The White Bull Read online

  There were nearly a score of people gathered in the center of the enormous room, most of them performers of one kind and another: musicians, dancers, acrobats. Meanwhile, seated on plain, hard-looking couches were the high-born celebrants, men and women together, enjoying their wine and entertainment. One of these, a weighty, masculine figure, surged to his feet so promptly as we entered that he might have been watching for the door to open. Having arisen, this man set down a golden cup upon an inlaid table, and strode toward me with the unmistakable confidence of majesty.

  As my escort stepped back, I began to make obeisance; but this was cut short by the rumble of King Minos's voice, for King Minos it was, urging me to stand up straight and have a drink. A youthful cupbearer and wine-pourer, looking like twins, were standing beside me almost instantly.

  The king's voice rumbled. "You must be Daedalus."

  "Yes, sire. I had heard that you wanted—"

  The hair on the king's head, glossy with oil, was raven black, as was the matted growth on his bare chest and arms, the latter adorned by circlets of heavy gold. He squinted at me closely; we were very much of a height, neither of us more than ordinarily tall. "It's really you. Yes, yes indeed, I've heard your description several times." Minos reached out to pinch my shoulder with a large, strong hand, adorned with many rings. To me it felt like a hand accustomed to assessing horses and draft animals as well as humans for their potential value to the throne. "Come to work for me, have you?"

  "Yes sir, that is, I hope so, sir. That's what I want to do."

  "Good, good!" The king stood back a step, his fists on hips. "What made you finally decide to leave Athens?"

  Certainly the king was going to hear the full story from someone, sooner or later. Almost certainly he would also hear exaggerated and distorted versions. During the voyage, in consultation with Kalliste, I had made up my mind to simply tell the truth when this moment came.

  I said: "What with one thing and another, sire, I had been falling more and more out of favor with King Aegeus. Things came to a head a few nights past. My nephew Talus—I suppose you will have heard of him—paid me a visit when I was working alone in my workshop, late at night."

  Minos rumbled: "Talus—yes, I've heard of him—some say that his skill as an artisan rivals yours." He watched me carefully for my reaction.

  "I think, sire, that it never really did. But however that may be, Talus is now dead." Becoming suddenly aware of thirst, and of the full cup in my hand, I gulped wine, then let the emptied vessel hang at my side. "We quarreled that night, my nephew and I. Then we fought. When he entered my studio that night I had no intention of killing him; but when I left it, he was dead."

  "I see. And Aegeus—?"

  "Talus was related by marriage to the king of Athens, Your Majesty. I thought that if I stayed to try the king's reaction, I would be lucky to escape execution."

  "I see," said Minos again. He gestured, and both our wine cups were refilled. There was a burst of noise, laughter and music, from the happy group still gathered in the center of the hall, who were determinedly going on with their revel. Glancing in that direction, I caught a glimpse of a woman I supposed must be Queen Pasiphaë. She was a large, dark, still-beautiful woman of about the same age as her husband, who I supposed to be a few years younger than myself. She was wearing a great amount of jewelry, and a blond wig.

  It was at about this moment that her royal husband clamped his hand upon my neck, rather like a farmer about to lead a young bull-calf to be gelded, so that for a moment I feared a fit of royal jealousy. But the king was not jealous—not then. He only wanted to lead me with him, into another and much smaller room where we would be able to talk in greater privacy.

  The small room held a table with a lamp already lighted on it, and two chairs. Minos did not carry his friendly and informal approach so far as to invite me to sit down at table with him. Instead Minos sat, while I was beckoned to stand close across the inlaid board. An open window high in one wall let in some of the misty night.

  The king started to say something, was struck by a second thought, and voiced that instead: "Your ship came here direct from Piraeus?"

  "Yes, sire."

  "Pass anywhere near Thera, did you?"

  I remembered the harbormaster's asking the same question. "No, sire."

