The King Must Die: A Novel

3

AFTER THE GOD’S SIGN, I no longer doubted I should grow tall. Season after season I waited, trusting. I had seen other boys shoot up all in a year or two, even without a god to help them. Seven feet, I thought, had been good enough for Herakles and would do for me; but I would settle for six, if Earth-Shaker required.

I turned eleven, and finished my service to Poseidon, and loosed a half-grown boar, whose tusks were showing, in the Great Hall when the King of Tiryns was dining there. Being younger than he had looked to me, he joined whooping in the chase, and said he had never spent an evening better; but my grandfather whipped me all the same, saying it might as easily have been the High King of Mycenae.

I turned twelve, and played in the thicket with a land baron’s daughter, who was thirteen. This came to nothing; she scolded me off, saying I hurt her. I argued that from all I heard, it was only to her credit; but she said she was sure I must be doing it wrong.

None the less, I was coming into manhood. In that way, I was better grown than boys much older. But I was still the smallest of my year but one; and when Simo brought a message from the shrine, I saw he was a whole hand taller.

My uncle Diokles could comb his beard to a point now, and would soon be married. He laughed at my scrapes when I was in disgrace with everyone else, taught me the skills of war and hunting, and tried to make me spend my spirits usefully. But one day when I was thirteen, finding me out of heart beside the wrestling ground, he said to me, “See, now, Theseus, no one can do everything. Some things need a light man, others a heavy one. Why can’t you take yourself as you are? You are doing well enough. You’re the best jumper about here, long or high; you nearly always win the foot race; as for riding, you can stay on anything; you are better than Dexios, who is better than all the rest. And you have a very straight eye, both for the bow and javelin; I know Maleus throws further, but how often does he hit? You will make a warrior, if you go on as you are; you’re not frightened, you are quick, and you’ve a grip like a grown man’s. If you are sensible, and get to know yourself, you’ll seldom come away from the games without two or three prizes. That should be enough for anyone. It’s time you stopped fretting your heart out, and wasting time, over contests where only weight will do. You will never make a wrestler, Theseus. Face it once for all.”

I had never seen him so serious; and I knew he was really fond of me. So I only said, “Yes, Diokles. I suppose you are right.” I was too old now to cry. I thought, “He has even forgotten why I should be big. It is not that he wants to hurt me, like Simo; not at all. Simply he never thinks of such a thing. It never enters his head.”

Poseidon’s sign was four years behind me. In youth, four years is long. And even the people thought less about it, now they saw I had not the stature of god-got men.

I was fourteen; the Corn Moon shone, and it was harvest home. My mother received the Goddess’ offerings, or read her the pledges written on leaves of clay. At evening she went down to the Navel Court, and following as far the cloister walk, I heard her soft voice, telling the House Snake all about the harvest; for, as she said, if we kept anything from him we should have no luck next year. I lingered in the shadow thinking how she must once have told him who my father was. Perhaps she was talking of me now. But it is death for men to spy on women’s mysteries. Lest I should hear a word of what she was saying, I slipped away.

Next day was the Corn Feast. In the morning she offered to the Mother at the sacred pillar, standing before it straight as the shaft, and graceful as the rising smoke. No one would have thought her sacred dress was so heavy, the flounces clashing with ivory lozenges and disks of gold. “Why does she not tell me?” I thought. “Does she need to be told I suffer?” And anger burned me like a red-hot rod, striking on my heart where it was tender with love.

Later we had the Games. I watched the wrestling, the big men grasping each other round the middle, straining and heaving to lift each other off the ground. Nowadays you will have to go far in the back hills to see Old Hellene style; but in those days, there was no other in the Isle of Pelops, and as much skill in it as in a tug of war.

In the boys’ events I won the jumping, and the foot race, and the javelin-throwing, just as Diokles had said. When the prizes were given on the threshing floor, I got a bag of arrowheads, a pair of javelins, and a belt sewn with scarlet. As I came away with them, I heard a voice say in the crowd, “He is blue-eyed and flaxen like a Hellene; but he is built like the Shore People, wiry and quick and small.” And someone answered softly, “Well, who can say?”

