The Corn King and the Spring Queen (61 page)

Nikomedes looked down curiously at his kissed hands. They did not seem to be his own any more; they were apart from him, smarting a little. He let them lie. He said: ‘If I give myself up to you, as I'm willing to do, you must give my father all the help he asks for.'

Ptolemy stared and frowned and said: ‘So you've come to bargain!' Suddenly he leapt to his feet and hunched himself over Nikomedes and shouted at him: ‘Who sent you?'

For a moment Nikomedes was choking back screaming terror. Then he said firmly: ‘No one! I came by myself.
I am a King's son and I won't be bullied or insulted, Ptolemy!'

Gradually Ptolemy's black look relaxed. He stood merely erect and said: ‘Was I bullying you, King's son? Did I seem to you like that?'

‘Yes,' said Nikomedes.

Ptolemy nodded. ‘You see, I've got power,' he said, ‘great power over all sorts of pain. Even over a King's son! Whips, Nikomedes, and licking fires and fish that eat boys and little, snicking knives. Don't let us talk of it. You want to bargain. You, not I, want that. I'm in a better position than you. I have, apparently, all you want, but I am not so sure that what you offer me is so good; that remains to be seen. Besides, you have come here to my palace, inside my walls. I am stronger than you, Nikomedes, even though you are a Spartan! Suppose I just took what I wanted? No, don't start so; I'm not touching you! Perhaps I don't even want to.'

They sat down again on the bench, Nikomedes at one end, his hands clasped between his knees, all at once feeling most unheroic and longing only to be home again with Gyridas and Nikolaos. Ptolemy, at the other end, sat and looked at him with the kind of eyes and mouth which might mean anything. He did not know what to do. The sun dropped and dropped towards the end of the world. The gold light in the room tilted and vanished. Softly the curtain was drawn aside and in came three lovely girls in blue with lighted silver lamps, which they hung here and there about the walls. Everything became kinder and vaguer and easier. While they were in the room the two on the bench did not speak. When they were gone Nikomedes found that Ptolemy was still looking at him as puzzlingly as ever. Suddenly and disastrously he found himself overwhelmed with tears. He got to his feet. He tried very hard to speak.

Ptolemy chose that moment to say: ‘You want to bargain with me. Tell me exactly what you want.' He spoke in a new, a grim kind of voice. Nikomedes stretched out his hands dumbly, praying desperately for time, for one moment to recover. Ptolemy seemed to understand, to take that prayer. He was standing now, close to Nikomedes, so that those dumb, quivering hands just touched the breast of his tunic. ‘You needn't tell me, then!' he said. ‘Look,
Nikomedes, you aren't a very good bargainer! Hadn't you better trust to me? I'm not ungenerous where I love. You should trust me, Nikomedes.'

Something in Nikomedes said ‘No, no!' If he could be the sacrifice he could and would make the demand! Only what was the best way? If only he knew more of the world! Was he certain he could save his father and Sparta? ‘Ptolemy—' he said, ‘I don't know yet.' It seemed to him that the moment to ask for money and soldiers was not yet quite come. He let himself be led a pace or two by the other King; his touched and breaking mind allowed it.

Ptolemy was sitting now on the raised end of the bench, and the boy stood beside him, shone upon softly by a lamp, his head bowed, his eyes open but veiled. Ptolemy lifted his arms and unpinned the brooch from the boy's right shoulder, a funny toy brooch of hammered gold with a quail on it. The tunic dropped forward and the young chin, too, dropped a little. The light fell straight on his shoulder and breast; the white tunic dropped in folds of shadow over his quivering belly. This innocent creature. This self-chosen victim. This March-bud beauty, this Spring God come at the turn of autumn for the mystery of the Vintage. He drew him closer to the bench, he began to turn him round with groping hands close against his hips, feeling down through the stuff of the tunic that would strip as a sweet almond strips. As the rough sheath from a crinkled poppy bud, a loose shaken white poppy.

At the far end of the room a little table was being laid for supper, a table of citron-wood almost covered with flowers, a foaming of blossom round the silver dishes, the faint jingle and glitter of the silver cups. Two of the girls and Agathoklea were preparing it under the farthest of the lamps. Between them and the bench there were great spaces of quiet shadow; they did not disturb King Ptolemy. Still he and the boy stayed as they were; still his bent palms waited over the flesh of Hellas. He was attending now to some ecstasy within himself which would surely come to a crisis and flow out towards possession of this beauty and of the whole world, the world which Alexander had died to possess materially, but which he, Ptolemy, would now possess spiritually through this little death, this agony of pleasure.

