Heroes

by Stephen Fry

  Two murmuring voices grew louder. He could distinguish an older man, who seemed distressed or anguished in some way and the lower murmur of a female voice.

  The handle of the cell door turned and through the grille he saw to his unnameable joy the face of Ariadne. She opened the door and came in, followed by an old man who nervously closed the door behind him. Theseus approached her.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  She looked steadily into his eyes. ‘You have to ask?’

  It seemed natural to take her face in his hands and cover her in kisses.

  The kisses were returned.

  ‘Ariadne!’ he breathed.

  ‘What is your name?’ she asked.

  ‘Theseus.’

  ‘Theseus?’ Her eyes rounded in wonder. ‘Son of Aegeus?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Of course …’ she fell into his arms.

  The old man tapped her impatiently on the shoulder. ‘Ariadne!’ he whispered. ‘The guards may come at any moment.’

  She broke off. ‘You’re right of course, we must hurry. Come with me, Theseus. We’ll leave the island together.’

  Theseus stopped. ‘I do not leave without my companions,’ he said.

  ‘But …’

  ‘I have come not to be spirited away, but to kill the Minotaur and free my people of the burden that has been placed upon them.’

  She gazed deep into his eyes again. ‘Yes,’ she said at length. ‘We wondered if you might say that.’ She indicated the old man by her side. ‘This is Daedalus. He built the labyrinth where the creature lives.’

  The old man nodded at Theseus. ‘Once inside its endless maze of corridors you will never find your way out,’ he said.

  ‘Is there not a key?’ said Theseus. ‘I have heard that if you take the first right and second left, or some such set sequence, then you can always solve a maze.’

  ‘This has no such cheap solution,’ said Daedalus testily. ‘There is one way – Ariadne, tell him.’

  ‘The corridors that lead from here through the labyrinth are dark,’ she said. ‘They take you inevitably to the centre. But to escape you will need this ball of thread. From the point where the guard leaves you, attach the end to the doorway and unroll it as you go further in. That way you will always be able to follow it out.’

  ‘Suppose I am the last chosen for the Minotaur,’ said Theseus. ‘I cannot let thirteen good young Athenians die. I must be chosen first.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. I shall bribe the captain of the guard and you will be chosen tomorrow morning, I promise. I can give you no weapon though. You must tackle Asterion on your own.’

  ‘I fought his father without weapons and won,’ said Theseus, thinking back to the Marathonian Bull.

  ‘When you kill him, kill him quickly and mercifully. He is a monstrous mistake, but he is my brother. My half-brother at least.’

  Theseus smiled into her eyes. ‘I love you, Ariadne.’

  ‘I love you, Theseus.’

  ‘When I have killed him, I shall return and release my companions. You will sail with me back to Athens and we shall rule together as king and queen. Now leave, both of you, before we are discovered.’

  ‘One last kiss,’ said Ariadne.

  ‘One last mmmnn …’ said Theseus.

  THE BULL MAN

  Fully awake though he remained, the next few hours passed like a fevered dream for Theseus. He had met the woman with whom he was destined to share his life. The gods were good.

  He had no way of calculating the passage of the hours. The sea-captain was the first of the Athenians to wake. He came over to Theseus and they looked down at the sleeping young people. They lay on the floor, arms encircling one another – the very flower of Athenian youth.

  ‘They say the monster kills quick,’ said the captain. ‘In with the horns and up with its head, slicing through to the lung and heart. There are worse deaths.’

  ‘It is the Minotaur who dies today.’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Let us suppose I am chosen first, but that I return here the way I came. Are you ready to prepare the others for a fight?’

  ‘We have no weapons.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do about that.’

  ‘It is good of you to plant the seed of hope but – great Zeus, what was that?’ The captain broke off and stared about him, a look of terror on his face.

  A sound like none that they had ever heard came to their ears from deep within the palace. It had begun as a deep, mournful bellow and was swelling now into a great roar of rage.

  Theseus put a hand on the sea-captain’s shoulder. ‘Our friend the Minotaur has woken up and is calling for his breakfast.’

