The King Must Die

by Mary Renault

  Next day I took him round the sanctuary to show him what to do. He was so much bigger than I, I wondered they had not sent him sooner. He did not like learning from a smaller boy, and made light of all I told him; he was not a Troizenian, but came from up the coast near Epidauros. As I saw more of him I liked him less. By his own story, there was nothing he could not do. He was thick and red, and if he caught a bird would pluck it alive and make it run about bare. I said he should let them be, or Apollo would be after him with an arrow, because birds bring his omens. But he said sneering that I was too squeamish to make a warrior. I hated even his smell.

  One day in the grove, he said, “Who is your father, towhead?”

  With a bold front and sinking belly, I answered, “Poseidon. That’s why I am here.” He laughed, and made a rude sign with his fingers. “Who told you that? Your mother?”

  It was like a black wave breaking over me. No one had ever said it openly. I was a spoiled child still; nothing much worse had come my way than justice from those who loved me. He said, “Son of Poseidon, a little runt like you! Don’t you know the gods’ sons are a head taller than other men?”

  I was shaking all over, being too young to hide my heart. I had felt safe from this, in the sacred precinct. “So shall I be tall, as tall as Herakles, when I’m a man. Everyone has to grow, and I shan’t be nine till spring.”

  He gave me a push that tumbled me over backwards. After a year in the holy place, I gasped at the impiety. He thought it was him I was afraid of. “Eight and a half!” he said, pointing his blunt finger. “Here I am not turned eight, and big enough to push you down. Run away home, little bastard! Ask Mother for a better tale.”

  There was a bursting in my head. What I next remember is hearing him yell in my ear. My legs were knotted round him, and I had both fists full of his hair, trying to crack his head upon the ground. When he put up an arm to beat me away, I sank my teeth in it and held fast. The priests got me off him by prizing my jaws with a stick.

  When we had been scrubbed and beaten, we were brought to beg the god’s pardon, burning our suppers before him to purge our impiety. At the moment of the sacrifice, the throat of the spring gave a great belch and gurgle. Simo jumped a foot in the air; he had more respect for the god’s presence thereafter.

  Kannadis cured his arm, when it festered, with the holy salt water. My wound was inward, and slow to heal.

  I was the youngest of the Palace children; I had never thought to measure myself with any others. Next time I went home, I began to look about, and to ask people’s ages. I found seven boys born in my year and season. Only one of them was smaller than I. There were even girls who were taller. I began to be silent, and to brood.

  All these six boys, as I saw it, were threats to my honor. If I could not outgrow them, I must prove myself some other way. So I would challenge them to dive between steep rocks, to poke wild bees’ nests and run, to ride the kicking mule or steal eggs from eagles. If they said no, I would make them fight. These contests I won, having more at stake than the others, though I never said so. Thereafter we could be friends, for me. But their fathers complained of me, that I led them into danger; and I was never two days running out of a scrape.

  One day I saw old Kannadis walking home from Troizen, and overtook him near the ford. He shook his head and said he heard sad tales of me; but I could see he was pleased I had run after him. Taking heart from this, I said, “Kannadis, how tall are the sons of the gods?”

  He peered at me sharply with old blue eyes, then patted my shoulder. “Who can say? That would be making laws for our betters. The gods themselves can be what size they choose; Paian Apollo once passed as a shepherd lad. And King Zeus himself, who got mighty Herakles, another time went courting as a swan. His wife had swan-children, curled up in eggs, as little as that.”

  “Then,” I said, “how do men know if they are god-begotten?”

  He brought down his white brows. “No man can know. Still less may he claim it. Certainly the gods would punish his pride. He could only seek for honor as if it might be true, and wait upon the god. Men are not asked to know such things; heaven sends a sign.”

  “What sign?” I asked. But he shook his head. “The gods will be known, when they are ready.”

  I thought much about this matter of honor. Talaos’ son, climbing out on a limb which bore my weight but not his, got a broken arm, and I a beating. The god sent no sign; so it seemed he was not satisfied.

