The Bull From the Sea: A Novel

V

THE PEBBLE MOVES UPON the mountain, shifted by a goat’s foot or the scour of rain. For a while it tumbles and rolls, and a child’s hand could stop it. But soon it takes great bounds, swift as a slingshot; at last it leaps out from the crag like Apollo’s arrow, and can pierce through a war-helm into the skull of a man.

So swiftly came the end. Or it seems so now. Yet time passed at Troizen, days passed, there was time even for the year to move. Mists hung in the mountain oak woods, and blew away; the drifted oak leaves lay ankle-deep and crisp, warning the deer of the hunter; rain fell upon the drifts and they turned to leaf-pads, which clung to the earth, dark as old hides, smelling of smoke.

As some ancient ship settles evenly in a dead calm, so it was with Pittheus. His eyes had turned milk-white now, and saw only moving shadows; and his mind was much the same. He liked to have my mother by him; but half the time he took her for some long-dead handmaid he had carried off in war when he was young. He would tell her to sing, and to please him she asked all the old folk what songs this girl had known; but no one remembered even her name. It was sixty years since a king had died in Troizen; when we came to bury him, there would be no one living to tell us what the custom had been before. It must be this great life ending, I thought, which made the very light seem strange, as it is before the thunder, when far isles look near and clear.

My mother was all day in his upper room, coming out only for the household business, or the rites, or else to rest. So she did not watch us; and if she saw death-omens in the spinning of spiders or the cry of birds, that was nothing strange.

Akamas had come back from Epidauros, but still slept in the grove one night in three, the priests saying they could not get omens yet to pronounce him cured. The place seemed to have sobered him; from his quiet he might have been a priest himself. All his time indoors he spent with one of the Palace craftsmen, making a lyre; he had been told to do this, as an offering to Apollo. But whenever he could get his brother to take him along, he followed him like a shadow. I could see Phaedra did not like to see them slipping off. But what could I tell the boy? “Hippolytos is four years your elder: years of the Amazon, when your mother, daughter of Minos and a thousand years of kings, waited in Crete till I had time to spare”? At his age, he might have seen it for himself.

Once I said to him, “You ought to spend more time with your mother; she came all this way in the bad season for your sake.” He seemed to shrink into himself; then said quite steadily, “She doesn’t mind, sir; she knows I am better now.” For a moment it might have been a grown man speaking, used to keeping his own counsel. But it was true enough she never asked for him, once he was out of sight.

From decency more than choice, I had brought no handmaid with me. It was high time in any case that our marriage was put in order. But at night there was always something: faintings, headaches, unlucky signs, or the moon. The time was long past when I would have turned her women from the room and had it out with her. But she had never been unwilling, until this year. I was not yet fifty, and no woman could ever say I had disappointed her; yet now I began to think, “Am I getting old?” The mists of autumn damped my spirits; I grew restless, mewed indoors, kept even from hunting by the rain. I made up my mind to go back to Athens, leaving Phaedra behind; but on that same evening, there was a new pretty girl among the homely bath-women, the battle-prize of some house-baron lately dead. It was clear her tears would never disturb his shade. King Pittheus, she said, bringing out her lesson pat, had sent her to wait on me. I had seen him that day; he hardly knew night from morning. This shy gift came from my son.

He is a good lad, I thought, and means well to me. Yet it seemed odd, unlike him. Though I kept the girl, who pleased me, yet it nagged my pride, to think it was common talk that I slept alone. I said nothing, thinking like him that it would not be seemly. For that matter, we seldom talked much now. The moodiness I had seen at meeting him had not lifted, but grown. It was more than his old daydreams; something was wrong; the lad was brooding; I should have said he was sick, if I had not seen him climbing the crags like a mountain lion. The closed drawn look he had had in Athens at the shrine was seldom off him now. He was losing flesh; in the morning his eyes were heavy; he would be gone by the day together, no one knew where. Hearing him asked for, I found he was neglecting even the kingdom’s business; fixing times for it, forgetting and going away. Often from the walls I would see along the Epidauros road his chariot going as if it raced for a prize; he would come back mud-splashed from head to heel, plunged in deep thought, barely coming out of it to smile and greet me. Or he would be gone on foot; I would glimpse his bright hair on the path that led to Zeus’s oak wood, and beyond. My mind’s eye followed him, past the rock with the eye of stone. What did he seek, what omen? Would he have more welcome there than I?

One day his slow young page came up to me, asking awkwardly if I had seen him; he had a note for him from the Queen. When I offered to see it he gave it me quite easily. Perhaps he was simple; perhaps less simple than he seemed.

