The Bull From the Sea: A Novel

  Amyntor, who understood, said quietly, “I have seen to everything, the horses and the Guard. Come away and rest.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but we must look after our guests first.” I turned to Oedipus, saying, “Come. It is time.” So it was and more; I had trouble to keep my voice steady.

  He kissed the girl’s brow; she walked off down the hill, like a good dog sent home, and reaching out for me he laid on my arm his light strong fingers, with their seeing touch. “Child of Poseidon, if your father is ready, so am I. Bring me to where his door will open, and give me to the god.”

  I stared at his empty eyes. When I took his meaning, I could have run like a horse from a burning byre. All my life, when the earthquake-sickness took me, I had schooled myself to give my warning before I got away, and that took all my steadfastness. My hair, which was already prickling, began to rise upon my head. He could not know what he asked of me. And then I thought, “But the god—he knows.”

  Surely it was a Sending, this fearful thing; it could not have come from man. If I failed from fear, for certain his power would leave me. I said to Amyntor, “Take the men down the hill, and wait.” He stared at me. I looked sickly, I daresay. “Go,” I said, reminding myself what a good man he was, or else I might have struck him. “I must do this for the god.”

  He grabbed up my hand and pressed it to his forehead, then quietly fell in the Guard and took them off. I was alone with Oedipus the Accursed, while the still air lay like lead on the moveless treetops, the bees were silent, and the birds cowered among the leaves.

  He tightened his fingers, asking where we should go. “Hush,” I said; the least sound made me retch and shiver. “Wait, I must see.” But all I could feel was the longing to flee in time. So I thought, “Where do I want to run?” and then, slowly as an ox to the altar, I walked the other way. I saw where this was leading me, to the broken ground with the fir trees. Then such a horror squeezed my heart that I knew it was the place.

  The blind man came with me quite easily, tapping with his stick before him. I steered him through the vine-rows, and up the slope to the gate. At every step my bursting head grew tighter, my heart beat harder, the goose-flesh rose on my neck and arms. That was my only guide, to go smelling like a dog after the scent of fear.

  As we came up into the stony wasteland, he slid his fingers down my wrist to my hand. His felt quite warm and dry. “What is it?” he said gently, but still too loud for me. “You are sick, or in pain.”

  One does not put face on, with a god breathing down one’s neck. I said, “I am afraid. We are getting near.” He pressed my hand kindly. I saw no fear in him; he had passed beyond it long ago. “It is only my warning,” I said. “When the god has spoken it will pass.”

  The boulders with the fir trees were close ahead. I could have looked more quietly at my own grave. I have never been much scared of dying; I was brought up to be ready any time, for who can tell when the god will want his sacrifice? This was not fear of anything, or I could have met it. It was just fear, like a burning fever that makes you shake with cold. And yet, his voice no longer grated on me. There was even comfort in it.

  “You are the heir of my death. I cannot give it to my people. Our line was sent as the curse of Thebes; God grant that my sons are childless.” His voice had hate in it; for a moment I glimpsed him in his prime, a red man with pale fierce eyes. But the flame died quickly. “To you, Theseus, and your land, I give my death and my blessing.”

  “But,” I whispered, “they stoned you at the altar.”

  “Why not?” He was calm and reasoning. “I killed my father.”

  We were among the boulders. He threaded them without much help, seeming to feel them before the touch. My fear was sinking from my head to gripe my belly; I slipped away from him and voided it, and felt light and cold, but a little better. Coming back I steered him to clearer ground, and said, “Fate was your master. You did these things unknowing. Men have done worse at less cost.”

  He smiled. Even as I was, it awed me. “So I said always, till I became a man.”

  We had come to the edge of the horseshoe dip, and the fear in me was saying, “Be anywhere but here.” My head felt so empty it must float away; women say it is so before they swoon. So I thought, “I can no more. The god will take me or leave me, I am in his hand.” And I leaned upon a boulder, as limp as a wrung-out rag. But he still talked on.

