The King Must Die

by Mary Renault

  My face was close to hers. Her eyes were swimming like the eyes of a netted fawn; and then I saw she trembled all over. Even the thick robe shook with it. I was ashamed I had threatened her as if she were a warrior; yet it made me smile too. I took her between my hands to hold her still, and she gave a little gasp, like a swallowed sob. “No,” I said, “do not say anything. I am here, and it is no matter why. See, I obey you, and do not ask a reason any longer. I have reason enough.”

  She turned up her face, flooded with changing color; and something hovered in my mind, that I could not name. Now I was near, I smelt the scent of her hair and of her body. “Who are you?” I asked. Then my breath caught in my throat; I knew.

  She saw it in my eyes. Hers opened black and wide; with a quick cry she ducked under my arm, and ran. I saw her shadow slipping away round the great image, and ran after. All the huge hall stood empty and echoing, but the only footsteps were my own. The black robe she had been wrapped in lay trailed along the floor; even the whisper and clink of her skirt was still. I paced about, looking where she might have hidden; the further door she could not have reached in time, yet I had heard something closing. “Where are you?” I called. “Come out, for I will surely find you.” But my voice rang too loud in the hollows of the sanctuary; I felt the Presence angry, and dared not call again. Then, as I stood still, my shadow leaped out black before me, from some new light behind. I sprang round, remembering I was unarmed. But when I saw whence the light came, then indeed my breath grew thick. The plinth had opened beneath the image. Within, a clear blue fire danced on a tripod. It shone upon the Earth Mother, living, crowned with her diadem; her arms stretched forth over the earth were wreathed with twisting serpents. Her hands grasped their middles; the light shone on their polished skins, and I heard their hissing.

  My heart was a hammer shut in my breast; I made the sign of homage with a shaking hand. Rooted on my feet I looked at the Earth Mother; and the Earth Mother looked at me. And as she looked, I saw her eyelids tremble.

  I stood still, and stared. The flames flickered, and the Earth Mother looked straight before her. I took a pace forward, softly, and then another, and one more. She had not had time to paint her face, and the diadem leaned a little. As I came, I saw her gasp from holding her breath. She held out her arms stiffly, and the serpents wriggled, disliking the light, and wishing for their house again. But I did not watch them as I drew near; I watched her face. When I stretched out my hand toward them, I knew well enough that their teeth were drawn.

  In her dark eyes, two little mirrored flames stood flickering. At the mouth of the shrine, I reached inward, and slid my fingers over her hand. As I closed it in mine, the snake, released, twined for a moment round both our wrists, and bound our two hands together; then it fell slithering, and poured itself away. Out of the Earth Mother, mistress of all mysteries, looked a maiden flying; a girl who has gone one step forward and three back, and wants to punish what scared her. I took her other hand; its snake had escaped already.

  “Come, little Goddess,” I said. “Why are you afraid? I will not hurt you.”

  7

  IN THE CORNER OF the temple, behind the image, was a curtained doorway and a little room. It was where she went to eat, when the rites were long; to be dressed, and painted. It was simple like a child’s, only that the litter was sacred emblems and vessels, instead of toys. There was a bath in the corner, painted blue inside with swimming fish. Also a bed, for her to rest on if she was tired.

  To this room I carried her. It was where she put off her gold-weighted diadem, and her heavy robes; where her women loosed her jewelled girdle, which no man had undone before. She was shy, and I only saw the place a moment before she blew out the lamp.

  Later the moon came up, plunging down a steep court to spill light upon the floor. I lifted myself on my arm to look at her; my hair fell down on hers, and she twisted them both into one rope.

  “Gold and bronze,” she said. “My mother was fair, but I am all Cretan. She was ashamed of me.”

  I said, “Bronze is more precious. From bronze come honor and life. Make my enemy a golden spear, and a sword blade too.” I did not like to speak of her mother, after all I had heard; so I kissed her instead. She hung all her weight upon my neck, and pulled me down to her. She was like a young salamander meeting flame; afraid at first, and only when flung in knowing its own element. There is an old saying that the house of Minos has sun-fire in the blood.

