by Mary Renault
“Kouros of Poseidon!” he said to me grinning. “And how are you Poseidon’s? Your mother went bathing, did she, and met an eel?” He turned round to the courtiers, who offered thin laughter, like people paying a tax.
I said, “I am his servant and his sacrifice. It is a thing between him and me.”
He nodded, with a scornful mouth and blank stare hiding his mind, looking all round, to see he had the people’s eyes. There was a gold ring on his forefinger, heavy and big; he drew it off, and tossed it in his palm. Then he flipped it in the air, so that it drew a bright line in the sun, and fell beyond the wharf into the sea. I saw it gleam and sink. And from the crowd of Cretans came a strange murmuring, as if they had seen impiety, or some ill omen.
“Well, Kouros of Poseidon,” he said, “if you are so thick with your fish-daddy, he will give it back to you. Go down and ask him.”
We were still a moment, looking at one another. Then I turned and ran to the wharfside and dived in. It was quiet and cool in the sea, after the hot wharf with its staring crowds. I went down and opened my eyes, and saw the shining sea-roof above me, and, below, the harbor floor patched with dark sponges, and strewn with the refuse of ships; broken pots and baskets, sodden skins of fruit and gourds, and old gnawed bones.
I thought, “He has made game of me. He knew I would not deny the god. Here I am diving for him like the slave-boy of some poor fisherman getting shellfish for his master. He did it to break my pride; no, to kill me, for he saw I would not come up with empty hands. If I die down here, it will be on my own head; no one can say he murdered a sacred victim. Yes, he is a beast that thinks. Someone should kill him.”
All this while, I was searching about in the dirty water. I had breathed in before I dived, but not enough, having no practice in it, and already my chest felt tight. “My eyes will blacken soon,” I thought; “then I am done.” There was a stone before me, and under it a squid waving its arms as if it mocked me; out and in; it seemed to grow bigger and smaller, like something in a dream. And then I heard a roaring in my ears, like waves beating on shingle. “You boasted of me, Theseus,” said the voice of the sea “but did you pray to me?”
So I prayed with my heart to the god, since my mouth was sealed with water. “Help me, Father. Save my people. Let me avenge my honor.” The blackness cleared from my eyes; and I saw in the mud under the squid a bright thing settling. I snatched at it; the slimy grip of the squid lashed my wrist, then he took fright and let go, filling the water round with his black ink. He must have seized it for food, and given it back at the command of the god.
I shot up to the light, and breathed like one coming back from the dead, and swam toward the wharf steps, with my hand clenched on the ring, for it was loose upon my finger. The Cranes waved and called my name. Then I looked at my enemy. I saw he had got ready, while I was down there, what he would say when I came up ashamed, or when I did not come. Now his mouth straightened and set. But his round stare did not alter. Presently he said in his coarse arrogant voice, “Well, well, it seems you have missed your calling. A fish-boy, sure enough.” And he held his hand out for the ring.
I drew it off and looked at it. It had a goddess carved on it, with a high diadem and serpents in her hands. I held it out on my palm, so that it could be seen; I did not want him saying I had cheated with a pebble. “Here is your ring,” I said. “Do you know it?”
“Yes,” he said, his chin looking lower on his thick neck. “Give it here.”
I took a step back. “You have seen it, then. But it was an offering to Poseidon. We must give it him back again.” I threw it into the water, and said in the silence, “If you want it, it is between the god and you.”
Everything was so still that the ring’s splash sounded clearly. Then all the poor Cretans, the porters and sailors and rowers, started jabbering together as shrill as monkeys. Even from the Palace people came whispering and twittering, like birds hidden in leafy trees. I looked at the covered litter. The crack was a little wider, but still one could not see in. I felt that this unseen watcher had made me dare to throw the ring back in the sea, and wondered if it was sense or madness. The circles of its fall died on the water; and I turned to face its master.
I had looked to see him swollen with anger, and readied myself to be beaten if not worse. But he was quite still; hard, still, and staring. Then his head went up; his mouth opened; and the place was filled with his bellowing laughter. It startled the harbor gulls, and they flew up screeching.
