The King Must Die: A Novel

1

“I WAS A KING and a king’s heir,” I thought as the ship cast her moorings. “Now I am a slave.”

She was a big ship. The figurehead was a bull, with a flower on his brow and gilded horns. Amidships between the rowers were the black soldiers; there was a bridge for the rowing-master, and for the Captain’s chair. We victims lived on the after-deck, and had an awning to sleep under, just as if we had paid our passage. We belonged to the god, and had to be brought unspoiled. There was a guard all day on us, and a double guard all night, to see no one lay with the girls.

It was a time of pause with me. I had passed from my own keeping. I lay in the god’s hand, as once in boyhood, cradled on the sea. Dolphins raced along with us, diving under the waves, and blowing “Phoo!” through their foreheads. I lay and watched them. My life was still.

South of Sounion a warship, a fast pentekonter, took us in convoy. Sometimes on island headlands we saw pirate camps; the beached ships and the lookout tower; but none put out after us. We were bigger game than they had teeth for.

These things passed by me while I took my ease as one who hears the harper. “I am going to sacrifice,” I told myself. “But Poseidon claimed me, who once was no man’s son; and that is mine for ever.”

So I sprawled in the sun, and ate and slept and watched the sights, and heard unheeding the sounds of shipboard. Morning broke rose and gray as we threaded the Cyclades. About sunup I heard angry voices. There are many on a ship; we were passing between Kia and Kythnos, and there were things to see. Yet the sound drew tugging at me, and made me look. One of the Athenian boys was fighting an Eleusinian. They rolled grappling on the deck; the Captain was strolling up the bridge toward them, with weary eyelids, like a man who has done this a hundred times. A thin-lashed whip was looped in his hand.

It woke me like mountain water. I took a running leap on them, and pulled them apart. They sat gaping and rubbing bruises; the Captain shrugged and walked away.

“Remember yourselves,” I said. “Do you want to be beaten by a Cretan, before those slaves? Where is your pride?” They both began speaking at once, with the onlookers taking sides. I shouted for silence, and saw thirteen pairs of eyes all fixed on me. There was a check in my mind, and I thought, “What now?” It was like reaching for your sword when your side is bare. “What am I doing?” I thought. “I am a slave myself. Can there be a king among victims?” The words echoed in my head.

Everyone was waiting. I pointed at the Eleusinian, whom I knew, and said, “You first, Amyntor. Well?”

He was a black-haired youth, with thick brows meeting over a falcon nose and eyes. “Theseus, this potter’s son, with the clay still in his hair, sat in my place; when I told him to move up, he became insolent.” The Athenian, who was pale and sharp, said, “I may be Minos’ slave, but I am not yours. As for my father, Earthling, I can name him at any rate. We know what your women are.” I looked from one to the other, and guessed Amyntor had done the first wrong; yet that at bottom he was the better man.

“Have you done insulting each other?” I said. “While you were about it, you insulted me. Phormion, I chose the customs in Eleusis; if you don’t like them, I am the man to tell. It seems, Amyntor, you keep more state here than I do. Tell us what you expect of us, lest we should offend you.”

They stammered something. All of them sat around, with trusting dog-eyes. Where there was anger, they hoped for strength. You find the same thing among warriors. But once you have roused this hope, woe to you if you fail it.

I sat on a bale of wool, some small town’s tribute, and looked at them. While we ate, I had picked up the names of the four Athenian youths: Phormion; Telamon, a smallholder’s son, quiet and steady; a modest graceful lad called Hippon, whom I had seen somewhere before, and Iros, whose mother had screamed so at the lottery. She was some baron’s concubine; the boy was slight and high-voiced, with girlish airs, but away from her petticoats seemed as steady as anyone else.

The girls I knew still less of. One, Chryse, was a child like a lily, flawless, white and gold; she was the one the people had wept for. Melantho was Minyan, a firm bouncing girl, busy and managing. Of the rest, Nephele was bashful and snivelling; Helike slim and silent, with slanting eyes; Rhene and Pylia seemed pretty fools; and Thebe was honest and kind, but plain as a turnip. I studied their faces, trying to guess what they would be good for; and they gazed at me, like swimmers at a floating plank.

“Well,” I said, “it is time to talk.” They waited. They had nothing else to do.

“I don’t know why Poseidon called me to the bulls; whether or not he wants me to die in Crete. If not, I shall put my hand to what I find there. Meanwhile, we are all in the power of Minos; I am the same as any of you, just a slave of the god. What do you want me to do? Look out for myself on my own, or be answerable for you too as I would at home?”

Before my mouth was shut, they were crying to be led. Only the slant-eyed Helike was silent; but she never spoke. “Think first,” I said. “If I lead you I shall give laws; will you like that? There is the man with power to do it.” And I pointed to the Cretan, who had sat down again, and was paring his nails.

