People forget their own childhood, or they’d remember a child’s long ears. The moment she saw that wink, the child jumped at her father’s arm. “Daddy!” she piped. “I don’t want to marry Sim! I want to marry Theas!”
There was the pause that you might expect; then the fathers laughed, my mother looked down her nose, Bouselos’ wife said, “Hush, naughty girl!” But being a spoiled only child, she stamped and said it again. It distressed my brother, who, though himself a favorite, was sweetened by all the gods had given him.
“You can’t marry me,” he said, reasoning with her kindly. “You know I’m promised to Hegesilla. You don’t have to marry Sim yet, not till you’re big; and then you’ll like him. He’s very clever.”
All the parents gazed at him, admiring his good heart, in which indeed they were not deceived. My betrothed looked from him to me; it was, you might say, an epigram. Going fiery red—with temper, not maiden shame—she shouted, “I won’t marry him ever! When I’m old I still won’t marry him! He’s ugly, he’s all black, he’s got a dirty face.”
I had scrubbed it well for the wedding, but had not lightened my swarthy skin nor taken off my birthmark. Like all Ionians who have gone east and mixed their blood, we Keans set store by Hellene looks. It is said that before the war in Troy, King Minos’ Cretans had a city where Koressia stands, and sometimes we throw back to them. One thing’s for sure, on Keos it is not admired. I had black hair, before it whitened; also, though my beard covers it now, a dark mole on my cheek, as big as a double drachma. If I had been a girl, no doubt they would have exposed me on the mountain. But my father was never one to waste a pair of hands.
He looked put about by the words of his chosen daughter-in-law; but it was Theas who darkened with his rare anger. I think he’d even have given the girl a clip; but her mother, from civility to mine, was first with a box on the ear. She was led off bawling. Little Philomache screamed out after her, “You’re uglier than our Sim! You’re dirtier too! You smell!”
I did not wait to see how they made the best of it. I slipped through the crowd, not roughly lest anyone else should stare at me, and ran into the olive grove. There I could have wept unseen; but I went on dry-eyed through the vineyards to the mountain. Before sunset I was up above the sheep-grass. I sat on a boulder while somewhere below me a goat-boy piped to his herd, out of tune, and the goats replied, fading away downhill. In clear golden air I looked west over shimmering sea; first the little islet of Helena, then beyond that the purple Attic hills.
I had never been out of Keos; so though all Hymettos stood between, I could believe I gazed on the Rock of the ancient kings: Theseus who redeemed the land from Crete and killed the Minotaur, Akamas his son who fought at Troy, Kodros who went disguised to be killed in battle, when the oracle proclaimed that the King must die.
Till now I had been angry only with the present; at being reminded I was ugly, though I was used to that; much more at having the song put out of my mind, for nearly all had gone. But now I seemed to feel my fate close in on me. This island, twenty miles by ten, was to be my prison; here I would plod the circle of sour Hesiod’s seasons, works and days, works and days, tied to a fool and to her fools of kindred; tasting the food of the god once in five years, maybe, when some bard might chance to call at the harbor, held up by rough winds or the need to sing for his passage-fee. Like Homer’s orphan child, I would get the sip that wets the mouth and leaves the belly empty. I looked at Attica, and thought of her kings and heroes, of whom I had sung in solitude.
They had come to me in snatches of Homer, or peasant songs, or old wives’ tales; but they had faces and ways of speech for me; I knew their armor, and if they used sword or spear. Child as I was, I thought they asked me for something. I had no blood-libation to give their shades body and voice; yet they seemed to say to me, “We die twice when men forget.”
There is nothing like despair to make one throw oneself upon the gods. Helios Apollo was going down over the Attic hills, to plunge his chariot in some distant sea; and as he passed from sight, suddenly a great wing of cloud, which had been grey, flamed like rose fire against a sky as green as kingfishers and deeper than the sea. Come then, he said. Then he folded his bright wing in the mist, yielding to night.
Down the mountain I went, possessed by a daimon that made me run, so that I might have broken my neck had not a bright moon lit me. In the farms and hovels, all folk who had lain down with the dusk were sleeping, and the last of the lamps were going out. I would not be back before our door was barred, and our father would beat me. Why not? Tomorrow was the day for mulching the vines; and there was never a night when he had not earned his sleep.
I was still on the sheep-track when our lamp was quenched. Only one was left shining now. It was in the house of Hagias, father of the bride. It seemed strange, seeing she and her groom were long since bedded at his own fine place, newly built from his gains at sea; I had seen the bridal torches threading there from up the mountain. Then I thought, It’s the bard who is still awake.
If a mouse had crossed my path, I was ready to see an omen. I took the next fork in the track.
As I came to Hagias’ vineyard, his two watchdogs bayed at me. They were running loose, which meant their bite was worse than their bark. Wandering men grow either to hate dogs or to know them; but there are no two ways for a shepherd. I sat on a stone, to let them nose me at leisure; after a while they let me tickle their jaws, and we walked on together. I did not go too close to the house, which, good sentinels that they were, they would not have approved; there was a little plowshed, whose roof faced the lighted window.
I’ve been a fool, I thought. All I saw was a pallet bed, with a boy upon it. But no one on thrifty Keos sleeps with a lighted lamp, and I looked again. He was fair-haired, with a flush upon him, pushing the clothes about and tossing. This explained the lamp, but was no affair of mine. I was about to start climbing down, when a shadow crossed the window, and a man came into the light, holding a cup, which he lifted the boy to drink from. He was a stiff grizzled man, looking old and anxious, with a blanket caught around him as if just risen from bed. Hagias had many servants, and again I would have gone, but something bright caught my eye; craning, I saw on the clothes-stool an embroidered robe. Against the wall was the kithara.
I sat, and watched, and thought of the god’s bright omen, and of where it had led me now. It shocked me. There is no one more just than a child. A stranger, a guest of the land, a pleasant-faced lad who had a look of my brother a few years back; what evil was I wishing him, perched on the shed like a dark kite waiting to feed? Black Sim, the boys in the village called me.
Often I had wished my father dead, and Theas in the master’s chair, but had never dared to know it. This was the first time I had looked for gain through death, knowing my thought. It is man’s nature to pray for what he much desires; but I had the justice of a child, and I did not pray.
Soon the bard left the window-square, but I knew he was sitting near the bed, because I could see one of his feet. The boy dozed with half-closed eyes showing the whites. Presently I climbed down, speaking softly to the dogs, who suffered my hand, but saw me off as far as the olive grove, lest I should deceitfully take a sheep. They’d have made better soldiers than some men I’ve met.
When I got home, there was a shutter open. I crept up, and two strong hands hoisted me in. Theas set me down, signed to me to be quiet—he had no need!—and showed me a dummy of rolled sheepskin, which he’d laid under my side of the blanket in our bed. In the great bed our parents were fast asleep, and had never missed me. He took me by the ear and gave me a soft slap on the head. I gave him a soft punch on the belly, which was flat and firm as a shield. We were used to these silent games. When he had hidden the skins and we were both in bed, he went straight off to sleep. He had kept awake to save me from my beating. I warmed myself on his wide shoulders cloaked with long golden hair.