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

ready whenever her father wished.

She was Chief Priestess of Mother Dia in Troizen. In the time of the Shore People before us, that would
have made her sovereign queen; and if we ourselves had been sacrificing at the Navel Stone, no one
would have walked before her. But Poseidon is husband and lord of the Mother, and on his feast day the
men go first. So, when I heard I was going with my grandfather, I saw myself a man already.

I ran to the battlements, and looked out between their teeth. Now I saw what god it was the men were
following. They had let loose the King Horse, and he was running free across the plain.

The village too, it seemed, had turned out to welcome him. He went through standing corn in the common
fields, and no one raised a hand to stop him. He crossed the beans and the barley, and would have gone
up to the olive slopes; but some of the men were there and he turned away. While I was watching, down
in the empty court a chariot rattled. It was my grandfather's; and I remembered I was to ride in it. By
myself on the terrace I danced for joy.

They fetched me down. Eurytos the charioteer was up already, standing still as an image in his short white
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tunic and leather greaves, his long hair bound in a club; only his arm muscles moved, from holding in the
horses. He lifted me in, to await my grandfather. I was eager to see him in his war things, for in those
days he was tall. Last time I was in Troizen, when he was turned eighty, he had grown light and dry as an
old grasshopper, piping by the hearth. I could have lifted him in my hands. He died a month after my son,
having I suppose nothing to hold him longer. But he was a big man then.

He came out, after all, in his priestly robe and fillet, with a scepter instead of a spear. He heaved himself
in by the chariot rail, set his feet in the bracers, and gave the word to go. As we clattered down the
cobbled road, you could not have taken him for anything but a warrior, fillet or no. He rode with the
broad rolling war straddle a man learns driving cross-country with weapons in his hands. Whenever I
rode with him, I had to stand on his left; it would have set his teeth on edge to have anything in front of his
spear arm. Always I seemed to feel thrown over me the shelter of his absent shield.

Seeing the road deserted, I was surprised, and asked him where the people were. "At Sphairia," he said,
grasping my shoulder to steady me over a pothole. "I am taking you to see the rite, because soon you will
be waiting on the god there, as one of his servants."

This news startled me. I wondered what service a horse god wanted, and pictured myself combing his
forelock, or putting ambrosia before him in golden bowls. But he was also Poseidon Bluehair, who raises
storms; and the great black Earth Bull whom, as I had heard, the Cretans fed with youths and girls. After
some time I asked my grandfather, "How long shall I stay?"

He looked at my face and laughed, and ruffled my hair with his big hand. "A month at a time," he said.
"You will only serve the shrine, and the holy spring. It is time you did your duties to Poseidon, who is
your birth-god. So today I shall dedicate you, after the sacrifice. Behave respectfully, and stand still till
you are told; remember, you are with me."

We had reached the shore of the strait, where the ford was. I had looked forward to splashing through it