When he had done, the cups beating the board could have been heard down in the village. Presently my mother signed that she wished to speak.
“Dear Father, this evening will be boasted of to those who were not there. Now, while the bard is taking a drink to cool his throat, won’t you ask him to sit with us, and tell us about his travels? I have heard he knows the world to its furthest ends.”
Of course my grandfather invited him, and his chair was moved. I went over too, and they put a stool for me by my mother’s knees. After the drink and the compliments, she asked him what was his longest journey.
“Without doubt, Lady,” he said, “the voyage I made two years back, to the land of the Hyperboreans. It lies north and west of the Pillars of Herakles, in that green shoreless sea which drowned Atlantis. But Apollo is the guardian god of the Hyperboreans. That year they built the second circle round his great sanctuary. I sang the work-song, when they raised the standing stones.”
“What kind of land is it,” I asked him, “at the back of the north wind?”
“A land dark with forests,” he said, “and green with rain. They build on the bare hilltops and high moors, for safety against beasts and enemies. But it is a great land for bards, and for Apollo’s priests to learn his mysteries. I was glad to go, being a priest myself. Thrace is my native land, but the god keeps me roaming. It was his oracle at Delos sent me on this journey. I was there to sing for him, when the envoys came with their offerings south down the Amber Road. The High King of the Hyperboreans sent to say he had this great work in hand, and asked for a priest from Delos, that being the center of Paian’s worship, as well as of the Cyclades and of all the world. It was put to the oracle in the hill cave, who answered that they should send the Thracian singer. That was how I came to go.”
He told us of the voyage, which had been cold, stormy, and perilous. A gale had driven them north of the island, where, he said, they had passed between two floating rocks as white as crystal, which almost closed on the ship; and on one sat a black monster with seven snaky necks, and barking dog-heads.
I glanced at my grandfather; he winked at me, when the bard was not looking. “After all,” said his eye, “the fellow is not on oath.”
My mother said, “And how had they built Apollo’s sanctuary?”
“After the fashion of the place: a circle of standing stones, with lintels lying on them. The inner circle had been there time out of mind. It is an emblem of Apollo’s mystery. While I was there, the priests admitted me to the Lesser Mysteries, and I learned such things as a man is better for all his life.”
“Since those things are secret,” my mother said, “tell us about the building.”
“It was like Titans’ work. Great blocks of rough-hewn stone, each as big as a poor man’s house. Yet they had brought them many leagues, from a sacred mountain, rolling them round hills and floating them over rivers. Some had been years upon the way. But now when it came to lifting them, the High King had sent to Crete for masons. If the strongest men on earth had all been there together, without engines they could not have been stirred.”
Then he told how this king, and six others who used the sanctuary, had brought all their people to the work; so many it needed, though the Cretans had halved it with their hoists and levers. And even that multitude looked poor and frail about the huge stones, like ants tugging at pebbles.
“Then I saw why Apollo had sent a bard. Cretans do not know everything, though they think so. They know how to raise stones, but not men’s hearts. The people were afraid. So I understood why I was there, and called upon the god; and he put the power on me, to feel the work and make it music. I sang his praises, and gave the time. After a while, the seven kings with their sons and barons came forward and pulled for Apollo’s honor, standing among the people. Then the stones rose up slowly, and slid into the beds the Cretans had made for them. And they stood fast.”
Now he was rested, I asked if he would give us a verse or two of his work-song. He smiled, and said it would be like a dance without dancers; but when he sang it, I saw old barons whose hands had never known the feel of a common task sway in their seats as if they were pulling a galley. He was famous for these songs; all over the Achaian lands, kings planning some great work in stone sent for him to time the hauliers, and put luck into the walls. Since he died there is no one to touch him at it; simple folk say, believing it, that the stones rose up for him of themselves.
It was now time to give him his presents. My grandfather gave him a good brooch; but my mother brought out a heavy girdle worked with gold, which would not have been mean to give a king. Since he had taught me so much, I felt I too should give him something uncommon; so I parted with my black ring, one of my best things. It was made of a precious metal from a distant land, very heavy, and so hard that you could turn even a bronze sword-edge on it. I was glad to find him pleased with its rarity; he already had gold enough.
My mother first, and then my grandfather, gathered their people and went up to bed. The slaves took down the trestles, and brought in the beds for the unmarried men. I saw the bard made comfortable, and asked if he fancied any of the Palace women; but he said he would sleep. Then I went out in the courtyard. The night was clear. The toothed roof-edge, the watchman with his spear and horn, stood black against the stars. Behind me in Hall, the House Barons were bedded with their girls, those who had captured or bought their own; and young men in want of company were seeking it in the usual way. A girl passed whom I knew; she belonged to my mother, and had sat that evening near her chair. I ran out and caught her round the middle. She only fought with the soft of her hands; we were not quite strangers to one another. We struggled and laughed in whispers, and she said, Well, what must be must, but I should be the ruin of her; and we went into Hall as they snuffed the last of the torches.
Later I asked her softly, so that no one else could hear, what my mother had said to the bard apart, when she rewarded him. But she was sleepy, and cross at being waked again, and said she could not remember.
4
IN THE DARK BEFORE daybreak, the girl woke me going away. I had been dreaming; and, being wakened, remembered my dream. I had seen the Hyperborean sanctuary, great hoists and engines standing against a gray sky, great stones rising, and kings leaning on the levers. And a thought came to me, sent straight from the god.
I got up, and went out to the yard of the Palace woodman. Dawn scarcely glimmered; not even the slaves were astir, it was only in the fields that men were waking. It was almost too dark to find what I needed; but I should have to take it with me, for no man puts a tool to the oaks of Zeus. I found a short thick log and two longer ones, whose ends I trimmed to wedges. I bound them up, and getting them unhandily on my shoulders—for I was not used to carrying burdens—set out for the oak wood.
Sunrise glowed red as I climbed along the gorge; when I reached the grove, I saw the altar-slab all scattered with brightness, like the harper’s robe. I put down my load, and prayed to Apollo.
“Paian Apollo,” I said to him, “Apollo Longsight! If I am offending any god by this, send me an omen.”
I looked up. Blue had come into the sky; and wheeling high above I saw an eagle. He tilted his wing and swept away to the left, and the boughs hid him. “Well,” I thought, “no god could say better than that,” and then, “I should have come before to him.” For I had felt too much and reasoned too little, hearing what I was ready to hear, not what had been said. There had been nothing at all about raising the stone with my bare hands; only that I must do it alone.