I had guessed it the moment Petra opened the sack and showed the poison pot, but still had to ask.
“Larish knew where the poison was hidden?”
“She went on and on until I told her.”
My fingers were as hard as wood, cold against the heat of my throat, my cheeks. Something dark pressed behind my eyes, swelled inside my head till I was dizzy, and my whole body shivered as I ran down the beach and in above my knees, the water smoothing itself still again.
All colour drained from sea, sky, bush, the sandhills across the harbour, everything gone white. I knew I was in a vengeful rage, that I must control it.
I could understand Petra’s giving in to Larish: that thought made me turn and walk slowly out of the water and back up the beach. Little by little the pressure inside my head eased, colour seeped back into the sky, the inlet. As the tide turned, as the first movement of water broke the reflected sky, I heard my voice speaking from a long way off.
“Here is Tobik. Let us tell him before we talk to Jenek.” They were my words spoken in my voice, but they made no sense until I repeated them. “Here is Tobik. Let us tell him before we talk to Jenek.” For one moment, I felt a thrill of terror, of not knowing who and where I was. I tasted bile and swallowed.
Tobik looked at Petra, back to me, and nodded.
“I suspected it,” he said in his quiet voice. “I didn’t think of Lorne till it was too late, but since Luce died I have been watching to make sure you were safe.”
My head filled with pictures of Lorne appearing out of the dark in the light of our fire at Hornish, playing knucklebones in the boat, building a sand house with a yellow flower for Enna. I blinked.
Tobik nodded. “I knew the answer, but asked myself who wanted Jenek so badly they would kill Luce, and who would kill Lorne because they were so envious of her being chosen for the next Selene?”
“Katerin wants to be the Selene, and Jedda talks about it. So did Luce.”
“All the girls want to be the Selene,” said Tobik. “Only one was brought up to hate you because you were chosen.”
“Go back to what you said about Jenek. Larish has Petra.”
“Having Petra, even loving him doesn’t stop her wanting Jenek. I’m sorry, Petra.”
Petra stared at Tobik, who continued. “Larish was after Jenek right back in Hornish, but he never liked her. She pestered him in the boat at night, sailing to Rabbit Island. That’s why I said I’d go with them when we sailed from there, because he’d asked me. Remember you were a bit unsure about it.
“He wouldn’t sleep with her, but she didn’t give up. Then she had a go at me at Table Island, trying to make Jenek jealous. We had left Jenek to look after the boat, while we were supposed to find water and a place to camp.
“I always disliked her, even before you were banished from Hornish. She knew that, and joined Tilsa and Ulseb beating me, getting her own back. She helped kill Patch. I told her that, when she made up to me on the island, and she shrieked and tried to hit me. I kept calm, and that drove her so wild she seemed to lose her temper and gasp for air, as if she couldn’t control herself.
“I knew she was acting her rage deliberately, exciting then giving in to it so that it took her over. It was the same way she behaved with her mother and grandmother at Hornish, when they kicked Patch to death. They hated us because our father was trusted by everyone else, and because you were the Selene, but there’s something strange about Larish. I think she might be mad.
“Out on the island, it took ages for her to get control of herself. By the time we got back, Jenek guessed something must have gone wrong and left the beach to look for us, the boat got swept away, and he tried to swim after it.”
I remembered thinking there was something odd about their story, but had thought it best to say nothing.
“I could have told you, when you rescued us from the island, but it would have just made it more difficult for you. Then we found Jenek after all, and it seemed best to forget it, specially once Petra came to the inlet.”
My breathing had steadied. The pictures of Lorne, the sick taste in my throat, the strange feeling in my head had gone.
“You did what you thought was right,” I told Tobik. “Like Petra. But we have to make sure nobody else dies. Jenek should know what we’ve found out, and then we will call everyone into the Great House.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I do not know yet. But everyone must hear what has happened, and say what they think. We cannot judge this on our own.”
Jenek listened impassive as Tobik and I went through the story again. Petra sat silent.
“Why did you—” Jenek turned on Petra but stopped himself. “There’s no point,” he said, dull-voiced. “Luce is dead. And Lorne.”
“We have to stop any more deaths.”
Jenek shrugged.
“Call everyone to the Great House.”
There was no need to go looking; the others had noticed the four of us talking. Ruka and Peck were just bringing down the sheep for the night, their helpers with them.
Petra stirred. “I’ll get Larish.”
“We know this is difficult, Petra.”
“What are you going to do to her?”
“Nothing yet. We have to make quite sure of everything first.”
“Who else could have done it?”
“We must be fair,” I told Jenek, “and we must be certain. Remember what happened at Hornish when people gave in to fear and hate, and what Petra told us happened at Karo?” I thought of the feelings I had just had to control, the shocking urge for vengeance. “We do not want a feud here.”
In the Great House, Jedda and the others from Pyke told their story again, pleaded their ignorance of poison, how to make it, even how to use it. Petra shook his head and could not speak, so Tobik described how Petra had hidden the pot of leftover poison under a log, then shifted it to the thatch of his cottage.
