Theseus cast him a glance. “What’re you talking about? The Minotaur is the sacrifice. Don’t you see the cunning of the scheme? The hostages leave here at their most impressionable age. They come home grown, ready to join our most important councils and continue our most powerful houses—but dyed for life in Cretan colors.
“Well. Even that far back, Diores was a shrewd adviser. Without him we’d have gotten worse peace terms than we did. Now my father had no living sons, and my uncle’s were among the first hostages chosen, of course. Diores urged my father to go to Troezen, at the end of the Argolis peninsula. Its king was his kinsman and an old ally. He agreed to the plan, that my father should secretly beget an heir on a daughter of his. I was that heir.”
It wouldn’t be impossible to keep such an operation confidential, Reid reflected, in this world of tenuous communications between realms often separated by trackless wildernesses.
“I was raised in Troezen,” Theseus said. “It also was tributary to Crete, but being poor, it rarely saw a Cretan.—Poor? In manhood we were rich. Before the first beard bloomed on my cheeks I was helping clear bandits and roving beasts out of the hinterlands.
“Diores often came visiting. Five years back he brought me to Athens. I claimed the heirship; my Cretan-loving cousins denied me it; my party’d kept their swords loose in the scabbards; and afterward the Minos could do nothing.”
Or would do nothing, Reid thought. Does an empire mainly interested in keeping peace along its borders and trade lanes ever pay close attention to dynastic quarrels among the tribes it’s holding in check ... until the day when, too late, it wishes it had done so?
“What are your plans, my lord?” he felt he might ask.
Heavy shoulders rose and fell beneath the tossing cloak. “To do what seems best. I’ll tell you this, Duncan: I’m not ignorant of what goes on in the Thalassocracy. I’ve been there. And not only as a royal visitor, fed buttered words and shown what the courtiers want me to see. No, I’ve fared under different names as trader or deckhand. I’ve looked, listened, met people, learned.”
Again Theseus turned to regard Reid with those disturb—_ ing eyes. “Mind you,” he said, “I’ve spoken no dangerous word today. They know in Knossos we’re restless on the mainland. They know, too, as long as their warships outnumber those that they let all the Achaeans together keep, they’re safe. So they don’t mind if we grumble. They’ll even throw us a bone now and then, since we do provide them trade and tribute and a buffer against the mountaineers. I’ve told you nothing that the Cretan resident and his clerk in the palace haven’t often heard—nothing I didn’t say to the Minos’ own first minister, that time I paid my official visit to Knossos.”
“I’d not denounce you, surely, my lord,” Reid answered, wishing he were more of a diplomat.
“You’re something new in the game,” Theseus growled. “Your powers, your knowledge, whatever destiny hovers above you—who knows? At least I want you to have the truth.”
The truth as you see it, Reid thought. Which is not the truth Erissa sees. