Читать книгу The Corn King and the Spring Queen - Naomi Mitchison - Страница 12

Chapter Five

BERRIS TOOK HER back to the great door of her own house; the guards lifted hand and sword to their foreheads as she went past, and did not look at her directly; it was no part of theirs to wonder why the Spring Queen of Marob had gone out at night with no servants, no coat, and nothing on her head. Erif Der tossed her plaits back over her shoulders, and grinned at them for the fun of seeing them not take any official notice. Then she kissed her brother and went on alone. She found Tarrik in the Council Hall, sitting in his great chair, with his chin on his hands. ‘I am thinking about the secret road,’ he said. ‘You can tell Yellow Bull. I wonder if it will ever be a danger. What do you think will have happened to Marob in ten hundred years, Erif? Will they be our blood, the Chiefs, then?’

He looked at her softly, with those smiling, bright eyes of his. And she looked away, because if she had met them and smiled back, she could not have gone on keeping secrets; she would have told him everything, put herself into his hands, into his mercy and love, done anything he bade her, been a good wife to him, niece to Yersha. Oh, if she could start life again! ‘I can’t think so far ahead,’ she said huskily, through stiffened lips. ‘I hate the time when I shall be dead! I hate countries I shall never see! I hate stars! I hate things that men have no power over!’

She threw herself down on the floor and hit her head with her knuckles; Tarrik went on speaking from somewhere above her: ‘But time is our own making, Erif. Even time so far off. I wonder if there will be any Marob then, or any Hellas. Athens has been going on for hundreds and hundreds of years, but I think she is almost dead. And the other cities of Hellas too. Nobody knows how long Marob has been here; people don’t think about that; I don’t often. And I don’t really care much what’s going to happen, either. Erif, do you love me?’

‘Yes,’ said Erif. Oh, anything not to have to talk just now!

‘I never minded if the others did or didn’t,’ he said. ‘I expect they did. I always got what I wanted and no one was any the worse. It helped the Corn. In five months it will be Plowing Eve again. I wish I knew what happened at Harvest; I cannot remember it better than a dream, and yet I was not even drunk. At Plowing Eve my head will stay clear, though. Will you help me, Erif?’

She answered ‘No,’ but with her face on the floor, so muffled that he did not hear or heed.

‘Ever since I was a man, I have known that I was truly Corn King,’ he said. ‘It is a queer thing to have power. But you have power too. So has Berris, but differently. The Greeks used to have power, but it is lost now. Yellow Bull thinks he has power. So does the Council. I am seeing without a cloud now; Erif, why is that?’

But before she could make up an answer, something had happened to drive it out of both their heads. The Captain of the Chief’s Guard came running in. ‘Chief!’ he shouted, ‘there’s a big ship blowing in north of the harbour—her mast’s gone and she’s nearly on to the shingle!’ They both jumped and ran, Tarrik giving orders as he went. At the door he turned and shouted to her: ‘Erif, stay here!’ But that was the last thing Erif Der was going to do.

The night was quite different now. A yellowish full moon had risen out of the sea and torn through the clouds to the north-east; even when their jagged edges streamed across it, the puzzling, diffused light went on. Over the hissing and grinding of the waves came other noises; men’s voices at top pitch, and sometimes on the back of the gale heart-tearing sounds of timber breaking up, the screech and crash of the strained wood, and sharp improbable sounds there was no time to guess at; and crackling of the bonfires they had lighted high up the beach, and neighing of the sea and fire-maddened horses, and women crying to one another behind; and again and always, the sea. There was no chance of launching a boat, but the men were wading out with ropes tied round their belts, legs braced against the surf; things were passed from man to man, inshore and up to the bonfires, to be helped back to life if they had breath in them at all. Erif sent a dozen women off to the Chief’s house for wine and warm clothes; she could do that, anyhow! Tarrik was nowhere to be seen, and for a time she was so hard at work among the half-drowned sailors that she did not think of him; he would be somewhere. They seemed to be half Scythian and half Greek, perishing with cold and wet and four days of storm and desperate struggle against it before the sides began to strain and gape hopelessly, and at last the mast snapped and killed three of them. They had a hold full of corn from Olbia, the last of the season; and they had left it too long. They gulped down hot wine and huddled themselves in the dry clothes, calling each other by name as man after man was passed up, and asking where they were, thankful to have come on a town and friends and food and rest after that terrible four days, and the storm ending too late to save them.

