The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  ‘I wish he was. But he won’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ Philylla dared to ask.

  But the answer was not very exciting after all. ‘He is afraid of what may happen when we get back. He doesn’t want to see it. He’s not really brave.’

  ‘He fought for Sparta and killed a general of the Achaean League!’ said Philylla, almost too eagerly.

  Erif, though, did not notice the tone. She said: ‘Almost anyone can kill people in a battle. They don’t have to think. It’s all coming at one at once. But Berris sees things that are going to happen so clearly that he can’t imagine any way round them. Then he runs away. That’s being a coward. And in the meantime someone else is sure to use his forge and break his tools and go to bed with his slave-girl.’

  ‘I didn’t know he had a slave-girl,’ observed Philylla.

  ‘Oh yes—Sardu. A nice little brown thing. After he went I used to practise magic on her sometimes. She didn’t mind. Philylla, do you like my brother?’

  ‘Oh—yes,’ said Philylla.

  ‘I’m glad. He gets stupidly lonely when his work isn’t going just as he wants it to. He and I used to do things together a lot. I thought we always would. But everything has been different to what we meant. Philylla, what shall I do when I see your Queen?’

  ‘There’s no ceremony here. She’s just like anyone else—only, I mean, of course, she isn’t! She’s Agiatis. Just go in.’

  She stood aside at the door, and after a moment the Queen of Marob went into the cool room, and the Queen of Sparta, all in white, with only a white cord net over her hair, got up from the couch and took her by both hands. Erif Der looked straight at Agiatis, into her calm eyes, and forgot what she had meant to say and half absent-mindedly tilted up her face like a child’s to be kissed, for she was not so tall as Agiatis, though taller than Philylla. Agiatis kissed her hot, damp cheek; she was amused and rather surprised, though she was used to younger women falling suddenly in love with her, and after a minute or two she thought she liked this odd Scythian Queen in her very curious and uncomfortable-looking clothes. She asked her what she thought of Sparta. The truth was that Erif, prepared even more than Berris to be impressed by things, had found very few of them that she liked at all, even less since the revolution and the new fashion for an authentic simplicity and Laconic bareness of life. She said: ‘I have never seen such high mountains. They look closer than they are. But it is very hot.’

  ‘And the people?’ said Agiatis, smiling.

  Here Erif Der had got a very definite impression, starting from the first day when she had met Philylla with the horses. ‘They look as if something were going to happen,’ she said.

  ‘Something has happened,’ said Agiatis, with a curious, rather sad pride.

  Somehow it was the sadness that Erif Der caught. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Sphaeros told me. Your baby died. Your eldest son. And I suppose you have never forgotten.’

  Agiatis said nothing for a moment; she had not been thinking of that at all just then, at least it seemed to her that she had not been. She remembered what Sphaeros had told her about this other Queen. ‘One does forget,’ she said, ‘one can, if one is wrapped round with love as I have been and as, I think, you will be. Lady of Marob, my dear, you’ve got your man back safe.’

  Philylla had taken up the distaff and spindle again. Suddenly she found herself saying, with all the cheerful obviousness of discovery: ‘How funny it is that women can make friends with one another so much faster than men! It’s because of the way the same things seem to happen to them all.’

  After a moment of translating it to herself, Erif Der began to laugh, and said: ‘That’s the kind of thing my brother says!’

  Agiatis was rather embarrassed until the laughter came. It was so ridiculously like her dear and sometimes quite baby Philylla to arrive at the remark in this way. Was she ever going to grow up? Grown up and silent and observing and doubtful like a real woman? No. The Queen said: ‘It’s just as well women can do it quickly. We haven’t as much time to waste as the men.’

  Erif said: ‘May I spin for a minute with your distaff?’

  Philylla brought it over. ‘It’s a thin thread,’ she said; she was proud of her fine spinning. ‘Take care or it will break. It’s sure to if you start it with a jerk.’

