The Bull From the Sea: A Novel

  She slept at last, but I lay waking. When the first birds called and the sky lightened, I knew what I would do.

  I called the barons, and told them that having considered their counsel and the kingdom’s good, I would sail to Crete and take to wife Minos’ daughter. But to hold the land in peace, I would honor its ancient law which came down from the old religion there: that inheritance is through the mother, and a woman who marries with a foreigner will lose it if she goes from her land to his. So I would leave her in Crete, with fitting state and proper guardians, and visit her when I went there on the kingdom’s business. Thus both realms would be well secured.

  They were overjoyed. I had done well to put them in mind that this queen too might serve the Goddess. Almost they thanked me for not bringing her home.

  That year I remitted the Cretan tribute, and asked only that they build a house for the bride, and for me when I was with her. I chose the old fort by the southern river, by the shrine of the Sacred Three. I had meant to have it strengthened in any case; it was easy to have it made handsome too. Not for all the world would I have raised up again the Labyrinth, in whose very dust you could smell the wrath of the gods. Deukalion had patched up the western wing; and he was welcome to it, for me.

  So that year passed, while the house was building. The child still grew and grew. As soon as the first mist had cleared out of his eyes, they had been like his mother’s, gray as a cloudless dawn; and the silvery hair he was born with hardly darkened. She loved the light on it, and would not have it curled. His skin, like his hair, was fine; but with a little sun it would glow like golden fruit. He was quick and strong, and would scramble everywhere. When he was three, he was found in a broodmare’s straw, his arms and legs round the new foal; he had tried to ride it, and when the two babes tumbled, the mare leaned down and licked them both. You could see, as his mother said, that he had the blood of Poseidon. It was a hard parting, when I set out next spring for Crete.

  Life had been picked up again in the great island, as it always is while men live on. If you kept away from the ruined strongholds (I had burned some myself, during the war) there was little amiss to see. The fields were tilled, the vine-stocks greening; the almond tree blossomed by the fallen wall. New houses were going up, less fine than those before but snug and bright. The potters were at work again, those that were left, and had started one more new fashion, this time for birds.

  The native Cretans welcomed me as loudly as on the day when I had led them against the Labyrinth. It pleased them that I would hold my wedding feast among them like their own king, and not a conqueror. Some of the Hellene barons who held from me, and had grown oppressive in my absence, were not so pleased. The best and greatest had been trustworthy; but it would not have done to stay away much longer. When I had dealt with what was pressing, I drove to Deukalion’s house to meet my betrothed.

  Whatever he thought, he greeted me very civilly. Once I was married, his throne hung on my favor more than before. He had been king only in name, and now would be barely that; but the shadow was precious to him, or perhaps to his lady wife. She came swimming up to me with a chatter of jewelled skirts and a cloud of scent from Egypt, languished awhile, and with a great play of eyes withdrew to bring the Princess.

  All this long while, I had seen in my mind’s eye the child who loved the bull-boy, smiling through tears in the nursery painted with apes and flowers. Now I saw led in by the hand a little Cretan lady, just like the portrait I had been sent. Her hair had darkened, and was crimped in long serpent ringlets, before and behind. Her lashes and brows were blackened with kohl, her eyelids painted with lapis paste, her breasts with powdered coral. Her open bodice was clipped in trimly above her tight gold belt; the skirt with its seven flounces showed only her hennaed toes. She cast down her eyes, and touched her forehead with small tapered fingers which, when I took them, never moved in mine. I kissed her closed lips, as one may in Crete; they were fresh and warm under the rouge, and as still as her hand.

  Later came the day-long pomps of the wedding, the offerings at the shrines, the sprinklings by the priestesses, the gifts to the kindred; the sunset drive in the gilded car, and the feast as hot and bright as noonday with the scented oil of a thousand lamps on painted stands. Singing, the women led her to the bridal room, and did whatever takes women an hour to do; and the youths with torches, singing, led me in to her. Then the crowds were gone, the doors were shut, the lamp was low; there was a sudden stillness, only the softly plucked harps of the night-music beyond the door.

