The King Must Die: A Novel

7

IN THE CORNER OF the temple, behind the image, was a curtained doorway and a little room. It was where she went to eat, when the rites were long; to be dressed, and painted. It was simple like a child’s, only that the litter was sacred emblems and vessels, instead of toys. There was a bath in the corner, painted blue inside with swimming fish. Also a bed, for her to rest on if she was tired.

To this room I carried her. It was where she put off her gold-weighted diadem, and her heavy robes; where her women loosed her jewelled girdle, which no man had undone before. She was shy, and I only saw the place a moment before she blew out the lamp.

Later the moon came up, plunging down a steep court to spill light upon the floor. I lifted myself on my arm to look at her; my hair fell down on hers, and she twisted them both into one rope.

“Gold and bronze,” she said. “My mother was fair, but I am all Cretan. She was ashamed of me.”

I said, “Bronze is more precious. From bronze come honor and life. Make my enemy a golden spear, and a sword blade too.” I did not like to speak of her mother, after all I had heard; so I kissed her instead. She hung all her weight upon my neck, and pulled me down to her. She was like a young salamander meeting flame; afraid at first, and only when flung in knowing its own element. There is an old saying that the house of Minos has sun-fire in the blood.

We slept, and woke, and slept. She would say, “Am I awake? Once I dreamed you were here, and could not bear to waken.” I proved to her she was awake, and she slept again. We should have been there till morning; but in the hour before dawn the old woman came into the temple, and prayed aloud in her high cracked voice, and struck the cymbals, before she pattered away.

It was about this time that I learned to sleep by daylight. Even the shouts of the echoing Bull Court could not wake me.

The second night, the thread was stretched a new way for me. There was a trap in an old disused lamp room, very much nearer. It was the old woman who had led me so roundabout, to keep me from learning the way. She was a kinsman, on the distaff side, to Pasiphae the dead Queen. The new way got me there much quicker; and it still passed the ancient armory.

This night there was wine set by the bed, and two gold cups to drink it from. “They look,” I said, “like libation cups.” She answered, “So they are,” making nothing of it. My mother had taught me respect for sacred things. But my mother was only a priestess.

The lamp burned on unquenched tonight. As for me, my eyes had been blind to all women else, and that day’s dusk had seemed unending.

Deep in the night, she said to me, “I do not live, unless you are here. A doll walks and talks and wears my clothes, while I lie here waiting.”

“Little Goddess, tomorrow night I cannot come.” It came hard to me, but I was still a Crane, bound by our oath. “Next day is the bull-dance. Love and the bulls don’t go together. But we shall see each other, when I come into the ring.”

She clung to me, crying, “I cannot bear it. It is a sword stuck in my heart, every time you leap. Now it will be worse a thousand times. I will have you taken from the Bull Court. They can think what they choose. I am Goddess-on-Earth.”

She was all girl, saying this. It made me smile. I saw, now, that it had never crossed her mind to make herself like the gods. It was an old title, showing her rank and office. All the sacred rites here had become like play, or mere court trappings. She did not know why I smiled, and her eyes reproached me.

“Bird of my heart,” I said, “you cannot take me from the Bull Court. I offered myself to the god, to answer for my people. While they dance, I dance with them.”

“But that is a …” She checked herself and said, “only a mainland custom. Here in Crete no king has been sacrificed for two hundred years. We hang our dolls on the trees instead, and the Mother has not been angry.”

I made over her the sign against evil. Her dark eyes, with little lamp-flames in them, followed the movement of my hand as a child’s eyes do.

“You offered yourself,” she said, “and the Mother gave you to me.

“We are all her children. But Poseidon gave me to my people. Himself he spoke to me; and I cannot leave them.”

She reached out for the Corinthian’s bull-charm, which I wore even when I wore nothing else, and tossed it back over my shoulder. “Your people! Six boys and seven girls! You who are worthy to rule a kingdom.”

“Not unless I am worthy to rule them. Few or many, it’s all one, once one has put oneself in the god’s hand.”

