The Bull from the Sea Read Online Free PDF

people.”
    She turned round. “Poor boy, poor boy. Braving the bull with your own flesh and bones; what’s my cow to that? Take her, lad, and the All-Mother keep you.”
    I kissed her cheek. The goodness green in the withered trunk came like a kindly omen, after old Mykale. “I’ll see you right with the King, Mother, I swear by my head, if I get safe home. Tell me your name and give me something to write on.” She brought me a worn wax tally from the shop; I smoothed out the old scores, and wrote, “The King owes Hekaline three cows, a hundred jars of sweet wine, and a strong good slave-girl. If I die, let the Athenians send to Delphi, and ask Apollo how to choose a king. Theseus.” She peered at it, nodding; of course she could not read. “Keep that safe, and give me your blessing, Mother. I must go.” As I walked off leading the heifer, I saw her bright little eye at the shutter’s chink.
    Podargos had gone further off. I was going after, when I saw something on the beach, too white for driftwood. It was a body, almost bare. Then I went running; for it wore the dress of the Bull Court.
    It was a girl from my team in Crete, one of the tribute-maids from Athens. She had set out to the bull with more pride than I had; as well as the loin-guard, she had put on her gilded boots, her handstraps, and all her jewels, and painted her face for the ring. There was a great tear in her side that must have gone through her liver. She was dying; but she knew me, and spoke my name.
    I knelt beside her, saying “Thebe! What is this? Why didn’t you wait for me; you must have known I would be coming.”
    Her eyes were bright and wandering, and she gaped for air as the dark blood flowed away. Theseus!” she said. “Is Pylia dead?”
    I looked about, finding first a bull-net, then the second girl, lying half in the sea where the horns had tossed her. I came back and said, “Yes, she is. She must have died quickly.” They had been lovers in Crete, after the custom of the Bull Court.
    She put up her hand and felt the wound in her side. “I need the ax; can you do it?”
    They use it in the ring to dispatch the victims. I said, “No, my dear, I have nothing; but it won’t be long. Keep hold of my hand.” I thought how I had watched over them in the Labyrinth, trained them, heartened them, and jumped the bull for them on their bad days, only for this.
    “We have done what is best.” You will see sometimes with a warrior going before his wounds are cold, that he will talk and talk, then snuff out like a dead lamp. “We came back too proud, and our kinsfolk hate us.”
    She paused, gasping. I stroked her brow and felt the clammy sweat.
    “My father called me a brazen trull, for vaulting our old ox to show the boys. And Pylia, they found her a clerk to marry. Soft as a pig. In Crete we’d have thrown him to the bull. They said she was lucky to get him, having lived a mountebank and a public show.”
    I said softly, “They should have spoken those words to me.” But there was no one to be angry with, only the dying and the dead.
    “They called us haters of men. Oh, Theseus! There is nothing left like the Bull Court. No honor … so we tried …” Her head sank back, and her eyes were setting, when she opened them again and clenched her hand on mine and said, “He gores to the right.” Then her soul went out in the death-gasp.
    Her hand slipped from mine, and it left me lonely. The Bull Court was gone indeed. But as I got to my feet I saw along the mud flats a great white shape, wicked and noble, smelling the wind. There was still the bull.
    I walked along the trees till I found a thick old olive, the last before the sea. I tethered the cow there, and tied the great hide bull-rope, with its running hobble, strongly round the tree. Then I climbed up with the net and hung it between two branches, lying easily. There was nothing left but to call upon the gods. I chose Apollo, since the Cretan bulls are bred from his sacred