Bull God Page 14

  Ariadne grinned in turn. “Because of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I'm doubly glad you go abroad in other places, first because you can tell me about them and second because that means no other priestess is as pleasant for you to be with as I am.”

  He tapped a finger on her nose. “Don't get above yourself. Perhaps I never thought before of making a friend of a priestess.”

  Although Ariadne suspected from what he'd said in the past that he had made a friend and lover, too, of the first Ariadne, she had no intention of reminding him of that. She caught at his hand. “Oh, don't, my lord. Don't look for another. I'll not get overproud, I promise. And I'll be whatever you want me to be. You've only to tell me what you desire.”

  Dionysus shook his head, but when she asked why, he wouldn't answer and asked whether she wanted to hear about foreign lands or not, whereupon she nodded eagerly and settled herself to listen.

  Altogether it was a delightful afternoon, most of it spent talking in the chamber but also walking in the temple garden in the early dusk and then—Dionysus invisible again—examining the nearer vineyards. He left when the Hunter hung overhead without even a fare-thee-well; she only knew when his hand released hers. She continued to walk through the rows of grapes, a little sad but vastly content also, somehow knowing that he would come again, and soon.

  So he did, sometimes sick as he had been that first time, sometimes raging over something he wouldn't explain, sometimes only weary and hurt. He would appear beside her wherever she happened to be and she would welcome him with delight, her heartflower bursting open and spinning out its silver strands. And whatever his mood, when those enwrapped him, he calmed and smiled.

  They never spoke of her family again, except on his second visit, when she told him there was much talk against her father and that she would like to bless what grapes had formed on the vines of Knossos so the curse on him shouldn't seem absolute. To that, utterly indifferent, Dionysus gave permission—and changed the subject. When he came, they lived in their own little world. He taught her magic, to light lamps, torches, and fires with a gesture; to freeze a person where he stood; to fetch articles from other rooms in the temple.

  Magic left her tired, although not so drained as it once had, and while she rested, they talked of many things, or rather, Dionysus talked and Ariadne listened. She was fascinated by what he told her and it enlarged her rather narrow view of life. She learned that she was very fortunate to have been born a Cretan. Cretan women were much more free and powerful than women in most other societies. Egypt was next best. But in many places women were accounted for very little, powerless, not permitted to own property or even rights to their own bodies. Ariadne realized that those lands had lost the worship of the Mother, had overlaid her power with that of mostly male deities, and were much given to war.

  The city-states of Greece were prime examples. They fought each other constantly, each calling on the patron god of that city, who sometimes helped and sometimes ignored the calls. Ariadne did not need to ask why; that much she knew from her father's dealings with his nobles. To keep them divided among themselves made him stronger. To keep the worshipers in doubt as to the god's favor, induced more generous giving at the temples. Ariadne had some proof of that already. Although the offerings were still adequate, they were not anything near that first outpouring. There would be another outflow, she guessed, when the wine fermented sweet and rich, but if the plenty continued unabated, the offerings would grow fewer, unless they were stimulated in some way.

  Sometimes, however, Dionysus spoke of more personal matters. He told her unhappily more than once of the mother who had been seduced by Zeus and then abandoned, except for leaving her covered with a heap of gold. And although Dionysus had never known her, he'd quarreled with Zeus about her and had eventually gone into the Underworld and badgered Hades into allowing him to bring Semele to Olympus. Hades had warned him it was a mistake, but wouldn't say why. And Hades had been right; Semele knew her son no more than he knew her. Like all the others, she was afraid of him. She wouldn't stay with him and had returned to Plutos.

  Did he live all alone? Ariadne had asked. That set off another set of tales. He explained about his household in Olympus, describing Bacchus and Silenos who lived with him. Good friends, he called them, but Ariadne realized from what he said that they were given over entirely to the joys of the body and, possibly, weren't too clever. He didn't say it in words, but Ariadne understood that he was lonely.

