The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  The thing rebounded round the room, from one mind to another. The women knew now what sort of a sacrificial beast their mistress had killed. They clung sickly on to the hangings, fell on to hands and knees at the bottom of the wall of the room, crept and covered their ears. Erif’s cousin wondered wildly whether she must run between them, let the Chief kill her if need be—But Tarrik went over to Erif and sat beside her and began kissing her. His eyes were trying to reach hers. After a time she seemed to understand what he was doing.

  Murr went back to the house where he had lived since he had been in Marob. Now Sardu was dead, who was the only one that could conceivably have helped him. The Spring Queen had thrown her knife at him; she would hunt him down like a beast. He supposed she was hunting him down now. He did not know if it would be the guards or her own crabs who would be doing the hunting. Either way he would be caught. He got a rope, climbed, made fast, and jumped. Nobody found his body until evening, and then it would just have been buried in the yard, least said soonest mended, only someone told a man who told Black Holly, and he happened to remember that this had been one of Yellow Bull’s men. So after a time the news got round to Tarrik and at last to Erif Der. She went across the town to Disdallis, heavy with the news. Disdallis had heard already both about that and about Sardu; remembering what Erif had told her one warm evening of the boat in the marshes, she put two and two together, and when she saw Erif coming to her house guessed them quickly into four. She sent the woman who had been weaving with her out of the room, and had her arms open ready for Erif. After a time Erif looked up from her sobbing and said: ‘But why did he kill himself! Why, why?’

  Disdallis said: ‘He thought you were angry. He thought he would die a worse death if he were taken. But what does it matter? You are the Spring Queen. He was only a herdsman.’ She stroked Erif’s hair and rubbed her cheek against the Queen’s cold cheek.

  ‘I would not have killed him,’ said Erif Der. ‘I would rather have lain with him.’ She went on: ‘He was afraid of me. I was unkind to him. I wish now I had been kind. The Spring Queen should be kind.’ She thought of the boat in the marshes and Murr’s groping hands that were now stiff. She had no definite custom to go on. For it was said that in old days the Spring Queen belonged to all the men of Marob for them to work their magic on. At the new moons of spring she had lain with the householders in green furrows and flax fields for the sake of the seasons. But now this did not happen; since then the Corn King had gathered so much power and violence into himself that he counted for all the men of Marob with the Spring Queen, and because of that, and because he was also the chief, the war-leader, none of them now dared to force her nor even to entreat her except in the name of the whole community at Plowing Eve. Yet there was nothing alien in the thought that the Spring Queen should be taken by any man. If this was followed by anger, that was the affair of the man and the Chief. She herself could not be reproached. Surely she could do nothing but good by being kind! Surely she was making it easier for the rain and warmth to come, for the corn to spring, for beasts and women to breed! Surely she was making peace in the household of Marob!

  She should have been kind. Marob wanted it. Her own body wanted it. She had wronged the life behind her body and Murr’s. Ah wrong, wrong, the thing Sphaeros had talked about, dear Sphaeros, telling them about the way of Nature and how one should always follow it! Now she was bitterly and deeply ashamed, more than she could ever explain to Disdallis, or to Tarrik. One way and another her body and mind were as bad as Tarrik’s now, and besides she had done her bad things more reasonably, less on the impulse of the moment. She was worse tangled than even he was.

  Yet, for the moment, she would not consider the tangle; she had not the strength. She could and must wait until her baby was born. Being a woman, she was allowed that much delay, even by her own conscience. Also, she had some tough, non-rational idea at the back of her head that possibly with the birth of her baby, with that terrific interruption and test of life, it might perhaps all be wiped out and made clean again.

  Later on her cousin told her that the man had been prowling round the Chief’s house for days before, looking up at the windows, hiding and watching. He did no harm, so they had not said anything about him. He looked like a man under a spell. Erif was angry that she had not seen him, angry with her women and with herself. He should have been real enough to see! He had been hers, but Sardu had been the one to find him and talk to him. He had belonged last and most to Sardu. She would never be able to find out if he had talked to Sardu about the boat in the marshes.

