Sarum (15 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
It was at such a meeting, in the third year of Krona’s leadership, that an important decision was taken. For some time the flocks of sheep had grown at a healthy rate, providing excellent meat, and wool which the women spun and then wove into the cloth that the hunters had so much admired when they first came. But lately the quality of the wool had been poor and it was clear that a new strain was needed in the settlers’ flocks.
“We need sheep with the finest wool, no matter what size,” one of the farmers said. “Cross-bred with the big ones we have . . .” he made a sign to indicate the excellence of the result.
“But we can’t get them on the island,” another said. “We’ll have to make the crossing again,” he added reluctantly. Few of the settlers were anxious to brave the English Channel a second time in their fragile boats.
Krona, however, was firm.
“We’ll get more sheep and cattle,” he decided. “Improve the quality of all our livestock. We can get all we need from the farmers on the coast of the mainland. But we must go soon, while the summer weather lasts.”
“What can we trade?” the first farmer asked. “Our pottery and our basketwork?”
Krona considered briefly, then shook his head.
“No,” he said, “we have something better.” And he turned to Magri and Taku. “We need skins, pelts, fur,” he said. “The farmers on the mainland will make a good exchange for those.”
It was true: these items were greatly prized by the farmers on the north European coast, and the island was rich in all of them.
“Taku shall arrange it,” Krona concluded.
In the last few years, the lame hunter had become a remarkable trader, taking the big skin canoes up and down the five rivers and even along the coast in search of goods which he brought back to the settlement. Now it took him only a few days to amass an impressive cargo, enough to fill two of the biggest canoes. There were deer skins, fox furs, badger pelts and even some bison skins which had made their way down the island’s network of rivers from the north. These activities of Taku’s were the first beginning of what was to become a substantial island trade; and with justifiable pride Taku hobbled from one pile to another, pointing out the high quality of each pelt.
“It is enough,” Krona said when he had inspected them. But if he thought that Taku was satisfied, he was mistaken; for now the lame hunter laid before the chief his most important request.
“Let me go with them,” he asked, “with my son,” and he indicated the eldest of his sons, a young man who appeared to be a carbon copy of his father.
Krona paused. Would he be useful?
“We can paddle,” Taku added. Indeed the hunter and all his children had made themselves accomplished boatmen. But still Krona was not sure. He wondered if the settlers manning the boats would accept his presence. To his surprise, however, there was general support for the idea. The former criminal turned ubiquitous trader had become quite a popular figure, arriving unexpectedly at farmsteads, but always with some new item that he had found to please the farmer or his woman.
“Very well,” Krona said. “Let him go with his son.”
That night Taku addressed his children solemnly.
“We shall cross the sea,” he said. “Perhaps we shall not come back. But even if we do not, other voyages will be made, in the future, and men will return. You must do as I have done. Use the boats, and trade: that is the best way for our family.”
For when Krona had originally lamed him and severely reduced his ability to hunt, he had unknowingly done Taku a great favour. Necessity had driven the hunter to find another way to subsist, and as the settlement grew, he had seen what the other hunters had failed to understand, that such a community must trade. Since the farmers were few in number and busy clearing the land, he had seen his chance and begun to act as a carrier of furs and game, a middleman on the five rivers. Now he perceived that bigger opportunities would open out with a crossing over the sea and he was determined to be a part of this new activity. He operated by instinct – for he had never seen a developed trading community such as already existed on mainland Europe; but his instincts were good.
The voyage was a success. The farmers got all the livestock they needed; the cattle enclosure had to be enlarged; and Taku had also found some small sheep with the finest wool. But most important of all, he and his son saw the larger settlements and the vigorous trade that was developing on the mainland.
“You were right to make peace with the settlers,” Taku confided to Magri. “They are even more powerful than we thought.” And to his son he said: “We need bigger boats now. We must trade across the sea.”
As the new era of prosperity developed at Sarum, only one nagging problem remained to trouble Krona as he entered the last phase of his old age – for he was nearly fifty now – and that was how to find a leader for the two communities to succeed him.
Liam was not in doubt.
“Name our son,” she urged. Their elder boy was thirteen now. In a few years he would be a man. As she gazed at her old husband with pride and tenderness, she was sure she could look after him and keep him alive long enough to see his strong young son become a fitting leader. “They will follow him, even if he is young, because he is your son and you have chosen him,” she argued.
But Krona knew it could not be.
“One day my son will be chief,” he promised Liam, “but not yet.”
It would be a difficult choice. For despite the peace that seemed to have settled over the place, the hunters still lived a life apart, worshipped the moon goddess, and made no attempt to raise livestock or sow corn themselves. He needed to choose a man who could command authority amongst the dominant settlers, but who was sympathetic to the hunters as well.
The solution to this problem presented itself unexpectedly.
When old Magri had brought the two girls to Krona’s camp, the chief had decided to give one of them to a promising young farmer named Gwilloc, who was distantly related to him. Gwilloc was a tall man of twenty-two with a long, intelligent face; the other farmers called him the dark man because his hair, his thick beard and his eyes were all jet black; and his dark and swarthy look was made more striking by his tallness. He spoke little, but when he did, his words were listened to with respect. Gwilloc accepted the girl from Krona without complaint and before long there were three children, all of them with striking dark good looks; Krona noticed with interest that these children seemed to be equally at home with both the settlers and the hunters, and he smiled at Magri’s wisdom in making the gift of the girls. In a few generations, he could see, the two peoples, despite their different cultures, might merge into one.
