Then, on the broad steps that climbed up to the Citadel, I saw him coming down to meet me. I knew him at once, because he was alone.
The steps were crowded with people from the Palace; but they all hung back from him and stood wide, as if his death were a catching sickness. He was older than I. His black beard was enough to hide his jaw; I don’t think he was less than twenty. As he looked down at me, I could tell I seemed a boy to him. He was not much above my height, being tall only for a Minyan; but he was lean and sinewy as mountain lions are. His strong black hair, too short and thick to hang in lovelocks, covered his neck like a curling mane. As we met each other’s eyes, I thought, “He has stood where I stand now, and the man he fought with is bones under the rock.” And then I thought, “He has not consented to his death.”
All about us was a great silence full of eyes. And it moved me as a strange and powerful thing, that these watching people did not feel even themselves as they felt us. I wondered if for him it was the same.
As we stood thus, I saw that after all he was not quite alone. A woman had come up behind him, and stood there weeping. He did not turn to look. If he heard, he had other things to think of.
He came a few steps lower, looking not at the Queen but only at me. “Who are you, and where do you come from?” He spoke Greek very foreignly, but I understood him. It seemed to me we would have understood each other if he had had none at all.
“I am Theseus, from Troizen in the Isle of Pelops. I came in peace, passing through to Athens. But our life-threads are crossed, it seems.”
“Whose son are you?” he asked. Looking at his face, I saw he had no purpose in his questions, except to know he was still King, and a man walking in sunlight above the earth. I answered, “My mother hung up her girdle for the Goddess. I am a son of the myrtle grove.”
The listeners made their soft murmur, like rustling reeds. But I felt the Queen move beside me. She was staring at me; and Kerkyon, now, at her. Then he burst out laughing. His teeth were strong and white above his young black beard. The people stirred, surprised; I was no wiser than they. All I knew, as the King laughing turned my way, was that his jest was bitter. He stood on the stairs and laughed; and the woman behind him covered her face in her two hands, and crouched down and rocked herself to and fro.
He came down. Face to face, I saw he was as strong as I had thought. “Well, Son of the Grove, let us do the appointed thing. This time the odds will be even; the Lady won’t know whom to beat the gong for.” I did not understand him; but I saw he was speaking for her ears, not for mine.
A sanctuary-house near by had been opened while we spoke, and a tall throne brought out, painted red, with devices of serpents and sheaves. They stood it near the floor, and by it a great bronze gong upon a stand. The Queen sat down with her women round her, holding the gong stick like a scepter.
“No,” I thought, “the odds will not be even. He is fighting for his kingdom, which I do not want, and his life, which I don’t want either. I cannot hate him, as a warrior should his enemy; nor even be angry, except with his people, who are turning from him like rats from an empty barn. If I were an Earthling, I should feel their wishes fighting for me. But I cannot dance to their piping; I am a Hellene.”
A priestess led me to a corner of the ground, where two men stripped and oiled me and gave me a wrestler’s linen apron. They plaited back my hair and bound it in a club, and led me forth to be seen. The people cheered me, but I was not warmed by it; I knew they would cheer whoever came to kill the King. Even now when he was stripped and I could see his strength, I could not hate him. I looked at the Queen, but could not tell if I was angry with her or not, because I desired her. “Well,” I thought, “is that not quarrel enough?”
The elder of the men, who looked to have been a warrior, said, “How old are you, boy?” People were listening, so I said, “Nineteen.” It made me feel stronger. He looked at my chin, which had less down than a gosling, but said no more.
We were led to the throne, where she sat under her fringed sunshade. Her gold-sewn flounces caught the light, and her jewelled shoes. Her deep breasts looked gold and rosy, bloomed like the cheeks of peaches, and her red hair glowed. She had a gold cup in her hands, and held it out to me. The warm sun brought out the scents of spiced wine, honey, and cheese. As I took it I smiled at her, “For,” I thought, “she is a woman, or what are we about?” She did not toss her head as she had before, but looked into my eyes as if to read an omen; and in hers I saw fear.
A girl will scream as you chase her through the wood, who when caught is quiet enough. I saw no more than that in it; it stirred my blood, and I was glad to have said I was nineteen. I drank of the mixed drink, and the priestess gave it to the King.
He drank deep. The people gazed at him; but no one cheered. Yet he stripped well, and bore himself bravely; and for a year he had been their king. I remembered what I had heard of the old religion. “They care nothing for him,” I thought, “though he is going to die for them, or so they hope, and put his life into the corn. He is the scapegoat. Looking at him, they see only the year’s troubles, the crop that failed, the barren cows, the sickness. They want to kill their troubles with him, and start again.” I was angry to see his death not in his own hand, but the sport of rabble who did not share the sacrifice, who offered nothing of their own; I felt that out of all these people, he was the only one I could love. But I saw from his face that none of this came strange to him; he was bitter at it, but did not question it, being Earthling as they were. “He too,” I thought, “would think me mad if he knew my mind. I am a Hellene; it is I, not he, who am alone.”
We faced each other on the wrestling ground; the Queen stood up, with the gong stick in her hand. After that I only looked at his eyes. Something told me he was not like the wrestlers of Troizen.
Wood tapped sharply on the gong. I waited on my toes, to see if he would come straight in, like a Hellene, and grab for a body-hold. No; I had guessed right. He was edging round, trying to get the sun in my eyes. He did not fidget on his feet, but moved quite slowly and softly, like a cat before it springs. Not for nothing I had felt, while he spoke bad Greek, that we yet had a common language. Now we spoke it. He, too, was a wrestler who thought.
His eyes were golden brown, light like a wolfs. “Yes,” I thought, “and he will be as fast. Let him come in first; if he is going to take a risk, he will do it then. Afterwards he may know better.”
He aimed a great buffet at my head. It was meant to sway me left; so I jumped right. That was well, for where my guts should have been he landed a kick like a horse’s. Even glancing, it hurt, but not too much, and I grabbed his leg. As I tipped him over I jumped at him, throwing him sideways and trying to land on him with a head-lock. But he was fast, fast as a cat. He got me by the foot and turned my fall, and almost before I had touched ground was slipping round to get a scissors on me. I jabbed my fist at his chin, and saved myself by a lizard’s tail-flick. Then the mill on the ground began in earnest. I soon forgot I had been slow to anger; you cease to ask what wrong a man has done you when his hands are feeling for your life.
He had the look of a gentleman. But the Queen’s stare had warned me, when I asked the rules. All-in is all-in among the Shore People, and nothing barred. This slit in my ear, like a fighting dog’s, I got in that fight as a dog gets it. Once he nearly gouged out my eye, and only gave over to keep his thumb unbroken. Soon I got too angry rather than too cold; but I could not afford to take a risk, just for the pleasure of hurting him. He was like tanned oxhide with a core of bronze.