The King Must Die by Mary Renault

Author:Mary Renault [Renault, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781480432888
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2013-08-14T22:36:00+00:00

2

THE SEAS ROUND CRETE are dark blue almost to blackness, wild, bare, and empty. None of us had been before on water where one saw no land. There indeed man is a dust-grain in the palm of the god. But no one was awed except ourselves. The stout priestess stitched in the sun; the seamen trimmed up the ship; the soldiers polished their black limbs with oil; and the Captain sat combing his long dark lovelocks, stripped to his codpiece, while the boy polished his gilded loin-guard and his helmet chased with lily flowers.

Toward evening we got a head breeze; the sail was lowered, and the rowers strained at the oar. The ship, from rolling, started to pitch. At supper-time no one was hungry but Menesthes. A few forced something down; but before dark we threw it up again. Then we lay on the deck and wished to die.

“If tomorrow is the same,” I thought, “we are finished.” Helike lay moaning, green as a duck’s egg. I felt my body sticky with cold sweat. My belly heaved, and I staggered back to the side.

When I was empty, I looked about me. Evening was falling. The sun girdled with purple was sinking in the burnished sea; eastward the first stars blinked in the cloud-rack. I stretched out my hand to Poseidon, but he sent no sign. He was away perhaps, shaking the earth somewhere. All about us I felt another power, dark, past man’s thought, giver of desolation or of joy, she who can cherish or cast away but abides no question. Two gulls flew by me, one following the other with wild cries, the pursued screaming as if in scorn. I was cold and weak, and grasped the bulwark to keep from falling.

“Sea Mother,” I said, “Foam-Born Peleia of the Doves, this is your kingdom. Do not forsake us while we are in Crete. I have no offering now for you; but I swear, if I get back to Athens, you and your doves shall have a shrine upon the Citadel.”

I sank on the deck again, and pulled my blanket over my head. Lying down eased the sickness and I slept. When I woke, the stars were paling, and the wind had changed; we had tacked and it was behind us. The ship flew smoothly; stretched out like spent dogs the rowers lay sleeping. The Cranes woke up, and reached hungrily for last night’s uneaten food.

When day was bright, we saw before us the high shores of Crete: huge wrinkled yellow cliffs, sheer-standing, the land hidden above them. It looked a cruel coast.

The great sail was hauled down, and another hoisted. All the royal ships of Crete had their dress sails, kept fresh for making port. This was dark blue, with a device in red. It showed a naked warrior, with a bull’s head on his shoulders.

The Athenians gazed with eyes of stone. Nephele, always the first to weep unless the grief was another’s, sobbed, “Oh, you deceived us, Theseus! There is a monster after all!”

“Shut your noise,” I said.

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