The King Must Die: A Novel

8

A FEW NIGHTS AFTER, Ariadne said to me, “Tomorrow is the day when I give my oracles.”

“You should be sleeping,” I said. I drew her in and kissed her eyelids. She was too tender, I thought, to bear without bruising the madness of a god.

She said, “Not many Hellenes come. To those I shall say the usual things. But I shall tell the Cretans that a new Summer King is coming, to marry the Goddess and bless the land. Hyakinthos flowering in a field of blood. They will remember that.”

I was amazed, and asked her, “But how can you tell what the Holy One will say through you, before you have drunk the cup or smelled the smoke?”

“Oh,” she answered, “I don’t take much of it. It makes one giddy; one talks nonsense, and one’s head aches after as if it would split.”

I was shocked in my heart, but I said nothing. If it was true the god spoke to them no longer, it was strange she could tell of it without weeping. But I remembered how Cretans play at such things like children. So I only kissed her again.

“I will make it stick in their minds,” she said. “I shall paint my face white, and draw a line of red under my eyelids. I shall have a cloud of smoke (it is all the same to them what one makes it of) and roll my eyes and toss about. When I have spoken, I shall fall down.”

I was slow to speak. At last I said, “It is a woman’s mystery. But my mother told me once that when she is in the Snake Pit, whatever the question is, something any fool should know without troubling a deity, she always pauses before her answer, and listens, in case the Goddess forbids it.”

“I always pause too,” she said. “I have been properly taught as well as your mother. A pause makes people attend. But you can see, Theseus, Crete is not like the mainland. We have more people, more cities, more business to fit together. We have ninety clerks working in the Palace alone. It would be chaos every month, if no one knew what the oracles were going to be.”

She stroked her fingers back from my temples through my hair; I felt them say, “I love you, my barbarian.”

I said to myself it was no matter; that when we were married, I would be there to stand between the god and the people. Yet I was sorry she had not the Hearing; a king, like a craftsman, wants to breed his skill into his sons.

Soon there was less time to think; from then on we were busy.

In the old archive store under the Labyrinth, I met with Perimos and his two sons. The office of his family was to write down the King’s judgments; only they and their chief clerks ever used the place, these records were so old. If Minos wanted to know the precedent before a judgment, he sent for the Recorder. It is an ancient mystery, inherited father to son from the founder of it, a prince called Rhadamanthos.

After the King was sick, and Asterion heard the causes, he had sent for Perimos, told him a judgment he meant to give, and asked for a precedent to uphold it. When Perimos brought him instead nine clear judgments the other way, he told him shortly to look again. The Recorder said nothing; he shut himself among the records, searching, till the time was up and Asterion had to do his own injustice. But everyone knew he would only bide his time; and Perimos did not want to wait.

He was about fifty, with stiff brows and beard streaked black and gray like wood-ash, and the fierce round eyes of an owl in a hollow tree. I was sorry for him; he would have got on well with my grandfather. It was against his grain to plot in cellars with painted bull-dancers. I had always to leave the Bull Court bedizened as if for a feast or tryst, else people would have wondered. However, I had not forgotten all I had learned in my grandfather’s judgment hall, my father’s, and my own; in time he forgot my bull-boy’s finery. His sons seemed men of honor; the elder rather clerkish, the younger a lieutenant of the household, very Cretan-looking, lovelocked and willow-waisted, but with the nerve of a soldier. He said we could count on about one in three of the King’s Guard, those who respected their oath of service, and those who hated Asterion. It was time, now, I thought, to push things forward in the Bull Court.

I had trusted the Cranes from the beginning. But soon it would have to go beyond them; and I looked for another team leader I could rely on. My choice fell on a girl called Thalestris, a Sauromantian. They have many customs of the Amazons, serving the Moon Maid in arms, and fighting in war beside the men. When first she came she looked very outlandish, dressed in a quilted coat and deerskin trousers, and smelling of goat-milk curd. Her country is at the back of the northeast wind, beyond the Caucasus, and they only undress there once a year. But stripped and cleaned she was a fine girl, a little too mannish for one’s bed, but with all the beauties of a bull-leaper. The courage too; for on her very first day she was eying me with envy.

Liking her spirit, I taught her all I could; and when she was made leader of the Gryphons, she came again for counsel. I warned her of one bull-shy boy who would do them no good; when they had given him to the bull and got someone better, she bound them with a vow like ours, and in more than two months not one had died. So people were used to seeing us in talk. I told her everything, except that I was the Mistress’s lover. Thalestris was a girl for girls; but it is a thing I have found, that no woman likes to hear you hold forth about another.

