The King Must Die

by Mary Renault

  So I thought; but I was growing drowsy in spite of myself. I heard again the buzzing of the Cretans, who thought the god had killed the bull at my feet. “Well,” I thought, “sure enough he has been with us.” And it seemed I felt his presence still about, solemn and brooding, so that the sounds of the Bull Court seemed too loud, and made me uneasy. But even as I thought it I fell asleep. I dreamed of my childhood, of serving the island shrine in the hush of noonday, and listening to the spring.

  When I awoke, the lamps were being lighted, and the dancers were sitting down to eat. Amyntor, who must have been waiting for my eyes to open, came over and asked what he should bring me. I sat up, though I was almost too stiff to do it, and asked if there had been any news of Minos’ death.

  He looked about him. But there was no one near; the dancers were all eating. “No, Theseus. Who told you of it? Can he be trusted? There is quite another rumor going about today. It is said that when the fleet set sail for Sicily, before the gales, Minos went with it, but it was kept secret. They say he went to take the island by surprise, and that was why it was kept dark. It has been denied from the Little Palace, which makes one think it may be true.”

  He brought me soup, and a barley-cake, and a piece of honeycomb. I ate, lying on my elbow, and wondering how long it would be before we got the news that Minos was dead in Sicily. Truly, I thought, it is a beast that thinks; and quickly too. It had been clever to deny it; I had to own I should not have thought of that myself.

  And then I thought, “But he must still need time. This proves it.”

  The wise woman came, and felt me over. She oiled and worked my limbs, kneading and knuckling and slapping; looked at my wound, muttering charms, and said it would heal clean. At the table the dancers were sitting over their twice-watered wine, in the last hour of talk before the girls were fetched away. I stretched out under the old woman’s hands, feeling my sinews loosened and my blood run sweetly. Nothing was left but the smart of wine on my graze, and a heavy drowsiness. I turned, when she had gone, to sleep again. Then I saw Aktor the trainer standing by my pallet.

  “Well,” he said, “so you have come to life again. I will write it on the door of the Bull Court, and save my legs. You have slept sound enough. When you lay there through the earthquake, with all the outlanders who never felt one bawling to their gods, I looked if you were dead; but you were sleek as a baby.”

  “Earthquake?” I said staring, and then, “Why yes.” I remembered the feel of the brooding god; I had been too tired even to know a warning when I had it.

  “It was nothing much,” he said. “A shelf of pots gone in the kitchen. Well, the Cranes will have to catch another bull.” He looked at me. This time no one was in hearing.

  I said, “What did they give him? I smelt it in his steam.”

  “How should I know?” He looked round again. “I should think what the dog fanciers give their beasts before a fight. The dogs mostly live, but it would be guesswork, the dose for a bull.” He had been stooping, but now he got down on the floor beside me, to speak lower. “One we won’t name must have a hole in his pocket now. If he still needs a talent of gold, he must wait till summer when his ships come in.”

  “Gold?” I said, thinking my cordial must have had poppy in it. I still felt slow.

  He said, “A ghost is talking”; a Cretan saying for what one will not stand to before witnesses. “He has got something on hand that is emptying the strong room. All day his agents have been scrambling about Knossos calling in revenues, chasing rents, selling up debtors, borrowing from the Phoenicians. Well, you know your odds. Even money three months ago, now it’s six for eight, and still the bookmaker’s headache. Go to any one of them and try if you can back Theseus to live; they won’t touch it; if you bet on the Cranes you must bet on points. But this morning, so I hear, all over Knossos there were bets laid on a kill, at a hundred to one or longer; quietly, here and there. And all about the same time, to keep the odds from shortening. What do you make of that?”

  “Make of it?” I said. “What should I make? I’m only a mainland bull-boy. In my village we’re simple folk.” My brain was spinning. Aktor looked down at me scratching his head, then said, “Sleep out your medicine, lad, you’re fuddled still,” and went away.

  My eyelids felt like lead; sleep lay upon me closer than a lover. But I thought that if I closed my eyes, I would believe after that I had dreamed all this. I saw Amyntor hanging about near by, and beckoned. “I have something to tell you. Bring Thalestris too.”

