The King Must Die (26 page)

At last we flung ourselves on the deck, panting and smiling. Looking at them all, I thought, "It is beginning. As a hunting pack is more than so many dogs, so too are we."'

When I thought about it, it was a good while now since I had spent much time with people my own age. With some of them, such as Chryse and Hippon, I felt old enough to be their father. Not only was I the eldest of us; I was the tallest too, except for Amyntor.

"Good," I said. "That should make them look twice. I don't suppose many victims come in dancing. And people will be there to see, so Lukos says. It seems they bet on the new bull-dancers, which will last longest. I never heard of a sacrifice being treated so lightly. The better for us; even their own gods can't think much of them."

We were making for an island, to lie up for the night, a lovely spot, with high mountains inland, whose slopes were clothed with vines and flowering fruit trees. From one tall peak, that had a flattened tip, a thin smoke was rising. I asked Menesthes if he knew where we were. He said, "It is Kalliste, the fairest of the Cyclades. That mountain is sacred to Hephaistos. You can see the smoke of his smithy, coming out of the top."

The land came near, and my skin prickled. It seemed I saw a doomed and holy brightness, like the beauty of the King Horse groomed for the god. I said, "Is he angry?" "I don't think so," Menesthes said. "It always smokes; the pilots steer by it. It's the last port before Crete. From here it is open water."

"Then," I said, "we must polish our dance, while the light still holds."

In the sunset glow, and in the twilight with lamps appearing, we danced at our mooring on the water-front; and the people of the port stood gaping, knowing where we were bound. Being young and in health, we started to laugh at it; the boys threw cartwheels and somersaults; and suddenly silent Helike, still in silence, bent herself back into a hoop, and stood up on her hands.

"Why," I said laughing, "whoever taught you that? It's as good as a tumbler!"

"Why not?" she said coolly. "That is my trade." She dropped her skirt, making nothing of it; underneath was a little gold-sewn breech. All her bones were like gristle; she could run on her hands as easily as her feet. The black soldiers, who had been telling long tales in a circle, sprang up pointing, and crying "Haul" She took no notice of them; but except when dancing she was very modest. Girl tumblers have to be chaste; they are no use when they are carrying.

When she stopped, I asked whyever she had not told us. She looked down a moment, then met my eyes. "I thought everyone would hate me, for having the best chance to live. But we are all friends now. Shall I dance for the Cretans?"

"By the Mother, yes!" I said. "You shall do a turn to finish the show." She said, "But I shall need a man to catch me." "Here are seven; take your choice." She hesitated, and said at last, "I was watching the dance. You are the only one with the knack, Theseus, and that would not be fitting."

"Tell that to the bulls," I said. "It will be news to them. Come, show me what to do."

It was not hard work; she was light as a child, and one only needed to be steady. At the end she said, "If you were a common man, you could make this your living." I said smiling, "We shall all have to live by it, when we get to Crete."

When I had spoken, I looked and saw the eyes of all the others fixed on me in despair. I thought, as one does sooner or later when one has charge of people, "What is the good of it? Why do anything?"

"Believe in yourselves!" I said to them. "If I can learn it, so can you. Only believe, and we may all keep together. Lukos said something about dancers being dedicated in the names of princes and nobles, as an offering to the god. Perhaps one might take us all. Let them all see, when we come in harbor, that we're the best team that ever came to Crete. We are the best team. We are the Cranes."

For a moment they stood silent, their eyes like leeches, draining my blood. Then Amyntor waved his hand and cheered, and everyone joined in. At that moment I loved Amyntor. He was haughty, wild, and rash; but he was in love with his honor. You could break every bone in him before he would break his oath.

Next morning, with our breakfast porridge, we finished the food we had brought from home. It was our last link with Athens broken. We had nothing now but one another.

2

The seas round Crete are dark blue almost to blackness, wild, bare, and empty. None of us had been before on water where one saw no land. There indeed man is a dust-grain in the palm of the god. But no one was awed except ourselves. The stout priestess stitched in the sun; the seamen trimmed up the ship; the soldiers polished their black limbs with oil; and the Captain sat combing his long dark lovelocks, stripped to his codpiece, while the boy polished his gilded loin-guard and his helmet chased with lily flowers.

Toward evening we got a head breeze; the sail was lowered, and the rowers strained at the oar. The ship, from rolling, started to pitch. At supper-time no one was hungry but Menesthes. A few forced something down; but before dark we threw it up again. Then we lay on the deck and wished to die.

