The Bull From the Sea: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  She clung to me, saying, “Do you think I could watch you from the walls, and not leap down to you? You know we are what we are.” In the light from the starry sky I saw her eyes as bright as fever. I stroked her and told her to be at peace, it would never come to pass. At last we slept; but she woke me tossing and sighing, and half-choked with sleep she gave the Moon Maids’ war-cry, as I had heard it at Maiden Crag. I woke her, and made love till she slept again. But next day I sent without telling her to Delphi, to ask the god what to do.

  Meantime the Palace people were still at odds, and the boy grew stronger. He would ride into the hills and lose his groom, and be found on a hilltop or by a stream, talking to himself, or with his eyes fixed on nothing. Yet there was no sign of madness in him; he was quick-minded and, to tell the truth, could write and figure better than I. Nor did he do anything outrageous, after the theft of the kid, but was gentle to those about him. But one day a baron came to me and, pretending to let it fall by chance, told me the boy had made himself a shrine of the Goddess, in a cave among the rocks.

  I answered lightly; but at fall of dusk I climbed down myself to see. The path was steep and dangerous, fit for wild goats. At last I came to a little ledge that looked towards the sea, and a cave-mouth blocked with boulders. There was carving at its mouth; it was very ancient and flaked away, but I saw it was an eye. The shrine had been long abandoned; but on the rocky slab before it there were flowers and shells and colored stones.

  I said nothing to the boy, but asked his mother if she knew. She shook her head. Later, when she had coaxed him to speak, she said to me, “Theseus, he had not even seen the sign; you say that it is worn. And I find he does not know its meaning. How should he? It is women’s business. And yet, he says that the Lady comes there.”

  My backbone shivered. But I smiled, and said, “He sees the gods in your likeness, that is all; and who am I to blame him?” With the barons’ envy and the peasants’ ignorance, she had troubles enough.

  Presently came news from the north that beyond Hellespont there were great wars, and the folk were fighting from their citadels. It was said they had burned their harvests, choosing to live like the birds all winter, if it drove the horde from their fathers’ lands. It needed no divination, to see where this would lead.

  It was soon after this that my envoy came back from Delphi, crowned with die garland of good news. The god had said that the Rock would not fall before the coming generations equalled those that were gone; a storm would break on it, but would ebb after the appointed sacrifice. The envoy had asked what must be offered; and the oracle had replied that the deity who required it would choose it also.

  I thought about this. Next day I had brought up to the Citadel some of all beasts the gods are pleased with, and had lots cast among them. The lot fell on a she-goat, which I sacrificed to Artemis. Thus the oracle had been fulfilled. The beast backed from the altar, and fought against her death. It is never good, when the sacrifice does not go consenting. But I had done what was decreed.

  Autumn came cold that year, and early. I sent to Argos for three ships of grain, and stored it in the vaults under the Rock, and warned all the people to make no great feasts at harvest time, but save their food. Rumor was everywhere; it was too late for silence, which would only make fear grow. And in the month after the longest night, word came that the horde had crossed the Hellespont. They had done it without ships; winter itself had made a bridge for them. In the great cold, huge blocks of ice had drifted down from the Euxine and jammed the narrows, and the strait had frozen round them. They had crossed over dry-shod, in a night and a day. Now they were overrunning Thrace like starving wolves.

  I knew now in my heart that they would come to Attica. I called the chiefs in council, and ordered all the strongholds stored with food and weapons. By luck the harvests had been good. Over in Euboia, where the straits would protect them, I had a camp built for the women and children and old men, with a great stockade for the cattle. The frosts were over; the first hard buds were on the fig trees; there would be no ice this time. Those who had gold I gave leave to store it in the Rock, and saw just tallies given. Then I sacrificed to Poseidon and Athene, the City’s gods, and gave offerings to the dead kings at their tombs. Remembering Oedipus and his blessing, I went out to Kolonos and made gifts to him also.

  All winter the horde worked down southward, picking clean the hamlets and the farms. Some small strongholds fell, but the great ones held, where the people had fled with their stock and stores. So the horde lived leanly on the gleanings of the fields, on roots, and wild game; on old horses and sick cattle not worth saving, and the sack of lonely farmsteads, which they burned behind them. Pirithoos sent me word when they reached Thessaly, before the gates of the forts were closed. I knew then that it would not be long.

  So the herds of Attica were rafted over to Euboia, and after them all the people who could not fight. It was a day of weeping; I held a sacrifice to Hera of the Hearth, to give them hope. But Hippolytos I did not send there. I did not trust him out of my keeping where his mother’s enemies could seize their chance. I sent him oversea the other way, to Troizen and to Pittheus my grandfather. He and my mother would understand him, if anyone could; and he would be safe there as I had been in childhood when my father was fighting for his kingdom. When he had taken leave of his mother, I said good-by to him. He looked white and still; but he did not ask to stay; I guessed he had begged that of her already. At the last he roused himself to smile, remembering one must do so to warriors before battle. I saw there the makings of a king. He was too young yet to say to him, “If I die, I leave you this realm, but you will have to fight for it.” The old man at Troizen knew my mind, but he must be growing frail, and could not be much longer above the earth. To the gods I commended him, and saw his pale bright hair in pale bright sunlight grow faint as he sailed away.

  Now fresh news came to us every day, as fugitives came over Parnes through the passes, half dead from the mountain cold, with babes on their backs and blackened toes that died from off their feet. I shipped them to Euboia or sent them down to Sounion. And I set watch-posts above the passes, with great beacons piled up to light for warning. In my mind was the thought that Attica is Land’s End. Till now they had only had to fight for the day’s food; down here they must fight for being.

  The fugitives told their tales, and the people listened with fear-sharp ears. And each tale had some word of the warrior women, the Sarmatians who must each bring as her bride-dower the head of an enemy killed by her hand in battle; and the bright-clad Moon Maids charmed against fear and weapons, who led the vanguard. All this I learned from the suppliants when I questioned them. My own folk never spoke of it in my hearing. We both knew what that meant.

  One morning Hippolyta got up from my side, and went over to the arms upon the wall, and put on the dress she wore when she drilled her Guard.

  I jumped up and put my hand on hers to stay her. She shook her head, saying, “Indeed it is time.”

  “Steady, little leopard,” I said to her. She looked thinner, and too clear, as if burning with an inward flame. I told you to let me deal. I am taking those lads back into the Palace Guard; you need answer for them no longer.”

  She searched my face. They have not told you. I must then, since they are all afraid. The barons have been putting it about that the Maidens are coming for my sake, to avenge the slight to me, because you married the Cretan. They are saying I sent them word.”

  Without thinking what I did, I took one of the javelins from her; then I found I had broken it in my hands.

  She said to me, “Dear love, you have made there your own omen. With such broken arms you will go to battle, if in anger you divide your chiefs and warriors. You can do nothing, Theseus. The Athenians will believe what they can see. I must answer for myself; no one else can do it.”

  “When we first met,” I said to her, “you called me pirate. And what better have I been to you, if it comes to this?”

 
; “Hush,” she said, “these are words,” and kissed me. “Fate and Necessity are here; and like us, they are what they are.”

  Then she went out and called her Guard, and spoke to them of the trial to come, urging them on to honor, before she put them to throwing at the mark. The youths sang out her paean; the barons’ faction looked downcast. It was true enough that she had done what I could not. Afterwards she went about laughing and gay. It deceived everyone but me.

  That night our love burned up as bright as it had beside the Euxine. But in the quiet after, when the heart tells all it knows, she said, “Is it certain they have wronged me? What if I have really brought this on the land?”

  I tried to hush her. There are some things best not spoken of, lest you give them power. But she whispered, “What I gave you, Theseus, I had vowed before to the Maiden. Did you guess?”

  I answered, “Yes. But there was some god within us. What could we do?”

  “Nothing, perhaps. If two gods do battle for us, it is our fate. But the loser will be angry, and is still a god.”

  “So is the winner. Let us trust the strongest.”

  “Let us keep faith. One does not change sides upon the field… We said that Maiden Crag was far away, but now it has come to find us.”

  “Sleep, little leopard. There is work tomorrow.”

  In that I was right. Before the stars had paled, the light of the beacons leaped on Parnes; and at daybreak there was war-smoke on the hills.

  It took them two days to come down through the passes. The watch I had set there harried them by rolling boulders down, and shooting from the heights. I could not spare men for more. Soon we saw from the walls the dark tide creeping on the plain, like waters that have cracked the dam. I did not go out to meet them. We were too few. The men of Eleusis had to hold their own strongholds, and the men of Megara to close the Isthmus. And if all of us had come out into the plain together, we would still have been swept away.

  I trusted in the Rock, as my fathers had for longer than men remember. It would be a siege; but one done backwards; it was we who must sit down and starve them out. In these early months, the fields were bare of everything; they could not close us round and wait in quiet. To get a living at all, they would have to straggle. The farms were stripped bare, the strongholds well stocked and manned. I reckoned to let them waste themselves little by little, with want and vain assaults; then when they were most dispersed and weakened, to choose my time.

  As they came near I saw they had cattle with them. But they were lean with winter grazing, and when they were gone there would be no more. As for us, men can live long and keep their strength up on barley and cheese and raisins, olive oil and wine.

  The Eleusinians had sent their cattle and the useless mouths across to Salamis; and there also I sent my ships. We had signals agreed on, smoke by day and fire by night. They knew my plan for them, when the time came.

  The moving mass came over the level plain; the cattle slowly, the warriors at the front and flanks, with horses and in chariots, going about the horde. I remembered old tales of how our own fathers had come down like this from the north; just so they must have looked to the Shore Folk, gazing from this rock that they could not hold. I wondered how it had fallen, by treachery or assault. Then I called the herald, and said, “Sound for the fire.”

  He blew; and from the houses down below, outside the walls, came the first thin smoke. Soon flames leaped through it, for brushwood was stacked inside. I had left this till the enemy was in sight, to daunt them. Before long there was a heat like summer on the Rock; we coughed in the smoke, and the warriors whose homes were burning smiled grimly. The men who had set the torches came clambering back; then the gates were closed, and great millstones rolled behind them. The Rock was sealed.

  Now after so much haste and toil there was a pause. The fire had devoured the smoke; the distant hills seemed to dance and ripple in the rising air; one heard no sound but the roar of flames and the loud crack of timber. All night it spurted and crumbled and flared again, so bright that the watchmen could not see beyond it. But at dawn the horde was on the move, and by noon the vanguard was before the Citadel.

  Soon all the plain between us and the harbor seemed filled as if by swarming ants. It was well to be seen that they were led by warriors; they took the low hills that faced the Rock, and began to throw up walls.

  On the Palace roof Hippolyta watched beside me. Her eyes were good, as mine are. The clothes of the Scythians seem dark from far away, when you do not see their ornaments. Even from here, you could not mistake the bright spots of color moving about in front, the scarlet and saffron and purple of the Moon Maids. I remembered how she had told me the chief of them had their own colors, which they were known by. I turned to her, and found her looking at my face. So she stood awhile, then said, “I have seen nothing there but your enemies. Come, let us go in.”

  Thus the siege began. They took all the hills: the Pnyx where I called the people to Assembly, the Hill of Apollo and the Muses, the Hill of Nymphs; all but the Hill of Ares, which faces the great gate. That is in bowshot, and my Cretan archers covered it. One night when the moon was dark the enemy crept up there and built a bulwark; from that time on, stray arrows fell within the walls, but we shooting down did better, and they never came there in strength.

  The nights were worst. There seemed as many watch-fires on the plain as the sky had stars. But, as I would tell the men on the walls when I did my night-round, many were cook-fires at which they were eating up their stores, and they had all their folk there, while we were warriors only. In rain or snow, rested or weary, I always went round the walls in the dead hour of night. It was partly to see good watch kept, but partly lest the married men grow envious; for, except the priestesses, mine was the only woman on the Rock. Often she would divide the round with me. She knew each man’s name as well as I did. Now the old men who hated her the most were gone with the women to Euboia, factions grew faint, and the danger that pressed us round drew us together. Valor and steadfastness and high-hearted laughter were the riches of our state; no one could show them forth as she did, and not be loved.

  And then one morning, at the light of day an arrow was found shot from the Hill of Ares. It had a sickle head, which is for witchcraft, and a letter wrapped round the shaft. No one could read the language, and they brought it me to see. Hippolyta, who was by me, took it from my hand, saying, “I can read it.”

  She read with a steady countenance; but I saw her face grow drawn, as if it had drunk her blood. At the end she paused, but not for long. Then she said aloud, in hearing of the warriors round us, “This was for me. They ask me, because I was once a Moon Maid, to let them in by the postern.” Only I, who was near enough to touch her, could tell that she was trembling. “If more of these come,” she said, “I will not see them. Give them to the King.”

  They murmured together, but I could hear they were praising her. Then Menestheus said, as eagerly as if he feared someone would be before him, “Did they fix a signal? Or name a night?”

  It was then I wished for the first time I had put him to death with the rest of his clan. He had no feeling, but for himself, and saw that everywhere. Such men turn even the good they seek to evil.

  I took the letter from her hand and shredded it, and scattered it on the wind. “Her honor is mine,” I said. “Do you think it fit for a warrior, to play decoy and lure old comrades into ambush? If any man here would do it, I would not trust my back to him in battle.” Then I looked at him straight. He turned red and went away.

  When we were alone, she said, “They would have guessed. To tell them outright was better.”

  “Yes, little leopard,” I said, “but now tell all. What threat did they put on you if you said no?”

  “Oh, they reproached me for living on when I had lost my maidenhood. Then they said the Goddess would forgive me if I betrayed the Citadel, because you took me against my will.” She smiled. But when I had her in my arms I felt on my cheek
her tears, trickling like blood in silence. I knew then that they had cursed her. And the curse had not far to fly.

  My own body seemed to chill and sink, as if I felt it with her. But I forced a cheerful face, for curses feed on fear, as I have often seen. “Apollo will take it off,” I said. “He can cleanse a man even from his mother’s blood; this will be nothing to him. He is Artemis’ own brother, and she must obey him. Once he himself took a huntress from her, and got her with child, and their son founded a city; You will see, he will be your friend. Get ready, we will go to the shrine together.”

  She said she would; but some of the captains had to speak with me, and while I was busy she slipped off there alone. When she came back she looked clear and calm, and said the god had given omens of consent to turn the curse aside. So I was glad and put it from me.

  For two nights all was quiet. I guessed they had waited till then for a sign from her. The third night, they tried to scale the walls.

  Some time before, I had picked out the men who saw best in the dark, and had one or two on every night-watch, walking round and round. But for that, the attack might have succeeded; it was led by skillful climbers, who had blackened their faces and their limbs. At the alarm, we threw down torches and fired the brush below; by that light we aimed our spears and arrows, and the slingers shot. Hippolyta with her strong short Cretan bow stood at my side, aiming steadily as if at the mark. She had changed since the letter came; I felt her no longer pulled two ways. When the dead were carried off below she stood quiet and calm. She sang with our men the paean of victory, and came away with me and was gentle, saying little. Her still face in the torchlight put me in mind of her son’s.

  As the days passed, we saw the cattle dwindling upon the plain; and bands of Scythians would go off into the country round. They seldom brought cattle back with them, mostly poor herds of goats; and often the men looked fewer. Then a smoke would go up from some castle that its lord still held, on Hymettos or towards Eleusis, signalling that they had beaten off a raid, or, with an extra puff, that they had made a good killing. But one day over on Kithairon, instead of the signal-smoke came a great cloud, and we saw no more from them. It was the hold that had been Prokrustes’; with so many angry ghosts in it, one could not expect much luck. That time the band returned well laden, and we heard the rejoicings from our walls. Still the fort had been stocked for a garrison, not a tribe. Soon they were ranging further and further off.