The Flint Lord

by Richard Herley

  With a pleasant feeling of flattery and anticipation, he snuffed the remaining flame and climbed in beside her.

  4

  Ika had been out on Valdoe Hill with a party of servants and villagers, among them the head man, who owned the dogs with which they had been coursing hares. At mid afternoon, being near the village, the head man had invited her to his Meeting House for refreshments.

  Rald, the food-taster, was at Ika’s side as she sat sipping a hot barley tisane. It was spiced with thyme and cicely, and their flavours rose in the steam and mixed with the smell of hemp smoke: Ika and Rald had been sharing a pipe.

  The village council had gathered in Ika’s honour. The Meeting House, open at one end, was warmed by a log fire. The floor gleamed with polish; the walls were panelled with rush matting to keep out the draught. Ika, amused by the deference the villagers were showing her, had shocked them all with her open and brazen intimacy with a menial, a food-taster, a person of lowlier rank than anyone else in the coursing party. Insulted and outraged, the councilmen had done their best to hide their feelings, for she was the sister of Brennis Gehan Fifth.

  Nonetheless, the conversation in the Meeting House was stilted and contrived, and at the sound of a commotion in the village compound the head man seemed grateful for a chance to leave the room and investigate. Presently he returned.

  “What was it?”

  “Nothing of importance, my lady.”

  “Tell me what it was.”

  “A runaway, my lady. Some of my people caught him on the outskirts of our village. He claims to be a wandering pedlar, but we know him for a slave and, his lordship your brother permitting, we will present him to the fort.”

  “At a price.”

  “We must cover our costs, my lady.” He snapped his fingers at a girl who was waiting with a wooden jug. “Will you take some more tisane?”

  “Let’s see this runaway. Bring him in.”

  “He is uncouth and smells foul, my lady.”

  “Bring him in.”

  With a resigned glance at the other village elders, the head man went to obey.

  The main intake of labour at Valdoe was supplied by slaving sorties to the mainland, when ships would bring back twenty or thirty or more captives to work in the mines, in the Flint Lord’s fields, in road-gangs, or in the forts. Rarely did a month pass, though, without at least one native addition to the slave quarters. Most often this would be a farmer luckless enough to be out alone and caught by a trading team, who would be paid a bonus for their enterprise. Anyone alone and defenceless was deemed fair game. Occasionally savages would be taken; occasionally a wandering herdsman or pedlar.

  Ika put her hand on Rald’s leg as the slave, hobbled with rope and with a line binding his wrists, was led into the Meeting House. His clothing was rude, grimed with mud and travel. He had apparently been subdued with blows about the head: a rivulet of blood had dried on his temple, and his cheekbone was bruised and swollen. But he was unbowed and he returned Ika’s appraisal with defiance. Tall and dark, he was about twenty-five. Ika found him striking. Something in his primitive, uncompromising bearing excited her and she leaned closer to Rald, squeezing his thigh.

  “What do you think?”

  Rald gave a cryptic smile.

  The head man jerked the slave’s chin aside. “Show respect!”

  For reply the slave spat in his face. The head man struck him; unable to retain his balance, he toppled to the floor.

  “How quaint!” Ika said. She moved her hand higher, watching as the slave was pulled to his feet. “Do you find him interesting, Rald?”

  “We will take him away now, my lady,” the head man said.

  “No. Not yet. I think Rald would like to know him better.”

  Impulsively she stood up and started towards the slave. She sensed the disapproval in the room: the air had become charged. For the first time today her boredom was forgotten.

  “Be careful, my lady.”

  “He won’t hurt me.” She reached out and ran her fingertips across his lips. “See? He didn’t bite.”

  The head man massaged his hands nervously. “It is nearly time to go back to the hounds, my lady, if we are to have any more sport today.”

  “We have sport enough here.” She beckoned to Rald.

