The Corn King and the Spring Queen (25 page)

The drums and bagpipes went on continuously, and the sharp, hollow handclapping from the crowd. They span in the blast of noise. The dance became the climax of the courting between Corn and Spring. He leapt at her. She gave at the knees and all along her body and fell on the floor of the booth, not painfully, for she was all slack to it. Then before the eyes of all Marob he jerked the strips of stuff sideways and away from himself. For one moment all the growers of corn could look on the hard and upright sign of the godhead on their Chief and Corn King. Then, still to the squealing of pipes he threw his hands up like a diver and all his body curved and shot downward towards her. She did not feel his weight because of the tension in her own skin from head to heels. In the convention of the
dance and in a solid noise of drums the Corn opened the Furrow, broke into the Spring, and started the Year.

It lasted only long enough for this final idea of the dance to get into the minds and bodies of the Marob people. By some curious process, and in spite of the movements he went through in this sacred mimicking of life, all desire of doing it in reality and not only in the dance had left the Corn King. It did not come into his intense but limited consciousness that the Spring Queen was a woman, partner and satisfier of a man's desire. He was not himself a man seizing in ultimate necessity on woman's flesh, but a god making plain his power. Being now this image himself, he was satisfied with an image. Later on that day, as always, the actual thing would happen, but he did not even consider it; he was not yet the person who would be and do that.

Drum and pipes stilled. Suddenly all the people of Marob rushed at the booth of the dancing and at the Spring Queen, lying still and with her eyes shut on the floor. They began to pull the flowers off her dress, snapping the wool stalks, one flower for every household. As they surged round and over her with small rustlings and tuggings, her body quivered and leapt again and again. The Corn King turned her over for them to pluck the flowers from her back. Her shut eyes rested on her hands, damp with sweat that slowly cooled and chilled. He stood back; she was the sacrifice. During the dance her hair had come unplaited; it lay in tangles round her head. People trod on it. The most eager ones would stoop and pull out one of her hairs to go with their flower. Each had a piece of new white cloth for wrapping. Folding it up, hiding it away, satisfied, under a belt, or in the breast of a coat, one after another the householders stepped back and climbed down off the stage. At last all had gone.

The booth was taken to pieces just as quickly as it had been put up. Girls dressed bridally in green and white, with very large hats like inverted peg tops, led the dishevelled Spring Queen away to a covered cart and laid her on a deep pile of furs. She went to sleep almost at once and did not wake, however bad the long jolting back to Marob was. She scarcely stirred when they carried her out, back into the Chief's house. Here they undressed her and smoothed her hair, cutting out and keeping for luck the entangled
corn ears, and put her to bed and took turns to stay by her with a light through the evening and night. But she slept very soundly and softly, with her fingers clasped unstirring under her chin, and did not turn over in bed even once.

In the field the Corn King took off his belt and ducked out of his odd, ragged dress. The men brought warm water and poured it over him, rubbing off the clay till he was clean again. Then he put on fresh clothes, coat and breeches of red stuff sewn all over with little plaques of gold, tiny rayed suns, and the same on his boots. He wore a crown with spikes; below each spike stared out a rounded and ringed cat's-eye stone. By now it was sunset; the red light was reflected separately in every one of the flat pieces of gold as he moved or breathed. He was taking the power and glory of the day into himself. They brought him wine, and honeycomb on a golden dish. He took a piece of the honeycomb in his mouth and crushed it between tongue and palate. The golden honey oozed over his lips and down his throat. The dusk of evening closed over the plowed field, but the Corn King himself was the sun now.

Torches were stuck all round and others were carried, whirled and tossed about. Trails of sparks blew across the evening. Half the men of Marob formed themselves into the eight spokes of a wheel, of which the Corn King with the honey in his mouth was centre and giver of motion. They began to sing and wheel. The inner ones turned slowly, the outer, who were all the younger men, bounded hand in hand, stumbling and recovering and leaping in the furrows, knocking down the thin gay plowing marks when they met them. The Corn King was, at the same time, turning slowly and moving step by step onwards along the edges of the field, so that the circle should roll round it, sungates, touching it everywhere. As the spokes of the wheel tired and dropped panting, others from the crowd sprang in and joined hands and made them up again. By now all had drunk deeply of the wheat brew and eaten much honey with it that made them thirsty for more drinking. The torches were seeming to roar and flare behind their eyes now. The wheel throbbed, expanding and contracting. The plowed field rocked and leapt under their feet with pain and pleasure of its plowing.

