John Powys - Atlantis

Escaping from his king therefore, with almost as much relief as he escaped from his mother, for he felt a sudden longing to be plotting and planning with Arsinöe again, Nisos pushed his way hurriedly through the crowd and was soon pleading passionately and eagerly the cause of the unborn babe, who might turn out to be the inheritor of the longest-descended racial tradition in Italy. “Well, if he’s set his heart on it,” the old lady finally conceded, “there’s nothing to be gained by thwarting his wishes. O you men! you men! He has no notion, nor, I expect, have you, closer though you are than he is to the womb out of which you all come, how near to her pains this woman is, but if—”

Nisos interrupted her. “It was her sister, the midwife, Granny dear, who brought her to Odysseus, not I. I can’t remember ever seeing her. But I daresay I may have seen her when I was little, and before she went to Italy. She lived with the Nymph in the Cave, Granny. You know about that Nymph in the Cave in Italy, don’t you?”

But the old lady’s contradictory mood wasn’t soothed away by this. “I’ve known too many caves and too many Nymphs already!” she cried. “You and your Nymphs! What I would like to see, Nisos Naubolides, would be no more nymphs and no more caves but a well-built Palace in a well-built City with a well-trained army to protect it from pirates and murderers and thieves, and with well-trained servants to send on the King’s business, without having to have recourse to— But what am I doing, chattering here with a baby like you when an old woman’s proper work’s up yonder? Here! give me my cloak, girl; and you were best come with me too, foreigner though you be, for us can never tell with these cave-nymphs! This wench may be dropping a monster with horns and tail before we’ve got her to bed!”

As may be conjectured these words were addressed to the alert Arsinöe, who with a quick glance at Nisos helped the old woman into the garment she required and assisted her up the passage to the hall. Before he followed them thither, however, our young friend couldn’t resist a word with his old comrade Tis whom he found naked to the waist working furiously between oven and wash-trough on his left and red ashes under a great cauldron on his right.

Dragging about with them across the floor their own foreign blankets, which they had brought up from the ship lest they should be stolen, were half-a-dozen sailors who had been so freely and hilariously partaking of the old nurse’s hospitality that, now the feast was over, they found it hard to keep awake.

Nisos persuaded Tis to put on his tunic again and leave his wash-tub. Then in a voice too low for those of the foreigners who were not asleep to catch his words he tried to make clear to his friend the pressing necessity for cutting off the beard of Odysseus so that Nausikaa should see him as he was when she first set eyes on him. To his surprise he found that this daring stroke met with obstinate and determined resistance from Tis.

“I don’t like it: I don’t like it: I don’t like it,” he kept repeating. “It’s an insult to the old man — an insult that I’d never consent to see practised on my old grand-dad Moros, an insult that you’ll never persuade me to help you to carry through.”

“But don’t you see, old friend,” pleaded Nisos, considerably disturbed by this unexpected opposition, “don’t you see it’s essential that Princess Nausikaa should recognize in our king the man she loved the moment she saw him coming out of the sea?”

But Tis shook his head. “You young folk always exaggerate and overrate the effect of any mortal thing that strikes you as romantic. How do you know that cutting off our king’s beard will make him look young again? There are other signs of old age than the greyness or the whiteness of our hair. Odysseus had nothing like those deep lines at the side of his mouth, for instance, or those other lines, deeper still, in the centre of his forehead when he first met his princess. No, no! You know very well he hadn’t! He couldn’t have had.

“No, you’re making a great mistake if you think our old hero’s beard has anything to do with it! In fact, if anybody tried to meddle with our king’s beard when his servant Tis was around that person had better take care! It wouldn’t be that man’s beard that would come off. It would be his head!”

“But don’t you see, Tis, old friend, it will only be in the interest of our king, and for the sake of the happiness of our king, and in order that our king may have all the honour and glory he wants, that his beard will be cut off. Better lose a beard, than a kingdom! Better lose a beard than the enchanting Love of your proud youth! O Tis, Tis, don’t be an obstinate Tis, a reactionary Tis, an antiquarian Tis! The world has to move on. Life has to move on. Customs have to change. Habits have to change. There was a time for beards. That time is past. Beards have to be—”

But Nisos stopped suddenly. He was shocked at the expression he saw on Tis’s face. He felt in the marrow of his bones a lively shudder of fear. “Then it is really and truly possible,” he told himself, “for old Tis to give me such a clap across the ear-hole that my head will roll from my neck and go bouncing into—”

But his thoughts were interrupted, and Tis’s attention was turned by a sudden loud uproar which descended the passage from the hall above; and they both became aware of shrill cries and resounding tramplings and even of the sound of bronze striking against bronze and iron striking against iron.

The foreign sailors leapt to their feet and drew from their belts their double-edged knives; while Nisos couldn’t help noticing, even in the distraction of that uproar, how carefully these men folded up the blankets on which they’d been lying and tucked them under their arms.

Both Tis and he were out of the kitchen and up the passage and forcing their way into the hall before either of them had time even to imagine what had happened. But it was soon plain enough to them both. There, confronting the king who was leaning forward across the back of the throne on which he had been seated, was Nisos’ brother Agelaos, the eldest son of Krateros and Pandea, and close to him was none other than Leipephile the young man’s betrothed, while, facing the pair of them, on one side of Odysseus was Nausikaa and on the other were Okyrhöe and Pontopereia.

The uproar that had reached the kitchen came from two opposing groups of angry armed men, one of whom was shouting abuse of the House of Odysseus and the other abuse of the House of Naubolides. Matters might have got worse at any minute and serious blood-shed might doubtless have ensued, if an event had not occurred so unexpected by both parties that they turned, as if by mutual consent, from their furious confrontation of each other; and both sides gazed with awe-struck amazement at what they saw.

And what they saw was indeed a sufficient wonder to quell the wildest altercation. Walking quite gently, slowly, carefully and quietly, his wounded wing evidently grown again, and its roots completely healed, while the long feathery tips of both wings were folded against the animal’s sides like those of a colossal moth, there came up through the crowd, from the corridor of the pillars, the winged horse Pegasos. On his back, seated there with the utmost ease, and evidently in a mood of radiant high spirits, was the young girl Eione, Tis’s little sister, who the moment she caught sight of her brother by the side of Nisos kissed one of her hands to them both while with the other she waved in the air an extraordinary-looking object which she was clasping in triumph.

Pegasos bore her straight up to the old king, the two contending groups of people automatically separating to let them pass. When they reached the throne, across the back of which Odysseus, with great practical shrewdness, was already leaning forward above its empty seat, his body wedged between the chair’s back, across which he leaned, and the massive table which protected his rear, Pegasos stopped, and lowering his head, consented to enjoy the natural equine satisfaction of munching a couple of large lettuce-leaves which the old King lost no time in snatching from the table behind him and placing on the seat of the throne for the god-like creature’s special delectation.