“He is always right.”
“And you will become a butterfly.”
“I never cared much for butterflies,” she confessed. “Such frail and helpless creatures. Perhaps I can join you as a snake.”
“Oh no. Snakes are for men. Phallic, you see.”
“At least I can visit you as a butterfly.”
“Our guests will cease their chatter and climb the stairs.”
We did not feel like guests when they bound our hands and feet to the pole atop the dais. They bound us with leather thongs and, in spite of their gentleness, their obvious effort not to flaw our looks, the ragged fibers cut into our skin.
“Is this the way to treat an honored guest?” asked Marguerite, looking a queen, sounding ready to order an execution.
The Achaeans stared at her as if to say, “How better to serve the God?” and hurried to take their places in the crowd.
Alone with Marguerite, I looked at the Cretans who had come to look at us. Death, torture, shame, or even escape? They could not predict our fate, but they could not fail to be pleased in pleasing their god.
A wall of spiked timbers divided the audience from the arena but did not break their view, since their lowest seats were higher than the spikes. Tier after tier rose upward in soapstone as tall as a three-story house, imprisoning us with multiple rings and the waiting multitudes. The ladies flickered their parasols as if to deflect the sun, but the turn of a wrist, a parasol lowered to hide a face, or raised to reveal, appeared to be part of a courting ritual and what, for the Cretans, must have passed for love. Some wore hats atop their lacquered hair. The young wore open blouses to flaunt their breasts, which were painted in gold, vermilion, purple, or blue to match the voluminous skirts. The men had dressed according to their years: the young and lithe, in phallus sheaths, a ring, and anklet, sandals of ibex leather. What adornment could compete with the truth? The old affected a loose-flowing robe to their knees or ankles, and the color, it seemed, implied their wealth or station: brown for the poor, purple or red for the rich. But while I saw old age, white hair, and wrinkled skin, I looked in vain—except among the poor—for deformities, a limp, a severed limb, a twisted nose. Cretan aristocrats expose the deformed and even the ugly at birth. Any ungainliness is anathema to them.
The clamor remained unbroken until we were bound to the pole: the stare, the conjectures the awe. The voices were loud since the speakers wished to be heard, and the artfully built arena did not distort the sound; words and phrases reached my ears and did not, must I confess, entirely displease me. For Marguerite, a frequent “Beautiful!” or “Hair like a saffron crocus.” For me, “Blonde as the lady, and slim as a Cretan. But half a head taller at least!”
Then, like a canvass lowered to smother a fire, silence muffled the crowd, the silence of expectation.
We could only wait with them, but for a different end: to be a surprise instead of to watch a surprise.
In spite of my thongs, I managed to clasp Marguerite by the hand. I felt her tremble—her fingers were slender and small—little-girl hand—and tightened my grip and wished I were Silver Bells to assuage her fear.
“Cousin, Cousin,” I said. “We’ve seen worse times.”
“Once,” she shuddered. “Since, it was never so bad. Not even among the Tritons.” Back to back, we could not face each other, but I envisioned the color leaving her cheeks, and leaving her lovelier: the blue-asgentian eyes, intensified by her sudden pallor and chill.
“It may not be so bad as we think. We may be part of a festival or a frolic. Have you met any Cretans who look like killers, except the fishermen? They never even make war except against pirates, and then with battering rams instead of hand to hand. They use their spears and axes in rituals, not in combat. Don’t confuse them with the Achaeans, who ape them in other ways.”
“They are brilliant artists,” she said. “Consummate merchants and seamen. They are also children, who will order the death of a slave and go to market without a second thoughts They don’t look hard or cruel because they feel no guilt. And children like to play. They like their games and their toys. Oryx, we’re the toys. Do you understand?”
I had never heard her speak with such despair. Usually she tried to shield me from the truth. Now, it seemed, she felt it best to prepare me for the truth.