Tarrik was down in the sea, stripped to the waist and covered with oil for warmth; he was head of one line, as far out as he could keep his footing on the battered shingle. The light from the bonfires on the shore lay out on the surface beyond him as far as the third or fourth wave, so that he got some warning of anything coming in and had a moment to brace himself and take it. Sometimes a man clinging to a plank or swimming weakly in the trough of a wave, sometimes a cask or chest or bit of a mast, once a horrible, heavy strip of torn sail that tangled round his legs and pulled him over into the surf. Further out, between him and the moon, he could see the black, jagged outline of the wrecked ship, heaving and pitching as she broke up.

For more than an hour, though it scarcely seemed five minutes, he had been extremely efficient and enjoying every moment; he was shouting at the top of his voice and using every inch of his strength and skill; his side stung vividly where a splintered plank had grazed the skin; his eyes were used to seeing quickly in the half-lit dark, his arms and shoulders to heaving weights; he had beaten the sea! But now no living thing had come in for nearly ten minutes; he began to feel the cold at last. One more look out to the wreck before he turned. And there was a man moving on the black against the sky. He yelled out, though he knew it was no use against this wind. But the man had disappeared. For a minute or two he held himself hard against the battling waves, peering out ahead, then at last saw the black smudge on a tearing water crest that meant something coming in. He moved to the right, shouting back to the man behind to be ready, leaning against the weight and struggle of the sea. Then over the top of one great blinding wave the swimmer came at him head foremost, and both were rolled over and over and into the next on the line, one of the guards; he stood firm and held Tarrik, who heaved himself up, choking and cursing, one arm round the man from the ship. ‘Are you the last?’ shouted Tarrik, as soon as he got his breath. The man gasped yes, clinging to Tarrik’s bare, slippery shoulder. He was small and light, soaked and streaming like a bunch of seaweed; an open cut on his temple was bleeding steadily, smearing his face with pale blood. Between them, Tarrik and the guard helped him in through the fierce shove and suck of the shallow water, and up to the bonfires. And so Sphaeros the Stoic came to Marob.

Erif Der had clothes and hot wine and food for them all; she saw to the graze on Tarrik’s side, and odd cuts on his arms and hand; furtively, she kissed his cold back as she helped him on with a shirt. Yellow Bull came up, wetter and wilder looking than one would have thought possible; he had been head of another line of rescuers. ‘That was fine, Chief!’ he shouted, and then suddenly caught sight of Erif and remembered and checked and buried his face in a huge cup of wine. But Tarrik was far too excited and happy to notice the change in Yellow Bull, or even see that, for the moment at least, every one was round him again, talking and cheering, forgetting that he had ever been unlucky.

But Yellow Bull drew his sister aside out of the glare of the fires. ‘What have you been doing?’ he asked. ‘Wasn’t this your time?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I suppose so. I forgot. It was so exciting. I’m sorry, Yellow Bull.’

‘Father will be angry.’

‘I know. But—you can tell him there’s going to be another chance, quite soon, at the bullfighting.’

‘He’s going to try that, is he?’

‘Yes. So you see, then—It will all work out. Yellow Bull, let tonight alone.’

In the meantime Tarrik was giving out the rescued sailors to the chief men in his town, to keep for the moment, anyhow. Time enough tomorrow to see what should be done with them. Nearly all had been saved, not much hurt, including the captain, who kept on talking to anyone who would listen about his insurance. When they had been allotted, all the other things, barrels, rafts, bedding, and whatnot that had been washed up, were heaped at one side and left under guard. Tarrik found the little man he had saved last sitting quietly by the fire, trying to tie up his own cut head; he was managing it very neatly, but his hands were shaking still. ‘What in hell were you doing to stay so long?’ asked Tarrik suddenly.

The man looked up. ‘I knocked my head; they thought I was dead and left me. It wouldn’t have mattered.’

‘No,’ said Tarrik, amused.

