The Corn King and the Spring Queen (16 page)

Out of a thicket of low bushes she ambushed the dawn flowing towards her across the pastures; it was infinitely satisfying to jump out on to it and leap about in the dazzle. Only she was cross with herself for forgetting to bring anything to eat; that wasn't being like a soldier. Still, over the next ridge was her foster-mother's farm; she broke herself a big stick and went on, humming and chanting odd bits of things in the way that was so annoying for every one except herself.

Good! they'd been cooking at the farm. She smelt food and cows; there would be milk. She walked without knocking into what seemed a very full room, rather dark after the bright morning outside. Tiasa and the other women
all ran round and began touching her; she noticed suddenly that she was as tall as a grown-up now, taller already than some of the helots. There was nothing she was afraid of. They brought her pig's tripe and bread, and tipped her a bowl of warm milk from the frothy pails. They murmured and stroked her yellow curls, put their fingers through the rings in it. On a low bed in the corner that she had not seen at first was a woman with a young sprawling baby half wrapped in soft rags. She took her bread in her hand and went over to look at them. There was a young man sitting on the edge of the bed stroking the woman's legs and feet. He did not move. Philylla glanced at him out of the tail of her eye, but her foster-mother ran over and shook her fist at him: ‘Get up, you dog!'

The man looked round and grinned and spoke across her at Philylla: ‘There won't be any of that soon!—not when we're all masters, me and him and him. We won't stand up for you—but for your pretty face!'

Philylla gasped as if she had been ducked, but held up her hand to stop Tiasa from answering for her. The man was half standing now and staring at her, leaning up against one of the house posts; there were two or three others—she couldn't quite see how many; dark and laughing, they waited for her. The woman on the bed waited, her bare, soiled toes cocked up and still. She said: ‘What makes you speak like that to me?' Tested, her voice was adequately calm.

‘You know,' said the man.

She began to feel rather queer; by saying that the man had brought some sort of community between them; it was as if he had dared to touch her face. For a minute she only wanted to smash that community; she heard her foster-mother stirring with shocked and angry eagerness just behind her; and further behind were all the powers of life and death, of prison and torture and abuse when the abused has to stand silent with his hands folded and neck meek. The combined inheritance from father and mother boiled and tossed through her against the helots. Then her own lifted and calming hand stayed her, gave time for the image of Agiatis to come. She felt her blood ebb back into an even flow. She said: ‘You mean, the New Times.' The helots nodded and murmured and came closer, four
young men. Suddenly she gave a little funny sigh and dropped her hand, palm outward; in her own mind she had allowed the community. Then almost immediately she had the experience of pride such as she had never known as a Spartiate by herself. She lifted her head: ‘How did you know that I—follow the King?'

‘Panteus told Phoebis, and Phoebis told us.'

Now smiling and steady she took stock of them. They were tall, broad, three with thick beards, the other younger. She thought she could never have looked at a helot before. She said: ‘Why aren't you with the army?'

‘We aren't soldiers, we're only farmers!' They laughed.

Her head jerked back to a return of anger. ‘There won't be room for cowards in the King's time!'

Before any of the men could answer the woman on the bed swung herself half up on to her elbow: ‘You call them cowards! What have you had to face yourself, my lady?'

‘Well, I know I wouldn't be a coward!' said Philylla, suddenly childish again.

The man who had spoken first leant over to the woman: ‘Don't you tease her,' he said.

‘She isn't!' Philylla said. ‘As if she could!'

Her foster-mother at her elbow spoke comfortably: ‘That's right, my lamb! Whatever people may say, there'll always be master and servant.'

But Philylla was not happy. She stood in the middle of the farm-room with the people looking at her, waiting; to cover her embarrassment she finished eating the slice of bread. She wished anything else would happen, a cow jump down the chimney or something.

Then one of the other men began to talk. He said: ‘A hundred years ago my father's fathers were citizens, like yours. Then there were wars and bad seasons and accidents and too many children. They couldn't pay their share of the mess. They stopped being citizens. But by blood I'm as much a Spartiate as you, Philylla, daughter of Themisteas. Your father gives me orders now, though; so of course you have a right to call me a coward.'

Philylla felt herself blushing; they had left a large hollow space for her to fill with her answer. She swallowed the last piece of the bread chokingly. Her voice was only a loud whisper. ‘I didn't know about that.'

But the man went on as if he had not heard. ‘So now I am the same as the slaves; they are my brothers.'

Suddenly Philylla found her voice again. ‘All right, then—will you all be the King's soldiers in the New Time?'

