The Corn King and the Spring Queen (7 page)

When the fire in the brazier had burnt right out, Erif Der woke up again, slowly, in time with some singing of her mother's. Moving her eyes and hands a little, she found, comfortingly, that she was wearing her best clothes, and remembered after a time what had happened. She was no longer a virgin: she settled down to that, with a certain pleasant relaxing of all her muscles. She had been hurt: that was all cured. By Tarrik: who cared what Tarrik did?—he would not be Chief much longer. But Tarrik had her star. She sat up suddenly. ‘Mother, oh, mother!' she said, ‘he took my star!'

‘Well,' said Nerrish softly, ‘do you mind?'

‘No,' said Erif, ‘perhaps not. But what shall I do for some things?' And she put her mouth close to her mother's ear, and whispered.

‘The power is in you,' said Nerrish.' ‘Listen! I have done without things for years now. Have you ever seen me eat lately? No. And as for my star, I threw it into the sea last winter. I will tell you something, because you are more to me than the rest: soon, quite soon, I am going to turn into a bird, a wise bird with rosy feathers. After I am buried, I shall creep through the earth, all little, till I come to an egg, and there I will rest for a long time. Then I shall come out to the rose-red bird flocks. Look, Erif, my baby bird, it will be soon!' And she spread her arms and the grey stuff wavered about her as she hovered a moment in the dim light of the tent.

‘But are you going to die, mother?' said Erif, and her lip trembled.

‘Yes, perhaps. And he will be sorry'—she nodded towards her bed and some of Harn Der's gear hung up beside it—‘but you will know better.'

‘Won't you tell him?'

‘No,' said Nerrish, ‘he is a man, he would be afraid.'

‘Some men aren't afraid,' said Erif musingly, and reached down to take hold of her own slim legs; as she did it, her plaits with the coloured ribbons fell forward. ‘Oh, mother,' she said, ‘oh, my lovely hair! These are your very own ribbons that came from the other end of the world!'

‘Yes,' said Nerrish, laying her cheek for a moment lightly on the smooth roundness of Erif's head, as a mother wild duck does with her soft babies.

Erif was stroking and purring over the bright, lovely colours, the rainbowed shining silk from that other end of the world! ‘Oh,' she sighed, ‘I must go out, I must show them to Berris. Every one must see me!' As she stood up, her mother slipped a stick into her hand, a long, smooth thing of ivory, carved into narrow leaf-shapes, and a fruit under her hand. Half consciously she leaned on it, and took the weight from her foot; her mother knew it was dangerous to disregard a pain that was no longer felt: it might come back.

Outside the tent, the sun was blinking bright. She stepped out, with her high head, her white dress woven with coloured, fantastic lions, her coat of thin linen bordered with kingfisher feathers, her turquoise belt and ear-rings, and the brilliant shine of her plaits. Slowly, leaning on her long
stick, she passed the groups of servants, the fires, pale yellow in sunlight. Wheat-ear ran up to her: ‘Oh lovely, lovely!' she cried, and danced round her big sister. Further on, Erif saw her father with Berris, and, rather to one side, Tarrik in clean clothes, standing by his horse. They all stared at her, and she wished there were more of them. Tarrik came up to her, a little uncertainly. ‘I have your star,' he said, ‘you beauty, Erif!' And he suddenly kissed her hand. ‘I'm wearing it now,' he said again, with a kind of challenge. ‘Go on, then,' said Erif kindly, disconcertingly, and looked him up and down, and touched his arm, and then his neck, his cheek, and his lips with cool, baffling fingers. He stood quite still, feeling them trail about him. ‘And I have your coat,' she said. ‘Burn it—for the fields,' he said earnestly. But she answered, low, ‘Oh, no, Tarrik. You don't know everything,' and went past him, to her father, the Spring Queen, quite grown up.

Harn Der drew her aside admiringly. ‘He has killed Epigethes, the fool! Was that your work, Erif?' Fortunately Erif was much too pleased with herself at the moment to look as startled as she felt. ‘It begins,' she said. ‘If it goes on,' said Harn Der, ‘there will be no need for you to marry him.' ‘No,' said Erif Der, and made a childish but fleeting face, and walked away.

