The Bull from the Sea

by Mary Renault

  A ship from Troizen brought me a letter from Hippolytos. He said that Akamas was much better, going to the sanctuary only one night in three, to take his physic and sleep. “So, Father, will you forgive me now for going? It was no wish of mine. No other man can teach me what I was learning from you. And I was happy.”

  This letter was carved in wax, on a pair of tablets much worked over, as if it had cost him thought. I put it away, in the chest with his mother’s things.

  The house was so quiet, one might have hoped for peace. But as soon as her son had gone, Phaedra began to fret over him: first that he would have a seizure, and die without her near; and then, when the news was good, that he would forget her. She seemed always sick, yet the doctors could put no name to it, except this grieving for the boy. I tried to reason with her; was it love, I said, to want him back uncured? These fits could cripple his life, and the kingdom’s with it. In a word, it could not be. I feared an outcry; but she said quite meekly, “You are right, Theseus. Yet I can’t rest night or day, for fear he is in some danger and a god is warning me. Do only this for me: let me go myself to Troizen, to your mother, and stay awhile. I could see the doctors at Epidauros, too. Do let me go; surely it is not much to ask.”

  “It is a good deal,” I said. “Crete would be well enough; but Troizen will make people think you are being sent out of the way. We can do without such talk.” It was too late now for Crete, the gales had started. I looked about her room: the mess of clothes and jewels hung up or thrown down when she would not choose; the phials and jars and mirrors, the pots of physic everywhere; the warm frowst of women in a closed-up place; and I remembered it long ago, curtains flung wide to the sun, clean polished wood smelling of beeswax and lemon thyme; a bow and a silk cap on the unused bed; a lyre propped against the window-column, and crumbs on the sill for birds.

  The place looked hateful to me, spoiled and profaned. I wanted only to be gone; but the sailing months were over. So I said, “Very well; we will both visit Troizen, and see the boy. Then no one can make mischief of it.”

  She offered again to go alone, saying she would not be a burden. “You will be none,” I answered, “so long as you keep peace with Hippolytos. He is master of the house already, in all but name, and you will be his guest. Any complaint you have, you must bring to me.”

  I sent a courier on over the Isthmus, to announce our coming. But the ways were foul; he fell down a gully, was nursed by ignorant folk, and did not get his message on till we ourselves had started.

  After Akamas’ sickness, the priests at Athens had taken omens, and said it was a blood-curse for the Pallantids, killed all those years ago in my father’s war. My guess was that the doctors were jealous of Epidauros. But to please everyone, and appease the Gentle Ones if they were really angry, I made it known I was taking my blood-guilt out of Athens, and would come back purified.

  It was an autumn journey, tedious and slow. The road was slippery, or blocked with stone-slides from the hills; the leather curtains of the women’s Utters barely kept out the driving rain. It made me feel stiff, and I feared Phaedra might catch her death crossing the Isthmus; but she bore it cheerfully, ate well, and looked better, though all her women had colds.

  We turned off the coast road, to stop at Epidauros. The sheltered valley was like a dish to catch the pelting rain. As the servant towelled me down in the guest-house smelling of pine and resin, I looked out at the winding glade with its autumn-turning leaves and wet green bay. The sleeping-houses for the sick had their doors shut-to against the weather, the thatch streaming, damp stains on the wooden walls. The yellow beeches dripped and shed their leaves into the stream, whose stones chattered and ground in the whirl from the opened sluices. Pools lay in the grass, with tall seed-heads bending out of them. You will say, a dismal scene. And yet, there was a calm, an ease of soul, a feel of living in time with the seasons and the gods… I would have liked to send off all my people, only to sit in one of those thatched huts watching the showers drive by, hearing the stream, waiting in no haste for a late sun to dapple the water through the boughs, for the sweet moist earth-scents of evening, the blackbird’s whistle, and a wagtail stepping on the grass. We had come with short warning; but doctors are used to haste. All was prompt and in order. If I had cried, “Help! I am dying!” I could see it would be much the same. Soon came the Priest-King of the Asklepiads, kindly and brisk, yet with something withdrawn about him, from keeping the secrets of the sick, as the god’s vow binds them to do, even from kings. He was younger than I, dressed simply, more priest than king, ready to work with his hands among the sick in the god’s service. His kingdom has no need of war, being holy; nor of wealth, for the offerings keep it. When I asked for Akamas, he said the boy was there that day, and well; but it would not be good to wake him after his physic, and bring him through the rain. He spoke very courteously; but he spoke as king. I did not argue; there was too much calm in the place.

