The King Must Die Read online

  “They would cut you down,” he said, “at the frontier gatehouse. Has the witch cursed you with madness?” He struck his thigh like a man distracted. Because he was wise and forward-looking, it put him in a taking not to see his way. I was sorry to be a trouble to him so soon.

  “But, Father,” I said, “the young men saved me in battle. They shed their blood, and one of them died. How could I come on them like a robber, with spears behind me? Their Goddess chose me, I don’t know why. They are my people.”

  He paced the room, and began to speak, and paced again. He was wise, and could see ten things where I could see only one. “But,” I thought, “I must needs keep hold of the thing I know, and do what I can with that. I shall do worse with the others; wisdom is only from the gods.”

  “I shall have to go, Father,” I said. “Send me with your blessing”

  “In the name of the god,” he said, “may your life-thread be stronger than the curse.”

  I was cleansed that day in the Cave of Apollo, in the cliffside below the Citadel. In its low shadow, where the sacred spring runs down the rocks, they filled the pitcher to wash me from Xanthos’ blood. Then in the bright sunlight we sacrificed a goat on the altar before the cave. At night there was a splendid feast, with harpers and jugglers. My father had everything tasted before we ate it. He did not keep a slave for this; the man who had cooked it brought it in, and my father himself pointed to his portion; a custom I thought both prudent and just.

  Next morning I was up early. My father and I stood on the terrace cool with dew, while the rock cast its long blue shadow over the morning fields. He looked as if he had slept badly, and begged me to change my mind.

  “If I could for anyone, sir,” I said, “I would for you. But I have taken these Minyans into my hand. It would hurt my standing to run away from them.” I felt sorry for him; I could see he would have liked to forbid me. It was hard on him, I thought, to have his only son come to him already a king. But that was a thing past remedy.

  “One thing more, Father,” I said, “before I go. If ever we can join these kingdoms, I won’t have their children’s children say of me that I led them into bondage. They must come as kindred, or not at all. Give me your word on it.”

  He looked at me hard; then he said, “Are you bargaining with me?”

  I said, “No, sir,” out of civility. Then I said, “Yes; it seems that I am. But my honor is in it.”

  He was silent so long that I asked if he was vexed with me. “No,” he said. “You have done as you ought.” And he took his oath then and there before me. Then he said, “I see your grandfather in you. Yes, you are more Pittheus’ child than mine. I daresay you are the better for it.”

  My horse was waiting. I told my servants to follow later in the day. I had a feeling there was luck in going alone.

  At the border watchtower, they returned my salutation and let me through at once. This seemed too smooth, till I heard one of them say behind me, “So much for that tale. All Athenians are liars.”

  Presently, rounding a bend, I saw the next hilltop crested with spears.

  I was in bowshot already, so I rode on at leisure. Soon a man showed forth against the sky. Then I knew them, and waved my hand. He beckoned those behind him, and began climbing down. I drew rein, and waited, and said, “Greeting, Bias.”

  “Welcome home, Theseus.” Then he shouted over his shoulder, “I told you so. Now what have you to say?”

  The Companions scrambled down, quarrelling and cursing one another as they came. “I never believed it; it was Skopas’ story.” “What? We all heard you.” “Take that lie in your teeth.” Then daggers were out. It was just like old times. I had to dismount, and pull them apart like fighting dogs.

  “An up-country welcome,” I said. “Have you all turned plow-boys in three days? Or what? Sit down, and let me look at you.”

  I sat on a bit of rock, and ran my eye over them. “A man is missing. It is Hypsenor. Where is he? Has someone killed him?” A voice said, “No, Theseus. He has gone to tell the army.” There was a pause. Bias said, “To say you are alone.” I raised my brows. “When I want the army turned out to meet me, I will say so myself. Who does Hypsenor think he is?” Bias coughed and shifted. “Well, but they were out already; they are just over the hill there. We are the vanguard.”

  “Vanguard?” I said. “Yes, I should hope so. But whom were you expecting to fight?”

