The King Must Die

by Mary Renault

  “In Athens?” I said staring. It was only a name to me.

  She said a little impatiently, as if I ought to know, “His grandfather had too many sons, and he had none. He has never held his throne a year in quiet, nor his father before him.” She looked at my face, and then down at the hair she was combing. “Come, Theseus. Do you think chiefs or barons carry swords like that?”

  There was a roughness in her voice, like a young girl’s, as if she were shy, and trying to hide it. Then I thought, “Why not? She is three and thirty, and it is near eighteen years since a man was with her.” And I was angrier for her than I had been for myself before. “What is his name?” I said. “I must have heard it, but I don’t remember.”

  “Aigeus,” she said, as if she were listening to herself. “Aigeus, son of Pandion, son of Kekrops. They are of the seed of Hephaistos, Lord of the Earth Fire, who married the Mother.”

  I said, “Since when was Hephaistos’ seed better than the seed of Zeus?” I was thinking of all the toil I had put myself to for this man’s pleasure, thinking it was for a god. “It should have been enough for him, and more, that I was your son. Why did he leave you here?”

  “There was a reason,” she said again. “We must find a ship, to send you to Athens.”

  I said, “To Athens? Oh, no, Mother, that’s too far to go. Eighteen years since his night’s pastime, and he never looked back to see what came of it.”

  “That is enough!” she cried, princess and priestess all through; yet there was that shy roughness still. I was ashamed of myself; coming up to her chair, I kissed her head. “Forgive me, Mother. Don’t be angry; I know how it is. I’ve laid a girl or two myself who never meant to do it; and if anyone thought the worse of them, it wasn’t I. But if King Aigeus wants a spearman more for his house, let him get one at home. Though he didn’t stand by you, he did the next best thing; he gave you a son who will.”

  She drew a sharp breath; then she let it out on half a laugh. “Poor boy, it’s not your fault you know nothing. Talk to your grandfather. It is better from him than me.”

  I picked up a lock of her fresh-combed hair, and turned the end round my finger. I wanted to say I could have forgiven a man she had taken for her pleasure, but not one who had taken her for his, and gone away. But I only said, “Yes, I will see him. It is late enough.”

  I stayed, however, to change my clothes. I was angry enough to prize my dignity. My best suit was of dark red buckskin, the jerkin trimmed with gold studs and the drawers with kid-skin tassels, to match the boots. I was buckling the sword on, when I remembered no one brings arms into the presence of the King.

  At the top of the narrow stairs, his voice bade me enter. He had had a chill lately, and still kept his room. There was a shawl round his shoulders, and on the stand by his chair a posset cup with the dregs still in it. His face looked sallow, and one began to see age there. But I would not be cheated of my anger, and stood before him silent. He met my eyes with his old pale ones; I could see he knew. Then he nodded to me briskly, and pointed to the footstool. “You can sit down, my boy.”

  From habit I pulled it out and sat. He had been a long time at his trade, and his fingers had command in them as a harper’s have music. It was only when I found myself back in my childhood seat, my feet on the old worn bearskin, my arms round my knees, that I saw how he had made a fool of me. Near my face was the posset cup, with its smell of barley and honey, eggs and wine; a smell of old age, and of childhood. I felt my man’s anger dashed down into a boy’s. From above me, now, his watery eyes blinked down, with the touch of malice in them that old men feel to young men when their own strength is done.

  “Well, Theseus. Has your mother told you who you are?” Crouched at his feet like a fettered captive, my heart full of bitterness, I answered “Yes.”

  “And you have things to ask me?” I was silent. “Or ask your father, if you prefer.” I did not trust myself to speak; he was the King. “He will acknowledge you as his heir now, if you show him the sword.”

  I was startled into speech. “Why should he, sir? He has sons of his own house, I suppose.”

  “None in marriage. As for the rest, bear in mind that though he is an Erechthid, which is well enough, we are the house of Pelops, and Olympian Zeus begot us.”

  It was in my mouth to say, “As Poseidon did me, sir?” I did not say it; not, if you want the truth, because he was my grandfather, but because I did not dare.

