The Bull from the Sea

by Mary Renault

  “What is she?” I thought. “Where was she a child? For she was not born on this mountain, like a fox or a bird. These savage rites, this fierceness, how deep are they in her soul? The lioness is noble, but only a madman walks into her lair. She made me a vow before the battle; but do her customs bind her? Did she even understand it clearly, in a tongue that was not her own? She is proud; she offered torches to light the ground. She is faithful; she stood naked before the warriors, to save her friend. But the lioness fights for her kind, yet is death to men. Have the gods sent her me to fill my life or end it? It is the one or the other, that is sure.”

  “So, then,” I thought; “if one accepts one’s fate, one must go to meet it. Come, let us see.”

  She sat on the side of the bed, with the cup and trencher by her. Her eyes never left me, as I took the things away; though she sat unflinching, I could feel her all sparks like a cornered cat. I spoke to her gently, giving her time to follow. “I must go for a while, to see the camp in order and set the watches. No one will come in. But it is not good to be among strangers weaponless. Have this to keep by you.” And I unslung my sword, and put it in her hands.

  She took it from me, stared at it and then at me. I did not stir. I thought of the Mystery, the girl with the daggers leaping forward. In the lamplight, gazing at the sword with wide strange eyes, she was beautiful as deadly things are, lynxes, or wolves, or the mountain spirits who lure men to the cliff. I stood with my empty hands before her. Presently she slid the blade half out, and touched the edge with her fingers, and stroked the inlaid pattern to feel the work. “It was my father’s and my grandfather’s,” I said. “But my Cretan swordsmith shall make you one as good.”

  She had twisted back her hair into its thick braid; they only loosen it for the Dance; but it was soft and wild as a child’s about the brows. Her pigtail had fallen forward, as she bent over the sword. She gave it a tug—the first time I ever saw that trick of hers—and peered at me, her eyes bright with danger, fearing some trick. “What is it?” I said. “I am only doing as I promised. As for why, I have told you why.”

  I left her with the sword across her knees, her head on one side, looking at the inlay and pulling at her hair.

  As I was posting the guards, my servant came up and asked if the girl would fetch the water and wash me, as though she were some common prize of the spear. I told him to mend his manners, and take hot water to her instead. For myself I washed at the fountain. But I saw my men staring and glancing. If I did not spend the night in there, they would think I was off my head, or else afraid.

  After a while I scratched on the door, and opened it. She had left the lamp burning; I saw her bare arm slide from the bed to the floor and grasp the sword. She had a linen shift on; her outer things hung on the bedpost. She had trusted me. But she could not have understood I was coming back. Her limbs had grown taut and still, her eyes had narrowed. If she had got to die, she was going down to the River with her enemy, as a warrior ought. The more honor to her, I thought.

  “It’s only I,” I said. “Why don’t you sleep; you have had work enough. I shall lie here at the door, to keep it; that is best, among roving warriors.” I looked at the shadows round her bright open eyes; her fate had moved too fast for her. Torn from her kind and all she knew, she had no one but me to look to. “Take care of the sword till morning,” I said. “I have got my spear.”

  I took off my leather corselet. As I bent to put out the lamp, I heard her speak; a low half-muffled growl, not like her clear voice before the fight. I came towards her, but her eyes were like a wild-cat’s holed up in a rock, so I stopped again. “What is it, then?” I said. “I cannot hear you.” She slid her arm out of bed, and pointed to the wound on my leg, which I had had no time to see to. “Wash!” she said, and jerked her thumb towards the ground, growling, “Bad, bad.”

  I told her it had dried, and would do in the sea tomorrow; but she pointed at the wine-flask, saying, “Good!” She was forgetting the language, with all that she had been through. Poor girl, I thought; everyone knows what a captive’s lot is like, when the man who took her dies. So to give her some peace I washed it, though it smarted from the wine, and fresh blood came.

