Scribblings

Ariadne:  One by Elizabeth Ferguson

He left me.

            He left me.  I watched the former tribute ship, with its black sails full, become a dot on the horizon as I screamed myself hoarse.  The man I had wasted my virginity on had sailed away while I was asleep, stranding me here on the island of Naxos.  His friends, the thirteen other fair Athenians I had helped free from a death sentence, must have helped him.  I had saved their lives, but they had never liked me.  I was the dark princess from Crete.  I had been their enemy from birth.  I had been stupid to think that they would want me as their Queen.

            I sat down on the sand and cried.  I cried not for Theseus, whom I had genuinely liked, or the ache between my legs where I had enjoyed a man, or my situation, stranded here with no provisions.  I sat down and cried for the first time for what I, selfish and spoiled, had done just days ago.  I deserved to be jilted and put away from everyone.  I was a horrible person, and should have known that Theseus couldn’t have possibly wanted me.

            After all, it was I, Ariadne, who had betrayed my father to his enemy.  I had dishonored the memory of my beloved older brother.  I had effectively dumped the responsibility of my handicapped mother on my weaker younger sister.  I had committed high treason, adultery, espionage, and fratricide.  I was terrible and stupid. 

            All of this because I had been bored, because the Athenians had been too beautiful, and because Theseus had given me a look that had filled me full of the possibilities that existed between he and I.  Oh, and my half brother had been an embarrassment for years.  I felt bad about his death, but not terrible.  His birth had driven my mother mad and made my father a laughing stock.  It was an old story, now, but often retold by those who had actually witnessed my mother in her bizarre act of conception.  To understand  it all you have to first know how it was in the court of Crete, when I was a little girl and everyone seemed blessed.

            Ours was a great court.  Our home was very famous, and set on a hill so everyone could look up and see us for miles around.  My family lived in the grandest part. There was a  great square building with an open court in the middle - the empty middle was where my father sat on his throne and passed judgments that kept the place wealthy and peaceful.  It was the Palace Cnossus, and it was arguably the most magnificent  building in the world for some time.  The inner courtyard itself was paved with marble and inlaid with symbols for all the gods.  The symbol for Zeus was the largest, and in the middle, so that no one could forget that my father, Minos, was the son of the most important God of all.  To kill him or to commit treason was not just to insult him, but Olympus as well.  I can not remember any trouble worth speaking of until my father brought it upon himself.

            Every year at harvest time, when the common people honor their patron Gods and Goddesses, my father, as king, was obligated to have a day of sacrifice to each of the deities so that he could continue to enjoy their favor.  As a bastard son of Zeus, he was not immune by any means to the sniping and politicking that went on in Olympus.  His very lineage guaranteed him a spot as a possible pawn in any little feud that came about in the Heavens, and his position of wealth and fame on Earth left him open to ordinary plotting and conniving from his own subjects.  He was a very shrewd man, my father, to be where he was in life.  But he only had to make one very stupid mistake, and then it seemed that all the misfortune he had avoided in life was delt to him with one sharp blow.

            My mother, Pasiphae, was herself a daughter of  the sun god Helios.  She was beautiful and tall for a woman, although I didn’t know that as a child.  She had a very formal manner about her, even with us children, that some called cold.  She ran the Palace Cnossus strictly, sometimes even inventing new protocol.  I, with my other siblings, lived down the hall from her in a three room nursery.  She choose our nannies with the same strict rules, often giving her favorite ladies in waiting away to our care. 

Our family fell apart in the year after my oldest brother, Androgeus, was killed in a hunting accident.  To my young eyes, he was the perfect example of a young hero, eleven years older than I.  Androgeus was built like an athlete, trained from birth by my father and trusted guards to be the perfect swordsman, horseman, chariot driver, and tempered by the common soldiers to have a great sense of humor.  The court loved the heir apparent, and my father was justifiably proud of his established lineage. 

            At eighteen, Adrogeus visited Athens, the court of our good friend King Aegeus.  We were on good terms with Athena then, and no one was thought to be more politically savvy  than  Aegeus, who had been rumored to have hidden his own heir in obscurity somewhere.  It should have been the safest place for him to go, but my older brother never returned.

            Adrogeus was killed on a wild boar hunt.  Why King Aegeus would have let a boy with no experience, and a guest in his house, be part of such a dangerous venture will never be explained to my satisfaction.  The man was either an idiot, grossly inhospitable, or secretly hated Crete.  After knowing his son, Theseus, I am inclined to believe he was simply that rude and unthinking.  I was seven when I became the oldest child in my family. 

            When the news of my brother’s death came to our home, the whole country was at once in mourning , and then horribly angry.  All of Crete was nothing but a tribute to him. Windows were covered for more than a month. The people had been happy when they had known that Adrogeus would rule over them after Minos.  The boy had been beloved by all the young women as beautiful and kind. The military men thought of him as their son.