  “I was reared Polybios’ son. But I never favored him; it was talked of, and I heard. And when I asked the god at Delphi, his only answer was a warning. ‘You will kill the planter of your seed and sow the field you grew in.’ So. Did I not know that every man or woman past forty must be my father or mother now, before the god? I knew. When the redbeard cursed me from his chariot’s road and poked me with his spear, and the woman laughed beside him, did I not remember? Oh, yes. But my wrath was sweet to me. All my life, I could never forego my anger. ‘Only this once,’ I thought. ‘The gods will wait for one day.’ So I killed him and his foot-runners, for my battle-fury made me as strong as three. The woman was in the chariot, fumbling with the reins. I remembered her laughter. So I dragged her down, and threw her across her husband’s corpse.”

  His words roosted in my mind like crows in a dead tree. I was so spent, I hardly shuddered.

  “And later, when I rode as a victor into Thebes, shaven and washed and garlanded, she met my eyes and said nothing. She had only seen me in my anger; blood and rage and the grime of the dusty road will change a man. She was not sure. And the soft bright look of the wolf-bitch at the new leader of the pack … It is Theban law, that the King rules by right of marriage. To be a king, to be a king … I gave her a stranger’s greeting. I never told, she asked no questions. Never, until the end.”

  I heard these dreadful words; but they came to me like children weeping. For the presence of the god was pressing on my skull, and up the soles of my feet and through my loins from the tingling rock. I stood upright, as if his arm had thrust me forward. My fear was quenched in solemn awe. I was out of myself, only a string for his sounding; I knew what it is to be priest as well as king.

  The blind man stood where I had guided him, a little below me in the trough of the holy hoofprint, his face looking to the earth. I said, “Be free of it. Go in peace to the house of Hades. Father Poseidon, Earth-Holder, accept the offering!”

  Even while I spoke, the birds flew upward screaming, and the dogs howled. I saw him stretch out his hands in prayer to the gods below; and then I saw no more. Deep down under, the hill’s core gave a great grinding jar. I lost my footing, and slipped among falling stones and shale, till I fetched up against the roots of a fir tree, sticking up naked from the earth. Close by I heard a mighty, bounding thud, another, and a heavy settling. At once the earthquake-sickness left me; my heart stilled, and my head was clear. It was like waking from a nightmare; so that I called out briskly, “Where are you? Are you hurt?”

  None answered. I pulled myself up by the fir tree. The shape of the rocks had changed. The hoofprint’s groove had opened in a cleft, and great boulders filled it. I made the sign of reverence to the god, and crept to the edge upon my knees; but the depths were still.

  Far off, the people of Kolonos were calling the god by name and blowing bull horns; and a lone ass hurled up his bray to heaven, as if all things that suffer had made him their spokesman to accuse the gods.

  VIII

  IT WAS A YEAR and more since I had seen Pirithoos, for he had buried his father and was King in Thessaly. It stopped his roving for a while. But when he did come, it was by sea again; salt-stained, storm-beaten, as hairy as his men, and clinking with gold. He had swept down on Sarnos while the King’s men there were away fighting a war, and sacked the royal palace. He had brought a Samian girl, and even kept her a virgin, as a gift for me.

  I had not been idle that year either; for I had conquered Megara.

  The war concerned the tolls of the Isthmus Road. Nisos, the old King, whom I had had a treaty of
free trade with, had died with no son surviving. He had been my kinsman; the heir was neither kin nor kind. He taxed all traffic from Attica, making excuse that when the treaty was drawn up, I was only King of Eleusis; as if any man of honor would not have stretched the point for me, who had cleared the road of bandits. At first, when I sent word to him, he gave civil answers and amends, then civil answers and excuses; then the answers shortened. This was foolish. It made me think, as any king would who cared to leave a name behind him, that with Megara in my hand I could push the bounds of Attica right up to the Isthmus neck.

  So I came down on him before the weather broke. I dressed my men as merchants; their arms were stowed in their bales, and I had myself carried in a covered litter, such as well-born women use. We surprised the gate-tower, let in the army which had been waiting behind a hill, and were almost at the Citadel before the land was roused. We could have made as great a sacking as Pirithoos’ at Samos; but I forbade it on pain of death. I had never yet ruled folk who hated me.

