“He is a hero, Xenodice,” she said very seriously. “He is the greatest hero of our time.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “so he told us.”
“Oh, you are like everyone else! We are too civilized here on Kefti. Our island has been tamed for a thousand years. There is no wilderness here—the Queen’s Menagerie holds the only dangerous beasts of prey. What need have we for heroes? Theseus comes from a primitive world, where heroes matter. He is rough and wild because the world he comes from is rough and wild. He wasn’t boasting when he called himself a hero—he was just stating a fact.”
“It sounded like boasting,” I said. “And that’s all the more reason not to leave Kefti for Athens. Who knows what would happen to you there!”
She smiled a secret smile, hugging herself. “Theseus will protect me,” she said. “He will never let any harm come to me. Do you know what he did?” she demanded. “He is—everyone has guessed that he is illegitimate, but he is the son of a princess, not some milkmaid or woodcutter’s daughter. His mother is the daughter of King Pittheus of Troezen.”
“Oh, really?” Troezen was a tiny coastal nation across the sea, of no importance to anyone but its inhabitants.
“When he reached manhood he walked from Troezen to Athens to claim his patrimony, although his mother begged him to sail. The lands between Troezen and Athens were infested with all manner of monsters and thieves and murderers, but he would not take the easy way, because he wished to prove himself a hero.”
“And did he meet any monsters or murderers on his way to Athens?” I inquired.
“He did. He killed them all,” she said. “There were scores and scores of them! There was Sinis, for example. He used to tie people to two pine trees bent to the ground. Then he’d let the trees go and the people would fly through the air into the sea. It must have been a sight to see,” she mused. “Theseus served Sinis in exactly the same manner.
“And then—listen, Xenodice!—this is very strange. The robber Procrustes owned an iron bed, and when strangers passed through his lands he would force them to lie on it. If you were too tall to fit the frame you had your feet cut off, and if you were too short you’d be stretched so you were long enough!”
“Ugh!” I said involuntarily. What queer savages these mainlanders were!
“And then he met one Sciron, a bandit who—”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?” Ariadne demanded.
“Why did Procrustes do that, stretching people and chopping them up? Why should he care?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He was just mean. Anyway, Theseus bound Procrustes to his own bed, killed him, and left him there for the crows and birds of prey,” she concluded with satisfaction. “After that there were lots more he vanquished, like a fierce sow and a wrestler who broke people’s necks and I don’t know what all else. And then when he got to Athens, everybody was naturally shouting out his praises in the streets, since he had made that whole part of the world safe. He was so popular, in fact, that his father—who didn’t know he was his father, you understand—got worried. Not having an heir, he didn’t much like bold young men who might be tempted to take the country away from him. So he invited Theseus to dinner with the idea of poisoning him.”
I gasped. “Another violation of the sacred law of hospitality! Truly this Aegeus is a barbarian!”
“Well, it wasn’t actually his idea,” Ariadne said. “There was at court a witch named Medea, who knew by her arts who Theseus was and who wanted no rivals for the love of the king. So she convinced Aegeus to give his son a cup of poisoned wine.”
“Still—”
“But Medea’s plot failed,” Ariadne said rapidly, “because just as Theseus was about to drink, his father saw the sword he carried and the sandals he wore, by which he knew the boy was his son. He dashed the cup from Theseus’s lips and pressed him to his bosom, whereupon the witch Medea stole away and fled from that court and was never seen there again.”
“Hmmmm,” I said. “What, then, is he doing here in a consignment of slaves?”
“That is the bravest thing he has done so far,” she said eagerly. “He volunteered to come here. He thinks—they all think in Athens—that the Minotaur—”
“Do not call him that!” I said. “His name is Asterius, and he is our brother.”
Rather than firing up at my peremptory tone, she did not meet my eyes. “Yes,” she said, and then went on. “They believe that he eats Athenians. I told Theseus that he did not—really, I did, Xenodice. But once Theseus gets an idea in his head, well, it’s remarkably difficult to get it out.”
“A pleasant trait in a husband,” I observed.
“Oh, what do you know about the matter?” she said furiously. “No more than Molus, or that baby Phaedra! He is the only husband I shall ever have, so hold your tongue!”
I was about to reply, when I thought better of it. I knew what it was to be bound to a man by fate. I would marry Icarus or I would marry no one. And then too, the mainland sounded like a terrible place, lawless and wild—it was no place for me. But Ariadne had a brave, bold heart, just as Theseus had. Perhaps she belonged there, as she would not belong on Kefti now that Acalle was coming home.
Ariadne was watching me.
“Help me, Xenodice.”
“No! How can I? He will hurt Asterius—I know he will! He frightens me, Ariadne. There is another matter—” I broke off, unwilling to betray my father. I didn’t know how Ariadne would use such knowledge.
“He won’t! I promise you, he wont harm Asterius. I will make him swear!”
If Theseus could be bound by a promise not to harm my brother, why then . . . he could
