The Corn King and the Spring Queen (15 page)

‘I have come hoping to see the King,' said Sphaeros.

‘Who are you? Strangers?' the man said, looking from Sphaeros to the barbarians and back again.

‘I am a philosopher. I was the King's friend—once.' After another long look, the man led them along into the
outer hall and left them there with a couple of strong-looking armed helots on guard.

It was a square, darkish room with four doors, and not too clean. In each corner there was a large bronze vase, cast and rather badly finished, with jagged-looking holes for the rings to go through, and a stupid and very much elaborated egg and dart pattern round the bulge; one of them had dried bulrushes in it. There were also two or three glazed pottery lamps, shaped into fattish sphinxes, and a trophy of arms, not very interesting. The walls were more pink than red, with a black stripe near the bottom, and imitation pillars painted at each side of the doors. Berris grew more and more depressed; he thought of home, of his own forge, and the clear live shapes of his own things, fire and anvil waiting for him, and the little girl Sardu sorting his tools and putting them away in their leather roll. He thought of Erif Der, her pale face and grey eyes between the plaits. He thought of the harvest—the heavy, gentle heads of the garlanded cows; the little fir trees stuck about with apples and coloured knots; the striped reeds of the flax-pickers; the thick blue and scarlet dresses of young girls running on the snow of Marob. His eyes wandered round the room again, and at last caught Tarrik's and stayed there. Tarrik was laughing, but that made it no better. The helot guards looked at them suspiciously, their hands on their sword hilts.

After about ten minutes, when still nothing had happened, Tarrik began to fidget and suggested to Sphaeros that kings were sometimes difficult to see and he had plenty of Greek money with him. But Sphaeros shook his head, beginning to be rather unhappy. Then, after another time of waiting, a girl came into the room from one of the side doors, with a great bundle of folded linen across her arms. She looked at them over the top of it, hesitated and stopped.

‘Is it the King you wish to see?' she said with some dignity. They were so pleased at anything happening that they all said ‘Yes!' in the same breath. A little confused herself, she smiled at them, prettily, mostly at Berris, who seemed to be more her own age. And suddenly Berris knew that everything was all right, and he had come this long way to Hellas for no vain hope.

As he realised this, he heard Sphaeros speaking, and saying who he was. The girl hugged the bundle of linen tight against her; her eyes were big and bright; she spoke in a whispered cry: ‘Oh, you're Sphaeros at last! You've come to make us good again and bring the King's time! Come—come to Agiatis.' Berris, watching every least movement, saw her try to get one arm away from the bundle, and jumped forward himself and caught the linen as it slipped. She thanked him with a word and half a stare at his funny clothes, and took Sphaeros by the hand and led him through. The guards saluted her. They went down the passage and into a light, open court. Tarrik was the one of the three who looked about him now.

By and bye Kleomenes came, grave and hurrying, and took Sphaeros by both hands, then quickly bent and kissed him.

‘Now,' he said, ‘I shall know what I am doing. Oh, Sphaeros, I see so crookedly sometimes!' Then he became aware of the other two and frowned terribly. ‘Why are these barbarians here?' he asked.

Sphaeros, seeing Tarrik elaborately pretending not to hear, stood back so that the two faced one another across his shadow: ‘This is Tarrik, King of Marob, Corn King of the Marob Harvest, who is also called Charmantides. Without him you would not see me here. I was wrecked on his coast, and he took me into his house and was my pupil as you were once. He brought me here in all honour and knowing that King Kleomenes of Sparta would use him and his men no worse than he used me.' He laid some emphasis on ‘knowing' because it was something real to him, an idea and a word not to be used lightly.

Kleomenes saw this, and for a moment he hated Sphaeros, first for bringing this barbarian and complicating what he had thought of as clear, and second for doubting him and his behaviour. His neck swelled, and the veins on his forehead; his eyes seemed to darken. Tarrik kept quite still, measuring his own height and strength against the other king's. But suddenly the Spartan's head jerked back, his hand out. ‘Welcome to my house, King of Marob!' he said, with something surprisingly near sincerity.

