And then I thought, “But he must still need time. This proves it.”
The wise woman came, and felt me over. She oiled and worked my limbs, kneading and knuckling and slapping; looked at my wound, muttering charms, and said it would heal clean. At the table the dancers were sitting over their twice-watered wine, in the last hour of talk before the girls were fetched away. I stretched out under the old woman’s hands, feeling my sinews loosened and my blood run sweetly. Nothing was left but the smart of wine on my graze, and a heavy drowsiness. I turned, when she had gone, to sleep again. Then I saw Aktor the trainer standing by my pallet.
“Well,” he said, “so you have come to life again. I will write it on the door of the Bull Court, and save my legs. You have slept sound enough. When you lay there through the earthquake, with all the outlanders who never felt one bawling to their gods, I looked if you were dead; but you were sleek as a baby.”
“Earthquake?” I said staring, and then, “Why yes.” I remembered the feel of the brooding god; I had been too tired even to know a warning when I had it.
“It was nothing much,” he said. “A shelf of pots gone in the kitchen. Well, the Cranes will have to catch another bull.” He looked at me. This time no one was in hearing.
I said, “What did they give him? I smelt it in his steam.”
“How should I know?” He looked round again. “I should think what the dog fanciers give their beasts before a fight. The dogs mostly live, but it would be guesswork, the dose for a bull.” He had been stooping, but now he got down on the floor beside me, to speak lower. “One we won’t name must have a hole in his pocket now. If he still needs a talent of gold, he must wait till summer when his ships come in.”
“Gold?” I said, thinking my cordial must have had poppy in it. I still felt slow.
He said, “A ghost is talking”; a Cretan saying for what one will not stand to before witnesses. “He has got something on hand that is emptying the strong room. All day his agents have been scrambling about Knossos calling in revenues, chasing rents, selling up debtors, borrowing from the Phoenicians. Well, you know your odds. Even money three months ago, now it’s six for eight, and still the bookmaker’s headache. Go to any one of them and try if you can back Theseus to live; they won’t touch it; if you bet on the Cranes you must bet on points. But this morning, so I hear, all over Knossos there were bets laid on a kill, at a hundred to one or longer; quietly, here and there. And all about the same time, to keep the odds from shortening. What do you make of that?”
“Make of it?” I said. “What should I make? I’m only a mainland bull-boy. In my village we’re simple folk.” My brain was spinning. Aktor looked down at me scratching his head, then said, “Sleep out your medicine, lad, you’re fuddled still,” and went away.
My eyelids felt like lead; sleep lay upon me closer than a lover. But I thought that if I closed my eyes, I would believe after that I had dreamed all this. I saw Amyntor hanging about near by, and beckoned. “I have something to tell you. Bring Thalestris too.”
They came and hung over my pallet, eying me like something that may fall apart. “Be easy,” I said to them. “The Minotaur knows nothing. He did this for gold.”
If I had spoken in Babylonian they could not have looked blanker. I did not blame them.
“Minos is dead. You can take that for certain. He is hidden somewhere in the Labyrinth, bundled away without rites like a dead robber, to give Asterion time. He needs to buy troops, and friends; but he can’t claim the treasury till the death is known. Stuck between the horns, as you might say. So he backed the bull for a kill, to raise the wind.”
They stood drop-jawed, like village idiots. It almost made me laugh.
At last Amyntor said slowly, “He did it for gold? But we are the Cranes. We have danced a year for him.”
Thalestris flung back her head. “Mother of Mares!” she cried. And indeed she looked a true daughter of Poseidon Hippios, her strong dark mane tossed out behind her and her nostrils flaring. She planted her fists upon her hips, and showed sidelong like a wicked colt the blue whites of her black eyes. “What are these Cretans? They and their baths, and their talk about barbarians. Hollow as sucked gourds! If you shook them they would rattle! Theseus, why do we wait?”
In the old days at Eleusis, it would have been Amyntor who spoke first. But nowadays he would take his time. He had been standing with his black brows joined above his hawk-nose, fingering the place where his dagger should have been.
“Theseus,” he said, “how this man has despised us!”
I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “He has always held us light.”
“Vengeance is the right of any man who is not a woman. If he had done this knowing there were arms hidden in the Bull Court, I would have liked him no better, and thought of him no worse. But all he knows of us is our honor; and he has sold us off like the spare goats in a lean year. By Black-Horned Poseidon, Theseus, it is enough! For this we will have his heart.”
10
IN THE MORNING THE old woman came again with her warm oils. I had slept like a log; my leg wound was drying cleanly, and not much deeper than a scrape. The muscles I had thought were torn were only strained; all I needed now was to move about. Tonight I would go up to the sanctuary, and find whether Ariadne knew that Minos was dead. If they had locked up his door, she would have no remedy, without betraying the secret way. But, I thought, even when she knew, what could she do, or Perimos, or Alektryon, or any of us in the Bull Court? Whoever owned knowledge of the death would be charged with the killing. Yet every day we waited, Asterion would gain strength.
After I had limbered up at exercise, I felt well enough; yet all this weighed on me. I stood with the Cranes, and Thalestris, and another team leader, young Kasos of the Sparrowhawks, a Rhodian pirate’s son, enslaved when they hanged his father. They were eager for some action, and I put on cheerfulness, ashamed to feel so low when nothing was wrong with me. Across the Court, the Dolphins had got a cockfight on. The mounting noise went through my head, and I longed for it to be done. At last I cried out in spite of myself, “Make them stop that din!”
“What is it, Theseus?” said kind Thebe. “Does your head still ache?”
“No,” I said, for I had that moment understood myself. “It is a warning. The earth is going to shake again. I think it won’t be much. But noise is bad, when the god is angry.”
They hushed their voices. I saw Kasos glance at the great ceiling beams, and fidget his feet. “It doesn’t feel,” I said, “like a bad one.” For it did not press hard on me, but only prickled. “But make them be quiet, and stand off from the walls.”
Nephele had gone over to the cockfight; the team came running, while the cocks by themselves bounced up and down, pecking and spurring, then stopped and stood with bunched wings, looking uneasy, as if the god had warned them too. My head tightened, and every trifle made me angry; there were pins pricking my feet. Just then up came Aktor, whom someone, I suppose, had passed on the warning to. “What is the matter with you, Theseus? Why don’t you get back to bed, if you still feel shaky, instead of setting the Bull Court by the ears?”
I could have struck him. “Get away from that column,” I said softly. I could not bear to raise my voice. Just as he opened his mouth to answer, the earth rumbled and jarred, and a big molding from the column-head burst into bits beside him. Pots crashed in the kitchen; the Palace beyond echoed with shouts and squeals and invocations. Around us the dancers called on the hundred gods of the Bull Court, outlanders lay on their faces shielding their heads, lovers clutched each other; and Aktor looked at me with his jaw so wide that you could count his teeth.