Ariadne(67)

The illusion was my life. I gasped as, again, a sharp twist of pain stabbed at my insides, low down. ‘But you knew,’ I hissed through gritted teeth.

He thought it was fury that made me growl. He did not know how the silver radiance of agony now writhed within me. ‘I had heard – later. Much later. Only recently did I find out.’ He cast a look at my swollen form. ‘I did not want to cause you any worry; I knew it would upset you to know.’

Sweat started forth on my brow. I panted as the tight clench of my belly loosened in waves of lessening pain. ‘I was far more upset when I thought my sister’s body was nothing but rotted bones on a distant island. But now I know she is the bride of an Olympian!’

Finally, he met my eyes and answered my unspoken question. ‘Your sister was a traitor,’ he said. ‘How could I bring her back to the palace of Athens? My people had so recently been freed of the poisonous yoke of Medea, another foreign princess who left the blood of her own kin in her wake.’

‘You are their hero; you could have brought back any bride you chose!’ I cried. ‘Besides, Athens owed my sister only gratitude for what she did; the city whose children she saved!’

He opened his mouth to argue with me again, but it was my turn to silence him. I knew now what the waves of discomfort that had assailed me on and off that day had become. As the spasm began to mount again, I spoke before it robbed me of breath once more. ‘Theseus,’ I gasped. ‘Get the women. It has begun.’





24


I had heard much of the torment of birth, but what no one had spoken of to me was the misery of what followed. When they placed the infant in my arms, I felt confused. The midwives clustered around me, looking expectant. I couldn’t understand what they were waiting for. I was sore and exhausted. I craved sleep more than I had ever yearned for anything in my life. And yet they handed me this squalling creature, his tiny red face contorted with the violence of his yells. I thought my head would split in two from the volume of it.

He was not comforted by my inexpert cradling. I wept with frustration as he turned his head from my breast and howled. I remembered how my own mother had found it in herself to love a monster and I wondered why all I could feel was despair mixed with a faint pity for this tiny, angry baby who seemed so very disappointed to find himself with me.

‘Take him,’ I nearly begged. When the woman at my side obeyed, eyeing me with some uncertainty, I felt only relief. In her experienced hold, I heard his screams begin to quiet, softening into little more than a snuffle. I looked away.

My lack of maternal feeling drenched me with shame. The tears that burned in my eyes were not those of relief or love or joy. I cried for myself and for the terrible realisation that was dawning upon me; the black, gaping pit that was yawning open in my soul.

The truth was, I hated motherhood. From that first stunned moment after the birth, and every hour that followed. All day, the baby was clamped to my breast, greedy and desperate. All night, he seemed to cry, his piercing shriek destroying my peace, over and over again, until I thought I would lose my mind. Anxious that none should detect the horrifying lack of love, this strange abnormality that festered rotten and raw within me, I insisted that I was the one to tend to all of his needs. I sent my handmaidens away; I turned my face from the worried elder women, who seemed to loom before me every moment, offering their endless advice and help. I could not let them see what I was. Who had ever heard of a mother with such an unnatural void in her heart for her own child?

When Theseus came to lay his eyes upon his son, I watched him with curiosity. He seemed pleased enough, if not particularly interested. I envied him his untroubled indifference.

‘What is his name?’ Theseus asked.

I shrugged. I did not trust myself to speak. The shattering fatigue that split me apart might let anything slip out if I opened my mouth.

He looked so incongruous, faintly ridiculous almost, dandling a tiny baby in his thick, muscular arms. He would have no hesitation striding into a dark, winding abyss and battering the horrors it contained with his iron club, but he had not the faintest idea of what to do with a child. I laid my head back against the soft pillows heaped behind me and felt the tears prickle again at my eyelids. There would be no rescue for me, no respite. I would be alone in this, not that I had ever imagined otherwise. A stubborn pride flickered somewhere in the wreckage of my body. I would never let anyone else know the loneliness I felt watching my husband hold my son.

‘Acamas? Linos? Demophon?’

I nodded, not opening my eyes. ‘Demophon,’ I said. I did not care. But the baby was named, at least.

I developed a grim kind of capability. He cried and I nursed him. I paced the floors with him and I even sang to him. When it did not work, the fury would build in my throat; night after night, I swallowed it back down again and persevered. I hoped that if I carried on as though I was a normal mother, eventually it would become true.

One morning, I watched the sun rise, resting my elbows on the deep ledge of the window sill and feeling the distant warmth of that gold disc on my face. I had been awake so long and my body was weary but my brain felt frantic, too chaotic for rest to be a possibility. The baby’s breath was soft and even behind me. He was happy to be out of my arms, where he had squirmed and fussed and cried all night. He did not want me any more than I wanted him. I felt him go rigid against my body, arch his back and kick whenever I picked him up. It would be better for us both, I reflected with a strange calm, if I walked out of the slumbering palace into the fiery dawn and never returned.