The Corn King and the Spring Queen (62 page)

‘Agathoklea is so sensible,' murmured Metrotimé. ‘No, Berris, I will
not
have your nasty stone-dust in my hair! Go away! Well—wash!'

When they got upstairs they found Erif making a bundle of the dress and kerchief, and Nikomedes staring with some alarm at Berris' half-finished relief of hawks carrying off and eating little men and women. It was very horrid, with a curious stiffness and fatality about it, the stiffness of that same dream in which one cannot escape. ‘Brr!' said Metrotimé, ‘what a nasty, fascinating thing! It's like something out of one of these dreadful Egyptian temples, only worse, because it's now, not a thousand years ago. Do you know, Berris, I believe Agathokles would adore it! What's your price?'

‘Depends on how many days' work I put into it. I'm not sure I shall sell it at once, either. I'm glad you don't like it, Metrotimé.'

‘Well, I must be going back,' she said. ‘Are those the things? How sweet of you, Erif! Good-bye, Nikomedes –' She kissed him. ‘You'll see me in, Berris?'

Berris looked at her and grinned. ‘All the way!' he said.

T
HE NILE ROSE
more and more rapidly and flooded the land, though in the delta country this made less difference than in the valley itself. But there was a feeling of security and comfort about, even in the still, baking weather they were having now. The date harvest was gathered and every one in Alexandria went about the streets sucking the hot sweet things and spitting the stones into the gutters. But Kratesikleia had a theory that they were bad for children and would not let Gorgo eat them and tried to stop the boys. Neareta took to them; she kept house better than any of the Spartiate women, and Phoebis was fairly cheerful.

Not long after this the last of the season's letters came over from Greece. The chief news they brought was that Antigonos of Macedonia was dead, quite suddenly of excitement and haemorrhage after a battle. It was queer. King Antigonos was dead, and it seemed to make no difference! They were up against worse forces than Antigonos now, things that were out of the power of Spartan courage. The only real hold Kleomenes had was over Ptolemy's Greek mercenaries, most of whom had a great admiration for the Spartan King and his friends, half romantic and half practical, and would sooner have been led by them than by Sosibios. But that was a difficult power to use without letting it appear too much as a threat.

A month and a half later, when the Nile was sinking again and all the flooded land left with the soft, new mud, delicious to tread in and rich with the thought of the young growth, came the Festival of Osiris, the Corn King of Egypt, who is slain every year and broken into pieces and sown like grain over the long narrow valley of fertility. Last year Kleomenes had not known what was to happen that day, and woke in the morning and listened quivering to the wailing, for it seemed as though it had come out of his own mind into objectivity. Then the children, who had enjoyed it all the year before, came in and told him what it was: only the natives wailing for their God who was dead—as people at home in Amyclae still wailed for Hyacinth. But soon it would all turn right and there would be processions and songs and
barges with lamps—could they go this year?—and the little troughs of barley, the resurrection gardens that every one had planted, would shoot up green, and the natives would say that Osiris was alive again.

This year Kleomenes knew it was coming and waited for it with an extra tension of nerves. Now it was too late for any more news from Greece this year. Though it was still fine in Egypt, there would be storms between him and his Sparta. How blessedly cold it would be on those mountain tops! Kleomenes sent for Panteus and rode with him to hunt in the edges of the desert till the wailing was over. Why not hunt? There was nothing else to be done. The palace laughed at them still! But there was pleasure yet in the swift air, in the sight of the hounds' bodies, in the skill, the sudden decisions, the alertness of the senses in hunting that did not leave the mind time to fret and jangle. It was marvellous to stop a quick, just glimpsed, galloping thing, to topple it over in bright blood! To run and shoot up overhead with the sting of the bowstring brushing one's cheek, to see the flying thing change direction, suddenly crash down through bright hollows and cliffs of air. Something in the mere check of speed sent the blood jumping through the heart. And the power, to bury one's fingers in warm quivering fur and feathers, to change it all in an instant to some other stuff. One found a wounded beast very still and close, and looking at one with bright bead eyes, as if one were a God, but with no wretched cringing or appealing, only accepting what God gives, so that one had no slightest twinge as the thin knife struck cleverly into the heart. They were very happy, those two, hunting, and sleeping at night tired out and full of the juices of toasted meat, on cloaks and saddles by some tree-shaded pool where they had drunk and would drink again in the morning. For three days they kept everything else out of their minds and hearts, while in Alexandria and all the cities of Egypt, folk wailed for the dead Corn God.

