Bull God

by Roberta Gellis

  Was this a deliberate blindness visited on the people to hide from them their impending fate? Had the Mother withdrawn her favor from Crete? Not from herself, she didn't fear that for she recognized that she hadn't been scanted in the Mother's giving of help or power, but Pasiphae hadn't drawn the goddess's being into herself. Would some great evil befall them? Reaching the shrine, Ariadne passed right by the food set out for her and went to huddle in her bed.

  The day after the ritual, although Ariadne didn't hear about it for another five days, the Minotaur killed again. That evening the old woman, who had replaced the courtesan and because she was cleverer than the others had escaped retribution longer, noted that when he did return, the Minotaur only picked idly at the meat in his bowl. The next day, he wasn't hungry either, and the day after that Phaidra asked pointed questions about the leftover meat and the two missing men.

  The old woman caught her breath. Two and two had just come together in her mind. Clea and the remaining man made glib excuses. The man she hadn't seen for five days spent most of his time in the gardens; the other had gone out to look for the Minotaur to tell him it was time to eat. Phaidra didn't believe them, but she said nothing. When the Minotaur wasn't there to protect her, she had a fear that the criminals might attack her and try to hold her hostage.

  Neither of the missing men was in the Minotaur's apartment when Phaidra again brought food. She didn't ask for them, but went out at once, reinvoking the illusion as soon as she stepped out of the door and only removing it after she had made the left and right turns that she knew were real. Even so, she found herself in a cross corridor and had to retrace her steps before she could get onto the direct path.

  Angry and frightened enough to forget for a little while the expected return of Androgeos with the confirmation of the treaty and her marriage, Phaidra didn't return directly to her room to work on her Athenian gowns. Instead she went up Gypsades Hill to the shrine and told Ariadne that two of the prisoners had escaped.

  “Don't be silly, Phaidra,” Ariadne said. “No one can thread that maze, and even if one of the men came by chance upon the gate to the palace or to the temple, those are magic locked and he couldn't open them.”

  “Who says he couldn't? You and I can unlock those gates with a touch of a finger, why shouldn't one of those criminals know magic?”

  “Magic wasn't a crime listed against any of them.”

  Ariadne's voice was now uncertain. Although she didn't believe any ordinary human magic could break Hekate's illusions, a man might have come upon a gate by accident. The gate locks weren't Hekate's spells but Daidalos', and those another magician could undo. And then she thought that one man might reach a gate by chance, but two? Could Hekate have overlooked something?

  She raised the question to Dionysus that evening and he didn't reject her doubt out of hand. “Not overlooked in an ordinary way,” he said. “But sometimes with such a complex spell, or maybe two or three spells working together, an added bit of magic of a different kind could disrupt the illusion. Still, two men? Both able to do magic that would negate a spell of Hekate's?” He hesitated and sighed. “There's another explanation, a simpler one.”

  Ariadne remembered how the Minotaur had looked at her and repeated, “Eat soon,” and her back went cold. She whispered, “I'll have to go and look tomorrow.”

  “No. I think we should both go tonight. When they're all asleep, you can release the illusion. Then we'll have time to look for the lost men, and I think with most of the power gone from Hekate's spell that I'll be able to tell if anyone has meddled with the locking spells on the gate.”

  Dionysus found the lock to the back of the temple unchanged; no one but Ariadne had ever touched it. They never bothered to check the lock that led to the palace because they found the bodies of the missing men in one of the roofed shelters. Both had been dismembered and partly eaten, but Dionysus assured Ariadne, who was so sick and weak that he had to support her, that both had been killed quickly and mercifully. One had been strangled and the other dispatched with a blow to the head that had smashed his skull.

  “They were condemned to die for horrible crimes,” he said, “and caught trying to escape. You weren't troubled by the fact that the soldiers killed the others that tried to escape. These men's deaths were no worse than if they'd been executed by the double axe. Those driven out onto the hills for the maenads to sacrifice don't die so easily.”