            The people demanded war against Athens, but it was harvest time, and to take all the men away then would have meant crops rotting in the fields.  There was also the matter of sacrifice time to attend to. We would wait for war until winter.  My father was busy as always at this time of year, but he was also consistently drunk with grief.  When my younger brother Catreus was presented as the new heir, it was not the festival it should have been, and our divine guests that attended were not happy with the quality and tone of their tributes this year.  Minos was warned then, but did not seem to care.  The Grandfathers let the matter pass, because of the recent death in the family, but not everyone in Olympus was as lenient.

            My great uncle, Posiedon, ruler of the seas, was rather distant, but never unkind.  Years ago he had even helped his nephew in the founding of our empire by gifting Crete with some extraordinary horses and cattle.  When remembering this favor each year, it was our custom to give Posiedon the best and most beautiful bull of our stock, one that had never even been bred, to show our thankfulness.  This year, my father did not do what he should have done by sacrificing the best.  When he saw the pure white bull in its pasture, he shook his head.  It was too big, too perfect to let go. 

            “We’ll need stock like that if we’re to feed a bigger army.” he said, and picked another bull for the slaughter.  Posiedon didn’t buy the story of a grieving father as a good excuse for being slighted so publicly by one of the wealthiest kings in the world.  The Sea God couldn’t kill his own nephew, and had no desire to hurt the people of Crete, who had been very good to him this year, knowing that they would need his blessing on the long voyage to Athens.  Posiedon felt that our family needed a good lesson in humility though, a reminder that we were not divine, but human beings like any others.  The lesson needed to be public, too, so that the peasants of Crete would know once and forever that my parents were not on the level with the Olympians.

            Our uncle must have looked at the bull that should have been his for a long time. I’m sure the legend of our grandmother, Europa, crossed his mind.  Then he looked at our mother, Pasiphae, a beautiful but haughty woman, who didn’t exactly discourage people from looking on her as a minor goddess, even though Helios showed little interest in her.  Zeus could not say anything to his brother as long as Posiedon did not touch Minos.  Pasiphae was different.  She dared to set herself on level with the goddesses with all of her elaborate court rituals.  My mother was fair game by the rules of the Fates.

            So my mother was cursed with a lust for the beautiful bull.  I remember a great uproar the dawn she awoke from a deep dream, and in a trance walked right from her chambers in her nightclothes.  Her ladies in waiting raised the alarm with their voices.  It was so uncustomary for my mother to leave her room unmade that they knew instantly that there was something wrong.  Our nurses comforted us in the nursery, awake from the noise, and sent their messenger to see what the fuss was about.  My sister and I could hear her voice, for the first time insane, raised loud in the stone passage.

            “I was just going for a walk!  I could not sleep - and was going to the fields to see the sun rise.  Let me leave!”  Her women quietly asked if she would not like to first dress.  The herdsmen would already be about even now.  Surely her Heighness would not let such simple men see her informal?  Our mother was livid at this distraction from her real intent, but was convinced.  She complained loudly and insensibly all the way back to her suite.

            I was shielded from what happened next because of my young age, but when I was thirteen I forced the story from a servant.  The first morning of my mother’s madness, Pasiphae did allow herself to be dressed but was very agitated.  Her dresser could scarcely arrange her hair, because the Queen could not sit still.  Her attendants made haste, and she walked so quickly outside and through the market walls that some of the smaller women had to run to keep up. She did not stop until she reached the pasture where the prize bull was kept, and then, fist to her mouth, she gazed in obsession.  The look in her eyes made her servants even more afraid.  Without being told, a messenger ran back to the court to tell the just-waking King of his worry for his mistress.

            Pasiphae commanded her entourage to stay where they were, she was going to see Poseidon’s beautiful handiwork.  What fine beasts her uncle had given them! She entered the bull’s enclosure and the animal approached her.  She petted the animal and gazed into its eyes and  - so it is said -the animal nuzzled and sniffed her.  That is when she laughed, and kneeling, began to give the thing serious attention.  Her attendants screamed and a guard ran out to her to pull her away. He was mortally gored by the bull, and that’s when more guards, ordered to check on the Queen, appeared and dragged the lady away from an animal that had just killed one of their men.

            The guards paid no heed to the Queen’s mad rantings.  The good men assumed she was in shock from the sight of her loyal servant being killed.  Her ladies, shaken and disgusted by what they had seen, did not know what to tell the King when questioned about the event.  How do you tell a man who can have you killed that his wife is lusting after an animal?  They did manage to convince him that she had committed an insane act, and that the guard had died to protect her from the bull.  Minos ordered his wife sedated with sleeping powder, a technique new to us in Crete.  Our clever man Daedalus had just invented the stuff a few months ago.

Sedatives soon proved to be the only thing that could keep Pasiphae from screaming in frustration that she wanted to be out.  Out in the field with that bull.  She would throw things at people who were ordered to be her servants but to keep her in her chambers.  She almost killed a poor girl who did nothing more than get close enough to her Queen to present her with food - and was unfortunate enough to be wearing the keys to the door.  After that incident guards outside the chamber locked and unlocked the suite as people came in and out. 

