Authors: Mary Renault
Then, as the time drew on for our first bull-dance, came trouble where I had least looked for it. Helike grew pale and silent, and slipped away from us to sit alone. She had a look I knew, after a month or two in the Bull Court. It was the look of those who had had bad auguries; those who had been brought young from home, and were growing out of their strength and speed; those who had given up. But it made no sense in Helike. On the wooden bull she had a perfect style. The nakedness of the Bull Court suited her; though she was thin and had hardly more breast than a boy, her dancer's grace made her look like one of those gold and ivory bull-girls the Cretan jewellers make.
I went up to her alone, and asked if she was having a sick day. It was a thing the girls did not talk of much; but it was a trouble to them, since all were virgins. Sometimes they were killed then; and I felt answerable for the Cranes.
She swallowed, and looked about her, and said it was nothing. Then she told me the truth. Helike was bull-shy. She had been afraid since our first practice with the living beast.
"I trained with my brother," she said. "He is my twin; we danced before we could walk, and he thinks with me. Even with you I was not afraid; you have a tumbler's hands. But this is a brute, who would as soon kill me as not. How can I tell what he will do?"
I thought within me, "This is the end of the Cranes." All teams but ours were built round a seasoned bull-leaper. Chryse had the makings of it, and Iros, and I myself; but I did not know how soon. It was Helike I had trusted to please the people at our first dance, while the rest of us found our feet. If she would not leap, someone must; a team that gave no show would be broken up before next day was out, even if no one died.
It was no use to rebuke her. She was a mountebank, not a warrior, and had not chosen to come to Crete. It had needed courage to tell me. Moreover, it could not have happened in any other team. If they as much as guessed you were bull-shy, they left you to the bull; by the law of the Bull Court, it was only shameful to forsake the brave. But she had trusted me, because of our vow. This was the first test of it.
I talked to her awhile, and made her laugh, though only to please me; then I went off to think. But I could only remember a colt I had had in Troizen, who shied at chariots. I had cured her in the usual way, by walking up to one myself before her, then leading her up gently.
That is the true reason, which was never told in Crete, why the Cranes let loose their bull in the practice pit. The Cretans thought we did it from wildness, and for sport, and tell it so to this very day. But it was my desperate remedy to start her out of her fear, or at the worst to see if I was good enough to leap instead.
When the bull was tethered, and we had worked him awhile, I made pretense to take a message at the gate, and sent Aktor back to the Bull Court. Then I shouted, to warn the team, "The shackle's loose!" and let it slip while I feigned to fix it.
It was a place never meant to loose a bull in; small like the old pit of sacrifice, with high walls to trap one. But there was just room for a run and a leap, if you were quick, and the bull was slow. Cretan bulls, when something unwonted happens, need time to think. I ran in and grasped the horns and flung myself upward. As my body thought, and I soared and hung in air, I knew the practices had been nothing; this was life and glory, like one's first battle, one's first girl. I made a fool's landing, my belly across his back, but I knew what I had done wrong, and got it right the second time. Then Helike came after me, and I caught her safely. We were doing our crane-dance round the bull, from pride in ourselves, when Aktor came back and found us at it.
He promised us all a beating from his own hand, and he kept his word. We soon saw why; it was hardly more than a tickling. By that we knew he meant to bet on us, and did not want to make us stiff.
There is madness in youth; but sometimes a god inspires it. We were captives and slaves, whose comings and goings were our own no longer. Where pride fails, there too sinks courage. But now we had gone to the bull in our own time, as if we were free, and it freed our hearts. Never again did we feel like helpless victims, after we had gone halfway to meet the god.
Next day Aktor called us to the wooden bull, and put us through our paces. With the dancers watching, we set our best foot foremost. Patrons and lords and ladies would bribe their way in to watch; but the praise of one bull-leaper was worth twenty of them. Presently he told Helike and me to leap again, and walked away. I jumped, listening to the levers' creak and the dancers' chatter. Then when I was down, I saw whom the trainer had gone to greet. It was Asterion. He had come at last.