  As he spoke the door opened and four soldiers marched in followed by an overweight and self-satisfied-looking captain of the guard.

  ‘Up! Get up, the pack of you!’ he barked, strutting round and kicking the prisoners awake. ‘Let’s see … who shall we pick, eh?’ The young Athenians shrank back and tried to look invisible. ‘You!’ The captain stabbed his forefinger at Theseus. ‘Yes, you. Follow me.’

  The other Athenians covered their natural feelings of relief at being spared by offering far from convincing cries of shocked distress.

  ‘No, no! Not Prince Theseus!’

  One even dared to call out ‘Take me! Take me instead!’

  Theseus quietened them. ‘Brave friends,’ he said. ‘I go willingly and gladly to meet my fate. Fear not, we shall meet again and laugh at the memory.’

  The captain of the guard pushed him towards the door. Theseus pressed the ball of thread into his armpit and trusted that the unnatural way his arm hung could be put down to fear.

  As they marched away down a dark corridor, the captain gave him a long sideways look. ‘What you do to upset the Princess Ariadne, then? She begged me to make sure the tall one with copper hair be taken to the labyrinth first. What you say to her?’’

  ‘I can’t imagine.’

  ‘Must have said something.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s the way I looked at her.’

  ‘Well you’re going to pay the price, sure enough.’

  They approached a giant bronze gate into which was set a smaller door which the captain opened.

  ‘In you go, mate. If you can find your way back to this door, why then … but no one ever has and no one ever will.’ He gave Theseus a push through. ‘Give the bull man my regards.’

  The door closed behind him and Theseus was in darkness. It was not total darkness; far above at roof level were gratings that let in enough moonlight to pick out the damp edges and corners of the passageway in which he found himself.

  He stood for a while, allowing his eyes to accustom themselves to these new conditions. A lick of light showed him the small door he had come through. He tried its handle. It was unlocked!

  ‘Oh no you don’t, mate,’ came the sneering voice of the captain of the guard. ‘I’m staying here till I know you’ve gone.’ Theseus felt the door being pushed closed against him. Never mind, there was a stud on his side around which he could wind the end of his thread.

  He turned now and walked away from the door, playing out the thread behind him as he went.

  It was like no other experience he had known. At first he felt the floor rising, then he turned a corner and it sloped downwards. He started in shock as he made out the shape of a man creeping stealthily towards him. He laughed when he d that it was his own reflection in a panel of polished bronze. This happened four more times as he went on. Corners and blind recesses baffled him. He was sure at one point that he had come full circle and yet he could tell from the smell and the continuing downward slope that this could not be so.

  He became aware of distant sounds that grew in volume the further he pressed on: snuffling and stamping, baying, grunting and growling. There was a forlorn quality to the way the growls and grunts were being pushed out that reminded Theseus of something. He was on the verge of placing it when he ste
pped on something that crunched under his feet. He stooped to pick up a human rib bone, and then another and another.

  ‘Asterion, O Asterion!’ he called. ‘I’m coming for you …’

  He leaned against a wall and looked down a long corridor from which came more light than he had seen for the past half hour. A high roof, open to the sky, poured moonlight down into what he believed must be the heart of the labyrinth. He had made so many turns; he had ascended and descended more than he could recall and had almost collided with dozens of mirrors and dead ends. Seemingly he had doubled back and redoubled his course multiple times, looping round and up and along the same passageways, but – if the clue he was leaving, the thread, was to be believed – this was an illusion. The genius of the design seemed to lie as much in the appearance of complexity as in its reality. The labyrinth induced panic and eroded self-belief.

  As Theseus approached the central room, a smell of rotting flesh, shit and urine met his nostrils. He laid the almost depleted ball of thread down and left it on the ground, coughing at the putrid stench. The stone floor was level here and he could be confident that his lifeline would not roll away.

  He was delighted to find himself completely unafraid, yet puzzled to feel his heart beating thunderously in his chest nonetheless. Could he be frightened and not aware of it? A shuffling, growling and stamping came from up ahead. So much bright silver light poured down from the open roof high above that Theseus had to open and close his eyes wide to see properly.