Tarrik answered quickly: ‘Good words, King of Sparta. I take your welcome—I and my men—to a well-heard-of
house! And if you need help, money, or swords, we will be your friends and allies.'

Kleomenes looked sharply at him: ‘How many are you?'

‘Twenty, and all free; some are my cousins. All young too.'

‘Mm,' said the other king, ‘I might find a use …' Then suddenly: ‘Where is Marob?'

Tarrik found it hard to explain; he had never exactly thought of this; Marob had always been, as it were, here, in the middle: other places, somewhere away north or south. Besides, if he knew about Sparta, then this other king ought to know about his country! But Sphaeros began to tell the whole story; it was better to have it clear. The three of them drifted off, Tarrik apparently admitted. But Berris had not been quick enough, nor for that matter quite bold enough, to follow his Chief. He stayed where he was, looking about him, enjoying the sunshine on his face and hands. The girl he had seen came up quietly from behind and made him jump when she spoke.

‘Who are you?' she asked.

He assembled his Greek as quickly as he could under the child's disquieting eyes; he saw now that she was younger than he had thought at first. ‘I am Berris Der,' he said. ‘I came from Marob with my king and Sphaeros.'

‘Is that your king?' She pointed. ‘I see. He looks very fine. Are you his friend?'

‘Yes,' said Berris.

Philylla nodded sympathetically. ‘What kind of man is he?' she asked. Berris was not at all sure how he ought to answer. He began tentatively: ‘He can kill bulls and shoot through a man's eye a hundred paces off. And— oh,‘—seeing this was the wrong thing—‘Sphaeros has been teaching him all the winter, and they read a great many Greek books! He is called Charmantides sometimes— his great-grandfather was a real Hellene from Olbia!' Philylla was too polite to laugh outright, but she grinned a little, and he grinned back appealingly. ‘Words mean such different things!' he said. ‘What kind of man is your king?'

Philylla looked at him hard and took a breath and said solemnly: ‘He is going to make our country great and
wise and free. He never thinks of his own pleasure, only of that. And the Queen is the same, only more.' Suddenly she remembered that he could not know who she was. ‘And I am Philylla, daughter of Themisteas. I am maid of honour to the Queen. Till she comes I am your hostess.'

She stopped short; it seemed to be Berris's turn. He would have liked to say something impressive. ‘My father is one of the Chief's councillors at Marob,' he began, ‘and no one can give him orders but the Chief, the King, that is.'

‘Yes,' said Philylla, ‘foreigners always have to obey their kings. We are free in Hellas.'

‘But your king—'

‘Oh, that's different. Our king is a citizen like the rest of us under the ephors. If he told us to do something that was bad for the State, or unworthy, we would not obey him. But that won't happen with King Kleomenes!'

Berris tried to think of something comparable to say about Tarrik, but couldn't manage it. He said: ‘I'm a metal-worker. I make things out of brass and gold.'

Philylla drew back a step: ‘You said you were a noble!'

‘But I
am
! I work because I choose. I draw beasts and trees, and sometimes I carve, and sometimes I model in clay.'

‘Oh, then you're an artist!' said Philylla, slightly mollified, but still looking down on him.

‘I'll make you a gold bracelet if you like,' said Berris, ‘with any pattern you say! Shall I?'

She blushed, not sure for one thing whether he was asking for an order or suggesting a present. ‘The Queen doesn't want us to wear many ornaments,' she said. ‘Besides—oh—do you like being in Hellas?'

‘I came here because I was an artist,' said Berris, finding the Greek came easier, ‘to see everything. People always told me that there was no art outside Hellas, so I had to know.'

Philylla had not considered art much yet; she looked quickly all round the courtyard and for the first time really noticed the marble groups of Laughter and War—coloured marble they were, and very expressive, given to Kleomenes by his father and much admired. These, of course, must be art. ‘Yes,' she said proudly, ‘everything pretty comes here. I expect you'd like to look at the statues and things. They're very beautiful, aren't they?'