“We will take an oath,” said Amyntor, “if you ask us to.”

“Yes, I shall. We must swear to stand together. If anyone dissents, now is the time to say so. You too, girls; I am calling you to Assembly. We must make our own customs, to suit our state.”

The Athenian girls, who were not used to public business, hung back whispering; then the dark brisk Minyan, Melantho, said, “We are out of our own lands, so a man ought to lead us; that was always Minyan law. I vote for Theseus.” I said, “That is one. What about the other six?” She turned to them scornfully and said, “You hear him. Put up your hands, if you can’t talk.” Five put them up, and Chryse, the gray-eyed child whose hair hung straight like a sheet of gold, said gravely, “I vote for Theseus.”

I turned to the men. “Who is against it? In Crete we shall have to depend on one another. So speak now; and I will bear no grudge, by my father’s head.”

The young Athenian Iros, the mother’s pet, said seriously without his usual mincing, “No one is against, Theseus. You gave yourself to the god; we were only taken. No one else can be King.”

“Very well,” I said. “In his name be it. We need a mace for the speaker.” There was nothing about, except a distaff Thebe was twirling to pass the time. “Throw your wool away, little sister; you will need other skills in Crete.” So she threw it overside, and we used the distaff.

“Here is our first law,” I said. “We are all one kindred. Not Athenian nor Eleusinian, but both at once. If anyone is highborn, the bulls won’t know it; so let him keep his honor only, and forget his rank. Not Hellene nor Minyan, high nor low; no, not even men and women. The girls have got to stay maidens, or lose their lives. Any man who forgets that forswears our oath. Soon we shall all be bull-dancers, men and girls alike. Since we can’t be more than comrades, let us swear never to be less.”

I drew them together in a ring, while the Cretan priestess squinnied between to see no petticoats got lifted. Then I swore them with a strong oath; for as it was, only misfortune bound us. They looked better after, like all frightened people when given something to do.

“Now we are children of one house,” I said. “We ought to have a name.”

As I spoke, Chryse looked upward with her wide-set eyes, and I heard a hollow cry. A line of cranes, with long stretched necks and winnowing wings, was crossing between the islands. “Look,” I said, “Chryse has seen an omen. Cranes are dancers too; everyone knows the crane-dance. We’ll be the Cranes. And now before we do anything else, we will commend ourselves to Ever-Living Zeus, and to the Mother. We must share our gods too, then none will be offended. Melantho, you shall invoke the Goddess; but there must be no women’s mysteries. The Cranes share everything.” To tell the truth, I was not sorry to pay Mother Dia some respect. She does not like men who rule; and in Crete I knew she was supreme.

“Well,” I said afterwards, “we are still in council. Does anyone want to speak?”

The graceful boy, whose face I half remembered, put out his hand. Now it came back to me where I had seen him: polishing harness in the stable, while I waited for my father. Without looking at the Eleusinians, who being from the Guard were both divinely descended, I gave him the mace and said, “Hippon is speaking.”

“My lord,” he said, “is it true we are sacrificed to the bull? Or has he got to catch us for himself?”

“I should like to know too,” I said. “Can anyone tell us?” This was a mistake. Everyone talked at once, except the silent Helike, and when I got them using the mace, it was not much better. All the old wives’ tales came out: that we should be bound to the bull’s horns, or thrown into a cave where he lived on human flesh; even that he was a monster, a man bull-headed. They were all scaring each other sick. I shouted for silence, and held out my hand for the mace.

“Which of you,” I said, “were frightened with these tales as children, to keep you quiet?” Several looked sheepish. “Anyone would think, from the way you go on, that all these things could be true at once. If even one is, then all the rest are lies. Hippon is the only one with sense; he doesn’t know, and knows it. We must find out, and stop guessing. Perhaps I can get the Captain to talk.”

The Athenians did not know why I should think so, and looked amazed, especially the girls. To the Eleusinians I said, in the slang of the Guard, “If anyone laughs, I will push his teeth in.” They grinned, and said, “Good luck, Theseus.”

I went over to the ship’s side, and stood there pensive. When the Captain looked my way I greeted him. On this he beckoned, and the guards let me on the bridge. He packed off the black boy, who had been sitting at his feet, and offered me his footstool. As I had seen, he had only been held back by fear of a public insult. Our persons were sacred, so he could not have avenged it, beyond a flick of his whip.

As for getting him to talk, he would have been as hard to stop as some old warrior remembering the battles of his youth. He was what they call in Crete a man of fashion. There is no Hellene word for this; it means something more than a gentleman, and something less. Such people study the bull-dance as a harper does old songs. He was still running on when his supper was cooked, and would have kept me to share it. I said the others would kill me for sure if they saw me taking favors, and got away; evening drew on, and it was only the bull-dance I wanted to learn about.