  "The strange stories, the rumors, keep coming out of that island, Daedalus. Some of the original population must still be living there, because people seem to keep fleeing the place in small boats, and some of them end up here. Each refugee brings with him wilder tales than the last. None of my captains will go ashore on Thera, and I don't suppose I blame them. I don't even ask them to land, only to sail near the place and reconnoiter. When they do that, or say they do, they come back with more wild tales of their own. Reports of gods flying over the cliffs of Thera, and monsters waddling on the beach."

  "Sire, in Athens I have several times spoken to some of the refugees you mention. Even if one discounted nine-tenths of their stories, something extraordinary indeed must be happening on Thera. And whatever it is must have been going on for more than twenty years."

  "Do gods dwell there, Daedalus?" the King of Crete asked me flatly. "In the sense that I and you dwell in this room? And might a man who went to that island find himself confronting them face to face?"

  "Majesty, I am no philosopher or seer. And it seems to me that only one who—"

  "I have seers and philosophers at my call. A whole stable of them. And they can tell me nothing, really. But you are famed as a practical man. What can you tell me? What do you think?"

  I hesitated to answer, but I had to at last. "Sire, I deal with practical matters, as you say. I know nothing about the gods. To my knowledge no outsider has visited Thera in the past twenty years or longer—of course I would not be surprised to hear that there had been a few Phoenicians, who will go anywhere. But that last is only my surmise."

  The king considered my reply. Then for a time he sipped absently at his wine, gazing at the painted wall as his thoughts led him elsewhere. But presently his attention came back to me. "I question every intelligent traveler on that subject, Daedalus, when I have the chance. I suppose there is no reason to expect you to be able to provide answers where others have failed. You are, as you say, only an artisan."

  "Indeed, sire, that is what I am. I find that my own field of endeavor offers more than enough problems for me to solve. My thought is that if there are gods, on Thera or elsewhere, I will leave them alone, and hope that they will do the same for me."

  The king smiled. "Most men are content to think of the matter that way. And most of the time I agree with them." Then Minos shook his massive head, like a man emerging from water. In a brisker and more businesslike voice he said: "I would like some plumbing installed in my palace. I've heard there are some great Greek houses where fresh water, good to drink, runs in through pipes, while other pipes carry off the sewage."

  I nodded. "I have seen one or two such on the mainland, sire. They are very convenient though for some reason there is no great demand for them over there. And I think I can improve on the ones I've seen. Much depends, of course, on the ready availability of water," I added cautiously, though it seemed a safe assumption that no palace this size would have been built far from a good source.

  "Of course, of course—you can look over the whole place tomorrow. By the way, did anyone come with you?"

  "Only one concubine, sire, a girl I dearly love. And our child. Kalliste's half a year into her second pregnancy, and I—"

  "Hah, concerned about her, are you? Never mind, I'll make sure a good physician looks at her tomorrow. You'll want her with you tonight, I suppose. So, let that be enough discussion for tonight. Get a good night's rest, and we'll work out the details for your employment in the morning." The king got to his feet, frowning at his wine cup as if surprised to see that it was empty.

  That night I slept snugly, installed with my woman and my child in quarters even finer t
han those we had enjoyed in Athens, when I had been at the peak of my favor at the Athenian court.

  Kalliste and Icarus were both exhausted, and they were still fast asleep when I arose shortly after dawn. Three or four slaves had already been assigned to serve us, and these servants came in at first light to introduce themselves, bowing and scraping and bringing new clothing, gifts from King Minos for their new master and his woman.

  One of these slaves was a calm and rather deaf old man, another a dull boy. I have forgotten their names. The third was a red-haired barbarian girl of about sixteen, who, in response to my curious questions, told me that she had been brought as a small child from some distant land to the far north. She was called "Thorhild," a barbaric sound indeed.

  I questioned Thorhild further while I splashed my face with water. "Is His Majesty still sleeping? I was to speak with him this morning."