‘I am sure I shall find some beauty.'

‘But haven't you yet?'

‘Well—not much. Not made beauty, anyhow.'

Philylla led him squarely in front of the war group, which was particularly tangled. ‘There! Now, what do you think of that?'

Berris looked at it and wanted violently to be truthful—and then smash it. It had no centre and no balance; it was all twisted and none of the twists were in the right place. There was no sense of marble about it, no sense even of the original clay it was modelled in. Berris felt himself getting swollen with annoyance and the inability to express it properly. At last he muttered: ‘It's very nearly perfectly ugly,' and left it at that.

Philylla stared at him, hardly able to believe her ears, but his clenched fists and scowling eyes told her the same thing. She chucked back her head, saying indignantly: ‘I think you're mad!'

Berris had a moment of wondering guiltily whether Tarrik would have allowed him to be so truthful on the first day, then he looked from the statue to Philylla and didn't care. ‘I will make you see for yourself,' he said; ‘you know, you don't really like it either.'

‘I don't think it's important enough to like or not to like! It's only silly made-up stuff. But if I chose to, of course I'd like it. It belongs to the King and it cost as much as hundreds of barbarians!'

Berris was so anxious to justify himself that he hardly noticed that. ‘It is important!' he said. ‘What is the good of anything else if there's no beauty? Philylla, what can there be to like about that ugliness?'

‘It's about war, it makes me think of soldiers and swords and victories. They are the things that matter. We only make statues of them just to be reminded. The statues aren't anything by themselves. Of course they aren't!'

‘But—but—is that all the praise your artists get?'

‘Artists!' said Philylla, with incredible contempt. She could not at the moment think of anything scathing enough to say. At last she said: ‘You haven't even got a sword!'

‘I thought strangers did not need to go armed in your State,' said Berris bitterly, wishing he could knock her on the head, make her understand somehow! ‘See this,
Philylla, daughter of Themisteas—I'm a better artist than the man who made that statue. You set me anything to do, with sword or bow, on foot or riding, and I'll show you you're wrong!'

It was quite a minute before Philylla answered. ‘You are going to war under the King,' she said very seriously. ‘You are to kill one of the generals of the Achaean League. You are to bring me back proof that you have done it.'

‘And then?'

‘Then I'll believe everything you tell me about your silly statues.'

‘Very well,' said Berris, quite happy again, ‘that's agreed, isn't it, Philylla?'

‘Yes,' she said, suddenly nervous. ‘Oh yes! But I had better bring you in now. The Queen will want to see you. Are you—are you going to tell your king what you've promised?'

‘Of course.'

‘And if he forbids you?'

‘He won't.'

‘But he may. And he will be very angry with me. But I don't mind. You
are
going to do it, aren't you?'

‘I am.'

‘Then we're friends?'

‘Yes,' said Berris. And then all at once: ‘I've got two sisters at home, one older than you, I think, and one younger.'

‘I'm going to be fourteen. How old are your sisters?'

‘One's seventeen. She's the Chief's wife, and she can work magic.'

Philylla stopped and turned round: ‘Magic! Oh, how lovely! Can she make charms to get people to do what she wants? Oh, can she tell fortunes?'

‘She can make stones dance, and men and women invisible. She can make the waves follow her along the beach, and the sky change colour.'

‘I don't believe you. No one can do that, not even the priests in Egypt. Can you make charms yourself too?'

‘No, but my chief can. Only not here. He's Corn King in Marob. He makes the flax grow and the corn. Whatever he does, happens to the crops. So he has to do special things sometimes.'

‘Sacrifices? Our kings have to do them. But it's for war and good laws. The slaves do them for the crops here!'

‘Yes, but—' said Berris, wanting to explain fifty things at once, and then they came through into another court. And there was Tarrik, who had found a convenient pillar to lean against while he listened and smiled; and Sphaeros explaining and asking questions and walking about as he did it, unconsciously gone back to childhood, making patterns with his feet on the marble chequer of the paved floor; and the King and Queen of Sparta, hand in hand, standing beside the round raised basin of clear water that reflected that bright, almost spring-like sky.

