One night at bedtime, I asked her if there was nothing in Eleusis for the King to do. She smiled and said, “Oh, yes. Undo this necklace; it is caught in my hair.” I did not move at once, but looked at her. She said, “Why should the King sit at clerk’s business with ugly old men?” Then she let fall her belt and petticoat and said, coming nearer, “See, it is pulling here. It hurts me.” And there was no more talk that night.
Just afterwards, I learned by chance that she had seen an embassy from Rhodes, and never even told me. I overheard it on the Lower Terrace; the stewards had heard it first. I stood there in my tracks. No one had so insulted me since my childhood. “What does she take me for?” I thought. “Because I have less beard than her fox-eyed brother, does she think I need a nurse? Thunder of Zeus! I killed her husband.” Anger blurred my eyes.
There were voices about me. The young Companions were escorting me, as they did everywhere. I hardly knew one yet from another; there had been no time. “What is it, Kerkyon? Does something trouble you?” “You look sick.” “No, he looks angry.” “Kerkyon, is there something I can do?”
I said it was nothing. I had too much pride to say I had been made light of. But when her women had gone that night, I asked her what she meant by it.
She looked at me amazed. It seemed she really could not see why I was angry. She said she had done nothing against custom; and I saw it was true. As for making light of me … she shook out her hair, and laughed at me through it sidelong.
Next morning dawned green and gold. A tress of red hair lay tickling on my breast. I lifted it off and slid away, and went to the window. The Attic hills swam in gold mist, across a shimmering sea, looking near enough to hit with an arrow. I thought how strange are the ways of Earthlings, and hard for a Hellene to understand. For she had chosen me, and set me to the wrestling, and hallowed me King. Yet neither she nor anyone else had asked if I consented to my moira.
The white bird woke and whistled. Her voice from the bed said wide awake, “You are thinking. What are you thinking of?” I made her the answer she liked best. I was the first Hellene she had ever married.
From this day on, I awoke from dreaming. I had spent the long days of Eleusis in sleep, in dancing or wrestling with the young men, playing the lyre, or looking out to sea. Now I began to seek for occupation. It is not in my nature to do nothing.
The Companions were nearest to my hand. If there was war, at least I should have command of my own Guard, though Xanthos led the rest. It was time I paid them some attention.
These youths, as I was saying, never left me, except when I was with the Queen in bed. They were all well set up, well bred and personable, or they would not have been where they were; they were chosen for such things, rather than for feats of arms. I had no need of their protection, for in Eleusis nothing was so dreadful as to kill the King out of his time. After suffering many pains, the killer would be sealed in a tomb alive, for Night’s Daughters to do their will on him. It was long since it had happened, and then by misadventure. But the Companions were an adornment for the King, which the people liked to see about him.
They all had more or less Greek, which was the mark there of a gentleman. When I began to talk with them, they seemed to me very vain, full of petty jealousies and rivalries, feeling slights as a cat does water, and always trying to put each other down. They were curious about me, because I was a Hellene, and, as I learned after a while, because of some oracle concerning me which had been kept secret from the people. I remembered the dead King’s laughter; but it told one nothing.
From all I could see, they had done little till now but play at war training. They did not lack spirit, so I suppose most of the kings had not looked beyond their own term. But wherever I am, I must put my hand to what I find there.
Men soon get stale with courtyard exercise; so I got them into the hills. At first they went unwillingly; Eleusinians are plainsmen, and despise the mountains as poor barren land, fit for wolves and robbers. I asked them whatever they did when raiders came for their cattle, if they did not know the borderland. They took this quite well, and owned the Megarians often made away with stock, trying to make good their losses by the Isthmus bandits the other side. “Well,” I said, “there’s only one answer to that. They must be made to fear us more.” So I took them scrambling; we got a buck, and roasted our kill by a mountain stream, and they were pleased with the day. But on the way home one of them said to me, “Don’t tell anyone, Kerkyon. You would be stopped next time for sure.”
“Oh?” I said, raising my brows. “Who would stop me, do you think?” There was some whispering; I heard, “Well, you fool, he’s a Hellene.” Then someone said civilly, “You see, it is very unlucky if the King dies out of season.”
This is quite true. There is a Minyan song about some young King long ago, who got himself killed by a boar after the Queen had forbidden him to go hunting. Anemones are said to be dyed with his blood. The olives failed that year, and no one has ever heard the last of it.
All the same, we were in the hills again next day, and the day after. Eleusis lies between two Hellene kingdoms; when the youths found their mothers’ rule bear heavy, they would cast an eye sidelong at the lands of men. So they came, and kept the secret, and were pleased with themselves. My trophies of the chase, which I could not show in the Palace, I gave away as prizes; but I had to be careful, or they would quarrel over them, being much given to rivalry. Time passed like this; as we got used to each other’s speech, we had a language of our own, Greek-Minyan laced with our own jokes and catchwords. No one else could understand it.
One day, when we were straggled out on the mountain, I heard them calling to each other, “We have lost Boy!” “Where is Boy, have you seen him?” I climbed into view and someone said, “There he is.”
I had put up with a good deal in Eleusis; but I did not mean to swallow insolence. I came forward, reminding myself that I passed for nineteen, and the eldest of them was not one and twenty. “The next one who calls me Boy,” I said, “I am going to kill.”
They all stood gaping. “Well?” I said. “Here we are on the border. Anyone who kills me can run away; or you can throw my body off a rock, if you like, and say I fell. I shan’t hide behind the Goddess’ skirts; but let’s see first who can kill me. Who thinks I am a boy? Come out and say it.”
There was a pause; then the eldest, a young man called Bias who had a proper beard, said, “But, Kerkyon, no one here would insult you. It is the other way.” More of them joined in, calling, “It is our name for you.” “Kerkyon is nothing; it is cold.” “All the good kings have nicknames.” And one who was always bold and reckless said, laughing, “It’s all in love, Kerkyon. You know you could have any one of us for a wink.” At this two or three shouted out agreeing, between joke and earnest, letting me see it was an offer; and next moment two had started a fight.
I got them parted, and let it go as foolery. Everyone knows there is a good deal of this among the Minyans; and one cannot wonder. It comes of being tied to their mothers’ petticoats after they are men. Their mothers even choose their wives for them. Then they go to the wife’s house, and change one petticoat for another. When a man lives like this, a youth he can choose for himself, who looks up to him and copies him and boasts of his friendship, will give him more pride in himself than the womenfolk at home. I see no sense in looking down on this; most customs have a reason; even among Hellenes, in a long war where girls are scarce and the leaders are first served, the young men’s friendships grow tenderer than they were.