Harvest Home

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.”

The Harvest Lord made immortal. The pride of Justin Hooke.

The old woman continued, recalling for them the last Great Waste, when Loren McCutcheon had been Harvest Lord-Justin nodding agreement-and the cause of this visitation had come at the hands of Gracie Everdeen, blighted in soul and body, she whose Lord had been Roger Penrose, and who had defied the traditions of Harvest Home, had brought to the reign of Loren McCutcheon waste and dearth.

Perfidious Grace Everdeen.

Dead, all of them. Loren McCutcheon, but not from drink. Roger Penrose, but not from a horse fall. Clemmon Fortune, but not from an axe blow.

Murdered for the corn.

The Widow Fortune.

Widowhood in exchange for good crops. And everyone, all the villagers, had known it, man, woman, child alike. And he, the victim, had also known. And I, the fool everyone said I was, had not known.

I saw it now. Loren McCutcheon had been the Harvest Lord and had reigned for seven years; on the seventh year Justin had been chosen the Young Lord at the Agnes Fair. At Harvest Home, Loren had been dispatched by some unknown means and Justin had taken his place. For seven years there had been no Great Waste, the crops were bountiful; and now, tonight, the seven years were done. Worthy Pettinger had been chosen the Young Lord, with Missy Penrose’s bloody hands on his cheeks, signifying he would reign for the next seven years. But Worthy had not wanted to die. He had run away, been brought back, and killed. Insult to the Mother.

And Justin would die, in the prime of his manhood, to give place to the hew Harvest Lord, Jim Minerva, who in another seven years would also die.

The King is dead, long live the King.

Now the women could not stifle their ready tears, and they began an orgy of cries, voices calling out in