The Corn King and the Spring Queen (53 page)

Philylla could not answer any better than she had done already. She turned to the boy again. ‘What else was there in the letter, Gyridas? Anything about any of the others?'

‘He said everything was going on as well as it could, only that was slow at the best. He said the people in Alexandria were kind, but not like our people. He said he was teaching Nikomedes pole-jumping. I can do that already. He said I would be friends with Nikomedes and Nikolaos when I came out. I expect I will.'

Neareta came out of the house then. She said: ‘We'll be going down to Gytheum at once, Philylla, my dear, and we'll just wait quietly for a ship. I've cousins there. He says we'll be coming back maybe in spring. It's then that things come right mostly. And you?'

‘I haven't been told what to do,' said Philylla, and her hands closed over the breast-fold of her dress and the hard corners of the letter. ‘I envy you rather, Neareta.'

Tiasa stood in the doorway, a country malice in her eyes and breasts. She ignored Neareta and spoke straight at her foster-daughter. ‘Still thinking of running away, my babsie-ba? And where does she think the money's to come from?'

Philylla frowned. It had hurt her when Panteus ‘land and livestock had been taken away. It had been her own little house, where they had been happy. The ephors had taken all the small possessions he had as well. It looked rather as if someone who knew about it had told them. She was markedly silent on this subject to her mother. There was not much about the confiscations in the letter; he could not realise at all completely what had happened while he was away; he would go on dreaming about his land and the house where they had slept together. She said:' I think you're forgetting, Tiasa, that my father was in the battle.'

‘Oh yes!' said Tiasa. ‘But he knows enough to lie low and let those who can help him. And he won't be too pleased with a young man who runs off and leaves his wife without so much as a word or a silver piece to click her teeth on! Will he, now?' Philylla waited and breathed and hoped she would be able to think of some reason why this was not true. Tiasa looked round. Neareta and the boy were gone, and Mikon had limped away after them. She came a step nearer and suddenly her voice thickened and softened. ‘Aye, there, we know what you've been through. We'll get you out of it yet. Let him go back to his King and stay there! You'll marry another, a good one that'll look your way all the time and stay looking! Don't go telling me that's not what you want: aren't you made of woman's flesh, my sweetie, the same as me? Don't I know! It's hurting you, isn't it, it's screwing round like a knife every blessed minute?'

Philylla made one great effort to throw it off, to give the lie in calm anger to her foster-mother. But as she lifted her head her throat ached with shut sobs, and all at once her misery betrayed her into complete collapse on to this tenderness which was as old as her own body. ‘It's true, it's true!' she cried. ‘He doesn't love me!' And then she merely let herself run with tears, let herself be kissed and petted and cooed over. She listened, tingling and fascinated behind her
wet eyes, while Tiasa stood and abused her husband. The words beat round her and there was just enough truth in them to soothe the pride and love in her which had been injured and which wanted to be angry with him. That part of her was at last being understood; her complaint against life was being made at last. Between these luxurious bouts of listening she cried jerkily with her mouth open and flung out her hands and flapped them against Tiasa's body. Lovely, lovely, to let go!

But after a time this curious pleasure ceased as abruptly as it had begun. The hands went still, the wrenching sobs died down into childish hiccups, she blinked her swollen eyelids and began to look about her. At any rate, she hadn't shown Tiasa the letter, even though her foster-mother had perhaps guessed about it. She said: ‘It may be all true enough about me being hurt, but he doesn't understand that. If he did he wouldn't have hurt me. But then, he wouldn't have been a man.'

‘That's all very well,' said Tiasa, ‘but I can't see you being torn to bits under my eyes just because it's by a man! Now, you listen to me: if you go to him you're going to worse than you left, for you're nowhere with Panteus when it's a choice between you and the King, and you've got to see that. If the King wants him he'll take him every bit, and you for the gutter.'

‘No!' said Philylla, ‘I'm somewhere. And—and I choose to serve my King too!'

But Tiasa only laughed and went on: ‘And you won't have any of your own folks at your back then. You'll be Mrs. Nobody out there among the black foreigners. You won't even have your old nurse to order about!' This time it was Philylla who laughed, but Tiasa went on: ‘Oh, my sock-lamb, I'd be cut into little pieces if it was anyways for your good—don't I know my masters?—but I won't go an inch out of my road when it's for nothing but a young girl's silliness that I know best about, as how shouldn't I, being thirty years older than you? But there'll be no one to die for you in Egypt, nor to know you're any way different from that stuck-up Neareta and her little brat of a boy not half so big nor so clever as our Dontas for all he's been put to school with his betters! There'll be no one to stay by you if you're sick nor see you through when your time comes and
that man of yours maybe off with the King. What'll you live on if you do get out there? Are you going to beg from the Egyptians?'

