The King Must Die

by Mary Renault

  She drew herself up frowning. “What is a man to choose? Woman bears him; he grows up and seeds like grass, and falls into the furrow. Only the Mother, who brings forth men and gods and gathers them again, sits at the hearthstone of the universe and lives for ever.” She lifted her hand; the attendant women fell back around her; a man came forward to lead my horses. “Come,” she said. “You must be made ready for the wrestling.”

  I found myself walking at her side. All round us followed the people, whispering like waves upon a shoal. Clothed in their expectation, I felt not myself but what they called me to be. One does not guess the power of these mysteries, till one is given part in them.

  As I walked in silence beside the Queen, I recalled what a man had told me, about a land where the custom is the same. He said that in all those parts there is no rite in the year that moves and holds the people like the death of the King. “They see him,” this man said, “at the height of fortune, sitting in glory, wearing gold; and coming on him, sometimes unknown and secret, sometimes marked by the omens before all the people, is the one who brings his fate. Sometimes the people know it before the King himself has word.” So solemn is the day, he said, that if anyone who watches has grief or fear or trouble of his own, it is all purged out of him by pity and terror; he comes away calmed, and falls into a sleep. “Even the children feel it,” he said. “The herdboys up country, who cannot leave their flocks to see the sight, will play out for one another on the hillsides, with songs and miming, the death day of the King.”

  This thought awakened me. “What am I doing?” I thought. “I have offered my forelock to Apollo; I have served Poseidon, the Mother’s husband and lord, who is immortal. Where is this woman leading me? To kill the man who killed someone last year, and lie with her four seasons to bless the corn, till she gets up from my bed to fetch my killer to me? Is that my moira? She may have omens; but none have come to me. No, an Earthling dream is leading me, like the King Horse drunk with poppy. How shall I get free?”

  All the same, I was looking aside at her, as a man will at a woman he knows is his for the taking. Her face was too broad, and the mouth not fine enough; but her waist was like a palm tree, and to be unmoved by her breasts a man would need to be dead. The Minyans of Eleusis have mixed their blood with the Hellene kingdoms either side; her color and form were Hellene, but not her face. She felt me look, and walked straight on with her head held high. The fringe of the crimson sunshade tickled my hair.

  I thought, “If I refuse, the people will tear me to pieces. I am the sower of their harvest. And this lady, who is the harvest field, will be very angry.” One can tell some things from a woman’s walking, even though she will not look. “She is a priestess and knows earth magic, and her curse will stick. Mother Dia must have her eye on me already. I was begotten to appease her anger. And she is not a goddess to treat lightly.”

  We had come to the sea road. I looked eastward and saw the hills of Attica, dry with summer and pale with noon, a morning’s journey. I thought, “How could I go to my father, whose sword I carry, and say, ‘A woman called me to fight, but I ran away?’ No. Fate has set in my path this battle of the stallions, as it set Skiron the robber. Let me do the thing at hand, and trust in the gods.”

  “Lady,” I said, “I was never this side of the Isthmus until now. What are you called?” She gazed before her and said softly, “Persephone. But it is forbidden for men to speak it.” Coming nearer, I said, “A whispering name. A name for the dark.” But she did not answer; so I asked, “And what is the King’s name, whom I am to kill?”

  She looked at me surprised, and answered carelessly, “His name is Kerkyon,” as if I had asked it of some masterless dog. For a very little, it seemed, she would have said that he had no name.

  Just inshore, the road sloped upwards to a flat open place at the foot of a rocky bluff. Stairs led up it to the terrace where the Palace stood: red columns with black bases, and yellow walls. The cliff below it was undercut; the hollow looked dark and gloomy, and had a deep cleft in its floor that plunged into the earth. The breeze bore from it a faint stench of rotten flesh.

  She pointed to the level place before it, and said, “There is the wrestling ground.” I saw the Palace roof and the terrace thick with people. Those who had come with us spread themselves on the slopes. I looked at the cleft and said, “What happens to the loser?”