  I lay down by her, and took her chin in my hand, and turned her face towards me. She looked up with dark silent eyes. They had taken off her day-paint and put on paint for the night; the colors were softer, but it hid her still. “Look, Phaedra,” I said, and showed her the old scar across my breast, “I am still marked with the Bull Court. Do you remember when they told you I was dead?”

  She answered stiffly, as if we were in a hall of audience, “No, son of Aigeus.” She meant her eyes to tell nothing, but she was young. They told me, among the rest, that she was Minos’ daughter; and there was no doubt that she knew everything.

  “I am Theseus still,” I said to her. “I told you if the bulls did not kill me I would be a king, and come back to marry you. And here I am. But fate never comes in the shape men look for: See what has passed over us between then and now; war and earthquake and change, and all those chances that living brings to men under the sun. Yet I have never forgotten how you wept for me.”

  She said nothing. But I would have thought worse of myself forever, if I had lain till morning with a woman I could not warm. There was never yet a son or daughter of the House of Minos, but had in them some of the fire of Helios from whose seed they sprung. I was there to serve my kingdom. Perhaps if I had gone about my duty briskly, without trying to make it better than it was, and left the fire unwakened, the shape of future things might have been changed. But I pitied her, for fate had been her master, as it had mine. Also it is my nature to want victory, in this as in other things. No man can outrun the destined end, from the day he is born.

  My days were full of business, which I had left too long. When I met her then, she was quiet and soft-spoken, with the pretty airs and graces high-born ladies are taught in Crete, which are for any man. She seldom raised her eyes to mine. By daylight we did not speak about the night, nor make the secret signs of lovers. But the night had its own laws; and indeed when the time came I might have grieved to leave her, if I had been going anywhere but home.

  VII

  THE HELLENE LANDS WERE quiet; and because the people had missed the wedding, I made a great feast of the Isthmian Games, which were due that year. I dedicated the festival to Poseidon with a hekatomb of black oxen, and proclaimed they should be held each second year henceforth forever. Thus I gave them a show, without linking it to the wedding, which would have slighted Hippolyta and our son. As he began to get about, even his mother and I, whose pride it had been that he feared nothing, found him too daring for our peace. At five, he was slipping off to scramble on the great rocks below the Citadel. At six he stole a lynx-kitten from its lair between the crags, and then, hearing the mother yowling and crying, would have climbed down to give it back again, if someone had not caught him and saved his life. When the creature died he wept for it, though he could knock himself black and blue without a tear.

  A little after this he was missed at bedtime. His nurse tried at first to keep it from his mother, and she at first from me. When it grew late, I turned out the Guard and made them search the Rock. The moon was as bright as day, but they could not find hide or hair of him. Hippolyta paced about, her arms across her breast and one hand tugging her pigtail, muttering moon-charms from Pontos. Suddenly as she gazed upwards, she grasped my arm and pointed. There was the boy on the Palace roof, sitting between two teeth of the battlements, his feet hung over the drop, his face turned skyward, quiet as a stone. We ran up, then stood tiptoe, in dread to make him start. His moth
er signed me not to speak, and whistled softly. At that he swung himself in, and came to us walking lightly, as if he had no more weight than one has in dreams. I had been angry after the fright; but in the silence, with his still face and wide eyes, I could not raise my voice to him. He looked at us both, and said, “What is it? I was quite safe. I was with the Lady.”

  I let his mother lead him away, for she best understood him. But some of the Palace people had followed us up and heard; and it began to be gossiped that the boy was being taught to set the Goddess above the gods.

  It was a bad time for such rumors; for a child had been born to Phaedra.

  I had been to Crete to see him, a small lively babe with a fuzz of black hair which, the nurses told me, was the kind that falls away. Meantime it made him look very Cretan. Phaedra was pleased with him and with herself, and seemed more content. But it had given me much to think of. We had called him Akamas, which was an old royal name there; for it was certain that he must succeed in Crete. But the mainland kingdoms I had given to Hippolytos in my heart, even if it meant dividing the empire.