I went outside. The Corn Moon shone great and golden. I laid my prizes on the ground, and walked down to the sea.

The night was calm. Moonlight lay on the strait, and a night bird called, soft and bubbling, like water from a narrow jar. From uphill I heard the singing, and hands clapping to the dance.

I walked straight into the water as I was, in my belt and drawers. I wanted to be far from men and their voices. As I struck out with the current to the open sea, I said within me, “If I am the god’s he will look after me. If not I shall drown, and I do not care.”

Beyond the narrows and the headland, the strait opened to the sea. Then over on Kalauria I heard music and saw torches weaving; and boylike I wanted to go and see. I turned, and struck for the island shore; but the lights grew smaller whenever I looked. I saw I might truly die; and I wanted life.

The current had borne me easily; but when I fought it, it was cruel and strong. I began to be tired, and cold; my leather breeches dragged at my thighs, my wet belt pinched my breathing. A wave slapped me head-on, and I went under.

I could not right myself; I seemed to sink to the very bottom of the sea. My head and my chest felt bursting. I thought, “The god rejects me. I have lived for a lie and there is nothing left. Oh that I could be dead without dying! It is hard to die, harder than I know.” My eyes flashed and saw pictures: my mother in her bath; a hunchback the children laughed at; the shrine in the noon stillness; the youths in their horse-dance stamping for the god; and the sacrifice, my grandfather beckoning with his bloodstained hand. And then, just as when I was seven years old, I heard within me the sea-surge, bearing me up and on. It seemed to say to me, “Be quiet, my son, and let me carry you. Am I not strong enough?”

My fear left me. I ceased to struggle, and my face broke water. I lay on the sea, as easy as the lost child the father finds on the mountain, and brings home in his arms. Once round the point, the current always sets for land again. But I should never have lived to remember it but for Poseidon, Shepherd of Ships.

In the hills’ shelter the sea was calm and the air gentle. Climbing to the torches I lost the last of the chill. I felt light and lucky, full of the god. Soon I saw light through apple leaves, and dancers whirling; there were pipes and singing and the thud of feet.

It was a little village feast, on a slope of orchards. The torches were fixed on poles around the floor, for the torch-dance was over. The men were doing the Dance of the Quails, with feathered masks and wings, wheeling and hobbling and dipping and giving quail-calls; the women stood round singing the song, clapping and tapping their feet. When I came out into the torchlight they broke off singing; and the tallest girl, the village beauty the men were whistling and calling to, cried out, “Here is the Kouros of Poseidon! Look at his hair all wet from the sea!” Then she laughed. But when I looked, I saw she was not mocking me.

After the dancing we ran away, and lay hidden close in the deep wet grass among the apple trees, stifling each other’s laughter when one of her suitors came crashing and roaring past. Afterwards she held me away from her; but it was only while she got out a windfall from under her back.

That was my first girl, and I had my first war not long after. The men of Hermione came north over the hills, and lifted thirty head of cattle. When I heard my uncles shouting to each other, and calling for their horses and their, arms, I slipped away and helped myself from the armory and the stable! I stole out by the postern, and joined them up on the hill road. Diokles thought it a good joke. It was the last he ever laughed at; one of the raiders speared him. When he was dead, I rode after the man who did it, and dragged him from his horse across the neck of mine, and killed him with my dagger. My grandfather had been angry at my going without leave; but he did not rebuke me after, saying it was only proper I should avenge Diokles, who had always been good to me. I had been so angry I could not even feel I was killing my first man; only that I wanted him dead, like a wolf or a boar. We got back all the cattle before nightfall, except for two which fell down a steep place on the mountain.

A few months after this, the time of King Minos’ tribute came round again.