She drew back to look in my face; but she kept a hank of my hair clutched in her fist, as if I might run away. “I am in a god’s hand too,” she said. “Peleia of the Doves has caught me. This is her madness, this love like a barbed arrow that cannot be pulled out. When you try, you drive it deeper. My mother called me a little Cretan; I hated Hellenes and their blue eyes; but Peleia is stronger than I. I know what she is doing well enough. She sent you here to be Minos.”

I stared at her, feeling my mouth part with horror. Yet her eyes were innocent, it seemed, of everything but wonder at mine. At last I said, “But, Lady, it is your father who is King.”

She looked quenched, like a child who does not know what it did wrong. “He is very sick,” she said, “and he has no heir.”

Now I understood her. But it was a great matter; my mind moved to it slowly.

“What is it?” she said. “Why did you look at me as if I were evil?”

She lay on her side; her waist had little folds full of soft shadow. I stroked them with my hand. “I am sorry, little Goddess. I am a stranger here. At Eleusis, when I went to the wrestling, it was the Queen who led me.”

She looked at my hair still in her hand, then up at me, and said not angrily but as if in wonder, “You are a barbarian. My nurse said that they ate bad children. I love you more than I can bear.”

We talked then without speech. But a man is not a woman, and cannot long be kept from thinking. Presently I said, “Your father may have no son; he should know best. But he has an heir.”

Her face sharpened in the lamplight. “I hate him,” she said.

I remembered her in the temple, looking at him over the broken tablet.

She said, “I have always hated him. When I was little, my mother would leave me when he came. They had their secrets. She laughed at me, and called me her little Cretan; but never at him, though he was twice as dark. When she died, and they buried her, I scratched my face and breast until they bled; but I had to throw my hair all over my eyes, to hide that I could not weep.”

“Did you know then?”

“I knew without knowing, as children do. My father is a silent man; he rarely spoke to me. But I knew they mocked him when they whispered in corners. It made me love him.” She dug her fingers into the bed. “I know who has killed him. I know; I know.”

“But,” I said, “you told me he was sick.”

“He is dead,” she said. “Dead alive. For a year and more his face has not been seen; now he never leaves his room. When he goes, it will be on the death-car.” She paused and said, “Swear to keep this secret. You must bind yourself; I could never, never curse you.”

I bound myself with the oath. Then she said, “He is a leper.”

I felt, as one always does, the word like a cold finger on my flesh. “That is a heavy thing. But it comes from the gods.”

“No. It comes from another leper, or from something of his. All the doctors say so. When they found it on my father, they stripped and searched everyone about him; but all were clean. I thought myself it was magic, or a curse. But then he remembered how more than a year before, he had lost an arm-ring, one he wore every day. It was gone nearly a month; then it was found, in a place that had been searched before. So he put it on again. It was under the ring that the marks began.”

This seemed to me too fanciful. “If there were a traitor among his household,” I said, “why not poison, which is quick? Lepers live long, if they have a roof and people feed them.” To myself I was wondering why Minos had not gone back to the god, on the first day. “Asterion might have years to wait; he would find something surer.”

She said, “He has found the surest thing. If my father had died outright, and he had been proclaimed Minos, there would have been war. The Kindred would not have suffered it. Now little by little he has been getting power in his hands; buying some men, putting others in fear. At first, when my father sent out orders, they were obeyed. Now they do not reach the men he sends them to, and the Captain of the Guard has bought a new estate. No one knows now who belongs to Asterion. No one dares ask.” And then she said, “He rules like a king already.”

Then indeed I understood, not only this but all the rest.

“But,” I said, “then Crete is being ruled by a man who does not belong to any god; who was never dedicated. He has all power; yet he has not consented to make the sacrifice. Has he consented?”

There was a shadow on her cheek, as if she would smile; but her face grew grave, and she shook her head.

“Then,” I said, “the god will never speak to him. How can he lead the people? Who will see their danger coming? What will happen, if the god is angry, and there is no one to offer himself? He takes service, tribute, honor; and he gives nothing! Nothing! I knew that he was monstrous! He will be death to your people, if they let him live. Why do the chiefs obey him? Why do they bear it?”

