The King Must Die Read online

  I set my hands on the balustrade, and looked along the walls whose roots were mortised in living rock. And as I stood, it was as if all this flowed into me, with a singing sea-surge, and filled full my heart, and lay there like still waters. And I thought, “This is my moira.”

  My soul leaned out to grasp her. All else, in this moment, was as passing dust-clouds or a summer shower. I thought, “What was all that clamor within me? She has known a thousand kings. Who can tell how many have hated their fathers or their sons, or loved false women, or wept for this and that? Such things were their mortality, which lies in the grave with them and withers. Only this lives, that they were kings of Athens, who made her laws, or widened her boundaries, or strengthened her walls. High city of the purple diadem, whose stones breathe light, your daimon led me here, when I thought it was my will. Feel my hand, then, know my step, receive me; I will come when your gods summon me, and at their sign I will go. A child I came to you, stronghold of Erechtheus; but you shall make me a king.”

  After a while, I felt a new quiet about me. Yet the drone of singing still stirred the air. The sound that had ceased was the sound of my father’s weeping. I saw him, in my mind, standing where I stood now, looking out over the Citadel, when enemies beset her, or the fields were gray with drought; or when word came that there was a new king on the border, for whom Eleusis was not big enough. Only because he had kept her well, I stood here tonight. I thought of his hard struggle and his endless shifts, and of the long-held hope turned now to poison in his belly. The bitter anger left my heart, and I felt compassion, understanding his grief.

  I went in. He was sitting in his chair, his elbows on the table, his face between his hands, staring dully at the sword. I knelt down before him and said, “Father.”

  He creased his eyelids, as if he were sure neither of sight nor of hearing. “Father,” I said. “See how true it is, that fate never comes in the shape men look for. The gods have done this to show us we are mortal. Let us leave off grieving, and start again.”

  He wiped his eyes with his hand, and looked me over a long time in silence. At last he said, “Who can say what they have done, or why? There is that in you which never came out of me.”

  He brushed his hair from his face, and moved forward a little, and then drew back. I saw that after what had happened, it was for me first to embrace him. So I did, though I felt shy of it, and was afraid besides it might start him weeping again. He commanded himself, however, and we both felt, I suppose, that next time would be easier. Then he went to the door, and clapped his hands, and said to the man who answered, “Take a guard of four, and bring the Lady Medea, whether she consents or not.”

  As the man went, I said, “You will not find her.” He answered, “The gate is closed for the night, and the postern too. She is here unless she can fly.” Then he said, “What is your name?” I stared at this, and we almost smiled. He said, when I told him, “It is the name your mother and I chose together. Why did you not sign your letter with it?” I told him what I had promised her, and he asked me about her, and about my grandfather. But he had one ear for the sound of the guard returning. Presently we heard their feet. He broke off and sat thinking, chin on fist, and said to me, “Do not look surprised at what I say, but agree.”

  When they brought her in, she stepped out before them like a woman who wants to know why she is wronged. But her eyes were wary.

  My father said, “Medea, I have had a sign from heaven, to take the King of Eleusis for my hearth-friend. His enemies are mine. Do you understand?”

  She lifted her black brows. “You are the King. If that is what you have decided, so it will be. Did you have me dragged here like a thief to tell me that?”

  “No,” he said. “The King my friend, before he came to Eleusis, sailed north beyond the Hellespont, to Colchis, where you were born. He says you are blood-cursed; that you killed your brother. What have you to say?”

  Now her surprise was true. She turned to me in anger, and I began to see my father’s mind. “Everyone knew,” I said. “You fled south to escape vengeance.” She cried out, “What lie is this?” but I was watching her eyes; they were confused, not innocent; she had done some evil there. My father said, “He has told me all, and taken his oath upon it.” At that she cried out in anger, “He is forsworn then. He never set foot outside the Isle of Pelops in all his life, until this year’s spring.”