  They came and hung over my pallet, eying me like something that may fall apart. “Be easy,” I said to them. “The Minotaur knows nothing. He did this for gold.”

  If I had spoken in Babylonian they could not have looked blanker. I did not blame them.

  “Minos is dead. You can take that for certain. He is hidden somewhere in the Labyrinth, bundled away without rites like a dead robber, to give Asterion time. He needs to buy troops, and friends; but he can’t claim the treasury till the death is known. Stuck between the horns, as you might say. So he backed the bull for a kill, to raise the wind.”

  They stood drop-jawed, like village idiots. It almost made me laugh.

  At last Amyntor said slowly, “He did it for gold? But we are the Cranes. We have danced a year for him.”

  Thalestris flung back her head. “Mother of Mares!” she cried. And indeed she looked a true daughter of Poseidon Hippios, her strong dark mane tossed out behind her and her nostrils flaring. She planted her fists upon her hips, and showed sidelong like a wicked colt the blue whites of her black eyes. “What are these Cretans? They and their baths, and their talk about barbarians. Hollow as sucked gourds! If you shook them they would rattle! Theseus, why do we wait?”

  In the old days at Eleusis, it would have been Amyntor who spoke first. But nowadays he would take his time. He had been standing with his black brows joined above his hawk-nose, fingering the place where his dagger should have been.

  “Theseus,” he said, “how this man has despised us!”

  I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “He has always held us light.”

  “Vengeance is the right of any man who is not a woman. If he had done this knowing there were arms hidden in the Bull Court, I would have liked him no better, and thought of him no worse. But all he knows of us is our honor; and he has sold us off like the spare goats in a lean year. By Black-Horned Poseidon, Theseus, it is enough! For this we will have his heart.”

  10

  IN THE MORNING THE old woman came again with her warm oils. I had slept like a log; my leg wound was drying cleanly, and not much deeper than a scrape. The muscles I had thought were torn were only strained; all I needed now was to move about. Tonight I would go up to the sanctuary, and find whether Ariadne knew that Minos was dead. If they had locked up his door, she would have no remedy, without betraying the secret way. But, I thought, even when she knew, what could she do, or Perimos, or Alektryon, or any of us in the Bull Court? Whoever owned knowledge of the death would be charged with the killing. Yet every day we waited, Asterion would gain strength.

  After I had limbered up at exercise, I felt well enough; yet all this weighed on me. I stood with the Cranes, and Thalestris, and another team leader, young Kasos of the Sparrowhawks, a Rhodian pirate’s son, enslaved when they hanged his father. They were eager for some action, and I put on cheerfulness, ashamed to feel so low when nothing was wrong with me. Across the Court, the Dolphins had got a cockfight on. The mounting noise went through my head, and I longed for it to be done. At last I cried out in spite of myself, “Make them stop that din!”

  “What is it, Theseus?” said kind Thebe. “Does your head still ache?”

  “No,” I said, for I had that moment understood myself. “It is a warning. The earth is going to shake again. I think it won’t be much. But noise is bad, when the god is angry.”

  They hushed their voices. I saw Kasos glance at the great ceiling beams, and fidget his feet. “It doesn’t feel,” I s
aid, “like a bad one.” For it did not press hard on me, but only prickled. “But make them be quiet, and stand off from the walls.”

  Nephele had gone over to the cockfight; the team came running, while the cocks by themselves bounced up and down, pecking and spurring, then stopped and stood with bunched wings, looking uneasy, as if the god had warned them too. My head tightened, and every trifle made me angry; there were pins pricking my feet. Just then up came Aktor, whom someone, I suppose, had passed on the warning to. “What is the matter with you, Theseus? Why don’t you get back to bed, if you still feel shaky, instead of setting the Bull Court by the ears?”

