Shortest Day Read Online Free Page B

boar’s head in a nest of ivy. When the chorus struck up “The Boar’s Head Carol,” he couldn’t help nodding his shaggy head in time to the music.
    From then on Homer forgot his hostility and basked in this fanciful Cambridge version of the Middle Ages. It was nice, it was the Très Riches Heures come to life, enhanced by the mystic Victorian woodwork of Memorial Hall, with its thick varnish in which were magically embedded a few fragments of the Round Table. The playful enchantment of the Revels had taken hold.
    When Mary’s part of the rehearsal was over, she met Homer in the deathlike chill of the memorial corridor. “Oh, Homer, I was right. You didn’t like it, did you?”
    He was not yet ready to confess his transformation. “Well, I don’t know,” he said gruffly. “The Morris dancers were okay, I guess.”
    Mary introduced him to Sarah and Morgan Bailey. Sarah was enchanted with Homer. She gaped up at him. “So this is the famous Homer Kelly! Nobody told me you were ten feet tall.”
    â€œOnly nine feet, actually,” murmured Homer, who was used to being stared at, and liked it.
    â€œNo, no,” said Mary. “He’s only six feet six.”
    â€œOh, Homer,” pleaded Sarah, taking his arm, “will you be our giant? We were going to do without one, but you’re just right. We’ve never had anybody so tall.”
    â€œGreat idea,” said Tom Cobb, grinning at Homer. “How about it?”
    Homer demurred bashfully, and then, to Mary’s astonishment, he grinned and gave in. “Well, what the hell, I have to be in this building all the time anyway to teach our class.” He cleared his throat and roared, “FEE-FI-FO-FUM—is that the general idea?”
    Sarah threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Homer, that’s great.”
    Homer looked pleased with himself, his entire attitude toward childish playacting and Christmas frivolity and grown men and women making fools of themselves suddenly abandoned.
    Mary was amused. She glanced at Morgan, Sarah’s husband, and laughed. Morgan was smiling too, but his eyes were on Sarah.
    â€œSaint George,” cried Sarah. “Has anyone seen Saint George?”
    Homer looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows. “Saint George?”
    â€œOh, you know, Homer, Saint George has to kill the dragon. And then he has to be killed himself, you see.”
    â€œNo, I don’t see.”
    Before Mary could explain, an interpreter loomed up beside them, a gaunt woman in thick glasses. Her enormously magnified eyes gazed at Homer. She launched into a lecture. “Dying and reviving gods, you see. The hero combat. In remote times the kings of Babylon were put to death after reigning for a single year. It’s the sacrifice of the god-king, you see, to save the world. Among the Musurongo of the Congo the king is put to death after only a single day.”
    Mary was struck dumb. She repeated stupidly, “The Musurongo of the Congo?” Then she pulled herself together. “How do you do? I’m Mary Kelly, and this is my husband, Homer.”
    â€œMarguerite Box. Dr . Marguerite Box. Lecturer in mythology and folklore, the safeguarding of the life-spirit, the forms of taboo, the emblems of fertility, the worship of Adonis, the slaying of the god-king, et cetera.” Dr. Box wore a large purple hat. Briefcases hung from her shoulders like panniers on a beast of burden.
    Homer’s eyes glazed over. Dr. Box was a bore. She fixed him with her magnified eye. “The legend of Saint George is merely a winter-solstice festival to revive the light, a new incarnation of a dying and reviving God.” Then a blast of chill air smote Dr. Box, and she snatched at her purple hat.
    Parents were shepherding children out the north door. They were a wriggling crowd in puffy coats and woolly hats, screeching in the cold, blocking the entrance for someone