The Corn King and the Spring Queen (40 page)

Kleomenes was beginning to think of plans, or scarcely yet plans, but possibilities, narrow tracks their hopes might creep somehow up. He was welcomed by kindly, silent people in Tegea, and while he took his armour off and washed, the largest room in the house was made ready for the Mess. The smell of cooking food began. One after another they came in and began eating bread and radishes, all there was on the table so far. Phoebis was telling someone about an eagle he had seen—on the right. Was that a good sign? There was a knock on the outer door. One or two turned, wondering what it was, but the King had his map out and was pointing excitedly with a twig. Someone drew back the curtain at their door, and two men came in whom they all knew, slaves of the King's household. They went quickly up to the King and one of them handed him a letter. Then both stood back, very hurriedly, as though they were afraid of him. He opened the letter. It was from his mother. It told him that Agiatis had died that morning.

H
E HANDED THE
letter to Idaios, who happened to be next him, and dropped his head forward over the table. His hands, reaching out, crumpled up the parchment of the map. Phoebis and Therykion had both jumped at Idaios to read the letter over his shoulders. Phoebis turned to the slaves and whispered to the one who was left; the other had gone off, even before anyone told him to do it, to fetch Panteus. Agesipolis and young Kleomenes, hungry and thinking they were late, came running in, but checked on the threshold, throwing up their heads questioningly, like young hounds. It was at the noise of their feet that Kleomenes lifted his head. He stared at them for a little time, while they stayed struck still, and then he nodded at them and seemed to be trying to smile. His face had gone a queer yellowish colour, sunburn over white. He looked at
his hands, saw that they were spoiling the map, and took them off it, laid them one on each knee. Phoebis went to him then, and knelt beside him and began to stroke and kiss his legs and feet, calling him by funny child nicknames, helot pet names that dated from their childhood together and that he had hardly thought of since then. Every one in the room knew now. Someone was coming along from the kitchen with a clatter of bowls and spoons. Therykion parted the curtains and took them quietly, then the soup as it came.

Panteus walked into the room and over to the King. He said: ‘We knew this would come sooner or later. She knew it too. Kleomenes, she will never get the worst news now.'

The King seemed to be trying to answer. They all waited. At last he said: ‘We shall want night-guards on the walls here, and an outpost with good communications along the north and north-east roads. It will be important to have a strong garrison in Orchomenos now. Mnasippos, you will take three hundred of your best men there. Therykion, will you talk to the Cretans tomorrow? Don't promise them more pay if you can help it, but do if they will not stay otherwise. I had told them that I would see to it myself. But I am going to Sparta.'

Panteus said: ‘I will come with you.' The King began to produce some elaborate reason why he must stay. ‘There's no need at all for me to be here,' Panteus went on, as ordinarily as possible. ‘Everything will be quite safe now that you have given your orders.'

‘Yes!' said the King suddenly, ‘don't leave me alone!' He started on to his feet, knocking into Phoebis, and then sat down again. ‘Why,' he said, ‘this is one of the lessons. I am going to be good at it. She was good at hers.' He began to smooth the map out with his fingers, a little jerkily still. Deliberately he began to control them, one after the other. Phoebis and Panteus sat down, one on each side of him. He started eating, finished his bowlful, and took some wine, like a clever child who has just learnt how to do it in the company of his elders. He said suddenly and loudly across the table to Neolaidas, who happened to be opposite to him: ‘It is curious, but I find the worst things are the easiest to bear calmly. I wonder if that is usual.' When there was no
answer—for what could Neolaidas say?—he went on reflectively: ‘I suppose this is because the occasion is more like one which might be taken as an example of how the good man should act. So one can take this direct example and follow it. Would you say that was how it happens?'

‘Yes!' said Neolaidas, gasping, hunting with his eyes for Panteus or Phoebis to help him.

They did, both at once beginning to talk about some more necessary precautions for the safety of Tegea. After supper the King suddenly demanded that someone should play draughts with him. Therykion did that, but the King could not keep it up for long. A deputation of citizens came in, genuinely grieved over this thing, for they were near enough to Sparta to know what sort of a couple Kleomenes and Agiatis had been. Kleomenes made them a Stoic set-speech which moved them deeply. Panteus stood by in case he broke down in the middle of it. At last the evening came to an end, as such evenings do. One by one they went out, quickly or slowly. The two boys stayed till almost the last, unable to move. Hippitas took a hand of each of them to lead them out, hoping they would say nothing. But at the end of the room the younger one turned, pulling his hand away. ‘Oh, my uncle,' he said, gasping, and he kissed the King hard. When they were gone Phoebis began to blow out the lamps. ‘Get him to bed,' he whispered to Panteus. ‘You'll stay, won't you?' ‘Yes,' said Panteus.

