The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  ‘Me!’ she said. ‘But—I like him so much. I wouldn’t hurt him, Sphaeros!’

  ‘It is perhaps not your fault,’ said Sphaeros. ‘I find it very hard to see how a woman should live rightly. But it is a pity for Berris Der.’

  ‘Do you mean—is he too fond of me?’

  ‘Just that. Love is bound to be a matter of too much.’

  ‘What can I do, Sphaeros?’

  ‘I do not know exactly. Talk with his sister, perhaps. Here is the King’s house, Philylla. Go in.’

  But she clung on to him. ‘Oh, Sphaeros, tell me one thing! You say love is always too much. But must it be? I love Agiatis, and she loves Kleomenes. Surely that’s all simple and right and natural?’

  ‘I cannot decide for you, child. It must be in your own mind. But I do not think there is any great hurt anywhere if you go on loving Agiatis. Yes, I advise you to go on. However, I am not a woman and I cannot be certain.’

  The first person she met after she had put her horse into the stable was Deinicha. She ran into her with: ‘Here I am again! Isn’t it lovely to be back! Where’s Agiatis?’ And then: ‘What’s the matter with you, Deinicha?’

  Deinicha said: ‘I’m going to be married tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh good, I’m back in time! To Philocharidas? But that’s what you want, isn’t it? Oh, Deinicha darling, tell me!’ They sat down on a bench with their arms round one another. Somehow it was the first time Philylla had ever been in the position of being kind to Deinicha, who had heaps of friends of her own; and she liked it.

  For a little Deinicha just cried, then she said: ‘It’s not about my marriage, Philylla, you little goose. But when this is all happening to me I think I see things very clearly. But I won’t tell you unless you see for yourself too. Philylla, I—I do like you!’

  ‘I like you, though you used to tease me when I was little.’

  ‘You were such a funny little strong thing, always playing games by yourself. And you used to think you could sing – now you don’t try. Besides, that was in the old days, a long time ago. I’m different too; aren’t I? I should have had a different sort of wedding in those days, with lots of new dresses and scents and jewels and sweets, and presents from all over the world. It would have taken hours and I should have been in the middle of it all. But now he’ll just come and snatch me away for a night and then back to the army, and so to me again, and I shall live in the hut on his lot, up in the hills, Philylla, and be thinking of him all day. And then sometimes I’ll go home or I’ll come back here, but I won’t be one of you any more; someone else will finish the pattern on my loom. I’m going to have my hair cut short, Philylla, as it used to be in the very oldest time, and wear a short white woollen frock. Sometimes I can’t believe that’s really me. I would have hated it so once! I loved fine bright things, thin muslins one could see through; things from Egypt and Cos and Syria. I do still. Only—I’ve turned round. I won’t be separated from life, the life of my State. And in a marriage the man’s more than the dress. I can see myself as I was marrying Philocharidas as he was, but I don’t see myself being happy.’

  ‘No,’ said Philylla, ‘he was rather silly.’

  Deinicha squeaked with laughter suddenly. ‘Silly! We all were. Even you were, sometimes! Philylla, the Queen’s going to be my brideswoman and cut my hair.’

  ‘Oh, you lucky! I think you’ll look pretty, Deinicha, with short fluffy hair. Philocharidas is a friend of Panteus now, isn’t he? I only wondered if Panteus would come with him to carry you off.’

  ‘And carry you off? Philylla, will the King really not be hurt?’

  ‘He spoke about it himself to my father.’

  ‘Does that prove it? Oh, Philylla, I’m that much older than you, I see that love isn’t always simple.’

  ‘I can see that, too, now. But this ought to be, because of Agiatis.’

  ‘Yes. Go and see her now. I’ll stay here for a little.’

  Philylla went on, just for a moment wondering why Deinicha had said that last, then puzzled about the King and Panteus, and resolved to find out how things really stood. She heard the children’s voices first and ran in to hug Gorgo, the dark, soft curly head, and be hugged herself with great violence by Nikolaos; she wondered if any man’s lips or arms could possibly be as nice as these cool lips, these strong round little arms against her neck. She swung them both round by their hands, and then asked him when he was going off to his class. ‘Next month,’ he said. ‘I will like being with Nikomedes. He’s been away such a long time!’

