The Flowers of Adonis

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  They spoke soft words to me, as though they thought that the unease in the room was my own fear of my wedding night. I scarcely heard what they said; only their voices — the Helot women have softer voices than ours. They led me to the broad bed-place, piled with rugs, my own wolf skins over all; and when I lay down, they would have drawn a coverlid of saffron wool over me. But the skins were warm beneath me, and there seemed even less air in this place than in the loft at home. And when they were gone, I flung it off again and lay naked. The room turned on me the blank look of a stranger; in the light of the lamp hanging from its bronze standard at the bed-foot, I could see a couple of spears propped in a corner, a great armour-chest against one wall, with a well-worn soldier’s cloak flung across it. Only my own painted olive-wood chest standing ready opened, with my spindle and distaff lying on the beaten earth beside it, was a part of familiar things and the life I knew. It was very quiet, the wind had died utterly away. There were sounds of movement and distant voices in the house. Once I heard Agis’ voice raised, and a boy’s, angry and near to tears. But always, beyond the sounds, was the silence, and the waiting.

  And then I heard Agis’ footsteps, stumbling a little; and he was back, standing on the edge of the lamplight, freeing the shoulder knot of his cloak, pulling off his sword. And still he never looked at me. I said, ‘Did you get rid of the boy?’

  He said, ‘Yes,’ and then he turned and looked at me for the first time. He had been a little drunk before, and he had been drinking again. He stood rocking on his heels, his eyes were red-rimmed, and the hard lines of his face were slackened and blurred by the drink in him. And I saw for that one moment my boar brought to bay. The moment passed, and he looked me all along as I lay there naked on the bed-place, and his face settled into cold distaste. I said, ‘Do you want your son so much?’

  And he said, ‘Sparta wants my son.’

  And I knew he would give Sparta what his duty demanded, like the good Spartan he was.

  He pulled off his tunic and came to the bed, and looked down at me; and I saw that he was shaking, through all his strong thick-set body; and I thought, ‘Maybe he will kill me with this; with his striving to force his son into me against the will of his flesh.’ And even as he bent over me, suddenly a bird gave its alarm call to the night, and there was a great fluttering of wings, the courtyard pigeons and the swallows that nested under the eaves flying out from their roosting places. And then I heard it: a distant mutter of sound that seemed to come from far, far down below the King’s House, as though in some cavern of the underworld, something stirred from sleep. In the same instant the lamp-flame began to jump and flutter, sending weird bursts of shadow up the walls and rafters as though a great wind had leapt into the room. The lamp itself had begun to swing on its chains; and the mutter that had died away, came again, deeper and louder and more menacing, and the earth shivered with it, and was still. I had known it before, the wrath of Poseidon the Earth-shaker, but only as a child, and it was a few moments before I understood. Then the beaten earth seemed to rouse and shake itself and slip sideways under me. Part of me noticed, as though it stood apart from the rest of me, looking on, how my spindle rolled a little way in a sharp curve over the floor, then back again to rap against the side of the chest. Dry chaff and old dust and small many-legged things showered out of the thatch. A narrow crack started beside the bed-place and ran like a lizard up the wall. I waited for it to widen into a mouth and the King’s House to come crashing down. It seems strange to me now that I did not spring up, but only lay there waiting — and watching Agis’ eyes. But it was all over so quickly; a few heartbeats of time, and the earth was still again; nothing left but the crack in the wall and the fallen roof-stuff, the crying and calling of voices, a horse neighing in terror in the stable court. And then those too began to fade. And strangely, like a great sigh of relief, I heard the birds coming back to roost.

  The wrath of Poseidon had been mild and swiftly past. I learned later that little damage had been done. One house on the outskirts of the city had been burned down by a lamp setting fire to a fallen rafter, a few Helots’ hovels had caved in, a few stones had been shaken out from the big Boundary Herm on the North Road, two or three people had been killed by falling debris.

