Dark of the Moon

THESEUS

chapter 26

THE DAYS march past each other in a tedious procession. I could lounge on cushions all day, eating and drinking, and find a different girl in town every night if I chose, but I'm not used to such idleness. Konnidas would show one of his rare smiles if he were to learn that I look for something to do—he used to have to chase me down to make me help him hoe a field or gather firewood.

The palace guards seem bored too. Everyone in the world rightly fears the Kretan navy, so the chances of an enemy slipping past the ferocious-looking warships that circle the island are slim. The Kretans are good swordsmen, and I manage to pass some time learning how to fence. They give me only a wooden practice sword, but it's well balanced and easy to use. I improve rapidly, but compared with the soldiers, I am incompetent. When I feel foolishly inadequate, I offer to wrestle them. My size makes up for my lack of skill—the men here are generally small, and they're quite slender until they reach middle age, when lack of exercise and the excellent Kretan food turn them soft and wide.

Everyone is courteous, but the men seem wary of me. Some of the younger boys are friendlier, and I enjoy giving a fuzzy-headed youngster named Glaukos wrestling lessons. He's talkative and cheerful and would be well-looking if not for one eye that refuses to follow the other one and a bad habit of using his left hand.

One of the boys I saw training to dance with the bulls early in my stay in Knossos has offered to show me the rudiments of this sport. He's named Simo, and he reminds me of Arkas. He's small and quick, like my tormenter back home in Troizena. Even though practicing with a real bull is prohibited—it would be a sacrilege, I think—and Simo holds a board with bull's horns nailed to it, I quickly learn that someone as large and slow moving as I has no business being in the bullring. I trip over my own feet, and Simo grazes my back with the horn tip. On the next pass, I dodge him but accidentally tread on his foot hard enough to make him curse.

"Sorry," I mumble. He hands me the board.

"You take a turn." He limps off to the side of the ring. Despite my misgivings, I run at him. He waits until I'm close enough that I worry I'm going to gore him, and then he trips me. I sprawl in the sand, and he is astride my back. "Ha!" he says, and smacks me between the shoulder blades. I stand up and shake him off, knowing that if I truly were the bull that I am pretending to be, that would have been a sword and now I'd be dead. Simo's scornful smile follows me out the ring, and I don't return.

There are few other amusements. The Minos invites me to a banquet, which is enjoyable, and the women who dance between courses are lovely, but I'm mindful of the warnings of the soldier who escorted me to the palace, and I don't try to touch any of them. No one forbids me to leave the grounds, but on the occasions when I do, I find myself surrounded by men with the cloaks that indicate their military status, and their presence drains the pleasure out of any activity that I find. Also, people treat me oddly. It can't be because I'm a foreigner; Knossos is a port, and ships from all over dock here regularly. They must be avoiding me because I came here to be monster fodder.

One evening, after I show the younger boys some wrestling holds, I see Simo and Enops, one of the friendlier of the young men around my age, leaving the arena together. I pay no attention and am about to pass them, when Enops stops me. "We're going to a tavern in the town. Want to come along?" Simo glares at him, but Enops doesn't appear to notice and talks in a friendly manner about Knossos and Athens (about which I know little) and my voyage here. Winter has made a brief return, and the air is cool. I wrap my cloak around myself tightly.

The tavern is warm and brightly lit. I recognize some of the palace guards. They appear surprised to see me, but they nod a greeting and return to their cups and their conversation. Enops orders wine and the Kretan pastries I've grown fond of. He's friendly, and before I know it, I've told him the story of my parentage and the circumstances of my trip here.

When I finish, he strokes his chin thoughtfully and then raises his cup for more wine. The tavern keeper fills it and stands waiting for payment. I fish a coin from my pouch. "Leave the bottle on the table," I say. The man inspects the coin under a lantern, and what he sees must satisfy him, because he does as I ask.

"So, Athens is ruled by a king," Simo says. I nod. "Yet the people worship Athena, a goddess."

"She's very powerful." I feel stung by the implied insult to the deity of a city I hadn't felt any connection to until a few weeks ago. "She's a warrior."

"Oh, I know she's powerful," he says. "Everyone knows that Athena is to be feared. But—" He takes another gulp of wine. I refill his cup. Fortified, he lowers his voice and inches over on the bench so that we can talk without being overheard in the hubbub of the busy tavern. Enops leans in closer as well, and his serious face appears thoughtful as Simo continues. "Some people here say that being ruled by a woman is old-fashioned." He looks around, but no one is paying attention. The soldiers appear to trust that my companions will keep an eye on me, and are tossing dice. "And then others say that Goddess"—Simo winces as if expecting to be struck by lightning—"Goddess would never consent to a man ruling. Yet Athena allows it. It's most interesting."