‘You have forgotten Queen Kratesikleia.'

‘Well, so I did, but there's little enough in it! The thing that counts is the heart, and you'll be hit there over and over again, for all the old Queen's in Egypt. Don't you mistake about that. But if you'll stay here—stay and get healed and forget all this—grow out of it—why, don't I know that young spark of your sister's would ten times rather have you, a beauty like you, just plum-ripe for the biting! And he'll keep you well, like wives were kept in the old days, you'll be Mrs Somebody then, not dragging about without a change of linen for all the foreigners to laugh at, but lady of one of the first estates in the land, with a great household to make what you like of, and dresses and jewels—why, Chaerondas could bring up all the boys you like to bear, and that's more than Panteus ever can, now—isn't it, duckie? Just you let me tell Chaerondas you'd be willing to see him—no more than that! Ianthemis can wait a bit—what's she compared with you, my own lovely dove?' Suddenly she threw herself down on her knees in the muck of the farmyard and flung her arms up and round Philylla. ‘Do it!' she cried. ‘Oh do it, and make your old nursie happy and get happy yourself!'

But Philylla disentangled herself and caught Tiasa hard by the two hands and looked down into her eyes. ‘I'll tell you if I need you,' she said. ‘Just now—I don't.'

E
RIF AND BERRIS
Der came late in autumn into Sparta. Everything had freshened up after the rains; there were clouds on the hills at both sides, but the sky between was blue. Berris was not exactly getting fat, but he did not care how he stood and he was a little soft about the body. His arms, though, were extremely strong and he could twist very tough bits of metal in his fingers. They found that most of their old friends were killed or in exile; there were new people in the same houses. But Berris Der by now had a certain reputation; in fact, people had begun to say that he was not a barbarian at all, but a Greek; that annoyed him rather. He had no difficulty in finding friends or work
among the rich in any state he visited.

He had begun portrait painting and was finding it amusing, though sometimes his subjects were not pleased, for he was in an unromantic phase. One of his commissions was a full-length of the Macedonian Governor of Sparta. He did this very competently, and his sister talked to the governor's mother, who was quite a dear old lady. They talked mostly about the gods of Macedonia, who all had Greek names but were rather different in their action, and more particularly about some mountain rites which the nice old thing remembered with a sucking in of lips and wrinkling round eyes. ‘Girls will be girls,' she said, ‘and we all did it. The best families. These chits of Greeks down here, they haven't the blood. No, my dear. But up in the north we're different, we know how to live. You tell your brother he should take you to Macedonia, you'll find yourself a man there.' She quite disregarded the fact that Erif was married; she liked something she could see and understand. On the same lines, she was cross with Berris because he was not sufficiently accurate in painting the scars on her son's legs. They were honourable scars; once he had a pike-head right through his left calf; he still walked a little lame of it, but not enough to spoil his dignity. Berris, annoyed, made a sketch of the governor with no clothes and more than all the scars, but for safety's sake it had to be burned.

Then one day Erif met Eupolia and Ianthemis at a party the governor's wife was giving. She looked no odder than the Macedonians now in her Greek dress as she came quickly forward to speak to them. Eupolia was quite reasonably pleasant, but Ianthemis was shy and distressed and seemed cross. The girl was thinner and darker than her sister, and her skin was smudgy, so that it was thought better for her to use powder. But behind it her eyes were less guarded than her mother's, so it was she that Erif Der decided to get the news from, after Eupolia, having given courteous replies about her husband's health, had moved on and begun to talk to their hostess. Ianthemis had wanted to follow her mother; she was afraid of being left alone and talked to by strangers, but she was not used enough to parties to finish off her conversation with Erif neatly and quickly, and the thing dragged on and her mother was out of sight and the slaves with cakes seemed all to be at the other end of the room! Erif
Der said quickly: ‘Do you ever hear from Philylla now?' Ianthemis gaped. ‘Does she like Egypt?'

‘Oh!' said Ianthemis, ‘she's not in Egypt!'

Erif was so surprised that she nearly lost her grip of the talk, but Ianthemis was not enough on the spot to get away before the question: ‘Is she here then?'

‘No-oo!' said Ianthemis, and laughed and then looked at the foreign woman, who was, after all, not a Macedonian, and decided to tell her—well, something. ‘She's at home,' said Ianthemis, ‘and mother sees she stays there! Besides, she doesn't like these parties.'

