The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  Then, in about an hour, Kleomenes came. Panteus left them, went straight and simply to the King, and stayed beside him. Philylla took the children out and ran back herself for the news. She saw at once that Kleomenes was angry; when Panteus touched him he jumped and cursed him. He took a letter out of his belt and handed it to Agiatis. ‘That’s from Aratos, or just as good’ he said.

  ‘It’s not signed by him,’ she said, smoothing it and looking.

  But the King scowled and grunted and sat down on a bench and began reading the first book roll he laid his hands on.

  The other two looked at the letter over Agiatis’ shoulders. ‘It seems to be mostly about me,’ she said; then, as she read on, ‘and you, Panteus.’

  Philylla stamped and choked. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘oh!’ and almost felt her hands on the man’s throat, killing him herself. Panteus rubbed his forearm over his mouth, as though to get rid of some nasty taste, then took her hand and squeezed it.

  Agiatis rolled up the letter again before she said anything; she was rather pink, but quite smiling and calm. ‘Well, my dear, we Spartan women are used by now to the joke about our leading our men by the noses. That’s nothing new. And as to the other things about you and me, just forget them. They get said about women always. And this about Panteus is the old story too. We make a different pattern of life here. Don’t be angry.’

  Kleomenes looked up, suddenly dropping his book roll as if it had been a spider. ‘Sphaeros seems to be writing more and more stupidly. He’s getting old. Like the rest of us! What, the letter? Of course I don’t care! Besides, I’ve written back as good.’

  ‘Oh!’ she said, and looked away from him. ‘I’m sorry.’ And Philylla, half-way to clapping her hands, checked herself, puzzled, trying to understand. Then the Queen looked up again and smiled and went over to Kleomenes and kissed him. ‘Well, I’m not a man! Now, what’s the real news?’

  He laughed and stood up. His anger was quite gone, his face had stopped twitching, his eyebrows were still. He stretched himself and said: ‘The real news is that the Achaeans are meeting in Argos. They’ve written to me asking me to come over in four days and meet them. Is that good enough for you?’

  The three looked at one another. Panteus said very gladly: ‘That means we’ve won.’

  Agiatis said: ‘This will put right the time before! The Gods have given you a second chance, my husband.’

  He said: ‘Yes, I think I shall get the command of the League this time. Oh, I shall be very happy to break Aratos.’

  ‘And then,’ said Philylla, ‘you’ll conquer the whole world!’

  Kleomenes said quickly, going up to her and touching her as though she were something lucky: ‘I take it from you, Philylla! I will.’ Then he said: ‘I couldn’t rest up in Tegea those four days, so I rode down here, but I must be off again tomorrow early, and you too, Panteus. Some of the Mess are down here. They’ll want supper.’

  After this he seemed suddenly tired, and his eyes were a little bloodshot. He let Agiatis bring him over to the couch and arrange the cushions, though he tossed them about afterwards, burrowing into them with his forehead. He said: ‘I’ve got a headache. Sing, Panteus.’

  Panteus stood and sang, and the King listened with his eyes shut. He sang whole stories of the lives and loves of heroes, to old tunes or tunes he made up himself. Sometimes he walked about the room and sometimes he stood by the King and stroked his head, drawing the pain up out of Kleomenes into his own fingers. At least Philylla thought so. She stayed and watched him and thought she had never heard anything so lovely and envied him for that singing voice as much as she envied him for being a soldier, and loved it and caressed it in her mind with praise. Then she turned round and saw Agiatis was not there, and tiptoed out guiltily, hoping Panteus had not noticed her—hoping he had.

  Hippitas and Therykion came in. The King looked up, twitching his eyebrows and the skin of his forehead; he was cured. ‘How long have you been singing, Panteus?’ he asked.

  ‘Not long,’ said Panteus and smiled, but it was dusk now. His cousin Hippitas could see that he was tired, that he had been at work. He went over to Therykion, whom he had not seen for a few days, and took his hand. ‘How are things with you?’

  Before Therykion could answer, the King did for him: ‘As cheerful as ever! I tell you, Panteus, when that letter came, the first thing Therykion did was to say it was Macedon’s chance as well as mine!’

