The White Bull Page 14

  After having been warned by the men below, I took careful note of the two attendants as they approached. But they were unarmed, and did not look particularly dangerous. Ignoring my wings entirely, they gazed at me with evident dislike, until their mistress chided them into some semblance of hospitality.

  Soon, as if in a parody of palatial entertainment, the Princess and I were brought poor drinking vessels—mine was only a cracked clay cup—and furnished what I was assured was wine; but when I tasted the clear liquid poured by one of the scowling attendants into my cracked cup, I was sure that I was drinking the water of the nearby spring.

  "Is it not delightful, Daedalus?" Ariadne asked me as her own cup was refilled by one of her attendants. Indeed, as water it was not bad. But evidently my hostess sincerely believed our drink to be the finest wine, for now at last her voice took on some animation, and a slight flush touched her sunburnt cheeks.

  I muttered something in the way of agreement.

  "Are not all things here the most beautiful of their kind that you have ever seen?" And she made a graceful gesture with her tanned arms, inviting me to study our surroundings. I studied her instead, and only now did I notice that Ariadne's hair was somewhat unclean and matted, her full Cretan skirt was slightly torn, and that the bodice that upheld her lovely breasts was soiled.

  "Yourself the most beautiful of all, Highness." That I could still say with but little damage to the truth.

  She accepted the compliment as complacently as a princess ought to acknowledge such things; then, with another sharp little clap of her hands, she ordered food to be set before herself and her guest. My hopes rose for just a moment; but then, on seeing what gristly scraps presently appeared before me on a wooden plate, I could only protest that I was not hungry.

  That was fine with the princess, whose own food appeared no better than what had been brought to me; whatever pleased her visitor pleased her. "But how do you like our wine, Daedalus? Tell me truly, now." Ariadne smiled at me serenely, the hostess never doubting that she was about to receive another compliment.

  I shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably, wondering if all this could possibly be some monstrous jest. No, not on the part of Ariadne. No.

  All I could say was: "Seldom or never have I tasted its like, Princess."

  She nodded complacently, and took another sip herself. And now I was aware of a most painful duty that I could not postpone any longer. I had to tell the princess that her father was dead. Somehow I stumbled through the announcement.

  She thought the news over for a moment or two, and then she wept one slow tear. "Oh, Daedalus, sometimes I am so—so—"

  In a moment I was kneeling before her again, offering her my help. But I could not get her to complete that statement. She insisted there was nothing wrong.

  I had dreaded having to inform the princess of the horrible details of her father's passing, but to my amazement she never asked to hear them, even though I told her the tragic event had taken place in Sicily. And in a frighteningly few moments she had resumed her air of gaiety and laughter, to all appearances completely delighted with her rural poverty. Next, in all apparent seriousness she was inviting me to admire the beauty of her servitors, who, the gods knew, had little enough of that commodity to share among them.

  Was Ariadne's strange behavior the result of some great enchantment? I had never put much stock in magic, but still I could not imagine any other cause save madness. At last I mentioned to the princess the strange band of men we had encountered in the harbor town, and the even stranger warnings those men had given us.

  Ariadne's face grew troubled, and she ordered me to silence, saying that it pained her to think or talk about such things.

  It was with a strong feeling of foreboding that I at last asked her to tell me what had become of Theseus and Phaedra. The princess had volunteered no information about them, or indeed about anything except the water she called wine, and the beauty with which she thought we were surrounded.

  An expression of fear grew on Ariadne's countenance as soon as I mentioned her sister and the Prince of Athens, so that I regretted my question. But it was too late.

  "They are gone," she cried. "They left me here and sailed away together. I can only hope that they are as happy as I am." And saying that, Ariadne burst into tears.

  I did what little I could, as a man and a mere commoner, to soothe her royal self. To my own surprise, my clumsy efforts were immediately successful. Then, as soon as the princess was composed again and beginning to smile, I asked her why she stayed here.

  Ariadne's eyes lighted up, and she began to tell me about one whom she called her master.

  These were strange words from a princess, stranger than any I had heard yet. I could not understand her at all, and was trying to think of how to express this fact diplomatically, when she was interrupted and rebuked in an incredibly rude way.

  "Ha! Little you know of our master!" This startling outburst came from one of Ariadne's attendant women—this particular one so ugly that I thought even Phoenician sailors would have shown little interest in raping her.

  To my astonishment Ariadne ignored the woman completely and went on with her description of the mysterious master. At this point I became firmly convinced that at least one, and probably both, of the women before me must be mad.

  While I was wondering what to do next, a large shadow passed silently over us. A whispering sound ran through the air above us, too steady, I thought, to be made by wings. Looking up with some half-formed idea that I was going to see another man who had been taught by the White Bull how to fly, I beheld an even stranger sight. What looked like a closed chariot, its surface half bright glass, half of metal that was almost as bright, and drawn through the air by invisible horses, passed above us at a leisurely speed. A moment later the vehicle had landed easily in the small glade, fitting itself precisely down among the trees.