  He was in the Minotaur’s lair. He was treading on bones, clods of manure and damp straw which Theseus guessed had been dropped in from the roof above. Silence but for the thudding of his own heart and the alternate crunching and slushing of his footsteps. But now a new noise, a scraping of horn against stone. Something in the corner was moving. A form arose in the corner and emerged from the shadows. Red eyes burned as they looked towards the mortal man who had dared approach.

  ‘Hello there …’ said Theseus. He had meant his words to be loud and clear, but they came out as a whisper.

  The great head was raised and the Minotaur let loose a mighty bellow. The roar echoed off the stone and down the four corridors that ran from this central chamber. Theseus stepped in from the head of his corridor.

  ‘No, no,’ he said, ‘you can’t threaten me with that. Any bull in a field can roar.’

  Theseus’s eyes were able to pick out more and more detail. The Minotaur was standing upright now on its two human legs. The head was huge, the horns sharply pointed. The neck widened onto human shoulders, the chest below was matted with fur-like hair or hair-like fur that patched the whole body. A great pizzle swung between the legs, almost reaching the two hoofs that banged and scraped on the stone flags. The creature stopped roaring and looked sideways at Theseus. A long string of drool fell from its chops.

  ‘You’re a sight, aren’t you?’ said Theseus. ‘Does no one ever wash this place down?’

  They both raised their heads at the same time to look at the square of light above.

  Theseus laughed at the comical synchronization. ‘I really believe you understood me.’

  The Minotaur growled, snorted and grunted.

  Theseus realised with a stab of astonishment what it was that had struck him earlier as so strange about the creature’s voice. It mimicked the rhythms of human speech. He was unaccountably certain that the Minotaur was trying to speak, but that the bovine vocal cords with which he had been born were incapable of fashioning the right sounds.

  ‘You’re trying to speak, aren’t you?’

  The hoarse cry that came from the bull’s head was surely an affirmation.

  ‘You poor thing. Asterion, that is your name? Asterion, listen to me. I know the way out of this maze. Why don’t you come with me? We will sail for Athens. I will make sure you have a field to yourself.’

  Something like a howl emerged and the animal’s great dewlaps shook.

  ‘No? What then?’

  The Minotaur stood tall and screamed.

  ‘Shush now. Try to help me understand,’ said Theseus, quite unfazed. ‘Surely anything is better than a fight? There can only be one outcome. I will kill you. I wouldn’t want that. Now that I’ve met you I find that I like you.’

  Now the Minotaur strained to make a new noise. It summoned all its breath and focussed it into a whine that sounded in Theseus’s ears like ‘Hill he! Hill he!’

  Then he understood. ‘Kill me? You’re saying kill me?’

  The Minotaur dropped his great head in a form of assent.

  ‘Kill you? Don’t ask me that.’

  The Minotaur reared up. ‘Hill he! hill he!’

  Theseus rose to his full height too. ‘Let it be a duel at least,’ he said. ‘You kill me … kill me!’ So saying he aimed a kick at a heap of dung. Thick pieces flew up into the Minotaur’s face. ‘Come on, then!’

  The creature gave a roar of outrage as flecks of his own faeces stung his eyes. He stamped his hoofs, shook his head and lunged at Theseus.

  Theseus stepped left and then right, goading the Minotaur to come at him. It shook its head one way and the other in confusion.

  ‘Yah! Yah! Come on now,’ shouted Theseus, backing towards a wall.

  It made up its mind, lowered its horns and charged. Theseus leapt aside at the last moment and the Minotaur crashed headfirst into the stone wall. The left-hand horn snapped with a great crack and hung down loose. Theseus rolled forward in a somersault, wrenched the horn free and before the dazed creature had time to know what was happening, he thrust the sharp point deep into the folds of its throat and pulled viciously across, severing the windpipe.