  We slept, and woke, and slept. She would say, “Am I awake? Once I dreamed you were here, and could not bear to waken.” I proved to her she was awake, and she slept again. We should have been there till morning; but in the hour before dawn the old woman came into the temple, and prayed aloud in her high cracked voice, and struck the cymbals, before she pattered away.

  It was about this time that I learned to sleep by daylight. Even the shouts of the echoing Bull Court could not wake me.

  The second night, the thread was stretched a new way for me. There was a trap in an old disused lamp room, very much nearer. It was the old woman who had led me so roundabout, to keep me from learning the way. She was a kinsman, on the distaff side, to Pasiphae the dead Queen. The new way got me there much quicker; and it still passed the ancient armory.

  This night there was wine set by the bed, and two gold cups to drink it from. “They look,” I said, “like libation cups.” She answered, “So they are,” making nothing of it. My mother had taught me respect for sacred things. But my mother was only a priestess.

  The lamp burned on unquenched tonight. As for me, my eyes had been blind to all women else, and that day’s dusk had seemed unending.

  Deep in the night, she said to me, “I do not live, unless you are here. A doll walks and talks and wears my clothes, while I lie here waiting.”

  “Little Goddess, tomorrow night I cannot come.” It came hard to me, but I was still a Crane, bound by our oath. “Next day is the bull-dance. Love and the bulls don’t go together. But we shall see each other, when I come into the ring.”

  She clung to me, crying, “I cannot bear it. It is a sword stuck in my heart, every time you leap. Now it will be worse a thousand times. I will have you taken from the Bull Court. They can think what they choose. I am Goddess-on-Earth.”

  She was all girl, saying this. It made me smile. I saw, now, that it had never crossed her mind to make herself like the gods. It was an old title, showing her rank and office. All the sacred rites here had become like play, or mere court trappings. She did not know why I smiled, and her eyes reproached me.

  “Bird of my heart,” I said, “you cannot take me from the Bull Court. I offered myself to the god, to answer for my people. While they dance, I dance with them.”

  “But that is a …” She checked herself and said, “only a mainland custom. Here in Crete no king has been sacrificed for two hundred years. We hang our dolls on the trees instead, and the Mother has not been angry.”

  I made over her the sign against evil. Her dark eyes, with little lamp-flames in them, followed the movement of my hand as a child’s eyes do.

  “You offered yourself,” she said, “and the Mother gave you to me.

  “We are all her children. But Poseidon gave me to my people. Himself he spoke to me; and I cannot leave them.”

  She reached out for the Corinthian’s bull-charm, which I wore even when I wore nothing else, and tossed it back over my shoulder. “Your people! Six boys and seven girls! You who are worthy to rule a kingdom.”

  “Not unless I am worthy to rule them. Few or many, it’s all one, once one has put oneself in the god’s hand.”

  She drew back to look in my face; but she kept a hank of my hair clutched in her fist, as if I might run away. “I am in a god’s hand too,” she said. “Peleia of the Doves has caught me. This is her madness, this love like a barbed arrow that cannot be pulled out. When you try, you drive it deeper. My mother called me a little Cretan; I hated Hellenes and their blue eyes; but Peleia is stronger
than I. I know what she is doing well enough. She sent you here to be Minos.”

  I stared at her, feeling my mouth part with horror. Yet her eyes were innocent, it seemed, of everything but wonder at mine. At last I said, “But, Lady, it is your father who is King.”

  She looked quenched, like a child who does not know what it did wrong. “He is very sick,” she said, “and he has no heir.”

  Now I understood her. But it was a great matter; my mind moved to it slowly.

  “What is it?” she said. “Why did you look at me as if I were evil?”

  She lay on her side; her waist had little folds full of soft shadow. I stroked them with my hand. “I am sorry, little Goddess. I am a stranger here. At Eleusis, when I went to the wrestling, it was the Queen who led me.”

