The day dawned colourfully in the eastern sky above the Temple Mansion, in deep reds and blues which exploded into yellow as the sun breached the distant clouds above the horizon. Glaucus's shadow reached eagerly across the paving of the roof terrace in a pre-emptive strike towards Clitia's room. In a trice, he followed its lead, hurried away from the exposed location he was in and quenched his anxiety in the shade of the descending steps.
For many, many days he had delayed his flight. So close had he been to the perfect conclusion to his plans for escape when one of the karpathia had entered the door that he had marked for his release, for freedom, and it had at last been Clitia. For a brief moment he had watched her move gracefully away from him and disappear around a corner; and he had not been able to call, nor even to speak at all. She had not appeared when he had waited near the same door the next morning, or the next. Every morning at dawn, for many days afterwards, he had waited near that door.
He slept by day in a hollow in the depths of the jar-filled magazines beneath the western side of the Temple Mansion, or in one of the pithoi themselves. Down the axis of each long room were gypsum-lined pits in which he could lie hidden, covered, surrounded by enormous jars and vessels standing in the darkness.
He moved about at night, like a ghost. The doors to the city and to the river were all locked at night but he had discovered drains, high enough to stand in, dank, wet, dark and long. The magazines of the Temple Mansion contained all the food he could want. The day of his abduction still haunted him and he could not shake the image of the Goddess from his mind, nor the memory of Clitia. He was beginning to wonder whether he was becoming invisible. Anything seemed possible in these surroundings. Or was he just very good at making himself appear invisible, he thought, as he sat at the foot of the steps and breathed courage slowly into his heart as the sun gathered its own strength for the day.
Clitia had appeared before him again, suddenly, early one evening, holding a lamp. He had been in perfect hiding within view of the grand staircase that rises on the eastern side of the Temple Mansion, and she had ascended that staircase and disappeared, as she had done once before. Glaucus, fired on this occasion by an inspiration, had crept out into the central court where he soon saw the light she was holding appear dimly on an upper storey high to his left, lighting windows in the red brick fabric surrounding the higher rooms of the western wing of the Temple Mansion. Then the light had vanished. And now, at last, he knew where.
He took a deep breath and entered the corridor, past a gazelle walking tightrope along a strand of ivy.
No sunlight streamed onto Clitia's bed. She had slept in her room, although she was not quite sure why she bothered now, and arranged the leaves of wild olive into a loose mattress before replacing the under-blanket on top again. The sound of footsteps along the corridor caused her to turn towards the door. She was expecting one of her girlfriends to come and she went over to the door and opened it. Instead, she saw a face that she had almost forgotten.
As Glaucus stood squarely in the open doorway, he knew, for the first time since his involuntary incarceration within the Temple Mansion, that he was exposed without any hope of concealment. So he stood, boldly and alertly, hoping to judge in an instant whether it was the right door; his joy leapt as Clitia appeared before him and his eyes met hers in a mutual encyclopaedia of questioning. She stood facing him and could not move.
Each knew that one of them had to do something.
Clitia moved; she darted forward, pulled him into her room and slammed the door closed.
'Go away!' she exclaimed.
'Where have you been all this time?' he replied, ridiculously.
'Go away!' Clitia repeated, unconvincingly, and moved to block his exit.
·
Theseus had tried hard to find her. Through the heat of the afternoon and through the pleasant warmth of the night he had searched. Hide and seek had once been a satisfying game, searching countless rooms of the labyrinthine upper floors, every hall of the lower, numberless cellars and crypts, behind every hanging curtain, inside every hidden space that he could find. It had been an adventure to discover new rooms, new corridors, new smells, new places, new faces, new bodies. When he had come upon a Lady of the Goddess, he had introduced himself properly, politely, reassured her, loved her. Or continued his search, explaining that he was otherwise engaged but that he would return to play a new game with her shortly. And then, after finding the object of his searching and loving his sweet discovery, he would embark upon another exploration.
But he had never tired of searching for her. The woman who had first appeared before him in the Court of the Verandas, holding a manuscript closely to her face and reading as she walked. He had never tired of searching for her.
Now only two days remained to the first full moon after the midsummer solstace. On this day the Ladies' Games were going to take place. But there was plenty of time.
He was once again in the Court of the Verandas, trying to remember the exact spot where she had been moving when he had first seen her. He had tried all the other places but she was never there. The floor of the court had been freshly swept and a pile of dirt lay ungathered between two of the rising timber columns. It was like a fine grey ash. Theseus picked a pinch of it between his thumb and forefinger and placed it in his palm. Little grains of black, shaped like tiny tears. Amber quartz. A green mineral. It was like sand. How could sand have found its way into the building? Perhaps southerly winds had carried it from the deserts of Egypt and Libya! Theseus brushed his palm and made to begin another desperate circuit of his home.
