Page 21 of Circle of Days

Ani looked at the carcass and saw that it had been disemboweled and the underside was gone, so it was not possible to be certain whether it was a heifer. Robbo must have done it on the plain, before dragging it here. He had given some thought to how he would pretend innocence.

Joia said: “Of course it was a heifer, that was why Inka tried to stop you killing it.”

“You’re just making excuses for your brother’s part in this.”

“My brother tried to save you.”

“I don’t have to answer to you.”

“That’s true,” Joia said. “You don’t have to answer to me. You’ve murdered a priestess. You will answer to the gods.” She turned around and walked away.

Ani caught up with Joia and said: “Robbo is being very sly about this.”

“I’m going back to the Monument,” Joia said. “I have to speak to the priestesses.”

“I’ll talk to the other elders,” Ani said, and they parted company.

Joia’s mind was spinning. After talking to Ani she had felt satisfied that Robbo’s offense would be recognized by the community.

She did not want him to be killed, as in the farmer custom, but she wanted the herder folk to acknowledge that he had done something terribly wrong.

The murder of a priestess should not be lightly passed over.

But Robbo was putting out a story in which he and Inka had been equally guilty.

As she strode from the village to the Monument, she saw many strangers, and she remembered that tomorrow was the Spring Halfway, and hundreds of people would be here for the Spring Rite.

That opened up a possibility. The priestesses would have a chance to speak to the entire community of the Great Plain about the murder of Inka.

But the more she thought about it, the more she felt that it would not be a matter of logical argument. Robbo had an answer for everything, and he was clever enough to confuse people. In the end, how people saw this issue would depend on how they felt about the priestesses and about Robbo.

Tomorrow would be an opportunity, but not for a speech.

The glimmer of an alternative formed in her mind.

As soon as she reached the Monument, she sought out Soo, the High Priestess. She was sitting on the ground outside her house, enjoying the mild air of spring. In the last ten years Joia had come to see her as a friend and mentor.

Joia sat down without ceremony.

Soo said: “This is a terrible thing that has happened. Poor Inka. The novices are washing her body now.”

“Robbo is putting out a false story,” Joia said without preamble. Soo liked people to get straight to the point. “He’s saying that Inka tried to kill him and he had to defend himself.”

“But that’s not true,” Soo said. “I’ve spoken to your brother, Han, who carried the body here, bless his soul.”

“Robbo is trying to persuade people that what happened was a fight, not a murder. But I want Robbo’s crime to be acknowledged.”

“So do I,” said Soo. “I’m guessing that you have something in mind.”

“I think we should cremate Inka’s body here tomorrow as part of the Spring Rite.” Cremation was the usual method of disposing of the dead. The ashes were scattered. “It will give everyone the sense that something holy has been lost.”

Soo nodded slowly. “We have a very sad song for the death of a priestess.”

“I know it,” Joia said. She knew them all.

“Then you can lead the singing,” said Soo.

Pia was looking for Han. She adored him and waited impatiently from one Rite to the next to see him.

In between she pictured him every day, with his blond beard and his big shoes; and in the daydream he leaned close to her and whispered in her ear, so that she could feel his warm breath as he told her that he loved her.

She smiled when she looked back at herself, not quite eight midsummers old, asking him if she could be his girlfriend; and his embarrassed answer: No, that’s silly grown-up stuff .

She had felt sure that in his heart he really wanted her to be his girlfriend but was too shy to admit it.

So she had not minded his refusal, in fact she had cherished his words.

A few years later, when she had started thinking about boys in a different way, she had forgotten him for a while.

She had flirted with farmer boys, and kissed them, and discovered her power to make them groan and spurt.

Then she had talked to Han at a Rite, and the old bond between them had come back in a new form.

It was surprising how the enmity between herders and farmers had faded. It was not gone, not completely, but the two groups met frequently at Rites, watching silently as the priestesses danced and sang, and afterward did business amiably enough.

She found Han coming out of the priestesses’ village. He looked stressed, and she was shocked to see blood on his cheek. “Han!” she said. “What happened?”

“Murder,” he said. “It was awful. I’m very glad to see you.”

She hugged him. She could not help being thrilled that she was the one he wanted when he needed comfort.

She took his hand and led him away from the village. They sat on the outside slope of the earth bank. “Tell me all about it,” she said.

“There was an argument between a priestess called Inka and a herder called Robbo, and it turned violent. She hit him over the head, twice. I grabbed her to restrain her, and while she was helpless he slit her throat with a flint knife and she died.”

Pia gasped. “So you saw everything!”

“I was part of it. It might even be my fault she died.”

