The Corn King and the Spring Queen

by Naomi Mitchison

  He went to sleep and had horrid, confusing, tangled dreams, which settled down into seeing a long procession going past over and over again, with priests and oxen and his grandmother and all sorts of quite unbothered people, and in the middle his father, and he knew that at the last moment the beasts were just not going to be there and they would sacrifice his father instead. If only he himself could get into the procession he could stop them, but he was always in some way outside it. Then he dreamt about Ptolemy like an ogre eating boys, which seemed ordinary in the dream, and his father was mixed up in that too. He would have liked to ask someone about these dreams, but Sphaeros was always cross with him for dreaming or at any rate saying anything about it, and he was ashamed to ask the Egyptian servants who would have been delighted to explain.

  The rest of the Spartiates came to the King’s house; some of them had got letters from home too, by the same boat. They discussed them, getting down to the smallest possible amount of help that would allow them to try the adventure. They talked about Sosibios and the best ways to approach him. They were none of them cheerful. Nikomedes sat and listened. Panteus said behind his hand to Phoebis: ‘The child oughtn’t to be here. Can’t he be sent away till we’ve got something better to tell him?’ Phoebis hadn’t noticed the boy much; he looked at him for a time and whispered back: ‘He’s old for his years; he can stand it. But I don’t see why he need.’

  It was beginning very slowly and yet with an odd effect of doing it by jumps, to take shape in Nikomedes’ mind that he could do something to help. He could do it alone. He must. It occurred to him that if he was a Stoic he would not mind what happened to his body; if he was a good Stoic he could be a victim. It would be some use having been talked to by Sphaeros!

  They went on discussing points, more and more dejectedly. There were long silences. Kleomenes sat with his head in his hands; he looked as if he had not slept much. At last there seemed to be nothing further to say. One after another they went out of the room. Nikomedes walked over to Panteus and said: ‘Isn’t there any way of getting straight to King Ptolemy?’

  ‘I think we’ve tried everything,’ said Panteus.

  ‘If there was something he really wanted that we had! What does he really want, Panteus?’

  ‘As far as I can see, he doesn’t want anything honourable, anything a Spartiate has to give! We’ve offered him our swords.’

  ‘And he wasn’t interested. And father goes on being hurt. Have you noticed, Panteus, how his hair’s quite white over his temples and a bit grey everywhere else?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Panteus, ‘I’ve noticed.’

  ‘Can I come and see Philylla one day? She hasn’t asked me lately. Aren’t you going to have a baby, Panteus?’

  Panteus shook his head. ‘Come any day, Nikomedes. We’d be very glad.’

  Nikomedes went to Idaios who was rolling and tying the loose bits of paper. ‘Idaios,’ he said, ‘before you married Leandris, did you love a boy?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Idaios. Then: ‘He was killed at Sellasia. Praxitas. You knew him, didn’t you? He was almost a man then.’

  ‘I remember him,’ said Nikomedes. ‘I didn’t know he was your love. Idaios, was that better than Leandris?’

  ‘Why do you ask, King’s son?’

  ‘You don’t mind my asking, Idaios? Well, I—I wondered what it was like.’

  ‘You’ve got no love, Nikomedes, have you? And you should, of course, at your age. It’s this damnable place. We’re all too old for you, and no good to a boy anyway, and there’s no one else. Bad luck, Nikomedes!’ He put one arm round the boy’s shoulder and kissed him on the forehead.

  Nikomedes looked up at him and said: ‘Tell me just this. If—everything were different—am I the sort of boy you could fall in love with?’ Idaios looked rather startled, and Nikomedes blushed quickly and said: ‘Please don’t think I’m asking you to! It’s not that. I only want to know. Do I look right?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Idaios. ‘I hadn’t thought of you that way. You’ve been one of our council, one of the men. Yes, I suppose you do. Don’t worry about it, Nikomedes. We’ll get back to Sparta some day. At least you will, even if we’ve all got to die in these blasted sand-heaps!’ He stacked up the piles of paper and went out.

  The only one left now was Hippitas, who was always slow-moving. Nikomedes went up to him. ‘Hippitas,’ he said, smiling at him, ‘do you think I’m beautiful?’

  ‘Chtt!’ said Hippitas, ‘what are you after, imp? I’m not seducible!’

