The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  ‘Well, we’ll have to teach him to care! He loves other beauty—music—so he ought to love this.’

  ‘It isn’t an art to be able to sing. I won’t try to teach him, Philylla. But—do you often get the chance of teaching him things?’

  ‘Not often. Oh, not as often as I should like. But I expect I shall, Berris.’

  ‘Do you, Philylla? I didn’t know. When?’

  She looked quickly at him. They were sitting in the orchard of the King’s house. She had brought up a lot of garden seeds to sort and tie up in little twists of cloth for next year. He was looking at the ground in front of him. She had a leaf beside her with a few meal worms which she had got for her magpie; she held one out to him, wriggling, and he came hopping for it. Berris still did not look up. She said: ‘It’s not quite settled yet, but I think my father is going to give me to him.’ She put it that way, with an instinct to keep herself and her own actions out of it.

  ‘Yes,’ said Berris, ‘I’d heard it spoken of, but quite vaguely. It seems most—reasonable.’

  She was puzzled. ‘Reasonable—yes! Oh, Berris—Berris, be glad with me!’

  ‘Are you glad?’

  ‘Of course. He is the best thing there is in Sparta.’

  ‘And that means the best thing in the world—doesn’t it, Philylla? Oh, I know. And when you’re married you’ll stop thinking about silly things—like my sort of beauty.’

  ‘Yes, I shall stop a little. You see, I shall have other things, children perhaps. But I won’t quite stop. I shall talk about it to Panteus.’

  ‘You’ll talk about it to Panteus,’ he said, ‘yes.’

  ‘Oh, Berris, Berris!’ said Philylla, and suddenly leant over, spilling her seeds, and shook him. ‘Why don’t you like Panteus?’

  ‘I do like him,’ said Berris, ‘as far as I know him. He doesn’t like me.’

  ‘It’s stupid of you,’ said Philylla, disregarding this. ‘You ought to like him. Oh, I want you to.’

  He changed the subject, back to one which he knew would interest her. ‘Why don’t you ask my sister if she could do anything about the Queen? She might, you know, be able to help.’

  ‘Oh, might she really?’ said Philylla. ‘Oh, Berris, I’ll go and find her now!’

  But Erif Der could not help much. She tried to explain to Philylla that the air of Hellas was bad for magic and that the Queen of Sparta would not accept it. All the same, Philylla dragged her off to try. Erif Der said: ‘You were kind to me when I came here first, Queen Agiatis, and I would repay it if I could.’ She was frightened of Agiatis, but very much hoped that the Queen would perhaps like her enough to make some use of her. But it was no good; Agiatis refused to admit that she was ill at all, still less would she allow the barbarian to show any power over her. When Erif was gone, she was even a little angry with Philylla. ‘There’s a funny half of you that believes in magic,’ she said. ‘But I don’t. And I like it to leave me alone. So remember that.’ All the same Philylla wanted Erif to give her a charm which she could slip under Agiatis’ pillow or somehow get to her without her knowledge. But Erif could not do magic that way, on the unwilling for their own good. Philylla got a charm finally from her foster-mother, but she did not believe in it much.

  Agiatis did not like speaking of her pains; that seemed to make them realer. But she had her littlest, Gorgo, with her a good deal. Nikolaos had gone to the class and was there with his brother. She had hoped he need not perhaps go yet, and had even once done what she had not meant to do—it was after a week during which she had slept badly—and begged Kleomenes to let her keep him at home for another year. By then—But Kleomenes had been firm that he must go. ‘It’s not like you, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Be yourself, be a Spartan mother!’ So she had been. However, the discipline was not so hard that the two children might not come home sometimes. When they did Nikolaos was very much of a big boy, not wanting to be babied, or sit on her knee. But Nikomedes was gentle and sensitive to her. When she had not got the children or Philylla with her, she tried never to be without something to do or someone to talk with. At worst, a book.

