The Seven Daughters of Eve (21 page)

Helena lived twenty thousand years ago at a time when the last Ice Age was at its most severe. Glaciers and permanent ice fields covered all of Scandinavia and stretched as far south as the present-day cities of Berlin and Warsaw. The Baltic Sea was permanently frozen, as was the North Sea from Denmark to the Humber. In the winter the Atlantic froze and there was pack ice as far south as Bordeaux. Britain, still joined to continental Europe by dry land, was buried under ice down to what are now the English midlands, central Wales and southern Ireland. Year by year the tundra, the bleak terrain which was nothing more than a thin layer of soil and vegetation above the permafrost, advanced further and further south, almost reaching the Mediterranean. Freezing temperatures and heavy snowfall made the tundra uninhabitable in winter, and the hunting bands who roamed across most of northern Europe were progressively pushed up against the mountains of the Pyrenees and the Alps. Many had been funnelled down the wide valley of the River Rhône and spread out along the low-lying lands that bordered the Mediterranean. As now, lagoons indented the coast, but the shoreline itself was many miles away from its present position. So much water was now locked up in the great ice sheets that the sea level was over a hundred metres lower than it is now.

There was a reasonable living to be made from the shoreline and from the woodland behind. Helena spent her childhood in this landscape, helping her mother comb the woods for wild mushrooms and toadstools, or wading into the brackish lagoons in search of oysters. Her father patrolled the woods alone, on the lookout for small deer and other mammals. But as the first mists of late summer began to hang in the morning air above the marshes, the band knew it was time to prepare for the great gathering.

They packed up their camp and moved inland towards the hills. They travelled light, taking with them only the absolute essentials. Every few days they would come across other bands moving in the same direction. There was no friction between them; indeed, there was instead a shared mood of excitement and anticipation in the air as they moved across the landscape. The woods had thinned out now and they were out into the tundra. They carried on over open rolling hills and flat plateaux and across wide river valleys. At last, after six weeks, they reached their destination, the valley of the Dordogne. The great river flowed green and smooth between high cliffs of yellow grey limestone.

The band were to make their camp in a broad rock shelter that led into a deeper cave. Before taking it over, the men went back into the cave as far as they could go to make sure they were the only occupants. This was always a dangerous and frightening operation. The caves were also used by hyenas, lions and gigantic cave bears. If it was occupied then the residents would have to be either evicted or killed. But this year they were lucky; the cave was empty when they arrived. The camp was set up close to the entrance. The long journey was over. Helena and her companions could rest, warmed by the sun and gazing down at the river as it flowed gently past, a hundred feet below. It was a beautiful sight. Within a few days, all the surrounding caves and rock shelters were occupied as bands from far and wide converged on this magical place. They had come, just as their ancestors had before them, to intercept the reindeer as they made their way from the summer pastures high up in the Massif Central to their winter feeding grounds on the flat plains below. They had to cross the Dordogne and they had to get through the gorge. And Helena's band would be waiting for them.

But this great communal event was still some weeks away, and there was a lot of preparation to do. Helena's father began to strike a new set of flakes from the core of fine-grained flint that he had acquired through a trade earlier in the year. It was very high quality, of even texture with no cracks or other faults. He was an especially good toolmaker and could make almost anything from this precious core. It all depended what was required. He decided this year to renew the bone points on his favourite spear, which would be his main weapon when the time came to kill the reindeer, and settled down near the cave entrance to begin his work. The core itself was a rough cylinder about the size of a small cheese. He looked closely at it, turning it round and round in his hands, calculating by an intuition born of years of experience where best to strike to split off a blade from its edge. It was almost as if he could sense the internal structure of this precious piece of stone, the weakest plane of its molecular bonds. He chose his spot. Taking the core in his left hand and a large river pebble in his right, he struck hard. The rock split, and a long thin blade snapped off from the side, precisely as he had anticipated. While he was in the mood and things were going well, he struck off another five blades before putting the precious core back into its pouch. The blades, about three inches long by an inch across, were wonderfully adaptable. With further delicate retouching they became knives, scrapers and spear points, or tools to work secondary materials like bone or antler. Inspecting each blade in turn, he chose three to use as spear points, one as a scraper for cleaning reindeer hides and two as tools for working bone. Even though any of the six blanks could be shaped for any of the final uses, he knew from experience which blank to select for which end-product.

