The Corn King and the Spring Queen (37 page)

It was worst when Panteus was late, as he was today. The King could not eat, and hardly touched his wine. There had been some skirmishing round the walls of Pellene with a force Aratos had sent out to see whether by any chance the Spartans were resting too securely on their laurels. But they were not. And while the Achaeans were being kept off by javelin men from the walls, Panteus and a picked fifty from his brigade, the youngest year-class, all splendid runners and eager for adventure and praise, had gone round a spur of the hills to get them from behind. It was perhaps rash, but very much in the spirit of the times, and if it succeeded was the
kind of thing which would bring great glory to Sparta and discourage her enemies. A moral effect of this sort might perhaps mean another city coming over easily. But that was the last that had been seen of Panteus. The Achaeans had disappeared from under the walls, leaving some dead. And then? Phoebis said that one of his men had seen Panteus since. ‘You liar, Phoebis!' said the King. This was true, but Phoebis looked hurt and did not admit it. He had known the King longer than any of them and was prepared to lie to him as much as he thought proper.

It worried them all that the King should not eat. Not that it was very tempting. Everything on the table smelt strong of barley and tripe and garlic. Therykion went out and came back in a few minutes with white bread and thin slices of smoked ham, as they knew how to make and cut it in Arkadia, and a leaf of garden fruit, raspberries and a few of the first pears. He had seen them earlier that day in the kitchen of the house where he was billeted, but had looked away himself. He put them down beside the King and went back to his place. Kleomenes ate some of the fruit.

They prolonged supper a good deal, hoping any moment that the missing one would turn up. Mnasippos, a youngish, good-looking man rather spoilt by a sword-cut over his left eye, got up and went out to look for him. Idaios, another of the younger ones, began nervously to whistle a camp song, but Kleomenes growled at him so angrily that he stopped. At last the King suddenly jumped up, startling them all, and went back to his own working-room in the house they were in, which belonged to one of the magistrates of Pellene. Phoebis followed him quietly. Released, the others all began talking loudly and filled their cups again. After a few minutes Phoebis came back. ‘No good,' he said, ‘but anyway he's keeping in the house. I told them to let me know if he goes out: put the wind up them! The room's all right, anyhow, flowers and all and the best bed. With any luck he'll sleep. But I wish to God I knew where Panteus is! If he's gone and got killed, blast him—! Bad job.'

Mnasippos came back. ‘All I can hear is he brought it off, smashed up that raiding party, gave them a nice story to tell Aratos—the ones that got back! Nothing about him. We'd surely hear if he'd been hurt.'

Neolaidas, another of them, said inadequately, simply voicing their anxiety: ‘I would hate it if he got killed!'

Idaios said: ‘My young brother's in his brigade. He says there's no one like him.'

Phoebis said: ‘If anything has happened, it will be nice for whoever has to tell the King.'

‘You and I should do that,' said Therykion, looking up. ‘You had better stand by him. I will do the talking. I will say—'

‘Oh, stop!' said Mnasippos, and banged a cup down on the table. ‘He's all right.' They wished Hippitas were there, but he had a javelin wound in his arm and a slight fever after it, and was lying up in the house of a widow woman, who was looking after him as though she meant him to marry her.

Suddenly Phoebis threw up his head, listening, then dashed out of the room. He was back in a moment. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘it is. So that's all right. Got two boys with him. Don't know who. Good night. We'll damn him properly tomorrow for giving us such a scare.'

The King was doing that already. He had made up his mind while he waited in pain that Panteus' plan was utterly foolish, that he had thrown away life and love for a boy's trick, scheming for a little bit of glory! In the moment of relief after he saw that Panteus was really there, not even wounded, he shot it all out at him, cursing him up and down, with his voice jerking and breaking. 'All right!' said Panteus, interrupting him, trying not to be angry or hurt, ‘if it was honour and praise I wanted, I'm getting them, aren't I! Don't you even want to know if my plan did work, Kleomenes?'