The tax goods were gathering at the harbor: hides and oil, wool and copper and boarhound bitches in whelp. People looked sour; but I had other trouble. I knew this was when the small boys were taken out from the tall ones, and sent to the hills to hide. I made offerings to Poseidon, and Zeus, and the Mother, praying in secret to be spared this shame. But soon after, my grandfather said to me, “Theseus, when you are up in the mountains, if there are broken necks, or cattle stolen, I am telling you now you will be the first to answer for it. There is your warning.”

My heart reproached the thankless gods. “Must I go, sir? Surely it’s beneath the house, for me to hide away. They would never take me; they can’t think so meanly of us as that.” He looked at me testily. “They will think you are just the build of boy they like for the bull-dance; that and nothing more. Don’t talk when you know nothing.” I thought, “Well, that is blunt enough.”

“Who is King Minos,” I said, “to treat kings’ houses like a victor? Why do we pay him? Why not go to war?”

He tapped his fingers on his belt. “Come back later,” he said, “when I have less to do. Meanwhile, we pay Minos tribute because he commands the sea. If he stopped the tin-ships we could make no bronze, and should have to make swords of stone, like the first Earth Men. As for war, he has ships enough to bring five thousand men here in a day. Remember also that he keeps the seaways clear of pirates, who would cost us more than he does.”

“A tax is all very well,” I said. “But to take people, that is treating Hellenes like slaves.” “All the more reason to avoid it. In Corinth and Athens, likely boys were allowed to be seen; now other kingdoms know better. To talk of a war with Crete, as if it were a cattle raid! You try my patience. Behave yourself in the mountains. And next time I send for you, wash your face.”

All this was bitter to my new-found manhood. “We ought to hide some girls too,” I said. “Can we pick our own?” He gave me a hard look. “It’s a young dog that barks over his bone. You have leave to go.”

It was my bitter hour, when the big lads swaggered free in Troizen, while the small and slender, bear-led by two unwilling House Barons, were led away. Even though the cripples and the sickly stayed in Troizen too, we all felt disgraced for ever. Five days we were in the mountains, sleeping in a barn, hunting and climbing and fist-fighting and coursing hares on foot, a plague to our guardians, trying to prove to ourselves we were good for something. Someone got an eye pecked by a raven, and one or two of us, as we learned later, got sons or daughters; they are wild but willing, those girls in the back hills. Then someone rode out on muleback to say the Cretans had sailed for Tiryns, and we could come home.

Time passed, and I grew taller, but never overtook the others; and the wrestling court was a place of grief to me, for there were boys a year younger who could lift me off the ground. I no longer hoped to be seven feet tall; I wanted a foot even of six, and I was rising sixteen.

When there was dancing, my troubles always lifted; and I came to music through the dance. I loved the winter evenings in the Hall, when the lyre was passed about, and was glad when I began to be called on for my turn. On one such evening, a guest was there, a baron from Pylos. He sang well, and in compliment gave us the tale of Pelops, the founder hero of our line. It was not the same song as the one favored in Troizen, which was of Pelops’ chariot race for the hand of the Earth King’s daughter; how the King speared all her suitors as their chariots turned the end stone, till the trick with the waxen linchpin threw him first. This song was about Pelops’ youth: how Blue-Haired Poseidon loved him, and would warn him of the coming earthquake when he laid his ear to the ground; he was called Pelops, so said the song, from the earth-smear on his cheek.

I kept my thoughts to myself. This, then, was where my warning came from. Not a pledge straight from the god to me, but an inborn skill, like this man’s sweet voice who sang. It came to me in my mother’s blood.

Next day, still sick at heart, I went to look for my friends; but all the youths were wrestling. I stood beside the ground, seeing the white dust fly up to the poplar leaves; too proud to take a turn with the boys of my own weight, for those who were worth a match were all younger than I.

I watched them straining and grunting, heaving each other up and tossing each other down; and a thought came to me, how easily a man is thrown if something strikes the side of his foot just when his weight is coming on it. It puts him off balance and down he goes; it had happened to me with a wayside stone. I watched, the feet, and then the bodies, and thought about it.

