Free Seven Days in New Crete (Penguin Modern Classics) by Robert Graves Page A

wheels,
Laughed as he heard the discordant cries
Of hate and despair that rose all about.
     
    Nimuë awakened, Mari’s daughter,
From her sleep in the branches of the catkin-willow,
Soon she was aware of what Dobeis had done.
Her beautiful face grew pallid and stern.
Slinging her bow across her slender back,
She strode along the path to the house of Dobeis,
The golden wheels circling giddily about her
And locking together, wheel with wheel,
As a shield to protect the house of Dobeis.
     
    Nimuë leaped across the gold shield,
Her white foot alighting on the window sill.
She addressed fat Dobeis in reproachful words:
‘Dobeis, Dobeis, what mischief is this?
What have you contrived against the five estates?
Call back your wheels while yet there is time,
Lest you forfeit the pardon of Mari and Ana.’
     
    Dobeis laughed loudly from his silken bed,
Reclining at ease upon his left elbow:
‘I am bad, I am bad, I am bad,’ he said.
‘I would have all the world resemble myself.
Away, little Nimuë, lest I do you harm.’
     
    Nimuë called to the blackthorn-tree:
‘Blackthorn, lend me a white-flowered branch
To humble the power of Dobeis the bad!’
The blackthorn lent her the white-flowered branch;
A magpie brought it to Nimuë.
     
    Dobeis watched laughing as she trimmed the point
With a flint knife knapped in the crescent shape.
‘Back to your dolls, little Nimuë,
Back to your dolls, before worse befalls.’
Suddenly she struck, weeping for sorrow.
Since never before had she taken life.
She struck at the hollow under his breastbone.
She did not pierce Dobeis, she drew no blood,
The magic lay in the wind of the blow.
     
    Dobeis lay back upon the silken bed
His face was doleful, his frown was deep,
Dilated his nostrils, his dark eyes dull,
Profoundly sunk within their orbits;
Black shadows gathered all around.
His face and arms were white as marble,
His lips turned blue, his brow cold-sweated,
A chill spread over his trunk and limbs.
     
    Then, in a voice, that was weak and hollow
‘Alas,’ he cried, ‘Little Nimuë,
Who would have thought that the wind of the blow
Struck by a girl could have caused my death.’
Nimuë, weeping, addressed Dobeis:
‘Let your vengeance fall on the blackthorn-tree,
On the magpie’s claws, on the crescent knife;
But recall the course of your golden wheels,
I conjure you in my Mother’s name.
Do so, and I will bury you.’
     
    Dobeis called back the golden wheels,
And the ruin of man was thus arrested,
When the last bright wheel came rolling home
He died, and Nimuë buried him.
She brought the wheels to the witches’ queen,
Who rid them, by long evocation,
Of the evil magic of Dobeis.
Then smiths with hammers beat them flat,
Into sheets of gold, into books of gold,
Of the sort that noble poets use
To make a record of Nimuë –
Of Ana, Mari and Nimuë.
    How much of this piece of mythology – it was repeated three times – the children were capable of understanding, I could not judge. Certainly they seemed to be word-perfect by the time that the lesson was over. I noticed a girl of the magician estate weeping in sympathy with Nimuë each time that the line recurred: ‘Never before had she taken life.’
    The estate of the children was shown by the number of bands on the cuffs of their overalls. Estates sat together, though I noticed that one or two girls were sitting out of place. At a signal from the mistress all shouted a greeting to the statue of the Goddess and ran into the playground, where they began to play games in the same disorganized way that children do now. The mistress stayed behind, praying. She did not kneel, however, nor pray upright with palms spread out at the height of the thigh, as I later saw the priests pray, but stood with arms akimbo and a pleasant smile on her face as if respectfully chatting with the Goddess. She reminded me of fat Fanny, my grandmother’s faithful cook, respectfully asking her permission to make the mushroom-sauce according to my