Harvest Home (50 page)

Beyond the gap, the singing grew louder. It had taken them half an hour longer than it took me to get to the grove; I had followed the shorter route across the fields, avoiding the men posted along the Old Sallow Road and entering the woods through the meadow. They were coming through the gap now, processionally, their way lighted by the torches. I listened for the sound of the cart, but the Corn Maiden appeared on foot and was at once encircled and greeted by those who had come first, several clasping her to their bosom, then leading her to one side of the clearing where a large piece of cloth was spread; she sat, veiled, the white mantle she wore drawn around so no bodily part showed. Eight or ten of the girls grouped themselves about her.

I had not yet seen the arrival of the two other important characters in the drama: the Widow Fortune and the Harvest Lord himself. The women had arrayed themselves in a large circular group about the clearing, waiting. I saw some of them whisper to each other, then look in my direction, and as they joined hands and came toward the tree I felt the fear of discovery. Suddenly Robert’s warning came back to me: the Eleusinian Mysteries, that no man had seen and lived to tell of. They came close, their faces turned directly toward me, but they had not discovered my hiding place.

Meanwhile other women were arriving in the clearing, many carrying hoes, some bringing wooden kegs, the ones I had seen unloaded from Fred Minerva’s wagon. Several large baskets were brought out, from which came chalice-like cups. These were filled from the kegs and passed around, the recipients tasting as though examining for flavor, then drinking.

Cups were carried to the Corn Maiden’s group, sitting on the ground, and they, too, drank. Presently I heard the sound of the instruments, and the celebrants arranged themselves again in a large circle around the clearing, cups poised in midair. I could hear someone moving behind me, and in a few moments I saw the Widow’s broad black back and her white cap as she walked into the clearing, leading Justin Hooke, whose eyes were blindfolded by a white band, tied behind. The Widow brought him to the throne, where she aided him in sitting, arranging his red mantle so it covered him to the ground. A cup was quickly brought and offered to her. She signaled impatiently, and it was placed in Justin’s hands, while another cup was given to the Widow, and they both drank.

The cups were passed, and passed again; the women drank long and eagerly, as if anxious to absorb the contents. They had broken up into groups, which in the most casual fashion began a loose form of dance, not the dance they had executed at the husking bee, but of a more impromptu nature, with no prescribed form. Someone started a song, its melody totally unfamiliar to me, with an odd cadence and odder pattern, a still odder tongue.

Suddenly I heard a sound behind me. Someone had come through the gap and was crossing toward the clearing, with slow, measured, almost furtive steps. A twig cracked, then another. I waited for a figure to appear within my range of vision, but no one came. Whoever it was had stopped at some point just in back of the tree and I froze, thinking she must be investigating the trunk. But no; I knew the person standing there was only watching the proceedings in the clearing.

Several women came toward the spring carrying a large metal ewer. They submerged it in the water, and while it filled they looked past me, one of them making a beckoning gesture, an acknowledgment to whoever it was waiting behind my hiding place. She beckoned again, gave a slight shrug, then the filled ewer was borne away, to be placed close to Justin’s throne. Now, one by one, numbers of the women separated from the others and gathered around the Harvest Lord. His blindfold was removed, the cup given into his hands again. The women dipped napkins into the ewer and began washing his feet, a ritual of cleansing and purification.

Ivied garlands and chains of flowers were produced and hung around his neck and shoulders. Then the same corn crown that had been used in the play was brought to the Widow and she placed it on his head.

These women now withdrew, leaving the Harvest Lord to watch the dancing.

The dancers were accompanied by the instruments, a primitive strain similar to the music I had heard from the cornfield on the night of the “experience.” From time to time, the circles broke while the women refreshed themselves from the cups continually being filled from the kegs and passed among them. Unfailingly, one was always carried past my line of vision to the unknown presence standing behind my tree, and I would hear low urgings, then a muffled response; then, the cup drained, the bearer would return to the group, where their somewhat stilted, ceremonial aspect was now wearing off. Their movements had become erratic, their singing often off key, their gestures more abandoned.