‘But you see, when I found I was alive after all, the impulse was too strong for me. Besides I am still hoping to finish my journey.’

‘Where were you going?’ Tarrik asked, in Greek this time.

‘To Sparta, to King Kleomenes. I am his tutor.’

‘What do you teach him?’

‘Philosophy.’

‘You had better teach me; I am a king too.’

‘I do not know if you would be a good pupil; if you are, I should be glad to teach you. But Kleomenes needs me.’

‘I have been to Greece, but never to Sparta; they say it is a rich place, where a few have all the power, and most are poor and unhappy.’

‘It is like that now; but States may become better. Who are you, King, and what is your country?’

‘I am Tarrik of Marob; but my name is Charmantides as well.’

‘You are partly Hellene, then?’

Tarrik hesitated a moment, looking the philosopher up and down. ‘I do not choose to think myself Hellene,’ he said. ‘I am a barbarian.’

The little man laughed pleasantly and openly, half shutting his eyes. ‘Good!’ he said. ‘Now we have something real. I do not think Hellenes are good and barbarians bad, Tarrik of Marob. I think we are all citizens of one world. I think, too, that you have seen the worst sort of Hellene. Isn’t that true?’

‘Perhaps. They were not citizens of my world, anyhow. What is your name?’

‘I am called Sphaeros of Borysthenes. You see, I am not quite a Hellene either.’

‘You will come to my house,’ said Tarrik. ‘The blood is getting through that bandage. Does it hurt?’

‘Not much. It is of no consequence, anyway.’

‘Perhaps not to you. But I want you to teach me, I want you alive!’ He called: ‘Erif! Look: will you make the blood not come?’

Erif Der laid her fingers over the red patch on the bandage, then after a moment took them away sharply, and spoke low to Tarrik: ‘Who is it?’

‘Sphaeros: a Hellene: a teacher of kings. Make him well for me, Erif!’

She frowned and began muttering words and making little movements. Tarrik looked on anxiously, wondering what was the matter. Sphaeros sat quite still, feeling a little weak, only just sometimes lifting a hand to wipe away a trickle of blood from his neck. ‘I can’t,’ said Erif Der suddenly, ‘I can’t! It doesn’t work on him!’ She jumped up and called to the women for a bowl of water, needle and thread, quick. Then she undid the bandage. ‘This is the other way,’ she said to Tarrik, and took his sharp little hunting-knife and cut the hair all round the wound, and then sewed the edges of it together, with her lips pressed up firmly, and eyes fixed on what she was doing. Sphaeros twisted his hands between his knees and shut his eyes, but said nothing, only gave a little gasp when it was all over. Tarrik gave him a cup of wine; the bleeding had stopped; Erif Der turned away and made one of the women pour water over her hands till they were clean.

The next day the Council met; they had to decide what to do with the ship’s crew and the few passengers, a merchant with his clerk and two servants, and Sphaeros. The natural thing was to take them as a gift from the sea, and, after due thanks, enslave them or hold them to ransom. Three generations ago this would have been a certainty; but these were degenerate days. The Council discussed other possibilities. The Chief was being curiously reasonable, hearing both sides and then giving his own opinion, in a way that made Harn Der and his eldest son rather anxious. However, they comforted themselves with the thought of the bullfighting later on. Erif Der might have her own ways, but they could trust her to be loyal to her family.

In the end it was settled that such of the crew as had any money should have a sum fixed to be handed over in spring, whenever a ship came to take them away; the others would have to work for their living, and there would be correspondingly larger sums for the captain and passengers to pay. ‘But as to the Greek, Sphaeros,’ said the Chief, ‘I will pay his now; he is my guest.’ Any cargo, wood, baggage or provisions washed up from the wreck were to be distributed.