As the sun ring went on and began to come back to its first
place, a good many of the women left the crowd and slipped off homewards, among them most of the young wives and quite young girls. It was thought no dishonour to stay in the plowed field this day of all the year, and no husband or father could well complain, but all the same they might mind, and one does not want to hurt those one loves. Still, quite enough women stayed for the men to be able to work their own and only magic and help the Corn King to help the year. Among these women, too, the bowls of drink were passed round, and dizzily, too, for them the wheel span on towards their waiting bodies. They sang to welcome it and stirred up the torches and waved red and yellow ribbons and stamped. The wheel swept through its path to the end and slowed down and broke up sweating and panting. The hub of it, the Corn King, the sun himself, stood in a furrow with his arms stretched out; anyone who looked at him could see that his eyeballs were swinging still from side to side, and clearly he could not see much. But that came right. His arms lifted a little, his shoulders squared back, his gold scales glittered, and he grew bigger and fuller of heat and power. He threw up his head and laughed. Then he went forward among the women and made his choice. The night of Plowing Eve had begun.

As it went on and on and the magic of the men was let loose over the plowed field, so Tarrik lost more and more of his godhead. It was fun, it made him laugh in great bursts that every one heard. It started the year well; it was easy. But it had not the sacredness of the sham thing. Between times he began to remember other sorts of ideas. He began also to try and count up how many more times, with the best of luck, this would happen. It only happened once a year: twenty—thirty times more perhaps—three or four times beyond that with any luck. But once you look at a thing and see it is finite, how very little that extra three or four times matters! He used not to mind, used not to think of himself as anything apart from Marob, which went on for ever. It was the Greek part of him standing up in his heart and whispering. The Corn King would always be there, but Tarrik only for a few more years. No, no! Woman, make me forget, rub against me, light fires to burn up all this useless thought!

Towards midnight he encountered Sardu, the little,
brown, wriggling, biting slave girl, whom Berris had been the first to have. Harn Der had not taken her with him, and now she belonged, more or less, to one of the other metal workers. She was useful in a forge and knew just what to do and why; Berris had knocked all that well into her. She was useful for Plowing Night too. She did not expect to be spoken to, but Tarrik did speak to her. He said: ‘Do you ever dream about Berris?' Sardu giggled and shook her head. He said: ‘Some day Berris will come back. I wonder what he'll make of us all then. I wonder if he'll want all this. Perhaps he'll have found something else that's more real. What is he going to think of me, Sardu?' But Sardu adored Tarrik; she pulled open the sweat-streaked linen to kiss and bite his flesh. He rolled half over, pinning her down; he looked into her black eyes, iris and pupil equally black and blank and bright; the eyes where Berris had looked but left nothing of himself. He said: ‘Will you always do just what I tell you, Sardu, whatever it is?' And Sardu whispered brokenly that she would, she was his bitch.

Gradually the torches burnt down and smouldered out. The full moon of Plowing Night cruised slowly over them and then sank into films and layers of cloud. Men and women got to their feet and breathed cold air and left the well-plowed field. Everything would go right this year. His luck had come fully back to the Corn King.

D
ISDALLIS STOOD IN
the doorway of her house, waiting for Kotka. The main stem of the vine, knotty with pruning, crossed above her head. A bird twittered by with a long straw in his beak. The sound of the sea was washed pleasantly up towards her. Kotka came down the street with an eagle's feather in his cap. They went in together. The house smelt of stored food and the end of winter. She said: ‘Why does Erif Der not want me to come and see her in the Chief's house?'