  ‘So it is!’ said Therykion fiercely; ‘and someone has to say it!’

  ‘I’ve been wondering about Macedonia too, while I was singing,’ said Panteus.

  ‘Yes,’ said the King, ‘but you didn’t say it first thing! You three gave me good omens. I don’t know about Macedonia. I don’t think myself that Aratos can be very serious, he’s trying to frighten me with this business of being hand in glove with Antigonos—making sacrifices for him! I doubt if Antigonos will move—it’s no use glaring at me, Therykion, I must have my own opinion as well as you. Perhaps I’m wrong. But he’s a sick man, coughing his life out now, and, after all, only a Macedonian. I think’—and he looked at Panteus—‘I think Sparta could do anything now!’

  Chapter Three

  BERRIS DER AND ERIF Der sat in two crooks of an old fig tree, a little above the ground. The figs were not ripe yet, but there was shade inside the tree and a pleasant springiness to the grey boughs. Still more, it was a house. They were together in it, Berris and Erif; they could talk in their own tongue and no one would hear. He wore Greek clothes and moved in them easily; his hands could twitch the folds of a cloak right in a moment. Only his belt-clasp and the hilt and sheath of his dagger were his own work; his shoulder brooches were Greek gold and had been given him by King Kleomenes after the battle at Hekatombaeon. She wore a summer shirt, white linen much embroidered, with loose sleeves gathered at the wrist; no coat, but a belt. She was barefoot just now, but she usually put on soft boots to go about in. Her hair was plaited in a single big plait which kept the sun off the back of her neck, and she had a broad felt hat with ribbons to tie under her chin; but this was hung up on a branch beside her.

  They spoke with long silences between each sentence. Nothing that was said seemed to be much use. She had come straight to Sphaeros when she landed, hoping he would help, having made up her mind during the voyage that he would. But she found him so much occupied with his friends here and their problems, that he could not turn his mind at all to hers. Besides it was so un-Greek a thing, and so horrible, that had happened, and he had been so long in Greece now, forgetting her barbarian world and the kind of realities that might have to be faced there, that he could not understand and so could not begin to help. Who would?

  Berris had been shocked, but not surprised. As she told him, month by month, what had been happening in Marob, he saw it all in his mind. It was not, of course, in the least accurate in detail; he did not group his people right, inevitably he gave Tarrik the expression he had when looking at him and not what he had when looking at Erif; he made his father too young, he made the picture in his head of the water-ways beyond Yellow Bull’s house quite different, because the ones he had himself seen were to him the only real ones; but still it was all vivid enough, and he breathed quick with excitement while he listened. He did not doubt that his sister had broken the cycle of the rite, the thing that was to Marob as a man and woman’s cycle of desire and begetting and calm and birth were to them, each naturally arising from each. Erif Der had put in something new and it must be met with something that sprang from it. She had put in death. Must it now stay there always, and always be fulfilled as part of the cycle, or could there be such a new birth after it that the thing would cancel out?

  She spoke of what Tarrik had said—very dubiously, for she was not sure herself of exactly what he meant—about this dissatisfaction of his, how he wanted more than just the life of Marob. But Berris understood at once. ‘That’s why I must make things,’ he said; ‘that is me: my own only life, not part of Marob o
r Hellas or anywhere, not even part of Sphaeros’ way of Nature; but itself, to live after me when I am dead. Tarrik hasn’t got that.’

  ‘Marob is his work. Marob will go on living through him, bought by his life.’

  ‘But that’s too big. We want some one little immortality of our own, he and I. Don’t you, Erif?’

  She slid her hands along the crumpled, twigless fig branches; at last said: ‘A little, small immortality. A baby! Something as easily hurt as that. Before the child was born I thought he would be that. Then I found he was his own and nothing to do with me. When you have finished making a stone woman or a golden beast, Berris, don’t they come alive on their own and run away from you?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘I suppose that’s why I don’t care when they’re done if I sell them and never see them again. I don’t care who I work for or what they do with my stuff, so long as it’s good. It is good just now, Erif! Don’t laugh at me. Though I’m not doing as much as I should—not big things. It has this to it over a child: the child knows he will die and sooner or later needs his own immortality, and makes his own image again, another child; and so on. Each time he gets further away from you. But my things stay.’