Just then Maleus, a great shambling youth, called out, “Come on, Theseus, give me a match!” Then he bawled with laughter; not that he hated me, it was his way. I said, “Why not?” which made him slap his knees and roar. When we were closing, and he reached out to lift me, I moved and made him lean a little. Then I backheeled him. He went down like a boulder.

For some time, helped by the dust-cloud and by being quick, I threw the youths of Troizen with this one chip alone; till a day when I woke feeling lucky, and went for no reason down to the harbor. There was a small trader in from Egypt, buying hides and horns. Two little brown boys, as lithe as snakes, were scuffling naked on the deck. They were wrestling, not fighting; and though they were only half-taught children, I saw what they were up to. I got sweet figs and honey, and climbed aboard; and came away with half a dozen chips as good as my backheel, all fit to throw a heavier man. It was news to me in those days that the Egyptians know all about this matter. I thought it a portent straight from the god.

Nowadays, it is all Athenian style wherever you go; so once again you must match with your own weight, if you want to go far. But I still umpire at the Games of Poseidon, because it pleases the people. Sometimes I wonder who will umpire at my funeral games. I thought once it would be my son; but he is dead.

Soon, in Troizen, even men were coming to see me wrestle, and I took some on. Though they learned a few of my holds, I kept a few ahead, for one thought leads to another. And people began to say there was surely something between the god and me; for how could I keep it up against men so much bigger, unless Earth-Shaker put out a hand to pull them to the ground?

So, as I neared seventeen, I was in better content with myself, even though I had not grown beyond five feet and a half. It had not stood in my way with girls; and the children I got were fair and Hellene. Only one was small and dark; but so was the girl’s brother.

My birth month came, when I should be seventeen. And on the day of my birth, in the moon’s second quarter, my mother said to me alone, “Theseus, come with me; I have something to show you.”

My heart paused in its beating. A secret so long kept is like a lyre-string stretched near breaking, which a feather will sound, or a breath of air. Silence held me, as it had before the earthquake.

I went with her; and she led me through the postern, up the road to the hills. I walked half a pace behind her, going softly. The path skirted a gorge, where the mountain stream ran deep, green with ferns below and woods above; we crossed it by a great flat boulder, put there by giants before anyone remembers. And all the while I thought my mother looked quiet and sad, and my heart was chilled; this was not the countenance, I thought, of women whom gods have favored.

We turned up from the stream, and came into the holy Grove of Zeus. It had been old already on the hillside in the time of the Shore People who had the land before us. And even they can only say it has been there time out of mind.

It is so quiet there, you can hear an acorn dropping. Now it was spring; the leaves were tender on the great gnarled boughs; and about the trunks which two men’s arms together could hardly span, faint starry shade-flowers grew. Last year’s oak leaves smelled musty underfoot, soft and black, or brown and rustling. All the way we had not spoken, and now the snapping of a twig seemed loud.

In the midst of the wood was the most sacred spot, where Zeus had hurled his thunderbolt. The ancient oak it had blasted had almost rotted into the ground, it was so long ago. But though the huge limbs were perishing among the brambles, a stump like a tooth still stood, with a secret life in it; faint buds of green showed on the roots where they humped like knees above the earth. The spot is so sacred that no sapling has dared to grow there since Cloud-Gatherer struck it; through the hole in the green roof one can see the sea.

My mother walked on in her gold-clasped sandals, lifting her skirt in front to clear the slope. Fawn-spots of sun fell on her fine bronze hair, and on the thin shift under her bodice which showed the pink tips of her moving breasts. Her forehead was broad, her gray eyes widely set, with soft brows nearly meeting above her straight proud nose; the arch over the eye was her greatest beauty, and the smooth clear curve up from the eyelid. Like any priestess, she had a mouth for secrets; but it was serious, not sly like some one sees. Though I could never see it when people said I was like her, I was always glad if they said I had her eyes. Mine looked bluer because I was tanned, and my chin was my own, or else my father’s. But to me, this long time now, she was the priestess no one dares question, more than she was anything else. She seemed armored in the Goddess; so that if she were to tell me my father was Thyestes the lame stillman who brewed her bath-scent, or a swineherd from the back hills, it would not touch nor shame her, but only me.

