The Bull from the Sea
A Novel
Mary Renault
Contents
Marathon
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Pontos
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Epidauros
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Skyros
Chapter I
Author’s Note and The Legend of Theseus
A Biography of Mary Renault
Marathon
I
IT WAS DOLPHIN WEATHER, when I sailed into Piraeus with my comrades of the Cretan bull ring. Knossos had fallen, which time out of mind had ruled the seas. The smoke of the burning Labyrinth still clung to our clothes and hair.
I sprung ashore and grasped both hands full of Attic earth. It stuck to my palms as if it loved me. Then I saw the staring people, not greeting us, but calling each other to see the Cretan strangers.
I looked at my team, the boys and girls of Athens’ tribute, carried to Crete to learn the bull-vault and dance for Minotauros on bloody sand. They showed me myself, as I must look to Attic eyes: a bull-dancer of Crete, smooth-shaven, fined down to a whiplash by the training; my waist in a gilded cinch-belt, my silk kilt stitched with peacock eyes, my lids still smudged with kohl; nothing Hellene about me, but my flaxen hair. My necklace and arm-rings were not grave jewels of a kingly house, but the costly gauds of the Bull Court, the gift of sport-loving lords and man-loving ladies to a bull-boy who will go in with the music and fly up with the horns.
Small wonder no one knew me. The bull ring is a dye that seeps into one’s soul. Even till my feet touched Attic soil, the greater part of me had been Theseus the Athenian, team-leader of the Cranes; the odds-on fancy, the back-somersault boy, the first of the bull-leapers. They had painted me on the walls of the Labyrinth, carved me in ivory; there had been little gold Theseuses on the women’s bracelets. The ballad-makers had promised themselves and me a thousand years of singing. In these things my pride still lingered. Now it was time to be my father’s son.
There were great shouts about us. The crowd had seen who we were. They thronged around calling the news along towards Athens and the Rock, and stretching their eyes at the King’s son tricked out like a mountebank. Women screamed out for pity at the scars on my breast and sides from glancing bull-horns. All of us had them. They thought we had been flogged. I saw the faces of my team looking dashed a little, even in the rejoicing. In Crete, all the world had known these for our honors, the badges of fine-cut skill.
I thought of the solemn dirges when I sailed, the tears and rent hair, the keening for me, self-offered scapegoat of the god. All that could not be told broke from me in a laugh; and some old woman kissed me.
In the Bull Court, boys’ and girls’ voices had never ceased all day. I heard them still. “Look, we are back! Yes, every one of us; look, there is your son. No, the Cretans will not chase us, there is no Minos now. The House of the Ax has fallen! We fought a great battle there, after the earthquake. Theseus killed the heir, the Minotauros. We are free! And there is no Cretan tribute any more!”
People stared and murmured. It was too great for joy. A world without Crete was a new thing under the sun. Then young men leaped and raised the paean.
I said smiling to the team, “Suppers at home.” Yet my heart was thinking, “Leave the tale so, dear comrades of our mystery. You have told them all they will understand; don’t cry against the wind.” They chattered on; I could hear it now with an Attic ear, foreign as bird-song. “We are the Cranes! The Cranes, the Cranes, the first team in the Bull Court. A whole year in the ring, and all alive; the first time in the annals and they go back six hundred years. Theseus did it, he trained us. Theseus is the greatest bull-leaper who ever was in Crete. Even here in Athens, you must have heard of the Cranes!”
The kinsfolk clasped their darlings, shook their heads and stared. Fathers were grabbing my hands and kissing them for bringing their children home. I made some answer. How we had prayed and plotted in the Bull Court to get away! And now, how hard to shed it from us, the doomed and fiery life, the trust stronger than love. It left a raw bleeding wound. A girl was saying to her betrothed, who had hardly known her, “Rhion, I am a bull-leaper! I can handstand on the horns. Once I did the back-spring. Look at this jewel; I won a great bet for a prince, and he gave it to me.” I saw his face of horror, and their eyes meeting at a loss. In the Bull Court, life and honor came before boy or girl. I felt it still; to me these slim athletes of my team were beautiful. I saw with the eyes of this fuller’s son how free-moving and firm and brown she looked beside the milky maids of Athens. When I thought of all the Cranes had shared, I could have struck the fool and taken her in my arms. But the Bull Court was ashes and blackened stone; the Cranes were out of my hand, my rule was over.
“Find me a black bull-calf,” I told the people. I must sacrifice to Poseidon Earth-Shaker, for our safe return. And send a runner to the King my father.”
The calf came meekly, and bowed his head consenting; a good omen which pleased the people. Even at the stroke he scarcely struggled. Yet when he sank down his eyes reproached me like a man’s. A strange thing, after his mildness. I dedicated him and poured the blood upon the earth. When I quenched the flames with wine, I prayed, “Father Poseidon, Lord of Bulls, we have danced for you in your holy place and laid our lives in your hand. You brought us safe home; be good to us still, and hold fast our roof-posts. And for myself, now I am come again to Erechtheus’ stronghold, let my arm not fail her. Prosper my father’s house; and be it so according to our prayer.”
They cried amen; but the sound wandered. There was a buzz of news behind. My runner was back, long before he could have reached the Citadel. He came to me slowly; and the people made way for him, drawing aside. I knew then he brought death-tidings. He stood silent before me, but not for long. No news so bad but an Athenian wants to be first with it.
They brought me a horse. Some of my father’s barons came down to meet me. As we rode from Piraeus to the Rock, the sounds of joy fell back and I heard the wailing.
On the ramp of the gates where it is too steep to ride, the Palace people stumbled to kiss my hands and the fringe of my Cretan kilt. They had thought me dead, themselves masterless: beggars at best, slaves if they could not get away before the Pallantids swarmed back to take the kingdom. I said, “Show me my father.”
The eldest baron said, “I will see, my lord, if the women have done washing him. He was bloody from the fall.”
He lay in his upper room, on his great bed of cedar, with the red cover lined with wolfskin; he had always felt the cold. They had wrapped him in blue with a gold border; very quiet he lay between the wailing women as they shook their hair and clawed their bosoms. One side of his face was white, the other blue from the rock’s bruising. The skull-vault was stove in like a bowl; but they had wrapped a clean cloth round and straightened his broken limbs.
I stood dry-eyed. I had known him less than half a year, before I went off to Crete. Before he knew who I was, he had tried to poison me in this very room. I bore no malice for it. A battered dead old man; a stranger. The old granddad who reared me, Pittheus of Troizen, was the father of my childhood and my heart. Him I could have wept for. But blood is blood; and you cannot wash out what is written in it.