Dark of the Moon

chapter 14

THE QUEEN belatedly realizes that I'm in even greater need of a bath than of food, and as I try to frame a question about what the king means—I'll do? Do for what?—she sends Prokris to fetch the child's nurse.

The old woman looks exactly like a bird, with sharp little eyes on either side of a long, thin nose. I almost expect her to flap her skinny arms as she precedes me down a corridor, past weaving rooms full of women who fall silent and peer out the door after us, and storerooms jammed with large earthen vessels of what must be wine and oil, and fat sacks of grain. She wears a most unbirdlike smirk as she waits for me to hand her my clothes. I fumble with them, not sure whether it's decent to strip in front of her. She glares at Artemis, and the dog lowers her head and tail and retires to a corner.

"Come, boy," the bird-woman says, not even trying to conceal her impatience. "Whatever it is you have under that stinking tunic, I've seen better. I was nurse to Aegeus, and I've had the care of Prince Medus since the day he was born." In my haste I manage to knot the belt even tighter. She shifts her weight and sighs.

At last I lower myself into the steaming water and settle back with a sigh. When I was still small enough for my mother to take an interest in me, my bath was the highlight of my week. She would fashion sea monsters out of shells and wood and make them wiggle through the water, and I would battle them until I emerged clean and victorious.

The woman doesn't leave me to bathe alone, as I had hoped, but rubs sweet-smelling soap into a large sea sponge and vigorously scrubs it on me, tutting through her teeth. "You'll be fit for the king's court when I'm through with you," she says grimly, as if this is a challenge she's taken on. "Although where you're going, it won't make any difference."

"Going?" I sit up, sloshing water over the side of the tub. "I'm not going anywhere. I just got here."

"As you say." Her voice is prim, but I hear a note of sarcasm.

"What do you mean? And why wouldn't it matter how clean I am?"

She pushes me forward and rubs at my back until I think the water will run red with my blood. She yanks up an arm, scrubbing from shoulder to fingertips, and then back down to my armpit. One thing I have to say for her: she's thorough.

Apparently she can't keep from taunting me. "The one you'll be meeting doesn't care what you look like or smell like."

I try to wait her out, but I can't. "Who will I be meeting?"

A dry chuckle, then, "Someone who cares what you taste like."

I emerge from the bath wearing a brilliant white tunic, and a silver diadem that holds my hair in place. My feet are encased in sandals so new, they squeak on the stone floor.

The bird-woman has disappeared, and I'm uncertain where to go. I take a tentative step into a corridor, hear muffled giggles, and hastily retreat. I wait a bit and then try again. With the help of a young manservant, I find my way back, Artemis's claws clicking on the stone floor at my side.

The room is empty, and I'm standing in the doorway wondering what to do when I hear a soft footstep. I turn to see the girl Prokris. She lays a soft hand on my arm and asks if I'd like a cup of wine. I accept and follow her into the lofty chamber. I sit on a low stool and notice that the slippery cushions I sat on earlier have been removed. Burned, I wouldn't wonder, trying not to blush as I remember how filthy I'd been. The girl pours two cups of wine and hands me one. The liquid is so dark that I know it hasn't been watered, and I wonder if she's trying to dull my mind, so I take only a sip as she settles next to me.

"I hope you're not angry with me."

So, what she said earlier to the king and queen is something that should anger me. "I didn't understand what you were talking about," I admit. "What did the king mean by saying that I would 'do'?"

"It all goes back to the young prince," she says.

"Little Medus?"

"No, no. Androgeos. His father is the king of Krete. Minos. You've heard of him?"

Everyone knows about the powerful King Minos, and everyone in the world sends him tribute. Even small Troizena—when our turn comes every nine years, we send him wine and herbs. "Yes," I say. "I've heard of him."

"His son Androgeos came here to play in our games—the Panathenaic Games. He was a fine athlete, and so handsome! The king's firstborn, they said, with his first wife. They married when they were barely of age. Androgeos was raised in the palace at Knossos, the first city of the island. Androgeos was a fine athlete," she repeats, "and that's where all the trouble came from."

"What trouble?"

It appears that the Kretan Prince Androgeos was so good at the games that some drunken Athenians killed him. When word reached King Minos, he was furious, and he added a new tribute to the wine and oil that Athens was already sending him.

"Every ninth year, King Aegeus must send seven boys and seven girls to Krete," Prokris says. "At first, he sent pretty children, nobly born, but the Kretans sold them as slaves. Some even went to work in the horrible limestone mines and of course died quickly. That was bad enough, but worse was to come. The second time, the king turned them into playthings for his wife's monstrous son, who tore them apart and ate them."

I have heard of this monstrous son. He is called the Minotauros and is said to be the son of the Kretan queen and a sacred bull.

"This is all very interesting," I say, even as my stomach turns at what she has said, "but what does it have to do with me?"

"That second time, almost nine years ago now, Aegeus sent only the children nobody wanted—beggars, mostly, and the ones who should have been exposed at birth. King Minos was furious, and last year he gave instructions that this time, Aegeus must send his son. Medea flew into a rage and said they should never have her son, that she already sacrificed two children and this one would not go to the monster."

I begin to see, and what I see I do not like at all.

"Aegeus had another son, but he died of the fever, and a few years ago, shortly after he married Medea, a boy turned up at the palace claiming that Aegeus was his father." She gazes at me thoughtfully. "You look something like him. You both resemble the king."

"Where is he now?" I ask.

"He disappeared one night, about a moon after he arrived. That was before King Minos ordered Aegeus to send him a son, and Medea—well, Medea saw the boy as a threat to her own child, who had just been born. But now they have a king's son in you." She raises her eyebrows. "Were you about to say something?" I shake my head hastily. "Surely a hero such as you will have no difficulty when you go into the maze and meet the Minotauros."

"Me? A hero?" But then I remember the tales I told, about the giant turtle and the innkeeper who cut off his guests' feet and all the rest of it, and I know I am defeated.

And so it is decided. I have arrived in Athens just before the boats are to sail, and the priests agree that this is a sign that the gods have willed me to go—not that the holy men would dare say anything else once the king's mind has been made up.

It's some small satisfaction to learn that Prokris is to be one of the seven girls going as tribute. If I am to be exiled to the strange land of Krete, so is the person who engineered that exile. The king is to make her his wife—one of many, I understand—and since she is a distant relation of Aegeus's, the two kings will become allies after my death has satisfied Minos's desire for revenge.

It is a dark morning several weeks later when we sail, with clouds hanging so low over the horizon that it's hard to tell where they end and the land begins. I stand at the stern of the ship and watch the cliffs retreat, rage against my father battling with the fear in my gut.