The Bull from the Sea (7 page)

He was about four-and-twenty; taller than the rest, and barbered like a Hellene, with a black rakish short-clipped beard and the rest shaved clean. He had dark brows just like the wings of a hawk, with that upward curve at the outer tips; and his eyes were light green, almost golden: wild, bright and watchful as a leopard’s, only beasts do not laugh. He balanced his spear and called, in true Greek but with a broad up-country lilt to it, “Hoy, get back there. Who are you?”

His clothes were rich, but with something antique about them: great studs of worked bronze, a helmet of burnished silver, a lionskin cloak with the teeth and claws. Round his right arm a long blue snake was twisted, stained into the skin as the Thracians do it. But the Lapith kings have married often into Hellene houses; they know the right names of the gods, and the famous battle-lays, and the rules of war.

I called out, “I am Theseus, the man you have come to see.”

He grinned, and the corners of his brows shot higher. “Well met, King Theseus. Don’t you feel lonely, so far from home?”

“Why should I,” I said, “if I can find good company? I have come to fetch back my cattle. Leave them where they are. As you are strangers, I will remit the fine.”

The pirates bellowed, and started forward. But he barked at them, and they pulled up like well-trained hounds.

“Your bull knows you, it seems. Have you missed each other?” He added a joke so rustic that it shocked the boy. I could tell from his men’s laughter that they loved him dearly.

I said, “What are you, Pirithoos? A lord of men, or just a cattle-lifter? I have come to see.” And I reached for my shield.

“Call me a cattle-lifter,” he said, “who likes to pick and choose.” His bright open eyes were insolent as a cat’s are: without malice, and lazy, until it springs.

“Good,” I said. “That goes with what I heard of you. Well then, there is a matter of standing for us two to settle.” I gave the reins to the boy, who grasped them as if his life were in them. Then I leaped from the chariot with all my arms.

We stood there face to face. Now I had got what I wanted, I found myself thinking I had never seen a man I should be sorrier to kill.

He had paused too, idling on his spear. “You seem in love with trouble,” he said. “Well, you want it, I have got it to give. I will make dogs’ delight of you or any man who comes to me asking civilly. And what a squealing of women over your body! Oh, I have heard.”

“Don’t be concerned,” I answered him. “No woman hereabouts will squeal under yours. Not girls but birds will be getting their fill of you, when our business is done.”

“Birds?” he said, raising his brows. “Don’t you mean to eat me yourself, then? You are not the man they told me of.”

“You should come down oftener from the hills,” I said, “and learn the ways of folk who live in houses.”

He laughed, standing with a loose shield and half his right side bare to me; he knew I would not take him off guard. I could not make him lose his head, nor get really angry myself. But it was no use to dawdle and wish we had met some other way. “Listen, Pirithoos; this boy brought me your challenge. He is a sacred herald: if I fall, don’t chance your luck. And now let us stop calling names like a couple of women yattering over a cracked jar at the wellhead. Come on, stand up to me, and let us try each other’s bronze.”

I threw my shield before me. He stood a moment, looking straight at me with his big green cat-eyes. Then he shrugged his shoulder out of the shield-sling, so that the tall shield fell clattering, and tossed away his spear.

“No, by Apollo! Are we mad dogs or men? If I kill you, you will be gone, and I shall never know you. Thunder of Zeus! You came alone to me, with a child for shield-bearer, trusting in my honor. And I your enemy. What would you be for a friend?”

When I heard these words, it was as if a watching god had stepped down between us. My heart lightened; my spear fell from me; my foot stepped forward and I held out my hand. His with the blue snake round the wrist came out to meet it; the grip seemed one I had always known.

“Try me,” I said, “and see.”

We clasped hands, while the Lapiths rumbled through their hair. “Come,” he said, “let us start clear. I will pay your fine for the cattle-lifting. I have done well this trip, my holds are full, meeting my debts won’t break me. You’re the King; you make the judgment. If you weren’t to be trusted, you’d never have trusted me.”

I laughed and said, “I saw old Oinops squaring his own score. Feast me one day and we’ll call it quits.”

“Done,” he cried. “I’ll ask you to my wedding.”