“No,” she said immediately. “Robbo held the knife. You were just trying to stop the fight.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself.”

“You’ve got blood on your face.” She pulled up a handful of grass, wetted it with her saliva, and scrubbed the stain off his cheek. “That’s better,” she said.

“Thank you. There was such a lot of blood, all of a sudden, then it stopped, and she died in my arms.”

“Who was with you?”

“My sister Joia. She was terribly upset. She’s a priestess, as Inka was.”

“Where’s the body now?”

“I carried it here. The priestesses have it.”

“You should eat something. It will make you feel better.” Pia took from her bag some goat cheese wrapped in leaves. “Here, eat this. My mother makes it. It’s delicious.”

He hesitated. “Is this your supper?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get something. Eat it, please, it will do you good.”

He unwrapped the leaves and ate the cheese. “I didn’t know I was hungry,” he said through a mouthful. “You’re right, it’s delicious.”

When he had finished, she said: “Now you can kiss me.”

“It may be a rather cheesy kiss.”

“It will taste delicious.”

They kissed for a long time, then she said: “Let’s go and see your mother. Does she know about the murder?”

“Joia has probably told her.”

“She’ll want to see you, to make sure you’re all right.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “You’re very considerate,” he said. “You think about people’s feelings—first mine, then my mother’s.”

She did not know what to say to that.

He said: “I think you’re wonderful.”

She did not see herself as wonderful, but she was thrilled that he thought she was.

They got to their feet and headed across the plain toward Riverbend. When they reached the village, he took her hand.

That means I belong to him, she thought, and he belongs to me.

And he wants everyone to know it.

The drum sounded so slowly that Seft found himself waiting, almost anxiously, for the next beat.

This was not how the Spring Rite normally began.

He stood in the crowd as the dawn light filled the sky.

The spectators were quiet. Neen and the two older children stood beside him.

He was carrying the baby, who was asleep.

As he waited he had a chance to admire his work.

He had rebuilt the Monument in wood using the peg-and-hole joints he had devised ten midsummers ago.

With the crossbars firmly attached to the uprights, the big circle was neater and steadier.

It would survive very severe weather, and if the farmers attacked it again—which he asked the gods to forbid—it would prove much more difficult to destroy.

Though not impossible, he thought; that would require a stone Monument.

The song began when the priestesses were still outside, so that the music seemed eerily to come from nowhere. It was a sad tune that spoke of regret and loss. It made Seft look to make sure his children were all right.

When the priestesses appeared, they were led by Soo and Joia, who were side by side. The song followed the familiar pattern of a line sung by one person and answered by the whole choir.

After Soo and Joia came six priestesses carrying, at shoulder level, a wickerwork bier on which rested the body of Inka.

She was naked except for some foliage, leafy branches interspersed with wildflowers.

Her skin seemed white in the early light.

She looked soft and vulnerable, as if still alive, except for the cruel gash across her throat.

Each of the priestesses following the bier had painted a white line across her own throat, probably with chalk.

People in the crowd gasped to see the repeated vivid reminder of how Inka had died.

Seft heard Neen mutter a shocked oath. He noticed that the two older children, standing on either side of Neen, were both holding hands with their mother.

He began to wonder if he and Neen had been wrong to bring the children to this.

At the back of the procession, two novices held blazing torches.

The song was unbearably melancholy. Joia’s voice soared as Seft had never heard it before, seeming to fill the earth circle with sound, and the priestesses responded in unison like mournful thunder. As the pale cold body was slowly carried around, Seft heard people in the audience begin to cry.

The sun started to rise as they completed their circle. Now Seft saw that a funeral pyre had been built in the inner oval. People craned their necks to see between the posts. It was a low bed of dry leaves and twigs with logs on top: it would catch alight immediately and burn hot.

The priestesses laid the bier gently on top of the pyre.

Soo, the High Priestess, bent and picked up a jar previously hidden behind a post. Tipping it, she poured an oil that Seft guessed was birch tar over the body of Inka, holding the jar upside down until it was empty. Then she nodded at the novices with the torches.

The two girls came forward. One was weeping uncontrollably and barely able to stand.

They went to the two ends of the pyre, knelt down, and held the torches to the dry tinder.

The wood blazed up. The priestesses knelt and sang a song of the sun, a ball that itself seemed aflame as it rose on the eastern horizon.

Many watchers turned away as the body of Inka blackened in the heat and began to be consumed. Her soul rose in smoke, drifted and thinned in the air, and then was no more.

On the following night, under cover of darkness, Robbo and his family, carrying a few possessions, quietly crept out of Riverbend onto the Great Plain, and turned south.