The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  Tarrik was listening quietly now, and so were the others, more or less. Only Eurydice was bending over a piece of fine embroidery, and seemed at least as much interested in it as in the story; her hands were Still very white and beautiful, and they moved over the sewing like big moths. It was rather dark in the hall, in spite of the torches all round in rings on the wall, but one of the maids knelt beside Eurydice, holding a lamp just so high that it shone round and softly on those hands of hers. Berris kept on looking at them, and for a little while Sphaeros found them a certain interruption in the thread of his ideas. But by and bye the room faded, and he was away in another country, among the dead that he had known and loved.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the story comes nearer: to fifteen years ago. Sparta has always had two kings, and in the days I am telling you about, one of the kings was called Leonidas. He was an oldish man and he had lived much in Syria with King Seleucus and the great lords there: there was no luxury or pride that he did not know or practise. He had a daughter, called Chilonis, and two young sons; they had only to ask for a thing to get it. I know his house well; it was all plastered with gold. He was the sort of man who could not bear a straight line or a plain wall; everything must be twisted and tangled and gilt and coloured till one’s eyes ached. Every corner was crammed with statues and fat gold vases like old men’s bellies and life-size pottery peacocks painted and glazed, and goggling black slaves he’d brought from Antioch, smelling of fat and scent; and everywhere there were soft carpets and lamps running over with sweet oil, and food and drink enough for an army. And there he was in the middle, this old Leonidas, always grabbing and hungry for more, never satisfied, never happy, as rough as any peasant with it all. His wife was a tall, proud Spartan, who kept herself away from him, and the daughter was married to her cousin Kleombrotos, a decent enough young man; she, woman-like, hated all this violence and luxury of her father’s and would tell her little brothers stories of Sparta in the time of the Good Life; and they listened to her. Leonidas loved her, perhaps because she was so different, and it was she who persuaded her father to ask me to come from Athens and teach the two young boys, Kleomenes and Eukleidas. So for a time I went and lived in his house, among all those vain riches.

  ‘But the other king of Sparta was called Agis. He was not wise, and never free from desire. And yet—if I could have loved any man—’ He stopped again, with a little gasp, so vividly had Agis come into his mind. But two of them at once said: ‘Go on.’ He moved a little sideways on his couch and went on. ‘Well, it is all a long time ago, and the world goes on still. Agis was young—little older than Berris here—and gentle and kind-hearted as a girl. He had been brought up with all tenderness and no sparing of money or love, by his mother and grandmother, and early married to a wife who was as beautiful as she was good, Agiatis the merry-minded, only daughter of the richest man in Sparta. He had these three women always by him, giving him of their best.

  ‘Agis grew restless in the heat of summer and went up into the mountains of Sparta, and he stayed there alone for two nights. Then he came down and looked with new eyes at his country, and he saw how evil the times were, and he knew so clearly that there was no doubting it that he must bring Sparta back to the Good Life. So he cast away all pleasures and softness, all the graces and sweetness of his young life, and followed the old rules. The three women loved him so much that they did not try to hinder him. And gradually the rich young men of Sparta began to give up their pleasures too, and do as he did. But King Leonidas thought him a fool and said so to me; I kept my thoughts to myself, for I wished to go on teaching Kleomenes.

  ‘Now Agis, having seen that he himself could lead the Good Life, planned to make it possible for all Sparta. In this State, the power lies not with the kings, but with their counsellors, the ephors, and in these days the ephors were rich men ruling in the interests of the rich. But Agis procured matters so that his own friends should be the ephors, among them his uncle, Agesilaus, whom he trusted: for he was young and without experience of men and their foolish and evil wills. Then, through these ephors, he proposed his new laws—the freeing of the poor from debt—the dividing up of all the lands into equal lots for all the citizens—and the granting of citizenship to those not Spartiate who yet had free minds and strong bodies and a will to serve the State. All the people were gathered together to hear these new laws, utterly surprised for the most part, and dumb and fearful as men are of any new thing. Then Agis stood up among the ephors, with downcast eyes and wearing the rough Spartan dress. He spoke very shortly and simply, saying that his life was not his own but theirs, and if they would have the new laws, so would he. And with that he gave them all his own lands, which were very large and fertile, to be divided up, and six hundred talents of coined gold, which was almost all he had, and told them that his mother and grandmother and all his friends would do the same.

  ‘Then, as it came real to them, the people went mad with excitement and admiration and love for their king. And suddenly Leonidas saw that it was no mere boy’s game and that if it went on all his lands and riches would go too, and then and there he turned on Agis with bitter blame and anger. After that the State was divided into two, the poor and young following Agis, and the old and rich, Leonidas, who bribed and persuaded the Council of Elders to reject the new laws. But Leonidas was not the winner for long; the ephors attacked him, and his son-in-law Kleombrotos, eager to do as Agis had done, claimed the kingship, and he had to fly from Sparta. Some would have killed him on his way over the pass, but Agis heard of this and forbade it. The boys went with him, and so did Chilonis, for she was one of those who would rather be unhappy than happy. And I went north to Athens to Be with my teacher Zeno, for I was sick of rich men and their ways. Only I promised Kleomenes to come back one day.

