Jenek and Tobik led the five survivors of Pyke to the inlet, driving their sheep up and over the ridge and down the northern valley to the inlet, lighting fires for smoke signals as they came so Ansik and I were waiting with the boats at the creek mouth.
There were three boys, a fair-haired older girl called Luce, and a little girl of Lorne’s age. By the time we had made several trips down the inlet with the trussed sheep, we were getting to know each other.
Luce was light-skinned, her laugh a happy peal that rang across the water and filled the village so everyone ran down to meet the boats. For the first time, I realised how serious we had been for so long: escaping Hornish, sailing north, getting established. Everybody felt better for having Luce there, and I learned I could relax a little.
Sixteen of us. Our stores were not too much now, and as Jenek said there were more hands as well as mouths. At night in the Great House, there was some squabbling over who got the seats in the chimney.
“I’ve been here longer than you,” I heard Katerin tell one of the Pyke boys, so I laughed aloud and sat in front of the fire, and Tobik and Jenek copied me. We had to make sure the newcomers became part of us.
When we talked of the village growing, Tobik mentioned a stream that we could tap by damming its gully, digging a drain around the spur, and building a wooden chute to deliver the water to our beach.
“We don’t need it yet,” he said, “but we will”, and I smiled at his promise.
He and Jenek laid a keel, fitted bow and stern pieces, and set up the frames and stringers for a small boat to make netting easier. Having no saws, they split and adzed their timber from slabs of kike, and pegged everything together. They had trouble fitting the planks until Jenek remembered the steam box the boatbuilders used at Hornish.
“Why don’t the planks straighten out when they cool?” asked Likad, one of the older boys from Pyke.
“Steamed and pegged,” Jenek told him, “they’re fixed in that shape for good. Like some people who can’t change.” He winked and nodded, and the pair of them chuckled.
As well as the adzes, Petra made them narrow-headed hammers to caulk the seams, and Jenek, Likad, and Tobik tapped in flax fibre mixed with its gum. They burned oyster shells to powdery lime, stirred in whale oil, and smeared the creamy shenam thick on the bottom of the new boat.
“While we’re about it,” said Jenek, “we might as well do the other boats as well.”
“Oh,” said Ansik, who with Katerin had collected most of the oyster shells, “we did them not long ago.”
“Shenamming’s a lot easier than replacing wormy planks, but it only lasts a while. The boats were in the water a long time on the way here, and I’ve been keeping an eye on them ever since, but you never know with worm. A plank can look sound yet be eaten away inside.”
“Then how can you tell?”
“Only one way: tap, listen, and use the tip of your knife. If the shipworm’s bad, you’re better building a new boat.”
At Hornish, the elders kept records of what food was stored, how much was used, how much seed to keep for sowing. I did that now and made a calendar of the best times for planting, the arrival of the teetees, the herring shoals, and the return of the gods — though the last was easy because of the spectacular annual reminder of the mercy trees.
“Satisfying,” Jenek said when I explained my charcoal marks on flat strips of wood.
“That’s how much we had to start with, how much we’ve eaten, how much we need to grow next year. We’ll know before things start to run out. And when to get things ready, the nets, the barrels.”
Jenek nodded. “Satisfying,” he said again.
“Satisfying,” I told Enna, and “Satisfying,” she babbled, delighted when anyone talked to her.
If I was not close, Enna would go to Lorne for reassurance, something that had always displeased Larish even though she was busy with her pottery and weaving. She had a difficult pregnancy but resented help, so I tried mentioning things to Petra, hoping he might pass them on. When she started keeping Petra away from the rest of us, I blamed myself and hoped time might take care of her troubles. Larish flared with rage at the younger children from Pyke several times, so I asked Katerin to keep them out of her way.
Ansik and Katerin found the stores rifled in their shelter across the harbour, and tracked and found two more boys of about their age and another older girl, Jedda, living in our fishing camp in the outer bay. Luce recognised and welcomed them with her joyous laugh, and there was no question this time of whether or not they could join us.
Accompanied by two women, a couple of babies, and a man, they had fled Pyke by following a long valley south. The adults and both babies had died of the red fever, the Punishment, not long after leaving Pyke, Jedda said.
“We found a big swamp and lived on eels and swamp hens, and those thieving, long-legged wecks. Then we followed a creek down to the coast, and came to your camp. The boys took the stores from Katerin and Ansik’s shelter, and I was scared you’d be unfriendly, but it was too late to put them back.”