While Aktor talked, he ran us over with his round staring eye, which never changed when it met mine, any more than the eye painted on the wooden bull. He nodded once or twice, and went away. I thought, "Now it is coming to me." But when I thought what he might do, my first thought was, "He will keep me from being a bull-leaper." I was so set on it that only death seemed worse.
The trainer came back, but he said nothing. At last my ignorance burst me. I said, "What did the patron want?" He raised his brows and shrugged. "What does any patron want? To know the form. My lord, when he offers a hundred oxen for a team to do him credit, likes to get value for it. Take care he does; that's the best advice I've given you yet."
He went away. The dancers and the bull-leapers closed round us, praising and finding fault and making the hard jokes of the Bull Court. One was never alone till dark, and then only with trouble.
A little later young Hippon came up to me. "What is it, Theseus? I hope you are not sick?"
He sounded like a bath-woman and I nearly said so. My anger wanted something to bite; but he had meant no harm. "How do you like it," I said, "that any good we do in the bull ring will be profit for that insolent swine? If we even live, we must live for him."
Iros was with him. They looked at one another, making long eyes, like a couple of Cretans. "Oh," said Hippon, "don't trouble yourself with him. He is nothing; is he, Iros?" They grew knowing, and leaned their heads together. They were getting, I thought, to look just like sisters. "Oh no," said Iros. "He is rich and does what he likes, but he is a very common fellow, not worth a thought. Surely, Theseus, you know the story?"
"No," I said. "I have not kept him in mind. But tell it me."
After each had invited the other, giggling, to begin, Iros said, "He passes as Minos' son. But everyone knows his father was a bull-leaper." He did not trouble to drop his voice. The Bull Court was the only place in the Labyrinth where speech was free.
Hippon said, "It is quite true, Theseus. Of course it is not talked about; but my friend, who told me, is so highborn that he knows everyone."
"So does mine," said Iros, tossing his hair. "My friend not only makes songs, he writes them down. It is a Cretan custom. He is very accomplished. He says this bull-leaper was an Assyrian—"
"Ugh!" said Hippon. "With their thick legs and great black beards." Iros said, "Oh, don't be foolish; he was only fifteen or so. It was Minos who fancied him first, Theseus, and kept him for months out of the ring, lest he should be killed."
"But," I said, "that would have been impiety. He must have been dedicated, just as we were."
"Oh, yes," said Hippon. "A great impiety! People said it would bring a curse. Well, so it did. The Queen was angry; and that made her notice the youth herself. They say the poor King was the very last to hear, after it was the talk of the Labyrinth and even of Knossos town. There is a bawdy song of how she used to follow him into the Bull Court, she was so besotted, and hide herself in the wooden bull. My friend said that is only vulgar talk. But she was mad for him, quite out of her head."
"And when the King found out," I said, "I suppose he put her to death."
"In Crete? How could he? She was Goddess-on-Earth! No, all he could do was to get the Assyrian sent back to the bulls. I suppose he was out of training, or the god was angry; at any rate his next bull killed him. But he left his tokens behind."
"But," I said, "surely at least Minos could have exposed the child?" Iros, who was never anything but civil, said patiently, "But, Theseus, the Cretans have the old religion. The child is the mother's. So the King kept quiet to save his face, and let it pass for his. I expect he would not like to give it out that he had not been with her. People would know why."
I nodded. One could see that, indeed.
"At first," said Hippon, "Asterion was kept in bounds. They say Minos was very hard on him; one can hardly wonder. Now it's another story. He is clever; and he has got his hand on so many threads he is almost ruling the kingdom." He looked at me, not following my thoughts, but concerned to see they moved me. I saw, under all his nonsense, the sensible stable-lad I had seen polishing harness, with a shrewd eye for a horse. "But you see, Theseus, how he is beneath your notice, an upstart like that."
"You are right," I said. "Old Herakles is more worth studying. But what does Minos have to say about it?" His voice grew hushed; from awe rather than fear. "Minos lives very retired, in his sacred precinct. Nobody sees him."
The day passed. When night had fallen, I slipped away to the courtyard. I sat on the black base of a great red column, hearing women tittering in some room above, and a boy singing to one of those curved harps of Egypt. Now I was like a man whom vermin have been biting under his clothes, able at last to strip and scrape. But the sting had gone deep, and burned me still.
