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

all they will understand; don't cry against the wind." They chattered on; I
could hear it now with an Attic ear, foreign as bird-song. "We are the Cranes!
The Cranes, the Cranes, the first team in the Bull Court. A whole year in the
ring, and all alive; the first time in the annals and they go back six hundred
years. Theseus did it, he trained us. Theseus is the greatest bull-leaper who
ever was in Crete. Even here in Athens, you must have heard of the
Cranes!" The kinsfolk clasped their darlings, shook their heads and stared.
Fathers were grabbing my hands and kissing them for bringing their children
home. I made some answer. How we had prayed and plotted in the Bull Court to
get away! And now, how hard to shed it from us, the doomed and fiery life, the
trust stronger than love. It left a raw bleeding wound. A girl was saying to
her betrothed, who had hardly known her, "Rhion, I am a bull-leaper! I can
handstand on the horns. Once I did the back-spring. Look at this jewel; I won
a great bet for a prince, and he gave it to me." I saw his face of horror, and
their eyes meeting at a loss. In the Bull Court, life and honor came before
boy or girl. I felt it still; to me these slim athletes of my team were
beautiful. I saw with the eyes of this fuller's son how free-moving and firm
and brown she looked beside the milky maids of Athens. When I thought of all
the Cranes had shared, I could have struck the fool and taken her in my arms.
But the Bull Court was ashes and blackened stone; the Cranes were out of my
hand, my rule was over. "Find me a black bull-calf," I told the people. "I
must sacrifice to Poseidon Earth-Shaker, for our safe return. And send a
runner to the King my father." The calf came meekly, and bowed his head
consenting; a good omen which pleased the people. Even at the stroke he
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scarcely struggled. Yet when he sank down his eyes reproached me like a man's.
A strange thing, after his mildness. I dedicated him and poured the blood upon
the earth. When I quenched the flames with wine, I prayed, "Father Poseidon,
Lord of Bulls, we have danced for you in your holy place and laid our lives in
your hand. You brought us safe home; be good to us still, and hold fast our
roof-posts. And for myself, now I am come again to Erechtheus' stronghold, let
my arm not fail her. Prosper my father's house; and be it so according to our
prayer." They cried amen; but the sound wandered. There was a buzz of news
behind. My runner was back, long before he could have reached the Citadel. He
came to me slowly; and the people made way for him, drawing aside. I knew then
he brought death-tidings. He stood silent before me, but not for long. No news
so bad but an Athenian wants to be first with it. They brought me a horse.
Some of my father's barons came down to meet me. As we rode from Piraeus to
the Rock, the sounds of joy fell back and I heard the wailing. On the ramp of
the gates where it is too steep to ride, the Palace people stumbled to kiss my
hands and the fringe of my Cretan kilt. They had thought me dead, themselves
masterless: beggars at best, slaves if they could not get away before the
Pallantids swarmed back to take the kingdom. I said, "Show me my father." The
eldest baron said, "I will see, my lord, if the women have done washing him.
He was bloody from the fall." He lay in his upper room, on his great bed of
cedar, with the red cover lined with wolfskin; he had always felt the cold.
They had wrapped him in blue with a gold border; very quiet he lay between the