Blood Ties (41 page)

He was facing away from her now, looking down the vine-clad, stone terraces to the valley below. They were high enough so that in the distance the great river could be seen, shimmering in heat haze.

‘He gave it to me before he died. “Take it back to the land, and use it there,” he told me. Well, I’m back!’

His voice rising to a shout, he reached behind him, bending back to throw.

A hand closed over his. ‘Oki – objects – have power, Tagay,’ Anne said. ‘Donnaconna’s stone. The silver cross in my pouch that my brother once nailed to a tree in Tuscany. Above all, that which my father swore to bury, that many men covet still, the six-fingered hand of Anne Boleyn. To some, only a stone, a piece of metal, some old bones. But we know the truth of power, Tagay. You don’t throw away power. Your uncle, my father, they were right. Power is to be used.’

The next village was not a pile of cinders. Fires there were, at least fifty of them, and their smoke rode the wind over the log palisade that encircled the village. Kettles, full of meat, simmered above rock hearths, in a wide cleared space where all the houses converged in a giant circle. These were made from slabs of cedar and there were scores of them, of different sizes, though a similar shape, the largest being at least forty paces in length and fifteen wide, the same in height. And every one was deserted.

‘You can stop that now,’ Jacquet called to Bertrand, the youngest of the crew, ‘for there’s no one here to appreciate your greeting.’ The boy immediately lowered the flute he’d been blowing ever less enthusiastically as they had walked through the lifeless village. The fingers that had been stopping holes were now occupied with crossing himself repeatedly.

The Captain was as concerned as each of his men. ‘Where are they?’ he muttered. ‘This place is, or was, Stadacona. I’d recognize those cliffs anywhere. Spent a winter nestled against them with the Admiral in thirty-seven. If anything, it’s bigger than it was then. Someone set those pots to cook. Where the devil are they now?’

‘Or what devil has taken them.’ Tagay’s joy at seeing the smoke from the cooking fires of his people had been ripped away by their absence, leaving an even greater desolation. ‘Maybe the demon who burned the other villages first stole all life from them, as he has done here. And when he has finished eating the people, he returns to destroy their homes.’

‘Enough of that talk!’ Jacquet bellowed, as his men crossed themselves ever more furiously. The last thing he needed was his crew to start seeing the Devil in this. Captain or no Captain, they’d take the ship back to France on the instant.

Anne was standing slightly away from the men. ‘Listen,’ she said, and each laboured to pitch their hearing above the beating of their hearts. At first, there was nothing but the wind. Then something came to each of them, on swirls of air.

‘It sounds like … wailing!’ Bertrand whimpered. ‘The Indian’s right, the Devil’s abroad.’ He turned toward the river, took a step.

‘Quiet!’ Jacquet’s head was tipped toward the cliffs. ‘Sounds like cheering to me. And laughter.’

‘What is up there? Do you remember?’ Tagay said.

‘Aye. You seem to climb for ever up those rocks and then suddenly you come out on a huge meadow.’

‘My uncle told me of that place.’ Tagay said. ‘He called it Dayohagwenda – “Opening through the woods”. My people – perhaps they are there.’

‘I don’t like it,’ muttered Jacquet. ‘What would make the whole damn village leave their cooking fires?’

‘Well,’ said Tagay, his face suddenly flushed, ‘shall we go and find out?’

‘I couldn’t make the climb, not with this.’ Jacquet ground the crutch’s end into the earth. ‘And my men won’t go without me.’ He thought for a moment. ‘You go, Tagay. By yourself. That way, if the Devil
is
up there, he’ll only get his own.’ He smiled, briefly. ‘We’ll wait for you back at the river.
On
the river.’

He turned, walked a few paces back toward the palisade, turned back. ‘Come, girl,’ he said to Anne, who had not moved.

‘No,’ said Anne. ‘I’m going too.’ She halted the protest that came from both men’s mouths. ‘Of course I’m going. You think I’ve come this far to slink away? We are here to meet these people. Tagay’s people. There is no other choice.’

They had, each of them, heard that tone of determination before.

‘Come then,’ said Tagay.

