Ariadne(90)

The shame, hot and scarlet, drenches me. I flew down here on the wings of love, trusting in them to carry us both away. The long-ago image of Icarus flickers in my mind. I feel old, ridiculous, standing here. I am a fool who should have known better, and all at once I cannot bear his presence any more than he can bear mine.

He bristles with revulsion, with abhorrence for me.

And now I can see it so starkly. The love I cherished so fondly for him was just as he said: a madness.

He strides past me roughly and I do not watch him go. I am rooted to the spot. If I move, this is real. If I take a single step, it is a step into a future that has spiralled wildly off course and I have no hope to steer it back under my control.

Every day, for months now, I have dreamed of running away with Hippolytus. Why did I, Phaedra of Knossos and Athens, put my faith in a man? When I should have seen that what I truly wanted was simply to run away.

I cannot step back now into that other life. I let the thoughts run through my head – Theseus’ wife, a lonely queen, a mother to children I barely know. This is not the life I was meant to lead, I know it with all the ferocity I had mistaken for love.

But what to do now? Hippolytus is young, and young people are rash and impetuous. I should know. The panic in his eyes – I wager that nothing in his simple life has prepared him for such a moment as this. I see now that, of course, he did not suspect the feelings I harboured. Not for an instant. His honesty would not allow him to imagine that anyone else concealed their true heart from him.

His honesty. His simple, virtuous honesty. I clap my hand to my mouth, my foolish mouth that let spill such disaster.

Hippolytus will not keep this hidden for a moment. As soon as he sees his father, he will tell him – as surely as night follows day.

The gods alone know what Theseus has done whilst he has roamed the world in the years of our marriage. But if he hears that I have let even the flicker of attraction to another man cross my mind – and not just any man, his own son. The horror of it all swamps me suddenly. My vision goes black, I tilt and sway and clutch the rough wall of the stable to keep me standing.

I must stop him. I must stop Hippolytus, beg him to protect me. He does not understand dishonesty, I know, but he understands mercy. He is gentle to the very core. If I fling myself at his feet, make up a story of madness possessing me – an insanity. Or that I played a trick on him, or tested his loyalty in some way? If he knows what his father will do to me – he will not conceive of it himself, he is not capable of imagining it – if I tell him, surely he will not condemn me to Theseus’ wrath. And if he has no pity for me, what of my sons? I remember too well the shame that an adulterous mother rained down on our family. Now would my children suffer it, too?

My legs are weak beneath me, but I must run. Run to catch him. I stumble to the door but he is gone – he could be anywhere in the hills. If he has taken one of the horses from pasture, he could be miles from me already.

I look about me, confusion and terror overwhelming me now. Perhaps if I run back to the palace, to Ariadne, perhaps we could flee together? I have brought my sister into peril, too, I can see. For if Theseus returns and sees Hippolytus before I do . . . He had no compunction in letting Ariadne die once, after all. I have brought her into the oncoming storm of his rage, here, away from her immortal protector; she is alone and vulnerable because of me.

I snatch up a piece of papyrus from a shelf on the stable wall. An inventory of the horses; I do not care to read it. But if Hippolytus comes back to the stables first, I can leave him a letter pleading for my life.

I get as far as scratching his name on the papyrus before I crumple it in my fist and shove it under my belt. A letter, if found, will condemn me more surely than Hippolytus’ words ever could. I will burn it.

I step back outside, my head whipping back and forth between the views of the distant palace, the far-off hills and the looming woods nearby. Where to go? What to do? I long to tear at myself, to flay off my own skin – and with it, the humiliation and the pain that madden me.

I think for a moment that we can flee, Ariadne and I together, that I can find her now. I will take the oars of her ship myself if I need to, anything to get away from here.

But it is too late. Too late for me already. For I hear the sound that has struck dread into my heart every time it has blared across the flat plain of Athens since Theseus first sailed away.

First, the long note of a single horn, then joined by another and another until a triumphant chorus rings out between the walls of rock that trap us here. Announcing the safe arrival of the King.

Theseus has returned. My chance of escape is lost.

Tears slide down my face and a raw whimper that I do not recognise spills from my throat. There is no sign of Hippolytus. For all I know, he is at the palace now, ready to tell all.

In one direction there are the empty valleys and the mountains beyond. If I run there, I will be torn apart by wild beasts. Or Theseus and Hippolytus will mount their horses and come for me. I will not let myself be hunted like a helpless creature, cringing against a rock and listening for the pounding of hooves. In the other direction the palace rears up from the rock, and I cannot allow myself to think what could await me there. My private hopes, the ill-conceived dreams I let run rampant, paraded before the world, exposed to the scorn and judgement of all those whom I have ruled over until now. How they would exult in my disgrace. A fallen woman is the sweetest entertainment they know; I saw it before, in Crete. I will not let it happen to me.