The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  In the meantime they made friends with other people who were waiting with questions and formed part of the excited circle when one of them had his question answered. Quite often the God had said something which might be taken in several ways. The priests themselves refused smilingly to interpret, but there were professional interpreters who came round to the inns, as well as all the pilgrims’ new acquaintances. Most of them were Greeks, either come for themselves or, very often, for their city or family or club. Sometimes they came singly, but often a whole deputation together; if it was for a city perhaps most of the men who had paid for the offering. A good many of the Greeks were from the outer world, Asia or Egypt or Macedonia. And there were some real barbarians, a kinglet or two from north or east going about proudly, guarded and laughed at. There were Celts with heavy and uncomfortable-looking gold neck-rings that they even slept in, and great bronze pins and bosses on their belts. They were usually made to pay extra, as they were so quarrelsome. There was one Carthaginian, whom they made friends with, a great merchant and childless. None of his own gods could tell him what to do, but he had travelled much and he was most willing to deal with strangers. He showed them a picture of his wife which he took about with him, dark and grave, with big eyes and long black curls, blue birds’ wings coming down from behind them and meeting at the base of her neck. She was a priestess herself, he said. One was apt to believe in the Gods at Delphi.

  A letter for Erif was sent on from Sparta. It was Tarrik’s answer to her question as to what had happened at Harvest. No one in all Marob, not even Kotka, or any of the Chief’s best friends, would be IT, the actor in the Corn Play, so he had to be IT himself; and when he put on the Corn-cap every one thought he was Harn Der and called him that. It was a short, grim letter for Erif after all this time. But Klint was well.

  The weather broke. It suddenly turned bitterly cold in Delphi. Parnassos hid his shoulders in mist, and cold winds blew along the glen of olives. Brown sudden rivers poured off the cliffs and down the roads and waterlogged the black earth round the bases of the olive trees. The time came for Erif to make her final offering and ask her question.

  She was desperately nervous. She could not have done it at all without Berris. But the priests were used to that, from women most of all. They were both taken through to the room, where one waited and most likely regretted that one’s gift had not been more impressive. Erif had simply asked when and how she could be clean again and able to go home. It was better, people said, to make one’s questions as short and explicit as possible. The thing had, after all, to go through the mind, and ultimately the mouth, of such a simple vessel. It had been the way of prophecy always. The priests, of course, made sense of what the girl said—they had been trained to it for years. One could never do that for oneself if one were only given the immediate words she spoke.

  Berris was a little sceptical about all this, but he did not say so to Erif. He wanted her to get right, and whether the priests were utterly honest or not, he hoped it might work for her. While they waited, he held her hands and talked about how lovely it would be to get back to Marob at last and see Klint-Tisamenos. Perhaps he would come back himself with her. ‘If—if—’ said Erif, and watched the door where the priest would come in again.

  He came in at last with the folded paper and handed it to Erif, a tall, bearded man. She had jumped to her feet and stood holding the thing, not knowing whether to open it yet.

  ‘Read it, read it!’ said the priest quite kindly, but a little impatient at the stupidity of many pilgrims. She opened the paper and Berris read it too, without asking anyone’s leave. It said:

  ‘The Mother must meet the Daughter. The Dead

  must meet with the Snake.

  A House shall stand in the Cornfield, though it cost

  five years to make.

  Potters will paint their Vases, Poets will string

  their Rhymes,

  And Kings will die for the People

  in many places and times.

  The priest, seeing the usual and inevitable questions and exclamations coming, bowed and went out.

  She read it again. ‘Five years! Berris, it says five years.’

  Berris was extremely angry with Apollo for saying that—which was the only plain thing in the oracle; she was bound to see it first. He said: ‘You insisted on coming here, Erif, but as far as I’m concerned I cannot see how this God can possibly know anything about Marob—particularly a thing like time. What’s all this other mix-up?’

  ‘The Mother must meet the Daughter. But I’ve no daughter!’

  ‘You could always go and have one,’ said Berris to himself.’

  But she was not listening; she was thinking of the thing their own dead mother, Nerrish, had said to her in the tent about meeting again. 'The Dead must meet with the Snake. Which dead? What snake? Is that about Harvest? It might be, because of the House in the Cornfield. Oh, Berris, Apollo must know, because of that!’

  ‘You probably said something to someone about the corn! No, I don’t think that’s very clever of Apollo.’

  ‘But what’s the third line for? I don’t understand it at all!’

  ‘Nor I. Have you been writing poetry, Erif? I know you can’t paint—even pots.’

  ‘And then—the last one. Oh, Berris, Berris, is it about Tarrik?’

  It was the only line that had impressed Berris at all, but he did not say so. He said:

  ‘It might be about him or about anyone else. Kleomenes, for that matter. Or Antigonos: I wish it was! If it’s about Tarrik it’s really nothing new. The Corn King always dies in the end, you know as well as I do, and he dies for the next Corn King and the strength of Marob, so I suppose a Greek might say he died for the people.’

  She shook her head and folded the paper up again, put it into her bodice. Another priest beckoned to them to come out; the next pilgrim was waiting for the room.