She led me up to the sacred oak, and stopped; and I saw at her feet a stone.

I knew it. I had found it as a boy, when Dexios and I first went tiptoe to the oak wood, daring each other under the gaze of the trees; the dryads who live there stare harder into one’s back than anywhere else I know. It was an old gray slab; put there for an altar, I suppose, when Zeus first hurled his thunder. I had never met anyone there, yet often there were fresh ashes, as if someone had been offering. Now they were there again, looking almost warm. Suddenly I wondered if it was my mother who came. Perhaps she had had some omen she meant to tell me of. I turned to her, feeling gooseflesh on my arms.

“Theseus,” she said. Her voice sounded hoarse, and I looked at her surprised. She blinked, and I saw her eyes were wet. “Do not be angry with me; it is no choice of mine. I swore your father the oath gods dare not break; or I would not do it. I promised him by the River, and the Daughters of Night, not to tell you who you are, unless by yourself you could lift this stone.”

For a moment my heart leaped up; royal priestesses do not take such vows at the bidding of base-born men. Then I looked again, and saw why she had wept.

She swallowed so hard that I heard it. “The proofs he left for you are buried there. He said I should try you at sixteen, but I saw it was too soon. But now I must.” Her tears ran down, and she wiped her face with her hands.

Presently I said, “Very well, Mother. But sit over there, and do not watch me.”

She went away, and I stripped off my arm-rings. They were all I had on above the belt; I went bare in nearly all weather, to keep hard. But, I thought, much good that had done me.

I crouched by the stone, and dug with my hands to find the lower edge. Then I loosened it round, scraping like a dog the earth away, hoping to find it thinner at the other end. But it was thicker there. So I went back, and straddled it, and hooked my fingers under it, and pulled. I could not even stir it.

I stopped, panting and beaten, like the half-broke horse who still finds the chariot tied behind him. I had been beaten before I had begun. It was a task for a youth like Maleus, as big as a bear; or for Herakles, Zeus-begot in a threefold night. It was a task for a god’s son; and now I saw it all. “It must be with the gods as with men; a son may be lawful, but take all after the mother’s side. My veins have only one part ichor to nine parts blood; this is the touchstone of the god, and the god rejects me.” I looked back on all I had endured and dared; it had gone for nothing from the beginning, and my mother had wept for shame.

It put me in a rage. I seized the stone and worried at it, more like a beast than a man, feeling my hands bleed and my sinews cracking. I had forgotten even my mother, till I heard the sound of her skirt and her running feet, and her voice crying, “Stop!”

I turned to her with my face dripping sweat. I was so beside myself that I shouted at her, as if she had been a peasant, “I told you to stay away!”

“Are you mad, Theseus?” she said. “You will kill yourself.”

“Why not?” I said.

She cried, “I knew how it would be!” and pressed her hand to her brow. I did not speak; I could almost have hated her. She said, “He should have trusted me. Yes, even though I was young.” Then she saw me staring and waiting, and closed her mouth with two fingers. I turned to walk off, and cried out with pain; I had torn a back muscle, and it took me by surprise. She came over and felt it gently; but I looked away.

“Theseus, my son,” she said. Her gentleness almost undid me; I had to shut my teeth together. “Nothing forbids me to tell you this: it is not I who find you wanting. And I think I am fit to judge.” She was silent, looking out through the gap in the oak leaves at the blue sea. Then she said, “The Shore People were ignorant; they thought Ever-Living Zeus dies every year. So they could not worship the Mother rightly, as we Hellenes know. But at least they understood that some things are better left to women.” She paused a moment; but she saw I was only waiting for her to go away. So she went; and I threw myself upon the ground.

