Day of the Minotaur

Chapter II THE MINOTAUR

His helmet of boar’s tusk glittered yellowly in the light the clerestory windows. His bronze cuirass fell below his thighs; he removed his greaves, grunting with easeful release, and his huge, hairy legs resembled trees rising from the undergrowth of his rawhide boots. To Thea, he looked elderly; he must have been forty. He lifted the helmet from is sweat-matted hair and faced his young captives. In the hall of a Cretan nobleman’s captured mansion, Thea and Icarus awaited his judgment. His name was Ajax; his men had taken them beside their glider.

On the frescoed walls, blue monkeys played in a field of crocuses. Red-stained columns, swelling into bulbous capitals, supported the roof, and the alabaster floor was divided by strips of red stucco. A riot of color and movement, freedom and playfulness: unutterably foreign to the hard-bitten conquerers with their shields and swords. They seemed to sense their unwelcome; they stood gingerly on foam-white alabaster and stared at the painted walls as if they expected the monkeys to drown them with derisive chattering.

She sought her brother’s hand and felt his returning pressure. A warmth of tenderness, like the current from a glowing brazier, enveloped her; then a chill of remorse, as if the brazier had been extinguished. It was she who had caused their capture, preferring known barbarians to unknown Beasts.

Ajax sighed and slumped in a chair with a back of carved griffins. To such a man, thought Thea, fighting is not an art but a livelihood; he is not a hero but a strong, stupid, reasonably brave animal who fights because he is too lazy to plant crops or sail a ship.

A small, wedge-shaped wound glowed in his forehead. “You Cretans,” he said, pointing to the wound. “For such little creatures you have sharp claws. The lady of the house gave me this.” He laughed. “She was suitably punished.” He motioned Thea and Icarus to approach his chair.

Icarus stepped in front of his sister. “You are not to harm her.”

“Harm her? Not if she pleases me,” Ajax grunted without rancor, disclosing a gap in place of his middle teeth. His voice was high and thin; it squeaked from his hulking body like a kitten’s mew from a lion. But he gestured and flared his nostrils as if he were Zeus, the sky-god. “My men saw your ship come down. You almost landed in the Country of the Beasts.”

“I wish we had,” said Icarus.

“Do you?” Ajax laughed. “You’d like for the Minotaur to get your sister? He takes his pleasure with girls and then he eats their brothers. A Cretan boy like you would make one good bite—except for your head. That might stick in his throat.”

“Does he live in the woods where we landed?” asked Icarus, totally uncowed.

A young warrior, both of whose ears had been sliced from his head as neatly as mushrooms from a log, anticipated his leader. “His lair is a cave a little to the west. The people hereabouts offer him lambs and calves so he won’t come out and eat their children. When we took this house, they called his curse down on us.”

Ajax silenced the speaker with an oath. “To Hades with Cretan curses! They’re no more potent than Cretan goddesses. Now take these children to the Room of the Dolphins and see that the girl has the means to bathe and change.”

She felt his eyes on her wind-disheveled hair and instinctively reached a hand to rearrange her curls.

“Pointed ears,” he remarked, apparently noticing for the first time. “And your brother as well. Are you from the forest?”

Angrily Thea restored her curls. “We are Cretans, not Beasts. If I were a Beast, my ears would be tipped with fur.”

“Well then, my girl with the furless ears, I will come to see you within the hour. See that you robe yourself as becomes a woman and not a child. I have no wish to be reminded of my daughter.”

The Room of the Dolphins was small, like most of the rooms in the sprawling palaces of Crete. It was intimate and gaily decorated, with terracotta lamps, as yet unlit, perched like pigeons in wall-niches; folding chairs of fragrant citrus wood; and a raised stone platform billowing cushions of goose feather. On one end, it opened between two columns into a light well with a black wooden pillar to honor the Great Mother; on the other, into a bathroom with a sunken floor and a small clay bathtub around whose sides an impudent painted mouse pursued a startled cat. In the center of the room stood an open chest whose contents were strewn on the floor like a treasure cast from the sea: golden pendants aswarm with amber bees, sandals of blue kidskin, gowns of wool, leather, and linen with wide, flaring skirts. The earless Xanthus pointed to the dresses, nodded to Thea, and paused with eager expectancy, hoping no doubt to watch her disrobe in front of him. Because they display their breasts, the ladies of Crete are sometimes thought to be shameless.

