Marden Fee
THE FIRST ARC
CHAPTER 1
A YOUNG MAN IS ACCUSED, AND THE STORY OF HIS CRIME BEGINS
If from a great height we look down on the scene of my story, we shall see the convex surface of the earth as a small shining disk, one of a myriad spinning coins tossed into space by the unknown minter; and, if our vision serve us, we shall see, moving on that disk, events that are now ages old. So we may begin in however remote a past, and, descending stage by stage, make our own terms with time, the line of our vertical downward flight being the instrument with which, at our pleasure, we may accelerate or retard its motion. Somewhere upon the face of that small world is England; somewhere on England is the South Downland; and in the heart of that country—microcosm of a microcosm—lies the little patch of territory, as yet undefined, that is one day to be known as Marden Fee. It is a small enough space, but the world itself is no bigger in meaning; for meaning is of the heart, and all that the heart knows and suffers can be read, if it can be read at all, as plainly in this hamlet as in the universe at large: more plainly indeed, for the less contains the greater, and here is an horizon that curves comfortably into the eye.
But Marden Fee is not yet in being; we can but see the place where it will one day be; and now, as we watch from our chosen height, Koor the patriarch, stately in his house of wattle and daub, sits in judgement on one of his many sons. A female of his tribe—a young girl of whom, as it happens, Koor himself is both father and grandfather—has been touched, and the patriarchal prerogative flouted, by the golden-bearded young upstart who now, with hate sparkling in his eyes, stands in a circle of spears five strides from his father. Koor is ancient and very hairy. His old body, much of which is naked, bears the scars of a thousand mutilations; his face seems all but featureless, nothing beyond wild beard being visible except a spike of nose, a wrinkled receding forehead, and two small bright frosty eyes. His hands, clasped over his plump belly, are brown and knotted; his fingers are so thin that they extend like claws from his huge knuckles. By the standards of the time he is fabulously old: the number of his moons is indeed beyond the computation of his contemporaries, although, since his birth, at every period of the moon’s pregnancy—for the moon at regular intervals becomes big with a brood of stars—the left ear has been cut from a female wolf-cub, and these powerful tokens, nearly six hundred by now, at this very moment hang about his neck in the form of a necklace: not only a symbol of age and authority but a device of great practical use, since this mutilation of ears enables Koor to hear the secret speech of his enemies. At sight of that monstrous charm every man with treachery in him puts a check even on his thoughts, for the wolf has quick hearing, and these many wolves together, with Koor’s cunning added, may perhaps learn even the thing that is not said. So thinks the lean wizard who stands at the Old One’s side and at intervals, in a chanting voice, testifies to the malice of the gods towards them that suffer a sinner in their midst. A crafty fellow, this wizard. He has told many tall stories in his time, and it is his tragedy, making him the half-demented scarecrow we now see, that he has always ended, even if he did not begin, by believing them himself. He is thinking, now, that Koor is old and losing his power, and that the time is fast coming when he, the wizard, must choose a new master and betray the old. Master? Or tool? He doesn’t know. He only knows that he is mortally afraid of that necklace, of which the tradition is older than himself, who is next in age to Koor. ‘Woe and pestilence on them that suffer a sinner!’ he moans, with mechanical unction. There is safety in that formula, and by making that much noise he will prevent, so he hopes, his thoughts from reaching the Old One. One man alone, in all this assembly, fears not the necklace; and that one is the prisoner, Ogo, who, thinking himself already as good as dead, is emancipated from all other fears. Ogo’s thoughts run free as water in a broad stream, but the bed of this stream has been broken, the mud stirred into motion, by a dropped pebble, the anticipation of death; so that all the man’s memory, except when he reaches a state of trance, is clouded and rippled by conjecture.
Could we pierce beyond that cloud, smooth away those ripples, his memories would be clear to read: how it all began, this dire trouble, many days ago—and ‘many’ to him means ‘more than seven’, for after seven is mystery—many days ago when he and Hawkon, his brother and comrade, met with some few others of the sons of Koor and talked mischief of their father. The conference took place, as was most necessary, deep in the forest and far from the clearing, the broad green valley, where, with Koor’s great squat for centre, the tribe lived. Even so it was a desperate and dangerous affair. But Hawkon today was intoxicated with himself. He had done wonders, he said. He, he alone, had raided a foreign people half a day’s journey distant, and was come back with a tale of having killed many men and captured a woman for wife. The many men killed may have been a fiction: a theory that does not impugn Hawkon’s honesty, for on the journey home, with a bride for company, he had had time to weave fancies, and the capacity to distinguish, in retrospect, between fancy and fact was not general among the sons of Koor, for whom the life of dreams was as valid as waking experience and often in memory confused with it. But whatever men he had slain or not slain, of the woman captured there could be no doubt, for there she was, young and taking, and already following Hawkon’s every gesture with slavish adoration. There she was and you could look at her if you liked, but if you were wise you would not look too long or too appreciatively, lest Hawkon should be tempted to add to his greatness by thrusting his flint-headed spear into your belly. For, though to kill sib was a crime, to punish adultery—even before it was committed—was a virtuous deed. Since Hawkon had touched this woman, and taken her for wife, she was to all others forbidden; only by enforcing such taboos, which encouraged every man to acquire a foreign woman for himself, could Koor be sure of retaining his own monopoly rights over all the women of the family. The law, however, was not of Koor’s invention: he had had it from his father, and there is no doubt—or in Koor’s mind there was no doubt—that it had come in the first place from those mysterious unseen powers who were, as it fortunately chanced, chiefly concerned with maintaining the prestige and power of the Old One. Koor and his wizard frequently communed with these gods, and seldom failed to profit by what they heard. If drought could not be brought to an end by the ritual watering of the sacred stone, then a child must be buried up to its neck in the ground so that by its lamentations, and still more by the small rain of its tears, it should soften the heart of the rain-god. These or similar things had only to be done often enough, and rain would certainly fall, or cease falling, whichever was desired. Thus, by the scientific method of trial and error, for every evil could be found a remedy: one needed only a little patience, a little reverence, and much faith.
Hawkon’s woman was tall and dark and very lusty. She nestled in the crook of her lord’s arm and gazed at him dumbly while he discoursed. ‘She is my woman,’ said Hawkon, not for the first time. ‘She is my woman. She’s a good one, I can tell you. I shall call her name Flint, because there’s fire in her.’
‘A woman!’ sneered Ogo. ‘What name can a woman have?’