The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  ‘All the same—’ she said, then shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, perhaps he doesn’t know. Perhaps he is a fool.’

  ‘He is not that, then,’ said Berris Der suddenly, ‘he is the one of you all that knows what I am looking for, and if father’s plan was anyone else’s plan I should be well out of it! And remember, if you hurt Tarrik, I shall be out of it!’

  ‘Oh you, Berris,’ said his father, ‘if you don’t want to know you shouldn’t listen. And—for the hundred and first time—we are not going to hurt Tarrik. I know as well as you that it would be no good in the end: so long as he is Corn King. If I did not know it, couldn’t I have killed him twenty times over and been Chief by now? But that would have been for my harm and the harm of Marob as well. I am not going to hurt the corn. As it is, the Council will see that he goes, gently, for no one hates a madman, and then they will put me in his place and Marob will not be divided against itself.’

  ‘But I shan’t have to stay married to him?’ asked Erif Der anxiously.

  ‘Of course not. You will be the Chief’s daughter: to do whatever you and we choose. But listen: when I said Tarrik was a fool, I meant a fool in the way you thought he was wise. He does not know of the plan, still less that you are part of it. And as to the way Berris thinks he is wise, whatever that may be, it will not alter, and when I am Chief, Tarrik can work with Berris and they can both talk about beauty.’

  Erif Der shook her head, but said nothing and went over to a chest by the wall; she took out a coat of brown fur, a shade darker than her own hair, and put it on instead of the felt one, which she folded carefully and put away. Then she took a gold bracelet out, and tried it on her arm, first above, then below the elbow, pinching it into place; when it was high on her arm the sleeve hid it, but then, whenever she lifted her hand, it flashed out wonderfully. ‘Which is right, Berris?’ she said. Her brother frowned at her and walked out; she hesitated, changed the bracelet to the other arm, and ran after him, caught him up, and walked beside him, a pace behind.

  Harn Der looked after them, scratched his head, and after a little walked out into the flax market; he found one of his own farm people, who had been sent down to Marob to buy new milk jars, and was going back with the big red crocks slung over his shoulder; he said that everything was doing finely, the wheat well up, the flax and hemp high for the time of year, and there were two fat calves ready to be killed and sent down whenever they were wanted. Harn Der was pleased, thinking of his crops and his beasts; no one in Marob had better land than his, few had so much of it; and all good, sheltered, and well watered, away from the sea, but not so far from the town that the inlanders, the Red Riders, would ever come and raid it. In a few weeks he would be going down there with his wife and children, to live all summer in great yellow tents, with the birds and the beasts on the plains all round him, and the sun shining and the crops growing.

  But it was more than land he had, and better than gold. Every one in Marob knew him and thought of him always as wise and strong and a ruler of men; the elders had seen him at war, seen him guarding their land against the Red Riders in the days when Tarrik was only a child. A great archer was Harn Der then, and a great horseman; you could see the yellow tassel of his helmet a mile away across the fighting, when things were at their worst, and then back it would come to you and you would know that everything was going to be right and the Red Riders beaten and driven out of the fields you loved. That was Harn Der, and that was Harn Der’s eldest son, Yellow Bull, who was making himself new lands out of the swamps to the south of Marob and had built his house there, not in the walled town. Harn Der sighed, and went home again moodily, thinking of his sons and all he was doing for them.

  Berris and his sister were out of sight by now; they were walking fast and Erif Der was out of breath and a little angry. She took an odd-looking, small wooden star out of the front of her dress and held it for a few yards, then stopped for a moment, panting, and touched her brother’s hand. It’s very hot, isn’t it, Berris?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose,’ said Berris vaguely, slowing down, and took off his coat as he walked and trailed it from his hand till it dropped. ‘Very hot,’ he went on, and began pulling at his shirt, and, ‘very hot,’ his sister echoed, looking at him gravely. He pulled the shirt over his head and his felt cap dropped off with it; there was a brown line at the base of his neck where he stopped being sunburnt. The belt went with the shirt; he started just a little at the chink of the clasps falling on the road, but he was looking at Erif Der. Still walking slowly, he stepped out of his loose trousers. ‘So hot,’ he said again, and there was a film of sweat on his skin. He pushed back the hair from his forehead, and suddenly behind Erif Der there seemed to be a face staring at him, two, three faces. He stared back at them. They were opening their mouths to say words to him, his sister faded and they came real, and all at once he noticed, first, that he was really quite cold, and then that he had nothing on and all his clothes were straggling in little heaps down the road where he had dropped them.