She was silent awhile; then she reached over my shoulder, and pulled the crystal bull to hang upon my breast. “You said to me, ‘Make my enemy a golden sword blade.’ That is what we have done here; made our swords of gold. I did not see, till I knew you.”

Her words surprised me. She said, “You think I am a child, because I was never with a man before. But some things I know. I knew you brought some fate or other, down at Amnisos, when you married the sea.”

“It was you, then, peeping through the curtain!” Then there was some young lovers’ talk. But I said later, “What did you mean, when you said I married the sea?”

She looked at me with deep bright eyes that were not childish. “Why do you think he threw the ring?”

“To drown me, of course. He could not put me to death.”

“So you did it without knowing; that makes it sure.” When I asked her what she meant, she said, “When a new Minos is proclaimed, he always marries the Sea Lady. He throws her a ring.” I remembered the native Cretans, staring and muttering. He had given them an omen to remember, that would seem to come by chance as true omens do. He had used me; a dog would have done as well. He had made light of me even in this.

“So,” she said, “it made a fool of him when you brought it up again. But then you threw it in the sea, and married her yourself! How I laughed, inside my curtain! And then I thought, ‘Perhaps it is a true omen.’ I could tell the Cretans thought so. He could tell it too, so he patched it up the cleverest way, by making himself your patron. He must always own the best of everything. He saw you would make a bull-leaper, and he thought it would keep the last laugh for him.”

I thought awhile. Presently I said, “How does he get on with the native Cretans? According to their old customs, the Queen’s blood should be good enough for them; they don’t set much store by the father.” I was afraid this might seem too blunt; but it was not what troubled her.

“Yes,” she said. “He knows. Until lately he was very scornful of them; they were nothing to him, except for work. It was me they came to. That is my office, to hear suits and prayers; Cretans would always rather pray to a woman. And I tried to help them. I know how it feels to be made light of. I used to bring their prayers to my father; that was how I first came to talk with him. He used to say, ‘You are only a goddess, little Ariadne. To be an envoy is a serious matter.’ But often he did as I asked.”

I wiped her lashes with my finger, saying, “And now?”

“Asterion courts them. Once if they were wronged he would not lift a hand. Now he will back them even in an unjust cause, unless it is against one of his creatures. Even among the Palace people he is gathering men with Cretan kindred, men like Lukos. You see why my father must die slowly?”

“That is bad,” I said. “Has he won many?”

“Cretans have long memories. Those he has insulted don’t forgive him. But if any have been injured by a Hellene, they turn to him.”

We talked longer, but I remember no more of it. My head was spinning with sleep, and thinking, and the warm scents of her hair and breast.

At the next bull-dance, when I looked up to the shrine, it seemed to me that the world must know, and I guessed she felt the same. But no one noticed anything. I brought off a new trick, jumping off Herakles with a standing back-somersault, and landing on my feet. I had been practicing it all morning on the wooden bull, to show her what I could do.

Afterwards I told the Cranes all I could in honor; I had not wanted to disturb them before the dance. I said I had heard that the King was sick, that Asterion was plotting to set the Cretans against the Hellenes and seize the throne. “It means we have not long. If the Cretans back him, he can hold the coasts against a Hellene fleet as long as he keeps their love. And that will be till he is safe on the throne; a year, or two, or three; longer than we shall last here. We shall have to strike quickly.”

Iros said, “We are doing what we can, Theseus; but we haven’t got many weapons yet.” He looked reproachful. He and Hippon had stolen more arms than anyone else; their chances were better. I said, “I know of a weapon-store; with luck there will soon be arms for everyone.” I meant to bring them a few at a time and hide them where we could get them quickly. But I did not want too many questions.

That night in the little robing room, we flew together as the spark to the tinder. Two days and a night apart had been like a month. The night before, indeed, I had almost gone to her, bull-dance or no; only that when I sat up I saw Amyntor sleeping, and remembered my people.

Already in three nights our love had its memories and its past. We had our secret words to laugh or kiss at. Yet even while we laughed and played, or sank as deep in love as a diving dolphin, I felt a kind of awe; whether of the place, or because the love of kings and queens, even in secret, is a rite done for the people before the gods.