“Lucky for you we’re friendly.” It was impossible to resist Luce’s good humour. Everyone laughed.
Like the other group, Jedda and the boys were fearing winter, but had already made a small fishing net, begun a bigger one, and had started drying mussels. They planned re-thatching our fishing shelter and walling it against the cold storms, but had not found time. They were tough, but three was too small a number to survive long.
Nineteen.
Larish had a long, difficult time giving birth. Petra and I helped, but it was Lorne with her small hands who turned the baby so it was born alive.
Twenty.
Larish showed little interest in Tara, had trouble feeding her, and was easily upset. My mother had told me of similar cases in Hornish, and I brought to mind the sound of her voice, pictures of her face and the inside of our old cottage to help me remember all she said. Perhaps that was why I was unsurprised when Lorne carried Tara to me, weak, distressed.
I put the little scrap of a thing to my breast where she sucked hungrily and fell asleep. Enna found her there, and I said, “Tara’s mummy has no milk, so I have given her some of mine.”
“Mine,” said Enna, but Lorne distracted her with a bowl of the mashed vegetable stew she was now eating. Enna came to approve as if she were responsible for Tara, watching her suckle, and weaning herself on to goat’s milk as if it were her own idea.
Larish was furious, but accepted my feeding her baby because she was not really interested. Petra was good with Tara, brought her to me discreetly, and kept her in a flax basket nearby while he worked at his forge.
In case of any more difficulty with Larish, I got Petra to make a clay pot with a spout the baby could drink from. I was still feeding her, but Lorne began giving Tara a little goat’s milk, and she kept it down well enough. The pot was easy to keep clean, and we scoured its spout with spiky tote and marnoo leaves and sand.
Tobik, Jenek, and Likad went north up the valley with the flax swamp, to see if anyone else had survived the sickness in Pyke, and I noticed Luce fell quiet in their absence. When they returned, Jenek told me Likad had stopped one day and pointed east to the grassy basins of a higher valley to the east.
“That’s the way Luce and the others must have gone, where you found them. The shepherds grazed a lot of our sheep up there and brought them down to Pyke and the winter pastures in autumn.”
“Didn’t they have trouble with wild dogs?” Jenek said he asked Likad as they stood looking across the country.
“We had an old woman who made poison. In autumn, once the shepherds brought the sheep down, her family went up, killed wild goats, and poisoned their carcasses. All winter, when the wild dogs were hungriest, they killed them.
“They laid poison in the other valleys over the ridge-tops,” said Likad, “so the packs were wiped out in every direction, and the sheep were safe when they came back in spring.”
“That’s how the wild sheep survived, where Ruka and Peck found them,” Jenek said to Tobik. “Maybe we should poison further away from the inlet, wipe out the dogs right back into the hills.”
“The old woman spoke in the meeting house about the need for balance,” said Likad. “Too many wild dogs, and the sheep and goats would be killed out. Too many goats, and the bush would be eaten out. She said both things happened long ago. She talked of balance till everyone called her Baal behind her back.”
Likad led Jenek and Tobik through a saddle between hills. The ground dropped beneath their feet, and they were looking down on the village of Pyke set among trees either side of a stream. Out to sea was the large, high-peaked island we had seen far to the north when we arrived at the inlet.
“People used to live out there,” said Likad. “They attacked Pyke, but that was ages ago, before I was born.”
“Do they live out there still?” asked Jenek.
“If they do, there’s no sign of them. The last time they attacked Pyke, most of them were killed. That’s what the stories used to say. A few escaped on their boat and headed back out to Pity Island.”
“Pity Island?”
“That’s what we always called it.” Likad looked back down at Pyke.
Around its silent cottages stretched orchards, gardens, and the grassy enclosures that once held goats and sheep. Likad pointed at a cottage downstream from the village.
“Baal’s cottage. She was the first to die of the Punishment, and everyone thought it must be the dog poison she made there.”
The boys did not dare go into the village itself, but camped upstream, kept a bonfire going all night, made smoke, and called from nearby. They saw fowls that had gone wild, marked where they roosted in the scrub, and caught five hens and a rooster after dark.
“We baked eels in embers, as we came back down the valley through the swamp,” Jenek told us when they returned carrying the fowls on their backs in woven baskets, a marvellous prize. “The chooks liked eating them. And we tied them by one leg, and let them scratch around and feed themselves wherever we stopped.”