When she had heard, she threw a back-somersault, for she was a wild thing still. But she was no fool. After she had run on awhile about her mountain home and friends, whom now she might hope to see again, she asked me to get her a bow, for that was her weapon. I said I would try; now we were in with the loyal Guard, good stuff was coming down into the weapon store from the armory above. She begged to tell her Gryphons, saying they had no secrets apart; and as I thought it spoke well for them, I gave her leave. Before long all the teams knew, who had vows of fellowship. As for the others, they would fight when the time came; but for their tongues one had no surety.

So the leaven worked silently in the dough; there was no folly. The secret was with people whose life-threads were closely bound; to fail the team was to meet your bull next time. You could only see it in their eyes if you knew already.

Now we began to bring up arms into the Bull Court. Amyntor and I showed the other boys of our team, and three or four team leaders, the way down through the lamp room; our friends of the Guard had stacked the arms below it. It was cold, so we had cloaks to hide things in, though we had to saw down the shafts of the spears and javelins. Cretan bows are short, and a good weight for women. The girls hid all these things, and many arrows, in nooks and holes under the floor.

Ariadne had given her oracles to the Cretans. She told me, full of pride, how she had talked in broken phrases, neither too clear nor yet too dark; how she had rolled up her eyes and sunk down among her fangless serpents, and waking dazed had asked what she had been saying. Now, she said, she had sent out an old woman she could trust, to whisper among the gossips and recall the ring in the harbor. Before long, it would be time to warn the chiefs and headmen.

Spring comes early to Crete. The painted vases in the Palace rooms held daffodils and sprays of almond flowers; the young men dressed their hair with violets, and the ladies decked their boy-dolls, which they would dandle till midsummer and then hang on the fruit trees, for they play at sacrifice as at everything else. The sun shone warmly, the snow shrank higher up the mountains, and in the lull before the south wind began blowing, the sea was calm and mild.

I went to the feasts of the Palace people, and sometimes there would be a juggler or a dancer or a girl with tame birds, or a bard from oversea. I would go near when I could, and let them hear my name and my Hellene speech. But no message came from Athens.

Days passed, and the almond blossom in the painted vases snowed down upon the painted tiles. A chieftain of the Kindred, who had land near Phaistos, which he would not sell when Asterion asked him, died suddenly of a strange sickness; his heir took fright and sold the land. The native Cretans whispered in corners, and told long tales of the ancient days. In the Bull Court, the dancers had their heads together, as bull-dancers often have, being full any time of gossip and intrigue. But you could hear, if you listened, that they were talking of their homes and kindred, as when the frozen stream melts in spring. Days passed. And one night I heard the sound of a rising gale, whistling over the horned roofs and through the courts of the Labyrinth. It was the south wind blowing, which closes Cretan waters to ships from the north.

I lay on my back with eyes wide open, listening. Presently a dark shape came near. There was always someone prowling about in the Bull Court after the lamps were out. But this was Amyntor. He leaned down to me and said, “It is early this year. Half a month early, the Cretans say. It is moira, Theseus, no one can help it. We can do with what we have.” I said, “Yes, we shall do. Perhaps Helike’s brother never got to Athens.” The Cretans had been looking for the wind a week already. But he had fought under me in the Isthmus and in Attica, and wanted to save my face.

Next day in the Bull Court, Thalestris got me in a corner. “What is it, Theseus? You look downhearted. No one thinks any worse of you because the wind is blowing. It was good warriors’ talk, about the Hellene ships; it kept us in heart while we were getting ready. Now we don’t need it.” She clapped me on the shoulder like a boy, and strolled away. But I felt the shadow upon the Bull Court, as well as she.

I walked slowly to the next meeting in the archive vault. But old Perimos only nodded with a grim smile, as if we had won a bet. He was a man of the law, as they say in Crete; it is the nature of their calling to expect the worst. I had done myself good with him because I had promised nothing. Presently he said, “My son has a plan. Though it is foolhardy, it may do for want of better.” His voice was dour; but I saw in his eye both pride and grief.

The warrior son, whose name was Alektryon, stepped forward, looking among the dusty shelves and withered parchments like a kingfisher in a dead tree. The dim lamplight glittered on his rose-crystal necklace and his arm-guards of inlaid bronze; his kilt was stitched with those shining green beetles they dry in Egypt and use for jewels, and he smelt of hyacinths. He said that if a chief man of Asterion’s faction were to die, they would all attend his funeral, and we could seize the Labyrinth while they were out of it.

“Well thought of,” I said. “Is someone sick?”

He laughed, showing his white teeth. There is a gum called mastic, which Cretan beauties chew to blanch them. “Yes, Phoitios is, though he doesn’t know it.”

This was the chief of Asterion’s private guard; a big fellow with Hellene bones, and a nose broken from boxing. I raised my brows and asked, “How can it be done?”

“Oh, he takes good care of his health. The only way is openly. I shall make him fight me; I expect he will choose spears.”