  The tales and explanations were long ones, full of byways, some joy, much anguish, and not to be spun out in an hour. Ten-days passed. At midsummer they ran the vineyards again spreading the Mother's blessing so that the grapes were full and sweet; and in the autumn, they went a third time. That time Dionysus taught Ariadne how to touch a bunch here and there with a certain mold, which would lend a special flavor to the wine. After they had covered the whole island, Ariadne was a trifle anxious, fearing that Dionysus would settle into Olympus for the winter and not come to her, but she was wrong about that.

  Since he had become so sure she would welcome him in any and all circumstances and conditions without fear or questions, he was easier and lighter hearted, teasing and joking and clearly taking great joy in the fact that Ariadne also teased him and played childish tricks on him. He abandoned all pretense that he came as a godly duty and began to bring with him games and scrolls full of stories and ancient lore. They played the games but Dionysus found the stories silly and they left the scrolls alone.

  On the morning of the winter equinox, the courtyard of the shrine was packed, the people overflowing onto the sides of Gypsades Hill. The wine was already sweet and strong and would be like the nectar of the gods when it had aged. When Ariadne looked into the scrying bowl as the sunlight touched the rim, she thought a wry smile and words that appeared in no ritual: “Sorry, my love, I know it's too early for you, but custom is custom. Will you come?”

  Half growling, half laughing, he obediently rose and dressed and came, and the shouts of the people, despite an unusual bitter cold, nearly shivered loose the stones of the shrine. Minos, in the first row, saluted with the others, but his lips didn't part in any hymn of praise. Pasiphae was not present. She was said to be almost too big with child to walk and her delivery was imminent.

  It was a shock for Ariadne to remember that, to realize suddenly that if Pasiphae had conceived on the night of Dionysus' Vision, she'd carried the babe more than a month over the normal time. A hope flared in her that her mother had lied, that she hadn't conceived or the god hadn't come and what she carried was Minos'—or some other man's—get.

  The hope fled as Dionysus tilted her face up for his kiss. His Visions were always true. Could Pasiphae be carrying her young for the term of a cow's breeding? Ariadne buried that horrible thought and began to wonder whether she would ever be permitted to bear Dionysus' child.

  Not that time, in any event. He shrouded them in darkness, but did no more than hug her and explain that he couldn't linger this time. A faint shadow crossed his face but he only said he had been invited to a celebration of the winter equinox that he couldn't fail to attend. Ariadne kissed him again as he dismissed the darkness, and hastened to draw on the robe she'd just removed and to help a shivering Dionysus with his himation. At the god's gesture, the audience departed and they hurried inside, Dionysus shaking his head and wondering aloud who could be so idiotic as to expect god and priestess to couple on a freezing stone altar.

  “Surely even a god would have more common sense than that!” he protested indignantly.

  Ariadne was still laughing when he disappeared. He would be back as soon as he could come, she was sure.

  The next day, however, she was wakened suddenly by the frantic pealing of the bell at the temple gate. Pale light came through the shaft window; it was morning, but much earlier than Ariadne normally left her bed. Still, she sat up at once. The bell pealed again. Although she was no healer nor could she imagine
any emergency that a priestess of Dionysus could be expected to amend in the middle of the winter, she rose and hurriedly pulled on a warm gown. There was something in the pealing of that bell that brought her pounding heart right up into her throat.

  The voice that called her name was Phaidra's, high and hysterical. Some disaster had struck Knossos. Disaster. Ariadne's mind leapt to her thought of the previous morning, that Pasiphae was due to expel whatever she had carried in her overfull belly. She ran out to meet Phaidra.

  “I can't! I can't!” Phaidra wailed, casting herself into Ariadne's arms. “It's too horrible. I can't do it. You must help me.”

  “Of course I'll help you,” Ariadne soothed, “but you have to tell me first what it is you can't do.”

  “I can't care for it. I can't. Mother had no right to bear a monster and cast its care on me.”

  Cold washed down Ariadne's back. Through stiff lips, she asked, “The child is born?”

  “Child?” Phaidra echoed and shuddered. “I don't know what it is. Come. You must come. She's already very angry with me because it's crying, but I can't touch it. I can't. And the maids fled away. Come. You must come.”

