Plan for the Worst

by Jodi Taylor

  The bull bellowed in fury and triumph. I wasn’t anywhere near close enough but I swear I could see his beady eyes light up. He would gore the girl approaching him and then scrape off the other two, both clinging on for dear life, and trample them. Game over. Back to the bull pens, something to eat and a nice little heifer afterwards.

  The spectators – all of them, us included – shouted a warning. Parrots and parasols were dropped, unheeded. The clamour rose above the rooftops and down through the ground. Perhaps even to the Earth Shaker, old Poseidon himself, waiting with his trident. Biding his time.

  The arena was filled with the reek of hot bull. I could smell his cow breath all the way up here. His heaving flanks steamed, despite the heat.

  The third girl didn’t even break her stride. Altering her direction slightly, she went right. At the same time, the girl still trapped between the bull’s horns twisted and went left. They’d practised for this. How to get themselves and their teammates out of trouble. Each girl seized a horn and hung there. Their combined weight was pulling his head down but not slowing him in any way. I could see them trying to angle themselves so their bodies covered his eyes. He couldn’t see. But he was angry. Very angry. There’s a phrase blind rage and this was it. He stopped running and began to buck. He was enormously agile for such a huge animal. He leaped high into the air, twisting as he went, then hit the ground with all four legs simultaneously. I swear we felt the shock all the way up on our rooftop. The tremendous force of his landing dislodged the young boy still clinging to his back somehow. He fell to the ground in a cloud of sand, rolling and rolling to get clear of the stamping hooves.

  The two girls hung on to the horns. They had no choice. The remaining members of the team began to run around the bull, even the boy who’d fallen, limping and with an arm that looked broken to me. I doubt he even noticed.

  Shouting, running forwards and tapping the bull on the nose and dancing back out of range, they were doing everything they could to distract him. Still the two girls clung to his enormous horns, both of them, if you will excuse the expression, on the horns of a dilemma. Because if one let go or fell off then the other was finished. The bull would have the other off in a second and all that would be left of her was a long bloody smear around the walls. They had to dismount together. Simultaneously.

  For how long could they both hold on?

  The crowd was on its feet, men shouting, women screaming. The king and priestess sat unmoved. They might have been watching a display of country dancing. Everyone else was gesturing, pointing, stamping. Some people threw flowers into the ring. I wasn’t sure whether they were a vain attempt to distract the bull or pre-empting the funeral offerings.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Peterson, beside me, recording for dear life.

  I would have nodded but that would have blurred the recording so I contented myself with another historian grunt. The sweat was pouring off me. The excitement. The drama. The hot day. Fear for the leapers. They were so young, all of them . . . One of them reminded me of Mikey. Young. Dauntless. Irrepressible. My hands were so wet I could barely get a grip on my recorder.

  And still the bull ran blindly, short sharp bursts punctuated by leaps into the air and bone-shattering landings until, inevitably, because bulls have poor depth vision, he ran into one of the side walls with an impact that caused the whole stand to shudder. Women screamed all over again. One girl, the one on his left horn, dropped into the sand and suddenly the bull could see again.

  Both the catchers ran forwards, shouting, waving their arms to make him look at them but he wasn’t having any of it. Lowering his head, still with the other girl wrapped around his horn, clinging on like a monkey, he used his free horn to gore the one on the ground. A vicious down and then up movement with the force of his whole body behind it threw her high into the air, arms and legs flailing, before she thudded heavily on to the sand and lay very still. She had that broken look that is never good. One catcher ran to stand over her, shouting, crying, stamping his feet and waving his arms to drive off the bull. The other one ran in, attempting to grasp the now bloodstained horn. The bull wasn’t having any of it. He had the smell of blood now. Swinging his massive head, he knocked the catcher clear to the other side of the arena where he lay, winded, possibly with a few ribs broken as well.

  The remaining girl was trying to make a grab for the other horn. I could see her thinking. She would have both horns and could spread herself across the bull’s broad forehead and just hang on until he exhausted himself and then rely on her teammates to get her safely away.

  She swung her arm and made a grab.

  And missed.

  As if sensing her weakened hold, the bull stopped dead and began violently to swing his head from side to side.

  She lost her one-handed grip, fell into the sand and, like the catcher before her, began to roll away as fast as she could.

  He was an angry bull and he wanted revenge. Lowering his head, he got his horn underneath her and stabbed. Unlike her teammate – now lying dead and unattended – he didn’t toss her. He gored and then he ran, the screaming girl impaled upon his horn for nearly half the length of the arena until her own weight pulled her off. And then he ran straight over the top of her.

  All around, her teammates were hurling themselves at him, desperate to distract him. Most of them were streaked with blood. Whether their own or their teammates’ was impossible to say.

