Читать книгу The Corn King and the Spring Queen - Naomi Mitchison - Страница 10

Chapter Three

YELLOW BULL HAD ridden on ahead to warn his wife they were coming and bid her get her best food ready for them, and now Tarrik and Epigethes were quite alone in the afternoon, with the track stretching across the plain as far as they could see, in front and behind. In the distance, on the right, there was a flock of sheep grazing, but no shepherd in sight. Every now and then a large hawk would come circling near them, and sometimes they roused hares or grass rats from the tussocks beside their path.

Tarrik was riding a young horse that had never been properly broken; it shied at its own shadow and had already tried to bolt with him twice. But he was such a brilliant rider that it only made the day pass more amusingly, and now the horse was answering better to bridle and knee than it had in the morning. Epigethes was on the whole a bad rider, and out of practice; he was very stiff and sore, and far from Hellas. They did not talk much. Tarrik had started several conversations, but after a short time they always seemed to drop, or else something unpleasant would creep into them, a hint of too absolute power by the Chief, or Epigethes showing rather too much of that fear that was whispering painfully all round his heart, all the time, that had been there ever since the day the Chief of Marob had called him from the street, and afterwards he had tried to find a ship that was sailing … but there were none. He would have gone anywhere, to Olbia, to Tyras, north or south, given up all his plans; he offered fantastic prices; but no one seemed interested in him. And now—now this unknown fear was coming closer, he tried to keep his mouth and eyes still, knowing that this terrible Scythian would see any least movement, knowing exactly—so hard it is being even a bad artist—the slight flicker of pleasure that would go over the Chief’s face, watching his own pain.

Every mile or so they passed great patches of wild-rose bushes, very sweet, and covered with butterflies; they were going downhill almost imperceptibly. By and bye they began to see the spreading of the marshes in front of them, the deeper green of reeds, the steel blue of still waters curving among them. Soon they were near enough to be tormented by the mud-happy gnats and gadflies, their horses swerved and started and kicked and tried to roll. Epigethes was thrown once, and picked himself up with an aching head, and the feeling that the ground was getting softer and beginning to smell queer and rotten. There were plants with greyish, swollen leaves, and sometimes they saw the tracks of wild boar crossing their own way. They had to go carefully, keeping to the raised path; once they crossed a plank bridge and saw fish moving slowly over the black mud below them. Then the ground lifted a little to an island, and some large elm trees with cattle grazing under them. And over the ridge was Yellow Bull’s house, facing south over the unknown country, tarred wood and reed thatch, with byres at one side, and store-houses at the other.

The earth in the yard was not yet summer-hard, but at least they could pick their way dry-shod between the worst of the mud; Yellow Bull brought them into his hall and helped them to pull off their riding-boots. They could smell their supper nearly ready and even hear the hissing and bubbling of roast meat over the fire in the other room. In the meantime the women brought them water for hands and feet, and such wine as there was in the house—not good, but at least it drove the fear a little further from Epigethes, and helped him to talk and laugh and look about him.

Yellow Bull’s wife, Essro, was a small, pale-skinned woman, with eyes that seemed too big for her face; she lived mostly indoors, so as not to have to look at the marshes. She had always been good at domestic magic: her milk stayed sweet in hot weather, her stored apples never rotted, a bushel of flour went a long way with her. But she was easily frightened; she never tried to work magic on people, least of all on her husband, and the farm slaves found her easy to cheat. It was only very timidly that she dared say words over her own hair, even, to stop it falling out in the autumn, when there were mists creeping over the whole of their island, and she longed most for Marob town.

She waited on them at supper, very nervous of Tarrik; once she dropped a milk-jug and screamed, not very loud, but enough to hide the gasp of sheer terror from Epigethes. Afterwards she brought in torches and candles, and more wine. Yellow Bull drank little, but the others had their cups filled and refilled.

