The King Must Die

by Mary Renault

  I stepped out, hearing men whisper, and women coo like mating pigeons. I knew already that the son of the Queen’s own daughter ranked before the sons of the Palace women; but I had never had it noticed publicly. I thought I was being honored like this because the King Horse was my brother.

  Five or six strong white hairs were put in my hand. I had meant to thank my grandfather; but now I felt come out of him the presence of the King, solemn as a sacred oak wood. So, like the others, I touched the lock to my brow in silence. Then I went back, and Diokles said, “Well done.”

  My grandfather raised his hands and invoked the god. He hailed him as Earth-Shaker, Wave-Gatherer, brother of King Zeus and husband of the Mother; Shepherd of Ships, Horse-Lover. I heard a whinny from beyond the pine woods, where the chariot teams were tethered, ready to race in honor of the god. The King Horse raised his noble head, and softly answered.

  The prayer was long, and my mind wandered, till I heard by the note that the end was coming. “Be it so, Lord Poseidon, according to our prayer; and do you accept the offering.” He held out his hand, and someone put in it a great cleaver with a bright-ground edge. There were tall men standing with ropes of oxhide in their hands. My grandfather felt the cleaver’s edge and, as in his chariot, braced his feet apart.

  It was a good clean killing. I myself, with all Athens watching, am content to do no worse. Yet, even now, I still remember. How he reared up like a tower, feeling his death, dragging the men like children; the scarlet cleft in the white throat, the rank hot smell; the ruin of beauty, the fall of strength, the ebb of valor; and the grief, the burning pity as he sank upon his knees and laid his bright head in the dust. That blood seemed to tear the soul out of my breast, as if my own heart had shed it.

  As the newborn babe, who has been rocked day and night in his soft cave knowing no other, is thrust forth where the harsh air pierces him and the fierce light stabs his eyes, so it was with me. But between me and my mother, where she stood among the women, was the felled carcass twitching in blood, and my grandfather with the crimson cleaver. I looked up; but Diokles was watching the death-throe, leaning easily on his spear. I met only the empty eye-slits of the leopardskin, and the arm-snake’s jewelled stare.

  My grandfather dipped a cup into the offering bowl, and poured the wine upon the ground. I seemed to see blood stream from his hand. The smell of dressed hide from Diokles’ shield, and the man’s smell of his body, came to me mixed with the smell of death. My grandfather gave the server the cup, and beckoned. Diokles shifted his spear to his shield arm, and took my hand. “Come,” he said. “Father wants you. You have to be dedicated now.”

  I thought, “So was the King Horse.” The bright day rippled before my eyes, which tears of grief and terror blinded. Diokles swung round his shield on its shoulder sling to cover me like a house of hide, and wiped his hard young hand across my eyelids. “Behave,” he said. “The people are watching. Come, where’s the warrior? It’s only blood.”

  He took the shield away; and I saw the people staring.

  At the sight of all their eyes, memories came back to me. “Gods’ sons fear nothing,” I thought. “Now they will know, one way or the other.” And though within me was all dark and crying, yet my foot stepped forward.

  Then it was that I heard a sea-sound in my ears; a pulse and a surging, going with me, bearing me on. I heard it then for the first time.

  I moved with the wave, as if it broke down a wall before me; and Diokles led me forward. At least, I know that I was led; by him, or one who took his shape as the Immortals may. And I know that having been alone, I was alone no longer.

  My grandfather dipped his finger in the blood of the sacrifice, and made the sign of the trident on my brow. Then he and old Kannadis took me under the cool thatch that roofed the holy spring, and dropped in a votive for me, a bronze bull with gilded horns. When we came out, the priests had cut off the god’s portion from the carcass, and the smell of burned fat filled the air. But it was not till I got home, and my mother asked, “What is it?” that at last I wept.

  Between her breasts, entangled in her shining hair, I wept as if to purge away my soul in water. She put me to bed, and sang to me, and said when I was quiet, “Don’t grieve for the King Horse; he has gone to the Earth Mother, who made us all. She has a thousand thousand children, and knows each one of them. He was too good for anyone here to ride; but she will find him some great hero, a child of the sun or the north wind, to be his friend and master; they will gallop all day, and never be tired. Tomorrow you shall take her a present for him, and I will tell her it comes from you.”