  He looked at my face; then drew the shawl about him and said testily, “Do you never shut a door behind you? This room is like a barn.” I got up and saw to it. “Before you speak of your father with disrespect, let me tell you that but for him you might be a fisherman’s or a peasant’s son; or a slave’s, for that matter.”

  I was glad to be standing. Presently I said, “Her father can tell me that, and go safe away.”

  “Your mouth is robbing your ears,” he said. “Be quiet, boy, and attend to what I am saying.” He looked at me, and waited. I held out for a little; then I came back, and sat at his feet.

  “In the year before your birth, Theseus, when your mother was fifteen, we had a summer without rain. The grain was small in the ear, and the grapes were like hedgerow berries; the dust lay deep, so that men’s feet sank in it, and nothing prospered but the flies. And with the drought came a sickness, which, sparing the old, took children and maidens and young men. First a hand would fail them, or they would limp; then later they fell down, and the strength went out of their very ribs, so that they could not draw in the breath of life. Those who lived are cripples to this day, like Thyestes the stillman, with his short leg. But mostly they died.

  “I inquired what deity we had offended, going first to Apollo, Lord of the Bow. He said through the entrails of the victim that he had not shot at us; but he said no more. Zeus too was silent, and Poseidon sent no omens. It was about the time of year when the people drive out the scapegoat. They chose a squinting man they said had the evil eye, and beat him with such rage that by the time they came to burn him, there was no life left in him. But still no rain fell, and the children died.

  “I lost three sons here in the Palace: my wife’s two boys, and one who I must own was even dearer. He lay dying like one already dead, only for his living eyes that begged me to give him breath. When he was in his grave, I said to myself, ‘Surely the time of my moira is coming. Soon the god will send me the sign.’ I put my affairs in order, and at supper would look at my sons about the table, weighing them to choose my heir. Yet no sign came to me.

  “On the next day after, your father came to Troizen, journeying from Delphi to take ship for Athens. He was taking the two sea trips which avoid the Isthmus Road. I was in no mood for company; but the guest of the land is sacred, so I made what show I could. Soon I was glad of it. He was younger than I, but adversity had seasoned him; he had understanding of men. Over supper we began to share our troubles; what I had just lost, he had never known. His first wife had been barren; the second died in childbed with a stillborn girl. He had gone to the oracle; but its answer was dark and riddling, and even the priestess could not interpret it. Now he was going back to a harassed kingdom, with no heir to stand beside him. So there we were, two men in sorrow who understood each other. I sent away the harper, and had a chair brought up here for him; by this hearthstone, where you and I are now, we sat quietly and talked of grief.

  “When we were alone, he told me how his brothers, in their greed to get the kingdom, had sunk to scandalling their own mother, a most honorable lady, and proclaiming him a bastard. Here, it seemed to me, were troubles equal to mine. Then, as we talked, there was a great commotion in the Hall below, wailing and outcry. I went out to see.

  “It was the Priestess of the Goddess, my father’s sister. Round her were the women, crying, beating their breasts, and making their cheeks bleed with their nails. I stood on the steps, and asked what it was. She answered, ‘Grief upon grief, King Pittheus, you have laid on the people, setting gifts bef
ore the Sky Gods who were full-fed already, and starving the altar nearest your hearth. Now the second night I have brought meat and milk to the Navel Stone, and the second time the House Snake has refused it. Will you wait till every womb in Troizen has lost the fruit of its labor? Sacrifice, sacrifice. It is the Mother who is angry.’

  “At once I had a holocaust of swine brought in, reproaching myself for having left all this to the women. I should have guessed from Apollo’s silence that our troubles were not from the sky. Next morning we killed the pigs about the Navel Stone. The house echoed with their squealing, and the smell of entrails hung in the air all day. When the blood had sunk into the earth, we saw clouds coming from the westward. They hung gray above us, but the rain in them did not fall.

  “The Priestess came, and led me to the Navel Court, and showed me the House Snake’s wriggling track, by which she read the omens. ‘He has told me now,’ she said, ‘what has angered the Mother. It is twenty years, not less, since a girl of this house hung up her girdle for the Goddess. Aithra, your daughter, has been two years a woman; but has she dedicated her maidenhead? Send her to the Myrtle House, and let her not refuse the first comer, whoever he may be, sailor or slave, or wet-handed from his own father’s blood. Or Mother Dia will not relent till this is a childless land.’”