  She said, “He goes to the Mother. At the autumn sowing his flesh is brought forth and plowed into the fields, and turns to corn. A man is happy who in the flower of youth wins fortune and glory, and whose thread runs out before bitter old age can fall on him.” I answered, “He has been happy indeed,” and looked straight at her. She did not blush, but her chin went up.

  “This Kerkyon,” I said; “we meet in combat, not as the priest offers the victim?” That would have been against my stomach, seeing the man had not chosen his own time. I was glad when she nodded her head. “And the weapons?” I asked. “Only those,” she said, “that men are born with.” I looked about and said, “Will a man of your people tell me the rules?” She looked at me puzzled; I thought it was my Hellene speech, and said again, “The laws of battle?” She raised her brows and answered, “The law is that the King must die.”

  Then, on the broad steps that climbed up to the Citadel, I saw him coming down to meet me. I knew him at once, because he was alone.

  The steps were crowded with people from the Palace; but they all hung back from him and stood wide, as if his death were a catching sickness. He was older than I. His black beard was enough to hide his jaw; I don’t think he was less than twenty. As he looked down at me, I could tell I seemed a boy to him. He was not much above my height, being tall only for a Minyan; but he was lean and sinewy as mountain lions are. His strong black hair, too short and thick to hang in lovelocks, covered his neck like a curling mane. As we met each other’s eyes, I thought, “He has stood where I stand now, and the man he fought with is bones under the rock.” And then I thought, “He has not consented to his death.”

  All about us was a great silence full of eyes. And it moved me as a strange and powerful thing, that these watching people did not feel even themselves as they felt us. I wondered if for him it was the same.

  As we stood thus, I saw that after all he was not quite alone. A woman had come up behind him, and stood there weeping. He did not turn to look. If he heard, he had other things to think of.

  He came a few steps lower, looking not at the Queen but only at me. “Who are you, and where do you come from?” He spoke Greek very foreignly, but I understood him. It seemed to me we would have understood each other if he had had none at all.

  “I am Theseus, from Troizen in the Isle of Pelops. I came in peace, passing through to Athens. But our life-threads are crossed, it seems.”

  “Whose son are you?” he asked. Looking at his face, I saw he had no purpose in his questions, except to know he was still King, and a man walking in sunlight above the earth. I answered, “My mother hung up her girdle for the Goddess. I am a son of the myrtle grove.”

  The listeners made their soft murmur, like rustling reeds. But I felt the Queen move beside me. She was staring at me; and Kerkyon, now, at her. Then he burst out laughing. His teeth were strong and white above his young black beard. The people stirred, surprised; I was no wiser than they. All I knew, as the King laughing turned my way, was that his jest was bitter. He stood on the stairs and laughed; and the woman behind him covered her face in her two hands, and crouched down and rocked herself to and fro.

  He came down. Face to face, I saw he was as strong as I had thought. “Well, Son of the Grove, let us do the appointed thing. This time the odds will be even; the Lady won’t know whom to beat the gong for.” I did not understand him; but I saw he was speaking for her ears, not for mine.

  A sanctuary-house near by had been opened while we spoke, and a tall throne brought out, painted red, with devices of serpents and sheaves. They stood it near the floor, and by it a
great bronze gong upon a stand. The Queen sat down with her women round her, holding the gong stick like a scepter.

  “No,” I thought, “the odds will not be even. He is fighting for his kingdom, which I do not want, and his life, which I don’t want either. I cannot hate him, as a warrior should his enemy; nor even be angry, except with his people, who are turning from him like rats from an empty barn. If I were an Earthling, I should feel their wishes fighting for me. But I cannot dance to their piping; I am a Hellene.”

  A priestess led me to a corner of the ground, where two men stripped and oiled me and gave me a wrestler’s linen apron. They plaited back my hair and bound it in a club, and led me forth to be seen. The people cheered me, but I was not warmed by it; I knew they would cheer whoever came to kill the King. Even now when he was stripped and I could see his strength, I could not hate him. I looked at the Queen, but could not tell if I was angry with her or not, because I desired her. “Well,” I thought, “is that not quarrel enough?”

