“What did your people do to anger her?”
“Some say we had turned away from her, that we thought ourselves as strong as she, or as wise. Others claim the queen allowed one of her consorts to live beyond his time. Athene did send warning through one of our oracles. Some escaped onto the sea in boats. We rebuilt, as you’ve seen.” She twined her arms over her head in a sinuous movement, stretched, and turned her face to the sun. Golden light bathed her cheeks, glinted through her eyes and lashes like a lover’s touch, sparking more colors than Chrysaleon knew existed.
“Look,” she said, scooping a handful of ivy from the trunk of the tree. She placed her hand on one of the leaves, spreading her fingers over its surface. “Each leaf has five fingers, honoring the hand of Athene. Artisans fill their homes with vases of ivy to spur imagination and creativity.”
Aridela, a goddess in her own right, with her black eyes, that delicate yet defined bone structure she’d inherited from Helice, and a mouth that made his groin ache. He could almost picture giving up everything for her, even his life, without regret. Perhaps the old saying was indeed truth— that Athene planted the desire to die within the heart of the bull-king.
The image of her triumphant leap in the bullring would never grow dull— that and the first time he’d seen her, swimming naked in the forest pool on Mount Ida. On the heels of those memories came more, of their coupling in the cave, of her erotic desire and fierce response. Yet something else nagged him, something harder to define. He hadn’t expected wisdom, reckless courage, or the trust she’d so quickly and loyally granted him. He felt dazzled, as though he stood in the path of a falling star, and feared she could fast become a compulsion.
Below them, the cow flicked her tail at flies and grazed, untroubled.
Heat made the wound on his forearm itch. He rubbed the dressing absently. Eleven days had passed since his triumphant struggle for the crown and title of Zagreus in the labyrinth at Knossos. Lycus, Kaphtor’s foremost bull leaper, had managed to inflict several wounds upon him, which he still found unbelievable and annoying. Besides the large chunk missing from Chrysaleon’s forearm, there was also a puncturing cut in his thigh and a tender, half-healed lump on the side of his head. But Lycus had fared much worse, with a deadly cleft to his side. He couldn’t even walk yet, and suffered from blood fever.
“I cannot bear this,” he said quietly.
Aridela continued to watch the cow, but the muscles in her jaw tightened and a shadow formed between her brows.
“It’s you I want, you I fought for. Not your sister.”
She met his gaze. “Do you understand what you’ve done? Your father— is he truly willing to give you up?”
Chrysaleon considered. He didn’t want to lie to this girl, with her obsidian eyes, not completely, anyway. He would take a chance and see where it carried him.
“He and I see the benefits of a closer alliance. He wants our two countries united. Yet he respects your mother, and ruled out any talk of invasion or war.”
“So you competed to strengthen this alliance.”
“He forbade me from competing. I defied him because, when you entered the ring, when you leaped over the bull’s back, a god’s noose slipped around my neck and bound me to Kaphtor— to you. I’ve known from that day to this I won’t leave.”
She bit her lower lip, making him want to kiss it.
“Before I saw you,” he went on, “I railed at my fate, ordered to travel so far to watch other men fight for some dust-dry princess. How was I to know that here, in the bullring at Labyrinthos, I would discover my perfect mate?”
Shock passed over her face. “I felt Athene’s hands pushing me into the bullring that day. I’d known since I was small she wanted me to dance with a bull. I knew it would change something, but I never knew what. Now I see. It changed you. She wanted you to enter the Games, so you would win and become our Zagreus. The bull dance was how she spurred you to it.” She paused, tilting her head, frowning. “I don’t think— no, I’m sure. I haven’t had the dream of leaping a bull since that day. Not once.”
Her acceptance of deliberate divine intervention reminded him of a child. He started to smile, to tell her she shouldn’t give deities too much importance, but the scene below changed, calling for their attention.
The underbrush shook and a massive brown-spotted bull crashed into sight. The cow stopped grazing. With a gruff bellow, the bull pawed the earth and trotted to her, smelling the air.