Something seemed to break and begin to grow clearer. ‘We hope so,' said the first man.

‘Oh dear,' said Philylla, ‘I wish I could be too. I'm sorry.' It was not clear whether she was sorry for being only a girl or for having called them cowards, but the room seemed less full of strained breathings. She moved forward and held out a finger uncertainly towards the baby.

The man sat down again on the end of the bed and began again stroking the woman's feet. ‘That's my baby,' he said, ‘and my woman. She likes having my babies.' Embarrassed as before, Philylla dropped her finger. The woman was staring at her boldly. She was a solid, handsome woman; her hair was long and greasy and fastened back with big copper and coral pins; she made Philylla feel dreadfully young. The man said: ‘She wants me to put another baby into her. Well, that's easy done. When we have them we keep them; they work on the land. There's no fuss about splitting up the estate between them! It was all very well for you, my lady Philylla, being the eldest, but what about your little sisters?'

Philylla didn't understand; she looked puzzled. She heard her foster-mother say: ‘Ah, be quiet—' and then the man again: ‘Don't you know there were three more of you who weren't allowed to grow up?'

For a moment nothing happened; nothing was conveyed to her mind. Then several things at once rushed out of memory into the front of her consciousness, things she'd heard said and hadn't attended to—horrid things! ‘Ooh!' she went, moaning like a little funny bird, ‘ooh—oh!' She felt Tiasa's arms round her and the voice she knew. ‘There, there, every one does it—' and then the man being scolded. She sat down on the edge of the bed; she could smell the milky, live smell of the woman and her baby just beside her; she felt her hand held and patted, she did not even try to draw it away. She didn't listen to what anyone was saying. At last she looked up and shook herself and said: ‘Let's talk about
something else. Tell me if you have any news later than mine.' Suddenly she was a general holding an important council with her subordinates.

‘They're all up by dirty old Megalopolis,' said the younger man, ‘but Aratos won't fight. He dodges about and keeps out of the way and wears out our people trying to catch him. But he's an old man and our King's not old; the young one will catch up in time—as he did before in the same game—and won! They say there's little love lost between the generals of the League. I don't know, but Aratos is a Sicyon man, good enough at buying and selling, whether it's stuff or his own friends! He's no soldier. When he hears an arrow his heart goes flop and his eyes turn up, and when he sees a spear he's got to go quick behind the first tree to empty himself!'

‘I've heard that too,' said Philylla politely, recovered from the shock she had been given, ‘and I can't see why the Achaean League stays so strong with a man like that at the head of it.'

‘Ah, there's money behind the League,' said the man wisely and vaguely, shaking his head. ‘Egypt. Black men. Crocodiles.'

‘Oh,' said Philylla, ‘Egypt is a very civilised place. One of the dresses I had for my birthday was made of Egyptian muslin; there's a sort of plant they have that grows wool like a tiny sheep. Did you ever hear that? It's quite true. They must have lots of money. But swords will win in the end!'

‘Swords and the King's will.'

Now Philylla would have gone on quite happily being a general and a sort of grown-up. But suddenly her foster-mother interrupted them: ‘You and your King Kleomenes! He gets round you all like—like a woman! As if things were ever altered this way. He's no better than all the rest, bless him. Shall I tell you something about him?'

‘If you've got anything interesting to tell,' said Philylla, rather annoyed, ‘but I don't expect it is. The King's a black bull—the silly stories all round him are flies. We don't listen to the buzzing.'

Tiasa sat on a stool and put her arms round Philylla, who by habit had come to stand between her knees. Thick looks
passed between them, the dizzying half-way from love to anger. The woman began her story. ‘Ever since the very beginning there have been two kings in Sparta: one for peace and one for war; one to come and one to go; one to be steady, one to be ready, and two for the brothers of Helen. Your Kleomenes is king of one line. Agis was king of the other. After Agis died—'

‘Was murdered.'

‘Well, well, poor lad, it's all the same to him now; well, after that his baby son was king of that line. But the baby died, as babies do, even the ones that are wanted most. Then the king was Archidamos, Agis' young brother, who'd fled away in the bad times. Your Kleomenes sent for him to come back, and back he came out of Messene.'

‘I know this story,' said one of the men. ‘It is not true.'

‘All the better if it's not,' said the wcman, and went on. ‘He hadn't been back a month before he was murdered one fine night between moonset and cockcrow. Little enough was said about it; you'd have thought there was only one king in Sparta, and that one Kleomenes. Whoever had done it they were never caught, and never much hunted for that matter. And no one else has come home to claim the kingship on that line. But I've had it in my mind it must be a sight easier for Kleomenes if he's got all these high and mighty ideas that you children talk so big about, if he hasn't another king beside him who might have respect for the laws and get in his way.'

