The King Must Die, Page 34

  “Poseidon is coming! Poseidon is coming! I Theseus tell you so, I his son. The sacred bull was killed and the Earth Bull has wakened! The House of the Ax will fall! The House will fall!”

  Then there began a clamor that went through my head like hot black spears. People ran about calling on their gods or for their lovers, snatching up their jewels or other men’s, trying to run away or to head off the runners, fighting and grappling on the floor. They only felt the fear I told them of. I felt the fear itself. I had drawn a great breath to shout again, when through the tumult a far, clear voice, like a singing bowstring, seemed to say within me, “Know yourself. Do not forget yourself. You are a man, a Hellene.”

  I paused, and knew that those who fled in panic without arms would be trapped within the Labyrinth. I took a long bull-leap off the table and hurled myself among them, cursing them and telling them to wait. But even as I spoke, thick shouting sounded along the Court, and in came the two guards from the inner door. They must have been drinking in the guardroom, it being a feast day, and slow to heed; there was always noise in the Bull Court, and their work was only to keep the door. Now they stood bawling and staring, asking if everyone was mad. They were full-armed, with seven-foot spears.

  The sight of them almost brought me to myself; but I was giddy still. As I walked forward, I heard Telamon, who was always level-headed, say, “The boys have been drinking; someone gave them some unmixed wine. It’s only horseplay.” One of the guards said to the other, “The trainer can deal with this. Find him; he must be at the dancing.” Then he broke off and said, “What’s that?”

  The sound drew nearer; a yelling and screeching like mountain cats in moonlight. A horde of girls rushed in, their arms full of weapons; bows and daggers, quivers and sawn-down spears. In the van, their arms bloodied to the elbows, were Iros in a woman’s skirt and scarf, and Thalestris stark naked, her bow and quiver at her back, her hair like black war-smoke streaming behind her. The girls had stripped to their bull-dress to free their limbs for fighting; I suppose in the scrimmage the weak link of her belt had gone. She took no notice, which among Amazons is the modesty of the field.

  They ran up the Bull Court shrieking their war cries; and at one look the door guards flung down shield and spear, and fled. But they might as well have run from the hounds of Artemis. Swift feet outran them; a twisting heap of slender limbs engulfed them; bright-honed bronze flashed up and down. When the girls scrambled up from the prone bodies, not only the Amazons had breasts dabbled with blood.

  Now the boys ran at the girls, demanding weapons, snatching and shouting, treading the dead men underfoot. And all of myself that was myself was in a rage with the panic I myself had made. I had meant to plan our breakout like a war, with stealth and coolness, and the time fixed with our friends outside. But it is not for men to see as far as the gods. I stood half crazed before my troop of madmen, knowing nothing clearly but the god’s wrath gathering and brooding, like the dense air before a storm. And yet there was a soul within my soul, free of the madness, which stood apart and whispered, “You are the King. Remember your moira. Do not lose yourself; you are the King.”

  I pressed my hands to my brow. With covered eyes I prayed to the Sky Gods, to King Zeus and to Serpent-Slaying Apollo, for wit to save my people. Then I looked about me. I did not feel much better; yet I was answered, for I knew I could do what I must.

  I stood before the mob, and shouted for silence, and my voice was like my own again. So they heeded me and stood still, those who were saner calming down the wildest. Then I could hear far off, from the northern terrace, the sound of the flutes and strings; for all this had passed swiftly, since first I had cried aloud.

  I went among them, making those with spare arms share with those who had none, and thinking where we should go. I knew all the ways from the Bull Court into the Labyrinth, but those would not serve us now; we must reach the open beyond the walls, and soon, for my head was bursting with its burden of dread. There was only one way: to storm the great outer gates of the Court, which we had never seen opened; they looked to have been locked and barred for a hundred years. There was no knowing if they would be guarded, or even walled up on the other side; there was no key. They must be broken down.

  I looked for a ram. The benches and the table were lighter than the doors; there would be long battering, great noise. The time was passing, the god was near. Then I saw the Bull of Daidalos, his oaken platform set on solid wheels, and his horns of bronze.

