The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  It was a good year for the vines. There would be wine for the new Spartan armies to drink to Kleomenes. The carts of grapes went creaking down the street of Sparta. Therykion stood back into an angle of wall to let them pass. He was tired because he had been doing a night march with one of the new brigades and seeing to it that the various officers knew what they were about. Now he was going to report on it to the King. When the carts were by, he went on, frowning; he was not sure that he had a uniformly good report to make; he wondered how this new stuff would face real war, rear-guard in a losing battle, say …

  Panteus came loping along towards him; he had a bright blue tunic with a black edge. He ran with an amazing amount of spring, as though he were always on short turf. He stopped short, with a last bound, beside Therykion, not panting at all, and said: ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To Kleomenes,’ said Therykion, ‘with reports; or Eukleidas, I suppose. Sit a minute, Panteus, I want to ask you something.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Panteus, ‘I’ve got my people up in the hills—sweating. I’m going to have a great hunt for every one next week; it’ll do them good and please the farmers. Can you let me have any hounds?’

  ‘Yes, any I have now. Listen, Panteus: what about Eukleidas?’

  ‘Well—he’s been made the second King. I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You do know. You know Kleomenes ought not to have done it. There have never been two kings of the same line, let alone two brothers.’

  ‘I don’t think it matters,’ Panteus said. ‘Plenty of odd things have happened lately; odder than that. I like Eukleidas. And there’s no “of course” about it, Therykion. He and Kleomenes aren’t much alike. Why do you want us always to stick to the past?’

  Therykion said: ‘We are always pretending to. And this is what it comes to! Panteus, did the King believe all that about the ephors having stolen the power in times past?’

  Panteus laughed. ‘Why bother? Therykion, these are the New Times. For God’s sake let us accept them with our arms open! Oh, by the way, I’ve been asked about those Scythians who were taken prisoner at Orchomenos. Are they still in prison? Megistonous doesn’t know. He’s got some scheme about Argos now and won’t talk about anything else.’

  Therykion shook his head; he didn’t know either, and didn’t care. He had not been at all interested in the Scythians.

  Just then Phoebis came up to them; his hair was sticking up in tufts and he was grinning. He said to Therykion: ‘You look as if you wanted cheering up. Have you heard the story about the goat?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Therykion with a snap, and turned away with a jerky, raised hand.

  ‘Will you come to my autumn hunt?’ said Panteus. ‘I’m putting my whole brigade to it.’

  ‘Do I look it!’ said Phoebis, extremely gaily, and went on.

  ‘I suppose that means yes,’ said Panteus, ‘in our new laconic manner. Good old Phoebis.’

  ‘Phoebis,’ said Therykion suddenly, ‘has got quite intolerable since he’s been a citizen.’

  ‘No,’ said Panteus, ‘no. You’re tired, Therykion.’

  ‘I know I am. God help me, I can’t tell how things are going to work. But I wish Phoebis would comb his hair sometimes, or even wear a clean tunic!’

  Panteus put an arm round his shoulder gently. ‘We both mind that,’ he said, ‘but not so much. Here’s Sphaeros. He’ll tell you it’s only appearance if you want to make really sure.’

  Sphaeros came over to them and Panteus repeated his question about the Scythians. Sphaeros looked worried and wrinkled at once. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they’re in prison still and I can’t get at the woman Eurydice. It’s her business to ransom them, but she keeps on delaying for some reason, and now she’s run off to Messenia. Who asked you, Panteus?’

  ‘Another Scythian, a new one. Some sort of a servant. He couldn’t speak Greek very well.’

  Sphaeros said: ‘I’d better see him, poor thing. I can speak his own language. He is probably frightened. You know, Tarrik was their good genius as well as their king. Perhaps things have seemed to them in Marob to be going wrong without him.’

  ‘The Queen told me his wife was dead,’ said Panteus, following up some train of thought of his very own. ‘I wonder if he was fond of her.’

  ‘He was,’ said Sphaeros, ‘though she was a queer creature. I heard all sorts of stories about her. I did not think most of them were very credible, though; at least, not now and here. Marob was a curious place. Panteus, do you know where your Scythian was lodging?’