  “Look,” I said. “All clean.” She raised her head from the homespun pillow, and muttered something. “Goodnight, Hippolyta. You are my honored guest-friend, sacred to the gods. A blessing on your sleep.”

  I stood a moment, wishing only to put my hand upon her head; it would feel like a child’s, I thought, through the fine hair. But it might scare her; so I smiled, and went to the lamp again. I heard her voice, under the blanket, growl out, “Good night” as I drew away.

  Between my heart’s happiness, and the fleas in the pallet, I could not sleep. I dreamed, of course, of love to come; but even this time as it was seemed precious. Some god must have warned me that there was none to waste.

  Outside was the village square of beaten earth; the sentries had got a watch-fire going there, which they fed all night. Its light came through the door-chinks and the little window, nearly as bright as the lamp had been. She turned on her side, and saw me looking at her; then she turned again, and faced away. But presently she dozed, and at last slept deeply. She was weary, and young. Little by little her even breathing lulled me, till I grew drowsy myself. It had been a long climb, round through the woods and up the mountain.

  I woke to a scratching on the wall. It was only thin daub-and-wattle. Rats I loathe; they come on battlefields for what the kites and dogs have left. The first sound of their gnawing always wakes me. The watch-fire had burned down dull and red; it must be halfway to morning. I was sleepy still, and thought, “Let it go, since my dog’s in Athens.” Then a flake of plaster fell from the wall beside her bed. There was a hole; and a hand came through it.

  I thought at first that one of my men had had the impudence to make a peephole, and reached softly for my spear. But as the hand came in, I saw it was finer than a man’s, and had a sleeve of embroidered leather. It reached down, and touched her shoulder. Then I lay quiet, and looked under my eyelids.

  She woke with a start and gasp, having forgotten where she was. Then she saw, and turned to look if I did. But I had foxed in time. She took the hand in both hers, and laid it against her cheek. She looked young, wild and lost, crouched by the wall in the faint firelight with the dip of shadow under her throat. And yet, it seemed she was offering comfort more than taking it.

  The hand clenched hard on hers, then slipped back into the wall. When it came again, there was a dagger in it.

  She gazed, unmoving; and so did I. It was like the daggers of the Mystery; short, thin and needle-pointed. There was a moment’s waiting, then a scratch upon the wall; I guessed there was a guard not far off, and there could be no whispers. At the sound she took the knife, and stroked the hand and kissed it. Then it went away.

  She kneeled on the bed and put her eye to the hole; but too late it seemed, for she soon left it, and sat with her feet curled under her, the weapon in her hands. The light flickered on it, as she shivered in the cold before the dawn. Her little shift left bare her arms and her long slim legs, with a fine silk upon their brown like the silk of beechnuts. Presently she tried the point upon her fingertip, and laid it down on the blanket, and sat some time with her arms wrapped round her breast. She was looking down at the floor beside the bed; I remembered, though I could not move to see, that it was where she had put the sword.

  At last she lifted her hands in prayer, and turned up her face to where no moon was, but only the dusty rafters. She took the dagger in her hand, and slid to her feet, and came towards me softly.

  She would see now if I looked, so I closed my eyes. I could hear her light breathing, smell her warm shift and her hair. With any other woman in the world, I would have jumped up laughing and closed with her. But like a man bound by a god, I could not do it. Even though I could not tell what bidding had been put on her, stronger than her vow to me—for she was King no longer, and
under who knew what laws—yet I could not do it. I lay hearing my heartbeats and her breath; remembering how her javelin had pierced my shield, I thought, “If it comes, it will be quickly done.” The wait seemed endless; my heart drummed over and over, “I must know, I must know.”

  She drew a short sharp breath, leaning close above me. Her breathing paused. I thought, “Is she getting ready?” Then something touched me; but it was neither hand nor bronze. It was a drop of warm water falling on my face.

  She was gone. I heard her soft flying footfalls. With the grunt of a man half wakened, I turned over and lay still again, where I could see from the side of my eye.