  “But I've seen these men,” Ariadne breathed, burying her face in Dionysus' tunic. “And he ate them.”

  “He's a beast ... mostly,” Dionysus said indifferently. “He was hungry and man's flesh is soft and sweet.”

  Ariadne shuddered in his arms but didn't withdraw from them. “You too?”

  Dionysus laughed. “Not by custom, but Hekate's father began a cult ... Never mind that. It's ended now.” He gave Ariadne a rough hug. “You stay here. I'll take the remains of these and leave them just outside the door of the Minotaur's rooms. The servants will know the men didn't escape and they won't go into the maze again. Since they'll have food to offer the Minotaur whenever he returns to his chambers, he isn't likely to attack them there.”

  The words were very comforting—especially after the mangled bodies were gone, and Ariadne found her horror diminishing as she waited. When Dionysus returned, they left the maze the way they had entered it, Ariadne reinvoking the spell from outside the gate. By the time they reached the shrine, she had recovered completely, and she wondered wryly whether she would soon grow accustomed and not care at all.

  Still, the memory was not pleasant, and she said, “Thank you, my love. I've no idea what I would've done if I had been alone. Stood and screamed like an idiot, I suppose.”

  The moon was out and silvered her black hair, carved dark shadows into her face. She laid her hand on Dionysus' arm and stroked the fine, gold hair. He drew in his breath and pulled her tight against him.

  “Say 'enough' then, and come with me to Olympus. I'll arrange for someone else to hold the key to the illusions of the maze and see that the bull-head is fed. He's as happy as he ever will be. There's no more you can do. Sooner or later the spell Poseidon wove will come apart and he'll die.”

  “Yes,” Ariadne sighed, pressing herself against him, aware of his warmth, of the thrust of his shaft against her belly. “Let me see my sister Phaidra married to Theseus and safe in her own home and I will come ... But Dionysus—”

  Before she could finish, he had thrust her away and disappeared.

  Her plaintive, “Why won't you love me?” remained a thin whisper in the air.

  Ariadne slept very little that night but, struggling to find something, anything, besides Dionysus' rejection to think about, she discovered the need to tell King Minos that two more servants had been killed. In the morning, she sent one of the boys, grown from novice to acolyte, to request a private audience and was received promptly. The news she brought evoked very little reaction.

  Minos, whose mind was plainly elsewhere, was only mildly annoyed when she described how she and Dionysus had found the missing men. “So long as this news does not get out,” he said. “I will arrange for two more servants to be delivered to him. But he cannot go on killing them at this rate. I doubt there are more than two or three more condemned criminals being held for execution.”

  “There's nothing I can do to stop him,” Ariadne pointed out sharply, then sighed. “I doubt there will be any more deaths soon,” she added, and explained that the servants had thought they were clever enough to defeat the maze and escape. Instead the Minotaur had caught them. “Either he was hungry at the moment, or he simply felt they were intruders—as he did with the man who tried to escape through his temple—and got hungry later.”

  Minos swallowed. “Hungry ...” he repeated barely above a whisper. “You don't seem to care.”

  “He's only a beast, poor creature,” Ariadne replied. “You called him a god and taught him he could do what he liked. You didn't train him to respect humans
. I've done what I could, but it wasn't enough. Why should I blame him now for being what he is?”

  The king made a dismissive gesture. “Is he so far gone that he can't be shown in the temple in the next day or two? I expect the return of the Athenian delegation very soon now, and it would be well if they heard that the god has gone to his own place, but did once manifest himself in his temple.” Then he looked at Ariadne's face and added hastily, “It's for Phaidra's sake, too. I don't want anything to cast a shadow that will interfere with her marriage to Theseus.”

  Ariadne doubted that Phaidra's marriage actually counted for much with her father—he was interested only in binding the Athenians—but the marriage was important to Ariadne. “Possibly I could get him to the temple,” she said, “but he won't stay if there's nothing to amuse him.”

