The blue side of his face looked stern; the white had a little secret smile. At the bed’s foot his white boar-hound lay chin on paws, and stared at nothing.
I said, “Who saw him die?”
The dog’s ears pricked, and its tail struck the ground softly. The women peeped through their hair; then they screeched louder, and the youngest bared their breasts to pummel them. But old Mykale knelt by the bedpost silent. My father’s grandfather had taken her in some ancient war; she was more than fourscore years old. Her monkey-creased black eyes met mine unblinking. I held them; but it was hard to do.
The baron said, “He was seen by the guard of the northern wall, and by the watchman on the roof. Their witness agrees, that he was alone. They saw him come out on the balcony that stands above the cliff, and step straight upon the balustrade, and lift his arms. Then he sprang outward.”
I looked at the right side of his face, then at the left. But their witness did not agree. I asked, “When was it?”
He looked away. “A runner had come from Sounion, with news of a ship passing the headland. ‘What sail?’ he asked. The man answered, ‘Cretan, my lord. Blue-black, with a bull upon it.’ He ordered the man to be fed, and then went in. That was our last sight of him living.”
I could tell he knew what he was saying. So I raised my voice for all to hear. “This will be my grief forever. Now I remember how he bade me whiten my sail, if I came safe home. I have been a year with the bulls since then, and through the great earthquake, and the burning of the Labyrinth, and war. My sorrow that I forgot.”
An old chamberlain, polished and white as silver, slid out from the press. Some pillars of kings’ houses are earthquake-proof; it is their calling. “My lord, never reproach yourself. He died the Erechthid death. So went King Pandion at his time, from that very place; and King Kekrops from the castle crag at Euboia. The sign of the god was sent him, you may be sure, and your memory slept by the will of heaven.” He gave me a grave silvery smile. “The Immortals know the scent of the new vintage. They will not let a great wine wait past its best.” At this there was a buzzing, decent and low, but keen as the shouts of warriors at a breach that someone else has made. I saw my father’s smile in his new-combed beard. He had ruled a troubled kingdom fifty years; he knew something of men. He looked smaller than when I went away, or perhaps I had grown a little. I said, “Gentlemen, you have leave.”
They went. The women’s eyes moved to me sidelong; I signed them away. But they forgot old Mykale, clutching at the bedpost to ease up from her stiff knees. I went and lifted her, and we looked at one another.
She bobbed, and made to go. I caught her arm, soft loose skin upon brittle bone, and said, “Did you see it, Mykale?”
Her wrinkles puckered, and she wriggled like a child in trouble. The bone twisted while the slack flesh stayed in my hand. Her skull was pink as chicken-skin through the thin hair. “Answer me,” I said. “Did he speak to you?”
“Me?” she said, blinking. “Folks tell me nothing. In King Kekrops’ day I was paid more heed to. He told me, when he was called. Whom else, when I was in his bed? listen again, Mykale, listen again. Lean down, girl; put your ear to my head. You will hear it like a sounding shell.’ So I leaned down to please him. But he put me by with the back of his arm, and walked out like a man in thought, straight from his naked bed to the northern rampart, and down without a cry.”
She had been telling this tale for sixty years. But I heard it out. “So much for Kekrops. But here lies Aigeus dead. Come. What did he say?”
She peered at me: a wise-woman near her end; a withered baby with the ancient House Snake looking from its eyes. Then she blinked, and said she was only a poor old slave-girl whose memory would not hold.
“Mykale!” I said. “Do you know who I am? Don’t fool with me.”
She jumped a little. Then, like an old nurse to a child that stamps his foot at her, “Oh, aye, I know you, outlandish as you’ve grown, like some rich lord’s minion or a dancing mime. Young Theseus, that he got at Troizen on King Pittheus’ girl; the quick lad with the meddling hand. You sent word from Crete by a mountebank, that he should put out his ships against King Minos, and bring you home. A fine taking it put him in. Not many knew what ailed him. But news comes to me.”
I said, “He had better have sailed than grieved. Crete was falling-ripe and I knew it. I proved it, too; so I am here.”
“Trust comes hard, when a man’s own brothers have fought him for his birthright. Better he’d trusted Apollo’s oracle, before he loosed your mother’s girdle. Aye, he woke a fate too strong for his hands, poor man.”
I let her go. She stood rubbing her arm, and grumbling to herself. My eyes turned to my father. Under the cloth that wrapped his skull, a thread of blood was trickling.
I took a step back. I could have cried to her like a child to its nurse, “Make this not to be!” But she had drawn away like the House Snake who at a footstep creeps towards his hole. Her eyes were like cores of onyx. She was of the ancient Shore Folk, and knew earth magic, and the speech of the dead in the house of darkness. I knew whose servant she was, and she was not mine. Where the dead are, the Mother is not far away.
No man will lie when the Daughters of Night are listening. I said, “He feared me always. When I first came to him as victor from the Isthmus, he tried to kill me out of fear.”
She nodded. It was true that all news came her way.
“But when he knew I was his son, we both did what was proper. I fought his wars; he gave me honor. It seemed we loved as we ought. He would ask me here—you have seen us at evening, talking by the fire.”
I turned towards his bed. The blood had stopped flowing; but it lay wet still on his cheek.
“If I had meant him harm, would I have saved him on the battlefield? He would have been speared at Sounion, without my shield. Yet he feared me still. Would I have gone to Crete? Yet I felt his fear still waiting. Well, he might see cause now. He had failed me with the ships. That was to face between us. In his place I would have died of shame.”
When the words were out they shocked me. It was unfitting, before his face; and Night’s Daughters hear such things. Something cold touched my hand. My flesh leaped on my bones; but it was the nose of the white boarhound, dropping into my palm. It leaned hard against my thigh; the warmth had comfort in it.
“When it came time to show the sail, I prayed Poseidon for a sign. I wanted to reach him before he knew of my coming: to prove I came in peace, that I bore him no ill will for failing me, that I could wait in patience for the kingdom. I prayed; and the god sent me the sign I prayed for.”
The Guardians of the Dead received my words into their silence. Words do not wash out blood. There would be a reckoning. Yet I would like to have spoken with him, a man to a man. What I had been afraid he would do in fear, he had done in sorrow. There had been this kindness in him, beneath all his contrivance. And yet, was it so? He was the King. Sorrow or not, he should have named an heir, disposed the kingdom, not left chaos behind. That he knew. Perhaps it was true that the god had called him.
I looked at Mykale, and saw only an old slave-woman of the Shore Folk, and was sorry to have said so much.
She hobbled to the bier, and took a cloth left by the women and wiped the face. Then she turned up the palm, which came stiffly—for the corpse was setting—and looked into it, and laid it down again and took up mine. Her hand seemed still cold from the touch of the dead. The dog pushed between, fussing and whining. She scolded it off, and brushed her robe.
“Yes, yes, a fate too strong for him.” A fading flame guttered in her watery eyes. “Go with your fate, but not beyond. Beyond leads to dark places. Truth and death come from the north, in a falling star…” She crossed her arms and rocked, and her voice keened as if for the dead. Then she straightened, and cried out strongly, “Loose not the Bull from the Sea!”