            We children were only told that she was ill, and were not allowed to visit.  It was about this time that news of  Medea’s crime reached Crete.  No one could believe that King Jason’s wife had killed their sons.  Our father, still intent on beginning his campaign against Athens, was now unsure if he should leave us alone with a madwoman.  Some change had to happen in Pasiphae’s condition so that he could leave to avenge their son’s death.  So Minos called on the inventor Daedalus to find a solution, other than keeping her in sleep day in and out.

            Daedalus was smarter than he needed to be, many people have said, but I can not imagine being in his place at that time.  Everyone in the court was at wits end about the situation.  Daily functions now revolved around the mad Queen, and outside the inner circle, the peasants were beginning to wonder when we were going to make Athens pay for  Adrogeus’ death.  In a few weeks the last crops would be in and the fields cut  back; now was the time to prepare the ships for the battle.

            Daedalus did what no one else had done until that time.  He dared to take her off the drugs and speak to her sympathetically.  Why do you scream?  He asked, why do you need the bull, what must you have from him?  She lit to the subject, and told him of her dreams.  To his credit, he did not flinch, but took her desires and did what she, his Queen told him to do.  He devised a cow suit for her so that she could have the bull as she desired.  The he snuck her in and out of the castle one day.  The next, he presented her to my father as “cured”.  The rest of what happened I remember pretty clearly, because it was so awful.

            Minos was delighted with Daedalus, and neither man knew the full extent of Poseidon’s joke at that point.  My mother was pregnant with a monster.  Blissfully ignorant, my father took his army to Athens and left his inventor in charge. I remember him kissing us good-bye as he left, scary and handsome and huge in his ceremonial armor.  He said he would bring us back pretty things from Athens, and maybe have a little suit like his made for Catreus.  My sister and I laughed at that.  Catreus was only three, so small compared with our father who held him tight before leaving.  Icarus, the inventor’s son, was brought in as a playmate for the heir at that time.  He was, I believe, only a week or so younger, and the boys got along well.

            We had our mother back, it seemed; she was no longer mad, but a different person now, almost like Phaedra, who was five then.  Our nurses never left us alone with her anymore, but that was Okay.  She wasn’t much fun anyway, getting all fat in the stomach again and giggling about it.  She seemed to eat all the time, and the doctors were really worried about her remarkable size. After eleven months, they decided to cut the child from her.  Even with the sleeping powder she screamed and screamed; we children were sent outside but heard the first of it before we were really away. They showered us with gifts and pretty distractions, but my sister and I wanted nothing more than to see what was being done to our mother. 

            We were not allowed to see the baby.  Unlike other children my mother had, this baby was not put in the nursery with us right away.  We could hear it crying from her chambers, a strange sound not like the servant’s babies.  Mother would not let the baby go, because she knew that the guards, loyal to my father, would kill it and tell her it had died while she slept.  Daedalus was beside himself, knowing he was as good as dead when the King arrived home. He often stopped in the nursery and watched the prince and his son playing together, maybe wondering what their relationship would be when they grew up.  I have never had anything but pity for that man; he was caught up in our follies by accident.

             Father was only halfway through his initial siege of Athens when the news reached him of the Minotaur’s birth;  I believe he took his rage out on that city, his soldiers burning, looting, and raping their way to the palace of  Aegeus.  When he reached the home of his former friend, everyone knew.  Every man and woman knew that the King of Crete’s wife had fucked a bull.  But they had to bow to him, because if they didn’t, he’d kill every Athenian left.

            Minos was not someone used to being made a fool of.  The Athenian soldiers during the siege had laughed at him and drawn explicit cartoons and had even dared to reference his dead son and the boar that killed him.  In return, Minos let his soldiers at their sisters and mothers, had most of their livestock on its way back to Crete already and  had burnt several common houses with the residents still inside.  No one was laughing at him now. 

            Aegeus knew he was beaten, and could do nothing but kneal before his former friend and hope that the sword didn't separate his head from his neck..  I can imagine my fathr squinting at the sun, frowning.  I cannot imagine he enjoyed seeing another king so humbled.  Instead of killing the man who killed his favorite son, my father wanted to see him humiliated like he was.  The tribute idea was perfect, and I have often wondered if he consulted with his father on it or thought it up himself.  In any case, when he pronounced the sentence on Athens for the death of Prince Androgeus, it was flawless.

“Nine years from now, and every nine years from now on, you will send me seven Athenian girls, and seven of your subject's young men as tribute for my dead son.  I'll have them or I'll be back every seven years to do what I have done today."

            Aegeus asked, “What will you do with them?”

            My father, son of Zeus, smiled horribly.  He leaned down close to the prostrate man. “I’ll feed them to my wife’s bastard.”  Then he kicked Aegeus, spit on the steps of the Athenian palace, and faced a cheering army.  All of the soldiers that helped conquer the wrecked city became richer for it; they received a share of the livestock that made it back to Crete and a little gold or silver depending on their rank.  Athens starved for a year while Crete grew fat.  The victory over Athens restored my father’s honor.  Crete may have an insane Queen, but their King was not a person to make fun of.  He was reputed to own a man eating monster.