  She was moving about the apartment, cleaning and arranging energetically. "Sir, His Majesty has been up for half an hour, and has gone, as he often does, to a shrine by the sea, to offer sacrifice to Poseidon."

  "Then let me hurry after him. I wish to appear alert and ready to serve him."

  One of my servants provided me with a mount, and another informed me as to which path I should take. The shrine was on a rugged crag overlooking the sea, a brief walk along the coast from Heraklion. I left my horse, borrowed from the king's stables, with the man who was holding the king's own mount, and walked on slowly toward the place where Minos was standing with only three or four attendants.

  A young spotted bull was about to be sacrificed, and, looking down at the sea, I decided that those making the offering were probably waiting for what they judged to be the moment of high tide. While gulls wheeled and cried above, waves mumbled and spoke around the rocks below, a voice-like roar resulting from the recurrent drainage of water between two sharp angles of rock. A man determined to hear some message from a god, I thought, could hardly fail to perceive words in that noise.

  On a crag overlooking the tidal vortex of the waves, two priests held the bullock bellowing, while the king with an ancient obsidian knife managed with three stabs to open one of the great blood vessels in the side of the beast's neck. I observed this bloodiness with respectful attention, but mild distaste. Nor did it appear to me that Minos was enjoying himself, but he pressed on with the butchery. When it was done he accepted a white towel on which to wipe his hands, then submitted to a more thorough cleansing. One helper provided more towels, while another poured water into a silver basin.

  Turning his head at last, he saw me watching and called to me: "I do what you see me do here, Daedalus, because of an old prophecy. You've probably heard it."

  I approached the royal presence respectfully. "I have heard one, sire, about a bull, a gift from the gods, coming to this island from the sea."

  Minos nodded. "I suppose no one on the island any longer really expects the sea to cast up a white bull on our shores. Now it's enough for the people that the king discharge his obligation to Poseidon by a regular performance of the sacrifice." And now the dead bullock was being pushed into the sea, which I had never known to be significantly reddened by any amount of blood, animal or human.

  Not knowing what comment I ought to make, I remained silent, until the king threw down the towels, which were no longer white, and started to talk about the plumbing system he wished to have.

  After conversing on that subject for half an hour with the king while we rode unhurriedly back to the House of the Double Axe, I spent another hour in a preliminary survey of the present water supply serving the palace and the town. When I got back to my new quarters I found a physician examining Kalliste. I had now been in Crete less than a day, but I was no longer in the least surprised to see that the physician was a woman. Beginning to feel rather secure in the king's favor, I said as much to her when we were talking.

  "Women are not property here, sir, unless of course they are slaves." As the doctor spoke, her bare breasts were aimed at me as boldly and provocatively as any courtesan's. "Your girl here is doing fine. I'll be back to see her in a month."

  That evening, Kalliste and I had our first real chance for a private conversation since our arrival. Little Icarus had already made friends with a steward's children, and the three of them were playing together on a patio nearby.

  Kalliste had already heard the rumors of Queen Pasiphaë's lustfulness, which was said to know no bounds, and now she spoke about them worriedly. "They say she can be very cruel to those she takes as lovers."

  I was amused, and tried to relieve her fears, which seemed to me then endearingly unreasonable. "I doubt the king would put up with her taking lovers. He doesn't seem the type to stand for that kind of nonsense. And I haven't even met the queen officially as yet. Anyway, I doubt she's going to be very interested in me. I'm an old man, with failing powers."

  "You're not yet forty! And, anyway, you're a famous man, and that intrigues some women greatly."

  I grunted noncommittally, having long ago had reason to know the truth of that.

  "And you are—as I have reason to know—a very strong man still. Stronger than some of these young athletes, I'd wager." Kalliste's eyes flashed wickedly. "In some members of your body, anyway."

  "Come here. At last you need have no fear that I am going to want the queen. Or any other, while I have you with me."