I went back to the Cranes. Dipping in the common pot brought all our heads together.

“Well,” I said, “you were right, Hippon; the bull has to catch us. But it is we, in the first place, who must catch him; cut him out of the herd, and bring him in. I can tell you as much about the bull-dance now as anyone can who hasn’t seen it. To begin with, before we dance at all we have three months’ training.”

They had been resigned to death as soon as we touched land. Three months was like three years to them; you would have thought I had given it them myself.

“We live in Knossos Palace, the House of the Ax, and we never leave it. But from what he says, it is pretty big. It is old too—a thousand years, he says, as if anyone could count so many. He says Poseidon lives underneath it, deep in a cave, in the form of a great black bull. No one has ever seen him, he lives too far down; but when he shakes the earth he bellows. Lukos—that’s the Captain—has heard it himself and says no sound on earth is half so dreadful. And his deeds in Crete have been like his voice. Two or three times, in former ages, he has had the house down to the very ground. So he is a god they have to pay heed to; and that is how the bull-dance began.

“Lukos says the sacrifice goes back to the very beginning, to the first earth men who made swords of stone. Then it was rude and simple; they just put a man into the bull pit for the bull to gore. But sometimes if he was quick-footed, he would dodge about for a while, which they took sport in, being barbarians. So time went on, and they learned civility from Egypt, and from the men of Atlantis who came flying eastward from Poseidon’s anger. Now they are become the most skillful artificers anywhere; not only for pots and jewels and houses, but for music and rites and shows. Since time out of mind they have been working on the bull-dance. First they made the bull pit bigger, and put more victims in, so there was a longer chase before someone was killed. The rest were brought back next time; but the longer they lived, the cunninger they got at dodging, till sometimes the bull tired first, and then they said the god was content for the day. So the neat and the quick lived longest, and taught their craft to others. Thus it went on, each generation adding some flourish to the show; all men will seek honor, even victims doomed to death. It was thought nothing of, just to dodge the horns; you must make a graceful dance of it, and never look flurried or scared, but play the bull as if you loved him. And then, so Lukos says, came the golden age of the bull-dance. There was so much honor in it that the noblest and bravest of the Cretan youth did it for love, to win themselves a name and honor the god. That was the day of the first great bull-leapers; the day the songs are sung of. It is a good while back now, and the young lords and ladies have other pastimes. But sooner than lose the show, they brought in slaves to train. Even now, he says, a kind of glory sticks to a bull-dancer. They think the world of him, if he can keep alive.”

“Alas! Alas!” cried moist Nephele, beating her breast as if it were a funeral, “Must we suffer all this before we die?”

I had not finished my tale; but, I thought, better not. “If you cry yourself all to water,” I said, “it will not help you. So why cry? When I was a boy at home, we played the bull for sport, and I’m still alive. Don’t forget they only drew the lot among the likely ones. If we learn this dance, we may live long enough to escape.”

“Theseus,” said Melantho, “how many—” “Oh, let him eat,” Amyntor said. She asked him sharply if he had left his manners in Eleusis. She would have taken it from an Athenian; but the Minyan girls did not like to see their own men getting above themselves. I said, “Yes? I can eat and listen.” She turned her shoulder to Amyntor, and asked, “How many dance at once?” “Fourteen,” I answered. “Seven of each.” She said, “Then are we a team? Or will they send us here and there, as people get killed?”

“That’s the question,” I said. It had been on my mind all the while; I had hoped that no one else would think of it. “I dared not ask the Captain; he might have thought we were planning something, and taken care we were split up. Let me think about it.”

I never found hunger better my wit; so I ate, and thought. At the end, I said, “Whatever we do, the Cretans will please themselves; we know that. So we must do something or other that will make them think us a team worth keeping. Well, what shall we do, and when shall we do it? Once on shore we may not get the chance. Yet here on shipboard, no one of consequence will see us. This Lukos may be small fry in Knossos, for all his airs. So it will need chewing on.”

Menesthes of Salamis, the wiry brown-faced boy whose father owned ships, spoke up for the first time. “Well, we could do it as we come into harbor. Like the Phoenicians, who always come in dancing and singing.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “Both answers in one! Yes, we must dance for them, all together.”

But at this a squeal went up from the Athenian girls, as from a farrow of piglets. They said that never, never had they stood up to dance with men; that the mere tidings of it would kill their parents dead with shame, and it was enough to lose their lives, without their honor. Nephele led in this. I was sick of her modesty, which she reminded us of too often.