The silence, the wait, though probably brief, appeared as endless as watching an hour-glass empty its sands. I tried to fill the time by studying faces until I could see them as individuals and not as a crowd. I recognized wealthy visitors from Egypt, a merchant fat in linen; a dark, purple-lipped soldier whose veins must mingle Egyptian and Libyan blood; a lady as slender as a sapling palm, as graceful and pliant to her companion’s words. I saw our host of the villa, protuberant stomach hidden for the occasion. He returned my look with pride; he had found us for the Games and thus he had earned the gratitude of his friends and the blessing of his God. I saw a youth who must have been a prince, Minos’ son, no doubt, since he wore a tall, peacock plume in his carefully structured hair and occupied a position close to the ring and shut from the crowd by a makeshift circle of palms. Guards stood behind him; beside him sat a Nubian lady, a queen or at least a princess, attended by pygmies and a plump, laughable fellow who must be a jester of sorts. I had seen such pygmies in Egypt, and jesters with tiger tails affixed to hats and flopping down their backs. But the lady, the princess, the queen, the Goddess! A woman to fill your eye, and how she shamed the mantis-waisted Cretans with her amplitudes, her breasts like pumpkins ripe to be plucked, dominating her bold and barbarous gown of tiger skin. A lusty queen of the South! I gave her a tentative smile. Perhaps she would take offence. Perhaps she had learned the ways of a Pharaoh’s wife.
She looked at me fixedly, smiled, and gave me an undeniable wink.
Zoe!
“Marguerite,” I cried, “Zoe has come to the games. See! Sitting beside the prince among the palms!”
“I see a Nubian queen and attendant pygmies. Otherwise, there is no resemblance except in girth. This lady’s skin is brown, and so is her hair.
“Disguise.”
“I see no pointed ears.”
“The tips are hidden. They may be forked for all you can see. But they aren’t, because they belong to Zoe.”
“Oryx, you are snatching at butterflies! How could Zoe be here, and with a Cretan prince, and dressed in such disgusting robe?”
“Disgusting?” I wanted to slap her face! Anger is better than fear at such a time. So is talk. “It’s what men like.” An unfair argument to throw at a woman.
But a rising murmur drowned her reply. A door had opened in the arena floor. A head appeared in the light, eyes blinking, face kindly and sad and also bemused.
“Silver Bells.”
He climbed the underground stairs which we could not see and stood in the sun and saw us and smiled. But his smile sent a chill, like a lizard, down my back. I read in his face that he did not know his fate.
And then, another and larger door, and a creature of darkness slouched into the sun.
At first I took her to be a lion. The tawny fur. The tumbling mane and slanted eyes. The enormous padded feet with their deadly claws. No, I saw the black and bristling wings.
“A Sphinx,” gasped Marguerite.
“Never mind,” I said, grasping for words. They can’t really fly, you know. They can only flutter, and then they fall to the earth.”
“How should I not know, Oryx? But they don’t really need to fly. There’s nothing they need to escape. And some of them can change—”
With a courage I did not feel I met the Sphinx’s stare. “We have seen your kind before,” I cried. “And escaped. And here we are to escape you again. Or kill you in our attempt.”
“Cousin,” asked Marguerite, pressing my hand with desperate strength. “Can it be her?”
A Sphinx who has tracked you never forgets your scent.
Chapter Ten
Oryx
The Sph
inx entrapped us in her unreadable stare. Composite of Beasts, she had the look of a creating god’s mistake: of parts unmatched and at war: wings of a Harpy, mane and paws of a lion but always, and first, the essence of Shark, the unpredictability, the motiveless cruelty. And the essence showed in the eyes. I felt the nameless and indescribable fear of a sailor adrift at sea, land out of sight, when he spies the gliding fin and the lidless eyes. But the eyes of the Sphinx can change their color, reveal instead of conceal. When she is making her kill, they revolve in her head, the gray is speckled with gold, and enigma becomes intention: to maim and torture and kill.
She turned her seeing, unseeing stare to Silver Bells. The shark is a mindless killer; the Sphinx deliberates before she kills; the Sphinx can think. If she wished to feed, Marguerite and I were a waiting feast. But she knew that Silver Bells was our champion. He would protect us. Him she must first destroy.