Chrysaleon offered the scene a cursory glance before turning back to Aridela. He sensed the advantage he’d created and didn’t want to lose it. “How could I have known,” he said, “before I came here, that your waist would fit my hands like it was made for them? That your body would mold into mine and mine into yours as though we were twined within the same womb?”
Appreciation flickered across her face, but then the frown returned. Someone had warned her against him— he saw it in her eyes.
Receiving some sort of acquiescence from the cow’s uplifted tail, the grunting bull mounted her hindquarters.
Chrysaleon plucked one of the leaves off the vine and traced it from Aridela’s shoulder to her wrist. “The bull cares for nothing but his brief pleasure, and when it’s done won’t remember the cow. But it isn’t that way for us. Whether I want to or not, I love you. Have I not proved it through the battle I waged in the labyrinth? By these wounds I suffer for your sake?”
His argument formed without planning or preparation, and for the first time he wasn’t sure if he was still telling lies.
“Goddess Athene paired you to my sister,” she said, her deep black gaze softening. “You will ascend Kaphtor’s throne at her side. The council made the decision.”
“Your decision holds me, not the council’s. If they forbid our union, we can leave. Your home will be the citadel of Mycenae. We have mountains in plenty to remind you of Kaphtor, but I will never leave you alone long enough to miss it. And our palace, though not as magnificent as yours, is the finest on the Argolid. I’ve seen how much you love honey. I’ll pack our storerooms with jars and serve you honey-cakes three times a day. You will know honor and respect as my wife, as Mycenae’s queen. Would you not rather come with me than waste your life buried in caves praying and breathing smoke?”
“And what of Iros, who is already your wife?”
Ah. Her doubts came from Harpalycus. He should have known. “That means nothing to me. It was arranged without my knowledge or consent. I will send her back to her father.”
“And in doing so, make me the cause of war between Mycenae and Tiryns.”
He shrugged. “I would gladly flatten Tiryns if you join me at Mycenae.”
“You ask me to abandon my people, betray my mother and sister, defy Lady Athene. Do you imagine we would be allowed a single day of happiness?”
The painted team crept out of hiding and roped the hobble around the bull’s hind leg. His furious bellow reverberated up the slope.
“Do you want that to be my fate?” Chrysaleon asked, nodding toward the bull. “Hobbled, cheated, helpless?”
“You would take me from all I was born to do and leave Kaphtor in turmoil.” Aridela shuddered. “My mother would never stop hunting you until you were dead.”
The dancers fell back, laughing, and allowed the bull to finish his business. Afterward there was some thrashing, but the strong nets eventually won out. The bull gave up and sprawled on his side, exhausted.
“I’m restless,” Aridela said. She started to take his hand in her own but, glancing toward the attendants, brushed off her tunic instead and rose. “There is no purpose in debating things that will never be. Why don’t we hunt or explore?”
He couldn’t tell if this meant her outright refusal, and bit his lip to hold back angry demands. Seldom was he forced to wait for what he wanted, whether it be a pomegranate, a well-crafted spear, or a virgin. When had he ever bothered to speak so many flowered words to a woman? And why did he offer marriage? She was
right; it would mean war, not only between Mycenae and Tiryns but Mycenae and Crete. He’d declared his willingness to fight for her, but was he willing to see thousands killed for the sake of this unreasonable lust?
Litter-bearers carried them back to the palace. She went off to exchange her gown for a sturdier tunic while Chrysaleon wandered the terraces on the hillside and stretched his leg, which had stiffened from sitting beneath the tree. He saw Menoetius and Selene below, walking along a low rock wall. Selene laughed. Menoetius bent and kissed her.
Aridela reappeared, clad in muted brown and a plain leather belt. She carried two bows but warned him that the hills around Phaistos didn’t offer much game, as the farmers did their best to keep animals away from the crops.
“My friend is taken with your guard.” She nodded toward the unaware couple. “She called his lovemaking a pleasure beyond belief, and blushed as though he was her first.”
