The Bull From the Sea: A Novel

III

WHILE MY FLEET WAS getting ready news began to come in that Crete had a new Minos. I knew his name, Deukalion, and, from what I had heard, guessed him for a man of straw, put up by those lords whose strongholds had withstood the risings. But he came of the royal kin, and his army, scrambled up from masterless spearmen of fallen houses, had seized back the Labyrinth from the rebel serfs. Something like this had been sure to happen; but it meant there was no time to lose.

For all that, I did not go at it like a charging bull. I knew Cretans, and made my plans remembering their subtlety. What I had forgotten was their insolence. They sent me an envoy.

He came into my hall, his lovelocks sleeking his bare shoulders, his willow waist gold-belted. Before him black pages carried gifts of courtesy: a gold necklace with crystal pendants, painted vases of sweet oils, a rare rosebush in flower streaked with blood and amber. Nothing was said, this time, about a tribute of boys and girls from Attica.

As we went through the courtesies, I thought, “Have I seen you before, little peacock? Well, you will have seen me. You have smoothed your mouth with oil since you yelled at me from the ringside.” He met my eye unblinking, proclaimed his master, and asked for my allegiance. I did not laugh. To deal with Cretans like Hellene chiefs would be taking a boar-spear after foxes. They had made me live a year among them, when I should have been learning kingcraft. Instead I had learned the bull-dance, and their minds.

I asked where was Minos’ body (which they would not find) and the royal seal, which I had brought away myself though I did not say so. All I needed was a little time. I said, “Your ship is at Piraeus?” knowing he would have seen nothing there; to hide my plans I was mustering my ships at Troizen, across the gulf.

He answered smoothly, but with some eagerness below: “No, my lord, at Marathon. I beached out of the city, because I have another gift from my master still aboard, something more worthy of your fame. It would not do in the streets; it might scare the people. King Theseus, since the bull-dancers are scattered and the dance is over, my master has sent you as a gift of honor Podargos, King Bull of the sacred herd sprung from the Sun. He is yours; do as you think fit with him.”

“Podargos!” I could not keep my face from lighting. Every bull-dancer in the Labyrinth had known Big Snowy, that great white portent among the piebald herds of Crete. He had been the bull of the Dolphins, and as tricky as he was beautiful; the Dolphins were a short-lived team. He would give good sport, charge straight forward, was a fine bull for the leap; but when he killed, all we trained watchers would argue how he did it and not agree. If our team had had him, I doubt if I could have got them all safe home. But I had always had an itch to tackle him myself; and even now I quickened at his name.

I came back from my dream, to find the Cretan smiling. “A kingly gift,” I said. “But for a god, not a man. Such bulls are sacred; Apollo would be angry if I put him in my herd.”

“He would be troublesome,” said the Cretan, looking put out, “to carry again to Knossos.” I nearly laughed out loud. I could believe it. I would have liked to ask how they had got him here; but I was not a bull-boy any more.

“There is no need,” I said. “The Sun Herd is Apollo’s. We will give him back to the god.” In any case I could not take such a gift from a man I meant to make war on. This way would save my honor, though it would go to my heart to do it. At least I would mate him first with some of my cows. He was the last of the Bull Court; he would hand on a spark of that strange year’s life. The roar of the ring under the Cretan sun; it lingers long in the ear.

The Cretan bowed himself off. I sat remembering, then shook myself and took up my daily business. Later, I saw a runner come in from westward. I could see Amyntor, the captain of my Guard, tearing, himself, up the ramps like a man possessed. He was the best of the lads who had been with me in Crete; a little young for his place, but then so was I. He scratched at my door; then fell inside, and panted out as if we were still in the Bull Court, “Theseus! Theseus! Podargos has got loose!”

“Get your breath,” I said. “He will have to be caught, then.”

“He is running wild. Those Cretan ninnies let him go, and he is running amok in Marathon. Three men killed outright; four more and a woman dying. And a young child.”

“Old Snowy?” I said. “But he never was a rogue. He never charged before the Dolphins had played him.”

“He has had the sea-trip. And been played too for that matter, by the men of Marathon trying to catch him. Three horses he has had besides the people; and the mules and dogs, no one has counted.”

I cried out, “Dogs! The ignorant fools! Don’t they know what he is?”

“I doubt they do. We got used to these great beasts in Crete, but the home breed must look like calves beside them. They take him for a monster.”

“Why did they meddle, the stupid oafs, before they sent for me?”

“They have done meddling now and started praying. They say he’s been sent by Poseidon to destroy them; they call him the Bull from the Sea.”

The words rang like a gong. I stood there silent. Then I began to strip my clothes. When I was naked, I went to the chest where my bull-leaper’s things were laid away. The ornaments I did not trouble with, but strapped on the loin-piece of tooled and gilded hide. One gets used in the ring to playing about with death; but no one wants to be gelded.

