The Corn King and the Spring Queen. Naomi Mitchison
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ERIF DER SAT DOWN again on her bed, and wondered if it was true. Supposing it was—it complicated things. She had decided that she was probably going to have a baby, but no one else knew, unless possibly Essro, whom she had asked, as casually as possible, about signs. But that was not so very important if—if this other thing was true; she would not want to tell him. By and bye her women came in to dress her. She never liked that, but the great cone and veil were difficult to put on for herself, and she had to wear them today for the feast after the Council meeting. Her father would be there; she might have to speak to him and Yellow Bull. Her dress was of thick felted wool, so stiff that it stood right away from her feet; it was embroidered all over with spirals of yellow cord, and she had a ring on every finger. That morning she looked rather pale, so they put her on some colour—a round, red spot on each cheek. There was nothing to do till the feast-time.
She sent the crabs down to the beach, and then she took the queen’s keys and unlocked the treasure-room and went in, with lighted torches to stick in the sockets on the pillars. All along three walls there were bronze-bound chests, and hanging above them dresses and armour sewn with jewels and flat gold scales, and strung like onions from the rafters gold-faced skulls made into devils and guardians, with coral drops dangling from their necks in the way blood does when it is cold and sticky. There was another big, standing devil, too, in the middle of the room, facing the door, with black glass eyes and real teeth, and strings of tinkling egg-shells between his hands and the walls. But he would know the queen’s keys, and Erif Der need not be afraid to touch him, nor to stand with her back to him, rummaging in the chests, choosing herself a new wand of tapered jade and a necklace of jade and lapis lazuli, very heavy and cold, to wear at the feast. When she was done, it was time to go to the hall, with all her women behind her, holding up branches of silver and coral and peacocks’ feathers.
All rose to their feet as she came in and took her place at the north end of the table, with Tarrik at the south end. She sat in a very high chair, with steps and a pointed back of streaked marble. On the steps at each side was a girl child, one with tame doves sitting on a green bough, the other with a double flute, and a soft, monotonous tune to play, something to fill the deeps of Erif’s mind while she was talking in the shallows. Round her were women, wives and daughters of the chief men in Marob, stiff and not very real in their hard, embroidered dresses, with the coloured cones on their heads, banded with gold and jewels. Yersha sat in a chair much like Erif’s; she had powder and paint thicker than usual to hide the black rings round her eyes and the slight shrivelling back of tired lips. It seemed also as if she were finding it hard to keep still, as if something was suddenly pricking her from time to time.
Erif talked to the women and saw that the food and drink were plentiful, and graciously took and praised the small customary gifts they brought her, gay-coloured flowers made with waxed threads and silver wire and beads: because it was thought that this was a bad time of year for the Spring Queen, and she must be helped now, or she would not help Marob at Plowing Eve. While they were still eating it grew dark, and even when the lamps and torches were all alight, she could scarcely see down the table as far as Tarrik. She could not, at least, tell what he was talking about. He seemed excited, though, leaning forward, beating on the table, throwing himself back to laugh, open-mouthed. Sphaeros was close to him, little Sphaeros whom she half liked in spite of everything, and her father and brothers, all very fine and glittering. Once or twice Berris, who was nearest, had tried to catch her eye, but she always looked away in time. But if only she knew what they were talking about! This going away … She noticed, interestedly, that her heart was paining her, heaving suddenly outwards and then caught again, as if a hand were squeezing it. At first she thought that this must be someone else’s magic, and angrily set her own on guard. But it was only herself.
At the end of the feast, as drink and talk and music began to break down the set pattern of behaviour in every one’s mind, the men and women moved about, laughing with each other, though nothing more, because it was the Chief’s house. Erif sat on in her chair, between the two girls, grimly, thinking that this way her father would have no chance of whispering. Sometimes she could hear Tarrik’s voice—she listened for it. He had got up, was walking about, kissing any of the girls he fancied, lightly and easily. She wondered whether she minded this or not; on the whole perhaps a little—a very little. It was the other thing she would mind: if he went really away so that she could not even see him!
Berris came down the side of the hall, walking along the bench, just under the torches. The big room fitted itself together into a pattern, a criss-cross of yellow light in fat wedges, a layer of people’s heads, moving and tiny, a layer of glow, hardened here and there to torch or lamp, and a last, most beautiful layer of hollowness and faint shimmer, and the great cross-beams reaching up into darkness and the heavy night pressing on the roof tiles of the Chief’s house. The square heads of the men, the pointed heads of the women, ranged themselves exquisitely under his eyes; and there at the end was his sister, up in her big chair, pretending to be Spring Queen, with her white, smooth child’s forehead, and soft lips. He came towards her quietly and leant over her chair before she was aware of him. She was much more startled than she ought to have been; her eyes went narrow and then wide with fear. ‘It’s only me,’ said Berris; ‘I haven’t seen you—for days. Tell me, is it true Tarrik is going away?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said very softly, looking straight in front of her.
‘He was talking—and every one else—this evening. But he’s not sure. It’s as if he were doing it half against his will. Well, Erif, I suppose that’s you?’
‘Tell father what you like,’ she said. ‘Is he glad?’
But Berris shook his head. ‘We do not talk of this now. I go my way by myself. Only—take care, Erif, I think father is doing without you now.’
She turned her head quickly, the shadows shifting across her face. ‘Doing—what? Berris, who else is with him?’
‘Tarrik knows the Council better than I do,’ said Berris, low. Then: ‘I wonder if he is really going to Hellas—again.’
‘You would like to go with him, Berris.’
‘Yes.’
‘And so would I,’ said Erif surprisingly. ‘I should like to know if it is really Epigethes or Sphaeros.’
‘Yes,’ said Berris again, ‘but you would hate not being able to magic them, Erif, whichever it was.’
‘Magic,’ she said, sitting there, still and small, ‘my magic! I can’t help myself. I can’t be sure what’s going to happen any more than you can when you start thinking of a golden beast.’
‘Can’t you?’ said Berris, very close to her. ‘I thought you had more power than mine.’
Erif looked down and round; suddenly she saw Apphé standing quite near to the other side of the throne, her head cocked like a hunched bird over her thick, brown-clothed body. ‘Yes,’ said Erif, rather louder, ‘I have got more power—as much as I choose to take.’
But Berris went out of the hall, unsatisfied, back to his forge. He often slept there now, rather than at his father’s house, sometimes with a slave-girl he had bought that autumn, an odd little savage, Sardu, brown and supple, from far north-east, beyond the Red Riders’ country, with a flat, bony face and sidelong eyes, very black. Now that Erif was with him so little, he made this girl blow the fire and sort the sweepings from his bench; he used to draw her often, and taught her to sing his own songs, which were too bad for anyone else to hear.
Erif Der managed not to speak to her father or Yellow Bull; she and her women left the feast long before the men, who stayed very late, talking