The Corn King and the Spring Queen (48 page)

I
HAVE NOT WRITTEN
for three days. At first I was feeling an acute depression, partly for obvious reasons and partly because I was thinking out this business of Tarrik and Marob, so that at least if we are to die we can die clear headed and in more or less the same communion of ideas. Now I believe I have it ready to set out.

I do not know how mankind began, and I doubt if it is much use speculating on origins, but I know more or less, from history and observation, how they have been for the last several hundred years, and how they are now. I take it, very tentatively, that the thing could perhaps be put into a formula of approximately this kind.

It is natural for men to live in communities and painful to them when these communities break up. The closer the community is, the better for the general happiness, for there they have a unity ready provided for them, easy to accept, hard not to accept. They need never question: they need only live. And death is not a severance from the community, but merely another facet of it.

Yet, as men's minds grow, they have to question. And as they question and become different one from another and want to be still more different and to lead each his own separate life, so the community breaks up. The people in it are no longer part of a unity and harmony that includes their friends and their dead and their unborn—a unity in time—and no longer part of the earth and the crops and the festivals of the community—a unity in space. They question the gods, and the gods crumble and fade and are no more help. When this day comes a man must stand up for himself and face the truth as far as he knows it, and be no more helped by his citizenship and his sense of being part of a better whole. And it will be well for him if he is a strong man then.

Now in general this comes gradually, and from generation
to generation men have time to grow up until they are old enough and brave enough to wed with the naked truth and perhaps beget wonderful children on her. They can save themselves from the chaos and fear of being cityless and godless. The foolish ones invent for themselves new gods, each a god and saviour for himself. But the wise ones recognise this as a folly, and the only comfort and substitute they make for themselves is the love and trust of their friends and the excitement of the hunt after knowledge. Very often too, when men suddenly separate out like this, there is a change in the government of a State. It was because of this, I think, that we got democracy, in Hellas at least.

But here in Marob there is and has been a close community in which, I suppose, all were to some extent happy, because all were to some extent in communion with the others, though even so I am not sure of them all, especially of the women, about whom it is always hard to tell. There were two who were the keystone of the community, the Corn King and the Spring Queen. Then through, as is usual, a combination of circumstances, but mostly because the Greek modes of thought, and especially those of Sphaeros the Stoic, had suddenly come on them, these two began to question, and, before they understood what was happening or could retrace their steps, they were out of their community and had to stand up unhelped and face a world of apparent chaos and pain and contradiction and moral choices which, being so thoroughly disturbed by old Sphaeros, they could not deal with.

I do wonder if Sphaeros knows what he has done, and, if so, whether he regrets it at all!

I
THINK I AM BEGINNING
to be able to explain all this to Tarrik. But for these things which have happened to us both I could never have done it, but now I have imaginative good-will towards him, and I can get into his mind. He does not set up barriers against me. I am doing what Erif asked me to do. I am being faithful to my friends.

We have talked about her a great deal and about how she is to be saved. It seem to us that only some very beautiful and terrible event will shake her out of the solitude where she is, back into the life of Marob, and into Tarrik's life if he has it still. We do not think that she can save herself
entirely by any intellectual process. Women can very rarely do that. I do not say that one kind of mind is better or worse than another, but I do know that men and women are different. What I seem to want to do with Erif Der is to bring her back into godhead and magic and superstition. Yet it is not quite simply that. It is just that I want her to be completely herself, and she cannot be herself alone, any more than one honey bee separated from its hive and its flowers can be said to be a true bee at all.

I am beginning to accept all this about plowing and Harvest. I am beginning to see the way in which it is compatible with science. Obviously, Harn Der is dead and ended: there is no more Harn Der. But so long as he is still in the minds of the Marob people and in Tarrik's own mind, his image will be projected on to Tarrik. I am trying to give Tarrik the idea of death as complete sleep and finish, and a cessation from action of any sort, even the kind of consciousness of a sleep-walker. I swear by my master that I am not thinking of that all the time in connection with ourselves! And I am not afraid. Or at least only of the pain. Before it comes I shall have Tarrik standing on his feet.

