When I was ready, I asked for my sword. They said staring that I should have no need of that. “So I should hope,” I said. “But since I am going to my wife’s house and not she to mine, it is proper to bring it with me.” This they made no sense of. I could not say it was my father’s; but when I said “My mother gave it me,” they fetched it at once. Earthlings inherit everything from their mothers, even their names.
Outside was a guard of young men singing, and musicians. They led me not to the Palace, but to the precinct below. The song was in Minyan, but the bawdy clowning told the story. One expects some fooling when they bring the bridegroom, but there is measure in everything. Besides, I thought, I knew what I was about, and had no need of teachers.
The song changed to a hymn. I got to know it after. It is the Corn Song of those parts, about how a whole ear springs where a grain was sown, through Mother Dia, from whose womb comes everything. Then they sang the Queen’s praises, hailing her as Kore, which is her unforbidden name. Presently we came to steps going into the ground. At once the song ceased, and all was silence. The priestess put out her torch, and took my hand.
She led me down into darkness, and on through a winding way, and up a little. Then the walls opened to a space, and there was the scent of a woman. I remembered it on the Queen when I walked with her, heavy like asphodel. The priestess let go of me; I heard her fading footfalls and her hand brushing the walls. I stripped and dropped my clothes behind me, keeping only my sword in my left hand. Then I went forward, and felt a bed. I propped the sword against it, and reached out and found her. She slid her hands up my arms, then downward from my shoulders; and what I had learned with the Troizen girls seemed nothing, like the games of children before they understand.
Suddenly she cried out like a virgin. There was a clash of cymbals and blare of horns. Torchlight blinded me; I heard a thousand voices laughing and cheering. Then I saw we were in a cavern whose mouth had been closed with doors; the people had been waiting outside, to see them opened.
For a moment I was too stunned to move. Then anger lit in me like a mountain fire in summer. I snatched my sword, and shouted, and ran forward. But amid shrieks and squeals I found myself entangled in women, who, if you please, had been standing foremost to see the sight. Everyone was calling out and exclaiming, as if I were the first man they had ever known to resent such a thing. I shall never, till I die, understand Earthlings.
I flung the women off, and crashed the doors together. Then I strode back to the bed and stood over it. “You barefaced bitch!” I said. “You deserve to die. Have you no shame for yourself, no respect for my honor? Could you not have lent me some man of your house to keep the door for me, seeing I brought no friend? Or have you no kinsmen to see decency? Where I come from, the meanest peasant on the folk-land would have blood for this. Am I a dog?”
I heard her quick breathing in the dark, which seemed blacker after the torchlight. “What is it?” she said. “Have you gone mad? There is always the Showing.”
I was struck dumb. Not only with Kerkyon, but with the gods knew how many men before, she had shown herself to the people. There was music outside, a wild air on flutes and lyres, with drums beating like blood in the ears. She said, “It is over now. Come here.” I heard her move on the bed. “No,” I said; “I have drunk poison; you have shamed my manhood.” The scent of her hair came close, and I felt her hand on my neck. “What has the Mother done to me,” she whispered, “sending me a wild horse-tamer of the Sky Folk, a blue-eyed charioteer without law or custom or respect for anything? Don’t you understand even seedtime and reaping? How can the people trust the harvest, unless they see it sown? We have done what is needful now; they will ask no more of us. Now comes the time when we can please ourselves.”
Her hand moved down my arm; she laced her fingers in mine, and loosened them from the sword hilt. When she had drawn me near, I forgot that what she knew, dead men had taught her whose bones lay near us under the rock. The drums were quickening their beat, and the flutes shrilled higher at each clash of the cymbals. I learned more in that one night than I had in three whole years from the girls of Troizen.
2
WHEN THEY LED US up to the Palace in the fresh morning, and I saw from the upper terrace the glittering sun-path on the sea, I thought to myself, “Only four days out from home, and here I am a King.”
Nothing is good enough at Eleusis for a new-made King. They drown his days in honey. Gold necklaces, inlaid daggers, tunics of silk from Babylon, rose-oil from Rhodes; the dancers throwing flowers; the bard, lest you should miss the compliment, singing it again in Greek. Young girls sighing; the King is everyone’s beloved. Old women cooing; he is everybody’s son. And among the Companions, the guard of high-born youths who are in the running themselves for King, it seemed too that I was everybody’s brother. I did not notice at first that I was not the eldest brother, but the youngest spoiled by all the rest. I had other things to think of.
The great bedchamber faced southward. When one waked at morning, one saw in the wide window only the rose-flushed sky; then sitting up, the hills of Attica purpled with daybreak, and the gray landlocked bay. The walls were painted with white spirals and pink flowers, the floor had red and black checkers. The bed was of Egyptian ebony studded with gold barley-ears, and had a cover of civetskins bordered with dark purple. In a withy cage at the window lived a bird with smooth white feathers color-shot like pearl shell, which whistled at sunrise, and when one looked least for it sometimes spoke. It made me start, and she used to laugh. The earliest sunlight glowed deeply in her hair; strong hair, and springing; when one gathered it up, it filled both hands full.
I lived all day for the night. Sometimes I fell asleep at noon, and did not wake till evening; then I would not sleep again till dawn. I hardly noticed at the marriage sacrifice how, though I killed the victims, it was the Queen who offered them, as if she were the King. At the Games I won the spear-throwing and the jumping, and a silly horse race with little Minyan ponies. Also I won the archery, though I had thought my eye would be out from going short of sleep.
There was no wrestling; it seemed that had been settled already. But if you are supposing these were the funeral games of the dead King, you will be wrong; they were held in my honor. He was gone from sight and mind; I have grieved longer for a dog than they did for him. What is more, I was Kerkyon now. It is the style of Kings of Eleusis, like Pharaoh in Egypt and Minos in Crete. So the man had not even left a name behind him.
Days passed, and the Palace business began again. Down on the plain the army turned out to exercise, throwing spears at the stuffed hog, or shooting at the mark. But this, I found, was not supposed to concern me. It would not answer, for war leaders to come and go, one every year. The troops were led by Xanthos, the Queen’s brother. He was a big man as Minyans go, on whom his sister’s red hair was not beautiful. He had the russet eyes of a fox. There are hot red men and cold red men, and he was one of the cold. He used to speak to me man to boy, which made me angry. Though he could give me a dozen years, I was the King; and I was still new enough in Eleusis to suppose this meant something.
Every day the Queen held audience. Seeing the Hall filled with women, I did not understand at first that she was doing all the kingdom’s business without me. But the women were heads of families; they came about land disputes, or taxes, or marriage portions. Fathers were nobody in Eleusis, and could not choose wives for their own sons, or leave them a name, let alone property. The men stood at the back till the women had been heard; and if she wanted a man’s advice, she sent for Xanthos.