  Failing Murr, it was Erif herself who went to fetch Essro and tell her that she could come back, that the Chief was no longer hungry for Yan. She rode very easily this time, with Black Holly and his men as well as half her own women. At night they pitched a striped and embroidered tent for her in the middle of flowers. After a time they sent a messenger and Kotka came to meet them, looking very down-hearted. Erif told him the news and said she must have a boat. ‘Essro is at the far end of the secret road,’ said Erif, ‘beyond where it has got to yet.’ Kotka looked at her and his eyes widened slowly and he pushed a hand through his hair. ‘As you were saying it,’ he said, ‘I wondered whether she could be there. But why didn’t I look there before?’

  She found it very difficult to remember her way to Essro’s island and went wrong several times. She wished she could summon Murr to guide her back, but she had not that power. She did not think that anyone of Marob had it in her time, though it used to be done not so many years back. But at last she got there and persuaded Essro that it was true and she must really bring Yan home. He had grown tremendously, and howled at Erif when she tried to lift him. He had forgotten her altogether. They left the goats and sheep on the island; it was easily big enough for them. When the secret road got there it would find them or their descendants. Essro did not come back to the town of Marob for a long time; she stayed on at the farm and sometimes got very frightened; she always kept a boat ready to fly in just in case Tarrik changed his mind. She could not get happy anyhow; she had been married young to Yellow Bull and her marriage was in some way the thing she measured everything against. It was dreadful not to be married. Tarrik had broken it and she would not see him again—not yet, at least. And Erif Der thought she was right.

  Kotka came back still very angry with Disdallis, because, although of course he was delighted that it had all ended so well, he was not going to stand being interfered with by her. But when he got to his house he found that she had just been sent for to one of the out-grazing herds where there was trouble, the cows refusing, as they sometimes do, to suckle their calves. He followed her there, but arrived when she had already begun the rite, so stayed behind the ring of cattle-men to watch. She went up to one of the calves which was lying on the grass, with sides fallen in and legs sprawling weakly from hunger. Its mother was grazing quietly with her back to it, a little way off, completely regardless of its miserable and now very faint bleatings. Disdallis crouched beside it, opened its mouth, blew down its throat, and spoke some words. Then she stood up and talked to the cow. After a time the cow turned round, walked back to the calf and stood chewing and blowing while it sucked her. The first time it was so weak that Disdallis had to hold it up. She did the same with the other cows and calves, and walked back to the cattle-men with the halter of the heifer which she had been given as her payment. She saw Kotka and smiled at him droopingly, rather tired with her day’s work. He asked her again, as he had done before, how she did it; but she could not explain, except that they were home cattle, part of the Marob herd, food for her man and children. That was how her life was joined to theirs and why she had power over them. She did not think she could do it with strangers’ cattle. Then she told Kotka how Tarrik had met her in the flax market and what he had said. It was very disquieting, and they went about cautiously for several weeks. But Tarrik did and said nothing more; he was all smiles to them both. By the time they had finished all their talking it
was too late for Kotka even to be very angry with Disdallis.

  Riders went west and north-west to find Harn Der. The inlanders who came to Marob in trade were told to pass word through the forest that he and his household might come back. The Council were glad that after this bloody and alarming spring, summer had come so well to the Corn King. It would be splendid to have them both, reconciled, for the good of Marob and the harm of Marob’s enemies; one against famine, the other against the Red Riders. Erif Der said nothing. She looked forward to seeing Gold-fish and Wheat-ear again. The rest must wait. She would not think about Harn Der until after her baby was born. She would not let whatever it was that she intended take shape until after that.

  Just before midsummer Harn Der and his waggons came back to Marob. Tarrik rode out to meet him. The old man was smiling in his beard; he greeted Tarrik with the salute to the Chief and then a hard handshake. He seemed all one piece with his horse, his bow and silver-plated quiver, the axe in his belt, his helmet of gold and bronze, and his short iron sword. His body was only one more thing that he used, as a weapon or for his pleasure. The two children of his body were tall and rosy, perched on big horses. The waggons were full of fine forest pelts, bear and deer and marten and ermine; pairs of stags’ horns, painted in his colours, were nailed along the ridge poles, and bunches of boars’ tusks and lynxes’ claws dangled from the axles. He had a piece of beautiful clouded amber to offer to the Chief, the kind of thing which would be much praised in Marob. Yes, it had been a fine holiday for Harn Der!

