When harvest came, which was earlier in the year here, Erif Der felt a queer excitement stirring in her; this was the same as her own corn, but dryer and browner, shorter in the straw and seldom as heavy in the ear. ‘Do you do nothing for thanks, nothing to make it better another year?’ she asked.
Philylla said slowly: ‘We don’t ourselves. But the ones who are nearest the corn do. It has been in the care of the helots ever since the beginning. That, I suppose, is the power they have; if one thinks it is really anything. It is their feast and we never interfere; that might be unlucky: again if one thinks it is really anything. I am not sure what they do, but I believe there is something now, and something at sowing time.’
Erif said: ‘It is very odd that you do nothing yourselves.’ Then: ‘May I join the feast? I will not hurt your corn.’
‘I will think about it,’ Philylla said.
The next day she came in late, riding through the full sun, a brown, slender, serious creature. ‘I have asked Neareta,’ she said, ‘and she tells me you may come to the harvest feast, but you must wear the right sort of clothes. I don’t quite know what that means. And, Erif—most of them are slaves still, but I think they will not be soon. Forget you are a queen, because they are my friends.’
Erif Der understood that. She looked at her dresses, the Marob ones, not the new Greek ones that she was learning to wear in the hot weather. At last she chose one that was yellow and red, for these are likely to be lucky colours for the corn all over the world; the coat was embroidered with running horses in threes, and on the back was the flax-tailed cross from the market-place of Marob. She had seen crosses like that, or with hooks instead of flax-tails on the four arms, chalked up sometimes on rocks or old trees. It was hot, but she wore nothing under the dress. She also put on two necklaces, one of amber and the other of coral. Then she and Philylla rode to Phoebis’ farm. At the gate Philylla drew back. ’I won’t come in,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t like it. Not even in the New Times! I’ll come back for you tomorrow, Erif. Till then, trust Neareta. She knows you are a guest of the King. I hope—I hope nothing will happen.’ She kissed Erif and held on to her for a moment as if she were afraid of what might be waiting for her in there. Those two were very fond of one another now.
Erif Der went across the courtyard between the sun-dried dung-heaps. Neareta met her at the farm-door, her arms stretched across it, barring it. She looked the Spring Queen up and down without speaking. Erif turned slowly round so that her dress should be fully seen. Finally Neareta nodded, went up to Erif, undid her plaits and shook them out, then said: ‘Come in and welcome!’ and stepped back from the doorway. Inside the farm, Erif felt her hands taken by other hands, her hair and dress being fingered. For a minute or two her Greek left her; she could only smile and gesture and in return touch them or their dresses. She had seen nothing like it since she came to Greece. The women were all wearing dresses shaped to the waist and scalloped at the bottom, in all sorts of bright colours, but mostly red and yellow and black with great square patterns all over them, and their hair was loose. She did not see any men yet.
Neareta was head of the feast and she wore a very high, pointed red cap, higher and worn more forward than those of Marob, with one white and yellow tulip-shaped flower made of linen stiffened with wire, on the top of it. She showed Erif the farm, very proudly: her wooden beds full of fresh hay with woven rugs over it, her chest of linen, most of all the things Phoebis had brought her back from the wars one time or another, an embroidered Syrian wall-hanging, a silver lamp, a pair of scarlet leather shoes with gold beads on them, a fine bronze kettle, two looking glasses, one with an ivory back, the other engraved with a plump Aphrodite, several vases, and his second-best suit of armour which he’d had at the beginning of the war. Erif admired everything and came back into the main room; nothing was happening yet. She wondered which were slave and which were free. They were very mixed as to looks, as though the two races did not in practice keep apart very much. In one corner of the room, on a painted shelf, there were some clay images, which Erif took to be gods, a woman holding something in her hand, a man with a mask, a garlanded woman. They were rough things, turned out of a mould by the dozen and coloured with reds and blues that went on anywhere without much rhyme or reason. Erif Der did not like to look at them very long or directly, and she could not recognise them as any gods she had heard of.