A trail, beaten by thousands of feet, led from the rear of the village, traced along a stream, then began winding up a steep slope. It was hard climbing to limbs that had only been able to stretch the length of a caravel for weeks at sea, and the sun bore down ferociously. Using his arms to pull at the shrubs that lined the path, as well as his pumping legs, Tagay pulled himself up, Anne struggling behind. As they got higher, the cries above grew louder.

They reached the summit and the noise doubled, screams bursting through the small screen of scrubby pine that crested the cliff top.

‘Keep low,’ Tagay turned back to whisper, ‘and be ready to run.’

Through a stand of oak, the trail then plunged into a wall of shoulder high grass. The voices weaved through it, as if the shouters were just the other side of a screen.

Tagay signalled back to the last oak, whose branches stretched over the green sea ahead. Anne understood and immediately began climbing, Tagay following, letting her guide him to the foot and handholds, for he had watched her on the ship and she could go up a mast as swiftly as any of the sailors. When they reached a branch that looked solid enough, Tagay moved past and pushed outwards through the foliage.

Leaves parted on mayhem. The tall grasses reached only a few paces in and then there was a great plain filled with screaming humanity. All were semi-naked, men and women, a breech cloth and dust their only covering. A cloud of it hung above the horde that surged forward, then swayed back, men, women, children, packed so tight that many had been lifted from the ground and were borne by the press, each head thrown back, wailing to the sky:

‘Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ahum!’ The voices started on a high note and slid down the scale, then rode up and ended in the mighty crescendo of the final phrase.

Anne found that her hand had reached into the pouch at her waist and was clutching her brother’s little silver cross there.

‘Are they possessed, Tagay? What agony are they in?’

Before he could reply, another tormented cry came from the far side of the field. Yet peering through the dust cloud, he could see that it was no echo but another wedge of people, letting out the same shrieking rise and fall of notes.

‘Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ahum!’

Silence followed, as complete and dreadful as the noise that had preceded it. Then a single, deep male voice let out a cry that conjured shapes from the ground between the opposing groups. A dozen men stood in two lines of six facing each other. Every man was naked, save for the small apron that barely covered the loins. Every man held a carved and curled stave in his hands.

Anne suddenly knew what she was watching. Her father had taken her once to a tournament of knights in Bologna. ‘Tagay,’ she whispered, clutching at his shoulder, ‘these men fight each other.’

As she spoke, someone stepped forward from the far crowd and hurled something into the space between the two lines of warriors. The distinct clack of wood on wood came, as eight of the men merged into a solid group where the thrown object had landed. Grunts of exertion rose from the dust cloud that partially obscured them; then, suddenly, a round object burst out of the mêlée and hurtled toward the two men to the left who had stood clear of the fight. One of them flicked it from the ground up into the air with his stick, then hit it in the same movement across the field, to the men who had stood off there. A stave rose, struck; the ball – for that is what it had to be – flew upfield.

There were cries of alarm from those below the tree, screams of delight from those opposite as the warrior who had knocked the ball forward pursued it. He was heavily tattooed, blue and black lines curving around his body in wreaths of leaf and reptile shapes. Taller than the one who chased him, a shrug of hips gained him a few yards, to the further dismay of those below the oak. But the smaller man was swift and caught up, just as the taller reached the ball. Despite a vicious chop down that seemed aimed more at fingers than stick, and produced another howl of outrage from those below them, the smaller man managed to knock the ball beyond the taller one’s reach. A team-mate, sweeping back, caught the ball on his stick and knocked it into the air; three men leapt, sticks high and, to agonized shouts, the ball hurtled back the way it had come, down the centre of the field.

‘This is a ball game, yes, Tagay? It is not war?’

He turned, excitement in his eyes, the first she’d seen since landfall. ‘It is much more than a game. War is the better word. This is Otadajishqua.’

The words were lost in the shrieking. Where the ball had rolled another group contended, more joining in as they arrived, others standing off. The ball escaped, only to be snatched back into the struggle.

Suddenly it rolled free, long enough for a stick to knock it away. Someone mis-hit it, and the small defender who had rescued it previously now retrieved it, bounced it up on his stick end and ran around a wrongfooted opponent. She could see where he was heading. She’d hadn’t noticed, till then, the twin gates of two poles that faced each other at either end of the field. They were twice the height of a man, a few paces apart.