  ‘Now Agis had all the deeds of money-lending burnt in the market-place of Sparta, and so far freed his people. He would have gone on at once to the division of land, but Agesilaus his uncle had other plans: he was a man with many debts and much land; now he was free of the debts, but hoped to keep the land. Agis did not understand this; he was too young to believe the worst of people. So he went marching to the wars, leaving half his work undone. Still all would have been well, but that the general of the Achaean League, whom he went to help, was jealous of him, and would not let him win a battle. These things happen and there is reason in them if one could see it. His army was all under the old discipline and he himself was the youngest there; they loved him, he was a flame to them, he would have led them to victory. But in the end there was nothing for them to do, and he had to bring them back ingloriously, and found that all was in disorder in Sparta, because of Agesilaus, who was still ephor and was using his power to oppress the people and get everything for himself. He treated his nephew Agis and the other young king as foolish boys, and gave out that there was to be no dividing of the land.

  ‘Then the people turned fiercely on those who they thought had tricked them, and sent to Tegea and brought Leonidas back in triumph. Agis knew that his army was utterly his and would fight for him, even against the rest of Sparta. But he would not let the army save him because that would have meant killing others of his fellow-citizens. Kleombrotos agreed. The two young kings fled for safety to the most sacred temples, yet I think most likely Agis knew that he was choosing death. Kleombrotos was saved by this same Chilonis, his wife, who stood between him and her father, and went with him to banishment, just as she had gone before with Leonidas. But Agis was not to be forgiven.

  ‘His enemies tried to persuade him to come from the temple; he would not listen to them. But again he was trapped by his friends—by his own pure heart that would believe good of anyone until, too late, their evil was proved. They lured him out of his refuge and dragged him to prison. Leonidas and his followers among the elders came there to accuse the king, to show some pretence of justice. He stood before them, bound and smiling, and happy because of the things he had tried to do. They sentenced him to death;
there was such a glory about him that the executioners dared not touch him. It was those one-time friends who dragged him to his place of death!

  ‘But now his mother and grandmother had heard. They rushed about the city, stirring up the people, reminding them of all he had done and hoped to do. They came clamouring round the gates of the prison, saying it was for them to hear and judge him. That only brought him a quicker death. The officers of the prison wept for him, as once they did in Athens for Sokrates. He bade them not to mourn for him dying innocent and unafraid. He gave his neck to the noose.

  ‘Then these friends who had betrayed him, came out with fair words to the women, saying that there was no more danger for Agis. They brought in first the older woman, his grandmother, and killed her. Then his mother came in, thinking to have him in her arms again, and they were both lying dead. “Oh, my son,” she said, “it is your great mercy and goodness which has brought us all to ruin.” And they hanged her too, till she died.’

  Sphaeros stopped suddenly and looked round at the Scythians. Eurydice’s white hands were quiet now, Tarrik was leaning forward with his hand on his sword. The other two were both in tears. Said Erif: ‘But what happened to the other, his wife—Agiatis? Did they kill her too?’

  ‘No,’ said Sphaeros, frowning a little. ‘They did not kill her. She was heiress to her father’s estates, so Leonidas married her by force to the boy Kleomenes. She hated that; she had a little baby, and besides, she had loved Agis. She did all she could to keep herself his, and his alone: she hated Leonidas. But she was in his power—as all Sparta was then.’

  Erif Der drew a breath of pity. ‘Poor dear, oh, poor dear! Was she very unhappy?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Sphaeros. ‘The baby died very soon: and Leonidas was not kind to her. But my Kleomenes was gentle, and, as soon as he was old enough he began to love her so much that in time she loved him back. But she never forgot Agis, he was always in her heart, and by and bye she found that her husband was the one person she could talk to about him. I was in Sparta again some three years after this marriage (between-times I had been home again, in Olbia) and Kleomenes told me, as if it were something quite new, the story of Agis. He was all in a passion, flaring up and then crying like a child over it: he wanted to know what I thought of Sparta, as it was now under his father, a worse place than ever, rotten with luxury and idleness and the evil wills of the rich. He swore to me then, if ever he was king, with my help he would change it all and make it a place where men could be wise. And I swore too, that if, when the time came, he still needed me, I would come. Nine years ago his father died, worn out with desires and the vain image of pleasure. Kleomenes was still little more than a boy. He is a man now. He has written to say that at last he needs me.’

  ‘I see,’ said Tarrik, and got up, and began walking about the room, fidgeting with his crown, his belt, the edges of his coat. At last he came to a stand in front of the philosopher and looked hard down at him for a minute or two, as if he were trying to see through the man’s eyes into his mind and heart. ‘And so it seems as if you must go,’ he ended his sentence.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sphaeros gravely.

  ‘You may have difficulty in finding a ship.’