  They went back to their inn and all their new friends and acquaintances rushed up to find out what kind of an oracle they had got. There was a good deal of head-shaking and many more or less unlikely interpretations. One or two people agreed that it must have something to do with the Mysteries: both the first and the fourth line would fit in with that. The king who dies for the people might be one of the new kind of gods—Attis, Adonis, a not-Greek. There were plenty of potters and poets in Delphi: would she like to see some of them? Or a professional interpreter? But she thought she would wait. She had it in her mind that something would suddenly happen which would make it clear. Besides, if it was to take five years—! There was time enough. She could not make up her mind to write to Tarrik about it; she was afraid of what might happen in Marob when he heard.

  Berris found her rather a gloomy companion. He was unhappy enough himself already. He kept on thinking, almost every night, that perhaps Philylla was just married. He wished now that he had waited till the thing was certain and finished. At any rate he did not want to go back to Sparta again, once having gone through the pain of leaving it. It was Philylla who had first made him fight for Kleomenes and the New Times. Now she was stopping him from fighting. Let her understand that and be sorry. He said this once to his sister in a mood of bitter resentment. She laughed and said: ‘Didn’t I tell you that you’d hurt Philylla just as much as anyone else if you felt like it!’ They stayed on at Delphi all that winter and spring. It was as good as anywhere else. Five years.

  Erif had two letters during the winter from Philylla, the first telling how Kratesikleia and the children had gone to Egypt, the second with little news and much anxiety. After that Antigonos moved and it was difficult to send letters to or from Sparta. He took Tegea and then Orchomenos with great loss to the Spartans. Berris knew that some, at least, of his friends must have been killed. There was a Macedonian garrison in Orchomenos now. Kleomenes counter-attacked against one town or another, but was too badly outnumbered to dare risk a real battle.

  One day when Erif and Berris were walking together a
little way beyond the town, they heard a lot of shouting—the sort of thing which might mean a murder or a wild-beast show, or the mere fact that someone had dreamt of a piebald rat running from left to right. They got as far as the edge of a small crowd and then asked someone. It was turning into rather angry and violent shouting. The man said in great excitement: ‘It’s a dirty atheist coming and mocking at Apollo, but he won’t do it much longer!’

  ‘Apollo is avenging himself?’ asked Berris politely.

  ‘We are!’ said the man, and picked up a stone and butted his way head first into the crowd. Berris said nothing but looked disgusted, and they both turned back. Erif just happened to see a large flat rock, crying out to be climbed on to. When she was on the top she looked. Then she called sharply to her brother to come too.

  They were at the back of the crowd. In front of it there was, just for a moment, a rather nice man standing and talking. The next the stones got him and he was down. On the other hand, the crowd was quite small and looked quite stupid. Erif yelled shrilly from the back of her throat: ‘Tarrik and Marob!’ and jumped off the rock, her hair flying and Tarrik’s knife drawn in her hand.

  ‘Oh hell,’ said Berris, ‘Tarrik and Marob!’ and he jumped too and thought on the whole that they would both be killed almost at once. He had not reckoned with this crowd and the alarming effect Erif and an unknown language would have, particularly from behind. In less than a minute they were all gone except the man. He picked himself up with his face and arm bleeding. Berris said:

  ‘They’ll be back in no time! Oh, Erif, can’t you leave things alone!’

  She said: ‘I can make a circle, Berris, I know I can. Look at the knife!’ There was blood on the tip of it—from someone—but the rest of Tarrik’s knife was glowing as it had not since it was in Greece.

  ‘Then that’s all right,’ said Berris. ‘Make a line while I get the man away behind it.’ If she said she could she would be able.

  She made it, with the knife and the green shells and a few shaken blood-drops. The first people who came back to finish off their atheist and whoever else there might be, found her ending it. She went along it again to strengthen it. Then she invited them to come. But instead, they all ran to fetch a priest and show him what was being done in Apollo’s own ground. Erif went down into the olive grove and whistled for Berris, who answered her from a pile of wood stacked against the wall.

  ‘The man says he’s a philosopher,’ said Berris, ‘and an Athenian.’

  ‘Like Epigethes,’ said Erif. Then she added: ‘A nice lot of good it’s done us before, rescuing philosophers.’ She sucked her lip and thought of Sphaeros—dear Sphaeros: but how he’d changed things for Tarrik and her!

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Berris. ‘Shall we just go home?’

  ‘I suppose not, once we’re in it. If they’d said he was a philosopher! Still—what shall we do?’

  Berris said: ‘Every one will know it’s you and I. They know your clothes all over Delphi, I should think. We can’t possibly take him to the inn. There’ll be a fuss, of course. It may cost rather a lot. I mayn’t even be able to work it if he really is an atheist and the priests are angry. Naturally they can’t afford that kind of thing on the God’s own territory. You’d better stay. I suppose you can look after yourself?’

  ‘Yes!’ said Erif, cleaning her knife.

  By and bye she looked in under the wood-stack and told the man to come out. He did, crawling. He looked particularly ragged because Berris had pulled strips off the bottom of his tunic to tie up the worst grazes the stones had made. She sat back on her heels and stared at him. He was quite young—an altogether different kind of age from Sphaeros.