  The slave was taller than the food-taster, and in every way quite different. Ika was thrilled by the contrast between the two men, in manner as well as appearance: one civilized and refined, with all the merits that culture could bestow, the other a bumpkin, a clod, an animal from the wildwood. And yet … there was some fire, some spark in this clod that Rald had lost. Rald had never looked at her like that. She stood back while Rald studied his face.

  Rald too reached out and touched his mouth, palpated his bruised cheek, and then, entering into the full spirit of his mistress’s game, and with a conspiratorial smile for Ika alone, began to walk round the prisoner, examining him from all angles.

  Rald completed the circle and looked her way. Some subtle signal passed between them: Ika grew more animated still.

  “My servant and I wish to speak to this fellow in private,” she said to the head man. A flush was rising in her cheeks; her eyes seemed to have grown wider.

  “The council will withdraw, my lady,” the head man said.

  “Are there blinds to close the doorway?”

  “There are.”

  “Then bring them.”

  “Of course, my lady,” said the head man in bewilderment.

  “And we’ll want a knife. And some fresh rope.”

  “What does my lady plan?” He indicated the altar. “I … I must remind you … this is a sacred place … my village … the elders cannot … they cannot permit …”

  “You’ll have your price for him. Do as I say! He won’t be killed.”

  “That is not the point … we cannot permit … we cannot permit … sacrilege, forgive me, my lady …”

  One of the older men stepped forward. “We give allegiance to the Flint Lord, my lady. This is Valdoe Village: what we have belongs to him. It is so with this runaway. The slave is Valdoe’s now and of course you are free to dispose of him as you would of any slave. We make no claim on him at all.” He paused. “But our head man is absent-minded and has forgotten that a council meeting is due to be held here in a short while. Might my lady care to conduct her conversation in some other house? Perhaps in the head man’s house?” He glanced for confirmation at the head man, who nodded reluctantly. “His dwelling is nearby, warm and comfortable, screened and shuttered for privacy. Here I am sure my lady would feel more at ease.”

  Ika assented. At her direction, the slave was bathed. He shouted and struggled as six of the villagers tied him face-downwards on a bed, spreadeagled, with taut ropes from his wrists and ankles to the pillars of the room.

  The head man tried to conceal his dismay. He was the last of the villagers in the house.

  “One more thing,” Ika said. “Post some men by the door to see that no one enters. Give them weapons. If he becomes troublesome I want help at hand.”

  The head man nodded. Rald blew out one of the lamps.

  “Now go.”

  The head man backed away. The doorway was low and led into a tunnel porch: he crawled into it backwards. As he lost sight of the room he heard Ika say something hoarse and unintelligible, and he saw Rald beginning to disrobe.

  * * *

  Nearly four hundred slaves spent their lives, by day or by night, in Brennis Gehan’s mines. About thirty were stationed at the small workings at Findon, a similar number at Blackpatch nearby, and forty at Raven Hill. At Bow Hill, three miles west of the Trundle, eighty miners occupied the slaves’ quarters below the fort. The rest, some two hundred men, were prisoners at Valdoe.

  The mines here were the most productive and yielded the best flints. They lay on the southern slopes of the hill, just under a mile from the fort itself. The vegetation had long since been burned off, and only coarse turf and a few
thorn bushes remained. The area was strewn with piles of timber and spoil-heaps of stark white chalk rubble, and was crisscrossed by muddy paths. Plank structures, roofed with skins, protected the mineshafts from the rain, and a shed gave shelter on site for the mines Trundleman, a man named Blean.

  He was forty, with pale grey eyes and close-cropped hair. Born in the homelands of a wealthy family, Blean held the most prestigious non-military post in the island country: he was responsible for all flint production in the Valdoe domain. From the aspect of a hill, from the way the land was shaped, he could guess where the flint seams were likely to run. At his word the overseers would direct the probing gangs to their work. Ropes and flags would be used to mark out the test pits, and samples of stone and soil would be taken back to the Trundle for examination. If all was auspicious, a shaft would be started, driven up to seventy feet underground, and from the shaft a radiating system of galleries would be dug.