She could not be cross with the man in spite of his impudence. There was something pathetic about his missing ears; without them, his head looked undressed. She smiled tolerantly and pushed him toward the door. The merest touch of her hand impelled him to motion, and he moved before her like a ship before a breeze.

Leaving Icarus to admire the fresco of dolphins, she climbed in the tub and turned a frog-shaped spigot to immerse her body with hot, steaming water. In the larger mansions, rain was trapped on the roof, heated by a brazier, and carried to the bathrooms through pipes of terracotta. Cretan plumbing was admired even in Egypt. She drowsed and forgot to lament the past or dread the future; anxieties flowed from her body along with dust and sweat and the stains of grass and flowers.

A sound awoke her, a lapping of water.

“Thirsty,” said Icarus. He had knelt by the tub to offer Perdix a drink, and the snake’s forked tongue was narrowly missing her arm.

She shrank to the rear of the tub. She was not embarrassed in front of her brother—often they had bathed or swum together without clothes—but she did not wish to be bitten by her great-great uncle. Though none of the snakes of Crete were poisonous, some like Perdix possessed sharp fangs.

“Does he have to drink now?” she cried.

“He likes it hot, you know. It reminds him of underground springs.” When the snake had drunk his fill, Icarus raised him from the water and held him as casually as one might hold a piece of rope or a few links of chain. “I chose a gown for you,” he continued. “Hurry up and dress before the water gets cold. Perdix and I want a bath too.”

Icarus and Perdix possessed the vacated tub, which lacked a drain and would have to be emptied by Ajax’s attendants before it could be refilled. While Icarus splashed in the tub and complained about slow sisters who let the water cool, Thea examined the gown he had chosen for her. It was very bold. The crimson skirt was embroidered with golden heads, of gorgons, the puffed sleeves with matching serpents. The bodice was open to reveal the breasts. She smiled at Icarus’ taste and chose a more decorous gown which covered her breasts with a thin, diaphanous gauze. Sleeves of saffron fell to her elbows, and the skirt, supported by hoops, flared like an amethyst bell.

“He is going to be disappointed,” said Icarus, entering the room. “He wanted you to dress ‘as becomes a woman.’ ”

“Haven’t I?”

“You know very well what he meant. He wanted to see your breasts. Myrrha always said they were like melons, and if they kept on growing they would soon be pumpkins. I expect he feels like gardening.”

“He can see enough of them now.”

“I know, but you’ve diminished them. Perhaps you could paint your nipples with carmine.”

“Do you want me to look like a Moabite temple girl?” she protested, though nipples were also painted in worldly Knossos.

“It can’t hurt to pacify him,” said Icarus realistically.

She thought with a start: He does not suspect what Ajax really wants of me. He still believes that a woman pleases a man only by showing her breasts and perhaps giving him a kiss.

“You see,” he went on, “if he likes your dress, he may not make you kiss him.”

“If he likes my dress, he will make me kiss him.”

Icarus looked surprised. “But that seems greedy. Must he get everything the first night?”

“Achaeans are greedy men. That’s why they’ve come to Crete.”

“Of course,” he admitted. “You are right then to veil your breasts.” From the contents of the chest he selected a pendant of amber and placed it protectively around her neck. “This,” he said, “will diminish them even more.”

She arranged her curls with the help of copper pins, their heads like tiny owls; reddened her cheeks with ochre; and darkened her eyes with kohl. She was not vain; she was fastidious. She did not dress to make herself beautiful, but to perform an indispensable ritual by which she emphasized the degree and discipline of her ancient civilization. The application of cosmetics was an affirmation of order in a world which, because of earthquakes and Achaeans, threatened to grow disorderly to the point of chaos.

Hardly had she finished her toilet when Xanthus invaded the room with a swollen platter of grapes, figs and pomegranates, withdrew, and returned with a copper flagon of wine and two cups, which he placed on a three-legged table of stone. Then, with the help of coals from a portable brazier, he lit the flaxen wicks of the clay lamps and went to fetch his master.

“ Xanthus,” said Ajax, entering the room with the leer of a man who is about to enjoy a woman and be envied by other men, “stand guard at the door with Zetes and don’t disturb us.” Withdrawing, Xanthus returned the leer, and Thea ceased to pity him for his severed ears.

“You will sleep in there,” Ajax said to Icarus. He handed the boy a cushion and indicated the floor of the bathroom, beside the tub. “Your sister and I are going to dine.”

“I’m not sleepy,” said Icarus. “The evening is still youthful. However, I am hungry.”