  ‘I know. His letter did not reach me till late in autumn. But you will help me, King of Marob.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tarrik, ‘I will help you.’

  Chapter six

  ERIF DER LEANT OUT of her father’s window and watched them driving the bulls into the flax market. The openings of the streets and the house doors and lower windows were barred across, because of the half-wild beasts pouring in, tossing heads and tails, brown and white in the sunlight, not angry yet, but ready to be. From housetops and windows half Marob was watching. Snow had fallen the week before and been cleared away; now it was a lovely, sharp, windy morning. The well-head in the middle was covered over with hurdles to make a raised refuge place for the branders and killers. They stood about on it, some ten or twenty young men who wanted to show off to their girls and friends, all gay with coloured knots and leather fringes to their coats and boots. Tarrik was among them, standing right on top of the hurdles, with gold and red ivory scales sewn all over his clothes and the long, plaited whip hanging from his hand to the ground; he jerked his arm up and cracked it out over the bulls’ backs. Most of the people shouted back at him, ready to give him his chance and let him show he was Corn King again. But Erif Der started, clinging to the side of the windows; she waved her hand to him, with something tinkling between the fingers; she was very white, and after a moment looked back into the room as if she were going to fall. Yellow Bull came close to her and whispered: ‘You are sure—this time?’ She glared at her brother and said nothing. Harn Der, wiser and perhaps more anxious, pulled at his arm and got him away, right out of her sight.

  They left her alone; she had worked out everything—everything except what the bulls would do: that she must leave to chance. She wished she could stay still now, frozen, unthinking, unpicturing, instead of being horribly alive to it all, in the middle of this magic that she had made herself, and that she knew was well made. She gathered it up against Tarrik and let it go; at any rate, she was in her father’s house; why need she feel that there was any change between last winter and this?

  The bulls were beginning to get angry now, swinging their great heads and bellowing; but so far they had kept clear of the men at the well-head, knowing the sound of whip-cracks and the gadfly bite that always followed. The people watching all round began throwing stones and shouting. One of the bulls charged suddenly, horns down, at a house wall, but then at the last moment swerved aside and came blundering back into the herd. Two women in the window above him screamed, and one of them called shrill to a boy among the branders, who yelled back and shot out his whip-lash and flicked the flank of the bull, angering him. In another ten minutes the show was at its height; the old bulls were being killed and the young ones branded with this year’s mark. Blood ran dark and bright in the gutters; people and beasts alike were smelling it, and the singed hair and flesh. They got mad. The boys on the top of the flax stores were throwing down balls of tow that they had set on fire. One of the branders, not quick enough, was caught before the others could come to his help with their weighted whip-handles, and had to be carried into a house with his arm broken. But nobody minded except him: it was all part of the fun. Only Erif Der was not really looking, not enjoying it properly as she always had in other years; her father came softly behind her to see what she was doing, but she did not turn round, and he went away again with Yellow Bull to the other room. Yellow Bull wished he had been bullfighting too this year: it would have been, somehow, fairer. But his father had wanted to be quite sure of having him safe; he saw that this was wise, but all the same, it stopped him from getting any pleasure out of the show.

  Tarrik had waited till there were a dozen bulls at once charging about the market, clatter and thud and grunt of their wild, hot bodies, the weight and danger behind their sharp horns and stupid, savage brains. Then he marked his beast, jumped clear and threw out his coil of rope with the stone on its end. It went snaking out, low after the bull, and twisted round his hind-leg. Tarrik braced himself gloriously, with eyes and ears open for another brute to dodge. As the strain came, he heaved himself back on the rope, feeling his strength and godhead burn down through muscles of arms and back and legs to his quick feet hard on the rammed earth of the market-place. The bull fell, kicking with all four of its hoofs like knives, and he was on to it and banged it between the eyes with the bronze knob of his whip. The shouting all round rose to a yell for him; he heard his own name and thrilled to it, and stuck his knife deep into the bull’s throat folds. It quivered immensely and groaned; then its eyes glazed and it died. Tarrik jumped on to its ribs and stamped on the warm, foam-streaked hide, cracking his whip and shouting shrilly as he felt the blood trickling down his hands. Then he began showing off to Marob, playing tricks, jumping over the brutes’ backs and und
er their noses, roping a young bull to be branded, scoring the neck of an old one with his knife point to madden it; he was all barbarian.

  From a broad window, not too high above it all, his aunt was watching; sometimes she felt herself almost swamped in the waves of savageness bursting all round her; she nearly got to her feet and yelled too. But still she could stop herself, look away, ask Apphé whether she had remembered the gold thread for the embroidery. She wondered if she would always be able to stay so beautifully calm; every year, as she grew older, she enjoyed it more. Sphaeros was sitting beside her, and he watched, but he did not seem as if he even wanted to yell; the lines on his face showed, his clasped fingers fitted together; he had not spoken much, nor even answered her questions with at all a courteous fullness, all the morning. Perhaps he was shocked, in spite of admitting it all intellectually: the Scythians of Olbia had never played this savage game.