  My father looked in her eyes, and said, “How do you know?” Her face set like a mask of clay. He said, “You are a wise woman, Medea; they named you well. You can read pebble-cast, and water, and men’s hands; you know the stars; you can make the smoke that brings true dreams. Perhaps you know who his father is?”

  She said, “I did not see that. The mist hid it.” But her voice had lost truth and caught fear. I saw my father was a prudent judge, who knew his business, and had much to teach me.

  He turned to me. “I was not sure. She might have done it ignorantly, from misreading the omens.” He turned to the captain of the guard. “Where did you find her?” The man said, “On the South Wall. She had her two sons there, and was trying to make them climb down with her. But the rock is steep and they were afraid.”

  He said, “Now I am satisfied. Theseus, I give her into your hands. Do what you think fit with her.”

  I thought it over. Clearly, while she lived, men somewhere on earth would be the worse for it. I said to my father, “What kind of death do you give here?”

  Suddenly like a snake she slipped through the guards (I could see they were afraid of her) and stepped up close to him. I saw in their faces, despite themselves, the nearness of man and woman who have shared a bed. She said quietly, “Is it worth it to you, what you are doing?” He said only, “Yes.” “Think, Aigeus. These fifty years you have lived with the curse of Eleusis, and felt the weight of it. Have you chosen well?” He answered, “I have chosen with the gods.” She sucked in her breath to say something; but he cried loudly, “Take her away.”

  The guards closed round her. But she turned to the one who looked most in fear of her, and spat on his arm; his spear dropped clattering, and he stood dead white, clutching his wrist. While the rest shifted about, making to take her but afraid to touch her, she cried out, “You were always close-fisted, Aigeus. What kind of bargain did you think you had made with us? To be free of the curse, and nothing to pay but the life of some foot-loose stranger? Gold for horse dung! Is that what you thought?”

  My father looked at me, as one compelled to it unwillingly. Now I knew what words he had tried to silence. I felt a coldness in my belly; a kind of shock that was not amazement. I saw in mind the pearl-white bird that whistled at sunrise, the painted walls. I wondered how often I had lain with her, since first she conceived my death.

  Seeing my father’s hand move to an order, I said, “Not yet.” Then there was quiet, except for the chattering teeth of the guard who had dropped his spear. “Medea,” I said. “Did the Queen of Eleusis know too whose son I am?”

  I saw her eyes search my face to see what answer I wanted. But I had grown older this last hour, and kept my thoughts to myself. Her voice grew spiteful. “In the beginning, she only wanted you put down, like a dog that bites. But when her brother failed, she sent me something of yours, and I looked in the ink-bowl.”

  My father said to me, “Your wife sent warning me that you had vowed to rule in Athens. I would have told you, but not so soon. You are young, and perhaps you loved her.” I did not answer, for I was thinking. He said, “She would have freed me of my grandfather’s guilt, to make me my son’s murderer. You serve a gentle mistress, lady.”

  I had finished my thought now, and looked up. “Never mind it, sir. This comes as a good to me. It makes my way straight.”

  On that she whipped round at me. Her slant eyes narrowed and shone, her mouth thinned and widened; and I found I had given back a pace before her, for I saw it was true she had the Power. “Oh, yes!” she said. “Your way is straight now, Hellene thi
ef. Follow that long shadow you throw before you. Your father will feel it soon. Ten years he cut off his life-thread, when he took the posset from your hand.”

  Beyond her the guard stood with dropped jaws and stretched eyes. My father was pale, yet had not forgotten to watch how they took the news. But it was me she fixed her eyes on, swaying a little, as the snake does to freeze his prey. The guards had edged up air together; but I was alone.

  “Theseuss,” she said softly, as if her hissing tongue were forked. “Theseuss of Athens. You will cross water to dance in blood. You will be King of the victims. You will tread the maze through fire, and you will tread it through darkness. Three bulls are waiting for you, son of Aigeus. The Earth Bull, and the Man Bull, and the Bull from the Sea.”