  The elder of the men, who looked to have been a warrior, said, “How old are you, boy?” People were listening, so I said, “Nineteen.” It made me feel stronger. He looked at my chin, which had less down than a gosling, but said no more.

  We were led to the throne, where she sat under her fringed sunshade. Her gold-sewn flounces caught the light, and her jewelled shoes. Her deep breasts looked gold and rosy, bloomed like the cheeks of peaches, and her red hair glowed. She had a gold cup in her hands, and held it out to me. The warm sun brought out the scents of spiced wine, honey, and cheese. As I took it I smiled at her, “For,” I thought, “she is a woman, or what are we about?” She did not toss her head as she had before, but looked into my eyes as if to read an omen; and in hers I saw fear.

  A girl will scream as you chase her through the wood, who when caught is quiet enough. I saw no more than that in it; it stirred my blood, and I was glad to have said I was nineteen. I drank of the mixed drink, and the priestess gave it to the King.

  He drank deep. The people gazed at him; but no one cheered. Yet he stripped well, and bore himself bravely; and for a year he had been their king. I remembered what I had heard of the old religion. “They care nothing for him,” I thought, “though he is going to die for them, or so they hope, and put his life into the corn. He is the scapegoat. Looking at him, they see only the year’s troubles, the crop that failed, the barren cows, the sickness. They want to kill their troubles with him, and start again.” I was angry to see his death not in his own hand, but the sport of rabble who did not share the sacrifice, who offered nothing of their own; I felt that out of all these people, he was the only one I could love. But I saw from his face that none of this came strange to him; he was bitter at it, but did not question it, being Earthling as they were. “He too,” I thought, “would think me mad if he knew my mind. I am a Hellene; it is I, not he, who am alone.”

  We faced each other on the wrestling ground; the Queen stood up, with the gong stick in her hand. After that I only looked at his eyes. Something told me he was not like the wrestlers of Troizen.

  Wood tapped sharply on the gong. I waited on my toes, to see if he would come straight in, like a Hellene, and grab for a body-hold. No; I had guessed right. He was edging round, trying to get the sun in my eyes. He did not fidget on his feet, but moved quite slowly and softly, like a cat before it springs. Not for nothing I had felt, while he spoke bad Greek, that we yet had a common language. Now we spoke it. He, too, was a wrestler who thought.

  His eyes were golden brown, light like a wolfs. “Yes,” I thought, “and he will be as fast. Let him come in first; if he is going to take a risk, he will do it then. Afterwards he may know better.”

  He aimed a great buffet at my head. It was meant to sway me left; so I jumped right. That was well, for where my guts should have been he landed a kick like a horse’s. Even glancing, it hurt, but not too much, and I grabbed his leg. As I tipped him over I jumped at him, throwing him sideways and trying to land on him with a head-lock. But he was fast, fast as a cat. He got me by the foot and turned my fall, and almost before I had touched ground was slipping round to get a scissors on me. I jabbed my fist at his chin, and saved myself by a lizard’s tail-flick. Then the mill on the ground began in earnest. I soon forgot I had been slow to anger; you cease to ask what wrong a man has done you when his hands are feeling for your life.

  He had the look of a gentleman. But the Queen’s stare had warned me, when I asked the rules. All-in is all-in among the Shore People, and nothing barred. This slit in my ear, like a fighting dog’s, I got in that fight as a dog gets it. Once he nearly gouged out my eye, and only gave over to keep his thumb unbroken. Soon I got too angry rather than too cold; but I could not afford to take a risk, just for the pleasure of hurting him. He was like tanned oxhide with a core of bronze.

  As we twisted and kicked and struck, I could make believe no longer I was nineteen. I was fighting a man in his flower of strength, before I had come to mine. My blood and bones began to whisper he would outstay me. Then the gong began.

  The starting stroke had come from the butt of the stick. This was the blow of the padded hammer. It gave a great singing roar; I swear one could even feel the sound in the ground underfoot. And as it quivered and hummed, the women chanted.