  What had started as a beautiful display of precision ­gymnastics had turned into a gorefest. One girl lay dead in her own blood at one end of the arena. The other was screaming as she tried to drag her broken body across the sand. I don’t know where she was going. The big wooden doors remained firmly closed. No one came out to save her. Not one single person did one single thing to save her. Only her remaining teammates, trapped in the arena with her. There was no way out for them. The walls were too sheer to climb. I wondered – would the gates stay closed until they were all dead? Was it only then that men would emerge with poles and hooks to drive the bull away and drag the bodies out? The team were shouting . . . to each other . . . to the bull . . . to their gods . . .

  No one intervened. This was the will of the gods. Gods like it when their people die for them.

  Eventually, what was left of the team managed to drive the bull away, shouting, stamping and waving their arms. He took himself to a corner where he stood, chest heaving, his horns dripping blood and still looking for anyone he thought might give him some trouble.

  A man dropped down into the arena. He too wore a bull mask – although nowhere near as grand as the king’s – and he carried a ceremonial double-headed axe. I thought, in my ignorance, he was here to put down the bull.

  I got that wrong.

  He walked to the screaming girl, lying in a tangle of her own sand-covered intestines, blind to everything around her except her own agony. I doubt anyone could have done much for her even in a modern hospital. There was no chance of survival in this place. He paused for a moment, dispassionately picking his spot, and swung his axe. The screaming stopped.

  Silence fell in the arena.

  The wooden gates opened. The bull turned his head and looked. You could see him thinking. Remembering. It was cool in there. There was water. There would be food. He was being offered a choice. I had the feeling that if he chose to stay – to finish what he’d started – then his choice would be honoured. Because it would be the will of the god.

  No one moved. There wasn’t a sound anywhere. Even the wind had dropped. There was complete stillness while everyone waited for the god to make his wishes known. And then the bull turned and walked slowly through the doors, which closed behind him. As if he’d returned to the underworld whence he’d come.

  The remaining five team members helped each other to their feet and limped to stand before the royal box. Their team leader, the one who had originally saluted the god, was dead
. One of the catchers, a stocky boy with tight black curls, raised his arm in a half-hearted salute. None of them looked at the royal box. Or even at each other.

  What would happen to them? If a team failed – as this one would be judged to have done – were they all punished? Would they all die for this day’s work? Or would they be mercifully retired? I wished we could find out. I watched them limp from the arena. There was no applause from the crowd. Just excited chatter. I wondered how often this happened. I knew there were bull-leaping ceremonies all the time but most of them were private. These big public ceremonies were only held a couple of times a year. How normal was death in the arena?

  Peterson turned to face me, his face running with sweat. He was very pale. I suspected we all were.

  ‘Well,’ was all he said, and I quite agreed.

  I took a few deep breaths and pulled myself together. That seemed to be it for the day. People were standing up to leave the royal box.

  The priestess took precedence, followed by the king. Once they’d gone, everyone else just scrambled for the exit as best they could. Minor priestesses and courtiers jostled each other to get out of the heat.

  I looked at the crowds standing on every available flat surface. Tier after tier of us. It was going to take us hours and hours to get out of here.

  I looked back down into the arena. Slaves had seized the two dead girls by their ankles and were dragging them away, leaving long, bloody furrows in the sand. They were talking among themselves, not even looking at what they were doing. As if they were just taking out the daily rubbish.

  Under cover of gathering my gear together, I placed my hands flat on the roof. A gesture of respect for any ghosts that might be lurking nearby.

  And bloody hell, it was still hot.

  What seemed like a very long time ago – and probably was – people had trickled on to the rooftops and access had been easy. Now everyone was trying to get away at the same time. Everyone was in a rush to attend the family feast or whatever they had planned for the rest of the holiday. I seriously considered locating the nearest water trough and just hurling myself in.

  The enormous crush of people, all of whom were waiting about as patiently as people desperate to get out of the sun might be expected to wait, meant our group had to break up and we exited over separate rooftops. We all chose a different route down to street level. I wasn’t too bothered. We were all still in contact with each other.

  ‘Well,’ said Kal, in my ear. ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I hardly know where to begin,’ I said, negotiating a rickety staircase leading down to yet another roof.

  ‘Yes,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Max, I know it’s not the primary aim of this assignment, but I really think this could bear more investigation. I’d particularly like to know at what point it stopped being a sacrifice of the bull and became a sacrifice to the bull.’

  I agreed. ‘I suspect the original point of the ceremony has been lost over the centuries. That always happens with religion. The original purpose or message gets swamped by the cere­monial and political – and religious leaders always have their own agenda, as well – but you’re right. Put my name down for a return trip. If you can persuade our overlords, of course.’

  ‘That was the deal I did with my overlords – that I would manage you. I did another deal with Dr Bairstow – that I manage them. Leave everything to me. Listen, it’s a public holiday – are you coming back to Site A for a bit of a knees-up?’

  ‘That sounds very nice. We’re going out by the east gate and I don’t know how long it will take us to work our way around to you, but we’ll see you some time. Put the kettle on.’

  I’d stepped aside while talking to Kal – on these staircases it was walk or talk – not both – and the others had somehow got ahead of me. I decided I’d find an open space and call them up.

