Island in the Sea of Time (64 page)

“I know you gentlemen and ladies”—the Congregational minister was a woman—“have been holding a conference.”

“We have indeed,” Gomez said. “We’ve been trying to come to some understanding of what God meant by the Event, in a specifically religious sense. Some things are obvious. Questions of episcopacy and papal supremacy are . . . well, completely moot. We think that this means that God is telling us to fall back on the simple wisdom of the early church; wherever two or more of us are gathered in His name, there He is . . . and all believers are one.”

Cofflin nodded. That made sense. For that matter, there’d been something of a religious revival on the island since the Event. Not showy, and there’d never been many fundamentalists here—Unitarians and mainstream Protestants were in the majority, with the Catholics a not very close second. More people had been showing up of a Sunday, though.

The Congregational minister went on: “At the same time, God is also telling us something by the very fact that it was
Nantucket
that was thrown into the sea of time. And not, say, Sicily or an island in Indonesia.”

She looked at her colleagues. “There’s a certain balance of denominational forces here that’s pretty well unique. And we’re in a world where, say, Islam or Buddhism is completely absent, even Zoroastrianism. No other what you might call competing higher religions.”

“So you’re going to unite and form a single church?” he said.

Gomez spread his hands. “More of a federation.”

“Congratulations . . . but there’s no question of a
state
church, I hope you realize that.”

“Of course.”

“Well, then, what exactly is the point of all this?” Cofflin said.

The clerics looked at each other. Gomez cleared his throat and took up the thread: “Well, Chief Cofflin, you must realize that God is also telling us something by putting us in a world still wholly pagan. Some of it reasonably clean paganisms like . . . oh, like Ms. Swindapa’s. Others abominations like the Olmec jaguar cult. Obscene by worldly standards, and possibly of demonic inspiration.”

Cofflin nodded grimly. Cultural autonomy be damned, that
deserved
to be scrubbed off the face of the planet. The problem with eliminating undeserving customs, though, was that it was hard to do it without wiping out the people who held them. He was a lot less enthusiastic about that.

“Well, the obvious inference is that God wants His word brought to these people. . . . There are some technical issues to do with the effect of the Incarnation on man’s fallen nature, but I won’t bother you with that. Basically, we’re called to spread the Word, and to do that, we need some help from the government of our new republic here.”

“Oh. Missionaries?”

“Certainly. On a more secular note, conversion will also make trade and other peaceful relations easier.”

“Hmm.” Cofflin pondered. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

 

Funny,
William Walker thought. The Iraiina verb for “to marry” was
wedh.
It also meant “to carry away,” which was precisely what you did with the bride. Ekhnonpa was a big young woman, but he lifted her easily onto his saddlebow; a pleasant armful, and her face was nice enough—not exactly pretty, but it wasn’t paper-bag-ugly, either. It would have been a chariot in an
entirely
traditional upper-class wedding. She shivered a little through the fur cloak and leaned against him; he waved and called back greetings to the guests who thronged Daurthunnicar’s steading. They roared out good wishes, mostly of an obscene nature, with plenty of puns on “riding home,” the bawdy mirth of a stockbreeding people. The women crowded close, pelting them with handfuls of wheat and barley for fertility. Ekhnonpa had been in high good spirits all through the ceremony—the viewing of the dowry, the handing over by the father, the bride and groom eating from a loaf cut by the man’s sword—but now she became a little subdued.

The grass in the fields was silvery with frost where tips lifted out of last night’s snow. The branches of the oaks were a tracery of silver where the path ran beneath, and a mist of ice crystals drifted down, reddened by the morning sunlight. Breath puffed white from men and animals. Walker fell back beside the light horse-drawn cart that drew up the rear of the procession.

“Here, wife,” he said. “This will be more comfortable for you.”

She made a small sound of surprise at the heaped wool and bearskins under the padded leather canopy, more so at the smooth ride the springs gave, glowing with satisfaction at this demonstration of her man’s status. Her two attendants were already sitting there; he could hear them chattering to each other as he rode back to the head of the line. His men called congratulations, waving spears or slapping him on the back as he passed.

