The King Must Die (12 page)

I said it was nothing. I had too much pride to say I had been made light of. But when her women had gone that night, I asked her what she meant by it.

She looked at me amazed. It seemed she really could not see why I was angry. She said she had done nothing against custom; and I saw it was true. As for making light of me... she shook out her hair, and laughed at me through it sidelong.

Next morning dawned green and gold. A tress of red hair lay tickling on my breast. I lifted it off and slid away, and went to the window. The Attic hills swam in gold mist, across a shimmering sea, looking near enough to hit with an arrow. I thought how strange are the ways of Earthlings, and hard for a Hellene to understand. For she had chosen me, and set me to the wrestling, and hallowed me King. Yet neither she nor anyone else had asked if I consented to my moira.

The white bird woke and whistled. Her voice from the bed said wide awake, "You are thinking. What are you thinking of?" I made her the answer she liked best. I was the first Hellene she had ever married.

From this day on, I awoke from dreaming. I had spent the long days of Eleusis in sleep, in dancing or wrestling with the young men, playing the lyre, or looking out to sea. Now I began to seek for occupation. It is not in my nature to do nothing.

The Companions were nearest to my hand. If there was war, at least I should have command of my own Guard, though Xanthos led the rest. It was time I paid them some attention.

These youths, as I was saying, never left me, except when I was with the Queen in bed. They were all well set up, well bred and personable, or they would not have been where they were; they were chosen for such things, rather than for feats of arms. I had no need of their protection, for in Eleusis nothing was so dreadful as to kill the King out of his time. After suffering many pains, the killer would be sealed in a tomb alive, for Night's Daughters to do their will on him. It was long since it had happened, and then by misadventure. But the Companions were an adornment for the King, which the people liked to see about him.

They all had more or less Greek, which was the mark there of a gentleman. When I began to talk with them, they seemed to me very vain, full of petty jealousies and rivalries, feeling slights as a cat does water, and always trying to put each other down. They were curious about me, because I was a Hellene, and, as I learned after a while, because of some oracle concerning me which had been kept secret from the people. I remembered the dead King's laughter; but it told one nothing.

From all I could see, they had done little till now but play at war training. They did not lack spirit, so I suppose most of the kings had not looked beyond their own term. But wherever I am, I must put my hand to what I find there.

Men soon get stale with courtyard exercise; so I got them into the hills. At first they went unwillingly; Eleusinians are plainsmen, and despise the mountains as poor barren land, fit for wolves and robbers. I asked them whatever they did when raiders came for their cattle, if they did not know the borderland. They took this quite well, and owned the Megarians often made away with stock, trying to make good their losses by the Isthmus bandits the other side. "Well," I said, "there's only one answer to that. They must be made to fear us more." So I took them scrambling; we got a buck, and roasted our kill by a mountain stream, and they were pleased with the day. But on the way home one of them said to me, "Don't tell anyone, Kerkyon. You would be stopped next time for sure."

"Oh?" I said, raising my brows. "Who would stop me, do you think?" There was some whispering; I heard, "Well, you fool, he's a Hellene." Then someone said civilly, "You see, it is very unlucky if the King dies out of season."

This is quite true. There is a Minyan song about some young King long ago. who got himself killed by a boar after the Queen had forbidden him to go hunting. Anemones are said to be dyed with his blood. The olives failed that year, and no one has ever heard the last of it.

All the same, we were in the hills again next day, and the day after. Eleusis lies between two Hellene kingdoms; when the youths found their mothers' rule bear heavy, they would cast an eye sidelong at the lands of men. So they came, and kept the secret, and were pleased with themselves. My trophies of the chase, which I could not show in the Palace, I gave away as prizes; but I had to be careful, or they would quarrel over them, being much given to rivalry. Time passed like this; as we got used to each other's speech, we had a language of our own, Greek-Minyan laced with our own jokes and catchwords. No one else could understand it.

One day, when we were straggled out on the mountain, I heard them calling to each other, "We have lost Boy!" "Where is Boy, have you seen him?" I climbed into view and someone said, "There he is."

