For answer Hawkon lifted his spear. He knew now what he must do. He knew, but he did not even now know that this for many days had been the intention buried deep in his heart. In one instant of time the seed of his ambition burst, thrust through the darkness, budded and flamed into a bright terrible flower. Its beauty enchanted him and he had eyes for nothing else. Koor was old and feeble and ugly: Koor must give place to his conqueror. Nor did he know—such flights were far beyond him—that even as Koor was now, so he Hawkon would one day be.
The spear of Hawkon pierced his father’s throat. The figures in Koor’s fantasy loomed for the last time in the dying brain. The bull charged, and was caught by its horns. It snorted fire on its captor. I am the great bull and the king of bulls, thought Koor . . .
Hawkon retrieved his spear and held it high.
‘I am the Koor,’ he cried.
‘You are the Koor, great Hawkon,’ quavered Nigh, shrinking away from sight of his dying master.
‘The gods have spoken again,’ wailed Hasta. ‘They tell me that Hawkon is the Koor.’
But the young men were in a frenzy, Hawkon having the only cool head amongst them. All their long suppressed hatred of these elders found vent in violence. The stroke of an axe silenced Hasta’s wailing, and a dozen spears leaped to transfix the Tale-Bearer. Hawkon’s voice quelled the riot, and all drew back in fear from their work. And no one noticed that Ogo was no longer in their midst; no one had seen him—in the very moment of Koor’s death—slip through into the inner room, the sacred secret place where the women sat shuddering together. If to Hawkon this killing of the Old One was triumph, to Ogo it was deliverance. And the screaming of the women at sight of him gave him no check. ‘The Old One is slain,’ he said, ‘and Hawkon is the Koor.’ He spoke to distract their attention from himself; and his eyes searched among them. He sought and found Wooma. A little apart from the others (for was she not dedicated to death?), she lay in a languid trance. She, like himself, was unfettered: being young and desirable, she could be safely entrusted to the custody of her fellow-women. ‘Come!’ he said. The women, disregarding him, were crowded at the moot door. ‘Come, Wooma. Here’s Ogo.’ She stared, screamed, jumped to her feet. But Ogo did not wait to look at her again: he was scratching and tearing, like a dog, at a small aperture in the wall. Some of the women, eager to fawn at the feet of their new lord, were filtering through into the death-chamber; and the others, staring in frightened wonder at the intruder Ogo, could do nothing to thwart his impious design. He was strong, and he was sib to them: they dared not touch him.
In the hall of doom Hawkon raised his spear again, commanding silence. And when all voices had ceased, he fell on his knees at the feet of the three corpses. ‘O Koor, I have slain you, but I am your friend henceforth. In life you were mighty, and we your sons will praise you wherever we go. Visit us not in anger, O Old One, but go far from this place, or stay where we leave you. And you, Hasta, and you, Nigh, remember us kindly, and do us no harm, for we are your friends too. You three, you mighty ones, shall have this house to live in for ever.’ He rose and turned to his brothers. ‘We will pile great stones upon them. We will fill this place with great stones, and close it up with the greatest of all, so that their demons will be comfortable and not trouble us.’
The young men ran to do his bidding. Stare alone lingered.
‘O Koor, O Hawkon,’ said Stare, with profound respect, ‘what of Ogo and the woman who have sinned together, being sib?’
The wailing of the women was no longer to be ignored. They wailed not for the death of the Old One, but because Ogo had broken into their sanctuary and snatched Wooma from them, where she lay awaiting the time of sacrifice. Sin had gone unpunished; the vengeance of the gods must fall on all the sons and daughters of Koor. . . . And so in after days, though the tribe flourished with Hawkon at its head, every misfortune that visited them was laid to Ogo’s account; many conflicting tales were told of how the sinners, perishing in the wild, were pursued for ever by the curse of their sin; and the suffering voices of Ogo and Wooma were heard in every wailing wind. The sinners themselves, in their squat by the distant river, knew nothing of these tales and heard no such voices. Strangely forgetful of the past they lived to a ripe age, and their sons made many boats.
