The White Bull Read online

Then, while we were in the midst of exploring these ruins, there came for me another of those moments that will never be possible to forget.

  I was standing in front of a shattered wall, made of one of the mysterious opaque substances used in so much of the construction here; and this wall was very much like all the other shattered walls around me, except that I realized abruptly that a human face was peering at me through one of its many holes.

  It was no ordinary face. On my second glance at this apparition, with my previous experience with the Bull and Dionysus never far from my awareness, I was not entirely sure that the countenance now confronting me was wholly human.

  Not that there was any gross disparity in shape or feature. My first logical impression of the man behind the wall was only that he must be of no more than ordinary height, and young, so that his brown beard, bleached somewhat by the sun, still grew patchily. His brown eyes were large and round with astonishment as he stared at me through the hole, and the expression on his face suggested that he had never seen anything quite like me before. But somehow, before I had seen anything of this man but the central features of his face, I knew that he was extraordinary. This person was somehow of a kind with Dionysus—which meant that to me he was, perhaps, more than a mere human being after all.

  I called out in a low voice to my four companions, who were moving about at no great distance behind me. And at the same time the stranger and I, as if by common though unspoken consent, both began to move toward the place where the wall separating us ended in a broken opening. When we reached that point we would be able to confront each other fully, at scarcely more than arms-length distance.

  The man I had discovered was clothed only in a lion-skin, I saw when we had both moved beyond the corner of the wall. But even this bizarre garment was not the first nor most remarkable thing that any of us noticed about him.

  As greatly as Theseus had excelled the clerk Stomargos in strength and bulk of muscular development, even so, it seemed to me, this stranger excelled the King of Athens, or any other mortal man that I had ever seen. And yet the massive body poised in front of me looked neither fat nor slow; and the muscles under the tanned skin were not only extraordinarily large, but appeared to have a different quality about them as well, as if, despite their natural flow and movement, they might be formed of some material harder than human flesh. This peculiarity is something hard to put into words. I was reminded of the Bronze Man patrolling the shore of Crete; not that I thought the figure in front of me was rigid metal, or had the least doubt that it was fully alive.

  Of course the sole garment worn by the stranger, the lion-skin, was remarkable enough in itself. Lions were not native to any of the other Greek islands, and could scarcely be commonplace here on Thera. But still here was an undoubtedly genuine skin—I had seen one of the great cats alive, caged in Athens, and some of their pelts in Crete, and I could not be mistaken. In confirmation, there were the skull and gaping jaws, from which fanged bones our new acquaintance had fashioned himself a kind of crude helmet.

  The man who stood facing me, thus adorned, was carrying a club, a tapering length of splintered log. The log was deeply dented in several places, and most of the bark was worn away by some kind of heavy use. I am not usually considered a weak man, yet I would have used two hands to lift that club, and would have found it much too ponderous to serve as a practical weapon. Yet this fellow waved it lightly in one fist, so that I thought at first it might be of some kind of peculiarly light wood. I discovered soon enough that it was not.

  Still, with Theseus and several others standing armed and ready at my back, I was able to remain calm in the face of this apparition. And as no one else was in any hurry to speak, I took it upon myself to open conversation. "Greetings, sir. I am Daedalus, an artisan, lately of Athens and of Crete. May I ask your name?"

  There was a pause, as if my interlocutor found it necessary to think for a moment to be sure of the question.

  "I am Heracles," he said at last. The young man spoke as good Greek as any of us, and in educated tones, not in the local dialect. His voice, though not unpleasant, was high-pitched, not nearly as deep as might have been expected from the possessor of such a body, so that at first it struck me as incongruous.

  Heracles—the glory of the goddess Hera. It was an unusual name, though not unheard of, and I wondered silently how this remarkable-looking youth might have come by it.

  Haltingly, somewhat uncertain as to protocol, I did my best to introduce this somehow godlike person to the new King of Athens. I thought that Theseus looked jealously upon this strange man's massive muscles—as would any man who prided himself on his own strength—and I was sure the king was calculating in his own mind how soon he could honorably issue a challenge to a wrestling match.

  Trying to fill a somewhat awkward silence, I questioned our new acquaintance about his dress.

  Heracles answered simply that he had killed the lion and taken its skin.

  "You killed the beast in Africa?" Theseus asked him.

  "No. No, sir—I should say 'Your Majesty.' I killed the lion here. I have never been to Africa. I may not leave this island."

  Theseus blinked at him, not understanding.

  "You mean that you are not allowed to leave, good Heracles?" I asked. "Why not?"

  "I have taken a vow," the strong man answered solemnly. "I am trying to make up for the grievous harm that I have done."

  The rest of us looked at one another in puzzlement; and Theseus, also the victim of a self-inflicted vow, showed sympathy.

  Somewhat haltingly, with the air of a man who needs encouragement to be sure that his audience is really interested, Heracles began to tell us something of his history—though many a day was to pass before I heard very much of it.