‘I can't tell you,' said Kotka. ‘You want to find out very difficult things! Why don't women want to see other women? Well, has Tarrik been making love to you?'

‘No!' said Disdallis. ‘And if he had I think Erif Der would want to see me all the more. If there's any one woman
rather than another that Tarrik has just now, it's that little wretch Sardu, though what he wants with a creature that's been handed round half Marob—! Can't you find out anything about Erif, Kotka?' She rubbed her head against him, trying to make him wake up and be less of a solid, stupid man.

‘Tarrik said,' Kotka began, ‘that she was—not playing your game any more, Disdallis.'

‘Oh,' said Disdallis the witch, ‘I wonder if it turned on her once, her magic. Well, Kotka, I'm going to see her whether she wants me or not.'

Kotka was anxious; he pulled her towards him. ‘No! You must be careful. Tarrik has been like a bear ever since Plowing Eve.'

‘Sulky?'

‘Yes, and angry. He's done—oh, bad things, Disdallis; cruel things! I won't have you in danger.'

Disdallis sucked her nail and thought. She said: ‘Does anyone say anything about Essro and her baby?'

Kotka began squeezing her throat between his fingers and thumb, half in earnest, half laughing. He said: ‘If you think you're going to play at who's to be Chief of Marob—yes, or you and Erif between you!—you'll have to reckon with me, my girl!'

Disdallis blinked and removed herself and smiled at Kotka. She did not suppose he would ever, for instance, really beat her, but she hated being even roughly handled, and she knew he knew it! All the same she said: ‘They say the Council has advised Tarrik to kill Essro and Yan.'

‘They say!' Kotka mocked at her. ‘You silly women! Nobody wants Essro killed.'

‘Oh! Just Yan. So that they needn't ever have to change their minds again about who's to be Corn King! The lazy, stupid old men! Oh, Kotka, I said them, not you! Don't, don't!'

But it was spring now. Kotka was quite as ready to kiss as to hit. Disdallis wondered whether he was still thinking that the Chief had been making love to her. She had on the whole kept out of the way just in case that should come into Tarrik's spring-wild head. If it did, Kotka could not do anything about it. With the Corn King, that was that, and husbands had to look the other way. But all the same
he would hate it. And even when he hit her, Disdallis did not want to hurt Kotka.

In the evening she went to the Chief's house in an old green dress with a milk yoke over her shoulders. The two pails clanked and swayed. Every one looked at the milk, not at her. It did not seem to them odd that she should sit down and wait in one of the Spring Queen's rooms. People passed her. By and bye Erif Der passed her, alone. She looked at the milk, too, but it did not hold her, and her eyes jerked up to the face. After a time she said: ‘Why?'

Disdallis said: ‘Dearest, what has made you like this? Why don't you play any more? Is Tarrik unkind?'

Erif's eyes seemed to blur. She said: ‘No,' and then sat down beside the milkmaid. Others in the room now saw that it was Disdallis, Kotka's wife, whom they had been told not to admit. However, the mischief was done, and now the Queen motioned them away, out of ear-shot. ‘No,' she said again, ‘not to me.' She laughed a little. ‘He's unkind to Sardu, but she likes it! So do the others. He's not been after you, Disdallis? No. That's all part of Plowing Eve, and this spring's difficult, perhaps. But he's done other things. To the slaves, you know; or to strangers, or almost anyone.' She put her arms round Disdallis and whispered: ‘I don't like him to touch me after that. Once or twice he got his hands all bloody. It's as if he were wanting to show someone or something that he can do anything he chooses. The Council are frightened of him. They like having a chief who frightens them.'

‘Kotka doesn't.'

‘No. Nor Black Holly. Nor any of his friends who were in Greece with him.'

‘And Essro?'

But Erif Der said nothing. She looked at Disdallis angrily and miserably. She cried out: ‘You know I said you were not to come!' Disdallis dipped her fingers in the milk and began to dab it on Erif's hand, but the Queen drew it away sharply. ‘You are not to try things on me!'