  Chapter Five

  NOW THINGS WENT on very well for Sparta and that idea of the world. All through the autumn and winter one place after another came over to Kleomenes, sometimes through fear and sometimes through admiration: they wanted a share in the power and glory. Very soon Sparta had gathered in practically the whole of the Peloponnese. The King took hostages and put in garrisons, and when he did that every one came out to stare at the real Spartans as they went by. Sometimes he banished the chief men who had been against him, but that was not always wise. It was still the poor and indebted who were on his side everywhere, but he did not always alter things as much as they hoped. Perhaps when the war was over he would come back and finish his revolutions: when he had conquered the world! For one thing led to another; he never found the right place to stop. He could not at least till Aratos was smashed, and with him all danger from Macedonia, and he himself had command of the whole free League. And when he had got the command? He dreamed awake with clouded eyes; he made the sacrifices that the King of Sparta must make for his army, and they were good. It would be unlucky to think now of setting limits to his fortune!

  Some of the others thought the same. They had needed, in the beginning, to set up such an overwhelming idea of Sparta, that now it stood in their hearts like an armed man forcing them on. They had gone back almost three centuries. Let Antigonos of Macedonia come with all his men, let all the outlanders come! They would no more conquer sacred Hellas than the Persians had, even though they found a traitor to let them through the pass. His reward would come to him in time, oh, a bitter one. Sparta stood at the back of Hellas now, as it had then, when the first Kleomenes had thought and planned for her, and Leonidas his brother had fought and died for her, when Pausanias, king too in that line, forefather of their own King, had finally and utterly broken the barbarians at Plataea. The world was repeating itself; this would happen again. Being Spartiate, they were part of it all; they were in one world with the men of Plataea and Thermopylae.

  But some were anxious. They saw, part of the time at least, that this was not a full reality. Phoebis was distressed that the lists of new citizens did not go through faster. He told the King plainly that the Have-nots were still hungry, that now again they were growing suspicious of the Haves. Kleomenes said he would see to it in time, but what mattered now was the war; he must see how these new citizens did as soldiers. ‘We’re doing well enough,’ said Phoebis. ‘We—we?’ said the King. ‘You are part of my Mess, Phoebis. That’s a different we.’ But Phoebis was still anxious; it seemed to him that the King was going cross-wise with his destiny, that pride was getting him, and the world beyond Sparta. He tried to quiet his people when he went home, making promises he was not certain would be kept, unless luck were kind and turned the King back to what he had seen once, and what Agis had seen.

  Another thing: Kleomenes did not insist on the cancelling of debts and dividing of land at Argos, because he wanted to take the force out of Aratos’ constant image of him as the hurter of cities, the devil he set up always to frighten the careful Assemblies. And Kleomenes wanted Corinth.

  He got Corinth that winter. The citizens were finally very eager to let him have it peaceably before he should come and take it by force. The Achaean garrison would not move out of the citadel, so he blockaded it. Aratos still held Sicyon, but little else except the knowledge that Antigonos was now surely coming. The Gods were beginning to move against Kleomenes. But Kleomenes did not admit that at all; he laid siege to Sicyon, and accepted the private estates of Aratos as a gift to himself and Sparta from his own League of many cities.

  In the meanwhile the Spartan army was not always fighting; the blockades went on quietly; from time to time they all got home, and home seemed very good. There were many marriages that winter; both men and women were marrying younger and more suddenly than they used, and were less careful about how
many children they brought up, now that there was no question about splitting up the estates. The future was as uncertain as it was surely splendid, and they could not attempt to make provision for it; boy children at least were always welcome, to be brought up as soldiers for new Sparta. Many of Philylla’s friends were married already. She knew now that there would always be plenty ready to marry her, she need never be afraid of that; but they did not speak to her father, for all knew that she was half betrothed already in the King’s house.

  Gradually she and Panteus got nearer to each other; they began to speak of the time when they would be married and the children they would have. Often during the winter there would be hours when they would be all together, the King and Queen and Panteus and she, and they would talk and play games, or Panteus would sing, and the war and the future would both stay a long way off for a time; or at least only that one part of the future would show which belonged to her and Panteus. Often, too, there was little speech. She would be doing something with her hands, spinning or weaving or embroidering or making garlands for the men at supper, and her mind was at ease and flowing sweetly, and sweetly showing itself in words, when words were needed, but not unless they were. Agiatis would be doing something too, and perhaps Panteus would be shaping the end of a bow, or perhaps he would be making a doll that nodded its head for Gorgo. They felt the presence of one another and knew that it was a Good.