  It was here that Blean’s real genius displayed itself. He was an artist in the manipulation of loads and pressures and thrusts. As if by instinct he knew when a tunnel had gone far enough, and at the moment of imminent collapse work in the gallery would cease. By inspired use of timbers he kept shafts open long after they should have fallen in; and by means of his own inventions – rope transport and movable ladders – he ensured a smooth flow of work inside the mines. Sometimes there were failures: sometimes a few slaves or even an overseer would be lost in a cave-in, but this loss was small compared with the gains from Blean’s efficiency. It was Blean who had been instrumental in helping Gehan to summon his present military strength: Bohod Zein had to be paid in flint.

  Blean took an acute interest in the quality of workers provided for him by the slaves Trundleman. Most were “Valdonen”, men who had been born in slavery or who had spent all their lives at Valdoe. From these the overseers were recruited, as were most of the skilled men – the carpenters, joiners, probers, and ropemen. The unskilled force, with the exception of a few who performed surface duties, worked at the chalk face, in pairs, eleven hours at a stretch. After each shift they were marched uphill to their quarters, a compound enclosed by tall incurved palings.

  Shifts were changed at mid-morning and in the evening. The outgoing shift would be woken and fed an hour beforehand and locked in a holding cage just outside the compound. A flag or flame signal would then be made to the mines and the other shift brought above ground. Only when the incoming men were safely locked in the compound would the holding cage be opened and the new shift released.

  The compound covered a third of an acre by the south-west gatehouse. Inside the palings were tents and shelters for the overseers and guards, canopied kitchens and an eating area with benches and long tables, and an inner cage for sleeping.

  This had a wicket gate and a wooden floor, sloping downwards to a shallow gutter, and a roof made of poles and skins. The bars, vertical and horizontal beams of ash, allowed nowhere a gap of more than a hand’s width. Above waist height the walls were open to the weather.

  While the incoming shift ate a meal of beans, lentils, meat and bread, and while they used the troughs and latrines, women with brooms and buckets sluiced the cage; and then the miners were counted through the wicket and locked up.

  They were thinly dressed: in winter they shivered. The floor was always damp, often icy, and there was little protection from the wind. Sometimes during the long nights one of the older slaves got so cold he did not wake up. For this reason it was considered lucky to be a night-shift man: underground, below a certain depth, the temperature varied little.

  “It’s not my fault,” Klay said to the man who was to be his partner, a thin, grumbling foreigner called Wouter. Wouter’s partner had broken his leg, so Wouter had been moved from the night-shift and teamed with Klay, who, having been examined by the slaves Trundleman, had been approved for duties underground and put in the sleeping cage some time before midnight.

  “Filth. They’re filth,” Wouter said. He was grey, no longer young, stoop-shouldered, with tiny veins in his nose and in his watery brown eyes. His beard was lank; his joints and knuckles were red and swollen with rough work and the cold. “Anyway, go to sleep,” he said wearily.

  In the faint lamplight, Klay watched him lean back and find a space on the floor. His eyes closed at once and his mouth sagged open. In a few moments his breathing became a snore.

  The moon had risen. Above and beyond the high bars of the cage, beyond the compound, Klay could see it drifting mysteriously behind scant, luminous cloud.

  With misery in his eyes he watched its passage in the sky. He could not forget what had been done to him, there in the village at the bottom of the hill. Afterwards the villagers had dressed him and taken him up to the Trundle and he had not seen the green-eyed youth again, nor had he seen the blonde woman who at first had merely watched, urging the youth on, and then, slipping off her clothing, had participated. At the depth of his shame Klay had shouted out in humiliation and pain. With vile clarity he now recalled each detail, the first touch and the weight of the youth on his back … he clapped his hands to his face and sharply breathed in: he wanted to vomit, to expunge from his thoughts all evidence of what had taken place in that loathsome room; but he knew that even if he could scrub his mind clean, he could never rid his body of its sense of dirt and violation.