“You must give him a weapon,” I shouted. “How can he fight a Sphinx without even armor? She will tear him to pieces.” I thought of the reddish hair which would deepen with blood. I thought of the generous heart which would feel for its friends to its final gallant beat.
I thought of the Sphinx, unconquerable though her shaggy fur, her hide as tough as a warrior’s cuirass; conquerable only through her eyes and her mouth. The eyes were small for her size, and shielded in part by her mane. And who could break the barricade of her teeth?
The young Minos rose to his fullest height—most of his royalty, not to mention his height, lay in the peacock plume—and he looked a youth instead of a man: smooth, bland, beardless (the Cretans shave with a blade of bronze); and markedly unintelligent for a race remarkable in their nimble wits as well as their agile feet. Age had settled neither compassion nor hardness on his face, which awaited the chisel of the gods, and doubtless would wait—and resist—and wait until he died. He wore a high, jeweled collar above his naked chest. He jangled with armlets and anklets and doubtless priceless gems—I could only catch the glint of a green, a blue, a purple (amethyst, stone of kings); the glitter of silver and gold.
He assumed the stance which says, “I am going to make a speech, and you, my soon-to-be subjects, shall be my audience—as long as I choose.” But a prince is not a king; the eventual Minos XIV was not his resolute father, Minos XIII. The people bad come to the games; they met and answered his look: talk as long as you like, you will not be heard. We have come for blood and not for words.
The legs of the Sphinx were bound by ropes whose nethermost ends were fixed to invisible bars beneath the ground, but the animal fretted; the ropes had begun to fray. And the crowd was fretful for games.
“In honor of Him, the God, to whom the bull is the holiest of the animals, we have organized these Games. The God has sent us an earthly surrogate; a Bull-man from the northern forests of Crete. He is pitted against a Sphinx, anathema to the God, his Mother, and men who worship them.” The Prince was speaking what his people knew; they could see the contestants; they wanted to see them fight. Rumbles, like the warning snorts of the Bull who holds the island atop his back, before he topples a wall or crumbles a palace with his weapons of soil and stone, ran through the crowd, met, swelled, threatened a quake of men instead of earth. “If the Minotaur wins the fight, our vineyards will flourish with grapes. If he loses, the omens are bad.” The Prince, sensing the restlessness in his subjects, looked to Zoe for praise, encouragement, words to continue his speech. Quickly she shook her head. The Prince completed his speech in a single breath.
“Butthatisthewayofthegames. ThuswelearnthewilloftheGod.”
“Let ‘em fight. Crops ‘ull take care o’ themselves!” The nameless speaker appeared to speak for the crowd.
“Fight to the death!”
After my scrutiny, they had seemed to revert into a shapeless whole. Like a monster jelly fish, they undulated over the seats and moved of a single accord; with a few exceptions, I guessed, they wished with a single horrendous wish.
“They don’t care at all who wins,” sighed Marguerite. “They don’t want to please their God. They just want to see some blood. Hide their heartlessness under the name of ritual.”
Perhaps, in earlier ages, when Woman instead of Man had ruled on Crete, such games had been a genuine ritual; no more. Marguerite was right. Bigger ships and smaller hearts; thus, the Cretans of now.
“It’s enough to make me turn to thieving again. That is to say, if Zoe hadn’t reformed me. I could spend a lifetime robbing these folk.”
“Hush,” said Marguerite. You tempt whatever demons may be in this place. You speak of a lifetime. Better to speak of a moment, or nothing at all.”
“Throw him a weapon!” we shouted in one great voice. They had probably not even bothered to learn his name; to them, he was a Beast, and a Beast was less than Human, however dear to their God. A griffin was meant for a pet; a dolphin for food; a bull or Bull-man for sacrifice.
No one had heard us above the crowd. Suppose he had heard the pleas of his prisoners: The Prince would have done as he chose or sought the advice of courtiers and counselors. But even a simpleton must foresee that a weaponless Silver Bells might die at the first confrontation, and an early death would lessen the sport. Still, he made no move till Zoe whispered into his royal ear. The Prince removed the dagger from his side—small, bronze of hilt and onyx of blade, I assumed—and threw it into the ring, His gesture was grand; he paused and posed and waited in vain for acclaim. “And throw him a flagon of wine. The day is hot. We would have him fight at his best.”