T
HE CHIEF OF MAROB
and his people were housed in some of the very large and much decorated guest-rooms that King Leonidas had once ordered to be made, round an old court at the back of the King's house: that was years ago when there had been some very particular visitors from Macedonia to receive and impress. By now the plaster and paint showed signs of wear and decay, though Agiatis had seen to it that there should be enough cleaning and touching up to keep them very magnificent. Nothing of the sort would be made nowadays, of course, but still she and her husband thought of it all—when such things occurred to them—as very fine and adequate for the guests of the Spartan State.

She had given Sphaeros an even better room, close to their own. It had a vine painted all over it, with red grapes and yellow baskets in low relief, and winged babies, grape gathering or asleep. There was one that always reminded her of her own dead baby. Philylla, spreading a coloured quilt on the bed, looked round and saw Agiatis staring at the wall quietly and solemnly, with her lips a little parted, and knew what it was, and wondered for the hundredth time which of the two kings whose children she had borne, Agiatis had loved best. And then suddenly she found that old wonder changing into a new one, about the barbarian who had spoken to her so oddly about beauty: because, of course, the babies and the grapes were ever so pretty, and she'd always liked them and always would, and anyhow what he said hadn't meant anything, couldn't have, only she'd have to try and believe him—if he kept his promise.

Tarrik was quite decided about not letting Sphaeros see any the less of him now that they were in Hellas. The position became gradually clear to him, though not to Berris nor most of the others. On the one hand there was the King and his friends, those odd and silent people with some intensely interesting business of their own, in whose completion he and his men might be called upon to share, though they were so completely shut off from its preparation. He could feel that they could never be friends, he and Kleomenes, they would never talk together about kingship and all the things he had learnt from Sphaeros, learnt easily because of his own partly Greek mind, and that he had come all this way to know more of. So far, he was angry and rather hurt. He was prepared, at least he had thought so, to be looked down upon by these true Hellenes; but only for ideas imperfectly worked out or concepts scarcely realised—something that could be remedied; not, certainly, like this, as a simple matter of course.

Then there was the rest of Sparta. They did not seem to look down on him, and yet perhaps they puzzled him more. Because, in a way, they seemed more Hellene than the King's friends. The elaborations and distractions of their lives were more what he had expected and half feared, yet knew he could very quickly get into the way of dealing with, seeing that money was the one thing needful: beauty could so easily be bought.

Not that Tarrik was taken in for long by this beauty. Even if he was not a craftsman himself, he had the clear eye and ready scorn that he had learnt from Berris and the metalworkers of Marob. He and Berris used to laugh together immensely, and not very secretly. It pained Sphaeros, who could not see why his pupil should value his own idea of beauty higher than courtesy to his hosts. Neither had much importance, but one was at least expedient.

The Chief's other friends were, on the whole, delighted with this second half of Sparta, which received them so well, asked them to banquets where the food was excellent, the wine better still, and the general air of magnificence far surpassing anything they had ever come across. They drew on the common store to buy themselves slaves, horses, fine clothes, and all other necessaries for the life of pleasure,
and thought well of their Chief who had brought them to it.

It was odd how definitely they thought of him as the Chief now, the leader in war and council, and not as the Corn King. At the same time they forgot all about the blighting and unlucky things that had happened to the magic part of him, the God in him. He was a man here like the rest of them, governing them through the force of that manhood. There were no gods in Sparta, no gods at least that did things, only vaguely remembered, faintly and formally recognised shadows of what had been; or if, after all, there was anything more, it was hidden from the people of Marob.

