The Beothuk Saga

by Bernard Assiniwi

  But it was Woasut who answered. “It is good to see the man’s face during the act,” she said. “Good for the woman, at least.”

  Gudruide agreed. “In Green-land, the females prefer it this way, but men who think only of their own pleasure always do it from behind.”

  Anin did not reply to this, but he felt the rebuke. By even asking about matters related to coupling, he had broken an unspoken rule of his people, for whom discretion was an important virtue. Before setting out on his long voyage around the earth, he had seen clan members performing the act when others in the mamateek were awake, but it was customary to wait until the others were asleep, when the fire was reduced to a heap of glowing embers that cast a filtered light. But here, Anin’s clan performed the act of satisfaction openly, without shyness or shame. Although this was new to him, he did not think it disagreeable. That night, everyone slept soundly, except for the two babies, who woke several times demanding to be fed.

  Woasut would soon feel desire for her man reawaken within her. She told herself that having several wives was good for the man, a way of ensuring that he was always in good spirits. But for a woman it was a perpetual source of anxiety, envy, and jealousy. And of frustration, which ensured that she was often in bad spirits. Woasut accepted the situation, since it was as natural to her as living and breathing. Gudruide thought that she herself would have been less jealous of her sister, Gwenid, than she was of the Scottish slave, Della. But she also told herself that it would not be a bad thing for women if they were able to depend on more than one husband.

  “In our land,” she thought, “a man can have only one wife when he is at home, but when he is voyaging he takes mistresses. The woman Freydis, who tried to have us killed, was the bastard daughter of Erik the Red, and the illegitimate sister of Lief, Erik’s son. Our men behave much like the Addaboutik, but they are hypocritical about it. They do not act openly, and they are often jealous of their women. I prefer the way things are done here. And Anin is much more agreeable to look at than the Skraelings, whom Woasut calls Ashwans.”

  As a slave, Della had been forced to submit to every imaginable whim of the Viking men. She, too, thought it was better to live freely here, among these people. It had been terrifying to be caught between the jealousy of the Viking wives and the brutality of the Viking men. But she felt that if she could have Anin to herself, she would teach him to be less rough with her than he had been that first time. She had had enough experience among mariners to know how to make a good man like this Addaboutik think about the woman during the act of satisfaction. She could speak about this with the other women, now that she was no longer a slave. She thought she could make allies of them, that their lives would be better here than it had been for her in Green-land.

  Gwenid thought that Anin ought to have chosen her for his third wife. In Ice-land, a husband could kill a male slave if his wife were impregnated by him. But this was hypocrisy, because often the male slave had been seduced by the wife, who was frustrated from having been left so long alone by her husband when he was away voyaging with his mistresses. Gwenid believed that Anin would make a wonderful lover once he had learned how to please a woman. When she watched him coupling with the Scottish slave, she had marvelled at his strength, his passion, his rhythm! She had been very jealous. She told herself that she would have him before long.

  For Robb, possessing a woman who was bigger and more robust than his Scottish companion was not a bad bargain: “This Gwenid is more pliable than Della,” he thought. “She is less disdainful of me now that I am no longer a slave among her people. But she coupled with me only because she did not know how else to behave in front of Anin. Woasut would be a very interesting challenge, once she has recovered from having her baby. She has a beautiful body, and her dark skin is as soft as duck down. Would Anin be jealous? Is everything as free and easy here as it seems? How pleasant it would be to rise from being a lowly slave, without rights, to a lord and master of my own clan! But I must tread carefully for fear of angering Anin. When I know more of the Addaboutik tongue, I will ask him about the proper way of behaving here, and among the Addaboutik people. Are there many women in his village? Will they be available to us, or will we have to share these four women with other men? How agreeable it is to be no longer a slave! Life here is so much more worth living than it was when I was condemned to serve the people of Green-land.”

  These thoughts distracted him from his work, but only for a few moments.

  15

  Anin and Robb returned to the enormous birch from which they planned to take the bark for the second tapatook, which would allow the entire clan to get to the Addaboutik village of Baétha. It took them one whole sun to find it again. Anin first drew lines where the incisions were to be made, using a piece of red ochre rock. Since Robb was not tall enough to allow Anin to reach the top of the trunk by standing on his shoulders, Anin tied a stone to one end of a long cord and tossed it over the lowest branch of the tree; he then looped the end around his waist and cinched it tightly. Robb took the other end of the cord and, with Anin’s help, pulled until he had hoisted Anin to the first branch.

  With Anin thus suspended, Robb wrapped his end of the cord three times around a nearby tree; when Anin was ready to be lowered slowly to make the vertical cut, all Robb had to do was slacken the cord slightly. When all three cuts were made, Anin began separating the bark from the trunk. This was a painstaking operation, because even a small split in the bark would render it useless for a tapatook. But the work went well. It was the season when the sap was rising within the tree, and the bark was moist and pliable.

  When they had completely removed it they spread it out in the sun, and before long it was lying flat and uncurled. Then they rolled it up again, this time with the inside facing out. It was light enough for one of them to carry; indeed, the finished tapatook would not weigh more than a child of five season-cycles.

