Ariadne(38)

Minos stepped over the crumpled form of his wife on the floor.

‘Ready my ship,’ he commanded.

A flurry of activity swarmed around us, people grateful to have a task, anything to get them out of here.

Minos no longer bellowed or roared. His voice was pure ice, barely above a whisper. ‘We sail immediately.’





14


Ariadne


After the frenzy in which I had destroyed the vines and smashed the grapes across the rocks, I knew that death was near and a dull calm descended once more. It was not the stupor in which I had lain before, but a clear and quiet kind of peace. I had cried all the tears I thought I could ever produce; I had spat and screamed and now I felt strangely cleansed. I could see, with dispassionate and rational eyes, that my supplies had now dwindled to mere scraps. I had had neither sight nor sound of any living thing whilst I had been on the island, save the occasional darting lizard scuttling across my path, the crawling insects, or the birds wheeling with joy across the wide sweep of sky. No doubt fish swam in the waters, and other creatures must have dwelt somewhere, but I did not know how to find them – or what I would do if I caught one. If I held a life, furred or finned or scaled, wriggling in my hand, could I bring myself to squeeze that life out with my bare hands and tear its raw flesh with my teeth? Could I become a beast myself?

I was not afraid – or not so much. Acceptance stole its way through my veins, filling my body with the weight of understanding. I had walked away from Crete, freely and purposefully, in the knowledge that I could never return. No more children would make that fearful voyage from Athens, quaking at the prospect of being devoured in the dark. Perhaps my life was a fair price to pay.

I slept that night with a sense of calm in my heart, and the next morning I decided that I would walk down to the beach. The ocean had always been a friend to me, back in Crete. The sight of it would always soothe my soul. Since Theseus’ desertion, it had been a taunting enemy, staying so resolutely empty as I willed it desperately to summon back his ship and return him to me. But today, it would be a friend again. I would sit on the warm sand and watch the white-crested waves sparkle.

In the kitchen, I steeled myself to drink the very last of the water that remained. I trembled a little as I set the empty cask down. Perhaps, if I searched further into the island, I would find fresh water – a spring of some kind. I paused, indecisive. ‘What good will it do you, Ariadne?’ I said, the sound of my voice bouncing off the stone walls, shocking me with how loud it sounded in the silence to which I had become accustomed. To give up seemed so deliciously tempting – to go to the beach and lie down and wait for sleep to take me. Was that how it would be? Or should I scour the island’s depths, risk whatever dangers might be lurking? Would I die searching, delirious and foaming at the mouth? Or would I find salvation in the form of a spring and draw out my lonely days still further?

I needed to get out of the house; the walls suddenly felt like those of a tomb closing around me. I hastened through the courtyard, to the cliff edge. Resting my forehead against the rough surface of the rock on which I leaned, I cast my gaze out to sea. I had spent days scouring that horizon fruitlessly, searching for the flapping sails of a ship that would mean my salvation. It had remained resolutely empty; a blue abyss that spelt my doom instead.

But now, as I watched that line where sea merged into sky, I saw for the first time a dot that grew increasingly larger as it neared me and resolved itself into the unmistakeable sight of a ship. A ship, sailing towards Naxos.





15


Phaedra


Pasiphae was no use at all in those first shocked, strange days. When she scraped herself up off the throne room floor in the wake of Minos’ departure, she scrabbled frantically for the gruesome remains of the monster. Not caring for the foul streaks upon her hair, her breast, her face, she cradled it close, whimpering.

I turned away in revulsion. I longed for cold, clean air to blow away the stench and the suffering but I could see the haze of the sun’s heat shimmering from the stones outside, beyond the red-painted columns. Sourness rose in my throat.

No one asked about Ariadne. It was as though she were nothing more than the gems or the gold that Theseus and his men had taken. Far from questioning me to find out if I knew anything, Minos and his men ignored me, vowing revenge, cursing Daedalus and Theseus, one after the other.

And had I been doubly forgotten? Had Ariadne plotted my abandonment with Theseus? I did not believe my gentle sister had it in her. But then I wouldn’t have believed her capable of freeing Theseus from his cell to plot against Minos, had I not seen it with my own eyes. Was there any way it could have been a mistake? Some kind of misunderstanding? But as my mind teemed with questions, the image of Theseus’ face remained fixed. The way he had looked at Ariadne with a kind of hunger. The way she looked back as though he were the only person in the world.

Perhaps I just got in their way.

I did not have Ariadne’s patience for Pasiphae, and as I watched her crawl about on the floor, gathering the pieces of her monstrous offspring, I felt more anger than sympathy. She had three living children, aside from that creature, but for years she had looked through each one of us as though we were air. When Deucalion had boarded his ship to Lycia, she had barely registered the loss of a sturdy, human son. Now Ariadne was gone and she wept only for an aberration that should never have been in the first place. But I could not leave her there. Although every inch of my skin recoiled from the gore, I knelt to help her to her feet. She muttered feverishly under her breath, but she rose, supported by my arm.