In Alexandria Philylla sat in her house and listened. Her servant had gone early, in delicious ecstasies of sorrow to the Temple of Osiris, that very old one, which had survived from Rhakotis, the forgotten city before Alexandria. This temple was squat and small, and now it was packed to overflowing with kneeling, groaning worshippers, begging the
God to come again. Philylla went to their room and carefully folded up Panteus' tunics, and picked up and paired the shoes and sandals which he had scattered all over the room in his joyful scramble for hunting-clothes and boots. She had helped him, with gay looks; truly she did not grudge him his joy! He was very untidy; as a young Spartiate in the first years of the King's time, he had given up almost all his possessions except his actual arms and armour and the clothes he slept on, but lately he had accumulated more possessions, new clothes for palace ceremonials mostly, and Philylla had stopped him from throwing away three-quarter worn-out things. They would do—for something. There was enough good stuff to cut up for tiny shirts. If the time came. If. If. She sighed helplessly and patted the things down into the chest. For three days she would not have to fend for him, market or mend or think of new ways to try and make him look happier. She would live on the peasant grain which she never let him eat—it did not taste so bad, though!—and eggs, and he would bring back game with him. Philylla—Panteus. Panteus—Philylla.

What was wrong? Who would know? It went round and round in her head in time with the wailing. It was not the state of marriage, because that, after all, was what she had wanted and got, and Agiatis had been happy, and Deinicha and Chrysa had been happy, and Leandris was happy. Leandris was going to have a baby next year. Was that it? But Panteus did not seem to want children; he said he was glad they had brought no one into this terrible world. She wished he would not say that, when there was still hope for Sparta—oh, surely, so much hope! What else was wrong? Oh it was not, not the King! How could it be? She had known about that always, had thought it lovely when Agiatis had told her that first day when he had sent her the arrows and violets and her darling magpie. She had been right to see it so! It was the pattern of Sparta, and if Agiatis knew it for beautiful, then it must be beautiful too, for her, the other wife!

That was only right and logical. She thought of Sphaeros. He would say it was all delusion, a mere thing the disorder of her female mind had made. With age, Sphaeros was growing more and more formal, more apt to meet a difficulty with a stock phrase; she had not spoken with him much since
Agiatis' death, except about the boys. She wondered if the boys were getting out of life at all what Agiatis had meant them to get, and meant her to see that they should get. It was very difficult for her to do anything effective with Sphaeros and Kratesikleia, both firm that they knew best about everything; but she did keep up her deep friendship with Nikomedes and talked to him hopefully. He needed hope in that house. She thought he was very beautiful and was sorry that there was no one to tell him so. A little praise would not have hurt him.

Through noon the wailing went on; she could not eat, she knew the Egyptians would be fasting. She began to be frightened, though she told herself it was nonsense. She tried to read, then to embroider. She went through the movements of one of the Artemis dances which she had learnt in Sparta a long time ago, but that was more alarming than anything, all by herself. She began to imagine that Panteus might come back suddenly for something he had forgotten—or because there was no game—or because he had thought all at once how grim it was for her alone in the wailing city—because her thoughts had reached him and told him how she longed only for his arms and for one of those moments when he seemed really to be thinking of nothing but her. Could thoughts travel? The Egyptians thought so. They thought the Double, the Kha, could be sent out with messages. Well, even if that were possible, she would not spoil the King's hunting!

She went the next day to see Leandris, who seemed very happy and busy and not much disturbed by the wailing. And the third day Erif Der came to see her. ‘I've just heard you were alone,' she said. Those two have gone again!'

Philylla answered back to the tone of indignation with a laugh: ‘Yes, we shall have our larder full! I shall try to salt down some of it, for it won't keep long in this weather.'

Erif stared at her and said: ‘Yes, but the next time they're away, come and see us.'

After that they talked very comfortably of this and that; the noise of mourning did not seem to penetrate so much. Anyhow, on the third day it was less loud, though perhaps more intense and spasmodic, after the fasting and prayer and saying aloud of many alarming names, to revive the dead Corn God. Erif had brought with her a curious little drawing
of dancers which Berris had made lately, on parchment, some winged and others with animals' heads. Philylla said: ‘I wish he would make some more paintings of King Agis. Those were wonderful. I hope they will have got to young Kleomenes now; he has written fairly often, but never about that.'