“No, I don’t have any objection,” Isketerol said, taking up the thread of the conversation as their horses paced side by side. He’d adopted trousers and jacket and cap with earflaps for winter wear. “Even better, if you stay here. More for Tartessos in the Middle Sea; and richer trade—you’ll want to buy wine, oil, dried fruits, things like that.”

“It’ll depend on what happens this winter and spring,” Walker said. “I think I can build a position the Nantucketers won’t care to mess with, particularly not if I’m prepared to be reasonable about trading. Which I will be.”
For a while,
he added to himself. “And then again, if I can open peaceful relations with the island, I can attract more specialists here. I can certainly offer them a better deal than they have back home, and good luck to Cofflin and the captain if they try to stop it. Pretty soon you’ll have ships on that run.”
And so will I, of course. You’re a good buddy, Isketerol, but I’m not giving you a monopoly.

The folk of his own steading came out to greet them as they arrived around noon; the winter sun was fairly low in the southern sky. He stopped to put Ekhnonpa back on his saddlebow. She looked around, awe plain on her face as they rode into the courtyard.

“Walkerburg,” he said.

“It’s larger than father’s
ruathaurikaz
already!” she said, startled. “And no palisade?”

“It’s our enemies who need walls,” he said, and tried to see it with her eyes.

All the buildings of horizontal logs, with split strakes for roofing, and fieldstone chimneys carrying away the smoke. The stone pavement of the courtyard showed, the snow brushed off it; the barn and stables were built to the pattern he remembered from his boyhood. Martin’s hammer went
clang . . . clang
from the smithy, but otherwise everyone was here. He’d throw a party for the common laboring slaves as well; letting them get blasted and laid on high occasions was good management practice. There were a row of smaller log cabins for his free followers, and the big house he’d put up out of logs from the palisades of plundered settlements.

All in all, it didn’t look like his family’s ranch in the Bitterroot country of southwestern Montana any more. It looked like the little crossroads hamlet where his grandfather had gone four times a year to lay in supplies.

“Nut a izzy plessta mekka livvin’,”
he quoted softly, remembering Gramps.
“But kip y’feet uffa m’ prop’ty. Ent much but it’s mine.”

“My husband?” she said.

“Nothing,” he replied. “Old memories.”

He swung down, swept up the Iraiina woman in his arms, and carried her through the big house door. He’d built the place on the shotgun principle, four rooms up and down separated by a hall, with a lean-to kitchen out back. It was fairly comfortable, too. Squared-log walls made good insulation, and Martins had run up some Franklin stoves.

“It’s warm!” she said in amazement as he put her on her feet again. An arm stayed around his waist. “Warm as summer!”

Ekhnonpa gasped again; she’d never seen a floor of split logs, sanded smooth and covered with rag rugs, or plumb-line-straight walls hung with native tapestries, or a staircase, or proper hinged doors. Nor the brightness that glass-chimney oil lamps and molded wax candles allowed.

“This is like the palaces of the
gods,
” she blurted.

Actually more like summer camp,
Walker thought with some pride.
But it’s a start.

Alice Hong came up. Ekhnonpa made a bobbing gesture, halfway between a curtsy and a bow, as was due to the senior wife.

“Greetings, my elder sister,” she said quietly.

Hong nodded to her, smiling, and went on to Walker in English: “All right, if you like big blond horses. Being a cowboy, I suppose . . .”

“Tsk, tsk, meow,” he replied in the same language. “Everything ready?”

“Yes, oh Master,” she said, leading the way into the dining room. “The runner got here an hour ago. And I delivered a baby and set a broken leg in my
abundant
spare time today.”

“Cut the sarcasm—I’m hungry.”

The table was set for a dozen, his principal followers. Ekhnonpa looked around at the room, the table with its place settings and candelabra, the chairs—those were only for chieftains, among the Iraiina—and laughed nervously. “I can see that there is much I must learn about helping to run a household of the Eagle People. Much my elder sister Alauza must teach me.”