After I left her, I took the lamp from its bracket on the sacred column, and went to the store of arms. As I had foreseen, it was all old stuff; what was new and good was in the armory above. One could see the steps and guess where they led; but it would be well guarded. I trod softly, and greased the hinges of the chests with lamp oil. They were full of arrows; but the bows looked time-warped, and the strings had perished. It was the spears and javelins that drew me. They were an old pattern, a little heavy, but quite sound. Only they were too long to conceal about one, even under a cloak.

Nonetheless I set myself to move them, night by night, to the vault under the lamp room, where they could be quickly got. There was a pile of old oil jars by the pillar, mostly empty; the cobwebs showed they were never stirred, and there was room behind them. A few nights later I found a box of spearheads, and a whetstone. This was best of all. I began to grind them down for daggers, and to bring them into the Bull Court, a few at a time, for the girls to hide.

I had sworn the Cranes to silence, even with lovers and mistresses; so I felt bound to it myself. Besides, she was not a girl to give half your mind to. She had that vein of wildness which stirs a man because it lies deep, like Hephaistos’ fire which only the earthquake loosens from the mountain. Afterwards she would look at me with still eyes of wonder; then sink into a milky calm like a full-fed baby’s, and fall asleep.

Sometimes, when she talked of her father and the kingdom’s troubles, I thought of speaking, and asking her help. Her heart I trusted. For her head, she was young, barely sixteen; she had told her secrets quickly; and most of all I feared her hatred of Asterion. He was no such green lad as I had been in Eleusis. If a woman’s face said to him, “Something is coming to you, though you do not know it,” he was not one to miss the message.

About this time, he bade me to another of his feasts; and I saw she had told me true.

I did not see one guest who looked even half Hellene. They were all Cretans, or near-Cretans; the small gentry, whose houses had been great in the days before the Hellenes came. And his manner to me had worsened. Not that he openly insulted me as such a man thinks of insult. That would have won him no praise, for every Cretan loves a bull-leaper. But he made it very clear that I was only there to entertain his honored friends; and I could feel, at the back of it, that he wanted to take a Hellene down before them. Presently he asked me to sing a song of my homeland. He spoke smoothly; but he spoke too as the conquerer does to the captive.

I bit on it awhile in silence. Then I thought, “Good. If I submit to this, no man alive could say I am his guest.”

I asked for a lyre, and tuned it to the Hellene mode. Asterion sat back smiling. But I saw sly Lukos looking under his eyelids. He had travelled. He knew what the skills of a gentleman are among our people.

It does not become a captive to sing the triumphs of his forebears. Nor did I want to warn anyone my thoughts were upon war. Yet I wanted to make these Cretans remember me, and not as quite the fool Asterion hoped. So I sang one of those old laments I had learned at home in Troizen. It is the one they sing all over the Isle of Pelops; often when the bards tell of a sacked city they will work it in, but sometimes they sing it alone. It is about the King’s heir, the Shepherd of the People, kissing his wife farewell at the gatehouse, as he leaves for battle foreknowing his death.

“Let me go,” he says, “and do not try to keep me. If I hung back, I should be ashamed before the warriors, and the gold-belted ladies with their flowing skirts. Nor would my heart consent, for I was reared to valor, to fight in the vanguard for my father’s honor and mine. In my deep heart I know the sacred citadel must fall, the King and his people perish; yet that is not what I grieve for most of all; no, not for my father, nor my mother, nor for my bold brothers tumbled in the dust. I grieve for you, when they carry you off in tears to the hollow ships, and end your days of freedom. Far away, in the house of some foreign woman, I see you working the loom, or driven with heavy water jars up the steep path from the spring. And someone who sees you weeping will tell another whose wife you were, bringing your sorrow freshly home, that your man is gone who would have kept you free. May I lie dead, and the earth heaped over me, before I see you led away, and hear you cry.”

In the Labyrinth, they have servants to make their music for them. He had not expected a king’s son to have been properly taught. When I saw the Cretans wipe their noses, I knew that now they would not mock me. At the end, they came crowding all about; by which I knew those who were not his lackeys yet, a good many it seemed. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. But there was nothing he could say; I had only done as he asked me.

That night I said to Ariadne, “I have been at the Little Palace. You were right. If he is to be stopped, it must be quickly.”

“I know,” she said. “I have thought of killing him myself, if I knew how.”

She felt as soft in my hands as a nestling dove. Though he was her brother of the same belly, her words were too wild to shock me. She had been alone, with no one to turn to. I said, “Hush, and listen. If I could get word to my people at home, and they sent me ships, what then? You understand it would mean war. Whom would the Cretans fight for?”

She turned over in the darkness, and lay thinking, her chin propped in her hands.

“They would fight for themselves. They would rise against the Hellene houses, when the chiefs went to the war. There would be terrible things done, blood everywhere. But that is what Asterion will do himself; that’s what he wants with the Cretans. When he has used them, he will take care that uprising is their last. Yes, they will have died to buy themselves a heavier chain.” She folded her arms and laid her head upon them. Presently she said, “But if …”

“Yes?” I said, stroking her hair. But she shook her head, and said, “I must think. Look where Orion is; how quick night passes.” So we began our good-bys, which took a long while, and no more was said about it.

I had now moved arms enough for every dancer in the Bull Court, men and girls, and had told Amyntor where they were, so that someone should have the knowledge if I died. The girls had about thirty daggers hidden in their sleeping place. Winter was come, and sometimes the bull-dance was not held because of the rain or snow; it was a long while since the people of the Labyrinth had put themselves out to honor a god. But if we missed a dance, we practiced on Daidalos’ Bull, or sometimes held our own Games, boys against girls, or drawing for sides; or we danced, if we were feeling stale; anything to keep us limber. I had seen other teams get slack, and what always came of it.

This was our third season in the Bull Court. We had learned by now every chance that can happen to bull-dancers, whom the Cretans call Poseidon’s little calves. We knew what they live by, and how they die; what kills a dancer in the first week, and what kills him after half a year. And one day Amyntor touched my arm, while the girls were wrestling (the priestess would not let them wrestle with boys), and said to me softly, “Chryse is growing.”

Our eyes met. There was no need to say more. She had been fourteen when she sailed from Athens; and she was all Hellene, head to heel. If she lived, she would be like the Maiden Goddess, upright and tall. But tall girls did not live long in the bull ring.

I said to Amyntor, “After the winter, and before the great spring winds, that is when the ships will come.” I measured him against me, when he was not looking. He had grown three fingers himself.

Amyntor had grown dear to me. We had worked together till we thought like one; he knew how I would leap before I knew myself. It was rumored in the Palace that we were lovers. We no longer put ourselves out to deny this. It saved us from the nonsense of the Knossos courtiers, with their flowers and seals and mincing verses and lurkings in the night, and gave us something to laugh at. Lately it had served me well; we could talk secrets unregarded, and, now my wanderings among the women were over, it saved me from too much guessing.

But the night before the bull-dance, I always lay alone; two nights even, if I felt my eye out at practice. It came hard, for I was young, and had not so much as kissed another woman since I came to her. But my people and I were far from home. To keep me a king I had neither laws nor warriors, only what I could find within me. It was a little kingdom; the finest crack could shiver it.

If I told her I could not come, she never reproached me, or not in words. But from her hands I knew her mind. She wanted to hear me say, “Let tomorrow go, let the bull have me and my people die; it is all well lost for one night in your arms.” Then she would have answered, “No! Do not come; I swear you will not find me.” She only wanted to hear me say it. But I was young, and took my calling gravely, as a holy trust, which it would be impious to play with, or toss to a girl like a string of beads. In those years, I had always one ear listening for the god.

Nowadays it would cost me nothing to please a woman so. He speaks no more to me, since my son died on the rocks beside the sea. I had felt the warning in the ground; “Beware the wrath of Poseidon,” I said to him, and he could take it as he chose; I too was angry. He chose to take it for a curse, and I would not speak again. I watched him off, the tall lad and his big Troizenian horses, riding to the narrow way. I kept my silence. Now the god keeps his.

But I remember, though it is long ago, how the night after the bull-dance our meeting was like unmixed wine, all fire and spiced honey, making it worth while to have stayed away. I remember how she wept over some silly graze, my first since we were lovers. After a while I said, “Have you thought of any plan?”

