The Corn King and the Spring Queen (20 page)

Word went back to the King's house; they were all waiting for it. Philylla stood twisting her hands, wondering what her father Themisteas was doing, longing for him to have been persuaded but hardly daring to hope he had been. Suddenly she said: ‘We must go out and give our things!' and she ran to the chest where she kept her dresses and jewels. Half the other girls ran too—they had to do something! It was difficult; they did like their pretties. Could they be sure that all the other girls would do the same? It was all very well for grown-up married women; yes, and it was all very well for Philylla, when every one knew the Queen was going to give her Panteus. The ones who had fewest things loved them better, but also this would level up and stop the ones who used to have more from crowing over them. Some of them understood and were glad for their things to be consecrate, though it was to a strange god. Others just had to shut their eyes and gasp and grab. But that, for the younger ones at least, made it all the more marvellous. Philylla and most of her friends weren't old enough to be ashamed of feeling like a band of heroines. They ran out of the King's house, the Spartan girls, and into the market-place, with gold and silver and ivory and precious stones in the skirts of their dresses.
The crowd parted for them. They came and heaped their things under the eyes of the King and Queen. It was like a dance.

At the end Philylla looked up, a little dazed, and saw her father quite close to her. She ran to him and threw her arm round his neck. ‘Oh, father!' she said, and then again in another voice: ‘Oh, father!'—for she thought she saw—

‘I've done it, my dear,' said Themisteas. ‘I'm most likely a fool, but I'm not a coward and I can't see a brave thing tried and not be in it myself! I don't know what your mother will say, but we've got to give the King his chance. It's a good job you're pleased, my lass, anyway!' And he kissed her.

‘Have you given up everything, father,' she whispered, ‘everything?'

‘They seem to have taken my land,' he said, ‘so I may as well finish it off. Besides, by God, if this means that we get an army that's some use, then it's worth it! I'm giving him all my horses for his cavalry. But don't blame me, Philylla, if you ask me for a dowry some day and don't get it.'

‘I won't, father,' she said, very seriously.

After that she stayed by the Queen and watched. It was all tremendously exciting, though nothing so much so as her own giving up. She saw the King's friends all about and suddenly asked the Queen if Panteus was there. But Agiatis said that he had been sent to tell the army. So he had not seen her and her friends come out of the King's house and throw in their things. All at once she felt a little tired. It was late; everything was going on by torchlight. The Queen and her maids went back and then to bed. The New Times had come.

But the thing went on steadily. Kleomenes never let it slack off nor allowed for a moment that the most difficult part was not still to come. The raw material was under his hand, waiting to be put into form. He and his friends, and Sphaeros most of all, had the plan of it almost worked out. Every one had to work, the men in defence and government of their State, the women in its maintenance. Much of the old life was brought back with a fresh violence. Beginning at the beginning they started the classes again. Nikomedes was eight. He went, as kings' children had always gone in
time past, out of his mother's hands to learn hardness and discipline; he was shy and terribly excited; he went for a long walk with Philylla and told her about it. He was longing already for the adventure of making friends.

The eating-together was insisted on for all citizens, and no foreign cooking or hot spices to make the black broth go down. The new citizens were chosen and enfranchised, men of all classes, even the poorest. Later on there might be still more enfranchisement. Men went off to see to their lots of the divided-up land. Even those who had been banished were given their lots, for Kleomenes was set on having them back as soon as things were running well; he was not going to waste any Spartan blood. Very often an arrangement was come to with the old owner, about the standing crops at least, and it made a difference what sort of reputation he had got in the old days for his dealing with the under-folk.

Everywhere there was great activity and with it a curious order and decency of life, for no one had much time to spare from this absorbing and fascinating work of renovating and making beautiful their state. Many of those who had at first been most reluctant became interested, and by and bye enthusiastic. Men were making new contacts and friendships with others who had looked on the same life from a very different place. There was less bitterness and gossip and jealousy because they had stepped into a wider and more generous world. Perhaps they might get tired of it sooner or later, but at first most of the young ones, anyhow, were all for the King and his times.

Kleomenes had remade the whole of his army, letting all except the best of the mercenaries go, and training his new brigades to use the great Macedonian pike and be less hampered by their shields. They drilled and played war-games in the fields about Sparta, and the King encouraged the daughters and sisters of the new citizens to go out and see them, for he was working for the next generation as well. There was plenty of singing and laughter, and catchwords going about. The young men who had been most subtle and agile-minded and had invented the oddest amusements for themselves in old days, were angry and bored with it at first, but then found they wanted to be among the leaders, too, and turned their minds to that. Philosophy was fashionable enough in the Spartan army, and the poorer men, for whom
it had been a luxury which they had never been able to afford, put a new liveliness and sense of reality into the old philosophic tricks and games and set dialogues.

