The Corn King and the Spring Queen (22 page)

O
N HIS WAY BACK
Sphaeros met Phoebis, who was on the whole sympathetic about the Scythians and how little good they had got out of Sparta. He himself was rather distressed and indignant because some of the Spartiates who had been friendly enough to him and his likes before they were citizens, were now not nearly so ready to consider them brothers. Sphaeros soothed him down. ‘It'll pass, Phoebis,' he said, ‘after the next battle! And I know it's none of the King's own Mess.'

‘No,' said Phoebis, ‘but I'm the only one who's in that, and the others mind more than me. They'll get their own back some day, or their sons will. I'm half and half, but some of them are pure helots, though we all pretend not to
think so—except the King, who does dare look straight because he's an eagle! And they've been kept down all these years and years, oh, beyond time, Sphaeros! And now they've got their rights. It's like strong wine.' He scratched his head and grinned. ‘Well, we've all got something wrong with us. There's our poor Therykion gone and fallen head over ears for a pink-and-white boy who can't run across two fields!'

‘I heard that,' said Sphaeros. ‘One hoped he might have been able to choose more wisely at his age: if one must fall in love, as you all seem to do whatever follies you can be certain it will lead you into.'

‘Some people are fools,' said Phoebis. He laughed and felt better. He quite liked Therykion, but thought him fussy about his beard and nails and the hang of his otherwise very plain tunic. ‘Panteus is the lucky one,' he said. ‘Everything he touches goes right. I do like it when he sings. He and the King have got each other's heart for keeps, and when she's old enough he'll have Philylla, who's the same for the Queen or as near as makes no difference. She's a picture, isn't she, Sphaeros?'

‘I suppose so,' said Sphaeros. Phoebis had hold of his arm and was walking him along rather fast. He stumbled once or twice. ‘Is she gentle, do you know? When I'm there she scarcely speaks, but I have seen her racing about the fields by herself.'

‘She's gentle and wise,' said Phoebis, ‘and she knows something about my people. She doesn't mind the smell of cows and pigs and old thatch and garlic. She'll give him children. Sphaeros, did you know I was married? Well, I am. I married young and I married back, too. None of your fine useless ladies! She looked after the goats on the farm next ours. I've got two boys.'

‘Does it hinder you?' said Sphaeros.

‘No, it helps me. Because of the children. She'd stick to me too, whatever happened, even if the King was beaten in the end, as Agis was, and my citizenship was taken from me.' But that was a thing Phoebis didn't care for thinking about. He let go of Sphaeros suddenly and jumped over to the side of the road where there were bushes with milky-blue flowers, the kind that had been sacred to Hera in old days. They made quite a good garland flower, and Phoebis picked
a whole bunch of them and began knotting the twigs together with a handful of stiff grasses. He made a pretty, straggly sort of crown and wanted to put it on Sphaeros. He was rather ashamed of having said so much and wanted at least to turn it into play, but as Sphaeros was extremely firm about refusing to put it on, he crammed it down over his own forehead and gay eyes, and then went rushing off, while Sphaeros went on towards the King's house.

He asked to see the Queen and waited. They brought him a bench with cushions into the front room, but by that time he had got out his tablets and was writing on them and not in a state to notice whether he was standing or sitting. One of the maids of honour went to find the Queen. There was a big, cool room at the back of the house, whose only windows opened into the covered walk round a courtyard full of green plants and the trickle of a fountain, so that they could not let past the dusty glare of the unveiled sun or the heat on the roads. The ceiling was made carefully of reeds, though there was a big rafter in the middle with two hooks on it for a rope swing, which was now looped back; the walls were blue and the floor had lately been sprinkled with water. Agiatis lay on a couch along the wall with the little girl tumbling about her feet. She was looking merry enough then, and soft and pretty as a young, new-married wife. Philylla had been reading to her, but now she had stopped and was talking about the nice baby Gorgo, whose mouth was full of her own silly curls and who wriggled and squealed with laughter and brightening eyes as her mother's strong toes tickled her. Philylla said: ‘I do wish you'd have another baby, Agiatis. I would love to see you with a tiny fat baby.' She came and stood beside Agiatis and touched her breast gently with one finger and patted the edge of her white dress which the little princess had tugged down off her mother's shoulder. ‘Oh, Agiatis, I would love to see you suckling a baby! Did you feed them all yourself?'

