The King Must Die

by Mary Renault

  He nodded, and I felt he smiled. “Well, Theseus, so much for the courtesies. They are due to your blood and honor. But my daughter will have told you, they are all I have to give.”

  I said something or other, and he scratched among his papers, shaking his head, and sometimes muttering, as sick men do who are much alone; whether to himself or me I could not tell. “When he was a child, he followed me like a shadow, the black bull-calf branded with our shame; he never let me forget him. He would have dogged me to the hunt, on shipboard, to the Summer Palace; he wept when I sent him back where he belonged. He would call me Father, and stare when he was silenced. I should have known he would destroy me. Yes, yes, a man might laugh; it has been as pat as an old song. I withheld the sacrifice, and it bred my death. If there were really gods, they could not have done better.”

  He paused, and I heard mice rustling behind the bookshelf.

  “Only slaves come here now. The higher stand at the door, and make the lowest enter. The man is dead, and overripe for the death-car. But the King must live a little longer, till the work is done. With the child, Theseus, there must be a new beginning.” Then he said softly, “Look if she is out of hearing.”

  I stepped to the door, and saw her by starlight, sitting on the coping of the sunken shrine. I came back and said, “Yes.”

  He leaned forward in his chair, grasping the arms. His low voice rustled in the bull-mask; I had to lean near to hear. The close smell choked me, but I hid it from him, remembering what he had said about the slaves.

  “I have not told her. She has seen already too much of evil. But I know what this beast of our house will do. He will promise these Cretans a Cretan kingdom; that has begun. But in a Cretan kingdom, he can only reign by right of the Mistress. In the ancient days of the Cretan Minos, they married as they do in Egypt.”

  My heart paused; there was a stillness within me as I understood. Now indeed I saw why great Minos had received a bull-boy from the mainland, a bastard son of a little kingdom, and offered him the Goddess. And I saw why she had spoken of killing her mother’s son. She had guessed, having seen evil already.

  It made up my mind. “Sir,” I said, “I have sent word to my father I am alive, and asked him to send ships for me.”

  He straightened in his chair. “What? My daughter said nothing of it.”

  “It was too heavy,” I said, “to lay upon a girl.”

  He nodded his gold head, and sat in thought. “Have you had an answer? Will they come?”

  I drew breath to speak. Then I knew I had been going to speak like a boy. This meeting taught me to know myself.

  “I do not know. My father has not ships enough. I told him to try the High King at Mycenae.” His head moved, as if to stare. But I was thinking as I spoke. “I daresay the High King might say to him, ‘Theseus is your son; but he is not mine. He says that Knossos can be taken; but he is a bull-dancer who wants to see his home again. What if we send ships and Minos sinks them? Then we shall all be slaves.’ My father is a prudent man; if the High King says this, he will see sense in it.”

  He nodded heavily. “And now it is too late to send again, across the winter sea.”

  “Then,” I said, “we must trust in ourselves. If the Hellenes come, so much the better.”

  He leaned back in his chair, and said, “What can you do?”

  “There are still the bull-dancers. They will all fight, even the bull-shy ones, even the girls; they will fight for the hope of life. I am getting them arms as fast as I can. I can take the Labyrinth with them, if we can get help outside the Bull Court.”

  He reached out for some papers beside him. “There are a few men left who can be trusted.” And he read me some names. “Not Dromeus, sir,” I said. “He’s trimming now; I’ve seen him at the Little Palace.” He sighed, and pushed away the papers, saying, “I brought him up from a boy, when his father died.”

  “But there is Perimos,” I said. “He has stood out, and he has sons. He will know who else is safe. We need two things: arms, and someone to win us the Cretans.”

  We talked of such things awhile. At the end he said, “However weary I grow of life, I will live till you are ready.”

  I remembered how I had thought worse of him for not returning to the god, and was ashamed. He said, “Let me know, if you get word from Athens.”

  I said I would. Then I pictured my father driving in at the Lion Gate, and up the steep road to the Great House of Mycenae. I saw him at table with the High King. But I could not see him in the upper room firing the King for war, making him impatient to launch his hollow ships. My father had had a bellyful of trouble, and it had made him old before his time. I saw the rough dark seas that tossed round Crete; and I saw them empty.