“Yes,” she said. “Tomorrow night I will tell you.” I asked, “Why not now?” But she said it would take too long, there was no time tonight, and bit me softly, like a kitten. Often I had the marks of her teeth next day. But a bruise is nothing, in the Bull Court.

The next night I was going to her through the vaults, when in the shadows of the temple store I saw something move. I reached to my belt for my homemade dagger; then the figure stepped into the light, and it was she. We embraced between the gilded death-car and the stack of dolls. She was wrapped in the dark cloak she had worn before. “Come with me,” she said. “There is someone you must speak with.”

She gave me from a shelf a round clay lantern, such as one can darken by covering the hole. When I opened my mouth to question her she laid her hand on it, saying, “Don’t make a sound. We must pass right under the Palace.” After she had led me past the archive room, she turned aside. There was another thread tied to a different pillar. She whispered softly, “It is a hard way to find. Once I was almost lost myself.” She took the thread in one hand, and my wrist in the other. The lamp was dim, and the place pitch-dark around.

The way went winding, through the Labyrinth’s very bowels. We passed old uncouth masonry that looked like the work of Titans or the first earth men. For this was the core of the foundations, belonging to the earliest House of the Ax, the stronghold of Cretan Minos, two palaces ago. These mighty piers, made strong with the blood of a thousand victims, had withstood the rage of Poseidon when every wall had fallen that stood above the ground.

Sometimes she would squeeze my hand, warning me to shade the lamp; there would be a fine crack in the stone above, with light glinting through, and voices arguing or making love. Little by little our way slanted lower, which made me think we were going westward, with the slope of the hill.

Here were no stores, but now and then the rubbish of the ancient earthquakes, broken pots shaped without the wheel, or old crude tools. And once, where the earth had settled, there was a man’s white skull sticking out of the ground from the eye-sockets upward, before one of the great pillars. He still wore shreds of an old hide helmet. He was the Watcher of the Threshold, the strong warrior they bury living under a sacred place, for his ghost to fight off demons from it. I started, and then saluted him as became his honor. Ariadne had passed that way before, and only drew her skirt aside.

At last we came to a few steps and a narrow door. She signed to me to take my sandals off, and not to speak. She took the lantern from me, and quenched it, and set it down.

The door opened softly. Two plates of my necklace chinked together; she stilled them with her hand and made me hold them. Then she led me through some small dark room, where my feet felt polished tiles. Beyond was another door; then air and space, and what seemed light after the blackness. It was starlight coming from three flights above, through the roof-hole over a great stairway.

Beyond the stair-foot was a hall, and going down from it a sunken shrine. There was a solemn, old, sacred smell. On the wall that faced the shrine were paintings it was too dark to see, and midway of the wall a tall white throne.

Through all this she led me, and out beyond. Then there was a door, under which a dim lamplight showed. She whispered, “Wait,” and opened it; within was an embroidered curtain, which fell to behind her. I heard whispers, and a sound of metal. Then a voice spoke, which was not hers. It was the voice of a man, but strangely altered; muffled, and dimly booming. It made me shiver. Yet it was gentle and weary, even sad. It said, “You may come in.”

I put aside the curtain, and smelled sweet gums burning. The air was blue with the smoke. I peered through it and stopped dead, with my heart knocking my ribs.

The room was small and plain, with dying embers on the hearthstone. There were shelves for cups and plates and toilet vessels, a shelf of scrolls, and a table with writing things, on which burned a lamp of greenstone. In a chair beside it, hands laid on knees, sat a man with a golden bull-head, and crystal eyes.

The weary voice, hollow within the mask, said, “Come, son of Aigeus, and stand where I can see.”

I came forward, and touched my fist to my brow.

He drew a long sigh, which rustled in the mask like wind in reeds. “Do not be affronted, Shepherd of Athens, that I cover my face from your father’s son. It is a long while now since I sent away my mirror. This face which Daidalos made for the Cretan Minos is better for a guest to see.” He lifted the lamp from the table, and held it up, moving his head because the mask blinkered his eyes. Then he said, “Go out, my child, and watch the stairway.”

