The Spartans had lost their gods. Apollo of the market-place, who had also been the Guide of Souls, was left behind with the rest of the good things they had once been part of, being himself utterly and for ever Sparta. The little colony of Dorian strangers, too small to be spiritually self-sufficing in this many-templed city, began to be shaken by the new kinds of gods they found. Not all of them were touched, nor most of the King’s best friends. Sphaeros was distressed; Kleomenes angrily ignored the whole business; Hippitas laughed. Panteus was just plainly troubled—one more difficulty added on to the burden of worries and anxieties and disappointments and petty, wearing schemes and rearrangements. No single thing was in itself unbearable, but the combination was beginning to split him up. It was not the kind of hardship he was bred to stand. Philylla watched him, laid herself open to his pain, so that it came directly and steadily on to her. He told his wife most things, and she guessed almost all the others. She tried to help him practically, wrote letters for him and ran his house with an economy which was very difficult for her. She went to the market herself; there was no home-farm to send down fresh milk and cheese and eggs. No horses to ride. She must not think of that; it reminded her of Tiasa. All she wanted was to help him and the King. If only she could have helped him better! She knew that even in this life it should have been possible to have intervals, moments of utter peace and happiness plucked out of danger, but, except for that first day of all, and a few rare and desperately lovely hours during the weeks just after that, it had not happened. She had not been able to put him right and give him what he needed. There was no sign of a child, but perhaps that was just as well. When this was over and they were home—then everything would be put right, and that too. She talked to him about his land and the little house; it was distant in the past and distant in the future. Neither of them could really talk about anything except this grinding present which was going on all the time. It seemed worse when letters came from home, as they were beginning to now. Deinicha had her baby boy, and they all had the fields and the hills and the air of home. It was difficult to write answers; every month the common ground of life which they used all to have together was getting smaller.
A little before midsummer, or so it seemed to Erif Der, everybody in Egypt began to get excited. Something was going to happen. Even the Greeks in Alexandria felt it. Then one morning a message came, ritually whispered from house to house along the waiting streets: ‘The Tear has fallen.’ And at once in all the houses men and women put on the clean white linen robes that lay waiting for them and heaped cakes and fruit into their flat baskets. Isis had wept and the Nile was beginning to rise, and all would be well with next year’s corn.
The lady Ankhet and her two Egyptian maids came down the steps from the roof in white thin dresses down to their bare ankles. The maids carried food-baskets on their heads, and Ankhet had a lighter one balanced on her hip; she brought her elder daughter with her, silent and delighted. Rather shamefacedly her husband followed, half trying to look as if he were there by accident, but he was in a clean tunic too. Berris was working hard and Erif, rather bored because he would not talk, was kneeling by the window, leaning out, sniffing tentatively at the air to find out what this new feeling was. She saw them and called down: ‘May I come too?’
Ankhet called up to her gaily to put on clean linen in honour of Isis, the Year Queen who had pity on her people, and Hapi, the Nile, who had answered her. Erif jumped up, and ran and changed and came down to find Ankhet waiting. They went on together down towards the Sun Gate, the eastern gate of the town; just outside it there were bullock-carts waiting, with straw and cushions on the floor-boards and tasselled canopies to keep off the sun. Ankhet pointed to a pile of rugs in their own cart. ‘We shall sleep in the carts tonight.’
Erif wondered what it was all about, but was quite content not to ask. There was a midsummer feeling in her body. The bullocks grunted and heaved, the cart started jerkily, hauling itself up on to the dry Canopus road. One of the maids brought out large light veils; they covered themselves at once, before the dust should have got into their hair and eyes. Then they sat back among the cushions, not speaking much, but chewing seeds and leaves and little hard sweet cakes, and sometimes passing round a gourd of water. In front and behind and at each side other bullock-carts creaked and padded; through the moving haze of dust they could see the backs of their own driver, and Ankhet’s husband, also veiled against the dust. After about five hours they turned south off the Canopus road, and fairly soon after that Ankhet lifted her veil and knelt up, swaying in the cart, peering ahead. She signed to Erif, who looked too. Not far ahead was the long line of palms and acacias and close-planted fruit trees which marked that branch of the Nile. The Egyptian women stretched out their hands and murmured. In another half-hour the cart jolted to a standstill in the shade of the first palms, and they stepped out.