  The eruption of blood covered Theseus from head to foot. The creature stamped about in a jerking dance as more and more blood jetted out from its neck in a fountain. Its hoofs slipped on the blood-wet stones and it fell, shuddering to the ground.

  Theseus knelt beside it and talked gently into its ear. ‘I send you to your eternal rest with all speed and respect, Asterion. The world will know that you died a brave and noble death.’

  The act of slashing the creature’s neck must have loosed the tight vocal cords that moments earlier had denied it the power of speech. Now, despite the blood bubbling from the open gash in its throat, it managed to speak. Theseus heard as clearly as from an orator on the Acropolis the words ‘Thank you’ before the creature’s ghost departed its monstrous body.

  ‘Farewell, bull man,’ breathed Theseus. ‘Farewell, Asterion, son of Pasiphae, son of the Bull from the Sea, the Cretan Bull, the Marathonian Bull. Farewell brother of the beautiful Ariadne. Farewell, farewell.’

  ABANDONMENT AND FLIGHT

  Theseus followed the thread out of the labyrinth. When he emerged through the door inset in the great gate he saw opposite him the captain of the guard asleep in a chair. He crept up to break the man’s neck and take his keys, but found that he had been dead for some time and that the great iron ring at his belt had already been stripped of its keys. Making his way towards the dungeon where his fellow Athenians were imprisoned, he found Ariadne standing outside. Her eyes were shining as she waved keys in front of Theseus’s face.

  ‘I knew you’d make it,’ she said.

  Theseus embraced her. She could not but recoil.

  ‘You’re covered in blood!’

  ‘I’ll wash it off when we’re clear of here.’

  ‘Was it horrible?’

  ‘I gave him a quick death. Did you dispatch the captain of the guard?’

  ‘The pig had it coming,’ said Ariadne. ‘The things he tried to do to me when I was little. Now, let’s free your friends.’

  The pair of them and the joyful thirteen Athenians stole silently out of the palace by a side gate and made their way to the harbour, where they holed the bottoms of the Cretan ships at anchor before boarding their own vessel and setting sail.

  Day was breaking as they slipped into the open sea. The six youths and seven girls, Theseus and the crew added oar power to
the sails and soon the landmass of Crete was out of sight. Although they had scuttled the Cretan fleet in Heraklion harbour there was still the risk of a patrolling warship, so they did not stop until they reached the island of Naxos where they dropped anchor and waded ashore to spend the night.

  Theseus, now cleaned of the caked blood of the Minotaur at last lay with Ariadne. They made love three times in the moonlight before falling asleep in each other’s arms.

  A most terrible dream came to Theseus while he slept. It began as a shouting in his ears.

  ‘Leave! Leave the island now. Go! Take your Athenians, but leave Ariadne, who is promised to me. Leave or you all die. You all die.’

  Theseus tried to resist but the outline of a figure formed out of the mists of the dreams and came towards him. A young man with vine leaves in his hair approached. He was at once both beautiful and terrible to look upon.

  ‘Three choices. Stay here with Ariadne and you die. Take Ariadne with you and you and all your companions die. Leave with your people and you live. My ships are coming. Nothing can stop them. Go, go, go!’

  Theseus knew the young man to be the god Dionysus. He sat up, sweating and breathless. Ariadne lay peacefully asleep beside him.

  Leaving her he went down to the beach to think. The sea-captain had also been unable to sleep and joined him. They paced up and down the sand in silence for a while.

  ‘I had a dream,’ said Theseus at last. ‘Just a dream, but it worries me.’

  ‘The god Dionysus?’

  Theseus stared. ‘Don’t tell me you had it too?’

  They silently woke the others.

  ‘We don’t have a choice,’ the sea-captain said to Theseus time and again. ‘We have to leave her.’

  When they were far out to sea Theseus looked back and thought he could see the desolate figure of Ariadne standing on the shore in the moonlight. Approaching the island from the other side they could already see the fleet of Dionysus. Theseus mourned the loss of the girl he had fallen in love with, but he knew that the safety of the young people in his charge overrode everything. He had to sacrifice his own happiness. He had to sacrifice her.