  Cold on my life I felt the touch of her evil wish, and ghosts with covered faces answering. I had never been ill-wished before. It was like the dark chill when the Earth Snake bites the sun. As the guards backed, my father stepped between her and me. “Do you want a good death, you bitch? If so you have said enough.” She answered coldly, “Don’t raise your hand to me, Aigeus,” and it was as if she were taking the secrets of their bed to make witch-power, instead of his nails or hair. “Do you think you can cheat the Daughters of Night, you and your bastard? He will pay your debt; yes, and the interest too. You saved the son of a night, who came to you a stranger. But the son he kills shall be the fruit of his dearest love, the child of his heart.”

  I was young. I had got children here and there, but not yet begun thinking about a son of my house, or what I wished him to be. Yet, as a man may stand by night upon a cliff, and feel below him great depths which he cannot see, so I felt breathe upon me from far off the anguish which cannot be conceived before it comes, and, after, must not be remembered.

  I stood a stranger to myself. The guard were muttering. Before my face my father’s hand was held up in the sign against evil. She had made her moment well. Doubling like a hare, she was through them all and running to the balcony. I heard the rustle of her spangled flounces and swift feet; then only the scramble of the guard, making haste slowly.

  I felt for my sword; remembered where it lay, and snatched it up. A sentry ran in from along the balcony, alarmed by the noise, and crashed into the guard within. “Where did she go?” I called. He pointed, and I ran outside. A breeze had got up, blowing in from the sea. Wet mist chilled my face and clung to the flagstones. The moon was like a handful of wool. I remembered what they said of her, that she could call the wind.

  The balcony was empty. I ran in at a doorway, and fell over an old man asleep in bed. While he stuttered I picked myself up and found my sword. There was an opening covered with a curtain, which swung as if just moved. Beyond was a little stairhead, with light coming up from a lamp below. I started to run down it; then I saw against the turn of the wall the shadow of a woman, lifting her arm.

  Without doubt it was the witch, for she put a charm on me. This was the nature of it. My hands grew cold and sweated. My knees lost their strength, and I felt them tremble. My heart leaped to and fro so that it shook my breast, and my breath came thickly panting; I almost choked with it. My skin crawled upon my flesh, and my scalp upon my skull, and the roots of my hair stood upright. And my two feet were fixed to the floor; they would not take me forward.

  I stood rooted by this charm, my entrails working as if with sickness. The shadow moved, and left the wall. This loosed the cord of the spell, and it began to leave me. I ran down the stairs, but their steepness made me slow. They led me to a passage, and that to a court. It was dark, and full of a clammy mist. Nothing else moved there.

  I turned back, and heard clamor above me. The old man I had tripped on was rousing everyone, shouting that a huge warrior had run out of the King’s chamber with a drawn sword in his hand. The Palace was in uproar. A crowd of House Barons came running, naked behind their shields, and would have speared me, but my father came out in time. New-lit torches, damp with the mist, made stinking smoke; old men coughed in it, women ran about screaming, children cried, men yelled rumors across the courts. At last they found the herald, to quiet the din with his horn. My father led me out on the balcony, not to tell them who I was but to make sure that no one killed me. He calmed their fears and promised them good news tomorrow; then he said that Medea had done what is abominable to gods and men, and till she was taken the gates must not be opened.

  When things were quieter, he asked if I had seen the witch when I ran after her. I said no, which was true; for I had not seen her, but her shadow only. And this I did not wish to speak of; for the charm she put on me was very evil, and if you talk of such things you give them power. Paian Apollo, Slayer of Darkness, send that I never feel the like again.

  2

  THE WITCH AND HER sons were never found, though we searched the Palace from roof to pillar-crypt, and right down into the House Snake’s sacred cave. Every crack in the rock, and even the well, was sounded. People said the Dark Mother had sent a winged serpent to fly away with her. To that I said nothing. It was in my mind that she might have put on the gate guard the spell that she put on me.

  Next day my father summoned the people. From the Palace window we watched them climb the long ramps back and forth, and spread out over the rock. He said, “Today they walk lightly, without their bundles and their children stooping their shoulders. Yes, they know their way to the Citadel. We shall see smoke again upon Hymettos, when the Pallantids get this news. You have just come from a war; are you ready for another?”

