I cannot tell; for I went away leaving the body with them. I knew that he was dead, and no god would raise him. For me there was work in Troizen waiting.
The wailing of women met me; by this time, the news had been pieced together, and all was known. My mother was leading them, weeping out his praises as the words came to her, which later she would shape into the funeral chant. She broke off her crying to come and meet me. The rest all covered their eyes with their hair.
She had nothing to say, having foreseen the curse so long before; so she embraced me with the common words of any mother. I kissed her—for he had been like her youngest son—and said we would talk later. Then I asked for my wife.
“The women were angry,” my mother answered. “I warned her of it; not for her sake, but for fear of something unseemly. I suppose she is in her room.”
I went up through the empty Palace. Those who saw me far off turned quickly out of my way; but there were few to see. An old servant, whom I ran into at a corner, said that King Pittheus was sleeping; no one had dared yet bring him the news. I paused for a moment; but I had already enough to do. Better he had died yesterday. But they say that the end of man’s life is sorrow.
As I climbed the stairs, I thought of the tale I had heard from Phaedra, how Hippolytos had sworn to bring back the old religion, what he had said. A long tale for a woman to remember who has just been ravished in the fields. And yet, a long one to make up in a moment, even under the spur of fear. I saw it now. Well she might remember, every word! Many a night she must have lain with those words in mind, trying them this way and that, getting them perfect, as the harpers do: getting them ready. They had been her words to him.
I came to her room, and knocked at the outer door. None answered. I went into mine, and tried the door between. That was locked too. I called to her to open; silence still. I listened, and felt that the silence breathed. The outer door was strong, but this one was light. It did not take long to force it.
The room was empty. Then I looked again, and saw a shudder in a press of clothes. I dragged at them, and pulled her out. She cringed and crawled about me, clasping my knees, snivelling and praying. Like a slave, I thought; like a lying slave; the daughter of a thousand years of kings. Her throat was still marked from his fingers. I took her by it, to push her off me. Till I saw her eyes, and their expectation, I don’t think I knew what I meant to do. But she showed me her own deserving.
She died hard. When I thought it was long over, and let go, she started to move again. At last I let her fall; she lay still then, one bundle more in the tumble of clothes from the press, which smelled of Crete.
And then I thought, “Will her lies live after her? There are always men glad to think the worst of the best. She should have been made to bear witness first before the people. I have failed him once again.”
Then I said aloud, “By Zeus, she shall speak for him, even now! She shall make good my son’s honor, living or dead.”
There was ink and paper in the room. I can write the Cretan hand; I wrote it small, like a woman. Here in Troizen, that would be enough.
“I slandered Hippolytos, to cover my own shame. I asked, and he refused. I can bear my life no longer.”
This letter I bound into her hand, with a ribbon from among the clothes. As I did it, I saw that the inner curve of her arm was white and tender, her breast round, firm and fair. I remembered his heavy eyes at morning, his day-long wanderings, coming home dead tired. Had he been tempted? What if he had; it is the hard fight earns the garland. Well, he was avenged.
I made a noose from a girdle, and tied it to a sheet knotted round a beam. When she was hanging, I overturned the chair that I had stood on, under her feet. Then I went down, to show the broken door and what I had found behind it.
All over Troizen, his name is held in honor. It is growing holy; each year the maidens offer at his tomb, and clip their hair. I did for him what I could. Maybe it was not what he would have asked for, if he could have spoken. But a man can only give what he has, being what he is.
Skyros
I
THESE THINGS ALL STAND as clear in my mind as yesterday. It is yesterday that I forget.
Was it after one summer, or two, or three, that the god’s hand struck me? I know I was at sea with Pirithoos (for a man must be somewhere, while he walks under the sun) and seeing Melian pirates sailing hull-down with loot, we bore down on them to take the prize. I remember, I think, the sight of them nearing. Then I felt giddy, and my eyes went black; and when I opened them, it was night. I was on a pallet, in a peasant’s house; there were women chattering, and two of my men leaned over me, calling the rest to witness that they had said I was alive, and look! my eyes were open.
They all asked me how I did. But when I tried to answer, the half of my mouth felt numb, and my speech slurred like a drunkard’s; and when I moved, only my right side answered me. I reached the right hand over, to feel the left; the right seemed to touch the hand of a corpse, and the left felt nothing.
My men told me that before the ships engaged, as I gave the war-cry, I had fallen down like the dead. It was too late to avoid the battle. It had been bitter, with so many killed that in the end neither had claimed the victory, but the ships that were left had limped away. When I asked after Pirithoos, they said his ship had been rammed, and sunk with all hands. This I heard, as one hears things without meaning.
All that were left of my crew were here in the hut with me, a scant dozen. The rest were killed or drowned. They had been laying my body out, to wrap it up and bring it home for burial, and had begun to fold the sail about me, when they saw I was still alive. When they sought for my wound they could find nothing; I had fallen, they said, before the weapons began to fly.
The peasant women spooned milk into my mouth and wiped my face. Then I told them all to go, and lay for a long while, thinking.
Perhaps it was the Mother who had struck me down. I had stolen two of her daughters out of her shrines, and tamed her worship at Eleusis. All those who follow the old religion, or fear it still, say that it was the Mother. Or it may have been Apollo; for I was struck without pain, as men are killed by his gentle arrows; and as I was only half to blame for his good servant’s death, he left me half alive. But I have come to think it was Poseidon Earth-Shaker, because I turned his blessing into a curse. I think so; and I have good cause.
I felt no pain in my body, and little yet in mind. At first, I scarcely reproached the gods that I was not dead. Yet I, who had forgotten, or ceased to care, that I was a man no longer, remembered I was a king. Often I had said to myself that I ought not to die before my heir reached manhood. I had gone roving just the same, saying, “If it is fated, it will come.” Yet I had never thought to be dead and living.
When one of my men came back, I asked him if the people here knew who I was. He said no, only that I was the captain; they were ignorant folk, having only the Shore Folk speech, and that uncouthly. I told him to leave it so.
There is a little isle of mine, northward of Crete, with open sea around it. Pirithoos and I used to put in there, to mend our ships and get water, and sometimes to hide our loot till we could bring it home. We had a little stronghold and a house within it, looked after by one or two old girls of ours we still had a kindness for, though they were getting on.
Here, when I could be moved, I bade them bring me; and here I lay all day, or sat in the chair that I was carried to, looking at a little wall with a fig tree in it, and a gateway, and a square of sea. The women fed me, and kept me clean, and tended me like a baby. Hour after hour I sat, watching a bird pecking a fig, or a passing sail, and thinking how I could keep my enemies in fear of me till the time was ripe to die. Yes; while the child waited for his nurse to bring the posset or the sponge, the King still thought. Him the god’s stroke did not destroy. The warrior, the lover, the wrestler, the singer, he has outlived them all. He is Theseus, it seems.