  In designing the new waterworks, the first part of my job was to make sure of the fountain-head. At present, several sources were in use, with water being hauled by wagon to the town and palace. I went up into the foothills, where there were springs here and there, if you could find them among the rocks. I looked into the highest valleys, where lay well-nigh permanent snows, whose melting through the long summer provided another possible fount. Any of these supplies would be hard to tap. And it was going to be a long pipeline indeed from here down to the palace—long, but not impossible.

  Having decided to use the springs, I needed a few days to draw up a plan for the new works, and a few more to design clay pipe in different diameters and lengths. Each length of terra cotta pipe was to be made flared at one end, narrowed at the other, so that several lengths, or hundreds if need be, could be sealed together into one long conduit with a minimal prospect of leakage.

  I was surveying my way back down from the springs one day in late afternoon, deciding on the best path for the long acqueduct, when my life changed forever. Someone—I shall never know who—went hurrying past me, headed uphill. As this man or youth passed me, he called out in a choked voice that a white bull had just come out of the sea.

  For a moment I did not even look up from my work. Then I did, and stood staring after the messenger in silence. By now I had been well over a month in Crete, more than long enough to begin to appreciate the local power of the ancient prophecy.

  Next I turned to my assistant who had been working with me, meaning to leave this man in charge of the surveying while I myself went down to the shore to investigate this strange report. But my assistant was already gone; I was just able to see him in the distance, bounding down the hillside.

  By dint of walking quickly, and trotting a little now and then, I was soon approaching the shoreline, and in less than half an hour I had got close enough to see that a strange kind of confrontation was going on. Presently I was running forward in my eagerness to see more.

  I did not slow to a stop until I was within a stone's throw of the principals. These were arranged in two small groups, one to my left and one to my right. And the pair who stood on my right were the most outlandish sight that I had ever seen in all my life.

  The group on my left was much more ordinary, consisting only of a king and a small handful of high counselors, including a couple of soldiers—the queen was absent, for whatever reason. Minos and the men and women with him were standing so close to the waves that sometimes their sandalled feet were wetted. The two military officers were gripping the hilts of their bronze swords, and as I watched t
hem I had the feeling they wanted to draw their weapons but the king had already ordered them not to do so.

  On my right, also at the very water's edge, and facing the king and his entourage, stood the two figures who were so much more remarkable than mere royalty.

  The least astonishing of this pair appeared to be a man, somewhat deformed perhaps in the proportions of his body, and outfitted from head to toe in a marvelously smooth and seamless suit of bronze armor. Actually the color of the metal was odd for bronze; it was far from matching that of the swords and breastplates opposite. But on Crete a hundred shades of bronze alloy were in common use, some of them containing traces of substances other than tin and copper, and so the color in itself was not so strange. Wondrously stranger was the way in which the armor had been made, with scarcely a seam or a joint visible, amazingly sexless and still extremely well-fitting. At the moment the man—or woman—who must be inside the armor was standing almost perfectly still. Only a slow movement of the figure's head, turning to aim a glassy visor at some of the gathering spectators, showed that it was not a statue.

  And yet it was the other figure, the bronze man's companion, that drew my gaze almost immediately, and held it. There was no question of this one's being a statue; still, my first reaction on beholding it was simply: That cannot be.

  Yet there it was.

  Not a man, woman, or child, but a two-legged beast, though the arms and shoulders and torso were strongly human. No human legs, however deformed, could have fit into those shaggy, lean, mis-jointed looking lower limbs. No human feet were hidden inside those undoubted hooves. And the head—the head was somewhat human, somewhat beastlike, the factors of inhumanity strongly emphasized by the hornlike projections that curved up from the temples on either side.

  And the creature, whatever it was, was white, white all over, or at least an off-white, mottled gray. Whitish fur grew in a mane down even the most human portion of the back, and from the bottom of the back there sprouted a very bull-like tail. Between the legs in front the growth of fur was at its thickest, but there was movement there among the hair, a faint but heavy swaying when the thing's hips moved, suggesting a bull-like potency.