The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  Chapter Two

  BERRIS DER HAD done some Court portraits, but rather reluctantly. He was bored with portraiture now; he had come to the end of it. There was excitement for a time in getting his effects more and more certainly and economically, and strengthening his drawing, but now another set of problems was coming back into his head, old ones which he had laid aside because he could not tackle them then, but which by this time he felt, if once it were possible to make the effort and lift the dead weight of beginnings, he would be able to solve. They were again three-dimensional, the thing beyond paint. He was unhappy and uneasy over this new craving. Though he did not admit that the work he had done lately was definitely bad, yet it did seem to him valueless by present standards—and what other way had he of telling? He got some blocks of sandstone and spoilt two of them trying to find out what he was looking for. They were not hard enough material, but he was still too impatient to work on anything slower and less easy.

  Erif, watching, thought that this unhappiness had more direct connection with Philylla than he would admit. The three of them had lived on the ship as one little, very close group, trusting and loving. But in Alexandria Philylla had just walked out of the group into her husband’s arms. It had been as simple as that. When they got to the city they had asked for King Kleomenes’ house and had gone there. Kratesikleia welcomed them very warmly, though she struck them as definitely older and more irritable. Gorgo was a little shy at first, then climbed up on to Philylla’s knee and snuggled. Nikolaos shouted and jumped about and kissed her hard and often. Nikomedes was almost speechless; he sat opposite her for a time, and looked at her and grinned softly, and then he went away to find Panteus. They sat there, still all three close together, and then Panteus came in and made a little movement with his arms, and she got up and went to him like someone at last going home, and they said nothing, and Philylla did not once look back at her friends who had saved her, and after a time they went away from the room, never having let go of one another’s touch since the first moment.

  The next day they had both come to see Erif and Berris, and Panteus had thanked them simply and very deeply for what they had done for his wife, and said he would repay when he had the power: in the meantime here was his sword and his whole friendship at their service. Philylla had been infinitely friendly, but already a kind of vagueness was beginning to form between her and them. She did not belong to them any more. Berris had accepted this and tried to accept Panteus and his friendship, but could not do much with it. Erif, left alone, began to think more about her purification, and the meeting between mother and daughter, between Dead and Snake. She had written home telling Tarrik what had happened, but there could be no answer till autumn. She might easily miss a letter too, moving about like this.

  Berris had not much liked any of King Ptolemy’s friends, though he found them amusing. He kept Erif out of it for some time, but then she grew bored and insisted on accompanying him. However, when she got to the palace she was rather frightened, particularly by a rather charming girl who suddenly fell in love with her and felt no awkwardness about demanding her satisfaction there and then. Erif protested and finally ran out of the place, her ears tingling with every one else’s laughter. She was annoyed with herself afterwards, thinking: why not? why be unkind? Yet she could not imagine she would have enjoyed the experience. And then suddenly it occurred to her: if it had been Philylla who had made love to her? Well, yes, she thought honestly that might have been different. But after this she only went back to the palace very circumspectly, with Berris.

  He had discovered Metrotimé, or rather she had let him discover her, and they were both amusing themselves. She was exactly what Berris wanted now: her ironic and critical mind to deal with his sentimentality, and her practised and knowledgeable body to wake his up out of the calm it had been bullied into. But she did not help him to solve his aesthetic problems.

  Erif made one new friend. This was the woman of the house where they lodged, an Egyptian of fairly good family, named Ankhet, married to a Greek corn-merchant. She was very shy and soft-footed, and a good housewife. After a time she asked Erif to her own room; almost as soon as she came in she saw a little image of a Mother and Child, and remembered the story of Isis and Horus, which she had heard first in Sparta from some of the Queen’s girls. After much questioning and several weeks of patience, she found out from Ankhet that there were various temples in the Egyptian quarter of Alexandria, which, so far, she had scarcely been into at all. The woman was obviously rather afraid of having her gods misunderstood, if not laughed at, by the Greeks or those whom she supposed to be Greeks, yet at the same time she was intensely proud of them and longing to show them as powerful. At last she was persuaded to bring Erif within sight of some of them.

