Ariadne(89)

I shrugged. ‘Out walking, perhaps? I am not sure. She will return in time, no doubt.’ I was deliberately vague, hoping he would not ask me more. The last thing I wanted was for him to look for her. I hoped that she would not be too obviously devastated when she came back.

A cold breeze rippled through the air and I shivered. Theseus looked past me, as though listening for something. In another moment, I heard it, too. A high-pitched, wavering sound, undulating through the air from a distance. As the breeze changed direction, the noise disappeared, then returned again.

He stiffened.

‘What is it?’ I asked, but he didn’t reply.

The sound became louder. It was wailing. A funeral procession perhaps? The keening cut through the air, the shrill edge of female despair. It sent a creeping sensation up my spine. It was not Phaedra; no one person alone could make such a chorus.

‘Come,’ Theseus said.

I followed him, back out through the grand archway, to the vast sweeping gardens of the palace. The howling increased in intensity and volume until I thought my head would split apart.

And then we saw them. The servants who I had noticed by their absence, all of them coiling up through the gardens in a shrieking snake of despair. Their mouths stretched wide, hands tearing at their hair and their robes, and all the while the eerie cacophony growing louder and louder. Tauropolis whimpered.

Theseus bounded towards them. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

At the sight of him, some of them screamed more loudly. Some hurled themselves to the ground.

My skin was crawling with fear; I longed for it to end. I searched the faces of the distraught women for Phaedra but saw her nowhere.

The woman – barely more than a girl – at the front of the procession handed Theseus a creased piece of paper. A letter? It must be from Phaedra. Had she run away already? Was this news of her desertion? My heart leapt painfully. Had she succeeded? Did she flee with Hippolytus after all? Could it be that she had overcome his reservations and his reluctance and they had left Athens already? It pained me that she had not said goodbye; that she did not still seek the sanctuary of Naxos, for that could only be my fault. But nonetheless, if she was free of Theseus, it could only be for the best.

The colour in Theseus’ face drained as he read the paper. With a cry of anguish, he crumpled it in his fist and dashed it on the ground, hurtling in the direction whence the wailing women had come.

Panic seized me. If he were to catch them, the gods only knew what he would do to them. I fumbled with Tauropolis, my fingers clumsy and trembling. ‘Please,’ I said to the young woman who had handed Theseus the note. ‘Please, look after him.’ I passed the baby to her. He squalled as I let him go, his cries rising in pitch along with the women’s as I picked up my skirts and ran, only stopping to clutch at the letter Theseus had thrown to the ground.

The sky was turning grey, the setting sun lost behind the clouds, but I could see the shape of Theseus, astonishingly far away by now. I flew over the soft earth in pursuit, for once unhampered by a child at my hip. My breath burned in my lungs, my legs screaming for respite, but I was determined to catch up.

He had stopped by a copse of trees. I slowed to a walk, my ragged panting loud in the silence down here. I could not see his face.

‘Theseus?’ I called. I hoped that if Phaedra and Hippolytus lurked anywhere near, they would hear me and be alerted to his presence.

He turned. I had seen him fired up with glorious purpose, I had seen him in the flush of victory when he strode out of the Labyrinth, I had seen his face suffused with a tender intimacy I had never dreamed was false. But I had never before seen him broken. His face sagged, collapsed in on itself.

‘Do not look,’ he warned me.

I did not understand him. I thought he did not want me to see his weakness.

I did not turn away.

In the nights to come, what I saw would not leave me, however much I might pray and beg that it would disappear.





35


Phaedra


At first, I think that Hippolytus does not understand. My words were clear enough, but I suppose that he did not expect it and so I loosen my grip on his forearm and I step back, to give him a moment to absorb our newfound freedom and the happiness now so close within our grasp.

His face, though – I look at his face and it crumples, not with joy but with something else. A spiral of fear begins to rise within me. ‘I know you will worry about your father,’ I begin, trying to soothe his worries. ‘It is only natural . . .’

‘I do not worry for my father,’ he says at last. ‘I worry for you, Queen Phaedra. I worry that you have entirely lost your reason.’

I freeze. This is not how I expected it to be. I had thought there would be surprise, maybe even an agony of indecision as he wrestled with the betrayal, but even that I did not anticipate lasting for long. After all, it had taken me only moments in Crete, all those years ago, to choose to follow Theseus in defiance of everything that my father held sacred. It was barely a decision at all. Why does Hippolytus look now so sad, so angry, so . . . disgusted?

My skin begins to crawl. It cannot be. In a dream, I force my dry lips to move, and I speak again. ‘What does love have to do with reason?’ I croak.

He shakes his head vehemently. He backs away from me. ‘I have thought of you as a mother here in Athens,’ he whispers.