The King was silent while Panteus told him, then said: ‘You had more luck than you deserved. A mad scheme! How many of your men were killed? Four? And out of the youngest year-class, four of the future that you've killed!'

Panteus put his shield down against the foot of the couch; his hand shook; he was afraid of throwing it violently at something if he kept it. He stood close to the King and said low: ‘I'll go to my quarters now, sir; I don't care much for this in front of the boys.'

That stopped Kleomenes. He stood up with a jerk and
said: ‘Who? What boys?' Then stared at them where they stood behind Panteus, embarrassed, very close together. The elder one was in full armour, very fine, inlaid in gold on the shield with a design of a baby gripping two snakes. He had the beginnings of a fair beard; there was a spear in his right hand and his left arm was round the younger one, very like him but beardless still. This one had no breastplate and his forearm was bound up and in a sling; underneath he had a tunic of good stuff, woven, as far as it showed, with the same design. They did not speak; they were afraid, tongue-tied. Kleomenes looked at the device of the young Herakles on both of them. ‘You must be my blood,' he said.

Panteus stood back, letting them face one another. ‘They are your sister's sons,' he said.

‘Chilonis!' cried out Kleomenes. ‘Are you her boys?'

‘Yes, my uncle,' said the eldest one, ‘I am Agesipolis and this is young Kleomenes. We have wanted to come to you for months, but mother would not let us. She said you would go the same way as our father and King Agis. But at last she said we might. Besides, I am old enough, for that matter, not to need a woman's advice. We have been with the army a little time now, but we did not want you to know until—until we thought we deserved your praise.'

He looked down at the younger one, holding him close still, and the boy said lamentably: ‘We did think this was well done, my uncle! I was kicked by a horse in their flight afterwards and my arm broke. He helped me and bound it up. It took a long time. But he said you would say it was an honour for me!'

Kleomenes went up and kissed them both. ‘Forgive me!' he said. ‘Chilonis won't write to me or have anything to do with me these days, but she cannot have forgotten me altogether. Did she never tell you her brother was an angry man, unkind, impatient, one who hurts his dearest friends? I am a bad Spartan over this; I cannot stay calm and use few words. And a worse Stoic, for all my teaching. You two must make Panteus your pattern, not me. He is the best part of me; forget what I have said to him. Agesipolis—young Kleomenes—my mind is clear of evil now, I give you your praise! It was well done of you and still better done of your captain. I will write to
your mother, and perhaps this time she will write back to me. Will you stay in Sparta now?'

‘We hope to.'

‘And accept the discipline and the New Times? And me?'

‘Surely, my uncle,' said Agesipolis.

Panteus said: ‘These boys should have supper now. Come!'

Kleomenes said: ‘I have had little enough supper myself. There will be some left here.' He held out a hand to the younger boy, who took it gladly, the other to Panteus.

But Panteus was picking up his shield again. ‘I think you were right,' he said. ‘It was perhaps rash of me not to have taken twice the numbers. We did it, I suppose, too much for honour and glory and all that. These things are good for boys. But you were right not to offer them to me.'

Kleomenes said nothing, but took his two nephews into the other room. Therykion was still there, writing his diary under the lamp at a corner of the table. Kleomenes presented him to the sons of Kleombrotos and Chilonis. ‘They are the two that Chilonis had with her in the temple of Poseidon when my father, Leonidas, came hunting down Kleombrotos, to kill him with Agis. Do you remember that, boys?'

They shook their heads. ‘He was only a baby,' said Agesipolis, ‘and I little more. Sometimes I think I remember, but that is all. Mother has told us about it.'

The King filled their cups himself and gave them bread and cheese, and cold black broth to the elder one to see if he would take it. He finished it splendidly, and most of the second helping which Kleomenes rather maliciously gave him. Through a spoonful he suddenly remarked that he was married and had a son. He said it with some embarrassment and as if he definitely did not want it mentioned again. Kleomenes remembered that Chilonis, left in charge, had married her son quietly and firmly to a suitable and virtuous wife. Agesipolis had now done his duty and presented his mother with a grandson, who was called after him, still another Agesipolis.