The tablet said, “Theseus misses you; do you forget he is your guest? Of myself, no matter. You offend and slight him. What is it that you fear?”

I told the page I would see to it, and went straight to her room. When I had her alone, I said to her, “What is this? What have you been up to with Hippolytos? Is this your promise?”

I finished more quietly than I began, for I could see she was not well. She had sunk back, with her hand clasped to her throat. She had been full of vapors lately; yet she had refused to go to Epidauros, after all.

“Come, calm yourself,” I said. “I am to blame; I should have known you two would never agree. Why, we both know; but what use to speak of it? What’s done is done; but it was long ago, and she is dead. You came here to see Akamas; you know now he is well. Any day the old man may die; I will not have strife brought into the house, when my son is taking up his heritage. Two days from now I am going back to Athens. You will come with me.”

She stared a moment; then she started to laugh. It was low at first; then it rose wild and screeching, peal on peal. I called her women, and left her. I knew, when I married her, that she came of old rotten stock, given to all extremes. But I had to think for the kingdom.

Hippolytos was out, as usual. It was not till dusk he came plodding home, limb-weary as a field hand, his clothes stained from the forests, green and brown. He greeted me with courtesy, which did not make up for his neglect; yet, remembering he had borne patiently, for my sake, his stepmother’s scoldings, I told him without anger that we were going home.

He began to say something; stammered and broke off; then knelt and put my hand to his forehead. He was down there so long that I told him to get up. Slowly he rose. His eyes were streaming. He stood still, taking deep breaths, while great silent tears ran down his cheeks. At last he muttered, “I am sorry, Father. I don’t know what it is… I am sorry you are going.” His voice choked and he said, “Forgive me,” and hurried out. Turning, I saw young Akamas, who had hung about for him (often lately he had shaken off the boy to go out alone), stare after him in horror, and run out another way. He thought too much of him not to be ashamed at seeing him unmanned.

That day passed, and the night, and the next morning. I don’t know how I spent the time; the memory has been swept away. But a little before noon, I went out to the stables, to see what shape the horses were in for the journey. The rain held off; but gray clouds covered the sky and the breeze was moist, blowing from the sea.

Suddenly I heard a woman’s high yelling scream. For a moment, I only felt it go through my head; I had not noticed till then an ache beginning. Then the sound broke into shrill jerking spurts, as if the woman herself were shaking, and I thought, “Her husband is knocking her about.” Then came a great shriek, “A rape! A rape!” And I knew the voice. The eyes of my charioteer met mine. Like one man we started forward.

He unhitched two horses and we leaped up. The cries came from the olive grove beyond the barns. It was sacred to Mother Dia, with a little old altar where my mother used to sacrifice in spring, to bless the trees. We rode as near as we dared to the sacred precinct, dismounted, and ran.

Between the trees, not far from the altar-stone, sat Phaedra, on the ground, wailing and sobbing, flinging her body to and fro, beating her clenched fists first on the earth and then upon her breast. Her hair hung wild, her bodice and skirt gaped open at every clasp; her shoulders and arms and throat were covered in great red finger-weals, whose shape could be clearly seen.

I ran up to her. She clutched and clawed at my arms, gabbling and gasping; I could not make out the words. When I tried to raise her, her clothes began falling off; she pulled away her hands to grab her belt about her, her breath heaving and shivering; then scrambled up, her skirt bunched in one hand, and pointed with the other through the grove. Her voice broke in a rough caw like a raven’s. “There! There!”

I heard men’s voices, running footsteps, rattling arms. The outcry had brought the Guard. They were still coming up; but the foremost had heard her words and were off through the trees already, like hounds with the quarry in full sight. They called to one another; then their voices changed. And looking along the grove, I saw the man.

He was running out to the hill-slopes, clambering over the boulders, wild as a stag. The light caught his hair as the sea-wind lifted it. In all Troizen, there was not such another head.

I stood still. A great sickness swept down from my head into my body. There seemed room in me for nothing else.

All round me went the din of the hue and cry. My temples throbbed with it. Only the foremost understood, yet, whom they were after. But when the word spread back, they would all run on. There are laws bred into the very bones of men, older on earth than princes.

I sent someone to fetch the Queen’s women. To the rest I said, “Stand back. Leave us alone.”

She had fixed her skirt-clasp somehow. Now she stood wringing her hands, round and round each other, as if she were washing and could not get them clean. “Quickly!” I said. “No one can hear. In the name of Zeus, what happened? Speak.”

