As we twisted and kicked and struck, I could make believe no longer I was nineteen. I was fighting a man in his flower of strength, before I had come to mine. My blood and bones began to whisper he would outstay me. Then the gong began.
The starting stroke had come from the butt of the stick. This was the blow of the padded hammer. It gave a great singing roar; I swear one could even feel the sound in the ground underfoot. And as it quivered and hummed, the women chanted.
The voices sank and rose, sank and rose higher. It was like the north wind when it blows screaming through mountain gorges; like the keening of a thousand widows in a burning town; like the cry of she-wolves to the moon. And under it, over it, through our blood and skulls and entrails, the bellow of the gong.
The din maddened me. As it washed over me again and again, I began to be filled with the madman’s single purpose. I must kill my man, and stop the noise.
As this frenzied strength built up in me, my hands and back felt him flagging. With each gong throb his strength was trickling from him. It was his death that was singing to him; wrapping him round like smoke, drawing him down into the ground. Everything was against him: the people, the Mystery, and I. But he fought bravely.
He was trying to strangle me, when I got both feet up and hurled him backward. While he was still winded, I leaped on him and snatched his arm from under him and threw him over. So he lay face down, and I was on his back, and he could not rise. The singing rose to a long shriek, then sank into silence. The last gong stroke shuddered and died.
His face was in the dust; but I could tell his mind, as he felt this way and that to see if anything was left to do, and understood that it was finished. In that moment my anger died. I forgot the pain, remembering only his courage and his despair. “Why should I take his blood upon me?” I thought. “He never harmed me, except to fulfill his moira.” I shifted my weight a very little, taking good care because he was full of tricks, till he could just turn his head out of the dirt. But he did not look at me; only at the dark cleft below the rock. These were his people, and his life-thread was twined with theirs. One could not save him.
I put my knee in his backbone. Keeping him pinned, for he was not a man to give an inch to, I hooked my arm round his head, and pulled it back till I felt the neckbone straining. Then I said softly in his ear—for it did not concern the people about us, who had given nothing to the sacrifice—“Shall it be now?” He whispered, “Yes.” I said, “Discharge me of it, then, to the gods below.” He said, “Be free of it,” with some invocation after. It was in his own tongue, but I trusted him. I jerked his head back hard and fast, and heard the snap of the neckbone. When I looked, it seemed his eyes still had a spark of life; but when I turned his head sideways it was gone.
I got to my feet, and heard from the people a deep sighing, as if they had all just finished the act of love. “So it begins,” I said to myself; “and only a god can see the ending.”
They had brought a bier, and laid the King on it. There was a high scream from the throne. The Queen rushed down and threw herself on the corpse, rending her hair and clawing her face and bosom. She looked just like a woman who has lost her dear lord, the man who led her a maiden from her father’s house; as if there were young children and no kin to help them. That was how she wept, so that I stared amazed. But now all the other women were crying and howling too, and I understood it was the custom.
They went off wailing, appeasing the new-made ghost. Left alone among staring strangers, I wanted to ask, “What now?” But the only man I knew was dead.
Presently came an old priestess and led me toward the sanctuary-house. She told me they would mourn the King till sundown; then I should be blood-cleansed, and wed the Queen.
In a room with a bath of painted clay, the priestesses bathed me and dressed my wounds. They all spoke Greek, with the lilt of the Shore People, lisping and twittering. But even in their own speech they have Greek words. There is so much sea traffic at Eleusis, the tongues have got mixed there, as well as the blood. They put a long white linen robe on me, and combed my hair, and gave me meat and wine. Then there was nothing to do but listen to the wailing, and wait, and think.
Toward sunset I heard the funeral coming down the long stairs, with dirges and weeping and the aulos’ skirl, and disks of bronze clanging together. From a window I saw the winding train of women, robed in crimson with black veils. When the dirge ended, there was a great cry, between a scream and a shout of triumph. I guessed the King was going home.
Soon after, at fall of dusk, the priestesses came back to fetch me for the cleansing. A red glow shone in at the window; and when they opened the door, I saw everywhere a leaping torchlight. There were torches as far as one could see, filling the precinct and streaming up to the Citadel, and flowing on into the town. Yet all was quiet, though all the people were there, from about twelve years old. The priestess led me between them, in a deep silence, till the shore with its beached ships lay before us. When the water lapped our feet, the priestess cried out, “To the sea!”
At this, everyone began to walk into the water. Those who wore white robes kept them on; many stripped naked, both women and men, but all was done with deep solemnity, and they kept their lit torches in their hands. The night was calm; the sea seemed sown with a thousand points of fire, every flame with its rippling image.
She led me forward till the water lapped my breast, and held her torch high for them all to see me. I was there to be cleansed of blood; they, I suppose, washed off ill-luck, and death. I was young, and had killed a man whose beard had grown; though it was the earth magic had put him in my hand, I felt my victory. Also I was going to the Queen; and with darkness came desire.
In Salamis, across the strait, lamps burned in the houses. I thought of home, of my kindred, and of Kalauria across the water. Everything here was strange except the sea, which had carried my father to my mother. I loosed my girdle, and pulled off my robe, and gave it to the priestess. She stared surprised; but I plunged in and swam beyond all the people, far into the strait. Behind me the torches were a fiery surf along the shore, and above were the stars.
For a while I was quiet, floating on the sea. Then I said, “Blue-Haired Poseidon, Earth-Shaker, Horse Father! You are the lord of the Goddess. If I served your altar well in Troizen, if you were there at my begetting, lead me on toward my moira; be my friend in this land of women.”
I turned to swim back, head over heels in the water. As it rushed in my ears, I heard the pulse of the sea-surge, and thought, “Yes, he remembers me.” So I swam back to the torches, and there was the chief priestess, waving her light about and crying, “Where is the King?” for all the world like some old nurse when the children get too big for her. That, I suppose, was what made me swim up under water, and bob out laughing right under her nose, so that she jumped and nearly doused her torch. I half expected a box on the ear. But she only eyed me muttering in the Minyan speech, and shook her head.
Walking back in my wet robe, it was strange to feel my wounds fresh-smarting from the salt, for it seemed a year since the wrestling. As for all the people, you might have supposed King Kerkyon had never been. But as I looked beyond the wrestling ground, where the precinct was lit with cressets, I saw beside the rock-cleft the woman who had wept for him, face down on the bare stone, her torn hair flung about her, still as the dead. Some women on the steps were calling out, upbraiding her. Presently they ran down clucking, and pulled her to her feet and led her up to the Palace.
At the sanctuary-house I was dried and oiled and combed again; then they brought me a tunic of embroidered work, a necklace of gold sunflowers, and the King’s ring. The Goddess was carved upon the gold, with women worshipping her, and a youth done small. I had a cut on my cheekbone, where Kerkyon’s fist had driven it into my face.