The Caves of Périgord: A Novel by Martin Walker Read Free Book Online

He had not thought of his woman, or of the birth, at all.

    At the fire by the river, the banished apprentice sat tiredly in a brief moment of rest before the women ordered him to feed the fire again, or to get more wood or to bring more water. The screams of the woman lying on the great mat of sewn-together reindeer hides had faded to moans. He could see nothing of the birth. The other women huddled around her, some still holding down her shoulders and legs. Suddenly one turned to him, speaking coldly, and told him to run to the flint makers and bring back the sharpest piece they had.
    “It must have a good gripping stone. Just a chip of flint won’t be enough. We’ll have to hold it firmly,” she said, and turned away to shout more instructions to a young girl.
    He rose and began running along the river and then up the hill to the quarry where the flint men worked, the sound of their constant tapping even louder than his labored breaths. He paused as he approached, catching his breath and looking carefully on the ground ahead. Even the most callused feet could still be sliced by the shards of flint that littered the earth. The flint men themselves wore leather moccasins with wooden soles bound to them. They were men he hardly knew, who kept to themselves almost as much as the Keepers who worked in the cave, and were just as strict in their hierarchy. The head of the flint men, whose main work was to teach the craft to the young apprentices, ignored the youth’s approach for a few moments before looking up. The youth explained what the women needed.
    “For a bad childbirth?” the flint man asked. He was old and white-haired, with strips of hide tied around his hands to protect them from the stones. “I’ll have to make something.”
    He rose and went to the pile of stones the youngest apprentices constantly brought down from the quarry. Sifting carefully though them, he picked out a smooth rock that was almost a perfect globe, only one end jagged and split. He came back to the circle of watching apprentices, picked up his knapper, held the globular stone firmly against the flat rock that served as his anvil, and explained what he intended to do, and where his first strikes would be. He lifted his right hand, and brought the knapper down sharply onto the stone, hitting at an angle and just above the first break in the smooth globe. A large sliver of stone broke off. He turned the globe and repeated his strike, and then handed it to an apprentice and told him to do the same. Within the time it took for the banished apprentice’s breathing to return to normal, a sharp flint knife, with a perfectly smooth and round haft to fit the hand, had been produced. The flint man tested the edge against the hair on his own arm, and nodded approval. He tossed it to the waiting youth, who turned and ran back to the women at the fire.
    As he reached them the young girl who had been dispatched came running back, breathing easily, with two handfuls of fresh moss from the riverbank. As they handed over their items, the young man caught the scent of fresh blood. There were no more moans coming from the woman lying on the reindeer hide, and the other women had ceased to hold down her legs and shoulders.
    “Is she dead?” the girl asked. A tired woman, bloodstained to the elbow, nodded grimly and sighed. “The child still lives within her.”
    The two young people squatted near the fire, and watched as the oldest-woman took the sharp flint and drew it firmly down the swollen belly of the dead mother into her groin. The girl gasped and turned her head aside. The youth watched intently as the blood welled, trickling slowly down the woman’s sides to the hide. The old woman repeated her stroke, muttering softly to herself, and then two more women began to peel the parted skin aside. The old woman began working with the flint knife inside the belly as yet another woman squatted over the dead one’s head, and began mopping up blood with