·
'You lived in a jar!' exclaimed Clitia incredulously and burst into laughter. 'A honey jar!' she hugged him and the tears rolled down her face.
'It is a very big jar and in a very dark place,' assured Glaucus. Clitia laughed uncontrollably, but more silently, on his shoulder, and after a few moments he realised that she was crying.
She pushed him away, took a deep breath, and wiped her face with her hand. 'You must leave.' Glaucus stood still.
'Tonight - you must come to my house near the cypress woods.' Her smile asserted itself with its usual, uncontrollable dominion over her face, and his responded.
'But we cannot be seen together,' she warned. 'You must go back to your jar,' she bit her lip and took his hand, 'and wait there. I will leave after dark by the door in the east wing, the one beyond the great hall of the balconies which I took you into briefly, such a long time ago. You will always have found the door locked at night and impossible to reach during daylight,' she touched his chest with her fingertips, 'but there are no keepers there and I will leave it unlocked for you when I leave.'
'How will I know where to find you, in the darkness, when I have left the Temple?' asked Glaucus.
'Do you know the villages to the northeast of here, beyond the bridge over the river?'
'No.'
'Not at all!'
'No!' Clitia looked around her and her eyes fell upon a spindle of yarn that she had spent the last day or so working upon. She went over to her chest, pulled out an empty one and gave it to Glaucus.
'What do I do with a stick and a stone?' he asked.
'Use it to wind up the thread that you will find on the ground tomorrow night, when you step out into the darkness from the east door,' she replied. 'I will be waiting at the other end, but don't be too early. It is impossible for me to risk being seen outside the Temple with you when people are about, but there are places I can wait, places we can meet safely. Be careful because the moon will be bright, and make sure that you wind up all the thread.'
She opened the door, stepped out into the corridor and listened. 'Go!' she urged.
·
In the gloom of a long corridor, holding a sheet of papyrus paper closely to her face and reading, Theseus's heart missed a beat as he saw her turn a corner and disappear from sight. He ran as fast as he could to where she had turned and found himself entering a large hall, just in time to see her vanish into a corridor leading off from it. Theseus ran down this corridor faster than he had ever run before, with the possible exception of a race whose memory caused him suddenly to falter slightly in the realisation of how long ago it was since he had risked all for an objective that he seemed now to have abandoned, and a sudden guilt and a sense of foolishness gripped him but only slightly because he could feel the same rush of adrenaline that he had felt all those many months before and he sprinted after her now as fast as he could, faster than anyone else had ever run before, content in the knowledge that he would catch her in a few short moments. She stepped up a flight of stairs in front of him. Like the wind, he followed, into a long room. At the far end, she seemed to pause slightly, and turn. And vanish. Seeking, suddenly, had the same feel as at the beginning. But he could not find her.
Theseus began a concerted search. He devised a route which covered all he knew of the Temple Mansion. And there were walls behind which he knew that he had never been, a room which still waited for him to enter. He knew she was in the building, somewhere. So he began in a hall near to the head of a long, gently descending stairway that led to a room decorated with alabaster rosettes. Near the head of this stairway was the Axe of the Covenant, and he stepped into the spacious shrine to look at it once again. Then he searched all the halls nearby, descended the stairs, took a lamp and searched the passages and crypts of the western Temple beneath these halls. In one of the crypts, the patch of earth at the foot of a pillar contained some inverted conical cups, nurturing the promise of animating, once again, the butterflies on the walls beyond, but Theseus moved on. He searched the passages and cells of the eastern side of the Mansion, passed through a hall of colonnades and the hall of blue dolphins and small pink fishes and through the lightcourt surrounded by grand balconies, then retraced his steps out into the central court and down the slope past the bull reliefs to the hall of colonnades and spiral-decorated tapestries where the Temple Mansion had once seemed so alien; first this hall, then the one above it, up to the rooms above these and on to a winding staircase and down to a plant-filled lightcourt and into a corridor that led to another with a silver gaming table at the far end and through the storerooms to the Court of the Verandas. He searched the balconies where he and Hermione had read together, but there was no sign of her, no sign of the lady with the manuscript. He was deviating from his plan already, repeating himself, looking where he had already looked before.
