The Corn King and the Spring Queen (31 page)

Erif loved Tarrik for being her baby's father, for getting her this solid and lasting thing, this pink, fresh, awakening piece of prettiness, this baby man. She loved him as the father of other babies in other years, lots and lots of babies; she saw herself with her arms full of them, standing up in Marob with the Chief's babies laughing in her arms. Sometimes, in their mutual caressing, Tarrik was rather too much aware of this; he caught her looking right through him at someone else—at her children's father when he himself did not want to be that, was not interested in her children, even in the one who was so obviously here already, let alone all the future ones, when he only wanted to be her lover and friend! She wanted to start another baby at once, but he was very anxious that she should be as strong and well as possible at Plowing Eve. He did not know what would happen then, but he thought it might need all their strength to get hold of the seasons. He had stayed in his own place for hours on end, had spent nights there trying to get a true dream, hoping to see into the future, but it was no use. If she wanted another baby he would give it to her—it was
hard enough not to when she made love to him!—but he was not very willing when he was away from her and could think about it calmly. Yet it would hurt and anger her if he went to other women now, and besides he did not want to. Just now the flame in him burnt inwards, not out towards plowing and sowing and begetting.

After the winter solstice every one brought him presents, in gratitude for the relief they always felt after the slight insecurity that always hung about for a few days before that when the sun seemed so very unwilling to come near and warm them. They brought him candles to increase his strength and baskets of late apples, or, if they had not any left, apple-shaped balls of honey and flour baked hard and coloured red. Then there was a feast when all the candles were lighted and the apples eaten, and day by day the sun grew stronger, set later, and soon began to rise earlier on Marob.

In the middle of the feast, looking along the table at his friends and companions, Tarrik suddenly wondered who would be
IT
next year at the Harvest Play. There was nobody he could ask about it and no precedent for it in the past, and after a time it seemed as if perhaps Marob would not find anyone to be
IT
. He had taken it on himself. The Corn Man had died and risen again as somebody new and unforeseen and younger. The grandfather had died and the father of the grandson had risen. The daughter had killed her father and her lover was brought to life. The old war-leader was killed and the risen one had been mostly leader in peace and games. The choice of the Council had been killed and the Chief alone had risen. Finally, Harn Der had been killed, yet whenever Tarrik went to his own place now to work the seasons or to dream, he had to beware or he would begin to become Harn Der as well as himself. But which was the thing that mattered, which aspect of it was Tarrik to consider in the future of Marob? He must know soon or he would be haunted for ever by the ghost of Harn Der. If Berris had been there, he might have helped; at any rate, he would have been someone to talk to. Or his Aunt Eurydice? No, it was a long way from her and from Sphaeros.

He leant his elbows on the table and looked down it moodily; it was a men's feast. He felt they were watching
him, trying to interpret, whispering about him. Let them interpret if they could! He wished them joy of it. His friend, the metal-worker who had made the new plowshare, was there. He at any rate was not thinking about the Corn Play! He was looking at one of the Chief's candlesticks, with his lip out as if he thought rather ill of it. By and bye he drew it jarringly across the table towards him, and the twenty spiked candles trembled and spilled. He leant across to a neighbour, another metal-worker, and said something. Tarrik threw a nut at him.

It knocked over one of the candles. Almost every one gasped and stopped talking; they were in that state of maddening expectancy. Tarrik stood up, furious. He took the two iron candlesticks that were nearest to him and heaved them up, one in each hand, with that momentary, terrific strength that sometimes came to him. He said: ‘I tell you, the dead thing rises again! It takes another shape and lives! Spring will come back, the corn will grow, I have been dead and now I am alive!' He waited, waited for the impulse to leap through his arms and crash the candles blazing down. He thought he would kill somebody, make them stop staring at him! They thought so too. They cowered, lifted their hands and ducked their heads. The impulse did not come.

There came instead to Tarrik the image of the burning candle which Sphaeros had used in books and talk: the wax rushing gently up the wick to consume in flame, but there alone to find its true reality. And gently, too, Tarrik set down the candlesticks, so that they scarcely flickered. He stood with his hands spread behind the flames and said: ‘I wish you peace and that you may get your best hope.'