“Only Petra knew where he had hidden it,” said Tobik. “That’s what Selene and Jenek thought, but we now know that somebody else found out.”
“Who?” The word jerked out of her mouth as Larish tried to scramble up, and Petra put his arm about her, held her down. Those sitting near them shifted away.
Without accusing Larish, Tobik described the questions he had asked himself about Luce’s and Lorne’s deaths.
Larish threw off Petra’s arm and leapt up. “Selene lusted after Jenek.” Her eyes popped round as she pointed at me. “Have you forgotten the way she destroyed Hornish by lying with Ennish and offending the gods?”
Her mouth worked, her lips moved, but no more words would come out. She spun and pointed at Tobik, choked and pointed at me again, and her voice came back.
“You all saw the way Selene looked at Jenek. She wanted him, so she poisoned Luce and killed her baby as well, Jenek’s baby. Luce was just sick from being pregnant at first, like I was; she was all right till Selene started nursing her and made everyone else keep away. How could I kill her, when Selene was there all the time, feeding her poison?”
The faces turned and looked at me, some of them startled.
“Not all the time,” said Tobik. “Selene left Luce alone, as she was getting better. When Luce slept in the afternoon, Selene left her and worked in the garden for fresh air.”
“Why would Selene kill Lorne?” somebody asked.
“Why would I poison my own little sister?”
Others joined in the argument, and Larish turned on the newcomers from Pyke, tried to blame them. Waving her arms, shouting, threatening, she backed across the floor till she came up against the tree and stood looking trapped. Hanging high on the trunk, the worn spine of the ancient knife of Selene pointed its narrow tongue down upon her head. I listened and thought of the shakiness of evidence, how easy it is to jump to a conclusion.
“You didn’t like Lorne,” said Ansik. “You never did.”
The left corner of Larish’s upper lip lifted till the tip of one tooth showed. “If there’d been enough poison, I’d have killed you as well.”
Those snarled words convinced almost everyone of her guilt, but as some cried for punishment, I kept quiet. That I had managed to control my earlier rage and fear now gave me strength.
Back in Hornish, my father had told me of a man accused of murdering his wife, of how he was tried by the elders. Two women and a man gave evidence that made him look guilty, and other villagers joined in with things they had forgotten but remembered now, little facts that had seemed unimportant but fitted as part of a pattern.
As his guilt looked more and more certain, the man broke down and admitted the murder, became talkative, and even boasted how he did it. The elders banished him out to sea, but as his boat ran the gauntlet between the cliffs, a spear killed him.
Some days later, one of the three main witnesses went to the elders, his conscience worrying him: he had confused things; something he had said in evidence was wrong. The elders called another meeting, and several other witnesses admitted to being carried away and exaggerating things, to giving false evidence, even to lying. In the Hornish Great House, people fell silent as they realised they had killed an innocent man, that the murderer was still among them.
I thought again of Palik’s words: “Our mind is a curious thing. We can be driven to confess something we never did, to claim somebody else’s crime.” At the same time I thought of the bewilderment and rage I felt when banished from Hornish, how Larish and her family had accused me, killed Patch, and beaten Peck and Tobik, how Ennish had died because of them. My mother and father, too. I tasted blood, found I had bitten the inside of my lip, and reminded myself again not to give in to the urge for vengeance.
An unearthly noise came from Larish. She clawed the air, stamped, and glared. Words vomited from her swollen mouth, jostling a violent torrent. She had taken the pot from its hiding place in the thatch; she gave Luce the poison, first in some food; then one day when I left Luce alone to work in the garden, she had slipped inside the cottage and given her more poison mixed in water.
Voice still uncontrolled, but now thick with satisfaction, Larish boasted of how she replaced the beeswax and flax, copied the secret knot in the lashing, and hid the pot back under the thatch. She seized a length of twine from the floor and demonstrated the knot. Petra looked at it and nodded: the same knot he had found on the lashing, he muttered, not his but very like it.
All urgency gone, Larish’s body slumped, and her voice now matter of fact, she described how she poisoned Lorne. There was even more madness in the flatness of her words. I thought of the strain of losing her family, wanting Jenek, envying me but having to accept my leadership. Then her unhappy pregnancy, Tara’s difficult birth. It had been too much for her mind.
She cawed that awful sound again, and swung into her earlier excited mood. Flaunting her guilt, she accused others, threatened anyone who spoke. Terrified, one of the boys from Pyke laughed nervously, and she leapt at him, pulling a knife from inside her tunic. Jenek sprang and tore the knife from her, cutting his own hand. Tobik and Petra held Larish back as she clawed at the boy’s eyes, and tried to throttle him. Several had to hold her down, spitting, biting. Since there was nothing else, they tied her hands, gagged her mouth, and roped her to the tree.
The boy from Pyke rubbed his reddened throat. “She should be poisoned herself,” he managed to say.
“We can’t ever trust her again,” said somebody else.
“Does she know the secret of Petra’s poison, which plants he used?” asked Jedda.