Alice had enough Iraiina by now to understand that. She began to laugh into her wineglass. The other Americans joined her, and the Iraiina looked at the ceiling or the table, anywhere but at the chieftain’s bride. Servants scurried in with platters of food and baskets of bread, the candlelight flashing on their silver collars.

“I teach well,” Alice said, looking aside at Walker. “Don’t I, Will?”

“Not this time,” he said in English. “Political considerations, my sweet.”

She pouted slightly. “You get all the fun, with this bloody log-cabin harem of yours.”

“You’ve been having a good enough time.”

“Pickles and ice cream are nice, but they’re no substitute for beef,” she said. “There isn’t enough of you to go’round, Will, and now there’ll be less, and you’ve developed a really medieval jealous streak.”

“This
is
the Land of the Double Standard, Alice my medicinal
querida.
” For an instant his face went utterly cold, until she looked aside. “I don’t give a shit personally, but I can’t afford to lose face, which I would if you strayed. If I lose face, you lose your face. Clear?”

“Clear,” she said sullenly. “Pass the peas.”

Walker did, then helped Ekhnonpa fill her plate. A fork could be surprisingly difficult if you’d never used one before, and he helped her with that too. He kept her wineglass filled. Before long she was blushing and giggling at him, and leaning closer unconsciously. He grinned inwardly. Iraiina men had no technique. In bed they just put a woman on her back and leaped aboard, and outside it they socialized mainly with each other. A little American smoothness went a long way here. And for the present, Ekhnonpa was going to be
very
useful to him.

 

“That’s
fun,
” Swindapa said, swinging down out of the saddle.

Ian Arnstein stifled a groan.
Well, young women are
supposed
to like horses,
he thought. He didn’t, and besides that he looked ridiculous on any but a fairly large one. On the Bronze Age ponies . . . he’d be lucky if they didn’t walk out from underneath him and leave him standing like a straddle-legged statue. There’d been a Viking chief with that problem; they’d called him Hrolf Ganger, Hrolf the Walker.

The big barn had two sawdust riding rings inside it, and the board walls cut the chill a little . . . a very little. It smelled of the sweat and other by-products of horses, despite the snow that lay three inches deep outside. Cynthia Kelton had rented stable space before the Event, to support her habit—the habit being horses, of course. She was about thirty herself, and she’d been plump before the Event; that showed in the looseness of her jodhpurs. There was a visible glow to her as she tutored
Eagle’
s officers and selected members of the militia who’d be going east with the expeditionary force. She would be along herself, to break in local horses they planned to buy on the other side of the ocean, which was considerably easier than carrying any with them.

“Of course it’s fun,” Kelton said to Swindapa. “And a very promising student you are, too. Nice seat and good hands.”

“Better her than me,” Arnstein muttered under his breath.

He’d always been convinced that the only purpose a horse served was to take up space that might otherwise be occupied by another large quadruped, say a cow or a camel.

“It’s not that bad, Ian,” Doreen said, turning out a leg with a riding boot on it to admire the curve.

“I’d rather hoof it myself on shank’s mare than saddle myself with one of these things,” he said, heading toward the mounting block. “What is it with women and horses?”

“They don’t make puns, for starters,” she said. “Or leave cracker crumbs in bed.”

 

Marian Alston doubted anything like the Dance of the Departing Moon had been done in Nantucket before. Certainly not by someone in pink bikini briefs spangled with blue flowers. Swindapa was humming to herself as she danced, turning, whirling, leaping, crouching, then slowing to a stately gliding walk in the intricate measure; it was like a ballet laid out by a mathematician with a taste for geometry. Long blond hair spun out in a final spiral as she collapsed gracefully into a pattern of limbs, the fixed look of religious ecstasy fading from her face.

Well, that explains how she picked up the Art so quickly.
With that sort of training . . .

“That will bring our journey luck,” the Fiernan said, rising and kneeling up on the sofa at the foot of the bed, elbows on the back and palms supporting her chin. “Oh, it will be good to see my family again! And I’m looking forward to showing you off to everybody, my friends and my uncles and aunts, and having you meet my mother and sisters.”