The Corn King and the Spring Queen (46 page)

The knock came on the door of the house and she stiffened. The women's voices all round her jumped and throbbed. She raised her eyes to give him that stare. But before it came she suddenly realised that it was quite impossible for her to hurt him, even to try to while he still had those eyes and that smile. She had not remembered what a complete defence they were. She could no more hurt him than she could have hurt a baby of her own! He came towards her and in the meeting of their eyes there was no cold anger but a marriage. As he swung her up in his arms it was as if they had arranged all that, a long time ago. There appeared after all to be no need for blame or anger or explanation. She put both arms round his neck to make herself lighter to carry. But he did not seem to find her heavy; it might have been a thing he was perfectly and beautifully used to. She kissed him where she could reach most easily, just behind the ear on the line of neck and hair, smelling his skin there. As the gate shut behind them and they were out together in the evening, he rubbed his cheek sideways against hers. ‘Philylla,' he said. It had all come right.

Towards the middle of the night she woke again, turning herself over slackly, feeling her whole body swayed by this new rhythm of a man's breathing beside hers, slower than
hers. The lamp was still burning. This room that she had never been in before, but now whose shadows and angles were all her own for ever! He woke, too, and sat half up, so that his flanks drew level with her head. She slid an arm slowly round him, feeling one set of muscles after another start a little under the soft excitement of her touch; she laid her face close over the hollow of his side between ribs and hip, her lips moving a little against his smoothness and male youth. His hand strayed over towards her head. At last she said: ‘Why did you choose just now for our wedding?'

‘I don't know,' he said, ‘but we were always going to be married some time. I wanted to now. It was right now. I can be away from my brigade now.'

‘And the King did not mind your leaving him?'

‘No,' said Panteus gently, and Philylla thought she would not speak of the woman of Megalopolis—not yet, not yet, not while they breathed so sweetly and easily together, in this marvellous close quiet after their first violences. She looked up. ‘Sing something!' she said, not quite expecting that he would.

But he said: ‘Very well,' only pulling her a little further over on to himself, turning her so that she lay face upward, her cheek soft against his belly, her short hair on his, mixing with his. He began to sing a love song. She lay and listened in a breathless happiness. It might have been for a girl or a boy: she could not tell from the words; she did not know or care; she was his wife. Philylla, wife of Panteus. It was low and sweet and very formal as he sang it there to her alone, a grave and tender song:

H
YPERIDES, SON OF
Leonteos, to Timokrates, son of Metrodoros, and great-grandson of Metrodoros who was the Master's friend: Live well!

I've a hundred and one things to tell you. God, it's such ages since I've seen you all! If you could feel how hard I've remembered you sometimes, you and Menexenos and Nikoteles and dearest Timonoë and the children, you'd tingle all over. Never mind, I shall see you again, and the garden. At least I hope so.

Well, I told you about my two charming Scythians, and how I was going to run errands for them. I can tell you, when it came to the point I didn't feel so gay about it. We stayed a day or two in Byzantium, and I asked them there—for they know all the scandals of the Euxine!—what sort of a man my Erif's husband, this Tarrik-Charmantides, was. They weren't what you'd call cheering! He has the reputation of being very queer and unaccountable, and there were some very nasty stories going about of things he had done to traders, just suddenly for no reason. Of course I quite sympathise with any barbarian who stabs some of these cheating brutes of traders in the back. But the King of Marob went rather further. I suppose it's silly of me, but I have a prejudice against torture, all this messing up of good clean human bodies. And I should dislike having it done to me quite particularly. None of this was very recent, mostly three years ago, in fact; but obviously there's no knowing when he mayn't get taken that way again. So I sailed on, feeling that perhaps I was putting my head into the lion's mouth. The only thing that comforted me at all was the box of toys for the child.

We sighted Marob on a fine summer morning and stood into Marob harbour. How I did look! It was a low, greenish coast, scarcely a hint of rising ground, though I hear there
are wooded hills further inland, where the savages, whom they call here Red Riders, inhabit. At first I could not make out much of the town. It does not rise anywhere to the lovely, pale, crowned heights that you and I know in cities. There is no strong high place, no acropolis, no sacred way or rocks for olives. The only building that stood out, besides some great warehouses to the north of the harbour, was a stone house with windows and a roof of the local, rather pretty tiles, and a great square door between towers facing the sea. They told me this was the Chief's house. I suppose Erif lived there always. It was curious to know one was so near to one's journey's end!

