Warrior Scarlet (2 page)

He entered the steading garth by way of a weak place he knew of in the thorn hedge, instead of going round to the gateway that faced towards the corn-land down the combe, and made his way between the byre and the shelter where the two-ox plough was kept. Drustic must be out hunting, since there was no sign of him about the farm-land, and would scarcely be home by dusk; but his mother and the Grandfather would be there, and Blai. As he reached the back wall of the house-place and saw the familiar strip of warm darkness where the roof turf had been rolled back to let in more air and light, the idea suddenly woke in him that it would be fun to get in that way and drop on them like an earwig out of the thatch when they did not know that he was anywhere near.

The roof of the house-place came down to within elbow height of the ground all round, and the pitch was not very steep, but the sun-dried turf was slippery, and so it was not as easy to climb up as it looked. He managed it, however, working his way up with infinite care until he could reach the edge of the opening, and after that it was easy. He drew himself up a little farther, then shifted his grip and slipped through between the
rafters that showed in the gap, found a one-hand hold inside, and next instant, all without a sound—for few people could move more silently than Drem when he chose—was lying full length along the edge of the loft floor.

The half-loft in the crown of the roof was full of warm, crowding shadows through which the bar of fading sunlight from the gap in the roof fell like a golden sword. There was a warm smell of must and dust, and the sharper, aromatic tang of the dried herbs hanging in bundles from the rafters, and the animal smell of the skin rugs laid aside there until the winter. Spare farm tools were stacked deep under the eaves, and the raw, grey-brown bundles of wool from the last clip, and the wicker kists in which the household kept their clothes and gear. Harness hung among the herbs, and a smoked bear ham; and there, too, were the two-handled crocks full of honey that kept the household in sweetness from one bee harvest to the next.

At the open side, almost in the smoke of the hearth fire that wreathed past on its way to the smoke hole, hung two shields: Drustic’s shield that had been their father’s, and the great bulls-hide buckler with the bronze bosses that was the Grandfather’s and would be Drem’s one day.

But at the moment Drem had no interest to spare for the loft. Lying flat on his stomach and shielded from sight by the great roof-tree and the Grandfather’s buckler, he was peering down over the edge into the main body of the house-place below. It was fun to see without being seen. Out of the fireglow and the fading sword of dusty gold, the great living-hut ran away on every side into brown shadows with a bloom of wood smoke on them, but where the light fell strongest near the doorway, his
mother was working at her loom; a big upright loom, the warp threads held taut by a row of triangular clay weights at the bottom. He could hear the small rhythmical sounds as she passed the weaving-rod to and fro and combed up the woof between each row.

The warm, fatty smell of the evening stew came up to him from the bronze pot over the fire, and brought the warm water to his mouth, for he had not eaten since the morning bowl of stirabout with the shepherd kind. The Grandfather was sitting beside the fire as usual, on the folded skin of the bear that he had killed when the world was young; a man like a huge old brooding grey eagle that had once been golden.

On the other side of the hearth, the Women’s side, Blai squatted on her heels, turning barely cakes with small, flinching hands in the hot ash. She was exactly beneath Drem, so that he thought how easy it would be to spit on her, like spitting on the back of a hare as it sunned itself on a far-down ledge of the old flint quarry north of the summer sheep-run. Blai was not his sister; her coming belonged to the time that he could only just remember, when a bronze-smith had come by from the Isles of the West, and his woman with him—a wild, dark creature with hair and eyes like the night. She had been sick already, and in the night she had died and left a new babe bleating in the fern against the wall. The bronze-smith had not seemed much interested, and two days later he had gone off along the track that led inland, leaving the babe behind him. ‘What should I want with the creature?’ he had said. ‘Maybe I will come back one day.’ But he never had come back. And now Blai was rising seven years old, black as her mother had been, in a house where everyone else was red-gold like flame, and somehow never quite belonging to them. Blai believed that one day the bronze-smith would come back: ‘One day, one day my
father will come for me!’ seemed to be her talisman against all ills, the faith that she clung to as something of her own. But of course he never would come back; everybody knew that except Blai. Blai was stupid.