When the Council was ended, Tarrik found that his aunt had asked Sphaeros up to her room and was talking to him. Sphaeros sat on the edge of a chair, looking displeased and faintly uncomfortable; he had already refused offers of money, clothes, books, and exclusive friendship as between Hellenes in a barbarian country, from Eurydice, always with politeness, but still firmly. ‘I am honoured,’ he said, ‘but, as you must see, I cannot commit myself yet.’ He was a little curious to know more about Erif Der but was too discreet to ask. He had always liked Scythians, rather romantically, perhaps, but then he was more than usually sane and clear-headed over other things. He liked the hardness, the violent living of these riders and fighters, the carelessness of pain. The contrast in his mind was between them and the rich Greek—the kind of life that he saw reflected in this room of Eurydice’s—rather than the Wise Greek. The Wise Greek was so very rare, thought Sphaeros: one thought one had found him, but how often one was disappointed. And it seemed to him that this strong, questioning, bare-breasted Tarrik was a Romantic Scythian. But so far he could not quite fit in Eurydice. At any rate, it gave him no pleasure to eat caviare and white bread from golden dishes on an ivory table, and hear rather second-rate poetry read aloud. He did not really mind in the least that his clothes were slightly torn, and discoloured and shrunk with sea water; in fact, he had not noticed. His sandals were borrowed and on the large side, but he did not even know who was the lender, so he could not possibly fret about returning them.

Tarrik leant against the wall, with his thumbs hooked into his belt. ‘You’re going to stay with me all this winter,’ he said, ‘and teach me.’

‘But I must go to King Kleomenes as soon as I can,’ said Sphaeros. ‘There will be small ships sailing from harbour to harbour still; I can work my way south.’

It suddenly occurred to the Chief that he really had someone to deal with this time. ‘You won’t go till I let you,’ he said. ‘I have the power here, my philosopher.’

‘Yes, King of Marob,’ said Sphaeros, ‘but you cannot make me teach.’

‘I can kill you the moment I choose—and I will if you don’t do what I want.’

‘Yes, and how well I shall teach then!’

But Eurydice came between them, distressed at this scene between her Charmantides and a real Hellene philosopher. ‘This is all nonsense, of course! Charmantides, you mustn’t be rough. This delightful Sphaeros is my guest.’ And she smiled at him, feeling that there was something to be said for being a respectable age—though not, of course, old!—at the moment.

But Sphaeros did not respond properly; he had a hand on Tarrik’s arm, and was looking up at him earnestly. ‘King!’ he said, ‘I will tell you why Kleomenes of Sparta needs me, and then you will let me go to him. I do not think you are truly the sort of king who kills people without reason.’

Tarrik, unused to this particular form of flattery, blushed and said: ‘Well, we shall see. Tell me, anyhow.’

‘It’s a long story, it begins before you were born, King.’

‘At supper, then. Oh, I shall get Berris!’

At first Berris refused to come to supper, with all sorts of excuses; but in the end, of course, there he was, with his eyes fixed on the Hellene. They sat round, more or less Greek fashion, Eurydice in a high-backed chair, waited on by her own maids; Tarrik half lying, half sitting, always very restless, on a big throne with red cushions; Erif Der beside him with her proper crown, five spikes of silver, lightly engraved with stags and lions that had star sapphires for eyes, and a heavy patterned dress that fell over her feet. Sphaeros was on Tarrik’s other side, head propped in hands, lying along a couch of cedar lattice, with small cushions, and Berris beyond him on another couch, but sitting half up, clasping his knees, eating by fits and starts. They had a long and large supper, with quantities of meat, stewed and boiled and roasted, and fish, and raisin pies, some good wine and much bad, wheaten cakes and run honey and cream.

Eurydice only spoke when she had something to say which appeared to her to be really noble—or witty—or revealing a heart which yearned for Hellas; this made her conversation rather fitful. Tarrik kept on thinking, quite rightly, that she was at her best when alone with him. He talked rather little, because he was hungry and at the same time happier than he had been for months. Sphaeros was naturally rather silent, and tonight he was tired too, but knew he must tell his story well enough to convince the Chief. So, during supper, Erif and Berris Der talked at one another most of the time, across the others, sparring like two pretty game-cocks. They talked Greek out of politeness, and hers was bad, but fluent and very funny, whether on purpose or not. They ended by throwing bread balls at one another and Eurydice disapproved; but Tarrik joined in, and then Sphaeros, not out of any sense of compliment to his barbarian hosts, but in all pleasantness and seriousness. Only then in the middle of it, Tarrik suddenly took up a half-loaf and threw it at his cup-bearer and shouted to them to clear the food and bring more wine. He pledged them all in a skull cup, one of the chiefs of the Red Riders that he had shot himself as a boy ten years before. ‘And now the story,’ said Erif.

