The Corn King and the Spring Queen (41 page)

Nikolaos ran out and saw them and checked and stamped his foot. ‘Think about something else!' he ordered. Then he flung himself on to Philylla, crying too.

She had them both in her arms when Panteus came. He sat down on the bench opposite her and watched them, unsmiling. At last he said: ‘Is the King in there?'

‘Yes,' she said, ‘alone.'

After a time he said: ‘Ought someone to go in?'

‘He told me I might,' said Philylla. She reached out her free hand and said low: ‘Oh, Panteus.'

He took it, but there was not much reassurance in his grip. He said: ‘What about the children? Shouldn't they go to their father?'

‘I won't!' said Nikolaos. ‘I don't want to look at mother!'

‘Neither do I,' said Nikomedes. ‘But—does father want me? I didn't know he'd come yet. I thought perhaps he was still at Argos.'

‘Nikomedes,' said Panteus, ‘listen. You are a king's son and you must learn to bear things that other boys can't and to hear things that other boys don't hear. We've lost Argos. We've lost almost all the towns we had a week ago. The Macedonians have outnumbered us and beaten us. It was nobody's fault, but it has happened. We have to make new plans.'

‘But I thought—' said Nikomedes, stammering, horrified, ‘I thought Sparta was going to win—now. Father said so.'

‘We all thought so,' Panteus said. ‘We're all hurt by it. But it's worst for the King.'

‘I see,' said Nikomedes. ‘Then I expect I'd better go to him. Philylla, will you please come too, in a little?'

‘Yes,' said Philylla. ‘Brave boy!'

Nikolaos suddenly sobbed. ‘I'm brave too, but I don't want to go in yet, Philylla.'

She petted him. ‘Yes, you're a big, brave boy, too. Go and talk to Gorgo now; tell her father's come.' When he went back, she turned to Panteus and said: ‘That's bad news. What will happen?'

Panteus shook his head. ‘I don't know. The King has plans about Egypt. When this is over he'll do something about it.' He said nothing more but sat with his head in his hands.

Philylla got up off the floor and shook her dress out and sat down on the other bench. ‘Panteus,' she said, ‘I'm very unhappy.'

He looked across at her with his blue eyes, his straight eyebrows twisted with pain and worry. ‘I know you are, Philylla,' he said, ‘and I'm sorry. I am really sorry. But I can't do anything about it now, can I?' His voice was angry and helpless and appealing, like a child's who can't help hurting you and wants you to understand it's your fault, not his!

‘I suppose you can't,' said Philylla. Then she got up and went softly into the other room. Kleomenes was hugging Nikomedes very hard and they were both crying and whispering to one another. Neither of them was looking at Agiatis now, so Philylla went over and sat down by her feet and leant her head against the couch.

The King spent one night in Sparta. All the evening he and Panteus and Eukleidas made plans and he drafted a letter to Ptolemy. The next day they buried Agiatis. Every one who was left in Sparta came to mourn with the King, and the maids of honour who were married and perhaps mothers came from their houses to weep for the Queen. Sphaeros came too. His ship had sailed on, suddenly, leaving this lovely and pleasant island, the springs of clear water, the voices of the birds. He must not regret it, must not turn away his eyes from the piloting of his ship. Kratesikleia cut off her hair at the tomb, and Gorgo's short, soft curls. Philylla did not cut her hair. What was the use? Her heart was for the time buried with Agiatis. All that day and for some weeks afterwards she felt curiously cold, though it was the middle of summer. Before Kleomenes rode to Tegea he kissed her and said: ‘I know she loved you better than anyone. Tell me if ever I can do anything for you, Philylla.' But she shook her head and said ‘No.' Then: ‘All I want in the world now is to be of some use to you and Sparta. She knew that.' The King said: ‘Later I will ask you to talk with me about her sometimes. Not yet.'

