The Bull from the Sea by Mary Renault Page B

He turned his head my way; and a shiver went all through me; for that old man had a face like Fate itself. Beyond sorrow, beyond despair; with hope and fear forgotten as we forget the milk of infancy.
    He came up prodding his stick at the ground before him, and leaning on the girl. He wore a short tunic, as for a journey; it was torn and bloody, and had been soiled and worn before; but the wool was fine and the borders patterned, the sort of work that takes a skilled woman a long time on the loom. His belt was soft tooled leather, and had been studded once with gold; you could see the holes. From there I looked to his sandals; but I did not see them. For I saw his feet. They were strong and knotted and had carried him many miles; but they were warped like the wood of a tree which has been spiked as a sapling, and grown about the scar. Then I knew who he was.
    A cold gooseflesh stood up on all my limbs. My hand came up of itself, to make the sign against evil. His sunk and shrivelled eyelids moved a little, as if he saw.
    I said to him, “You are Oedipus, who once was King of Thebes.”
    He went down on one knee; there was a stiffness in his bending which was not of his joints alone. And for a moment I let him kneel, because I knew it would be courteous not to bid him rise but to touch and raise him; and I could not make my hands obey me.
    When the people of Kolonos saw I did not move to him, it was as if I had opened a farm-gate to a pack of curs. Barking and baying they ran forward, picking up their stones again. You would have thought they danced upon their hind legs, for me to pick the old man up like a skinned carcass and throw him to their jaws.
    I shouted, “Back!” My gorge rose at them, more than at what knelt before me. So I took him between my hands, and felt his lean flesh and old bones like any other’s, only a man in grief.
    The woman had ceased her wailing and begun to weep, stifling it in her hands. He stood before me, his face tilted up a little, as if his mind’s eye saw a taller man. Now it was quiet, I could hear the growling of the people, muttering to each other that even the King should not tempt the gods.
    Kolonos of the Horses is always an uneasy place to me, for all its prettiness; and that day, as I have said, there was a lour about it, a brooding in the ground. Suddenly my anger swelled so that my body felt quite light with it. I turned to the snarling crowd and shouted, “Silence! What are you—men? Or boars, wolves, rock-jackals? I tell you it is the law of Zeus to spare the suppliant. And if you will not do it for fear of heaven, by the head of my father Poseidon, you shall do it for fear of me!”
    There was a hush then, and the headman came forward whining something. What with my anger and the awe of the place, I felt strange, as if the god’s finger brushed my neck. “I stand here for this man,” I said. “Lay hand or stone to him, and you may well fear Poseidon’s anger. For I will curse you in his name.” And it was as if a shudder flowed up into me from the earth beneath my feet; I felt I had the Power.
    Now there was really silence. Only a bird cheeped somewhere, and even he spoke softly. “Stand further off,” I said, “and in good time I will ask his mercy for you. Now leave this man and woman for me to deal with.”
    They drew away. I could not look yet at the girl. I had been going to say, “This man and his daughter,” when I remembered she was his sister, too, out of the one womb.
    She took her head-scarf and wiped his face where a stone had grazed it; I saw she was daughter in her heart, keeping faith with her childhood. It was time to greet him in some words fitting to his birth. But one could not well say, “Oedipus, son of Laios,” when he had killed Laios with his own hand.
    So I said to him, “Be welcome, guest of the land. Men should walk softly, where the gods have struck before them. Forgive me for these people, that I have not taught them better. I will