  Next day we went down together to the Navel Stone. It had fallen from heaven long ago, before anyone remembers. The walls of its sunken court were mossy, and the Palace noises fell quiet around. The sacred House Snake had his hole between the stones; but he only showed himself to my mother, when she brought him his milk. She laid my honey-cake on the altar, and told the Goddess whom it was for. As we went, I looked back and saw it lying on the cold stone, and remembered the horse’s living breath upon my hand, his soft lip warm and moving.

  I was sitting among the house dogs, at the doorway end of the Great Hall, when my grandfather passed through, and spoke to me in greeting.

  I got up, and answered; for one did not forget he was the King. But I stood looking down, and stroking my toe along a crack in the flagstones. Because of the dogs, I had not heard him coming, or I would have been gone. “If he could do this,” I had been thinking, “how can one trust the gods?”

  He spoke again, but I only said “Yes,” and would not look at him. I could feel him high above me, standing in thought. Presently he said, “Come with me.”

  I followed him up the corner stairs to his own room above. He had been born there, and got my mother and his sons, and it was the room he died in. Then I had been there seldom; in his old age he lived all day in it, for it faced south, and the chimney of the Great Hall went through to warm it. The royal bed at the far end was seven feet long by six feet wide, made of polished cypress, inlaid and carved. The blue wool cover with its border of flying cranes had taken my grandmother half a year on the great loom. There was a bronze-bound chest by it, for his clothes; and for his jewels an ivory coffer on a painted stand. His arms hung on the wall: shield, bow, longs word and dagger, his hunting knife, and his tall-plumed helmet of quilted hide, lined with crimson leather the worse for wear. There was not much else, except the skins on the floor and a chair. He sat, and motioned me to the footstool.

  Muffled up the stairway came the noises of the Hall: women scrubbing the long trestles with sand, and scolding men out of their way; a scuffle and a laugh. My grandfather’s head cocked, like an old dog’s at a footstep. Then he rested his hands on the chair-arms carved with lions, and said, “Well, Theseus? Why are you angry?”

  I looked up as far as his hand. His fingers curved into a lion’s open mouth; on his forefinger was the royal ring of Troizen, with the Mother being worshipped on a pillar. I pulled at the bearskin on the floor, and was silent.

  “When you are a king,” he said, “you will do better than we do here. Only the ugly and the base shall die; what is brave and beautiful shall live for ever. That is how you will rule your kingdom?”

  To see if he was mocking me, I looked at his face. Then it was as if I had only dreamed the priest with the cleaver. He reached out and drew me in against his knees, and dug his fingers in my hair as he did with his dogs when they came up to be noticed.

  “You knew the King Horse; he was your friend. So you know if it was his own choice to be King, or not.” I sat silent, remembering the great horse-fight and the war calls. “You know he lived like a king, with first pick of the feed, and any mare he wanted; and no one asked him to work for it.”

  I opened my mouth, and said, “He had to fight for it.”

  “Yes, that is true. Later, when he was past his best, a younger stallion would have come, and won the fight, and taken his kingdom. He would
have died hard, or been driven from his people and his wives to grow old without honor. You saw that he was proud.”

  Tasked, “Was he so old?”

  “No.” His big wrinkled hand lay quietly on the lion mask. “No older for a horse than Talaos for a man. He died for another cause. But if I tell you why, then you must listen, even if you do not understand. When you are older, if I am here, I will tell it you again; if not you will have heard it once, and some of it you will remember.”

  While he spoke, a bee flew in and buzzed among the painted rafters. To this day, that sound will bring it back to me.

  “When I was a boy,” he said, “I knew an old man, as you know me. But he was older; the father of my grandfather. His strength was gone, and he sat in the sun or by the hearthside. He told me this tale, which I shall tell you now, and you, perhaps, will tell one day to your son.” I remember I looked up then, to see if he was smiling.