She stood panting; with each breath came a rattle from her chattering teeth, and nothing more. Still I kept hold upon myself, from the habit of doing justice. “Speak up, hurry, before they bring him here.” But she only rocked about, washing her hands. A sudden hot light flashed before my eyes; I came and stood over her and shouted, “Speak, woman! Did he get it done, or not?”

“Yes!” she cried, and left her mouth open, gaping. I thought she would scream again; but now at last came the words.

“In Athens it began, he started then to come after me, but he said it was to cure my head. In Athens I didn’t know. It was here he told me, here in Troizen; I have been almost dead with fear. I dared not tell you; how could I tell you of your son, what he was, what he meant? He wanted me, oh yes! But it was more, it was more. This is the truth, Theseus. He has taken a vow to the Goddess, to bring back Her rule again.”

We were alone in the grove, beside the ancient altar. The men I had sent away had followed after the chase. Great hands seemed to press my head, crushing it down into the earth.

“He said he had had omens, that he must marry Minos’ daughter and make her Goddess on Earth. Then the power would return and we should rule the world. I swear it, Theseus, I swear by this holy stone.” A great shiver shook her body. “‘Let me reign with you,” he said, ‘and love you; and when She calls me, it will be nothing for me to die. For we shall be as gods, remembered forever.’ That was what he said.”

The sounds of pursuit had sunk. The crowd was coming back towards the grove. He must have stopped to wait for them. “Not yet!” I thought. “Can’t they give me time?” My brow felt bursting. I longed to be alone as a wounded man wants water. But her voice rushed on.

“I said to him, ‘Oh, how can you say so when your father lives?’ and he answered, ‘He is under Her curse and the land is sick with it. She calls men and sets them by, and he has had his time.’”

Through the beating in my head I heard men’s low muttering voices, broken with their heavy breathing from the run. He was walking among them, free, looking straight before him, like a man led to his death.

The women had come up from the Palace. They hovered among the trees, like scared birds, flustered and twittering, each urging another forward, exclaiming in whispers at her bruises and torn clothes. Suddenly she grabbed my arm again. “Don’t kill him, Theseus, don’t kill him! He could not help it, he was mad as the maenads are.”

I thought of Naxos; of the bloody hands, torn flesh; the sleeping girl draggled with blood and wine. Blood seemed everywhere; it was the color of the buzzing sky. “It is like the earthquake warning,” I thought, and then the thought passed by. Her hands on my arm were like her sister’s hands. I pulled them off, and signed for the women. The squat old altar looked at me, each crack in the stone a grinning mouth and every hole an eye.

They were here. He stood before me. His hair was all dishevelled; there was a bleeding place, where it had been torn. His tunic was split along the shoulder. His eyes met mine. So a stag will stand, when you have run it down and it can go no longer, looking at you as if it saw some vision, waiting for the spear.

The women crept up to Phaedra; one wrapped her in a cloak, another held a flask to her lips; they waited my leave to take her away. Her bruises were darkening; she might have been a beaten slave. The sickness, the noises in my head, were making me almost mad; I found my hand on my dagger. There was a scream of birds, above the birdlike cries of the women, a lowing of cattle from the byres, a dog’s long-drawn howl. They were the sounds of earth; all this was true. I pointed to my wife, huddled shivering into the cloak, and said to my son, “Did you do this?”

He did not speak. But he turned his eyes to her. It was a long, dark look. She covered her face and broke into wailing, muffled by the cloth. I signed to the women; they led her off murmuring, through the trees.

His eyes met mine; and at that his face closed up, his mouth set like a seal. All this while, as the horror in me mounted and turned to rage, some hope had held out, like the watchman of a doomed city alone upon the wall. No signal came; there would be no message. Now all my life’s enemies met in him.

I spoke. But the words have gone from me. Not long after, I was taken sick; and when I came to myself, the words had gone. Yet sometimes I wake, with the sound just fading. Somewhere within me are the words; and I have feared to sleep, lest my sleep release them.

So clear seemed his guilt, like far hills before the storm: how he had watched at the shrine, and told me of an omen; had taken Akamas to Troizen, to make her follow; given me a woman, to keep me from her; and fled my presence day after day, lest I should read his thoughts. He had wept, to hear that she was going. Today had been his last chance. It seemed as clear as if a god had shouted it in my ear. Indeed my ears were ringing.

As I spoke these words I have forgotten, the men about him all drew aside. He was not king of Troizen yet, and now would never be. He had broken the sacred hearth-laws ; ravished his father’s wife; and I was not his father only, nor his guest, but High King of Attica, Megara, and Eleusis, Guardian of Thebes and Lord of Crete. How could they dare to choose my enemy?