  “Ships or no, sir,” I said, “we shall know our time when it comes. I am in the hand of Poseidon. He sent me here, and he will not fail me. He will send me a sign.”

  So I said, to cheer his solitude, because I doubted there would be ships until I went myself to fetch them. But the gods never sleep. Truly and indeed, Dark-Haired Poseidon heard me.

  8

  A FEW NIGHTS AFTER, Ariadne said to me, “Tomorrow is the day when I give my oracles.”

  “You should be sleeping,” I said. I drew her in and kissed her eyelids. She was too tender, I thought, to bear without bruising the madness of a god.

  She said, “Not many Hellenes come. To those I shall say the usual things. But I shall tell the Cretans that a new Summer King is coming, to marry the Goddess and bless the land. Hyakinthos flowering in a field of blood. They will remember that.”

  I was amazed, and asked her, “But how can you tell what the Holy One will say through you, before you have drunk the cup or smelled the smoke?”

  “Oh,” she answered, “I don’t take much of it. It makes one giddy; one talks nonsense, and one’s head aches after as if it would split.”

  I was shocked in my heart, but I said nothing. If it was true the god spoke to them no longer, it was strange she could tell of it without weeping. But I remembered how Cretans play at such things like children. So I only kissed her again.

  “I will make it stick in their minds,” she said. “I shall paint my face white, and draw a line of red under my eyelids. I shall have a cloud of smoke (it is all the same to them what one makes it of) and roll my eyes and toss about. When I have spoken, I shall fall down.”

  I was slow to speak. At last I said, “It is a woman’s mystery. But my mother told me once that when she is in the Snake Pit, whatever the question is, something any fool should know without troubling a deity, she always pauses before her answer, and listens, in case the Goddess forbids it.”

  “I always pause too,” she said. “I have been properly taught as well as your mother. A pause makes people attend. But you can see, Theseus, Crete is not like the mainland. We have more people, more cities, more business to fit together. We have ninety clerks working in the Palace alone. It would be chaos every month, if no one knew what the oracles were going to be.”

  She stroked her fingers back from my temples through my hair; I felt them say, “I love you, my barbarian.”

  I said to myself it was no matter; that when we were married, I would be there to stand between the god and the people. Yet I was sorry she had not the Hearing; a king, like a craftsman, wants to breed his skill into his sons.

  Soon there was less time to think; from then on we were busy.

  In the old archive store under the Labyrinth, I met with Perimos and his two sons. The office of his family was to write down the King’s judgments; only they and their chief clerks ever used the place, these records were so old. If Minos wanted to know the precedent before a judgment, he sent for the Recorder. It is an ancient mystery, inherited father to son from the founder of it, a prince called Rhadamanthos.

  After the King was sick, and Asterion heard the causes, he had sent for Perimos, told him a judgment he meant to give, and asked for a precedent to uphold it. When Perimos brought him
instead nine clear judgments the other way, he told him shortly to look again. The Recorder said nothing; he shut himself among the records, searching, till the time was up and Asterion had to do his own injustice. But everyone knew he would only bide his time; and Perimos did not want to wait.

  He was about fifty, with stiff brows and beard streaked black and gray like wood-ash, and the fierce round eyes of an owl in a hollow tree. I was sorry for him; he would have got on well with my grandfather. It was against his grain to plot in cellars with painted bull-dancers. I had always to leave the Bull Court bedizened as if for a feast or tryst, else people would have wondered. However, I had not forgotten all I had learned in my grandfather’s judgment hall, my father’s, and my own; in time he forgot my bull-boy’s finery. His sons seemed men of honor; the elder rather clerkish, the younger a lieutenant of the household, very Cretan-looking, lovelocked and willow-waisted, but with the nerve of a soldier. He said we could count on about one in three of the King’s Guard, those who respected their oath of service, and those who hated Asterion. It was time, now, I thought, to push things forward in the Bull Court.