‘We go out first and meet the men and the corn,’ Neareta said to her, ‘and dance: you will see how. And then back here for the feast. After that, lady, you may do as you like.’
She looked away from Erif, regarding her big, work-lined hands. Erif said quickly: ‘May I be one of you in everything?’
‘You will not have to,’ said Neareta. ‘You are a stranger.’
‘Is it a sacrifice?’
‘There is a sacrifice,’ Neareta admitted. And then: ‘There was one this morning as well, but that was for the men alone. My Phoebis gets leave for this always, but he will not let me ask for the boys. They are with their class. But there are enough men, for most of those who are not free are left for the reaping.’
Erif Der said: ‘Shall I do some magic for you?’ It was months now since she had done any, but she had suddenly felt that here she could and must.
‘Yes!’ said Neareta. ‘What will you want for it? Is it a blood magic?’
‘No, no,’ said Erif. ‘Only a little magic that I can do by myself.’ She made the women all sit on the floor and herself stood in the middle and made a flower grow for them, not a very good flower, for it disappeared several times, but still they loved it; and she cut off the hair of one of them and then made it long again; and at last she made the whole room turn red for a moment as though they were in the light of a bonfire.
The women were delighted and pressed up all round to touch her as much as possible. At first the unaccustomed smell of them was alarming and rather unpleasant, but soon Erif got used to it and enjoyed the solidarity and permanence of it, the smell of earth behind all. Then Neareta called them together and most of them left the farm, though some stayed and appeared to have business there. They went towards the cornfields, the older ones in the narrow, deep-trodden path, but most overflowing into the fields and rough land at both sides. Erif went between two helot women who held each of her hands; sometimes they walked and sometimes they went bounding along and shouting. Then she went bounding with them. After a time they began to hear long shaking yells that came towards them from the far side of the ridge, and then on the crest they met the men with Phoebis at their head carrying the corn-sheaf on a pole. The men were mostly in their ordinary clothes, but with tags of stuff and goatskins swinging about them to make them look gayer. Only five of them, all youngish, were differently dressed; one as a ridiculous soldier in armour of heavily starched and painted linen and a helmet with an enormous black plume, that would only just stay on; another in a white tunic with one garland of roses and myrtle slung across it and a second on his head; another with his head through the middle of a goat-skin that was trimmed all round its edges with scarlet knots; the fourth made up as an old grandmother with shawl and limp and sheep’s wool hair; and the fifth, a quite beardless boy with merry, sloe-black eyes, in a yellow tow wig of short curls and a short white woman’s tunic. They all had long sticks of stripped hazel.
The women raced and leapt round among the men, every now and then bounding up to one of the dressed-up ones, especially the man in the goat-skin, and pinching him or pulling his hair. In return the men would swipe at them with the hazel sticks and often caught one before she got away. But Erif Der, when she understood the game, was much too quick for them. So, in about half an hour, they came to the farm. Here they did a play in front of the door, the actors talking hard all the time, saying whatever came into their heads.
First of all there was a sham fight between the soldier and the garlanded bridegroom with sticks; holes were poked in the armour and there was a good deal of joking about Kleomenes and Ar
atos, though much of it was in dialect that Erif found it hard to follow. Finally the soldier was killed and then walked off to join the spectators, and the bridegroom put on his helmet and began chasing the bride, who filed and giggled, holding up her already short tunic a good deal higher than was at all seemly, among the audience. Some of them tried to trip her, others to trip the bridegroom, and whenever his helmet came off, which it usually did, he had to stop and put it on again. At last, however, she was sufficiently well tripped to allow him to catch her and carry her off, kicking, on to a heap of corn which had meanwhile been piled in front of the house door. It struck Erif, even though she only understood half what was being said, that it was all a mockery of Spartan ways and customs, soldiers and brides, and it seemed to her that Phoebis, standing in front with his arm round Neareta, looked rather uncomfortable. The marriage-bed scene was extremely funny and prolonged, with much virginal coyness by the bride, and every one was shrieking with laughter. When it came to an end there was an equally funny lying-in scene with the old woman, who finally collected a rag baby and put it into a basket, where already the corn-sheaf had been laid, and rocked it vigorously. This basket rather startled Erif; it was so exactly like the one that was always used at midsummer in Marob. Then there was a dance to flutes by all the actors, criss-crossing and holding hands with the basket in the middle. In the end figure, the four who had already acted ran round the basket holding bunches of corn, while the fifth, the one in the goat-skin, got into the basket. Then the whole thing began again. For the goat-skinned one jumped out of the basket and fought and killed the bridegroom, then threw off the goat-skin, put on the helmet, and chased the bride. Meanwhile the first man, who had been looking on, picked up the goat-skin, and became the next son and successor. The bride had the most strenuous time, but at any rate she could sit on the corn heap during the fight, while she made intimate remarks about the fighters, and anyhow she was the youngest.