  ‘I wish Tarrik could make something if it is all that help to the maker!’

  ‘Tarrik is not a good enough craftsman; he is too lazy. Have the Red Riders been back at all, Erif?’

  ‘No. What was it you said about not doing as much work as you should? Why not?

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Philylla.’

  ‘Ah! So you’re where you were. Just where you were, Berris? Haven’t you spoken to her? She’s old enough.’

  ‘I couldn’t ever marry her, Erif. She’s a Spartiate and I’m a barbarian. I daren’t speak. I should lose what I have.’

  ‘What have you?’

  ‘Part of her mind.’

  ‘Not much for a man to say thank you for! Tarrik wouldn’t. But you’re more like a woman, Berris. Why don’t you try? There’s plenty of Greek blood in Marob, one way and another. There were Greeks there once; Tarrik says so. For all you know, you and I may be a little Greek. No use? Well, then, Berris, stop it.’

  ‘How, my dear?’ He looked across the tree at her and laughed. ‘But I wouldn’t, if you did know how.’

  ‘Well, if you think she’s worth it—! But why should she despise you, Berris? You’re as good as she is and I’m a queen. I’ve got jewels with me, Berris, sewn up in little bags. No one in Sparta has such things, not now anyway!’

  ‘She doesn’t despise me. She’s simply different. You won’t be able to sell your jewels here, Erif, nor in any of the states that follow Kleomenes. But you shall be a guest as long as you are in Sparta, the guest of the Queen most likely.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, curling and spreading her toes against a branch in a tiny quivering patch of sunshine that had come through the leaves, ‘I won’t stay here long if I can get no help. I get terribly lonely, Berris, even with you. Whenever I see a child I laugh first and then I’m miserable because of Klint, and when I see a man and woman together they ought to be Tarrik and me. I hate sleeping by myself.’

  ‘You could easily get someone to sleep with,’ said Berris, suddenly being a brother.

  A few days later the news from Argos came to Sparta. It was Eukleidas who brought it to the Queen. He usually stayed in Sparta itself while Kleomenes was with the army, unless he was wanted to do anything else. He was utterly devoted to his brother and had been since they were boys; he believed everything he was told, and when Kleomenes was kind to him, as he mostly was, felt repaid for anything. He had not married, and, though he would not admit it to his brother, Agiatis knew that it was because he did not wish to complicate the succession yet. If, finally, Kleomenes should decide that he wanted a child of his brother’s as the next second king, then Eukleidas would marry and make a nephew for Kleomenes—younger than Nikomedes—twelve or fifteen years younger. That would not matter; it was just as well for the kings to overlap in age. So far, though, he had not decided, and Eukleidas was at least reasonably content with a boy-love; a nice, gentle, well-bred creature who thought him perfect.

  He came in hurriedly and very much distressed. ‘Agiatis!’ he said, ‘it’s all gone wrong. They won’t have him!’

  But it was Kratesikleia who flinched and cried: ‘My son!’ Agiatis got up and began moving about the room, altering the position of a bench here and a vase there; she could listen more calmly so.

  ‘Aratos got round them again with that tongue of his,’ said Eukleidas. ‘Oh, how I could kill him myself! He made them say that Kleomenes might only come into Argos quite alone without the army. That means he had made them change their minds completely. It was a mockery of their first letter! Kleomenes refused. He has declared war on the League again at Aegium and called up the year-classes. Oh, I hope he will send for me. I want to be fighting again!’

  He was almost crying. Kratesikleia patted him on the back. ‘This isn’t so bad it mightn’t be worse. If he can’t win by fair words he’ll win by force. You’ll see your brother leading the League yet.’

  ‘It’s all giving time to Antigonos,’ said Eukleidas.

  ‘Oh,’ said Kratesikleia, ‘there’s not much to that, surely?’