“When you have done,” I said, “look at the Captain there. See what he is wearing.” He was sitting down, which hid his little loin-guard; he looked stark naked, but for his boots and jewels. “What he has on,” I said, “is what you will dance the bull-dance in before ten thousand Cretans. And if you don’t like it, ask him to put about and take you home.”

She set up a wail. I looked at her, on which she swallowed it.

“And now,” I said, “we will dance the Cranes.” “But,” said Rhene, stretching her eyes and gulping, “that is a dance for men.” I stood up and said, “It is our dance from now on. In line!”

So on the little afterdeck, we danced the Cranes in the westering sunlight. The sea was dark blue, like the enamel smiths fire on bronze; the islands looked smoke-purple, or dusty gold. When I looked back along the line it was like a plaited garland, white arms and brown, and the mingled colors of the tossing hair. As we danced we sang. The blacks amidships flashed their teeth and eyes, and slapped the beat on their striped shields; the steersman watched with his hand upon the tiller lines, the pilot from the beak; and on the bridge, with the little Negro curled at his feet, the Captain played with his crystal necklace, and arched his brows.

At last we flung ourselves on the deck, panting and smiling. Looking at them all, I thought, “It is beginning. As a hunting pack is more than so many dogs, so too are we.”

When I thought about it, it was a good while now since I had spent much time with people my own age. With some of them, such as Chryse and Hippon, I felt old enough to be their father. Not only was I the eldest of us; I was the tallest too, except for Amyntor.

“Good,” I said. “That should make them look twice. I don’t suppose many victims come in dancing. And people will be there to see, so Lukos says. It seems they bet on the new bull-dancers, which will last longest. I never heard of a sacrifice being treated so lightly. The better for us; even their own gods can’t think much of them.”

We were making for an island, to lie up for the night, a lovely spot, with high mountains inland, whose slopes were clothed with vines and flowering fruit trees. From one tall peak, that had a flattened tip, a thin smoke was rising. I asked Menesthes if he knew where we were. He said, “It is Kalliste, the fairest of the Cyclades. That mountain is sacred to Hephaistos. You can see the smoke of his smithy, coming out of the top.”

The land came near, and my skin prickled. It seemed I saw a doomed and holy brightness, like the beauty of the King Horse groomed for the god. I said, “Is he angry?” “I don’t think so,” Menesthes said. “It always smokes; the pilots steer by it. It’s the last port before Crete. From here it is open water.”

“Then,” I said, “we must polish our dance, while the light still holds.”

In the sunset glow, and in the twilight with lamps appearing, we danced at our mooring on the water-front; and the people of the port stood gaping, knowing where we were bound. Being young and in health, we started to laugh at it; the boys threw cartwheels and somersaults; and suddenly silent Helike, still in silence, bent herself back into a hoop, and stood up on her hands.

“Why,” I said laughing, “whoever taught you that? It’s as good as a tumbler!”

“Why not?” she said coolly. “That is my trade.” She dropped her skirt, making nothing of it; underneath was a little gold-sewn breech. All her bones were like gristle; she could run on her hands as easily as her feet. The black soldiers, who had been telling long tales in a circle, sprang up pointing, and crying “Haul” She took no notice of them; but except when dancing she was very modest. Girl tumblers have to be chaste; they are no use when they are carrying.

When she stopped, I asked whyever she had not told us. She looked down a moment, then met my eyes. “I thought everyone would hate me, for having the best chance to live. But we are all friends now. Shall I dance for the Cretans?”

“By the Mother, yes!” I said. “You shall do a turn to finish the show.” She said, “But I shall need a man to catch me.” “Here are seven; take your choice.” She hesitated, and said at last, “I was watching the dance. You are the only one with the knack, Theseus, and that would not be fitting.”

“Tell that to the bulls,” I said. “It will be news to them. Come, show me what to do.”

It was not hard work; she was light as a child, and one only needed to be steady. At the end she said, “If you were a common man, you could make this your living.” I said smiling, “We shall all have to live by it, when we get to Crete.”

When I had spoken, I looked and saw the eyes of all the others fixed on me in despair. I thought, as one does sooner or later when one has charge of people, “What is the good of it? Why do anything?”

“Believe in yourselves!” I said to them. “If I can learn it, so can you. Only believe, and we may all keep together. Lukos said something about dancers being dedicated in the names of princes and nobles, as an offering to the god. Perhaps one might take us all. Let them all see, when we come in harbor, that we’re the best team that ever came to Crete. We are the best team. We are the Cranes.”

For a moment they stood silent, their eyes like leeches, draining my blood. Then Amyntor waved his hand and cheered, and everyone joined in. At that moment I loved Amyntor. He was haughty, wild, and rash; but he was in love with his honor. You could break every bone in him before he would break his oath.

Next morning, with our breakfast porridge, we finished the food we had brought from home. It was our last link with Athens broken. We had nothing now but one another.