I remembered the Corinthian's laughter, when I said I had a quarrel with Asterion. But I had seen no joke in it; we both came of kings' houses, and were such men as would seek out each other on a battlefield. My being a god's slave did not alter that. I had challenged his anger to keep him from bidding for the Cranes, but also from pride. When he bid for us, I thought it was to get an enemy in his hand. Today I knew at last how he rated me. He had bought me as a rich man will buy a chariot horse though it has kicked him, because it looks to be fast and a stayer, and he hopes to win a race with it. The kick does not bruise his honor; a beast kicked him, not a man.
When he had called me a mainland savage, I had thought it a studied insult. I had done myself too much honor; the man had spoken his thought. So he had bought me for his stable, and handed me to the trainer and thought no more of me; me the son of two kings' houses, both god-descended, Lord of Eleusis and Shepherd of Athens; me who had had the sign from Earth-Shaking Poseidon. So light he had held me. And he not even kingly got.
The Labyrinth had fallen silent. The lamps went out; the moon was rising, to quench the bright stars of Crete. I stood up, and said aloud for the gods of the place to hear me, "By my head, and by my father's head, one day he shall know me again!"
5
It is a life out of life in the Bull Court.
One wakes often at night, in a hall where fifty-odd youths are sleeping, who come from everywhere, and have manners not all to a Hellene's taste. There was a scuffle once, and some trouble, when I broke a Tyrian's nose. People said I was uncivil. But as I told them, if he had a right to his customs so had I to mine; and it was a custom where I came from, if a stranger came creeping to your bed at midnight, to take him for an enemy. His nose set somewhat askew; which reminded others I was one to let alone.
Once I asked Helike what it was like in the girls' place, after they were shut away. She said it was a world to itself, and I would not understand it; but she did let fall that sometimes the girls would fight like young warriors, if two were rivals for another. More than once I saw bruises on girls who had not been in the ring. I did not think hardly of them for it; it was the life they were trained to, and I like a woman to have spirit.
As I say, the nights were broken with such things as this, or with someone dreaming aloud, or crying out, sometimes, in fears he would not own by day. One did not ask people their dreams in the Bull Court; nor what they thought about when they were wakened and lay silent in the dark. I know I thought of many things: of death, and fate, and what the gods want of man; how far a man can move within his moira, or, if all is determined, what makes one strive; and whether one can be a king without a kingdom.
Then I would ask myself what would happen if Iros, or Helike, or Amyntor should turn out a better bull-leaper, and lead the team. The Bull Court is a world to itself, with laws which spring from its own nature and cannot be gainsaid.
Thus I would trouble myself, in the first weeks of training. But once we were in the bull ring, I forgot such cares. For the dance took hold of me, head and hand, heart, bones, and blood. To be a bull-leaper seemed enough for one man's life; I was so filled with it that my danger leaned the other way: only by striving could I remember I was a king. But I remembered I was team leader, and often that served instead.
For a bull-leaper to last three months, though it is not bad, is not remarkable. But the old men of Knossos said they had not known such a thing in all their days, a whole team to last three months and none to die.
We lived because we all knew what each was good for, and that it would be there at need. Even those who had been careful of themselves, like Phonnion and Nephele, had kept their oath; first from fear of Night's Daughters, who visit perjurers, and even from fear of me; then because they saw it paid the best; and at last, like the others, from pride in being Cranes.
It is a saying of the Bull Court that the longer you live there, the longer you may. You know the dance, and the dancers; and you know your bull. Indeed, there is no woman I have shared a bed with, save one alone, whose moods I have known as I knew old Herakles'. Poor Helike; she never forgave him for being a beast and not a man. In spite of all her skill, she was never more than a middling bull-leaper. Thinking him mindless, she would not try to learn his mind. When she did leap, she was so polished that the people always cheered her. But I often had to cover for her, or go in instead, whereas Chryse never faltered. Everyone loved Chryse, even in the Bull Court; she had come, I think, to take love as in the nature of things, and half expected it from Herakles too.