  Erif Der twisted the spindle too hard, and of course the thread did break. Philylla picked it up. ‘Shall I make the join for you?’ she asked.

  But Erif Der said ‘No,’ and laid the two ends on the palm of her right hand. ‘Now watch.’ And under the eyes of the other two the threads groped and wriggled like white worms and came together. ‘There!’ she said, and dropped them off her hand. The spindle swung from an unbroken line.

  Philylla stared and came nearer and ran her finger down it. Then: ‘What’s that red mark on your hand?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Erif, ‘that’s a drop of blood,’ and she stooped and wiped it on the under side of the hem of her dress.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I had to make the thread alive so that it would come together; so it had to bleed where it was wounded.’ And she began spinning properly. ‘I think you will find this is a strong thread now,’ she said, ‘a very strong thread. I am doing my best with it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Philylla, ‘I see. But if it was me I’d like to be able to do it with people.’

  Agiatis, though, was rather horrified. Later, when Philylla was taking Erif Der back to the door of the King’s house, she picked up the thread which the Queen of Marob had spun and tried to break it. But it was certainly very strong. Then she thought of burning it, but she was not quite sure whether that would be a good thing to do. Later on it disappeared, and she thought it was wiser not to ask Philylla what she had done with it or whether she had woven it into some dress of her own.

  Two days later the Scythians left Greece. Kleomenes, when reminded of it, went to say good-bye to the Chief of Marob who had fought for him, and made a real effort to be understanding and courteous and helpful, more because he knew Sphaeros wanted him to be than for any other reason. So Tarrik went away with the feeling that after all there was something in Hellas, and, though this time he had just missed it, perhaps one day it might be easier, and if there had only been, say, a week quite to spare with nothing important happening in it, he and Kleomenes might have made friends. But now he was very doubtful whether he had learnt enough even to try and be a philosopher king by himself. It would be easier to make the crops grow again in Marob and the women have plenty of boy children.

  He was not bringing much away from Greece, except some rather fine weapons, a good many barrels of wine, partly for himself and partly as presents or bribes for when he got home, and several little linen bags of flower and vegetable seeds. He also had two or three seedling almonds in pots; even if they would not fruit in Marob, he wanted their blossoms for the Spring Queen. The others all had lots of things. Sparta, after the revolution, had been an admirable place to buy works of art in, pedigree dogs, jewellery and dresses; it would have been silly not to take advantage of it. Kotka had a set of small vases with curly ears and coloured wax stoppers all full of the latest and most fashionable perfumes of the western world for his wife. Black Holly had a pair of over-lifesize bronze wrestlers. Tarrik told him that if the ship were in danger they’d be the first to go overboard, and Black Holly was less annoyed than he might have been because once he had bought them he found that he liked them much less than he had meant to; they seemed squashy. But all the same every one hoped that the Corn King’s ship would be lucky. Philylla had seen how much Erif Der liked her magpie, and had sent out and got her one to take home. It talked very well and with a certain impropriety, but luckily none of the Marob people were sufficiently up in the subtleties of the underworld to appreciate it fully, and Erif began teaching it phrases which had to do with the Spring Plowing; she thought it might be useful.

  Sphaeros rode with them all the way to the coast, trying to think of the absolutely right thing t
o say and feeling curiously guilty. He said, and meant, that he hoped he would see them all again. Berris said good-bye at Gytheum too, and rode back, half depressed and half immensely elated, for now he could see what sort of a man—and by this he meant what sort of an artist—he would be by himself with no influences except those of Hellas. The first thing he did was to accept an invitation to go out hawking with Panteus, who was quite friendly, and some of the older boys and young men of his brigade, who were being trained in the new-old discipline. Berris loved hawks: the feeling, even over a gloved wrist, of those tense, strong claws clutching and balancing. He had always had them in Marob and he was expert at dealing with them and drawing them.