The King was constantly busy. His friends all had their hands full. Sometimes he did not see Panteus for days at a time. Agiatis saw less of him, too, but she was busy among the women: they took longer to be talked over and persuaded—the good for them was much less obvious. But she was so glad that he was getting his heart's desire at last that she minded very little, and tried not to miss the nights when he had been desperately unhappy and depressed, and had given her the joy of calming him and making him hopeful again. It was early autumn and there had been no rain for months. In dust and sun the New Times went on.

R
EVOLUTIONS ARE
always awkward for foreigners who happen to find themselves there. Eurydice fled over the hills into Messenia and her Rhodian merchant fled too. There was a ship of his at Pharae, and he urged her to come. But Tarrik was still in prison, and she had not yet been able to arrange what she wanted: to ransom him without Berris. However, she had managed to stop any of the other Marob people from doing anything on their own; it was certainly her place to act. She had in the meantime sent a smaller sum, which would allow the prisoners to make the necessary arrangements for any small comforts or extra food which they would be sure to need. So she settled down again in Messenia. Her house had a vineyard behind it and now the grapes were ripe, the solid, unpruned bunches of wine grapes that were like single fruits to hold in the hand and that bled warm red juice on to face and neck as one bit into them.

It was a good year for the vines. There would be wine for the new Spartan armies to drink to Kleomenes. The carts of grapes went creaking down the street of Sparta. Therykion stood back into an angle of wall to let them pass. He was tired because he had been doing a night march with one of the new brigades and seeing to it that the various officers knew what they were about. Now he was going to report on it to the King. When the carts were by, he went on,
frowning; he was not sure that he had a uniformly good report to make; he wondered how this new stuff would face real war, rear-guard in a losing battle, say …

Panteus came loping along towards him; he had a bright blue tunic with a black edge. He ran with an amazing amount of spring, as though he were always on short turf. He stopped short, with a last bound, beside Therykion, not panting at all, and said: ‘Where are you going?'

‘To Kleomenes,' said Therykion, ‘with reports; or Eukleidas, I suppose. Sit a minute, Panteus, I want to ask you something.'

‘Very well,' said Panteus, ‘I've got my people up in the hills—sweating. I'm going to have a great hunt for every one next week; it'll do them good and please the farmers. Can you let me have any hounds?'

‘Yes, any I have now. Listen, Panteus: what about Eukleidas?'

‘Well—he's been made the second King. I don't know what you mean.'

‘You do know. You know Kleomenes ought not to have done it. There have never been two kings of the same line, let alone two brothers.'

‘I don't think it matters,' Panteus said. ‘Plenty of odd things have happened lately; odder than that. I like Eukleidas. And there's no “of course” about it, Therykion. He and Kleomenes aren't much alike. Why do you want us always to stick to the past?'

Therykion said: ‘We are always pretending to. And this is what it comes to! Panteus, did the King believe all that about the ephors having stolen the power in times past?'

Panteus laughed. ‘Why bother? Therykion, these are the New Times. For God's sake let us accept them with our arms open! Oh, by the way, I've been asked about those Scythians who were taken prisoner at Orchomenos. Are they still in prison? Megistonous doesn't know. He's got some scheme about Argos now and won't talk about anything else.'

Therykion shook his head; he didn't know either, and didn't care. He had not been at all interested in the Scythians.

Just then Phoebis came up to them; his hair was sticking up in tufts and he was grinning. He said to Therykion:
‘You look as if you wanted cheering up. Have you heard the story about the goat?'

‘Yes,' said Therykion with a snap, and turned away with a jerky, raised hand.

‘Will you come to my autumn hunt?' said Panteus. ‘I'm putting my whole brigade to it.'

‘Do I look it!' said Phoebis, extremely gaily, and went on.

‘I suppose that means yes,' said Panteus, ‘in our new laconic manner. Good old Phoebis.'

‘Phoebis,' said Therykion suddenly, ‘has got quite intolerable since he's been a citizen.'

‘No,' said Panteus, ‘no. You're tired, Therykion.'

‘I know I am. God help me, I can't tell how things are going to work. But I wish Phoebis would comb his hair sometimes, or even wear a clean tunic!'