  My grandfather looked down at me. “Well, young thickhead? Do you begin to understand?” I nodded, too full to speak.

  “I went off thankful, like any man in such a case, that it was no worse. Yet I was sorry for the child. Not that she would lose any honor with the people; the peasants who have mixed their blood with the Shore People’s have sucked in such customs with their mothers’ milk. Well, I had never forbidden it; but nor had I enforced it; and certainly your mother had not been brought up to expect such a thing. It made me angry to see the Priestess glad of it. She had been widowed young, and no one else had offered for her; she did not like well-favored girls. The child was shy and proud; I feared her falling to some low fellow, who from brutishness, or malice to those above him, would take her as roughly as a whore. But most of all I misliked the base blood it might bring into our house. If a child was born, it could not be let live. But that I would keep from her now; the day’s concern was enough.

  “I sought her in the women’s rooms. She listened silently, and did not complain; it was a little thing, she said, to do for the children; but when I took her hands, I felt them cold. I went back to my guest too long neglected. He said, ‘My friend, here is some new trouble.’

  “‘Less than the last,’ I said, and told him. I did not make much of it, not wishing to seem soft; but, as I say, your father understood men. He said, ‘I have seen the maiden. She should bear kings. And she is modest. This is hard for you and her.’ That table there was standing between us. Suddenly he struck it with his fist. ‘Surely, Pittheus, some god had my good in mind when he led me here. Tell me, what time of day do the girls go to the grove?’ I said, ‘About sundown, or a little before.’ ‘By custom only? Or is there any sacred law?’ ‘None that I know of,’ I answered, beginning to see his drift. ‘Tell the Priestess, then, that the maid will go tomorrow; and if she is there before daybreak, who will know but you and I? So we shall all three gain: I an heir, if heaven relents to me; you a grandson of decent blood both sides; and your daughter—well, two brides have come to me virgins, and I know a little of women. What do you say, my friend?’”

  “‘In the gods’ name,’ I said. They have remembered my house today.’”

  “‘Then,’ he said, ‘nothing remains but to tell the maiden; and if it is a man she has seen already and knows no harm of, she will be less afraid.’

  “I nodded; but a thought stayed me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘She is of the Kindred; she must go consenting to the sacrifice, or it will lose its virtue. Let it rest between you and me.’

  “When the first quarter of the night was gone, I went to wake your mother. But she was watching in her bed, with her lamp beside her. ‘My child,’ I said, ‘I have had a dream, sent I don’t doubt by some god or other, that you went to the grove before cocklight, to do your duty to the Goddess with the first of the day. So get up and make ready.’ She looked at me in the lamplight with wide still eyes and answered, ‘Why, then, Father, it will be sooner done.’ Then she said, ‘It is a good omen for the children.’

  “Presently she came down wrapped in a foxskin cloak, for the night was chilly. Her old nurse, whom I had told nothing to, walked down with us as far as the shore, holding her hand, and chirping out like a cricket old wives’ tales of girls in this case whom gods had visited. We put your mother in the boat, and I myself rowed her over.

  “I beached where the glade runs down grassy to the shore. Great clouds were banking in the sky; the moon shone blinking on the shining myrtle leaves, and the house of cedar-wood on the rocks by the water. As we reached it the moon went in. She said, ‘A storm is coming. But no matter; I have my lamp with me, and the tinder.’ She had brought them all the way, hidden in her cloak. ‘That must not be,’ I said, taking them from her. ‘I remember my dream forbade it.’ It went to my heart; but I feared some night-walking thief would see the light. I kissed her and said, ‘To such things as this people of our kin are born; it is our moira. But if we are faithful, the gods are not far away.’ So I left her, and she neither wept nor clung to keep me. And as she went from me, thus consenting, into the dark house, Zeus thundered in heaven, and the first of the rain began to fall.

