what I meant and worked her magic better it would never have happened. But women are like that, even the cleverest.’
‘Yes. Father, it is a queer thing being Corn King suddenly like this. He took me to the House—. Is it strange for you too, your son being God?’
Harn Der rubbed his fingers through his beard; he had not got that sort of mind. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not very strange. I shall not feel it strange when I am Chief, either. I give Yersha about four months.’
‘Yes,’ said Yellow Bull, ‘and there will be a Council meeting tomorrow, father? I can start at once on the secret road!’
That evening Eurydice was looking at herself in the mirror; she wore the crown of Marob, and she thought she looked like a man. She felt like a man, at any rate, full of power. This was her time. And then she thought of Charmantides, and how pleasant it would be if he were to come back from Hellas this summer with a wife, some charming, modest, well-born girl, so that there should be more Greek blood in the line of the chiefs of Marob. A girl who would be a little frightened of the north, the cold and the snow and the savagery, and who would come to her aunt for protection and kindness and love. … If a messenger were sent out to assure him that Erif Der was dead. If she was really dead. It would be for every one’s good. Erif Der and her magic dead and done with.
On the ship, out of sight of land, Tarrik had supper early among his friends, with Sphaeros on one side and Berris on the other. He loved them both—and all this company of men, free and singing and his own to command! He was happy and very tired. Not long after it was full dark, he stood up and bade good night to them all, and to Berris. ‘I’m glad you came,’ he said, ‘it was you I wanted all the time. God, I am sleepy—I was doing things all last night. Take anything you want from my stores, Berris—anything. If I’m still asleep, come and wake me at sunrise. We shall be that nearer Hellas. Good night, Sphaeros, and good dreams, sleeping or waking!’
Erif Der was alone in the Chief’s house. She had all the lamps alight in her room, and the shutters open too; it was still enough for that. She sat on the edge of her bed, undressed, with a fur rug pulled round her, clutched under her chin. There was no one in the room, nothing to hurt her. But still she sat there, quite quiet, watching and listening, very white.
I had a little nut tree,
Nothing would it bear
But a silver nutmeg
And a golden pear.
The King of Spain’s daughter
Came to visit me,
And all for the sake of
My little nut tree.
NEW PEOPLE IN THE SECOND PART
Greeks
Kleomenes iii, King of Sparta
His wife Agiatis, widow of King Agis iv
His children, Nikomedes, Nikolaos and Gorgo
His mother, Kratesikleia
His stepfather, Megistonous
His brother, Eukleidas
His foster-brother, Phoebis
His friend, Panteus
Philylla
Her father, Themisteas
Her mother, Eupolia
Her younger sister, Ianthemis
Her younger brother, Dontas
Her foster-mother, Tiasa
Therykion, Hippitas, and other Spartiates
Deinicha and other Spartiate girls
Panitas, Leumas, Mikon and other helots or non-citizens, their women and children
Aratos of Sicyon
Lydiades of Megalopolis
Spartans, Argives, Athenians, Megalopolitans, Rhodians and others
People of Marob
Kotka, Black Holly and other men of Marob
CHAPTER ONE
IN A FIELD NEAR Sparta there were three children with bows and arrows shooting at a stone mark, roughly painted as a man with a shield. It was winter—you could scarcely call it the beginning of spring yet—and the grass had been cropped close by the beasts. At the high end of the field were twenty old olive trees, lifting grey, beautiful heads to any sun there was; through them a goat-path, trodden hard, led down from upland pastures to the city. All round the field there was a stone wall, and beyond, on three sides, the still jagged mountains of Sparta.
The two younger children, a little girl and a still smaller boy, were looking crossly at their big sister; they wanted to play, and she was making it into work. They were chilly as well; she had made them leave off their warm cloaks, and the cold crept up their bare arms and legs, and under the thin wool of their indoor tunics. ‘A real bowman,’ she had said, ‘mustn’t let anything interfere with his shooting.’ And when they protested that they weren’t real bowmen, she said then they mustn’t shoot with her bows and arrows: so they had to be. But she’d always been like that, and it was worse than ever now she was maid of honour to the Queen.
They had to shoot in turns, standing a long way from the mark, so that they hardly ever hit it, which was dull, and they had to watch their arrows and find them, and between times they had to stand quite still and not drop their bows. It was unbearable; by and bye the little boy, Dontas, rebelled. ‘You said it was going to be a game!’
His big sister looked at him scornfully. ‘That was only to get you to come,’ she said, and her nose tilted at him. ‘This is much better than a game.’
‘It’s not!’ said the others, both together, and the small girl suddenly began to cry: ‘You’ve cheated us, Philylla! You said we were going to like it and we don’t!’
‘It’s better than any game,’ said Philylla in an excitement which somehow disregarded them. ‘It’s real! We’re all real Spartans now. I’m teaching you.’
‘We don’t want you to teach us, do we, Dontas?’ She appealed to the boy, who nodded, frowning as hard as he could. ‘You aren’t grown up any more than me, and besides we’re Spartans already!’
The big one tossed her head and made a comprehensive face at them. ‘That sort of Spartan—very likely! That pay other people