  The Egyptian quarter was much more crowded, dirty and cornery, than the Greek or Jewish quarters, and quite different sorts of food were being sold on trays. Erif, enchanted, got her friend to buy quantities of it, and walked along munching and looking at the odd people. But Berris had seen a great smooth stone cat lying as guardian genius at the back of a shoemaker’s shop, and he was thrilled to the bone. They went through low, covered alleys, and brownish people flimsily dressed in straight bits of linen looked at them over their shoulders. Then they went down a side-alley and through a square archway of limestone blocks.

  Beyond that was a small courtyard, rectangularly planted with mulberries, and then a square, flat-roofed temple, painted red. They went through the outer row of pillars; Erif and Berris were rather startled to find that the inner row had curious, human heads, with stiff side-curls for capitals. They appeared to be staring in an unpleasant way. The temple itself was dark and entirely covered with small paintings, some bits of which were gilded and showed up inconsequently like pieces of jewellery. A priestess in a long white linen robe, pleated straight from the shoulders and ungirdled, walked past them very silently on bare feet carrying a dish. At the far end of the temple two others moved shuttle-wise across and across, occasionally lifting their arms with some musical instrument which tinkled sharply.

  Suddenly the lady Ankhet said: ‘Here is Isis,’ and she made one further pace and raised her hands forward and level with her shoulders, and stood still in adoration. Beyond her the other two saw a low altar and behind it the granite image of a goddess holding a divine child against her knees. Her head was small, her chin frail and pathetic under the great painted headdress. Her eyes were widely open, her Ups heavy. The rounded conventional line of her dress was faintly marked, drooping from shoulder to shoulder, but below it the sculptor had left her breasts and thighs naked to her worshippers. The child had a funny, stiff kilt; his arms dangled. For some reason Erif was profoundly moved, her critical self stopped working. She lifted her hands in front of her as the woman had done, and remembered her own son.

  At each side was another statue. One was cow-headed with a meaningless human body painted with symbols. The other was human, but had its arms stretched forward with stiff feathers growing down out of them, green and gilt; the mouth was quite straight, not smiling or drooping, and the eyes were elongated right along the top of the cheekbone in a convention which had quite ceased to be beautiful. Berris, fidgeted by the immobility of the two women, at last whispered: ‘Who are those?’ After a time Ankhet turned and said: ‘These are Isis too.’ Then she went to one of the priestesses and whispered for a few minutes. Berris produced what seemed to him sufficient gold coin to cover himself and his sister at the usual price of offerings. He was rather annoyed when Erif pulled off one of her rings and gave that as well to the priestess. Then they went home.

  During the next few days they were both silent and excited, and both wanted to go to more temples. Few of the Alexandrian temples were very old, for Rhakotis, the old city round and over which Alexandria had been founded, was tiny and obscure, a shelter for goatherds and sailors. But some of the new temples had old-cult images in them, or very expert copies, and Ankhet herself had one
or two rather beautiful small things which she kept to guard her home and children, for she did not think much of her husband’s gods. She had inherited them from her own mother: the green beetle which meant life for ever springing newly from itself, the buckle of Isis in gold and rubies, and various small bronze and enamel beasts. Even her make-up box was a god-beast, the kohl-sticks long, thin goddesses, the protectors of beauty and the faithfulness of husbands.

  Berris was extremely interested. He had not suspected that there was so much in Egypt that would jump out at him like this, promising a new series of problems, and perhaps solutions, of the same kind as those which were on him now. He met and argued with a father-priest of Osiris, a gentle formalist who, at last, took him a week’s journey south, beyond the delta country, to see one of the ancientest and most famous temples. When he came back the whole outlook of his work was twisted over, mostly towards grimness, and a great interest in patterns, a defence of three-dimensional formalism. Erif did not like it much, especially for the first month or so while the interest was newest and most overbalancing, but he paid very little attention to anything she said.