  I was sure the people would come to choose him, rather than a foreigner, if he took any care at all to please them. He looked through and through a Hellene; his courage was already talked of; he could stick on the back of his little Kentaur pony like one of Old Handy’s boys. Of affairs he knew nothing and cared less; but he had a feel of his own for what matters in men, and could tell a liar though he did not understand the lie. Anyone he took against, I had learned to watch out for. Yet always, coming and going like a cloud, was this secret strangeness.

  I spoke of it one night to his mother, as we talked in bed. “Of course,” I said, “he must honor Artemis. For your sake I would be angry if he did not. But before the people, we must see he gives her just what is proper, and shows respect to the Olympians. You know what hangs on it.”

  “Theseus,” she said, “I know what people say, that I have taught him some secret worship. But you know better; you know the Mystery is not for men. Whatever he has, it is his own.”

  “All children tell themselves tales. I suppose he will outgrow it. Yet it troubles me.”

  “When I was a child,” she said, “I made believe a playmate. But I was lonely. He, when he is alone, will sing for joy. And he makes friends everywhere. Yet this will come, and everything falls away from him. I have seen it begin with long looking at something: a flower, or a bird, or a burning flame. As if his soul were being called out of his body.”

  I made in the darkness the sign against the evil eye. “Is it witchcraft? Should we seek it out?”

  “But then he would surely pine. He is stronger and taller for his age than all the others. I have told you; a god is with him.”

  “He said, ‘The Lady.’ You were a priestess; can you get an omen, or any sign?”

  She said quietly, “I was a maiden, Theseus. She will not speak to me. Sometimes, during the Dance, the Sight would come. But I left it at Maiden Crag.”

  Not long after this, I heard a commotion outside the Palace, but muted, as if people were keeping their voices down; so I sent to see. In came one of the Palace elders, bringing in the priests’ servant from Zeus’s sanctuary, with a bleeding cut on his arm. With a long face and well-pleased eyes, the house-baron said my son had done it. The boy, it seems, had found a kid tied up for sacrifice, and started petting it. When the man came to fetch it to the altar, the boy defied him. He got on with his duty, as he was bound to do, whereat Hippolytos in a fury drew his toy dagger, and set upon him. How fortunate, said the baron (relishing it like good wine), it had been the servant and not the priest.

  That was something, certainly; but it was still sacrilege, and all the Palace knew it. Apart from the bad luck it might bring, he could hardly have done worse than insult King Zeus. For his mother’s safety, as well as the honor of the god, I must do justice before the people.

  He came all flushed and tumbled, the tears of rage still in his eyes, but sobered at being brought before me. He should be ashamed, I said, to strike a servant who could do nothing back. I suppose I should have begun with Zeus the King; but he, after all, prefers kings to be gentlemen. It went home to the boy, as I could see. He said, “Yes, Father, I know. But the kid could do nothing either; what about him?”

  “But,” I said, “this was a beast, without sense or knowledge of death. For that would you rob the King of Heaven?” He stared me in the face with his mother’s eyes, and said, “He did know. He looked at me.”

  For his own sake, it was no time to be soft with him. “Hippolytos,” I said, “you have lived seven years, and in all that time I have never raised my hand to you. That is because I love you. And because I love you, I am going to beat you now.” He did not look scared, but studied my face, trying to understand. “You have angered the god,” I said. “Someone must suffer for it. Is it to be you, who did the wrong; or would you rather go free, and let him curse the people?”

  “If it has got to be someone,” he said, “let it be me.” I nodded and said, “Good boy.” “But,” he said, looking up at me, “why should Zeus curse the people, when they did no harm? You would not do that.”

  Just as if a man had spoken, I found myself saying, “I do not know. It is the nature of Necessity. I have seen Poseidon Earth-Shaker throw down the Labyrinth, crushing the evil and the good. The laws of the gods are beyond our knowing. Men are only men. Come, let us have it over.”

  It was hard to do as I knew I must. I had got to mark him, for justice to be seen. He never whimpered. Afterwards I said, “That was kingly borne, and King Zeus will like it. Now don’t let it be for nothing, but respect the gods.”

