The Bull from the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page A

riders turn them back and stop at the gates themselves. So presently the road grew quiet; and when I came down into Marathon between the olive groves all blooming with green barley, there was no one; only a hoopoe calling in the silent noonday, and the gulls upon the shore.
    There was a road between tall black cypresses, leading to the sea, and by it a little wineshop, such as peasants seek at evening when they unyoke their teams, a mulberry tree above the benches, hens scratching, a couple of goats and one young heifer; and a little house of daub-and-wattle, old and tottering, all drowsy in the quiet sun. Beyond was the flat sour sea-meadow, the long harsh plain between bay and mountains. The blue sea lapped on a beach piled high with wrack and driftwood; slow shadows of clouds, grape purple, swept the sunny mountains. A thin poor grass, with yellow coltsfoot, stretched from the shore to the olive trees. Among the flowers, like a great white block of quarried marble, stood the Cretan bull.
    I hitched my horse to a cypress and went softly forward. It was Old Snowy, sure enough. I could even see the paint of the bull ring still upon his horns. The gilt stripes caught the sun, but the tips were dirty. It was turned noon, the hour of the bull-dance.
    You could see he was on edge, if you knew bulls, by the way he looked about him as he grazed. Far off as I was, he saw me, and his forefoot raked the ground. I went off to think. There was no sense in stirring him up before I was ready.
    I mounted again; my horse slowed before the little wineshop. There was the heifer, honey-colored, with a soft brown eye. I thought how bulls are caught in Crete, and laughed at my own slowness. So I tied my horse to the mulberry tree and went and knocked at the door.
    A slow step shuffled, the door opened a crack, and an old eye peeped out. “Let me in, Mother,” I said. “I want a word with your husband.”
    “You’ll be a stranger here,” she said, and opened. Inside it was like a wren’s nest, so spare and neat; she must have been widow longer far than wife. She was shrunk so small, she looked to be near a hundred. Her eyes were still bright and blue, but it seemed as if a breath would blow her away; so I waited, not to give her a start.
    “Young man,” she said, “you’ve no business walking abroad. Didn’t you hear the crier? The High King of Athens sent for everyone to keep within doors, till he brings his army. There’s a mad bull loose in the fields; they say it came from the sea. Well, poor lad, come in, come in, the guest of the land is holy. I can tell by your speech you’re from foreign parts.” I went humbly inside. She was the first to tell me I had picked up a Cretan accent in the Bull Court.
    She shuffled about, dipping a measure of wine into a clay cup, and filling from the water-crock. She sat me on a three-legged stool and gave me barley bread with goat-cheese. It was time in courtesy to account for myself; but I did not want to flutter her. I said, “The Good Goddess bless you, Mother; I shall work better for that. I am the bull-catcher from Athens, come to take the bull.”
    “Mercy!” she cried. “What can the King be thinking of? One young lad alone, for a great bull in his rage? You should go back to him, and tell him it won’t do. He won’t know the ways of cattle, he hires others for that.”
    “The King knows me. I learned my trade in Crete, where that bull comes from. And that’s what brings me here, Mother; can I borrow your cow?”
    The poor soul quivered all over, and her mouth opened like an empty purse. “Take my poor Saffron for that wicked beast to murder? And the High King with a thousand of his own?”
    “Murder?” I said. “Not he. But she’ll quiet him down; and if he serves her, she’ll throw you the finest calf in Attica; you can sell it for a fortune.” She went to the little window, muttering and near tears. “Be good to me, Grannie,” I said, “for the sake of all the