He has to save himself through his mind. He has begun to tell me what are the things that entangle and horrify him. He said: ‘Even if we escape now, yet when I begin to grow old, when other men have peace and comfort and story-telling to grand-children round the fire, they will come one day and cut my throat. They will cut my throat in my own place and Tisamenos will eat me, eat my flesh!' He looked shudderingly down at his own legs and body. I confess I was a little horrified myself, but I said: ‘Why not? He will not do it from choice, any more than you did yourself when the thing happened. It is the kind of action which one has been led to suppose is awful and shocking, but only because our ancestors did it once for pleasure, and now our taste is so utterly turned away from it that we are in revolt against our ancestral blood. When you are dead you will not feel or know. It will be all one whether you are eaten by worms or men or fire.' And I said: ‘You will be spared old age, the misery and shame of not being able to do accustomed things any longer, the pains of disease and loosening teeth, and no more love, and the distress of seeing your companions in
the same state.' I said then: ‘What happens to the Spring Queen?' He said: ‘My mother died when I was a child, trying to bring to birth another son, who died too. But the custom is that there are always new Spring Queens, so that it is very seldom that any woman is still Spring Queen when she grows old. Yet,' he said, ‘I think Erif would mind dying that way less than I do.' And then he said suddenly: ‘But after all, I wonder if you are not right. Perhaps there is nothing really so bad about it.' If he can go on thinking that!

Is it stupid of me to be glad all the same that this is not going to happen to Erif Der?

But it is not that alone. He is up against the whole idea of the death of the individual. I wonder if I can explain to him that it seems less difficult to me now, since I have got this notion of a close community so well into my head. So long as one is still in one's community! In the Garden. In Marob. There is no such thing as an individual. We are not divided one from another, friend from friend. It is hard to be sure of that when there are sundering seas and wars and poverty. But yet I know I am sure. I will make Tarrik sure too! Before we die.

T
ARRIK HAS BEEN TALKING
to the chiefs of the Red Riders. They came into the tent and stared at us and pointed, as they always do. We are still odd beasts for them. Tarrik is both a strange and a sacred beast. They know he was the Corn King and wonder-worker of Marob. Once they stripped him and looked at his body for signs. He did not resist and they did not try to hurt him, but he could not sleep that night because they had touched him so much. Ever since the first days he has been trying to talk to Tigru and Diorf, really to hold their attention. He has told them that the Marob people would give them yearly tribute of gold and wine and women if they would let him and the rest of the prisoners go. At first I thought he even meant it. But the Red Riders cannot or will not take this in. They are either too stupid or not stupid enough! They did not answer him. But lately Tigru has seemed to attend. He has a Marob girl who was taken this time, in his tent. We did not know about her at first, but now she screams and screams. He would like to get other women. She is the first who has
been taken alive for a long time. He came in today without Diorf and said that if Tarrik sent for a hundred women and two hundred head of cattle, and had them delivered at the edge of the forest, he and I would be released. Tarrik said he would like Diorf's word on it too.

Then it became clear that Tigru was speaking for himself, and the other savage was still determined to sacrifice us. Tigru whispered at us greasily. He is taking a risk in going against the feeling of the camp. Tarrik said he would write a letter and Tigru must come back for it after midnight. He said that midnight was his own most sacred time and that an order signed then would be obeyed. That was the kind of rigmarole Tigru could understand. He nodded and went away, oozing a little at the lips with the thought of the women and the fresh meat.

Tarrik says he is going to try and kill Tigru when he comes back and then cut our ropes and try to escape. I will help him over the killing. But we both think that we are almost sure to be caught on our way through the camp. We will have Tigru's weapons and we will not let them take us alive again.

We have said good-bye to one another. We both agree that this chance is worth taking. I will buckle the paper under my belt again. Oh, Erif, I wish you knew that Tarrik and I had made friends!

H
YPERIDES, SON OF LEONTEOS
, to Timokrates, son of Metrodoros, live well! Oh, my adventures! I will tell you everything from the place where my odd scraps of paper left off.