  Behind the stables was the pen of the Palace bull. He was red as a pot, with short straight horns and a look of Simo. We boys liked teasing him through the palings, though the bailiff would clip us if he caught us at it. One day we had been watching him serve a cow and the show was over, when it came into my head to jump down in the bull pen and dodge across.

  He was quiet after his pleasure, and I got away easily; but it made a stir among the boys, which was enough to send me back next day. The life I had been living had made me hard and wiry and quick-footed; and when other boys out of emulation joined the game, I was still the master. I chose my band from those who were slight and spry; we would play the bull two or three together, the envy of the rest, while someone watched out for the bailiff.

  The bull too was learning. Soon before we were on the fence he would be pawing the ground. My troop grew shy, till at last the only boy who would go in with me was Dexios, the Horse Master’s son, who feared nothing four-footed. Even we two liked to have the others drawing off the bull’s eye before we jumped. One day, waiting his moment, young Dexios slipped, and fell in while the beast was watching.

  He was a boy younger than I, who followed my lead and liked me. I saw what must happen, and all through my fault. Being at my wits’ end what else to do, I leaped down on the bull’s head.

  What happened I don’t well remember, or how it felt, or if I expected to die. By luck I grasped him by the horns; and, being as new to this as I was, he rid himself of me carelessly. I flew up, struck my belly on the top of the fence and hung, felt the boys grab me, and was down on the other side. Meanwhile Dexios had climbed out, and the noise had brought the bailiff.

  My grandfather had promised me the thrashing of my life. But seeing, when he had me stripped, that I was black and blue as if I had had it already, he felt me over, and found two broken ribs. My mother cried, and asked what had possessed me. But she was not the one I could tell that to.

  By the time my bones were mended, it was time for the shrine again. Simo had now learned some manners; but he remembered his bitten arm. Now he never used my name, but always “Son of Poseidon.” He said it too smoothly, and we both knew what he meant.

  When it was my turn to cleanse the sanctuary, I used to kneel afterwards by the spring, and whisper the god’s name; and if any murmur answered, I would say softly, “Father, send me a sign.”

  One day of midsummer, when I was ten years old, the noon stillness seemed heavier than I had ever known it. The grass of the grove was pale with drought; the mat of pine needles muffled every sound. No bird was singing; even the cicadas were dumb; the pine-tops stood unmoving against the deep blue sky, as stiff as bronze. When I wheeled in the tripod, its rattling seemed like thunder, and made me uneasy, I could not tell why. I trod soft-footed, and kept the vessels from chinking. And all the while I was thinking, “I have felt this before.”

  I was glad to have done, and did not go to the spring, but straight outside, where I stood with my skin prickling. Kannadis’ fat wife greeted me as she shook her blankets, and I was feeling better; when up came Simo and said to me, “Well, son of Poseidon? Have you been talking to Father?”

  So he had spied on me. Yet even this did not move me as at another time. What rubbed me raw was that he had not lowered his voice, though all the world seemed to be saying “Hush.” It rasped me as if all my hair were being combed backwards; I said, “Be quiet.”

  He kicked a stone, which set my teeth on edge. “I looked through the shutter,” he said, “and saw the old woman nak
ed. There’s a wart on her belly.”

  I could not endure his voice sawing at the stillness. The offended silence seemed to brood around us. “Go away!” I said. “Can’t you feel Poseidon is angry?”

  He stared at me; then gave a jeering whinny. As it left his mouth, the air above us was loud with whirring wings. All the birds in the grove had left their trees, and hung above uttering their warning calls. At the sound I tingled all over, body, limbs, and head. I did not know what oppressed me so; but Simo’s laughter was past bearing. I shouted, “Get out!” and stamped my foot.

  My foot struck the earth; and the earth moved.

  I felt a rumbling, and a sideways ripple, such as some huge horse’s flank might give to shake off flies. There was a great noise of cracking timber, and the roof of the shrine came leaning down toward us. Men shouted, women shrieked, dogs barked and. howled; the old cracked voice of Kannadis called on the god; and suddenly there was cold water all about my feet. It was pouring out from the sanctuary, from the rocks of the holy spring.

