“These two years now,” he said, “every breath I have drawn has fed my enemy. I have only lived to keep my daughter from him. Not one of the Kindred dared to offer for her; not one dared stand between him and the Gryphon Throne. Now I have found a man, why give him one day longer? Take care of her. She has her mother’s blood; but her heart will rule it.”
He stood up. He was taller than I by half a head.
“Come,” he said. I heard a soft laugh within the mask; it made me start like the bats in the vault below. “He has had a good run, our long-horned Minotaur. But he cannot be Minos till the priests have seen my body. And they know who owns the Guard. I wish I might watch his face, when the blood-guilt comes homing back to him. Come, Theseus; nothing is left to stay for. You have the ring already. Labrys is waiting; take her from her bed.”
I went to the polished stand. The ax was shaped like the one they use in the bull ring. Its haft was bronze worked with serpents; but when I looked at the head, I saw it was of stone, the edges of the blades hand-flaked and ground, the neck drilled for the shaft. Then I raised my fist in homage, knowing that this was Mother Labrys herself, the guardian of the house since the beginning.
He said, “It is two hundred years since she took a king, but she will remember. She is so old at her trade, she could almost do it alone.”
I lifted her from her bed. Dark shadows beat about me, like stooping ravens. I answered, “If the god says so. We are only watchdogs, to hold or let go when they call our names. But it is against my heart.”
“You are young,” he said. “Never let it trouble you. You are breaking my prison.”
I felt the ax in my hand, and it balanced well. “Speak for me,” I said, “beyond the River, when the Avengers ask whose hand you fell by. If I live I will see your tomb well found with all a king should have; you shall not go hungry or scanted in the paths of darkness under the earth.” He answered, “I will commend you there as my son, if you are good to my child. If not I shall require it of you.”
“Do not fear,” I said. “She is like my life to me.”
He knelt before the image of the Earth Motherland turned his back; then he drew off the mask and laid it down before him. His black hair had broad streaks of white, and his neck showed through it like the bark of a dead tree. He said without turning, “Have you room?” I lifted the ax, and said, “Yes, for a man of my height there is room enough.” “Do it, then, when I invoke the Mother.”
He was a short while silent; then he cried aloud to her in the ancient tongue, and bowed his head. My hand was still unwilling; but it was due to his honor not to keep him waiting. So I swung down the ax, and it came strongly with my arm, as if it knew its business. His head lolled down, and his body sank at my feet. I drew back from it, my flesh shrinking in spite of me. But when I had put Labrys back to lick her chops after her long fast, I turned to him again, and saluted his shade as it started on its journey. His head lay turned toward me; and though it lay in shadow I saw what stopped my breath; he had not the face of a man, but of a lion.
I ran out through the curtain, and stood panting in the fresh night air. My limbs shuddered and my hands were cold. But in a little, when I could think, I was glad for him. I saw the gods had set upon him a mark of honor, now he had made the offering at the people’s need. Thus they may turn to men at last, after long silence; after blood and death, and the bitter grief for what can never be undone, have closed the listening ear thicker than dust. So may they do at the very end, even with me.
A flake of moonlight struck the coping of the sunken shrine. I looked about me, and saw against the wall the tall white throne of Minos, with the priests’ benches either side, and, painted behind, the guardian gryphons in a field of lilies. An owl hooted, and somewhere in the Palace an infant cried till its mother stilled it. Then all was silent.
There was danger here, and I should have been gone already; but this place seemed set apart only for me, and for its watching gods, and the ghost waiting for the ferry on the sighing shore. It seemed unworthy of what had passed, that I should scramble off like a thief. I felt he saw me. So I crossed the painted floor and sat in the seat of Minos, laying my hands flat on my knees and my head against the throne-back, sitting upright and thinking my thoughts. At last I heard beyond the doors the voices of the Guard calling their rounds. So I rose up softly, and went back through the dark maze along the path of the thread.
9
I WOKE HEAVY-HEADED, with all the teams astir before me. As I fetched my breakfast yawning, I saw Amyntor eying me. Presently he asked how I had slept. I was not used to rebukes from Amyntor. But I remembered how I had gone off last night, and that he was an Eleusinian. “You fool,” I said, “do you think I went courting? I was sent for. Minos is dying. By now he must be dead.” It was best for his own sake he should know no more.
“Dead?” said Amyntor. He looked about him. “Not yet; hark, no one is wailing.”
It was true. After the mystery performed in silence and dark night, I had forgotten to wait for clamor. There was no doubt I had dealt a death-blow. Labrys had split his skull. I said, “Well, he is sinking fast; I had it for certain.” Surely, I thought, by now someone has found him.
“Good,” said Amyntor. “This must bring things to a head. Meanwhile there is the bull-dance; you had best get some more sleep.”
“I am not tired,” I said, to keep him from fretting; he was always trying to nurse me. “Besides, they’ll never hold the dance with the King lying unburied.”
“Don’t sell the calf before the cow gives birth,” Amyntor said. He had been the rashest of the Companions, before he came to Crete; it was being a catcher that had steadied him.
I went back to my pallet to keep him quiet, telling him to say nothing to the others. It would only put them on edge; and it might be noticed. I shut my eyes; but I was wide awake behind them, listening for the outcry that proclaims the death of a king. Now and again I saw under my eyelids some Crane tiptoeing up to look at me. They were afraid of my coming to grief in the ring, so near our time. Hours seemed to pass. I grew too restless to keep still, and got up again. Noon came and our food; and the Cranes ate slenderly, as one must before the dance. For an hour we rested, playing at knucklebones; then we heard the pipes and tabors, and it was time to go.
The sun shone. There were scents of warm dust and sharp spring leaves. We touched for luck the altar to All the Gods, which stands by the dancers’ gate. Round it in the dust sat the sacred cripples, bull-dancers who had walked out of the ring on their feet after a goring, but would never dance again. Some of them were old bald men and crones, who had sat here fifty years. They scratched and chattered in the sun, threatening to ill-wish us unless we gave them alms; we put our gifts into their bowls, hearing the music, and getting our bodies ready to dance in.
The sand was hot from the sun; the women’s stands tittered and buzzed, the gamblers called the odds. We came before the shrine, and I looked up, trying to read in her face if she knew her loss. But through her ritual paint one could tell nothing.
We spread and made our circle in the ring, and I took up my place facing the bull gate. Before it was lifted, we heard a bellow behind it. I could feel, all round, the Cranes pricking like dogs. It was the same with me. You could tell by the sound that something was wrong.
The gate chains rattled. I got ready to watch him when he paused to look about him. On his bad days he would come in with his head held low, and stand fidgeting his forefeet. The gate rose clattering; and I raised my arm to him in the team leader’s salute. It seemed to me that I was still waving when he was on me. Without looking to right or left, or pausing to draw breath, he had shot straight out of the bull gate and across the ring, like a boar from covert, like a thrown javelin aimed at my heart.