  The shape of this peculiar craft was roughly that of a wide, short cylinder, with most of its glass on top. As soon as the cylinder had come to rest, a door slid open in its curved side. I stood gaping, half in wonder, half in envy, at the art and strength that must have gone into the creation of such a device.

  At first I was more fascinated by the machine than by the man, or rather youth, who now came climbing out of it, followed promptly by first one and then a second giggling female. But that state of affairs did not last long. The head of the youth who had just arrived was wreathed with ivy, but he wore almost nothing else, as if he were coming fresh from winning a prize at wrestling or bull-dancing. His body had once been that of an athlete, but it was already going soft with evident dissipation and lack of exercise.

  First one of the newly-arrived young women and then the other, both of them as scantily clad as the god himself, and obviously much under his spell, joined him standing in front of the marvelous machine in which they had arrived. All three were laughing.

  I stood uncertain as to whether to try to flee, but the princess, laughing happily, urged me to remain. The new arrivals came walking through the trees to join us. The youth, completely ignoring me at first, greeted Ariadne carelessly, but still with respect. The impression I received was of a returning king being reunited with a favorite concubine, or perhaps his morganatic wife.

  And Ariadne, humbling herself before the youth in a manner ill-befitting a princess in any company, addressed him as her divine lord and true god Dionysus, and presented me to him under that name.

  Cautiously I genuflected as if to royalty. I was puzzled and wary; my first glimpse of the Bull on the shoreline of Crete had told me that I was in the presence of something other than a human. But this person, at first sight, was not obviously anything but a man. Certainly a young and handsome man, if not a completely healthy one—but I had seen others his equal in youth and beauty.

  Like most of those others, who were surely only mortal, this self-proclaimed deity had a certain haughtiness about him. But op the whole this Dionysus impressed me
as a mild-mannered chap, almost diffident, though dressed rather indecently in only a couple of very small animal skins and a few leaves, A god? I really had grave doubts about that, even though he had arrived in a chariot that might have been borrowed or stolen from some divinity. This Dionysus looked very human indeed, a radiant, amiable, though perhaps not strictly handsome youth with grape-leaves in his hair, a sniffle, and the beginnings of a paunch resulting from too much easy living.

  After a brief exchange of greetings, I retired a step or two into the background and stood listening. The more I overheard of the conversation of this strange person with the princess, the more I became convinced that these two were indeed, in some sense, man—or god—and wife.

  Moreover, this strange god had somehow convinced Ariadne that he was faithful to her, though I saw no possibility of that actually being the case; the two girls or young women who had arrived in the metal chariot with our new Dionysus clung to him sleepily during the conversation, and he, in a kind of divine arrogance, took shameless liberties with them in the very presence of Ariadne; his hands fondled their voluptuous bodies in an absent fashion, even as he spoke to the woman he had styled his queen. And meanwhile she, gazing at her lord with every appearance of adoration, did not appear to notice.

  At least this Dionysus had certainly convinced her that his unfaithfulness did not matter in the least.

  From the position to which I had retreated, a few paces from the others, I examined the supposed god Dionysus as objectively as I could. He in turn threw a bored glance my way now and then, and eventually began to take something of an interest in me.

  This interest, to begin with at least, had little to do with the wings I was still wearing—at first I think he was hardly aware of those artificial attachments, and when he noticed them he was even less surprised than Ariadne had been. When at last he did take full notice of my wings, he for a time assumed, for some reason, that I had just come from Thera. At this Dionysus began to talk to me, almost as to an equal, about what events might be occurring upon that island now. I understood hardly a word of this effort on his part to make conversation.

  I assured the supposed divinity that I knew nothing of what might be happening on Thera, and that in fact I had never been there. With what I hoped was acceptable humility I informed him that I was only a poor artisan.

  Now at last the one who called himself Dionysus blinked and scowled at me. It was only at this point, I think, that he realized that he had never seen me before.

  For a moment I feared his anger, but I need not have worried about that; he was seldom angry, as I learned later, and never violently or for long. Nor was he very intelligent. But my fear was well-founded all the same.

  How shall I describe what happened to me next? When it began, and for some minutes thereafter, I did not realize that what was happening had anything directly to do with Dionysus.

  Once that most extraordinary being—whether he, deity, or mere man—had smiled upon me, and decided to employ his powers, there was nothing I could do about it.

  As I say, I was at first not even aware that the one who smiled and talked with me was doing anything else.

  The effect began with a warm, glowing feeling of well-being, which I attributed at first to the wine I had drunk—how could I ever have thought this clear and sparkling stuff was only water?—and with which Ariadne's cup-bearers were plying me again. Then, just when the effect was reaching its full force, the youth who had been talking to me changed his expression, giving a little lift to his eyebrows as if he would have said: There! How do you like that?