Panteus put an arm round his shoulder gently. ‘We both mind that,' he said, ‘but not so much. Here's Sphaeros. He'll tell you it's only appearance if you want to make really sure.'

Sphaeros came over to them and Panteus repeated his question about the Scythians. Sphaeros looked worried and wrinkled at once. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘they're in prison still and I can't get at the woman Eurydice. It's her business to ransom them, but she keeps on delaying for some reason, and now she's run off to Messenia. Who asked you, Panteus?'

‘Another Scythian, a new one. Some sort of a servant. He couldn't speak Greek very well.'

Sphaeros said: ‘I'd better see him, poor thing. I can speak his own language. He is probably frightened. You know, Tarrik was their good genius as well as their king. Perhaps things have seemed to them in Marob to be going wrong without him.'

‘The Queen told me his wife was dead,' said Panteus, following up some train of thought of his very own. ‘I wonder if he was fond of her.'

‘He was,' said Sphaeros, ‘though she was a queer creature. I heard all sorts of stories about her. I did not think most of them were very credible, though; at least, not now and here. Marob was a curious place. Panteus, do you know where your Scythian was lodging?'

‘You'll run into him sooner or later; he was funny
enough to see a mile off! Sphaeros, aren't you glad about everything—on the whole?'

Sphaeros drew himself upright, but he did not come beyond Therykion's shoulder; he looked up at them both and said: ‘On the whole—yes.'

It was then that Panteus pointed and said: ‘There!—that's one of the Scythians for you. Riding! I wonder how he's managed to get a horse. It's not so easy nowadays.'

Therykion said: ‘It's a woman.'

Panteus said: ‘She rides well.'

Sphaeros, who could not see as far as they could, waited, screwing up his eyes, till the rider was nearer. Then he said: ‘It is Erif Der.'

She trotted up, waving a hand to Sphaeros, and dismounted. She was wearing black linen breeches and a green coat with feathers and an tiered heads of black linen cut out and sewn on to it. Her boots were green leather sewed in black with criss-cross patterns. Her head was bare and her face and neck had burnt very red from the sun. Sphaeros thought, first, that her plaits were scanty and rather darker, and then that her body was thicker and her face thinner. She held out her hand: ‘I am glad I found you, Sphaeros!' she said, in still rather halting Greek. ‘Now things will be easier. Where is Tarrik?'

‘A prisoner,' said Sphaeros, ‘somewhere in Achaean League territory. So is your brother. I believe they are both well. Tarrik was told you were dead.'

‘Who told him? Eurydice?—I suppose she's called that here. Ah, she thought I was! But it was an appearance, Sphaeros.'

Sphaeros said: ‘It is good that it was only that. Now, here are two friends of the King of Sparta—Therykion and Panteus; the Queen of Marob.'

They bade her welcome. Her Greek was improving at every sentence. Panteus asked how she had got the horse. She said: ‘I am not very easily hindered about things like horses, even here. I saw some horses in a field and met three girls with them. I asked them to lend me a horse and one of them did.'

Panteus was looking carefully at the horse and its harness: ‘Of course!' he said, ‘it is one of the King's horses. But still I don't understand how you got it, Lady of Marob.'

‘I told the girl I came from Marob and I was a witch—Sphaeros doesn't believe that!—and she said she would have been a witch if she had been my sister, and she let me have the horse for today, because I was tired and I had to find out about my man. She was younger than me with very bright eyes and hair, and she looked as if she were in the middle of something very exciting. She had a bow and arrows and a bird that she talked to.'

‘That was Philylla, daughter of Themisteas,' said Panteus. ‘She can shoot well now.'

‘I can shoot, too,' said Erif Der.

Sphaeros said: ‘Tell me what you have been doing all this year.'

She sighed and made a queer, strained little face. ‘I'd like to tell you some time, Sphaeros,' she said, ‘when I've got Tarrik back.'

‘Are you going to get him yourself?' asked Sphaeros. ‘Have you the money?'

She smiled again. ‘I don't waste money,' she said.

Erif Der had come from Marob with only half a dozen men and no women. She had also brought some of her brother's finest tools which she knew he would be sure to want, though she was equally sure that he would be so pleased to see them that he would forget to say Thank you' to her. They were his goldsmith's tools mostly, and especially the magnifying crystal, which had been left him by his uncle, who had first taught him the craft, and which was certainly hundreds of years old. He would like having that in his hand again.