  He stood and swore at the starers till they ran—they were all poor men, and he, in spite of everything, Harn Der’s son. Then he went up to Erif Der; she had her mouth tight shut and her cheeks pink; she tried to look him in the eyes again, but he was too angry for her now. Tick up my clothes,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t!’ said Erif Der, getting pinker.

  ‘Yes you will,’ said her brother, and got her by the two plaits. She screamed and hit out at him, but he swung her away by her hair. Tick them up,’ he said.

  She went and got them without a word, and threw them down at his feet; she was too sore and angry to cry. ‘You beast, Berris!’ she said, ‘I’ll make you sorry for that!’

  Berris recovered his temper with his trousers. ‘No, you won’t,’ he said, ‘I can always pull your hair and you can’t always magic me, so it won’t do you any good in the long run.’ She kicked his coat and said nothing. ‘Little goose,’ he went on, ‘what did you do it for? Suppose Tarrik had seen?’

  ‘Well, let him!’ said Erif Der. ‘Let him! Then no one can say he didn’t know what I can do!’

  ‘Oh,’ said Berris, ‘so that’s what you’re after. My belt, please. No, pick it up. Pick it up! So you want Tarrik to know?’

  ‘Tarrik does know! I’m going home. I shall tell father you hurt me!’

  Berris caught her by one arm: ‘Baby! You come with me to the forge. Come and blow the fire for me. Erif, I’m making something—something exciting. A beast. Come on, Erif.’

  ‘Is Tarrik going to be there? Is he? Let go, Berris!’

  ‘Very likely. Erif, you are shiny when you’re so cross. There, that’s better. Are you coming?’

  ‘I won’t answer till you let me go.’

  He dropped her arm. She rubbed it against her cheek for a moment, then nodded and went down the street towards the forge.

  Berris Der unlocked the door, taking a little time over it, because he had made the lock himself and was proud of it: the key was like a little stag with mad horns. He left the door open and unfastened the shutters from inside. Erif Der went to the fire and raked away the earth that had been banked round it the evening before: it was still alive and stirred redly under her breath as she fed it with dry chips. She leaned to the bellows. ‘Why have you got to do that?’ asked Berris. ‘Can’t you make the fire obey?’ Erif Der shook her head: ‘I don’t know enough about fire,’ and she turned her back on him to get a purchase on the bellows handle. Berris was at another of his own locks now; it was on a great oak chest, bound with forking straps of silver-inlaid bronze. He took something out, and laid it carefully on the embers, which throbbed white and red with heat under the bellows. After a time he called her to look.

  She stood away from him, watching. There was a small, queer, iron horse, twisted and flattened, biting his own back; he was angry and hammer-marked all over; his mane shot up into a flame; his downward jammed feet were hard and resisting; the muscles of his body were ready to burst out. Be
rris Der laid him on the anvil and began hammering to a rhythm, one, two on the horse, three with a solider clink on the iron of the anvil. The horse twisted still more; fresh hammer marks beat out the old—the substance seemed less and the movement more; every moment he became less like the tamed horses of fenced pastures; and more like something wild in the mind, beaten madly by the violences of thought. The glow died out of him. The blows stopped suddenly; he was back in the fire, and his watchers at work, thinking of him. Then again the anvil. Berris chanted in time with the hammer, tunelessly: ‘Horse, horse, horse.’ At a point of the fantastic he stayed, the hammer half raised. ‘Well?’ he said. She came nearer, tracing the horse shape half unconsciously in the air with one finger. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘I expect he is the best thing you have done?’ ‘Yes, but how do you know?’ ‘Not any way you’d like. Ask Tarrik.’ Her brother did not answer, but stayed still, his lips pursed, watching his queer little horse as it lay there with the light on it, the centre of the forge; he made the movement of touching it, but could not really, because of the heat in the iron.