Everywhere other families were halting their carts and getting out, and then the whole crowd began to move down towards the river. Most were Egyptians, but quite a number were Greeks or other foreigners. It was then that Ankhet began to tell Erif of the summer flooding of the Nile and how the flood-water brought down life with it for crops and men. Far up the Nile this had started, and although down here it was scarcely visible, yet they believed and came to bless and be blessed by the waters. It was less immediately important in the fertile delta country, but this was the way of ancient days and ancient living.
They came down over the dried mud to the edge of the river, and then, in a soft, surprising rustle, men and women and children threw out from their baskets into the water, fruit and millet and cakes. The brownish, swift current took all the little things and swept them down and under. After that they all walked into the cool bosom of Hapi the Nile, ankle deep, knee deep, waist deep. Ankhet had led Erif by the hand, startled and yet not frightened, but glad to be one of a crowd again. She felt the warm mud oozing about her feet and as they got further out felt the soft tugging of the current about her legs and body. It was all very solemn at first, but soon here and there along the line came shrill, joyful cries, and people’s hands stirred and then their arms, circling, plucking at the surface of the water, and the impulse came down on them everywhere, and they all fell to splashing and laughing and crying out of happy greetings and blessings to one another and to the dear and kind river. Some of the young men flung themselves out on to the current swimming and glad, shouting that they could feel the flood already. They circled down and back and were greeted with laughter and kisses and pelted with grain.
They stayed bathing and splashing till the late afternoon, and then came out reluctantly to let the sun dry their new linen dresses before nightfall. They played games on the bank and gave one another flowers and pottery tubes of scent. Then they went back to the carts to sleep, but Erif thought that the gaiety was deep enough into the crowd for the sleep to be best done in twos. She felt suddenly very angry and miserable that she—she the Spring Queen of Marob!—should have to sleep by herself with Ankhet and the maids and the little girl. She wanted to jump out and go down into the bushes where there were still lights and singing, and find herself a gentle, dark-eyed Egyptian boy to be her playmate and sleep-mate, but she did not know enough of the language and she did not think she could explain to Ankhet, who was, after all, her hostess and sponsor. It was all very well for Ankhet, she thought resentfully, with a husband any night, but for her it was long, long since last midsummer! She stayed awake till well after the others and then cried herself quietly to sleep. She woke just before dawn at a creaking and rustling, and, peeping through half-closed lashes, saw the two maids slipping back into the cart with flushed and drowsy faces. They at least had gone down into the bushes by the river and played midsummer properly!
Chapter Three
THE CHILDREN HAD all been allowed to come down on to the quays, even Gorgo, on the understanding that the boys should look after her properly. Every one was busy at the King’s house, for Leandris was to be
married that day to Idaios, and Queen Kratesikleia had set her mind on having a good show. She had asked a number of ladies from King Ptolemy’s court, determined to overlook a great deal, though naturally she had to draw the line at Agathoklea! Leandris herself thought uneasily that probably none of them would come, though she did not quite know why, for she did not begin to question that her lady was a great queen still. But she felt from the beginning that it would be a failure and knew that Kratesikleia would end the evening in trembling indignation, and then she suddenly remembered that this time she herself would not have either to soothe or run away and hide till it was over. Because she would be with her husband. She would have the right not to think of Queen Kratesikleia all the time!
The children went down to the eastern docks, Gorgo in the middle, and bought themselves a half water-melon to share. By now they had got used to seeing the lighthouse on the end of the island, opposite them across the harbour; only Gorgo still stared. Last winter they had come down every evening about dusk to watch it being lighted, the yellow light bigger than the moon, which leapt and throbbed at first, and then settled down into a steady glare. The boys liked it, they would have liked to go up there and spend the night throwing on faggots, constantly stirring up the fire-dragon of Alexandria. But Gorgo did not like it, this great erect frightening thing with an eye on the top. She told Philylla about it, but Philylla did not understand properly. There ought to have been someone who understood.
