Ariadne(64)
Dionysus and I married on our beach at sunset with a circle of maenads around us, flowers plaited through their hair. Rich red wine was poured afterwards in place of ambrosial nectar and the ceremony was illuminated by the soft light of the sinking sun rather than the dazzle of thunderbolts. We roasted fish from the teeming seas around Naxos under the silvery glow of the moon that evening and never gave a thought to anyone or anything outside our island paradise.
The only splendour we had was the magnificent crown which Dionysus placed upon my head as we stood together. What master craftsman had constructed it, I could not say. Its delicate points rose from the slender, silver band in a shining arc, the base of each inlaid with exquisite jewels which, when touched with the sunset rays, flamed into life. Even as a Princess of Crete, I had never seen anything quite so beautiful before. So it was to my horror that later that evening, as we walked by the surf, Dionysus suddenly whisked it from my head and flung it into the inky darkness beyond.
I squawked in shock, robbed of speech at such an action. As I turned to him, I was not surprised to see that he laughed and, new husband though he was, I was furious with him. ‘What on earth do you mean by such a thing?’ I demanded.
‘A trinket can be lost,’ he answered.
I suppressed the fuming reply I wanted to give.
‘It can be stolen, it can be twisted or tarnished and lose its lustre,’ he went on. ‘I want no gift that I give to you to be so transient. And so I took it from your head, where it can only look dull in comparison to your radiance, and I put it somewhere it will shine forever.’ He cupped my cheek in his hand and lifted my chin to the dark bowl of the night sky. ‘See the new constellation there?’
In the eternity of night, I saw the brand new pinpricks of light that shone in a sweeping arc. The lustre of my crown, now a fiery illumination against the darkness.
‘Just as you will never lose me, you will never lose your crown,’ he murmured, his arms wrapped tightly around me. ‘Your coronet will guide sailors to safety through the labyrinth of the treacherous seas. Women will look to it for a sign of comfort, a light in the darkness. Children will whisper their wishes to it before they close their eyes to dream. It will stay there, fast and true, for all time.’
And so we were married, and the idyll of our life together stretched on.
We led a life of dreamy productivity under the golden sun. The gardens bloomed, the goats produced creamy, frothy milk for cheese, grapevines twisted and thickened everywhere we looked and we pressed the luscious purple fruits into jewel-bright wine that we drank together under the stars every night.
The months tumbled one into another, on and on, until the day that the creamy jet of milk I coaxed from my favourite goat made me wrinkle my nose at its sudden sharp stink. And the heat seemed to press down on me with an unbearable weight that made me want to drop everything and sink into a pile of leaves in the shade to sleep away the fatigue that washed over me in heavy waves. And the wine turned sour in my cup and made my stomach turn over with an alarming slosh of nausea that ground through my body, making me feel as though I were perpetually on board a careening ship.
I thought I was dying, but the maenads were of a more practical bent than me and diagnosed my condition correctly. I was with child and this happy news briefly lightened the fog of exhaustion and sickness that clung to me. I did not bloom, radiant and glowing, but that precious pocket of knowledge gave me comfort through the indignity of the sickness. I knew that when I held my baby in my arms, this would all be nothing more than a memory.
If I held a baby in my arms at the end of it, of course. Even before the grisly birth of the Minotaur, my mother had not found each pregnancy a simple path to a newborn, swaddled and hopeful, with the light of the future glowing in its tiny crumpled face. Every woman alive knew that the journey through birth was a voyage between life and death, for her and the infant alike. As the time drew nearer for my baby to be born, I could not suppress all thoughts of that perilous path. I remembered Dionysus saying of his beloved Ampelos that the fate of all mortals was set in stone by the Fates the moment their thread was spun, and it was not for him to alter what they decided. His joy in the news seemed complete and true and I did not detect in him any hint that he foresaw a tragedy instead of a new beginning. But I knew that even in his divine power, the future was not set out whole and entire to him. The mysteries of birth were cloaked to all, and even the goddesses of Olympia were not immune to its bitter pangs.
I poured libations to Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth. I gave heartfelt thanks to Demeter for blessing my womb. I gathered to me the closest of my maenads who had helped women navigate this perilous pathway before and some of whom who had walked it themselves. We made every preparation that we could. But still, when the sharp pain pierced me for the first time, robbing me of my breath, I knew at once that I was not ready in the slightest.
I had heard stories amongst my handmaids back in Crete of the travails and torments that awaited me. Every girl felt the incredulity that, one day, it may be her turn to lie there, pinned with terror and agony, fearing that she would be torn to pieces trying to bring her child into the world. Those fears gripped me at first, along with the pains. I clenched my body tight and battled the tides that shook my core until my maenad midwives coaxed me to stop fighting. They laid cool cloths upon my forehead, they held my hands in theirs and breathed into the pains with me.
And as they did so, a calm began to creep into my bones. Who knew how many women, right at that moment, were struggling to do as I did? All of us straining and grunting to bear our babies to safety. I pictured them in my mind as each wave squeezed my belly. Instead of floundering, I tried to ride each wave to its end and catch my breath in the moments of quiet between. I saw the women of the world – on wide, soft couches in golden palaces, in shaded tents on desert sands, in huts built of mud or stone, in lands that ranged to the ends of the earth – and as I braced upon my hands and knees, I felt that we surged in synchrony with one another. Like a vast constellation of stars pinpricking the night sky, I could feel us all strive together to each bring new sparks of light into the universe. I thought I could feel their support, their hands upon my back and their words of encouragement spilling into my ears as, with a final, mighty effort, my son was born.