All the time, I kept careful watch for a clue in the proceedings that would tell me what it was Gracie Everdeen had done that had caused her death. Or what it was about the ceremony that had caused Worthy’s. Or why Sophie had taken her life. The upright lord, seated on the throne, muffled in his red mantle, seemed gradually to relax; his shoulders slumped slightly, and as his head moved from side to side with the rhythm of the music, I saw in the flickering light that his features had taken on a glazed, drunken look. The mead was having its hallucinogenic effect. I remembered the cask Mrs. Green had been given from Fred Minerva’s wagon: they had drugged Worthy before executing him.

The moon rose higher, and from time to time the Widow looked up at it; I judged she was using it as a clock. The torches were hardly needed now, for the clearing was illuminated by a light etching every detail. Again the cup was passed to the Corn Maiden, who took it under her veil and drank, turning to one or another of the girls around her, and from the pitch of their babble I could tell that the mead was having its effect on them as well.

Then, as the music built, the Widow walked to the center of the clearing and lifted her hoe to the sky. The moon was directly overhead. The dancers withdrew in groups around the periphery of the clearing while the old woman turned slowly, pointing around the ring with the tip of her hoe. I saw it swing toward me, pass, then stop. An angry look came over her face and she marched in my direction. Yet she also was not looking at my hiding place, but behind it. I could hear her decisive whisperings to whoever was waiting behind the tree. Then she reappeared, her step lethargic as she came to stand before the throne. With difficulty she assumed a kneeling position at Justin’s feet, where she bowed her head in prayer; the others were silent and watchful until she lifted her head again, then rose unsteadily to her feet. Her face looked flushed, and she blinked her eyes behind the spectacles. She made motions with her tongue as if she found her mouth excessively dry: she was not drunk but narcotized. Laying a hand on Justin’s shoulder, she spoke in a hoarse, uneven voice.

“Behold. This is our anointed. Give eye unto the chosen among us, give tongue to his praises. He was chosen for us, and for seven years we have loved and honored him. Trophy and tribute have been his, and the worship of all. He has been our Lord of the growing corn. He is our god, whose godhead is the crops.”

The voices of the women punctuated each sentence with responses of approval, which sounded to me like the “Amen”s of a church service.

“As it was in the olden times, so it has been and ever shall be. It is the way. The spirit has been in our Lord for these seven years, and he has brought us good harvests. It was the flesh of his body, his strength and sinew, his limbs and brain, his blood that did this for us. The corn is his, each kernel, and for it we thank him.”

“We thank him,” they chorused.

“This is something to have done in a life. It is something to have been made for. To have been set upon the earth to cause the earth to bear.”

“Oh, yes.
Oh, yes
.”

“Then let him be gloried!”

“Gloried.
Gloried
.” I heard the feverish response, saw the bright glistening eyes of the women as they lavished adoring looks upon him, some in their dazed state unable to withhold sudden emotional outbursts, pushing their way toward him and prostrating themselves before him.

The old woman’s body had begun moving slightly; I could see her shoulders lifting and lowering as though to engender more deeply the force of the drug in her system. Her torso made small circular motions while her hand lay upon Justin’s head.

“Hear me, for I speak with the tongue of the Goddess who dwells in the earth. I remind you again of Her promise. She will provide for us, She will give us the—” Here she broke off, as though to remind herself what would be provided. Having recollected, she went on in a thick, harsh voice: “The bountiful harvest, if—if we Her servants tend well to Her business. If we will
believe
.”

“
Believe
.” The word was repeated through the throng which forced its way nearer, the closest throwing themselves to the ground, reaching to touch the hem of Justin’s cloak. “Let no man gainsay us. Let no outsider comprehend Her. In a time when faces have been turned on the other God, let us acknowledge the Mother of us all. She will sustain us.”

“Yes.
Yesss
.”

“As She has sustained this, Her son.”

Cries arose, a piteous lament, and some had come behind the throne, leaning forward to touch Justin’s head and caress his neck and shoulders.

“From his hand has come the gift, and in return we have shown him our secret. The soil has quickened and proved fertile and the rains have been plenteous and the sun of the world has shone on us.”

“Has shone. Has
shone
.”

“The corn grew. We have prospered.”

“
Prospered
.”

“And—” She faltered again, making a tight movement with her lips to master herself, as if the next moment were of the greatest import.

“And in the gratitude of our hearts we now offer him the pledge and token of our esteem, as is customary upon the seventh year of Harvest Home, that he may know of us the secret heart of that which he himself has given us. He alone of all men may know the secret which has been given to us, the secret of the Sacred Mother.”

For an instant, I reeled back in time to Tithing Day, when Worthy had appeared in the church doorway and had damned the Mother. The answer was at hand. The secret was to be revealed, and with it the heart of the mystery I had so long probed. The secret heart of Mother Earth. The Widow’s last words filled my head: “He alone of all men may know…” I realized my peril: if I was discovered, they would kill me.

The women had formed a melting, slow-moving configuration across the clearing and, before I realized it was happening, from the midst of the throng was produced the core of the night’s mysteries, which no man but the Harvest Lord was permitted to look upon. Covered with a woven cloth, resting upon a silver salver, the mysterious and awaited object was given into the Widow’s hands, who now turned and held it before Justin. From her seclusion, the Corn Maiden arose with her court, she, too, to gaze upon what lay hidden under the cloth. It was not large—this I could easily see—and I felt a tremor, wondering at this rare and precious treasure, this strange, forbidden object none but the initiated might look upon.

Yet when the Widow lifted the cloth and revealed it, I saw it was the commonest of things, something I had seen constantly since coming to the village of Cornwall Coombe. Was it for this these ceremonies took place? Was this the heart of the mysteries of the great Mother, which had been handed down from generation to generation, century after century? Was this what Worthy had feared, what Grace had refused to acknowledge, what Sophie had ended her life in dread of? What no man may know nor woman tell?

An ear of corn. A single, simple ear of corn. It lay upon the salver in its husk, the salver held before Justin’s eyes as he gazed on it. What, I wondered, did the fact of it reveal to him? What had it been given him on this night of Harvest Home to read in a single ear of corn? Then I saw, as he must have, that what had been given to him was the exact and precise nature of the world he lived in, where the fact of the corn was the fact of his life. Like most simple facts, it was the truest, and the most easily overlooked. On the tray, hidden in the husk, was the whole vision, the life of the corn and the life of the man, inextricably bound together in oneness, bound in the tilling and the planting and the growing, in the harvesting and in—

I knew it then.
I knew it!
And was terribly afraid. The corn was the revelation; the revelation was in the corn: the ear in its husk held before the Harvest Lord by the hands of the Widow Fortune. Its deepest significance had been obscured by the tangle of mysteries, yet in a single chilling moment all the mysteries now became clear. I felt a shiver, like a strange paralysis, creeping up my body. I swallowed and, in the silence, thought someone surely must hear. But I did not fear for myself; I feared for Justin. I knew then the terrible secret of Harvest Home.

They were going to kill him
.

Here, in the grove, in this temple of the Mother Earth, the Harvest Lord was to be offered in ritual sacrifice. Here, in the moonlight, with the dancing and singing women, Justin Hooke was being drugged, was then to be murdered, murdered for the corn.

This was why they had revealed to him their mystery, because he would never live to tell what he had seen. Bound together in oneness, the Harvest Lord and the corn, and as the corn died and was reborn, so would he die and be born again, not in himself but in the young Lord. The Eternal Return.

I felt shock, disgust, rage, felt again the hatred I had felt at the burning—hatred for their stupid, primitive beliefs. I wanted to shout out to Justin: Do not drink, run away; never hear, never listen.

I looked at him. He did not seem afraid. In his drugged state, he showed no loss of dignity; he sat regal and aloof, watching as the corn ear was covered again and taken from sight, as if he comprehended what he had been shown, and what he must now do.

The Widow was speaking again: “And as our Lord has accepted honor and tribute at our hand so he must likewise find his passing at our hand.”