  ‘No bones broken?’ she asked. He shook his head and smiled. She said: ‘You’re really rather nice!’

  He said: ‘So are you!’ and scrambled up to her and kissed her.

  She found that rather pleasing, much more what she wanted than gratitude. She said: ‘As you’re a philosopher, I suppose you’ll say now that you don’t really mind whether you get killed or kiss me?’

  ‘There’s all the difference in the world!’ said the man. ‘I should hate to be killed that way too. It felt as if it was going to be most uncomfortable. Stupid donkeys of people—as if they really believed in their Gods!’

  ‘Apollo is not like the others,’ said Erif firmly. ‘Apollo here, at least. I’ve had an oracle myself.’

  ‘Poor dear Apollo! If you were a god would you like to spend all your time answering questions about whether two perfectly dull people ought to marry one another—that’s the kind of thing half the questions are—when it doesn’t make a pennyworth of difference to the world?’

  ‘It makes a lot of difference to them. I don’t know what kind of a god Apollo is, but he has a way of getting behind the future.’

  ‘The only way to get behind the future is by hard thought, a more difficult but less expensive process, which my countrymen don’t like at all. Am I depressing? Was it a nice oracle you had?’

  ‘Not very,’ said Erif Der.

  ‘Then I shouldn’t believe in it too much if I were you. You’re not a Greek, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m from Marob on the Black Sea. I’m the Queen of Marob.’

  ‘Do you like being queen?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but I can’t be just now. I—I am partly a god myself. But something went wrong. So I came to ask Apollo about it.’

  ‘Member of the same club. Well, there’s more to be said for that. Are you a kind god when you’re at home?’

  ‘With all my power. I make the spring come.’

  ‘What happens when you’re away?’

  ‘Someone else has the power. Don’t let’s talk about that. What’s your name?’

  ‘Hyperides. Hyperides of Athens. Long name, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a gay name. The first philosopher we rescued was called Sphaeros: a short, thick name.’

  ‘Sphaeros of Borysthenes? My poor lambs, a real professional! What did he do to you?’

  ‘He taught us how the good man should live.’

  ‘Does that include consulting oracles? Or aren’t you good?’

  ‘I didn’t ask him. I think he’s good himself. I wish you wouldn’t laugh at him! He has helped us and hurt us, both.’

  ‘A habit the Stoics have. I’ll take him quite seriously. I suppose he said he would teach you to distinguish between appearance and reality? The kataleptike phantasia and all that? That he could cure you of being too much alive? Yes, that was Zeno’s game. My master was gentle. He said he would make us more alive, and cure us of death. Oh, not by taking it away, as the Mysteries pretend to, but by facing it: you see, we have our realities too, but they’re human ones. Have you ever been afraid of death, for yourself and for others?—the hells and half lives, the child coming back to look for its mother and not finding her—’

  ‘Oh don’t!’

  ‘But I can cure you of that. And of fear of all sorts of darkness and pain. My word is a gentle one for all who are afraid and tired and weak.’

  ‘Who was your master?’

  ‘Epicuros the Athenian. He lived a hundred years ago. He was a man who had seen much trouble himself. Women and slaves and children came to him. He was friends with them. I see you’re frowning. People have spoken much evil of him. You may have heard it.’

  ‘Sphaeros says he taught that pleasure was a good.’

  ‘He reminded people that happiness is. Why, what is life for except to be lived? To be lived fully with reason and music and a garden, a community of friends who love one another.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Erif, ‘you allow love in your pattern! Then indeed you’re dealing with life. Here’s Berris!’

  Berris jumped down off the wall. ‘I’ve bought him from the priests. It was rather expensive. I was so sympathetic to them! He’s not liked, you know; he can’t go back to Delphi. And what’s more, I don’t think we can. They don’t like the idea of your line, Erif, though
I told them it was nothing but a trick to stop the crowd.’

  ‘You did, did you!’ said Erif. ‘Well, I don’t mind; I’m tired of Delphi. Let’s go down to Cirrha and see if there are any boats going to Marob. I must write to Tarrik soon. Let’s take Hyperides.’

  ‘Does he want to come?’ Berris turned towards him.

  ‘I should like it very much. Obviously, I’m under great obligations to you both and I’d, of course, do whatever you suggested, but this would be far the pleasantest. Are you husband and wife?’

  ‘No,’ said Berris. ‘Brother and sister. But she’s married!’

  ‘Well, I’m not a professional seducer if that’s any comfort to you. I take the thing too seriously. The other reason your suggestion is particularly welcome to me is that I haven’t got any money.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I spent it all. Then I thought I’d take to teaching. You saw what an effect my lessons had on the people of Delphi!’

  ‘Mm,’ said Berris. ‘You know that funny old man with the whiskers who’s staying at our inn, Erif? He gave me an order yesterday for some chairs, bronze and leather. I’ve never done that before, but I’ve been thinking out some designs. Hyperides, do you think you’d be any good at making patterns on leather? No, I suppose you regard beauty as a thing of no consequence and you wouldn’t see that it mattered if you were an inch or so out!’