It was news to me that mortal insults were still known in Crete; but I was thinking that here was a man we could hardly spare. There was nothing I could say, seeing he was five years my elder, except, “When will it be?”

“I can’t say yet; I must find a likely quarrel, or he will guess at something behind. So have your people ready.”

I said I would, and we parted, he and his father going off to the stair they used, and I up to the sanctuary. We never watched each other go. Even their friends among the courtiers did not know of this meeting place; everything hung on keeping the secret of the vaults.

I went up to the robing room, and told my news. Ariadne said she was glad it was not I who was fighting Phoitios; he would be a hard man to kill; then she asked when the fight was to be, for she must see it. I told her I did not know, and we said no more; with all this business, we were always short of time for love. At parting we would tell each other how, when we were married, we would lie till the sun stood high over the mountain. Next night was the fast before the bull-dance.

But next night, after supper, I heard laughter at the doors of the Bull Court, and the chink of gold. It was not cheap, to buy your way in there after dark. In came Alektryon, swift and glittering, his kilt stitched with plaques of pearl and his hair stuck with jasmine. He had a necklace of striped sardonyx, and a rolled kid belt covered with leaf gold. He strode among the dancers, flirting with this youth or that, talking of the odds and the newest bull, like any young blood who follows the ring. But I saw his seeking eye, and went toward him.

“Theseus!” he said, making eyes at me and tossing back his hair. “I vow you are of all men the most fickle. You have forgotten my feast and eaten in the Bull Court! You have crystal for a heart. Well, I will forgive you still, if you come now for the music. But hurry; the wine is poured out already.”

I begged his pardon and said I would come. “The wine is poured” was a signal agreed on between us, for something that could not wait.

We went but into the Great Court, which, since it was still early, was full of lamplight, and of people with torches passing to and fro. He caught my eye, then leaned upon a column in a Cretan pose. As someone passed he said, “How can you be so cruel?” and fingered my necklace and drew me near. Then he said softly, “Minos has sent for you. The way is marked as before. You must go alone.”

He spoke as if he had learned it off. But I had never had word from the King, except through the Goddess. I stared, trying to read him. His Cretan looks, his finery, his foppish ways, all made him doubtful to me, once I began to doubt. I knew nothing of his standing among the warriors. My eyes met his. He took me by the arm, a grip tender to look at but strong and hard. “I have a token for you. Watch out, and take it like a love gift.” He opened his hand saying, “I was to tell you it has been cleansed with fire,” and then, as someone came past us, “Wear it, my dear, and think of me.”

The ring in his palm was of a pale gold, very old and heavy. The carving was in an antique style, pointed and stiff, but the worn device could still be read: a bull above the shoulders, a man below.

He slipped it on my hand. Under his warning eye I smiled, turning it this way and that. I had seen it once before. So I leaned on his shoulder, as I had seen youths do in Crete, and whispered, “It is enough. What does he want?” He put his arm around my waist and said, “He did not tell. It is something heavy.” Then he looked past my shoulder and murmured swiftly, “One of Asterion’s people. We mustn’t look too well in together. Quick, give me the slip.” I shrugged him coyly off me, and went away. Though I felt a fool, I had no more doubts of him.

Down in the vaults, I found the second thread tied ready, and a clay dark-lantern. I had never been this way alone. It is natural, when with a girl, to expect boldness of oneself; but now I found these ancient warrens eerie and awesome, haunted, it seemed, by the dead who had been crushed there when Earth-Shaker was angry. The bats that came winnowing round the light were like souls kept from the River. When at length I came to the Watchman, looking at me under his moldering helmet with the caves of eyes, it was like meeting a comrade; one knew what he was, and that he belonged to a god. I made the sign of propitiation, and it seemed he said to me, “Pass, friend.”

When I reached the door above; I doused the lantern and stood silent, listening. No one was on the stairway. I shut the door behind me, and saw (for there was a moon this time) how it closed flush with the wall and the painting hid it. There was a little hole to hook one’s finger in, and work the catch. White moonlight fell on the stairs beyond, but the tall throne was in shadow. I trod softly through, and saw faint light under a door. Going up to it I smelled the incense. So I scratched the panel, and his voice bade me enter.

He sat in his high-backed chair, masked as before, his hands laid on his knees. Yet it was not the same. The room was clear of litter. The incense burned before a stand on which stood some symbol or image. And there was some new thing about him; a stillness, and a power.

I touched my breast in greeting and said softly, “Sir, I am here.”

He beckoned me to stand in front of him, where he could see me through the mask. I waited. The air was close and fetid, the smoke stung my eyes. They were heavy for sleep; I remembered that tomorrow was the bull-dance.

“Theseus,” he said. His muffled voice sounded clearer than before, and deeper. “The time is come. Are you ready?”

I was troubled, wondering what had miscarried in our plans. “We are, sir, if need be. But the day of the burial would be better.”

