"Mary Renault - Greece 1 - The King Must Die" - читать интересную книгу автора (Renault Mary)

man's. If you are sensible, and get to know yourself, you'll seldom come away from the games without
two or three prizes. That should be enough for anyone. It's time you stopped fretting 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
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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