The black oak soil, rich with the scents of spring, drank down my tears into the fallen leaves of ages. The Grove of Zeus is not a place where one can defy the gods. I had been angry with Poseidon, who had broken my pride like some column tossed down for a whim. But presently I saw he had done me no harm, but many favors. It would be hubris to affront him; and not even worthy of a gentleman, who ought never to be outdone, either in cruelty by an enemy or in kindness by a friend. So I limped home, and got into the hot bath my mother had ready. She rubbed me down after with oil of herbs; but we did not speak.

I could not wrestle for a fortnight, and told the other youths I had fallen on the mountain. For the rest, life went on as before; except that the light had been put out. Those to whom this has happened will understand me; not many, I daresay, for such men die easily.

For a man in darkness, there is only one god to pray to.

I had never before singled out Apollo for worship. But of course I had always prayed to him before stringing a lyre or a bow; and when I went shooting, I was never mean with his share. He had given me good bags time and again. Though he is very deep, and knows all mysteries, even those of the women, he is a Hellene and a gentleman. Keeping that in mind, it is easier than it seems not to offend him. He does not like tears intruded on his presence, any more than the sun likes rain. Yet he understands grief: bring it to him in a song, and he will take it away.

In the small laurel grove near the Palace, where he had an altar, I gave him offerings, and played to him every day. At night in Hall, I used to sing of war; but alone in the grove, with only the god to listen, I sang of sorrow: young maidens sacrificed on their wedding eve, ladies of burned cities weeping their fallen lords, or the old laments which have come down from the Shore People, of young heroes who love a goddess for a year, and foreknow their deaths.

But one could not always be singing. Then melancholy would fall black upon me, like a winter cloud heavy with snow. Then I could bear no people. Those days I took myself into the hills, alone with my bow and my dog.

One day in summer I had wandered far, loosing at small game and taking up my arrows; but the wind had tricked me, and I had got nothing but one hare. I was still on the heights in the last light, and looking down saw the shadows of the hills thrown right across to the island. From the foot slopes hidden by trees and dusk, the smoke of Troizen rose faint and blue. They would be trimming the lamps there. But on the tops, birds still gave softly their evening calls, and a deep light carved the edges of the grass blades.

I came out upon the bare round summit ridge, where the sun strikes first at morning, and Apollo has his altar. On two sides you can see the sea, and to the west the mountains about Mycenae. There is a house for the priests, built of stone because up there the winds are strong; and a little stone sanctuary for the holy things. Underfoot are springy heath and thyme; and against the sky is the altar.

My black mood was still on me. I had resolved not to go and eat in Hall; I should only affront someone and make enemies. There was a girl by the harbor who would put up with me, because it was her trade.

A dim curl of old smoke rose from the altar, and I paused to salute the god. The hare I had shot was in my hand. I thought, “It is not worth cutting. One can’t be paltry with Apollo. Let him have it all; he has given me something for nothing, often enough.”

The altar stood black against a clear sunset sky, yellow as primroses. It smoldered still from the evening sacrifice, and the smell of burnt meat quenched with wine hung on the air. The priests’ house was silent, lampless and without smoke. They were fetching wood, perhaps, or water. There was no human creature to be seen in all the world; only the thin pure light, and great blue spaces stretching away, mountains and seas and islands. Even the dog was daunted by the solitude; the hair darkened on its back, and I heard it whimper. The evening breeze touched my bowstring, and a humming came from it, high and strange. And suddenly the place overwhelmed my soul, as an ant drowns in a river. I would have given anything for the sight of an old woman gathering sticks, or any living thing. But nothing stirred in all that vast-ness; only the bow still sang, small like a gnat. My nape shuddered, and my breath came thick. Almost I fled headlong into the hillside forest, like a hunted stag, crashing down through the woods till the thicket held me. I stood at stretch, my hair stirring like the dog’s hackles; and a clear voice said in my ear, “Do not be late tonight, or you will miss the harper.”