But such a blending would take time, and meanwhile, it was young Gwilloc who now presented Krona with a new and unexpected development.
At the time when Taku was preparing for his voyage across the sea, Gwilloc came to Krona and asked permission to stake out a new farm.
“My brother and his family will take over the farm we have been sharing,” he explained: “for he has three sons now. It is time for me to start a new one.”
This request was reasonable enough. But when Krona asked what place he had in mind the young farmer named a spot outside the valley.
“But our farms are all in the valley,” Krona said. “There is good land there.”
“The land opposite the valley entrance, to the south wes’ of where the rivers meet, is even better,” Gwilloc replied. “And there,” he added to the old man’s surprise, “my woman will be nearer her own people.”
This was a new idea that had not occurred to Krona before.
“We gave our word to the hunters to stay in the valley,” he said. “I promised to protect their hunting grounds.” Such an extension of their settlement would provoke exactly the kind of bad feeling he was trying to avoid. “You are a fool,” he told the young farmer.
“What if I can persuade the hunters to agree that my farm should be here?” Gwilloc asked, undismayed.
Krona shrugged. If that were the case, then he would have no objection.
“They will not agree,” he said.
But to his surprise, ten days later, Magri and another hunter approached him and proposed that Gwilloc’s farm should be situated exactly at the spot he had requested.
“But that is on a hunting ground,” he said.
Magri nodded.
“But this farm would lie at the entrance to the western valley; and the hunting there is less good than to the east. If there are to be new farms, let them be in the western valley,” he replied; the other hunter nodded.
“We promised to stay in the northern valley,” Krona persisted. “And we keep our promises. There is plenty of land there.”
The second hunter smiled.
“You make promises, but look at the way your farms advance. Sooner or later the hunters know you will want to leave the valley. Better to have Gwilloc, whose woman is one of us, than another of your farmers.”
“The children of Gwilloc already begin to hunt with our children,” Magri explained. “In time they will respect our hunting grounds the more if they have lived amongst our people. It is better this way.”
At this moment Krona saw who it was who should succeed him as chief.
In the five years that followed, Krona lived contentedly. In the third year, during a particularly long and harsh winter, old Magri died and automatically, since he was the next oldest, Taku filled his place as the spokesman for the scattered bands of hunters. The following spring the medicine man became sick and at the time of the harvest, he too died; his place was taken by his assistant: a cool-headed young man who was in much awe of Krona and who was careful to do nothing to upset the hunters.
From the time that he set up his new farm opposite the valley entrance, Krona took care to watch Gwilloc closely and to give him every chance to prove himself as a worthy leader.
Whenever there was a council or discussion of importance, he called him to his side; and frequently he sent him with instructions to act for him in smaller matters. Gwilloc was quick to respond, and since he well understood both communities, his words carried weight. He was a good farmer and the land he had chosen was well-sited. He and his family prospered.
The marks of Krona’s favour were immediately understood by the farmers and since Gwilloc’s reputation was high, no words were raised against him as he quietly but steadily established himself as the old man’s successor.
Each year the old warrior moved about less and he was aware of a stiffening in all his limbs. The great bull neck began to sag, and his powerful form grew thinner: but even near the end, he was still an imposing figure. Whenever the sun was warm, he could still be seen in front of his farm, attended now by several of the younger women to help Liam, and, as ever, watching the swans make their nests on the banks of the river below.
It was in his usual place, on a sunny afternoon in late spring, that Krona quietly and suddenly died. He had reached the considerable age of fifty-four.
The next day a council was held and Gwilloc was immediately chosen as the new chief.
Gwilloc’s first act as chief began a process which was to continue for nearly four thousand years, a process which would alter the landscape of Sarum for all time to come.
“We must honour Krona, who founded this settlement and who kept peace in the place where the five rivers meet,” he announced. “We must not let his greatness be forgotten.”
There was general agreement, but some uncertainty about what to do.
“We should build a pile of stones over his grave,” said one farmer. But several of those present felt this was not enough.
Finally Gwilloc supplied the answer.
“We shall build him a house,” he said, “where his soul may live at peace for ever.”
And so he selected a place on the high ground a few miles north of the valley entrance; it was a deserted spot at the top of a ridge, with a magnificent view over the high ground and the valley below. There, on his orders, the hunters and settlers came, each day, clearing the whole area of trees before they began to build. First they made a small house of wood and placed Krona’s body inside it. Beside him they put his club, the sack of wool on which he used to sit, and they killed one of the swans he liked to watch and placed it there as well.
But next, they did something that had never been done before. First they sealed the wooden tomb; then, using deers’ antlers as picks, on either side of it they dug two enormous parallel ditches in the chalk, a hundred feet long and ten apart, piling the earth in the centre to create a mound. Day after day they continued. The mound grew. Soon it completely covered Krona’s wooden tomb, which lay at its south east end. But still the work went on until the hundred foot mound rose over six feet high along its entire length.
This work took two months of hard labour to complete; when it was done, Gwilloc made them pack the chalk sides and the top of the mound hard. The final result was a long, impressive monument that rose out of the ground like a huge, upturned boat. By day, it struck the eyes with its harsh, white glare; and under the moonlight, it gave off a pale, ghostly glow.
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