The Bull from the Sea (24 page)

This is our last deed, I said in my heart; our last fight together. Let us go with the gods, in pride and battle-joy. She will have time to weep.

She was looking steadfastly at me with her clear eyes. I did not know what time had passed since I heard the voice of Poseidon. No one seemed impatient; it could not have been long. She said to me, “I see you clothed with victory, as if a light shone through you.” “You too,” I answered; for some solemn presence seemed to have touched her also. “In the gods’ name, then. Come, it is time.”

We ran down into the dip between the hills; then threw our shields before us against arrows, and climbed towards the Pnyx. Up there was the man who would send my life to the god; or the woman maybe, for the Moon Maids were there shouting their high war-calls, bright as cock-pheasants in the morning sun. The hill was steep, but my feet were light on it, as the tide of fate bore me along. Yet something hindered me: it was my heavy shield of dappled bull-hide. It made me laugh, that being given to death I should lug along, from habit, this burden which had no use but to keep me safe. I loosed the buckle of the sling, and tossed it from me and ran onward. It was not my business to choose when I should fall.

I was glad when the shield was gone. It made me freer, given altogether into the hand of the god. This is a mystery, which I tell only to kings, since it concerns them: consent and fear nothing, for the god will enter you and take away your grief. I give you this counsel, which no other man has lived to give. Surely it must be good for something, to some leader of the people in time to come. Or why did I live?

The warriors came with me, singing the paean and cheering, till the hill’s steepness caught their breath. No one cried out on me for going shieldless; they saw that the god inspired me, and thought I had omens that I could not fall. It gave them a feel of luck. Even Hippolyta did not reproach me. She kept close at my side, except when she paused to shoot. The Moon Maids above had seen her; they screamed their war-yells at her, and shook clenched fists. But her face was rapt and tranquil. Even when we saw upon the ramparts the Maiden King, Molpadia, lifting the sacred ax and calling on the Goddess, it did not change.

The crest was near. Arrows and stones and javelins flew round me, and passed me by as if the god enclosed me in his hollowed hands. When I fall, I thought, this strength I feel will flow into my people; they will not lose heart at my death. I felt love for them, not hatred of the enemy, who were doing as they must, as our own folk had done before them. Their fate was between them and the gods, and so was ours.

The King of the Maidens put down her ax, and reached her hand to her bow. As she took aim, I felt the music of the god rise like a thousand sweet-toned horns. It sang to me that I should not leave my people nor the Rock, that my shade would come back here on great days of joy and peril, called by their paeans and prayers. As the bent bow straightened, I thought, “It is now.” But no arrow pierced me. Only the music ceased, in a moment, cut off and quenched so that my head was giddy at the silence; and in its place I heard a cry.

The gold plume was falling, that had tossed so lightly, going down with a sinking flutter, like a shot bird’s. Closed in with the god, sure of my death, I had not seen her leap before me. She dropped to her knees, with outstretched hands; before I could reach her she pitched forward, and then heeled sideways, turned by the arrow fixed in her breast.

I kneeled on the sharp rocks, and took her in my arms. The voice of the god, the wind-borne lightness, had gone like the dream one wakes from to a cruel day. Her eyes were wandering, blind with death already; only her hand groped here and there. When I took it in mine her fingers tightened, and her lips moved in a smile.

They parted to speak; but only the death-gasp came from them. Her soul paused for a moment, hung on her flickering breath. She gave a great jerk and shudder, as if a strong cord had broken. Then she grew heavy, and I knew that she had gone.

I crouched above her, the battle all about me. If they had passed on and left me, I would not have known. So stoops the wolf whose mate has fallen to the hunters, dumb, without understanding, and as she stirs from his licking, looks to see her move with life again.

Yet the knowledge of a man was in me. I saw how she had slipped off in secret to trick me with Apollo, conjuring him who had loved a huntress to let her take my death.

I raised my eyes to the hilltop, drawn by noise. Molpadia had lifted up her ax to heaven; there was a shout of triumph from the Amazons, like a wild laugh.