  She went on to find their mother. She came softly into the room. Agiatis seemed to be asleep. She lay along the couch with her knees crossed and one hand on her breast, the other at her side. Her face was very pale and in this tired stillness of hers every line showed at its full value, lines on her forehead and round her mouth and eyes, a queer crumple in one cheek. Her mouth was a little open. Philylla’s first brutal and startled thought was: she’s getting old, she isn’t beautiful any longer. And then, as she tiptoed nearer and saw the Queen’s lovely hair just as it always was, in contrast with this new face, she thought: but that’s not it! What can have happened while I was away? And then she whispered in a queer, sudden agony: ‘Oh, Agiatis! Oh, my darling!’

  It seemed to break the spell, for the Queen opened her eyes and saw her and sat up in one splendid swing of her body, feet clear to the ground, arms out to welcome this beloved. Immediately too her face altered; the lines weren’t plain any more, they were lost in smiling and bright eyes and the delight she had in seeing Philylla. ‘Little darling,’ she said, ‘little lamb!’ as Philylla jumped at her, knelt on the couch beside her, held on to her tight and fast and snuggled down against her, kissing her face and neck, pressing with her dear body close against the Queen’s.

  For a minute or two she only clung and kissed and sobbed. ‘What is it?’ said the Queen, patting her.

  ‘It was you!’ said Philylla. ‘Oh, my love, are you ill?’

  The Queen took her by the shoulders and held her still. ‘I think I am,’ she said. ‘But if I am, there’s nothing to be done, no sense in crying, and the King is not to know. Do you see?’

  Philylla nodded; then, urgently: ‘Where are you ill? What do you feel? Is it since I’ve been gone?’

  ‘I’ve had pains in my body,’ said the Queen. ‘Not much yet. They started some time ago. You only see the difference because you’ve been away. Oh, sweetheart, don’t be so unhappy. I expect I shall be all right again soon.’

  ‘Oh do you, do you truly, Agiatis?’

  ‘Yes, yes! And what would Sphaeros say if he saw you like this? I thought you were a good Stoic! Wouldn’t he say you were making it harder for me?’

  Philylla leant back against the Queen’s arm and looked at her. Agiatis dried her eyes, like a child’s, with a corner of the over-fold of her dress. She kissed her mouth lightly and ticklingly till she smiled. ‘I wish I knew when you were speaking truth to me!’ said Philylla, and laid a hand on the Queen’s heart, over her left breast, which was reassuringly firm and cool and gently moved by her breathing. ‘You’re too clever. Haven’t you told the King at all?’

  ‘No. This perhaps his greatest year, and I won’t spoil it. I’ve taken care he shouldn’t think anything. You mustn’t say a word to him—after all it may be only my own imagination!—or to Panteus because he can’t keep secrets from Kleomenes. Promise: both of them.’

  ‘Yes. But I haven’t seen Panteus for a long time, not to speak to.’

  ‘Well, you will. You may talk to Sphaeros—he’ll be good for you. I told him.’

  ‘Every one tells Sphaeros! Or he sees somehow. I suppose he just doesn’t think about himself and he doesn’t love anybody, so he can spend all his time watching the rest of the world.’

  ‘And he has no children. Oh, did you see Gorgo and Nikolaos?’

  ‘Yes. Oh, Agiatis—’

  The Queen laid a hand over her mouth. ‘Ssh! You are not to think of that or make me think of
it either! If it did happen they’d have you, and Kratesikleia and one another. They’re fonder of you than of anyone. Oh, Philylla, isn’t it lovely that you’re back in time for Deinicha’s wedding! I’ve seen so much of her since you’ve been away. I never liked her so well before.’

  ‘But you don’t like her as much as me, do you?’

  ‘You—silly—little—cabbage!’ Agiatis took her by the shoulders and shook her, between laughter and a little real anger, till Philylla, breathless and helpless, admitted she wasn’t really jealous. One of the other girls, Chrysa, came in with a letter for the Queen. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘the King will be back for a night tomorrow! Now we shall know what’s really happening and how long the League’s going to keep us waiting!’ She went out with Chrysa to see that the King’s things were all ready for him. He always brought back tunics and cloaks full of holes and filthy and left them at home to be washed and mended.