  They went off into the hills in the very early morning when the light was loveliest. By and bye Kleomenes joined them, with his wife and most of her maids of honour. Some of the birds that were brought down were sent back to the King’s Mess; others went to the brigade. By the afternoon they had killed enough, and though it was still the full heat of the day, Panteus made his boys show off to the King, wrestling and running and throwing hunting-spears and high-jumping over thorn bushes. The girls ran off to get leaves and any flowers there were to make crowns for the winners, and then ran back as fast as they could to see those boys and young men stripped and active. It was all happening in rather a pleasant rocky valley with a piece of flat field in the middle of it. This had once been plowed, but now it had been let go out of cultivation and the wild stuff was all over it again. At one side of the flat ground was a fairly deep ravine, quite dry now, but the beautiful plane trees that grew out of it showed that there would be water again in another month or two. On the other side were more trees, mostly the low, golden-green pines and between them dark prickly undergrowth with red berries. There were little goat-paths through it, and at their edges larkspur and crowds of violet-scented butterfly cyclamens. The girls picked lapfuls of them to mix in with their crowns, and made themselves necklaces of them and the pretty, strewn feathers of the game-birds. Most of them climbed up into the pine trees which grew slantwise with low boughs, and hung the wreaths as they finished them on to the warm, resin-smelling twigs. Up here in the branches they could see admirably and point and make their comments without being too much seen, and giggle and jump their swinging trees about when someone leapt short into a thorn bush or was thrown in the wrestling and came down on a stone.

  ‘It’s the one thing we didn’t get in old days,’ said Deinicha, expertly weaving a long supple heron’s feather in and out of her fluffy hair to make a crown nearly as shining as silver. ‘Oh my dear, they’re going to have boxing now! I do hope nobody’s going to get hurt!’

  ‘I hope they are,’ said one of the other girls, more truthfully. ‘I do love it when they really get angry and go for one another and the blood comes. I feel as if it was all for me!’

  ‘Well, it’s not,’ said Deinicha, ‘so there! Look how they’re sweating! There’s Philocharidas, he’s my cousin. It’s doing him all the good in the world, anyhow; you never saw such a stupid as he used to be in old times. Never looked one’s way once. Always reading and playing the flute, of all silly things, when it was perfectly easy to hire a really good professional. But now! Holy Mother, he doesn’t let me alone a minute if he gets half a chance.’

  The King and Queen walked together under Philylla’s tree; she dropped a loose chain of cyclamens, strung head to tail, over the Queen’s head, then, as they both stopped and looked up, greatly daring she dropped one over the King too. He frowned, and she was rather frightened, but then she saw it was really a play-frown, and in a second he had jumped and caught her dangling hand, so that she was pulled right round under her branch, squealing and holding on for all she was worth with her knees and feet and other hand. Agiatis ran at the King and shoved at his throat and shoulders, laughing breathlessly in defence of her girl, and he let go Philylla to catch and hug his wife and then to put her wreath straight. She looked very young in the dappled light under the tree, just as those September cyclamens looked like spring. Philylla settled herself again in the crook of her branch, rubbing one bare knee where the bark had grazed it. ‘Do you like them?’ said the King, pointing out to the runners.

  ‘Oh yes!’ said Philylla, ‘they’re lovely. I do like the colour they are now.’

  ‘You like them best with their clothes off?’ said Kleomenes grinning.

  ‘Of course,’ she said, and then blushed and tried to pull down her short tunic.

  ‘So do I,’ said Agiatis. ‘You’re quite right, lamb. I believe my girls could do as well as some of Panteus’ boys, though. I’m sure I’ve seen you jump better than that, Philylla.’

  ‘I believe I could,’ she said, measuring the distance. ‘Now they’re going to wrestle again. Oh the beauties!’ And then suddenly she leant down out of her perch and touched Kleomenes lightly on the neck. ‘Oh, sir, do go and wrestle yourself!’

