The Bull From the Sea: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  I was glad when the shield was gone. It made me freer, given altogether into the hand of the god. This is a mystery, which I tell only to kings, since it concerns them: consent and fear nothing, for the god will enter you and take away your grief. I give you this counsel, which no other man has lived to give. Surely it must be good for something, to some leader of the people in time to come. Or why did I live?

  The warriors came with me, singing the paean and cheering, till the hill’s steepness caught their breath. No one cried out on me for going shieldless; they saw that the god inspired me, and thought I had omens that I could not fall. It gave them a feel of luck. Even Hippolyta did not reproach me. She kept close at my side, except when she paused to shoot. The Moon Maids above had seen her; they screamed their war-yells at her, and shook clenched fists. But her face was rapt and tranquil. Even when we saw upon the ramparts the Maiden King, Molpadia, lifting the sacred ax and calling on the Goddess, it did not change.

  The crest was near. Arrows and stones and javelins flew round me, and passed me by as if the god enclosed me in his hollowed hands. When I fall, I thought, this strength I feel will flow into my people; they will not lose heart at my death. I felt love for them, not hatred of the enemy, who were doing as they must, as our own folk had done before them. Their fate was between them and the gods, and so was ours.

  The King of the Maidens put down her ax, and reached her hand to her bow. As she took aim, I felt the music of the god rise like a thousand sweet-toned horns. It sang to me that I should not leave my people nor the Rock, that my shade would come back here on great days of joy and peril, called by their paeans and prayers. As the bent bow straightened, I thought, “It is now.” But no arrow pierced me. Only the music ceased, in a moment, cut off and quenched so that my head was giddy at the silence; and in its place I heard a cry.

  The gold plume was falling, that had tossed so lightly, going down with a sinking flutter, like a shot bird’s. Closed in with the god, sure of my death, I had not seen her leap before me. She dropped to her knees, with outstretched hands; before I could reach her she pitched forward, and then heeled sideways, turned by the arrow fixed in her breast.

  I kneeled on the sharp rocks, and took her in my arms. The voice of the god, the wind-borne lightness, had gone like the dream one wakes from to a cruel day. Her eyes were wandering, blind with death already; only her hand groped here and there. When I took it in mine her fingers tightened, and her lips moved in a smile.

  They parted to speak; but only the death-gasp came from them. Her soul paused for a moment, hung on her flickering breath. She gave a great jerk and shudder, as if a strong cord had broken. Then she grew heavy, and I knew that she had gone.

  I crouched above her, the battle all about me. If they had passed on and left me, I would not have known. So stoops the wolf whose mate has fallen to the hunters, dumb, without understanding, and as she stirs from his licking, looks to see her move with life again.

  Yet the knowledge of a man was in me. I saw how she had slipped off in secret to trick me with Apollo, conjuring him who had loved a huntress to let her take my death.

  I raised my eyes to the hilltop, drawn by noise. Molpadia had lifted up her ax to heaven; there was a shout of triumph from the Amazons, like a wild laugh.

  I got then to my feet. Standing about me I saw the lads of her Guard. They were weeping, though my eyes were dry; it was many days before that comfort eased me. “Stay with her till I come,” I said to those who were nearest. Beyond them were the warriors; the whole host had its eyes on me. They were ready; they had known me before I knew myself. But I felt it now, as the dog-wolf feels it; that for the pain of loss there is no cure, but anger eats and is filled.

  I leaped up on a rock, where I could be seen, and gave my war-yell.

  Three times I shouted; and at each the roar of the host rose higher, as if I called up the sea. On the hill I saw the hands of the archers and slingers sink, and faces turn to one another. Then I ran forward.

  The climbing of the slope and of the earthwork, I remember that. I scrambled up the walls with my hands and feet and spear-butt. Then I was among them. But not much of that day comes back to me, after I began to kill.

