Read The King Must Die for Free Online

your heart out, and wasting time, over contests where only weight will do. You will never make a wrestler, Theseus. Face it once for all."
    I had never seen him so serious; and I knew he was really fond of me. So I only said, "Yes, Diokles. I suppose you are right." I was too old now to cry. I thought, "He has even forgotten why I should be big. It is not that he wants to hurt me, like Simo; not at all. Simply he never thinks of such a thing. It never enters his head."
    Poseidon's sign was four years behind me. In youth, four years is long. And even the people thought less about it, now they saw I had not the stature of god-got men.
    I was fourteen; the Corn Moon shone, and it was harvest home. My mother received the Goddess' offerings, or read her the pledges written on leaves of clay. At evening she went down to the Navel Court, and following as far the cloister walk, I heard her soft voice, telling the House Snake all about the harvest; for, as she said, if we kept anything from him we should have no luck next year. I lingered in the shadow thinking how she must once have told him who my father was. Perhaps she was talking of me now. But it is death for men to spy on women's mysteries. Lest I should hear a word of what she was saying, I slipped away.
    Next day was the Corn Feast. In the morning she offered to the Mother at the sacred pillar, standing before it straight as the shaft, and graceful as the rising smoke. No one would have thought her sacred dress was so heavy, the flounces clashing with ivory lozenges and disks of gold. "Why does she not tell me?" I thought. "Does she need to be told I suffer?" And anger burned me like a red-hot rod, striking me on my heart where it was tender with love.
    Later we had the Games. I watched the wrestling, the big men grasping each other round the middle, straining and heaving to lift each other off the ground. Nowadays you will have to go far in the back hills to see Old Hellene style; but in those days, there was no other in the Isle of Pelops, and as much skill in it as in a tug of war.
    In the boys' events I won the jumping, and the foot race, and the javelin-throwing, just as Diokles had said. When the prizes were given on the threshing floor, I got a bag of arrowheads, a pair of javelins, and a belt sewn with scarlet. As I came away with them, I heard a voice say in the crowd, "He is blue-eyed and flaxen like a Hellene; but he is built like the Shore People, wiry and quick and small." And someone answered softly, "Well, who can say?"
    I went outside. The Corn Moon shone great and golden. I laid my prizes on the ground, and walked down to the sea.
    The night was calm. Moonlight lay on the strait, and a night bird called, soft and bubbling, like water from a narrow jar. From uphill I heard the singing, and hands clapping to the dance.
    I walked straight into the water as I was, in my belt and drawers. I wanted to be far from men and their voices. As I struck out with the current to the open sea, I said within me, "If I am the god's he will look after me. If not I shall drown, and I do not care."
    Beyond the narrows and the headland, the strait opened to the sea. Then over on Kalauria I heard music and saw torches weaving; and boylike I wanted to go and see. I turned, and struck for the island shore; but the lights grew smaller whenever I looked. I saw I might truly die; and I wanted life.
    The current had borne me easily; but when I fought it, it was cruel and strong. I began to be tired, and cold; my leather breeches dragged at my thighs, my wet belt pinched my breathing. A wave slapped me head-on, and I went under.
    I could not right myself; I seemed to sink to the very bottom of the sea. My head and my chest felt bursting. I thought, "The god rejects me. I have lived for a lie and there is nothing left. Oh that I could be dead without dying! It is hard to die, harder than I know." My eyes flashed and saw pictures: my mother in her bath; a hunchback the children laughed at;