Claiming Ariadne (25 page)

“Both of you?” asked Kitanetos.

Ariadne swallowed. As accustomed as she was to being the focus of attention, this scrutiny was unbearable. “After Elaphos was dead, I couldn’t stay behind. Taranos knew I would be discovered.”

“And yet,” observed Nopina, “he sent you walking alone to Katsambas, among savage men who didn’t know you were a priestess. Why, you could have been raped and killed by those beasts!”

Embarrassed, Idomeneus loudly cleared his throat.

“Taranos meant to come with me. We made it as far as the north stables, where he tried to steal a chariot and two horses. But before he went, he told me what to do and what to say to the sentries should he be discovered. He didn’t come back for me because he rode all night trying to keep his pursuers away from me.”

“That part is true,” said Idomeneus. “When I demanded to know why my nephew allowed a pregnant High Priestess to walk barefoot all night to a camp where she was nearly mistaken for a whore, Taranos gave me the same explanation. My nephew is a good man, but sadly, he can be rather stupid sometimes.”

“Does anyone else wish to question the High Priestess?” When no one spoke, Aktaios turned to her. “Ariadne, if Taranos is found guilty, are you willing to share your husband’s fate?”

Last night, as she pillowed her cheek on Taranos’s broad chest and listened to his heartbeat, she had made up her mind. “Once my child is born, I am willing to go to my death. The High Priest Kitanetos has agreed to send a son to Tiryns. I will send a daughter to my great-grandmother in Archanes.”

The priestesses of Hera came in at the recess to escort her outside. In the antechamber outside the Throne Room, Ariadne found her husband leaning against a doorjamb. All four sets of doors along the polythyron had been opened to admit air. Two guards, one at the entryway and the other at the foot of the stairs leading up to the loggia, stood watch.

A livid bruise purpled Taranos’s cheek. “My uncle hits hard.”

“You idiot. I had to defend you.” Ariadne led him over to a bench and sat quietly beside him. “I don’t know how long it will be.”

As they waited, the priestesses and sentries maintained a strict yet benevolent vigilance, allowing them small intimacies. Ariadne rested her head on Taranos’s shoulder. Through the heavy oak doors off to the right, she thought she heard shouting. A man’s voice, too indistinct to identify, too muffled to be coherent. She wished she knew what they were saying.

Sudden movement in her belly wrenched her out of her haze. “Taranos! I think the baby just kicked me!”

Eyes widening, Taranos turned to her. “Are you sure?”

Again, she winced at the small yet definite movement. After four pregnancies, she was sure. “Yes, put your hand here and feel it.”

For several heartbeats, nothing happened. Taranos frowned, radiated disappointment, when suddenly they both felt the baby move. “Klymenos! Augeas! Come over here and feel this! It’s a boy, I’m sure of it!”

The two Achaean sentries awkwardly came forward, as did the priestesses. Ariadne submitted to their attention, yet when the baby’s movements began to subside, she warned them that at twenty weeks his shifting and kicking wouldn’t last very long.

At last, the well-wishers withdrew, and with them her brief euphoria. It occurred to her that the gods must mean this as a sign, a last gift to Taranos before he died. He would never see his child and never hold it. For him to have this much at the very end was a blessing.

“I wonder how they will put me to death. After the baby is born, I mean.”

Taranos shifted next to her. “Why would you even wonder that?”

“I agreed to share your fate.”

He started to speak, no doubt to protest her foolishness, but the words died on his lips as the double doors opened. Sentries and priestesses stirred. Ariadne and Taranos got to their feet.

Aktaios emerged. “High Priestess, Sacred King, we have made our judgment. You may now come in to hear our decision.”

Once so eager to have it over and done with, now Ariadne found her legs refused to work. She reached for Taranos and felt his arms go around her to support her. She leaned into him, lifted her head when he touched her chin, and received his kiss. “You foolish woman,” he whispered into her lips. “You’re not coming with me.”

“I have no choice now.”

Everyone stood as they entered. Behind them, the doors closed with an ominous rumble. “We have decided,” Idomeneus said into the waiting silence. “It was not an easy choice. Killing a priest, no matter what the provocation, is a serious matter. Death should be the natural outcome.”

Should be
. Ariadne clung to those words as shreds of hope. Taranos tightened his hold where his arm fell around her shoulders.

“There were those who voted for death, and others who opted to show leniency. Both judgments are equally sound, yet I did not come here today to set one above the other, or open myself to a charge that I was merciful simply because the Sacred King happens to be my nephew. Taranos is a grown man who knows his duty to the gods. He will accept whatever decision we render.”

Ariadne’s heart wavered.
He is going to condemn us. Oh, let it be done quickly!

“Elaphos was also guilty of a crime: threatening the life of a High Priestess and the life she carried—life granted to her in the service of Demeter. Taranos may have acted in his own interest to protect his wife and their child, or he may have carried out the will of a god. We cannot decide either way. So we must compromise.”

Compromise
. Ariadne stared at the floor. Studying the king’s red leather shoes and, above them, his muscled brown calves, she tried to fathom what that meant.

“Taranos bears blood-guilt, that is certain, yet it is our judgment that he will not die. Instead, he will find a white bull calf and offer it up to Poseidon as a substitute for his own life. His hand will wield the sacrificial knife.”

