“What is this?” I asked. “Have you not seen enough of her? If you had done as I said, it would have been better every way.”
“Ah! You own it! And what did you mean to do, then, fighting my quarrel? Tell me that.”
“Fighting? You forget, I am the King. I shall do judgment. Go now; we will talk afterwards.”
She came up in two strides, and looked at me eye to eye. “You meant to kill her!” she said.
“It is a quick death, off the Rock,” I said, “and better than she has earned. Now go as I asked, and let me deal.”
“You would have killed her!” Her eyes flashed, and narrowed like a lynx’s. Even when we were hand to hand at Maiden Crag, I had not seen her like this. “What am I? A peasant wife, one of your bath-girls? It was the same when I killed my leopard! Oh, yes, I remember; I had to shout or you would have had that too. And you swore not to dishonor me!”
“Dishonor you? Not to stand by and see you wronged, is that dishonor? I warned you against letting things come to this. You would not heed; and who is the better for your pride?”
“I am, if you are not! Did you think I would come creeping to you like a slave-girl, telling tales? Have I never been taught honor, or the law of arms? I know what calls for a challenge, as well as you do. Yes, and if you had been any other, I would have had your blood too, for this.”
I nearly laughed; but some voice said danger. If she lost her head and defied me, she was too proud to draw back; and who could tell the end of it? But, I thought, if I give in first will she not despise me? We stood at stretch, fizzing like cats upon a wall. I don’t know what would have come next, if we had not heard outside the Guard bringing the woman. That brought back my wits.
“Very well,” I said. “I give her to you. But remember, after, it was you who asked.”
I went and sat apart, in the window. But the woman, when they brought her in, ran straight past Hippolyta, fell down clasping my knees, and wailed excuses. She blamed it all on the treasurer, who had loved her, poor fool.
“Get up,” I said. “I have nothing to do here. The Lady Hippolyta can right her wrongs without help from me. Attend to her; there she is.”
I looked across. She was sickened already by this grovelling; she could not meet my eye. But she stood her ground, showed the weapons (ax, spear and javelin, as I remember) and offered her enemy first choice.
There was no answer, but a squeal of fear. When it sank to sobbing, Hippolyta said quietly, “I have never fought with a knife. I will take one against your spear. Will you fight now?”
Yelling as she ran, the girl came back to me, and fell upon the ground clawing her hair, begging me not to have her butchered by the Amazon, who had bewitched me for sure, else what could I see in such a freak of nature? Then before I could think to stop her (one does not think of such things) out came the bile such women hide from men till hate or fear makes them careless. I got six months’ siltings, thrown in one drench; thrice-chewed, spat-out backbitings of the closet and the bath. I gasped in the stream, then stood up, letting her fall. She lay on the floor between us, looking from face to face, gulping and moaning. She found she had meddled with something outside her ken, and did not like it. “What now?” I said, speaking across her. “She is yours.”
We exchanged silent glances. We could not talk with the woman there. At last Hippolyta said in a low voice, “I have never yet killed a suppliant. If she is mine, send her away.”
I had her taken out, still grizzling to whoever had ears to hear. When we were alone together, I said, “I would have spared you that, with your leave or without it, if I had known.”
She turned slowly. I wondered, if she struck me, what I would do. But she said, “I am ashamed,” and covered her face.
“You?” I said. “Of what? The shame is mine. With that I made do, before you came.” Then we were reconciled, and more in love than ever, if that could be. As for the girl, keeping my word I sold her to some Sidonian trader at Piraeus.
That was enough for me. I made a clean sweep of every girl I had doubts of. Since still she would tell no tales, no one was punished; I gave them to my barons, or with dowries to marry decent craftsmen. That left a quiet house, but short service. Though lack of company was better than what she had had, the dose of poison had left a sickness on her spirit. I could not bear to see her dimmed.
And then one day she said to me, “I have been talking to Amyntor.”
She spoke as simply as a boy. She had still much innocence. After what had happened, I was pleased to see it. I smiled and said, “You could do worse. He was my best lad in the Bull Court.”
“He tells me his wife was there too, and better than he. I should like to see her. But he says he must have your leave.”
“He has it,” I said, thinking how times had changed, when men wanted to bring their wives under my roof. It was clear he had planned for this. When I sent for him he almost owned it. “She has settled down, sir, since she had the boy. I think she is happy most of the day, and perfection is for the gods. She knows that I understand; but no one forgets the Bull Court.”
“No wonder. Nor will I forget that back-spring she used to do, off her finger-ends. She went like a song.”
“There was a song,” said Amyntor. We hummed the air.
“She would have grown too tall,” I said. “We were just in time, there.”
“I once found her crying over that. But not since the child.”
“She can bring him; would she be willing to come?”
“Willing? She has been on at me, sir, board and bed. But you’ve surely seen, since your Lady came, every bull-dancer that is left would die for her.”
So Chryse came from Eleusis. She had grown a tall full-breasted Hellene beauty; all but she herself, I suppose, had forgotten the fearless golden child of the Cretan songs. She loved Amyntor. Yet princes had staked on her a chariot-team or a country villa; young nobles had risked their necks and bribed the guard, to send her as the custom was their verses of hopeless love; she had heard ten thousand voices shout for her as she grasped the horns. Something she must have missed among the house-bred women with their talk of nurses and children, scandal and clothes and men.
She and Hippolyta were friends at the first glance, neither having a mean thought to hide. I would find them in the evening telling tales of Crete or Pontos, or laughing while the little boy played at bull-leaping with a footstool. Peace and order came to the women’s quarters, which had stood in some need of it; and people began to say that the Amazon, for all her strangeness, had made King Theseus steady.
But the barons, as I knew, thought more than they said when they saw her sitting by me in the hall. They knew it meant I would not marry yet, feared it would lay up strife for the day when I did, and wanted the bond with Crete tied firmly. Nor had they forgotten Medea, who had been, besides a sorceress, a priestess of the Mother, scheming to bring back the old religion and end the rule of men. Now here was another priestess of a Goddess; one who knew magic, as they had heard. It did not move them, or quiet their fears, that she wanted nothing but to be free in the woods and mountains, or else with me.
So winter passed. We had a great wolf-hunt on Mount Lykabettos, following the tracks in new-fallen snow to their den in the high rocks above the pines. It was a fierce fight and a good killing; we laughed to see her bitch and my dog fight side by side, as we did. In her jacket of russet lambskin with her scarlet boots and cap, her eyes and her cheeks all glowing, she shone in the white cold like a warm bird. She loved the snow.
I asked to this hunt, and the feast after, all the young men who had gone to Crete with me, and as many of the girls as chose to come. Chryse, who had fined down and toughened with riding and running, was the first of these; there were two more who were serving Artemis in a shrine above Eleusis. For Thebe and Pylia it was too late.