  ‘You’ll run into him sooner or later; he was funny enough to see a mile off! Sphaeros, aren’t you glad about everything—on the whole?’

  Sphaeros drew himself upright, but he did not come beyond Therykion’s shoulder; he looked up at them both and said: ‘On the whole—yes.’

  It was then that Panteus pointed and said: ‘There!—that’s one of the Scythians for you. Riding! I wonder how he’s managed to get a horse. It’s not so easy nowadays.’

  Therykion said: ‘It’s a woman.’

  Panteus said: ‘She rides well.’

  Sphaeros, who could not see as far as they could, waited, screwing up his eyes, till the rider was nearer. Then he said: ‘It is Erif Der.’

  She trotted up, waving a hand to Sphaeros, and dismounted. She was wearing black linen breeches and a green coat with feathers and an tiered heads of black linen cut out and sewn on to it. Her boots were green leather sewed in black with criss-cross patterns. Her head was bare and her face and neck had burnt very red from the sun. Sphaeros thought, first, that her plaits were scanty and rather darker, and then that her body was thicker and her face thinner. She held out her hand: ‘I am glad I found you, Sphaeros!’ she said, in still rather halting Greek. ‘Now things will be easier. Where is Tarrik?’

  ‘A prisoner,’ said Sphaeros, ‘somewhere in Achaean League territory. So is your brother. I believe they are both well. Tarrik was told you were dead.’

  ‘Who told him? Eurydice?—I suppose she’s called that here. Ah, she thought I was! But it was an appearance, Sphaeros.’

  Sphaeros said: ‘It is good that it was only that. Now, here are two friends of the King of Sparta—Therykion and Panteus; the Queen of Marob.’

  They bade her welcome. Her Greek was improving at every sentence. Panteus asked how she had got the horse. She said: ‘I am not very easily hindered about things like horses, even here. I saw some horses in a field and met three girls with them. I asked them to lend me a horse and one of them did.’

  Panteus was looking carefully at the horse and its harness: ‘Of course!’ he said, ‘it is one of the King’s horses. But still I don’t understand how you got it, Lady of Marob.’

  ‘I told the girl I came from Marob and I was a witch—Sphaeros doesn’t believe that!—and she said she would have been a witch if she had been my sister, and she let me have the horse for today, because I was tired and I had to find out about my man. She was younger than me with very bright eyes and hair, and she looked as if she were in the middle of something very exciting. She had a bow and arrows and a bird that she talked to.’

  ‘That was Philylla, daughter of Themisteas,’ said Panteus. ‘She can shoot well now.’

  ‘I can shoot, too,’ said Erif Der.

  Sphaeros said: ‘Tell me what you have been doing all this year.’

  She sighed and made a queer, strained little face. ‘I’d like to tell you some time, Sphaeros,’ she said, ‘when I’ve got Tarrik back.’

  ‘Are you going to get him yourself?’ asked Sphaeros. ‘Have you the money?’

  She smiled again. ‘I don’t waste money,’ she said.

  Erif Der had come from Marob with only half a dozen men and no women. She had also brought some of her brother’s finest tools which she knew he would be sure to want, though she was equally sure that he would be so pleased to see them that he would forget to say Thank you’ to her. They were his goldsmith’s tools mostly, and especially the magnif
ying crystal, which had been left him by his uncle, who had first taught him the craft, and which was certainly hundreds of years old. He would like having that in his hand again.

  She got her men housed in Sparta and asked a certain number of questions. Then, still with the horse she had borrowed from Philylla, she went north towards the cities that were members of the Achaean League. Every one there had their eyes on Sparta, Aratos most of all. At first he had thought that the revolution in Sparta would have shaken things up and given him his chance of a not too expensive victory, but soon it was clear that the new Spartan armies were an infinitely more powerful weapon for Kleomenes than anything he had had before, and besides, now that he was free from the ephors and their traditional cautiousness, he could do what he liked. And what he liked, Aratos well knew, would be nothing short of the leadership of the Achaean League going to Sparta and himself. That would mean two things, and one would be the end of Aratos. The other that this Kleomenes might take it into his head to start revolutions in some of the other states. There were some who would welcome him too: the riff-raff, of course. But Aratos wondered if he could be sure even of the respectable poorish people. It was unfair that Kleomenes should have made himself so popular. Ptolemy would send money, but no soldiers. Aratos began to look somewhere else; a very safe messenger took a secret letter to Macedonia and King Antigonos.