  ‘Seriously,’ said Nikomedes, ‘am I?’

  ‘Oh, you’re well enough. Anyway, Nikomedes, you’re a good boy, which is a less ordinary thing to be.’

  ‘That’s my own affair,’ said Nikomedes.

  ‘Isn’t the other? That’s news, if it’s not. My dear, who’s been making love to you?’

  ‘No one, no one! Hippitas, I just want to know!’

  ‘Can’t you tell me what you’re so excited about? No? Well, I think you look nice, as most decent, well-bred boys of your age are bound to do. Is that enough for you?’

  But Nikomedes was away already, frowning.

  He knocked at the door of his father’s room. Kleomenes was writing letters to Sparta, grinding his teeth slightly from time to time, and getting up and walking about the room to get his sentences clear in his mind before he wrote them down. He frowned mechanically at the interruption. Nikomedes stood near the door, waiting, his heart beating violently with unexpressed and unexpressible sympathy and love. At last Kleomenes said: ‘Well, what is it?’

  ‘Father,’ said Nikomedes, ‘I want to ask you a question. It sounds stupid, but it’s not. Am I at all beautiful?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ said Kleomenes, still frowning because he wanted to keep the idea of his letter clear. Nikomedes shook his head. ‘Of course you are!’ said Kleomenes, ‘the most beautiful thing I ever made. God help me, you’re the image of your mother. Go away, Nikomedes.’

  He went to the room where he and his brother kept their clothes. Gyridas and Nikolaos were playing draughts; they murmured to him but were too much interested in their game to look what he was doing. At last when he had washed and dressed again, Gyridas turned round. ‘What are you doing in your best tunic, Nikomedes?’ ‘Did granny say we were to?’ asked Nikolaos, vaguely certain that he was likely to have forgotten some occasion. But the eldest son went out without answering. ‘I wonder what’s the matter with him,’ said Gyridas. ‘Did you see—his hands were shaking and he had a funny look about his nose, as if he couldn’t breathe?’

  Nikomedes walked quickly through the streets of Alexandria to Ptolemy’s palace. It was getting near sunset and the light coming down between the houses was very golden. They would probably think he was having supper with one of the others. He walked with such extreme certainty and carelessness through the gates that two sets of sentries let him by. When he was challenged he said: ‘I am Nikomedes of Sparta and I have particular business with King Ptolemy.’ He wondered what he would look like to them when he came out again. He had a little money, but he had decided when to use it. To the last guards who challenged him he said: ‘Tell King Ptolemy that the boy Nikomedes, the son of Kleomenes, is here in his best clothes. Wait to tell him till he is alone. Sosibios is not to know. I think you will find that your master will be pleased.’ He handed over his bribe, a small one as things went, and one of the sentries went off with the message.

  The other one tried to talk to him and even to touch him, but Nikomedes evaded it with some skill. At last the man who had gone came back. ‘I gave your message,’ he said. Nikomedes took a step forward, suddenly feeling very cold. ‘And now?’ ‘One nice kiss for me and I’ll let you through.’ ‘You’ve had my money!’ ‘That! Why, that’s what I give the old beggar women in the gutters! Now, don’t be nasty—what’s one kiss more or less to a pretty boy like you?’ ‘Very well,’ said Nikomedes, hardening himself into a mere Stoic formula, and stood and let the guard kiss him. The
man seemed rather dissatisfied, but he was allowed to go by. He went along a passage and pushed aside a curtain of painted linen, and then stood blinking for a moment, with his eyes full of the setting sun. A voice said: ‘Come in, come in, Nikomedes; I’ve been hoping for a long time that you’d pay me a visit.’