  Pirithoos grieved to have missed the war, and sailed on home. I was busy with Megara all that year. Like the peoples of Attica, these had their ways, which I would not plough under; but that work had taught me something, and my hand was surer here. I was resolved to build a strong house that would stand after me, not a shoddy makeshift to fall on my son’s head. So I was thinking, all the while I settled Megara and the Isthmus, built the great altar of Poseidon to mark my new-made boundary, and founded his sacred Games. And once every few days, I remembered I was rising five-and-twenty, without a wife.

  Chance, mostly, had made it so. My father could not betroth me as a boy, since he had kept me hidden; soon after he acknowledged me, I had gone to Crete. When I came back I had great things in hand, and grudged the time.

  My house had women enough, there when I wanted them, out of the way when I was busy; I had taken some more girls in the war, and could suit my mood; or if I found one tiresome, I could pack her off. What I should be doing, I knew full well; but I thought of all the tedious business: embassies; visits from kinsfolk and back to them; treaties and portions, with days full of paper and old men; the women’s rooms to be brought in order, the tears and screams and threats to jump off the walls; the mess of girls and gear the bride would bring along with her, the quarrels and the jealousies, the tedium of the same face each morning on the pillow. It would do next season. Then an arrow would pass me near in battle, or a summer fever touch me, and I would think, “I have no heir but my enemies; tomorrow I will see to it.” But tomorrow was another day.

  And then, the year after the Megarian War, a big ship stood off Piraeus, flying the royal pennant of Mykenai and a red sail with the guarding lions. I made ready for a guest of honor, wondering what it meant. Soon came ashore a herald from Echelaos, the King’s heir. He had taken the omens of the winds, before passing Sounion Head, and had got a bad one; could he be my guest for the night?

  I met him at the port, and found him what I had heard: a big man of about my years, personable and proud, but able to be easy when he wished to please.

  Since we met, as he said, by luck and weather, he put on the lightness of men at the hunt or at the Games: told battle-tales and jokes, admired my horses. At evening, over wine in my upper room, he loosened further, gossiping about his father’s health and his mother’s strictness; she was too hard, he said, on his young sister, who would soon be a woman. “A girl who is shooting up like wheat, and coming into beauty; one cannot keep her a child forever.” He looked down at his long brown hand, and turned his signet.

  I kept a pleasant face, though my mind was buzzing. This was what had come of putting off. I thought how it would have rejoiced my father, when Attica was a rock in a little plain. For me it was a baited trap. My power was too new to come under the great shadow of Mykenai; they would suck me in, and my heir would be their vassal in all but name. A few years more, and it might have been a match of equals. So they thought too, it seemed.

  Well, this would teach me to delay! It was now or never. To pause, and consider, and withdraw, would be a mortal insult; and the Lion House does not stomach insults much better than the gods.

  Haste would be improper. He had managed his part well, and so must I. So I sent for a Cretan girl who played the Egyptian harp, and bade her sing. I was glad to see he fancied her, for he might need sweetening. She saw it too, and made the best of herself, her mind on a jewel from the golden town. I had kept her for her music, and never slept with her; even the scent she used brought back the Labyrinth, the secret midnights, the dreadful farewell on Naxos. But Echelaos’ eyes were busier than his ears.

  When the song was over, he looked like a child who sees the honey-pot being put away. So I motioned the girl to stay for another song, and said to him, “Yes, it’s a pretty air. I heard it sung by the girl I am betrothed to, while she was still a child—King Minos’ daughter Phaedra. Ah, yes; it is time I sailed to Crete again.”

  He took it well, clearly believing me, and saying, even, that he had heard as much. He had come, as now I guessed, to sound me and make sure. Soon he went to bed, and I sent the girl to him. That would leave him no time to brood. As for me, I stood late upon the balcony, thinking how quickly fate had settled this over my head.

  It was the only marriage, as I had long since known. I had thought I could take my time, since they could not betroth her without my leave. Of course they had not asked; they had been waiting for me. Well, there could be no more trifling, after today.

