Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [38]
The medicine man had failed and as each day passed, there were signs of the settlers’ anger and his declining influence with them that he could not ignore. There were sullen murmurs about him in the homesteads. Women with sick children did not go to him and the men avoided his company. One day, at the cattle enclosure, he even saw a settler woman whose child had stumbled into some poison ivy, accept gratefully a herbal cure from one of the hunters. He had waddled forward to stop this, but the woman had taken the herbs and quickly left without looking at him.
One day a small deputation arrived at the farm on the hill to see Krona.
“The medicine man has brought two years of rain,” they complained. “He is displeasing the gods and we should drive him out.”
After they had gone, Liam joined her voice with theirs.
“He has failed,” she reminded him, “and besides, he is not to be trusted.”
The ageing chief knew that his proud young wife resented the influence of the medicine man in the valley, and he understood the feelings of the settlers, but he was unwilling to do such a thing.
“We shall not be hasty,” he decreed. “Speak to me of this no more.”
But from that day, the medicine man noticed that whenever Krona saw him his weatherbeaten face took on a hard and angry stare that was frightening. Still more disturbing was the suggestion he overheard a young farmer make to some companions, none of whom disagreed with him:
“I think the sun god has no power in this place,” he said. “Perhaps it belongs to the moon goddess the hunters worship and we should sacrifice to her instead.”
When he heard this, he knew that he had not much time.
It was at this critical moment, when the very future of the settlement in the valley seemed in doubt, that an event took place that was to give the medicine man his opportunity.
Early one morning, near the end of summer, a single man walked slowly out of the woods to the east and entered the place where the five rivers met. He was very old – probably older than any other man living in the south of the island; he carried a staff to lean on and walked with a shuffle; and his sudden arrival caused a flurry of excitement amongst the hunters.
They had not seen him for twelve years and his presence amongst them meant that there would be a great feast in his honour, when important matters such as the arrival of the settlers would be discussed, and his advice sought. For no man was more revered, and none wiser, than this old man, who might appear only once or twice in the lifetime of a hunter.
He was the soothsayer.
There were several soothsayers on the island at that time – strange figures who usually lived alone, travelling through the forests from one isolated camp to another; and wherever they went, the hunters welcomed them as honoured guests. They were mysterious, disappearing into the forests sometimes for months at a time; they were wise, for they knew every secret of the forest, every root that cured sickness, and the habits of every animal. The soothsayer who approached was especially revered because he was known to have magical powers, and to be able to predict the movements of game and of the weather.
“He is protected by the forest god,” Magri explained to one of the farmers. “And when the moon is full, he converses alone with the moon goddess and she tells him her secrets. We call him the Old Man of the Woods.”
He was very old: over sixty at a time when few men lived to be fifty. His knowledge was indeed extraordinary: for with all the ancient lore of the natural world, he also carried in his head a vast store of knowledge concerning the hunters themselves. He knew the family histories of most of the settlements in the south of the island; he was a great teller of tales; he was in truth the keeper of the hunters’ culture.
“He will tell many stories,” Magri told a farmer, “and then he will make a great sacrifice to the moon goddess, to give us good hunting.”
It was when he heard of this visitor that