  Back at camp, the men decided to make the tapatook close to the waterfall, since they would need plenty of water to bend the ribs and bark into the proper shape that would allow it to float. There were hundreds of rocks near the waterfall as well, which they carried to the mamateek. They then began the process of shaping the bark. Even though it was freshly cut and still filled with sap, they had to soften it still more by immersing it in the stream for two whole suns, held down with the rocks. Then they very carefully fitted it between two rows of sharpened stakes pounded into the ground in the shape of the eventual tapatook. Its central form would be determined by a thin, bent piece of birch inserted across the bottom and up the sides. To give the hull greater strength, long, thin strips of pine, dried at the fire, would then be laid lengthways along the bottom, under the central rib, and other ribs of birch would be tied in place, equally spaced along the tapatook’s length to give it its final shape and rigidity. The curved gunwales were also to be of birch. Anin explained to Robb that the entire process would take at least one moon. The bark and ribs had to be woven to the gunwales with thin pine roots, boiled and split down the middle, and every joint would be sealed with a mixture of pine gum and beaver fat. This was the method that the Addaboutik and Beothuk had followed to make their tapatooks since the first birch tree provided the bark for the first tapatook, and this was the method Anin’s clan would use now. The only innovation in this case was Della’s cutting tool, which she had stolen from the Bouguishamesh, and which would make the work go faster. Since Robb and Della were equally accustomed to wielding the strange axe, both would be allowed to work on the tapatook.

  Woasut and Gwenid augmented the clan’s food stores with shellfish from the bay and small game from the forest. Gudruide looked after the babies, except during feeding time, when each mother continued to feed her own child. Woasut’s son was already eating cooked meat; Woasut chewed it for him first, to make it easier for him to digest, then placed it in his mouth.

  Gudruide was recovering slowly from her birthing and would still need many suns’ rest before her stren
gth returned to her. She was excused from the heavier chores about the camp. Anin suggested to Woasut that she wade out into the bay with fishing lines to catch various kinds of fish. It was nearing the time when the small fish the Addaboutik called shamut would wash up onto the beach in waves. They ought not to miss this seasonal gift from the sea.

  One morning, Anin witnessed a scene that rarely occurred among the Addaboutik, and which Woasut said she had also never heard of among the Beothuk. Gwenid gave an order to Della, who refused it, saying she was no longer Gwenid’s slave. The two women began shouting at each other in the Viking language, hard words spat out furiously. Before long they were hitting each other with their fists. Gwenid was the bigger of the two, but the Scotswoman was stronger, quicker, and much more enraged. There was much kicking, punching, and pulling of hair. Anin stepped in only when Della reached for her axe and was about to bring it down on Gwenid’s dried-grass-coloured head.

  “If you kill her,” he said to Della, “then you must either submit to the same treatment, or be banished from the clan. That is the law of the Addaboutik. There is nothing I can do to save you. We do not kill members of our own clan here.”

  The slave lowered her weapon, visibly calmed herself, and returned to splitting pine roots. Anin took Gwenid by the shoulders and marched her into the woods. He explained to her at length that the women must get along with each other if the clan were to survive. There was the matter of presenting a united front to their enemies; they must forget about such things as social levels that prevailed among the Bouguishamesh. All people were treated the same by the Addaboutik. All women were equal, and all men were superior to them, because the men provided the clan’s food and weapons. Gwenid seemed to understand, but she was still angry enough to explain that she had been jealous of Della ever since the clan leader had shown her preference.

  Anin smiled and said that such preference was not necessarily a permanent mark of favour, but was rather the expression of a momentary need.

  “A clan chief may chose one woman one sun and another the next. Only the first wife is given preference, according to our custom. If the number of women becomes less than the number of men, then the first wife would be the only wife. And second and third wives must also attend to the needs of other men, so that there will be no disputes among brothers or other male members of the clan.”

  The young woman met Anin’s gaze directly. “Then I can hope that in time you will choose me?” she said.

  Anin was embarrassed. “You may hope that I will take you, yes.”

  Without taking her eyes from Anin’s, Gwenid untied the cords of her dress. “Take me now, then,” she said to him.

  When the two returned to the camp, the others pretended not to notice that Gwenid’s dress was spotted with mud, and that dead leaves from the previous season of cold and snow clung to it, suggesting that she had been lying on her back on the ground. Only Della responded by splitting pine roots with an angry vigour. Woasut smiled inwardly: Anin seemed to have chosen Gwenid as his third wife. This would bring the three women closer together. Gudruide was uneasy, however, even though she, too, had secretly hoped that Anin would favour her sister when they had been together in the mamateek. Now she was not concerned that the clan chief had taken her sister, only that he had done so away from the eyes of the other members of the clan. She hoped that this would not cause jealousy among the others. She had to admit that she herself was envious of her younger sister for having succeeded in getting Anin alone, where she could have him to herself.