  Meanwhile Tarrik and Berris Der and the two others, Black Holly and Kotka, were in prison and getting more and more gloomy as the days went by and nothing happened about the ransom. Midsummer was past and now harvest would be past as well. The others were not so much disturbed about this, for they remembered that Tarrik had made another Corn King before he went, and they supposed Yellow Bull was working the corn magic, and Essro would be his Spring Queen. But Tarrik himself knew what was likely to have happened to Yellow Bull and his magic, and he was very much distressed when he thought of the Marob fields and the bad things let loose on them. The star on his breast had gone dim again, but he found it was possible to go back in memory to that night in the hills above Sparta. Though he was not certain and dared not say anything hopeful to Berris, he yet did not despair of seeing his wife again; but he got very, very tired of waiting.

  They had been treated fairly well. For the first few days they had all been chained except Berris, who was obviously too ill to walk; but in these wars it was generally recognised not to be a good thing to be too unfriendly towards the mercenaries and foreigners; they might be on one’s own side next time. Tarrik was angry that his Aunt Eurydice was taking so long about the ransoms, but supposed it might be due to what he vaguely heard was happening in Sparta. They were actually in prison at Argos, but none of them were very sure where it was in relation to Sparta; they had been marched there through puzzling hill-roads. The four of them had a fair-sized stone room to themselves with mattresses and blankets. There was no window, but the door was only an open framework of iron bars. It looked out into a small courtyard with a plane tree in the middle, and they were allowed to be there all day. It had a gateway out of it, but there were always armed guards who were severely punished if they were caught taking bribes from the prisoners. There were seven other rooms opening off the courtyard and other prisoners in three of them. A few of these were Tarentine mercenaries, who told Tarrik and his friends about Italy, shifting the centre of the world still further west and away from Marob. They all played dice with one another and any other games they could think of, and tried to get the guards to tell them what was going on outside.

  At night they were locked into the rooms again, but two guards were always left in the courtyard. It was hot and difficult to sleep: some sorts of flies preferred the sun, but others came out at dusk. Berris usually lay nearest the bars; he could overhear one of the guards—a Thracian who spoke very bad Greek—making clumsy love to a town girl he had brought in. The other guard was a Greek of sorts. Berris had drawn things in charcoal all over the walls of their room; he was unhappy because the next people would rub them off. Being unhappy about one thing reminded him of the other things. He thought of Erif Der and how she used to blow the forge fire for him, and all that they had laughed at together which no one else would ever laugh about in the same way. He began the painful picturing of her: her face pale between the plaits, staring at him, staring out of the darkness, the dark of earth, her lips moving. ‘Berris,’ she said, ‘Berris.’

  Immediately, between one breath and the next, he realised that this so much alive image was not his making, was not an appearance at all but the thing itself. She passed him in wire and pincers. ‘It looks an easy lock,’ she said. He got to work while she crouched against the bars. He was too intent to ask questions, but pure gladness made him clever. ‘So,’ he said, ‘so!’ The door creaked. ‘Wake the others,’ she whispered. ‘I can see Tarrik! Tell them to follow and not to speak.’ He woke them all. Tarrik was dreaming already, fidgeting at the hot star. Kotka began to ask questions and had to be stopped. They slipped past the half-open door. She had a dagger for each of them. Tarrik touched her hand and nodded, then slid his eyes round questioning towards the sentries—he could only see one, the Thracian, standing close up to the wall and his woman. She shook her head. ‘I killed the Greek. The other I’ve dealt with. Come.’ The Thracian and his girl were staring straight at them as they went past in the starlight, and Tarrik heard him say to her: ‘Look at those shadows by the wall; one would say they were men.’ And then they were back again at their kissing and giggling.