“Help yourself to the fruit, but eat it in the bathroom.”

Icarus eyed the fruit without enthusiasm and eyed his sister as if he hoped for a sign. It was plain to see that Ajax had kisses in mind. What should they do?

But Thea could not help him. Fear had left her speechless. A disagreeable adventure threatened to become a disaster. Ajax could break her back with the fingers of one hand.

“You know,” continued Icarus valiantly, “it’s not the food I want so much as the conversation. My great-great uncle Perdix used to say: ‘Good company is worth a broiled pheasant, a flagon of wine, and all the honey cakes you can get on a platter.’ ”

Thea recovered her speech. “Icarus would enjoy eating with us. You see, he hasn’t known any warriors except his father. You could show him how to handle a dagger.”

’Yes,” said Icarus, reaching toward the dagger in Ajax’s belt, a bronze blade with a crystal hilt. “It’s the biggest I every saw. Why, even a wild boar—”

Before he could finish his sentence, Ajax had swallowed him in his massive arms and swept him toward the door to the bathroom. There was something almost paternal about the scene. In the giant’s embrace, the chunky Cretan looked like a small boy being carried to bed by an irate, but loving father. Thea remembered that Ajax had mentioned a daughter.

When Ajax returned, the door shutting behind him on its vertical wooden pivot, Thea had formed a plan. At the age of eleven in Knossos, before she had gone with Icarus to Vathypetro, she had learned to parry the advances of amorous boys; on sun-dappled Crete, young bodies ripened like succulent dates and love came with first adolescence.

Smiling, she motioned Ajax to a chair. “He’s a lonely child,” she said, gesturing toward the closed door behind which she did not doubt that Icarus had knelt to listen. “He misses a man’s company. You see, our father was killed by pirates three years ago.”

“Achaean?”

“Yes,” she sighed. “They attacked the ship on which he was sailing to Zakros.” It was not hard to invent a touching story. “Women have raised us. Not our mother, who died when Icarus was born, but servants and aunts. Always women. How we have missed a man.” She offered him a cup of wine. He touched the brim to his lips, tasting gingerly, as if he suspected poison. She walked behind him and placed her hand on his forehead.

“You must let me bathe your wound,” she said. “Pretend that I am your own daughter. Before he was killed, I used to tend my father with soft unguents and comb his wind-tossed hair. Like you, he was a fighter and often hurt.”

He seized her wrist with unpaternal roughness and drew her into his lap. “The skirt becomes you,” he said, draining his cup in one continuous swallow. “But not the blouse.” With a single and surprisingly deft movement for such a ponderous hand, he tore the gauze from her breasts. His body reeked of leather and sweat. He could not have bathed in weeks, possibly months; he had doffed his armor but he wore the same tunic which he had worn in battle (in several battles, she decided; it was stained with blood, dirt, and food). Furthermore, he was densely wooded with hair: his legs, his arms, even the tops of his sandaled feet. He reminded her of a large hirsute goat, and like a goat he seemed to her foolish rather than threatening. She had not yet learned that a strong fool is the most dangerous of men.

“You need more wine,” she said, trying to disengage herself. Perhaps she could incapacitate him with drink. According to a universal proverb, variously claimed by Cretans, Egyptians, and Babylonians, drinking increases desire, but limits its performance.

“Not wine. This—” He buried her mouth with a kiss which tasted of onions. She remembered that Achaean soldiers chewed them as they marched. She felt as if heavy masculine boots were trampling the delicate offerings—murex, coquina, starfish—in a seaside shrine to the Great Mother. It was not that she feared dishonor, like the god-fearing women of Israel, the faraway kingdom of shephered patriarchs. As a Cretan girl, she was realistic enough to recognize that there was nothing dishonorable if he took her, a woman and a captive, against her will. It was his dirt she feared, his ugliness, his hairiness, his affront to her feminine pride (remember, the Cretans worship a goddess as their chief deity). It was the supreme disorder of being forced to do what seemed to her not a wicked but an ugly and demeaning thing.

His kiss grew more impassioned. She clenched her teeth to withstand his probing tongue. Loathing burned in her like a black, bitter fire of hemlock roots.

“I lost my snake,” said a loud and determined voice from the door. Ajax leaped to his feet, and Thea embraced the hard but welcome coolness of the floor. Rising to her knees, she watched the advance of the snake. He was neither large nor poisonous but, flickering his forked tongue, he somehow managed to look as sinister as an asp from the deserts of Egypt. Ajax seized a stool and assumed the martial stance of a soldier defending a bridge against an army.

