The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  Tarrik was quite decided about not letting Sphaeros see any the less of him now that they were in Hellas. The position became gradually clear to him, though not to Berris nor most of the others. On the one hand there was the King and his friends, those odd and silent people with some intensely interesting business of their own, in whose completion he and his men might be called upon to share, though they were so completely shut off from its preparation. He could feel that they could never be friends, he and Kleomenes, they would never talk together about kingship and all the things he had learnt from Sphaeros, learnt easily because of his own partly Greek mind, and that he had come all this way to know more of. So far, he was angry and rather hurt. He was prepared, at least he had thought so, to be looked down upon by these true Hellenes; but only for ideas imperfectly worked out or concepts scarcely realised—something that could be remedied; not, certainly, like this, as a simple matter of course.

  Then there was the rest of Sparta. They did not seem to look down on him, and yet perhaps they puzzled him more. Because, in a way, they seemed more Hellene than the King’s friends. The elaborations and distractions of their lives were more what he had expected and half feared, yet knew he could very quickly get into the way of dealing with, seeing that money was the one thing needful: beauty could so easily be bought.

  Not that Tarrik was taken in for long by this beauty. Even if he was not a craftsman himself, he had the clear eye and ready scorn that he had learnt from Berris and the metalworkers of Marob. He and Berris used to laugh together immensely, and not very secretly. It pained Sphaeros, who could not see why his pupil should value his own idea of beauty higher than courtesy to his hosts. Neither had much importance, but one was at least expedient.

  The Chief’s other friends were, on the whole, delighted with this second half of Sparta, which received them so well, asked them to banquets where the food was excellent, the wine better still, and the general air of magnificence far surpassing anything they had ever come across. They drew on the common store to buy themselves slaves, horses, fine clothes, and all other necessaries for the life of pleasure, and thought well of their Chief who had brought them to it.

  It was odd how definitely they thought of him as the Chief now, the leader in war and council, and not as the Corn King. At the same time they forgot all about the blighting and unlucky things that had happened to the magic part of him, the God in him. He was a man here like the rest of them, governing them through the force of that manhood. There were no gods in Sparta, no gods at least that did things, only vaguely remembered, faintly and formally recognised shadows of what had been; or if, after all, there was anything more, it was hidden from the people of Marob.

  During the voyage Tarrik had looked from time to time under his coat at the star. Since the day he had taken it, Erif had never had it back, nor, for that matter, asked for it; but it seemed like part of her still, some part that was virgin in spite of him. It was always warm to touch, and in any dim light it shone a little so that one could see the veining of the wood wavy across it. In daylight Tarrik could only see the glow by hollowing his hand round it and looking in between his fingers. He liked doing that, as if it were Erif herself he held there, tiny and still and his very own, as somehow she had never quite been in her real body. But since they had come to Sparta the star had gradually got cold, till now it was no warmer than the heat of his own skin made it, and the light had faded too. It was so gradual that he could not believe anything had happened to Erif Der; it seemed more as if the magic had lost touch with her. So he asked Berris what he thought.

  They were outside, at midday, sweating and excited, and the light was quivering down in white sheets edged abruptly with the oblique shadows of houses. The pink smoke of fruit blossom still lay all about the plain of Sparta: the brilliant flower colours were still unfaded by the sun; they had not seen or imagined the pale drying of the summer grass. ‘I wonder,’ said Berris, screwing up a spray of sweet leaves against his nose, ‘what is the real reason. I don’t think anything can be wrong with Erif; she’s never ill. Unless she was going to have a baby?’ But Tarrik shook his head. ‘Well then, it might be there’s a sort of gap coming between you that the star can’t bridge. Perhaps she’s gone back to father and Yellow Bull.’

  ‘Why should she?’ said Tarrik sharply, and clutched so hard at the star that the chain snapped with a little ting and the broken end flicked up against his neck.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Berris rather unhappily, and picked up the chain. ‘I don’t know what she told you. I hadn’t seen any of them much since the bullfighting. They would talk, and I’d got things to work out. But supposing Erif is just where you left her, could it be you? I mean, if you didn’t care—’

  But Tarrik said: ‘I do care.’

  ‘Oh well, I suppose you know, Tarrik, and I suppose that girl you’re after now is just to remind you of her!’

  ‘Oh, that young woman! She’s just to see how much the Greeks can stand of us after all!’ And Tarrik grinned, relaxing his grip on the chain. ‘But it’s no good trying the Queen’s girls, Berris. That bare-legged crew of hers won’t have anything to do with savages like you and me. You’ll never have that Philylla girl of yours!’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ said Berris, a good deal hurt, partly because he had never considered Philylla like this and partly because he was a little ashamed not to have. He went on: ‘But, Tarrik, about the star. If it’s not her and it’s not you, mightn’t it be the place? Look—look at the light there is on everything, every single grass blade so all over seen that it couldn’t hide a fly! Look at those flat walls, just spread out blank for the sun’s patterns to go on! All these sharp things completely seen, Tarrik—I mean, it’s not a magic country.’

  ‘No,’ said Tarrik, ‘I believe that’s it. Magic won’t work here, just as it wouldn’t with Sphaeros. But I shan’t lose my own, I can’t! Not the magic that’s in me! Berris, I can make the corn grow still!’

  Berris said: ‘You’ve given that to my brother now.’