Towards the end of winter, on a grey morning, Disdallis felt her pains begin. Late that evening Kotka went over to the Chief's house and found Erif's girl cousin, Linit, and bade her tell the Spring Queen that Disdallis was asking for her and only her. The girl looked at him and said: ‘I wish my Queen very well, but I wish Disdallis well too, most of all now. Is what you ask lucky?'

Kotka said between his teeth: ‘I'll tell the Spring Queen this!' ‘No, no!' said Linit. ‘At least—wait. I'll get her now.' She ran in and found Erif, who got together what charms and herbs she knew of, and went hurrying across
Marob with Kotka, neither of them speaking much. She did what she could, but with Disdallis white and screaming or sobbing with utter exhaustion, she did not manage to help much. The pains were too complete for magic to make any headway against them. Once as she held Disdallis taut and writhing, against her breast, she saw some of the older women there glaring at her. She went home hurriedly to suckle her baby and eat a little herself, and when she came back she found they had hung beads round Disdallis' neck and double plaited the ends of her hair. She was so angry that she pulled the coral straight off and threw it at them. Disdallis was now fainting from time to time. They made her eat, but when she did she was sick. About noon, more than a day and a night since the pains began, she gave birth to a dead baby, strangled with its own birth cord. She was almost too ill to understand. She could only sob helplessly and turn her face away from Kotka when he tried to kiss her.

Erif got her to sleep, and when she was asleep made a magic that would keep her asleep, for as long as the pain had been before. Then she went home to her own house in horror and gave Klint back to his nurses the moment she had fed him. She thought perhaps
that
was what she was asking from Tarrik and what she would get from him next time. She wondered shakenly if she was pregnant already, if so how to stop it. The more she considered it the more she became certain that if he started a child in her now something would assuredly go wrong with it. The bad luck would go down from her hands that had held the sickle to her womb that held the child. Tarrik was with the Council discussing a question of mending the breakwater, which had been rather badly knocked about in the last storm, now, or leaving it till spring. She changed her clothes and had a steam bath. At least she could stay at home and rest while Disdallis slept; she would not have to face her dear friend suffering until the next day. She would see Tarrik again first and get strength from him.

She heard Kotka's voice and ran to meet him. Her cousin Link was clinging to him, trying to stop him coming. He threw his arm up and swung the girl off. ‘Erif!' he said, ‘when I left her they took your magic things away, took the leaves out of her mouth—her mother did, Erif!—and
she woke up crying. Oh, Erif Der, she won't let me go near her!'

‘Is she in much pain?' said Erif. He nodded. Erif half turned her head away, covering her eyes and mouth. She could not bear to go back and face it again!

The girl cousin said to Kotka: ‘What did I tell you?'

Kotka did not notice, but Erif did. She looked at her cousin. ‘You too!' she said, ‘you bitch.' She drew her dagger.

Link said: ‘Kill me then, Erif! But I've defended you time and again against a hundred people. My own father and mother. What do you think will happen and go on happening till you get clean? Oh, get clean, Erif!'

She dropped on to her knees. Erif sheathed the knife and looked at her own hands. ‘They seem clean to me,' she said, ‘and I thought the snow would have cleaned everything. Get up, Linit, I won't hurt you. Kotka, what shall we do?'

He said: ‘I laughed at her. About being hurt. At harvest. She'll never forgive me.'

‘I expect she will,' said Erif a little vaguely, but trying to think about that, not herself, ‘only not yet. And don't be in a hurry to hurt her again.'

‘Never!' said Kotka, ‘never.' And he shuddered horribly.

Erif did not answer; she got more of the leaves and shells which she needed and told Link to bring the baby to Kotka's house to be fed. Tarrik perhaps would come there too, when the Council was over. She found the other women in the same room with Disdallis, who was moaning and twitching and very hot. She went straight to Disdallis and put the leaves on her tongue again and began to speak into her ear low and rapidly, and went on till she fell asleep again. She was so intent on it that she did not hear the scuffles and shrieks as Kotka turned the others out of the room. She stroked Disdallis with light fingers, smoothing her forehead to calm and her mouth to a smile. When she moved away Kotka came nearer and looked down at his wife, out of pain for the moment. ‘I trust you, Erif!' he said. ‘If it was anyone's doing, it was mine. I'll stay here till she wakes.'

Erif nodded and went out and found the other women all in a bunch glaring at her. ‘You picked up my shells,
didn't you?' she said, ‘in your fingers? They'll begin to burn you in a day or two.'