  “The storm came on quickly. I had not handled an oar since boyhood, and had ado to make the landing place. When I got there, wet through, I looked about for your father, to give the boat to him. Then I heard from the boathouse an old woman’s cackling laughter, and saw by the lightning the nurse sheltering from the rain. ‘Don’t seek for the bridegroom, King Pittheus; he grew impatient. Te-hee, young blood. I have got his clothes here, keeping dry; he won’t need them for this night’s work.’ ‘What do you mean, you old fool?’ I said; the crossing had not sweetened me. ‘Where is he?’ ‘Why, almost there by now, the Good Goddess give him joy of it. He said sea water was warmer than rain, and the maiden would need company, alone on such a night. A lovely man he is too; strips like a god; haven’t I waited on his bath since first he came here? Ah, folk don’t he when they call you Pittheus the Wise.’

  “Well, Theseus, that is how your father came to your mother. As she told me later, she stood at first in the doorway of the Myrtle House, for fear of the dark within. When the levin-light lit heaven, she saw Troizen over the water, and the boat already far away; when it ceased her eyes were dulled with it and she saw nothing. Presently came a great clap close at hand, the sound and the flash together; and there before her, on the rocky slab outside the porch, all gleaming and glittering in a clear blue light, stood a kingly naked man, with dripping hair and beard and a ribbon of seaweed on his shoulder. What with her awe of the place, and her being overwrought, and the old woman’s tales upon the way, she did not doubt the Lord Poseidon himself had come to claim her. The next flash showed her to your father sunk on her knees, her arms crossed on her bosom, waiting the pleasure of the god. So he lifted her up, and kissed her, and told her who he was. Presently in the house she covered him with her foxskin cloak; and that was your beginning.”

  He ceased. I said at last, “She has the cloak still. It is all worn and the fur is falling. Once I asked her why she kept it.” Then I said, “How was this hidden from me?”

  “I bound the nurse with an oath that scared even her to silence. After the storm, your father went back the way he came; and I brought the Priestess to witness the proofs of what had been accomplished. But neither she nor anyone knew who was the man. Your father asked that of me; he said your life would be in danger even in Troizen, if the claimants in Attica knew what seed you came of. Your mother’s fancy prompted me. I gave it out for the truth. When my wish was made known, folk who had other notions kept it to themselves.”

  He paused; a fly lighted on the gold rim of
the posset cup, crawled down to sip the dregs, and drowned. He muttered something about bone-idle servants, and pushed the cup away. Then he sank into thought, gazing through the window at the summer sea. Presently he said, “But I have thought to myself since then, What put it into your father’s head, a sensible man past thirty, to swim the strait like a wild boy? Why was he so sure he had made a son, he who had married twice and never got one? Who can follow the way of the Immortal Ones, when their feet tread earth? And I have asked myself if after all it was I or your mother whose eyes saw clear. It is when we stretch out our hands to our moira that we receive the sign of the god.”

  5

  ABOUT SEVEN DAYS LATER, a ship touched at Troizen bound for Athens.

  The Palace steward had taken my passage and seen to everything. But never having been on the open sea, I could not wait till sailing-time to see her, and walked down to the harbor. There she was, moored to the spit they call the Beard of Troizen: a dark-sailed ship, her sides painted with long serpents, her prow ornament an eagle with back-swept wings and a bull’s head; a ship of Crete.

  Cretan ships seldom came to us, except at tribute-time. The Beard was in a stir, and the people had set a market up. The potter and the smith, the weaving-woman and the carver, the farm people with cheeses and chicken and fruit and honeypots, sat on the cobbles with their wares about them; even the jeweller, who as a rule only brought his cheap stuff to the harbor, was showing gold. The Beard was full of Cretans, doing business and seeing the sights.

  The small dark seamen were working naked, except for the leather codpiece Cretans wear. They keep it on under their kilts, making a show which a Hellene finds somewhat laughable; much cry and little wool, as the saying goes. Some of those strolling round the market you might have taken for girls. At first sight, the company seemed all youths and graybeards. It was a custom in Troizen, as in most Hellene towns, if a man had done something very disgraceful, to shave half his face, lest he forget too quickly. The sight of men who on purpose had taken their beards off was something I could scarcely credit, even when I saw it. I was always feeling after mine; but it was too fair to show.