I had put up with a good deal in Eleusis; but I did not mean to swallow insolence. I came forward, reminding myself that I passed for nineteen, and the eldest of them was not one and twenty. "The next one who calls me Boy," I said, "I am going to kill."

They all stood gaping. "Well?" I said. "Here we are on the border. Anyone who kills me can run away; or you can throw my body off a rock, if you like, and say I fell. I shan't hide behind the Goddess' skirts; but let's see first who can kill me. Who thinks I am a boy? Come out and say it."

There was a pause; then the eldest, a young man called Bias who had a proper beard, said, "But, Kerkyon, no one here would insult you. It is the other way." More of them joined in, calling, "It is our name for you." "Kerkyon is nothing; it is cold." "All the good kings have nicknames." And one who was always bold and reckless said, laughing, "It's all in love, Kerkyon. You know you could have any one of us for a wink." At this two or three shouted out agreeing, between joke and earnest, letting me see it was an offer; and next moment two had started a fight. .

I got them parted, and let it go as foolery. Everyone knows there is a good deal of this among the Minyans; and one cannot wonder. It comes of being tied to their mothers' petticoats after they are men. Their mothers even choose their wives for them. Then they go to the wife's house, and change one petticoat for another. When a man lives like this, a youth he can choose for himself, who looks up to him and copies him and boasts of his friendship, will give him more pride in himself than the womenfolk at home. I see no sense in looking down on this; most customs have a reason; even among Hellenes, in a long war where girls are scarce and the leaders are first served, the young men's friendships grow tenderer than they were.

One can be, as I am, a man for women, yet not dislike having friends in a strange land, or a loyal Guard. If they had been tiresome or importunate I might have wondered, being young, how I was going to deal with it; but this time, for once, there was something in being King. "Well," I said to them, "even kings have names where I come from. Mine is Theseus." So they took to using it, though it was clean against the custom.

If I had fancied one of them, there would have been no end to bloodshed and intrigue; one heard stories of former years. As it was, it was only a matter of taking care. A few meant what they said; with others it was a fashion; they had friends of their own or were in love with girls, usually with girls their mothers would not let them marry. Troubles like this they brought to me, and when I could I urged their causes with the Queen. But it hurts a man's pride, to coax a woman when he has no power to do more. Just as when I was a boy, I began to find wild ways of proving myself to myself. I would have wished for war; but westward were the Megarians, my father's hearth-friends and kindred; and eastward was my father.

I heard a good deal about the cattle wars with Megara; some of my young men were old enough to have been in the last themselves. King Nisos, they said, was too old to fight, but his son Pylas could fight for two. I learned, from hints here and there, that the Queen's brother was not much loved by his men. No one questioned his courage; but he was thought overbearing, and greedy with the spoil. There was a proverb among them, "Xanthos’ share."

My grandfather had said to me, "Take care as you pass through Megara not to give offense, or get into a brawl. King Nisos is the only sure ally your father has, your grandmother's brother. King Pandion fled there from Athens once during the wars for the kingdom; your father himself was born there." As autumn drew on, these words stuck in my mind. It is a time for raids, before winter closes the ways. Once in the field, I thought, it would be a poor thing if I did not single this Pylas out for combat; people might well, then, call me Boy. Yet whether I killed him or he killed me, my father stood to lose by it. I began to dread this war as much as a man might who was scared of fighting.

Lying at dawn in the painted bedchamber, thinking my own thoughts before the white bird whistled at the sun, I saw it was time I slipped off to Athens. But how to do it? It would have been easier for a slave than for the King. I was always among people: dancing at festivals, parading at the sacrifice (though I never offered it); everywhere I went the Guard went with me; and at night I had only to move as far as the edge of the bed, for the Queen to wake. There were the hunting trips in the hills; but I knew the Companions, thinking I was lying hurt somewhere, would set the dogs to find me. Besides, they would be punished for losing me; killed, for all I knew; and I had begun to feel answerable for them. Being with them so much, I could not help it.