  At the time I could know none of that. I only knew Agis’ small bright eyes staring straight into mine and the sudden relief in his drunk face.

  He passed his tongue over his lips, and said, slurring the words, ‘It is the warning of Poseidon! The warning of the Gods!’

  I said nothing; and after a moment he gathered himself together and hid the relief with care. He said again, ‘The warning of the Gods.’ And then, to himself as much as to me, ‘They bid me not to lie with you before we march for Attica. They demand this of me as the price of victory.’ And his eyes dared me to say otherwise.

  He flung his cloak round his shoulders and caught up his sword and strode out of the room.

  *

  Next day it was known everywhere that in obedience to the warning of the Earth-shaker that had struck Sparta as he entered the marriage chamber, Agis had vowed not to lie with his new Queen until he returned from Dekalia.

  It was a good enough reason for my own people, who have been bred with a proper reverence for the Gods; but I seemed to hear the laughter of Alkibiades everywhere, even in my solitary bed at night.

  *

  I thought at first — when I had had time to think the thing out at all — that since Agis did not want me, I should have at least as much freedom as other Spartan wives, maybe more. I did not yet know Agis the King. He had no desire for me in the way of a man for a woman. But I was his, like his cloak, his sword, his hunting dogs; indeed he was like an old hunting dog with a bone that it does not want itself but is determined no other dog shall have; crouching within reach, eyes half-closed and hackles a little raised.

  I found myself keeping to the women’s quarters almost as close as I have been told Athenian women do, because of the eyes that followed me whenever I went abroad, no matter how modestly I drew the unaccustomed veil across my face; the eyes of the Palace women, of the guard, of my old jealous hound himself. I was Queen of Sparta, as was my appointed destiny. But I had not known when I ran free with the other girls and the young men at training, that it was appointed also that I should be caged.

  So I heard only the distant sounds of Sparta making ready for war. The distant shrilling of flutes from the training grounds; the tramp of marching feet up the narrow street behind the women’s quarters; the occasional talk of My Lord and his Generals, when he sent for me as he sometimes did late in the evening, to sit beside him where the lamplight fell on my hair, while he talked over plans of campaign or went through the muster rolls. At first I used to wonder why he sent for me; there was nothing for me to do, there were always boys to mix and pour the wine. But later I came to understand that I was simply to be there, so that other men might see, and know that I was his.

  On the morning that the Army were to march, I was working early at my loom when one of my women checked her spinning and glanced quickly at the door and then at me; and a little flurry among the rest made me turn that way myself. And there on the threshold stood Agis in his favourite position, legs apart and hands behind his back, his head down a little, watching me under the rim of his helmet, for he was already fully armed. And under the thorax-straps and the heavy folds of his cloak, the breadth of his shoulders filled the doorway from side to side.

  I gestured to my women, and they drew back to the far end of the long room.

  ‘It is always good to see the mistress of the house busy at her loom,’ he said. ‘But I wonder how many women are weaving in Sparta this morning while their men make ready to march?’

  I said, ‘It has not seemed to me that you find so much pleasure in my company that I should come to you unsummoned.’

  ‘I waited for you to come to arm me for war.’

  ‘Your Helot has done it quite as well as I could do.’r />
  He said, ‘That is not the point. It is the duty of a Spartan wife to arm her husband at such times, to show her pride in him.’

  ‘You have not treated me as a wife,’ I said.

  His brows drew together. ‘The Gods forbade it, that you know.’

  I think by then he had forgotten the truth, had made himself forget, and believed that he was obeying the will of the Gods in this. I was the only person in the world who had seen the sick relief in his eyes when the shuddering of the earth gave him a good reason for keeping out of my bed. But I did not remind him. If I had, I think he would have had me killed while he was away.

  So I bowed my head, and said nothing.