Agiatis laughed up at her. ‘Yes, these ones,' she said, ‘they were dears. It was what Kleomenes wanted. But I didn't with my first one. Nobody thought it possible or fitting for the Queen. But it's a sweet thing to do. You will, Philylla.'

Then Sphaeros was announced and Agiatis sat up straight and held the little girl in her arms, jogging her to keep her
quiet. Philylla went over to the corner of the room and got herself distaff and spindle and would have gone out, but Agiatis called her back, for Sphaeros had just asked if she knew that Phoebis was married, and this was a thing that Philylla knew more about than she did. ‘I've ridden over there,' said Philylla, ‘oh, four times anyway. The place is full of bees in spring, tearing in from the hillsides. I always have bread and honey there and sometimes butter, for they've got cows: two more since the dividing up of the land. It's a big farm; all his people live there. She's nice, Sphaeros. Her name's Neareta. I think their own names matter a great deal to people of that sort; perhaps it's because they don't belong to one another the way we do. Her voice is rather thick and country, and she's getting fat, but I can see she must have been a lovely girl when he fell in love with her. And strong! she told me she could carry a big nanny-goat on her back, in those days. She's wonderful with animals now; they don't seem to mind what she does to them. And they've got two little boys.'

Sphaeros, used to estimating pupils from the answers they least thought he was attending to, on the whole thought that Phoebis was right about Philylla. He said: ‘I want you both to be kind to the young Queen of Marob who came here to find her husband and is sailing off with him in two days.' And he told them all he knew about Erif Der and how he wanted the Scythians to go back to their queer outer land with not too bad an idea of the Greeks.

Agiatis listened and nodded and kept the child still, and Philylla listened and held the distaff in her armpit and set the spindle twirling with her clever, unconscious fingers. She had been curiously startled to hear the Scythians were going so soon. Why hadn't Berris Der told her? He was her property and he'd got no business to run away. Then she felt ashamed of herself and the thread broke, and for a moment she did not hear what Sphaeros was saying. She would be nice to this Queen, of course she would! Hospitality was a sacred thing. She had been right to lend her the horse at once without question. Then Sphaeros went out and Agiatis said: ‘He is going to bring this little barbarian Queen to see us. I wonder what she'd like to have said to her. You've seen her, Philylla. How is one to talk to her?'

‘Oh, she's just as nice as a lot of people,' said Philylla. ‘Besides, she's a witch.'

Agiatis burst out laughing. ‘You silly dear goose, you don't believe that?'

‘She told me so herself,' said Philylla, ‘and so did her brother. They ought to know. And I think, as well, that I understand the sort of way women can be witches.'

Agiatis sighed. ‘I think I did when I was your age. One feels full of power, doesn't one? But it never lasts, sweet; not if one lives a full woman's life. One's giving too much all the time. Now, run and fetch me my comb and a mirror.'

Philylla went to the door of the King's house to meet Erif Der and bring her in. Erif was very nervous and hot, running with sweat in her best clothes, one of those stiff felt dresses embroidered all over with sets of toothed concentric rings in every colour. On her head was the heavy felt cone, and round it the very elaborate Spring crown that she had brought away with her: flower sprays with improbable blossoms and little animal running in and out, gold and coral and various enamels. Her hair was plaited with the queer patterned Chinese ribbons, and there were rings on all her fingers, most of them solid, hollowed amber. Philylla tried hard not to seem surprised and took it all in. Erif Der thanked her for the horse, which Kotka had led behind her as far as the door, for she could not possibly ride with that dress. Philylla said it was sad that she must go away so soon without seeing anything. Erif answered that her brother would do the seeing for her, as he was staying on. ‘Oh,' said Philylla, as unconcernedly as possible, ‘isn't he going with you, then?'

‘I wish he was. But he won't.'

‘Why not?' Philylla dared to ask.

