In the midst, straight before me, stood a stately woman, with a slave holding a sunshade over her head. She was about seven and twenty; her hair, which was crowned with a diadem of purple stitched with gold, was as red as firelit copper. A score of women stood about her, like courtiers about a king; but there was no man near her, except the servant with the parasol. She must be both priestess and reigning queen. A Minyan kingdom, sure enough. That is what the Shore People call themselves, in their own places. Everyone knows that among them news travels faster than one can tell how.
Out of respect, I got down from my chariot and led the horses forward. Not only was she looking at me; I saw it was for me she waited. As I drew near, and saluted her, all the crowd fell into a deeper silence, like people who hear the harper tune his strings.
I said, “Greeting, Lady, in the name of whatever god or goddess is honored here above the rest. For I think you serve a powerful deity, to whom the traveller ought to pay some homage or other, before he passes by. A man should respect the gods of his journey, if he wants it to end as he would wish.”
She said to me, in a slow Greek with the accent of the Minyans, “Truly your journey has been blessed, and here it ends.”
I stared at her surprised. She seemed to be speaking words prepared for her; behind all this another women peeped out in secret. I said, “Lady, I am a stranger in the land, travelling to Athens. The guest you look for is someone of more mark; a chief, or maybe a king.”
At this she smiled. All the people drew closer, murmuring; not in anger, but like the goatherds by the fire, all ears.
“There is only one journey,” she said, “that all men make. They go forth from the Mother, and do what men are born to do, till she stretches forth her hand, and calls them home.”
Plainly this land was of the old religion. Touching my brow in respect, I said, “We are all her children.” What could she want of me, which the city knew already?
“But some,” she said, “are called to a higher destiny. As you are, stranger, who come here fulfilling the omens, on the day when the King must die.”
Now I understood. But I would not show it. My wits were stunned and I needed time.
“High Lady,” I said, “if your lord’s sign calls him, what has that to do with me? What god or goddess is angry? No one is in mourning; no one looks hungry; no smoke is in the sky. Well, it is for him to say. But if he needs me to serve his death, he will send for me himself.”
She drew herself up frowning. “What is a man to choose? Woman bears him; he grows up and seeds like grass, and falls into the furrow. Only the Mother, who brings forth men and gods and gathers them again, sits at the hearthstone of the universe and lives for ever.” She lifted her hand; the attendant women fell back around her; a man came forward to lead my horses. “Come,” she said. “You must be made ready for the wrestling.”
I found myself walking at her side. All round us followed the people, whispering like waves upon a shoal. Clothed in their expectation, I felt not myself but what they called me to be. One does not guess the power of these mysteries, till one is given part in them.
As I walked in silence beside the Queen, I recalled what a man had told me, about a land where the custom is the same. He said that in all those parts there is no rite in the year that moves and holds the people like the death of the King. “They see him,” this man said, “at the height of fortune, sitting in glory, wearing gold; and coming on him, sometimes unknown and secret, sometimes marked by the omens before all the people, is the one who brings his fate. Sometimes the people know it before the King himself has word.” So solemn is the day, he said, that if anyone who watches has grief or fear or trouble of his own, it is all purged out of him by pity and terror; he comes away calmed, and falls into a sleep. “Even the children feel it,” he said. “The herdboys up country, who cannot leave their flocks to see the sight, will play out for one another on the hillsides, with songs and miming, the death day of the King.”
This thought awakened me. “What am I doing?” I thought. “I have offered my forelock to Apollo; I have served Poseidon, the Mother’s husband and lord, who is immortal. Where is this woman leading me? To kill the man who killed someone last year, and lie with her four seasons to bless the corn, till she gets up from my bed to fetch my killer to me? Is that my moira? She may have omens; but none have come to me. No, an Earthling dream is leading me, like the King Horse drunk with poppy. How shall I get free?”
All the same, I was looking aside at her, as a man will at a woman he knows is his for the taking. Her face was too broad, and the mouth not fine enough; but her waist was like a palm tree, and to be unmoved by her breasts a man would need to be dead. The Minyans of Eleusis have mixed their blood with the Hellene kingdoms either side; her color and form were Hellene, but not her face. She felt me look, and walked straight on with her head held high. The fringe of the crimson sunshade tickled my hair.
I thought, “If I refuse, the people will tear me to pieces. I am the sower of their harvest. And this lady, who is the harvest field, will be very angry.” One can tell some things from a woman’s walking, even though she will not look. “She is a priestess and knows earth magic, and her curse will stick. Mother Dia must have her eye on me already. I was begotten to appease her anger. And she is not a goddess to treat lightly.”
We had come to the sea road. I looked eastward and saw the hills of Attica, dry with summer and pale with noon, a morning’s journey. I thought, “How could I go to my father, whose sword I carry, and say, ‘A woman called me to fight, but I ran away?’ No. Fate has set in my path this battle of the stallions, as it set Skiron the robber. Let me do the thing at hand, and trust in the gods.”
“Lady,” I said, “I was never this side of the Isthmus until now. What are you called?” She gazed before her and said softly, “Persephone. But it is forbidden for men to speak it.” Coming nearer, I said, “A whispering name. A name for the dark.” But she did not answer; so I asked, “And what is the King’s name, whom I am to kill?”
She looked at me surprised, and answered carelessly, “His name is Kerkyon,” as if I had asked it of some masterless dog. For a very little, it seemed, she would have said that he had no name.
Just inshore, the road sloped upwards to a flat open place at the foot of a rocky bluff. Stairs led up it to the terrace where the Palace stood: red columns with black bases, and yellow walls. The cliff below it was undercut; the hollow looked dark and gloomy, and had a deep cleft in its floor that plunged into the earth. The breeze bore from it a faint stench of rotten flesh.
She pointed to the level place before it, and said, “There is the wrestling ground.” I saw the Palace roof and the terrace thick with people. Those who had come with us spread themselves on the slopes. I looked at the cleft and said, “What happens to the loser?”
She said, “He goes to the Mother. At the autumn sowing his flesh is brought forth and plowed into the fields, and turns to corn. A man is happy who in the flower of youth wins fortune and glory, and whose thread runs out before bitter old age can fall on him.” I answered, “He has been happy indeed,” and looked straight at her. She did not blush, but her chin went up.
“This Kerkyon,” I said; “we meet in combat, not as the priest offers the victim?” That would have been against my stomach, seeing the man had not chosen his own time. I was glad when she nodded her head. “And the weapons?” I asked. “Only those,” she said, “that men are born with.” I looked about and said, “Will a man of your people tell me the rules?” She looked at me puzzled; I thought it was my Hellene speech, and said again, “The laws of battle?” She raised her brows and answered, “The law is that the King must die.”