After that we exchanged our daggers as a pledge of friendship. Mine had a gold inlay of a king in a chariot, hunting lions. His was Lapith work, and very good, not what you would expect from looking at Lapiths; the hilt was covered with fine gold grains, and the blade had running horses done in silver. As we embraced to seal the pledge, I remembered the boy who had come to see a battle. But he did not look downcast; even the Lapiths, when their slow thoughts had come abreast of us, cheered and waved their shields.

I knew, as one sometimes may, that I had met a daimon of my fate. Whether he came for good or ill to me, I could not tell; nor, it may be, could a god have told me plainly. But good in himself he was, as a lion is good for beauty and for valor though he eats one’s herds. He roars at the spears upon the dike-top, while the torchlight strikes forth fire from his golden eyes; and one’s heart must love him, whether one will or no.

W
HEN WE HAD SACRIFICED
and feasted, I took it without saying he would stay as my guest at Athens. He said, “Gladly; but not till after the hunt at Kalydon. I have come south ahead of the news, it seems. They have one of those giant boars there, that Bendis sends for a curse.” That is an up-country name for the Moon Mistress; there was a good deal of Lapith in him, as well as Hellene.

“What?” I said. “I killed a big sow once in Megara; I thought she was the only one.”

“If you hearken to Kentaurs’ tales, there used to be a mort of them.” His Greek was partly stiff and stilted, the work of his boyhood’s tutor where even the Court did not speak it daily; the rest was the coastwise jargon that pirates talk, and only better than his men’s because his mind was quicker. “They say their forefathers killed them off with poisoned arrows. Kentaurs don’t hunt like gentlemen; they are too wild.” I thought of his Lapith band, and wondered what folk were like who seemed wild to these. “They eat meat raw,” he said, “and never come down off the tops except for mischief. If the pigs had killed their forefathers, it would have been all one to me. Or if their fathers had made a right end to the pigs, that would have been something. Kentaurs are curse enough; and once in a while there are pigs as well.”

I had been offended with him for refusing to be my guest; but he had always some odd yarn to turn one’s anger.

“In Kalydon,” he said, “they sacrificed some virgins to Artemis.” He had remembered her Hellene name this time. “Three they burned, and three they shipped up north to that shrine of hers, where the maidens sacrifice men. But she sent them omens that what she wanted was the boar. How they angered her I don’t know, but she is a goddess needs watching out for. Even Kentaurs look out for
her.
So the King has a hunt on, and open house for warriors. This, Theseus, forgive me, I cannot miss. Friendship is dear where honor is dearest.” (I could see the tutor, beating the old lays into him.) “Well, no need to part company. We’ll go together.”

I opened my mouth to say, “I have work to do.” But it seemed I had been working harder than a plowboy for months and years. I thought of a foot-loose journey north, with Pirithoos and his Lapiths. It tempted me like a sweet look from someone else’s wife.

He said laughing, “You can stretch your legs aboard, I left deckroom enough for your cattle.”

I was still young. Not far behind me was the Isthmus journey, not knowing at dawn what the day would bring; Crete, and the bull-dance. I had had the sign of Poseidon; I was born to be a king; and while I moved to it, everything within me worked the one way. Now I had got it. The King had enough to do. But there was another Theseus fretting idle; and this man knew him, too well.

“Why not?” I said.

So I put my business by, and went to Kalydon. I saw ships rolled over the peaceful Isthmus, the Gulf of Corinth blue between mountains, and Kalydon by its mouth. And a fine boar-hunt we had there; great deeds, good company and a rich feast. It was good only while it lasted; for it started a blood-feud in the royal house there, and, as happens often, the best man died. Still, it was a great victory feast, for young Meleager and the long-legged huntress he shared the prize with; the grief was all to come. But the faces round the board grow dim to me, and I see, when I look back, Pirithoos everywhere.

I have been the lover of many women, never of a man. It was the same with him, and our friendship did not change it. Yet if I picked up a spear or a lyre, mounted a chariot, whistled a dog or caught a woman’s eye, it was his eye I thought of. There was emulation mixed in our friendship, and even in our faith a kind of fear. From the day I met him, I would have trusted him with the woman of my heart, or my back in battle; and so would he have trusted me. But what he loved best in me, I myself had doubts of; and he could charm it like a bird out of the wood.