‘It can't hurt,' soothed Disdallis. ‘It's my very own magic. I understand it. It will not turn on either of us.'

Erif Der said loudly and challengingly: ‘It is better to have no magic! It is better for a woman not to be a witch!'

Ash-fair Disdallis looked at her and could not answer.

After a time she said again, but more softly: ‘It's better to be one of the others, just one of Marob, not separated. Things wouldn't matter; Marob goes on. If we are witches, we are ourselves, standing all alone. Outside things matter and we have to find out which are real and the ones we must deal with. And I have found out that the things which do matter and are real are the bad things, the cruel things! Much good magic is to me!'

‘But the other things, the good ones—the things that make us happy,' cried Disdallis. ‘Why not choose them?' Her eyes moved round the room, looking at the fire, the beautiful furs, the gay coloured carpets, the two little almond trees in frail and lovely blossom beside the unshuttered window, and the March sun streaming in all round them, squaring a pool of quivering light on the clean flag-stones of the floor, while above in the rafters a still more dancing and paler pool came from the same sunlight reflected out of the small waves in the harbour.

Erif looked too. The things stayed stockily all round her. She put out her tongue at them; they didn't alter one bit or come any closer. Ashamed, she shut her mouth hard. They don't choose me,' said Erif.

They heard Tarrik's voice in the next room. Disdallis jumped up, slipping her shoulders under the yoke, and turned sideways to the door with her head bent, looking down into the milk. Tarrik did not notice her. He went over to the little Greek almond trees; he stretched his hands at them, clawed, as if he would have torn off the blossom, and then jerked himself away and moved towards Erif Der. While the Corn King and the Spring Queen were looking at one another, Disdallis slipped out. Erif Der said: ‘Tarrik, I must know now! What do you want with Essro and Yan? Do you want to kill them?'

Tarrik said: ‘You are not to think about these things. I will do what is best for you. When I see you I want not to have to think of them.'

‘Why won't you tell me, Tarrik?' said Erif, then, with a half-laughing, half-bitter shakiness: ‘I suppose you tell Sardu!'

Tarrik laughed. She began to cry. It was uncomfortable to cry now; it made her feel sick, a sick, dizzy weight
along her back, up into the roots of her brain, her throat, her palate. She went pale with crying.

Tarrik suddenly said: ‘I wonder what a woman four months gone is like inside. I should like to cut one open and see.'

Erif stopped crying, choked on a deep breath. She did not know whether fear or anger or horror had got her most; she only knew that Tarrik, as he was now, meant it quite seriously. It was the sort of thing he did like. At last she said: ‘What is the matter with you, Tarrik? Why has everything gone wrong?'

He said: ‘You see that too?' Then: ‘There is nothing wrong with me when I am god. I can feel the seed-corn sprouting now all over Marob. But that will come to an end, as it did with my father. I shall be killed, and parts of me will be eaten. They will perhaps be eaten by that queer little thing in your belly, Erif.' He shivered and said: ‘Every year the corn springs again. It is cut down. The seed is stored. After the plowing it is thrown into the dark earth. The earth holds it, buried and forgotten. But it comes alive again. That is the game we play at harvest. But where does Tarrik come in? I am tired of playing the game for the corn, making it go on, the food of Marob, making Marob go on, but leaving myself out. And you. I leave you out. Women die. They die in childbirth, Erif. Often they die! Why must it always be the corn and never us? I want to play a different game.'

But he was walking up and down the room all the time he was speaking. Erif had not really heard, only the parts about herself. She thought that perhaps death was now five months away from her and coming steadily and inevitably nearer. She wished Tarrik would take her in his arms. But he did nothing of the sort. He took a painted jar up from a shelf; it was a jar from Olbia with centaurs painted on it, a Greek story, but very un-Greek to look at, and rather fine. ‘We die,' he said, and dropped it out of his hands, ‘like that!' And he put his foot on the shards and began grinding them into the floor. Erif gave a little scream. She had liked the vase. He had just opened his fingers and dropped it quite deliberately, watched it drop and crash.

