Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [65]
The months that followed were a time of new joy and excitement for the little mason, as he explored each night his wife’s young body. He would hurry back from the henge now before dusk fell, when he might have lingered before, so that it became a joke with all the masons as they saw his bandy-legged little form hurrying urgently towards his wife.
Fate had not been kind to Katesh. She was a lively, good-looking girl who could, in the normal course of events, have expected a rich choice of husbands from the farmers around. It was her bad luck that her father was so anxious to please the priests. When she heard that the mason had been asking for her she was dismayed,
“I have heard about him,” she cried. “They say he is small and ugly with a huge head.”
“He is the finest mason on the island,” her father told her, “and he is very popular with the priests.”
“But what if I do not like him?” she protested.
“You’ll be lucky if he’ll have you,” she was told.
When she first saw Nooma, her worst fears were confirmed. While the little mason saw that she was discreetly eyeing him, he little guessed the unhappy thoughts that were going through her mind.
“He is ugly,” she thought, “but I can bear that if I must. He is shorter than me. That’s not so terrible. But he is . . .” she did not want to think of it: “he is absurd,” she acknowledged. “How shall I love him?”
That night as she thought of the young man – undefined but handsome – that she had always dreamed would be her husband, and as she realised that the rest of her life might be spent with this worthy fellow with his big solemn head, his bandy legs and the funny little hands that she had observed that day, she wept bitter tears.
For two days, she pleaded with her father, but each time he turned his face away as though he could not hear her, and her mother only shook her head sadly.
“You must obey your father,” she told the girl. “He will choose the right husband for you.”
When the mason came for her and paid her father the absurdly low price that he had asked, she hid in the house and wept until her parents came in to fetch her. Then her mother firmly gave her the advice – it was really an order – that was to see her through the rest of her life:
“Remember Katesh, you are thirteen now – grown up. You must make your husband believe that you love him. And you must always obey him, that is your duty. Make sure you do both these things or you will suffer.”
In the coming years, she did her best. But on that sunny day, as the boat carried her towards her new home, and she looked up at the towering ridges and the broad, sweeping spaces of Sarum under the clear blue sky, it seemed to the young girl that the rest of her life was ordained to be a long and terrible sacrifice.
She remembered her mother’s words.
Night after night, as the little mason made vigorous love to her, thinking that he impressed her with his strength and passion, she tried to pretend that she, too, was carried away; and since the mason was filled with pride and excitement, it did not occur to him that his young bride might not be delighted with his passionate attention, his endless thrusts and his grunts of pleasure.
Indeed, knowing the excitement she caused her little husband did give Katesh a momentary delight and satisfaction; but she was glad that on most days she was alone, and she did not look forward to the nights when he returned.
Several times the mason took her to see the henge, where already the sacred bluestones were being moved to one side to make way for the new sarsens. Each time she noticed the grins