They’ve had too much power. And besides, if—if one has any feeling—one doesn’t look there for help!’ The other nodded and made a sign with her hand, something un-Greek enough. The Spartiate women imported their gods in the same ship with fine muslins from Egypt, or scents and hair-wash from Syria. At home in Hellas there were only charms, and little godlings for luck in love or housekeeping.
They went on to talk of their perennial grievance, the clothes Queen Agiatis made the girls about her wear, their own weaving even, as if there were no such things as trade and good money in Sparta and lovely stuff over-seas, patterned and delicate, for soft skins and subtle colouring. But she wouldn’t even let them have powder, let alone all the possible small hints they knew they could use so cleverly, the lengthened line, the different tinting, that gave mere nature the mystery and attraction of art. It was all very well for her, with her husband and children and no one daring to laugh at her whatever she chose to look like. But her poor maids of honour, wasting all their best years at this extraordinary Court, while their sisters and cousins were enjoying themselves, and getting lovers, and living a life that you could call life! Well, the only comfort was, it couldn’t last. Or … could it? One of the helot women came in, with a huge grin and her arms full. The girls all stopped and ran up to her or looked round the corners of their looms. ‘Who’s the lucky one?’ they said, and one or two blushed and giggled self-consciously. But the woman, with as nearly a wink as was consistent with their dignity as the Queen’s girls, went over to the little ones and dumped her things on the bench beside Philylla, who was so really surprised that some of the others thought she must be acting. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘are you sure? It’s not my birthday! Did mother send them?’ ‘Oh yes!’ said the woman, chuckling, and nudged her. ‘There you are, my lamb!’—it was a tablet, stringed, and sealed with red—‘now you write something pretty back.’ But Philylla was more interested in the presents than the letter. There was a great bunch of violets, sweet ones, blue and white, mixed with pink sprigs of daphne, and a rush box of honey-cakes sprinkled with cinnamon, and a bunch of arrows. She looked at them for a minute—they were light, but real grown-up ones with bone points; and last of all, in a cage of withies, a smart and glossy magpie, long-tailed and bright-eyed, that hopped towards her. Now the point of this, as all the older girls knew, but Philylla didn’t, was that a magpie was the one fashionable present just now from admirer to admired. They were usually taught to say some special phrase, not always very proper. The others all crowded round. ‘Take him out, Philylla! What does he say? Pretty bird, then, pretty bird!’ The magpie was very tame and friendly and sat on Philylla’s shoulder as she stood there, stiff and pink with pleasure and some pride, but he didn’t say anything, only whistled, cocking his jolly head at them. ‘But who’s it from?’ they clamoured. ‘Who is he? Why haven’t you told us, sly thing?’ ‘But I don’t know,’ said Philylla, dreadfully confused, fingering the tablet. ‘Read it then,’ said Deinicha. ‘Read it aloud, there’s a love.’ They all tried to peep over her shoulder, and she couldn’t bear to open it there in the middle of them; she wanted to run away by herself. ‘But read it!’ they cried at her, so excited that they were nearly pulling it out of her hand. She wriggled up to the wall and jerked at the seal; it was quite easy to read—she had been rather afraid it might be difficult. It was quite short. ‘Panteus to Philylla, greeting! Here are four things. Tell me which you like best. I think it will be the one I hope.’ She rubbed it out quickly with her finger; but still the others had seen it and repeated it to one another. They were more than a little surprised and jealous. ‘Panteus! Well, you’re flying high! Lucky little minx! How did you get your claws into him? What does the King say? Panteus indeed, why didn’t you tell us?’ ‘But,’ said Philylla, ‘I can’t help it! I really and truly didn’t know. I’ve only just seen him.’ ‘You must write a letter back,’ said Deinicha firmly, ‘and no baby nonsense, Philylla; you’ve got to do us credit—though you’ve done very well so far!’ she added handsomely. Philylla looked at the things again. Clearly it wasn’t the flowers or the cakes—though they were very nice!—it must be the arrows: because of what he had said about her own. And they were lovely arrows, a whole dozen of them, with stiff goose-feathers to make them fly. She would be able to shoot all sorts of big beasts now, deer even. But all the same she did love the magpie.
She took the tablets and began to write slowly. ‘Philylla, daughter of Themisteas, to Panteus, son of Menedaios (she was going to do it properly!), greeting. I thank you with all my heart for the four things. I think you want me to like the arrows best. They are beautiful and straight and I will shoot with them. But I do like the magpie too.’ She thought a moment, then decided to be really truthful, and made the last sentence into ‘I like the magpie best.’
Deinicha took the tablet and read it, then shrieked with laughter and fluttered her hands. ‘Philylla, you baby, you weren’t going to send that! Do remember you’re thirteen years old and one of us! Rub it all out—we’ll tell you what to say.’
‘I won’t,’ said Philylla solidly.
‘But—my dear child—what will he think of it? You’ll never keep him! You must put something in— well, a little pretty. This is the sort of letter you’d write to a brother. Poor things, one must give them a little encouragement!’
Philylla hugged the tablets to her, very red and uncomfortable, feeling partly that Deinicha must know what one ought to do, and partly that, after all, if it was really true that Panteus liked her, it was her own affair. ‘He doesn’t want to be encouraged.’
‘Oh, is it as bad as all that—?’ They all giggled.
‘I hate encouraging people!’ said Philylla, stamping. ‘You’re making it all horrid. Take this and go!’ She turned and half shouted at the helot woman, shoving her out. Then she ran to the bench and her things. ‘If you talk about it any more, you shan’t have any of my cakes!’ The rest subsided laughing at her behind the looms, and whispering to one another. She was fondling the magpie, and talking low to it, soothing her hot cheeks with the cold black and white of its wing feathers, offering it a bit of her cake; and the tame bird flirted with her, hopping from her shoulder to its own cage-top, and back, whistling its odd, half-human tune over and over again.
That evening she came to the Queen with a thick garland of violets on her own head, and two in her hand, one for Nikomedes, the eldest child, who could scarcely keep it on his head for wanting to take it off and smell it, and the other—if she would!—for the Queen.
‘Where did you get them, lamb?’ said Agiatis, surprised, stooping her head to be crowned.
Philylla explained. ‘And I may keep the magpie, mayn’t I? I do love him! I’m afraid we ate all the cakes; there were just enough to go round.’
‘Yes, of course keep him. But—sweetheart—are you old enough for all this?’
‘All what?’
‘Well,’ said the Queen, smoothing Philylla’s hair between her finger-tips, wondering how much to say or leave unsaid, ‘why did Panteus send you the presents?’
Philylla frowned and tried to get it clear to herself. ‘Because he wanted to show me he really thinks I’m grown up, in spite of having talked to me in the field as if I was a cry-baby!’
‘You haven’t spoken to him before?’
Philylla shook her head. ‘I’ve seen him often, of course—with the King.’ Then, suddenly bold: ‘Do you love him too?’
Agiatis sat down on one end of the bench, clasping her knee and leaning forward, suddenly very young looking, so much so that Philylla felt, quite rightly, that for all intents they were the same age, and sat down too, quite close to the Queen, so that she could reach over and stroke her arm. Agiatis said suddenly, ‘I do love him. You see, Kleomenes has been very unhappy—I’m telling you this just for yourself—first when he was a boy, with that horrible father, and afterwards too. I couldn’t make him happy at first, because my heart was shut up with the dead ones, my baby, and Agis. That’s all come straight now, but it meant that when he was just growing up I didn’t help him. At first he had Xenares—you’ve seen him, haven’t you?—I never liked him much, he hadn’t the fire, the