Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [58]
“I shall not give him more children,” she told Dluc; and it was she who had then urged the chief:
“You must take new wives, young women who will give you children. Let the priest choose them for you.”
And so, early that winter, the process of finding Krona’s new wives had begun.
Soon after the autumn equinox, Dluc had made a great sacrifice: fifty-six oxen, fifty-six rams, and fifty-six sheep. When it was done, he had brought to the chief two young girls of good family.
He had lain with each, many times.
Spring had come, then summer; the harvest had been poor, spoilt by heavy rains; neither girl conceived; and the people of Sarum were discouraged.
“The curse is not lifted,” they said, “not even by the great sacrifice.”
In his heart, the High Priest knew that they were right. He knew it even when he made the sacrifices. The great slaughter had been useless: whatever it was the gods wanted, they were not appeased.
Krona was depressed.
“You are not old yet,” Dluc reminded him, although it grieved him to look upon this sad, grey-haired man who had been a magnificent chief in the full pride of his manhood only months before. “We will find others.”
It was some time after the summer solstice that he brought this latest girl to Krona. With her ripe, inviting and rather plump young body, even Krona, who had seemed to take little pleasure in the other girls, smiled when he saw her. The priest had chosen her because in the recent bad harvest her father’s crops, for some reason, had been excellent, and since the gods had clearly marked her father out for their special favour, he was hopeful that at last he had found a bride who would be pleasing to them.
Now he was looking at her, cowering on the floor, while the chief stared at him with eyes that were wild, and Ina sadly shook her head.
“Very well,” he said at last. “It shall be as you wish.” He did not believe that sacrificing the girl would do any good, but it was better to try every remedy. He did so at dawn the following day, with a heavy heart; and that same evening, Krona reported to him that he was well again.
“Send me more girls,” he urged.
But this time Dluc did not. For it was clear from the signs from the gods – and his own instincts also told him – that the causes of their present troubles were deep-rooted. They would not be overcome by making a sacrifice and sending the chief another girl.
“I do not think our sacrifices are enough,” he told the chief. “We must do more.”
“What?”
Dluc shook his head.
“I don’t know. But we must find out. We shall read the auguries.”
This process, by which the priests asked the gods direct questions and received their answers was a lengthy one which Dluc did not like to use: not because he had any doubts that the gods would reply, but because of the extraordinary difficulty of interpreting their answers, against which his precise, mathematical mind secretly rebelled. In this instance however, he could see no other course. For several days the priests roamed the woods, netting birds which they kept in cages, where they were fed with grain into which was mixed all kinds of other material – herbs and grasses, gold dust, tiny pellets of stone and coloured earth – all of which would leave a tiny residue for inspection in their gut.
Early one morning, when over a hundred birds had been collected, fed, and brought in their cages to the henge, Dluc aided by a circle of priests began the delicate task of reading the signs.
Carefully, using a small bronze knife, he slit the bird’s breast open and then, with sharp sticks, pulled out its intestines for inspection, cutting here and there to see what signs could be found which would indicate the wishes of the gods.
The questions were simple, and before opening each bird, Dluc called them out:
“Tell us, great sun god, is Krona to have an heir?”
To this, by noting the sex and state of the innards of each of ten birds, an affirmative answer was soon reached, and Dluc gave a sigh of relief.
But to the following questions, the answers were less simple. What must be done to appease the