The Gathering Night

by Margaret Elphinstone

  Even before we reached Loch Island hostile spirits came out to meet us. They flew low over the boat, trying to beat me back. Osané’s brothers said nothing, either to the spirits or to me. Silently I called upon my Helpers. My Swan came at once and flew into the cloud of angry spirits. He couldn’t put them to flight, but after that they hung back, not daring to attack him. My Dolphin remained hidden. That puzzled me, but I didn’t have the chance to think about it. Osané’s brothers steered along the High Sun side of Loch Island, within a paddle’s reach of a reef of glistening seaweed, and brought the boat alongside a rock. Koldo gripped a handful of trailing seaweed and held the boat steady. Their dogs leaped ashore, nearly knocking me over. The two young men said nothing. I was an old woman but luckily I didn’t need their help. I stepped lightly over the boat-lip into slippery weed. I picked my way across to dry rock without looking back, leaving the young men to unload their meat and carry their boat ashore.

  The dogs started barking as soon as I was on the island. A hand-full of children came running along the shore, baskets of shellfish bouncing on their backs. When the dogs reached me they leaped up and barked in my face. I knew they wouldn’t dare hurt me. A little boy shrilly called them off.

  ‘Argi,’ I called to him. ‘You know me! Come here.’ He came warily towards me, the other children following. I took a shell-full of crab meat out of my basket – it was all the food I had left after my journey – and gave it to him. ‘You can divide that between you. Now, I’m looking for Arantxa. Is she in Camp now? Can you take me to her?’

  ‘Yes, Nekané.’ Of course they all knew me from Gathering Camp. Argi took hold of my travelling cloak and started pulling me back the way he’d come. The other children stopped being shy and pressed round me. Now they all wanted to take part in bringing the Go-Between into their Camp. Seeing I was welcomed, the dogs trotted back to Camp ahead of us.

  Many feet had trodden the path to the Camp so it was easy to follow. It led us through waist-high bracken, threading its way among rocky hummocks where late bees droned among the heather, through marsh-flats where the deer grass was already taking on a tinge of russet. I rounded a rock, and came upon a grove of aspens sheltering in the lee of a hillock. They whispered to me as I passed, with a soft pattering like falling rain.

  I stopped in the shade of the trees for a hand-full of heartbeats, surveying the Camp where it lay in a hollow at the foot of Loch Island Crag. Everyone had heard the dogs, so the women were on the look-out. A beaver hide was stretched on a frame facing the Sun. I saw no fresh skulls in the trees. Arantxa, leaning over the hide, still had a scraper in her hand. No one was doing any work now. As I stood silently under the aspens, one of her cousins saw me and jerked Arantxa’s tunic. When Arantxa looked round, her mouth fell open. All the cousins stared at me.

  ‘Nekané has come,’ said Argi with a flourish. That child always knew how to make himself the important one!

  That brought them to their senses. Arantxa managed to welcome me, and Argi’s mother brought me crab mashed up with sea-roots and limpets, roasted in dulse. I’d been travelling all day and I was hungry. The women pretended to carry on with what they were doing – scraping hides, grinding roots, twisting twine. But all they were really doing was watching me.

  ‘You’re all very quiet,’ I remarked. ‘Is your Camp always as quiet as this?’

  Several of them burst into hurried talk, like the chattering of a sudden breeze through the aspen grove. Nothing they said was to the point. I knew what they were hiding from me.

  ‘Your men are still away at Hunting Camp.’ I made it a statement, not a question.

  Argi’s mother gave a guilty start, then tried to answer casually. ‘Oh yes, they’ve gone to their Hunting Camp in the hills, towards the Morning Sun Sky somewhere. They’ll be back in a day or two.’ She stopped and put her hand over her mouth. She’d been told not to tell anyone that. ‘Or longer,’ she gasped.

  ‘The sooner the better, as far as I can see.’ I left it to her to decide whether I was being unforgivably rude about the lack of meat, or whether the spirits had given me insights too deep for her to fathom.

  Soon Arantxa’s sons appeared, with their deer slung on a pole between them. In the midst of sudden silence they carried it into the Camp and laid it by the main hearth. The women gathered round at a little distance. No one said a word.

  Arantxa whispered to Koldo.