  “Father,” I said, “that is what I came for.” He looked like a man who has forgotten how to rest. “You are the only one,” I said, “who did not lie to me. From the rest I got children’s tales; but you left me a sword.”

  “What did they tell you?” he asked. I told him, trying to make him laugh; but he looked long at me, and I feared he was still grieving over last night. I said, “You did well by me, to put me in Poseidon’s keeping. He has never forsaken me. When I have called on him, he has always spoken.”

  He looked at me quickly, and said, “How?” I had never talked of it, and the words came slowly, but I said at last, “He speaks like the sea.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That is the Erechthid token. It came when I was begetting you.” I waited, but he did not tell me of the other times; so I said, “How are we called, then, at the end?”

  “He calls us to a high place,” my father said, “and we leap down to him. We go of ourselves.”

  When he said it, it seemed I had always known it. “That is better,” I said, “than the Earthlings’ way. One should go like a man, not like an ox.”

  The people were now packed tight below us; their voices hummed like bees when you fell their tree, and the smell of their bodies rose to meet us. My father said, “We had better go out to them.”

  Now it was time, my hands stuck to my chair-arms. I thought of all those eyes, while my father spoke. I like to do, not to be done to. “Father,” I said, “what if they don’t believe I am your son? We might have made a bargain for all they know; my sword against the Pallantids, to be heir of Athens. What if they think that?”

  He came up with his spare smile, and put his arm on my shoulders. “Three out of five will think so. Shall I tell you what they will say? ‘That old serpent Aigeus, he never wastes a chance. Here is this young King of Eleusis, a Hellene, who doesn’t want to go the way of the rest. Just the lad for him; one who will be his debtor for the life-breath sure enough whoever his father was. Well, he looks like a fighter. Who’s to say a god didn’t send him? Good luck to him, and no questions asked.’”

  I felt simple and young beside him. He went on, “My brother Pallas has ten sons in marriage, all of grown years, and about the same number by women of the house. And most of them have sons themselves. Once they were in, they would rend Attica among them like wolves on a dead horse. You have a great virtue, my son, which will carry all before you. You are one, and not fifty.”

  He grasped my
arm, and led me out. I found he was right; whatever they thought, they made me welcome. When we had gone in, he smiled and said, “A good beginning. Only give them time; they will see Erechthid written all over you.”

  We were getting to feel a little acquainted. I daresay if he had brought me up as a boy, we should mostly have been at odds; yet we felt liking now, and a kind of gentleness. It was as if the poisoned cup had drawn us together.

  He gave orders for a feast that night, and a great sacrifice to Poseidon. When the priests had gone, I said, “Don’t forget Apollo, sir. I’ve not been blood-cleansed yet.”

  “That will wait,” he said. “Tomorrow will do.”

  “Well, sir,” I answered, “there’s not much time, if you are expecting war. I should ride to Eleusis tomorrow, and put things in order.”

  “To Eleusis!” He looked dumfounded. “The Pallantids must be settled first. They will be on us. How can I spare the men?” I could not follow this at all. “Men?” I asked. “Why, the two I brought can do all I need. I don’t care to be much waited on.”

  “But,” he said, “can you not see? The news will be there before you.”

  “This girl, Father,” I said, “that I brought along; can you get your women to look after her? I would have left her in Eleusis; I’m not so tied to her skirts that I must have her everywhere; but the Queen had taken against her, and might have done her some harm. She’s a good girl, useful and well-spoken; you won’t find her troublesome, and I shan’t be long gone.”

  He raked his hand through his hair, a way of his when harassed. “Are you out of your mind? From today on, your life’s not worth a pressed grapeskin in Eleusis. When we have quieted the Pallantids, you can have the army to claim your rights.”

  I looked at him surprised. But I saw he was anxious for me, in the way of fathers. It touched me, never having come my way before.