In the meantime Tarrik had mounted; he rode past Berris, then drew rein and turned again, and held out something in his hand. ‘I got these from Epigethes,' he said, ‘after he was dead; he left them. Look, Berris.' Berris looked, and looked again, and frowned. He took them into his own hand and peered at them closely. ‘These are copies of my keys,' he said. ‘I worked on them too long not to know.' ‘And those?' Berris shook his head, beginning to look horrified; these were the keys that locked up his precious metals and stones. There was only one use that could be made of a duplicate set. Tarrik jingled the others gently in his hand. ‘Copies of somebody else's keys?' he said. ‘Well, Berris?' ‘Yes,' said Berris, with a dry mouth, trying to speak ordinarily. ‘Yes, Tarrik, I see.'

S
LOWLY AND JERKILY
the ox-team was dragging back the great cart; every jolt went straight from axle to floorboards, and through the thick, black carpets, and shook Erif
Der till her teeth rattled. She and the other women in the cart talked in whispers, and nursed their hands, scored across and across with arrow-heads for dead Nerrish. Wheat-ear was there, and Essro, and four or five older women, cousins or aunts, and the nurse, tired out with wailing round the grave. Erif Der herself was wondering whether her dead mother had yet started that journey, a little angry with her for having died just then, when her daughter might be needing her so badly. She frowned across at Wheat-ear, who was crying, more from excitement than anything else, then, finding it had no effect, pulled the little sister over to sit on her knee where she would not feel the jolting of the cart so much. By and bye Wheat-ear quieted down and began sucking her thumb, as she still did after any passion; unconsciously, Erif Der held her a little more closely, musing over children unborn. Once they came through a wood of ash trees, and the broad, dry leaves blew about, some falling into the cart; there were not many left on the trees now, for it was late autumn.

The cart came to the town of Marob, jarring along the deep ruts from street to street, and so to Harn Der's house, where the funeral feast was held. The men were there already; they had been drinking, and some had cut their cheeks as well as their hands. Her father was covered with a black blanket, only slit in two places for his eyes and mouth. Tarrik was there, with his high crown showing over every head; but no one spoke to him now unless they had to, and Erif Der noticed with an odd calm how much thinner he was getting every week. When he sat down at the table, the man on each side of him edged away, till there was a space both ways; he looked straight in front of him, white rather than flushed, pressing his thumbs into a piece of bread. After a time, Erif Der left her sister and came slowly over and sat down at her husband's right hand; she heard his checked breathing deepen, and felt him stir a little on the bench beside her. One or two of the men stared at her; but she knew the Chief was not unlucky—only magicked; how should she be afraid of what she had done herself?

Every one was hungry after their long ride or drive in from the burying in the plains; they ate without talking much at first—boiled mutton passed round hot and
steaming in the three-legged cauldrons, with garlic and beans and salsify, and stewed fish, and soft, sweetish strings of seaweed. Tarrik ate little, though; obscurely, that began to worry Erif Der, and she put bits from her own plate on to his. She could not eat either, but this was partly because she knew that soon her father was going to talk to her, urge her, put his will in place of her own. While she was still a child that had not mattered; but now she was a woman, four months married. She sat up very straight and lifted her head, heavy with the weight of the stiff cone and veil she wore. People were staring at her as well as at Tarrik.

Suddenly it seemed to her that there was an unwarrantable amount of unhappiness in the room; not much for the dead, magic woman, except perhaps from her father and the old nurse; but for all sorts of other things. Tarrik was unhappy, of course, because she had magicked him, because he hated not being favourite with the people any longer, and he hated having done anything badly, failed so completely as he had that twice when he had been in her power; and because she had disturbed the sure base of his judgment. And Berris Der was unhappy; she did not quite know why, but there was some fight going on inside him, where sometimes one side won, and sometimes the other. He sat forward with his head on his hands, looking like he did after he had broken the little horse. The people who stared so at Tarrik were unhappy too, because they knew something had gone wrong with him, with the Corn King, and they thought of their seed corn rotting; and yet they still did not know what to do. Uncertainty, that was it, thought Erif, that was what made people unhappy. And she herself? No, she was not unhappy, she was not uncertain, she had her hand on the plow. Angrily, she began to eat again, picked up a bone and cracked it between her strong back teeth.