  He swallowed, and said, “Then he won’t curse the people now; so can I have the kid?”

  I kept my patience, and sent him to his mother. Of course the thing was talked about for a month, and never quite forgotten. She was a servant of Artemis, who loves young beasts; so it was a gift to her enemies, who, for the most part, had first been mine. She was only their weapon. They were the elder lords, whom I had curbed in their power over their serfs and slaves; who hated change, and envied the newcomers from the Bull Court, with their youth and gaiety and foreign ways. And these, for their part, not being fools, soon felt it, and let it be seen that they were on the side of the Amazon. So, where there had only been rivalry between man and man, there grew up two factions in the Palace.

  Often, I knew, Hippolyta met with such pinpricks as can be done in the dark by those who would not dare an open enmity. This time they were not bondwomen who could be sent away. And this time she did not keep it from me. She was a wild girl no longer, but had an understanding as good as a man’s; she was concerned for my sake, and for our son’s.

  Angry as I was, yet I was doubly careful when I gave judgment to hold the balance true, and give them no case against her. I believe they sent spies after her when she rode into the hills, to find if she had secret rites there. And I know they tried to use the boy; for, knowing no contrivance, he would tell us how he had been questioned, not understanding what it meant. Though his mother had nothing to hide, yet there was danger in his innocence; her friends, who loved laughter, might say in joke what would not sound well in earnest, and his own fancies be twisted by subtler minds. I did not warn him; he was clear as water, it would appear and breed more suspicion. I put more faith in his own nature, not to talk freely to those he did not like.

  It is my way to bring things into daylight, and fight them out. It irked me to take such care. But rumor still drifted from the north; garbled and foolish mostly, yet with a feel of truth behind. The ship must be whole, if the storm was coming.

  And soon I knew it was; for I heard from Pirithoos. He sent me his own wife’s brother, with a letter under his royal seal, to give me when we were alone. It said, “The Black Cloaks turned due south. It is the tribes east of Euxine who are on the move. They are coming down towards Hellespont, and I do not think the straits will stop them. If not, they will reach Thr
ace this year. Don’t count on winter to slow them down, for hunger and cold may drive them faster. The rest, Kaunos will tell you.”

  I turned to the Lapith, who was waiting for it. He said, “There is a message Pirithoos thought better not to write. It is this: ‘Warn your lady that the fighting women of Sarmatia, who serve the Goddess, are riding with their men; and the Moon Maids are leading them.’”

  VIII

  I DID NOT TELL her, thinking there would be time enough for trouble. I made out, to her like all the rest, that Kaunos had called in friendship as he travelled by. But as soon as we were in bed that night, she said, “Come, what is it?” and had it out of me. She could feel my thoughts through my breast.

  When she heard she was long silent, lying in my arms. Then she said, “Perhaps the long-haired star has come again.”

  “What?” I asked her. “Have the Moon Maids left their shrines before?”

  “They say so. They say that as long ago as an oak takes to grow and die, the people of Pontos lived beyond the mountains, by the shores of another sea. Then this star came, with fiery hair that streamed all across heaven; and it drew the peoples like a tide. The priestesses of that time read the omens, and saw the land could not be held against the hordes of the Kimmerians; so they went with the people, fighting in the vanguard. When they reached Pontos, part of the star fell down upon the earth. So they took that land, and held it.”

  I remembered the thunderstone. But she did not like to talk with a man of these sacred things.

  “It is no joke,” I said, “for a whole people to cross Hellespont. Then there is Thrace, a wide country full of fierce warriors. Somewhere north of Olympos they will be stayed; we shall never see them here.”

  She lay quiet, but too lightly to be sleeping. I felt the thought of her heart, as she felt mine.

  “What is it, little leopard? What do you fear? I love your honor like my own. Never would I ask you to fight sworn comrades, not even if they stormed the Rock. If it does come, it is your time to be a woman; sick, or with child. Or you shall have omens not to fight on either side. Leave everything to me.”