The King Must Die (35 page)

I came nearer, saying, "We have craft laws in Attica. And for the farmers too. They meet in council of their craft, and the King sees justice." I was so far from home, I was seeing it not as it was, but as I had dreamed of making it. The dream had grown and spread unknown to me, as it were in sleep. They listened, at first, because I was Theseus of the Cranes; all Cretans follow the bull-dance; but suddenly the foreman said, "Well, if the King of your country ever lands here, Theseus, he'll find plenty of us to fight for him, in return for laws like that."

Others joined in agreeing. I walked away, with a dazzling in my mind, and could hardly break off my thought when people spoke to me. But soon the brightness died. The Hellene lands were far across the seas, and I had no messenger.

But I could not forget. Every night I prayed to Father Poseidon, stretching my hands over the earth. Nor did I cease when no answer came. I dinned at the god's ear till it must have grown weary. And at last he heard.

I was sitting at some feast, when a tumbler came in to dance for the guests, a small slender youth, too fair to be anything but Hellene. I too must have caught his eye, for I saw it fixed on me. He was a skillful dancer; you would have thought that like a snake he had joints all over. And all the while, I was thinking I had seen him somewhere before. When he was resting our eyes met again; I beckoned him over, and asked his city. His face quickened at my Hellene speech. "My trade takes me about," he said. "But I was born in Athens."

I said, "Speak to me after."

I excused myself early, which no one noticed, for bull-dancers need their sleep. In the courtyard he came up softly; and, before I could ask him anything, whispered in my ear, "They say you are chief of the bull-dancers?" I answered, "So they say." "Then, for Merciful Zeus' sake, tell me where the dead victims are buried, and how I can get there. I have come all this way to make the offerings for my sister, who was taken from Athens last tribute-time. I have had to work my way, or I would have seen these Cretans dead before I danced for them. She and I were born at one birth. She was my partner. We danced before we could walk."

My heart leaped so that it nearly choked me. "Take home your offerings. Helike your sister is still alive."

He blessed me and ran on a little, then besought me to tell him how he could get her away. I said, "Yourself you never could. Even we men never leave the Labyrinth; and the girls are shut in the Bull Court. You would die a hard death and leave her grieving. But you may still save her before she meets her bull, if you will take a message for me to the King of Athens."

I saw him start in the shadow. He caught at me, and drew me to a shaft of light from a doorway; then he dropped my arm, and whispered, "My lord! I did not know you."

All bull-leapers paint their eyes. It marks one's standing, like wearing gold. He was too civil to remark on it.

"I never saw you so near in Athens. All the City mourned for you, and the King looks ten years older. How he will praise the gods for this news!"

"You too will find him grateful." His eye brightened, as was natural enough, and he begged for the message, to hide it well. I said, "No, it would be your death if it came to light. You must learn it off. Remember it's your sister's life, and say it after me."

I thought a little, and then said, "Greeting, Father. Crete is rotten-ripe, and five hundred ships can take it. The native Cretans hate their masters. Ask the High King of Mycenae for his ships; there will be great spoil to share. And gather the fleet at Troizen, for the Cretan warships do not call there. When your men come, I will arm the bull-dancers and seize the Labyrinth.".

He learned it soon, being quick-minded; then he said, "Have you some token, sir, I can give the King? He is a careful man." This was true, but I could think of nothing to send. "If he wants a token, say, "Theseus asks you whether the white boarhound still drinks wine.' "

So we parted. I told him when he could watch Helike dance, but said, "Send her no word of it. It would take her mind from the bull. I will tell her after."

When I had given her the news alone, I called the Cranes together, and swore them all to silence, and told them the plan. "It is the secret of the Cranes," I said. "It is too soon to tell the others. Someone will talk, out of so many. As for friends and lovers in the Labyrinth, we will spare them when we strike; but till then our oath must bind us. Meantime, we must find a place to hide arms in, when we can get them. We have the girls too to arm."

