The King Must Die (22 page)

I spent a good deal of time with him in Athens, and listened when he gave judgment. It made me feel for him; for the Athenians were very quarrelsome. Time out of mind, the Citadel had never fallen; but the plain had been overrun in old days by all sorts of people, Shore Folk at one time and Hellenes at another, so that Attica was as mixed as Eleusis, yet had never blended. You got patches of people under chiefs like petty kings, who had not only their own customs, which was natural, but their own laws, so that neighbors could never agree on what was just. As you may suppose, blood-feuds were nearly as common as marriages, and no feast ever went by without someone being killed, that being a time when enemies waited for their man to show himself. When they had got themselves to the edge of a clan war, they might come at last to my father to judge between them, with a tale twenty years long. No wonder, I thought, his face was lined and his hand unsteady.

It seemed to me he would wear himself out before his time. I don't know why, seeing he was a wise man and had kept the kingdom all those years; but I felt dangers threatened him everywhere, and that if any ill befell his life, the blame would be mine for not taking better care of him.

One evening, when he had come from the judgment hall dead tired, I said to him, "Father, all these people came to the land of their own will; they all own you as High King. Can't they learn they are more Athenians than Phlyans and Acharnians and so on? I reckon the war lasted near twice as long as it should, because of their bickering."

He said, "But they are fond of their customs. If I take any away, they will think their rivals are being favored, and then they will help my enemies. Attica is not Eleusis."

"I know it, sir," I said, and fell to thinking. I had gone up to his room to drink a posset by the fire. The white boarhound nudged my hand; he always begged for the lees to lick.

Presently I said, "Have you ever thought, sir, of calling all the men of good blood together? Some things they must all want: to hold their lands, keep order, get in their tithes. In council, they might agree on a few laws for their common good. The craftsmen too, they all want a fair price for their labor, not to be beaten down to what the hungriest man will take; the farmers must need some working rule about boundaries and straying stock, and the use of the high pastures. If these three estates would each agree on some laws for their own sort, it would draw them together and break the pull of the clans. Then, if chief disputed with chief, or craftsman with craftsman, they would come to Athens. And in time there would be one law."

He shook his head. "No, no, there would be two causes of strife where there was one before," and sighed, for he was weary. "It is well thought of, my son; but it is too much against custom."

"Well, sir," I said, "just now they are well shaken up, with all these new southlands joined to the kingdom. They might take it better now than ten years hence. In summer, there is the feast of the Goddess, whom they all worship under one name or another. We could have some victory games, and make a new custom of it, and they would come together for that. Thus you would have them ready."

"No!" he said. "Let us have rejoicing for once instead of blood." His voice had sharpened, and I reproached myself for troubling him when he was tired. Yet all the while there was a beating in my head, like a caged bird's, which said to me, "A lucky time is being wasted, a great chance let go by; when my day comes, I shall have to pay for it." But I said nothing of this to my father; for he had been good to me, and rewarded my men, and done me honor.

There was a girl in his household, a prize he got in the war, dark-haired and high-colored, with bright blue eyes. She had belonged to one of the sons of Pallas, in the house at Sounion. Seeing her among the captives, I had had half a mind to her, and had meant to pick her out when the spoil was shared, I had never thought of my father choosing a woman. He saw this girl and chose her before anything else. Now Medea had gone, there was no one about him fit for a king's bed; but when it happened, being young and foolish I was surprised, and even somewhat shocked, as if I could have expected him to choose a woman of fifty. Of course I put such thoughts aside. I had my Isthmus girl Philona, a good enough girl and indeed worth ten of the other, who proved a baggage, always with one eye for a man. I did not care to warn my father. One day, I remember, on the terrace, she came hurrying out of a side door and ran right into me. She begged my pardon; and leaned so hard on me that she might as well have been naked. Her shamelessness filled me with anger. I threw her off (she would have fallen, if she had not struck the wall) then dragged her to the parapet, and held her half over. "Look well, Bitch-Eyes," I said. "That's where you’ll go, if I ever catch you playing my father false, or doing him harm." She crept away frightened, and was more modest after. So I had no need to trouble my father with it.