Later, during that evening, Erif reassembled her neglected magic. She made a spell with beads and cowries and a smoky
fire that left blackish traces afterwards on the green-painted rafters of the room. Then she sent for Sardu, and Sardu walked into the pit. Erif was quite kind; she did not really dislike Sardu, though she thought she smelt. It was always possible to recognise her smell on Tarrik—something slightly disgusting. But, after all, what could you expect from a slave girl? Besides, Sardu really belonged to Berris still, and Erif was not going to damage her brother's property. The girl stood in the middle with her eyes running a little, staring at the spell which was laid out on a table between her and Erif and answering the questions which she seemed to think it, or perhaps Tarrik, was asking her. Erif found out, quite easily, that the Chief was going to send or go himself south, as soon as the ground was firm enough, and that would be any day now, to have the baby Yan killed, and, if necessary, his mother Essro with him. Sardu went out again with her hands to her forehead. She did not know quite what had happened during the last half-hour, only that it had been unpleasant, and that now her eyes and the whole inside of her head ached with the smoke of that fire.

The next morning Erif Der saw Kotka coming away from the Chief, looking angry and miserable as he so often did now. He tried to avoid her, but she called him over. Instead of asking questions, as he had feared she would, she said: ‘Tell Disdallis it is no use trying to pick up spilt milk.' Kotka said he would and was pleased. He knew that this was likely to be something to do with his wife's magic, and was glad they were this much together again. He went home, and the Chief went to the Council, and Erif went to the stables and had out her strong, quiet, pony mare. She waved the guard back when they would have followed, and they obeyed her because it is foolish to cross a pregnant woman when one of her moods is on her. She had food with her and there was a great blanket under the saddle which did to sleep in at night. As always, there was a small bag of corn tied to the pommel. She was afraid they would track her sooner or later, so she rode the pony through sheep and then down the muddy bed of a stream. She went south across the plain, very visible and going slow because of the soggy ground, but still no one saw her. That was partly luck and partly her own doing. Up to that time she had been sick most mornings and often in the afternoons as well, but during this ride she was
only sick once and that was because she had not wrapped herself up properly one night and woke rather chilled.

On the last day she came in sight of the house under the elms, and brisked up the pony. She rode down through sallows, knocking up clouds of sweet golden pollen; fat shining leaves were unfolding out of the mud. But between her and Yellow Bull's farm was a brown mile of floods. Westwards the sun dropped towards red reflections. She rode a few yards through the water, splashing, and suspected it was nowhere deep, but she grew nervous, and the pony, feeling it through her, refused to go on. She felt shaken and sick. At last she did what she had not meant to do. She crouched in the brim of the flood among the muddied grass stems and stirred the water into ripples, talking to it all the time; the ripples went off towards the island with the elms. She sat in the saddle and waited. Before it was quite dark two of Essro's servants rowed over in a flat-bottomed boat. Erif stepped in and they tied the pony behind. ‘Essro sent you at once,' she said contentedly, glad to think of the fire and dry bed waiting for her. But the men frowned at one another. ‘We saw you—didn't we?' said the elder of the two.

Essro stood in the doorway, one clenched hand over her heart. ‘It's only you, Erif!' she said. ‘I thought—at least, I didn't think—come in!' They had supper of salt fish and cheese and grain that had been damped and begun to sprout and was then boiled with herbs. Erif told her sister-in-law how things were. Yan slept in a wicker cradle between them, a great, pink, happy lump of a boy, ridiculously like Yellow Bull. ‘I'm still nursing him,' said Essro. ‘You see, I don't expect I shall ever have another, Erif. But I give him food as well. He has got four great teeth and he stands up like a man. I wish—oh, I wish he were big, Erif! Then he could talk to me.'

‘I'm going to have one in summer,' said Erif.

‘I thought so. Are you glad?'

‘It would be much better,' said Erif, looking sulkily at Yan, ‘if we hadn't ever started being glad or sorry. We could just have had children, or been killed, or fallen in love, or whatever it was, and that would have been all right and we wouldn't have asked questions about it.'