Philylla laid her hand over the woman's breasts, with painful knowledge of the complete intimacy there had been between them not so long ago, with a queer vision of herself tiny and ugly, sucking, slobbering, at the brown nipples, helpless in the big hands. She said: ‘If you were not my foster-mother you would not dare to say this to me.'

‘But I am, lambie, so I do dare. It's good for you to hear something else sometimes.'

‘As if I didn't hear it at home! Listen: you must not say these things. Not ever again. Kleomenes never did that deed. I swear it. I know.' She turned to the men: ‘We will not have it,' she said, ‘we stand for the King and justice and hard living and truth!'

‘Yes,' said the man who had spoken to her first, ‘and now you must go back, or else they will miss you and send
to look for you. It would be a pity if they found you here. Good luck, Lady Philylla!' They crowded round then and kissed her hands, and all at once she was a queen—a queen like Agiatis!

A
T THE END OF
the battle of Leuctrum, the Marob people went back to their own quarters, half a dozen tents in a little walled enclosure of fruit trees. The green almonds were swelling already, beginning to weight the twigs; Berris had never seen them before. He was dazed and very unhappy. It had all only just happened.

He had shut his imagination and gone among the spears. Tarrik enjoyed that, but he didn't. It had been a muddling, scrambling sort of fight, in and out of ditches, putting one's horse at loose stone walls—then who was quickest at the far side, you or the other man—losing touch with one's friends in back gardens with ridiculous smug rows of cabbages and beans or sunk lanes between the stony little cornfields, not sure till the last moment whether the man galloping towards you was friend or enemy. Then he and the Chief, and perhaps a dozen others from Marob, collected in a patch of waste ground where the garden rubbish was dumped; there was a shed for a wine-press at the far end. One of the others had a helmet full of water, and they all drank. The place was covered with some sort of vetch, pink and white. There was a great noise and they got their horses in hand and a bit of the battle came at them, a sort of ragged cavalry charge. They shot off arrow after arrow at the horses, brought down three or four who broke up the line behind them, and then met the rest on their spears. As it happened, Berris was opposite the leader, and quite by accident managed to kill him, he was not very sure how. And then a prisoner, a man from Megalopolis, told them that it was Lydiades, their own leader and one of the two most important generals of the League. Immediately Berris remembered his promise to Philylla.

He had dismounted to look. Lydiades was not quite dead, just moving a little all over, but unconscious and beyond speech. The spear had gone through his chest, but he did not seem to be bleeding much, outside at least. He was a noble-looking man, with clear skin and his neck set rather
beautifully on to his shoulders. Suddenly Berris became dreadfully sorry; he had spoilt something irreplaceable. He knelt beside Lydiades and looked at the horrid smashed hole his spear had made. He tried to close it up, to make it seem as if it hadn't been done. That was no use. Lydiades died. Over the body he found himself looking across at one of the prisoners, who was kneeling too, his face so twisted with misery and anger that Berris found his own face was twisting in sympathy. ‘Tell me,' said Berris.

The man said: ‘He was the best—the best of us all! He had power over us for a year; if he had chosen to stay tyrant he could have, for no one else loved glory and splendid things as he did. But he did not choose! He threw off the tyranny of his own free will, gave us back our liberty, let us join freely the free Achaean League. He was braver and more generous and higher hearted than anyone else, and now the old dog Aratos, the son of Klinias, has let him be killed.' The man broke down into fits of weeping. Berris looked once more at Lydiades, noticing the beautiful proportions of his arms and legs and the way he lay tangled up with his splendid armour. The shield and helmet were heavily and tortuously inlaid with golden comets and gorgons. In the near presence of that dead man, their owner, Berris did not quite like even to think his inevitable opinion of them.

King Kleomenes was told. He was angry and upset for two reasons: first, because Lydiades, though his enemy, had also been the great influence against Aratos in the councils of the League, and Aratos was the only part of the League he really feared; also he had always thought of Lydiades as being in some way and in some future a possible ally, and Sphaeros had thought the same. This was part of the second reason too, and the rest was simply violent regret that a man like Lydiades who had also been influenced by the Stoic philosophy and had at least done one action worthy of a philosopher king, should be dead like this in a skirmish. He bade them bring the body over to his quarters, and put on it a purple cloak of his own, and so sent it back in all honour to Megalopolis, whose tyrant it had been once and since then the first of the citizens. He sent with it an escort of half a dozen citizen prisoners; they had seen his grief and the gesture of the cloak, sincere enough too. Things like this were as good
for Kleomenes in the eyes of men as many gifts would have been.

