Ariadne(84)

I was torn in two directions: eager to reach the clearing and know it all at last, but equally wracked with anxiety for Tauropolis waking to find that I was not there. Perhaps that was why I felt my innards churn with panic. Perhaps it was simply my natural maternal instinct, urging me back to my sleeping infants, nothing more.

The singing of the maenads was clear and unbroken now against the steady beat of a drum, pounding low and relentless; the opening in the trees was just ahead, bathed in moonlight. Behind the song and the drums, I could hear another noise, a bleating sound. It was so like a baby crying that I jumped, thinking it must be Tauropolis somehow, but it continued and I realised it was more animal than human. A goat, just a kid, with its fur slick and soft in newly grown tufts. I saw it lifted up in the centre of the circle of women as I crept closer, my hand against the ancient trunk of an oak to steady myself.

He would have known I was there, surely, had he not been so rapt and absorbed by the proceedings. His shoulders were swathed in a heavy animal skin; in his hand he clasped a vast, curved horn of white bone which was streaked with long rivulets of thick red liquid. The sweet, intoxicating aroma of wine was heavy in the air. A laurel crown sat askew amidst his golden curls. His eyes, blank in the moonlight, were fixed on the baby goat whose panicked cries grew shriller and louder.

I had never seen my mischievous, impish, boy-god of a husband look thus. I could not tear my eyes from his face. At the edges of my vision, I saw the white circles of the maenads’ faces, the gaping voids of their eyes, the wide slack caverns of their mouths. The beat of the drum, unsteady now as it became more frenzied, more wild. It was not a song that spilled from their lips now; more a long, undulating wail. These women, who tended the gardens beside me every day, who slipped little Thoas grapes when he tugged at their skirts with fingers already stained purple, whose laughter rang across my island, now seemed like ghastly models of themselves, wrought clumsily in wax so that their features were distorted and strangely vacant.

I drew back in horror. I recognised nothing in this clearing, nothing of these rites, nothing of the figure in the midst of it all, raising his arms to the sky as though he were yanking this discordant cacophony of shrieks from their throats. I did not want to see any more. My palms were slippery against the bark, my skin frantically crawling and my heart leaping faster, faster than the drums. I was desperate that they should not see me, though I did not know if they could see anything at all through the veil of madness that seemed to have descended on their gathering. More than anything, I knew that I did not want to be drawn into that circle, that I did not want to take my place amongst them and forget who I was.

I thought of my warm, sleeping boys nestled together amongst feather-stuffed cushions and I longed to have my arms around them once more. I urged my rubbery, shaking legs to move, but they refused to obey.

I could not prevent myself from seeing what came next.

One of the maenads was holding the baby goat aloft. From the groaning circle came a white hand that seized one of its desperately kicking legs. Then another, and another. They held it fast between them, slender fingers gripping each limb and sinking deep into its fleece, twisting the clumps of wool. It screamed; an endless, ragged sound that I thought would shatter my mind.

A muffled noise in the sudden, abrupt silence. A soft rip, a sticky tearing away.

No more bleating.

My hands were laced over my eyes now, though I could see the scene played out again against the darkness of my eyelids. Bile rose, sharp and sour in my throat. I swallowed it back, praying that my body would not give me away. I dared not look again but I would not huddle behind my own arms. If they were to see me, I would stand. I drew in a long, quiet breath and forced my shaking hands away, down to my sides.

I looked.

Dionysus stood over the tattered, bloody remnants of the kid. His face was carved like marble. The maenads who had writhed and cried aloud just a moment before were still and silent. The only movement in the clearing was the slow trickle of blood down their arms and across their cheeks, so thick and dark it was almost black. Their faces took shape now. At Dionysus’ side stood Euphrosyne, our newest arrival on the shores of Naxos. I remembered her stepping lightly from her rowing boat, her hair shining like polished wood and her cheeks dimpling with her smiles, just the day before. Now her hair hung in long, clotted strings. The only sound I could hear was the soft panting of her breath.

Dionysus spoke. A savage, ancient sound. Words I had never heard before, strange and snarling.

I heard a whimpering and stuffed my hand into my mouth, fearful that it was me and that I would be found. But it was not me who made that little mewl. For impossibly, at Dionysus’ feet, the scattered knots of fur and sinew were shifting and stirring and as I stared, they gathered together into the unmistakeable shape of a baby goat. Whole and new and fresh, it sprang to its feet, hooves clattering unsteadily on the rock. Its fleece was purest white, as unstreaked and unrumpled as untrodden snow.

The strange hold of the circle relaxed. I saw the maenads loosen, unstiffen their shoulders and begin to turn to one another. Spirals of laughter, edged with a crazed note, curled up into the still night air.

It was my chance to run before they moved from the clearing. I would run silently back down the slopes and no one would ever know that I had been here. I would bury my face in the warm, plump softness of my sleeping children and try to forget what I had seen. But I looked back once, before I fled. He stood there still, unmoving in the centre of the circle. His face was unchanged as he watched the little goat skitter by his feet. A clammy chill squeezed my heart.