Ariadne(34)

I woke with the screams tearing at my throat. Golden sunshine flooded through the narrow window above the bed, but I felt the shivery grasp of an endless, cold ocean of sadness, washing out all hope.

Theseus was gone, he was gone, he was gone.

There was nowhere to go, but I could not stay in that bed a second longer. Consumed with a restless energy, I dressed frantically – no choice but to put my bronze dress back on, as that was all I had. A strange choice for a prisoner, an exile, whatever I was now – not a princess, not a collaborator or co-conspirator, not a wife.

My movements were jerky, uncontrolled, my fingers clumsy. I snapped my head around at the slightest movement, not sure whether to panic or rejoice when my mind tricked me into thinking I heard the sound of another person. These delusions would plague me in the lonely days and nights to come. As my mind unravelled, I would hear footsteps on the stairs and my heart would seize with joy that Theseus had returned, then with terror that it was a brigand or a pirate or a desperate sailor wrecked upon the shore and coming for me. Or perhaps a vengeful god – there were so many crimes for which I could be punished, after all. Did one of them see my snivelling despair and come to silence my wailing, my weeping, the fruitless prayers I had sent on the wing of the breeze to disturb their complacent feasting in golden halls?

In the pit of the night, the blackness engulfing me would stretch to the very ends of eternity. I would hear the clattering of hooves and the huffing of breath through the bull’s snout and I would claw at the covers, desperately trying to bury myself and holding my breath until stars exploded against my tightly closed eyelids and I had to gasp for air, terrified of what I would see when I surfaced.

My days were spent in desultory walking. I did not dare to explore the island further. I walked the beach, I walked the cliffs and I scanned the flat expanse of the sea, hour upon hour. It remained empty.

I eked out the supplies that Theseus had left me. The gnawing emptiness in my stomach did not seem to resemble hunger. Anything I ate was tasteless and sat heavily in my belly. I was thirsty, but the sips of water I allowed myself did nothing to quell the constant pounding at my temples. My bronze dress hung around me, discoloured and stained and torn by the jutting edges of the rocks I passed every day on my futile walks between the beach and the house.

I considered, with a strange sense of calm, ending it all more quickly. Theseus had left no friendly knife, no blade to plunge through my faithless breast and bring it all to a merciful close. I could have hurled myself from the cliffs to the hungry waves below, and I stood at their precipice to contemplate it. Perhaps it would feel exhilarating, to sweep through the air, to plummet in its weightless embrace, free for a few glorious, doomed seconds. I was terrified, though, of the icy submersion at the end, my lungs screaming for air in the suffocating salty depths. I was afraid and more pathetically, I still clung to that tiny crumb of hope. I hoped against all hope that Theseus would take pity on me, that he would relent, that he might return and I could be saved.

I noticed, one of the dreary afternoons that I passed in the courtyard, watching the journey of the sun from one end of the sky to the other, a cluster of vines growing just beyond the house. I hadn’t seen them before, but now I wondered how I could have missed them. The thick woody stems curved and twisted around each other and the verdant leaves were a waving canopy fluttering in the breeze. Nestled plumply amongst them were heavy, gleaming bunches of purple grapes.

I had been lying on the stones, too fatigued now to walk and walk in the heat. But at the sight of the grapes, hope rippled in my chest. I knew that little remained in the kitchen now – a corner of heavy, stale bread and perhaps a handful of olives. How much water? Not enough, was all I knew. I was rationing every sip, afraid of what it would mean when I drained that cask dry. But grapes – I could taste their sweetness bursting on my tongue, their delicious, delicate succulence in my mouth. The feeling propelling me to my feet was excitement, joy . . . the first true glimmer of hope since the black sails disappeared. I could not understand how I had not seen them before; it was as though they had emerged fully formed just when I needed them. I hurried towards them, fearing they might dissolve into the air as abruptly as they seemed to have appeared. Suddenly, I was ravenously hungry. I pulled the grapes off their stems and crammed them into my mouth with an appetite I had forgotten I ever possessed.

They were a revelation to me, those grapes, a lesson in how glorious food can be when you are truly hungry. After the dry, salted offerings I had rationed out in ever-decreasing amounts over the past days, this ripe and luscious fruit was a miracle. If the island had more gifts like this to offer, if I could find and forage enough for my survival—

Abruptly, I stopped. The hope flickered and died. What good would it do? Suppose I found berries and nuts and leaves to sustain me, what life would I lead all alone in this place?

I was an exile. I was a traitor. I was deserted. I had nothing.

Heavy despair had hung upon me like lead weights since Theseus had sailed away. I had felt the gaping wound of my misery like a disembowelment, as though Theseus had sliced me open with his sword. Now, however, I felt a new emotion rising up within me. There was not room in my body to contain it so I screamed – long and loud and full of fury. I let a stream of invective fly from my mouth, incoherent and venomous, like a stream of burning arrows dipped in poison. I directed them at Theseus, calling him things I did not know I had the words for, but I foamed with anger for Minos as well and even for Poseidon – these men, these gods who toyed with our lives and cast us aside when we had been of use to them, who laughed at our suffering or forgot our existence altogether.