But the answer was not very exciting after all. ‘He is afraid of what may happen when we get back. He doesn't want to see it. He's not really brave.'

‘He fought for Sparta and killed a general of the Achaean League!' said Philylla, almost too eagerly.

Erif, though, did not notice the tone. She said: ‘Almost anyone can kill people in a battle. They don't have to think. It's all coming at one at once. But Berris sees things that are going to happen so clearly that he can't imagine any way round them. Then he runs away. That's being a coward.
And in the meantime someone else is sure to use his forge and break his tools and go to bed with his slave-girl.'

‘I didn't know he had a slave-girl,' observed Philylla.

‘Oh yes—Sardu. A nice little brown thing. After he went I used to practise magic on her sometimes. She didn't mind. Philylla, do you like my brother?'

‘Oh—yes,' said Philylla.

‘I'm glad. He gets stupidly lonely when his work isn't going just as he wants it to. He and I used to do things together a lot. I thought we always would. But everything has been different to what we meant. Philylla, what shall I do when I see your Queen?'

‘There's no ceremony here. She's just like anyone else—only, I mean, of course, she isn't! She's Agiatis. Just go in.'

She stood aside at the door, and after a moment the Queen of Marob went into the cool room, and the Queen of Sparta, all in white, with only a white cord net over her hair, got up from the couch and took her by both hands. Erif Der looked straight at Agiatis, into her calm eyes, and forgot what she had meant to say and half absent-mindedly tilted up her face like a child's to be kissed, for she was not so tall as Agiatis, though taller than Philylla. Agiatis kissed her hot, damp cheek; she was amused and rather surprised, though she was used to younger women falling suddenly in love with her, and after a minute or two she thought she liked this odd Scythian Queen in her very curious and uncomfortable-looking clothes. She asked her what she thought of Sparta. The truth was that Erif, prepared even more than Berris to be impressed by things, had found very few of them that she liked at all, even less since the revolution and the new fashion for an authentic simplicity and Laconic bareness of life. She said: ‘I have never seen such high mountains. They look closer than they are. But it is very hot.'

‘And the people?' said Agiatis, smiling.

Here Erif Der had got a very definite impression, starting from the first day when she had met Philylla with the horses. ‘They look as if something were going to happen,' she said.

‘Something
has
happened,' said Agiatis, with a curious, rather sad pride.

Somehow it was the sadness that Erif Der caught. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘Sphaeros told me. Your baby died. Your eldest son. And I suppose you have never forgotten.'

Agiatis said nothing for a moment; she had not been thinking of that at all just then, at least it seemed to her that she had not been. She remembered what Sphaeros had told her about this other Queen. ‘One does forget,' she said, ‘one can, if one is wrapped round with love as I have been and as, I think, you will be. Lady of Marob, my dear, you've got your man back safe.'

Philylla had taken up the distaff and spindle again. Suddenly she found herself saying, with all the cheerful obviousness of discovery: ‘How funny it is that women can make friends with one another so much faster than men! It's because of the way the same things seem to happen to them all.'

After a moment of translating it to herself, Erif Der began to laugh, and said: ‘That's the kind of thing my brother says!'

Agiatis was rather embarrassed until the laughter came. It was so ridiculously like her dear and sometimes quite baby Philylla to arrive at the remark in this way. Was she ever going to grow up? Grown up and silent and observing and doubtful like a real woman? No. The Queen said: ‘It's just as well women can do it quickly. We haven't as much time to waste as the men.'

Erif said: ‘May I spin for a minute with your distaff?'

Philylla brought it over. ‘It's a thin thread,' she said; she was proud of her fine spinning. ‘Take care or it will break. It's sure to if you start it with a jerk.'

Erif Der twisted the spindle too hard, and of course the thread did break. Philylla picked it up. ‘Shall I make the join for you?' she asked.

But Erif Der said ‘No,' and laid the two ends on the palm of her right hand. ‘Now watch.' And under the eyes of the other two the threads groped and wriggled like white worms and came together. ‘There!' she said, and dropped them off her hand. The spindle swung from an unbroken line.

Philylla stared and came nearer and ran her finger down it. Then: ‘What's that red mark on your hand?'