I heard these dreadful words; but they came to me like children weeping. For the presence of the god was pressing on my skull, and up the soles of my feet and through my loins from the tingling rock. I stood upright, as if his arm had thrust me forward. My fear was quenched in solemn awe. I was out of myself, only a string for his sounding; I knew what it is to be priest as well as king.
The blind man stood where I had guided him, a little below me in the trough of the holy hoofprint, his face looking to the earth. I said, “Be free of it. Go in peace to the house of Hades. Father Poseidon, Earth-Holder, accept the offering!”
Even while I spoke, the birds flew upward screaming, and the dogs howled. I saw him stretch out his hands in prayer to the gods below; and then I saw no more. Deep down under, the hill’s core gave a great grinding jar. I lost my footing, and slipped among falling stones and shale, till I fetched up against the roots of a fir tree, sticking up naked from the earth. Close by I heard a mighty, bounding thud, another, and a heavy settling. At once the earthquake-sickness left me; my heart stilled, and my head was clear. It was like waking from a nightmare; so that I called out briskly, “Where are you? Are you hurt?”
None answered. I pulled myself up by the fir tree. The shape of the rocks had changed. The hoofprint’s groove had opened in a cleft, and great boulders filled it. I made the sign of reverence to the god, and crept to the edge upon my knees; but the depths were still.
Far off, the people of Kolonos were calling the god by name and blowing bull horns; and a lone ass hurled up his bray to heaven, as if all things that suffer had made him their spokesman to accuse the gods.
VIII
IT WAS A YEAR and more since I had seen Pirithoos, for he had buried his father and was King in Thessaly. It stopped his roving for a while. But when he did come, it was by sea again; salt-stained, storm-beaten, as hairy as his men, and clinking with gold. He had swept down on Sarnos while the King’s men there were away fighting a war, and sacked the royal palace. He had brought a Samian girl, and even kept her a virgin, as a gift for me.
I had not been idle that year either; for I had conquered Megara.
The war concerned the tolls of the Isthmus Road. Nisos, the old King, whom I had had a treaty of free trade with, had died with no son surviving. He had been my kinsman; the heir was neither kin nor kind. He taxed all traffic from Attica, making excuse that when the treaty was drawn up, I was only King of Eleusis; as if any man of honor would not have stretched the point for me, who had cleared the road of bandits. At first, when I sent word to him, he gave civil answers and amends, then civil answers and excuses; then the answers shortened. This was foolish. It made me think, as any king would who cared to leave a name behind him, that with Megara in my hand I could push the bounds of Attica right up to the Isthmus neck.
So I came down on him before the weather broke. I dressed my men as merchants; their arms were stowed in their bales, and I had myself carried in a covered litter, such as well-born women use. We surprised the gate-tower, let in the army which had been waiting behind a hill, and were almost at the Citadel before the land was roused. We could have made as great a sacking as Pirithoos’ at Samos; but I forbade it on pain of death. I had never yet ruled folk who hated me.
Pirithoos grieved to have missed the war, and sailed on home. I was busy with Megara all that year. Like the peoples of Attica, these had their ways, which I would not plough under; but that work had taught me something, and my hand was surer here. I was resolved to build a strong house that would stand after me, not a shoddy makeshift to fall on my son’s head. So I was thinking, all the while I settled Megara and the Isthmus, built the great altar of Poseidon to mark my new-made boundary, and founded his sacred Games. And once every few days, I remembered I was rising five-and-twenty, without a wife.
Chance, mostly, had made it so. My father could not betroth me as a boy, since he had kept me hidden; soon after he acknowledged me, I had gone to Crete. When I came back I had great things in hand, and grudged the time.
My house had women enough, there when I wanted them, out of the way when I was busy; I had taken some more girls in the war, and could suit my mood; or if I found one tiresome, I could pack her off. What I should be doing, I knew full well; but I thought of all the tedious business: embassies; visits from kinsfolk and back to them; treaties and portions, with days full of paper and old men; the women’s rooms to be brought in order, the tears and screams and threats to jump off the walls; the mess of girls and gear the bride would bring along with her, the quarrels and the jealousies, the tedium of the same face each morning on the pillow. It would do next season. Then an arrow would pass me near in battle, or a summer fever touch me, and I would think, “I have no heir but my enemies; tomorrow I will see to it.” But tomorrow was another day.
And then, the year after the Megarian War, a big ship stood off Piraeus, flying the royal pennant of Mykenai and a red sail with the guarding lions. I made ready for a guest of honor, wondering what it meant. Soon came ashore a herald from Echelaos, the King’s heir. He had taken the omens of the winds, before passing Sounion Head, and had got a bad one; could he be my guest for the night?
I met him at the port, and found him what I had heard: a big man of about my years, personable and proud, but able to be easy when he wished to please.
Since we met, as he said, by luck and weather, he put on the lightness of men at the hunt or at the Games: told battle-tales and jokes, admired my horses. At evening, over wine in my upper room, he loosened further, gossiping about his father’s health and his mother’s strictness; she was too hard, he said, on his young sister, who would soon be a woman. “A girl who is shooting up like wheat, and coming into beauty; one cannot keep her a child forever.” He looked down at his long brown hand, and turned his signet.
I kept a pleasant face, though my mind was buzzing. This was what had come of putting off. I thought how it would have rejoiced my father, when Attica was a rock in a little plain. For me it was a baited trap. My power was too new to come under the great shadow of Mykenai; they would suck me in, and my heir would be their vassal in all but name. A few years more, and it might have been a match of equals. So they thought too, it seemed.
Well, this would teach me to delay! It was now or never. To pause, and consider, and withdraw, would be a mortal insult; and the Lion House does not stomach insults much better than the gods.
Haste would be improper. He had managed his part well, and so must I. So I sent for a Cretan girl who played the Egyptian harp, and bade her sing. I was glad to see he fancied her, for he might need sweetening. She saw it too, and made the best of herself, her mind on a jewel from the golden town. I had kept her for her music, and never slept with her; even the scent she used brought back the Labyrinth, the secret midnights, the dreadful farewell on Naxos. But Echelaos’ eyes were busier than his ears.
When the song was over, he looked like a child who sees the honey-pot being put away. So I motioned the girl to stay for another song, and said to him, “Yes, it’s a pretty air. I heard it sung by the girl I am betrothed to, while she was still a child—King Minos’ daughter Phaedra. Ah, yes; it is time I sailed to Crete again.”
He took it well, clearly believing me, and saying, even, that he had heard as much. He had come, as now I guessed, to sound me and make sure. Soon he went to bed, and I sent the girl to him. That would leave him no time to brood. As for me, I stood late upon the balcony, thinking how quickly fate had settled this over my head.