He stood, and heard me. Not once did he part his lips to answer. But near the end, I saw his hands clench at his sides, his nostrils widen, his eyes stare as one sees them in battle above a shield. He took one step forward, and set his teeth, and stepped back again; and I read in his face, as clear as words on marble, “Some god hold me back, before I take this little man and break him between my hands.” Then, if I could, I would have struck him dead.

The anger that rose in me seemed the wrath of the earth itself. It flowed up through my feet, as the earth-fire rises in some burning mountain before it destroys the land. And then, as if my mind had been lit with flame, I knew that it was true. It was not my anger only. The dog had howled and the birds had cried, and my head had tightened; yet I had not felt Poseidon’s warning, because my anger had risen in time with his. Now I felt it, and felt it soon to fall; the god my father standing by me, to avenge my bitter wrong.

It was like a thunderbolt in my hand. They were all looking at me in fear, as if at something more than mortal; yes, he also. And in the strength of the god I struck my foot upon the earth, crying, “Go out of my lands and from my sight forever. Go with my curse, and the curse of Earth-Shaking Poseidon; and beware of his wrath, for it will be soon.”

One moment he was there, white-faced, standing like stone; the next there was an empty place, and the people staring after him. They stood and gazed; but no one followed, as they would have followed some other man, to stone him out of the land. They had loved him; I suppose it seemed to them that his madness and his doom were sent from heaven, and they had best leave him to the gods. He was gone; and as rage like a fever started to cool in me, I felt the earthquake-sickness, just as it had always been.

I closed my aching eyes. A picture flashed behind them, as if it had been waiting there: the groves of Epidauros, drenched with peace and rain. Then I, being priest as well as king, remembered how all my life, since I was a child at Poseidon’s sanctuary, I had held his warning as a trust to save the people, and never used it for a curse.

I woke to myself, and looked about me, and said to the folk of Troizen, “I have had the sign of Poseidon. He will shake the earth, and soon. Warn them in all the houses, to come out of doors. Send word to the Palace.”

They groaned with awe, and started to run off; soon I heard heralds’ horns. Then no one was left about me but men of my own from Athens, standing uncertainly a little way off, fearing to come or go. I was alone, hearing the noise of the alarm spreading all the way down to Troizen from the Citadel; and with it another sound, the triple hoofbeat of a chariot-team on the road below. It made me shudder, with the wrath of the god so near. That was how I heard it first, a wicked beating upon the earth, going through my head. Then I remembered. I had given out my warning to every soul in Troizen. Only for him I had wrapped it up in darkness, that hearing he might not understand.

I stood on the prickling earth, my heart still pounding from my own anger and the god’s. The Palace was like a skep of bees when a horse has kicked it; women running out with babies, pots and bundles, and stewards with precious things. There was a stir in the great doors; they were bringing out old Pittheus in a curtained litter. I looked beyond. Far down the road, the bright head vanished in the foot-slopes towards the Psiphian shore. The fastest team in Troizen, following, would not overtake him now.

The fear of the earthquake was working in me, cold and sinking, as I had known it since a child, overshadowing all the rest; man’s greatest wrath is like the stamp of a child’s foot, beside the gods’. Old habit gave me the feel of it; not so bad as some that I had known; at least, not here; for it seemed this was the fringe of it, the center further off. Turning about, as a dog does for the scent, I felt my neck-hairs rise when I faced the sea.

The water of the straits was as still as molten lead. On the windless air, I heard horses screaming and whinnying, as the grooms led them from the stables into the field. Then through their noise I heard a voice quite near me, laboring and hoarse, say, “King Theseus! Sir!”

A big warrior, the Palace wrestler who taught the youths, was plowing up through the grove towards me, with a burden in his arms. When I turned, he laid it down upon the ground. It was Akamas. He thrust off the man, who was trying to prop his head, and leaned back on his elbows, fighting for breath, his body arched like a bow, jerking and gasping. The man said to me, “He would come, sir. I found him down there; he had been trying to run, and fallen. Sir, he keeps saying he must see you before he dies.”

The boy rose on one hand, and stretched the other out to me, beckoning me near. His face was white about the mouth, which was almost blue. On a great hiss of breath he said, “Father!” and clutched his chest with both hands, as if he would tear it open to let in air. His eyes were fixed on mine; charged not with terror, but with speech.

