The Corn King and the Spring Queen. Naomi Mitchison

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 imploringly. ‘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.

      He took the horse and laid it on the anvil; he looked at it with cold anger, and then began to smash it with the big hammer, all over. The red-hot sparks flew round him, thick and low, scorching his leather apron and shoes; he hit anyhow, with a blind, horrible passion of hate against his own work, grunting at his efforts sometimes, but saying no word. He did not stop till the iron was black again, and shapeless. Then he took it up with the tongs and threw it clanging into a corner of old cast-off scraps. Erif Der watched it go; she was back again in her old place on the floor.

      Her brother went to his chest and stood beside it, taking out one thing after another, mostly half finished; he handled them and frowned or muttered at them, and put them back again. At last he unwrapped the Gorgon’s head buckle, and found a piece of gold, roughly beaten out, and compared the two; he was copying the head exactly on to the other half of the buckle. He took them both over to his bench, right under the window, and began to measure and make tiny marks on the gold. They were right under his eyes as he sat upright with both elbows in front of him on the bench to steady himself. He took his magnifying crystal out of the soft leather roll it lived in, and peered through it, counting and placing the tiny balls of filigree. But he seemed clumsy at his tools; his hands were shaking after all that violent hammering; he dealt unlovingly with the things. Once or twice other men passed the window and looked in and spoke to him; he answered crossly, covering the work with his hands. Sometimes there was sun shining on him, but more often not, as the day had turned out cloudy after all.

       Chapter Two

      BY AND BYE ERIF Der felt that someone was watching her; she looked up, rather cross at having been caught. Under her eye-lashes she saw Tarrik lolling against one of the door-posts, quite quiet, with a bow in his left hand. He had a squarish, smiling, lazy face; the oddest thing about it were his bright brown eyes that looked straight into yours. He was clean shaven about the chin, but in front of his ears and on his cheek-bones near the outward corners of his eyes, there were little soft hairs. He was brown and red as to colour, as if he lay out in the sun all day, and let it warm his bare skin while others were working. Like Berris, he wore loose shirt and trousers, both of white linen, and a white felt coat embroidered with rising suns and a criss-cross of different-coloured sunrays. His belt was all gold, dolphins linked head to tail; it had a rather small sword hanging from it on one side, and at the other a gold-plated quiver of arrows, a whistle, and a tiny hunting-knife with an onyx handle. He wore a crown, being Chief, a high felt cap, covered with tiers and tiers of odd, fighting, paired griffins in soft gold; his hair, underneath, was dark brown and curly; on his upper lip, too, it was brown and quite short, so that one saw his mouth, and, when he laughed, as he often did, his white, even, upper teeth.

      The girl looked quickly from him to her brother; but Berris was tap-tapping on the gold, with his back to them both. Tarrik smiled, tightened his bowstring and began playing with it, till it buzzed like a wasp. She frowned at him, not sure whether he mightn’t be laughing at her, treating her like a baby, when really it was she who had all the power. She put her hand to the wooden star under her dress.

      Then the tapping at the bench stopped and Berris called her to blow the fire again; the gold was getting brittle, he had to anneal it. As he got up, Tarrik made the bowstring sound sharply again. He slipped off the stool and gave the Chief his formal salute, right hand with bare knife up to the forehead, then went over and took Tarrik by the upper arms and shook him with pleasure at the meeting. Tarrik grinned, and let him, and Erif Der took the opportunity of getting to her feet and taking out the wooden star. ‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ said Berris. ‘Oh, Tarrik, I’ve had a terrible day! I thought I’d made something good and it wasn’t!’

      ‘How do you know?’ said Tarrik, and his voice was as pleasant as his smile. ‘Let me see it.’

      Berris shook his head.