Claiming Ariadne (12 page)

After lunch, they went outside into the warm afternoon. Dappled sunlight filtered through the cypresses and olive trees. Iphame showed them her small vineyard and wine press with its stone trough. “I get in and stomp those grapes myself. You’ve got to show those lazy boys how to do it properly, otherwise they slack off and all sorts of bits and pulp get into the wine.”

Just before they left, as Taranos went to relieve himself, Ariadne drew her great-grandmother aside. “Why did you tell us that story? You never said anything about those things before.”

Iphame pursed her lips. “When you’re as old as I am, girl, and have held it in as long as I have, it can’t help but want to come out. And when you arrived today with that young man, I knew it was time.”

What did she mean by that? “I wasn’t sure I ought to bring him.”

“It’s a good thing you did. A woman can do much worse than that Achaean and not much better.” And yet, her copper earrings swinging, Iphame shook her head. “I suppose I should warn you that the women of this family are never lucky when it comes to love. Your mother loves only her serpents. Your grandmother married the man she wanted and the gods turned on her. My beautiful Meri, gone at eighteen. I still remember how happy she was about her baby. I still visit her grave once a year.”

Ariadne did her best to never, ever think about the dangers of childbirth. Worrying thoughts upset a woman’s womb, and then she didn’t carry properly. “Taranos...”

“I don’t know what to tell you, girl. It’s clear you’re fond of him, no matter how much you like to pretend he irritates you. And he likes you, too. But what chance do you have? I don’t need to tell you this, but unless he escapes, his time will come sooner than it should.”

Taranos would end as a sacrifice, like Admaios. Perhaps not held down on an altar, but killed in combat by a younger opponent. Ariadne, standing amid the rustling cypresses, her nostrils heady with spring’s green warmth, preferred not to think that far ahead. Yet she felt a chill that didn’t abate even when Taranos reappeared.

“You have to be prepared, Ariadne.”

“Prepared for what?” Taranos asked cheerfully.

Ariadne froze, even when her great-grandmother answered with a quick lie. “To leave, of course! It’s getting late, young man, and this girl needs to be back safe and tucked into bed by nightfall. Your men are hitching up the chariots now, I suspect. Mind you don’t drive too fast. Minos Echmedes will never fix the road properly until one of his sons tips his chariot and cracks his skull.”

This time, there was no argument when Ariadne climbed into the chariot with Taranos. She waved to her great-grandmother before clutching onto the railing. Taranos placed a solid hand against her back and looked about to say something. Yet after a moment’s silence, he simply caressed the small of her back before turning to take up the reins.

“Are you sorry we came?” he asked once they were in the countryside. The late afternoon sun slanted golden rays onto the rooftops of Archanes far behind them.

Ariadne wished she knew the right answer to give. “Yes. And no.”

Chapter Six

At the great Bull Dance celebrating the summer solstice, the High Priestess and her Sacred King always enjoyed excellent seats. A bright blue awning shaded the porch overlooking the Central Court, which was long enough to comfortably accommodate the king and his family, Kitanetos as the presiding High Priest, and the High Priestess and her consort, who sat slightly apart from the others.

Taranos eagerly anticipated the rites. “We don’t have bull-leaping in Tiryns. One has to come to Crete to see it.”

“I thought you had everything in Tiryns.” For the occasion, Ariadne wore a turquoise bodice and a blue-and-turquoise flounced skirt trimmed with the finished purple embroidery. Golden rosettes dangled from her ears.

She sweltered under her white face paint. Midmorning banished the brief dawn coolness, and while the awning provided shade, there was only a slight breeze to offer relief. Last night, the priestesses and novices slept on the roof. Tonight, they would do the same.

Taranos gave her bare breasts an appreciative glance. “We have other contests you might appreciate. Our women quite enjoy watching the men wrestle half-naked.”

“I’m sure they do. You don’t intend to give an exhibition later, do you?”

“Would you come to cheer me on?”

Ariadne snorted. “No.”

In his fringed blue loincloth, Taranos wore just enough for modesty, but the garment didn’t conceal his impressive bulge. Not knowing what possessed her in this sluggish, stifling atmosphere, Ariadne repeatedly found her gaze drifting to his lap. Skin on sweaty skin was the last thing she wanted, yet she kept daydreaming about his hard shaft nestled in its tangle of brown curls. Just as she sensed him savoring the vision of her full breasts. Perhaps she would have commented, even flirted a little, had the fine sheen of sweat forming under her arms and breasts not made her feel self-conscious.

At last, she forced her gaze from his bulge to the shaded porch on the north side, where a yellow awning provided shade for the high priests and priestesses seated there. Aktaios sat beside Sinon, the short, balding priest of Zeus who never shut up. And there, surrounded by the other priestesses who served the Mistress of the Animals, sat Potinia.

