The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [104]
Without another word, Deer led the other four out of the narrow gallery and into the main cave where the clan leaders and the Keepers stood waiting. They marched past them and out to the sacrifice fire, where they placed the bowl with its remains of bloodied clay on the embers and then added the brush. They stood and watched them smoke, catch fire, and burn, as the older men emerged from the cave and began to skin and joint the sacrificed reindeer, and set up spits of green wood to roast the meat.
“It is done,” said the hunter. “We are men now.”
“Aye,” said the woodman. “We will have women tonight.”
As the sun began sinking and glinting red on the river, the women came singing up the hill, the three maidens leading them with flowers in their hair. The young widows had sewn feathers into the seams of their tunics and their children danced in excitement beside them. The married men took torches, lit them in the fire, and then shuffled into two long lines, making a wide passage that led to the fire, jesting with their women as the young girls, eyes downcast, approached.
Again the Keeper of the Bulls dominated the ceremony, standing in his eagle’s mask by the great horned skull, flanked by the chief hunter with his bow and the chief woodman with his beaked club. Each of them had a clan daughter to be betrothed this day. Standing in line with his four fellows, Deer caught his breath as Moon came forward with the other two maidens to lay flowers before the feet of the young men. Heads down, they backed away, and the two long lines of men began the wedding chant, stamping their feet in steady rhythm as the young widows came with flowers in their turn.
Five newly made young men, and three maidens. Two men who had lost their women in childbirth, and five widows. One of them would go back to a lonely bed this night, waiting for another year.
The chief hunter and chief woodman began lengthening the fire, poking the embers while other men brought dry wood to feed the new flames until the fire was as long as three spear lengths. The oldest woman of the village, not a tooth left in her head, limped up to the bull’s skull and poured a bowl of milk, freshly taken from the breasts of nursing mothers, between its horns, to ensure that all the matings would be fruitful.
The two men who had lost their women stepped forward to the fire, one hunter and one fisherman. The hunter laid a fresh-killed rabbit at his feet, and his bow beside it. The fisherman laid a fat pike on the stone before him, and rested the shaft of his fishing spear beside it. The oldest woman went down to the group of waiting widows, and clearly by some arrangement the women had made among themselves, took two of them, one by each hand, and led them with their children to the waiting men. One hand still clasped to the old woman, each of the widows stretched out her other hand to one of the men. Each took it, and then each couple ran to the long line of fire and leaped, hand in hand, across the flames. It was done.
The old woman went back to the three remaining widows, and led them in line to the five new-made men. One had a babe at her breast, and another had toddlers clinging to her skirts. For a man who wanted sons, the certainty of fertility was important. The third widow was the fairest of all them all, but had no children with her. Deer remembered the body of her husband, the bold young hunter, being brought back to the village.
From his side, the young woodman with the mark of the beaked club still on his chest, was the first to step forward and offer his hand to the girl with