The two boys went back to their class. It was the best thing for them. Nikomedes had suddenly found himself curiously near to his father. He felt very much now that he was the King's eldest son, that he could share in all the hopes and fears and plans, and really be part of Sparta.
He was a little surprised, but mostly very glad and proud. In this mood he could face life again. Kleomenes himself had been wonderfully comforted by the boy, whom he had always thought of as a child, something in the vague future, perhaps, but nothing so far for him. Now all at once he had seen Agiatis again in her son. He looked forward to days with his boy—soon: in winter after the snowfall when there would be no more fighting. He would hunt with Nikomedes, teaching him all kinds of things, talk to him about how to be a king. That was something definite, a fixed point in the future. He and his son had agreed together that they would do this.

Gorgo was with her grandmother a great deal. She wanted to be petted and have stories told her all the time. She did not believe it when they said her mother was never coming back. And then even Philylla went away, back to her own house, and wouldn't promise to come to Gorgo every day—every, every day till mother was at home again.

Erif Der went back with Philylla. It was the obvious thing to do, now that the King's house was empty. Almost all the maids of honour went home or got married except one or two quite young ones who stayed on with Kratesikleia and little Gorgo. Philylla would have found it very hard to face home without the Queen of Marob to ride back with her and to talk to her mother and Ianthemis instead of letting them ask questions. She went to bed early, but she couldn't sleep. She was seventeen now and full grown, and oh, so ready to be kind to anyone who was kind to her! She couldn't sleep. There were no voices in the house, only the noises of the country at night, the ringing of the crickets on the hot hillside, the low cry of a night-jar, a goat suddenly bleating. It must be midnight. She couldn't sleep. If only Agiatis would come to her, even the ghost of Agiatis. She wouldn't be frightened, she would welcome it. She stared across the room. She cried out: ‘Agiatis!' But it was Erif Der who answered: ‘It's only me.' She felt her way over to the bed. ‘You weren't able to sleep, were you? I felt it. Philylla, I can help you; I've got power over that. I'll do a magic on you, a little easy magic, to make you sleep.' She began to stroke Philylla's head and hands;
she sang like a bee. Her voice got farther and farther away. Philylla dreamt about Agiatis. She could not remember exactly what or how when she woke up, but somehow it had made her less unhappy and she could answer back very satisfactorily when Ianthemis asked if she wasn't ever going to get married.

After that smash-up there was no more fighting for a time, though every one stayed ready for it. Panteus was left in command at Tegea when the King was not there himself and practically never got back to Sparta. Occasionally, there would be a raid against him, but not very serious, rather a test of how things were and a way of stopping the Spartan army from having any adequate rest. Panteus was very careful of his men's comfort; he saw that they had good food and that the wounded were looked after properly, and when there was any good news, he gave it to them at once.

Antigonos was consolidating himself politically, making himself popular with the rest of Greece, and seeing that his Macedonians treated the cities in which they were quartered with the utmost respect. Aetolia, Elis and Messenia kept out, and so did Athens, though with great politeness and many speeches and garlands and decrees. The Athenians had never cared very much for Leagues which were not managed by themselves. Perhaps the best move Antigonos made was when he declared to the Assembly of his own new and enlarged League that he was making war, not with Sparta, but with Kleomenes. Not with one of the oldest and most respected states in Greece, but with social revolution and the class war; not with the ephors and the great Spartiate families, the solid body of Spartan citizens who had been living reasonably and peacefully for generations, but with this lawless and murderous King and his creatures and helots! The Assembly cheered and cheered him.

And it had more effect on Sparta itself than the King or Eukleidas liked to think. While Kleomenes had been having his success, while it seemed that at least his revolution had been worth while for the sake of his victories, every one had acquiesced and most had been enthusiastic. Now the party that was against him began to show its numbers and feelings. There was a growing demand for
a new Board of Ephors to be elected and take over their old powers. It was too late, for him now to exile or condemn. Besides, that was no part of his plan, in Sparta. He was the Head of the State, the property of the State, not a tyrant. Also, this party against him was on the whole a headless thing with no special leaders or speakers, but no less formidable for that—a general, slow movement against his revolution. He felt the women working against him, the women who, as Agiatis had always said, had least to gain from the rules of Lycurgos. Now that she was dead he could not see what they were doing, still less have any influence on it. His mother was too old and too much of an aristocrat to be a good persuader. He got the Queen's girls together, Deinicha and Philylla and those he knew he could trust, and asked them to help him. They did what they could, but the trouble was mostly in the generation a little older than theirs, who had known the other world, and perhaps also in the generation a little younger who would not accept what they were growing up into. It was all very difficult.