Between Athens and Eleusis, and riding about Attica to bring order after the war, winter passed and the snow-streams ran down the mountains. In the wet banks you could smell violets hidden. Young deer came after the green crops; when I went hunting them, I urged my father to come too, and get the good air; he never went out enough. We were on the foot slopes of Lykabettos, and had ridden up through the pines to where it gets stony, when his horse stumbled, and threw him on a rock. A clod of a huntsman had set up a net there, and gone away and left it. Up he ran excusing himself, as if he had cracked a kitchen pot, instead of nearly killing the King. I got up from helping my father, who was badly bruised, and knocked three or four teeth down the fool's throat, to make him remember. I told him he had got off lightly.

One day my father said to me, "Soon ships will be taking the sea again, and women can make journeys. What if I send for your mother? She will like to see you; and it would be good to look on her face again."

I saw him watch how I took it; and guessed he was not speaking all his thought, because he was a careful man. He had it in mind to make her Queen of Athens; and for my sake, too; for she had been younger than I when last he saw her. "For sure," I thought, "when he sets eyes on her, he will want to take her to bed again. Except when she is sick or tired, her skin is like a girl's still, and she has not one gray hair. And this is what I have so long wished for, to see her honored in my father's house." I remembered how when I was a child I had looked at her in her bath, or wearing her jewels, and thought that only a god was worthy to embrace her.

I said, "She could not leave till the House Snake wakes with his new skin, and she has made the spring sacrifice and received the offerings. She has a great deal of business then. After that she will come." So he put off sending, because it was too early.

I remember a fright my father gave me about this time. There is a corner of the upper terrace straight over the rock-face. When you look down, the houses below are as small as if children had pinched them out of clay, and the dogs sunning on the roofs no bigger than beetles. There is a prospect over half the kingdom, right out to the mountains. One day I saw my father leaning there, and right beside him a great crack in the stone balustrade. It shocked me so much that I stopped breathing. Then I ran and pulled him back. He looked at me startled, for he had not seen me coming; when I showed him his danger, he made light of it, and said the crack had been always there. So I sent for the mason myself to mend it, in case he forgot. Even afterwards, to see him stand there made me uneasy.

My father liked to have me often in Athens, to sit with him in Hall or go among the people. I had nothing against it, except that it took me from Eleusis, where I could do things my own way. In Athens I looked on, and sometimes saw people I doubted put too high, or people put too low who were able for more, or things done with trouble that might have been made easy. My father had had too many cares to see to it, and now had grown used to things as they were. If I said anything he would smile, and say that young men would always build the walls of Babylon in a day.

There was a woman in the Palace, who had belonged to his father before he was born. She was more than eighty years old, and did not work much, but used to blend the bath-scent and the oil, and dry the sweet herbs. Once, when I was in the bath, she came by and pulled a lock of my hair, and said, "Come back, lad. Where have you flown off to?" She was allowed her liberties because she was so old; I smiled and said, "To Eleusis." "And what does Athens lack, then?" "Athens?" I said. "Why, nothing." My father had given me two fine rooms, and had the walls new painted with mounted warriors, and with some very good lions, which I liked so well I have kept them to this day. "Athens lacks nothing," I said. "But there is work in Eleusis I ought to be at now."

She picked up my hand from the side of the bath, and turned it palm upward. "A meddling hand. Always doing, never letting be. Wait, Shepherd of the People, wait on the gods; they will send it work enough. Have patience with your father. He has waited long to say, 'Here is my son'; now he wants to live thirty years in one. Bear with him, lad; you are the one with time before you."

I snatched back my hand into the bath. "What do you mean, old scritch-owl? He has thirty years to go, before he is as old as you are; and you look good for another ten. Why, before the god sends for him, I myself may be as old as he is now. Are you ill-wishing him, or what?" Then I was sorry, and said, "No, but you should not talk carelessly, even though you mean no harm."