  But Tarrik had expected this; he was prepared to meet it with an equally elaborate pretence game of his own. What he had not expected was to see Harn Der, in the moments between the smiles and the easy talk look suddenly for a breath old and unhappy and beaten, hurt to the roots of his soul. His power and honour were much diminished, his hopes which he had worked at so long and patiently were unfulfilled, and he could see as well as anyone that they never could be fulfilled now, even if Gold-fish grew up to be another Yellow Bull; his wife and his eldest son were dead; another son had gone right away, perhaps for ever; his eldest and dearest daughter—well, who could say? Not he, not Tarrik, not even perhaps Erif herself. It was a nasty sort of tangle, enough to make a man feel old. Tarrik had meant to tease him, to withhold news of Essro and Yan, make him think perhaps that the one grandchild was lost too; but after a short time he began to feel a horrid and disturbing sense of being himself in some way the same as Harn Der, in trouble too, in a worse trouble than the men of Marob knew. He was angry at not being able to tease Harn Der, but his silly, unsure mind kept jumping into the other man’s skin and hurting him from there! So Tarrik found himself gravely reassuring his father-in-law about the health of Yellow Bull’s son.

  Harn Der went back to his house and waited for Erif Der to come to it. He himself did not go to any but the most public parts of the Chief’s house, the halls where the Council and the feasts were held. She did not ask him to come nearer. But she sent for Gold-fish and Wheat-ear and gave them lovely sweets and things she had bought for them in Greece. Gold-fish was nearly as tall as she was now, and he could ride and shoot like a man and bear pain; he stuck one of her long pins into his arm to show her. Wheat-ear liked seeing that; she turned pink and stuck her tongue out; but it made Erif feel sick. Gold-fish had a hawk of his own, as Berris used to have; he understood them. These were the eye-teeth of his first wolf; this was a heron’s egg; he had climbed so high he had almost forgotten what the ground was like, and the big herons had tried to jab his face; he had killed a man already, one of the inlanders who had come thieving round the waggons.

  Wheat-ear was getting a big girl too! Erif couldn’t accustom herself to it. The little sister was growing up, her shape was beginning to change; she wasn’t a soft baby any more, but a long, budding thing, half-way to a woman. Erif was shy of her till she saw it was mostly appearance; Wheat-ear was unconscious of it herself; she thought about the same animals and games and things she was learning, as she always had; she was not interested in her own growing up or what might be going to happen in her mind or body. She was pleased that Erif was going to have a new baby; she seemed to have forgotten about the one who had been killed—or, as she must have thought, died, as babies do. And she liked being in the Chief’s house and seeing everything; she rummaged about in her sister’s big chests full of things and tried on all her dresses that did not belong to special occasions. Erif Der was quite happy about those two. Whatever happened they would not be much disturbed: they were too deep in the life and peace of Marob to have very much that was their own and separate and vulnerable.

  A few days after Harn Der came back, Tarrik had a letter from his Aunt Eurydice in Rhodes. When they gave it to him he did not know whether he wanted to read it or burn it. He took it with him to a meeting of the Council, crumpling it down inside his coat. When he brought it out again he found that Erif’s warm star which had stopped burning him, had scorched a hole right through the thick Egyptian paper and loosened the thread which had kept it fast. He read then that his Aunt Eurydice had wondered whether to write to him all through the bright, cool months of her Rhodian winter; she had hoped he understood now why she had acted as she did (and yet she did not hope too much, for perhaps it was better for him not to understand if he was happiest so—though in heart so far now from her who had been almost a mother to him!). There were wide seas between them, and there should be peace. If he did at all understand, would he force or pray Harn Der’s daughter not to go on tormenting her!

  She went on to speak of books she had read, objects which she had bought, a garden with a fountain and myrtles, sunnier and stonier than her garden at Marob. And the pale bodies of swimmers: a different sea to the Euxine. She said little of her husband. Tarrik smoothed the letter out and took it to his wife.