  “That's no problem. Since the god departed, I've arranged for many more priests and priestesses to be inducted. There's no time, day or night, when a group isn't dancing before the empty throne chair.”

  “Very well,” she agreed.

  She fulfilled that promise later in the morning, when she escorted two guards and two men with their hands bound through the maze. Before she left the men with the living servants, she showed them the gnawed bones not far from the entrance and told them what had happened to those who thought they could escape.

  Having seen the guards out the gate, she sought the Minotaur. He wasn't in either of the gardens, which troubled her. Wondering sickly whether he was looking for what he had left there, she started toward the shelter where she and Dionysus had found the bodies, but was spared that horror only to be confronted by another. When she came across the Minotaur, looking at a picture, he heard her footsteps and was upon her with a leap, his fist raised to strike.

  “Minotaur!” she cried. “I am Ridne!”

  The hand fell to his side then reached for her, slowly, tentatively. “Ridne?” he said.

  Ariadne gulped air and pressed a hand against her chest where her heart was beating as if it would break through the flesh. The passage seemed to grow darker and she grasped the hand that barely touched her, afraid if she didn't hold onto something for support, she would fall.

  “Yes, Ridne,” she insisted, then asked, “Are you hungry?”

  “No eat Ridne,” he said. “Love Ridne.”

  “And Ridne loves you.” Had he almost killed her, she wondered? Was Phaidra, coming each day with food, in danger? “Why did you want to strike me, Minotaur?” she asked.

  He tilted his head to see her more clearly. “Mine,” he said and gestured.

  “The maze is yours, and no one else must walk in it?” she asked.

  “Mine,” he repeated nodding.

  He dropped her hand and turned away then, as if he would leave her. Ariadne's blood ran cold. Asterion as a child, the Minotaur later, had always clung to her. She tried to find her voice to bid him wait, but fortunately his eye fell on the picture he had been looking at when Ariadne found him. He turned back.

  “Picture,” he said.

  Minos wanted the Minotaur in the temple once more before the Athenians came. If that would influence them to confirm the marriage to Phaidra and free her from this duty, Ariadne thought, it had better be this very day. The Minotaur was changing too fast to waste any time.

  “Oh, yes, I know that picture,” she said, moving to stand before it. “You see how well dressed the people are. They have jeweled headdresses and are wearing their best gowns. They are going to the temple to bring offerings to the Bull God. Would you like to go to the temple, Minotaur?

  “Temple?” The word was more question than recognition, but after another moment, he said, “Temple. Priests dance.”

  “Yes. The priests dance for you. Would you like to see them?”

  “Temple,” he said. “Where?”

  “I know the way,” Ariadne said, holding out the hand he had dropped, and he took it and went with her.

  From the shadows behind the back entrance, Ariadne watched the Minotaur take his place on the massive throne that had been built for him. When he appeared, a loud shout went up from the priests and priestesses and runners came out of the buildings that had been erected to either side of the temple to house those that served. The dancing and singing went on with renewed fervor and soon Ariadne saw that worshipers were gathering and entering the shrine. Good enough, she thought, word of the Bull God's reappearance will spread.

  It was not good enough, however. On the last day of the month Ariadne learned that nothing would have been good enough. Phaidra came, tear smeared and with disheveled hair, to tell her that a ten-day before then, on the very day of the Mother's ritual when Ariadne had sensed that something was wrong, a band of Athenians had fallen upon and killed Androgeos.

  It was pure treachery, Phaidra wept, all the talk of how King Aigeus welcomed the treaty and that Theseus was eager to marry her, all treachery even to the last moment. Androgeos had been all unarmed and suspected nothing, having been warmly received by the king and his son. The attackers had cried aloud that he was a worshiper of a false god, an eater of man's flesh, and that all Cretans were cannibal monsters.

  Stricken, for Androgeos had been her favorite brother, Ariadne accompanied Phaidra back to the palace to mourn with her family. She found little comfort there. Minos was in a towering rage, in which his grief for his son was totally submerged. He had withdrawn, as was proper, from the public rooms to his private chamber, but instead of sitting with his other sons and daughters and speaking of Androgeos to those who came to offer condolences, he had called in the master of his armies and the chief of the ships' captains and was giving orders to make ready for war.