Petra shook his head. “Larish asked me often, but I would not tell her that.”
I held Enna tight, listened to the calls for punishment; aware of the voice inside my head that bayed so loud for vengeance, I thought the others must hear it. Larish had killed two of us, as well as Luce’s unborn child. She had destroyed the confidence in our village, damaged our growing family. If I said she should die, everyone would agree, but something made me silent. I looked up and saw their eyes on me.
“Kill Larish,” I said, “and we are no better than her.” I would not say any more, lest vengeance swamp my brain.
Tobik took my hint.
“Banish her,” he said.
“Banish her?”
“Not as Selene was banished, driven out to sea to die. In any case we cannot spare a boat. Put Larish ashore on Table Island where she can’t hurt anyone but still has a chance of living. If she doesn’t survive, she will be responsible for her own death.”
“Why should we let her live?”
“Did she show Luce any pity?”
“Or Luce’s baby?”
“Or Lorne?”
“Her own sister.”
The words, the arguments tossed back and forth. I closed my eyes and saw them like broken waves rearing and collapsing against each other only to lurch up again. One by one, people agreed with Tobik: banish Larish to the island. The rest would be up to her.
“What about Tara?”
“Petra’s done all of the looking after Tara. We’ll all help.”
Petra was sitting silent, his head down. He looked up, stared at the shapeless figure slumped against the ropes and said, “Let me go with Larish and take Tara.”
“Why punish Tara? She’s done nothing.”
“I am her father,” Petra said, “Larish is her mother.”
“She neglected Tara. Selene fed her and kept her alive.”
“Even so, Larish is Tara’s mother, the only one she can have.”
There was a long silence.
I watched Jenek and Tobik. They sat thinking, then Tobik nodded, and Jenek, too. They understood what Petra was saying.
“What about Katerin?”
“I want to stay here.”
At the certainty in her voice, I thought of the feeling between Katerin and Ansik, and of the time when Larish and Petra had moved into their cottage, how Katerin moved in with them but soon came back to the Great House.
Just as well, I realised now. Had Katerin kept close to her father, she might have died, too.
“What sort of punishment is that for Larish?” asked Likad. “She’s allowed to live on the island, with Petra and her child. And Katerin loses her father and her half-sister.”
“I’m staying here,” Katerin stated, even more definite. She glared at Ansik, as if something was his fault.
“No punishment will bring back Luce and Lorne,” said Tobik. “What we have to do is make sure Larish never kills again.”
Some — mainly those from Pyke — still wanted Larish banished on her own.
“What for?” asked Tobik. “That’s just revenge.”
“If Petra goes, we lose his skills with him,” said Likad.
“At Pyke,” said another boy, “when anyone murdered, they were killed the same way, as a warning to others.”
“Who killed them?”
“Somebody from the victim’s family.”
“What good did it do?”
“At least it made them feel better.”
“It was a warning to others.”
“It didn’t work,” said Jedda. “Don’t you remember? Two years ago, there was that man who drowned his wife. Her brother drowned him as a warning to everyone, yet within a short time somebody else was murdered. Have you all forgotten that?” She paced up and down in the Great House, staring at people, demanding, strong-voiced.
“I agree with Tobik,” she said. “Banish Larish to Table Island, and let Petra go with Tara.”
“Petra taught Ansik how to work iron,” said Tobik. “We know how to spin and weave now, how to make pots. We’ll miss Petra’s skill, but it’s better he goes, if that’s what he wants.”
“What does Selene think?” asked Likad.
I still feared my own wish for revenge, the rage I had felt. “Let everyone speak.”
The argument went on till only one or two were reluctant; that was as much agreement as we would get. Two dead, and three to the island. Fifteen left. I would rather have kept Petra and Tara, but not against his will.
“We will vote on it,” I said. “That is what the elders said must be done at Hornish, so everyone gets an equal say. Here.” I handed around the baskets of white shells and charcoal that Tobik had got ready, set a large clay pot in the middle, between the chimney and the tree.
“If you think Larish should be banished to the island, do not mark your shell but put it into the pot. If you think she should be poisoned herself, mark your shell black with charcoal and put it in the pot.”
“Do Larish and Petra get a shell?”
I thought. “Of course. She must be able to defend herself. That is only fair. And Petra must be allowed to make up his own mind. That is fair, too. Tara and Enna are too young to vote. All right?”
There was a growl of agreement.
When Tobik loosened one of her hands and gave Larish a shell, she flung it back in his face. He tried it a second time, and she did the same thing.
“Set it aside,” I said.
“What?”
“She was given the chance to vote,” I told Petra. “She chose not to. She has that right. Smash her shell and put it aside so it will affect the result neither one way nor the other.”
The other shells rattled into the pot. Jedda and Ansik spilled them on the sandy floor in front of the fire, sorted them in two piles. There was no need to count, though they did so aloud.
“We have voted to banish Larish to the island,” I said, surprised at how firm my voice was. “Petra and Tara will go, too.”