  There was a huge crush of people. Estimates put the population of Knossos at this time as anything between thirty to a hundred thousand and I reckoned a lot of people would have come in from the outlying districts, as well. All the streets and flights of steps were packed solid. The smell of roasted meats began to drift across the city as people prepared for their feasts.

  I worked my way past one of the sanctuaries, past a whole range of cool, dark storerooms with huge numbers of giant pithoi stored in the shadows, just following on behind everyone else. There were no city walls here – the palace just evolved into the town itself and then the town just petered out into the countryside.

  Achieving street level at long last, I looked about me to get my bearings. Ahead was the potters’ quarter, to my right the metalworkers’. A small river – just a trickle at this time of year – separated the two areas.

  Site A was north – to my left, behind the main residential area. If we all met up here and followed the river and crossed the road, we’d be there in no time. This wasn’t the most prosperous part of the city. The streets were less clearly defined and paving – where there was paving – was very uneven and I had to watch where I was putting my feet.

  I don’t know what made me look across the road. He attracted my attention immediately. Unlike everyone else, good-naturedly shoving their way homewards, he was motionless. He was taller than most. No one jostled him. He stood like a rock in a stream while people flowed around him. Unlike the mainly bare-chested Cretans he wore a rough tunic, not a kilt. It looked to me like a torn-up bed sheet – that old St Mary’s stand-by – itself quite distinctive in this colourful world. He had short hair. No lovelocks. No curls. His habitual nasty expression. Guess who was back.

  33

  I’m not quite sure what came over me. Whether I thought I was surrounded by my own people and therefore quite safe – although the converse is usually true – or whether, after the bull-leaping ceremony, my blood was up and I wasn’t about to take any shit from anyone, or whether it was because I was in the land of moira – destiny, fate, call it what you like. Or I’d been out in the sun too long. Or a combination of any or all of those, I don’t know. I do know I was suddenly tired of people interfering (not my first choice of verb) with my life. I was tired of trying to stay out of trouble when trouble always came looking for me.

  Well, not today. Today was the day trouble ran from me. It was my moira. I heaved my pack securely over both shoulders, groped in my skirt pocket for my stun gun, jumped up and down, waved my arm and shouted, ‘Yoo-hoo! Clive! Over here.’

  He saw and heard me immediately – I suspected they could see and hear me from Mount Olympus – and began to force his way through the crowds.

  I assumed my best come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough expression and flourished my stun gun. He stopped dead and looked straight at me. Straight in the eye. I was all set to wipe him from the face of the planet but just then a huge crowd of boisterous people forced their way between us. By the time they’d pushed past and I could see again – he’d gone.

  I wasn’t so stupid as to set off after him. Not alone, anyway. I elbowed my way through the crush to a convenient doorway in a private house, touched the little statue of the Snake Goddess for luck and called up Markham. ‘Ronan alert. Be aware.’

  He responded instantly. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I think I’m about twenty yards downhill from you.’

  ‘And where was Ronan?’

  ‘On the other side of the road from me. About twenty feet away. Light tunic. Short hair.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘He ran away.’

  Markham sounded accusing. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I waved at him and he pushed off. No manners, some people.’

  ‘Shit, Max. Get out of there.’

  ‘Can’t move in all these people.’

  ‘Was he armed?’

  ‘Almost certainly, alt
hough I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘So just a cut throat or a knife between the ribs for you to worry about then. Find somewhere safe and stay there. And keep your distance. I’m not that far away.’ I could hear him issuing instructions to Evans and Cox.

  Casually, I leaned back against the door, just on the off-chance it would open. It didn’t move. OK – no escape that way, then. Worth a try, I suppose.

  I was wondering how on earth I was supposed to get through all these people and then, suddenly, there was Peterson, nearly a head taller than everyone else, scanning the crowd.

  I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the doorway. ‘Tim, I’ve just seen . . .’

  ‘Yes, I heard.’

  The earth moved for me.

  This wasn’t my first earthquake – it wasn’t even my first earthquake on Crete – we’d had several tiny tremors since our arrival – but there’s always that moment when you wonder what the hell is going on before realisation cuts in and you remember the earthquake drill.

  Instinctively we both dropped to a crouch, bracing ourselves against each doorjamb. Around us I could hear the clatter of loose masonry, falling pots and so on. A few people shouted or screamed. Dogs barked. And then it was all over. Ten seconds at the most. Although a very long ten seconds at the time. People stood up, dusted themselves down, picked up their bundles and children, and life carried on as normal. This sort of thing happened all the time. No need to panic.

  They had no idea what was to come.

  I looked up. Our doorway was supported by an ancient wooden beam that looked harder than stone itself. Perhaps it had been here since the Dawn of Time and people had built the house around it. I peered up and down the street. There was no sign of Ronan anywhere.

  We stepped out from the doorway and I tapped my ear.

  ‘Mr Sands – report.’

  ‘We’re all together, Max. Everyone’s safe. We were in that open space by the well in the weavers’ quarter when it kicked off. Even Bashford’s uninjured.’