Ariadne(86)

I knew without her saying. I could remember the exquisite sweetness of holding my newborns for the first time. I wondered what had happened to her child.

‘I took the baby to my husband, to show him what a perfect little miracle our joyless union had created.’ There was a look in her eyes that made me lower my gaze, afraid to witness something so raw. “A girl,” he said, “what am I to do with a girl? Cast it out upon a hillside, it is nothing but a pointless mouth to feed.”’ Her face twisted. ‘They tore her from my arms even when I screamed. She cried and I screamed but they carried her away and I screamed more until the world went black around me. I did not wake for days and my baby was long dead on an empty hillside by then, but I heard her crying wherever I went, whatever I did. The crying only quieted when I climbed aboard that boat and came to Naxos. I pulled the oars myself, every stroke. When I reached this shore, it was the first happiness I had known, except for that one perfect moment when I held my child. I smiled so much I thought that my face would break in two.’

I let out a long, shuddering breath. I saw her blank face in the clearing again. The baby animal, restored to life before her. I thought that I knew in what way she hoped Dionysus would reward her service. I felt sick and hollow and so very, very tired.

The light had drained completely from the sky, dark clouds massing overhead. I could not find any words to say to this desperate, hopeful, deluded woman. ‘Then I am glad that you came here,’ was all I could muster. I took her hand. I pressed it between mine. The simple, common horror of her story had left me broken inside. I could not conceive of another human being who could look into a mother’s face and do what they had done to her and her baby. But I knew that it happened every single day. And the gods feasted on and on, savouring every last wisp of smoke that rose from the altars that were fuelled by despair like hers; so many agonised entreaties to the heavens for the suffering to stop. Mount Olympus should ring to the top of its golden pillars with the sound of human misery. But Dionysus had told me that the only noise that echoed in its halls was the self-satisfied chatter of the immortals.

‘I am glad as well,’ she replied. She squeezed my hands in return and then slipped her fingers from my grasp.

I did not watch the procession wend their way up the mountains that night. I lay beside my children and counted my blessings instead, all of them pressed against my heart.

When I woke the next day, I was resolute. I would go to Athens. I had left Phaedra once before. I would not desert her again.





32


As soon as my decision was made, I was on fire to leave.

‘But I don’t understand why you want to chase after her.’ Dionysus frowned as he lolled back upon my bed whilst I hunted for my belongings, the things I would need to take with me.

When I had packed to leave Crete, I had travelled lightly on the wings of love. Also, I had no children then. I couldn’t leave Tauropolis; he was too young. But the logistics of a sea voyage with a baby were making my head spin.

‘She made her feelings clear enough when she left here,’ Dionysus continued.

‘All the more reason to be hasty,’ I snapped back at him. ‘I don’t want to leave things the way they were. I don’t want the bad feelings to fester, to stagnate and harden.’

‘You hope that you can dissuade her from her course, but you cannot,’ he told me.

Irritation surged in my breast. ‘How can you be so sure?’ I didn’t give him a chance to respond. ‘Besides, the important thing is that I try, whatever the outcome.’

He snorted. ‘You would do better to stay here, with the children.’

I rounded on him. ‘How simple it is for you to say! But you do not trouble to take your own advice!’

His eyes flared in surprise, but I could not stop myself now.

‘Always, you are flitting off here and there. Striving to spread your fame, though you used to say that you didn’t care about such things. A search for glory was for the other gods – or worse still, their pet heroes. Now, you disappear whenever the whim strikes and leave me to wonder where you are gone, what you do there, when you will be back!’ My breaths were coming quickly; all the things that had swirled in my brain since Phaedra’s visit, since the sacrifice of the goat, all of them spilling out before I could temper my words.

‘You have never said that you minded my travels before,’ he remarked. His eyes were mild, but his mouth was pressed into a hard line unlike his usual merry smirk.

‘You have never asked if I minded,’ I retorted. ‘Nor if I wished to go with you. I wonder why that might be?’

He sat up straighter at this. ‘You have never wanted to come!’

‘We could argue this circle round a hundred times,’ I muttered. ‘But it is my turn to leave now. And I will go.’

I swung round, ready to march out, but he caught my shoulder gently.

‘I will not stop you,’ he said. ‘I only wish to protect you from hurt. And Phaedra . . . she is on a path I have seen before. It does not end well.’

I fought the feelings in my breast. Swallowed down the things I did not have time to say to him now. I took his hand. ‘Then surely you can see that I must do everything I can to help her before it is too late.’

He did not tell me it was already too late. For that, at least, I was grateful.