Ariadne(40)

I hurried to the docks, with no one left to hold me back in the name of decorum. I pushed my way through the traders and the merchants who milled around, shouting to each other over the noise of the waves and the wind that rattled the great cloths hung on each of the many ships clustered together. I had my eyes firmly fixed on the figure stepping down from our royal ship, so much mightier and more impressive than all the others. I did not care about the muttered exclamations and protests as I elbowed past them all.

He was taller, much taller than when I had seen him last, but his smile was just the same. My warm, good-hearted Deucalion, returned to me again. I flung my arms around him as he made the final step on to the jetty, knocking him slightly off balance.

He laughed. ‘Phaedra!’

‘I am so glad, so glad you are back,’ was all I could say, muffled into his chest. I felt the warm press of his hand on my back.

‘I am sorry I was delayed. I stopped at Athens on my journey home.’

I stiffened, drew back. ‘Athens? Did you – did you see Ariadne?’ I hardly dared to ask the question; the words fell so tremulously from my lips, I hardly recognised myself.

His face clouded. ‘I have news of Ariadne. I will explain it all in the palace, not here.’ He jerked his head at the roiling mass of people all around us, the soldiers who flanked him and the curious, questioning stares he was garnering. As the realisation rippled through the crowd, I saw people begin to bow their heads, the noisy chatter quieting.

I wondered what that felt like; to command the respect of people who had not seen you for years and knew nothing of you except that you were the son, rather than the daughter, of the King. But I was impatient to hear news of my sister and relieved that Crete was clearly not in open rebellion, so I walked beside him, the guards fanning out on either side of us in stately procession.

‘What of our mother?’ he asked me quietly as we walked. ‘How is she?’

I considered. ‘She grows stronger every day.’ I had wondered if Rhadamanthus had been correct in his appraisal of her at the tomb; that she had grieved for all that had been done to her over the remnants of the Minotaur. ‘I think she is finding some kind of peace.’ It helped, of course, to have Minos’ suffocating, tyrannical presence gone. I could see that she was at last able to breathe freely.

He nodded. ‘Good.’ I marvelled at the newfound strength of his presence, the ease that he seemed to feel striding up the worn steps to the palace – his palace, for now anyway. As we approached the vast colonnade at the entrance, advisers and nobles and servants flocked towards us, but he waved them all away. ‘There is time enough for affairs of state,’ he pronounced. ‘First, I speak to Phaedra.’

I thrilled at his words.

He ushered me into an anteroom, remembering the twists and turns of the palace as though he had left only yesterday. At last, we were alone together, and there was only one thing I wanted to know.

‘Ariadne?’ I demanded.

He exhaled slowly. I could not read the expression in his eyes, but the blood pounding in my veins slowed and stilled as the seconds stretched on. Just as I thought I could not stand it any longer, he spoke.

‘Ariadne is dead.’

I knew, before he said it. My sister, so sweet and trusting and brave.

‘Theseus told me it all. How she plotted with him to kill the monster and waited outside. They fled on his ship that night and stopped at an island called Naxos to rest. He said that he and his men set up camp and made a separate place for her, to protect her virtue. But in the morning, when he went to wake her, he found her cold, coiled in the grip of the mighty snake whose venom had killed her. He battled the immense creature – so big, he said, he knew it must have been sent by a god – and he prevailed. He promised me that they carried out all the proper funeral rites for her before they sailed. When he reached Athens, he consulted an oracle which told him Artemis had unleashed the serpent in punishment for Ariadne’s betrayal of her father and her city.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Theseus was sorry to bring this news to me and I regret that I must burden you with it as well, little Phaedra.’

I gasped, choked on the words I could not wrench from my throat. My skin tingled as though ants swarmed across my body. I could only think of her lying in the embrace of a poisonous snake, her skin hard and drained of the life that had flushed her cheeks when I had seen her last. ‘Why just our sister?’ I managed to gulp at last. ‘Why was it only she who was punished?’

Deucalion pulled his hand across his mouth. ‘The crime was hers, Phaedra. I know why she did it, but it was disobedience to Minos and disloyalty to Crete. Theseus was our enemy and she helped him.’

‘Our enemy?’ My voice was high, loose, unfamiliar to me. ‘He saved us all!’

‘I cannot deny he has done us a service, ridding us of the Minotaur and the monstrous harvest.’ Deucalion nodded earnestly. ‘I want only to make peace with Athens now; I bear them no grudge.’

‘But Ariadne paid the price,’ I whispered.

He was silent for a long time. ‘The price is not paid yet, Phaedra.’

I looked up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Minos is gone and no one knows when he will be back. We have no Minotaur. Whispers of rebellion surge around Knossos. We cannot afford the enmity of Athens now, but we have taken their children twice over and fed them alive to our monster. If Theseus had not killed it, we would have taken their Prince as well and it would stretch on forever; an endless sacrifice that we demanded of them. Their friendship will not be easy to come by.’