Theseus returned and ascended the staircase to the very top of the Temple Mansion, to the living rooms and followed a winding route through split levels of chambers, entering every one, down corridors, half-timbered, decorated with colourful frescoes and often supported with columns of blue and red, now and again catching a glimpse of the rounded upwards-curving horns of the roof ornament, until he reached a corridor on the south side of the building and entered each room in turn. Every door, along this narrow passage and then along the next, through every connecting room, down stairs that led to spaces which lower corridors had deviated around. He found himself following a way that led inexorably downwards and came at last to the small court which led to the echoing cavern and the tunnels, so he returned and tried another. Faces turned towards his, some expectantly, some questioningly; some lovingly and gave him news of his fatherhood and hugged him. He came to a room he had never visited and inside he found a beautiful woman who introduced herself as Helen. But his purpose was fixed. He made his way down a long stairway to the lane above the western storerooms; he found a doorway and descended again to the head of a hall with three columns, ran across the landing and urgently down a wide staircase, past the huge column which supported the upper stories of the Mansion on its western side and out into the central court once again. Then he raced up those same steps, retracing the route back to Helen's door.
'Have you seen her? Do you know who she is?' he implored. Helen did not know who he was talking about.
Back along corridors, through rooms joining halls to other halls went Theseus, light halls, lightcourts, gloomy passages, spirals, oil lamps, hanging tubs and baskets, up to the highest levels again, light, airy and familiar; he paused to overlook the long portico that snaked its way down to the stream far below, where spectators had sat eagerly and expectantly on the morning of the Games. Then he searched along a winding route past a fresco of dolphins and flying fishes, then an octopus, crabs and brightly coloured rocks, blue monkeys gathering saffron, tall grasses and spotted ivy, stripy stones, lions, purple bushes and blue gazelles. A ship with a white sail. He punched the wall in a sudden burst of anger and frustration.
·
His perspectives restored, Theseus, that night, took the Axe of the Covenant and made his escape from the Temple Mansion. Silently. Quickly. Hermione waited for him to arrive by boat near her house by the shore, as their plan had been for many days now. But as the following morning wore on, Theseus became more and more lost and began to lose even his sense of the direction in which Hermione's house lay. The pit of loose soil beneath the upturned roots of a fallen tree where he had hidden the Axe during the night did not lie beside the main path through the forest, nor on any of the other paths and tracks that he had followed in daylight so far. He had become lost in the dense woodland during the darkness of the early morning, on a journey that he had not planned to have to make, from the cave of Eileithyia overland to Hermione's house. And in making swifter his efforts to regain his bearings, he had put the Axe down only to find himself unable to retrace his path back to it.
His sails had been destroyed.
The forest contained a lot of undergrowth and the tall cypress trees grew closely together, impeding progress and allowing only a little sunlight to penetrate. He scrambled up a steep slope, remembering a similar climb in the darkness, but it became too steep and obviously not the same one. He shouted in frustration. A growing anger sent him back to a main path and with the concentration which controlled anger can bring, he resumed his search from the beginning. With growing desperation, he followed a narrow animal track into the heart of the forest to a point where a small, indeed hardly discernible path led off. A little way along this route through the gloomy underbrush, an opening became visible between the cypress trunks; a tree had been blown over and allowed a dapple of sunlight to penetrate to the woodland floor.
But it was not the one.
A little further along and the track began to disappear completely; the slender brown spikes of cypress branches beneath the green canopy began to force him to weave and duck and it was obvious that this was not the way.
Back at the fork, Theseus followed the other track and came to a path crossing it, a few paces led him to recognise that it was a route that he had already prosecuted without success. Doubling back he came to another path which led away to the right. Visible between the trees a short distance along this new track was a clearing and he left the path to make for it; hopelessly, because he knew that he had followed a much more obvious trackway before putting the heavy axe down, just as the moon was setting.
Then in the distance, between the trees, far away, holding a manuscript up to her face and moving obliquely away from him, was the woman he had been searching for at the Temple Mansion. But there were so many trees obscuring Theseus's view of her that she came into his sight and out again like a flickering ghost, but so clearly in those flashing instants was her face visible that there could be no doubt. Theseus forgot the clearing and ran as fast as he could towards her, but she was travelling quickly and he found it difficult to keep up.
