Till We Have Faces_ A Myth Retold - C. S. Lewis [5]
Again there was dead silence in the hall. Suddenly the King flung up his hands, stamped, and cried, "Faces, faces, faces! What are you all gaping at? It'd make a man mad. Be off! Away! Out of my sight, the whole pack of you!"
We were out of the hall as quick as the doorways would let us.
The Fox and I went out of the little door by the herb-garden on the east. It was nearly daylight now and there was a small rain beginning.
"Grandfather," said I, sobbing, "you must fly at once. This moment, before they come to take you to the mines."
He shook his head. "I'm too old to run far," he said. "And you know what the King does to runaway slaves."
"But the mines, the mines! Look, I'll come with you. If we're caught I'll say I made you come. We shall be almost out of Glome once we're over that." I pointed to the ridge of the Grey Mountain, now dark with a white daybreak behind it, seen through the slanting rain.
"That is foolishness, daughter," said he, petting me like a small child. "They would think I was stealing you to sell. No; I must fly further. And help me you shall. Down by the river; you know the little plant with the purple spots on its stalk. It's the roots of it I need."
"The poison?"
"Why, yes. (Child, child, don't cry so.) Have I not told you often that to depart from life of a man's own will when there's good reason is one of the things that are according to nature? We are to look on life as — "
"They say that those who go that way lie wallowing in filth — down there in the land of the dead."
"Hush, hush. Are you also still a barbarian? At death we are resolved into our elements. Shall I accept birth and cavil at — "
"Oh, I know, I know. But, Grandfather, do you really in your heart believe nothing of what is said about the gods and Those Below? But you do, you do. You are trembling."
"That's my disgrace. The body is shaking. I needn't let it shake the god within me. Have I not already carried this body too long if it makes such a fool of me at the end? But we are wasting time."
"Listen!" said I. "What's that?" For I was in a state to be scared by every sound.
"Horses," said the Fox, peering through the quick-hedge with his eyes screwed up to see against the rain. "They are coming to the great door. Messengers from Phars, by the look of them. And that will not sweeten the King's mood either. Will you — ah, Zeus, it is already too late." For there was a call from within-doors, "The Fox, the Fox, the Fox to the King."
"As well go as be dragged," said the Fox. "Farewell, daughter," and he kissed me, Greek fashion, on the eyes and the head. But I went in with him. I had an idea I would face the King; though whether I meant to beseech him or curse him or kill him I hardly knew. But as we came to the Pillar Room we saw many strangers within, and the King shouted through the open door, "Here, Fox, I've work for you." Then he saw me and said, "And you, curd-face, be off to the women's quarters and don't come here to sour the morning drink for the men."
I do not know that I have ever (to speak of things merely mortal) been in such dread as I was for the rest of that day — dread that feels as if there were an empty place between your belly and your chest. I didn't know whether I dared be comforted by the King's last words or not, for they sounded as if his anger had passed, but it might blaze out again. Moreover, I had known him do a cruel thing not in anger but in a kind of murderous joke, or because he remembered he had sworn to do it when he was angry. He had sent old house-slaves to the mines before. And I could not be alone with my terror, for now comes Batta to shear my head and Redival's again as they had been shorn when my mother died, and to make a great tale (clicking her tongue) of how the Queen was dead in childbed, which I had known ever since I heard the mourning, and how she had borne a daughter alive. I sat for the shearing and thought that, if the Fox must die in the mines,