  They all looked at Bias, who looked back at them in anger. “Come,” I said, “spit it out.” He swallowed, and said at last, “Well, Theseus, a tale came last night from Athens. None of us believed it. But the Queen thought it was true.” He stopped again; then, “They were saying you had offered Eleusis to King Aigeus, in exchange for making you his heir.”

  My heart chilled and sickened. Now I saw why my father had called me mad. The last thing I had thought of, which should have been the first.

  I looked from one to another, and they found their tongues. “They said you had been proclaimed on the Citadel.” “We all gave them the lie.” “We were angry.” “We all swore that if it were true, we would kill you on the border or die ourselves.” “Because we had trusted you.” “Not that we believed it, Theseus. But if it were true.”

  All this gave me time. As they talked, I had felt my spirit lighten a little. It was nothing one can put a name to. The truth is, I have seldom needed a soothsayer to tell me my lucky day. I can feel it; I felt it then.

  “This much is true,” I said. “I have struck a bargain with King Aigeus.” There was a silence as if they had all died. “I have got his oath that he will never wrong the men of Eleusis, but treat them as hearth-friends and kindred. What kind of bargain do you think a father makes with his son?”

  They all stared in a deep hush. I did not wait till they began to look at each other instead of at me.

  “I told you all,” I said, “on the day the King died, that I was journeying to Athens. I did not tell my father’s name, because I had sworn an oath to my mother, who is a priestess, not to tell it on the way. Which of you would have broken that? She gave me my father’s sword to show him; does it look like a common man’s? Look at it. Look at the device.” They passed it round among them. It left me weaponless; but in any case, I was one among thirty.

  I said, “I am the son of the myrtle grove, who the oracle foretold would change the custom. Don’t you think the Goddess saw me on the way? While my father passed through Troizen to take ship for Athens, my mother hung her girdle up for Mother Dia, and so I was conceived. Do you think the Gift-Bringer forgot? She has a thousand thousand children, but she knows each one of us. She knew I come from a king and from a king’s daughter of the Hellenes, who are ruled by men. She knew I am one to put my hand to what I find about me. Yet she called me to Eleusis, and gave the King into my hand. She knows best, who made us and calls us home. The mother changes to her sons as they grow to manhood. Everything has its term, except the gods who live for ever.”

  They were all quiet, as if they heard the harper. I could not have done it by myself. Something hung in the air between us, and out of that I spoke. A bard will tell you it is the presence of the god.

  I said, “I came to you a stranger. There are many men who wander the world for spoil, burning towns and driving off the cattle, throwing the men from the walls and taking the women. So they live; and if one of them had bargained as you thought, it would be good dealing for him. But I was bred in a house of kings, where the heir is called Shepherd of the People, because he stands between wolf and flock. We come when the god calls us; and when he is angry, we are the sacrifice. We go consenting, because the gods are moved by a willing gift. So I will go for you, if I am called to it. But I will only take my summons from the god; I will only answer for you to him, and not to any mortal man. Even my own father knows that, and consents to it. That was the bargain I made in Athens. Take me as I am. I cannot be other. You have heard me; if I am not a king to you, I am alone, and you have my sword. Do what
you think good, and answer to heaven.”

  I waited. There was a long silence. Then Bias got up, and went over to the man who had the sword, and took it from his hands and put it in mine. On this the wild lad Amyntor shouted out, “Theseus is King!” and then they all shouted.

  But Bias had grown quiet. When they had done, he jumped up beside me, and said to the rest, “Yes, you can shout now, but which of you will face the curse? Think now; don’t bring him back to Eleusis and then leave him to die alone.”

  There was muttering, and I said, “What curse is this?”

  Bias said, “The Queen put the cold curse on any man who let you pass.”

  “I don’t know the cold curse,” I said to them. “Tell it me.” I thought I should feel better knowing what it was, than not knowing. They took it for boldness.

  Bias said, “Cold loins and a cold hearth, cold in battle, and a cold death.”

  For a moment a chill ran down my neck. Then I thought, and remembered this and that. Then I started to laugh.

