The Bull from the Sea by Mary Renault Read Free Book Online Page A

The rocks narrowed; there was a rope across, tied in a curious knot. My mother pulled it somewhere, and it fell apart. As we passed it, she pressed a finger to her lips.
    Our feet slipped ankle-deep in water, the cleft sides stood three-man-high above our heads. Then they opened; there was a round rock-walled space, with trees growing in its sides. In the far wall, a little way up, there was a cave. The stream ran out from it, murmuring and chuckling; and mossy, low steps ran up, towards the dark within.
    My mother pointed away, to a space between two boulders. I went there, my backbone feeling cold; but there was only a wild pig tethered. I dragged him out; by a slab below the steps the old priestess stood with a cleaver. There was black blood upon the stone. The boar snorted and tugged; the thought of his screaming froze me. I used all my strength, and clove his neck to the windpipe. His breath hissed, mingled with blood which ran into the earth. He died; and I saw in the mouth of the cave the three faces waiting: the green maiden, the woman, the crone. My mother beckoned.
    It was dark in the cave. Further on, it sloped downwards into blackness. The stream, scouring one side, had smoothed itself a channel stained yellow and red. Baskets stood on the floor, of grain, of shrivelled roots and leaves; some were covered over. On the shadowy walls dim things were hanging: cloths or robes, or sacks of worked leather. On the other side of the stream, behind a jutting rock which cut off the light, was a curtain of kidskin hung over a wooden frame. A stone slab showed under it, like the foot of an altar.
    They began the rites of appeasement. I was marked with the dead boar’s blood, then washed with water from the stream; my head by the crone, my right hand by my mother. Then the maid came to wash my left. She was dark and slight, a girl of the Shore Folk with eyes like forest water, shy and unguarded. They gazed at me as she came up, gangling as a hound-pup and as tenderly made. In this awesome place I had forgotten my deeds and my fame. But this girl remembered.
    I let my hand fall. She paused; then took it timidly in hers to hold it for the washing. Her brow flushed, then her face and her breast. But she kept her eyes down, and put away her pitcher neatly.
    The rites were long. The women passed and repassed the screened-off altar. Things were brought out and censed and sprinkled, taken back and hidden. I watched my mother, thinking how I had seen her year after year since boyhood, splendidly robed, her jewelled skirts clashing and swinging, making the harvest sacrifice upon the threshing floor in the bright sunlight; and all the while these secrets in her heart.
    Fire crackled behind the curtain; there was a smell of burning gums and leaves. The pungent smoke itched my nose and throat. Where I had been in awe, I began to weary. The maiden passed behind the screen and I watched for her returning, thinking of her young coltish thighs and soft breasts. She came; and by chance or because she could not help it, her eyes met mine. My mother was not looking; I smiled, and moved my lips in a kiss. She looked down confused; and not watching where she went, brushed the screen with her shoulder. It tottered and fell down.
    In the bull ring and out, I had lived hard that last year, with my life hanging on a quick eye. I had looked before I knew.
    The Goddess sat on the altar, in a little throne of painted wood. But she herself was stone. She was round and dimpled, both a woman and a stone. Your two hands could have spanned her round. Waist she had none, being great with child; her small arms were folded between her great belly and heavy breasts, her huge thighs tapered to tiny feet. She was unpainted, unclothed, unjewelled; a small round gray stone. There was no face to see; it was bowed upon her breasts, showing only rough-carved curls. Yet I shivered and sweated; she was so old, so old. Zeus’s oak grove seemed like spring shoots beside