  The fire outside had been raked together, and put up a spurt of flame. It glittered on her tears, as she stood fighting for silence. The back of her hand with the knife still clenched in it was pressed against her teeth, and her breasts moved shudderingly under the thin white shift. When she lifted the hem to wipe her eyes, it hardly roused me, I felt such pity for her. I longed then to speak; but I feared to shame her, remembering her pride.

  She grew quiet after a while. Her arms fell to her sides; she stood spear-straight, looking before her. Then slowly she lifted the dagger up, as if offering it to heaven. Her lips moved, and her arms passed to and fro, weaving a subtle pattern. I watched her, wondering; then I remembered. It was the ritual of the Dance. Again she raised up the knife; her knuckles were white upon the hilt, and the point hung over her breast.

  In the Cretan bull ring I had lived by swiftness; but in all my life I have never moved so fast. I was there before the sight of my eyes caught up with me, one arm about her, the other grasping her wrist.

  I took the knife and tossed it into a corner, and held her away with her shoulders between my hands, in case I should forget myself. She stood shaking like a plucked harp-string, and choking back her tears as if they were something against nature. “Come, child,” I said. “It is over. Be at peace.”

  All the Shore Folk speech had been driven out of her. Her eyes searched my face, asking the questions she would have been too proud to put her tongue to, if she had known the words. “Come,” I said, “you are catching cold.” I sat her on the side of the bed and wrapped the blanket round her, and called through the window to the man on guard, “Bring me a crock of fire.”

  He answered startled; I could hear them outside muttering. I turned back to her and said, “You know, who are a warrior, that one often stakes one’s life on a little thing. So why not on a great one? That was what I thought.”

  “You won the fight.” She had looked down, and I could hardly hear her. “You fought fair, so …” Her fingers twisted in a fold of the blanket.

  The guard scratched and coughed outside; he had brought the fire in a clay mixing-bowl. I took it at the door from him, and set it by her feet on the earthen floor. She sat staring into it, and did not turn when I sat down beside her.

  “I shall watch with you now till light, in case anyone comes to trouble you again. Sleep if you like.” She was silent, gazing into the embers. “Don’t grieve,” I said. “You were a faithful hearth-friend, and true to your warrior’s vow.”

  She shook her head, and murmured something. I could tell what it meant: “But I broke another.”

  “We are mortal,” I said to her. “One can only do so much. It would be a bad business, if the gods were less just than men.”

  She did not answer; and being so near, I saw well enough she could not. There was no doubt what she was needing, warrior or not; so I put my arm about her, and said, “What is it?” softly.

  This brought the rain from the sky. She had been taught it was shameful to weep, and at first it hurt her, breaking through; but presently as it eased her heart she lay in my arms with the strain and stretch all loosened, as trusting as a child. But she was not that; she was a woman eighteen years old, strong, with warm blood in her; and when man and woman are born to love as we were, they will find it by any road. We felt one another’s mind, as we had felt it fighting; love came to us as birth does, knowing its own time better than those who wait for it. Though she knew less than any maid who has heard the women chatter, yet she knew more, knowing only me. My own life left me to live in her; with all women before I had been myself alone. And though what I had learned with them, which I had thought was much, went all for nothing, yet I learned again from her trust, and it was enough.

  By daybreak, we had forgotten the need of words, or that we had never spoken together at all in our own tongues. When the Guard outside argued together if they should dare to wake me, she knew by my smiling what they said; we pulled the blanket over our heads till they had looked through the keyhole and gone away. Not till I heard the voice of a runner from the ships, sent up by Pirithoos to learn if I was dead, did I come back like a stranger to the world of mortal men.

  III

  THE STRAITS OF HELLE passed like a dream. Even its wars were dreamlike. All things else were a sleep we woke from to one another. I did not care what my men made of it, and they knew better than to tell me. As long as they showed her respect, it was all I asked.