  “While I was in Athens,” I said, “the Queen tried to have me poisoned. It was then I learned that Xanthos too worked with her warrant. Once, for that matter, she tried with her own hand; you can see the wound. Why go to all that trouble, if her cold curse would stick? Or perhaps it did? Perhaps you have seen it working?”

  They had listened solemnly; but now someone at the back yelled out a bawdy joke. I had heard it before, but not to my face. They all shouted with laughter; and then they cheered.

  Presently a dark youth, he who had not liked the killing of Phaia, said, “All the same, she cursed a man two years back. He cried aloud, and fell down as stiff as a board; then when he got up, he turned his face to the wall, and did not eat or drink until he died.”

  “Why not?” I said. “Perhaps he deserved it, and no god protected him. But I am a servant of Poseidon. This time, maybe, the Mother listened to her husband first. In goddess or woman, no bad thing.”

  This pleased them more than anything; especially those who were courting girls their mothers did not care for. They all began to cheer again; this time they were won. And in due course, I may say here, they made these marriages their hearts were set on. The outcome was that about half got good wives and half bad, just as under the old custom. However, they could manage the bad ones better.

  It must have been a god’s favor that set the Companions first in my way. They were men I knew; I could feel my way with them, and see what answered best. That was my prentice piece. When I rode on to meet the army, I learned a thing one never forgets after: how much easier it is to move the many than the few.

  They were drawn up at the seaside, where the foothills dip to the shore. That is the neck of the Athens road, where it had been held time out of mind. They had made a rough wall there, with stakes and boulders, and all who could scramble up it were standing on the top. I had no trouble to get a hearing; they were men of Eleusis, and eaten up with curiosity to hear what I would say.

  So I called an Assembly, standing on the sands by the calm water of the strait, while gulls flashed silver in the blue air, and the breeze from Salamis fluttered the plumes of the warriors. I called to mind all I had learned of these people, and spoke. Since the times of their forefathers, they had had Hellene kingdoms hard by them. They had seen the customs of lands that are ruled by men; and I knew well enough that most of them felt a hankering.

  When I had done, I saw which side they wanted to choose. But they were still afraid. “What is it?” I said to them. “Do you think it is heaven’s will that women rule you for ever? Listen to me, and I will tell you how it began.” Then they hushed and waited; for they loved a tale.

  “Long ago,” I said, “in the time of the first earth men who made swords of stone, all men were ignorant, and lived like beasts upon wild berries. They were so stupid that they thought women conceived by their own magic, without help of men. No wonder a woman seemed so full of power to them! If she told a man no, who but he would be the loser? She by her art could conceive from the winds and streams, she owed him nothing. So all men came to her crawling on their faces, till a certain day.” And I told them the tale of the man who first learned the truth. Every Hellene knows it; but it was new to the Eleusinians, and made them laugh.

  “Well,” I said, “that was long ago; we all know better now. But no one would think so, to look at some of you. You cling to your fear as if it were ordained by heaven.” Again I began to feel that something joined us, like a birth-cord filled with common blood. But the minstrels say it is Apollo; that if you invoke him rightly, he will bind the hearers with a golden thread, and put the end in your hand.

  I said, “There is a measure in all things. I didn’t come here to slight the Goddess; we are all her children. Just as it takes man and woman to make a child, so it needed gods and goddesses to make the world. The Mother brings forth the corn. But it is the seed of the undying god that quickens her, not a mortal man doomed to perish. Wouldn’t that be the greatest of all shows, to make them a wedding? Why not? The god to come from Athens to her home with the bridal torches—for she is great, and it is the custom here—and to be brought to her in the sacred cave, while both the cities feast and sing together?”

  I had not planned this. It came to me while I was speaking. I knew they loved a portent, and to see moira working among mortal men. Perhaps that put it in my mind. But a god goes with one on one’s lucky day, and I think he sent it. The time had come for a change, and I was there to his hand. For, afterwards, I really made this rite for them. Or, rather, I sent for the bard who had come to Troizen, because he seemed fitter than anyone else I knew. He talked with the oldest priestesses, and prayed to the Mother, and took counsel with Apollo; and he made it so beautiful that no one has ever wanted it changed. He said himself that it was the best work he had done in all his life, and he would not complain if it should be the last.