“You saw nobody?”
“No one,” said Jenek, and Tobik shook his head. “We might go back in a year or so and see what’s left. It should be safe then. Likad said they had no iron in Pyke, but they traded wool with people away to the north, and got tools from them. He said that arrowhead Ruka found was one of theirs.”
“So there’ll be iron tools in the village?”
“Lots, from what Likad said.”
“What do eggs taste like?” asked Lorne when she saw the fowls.
“You remember,” Peck told her. “The rest of us do.”
We built coops, and as soon as a hen went clucky, set her to hatching chickens.
I had hidden my own feelings when, during his absence, Luce confessed to me her love for Jenek. She did not even try to hide her delight at his safe return from Pyke. The village rang with her laughter, and we all smiled. All but one.
“There’s trouble,” I heard Larish say to herself, but it seemed unimportant then. She was moody anyway, ignoring her baby, keeping to herself more and more, losing interest in the potting and weaving she had so enjoyed and which she was so good at. I watched, tried to help her indirectly, and encouraged Ansik and Katerin when they gave a hand to Petra, now busier than ever.
Larish would sometimes join the rest of us in the Great House, but her habit of grumbling and muttering to herself was upsetting to those who had not known her long. One night, Ansik spilled hot soup from a bowl on her leg, and her face contorted as she struck him down, kicking him before Tobik and Jenek could interfere.
Her sudden fierceness was frightening. Ansik said nothing, just got out of the way, but I thought of their former relationship, how he had grown in confidence when separated from her on the journey from Rabbit Island. It had been much the same with Lorne. Though Larish was their older sister, neither trusted her.
Larish threw off Tobik and Jenek’s hands, and left the Great House, cursing. Petra followed. Everyone looked at me.
“She hasn’t been well since having Tara. We’ll leave her alone to calm down.”
But it had a bad effect, especially on the younger children from Pyke, who were already scared by Larish’s moodiness and didn’t understand anything of the background of Hornish, the violence we had escaped. As they went on with their meal, Lorne and I rubbed whale oil on Ansik’s grazes and bruises.
“She’s not well,” I said. “Best keep clear of her.”
“I forgot,” was all Ansik said, but I knew that like the others he expected me to protect him.
I got Larish on her own in the work shed. “Larish, Ansik is sorry he spilt the soup. He didn’t mean to.”
Larish glared at me, and I noticed the shapelessness of her features, as if I was looking at her face out of focus. “Don’t you try to tell me about my own brother …” she began just as Petra appeared, moved between us, and murmuring something led her into their cottage.
Had Larish just been unhappy, I thought, there might have been more I could do, but she was suffering something beyond ordinary misery.
The rest of us joined in building and thatching a cottage for Jenek and Luce, and before long another one for Jedda and Tobik. The younger children still slept in the Great House, though Enna and I now lived in a thatched lean-to. She would sometimes fall asleep with the other children, waking and stumbling through to me in the middle of the night. Petra kept Tara in the workshop where she slept in her basket amid the noise, Lorne still bringing her to me to be fed. Larish kept out of sight much of the time, while Jedda, with the help of some of the children from Pyke, took over the potting and weaving.
So things seemed to settle; then, from good health, in love with Jenek, and carrying their child, Luce fell ill, and we missed her laughter, the sight of her fair curls, her good humour. It was if the sun had stopped shining. Everyone feared what had killed the people at Pyke, and I asked Jenek to leave their cottage and moved in myself to nurse and keep Luce comfortable, leaving Enna to be looked after by Lorne and Jedda in the Great House.
No red rash developed on Luce’s body. I would not let Jedda near, but stood at the door and described Luce’s vomiting, her thirstiness, blotched skin, the shuddering, the strange smell of her body.
“It sounds like something else, not the Punishment,” Jedda called back.
Lorne held Enna up, and I waved to her, but she put her face into Lorne’s neck, refusing to look at me, shaking her head at my voice.
“Mummy loves Enna,” I called, “but she has to help Luce.” I could hear Enna crying as I went back inside.
A few more days and Luce was getting some strength back, a little more colour in her face, eating a few mouthfuls of soft stuff. While she slept one afternoon, I slipped outside and — still keeping my distance from the others — worked in the garden, weeding a row of carrots, enjoying the sun and wind on my skin, the feel of soil between my fingers, the escape from the smell of sickness. It was only for a little while, but I went back relieved. Luce breathed quietly, a healthy sleep, her forehead cooler.