I went and bent over him, the son that I had left. “Can it be,” I thought, “that the god’s sign has come down to him, and he lacks the strength to bear it? Yet it proves him my true son, this one at least.” I said to him, “Hold on, lad, it will be over before long, and the fear will pass.”

He shook his head, and made a harsh sound in his throat, cut off by choking. His face filled with blood, like a hanged man’s; then he snatched at a breath, and cried out his brother’s name.

“No more!” I said. “You are sick, and you know nothing. Rest, and be silent.” His chest worked up and down, laboring with words. “Be still. Later you will understand.” Tears of pain and struggle had filled his eyes; half out of my mind as I was, I pitied him. “Hush!” I said. “He has gone away.”

Such a spasm seized him, that it took my mind from the earthquake; it seemed he would never breathe again. He was almost black, when he hurled from his knees up to his feet, and flung his arms at the sky. His breath crowed in his throat and he cried aloud, “Paian Apollo!” He stood there, swaying; then turned to the man who had carried him, and said hoarsely but quite steadily, Thank you, Sirios. You can go.”

The man looked at me, and at my nod went off. I helped the boy down again and knelt beside him. Before ever he spoke, some shadow brushed me with cold. But I said to myself it was the coming earthquake.

“Now quiet,” I said. “Or it will start again.”

“I can die. I was afraid before.” He nursed this rough flat voice, easing it along like a dead-tired horse. He was very weak. “I can die if I tell you first. Hippolytos … what you cursed him for … it isn’t true.”

“Hush, that is finished. It is for the gods to judge.”

“Let them hear me! Let them choke me if I lie!” His eyes opened and he caught his breath; then he drew it clear. But he whispered after, to save his strength. So robbers must look, white-faced and whispering, who creep into a royal tomb. “He said no. She asked him, she …” His working fingers dug into the ground. “… in Athens,” he said. “I heard.”

I stared before me, knowing the wound was mortal; soon I would begin bleeding, soon would come the pain. The boy reached for my hand, and I took it, though it was little thought I had for him. Only a god can guess what he must have suffered; and he a Cretan, for whom the mother is god on earth.

His hushed, thief’s voice ran on. “I nearly died then. I hated him too, because of what he called her. But he said to me after, ‘I was wrong to be angry. She trusted me.’ He came to me the next day, when I was sick, to say that he was sorry. ‘Don’t be afraid, Akamas,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell Father, or anyone else on earth. I’d swear it to you, but an oath to a god is greater. I gave her the pledge of Asklepios, which binds a man till death.’”

I lacked even the strength to say to him, “It is enough.”

“You see,” he said, “it was the secret of her sickness. So he had to keep it.”

The sight of the woman rose before me. Bruised like a slave; a slave’s terror too, and a slave’s lies. If her tale had been true, she would have scratched his face, or bitten him. His torn tunic and dragged-out hair—he had been pulled at, not thrust away. Those weals upon her shoulders and her throat were the marks not of his lust, but of his anger, the rage of the lion who sees the bars of the trap on every side. When she screamed, he had shaken and shaken her in blind fury, forgetting his own strength. I out of all men, how could I not have known?

“He said to me”—the boy’s voice was getting stronger—“‘We will go together, and be the guests of Apollo. All evil is a sickness, and his music heals it. At Epidauros, everything will be well.’”

I stood up. My brows were dizzy, my feet were tingling. The flat oily sea made me sicker than any storm. I looked along the road to Epidauros, the road that ran by the shore.

“Father, it is true, I swear, I swear! If I lie may Apollo shoot me dead! It is true! Quick, Father, and stop the earthquake!”

Horror crept over me. I cried aloud to him, “I am not a god!” But his dark eyes, fixed on mine, seemed more than his own. He had challenged death, offering his fear in sacrifice; and the holiness had not brushed off him yet. The god in him had cried to the god in me; but there was no god to answer, only the feel of a sickness in the ground.

I said, “Stay here, where you are. I will go and find him.”

I ran off down the olive-slope, calling my men, who came pounding after, grim-faced with fright. Over my shoulder, I saw the old wrestler plodding back to the boy. He was sitting quietly. What inward fetter broke in him that day I do not know; but from that time on the fits grew short and mild, and now he has reached manhood, they are gone.

Down on the horse-field they had picketed the chariot-teams, lest they should bolt when the earth shook. Most of them were squealing and plunging on their hobbles; I picked out a quiet pair, and shouted for a racing-chariot. It was the first time I had raised my voice with an earthquake coming, since I was a child.

As I urged them down to the shore, I felt neither fear nor awe, only a strangeness, like high fever. The horses felt it in me; they dashed along hardly needing the whip, as if they wanted to get away from the man behind them. So too did I.

