The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [102]
The woman of the Keeper of the Horses left the knot of women around the fretting babe and led Deer to the broad log before her fire and bade him sit. The other Keepers settled alongside him, and Moon took a long, green knife of flint and a smooth brown stick that had been sharpened to a point as two of her brothers lifted the long spit from the fire. Holding the meat firmly with the stick, Moon began slicing the steaming, aromatic flesh. The first and honored slice she placed on a warmed stone and brought to Deer. Her head seemed to be downturned, but her eyes laughed with delight at him from under her lashes as he bowed and thanked her. This time he did stammer.
“You’ll be ready for the time of mating,” chortled the Keeper of the Bear at his side. “Looks as if someone has already chosen you.”
“Is the feast always given to a new Keeper? Was this how it was in your time?” he asked, skirting the topic of Moon, although his eyes followed her as she served the other Keepers.
“My time was a long time ago. We had just started the work in the cave then. My father made a feast for me,” he said. “But you have no father, so the Keeper of the Horses said the brotherhood should attend you.”
“You attend me just this evening and in matters of the cave, or at all times? Forgive me, but I know not the customs.”
“Why, at all times. At the hunt, at times of sacrifice, at times of betrothal, and even in time of war, the Keepers stand together. Our hearths are always open to our brother Keepers. We are bound like kin to take one another’s part, just as the hunters and the flint men do. We mourn one another’s deaths and celebrate one another’s births.”
“And if this rule be broken, if one Keeper should stand against another?”
“That happens not. We have our council where all matters are discussed until we are resolved and of one mind. Yes, there are arguments, but finally we come to agreement. That is the way of the brotherhood. You saw this evening how it is sacred to us all.”
The next morning, Deer took his place in the line of young men who gathered before the cave. The other Keepers stood behind the sacrifice fire, and once again the Keeper of the Bulls had donned his eagle’s headdress and placed the bull’s skull behind the fire. Beside the fire stood the leaders of the hunters, the fishers, the flint men, and the woodmen. Each bore his sign of office, the bow and the barbed fish spear, the great flint ax and the smooth and blackened club, whose head was carved into the shape of a bird with a sharp, pecking beak. Two boys held the young reindeer that had been saved from the slaughter at the cliff. Its front and rear feet were hobbled with thongs, but its eyes rolled and it kept trying to duck its head down between its own shoulders.
One youth from each clan had qualified for manhood at the great hunt, and they stepped forward in turn as their clan leader called them. Each stripped off his garment, and each was given the ceremonial weapon of his clan, except for Deer. The Keeper of the Bulls took from the edge of the fire the bowl of red clay and the stick whose end had been flattened and shredded into the form of a brush and handed them to Deer. No women were allowed to witness this rite.
“Mark it well for your fellow youths. Lead them this day to the common kill that will bind you all as men,” chanted the Keeper of the Bulls.
Deer advanced on the terrified reindeer, which froze immobile. He painted one red circle around its eye, and another low down on its neck where the shoulders met, and another on each side where the ribs parted and rose to the soft flesh of the belly. The two boys scurried away. Deer went around to the rear of the trembling beast, leaned his chest on its rump and wrapped his arms around its haunches, clutching