Sphaeros sat up on his couch, so as to be able to face them all, and shifted his head bandage where the edge was catching his ear. ‘The beginning of the story is away back,’ he said, ‘in the time when the Spartans did something that no one else had ever done with their eyes open—or ever will, I think. They turned their backs on the beauty that was ripening in Hellas, in their own hearts too. They said: “We will not build temples, nor make statues or paintings or music, we will have no poets here. We will make life hard and bitter so that only the strongest can bear it, and these shall be our citizens.”’

He stopped for a moment, just long enough for Berris to ask ‘Why?’ The others were all quiet.

‘Why?’ said Sphaeros, half to himself. ‘Because Sparta is a hot green valley, a garden where flowers blossom too much and die; they had to climb out of it, to live on the peaks in the cold winds. They made themselves the strangest State in the world; strong and free and caring not at all for death, no man for himself but all for the others, for Sparta. By casting out the beauty we know, they made a beauty of their own.’

Tarrik began to fidget and frown. ‘Sparta is not like that. I have been to Hellas—I know for myself: no traveller’s tales, my Sphaeros. I tell you, if there was any luxury, anything rare and precious and sought after, they had it in Sparta.’

‘Yes,’ said Sphaeros, ‘but that came afterwards. It seems that no man and no State can live on the heights for ever. Sparta became too powerful, and the doom of the conqueror fell on her: gold and silver flowed down into hollow Lacedaemon and rotted the very roots of their greatness. These things, rather than the riches of the spirit, came to be what they cared for in Sparta; men strove for them only. In that moment the Good Life left them and was gone. Now gold follows after gold, and with it land and power, houses and cattle and slaves; more and more of the lands and riches came into the hands of a few men; and those of the citizens who dropped behind in the gold race must needs take to trade or farming to get their bread, and so they lost the good Life, and had no more leisure for the Training, the Eating-together, and all those matters without which no one can have citizenship of Sparta. A time came when all the riches in the State belonged to scarcely more than a hundred families, and of these many were unbelievably rich, though some had mortgaged their land and were deep in debt, and had nothing but the appearance of riches. The rest of the people worked for them, and were humble and slavish through debt and anxiety and poverty, and there was no happiness.’

Tarrik was listening quietly now, and so were the others, more or less. Only Eurydice was bending over a piece of fine embroidery, and seemed at least as much interested in it as in the story; her hands were Still very white and beautiful, and they moved over the sewing like big moths. It was rather dark in the hall, in spite of the torches all round in rings on the wall, but one of the maids knelt beside Eurydice, holding a lamp just so high that it shone round and softly on those hands of hers. Berris kept on looking at them, and for a little while Sphaeros found them a certain interruption in the thread of his ideas. But by and bye the room faded, and he was away in another country, among the dead that he had known and loved.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘the story comes nearer: to fifteen years ago. Sparta has always had two kings, and in the days I am telling you about, one of the kings was called Leonidas. He was an oldish man and he had lived much in Syria with King Seleucus and the great lords there: there was no luxury or pride that he did not know or practise. He had a daughter, called Chilonis, and two young sons; they had only to ask for a thing to get it. I know his house well; it was all plastered with gold. He was the sort of man who could not bear a straight line or a plain wall; everything must be twisted and tangled and gilt and coloured till one’s eyes ached. Every corner was crammed with statues and fat gold vases like old men’s bellies and life-size pottery peacocks painted and glazed, and goggling black slaves he’d brought from Antioch, smelling of fat and scent; and everywhere there were soft carpets and lamps running over with sweet oil, and food and drink enough for an army. And there he was in the middle, this old Leonidas, always grabbing and hungry for more, never satisfied, never happy, as rough as any peasant with it all. His wife was a tall, proud Spartan, who kept herself away from him, and the daughter was married to her cousin Kleombrotos, a decent enough young man; she, woman-like, hated all this violence and luxury of her father’s and would tell her little brothers stories of Sparta in the time of the Good Life; and they listened to her. Leonidas loved her, perhaps because she was so different, and it was she who persuaded her father to ask me to come from Athens and teach the two young boys, Kleomenes and Eukleidas. So for a time I went and lived in his house, among all those vain riches.