  I could have struck him. “Get away from that column,” I said softly. I could not bear to raise my voice. Just as he opened his mouth to answer, the earth rumbled and jarred, and a big molding from the column-head burst into bits beside him. Pots crashed in the kitchen; the Palace beyond echoed with shouts and squeals and invocations. Around us the dancers called on the hundred gods of the Bull Court, outlanders lay on their faces shielding their heads, lovers clutched each other; and Aktor looked at me with his jaw so wide that you could count his teeth.

  Something caught my ear. I put up my hand for silence. Then I heard it, low and far down, the thing I had heard tell of: the great muffled bellow of the Earth Bull in his secret cave. Every sound else was hushed. Friends reached for each other’s hands. The earth settled, and the sound died slowly. My head felt better, and I could speak aloud.

  “Wait!” I said. “While the god is here we will pray to him.”

  I stretched my hand palm downward over the earth. “Earth-Shaker, Father of Bulls, you know us all. We are your children, your little calves who danced for you. You have heard our feet, you have tasted our blood in the dusty sand. We have taken the bull by the horns; we have leaped for you and not run away; we always gave you a show. Wrong has been done here, but we did not do it. We have lived in your hand. Hold us up now, when we have need.”

  So I prayed; and those not in the secret thought I was asking him to spare us in the ring. But he knew my meaning. I felt my words sink deep, through the flags of the Bull Court, and the vaults below, down through the rubble of the ancient Labyrinths, through the virgin earth and the living rock, down to the sacred cavern where the dark lord stands in his bull shape, long-horned and curly-browed, with great eyes glowing red as embers in the night.

  The House of the Ax fell quiet. In the Bull Court, people stood about looking at me and whispering; then the talk and the games began again, the ruffled cocks were matched, the bull-leapers swung themselves over the wooden bull. As for me, I took Aktor’s advice after all, and went to bed. I did not feel myself yet, and wanted to be let alone. Yet when I was there I did not like it; my pallet was uneasy to me and I wished to be on my feet. I got up and watched the next cockfight, and played Five Fingers with the Cranes. But my head ached, just as if the earthquake had not cleared it; my spirits were oppressed, and sudden sounds went through me, so that I wondered if I was going down with fever. I felt my wound, but it did not throb nor burn, and my brow was cool. I had not been sick since I was a child, and could not remember much of it. I thought, “Have I been poisoned?” But no dancer was served with food in the Bull Court; we took our own from the common dish. Neither my chest nor my belly pained me. My limbs did not shiver. Yet a kind of horror crawled on my skin, and my eyes saw thick darkness mixed with the light.

  Supper came, and I played with a mutton bone; I did not want the other bull-leapers to see me off my food a whole day after a shaking in the ring. The Cretan servants cleared the food and brought the wine, and the dancers gossiped with them in the way of the Bull Court. I heard them with half an ear talking of that night’s festival; the spring moon was full, and the women would dance on Daidalos’ Maze by torchlight. But the darkness would not lift from me. I thought, “It is the shade of Minos, complaining of his wrong. I am the nearest thing he has to a son; he wants me to bury him, and set him free to cross the River. Be patient, poor King; I have not forgotten.”

  The weak wine went round. People were laughing. I was angry with them, that they could be merry. In the high windows the sky was pink with torchlight; I heard the music of flutes and strings begin, and wished it away. The old steward, who had served the tables of the Bull Court fifty years, came for the wine jars; and Melantho asked him what the people were saying about Herakles’ death. I roused myself to listen.

  He answered softly, “They don’t like it. They misliked it yesterday, and today they like it less. They’re saying he was doctored, to beat the book. They don’t name names, they know better; only yours, Theseus, for the man who saved their bets. But they’re saying today no good can come of it. They say the Earth Bull won’t stand still to have his tail twisted, not by the greatest in the land. Two shocks since it happened; no great harm done, but they take it for an omen. And now there’s the harbor.”

  I jumped round on the bench, saying, “The harbor? What do you mean?”

  “You should be keeping your bed,” he said, “by your looks tonight.”

  “The harbor! What is it there?” I felt suddenly maddened; I could have shaken it out of him with my hands. And yet, something in me dreaded to hear.

  “Gently, lad!” he said. “You’ve had a bone-shaking and no mistake. I can’t speak for my own eyes, but the runner from Amnisos says the sea’s sunk down to half a fathom there, and all the ships are aground. People are saying it’s a warning of bad luck.”

