The Corn King and the Spring Queen (19 page)

‘About three hundred, I'm afraid, counting the paid soldiers.'

‘Oh, those! How was it, do you know? Did we put up a good defence?'

‘Most brave, the messengers say. It was a night surprise. Every one thought Aratos was fifty miles away.'

‘Megistonous should not have allowed himself to be surprised. I suppose they will let me ransom him. He is wanted here, or will be soon. He could not have found a worse time to be taken prisoner. Is he wounded?'

‘They say not. Dear granny, you must not get anxious about him.'

Kratesikleia smiled and patted the younger woman's hand: ‘My lamb, I shan't sleep any the worse. You've been married to two men and in love with them both. I've been married to two men and not the least in love with either of them. Leonidas gave me the boys and Chilonis, and he wasn't as bad as you used to think, and Megistonous and I have a very proper respect for one another, but as far as that goes we are quite as happy when we are not in the same place and I am sure Aratos will have the sense to treat him well.' She turned suddenly with a snap of her black bright eyes, so that the other jumped. ‘Philylla, you are listening! Yes, I can see it! Well, take my advice, and don't fall in love with your husband, it will save a great deal of trouble.'

Agiatis protested: ‘Don't listen to her, Philylla! And will you tell the children about this? Say it will be revenged, and soon. The King says Aratos will not try to push south—he has not got the army for it. And the moment things are settled here, we will attack him and make up for it. If the men at Orchomenos had been all Spartan this would not have happened. But that will be changed in the New Times!'

The Queen and her mother-in-law went in, and Philylla told the children. The two eldest understood a little and got angry and stopped playing for a few minutes. Then they started again, only shouting rather louder than they had before. Philylla rather thought the Scythians must have been in Orchomenos. Megistonous had very few Spartan troops and a good many hired ones—he had paid for them himself, as a gift to the State—Cretans and Italians, men from the Greek colonies and roughish, dark people from the native Italian cities which, it was said, were beginning to get prosperous and powerful, one most of all—Rome! A big, walled city among marshes, always fighting. That was what was happening now in all these outside countries that nobody had ever heard of fifty years ago. But, she supposed, they would all disappear again, in time, when she was older.

Yes, she was sure the Scythians had been in the fortress. She did hope they hadn't all been killed. She frowned and began to remember, attentively, the things Berris had said.
Now that he was not there and perhaps never would be there, she thought of the answers she ought to have made and began to put together a theory of her own about beauty, or rather, against beauty, recognising, as Agiatis had, its inherent dangerousness. She thought of what really mattered to her and it seemed that two things did matter: the first was people, those warm, immediate people she knew and admired and loved; and the second was her country, Sparta—that country, not so much now as in the future, but a quick future; soon, soon, when it was as she and the others wanted it to be! Beauty, as Berris had explained it to her, came into neither of those things except accidentally, as, for instance, the Queen was beautiful and the mountains were beautiful. But it was not really a part of either of them. Trying to remember scraps of philosophy, what she had overheard and what the Queen or even the King had told her, she got to closer terms still with her ideas. Then it seemed to her that what she looked for both in people and in the State was goodness certainly, truth perhaps—she could not remember whether Sphaeros said they were the same thing!—but not this matter of beauty. She saw beauty as an alarming, violent, destructive power, Aphrodite the Untamed, caring for no standards but its own. She understood at last the thing which the Queen had told her: how in old days the Law-givers had driven Beauty out of Sparta for the sake of the Good Life. Already she foresaw conflict if it was let in again, though she was too young to put any form to it, and she was angry with beauty for upsetting things and angry with Berris Der for having talked and having given her these troubling thoughts where such a little time ago she had been quite clear and calm. It was no use wondering if he was dead. She gave her mind to the game again. She was not going to let Nikomedes beat her!

Later she heard that several of the Scythians had been killed, but that the Chief, Berris Der, and a couple of others were prisoners. As soon as they were arranged, Eurydice would send the ransoms. There was a certain amount of misunderstanding about this, and one letter went astray, but it would be got together and sent off. In the meantime Tarrik was practically unwounded and none of the others were much hurt. Berris had been stunned by
a falling stone and had a nasty couple of days, but now he was all right.