  He was a priest of Paian Apollo, and perhaps he had foreknowledge. The old religion is dear to the Daughters of Night; and whoever else is glad, they do not like to see it changed. Their hand fell on him, as it fell on me.

  In Thrace, where he was killed, they keep the old custom for all his trying. Even in Eleusis, it dies very hard and its shadows linger. At any summer’s end there, you will see the people of town and village gathered on the hill-slopes, sitting to watch the herdboys mime their old tales of the deaths of kings.

  But that was after. Meanwhile, the men of the army tossed up their helmets and waved their spears, and begged me to lead them to the city. So I mounted my horse again, with the Guard about me; the Eleusinians followed after, singing paeans, and shouting, “Theseus is King!”

  I did not ride straight up to the Palace. I took the lower road, that leads to the cave and to the wrestling ground.

  All the women had run out chattering, and questioning the men; the slopes began to be full of people, just as on the day when first I came. I called two of the chief men and said to them, “Command the Queen to come down to me. Let her come of herself if she will do it; if not, bring her by force.”

  They went up. At the top of the steps, some of the priestesses stopped them; I should have known, if I had been older, that two men were not enough. I sent four more, to keep up each other’s courage. They shouldered through, and went in. Then I waited. And I knew why I had chosen this place of meeting; to see her come down the steps as Kerkyon had come down to me, and the King before to him: every year for years uncounted a man in his flower of youth, charmed from his strength like the bird by the dancing serpent, to wrestle and to die.

  Soon I saw the men returning; but they were alone. I was angry at this; if I had to go up myself, the people would lose their show. But when the men came near, I saw them pale. And the chief of them said to me, “Theseus, she is dying. Are we to bring her as she is, or not?”

  I heard all about me voices passing the word along; it was like the sound of benches being dragged about in an empty hall. “Dying?” I said. “Is she si
ck? Or has someone harmed her? Or did she lay hands upon herself?”

  They all shook their heads; but they did not all speak at once. Eleusinians love strong events, and know how to display them. They turned to the eldest, who had a good carrying voice. He said, “None of these, Theseus. When the word came to her that we were bringing you home as High King from the border, she tore her hair and clothes, and went down to the Goddess, and cried to her for a sign. What sign she wanted they did not know, but she cried three times, beating her hands upon the earth. Then rising up at last, she had milk brought and set it down for the House Snake; but he would not come for it. So she called a flute-player to make the music snakes dance to, and at last he came. When he was listening to the music, and had begun to dance, she cried out again to the Goddess, and took him into her hand. And he struck his teeth into her arm, and ran back into his hole as quick as water poured into a jar. In a little she fell down, and now she is dying.”

  There was quiet all around. You could have heard a whisper.

  I said, “Bring her here. If I go to her within walls, it will be put about that I killed her. The people must be witnesses.” I felt in their deep silence that they approved. “Put her on a litter, and do not hurt her. Let two of her women come, in case she needs anything; but keep the others back.”

  So I and the people waited again; but Eleusinians are patient, when there is a sight to see. At last I saw the Utter coming on the terrace above; four men bearing it, two women walking beside; and behind, kept back by warriors with crossed spears, the priestesses all in black, with bleeding faces and dishevelled hair, wailing aloud. The steps of the stair were not too steep for the litter. Every year, since time out of mind, a dead king had been carried down them, lying on his bier.

  They came down, and brought her before me, and stood the feet of the litter on the ground. It was made of gilded cornel-wood, with lapis set in.

  She was tossing, and breathing fast; her hair fell down over the gilded litter and swept the ground. Her face was white as new ivory, with a smudge of green under the eyes, and her mouth looked blue. There was a cold sweat upon her, and the woman beside her wiped her brow with a cloth stained with the paint from her lips and eyes. I would not have known her, but for her hair. She looked old enough to be my mother.