It was too dark to see. The planks jabbed hard against her back and the soles of her feet. How can men live like this? She drew another breath, her lungs rebelling against the stench. She’d heard stories about how men travelled in ships like this, all the way to the far-off Arab lands or up north where ice and snow reigned all year long, but she’d never believed such foolishness. For the first time in her life she didn’t feel the touch of the earth raw beneath her feet. It was an odd, uncomfortable sensation, as if a part of her had been torn away. Recently, some of the clan had taken to wearing birch bark shoes, which the traders had brought up from the cities of the Poles, but Iwa had always laughed at them, proudly going barefoot even in the depths of winter.
Will my feet never touch Matka Ziemia again? She peered around, but it was too dark to see. A deep hollowness settled over her and bled inside her breast. In her arms Tomaz was quiet, barely able to move as she hugged him to her. Then, in the darkness, someone moaned.
‘Father?’ she whispered, hardly daring to hope. But there was no reply.
Gradually, as she became accustomed to the gloom, she began to make out the shapes that pressed in all around her. The smell wasn’t one of rotten flesh but of too many people crammed together. She began to make out faces, dimly at first, the line of a nose or the slope of a brow. It was as if the whole clan had been packed inside, but only the women. She could make them out clearly now, hardly moving, their faces riddled with fear. Here and there a few rocked against the side of the ship, their lips moving silently as if the words had been drained from them.
‘So they have caught you, girl.’ A voice cut through the gloom. It was Katchka. Hard to recognise her now, as if she’d aged twenty years since sunset; her face was ashen and the lines wrinkled heavily around her eyes as though carved with a knife. ‘It’s a wonder that you lived out the night,’ she said, as she took Tomaz and pressed a water skin to his mouth. The semblance of a smile formed on his lips as he sucked deeply.
But, when Iwa reached up, her hand was slapped away. ‘There isn’t enough for two. We’ve had precious little ourselves, and who knows when we’ll see more?’ Too tired to argue, Iwa let her hand fall as she followed the motion of the water skin hungrily with her eyes.
‘That’s if we get any more at all,’ another voice said. At the other end of the ship one of the women stirred – it was Alia, though had it not been for her voice, Iwa doubted she would have recognised the girl. Her silken hair hung limp around her shoulders, unbraided and uncared for, and along the side of her face a dark bruise yellowed. ‘The Poles will let us starve,’ she said calmly, as if talking about picking berries. ‘They mean to kill us all.’
‘Where would be the sense in that?’ Katchka replied, as she pulled the skin from Tomaz’s clutch.
‘Where is the sense in any of this?’ one of the women murmured.
‘Perhaps they will sell us to the Arabs for slaves, or else…’ Alia paused and let the words hang in the gloom.
‘There’s no use in thinking about what might be,’ Katchka said as Tomaz, revived by the drink, began to wail, his hands grasping for more.
‘But we haven’t had any food since morning. Jezi Baba has forsaken us. The spirit of Karnobog has deserted the clan.’ Some of the women around Alia gasped and made signs to ward off evil, but many nodded, their faces cold and filled with fear.
All the clans worshipped communal gods – spirits of earth and water, sacred trees or stones – but each carried their own clan god. Karnobog was the god of the Bison Grass. His spirit rested in the bones of a great bison that was carried on a litter and placed at the centre of the camp. That was the only time the clan were allowed to slaughter one of the creatures. Other clans might hunt such meat, but for the Bison Grass the animal was sacred and only to be killed when the god needed a new home.
Even then it was only a single hunter, picked out by the hunt master, who was allowed to kill the bison, always a fully grown buck, the herd leader and the hardest to kill. Then the clan would gather and sing paeans whilst the young hunters danced round the shrine with the women. All the young maidens would wear headdresses of spring or summer flowers but always entwined with the sacred bison grass.
Then, as the sacred song of Karnobog was raised to invite the god into the bones, the clan would gather round the shrine in three large rings joined arm in arm as they swayed and stamped their feet in time to the tune.
Finally the Szeptun witch would come, dressed in a sacred shawl of pure white cotton and carrying the horns of the old bison corpse. In her other hand incense burned in a large flat shell. Her face was masked by leather into which the sacred symbols of the clan had been dyed. Amber glinted darkly from the sockets so she had to be led through the rings of dancers, who parted before her.
Then, with the music still playing, she knelt before the