Gyridas looked back over his shoulder at the palace with its high limestone walls and its own walled-off quay. Shiny green trees showed their heads over the white wall-tops, and there were red and yellow curtains in the far up ranges of windows. He said to Nikolaos: ‘Ptolemy’s in there. Suppose we made a sand palace and then put dry seaweed in and set it on fire?’
‘Would it be fun?’ said Nikolaos evasively, avoiding all implications and yet admiring Gyridas for suggesting them.
But Nikomedes was looking across the causeway to the big western harbour where most of the merchant shipping came. ‘Come on!’ he said suddenly. ‘There’s a new black-rig in! Let’s see if there’s news.’
But she wasn’t from Greece at all; she was from the north, built and owned in Byzantium. She had touched at Poieëssa, Chios, Samos and Rhodes, then coasting south of Crete, and so to Alexandria. She was unlading exciting-looking bales. Nikomedes asked politely what they were, and was told furs; then came slaves, driven stiff and scared out of the hold, ducking and blinking at the sun-blaze. Then came the captain, all in his best, with rings and bracelets and a wolf-hound on the lead. He was carrying two or three sealed packets. Gorgo looked at him so adoringly that he couldn’t help grinning back. He came over to the children and asked them if they could help him about the delivery of letters. One of them was for Erif Der.
She came back from the wedding fretted and jumpy with the thought of Leandris and Idaios together, while she herself must still sleep alone, and found that Berris, impatient, had opened her letter. ‘What’s the news?’ she cried, running at him, and then, seeing his face: ‘Oh, Berris—what? Not Klint?’
‘No, no,’ said Berris hurriedly, ‘no one’s dead. You read it, Erif. I’m here.’
While she read the long letter in Tarrik’s black, hard writing, Berris watched her face. Her cheeks grew pink and her eyes looked bigger and bluer; she made a funny movement with her arms. ‘The baby,’ she said softly. ‘Oh, the little baby! Oh, I would love to hold him!’ She read on to the end. ‘I’m glad it’s a boy,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t have liked Tarrik to have his first girl except by me myself. Link will have wanted a boy, too.’ She rolled back the letter to look again at something in the beginning of it which made her smile. Then she looked at her brother. ‘You thought I’d be angry, Berris.’
‘Well,’ said Berris, ‘yes, as a matter of fact, I did.’
‘I’m not,’ she said. ‘I’m glad. I do love him! And she is my cousin; we were little girls together. I think I am them both, Berris. I know I am Tarrik, and because she has been so deeply kind to him and given him a child, I am her too. She would have been as kind to me; she became me at Plowing Eve to her own danger. She has taken away nothing from me.’ She stretched out her arms and heaved up her breasts in a wide breath and thought very happily about Marob and her loves and the new little baby of the Corn King.
Then, of course, Berris laughed. What he said was unfair to her, but he was still rather annoyed about the loss of his property: ‘It would have been nice for Tarrik if you’d looked so pretty over Sardu!’ God, how stupid Sardu could be! And what lovely legs she had. ‘Poor little Sardu, who hadn’t hurt you either,’ he added.
‘I’m thinking of my equals!’ said Erif grandly and rather tremblingly. Her brother did not appear to be impressed. Scarlet and purple rose viciously through her. ‘Not little stinking worms, not your cast dirt—’
Berris laughed again loudly, mocking the spitting scarlet in his sister with something black of his own, determined to pull Erif down, to be King of the Castle himself!
But Erif refused the tussle. Someone else had come into her mind, following Sardu. Murr, who had killed himself just before midsummer, because of her unkindness. Now all the kindness he should have had came flooding up through Erif. She recognised the scarlet for the thing it was, her own jangled body that had been torn away from Tarrik and the sweet sucking of her baby and the life of Marob. She said she thought she would go and help Ankhet about the house. She thought she would be able to tell Ankhet about the new baby.
