Ariadne(62)
‘Why do you say perhaps?’ I asked, confused.
‘The mind of Hades is as unfathomable to me as mine is an open book to him. I wonder that he could not know for even one second that Cerberus was gone, and the truth of the desire that had led me to his kingdom. He knew I wanted my mother back.’
‘But why would he let her go?’ What I knew of Hades hardly allowed for compassion.
‘Do not misjudge any god’s capacity for revenge.’ Dionysus cocked an eyebrow. ‘Hades knows how Hera’s jealousy burns away at her soul. And he knew that once I had led my mother from the Underworld, I would not let her go again. I cannot say for sure what he thinks or feels but I imagine that the prospect of seeing Hera squirm with frustration and hatred at the sight of her rival elevated to Mount Olympus, to share her own golden couches and sup on ambrosial nectar with them all, was one that was as pleasing to him as it was to me. Perhaps it brought him a little warmth in his chill halls and lifted some of the fog around him for a moment. For I feel sure that he would not have allowed me to flout him otherwise, and I cannot believe that I was able to outwit him.’
I floundered for a moment. ‘So, your mother . . . ?’
‘Became a golden goddess of Mount Olympus, yes,’ Dionysus said. His face beamed with triumph as he spoke. ‘My father granted me such a boon when I ascended with her soul, which was fully restored the moment we left the Underworld, and he saw what I had accomplished. He could not deny me my request. She presides over my rites now as the goddess Thyone. And Hera cannot touch her, but must look upon her every single day.’
Dionysus’ story was such a charming one that I could not help but smile. I was captivated by Dionysus’ willingness to talk so freely and frankly of what he had felt, and his innocent glee in seeing Hera gnash her teeth at his success, when she had connived so very much to see him brought low. His palpable disdain for Theseus also salved the ache within me, like soothing oil on the raw flesh of a burn.
I had been a fool to trust in a hero: a man who could only love the mighty echo of his own name throughout the centuries. It could have undone me. I could have shrivelled and died on this very beach. I could have wept a lonely ocean before the crows came for my eyes, and my blinded spirit could have howled for eternity in the bleak marshes at the banks of the Styx. But instead, this laughing god had cast his light across my story.
It was Theseus who would be left with nothing in the end. Nothing but the rippling, illusory veil of history, which might well cloak him in a pleasing manner so that listeners round a fire or at their banquets would marvel and gasp at his courage and daring. But the warmth of their flames would cast no light or comfort into the dim fog where he would dwell by then. His formless spirit would have to take what meagre crumbs of joy it could in the whispers of his stories floating like ash on the listless breeze.
And me? His erstwhile victim, my bones bare and bleached by now, for all he knew. Did he cast me a thought? When he told of how he crushed the Minotaur’s skull beneath his iron club and cracked the beast’s bones in his mighty fists, did I ever flicker across his mind? The thick red twine I had wrapped around his wrist. The monstrous weapon I had laid in the Labyrinth for him to use to beat my brother into gristle and pulp, then smear his steaming flesh across the Cretan sand, glistening under the moon. The promises that fell from my lips, eager and honest, as I lifted them to his.
Theseus emulated the worst of the immortals: their greed, their ruthlessness and the endless selfish desires that would overturn the world, as though it were a trinket box, and plunder its contents for a passing whim because they believed it belonged to them anyway. He was like any number of grasping, petty deities of all ranks and description who would take what they wanted and discard what they did not, with never a thought for what they left in their wake.
But Dionysus had told me he was not like other gods, and I knew he was not like other men, either. I held his hand more tightly in my own.
He had come back again. Perhaps I could begin to believe that truly he would stay.
22
The island transformed day by day. Somehow, news of Dionysus’ return must have spread, for each afternoon, new arrivals emerged. A band of laughing, singing young women who followed him wherever he went now came to Naxos and suddenly, the solitary beach and empty forests were filled with the sound of the flute and the lyre and the piping of female voices. I was fascinated by them; ‘maenads’ he had told me they were called, and their beaming faces seemed to greet me everywhere. Their good-natured chatter brought the stillness of the island to vivid life. Like Dionysus himself, his followers seemed curiously innocent and full of sweetness. I watched them as they wove their way sinuously through the trees and up the sloping sides of the mountains, letting their hair swing loosely in the fluttering breeze which carried fragments of their songs to me. At night, they poured rivers of sweet, rich wine in libation to Dionysus whilst he looked on with an approving smile and they drank together before beginning their lazy, spinning dances. They seemed to be animated by a simple joy of living; the glimmer of the moonlight across the waves or the scent of the flowers that clustered everywhere gave rise to yet more song and yet more laughter. In the day, they tended their own vegetable patches and wove cloth on the great loom that now shone like polished onyx, and they milked the goats that dotted the landscape and engaged in a happy and quiet domestic industry that I had not expected.