  Koldo replied loudly enough for all to hear, ‘No, mother! Your sons aren’t much good – if we’d been proper hunters we could have brought you that many deer!’ He held up both hands with all fingers spread. ‘What we’ve brought you is so little it’s hardly worth bothering about. You can have the hide, but all our cousins will have an equal share of meat. After all, there’s not much – what difference does it make?’

  Sudden talk rose in the air like flocking magpies. Itzal skinned the deer. He eased the last bit of hide from the back legs. In a heartbeat the women had cut strips of heart, lungs and kidneys and seared them in the flames. The Wise ones fed me first, then the eager children, then the pregnant women and the ones in milk and last of all themselves. Fires were built up, joints cut into strips, entrails cleaned, sinews twined . . . this one small deer was a lot more welcome than it should have been in Light Moon.

  For the rest of that day I sat at their hearth. I played at twine patterns with a small girl who had toothache. After a while her mother was brave enough to ask if I could cure the pain. I unpeeled the dandelion leaves from the lump of birch-resin I always carry with me – my own teeth, what’s left of them, are none too good – and gave her a bit to chew. Then another cousin asked me to hold her baby while she heated stones for the roasting pit. The child fell asleep in my arms. While I rocked the baby, one of Osané’s cousins – I could see the likeness, but this girl was a pale shadow of Osané as I’d last seen her – came and asked me, very quietly so the others couldn’t hear, if my Helpers could make a charm for her to get pregnant. Otherwise her man would leave her, she said. I asked her how bad a thing that would be. ‘You could always send him away first,’ I pointed out. ‘Then the shame would be his, not yours. You’d soon get another man at Gathering Camp – one who might do a bit better at giving you a child. Had you thought of that?’

  Clearly she hadn’t. But then People don’t. Usually all I have to do is to turn their troubles inside out and get them to look at the other side. I don’t wake my Helpers for that. I never tell People, of course, how simple it really is. People like to think that their lives are very difficult, just as they like to think their troubles are unlike anyone else’s. I travel around and I listen to People’s stories wherever I go. I seldom hear anything new. When People are young they think everything is new. I’m old: I know that People have always cared about the same small things, and they always will.

  In the evening Hodei and some of the other men came back empty-handed. The fresh skull of Koldo and Itzal’s deer stared down at them through the aspen leaves. Its meat, roasting in the pit, would now have to feed more than four hands-full of mouths. Hodei nodded to me when he saw me, then strolled off to lay his unused weapons in the shelter. I didn’t expect him to show surprise. After all, he’d know better than anyone why I was here, and if his Helpers hadn’t told him I was on my way they must be fast asleep.

  That night I lay next to the hearth in Argi’s family tent and thought things over. If Osané’s brothers hadn’t brought meat we’d have gone to bed hungry. The hunting hadn’t been going well anywhere. We’d had four hard winters, and even the summers had often been grey and wet. The Animals were unhappy. I was a guest at Loch Island Camp. I watched, and listened.

  Next morning, as soon as the men had paddled across the strait to the mainland, I followed Arantxa to the spring. I’d miss my chance if I didn’t speak to her before the main hunting party came back. The spring lay between two heather-covered outcrops above the aspen grove; I scrambled up the rocky path to where the water bubbled upward between dark-gr
een rushes. Arantxa squatted on a flat rock which had been laid on the wet ground at the edge of the spring. She was holding the lip of the waterskin just below the surface so clean water could flow in gently.

  ‘Arantxa! I’m here to talk to you!’

  ‘Oh!’ Arantxa dropped her skin, and lunged after it with a splash.

  She tried to make excuses, but I wasn’t having that. Luckily she was frightened of me. ‘You’ve muddied the pool now anyway, splashing like that. You’ll have to wait.’ I looked her in the eye. ‘You haven’t asked me yet about Osané.’

  Arantxa looked terrified.

  ‘She’s your only daughter. Surely you want to know how she is?’

  Arantxa fretted with the waterskins. She held the one she’d just filled upside down and the water splashed all over her skirt. ‘Oh dear, now look what . . .’ She rubbed her wet skirt. ‘Oh yes, I . . . yes of course. I mean . . . I didn’t think you’d seen your family lately.’

  ‘I see them when I can. I saw Osané much more recently than you did.’

  ‘Oh yes, you . . . Yes, of course.’ Arantxa had filled the water-skin again, and was trying to tighten the sinew-twine with trembling fingers.

  ‘Leave those waterskins alone, Arantxa! We’re not going back yet.’

  ‘But they need . . .’

  I took the skin from her, tied it firmly by the neck and laid it upright on the bank. ‘They can wait. We’re talking about Osané, Arantxa. You must be sorry never to see her at Gathering Camp. You’ll be missing your grandson. Four winters now . . . and you’ve never even seen him.’

  ‘Oh yes, yes. Little . . . little Bakar. Oh yes. Yes, of course.’

  ‘Is that all you can say? You know, don’t you, Arantxa, why Osané and her man don’t come to Gathering Camp?’

  ‘Oh yes. I mean no. No, no. Of course.’

  ‘Have you lost your wits, woman? I’m talking about your daughter! No wonder she left this family! Well, we love her, I can tell you that!’

  Arantxa burst into tears. There was nowhere to sit on the wet ground, and the midges that hovered around the spring were beginning to find us. I made Arantxa put down the other waterskin and come with me to the open clearing at the summit of the island. I sat her down on a rock among the dry heather. She was still trying to hold in her sobs. I looked round. There was a welcome breeze up here, and also I could keep an eye out for boats.

  I put my hand on her shoulder, and said in a very kind voice, ‘It’s all right, Arantxa. I know how hard it’s been for you. You must be so unhappy.’

  Arantxa was so astonished that anyone would speak kindly to her that she sobbed harder than ever. ‘Nekané, you do understand! I thought nobody ever . . . Oh Nekané, I did try! It was so hard! She was such a pretty child . . . of course I loved her’– I waited patiently while Arantxa put her hands over her face and wept – ‘how could I ever want to lose her!’ Here Arantxa broke into a storm of weeping. I hoped no one would hear. I didn’t think any woman would dare come and meddle with me. It was lucky that the men were off the island. Normally they’d leave a Go-Between alone, but this family had too much to hide.

  ‘You’ll be very glad, then, to know Osané’s well,’ I said at last. ‘She’s happy with Kemen. Your grandson is thriving too.’

  Arantxa sniffed hard, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. ‘Kemen!’ she said with loathing. Now we were coming to the point. ‘That man! Nekané, how could Zigor let that man steal my daughter!’

  She didn’t dare accuse me. If she wanted to take refuge in blaming Zigor, it wouldn’t hurt him, and it might help me. I left Zigor out of it. ‘Kemen didn’t steal your daughter, Arantxa.’

  ‘What do you call it then?’ flashed Arantxa. ‘What right had he to take my child? She was promised to Edur! Kemen stole her! He stole her from Edur! He stole her from us!’

  ‘What do you mean: stole her? Was Osané a baby at your breast? Was she your cloak or your knife or your needle? No, Arantxa, she was not. She was a grown woman! She wasn’t yours to keep, or yours to give. So how could she be stolen?’

  ‘Kemen took her!’

  ‘Yes, and she took Kemen. Is that so strange?’

  ‘But she never would if . . . She was forced to do it. She should have stayed with her family. Zigor had no right—’

  ‘Forced?’ I repeated. ‘Osané wasn’t forced! She chose to stay with Kemen. I was there that night, remember! No one held Osané down. If she’d wanted to leave my hearth she could have got up and walked across the Camp to yours. Why didn’t you – you – her mother – come and fetch her home, if you had the faintest breath of a suspicion that she was forced? And where was her father? Why didn’t he come and get her instantly if he thought she was being raped? But he never came near her! What kind of father is that? And why didn’t her brothers ask her to come back with them, instead of hurling insults and empty threats at my family? Did they see anyone holding Osané back by force? No, Arantxa, they didn’t. Nobody did. Osané could have returned to your hearth whenever she liked. But she didn’t, did she?’

  ‘But that man! Not that I blame you, Nekané,’ Arantxa added hurriedly. ‘That Kemen! He took her! He raped her! After that she was too ashamed to come! Poor child! Oh Osané, my poor lost child.’

