From habit I pulled it out and sat. He had been a long time at his trade, and his fingers had command in them as a harper’s have music. It was only when I found myself back in my childhood seat, my feet on the old worn bearskin, my arms round my knees, that I saw how he had made a fool of me. Near my face was the posset cup, with its smell of barley and honey, eggs and wine; a smell of old age, and of childhood. I felt my man’s anger dashed down into a boy’s. From above me, now, his watery eyes blinked down, with the touch of malice in them that old men feel to young men when their own strength is done.
“Well, Theseus. Has your mother told you who you are?” Crouched at his feet like a fettered captive, my heart full of bitterness, I answered “Yes.”
“And you have things to ask me?” I was silent. “Or ask your father, if you prefer.” I did not trust myself to speak; he was the King. “He will acknowledge you as his heir now, if you show him the sword.”
I was startled into speech. “Why should he, sir? He has sons of his own house, I suppose.”
“None in marriage. As for the rest, bear in mind that though he is an Erechthid, which is well enough, we are the house of Pelops, and Olympian Zeus begot us.”
It was in my mouth to say, “As Poseidon did me, sir?” I did not say it; not, if you want the truth, because he was my grandfather, but because I did not dare.
He looked at my face; then drew the shawl about him and said testily, “Do you never shut a door behind you? This room is like a barn.” I got up and saw to it. “Before you speak of your father with disrespect, let me tell you that but for him you might be a fisherman’s or a peasant’s son; or a slave’s, for that matter.”
I was glad to be standing. Presently I said, “Her father can tell me that, and go safe away.”
“Your mouth is robbing your ears,” he said. “Be quiet, boy, and attend to what I am saying.” He looked at me, and waited. I held out for a little; then I came back, and sat at his feet.
“In the year before your birth, Theseus, when your mother was fifteen, we had a summer without rain. The grain was small in the ear, and the grapes were like hedgerow berries; the dust lay deep, so that men’s feet sank in it, and nothing prospered but the flies. And with the drought came a sickness, which, sparing the old, took children and maidens and young men. First a hand would fail them, or they would limp; then later they fell down, and the strength went out of their very ribs, so that they could not draw in the breath of life. Those who lived are cripples to this day, like Thyestes the stillman, with his short leg. But mostly they died.
“I inquired what deity we had offended, going first to Apollo, Lord of the Bow. He said through the entrails of the victim that he had not shot at us; but he said no more. Zeus too was silent, and Poseidon sent no omens. It was about the time of year when the people drive out the scapegoat. They chose a squinting man they said had the evil eye, and beat him with such rage that by the time they came to burn him, there was no life left in him. But still no rain fell, and the children died.
“I lost three sons here in the Palace: my wife’s two boys, and one who I must own was even dearer. He lay dying like one already dead, only for his living eyes that begged me to give him breath. When he was in his grave, I said to myself, ‘Surely the time of my moira is coming. Soon the god will send me the sign.’ I put my affairs in order, and at supper would look at my sons about the table, weighing them to choose my heir. Yet no sign came to me.
“On the next day after, your father came to Troizen, journeying from Delphi to take ship for Athens. He was taking the two sea trips which avoid the Isthmus Road. I was in no mood for company; but the guest of the land is sacred, so I made what show I could. Soon I was glad of it. He was younger than I, but adversity had seasoned him; he had understanding of men. Over supper we began to share our troubles; what I had just lost, he had never known. His first wife had been barren; the second died in childbed with a stillborn girl. He had gone to the oracle; but its answer was dark and riddling, and even the priestess could not interpret it. Now he was going back to a harassed kingdom, with no heir to stand beside him. So there we were, two men in sorrow who understood each other. I sent away the harper, and had a chair brought up here for him; by this hearthstone, where you and I are now, we sat quietly and talked of grief.
“When we were alone, he told me how his brothers, in their greed to get the kingdom, had sunk to scandalling their own mother, a most honorable lady, and proclaiming him a bastard. Here, it seemed to me, were troubles equal to mine. Then, as we talked, there was a great commotion in the Hall below, wailing and outcry. I went out to see.
“It was the Priestess of the Goddess, my father’s sister. Round her were the women, crying, beating their breasts, and making their cheeks bleed with their nails. I stood on the steps, and asked what it was. She answered, ‘Grief upon grief, King Pittheus, you have laid on the people, setting gifts before the Sky Gods who were full-fed already, and starving the altar nearest your hearth. Now the second night I have brought meat and milk to the Navel Stone, and the second time the House Snake has refused it. Will you wait till every womb in Troizen has lost the fruit of its labor? Sacrifice, sacrifice. It is the Mother who is angry.’
“At once I had a holocaust of swine brought in, reproaching myself for having left all this to the women. I should have guessed from Apollo’s silence that our troubles were not from the sky. Next morning we killed the pigs about the Navel Stone. The house echoed with their squealing, and the smell of entrails hung in the air all day. When the blood had sunk into the earth, we saw clouds coming from the westward. They hung gray above us, but the rain in them did not fall.
“The Priestess came, and led me to the Navel Court, and showed me the House Snake’s wriggling track, by which she read the omens. ‘He has told me now,’ she said, ‘what has angered the Mother. It is twenty years, not less, since a girl of this house hung up her girdle for the Goddess. Aithra, your daughter, has been two years a woman; but has she dedicated her maidenhead? Send her to the Myrtle House, and let her not refuse the first comer, whoever he may be, sailor or slave, or wet-handed from his own father’s blood. Or Mother Dia will not relent till this is a childless land.’”
My grandfather looked down at me. “Well, young thickhead? Do you begin to understand?” I nodded, too full to speak.
“I went off thankful, like any man in such a case, that it was no worse. Yet I was sorry for the child. Not that she would lose any honor with the people; the peasants who have mixed their blood with the Shore People’s have sucked in such customs with their mothers’ milk. Well, I had never forbidden it; but nor had I enforced it; and certainly your mother had not been brought up to expect such a thing. It made me angry to see the Priestess glad of it. She had been widowed young, and no one else had offered for her; she did not like well-favored girls. The child was shy and proud; I feared her falling to some low fellow, who from brutishness, or malice to those above him, would take her as roughly as a whore. But most of all I misliked the base blood it might bring into our house. If a child was born, it could not be let live. But that I would keep from her now; the day’s concern was enough.
“I sought her in the women’s rooms. She listened silently, and did not complain; it was a little thing, she said, to do for the children; but when I took her hands, I felt them cold. I went back to my guest too long neglected. He said, ‘My friend, here is some new trouble.’