She peered at me under her gray wrinkled lids. "Be at peace, Shepherd of Athens. You are dear to the gods. The gods will save you."

"Me?" I said staring. But she had shuffled off. She was the oldest woman in the Palace, and her wits were failing.

Spring came on; there, were pale green buds on the black vinestocks, and the cuckoo called. And my father said to me, "My son, about this time of year you must have been born."

I said, "Yes, in the fourth month's second quarter. My mother said so."

He struck his fist into his hand. "Why, what have we been about? I must make a feast for you. Your mother should be here! Now we can't wait for her; all Athens knows when I passed through Troizen, and if this is not your birth-month, you are not my son. Well, well, it is not strange I forgot. You grew into a man ahead of your years, and I have missed your boyhood. It will be your victory feast as well."

I thought of my mother, and what was due to her. Presently I said, "We could sacrifice on the day, and send for her to Troizen, and make the feast later." But he shook his head, saying, "It will not do. No, it would be coming on tribute-time, and the people would not like rejoicing then." What with the war, and all that had happened since I came to Athens, it did not come to my mind what tax he meant, and thinking about my mother I forgot to ask him.

When the day came, I was early up, but he had risen earlier. The priest of Apollo trimmed my hair, and shaved the down from my cheeks and chin. I had more to dedicate than I thought; it had not showed much, being fine and fair.

My father smiled, and said he had something to show me, and led me to the stables. The grooms flung wide the doors. Within was a new chariot, of dark polished cypress-wood, with ivory inlays and silver-bound wheels, a craftsman's masterpiece. Laughing, he bade me look well at the axle-pin; I should not find wax this time.

It was a gift beyond my dearest wish. I thanked him on one knee, putting his hand to my brow; but he said, "Why this haste, before you have seen the horses?"

They were matched blacks, with white-blazed foreheads; strong and glossy, sons of the north wind. My father said, "Aha, we slipped them up here, as neat as Hermes the Trickster lifting Apollo's steers. The chariot while you were in Eleusis; and the horses this very morning, while you still slept."

He rubbed his hands together. I was touched at his taking all this care to surprise me, as if I had been a child. "We must take them out," I said. "Father, finish your business early, and I will be your charioteer." We agreed that after the rites, we would drive to Paionia below Hymettos.

There was a big crowd waiting on the slopes around the shrine of Apollo. As well as the chief people of Athens, those of Eleusis had been bidden to the festival, and all the Companions. While the priest was studying the victim's entrails, and taking a long time about it, I heard a buzz among the Athenians, as if some news were being passed along; and it was like a dark cloud crossing the sun. I am a man who likes to know what goes on around me; but I could not leave my place to question anyone, and we went on to the sacrifice of Poseidon and the Mother, at the household shrine. Afterwards I looked for my father, but he had gone off somewhere; to finish his business, I supposed, as we had planned.

I changed my clothes for a driver's tunic and tooled leather greaves, and tied back my hair; then I went out to my horses, and gave them some salt, and made much of them, to let them know their master. I heard some bustle and stir in the Palace beyond, but it was to be looked for on a feast day. There was a young groom, a graceful lad, polishing harness; someone called him to come, and he put down his rag and beeswax, and went off with a face of fear. I wondered what he had done that had found him out, and thought no more of it.

From the horses I went to the chariot, and looked at the inlaywork of dolphins and doves, and felt the balance; till even these pleasures I had had my fill of, and could not help thinking, "How slow old men are! By now I could have done it all three times over." I called a groom, and I told him to take the chariot down the ramp; as for the horses, I could not bear to let them out of my sight. It seemed to me he looked at me strangely as he went; I shrugged it off, yet began to feel uneasy.

I waited and waited, till the horses grew restive, and I resolved to go and see what kept my father. Just then he came up, alone. He had not even changed his clothes; I could have sworn he had forgotten why I was waiting. He blinked and said, "I am sorry, my son; that must be for tomorrow."