I got then to my feet. Standing about me I saw the lads of her Guard. They were weeping, though my eyes were dry; it was many days before that comfort eased me. “Stay with her till I come,” I said to those who were nearest. Beyond them were the warriors; the whole host had its eyes on me. They were ready; they had known me before I knew myself. But I felt it now, as the dog-wolf feels it; that for the pain of loss there is no cure, but anger eats and is filled.

I leaped up on a rock, where I could be seen, and gave my war-yell.

Three times I shouted; and at each the roar of the host rose higher, as if I called up the sea. On the hill I saw the hands of the archers and slingers sink, and faces turn to one another. Then I ran forward.

The climbing of the slope and of the earthwork, I remember that. I scrambled up the walls with my hands and feet and spear-butt. Then I was among them. But not much of that day comes back to me, after I began to kill.

I know I did not draw my sword, for it came back bright in its scabbard. Soon after I scaled the heights, there was an ax in my hands. The ax was good; as it bit and smashed about me, I felt it matched to my desire. I did not look to see if my men were following; I felt them there, like red sparks streaming behind my rage. I might have outpaced them if I had gone straight onward; but I was thorough, and killed also on either side.

I could not quench the thirst that drove me. Men who could die I struck; their blood ran down the lifted ax and made my knuckles sticky. But I could not kill the pain within; I could not kill fate, nor the gods, nor the knowledge that tore my heart, that I was angry also with her. Why had she meddled, when all was well? She had taken too much upon her. We were equal war-comrades, but only one was king. I had joined hands with my fate, and seen my finished days as a harper’s song. There need have been no parting, since she held her life so light. Hand in hand we could have crossed the River to the house of Hades. But she had left me alone, with my people about my neck and no god to guide me, to be king, and live.

My soul cried vengeance, and I took it where I could. Soon no one was left to kill on the Hill of Pnyx; I led on over the saddle, towards the Hill of the Nymphs. They were there on the top, and I shouted out to them. A few arrows came down. But they broke quickly before us, and I knew by their squealing they were on the run. Men were shouting behind me that we had saved the City. But I only felt too many would get away. In the pursuit I fell; a man of my Guard helped me to my feet again; I gazed round blinking, to find the Scythians streaming down the slopes towards the plain, and the men from the ships awaiting them. But beyond, on the hill ahead, I saw armed warriors; and shouting that these should not escape us, I charged towards them. Their leader ran before; I gave my war-call; but he cried to me, “Sir, it is I! Will someone look to the King; he cannot see. It is Amyntor, Theseus! The field is ours. How is it with you, sir; what is it?”

I lowered the ax, and the men who had held me stood away. My eyes cleared slowly, and I saw the army from the Citadel, meeting mine and cheering, with men weeping for joy. I stood there, dreading to awaken, while they talked across me softly, as men do about the dying. One said, “He must have taken a head-blow.” But another answered, “No. Where is the Amazon?”

That I understood; and I answered, “On the Hill of Pnyx. I will bring her home.”

I started to walk back there, then stopped, and said, “First bring me Molpadia, King of the Maidens. She has a debt to pay.”

A captain of Athens who had fought along with me said she was dead. It did not please me, and I asked who killed her. “Why, sir,” he answered, “you yourself with her own ax, as soon as you scaled the heights. There it is in your hand; you used it all through the battle.”

I wiped it on the grass, and looked. It had a slender shaft, and a blade like a crescent moon, with signs of silver laid into the bronze. When first she rode to me on the heights of Maiden Crag, this had been in her hands. All along, it had gone with me as if it felt my thought.

Since that day I have gone into battle with no other weapon. Even years after, it seemed still to have the feel of her. But all things fade. It has forgotten her hand, and knows only mine.

She lay on the hillside, with the young men round her. They had straightened her, and laid her upon a shield. Not daring to touch the arrow, they had sent the youngest to the Citadel, to fetch the priest of Apollo. He had pronounced her dead, and drawn it out, and covered her with a pall of scarlet lined with blue; and the lads had laid her hands upon her sword. The priest said to me, The Lord Paian sent her the omen. But she asked if it was his command to keep it secret; and he answered according to her wish.”

