‘And the King did not mind your leaving him?’
‘No,’ said Panteus gently, and Philylla thought she would not speak of the woman of Megalopolis—not yet, not yet, not while they breathed so sweetly and easily together, in this marvellous close quiet after their first violences. She looked up. ‘Sing something!’ she said, not quite expecting that he would.
But he said: ‘Very well,’ only pulling her a little further over on to himself, turning her so that she lay face upward, her cheek soft against his belly, her short hair on his, mixing with his. He began to sing a love song. She lay and listened in a breathless happiness. It might have been for a girl or a boy: she could not tell from the words; she did not know or care; she was his wife. Philylla, wife of Panteus. It was low and sweet and very formal as he sang it there to her alone, a grave and tender song:
O sweet earth all day drinking
While it rained:
My mind’s sweet too, with thinking
Of my friend.
PART V
Up the Ladder and over the Wall
Dauntless the slughorn to his lips he set
And blew, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.
Browning
NEW PEOPLE IN THE FIFTH PART
Menoitas, a Greek merchant, and other Greek
traders and sailors
Tigru and Diorf, chiefs of the Red Riders, and the
horde of Red Riders
Tsomla and other men and women of Marob
LETTER ONE
HYPERIDES, SON OF Leonteos, to Timokrates, son of Metrodoros, and great-grandson of Metrodoros who was the Master’s friend: Live well!
I’ve a hundred and one things to tell you. God, it’s such ages since I’ve seen you all! If you could feel how hard I’ve remembered you sometimes, you and Menexenos and Nikoteles and dearest Timonoë and the children, you’d tingle all over. Never mind, I shall see you again, and the garden. At least I hope so.
Well, I told you about my two charming Scythians, and how I was going to run errands for them. I can tell you, when it came to the point I didn’t feel so gay about it. We stayed a day or two in Byzantium, and I asked them there—for they know all the scandals of the Euxine!—what sort of a man my Erif’s husband, this Tarrik-Charmantides, was. They weren’t what you’d call cheering! He has the reputation of being very queer and unaccountable, and there were some very nasty stories going about of things he had done to traders, just suddenly for no reason. Of course I quite sympathise with any barbarian who stabs some of these cheating brutes of traders in the back. But the King of Marob went rather further. I suppose it’s silly of me, but I have a prejudice against torture, all this messing up of good clean human bodies. And I should dislike having it done to me quite particularly. None of this was very recent, mostly three years ago, in fact; but obviously there’s no knowing when he mayn’t get taken that way again. So I sailed on, feeling that perhaps I was putting my head into the lion’s mouth. The only thing that comforted me at all was the box of toys for the child.
We sighted Marob on a fine summer morning and stood into Marob harbour. How I did look! It was a low, greenish coast, scarcely a hint of rising ground, though I hear there are wooded hills further inland, where the savages, whom they call here Red Riders, inhabit. At first I could not make out much of the town. It does not rise anywhere to the lovely, pale, crowned heights that you and I know in cities. There is no strong high place, no acropolis, no sacred way or rocks for olives. The only building that stood out, besides some great warehouses to the north of the harbour, was a stone house with windows and a roof of the local, rather pretty tiles, and a great square door between towers facing the sea. They told me this was the Chief’s house. I suppose Erif lived there always. It was curious to know one was so near to one’s journey’s end!
Our captain landed with me and took me to an inn where I found quite a number of traders, come, they said, for the mid-summer market; in fact, I have to share a room with a couple, one of them a most trying person—I trust he won’t contrive to read this letter!—from Kyrene, called Menoitas, who is persuaded he knows everything about anything, including, of course, the King of Marob, who has, according to him, driven out his wife because he got tired of her, and is now playing about with all the women in the place. This doesn’t tally with Erif’s own story, and I didn’t believe it at first, but now I am not so sure. I should hate friend Menoitas to be right over anything, let alone this, but it looks rather unpleasantly like the truth.