  I know I did not draw my sword, for it came back bright in its scabbard. Soon after I scaled the heights, there was an ax in my hands. The ax was good; as it bit and smashed about me, I felt it matched to my desire. I did not look to see if my men were following; I felt them there, like red sparks streaming behind my rage. I might have outpaced them if I had gone straight onward; but I was thorough, and killed also on either side.

  I could not quench the thirst that drove me. Men who could die I struck; their blood ran down the lifted ax and made my knuckles sticky. But I could not kill the pain within; I could not kill fate, nor the gods, nor the knowledge that tore my heart, that I was angry also with her. Why had she meddled, when all was well? She had taken too much upon her. We were equal war-comrades, but only one was king. I had joined hands with my fate, and seen my finished days as a harper’s song. There need have been no parting, since she held her life so light. Hand in hand we could have crossed the River to the house of Hades. But she had left me alone, with my people about my neck and no god to guide me, to be king, and live.

  My soul cried vengeance, and I took it where I could. Soon no one was left to kill on the Hill of Pnyx; I led on over the saddle, towards the Hill of the Nymphs. They were there on the top, and I shouted out to them. A few arrows came down. But they broke quickly before us, and I knew by their squealing they were on the run. Men were shouting behind me that we had saved the City. But I only felt too many would get away. In the pursuit I fell; a man of my Guard helped me to my feet again; I gazed round blinking, to find the Scythians streaming down the slopes towards the plain, and the men from the ships awaiting them. But beyond, on the hill ahead, I saw armed warriors; and shouting that these should not escape us, I charged towards them. Their leader ran before; I gave my war-call; but he cried to me, “Sir, it is I! Will someone look to the King; he cannot see. It is Amyntor, Theseus! The field is ours. How is it with you, sir; what is it?”

  I lowered the ax, and the men who had held me stood away. My eyes cleared slowly, and I saw the army from the Citadel, meeting mine and cheering, with men weeping for joy. I stood there, dreading to awaken, while they talked across me softly, as men do about the dying. One said, “He must have taken a head-blow.” But another answered, “No. Where is the Amazon?”

  That I understood; and I answered, “On the Hill of Pnyx. I will bring her home.”

  I started to walk back there, then stopped, and said, “First bring me Molpadia, King of the Maidens. She has a debt to pay.”

  A captain of Athens who had fought along with me said she was dead. It did not please me, and I asked who killed her. “Why, sir,” he answered, “you yourself with her own ax, as soon as you scaled the heights. There it is in your hand; you used it all through the battle.”

  I wiped it on the grass, and looked. It had a slender shaft, and a blade like a crescent moon, with signs of silver laid into the bronze. When first she rode to me on the heights of Maiden Crag, this had been in her hands. All along, it had gone with me as if it felt my thought.

  Since that day I have gone into battle with no other weapon. Even years after, it seemed still to have the feel of her. But all things fade. It has forgotten her hand, and knows only mine.

  She lay on the hillside, with the young men round her. They had straightened her, and laid her upon a shield. Not daring to touch the arrow, they had sent the youngest to the Citadel, to fetch the priest of Apollo. He had pronounced her dead, and drawn it out, and covered her with a pall of scarlet lined with blue; and the lads had laid her hands upon her sword. The priest said to me, The Lord Paian sent her the omen. But she asked if it was his command to keep it secret; and he answered according to her wish.”

  “Sir,” said the youths, “a bier is coming for her. Shall we carry her down the hi
ll?”

  I answered, “You have done well, but it is enough now. Leave her to me.”

  I took off the pall, and picked her up in my arms. Her body was cold, the limbs beginning to stiffen. I had been gone too long; her shade was far off already. I held a corpse with her face. She had felt like sleep, when I went away.

  At the foot of the hill they met us with the bier, and I laid her on it; the battle had been long, and I was tired. As we came nearer to the Rock, I heard the paeans of victory. It stirred my anger; yet it was what she would have wished to hear.