There is time, I thought, there is still time. He had been gone, how long? As long as it takes to string a lyre and tune it; to row a ship out of harbor; to drive a few turns round the track? And then I thought, “How soon?”

As I labored over the soggy mud flats, I thought of the slave-girl he had sent me, lest quarrelling with Phaedra I might learn the truth. He had feared for me, and for his brother; the truth of his own danger he had only seen too late. He had not the mind that foreknows such things.

The road climbed again; far off between two cypress clumps I glimpsed his chariot. As I looked, it slowed to a walk. He has seen me, I thought; he is waiting; all is saved. I waved, to catch his eye. But he had only paused to breathe his team; he was off again. He had all three of his horses; after all, he was going away for good. As they started up, I saw they were getting restive. Next moment he was out of sight.

The road was good; it had not rained for three days. I whipped up my team; but there was a change. Though they had not felt it in the horse-field, they felt it now. They checked and plunged; one reared up screaming; I had all I could do to hold them. As I stood leaning back against the reins, over the tossing heads I saw the bay below. And it had moved away. Even as I watched, the waters crept out further, showing the sea-floor no living man had seen, all weed and rotting boat-hulls. And still they sank, as if some great mouth below were swallowing them in.

I knew what the horses knew. The chariot turned, a beast with three heads filled with one fear. We charged off the road and up into the farmland, ploughing across the new-sown fields, breaking the water-channels, crashing through young vines. The farmer’s wife and all his children, hearing the din, ran shouting out of doors. The god was their friend. He sent them me for a blessing. Who can trace the pathways of the Immortals?

The horses bolted on, past the vines into unfilled scrub; the wheels leaped and lurched over clods and stones. I had hitched the reins about me, but only with one turn, for fear of something like this. As the brush slowed them, I loosed myself and jumped clear. I fell and rolled, and got up shaken and bruised, shuddering from the touch of earth. All the cattle in the byres were lowing and bawling. A he-goat with wicked eyes opened his mouth in a wild cry. And with that came the earthquake.

The ground jolted and jarred; there was a rumble of stones as the farm fell down in rubble. I heard the wife wail, the man shout out to her, hoarse with terror, from the fields. The children began to scream and the dogs to howl. The earthquake-sickness cleared from my head and belly. “It is over,” I thought. Then why do I feel this fear?”

A hare raced past me, almost brushing my leg, taking great bounds uphill. And then I saw the water coming.

The bay was filling again; not slyly, as it had emptied, but in a great rushing wave, climbing the shores. It washed right over the Psiphia mole, lifting the fishing-boats upon it like toys on a child’s string. Right over the chariot-road below me ran the salt sea, and climbed the plowland; spent itself, and paused, and went sucking back from the scoured land. There was a hush like death; and in this quiet, before all the outcries began again, I heard from northward along the road the squeal of furious horses, mixed with the great bellowing of a bull.

I did not ask, “What is it?” It was the voice of my fear.

Rising above the din, like the war-cry of a king above the battle, I heard a shout I would have known among the shouts of a thousand men. It ceased, broken halfway. The wild neighing rose, and stopped, and rose again. My own pair, caught in the traces round the foundered chariot, whinnied in dread.

I ran to them, dragging at the milling tangle, shouting for someone to give a hand. The farm people went on scrabbling in their ruins; after the god’s passing, they had no ear for kings. I cut loose with my dagger the horse that was not lame, and knotted the reins together. He could carry my weight that far.

There was nothing left you could call a road. It was all slime and flotsam, channels and slides of stones. The horse had been broke to draw; he slithered and pecked and stumbled, and I dared not press him. I myself could have run faster, a few years gone.

The mud had dying fish in it, flapping and squirming. There was a hissing by the road; the horse shied, and nearly threw me; a great dolphin, whistling through his blowhole, was trying to thrash towards the sea. The road climbed, for the slope grows steep there; it would soon be above the flood-line; yet still I heard horses crying, from where they had cried before, pausing sometimes as a trapped beast will pause from weariness, before it begins again. The bull bellowed once more, a sound of rage, or anguish. Struggling with my mount, which was getting scared again, I listened for another voice. But no voice called.

At the top of the rise, the road bent round. Then I saw, and got off the horse and ran.

Less than a bowshot off, on the shore below the road, a bloody mass of snared beasts struggled and heaved: three mangled horses, lashing and lunging. Above, blocking the road they had crashed down from, stood a bull, head down. He bellowed with fear and anger, and lurched, trying to paw the ground; lamed in a foreleg by the flood-wave that had swept him from his broken pen. Here he had struggled back to land, coated with weed and slime; a black bull of Poseidon, a bull from the sea.