It was dark before the funeral feast was over. They bolted the shutters and heaped the fires up; there was a rising wind that might turn to storm before the night was out. One by one the guests went away, with their coats drawn tight about them and their fur caps over their ears. Tarrik was one of the last; he stayed on, as if he had been hoping for something; but Erif Der said she must stay this night in her father's house, for the last things to be done, and
bade him go home, out of the death circle. He took up his great cloak of white fox fur, and the gold scales along the edges jingled stupidly. After a moment she followed him to the door, but he was riding home, and did not turn his head once to look for her. She could just hear the sea now, a low continuous dashing on the beach, filling all the air, coming up past the houses; she thought the weather must have broken for the year.

The children were in bed and asleep by now; she kissed them and talked for a little to Essro, and then came back to her father and brothers. Such of her mother's things as had not been buried with her were laid out on a table beside the hearth; they had to watch that night in case she came for any of them. Harn Der had taken off the black blanket, and lay back in his chair, tired and yellow-looking. She sat at the other end of the table, the brothers at each side; they said over together certain words, and then stayed still. For a time no one spoke; Erif began to think of her mother again, and wondered if it would really be so terribly frightening if she were to come back. Whatever she had felt, love or indifference, she had always been able to trust her mother utterly while she had been alive; but now she was dead one could not be sure; she might be different, changed into something cold and waxen and hurtful. It was this that was frightening. She shifted a little in her chair, clutching the arms and sweating lightly; her father broke silence at last, and they were all glad.

‘Your work is nearly done,' he said to her, ‘but you must go on to the finish. A step backward now, and all would be to begin again.'

‘Yes, father,' she said, ‘I know. I have done my best for you.'

‘Only twice,' said Yellow Bull, and bit the end of a finger-nail.

‘Twice, that you saw!' she said indignantly, ‘but you don't see everything, Yellow Bull! And what a twice—Midsummer and Harvest! He did the words backwards and the Dance wrong, he—'

But Yellow Bull interrupted her, a little nervously: ‘Well, better not speak of it!—not—not till next year's corn is up.'

Erif Der leant forward: ‘I have not hurt the corn!'
she said. ‘I tell you again, I went myself that night with his crown and the sacred Things! I built the Year-house again, by myself. I am Spring Queen, it is in my hands too! If there is any bad luck it is not my doing, but yours, Yellow Bull—you, who won't believe me!' She stopped, with tears in her eyes: it had been so terrible doing those Things alone, letting the Powers sweep through her, standing between bare Earth and Sky, with the sun in one hand and the rain in the other, knowing that her own magic was nothing beside this stolen Godhead. But none of the others understood; they could not imagine it. She had done it twice, and the second time was the worst, at Harvest, when she had gone alone to the stubblefield and bound herself difficultly with straw, and then gone back at midnight to the door of the Corn King's house and spoken herself the right words to the sleeping actor in the Corn Play; it had seemed to her that years had fallen on her, that she was an old woman, worn out like her mother. And this was all the thanks she got from Yellow Bull! Berris leaned over and patted her knee; she blinked the tears out of her eyes and stared across at her father. ‘Well,' she said, low, ‘what am I to do?'

‘Finish!' said Harn Der, ‘the Council are ready. They know me and they know my son‘—he looked at Yellow Bull who was still worrying at his broken nail—‘and as for the people, they would give him up this moment if they saw another Corn King. Erif Der, we count on you.'

She knew she wanted to say something, but could not think what it was. Berris spoke for her. ‘But, father, what good will she get from all this? She is Spring Queen now, she has all the treasure of Marob if she chooses to call for it: suppose she doesn't like to give all that up?' And he glanced from her to the others, and back again; he was wondering a little what sort of Spring Queen Essro would make when Yellow Bull was Corn King.

‘I will give you anything you like, Erif,' said Harn Der, ‘and your marriage shall be undone at once. You shall still have what power you choose—after all, you have more power now than any of us.' He laughed, a little nervously. ‘In a year you will have forgotten all this. There is nothing to make you not forget, Erif?'

‘No,' she said sharply, ‘I am not going to have a child—yet.'

‘All the more reason to finish quick,' said her father.