She went softly out, and I waited. It was so still that I could hear the sputter of the incense in its porphyry dish. Behind its precious scent hung the heavy smell of sickness. His right hand, bare on his knee, was long and fine; the left was covered with a glove. Presently he said, “I had heard King Aigeus was childless. Tell me something of your mother.”

I told him about my birth, and, when he asked, about my rearing. He listened quietly. When I mentioned some sacred rite, he reached for his tablets, and made me tell it all, and wrote quickly, and nodded. Then he said, “But you changed the custom at Eleusis. How was that?”

“It came by chance,” I said, “from putting my hand to what I found.” And I told him how it was. Once I stopped, hearing him choke within the mask and thinking his breath had failed him. But he motioned me to go on; and I perceived he had been laughing.

When I had told him how I got to Athens, he said, “They say, Theseus, that you wrote your own name on the lot to come here. Is this true? Or is Lukos trying to excuse himself? I should like to know.”

“Oh, it is true,” I said. “He is a man who loves order. I was sent by the god. He gave me his sign, to sacrifice for the people.”

He leaned forward in his chair, and lifted the lamp again. “Yes, so she told me. Then it is true.” He pulled a fresh tablet toward him, and took up a new sharp pen, moving briskly, like a man who is pleased.

“Come,” he said, “tell me of this. The god spoke to you, you say. You have heard the voice that calls the king. How does it speak? In words? In a sound of music, or the wind? How does it call?”

I thought, “He is right, seeing my birth is unattested, to prove if I have the Hearing.” But I had scarcely spoken of it even to my father, and the words came hard.

He said, “I shall be beholden to you. My time hangs heavy here. I am making a book upon the ancient customs, and this is a matter where the archives give no help.”

I stared at him. Amazement rooted my tongue. I thought I must have heard wrong, yet knew not how to ask. For courtesy’s sake I began to stammer something; but the words died, and we were silent, looking at one another.

He was the first to speak. He leaned his head on his hand, and said in his sad muffled voice, “Boy, how old are you?”

I said, “If I live till spring, my lord, I shall be nineteen.”

“And after dark, when the bats fly over, you hear their cry?”

“Why, yes,” I said. “Often the night is full of it.”

“They cry to the young. And when the old man passes, they are not silent; it is his ear that has hardened. So also with kings’ houses; and it is time then to think of our going. When the god calls you, Theseus, what is in your heart?”

I paused, remembering. In spite of what I knew, I thought he would understand. Which is strange, for it had not always been so with my father. Finding what words I could, I opened my heart in this small close room to Star-Born Minos, Lord of the Isles.

When I had said my say, his heavy mask sank forward on his breast; and I paused, ashamed to have tired him. But he raised his crystal eyes again, and slowly nodded. “So,” he said, “you made the offering. And yet, it is your father who is King.”

His words went sounding through me, deeper even than my grandfather’s long ago; deeper than my own thought could follow. “No matter,” I said. “A good Shepherd will give his life for the sheep.”

He sat in thought awhile; then he sat up and pushed the tablets from him. “Yes, yes; the child was right. I own, I doubted her. There is a daimon of perversity that haunts our house. But she chose soundly. Out of death, birth. You are what must come; I question it no longer.” He made a sign with his hand in the air between us. Though his forebears had been long from the Achaian lands, I saw he was still priest as well as King.

He shifted in his chair, and made as if he would clear a space on the table; then he shook his head. “This sickness clings to what one touches. Or I would ask you to sit down, and offer you the cup of kinship, as a man should who gives his daughter’s hand.”

I almost knelt to him. Only I saw it was not reverence he wanted, but an arm to trust in. “Sir,” I said, “with my heart I pledge you. I will not rest till I have made her a queen.”

He nodded, and I felt he smiled. “Well, Theseus, so much for the courtesies. They are due to your blood and honor. But my daughter will have told you, they are all I have to give.”