He will not die
.

Now her heart leapt for joy.

“He will be purified of his blood-taint. He will no longer be Sacred King. He will leave Knossos with his goods, free to go where he will. Do you, Taranos, son of Kretheus, understand and abide by this judgment as it has been rendered?”

Taranos’s relief washed through his voice. “Yes, I do.”

But Idomeneus wasn’t yet finished. Turning to her, he continued, “Because the High Priestess Ariadne agreed to become the wife of Taranos and share his fate, she must go with him into exile. She will receive and bless the harvest as High Priestess, and she may bear her child here within the sanctuary of Eleuthia, but she will choose and train a successor, and at the rites of the spring equinox, the new High Priestess will take her own Sacred King.”

Leave, she must leave. Ariadne felt the blood rush from her; she swayed on her feet till Taranos caught her up and eased her onto her chair.

A female presence loomed at her back. A woman’s hand massaged her shoulder, and she realized it was her mother.
Where will I go now? This has always been my home
.

A man joined her. Kitanetos had left his bench to stand beside her. Idomeneus hadn’t finished speaking, but when he resumed, he addressed her directly and with gentle authority. “You are the wife of a prince. You and your children will not be homeless, and you will not be destitute. You also will take your goods with you. Do you understand and agree to these conditions?”

She nodded helplessly.

Clearing his throat to put the final punctuation on the meeting, Idomeneus thanked the assembly for their service and dismissed them. Potinia, sharply countermanding the priestesses of Hera who came to collect her daughter, remained with Ariadne. “Your own women will look after you.”

All Ariadne wanted was to be alone once more with Taranos, but as the king’s guards moved into the room, she knew that wasn’t going to be possible.

“It’s all right,” Kitanetos said, to her as much as to Taranos, who slowly rose from his chair. “They’re going to take the Sacred King to the Little Palace. He’ll be his uncle’s guest until he fulfills his obligations.”

Ariadne didn’t know how long that would take; it might be six months before she saw him again. Rising, she threw her arms around Taranos. “You’ll wait for me?”

Ignoring the many stares and his uncle’s impatient grunt, Taranos kissed her. “Nothing could keep me away.”

* * * *

That night, she slept in her familiar bed in the House of the Great Mother. Soon another, younger woman would occupy these rooms and her role as High Priestess. A woman she chose, but who would it be? Ariadne lay fully dressed atop the coverlet, plucking at loose sausages of wool, too numb to give the dilemma much thought. She ate only a little when Pemo brought her supper, and spoke to no one.

As night fell, lamplight slanted across her open doorway. A priestess entered, as priestesses and novices bearing food, personal belongings, and clean water had done all afternoon. Ariadne closed her eyes and waited for the woman to leave.

Skirts rustled beside her; she heard a stool pulled close. “Ariadne,” said a familiar voice. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

Potinia had come without her paint or snakes, as a woman rather than a priestess. In the mellow lamplight and its flickering shadows, she looked every one of her forty-eight years. “It wasn’t an easy choice.”

Did
you
vote to kill Taranos?
Ariadne couldn’t bring herself to ask. “I have nowhere to go.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense. Your husband has kin in Tiryns. I suppose he’ll want to carry you home like the prize you are.”

Why must her mother always mix pessimism with comfort? “Why are you here?”

“I thought someone should tell you it wasn’t that strutting Achaean warlord who rendered the final judgment. Oh, he takes credit for it, but that’s all he can say. No, it was Kitanetos who forced us to decide as we did.”

“Kitanetos?” Aside from asking a few pointed questions, the High Priest played little part during the trial. Where he should have been the presiding priest, he’d been so troubled by the events in the storeroom and their possible ramifications that he’d sat by and let Aktaios usurp that role.

Potinia stroked her hair, a gesture so alien to her that it didn’t feel comforting in the least. “Many voted to execute Taranos, but Kitanetos stood up and outright refused to spill the blood of a man wedded to his own daughter. He shouted everyone down, and you know he doesn’t shout, but he wasn’t going to make you a widow, or do anything that would bring you harm.”

Ariadne abruptly sat up. All the shouting she’d heard that morning—not for one moment had she dreamed that loud voice belonged to the soft-spoken, silver-haired High Priest. “His daughter? Mother, what are you saying?”

“I’m telling you that Kitanetos is your father, and the child you’re carrying is his grandchild. I realize this isn’t how you would have wanted to be told, and that I’m not good with such things, but if you don’t hear it from me you’ll hear it from others. The night you were conceived, he came to me and asked to celebrate the Great Marriage with me. We weren’t drunk. We had known each other a very long time. It was just something we did.

“I didn’t want a husband. Kitanetos respected my decision and never told anyone you were his daughter, but today he had no choice. Some of the priests voted for death. He marched right up to them and shouted in their faces that what Elaphos did was an outrage, and that he would have run the man through himself had he been there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry. After that, what else could anyone say? Even that Achaean usurper wouldn’t argue with him. No one was willing to wield the
labrys
for him or mix the lethal draught they would have given you.”

So it would have been poison. Ariadne squeezed her eyes shut. “Mother, how did you vote?”