  The Bull Court spun and went black. There was a winecup shoving at my mouth, and the old man’s voice saying, “It will do you good.” I was standing bolt upright, grasping the table. The honey-sweet taste of neat wine was on my lips; all round were staring faces, open eyes and mouths. I flung the cup away and heard it break on the flagstones. People caught at me, as if I needed holding up; I felt as light as fire. My skull seemed open and streaming with blue flames. I gasped for air, filled my chest wide with it, and let go. A cry like a wolf’s filled the echoing Bull Court, and the voice was mine.

  Faces closed in on me, and hands and arms, which I fought away. My fist was up to hit again, when my eyes half cleared and I saw the eyes before me. It was Chryse with her scarred cheek, clinging to my shoulders. I dropped my arm, and heard the sound of my own panting, while some shred of sense in me thought by itself, “She has grown again. She is as tall as I.” Then I heard her saying, “Theseus! Speak to us. Tell us what it is. You know us, Theseus; we are the Cranes. We will not harm you. See, we are your people.”

  I struggled with the frenzy, though I felt it must tear me in pieces. Somehow I must hold together; no one could save them now but I. I kept myself whole, though I shuddered all over, and it seemed my very soul would burst and be lost in darkness. And after such a struggle as made the fight with that other bull seem like children’s games, I grappled the madness, and felt that I could speak. But first I took Chryse’s hands and held them fast in mine; they seemed to link me to myself.

  “Chryse,” I whispered, “call the Cranes.”

  Voices shouted, “Look, we are here.” I kept hold of Chryse’s hands and my eyes on hers.

  “A warning!” I said. But it came out like the croak of the dying, and they cried out, “What?”

  “Hush!” said Chryse softly. “It is the god in him.” They waited, and I tried again.

  “It is a warning. Great and terrible. It hangs like the shadow of a mountain; I have felt it through those others, it falls far ahead. Poseidon is coming in black anger, stamping on the cities, we have not seen such anger since we were born. Not yet. But soon. The god is coming. I feel him in the ground.”

  There were voices somewhere gabbling; but Chryse’s hands of a bull-girl, steady and hard, were warm in mine and her voice said quietly, “Yes, Theseus. What shall we do?”

  I had seemed to myself only a burning shell; yet at these words something within me thought. I said, “The house will fall. We must break out or die.” I blinked, and shook my head, tr
ying to clear it. “Is Thalestris here?”

  Beside me her deep boy’s voice said, “Here I am.” I said, “The arms; you must get the arms.”

  She said, “Look, they are fetching the girls to bed. Most of us are shut in already. We are the last.” I could hear, now, the scolding voice of the priestess. “The doors are bolted outside,” Thalestris said. “How can we get back?”

  I was giddy, but someone was holding me up. It was Amyntor, the good catcher, ready as in the ring. I said, “The fancy-boys; where are they?” I was past choosing words. Hippon and Iros said, “Here, Theseus. We know what to do.” I suppose they knew I would not have insulted them in my right mind. I said, “Leave the girls just time to arm. Have you something to give the guard? Thalestris, have the girls all ready to rush the doors. Waste no time; if anyone stops you, kill them out of hand. When you come we will fight our way out together. Hurry, hurry, the god is nearer.”

  I stopped with a gasp. Holding the madness off had been worse than holding a boar upon one’s spear. I heard through a daze the priestess promising to birch the girls if they would not leave romping like trulls with the boys and come away.

  They ran off; and the voices of the youths dinned in my ears, shouting questions and asking each other what I had said; for most of them had only heard a single cry. Chryse was gone and the noise tormented me; the warning surged and roared and crashed through my head, or withdrew leaving a dreadful hollow hush filled with the tread of the approaching god. The awe and terror which it is man’s nature to feel before the Immortals goaded and spurred me to fly for my life. And when I held my ground, the madness burned me up, and the warning would not be contained within me. I shook Amyntor off and leaped on the table among broken winecups, and shouted it aloud.