“Well done, fish-boy!” he roared. “Your fish-father gets the prize! Commend me to him; tell him not to forget Asterion!” He rocked round laughing on his heel, toward his ox-car. It brought him round facing the litter; he saw it then for the first time. For a moment the laughter slipped from his face, like a mask when the string is broken. But he caught it back again, and the chair shook as he drove away.
3
THE KNOSSOS ROAD CLIMBS from the port between orchards and silver olives. It is a rich land, within its deathly cliffs. The black troops still escorted us; but Lukos avoided me, which I did not find strange, for I had angered a powerful lord, and that is a catching sickness. The houses of the rich merchants lining the road were like small palaces; I was always expecting one to be the house of the King, but ceased to ask when I saw the black men grinning.
We passed the houses, and Lukos came nearer, like a man pondering a doubtful horse. I said to him, “Who was that man in the ox-car?” He looked about him, hiding it, in the way of the Palace people; then he said. “You were foolish. That was the King’s son, Asterion.” I laughed and said, “A starry name for an earthy thing.” He answered, “It is not for you to use it. The style of the heir is Minotauros.”
Something came back to me. A feather seemed to brush the short hairs on my neck. But I said nothing to the others; it concerned my own moira only.
The road was coming out on a fertile plain, with a range of mountains beyond. The shape of the ridge was for all the world like a great long bearded man, lying flat on a bier. I pointed it out and Iros said, “I’ve heard of that. They call it the Dead Zeus.” “Dead!” cried the Cranes all together, shocked at the impiety. “Yes,” he said. “These Earthlings think he dies each year.” I was still staring at the mountain when Melantho called, “Look! Look!” And then, on a spur of the foothills that thrust into the plain, I saw for the first time the House of the Ax.
Picture to yourself all the kings’ palaces you ever saw, set side by side and piled on one another. That will be a little house, beside the House of the Ax. It was a palace within whose bounds you could have set a town. It crowned the ridge and clung to its downward slopes, terrace after terrace, tier after tier of painted columns, deep glowing red, tapering in toward the base, and ringed at head and foot with that dark brilliant blue the Cretans love. Behind them in the noonday shadow were porticoes and balconies gay with pictured walls, which glowed in the shade like beds of flowers. The tops of tall cypresses hardly showed above the roofs of the courts they grew in. Over the highest roof-edge, sharp-cut against the deep-blue Cretan sky, a mighty pair of horns reared toward heaven.
The sight winded me like a blow in the belly. I had heard travellers’ tales third-hand, but pictured them in the likeness of what I knew. I felt like a goatherd who comes in from the back hills and sees his first city. My mouth fell open in just such a peasant’s gape, and I shut it quickly before Lukos could look. Now when no one was hurting me, I could have wept indeed. All about me the Cranes were chattering and gasping. Presently Amyntor said to me, “Where are the walls?”
I looked. The Palace stood on an easy slope; yet it had no more walls than a common dwelling-house might have, to keep thieves out and slaves in. The roofs were even without battlements, crowned only by their insolent horns, a pair facing each way. Such was the power of Minos. His walls were on the waters, which his ships commanded. I stared in silence, shutting my face on my despair. I felt like a child come among warriors with a wooden spear. Also I
felt up-country, rude and ignorant, which hurts a young man more. “All very fine,” I said. “But if war came to Crete, they could not hold it a day.”
Lukos had heard me. But here on his home ground he was too easy for anger. He said with his careless smile, “The House of the Ax has stood here a thousand years, and never fell yet except when the Earth Bull shook it. It was old when you Hellenes were herdsmen still on the northern grasslands. I see you doubt me, but that is natural. We have learned from the Egyptians to reckon years and ages. You, I think, have a saying, ‘Time out of mind.’” He strolled on, before I had an answer.