"If tomorrow is the same," I thought, "we are finished." Helike lay moaning, green as a duck's egg. I felt my body sticky with cold sweat. My belly heaved, and I staggered back to the side.

When I was empty, I looked about me. Evening was falling. The sun girdled with purple was sinking in the burnished sea; eastward the first stars blinked in the cloud-rack. I stretched out my hand to Poseidon, but he sent no sign. He was away perhaps, shaking the earth somewhere. All about us I felt another power, dark, past man's thought, giver of desolation or of joy, she who can cherish or cast away but abides no question. Two gulls flew by me, one following the other with wild cries, the pursued screaming as if in scorn. I was cold and weak, and grasped the bulwark to keep from falling.

"Sea Mother," I said, "Foam-Born Peleia of the Doves, this is your kingdom. Do not forsake us while we are in Crete. I have no offering now for you; but I swear, if I get back to Athens, you and your doves shall have a shrine upon the Citadel."

I sank on the deck again, and pulled my blanket over my head. Lying down eased the sickness and I slept. When I woke, the stars were paling, and the wind had changed; we had tacked and it was behind us. The ship flew smoothly; stretched out like spent dogs the rowers lay sleeping. The Cranes woke up, and reached hungrily for last night's uneaten food.

When day was bright, we saw before us the high shores of Crete: huge wrinkled yellow cliffs, sheer-standing, the land hidden above them. It looked a cruel coast.

The great sail was hauled down, and another hoisted. All the royal ships of Crete had their dress sails, kept fresh for making port. This was dark blue, with a device in red. It showed a naked warrior, with a bull's head on his shoulders.

The Athenians gazed with eyes of stone. Nephele, always the first to weep unless the grief was another's, sobbed, "Oh, you deceived us, Theseus! There is a monster after all!"

"Shut your noise," I said. She put me out of patience. But she liked roughness in men, and dried her eyes. "You fool," I said, "it is the emblem of a god. So they draw the Earth Snake man-headed; did you ever meet him?" They cheered up, and I felt better myself. "At the harbor bar," I said, "be ready."

Where the cliffs opened to a river-mouth, we saw the port of Amnisos. Since it was bigger than Athens, we took it for Knossos itself. The soldiers formed up forward; the Captain, curled and oiled and burnished, stood on the bridge gilt-helmed and spear in hand; we could smell his scent from the afterdeck. They had taken down our awning, to let us be seen. Ahead was the mole, with people on it.

I knew nothing yet; but they gave me pause. There was an air in their looking and strolling, before one could see a face. They seemed people broke to wonders, as the chariot horse is broke to noise. They had not come to stare, but to glance idly and pass on. Women with parasols leaned together heads crimped and bound with gems; slim men half bare, with gilded belts and jewelled necklaces and flowers behind their ears, led spotted hounds as languid and proud as they. Even the laborers seemed to look at us over their shoulders, as if in passing at a common thing. I felt the pride drain out of me, like blood from a mortal wound. These were the people I had thought to amaze. My toes curled on the deck, as I pictured their laughter.

I looked round. The Cranes too had seen. They were waiting, as a tired slave waits for bedtime, to hear me own we were beaten. "They are right," I thought. "We have got to die; let us come to it decently at least." And then I thought, "This is Crete. We have come to the end, but for this one thing. I have made myself answerable for these people; now I must go on if the whole world mocks me. I undertook it."

I clapped my hands, and shouted, "Sing!"

They formed their circle, and now in the first comers I knew the bravest and the best: Amyntor, Chryse, Melantho, Iros and Hippon and Menesthes, and good ugly Thebe. As for Helike, she was there already, the only one who had not faltered. Poised as proudly as the Cretans on her slender feet, she seemed to say she had no awe of such people, she who had danced for kings. It was she who saved us. Till now she had been playing, saving her best for the show. The rest looked at her, not at the Cretans, when we passed the mole. I tossed her up as she had taught me, and felt her little hands, clever and strong as an ape's, grasp my shoulders as she stood upside down. "Fate is our master," I thought. "Yesterday a king, and today a tumbler's man. I hope my father never hears of it."

I heard the twitter of voices, calling out to each other, but could not move to look. Picturing all those scornful eyes, I wished myself at the bottom of the sea. Then Helike signed to me to catch her; and as her face passed mine she winked at me. The dance ended. I looked, and saw Lukos on his bridge waving gaily to the people. He looked so pleased with himself that I could have kicked him, even when I saw what it meant.