There were men down there. As I ran, they were among the horses, killing them with cleavers. One after another gave a last choked scream. Scarlet blood drenched everything; the struggling ceased. The men clustered, bending, over something beyond.

They had cut him loose from the reins, when I got down there, and were pulling out the splinters of the chariot that had gone through his flesh like spears. He lay in ruin, like the horses; a splendid creature broken everywhere, torn and muddied, flayed on the rocks and sand. But the beasts were quiet; dead meat, out of their pain; while he groaned, and moved. In his blood-wet face his eyes were open, and looked in mine.

The men called out to me, telling me who he was. They took me for some passing wayfarer, seeing me on foot, miry and bruised; and shouted the news at me all together, as shocked men do. They had been working in the fields above; their farm had stood through the shock, and they had watched it all. They told how they had seen him on the road, driving from Troizen; how his horses had bolted at the earthquake, yet somehow he had got them in hand. But the water had come up, with the bull upon it, floundering out clear in the way. And then … they pointed to the hacked-off reins, still lashed round his middle in the double-hitch of the charioteer.

He put one hand to the ground, and tried to lift himself, and sank back with a cry; his back was broken. Someone said, “He is gone”; but his eyes opened again. Two of the men were arguing what farm the bull had come from, and who had the right to keep it now; another said it should be offered to Poseidon, or he would be angry and strike again. But the man who had cut the reins away said to me, “Look, friend; bad news is always best brought by a stranger. Will you go up to Troizen, and tell the King?”

I said, “I am Theseus. I am his father.”

They stared gaping, and knuckling their brows; they could not keep their eyes from running over me, a dirty unkempt man, haggard and stammering, whose face they had scarcely glanced at, one of themselves. I sent them to fetch a hurdle; one offered me his garment to stop the blood with; then we two were alone.

He was bleeding from a dozen wounds, and from within. I knew he was past all help; yet I would not know it, and bent above him doing useless things. As I worked I spoke, telling him I knew everything, begging him for a sign. His eyes were empty. But after a while they changed; and his lips moved. He spoke to me. He did not know me; but dying men are glad of company. He said, “Not even the gods are just!”

He was quiet a long time then. I laid my hand on his head, and kissed him, and tried again to be understood. I could not tell if he heard. For a moment his eyes half wakened; they stared straight upward, in a bitter loneliness; then they grew blank again. His blood soaked through the rags and his face grew whiter. At last came the men with the hurdle. As we shifted him onto it he cried aloud; but there was no telling if his mind was clear. I helped them carry him, till two more men came; they had been killing the bull, since they could not move it. We got him up to the road, and the men said, “Shall we take him to the house, sir? Or on to Troizen?”

I heard a breath from him. His hand moved. I touched it and said, “No. To Epidauros.” Then his fingers closed on mine.

The clouds had parted. Over the sea they still looked dark; but there was a patch of blue above the mountains. All the birds were singing, loudly, as they do after an earthquake, claiming their boundaries, or glad to be alive. Someone had gone ahead to get more bearers; he was too heavy for one set to carry far. He was still, and I hoped that he felt nothing; but when the litter jolted once, I saw his teeth clench with pain.

The men were tired, and the others had not come yet. There was a clump of plane trees by the road, and a trickle of water, a little winter stream. The ground was flat there; and I said to the bearers, “Rest awhile.”

One of them had his bronze cup tied in his belt; he filled it from the stream, and I moistened the boy’s mouth, for his lips were dry. His eyes had been shut; but now he opened them and looked upward, where the bare branches stood against the blue, with a few golden leaves. His hand touched my wrist and he whispered, “Listen!”

There was a lark above. A little tinkle came from the stream. And up the hill was a herdboy piping, who, when the earthquake struck, had had no more to lose than the birds.

“Listen,” he murmured, smiling. “Epidauros!”

I looked at him. It was clear by now he would never get there alive; so I answered, “Yes.”

He shut his eyes again. His breathing was so quiet that I could not hear it, and thought it was the end. The men withdrew a little way; and I knelt beside him, covering my face. Then he said, “Father.”

“Yes?” I leaned down; I could tell, from the way he forced it out, he knew that he was going. “Forgive me your blood,” I said. “Though the gods will not, nor I myself, yet do you forgive it.”

