The Corn King and the Spring Queen. Naomi Mitchison

was Hippitas who came limping over to the Scythians’ tents and told them all this. They were angry, and Tarrik made up his mind to go straight home, not stay any longer in this Sparta, where nothing was happening the way he had meant it to. Hippitas soothed them down; his own opinion of them had got much higher from what he had seen himself during the fighting. He did not think the King really blamed them, and a good many of the Spartiates, including Therykion, had a quite different idea and were delighted at the death of one of the two great leaders of the League. Tarrik was partly appeased, but not altogether; Hippitas went to find Sphaeros and ask him to go and see his former pupil.

      Sphaeros was with the King, so Hippitas waited in the sun. He had taken off his armour and washed after the fighting, and now he had nothing on but a loose linen tunic; under it he could feel the good sweat that the heat brought out trickling freely down his body. He was glad the battle was won; he was glad he was not too old to like his own body. When the King’s time came and Sparta was itself once more, everything would be better still. It would be a good thing if Sphaeros went rather soon to see the barbarians and tell them to be sensible; he himself was not clever at that kind of talking. He went over to the King’s tent. There were two of the large, common water-jugs standing in the shade of it; he drew his hand caressingly across their cool, damp flanks. He could hear the King’s voice inside the tent, but did not distinguish any words. Panteus was on guard at the tent door with a long spear, Macedonian fashion; he frowned and motioned Hippitas away with his left hand. Hippitas went back past the jars, where he drank, and sat down again on a stone a little way from the tent, so that he would see Sphaeros coming out; he found a fresh clove of garlic in his belt and began to chew it.

      Inside the tent there was a mattress covered in the daytime with fine fox furs; it had a couple of rolled-up blankets and some cushions, not very clean. There were three carved oak chests, bound and hinged with bronze, and two bronze rings at each end for carrying them. There were a few folding chairs, bronze and painted leather, and a trestle table with the top inlaid for playing various games. On the table were a set of tablets, as well as a roll of Egyptian paper with pen and ink beside it. Sphaeros sat at one end of the table and King Kleomenes at the other. Panteus at the door could hear everything they said.

      Sphaeros looked unhappy and old and puzzled. Kleomenes was staring at him with a small, fierce smile that showed his very white teeth. ‘Well?’ he said.

      Sphaeros began fingering the ends of the pens. ‘I must ask you this,’ he said. ‘After Archidamos came home to take his place as your fellow king, what happened?’

      ‘What have you been told happened?’

      Sphaeros sighed. ‘You know as well as I do, Kleomenes. Have you got to be mocking me all the time?’

      ‘Very well,’ said Kleomenes, ‘if you want it you shall have it. I think I know what you have heard. It’s mostly true. I knew he was going to be killed, and I could have stopped it, but I didn’t. You might just as well say straight off that I killed him myself. There you are, Sphaeros, there’s your pupil.’

      ‘How do you justify yourself for that, Kleomenes?’

      ‘Have I got to justify myself? Well, if you wish it—I wouldn’t for most people. I asked him, then, to come back from Messene after the child died; I thought we might even work together. But when he came and I saw him I found he was frightened. Agis let himself be killed because he was too gentle and good. This brother of his was gentle, but he was not much else. He would have hampered me, whether he wanted to or not; he would have asked for mercy and compromise when there is no time for them; when they have been tried already and failed. It was a pity to have to kill him; he would have done plenty of things well, but being King of Sparta—just now—was not one of them.’

      ‘So you are King alone. The two lines ruling side by side have come to an end after six hundred years.’

      ‘Have I got to tell my teacher not to think he is sorry for a thing he doesn’t really mind about in the least? As if it matters that the double kingship is old! You’ll tell me next that the Twins have put a curse on me! I am King alone and perhaps my son will be that. Or perhaps it may seem better to go back to what used to be. It is wiser not to be too sure of one’s wishes, and above all not to put them into words.’

      ‘If the baby had lived?’

      ‘I suppose you are asking me if I would have killed him, Sphaeros? You may even think I did. No. He would not have hampered me; he would have worked with me. He was the son not only of Agis but of my Agiatis. That last day I stayed with her by the cot till he died.’

      ‘I see,’ said Sphaeros, and stayed silent and greyish for a time.

      The King beckoned Panteus over from the door of the tent. He came and stood by the table, trailing his spear a little so that it should not touch the linen roof. The King took his other hand and swung it a moment, mockingly. ‘Sphaeros thinks I’m a bad pupil. We oughtn’t to have done it!’

      ‘Sphaeros has only been here a few months,’ said Panteus, more gently and seriously. ‘He does not believe enough in the New Time—his own time, really.’

      Sphaeros looked at them both and spoke to Panteus. ‘You, his lover, do you think this was a good deed?’

      Panteus did not answer for a moment; he looked down along his spear. Then he said: ‘I will try and tell you how it all seems to me, though I am not sure if Kleomenes agrees. At least I know he doesn’t, because we have often talked together of just this. I believe that a man must think a great deal about what is good, by himself walking in the hills and with friends in the long nights of talk when it seems only an hour between midnight and dawn. When he has thought and talked much and has a plan in his head for the Good Life, then he can act, and if he has thought rightly, his action will be right. And it seems to me also that Kleomenes is this man.’

      Sphaeros said: ‘I do not think it is possible for a man with a life so full, with a wife and children whom he loves and spends himself for, yes, and armies and a kingdom, to stay still and think enough to be sure of rightness. Even Zeno my master was not sure.’

      Kleomenes said nothing; his eyebrows moved on the steep bony ledge of his forehead, his face twitched between laughing and frowning. Panteus went on: ‘It seems to me as well that two actions may be different, though both, in appearance and outward circumstances, are alike, according to the mind of the man who does them. A thing that is bad if it is done with great care and forethought, yet out of a mind that is unsure of its rightness, may be good if it is done simply and calmly out of a sure and calm mind. Just as, if one’s body is well trained and good in its own bodily way of awareness and strength, one can trust it to move as it should. I see where my spear should go, and there it goes: simply. And Kleomenes has his mind at ease like that because he knows the good he wants. Archidamos had to be killed. But it was done simply: just that nothing else was possible.’

      Sphaeros said: ‘It would have been terrible for you, loving him, if you had thought he had done a really wrong thing.’

      ‘We could not have gone on loving each other then.’

      ‘And because that is impossible you must find for yourself some way of being certain that what he does is not wrong.’

      Panteus looked at the King, not even touching him. ‘I do not think it is that,’ he said.

      Suddenly Kleomenes pounced like a fox on the first idea before it had trailed away out of the tent. ‘I do not myself consider that Panteus is right. He does not allow enough for the future. In his idea there is thought in the past and action in the present, but he does not show you the future pressing on me, on all of us more or less, like an unborn babe, forcing us to action for its sake, not for our own. Archidamos was a sacrifice for the future, as many others may be before I am done—as I may be myself.’ He shivered and sank into himself; Panteus’ hand went to his shoulder; the great spear shaft was a strong thing for him to gaze at.

      Sphaeros got to his feet. ‘At least, I understand, for any use that may be. You have gone beyond my teaching, Kleomenes. I hope you have not gone beyond truth.’

      Kleomenes