She got her men housed in Sparta and asked a certain number of questions. Then, still with the horse she had borrowed from Philylla, she went north towards the cities that were members of the Achaean League. Every one there had their eyes on Sparta, Aratos most of all. At first he had thought that the revolution in Sparta would have shaken things up and given him his chance of a not too expensive victory, but soon it was clear that the new Spartan armies were an infinitely more powerful weapon for Kleomenes than anything he had had before, and besides, now that he was free from the ephors and their traditional cautiousness, he could do what he liked. And what he liked, Aratos well knew, would be nothing short of the leadership of the
Achaean League going to Sparta and himself. That would mean two things, and one would be the end of Aratos. The other that this Kleomenes might take it into his head to start revolutions in some of the other states. There were some who would welcome him too: the riff-raff, of course. But Aratos wondered if he could be sure even of the respectable poorish people. It was unfair that Kleomenes should have made himself so popular. Ptolemy would send money, but no soldiers. Aratos began to look somewhere else; a very safe messenger took a secret letter to Macedonia and King Antigonos.

Meanwhile Tarrik and Berris Der and the two others, Black Holly and Kotka, were in prison and getting more and more gloomy as the days went by and nothing happened about the ransom. Midsummer was past and now harvest would be past as well. The others were not so much disturbed about this, for they remembered that Tarrik had made another Corn King before he went, and they supposed Yellow Bull was working the corn magic, and Essro would be his Spring Queen. But Tarrik himself knew what was likely to have happened to Yellow Bull and his magic, and he was very much distressed when he thought of the Marob fields and the bad things let loose on them. The star on his breast had gone dim again, but he found it was possible to go back in memory to that night in the hills above Sparta. Though he was not certain and dared not say anything hopeful to Berris, he yet did not despair of seeing his wife again; but he got very, very tired of waiting.

They had been treated fairly well. For the first few days they had all been chained except Berris, who was obviously too ill to walk; but in these wars it was generally recognised not to be a good thing to be too unfriendly towards the mercenaries and foreigners; they might be on one's own side next time. Tarrik was angry that his Aunt Eurydice was taking so long about the ransoms, but supposed it might be due to what he vaguely heard was happening in Sparta. They were actually in prison at Argos, but none of them were very sure where it was in relation to Sparta; they had been marched there through puzzling hill-roads. The four of them had a fair-sized stone room to themselves with mattresses and blankets. There was no window, but the door was only an open framework of iron bars. It looked
out into a small courtyard with a plane tree in the middle, and they were allowed to be there all day. It had a gateway out of it, but there were always armed guards who were severely punished if they were caught taking bribes from the prisoners. There were seven other rooms opening off the courtyard and other prisoners in three of them. A few of these were Tarentine mercenaries, who told Tarrik and his friends about Italy, shifting the centre of the world still further west and away from Marob. They all played dice with one another and any other games they could think of, and tried to get the guards to tell them what was going on outside.

At night they were locked into the rooms again, but two guards were always left in the courtyard. It was hot and difficult to sleep: some sorts of flies preferred the sun, but others came out at dusk. Berris usually lay nearest the bars; he could overhear one of the guards—a Thracian who spoke very bad Greek—making clumsy love to a town girl he had brought in. The other guard was a Greek of sorts. Berris had drawn things in charcoal all over the walls of their room; he was unhappy because the next people would rub them off. Being unhappy about one thing reminded him of the other things. He thought of Erif Der and how she used to blow the forge fire for him, and all that they had laughed at together which no one else would ever laugh about in the same way. He began the painful picturing of her: her face pale between the plaits, staring at him, staring out of the darkness, the dark of earth, her lips moving. ‘Berris,' she said, ‘Berris.'

Immediately, between one breath and the next, he realised that this so much alive image was not his making, was not an appearance at all but the thing itself. She passed him in wire and pincers. ‘It looks an easy lock,' she said. He got to work while she crouched against the bars. He was too intent to ask questions, but pure gladness made him clever. ‘So,' he said, ‘so!' The door creaked. ‘Wake the others,' she whispered. ‘I can see Tarrik! Tell them to follow and not to speak.' He woke them all. Tarrik was dreaming already, fidgeting at the hot star. Kotka began to ask questions and had to be stopped. They slipped past the half-open door. She had a dagger for each of them. Tarrik touched her hand and nodded, then slid his eyes round questioning towards the
sentries—he could only see one, the Thracian, standing close up to the wall and his woman. She shook her head. ‘I killed the Greek. The other I've dealt with. Come.' The Thracian and his girl were staring straight at them as they went past in the starlight, and Tarrik heard him say to her: ‘Look at those shadows by the wall; one would say they were men.' And then they were back again at their kissing and giggling.