On her left, Ariadne noted the people crowding the balconies encircling the Central Court. No one who could be there ever missed the Bull Dance.

“Tell me why they have the contest here instead of in a circular enclosure below the hill.” Taranos gestured to his left, where the porch created a sharp edge. “The Central Court isn’t perfectly square.”

Ariadne honestly didn’t know.

“How many cartloads of sand did the priests have to bring up from Katsambas for this event, anyway?”

“Go pester Kitanetos with your questions. I have no idea.”

A horn sounded. Led by four sweating priests of Poseidon, the bull lumbered into the courtyard. Unlike other bulls, this one wasn’t garlanded for sacrifice.

Taranos sat up in his chair the moment he saw the spotted bull swishing his tail in the heat. “That is an aurochs, or close to it.”

A crossbred aurochs, a massive creature standing six feet at the shoulder and boasting a hoof print half the size of a grown man’s head, was a foul-tempered beast when provoked, and a suitable stand-in for the god in his guise as the Great Bull.

Today, the High Priest bore the
labrys
. Even though the Great Bull wouldn’t die, the double axe would claim any bull-leapers who were gored or trampled while carrying out their sacred duty.

Few ever survived to maturity.

The bull-leapers, the ten youths and maidens dedicated to the god, filed into the courtyard.

While his acolyte held the
labrys
, Kitanetos rose from his seat and approached the edge of the porch with hands raised in supplication. All murmuring ceased, until the only sounds in that space were the muffled snuffling of the bull and distant birdsong. “To Poseidon Earth-Shaker, Father of the Sea, Master of Horses, Great Bull, we offer you this most sacred rite. On this day we bring forth the finest youths and maidens, consecrated to your service, to dance with and honor the Bull. Let their grace and courage please you. Let whatever blood be spilled belong to you as your rightful due.”

Music took up where he left off. Amid the drumbeats and panpipes, normal conversation resumed and flowed, then ebbed again as the dancers began to move. Singly and in pairs they engaged the bull, sidling up to him to stroke his flanks, to scratch behind his ears, to touch his great curving horns. And then, when he responded, shifting his hooves, turning and snorting in irritation, the contest commenced.

Like a hammering heartbeat, the drums rolled, the pipes ceased. A lithe, narrow-waisted youth sprinted, charged the bull, then in the last instant seized his horns and leapt, vaulting as the bull tossed his horns, turning in mid-air to land precariously upon his dancing partner’s back. Just as quickly, he cartwheeled off the agitated bull and landed in the arms of another youth.

“They’re teasing him,” Taranos observed.

And teasing the crowd, too. Too muscular to bloom into full womanhood, kept chaste by the priestesses, the maidens might not play to admirers among the audience, but the youths delighted in displaying their assets—their sleek, oiled bodies, their firmly rounded asses, their bulges barely covered by their leather codpieces. Erotic creatures displaying their prowess, their willingness to court death as well as carnal lust, and indeed, there were a good many men and women who hungered after what they saw. But Taranos sat with his chin propped on his hand, glowering at the spectacle when he’d been so eager to witness it. Hadn’t he known beforehand what the Bull Dance entailed? Had he really expected the bull-leapers to be grown men and women? Bull-leaping was a sport for the young.

Only a Cretan could appreciate the rite. Achaeans only cared about fighting and dividing their spoils. Ariadne found the Bull Dance mesmerizing, though she would have enjoyed it more had she not been so hot. Off to her right, she saw Kitanetos’s acolyte fixated on the young dancer who first leapt; the man licked his lips. Ariadne knew one fifteen-year-old boy who, provided he didn’t end today as a sacrifice, would receive a trinket and ardent love note by nightfall.

Again, the drumbeats started. Ariadne saw a young girl, a brown-skinned maiden no more than eight or nine, charge the bull, then flounder as she made the leap. So tall was the bull, and so high did the smallest dancers have to reach just to grasp the horns, that many perished this way. Not so this girl. She found the horns, and with the immense strength in her sinewy arms flipped her body over when the bull tossed his head, but the damage was done. Blood smeared the bull’s left horn. Nostrils flaring, he scented the blood, shifted around to face the girl as she tumbled off his back. More blood dripped from her gashed palm onto the sand.

Taranos seized his armrests. “The priests put a
girl-child
in with that creature? Better to just lay her on the altar and cut her throat.”

Ariadne found his revulsion incomprehensible. “She was dedicated to the god at birth. She’s a slave child, and this is how slaves are allowed to serve the gods. You see how she doesn’t flinch at the pain, or the bull snorting at her, and before long she’ll try to leap again. She sees only the god. She’s happy to do this. Dancing the bull is all she knows.”