Today he was going to make a new set of bone points for his spears, and also make Helena's mother some new sewing needles. He still had last year's spear points, but always preferred to make a new set for the coming hunt if there was time. He selected a piece of reindeer antler about six inches long and reasonably straight. These were easy enough to come by in the early summer when the reindeer shed their antlers and began to grow new ones. It meant a week-long trip to the hills behind their summer camp to a place he knew where there were usually some lying around. He could easily have kept some back from last year's autumn hunt, and sometimes he did, but the antler trip to the hills in the early summer was something he always looked forward to. It was a family tradition. His father had taken him every year since he was seven years old, and he had done the same with Helena's older brother. Because of these trips he always had a good supply of antler blanks. He broke off the points and left most of them where he found them, taking back only the pieces he could use, along with a few extras to work up and trade. For instance, he had a deal with a man in the band that he would exchange worked antler goods, which he enjoyed making and for which he had a good reputation, for blade cores. The best flint for the cores came from a long way away, so it made sense that while he collected antler and made it into useful items, someone else trekked off in another direction and collected the flints. So he was quite content, sitting comfortably at the cave entrance, looking down at the river and across to the hills on the opposite bank. Helena, who was now eight years old, came over to sit with him and help out. She had inherited her father's dexterity and was always begging to be allowed to make something.

The first task was to make the burin, which would be used to make parallel cuts into the antler; this required a flat edge like a carpet knife. Helena's father picked up each of the blades in turn and examined them closely. He selected one and laid it down carefully so that one end rested on the ground and the other was lying across a piece of antler. He made careful adjustments until the blade was touching the antler at just the position he wanted it to fracture. Then, in a swift movement he hit it sharply with a small pebble and the end of the blade flew off. It was a perfect fracture and yielded a perfect burin: a good straight edge like a chisel and very sharp. It didn't always work first time, but this one was a real peach. He picked up an antler blank and scored a straight line along its length with the burin. This was a good tool, as good as any he had made. Rotating the cylinder of antler in his hand, he repeated the process until it was divided by the deeply scored lines into five equal segments. It was always hard to get this right, but this burin had cut such a good line that the segments were of exactly equal size. There would be no wastage here.

Slowly he cut down along each of the grooves into the hard bone core of the antler, keeping the lines absolutely straight as he went. This took the best part of an hour. Finally, when he had almost reached the middle of the antler, he pushed down hard with the burin and twisted it. The bone bent slightly and then snapped cleanly along its whole length. Carefully, he lifted out the segment, six inches long and an inch across but now almost triangular in section. This was going to make a good spear point when it was worked up. One by one he split off the other segments. He only had one disaster, when the third segment snapped halfway up: that would do as a needle blank. He gave it to Helena, along with the burin. She already helped her mother to stitch, so it made sense that she should help making the needle. Carefully and evenly she cut away at the splintered segment, smoothing it on each side and tapering it to a point. When she had finished she showed it to her father. It was an excellent first attempt. He took out the awl. This was another of the tools he had fashioned from the multi-purpose blanks, and had a sharp spike of stone protruding from one end. Good awls were extremely difficult to make, and this one was carefully wrapped in its own piece of skin. With the point of the awl Helena's father gouged out an eye at the blunt end of the needle and gave it back to Helena, who ran back to show her mother what she had made.