  I stood half dazed. In all the din, I felt my head clear and lighten, like the air after thunder. “It was this,” I thought. “I felt it coming.” Then I remembered how I had felt strange, and cried, when I was four years old.

  Everywhere in the precinct and beyond, people invoked Poseidon Earth-Shaker, and vowed him offerings if he would be still. Then close at hand I heard a voice weeping and bawling. Simo was walking backwards, his clenched fist pressed in homage to his brow, and crying, “I believe! I believe! Don’t let him kill me!”

  As he blubbered, he backed into a slab of rock, and went down flat, and started to roar, so that the priests came running, thinking he was hurt. He went on babbling and pointing at me, while I stood too shaken to be glad, swallowing tears and wishing for my mother. The water was turning to mud about my toes. I stood in it, hearing the cries of the wheeling birds and Simo’s sobbing, till old Kannadis came up and made the sign of homage. Then he stroked the hair from my forehead, and led me off by the hand.

  No one was killed in the earthquake; and of the houses cracked or broken, none fell right down. My grandfather sent the Palace workmen with two new columns for the shrine; they mended the conduit of the holy spring, and the water returned to its course again. He came out himself to see the work, and called me to him.

  “I hear,” he said, “that the god sent you a warning.”

  I had been long alone with my thought, till I hardly knew the truth any longer; but this came as true to me. He knew such things, because he was priest as well as king. My mind rested.

  “Henceforth,” he said, “you will know it again. If it comes to you, run out of doors, and call to the people that Poseidon is angry. Then they can save themselves, before the houses fall. Such warnings are a favor of the god. Try to be worthy.”

  I said I would. I would have promised anything to the kind Horse Father, who had answered my long prayers with a sign.

  Next day in the grove Simo sidled up to me, and thrust something warm into my hands. “For you,” he said, and ran away. It was a ring-dove. He had kept it to pluck, I suppose, and changed his mind. It trembled between my palms, while I chewed on the thought that Simo had done me sacrifice, as if I were divine.

  I looked at its bright jewelled eye, its feet like dusky coral; the bloom of the back feathers, and the magic changing rainbow around its neck. A saying of my mother’s came into my mind, that we offer to the gods from their own creation; I remembered the birds and bulls I used to pinch from wet clay, and looked at the workmanship in my hand. It was Simo, after all, who taught me how far man is, even at his height of fortune, below the Immortals.

  I wondered if I should sacrifice it to Poseidon. But he does not much care for birds, and I thought I would give it back to Apollo. So I held up my hands and opened them, and let it fly.

  3

  AFTER THE GOD’S SIGN, I no longer doubted I should grow tall. Season after season I waited, trusting. I had seen other boys shoot up all in a year or two, even without a god to help them. Seven feet, I thought, had been good enough for Herakles and would do for me; but I would settle for six, if Earth-Shaker required.

  I turned eleven, and finished my service to Poseidon, and loosed a half-grown boar, whose tusks were showing, in the Great Hall when the King of Tiryns was dining there. Being younger than he had looked to me, he joined whooping in the chase, and said he had never spent an evening better; but my grandfather whipped me all the same, saying it might as easily have been the High King of Mycenae.

  I turned twelve, and played in the thicket with a land baron’s daughter, who was thirteen. This came to nothing; she scolded me off, saying I hurt her. I argued that from all I heard, it was only to her credit; but she said she was sure I must be doing it wrong.

  None the less, I was coming into manhood. In that way, I was better grown than boys much older. But I was still the smallest of my year but one; and when Simo brought a message from the shrine, I saw he was a whole hand taller.

  My uncle Diokles could comb his beard to a point now, and would soon be married. He laughed at my scrapes when I was in disgrace with everyone else, taught me the skills of war and hunting, and tried to make me spend my spirits usefully. But one day when I was thirteen, finding me out of heart beside the wrestling ground, he said to me, “See, now, Theseus, no one can do everything. Some things need a light man, others a heavy one. Why can’t you take yourself as you are? You are doing well enough. You’re the best jumper about here, long or high; you nearly always win the foot race; as for riding, you can stay on anything; you are better than Dexios, who is better than all the rest. And you have a very straight eye, both for the bow and javelin; I know Maleus throws further, but how often does he hit? You will make a warrior, if you go on as you are; you’re not frightened, you are quick, and you’ve a grip like a grown man’s. If you are sensible, and get to know yourself, you’ll seldom come away from the games without two or three prizes. That should be enough for anyone. It’s time you stopped fretting your heart out, and wasting time, over contests where only weight will do. You will never make a wrestler, Theseus. Face it once for all.”