  He also spoke of a race of Bullheads, as he called them, who until recently had occupied the highlands of this island, but who were now departed. These Bullheads were two-legged beings who nevertheless looked something like cattle, and who spoke the languages of men in a slow and halting way. From the way that Heracles described them, they were definitely not men; whether he thought they were gods or not was not easy to tell. And either our new acquaintance did not understand the reason for their leaving, or he was having trouble in communicating that information to us.

  Theseus and I, who had known the White Bull on Crete, looked at each other. And I understood that Heracles was confirming—as had Dionysus, on Naxos—what the Bull himself had told me of a whole race of such creatures.

  Kena'ani, who could have no patience with a race of beings who were already gone beyond the range of trading, asked: "Will you show us where the lion came from?"

  "If you wish."

  So saying, Heracles led us to a different kind of shelter, a huge, compound structure now broken in all its parts. Within its various yards and cells, he said, a number of specimen animals, including snakes and at least one lion, had been confined as far back as he could remember. Some of these beasts had managed to escape during the confusion attendant upon the general flight or failure of the Bullheaded gods. Heracles related how he, with only the kindest of intentions, had then hunted some of the more deadly creatures down and killed them after they escaped. His intention, as he said, had been to protect the weaker people, the villagers and fisherfolk who were still living on the lower levels of the island.

  I objected: "Then killing those animals cannot be the 'grievous harm' you say that you have done."

  "No. No. After that, I grew angry at the gods, you see. Because it seemed they had deserted me, and others who lived here." Here the strong man gestured vaguely toward the sky. "So I began to destroy their buildings." He gestured at what was left of the structure in front of us, whose ruin I had thought perhaps an earthquake had accomplished. "I smashed the nest where the flying chariot had always rested. And the places where the Bullheads themselves had slept and lived, before they decided to depart."

  "Where did they go?" I asked.

 
"I saw them get into a greater flying chariot, one big enough to hold them all, and one of them told me they were returning home; they sounded very sad, and talked of conflict among themselves, and failure. Among themselves they said much that I could not understand. And I grew… worried. So I hid myself for a time, until after they were gone. Then when they were gone I grew sad and angry too, and I broke all the fine things that I could reach."

  Heracles gestured with his great club; then he hung his head and mumbled: "After that I was sorry for what I had done. So I made a vow to stay here always, and protect people. And every day, or almost every day, I climb to the lip of the crater above, and sacrifice something I like."

  "Sacrifice it?" Kena'ani asked.

  "I throw it into the volcano. Some of the people who live below in the village taught me to do that."

  "But are there any other people here now?"

  The strong man raised his head and sighed. "No, not up here where I live. People still live down in the villages, and they visit me sometimes, and bring me something to eat. Some of them are women." He brightened slightly. "There are no longer any people besides me living up here on the meadow. You may live here if you like. But if you intend to stay here, I wish that some of you were women."

  "I do not think that we will stay," said Theseus slowly. Obviously he did not quite know what to make of this strange man. The rest of us looked at one another, but no one else had any immediate comment. We continued to explore the ruins, with Heracles now in attendance on us as a willing guide.

  There were many buildings scattered about the meadow, and we did not visit all of them. Some that we entered contained underground sections, and in general these basements had suffered less damage from the club of Heracles than had the upper floors. Heracles himself provided no further details on the subject. Perhaps there was simply less room underground to swing a club, or perhaps his rage had begun to fade by the time he reached the cellars.

  Here, below the surface level of one structure, we found a frieze, marvelously carved in stone, and some other artwork as well, showing some of the Bullheaded people in the act of bringing light to the poor human people of earth. Most of these in the picture stretched up their carven arms in gratitude. I supposed that this must have been carved by the Bullheads themselves.

  At some point during this tour our guide informed us that he had been born in one of these broken dwellings—just which one he was not certain—and had spent his entire childhood and youth here in these buildings and on this meadow, under the tutelage of the Gods-Who-Had-Come-From-Afar. This was another name of his for the Bullheads, as he more often called them.

  Theseus and I both questioned him about the youth who called himself Dionysus, and traveled about in a marvelous flying chariot.

  Heracles nodded calmly. He knew Dionysus, who had grown up here too. And he, Heracles, had seen that smaller chariot many times at close range—the Bullheads had left it behind, perhaps by mistake, when they departed—but he had never ridden in it. And the dissipated youth I described was indeed Dionysus—at least the strong man had never known him by any Other name. He had been one of Heracles's siblings—or at least one of his childhood playmates, he was not sure whether a blood relationship existed between them.

  "Yes, that's Dionysus, of course. A difficult young man to get along with. But he and I came to an agreement finally." Heracles did not sound at all like a man talking about a god.

  Theseus was uneasy, displaying the chronic uncertainty that I myself felt upon this subject. "But how can he be really Dionysus? I've seen him and talked to him. He's not the true and ancient god of vegetation that our fathers and mothers worshipped now and then."

  Heracles made an impatient gesture; probably it was only accidental that he gestured with the hand in which he was still absently carrying his club, and that the club smashed into a wall and cracked out fragments. Then he frowned at the wall, as if it might have deliberately got in his way. "Why not let him be called that if he wants? We were all of us allowed to choose our own names."