Eurydice was trying to make a plan to ransom Tarrik without Berris; that was natural enough. She felt languid and yet very much alive during this very hot weather at the end of the summer. There was no wind to stir the warm air between the baked, golden brown mountains on either side of the plain of Sparta. A man was making love to her, a Rhodian merchant, younger than she was, with sliding dark eyes. She knew it was mostly, even perhaps wholly, for her money, but she did not care. She watched them bringing in the harvest, and he sat at her feet and sang and played on a very sweet-toned small harp which she had given him; the ivory of its base was engraved with the judgment of Paris. She asked him to advise her about the ransom; she was only a woman with no kind, strong man to help her!

In the meantime things happened with a certain rapidity in Sparta. Megistonous had been ransomed quickly without bargaining; he was an influence among the older people and Kleomenes wanted his help. Agiatis had terrible, vivid memories of young Agis preparing for his new laws and changes fifteen years ago. She prayed at his tomb, asking his spirit to help them, and made vows. Philylla, knowing what it was the Queen wanted, made vows too. The feeling of something about to happen grew very strong; those of the Queen's maids who were with her in heart watched and listened and whispered; the others either laughed at them or were frightened. Philylla and one of her friends invented a secret password and a kind of sign language which made it even more exciting. Yet when it really happened, they only heard hours later, for the plan the King had made was quite quiet, as well as being quite effective.

The King had been marching up and down, harassing Aratos and the League at one point or another, and bringing up provisions to the further garrisons. His army was tired out and thankful when at last he let them settle down in camp, a day's march north of Sparta. Then he himself with those he could trust and the best of the mercenaries, went south to Sparta, and had four of the five ephors secretly and quickly killed while they were at supper. Phoebis, who was a lawless man, did this, and with him Therykion, who felt that, having gone this far with the King, he must seal
himself in blood to go further. The next day every one in the city went about very quietly or stayed at home. The King and Sphaeros had drawn up a list of eighty men who were against them and had power enough to show it. He gave them till nightfall to get beyond the boundaries of the State; they went at once. Then in the evening he called a meeting of the citizens, and at the same time sent Panteus and Therykion back to tell the army that the thing was accomplished and they must accept it.

Kleomenes was standing on the raised plinth underneath the bronze Apollo that had been in the market-place at Sparta so long that people had ceased to notice it. He himself stood in the same sort of attitude as the statue, drawn up to a tensity that must bring violent disaster on someone, and as he looked at them his shut mouth grinned with a beginning of triumph, and for a moment it looked alarmingly like that other very early metal smile. When the crowd was quite quiet he began talking to them, no louder than would just carry to the edges. Between sentences he slowed himself down, remembering how Sphaeros had again, for the twentieth time, warned him against speaking too fast. He tried to fix his eyes on some one man among the crowd, but that was not at all easy. It was so intensely important for him to get not only one, but all.

Kleomenes had taken weeks of thought about this speech to the citizens; it was to be the supreme justification of his way of action. It was a terrible thing to kill the ephors, the magistrates and representatives of his State; he did not try to say it was not. But desperate times need desperate remedies. In the old days Lycurgus had made his revolution without bloodshed. But now he, Kleomenes, was doctor to a State far worse diseased than the Sparta of Lycurgus. The time-old and native ill was there: riches and poverty together in one body, a hot and a cold fever. But now there were ills come from foreign countries, with names that should not be known in Sparta, luxury, usury and debt. For these he must be surgeon as well as physician. As for the ephors: he and his advisers (and here many who were listening knew that he meant the Stoic Sphaeros), wanting to understand certain things that had seemed to them very strange, and strange perhaps to many others as well, had searched through the store of tradition and law
and memory handed down from father to son, which was the history of their State; and it had come to them that the ephors had gradually taken more and more power both from the State and from the kings. So long as all had gone well the ephors were their own excuse. But he asked the citizens to think back to fifteen years ago. He said that and stayed silent for a moment, trying to pierce through into the crowd in front of him, the citizens of Sparta and a good many others who were not truly citizens, but wished to be and were going to be. The man he had fixed his eyes on at first seemed very much excited, but the crowd was on the whole orderly, and it was still not convinced. It looked him in the eyes and frowned.