  A moment later he had turned away from me again. At very nearly the same moment I was dimly aware that Ariadne had arisen from her cushions among the rocks, and with her own hands, was bringing her master red wine. The wine that she brought to him was genuine; I could see the true color of it, and I could smell it faintly in the sparkling air, even as it was being poured several paces from where I stood.

  Dionysus gulped down the wine and seated himself, lounging on pillows softer than those used by the princess, which had been brought for him by one of Ariadne's ugly attendants. One of his own pretty traveling companions came to seat herself in his lap; from somewhere this young girl produced a bunch of fresh grapes, which she proceeded to pop one by one into her god's laughing mouth. Only now did I notice how badly stained were the teeth of Dionysus.

  But now such trivialities as stained teeth or odd behavior could not matter. Dionysus had ordained a celebration, and no one within reach of his will could wish for or think about anything else.

  I was indeed fortunate that during my personal encounter with this god, or pseudo-god, he chose to treat me kindly. He was not unkind even after he must have realized that I was truly only a mere mortal, an ordinary man, a rude stranger engaged in close conversation with his queen. Fortunately Dionysus was not jealous. I must have seemed to him a poor, weak-willed, ugly man, hardly a rival for the affections of the princess or even the other women—what mere man could have been a real rival to him? Like the other humans with whom he came in contact, I was only a toy, no more—a toy, perhaps, with good potential for amusement, and so he chose to treat me gently. Also he must have been able to see that I was really an old friend of his beloved queen, and that a visit from me might be good for her. Ariadne still suffered moments of sadness despite all that he could do for her—or all that he cared to take the time to do. But I am getting somewhat ahead of my story.

  I can remember vaguely how, during that sunny afternoon on Naxos, the mighty Dionysus told me in a wistful voice at least some of his concerns for his queen. But he could never turn his own thoughts very far from revelry. Even when he spoke of Ariadne's suffering, it was as if he were remembering something from long ago, something that no longer mattered very much to him at all.

  It must have been a very peculiar conversation that the two of us, that god and I, enjoyed that day. At one point, as I remember, Dionysus expressed the wish that I might someday fashion a pair of wings for him. Of course I assured my powerful companion that I would, and at the time I undoubtedly meant it. And when he heard me mention my skill in plumbing, he spoke wistfully on that topic as well. He hoped, he said, to have a truly magnificent palace of his own one day, and it would be wonderful if he could have plumbing in it too. Thus are the gods—at least the ones that I have met—subject to the same indignities as the rest of us.

  The personal wings would be useful, Dionysus told me, because his own flying machine had lately been giving him trouble. To begin with, some months ago, it had always carried him immediately to the exact place where he wanted to go, but lately it had shown signs of becoming unreliable. And there was no longer anyone on Thera capable of repairing the flying chariot for him, restoring its full proper magic. None of the Bull-people were any longer on that island. And besides, my kind of man-made wings just looked like more fun.

  I drained my water-cup with delight, as if indeed it had contained some nectar of the gods.

  None of the Bull-people. My companion had spoken those words so calmly that at first I almost missed them. Besides, I was too dazed by the Dionysian powers employed to make me think of nothing but debauchery to take much conscious note of exactly what he said. But I had certainly heard those words, and I was not going to forget them. None of the Bull-people. Then the White Bull had not lied to me, on that point anyway; there were certainly more of the Bull's race in the world.

  As Dionysus and I continued our conversation, some demon of foolishness urged me to volunteer to repair this young god's flying machine for him—I wanted to do so mainly because I was so curious about the strange device that I wanted to examine it closely. But fortunately I realized there was a strong possibility that my skills would prove inadequate to the task; and so I bit my tongue and with some effort remained silent.

  At about this time Dionysus said: "There are still those living on Thera who want me to come back there. And stay."

  "Those? Do you spe
ak of other gods, Divine Leader?"

  "Gods? What are gods?" It was as if he really wanted an answer to the question, though he did not really expect to get one. And for the moment he seemed scarcely more than human.

  Then the moment passed. "No, the gods are all gone from that island," Dionysus told me, almost frowning. Then he brightened quickly. "Thera is the place, my friend," he said. "Where the real gods once decided to make their home�and where they proved not to be so godlike after all." And Dionysus laughed, enjoying some private joke.

  I puzzled over everything he said, trying to understand it. Meanwhile about a dozen more women had begun to emerge from the forest, singly and in couples, and to gather around us. These women were all of them healthier and better-looking than Ariadne's ill-favored attendants, and to my vision, distorted now by the influence of Dionysus, they appeared as nothing less than visions of divine beauty. They bore slings and bows, the weapons of hunters, and most of them were carrying fresh-killed game. It was as if these women had sensed the presence of their master here; or, more likely, they had simply observed the arrival of his flying machine, and were gathering from the surrounding woods, coming to adore their god. These newcomers cast looks that would have frightened me under ordinary circumstances; even under the influence of the god as I was, I found them vaguely disturbing. But none of those women would do anything to molest a man who was engaged in such friendly conversation with their master.