He did not speak. But he turned his eyes to her. It was a long, dark look. She covered her face and broke into wailing, muffled by the cloth. I signed to the women; they led her off murmuring, through the trees.
His eyes met mine; and at that his face closed up, his mouth set like a seal. All this while, as the horror in me mounted and turned to rage, some hope had held out, like the watchman of a doomed city alone upon the wall. No signal came; there would be no message. Now all my life’s enemies met in him.
I spoke. But the words have gone from me. Not long after, I was taken sick; and when I came to myself, the words had gone. Yet sometimes I wake, with the sound just fading. Somewhere within me are the words; and I have feared to sleep, lest my sleep release them.
So clear seemed his guilt, like far hills before the storm: how he had watched at the shrine, and told me of an omen; had taken Akamas to Troizen, to make her follow; given me a woman, to keep me from her; and fled my presence day after day, lest I should read his thoughts. He had wept, to hear that she was going. Today had been his last chance. It seemed as clear as if a god had shouted it in my ear. Indeed my ears were ringing.
As I spoke these words I have forgotten, the men about him all drew aside. He was not king of Troizen yet, and now would never be. He had broken the sacred hearth-laws ; ravished his father’s wife; and I was not his father only, nor his guest, but High King of Attica, Megara, and Eleusis, Guardian of Thebes and Lord of Crete. How could they dare to choose my enemy?
He stood, and heard me. Not once did he part his lips to answer. But near the end, I saw his hands clench at his sides, his nostrils widen, his eyes stare as one sees them in battle above a shield. He took one step forward, and set his teeth, and stepped back again; and I read in his face, as clear as words on marble, “Some god hold me back, before I take this little man and break him between my hands.” Then, if I could, I would have struck him dead.
The anger that rose in me seemed the wrath of the earth itself. It flowed up through my feet, as the earth-fire rises in some burning mountain before it destroys the land. And then, as if my mind had been lit with flame, I knew that it was true. It was not my anger only. The dog had howled and the birds had cried, and my head had tightened; yet I had not felt Poseidon’s warning, because my anger had risen in time with his. Now I felt it, and felt it soon to fall; the god my father standing by me, to avenge my bitter wrong.
It was like a thunderbolt in my hand. They were all looking at me in fear, as if at something more than mortal; yes, he also. And in the strength of the god I struck my foot upon the earth, crying, “Go out of my lands and from my sight forever. Go with my curse, and the curse of Earth-Shaking Poseidon; and beware of his wrath, for it will be soon.”
One moment he was there, white-faced, standing like stone; the next there was an empty place, and the people staring after him. They stood and gazed; but no one followed, as they would have followed some other man, to stone him out of the land. They had loved him; I suppose it seemed to them that his madness and his doom were sent from heaven, and they had best leave him to the gods. He was gone; and as rage like a fever started to cool in me, I felt the earthquake-sickness, just as it had always been.
I closed my aching eyes. A picture flashed behind them, as if it had been waiting there: the groves of Epidauros, drenched with peace and rain. Then I, being priest as well as king, remembered how all my life, since I was a child at Poseidon’s sanctuary, I had held his warning as a trust to save the people, and never used it for a curse.
I woke to myself, and looked about me, and said to the folk of Troizen, “I have had the sign of Poseidon. He will shake the earth, and soon. Warn them in all the houses, to come out of doors. Send word to the Palace.”
They groaned with awe, and started to run off; soon I heard heralds’ horns. Then no one was left about me but men of my own from Athens, standing uncertainly a little way off, fearing to come or go. I was alone, hearing the noise of the alarm spreading all the way down to Troizen from the Citadel; and with it another sound, the triple hoofbeat of a chariot-team on the road below. It made me shudder, with the wrath of the god so near. That was how I heard it first, a wicked beating upon the earth, going through my head. Then I remembered. I had given out my warning to every soul in Troizen. Only for him I had wrapped it up in darkness, that hearing he might not understand.
I stood on the prickling earth, my heart still pounding from my own anger and the god’s. The Palace was like a skep of bees when a horse has kicked it; women running out with babies, pots and bundles, and stewards with precious things. There was a stir in the great doors; they were bringing out old Pittheus in a curtained litter. I looked beyond. Far down the road, the bright head vanished in the foot-slopes towards the Psiphian shore. The fastest team in Troizen, following, would not overtake him now.
The fear of the earthquake was working in me, cold and sinking, as I had known it since a child, overshadowing all the rest; man’s greatest wrath is like the stamp of a child’s foot, beside the gods’. Old habit gave me the feel of it; not so bad as some that I had known; at least, not here; for it seemed this was the fringe of it, the center further off. Turning about, as a dog does for the scent, I felt my neck-hairs rise when I faced the sea.
The water of the straits was as still as molten lead. On the windless air, I heard horses screaming and whinnying, as the grooms led them from the stables into the field. Then through their noise I heard a voice quite near me, laboring and hoarse, say, “King Theseus! Sir!”
A big warrior, the Palace wrestler who taught the youths, was plowing up through the grove towards me, with a burden in his arms. When I turned, he laid it down upon the ground. It was Akamas. He thrust off the man, who was trying to prop his head, and leaned back on his elbows, fighting for breath, his body arched like a bow, jerking and gasping. The man said to me, “He would come, sir. I found him down there; he had been trying to run, and fallen. Sir, he keeps saying he must see you before he dies.”
The boy rose on one hand, and stretched the other out to me, beckoning me near. His face was white about the mouth, which was almost blue. On a great hiss of breath he said, “Father!” and clutched his chest with both hands, as if he would tear it open to let in air. His eyes were fixed on mine; charged not with terror, but with speech.
I went and bent over him, the son that I had left. “Can it be,” I thought, “that the god’s sign has come down to him, and he lacks the strength to bear it? Yet it proves him my true son, this one at least.” I said to him, “Hold on, lad, it will be over before long, and the fear will pass.”
He shook his head, and made a harsh sound in his throat, cut off by choking. His face filled with blood, like a hanged man’s; then he snatched at a breath, and cried out his brother’s name.
“No more!” I said. “You are sick, and you know nothing. Rest, and be silent.” His chest worked up and down, laboring with words. “Be still. Later you will understand.” Tears of pain and struggle had filled his eyes; half out of my mind as I was, I pitied him. “Hush!” I said. “He has gone away.”
Such a spasm seized him, that it took my mind from the earthquake; it seemed he would never breathe again. He was almost black, when he hurled from his knees up to his feet, and flung his arms at the sky. His breath crowed in his throat and he cried aloud, “Paian Apollo!” He stood there, swaying; then turned to the man who had carried him, and said hoarsely but quite steadily, Thank you, Sirios. You can go.”