I said something or other, and he scratched among his papers, shaking his head, and sometimes muttering, as sick men do who are much alone; whether to himself or me I could not tell. “When he was a child, he followed me like a shadow, the black bull-calf branded with our shame; he never let me forget him. He would have dogged me to the hunt, on shipboard, to the Summer Palace; he wept when I sent him back where he belonged. He would call me Father, and stare when he was silenced. I should have known he would destroy me. Yes, yes, a man might laugh; it has been as pat as an old song. I withheld the sacrifice, and it bred my death. If there were really gods, they could not have done better.”

He paused, and I heard mice rustling behind the bookshelf.

“Only slaves come here now. The higher stand at the door, and make the lowest enter. The man is dead, and overripe for the death-car. But the King must live a little longer, till the work is done. With the child, Theseus, there must be a new beginning.” Then he said softly, “Look if she is out of hearing.”

I stepped to the door, and saw her by starlight, sitting on the coping of the sunken shrine. I came back and said, “Yes.”

He leaned forward in his chair, grasping the arms. His low voice rustled in the bull-mask; I had to lean near to hear. The close smell choked me, but I hid it from him, remembering what he had said about the slaves.

“I have not told her. She has seen already too much of evil. But I know what this beast of our house will do. He will promise these Cretans a Cretan kingdom; that has begun. But in a Cretan kingdom, he can only reign by right of the Mistress. In the ancient days of the Cretan Minos, they married as they do in Egypt.”

My heart paused; there was a stillness within me as I understood. Now indeed I saw why great Minos had received a bull-boy from the mainland, a bastard son of a little kingdom, and offered him the Goddess. And I saw why she had spoken of killing her mother’s son. She had guessed, having seen evil already.

It made up my mind. “Sir,” I said, “I have sent word to my father I am alive, and asked him to send ships for me.”

He straightened in his chair. “What? My daughter said nothing of it.”

“It was too heavy,” I said, “to lay upon a girl.”

He nodded his gold head, and sat in thought. “Have you had an answer? Will they come?”

I drew breath to speak. Then I knew I had been going to speak like a boy. This meeting taught me to know myself.

“I do not know. My father has not ships enough. I told him to try the High King at Mycenae.” His head moved, as if to stare. But I was thinking as I spoke. “I daresay the High King might say to him, ‘Theseus is your son; but he is not mine. He says that Knossos can be taken; but he is a bull-dancer who wants to see his home again. What if we send ships and Minos sinks them? Then we shall all be slaves.’ My father is a prudent man; if the High King says this, he will see sense in it.”

He nodded heavily. “And now it is too late to send again, across the winter sea.”

“Then,” I said, “we must trust in ourselves. If the Hellenes come, so much the better.”

He leaned back in his chair, and said, “What can you do?”

“There are still the bull-dancers. They will all fight, even the bull-shy ones, even the girls; they will fight for the hope of life. I am getting them arms as fast as I can. I can take the Labyrinth with them, if we can get help outside the Bull Court.”

He reached out for some papers beside him. “There are a few men left who can be trusted.” And he read me some names. “Not Dromeus, sir,” I said. “He’s trimming now; I’ve seen him at the Little Palace.” He sighed, and pushed away the papers, saying, “I brought him up from a boy, when his father died.”

“But there is Perimos,” I said. “He has stood out, and he has sons. He will know who else is safe. We need two things: arms, and someone to win us the Cretans.”

We talked of such things awhile. At the end he said, “However weary I grow of life, I will live till you are ready.”

I remembered how I had thought worse of him for not returning to the god, and was ashamed. He said, “Let me know, if you get word from Athens.”

I said I would. Then I pictured my father driving in at the Lion Gate, and up the steep road to the Great House of Mycenae. I saw him at table with the High King. But I could not see him in the upper room firing the King for war, making him impatient to launch his hollow ships. My father had had a bellyful of trouble, and it had made him old before his time. I saw the rough dark seas that tossed round Crete; and I saw them empty.

“Ships or no, sir,” I said, “we shall know our time when it comes. I am in the hand of Poseidon. He sent me here, and he will not fail me. He will send me a sign.”

So I said, to cheer his solitude, because I doubted there would be ships until I went myself to fetch them. But the gods never sleep. Truly and indeed, Dark-Haired Poseidon heard me.