But young Kleomenes, with his broken arm, was tired and sobbed a little, leaning against his brother. Panteus came in and ate his supper standing, hungrily. At the end
he collected the boys, taking the older one's spear and shield so that he could help his brother better. ‘Come back when you've got them to their quarters,' said the King over his shoulder.

Panteus said: ‘No. I'm sorry, but I'm tired tonight. There's nothing you need to see me about.' And he went out.

In about half an hour Therykion said: ‘You'd better go after him, Kleomenes. Sometimes even kings must do that.'

‘Did you hear what I said to him?'

‘No, but I guessed. For all our sakes, for Sparta's sake, Kleomenes, try to keep steady till the end of this. You took the whole burden of the New Times at first. It's lighter now, but still the whole depends on you, and you may have years of it yet, and all Macedonia to face.'

‘I know,' said Kleomenes. ‘I will try, Therykion. Tell me, what happened about the boy you fell in love with?—I forget his name.'

‘He was flattered at first,' Therykion said, rolling up his diary. ‘Then he wanted someone younger and gayer. I don't blame him. And he had plenty to choose from.'

The King said: ‘I'm sorry. Therykion, have you read Iambulos's
The Blessed Island
? I was reading the chapters about how they land and begin to understand the laws. It is very beautiful, and life gets further and further away from that. You should read it. Well, I must try to make my peace, anyhow. Good night, Therykion.'

He knocked at the door of the house where Panteus was quartered, and after a time a sleepy slave opened it and showed him the way. He went in; it was dark; Panteus was asleep already. But when the King stumbled over his long spear he woke up with a start. ‘What is it, Kleomenes?' he said, and his voice sounded horribly strained and tired.

Kleomenes said: ‘I was unjust. You had done very well for Sparta.'

Panteus said: ‘I thought it was something that mattered. Why did you wake me? I was so tired.'

Kleomenes groped his way across the room. ‘Can you sleep on injustice?'

‘I could sleep on anything tonight. Those boys ran me
out. I'm too old for running five miles and then fighting. Go to sleep yourself, Kleomenes.'

The King heard, and guessed him pulling the blankets up over his ears and heard the pricking of the hay-filled mattress as he turned over with his face to the wall. He took another step, knocking into the armour, cutting himself a little on something, and stumbled against the bed, and stooped and shook Panteus by his humped-up shoulder.

Panteus turned over on to his back and reached up a sleepy arm, groping for the King's neck. ‘What's the matter?' he said. ‘Even if you were hard on me I shall forget it tomorrow.'

Kleomenes said: ‘A woman would not be hard to you; she would not hurt you, whatever you did to her. And if she did she could comfort you afterwards as I can't. A woman like Agiatis.'

‘I don't want comfort!' said Panteus crossly. ‘And there aren't any other women like Agiatis.'

‘If you were married to Philylla,' said the King, ‘she would put it right when I am unjust.'

Panteus pulled the King's head down towards his own and said: ‘I'll marry Philylla when the time comes, but if you think I shall let her come between us two for good or for evil—! If she'd been in this bed with me tonight, would I have told her? I can be in love with her for a time, and I shall give her all she need want, but you're as much part of me as my heart and head are. Nothing's going to alter that, Kleomenes. Now, supposing you let me go to sleep.'

For a few minutes Kleomenes stayed beside him, kneeling on the floor, till he could hear by his breathing that Panteus was fast asleep, beyond dreams. Then he turned and went out; his eyes were now so used to the darkness that he did not stumble over anything.