Even as Chrysaleon gave a skeptical snort, he was struck by a transient expression on Aridela’s face. Sadness? Nostalgia? He saw again in memory how Menoetius had reddened when the boy, Isandros, revealed that the bastard and Aridela knew each other.
“Perhaps she was dreaming or drunk,” he said. “He spares little time for women in Mycenae.”
Aridela dismissed her attendants in a tone that brooked no argument, something she had been specifically forbidden from doing by both her mother and the oracle, Themiste. His hopes leaped. She had put him off so far, citing his wounds and all those who watched them so carefully. Perhaps she’d finally realized he was perfectly capable of making love to her.
In answer to their timid protests, she said she was taking Chrysaleon for a short walk along the road, pointed where she meant, and promised they would remain in sight. They reluctantly agreed. Wasting no time, she led him south along the well-worn road. At first they passed fishermen, women carrying baskets of laundry, litters, and oxen, but the farther they walked, the fewer people they encountered. Eventually, trees and rolling hills hid them from the palace altogether.
Chrysaleon’s hopes crept upward again.
“Tell me about the first time you met Menoetius,” he said. The request stuck in his throat like bad cheese; he hated the idea of his brother sharing secrets with this woman, no matter how innocent the circumstances. He needed Aridela’s side of things.
“He didn’t tell you?” Aridela’s gaze turned up to his and he was freshly astonished at her eyes, which seemed to consume half her face. They’d never held a hint of trickery or deceit. He wanted badly to rip off that tunic, to feel her beneath him, and he suspected she had arranged this walk so he could, but it would wait for the right place, the right time. Then he would have her, again and again, and forge her to him as a sword blade forged to its hilt, leaving no room for Menoetius, Lycus, or any other man.
“No,” he said. Now that they were out of sight of the palace, he clasped her hand. “I learned of it the day of the Games, from your brother.”
Her mouth turned up in a wistful smile. Apparently, his question sparked fond memories. He struggled to maintain an unconcerned air and tightened his grip on her hand.
“It doesn’t surprise me,” she said. “Even then, he was quiet, shy. He saved my life. I confess I loved him, as a child will love an older, brave, and handsome man. I’m sure he thought me quite silly. I remember weeping for days when he left, and thinking death preferable to losing him.”
Chrysaleon unclenched his teeth with effort and forcibly swallowed resentment and jealousy. “What happened?”
“I tried once before to dance with a bull.” She laughed. “I was ten and very stupid. I thought the bull was no match for me. Of course I was gored. You’ve seen the scar.”
“Yes.”
“Isandros helped me sneak into the ring. He was under sentence of death for that. So I went to the shrine to pray for mercy, and my wound broke open. I would have bled to death but for Carmanor. That was the name he used, I don’t know why. It’s hard to think of him now as ‘Menoetius.’ He was there, praying. He carried me to the courtyard. He told you nothing of this?”
Chrysaleon shrugged. “He was praying?”
“Yes,” she said. With a quick glance backward, she pulled him off the road, beneath the overhanging branches of an enormous plane tree, and into a verdant, deserted meadow. “I loved his reverence. It wasn’t idle habit or show, but real, and meant much to me, for I’d heard all mainland barbarians were crude and impious.”
With a snort of laughter, Chrysaleon said, “Menoetius, devout? Not anymore, my lady. He no longer has any use for such things.”
Surprise passed over her face then she looked sad, saying only, “He is much changed.”
Good. If he could damage, even raze those tender memories, so much the better. “What happened after?” he asked.
“It wasn’t clear at first if he’d tried to help or hurt me. My mother was suspicious. She confined him until I could verify his story. Then of course, we feasted him and gave him many gifts.”
“So I am in my blood brother’s debt.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “I must thank him.”
A strong wind lifted from the west; it was hot, dry, leaving them thirsty. Darkness fell earlier than usual, leaving vaults of purple in the heavens and the scent of wild thyme flowing on swift currents of air.
