‘I haven’t tried,’ said Erif Der, ‘but I will. And I do hate you, Tarrik.’
He put on his crown again, caught the horse and lifted her on, then went to its head and led it back towards the camp; neither of them said anything more. When they were in sight, he took off his felt coat and gave it to her; she found it hid a good deal, but smelt of him. Harn Der came out to meet them, with Berris; both were armed, but she was afraid they were not going to do anything. Tarrik left her and went forward by himself to speak to her father; she could not hear what they were saying. Berris stared at her, questioning with his eyebrows; she put out her tongue at him. By and bye Harn Der came up and stood beside her. ‘So you’re a woman now, my daughter.’ ‘And you don’t care,’ she said, ‘how I’m hurt, how I’m dishonoured.’ ‘Well,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘you were betrothed. It’s nothing to make a song about. Go to your mother, Erif.’ He went back to the Chief, and Berris said: ‘It serves you right for magicking people.’ ‘Well, who told me to?’ said she furiously. ‘Oh, of course,’ said Berris, ‘but you know you like doing it. You think you’re clever.’
She leant forward and hit the horse on the neck, and sent it clattering off towards the tents, nearly throwing her. She called for her mother; the foot was hurting again, it wanted magic. The women helped her into her mother’s tent, saying nothing, because they saw she was angry, and knew what she could do to them if she chose to use her power. The old nurse brought her clean clothes, her best, and warm water, and olive oil, and soft woollen towels to wash with. Then at last came her mother, Nerrish, so small and quiet and shadowy in her grey dress, that she was hardly there. She sat beside Erif, holding her hand, crumbling something over her hair, while the girl cried solidly for ten minutes. Nerrish knew a great deal about people and a great deal about magic, but it had worn her out. She felt very old, she could scarcely deal with her children, hardly ever thought of the younger ones. But she would give what she had to this elder one who was most like her, whose life she could best see into. After a time Erif fell asleep, and while the sleep was at its heaviest, her mother and nurse undressed her and washed her, and saw to the bruises and the twisted ankle, and dressed her again, and plaited ribbons into her hair, and discussed between themselves, in very low voices, the doings of that curious, savage creature man, and how one should deal with him and overcome him. Then they moved a little brazier of burning charcoal close to the girl’s head, and Nerrish laid some large, flat leaves on it. The smoke rose and hung and spread itself upwards along the walls of the tent; Erif Der lay and slept, breathing easily, the colour coming back into her cheeks.
Meanwhile the horse had found its way back to Tarrik, and stood, with twitching ears, blowing into the palm of his hand. He had just said to Harn Der: ‘Three days ago I killed Epigethes,’ and was watching to see what would happen next. Harn Der said nothing at all for the moment, but breathed heavily. Berris, though, had heard. ‘You haven’t done that,’ he said, ‘Tarrik!’ And then, seeing it was true, covered eyes with hands in sheer horror.
Said Harn Der: ‘This was—unwise.’
‘Yes,’ said Tarrik, and began laughing as he had that day at the Council.
‘Why did you do it, Chief?’ said the older man.
But Tarrik went on laughing and then suddenly kicked backwards like a vicious horse at a clod of earth which exploded under his heel.
And Berris groaned: ‘Are you mad?’
‘He was bad,’ said Tarrik, and stopped laughing and walked from one bit of scattered turf to another, tramping on them. ‘He was bad. His things were bad. Rotten. Rotten roots. I like sound things. Sweet apples. Hard apples—like yours, Berris.’
‘My things!’ said Berris Der. ‘Oh God, you should have killed me—I don’t matter. But he …’ And his voice trailed off into silence, overwhelmed with the loss of Hellas.
‘The Council will think you mad, if they think no worse,’ said Harn Der again.
But Tarrik bent down and was lacing his shoes. ‘I shall want clean clothes,’ he said. ‘Burn these, with hers, and give them to your fields, Harn Der.’ He spoke now in the voice of the Corn King. They would be very careful to obey him; next year the crops would know.
He took the clean linen and went off by himself to the stream. All this time her star had been round his neck; when he lifted it, he found it had blistered his skin underneath in a star pattern. So while he washed, he put it under water to get cool, downstream from where he was. He also found that where her teeth had gone through the skin on his arm, there was still bleeding; it would not stop for cold water, or burnet leaves, or dock. After some hesitation he touched it with the star. Then it stopped at once. Tarrik knew no more about how magic worked than any other of the men, but it interested him immensely; that was perhaps the Greek part of him, not taking everything for granted. He dressed and walked slowly back to the camp; the star was on his neck again, but well wrapped in leaves, so that it should burn them first. It was the middle of the afternoon by now, very hot; he thought he could smell the lime grove, breathing its sweetness towards him from the other slope, a mile away now.
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.’
Chapter Four
SLOWLY 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.’
The Corn King and the Spring Queen Page 6