  The voices sank and rose, sank and rose higher. It was like the north wind when it blows screaming through mountain gorges; like the keening of a thousand widows in a burning town; like the cry of she-wolves to the moon. And under it, over it, through our blood and skulls and entrails, the bellow of the gong.

  The din maddened me. As it washed over me again and again, I began to be filled with the madman’s single purpose. I must kill my man, and stop the noise.

  As this frenzied strength built up in me, my hands and back felt him flagging. With each gong throb his strength was trickling from him. It was his death that was singing to him; wrapping him round like smoke, drawing him down into the ground. Everything was against him: the people, the Mystery, and I. But he fought bravely.

  He was trying to strangle me, when I got both feet up and hurled him backward. While he was still winded, I leaped on him and snatched his arm from under him and threw him over. So he lay face down, and I was on his back, and he could not rise. The singing rose to a long shriek, then sank into silence. The last gong stroke shuddered and died.

  His face was in the dust; but I could tell his mind, as he felt this way and that to see if anything was left to do, and understood that it was finished. In that moment my anger died. I forgot the pain, remembering only his courage and his despair. “Why should I take his blood upon me?” I thought. “He never harmed me, except to fulfill his moira.” I shifted my weight a very little, taking good care because he was full of tricks, till he could just turn his head out of the dirt. But he did not look at me; only at the dark cleft below the rock. These were his people, and his life-thread was twined with theirs. One could not save him.

  I put my knee in his backbone. Keeping him pinned, for he was not a man to give an inch to, I hooked my arm round his head, and pulled it back till I felt the neckbone straining. Then I said softly in his ear—for it did not concern the people about us, who had given nothing to the sacrifice—“Shall it be now?” He whispered, “Yes.” I said, “Discharge me of it, then, to the gods below.” He said, “Be free of it,” with some invocation after. It was in his own tongue, but I trusted him. I jerked his head back hard and fast, and heard the snap of the neckbone. When I looked, it seemed his eyes still had a spark of life; but when I turned his head sideways it was gone.

  I got to my feet, and heard from the people a deep sighing, as if they had all just finished the act of love. “So it begins,” I said to myself; “and only a god can see the ending.”

  They had brought a bier, and laid the King on it. There was a high scream from the throne. The Queen rushed down and threw herself on the corpse, rending her hair and clawing her face and bosom. She looked just like a woman who has lost h
er dear lord, the man who led her a maiden from her father’s house; as if there were young children and no kin to help them. That was how she wept, so that I stared amazed. But now all the other women were crying and howling too, and I understood it was the custom.

  They went off wailing, appeasing the new-made ghost. Left alone among staring strangers, I wanted to ask, “What now?” But the only man I knew was dead.

  Presently came an old priestess and led me toward the sanctuary-house. She told me they would mourn the King till sundown; then I should be blood-cleansed, and wed the Queen.

  In a room with a bath of painted clay, the priestesses bathed me and dressed my wounds. They all spoke Greek, with the lilt of the Shore People, lisping and twittering. But even in their own speech they have Greek words. There is so much sea traffic at Eleusis, the tongues have got mixed there, as well as the blood. They put a long white linen robe on me, and combed my hair, and gave me meat and wine. Then there was nothing to do but listen to the wailing, and wait, and think.

  Toward sunset I heard the funeral coming down the long stairs, with dirges and weeping and the aulos’ skirl, and disks of bronze clanging together. From a window I saw the winding train of women, robed in crimson with black veils. When the dirge ended, there was a great cry, between a scream and a shout of triumph. I guessed the King was going home.

  Soon after, at fall of dusk, the priestesses came back to fetch me for the cleansing. A red glow shone in at the window; and when they opened the door, I saw everywhere a leaping torchlight. There were torches as far as one could see, filling the precinct and streaming up to the Citadel, and flowing on into the town. Yet all was quiet, though all the people were there, from about twelve years old. The priestess led me between them, in a deep silence, till the shore with its beached ships lay before us. When the water lapped our feet, the priestess cried out, “To the sea!”