The inn servants are Marob men and women, and some half-breeds. Most of them talk a certain amount of Greek. I believe this Marob was once a Greek colony; I am persuaded of this partly by their own tradition and partly by some worked stones which I have seen in ordinary house walls. But it cannot have been a success, for there is little trace of it left, either in customs or the look of the people, though naturally a good many of them speak Greek and there is a certain amount of intermarriage, among the upper classes, with Tyras and Olbia families. But it seems to me that anyone who comes into this community from outside gets readily absorbed.
I was advised to try and see the Chief as soon as possible. So I washed and shaved and put on my best clothes and with some skill managed to dodge Menoitas, as I did not altogether relish appearing at my first audience with him to give me hints! I took the letters with me, and one of the inn servants carried the two cases of presents and so on.
I went into the Chief’s house by that great square door, with my back to the sea and the only way home. They took us across a courtyard with an apple tree in the middle that had coloured strings dangling out of its boughs, and so to a fairly large hall where there were some really fine furs, some of which were kinds I had never seen before, hanging up. Here we waited for some time, and at last a slave in black, whom I took to be tongueless but probably not a eunuch, beckoned us through another square doorway.
The King of Marob was sitting at a table, making marks on a wooden cylinder. He had a curious barbarian crown, three rows of very ridiculous animals on a felt cap, and a white coat and trousers embroidered with the most extraordinary coloured higgledy-piggledy. However, I didn’t laugh! He is a big, lazy-looking, smiling savage, who may, for all one can tell, be plotting the most horrible things behind his grin. He looks quite incredibly strong, and I could easily believe all Erif had told me about his physical powers. I bowed and offered him the letters. He grabbed them and began reading. I remained standing. Once or twice he looked up over them at me, and he frowned a good deal, presumably about the oracle. I took rather a marked dislike to him then and there. Timokrates, you know what it is sometimes, when one is in contact with this kind of an unmoving, solid piece of butcher’s meat—yet, in a way violent, a will that neither reason nor kindliness could get at! Still, of course, I may be wrong. But I hate the bare idea of this thing having possessed Erif Der, not so much physically, but because she wants to come back to him, because he has planted his image, all bloodily, in the middle of her gentle mind.
After a time he rolled up the letters and turned his smile round on to me. In fact, he may conceivably have felt really friendly towards me, for I know the other two had written nothing but good of me during our time together. But I was not inclined to cave in to the smile. We had a short and polite, and, of course, quite meaningless, conversation, as much on the offensive-defensive as two strange dogs! He spoke a good deal about his wife in very fluent Greek, and wanted me to talk about her. I am sure he was very anxious to know on what terms I am with her. He may have been jealous. Once or twice he certainly tried to catch me out over my answers. I think he was disappointed with what I had to tell him, and perhaps felt that it did not tally very well with the letters. But there!—one doesn’t feel inclined to let a man, who has done the kind of things Tarrik of Marob has done, into the house and garden of one’s friendship. I hope Erif will stay in Greece. It’s the right place for her!
A rather lovely girl, not unlike Erif herself, only y
ounger, brought in the child. I noticed that she wore a crown of gold and jewels and a very elaborate dress, and the King seemed very free and easy with her. Also I think she was pregnant, though this may only have been the slouching way in which these barbarian women stand. But it did occur to me that here was possibly one reason why Erif Der was not in Marob. The girls spoke a little Greek, but not much. As a matter of fact, I know something of their language, but I thought it as well not to say so. I gathered that she was called Link.
The child is a jolly little creature, rosy and curly, more Erif’s than his. We took the toys out. I must say, both the King and this Link girl tried hard to explain to little Tisamenos that these pretty things came from his mother. But I doubt if he took it in. Most of the time he was either dumb or squealing with pleasure and excitement.