After a long chase, breathlessly pushing his way through the forest and skirting his way around thickets of thorn and scrub, protecting his arms with the sheepskin that he had wrapped the Axe in, she stopped, and Theseus found himself approaching her quickly; and as he neared her, he recognised the upturned tree where he had left the Axe. But then, only a few trees away from her, Theseus heard the sound of voices and a staccato of running footsteps. He stopped in front of a path that crossed the one he was on, only a few paces away from the fallen tree. Glimpses of the woman became fewer and fewer as she receded into the forest beyond. Theseus weighed the situation with a sinking heart, reluctantly stole a few paces backwards and stood very still behind a cypress trunk. The first runner dashed past, along the track, clearly a Minoan bronzebelt. Another sped past, in a blue and gold loincloth and carrying a club, closely followed by a third. Theseus moved silently back into the forest. His absence from the Temple Mansion must already have been detected.
But his movement had been spotted, a shout rang out! Theseus judged that the time had come to run himself. He darted across the path in the direction that he had seen the woman disappearing, swerving around the trunks of trees, shielding his face with his arms and with the sheepskin, and found that the pursuit which had just warmed him stood him in good stead, and as long as he made instant decisions as to the course he wished to take around trees and thickets, he could move very swiftly. The sheepskin was invaluable in a part of the forest where the lower branches stuck out in wooden brushes and spikes at head height and tried to pierce him in the face and eyes as he rushed past. This advantage proved to be decisive. With his head down and wrapped fleece to the fore, he punched and weaved a way through the forest and when, at last, he stopped to listen, there was nothing to hear except his own breathing and the drumming of his heart. He gulped breaths of air and looked all around. As he recovered, he listened and there was still nothing to hear, except the calling of birds. He held his breath for a short while and heard no sound of pursuit, before exploding back into respiration. The sun was low enough for him to judge a rough direction and he set off westwards, through the thick forest, raising the fleece once more in front of his face.
·
The sky darkened as the sun set. The northern horizon was clear and peaceful with not a cloud to be seen. A cool breeze blew in through the portico between the columns of the open partition within the middle of the room, and penetrated into the area where a huge cauldron stood. The sea air dispersed the warmth that the day had stored and wafted the fumes from the steaming water around the faces of those grouped around it. The bronze cauldron seemed to brood over the enormity of itself and the deed it was to perform. A tripod supported it over the hearth.
Ariadne stood stirring the broth, and added a little more barley, some wheat flour, acorns and a little honey. Then she put another ingredient into the simmering liquid and began to stir again with a long wooden ladle.
After a little while, Ariadne and Hermione moved away from the cauldron, past the partition piers which divided the large room into two, and into the outer lounge which faced the sea through three columns open to the bracing air. Then they clasped hands and began to walk slowly around each other, with their arms outstretched. Soon, a steady chord began to sound and it was far from clear to Thersander where it came from.
'Drink from the cauldron,' called Ariadne, in a strangely detached voice, 'and we will recover the Axe.' Theseus picked up a wooden spoon that lay by the hearth. Perhaps the magic had already taken effect. A cinder burst beneath the vessel as he skimmed the top of the watery broth. He dipped the spoon into a pool of freshly upwelling liquid, brought it to his lips, blew on it a couple of times, and drank.
'Now you Thersander,' called Ariadne. Thersander came up to the hearth and took the spoon from Theseus, dipped it in and took a spoonful, thought about criticising the cuisine but, remembering its purpose, did not.
'Where is the sound coming from?' he asked, and blew on the broth he had taken. There was no reply. Thersander returned to the bench by the far wall, where Theseus was sipping wine and watching the dancers. 'Can you hear it?' Thersander asked. Theseus only nodded.
The sound pulsated like a painless throb through Thersander's head. The pipers of the chord breathed long and evenly, from wherever they were, whoever they were. The melodious hum went on for a long time, neither rising nor falling in pitch, and in the background the sea sucked rhythmically at the beach outside. There seemed to be no end to it, and after a while, no memory of a beginning. There was only the chord and the sound of the sea. And a cooing.
A dove appeared in the room. Theseus rose from the bench and moved towards it, and it shuffled away from him, towards Hermione and Ariadne. Then it tilted its head questioningly, fluttered its wings and flew up over the cauldron and onto a narrow shelf near the ceiling, where it began to preen itself. The circular dance continued, accompanied by the mysterious chord. Thersander looked out into the growing dusk and tried to concentrate on the swash of the waves dragging the shingle up and down. He strained his eyes and watched a wave break in the twilight and continue as a hill of white foam as it rolled towards the shore, rose once again, passed beneath a gull and broke a second time onto the beach. Another dove shuffled across the floor, and another, and then the area beyond the columns was full of doves; his view of the sea was obscured completely by doves. They descended in a great rush of flapping wings like a cloud, onto the paved floor of the portico, between the columns and into the room. There were suddenly hundreds of them, filling the room and surrounding the dancers, perching on their shoulders and their heads and flapping around them.