  Since Phaedra had come so far to see the boy, I feared she would make a fuss; but she said impatiently that since there was nothing to stay for, we had better make haste, and get the journey over.

  The rain cleared on the way. The air was soft and fresh; yet I thought at Epidauros it would be sweeter. Looking back from my chariot, at the turn of the road, I could hear far off the votive cocks all crowing; the birds of light, greeting the sun.

  We reached the bounds of Troizen at evenfall. The shadow of the wooded mountain drowned the house in gloom; great folded sheets of blood-red light stretched over the sky and dyed the islands; the sea was a dun pale blue. On the road ahead, gold glittered and burned like torchlight; plumes and manes tossed; above them was a paler shine. It was my son riding to meet me.

  We met in twilight. He had come in state; his charioteer held the horses, while he jumped down on foot and came to stand by my wheels, putting his rank aside. His shadowed eyes looked almost black. As he handed me down, I met them; and a darkness touched me, as night’s first finger had touched the Palace. This gaze of a warrior armed for a doomed battle; why should it hold compassion? It was a face of fate. And it was as though he had let me glimpse it against his will, like a mortal wound, in some last hope of help from me that he had known must fail.

  I was tired from the drive, aching and cold; my mind on a hot bath, mulled wine, and a good warm bed. This strangeness chilled my spirits, the only part of me that had been at ease. I remembered his flight from Athens, the strange vigil before. This came, I thought, from meddling in women’s mysteries. No good could come of it, only bad dreams and sick fancies. It was best made light of; and I greeted him briskly, with some joke about the journey.

  The dread and sorrow left his face; he smiled, as one might draw a mantle to cover blood, ashamed of having shown it. Then he went over to Phaedra’s litter. I saw him bow his head; but she opened her curtains a bare handsbreadth when she answered. I was displeased; she owed better manners, both to King Pittheus’ heir and to my son. A bad beginning.

  V

  THE PEBBLE MOVES UPON the mountain, shifted by a goat’s foot or the scour of rain. For a while it tumbles and rolls, and a child’s hand could stop it. But soon it takes great bounds, swift as a slingshot; at last it leaps out from the crag like Apollo’s arrow, and can pierce through a war-helm into the skull of a man.

  So swiftly came the end. Or it seems so now. Yet time passed at Troizen, days passed, there was time even for the year to move. Mists hung in the mountain oak woods, and blew away; the drifted oak leaves lay ankle-deep and crisp, warning the deer of the hunter; rain fell upon the drifts and they turned to leaf-pads, which clung to the earth, dark as old hides, smelling of smoke.

  As some ancient ship settles evenly in a dead calm, so it was with Pittheus. His eyes had turned milk-white now, and saw only moving shadows; and his mind was much the same. He liked to have my mother by him; but half the time he took her for some long-dead handmaid he had carried off in war when he was young. He would tell her to sing, and to please him s
he asked all the old folk what songs this girl had known; but no one remembered even her name. It was sixty years since a king had died in Troizen; when we came to bury him, there would be no one living to tell us what the custom had been before. It must be this great life ending, I thought, which made the very light seem strange, as it is before the thunder, when far isles look near and clear.

  My mother was all day in his upper room, coming out only for the household business, or the rites, or else to rest. So she did not watch us; and if she saw death-omens in the spinning of spiders or the cry of birds, that was nothing strange.