  Tagart had not warned him of their customs; he had told him nothing of this. One more grief to add to Tagart’s score! And that score would be settled – on the way south, trudging alone through the woods, Klay had vowed it. Tagart had cheated in the contest; Tagart had treated him unjustly and cruelly. His honour had been impugned, his family and ancestors belittled before the whole camp. The threat of banishment still hung over Yulin and his children, and he, Klay, a chief’s son, true heir to the name of Shode, had been given an impossible task as an alternative to public execution.

  Plainly Tagart hoped he would fail. Well, Tagart would be disappointed! He would not fail! He would redeem his honour and restore the name of his family, demand a retrial, demand another contest, and this time the laws would be properly observed by all! And at last, Klay would depose the strutting impostor who had usurped his birthright, taken over his blood-tribe, shamed the memory of his father; and he would choose with dignity the woman he wanted for his wife. Yulin and her children would be well cared for and respected as members of his family, and he and Segle would govern the Waterfall tribe and all the tribes of the winter camp. This was the future: he would not fail it.

  He looked up again. Most of the miners were sleeping. Grunts, sighs and moans broke from the huddle of men. Behind him, from the corner, came the sound of someone defecating. Klay tried to ignore it. For a while he studied Wouter. In ten hours or so they would be going underground, he had said, and Klay wondered when the best time would be to break his silence.

  He surveyed the sleeping men. They were ignorant of his identity; they had no idea why he had come; they were completely unaware that in a matter of days the secret he had brought would change their lives for ever.

  He sat thinking for a long time, but supposed later that he must have fallen asleep during the early hours, because he felt Wouter shaking him and opened his eyes to find that it was day.

  “Come on,” Wouter said. “Come on if you want to fill your gizzard.”

  The miners were being counted out of the cage and were passing into the refectory, where they seated themselves at the tables. Serving women were already ladling stew.

  “Over there, to the left,” Wouter hissed, pushing him from behind. “We want to get on that table. She gives you more.”

  They were beaten to the coveted places by the other men.

  “No matter,” Wouter said. “We’ll be quicker after the shift.”

  Klay squeezed in beside a middle-aged foreigner with greasy black hair. Across the table every face was turned towards the cauldrons: eyes watched and gauged the movements of the ladlers, counted heads to see where a bowl would end u
p. Some of the men drew shells or wooden spoons from their clothing.

  Klay ate with his fingers. The stew tasted unpleasant: it was thick with strange vegetables; globules of pallid fat floated just below the surface. The meat, which Klay could not identify, was stringy and almost inedible. When he had chewed the last piece he followed Wouter’s lead and drank the rest of his stew straight from the bowl.

  Women circulated with osier baskets, handing out wads of loam-coloured stuff. Klay had never seen its like before. He could only compare it to fungus or rotten wood. He touched it with his tongue, licked it, bit some off.

  “The bread’s always stale,” the foreigner whispered. Talking was forbidden: he glanced warily at the nearest overseer, who stood swinging his cudgel on its strap. “Give it here if you don’t want it.”

  “Silence!”

  This man, who was called Gabot, was assigned to the same part of the mine as Klay and Wouter. After the meal, they and the rest of the shift, having been given a few minutes at the latrines, were counted out and, in their pairs, ordered into the holding cage. This was another enclosure of wooden palings, with a tall gate locked by a bar. Gabot and his partner were almost the last pair through. Wouter pointed Gabot out.

  “Don’t trust him,” he said. “He’s a spy. He sleeps in the cage and works at the face and pretends to be one of us, but he’s been seen coming out of an overseer’s tent.”

  “Do they give him extra food?”

  “No one knows.”

  “Why should he spy, then?”

  “Perhaps they’ve got his woman in the Trundle. They do that sometimes. A woman, or a child.”

  The holding cage was secured; the chief overseer of the day-shift called to a soldier on the battlements, who waved a flag. Farther down the hill the signal was relayed by another soldier. At the mine-workings a gong was sounded above each shaft and the men came to the surface. They were counted and checked, and each was given a load of stone to carry to Trundle.