Our captain landed with me and took me to an inn where I found quite a number of traders, come, they said, for the mid-summer market; in fact, I have to share a room with a couple, one of them a most trying person—I trust he won't contrive to read this letter!—from Kyrene, called Menoitas, who is persuaded he knows everything about anything, including, of course, the King of Marob, who has, according to him, driven out his wife because he got tired of her, and is now playing about with all the women in the place. This doesn't tally with Erif's own story, and I didn't believe it at first, but now I am not so sure. I should hate friend Menoitas to be right over anything, let alone this, but it looks rather unpleasantly like the truth.

The inn servants are Marob men and women, and some half-breeds. Most of them talk a certain amount of Greek. I believe this Marob was once a Greek colony; I am persuaded of this partly by their own tradition and partly by some worked stones which I have seen in ordinary house walls. But it cannot have been a success, for there is little trace of it left, either in customs or the look of the people, though naturally a good many of them speak Greek and there is a certain amount of intermarriage, among the upper classes, with Tyras and Olbia families. But it seems to me that anyone who comes into this community from outside gets readily absorbed.

I was advised to try and see the Chief as soon as possible. So I washed and shaved and put on my best clothes and with some skill managed to dodge Menoitas, as I did not altogether relish appearing at my first audience with him to give me hints! I took the letters with me, and one
of the inn servants carried the two cases of presents and so on.

I went into the Chief's house by that great square door, with my back to the sea and the only way home. They took us across a courtyard with an apple tree in the middle that had coloured strings dangling out of its boughs, and so to a fairly large hall where there were some really fine furs, some of which were kinds I had never seen before, hanging up. Here we waited for some time, and at last a slave in black, whom I took to be tongueless but probably not a eunuch, beckoned us through another square doorway.

The King of Marob was sitting at a table, making marks on a wooden cylinder. He had a curious barbarian crown, three rows of very ridiculous animals on a felt cap, and a white coat and trousers embroidered with the most extraordinary coloured higgledy-piggledy. However, I didn't laugh! He is a big, lazy-looking, smiling savage, who may, for all one can tell, be plotting the most horrible things behind his grin. He looks quite incredibly strong, and I could easily believe all Erif had told me about his physical powers. I bowed and offered him the letters. He grabbed them and began reading. I remained standing. Once or twice he looked up over them at me, and he frowned a good deal, presumably about the oracle. I took rather a marked dislike to him then and there. Timokrates, you know what it is sometimes, when one is in contact with this kind of an unmoving, solid piece of butcher's meat—yet, in a way violent, a will that neither reason nor kindliness could get at! Still, of course, I may be wrong. But I hate the bare idea of this thing having possessed Erif Der, not so much physically, but because she wants to come back to him, because he has planted his image, all bloodily, in the middle of her gentle mind.

After a time he rolled up the letters and turned his smile round on to me. In fact, he may conceivably have felt really friendly towards me, for I know the other two had written nothing but good of me during our time together. But I was not inclined to cave in to the smile. We had a short and polite, and, of course, quite meaningless, conversation, as much on the offensive-defensive as two strange dogs! He spoke a good deal about his wife in very fluent Greek, and wanted me to talk about her. I am sure he was very anxious
to know on what terms I am with her. He may have been jealous. Once or twice he certainly tried to catch me out over my answers. I think he was disappointed with what I had to tell him, and perhaps felt that it did not tally very well with the letters. But there!—one doesn't feel inclined to let a man, who has done the kind of things Tarrik of Marob has done, into the house and garden of one's friendship. I hope Erif will stay in Greece. It's the right place for her!

A rather lovely girl, not unlike Erif herself, only younger, brought in the child. I noticed that she wore a crown of gold and jewels and a very elaborate dress, and the King seemed very free and easy with her. Also I think she was pregnant, though this may only have been the slouching way in which these barbarian women stand. But it did occur to me that here was possibly one reason why Erif Der was not in Marob. The girls spoke a little Greek, but not much. As a matter of fact, I know something of their language, but I thought it as well not to say so. I gathered that she was called Link.

The child is a jolly little creature, rosy and curly, more Erif's than his. We took the toys out. I must say, both the King and this Link girl tried hard to explain to little Tisamenos that these pretty things came from his mother. But I doubt if he took it in. Most of the time he was either dumb or squealing with pleasure and excitement.