We lay down and rested, so that we should be as strong as possible when the moment came. We scarcely talked at all: the time for that was over. The camp became quiet, though we heard voices now and then. We listened hard, because we had to find out where the horses were tethered. At last we thought we were sure of the direction. Tigru came in stealthily and fastened the flap of the door behind him. Tarrik stood up, holding the letter, and began to talk, manœouvring so as to get the savage immediately in front of the tent-pole and me. I was in shadow, holding a piece of cloth torn from Tarrik's thick shirt.

Tarrik sprang and knocked Tigru against the tent-pole. He got his wrists at once and fought him hand to hand, while from behind I stuffed the cloth into his mouth. I found afterwards that I had scraped the skin off two fingers on his filed teeth, and later they festered. He was horribly strong. While Tarrik still held him I worked down towards the throat. It seemed to be hard muscles and sinews all over. I could not get at the life in it. I squeezed the whole thing back as hard as I could against the tent-pole, but I did not think I was anywhere near killing him. He made the most filthy choked noises, and Tarrik grunted like a beast with pain and effort. It all took incredibly long, or seemed to. It was more horrible than you would think possible, Timokrates, the feel of that twitching throat! I did not think I could go on holding it much longer. My strength was giving. I trembled all over. Then suddenly I got the impression that something had broken, I still don't quite know what, and the body jerked and then went slack.

Tarrik and I took the weapons and cut our hide ropes. I was slow but he was amazingly quick. For a moment I was afraid he would not wait for me. Then we slipped out. It is very difficult to know for oneself even, still more to write, what happened. But sometimes now when I am just going to sleep I get a kind of flash vision that dates from then of Tarrik stabbing down over a man's shoulder into the great vein. I know I was wounded somehow and he pulled me on. I know he cut through the hobbles of two horses and slashed them into a gallop, holding on to the bridle of mine.

I know we were separated in a wood for some horrible, but most likely quite short, space of time. I know I was blundering on, desperate with panic, half falling off my horse, and Tarrik found me again and we rode all that night by stars we knew in gaps of the thick trees. Twice we drew into a thicket and hid. My forehead was cut and bleeding and he tied it up with a pad of moss. We had no food, but we drank from a brook. Spaces of blankness came over my mind. It was a real and horrible pain to stay awake and balanced. He put his arms round me and held me on the horse while I rode sleeping. We did not dismount till the evening of the next day.

Tarrik knew all the time in what direction we had to go, or if he was ever in doubt I never guessed it. He seemed
to take us straight. We chewed leaves and roots and any berries or nuts we could find. He had Tigru's sword, but I had dropped the dagger somewhere, probably in the first galloping off. Somehow I could not begin to realise that we even might be going to live.

Then! Then, Timokrates, a very long way off, at the end of the day, under a darkening sky, I saw a little pale line that was not grass nor tree-tops: the line of the sea; the clear way between oneself and home. And I bent over my horse's mane and fell to weeping with joy and weariness, and Tarrik wept with me because he was to be King again and because very soon he would know whether his child were alive or dead.

From the north-east we came down across the grass plain to Marob, and Tarrik looked at the fields. ‘It will be nearly Harvest,' he said, and then he laughed and threw back his stiff beard and said again: ‘It is a queer business, but I am done with Harn Der now. The dead has dropped off me. It was, as you say, all folly. I will show the people.' We were riding over a field that had just been cut, over the clean, sharp stubble. ‘Harvest,' he said; ‘Harvest,' crooning round the word. I did not doubt that the thought of the cut corn had become a solid thing in his mind, a little bright-edged eidolon, instead of the mere idea it was in mine. He looked, himself—how shall I put it?—sun-ripe and golden and full of gifts.

We saw a farm in the distance and went there on foot, hoping to find, as we did, somebody quite stupid who would not recognise the King nor be much interested in strangers. Tarrik did most of the talking, beginning tentatively: ‘There'll be fine doings in the town now.' He thought he would be sure to find out exactly when harvest was that way. The slave-girl we were talking to immediately burst out into complaints about having been left behind, and we found that this day was already the first day of Harvest.