  There was no “must” about it. Ariadne had warned Pasiphae to clean out her womb; she wasn't responsible for the result of the queen's refusal. She had also forsworn her family and could say with a clear conscience that she was no longer bound to them by blood ties. But it wasn't that simple. The queen had borne what a god had imposed on her. And all Ariadne's life, except these past nine moons, she had cared for Phaidra. Moreover, Phaidra hadn't cast her off. She had come often to the temple to give Ariadne news, to gossip and laugh. If Pasiphae was angry with Phaidra, the child would be made to suffer. Ariadne couldn't abandon Phaidra to her mother's rage.

  “Come. You must come,” Phaidra insisted.

  Ariadne yielded to Phaidra's pull and went with her out of the gate and down the hill. She was so sick with apprehension, that she could feel bile in her throat and she didn't dare ask a question for fear she would spew. Phaidra was silent too, except for one sentence, muttered under her breath, “Oh, why wouldn't it die quietly,” which reminded Ariadne that her sister had said “It was crying.”

  She heard the thin wailing as soon as she came out of the stairwell that led to the second floor, and her heart lurched. The cries were broken, exhausted, as if the child had been unattended for a very long time. Phaidra dropped her hand, but Ariadne knew perfectly well where to go and broke into a run.

  She faltered at the doorway. The room stank. Then the cradle lurched and the tired wailing, which had been still for a moment, began again. Ariadne hurried forward, her teeth set, and looked into the cradle. The child was naked and lying on its stomach, and at first sight was not so dreadful, except for the filth. True, a thick mane of black hair grew over the head and halfway down the back, but it had two arms and two legs and the correct number of fingers and toes.

  The condition of the cradle was far worse than a little extra hair, and it was far too cold to leave an infant not only wet and soiled but naked. Ariadne snatched up a clean blanket from a pile on a wall shelf, threw it over the child's back and picked it up. As she turned it, a gasping cry was wrung from her, and she had to tighten her arms consciously not to drop the child.

  What caught the eye was the black mass that protruded into a broad muzzle and covered almost the whole bottom half of the face. In it were two large holes that quivered as the little creature drew breath; below it a wide slit of a mouth with no lips and almost no chin opened to emit another wail. The eyes were large, bulbous, and set too far apart, but the lids were furnished with long, thick, curling lashes—a travesty of beauty that was almost more horrible than more ugliness would have been. A finger width of brow separated the eyes from the growth of black hair, which continued on down the child's back, and there were two bumps under the hair just above the brow.

  Ariadne stared, transfixed, aware that the horror of that little face was not really strange to her, that she had seen it before and not found it horrible at all. And then she remembered where she'd seen it and wavered where she stood, her soul in turmoil. She knew what Poseidon had done, and something inside her screamed and screamed for help while tears of pity and remorse ran down her face.

  “Turn it around! Turn it around!” Phaidra cried from the doorway. “How can you bear to look at it?”

  Ariadne almost couldn't bear it, but the little creature had stopped screaming now that she held it. At Phaidra's voice, it twitched in her grip and uttered a tiny whimper. Instinctively she rocked it in her arms, and it made a small hiccup. Ariadne drew a fold of the blanket over the child's face.

  It was her fault that the poor thing was being shunned, all her fault. She was no seer. She had misunderstood Dionysus' Vision and been too sure that Poseidon's curse would fall on all of Knossos, perhaps all of Crete. She had spoken that conviction aloud for too many to hear. She had set into everyone's mind that what Pasiphae was bearing was a great evil. The babe was a curse—a cruel, cruel revenge that Poseidon had taken, but not a great evil, except to itself. Minos would never forget that he had tried to cheat a god. Every time he looked into his youngest son's face, he would see the head of a bull.

  Whipped by her own regret, Ariadne turned furiously on Phaidra. “Come in here and take that mess out of the cradle,” she snapped. “What's wrong with you? It's not the child's fault that he's so ugly. You are the monsters, not he. How could you be so cruel as to leave a helpless infant unfed, wallowing in his own dirt. Get those foolish maids back in here at once.”

  “They won't come,” Phaidra said sullenly.