I went out of my way home from Kalydon, westward to Thessaly, to be his father’s guest. We travelled light, cross-country, with the men he could spare from working home his ships; for speed, he said, but from the love of trouble as I could see. We had enough of it, from wolves and robbers and leopards and the mountain cold. Once, where the track clung to a steep gorge-side, a gale tore through it that made it sing like a great flute of stone; our shields were plucked and tugged by the hands of the wind-god, and would have sailed us off the face if we had not laid them down and filled them up with stones. One Lapith was lost that way.

At last we were looking down upon the plains of Thessaly, where the rich land lies in broken stretches between long arms and shoulders of wooded hills. The Lapiths encamped beside a spring, and prayed to the god of its river; then they washed and combed themselves, shaved their upper lips, and trimmed their beards. They came out likely and proper men, and three parts Hellene. When they had signalled with smoke, the Palace Guard came out to meet us. Then first I saw the real Lapith wealth: not growing in the ground but running on it, with the thunder dear to Poseidon. This is the home of the great horses, that can carry a man.

They were bloomed like new-shelled chestnuts, with manes as long as girls’; so fast and strong, I almost believed Pirithoos when he said that at their mating time the black north wind of Thrace came rutting down through the passes to leap the mares.

We rode them down to the river valley. There the stream flows brown under poplars and silver birches; the stark mountains are only glimpsed far off, through tender leaves. Dark forests furred all the foot-slopes; Pirithoos called them the Kentaur woods.

Lapiths are great shipbuilders, being so rich in timber; they make the houses of it too, with carved lintels painted red. The Palace of Larissa stood on a hill by the river, in the midst of the greatest plain. There Pirithoos’ father met us at the gate. He greeted me most courteously, but was short and harsh with his son. Every time he went off roving, the old man saw him dead; when the fear was laid, the memory rankled. Above, in Pirithoos’ room, I saw the fresh bed and rich hangings, and everything kept sweet while he was gone.

While I was there, Pirithoos showed me the Lapith riding-tricks: spearing a trophy at full gallop, snatching a ring from the ground; standing in the saddle, or shooting from it with the short bow they use. He could ride two horses standing, with a foot on each. His people swore that Zeus had taken on the likeness of a stallion to beget him. He had been riding great horses at an age when I was still standing on tiptoe to give them salt. I never had his style; but before I left, I could keep along with him more or less. A horse is not so hard to stay on, after the bulls; and sooner than give him the best of it, I would have broken my neck.

Once his father took me aside, and talked to me of kingcraft. We spoke of our laws and judgments and such things; and presently he asked me if I could not make Pirithoos put his mind to them: “For he is a boy no more; yet he acts as if I would live forever.” I had seen that he moved slowly always; his flesh was sunk, and his skin too sallow for a man not yet turned sixty. Afterwards I said to Pirithoos, “Your father is sick; and he knows it too.”

He drew his brows together. “Aye, so do I. After being away, I saw the change. I spoke with the doctor again this morning. Talk, talk; it’s the empty jar that clinks so loud. There’s nothing for it, I must take him up the mountain.”

I asked if Paian Apollo had a healing shrine there. He looked a little sheepish, then said, “No, there’s an old horse-doctor we go to when the rest give up. Come too if you like; you were wanting to see a Kentaur.”

I must have stared, after his talk. He whittled away at a bullrush (we were sunning by the river, after a swim) and said, “Well, they have earth magic, if you can find a good one.”

“Where I come from,” I said, “that is women’s business.”

“Not among horse-folk. You southerners took that up from the Shore People you conquered. We keep the ways of our wandering forebears. Oh, yes, my father knows why I go roving; it’s in all our blood; it’s only his sickness makes him fret. Well, with horse-folk, women count as baggage, like the cattle. What else can they be while the people move—unless you want to have them take up arms, like the wild-cat Amazons?”

I opened my mouth; but I had talked enough of the Bull Court, and feared I might grow tedious.

“And Kentaurs,” he said, “are horse-folk too, after their kind. I’ve hunted these hills all my life, and barely seen the rump of a Kentaur woman. At the first smell of you, they’re off into the caves. Even when I was at school up there—”

He broke off short and I said,
“What?”