  There was a tapping on the open door of the forge; Berris looked round, half angry at being disturbed, half pleased at having someone fresh to admire his work. Erif Der stepped back one pace and sat down on the floor beside another chest which stood between the fire and the window. ‘Come in!’ said Berris, smiling at his horse; ‘come and look.’

  A man came in out of the sunshine and stood beside Berris, one hand on his shoulder. ‘So!’ he said, ‘you have something new?’ And he stood with his head a little on one side, looking at it. He was older than Berris, tall and graceful, with long, broad-tipped fingers, bare legs, and dark, curly hair; he was clean shaven and his eyes and mouth showed what was going on in his mind. His clothes looked odd and bright in the forge: a short, full tunic of fine linen, light red bordered with deeper red, and a heavy mantle flung round him, one end caught in his belt, the other over his shoulder and hanging thickly and beautifully from his arm. He had thin sandals on his feet and moved cautiously, afraid of knocking against some hot metal.

  ‘What do you make of it, Epigethes?’ said Berris Der, speaking shyly in Greek.

  The other man smiled and did not answer at once; when he spoke it was gravely, paternally almost, though he was not so very much older than Berris. ‘Very nice,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t think so!’ said Berris quickly, flushing, frowning at his horse. ‘It isn’t!’

  The Greek laid a hand kindly on his shoulder: ‘Well, Berris, it’s rough, isn’t it?—harsh, tortured?’

  ‘Yes—yes—but isn’t that, partly, the hammering?’

  ‘Of course. What have I always told you? You must work on the clay first till you get out all these violences. And then cast.’

  ‘But, Epigethes, I hate clay! It’s so soft, such a long way from what I want. And then, there’s the time it takes, with the wax and all—and when it’s done I’ve got to scrape and file and chip and fill in nail holes!’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Epigethes soothingly, ‘but you can always come to me for the casting: any time you like. I would tell my man, and you would have nothing to do but leave the model with him.’

  ‘Yes, but—’ said Berris again, and then suddenly, ‘Oh, it’s more than that! Whatever I did, you wouldn’t like it! I can’t make my things right, I never shall!’ He looked down at the shape on the anvil; he hated his little horse now.

  Epigethes sat down on the bench; still he had not seen Erif Der. ‘Berris,’ he said, ‘I’ll make you an offer. I can teach you, I know I can teach you! You have the hands and eyes—everything but the spirit. There—forgive me, Berris!—you are still a barbarian. No fault of yours: but I can cure it. Come and work with me for six months, and no one will know that you are not a Hellene born.’ But Berris Der was getting more and more gloomy; all the joy had faded out of his horse; he saw nothing but its faults, its weaknesses; he lost all pride and assertion, could not hope to be anything but a failure; he shook his head. ‘No, but I promise you!’ said Epigethes. ‘I swear by Apollo himself! And all I ask is what you can give me easily, this pure northern gold of yours, the weight of a loaf of bread, no more. And not coined, not to spend on foolishness, but to use as an artist, to make into beauty! Like this, Berris’—he put his hand into the breast fold of his mantle—‘and I am sure you could do as good if once you had the spirit.’

  Berris bent over to look. It was a gold plaque in low relief, a woman’s head bowered in grape tendrils, with heavy, flowing lines of throat and chin, female even in the gold, and exquisite, minutely perfect work on the grapes—those vines that had been worked on over and over again by generations of Greek artists, till they knew for certain which way every tiniest branchlet should go. But it all meant something different to Berris Der, something worshipful, the impacted art tradition of Hellas: for a poor barbarian to stare at and admire, but never to criticize, oh no, not criticize. He took it in his hands; how different it was from his horse, how well Epigethes must have known just what it was he wanted, and exactly how to get it! And he would be able to make things like this, if once he gave himself up to the Greek, gave his hands and powers as tools for the other to work with. He would make—as one should, one clearly should!—soft, lucid shapes, nature beautified, life in little, sane, unfantastic.