I looked about the Bull Court. It seemed barer than a field; we had only our little bundles. Then Melantho said, "In our rooms we could hide them easily. It is an old rambling warren, all holes and corners and loose boards. Only the outer doors are guarded." I said, "That will do for your own weapons, but not for ours. Ten to one we shall have to break out at night, and force your gate after." There was a silence. Then Hippon looked at me under his lashes. "Theseus. If we wanted the girls let out at night, I think I could get in there."

We all stared at him. He turned to Thebe, and whispered to her, and they went off together. He was gone some time and talking we forgot him. Then Thebe appeared, not in her bull dress but her Athenian clothes. "What has she done," I thought, "to look so pretty? That's not Thebe at all." The girl came up, looking under her eyelids, and hugging a shawl about her breast. It was Hippon. He had repaid our patience, after all. Everyone knew he had picked the post of danger. Then Iros said, "But wait, my dears, till you have seen me!"

This promised something. I knew by now that only men were kept from visiting the girls. There were many Palace ladies who came calling after dark, with a bribe for the guard and a gift for the priestess. Our spirits lifted.

I had one great fear, that hope might keep us too much at stretch, and we would dance the worse for it. I felt I could not bear to lose one of my people now, when it might be the last watch before dawn.

If one wore a loose necklace into the ring, one always made a weak link of thread in it, in case it caught on the horn. That was old custom; but now I made the Cranes do the same with their belts, under the clasp. This was after I had seen a Median tossed by his belt and killed. Many dancers copied this device; but, as it happened, I was the first to test it. I had slipped by Herakles very close, and felt him hook me. My belt held a moment, and I thought I was finished; then it gave way. Scrambling off without much grace, but none the worse beyond a nick in my side, I felt my loin-guard about my foot, kicked it away, and stood in the ring stark naked.

All round the stands, the people had been yelling and groaning and screaming, thinking to see me killed at last. Now their tune changed; there came from the men a shout of laughter, from the women flutterings and little squeals. Menesthes and Pylia meanwhile had drawn the bull, and Chryse was leaping him. But the people had seen all that before, and I had all their eyes. If one Cretan was in the stands, there must have been fifteen thousand.

I had given no thought to this beforehand; but now I felt hot all over, trapped in the open till the end of the dance. I even missed the bull turning my way, till Nephele called my name. She drew him off, and Amyntor and I had to look after her, which made me forget myself; but when there was time again, I was angry with the Cretans. Anger is bad in the ring. It showed me my folly.

"What!" I thought. "A slave made my garment; but All-Knowing Zeus made me. Shall I be ashamed before these foolish Earthlings, who think he dies each year; I who am a Hellene?"

So I ran round to face the bull, and danced with him to keep him in doubt of me; when I had fooled him cross-eyed I did the leap with the half-somersault, and vaulted off my hands; the people stopped laughing, and cheered instead. Soon he started sulking, then turned and plodded off; the dance was over, and I went to face the ribald Bull Court. I suppose I only remember this foolish trifle, because of what happened just after.

Next evening a slave brought me a token scribbled on clay, bidding me to a feast with a young lord whom I knew. After dark I bathed and dressed. (There are running conduits everywhere about the Labyrinth; no water needs to be carried in. They even have some to carry night-soil away, so that one need not go out to the midden.) As I passed along a colonnade, a woman slipped out from behind a column, and touched my arm, and said, "Telephos has no feast tonight."

Her head was covered with a mantle; but I saw she was gray and bowed with age. "He has just bidden me," I said. "Is he sick, then, or in mourning?" She answered, "He did not send. Follow me; I will show you where to go."

I drew back from her hand. I had had enough already of such fooleries, which ended all the same way, with a woman one did not want. Sometimes all they wanted themselves was to be even with a rival. The place was sticky with such intrigues. I said, "If he did not send, I will go and sleep. But I will ask him first."

"Hush!" she said. I peered at her in the dimness. She had not the look nor sound of a bawd; not even of a servant. She had gray Hellene eyes, and the bones of breeding; and when I looked, I saw she was afraid.