  “They'll come or I'll have them torn apart.” Ariadne's black eyes showed sparks of red, and Phaidra backed up a step. “If you run, I'll come after you and whip you myself, and what your mother will do to you, I don't like to think. Now, do as I say. You may tell the maids they don't yet need to handle the child, but they must provide me with clean padding for the cradle, warm water for washing, and oil for anointing. I want a wet-nurse—”

  “That you won't get,” Phaidra said, “no matter what you threaten. That thing almost tore the nipple off the woman who tried to suckle him. The next will last no longer than the first. I won't try to find another.”

  About to tell Phaidra not to be ridiculous, that the child must eat, Ariadne paused. She wasn't sure the mouth was made for suckling, except the long teat of a cow.

  “Then bring me a long-spouted cruet, a small one, and warmed pots of goat's milk, ewe's milk, and cow's milk, and quickly. And don't be such a fool! It's ugly, poor little thing, but it's only a baby.”

  “It's a curse upon us!”

  “No,” Ariadne said, tears starting to her eyes again. “Only on itself, and for the rest of his life, a bitter reminder to King Minos of how he tried to cheat the Lord Poseidon.”

  Under Phaidra's urging, backed by the threat that she would tell Queen Pasiphae if they wouldn't obey her, the maids crept back into the nursery. Their fears were somewhat reduced when they saw Ariadne holding the child as if it were any other baby, rocking it in her arms and murmuring to it. One, shrinkingly, brought the cruet and the pots of milk forward. Another, when Ariadne asked, said it was believed that ewe's milk was the richest and the easiest for a child to take in lieu of mother's milk. So Ariadne bid her pour ewe's milk into the cruet, laid the child on her knees, and lifting its head so it would not choke, dribbled a few drops of milk into the mouth that opened to wail again.

  The wail was cut off abruptly to swallow; the mouth opened again eagerly. The contents of the cruet disappeared in an amazingly short time with only a few mishaps when the eager baby tried to reach the spout more quickly and spilled milk or, once, almost knocked the cruet from Ariadne's hand. When the child had had its fill, and had been dandled on her knee and shoulder until it brought up wind, Ariadne washed it and dried it and wrapped it in swaddling cloths—and stared as the cloths virtually burst open under the thrusts of the babe's ar
ms and legs.

  Only then did she really look at the child and realize that it was half again larger than any newborn babe she had ever seen, remember how it had lifted its head off her arm, almost lifted its entire body, in an attempt to reach the milk. She blinked back new tears. It was very strong. Poseidon was taking no chance that his revenge would be cut short by a natural failing. Surely that infant had been Gifted with strength. Swallowing, she tried gently to rewrap it, but it wouldn't bear the confinement and it yelled and struck out, hard enough to hurt her a little.

  Stroking the furred head until it calmed, she turned the creature on its stomach, adjusted the head so that the protruding muzzle was not in the way, and covered it. She stroked the head a while longer and the bulbous eyes closed, the black nostrils fluttered with little snorts. It slept.

  Ariadne ground her teeth together to keep them from chattering. All she wanted to do was to run back to the shrine and forget what she had seen. Her guilt stabbed at her. She knew if the maids and Phaidra guessed she wouldn't return, they would also leave. She turned to confront her sister.

  “Now you can see it's only a babe, no great evil—”

  “Why did you tend it?” Phaidra asked bitterly. “I thought you would silence it...”

  “Phaidra!” Ariadne exclaimed. “It is a poor, helpless babe. How could you think I would harm it? And don't you be such a fool either. There can be no doubt this is the Earth-Shaker's child. Can you imagine what he would do to Knossos, to all of Crete, if deliberate harm were inflicted on his son?”

  Phaidra came close and whispered in Ariadne's ear, “But if only one person did the harm and that person was protected by another god, perhaps ...”

  “Oh, no,” Ariadne snapped, pushing Phaidra away. “This matter is more serious than taking a whipping for your sake as I have done in the past. I don't think the god Poseidon would trouble himself to distinguish between one common native and another. He would blame us all if any did harm to his get. His get . . . Hasn't the child been named?”