Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [87]
Soon after first light, messengers came to the henge from Krona to ask the meaning of the portent in the sky. And with a new confidence the High Priest declared:
“Tell Krona that the head of the star was crowned with gold. The time of our salvation is near: his bride who will give him heirs is coming and he must prepare himself.”
“Where is she?” his priests asked him. “Where are we to find her?”
“The star entered the constellation of the swan,” he told them, “and the swan is the form that the sun god takes when he flies over the water. I believe we should search for her upon the water.”
Since his discovery of Katesh’s deception, Nooma the mason had spent little time at his house. Partly this was because the pressure on him to supervise the dressing of the sarsens was so great; and partly it was out of choice.
He said nothing to her; nor did he allow his behaviour to change towards Tark, with whom he continued to work.
There was, however, a subtle change in his manner. Where he had been either quiet or enthusiastic, he now became abrupt, giving his orders curtly to the masons, and sending the labourers to their tasks with little more than a nod. But since he bore such a large responsibility, and since his skill and knowlege were unquestioned, the gradual change seemed normal to those around him who had come, with the passing of the years, to regard the curious-looking little fellow first with respect and even with awe.
From time to time he now took to going down river to the harbour whenever he heard that a merchant ship was coming in – for they usually had slave girls in their cargo. When he saw a girl he liked, he would buy her and take her to the hut he occupied near the sarsen site. It was widely known that he did so, but if news of it reached Katesh, she never mentioned the subject to him.
It was shortly after the comet was seen that he made one of these journeys.
He arrived at mid-afternoon, and as soon as he entered the long, still stretch of protected water, he saw the newly arrived merchant ship, moored by the jetty in the lee of the hill.
It was a stout, wooden vessel, with a double bank of oars that had made its long journey from a port on the Atlantic shore of Europe, skirting the dangerous coasts before it crossed to the island.
The little jetty was already crowded with people. Word had spread rapidly; farmers from all over the territory had hurried down the rivers, and were now jostling for a chance to see the boat and inspect its cargo.
The sailors were an interesting sight: small, dark, swarthy folk with bronzed skins from the south, but it was their leader whom Nooma especially noticed. About his own age, he had a bald round head, and a black beard that grew in hundreds of gleaming, tightly rolled curls, cut close and square. He had soft brown eyes, a snub nose, an engaging smile in which he displayed a fine row of white teeth, and a gentle, coaxing voice that seemed almost to ooze out of his throat: the sailors called him honey tongue. On his fingers he wore a dozen gold rings, which he clinked together constantly.
While the crowd watched in fascination, he brought forth his wares. There were jewelled ornaments which flashed in the sun, huge coils of beads, amphorae of wine, wonderful coloured cloths. Then with a flourish and a loud click of his fingers he made the sailors hold up the strangest pelt that Nooma had ever seen. It was like a huge lynx, but many times larger with a magnificent head, huge teeth and claws so large that Nooma shuddered to see them. Strangest of all was the animal’s strange colouring; it was striped black and ochre.
“This creature could rip an ox apart,” Nooma murmured to his neighbour, and he wondered what kind of animal this could be and where it came from.
But stranger things than a tiger skin from distant eastern trade routes had filtered through the Mediterranean and up to the northern sea ports before that.
Then came the merchant’s special prize. He built up to it splendidly. Using his whole body to emphasise his points, and accompanied by wonderfully