  She looked at my hair still in her hand, then up at me, and said not angrily but as if in wonder, “You are a barbarian. My nurse said that they ate bad children. I love you more than I can bear.”

  We talked then without speech. But a man is not a woman, and cannot long be kept from thinking. Presently I said, “Your father may have no son; he should know best. But he has an heir.”

  Her face sharpened in the lamplight. “I hate him,” she said.

  I remembered her in the temple, looking at him over the broken tablet.

  She said, “I have always hated him. When I was little, my mother would leave me when he came. They had their secrets. She laughed at me, and called me her little Cretan; but never at him, though he was twice as dark. When she died, and they buried her, I scratched my face and breast until they bled; but I had to throw my hair all over my eyes, to hide that I could not weep.”

  “Did you know then?”

  “I knew without knowing, as children do. My father is a silent man; he rarely spoke to me. But I knew they mocked him when they whispered in corners. It made me love him.” She dug her fingers into the bed. “I know who has killed him. I know; I know.”

  “But,” I said, “you told me he was sick.”

  “He is dead,” she said. “Dead alive. For a year and more his face has not been seen; now he never leaves his room. When he goes, it will be on the death-car.” She paused and said, “Swear to keep this secret. You must bind yourself; I could never, never curse you.”

  I bound myself with the oath. Then she said, “He is a leper.”

  I felt, as one always does, the word like a cold finger on my flesh. “That is a heavy thing. But it comes from the gods.”

  “No. It comes from another leper, or from something of his. All the doctors say so. When they found it on my father, they stripped and searched everyone about him; but all were clean. I thought myself it was magic, or a curse. But then he remembered how more than a year before, he had lost an arm-ring, one he wore every day. It was gone nearly a month; then it was found, in a place that had been searched before. So he put it on again. It was under the ring that the marks began.”

  This seemed to me too fanciful. “If there were a traitor among his household,” I said, “why not poison, which is quick? Lepers live long, if they have a roof and people feed them.” To myself I was wondering why Minos had not gone back to the god, on the first day. “Asterion might have years to wait; he would find something surer.”

  She said, “He has found the surest thing. If my father had died outright, and he had been proclaimed Minos, there would have been war. The Kindred would not have suffered it. Now little by little he has been getting power in his hands; buying some men, putting others in fear. At first, when my father sent out orders, they were obeyed. Now they do not reach the men he sends them to, and the Captain of the Guard has bought a new estate. No one knows now who belongs to Asterion. No one dares ask.” And then she said, “He rules like a king already.”

  Then indeed I understood, not only this but all the rest.

  “But,” I said, “then Crete is being ruled by a man who does not belong to any god; who was never dedicated. He has all power; yet he has not consented to make the sacrifice. Has he consented?”

  There was a shadow on her cheek, as if she would smile; but her face grew grave, and she shook her head.

  “Then,” I said, “the god will never speak to him. How can he lead the people? Who will see their danger coming? What will happen, if the god is angry, and there is no one to offer himself? He takes service, tribute, honor; and he gives nothing! Nothing! I knew that he was monstrous! He will be death to your people, if they let him live. Why do the chiefs obey him? Why do they bear it?”

  She was silent awhile; then she reached over my shoulder, and pulled the crystal bull to hang upon my breast. “You said to me, ‘Make my enemy a golden sword blade.’ That is what we have done here; made our swords of gold. I did not see, till I knew you.”

  Her words surprised me. She said, “You think I am a child, because I was never with a man before. But some things I know. I knew you brought some fate or other, down at Amnisos, when you married the sea.”

  “It was you, then, peeping through the curtain!” Then there was some young lovers’ talk. But I said later, “What did you mean, when you said I married the sea?”

  She looked at me with deep bright eyes that were not childish. “Why do you think he threw the ring?”

  “To drown me, of course. He could not put me to death.”