During the voyage Tarrik had looked from time to time under his coat at the star. Since the day he had taken it, Erif had never had it back, nor, for that matter, asked for it; but it seemed like part of her still, some part that was virgin in spite of him. It was always warm to touch, and in any dim light it shone a little so that one could see the veining of the wood wavy across it. In daylight Tarrik could only see the glow by hollowing his hand round it and looking in between his fingers. He liked doing that, as if it were Erif herself he held there, tiny and still and his very own, as somehow she had never quite been in her real body. But since they had come to Sparta the star had gradually got cold, till now it was no warmer than the heat of his own skin made it, and the light had faded too. It was so gradual that he could not believe anything had happened to Erif Der; it seemed more as if the magic had lost touch with her. So he asked Berris what he thought.

They were outside, at midday, sweating and excited, and the light was quivering down in white sheets edged abruptly with the oblique shadows of houses. The pink smoke of fruit blossom still lay all about the plain of Sparta: the brilliant flower colours were still unfaded by the sun; they had not seen or imagined the pale drying of the summer grass. ‘I wonder,' said Berris, screwing up a spray of sweet leaves against his nose, ‘what is the real reason. I don't think anything can be wrong with Erif; she's never ill. Unless she was going to have a baby?' But Tarrik shook his head. ‘Well then, it might be there's a sort of gap coming between you that the
star can't bridge. Perhaps she's gone back to father and Yellow Bull.'

‘Why should she?' said Tarrik sharply, and clutched so hard at the star that the chain snapped with a little ting and the broken end flicked up against his neck.

‘I don't know,' said Berris rather unhappily, and picked up the chain. ‘I don't know what she told you. I hadn't seen any of them much since the bullfighting. They would talk, and I'd got things to work out. But supposing Erif is just where you left her, could it be you? I mean, if you didn't care—'

But Tarrik said: ‘I do care.'

‘Oh well, I suppose you know, Tarrik, and I suppose that girl you're after now is just to remind you of her!'

‘Oh, that young woman! She's just to see how much the Greeks can stand of us after all!' And Tarrik grinned, relaxing his grip on the chain. ‘But it's no good trying the Queen's girls, Berris. That bare-legged crew of hers won't have anything to do with savages like you and me. You'll never have that Philylla girl of yours!'

‘I don't want to,' said Berris, a good deal hurt, partly because he had never considered Philylla like this and partly because he was a little ashamed not to have. He went on: ‘But, Tarrik, about the star. If it's not her and it's not you, mightn't it be the place? Look—look at the light there is on everything, every single grass blade so all over seen that it couldn't hide a fly! Look at those flat walls, just spread out blank for the sun's patterns to go on! All these sharp things completely seen, Tarrik—I mean, it's not a magic country.'

‘No,' said Tarrik, ‘I believe that's it. Magic won't work here, just as it wouldn't with Sphaeros. But I shan't lose my own, I can't! Not the magic that's in me! Berris, I can make the corn grow still!'

Berris said: ‘You've given that to my brother now.'

‘Yes, but after—if I'd lost it here and couldn't do it any more!' For a minute he was rather badly frightened and Berris, watching him, couldn't find a word to say. They both knew what happened to the Corn King when his godhead began to fail; the thing that had happened to Tarrik's father; the thing that would happen to Tarrik if he had the bad luck to get old—not be killed first by the
Red Riders or drowned in a storm. Only it had always been a very long way off before; now it grinned between them. With an effort, Tarrik broke past: ‘Nothing can happen to me! But that must be it about the star, Berris. I wonder if Erif can tell about me. I wonder if she's finding that the knife has gone dim too. You know the King wants us all for his war next week?'

‘Oh, but does he!' said Berris, and fell to thinking.

The next week, then, they all went off, marching against the Achaean League.

Philylla went home for her fourteenth birthday. Her father had two houses, one in the city of Sparta itself, and one in the country, a low white house beyond Geronthrai on the top of a foothill, looking west across the broad crop-patterned valley towards Taygetos. As it was spring and rather lovely up there, the family had left the city and gone over with several ox-carts of essential furnishing and provisions with them. They went for miles through their own estate; the tenants and cultivators, slave or half-slave or free, came out of the farms as they went by, and their daughters brought bunches of flowers or anything in the way of food or drink that it was thought possible the noble owners might not despise too much. Dontas was riding and maddeningly pleased with himself; he charged the flocks of geese and sent them flapping and cackling and hissing out of his way.