“Father,” he murmured, “I am sorry I was angry. All this had to be. Because …” He looked at me, to say he had not strength to finish, begging my pardon. I saw that his eyes were going blind. His head rolled back, facing the blue sky; like the sky it grew calm and clear. “I have had a true dream,” he said. “I shall die a well man now.” His fingers pressed my hand; so cold, it was as if he spoke to me from beyond the River. “Father … offer Asklepios a cock for me … do not forget.”

I said, “I will remember. Is there anything else?”

He made no answer. Soon his lips parted; his soul went forth in a sigh, and I closed his eyes.

Presently came some of the doctor-priests from Epidauros, who had heard the news. They brought on his body to the sanctuary, though, as everyone knows, it is unlawful for a corpse to lie there. They said they could not be sure that he was dead; talking across me with their eyes, as doctors do. He was very dear to them. Even when his corpse was growing cold, they warmed him and would not own it; and I have been told that, all their arts having failed, they turned to some old magic of the Shore Folk, which their law forbade them, and which had not been practiced for a hundred years. The Priest-King died soon after, suddenly, struck down as he worked, the swift death of Apollo; and it was said that the god was angry with him, for trying to raise the dead.

I cannot tell; for I went away leaving the body with them. I knew that he was dead, and no god would raise him. For me there was work in Troizen waiting.

The wailing of women met me; by this time, the news had been pieced together, and all was known. My mother was leading them, weeping out his praises as the words came to her, which later she would shape into the funeral chant. She broke off her crying to come and meet me. The rest all covered their eyes with their hair.

She had nothing to say, having foreseen the curse so long before; so she embraced me with the common words of any mother. I kissed her—for he had been like her youngest son—and said we would talk later. Then I asked for my wife.

“The women were angry,” my mother answered. “I warned her of it; not for her sake, but for fear of something unseemly. I suppose she is in her room.”

I went up through the empty Palace. Those who saw me far off turned quickly out of my way; but there were few to see. An old servant, whom I ran into at a corner, said that King Pittheus was sleeping; no one had dared yet bring him the news. I paused for a moment; but I had already enough to do. Better he had died yesterday. But they say that the end of man’s life is sorrow.

As I climbed the stairs, I thought of the tale I had heard from Phaedra, how Hippolytos had sworn to bring back the old religion, what he had said. A long tale for a woman to remember who has just been ravished in the fields. And yet, a long one to make up in a moment, even under the spur of fear. I saw it now. Well she might remember, every word! Many a night she must have lain with those words in mind, trying them this way and that, getting them perfect, as the harpers do: getting them ready. They had been her words to him.

I came to her room, and knocked at the outer door. None answered. I went into mine, and tried the door between. That was locked too. I called to her to open; silence still. I listened, and felt that the silence breathed. The outer door was strong, but this one was light. It did not take long to force it.

The room was empty. Then I looked again, and saw a shudder in a press of clothes. I dragged at them, and pulled her out. She cringed and crawled about me, clasping my knees, snivelling and praying. Like a slave, I thought; like a lying slave; the daughter of a thousand years of kings. Her throat was still marked from his fingers. I took her by it, to push her off me. Till I saw her eyes, and their expectation, I don’t think I knew what I meant to do. But she showed me her own deserving.

She died hard. When I thought it was long over, and let go, she started to move again. At last I let her fall; she lay still then, one bundle more in the tumble of clothes from the press, which smelled of Crete.

And then I thought, “Will her lies live after her? There are always men glad to think the worst of the best. She should have been made to bear witness first before the people. I have failed him once again.”

Then I said aloud, “By Zeus, she shall speak for him, even now! She shall make good my son’s honor, living or dead.”

There was ink and paper in the room. I can write the Cretan hand; I wrote it small, like a woman. Here in Troizen, that would be enough.

“I slandered Hippolytos, to cover my own shame. I asked, and he refused. I can bear my life no longer.”

This letter I bound into her hand, with a ribbon from among the clothes. As I did it, I saw that the inner curve of her arm was white and tender, her breast round, firm and fair. I remembered his heavy eyes at morning, his day-long wanderings, coming home dead tired. Had he been tempted? What if he had; it is the hard fight earns the garland. Well, he was avenged.

I made a noose from a girdle, and tied it to a sheet knotted round a beam. When she was hanging, I overturned the chair that I had stood on, under her feet. Then I went down, to show the broken door and what I had found behind it.

All over Troizen, his name is held in honor. It is growing holy; each year the maidens offer at his tomb, and clip their hair. I did for him what I could. Maybe it was not what he would have asked for, if he could have spoken. But a man can only give what he has, being what he is.