Martin Walker - The Caves of Perigord

“You remember Leaping Hare, my husband’s friend,” she said, almost carelessly. That meant she had something important to say.

“He died, fighting the wolves. He saved your man,” said the Keeper. He remembered the sad trail of dejected hunters, carrying the corpse, the wounded man, and the reindeer they had saved from the wolves. They were exhausted as they staggered back to the river. He remembered the keening from the woman, the way his sister had run to meet the forlorn little band, her hand to her throat, and remembered the woman with her, who had sunk to her knees and cried the death song over her man in a high, shrieking voice. Not a voice he would want to hear at his fire each night.

“He left a woman-Silver Eel,” his sister went on. “She has no children. She is a daughter to the fisher clan, and my friend. Still young, but wise. She will be a healer, some day.”

“This Silver Eel, she has passed her time of mourning?”

“Long since. And she needs a man.” She paused, considering whether to say anything else. He waited as she pondered. Finally his sister said, “She helped me all day with your baby.”

“You said she was barren.”

“No, I said she had no children. Not by Leaping Hare. But Leaping Hare sired no young. Whatever you say, we women know it is not always the woman who is barren.”

“Summon her here to your fire tomorrow, before I go to the cave,” he said, his eyes on his new daughter. He trusted his sister’s judgment, but he remembered that high voice. “Say nothing to her. I would first see and talk with this comely young daughter of the Keeper of the Horses. I am in no hurry.”

Farther down the riverbank, at a fire where the guts of fish still sizzled in the embers, the Keeper of the Horses studied his youngest daughter, his favorite. She had been a pretty child, and now she was as lovely as her mother had been. He loved to watch her, each movement graceful, even now as she turned to pick another bough, and placed it carefully on the fire. He had seen her help Deer down to the riverbank, before darting back here to his hearth. Deer and Little Moon, that would be an interesting match. Not a good match, for Deer had neither father nor mother still living, and no brothers. Deer would bring only himself to the family of the woman he took, no influence or honor, except what he could build for himself as the most talented of the apprentices.

Thoughtfully, he probed his teeth with a fish bone. Deer was a gifted youth, and a clever one, clever enough to take his advice, and to display the right contrition. Deer could go far. He would be a Keeper soon, the youngest of them. That would be honor enough. Little Moon liked him, that was clear.

But Deer was a wayward lad, too proud, too sure of himself. Too young to understand the ways of the Keepers, to accept that they had to show a proper respect for one another, even when their powers were fading. Or even when they had never had much talent in the first place, like the Keeper of the Bison. Deer as a Keeper would upset the delicate balance of respect inside the cave, unless Deer would consent to be guided by his wisdom. Deer’s talent, cautioned and schooled by the Keeper of the Horses’ advice to keep his pride and his temper under control. That could work. Deer had no father; he would listen to the father of his woman.

Across the fire, Little Moon put a testing finger into the clay-lined hole in the ground where the water was warmed by hot stones. She took a clump of moss, dipped it into the warm water, and began to cleanse her face and neck before she slept. Always neat and clean, his Little Moon, with breath that smelled like honey.

But could his advice and counsel be enough to control Deer from another clash in the cave? The Keeper of the Bulls was his friend, he supposed, certainly the most valued of his colleagues. But there was an ambition there, a sense of power. He virtually dominated the cave already. If not for me, he thought, the Keeper of the Bulls would decide everything, from the design of the cave to the colors they used to the choice of apprentices. There would be a clash, someday, between the Keeper of the Bulls and Deer. Keeper of the Deer, he corrected himself. A clash like that between aging father and growing son, between an old bull and the young one. Keeper of the Bulls would not content himself with this cave. He would want other caves, greater grandeur for his work, more honor to his bulls, more Keepers and apprentices to dominate. He already was the loudest voice in council, using the authority of the cave to push his views against the leaders of the fisher clan and the hunters and the flint men. He was hungry for power in a worrying way.

“You went up the hill to the cave, my daughter, and came back with a limping man,” he said softly.

“Deer could not walk, my father, after kneeling all day. I took him damp moss, and gave him my arm to come back to the village.”

“While the rest of us were eating, you left with some fish rolled into bark.”

“He had not eaten. We had plenty.”

“You like Deer, my daughter?”

“It was hard, to make him serve the women; and to take away his necklace so that he had no place among us.”

“That is over now.” She was good at not answering questions, this daughter of his.

“Deer will be a Keeper soon, a man with an honored place. And soon you will be of an age to take a man.”

Silence from his daughter, a silence so dense he could almost touch it.

“Your mother has talked to you of this, of taking a man, tending his hearth,” he went on.

“Of course I have,” his woman snapped, her voice muffled from the skins she was wrapped in. He had wondered if she were really asleep. “If we had to wait for men to start telling their daughters about the life that awaits them, we’d wait forever. And what I have told her is to stay away from the bold young boys. But she’s your daughter-she never listens. Now you had better make sure she listens to you.”

“You will listen to me, Little Moon,” he said. “You will not go to Deer again without my permission. You must not even think of him as a man until he becomes a Keeper. You will not go with any of the young men, but will stay by your mother all day and do her bidding. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, Father. But it was staying by my mother that I met Deer, when you punished him by sending him to work with the women. So that must have had your approval,” she said boldly.

No fool, his daughter. As quick of tongue as she was quick of foot. He smiled to himself; she’d be a handful for any man, just like her mother.

“You know what I mean, Little Moon,” he said, leaning forward to dip the moss into the warm water and swab his face before he pushed the big log deep into the fire and crawled into the skins alongside his woman. “And there are many other men in the tribe beside Deer.”

“But he is the best painter of all the apprentices. You said so yourself,” Little Moon said softly, almost to herself. “And he respects you most of all.”

He gave no reply, easing himself alongside the curving, familiar warmth of his woman.

“Now see what you’ve done, you old fool,” his woman murmured fondly, taking his hand to fold it to her breast. “Always meddling, that’s you.”

The Audrix Plateau, Perigord, 1944

The elderly Lockheed Hudson ground through the night, the engines hammering so loudly that Jack thought every German in France must hear them. He was cold and he knew he was frightened, and wondered if he looked half as calm as Francois and McPhee had done as they pulled themselves easily into the plane ahead of him. McPhee was still cursing good-humoredly at the waste of all his parachute training. Expecting to drop into France, they learned at the briefing that they would land on a makeshift grass strip, then the aircraft would load up with a return group of passengers to fly back to RAF Tempsford. It felt too ordinary, Jack thought, to mark his first foray onto enemy-held soil. Well, the first in Europe, at least. He had been behind Jerry lines often enough in the desert, if anybody was ever really sure where the lines were.