Money was short, and he and his friends had no more of their own to use for the State. He had kept some of the oldest gold and silver vessels of the King's household which he considered State property, cups he might have drunk from when the Council of the League came to ask him to take command of them! Now he sent them out of Sparta to be sold, mostly to Athens. They were often very beautiful, engraved with rows of heraldic animals and stiff, soaring Victories with spotted wings, made in the beginnings of Sparta, before they had seen that Beauty was a dangerous goddess. But that was not the kind of thing that people cared for nowadays. They were almost all sold by weight, to be broken up and made into something new. Philylla, very much distressed about this—for she had handled and loved them all—told Erif Der, who bought a few of them; so did Berris when he came back. Kleomenes suspected that there was more money about in Sparta than he knew of; all sorts of traffics and dealings went on. But he could not get hold of it, short of a house-to-house search, including the women's rooms. He could not do that to his citizens; if he did he would
probably be murdered—and most likely rightly. Some prices are too high.

Berris Der gave the finest of the cups he had bought back to Philylla, telling her to keep it for Sparta, for the King's children. She did not say much, but she looked happier than he had seen her for a very long time. Afterwards he told Erif what he had done. ‘Was it wise of me?'

‘Wise, Berris? That depends on what you did it for.'

‘I only did it for her. She was glad. She looked at me—oh, sweetly, Erif! What is happening about her marriage?'

‘Panteus is up at Tegea. He has not got down to Sparta for weeks except once for a couple of nights when the King was there, and then he was making plans with Eukleidas all the time.'

‘I know all that. Tell me something I don't know, Erif!'

Erif said: ‘I don't understand the patterns of Sparta, but, as I see it, Panteus is turned away from her, towards the King.'

‘Leaving her in pain! Oh, Erif, I would be kind to her if I had the chance! I would never hurt her by word or deed.'

‘What a promise to make! As if a man can ever tell when he's hurt a woman. If ever you have that chance, Berris, you'll hurt her just as much as anyone. And you won't know. At least, she knows she is hurting you, and she would help you if it was anyhow in this pattern of hers. But it isn't.'

‘I thought—oh, Erif, I thought she was so much gentler to me lately! She talked about my sort of things as though she were very open to them. She made me a crown of myrtle and wild flowers and put it on my head herself; her hands stayed and touched my ears. Supposing her marriage is not going to happen?'

‘But it is—unless Panteus is killed. Even then she'd marry another Spartiate. Oh, Berris, my darling, come away before she hurts you any more!'

‘But, Erif, if you'd seen how sweet she's been to me lately, how different! She answers to the least thing one does for her.'

Erif said: ‘Don't you see? Oh, Berris, you are stupid! Poor lamb, she's got no one to be kind to her now. Her man is turned from her, so she has turned to you. She can't help it any more than a flower can help turning to the sun. Her mother and sister are on the other side; they hate the things she loves. She's very fond of you, Berris! But not the way you want. Either you've got to take this new kindness as the pleasant, pretty thing it is, knowing—really knowing, Berris!—that it can't last, that it's only till Panteus, who's her other half and has been for years, turns back to her. Or else you should go away.' Berris began to draw in the dust with a stick he'd broken, curls and criss-crosses he rubbed out with his foot and then made again, always a little differently. Suddenly it annoyed his sister too much; she snatched the twig away from him. ‘Berris!' she said, ‘do you understand or don't you?'

Before he answered he got his stick back, after a small fight that ended with Erif being shoved into a bush of prickles, half laughing but a good deal angry. At the end he said: ‘Yes, I understand quite well, in spite of being a man. I probably knew already, and just made the other up because I wanted it more than anything in the world. Oh yes, I understand! I'm sorry if you've pricked yourself, Erif, but it was your own fault. I wish I could see why Philylla thinks there's no one but Panteus. Do you see that at all yourself?'