  “Long ago, so he said, our people lived in the northland, beyond Olympos. He said, and he was angry when I doubted it, that they never saw the sea. Instead of water they had a sea of grass, which stretched as far as the swallow flies, from the rising to the setting sun. They lived by the increase of their herds, and built no cities; when the grass was eaten, they moved where there was more. They did not grieve for the sea, as we should, or for the good things earth brings forth with tilling; they had never known them; and they had few skills, because they were wandering men. But they saw a wide sky, which draws men’s mind to the gods; and they gave their firstfruits to Ever-Living Zeus, who sends the rain.

  “When they journeyed, the barons in their chariots rode round about, guarding the flocks and the women. They bore the burden of danger, then as now; it is the price men pay for honor. And to this very day, though we live in the Isle of Pelops and build walls, planting olives and barley, still for the theft of cattle there is always blood. But the horse is more. With horses we took these lands from the Shore People who were here before us. The horse will be the victor’s sign, as long as our blood remembers.

  “The folk came south by little and little, leaving their first lands. Perhaps Zeus sent no rain, or the people grew too many, or they were pressed by enemies. But my great-grandfather said to me that they came by the will of All-Knowing Zeus, because this was the place of their moira.”

  He paused in thought. I said to him, “What is that?”

  “Moira?” he said. “The finished shape of our fate, the line drawn round it. It is the task the gods allot us, and the share of glory they allow; the limits we must not pass; and our appointed end. Moira is all these.”

  I thought about this, but it was too big for me. I asked, “Who told them where to come?”

  “The Lord Poseidon, who rules everything that stretches under the sky, the land and the sea. He told the King Horse; and the King Horse led them.”

  I sat up; this I could understand.

  “When they needed new pastures, they let him loose; and he, taking care of his people as the god advised him; would smell the air seeking food and water. Here in Troizen, when he goes out for the god, they guide him round the fields and over the ford. We do it in memory. But in those days he ran free. The barons followed him, to give battle if his passage was disputed; but only the god told him where to go.

  “And so, before he was loosed, he was always dedicated. The god only inspires his own. Can you understand this, Theseus? You know that when Diokles hunts, Argo will drive the game to him; but he would not do it for you, and by himself he would only hunt small game. But because he is Diokles’ dog, he knows his mind.

  “The King Horse showed the way; the barons cleared it; and the King led the people. When the work of the King Horse was done, he was given to the god, as you saw yesterday. And in those days, said my great-grandfather, as with the King Horse, so with the King.”

  I looked up in wonder; and yet, not in astonishment. Something within me did not find it strange. He nodded at me, and ran down his fingers through my hair, so that my neck shivered.

  “Horses go blindly to the sacrifice; but the gods give knowledge to men. When the King was dedicated, he knew his moira. In three years, or seven, or nine, or whenever the custom was, his term would end and the god would call him. And he went consenting, or else he was no king, and power would not fall on him to lead the people. When they came to choose among the Royal Kin, this was his sign: that he chose short life with glory, and to walk with the god, rather than live long, unknown like the stall-fed ox. And the custom changes, Theseus, but this token never. Remember, even if you do not understand.”

  I wanted to say I understood him. But I was silent, as in the sacred oak wood.

  “Later the custom altered. Perhaps they had a King they could not spare, when war or plague had thinned the Kindred. Or perhaps Apollo showed them a hidden thing. But they ceased to offer the King at a set time. They kept him for the extreme sacrifice, to appease the gods in their great angers, when they had sent no rain, or the cattle died, or in a hard war. And it was no one’s place to say to him, ‘It is time to make the offering.’ He was the nearest to the god, because he consented to his moira; and he himself received the god’s commandment.”

  He paused; and I said, “How?”

  “In different ways. By an oracle, or an omen, or some prophecy being fulfilled; or, if the god came close to him, by some sign between them, something seen, or a sound. And so it is still, Theseus. We know our time.”

  I neither spoke nor wept, but laid my head against his knee. He saw that I understood him.