We entered the Palace precinct by the great West Gate. On either side there were staring people. Before us was the great red lintel-column, the painted shadows beyond. I walked ahead, looking straight before me. If someone spoke, or anything new confused me, I would pause, and turn slowly as if I had just deigned to notice it. When I look back, all this seems laughable, a boyish vanity, not to be caught like a bumpkin at a loss. And yet, the mark of those days has never left me. I have heard people say in Athens that my bearing is more kingly than my father’s was. But I was quick-moving as a youth, pricking like a dog at everything around me. It was in the House of the Ax that I learned stillness, and to keep my speed till I had call for it.
The Palace people had swarmed to look; yet I thought these seemed of less consequence than those who had come all the way down to the port to see us. It puzzled me, but I could make nothing of it. We passed the guardhouse, and entered a great Throne Boom of audience. It was full of guards and priestesses and priests and Palace people; and against the far wall was a tall white throne, but it was empty.
Once more we waited, but this time in deep decorum. The people peeped discreetly, and murmured together. To pass the time, I raised my eyes to the walls; and then I forgot my resolve to stare at nothing new. For pictured there was the bull-dance, from the taking of the bull to the very end: beauty and pain, skill and glory, fleetness and fear and grace and blood, all that fierce music. My eyes were glued to it, till I heard a woman whisper, “Look at that one. Already he wants to learn.” But just then voices said, “Hush.”
The guards’ spears rattled. King Minos entered, and went up the side of the dais, and sat upon his carved white throne, resting hands on knees like the gods of Egypt. He wore a long red belted robe, and he looked tall; but that might have been his horns. The light from the portico gleamed dimly back from his gold face and crystal eyes.
In the quiet, I heard from the Cranes soft indrawn breaths. But that was all. Old Cretans say we were the first band of victims, seeing Minos in his bull-mask, of whom not one cried aloud for fear.
The mask was the work of some great artificer, solemn and noble. But before I had looked enough, the show was over. Lukos stepped out and spoke some words in Cretan; all the rite of the bull-dance is in the ancient tongue. For a moment we felt ourselves watched from behind the crystal; then a gold glove gestured; the spears rattled again; the King went out; and we were led onward from the presence chamber, through painted corridors, and colonnades barred with shadow, and up a great stair open to heaven, and through more passages and halls, till we knew north from south no longer, deeper and deeper into the House of the Ax, which Cretans call the Labyrinth.
At last we came out into a great chamber. Within the door stood either side on a pillar mount the Cretan double ax, the sacred Labrys. So I knew this huge place was a shrine. And at the far end, picked out in light that slanted from the roof, I saw the Goddess. She stood ten feet tall, crowned with a golden diadem; round her waist a gold apron lay over a skirt of many flounces, worked cunningly in enamel and precious gems. Her face was ivory; ivory were her round bare breasts, and her outstretched arms entwined with golden serpents. Her hands were held out low over the earth, as if they said, “Be still.”
We went forward, between walls pictured with her worship. I saw before her feet a long offering table inlaid with gold, and round it faces I knew again. Here were the nobles who had come down to the harbor; and among them, as broad as any two, swarthy Asterion whose title was Minos’ Bull.
Lukos halted us ten paces off. We waited. The people at the table whispered together. Then, from behind the painted goddess, came out a goddess of flesh.
Beside the great image she seemed little, and even for a woman she was not tall, in spite of her high diadem. She wore the whole costume of the Goddess, all but the snakes. Even her skin, pale golden, polished and clear, had a look of ivory. Her high round breasts had golden tips, like those above her. Their faces were painted just alike, the eyes drawn round with black, the brows arched and thickened, the small mouth red. It seemed the face below must be itself the same.
Since childhood I had seen my mother dressed for her priestly office; yet I was awed. She had never claimed to be more than a servant of the deity. This small stiff figure had a bearing that might claim anything.
She came forward to the offering table and set on it her outstretched hands. It was the very posture of the Goddess. Then she spoke, a few words only in the ancient tongue; a cool clear voice, like cold water on cold stones. Between the heavy painted eyelids, dark eyes moved, regarding us; for a moment they met mine. A shock went through me, such as Minos’ bull-mask had not struck into my flesh. A woman-goddess; and young.