I knew the voice. It was my mother’s. The words too I knew, for she had spoken them that morning, when I set out. I had answered heedlessly, my mind on my troubles, and had at once forgotten. Now, like an echo, the sound returned.

I went up to the sanctuary, and laid the hare on the offering table for the priests to find. Then I walked home through the dusky woodland. The black mood that drove me out had lifted; I felt hungry for supper, for wine and company.

Though I made good haste, I was still rather late; my grandfather raised his brows at me, and I saw the harper already at his meat. I went down to the foot of the table, where he sat among the House Barons, and they made room for me beside him.

He was a middle-sized man, dark and spare, with eyes deep-set and a thinking mouth. His life had made him at home at kings’ tables; he set himself neither too high nor too low, and was easy to talk to. He told me he came from Thrace, where he served a shrine of Apollo. The god had forbidden him to eat meat or drink strong wine; he took cheese and greenstuff, and even that sparingly, because he was going to sing. His robe glittered with gold, and looked like some rich king’s gift; but it lay folded on the bench beside him, while he ate in clean white linen. A quiet man, who talked of his art like a craftsman, and had a strain of the Shore People in his blood, as many bards have.

While we ate, we talked about making lyres: how to choose one’s tortoise, stretch the sounding-skin, and set in the horns. The lyre I made afterwards was so good that I use it still. Then the tables were cleared; the servants wiped our hands with towels wrung out of hot mint-water; my mother entered, and took her chair by the column. From her greeting to the harper, it seemed he had already given her a song upstairs.

The servants went down the Hall to eat and listen; my grandfather had the bard’s harp brought him, and invited him to begin.

He put on his singing-robe, which was blue, and spangled with small gold suns, so that by torchlight he seemed all sprinkled with fire. Then he withdrew into himself, and I stopped the young men from speaking to him again. I guessed he was a master, from his not sitting to eat in his robe. Sure enough, from the first chord onward, nothing else stirred but a dog scratching for fleas.

The song he gave us was the Lay of Mycenae; how Agamemnon the first High King took the land from the Shore Folk, and married their Queen. But while he was at war she brought back the old religion, and chose another king; and when her lord came home she sacrificed him, though he had not consented. Their son, who had been hidden by Hellenes, came back when he was a man, to restore the Sky Gods’ worship and avenge the dead. But in his blood was the old religion, to which nothing is holier than a mother. So, when he had done justice, horror sent him mad, and Night’s Daughters chased him half over the world. At last, all but dead, he fell on the threshold of Apollo, Slayer of Darkness. And the god strode forward, and lifted up his hand. They bayed awhile, like hounds robbed of their game; then earth drank them back again, and the young King was free. It is a terrible tale, and one could not bear it, but for the end.

When he had done, the cups beating the board could have been heard down in the village. Presently my mother signed that she wished to speak.

“Dear Father, this evening will be boasted of to those who were not there. Now, while the bard is taking a drink to cool his throat, won’t you ask him to sit with us, and tell us about his travels? I have heard he knows the world to its furthest ends.”

Of course my grandfather invited him, and his chair was moved. I went over too, and they put a stool for me by my mother’s knees. After the drink and the compliments, she asked him what was his longest journey.

“Without doubt, Lady,” he said, “the voyage I made two years back, to the land of the Hyperboreans. It lies north and west of the Pillars of Herakles, in that green shoreless sea which drowned Atlantis. But Apollo is the guardian god of the Hyperboreans. That year they built the second circle round his great sanctuary. I sang the work-song, when they raised the standing stones.”

“What kind of land is it,” I asked him, “at the back of the north wind?”