Tarrik went on to say what a grim business it had been at midsummer and the girl said anyway they'd got a younger and better-looking Corn King now, bless his heart! ‘Younger—' said Tarrik, and stopped. I knew he was wondering if it could be his child. But the next minute it came out that it was Gold-fish, Erif's younger brother. Tarrik was finding it difficult to speak. I said:
‘It was a good thing no more got killed at midsummer than were.' ‘All the more to get killed afterwards,' said the girl, picking up her spinning again.

That was maddening. We did not know what to say. I asked her to show us the way to the well. Half-way she said: ‘I was in town then. Why, I saw Black Holly killed!' The Chief started like a horse, but I gripped his arm and said: ‘Ah yes, but the others?' She shook her head. ‘But I tell you what I did see,' she said. ‘I saw the big horse go by a-gallop, and that poor innocent baby holding on to its mane as gay as a bird, love him!—and the white-faced lady lashing out with her big whip at the ones that tried to catch her!' ‘Klint?' I asked quickly, before Tarrik could speak. ‘Aye,' she said, ‘and I'm glad he's away, for all his father!' Then she suddenly glared at me and said: ‘Who are you, anyway, not to know that?' I laughed and said, of course, I was there too and signed to Tarrik to come away. He was holding on to the well curb and licking his lips with the strain of it.

We went back. He said nothing for some time, either in comment or explanation. I scarcely dared to ask. When he spoke it was heavily and quietly. He said: ‘I must go back tonight.' Then he began to thank me, not, I think, for anything special, but for just being there when he wanted me. I was—oh, very much moved, Timokrates! After that he gave me directions as to where to go the next day, and after nightfall he rode off himself.

I think I shall tell you now what had been happening while we were away—better than telling you how I stayed awake for hours that night wondering vainly about it and very anxious for Tarrik. It was like this. When Tarrik was taken prisoner and they thought he was killed, the Council of Elders, who had mostly been Harn Der's friends, and had never forgotten what happened, although up to now constrained to think they had, decided to get power over Marob. To do this, they chose as Corn King the eighteen-year-old Gold-fish, my Erif's brother, and said they would make him Chief and war leader as well when he grew older and wiser. But I think they always intended to keep that power for themselves. This was all decided the day after the raid when everything was still topsy-turvy, and they put it into action at once, seizing on the Corn King's
Place and his house itself. There was violent street-fighting, in the course of which Black Holly was killed, and Kotka, wounded already by the Red Riders, was wounded again almost to death. When we came back all these weeks later he was still not able to move.

They meant to have the child either killed or in some way maimed so that it could never be Chief or Corn King. This seemed to them, I believe, a right thing to do for Marob, on the grounds that both its father and mother were proved unlucky. They were afraid for themselves and their food. The girl Linit barred the doors of the Chief's house and tried to gain time, for she would never believe that Tarrik had been killed. The next thing that happened I am telling you as it was told to me without comment. All I can say is that this is a very strange country, and that one has evidence of things occurring here which would certainly be against all the laws of Nature at home.

Essro, the widow of Yellow Bull, whom Tarrik killed, looked down the well in the middle of her farm-yard. The water twenty feet below was like a little dark, round mirror. She saw the face of her sister-in-law, Erif Der, looking up at her out of it. The image stretched its arms as if it were trying to hold something. Then that faded and the image of the child Klint came instead, not as he is now, but as a small baby, as he was when his mother left him. Essro rode north as fast as her horse could go. I have never seen her myself, but they say she is a timid and unhappy woman. I believe she made this long ride in great fear. When she got to Marob she somehow managed, in some woman's way, to let Linit know, and Linit let Klint down to her through a side-window. And Essro galloped away with him through the streets of Marob, and back to her farm.

There are other things that are said here. That Essro, pursued, threw down a thorn branch which grew into a whole wood of thorns between her and the pursuers. That she called into the air and hornets rose up behind her and stung them. That she did even more fantastic and incredible things. All I know is that the Council left her in peace with the child and now she has him with her own son down on the farm by the marshes.