At last the King said: ‘It is four days to midsummer. Until then I have to work, either here or in my own place. You will wait and see me in the flax market. After that I shall have time. You will tell me all the things you have not told me yet.’ I thought that was rather clever of him. He added: ‘You shall want for nothing while you are here,’ and whistled loud and startlingly for a slave, to whom he whispered. And certainly since then the people at the inn have taken the utmost trouble to make me comfortable, and I gather there will be nothing to pay. If I knew I was going to sail away safely at the end of it, everything would be delightful, but there’s a queer feeling about this town. I don’t know quite what makes it, but I keep on suddenly finding myself at grips with the most horrible, undefined fear, the sort of thing I thought I had grown out of long ago and would never feel again. I repeat to myself that it is quite baseless and that fear of the unknown is a shameful thing for a reasonable, scientific-minded person to have in his head, but somehow I cannot entirely cast it off. It is partly, of course, that one is so utterly alone here, as far as mental processes are concerned, for none of the traders know Plato from Pythagoras, and if one talked to them about atoms they’d want to know how much a dozen one could sell them for in Alexandria!
I feel least uncomfortable when I’m writing. The play I told you about is getting on slowly; I’m afraid my heroine is a little hackneyed, though. Ask Timonoë to write me a nice letter telling me exactly how she’d answer if she was proposed to (a) by a rather dirty cynic, (b) by an elderly tyrant with several other wives, and (c) by a nice young man, say me—or you, if you’d rather!
Well, to go on with my adventures. The King sent one of his courtiers to show me round the place, a really very decent young man called Kotka. He asked me to his house, where I met his wife, of whom Erif has spoken sometimes. But she did not say much to me, or produce any magic, as I rather hoped she might! Kotka talked quite a lot and enjoyed showing off his Greek. He seems to be devoted to the King, but of course it is early days to tell how sincere this is. I can’t help suspecting that he might have a different story if one got to know him better. I’ve talked to him far more about Erif and Berris than I did to the King! He showed me some fine metal-work which he had, clasps and cups and quivers and decorations for saddles and sledge yokes, in which I could see the cruder and more barbaric beginnings of the art over which Berris Der has such mastery. They design from animal forms much more than he does (though he told me, I remember, that he used to himself at one time) and sometimes they are just too fantastic and illogical—for me, at any rate. I wonder if Berris has finished the inlaid table that I left him at work on.
The traders at my inn have been telling me something about this midsummer festival. The extraordinary part about it is that they half believe in it themselves. I had rather a heated argument with Menoitas and some of his friends over this. They were amazingly superstitious themselves, to begin with, continually talking about omens and vows and prophecies. I tried to put the rational point of view to them, quite gently, of course, milk for babes!—but they were genuinely shocked. I have been trying to make out just exactly what does happen at midsummer. There seems to be a procession with flowers and children dressed up, all very nice and innocent as far as one can make out, and then some kind of ceremony in the big market-place here, at which the King dances and sings, and the crowd performs some kind of religious rite, throwing stones and sticks about and into the middle of the square. I asked friend Menoitas if he meant that they actually stoned a sacrifice, but he said not, at least he did not think so. I am not sure how much the Greeks are allowed to see. He tells me that the object of all this is to encourage the sun, whose power now begins to decline! I do find it quite illogically annoying that any Greek should have so little idea of elementary physics as to suppose that the sun can be influenced. However, we all know the sun has been the centre of several very respectable and long-lived religions. In fact, our old comrades of the Stoa are a little bit mixed up with that—Divine Fire and what not! I do love to think of the distance the sun is from us, that lovely remoteness, the cool depths of space.
I gather that after this midsummer day affair every one is wildly excited, including the children, and the evening ends in a savage and erotic dance. I understand from Menoitas that I shall have the utmost difficulty in sleeping by myself on midsummer night. He certainly won’t try to avoid destiny over this, but I rather think I will! The next day there is a bonfire in the same market-place and everything is, as they say, ‘cleared up and burnt.’ I suppose I should be less suspicious about it all, but that this Tarrik, this Corn King, is in charge of it. I have an impression that everything he touches will be somehow made horrible.
I wonder if there will be a sacrifice.
I wonder if I shall have to speak.
Farewell.
Letter Two
HYPERIDES TO TIMOKRATES, Live well ! I am sending this letter by a ship which is sailing tomorrow. You will see that it is written on odd scraps of paper at different times. At any rate, I am alive!
I AM A PRISONER in the King’s house. I think he is going to have me killed, probably by torture. That will not last for ever, and in the end I shall have the whole of time to myself, with no pain and no fear.