THE SECOND ARC
CHAPTER 1
COMPANY AT THE NICK OF TIME, WITH ELOQUENCE IN SPATE AND MUCH TALK OF A HANGING
On a cool crisp evening in January, in the year seventeen hundred and fifty, the High Street of Marden Fee presents to us the appearance of a vivid dream. It is a broad street for so small a place: broad and brief, branching at its west end into three smaller roads whose junction forms two obtuse angles, and at the east end dwindling to a lane that winds unobtrusively past the parish church. The church, with its surrounding acre of tombs, stands on an eminence that was formerly cultivated ground and the scene of human sacrifice. It dominates the High Street, and is confronted at the other end by an inn, The Nick of Time, which stands, square and squat and comfortable, between two prongs of the fork, with the road to Glatting going north to the right of it, and two smaller roads, the one to Dyking Manor and the other to Medlock, running south-east and south-west. To a careless eye, as to a fanciful mind, these two buildings, the church and the tavern, close the street up, so that it looks like an island of habitation in a sea of field and forest. Some fourteen furlongs behind the church, and beyond our sight at the moment, stands the residence of young Squire Marden, whose grandfather was the first lord of this fee, a slice then newly-carved from the parish of Glatting. The High Street is deserted. It seems to float, without motion, in a clear white silence. The smoke curling from its chimneys oozes slowly upwards and is gently teased into wisps and tatters by the wind; and the hanging tavern-sign sends a long black banner streaming across the moonwashed wall. All the houses are in darkness, except the inn itself, whose parlour window, the life and heart of the scene, attracts the eye with a glowing square of red. Hovering we watch, surveying the whole; and presently can dimly discern something moving, with aged precision, in the shadow of Church Lane. Stepping at last into the brightness of the street, it is seen to be the figure of an old man, small and bent. The sound of his boots on the hard road breaks sharply into the surrounding silence; echo gives it back and sends it radiating in spirals to the sky. His walk is confident if slow. Without lifting his eyes from the ground he moves forward unfalteringly, as though drawn by the warmth of the red window. Nor does he for more than a moment pause at the inn door. His hand finds the latch. As the door opens, there escapes into the street, like heat from an oven, a warm gust of human sound. Then the door is slammed to, and the night is still, and the sounds that lately invaded it are become a memory.
Laughter greeted the old man’s entry, a laughter composed of many elements. Dick Mykelborne the wheelwright’s was genial, even admiring. Dick was a hearty and a godly fellow, big and black-bearded and nearing fifty. Like most other men of his age who wished themselves younger, he derived an unconscious comfort from the existence of this ancient man, took pleasure in his company, and respected him for having dodged death so long. The old man’s weakness made him feel his own strength, and the old man’s longevity made him feel immortal, for he was of a sanguine temperament and had that spirit in him that can read all signs in the sky as signs of fair weather. He sat near the fire, in the corner of the high-backed settle, and his large hand clasped lovingly a pint pot. His neighbour Tom Shellett, a lean stringy young fellow with eyes as placid as the cows he herded, laughed for no better reason than that the others laughed; Broome, the young master of twelve scattered acres, sounded a derisive note, being still insolent with youth; Gipsy Noke gave a shy hesitating grin, for he was conscious, as a borderer but newly settled, of his inferior status (moreover, the old man was gardener at the Vicarage and in that capacity had once rebuked him); and Roger Peakod, having drowned his small wit in ale, could only giggle and stare. The potman stared without giggling, and remained so, like a fool, till his master came close and spake a sharp word in his ear. This Erasmus Bailey, the innkeeper, was the only one who at this moment had attention for the company as well as for the old man from Squire’s. A comparative stranger among them, for he had been in the village but twenty years, he had the reputation of being something of a scholar, and a cut above the general run of men. Rumour called him a runaway schoolmaster. This gave him authority, without—for he was a genial fellow enough—making him the less liked by his humble patrons. If he smiled now at the comedy staged in his inn parlour, it was rather with wonder than with mirth, for a half-fledged thought fluttered in his head that if, instead of this aged man, a small precocious child had entered the inn parlour, the attitude of these fellows to their visitor could hardly have been much different; and a couplet—for he had the knack of such things—began shaping in his mind: