The Bull From the Sea: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  Till that time, I had never found it weigh on me to be priest as well as king. Poseidon had been good to me, giving me the earthquake warning that the dogs and birds have, but, among men, only the blood of Pelops’ line. Him I listened to, and did for the other deities such duties as are prescribed. But now, to reconcile the rites of all these jealous goddesses was like a judgment where a wrong verdict may start a ten-years war. One night I dreamed that they all appeared to me, threw off their sacred robes, and stood there mother-naked; it was my fate to give a prize to the fairest, and be cursed by all the rest.

  This dream so shook me that I got up in the night and poured oil and wine before Athene. Her shrine was dark. In the hand of the priestess I had roused from sleep, as she shivered in the midnight chill, the lamp-flame trembled. The face of the Mistress, in the helmet’s shadow, seemed to move like a proud shy girl’s who says without words, “Perhaps.” When I lay down in bed again, I slept sweetly; and next day when I met the priests and kings to plan the feast day, I got them easily to agree.

  It seemed she liked her offerings. The feast and Games went through as if her hand were leading us all the way. The old men said that in all the tales of their own grandfathers, there had been no such splendor in the land. Luck touched us everywhere: fair weather and good crops; no new feuds starting; good omens at the sacrifice; at the Games, clean wins by men with few enemies. The people glowed, the youths and girls had a gloss of beauty, the singing was sweet and true. When I stood up to give the prize for wrestling, a great paean rose up from the people, so that one might have thought that they saw a god, and I said to my heart, “Remember you are mortal.”

  I threw with my luck, and at that same feast made all Attica and Eleusis into one kingdom with one rule of law. Lords, craftsmen and peasants all agreed to have their causes tried in Athens; the priests acknowledged their gods in ours, adding, if they liked, the name they used at home. At last they understood that this was the end of war in Attica; that any man, unless he had killed with his own hand and paid no blood-price, could pass through his neighbor’s deme unarmed.

  It was not long after this, that I rode out to Kolonos, to take the omens of Poseidon.

  It is a pretty place, not far from the City, good for grapes and olives; young men in love go there to hear the nightingales. But the top is sacred to Poseidon Hippios; and even in those days, people let it alone. There was nothing to see, except broken boulders with a clump of fir trees; but if you stood at the top, below you was a round flattish dip, as if a great horsehoof had struck the ground, about as wide as a young boy can throw a stone.

  It was a thousand years, I daresay, since the god had stamped there; scrub and thorn had grown over, the shrine was small, the priest sleepy and fat. But it had made me angry, last time I went, to see the place neglected, for the god was certainly present; when I stood on the crest, my nape shivered, and a ripple like a cat’s ran down me. I asked the priest if he could not feel it, and he said he could; I knew he lied but could not prove it. Earth-Shaker himself did that within the year. The shock was nothing much; but the priest’s house fell down, and killed him in his bed. The people of the deme were half dead with fright, and sent posthaste to me, begging me to make their peace with the god.

  I drove out there in a three-horse chariot with a mounted guard. We had made our beasts fine, to honor the Horse Father; my team with red-plumed headstalls and braided tails, and all the rest beribboned. We brought the finest stallion of my herd, wreathed for the sacrifice. But the god had chosen otherwise.

  As we drew near, I looked out for the people who had so besought my presence. The road was empty. The feel of the god’s wrath was heavy on the ground; I was on edge, and wondered if he had struck again. Amyntor was riding on to see, but I waved him back. I could hear over the slope voices shouting, and a woman’s wail. I was angry now, and wanted to see for myself what they were up to. So I stopped the column and walked up on foot, with only a guard of four.

  As I got near, I heard the woman’s voice begging for pity, rising and falling with broken catches as she beat her breast. There were curses, and the thud of stones. Mounting the rise, I could see the village people stoning a man. He was crouching down, guarding his head with his hands; there was blood on his white hair. The woman, who was still young, was struggling to go to him, begging them to spare her father who had suffered enough. When they thrust her back, she gave a great cry, calling upon Poseidon. At that I stepped forth with a shout, and they turned round gaping, dropping their stones.

  The woman came running to me, sobbing and stumbling over the broken clods between the vine-rows; her clothes were torn, and bloody from her scratching her breast as she wailed. She looked old before her time, as peasants do, and yet not like a peasant; the lines had been drawn by other cares. She hurled herself down and clasped my knees and kissed them. I could feel her tears.

  I turned up her dust-smeared face, whose bones were noble, and asked what they accused her father of. But the village headman spoke first. This outlaw, he said, unclean before all gods, had touched Poseidon’s altar, trying when Earth-Shaker was already angry to bring death to them all. Meanwhile, hearing us speak, the man had risen to his knees. He held out his hands before him, seeking something, I suppose the girl. I saw that he was blind.

  “You can go to him,” I told her, and held my hand up to keep the others back. She went over and raised him, and put his stick into his hand and led him up to me. He was bleeding, but had no bones broken yet; and I could see by the way he got himself along that he had been blind a good while. She muttered in his ear, telling him who I was. He turned his head my way; and a shiver went all through me; for that old man had a face like Fate itself. Beyond sorrow, beyond despair; with hope and fear forgotten as we forget the milk of infancy.

  He came up prodding his stick at the ground before him, and leaning on the girl. He wore a short tunic, as for a journey; it was torn and bloody, and had been soiled and worn before; but the wool was fine and the borders patterned, the sort of work that takes a skilled woman a long time on the loom. His belt was soft tooled leather, and had been studded once with gold; you could see the holes. From there I looked to his sandals; but I did not see them. For I saw his feet. They were strong and knotted and had carried him many miles; but they were warped like the wood of a tree which has been spiked as a sapling, and grown about the scar. Then I knew who he was.

  A cold gooseflesh stood up on all my limbs. My hand came up of itself, to make the sign against evil. His sunk and shrivelled eyelids moved a little, as if he saw.

  I said to him, “You are Oedipus, who once was King of Thebes.”

  He went down on one knee; there was a stiffness in his bending which was not of his joints alone. And for a moment I let him kneel, because I knew it would be courteous not to bid him rise but to touch and raise him; and I could not make my hands obey me.

  When the people of Kolonos saw I did not move to him, it was as if I had opened a farm-gate to a pack of curs. Barking and baying they ran forward, picking up their stones again. You would have thought they danced upon their hind legs, for me to pick the old man up like a skinned carcass and throw him to their jaws.

  I shouted, “Back!” My gorge rose at them, more than at what knelt before me. So I took him between my hands, and felt his lean flesh and old bones like any other’s, only a man in grief.

  The woman had ceased her wailing and begun to weep, stifling it in her hands. He stood before me, his face tilted up a little, as if his mind’s eye saw a taller man. Now it was quiet, I could hear the growling of the people, muttering to each other that even the King should not tempt the gods.

  Kolonos of the Horses is always an uneasy place to me, for all its prettiness; and that day, as I have said, there was a lour about it, a brooding in the ground. Suddenly my anger swelled so that my body felt quite light with it. I turned to the snarling crowd and shouted, “Silence! What are you—men? Or boars, wolves, rock-jackals? I tell you it is the l
aw of Zeus to spare the suppliant. And if you will not do it for fear of heaven, by the head of my father Poseidon, you shall do it for fear of me!”

  There was a hush then, and the headman came forward whining something. What with my anger and the awe of the place, I felt strange, as if the god’s finger brushed my neck. “I stand here for this man,” I said. “Lay hand or stone to him, and you may well fear Poseidon’s anger. For I will curse you in his name.” And it was as if a shudder flowed up into me from the earth beneath my feet; I felt I had the Power.

  Now there was really silence. Only a bird cheeped somewhere, and even he spoke softly. “Stand further off,” I said, “and in good time I will ask his mercy for you. Now leave this man and woman for me to deal with.”

  They drew away. I could not look yet at the girl. I had been going to say, “This man and his daughter,” when I remembered she was his sister, too, out of the one womb.

  She took her head-scarf and wiped his face where a stone had grazed it; I saw she was daughter in her heart, keeping faith with her childhood. It was time to greet him in some words fitting to his birth. But one could not well say, “Oedipus, son of Laios,” when he had killed Laios with his own hand.

  So I said to him, “Be welcome, guest of the land. Men should walk softly, where the gods have struck before them. Forgive me for these people, that I have not taught them better. I will make amends. But first I must make sacrifice, for the omen will not wait.” I was thinking I should have to bathe beforehand, to take off the pollution.

  Now for the first time he spoke. His voice was deep, stronger and younger than his body. “I feel the touch of the god-begotten, the promised guide.”

  “Rest first and eat,” I said. “Then we will lead you on your way, and see you safe through Attica.”

  “Rest is here,” he said.

  I looked at him, and snapped my fingers to the men who carried the wine for sacrifice. He had turned as pale as clay; I thought that he was dying. My cupbearer fumbled and held back so long, I had to snatch the cup from his hand. After the wine, the old man looked a little better, but I had to hold him up. Some of my men offered to help; but their faces were pinched as if they must touch a snake or a spider, so I waved them off. There was a big slab of stone hard by, some boundary of old-time men, and I set him there beside me.

  He fetched a great sigh, and sat up straighter. “A fine, full wine. Thebes cannot match the wine of Attica.” It was the speech of feasting kings. I had been too awed for tears till then. “God-begotten,” he said, “let me know your face.”

  When he raised his hand, he felt the blood and dust upon it, and wiped it on his tunic-hem before he reached it out to me. “The tamer of bulls, the slayer of the Minotaur. And the shape of a young dancer. Truly the gods are here.” His hand traced upwards to my face, and touched my eyelids. “The god’s child weeps,” he said. I did not answer. My men were near and I had to keep some seemliness.

  “Son of Poseidon, no grief is here, but a blessing. The sign long waited has come at last. I am here to give you my death.”

  It found me silent. How could one wish him longer life, or a better fortune? Done was done. And though I pitied him, as any man must not made of stone, I did not want his bones in Attica. The Furies follow such men in a travelling swarm, like flies after bleeding meat.

  Just as if he had seen me look over my shoulder, he said, “They are here. But they come in peace with me.”

  Certainly the air was gentle there; you could smell the ripening grapes. It was from the earth the tingling came, and I knew that of old; at Kolonos, Earth-Shaker seems always close beneath the ground. Without doubt he was angry, and might lose patience any time. It seemed to me this was no gift to please him.

  “Why speak of death?” I said. “In spite of what these oafs have done to you, you have no mortal hurt. Is it a sickness; or have you had it foretold; or do you mean to call it to you? Truly, you out of all men have the right. But such blood puts bad luck into a place, not good. Come, let your heart endure; it has borne worse things.”

  He shook his head, and paused as if thinking, “Will he understand?” I thought of his great sorrows, and waited humbly, as a boy before a man.

  At last he said, “To you I can speak. You went to the bulls of Crete for the Athenians. Surely, you had the sign of sacrifice?”

  I nodded, then remembered and said, “Yes.”

  He put his hand to his grazed brow, and held up the wet fingers. “This blood comes down from Kadmos and Harmonia: the line of Zeus, the line of Aphrodite. I too know the virtue of the given death. When the plague struck Thebes, I waited only for the omen. I sent envoys to Delphi, sure in my heart the oracle would say, ‘The King must die.’ But Apollo’s word came back to seek the unclean thing. So I began to seek step after step into the darkness, on the path that led me to myself.”

  He was still, as a well without bottom when you drop a stone. “Past is past,” I said. “Do not grieve in vain.”

  He laid his hand on mine and leaned forward, as if he would tell a secret. “When I had wealth and fortune, I would have died consenting. Yet after, I lived on. I have been hunted with dogs from villages. I have smelled on the dews of night the dog-fox running to his earth, and lain down with a stone for pillow, where Night’s Daughters hounded me from dream to dream. Yet I, who would have died for the Thebans, would not do it for myself. Why, Theseus, why?”

  I did not say that beggars often love life more than kings. “All things pass; and patience brings a better day.”

  “I know, why now. I waited for the Gentle Ones. When the score is paid, they take no more. The rest they hold in trust for you. All this last year, the sorrow has been like water caught in a deep cistern; not the beating rain that leaves you dry. I thought I should die at last like a winter sparrow, that falls in darkness from the bough and is nothing, save to the ants that pick it clean. But the store has grown. The kingly power is here again. I have a death to give.”

  The girl, meanwhile, had been straightening her dress and hair; now, coming nearer, she sat upon the ground. I knew she wanted to overhear him; but he had dropped his voice, so I did not beckon her.

  “Did you know, Theseus, that in dreams the blind can see? Oh, yes, yes; never forget it; it is a thing the young don’t know. Remember, when you take up the brooch-pin, that at night your eyes will see again, and neither fire nor bronze will serve you then. There is a place the Solemn Ones would bring me to, where I saw what I must see. I came again to it; but all was stillness. They swept the floor with brooms of alder; then they sat down, like gray cobwebbed stones. First there was mist; then a clear darkness, with a little prick of windless flame. It burned up bright and tall; and in it stood the Lord Apollo, naked as a core of light, looking down at me with his great blue eyes like the sky that looks upon the sea. I thought, being unclean, I should avoid his presence; but pure in his fire he showed no anger, and I felt no fear. He raised his hand; the Solemn Ones slept fast, as ancient rocks do though the sun streams into their cave. And then he spoke, saying, ‘Oedipus, know yourself, and tell me what you are.’

  “I stood in thought. It came to me that I had stood just so, puzzling a hard question, in the Place of Ordeal sacred to the Sphinx. And then remembering, I knew the answer was the same. I said, “My lord—only a man.”

  “The Slayer of Darkness smiled at me. His light went through me, as if I had turned to crystal. ‘Come then,’ he said. ‘Since you have come at last to manhood, do what is fit, and make the offering.’

  “There was a stone altar in the cave, which I knew of old; but now it was washed of blood and strewn with laurel. I went up to it, and the first of the Solemn Ones came up with shears, like an old priestess with a kindly face. She cut my forelock and laid it on the altar; and I saw the hair fire-red again, as at my dedication when I was a boy.”

  His hands were folded in his lap, and his face saw. I kept quiet, lest I bring the darkness back again. But presently he stood up straight, and call
ed, “Antigone!” like a man used to being obeyed.

  The girl came up. She looked as a dog does, when the house is stirring for some change it does not know; one not very quick, but trusty, the kind that will lie on a grave until it dies.

  She held out her arm for his hand—it seemed that the long use must have worn a hollow there—and they talked together. I could have heard their words, but did not. For as soon as I had a moment by myself, I knew why it was my brow felt tight and my belly sinking, and the cluck of hens pierced my head like needles. If a child had clapped its hands behind me, I should have jumped a foot. A cold snake seemed coiling along my bowels. I looked at the olive trees of sweet Kolonos; already scared birds were flustered and cluttering. It was the wrath of Poseidon Earth-Shaker, coming to a head at last and ready to burst the ground.

  I looked about; at the old man talking to the girl, my Guard yawning at ease, the gawping peasants beyond the vine-rows. When my warning comes, I get enraged with the people round me, all so unmoved while I, who have faced things most of them would run a mile from, am sweating cold. But the gift and the burden is from the gods; and one must bear it so. I kept quiet, and beckoned the Kolonians. They came hopefully, picking up their stones again.

  “Be still,” I said. “I have the warning of Poseidon. He will strike here before long. What do you expect, when you stone the suppliants at his altar?” At this they did not drop their stones, but bent and laid them like eggs upon the ground. I pointed them down the hill, and they went off, trying to run tiptoe. I could have laughed if I had not felt so sick.