Drem decided not to spit on her after all, because that would betray his presence in the loft, and turned his attention back to his mother. The cloth on the loom had grown a little since he saw it last, though not much, because there was so much else to do; a piece of fine chequered wool, blue and violet and flaming red. There was red wool on his mother’s weaving-rod now, the true burning Warrior Scarlet that was the very colour of courage itself. No woman might wear that colour, nor might the Half People who came and went at the Tribe’s call. It was for the Men’s side. One day, when he had passed through the Boys’ House, and slain his wolf single-handed, and become a man and a warrior of the Tribe, with his Grandfather’s shield to carry, his mother would weave scarlet on the loom for him.

The Grandfather raised his great grey-gold head from watching bygone battles in the fire, and turned his gaze on the woman at the loom. ‘It grows slowly, that piece of cloth,’ he said, in a voice that came mumbling and rattling up from the depth of his great frame. ‘When it is finished, let you use it to re-line my good beaver-skin cloak. The old lining is worn to shreds.’

Drem’s mother looked over her shoulder, showing a tired face in which the beautiful bones stood out so sharply that it looked as though you could cut your hand on it. ‘I had thought to use this piece for Drustic; he also needs a new cloak, for his old one does not keep out the wind and the rain.’

‘Drustic is young, and the wind blows less cold for him. He can wait. Let you set up the loom for him next time.’

‘Next time and next time and next time,’ Drem’s mother said quietly. ‘Sometimes I wish that I had been born to the Men’s side; sometimes I grow weary of the spinning and the weaving and the grinding corn.’

The Grandfather spat into the fire. ‘By right there should be three sons’ wives to weave and grind for me!’

‘Then there should be three sons for them to weave for also,’ Drem’s mother said with a spurt of tired and angry laughter, thrusting back a bright wisp of hair that had strayed as her hair was always straying from the blue linen net in which it was gathered, and looked round again. ‘Or would you have them all widows?’

Drem knew his mother in this mood; it came when she was very tired; and he began to feel that it would not be a good idea to play his earwig-out-of-the-thatch trick, after all.

The Grandfather drew his brows together, and glared. ‘Aiee! A hard thing it is that I grow old, and of all my three sons there is not one left, and that the wife of my youngest son should taunt me with it! A hard thing it is that I should have but one grandson to carry my spear after me; I who have been among the greatest warriors of the Tribe.’

(‘The Old One grows forgetful,’ Drem thought. ‘He has lived so long with old battles that his mind grows dim; and he has forgotten Drustic.’)

His mother turned again from her weaving, with a fierceness that struck him even at that moment as odd. ‘Two grandsons there are at the hearth fire! Have you forgotten?’

It was then that the Grandfather said the thing that altered the whole world for Drem, so that it could never return to being quite the same as before.

‘Nay then, I have not forgotten. I grow old but I can still count the tally of my ten fingers. Two grandsons there are at the hearth fire; but a grandson at the hearth fire is not a grandson among the spear-warriors of the Tribe. Is it likely, think you, that the young one will ever win his way into the Men’s side, with a spear-arm that he cannot use?’

There was a sudden silence. Drem’s mother had turned back to her loom, but she was not weaving. The Grandfather sat and glowered. And in the warm shadows of the loft above them, the small boy lay on his stomach, staring down at them with dilated eyes, and feeling all at once cold and sick. Only Blai went on turning barley cakes among the hot
ashes, her small wan face telling as little as usual of what she thought or felt.

Then Drem’s mother said, ‘Talore the Hunter is one of the great ones of the Men’s side to this day.’

‘Talore the Hunter was a man and a warrior before ever he lost a hand to the cattle raiders,’ the Grandfather said, deep and grumbling, and he eyed her with a kind of disgusted triumph. ‘Na na, it is in my mind that the boy must go to the Half People when the time comes. He is often enough away with Doli and the sheep as it is; maybe he will make a shepherd.’ He spat again. ‘Lord of the Sun! That I should have a grandson herding sheep! I, who have been such a warrior as men speak of round the fire for a hundred winters!’