Neareta touched Erif Der on the arm and said: ‘Come in when you’re tired of this. The children will play it for hours.’ So after a little she did go in. The main room of the house looked quite different. There were two rods set up in the middle, one with a tulip like the one Neareta wore, and the other with two flat ears coming out at each side near the top. The clay gods on the shelf, she suddenly noticed, had been turned round with their backs to the room. The sacrifice had been made and lay limp and bleeding below the rods, a black goat. Apparently Phoebis had done it, as his hands were bloody. He and Neareta and the other older ones were praying, using some form of words which Erif could not in the least understand. She doubted if they could either, to judge by their faces. When it was over she asked Neareta, nodding her head towards the rods: ‘What do you call all this?’ Neareta said: ‘We call it a Jix, but I cannot tell you what that means.’
The next thing was that food was brought out to the actors and others, and every one sat on the ground and ate and drank. There seemed to be a whole series of tastes and smells here that Erif had simply never met before; some she liked, some not. The sun dropped into a hot and hazy reddish-gold evening that seemed as if it might have been made of the dust of cutting through dry straw and trampling on dry fields. The younger men were mostly a little drunk, particularly the actors. They pulled the girls about and sang rather well. Neareta beckoned to Erif Der and said low: ‘You need not join in the next thing, as you are a stranger and a queen.’
‘What is the next thing?’
‘After work, the feast. After the feast, the marriage-bed. It makes the corn grow next year.’
‘So you do that now instead of at the sowing?’
‘It would be wicked to do it at the sowing!’ said Neareta, startled. ‘That would be all wrong. It must be now, because now the corn is cut and killed, so that the new corn-year must be started.’
‘I see,’ said the Spring Queen of Marob. She stayed silent for a minute, wondering whether she would use her privilege as a stranger to keep out of it. The first thing that she thought was that she was a guest in Sparta, and if she could repay them at all by helping them with this corn-year, she should. And the second thing she thought was that Tarrik was getting plenty of Spring Queens all this time! She said: ‘I will stay and help you, Neareta. You know I have power. I will give you some for your corn next year.’
Neareta kissed her and said: ‘You will not want anything to happen. I will show you where the spring is behind the house. It is very cold water and I do not think it ever fails on this night.’
The moon swung up, a great silver thing that put out all the stars around him. But inside the farm it was dark and they lighted no lamps. Couple after couple went in, singing or silent. Neareta and Phoebis went in, and others whom she knew or guessed to be man and wife. But these mostly came out again after a short time, while the others seemed to stay, or else the women would come out alone. Erif had purposely sat down in the black shade of a thick bush; the deep yellow and red of her dress had gone dark with the night and she wanted not to be seen for a time.
Then the sweat-soaked linen began to be cold against her. She moved out, cautiously, towards the farm. Most people were already in couples; she was suddenly terribly afraid that her luck was so far gone that even here in Greece she could not be half a couple! Then someone pulled her hair softly from behind and slid a hand over her shoulder and down under her coat. She turned with immense relief into a man’s arms. He squeezed her up to him two or three times, as if to see whether she would do. She clung to him answeringly with arm and legs, feeling all the essential parts of him through her dress and loose coat; she had not realised how much she had wanted a man all these weeks of summer.
