The Corn King and the Spring Queen (33 page)

T
HEMISTEAS STILL HAD
his house in the country, the home farm and the land just round it; that was his lot after the division, and at least it was small enough now to let him oversee its cultivation, and curse the helots if they did not make the best possible use of it. His wife was unhappy. She could not understand the New Times and she did not want to, and when she chose to get on his nerves he was unhappy too, and for the sake of her comfort and his own he managed quite a number of small evasions of the new laws. He himself had, for the most part, to feed at his Mess, except when he had leave, but Eupolia and the children must have something better than black broth. Not that Philylla wanted anything better (or hardly ever!), but Dontas, when he came back from his class, which was rather lax, and turned a blind eye on mothers' pets, was the greedy one, and the eleven-year-old Ianthemis adored her mother and clamoured for whatever she thought Eupolia might be wanting. It was all rather grim for them. Themisteas went off fighting again and enjoyed it, and came back as eager as a boy for his wife. She, having found the summer months merely dullish and anxious, was less eager. Once Philylla found her father behind the pig-stye, chucking a pleased milk-maid under the chin; the milk-maid ran away giggling and the two Spartiates looked at one another, and both kept quite silent about it. Philylla thought it would have made her much more uncomfortable a year ago than it did now. But even still—

Philylla was at home for a month. Her mother demanded her back from the Queen, and Agiatis, wanting all possible goodwill towards the King and his Times from the old citizens, had made her go. That morning Eupolia had been weaving with her, and her foster-mother, and Ianthemis.
Philylla said to herself over and over again: ‘It is good practice for me to listen quietly to them teasing me, scratching at the things I love. I will not say a word back. It is like the discipline the boys have. I would rather have the same as the boys, but as I can't, I will make the most of this.' And she smiled, and stiffened her hands to keep them from trembling, and thought hard about Agiatis. When her piece of stuff was finished and folded into squares, and when Eupolia had duly remarked on how much better her daughter would have been at weaving if she had stayed decently at home, Philylla said that she would like to go out for a little before sunset.

After a time she found her foster-mother, Tiasa, following her. She glared, but it had no effect. Tiasa came level with her. ‘My lady doesn't like you to go out by yourself, lambie, with all these wild lads there are about now, and you grown so tall and pretty.' ‘Oh very well!' said Philylla, and turned off at a right angle along the edge of a cornfield, ‘then I'll go to the home farm and see if there's anyone there.' She stalked on, still being followed. On either side of her the young corn was well up. She balanced herself haughtily on the top of the ridge between. By and bye there was a low bank of stones and prickles, and then a drop down into the track that went to the farm.

The heat of that lovely day still stayed among the lengthening shadows. There were a great many flowers, mostly small and starry and close to the turf. She would have liked to stop and pick flowers, and think about all sorts of sweet and alarming and desirable things. But to do that she must be alone. She could not allow anyone, even the most familiar, to peer into the bud of her heart. Only once, as some incredibly soft breathing of broom and violets and distant cattle and wood-smoke and warmed turf came on her, wild air patting on her face and arms, shifting the light dress away from her moving legs and body, she stayed a moment and lifted her head to it, her eyes suddenly heavy and surprised with tears, lifted her hands to her brimming heart, the deep centre of all life, and startled herself again, as she often did now, with the springing out of her new firm breasts against her own fingers. She went on hurriedly then, brushing her touched hands through stiff leaves and twigs. Summer was
coming, summer of the New Times. And she was a child of them.

She came to the home farm in that evening light, bewitching everything to a lucidity, a transparence of matter and colour. Yet the farm was just as it had always been; a cow moved through the yard. Tingling, Philylla waited for its bell to sound and break the picture. But oh, lovely, the sound came at last so soft that it mixed in, and so did the distant voices, the trickle of water, the pleasant gabbling of ducks round the corner of the barn. The farm stayed, the light seemed to glow a little more; it lit up for her a beam of oak, the cross-beam of the byre, aged and grained oak, silver as the skin of a very old wood-nymph. It flowed levelly, right under the roof of the byre, settled against the further inside wall! It lit for her a tuft of house-leek on the thatch, the fat and settled leaves edged with their fine red fur; her eyes travelled along the line of the thatching; beyond the farm was Sparta and the mountains that framed the pattern of her life. She could not wait any longer in this excess of joy. It was almost killing her. So she said to herself, and knew, that she would remember this moment all her days and keep it as clear in her mind as it was now. That set her something to do, allowed an outlet for the choked-up violence of her happiness. Very quickly she put it all away in her memory, packed it up neatly as became an almost full-grown woman, and left it there ready to take out now whenever she pleased, a kataleptike phantasia. Quite calm again, she slipped back the upper bar of the fence and vaulted the two lower ones. She left the bar open for her foster-mother, who was just behind her still, and walked forward into the low room of the farm. She smiled and nodded round at every one, but rather blindly, as it was already nearly dark in there, for the small window faced into the yard and away from the sun, and then dropped into a corner.