Agathoklea looked delicately and sympathetically across the space of shadow towards the lighted group and for a moment fumbled in her recognition of Nikomedes. Then she saw and was shocked in her every sense of expediency, and gave a slight scream of disapprobation. Only the most ordinary, small scream, but enough to alter everything. For suddenly Nikomedes lifted his head and said very clearly: ‘Then you do promise me the regular subsidy and the soldiers and the transport ships?'

Agathoklea was not so much of a politician as her brother, but she could scarcely help understanding this. She bit her lip and began to walk across the room. But Ptolemy was rising from the bench. The young god had suddenly turned into a mocking imp, the victim was not a victim, the ecstasy had winked and shifted and become commonplace. His dream, his dream was broken! As he got upright, saying nothing, his grip shot upwards into a murderous one, fingers on throat, the only other way to take the victim and have the ecstasy!

Taken utterly by surprise Nikomedes stumbled back, choked, unable even to shout, clawing vainly at those fingers, his passion to save himself not for one moment equal to the fingers' passion to destroy him. The next thing he knew he was staggering, gasping and crowing for breath and in sharp pain, but his legs seem to have taken it on themselves to run, wobbling better or worse, in the wake of a woman who was pulling him along, stuffing him behind a curtain, rushing him down a passage, up steps into the open air, through a laurel thicket that whipped back sharp leaves at him, up some more steps, along—and plump into a small room with a girl at the end just looking up from a book with her mouth open to ask a question. Agathoklea let go. Nikomedes sat down hard and suddenly on the floor.

‘There you are, Metrotimé!' stormed Agathoklea. ‘Put him in the cupboard, into the book chest, hide him under your bed; I'm sure I don't know what to do with him!'

‘Who is it?' said Metrotimé, getting up and delicately poking Nikomedes with her toe so as to disarrange his tunic still further. ‘It looks rather nice. Bed, don't you think, not books?'

‘It's Nikomedes of Sparta, devil fly away with him!'

‘Oh,' said Metrotimé, waggling her eyebrows, and rather
obviously rearranged the tunic into complete decency. Nikomedes blushed and sat up rather more, patting his throat gingerly. ‘A hot cloth?' suggested Metrotimé, and clapped her hands.

Agathoklea nodded. ‘Is your woman safe?'

‘Too dreadfully,' said Metrotimé, and when a large, kindly looking slave-woman came bustling in, ordered her to bring steaming cloths and a glass of wine. ‘Now,' she said, ‘what about it, dearest?'

‘I came in,' said Agathoklea, ‘and found the King, bless him, prettily busy with this young man in a corner.'

‘How far?'

‘Oh, the limit in another minute, wouldn't it, you wretch?' She shook Nikomedes, who was still rather too dazed to speak. ‘Well, I thought, here's a nice business! For really I do think, mixing up politics and pleasure—! Don't you? Besides, I'll take my oath this brat knows no more about it than an idiot baby!'

‘How amusing!' said Metrotimé. ‘Is that true, Nikomedes? Haven't you ever enjoyed yourself with a nice friend?'

‘No,' said Nikomedes, in some obscure way rather ashamed.

‘Yes, quite too unsuitable! What happened?'

‘The next thing was I heard the little devil say, as cool as a monkey, just what he thought he was going to get out of it—money and ships and goodness knows what all! Next thing, he'd have been dead in another two ticks if I hadn't got between them. And next thing, we'll have to get him out, and you'll have to go and talk to my poor ducky little King, and I only hope it's not too late to put things right!'

‘Hmm. I gather the thing turned right over—the other side of the God! But what a fool the boy must be to speak just then. Who sent you, boy?'

‘I came myself,' said Nikomedes.

Just then the slave-woman came back with hot cloths, which she and Metrotimé between them laid on Nikomedes' neck over the red bruises. ‘I think, dearest,' Metrotimé said to her friend, ‘that you should go back. I expect, you know, there's nothing to worry about. You should get him to sleep; he'll be tired. I've got some stuff here; just
the thing. Tell him it's from me. It induces—dreams. Yes, very pleasantly.' She opened a chest, took out a small box and shook out a couple of blackish pellets. ‘I take them myself from time to time. I'll see to this brat. Now, run along, dearest.' Agathoklea went out with a last, not perhaps absolutely serious, scowl at Nikomedes, and the pellets. Metrotimé sat down with her book beside her and began to polish her nails, glancing at the story from time to time.