‘Why is she at home, Ianthemis?' said Erif, smiling as nicely as she knew how and beckoning one of the cake-girls over. ‘Do tell me. You see, I don't know anything!'

Half won, Ianthemis said: ‘Panteus wants her to go to Egypt. But of course it would be silly. So she's got to be stopped. Even though she is grown up.'

‘Would it be silly, though?' asked Erif. ‘Wives have to obey their husbands first, don't they? And besides—‘she dropped her voice, glancing down at the little cake in her hand—‘supposing all this doesn't last for ever?'

‘Oh, you mustn't!' said Ianthemis quickly. ‘We don't ever say that—or think it! Anyhow, Panteus hasn't ordered her to come.'

‘I see,' said the Queen of Marob, and suddenly found herself uncertain of the patterns of Sparta or what had happened to them now. She realised that Eupolia had rather definitely not asked her to the house, though at the time she had not noticed it, because she had not particularly wanted to go there. Now she did want. She tried the direct method. ‘How pretty you've grown, Ianthemis! You don't mind my telling you so? I expect plenty of people do. I wish my brother could see you. He's so tired of painting rather plain governors!'

In a pleasant distraction Ianthemis took another cake; there hadn't been anything so good to eat in all her life before! They had paste of dates and chestnuts and some little greenish sweet lumps—She wanted so badly to ask whether Erif really thought she was as pretty as her sister, but somehow she couldn't! She could only say: ‘Oh, do you really think so, how nice of you!' And, flurried, began on admiration in her own turn. ‘Your brother must be so
clever! Every one says so. Did he make your lovely bracelets?' She fingered the lowest of the very fine set which Erif wore, perhaps rather barbarically, between elbow and shoulder.

Erif undid it carelessly. ‘Oh,' she said, ‘they're amusing, aren't they? He's always making them. Look at the lizard's head.' She slid it suddenly on to the girl's arm. ‘Why, it's nothing, do keep it! I shall think you hate me if you don't!'

And really it did look beautiful, and it made—didn't it?—her arm look almost rather beautiful too! She'd had so few pretty things since the time father had made mother give up all her jewellery for the King. Herself, she hadn't minded then, she was too little, but now she did mind. She didn't know enough about jewels to tell if this was valuable at all; probably it was just nothing, as Erif had said. She blushed and thanked and inadvertently licked the cake crumbs inelegantly off her fingers, and blushed again for that.

‘And give my love to your sister,' Erif was saying, ‘and I may come and see you both one day, mayn't I? It's such ages since I've been away.' It was a bracelet Berris had given her at New Year, his own best work. Well, never mind. At the end of the afternoon, she got a rather vague invitation from Eupolia, which she promptly turned into a definite day and hour.

After the party she went to Berris, who was cleaning his brushes. She said: ‘Philylla is still in Sparta,' and watched him draw up and harden his mouth and rub the paint still more meticulously out of the soft brush hairs.

‘Where's her husband then?' said Berris.

‘Oh, in Egypt, as we heard. But her mother's keeping her at home. Poor darling!'

Berris did not answer for a time; he seemed to be turning it over and over. At last he said, very crossly indeed: ‘So you say, Erif, but how do you think you know she wants to go?'

Erif thought with pleasure of how a few years ago she would have answered him back, but how now she felt herself merely a superior player of the not too difficult game. ‘We shall know quite soon, anyhow,' she said, ‘because I've arranged for us to go and see her.'

‘Well!' said Berris, ‘you are a bitch and no mistake!' But his hard mouth grinned in spite of itself and he went on cleaning his brushes quicker.

Ianthemis told Philylla that they were coming, but Philylla was marsh-sunk in gloom so that she could scarcely turn her head or answer. She had been betrayed by Tiasa, and the whole household was mobilised against her. She had no money and nobody would get it for her. The stables were forbidden, though the young helot groom wept not to be able to obey her. Even her father insisted on giving her long lectures on the uselessness of going on with this: better to submit, as he had. Ianthemis had managed to send off her answering letter to Panteus, which said most solemnly that she would come out to him. Or—was it possible that her sister had betrayed her too? No, no; Ianthemis was a Spartiate where Tiasa was only a helot! She looked out of the high, square window of her room; she could see clouds like fat fishes going by, the beginning of winter. Already there would be fewer ships sailing; she would almost certainly have to wait until spring.

Thinking of that, she suddenly realised what she had been told by her sister. At least there would be Erif and Berris to make life possible during the winter! Berris. She had not seen him for a long time, not since she was a girl, before her marriage. She thought she knew now how unkind she had been. She wondered whether he had been twisted about, forced by the images in his mind into maddening, hot, aching sleeplessness, as she was now most nights, thinking of her man and his body. Sometimes towards dawn she would have been willing enough to have the body alone without the mind or heart. The body, the skin, the—No! what was the use of thinking about it till she was somewhere near getting it! Dreams do no good. She had stopped wondering about Berris. She did not even trouble to change her dress, though when she heard voices, she did come straight through the courtyard to them without needing to be fetched.