They came upon an old ruin of a wall that offered protection at their backs. Gathering wood, they built a fire. “All my life I’ve heard of Kaphtor,” Chrysaleon said as they settled beside it. He put one arm around her and made a sweeping gesture with the other. “Rich land of ships, palaces, mountains, caves, and fertile plains. I thought these must be fanciful lies. Women, owning the land, passing it to their daughters? Such a thing could never happen in my country. Yet my slave, Alexiare, explained how well your people managed, and for how many long ages— since before any of Argolis was tilled or any citadel built. My ancestors brought powerful gods to help them conquer these mainland villages, but when we came to the edge of land and looked out for more places to vanquish, Crete’s mighty ships forced us to stop.”
“Where do your people come from?”
“Our bards sing of vast plains of grass, high mountains on every side, of snow and ice that can freeze a man solid in a single night. It’s said our ancestors traveled four entire seasons to reach the lands we now call home.”
“And your gods? I have only learned a little about them.”
“They reside in the sky, the ocean, on mountaintops. They control everything, from sunlight to earthshaking, and have jealous tempers. Foremost among them is King Poseidon, Hippos, Father of horses, Lord of the earth, sea, and heavens. He gave us the horse, a beast more precious to us than any other. One of his palaces lies beneath the sea, where he keeps stables of coral and white stallions with manes of gold. He sinks our ships when angered, and destroys our coasts with waves as tall as thunderclouds. He visits us in the form of a bull, and in the heavens, we see him in the sun and the moon.”
“My tutors told me about Lord Poseidon,” Aridela said. “But they never made him sound as glorious as you do.”
“Every village my ancestors conquered worshipped Lady Athene, White-Armed Hera, and she the farmers call dark Hecate. We merged these mistresses into our own beliefs, for we saw their worth and knew we would have an easier time with the people if we honored their deities.”
Wind swooped as though wanting attention. The fire leaped in swirls of sparks and blue-edged flames.
“Kaphtor,” Chrysaleon continued, “where the path of moon and stars is as familiar as the change of seasons, and the smallest lump of gold can be measured. Palaces sprawl like cities, marvels of comfort and elegance. In truth, Alexiare reminds me how Labyrinthos stood established and civilized when my own people were naked savages living in caves.” He bowed his head in exaggerated homage. “A commanding yet generous lady— that is Kaphtor, lying in perfect conjunction along the best trade-routes from Egypt and Isy. She brings us the
tin we crave, purple dye to impress our rivals, gold, and all the comforts we can no longer live without. She forges ties with everyone and leads all in prosperity.”
“Do you mock us?” She looked wary.
“Perhaps I would like to.” Chrysaleon shrugged. “But Alexiare spoke the truth. I always thought his claims mere lies, the overblown boasting or false memories of an old man. But now I see they were not.”
“Lady Athene showed favor to my people when she sent her daughter to lead us here from our homeland.”
“Where is the land of your ancestors?”
“To the south. It is a country so vast it takes years to get from one end to the other. The sun burns everything; no snow ever falls but on the highest mountains. There is a beast, I’m told, which towers as high as our highest walls. It eats the leaves from the very tips of trees, and another, so big it can crush a man with one foot. And lions, my lord.” Lifting her hand, she touched his hair then rested her palm on his cheek, her mouth curving into a slow smile redolent with desire. “You are like a lion. Your father named you truly.”
The need to kiss her threatened to blot out Chrysaleon’s argument. His mind fell into blankness, but he fought his way back. “You say Athene showed your people favor. Yet it seems to me she’s shown you no favor at all.”
“Why?” Aridela’s smile faded into startled surprise.
His wounded leg ached; he rolled onto his side so he could stretch it and cupped her knee in one hand. “If you were a peasant or farmer’s child, you could leave Crete, be with me.”
“Athene sees all, from beginning to end. She doesn’t plan things according to the fleeting wishes of mortals.”
The Year-god's Daughter: A Saga of Ancient Greece (The Child of the Erinyes Book 1) Page 38
