The Corn King and the Spring Queen. Naomi MitchisonЧитать онлайн книгу.
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.’
She knew she wanted to say something, but could not think what it was. Berris spoke for her. ‘But, father, what good will she get from all this? She is Spring Queen now, she has all the treasure of Marob if she chooses to call for it: suppose she doesn’t like to give all that up?’ And he glanced from her to the others, and back again; he was wondering a little what sort of Spring Queen Essro would make when Yellow Bull was Corn King.
‘I will give you anything you like, Erif,’ said Harn Der, ‘and your marriage shall be undone at once. You shall still have what power you choose—after all, you have more power now than any of us.’ He laughed, a little nervously. ‘In a year you will have forgotten all this. There is nothing to make you not forget, Erif?’
‘No,’ she said sharply, ‘I am not going to have a child—yet.’
‘All the more reason to finish quick,’ said her father.
By now all Marob was asleep except these four; they could hear nothing but the wind, and the wood-fire burning quietly beside them, and their own movements and voices. They dropped to whispering. Berris wanted to talk about a new idea of his, the way certain curves, running into certain other curves, gave him a feeling of sureness in the heart; but he knew his father and brother were not interested, and Erif Der was too deeply absorbed in some pattern of her own. Tarrik would have listened; Tarrik would have put it into words for him. But he could not talk to Tarrik these days without feeling such a traitor to all friendship, such a brute-beast, that he could not work for hours afterwards. He began to puzzle out the practice of his idea, not as an animal or a flower, but just as lines in the air, not bounded into a flat surface or the solid edges of wood or metal, but passing through one another like the cracks in a great crystal. As night wore on, it grew more dreamlike, less fixed, less possible to remember, and when the others spoke, their voices followed the curves, cutting each other’s paths, light for his sister and darker for the other two.
At dawn they were all awake still, and nothing had happened; the pile of things lay there in front of them, no smaller; the dead would not return. The slaves brought them in food and drink, but this time no full plate or cup to stand aside in case One came for it. Essro strayed in too, gentle and anxious, and sat by Yellow Bull; Erif Der went to the heap and took two or three small things of her mother’s, an embroidered coat, a pair of shoes, and a little box full of cowrie shells, some painted red, and small loose pearls. She pushed back the shutters; there was rain blowing past on the wind; she reached out her hand and it pricked her coldly, stinging the fresh scratches, and all at once she felt as if her heart was being pricked and pierced, and she began to cry bitterly, as she had never yet done in all the week since her mother had died. So she ran out, and back in the rain to the Chiefs house by the harbour, where one was never out of sound of the sea.
For three days that storm rose, beating in from the Black Sea, till all Marob felt salty with blown spray; then it lulled suddenly, but left the beginnings of winter behind it. There were scarcely any leaves left on the trees in the Chief’s garden, and the few late flowers seemed too much battered to revive again for any sun. Erif Der put on a long felt coat, lined with reindeer pelts, and walked in the garden with her box of cowries. She made a face, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, whenever she passed one of the Greek statues; the half-draped marble nymphs looked cold and silly. Before she had made up her mind what to do with the shells, she met Eurydice, whom she still thought of as Yersha, walking in the garden too, with her favourite maid Apphé, who was a hunchback, but pure Greek. Erif Der hated seeing Apphé; it frightened her to think of people being like that; she liked funny, twisted things made by her brother, half beasts and half men, but not living flesh. She tried not to show how uncomfortable and afraid it made her, because she hoped Eurydice did not know yet; but if and when she did, Erif thought, this much of her own power would go. Eurydice motioned the maid to go on; as she passed Erif Der stiffened, but did not draw back. ‘Are you sorry that the summer is over?’ she asked Eurydice.
‘Summer is not over yet,’ said the elder woman decidedly, and beckoned Erif to sit down on the seat beside her.
‘It seems like winter,’ said Erif softly; ‘look over there at the clouds—so grey—’
But Eurydice, who was not Yersha in her own garden, would not look up higher than the things she knew. ‘Child,’ she said, ‘I am not going to play games with you. And I do not think Charmantides will play games with you any longer.’
Erif Der spilled out the cowries on to her lap. ‘I like playing games,’ she said. ‘Will you help me to thread these shells, Aunt Yersha?’
But Eurydice’s lips tightened, and she swept the shells on to the ground and caught Erif Der by the shoulders and shook her. ‘You have bewitched my Charmantides!’ she cried. ‘Take care! I can see if he cannot. I tell you, if you hurt him, I shall hurt you more!’
Erif Der, cramped against the corner of the seat, pushed out at Yersha, her hard, hateful hands and face, but could not get free for a moment. ‘I have done nothing!’ she said. ‘I am Queen, not you! What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ said Yersha, almost spitting into her face, ‘that whatever you can do to your own barbarians, you cannot magic a Hellene!’
Erif Der got loose. ‘I shall tell Tarrik,’ she said. ‘I suppose he used to like you once, Yersha—before you got so old.’ She stooped and began to pick up her shells. Eurydice stamped the heel of her sandal on to the girl’s hand, and crushed one of the cowries; it seemed more adequate than words; an arrow scratch tore and began to bleed again. But Erif Der laughed. ‘Even suppose what you said were true, Aunt Yersha, how much Hellene are you?—in winter?’ But Eurydice turned and walked quickly up to the house, calling her maid in a high voice, careful not to look up at the sky, in case there were any clouds after all.
Among the cowries, Erif Der picked up a hairpin of Yersha’s, and laughed again; but her hand was sore all the same, and she wished she was out of the Chief’s garden and standing alone on the seashore in the cold, or down in the forge with Berris, making things—and not magic. She went over to one of the fountains and sat cross-legged on the ground beside it, dabbling her fingers and frowning; then she began threading the cowries. In a way she was glad that Yersha hated her as much as she hated Yersha: it was all simpler. When it came to an end, as it would soon, Yersha would be in her power. She thought of all sorts of amusing things that might be made to happen to her, with all the lively imagination of a young married woman against an old maid. Yes, Yersha would be sorry for stamping on her hand: quite soon now. And Tarrik?
As she sat there, Tarrik came out of the house; he had been talking with his aunt, and, in a way, he knew that she was right. He knew he had married a witch and must beware of her; he knew she was working against him somehow; and yet he could not quite connect her with anything that had happened, least of all Midsummer and Harvest. The more he tried to remember, the less certain he was of what had happened; some cloud had come over his mind, and she—she could take it away if she chose. Yet it had been his own doing at the beginning, and he was Chief and Corn King and whatever he did was right. Make her be different, then. He went over to the fountain; she had a long string of odd shells and she was playing with them, pulling them along the ground and pouncing on them like a wild kitten. He could not see her as quite grown up, nor, somehow, quite plainly; he rubbed his eyes. And he should have got used to his wife by now. Used to her and tired of her, he thought savagely, remembering his old love affairs, and stood still, considering her critically. Then he pulled off her fur cap and threw it away, and rubbed his hands in her hair; it was wonderfully soft and full of little ends; it tangled round his fingers. She reached up gently and caught his wrists, but he shook her off and picked up the string of shells and