Now it was the turn of those below to let out the whoops of encouragement, those opposite the shouts of fear. The tattooed man was trying to close down the ball-runner, yet the smaller man seemed to sense him reaching out. He sped up and, as if he could see behind him, leapt, the stick thrust viciously between his pumping legs. The tattooed man fell as he thrust, the smaller man surging beyond him and, as the crowd’s roar built, the ball carrier bounced the ball into the air then cracked it hard. It flew straight between the gates.

The shout that arose from below seemed as if it could lift them from the branch. The team’s supporters surged forward, surrounding the players. A chant began, Tagay shouting as loud as any, and Anne recognized the one word they were chanting. It began slowly, building in volume each time. It was Tagay’s own name, without the ‘Little’ attached.

‘Bear! Bear! Bear! BEAR!’ the crowd screamed.

Then, just as they had started altogether, suddenly and altogether they stopped. Only one voice continued shouting the word and then only once more.

‘BEAR!’ screamed Tagay into the silence, and everyone there, the supporters, the players standing or lying on the ground, all turned to look at the man standing on the end of an oak branch.

The stillness lasted for five heartbeats. Tagay knew, because he could hear his. The people stared at him, he stared back, and the only movement was that of his arms, raised aloft in the triumph of the Bear, now slowly falling to his side.

Then the world below them exploded. The crowd began to move forward as one body. A group of twenty or so older men, clad in cloaks and leggings, turned and stepped toward the tree. But those who reacted swiftest were those who had lately contested in the game. They ran to the base of the oak, their game sticks raised before them like weapons. Two had bent to the ground to snatch up bows. One of these was the smaller man who had shot the ball between the posts. The other was the tattooed warrior.

It was the smaller who spoke first. ‘If these birds attack us, Tawane, I will shoot the plover with its strange plumage to the left, and you the one to the right. Through the eye. We will see whose arrow flies more true.’

The other warrior grunted. This close Anne and Tagay could clearly see the complexity of the black lines that covered him. One was a detailed drawing of a diamond-backed snake that curled up from the base of his neck, a forked tongue reaching from fanged jaws to encircle the left eye. ‘Why would you end the sport so swiftly, Sadagae? Why do we not see how many arrows we can use before each die?’

As the first man hesitated, the man he’d called Tawane fitted an arrow to his string. ‘A beaver skin on it,’ he said. ‘Look, I think they are going to attack now.’

He raised his bow.

It was then that Tagay, pulling Anne tightly behind his back, spoke. His voice wavered, belying a little the defiance of his words.

‘Is this how you treat a Bear who only seeks to celebrate his clan’s victory? I call that being a bad loser, Black Snake.’

The tattooed man stared along the length of his arrow, the point never wavering. ‘How is it you speak the language of the people, and know my name, when you dress in the skins of the Pale Thieves?’

The exchange had allowed the rest of the people to catch up with the warriors. A huge semi-circle of men and women had swiftly formed and a group of elders had moved through to stand beneath the oak branch.

One of them stepped before the others. He was the oldest there, judging by the wrinkles on his face. But a broad, muscled chest showed through the layers of beads and shells that hung from his neck, and his grey hair was thick, oiled and set in two rolls above his ears. His raised hand brought an instant silence to the throng and he spoke slowly into that silence, his voice measured and deep.

‘We know you are war chief of the Wolf clan, Black Snake. But does that give you the right to kill all prisoners for your own pleasure and deprive us of ours?’

Tawane, ‘Black Snake’, did not lower his bow, but his eyes flicked toward the elder. ‘I seek only to end the threat of this spy, Tododaho. He may be one of the enemy who seek our lands, may he not?’

‘He may. Though I think he would be a very foolish enemy to come among us and shout for the Bear clan in the game. But it is for us to judge threats together, Tawane, not for you to act alone. Lower your bow.’

For a moment, it looked like the warrior might disobey. If anything the string of the weapon drew closer to his body. Then something close to a smile came to his face, and he slowly released the string’s tension.

‘Tododaho has spoken. And I, of course, agree with his wisdom, famous for so many years among the people.’