  Among us we pointed him at the door. Then, shouldering and heaving all together, we brought him to a crawl, to a lumbering run. His platform struck the doors; they shook, and gaped, and burst right open. Out we ran, the bull nosing before us, into a pillared portico; flaking frescoes showed in the moonlight. The Bull Court must once have been a hall of state, in another age of the Palace. There was no guard.

  We tumbled past the great red king-column, and down the steps. Before us was a tangled garden, with tall black cypresses; beyond, torchlight and music. Now we were out it sounded loud and wild, with cymbals clashing, and I saw why only the guard had heard our noise. As we ran across the garden, and put three or four spear-casts between us and the walls, I heard the Cranes around me cry out with relief. But I was tighter than a lyre-string, for I knew the god was near.

  We looked about us, grasping our weapons. Amyntor beside me said, “Where are all the Cretans? There were servants in the Bull Court, when this began.” Someone said, “I saw them run for it. I suppose the rest are watching the women dance.”

  I struck my hand against my head. Truly and indeed the god’s madness had possessed me utterly. In all this while since it seized me first, I had not once thought of her.

  The ragged garden was sweet with the scents of spring. Behind us the great pile of the Labyrinth, bright with lamplight, stood against a cloud-flecked sky where moon and stars ran like driven ships before the wind. Before us the cypress-tips leaned against a rose-red glow of torches. Hands and drums and cymbals beat, flutes shrilled, a thousand voices were singing. And it was a horror to me; for in the midst of it was Minos’ daughter, the Mistress of the Labyrinth, her little feet striking the angry earth, her ears hearing the pipes and lyres, but deaf to the voice of the warning god. The sky was pressing on my head with its flying moon and all its stars, as heavy as a king’s burial-mound. The ground under my feet sent thrills of fear up through my sandals, shuddering in my belly and my loins.

  “Amyntor,” I said, “Thalestris, Kasos. Keep everyone together, there in that grove. Hide in the bushes. Then do not move; it will be soon. I will come back quickly; pray to the god and wait.”

  They asked questions; but there was no time. “Wait,” I said, and ran toward the torches.

  I came up unheeded behind the crowd. High wooden stands enclosed the floor three sides; the fourth was open, but blocked with standing men. They were Cretan peasants; not many; there were few Cretans anywhere, but I had other things to think of. I had just heard the Palace doves fly up, and all the birds of day rise chattering from their roosts. The god was breathing on my neck, so near that I feared neither Cretan nor Hellene, man nor beast, but his coming only.

  The Cretans let me through. They were used to being pushed aside by fair-haired men. Here and there one knew me and called out my name surprised. I reached the coping round the dancing-floor, and sprang upon it, and stared about to find her.

  A thousand torches, set on high poles, were streaming sideways in a rising wind. The smells of burning pitch and dust, of flowers and perfume and warm flesh, swam through my head. I saw before me the great paved maze of Daidalos, its magic pattern inlaid with black and white stone, smooth and bright and wide between the columned stands with their glittering people dressed for the feast. The women sat with their jewelled boy-dolls in their arms. On the edge of the floor was the music, the tambours and the cytheras, the cymbals and Egyptian harps, the skirling pipes from the aulos to the little flute of ivory whose fine sound flickers like
a snake’s forked tongue. The music shrilled, wounding the deathly silence in which the dark god stood waiting. And in the midst of the maze, strung along the crooked path of scoured white marble, hair and skirts and jewels swinging, arms entwined and slim waists swaying to the beat, was the wreath of women, weaving and twisting and turning on itself, like the house snake who sloughs his winter skin and is made new again. It bent about and came toward me. I saw her face, gay and flashing, touched by no dread, no shadow, leading the dance.

  I saw her; and all my soul and body, scourged by the god’s anger and ridden almost to death, longed for her breast and her warm arms as a child flies to its mother from the terrors of the dark. I leaped out from the parapet upon the checkered floor; and even as I leaped, the mighty voice of the god cried to me, “I am here!”