  I had not seen the child since I was a bull-boy. She had been seven or eight years old. Before the bull-dance, they would bring in the little ones of the princely houses, just to see the procession of the dancers into the ring, and be shown the first in fame. Before the bull-gate opened and there could be blood, their nurses took them away. Thus she had come, one of a crowd of piping children I would sometimes wave to, as I passed by. One day, when a rumor ran round that the bull had killed me, she had screamed herself so nearly into a fit that her scared nurse had fetched me up to her, to prove I was still alive. That was how I remembered her: a naked tear-drenched child on a painted bed, curled up in tumbled linen, clutching my hand.

  Then I had met her sister, and came into the ring with my mind on other things; but now and then, lest my face wore my thoughts too clearly, I would turn to the children’s balcony and smile and wave. By my counting, now, she must be about fourteen.

  Like a winding thread, my thoughts passed and repassed about the Labyrinth, and came at last to Naxos.

  I had never set foot there, since that midnight sailing. But my ships, when they passed that way, had had orders to bring word if ever Ariadne the Thrice-Holy should leave the shrine. So much was needful; to hold her could bring great power to an enemy. But she had grown too sacred; years passed and she was still there, in the sanctuary of Dionysos on its offshore island. Each vintage moon, she led the maenads up the mountain; at nightfall they came down swaying with wine and weariness, their hands wrist-deep in blood; and last year’s Vine King was no more seen.

  For a long while after that Naxos feast, my tongue had been sealed with horror. But kings cannot sit hand on mouth, like frightened children. She had to be accounted for. In Crete, when I freed the Labyrinth, I had told the people she would be my wife. So when I went back there, and had put the land in order, I told this story to the princes: that I had had a dreadful dream at Naxos in the Isle of Dia, Dionysos appearing to me in his shape of terror and warning me off his chosen bride. Which was true enough, after its kind.

  So I had put her off with a show of honor. In time, having passed through the islands mouth to mouth, my own tale came back full of marvels. She was so dear, it seemed, to Dionysos, that his vine-grown ship would glide by starlight to the water-stairs, and he would come to her in the shape of a black-haired man. I hoped it was true she had found a lover. She was a girl it would come hard on, to sleep alone.

  And then, after a few years more, news came that she was dead in childbirt
h by the god. Whether the child had lived I could not learn; Dionysos’ shrines have many secrets. I should lie, if I said I grieved. It was a burden lifted. And it left young Phaedra clear heir of the House of Minos, last of the Children of the Sun. When Echelaos left next morning, I gave him for his guest-gift the Cretan singer. It made him my friend for a long time after; and as he shortly became King, the present was well spent.

  I had thoughts of going to Crete for the betrothal, to see the girl for myself. Then there was a blood-feud at Eleusis, which no one else could deal with. So I sent an embassy instead, with a great gold bowl as a pledge to the kinsfolk. For the maiden I ordered something prettier; she had been a delicate child, small-boned and silken-haired; the Palace goldsmith made her a wreath of lapis hyacinths, with sprays for the ears. But my mind’s eye still saw her in the nursery with monkeys painted on the wall. So I sent her one in a little scarlet coat, and wondered if she would remember.

  The ship came back bringing the kin’s consent, and the gifts of compliment. One was a likeness of the maiden, painted on ivory; but it was just like any Cretan picture of a girl or goddess. Even her hair had been done black, which I knew was fair light brown.

  I had given my envoy leave to go, when he lingered and caught my eye. He was a white-haired baron I had chosen for his gentle manners. When I had sent the rest away he said, “My lord, I have something in trust for you.” He brought out a packet of embroidered stuff. “The princess sent it herself, by an old nurse of hers. I was to tell no one but you, for her aunt would scold her, but you would understand.”

  Inside was a wreath of plaited hair. There were two colors in it. I stared; then it came back to me. That day in Crete after the bull-dance she had begged a lock of my hair, saying, as little children do who know nothing of the matter, that one day she would marry me.

  The old man said, “She has been kept much alone; it is only innocence. Ah, but the bird is knocking there, within the eggshell; and a lovely bird it will be.”