But Icarus intervened before they could meet. “You mustn’t scare him,” he said, restoring the snake to his pouch. “It makes him nervous, and then he bites.”

“Guard!”

Xanthus appeared in the door beyond the light well. As usual, he looked expectant; perhaps he hoped for an orgy.

“ Xanthus, you will take this brat and his snake into the bathroom and keep them there, if you have to drown them in the tub.”

The door to the bathroom closed with abrupt finality.

“You Cretan girls,” sneered Ajax. He came toward her, shaggy and menacing. “You tease and mince and show your breasts, and then you say, ‘No, you hairy old barbarian, you shan’t touch me!’ Barbarians, are we? Well, we know what to do with a woman!”

“My father will kill you if you touch me.” The words stabbed the air like little daggers of ice.

“Oh? He’s back from Hades, is he? Indeed, I should fear a man who escapes Persephone!”

In spite of his golden beard, he seemed all darkness and evil, a black whirlwind of fire and rock. The smell of him bit her nostrils like volcanic ash. She knotted her fists in tiny impotence.

Then she remembered the pins in her hair.

She watched their torch-bearing captors recede in the distance like fishing boats into the night and leave them to darkness that seemed to smother their senses like a shroud of black wool. The air was rank with the droppings of bats. Icarus clutched her hand, half in protection, half in fear. She too was afraid; much more than he, she guessed, since caves and cliffs and roaring rivers, all of the fierce faces of nature, had long been familiar to him from his roving near Vadrypetro.

“Possibly,” said Icarus without reproach, “if you had struck him somewhere else, he wouldn’t have been so angry.”

“Nowhere else would have stopped him.”

“He certainly had to be stopped,” agreed Icarus. “I heard him screaming at you. And all for a kiss.”

It was hardly the time to tell him the facts which he had resisted from Myrrha. The cave, of course, belonged to the Minotaur.

She drew him close to her and felt his big head against her shoulder, “Forgive me,” she said. “Forgive me, little brother.”

“But I wanted to come to the Country of the Beasts,” he reminded her, not yet frightened enough for a sentimental exchange of endearments. “Now we’ve come.”

“You didn’t want the Cave of the Minotaur.”

“Perdix will bring us luck.”

“Not against the Minotaurs. They are much too big.”

“Maybe this one is out to dinner.”

“I’m afraid he dines at home. Shhhhh,” said Thea. “I hear—”

They heard a padding of feet (or hooves?), and then a low, long-drawn wail which deepened and reverberated into the curdling bellow of an enraged bull. Nausea crept to her throat like the furry feet of a spider.

“Mother Goddess, he’s coming!” groaned the boy.

“We must separate,” said Thea. “Otherwise, he will get us both at once. We’ll try to slip past him in the dark and meet at the mouth of the cave.”

“Won’t he be able to see us? This is his lair.”

“He can’t chase us both at once.”

“Let him chase me first. If he’s a slow eater, you may have a chance.”

“He will make his own choice.” She both expected and hoped to be chosen before her brother. If the Minotaur added the instincts of a man to those of a bull, he ought to prefer a girl to a boy.

She loosened Icarus’ hand. His fingers lingered; he hugged her in a quick, impulsive embrace and darted ahead of her, moving from darkness to darkness, scraping his sandals on the floor of the cave. She started to call his name. No, she must not alert the Minotaur. She began to feel her way along the walls; their dampness oozed like blood between her fingers. Once, she stumbled and cut her knee on stalagmites, for she wore her kilt and not the bell-shaped skirt in which she had greeted Ajax. A stench pervaded the air, rancid and sweet at the same time: putrescent flesh and dried blood. She stopped often to catch her breath; fear had drained her as if she had breasted a strong, outgoing tide and washed on the beach with driftwood and shells. Little by little, her eyes became used to the darkness and distinguished the pronged stalactites which hung from the roof like seaweed floating above a diver’s head.

Why, she asked herself, do I fear the Minotaur more than Ajax and his killers? At Knossos, she had often attended the Games of the Bull; once, it is true, she had seen a boy impaled, but the bull had not been vicious. The boy had tried to somersault over his back but landed on his horns. The bull had seemed surprised instead of murderous; he had lowered his horns to help the attendants remove the body.

Sounds, muffled and dim (Icarus’ voice, perhaps?). Then, again, the long-drawn, chilling roar.