  Akamas had come back from Epidauros, but still slept in the grove one night in three, the priests saying they could not get omens yet to pronounce him cured. The place seemed to have sobered him; from his quiet he might have been a priest himself. All his time indoors he spent with one of the Palace craftsmen, making a lyre; he had been told to do this, as an offering to Apollo. But whenever he could get his brother to take him along, he followed him like a shadow. I could see Phaedra did not like to see them slipping off. But what could I tell the boy? “Hippolytos is four years your elder: years of the Amazon, when your mother, daughter of Minos and a thousand years of kings, waited in Crete till I had time to spare”? At his age, he might have seen it for himself.

  Once I said to him, “You ought to spend more time with your mother; she came all this way in the bad season for your sake.” He seemed to shrink into himself; then said quite steadily, “She doesn’t mind, sir; she knows I am better now.” For a moment it might have been a grown man speaking, used to keeping his own counsel. But it was true enough she never asked for him, once he was out of sight.

  From decency more than choice, I had brought no handmaid with me. It was high time in any case that our marriage was put in order. But at night there was always something: faintings, headaches, unlucky signs, or the moon. The time was long past when I would have turned her women from the room and had it out with her. But she had never been unwilling, until this year. I was not yet fifty, and no woman could ever say I had disappointed her; yet now I began to think, “Am I getting old?” The mists of autumn damped my spirits; I grew restless, mewed indoors, kept even from hunting by the rain. I made up my mind to go back to Athens, leaving Phaedra behind; but on that same evening, there was a new pretty girl among the homely bath-women, the battle-prize of some house-baron lately dead. It was clear her tears would never disturb his shade. King Pittheus, she said, bringing out her lesson pat, had sent her to wait on me. I had seen him that day; he hardly knew night from morning. This shy gift came from my son.

  He is a good lad, I thought, and means well to me. Yet it seemed odd, unlike him. Though I kept the girl, who pleased me, yet it nagged my pride, to think it was common talk that I slept alone. I said nothing, thinking like him that it would not be seemly. For that matter, we seldom talked much now. The moodiness I had seen at meeting him had not lifted, but grown. It was more than his old daydreams; something was wrong; the lad was brooding; I should have said he was sick, if I had not seen him climbing the crags like a mountain lion. The closed drawn look he had had in Athens at the shrine was seldom off him now. He was losing flesh; in the morning his eyes were heavy; he would be gone by the day together, no one knew where. Hearing him asked for, I found he was neglecting even the kingdom’s business; fixing times for it, forgetting and going away. Often from the walls I would see along the Epidauros road his chariot going as if it raced for a prize; he would come back mud-splashed from head to heel, plunged in deep thought, barely coming out of it to smile and greet me. Or he would be gone on foot; I would glimpse his bright hair on the path that led to Zeus’s oak wood, and beyond. My mind’s eye followed him, past the rock with the eye of stone. What did he seek, what omen? Would he have more welcome there than I?

  One day his slow young page came up to me, asking awkwardly if I had seen him; he had a note for him from the Queen. When I offered to see it he gave it me quite easily. Perhaps he was simple; perhaps less simple than he seemed.

  The tablet said, “Theseus misses you; do you forget he is your guest? Of myself, no matter. You offend and slight him. What is it that you fear?”

  I told the page I would see to it, and went straight to her room. When I had her alone, I said to her, “What is this? What have you been up to with Hippolytos? Is this your promise?”

  I finished more quietly than I began, for I could see she was not well. She had sunk back, with her hand clasped to her throat. She had been full of vapors lately; yet she had refused to go to Epidauros, after all.

  “Come, calm yourself,” I said. “I am to blame; I should have known you two would never agree. Why, we both know; but what use to speak of it? What’s done is done; but it was long ago, and she is dead. You came here to see Akamas; you know now he is well. Any day the old man may die; I will not have strife brought into the house, when my son is taking up his heritage. Two days from now I am going back to Athens. You will come with me.”

  She stared a moment; then she started to laugh. It was low at first; then it rose wild and screeching, peal on peal. I called her women, and left her. I knew, when I married her, that she came of old rotten stock, given to all extremes. But I had to think for the kingdom.

  Hippolytos was out, as usual. It was not till dusk he came plodding home, limb-weary as a field hand, his clothes stained from the forests, green and brown. He greeted me with courtesy, which did not make up for his neglect; yet, remembering he had borne patiently, for my sake, his stepmother’s scoldings, I told him without anger that we were going home.