  It had been most startling for Ptolemy to get the whispered message. He kept the guard waiting while he turned it over and over in his mind. But he found he could not be rational about it at all. No amount of brain work brought him anything but the image of that silent and gracious and virgin creature who had stood sometimes between Sphaeros and King Kleomenes on the days of his audience, and had not seemed even to look at him. Nikomedes in his best clothes. So, he was at last going to get something out of the Spartans, in spite of Sosibios! He said the boy was to be brought in at once, and then, to one of the slaves: ‘A little supper. Yes. I am not to be disturbed.’ He mentioned the wine. ‘And garlands. Something white, yes, pure white for both of us.’ He glanced at himself in the mirror and decided not to wear anything more elaborate; it would only frighten the boy. The diadem? Yes, perhaps. What luck had he to thank for this? Was the boy bored with being shut up all day with a grandmother? Was he doing it merely out of curiosity? Or pique? Or to spite someone? One of those fierce, surly Spartiates who’d scolded him; his father perhaps. Or was it—had he come for the sake of the God—had he heard of the new wine? But while King Ptolemy was thinking this he heard light steps outside, not very fast, but quite even. Then the curtain was pushed aside and Nikomedes was standing in the Danaë gold of sunset. He raised his forearm to shield his eyes; he moved in beauty. He was all of old Greece that the Macedonians had ever longed for. Ptolemy went over to him and led him gently by the hand to the cushioned seat against the wall.

  As he was touched, something went very quickly through Nikomedes’ head; he only just caught and recognised it as being the same thing as the end of all dreams when a dreadful thing has been chasing you—the moment when it touches you and you dissolve into screaming, burning chaos. The witch, the fury, the beast. Now he was touched and he had not flinched. Although this touch, too, was chaos, although he could not wake. He must speak now before his mind had shattered under the touch like glass, for already it was ringing, ringing, like glass about to break. He said: ‘King Ptolemy, I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Ptolemy, ‘and I to you, Nikomedes.’ He found it difficult to speak calmly. It was a long time since any emotion of this degree of violence had come into his life.

  Nikomedes began: ‘We have been in Egypt a very great many months, hoping that you—’ And then he broke off, afraid of going too fast. Ptolemy smiled at him. The Egyptian King was, after all, nothing to be frightened of yet; he looked almost rather nice; only too smooth. Better begin again. ‘I know what you want of me. King Ptolemy.’ And then he stopped suddenly again, wondering, but did he, did he know? Could he really be certain either of this man, or, if what he had heard was true, about himself?

  Ptolemy had taken his hand again. ‘Do you know?’ he said. ‘Do you, Nikomedes? I want everything, yes, everything! I want your heart and body and mind, I want your youth, I want to eat you whole—like new bread, Nikomedes, new wine! And I’ll give you everything; yes, my crown and my kingdom, youth and life, you shall have it all back, but changed, but coloured through me, but mine, mine, mine!’ He picked the hand up and began kissing it bitingly, the funny, brown, untrimmed, square-nailed boy’s paw! The other paw reached up to push him away, push away his biting, sucking kisses, he had both paws. No, no; not too fast. He let them go again. ‘Well, Nikomedes?’

  Nikomedes looked down curiously at his kissed hands. They did not seem to be his own any more; they were apart from him, smarting a little. He let them lie. He said: ‘If I give myself up to you, as I’m willing to do, you must give my father all the help he asks for.’

  Ptolemy stared and frowned and said: ‘So you’ve come to bargain!’ Suddenly he leapt to his feet and hunched himself over Nikomedes and shouted at him: ‘Who sent you?’

  For a moment Nikomedes was choking back screaming terror. Then he said firmly: ‘No one! I came by myself. I am a King’s son and I won’t be bullied or insulted, Ptolemy!’

  Gradually Ptolemy’s black look relaxed. He stood merely erect and said: ‘Was I bullying you, King’s son? Did I seem to you like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nikomedes.

  Ptolemy nodded. ‘You see, I’ve got power,’ he said, ‘great power over all sorts of pain. Even over a King’s son! Whips, Nikomedes, and licking fires and fish that eat boys and little, snicking knives. Don’t let us talk of it. You want to bargain. You, not I, want that. I’m in a better position than you. I have, apparently, all you want, but I am not so sure that what you offer me is so good; that remains to be seen. Besides, you have come here to my palace, inside my walls. I am stronger than you, Nikomedes, even though you are a Spartan! Suppose I just took what I wanted? No, don’t start so; I’m not touching you! Perhaps I don’t even want to.’

  They sat down again on the bench, Nikomedes at one end, his hands clasped between his knees, all at once feeling most unheroic and longing only to be home again with Gyridas and Nikolaos. Ptolemy, at the other end, sat and looked at him with the kind of eyes and mouth which might mean anything. He did not know what to do. The sun dropped and dropped towards the end of the world. The gold light in the room tilted and vanished. Softly the curtain was drawn aside and in came three lovely girls in blue with lighted silver lamps, which they hung here and there about the walls. Everything became kinder and vaguer and easier. While they were in the room the two on the bench did not speak. When they were gone Nikomedes found that Ptolemy was still looking at him as puzzlingly as ever. Suddenly and disastrously he found himself overwhelmed with tears. He got to his feet. He tried very hard to speak.