As the pipes overtook the drums, the dancers linked arms to form a daisy chain around the bull. Clockwise they circled, then counterclockwise. Arms fell, the circle broke, and the dancers wove complex patterns around each other. As their movements brought them close to the bull, they paused to caress his flanks, to touch his twitching tail.

Thoroughly enraged now, the bull turned and lunged at each touch, yet with so many tormentors, so many potential targets, his befuddled wits could not decide which one to gore.

Then came the third bull-leaper, a young boy who couldn’t have been more than thirteen. Drums took up the beat, rolling faster and faster. The crowd tensed as the boy sprinted. Finally the bull, maddened by the heat and too much human contact, found his victim. Lowering his head with its immense lyre-shaped horns, he charged. A gasp rose from the audience, little cries from the ladies strangely juxtaposed against the bull’s angry bellow, and every breath caught as bull and dancer closed the distance between them.

Even a lumbering giant like a hybrid aurochs could move with astonishing speed when provoked. When the time came, when he had to leap or die, the boy faltered. Not from fear, but from an instinct that told him his momentum wouldn’t propel him up and over the bull’s head. Yet still, knowing his duty to the god, knowing he had no other choice, he valiantly tried.

The great head butted, caught the boy square in the abdomen as he reached for the horns, and flipped him gasping to the sand. Cries erupted from the crowd. Ariadne groaned, dared not breathe. Even now, a dancer could recover, could stumble swiftly to his feet and get away before…

Down came the hooves, kicking, trampling, accompanied by a snorting bellow not quite loud enough to muffle the sounds of cracking bone, or the cries of pain. Horns gored the sand. A broken scream. Blood dripped off the left horn. Pipes quavered, took up the melody again as the dancers moved in to drive the bull back. For the boy couldn’t simply be left lying on the ground to expire and grow cold. His dying breath and lifeblood belonged to Poseidon.

Still snorting and nodding its head with its reddened horn, the bull backed away. Ariadne clutched her armrests, the heat momentarily forgotten at what was to come. She dared not glance aside at Taranos. His criticism stung too deeply. Achaean that he was, he simply didn’t understand. This wasn’t the slaughter of a child. It was a holy thing.

A lull fell over the courtyard. Music ceased, the dancers withdrew with their hands crossed over their breasts to show respect, and the bull received a wide berth. Junior priests of Poseidon stepped down onto the sand with a stretcher. As gently as they could, ignoring the boy’s plaintive moans—for it would soon be over—they bore him up on their shoulders and deposited him on a stone slab just below the porch.

Kitanetos and his acolyte had left their seats the moment the boy fell beneath the bull. On the slab, Ariadne saw the bleeding leg twitch. A hand lifted, reached for the High Priest. Kitanetos bent over the youth, murmured something, and nodded. Lifting the
labrys
, he held it up where the god-in-the-bull could see, then swung it high over his head and brought it down. A groan escaped the crowd.

Flies swarmed in the lazy heat shimmer swimming above the altar stone, and Ariadne blinked back a moment’s dizziness as the junior priests bore the body away.

Excitement gripped the crowd as the eldest youth clambered onto a protruding cornerstone. Ariadne almost forgot the dead leaper in the thrill of anticipation. Each year the dancers drove the bull toward that particular corner, where someone took a death-defying diving leap over the bull’s horns. Would the youth survive the attempt? Last year, Pelinos had wagered and lost a stirrup jar of precious oil when the leaper fell so short he had to grab onto one horn just to keep from being trampled; the enraged bull dragged his tormentor halfway across the courtyard, where the poor youth, scraped and bruised, finally dropped facedown into the sand.

An expectant hush, then came the leap. A perfect somersault over the bull’s head. Two feet firmly placed on the moving bull’s back—just for the fraction of a second it took to vault down onto the sand. No one who wanted to live remained on the animal long enough to be bucked off.

Wild cheers echoed around the court.

Taranos sat quietly, chin propped on one hand. Ariadne glimpsed enough in profile to know he was glowering. Words burned unspoken in her throat. She wanted to speak, to explain, so he could share in this rite with her, yet the longer she dwelled on it, the stronger his disquiet seemed.

As the Bull Dance ended, Ariadne rose from her seat. Oh, to go indoors, take off her girdle, and sponge cool water on her face and breasts! Acolytes rinsed down the altar stone. Slaves moved out onto the hot sand to begin sweeping the courtyard clean. Other acolytes led the bull to pasture in a meadow below the palace.

Sweat trickled down the back of Ariadne’s neck and through her diadem, where her hair had been arranged in elaborate curls; she dared not muss them by wiping the moisture away.