  Kleomenes talked more than all the others. When he was happiest he most wanted to argue and persuade people, to flourish his bright mind like a sword. If Sphaeros came, he argued with him interminably and brilliantly, so that the others could almost see the arguments as javelins flashing through the air, would sometimes themselves reach out a small net of words to catch and hold one of the javelins and look at it closer. But Sphaeros did not come very often. He was wondering what he had done, what thing it was his teaching had let loose. It is terrible for an old man and a philosopher to begin to doubt, as he did. He tried himself to live the Stoic life utterly: not to care what happened, to disclaim responsibility, still more affection, and to shut himself away from the world of appearances, with his ideas. Sometimes he wrote all day and far into the night; he did not need much sleep now. Those who came to him for advice found that he was short with them, unwilling to be a guide through the mazes of the soul: an old man.

  Yet, towards the end of winter, a shadow had come over all these good hours together. Kleomenes knew now that his wife was ill and that there was nothing to be done. Yet he would not quite admit it, any more than she herself did. They helped one another at that, and they were brave and gay to one another till their friends, watching them, had their hearts wrung—Philylla and the rest of the Queen’s girls, Panteus and Phoebis and Hippitas, Kratesikleia, the old woman who might so well have been taken instead. Sooner or later, now, the thing was bound to happen. Only the children knew nothing, and wondered why their grandmother should suddenly be crying—or Philylla when they wanted her to play! Mother was the only person who was just the same. The two boys came back from their class whenever their father was home from the wars, or for feasts or birthdays. They didn’t always want to; it interrupted things they were doing with their friends. Nikolaos said so, but the eldest, the gentle Nikomedes, never did unless it was forced from him by direct questioning—for he was very truthful. Philylla was full of horror and concern for the child when this thing came on him. Once or twice she tried to warn him, but it was impossible; he could not take in what she meant, and she dared not be plain; being a child, he was still protected from the contemplation of future pain. Thinking of him, she thought less of herself, and that was as well. She could not begin to realise at all what life might be without Agiatis. In that sorrow who would there be to turn to?

  Panteus was full of future horror too: for the King. He was beginning to brace himself to stand by when Kleomenes had to take it. Often, now, he was moody and silent. He would not smile in answer to any look from Philylla, nor sing to her if she asked him to: that was the thing she loved best in the world, his singing. She could forget anything then, or at least find it turning somehow into beauty. But in these days he would not or could not help her. He did not know that he was hurting; he thought of her less and less. He was going to marry her some time. He had spoken to her father and there could be no going back on that; he did not want to go back on it. But it could wait; there were plenty of men of his own age unmarried still.

  One day Erif Der said: ‘I have been dreaming about Harvest. Tarrik has not written to tell me what happened. He should have written. I do not know why he has not written. I have sent a letter myself asking him. Soon it will be Plowing Eve again in Marob. I am not clean yet. I cannot get help here, either from your Gods, or the foreign Gods I have seen, or the Gods of the helots. I am going to Delphi to see if Apollo there can see further and tell me what to do.’

  Philylla stayed quiet for a moment. Then she took Erif ’s hand and then she began to cry, hot, startling tears, falling on to Erif ’s skin. She said: ‘I don’t want to stop you going to the God if you must, but oh, please, please, don’t go yet. It is going to be so terrible, Erif, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t face it alone. Do stay with me till—till afterwards. I do like you so much, Erif!’

  So what could Erif Der do, being a guest and one who had been so well treated, and having her hand held by this brown hand, having someone so like a young sister clinging to her, but promise that she would not go, not yet, and say that she too loved Philylla? ‘But when I do go, Berris must come with me,’ she said. ‘He’s too unhappy, Philylla; his work is less and less good. He can’t see any new things in his head.’

  ‘But I’ve thought some of the designs he has made lately very beautiful!’

