Ariadne(97)

He was quiet for a long time. He poured more wine and drank it with a silent urgency; an intent I had never noticed before. ‘You do not understand what being a god means,’ he said, at length.

‘It means you will have an eternity after we are gone. Perhaps you should think of that,’ I said softly.

His head snapped up towards me. ‘I think of nothing else!’ He stood, looking too tall for the small space, all of a sudden a caged creature, restless and prowling its confines. ‘Being a god and loving mortals means nothing more than watching them die. I know that all too well. Every time I see my children learn a new skill, acquire a new word, take another step away from us, I see their shadow drifting in Hades’ halls years from now, beyond my reach. You as well, one day nothing but smoke and ashes.’ The passion in his voice subsided, but his words remained just as cruel. ‘Can you blame me for thinking it better to garner the love of a thousand mortals instead; to hold the adoration of a city instead of one consort’s frail, mortal flesh?’

I turned my face away from him. I would not let him see the tears in my eyes. ‘You have always known this,’ I reminded him. ‘You told me once that one lifetime of human love was worth the loss.’

‘I was a fool,’ he said.

At last, his honesty. I heard the patter of rain and the gentle slosh of still more wine in his cup. I had known that I had lost him, maybe even before the night in the woods. But I hadn’t known how the loss tore him apart just as much as it did me, if not more so.

I had fallen in love with his vulnerability all those years ago. I had thought it made him different to all other men and gods alike. But it was his misery that made me so uneasy now. Because if I had learned anything, I had learned enough to know that a god in pain is dangerous.





39


He set the sails on the ship again and my heart lifted. I thought for a moment we were going home. I was mistaken. He tilted his course for the main bay of Argos, right before the city where Perseus had scorned him. Then he was gone, striding through the surf, shouting up at the blank walls. He called for the Argive women, his voice booming around the bay. From the deck of the ship, I watched them gather like birds atop the city walls.

‘Women of Argos!’ he called. His voice was rich, smooth, pouring like cream as he opened his arms to them. ‘Your god calls to you! Hear my words, for I need you all.’ A smile flickered across his face, warm and expansive, his eyes sparkling with that glorious mischief I remembered from the first day he had arrived on Naxos, fresh from his defeat of the slavers, bounding with glee and so very irresistible.

Wary and watchful, they stared down at him. None of them moved.

He continued, though I wondered if I detected a slight waver beneath his exuberant demeanour. ‘You have the chance now to please an Olympian god,’ he said. ‘I ask nothing from you, only that you come to me now and hear me. What your king has told you of me is wrong. There is no sin, no disgrace in following a mighty god. Come with me and learn the mysteries of Dionysus. If you do not want to stay, I will not keep you. I want only to share the glories with you all – young and old alike, none are barred from the wonders of my rites! The secrets I can share with you – the key to life and death itself – come now, and you will all be under my protection.’

They cannot have been deaf to the implied threat behind his oddly garbled words.

I felt so cold and hopeless watching him ask a hundred women to go with him. A prickle of humiliation laced the desolation I felt. What was I to do now that my god-husband was ravenous for the company of all the women of the world; now that the love we had built together seemed to cause him only pain?

Still the Argive women did not move towards him, and fear fluttered in my breast. As much as I longed for them to stay where they were – in the hope he would give up and come back, leave them all alone – I felt a grim certainty building up inside me. He would not turn away.

‘Follow me!’ he shouted up to them. ‘Cast off your fathers, your husbands, your tyrannical oppressors! Come into the woods with my maenads; understand what you can be if you are truly free!’

I feared that a madness began to possess him. Above him, they were shaking their heads, turning away. I saw what he planned: to draw the women away from the city and induct them into his mysteries. He believed Perseus would be forced to accept his worship to have the women back.

But it was not working. I could see that they did not want to go. In groups they climbed back down to the safety of their homes. He bellowed now at thin air.

He turned his back to the city. I saw his face, strangely blank. He raised his ivy-tipped staff to the sky and then crashed it hard against the ground. I flinched. His lips drew back over his teeth and now it was the ancient, undecipherable language that rolled from his mouth.

The snakes came first, uncoiling in great loops from the forest. There was a chorus of hissing, like waves crashing or rain pounding from the sky. The skies darkened above us and everything was washed in a livid glow.

Now the women did come forth, pouring in a great stream through the bronze doors. I saw them roll to the ground, clutching their heads as though their skulls would shatter. They howled with the pain, the torment, long streams of gibberish trailing from their mouths. They were crazed with it, like animals.

I thought of the pirate sailors, crashing to the deck in their strange new dolphin shapes. I wondered in horror if he meant to transform the women. But it seemed that only their minds, not their bodies, were touched. They gnashed their teeth and moaned together and they rose up from the ground. And in a great tide, I saw them move as one back into the city. The monstrous noise of their wailing procession reminded me of the women shrieking their grief for Phaedra in Athens. I felt a hollow sickness gathering in my stomach and retched, streams of panicky tears pouring down my face.