Then she sat by herself on a stool trying to be still and think of nothing till Tarrik came. ‘Sweetheart!' he said, staring at her, ‘what have they been doing to you?'

‘I'm only tired,' she said, ‘so very tired. I wanted you, Tarrik.' She told him what had happened. Then: ‘I must stop feeding Klint.'

‘But I thought—' said Tarrik.

‘Yes!' she cried, ‘I want to feed him! I can't bear not to! But now I daren't let him take the risk.'

K
OTKA BURIED HIS
dead baby, hurriedly and at night. After that Disdallis got well, but very slowly and half-heartedly; even when she was up and eating solid meat and ordering her household again, she would sit down to spin and then begin to cry, and if no one came in and stopped her there she would stay, sitting and crying, for hours. Erif brought her branches in pale bud, boughs of thorn and chestnut which she had broken off, black and frosty-brittle, and brought indoors and made magics over till she cheated them into belief that the real spring had come, and by and bye they budded for the Spring Queen. But it seemed to Erif that this year the little leaves came more reluctantly out of their hard bud cases and did not seem to spread and grow green as they should have. She asked Disdallis what she thought, but got no help, for Disdallis did not want to talk about it; and in a few days Kotka came to her, very unhappy, and said that it would perhaps be better if she did not come to the house.

‘But,' said Erif, ‘surely Disdallis doesn't think I'm unlucky! Oh, Kotka, surely she doesn't think it was my doing—what happened to her?'

‘She doesn't quite think so,' said Kotka awkwardly, ‘but she will if you go on coming. People talk to her—the old ones. And she's not herself yet.' He looked at Erif like a very nice dog; he would have liked to say something to help her but he did not know what.

Erif said: ‘Oh, if
she
is going to lose faith—! If
she
thinks it's true—!'

‘Anyhow, I don't think myself that you did any harm,' said Kotka earnestly. ‘Harn Der wanted killing. You had the right. Tarrik explained it all. I understood.'

‘Disdallis understood then!' said Erif. ‘She talked to people too; she helped me. Why has she changed? There's nothing new to know!'

‘I can't tell you at all,' said Kotka, and then lamentably, what he so often thought: ‘It is very difficult for me, being married to a witch!'

‘Yes,' said Erif, almost laughing, ‘we all ask questions! Well, I didn't want to see her last spring. One has one's fancies. And after all she may be right.'

The snow began to melt. The earth began to show, ready to wake up. Several small things happened to Erif Der. She would not perhaps have paid much attention to them any other year, but now she did, her dreams got full of them. Her pony mare died suddenly and so did the magpie which Philylla had given her and which she had kept indoors and warm by the fire and fed with her own hands. She caught a bad cold, and then her nose bled in the middle of a feast. Half the stock fish in the store seemed to have got wet, and went bad. Klint had spots and cried. She lost various things. She dropped and broke one of the pots for sowing flax seed in her Spring-field. She had to get another made. The first one cracked in the kiln and the second one was a little crooked, but she dared not say so or the potter would swear it had been straight when it left him, and people would talk still more. The time for Plowing Eve came nearer and Tarrik grew excited again and happy, but a long way from her. He came into her room in the red and yellow coats he wore about that time, and his eyes were bright and he did not seem to be able to understand why she should be anxious and unhappy. It was as though he were only aware of the part of her which corresponded with the mood that was on him now. He played with Klint, tossed him and rolled him and felt about in his mouth for teeth, laughed at the little hard gums biting on his fingers, and the baby knew and held up his arms and tried to roll over towards Tarrik when he saw him coming. But he seemed a little frightened of his mother now; sometimes he would cry suddenly and turn his face away. Erif said gaily that it was teeth, but she did not think so. She was very abrupt with him, suddenly
snatching him up and then as suddenly handing him back at arm's length to the nurses.

Plowing Eve came. The people of Marob gathered at the fallow field and the jars of drink went round. The shouting began. Noon came, and the ring parted to let through the Corn King and the Spring Queen. Erif felt them watching her, heard a curious, alarming quality in the shouting, shivered and whitened as she went through, forced herself on against sickening fear. She brushed against a plowing mark and heard a little gasp as it wavered, was suddenly afraid she was not really settled in the middle of the field, at last dropped her head over her wrists and tried to breathe calmly and wait and cease to be herself.