She did not look at his face in the moonlight, only saw that he was young enough and seemed reasonably clean. They went into the farm, she leaning and dragging for the violent pleasure of being half carried. The moonlight came through the window in a small square that lighted half-way up the rods of worship. There were couples all over the floor, but he seemed to know how to avoid them. He picked her up and swung her down, rough and quick and impersonal. She did not for a moment let go the touch of his body. So that’s all right, she thought, relaxing all over from tension into pleasure, and noticed another small square of moon-luminous night sky above the chimney-hole in the middle, and, putting out her hand, suddenly touched the still, naked flesh of a second couple in the same bed. As night went on the couples got rather discontinuous. Erif Der made half of several. She was thinking that in this rite of the helots there was a constant stream of death and life; the dead corn was never reborn, but the new took its place. Perhaps this was reasonable.
Later on in the night, sleepy and almost over-satisfied, she came out to the cold spring, and afterwards went to sleep on the hillside rolled up in one of the woven rugs which she had thoughtfully brought with her out of the house. She did not wake in the morning until the sun was right on her eyes. But she had time to wash her face and comb her hair at any rate before Philylla came to ride back with her to Sparta. She said good-bye to Neareta with every good wish for next year’s corn, and Neareta blessed her and kissed her hand. Philylla was glad, for she thought the Queen of Marob must have been kind and friendly with her under-folk. As soon as it was level enough Erif set her horse to cantering. It was pleasant to be, after all, a barbarian!
It was Berris Der who brought them, a week or two later, the news of Argos. Kleomenes had managed to stir up Sicyon and Corinth so much that half the Achaean army went to keep an eye on him. The other half were watching and taking part in the Nemean Games at Argos, thinking it safe enough with Kleomenes a long march away and apparently busy with other towns. However, he got there at night, and with the help of Aristomachos and the rest of his party inside the walls, took the highest quarter of the town, which commanded all the rest, and there he was in the morning when it was time to go on with the Games. This was more than any Spartan king or army had ever done before; even the most discontented at home had to admit that. And again half
of his men came back to Sparta, very gay and full of what they had done.
Erif told Berris of how she had helped with the helot corn rites, including the last few hours of it. ‘How many did you say?’ said Berris, rather badly shocked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Erif, ‘nor if they were slave or free.’
‘But what good was it?’ said Berris. ‘Has it helped you to find your reality and get cleansed?’
‘No,’ said Erif, ‘not a bit. But it was fun! And now, even if I am away for a very long time, I will not much mind thinking about Tarrik and his Spring Queens. Didn’t you find any girls in Argos, Berris?’
‘I didn’t,’ he said sharply. And then: ‘But supposing Philylla comes to hear of this?’
‘She won’t. She wouldn’t want to know, and Phoebis and Neareta won’t tell.’
Because of this, perhaps, Berris took special care to be gentle with Philylla, to talk only of art and philosophy and politics, to avoid, if possible, so much as touching her hand. And Philylla thought it was all much easier; either Sphaeros had been wrong or she herself had managed to put it right. She asked him how he thought Agiatis was. It was so hard to tell when one saw her every day. He was very much shocked to hear that the Queen was ill at all. Yes, perhaps she was rather pale, and perhaps rather thinner. But obviously he thought far more of how it was affecting Philylla herself, and wanted to know that. It annoyed her; she did not want to be thought of! She made him promise not to say anything about it to the King, or to Panteus. He smiled and said: ‘I wouldn’t, anyhow. You and my sister are the only people I really talk to. Except about work.’
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘did Panteus ask you to make him new greaves with a better pattern on them?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Though I’d have made them. I doubt if Panteus cares very much what sort of pattern he has on his greaves!—less than the King.’
The Corn King and the Spring Queen Page 40
