Authors: Mary Renault
Our part of the world had always been sacred to Earth-Shaker; the youths had many of his deeds to sing about. Even the ford, their hymn said, was of his making; he had stamped in the strait, and the sea had sunk to a trickle, then risen to flood the plain. Up till that time, ships had passed through it; there was a prophecy that one day he would strike it with his fish-spear, and it would sink again.
As we walked between the boys, my grandfather ran his eye along them, for likely warriors. But I had seen ahead, in the midst of the sacred clearing, the King Horse himself, browsing quietly from a tripod.
He had been hand-broken this last year, not for work but for this occasion, and today he had had the drugged feed at dawn. But without knowing this, I was not surprised he should put up with the people round him; I had been taught it was the mark of a king to receive homage with grace.
The shrine was garlanded with pine boughs. The summer air bore scents of resin and flowers and incense, of sweat from the horse and the young men's bodies, of salt from the sea. The priests came forward, crowned with pine, to salute my grandfather as chief priest of the god. Old Kannadis, whose beard was as white as the King Horse's forelock, laid his hand on my head nodding and smiling. My grandfather beckoned to Diokles, my favorite uncle; a big young man eighteen years old, with the skin of a leopard, which he had killed himself, hanging on his shoulder. "Look after the boy," said my grandfather, "till we are ready for him."
Diokles said, "Yes, sir," and led me to the steps before the shrine, away from where he had been standing with his friends. He had on his gold snake arm-ring with crystal eyes, and his hair was bound with a purple ribbon. My grandfather had won his mother at Pylos, second prize in the chariot race, and had always valued her highly; she was the best embroidress in the Palace. He was a bold gay youth, who used to let me ride on his wolfhound. But today he looked at me solemnly, and I feared I was a burden to him.
Old Kannadis brought my grandfather a pine wreath bound with wool, which should have been ready, but had been found after some delay. There is always some small hitch at Troizen; we do not do these things with the smoothness of Athens. The King Horse munched from the tripod, and flicked off flies with his tail.
There were two more tripods; one bowl held water, the other water and wine. In the first my grandfather washed his hands, and a young server dried them. The King Horse lifted his head from the feed, and it seemed they looked at one another. My grandfather set his hand on the white muzzle, and stroked down hard; the head dipped, and rose with a gentle toss. Diokles leaned down to me and said, "Look, he consents."
I looked up at him. This year his beard showed clearly against the light. He said, "It means a good omen. A lucky year." I nodded, thinking the purpose of the rite accomplished; now we would go home. But my grandfather sprinkled meal on the horse's back from a golden dish; then took up a little knife bright with grinding, and cut a lock from his mane. He gave a small piece to Talaos, who was standing near, and some to the first of the barons. Then he turned my way, and beckoned. Diokles' hand on my shoulder pushed me forward. "Go up," he whispered. "Go and take it."
I stepped out, hearing men whisper, and women coo like mating pigeons. I knew already that the son of the Queen's own daughter ranked before the sons of the Palace women; but I had never had it noticed publicly. I thought I was being honored like this because the King Horse was my brother.
Five or six strong white hairs were put in my hand. I had meant to thank my grandfather; but now I felt come out of him the presence of the King, solemn as a sacred oak wood. So, like the others, I touched the lock to my brow in silence. Then I went back, and Diokles said, "Well done."
My grandfather raised his hands and invoked the god. He hailed him as Earth-Shaker, Wave-Gatherer, brother of King Zeus and husband of the Mother; Shepherd of Ships, Horse-Lover. I heard a whinny from beyond the pine woods, where the chariot teams were tethered, ready to race in honor of the god. The King Horse raised his noble head, and softly answered.
The prayer was long, and my mind wandered, till I heard by the note that the end was coming. "Be it so, Lord Poseidon, according to our prayer; and do you accept the offering." He held out his hand, and someone put in it a great cleaver with a bright-ground edge. There were tall men standing with ropes of oxhide in their hands. My grandfather felt the cleaver's edge and, as in his chariot, braced his feet apart.