‘But the other king of Sparta was called Agis. He was not wise, and never free from desire. And yet—if I could have loved any man—’ He stopped again, with a little gasp, so vividly had Agis come into his mind. But two of them at once said: ‘Go on.’ He moved a little sideways on his couch and went on. ‘Well, it is all a long time ago, and the world goes on still. Agis was young—little older than Berris here—and gentle and kind-hearted as a girl. He had been brought up with all tenderness and no sparing of money or love, by his mother and grandmother, and early married to a wife who was as beautiful as she was good, Agiatis the merry-minded, only daughter of the richest man in Sparta. He had these three women always by him, giving him of their best.

‘Agis grew restless in the heat of summer and went up into the mountains of Sparta, and he stayed there alone for two nights. Then he came down and looked with new eyes at his country, and he saw how evil the times were, and he knew so clearly that there was no doubting it that he must bring Sparta back to the Good Life. So he cast away all pleasures and softness, all the graces and sweetness of his young life, and followed the old rules. The three women loved him so much that they did not try to hinder him. And gradually the rich young men of Sparta began to give up their pleasures too, and do as he did. But King Leonidas thought him a fool and said so to me; I kept my thoughts to myself, for I wished to go on teaching Kleomenes.

‘Now Agis, having seen that he himself could lead the Good Life, planned to make it possible for all Sparta. In this State, the power lies not with the kings, but with their counsellors, the ephors, and in these days the ephors were rich men ruling in the interests of the rich. But Agis procured matters so that his own friends should be the ephors, among them his uncle, Agesilaus, whom he trusted: for he was young and without experience of men and their foolish and evil wills. Then, through these ephors, he proposed his new laws—the freeing of the poor from debt—the dividing up of all the lands into equal lots for all the citizens—and the granting of citizenship to those not Spartiate who yet had free minds and strong bodies and a will to serve the State. All the people were gathered together to hear these new laws, utterly surprised for the most part, and dumb and fearful as men are of any new thing. Then Agis stood up among the ephors, with downcast eyes and wearing the rough Spartan dress. He spoke very shortly and simply, saying that his life was not his own but theirs, and if they would have the new laws, so would he. And with that he gave them all his own lands, which were very large and fertile, to be divided up, and six hundred talents of coined gold, which was almost all he had, and told them that his mother and grandmother and all his friends would do the same.

‘Then, as it came real to them, the people went mad with excitement and admiration and love for their king. And suddenly Leonidas saw that it was no mere boy’s game and that if it went on all his lands and riches would go too, and then and there he turned on Agis with bitter blame and anger. After that the State was divided into two, the poor and young following Agis, and the old and rich, Leonidas, who bribed and persuaded the Council of Elders to reject the new laws. But Leonidas was not the winner for long; the ephors attacked him, and his son-in-law Kleombrotos, eager to do as Agis had done, claimed the kingship, and he had to fly from Sparta. Some would have killed him on his way over the pass, but Agis heard of this and forbade it. The boys went with him, and so did Chilonis, for she was one of those who would rather be unhappy than happy. And I went north to Athens to Be with my teacher Zeno, for I was sick of rich men and their ways. Only I promised Kleomenes to come back one day.

‘Now Agis had all the deeds of money-lending burnt in the market-place of Sparta, and so far freed his people. He would have gone on at once to the division of land, but Agesilaus his uncle had other plans: he was a man with many debts and much land; now he was free of the debts, but hoped to keep the land. Agis did not understand this; he was too young to believe the worst of people. So he went marching to the wars, leaving half his work undone. Still all would have been well, but that the general of the Achaean League, whom he went to help, was jealous of him, and would not let him win a battle. These things happen and there is reason in them if one could see it. His army was all under the old discipline and he himself was the youngest there; they loved him, he was a flame to them, he would have led them to victory. But in the end there was nothing for them to do, and he had to bring them back ingloriously, and found that all was in disorder in Sparta, because of Agesilaus, who was still ephor and was using his power to oppress the people and get everything for himself. He treated his nephew Agis and the other young king as foolish boys, and gave out that there was to be no dividing of the land.