Tarrik had a strong head, but very much enjoyed getting drunk. He never got to the stage of completely losing control of his body, except at the three great feasts of the year, when, as Chief and Corn King he had led the rest in this, as in everything, and even then it was a drunkenness not even mostly of the wine and corn mead. But an hour or so of fairly steady drinking would just give him the necessary feeling of unreality, of separateness, of being able to stand apart and observe, and be free of mere human emotions.

And Epigethes found it was doing him all the good in the world; the fear retreated right into the back of his mind, till it was scarcely more than the tiniest black cobweb on the clear mirror of his perceptions. He began to feel again a Hellene among barbarians, amused at their odd habits and manners and clothes. Yellow Bull asked him if he was stiff with riding. He was. He wanted to explain that riding was not truly Hellenic, that it was better to run beautifully and exercise one’s own body rather than a mere brute’s—he sketched a few gestures, of running, disk-throwing, wrestling—a swimmer, even, with one arm raised for a perfect side-stroke … he grew a little mixed in his movements. But Tarrik woke up out of his detachment, brought spirit to body, to speech: ‘You swim?’ ‘But of course,’ said Epigethes loftily to the barbarian. ‘And dive? Wonderful! Our northern rivers are too cold.’

Epigethes tried to explain, tactfully—oh ever so tactfully, as befits a Hellene—that it was not because of the cold that no one practised swimming here, but because of their ridiculous clothes that muffled them up, kept them pink and modest like women, hid their riding bow legs. He, on the other hand, was proud of his body, would strip and swim and show them. Yes, that was it, they were all admiring him now, rightly and properly, as they should. … And then, somehow or another, there was night air falling coldishly and sanely on his face, damp grass underfoot, and that spider’s web of fear suddenly obscuring the mirror. … When he turned, the house was out of sight, they must have come a long way already. The moon was up, shining on water at each side, sleek mud, willows, flowering water plants. Words began to collect in his head: ‘Is this really the best time?’ spoken quite calmly, with a little laugh—yes, that was better, a little laugh to pass it off. ‘Tomorrow morning, say? Why, I’m half asleep, and I’ll bet you two are the same.’ But somehow they went on.

‘My road,’ said Yellow Bull suddenly; all three stopped. They were on a high bank, with a gentle fall on one side to tangled marsh, and on the other a creek, with a small boat moored in it, quite still. They went on a few yards; the bank ended abruptly, crumbled almost under their feet. There was nothing in front but a steep slope of mud, nine feet down, and then black water with only its surface reflecting the moon, just rippled, gurgling faintly as it mouthed its way past the mudbank, eating into it all the time inch by inch. ‘Now you shall dive beautifully,’ said Tarrik, standing on the edge with the moonlight catching the clasps of his coat and belt.

Epigethes looked backwards once. He could not run away; he did not know the path, and Yellow Bull did. Besides, he was too drunk—or had been—to get the full power out of his legs; it was a hard thing to be a Hellene and know that. And, after all, he had never been such a good runner as he pretended—only, in his head, among all the other shapes, the shape of himself as the athlete. He took his clothes off slowly; the web was matted all over the world now. For a moment he stood, stripped and rather beautiful in the moonshine. ‘Now, dive,’ said the Chief. Epigethes looked from him to Yellow Bull, but the other Scythian was quite impassive, in shadow; he seemed to have no eyes, nothing to appeal to. The first filming of a cloud began to cover the moon, the water looked worse. He gave one great, tearing sob, and dived.

In the dimming light those two on the bank could hardly see, yet plainly hear, the bubbles coming up out of the mud. But after some ten minutes the cloud passed from the face of the moon, and the water moved clearly below them; it was all as it had been, without Epigethes. Yellow Bull picked up the clothes and belt, and looked across at the Chief. ‘You meant him for my road?’ Tarrik nodded and turned and began walking back; suddenly he stretched his arms and laughed aloud in the night. ‘I was thinking of your sister,’ he said, but Yellow Bull frowned and went on solidly.