Silver Bells, retrieving the dagger, leaving the wine on the ground, turned to the dais and Marguerite and me. “I am the forest,” he said. “You are the city. But the two have met as friends. Will you bless my weapon against our enemy?”
“Silver Bells! It is you I will bless,” cried Marguerite. “You fight with more than a dagger, you fight with my love.”
“I give you my heart,” he said. “It is all I have.” He spoke to both of us, and I knew that he loved us as friends. But she thought his avowal was meant for her; she understood “love” to mean “desire.”
Such was our parting. Well, I was glad. Alyssum’s ghost was a rival she could not match. But if he should die, she would think herself first at the last, and her grief for him would be strangely sweet.
The ropes had been loosed from the Sphinx’s feet, and she crouched above the door, which was barred and effaced into the dirt of the ring. She did not advance on her foe; she did not circle to spy his weaknesses. She flaunted the pride of her strength. (But then to a Sphinx, a Nubian lion is weak.)
Silver Bells did not wait for her to move; waiting was not his way, when his friends were bound to a pole. With the speed of my namesake, the oryx, he crossed the ring and kicked her with his hoof. The hoof of a Minotaur is harder than that of a bull. He ought to have smashed her face. But her face is thick with fur and armored with cartilage.
She recoiled with mild surprise. A Sphinx does not feel pain, but droplets of blood bespattered the sand. The eyes remained impassive and gray.
And then she moved, and the movement belonged to a lion.
“He is gone,” said Marguerite, in a flat, emotionless voice, as if she had said, “He is dead.”
“Gone? Why, be stands—”
He did not stand.
“He has drowned in a yellow sea,” she said.
The Sphinx had squatted atop his body and shut him from the air. (Surely the Harpies had lent her those fluttering wings but forgotten to give them flight.)
“She is smothering him to death,” I gasped. “Not even a hand or foot is left in view!”
She sat with equanimity upon her prey. He did not appear to struggle under her weight. He appeared to lack the means.
An incongruous image, all the more horrible for its incongruity, flickered into my mind: a giant hen sitting on her egg. If she looked like many animals, a sphinx played as many parts, bland, guileful, ludicrous, but always returned to the cruelty of a s
hark. She knew that horror without relief eventually dulls. Thus, she changed her guise—with suggestion, illusion, (physical change?), to stir the deadening and renew the fear.
It was the yellow eyes which denied the hen and reasserted the shark . . . staring at Marguerite . . . staring at me. I think that she tried to smile. A shark’s downturned mouth, is curved perpetually to the reverse of a smile; it is curved to swallow or rend. And yet . . . and yet . . .
“Oryx, jerk on your thongs, you have got to get us free!”
“I’ve jerked until my wrists are open wounds. Ankles too.”
“So are mine. And the pole won’t bend.”
I could not see her face, bound as we were to opposite sides of a pole; but I could guess her look. The alabaster features were cracked with grief; a sob was lodged in her throat.
“Do you think he is dead?” she choked. She wanted a shouted “No!”
Yes, I thought, he is dead, and I loved him above all men. I loved his strength and his courage; I loved the silken mane and the rock-hard hooves. I wanted to be a Beast like him. I loved him for loving without judging, except the wantonly cruel.
But the heart, like a pyramid, has many rooms and they were flooded with grief for Silver Bells; but more for Marguerite, who was mother, sister, and friend to me. That I should die—well, I had grown accustomed to change, and I must confess to a curiosity about the Afterlife (I have told you my liking for snakes). But not Marguerite; her lotus-skin, her gentian-eyes, her crocus-yellow hair in the maw of a being which even the God, when a cruel and prankish boy, could never have twisted into the light. . . . life in the maw of death.
Silver Bells she had smothered; us she will tease and torture, like a griffin teasing a nightingale, for we are no possible threat to her; she will tear off a limb, toss, shake, grind us into the dirt. The world has tilted atop the turtles back, and evil encompasses us like the inky juice of the squid.
Cry Silver Bells Page 11