Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [64]
Never had Nooma been busier: his squat form bustled everywhere in a heavy leather apron, his hair full of dust; but he had about him now an air of quiet authority and his word was never questioned as he showed the men how to cut and shape the huge rocks.
Discipline was strict. The men working at the quarry or felling trees on the ridges were kept in camps for months at a time. At the great festivals of the year, the summer and winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes, the priests ordered Tark to bring slave girls to the camp, and the best workers were rewarded with them for two days, after which their work began again. At such times, Tark had always seen to it that Nooma had the pick of them.
The workers on the henge who were not already married were forbidden by the priests to take a wife; but in the second year, as a reward for his services, Nooma was told that he might do so.
This posed the mason with a problem. “I have no time to look for a wife,” he muttered as he surveyed the busy scene around him. Yet the thought of it excited him. Accordingly, one spring morning, he walked down to the trading post to consult his friend Tark.
“I need a girl,” he said.
Tark grinned. It was known that his own sexual appetites were prodigious. He kept several slave girls besides his wife and he had more than once let Nooma know that, without the knowledge of his priests, he could procure him a slave girl whenever he wanted.
But when Nooma explained that it was a wife he required, the river-trader grew serious. He listened carefully to his friend and then replied:
“Come back in three days. I will make enquiries.”
He was as good as his word. When Nooma returned, he had already spoken with several families along the five rivers who had suitable daughters, and had found that all of them would be glad to give a girl to the skilful builder of the henge, who was in such favour with the priests.
Carefully he outlined the merits of each.
“But the best is Katesh, daughter of Pendak the potter, who lives along the western river,” he said. “Her father is anxious to please the priests: he would part with the girl for five pelts; and for a girl like that, the normal marriage price would be twenty.”
“Is she so good-looking?” the mason asked.
“A beauty. I’ve seen her,” the trader assured him. “Black eyes, soft hair, and her body . . .” he made a lewd sign and laughed. “I envy you.”
Two days later, when Nooma saw the girl, he had to agree with his friend’s description.
She was thirteen, and the first thing he noticed was her large, lustrous black eyes and pale, creamy skin. She was a little taller than the mason. Her black hair fell to her waist; and though she stood quietly when her father brought her forward from the little hut beside his pottery, there was something challenging about the way she held her shapely young body, that stirred the mason to immediate excitement.
While he spoke to her father he was aware that the girl was watching him, and though her eyes carefully never met his, he knew that every point about him had been carefully noted. He wondered whether what she saw had pleased her.
He made his decision on the spot.
“I will take her,” he told the potter, who was delighted by the match.
A few days later he and Tark came up the river to the potter’s house, the five pelts were paid, and the girl was his. Slowly they paddled back to the place where the five rivers met, while Tark gently hummed a tune to himself, and the mason grinned almost foolishly at his good fortune.
When Nooma had brought her to the small house he had prepared in the northern valley, and she had silently cooked the customary meal of wheat