E
RIF DER WAS STILL
hunting for help. Philylla told her about the gods of Olympos. She knew them already as names and in art, and in the sense that Sphaeros and others used them in their books, to represent qualities or elements. As gods, they seemed to her to be dead. She was frightened of the smiling statue of Apollo in the market, but knew
that Berris would be able to explain exactly how it had been made frightening. She thought that perhaps what was really alarming about it was the power of the craftsman who had made it in the beginnings of Sparta. She and Philylla rode together to the sacred places, Amyklae and Thornax, passing through those rather terrible oak groves which lay round the sanctuary of Zeus of the Dark Woods. At Thornax the image of Apollo was hidden, but at Amyklae she saw it towering over them from its throne of gold and bronze, and ramping, ancient leopards and horsemen: the horrible great pillar of bronze topped by a frowning, staring helmeted face with painted eyes and lips and stiff arms holding a spear and bow. Artemis of the Marsh was a pillar too, a wooden pillar dressed in red with a polished head and long tresses that hid the shapeless neck. A kind of doll that might come alive. Her place smelt rather evilly of blood. Erif Der had bad dreams about them both.

The priestess of Artemis was Philylla's great-aunt; she took the omens for her when she sacrificed, and clucked and nodded her head, but did not say very much. Erif Der stood by Philylla, looking on, and bowing her head when the others did. When they were out of the temple again she said: ‘What happens now? Does Artemis help you?'

‘Not exactly that,' said Philylla, ‘but it turns my luck if it needs turning. It shows I am not careless or proud. Fate has all the Gods in her net. We believe she is Justice too. She cannot be looked at too close, so the Gods come between us and her lest we should see to madness. They show us if we ask them, a little of what is happening, beyond appearances.'

‘What did they show you this time?'

‘They told me to be careful. If I was careful I would get my heart's desire. They did not tell me which desire!' She laughed. ‘This way one does not see far inward, but there are other places. Apollo at Delphi is the furthest looker. He is the youngest of the gods.'

That seemed to be how things worked in Hellas. The other things she had seen at Amyklae were the great bronze tripods made in the days before Sparta had cast out beauty. Also there was the image of a woman holding a lyre that was called Sparta and always hung with garlands. It seemed to them both to be like Agiatis, but perhaps it was romantic
of them to think so. At any rate, it was more like a woman than a goddess.

Erif Der had a letter from Tarrik about the middle of summer. He said that the corn was looking good and the other crops much as they should be. Linit was working hard as Spring Queen. He also said that the Red Riders had come again, and he had led the men of Marob against them and had driven them back into the forest; but when things were happening fast, if they were all galloping about and shooting and being shot at, people would suddenly call him Harn Der. He said that the secret road was going on, but Essro still would not see him. Once he had ridden there, and, for fun, carried off Yan on his horse. Essro had screamed for five minutes and then fainted; but Yan had liked it. He was a big, strong boy. Klint was big and strong too. He could sit up by himself and roll over, and he was trying to stand.

She wrote back to him unhappily, but not so unhappily as she felt. She had little to say that would make sense when it got to Marob! Only news of Berris. And King Kleomenes. Battles, always battles! What did they matter either to her or Tarrik? That Sphaeros was no use; nor any of the Gods she had heard of yet. That she had his knife and watched it, but it had gone dull and ordinary. She knew, though, from him, that this was only because of the air of Hellas cutting off the magic there was between them, so she was not anxious. She hoped her star was bright and warm for him, even between him and another Spring Queen!

When harvest came, which was earlier in the year here, Erif Der felt a queer excitement stirring in her; this was the same as her own corn, but dryer and browner, shorter in the straw and seldom as heavy in the ear. ‘Do you do nothing for thanks, nothing to make it better another year?' she asked.

Philylla said slowly: ‘We don't ourselves. But the ones who are nearest the corn do. It has been in the care of the helots ever since the beginning. That, I suppose, is the power they have; if one thinks it is really anything. It is their feast and we never interfere; that might be unlucky: again if one thinks it is really anything. I am not sure what they do, but I believe there is something now, and something at sowing time.'

Erif said: ‘It is very odd that you do nothing yourselves.' Then: ‘May I join the feast? I will not hurt your corn.'

‘I will think about it,' Philylla said.