  He said in a kinder tone, ‘This has been hard for you, and you have played your part well. I have not failed to notice how properly you have kept to the women’s quarters, and held yourself, now that you are married, from the company of other men. If you have not been in truth my wife, you have behaved yourself as a Queen of Sparta.’ And then, while I was still shaken by the unusual kindness of his tone, the iron crept into it again, and he was looking at me with the hard narrowed eyes that I was used to. ‘I shall expect you to hold to the same conduct while I am away. Remember that, for if you forget it, if you should think, maybe, to follow the ancient custom of women when their men are long at the wars — which is a good custom for the carrying on of the race, but not for a Queen — there are those watching who have their orders from me.’

  I went close to him, and put my hands on his breast, and felt him shrink a little. I said, ‘You do not want me. Why does it mean so much to you, that no other man should have what you do not want?’

  He said, ‘You are mine.’ And I saw that to him that answered everything.

  *

  Later, I called my women after me, and went out across the forecourt to the broad timbered porch; my veil drawn decently across my face, to watch the men march away. Every woman in Sparta would be crowding out to see husband or son or father depart; and the Queen must be there with the rest. The broad space of the Agora was full of troops, the early summer sun glinting on bronze helmet-combs, on spear-points pricking the morning, on shields blazoned with the scarlet Lamda. Agis had already taken station at their head, his staff officers about him and his bodyguard close behind. The King-Standard with its painted Lion shivered in the little wind that was driving light clouds across the sky. The smoke of the sacrifice was still curling up from the altar before the temple of Ares. The augurs had read the omens in the entrails of the slain ox and proclaimed that they were fortunate. And the voice of the High Priest speaking the final words of invocation sounded thin in the morning air. It ended, and the flutes shrilled their order, and as one man the long ranks swung forward. The flutes broke into marching time; the steady, swinging rhythm of the tunes that would lead them northward through the mountains and across the Isthmus, and down at last from the north again, through the Dekalia Pass into Attica. The ranks passed — and passed — and passed — and were gone. The music of the flutes and the tramp of many feet, moving as one faded into the distance. In the training ground beyond the city, the rest of the Army would fall in behind them. But for us, here in the city, it was over, and they were gone.

  There was a ragged murmur from the crowd that had gathered to see them away; the women and the old, and the boys as yet too young for war; very little weeping. The women of Sparta are accustomed to watch, without weeping, their men march out to fight. But I, I wished all at once that there was some need in me to weep, something to bind me to the other women already beginning to drift away. But I could feel nothing, not even relief, at Agis’ going; I had no brothers, my father was too old, for they had not called up the veterans, and the boys who had trained with me were as yet too young by almost a year.

  For me there was nothing save an empty and impersonal pride in the bronze and crimson ranks that had left their emptiness in the sunlit air. Once, even though I had no special stake in them, my heart would have swollen and raced with a warm agony of pride as the marching ranks went by; but it seemed that close on two months of being Agis’ unused property had frozen something in me quite dead; and I missed it; I missed it with a longing beyond the need for tears.

  I do not know what made me pause as I was turning to go back into the King’s House, and look once more across the emptying Agora.

  Alkibiades was standing not far from the still faintly smoking altar, leaning one shoulder against a timber column of the temple, as though it was too much trouble to stand up. He was looking away down the street as though still watching the rearmost ranks that were long since out of sight, and the Helots who plodded after them carrying their baggage and spare weapons. I knew that he had applied to go with the Dekalia Force, and been refused, just as he had been refused when he applied to go on the Argolid raid the year before. He was a captive, even as I was, forbidden to leave Sparta till My Lord the King returned, a hostage for the success of his plan to ruin Athens. I wondered if there was anything of relief in him that at least now he would not be called on to draw sword against men of his own people. Or had he nursed his hate so well as the months lengthened into years, that there was only rage in him that he who had made the plan was left contemptuously behind while other men carried it out. There was nothing to be read in his face; it was the face a man wears in the wrestlers’ pit. As though he felt my eyes upon him, he turned his head and looked at me. For maybe the time that it takes to run five paces, it was as though we stood alone within touching distance and had reached out. Then he turned and said something to that drunken redheaded lieutenant of his, flung an arm across the man’s shoulder, and strolled away.