After a few minutes she saw who everybody was, or heard by their voices. There were the two old people, Tiasa's little bent father and aunt, sitting nearest the fire in the middle of the room, sometimes stirring whatever there was in the pot which hung from the blackened beam above it. And there were two of the men whom she had found there, oh, years ago now, the day she was fourteen, more than two years ago, so that she could forget it, as they had,
not be ashamed of herself any longer. They were the two helots, Leumas and Panitas, but now Panitas was a citizen and Leumas had his name down on the next list. He had been wounded early that year and still had his arm in a sling; his woman was sitting on the floor beside him with her knees up and a year-old baby perched on one of them. She swung it and joggled it and pretended to drop it; the baby laughed and bubbled and grabbed at the combs in her hair; no one noticed, least of all Philylla. The woman herself was happy, but she did not know it. She did not think about what she was doing: the nature of her body was to do this. There were two or three others, men and women whom Philylla vaguely knew; they were always meeting at this farm. It was the natural place where three valley paths converged, and besides—Philylla had never asked, but she was almost sure that it was just a little because she herself was one of the Queen's girls, and a friend.

Another was sitting on a stool behind the meal-chest; in a little she rose, a great solid woman in a red dress with loops of yellow hair pushed into a net behind, and a plaited leather girdle, Neareta, the wife of Phoebis. She stood with her hands on her hips and smiled at the men. She said: ‘This'll be the end of the fighting, you'll see; all the world's going to join us.'

Leumas said, fidgeting with his sling: ‘Does Phoebis say so?'

‘Yes,' said Neareta, ‘he was home for an hour last week, on his way back with a message. It's the same everywhere, the League's breaking. There'll be no one left to fight us!'

‘But then, if there aren't any more soldiers wanted—will it be all right about the next list?'

That's it!' said another man, a neighbour. 'Will he make me a citizen, Neareta? I'm down on the next list too. It would be a shame—'

‘Yes!' she said, ‘yes, my lambs, it will be all right. My man says so.'

Panitas said slowly: ‘Is he going to divide up all the land all over the world? Then there'll be no more rich and poor; we shall all be brothers! Everything will be simple like it ought to be. There'll be no borrowing. But if there are bad harvests? Someone has to tide us over. What will happen?'

‘The King will help us!' said the old man suddenly and shrilly.

But Panitas brushed it away. ‘He's no richer than the rest of us now.'

From beside Philylla, her foster-mother threw at them mockingly: ‘Yes, it will be fine for you when the corn's blighted and there are no masters to save you! The brothers will all starve together!'

Philylla waited to see if anyone else would answer, then said: ‘But the State has money that the rich gave it and put into the care of special magistrates. The gold is there. The King will help you out of the treasure of Sparta.'

‘Ah!' said Panitas. Then: ‘But all the world? Will every State have its own treasure and are you sure it will all go to help the poor?'

‘Yes,' said Philylla definitely, ‘Kleomenes will see to that.'

‘Oh, Philylla, dear-to-us-all, little wise one,' said one of the other men, very earnestly, ‘tell us one more thing and we will believe you. When Kleomenes has put everything right here, will he let be? Will he love his own State and his own deeds and us whom he has made into men well enough for that, or must he conquer the world?'

‘Why not?' said Philylla eagerly. ‘He could! Perhaps he is the only man who could. A hundred years ago Alexander of Macedon nearly did, but he was not an Hellene, and he was not a Spartan. But our Kleomenes is everything!'

