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 courage, he tried to hold back the future. That came to an end, as it was bound to, and then he’d only got me; and I had the children, I couldn’t give him what he needed, could I, Philylla?’
‘Yes,’ said Philylla, a little 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