  9

  The Queen

  The outer gates shut behind me. The pigeons came fanning all about me with the sunlight rimming their wings with fire; pitching at my feet, strutting and crooning, for it was the hour at which I often threw them a little grain.

  I had plenty to do all day, the maids to oversee at their spinning, the household to attend to; except at festival times when she must perform her priestly duties, the life of a Queen is little different from that of any other woman, save that she has a larger household to handle.

  And all the while I felt, as I had felt for so long, that it was not Timea doing these things, but another in Timea’s shape, while Timea herself stood by in some kind of half-country, not living at all, but only waiting — for a beginning or an end; I did not know which.

  Evening came, and the slaves lit the lamps; night came, and I went to my sleeping chamber that should have been mine and Agis’, but now bore no sign that ever a man had had part or lot in it.

  It was a hot night. One of those early summer nights when the wind drops quite away and the belly of the darkness swells with unspilled rain. I longed for the rain, as though its coming could ease and slacken me and let me sleep. (I had not slept well for a long time, I who in the old days had slept when my head touched the pillow.) But failing the rain and failing sleep, I longed to be alone — not presently when the ritual of the Queen being put to bed was over, but now, now! I could not wait! When my women had taken off my tunic, I told them to leave me.

  My old nurse, who had followed me into my new life, said protestingly, ‘But Mistress, your hair!’

  ‘I will comb my own hair,’ I said. And then I heard my voice rising, growing shrill as a market woman’s. ‘I do not need you, I do not want any of you! Go away from me! Get out! Go!’

  I suppose they thought the day’s happenings had been too much for me. Indeed Eurynome the youngest of them said gently, ‘Mistress, he will come back.’

  I remember looking at her with a kind of surprised pity, and thinking that I had not known before what a fool she was.

  When they were gone, I unclasped the two heavy gold bracelets from my wrists and laid them on the table. The lamp by the bed-foot cast my naked shadow on the wall. I stood and looked at it, and it was a good shadow, narrow at the waist and broad at the hip and shoulder, t
he kind of shadow that many women must bind tight strips about their waists to achieve. I turned sideways, so that it turned sideways too, and I could see the outline of my breasts and belly on the wall; I was still hard and flat-bellied from the running track. Once that had seemed to me good; but there is a time for all things; and suddenly I could have wept for pity of myself, wondering if I must go lean and flat-bellied until I withered into an old woman with empty hanging dugs and flanks that might as well be a man’s.

  I pulled off the golden ribbon that bound my hair, and it came tumbling down over my shoulders. I took the comb from the table, and my little bronze mirror and began to comb it.

  I sat there for a long time, parting it with my fingers and combing it this way and that, and thinking. Thinking of the long solitary months ahead; thinking of what might happen if Agis did not come back, thinking of what might happen if he did. The lamp flame burned blue at the heart as a hyacinth flower; the turn-over of the wick was sparked and seeded with red in the way that foretells rain.

  Presently I heard it come; the first heavy drops on the beaten earth outside. It quickened to a spattering, and the scent of rain-wet earth came breathing in at the high window. And then I heard another sound; a faint stirring of movement outside that was not rain. I looked towards it, and a hand came over the sill.

  I sprang up, my mouth was open to cry out — but I knew the hand; the great ring on the signet finger, too, but the hand more than the ring. Artemis pity women! I did not cry out. And Alkibiades drew himself up and dropped into the room.

  I remember that for a time, I do not know whether it was short or long, we stood facing each other. Part of me was terrified, listening for a shout and a running of feet and the jar of weapons in the night outside, and hearing only the soft hush and spatter of the rain. Part of me felt as though all the blood in my body had turned to a strange cold fire and rushed back to my heart so that I could not breathe. Part of me said, ‘This is what you were waiting for. Now be content.’