When they came back to the house, Essro was sitting upright at the table with two candles between her and the door. She looked at them coming in, and shivered, and went away. Yellow Bull put the things down on the table; there was a purse fastened to the belt, with two or three drawings and measurements in it, a list of names, and at least a dozen keys, some made very lightly of wire. ‘What were all these for?’ said Yellow Bull. ‘Not all his own, surely!’ ‘No,’ said Tarrik, ‘but we shall find locks for them,’ and he took them and put them into the pockets in his own belt. Then he stirred up the hearth fire and began throwing in the clothes. ‘The brooches—take care!’ said Yellow Bull, trying to pull them out of the stuff; but Tarrik threw them in with the rest. ‘You can rake them out tomorrow,’ he said, ‘they’ll be dead too, then.’ The next morning Tarrik got up and rode off, very early, while Yellow Bull was still dreaming about his road. The other horse stayed on the island; it was not really a very good one.

Tarrik rode straight north and then a little inland, keeping clear of the town. Sometimes there were crops, but more often pasture, or just rough land with scrub that was no use to anyone. Where the ground rose, there were sometimes a few trees, but all the forest lay right inland, four days’ riding from Marob; wherever there was a river, there would be swamp at each side of it, and he had to go carefully, marking the trackways and fords. As he got further north and east, the land was better, the soil sweeter and dryer. For nearly half a day he rode through the blue flax fields, seeing how well up the plants were, strong stemmed and clean. Sometimes there were tall patches of hemp, and later on that day he came to food crops, rye, barley, and some wheat. All the fields were guarded by children, in case anyone’s beasts strayed. Here, again, everything was looking strong and healthy in the sun; the blades were broad and deep coloured, the ears were big already. As he passed, Tarrik thought of himself as Corn King and was proud of what he and earth and sun had done among them; then he thought of the Spring Queen and the dance they had acted together in the middle of the ring on Plowing Eve; if that was to come real, he felt, so much the better for the corn. He rode slowly, so that all the lands he passed should get something from him, and slept securely at noon in beanfields and did not count the days that went by as he went north towards Harn Der’s land.

Sometimes there were orchards, fenced in with turf banks; the apples of Marob were in those days the sweetest in the world. In one or two places there were figs and pomegranates, very carefully grown and sheltered from the north. But these were only near farms or camping places, and Tarrik was keeping clear of these, except at night when he took supper and the best bed from the nearest place he saw, once as it happened a small and very dirty farm where he was half eaten by lice, and once the great tent of a landowner come out from Marob for the summer, one of his own counsellors, who had skins of good southern wine with him, and oil for washing, and clean linen. It was later on the same day that he came to Harn Der’s lands, which lay on the two sides of a very flat valley, with a stream going down from pool to pool in the middle and a wood of limes and oaks half-way up one slope. Here Tarrik slept the night, with the food and wine he had taken from the last place, under a lime tree, his saddle for a pillow. Leaning back against it, he could see through the tree trunks to the far slope, and the lights of Harn Der’s camp: the fires like big yellow stars, and at night the great peaked tents glowing faintly and queerly from the lights inside them. He did not sleep very much, partly because of the violent sweetness of the lime flowers, shedding layer on layer of scent about him, partly because he started dreaming of the bubbles in the mud and Epigethes wriggling formlessly like a white slug underneath, but mostly because, after this, to keep himself from seeing it again, he had begun to make pictures of Erif Der over there on the far side: of chasing her and catching her and handling her and playing with her all over, till by morning there was nothing for it but to ride and get her, herself. He cantered down and through a deep pool, splashing himself all over, but not much cooler by the end of it. They were only just stirring in Harn Der’s camp, it was still so early.

In the half dark of the women’s tent, Erif Der turned over sleepily. It was days since she had thought of Tarrik, but this morning, as soon as she woke, she found he had come into her head. She did not want him there; she sat up and peered about. At the far end of the tent she could see someone moving, her old nurse probably, reknotting the plaits of her sticky grey hair. But Wheat-ear, next her, was still asleep, charmingly curled up with her fists tucked under her chin. Erif Der blinked across at her small sister and called in a whisper; but Wheat-ear did not stir, so it must be little after dawn yet. Somewhere, right above her head in the great hollow dome of the tent, there were some big flies buzzing about, knocking against the sides; she could not see them. Someone slipped out past the curtain, and for a moment there was a breath of cool morning air. Erif Der pulled the blanket over her head and tried to go to sleep again.