  ‘Oh do be quiet, Arantxa! Osané is neither poor nor lost. On the contrary, she has everything a woman needs, and you know exactly where she is. If you think she went with Kemen against her will, why didn’t you say so when he took her? If Osané had said then that it was rape, the People would have made him give her up at once.’

  ‘And then no other man would have touched her! You know that! You know why girls don’t . . . You know what happens!’

  ‘Edur didn’t seem to know. He made enough fuss about wanting her back. You can’t have worried about no one wanting Osané, Arantxa!’

  Defeated, Arantxa subsided into whimpers. I looked at her thoughtfully. She was gazing helplessly out to sea. Her cheeks were wet with tears: her sorrow was real enough, not that I’d ever doubted that. I judged my chance had come. I said in an off-hand way, ‘But Edur can tell me himself, can’t he, as soon as the boat comes back from Hunting Camp?’

  Arantxa leaped like a startled hare. She stared at me wildly. ‘Edur? I . . . I . . .’

  ‘Oh yes you do,’ I told her. ‘Edur’s been at Loch Island since Egg Moon. And now I think you should tell me about the men he brought with him.’

  ‘I . . . I . . . I don’t know what you mean, Nekané! Truly, I don’t know what you mean!’

  ‘Come, Arantxa, you can do better than this! D’you think I don’t know why you’ve welcomed the brother of your worst enemy to your own hearth?’

  She turned so white I thought she was going to faint. She believed me, of course – I appeared to know so much that she thought I had the power to see anything I wished. I pressed the point home. ‘D’you think I don’t know why Edur brought Kemen’s brother here? It seems a strangely long journey to come all the way to Loch Island, when Edur’s own family have their summer Camps away under the High Sun Sky by Grandmother Mountain. You’d think Edur would have taken Basajaun straight across to Kemen on Mother Mountain Island, wouldn’t you? Because Basajaun must have asked Edur about his brother? Hodei realised what had happened at once, didn’t he? Did you really believe that Zigor wouldn’t see just as much as Hodei?’

  ‘Zigor!’ Arantxa gasped. ‘Does he . . . does Zigor . . .’

  ‘Of course Zigor knows,’ I said impatiently. ‘And I’m sure it’s not really your fault. I told Zigor that. But you’d better explain it to me yourself.’

  Arantxa wasn’t quite as stupid as I’d thought. ‘I don’t see why I should break my word’ – she stretched up her hands to the spirits – ‘to tell you something you know already.’

  ‘Your word to your husband, Arantxa?’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’ she retorted.

  I’d known all along we’d have to come to this. ‘I think your daughter could tell
you best what’s wrong with that,’ I said.

  Arantxa took me by surprise. She really did faint. She gave a hiccupping gasp and slumped against my arm. I lowered her on to the turf. I still had some water in my waterskin so I sprinkled cool water on her face, and stroked her temples. A shadow crossed her face; I looked up and saw small clouds gathering, chasing one another slowly across the Sun.

  Arantxa’s eyelids fluttered. I had a heartbeat’s memory of Osané, bruised and swollen, opening her eyes as I leaned over her in the Go-Betweens’ shelter. I’d never seen any likeness between mother and daughter before. My heart both softened and hardened towards Arantxa. I couldn’t doubt that she’d suffered too. But she’d let these things happen, and I could use that to deal with her now.

  Arantxa tried to look as if she were still too faint to speak.

  ‘Come on, Arantxa. You know you can’t get out of it. We’re not leaving this spot until we’ve talked about this.’

  Arantxa wept. I put my arm round her and spoke to her as if she were my little daughter. At first she was stiff and frightened. Then she laid her head on my breast and sobbed as if her heart were breaking. I made no move to stop her. There aren’t enough tears in this world for all there is to weep about. This woman – whom I didn’t like – but that was not the point – had suffered more than I ever had, more even than I did when I lost my son. I found myself thinking about my own husband. I remembered what a good man he was. No one realised how much I missed him. As Arantxa gave herself over to weeping, I felt a small prickling behind my own eyes. That was a good thing: Arantxa would have known if my sudden kindness didn’t come from my heart. At last her sobs began to die away. She took huge shuddering breaths like a child that’s worn itself out with crying. Her face was still hidden by the fold of my cloak. Suddenly a torrent of words flowed from her, just as I’d intended.