Amyntor was talking. But the words in my ears were the words of old Mykale. I had known at my father’s bierside that she spoke with the Power. It had hung in my mind, a secret shadow; a waiting fate, moving to me slowly with its meeting stars. Now so soon it was here, while I had my strength and swiftness still, the fire of youth and my bull-boy’s strength of arm. Within the day I would be free of it or dead.

Amyntor grabbed my arm, then remembered and let go again. “Sir! Theseus! What are you doing? You can’t tackle him now, a bull that has been baited!”

“We shall see,” I said. I was rummaging the chest for my lucky piece, a crystal bull on a neck-chain; I had never been in the ring without it. I spat on it for luck, put it on, and shouted for my chamber-groom.

“Send a herald posthaste to Marathon. He must cry the people to let the bull be, to go indoors and stay there till I send them word. Have Thunderbolt saddled for me. I want a bull-net tied to the pommel, and the strongest bull-tether they use at the sacrifices. Make haste. And no guard, Amyntor. I shall go alone.”

The groom opened and shut his mouth, and went. Amyntor struck his hand upon his thigh, and cried out, “Holy Mother! Where is the sense? After a whole year in the ring, to throw your life away? I’ll swear the Cretans played for this! I swear they had orders to loose the bull! This is what they hoped for. They knew your pride.”

“I should be sorry,” I said, “to disappoint the Cretans, after a year in the ring. However, Amyntor, this is not the Bull Court. Do not shout in my ear.”

Nonetheless he followed me down all the stairs, begging to call out the Eleusinian Guard and kill the bull with spears. Maybe he could be killed that way, by those who were left at the end. But the god had not sent this fate to me, for me to meet it with the lives of other men.

In Athens word had got about. People stood on housetops to see me pass, and some tried to follow. I had my riders turn them back and stop at the gates themselves. So presently the road grew quiet; and when I came down into Marathon between the olive groves all blooming with green barley, there was no one; only a hoopoe calling in the silent noonday, and the gulls upon the shore.

There was a road between tall black cypresses, leading to the sea, and by it a little wineshop, such as peasants seek at evening when they unyoke their teams, a mulberry tree above the benches, hens scratching, a couple of goats and one young heifer; and a little house of daub-and-wattle, old and tottering, all drowsy in the quiet sun. Beyond was the flat sour sea-meadow, the long harsh plain between bay and mountains. The blue sea lapped on a beach piled high with wrack and driftwood; slow shadows of clouds, grape purple, swept the sunny mountains. A thin poor grass, with yellow coltsfoot, stretched from the shore to the olive trees. Among the flowers, like a great white block of quarried marble, stood the Cretan bull.

I hitched my horse to a cypress and went softly forward. It was Old Snowy, sure enough. I could even see the paint of the bull ring still upon his horns. The gilt stripes caught the sun, but the tips were dirty. It was turned noon, the hour of the bull-dance.

You could see he was on edge, if you knew bulls, by the way he looked about him as he grazed. Far off as I was, he saw me, and his forefoot raked the ground. I went off to think. There was no sense in stirring him up before I was ready.

I mounted again; my horse slowed before the little wineshop. There was the heifer, honey-colored, with a soft brown eye. I thought how bulls are caught in Crete, and laughed at my own slowness. So I tied my horse to the mulberry tree and went and knocked at the door.

A slow step shuffled, the door opened a crack, and an old eye peeped out. “Let me in, Mother,” I said. “I want a word with your husband.”

“You’ll be a stranger here,” she said, and opened. Inside it was like a wren’s nest, so spare and neat; she must have been widow longer far than wife. She was shrunk so small, she looked to be near a hundred. Her eyes were still bright and blue, but it seemed as if a breath would blow her away; so I waited, not to give her a start.

“Young man,” she said, “you’ve no business walking abroad. Didn’t you hear the crier? The High King of Athens sent for everyone to keep within doors, till he brings his army. There’s a mad bull loose in the fields; they say it came from the sea. Well, poor lad, come in, come in, the guest of the land is holy. I can tell by your speech you’re from foreign parts.” I went humbly inside. She was the first to tell me I had picked up a Cretan accent in the Bull Court.

She shuffled about, dipping a measure of wine into a clay cup, and filling from the water-crock. She sat me on a three-legged stool and gave me barley bread with goat-cheese. It was time in courtesy to account for myself; but I did not want to flutter her. I said, “The Good Goddess bless you, Mother; I shall work better for that. I am the bull-catcher from Athens, come to take the bull.”