  “Listen, and do not forget, and I will show you a mystery. It is not the sacrifice, whether it comes in youth or age, or the god remits it; it is not the bloodletting that calls down power. It is the consenting, Theseus. The readiness is all. It washes heart and mind from things of no account, and leaves them open to the god. But one washing does not last a lifetime; we must renew it, or the dust returns to cover us. And so with this. Twenty years I have ruled in Troizen, and four times sent the King Horse to Poseidon. When I lay my hand on his head to make him nod, it is not only to bless the people with the omen. I greet him as my brother before the god, and renew my moira.”

  He ceased. Looking up, I saw him staring out between the red pillars of the window, at the dark-blue line of the sea. We sat some while, he playing with my hair as a man will scratch his dog to quiet it, lest its importunities disturb his thoughts. But I had no word to say to him. The seed is still, when first it falls into the furrow.

  At last he sat up with a start, and looked at me. “Well, well, child, the omens said I should reign long. But sometimes they talk double; and too early’s better than too late. All this is heavy for you. But the man in you challenged it, and the man will bear it.” He got up rather stiffly from his chair, and stretched, and strode to the doorway; his shout echoed down the twisted stair. Presently Diokles running up from below said, “Here I am, sir.”

  “Look at this great lad here,” my grandfather said, “growing out of his clothes, and nothing to do but sit with the house dogs, scratching. Take him away, and teach him to ride.”

  2

  NEXT YEAR, I BEGAN my service to Poseidon. For three years I went to Sphairia one month out of four, living with Kannadis and his fat old wife in their little house at the edge of the grove. My mother used to complain that I came back spoiled past bearing.

  It was true I came home rough and noisy. But I was only breaking out after the quiet. When you serve a holy place, you can never forget, even in sleep, that the god is there. You cannot keep from listening. Even on a bright morning, with birds in song, there are hushing whispers. Except at the festival, no one cares to be too loud in a precinct of Poseidon. It is like whistling at sea. You might start more than you bargained for.

  I remember many days like one: the hush of noonday; the shadow of the thatch falling straight and sharp; no sound but a cicada out in the hot grass, the restless pine-tops, and a far-off sea-hum like the echo in a shell. I swept th
e floor round the sacred spring, and scattered clean sand; then took the offerings laid on the rock beside it, and put them in a dish for the priests and servers to eat. I wheeled out the great bronze tripod, and filled its bowl from the spring, dipping the water out in a jug shaped like a horse’s head. When I had washed the sacred vessels, and dried them in clean linen, and set them out for the evening offerings, I poured off the water into an earthen jar that stood under the eaves. It is healing, especially for tainted wounds, and people come a long way to get it.

  There was a wooden image of Poseidon on the rock, blue-bearded, holding a fish-spear and a horse’s head. But I soon came not to notice it. Like the old Shore Folk who worshipped the Sea Mother under the open sky there, killing their victims on the bare rock, I knew where the deity lived. I used to listen in the deep noon shadow, quiet as the lizards on the pine trunks; sometimes there would be nothing but a wood-dove’s coo; but on another day, when the hush was deepest, there would sound far down in the spring a great throat swallowing, or a great mouth smacking its lips together; or sometimes only a long thick breath.

  The first time I heard, I dropped the cup back in the bowl, and ran out between the painted columns into the hot sun, and stood panting. Then came old Kannadis, and put his hand on my shoulder. “What is it, child? Did you hear the spring?” I nodded. He ruffled my hair and smiled. “What’s this? You don’t fear your grandfather, when he stirs in his sleep? Why fear Father Poseidon, who is nearer yet?” Soon I grew to know the sounds, and listened with my courage on tiptoe, in the way of boys; till the days of silence came to seem flat. And when a year had passed, bringing me trouble I could tell no one, I used to lean over the hollow rock and whisper it to the god; if he answered I would be comforted.

  That year, another boy came to the sanctuary. I came and went, but he was there to stay; he had been offered as a slave to the god, to serve the precinct all his days. His father, being wronged by some enemy, had promised him before his birth in exchange for this man’s life. He got home dragging the body at his chariot tail, on the day Simo was born. I was there when he was dedicated, with a lock of the dead man’s hair bound round his wrist