“A land dark with forests,” he said, “and green with rain. They build on the bare hilltops and high moors, for safety against beasts and enemies. But it is a great land for bards, and for Apollo’s priests to learn his mysteries. I was glad to go, being a priest myself. Thrace is my native land, but the god keeps me roaming. It was his oracle at Delos sent me on this journey. I was there to sing for him, when the envoys came with their offerings south down the Amber Road. The High King of the Hyperboreans sent to say he had this great work in hand, and asked for a priest from Delos, that being the center of Paian’s worship, as well as of the Cyclades and of all the world. It was put to the oracle in the hill cave, who answered that they should send the Thracian singer. That was how I came to go.”

He told us of the voyage, which had been cold, stormy, and perilous. A gale had driven them north of the island, where, he said, they had passed between two floating rocks as white as crystal, which almost closed on the ship; and on one sat a black monster with seven snaky necks, and barking dog-heads.

I glanced at my grandfather; he winked at me, when the bard was not looking. “After all,” said his eye, “the fellow is not on oath.”

My mother said, “And how had they built Apollo’s sanctuary?”

“After the fashion of the place: a circle of standing stones, with lintels lying on them. The inner circle had been there time out of mind. It is an emblem of Apollo’s mystery. While I was there, the priests admitted me to the Lesser Mysteries, and I learned such things as a man is better for all his life.”

“Since those things are secret,” my mother said, “tell us about the building.”

“It was like Titans’ work. Great blocks of rough-hewn stone, each as big as a poor man’s house. Yet they had brought them many leagues, from a sacred mountain, rolling them round hills and floating them over rivers. Some had been years upon the way. But now when it came to lifting them, the High King had sent to Crete for masons. If the strongest men on earth had all been there together, without engines they could not have been stirred.”

Then he told how this king, and six others who used the sanctuary, had brought all their people to the work; so many it needed, though the Cretans had halved it with their hoists and levers. And even that multitude looked poor and frail about the huge stones, like ants tugging at pebbles.

“Then I saw why Apollo had sent a bard. Cretans do not know everything, though they think so. They know how to raise stones, but not men’s hearts. The people were afraid. So I understood why I was there, and called upon the god; and he put the power on me, to feel the work and make it music. I sang his praises, and gave the time. After a while, the seven kings with their sons and barons came forward and pulled for Apollo’s honor, standing among the people. Then the stones rose up slowly, and slid into the beds the Cretans had made for them. And they stood fast.”

Now he was rested, I asked if he would give us a verse or two of his work-song. He smiled, and said it would be like a dance without dancers; but when he sang it, I saw old barons whose hands had never known the feel of a common task sway in their seats as if they were pulling a galley. He was famous for these songs; all over the Achaian lands, kings planning some great work in stone sent for him to time the hauliers, and put luck into the walls. Since he died there is no one to touch him at it; simple folk say, believing it, that the stones rose up for him of themselves.

It was now time to give him his presents. My grandfather gave him a good brooch; but my mother brought out a heavy girdle worked with gold, which would not have been mean to give a king. Since he had taught me so much, I felt I too should give him something uncommon; so I parted with my black ring, one of my best things. It was made of a precious metal from a distant land, very heavy, and so hard that you could turn even a bronze sword-edge on it. I was glad to find him pleased with its rarity; he already had gold enough.

My mother first, and then my grandfather, gathered their people and went up to bed. The slaves took down the trestles, and brought in the beds for the unmarried men. I saw the bard made comfortable, and asked if he fancied any of the Palace women; but he said he would sleep. Then I went out in the courtyard. The night was clear. The toothed roof-edge, the watchman with his spear and horn, stood black against the stars. Behind me in Hall, the House Barons were bedded with their girls, those who had captured or bought their own; and young men in want of company were seeking it in the usual way. A girl passed whom I knew; she belonged to my mother, and had sat that evening near her chair. I ran out and caught her round the middle. She only fought with the soft of her hands; we were not quite strangers to one another. We struggled and laughed in whispers, and she said, Well, what must be must, but I should be the ruin of her; and we went into Hall as they snuffed the last of the torches.

Later I asked her softly, so that no one else could hear, what my mother had said to the bard apart, when she rewarded him. But she was sleepy, and cross at being waked again, and said she could not remember.