In a rare mood of respect, he decided to forgo the company of a girl. Bed play seemed inappropriate while his wife was giving birth to his heir, but a man could not be expected to sit waiting with no comforts. Buntokapi bellowed for the runner to fetch a large jug of acamel brandy. This he would not surrender, even when servants pulled the screens away and filled his tub with steaming water. They waited with soap and towels. Buntokapi stripped off his robes and patted his expanding girth. He grunted to himself about needing to practise with the sword and bow more, to keep fit, as he slid his bulk into the water. A weaker man would have winced, but Buntokapi simply sat down. He took a brandy cup from a servant’s hand and drained it in one long pull.
The servants worked with diffident care. None of them wanted a beating for letting suds inadvertently spill into the open cup and sour the brandy.
Bunto sloshed back in his bath. He absently hummed a tune while the servants soaped his body. As their hands kneaded his taut muscles and the heat drew him into a sleepy, amorous mood, he luxuriated in the bath, and soon he drifted into a doze.
Then the air was cut by a scream. Bunto bolted upright in the tub, overturning his brandy and splashing the servants with soapy water. Heart pounding, he groped about for a weapon, half expecting to see the servants running for safety while armoured men answered the alarm. Instead all was quiet. He looked to the musicians, who awaited his order to play, but as his mouth opened to speak, another scream rent the stillness.
Then he knew. Mara, slender, girlish Mara, was giving birth to his son. Another scream sounded, and the pain in it was like nothing Buntokapi had heard in his short life. Men wounded in battle made loud, angry cries, and the moans of the wounded were low and pitiable. But this sound … this reflected the agony of one tormented by the Red God himself.
Buntokapi reached for his brandy. Dark fury crossed his face when he found the cup missing. A servant retrieved it quickly from the door, filled it, and placed it in his master’s hands. After Buntokapi drained it he said, ‘Go see that nothing is amiss with my wife.’
The servant ran off and Buntokapi nodded to another servant for a refill. Long moments passed while the sounds of Mara’s torment filled the night. Shortly the servant returned and said, ‘Master, Nacoya says it is a difficult birth.’
Buntokapi nodded and drank again, feeling the numbing warmth of the brandy rise up from his stomach. The scream came again, followed by a low sob. Exasperated, the Lord of the Acoma shouted over the noise, ‘Play something lively and loud.’
The musicians struck up a march tune. Buntokapi emptied the brandy. Irritated as Mara’s cries cut through the music, he tossed away the cup and motioned for the jug. He set the jug to his lips and took a large gulp.
His head began to swim. The screams seemed to come at him like a swarming foe, unwilling to be blocked by a shield. Buntokapi drank until his senses grew muddled. A happy glow suffused his vision and he sat with a stupid smile on his face until the water began to cool. The master still showed no signs of arising, and worried servants scurried to heat more water.
More brandy was brought, and after a time Buntokapi, Lord of the Acoma, could barely hear the music, let alone the unrelenting screams of his tiny wife as she struggled to bear his child.
In time, dawn silvered the screens to his chamber. Exhausted from a sleepless night, Nacoya slid open the study door and peeked in. Her Lord lay back sleeping in the cool water of the tub, his great mouth open and snoring. An empty jug of brandy rolled on the floor below his flaccid hand. Three musicians slept over their instruments, and the bath servants stood like battle-beaten soldiers, the towels hanging crumpled from their hands. Nacoya snapped the screen shut, disgust on her wrinkled face. How grateful she was that Lord Sezu was not alive to know that the successor to his title, Buntokapi, Lord of the Acoma, lay in such condition when his wife had laboured long to bear him a healthy son and heir.
A shout rang out.
‘Mara!’
Buntokapi’s anger rent the morning quiet like the challenge of a needra bull. Mara winced. She glanced instinctively at the crib near her side. Little Ayaki still slept, undisturbed by his father’s bellow. His eyes were tightly closed and his stocky limbs half tangled in his covers. After two months of Buntokapi’s roars, the infant could sleep through a thunderstorm. Mara sighed. The boy was his father’s son, thick of body and with a big head that had made his mother wish for death when he had been born. The difficult labour had drained Mara in a way she would not have thought possible before. While but eighteen years of age, she felt like an old woman, tired all the time. And the first sight of her son had saddened her. She had secretly hoped for a lithe, handsome child, such as her brother Lano must have been as a baby. Instead Buntokapi had given her a red-faced, round-headed little brute, with a visage wrinkled like a tiny old man’s. From the first moment he filled his lungs with air, he had a shout to rival his father’s; already he affected the same scowl. Still, as Ayaki lay asleep, Mara could not feel other than love for him. He is my son as well, she thought, and the blood of his grandfather is in him. The traits he has inherited from his Anasati heritage will be trained out of him and those from the Acoma will be nurtured. He will not be like his father.
‘Mara!’ Buntokapi’s irritable shout sounded very near at hand, and the next instant the screen to the boy’s nursery slammed back. ‘Here you are, woman. I’ve been all over the house looking for you.’ Buntokapi entered with a frown like a storm cloud.
Mara bowed with serenity, only too glad to lay her embroidery aside. ‘I have been with our son, husband.’
Buntokapi’s expression eased. He went to the crib where the boy lay, restless now from his father’s loud entrance. Buntokapi reached down, and for a moment Mara feared he would ruffle the boy’s black hair, as he did his hounds’. But instead his meaty hand gently straightened the cover that lay twisted between the tiny legs. The gesture caused Mara an instant’s affection towards Buntokapi, but she banished such sentiment at once. Though he wore the Acoma mantle, Buntokapi was a son of the Anasati, a house second only to the Minwanabi in despite for things Acoma. This Mara knew in her heart. And soon the time would come for change.
Exaggerating her whisper – Ayaki was a sound sleeper – she said, ‘What do you desire, husband?’
‘I must go to Sulan-Qu … ah, on business.’ Buntokapi straightened from the crib with studied lack of enthusiasm. ‘I will not be returning this night, and perhaps tomorrow as well.’
Mara bowed in acquiescence, not missing the haste in her husband’s tread as he departed through the screen. She needed no incongruities to guess that there was no business for her husband to conduct in Sulan-Qu. During the past two months his interest in business had waned, until it bordered on open neglect.
As Jican resumed control of the Acoma management, he kept his Lady well informed. Buntokapi still played hob with Keyoke’s administration of the warriors: which men were assigned and to what post. Having barely reached the point where she could influence a few small household matters, Mara could do nothing about that, at least not yet.
She stared at her embroidery in distaste, glad that in Buntokapi’s absence she need not keep that up for the sake of appearances. More and more she needed time to think and plan for the future. Her husband’s suspicious nature had partially played into her hands. Aware in his plodding way that Mara’s talent for commerce overshadowed his, Buntokapi had confined himself to seeing that his wife did not gain control of his household. Never did he realize that she had managed the garrison as adroitly before their marriage. As a result, he never thought to question other strange practices around the estate, such as Papewaio’s wearing a black headcloth. And despite his interests in warcraft, Buntokapi never became familiar with the men. Their heritage held no interest for him; otherwise he would have discovered that grey warriors had come to wear Acoma green. Certainly he lacked the imagination to embrace such changes in tradition,