He said, “The day is proper, and the rite. But the beast of sacrifice is not enough. Something is needed of us, Shepherd of Athens; me to suffer it, and you to do it.” He pointed with his bare right hand to the stand behind the smoke. Then I saw the holy thing that stood there. It was a two-headed ax, fixed upright on its shaft in the polished stone.

I stood still. I had not thought of so solemn a thing as this.

“The gods can send a sign,” he said, “when our ear hears them no longer. They sent a child to lead me.”

For a moment I wondered whom he meant. But though Alektryon was three and twenty, he would have known him from his birth.

The curved crystals of the mask were turned toward me. I looked at the ax wreathed in blue smoke. What he asked was seemly, and good every way. Yet my hand hung down. This was not Eleusis, where I had fought a strong man for my life. I felt myself shiver in the close air. I had thought, “He is old enough to be my father.”

“These two years now,” he said, “every breath I have drawn has fed my enemy. I have only lived to keep my daughter from him. Not one of the Kindred dared to offer for her; not one dared stand between him and the Gryphon Throne. Now I have found a man, why give him one day longer? Take care of her. She has her mother’s blood; but her heart will rule it.”

He stood up. He was taller than I by half a head.

“Come,” he said. I heard a soft laugh within the mask; it made me start like the bats in the vault below. “He has had a good run, our long-horned Minotaur. But he cannot be Minos till the priests have seen my body. And they know who owns the Guard. I wish I might watch his face, when the blood-guilt comes homing back to him. Come, Theseus; nothing is left to stay for. You have the ring already. Labrys is waiting; take her from her bed.”

I went to the polished stand. The ax was shaped like the one they use in the bull ring. Its haft was bronze worked with serpents; but when I looked at the head, I saw it was of stone, the edges of the blades hand-flaked and ground, the neck drilled for the shaft. Then I raised my fist in homage, knowing that this was Mother Labrys herself, the guardian of the house since the beginning.

He said, “It is two hundred years since she took a king, but she will remember. She is so old at her trade, she could almost do it alone.”

I lifted her from her bed. Dark shadows beat about me, like stooping ravens. I answered, “If the god says so. We are only watchdogs, to hold or let go when they call our names. But it is against my heart.”

“You are young,” he said. “Never let it trouble you. You are breaking my prison.”

I felt the ax in my hand, and it balanced well. “Speak for me,” I said, “beyond the River, when the Avengers ask whose hand you fell by. If I live I will see your tomb well found with all a king should have; you shall not go hungry or scanted in the paths of darkness under the earth.” He answered, “I will commend you there as my son, if you are good to my child. If not I shall require it of you.”

“Do not fear,” I said. “She is like my life to me.”

He knelt before the image of the Earth Motherland turned his back; then he drew off the mask and laid it down before him. His black hair had broad streaks of white, and his neck showed through it like the bark of a dead tree. He said without turning, “Have you room?” I lifted the ax, and said, “Yes, for a man of my height there is room enough.” “Do it, then, when I invoke the Mother.”

He was a short while silent; then he cried aloud to her in the ancient tongue, and bowed his head. My hand was still unwilling; but it was due to his honor not to keep him waiting. So I swung down the ax, and it came strongly with my arm, as if it knew its business. His head lolled down, and his body sank at my feet. I drew back from it, my flesh shrinking in spite of me. But when I had put Labrys back to lick her chops after her long fast, I turned to him again, and saluted his shade as it started on its journey. His head lay turned toward me; and though it lay in shadow I saw what stopped my breath; he had not the face of a man, but of a lion.

I ran out through the curtain, and stood panting in the fresh night air. My limbs shuddered and my hands were cold. But in a little, when I could think, I was glad for him. I saw the gods had set upon him a mark of honor, now he had made the offering at the people’s need. Thus they may turn to men at last, after long silence; after blood and death, and the bitter grief for what can never be undone, have closed the listening ear thicker than dust. So may they do at the very end, even with me.

A flake of moonlight struck the coping of the sunken shrine. I looked about me, and saw against the wall the tall white throne of Minos, with the priests’ benches either side, and, painted behind, the guardian gryphons in a field of lilies. An owl hooted, and somewhere in the Palace an infant cried till its mother stilled it. Then all was silent.

There was danger here, and I should have been gone already; but this place seemed set apart only for me, and for its watching gods, and the ghost waiting for the ferry on the sighing shore. It seemed unworthy of what had passed, that I should scramble off like a thief. I felt he saw me. So I crossed the painted floor and sat in the seat of Minos, laying my hands flat on my knees and my head against the throne-back, sitting upright and thinking my thoughts. At last I heard beyond the doors the voices of the Guard calling their rounds. So I rose up softly, and went back through the dark maze along the path of the thread.