  Robb was also discontented, but he did not let it show. He thought that if Anin was permitted to take Gwenid, there was no reason why he, Robb, could not do the same with Woasut and Gudruide. He was not particularly fond of Gwenid, and he had had Della many times already. Sometimes he had even coupled with her to please the sailors on the Viking drakkar. What a show they had put on! He was rather proud of his feats of endurance with her. As slaves, they had been obliged to obey or else risk losing their heads. He told himself that his situation here among the Addaboutik was much better than it had been with the Vikings, and he went back to work on the new tapatook.

  16

  When the tapatook was finished, Anin and Robb looked upon it with pride. Della, too, was happy that she had been allowed to work on it. It was almost as though she were considered a man, able to wield an axe like anyone else. She had shown Anin how to sharpen its cutting edge with a fine-grained stone. And then she had split the roots of the white pine to make the cords with which the bark and ribs were sewn to the tapatook’s gunwales. Anin marvelled at the knowledge acquired by this woman from a country he probably would never see in his life. She lifted the new tapatook onto her shoulders and began carrying it down the path: it was time to see if the craft was solid, watertight, and easy to handle. Anin picked up the two paddles from the old tapatook and, signalling Robb to follow, set off down the path to the shore of the bay.

  It had taken the better part of a moon to complete the construction. Gudruide was now completely recovered and working alongside the other women as usual. Her daughter was now also old enough to eat meat, and Woasut showed her how to prepare it. The three women were on the shore gathering shellfish when Della appeared with the tapatook and placed one end of it in the water with the other end still on the beach. Anin told her that a tapatook must always be boarded parallel to the shoreline, never with one end up on the sand where it could be broken or torn on a sharp rock. Della had placed the tapatook as she had seen the Vikings place their drakkars, which they always left pointed into the water, ready to be shoved off in a hurry if the need arose. Drakkars, he said, were made of stout planks, and could not easily be damaged by rocks, even though such construction made them too heavy to be carried like a tapatook. The three women stopped collecting shellfish and helped launch the new craft. Anin boarded first and sat in the stern. He invited Robb in next, to occupy the centre, and gave the second paddle to Della, asking her to help him paddle. The others pushed them out into deeper water.

  Della knew how to row with an oar, but this was the first time she had used a paddle. She had to turn around often to observe the strokes that Anin used to control the tapatook. She was amazed at how easily the craft moved through the water, and how responsive it was to the paddle. When Robb tried to stand up, she also came very close to learning how easily a tapatook could be capsized. Anin barely had time to yell at him to sit down: never stand up in a tapatook, he told him. Robb understood immediately. Returning to shore was more complicated than leaving it had been. They had to arrive side-on, not bow-first. But the former slaves were intelligent and learned quickly.

  That evening there was a celebration in the camp. Everyone told stories from their respective cultures, and Woasut sang lullabies to put her child to sleep. Then Gudruide sang lullabies in her own tongue, and for once Anin did not reprimand her for not speaking Addaboutik. The strangest singing was Della’s; she sang Celtic ballads with a soft, sweet voice, and her gentleness surprised those who had watched her wield the axe like a man. When the song was over, everyone noticed Gwenid, who was rubbing her breasts.

  “Why are you doing that?” Anin asked her.

  “Because Della’s song was very moving, and it made me feel like caressing myself. It is something I often saw women do when their husbands were a long time at sea and they had no slaves to comfort them. That was before the people in my country became Christians; now they have been told that such gestures are sinful. But it feels good.”

  Anin asked Della to sing another song, and told Gwenid she might continue rubbing herself.

  “I want everyone to enjoy themselves tonight,” he said. “We are now ready to begin our voyage to Baétha. Perhaps we will have something to teach my family and friends whom I will be seeing again for the first time in three seasons of cold and snow!”

  That night a new atmosphere of peace settled into the mamateek. Gone was the tension that jealousy and envy had created. Woasut sensed this change,
and watched and listened with the eagerness of one who wanted to learn everything. She no longer guarded her position as first wife, no longer felt anger at being neglected. She felt again what it was like to belong to a family. The three other women did not seem to her to be rivals, but were more like sisters with whom she could share, learn, and understand her life. Her zest for living had returned. No more would she mourn her lost people, killed by the Ashwans who came down from the cold regions for no other reason. No more would she dream only of vengeance, as she had since she had seen their corpses. No more would she blame the males of her clan for their carelessness in exposing themselves and their children to attacks from such a well-known enemy as the Ashwans. She let herself be gently rocked by the rhythms of Della’s singing, which spoke to her of tenderness and friendship, words she had not known until someone had explained them to her in her own language. She felt love for these strangers who had come from another world. They were not like her, but still she might learn from them much of what she needed to know about life.

  Anin, too, thought that meeting up with these strangers had been good. He could now be the leader of a clan, which he had dreamed of becoming since his childhood. He remembered stories about voyages told by the elders, in which the marvellous melded with the mundane. From now on, it would be he who told such stories, and his children would draw lessons about life from his own experiences, heard from his own lips. They would learn that the Addaboutik are not the only people in the world, and that Ashwans are not the only dangerous enemies.

  In the mamateek’s half light, cast by coals that glowed softly at the centre, eight people slept happily. When the sun returned, they would begin the final stage of Anin’s voyage around the world. A voyage that had taught him the serenity of being part of a clan.