  “So you did it without knowing; that makes it sure.” When I asked her what she meant, she said, “When a new Minos is proclaimed, he always marries the Sea Lady. He throws her a ring.” I remembered the native Cretans, staring and muttering. He had given them an omen to remember, that would seem to come by chance as true omens do. He had used me; a dog would have done as well. He had made light of me even in this.

  “So,” she said, “it made a fool of him when you brought it up again. But then you threw it in the sea, and married her yourself! How I laughed, inside my curtain! And then I thought, ‘Perhaps it is a true omen.’ I could tell the Cretans thought so. He could tell it too, so he patched it up the cleverest way, by making himself your patron. He must always own the best of everything. He saw you would make a bull-leaper, and he thought it would keep the last laugh for him.”

  I thought awhile. Presently I said, “How does he get on with the native Cretans? According to their old customs, the Queen’s blood should be good enough for them; they don’t set much store by the father.” I was afraid this might seem too blunt; but it was not what troubled her.

  “Yes,” she said. “He knows. Until lately he was very scornful of them; they were nothing to him, except for work. It was me they came to. That is my office, to hear suits and prayers; Cretans would always rather pray to a woman. And I tried to help them. I know how it feels to be made light of. I used to bring their prayers to my father; that was how I first came to talk with him. He used to say, ‘You are only a goddess, little Ariadne. To be an envoy is a serious matter.’ But often he did as I asked.”

  I wiped her lashes with my finger, saying, “And now?”

  “Asterion courts them. Once if they were wronged he would not lift a hand. Now he will back them even in an unjust cause, unless it is against one of his creatures. Even among the Palace people he is gathering men with Cretan kindred, men like Lukos. You see why my father must die slowly?”

  “That is bad,” I said. “Has he won many?”

  “Cretans have long memories. Those he has insulted don’t forgive him. But if any have been injured by a Hellene, they turn to him.”

  We talked longer, but I remember no more of it. My head was spinning with sleep, and thinking, and the warm scents of her hair and breast.

  At the next bull-dance, when I looked up to the shrine, it seemed to me that the world must know, and I guessed she felt the same. But no one noticed anything. I brought off a new trick, jumping off Herakles with a standing back-somersault, and landing on my feet. I had been practicing it all morning on the wooden bull, to show her what I could do.

  Afterwards I told the Cranes all I could in honor; I had not
wanted to disturb them before the dance. I said I had heard that the King was sick, that Asterion was plotting to set the Cretans against the Hellenes and seize the throne. “It means we have not long. If the Cretans back him, he can hold the coasts against a Hellene fleet as long as he keeps their love. And that will be till he is safe on the throne; a year, or two, or three; longer than we shall last here. We shall have to strike quickly.”

  Iros said, “We are doing what we can, Theseus; but we haven’t got many weapons yet.” He looked reproachful. He and Hippon had stolen more arms than anyone else; their chances were better. I said, “I know of a weapon-store; with luck there will soon be arms for everyone.” I meant to bring them a few at a time and hide them where we could get them quickly. But I did not want too many questions.

  That night in the little robing room, we flew together as the spark to the tinder. Two days and a night apart had been like a month. The night before, indeed, I had almost gone to her, bull-dance or no; only that when I sat up I saw Amyntor sleeping, and remembered my people.

  Already in three nights our love had its memories and its past. We had our secret words to laugh or kiss at. Yet even while we laughed and played, or sank as deep in love as a diving dolphin, I felt a kind of awe; whether of the place, or because the love of kings and queens, even in secret, is a rite done for the people before the gods.

  After I left her, I took the lamp from its bracket on the sacred column, and went to the store of arms. As I had foreseen, it was all old stuff; what was new and good was in the armory above. One could see the steps and guess where they led; but it would be well guarded. I trod softly, and greased the hinges of the chests with lamp oil. They were full of arrows; but the bows looked time-warped, and the strings had perished. It was the spears and javelins that drew me. They were an old pattern, a little heavy, but quite sound. Only they were too long to conceal about one, even under a cloak.