“Mercy!” she cried. “What can the King be thinking of? One young lad alone, for a great bull in his rage? You should go back to him, and tell him it won’t do. He won’t know the ways of cattle, he hires others for that.”

“The King knows me. I learned my trade in Crete, where that bull comes from. And that’s what brings me here, Mother; can I borrow your cow?”

The poor soul quivered all over, and her mouth opened like an empty purse. “Take my poor Saffron for that wicked beast to murder? And the High King with a thousand of his own?”

“Murder?” I said. “Not he. But she’ll quiet him down; and if he serves her, she’ll throw you the finest calf in Attica; you can sell it for a fortune.” She went to the little window, muttering and near tears. “Be good to me, Grannie,” I said, “for the sake of all the people.”

She turned round. “Poor boy, poor boy. Braving the bull with your own flesh and bones; what’s my cow to that? Take her, lad, and the All-Mother keep you.”

I kissed her cheek. The goodness green in the withered trunk came like a kindly omen, after old Mykale. “I’ll see you right with the King, Mother, I swear by my head, if I get safe home. Tell me your name and give me something to write on.” She brought me a worn wax tally from the shop; I smoothed out the old scores, and wrote, “The King owes Hekaline three cows, a hundred jars of sweet wine, and a strong good slave-girl. If I die, let the Athenians send to Delphi, and ask Apollo how to choose a king. Theseus.” She peered at it, nodding; of course she could not read. “Keep that safe, and give me your blessing, Mother. I must go.” As I walked off leading the heifer, I saw her bright little eye at the shutter’s chink.

Podargos had gone further off. I was going after, when I saw something on the beach, too white for driftwood. It was a body, almost bare. Then I went running; for it wore the dress of the Bull Court.

It was a girl from my team in Crete, one of the tribute-maids from Athens. She had set out to the bull with more pride than I had; as well as the loin-guard, she had put on her gilded boots, her handstraps, and all her jewels, and painted her face for the ring. There was a great tear in her side that must have gone through her liver. She was dying; but she knew me, and spoke my name.

I knelt beside her, saying “Thebe! What is this? Why didn’t you wait for me; you must have known I would be coming.”

Her eyes were bright and wandering, and she gaped for air as the dark blood flowed away. Theseus!” she said. “Is Pylia dead?”

I looked about, finding first a bull-net, then the second girl, lying half in the sea where the horns had tossed her. I came back and said, “Yes, she is. She must have died quickly.” They had been lovers in Crete, after the custom of the Bull Court.

She put up her hand and felt the wound in her side. “I need the ax; can you do it?”

They use it in the ring to dispatch the victims. I said, “No, my dear, I have nothing; but it won’t be long. Keep hold of my hand.” I thought how I had watched over them in the Labyrinth, trained them, heartened them, and jumped the bull for them on their bad days, only for this.

“We have done what is best.” You will see sometimes with a warrior going before his wounds are cold, that he will talk and talk, then snuff out like a dead lamp. “We came back too proud, and our kinsfolk hate us.”

She paused, gasping. I stroked her brow and felt the clammy sweat.

“My father called me a brazen trull, for vaulting our old ox to show the boys. And Pylia, they found her a clerk to marry. Soft as a pig. In Crete we’d have thrown him to the bull. They said she was lucky to get him, having lived a mountebank and a public show.”

I said softly, “They should have spoken those words to me.” But there was no one to be angry with, only the dying and the dead.

“They called us haters of men. Oh, Theseus! There is nothing left like the Bull Court. No honor … so we tried …” Her head sank back, and her eyes were setting, when she opened them again and clenched her hand on mine and said, “He gores to the right.” Then her soul went out in the death-gasp.

Her hand slipped from mine, and it left me lonely. The Bull Court was gone indeed. But as I got to my feet I saw along the mud flats a great white shape, wicked and noble, smelling the wind. There was still the bull.

I walked along the trees till I found a thick old olive, the last before the sea. I tethered the cow there, and tied the great hide bull-rope, with its running hobble, strongly round the tree. Then I climbed up with the net and hung it between two branches, lying easily. There was nothing left but to call upon the gods. I chose Apollo, since the Cretan bulls are bred from his sacred herd, and promised him this one if he would help me to take it. Then I went to work.

Podargos had his back to me, switching his tail at flies. I licked my finger to feel the wind, hoping the heifer’s scent might draw him. But the breeze blew from the sea.

Out on the sea-meadow I stepped, a pace at a time. The soil was caked and sun-dried, not good to run on. I did not want to get too far from the tree. I pitched a stone or two, but they fell far short of him. So I went further out, alone with my short noon shadow among dry yellow flowers, and threw again. The stone just hit him, though nearly spent, and he looked over his shoulder. I waved, to draw him. He would be fast as a war-chariot, once he charged. He swung down his head, and gave me a hard look, as if to say, “I am resting now; be thankful, and do not tempt me.” And he moved a little away.