It puzzled me. The bookmakers stood to win if the bull should kill me; but bets did not cover a death outside the ring. I could not think of any husbands I had cuckolded who would take it beyond hard looks; in the Labyrinth they were mostly used to it. And I kept clear of jealous women. Yet I had the feel of danger; danger and something more. There were secrets here; I was young; it would have tormented me to go away now unknowing. "What do you want of me," I said. "Tell me the truth, and I will see."

"I can tell you nothing," she said. "But I will take an oath, for myself and for those who sent me, that no harm is meant you, and none will come if you do as you are told." "A pig in a poke. Is it something against my honor?" She answered with an edge, though quietly still, "No, indeed! More honor than you are worthy of." And then, turning her face away, "It is no choice of mine that brings me."

For sure, she was neither bawd nor chambermaid. She sounded more like the head of a great household. "Let us hear this oath," I said.

She pattered it off, in the old Cretan of the rituals; and then it came to me that she was a priestess. The oath was heavy, so I said, "Lead on." She took from her arm a cloak she had been carrying, and said, "Wear this. You are too gaudy; you catch the light."

I put it on, and she made me keep ten paces behind her. She scuttled along like an old rabbit in a warren; presently reaching a little lamp from a bracket, she led me into places I had never seen, through smithies and carpenters' shops and kitchens and stinking midden-yards. At last we entered a store piled up with firewood, and she let me overtake her. We sidled between the stacks; behind them was a cleared space, and a wooden trapdoor. She pointed to its ring in silence. Certainly, she had never been a servant.

It had been freshly oiled, and opened silently. There were wooden steps below, and a far dim lamplight shining through them. They went down deep. There were smells of grain and oil and wax, and a cold smell of earth.

I went down a few steps, and looked round below me, and saw great store jars standing, taller than men. The clay was worked in handles all about them, so that they could be moved; in the half dark these looked like ears and fingers. I waited for my guide; she leant down, and spoke in my ear. "Go to that column there, beyond the grain jars. A thread is tied about it. Take the thread in your hand, and follow where it leads you. Keep hold of it, and you will not come to harm. If you stray into the treasure vaults, the guards will kill you."

"Why are you leaving me?" I said, and took her wrist to keep her. I did not like it; it had a smell of treachery and ambush. She said proudly and angrily, "You have my oath. Neither I nor those who sent me are used to be forsworn. Let be; you hurt me: you had best be more civil, where you are going." Her anger rang true, and I set her free. She said, with a bitterness aimed beyond me, "Here my errand ends; to know the rest does not concern me. So I am commanded."

I went down the steps, and heard the trap close softly. Around me every way stretched the vaults of the Labyrinth; long pillared passages lined with bins, or shelves for jars and boxes; crooked nooks full of clay-sealed vases with painted sides; tunnels with bays set back for casks and chests; a maze of dim caves, stoppered with darkness. A great gray cat leaped past me, something fell clattering, and a rat gave its furious death-squeal.

I went round the grain jars, of which each could have held two men standing, and found the pillar. It had a ledge with a little lamp, a twist of wick in a scoop of clay. Joined to the dressed stone was an offering bowl, smelling of old blood. Black stains with feathers stuck in them ran down to the floor and a shallow drain. It was one of those master-pillars of the house, at which the Cretans offer sacrifice, to strengthen them when the Earth Bull shakes the ground.

The thin cord round it had been tied there lately, for it was clean of blood. When I picked up the slack from the pavement, a house snake went whipping into its pierced clay pot, not a yard from my hand. I started back with gooseflesh on my arms; but I had the cord, and followed it.

It led winding through dark narrow storerooms, smelling of wine and oil, of figs and spices. Every so often, at a turn, there would hang on the black dark a little seed of light, from such a lamp as the first, beckoning the way rather than showing it. As I groped round a pillar, a strange harsh cry, low down, made my hair rise. In the moist floor an old well smelled dankly; a great frog sat on its coping, pale as a corpse. Then the way narrowed, and either side I touched rough stone walls, where creeping things scurried from my fingers. And as I paused, I heard from within the wall a muffled beating, uneven like a heart in terror; when I laid my ear upon the stone, faint and deep a voice was cursing and shouting, calling for light, and upon the gods. But only a few feet on I could hear it no more; the prison must have been a good way off.