  The earth lurched beneath me, grinding and shuddering. The marble flags I ran on tilted endways, flinging me down on hands and knees. There was a mighty crashing and roaring, shrieking voices, cracking wood. My fingers grasped an edge of paving that worked to and fro like a living thing; I was rocked and tossed about as the strong-laid floor of Daidalos broke like water and surged in waves. And deep below, as he tossed the groaning land upon his great black horns, the Earth Bull boomed and bellowed, louder than the shouts of terror, louder than the thunder of falling column and floor and wall.

  There was someone with me sobbing and crying like a woman as she gives birth. The sobbing shook me; it was my own. I had been with child of this great doom; now it was as if I myself had brought it forth with tearing of my body and the sweat of agony. As the broken marble settled under me I clutched it gasping and trembling. Everywhere around me the things that man had raised above the earth returned to it again, shaken back to their beginnings by the furious god. Shouts and moans came from the broken stands; from the Palace a wild howling of dogs and women, the squeals of children mad with pain and fear, men calling each other or crying for help, loosened blocks rumbling and crashing. I lay in the storm of this infernal noise; and felt flooding into me, as I lay, a strange white empty bliss. For I was delivered of my warning. The great hand of the god loosened about me, his madness cleared from my head. I was weary, bruised, and fearful, but neither more nor less than man. While flying feet stumbled over me and the greatest of all kings’ houses fell about my ears, I gave a great sigh of ease; it seemed almost that I could have slept.

  I raised my head. The wind blew dust and grit into my eyes; a woman rushed past me shrieking, with her skirt on fire. At that I remembered why I was here, and got upon my feet. I was sore and aching, as after a great shaking in the ring; but the giddiness had left me, my head was clear. I looked about me.

  The dancing-floor was like a sea-strand where a wreck has carried. The drunken torches leaned on their poles, or guttered on the ground; the tilted flagstones were strewn with a rubbish of garlands and trampled harps, shoes and scarves and bloodstained fans, broken dolls and the ordure of men in terror. The fallen stands were loud with cries and curses and splitting wood. One of them was on fire, where a torch had fallen. And in the middle of the maze, all cowered together as bright birds huddle in thunder, were the dancers.

  I ran toward them, picking my way in the mess and rubble. Some were kneeling and beating their breasts, some swaying with covered faces as they wailed, some waving their arms and crying for their menfolk. But in the midst I saw a girl standing alone, with wild bright eyes, silent, staring about her. She was mine, looking for me; against sense and reason knowing I would come for her.

  I reached her and caught her up. Her arms gripped me, her face thrust at my neck, her breast crushed upon mine panted and thudded with her beating heart. I ran with her off the floor, picking my way over prone bodies wailing, sputtering torches, trampled flowers, my feet slipping in I knew not what. We ran into the gardens, where the thorns of roses tore us as we fled. Then there was soft earth with sharp spring flowers in it. I put her down.

  I had had no thought but to save her. But men are straws in a torrent, when the mighty gods move on the earth. We learned then what it means, when they say that Earth-Shaker is husband of the Mother. We lay a moment in staring stillness, clinging and gasping; then we fell on one another like leopards coupling in the spring.

  This passion, being god-inspired, was healing. The earth was moist and sweet; the wrath of Poseidon had stirred its scents like the gardener’s spade, but now it was quiet, a friendly bed. There we lay, I suppose not long, drawing in strength from the Mother’s breast. Then we got stumbling to our feet. She looked at me with dazed, swimming eyes and cried, “My father!”

  “He is dead,” I answered. “A good quick death.” She was too stunned to ask me how I knew. “You must mourn later, my bird. My people are waiting, let us go.”

  We shook the earth from us, and I led her by the hand. As we came out of the garden-close, we almost fell over a pair lying as we had lain. They did not heed us. Then we faced the Labyrinth, and saw what the god had done.

  There where the tiered and terraced roofs had marched one above the other, lifting their proud horns to the sky, was a broken line as ragged as mountain rocks. The columns of the colonnades had fallen, the windows which had been soft with lamplight were black empty caves, or blinking eyes of fire. You could see, through the broken porticoes and through arches from which balconies had crashed away, the flames from the spilled lamp oil running along the floors, leaping up curtains and canopies, eating the wood of bed and chair and fallen rafter, roaring already and crackling as the strong wind swept it on.