  Among all these things Erif had not found the ones she was seeking. Here, certainly, was the mother in many forms. Only the child was always son, never, so far, daughter. The Dead were here, even overshadowing the living in interest and importance; that was new after Greece and the insistence on life in flesh and art and poetry, most of all in the bodies and minds of the young. In Egypt the preparations for death began early, with youth itself, for who could escape? For the most part, both Greeks and Egyptians had the same fear and horror of death and lack of any confidence about more than a dim and almost worthless survival, but the Greeks faced violently away, while the Egyptians were all the time being drawn and fascinated towards that ultimate stiffness, that final formalising of the fluent body. Erif Der was by turns fascinated too, and then in a sudden Greek rebellion. As for the Snake, there were plenty, royal or divine, cobras, asps, small, horrible fanged creatures from the hot sand or the steaming marshes. There was no telling which make her own Snake was.

  As summer went on it grew very hot, but there was usually a dry light breeze off the desert, not oppressive, that left pockets of cool air behind houses and in archways. It blew the sea into a strange glassy whiteness that looked as if it must stretch endlessly between here and Greece, and all the fishes came up and in towards the land. The nights were still fairly cool and all the households slept out on the roof, under the large stars, or in the afternoons in little shelters and bowers of stretched linen and vine branches. The native Egyptians went about their work much as usual, reaping their fantastically early corn-fields and setting oxen at once to tread out the grain. But the Alexandrians took more and more to the night. They had water festivals with lamps and barges, that did not end till dawn. The palace was shuttered and quiet during the day and every one slept, while King Ptolemy’s brown and yellow subjects passed below his walls with tools and water-jugs and food-baskets, and speculated on how he was sleeping and after what delicious exercisings of the body. The King had many tastes; they were all catered for immediately. Parents of charming young people of either sex knew of one possible career for their children. Agathokles was usually willing to be approached or, failing him and his sister, the old mother did as well or sometimes better. The Egyptians laughed about the ways of divinity, and did not, on the whole, copy them.

  Sosibios occupied himself less pleasantly. He put the edge on to his affairs, not through unusual and interesting activities and combinations, as the King did, but with ordinary cruelty. He was not nice to his wife. It was not always enjoyable to be his guests. The Egyptians, who held the housewife in a certain formal honour, and at any rate usually respected her as a business woman, did not like this in Sosibios. But it was generally agreed that he was devoted to the interests of the Ptolemys. Stories drifted about Alexandria, a continual consciousness of the doings of the Court. The divine Ptolemy with three boys at a time; his brilliant remark about the Roman envoy; Agathokles and the green pillar; Sosibios’ curious idea of a pleasant evening with his wife; the poetry readings; Agathokles answering the philosophers; that rumour—surely not true?—about the intentions of King Antiochos of Syria; King Ptolemy’s idea about an immense ship which was at the same time to be a temple of Dionysos-Osiris and to supply work for all the draughtsmen and carpenters in Alexandria; King Ptolemy and the elephant hunters; King Ptolemy and his plan for restoring the temple at Thebes with new scenes from the underworld, the Tuat. Sooner or later Erif and Berris heard most of it, but they wondered sometimes whether the Spartans were not so much out of the life of the place that the stories drifted by them and away.

  Old Kratesikleia tried so hard to get into touch with high politics. She was a queen, she had been a great queen; what right had any palace to shut its doors on her! The old Ptolemy had been most gracious and encouraging, and so had many of his Court, but the new ones laughed at her openly, laughed her home to cry the bitter and uncomforted tears of age and widowhood. She stormed at young Ptolemy and his friends and the ways of youth in general, till she was tired out. There was no answering her.