For an hour or two the King slept deeply. Panteus, tired enough too after yesterday, stayed awake for some while, solidly unhappy about everything—their defeat, and after it had looked for a moment as though they had got Argos again; his own men that he had trained himself for the New Times, so horribly disappointed; and this awful march back along the road they'd taken going out to conquer the world. And then, at the end, Agiatis, the other half of the King. She had been kind to him; he had loved her much and thought her very wise, but now he could hardly grieve for himself at all, it was hurting him so much more deeply through the King. But at last he too slipped down into sleep. After that the King began to wake, coming quietly out of the drowning, dim awareness of some shapeless disaster, over the threshold of dreams into full and sharp consciousness of everything. For half an hour he would face it with no
physical stirring, no tears. He could not, perhaps, have spoken. Then, as his body overcame his mind, the things he saw would waver and blur and rock out into blackness again, and for another space of time he was unconscious and gathering strength against the next awakening.

The fifth time, about, that this happened, he saw the room beginning to grow grey with dawn. Slowly his spear- shaft propped against the wall became itself. He watched it, concentrating his outward senses on the strength and straightness of the spear, so that behind them his mind could come to fairly calm decision. The first thing now was to get back to Sparta and comfort his children, and think what power he could raise against Macedonia. Egypt. How? If Ptolemy were persuaded that Antigonos was going to seize all Greece and stay there and aim across the water at the islands, or Asia? Ptolemy might lend him money to stop that. He had helped Aratos against Macedonia in the old days—at the beginnings of the League. Egypt. Egypt. What sort of a place was Egypt? Agiatis had worn a dress of Egyptian muslin in the summer Nikolaos was born. Muslin embroidered with blue outlines of lotuses and wild duck. Gilt Egyptian slippers. The grip on his heart was beginning to get unbearable again.

He looked away from the spear, down along his body. In the growing dawn the hump, the pressure against his knees, gradually turned into Panteus asleep, crumpled up on the floor beside him, head and hands on his bed, one arm up over him, the fingers slackly and vainly clutching: squarish hands, straight-cut nails. He knew very well how much longer his own hands, laid over them, would be. Shoulders sagging away from the bed with the weight of their tiredness. How stiff Panteus would wake from it! Let him sleep, ah, let him sleep while he could. With concentrated slowness, the King drew himself up out of that vain embrace, and Panteus' head and shoulders sank further down on the blanket and the open fingers still held on to nothing.

The King dressed and combed his hair and dipped his hands and wrists into the water-jar. He put on breastplate and sword-belt and greaves. He tiptoed over to Panteus and knelt beside him and kissed his hair and looked long at him, the grim line his mouth had taken now, the wrinkles
beginning to come round his eyes. Sparta was hard on them all. He took up helmet and shield and spear, carrying them carefully. Suddenly he wished he had not played this game. He could not ride alone without this one of his two loves who alone was left. He called him in a whisper: ‘Panteus!' and waited. But the whisper did not reach through that sleep. No, the King thought, I will face this alone. If I cannot do that I shall know I am weak and worthless and a coward. He turned to the door. But at one little, warning, metallic click the helmet gave against the shield, Panteus woke with a startled sob and swung round from the empty bed to see the King going softly out into the dawn.

He was with him again in a moment. He said: ‘Kleomenes, why were you leaving me?' The King said: ‘I did not mean to wake you, my dear, I can do this alone.' But Panteus was armed and ready—he had slept fully dressed and in his sandals—and out with the King before the horses were saddled. He brought bread and cheese for them to eat on the way. They rode up and up out of the plain of Tegea while the sun rose fair over them. At the steepest part of the pass it was quicker to walk, leading the horses. Here Kleomenes talked a little about Egypt and wondered what Egypt would want as the price for help. Aratos had sold the Achaean League to Antigonos for his help: what of Sparta would Ptolemy ask? Panteus said that he thought Ptolemy would not want to appear too openly against the other king. It would be better like that. Supplies sent secretly. If they could hire more soldiers and refit their own! Panteus said suddenly and grimly: ‘Money is the most important thing in the world!'