The time, anyhow, went on to Harvest. Gold-fish was put into the Chief's house and seems to have enjoyed himself
there, and had plenty of feasts and gave presents to every one. Linit took shelter with Disdallis and helped her to nurse Kotka. When it came near the day of Harvest, the Council chose a man to be the other actor in the Corn Play, one of themselves, a man called Tsomla, a big, bearded fighter. They had already given him Wheat-ear, Erif's little sister (though I suppose she was considered rather as Harn Der's daughter by the Council) for his wife. He waited the middle night of Harvest, as the custom was, in the dark, locked Place of the Corn King.

A little after midnight Tarrik came back to Marob. He knocked in some secret and peculiar manner on the door of his Place, and the old woman who is guardian opened it and knew him. She strewed some kind of stupefying leaf on the fire, and the other actor in the Corn Play went so deep asleep that he did not wake fully for three days. She took his clothes off and Tarrik put them on, and then she looked at their faces side by side and with plucking and moulding of fingers and with dark and pale dyes she made Tarrik look like the man Tsomla. She put white powder in Tarrik's new beard to make it look like the other's, and I think it likely that they also went through certain rites together.

In the morning Gold-fish came to open the door to the other actor, the Corn Man. Tarrik says that at first no one saw that there was anything strange, but as he walked beside Gold-fish in the great procession to the stubble field, Gold-fish began glancing at him and then hastily away, more and more uneasily. But he said nothing and Tarrik went into the centre of the field to do his dance with the new Spring Queen, the quite young girl whom Gold-fish had chosen.

I was among the crowd then, rather behind and quite disguised by my beard and my barbarian clothes. I watched the dance between the Corn Man and the Spring Queen, ending in the rather alarming ritual of death and mourning. And I gradually became aware—but later than anyone else, I suppose, because I was not really part of Marob—that there was a growing uneasiness among the crowd of watchers and worshippers, spreading outward from the young Corn King. I have an idea that Tarrik had looked at him in some rather shattering way from behind the beard and the mask of Tsomla's face.

Into the black-robed company of mourning women bounded the Harvest Fool, the one whose business it is to break up all the sadness and tension with a series of peculiarly crude and school-boyish jokes. Quite often I could not understand the words, but the import was plain enough. The men of Marob began to rock with shrill and nervous laughter. They seemed prepared for anything. The Fool danced over to the black winding-sheet above the Corn Man and suddenly it lifted and Tarrik bounded out, declaring himself with every movement of his body, crying aloud: ‘Tarrik and Marob! Tarrik and Marob!' as I had heard it at Delphi in the moment when the stones struck my head.

The first thing that happened (and, in a way, the last thing, for after that there was only one possible issue) was that Gold-fish, the Corn King, howled and scrambled up the bank and bolted. He was found again two days later hiding under a bush and brought back. Every one has been quite kind to him. When that occurred, the young Spring Queen nearly bolted too, but then I rather think curiosity got the better of fear; anyway, she stayed. The Fool had to stay whether he liked it or not, for Tarrik had a compelling grip on him. Then a man near me shouted: ‘He is risen again! Tarrik! Tarrik! Tarrik and Marob!' And then voice after voice picked it up and shouted that the corn was sprung, the dead was living, the King had come back to his people. I think most of them believed then, and for all I know believe still, that he had really been killed and was now born again out of the cut and harvested corn. This was partly because of the way they thought he had died, guarding the sacred things from the Red Riders, a death which had in it the seeds of rebirth!

It is very curious, Timokrates, and I wonder what I ought to do, for I cannot help sometimes believing that I am here for the beginning of a new religion. Could I stop it now? Or have I the right to even if I know it to be based on a lie? Is it any use or any good trying to keep Marob away from its gods? Should I or should I not allow myself to be compelled by my philosophic principles to hurt my friends? Anyhow, it is desperately exciting, the most exciting thing that has ever come my way!