"Mary Renault - Greece 2 - Bull From The Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Renault Mary)

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THE BULL FROM THE SEA by Mary Renault MARATHON I It was dolphin weather,
when I sailed into Piraeus with my comrades of the Cretan bull ring. Knossos
had fallen, which time out of mind had ruled the seas. The smoke of the
burning Labyrinth still clung to our clothes and hair. I sprung ashore and
grasped both hands full of Attic earth. It stuck to my palms as if it loved
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me. Then I saw the staring people, not greeting us, but calling each other to
see the Cretan strangers. I looked at my team, the boys and girls of Athens'
tribute, carried to Crete to learn the bull-vault and dance for Minotauros on
bloody sand. They showed me myself, as I must look to Attic eyes: a
bull-dancer of Crete, smooth-shaven, fined down to a whiplash by the training;
my waist in a gilded cinch-belt, my silk kilt stitched with peacock eyes, my
lids still smudged with kohl; nothing Hellene about me but my flaxen hair. My
necklace and arm-rings were not grave jewels of a kingly house, but the costly
gauds of the Bull Court, the gift of sport-loving lords and man-loving ladies
to a bull-boy who will go in with the music and fly up with the horns. Small
wonder no one knew me. The bull ring is a dye that seeps into one's soul. Even
till my feet touched Attic soil, the greater part of me had been Theseus the
Athenian, team-leader of the Cranes; the odds-on fancy, the back-somersault
boy, the first of the bull-leapers. They had painted me on the walls of the
Labyrinth, carved me in ivory; there had been little gold Theseuses on the
women's bracelets. The ballad-makers had promised themselves and me a thousand
years of singing. In these things my pride still lingered. Now it was time to
be my father's son. There were great shouts about us. The crowd had seen who
we were. They thronged around calling the news along towards Athens and the
Rock, and stretching their eyes at the King's son tricked out like a
mountebank. Women screamed out for pity at the scars on my breast and sides
from glancing bull-horns. All of us had them. They thought we had been
flogged. I saw the faces of my team looking dashed a little, even in the
rejoicing. In Crete, all the world had known these for our honors, the badges
of fine-cut skill. I thought of the solemn dirges when I sailed, the tears
and rent hair, the keening for me, self-offered scapegoat of the god. All that
could not be told broke from me in a laugh; and some old woman kissed me. In
the Bull Court, boys' and girls' voices had never ceased all day. I heard them
still. "Look, we are back! Yes, every one of us; look, there is your son. No,
the Cretans will not chase us, there is no Minos now. The House of the Ax has
fallen! We fought a great battle there, after the earthquake. Theseus killed
the heir, the Minotauros. We are free! And there is no Cretan tribute any
more!" People stared and murmured. It was too great for joy. A world without
Crete was a new thing under the sun. Then young men leaped and raised the
paean. I said smiling to the team, "Suppers at home." Yet my heart was
thinking, "Leave the tale so, dear comrades of our mystery. You have told them