he bolted, but not in time. Philylla suddenly losing the temper she had so admirably kept till then, jumped at him, and caught him almost at once, and shook him and hit him with her fists. ‘I’m not a girl!’ she said; ‘you shan’t call me that! I’m a soldier! I’m a Spartan! I shan’t ever let you touch my bows and arrows again!’
The boy squealed and kicked, ineffectively, because his feet were bare; the little girl encouraged him shrilly from behind, but was too cautious to let her hair come within grab of Philylla’s long arm. This went on for a minute or two, till Philylla suddenly felt she was being a bully, and let go.
Dontas broke away a yard or two, then stood, with his face red. ‘Keep your silly bow!’ he said. ‘When I’m a man you’ll be married and you won’t be allowed to do anything!’
‘Baby!’ said Philylla bitterly; ‘cry-baby, go home and play!’
The small girl, afraid it would start again, pulled Dontas back, whispering to him; elaborately not saying good-bye, they took their cloaks and went trotting off towards the town.
Philylla picked up her bow, talking to herself out loud. ‘I won’t marry,’ she said; ‘the Queen won’t want me to. I’ll be a soldier.’ And she began to shoot again, from still further off. She stood solidly with her white tunic pulled up through the belt to clear her knees; she had grey eyes and a small, obstinate mouth and chin, and her hair was tied up tight on the top of her head in a knot that overflowed into jumping, yellow curls. When she hit the mark, which was not always, she would suddenly boil over with a terrific, secret excitement; she sprang straight up into the air and yelled: she had killed an enemy! The headless arrows made a little click against the stone; she wanted a louder noise and thought she would ask the Queen to tell her father she could have a spear. A spear and a horse … and never get married, never want men making love to her like all the other sillies of maids of honour! She was nearly the youngest, but she knew the Queen liked her better than almost any of them; and she—she wished that stone was one of the Queen’s enemies, one of the people who said horrid things about her. There!—she’d hit him full in the heart.
After a time the King and Panteus came down the goat-path out of the hills; it was a safe place to talk secrets in, and Kleomenes had plans in his head enough to set all Sparta by the ears. Even now, Panteus was only just understanding; but he was excited, so wildly excited that he kept on stumbling over stones and olive roots and talking in jerks, not finishing his sentences. The King was excited too, but he showed it less, hardly at all unless to a person who knew him very well, who could see that queer, blind, blazing look behind his eyes, and the corners of his mouth twitching a very little with the force of the images that were tearing through his mind. They both stopped at the edge of the olives, suddenly aware of the child below them, shooting and shouting all by herself in the field.
Each smiled at the other, secretly, a moment’s check to the unbearable torrent of their excitement. The King put his hand up to his mouth and gave a hunter’s call down to the child. She jumped round to face it, still and startled, the bow held tight to her breast. Then with her free hand she swept up the loose arrows from the grass beside her and ran towards the olives, her eyes on the King, wondering what was happening now. He looked tired, she thought, leaning one way on his long spear, with the other arm round his friend’s neck. Both had tunics of fine wool, deep red, wine-coloured almost. She remembered the stuff being dipped by the Queen’s women, the first day she came to the house; the bitter smell of the dye, the maids of honour making faces at it behind the Queen’s back, and Agiatis herself with the red dripping off her arms, down from the elbows, a tiny smear on her neck. …
‘Well,’ said the King, smiling at her, ‘what are you doing that for?’
She looked down, fingering the bow, not wanting to answer.
Panteus helped her out, asking gravely: ‘Are you a soldier?’
She nodded. ‘The Queen lets me. And—I do really try!’
‘I saw that,’ said Kleomenes, ‘but don’t your friends come with you?’
‘My brother and sister were with me to begin with; but they wouldn’t go on. They’re babies.’
‘But the maids of honour?’
‘Oh no! They won’t start, they’re grown-up!’
‘And you’re just half-way between, so it’s all right?’
Philylla suddenly got shy and couldn’t answer him; she thought that was it, but didn’t want to say so. He was a grown-up too!
Again Panteus came to the rescue: ‘May I look at your arrows?’ he said. She handed them over silently. ‘You don’t always hit the mark, do you?’ She shook her head and he picked out three or four of the arrows. ‘These aren’t straight,’ he said. ‘Look. Where did you get them?’
She was almost crying but could not bear them to see; she took the arrows and broke them across her bare knee, ducking her head over them so as to hide her eyes.
‘Who made them?’ said Panteus again.
‘I did,’ she said at last, scraping her finger hard along the bowstring.
Panteus was really unhappy; she was so like a boy, standing there among her broken things. ‘One always makes a few crooked ones at first,’ he said. ‘I did. There’s nothing to cry about.’
‘I’m not crying,’ said Philylla indignantly, and turned round to the King. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘I want to tell you—if I can ever help you, do say! The Queen—she said I might speak if I saw you—and—she told me what you’re doing, how everything’s going to be splendid again! Some of them don’t like it, but I do, and—I do wish I could help.’
‘You may yet, Philylla,’ said the King gravely, ‘and thank you. We shall want every true heart. Now, run on and tell the Queen we are coming.’
‘I will,’ she said, and ran, her thick cloak in one hand, dragging out behind her, strongly, like a flag. Her heart was full of mixed pleasure at her own daring in speaking to the King and getting that answer from him, and shame at having made bad arrows, and the man thinking she was crying. Yet he was a good man, he hadn’t laughed; and the King had looked tired. She had noticed that; she was beginning to know about grown-ups. Only, did he think she was crying …? Hot and cold, hot and cold, Philylla ran down the goat-path, back to the Queen, whom she loved.
But those last words of hers had sent the King and Panteus racing back to the overwhelming thrill of their plans. Only first Panteus had asked who the child was, ‘because she seems like part of the new things.’
‘Philylla, daughter of Themisteas,’ the King answered. ‘My wife chose her. In three years she will be breaking hearts all round her.’
‘She doesn’t think of that yet,’ said Panteus, and then again they looked at each other secretly, flashingly, because in three years Sparta was to be all different!
The King sighed a little, saying to his friend: ‘I wish Sphaeros was here. He should have got my letter.’
Philylla found them all out in the courtyard, and stopped a moment, feeling it all so poised that she must not break into it, however gently. The King’s mother, Kratesikleia, was sitting on the step, telling stories to her grandchildren; she had been very tall as a young woman, but now she was much bent, though it was somehow softly, as though less with