  He began to say something; stammered and broke off; then knelt and put my hand to his forehead. He was down there so long that I told him to get up. Slowly he rose. His eyes were streaming. He stood still, taking deep breaths, while great silent tears ran down his cheeks. At last he muttered, “I am sorry, Father. I don’t know what it is… I am sorry you are going.” His voice choked and he said, “Forgive me,” and hurried out. Turning, I saw young Akamas, who had hung about for him (often lately he had shaken off the boy to go out alone), stare after him in horror, and run out another way. He thought too much of him not to be ashamed at seeing him unmanned.

  That day passed, and the night, and the next morning. I don’t know how I spent the time; the memory has been swept away. But a little before noon, I went out to the stables, to see what shape the horses were in for the journey. The rain held off; but gray clouds covered the sky and the breeze was moist, blowing from the sea.

  Suddenly I heard a woman’s high yelling scream. For a moment, I only felt it go through my head; I had not noticed till then an ache beginning. Then the sound broke into shrill jerking spurts, as if the woman herself were shaking, and I thought, “Her husband is knocking her about.” Then came a great shriek, “A rape! A rape!” And I knew the voice. The eyes of my charioteer met mine. Like one man we started forward.

  He unhitched two horses and we leaped up. The cries came from the olive grove beyond the barns. It was sacred to Mother Dia, with a little old altar where my mother used to sacrifice in spring, to bless the trees. We rode as near as we dared to the sacred precinct, dismounted, and ran.

  Between the trees, not far from the altar-stone, sat Phaedra, on the ground, wailing and sobbing, flinging her body to and fro, beating her clenched fists first on the earth and then upon her breast. Her hair hung wild, her bodice and skirt gaped open at every clasp; her shoulders and arms and throat were covered in great red finger-weals, whose shape could be clearly seen.

  I ran up to her. She clutched and clawed at my arms, gabbling and gasping; I could not make out the words. When I tried to raise her, her clothes began falling off; she pulled away her hands to grab her belt about her, her breath heaving and shivering; then scrambled up, her skirt bunched in one hand, and pointed with the other through the grove. Her voice broke in a rough caw like a raven’s. “There! There!”

  I heard men’s voices, running footsteps, rattling arms. The outc
ry had brought the Guard. They were still coming up; but the foremost had heard her words and were off through the trees already, like hounds with the quarry in full sight. They called to one another; then their voices changed. And looking along the grove, I saw the man.

  He was running out to the hill-slopes, clambering over the boulders, wild as a stag. The light caught his hair as the sea-wind lifted it. In all Troizen, there was not such another head.

  I stood still. A great sickness swept down from my head into my body. There seemed room in me for nothing else.

  All round me went the din of the hue and cry. My temples throbbed with it. Only the foremost understood, yet, whom they were after. But when the word spread back, they would all run on. There are laws bred into the very bones of men, older on earth than princes.

  I sent someone to fetch the Queen’s women. To the rest I said, “Stand back. Leave us alone.”

  She had fixed her skirt-clasp somehow. Now she stood wringing her hands, round and round each other, as if she were washing and could not get them clean. “Quickly!” I said. “No one can hear. In the name of Zeus, what happened? Speak.”

  She stood panting; with each breath came a rattle from her chattering teeth, and nothing more. Still I kept hold upon myself, from the habit of doing justice. “Speak up, hurry, before they bring him here.” But she only rocked about, washing her hands. A sudden hot light flashed before my eyes; I came and stood over her and shouted, “Speak, woman! Did he get it done, or not?”

  “Yes!” she cried, and left her mouth open, gaping. I thought she would scream again; but now at last came the words.

  “In Athens it began, he started then to come after me, but he said it was to cure my head. In Athens I didn’t know. It was here he told me, here in Troizen; I have been almost dead with fear. I dared not tell you; how could I tell you of your son, what he was, what he meant? He wanted me, oh yes! But it was more, it was more. This is the truth, Theseus. He has taken a vow to the Goddess, to bring back Her rule again.”