  My curiosity was straining. "Then you had other brothers, other playmates as well? Perhaps you had sisters too?"

  "Yes, I did. But they're all gone now." The powerful man's frown deepened. "I don't really know where they are."

  "Did they depart from Thera with the gods? The Bullheads?"

  "No, I think not." Heracles did not want to discuss the matter further.

  "Anyway, the one in which we are especially interested," the King of Athens persisted, "is he who now calls himself Dionysus. You say you know him. Where can he be found now?"

  Heracles answered that question readily enough; more and more he sounded as if he did not particularly like his former playfellow. "Dionysus paid a visit here only recently, traveling in his flying chariot as usual. We talked together for a time. He has gone on now to a place called Crete, about which I have heard some marvelous stories. He asked me to forget my vow of service and go with him, saying that vows meant nothing, and mine were more foolish than most."

  Theseus swore at such a scoundrel, who could take the attitude that vows and glory meant nothing. Naturally the rest of us contributed some indignation.

  "Dionysus," I said, "can be very persuasive, when he asks a man—or a woman—to do something."

  "True," said Heracles. "But he and I came to an agreement long ago. He will not try to persuade me, in that special way of his, to do anything. And I will not get angry at him."

  The King of Athens and I both asked Heracles for more details about his earlier life with Dionysus, but he seemed to want to avoid the subject now, and we did not press him.

  By this time Theseus was unable to restrain himself any longer, and challenged our new friend to a wrestling match. Heracles accepted indifferently.

  A ring was quickly arranged, and the two powerful men stripped and grappled. Heracles seemed to understand the rules and traditional procedures quite well.

  The signal was given for the bout to begin, and in a moment the King of Athens had been defeated. Not only defeated, but picked up and tossed down as if he were a child; it gave me a strange feeling, of mixed anger and satisfaction, to see this result, which the winner appeared to accept as a matter of course. From the expressions on the other onlookers' faces, I could see that they shared my feelings.

  As for Theseus, he sat motionless for a long moment in the middle of the ring, where he had been thrown down, his face white with a combination of what I supposed must be surprise and shame. It must have been his first defeat in years.

  Heracles began to look gloomy when he observed the reaction of his opponent. Then the victor expressed a wish that he had done the great king of Athens no harm.

  Color flowed into the face of Theseus again, and he sprang to his feet and immediately renewed his challenge. "Let's make it two falls out of three!"

  His shorter adversary shrugged. "If you wish."

  The second trial lasted no longer than the first, and had the same result, except that Theseus sprang at his opponent even more fiercely, and hit the ground somewhat harder a moment afterward. After lying stunned for a moment he bravely bounced up again, though I could see that his head must still be spinning. Two of three falls had already been decided, and all the young king could do was offer the winner his hand, and assure him that he was still perfectly all right.

  Then Theseus offered his conqueror a place at his side in the great adventure upon which we were embarked, explaining that he, Theseus, wanted to try conclusions with Dionysus.

  Heracles, who was neither sweating nor breathing hard, looked somewhat relieved that the king was still uninjured. Then he expressed some doubt about the wisdom of attacking Dionysus, and said that anyway he, Heracles, was bound to stay here, as he had already explained.

  Before the strong man had ceased altogether to feel some apprehension over the king's welfare, Kena'ani stepped in to play cleverly on his incipient sense of guilt over this victory. The Phoenician tried to persuade
Heracles to give up his self-imposed vow to remain on Thera. Seeing Kena'ani doing his best to ingratiate himself with the royal house of Athens, I considered the cause a good one and put in a word or two for it myself.

  Between us we eventually achieved our objective, but our success was some time in coming, because an objection had occurred to Heracles that made him unhappy and delayed matters. It seemed to Heracles that a special sacrifice, something beyond the daily effort—say a live lion—would be required to free him entirely from the burden of his vow, and he had no suitable animals available at the moment. There were none left aboard our ship either.

  But at this point I was visited by what I considered a happy inspiration. Remembering the mysterious gift of Minos, that still-unopened box, I explained where it had come from and under what circumstances. All save my friend Kena'ani agreed with me that the enigmatic little casket ought to make a more than adequate substitute for a live animal; and I, for my part, was glad at the chance to be rid of it. In truth I would have felt uneasy about any other method of disposal. Kena'ani was not altogether happy about my suggestion, but by now he had come to share some at least of my misgivings about the gift of Minos.

  Heracles was impressed to hear that our potential sacrifice had come from the King of Crete himself, who seemed to him an almost legendary figure. Whatever Heracles knew of Minos had evidently come from the vanished Bullheads of Thera, who had been somehow at odds with their compatriot the White Bull of Crete. So Heracles saw Minos as something of an evil or at least a misguided figure, who had dealt with the outcast Bullhead who had taken refuge upon that island and begun a course of interference with the natives that most of the other Bullheads had thought completely unwarranted.

  I flew down to the ship to get the casket, and labored back with it by air to the high plateau. Kena'ani cast one more glance of longing at the small wooden box, but he did not attempt to interfere.

  Heracles showed us the way to the highest crater, along a thin path worn in recent months by his own feet.