It was a good clean killing. I myself, with all Athens watching, am content to do no worse. Yet, even now, I still remember. How he reared up like a tower, feeling his death, dragging the men like children; the scarlet cleft in the white throat, the rank hot smell; the ruin of beauty, the fall of strength, the ebb of valor; and the grief, the burning pity as he sank upon his knees and laid his bright head in the dust. That blood seemed to tear the soul out of my breast, as if my own heart had shed it.
As the newborn babe, who has been rocked day and night in his soft cave knowing no other, is thrust forth where the harsh air pierces him and the fierce light stabs his eyes, so it was with me. But between me and my mother, where she stood among the women, was the felled carcass twitching in blood, and my grandfather with the crimson cleaver. I looked up; but Diokles was watching the death-throe, leaning easily on his spear. I met only the empty eye-slits of the leopardskin, and the arm-snake's jewelled stare.
My grandfather dipped a cup into the offering bowl, and poured the wine upon the ground. I seemed to see blood stream from his hand. The smell of dressed hide from Diokles' shield, and the man's smell of his body, came to me mixed with the smell of death. My grandfather gave the server the cup, and beckoned. Diokles shifted his spear to his shield arm, and took my hand. "Come," he said. "Father wants you. You have to be dedicated now."
I thought, "So was the King Horse." The bright day rippled before my eyes, which tears of grief and terror blinded. Diokles swung round his shield on its shoulder sling to cover me like a house of hide, and wiped his hard young hand across my eyelids. "Behave," he said. "The people are watching. Come, where's the warrior? It's only blood."
He took the shield away; and I saw the people staring.
At the sight of all their eyes, memories came back to me. "Gods' sons fear nothing," I thought. "Now they will know, one way or the other." And though within me was all dark and crying, yet my foot stepped forward.
Then it was that I heard a sea-sound in my ears; a pulse and a surging, going with me, bearing me on. I heard it then for the first time.
I moved with the wave, as if it broke down a wall before me; and Diokles led me forward. At least, I know that I was led; by him, or one who took his shape as the Immortals may. And I know that having been alone, I was alone no longer.
My grandfather dipped his finger in the blood of the sacrifice, and made the sign of the trident on my brow. Then he and old Kannadis took me under the cool thatch that roofed the holy spring, and dropped in a votive for me, a bronze bull with gilded horns. When we came out, the priests had cut off the god's portion from the carcass, and the smell of burned fat filled the air. But it was not till I got home, and my mother asked, "What is it?" that at last I wept.
Between her breasts, entangled in her shining hair, I wept as if to purge away my soul in water. She put me to bed, and sang to me, and said when I was quiet, "Don't grieve for the King Horse; he has gone to the Earth Mother, who made us all. She has a thousand thousand children, and knows each one of them. He was too good for anyone here to ride; but she will find him some great hero, a child of the sun or the north wind, to be his friend and master; they will gallop all day, and never be tired. Tomorrow you shall take her a present for him, and I will tell her it comes from you."
Next day we went down together to the Navel Stone. It had fallen from heaven long- ago, before anyone remembers. The walls of its sunken court were mossy, and the Palace noises fell quiet around. The sacred House Snake had his hole between the stones; but he only showed himself to my mother, when she brought him his milk. She laid my honey-cake on the altar, and told the Goddess whom it was for. As we went, I looked back and saw it lying on the cold stone, and remembered the horse's living breath upon my hand, his soft lip warm and moving.
I was sitting among the house dogs, at the doorway end of the Great Hall, when my grandfather passed through, and spoke to me in greeting.
I got up, and answered; for one did not forget he was the King. But I stood looking down, and stroking my toe along a crack in the flagstones. Because of the dogs, I had not heard him coming, or I would have been gone. "If he could do this," I had been thinking, "how can one trust the gods?"
He spoke again, but I only said "Yes," and would not look at him. I could feel him high above me, standing in thought. Presently he said, "Come with me."