  As for Pirithoos, when I brought her down to the camp he rolled his eyes to heaven; but having given me up he was glad to see me, and kept the right side of a quarrel. She was proud, and had cause to be shy, and at first she took against his roughness. But valor won him always, even in women; and when he found she knew the war-customs all along the coast as far as the mouth of Hellespont, he changed his tune. In council of war they got a respect for one another which turned to liking. She was never his notion of a girl; if she had been a youth, indeed, he would have settled to it more easily, and half the time in those early days he treated her like a boy of some kingly house over whom I had lost my head. But, knowing nothing of such customs, she only felt his good will; before long, he was teaching her pirates’ Greek.

  She warned us, among other things, that the tribes who had let us through on the voyage out would attack us when we came back laden. So we were ready. These wars, when I remember them now, come back to me shining like harpers’ tales. I could not put hand or foot wrong with her there beside me. Lovers of boys may say it is the same; but I should think it is easy to be looked up to by a lad not come to his full strength, whom you are teaching all he knows and helping out when he is overmatched. We two fought like one. We were still finding one another; and war, to those who understand it, shows forth a man. We learned as much of each other in battle as we did in bed. It is good to be loved for the truth struck out of one in the eye of death, by a lover who has no fear to make her judgment humble. Her face was pure in battle, as it had been when she offered to the Goddess. Yet it was not blood she offered, nor the death of the enemy, but faith and valor, and the victory over fear and pain. There is no cruelty in the face of the lioness.

  We fought among the longships that came forth to meet us; and at the springs of fresh water on the slopes; and in the creek where we beached to caulk the hulls, and the dark blue-painted Thracians charged us naked, creeping up behind the sandhills and scrubby tamarisks. By night we waked from each other’s arms to take up shield and spear; and sometimes even by day, when the fight was over, we would go off with its blood and dust still on us, to lie down in love among the bracken or the dunes; and if there was nowhere to go it was a grief to us.

  My men found this strange, which was enough to make them mistrust it. It is the mark of little men to like only what they know; one step beyond, and they feel the black cold of chaos. They had taken for granted that I meant to break her in, and till I had made a house-woman of her like any other, would feel myself half a man. As for my manhood, I reckoned it was proved by now and I could leave such cares to others; for the rest, one does not clip one’s hawk and put it in the henyard. For her I was man enough.

  Pirithoos, who had more sense than this, still wondered aloud that mad for her as I was, I would risk her in war. I could only tell him it was as it was. Besides, I had beaten her hand to hand, her first defeat since she took
up arms; and as our bodies knew each other’s needs without asking, so with our souls. It was a joy to feel her get back her pride. He would not have understood, however; and still less did my fools of spearmen. If I had torn some screaming girl-child from the household altar, and forced her before her mother, it would have been all in the day’s work to most of them. But now, I started to find the evil-eye sign chalked upon the benches. They thought she had bewitched me. Pirithoos said it was because when we fought together we never got a scratch, and the Amazons were said to have a charm against it. At this I said no more; if one of them after all had seen the Mystery, I did not want to be told.

  We came out into the Hellene seas and fair blue weather. All day we would sit handfast on the poop, watching the shores and islands, and learning to talk with words. What with her tongue and mine and the Shore Folk speech stringing it together, it was a patched-up business at first; but it served our turn.

  “When I told you my name,” I said, “you knew it.”

  “Oh, yes. The harpers came to us every year.”

  “Did I look as you had thought?” I know what harpers are, and wondered if she had expected a man seven feet high. There was barely an inch between us.

  “Yes,” she said. “Like the bull-dancers in the pictures, light and quick. But you had put up your hair under your helmet. I missed your long hair.” She touched it as it lay over her shoulder. Then she said, “On New Moon’s Eve I saw an omen, a falling star. And I thought when you came, It fell for me. I must die; but with honor, by this great warrior; and they will put my name in the Winter Song.’ I felt—oh, a change, an end.”