Free The King Must Die by Mary Renault Page A

the peasants who have mixed their blood with the Shore People's have sucked in such customs with their mothers' milk. Well, I had never forbidden it; but nor had I enforced it; and certainly your mother had not been brought up to expect such a thing. It made me angry to see the Priestess glad of it. She had been widowed young, and no one else had offered for her; she did not like well-favored girls. The child was shy and proud; I feared her falling to some low fellow, who from bullishness, or malice to those above him, would take her as roughly as a whore. But most of all I misliked the base blood it might bring into our house. If a child was born, it could not be let live. But that I would keep from her now; the day's concern was enough.
    "I sought her in the women's rooms. She listened silently, and did not complain; it was a little thing, she said, to do for the children; but when I took her hands, I felt them cold. I went back to my guest too long neglected. He said, 'My friend, here is some new trouble.'
    " 'Less than the last,' I said, and told him. I did not make much of it, not wishing to seem soft; but, as I say, your father understood men. He said, 'I have seen the maiden. She should bear kings. And she is modest. This is hard for you and her.' That table there was standing between us. Suddenly, he struck it with his fist. 'Surely, Pittheus, some god had my good in mind when he led me here. Tell me, what time of day do the girls go to the grove?' I said, 'About sundown, or a little before.' 'By custom only? Or is there any sacred law?' 'None that I know of,' I answered, beginning to see his drift. 'Tell the Priestess, then, that the maid will go tomorrow; and if she is there before daybreak, who will know but you and I? So we shall all three gain: I an heir, if heaven relents to me; you a grandson of decent blood both sides; and your daughter—well, two brides have come to me virgins, and I know a little of women. What do you say, my friend?'"
    " 'In the gods' name,' I said. "They have remembered my house today.'"
    " 'Then,' he said, 'nothing remains but to tell the maiden; and if it is a man she has seen already and knows no harm of, she will be less afraid.'
    "I nodded; but a thought stayed me. 'No,’ I said. 'She is of the Kindred; she must go consenting to the sacrifice, or it will lose its virtue. Let it rest between you and me.'
    "When the first quarter of the night was gone, I went to wake your mother. But she was watching in her bed, with her lamp beside her. 'My child,' I said, 'I have had a dream, sent I don't doubt by some god or other, that you went to the grove before cocklight, to do your duty to the Goddess with the first of the day. So get up and make ready.' She looked at me in the lamplight with wide still eyes and answered, 'Why, then, Father, it will be sooner done.' Then she said, 'It is a good omen for the children.'
    "Presently she came down wrapped in a foxskin cloak, for the night was chilly. Her old nurse, whom I had told nothing to, walked down with us as far as the shore, holding her hand, and chirping out like a cricket old wives' tales of girls in this case whom gods had visited. We put your mother in the boat, and I myself rowed her over.
    "I beached where the glade runs down grassy to the shore. Great clouds were banking in the sky; the moon shone blinking on the shining myrtle leaves, and the house of cedar-wood on the rocks by the water. As we reached it the moon went in. She said, 'A storm is coming. But no matter; I have my lamp with me, and the tinder.' She had brought them all the way, hidden in her cloak. ‘That must not be,' I said, taking them from her. 'I remember my dream forbade it.' It went to my heart; but I feared some night-walking thief would see the light. I kissed her and said, 'To such things as this people of our kin are born; it is our moira. But if we are faithful, the gods are not far away.' So I left her, and she neither wept nor clung to keep me. And as she