  Now Philylla knew why Deinicha had said she would wait in the same place. She went back there. Deinicha said: ‘So you’ve seen for yourself. What do you make of it, Philylla?’

  ‘I wish I’d never gone away!’

  ‘Much good you could have done. Some of the rest of us love her too, Philylla! Sometimes I’ve hoped it was just my worrying about her—and knowing I was going away—but it’s not. Well, anyway, I can leave her with you now. She’ll like that.’

  The next day about noon, Deinicha bathed in river water and put on the short white archaic tunic, only belted with a red cord and sewn with red half down the open side. She stepped out into the steeping sunlight of the main court of the King’s house. Philylla held her hair close to the roots and Chrysa held the ends. Agiatis cut it across as near as she could to the head with the very sharp edge of a bronze spear point, as Lycurgos himself had said that a Spartan maiden’s hair should be cut at marriage. It took a little time to do with that clumsy shearing; Agiatis was intent, and the two girls kept their hands very still. And suddenly it seemed to Philylla that perhaps it would not be the Queen who would cut her own hair at her wedding, and at the possibility of that terrible dark blank in her bright picture she shook a little and gripped the hair harder, so that Deinicha cried to her to keep steady. It was an uneven, odd cutting; the hair showed in curious layers, light and darker, cocked up at the nape of her neck; Deinicha patted it curiously and shakenly and cried rather. Agiatis tied up her shorn plaits with coloured ribbon and a few corn ears, and together the two of them laid it and Deinicha’s distaff on the altar in the King’s house.

  They all stayed in the courtyard, playing games and waiting. They played violent, running games, touch-wood and a kind of nuts-in-May, where they pulled one another across a line, and a ball game where they threw a rag-wrapped wooden ball so that it ran along the tiled roof that sloped inwards at all four sides, and fell off into the other party’s goal. Nikolaos came and played too, and Agiatis played sometimes, and Deinicha played hardest of all, bounding about and shouting, and her short wild hair tossed without the accustomed weight of its coils to pull it smooth.

  Then came the hammering at the door that they were waiting for. They checked and looked at one another over their shoulders, but, ‘One more game!’ cried Deinicha, wildly jumping at a friend for touch-last. Again they started off, shouting each other’s names, darting and dodging, trying not to hear the door clang open. Philylla, scudding across, saw Panteus in armour, for a moment veered his way, then hesitated and meant to run back. But he leapt in front of her and caught her. ‘Look!’ he said, ‘it’s pretty.’ She turned and stood beside him and saw young Philocharidas go at a run straight at his bride, sweeping away the other girls. She stood straight, facing him. Only when he picked her up she flung out an arm over his shoulder, gripping at his neck, hid her face against him, and seemed to let go to what was coming. He carried her off out of the King’s house, and that was another Spartan marriage.

  Most of his friends followed him, shouting, only one or two of the older ones stayed, and Panteus. Philylla felt his arm round her and looked sideways and up at him. He was not looking down at her though; it was a careless, friendly arm. With a very, very little laughter bubbling in her throat, she dared to lean back the tiniest bit against it. Suddenly and alarmingly she smelt the sweat in his armpit, a clean, savage, startling smell. She jumped away from it before she knew what she was doing. Panteus looked at her now. ‘Was Deinicha a great friend of yours?’ he said.

  ‘I think so,’ she answered.

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘She’s not like Agiatis. She’s just—oh well, yes, a friend. I’ve liked her much more lately than I did. Philocharidas looked splendid! Is he a good soldier?’

  ‘Not so bad.’ He was looking towards the door, frowning a little with his light, level eyebrows. The girls were going out of the courtyard and the hot sun, back to their own part of the house. Agiatis sat on the edge of the step and Nikolaos was sitting on her knee, fingering her ear-rings and whispering something very secret to her. ‘I’m going to wait for the King,’ Panteus said. ‘He won’t be long now.’

  ‘Yes, of course—the King.’ She was annoyed with herself for having leant against his arm, even if he hadn’t noticed it, the stupid! ‘Well, I’m going in.’