She stood at the table waiting, and the nobles came forward, each with a clay tablet in the hand. Each would point to one of us or the other and put the tablet down. I saw these must be offering-tokens, such as my mother received at home in the Goddess’ name, so many jars of oil or honey, so many tripods; she would read them out, and the worshipper paid later. This seemed the same, though all in Cretan; only here they were buying their beasts of sacrifice. I saw the man with the blue monkey point to Iros, the man with the cat to Chryse, the old woman to me. Last stepped up Asterion, and tossed his token down so that it rattled. She read it out; the rest all stared and muttered, and fell back sullenly. She spoke a phrase, in which I heard his name, and he nodded, satisfied, looking scornfully at the rest. For a moment she stood still at the table with her hands upon it, in the ritual posture. Then, meeting his eyes, she lifted up his tablet in her palms, and showed him it was broken.
There was silence, and the air prickled. I saw him stare at her, his jowl settling in his neck, his color thickening. She met his gaze, but her face was still, keeping the likeness of the image. Then she turned and went out the way she had come, and everyone raised fist to brow in homage. I too saluted her. It is never wise to neglect the gods of the place, wherever one may be.
The courtiers left the shrine; as they passed the door one saw their heads coming together. Asterion came up to Lukos, jerking his head at us, and giving some order. Lukos bowed deeply; he seemed struck with new awe. As for me, I stood up straight, waiting to hear what was in store for me. But our new master turned on his heel, and did not even look at me.
Nor did the Cranes. Their eyes were downcast.
“How can I face them?” I thought. “They will all pay for my pride. Yet how could I have denied Poseidon? The god would leave me.”
It was clear to me now why only the richest nobles had come down to the port. They were the ones who could afford to dedicate a bull-dancer; they wanted one who would do them credit. This rite at the shrine was a solemn business, going back, I suppose, to a time when they had more reverence for their gods. Down there they could look well, and appraise us.
“I must have been mad,” I thought, “to fancy insolence would keep him from buying me. Of course he has bought me for revenge. But what about the others?”
Just as I was wondering whether if we ran for it any would get away, a young man came and said lightly to Lukos, “Am I late? I will take them off your hands.” I saw he was doing some common office; so I went with him, and the Cranes followed.
Once more we threaded corridors and stairs and terraces, and crossed a great open court. Then there was a low entry, and another passage, which sloped downward.
And I began to hear a sound. As I listened, I felt cold fingers touching my hand. They were Chryse’s; but she kept silent, while the others caught their breath. A bull was bellowing in some hollow place, roaring and bawling between walls that flung back the sound; and we were walking toward it.
I looked at the man who led us. He walked carelessly, and seemed neither sorry nor glad, but to be thinking of his own concerns. I squeezed Chryse’s hand, and said to the others, “Listen. That is not anger.” For now we were nearer, I could judge the sound, and knew it.
We came out into a low crypt, lit with windows close to the roof, which were at ground level; the rest was all below. In the midst, sunk lower yet into the earth, was a big square pit of sacrifice. The bellowing of the bull filled it with a noise that nearly split one’s head in two. He lay on the great stone altar, trussed up and hamstrung, waiting for the knife.
He roared, and heaved, and beat his head up and down upon the stone; but in the pit all else was quiet and orderly: the strong young priest, bare but for his apron, holding the double ax; the table with the jugs and the libation bowls; the three priestesses, and the lady of the sanctuary.
The young man who had brought us led us to the edge of the pit, which was about as deep as a man is high, with steps going down. He made the sign of homage, and stepped back. I raised my brows at him, and he said impatiently through the din, “You have to be purified.” He would have gone then, but I caught his arm. “Who is that girl?” I asked, and pointed, to be clear, because of the noise.
He looked shocked past speech. Then he hissed in my ear, “Be quiet, barbarian. That is Ariadne the Holy One, the Goddess-on-Earth.”
I looked. She had seen me pointing, and her back was stiff. I saw she was not one to be lightly affronted. I touched my brow and was silent.