She kissed Erif and made much of her, but she was distant with Berris, deliberately putting barriers between her self of now and the self which Berris used to know. The talk was all quite formal. She sat between her father, who was delighted to see Berris again, and her mother. She noticed that one of the embroidery threads on her mother's dress was
loose, and had caught round a bronze leaf on the chair leg; when Eupolia got up it would all pull together—the little yellow wool bird on the wine-coloured stuff would wrinkle and shrivel and become shapeless as the thread of its body jerked out—the warp and weft of the groundwork would be suddenly strained on as never since its weaving, snap, snap. She made no movement to warn Eupolia.

Ianthemis sat on her mother's other side; she had not quite dared put on her best dress, but she was in white with anemones in her hair, and she wore the bracelet Erif had given her. She was very silent, but she kept on glancing sideways without turning her head at all towards Berris. She wondered if he was looking at her with his painter's eyes. She put her arms and her body into what felt like poses. Would mother let him paint her? Could it be done, perhaps, as a present for Chaerondas? Meanwhile Eupolia talked pleasantly to Erif, skirting round difficult subjects, but near enough for her to try and test what this woman thought and whether she would be a suitable companion for Philylla.

Erif took up the challenge and played. She had to persuade Eupolia that she was harmless and assure Philylla that she was a friend. All the time part of her was feeling over towards Philylla, trying to say: ‘We are both separated from the men we love, let us be sisters'; trying to say: ‘I will help you, even though you cannot help me.' But the upper part of her mind was light and laughing. She told them about Hyperides and how she had sent back toys for her little son, and how she had got a letter back from the Athenian, written just before midsummer, saying how well and pretty her boy was and how hospitable every one was in Marob. She hoped to get another letter soon, sent on from Kirrha, but she and her brother had been moving about so much. Yes, they were going to stay in Sparta all winter. Where better to stay nowadays than Sparta? At this she saw Philylla sigh and shift and turn back pitiably into herself, but Eupolia smiled and was satisfied. So far, so good. She would put it right easily with Philylla.

Berris had started by being extremely uncomfortable; he had looked once at Ianthemis and seen his bracelet on her arm. Erif had told him he probably would, and he approved her action, but still he did hate seeing it there! He was seized with a sudden desire in his finger-tips to touch the thing
again, and that had been made impossible for him! But he liked Themisteas; they had always got on well together. They talked about the battle of Sellasia, but technically, without any political opinions. If these seemed like appearing, Themisteas glanced aside at his wife and suppressed everything. Berris found himself half the time talking down to the older man. Now he himself was successful, with a security quite apart from birthplace or property, something in the minds of men and in his own mind. Yes, he had got almost enough praise now not to care about it! Even the Spartiates, Themisteas and Eupolia, recognised the quality in him, even though they did not care much for the external products of it. They were polite to him and a little bit frightened—and, in spite of themselves, a little bit honoured! Suddenly Berris, the successful one, had a wild impulse to stand on his head and wave his legs at them and shout!

But, feeling this impulse, he had flung his head up, and there was Philylla looking at him from under her brows, and all at once he was struck down to earth, into the net, and he was not successful any more. Oh God, what was everything if he had not got her! It was no use; he could say to himself as much as he chose that he was free of her; he could go and make love to slave-girls and models and pretend it was the same thing; he could tell a tart in a brothel at Kirrha about this calf-love of his and listen to her laugh at it and offer him better goods. All that muck had gone down to the roots of his passion, had dunged it into strength, now it had borne a blinding rose, now he was a grown man and deeply and bitterly in love with Philylla!

All the time, he went on talking to Themisteas. He told them amusing stories about his adventures, the houses he had been into, the things people had said about his pictures. He asked after the animals. Themisteas told him excitedly about the new litter of hound puppies; he gripped the arm of his chair and half raised himself, then winced and sat back and told the girls to run out and get them. Ianthemis jumped up and Philylla followed her; in a few minutes they came back with an armful each, and the great bitch sniffing and whining behind them. Ianthemis thought, thrillingly, that she was bringing an offering to a great painter, and she did hope her father would think of giving him one. She had the pick of the bunch snuggled into her right elbow; at least the
grooms said it was. She ducked her head down and rubbed her cheek on it. Philylla was not thinking about dogs at all.