At last Nikomedes said very shyly: ‘Please, what do I do now?'

‘I should get up off the floor if I were you,' said Metrotimé. ‘That's right. Now come here and let me take those cloths off your neck. There! Now the bruises won't show. How old are you, Nikomedes?'

‘Going to be fifteen.'

‘Goodness, how old! Old enough to keep secrets. Do you think you can manage not to tell anyone at all about this evening?'

Nikomedes thought hard. At last he said: ‘Yes.'

‘Good. Now, how do you feel? Quite all right?'

Again he thought hard. Surprisingly, his shattered self had picked itself up again. The dream was ended; he was awake. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘I'm ready to go.' It was only then that he realised he had failed. But it was not, somehow, a bitter failure; it was blurred. He thought his father might be glad, after all, that he had failed. Only his father must never know. He liked Metrotimé. He thought it would have been fun to have an elder sister.

She said: ‘Don't try this again, not for a year or two! You were lucky, you know. By the way, did you hear about the Vintage?'

‘Yes, every one has.'

‘What did you think about it?'

‘Nothing much. I heard about the girls who danced and went mad and let the fauns have them in the open fields. I wish I'd seen that!'

‘The God Dionysos had taken possession of them. I was one.'

‘You! But I thought they were just common girls. Why did you do it?'

‘It was as if each one of those men dressed as fauns had
been the God himself. They had got something divine into them by being part of the feast. One wanted that from them for oneself. Do you understand at all?'

‘But you knew they were ordinary men all the time. One can't get behind knowledge, behind the real thing.'

‘Yes, one can, and must. I suppose Sphaeros is your tutor, Nikomedes? You're a little Stoic, aren't you?'

‘I try to be. But I'm not wise yet.'

‘No, it takes time! But you haven't told me what you thought about the Vintage except that some of it was funny and perhaps shocking.'

‘I'll tell you what I do think. I just think it's much too hot for running about and enjoying oneself here! And anyhow the vines don't do so well as they do at home, and the grapes are half the size, unless you fuss about all the time, watering them. They simply aren't worth having a feast about!'

Metrotimé laughed and told him to drink a little wine and eat some of the flat crisp cakes she brought out of the other room. While he was doing this she fetched a plain coloured girl's dress and head handkerchief. ‘I'm going to take you out of the palace,' she said, ‘and you must be disguised. It will be quite safe if you are. Come now, you can put this on over your own tunic.'

‘But need I be dressed up as a girl?' protested Nikomedes.

‘Yes, indeed you must. We've got two sets of sentries to pass. Here, let me fasten it. Silly boy, that's not the way to put on a handkerchief! Why don't you grow your hair long? It's a shame to cut it off, soft and fine as it is.'

‘Spartiates used to grow it long in old days, but it would be silly now. Men don't, and I won't. Can't I hold this stupid skirt up more?'

‘Not too far! You make the most darling girl, Nikomedes. Wouldn't you like to stay with me and be my sister? Oh don't scowl at me; I always do say things in the vilest taste! We'll just draw the kerchief forward an inch, so. And the end round across your chin. Now, keep your head bent like a nice, modest girl. One moment till I find a scarf for myself. There! Come along, Nikomedes.'

They passed the guards with no trouble at all, for they all knew Metrotimé; she was friendly and generous to them; though, for that matter, it was the only sensible thing to be. There were not many people about, and they took the smaller streets, hurrying rather, like respectable women getting home. ‘Where are you going?' whispered Nikomedes at last.

‘To Erif Der. She's the only rational one among you. You can tell her if you must tell someone, though I still advise you not. Berris can see me home. You can stay there for the night and have a good sleep and forget about it all.'

They came to the house and knocked. It was Berris himself who came to the door, a mallet in his hand and stone-dust all over himself. He stared at them, not recognising Nikomedes. Metrotimé walked past him into the house and whispered to Nikomedes to run along to the work-room and take his things off, which he was only too glad to do. Then she told Berris what had happened. He listened, leaning his chin on her shoulder and every now and then kissing her ear or neck. ‘I didn't know the boy had it in him,' he said finally, ‘after all this grandmothering. Well, I'm glad that divine lunatic of yours wasn't allowed to murder him.'