  She looked at the scorched hole and then read it to herself. ‘Well?’ she said, and then: ‘I suppose you do understand everything she wants you to understand by now, Tarrik?’

  ‘What is happening to her?’ asked Tarrik, not answering.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Erif. ‘I suppose—yes, you see she left some of her dresses behind here. It was a wet magic, because of going over-sea. It must really be odder for her husband than for her!’ She laughed a little, but not very prettily.

  Tarrik waited till that was over and then said: ‘How long will it last, Erif?’

  ‘It will probably dry itself out in time, unless I do it again. I have some dresses still. I was not sure how it would work, whether I was being clever enough, but it seems to have done as well as I hoped. I like being able to do things.’

  ‘But are you going to do it again?’

  ‘I expect so,’ said Erif Der. ‘After all, why not?’

  Chapter Five

  MIDSUMMER DAY WAS always a kind of triumph, a thing shared between the people and the land, and this good year more than ever. Although, afterwards, life sloped down into longer nights and shorter days, there was no sadness about this feast; the sun would go on getting hotter and hotter for another month; if harvest nights were longer they were warm and starry and better for sleeping out in the fields. The sun had worked well for Marob; every house had jars full of honey already; the first crop of hay had been cut and the second was thickening and deep green. Fleeces had been heavy and clean. The fishing-boats had done well. The inlanders had come peacefully and respectfully with trading goods. Everywhere there were crops and beasts almost ready for the big markets. The year was working up through midsummer to harvest.

  There were always a good many foreigners at this feast. They joined in the processions and songs; it was a good thing. They were part of the prosperity. All the Marob families who were out in the plain with their waggons had harnessed up the oxen or horses and come in for the few days round about midsummer. It was always arranged that there should be a market just afterwards. They were all gay and sunburnt and delighted to see one another, pleased with themselves and their neighbours and especia
lly with seeing and smelling the sea again after so many green weeks in the un-salt inland country. The servants they had left behind had scrubbed and painted their houses till the winter feeling had quite gone, and now stood at the doors to welcome their masters back. The winter sweethearts hung about the doors, too, to whistle and throw flowers and watch critically to see whether their girls had grown too fat on butter and fresh meat. And the heads of households had always plenty to talk to one another about.

  As soon as the midsummer sun rose everybody got up and began hanging out the garlands they had made over-night; they were fastened across the streets from house to house and in great swags along the sides of the flax market; where the sun struck on them they dried up and petals shrivelled and dropped, but by that time they had been handled and admired and complimented and their gaiety had got into the day; they had become stuff for lovely bonfires! People wore flowers on their heads and shoulders. Children came running back from the fields with basketfuls for every one to take. Most of them brought a few to the Chief’s house and played a game of throwing small, tight posies of field flowers up onto the window ledges. The whole place smelt sharp and sweetish of moon daisies and hawkweed and yellow bed-straw and polleny grass.

  It was from the Chief’s house that the procession started. It went all through Marob, up and down the streets under the garlands, noisily and at great length. It was the best of the feasts for gay noise and colour and the smell of flowers. People had wicker cages full of wild birds, which they let go when the procession passed their own house-doors, for the birds to tell the news of midsummer all over the land. If they were ordinary small brown birds, they had red patches painted on their wings. It was not lucky to shoot those message birds afterwards until the colour had worn off.

  First of all in the procession came a great many children with masks of animals which they had made themselves, rats and mice and weasels and dogs and goats and birds. They pretended to worry and eat one another. That was always great fun. Then came a piebald cow with one crooked horn and lots and lots of flowers fastened on to her head and back. Then came the Corn King on foot and dancing, with a long coat, white and striped, and leading a bear cub from the forest on the end of a chain. The bear had been given fermented honey before they started, and it always danced well, at first anyhow; sometimes it snapped, but as it was only a young cub nobody got really hurt, and the Corn King’s thick coat and boots kept it off him. No one knew what the bear was for, except that everybody danced at midsummer, and, as bears can be made to dance, why not bears too! Afterwards it was turned loose outside the town, and the boys and girls threw stones at it till it limped away towards the forest.