‘If the child fails, then he must go to the Half People,’ Drem’s mother said, and her voice sounded tight in her throat. ‘But it may be that he will not fail. He is your own grandson, and not lightly turned from the things he sets his mind to.’

‘So. But it is not his mind alone that must be set.’ The Grandfather flared his nostrils in a derisive snort. ‘Say then that he comes through his years in the Boys’ House and slays his wolf at the end of them, and the time comes for him to receive his weapons; there must be two warriors, let you remember, and one of them not kin to him, to bring each New Spear before the Clan. And who shall I find, think you—or Drustic if I have gone beyond the Sunset—to stand for a one-armed champion?’

‘It is six summers before that question need be answered—and must I then answer it this evening?’ Drem’s mother cried. ‘If he fails, then let him go to the Half People as I say, and let you be thankful that there is Drustic to carry your spear after you!’ She gave a swift exclamation and turned from the loom towards the open pottery lamp that hung from the roof-tree just below Drem’s hiding-place. ‘The light fades, and if I am to finish this stripe before Drustic is home to be fed, I must have the lamp.’

Quick as a lizard, Drem darted back into the shadows.

‘Surely there is a rat in the roof. I heard it scamper.’ He heard her voice, dry and hard, behind him as he slid out through the opening in the roof. He dropped silently to the ground, driven by an odd panic fear of anyone knowing that he had overheard what passed in the house-place, because somehow—he could not have said why—that would make it quite unbearable.

The little stilt-legged hut where the seed corn was stored seemed to offer refuge and he dived under it and crouched there, breathing hard as though he had been running.

The sun was gone, but a golden after-glow was spread behind the Chalk, and there was still light to see by. And crouching there among the timbers that upheld the floor, he looked at his right arm, as though he had never seen it before: his spear arm that he could not use, the Grandfather had said. It was thinner than his left, and somehow brittle looking, as though it might snap like a dry stick. He felt it exploringly with his left hand. It was queer, like something that did not quite belong to him. He had always known, of course—when he thought about it at all—that he could not use that arm, but it hadn’t seemed important. He held things in his teeth and he held things between his knees, and he managed well enough without it. Certainly he had never for a moment thought of it coming between him and his Warrior Scarlet.

But he thought now, crouching under the floor of the corn store and staring straight before him with eyes that did not see the golden after-glow fading behind the Chalk. Never to take his proud place among the Men’s side with the others of his kind; to lose the world he knew, and go out into the world of the Half People, the Dark People, the Flint People, whose homes, half underground, were the little green hummocks in the hidden combes of the Chalk; who came and went at the Tribesmen’s call, though they never owned the Tribesmen as their masters; to be cut off, all his life, from his own kind . . . He was only nine years old, he could not yet understand all that it would mean; but he understood enough—more than enough. He
crouched there for a long time, whispering over and over to himself, ‘I
will
be a warrior of the Tribe. Let you say what you like, Old Man! I will show you—I will
show
you’—lashing up anger within himself, for a shield against fear.

When he went back to the house-place it was almost dark. Drustic had returned from the hunting trail, and the newly paunched carcass of a roe hind was hanging from the birch tree beside the door, out of reach of the dogs who were fighting over the offal, the white of her under-belly faintly luminous in the dusk, where the blood had not fouled it. He went in through the fore porch, where the ponies were stabled in winter. The apron of skins over the inner doorway was drawn back, and the tawny glow of the lamp and the low fire came to meet him on the threshold as he checked, blinking. The evening meal was over, and the Grandfather, it seemed, had returned to his watching of old battles in the fire. Drustic, with a half-made bow-stave across his knee and a glue-pot beside him, was busy on the great hunting bow that he was building for himself, while on the Women’s side of the hearth their mother sat spinning. She looked up as Drem appeared. ‘Cubbling! Here is a time to be coming home! When it drew to sunset I said, “He will not come now until tomorrow.”’

‘I would have been home by sunset, but—I stopped on the way. There were things to look at and I stopped on the way,’ Drem said. But he could not meet his mother’s eyes. Keeping his head down, he went to squat beside Drustic, holding out his hand. ‘I will hold it steady while you put on the binding.’