"Your goddess must be very powerful," I venture, not knowing if I am being disrespectful.

Enops nods. "Goddess causes the grain to grow and the lambs and kids and calves to be born in the spring."

"But just as a woman cannot bear a child without a man, Goddess cannot feed the people without Velchanos," Simo says. "It all depends on Velchanos, really. Once a year, at the planting season, Goddess leaves the sky and comes to us. She takes the body of She-Who-Is-Goddess. From that moment until she returns to her home in the sky, Goddess walks among us. She uses the body of She-Who-Is, who for those days is Goddess."

"And Velchanos takes the body of the Minos?" I ask.

"No!" Enops sounds shocked. "The Minos is the brother of She-Who-Is. We are not like the foul Aegyptians, whose queen marries her own brother."

"No," Simo echoes. "Every spring, Velchanos is born as a bull calf. The priests seek him out after the Planting Festival. We know him by his strength and by certain markings. Our priests bring him back to Knossos, where he is treated as the god and king he is. He lives with us for two years and accepts our worship. And then, at the Planting Festival, we free Velchanos from the bull's body."

I know what that must mean: they slaughter the bull, who for a while has been their god. Well, I've heard of stranger rituals, and whatever they do here must make the gods happy. Everyone I see appears content and well fed and, aside from a few beggars at the port, relatively prosperous.

"Where does he go, your god, once he is freed from the bull?" I ask.

"Velchanos chooses a man," Enops says, "a man whose body the god will inhabit for the length of the Festival. Then She-Who-Is-Goddess is subjected to a test. She must recognize that man from among all the men present."

Some small villages near Troizena have a similar custom, where the king steps down for a day or three days or a week at planting time and another man, usually someone of no importance, takes his place in the palace and in the queen's bed. At the end of that time, the replacement is presented with gifts and is sent back to his regular life. Sometimes he is also given a blow with a green stick or is slapped across the face. I've heard that in one place he's even whipped until he bleeds. I'm not sure why; perhaps this is meant to remind him that he is not really the king and must not boast later of his temporary elevation to that office.

"Any children born to She-Who-Is-Goddess nine moons later, near the next Festival of Birth of the Sun, are the children of Goddess and Velchanos," Enops says.

"And if it's a boy, he'll be your king?" I ask.

Simo sighs, sounding exasperated. "We have no king. She-Who-Is-Goddess is something like what you call a queen. The Minos is the lawgiver, but he must obey his sister in all things. She-Who-Is-Goddess trains the women who attend to childbirth, and she blesses babies by being present at their birth. She decrees when sacrifices are to be made, how to appease a deity who has been offended, what an omen means, when the crops are to be harvested."

So, the Minos is not a ruler, just as Prokris told me, but if Simo is telling the truth, he has even less power than she thinks. I wonder what this will do to Prokris's plans. Her Kretan informant was not very accurate.

Evidently, Simo feels he's said enough. He drains his cup and stands. "I'm going home." He stumbles out the door, followed by Enops. I finish the wine and follow them, the soldiers trailing behind me, obviously annoyed at having to leave their game.

That's the last time one of the other boys offers to go to town with me, and in fact my fencing lessons and bull practice are not repeated. The days are long and dull. My only real pleasure is imagining the ways I'll avenge myself on Aegeus, if I ever return to Athens. In some daydreams, I content myself with blistering him with my tongue. In others, I imprison him in his own palace. In the most satisfying fantasies, I battle him to the death and install myself on his throne.

It's getting difficult to find Prokris alone, as she doesn't want the Minos to become suspicious about her frequent absences. If he thinks she's found a lover, he'll have her put to death, even though he is clearly infatuated with her. She and I are not lovers, but the Minos has no need to prove his wife's infidelity. His decree would be enough.

When we finally manage to find each other outside the women's compound one warm afternoon, Prokris's feathery brows are drawn together. She pulls me aside, away from the wall, in more than usual concern of being overheard.

"Something strange is going on," she says. "The women are leaving."

"What women?"

"The wives of the Minos. Not all of them. Orthia, the one he married when he was a boy and who has turned back into a child, she's still here. But the rest of them, the ones who live nearby—their families keep arriving and taking them away, and the foreign ones are packing, planning to take ship."

Prokris is a wife from a foreign land, and I wonder if she, too, will have to leave. My heart lifts a little at the thought of becoming disentangled from her schemes.

"Nobody tells me what's going on. The old man does nothing but weep and strew ashes in his hair. He hardly eats. He doesn't play with the children."

"He's in mourning for his sister."

"Yes, I know he loved her." She sounds impatient. "But this is more than mourning. He seems frightened."

"Of what?"

"How would I know?" she snaps, and then softens. "I don't know. But I mean to find out."