The children had always loved this summer life, riding out, or driving in the big carts, singing and shouting, all in clean, light clothes to match the flowering plain. They had left winter behind; the house that had been getting dirtier and stuffier day after day for eight months, would stand open and be smoked out and scrubbed and painted with bright colours to welcome them again in autumn. They could eat the last of the old stored fruit and honey, be done with salt meat and the hard winter cheeses. Soon the sweet grass would be waving wide ahead of them, there would be fresh things to do and smell and eat and look at; suddenly they felt twice as alive.

For the first week or two they were always just mad, running about and rolling and playing, riding the colts and splashing in and out of the stream. Then they would settle down to summer. The women would find the best pool for their half-year’s washing, and a smooth slope for drying and bleaching; the men would be hunting, rounding up the young cattle and horses and branding them; Harn Der would ride gravely all about his fields and have long talks with his farm-people; and the two little ones, Gold-fish and Wheat-ear, made themselves a house of branches and took all their food there, and got more and more difficult to chase back to the tents at night.

Berris Der found that he was apt not to think about making anything for weeks at a time; he flew his hawks and hunted, and raced with the others on half-broken horses, for miles across the plain. Then suddenly, something would come into his head and he would begin drawing frantically, convinced that this was the best he had ever done. He had been like that the day before; now he was still asleep, among a litter of charcoal sticks and odd bits of linen with drawings all over them. He had seen two grass-cocks in their spring plumage, sparring with one another out on the plain; now he was making them into a pattern, with the sweep of their raised neck-feathers to balance the flare-up of their tails and spurs. Bronze, he thought of it; but that must be cast. He had been wondering what Epigethes would make of it—never mind, it was good! When he was back in Marob, he would go on with his lessons; he could, for that matter, ride back easily any time, stay a few days, and work with the Greek. It seemed less attractive now, but still, he could not drop it all till autumn. Epigethes might not be able to stay. Mentally, he cursed Tarrik for that. Here, at least, things would be better when his father’s plan came off: art would come into its own in Marob, and he would be the one to see to it. So he went to sleep, and dreamed of his cocks fighting, and the odd noise their bronze beaks made, clicking together.

By and bye, when the sun was up and only the shadows very dewy still, Erif Der, who had been half asleep, threw off her blanket and ran out, barefoot, in her linen shift. The servants were all busy, making the fires up again, cooking, bringing in the milk-pails. She sat down in the sun, outside the women’s tent, and began combing her hair; she liked doing this, for it was a comb she had magicked so carefully that it never pulled. When her hair was quite smooth she began plaiting it again, flicking it in and out of her clever fingers, admiring herself. She thought she ought to go on with the weaving of her wedding dress, but decided not to, there was no hurry on a day like this. She stretched herself, dropping the plait, breathing in huge mouthfuls of the sunny air, half thinking of getting Berris to come hunting with her; she loved hunting, much better than making wedding dresses. She began to wish the Red Riders would come again, just a few, so that she could shoot them.

Then she heard two or three sharp voices, and looking up to find what was the matter, what they were all pointing at, she saw Tarrik riding through the camp on a very beautiful, very nervous horse, that shied, terrified, at the fires and great tents. Tarrik himself was looking very big. She got to her feet, and found that for some reason her heart was thumping violently and painfully; she put both hands over her breast to quiet it. There was a little buzzing in her head and finger-tips. Tarrik came up close to her; she was fascinated by the twitching, jumping body of the horse, the pawing of its hoofs on the dry turf. Quite still herself, she watched intently Tarrik’s hands on the reins, with an acuteness, an accuracy of vision that might have been her brother’s. The grip shifted to the right hand only; Tarrik leant over and picked her up like a rabbit; she felt the linen of her shift tear all along the seam, and screamed. But by that time she was on the horse and Tarrik had loosed the reins; she held on to the mane with both hands, half across its neck, her balance all wrong, with nothing in her mind but the flying ground, the danger. Then Tarrik pulled her up, shifting back in the saddle himself, so that she had a little room, and holding her tight against him.