Good, warm clothing was a must. The winter temperature could stay at minus ten for weeks at a time. Fortunately, there was no shortage of skins and everyone had a made-to-measure tailored outfit. These were layered with an inner skin made from hare, squirrel or anything soft. It was the women's task to make the clothing, and Helena's mother had strong fingers and good eyesight. She trimmed each pelt and matched the pieces before using her own awl to make holes along the edges. Then she threaded the needle with a length of reindeer sinew and, pushing it carefully through each prepared hole, stitched the pelts closely together. Today she was making an outfit for Helena. Children of her age grew so fast, it was hard work keeping up with them. There were no clothes to be handed down from her older brother; he was seven years older than Helena, and they weren't going to carry his old clothes around for seven years. Occasionally she would get a cast-off garment from one of the other women in the band whose child had grown out of it, but on the whole she preferred to make a new outfit from scratch. These clothes had to fit well to keep out the bitter cold, and Helena stood in front of her mother while she was measured up using a long strip of deerskin. The process of joining the pelts, the fittings and stitching the seams took the best part of three days. A well-stitched outfit was something to be proud of, and Helena's mother was keen for her handiwork to be admired. With her prowess as a seamstress and Helena's father's reputation as a craftsman when it came to making antler goods, the family were very conscious of their standing in the band.

By the time they had been in the cave for ten days, they had caught up with the season's tasks. Helena had new clothes, her mother had a dozen new bone needles and her father had a new set of spear points. Already the days were growing shorter and colder; the birch leaves were turning yellow and the first night frosts had dusted the tips of the rushes in the valley below. The reindeer would soon be here. But before they appeared, and to make sure that they did arrive, there was an important ceremony to go through. On the night of the full moon after the first frosts, the men of the band and all the other hunters who had converged on that part of the river made their way up a side valley to a narrow opening in the cliff blocked by a circular stone. Their faces were daubed with red ochre, their bodies blackened by charcoal from the fire. They rolled the stone aside and filed silently into the cave, holding small candles made from animal fat to light the way. Helena's brother was there for the first time. He was old enough to be allowed to join in the hunt, so he must also come to the cave. He was afraid of the dark, and he hated even more being confined in a narrow space. In complete silence the men walked deeper and deeper into the heart of the cliffside, their lights flickering and casting eerie shadows on to the walls. At last, after a good half a mile, the narrow passageway began to broaden and soon opened out into a high cavern. It was absolutely silent except for the drip, drip, drip of water percolating through from above. In places the walls were covered in ribbons of pale flowstone which glistened in the candlelight. On one side three great stalactites, two metres long, hung down from the ceiling while three stubby stalagmites growing from the floor climbed up to touch them, reaching for an embrace that would not take place for another five thousand years.

But these natural wonders were not what the men had come to see. They turned to the right and climbed up into a tall passage leading off from the main chamber. High above them on the wall, barely visible in the pale yellow light of the flickering candles, were the unmistakable forms of wild animals. Huge likenesses of bison, wild horse, reindeer and fierce bulls covered the smooth walls. Helena's brother, already tense with claustrophobia, shrank back and held on tight to his father; he dropped his candle on the floor, it fell into a small pool of water and the flame sizzled and died. A wild bull seemed to be charging right at him, nostrils flaring, head lowered, horns ready to skewer him to the cave wall. Though his father had told him about the paintings, he was not prepared for this. They were so real, so alive and so dangerous. He wanted to run out of the cave, but his father held him tight and stroked his hair to calm him.

In silence the men looked up at these creatures that they not only feared but also depended on. In the soft light the images started to come to life. They began to move. Helena's father rubbed his eyes. Though he had been coming here for twenty years, first with his father, then alone, he always experienced the same strange effect. The paintings were too high up to touch to see whether they had really moved. Still the men stared up in silence, their eyes darting from one animal to another as if to check it was still there. They were concentrating on the hunt, looking hard at these images and preparing to meet them in real life. Nobody knew who had painted these pictures, or how long they had been here. The image of a hand, its outline airbrushed in soot, might have been the artist's – but no-one really knew. Perhaps they had always been here.