  Philylla came and sat with her, working on the same piece of embroidery, and tried to be hopeful and cheerful, though it was not always very successful. Queen Kratesikleia had three or four oldish women always about her, the generation between hers and Philylla’s, widows who had been buffeted by life and joined her in lamenting, but on a lower tone. There was also a few younger girls, who had come over with her and the children at the beginning. They were less gloomy, but very discontented. They hated being kept in as firmly as she always insisted, and she thought it both unnecessary and undignified to use persuasion; she preferred the more Spartan method of force to make them preserve their painful integrity. Leandris, the eldest, was betrothed to Idaios and was going to marry him as soon as she had finished the weaving of her wedding sheets. She was a golden and upright creature, a distant cousin of Philylla, to whom she loved talking and confiding. Even after she was married she would be with the old Queen a great deal, but still it was comparative freedom, and some day, when the exile was over and they all came back to Sparta, she would live happily ever after.

  Naturally, Sphaeros was the boys’ tutor; but he was growing old. They missed their classes terribly, and were delighted with Gyridas, who was now being brought up with them. But he had been badly frightened and was too deeply a helot in his blood to recover very easily; he seemed to like playing best at make-believe games with Nikolaos. When Nikomedes grew suddenly earnest and violent it frightened him and drove him back to the horrible time when his brother had been killed and they had tried to turn him out of his class and make a slave of him! Sometimes he hated Nikomedes for doing that, for not staying part of the race of children, but going with the grown-ups, not only in words but with his whole self. But he did not know it was hate, and Nikomedes himself never suspected it, still less Sphaeros or any of the parents and grandparents.

  Kleomenes told his eldest son about his plans and hopes, but even more about his disappointments, and the boy hurled himself from one peak to another of sympathy and indignation and love. He dreamt about it most nights and thought about it and talked it over with Philylla, who saw something of how things were, and, for herself, took great pains never to claim this love or sympathy, though, for that matter, the reason she wanted it from someone was too complicated to explain, even if she have could got it clear to herself. She told Nikomedes she was happy, and for three-quarters of the time she almost was.

  Nikomedes went with his father occasionally to an audience. He stood there in a clean tunic, between Kleomenes and Sphaeros, silently watching this glittering, patterned man on the throne, hating him with a steady conscience for not helping them. He heard a good deal of Court gossip this way, though he did not understand it all. And he went down to the harbour with the Spartiates and hung about there, waiting, waiting for news. Ships would come in and he
made up stories about them when they were still small, brown-winged things, just turning the corner of the island: how this was really at last the ship with news that everything at home had gone right, that would carry a great crowd of soldiers with spears and crowns and wreaths, shouting all together that they had put down the ephors and the Macedonians and were come to bring back their King to his rights—and they would all start that same evening! But when the ship had made fast and the captain landed, she was quite often not from Greece at all, let alone Sparta, let alone bringing good news.

  They had heard one thing not long after Kleomenes had come to Egypt. Only a few days after Sellasia, King Antigonos had got news from Macedonia that there was a rising of the tribes against him. He and almost all his armies set off at once for home; there was work for the mercenaries. Gradually through the winter Kleomenes realised that if he could have manœuvred and retreated and put off the battle until that news came, he would not have lost Sparta. There were moments when the fresh realisation of this or some new disappointment from Ptolemy or Sosibios blackened the world for him. Then he was bitter to Panteus and Phoebis and all his friends, bitterest of all to Nikomedes, since it was over him he had most power, and he had to show himself that he still had some power, still could hurt someone, still be that much of a king.

  Some of the Spartiates had got queerly involved with Egypt. There were none of them who had not had brothers or sons or dear friends killed. Death had moved nearer to them; they could not look away. They discovered Serapis first, because he was the most Greek, an almost deliberate invention, a liaison god between two hierarchies, taking for his kingdom that most elemental one to which all men journeyed. He was Osiris and Zeus and Hades, or, as some said now, influenced by the constant permeation of mystery stories, Dionysos-Hades. He had the attributes of all these gods. He was the Lord of the Gates. He held the keys.