  ‘It’s the old stuff; he’s working it to death. It’s the same thing with art and love; they must move and grow or else they die. I know you can’t help it, Philylla, it’s not your fault. You don’t hurt him yourself, but your image does, this pattern of you he’s got into his heart. And—I’m his sister.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Philylla. ‘I wish I knew what to do. I shall miss him badly when you take him away.’ Yes, how very badly she would miss him, that whole part of her life! How she would miss his eagerness and his gentleness and the look of him at his work—she’d watched him so often at work!—oh, why had this other thing got to come across it so that he must go away from her? She did not say this to Erif Der; only her tears, which had stopped, suddenly began again.

  ‘You can’t do anything,’ Erif said, ‘if you’re going to be married to Panteus. Perhaps it will be better for Berris when he sees you close and secure in someone else’s world. When will that be?’

  ‘Oh, I wish I knew!’ said Philylla, and all at once felt it was this other thing she was crying for, no less miserably. ‘Mother’s always asking me and—laughing at me. I wish he and father would get it straight. I can’t myself, and somehow lately—But he must think of the King first. I know that. The King is Sparta, and I’m only a girl.’

  ‘It’s a pity there’s no one else who can be the same for the King.’

  ‘Yes. Except that, I suppose, if there was it would hurt Panteus.’ She stopped crying. There was something to think about now, not a hard and unescapable fact, but a problem.

  Erif had one arm round her neck; she leant over towards Philylla, digging her chin softly into the soft shoulder, the strong little shoulder. ‘Philylla, will you never mind having only half a love?’

  Philylla was smiling a little now. She rubbed the remains of tears off her face. She said: ‘No. For this is how I see it for the years to come. The more he loves the King, the better lover he is and the more bright he grows—for love is a brightening thing—and the more he shines into my world. Also, through him I have a share in the King and in new Sparta. And again: I love others besides him. I love Agiatis. Ah, how I do love her, Erif!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Yes, I know. Don’t say it! I’ll love her
then too. And I shall love my children. And then, if another woman came to be as dear to me—Sometimes I think you’re that other woman, Erif, and then sometimes you’re suddenly like a stranger to me.’

  Erif stirred uncomfortably. ‘Don’t love me like that, Philylla! I shall go home when I can, when I’m clean, and then—well, I may see you again when we’re both older. Or I mayn’t. I mightn’t ever come back to Greece. Let’s love one another now, Philylla, but lightly, oh lightly, not for the future, not with a grip on each other’s hearts. I’m not in your world. And I am not sure that I believe in your image of love. You have not tested it yourself yet.’

  ‘No. I think I took it from Agiatis. With many good things. I would trust her over the pattern of love, most of all when it is the pattern of Sparta too.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s right for you. People must have thought about it for a great many hundred years here, till it’s got down below their hearts into the deep places of reason and philosophy. I don’t understand quite what you want in your marriage. I think Tarrik and I love only one another—well, hate one another, too, sometimes! But at least it’s always towards one another that we’re turned.’

  In early spring Kleomenes got news that Aratos had somehow slipped out of Sicyon through his lines, that his shadow League had voted to accept Antigonos definitely as their master and saviour, and that the Macedonian army was moving. That same day he let Sicyon go; for an hour his ring camp was running and shouting and staking tents and saddling horses; then it was away with him riding hard ahead of it to fortify the Isthmus of Corinth against the barbarians. He gained a little time because Antigonos, coming south, had to go the longest way. Aetolia, staying rigidly and violently neutral, had stopped him at Thermopylae. That seemed a good omen to the Spartans, and the King, on the strength of it, sent a gift to Apollo at Delphi, by this doing two things—pleasing the Gods, who had perhaps helped him if they perhaps existed, and pleasing the Aetolians, under whose protection Delphi was. The gift was a gold cup which Berris had designed and made for them, charging nothing for his work. It was more elaborate than he quite liked himself, but he knew that was what they would want. It had to be finished quickly and they kept on coming in and watching him at it; he put in some of them, but quite little, so that there was only a typical attitude to show who it was. Apollo sent back vaguely encouraging thanks.