  Beside him Pasiphae sat silent, offering nothing. Looking at her, Ariadne wondered again if the queen was fully alive, until turning to look for a clerk, Minos noticed her.

  “You fool!” he snarled. “You brought this on us. Even after the whole world saw the Minotaur for what he was, Poseidon's curse, you had to challenge the Mother.”

  Then Pasiphae came alive and turned on her husband, crying. “You were at fault, greedy for that accursed bull. If you'd sacrificed it as you promised, I wouldn't have been driven mad by Poseidon. And why accuse me now of challenging the Mother? You hoped I'd win, didn't you? And thought at worst I would be the one to suffer her wrath if I failed.”

  “My fault?” Minos bellowed. “It's yours and yours alone! You agreed about keeping the bull. You said you had no sign from the Mother against it. All this had nothing to do with the bull from the sea. It was all you and your pride! You were too proud to be priestess of one you called a little godling, but when Dionysus answered Ariadne's Call, you had to Call a greater god. Poseidon was satisfied with my three bulls until you troubled him with your lust.”

  “And what of me?” Phaidra wailed. “Who's suffered most from that accursed Minotaur? Who's fed him and cleaned him—and now my last chance for a marriage is gone. Who will have me, tainted with attendance on a false god?”

  “Selfish little beast,” Pasiphae shrieked. “You've lost a nothing marriage. I've lost the chance to be a goddess.”

  As the words left her lips, Pasiphae seemed to hear them and understand what she'd said. Under the paint that subtly enhanced her beauty, she turned gray-white.

  “Lost ... Lost ...” the queen whimpered, crumpling in on herself and sliding from her seat.

  Choking on sobs of mingled grief and horror, Ariadne fled.

  CHAPTER 21

  Appalled by what she'd seen and heard, Ariadne fled back to the shrine on Gypsades Hill. Her torment and feeling of betrayal because no one seemed to care for Androgeos, only for their own disrupted plans, flowed outward, and Dionysus was at the shrine before her. He comforted her as well as he could and let her weep herself out for the loss of a brother she'd loved, but he was himself much distressed because the incompleteness of his Vision had prevented her from giving warning of her brother's danger.

  Then Ariadne comforted him. She didn
't blame him or herself. She reminded him that at the time they had Seen together men fighting in Athens, Dionysus had been saddened by something he didn't understand. Now both knew the Vision had been sent incomplete, and Ariadne was sorely tempted to take the black image of the Mother down from its niche and toss it into the river that flowed between the shrine and the palace.

  Ariadne told herself that the disgusting scene she had witnessed in the palace was owing to shock. She returned there the next day, thinking that grief might well flow in when rage was exhausted, but she found little change except that Pasiphae had withdrawn to the secret shrine deep in the bowels of Knossos. That place was all that remained of a stronghold erected by the distant ancestors of the current Minoans. The stronghold itself had been shaken to rubble by Poseidon's rage over some past sin, but the deep room in which a stone phallus stood before a strange obese goddess, both incredibly ancient, remained untouched. The queen had gone alone, her maids said, and Ariadne nodded without comment. She was not wanted or needed.

  Minos needed what Ariadne had to offer no more than his wife. He barely spared her a few moments for civil thanks before returning to his plans for wreaking vengeance on Athens. Had he seemed driven by the loss of his son but fearful of the outcome of a war against so strong an adversary as Athens, Ariadne might have spoken of Dionysus' Vision. There was, however, no doubt in Minos' mind of his victory; it was as if he had partaken of Dionysus' Seeing himself. But the worst of all was that under the appearance of grief that he presented, was a hard satisfaction.

  “It is as if he were glad Androgeos had been killed so that he could wring from Athens whatever terms he desires without needing to offer them anything in return,” she said to Phaidra.