  Women passed us flying and wailing. One of them carried the child Phaedra clinging about her neck. Ariadne called, but they rushed by unheeding. I hastened on to where I had left the dancers.

  They were all there. Some were still calling on the god as I had told them to. They saw us and came running. The grove was bright with firelight now, and I saw tumbling out from under the flowering thickets those whom Mother Dia had stricken with desire. People called to each other that I was here, and ran up, and caught at me. Amyntor indeed embraced me; all this seemed natural, at the time. Not one had been harmed in the earthquake, beyond some grazes when they were flung down.

  I said to them, “The god has heard our prayers. Now we will go down to Amnisos, and seize a ship to get off in when the gale eases. But first, look here! Here is the Mistress, Minos’ daughter, spared from Poseidon’s anger. Help me to care for her; she will be my wife. Look at her well and know her. Here she is.”

  I swung her up on my shoulder; in the Bull Court one learns the knack. I wanted to be sure they knew her face, lest she should be lost in the tumult, or ravished by the young men; it was a time of wildness. So I lifted her, as one lifts one’s standard for one’s troops to see and remember.

  They cheered. The noise amazed me, that so few mouths could make it. And then I saw that all around us, in the mounting glow of the fires, the walks and lawns were black with Cretans. They came swarming and clambering up the slopes, from the open places where they had fled to abide the wrath of Poseidon. The servants in the Bull Court had heard my warning, and run out to warn their friends. All through the Palace, Cretan had told Cretan; they had put down broom and pot and lamp and trencher, and slipped away. They did not hold the gods so light as the courtiers of the Labyrinth.

  They had fled and lived. Now they beheld in ruin the proud house of Minos, where they had known heavy labor and slight esteem. They saw the broken doors, the smashed chests and closets spewing out silks and goldwork; the tilted wine jars, the tables spilling their feasts; the precious cups and rhytons they had filled and carried, always for the lips of other men.

  So they had crept near, meaning to make themselves the heirs of Labrys. Then just as they reached the upper terrace, I had lifted up before them the Goddess-on-Earth.

  She stood to them for the prayers King Minos had answered; for the oracles that had sweetened their coarse bread with mystery and hope; the little Cretan goddess, whom tall fair-haired Pasiphae h
ad been ashamed of bearing. She was their own, their stake in the glories of the Labyrinth. She was the heart and kernel of the old religion, nearest to the Mother who takes men to her breast and soothes them like whipped children after her husband’s wrath. She was the Thrice Holy, the Most Pure, the Guardian of the Dance; and, seeing her, they remembered the sacrilege done before her in the ring, which had waked the Earth Bull to ravage Crete.

  They thronged about us, roaring like the sea. They had seen who held her, and remembered the oracles, the ring in the harbor, and the warning that had brought them out. Some of them began shouting the marriage cry, whooping and dancing. But most were pointing to the Palace shaking their fists, or waving sticks and knives. As they pressed forward, sweeping us along with them, a voice howled, “Death to the Minotaur!” and a hundred answered, “Death!”

  Amyntor and Telamon closed up beside me, locking their arms across my back. All together we bore up the Mistress; we dared not set her down, lest she should be trampled in the milling press. Remembering the wrecked stands by the dancing-floor, I thought it ten to one Asterion was dead; I was angry at all this hindrance, thinking only how to get my people away. And then, of a sudden, just like the oil flames running along the Palace floors, I felt a fire leap from the Cretans to the bull-dancers around me. A spark of it fell on my soul, and it burst into a blaze.

  We thought of our distant homes, our parents weeping when we were snatched away; some of us had been courting, some betrothed, some in love with a craft or with the good land of our fathers, some with our hearts set on renown; from all these things, from the places and the customs of our kin, we had been torn away to die for the sport of the painted Labyrinth. We thought of the haughty envoys coming for tribute who had held our people light. But those of us who by now were bull-dancers to the bone, remembered before everything how Asterion had made merchandise of our courage and our blood. The gods were held cheap in the House of the Ax; but we had been brought from places where gods are honored. Though we were slaves, yet we were a proud people, the little calves of Poseidon. We did not take kindly to being any man’s cattle.