‘Then the people turned fiercely on those who they thought had tricked them, and sent to Tegea and brought Leonidas back in triumph. Agis knew that his army was utterly his and would fight for him, even against the rest of Sparta. But he would not let the army save him because that would have meant killing others of his fellow-citizens. Kleombrotos agreed. The two young kings fled for safety to the most sacred temples, yet I think most likely Agis knew that he was choosing death. Kleombrotos was saved by this same Chilonis, his wife, who stood between him and her father, and went with him to banishment, just as she had gone before with Leonidas. But Agis was not to be forgiven.

‘His enemies tried to persuade him to come from the temple; he would not listen to them. But again he was trapped by his friends—by his own pure heart that would believe good of anyone until, too late, their evil was proved. They lured him out of his refuge and dragged him to prison. Leonidas and his followers among the elders came there to accuse the king, to show some pretence of justice. He stood before them, bound and smiling, and happy because of the things he had tried to do. They sentenced him to death; there was such a glory about him that the executioners dared not touch him. It was those one-time friends who dragged him to his place of death!

‘But now his mother and grandmother had heard. They rushed about the city, stirring up the people, reminding them of all he had done and hoped to do. They came clamouring round the gates of the prison, saying it was for them to hear and judge him. That only brought him a quicker death. The officers of the prison wept for him, as once they did in Athens for Sokrates. He bade them not to mourn for him dying innocent and unafraid. He gave his neck to the noose.

‘Then these friends who had betrayed him, came out with fair words to the women, saying that there was no more danger for Agis. They brought in first the older woman, his grandmother, and killed her. Then his mother came in, thinking to have him in her arms again, and they were both lying dead. “Oh, my son,” she said, “it is your great mercy and goodness which has brought us all to ruin.” And they hanged her too, till she died.’

Sphaeros stopped suddenly and looked round at the Scythians. Eurydice’s white hands were quiet now, Tarrik was leaning forward with his hand on his sword. The other two were both in tears. Said Erif: ‘But what happened to the other, his wife—Agiatis? Did they kill her too?’

‘No,’ said Sphaeros, frowning a little. ‘They did not kill her. She was heiress to her father’s estates, so Leonidas married her by force to the boy Kleomenes. She hated that; she had a little baby, and besides, she had loved Agis. She did all she could to keep herself his, and his alone: she hated Leonidas. But she was in his power—as all Sparta was then.’

Erif Der drew a breath of pity. ‘Poor dear, oh, poor dear! Was she very unhappy?’

‘I think so,’ said Sphaeros. ‘The baby died very soon: and Leonidas was not kind to her. But my Kleomenes was gentle, and, as soon as he was old enough he began to love her so much that in time she loved him back. But she never forgot Agis, he was always in her heart, and by and bye she found that her husband was the one person she could talk to about him. I was in Sparta again some three years after this marriage (between-times I had been home again, in Olbia) and Kleomenes told me, as if it were something quite new, the story of Agis. He was all in a passion, flaring up and then crying like a child over it: he wanted to know what I thought of Sparta, as it was now under his father, a worse place than ever, rotten with luxury and idleness and the evil wills of the rich. He swore to me then, if ever he was king, with my help he would change it all and make it a place where men could be wise. And I swore too, that if, when the time came, he still needed me, I would come. Nine years ago his father died, worn out with desires and the vain image of pleasure. Kleomenes was still little more than a boy. He is a man now. He has written to say that at last he needs me.’

‘I see,’ said Tarrik, and got up, and began walking about the room, fidgeting with his crown, his belt, the edges of his coat. At last he came to a stand in front of the philosopher and looked hard down at him for a minute or two, as if he were trying to see through the man’s eyes into his mind and heart. ‘And so it seems as if you must go,’ he ended his sentence.

‘Yes,’ said Sphaeros gravely.

‘You may have difficulty in finding a ship.’

‘I know. His letter did not reach me till late in autumn. But you will help me, King of Marob.’

‘Yes,’ said Tarrik, ‘I will help you.’