  Ptolemy chose that moment to say: ‘You want to bargain with me. Tell me exactly what you want.’ He spoke in a new, a grim kind of voice. Nikomedes stretched out his hands dumbly, praying desperately for time, for one moment to recover. Ptolemy seemed to understand, to take that prayer. He was standing now, close to Nikomedes, so that those dumb, quivering hands just touched the breast of his tunic. ‘You needn’t tell me, then!’ he said. ‘Look, Nikomedes, you aren’t a very good bargainer! Hadn’t you better trust to me? I’m not ungenerous where I love. You should trust me, Nikomedes.’

  Something in Nikomedes said ‘No, no!’ If he could be the sacrifice he could and would make the demand! Only what was the best way? If only he knew more of the world! Was he certain he could save his father and Sparta? ‘Ptolemy—’ he said, ‘I don’t know yet.’ It seemed to him that the moment to ask for money and soldiers was not yet quite come. He let himself be led a pace or two by the other King; his touched and breaking mind allowed it.

  Ptolemy was sitting now on the raised end of the bench, and the boy stood beside him, shone upon softly by a lamp, his head bowed, his eyes open but veiled. Ptolemy lifted his arms and unpinned the brooch from the boy’s right shoulder, a funny toy brooch of hammered gold with a quail on it. The tunic dropped forward and the young chin, too, dropped a little. The light fell straight on his shoulder and breast; the white tunic dropped in folds of shadow over his quivering belly. This innocent creature. This self-chosen victim. This March-bud beauty, this Spring God come at the turn of autumn for the mystery of the Vintage. He drew him closer to the bench, he began to turn him round with groping hands close against his hips, feeling down through the stuff of the tunic that would strip as a sweet almond strips. As the rough sheath from a crinkled poppy bud, a loose shaken white poppy.

  At the far end of the room a little table was being laid for supper, a table of citron-wood almost covered with flowers, a foaming of blossom round the silver dishes, the faint jingle and glitter of the silver cups. Two of the girls and Agathoklea were preparing it under the farthest of the lamps. Between them and the bench there were great spaces of quiet shadow;
they did not disturb King Ptolemy. Still he and the boy stayed as they were; still his bent palms waited over the flesh of Hellas. He was attending now to some ecstasy within himself which would surely come to a crisis and flow out towards possession of this beauty and of the whole world, the world which Alexander had died to possess materially, but which he, Ptolemy, would now possess spiritually through this little death, this agony of pleasure.

  Agathoklea looked delicately and sympathetically across the space of shadow towards the lighted group and for a moment fumbled in her recognition of Nikomedes. Then she saw and was shocked in her every sense of expediency, and gave a slight scream of disapprobation. Only the most ordinary, small scream, but enough to alter everything. For suddenly Nikomedes lifted his head and said very clearly: ‘Then you do promise me the regular subsidy and the soldiers and the transport ships?’

  Agathoklea was not so much of a politician as her brother, but she could scarcely help understanding this. She bit her lip and began to walk across the room. But Ptolemy was rising from the bench. The young god had suddenly turned into a mocking imp, the victim was not a victim, the ecstasy had winked and shifted and become commonplace. His dream, his dream was broken! As he got upright, saying nothing, his grip shot upwards into a murderous one, fingers on throat, the only other way to take the victim and have the ecstasy!

  Taken utterly by surprise Nikomedes stumbled back, choked, unable even to shout, clawing vainly at those fingers, his passion to save himself not for one moment equal to the fingers’ passion to destroy him. The next thing he knew he was staggering, gasping and crowing for breath and in sharp pain, but his legs seem to have taken it on themselves to run, wobbling better or worse, in the wake of a woman who was pulling him along, stuffing him behind a curtain, rushing him down a passage, up steps into the open air, through a laurel thicket that whipped back sharp leaves at him, up some more steps, along—and plump into a small room with a girl at the end just looking up from a book with her mouth open to ask a question. Agathoklea let go. Nikomedes sat down hard and suddenly on the floor.