Page 77 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
“That’s one example,” Becket says. “The Year King is someone who’s both temporal and holy—he is a ruler, but with the power to affect the divine. A priest-king. A sacred king. And Frazer believed these kings were sacrificed. Sometimes every year, sometimes every eight or nine—it depended on the culture—but the killing of the king ensured a healthy land and a healthy people. We have only to look at the Fisher King to see what people believed an unhealthy king could do to the land. If the king is sick or old, then the land suffers and turns to waste.”
“Why?” Auden asks. “I mean, why do you think that’s the story they were interested in here?”
“By story, you must know I mean thematic beliefs underpinned by oral culture and seasonal rituals.”
“Yes, yes.”
“And I think we’re talking a very long time—on the order of centuries—since the last Year King was killed here.”
“Becket,” Auden says. “Just tell me why.”
Becket lets out a long breath. “I visited the historical society in Blackcombe. They have Dartham’s journals there.” Becket reaches in his pocket for his phone and pulls up a picture for them to see. It’s a picture of a Victorian journal page, complete with thin, looping handwriting and a few random inkblots.
Proserpina, St. Sebastian, and Auden all bend over the screen, reading.
As for the horrifying practises of Samhain, I much regret having interviewed so many of those living near Thornchapel, because I can no longer pretend this story is a solitary whisper. Indeed, though these inhabitants swear by God that they’ve never taken part in such madness, nor known anyone who has, they can all explicate in meticulous detail how the Thorn King was killed in the woods and whereby his blood fed the land. They told me this happened before Thornchapel manor was built, before even the chapel itself, although the stones and the altar are supposed to have predated the chapel. At that time, it is said, the Kernstows guarded the secret and made their own kings to take to that grisly altar on Samhain, but with the Saxons came the Guests, and with them came the beginning of Wessex Christendom. Perhaps it is then that the hideous practice ended, although more than one farmer told me that if the land goes sour or the water bitter or the wells dry, if the door should appear, then the Guests have done their duty by the land and gone to the altar in the woods. I asked the good Estamond Guest—born Estamond Kernstow—if she knew of her family holding any such lore, and she said nay and also that including such tales in the account of Thorncombe traditions would unnecessarily frighten any young or delicately minded readers, and I agree. I shall not put it down in the book, and I think I shall visit the people I spoke with once again, and remind them that our Lord Jesus Christ has been the final sacrifice for all our immortal souls.
They all look up from the screen at the same time. Thorn King, Proserpina thinks to herself. Where have I heard that before? “When did you find this, Becket?” she asks, diving back down for a re-read. “This is incredible.”
“Just this afternoon,” Becket says. He sounds proud and pleased that they appreciate what he’s found. “I meant to show you earlier, but we got so caught up in Beltane talk that I wasn’t thinking of Samhain until just now.”
“So whether or not Frazer knew what he was talking about, Dartham did,” St. Sebastian says. “But even Dartham says the Guests weren’t sacrificing people left and right—it was only if the land went sour or whatever.”
“So my ancestors were only sometimes murdery,” Auden says, not sounding consoled.
“I think everyone’s ancestors were murdery if you go back far enough,” St. Sebastian says.
Proserpina looks up again, blinking at the fire. It was her father who’d mentioned the Thorn King, the Kernstows, about what the Guests do in the woods on Samhain night. She’s thinking of that antlered figure she found at the Kernstow farm, and she’s thinking of her mother’s bones by the altar. Of Ralph Guest who put them there. Of the police who went through his old bedroom just last week, and who are now going through his letters and his laptop.
And then she’s thinking of the dream she had. The antlered man running through the forest, the trees whispering to her as he did.
The wild god. The Thorn King.
A chill slides down between her shoulder blades like a drop of water, and she tells herself she’s being suggestible, that this is all still happy and fun and the Thorn King is just another happy, fun role to play, like St. Brigid was.
“Let’s put a pin in all the ritual homicide for a minute,” Auden says, “and can we get back to why it matters that the consecration of the May Queen happened on Imbolc?”
“Ah, yes,” Becket says, also seeming relieved to move past the murder. “Well, my honest opinion is that I think it follows the rhythm of the seasons more closely. So at Imbolc, we have our god—or our sacred king who is embodying the god—and goddess and they are just reborn. Young. Beginning to wake up the land. And then at Beltane, they are crossing the threshold into full maturity and power, and that power will move the earth from spring to summer.”
“So by Beltane, the goddess has already begun growing in power and is ready to move from maiden to mother,” Proserpina says. “And therefore the May Queen does the same.”
“The question being,” Becket says, a sparkle in his eye letting them know he’s joking a little, “can the goddess do her part at all without a mortal May Queen to act it out?”
“If a tree falls in the woods . . .?” Auden says, and then hiccups.
St. Sebastian takes a drink of scotch and then gestures with the near-empty bottle. “I mean, by that logic, you could ask ‘did Jesus really die for our sins if we don’t perform the Eucharist?’”
“Does it matter if Jesus died for our sins if we don’t remember it? If we don’t routinely pledge to live with it in mind?”
More silence.
Then St. Sebastian says, “Okay, fine. Point taken.”
Auden takes the bottle, offers it to Proserpina who declines, and then knocks the rest of it back. “I’m not killing a stag,” he says to no one in particular.
“All right,” Becket says soothingly.
“Don’t like murder,” Auden mumbles, eyes sliding closed as his head tips back against the sofa he’s sitting against.