  Soon I too must give thanks, standing before the gods for the Athenians; that was my work. The City had been saved for a thousand years. This day, I thought, will be sung of; and I seemed to hear the song. Thus, fell King Theseus, giving his life for the people; in the flower of his age, with his love beside him, honored by gods and men.”

  The sweat of battle had cooled upon me; I felt a sharp wind from the sea. The Palace stood on its rock and waited. It was not long past noon. I could not tell what I should fill even this one day with; and there were years ahead. She had taken my death, lover for lover; she had been a woman at the last. She who was once a king should have known that only a king can offer for the people. The gods are just; but one cannot mock them.

  She had saved her man alive to weep for her. But the King had been called; and the King had died.

  Epidauros

  I

  I HAVE SAILED ALL the seas since then, and sacked many cities. Unless there was war, I went roving with Pirithoos every year. To see new things, and live from day to day, is better than wine or poppy, and fitter for a man. I have passed between Scylla and Charybdis by the smoking snows; and off the Siren Rocks, where the wreckers send their girls to sing you over, I have caught a siren and lived to tell. Women I have had in plenty, though none for long. A face glimpsed over foreign walls, not to be had without guile and danger; till she is won, it can hold your mind from before and after, and you can believe she will not be like all the rest.

  My people forgave me many years of this, because I had saved the City. Winter was long enough to bring the realm in order; if I found oppression growing up behind my back, I brought down a heavy hand. But by spring I would have wearied of it all, and of the royal rooms where my arms hung alone upon the wall; I would shut the door and be off to sea again.

  If I had stayed in Attica all the year, I could have sent for young Hippolytos, and tried to get him accepted as my heir. Each spring I had half a mind to it. But the sea would call, and new places free from memories. I would leave him in Troizen one year more; he was happy there, with old Pittheus and my mother. When I heard he was known for three kingdoms round as Kouros of the Maiden, I thought of calling at Troizen as I passed; but the wind was contrary, and I let it go. I remembered those stubborn silences. The lad in Crete, who was gay and easy, and would sit at my knee by the hour for sailors’ tales, him I could have talked to; though you would not look at him and say, “There goes a king.”

  One year at the winter’s end, a courier brought a royal letter from old Pittheus, sealed with the Eagle. It was the first I had had since the Cretan War. It said he was feeling the touch of age (the hand was a scribe’s, and the signature looked as if a spider had fallen in the inkwell). It was time to name his heir; and he had chosen Hippolytos.

  I had never thought of this. He had got sons without number. It was true, however, that only my mother was left of his lawful children. He might have chosen me; but seeing how I lived now, I could not blame him; and with Troizen added to my kingdoms, I should have had to give up the sea. I thought the old man had done well and justly by us; it would give the boy standing if he came to Athens, the people might be more ready to accept him there also, and he could still join the kingdoms when I was gone. It reminded me that it was four years since I had last put in at Troizen. The boy must be seventeen.

  In the sailing month I made my way there. As the ship rowed in, I saw the waiting people part, to let through a three-horse chariot. A man stood in it. He was the child I had seen last time.

  He bowled neatly down to the wharfside. The people knuckled their brows before his eye had reached them, and did it smiling. So far, good. As he jumped down, and young men ran to hold his horses, I saw he topped the tallest by half a head.

  He ran aboard to greet me, and went straight down on his knee. As he rose, he took my kiss upon his cheek and gave one; then he went on rising, up and up. He had been too civil to stoop.

  Commanding warriors, I am used to tall men about me. I have met plenty in battle, too, and come off best. I could not tell why this shocked me so, as if it were I who had lessened, or shrunk with age.

  Then my eye took in his beauty. That shocked me too. He was like the image of a god; there seemed a kind of hubris in it; yet it was not that. As he greeted me with the grave reverence proper to some foreign deity, I met his gray eyes, as clear as snow-water; shaped by long gazing, as a sailor’s are, but more still. They seemed to speak to me simply and frankly, in a language I did not know. They were her eyes no longer.