She went up to the roof. There, under a summer tent of palm leaves, Ankhet was damping and ironing the pleats of her best linen skirt. The little girl was doing the same with her doll’s dress and an iron carefully not too hot; she talked to herself and the doll very busily all the time. Erif Der told Ankhet what the letter had said and what it meant in Marob, how every one would be glad that the Corn King had begotten a child on the Spring, and how she was glad with them. She made a picture in her words of Linit and the baby, and Tarrik’s happiness, and the fresh springing of power reaching through his writing across the sea to Egypt. The strength of her imaginative well-wishing made her look beautiful to the other woman. Ankhet nodded and murmured. At last she said: ‘It is full water now. Hapi, the great river, has risen and risen and brimmed and been kind to us. My husband says we shall have good crops. I am going to the Little Mysteries tonight. Will you come too?’
‘To Isis? Isis and the baby? Will they not mind a stranger?’
Ankhet shook her head. ‘She will be glad of you. She looks on the land now. She walks over the thirsty land and draws Hapi the river after her. She thinks of others. She thinks of their good. You and I will go to meet her; we will wash our hair and put on clean linen, and when the men go to supper we will not go with them. We will take offerings. She will accept us both.’
Erif said ‘Yes,’ she would go with Ankhet; but when she thought of Isis and Horus she thought of her young cousin Linit and a baby that was as like Tarrik as her own Klint had been.
To begin with, the temple was quite dark. Ankhet held her right hand and someone whom she could not see but knew must be a woman held her left. In front of them there was a row of little red lights and then curtains; the lowest five feet of the curtains were dimly visible with lotus stems growing up them, but the lotus flowers and the tops of the curtains were lost in darkness. A certain rhythm of grip and swing began to assert itself faintly on the worshippers; the curtains began to sway a little to this same rhythm. The sway gaining, at last the curtains parted altogether. One after another, on silent naked feet, priests in white with shaved heads came to the image of Isis and kissed its feet and offered it sweet ointment, head bands and shoulder hangings of painted linen, scent, butter, and pure water out of vases made in the shapes of flowers and animals. They bowed and swayed and passed on, leaving the image of mother and child more and more shining. They brought her a ship made of papyrus and fully rigged; she was Isis the Alexandrian, mother of t
he lighthouse, star of sailors. Four of them brought in an altar and sacrificed an antelope, the wild thing of the desert, the suspect, the devil-ridden. This was done silently too, with no shock, for all closed on it at once with expert, choking fingers.
After this there began, to a tinkling music, a play of Isis and her wanderings as a forlorn widow, how the wicked rich woman who would not feed or house her was punished by a scorpion-bite on her child, but how Isis herself turned back and healed the dying child of her enemy. But Erif was not seeing the play properly. Because now that there was more light, faces were visible: the friendly face of Ankhet beside her, the fattish face of the woman on her left, and the face two beyond, which was not Egyptian, the unmistakable face of Tarrik’s aunt, Yersha-Eurydice. She drew her own head back and down a little, so as to observe from behind. That face was still damp as though with a perpetually cold sweat, the pure linen of the mysteries clung damply about the neck. It appeared to Erif that Yersha’s figure, of which she had been so proud, had collapsed a good deal. The breasts sagged; one could see that because of the damp stuff. And her eyes. Yes, Yersha had got the worst of it! This was the person who had come between her and Tarrik, who had tried to poison her and her baby, who had hated the true Marob people and thought and felt and acted against them. It was curious to see her. She looked very powerless now. Erif brooded on things that had happened and allowed her hands to swing to the tinkling tune of the Mystery Play.
Isis gave the rich woman her heart’s desire, the life of her child. The woman knelt before her in adoration holding the child, and Isis stretched out her arms to her woman worshippers and bade them too ask for their hearts ‘lawful desire at this time when the heart of a goddess was warm from giving and aching to give again. Then the women spoke aloud, tensely, their desires, but as they spoke mostly in Egyptian it was hard for Erif to understand more than a word or two. She said nothing herself, till Ankhet tugged at her hand, saying:’ Speak now!’ But even then she only murnured: ‘Make me clean, Isis, Lady of the Lighthouse, send me home!’ For she was listening to Yersha saying again and again in a voice she remembered so ridiculously well: ‘Take the spell from me, Lady Isis, pitiful goddess; have mercy on me, give me peace at last; take away the spell that the wicked witch cast on me!’
The Corn King and the Spring Queen Page 61