  I had never seen him so serious; and I knew he was really fond of me. So I only said, “Yes, Diokles. I suppose you are right.” I was too old now to cry. I thought, “He has even forgotten why I should be big. It is not that he wants to hurt me, like Simo; not at all. Simply he never thinks of such a thing. It never enters his head.”

  Poseidon’s sign was four years behind me. In youth, four years is long. And even the people thought less about it, now they saw I had not the stature of god-got men.

  I was fourteen; the Corn Moon shone, and it was harvest home. My mother received the Goddess’ offerings, or read her the pledges written on leaves of clay. At evening she went down to the Navel Court, and following as far the cloister walk, I heard her soft voice, telling the House Snake all about the harvest; for, as she said, if we kept anything from him we should have no luck next year. I lingered in the shadow thinking how she must once have told him who my father was. Perhaps she was talking of me now. But it is death for men to spy on women’s mysteries. Lest I should hear a word of what she was saying, I slipped away.

  Next day was the Corn Feast. In the morning she offered to the Mother at the sacred pillar, standing before it straight as the shaft, and graceful as the rising smoke. No one would have thought her sacred dress was so heavy, the flounces clashing with ivory lozenges and disks of gold. “Why does she not tell me?” I thought. “Does she need to be told I suffer?” And anger burned me like a red-hot rod, striking on my heart where it was tender with love.

  Later we had the Games. I watched the wrestling, the big men grasping each other round the middle, straining and heaving to lift each other off the ground. Nowadays you will have to go far in the back hills to see Old Hellene style; but in those days, there was no other in the Isle of Pelops, and as much skill in it as in a tug of war.

  In the boys’
events I won the jumping, and the foot race, and the javelin-throwing, just as Diokles had said. When the prizes were given on the threshing floor, I got a bag of arrowheads, a pair of javelins, and a belt sewn with scarlet. As I came away with them, I heard a voice say in the crowd, “He is blue-eyed and flaxen like a Hellene; but he is built like the Shore People, wiry and quick and small.” And someone answered softly, “Well, who can say?”

  I went outside. The Corn Moon shone great and golden. I laid my prizes on the ground, and walked down to the sea.

  The night was calm. Moonlight lay on the strait, and a night bird called, soft and bubbling, like water from a narrow jar. From uphill I heard the singing, and hands clapping to the dance.

  I walked straight into the water as I was, in my belt and drawers. I wanted to be far from men and their voices. As I struck out with the current to the open sea, I said within me, “If I am the god’s he will look after me. If not I shall drown, and I do not care.”

  Beyond the narrows and the headland, the strait opened to the sea. Then over on Kalauria I heard music and saw torches weaving; and boylike I wanted to go and see. I turned, and struck for the island shore; but the lights grew smaller whenever I looked. I saw I might truly die; and I wanted life.

  The current had borne me easily; but when I fought it, it was cruel and strong. I began to be tired, and cold; my leather breeches dragged at my thighs, my wet belt pinched my breathing. A wave slapped me head-on, and I went under.

  I could not right myself; I seemed to sink to the very bottom of the sea. My head and my chest felt bursting. I thought, “The god rejects me. I have lived for a lie and there is nothing left. Oh that I could be dead without dying! It is hard to die, harder than I know.” My eyes flashed and saw pictures: my mother in her bath; a hunchback the children laughed at; the shrine in the noon stillness; the youths in their horse-dance stamping for the god; and the sacrifice, my grandfather beckoning with his bloodstained hand. And then, just as when I was seven years old, I heard within me the sea-surge, bearing me up and on. It seemed to say to me, “Be quiet, my son, and let me carry you. Am I not strong enough?”