  I had trusted the Cranes from the beginning. But soon it would have to go beyond them; and I looked for another team leader I could rely on. My choice fell on a girl called Thalestris, a Sauromantian. They have many customs of the Amazons, serving the Moon Maid in arms, and fighting in war beside the men. When first she came she looked very outlandish, dressed in a quilted coat and deerskin trousers, and smelling of goat-milk curd. Her country is at the back of the northeast wind, beyond the Caucasus, and they only undress there once a year. But stripped and cleaned she was a fine girl, a little too mannish for one’s bed, but with all the beauties of a bull-leaper. The courage too; for on her very first day she was eying me with envy.

  Liking her spirit, I taught her all I could; and when she was made leader of the Gryphons, she came again for counsel. I warned her of one bull-shy boy who would do them no good; when they had given him to the bull and got someone better, she bound them with a vow like ours, and in more than two months not one had died. So people were used to seeing us in talk. I told her everything, except that I was the Mistress’s lover. Thalestris was a girl for girls; but it is a thing I have found, that no woman likes to hear you hold forth about another.

  When she had heard, she threw a back-somersault, for she was a wild thing still. But she was no fool. After she had run on awhile about her mountain home and friends, whom now she might hope to see again, she asked me to get her a bow, for that was her weapon. I said I would try; now we were in with the loyal Guard, good stuff was coming down into the weapon store from the armory above. She begged to tell her Gryphons, saying they had no secrets apart; and as I thought it spoke well for them, I gave her leave. Before long all the teams knew, who had vows of fellowship. As for the others, they would fight when the time came; but for their tongues one had no surety.

  So the leaven worked silently in the dough; there was no folly. The secret was with people whose life-threads were closely bound; to fail the team was to meet your bull next time. You could only see it in their eyes if you knew already.

  Now we began to bring up arms into the Bull Court. Amyntor and I showed the other boys of our team, and three or four team leaders, the way down through the lamp room; our friends of the Guard had stacked the arms below it. It was cold, so we had cloaks to hide things in, though we had to saw down the shafts of the spears and javelins. Cretan bows are short, and a good weight for women. The girls hid all these things, and many arrows, in nooks and holes under the floor.

  Ariadne had given her oracles to the Cretans. She told me, full of pride, how she had talked in broken phrases, neither too clear nor yet too dark; how she had rolled up her eyes and sunk down among her fangless serpents, and waking dazed had asked what she had been saying. Now, she said, she had sent out an old woman she could trust, to whisper among the gossips and recall the ring in the harbor. Before long, it would be time to warn the chiefs and headmen.

  Spring comes early to Crete. The painted vases in the Palace rooms held daffodils and sprays of almond flowers; the young men dressed their hair with violets, and the ladies decked their boy-dolls, which they would dandle till midsummer and then hang on the fruit trees, for they play at sacrifice as at everything else. The sun shone warmly, the snow shrank higher up the mountains, and in the lull before the south wind began blowing, the sea was calm and mild.

  I went to the feasts of the Palace people, and sometimes there would be a juggler or a dancer or a girl with tame birds, or a bard from oversea. I would go near when I could, and let them hear my name and my Hellene speech. But no message came from Athens.

  Days passed, and the almond blossom in the painted vases snowed down upon the painted tiles. A chieftain of the Kindred, who had land near Phaistos, which he would not sell when Asterion asked him, died suddenly of a strange sickness; his heir took fright and sold the land. The native Cretans whispered in corners, and told long tales of the ancient days. In the Bull Court, the dancers had their heads together, as bull-dancers often have, being full any time of gossip and intrigue. But you could hear, if you listened, that they were talking of their homes and kindred, as when the frozen stream melts in spring. Days passed. And one night I heard the sound of a rising gale, whistling over the horned roofs and through the courts of the Labyrinth. It was the south wind blowing, which closes Cretan waters to ships from the north.