  ‘Yes, but after—if I’d lost it here and couldn’t do it any more!’ For a minute he was rather badly frightened and Berris, watching him, couldn’t find a word to say. They both knew what happened to the Corn King when his godhead began to fail; the thing that had happened to Tarrik’s father; the thing that would happen to Tarrik if he had the bad luck to get old—not be killed first by the Red Riders or drowned in a storm. Only it had always been a very long way off before; now it grinned between them. With an effort, Tarrik broke past: ‘Nothing can happen to me! But that must be it about the star, Berris. I wonder if Erif can tell about me. I wonder if she’s finding that the knife has gone dim too. You know the King wants us all for his war next week?’

  ‘Oh, but does he!’ said Berris, and fell to thinking.

  The next week, then, they all went off, marching against the Achaean League.

  Philylla went home for her fourteenth birthday. Her father had two houses, one in the city of Sparta itself, and one in the country, a low white house beyond Geronthrai on the top of a foothill, looking west across the broad crop-patterned valley towards Taygetos. As it was spring and rather lovely up there, the family had left the city and gone over with several ox-carts of essential furnishing and provisions with them. They went for miles through their own estate; the tenants and cultivators, slave or half-slave or free, came out of the farms as they went by, and their daughters brought bunches of flowers or anything in the way of food or drink that it was thought possible the noble owners might not despise too much. Dontas was riding and maddeningly pleased with himself; he charged the flocks of geese and sent them flapping and cackling and hissing out of his way.

  When they got to the farm, Philylla’s mother, Eupolia, went into mild hysterics over the bareness of everything before the hangings they had brought were put up, and Themisteas walked off to look at his stables; his racers were mostly kept up here out of harm’s way. Philylla had all the country servants crowdin
g round her, saying how she’d grown, how pretty she was, what a lucky man it would be who’d get her. The big, soft-eyed country woman, Tiasa, who had been her wet-nurse, came up through the crowd and kissed her and brought her over to a seat under the furry first peepings of vine leaves. Philylla shut her eyes and began breathing in the queer, shiveringly alive country smells, of green things pushing and growing, and tight, rustling corn sacks and meal sacks, of old wood and hot dung and places where honey had dripped. Her foster-mother was feeling at her with big wise hands that knew what they wanted, touching at all the soft, very sensitive growing points of her body. Waves of feeling poured over her as she waited, shut-eyed, centering, centering. … And then she jumped up, one spring on to her feet, another on to the bench, and looked down at the smiling face and big breasts of her foster-mother. The smells still clung about her tongue and widened nostrils; the rustling and cooing and bleating, the always remembered lilt of the country voices, struck like deep bells on her ears. She shook herself and stuck her arms out into the sun. ‘What is it?’ she said.

  Tiasa answered: ‘Time will show,’ and stooped and kissed her feet between the thongs of the sandals. But already Philylla was thinking away from it all to her own time, the King’s time.

  She could usually bully her small sister and brother into at least not contradicting her, but the grown-ups were maddening! She couldn’t help sometimes trying to tell them, and then they either disregarded her or laughed at her. She knew she didn’t always explain it properly, and often she got too excited to be clear; or else she didn’t quite know herself exactly what it was she wanted so much to happen. And sometimes they did listen for a minute or two, but then they always ended by producing all sorts of silly reasons against it and against the King and Queen. They said: ‘Experience shows us—,’ ‘When you know as much about human nature as I do—’ ‘When you’re my age, Philylla—’ As if there was anything good about being old! Philylla knew that the new ideas ought to work, and when she was told they wouldn’t and couldn’t, but the only reason seemed to be that most people are greedy and lazy and selfish, she just got too angry to bear it and ran off into the store-room and hid behind the big oil jars and cried. She wanted somebody else to come and cry with her and agree that the grown-ups were silly, and solemnly vow and swear never to become like that themselves, however old they got. Sometimes she pretended Agiatis was there, but she knew the Queen was too patient and gentle ever to hate properly, as she hated. Sometimes it was one or another of the maids of honour who thought as she did, and sometimes it was one of these other two: Berris Der, that she could explain it all to and who would listen; or Panteus, who would explain it all to her. She didn’t know which she would rather have. Panteus would be rather frightening; he was too near the King. They were both away now, with the army. There were going to be battles. It was unfair that she couldn’t be a soldier!

  It was the week after her birthday and she was beginning to wish she could go back to the city at once instead of staying at home for the three more days she had. Everything seemed to be going wrong; she had been rude and then violently apologetic to her father and mother; she hadn’t wanted the presents they gave her for her birthday, the dresses and jewels and combs; she was afraid of losing her new ear-rings, and Themisteas laughed at her for wanting a horse of her own, though he said she might have one of the racers and let it be entered in her name—but not to ride, oh no! She usually slept like a dormouse, but that morning she couldn’t. She dressed and went out into the court; no one was about yet—even the slaves slept late. She looked round and bit her lip and undid the lower bolts of the gate; then she pulled up a truss of hay and got on to it and undid the top ones. She heard the man in charge beginning to wake up, so she pulled it open just enough to slip out and run. It was early yet. Across the valley the far mountains were all bathed and gold in the dawn sunlight, but she and her mountains were in shadow still. If she had got that horse she would have galloped down and across the valley till she met the light. And it was, there was nothing for it but to wait until the sun had come over the top of the great range behind the house. She went quickly down the slope and out of sight.

  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.