They were out of the camp; for a minute or two Erif Der was too dazed to tell which way. All down one side she was sore and bruised; she was being treated as a thing, not a person! Tarrik was saying something; she squared her shoulders and butted her head back sharp against his chin; he squeezed her so hard that she almost cried, not quite, though. She began to work her free hand in under the other that he held so tight against her, under her shift, finger-tips groping for the star. She felt its chain, the pin that fastened it, one point. She was all screwed up to get it, the words she must say were on her tongue; she was as clear headed as possible.

It pulled up, into her fingers. And then Tarrik caught her hand in his and jerked savagely; the chain bit into her neck, then broke, but she still had the star. His hard, terrible fingers were digging it out of her palm. She bit his other arm, got hers free, and reached back for his face, his eyes, something to go for. He got her tight again, wrist and face, bruising her lips with his arm-bones, and his other hand tore out the star and threw it away. Her teeth closed on saltish linen and skin and muscle, and she threw herself sideways with a kick against the side of the saddle. They hit the ground both together, rolled over half a dozen times. After that, she was almost too done to struggle or fight him any more.

By and bye Tarrik, beginning to realise how black and blue he was himself, asked her if she was hurt. She shook her head sullenly and sat up. Tarrik, not having, on the whole, had much to do with virgins, did not really know how much hurt she was likely to be, quite apart from falling off a galloping horse. Still, he was not very happy; he did not like her looking grey at the lips. She got to her knees, and began slowly to look at all the tears in her linen shift; it was torn right down the front at one side and she pulled the three-cornered piece up quickly over herself and held the top edges together in her fist. But there was nothing to fasten it with; she let it go to rub her fist across her eyes; after all, it was silly to mind if Tarrik did see her breast now. She didn’t think she could ever mind anything after this—he seemed to have broken all the clean, sharp edges of her feeling for ever. He rolled back his own sleeves to see her teeth marks and a little blood; she had bitten his neck worse, though. The horse had come back, and whinnied to them questioningly from the top of a ridge. She tried to stand, but failed altogether; he caught her and stopped her falling; together they looked at her ankle. ‘You must have come down on it,’ he said. She nodded; it was beginning to send shoots of pain up her leg, the under side of her knee, drowning everything else. ‘I’ll get some water,’ said Tarrik. ‘What else?’

She looked at him. ‘If I had my star,’ she said, and watched him run off down their track, and presently stoop and pick it up.

He brought it back. ‘You’ll magic me, too?’ he asked, still keeping it tight.

She held out her hand. ‘Oh, give it me!—Tarrik.’

‘But will you?’ She began to cry hard, partly at the check to what she wanted, partly at the softness of his voice—getting at her, trying to stop her hating him and all the violence and pain that was part of him. ‘Will you, Erif dear?’ he said again. ‘I don’t want to be turned into a bear.’

‘I can’t,’ she said, sniffing, ‘it’s too difficult. I haven’t learnt.’

‘Well, anything. I don’t want to be magicked. Will you not, Erif?’

She said nothing for a moment, then; ‘Not just now.’

He gave it to her. She fastened on to it, leant forward, and touched her foot all over with it. The pain went further and further back, till she scarcely felt it, only, behind it and coming into consciousness now, the deep bruising of her thighs. He bandaged her ankle as she told him, with a bit of his own shirt. ‘Now I want the star back,’ he said, and opened her hand and took it.

‘I can do magic without that,’ said Erif Der.

‘You can’t ever magic the Greek bit of me.’ She said nothing. ‘Not even when we’re married. Can you?’

‘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.’