uncomfortably, wriggling her feet together, ‘I mean, no.’
‘Then, when things were just starting, last year, Panteus was brought to us by that lame cousin of his. He hadn’t ever done anything but games and hunting, but all the rest was in him, waiting. Kleomenes talked to him, and he came alive. That was just before the beginning of the war, and once they were out, facing the League, Panteus showed he was a born soldier. So then, he and Kleomenes fell in love with each other and he’s made Kleomenes happy at last, and so I love him too.’
‘And so do I,’ said Philylla, ‘and I’m glad—oh I’m very glad he sent me the arrows and the magpie!’
Chapter Two
THEY WERE SITTING round the mess-table, King Kleomenes at the head, his friends and officers at each side. They had been speaking of the war with the League, and plans for the spring, a month ahead, when roads would be good for marching again. ‘If I knew what Aratos would do next,’ Kleomenes said, for the third time, nursing his head, crouching angularly forward against the table, ‘if I could make sure I had no enemies but him and his Achaeans! But supposing he were to get help from somewhere else—from Egypt—or Macedon.’
‘We’ve got to leave that out for now,’ said Therykion, from two down the bench, a tall, nervous man with a short beard. ‘Aratos has nothing to offer them. They don’t look his way—or ours. Take it in Hellas alone. That’s what counts.’
‘That’s what’s real. The other places are only—appearances. Yet perhaps appearances will kill us all before we’re ten years older!’
Therykion shook his head gloomily, and drank, out of old habit, though this rough wine they had at the mess was very different from what he had been used to a year ago. None of them spoke for a time; all had enough to think of these days.
Then Hippitas, who was sitting at the King’s right hand, looked up. He was rather older than the others, and lame from an old wound, but he was always one of the happiest of them, and extraordinarily gentle, with blue eyes that he blinked a great deal and a country burr in his voice. It was he who had first brought Panteus, his first cousin, to see the King and hear about the new things. ‘But look,’ he said, ‘everything is very different from last year. We never thought it would be so simple. Three-quarters of the country will be for us whatever we do. You can go as fast as you like, Kleomenes.’
‘Yes!’ said a fair, rough-looking man from the far end of the table. ‘I speak for my people, Kleomenes. Get on with it!’ This was Phoebis, half-helot and not a citizen—yet. But he was the son of the King’s old nurse; they had been brought up together as young boys. He was as brave as any of them, and, if possible, even more anxious for the change in Sparta.
Gradually the King unstiffened; he began to poke the dry walnuts in front of him more hopefully. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this much for tonight. Now—a song before we go.’ His eyes travelled round the table till they lighted on Panteus, and stayed. ‘You,’ he said, very tenderly, so that every one looked up, smiling at one another, because this love of the King’s was, as it were, their own Spartan flower, the sign of the new times, and every one cherished it and watched it grow.
Panteus stood up and came slowly over towards the King, who took off his own garland and crowned him with it. All shifted a little towards the song, except Therykion, who was afraid of music or anything beautiful, anything that might possibly tempt him out of the straight path. Panteus picked up the small lyre and rubbed the strings of it softly, thinking what the King would like from him. He was three years younger than Kleomenes, and not so tall, with blue eyes and rough, light-brown hair that grew low on the middle of his forehead and curled and tangled over his ears. He had an extraordinarily compact, strong body, that seemed of itself to know the way of things, to run and jump and wrestle without his mind being quite aware of it. Like the rest of the younger men, he wore the short tunic, one loom’s-width of wool doubled, pinned at the shoulders, and belted with the edges loose and open at the left, hanging forward from the brooch as he stooped to the lyre, so that the skin of his side and thigh looked wonderfully pale and beautiful against the deep red of the stuff. He sang them old songs, in the mode they knew and liked and thrilled to now, ‘Swords Tomorrow,’ ‘The Barberry Bush,’ ‘You go my Way,’ and so on, then a very early thing, ten lines by Tyrtaeus, that had become less a song than a symbol of past turning future, and then a last, even shorter one, of soldiers waiting before a charge, as they themselves might be soon. His voice just filled the room, very sweet, and unelaborate as a shepherd on the hills.
Then suddenly the King stood up, tall and thin, with his long neck and jutting brows, and the frown that stayed as part of him, even when he was smiling. ‘Good night,’ he said, ‘good night, friends.’ They went out by twos and threes; as they pushed back the leather curtain from the door, great waves of frosty air blew in and shook the flame of the lamps and chilled the room. Outside it was starry—a calm, deeply arched sky with that familiar closing inward and upward of mountains on each horizon, the valley of Sparta like a cup to hold so many stars. The King’s brother, that much younger and less assured, less complicated, stopped a moment. ‘Are you sure the ephors are going to send you, Kleomenes? Suppose they don’t want the war?’
‘That will be all right, Eukleidas,’ said the King.
‘But—’ the brother began. And then, ‘Well, I suppose it’s got to be your way, Kleomenes,’ and he went out too, after a worried and questioning kiss.
Panteus waited easily, as if his body were asleep and his mind only half awake. Suddenly both came alive, his eyelids lifted, his hands turned inwards towards the King.
‘Look!’ he said, ‘I wanted to show you this.’ It was the letter from Philylla.
Kleomenes read it laughing. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ve got your answer!’
‘But she didn’t mind, did she?—about the arrows?’
‘Dear, you’ll have her falling in love with you if you don’t take care. Don’t you see from her letter? She’s got as far as speaking truth to you, and that’s a long way for a woman.’
‘She’s not a woman, she’s a child.’
‘She’s a little bit of a faun. Hadn’t she got prick ears, Panteus? No, but truly, Agiatis loves her, and I trust Agiatis to see into people’s hearts. Why don’t you take Philylla out and teach her to shoot properly? Teach her to throw a spear and ride.’
‘Kleomenes, is she as much of a boy as all that?’
‘You would teach my girl if she were older, Panteus. Perhaps you will if—if things go right. And I know Agiatis thinks Philylla could do all this, if she had the chance. But her own father and mother—well, we know Themisteas. Catch him and Eupolia having their daughter taught to be anything but a pretty softy!’
‘But they let her come to Agiatis?’
‘Yes, but they didn’t know what Agiatis is like. People don’t. You do, Panteus.’ He took hold of the other’s shoulder and pressed it gently.
‘Yes,’ said Panteus. ‘Shall I ever have the luck to marry someone like her, Kleomenes?’
‘There aren’t two of her, any more than there are two of you. Your wife will be the lucky one, Panteus.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Panteus seriously, sure to the bottom of his soul, as is perhaps right in love, how much less good he was than his lover. ‘Besides, that’s a long way off.’
‘Yes,’ said the King looking deeply at him, and seeing after a time that he was shivering, partly with cold, took half of his cloak and wrapped it round, over his friend’s shoulders and bare arms.
It was three days later that a Hellespontine merchant ship put into harbour at Gytheum, after a long and anxious but not very adventurous voyage. Tarrik and his Scythians had stayed at Byzantium for the worst weeks of mid-winter and there changed ship. Even on the way south, after that, they had delayed at a dozen small ports, kept in by contrary winds or