  ‘Don’t go, Philylla!’ He looked at her now as if he too were a little hurt. ‘Come and sit down and talk to me; tell me what your father says about us all. Don’t go till Agiatis does. Did you knock against my armour just now?’

  ‘Yes, I bumped my nose.’ But she came and sat beside him.

  ‘I thought you did.’ He took off his breastplate, ducking out of it expertly. He had a tunic of red linen that had washed very soft and was loose between the threads where the shoulder brooches went. Good linen. She somehow thought he must like the feeling of stuffs, their special qualities, wool or linen or leather or whatever it might be. He laid the breastplate down quietly on the step beside him and turned round to her. ‘Silly to bump your nose, wasn’t it,’ he said, and kissed it, taking her face between his hands and tilting it up.

  ‘Panteus,’ she said, ‘what are you doing!’ And she put up her hands quickly to pull his away from her hot cheeks. And then, as she gripped his wrists, thought, well, why not? Let him be. She would have dropped her own hands as a sign of consent, only they liked feeling his wrists against their palms, bones at the sides and narrow strong sinews underneath her thumbs, and little hairs on the skin, light, rather curly hairs, she knew they were. How had she looked at them so well before? So they stayed still like that and she said nothing more but looked at him and he at her. They both began smiling and it seemed to her that she had never seen anything so friendly as his face looked then. He dropped his hands on to her knee, and she laid hers in them, trusting him. For some time they sat like this. She wanted desperately to ask him what he had meant—exactly—and what was going to happen next; she felt it was unfair that he should know and not she. Yet she managed not to speak, not to ask any questions, it was so sweet as it was. She looked at him all the time, sometimes at his face and the place on his temple, above his ear, where his hair was so curly, and she thought that some day she would kiss him just there; and sometimes at his hands, at his fingers that had closed softly about hers, as though she were a flower.

  Panteus looked at her too, mostly at those hands and sometimes at her feet, her straight little toes, and a place where the sandal strap had shifted a tiny bit to one side and showed a small strip of whiter, less sunburnt skin. He did not know she was full of questions. He had no answers for her. He was content with the present, a little dazed with it. He did not know what was to happen next any more than she did, less than she did perhaps. He knew himself towards Kleomenes, but he did not know himself towards Philylla, or for that matter towards any woman except his own mother, who had been dead for some years, and Agiatis, who was a part of Kleomenes, mother of the children, a help and comfort in trouble, the best of counsellors, the kindest part of life. This was apparently something differen
t, and in its own way delightful. He thought of her still very much as though she were a boy, although he had known now for a year that the King and Queen meant them to marry one another and have children for the New Times. So they sat side by side for quite a long while, and then he suddenly stretched out his arms and laughed and thought to himself that he was in love with a girl and this was what Kleomenes wanted him to be, and then he stooped and began taking off his greaves.

  ‘Let me!’ said Philylla and tugged at the strap behind his ankle and got it undone. The greaves were gilt on the outside, which marked the wearer as one of the King’s Mess, and they were edged with a leaf pattern in low relief. Suddenly she said: ‘You ought to let Berris Der make you some with a better design on them. I’m sure he would. Shall I ask him?’

  ‘If you like,’ said Panteus, ‘and if you think he will.’ He put them down beside his breastplate.

  ‘Do you like his things?’

  ‘Oh yes, quite fairly. He’s a good metal-worker, but he thinks too much about details. Life’s not long enough for that—nowadays. Philylla, I think the King will have news!’

  Agiatis came over to them, and of course Nikolaos wanted to try on Panteus’ armour. All three children much loved him, and thought he was the funniest man in the world, because he played with them seriously and inventively. Nikomedes was old enough to admire him as a soldier and want to grow up like that himself. Agiatis said nothing about the kiss, but herself kissed Philylla very hard, while the other two played and fought with one another. She looked so well and gay again that Philylla felt quite reassured. They went through to the room with the swing where there was a tall jar of martagons, and Philylla fetched Gorgo so that she could play too. Gorgo didn’t like swinging by herself, she always tumbled off sooner or later, so Philylla got into the swing herself with Gorgo on her lap, and Panteus swung them both. She felt the give and push of his hands against her every time she swung back. Gorgo wanted to go on for ever.