  Tall trees grew on her grave-mound. The pups of our hounds’ last mating had grown gray-nosed and died. Her young Guard had sons who were learning arms. As for me, she would hardly have known the face the mirrors showed me now, gray-bearded, darkened with salt and sun. She had seemed to die again in all these passings. But just now, far off in the chariot, I had seen the hair pale as electrum, the springing stance, the joy in the swift horses, and for a moment she had lived again. She was gone now, and forever.

  He led me to the chariot, mounted, and lashed the reins about him, holding the horses still as bronze for me to get up. The people cheered; he bent over the team as if he were a hired driver, leaving all the cheers to me, but turned with a shy smile to see that I was pleased. He was only a boy still. What I had felt seemed strange and foolish. This was my son and hers; and if I was not proud I must be hard to satisfy.

  I praised his horses and his driving, and asked how long he had handled three. Not long, he said; he had had a pair since he was fourteen, but the third was for great days and festivals. He smiled again. So the sun stirs among the moving barley, though it has been shining all along. I had left him a long time in this little kingdom, when there was a great one in Athens. I had not looked to find him so well content.

  We trotted out through the harbor town, the horses moving like one to his big light hands. He was careful even of the village pye-dogs, leaning out to give them a warning flick. He left me all the greetings, except when the children called to him, at whom he smiled. His bare shoulders shone before me, brown and broad, rippling like the horses’ glossy flanks; his own in their leather short-drawers were lean and strong. With his big-boned hands and feet, he would be taller yet. When I had been a child here, before my father owned me, trying to believe I was the son of a god, this was what I had prayed to grow into; but I had to make do with what I was given. Men have done worse with more.

  As we left the town he pointed things out to me, telling the kingdom’s news, as keen as a young farmer, yet not thinking as yokels do that it filled the world. His sense seemed sound. I wondered what he found to do here. It all seemed like a small-holding, after Attica and Crete.

  He had just touched up the horses for the open road, when a woman rushed out of a hut with a screaming child in her arms, and stood in the way. Instead of shouting to her to look out, he brought the team to a dead stop, took an extra hitch of the reins around his waist, and held out his arms without a word. The mother gave him the child, black in the face and jerking all over. He held and stroked it; presently it got its breath and color back and quieted down, and he handed it back again, saying, “You know you could do that too, and better than I.” She seemed to understand this, blessed him, and said it seldom happened nowadays. As we drove on he said, “Do forgive me, sir. It looked half dead this time, or I’d not have made you wait.”

  “Quite right,” I answered. “I am glad to see yo
u care for all your children, even those who were lightly got.”

  He turned his head, his gray eyes wide open; then he laughed. “Oh, it’s not mine, sir; it is the woodcutter’s.” He went on smiling to himself; then turned serious, and looked as if he would speak, but changed his mind and bent to his driving.

  At the Palace my mother greeted me. While I was a lad in Crete she seemed to age five years in one; since then in this quiet place she had grown no older, and might have been the lad’s mother instead of mine. Some of her half-brothers were there to bid me welcome, men still in their prime, and I watched how they looked at him; he, after all, was a bastard as well as they. But they seemed to accept him, just as the people did. Perhaps it was this gift of healing. No one had sent me word of it; but then I had not sent for news.

  Inside, my mother said to me, “I will see if Father is ready. I told him you were coming, Theseus, but he forgets again. Now at the last he calls the women to wash and comb him. Hippolytos, don’t stand dreaming; look after your father and see he has some wine.”

  He served me himself, sending off the steward. When I bade him sit, he took a low stool, and sat with his arms folded lightly upon his knees. Looking at their long muscles and remembering them at the reins, I thought, “What arms for a woman!” It was time he thought about marriage; if Pittheus was too old to see to it, I had better take it in hand.

  But when I asked him if he had a girl in mind, he looked amazed, and answered, “Oh, no, sir. It’s too late to think of that.”

  “Too late?” I said staring. But to laugh would hurt him, and do no good. “Come, lad; whatever happened, everything passes. A girl, was it, or a boy?”