The next day she came in late, riding through the full sun, a brown, slender, serious creature. ‘I have asked Neareta,' she said, ‘and she tells me you may come to the harvest feast, but you must wear the right sort of clothes. I don't quite know what that means. And, Erif—most of them are slaves still, but I think they will not be soon. Forget you are a queen, because they are my friends.'

Erif Der understood that. She looked at her dresses, the Marob ones, not the new Greek ones that she was learning to wear in the hot weather. At last she chose one that was yellow and red, for these are likely to be lucky colours for the corn all over the world; the coat was embroidered with running horses in threes, and on the back was the flax-tailed cross from the market-place of Marob. She had seen crosses like that, or with hooks instead of flax-tails on the four arms, chalked up sometimes on rocks or old trees. It was hot, but she wore nothing under the dress. She also put on two necklaces, one of amber and the other of coral. Then she and Philylla rode to Phoebis' farm. At the gate Philylla drew back. 'I won't come in,' she said. ‘They wouldn't like it. Not even in the New Times! I'll come back for you tomorrow, Erif. Till then, trust Neareta. She knows you are a guest of the King. I hope—I hope nothing will happen.' She kissed Erif and held on to her for a moment as if she were afraid of what might be waiting for her in there. Those two were very fond of one another now.

Erif Der went across the courtyard between the sun-dried dung-heaps. Neareta met her at the farm-door, her arms stretched across it, barring it. She looked the Spring Queen up and down without speaking. Erif turned slowly round so that her dress should be fully seen. Finally Neareta nodded, went up to Erif, undid her plaits and shook them out, then said: ‘Come in and welcome!' and stepped back from the doorway. Inside the farm, Erif felt her hands taken by other hands, her hair and dress being fingered. For a minute or two her Greek left her; she could only smile and gesture and in return touch them or their dresses. She had seen nothing like it since she came to Greece. The women were all wearing dresses shaped to the waist and scalloped at the
bottom, in all sorts of bright colours, but mostly red and yellow and black with great square patterns all over them, and their hair was loose. She did not see any men yet.

Neareta was head of the feast and she wore a very high, pointed red cap, higher and worn more forward than those of Marob, with one white and yellow tulip-shaped flower made of linen stiffened with wire, on the top of it. She showed Erif the farm, very proudly: her wooden beds full of fresh hay with woven rugs over it, her chest of linen, most of all the things Phoebis had brought her back from the wars one time or another, an embroidered Syrian wall-hanging, a silver lamp, a pair of scarlet leather shoes with gold beads on them, a fine bronze kettle, two looking glasses, one with an ivory back, the other engraved with a plump Aphrodite, several vases, and his second-best suit of armour which he'd had at the beginning of the war. Erif admired everything and came back into the main room; nothing was happening yet. She wondered which were slave and which were free. They were very mixed as to looks, as though the two races did not in practice keep apart very much. In one corner of the room, on a painted shelf, there were some clay images, which Erif took to be gods, a woman holding something in her hand, a man with a mask, a garlanded woman. They were rough things, turned out of a mould by the dozen and coloured with reds and blues that went on anywhere without much rhyme or reason. Erif Der did not like to look at them very long or directly, and she could not recognise them as any gods she had heard of.

‘We go out first and meet the men and the corn,' Neareta said to her, ‘and dance: you will see how. And then back here for the feast. After that, lady, you may do as you like.'

She looked away from Erif, regarding her big, work-lined hands. Erif said quickly: ‘May I be one of you in everything?'

‘You will not have to,' said Neareta. ‘You are a stranger.'

‘Is it a sacrifice?'

‘There is a sacrifice,' Neareta admitted. And then: ‘There was one this morning as well, but that was for the men alone. My Phoebis gets leave for this always, but he will not let me ask for the boys. They are with their class.
But there are enough men, for most of those who are not free are left for the reaping.'

Erif Der said: ‘Shall I do some magic for you?' It was months now since she had done any, but she had suddenly felt that here she could and must.

‘Yes!' said Neareta. ‘What will you want for it? Is it a blood magic?'