I have found paper and a pen here. I am writing in case—oh, I should like to explain! After all, it is my only immortality, and my play is not finished. I think, by what they said, that it will be some time yet before they come for me.
On midsummer eve the people in our inn made garlands, which they hung up in the morning early. I stayed indoors and listened to what was being said, which they thought I could not understand. It is incredible how full the world is of ignorance still! The sun is a dead and fiery body made up of the whirling together of atoms. It is far out of reach of earth and earth’s air. The moon shines by the reflected light of the sun. The universe turns for ever in a spiral; earth and sun and moon and stars turn harmoniously within it; no man nor god nor force of any idea or passion can change the movement of the universe. I repeat that. Here and now in the King’s house. The sun is a dead and fiery body, far out of reach of earth or any doings of man. It cannot be touched by the King of Marob, nor by any other mortal.
The procession began to go by. The inn people joined in, all except the slaves. As it seemed unlikely that there would be any dinner for some time, I joined in too, and so did the rest of the Greeks and half-Greeks. But they were just as full of it as every one else, and utterly refused to listen to me, saying that it would bring bad luck on the midsummer market. They sang all the songs, which were, as a matter of fact, quite gay, though rather tuneless and interrupted by rattles and children banging sticks together; and they made what appeared to be the suitable gestures, not always very polite. There were a certain amount of savages too, the inland fur-traders who had come down to Marob with bundles of skins and amber and resin for the midsummer market. They sang loudly, without, I think, understanding the words. Finally, we all got to the flax market, and every one stood round and the King began his dance. There was a most lovely clear blue sky with a few very tiny clouds on it. I suppose I shall never see that again. Nor my own sky be
tween Hymettos and the sea. Athens. Athens. Athens. All that I mean by Athens.
Well, they said the King was the sun. And I began to talk about astronomy. I told everybody what really happens. I became angry and talked louder. I was mad because they would not listen to me. I spoke in Greek to the traders who tried hard to stop me, and then suddenly I began to speak to the Marob people themselves in their own language. I was surprised myself that I could speak it so well, with such fluency and command of idiom. They were surprised too for a few minutes. The King was running round the thing in the middle of the market. He ran straight at me and knocked me over with his hot arms. I think he was looking for a sacrifice. I think I am the sacrifice. When they come back for me I shall still speak to them about astronomy and the nature of the sun and the laws of the universe.
Erif and Berris, my friends, what a place you have landed me in. You don’t know. Perhaps you never will. It does not alter the fact of our friendship. Timokrates, have I done well? Have I followed Epicuros, our master, who first understood that science, showing the laws of nature, also showed a unity and harmony beyond all superstition and all the horrors and follies which men have made for themselves? Timokrates. It helps me to write your name. It makes our friendship come stoutly into my mind. Timokrates. The garden at Athens. The light there. The leaves of the plane trees. Timonoë. Remember me, Timonoë. Timokrates, Menexenos, Nikoteles. There is no way of getting out of this room.
I AM GOING TO write this when I can. The sight of the words makes me feel not too utterly lost. When I heard them coming for me I took up the whole roll of paper and the pen and hid it in my tunic, buckling my belt hard over it. Black Holly said: ‘You fool, to speak against the Chief’s power! You are to say it is all lies and madness!’ I shook my head and said: ‘It was all true.’ Kotka said, urgently and more gently: ‘The Chief bears you no ill-will, but he cannot have these things said in Marob. It will break up our life. Even if it is true in Greece it is not true here.’ I said: ‘Truth is not a matter of place.’ I saw Black Holly draw his dagger. But Kotka said: ‘You can tell us other truths, only not this. That’s hard for a Greek, but you must. Sphaeros did not hurt Tarrik’s kingship; you are not to either.’ I said: ‘I will not deny science and my master.’ Black Holly said: ‘There’s only one cure for pride!’ He was going to cut my throat. I was thankful that it was to be a rational death like that with no secular or religious torture. But Kotka said: ‘No, the Chief must decide.’ So they tied my hands behind my back and shoved me into a still smaller room.
The Corn King and the Spring Queen Page 48