It was Hippitas who came limping over to the Scythians' tents and told them all this. They were angry, and Tarrik made up his mind to go straight home, not stay any longer in this Sparta, where nothing was happening the way he had meant it to. Hippitas soothed them down; his own opinion of them had got much higher from what he had seen himself during the fighting. He did not think the King really blamed them, and a good many of the Spartiates, including Therykion, had a quite different idea and were delighted at the death of one of the two great leaders of the League. Tarrik was partly appeased, but not altogether; Hippitas went to find Sphaeros and ask him to go and see his former pupil.

Sphaeros was with the King, so Hippitas waited in the sun. He had taken off his armour and washed after the fighting, and now he had nothing on but a loose linen tunic; under it he could feel the good sweat that the heat brought out trickling freely down his body. He was glad the battle was won; he was glad he was not too old to like his own body. When the King's time came and Sparta was itself once more, everything would be better still. It would be a good thing if Sphaeros went rather soon to see the barbarians and tell them to be sensible; he himself was not clever at that kind of talking. He went over to the King's tent. There were two of the large, common water-jugs standing in the shade of it; he drew his hand caressingly across their cool, damp flanks. He could hear the King's voice inside the tent, but did not distinguish any words. Panteus was on guard at the tent door with a long spear, Macedonian fashion; he frowned and motioned Hippitas away with his left hand. Hippitas went back past the jars, where he drank, and sat down again on a stone a little way from the tent, so that he would see Sphaeros coming out; he found a fresh clove of garlic in his belt and began to chew it.

Inside the tent there was a mattress covered in the daytime with fine fox furs; it had a couple of rolled-up blankets and some cushions, not very clean. There were three carved oak chests, bound and hinged with bronze, and two bronze rings at each end for carrying them. There were a few folding chairs, bronze and painted leather, and a trestle table with
the top inlaid for playing various games. On the table were a set of tablets, as well as a roll of Egyptian paper with pen and ink beside it. Sphaeros sat at one end of the table and King Kleomenes at the other. Panteus at the door could hear everything they said.

Sphaeros looked unhappy and old and puzzled. Kleomenes was staring at him with a small, fierce smile that showed his very white teeth. ‘Well?' he said.

Sphaeros began fingering the ends of the pens. ‘I must ask you this,' he said. ‘After Archidamos came home to take his place as your fellow king, what happened?'

‘What have you been told happened?'

Sphaeros sighed. ‘You know as well as I do, Kleomenes. Have you got to be mocking me all the time?'

‘Very well,' said Kleomenes, ‘if you want it you shall have it. I think I know what you have heard. It's mostly true. I knew he was going to be killed, and I could have stopped it, but I didn't. You might just as well say straight off that I killed him myself. There you are, Sphaeros, there's your pupil.'

‘How do you justify yourself for that, Kleomenes?'

‘Have I got to justify myself? Well, if you wish it—I wouldn't for most people. I asked him, then, to come back from Messene after the child died; I thought we might even work together. But when he came and I saw him I found he was frightened. Agis let himself be killed because he was too gentle and good. This brother of his was gentle, but he was not much else. He would have hampered me, whether he wanted to or not; he would have asked for mercy and compromise when there is no time for them; when they have been tried already and failed. It was a pity to have to kill him; he would have done plenty of things well, but being King of Sparta—just now—was not one of them.'

‘So you are King alone. The two lines ruling side by side have come to an end after six hundred years.'

‘Have I got to tell my teacher not to think he is sorry for a thing he doesn't really mind about in the least? As if it matters that the double kingship is old! You'll tell me next that the Twins have put a curse on me! I am King alone and perhaps my son will be that. Or perhaps it may seem better to go back to what used to be. It is wiser not to
be too sure of one's wishes, and above all not to put them into words.'

‘If the baby had lived?'

‘I suppose you are asking me if I would have killed him, Sphaeros? You may even think I did. No. He would not have hampered me; he would have worked with me. He was the son not only of Agis but of my Agiatis. That last day I stayed with her by the cot till he died.'

‘I see,' said Sphaeros, and stayed silent and greyish for a time.

The King beckoned Panteus over from the door of the tent. He came and stood by the table, trailing his spear a little so that it should not touch the linen roof. The King took his other hand and swung it a moment, mockingly. ‘Sphaeros thinks I'm a bad pupil. We oughtn't to have done it!'