I followed him up the corner stairs to his own room above. He had been born there, and got my mother and his sons, and it was the room he died in. Then I had been there seldom; in his old age he lived all day in it, for it faced south, and the chimney of the Great Hall went through to warm it. The royal bed at the far end was seven feet long by six feet wide, made of polished cypress, inlaid and carved. The blue wool cover with its border of flying cranes had taken my grandmother half a year on the great loom. There was a bronze-bound chest by it, for his clothes; and for his jewels an ivory coffer on a painted stand. His arms hung on the wall: shield, bow, longsword and dagger, his hunting knife, and his tall-plumed helmet of quilted hide, lined with crimson leather the worse for wear. There was not much else, except the skins on the floor and a chair. He sat, and motioned me to the footstool.
Muffled up the stairway came the noises of the Hall: women scrubbing the long trestles with sand, and scolding men out of their way; a scuffle and a laugh. My grandfather's head cocked, like an old dog's at a footstep. Then he rested his hands on the chair-arms carved with lions, and said, "Well, Theseus? Why are you angry?"
I looked up as far as his hand. His fingers curved into a lion's open mouth; on his forefinger was the royal ring of Troizen, with the Mother being worshipped on a pillar. I pulled at the bearskin on the floor, and was silent.
"When you are a king," he said, "you will do better than we do here. Only the ugly and the base shall die; what is brave and beautiful shall live for ever. That is how you will rule your kingdom?"
To see if he was mocking me, I looked at his face. Then it was as if I had only dreamed the priest with the cleaver. He reached out and drew me in against his knees, and dug his fingers in my hair as he did with his dogs when they came up to be noticed.
"You knew the King Horse; he was your friend. So you know if it was his own choice to be King, or not." I sat silent, remembering the great horse-fight and the war calls. "You know he lived like a king, with first pick of the feed, and any mare he wanted; and no one asked him to work for it."
I opened my mouth, and said, "He had to fight for it."
"Yes, that is true. Later, when he was past his best, a younger stallion would have come, and won the fight, and taken his kingdom. He would have died hard, or been driven from his people and his wives to grow old without honor. You saw that he was proud."
I asked, "Was he so old?"
"No." His big wrinkled hand lay quietly on the lion mask. "No older for a horse than Talaos for a man. He died for another cause. But if I tell you why, then you must listen, even if you do not understand. When you are older, if I am here, I will tell it you again; if not you will have heard it once, and some of it you will remember."
While he spoke, a bee flew in and buzzed among the painted rafters. To this day, that sound will bring it back to me.
"When I was a boy," he said, "I knew an old man, as you know me. But he was older; the father of my grandfather. His strength was gone, and he sat in the sun or by the hearthside. He told me this tale, which I shall tell you now, and you, perhaps, will tell one day to your son." I remember I looked up then, to see if he was smiling.
"Long ago, so he said, our people lived in the north-land, beyond Olympos. He said, and he was angry when I doubted it, that they never saw the sea. Instead of water they had a sea of grass, which stretched as far as the swallow flies, from the rising to the setting sun. They lived by the increase of their herds, and built no cities; when the grass was eaten, they moved where there was more. They did not grieve for the sea, as we should, or for the good things earth brings forth with tilling; they had never known them; and they had few skills, because they were wandering men. But they saw a wide sky, which draws men's mind to the gods; and they gave their first-fruits to Ever-Living Zeus, who sends the rain.
"When they journeyed, the barons in their chariots rode round about, guarding the flocks and the women. They bore the burden of danger, then as now; it is the price men pay for honor. And to this very day, though we live in the Isle of Pelops and build walls, planting olives and barley, still for the theft of cattle there is always blood. But the horse is more. With horses we took these lands from the Shore People who were here before us. The horse will be the victor's sign, as long as our blood remembers.
"The folk came south by little and little, leaving their first lands. Perhaps Zeus sent no rain, or the people grew too many, or they were pressed by enemies. But my great-grandfather said to me that they came by the will of All-Knowing Zeus, because this was the place of their moira."
He paused in thought. I said to him, "What is that?"
"Moira?" he said. "The finished shape of our fate, the line drawn round it. It is the task the gods allot us, and the share of glory they allow; the limits we must not pass; and our appointed end. Moira is all these."
I thought about this, but it was too big for me. I asked, "Who told them where to come?"