She stroked her fingers back from my temples through my hair; I felt them say, “I love you, my barbarian.”
I said to myself it was no matter; that when we were married, I would be there to stand between the god and the people. Yet I was sorry she had not the Hearing; a king, like a craftsman, wants to breed his skill into his sons.
Soon there was less time to think; from then on we were busy.
In the old archive store under the Labyrinth, I met with Perimos and his two sons. The office of his family was to write down the King’s judgments; only they and their chief clerks ever used the place, these records were so old. If Minos wanted to know the precedent before a judgment, he sent for the Recorder. It is an ancient mystery, inherited father to son from the founder of it, a prince called Rhadamanthos.
After the King was sick, and Asterion heard the causes, he had sent for Perimos, told him a judgment he meant to give, and asked for a precedent to uphold it. When Perimos brought him instead nine clear judgments the other way, he told him shortly to look again. The Recorder said nothing; he shut himself among the records, searching, till the time was up and Asterion had to do his own injustice. But everyone knew he would only bide his time; and Perimos did not want to wait.
He was about fifty, with stiff brows and beard streaked black and gray like wood-ash, and the fierce round eyes of an owl in a hollow tree. I was sorry for him; he would have got on well with my grandfather. It was against his grain to plot in cellars with painted bull-dancers. I had always to leave the Bull Court bedizened as if for a feast or tryst, else people would have wondered. However, I had not forgotten all I had learned in my grandfather’s judgment hall, my father’s, and my own; in time he forgot my bull-boy’s finery. His sons seemed men of honor; the elder rather clerkish, the younger a lieutenant of the household, very Cretan-looking, lovelocked and willow-waisted, but with the nerve of a soldier. He said we could count on about one in three of the King’s Guard, those who respected their oath of service, and those who hated Asterion. It was time, now, I thought, to push things forward in the Bull Court.
I had trusted the Cranes from the beginning. But soon it would have to go beyond them; and I looked for another team leader I could rely on. My choice fell on a girl called Thalestris, a Sauromantian. They have many customs of the Amazons, serving the Moon Maid in arms, and fighting in war beside the men. When first she came she looked very outlandish, dressed in a quilted coat and deerskin trousers, and smelling of goat-milk curd. Her country is at the back of the northeast wind, beyond the Caucasus, and they only undress there once a year. But stripped and cleaned she was a fine girl, a little too mannish for one’s bed, but with all the beauties of a bull-leaper. The courage too; for on her very first day she was eying me with envy.
Liking her spirit, I taught her all I could; and when she was made leader of the Gryphons, she came again for counsel. I warned her of one bull-shy boy who would do them no good; when they had given him to the bull and got someone better, she bound them with a vow like ours, and in more than two months not one had died. So people were used to seeing us in talk. I told her everything, except that I was the Mistress’s lover. Thalestris was a girl for girls; but it is a thing I have found, that no woman likes to hear you hold forth about another.
When she had heard, she threw a back-somersault, for she was a wild thing still. But she was no fool. After she had run on awhile about her mountain home and friends, whom now she might hope to see again, she asked me to get her a bow, for that was her weapon. I said I would try; now we were in with the loyal Guard, good stuff was coming down into the weapon store from the armory above. She begged to tell her Gryphons, saying they had no secrets apart; and as I thought it spoke well for them, I gave her leave. Before long all the teams knew, who had vows of fellowship. As for the others, they would fight when the time came; but for their tongues one had no surety.
So the leaven worked silently in the dough; there was no folly. The secret was with people whose life-threads were closely bound; to fail the team was to meet your bull next time. You could only see it in their eyes if you knew already.
Now we began to bring up arms into the Bull Court. Amyntor and I showed the other boys of our team, and three or four team leaders, the way down through the lamp room; our friends of the Guard had stacked the arms below it. It was cold, so we had cloaks to hide things in, though we had to saw down the shafts of the spears and javelins. Cretan bows are short, and a good weight for women. The girls hid all these things, and many arrows, in nooks and holes under the floor.
Ariadne had given her oracles to the Cretans. She told me, full of pride, how she had talked in broken phrases, neither too clear nor yet too dark; how she had rolled up her eyes and sunk down among her fangless serpents, and waking dazed had asked what she had been saying. Now, she said, she had sent out an old woman she could trust, to whisper among the gossips and recall the ring in the harbor. Before long, it would be time to warn the chiefs and headmen.
Spring comes early to Crete. The painted vases in the Palace rooms held daffodils and sprays of almond flowers; the young men dressed their hair with violets, and the ladies decked their boy-dolls, which they would dandle till midsummer and then hang on the fruit trees, for they play at sacrifice as at everything else. The sun shone warmly, the snow shrank higher up the mountains, and in the lull before the south wind began blowing, the sea was calm and mild.
I went to the feasts of the Palace people, and sometimes there would be a juggler or a dancer or a girl with tame birds, or a bard from oversea. I would go near when I could, and let them hear my name and my Hellene speech. But no message came from Athens.
Days passed, and the almond blossom in the painted vases snowed down upon the painted tiles. A chieftain of the Kindred, who had land near Phaistos, which he would not sell when Asterion asked him, died suddenly of a strange sickness; his heir took fright and sold the land. The native Cretans whispered in corners, and told long tales of the ancient days. In the Bull Court, the dancers had their heads together, as bull-dancers often have, being full any time of gossip and intrigue. But you could hear, if you listened, that they were talking of their homes and kindred, as when the frozen stream melts in spring. Days passed. And one night I heard the sound of a rising gale, whistling over the horned roofs and through the courts of the Labyrinth. It was the south wind blowing, which closes Cretan waters to ships from the north.
I lay on my back with eyes wide open, listening. Presently a dark shape came near. There was always someone prowling about in the Bull Court after the lamps were out. But this was Amyntor. He leaned down to me and said, “It is early this year. Half a month early, the Cretans say. It is moira, Theseus, no one can help it. We can do with what we have.” I said, “Yes, we shall do. Perhaps Helike’s brother never got to Athens.” The Cretans had been looking for the wind a week already. But he had fought under me in the Isthmus and in Attica, and wanted to save my face.
Next day in the Bull Court, Thalestris got me in a corner. “What is it, Theseus? You look downhearted. No one thinks any worse of you because the wind is blowing. It was good warriors’ talk, about the Hellene ships; it kept us in heart while we were getting ready. Now we don’t need it.” She clapped me on the shoulder like a boy, and strolled away. But I felt the shadow upon the Bull Court, as well as she.
I walked slowly to the next meeting in the archive vault. But old Perimos only nodded with a grim smile, as if we had won a bet. He was a man of the law, as they say in Crete; it is the nature of their calling to expect the worst. I had done myself good with him because I had promised nothing. Presently he said, “My son has a plan. Though it is foolhardy, it may do for want of better.” His voice was dour; but I saw in his eye both pride and grief.