And then there were three dancers.
Between Hermione and Ariadne was another woman, and as the dance brought her face into view, Theseus saw that it was the woman he had been following through the forest. She moved her head and looked directly at Theseus, and as she turned, the dance stopped and the hands of Hermione and Ariadne fell to their sides. The apparition walked towards Theseus and her beauty held him transfixed. She held out her hands and Theseus reached out and took them, and she led him upwards, until they stood upon the edge of the cauldron. Her hands slid gently around to embrace him and as she leaned forwards and kissed Theseus as though he were her lover, her hair brushed his shoulders and revealed around the nape of her neck the chain of a pendant, which slipped forwards as she leaned. It was made of a series of gold links, shaped as curls and spirals that Hermione instantly recognised as her own. Her own!
She stared.
Her own.
A sudden crack of sound shot across the room and the apparition vanished.
Theseus tried to save himself, but he was leaning at an angle that unsupported, was unsustainable, and he fell.
It was unclear to Thersander whether the crack he heard was the sound of Theseus's head hitting the edge of the cauldron or whether it occurred in the instant beforehand, but before he could get to him, Theseus had disappeared beneath the surface of the boiling water; bludgeoned, scalded and drowned.
Hermione sank to the ground, unable to accept a complicity in murder. And unable to comprehend the overwhelming sense of relief that engulfed her. Ariadne simply watched the water.
·
The Temple Mansion was quiet and the full moon hung high above the trees of the alder grove as Ariadne climbed the steps and used Hermione's key to enter the secluded door into the side of the Temple that faced the slope down to the river. Curiously, she could see a thread leading from the door down the grassy slope alongside the flight of steps; it seemed to continue away down the slope and she could see no end to it. Finding herself in a long, narrow corridor, she hurried along a series of passages and through a lightcourt to a dark flight of stairs and descended.
She came shortly to the court she was looking for. A silver cascade of moonlight illuminated the side of a balcony high above her head. Wooden pillars gave off a faint aroma of honey and a covered walkway soon led to a dim hall and a flight of stairs leading further downwards, into blackness. At the bottom of these steps was a small room and further steps down into a tunnel that led to an old abandoned grain silo.
Ariadne felt her way carefully through the tunnel and down steps that wound around a cavernous space, treading gingerly upon the rickety wooden boards, and came at last to the earthen floor. If she had had light to see, she would have noted the ochre of the walls and the tunnel that led through the red earth into a blackness even deeper than the blackness she was standing in now.
As she waited, a faint sound emerged from the stillness, a growing and developing, subtle and yet persistent, a rustling and then a shuffling and a scraping, and then the clear sound of breathing.
Theseus emerged.
Ariadne slapped him on the back and he uttered a cry into the darkness. She took hold of the thread he was trailing behind him and broke it.
The Axe was slung across his back.
'We must hurry,' she said.
·
Thersander's boat ploughed the waves towards the island of Naxos. Huddled at the bottom of the rolling vessel in a bed of straw, and bleating pitifully, was a woolly young ram. Resting beside this Golden Fleece was the Axe of the Covenant. Behind them, the island of Calliste was just visible on the horizon; it looked tranquil and the air above it was clear. A bright blue cloudless sky. All was peaceful.
'Things will be difficult for you to begin with,' cautioned Ariadne, as Theseus gazed at the sail. 'You will have to piece together some aspects of the past from the memories of other people, and this will take time, although it is a perfectly normal thing to have to do.'
'What of my father?' asked Theseus.
'Your father is safe,' assured Ariadne, 'although he will remember things that are not quite as you remember them.' She took a deep breath of sea air and turned her face away from the spray as the bow drove into the base of another wave.
'Thersander and I will leave you both when we land on Naxos,' she called. 'Neileus is likely to be there already and this ram would like to be reintroduced to its fellows. Thersander has said that you can keep the boat, as a gift of parting.' Another burst of spray drifted back in defiance of the breeze and Ariadne turned her head again.
'Take care of Hermione.'
Hermione sat with her arm over the side of the boat, ready to brush a wave with her fingertips if it rose enough, pleased to be returning home. Thersander leaned upon the steering oar, clasping in one hand then the other a small bronze axehead with a design of a honey bee and three interlocking spirals cast masterfully upon the metal; it reminded him of a land far over the sea, and a long journey in the arms of good luck.
Something was still troubling Theseus. He looked again at the sail and began to frame a question which he had already asked. Then he came to a decision.
'Take down the sail, Thersander.'
'But this black one is the only sail we have,' said Thersander.
'Then we shall row,' said Theseus.