He turned a little and Agiatis his Queen came from beside the statue and stood by him, all in the dead white which the sun shadowed into a queer, hollow blue. She was very white herself and not altogether like an ordinary woman. She held their son, Nikomedes, by the hand; she was the past and he the future. But did the crowd know that? Kleomenes said: ‘There is something so strange and sacred about the Kingship of Sparta that, whoever holds it, he has so much of sacredness about him that even his enemies in battle fear to be his death. But the ephors, out of their pride, thought otherwise. They banished one king, my cousin Kleombrotos, husband of my sister Chilonis. He died in exile—their doing. His children have been brought up by exiles. They killed another king. They killed Agis, the gentlest and best the gods have ever given you, murdered him without hearing his defence, because he tried to let you have back your oldest and most nearly divine way of government. I am not ignorant that my father Leonidas was one of the contrivers of this murder. He is dead. I take the best way to purge his spirit of the murder by avenging the murdered man. Yet I say this: that if Agis were alive now he would be very willing to die again for the sake of his laws, and he would say that if, because of his death, his laws were made real in Sparta—and they shall be made real, through his death and now through the death of the ephors whom I have killed to make the circle full—then we should be happy, and on his death day there must not be lamentation but gladness and remembrance and praise! I say this for him, as he would say it for all!'

Panting, Kleomenes took her by the hand, Agiatis the merry-minded, the mourner for Agis. She had made no movement either of sorrow or gladness, for she was a Spartan woman, but now she stood beside the King and she looked very beautiful. Kleomenes thought that the crowd in front of him was larger. There were more all about its edges. He had lost sight of his first man, but he thought they were all catching fire a little, and suddenly he took a glance up and saw from below Apollo's thin, terrific grin, and knew the god of old Sparta was shooting arrows for him. He went on: ‘I will do all that Agis would have done, and because I am older than he was, I will do more. I will build up a Sparta that shall not only be secure in the goodness of a good State, but shall through that be the standard and leader of Hellas. Now the first thing towards this is that the land shall from now on belong to every one, and not be the slave of a single owner. Then debtors shall be made free of all their debts. Then all those with brave and free hearts, whatever they may be now, shall be made citizens, and it is they who will save the city. Then those of us who love our State with action as well as words will give her all we own. We will do nothing by halves, the time for that is past. Citizens, it is my privilege and honour as your King to be first to do this!'

He called by name on ten of the oldest and most respected citizens and asked them to check off the money and promises as they were given in to the common stock. He gave his own partly in coined gold and partly in written deeds. Every one looked on in the kind of hush that is made up of intense whispering. Then Megistonous, his stepfather, did the same. He had lent a certain amount of money, and had the bonds for it. Kleomenes bade light a fire and Megistonous threw in his bonds. Then one after another his friends came with their money and bonds and deeds and promises. The stock and farm implements would go with the land and be divided up with it. Then there was a little pause. And then the thing happened which the King had waited for. The crowd moved, and one after another men came forward, nervous or stolid or wildly excited, and gave away all their possessions to the State, most by promise before witnesses, but some going home to their houses to get the actual money and deeds. And now there
were bursts of a glad noise, the shouting of men suddenly full of a great hope.

All night this went on. The women joined in. Agiatis threw into the common lot the golden bracelets and necklaces which Kleomenes had given her when they were first married. Fifteen years ago when Agis had done the same thing she had thrown in his love gifts too, for she knew he wished it, but she had cried about them for nights afterwards. This time she knew she would not regret them at all. Kratesikleia threw in hers too. From her own people and from Leonidas she had necklaces so heavy that she could scarcely wear them now, chains dangling gold acorns and leaves and lily buds, valued by their weight alone, and snakes with ruby eyes and twenty different precious stones along their backs, double and treble bracelets with sun-rayed knobs sticking out of them, and crescent ear-rings or ear-rings of gorgons' heads dripping pearls from their grinning mouths. She had liked them well enough as a young woman; they were less becoming now.