But she could not do it. Her senses could not keep still and let her be. She heard the grunting and plodding of the oxen as the plow started. The wind blew smells towards her, the crowd and its drink, then after a time the opened earth. Her odd dress fidgeted her; she wanted to move; her hands were bitterly cold. Her eyeballs shifted under their lids. And then she began to hear the Corn King talking about the plowing and she knew she would have to answer. And suddenly she also knew that it was not merely the reluctance of a difficult spring which she felt. The spring was not in her at all. She had lost touch with Marob and Marob's spring. She was not the Spring Queen!

Ah then, then, pretend! Act it until it becomes real. With a great effort she raised her head to answer. It would not be impossibly difficult. Yes, the answers were coming into her mind. She heard the people calling to her urgently from all round: ‘Spring Queen, be kind, be kind!' She loved them; they were her people; she would not hurt Marob! She would go through with Plowing Eve and force the spring to come.

She went on answering to Tarrik's plowing talk. It seemed to be all right. Yes, it was going to be! Why be anxious? She was strong, she was well. She was not pregnant. She had a baby at home and a splendid husband here on the field; it was all right. The spring would come, the earth would be young again and covered with flowers. Every year Marob grew young again. Trees that had been old in dull and tattered leaves grew young again. Fields that had been rough and stubbly as an old woman's face grew fresh and
young again. Salt, sad marshes grew young again and made men glad of them. The islands of the secret road would make men glad with their greenness and youngness.

Yes, yes, that was good and that would always happen, but she, Erif Der, she could never turn again and grow younger, no more be a young maiden moving consciously among glad looks! She was growing older every year—every Plowing Eve she was a year older—and soon she would be too old to make any man glad, not any lover, not her own Tarrik. Oh unfair, oh cruel spring to come young and young and again young while women grow old! Oh spring, luring men from their own women, making them see their women old and used against the young green! She heard her voice in an answer to Tarrik, and it was angry and hard. She knew the people of Marob would be hurt by it, would think it meant a cold and late season. She could not help it. She heard the farmers shouting at her, eagerly, violently: ‘Spring Queen, be kind!' And suddenly she remembered Murr, who had not had kindness from her but had died and would not see any spring again.

But now the plow was very near. She tried to force her voice to kindness and gladness, raised her head, thought she was not old yet, thought Berris would come back this year. She wondered if the people of Marob were at all satisfied. Ah, now the plow was turning inward. She must run between the horns of the oxen. One moment she stood, waiting for Tarrik to give her courage. She saw in his eyes that he did not know her. They were not Tarrik and Erif; he was the Corn King and she—she should be the Spring Queen. She sprang between the oxen and leapt the plowshare and did not stumble, nor even cry out or turn pale with the pain of her arm that had been grazed by one of the horns.

The thick, surging crowd swept inwards at her. Oh dear Marob, if only she could be part of Marob again, their Spring Queen, oh lost love! She shut her eyes, swaying, wrestling with herself to come and join them. She heard them hammering together the planks of the booth. Surely there was, after all, nothing wrong? She was the Spring Queen, who else could she be? Every one knew she was the Spring Queen wearing the Spring Queen's clothes! She was bringing them their spring, she was quite, quite
certain that it would come, that the corn would grow as well as ever. She had done nothing to hurt the seasons! No, she was not anxious, she was not thinking about harvest or anything that had happened! Yes, she was smiling now! She opened her eyes to their loud singing and the prickling of the thrown corn-ears. That singing answered back to her smile, growing louder and gladder. The pipes and drums thudded up from behind the voices. She was going to do the dance well for them!

