For a moment he considered coming out, having a talk with Agis, and going back. But the slither of the snake against his breast reminded him he had set out to see his mother. That, therefore, was what he was going to do.
If one kept one’s mind upon what one wanted, the chance appeared. Glaukos, too, was magical. He stroked the snake’s thinned neck, saying voicelessly, “Agathodaimon, Sabazeus-Zagreus, send him away, come, come.” He added a spell he had heard his mother use. Though he did not know what it was for, it was worth a trial.
Agis turned from the stairs into the passage opposite. There was a statue a little way along, of a lion sitting up. Agis leaned his shield and spear on it, and went round behind. Though stone sober by local reckoning, he had drunk before going on duty too much to hold till the next watch. All the guards went behind the lion. Before morning, the slaves would wipe it up.
The moment he started walking, before he put down his weapons, the child knew what it meant and started to run. He flew up the cold smooth stairs on silent feet. It always amazed him, when with children of his own age, how easily they could be outrun or caught. It seemed impossible they could really be trying.
Agis behind the lion had not forgotten his duty. When a watchdog barked, his head went up at once. But the sound came from the other way. It ceased, he straightened his clothes and picked up his arms. The stairs were empty.
The child, having pushed to behind him, silently, the heavy door, reached up to fasten the latch. It was well polished and oiled; he coaxed it home without a sound. This done, he turned into the room.
A single lamp was burning, on a tall standard of bright bronze, twined with a gilded vine and resting on gilded deer’s-feet. The room was warm, and breathing all over with secret life. The deep curtains of blue wool with embroidered edges, the people painted on the walls, all stirred with it; the flame of the lamp breathed too. The men’s voices, shut off by the heavy door, were no more than murmurs here.
There were close scents of bath-oil, incense and musk, of resined pine-ash from the bronze hearth-basket; of his mother’s paints and oils and the phial from Athens; of something acrid she burned for magic; of her body and her hair. In the bed whose legs were inlaid with ivory and tortoiseshell and ended in lions’ paws, she lay sleeping, her hair falling across the worked linen pillow. He had never seen her in such deep sleep before.
It seemed she had never missed Glaukos, to sleep so soundly. He paused, to enjoy his stealthy undisturbed possession. On her tiring-table of olive-wood, the pots and bottles were clean and closed. A gilded nymph upheld the moon of her silver mirror. The saffron night-robe was folded on a stool. From the room beyond where her women slept came a faint distant snore. His eyes strayed to the loose stone by the hearth, under which lived forbidden things; he had often wished to try working his own magic. But Glaukos might slip away. She must have him now.
He stepped softly up, the unseen guard and lord of her sleep. Gently the cover of marten skins, edged with scarlet and fringed with bullion, rose and fell above her. Her brows were drawn clearly above the thin smooth lids which seemed to show through them the smoke-grey eyes beneath. Her lashes were darkened; her mouth was firmly closed, the color of watered wine. Her nose was white and straight, and whispered faintly as she breathed. She was twenty-one years old.
The cover had fallen back a little from her breast, where, till lately, Kleopatra’s head had too often lain. She had gone to the Spartan nurse now, and his kingdom was his own again.
A strand of her hair spilled down towards him, dark red, strong, and shining in the moving lamplight with streaks of fire. He pulled forward some of his own, and set them together; his was like rough-wrought gold, gleaming and heavy; Lanike grumbled on feast-days that it never held a curl. Hers had a springy wave. The Spartan woman said Kleopatra’s would be the same, though now it was like feathers. He would hate her, if she grew more like their mother than he was. But perhaps she would die; babies often did.
In the shadows, the hair looked dark and different. He looked round at the great mural on the inner walclass="underline" the Sack of Troy, done by Zeuxis for Archelaos. The figures were life-sized. The Wooden Horse towered in the background; in front, Greeks plunged swords into Trojans, rushed at them with spears, or carried on their shoulders women with screaming mouths. In the foreground, old Priam and the child Astyanax weltered in their blood. That was the color. Satisfied of this he turned away. He had been born in this room; the picture held nothing new for him.
Round his waist, under his cloak, Glaukos was wriggling, no doubt glad to be home. The child looked again into his mother’s face; then let fall his single garment, lifted delicately the blanket’s edge, and still twined with the snake slid in beside her.
Her arms came round him. She purred softly, and sank her nose and mouth into his hair; her breathing deepened. He pushed down his head under her chin; her yielding breasts enclosed him, he could feel his bare skin cling to hers, all the length of his body. The snake, too tightly pressed between them, squirmed strongly and slid aside.
He felt her wake; her grey eyes with their inner smoke-rings were open when he looked up. She kissed and stroked him, and said, “Who let you in?”
While she still half-slept and he lay wrapped in bliss, he had been ready for this question. Agis had not kept proper lookout. Soldiers were punished for it. Half a year had gone by since he had seen from the window a guard put to death on the drill-field by the other guards. After so long an age, he had forgotten the offense, if he had ever known it; but he remembered the small distant body bound to the post, the men standing round with javelins poised at the shoulder; the shrill taut command followed by a single cry; then, when they had all crowded in to jerk out the bristling shafts, the head lolling, and the great spill of red.
“I told the man you wanted me.” No need for names. For a child fond of talking, he had learned early how to hold his tongue.
Her cheek moved in a smile against his head. He had hardly ever heard her speak to his father, without being aware she was lying about one or another thing. He thought of it as a skill she had, like the snake-music on the bone flute.
“Mother, when will you marry me? When I’m older, when I’m six?”
She kissed the nape of his neck, and ran her finger along his backbone. “When you are six, ask me again. Four is too young to get handfast.”
“I’m five in Lion Month. I love you.” She kissed him saying nothing. “Do you love me best?”
“I love you altogether. Perhaps I shall eat you up.”
“But best? Do you love me best?”
“When you are good.”
“No!” He rode her waist with his knees, pummeling her shoulders. “Really best. Better than anyone. Than Kleopatra.” She made a soft sound, less reproof than caress. “You do! You do! You love me more than the King.”
He seldom said “Father” if he could help it, and knew it did not displease her. Through her flesh he felt her silent laughter. She said, “Perhaps.”
Victorious and exulting, he slipped down beside her. “If you promise you love me best, I’ll give you something.”
“Oh, tyrant. What can it be?”
“Look, I’ve found Glaukos. He came into my bed.”
Folding the blanket back he displayed the snake. It had coiled round his waist again, having found this pleasant.
She looked at the burnished head, which lifted from its resting-place on the child’s white breast, and softly hissed at her.
“Why,” she said, “where did you find this? This is not Glaukos. The same kind, yes. But this one is much bigger.”
They gazed together at the coiled snake; the child’s mind filled with pride and mystery. He stroked the reared neck, as he had been taught, and the head sank down again.