By now all Marob was asleep except these four; they could hear nothing but the wind, and the wood-fire burning quietly beside them, and their own movements and voices. They dropped to whispering. Berris wanted to talk about a new idea of his, the way certain curves, running into certain other curves, gave him a feeling of sureness in the heart; but he knew his father and brother were not interested, and Erif Der was too deeply absorbed in some pattern of her own. Tarrik would have listened; Tarrik would have put it into words for him. But he could not talk to Tarrik these days without feeling such a traitor to all friendship, such a brute-beast, that he could not work for hours afterwards. He began to puzzle out the practice of his idea, not as an animal or a flower, but just as lines in the air, not bounded into a flat surface or the solid edges of wood or metal, but passing through one another like the cracks in a great crystal. As night wore on, it grew more dreamlike, less fixed, less possible to remember, and when the others spoke, their voices followed the curves, cutting each other's paths, light for his sister and darker for the other two.

At dawn they were all awake still, and nothing had happened; the pile of things lay there in front of them, no smaller; the dead would not return. The slaves brought them in food and drink, but this time no full plate or cup to stand aside in case One came for it. Essro strayed in too, gentle and anxious, and sat by Yellow Bull; Erif Der went to the heap and took two or three small things of her mother's, an embroidered coat, a pair of shoes, and a little box full of cowrie shells, some painted red, and small loose pearls. She pushed back the shutters; there was rain blowing past on the wind; she reached out her hand and it pricked her coldly, stinging the fresh scratches, and all at once she felt as if her heart was being pricked and pierced, and she began to cry bitterly, as she had never yet done in all the week since her mother had died. So she ran out, and back in the rain to the Chiefs house by the harbour, where one was never out of sound of the sea.

For three days that storm rose, beating in from the Black Sea, till all Marob felt salty with blown spray; then it
lulled suddenly, but left the beginnings of winter behind it. There were scarcely any leaves left on the trees in the Chief's garden, and the few late flowers seemed too much battered to revive again for any sun. Erif Der put on a long felt coat, lined with reindeer pelts, and walked in the garden with her box of cowries. She made a face, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, whenever she passed one of the Greek statues; the half-draped marble nymphs looked cold and silly. Before she had made up her mind what to do with the shells, she met Eurydice, whom she still thought of as Yersha, walking in the garden too, with her favourite maid Apphé, who was a hunchback, but pure Greek. Erif Der hated seeing Apphé; it frightened her to think of people being like that; she liked funny, twisted things made by her brother, half beasts and half men, but not living flesh. She tried not to show how uncomfortable and afraid it made her, because she hoped Eurydice did not know yet; but if and when she did, Erif thought, this much of her own power would go. Eurydice motioned the maid to go on; as she passed Erif Der stiffened, but did not draw back. ‘Are you sorry that the summer is over?' she asked Eurydice.

‘Summer is not over yet,' said the elder woman decidedly, and beckoned Erif to sit down on the seat beside her.

‘It seems like winter,' said Erif softly; ‘look over there at the clouds—so grey—'

But Eurydice, who was not Yersha in her own garden, would not look up higher than the things she knew. ‘Child,' she said, ‘I am not going to play games with you. And I do not think Charmantides will play games with you any longer.'

Erif Der spilled out the cowries on to her lap. ‘I like playing games,' she said. ‘Will you help me to thread these shells, Aunt Yersha?'

But Eurydice's lips tightened, and she swept the shells on to the ground and caught Erif Der by the shoulders and shook her. ‘You have bewitched my Charmantides!' she cried. ‘Take care! I can see if he cannot. I tell you, if you hurt him, I shall hurt you more!'

Erif Der, cramped against the corner of the seat, pushed out at Yersha, her hard, hateful hands and face, but could not get free for a moment. ‘I have done nothing!' she said. ‘I am Queen, not you! What do you mean?'

‘I mean,' said Yersha, almost spitting into her face, ‘that whatever you can do to your own barbarians, you cannot magic a Hellene!'

Erif Der got loose. ‘I shall tell Tarrik,' she said. ‘I suppose he used to like you once, Yersha—before you got so old.' She stooped and began to pick up her shells. Eurydice stamped the heel of her sandal on to the girl's hand, and crushed one of the cowries; it seemed more adequate than words; an arrow scratch tore and began to bleed again. But Erif Der laughed. ‘Even suppose what you said were true, Aunt Yersha, how much Hellene are you?—in winter?' But Eurydice turned and walked quickly up to the house, calling her maid in a high voice, careful not to look up at the sky, in case there were any clouds after all.