‘No, no,' said Erif. ‘Only a little magic that I can do by myself.' She made the women all sit on the floor and herself stood in the middle and made a flower grow for them, not a very good flower, for it disappeared several times, but still they loved it; and she cut off the hair of one of them and then made it long again; and at last she made the whole room turn red for a moment as though they were in the light of a bonfire.

The women were delighted and pressed up all round to touch her as much as possible. At first the unaccustomed smell of them was alarming and rather unpleasant, but soon Erif got used to it and enjoyed the solidarity and permanence of it, the smell of earth behind all. Then Neareta called them together and most of them left the farm, though some stayed and appeared to have business there. They went towards the cornfields, the older ones in the narrow, deep-trodden path, but most overflowing into the fields and rough land at both sides. Erif went between two helot women who held each of her hands; sometimes they walked and sometimes they went bounding along and shouting. Then she went bounding with them. After a time they began to hear long shaking yells that came towards them from the far side of the ridge, and then on the crest they met the men with Phoebis at their head carrying the corn-sheaf on a pole. The men were mostly in their ordinary clothes, but with tags of stuff and goatskins swinging about them to make them look gayer. Only five of them, all youngish, were differently dressed; one as a ridiculous soldier in armour of heavily starched and painted linen and a helmet with an enormous black plume, that would only just stay on; another in a white tunic with one garland of roses and myrtle slung across it and a second on his head; another with his head through the middle of a goat-skin that was trimmed all round its edges with scarlet knots; the fourth made up as an old grandmother with shawl and limp and sheep's wool hair;
and the fifth, a quite beardless boy with merry, sloe-black eyes, in a yellow tow wig of short curls and a short white woman's tunic. They all had long sticks of stripped hazel.

The women raced and leapt round among the men, every now and then bounding up to one of the dressed-up ones, especially the man in the goat-skin, and pinching him or pulling his hair. In return the men would swipe at them with the hazel sticks and often caught one before she got away. But Erif Der, when she understood the game, was much too quick for them. So, in about half an hour, they came to the farm. Here they did a play in front of the door, the actors talking hard all the time, saying whatever came into their heads.

First of all there was a sham fight between the soldier and the garlanded bridegroom with sticks; holes were poked in the armour and there was a good deal of joking about Kleomenes and Aratos, though much of it was in dialect that Erif found it hard to follow. Finally the soldier was killed and then walked off to join the spectators, and the bridegroom put on his helmet and began chasing the bride, who filed and giggled, holding up her already short tunic a good deal higher than was at all seemly, among the audience. Some of them tried to trip her, others to trip the bridegroom, and whenever his helmet came off, which it usually did, he had to stop and put it on again. At last, however, she was sufficiently well tripped to allow him to catch her and carry her off, kicking, on to a heap of corn which had meanwhile been piled in front of the house door. It struck Erif, even though she only understood half what was being said, that it was all a mockery of Spartan ways and customs, soldiers and brides, and it seemed to her that Phoebis, standing in front with his arm round Neareta, looked rather uncomfortable. The marriage-bed scene was extremely funny and prolonged, with much virginal coyness by the bride, and every one was shrieking with laughter. When it came to an end there was an equally funny lying-in scene with the old woman, who finally collected a rag baby and put it into a basket, where already the corn-sheaf had been laid, and rocked it vigorously. This basket rather startled Erif; it was so exactly like the one that was always used at midsummer in Marob. Then there was a dance to flutes by all the actors, criss-crossing and holding
hands with the basket in the middle. In the end figure, the four who had already acted ran round the basket holding bunches of corn, while the fifth, the one in the goat-skin, got into the basket. Then the whole thing began again. For the goat-skinned one jumped out of the basket and fought and killed the bridegroom, then threw off the goat-skin, put on the helmet, and chased the bride. Meanwhile the first man, who had been looking on, picked up the goat-skin, and became the next son and successor. The bride had the most strenuous time, but at any rate she could sit on the corn heap during the fight, while she made intimate remarks about the fighters, and anyhow she was the youngest.