At last the King said: ‘It is four days to midsummer. Until then I have to work, either here or in my own place. You will wait and see me in the flax market. After that I shall have time. You will tell me all the things you have not told me yet.' I thought that was rather clever of him. He added: ‘You shall want for nothing while you are here,' and whistled loud and startlingly for a slave, to whom he whispered. And certainly since then the people at the inn have taken the utmost trouble to make me comfortable, and I gather there will be nothing to pay. If I knew I was going to sail away safely at the end of it, everything would be delightful, but there's a queer feeling about this town. I don't know quite what makes it, but I keep on suddenly finding myself at grips with the most horrible, undefined fear, the sort of thing I thought I had grown out of long ago and would never feel again. I repeat to myself that it is quite baseless and that fear of the unknown is a shameful thing for a reasonable, scientific-minded person to have in
his head, but somehow I cannot entirely cast it off. It is partly, of course, that one is so utterly alone here, as far as mental processes are concerned, for none of the traders know Plato from Pythagoras, and if one talked to them about atoms they'd want to know how much a dozen one could sell them for in Alexandria!

I feel least uncomfortable when I'm writing. The play I told you about is getting on slowly; I'm afraid my heroine is a little hackneyed, though. Ask Timonoë to write me a nice letter telling me exactly how she'd answer if she was proposed to (
a
) by a rather dirty cynic, (
b
) by an elderly tyrant with several other wives, and (
c
) by a nice young man, say me—or you, if you'd rather!

Well, to go on with my adventures. The King sent one of his courtiers to show me round the place, a really very decent young man called Kotka. He asked me to his house, where I met his wife, of whom Erif has spoken sometimes. But she did not say much to me, or produce any magic, as I rather hoped she might! Kotka talked quite a lot and enjoyed showing off his Greek. He seems to be devoted to the King, but of course it is early days to tell how sincere this is. I can't help suspecting that he might have a different story if one got to know him better. I've talked to him far more about Erif and Berris than I did to the King! He showed me some fine metal-work which he had, clasps and cups and quivers and decorations for saddles and sledge yokes, in which I could see the cruder and more barbaric beginnings of the art over which Berris Der has such mastery. They design from animal forms much more than he does (though he told me, I remember, that he used to himself at one time) and sometimes they are just too fantastic and illogical—for me, at any rate. I wonder if Berris has finished the inlaid table that I left him at work on.

The traders at my inn have been telling me something about this midsummer festival. The extraordinary part about it is that they half believe in it themselves. I had rather a heated argument with Menoitas and some of his friends over this. They were amazingly superstitious themselves, to begin with, continually talking about omens and vows and prophecies. I tried to put the rational point of view to them, quite gently, of course, milk for babes!—but they were genuinely shocked. I have been trying to make
out just exactly what does happen at midsummer. There seems to be a procession with flowers and children dressed up, all very nice and innocent as far as one can make out, and then some kind of ceremony in the big market-place here, at which the King dances and sings, and the crowd performs some kind of religious rite, throwing stones and sticks about and into the middle of the square. I asked friend Menoitas if he meant that they actually stoned a sacrifice, but he said not, at least he did not think so. I am not sure how much the Greeks are allowed to see. He tells me that the object of all this is to encourage the sun, whose power now begins to decline! I do find it quite illogically annoying that any Greek should have so little idea of elementary physics as to suppose that the sun can be influenced. However, we all know the sun has been the centre of several very respectable and long-lived religions. In fact, our old comrades of the Stoa are a little bit mixed up with that—Divine Fire and what not! I do love to think of the distance the sun is from us, that lovely remoteness, the cool depths of space.

I gather that after this midsummer day affair every one is wildly excited, including the children, and the evening ends in a savage and erotic dance. I understand from Menoitas that I shall have the utmost difficulty in sleeping by myself on midsummer night. He certainly won't try to avoid destiny over this, but I rather think I will! The next day there is a bonfire in the same market-place and everything is, as they say, ‘cleared up and burnt.' I suppose I should be less suspicious about it all, but that this Tarrik, this Corn King, is in charge of it. I have an impression that everything he touches will be somehow made horrible.

I wonder if there will be a sacrifice.

I wonder if I shall have to speak.

Farewell.