We tied up at a high stone wharf. Beyond were houses like rows of towers, four or five floors high. The dockside swarmed with faces, brown and quick-eyed. In the midst were some priests, who I thought had come to receive us. But they stood there, pointing and tittering. They wore petticoats, to show they served the Goddess; and I saw from their smooth plump faces and shrill speech that they had offered her their manhood. They were only here to stare.

We stood for a long while in the hot Cretan sun, with the troops drawn up beside us and the Captain idling on his spear. No one kept the crowd away from us. Women clucked and giggled; men disputed; in front was a crowd of flashy fellows with gimcrack jewels, like the man at Troizen. But I could not tell them this time to get out of my sight. They were the gamblers and the bookmakers, come to reckon the odds on our length of days.

They walked round us, chaffering together in Cretan stuck with Greek words misused, the speech of such men in Knossos. Then they came up and kneaded our muscles, or, nudging each other, pinched the girls on their breasts and thighs. So long as no one damaged us, we were anybody's meat. Amyntor would have struck one, but I held his arm. It was beneath us to notice them. Death I had been ready for, but not this, to go to the god with less honor than an ox or a horse. Better I had leaped in the sea, I thought, before I made myself a mountebank for scum like these.

Suddenly a great trumpet blast sounded behind us. I jumped round to face it, as anyone would who had been a warrior. But there were only the gamblers, pointing and shouting odds. It was a trick they used on the new bull-dancers, to see who moved quickest, and who was afraid. Chryse's eyes were wet with tears; I don't think she had known a rough word before she left her home. I took her hand, till I heard the lewd talk, and then I dropped it.

A stinking fellow wearing stale scent poked my ribs and asked my name. When I took no notice, he shouted as if I were a deaf idiot, in barbarous Greek, "How old are you? When were you last sick? How did you get those scars?" Turning from his foul breath, I caught the eye of Lukos, who shrugged, as if to say, "I cannot be answerable for these low fellows. When you had a gentleman, you were not thankful."

But the heads of the crowd were turning. I followed their gaze, up the steep street of tall houses. Three or four litters were coming down it. Soon there were more, filling the causeway between the middens. Lukos looked well pleased with himself. I saw it was not to amuse the rabble he had kept us here.

The litters approached: first a man in a carrying-chair, nursing in his lap a cat with a turquoise collar; then two women's litters, the curtains open, the servants running side by side to let their mistresses gossip. They leaned together, their hands in fluttering talk, and the shoulders of the inside bearers nearly breaking, for they were all little men. The people in the litters were much bigger than the Cretans round them, and fairer too. This made me sure they were from the Palace; for I knew the house of Minos had Hellene blood and that the court spoke Greek.

Litter after litter was set down; lords and ladies were lifted out like precious jewels, and handed their lap dogs, their fans, or their parasols. Each seemed to have brought some toy or other; one young man had a monkey with its fur dyed blue. And yet,- if you will believe it, out of all those men, the King's daily companions fed at his board with his meat and wine, not one carried a sword.

They all met and greeted, kissing cheeks or touching hands, talking together in the high clear voice of the Palace people. Their Greek was quite pure, but for the Cretan accent which sounds so mincing to a mainland ear. They have more words than we, for they talk continually of what they think and feel. But mostly one could understand them. The women called each other by such baby-names as we would use to children; and the men called them "darling" whether they were married to them or not; a thing which from their behavior nobody could guess. I saw one woman alone kissed by three men.

They greeted Lukos gaily, but without much regard; one could see he looked rather too much a Cretan. However, he got some kisses. A woman with a pair of lovebirds on her shoulder said, "You see, dear man, how we trust you; all this way in the noon heat, just at the whisper that you have something new to show." The man with the cat said, "I hope your swans are not geese." Just then a woman came up richly dressed, with an old face and young hair; I had never seen a wig before. She was leaning on a young man's arm, her son or husband, one could not say. "Show! Show!" she cried. "We are here the first and must be rewarded. Is it the girl?" She peered at Chryse, who had drawn close to my side. "But she is a child. In three years, yes, oh yes, a face to burn cities. What a thousand pities she will not live!" I felt Chryse's arm tremble against mine, and touched her hand softly. The young man bent and murmured in the woman's ear, "They understand you." She moved away raising her brows, as if she found us presumptuous. "Tut, my dear, they are barbarians after all. They don't feel as we should."