She had so often acted the role, so often demonstrated the queen’s obsession with the great white bull, brought about by Poseidon’s curse to punish Minos, she had so often played the seductive strumpet, she had seduced the bull so many times, that even today, when she moved without thought, without volition, she convinced the audience. Slowly she removed the cloak: tease … pause … pose. Gracefully, now down to her semi-transparent tunic, she discarded the diadem and handed it to a waiting slave, then the bracelets, one by one. She caressed her white arms as she did so. Then she delicately peeled the tunic from her shapely body – to the accompaniment of raucous applause and shrill whistles – and dragged it in the dust. She tossed her golden-brown hair. She drew the tresses over her pointed breasts with their red-painted nipples in a pretence of shyness; she titillated the avidly watching men, made them hot and hard with desire, made each one of them wish she was seducing him and not the mythological animal.
While all she saw, what blotted out everything else in her consciousness, was the white face of her husband huddled against the stable wall, the spurting blood, the white fingers waving a grotesque farewell, and all she could hear was the bear going crunch. She maintained her composure, except when she removed the second sandal and it fell to the ground sole side up, and she saw that it was stained with blood. Then, she screamed.
But her scream coincided with the bull prancing back into the arena: two men beneath a cover of white leather, with a huge horned head that tossed as it cavorted around and around, and the audience assumed it was all part of the fun. How they laughed when Daedalus provided the wooden simulacrum of a cow, into which she had to climb through a gate in the rear, lie down and insert herself with her bare legs protruding from the front, so that she could couple with the bull! How they whistled and stamped when the actor who formed the front legs of the bull activated the spring that caused its huge member (also leather, stuffed) to spring erect! And how the amphitheatre echoed to the roar when the bull pushed his vast member into the cow!
There was a slot under her buttocks that allowed the bull to enter the cow, with a great production of the act of coitus while she kicked her legs in feigned orgasmic delight. Usually she managed to distance herself from this performance and feel nothing more than mild contempt for the men who enjoyed this coarse mime. Mostly she was simply bored: it was a job, she did it and she was good at it. She had her fans. But today, when all she could see was a white face and gouts of blood and a white hand obscenely flapping, today she lay in the uncomfortable wooden box that smelled dank and stuffy, with the bull bumping up against her and thousands of voices cheering it on, and she felt violated.
When she descended from the shell of the cow, it took all her resolution to remain on her feet and register appropriate horror when the monster to which she had supposedly given birth cantered onto the scene: Minotaur! Half man, half bull. Head of a bull, lower parts of a man. Also, of course, naked and well hung. Indeed, she, the Queen, had been properly punished for her bizarre act. No matter that she had been guiltless. No matter that she had been cursed for her husband’s foolish evasion of his duty. She had lain with an animal, she was disgusting and depraved and she deserved her punishment. Off she went in tears, followed by howls of righteous contempt.
She dressed hurriedly and ran all the way to the sick bay at the Hippodrome. The physician met her at the door, wiping his bloodied hands and forearms.
“How is he? Is he …” She fought for breath.
“He’s dead. You’re too late.”
“No,” she said. “No. Not just … without … not …” She put a hand against the rough stone of the wall to keep herself in the world, to stop herself from falling into a dark void.
He was unable to look her in the eye. She sensed his disapproval of this woman who performed a lewd pantomime while her husband breathed his last alone. “We tried, but the shock and loss of blood were too severe,” he said. “It was a frightful wound.”
“Oh, dear God,” she said. “He loved that bear. He used to breathe into its nostrils. Right up close.”
“The bear’s had to be put down. No tamer will work with an animal that has attacked someone so viciously. Vet says, it had an inflamed abscess in a tooth that probably drove it mad.”
“A tooth,” she repeated.
“Yes, well, it’s a pity. It was a valuable animal. Trained bears are hard to come by. But there it is.”
She left the sick bay on listless feet, wrapped in her own old cloak. On the way out she encountered Peter, an apprentice trainer who had had a great admiration for Acasius.
“I’m s-sorry, Anastasia,” he mumbled and shuffled his large feet. “I heard. It’s t-terrible.”
She nodded. She did not trust her voice.
“I’ll s-see you home,” he offered. “You must b-be exhausted.”
She nodded again. Let him bumble along, as long as he didn’t expect her to speak. She would have to tell the children, she thought. Dear God in heaven, how would she do that? They would be shattered. Especially Theodora, the middle one, who had without any doubt been her father’s favourite, and the last one to see him before he died. What could she say?
And now, bereft of their main breadwinner, how would they survive? She was, she told herself in utter disbelief, a widow. She had three small girl children. She could not imagine what would become of them.
Theodora looked at her father as he lay in the open coffin, wrapped in his best cloak in such a way as to conceal the fact that his arm was missing. His thick, dark hair was beautifully combed and his face looked stern, the way he used to look when one of his children had been naughty. There was a peculiar smell, in spite of the masses of flowers that breathed scent into the air, despite the incense that wafted from the censers carried by the priests who had come to lead the procession to the cemetery near to the city walls. It smelled like standing water, she thought. It smelled like the dead mouse they had once found in the kitchen. It had been days ago that he was killed.
She knew that her father had died. She knew that. Yet she thought that maybe, if she could be alone with him and speak to him very nicely, tell him how much they missed him and how sad they were, he might open his eyes again and smile. Miracles did happen.
Her father had told her about miracles himself, for he had been a Christian priest before he was a bearkeeper, in that far country from which they had come when she was too small to know that they were leaving home. Every evening at bedtime, he had read to his daughters from one of the two precious books – codices he called them – that he had brought with him. One told how God had created the world – Comito’s favourite – and the other held the Gospels, that told about the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Theodora loved that one. Her father had read her the story of how the Lord Jesus had spoken to Lazarus, and he had awoken even though he had been dead for days. Even though his winding cloths were smelly. So perhaps …
But she was never alone with him. There were lots of people: Asterius, the tall, thin Dancing Master of the Greens, with the big nose and important air, who was in charge of all their performances at the Hippodrome and the Kynêgion, also men Acasius had worked with, neighbours from their block and others down the street, the men friends with whom Acasius had wrestled and played ball games, the baker who supplied their bread, the blacksmith, who looked unnaturally clean, and Peter, who had liked to watch Acasius working with the bears, as well as Rosa, the sweaty fat washerwoman from downstairs, who had a clear, sweet voice and led the mourners in song.
Theodora looked forlornly into the coffin. She saw that they had put his training whip and pitchfork into the coffin with him. And his handsaw and his hammer and … and … his whittling tools, which he had used to make little animals for her. Now she understood for the first time that he was never going to wake up. Never coming back. Never again going to hold her warm and safe in his cloak. They were really, really going to put him into the ground. There would be no miracle. Fat tears rolled down her cheeks.
Now several sturdy men who were to carry the coffin came into the room. One