  ‘Kleomenes isn’t afraid,’ said Eukleidas. ‘I think, in a way, he’d like to see the whole world against him. But I am and so are some of the others. It’s the numbers and the money. He has both; enough gold to buy us up twenty times over! We’ve just not enough of either.’

  ‘What! You’ve all Sparta.’

  ‘I know, mother. And we have Kleomenes, who’s more than all. I’m sending off a messenger to him in an hour. If you two have any letters to add, I’ll put them in with mine. Shall I send across?’

  ‘No,’ said Kratesikleia. ‘That Philylla girl of yours can take them, can’t she, Agiatis, my love? Then she’ll be able to pretend she’s carrying despatches!’ Kratesikleia laughed to herself and sat down to write a gay, witty letter to her eldest son, and a less gay one to Megistonous, her husband.

  Agiatis had, of course, said that she would be very glad to have the Queen of Marob as guest again; so Erif came in her best clothes, and at once began playing with Gorgo. She told Agiatis about her baby, but she did not tell her exactly what else had happened, because she had seen from Sphaeros how horrible it was to a Greek mind, and she wanted to be liked by Agiatis; but she said that she had done something which had made her unfit for a time to carry on the rites of Marob. Agiatis thought this meant that she needed some ritual cleansing which could perhaps be given by some other queen, as it was between kings and kings’ sons in the Hellas of very old times. But she found that was not it. Erif Der was hunting for a bigger purification. Agiatis did not know much about these things herself, but she remembered that her maids of honour used to be always whispering about their gods and godlings before the revolution, so she sent for Deinicha and one or two others of the older ones who were married.

  Deinicha herself had rather forgotten it all now, but the others still found it their stay and comfort, and as they spoke Deinicha remembered too, and it was very queer for her. They told of gods in Syria and Egypt and Kyrene, mother goddesses, most of all Isis, the women’s goddess, the pure mother, the gentle one who still kept in her heart the pain of earth, who would stand for ever between women and chaos, guide their souls with her hands. One of them had a little coloured image of Isis, the dear and kind one whose crown had not made her unapproachable, with the child on her knees. Not a fierce maiden like Artemis or Athene, but one of the tamed and hurt, one of the group of whisperers, of women-together. Erif Der cried when she held the image in her hands, because she thought of her own baby and how very much she wanted to have him sitting on her lap and leaning back against her breasts; but she did not think this goddess would understand about Marob.

  One of them spoke then, guardedly, about other rites, in Hellas itself, rites of resurrection, of sowing in darkness and rais
ing in light, of passing through a gate and being reborn. Erif Der wanted to know more, for it seemed to her that this was somehow like the rites of the corn. But the women might not tell her much, for she was not initiated, and for the most part the initiates might only be Hellenes. If Erif Der could somehow get herself the citizenship of some city, not Sparta of course, but some little, poor city, where citizenship could be bought—? Was it possible for a woman? They did not know.

  She and Philylla found it easy to make friends. Erif Der wanted to know more about this creature whom her brother had thought it so well worth while to love even with the pain it was to him, and Philylla was very friendly, first because Sphaeros had asked her to, and then because she did not want to be unkind to Berris, and hoped the sister would be able to show how she could reasonably be kind. And both of them remembered two years before, and magic, and the borrowed horse. Berris himself had gone back to the army when Themisteas was recalled. They were somewhere up in the north, invading Achaea.

  All these months were terrible for Aratos. Time after time he had just saved his League. It was incredibly grim for him to think it might go over to Kleomenes and his ideas, how easily his decent, well-ordered cities might suddenly go blind to their own good and then be torn to pieces by the Spartan—oh, worse than Kleomenes himself those ideas of his rooting and spreading in the unwise minds of the common people who could not tell good from bad! One day he might find that he could not talk them over; they would give him the slip, these assemblies, like the female, fickle things they were, and then it would be over with civilisation and the good, the reasonable things of educated life. Anything was better than that. Antigonos was better than that. Macedonia, from whose power he himself had freed Corinth, his first deed as a young man. He had come down from the citadel and told the citizens, oh tired, and oh happy! That was a long time ago.