“Sir,” said the youths, “a bier is coming for her. Shall we carry her down the hill?”

I answered, “You have done well, but it is enough now. Leave her to me.”

I took off the pall, and picked her up in my arms. Her body was cold, the limbs beginning to stiffen. I had been gone too long; her shade was far off already. I held a corpse with her face. She had felt like sleep, when I went away.

At the foot of the hill they met us with the bier, and I laid her on it; the battle had been long, and I was tired. As we came nearer to the Rock, I heard the paeans of victory. It stirred my anger; yet it was what she would have wished to hear.

Soon I too must give thanks, standing before the gods for the Athenians; that was my work. The City had been saved for a thousand years. This day, I thought, will be sung of; and I seemed to hear the song. Thus, fell King Theseus, giving his life for the people; in the flower of his age, with his love beside him, honored by gods and men.”

The sweat of battle had cooled upon me; I felt a sharp wind from the sea. The Palace stood on its rock and waited. It was not long past noon. I could not tell what I should fill even this one day with; and there were years ahead. She had taken my death, lover for lover; she had been a woman at the last. She who was once a king should have known that only a king can offer for the people. The gods are just; but one cannot mock them.

She had saved her man alive to weep for her. But the King had been called; and the King had died.

I
HAVE SAILED ALL
the seas since then, and sacked many cities. Unless there was war, I went roving with Pirithoos every year. To see new things, and live from day to day, is better than wine or poppy, and fitter for a man. I have passed between Scylla and Charybdis by the smoking snows; and off the Siren Rocks, where the wreckers send their girls to sing you over, I have caught a siren and lived to tell. Women I have had in plenty, though none for long. A face glimpsed over foreign walls, not to be had without guile and danger; till she is won, it can hold your mind from before and after, and you can believe she will not be like all the rest.

My people forgave me many years of this, because I had saved the City. Winter was long enough to bring the realm in order; if I found oppression growing up behind my back, I brought down a heavy hand. But by spring I would have wearied of it all, and of the royal rooms where my arms hung alone upon the wall; I would shut the door and be off to sea again.

If I had stayed in Attica all the year, I could have sent for young Hippolytos, and tried to get him accepted as my heir. Each spring I had half a mind to it. But the sea would call, and new places free from memories. I would leave him in Troizen one year more; he was happy there, with old Pittheus and my mother. When I heard he was known for three kingdoms round as Kouros of the Maiden, I thought of calling at Troizen as I passed; but the wind was contrary, and I let it go. I remembered those stubborn silences. The lad in Crete, who was gay and easy, and would sit at my knee by the hour for sailors’ tales, him I could have talked to; though you would not look at him and say, “There goes a king.”

One year at the winter’s end, a courier brought a royal letter from old Pittheus, sealed with the Eagle. It was the first I had had since the Cretan War. It said he was feeling the touch of age (the hand was a scribe’s, and the signature looked as if a spider had fallen in the inkwell). It was time to name his heir; and he had chosen Hippolytos.

I had never thought of this. He had got sons without number. It was true, however, that only my mother was left of his lawful children. He might have chosen me; but seeing how I lived now, I could not blame him; and with Troizen added to my kingdoms, I should have had to give up the sea. I thought the old man had done well and justly by us; it would give the boy standing if he came to Athens, the people might be more ready to accept him there also, and he could still join the kingdoms when I was gone. It reminded me that it was four years since I had last put in at Troizen. The boy must be seventeen.

In the sailing month I made my way there. As the ship rowed in, I saw the waiting people part, to let through a three-horse chariot. A man stood in it. He was the child I had seen last time.

He bowled neatly down to the wharfside. The people knuckled their brows before his eye had reached them, and did it smiling. So far, good. As he jumped down, and young men ran to hold his horses, I saw he topped the tallest by half a head.

He ran aboard to greet me, and went straight down on his knee. As he rose, he took my kiss upon his cheek and gave one; then he went on rising, up and up. He had been too civil to stoop.

Commanding warriors, I am used to tall men about me. I have met plenty in battle, too, and come off best. I could not tell why this shocked me so, as if it were I who had lessened, or shrunk with age.