When they got to the farm, Philylla's mother, Eupolia, went into mild hysterics over the bareness of everything before the hangings they had brought were put up, and Themisteas walked off to look at his stables; his racers were mostly kept up here out of harm's way. Philylla had all the country servants crowding round her, saying how she'd grown, how pretty she was, what a lucky man it would be who'd get her. The big, soft-eyed country woman, Tiasa, who had been her wet-nurse, came up through the crowd and kissed her and brought her over to a seat under the furry first peepings of vine leaves. Philylla shut her eyes and began breathing in the queer, shiveringly alive country smells, of green things pushing and growing, and tight, rustling corn sacks and meal sacks, of old wood and hot dung and places where honey had dripped. Her foster-mother was feeling at her with big wise hands that knew what they wanted,
touching at all the soft, very sensitive growing points of her body. Waves of feeling poured over her as she waited, shut-eyed, centering, centering. … And then she jumped up, one spring on to her feet, another on to the bench, and looked down at the smiling face and big breasts of her foster-mother. The smells still clung about her tongue and widened nostrils; the rustling and cooing and bleating, the always remembered lilt of the country voices, struck like deep bells on her ears. She shook herself and stuck her arms out into the sun. ‘What is it?' she said.

Tiasa answered: ‘Time will show,' and stooped and kissed her feet between the thongs of the sandals. But already Philylla was thinking away from it all to her own time, the King's time.

She could usually bully her small sister and brother into at least not contradicting her, but the grown-ups were maddening! She couldn't help sometimes trying to tell them, and then they either disregarded her or laughed at her. She knew she didn't always explain it properly, and often she got too excited to be clear; or else she didn't quite know herself exactly what it was she wanted so much to happen. And sometimes they did listen for a minute or two, but then they always ended by producing all sorts of silly reasons against it and against the King and Queen. They said: ‘Experience shows us—,' ‘When you know as much about human nature as I do—' ‘When you're my age, Philylla—' As if there was anything good about being old! Philylla knew that the new ideas ought to work, and when she was told they wouldn't and couldn't, but the only reason seemed to be that most people are greedy and lazy and selfish, she just got too angry to bear it and ran off into the store-room and hid behind the big oil jars and cried. She wanted somebody else to come and cry with her and agree that the grown-ups were silly, and solemnly vow and swear never to become like that themselves, however old they got. Sometimes she pretended Agiatis was there, but she knew the Queen was too patient and gentle ever to hate properly, as she hated. Sometimes it was one or another of the maids of honour who thought as she did, and sometimes it was one of these other two: Berris Der, that she could explain it all to and who would listen; or Panteus, who would explain it all to her. She didn't know which she
would rather have. Panteus would be rather frightening; he was too near the King. They were both away now, with the army. There were going to be battles. It was unfair that she couldn't be a soldier!

It was the week after her birthday and she was beginning to wish she could go back to the city at once instead of staying at home for the three more days she had. Everything seemed to be going wrong; she had been rude and then violently apologetic to her father and mother; she hadn't wanted the presents they gave her for her birthday, the dresses and jewels and combs; she was afraid of losing her new ear-rings, and Themisteas laughed at her for wanting a horse of her own, though he said she might have one of the racers and let it be entered in her name—but not to ride, oh no! She usually slept like a dormouse, but that morning she couldn't. She dressed and went out into the court; no one was about yet—even the slaves slept late. She looked round and bit her lip and undid the lower bolts of the gate; then she pulled up a truss of hay and got on to it and undid the top ones. She heard the man in charge beginning to wake up, so she pulled it open just enough to slip out and run. It was early yet. Across the valley the far mountains were all bathed and gold in the dawn sunlight, but she and her mountains were in shadow still. If she had got that horse she would have galloped down and across the valley till she met the light. And it was, there was nothing for it but to wait until the sun had come over the top of the great range behind the house. She went quickly down the slope and out of sight.