‘Berris might some day,' said Erif, ‘but he doesn't feel like it now. He doesn't want to think of Sparta.'

‘No,' said Philylla. And then: ‘I hear he's at the palace a great deal with King Ptolemy—and the others. He must amuse himself.'

‘He does in some ways.'

‘Is it bad for his work?'

‘Other things would be better. Philylla, are you happy?'

Firmly Philylla said: ‘Yes.'

‘We want you to be,' said Erif, ‘as we brought you. Is it the same as you thought it would be?'

‘Not quite. What is?'

‘It will be for me when I see Tarrik again. Different outside, perhaps, but oh—deeply the same.'

‘After all, Erif dear, you're a barbarian'—she put an arm round her friend's neck, to soften the words, though as a matter of fact Erif smiled and didn't mind—‘and it's simpler for you. I've got to deal with something much more complicated.'

‘More complicated than being the Corn God? Tarrik does the things that these people are crying for now. Perhaps Osiris was a king like Tarrik once.' She rubbed her head down along the circling arm: ‘But you'll come to us if you want us ever? Promise, Philylla!'

After the Osiris festival all the crops were sown and the colder weather came, making everything brisker and more alive. Young Agesipolis, recovered from his wound, made love, more or less, to his cousin Nikomedes, and they went riding and hunting and to see the crocodiles. Agesipolis wondered very faintly and occasionally what his baby son was like now. He and his wife wrote to one another regularly twice a year, very short letters which neither of them liked getting. It appeared the child was well. Perhaps when he was older—seven or eight—Agesipolis would feel he must take an interest in him and get him trained. In the meantime he had a mother and two grandmothers to look
after him. Gods forbid that Agesipolis should come near that little nest! He did not want a wife; he wanted his brother, little Kleomenes, the brother he had loved and left at Sellasia. Failing his brother, he wanted Nikomedes.

But Nikomedes was curiously awkward and uncomfortable about it, as though any love-making carried some different and disquieting thought with it, and after a time Agesipolis, who was a reasonable and gentle young man, stopped any advances, but stayed great friends with the boy, who was grateful and enjoyed the companionship. Agesipolis was an important person, for his brother was the leader of the Kleomenist party in Sparta, the one most likely to be successful in any blow at the ephors. It was perhaps this feeling of the importance of Agesipolis, as well as his own uncomfortable memories, which held Nikomedes back; he would not be even the faintest shadow of a bribe to anyone now! He explained this a little to his father, who was curiously sympathetic. They did things together that winter, but not the swimming in Eurotas, not the wild-cat hunting among the crags of Taygetus. Panteus taught him and the others some of the more formal exercises, like disc-throwing; he was a better sprinter than Gyridas, but had less staying power for a long distance. Sometimes Philylla and Leandris came to watch them at their games. There was a good gymnasium near the house, belonging to one of the Greek clubs in Alexandria, which was always glad to give its hospitality to any of the Spartans.

Just after the New Year came another Osiris festival, the setting up of the Zed pillar, which was, some said, the tree in which the God's body had been confined, while others said more simply, ‘No, it was his backbone.' The corn was springing now; they set up the pillar to show the corn how to grow. This was made into a great palace feast, and the Zed pillar was wreathed with plants of a different God—yet perhaps the same under another name! The divine Ptolemy and the enflamed Agathokles said it was that. They raised the pillar—and there were other things besides a backbone or a coffin which an erect pillar might signify!—for Dionysos-Osiris, and a song, written and composed by one of the poets from the Library, was chanted round it, in which a quantity of episodes in the lives of both
gods were paralleled with great ingenuity, and sometimes with a certain tortuousness. It was a very esoteric, but a very decent song. Metrotimé wrote a much funnier version of it, which was neither.

A few weeks later, Philylla came one afternoon to visit Erif Der. That day Erif had been down to the harbour, asking about ships which would be likely to be sailing north for Byzantium that spring. She had a feeling that she was nearly free; she felt as though with all these festivals, she had taken over something from the Year Gods, Isis and Osiris. If they could do this strange thing in Egypt, every summer make the river to rise like a snake rising, surely she could do the easier thing in Marob! She could not be certain of having found Mother and Daughter yet, nor Dead and Snake, and she had not been five years—but supposing Hyperides were right about the Oracle, and she need not follow it? She told Philylla all this eagerly, wanting her to confirm those hopes. But Philylla only said: ‘Oh Erif, don't go yet! I want you.'