  ‘Shall I?’ said the King to Agiatis. She nodded. For another moment Kleomenes stood still, frowning and pulling himself together. The cyclamen flowers looked lovelier and more delicate still on his dark head, but the thin little wreath had snapped already; the petals only clung on by their own twisty lightness. Suddenly he shouted and ran straight out into the middle of the field and threw down his clothes and picked up a handful of dust to rub himself with.

  Agiatis said: ‘Oh, you are clever, Philylla! It was what I wanted. He’s been working too hard making out the plans against Megalopolis. I could never get him away from it.’ She sat down on a big stone beside the tree and watched him from under her hand. ‘He looks well, though, don’t you think?’ she said a little anxiously. ‘There’s so much depending on him!’

  He challenged the best of the boys, who came up, rather nervous, and was fairly easily thrown. The King’s long sinewy arms got unexpected and unlikely grips on him. Then Panteus came. Naked, he was quite a different shape from the tall, thin-flanked King, much squarer and more centred and better balanced on his feet, but not so quick and perhaps not so violently in earnest. His body looked less hard, still with a certain quite young roundness about the thick muscles. Philylla gasped with pleasure, watching them. They circled and closed and strained at one another; for long periods of time they stood so still that she really got her fill of the sight. But she knew that all the while they were heaving, shifting stresses and balances, imperceptibly altering their grips. The clear air put no barrier between them and her. She saw Berris Der sitting on a rock a little way off, watching just as she was; she felt very friendly towards him, sharing the same beauty. The boys and young men watched too, in lovely pale-brown groups, half conscious of their own bodies and the girls in the trees behind them, setting one another off with long legs and straight backs and heads up in the golden sunshine against the very deep blue sky.

  The two wrestlers moved suddenly, got new grips, stood and shoved, felt about with their feet in the dust. Then, after a new movement Panteus got under the King’s arm and threw him, and every one shouted. Kleomenes got up, rubbing his hip, where he was going to have a big bruise, and said something to Panteus which made them both laugh. Then they dressed and came back, hand in hand. The winners came crowding for the King to give them their crowns. They shook the trees as they passed under them, but the Queen’s girls held on and threw pine cones at them. Berris Der came too, looking very odd and different from the others in his coat and trousers, apart too in his observing eyes; it seemed to Philylla that she was the only one who noticed him at all. The hawks perched heavily, fed and still, with their heads sunk down into their shoulders.

  The boys went back to their brigade. There was no one left but the King and Queen, Panteus, and four or five of the maids of honour, who were playing cat’s-cradle with a scarlet thread; the others were playing hide-and-seek among the trees. Berris Der stayed too, for there was no special reason why he should go anywhere else. He was cutting things in the wood of the pine trees, his own name three times over in beautiful Greek characters, a
nd then just designs, letting his knife slice and cut in shapes that seemed to fit with the peeling bark and the light wood. Transparent resin oozed out of the cuts like very slow, very deep grief. The ship sailed back to Marob. It was too late to change his mind.

  Philylla suddenly got up from among the cat’s-cradle players and walked over to the Queen, who was sitting on the ground where the King had spread his cloak for her. She laid both hands on the Queen’s shoulders and swung her lightly about. Strength flowed up through her wrists and arms; she was so strong, she could have picked Agiatis up in her two hands and run with her, carried them all like babies, plucked and bent the tough pine trees. Now it was almost evening; the level light swam between the King and the Queen and Panteus. None of them spoke, but they were feeling very near to one another. Philylla stood over them and said: ‘I am very happy. I’ve got everything I want. I’m living at the right time and in the right place. I love you all.’

  There was a queer silence for a moment while Kleomenes and Agiatis stared at one another in horror, as though some god were approaching whom they could not ward off. Panteus got to his feet and stood and looked across them at her. ‘Take care, Philylla’, he said. ‘Oh, take care or it will be turned against you!’ And he held out both his hands towards her.

  PART III

  What Advantageth it Me?