Ariadne(22)

It was just at that very moment that a dark figure flung itself over the rocks that encircled us. The tumbling shape crashed to its feet in front of us, a heavy iron club wielded clumsily in its hands.





8


In the space of the following heartbeat, I learned I still knew how to fear. I froze, rooted to the ground for an agonising second before my tongue unstuck from the roof of my mouth and I forced out in disbelief, ‘Phaedra?’

‘Ariadne,’ she answered, trying to sound assured but with a slightly hysterical note that betrayed her excitement.

‘How did you . . . ? Where . . . ? Did you see . . . ? Is anyone—?’ I tried to ask the dozen questions jumbling in my throat.

While I struggled for words, I noticed Theseus take the club from her in a smooth and unhurried gesture. His body was poised and alert, his eyes scanning the dark horizon, listening intently, though all I could hear was the surf crashing on the rocks below and the sound of Phaedra’s quick breaths.

‘No one is coming,’ she told him loftily. ‘The palace sleeps. Everyone has drunk too much wine and now they are snoring like pigs. There isn’t a guard awake, I promise you. We have hours before the dawn stirs any one of them.’

We have hours. We?

Theseus slunk around the rocks that sheltered us, sleek as a cat, barely detaching himself from the shadows as he surveyed the area, clearly unconvinced that Phaedra hadn’t been followed. Whilst he patrolled, I grabbed her arm and hissed at her, ‘What under Zeus are you doing here? Are you insane?’

‘Only as insane as you,’ she answered, petulance sharpening her retort.

‘How did you know we were here?’ I demanded.

‘I followed you.’ I heard her pride at my utter surprise. ‘I followed you with Daedalus and I followed you to the prison. I knew what you wanted to do, I could tell the moment you saw him that you intended to help him escape.’

‘You followed me? Then where have you been all this time?’ I demanded.

She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Listening.’

I was furious and not a little embarrassed at how easily I had been outwitted by my younger sister. She drew herself up in the moonlight, small and slight but full of ferocity. I sighed. I would have given anything to keep her out of this. If she came to harm, it would be my fault. ‘And where did you get the club?’ I wondered if she was mad enough to have raided the armoury. I wasn’t sure that anything would have surprised me about her now.

‘It’s my club,’ Theseus interjected. I hadn’t noticed him return, so subtle had his movements been. ‘It’s all clear, as she said. So, the palace truly slumbers?’ he asked her.

Now that Theseus addressed her, her voice was as smooth as cream. ‘Oh yes, it is dead to the world after the revels of the evening,’ she assured him. ‘I retrieved your club from the storeroom in which the offerings from Athens had been placed.’

I felt my stomach clench. What if it were missed? But Theseus looked at ease, and seeing how natural the club looked in his hand, as though it were an extension of his arm, I felt safer.

‘This club made me the Prince of Athens,’ he told us, and his voice made me think of water flowing over stones, cool and rapid, with a force all of its own. ‘Without it, I would not be here at all. Thank you for returning it to me,’ he added, to Phaedra, and I could tell even in the dim light just how deeply she blushed.

‘Will you carry on?’ she asked him, almost shyly. I could see she was torn between triumphant pride at her daring and an uncharacteristic hesitancy in asking him to go on with the story she had heard without us knowing she was there at all.

He smiled. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I was happy in Athens, with my labours behind me and a glittering future ahead. But as I set my hand to the business of being a prince – tending flocks, presiding over disputes, observing Aegeus and striving to be as great a king as he was – the rumblings of war began to reach us. The Pallantidai were to march upon Athens, resentful that Aegeus sat upon the throne and now had such a mighty heir as me. They were fifty sons of Pallas, who were dissatisfied with ruling Attica and had hoped to take Athens when Aegeus died. Now their hopes dwindled and they thought instead to take it by force.

‘It was the Pallantidai who killed your brother Androgeos. They were bitter and jealous of anyone’s success, and his victory in the games had enraged them. It was they who lured him to the mountains where the crazed bull rampaged and where he met his lonely death. I want you to know that it was I who cut each and every one of them down in turn. When I had killed all fifty sons in front of him, I slew Pallas as well. Your brother’s death is avenged at my hands.’

I had felt cold before when he talked about Medea. But at these words, I burned with a strange mingling of pride and shame. Proud that this heroic man had slain my brother’s murderers. Ashamed that my father had brought him here in chains to pay the price for a death he had already redressed.

Theseus continued. ‘So, I had rid the city of another threat and given its people hope and faith that after Aegeus they would still be ruled justly by me. But still, a terrible sadness overcame the city like a cloud. Everywhere I looked, I saw bleak and despairing faces. I heard the weeping of women everywhere I turned. I asked my father, “What troubles our citizens? What makes them cry and howl and gnash their teeth? We have a prosperous city, our laws are fair and we keep them safe. What reason have they to give in to this despondency?”