‘If he could stay in his own State—' said the man again, fumbling for words. ‘It is so little, so dear to us. We know the soil and the crops; we know the shape of the mountains and how Eurotas floods and falls and floods again. What does the rest of the world matter? The Gods would not punish a man, even a king, for making his own State right, but if he wanted the world—if he was taken by pride—'

Panitas finished the sentence, out of the silence. ‘The Gods would have him. I say the same. Laconia is a big enough burden for any man. If he thinks it will keep straight without being looked to night and day—! He should have been a farmer, then he would understand.'

‘But the whole world!' said Philylla. ‘Surely it is right and splendid to ask for everything, to feel one can have everything! Then the power and kingliness come of themselves, and one can do impossible things.'

‘No!' said Neareta, before any of the men. ‘You may think that, Philylla, because you were brought up to ask for everything you chose and get it at once. You were one of the masters, but we who were under you know; we've learned not to hope for too much. I wish the King would let us teach him.'

‘Phoebis should do that,' said Panitas. ‘It is his place.'

Neareta sighed a little. ‘They all go mad when they are with the King. My man comes home to me, and he's as quiet and reasonable as an old plough-ox; but when he goes back to the King's Mess, there he is again with his head in the stars.'

‘Head-in-the-stars came tumbling to a bad end,' observed Tiasa.

But this time Philylla reached over and shoved a hand across her mouth. ‘If you like the old days so much,' she said, ‘you just tell me and I'll have you whipped!'

The woman's face flamed and she jumped at tight-smiling Philylla and shook her. ‘If this were ten years ago,' she said, ‘I'd have turned you up over my knee and made you smart, my lady!'

Neareta stepped between them quickly, talking loud to cover anything else they might say. Panitas, laughing, caught hold of Tiasa with: ‘Steady, mother! Come and make us some cakes.'

But Neareta was holding Philylla by the wrists with her even, peasant strength. She turned her round to the wall to hide her crying from the men, transferred the grip to one hand and put the other round, soothingly, over Philylla's shoulders. ‘There, now,' she said, ‘that's a brave lass. You mustn't fight with Tiasa. It was her milk made you grow so strong and clever.'

‘I know,' whispered Philylla, ‘that's what I hate.' She was gasping and tossing her head back. Neareta opened the door and they slipped out into the yard. Already the evening star was out above the roof, not just a fiery point, but a broadness one could measure, a cool, kind body of light.

‘You'll give your babies your own milk,' said the peasant woman. ‘Not leave your breasts fine and useless.'

Philylla nodded and pushed her hair back. ‘It's strange,' she said, ‘to think of that. Wouldn't it be terrible never
to have any children! Or supposing nobody ever married me.'

Neareta laughed and kissed her. ‘You needn't trouble your pretty head about that.'

‘Why not?'

Them that asks no questions—'

‘Oh, Neareta, don't tease me, please! Do you think I'm going to be married?'

‘Yes.'

‘Soon?'

‘Lassie dear, you're only just ready. Don't be hurrying too much; you don't know what you're asking for. It's a sweet time before and there's bound to be bitter after, a little bitter even in the best of marriages.'

‘But, Neareta dear, what do you think? What does Phoebis say? He's in the King's Mess.'

‘Yes, yes, it'll be Panteus the son of Menedaios, the King says so. Is that what you were wanting, then? You shall have him, my dear. Lambie, what are you crying for now?'

‘I don't know,' said Philylla.

Suddenly a man came bounding into the yard; he was full-armed and he carried a spear. Philylla cried out in surprise and greeting and some fear. In a moment she saw it was Mikon, the other man she had met at the farm two years before, whose fathers had lost the citizenship, but who had now regained it himself. He stopped in his tracks, dropped the spear, pulled off his helmet and flung it up in the air by its yellow plume. ‘Philylla, daughter of Themisteas!' he shouted joyfully, ‘I've good news! The revolution's gone through at Cynaetha and they've divided the land! They've made songs about Kleomenes; they've written up everywhere in black and red, Long live Kleomenes and Sparta. The League's gone to pieces, Aratos is a whipped dog, all Arkadia's coming over! We're treating with the Caphyae now. By the twins, Philylla, he'll get Sicyon itself before he's done. Half the army's getting leave. Phoebis will be back, Neareta. I'm going to tell them in there.' He picked up his helmet and pounded at the door with his spear butt.