Then, supposing I did get away, I should still get to my father's court a beggarly fugitive, perhaps with the Queen threatening war. A fine fool I should look, in flight from a woman. I had wanted to go to him a man who has been heard of. I had wanted him to say, before he knew me, "I wish I had such a son."

"No!" I thought. "By Ever-Living Zeus! I have time before me: autumn, winter, and spring. If I can't get openly to Athens with my name running before me, I deserve to stay in Eleusis, and accept the moira of her kings."

I looked about me, and listened, and thought I considered the Megarians, and Pylas, Nisos' son, who had the name of a warrior. There was only one way to avoid fighting him and keep my standing: somehow, and soon, we must make friends. I thought of this and that; but still I could not see my way to it.

Meantime, the night still had its sweetness; the harper's song at supper-time seemed always a verse too long. But I no longer asked myself how I could ever leave her.

I never spoke to her of business when anyone was listening, lest she should shame me with slight answers; but if I tried it at night, she would pet me like a child. At home, when I was only ten, my grandfather used to make me sit quiet while he gave judgment, and question me after to see what I had taken in. Here, I had even litigants coming to me with bribes to get them her ear, as if I were some concubine. Of course they were women, so I could not hit them in the teeth.

I often saw her children about the Palace. There were only five, though she had married ten kings. By the last she had had none; and I hoped, as any man will, that she would take by me. But sometimes I heard the nurses talking, as if these children were some favor she had shown their fathers; as if she chose which kings she would bear to. So I never asked her. I knew, if I ever learned that she thought me not worth breeding from, I should be too angry to answer for myself.

Then came a day when she heard I had been climbing after leopard. You might have thought, from the way she rated me, I had been caught up an apple tree in my first pair of breeches. I was shocked dumb. My own mother, who remembered me a babe as naked as a worm, would not have said such things. Afterwards I thought of answers, but too late. That night in bed I turned away from her, thinking that here was something she was not master of. But here too, in the end, she had the better of me, for she understood these matters. Next morning my eyes opened before cocklight, and I lay awake ashamed. I saw I should have to do something to get my standing back. I did not mean to be a man all night and a child all day, for any woman's pleasure.

I would hunt again, I thought; and this time it should be something big. Among the mountain herdboys I made it known that news of game would find me grateful. Before long, one came asking for me, all on tiptoe. "Kerkyon," he said, "the great she-boar, Phaia, is in the border hills. She has come over from Megara, and has a den on Broken Mountain. They say she has a litter there."

He went on to tell me of her; I had heard something already. She was said by the Megarians to have a javelin-head lodged in her side, which made her hate men; she would rush out from covert when no one hunted her, and kill the peasants for sport. There were five men to her count already.

This was just the kind of quarry I had been looking for. I gave the lad a reward that made him jump for joy. "The Good Goddess do as much for you, Kerkyon. King Nisos has put a price upon the beast; a tripod and an ox."

This gave me a new thought. I called him back as he was going. "Does Pylas, King Nisos' son, hunt about the border?" The boy said, "He will, sir, for sure, now she is there; he is always after her." 'Tell me," I said, "if he is seen."

He brought word a few days later. I beckoned the Guard about me, and said to them, "I have news of a brave beast in the hills."

At this the wildest of them, a dark youth called Amyntor, gave a whoop and swallowed it. I heard someone's voice claiming a bet. Of course they knew I had had my orders. There is nowhere for gossip like a palace of women, where it is common knowledge by noonday how many times you embraced your wife last night. They had all been waiting to see what I would do. All Eleusinians love strong happenings more than wine.

"Pylas of Megara and his friends," I said, "think they can bay the she-boar of Krommyon. I don't think we should let that pass, when she's on our border."

Their eyes grew wide. I saw them nudging and whispering, and was rather surprised; I had not found them easily frightened. Then one said aloud, "A she-pig!"

At this I remembered; these beasts are sacred in Eleusis. It did not please me; from the moment I had heard of Phaia, my heart had been set on her. But when I thought again, I saw it might work out for the best. "Be easy," I said. "She will not die in Eleusis. Those hills are No Man's Land. Nor will her blood be on you; boar are lawful killing for Hellenes, and I shall kill her."