‘Sphaeros has only been here a few months,' said Panteus, more gently and seriously. ‘He does not believe enough in the New Time—his own time, really.'

Sphaeros looked at them both and spoke to Panteus. ‘You, his lover, do you think this was a good deed?'

Panteus did not answer for a moment; he looked down along his spear. Then he said: ‘I will try and tell you how it all seems to me, though I am not sure if Kleomenes agrees. At least I know he doesn't, because we have often talked together of just this. I believe that a man must think a great deal about what is good, by himself walking in the hills and with friends in the long nights of talk when it seems only an hour between midnight and dawn. When he has thought and talked much and has a plan in his head for the Good Life, then he can act, and if he has thought rightly, his action will be right. And it seems to me also that Kleomenes is this man.'

Sphaeros said: ‘I do not think it is possible for a man with a life so full, with a wife and children whom he loves and spends himself for, yes, and armies and a kingdom, to stay still and think enough to be sure of rightness. Even Zeno my master was not sure.'

Kleomenes said nothing; his eyebrows moved on the steep bony ledge of his forehead, his face twitched between laughing and frowning. Panteus went on: ‘It seems to me as well that two actions may be different, though both, in appearance and outward circumstances, are alike, according
to the mind of the man who does them. A thing that is bad if it is done with great care and forethought, yet out of a mind that is unsure of its rightness, may be good if it is done simply and calmly out of a sure and calm mind. Just as, if one's body is well trained and good in its own bodily way of awareness and strength, one can trust it to move as it should. I see where my spear should go, and there it goes: simply. And Kleomenes has his mind at ease like that because he knows the good he wants. Archidamos had to be killed. But it was done simply: just that nothing else was possible.'

Sphaeros said: ‘It would have been terrible for you, loving him, if you had thought he had done a really wrong thing.'

‘We could not have gone on loving each other then.'

‘And because that is impossible you must find for yourself some way of being certain that what he does is not wrong.'

Panteus looked at the King, not even touching him. ‘I do not think it is that,' he said.

Suddenly Kleomenes pounced like a fox on the first idea before it had trailed away out of the tent. ‘I do not myself consider that Panteus is right. He does not allow enough for the future. In his idea there is thought in the past and action in the present, but he does not show you the future pressing on me, on all of us more or less, like an unborn babe, forcing us to action for its sake, not for our own. Archidamos was a sacrifice for the future, as many others may be before I am done—as I may be myself.' He shivered and sank into himself; Panteus' hand went to his shoulder; the great spear shaft was a strong thing for him to gaze at.

Sphaeros got to his feet. ‘At least, I understand, for any use that may be. You have gone beyond my teaching, Kleomenes. I hope you have not gone beyond truth.'

Kleomenes said: ‘I am not as sure as I used to be that truth is so utterly the worthiest thing to seek, nor that it is only of one kind. All the same, I think I have been a goodish pupil in that sense. By the way, Sphaeros, I have not told Agiatis about this one thing. It would have hurt her unnecessarily, though I think she would have understood my reasons. And she has been over-much hurt already.'

He looked hard at Sphaeros, who nodded and went out.
He was tired and would have liked to rest and think it all out, but Hippitas was waiting for him, and insisted that he should go over at once to see Tarrik of Marob and stop him from doing anything stupid.

Tarrik, however, had calmed down quite satisfactorily. His men had taken several fine horses with gilt saddles and scalloped and painted bridles, and now they were playing dice for them. Tarrik himself was eating pickled octopus, which he seemed to like very much, and a Spartiate captain—the son of one of the ephors—was sitting beside him. Sphaeros thought they must be talking about women. Berris was not there. When Sphaeros came in, Tarrik looked up, quite pleased, and shouted to them to bring another plate and olives; his Spartan friend grinned and said: ‘Well, how's the philosopher cock and all the philosopher chickabiddies?' Smiling, Sphaeros avoided answering him, refused a helping of octopus which in any case he did not much care for, and asked Tarrik if he was still angry. Tarrik shook his head: ‘My mind is back in its right place. They can say what they like now. But there was an hour or two when I didn't do my teacher much credit!' A quick spurt of laughter bubbled out of Sphaeros. He said: ‘My pupils are always so kind about blaming themselves, not me!' And then he asked after Berris Der. The Chief said: ‘Oh, Berris! He's in love. That makes everything worse. Who? It's plain enough: that Philylla girl, one of the Queen's maids. But he'll get over it. We do!' He sounded rather defiant. That was because it was still worrying him that the star on his breast was quite cold and he was a very long journey from Erif. Sphaeros nodded, but, in the presence of this other Spartan, made no comment.