The slap of the waves on the shore-line sounded in my ears; and with them the voice of old Mykale. “Loose not the Bull from the Sea!” And I thought, “He has been loosed, and I must bind him; the luck of my reign is in it. Why do I wait?”

I ran straight out, halfway to him. He was watching me, one foot stirring the dust. I put two fingers in my mouth, and whistled hard the fanfare of the Bull Court, which they play when the bull is loosed into the ring.

He pricked his ears. Then he planted his forefeet squarely and lowered his head; but he did not charge. He was saying, as clearly as speech, “Oho, a bull-dancer. Why so far off, if you know the game? Come up, little bull-boy, come up and dance with me. Take the bull by the horns.”

He had the wisdom of god-filled things. I should have known he would draw me back to the bull-dance, which was sacred when the first earth-men fought each other with axes and knives of stone. I lifted my arm, as so often in the ring at Knossos, and gave the team-leader’s salute.

It was strange to hear no shouting from the benches. “Well,” I thought, “It will be stranger to have no team.” That made me laugh. One would do nothing in the ring, without the madness of the god.

His hoof raked once. Then, quick as I remembered him, he charged head-on.

Most precious in the ring is the counsel of the dying. Knowing he gored right-ways, I feinted left to straighten him; then grasped at the stained and painted horns. My fingers and palms had lost the leather hardness of the Bull Court, but kept their strength. I swung upward with him, feet over head, feeling him steady to my weight as a familiar thing. A knowledge passed between us. And I felt a welcome. He was in a strange land, far from home, where men and dogs had baited him, the sacred sun-child used to the homage of a king. The touch and the weight, the grip of a bull-boy, cheered his slow inbred wits. He felt more like himself.

Only with the bull-dance would I coax him to come my way. So I made myself a whole team in one. That was the last and greatest dance of Theseus the Athenian, leader of the Cranes, which I danced alone at Marathon for the gods and for the dead.

When I came down from the vault there was no one there to catch me, or to play the bull away. But he was as unused to this state of things as I was, and his mind was slower; it was that which saved me. I would dodge when he turned, and come round to meet him, and leap again, always working nearer to the tree, till my hands were skinned from the horns and my arms began to shake with weariness. I stood to leap again, thinking, This time he will feel me flagging; then he will strike.” But he looked past me, snuffing the air, and ran on to the tree. The heifer lowed softly, and lifted her yellow tail.

I stood panting, aching and raw, till I saw he had forgotten me. Then I crept up, and fixed the hobble to his hind leg, and scrambled into the boughs.

He did not feel it just at first, having pleasanter business. Then he lugged and tugged till the whole tree quivered. The trunk was two men thick and must have stood a hundred years, but I thought he would heave it up. If I had not clung like an ape, he would have shaken me out with the twigs and birds’ nests. The scared cow added her bawl to the bull’s great bellow. But the stout rope held, and at last he tired. He had been caught before in the Cretan pastures, and no great harm had come of it. He stood; and I dropped the bull-net over him.

And now I was alone no longer. It was as if I had sown the furrows to bring forth men. They swarmed about me; they must have been creeping up while I was in the tree. The net’s edge was hardly wide enough for the grasping hands. I climbed down and showed them how to catch his feet in it so that a pull would trip him. They would have killed him then with spears and cleavers, working off their fear, as small men do. I was glad I could tell them he had been vowed to Apollo; he did not deserve so base a death.

I made them all wait, and went on alone, leading the heifer. I had a debt to pay. She was so frail, I did not want her to learn who I was from anyone but me. So I knocked, but got no answer, and went inside. She was lying below the window; when I picked her up, she had no more weight than a dead bird. She had spent her last breath in care for me, watching my struggle; I hoped she had lived to see me win.

I sacrifice for her every year, at the tomb I built for her where the cottage stood; and the servant I promised her has grown gray serving her shrine. The folk of Marathon offer too, for they think she makes their cattle fruitful; so she will not be forgotten after my death.

The bull-girls lie close by; I ordered them a warriors’ barrow and buried them on one bier. The kinsfolk murmured, till I lost patience and gave them some of my mind. They held their peace after that.

I went back to the bull. The people were still in mortal dread of him, and I said I would stay with him till he was offered to the god. I saw him stoutly haltered either side, then mounted his neck and rode him into Athens. He did not mind the shouting and thrown flowers; he was used to those in Crete; so he went consenting to the god who owned him, looking to the last for the bull-field and the good old days. It was I who knew they would never come again.

But when he had breathed his strong soul upward, and I heard the paean, my soul lifted with eagles’ wings. I had met and mastered the evil of my fate; I was King indeed.