  I lay on my back with eyes wide open, listening. Presently a dark shape came near. There was always someone prowling about in the Bull Court after the lamps were out. But this was Amyntor. He leaned down to me and said, “It is early this year. Half a month early, the Cretans say. It is moira, Theseus, no one can help it. We can do with what we have.” I said, “Yes, we shall do. Perhaps Helike’s brother never got to Athens.” The Cretans had been looking for the wind a week already. But he had fought under me in the Isthmus and in Attica, and wanted to save my face.

  Next day in the Bull Court, Thalestris got me in a corner. “What is it, Theseus? You look downhearted. No one thinks any worse of you because the wind is blowing. It was good warriors’ talk, about the Hellene ships; it kept us in heart while we were getting ready. Now we don’t need it.” She clapped me on the shoulder like a boy, and strolled away. But I felt the shadow upon the Bull Court, as well as she.

  I walked slowly to the next meeting in the archive vault. But old Perimos only nodded with a grim smile, as if we had won a bet. He was a man of the law, as they say in Crete; it is the nature of their calling to expect the worst. I had done myself good with him because I had promised nothing. Presently he said, “My son has a plan. Though it is foolhardy, it may do for want of better.” His voice was dour; but I saw in his eye both pride and grief.

  The warrior son, whose name was Alektryon, stepped forward, looking among the dusty shelves and withered parchments like a kingfisher in a dead tree. The dim lamplight glittered on his rose-crystal necklace and his arm-guards of inlaid bronze; his kilt was stitched with those shining green beetles they dry in Egypt and use for jewels, and he smelt of hyacinths. He said that if a chief man of Asterion’s faction were to die, they would all attend his funeral, and we could seize the Labyrinth while they were out of it.

  “Well thought of,” I said. “Is someone sick?”

  He laughed, showing his white teeth. There is a gum called mastic, which Cretan beauties chew to blanch them. “Yes, Phoitios is, though he doesn’t know it.”

  This was the chief of Asterion’s private guard; a big fellow with Hellene bones, and a nose broken from boxing. I raised my brows and asked, “How can it be done?”

  “Oh, he takes good care of his health. The only way is openly. I shall make him fight me; I expect he will choose spears.”

  It was news to me that mortal insults were still known in Crete; but I was thinking that here was a man we could hardly spare. There was nothing I could say, seeing he was five years my elder, except, “When wi
ll it be?”

  “I can’t say yet; I must find a likely quarrel, or he will guess at something behind. So have your people ready.”

  I said I would, and we parted, he and his father going off to the stair they used, and I up to the sanctuary. We never watched each other go. Even their friends among the courtiers did not know of this meeting place; everything hung on keeping the secret of the vaults.

  I went up to the robing room, and told my news. Ariadne said she was glad it was not I who was fighting Phoitios; he would be a hard man to kill; then she asked when the fight was to be, for she must see it. I told her I did not know, and we said no more; with all this business, we were always short of time for love. At parting we would tell each other how, when we were married, we would lie till the sun stood high over the mountain. Next night was the fast before the bull-dance.

  But next night, after supper, I heard laughter at the doors of the Bull Court, and the chink of gold. It was not cheap, to buy your way in there after dark. In came Alektryon, swift and glittering, his kilt stitched with plaques of pearl and his hair stuck with jasmine. He had a necklace of striped sardonyx, and a rolled kid belt covered with leaf gold. He strode among the dancers, flirting with this youth or that, talking of the odds and the newest bull, like any young blood who follows the ring. But I saw his seeking eye, and went toward him.

  “Theseus!” he said, making eyes at me and tossing back his hair. “I vow you are of all men the most fickle. You have forgotten my feast and eaten in the Bull Court! You have crystal for a heart. Well, I will forgive you still, if you come now for the music. But hurry; the wine is poured out already.”

  I begged his pardon and said I would come. “The wine is poured” was a signal agreed on between us, for something that could not wait.

  We went but into the Great Court, which, since it was still early, was full of lamplight, and of people with torches passing to and fro. He caught my eye, then leaned upon a column in a Cretan pose. As someone passed he said, “How can you be so cruel?” and fingered my necklace and drew me near. Then he said softly, “Minos has sent for you. The way is marked as before. You must go alone.”