Soon, I thought, it will be safe for me to hold Enna again, to let Jenek help Luce recover. Soon she will laugh again.
Next afternoon I slipped away while Luce slept. Two or three days, and, after another of those breaks in the garden, I returned to find her ill once more. That night she worsened suddenly, vomiting, thirsting, her body doubling up, convulsing. She lost her baby before morning and died in agony the next day. A gloom of wretchedness and despair filled the village.
In his distress, Jenek said she had been poisoned. Petra listened to my description of Luce’s sweating, vomiting, convulsions, and was silent.
“All we carried away from Pyke was food and what we wore,” said Jedda, when I asked her. “The dog poison was brewed by old Baal in a hut downstream from the village, where she lived away from everyone else when she was making it. None of us dared go near it. Baal and her family were the only ones who knew how to make and handle the poison, and they all died of the Punishment.”
I held Enna again, and she would not let me stir away from her, refusing even to go to Lorne. We buried Luce, as Jedda said was their custom at Pyke, and I saw Tobik watching me, some question in his eye.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” he shrugged, but I saw his eyes on me several times after that and wondered what he was thinking.
Jenek was withdrawn, and Luce’s death continued a mystery, then I had a dream in which the whale appeared to me and said it was time to begin teaching Lorne the chants and songs. When I told everyone in the Great House, I said Lorne already knew some of the songs, had learned them as we sailed from Hornish. Katerin was disappointed, but the meaning of the dream was clear.
And then Lorne sickened exactly as Luce had done, the same first illness, recovery, and relapse followed by the same convulsions, vomiting, sweating, stench, and agony. I wiped the smelly froth from her lips and body, cleaned and held her, crooned the whale songs, trying to comfort her, to ease her going when she vomited blood, her tongue hung out, and I realised I could not stop her dying.
We slipped the tortured little body over the side of the boat in the deep water under the great cliffs outside our bay, and sailed home telling Lorne the story of her short life that she might tell the gods.
Since Hornish, I had done my best to guard against losing anyone through sickness and injury. The more our numbers grew, the more likely it seemed some accident could happen, and I tried to prepare myself, but those were bitter deaths. I thought of different things I might have done, what to do if the illness happened to anyone else.
Enna had little understanding of what death meant. When I explained that Lorne was with the gods beneath the sea, Enna still expected her to come back, and I thought again of how hard it is to understand death, even when we are fully grown.
I tried to talk about it with Tobik, and his very quietness, his simple words seemed to help. Jenek, he said, was bewildered and cast down by Luce’s death, working hard each day to tire himself so he could sleep.
“He still thinks somebody poisoned Luce.”
About that time, Petra found me sitting alone above the beach, watching the tide brim at its height. Soon it would turn, begin its movement out, but now it lay broad and calm under the windless blue sky, reflecting the flight of a single black and white gull, the green bushed hills, a pink-edged cloud. It was a moment that always reminded me of the morning we arrived here from Hornish.
“What’s that?”
Petra opened the sack he carried. It contained the poison pot, the one he had hidden after killing the wild dogs. Jenek and I had seen him pour beeswax over it, wrap the pot in a folded flax leaf, and bind it with twine before hiding it.
He muttered something more.
“It looks the same to me. How do you know it’s been opened?”
He pointed.
“The knot?”
“Remember how I lashed the flax with twine? I finished it with a secret knot, one I’ve never shown anybody. This is a clever copy, but it’s not the same.”
He showed me the knot he had used, the difference between it and the one now finishing the lashing on the poison pot. He paused, as if thinking of something.
“Who would know that much about knots?”
“We’re all tying knots every day,” he said in his hoarsest voice. “Weaving, repairing nets, lashing handles, the whole lot of us.”
“Not as complicated as that one. Where did you hide the pot?”
“Under a log up the hill. Then I thought somebody might stumble on it, so I brought it down and hid it under the thatch of my cottage.”
I thought of his story of Karo and the feud and asked, “You, Jenek, and me, we are the only ones who knew there was any poison left over?”
Petra went to speak, stopped, and cleared his throat.
“What?”
“I was just thinking of something.”
“Yes?”
“Nothing important.”
“Everything matters now. What?”
“Larish.”
“Larish?”
Petra coughed and the words came in a croak.
“Larish knew.”