  He went to the chest again and took out something else, half of a gold buckle, beaten into a gorgon’s head, full face, with staring eyes. He passed it to Epigethes, rather roughly. ‘Is that better?’ ‘But of course!’ said the Greek, surprised, holding it up to the light. ‘No one need be ashamed of this. The style is coming; why, it is like a boss on the big vase I am making now. You will be an artist yet! When did you make it?’ Berris Der looked at the ground. ‘I went to your house a week ago,’ he said, ‘when you were with the Chief. I saw your vase; I measured the heads on it. This is a copy.’ And he snatched it back and shoved it into the chest, trembling a little.

  ‘Why not?’ said Epigethes, ‘between friends? You cannot do better than copy me for the next half-year. It will train your eye, and everything else will follow. Come again when I’m there: any time. I doubt if your Chief wants to see me again!’

  ‘Tarrik! Why not?’

  ‘Oh,’ Epigethes smiled, a little self-consciously, ‘I’m afraid he does not care for my work. I thought he might, having some Hellene blood himself. But no: you, the pure Scythian, you are more nearly Athenian than he.’

  Berris was sad, he wanted to justify the Chief—and yet—‘I wish he liked them; but perhaps he will some day. Me more Athenian … Oh, do tell me about Athens again!’

  Epigethes laughed. ‘Some day you shall come there with me and see all the temples and theatres and pictures and everything! You shall fall in love with all the goddesses and try to pick the painted roses, and you will forget that you once twisted iron into ugly shapes.’

  ‘Oh, I wish I could come!’ said Berris, ‘I do so long for Hellas!’ And he coloured and looked out of the window, thinking what a barbarian he must seem. But about Tarrik—‘Why did the Chief not like your work, Epigethes? How could he help it? What did he say?’

  ‘Oh, he said a great many things, foolish mostly. But it makes difficulties for me. I had hoped, if he cared for my things, laid out some of his treasures on these—perhaps!—more lasting treasures, I might have been able to stay here for a long time, teaching you some of it. But now—well, I am not a rich man.’

  The Greek glanced at his plaque again, then folded it up in a square of linen and put it back. Berris Der went over to the wall and unlocked a tiny metal door, heavily hinged, that opened with a certain difficulty. Epigethes turned his head tactfully away. Berris took out a solid lump of gold, about the size of an apple. ‘I meant to work on it,’ he said, ‘but you—you are worthier. Take it. Oh please, take it!’

  The Greek shook his head. ‘How can I? My dear boy, I can’t take your gold like this.’

  But Berris held it out to him imploring
ly. ‘Oh, I do want you to stay! It’s mine, my very own, do take it!’

  Epigethes seemed to make up his mind. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘if you will come and take lessons from me.’

  ‘Oh I will!’ cried Berris, ‘and you shall teach me to be a Hellene!’

  ‘If your Chief will let me!’ said Epigethes, feeling the golden lump with his finger-tips.

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’ And then Berris had a brilliant thought: ‘Oh, Epigethes, you must go to my father. He’ll buy your things—after I’ve spoken to him. And my brother, down in the marshes, I’ll take you there. Will you start teaching me soon?’

  ‘Tomorrow if you like. Walk with me to the corner of the street, won’t you? Let me see your keys, Berris; you made them, I expect? Still crude, you see.’

  They walked out together. When they were quite gone, Erif Der got up and went over to the anvil; the horse was nearly cold; she stared at him with lips pursed, poked him here and there, turned him over. Then she shrugged her shoulders and went back to her corner. She had a handful of little metal scraps, bronze and copper and iron; she arranged them on the floor in patterns. Or perhaps they arranged themselves, while she sang to them, a tiny, thin song in the back of her throat.

  Berris Der came back to his forge looking very grown up and determined. He took up his tongs. ‘Blow the fire!’ he told his sister. She began, then stopped, one hand on the bellows. ‘You aren’t going to change your horse?’ she asked. But, ‘Blow!’ he half shouted at her, ‘I want it hot, melting hot!’ And he threw on more wood. She started blowing, with long, steady strokes from the shoulder; twice she spoke to him, but he did not answer. He took his biggest hammer, a great, heavy, broad-headed thing, and propped it against the anvil. The logs flared and glowed and crumbled into white heat; the little iron horse lay there till he was red all over, and the girl’s back ached from the bellows. ‘So!’ said Berris, and she stopped, and straightened herself with a sigh of relief.