The Corn King and the Spring Queen went up on to the booth and began the dance. She had only to follow with her body what Tarrik led in. She watched him. She was the gentleness of the spring. He was the strength of the corn. The com that had been asleep all winter, but now was growing, was rising. Then suddenly a terrible thing leapt into her mind, and buzzed round and round there. Who was the risen corn? The Corn King of today was the Corn Man at harvest, and the Corn Man was Harn Der. The risen corn was Harn Der. She was dancing again with Harn Der. She had killed him and he had risen, and now she could not kill him again, he had got out of his own body, he had risen into another body, into the Corn King's body. He was looking at her through the Corn King's eyes. She fought the image, she tried to tear it out, she looked for help to Tarrik, her lover. It was not Tarrik any longer! From all round the pipes and drums hemmed her in, crushed the two dancers spinning together in one wild, inevitable rhythm. The climax of the dance was coming again. Erif Der saw with horror and terror her own dead father leap at her. She knew with an immediate grip of the moment and what it brought, that when she had fallen ready for him, it was Harn Der who would sweep aside the Corn King's rags and show himself, Harn Der who would plunge down on her, Harn Der who was the image of God and Man and her possessor and master! Her knees, her body, on the point of bending, giving to the fall, the final yielding of spring, stiffened and shook. She flung up her arms against Harn Der and the thing she must not take from him, screamed with all her might against the rhythm, and jumped clean out of it, off the booth, into the furrow ankle-deep, turned her head to see if he was following her and yelled in panic again and rushed into the crowd that parted all about her.

She ran like a hare, screaming and doubling like a hare, across the fallow field. The crowd scattered screaming too, as though her touch would be death. They trampled on one another. She could have caught and clutched on to someone if she had looked, but she was blind with fear, and no one would save her, no arms open to hide her! Then from two different places in the crowd two women ran to risk everything and head her. One was Disdallis and one was her cousin Linit. When Kotka saw his witch wife running, he suddenly trusted her and followed, and had almost caught her up when Erif Der ran into her arms and cowered there. The three of them held her. Linit was in the bridal dress of the Spring Queen's women, but her great hat had fallen off. There was no one else near them, but all round, at a little distance, people gathered into tight, staring knots.

Erif Der looked up and over her shoulder. She let go her grip of Disdallis and rubbed her hands over her face and smoothed down the wool flowers on her dress. She seemed to want to ask a question; the two women murmured soothingly to her. Kotka took her by the wrist and pointed: ‘There are the Council.'

‘And Tarrik,' said Disdallis. Erif pulled back from her.

‘You must,' Kotka said, ‘for Marob. Even if they are going to kill you.'

‘But they won't!' said Linit. ‘You will be made clean, Erif—somehow. And if you don't go to them they'll come and fetch you.'

‘We'll go with you,' Disdallis said, ‘and perhaps Tarrik will save you.' The four of them walked towards the Council.

Tarrik was in the middle of them, very obvious in his coloured tatters, talking hard. The Council were talking back at him, baying in their deep, old men's voices. A good many had drawn daggers or swords. Kotka loosened his own dagger in its sheath. As they came nearer Tarrik bounded out from among them, knocking up one hand with a knife. Erif twitched and shivered, but the others pulled her along. Some of the older men came after Tarrik, but he turned, whirling up his arms, and shouted: ‘I am the Corn King and I tell you I know what to do! Keep back and I'll save your corn. Come on and I'll rot it!' They checked,
and Black Holly came crossing over between them and his Chief, slowly, with a sword.

Then Tarrik glanced west at the low sun, and from Erif to the other two women. ‘I must do the dance with the new Spring Queen before dusk. Come!' He nodded at Disdallis, but she cried out ‘No!' and pulled at Linit. The girl came forward, hesitating two steps, and then, as she faced the Corn King, suddenly confident. ‘I will!' she said. ‘Change!' said Tarrik. ‘Quick!' He pulled at the neck of the girl's dress, tore with both hands and sent the linen ripping down a green stripe from top to hem. Disdallis untied the cord round the neck of Erif's queer dress, loosened it, and pulled it over her head. Link slipped into it and tied it as she ran with Tarrik towards the booth.

Erif stood naked and slackly staring till Disdallis huddled her into her cousin's torn dress and fastened it tight with her own belt. When she touched Erif's flesh it was so cold that she shivered herself. ‘If we could get her away?' she said. ‘Before the Council have stopped being frightened,' said Kotka, and picked Erif Der up. She did not seem to be able to hold on round his neck, so he slung her over his shoulder and walked away with her off the fallow field to where the horses were tethered. His own were at the far side, so he took the nearest two and they rode back to the Chief's house. Erif was able to walk now and even smiled a little. The women who were left brought wine and warm clothes and heaped dry wood on the fire, and asked dozens of questions till they found that no one was answering them. Kotka and Disdallis waited, sitting at the opposite side of the fire from Erif, watching her colour coming back. Disdallis held Kotka's hand and he was very glad of it; she had not done that for a long time.