  She led them down a quite empty street and turned into another, across a small square with a dripping fountain and a party of men laughing behind light-chinked shutters as they stepped past. She turned again into a yard full of the rustle of roosting hens and pigeons, took a ladder and climbed a wall. The moon rose above the town; they could see fairly well. At the other side of the wall was a deepish jump into bushes, but they all did it. Then down a zigzag path to a shed and five horses, one better than the others which she mounted herself. They rode some way without speaking. Gradually Tarrik came abreast of her till their knees touched. After a time she said they could stop now. They were among hills in coldish air and seemed to be miles away from anywhere.

  She sat down on a bank in the moonshine and Tarrik sat beside her; they could see one another’s faces very well. Berris came closer. Kotka and Black Holly tied up the horses, whispering, and then came and sat down too. There was bread and cheese in a bag by one of the saddles.-Berris was watching how her hands and Tarrik’s began groping towards each other, touched, started away, and then came together again. All speech was between the two of them, as though they had been in bed together. Berris listened and a certain jealousy of Tarrik kept coming into his mind. The other two would have found it queerer to have been overhearing if the whole nightful of events had not been so improbable and touched with the woman’s magic of Marob that made them feel as if they were in two places at once, there and here. Kotka was married himself and his wife was a witch.

  She told first how she had got to Sparta and come straight from there, and what they were to do now. She looked for quite a long time at the scar of an arrow graze on Tarrik’s wrist. She asked him about the fight at Orchomenos and the other battles. She asked what he and the King of Sparta had said to one another. She asked what he had thought when he was told she was dead. She asked what women he had made love to in Greece. She did not seem to want to answer anything herself. At last it seemed as if she had to, for Tarrik was holding both her hands and asking insistently what had happened at Marob.

  She said: ‘Yellow Bull is dead.’ Looking aside, she saw Berris horribly startled, as she had known he would be. But the Chief said nothing, only stiffened a little. ‘You killed him, Tarrik,’ she said, rather stating a fact than asking a question.

  ‘Yes,’ he said gravely, after a moment, ‘I killed him.’ The others breathed and stared and stayed very still on that Greek hillside.

  ‘Well,’ she said, pausing as though she were go
ing to make some judgment, some statement of her own feelings perhaps, but then went on, ‘he died at the beginning of summer. Then there was rain and rain and blight on the corn. The flax was all beaten down too. I do not think there will be much fruit and the bees could not get out to make honey. It was a bad season for fishing. And in June I had a child.’

  They both cried out at that, her husband and her brother, and Tarrik jumped to his feet, head up and eyes shining at this beautiful, startling thing. He had never known how splendid it was to be a father! ‘Erif!’ he said, ‘a child—a son?’

  She looked away from him, away from this unbearable glow of his happiness. ‘Yes, a son. And they killed him.’ She looked up again through the moonshine, in time to see Tarrik shiver and half shut his eyes and grow cold, and Berris drop his face into his hands. Now they had taken some part of her own pain on to themselves. But Tarrik—she went on more quickly—‘my father did it thinking to finish with you and yours that way. He said he thought I wouldn’t mind. He said he thought I was on his side.’

  ‘But you did mind?’ said Berris softly.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, dry-eyed, ‘I minded. I was not on his side by then. I was on your side, Tarrik. I am now.’

  He took her hand in his, looking down at her, then knelt close to her with the other hand on her neck. ‘But weren’t you before, sweetheart?’

  ‘No. I magicked you. I said I would and I did. I tried to kill you, just as Yersha told you I did. But that’s all past. And was, long before he was born.’

  ‘What was he like?’ said Tarrik.

  ‘I don’t know. I only just saw him. He seemed to me … lovely. Then they took him away. Oh, Tarrik.’ She suddenly grabbed hold of him and her lip trembled horribly. He took her in his arms, extraordinarily gentle. It was not quite real to him, and all that just awakened paternity turned back to comfort Erif. It was as if she were his little daughter who had been hurt.