After the pass they went on quicker, cantering where they could, down through olive groves and green vineyards and yellowing corn crops, screwing their eyes up against the dust, down past country carts and men who stared and did not see who they were until they were by. They went down the Oenos valley, between steep hills, good for defence or ambushing. On their right was the brown hump of Euas. Panteus, in his mind's eye, was ringing it with palisades, Euas and the hill to the left, little Olympos. They passed the town of Sellasia and then in half an hour came down on to Eurotas, the wide stone scar of its bed with the great river in the middle, drying up with summer, showing the long
rock ridges along its course. And so into the market-place of Sparta, past Apollo who had loosed his arrows at the King and was smiling still, and up to the door of the King's house. There were people in the market-place who watched them but said nothing. They knew about this, but they did not perhaps know of the other terrible things that had happened to Sparta.

The King stood in front of his house and said with a sort of horrified amazement: ‘She will not come!' And it was apparent to Panteus that he could not lift his hand to the knocker on that door. Panteus dismounted and did it himself. They went in. Kratesikleia came to meet them, an old woman, broken down, her pride destroyed by sorrow. The King looked at her black clothes, taking them in. He said: ‘You know Megistonous is dead?'

She said: ‘I did not know that, Kleomenes, but I thought he might be. I had a letter he sent me just before the attack on Argos.' She dabbed at her eyes. ‘Well, at least I know now. You sent him away in anger, Kleomenes, and he was old enough to be your father. Is all the news bad, my son?'

‘Yes,' he said, ‘there's little left now except Sparta itself. Is Eukleidas here, mother? I must speak to him.'

‘He is here,' she said. Then, as the King did not move: ‘Will you come in? She is there.'

He looked at nothing over his mother's shoulder and said: ‘If any of her girls are there, tell them to get out before I come. Go and do that first, please, mother.' She went in, going lame up the steps. He thought he heard one of the children crying, poor little Gorgo, perhaps. He might be able to help the boys, but not her. In a minute Eukleidas came out. He kissed his brother and tried to say something, but Kleomenes stopped him, pressing his mouth down against his own shoulder. He said: ‘I want to know how much money we have left in Sparta. Then we must talk over plans. We're beaten right back into Tegea, Eukleidas. I expect I have smashed up your life altogether as well as my own. You're a good brother.'

‘I love you,' said Eukleidas helplessly. He wanted to say so many kind and useful things!

Kleomenes said: ‘I think I will go in now.' He walked away from both of them, towards the women's rooms, almost certain that he was not even beginning to listen
for her voice or footsteps. He felt somebody take his hand and kiss it. That must be one of the girls, Chrysa perhaps. But he did not look down. He stopped in front of the door he must go through next, making up his mind to it. There was something on the floor to his right, doubled up, holding on with one hand to the edge of the bench. Philylla. They'd turned her out for him. He said to her gently: ‘Come in when you want, Philylla.' And then he raised his hand to the door.

After a while Philylla looked up. That was because someone was looking at her. It was Nikomedes and he seemed all right for a moment because he was making no noise, but then his face twisted up horribly and his mouth opened and he began to cry again. ‘Oh, Nikomedes!' she said, and she meant don't. But he thought she meant the same sort of protest against the horrible thing that the world had turned into as his crying was. He said: ‘Oh, Philylla!' meaning that she was the only person who really understood. For Nikolaos was too young and could be interested in other things, even today, and his granny was too old; she was only sad, not angry, not aching all over with hate as he was. Why should it have happened to him, when other boys' mothers—‘Oh, my poor darling,' said Philylla, ‘what
are
we to do?'

He came and sat beside her on the floor. After a time he put his arms round her neck. ‘Shall I have you always?' he asked.

‘Yes!' said Philylla, feeling she must say it. ‘Till you're old enough not to need me.'

For a time they kissed and petted one another, then Nikomedes began again: ‘Oh, I do wish I'd been a better boy to her!' he said. ‘Oh, Philylla, I remember telling her lies when I was little. If only I could explain about it now.'

‘I expect she knew usually,' said Philylla. Then: ‘Oh, Nikomedes, I'm wishing I'd never, never said a word to hurt her, or bothered her about things. Oh, I do wish I'd asked her such lots of questions! I've got no one to ask now. I'm lost.'

Nikomedes snuggled up to her. ‘Do ask me if they're not too difficult questions. I know quite a lot. Dear, dear Philylla, don't cry so.'