A bull that walks like a man, that was the terror. Walks on two legs. Thinks with a man’s cunning, hates with a man’s calculated cruelty. A hybrid of man and beast, monstrous to the eye, monstrous of heart, and roaring with cold malevolence.

A yearning for Icarus hushed her fears. The tentative touch of his hand, restless to dart away like a plump wood-mouse. The big head, not really big except for its wreath of hair, and the pointed ears which he did not allow the hair to conceal. His childish games and hardly childlike courage. She bit her tongue to keep from calling his name. She rounded a turn and looked up and up into the eyes of the Centaur, and his red, matted hair.

When I entered the cave, I was hungry as a bull. Once I week the farmers outside the forest bring me a skinned animal. Bellowing lustily to justify my reputation, I fetch the meat and take it home with me to cook in my garden, they call me the Minotaur, the Bull That Walks Like a Man. In spite of my seven feet, however, I am not a freak, but the last of an old and illustrious tribe who settled the land before the Cretans arrived from the East. Except for my pointed ears (which are common to all of the Beasts), my horns (which are short and almost hidden by hair), and my unobtrusive tail, I am far more human than bovine, though my generous red hair, which has never submitted to the civilizing teeth of a comb, is sometimes mistaken for a mane.

As I said, I came into the cave with a hearty appetite. I also came harassed by a trying day in my workshop. My lapidaries, the Telchines, had quarreled and bruised each other with chisels and overturned a vat of freshly fermented beer. My stomach rumbled with anticipation of the plump, neatly skinned lamb (perhaps two) which would soon be revolving on the spit in my garden.

Almost at once I heard the noises. I stopped in my tracks. Had my dinner been brought to me unkilled, unskinned, and uncleaned? Intolerable! It looked as if I would have to prowl the countryside after dark and strike terror the hearts of the shiftless peasants.

But no. The sounds were voices and not the ululations of animals. I stalked down the twisting corridors of what is called the Cave of the Minotaur but which might better be called his Pantry. I paused. I peered. I sniffed. Man-scent was strong in the air. A trap? Well, they were not likely to trap a Minotaur. I could see in the dark, and my nose was as keen as a bear’s. I advanced warily but confidently hoof over hoof. I—

Crunch!

A rock struck my outstretched hoof. I roared with pain, hobbled on the other leg, and looked up to face my attacker, who was crouched on an overhanging ledge and readying another rock.

I saw a chunky boy of about fifteen, with a large and very engaging head, a thicket of greenish hair, and pointed ears. The ears, to say nothing of the hair, marked him as a Beast. At least, half of him. I liked both halves. He was the kind of boy that one would like to adopt as a brother. Help him to carve a bow from the branches of a cedar tree and spear fish with a sharpened willow-rod and, at the proper time, introduce him to the Dryad, Zoe, and her free-living friends, who could teach him about a boy’s way with a wench.

“Come down from there,” I cried. “What do you think you are, a blue monkey? I won’t hurt you.”

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “You can talk, and in Cretan too.”

“What did you expect me to do, moo or speak Hittite? As a matter of fact, your people learned their language from my people several hundred years ago.”

“Till now I have only heard you bellow.” He was already climbing down from his ledge.

I reached out and seized hold of him and, suddenly mischievous, delivered my heartiest bellow right in his face. He trembled, of course, but looked me straight in the eye. “You shouldn’t have come down so quickly,” I chided. “I might have been luring you down to eat.”

“But you said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Don’t believe everything you’re told. If I had been a Cyclops, I would have smiled and coaxed and stirred you in the pot!”

“What should I have done?”

“Argued a bit. Asked for proof of my good intentions. Found out what I meant to do with you.”

“But you didn’t eat me, and I saved time and questions. I want you to meet my sister.”

My heart sank like a weight from a fisherman’s net. The sister of such a brother was certain to be a lady. Let me say at once: wenches have always liked me, but ladies shut their doors. I would frighten her, she would call me (or, being a lady, think me) uncouth and uncivilized. She would want me to comb my hair, shave my chest, and trim my tail. She would wince when I swore, glare if I tippled beer, and disapprove of my friends, Zoe, the Dryad, and Moschus, the Centaur.

“Oh,” I said, “I don’t think she will want to meet me.”

“She will be delighted. She thought she was going to have to pleasure you.”

We walked to meet her while Icarus told me about their adventures. The meeting was to change my life.