Ariadne(79)

I shook my head vehemently. ‘Stay a night,’ I asked. ‘If not for me then out of consideration for your men at least. Let them rest, we have beds enough. It will grow dark soon; do not risk them on the open sea.’

She pursed her lips, looking out to chart the path of the sun, assessing the truth of what I said. I could see how she burned to be back in Athens, intent upon her foolish and destructive quest. But whilst she could ignore everything else I had said, even she could not deny that night would fall long before she could reach her shores.

She would not be drawn on the topic of Hippolytus and I did not try again. She and her men rested the short hours of darkness and set sail again the very moment that the first shoots of dawn began to unfurl against the night sky. In the dim mist, upon the beach, I embraced her and implored her one more time to change her mind.

‘Theseus is gone again, on another of his foolish missions,’ she said. ‘I have my opportunity; I do not mean to miss it.’

Even in the gloom of the early morning, I could not mistake the determined set of her jaw. I dropped my arms from her neck and stepped back.

‘Then I wish you luck,’ I said. I meant it, though there was no hope or trust behind my wishes. ‘And know that there is always a safe place for you here, a home for you on Naxos.’ I could not see how this could end in any way other than disaster, humiliation, despair. All the mistakes of our childhood, repeated again in this monstrously misguided desire. But she would not see it and I knew that I could not make her. I watched her sail away, my eyes fixed on the horizon where she disappeared, long after she had gone. I wondered if I would ever see my sister again.





28


Phaedra


I thanked all the gods that the winds were swift. It was only as the waves flowed past us and the bright jewel of Naxos shrank and faded to a mere dot upon the horizon that I felt the scalding flood of humiliation begin to recede just a little.

Ariadne could pretend – swathed in the comfort she so clearly took in motherhood and the idyllic facade of her precious island, so far removed from the rest of the world – yes, she could pretend she had forgotten the truths we both learned at Knossos, but I knew that she was lying to herself. I saw that she had made a bargain: she would act as though her life was perfect, and she would look the other way, shielding herself from anything that proved it was not, so she could sleep at night.

As if we hadn’t learned from living with our shattered mother and her monstrous spawn that all a woman can do in this world is take what she wants from it and crush those who would stand in her way before they break her into fragments like Pasiphae. I had allowed myself to bear the weight of guilt for so many years; guilt at being the sister who lived, who married the hero and made a life that I could stand, whilst believing Ariadne dead. All the while, she skipped across Naxos, hand in hand with her divine lover.

I ground my teeth in frustration, willing the ship to get home faster. I could cast aside that guilt now, that was certain. I was tired of paying the price: the children who died so that we could keep our power in Crete; the husband I endured so that I could dress in finery and sip wine from jewelled goblets; the desire I tried to quench so that I could keep my respectability and the good opinion of people I cared nothing for.

Hippolytus had brought to me a burst of clarity – the gift to see my life for what it truly was. That Ariadne could not see her own was reason to pity her. The world knew what took place in those moonlit rituals on Naxos, and it reared back – gripped by the same condemnation we had felt burning us with shame at Crete. She might think it a fair price to pay for her blissful life. But then how dare she judge me?

I wanted to stamp my feet and scream into the clouded sky, though I knew it would make me ridiculous. I had lied to myself as well; I had told myself that Theseus was a man like any other, so I might as well make the best of my circumstances. Hippolytus had shown me that another kind of life existed. The possibility of a world where kindness was king, not brutality or greed or rapaciousness.

And as for my sister’s cruelty in dismissing the idea that he felt the same . . . my heart quickened. It could not be. It simply could not be that this passion, a love so pure and strong as this, only flowed one way. Perhaps it had not occurred to Hippolytus because he was so pure, so unassuming. But when I spoke to him – when I returned to Athens and offered him a future with me and his horses, far away from the world of politics and stultifying rules, a world like the one from which he had come, a world we would have to make for ourselves – I knew, I knew it in my heart, that he would feel it, too.

So Naxos was closed to us – I did not care. I did not want a part of what happened in their woods anyway. It did not matter where we went, just so long as it was far away from Athens and Theseus, and the life to which I could never bear to return. I could not pick up the pieces and carry on trying to balance between my duty and my rage any longer.

As the Athenian shore began to materialise in the distance, a sense of calm swept over me once more. I did not need Ariadne’s help. I never had done. Far from dissuading me, she had only succeeded in making me more resolute than ever.

I would bathe that night in our finest scented oils, make the most of the luxuries I would so willingly leave behind me soon. If Hippolytus was away hunting, which he so frequently was, I would await his return and I would not let the words die in my throat again. I had rediscovered my courage. I would not let it slip from me now.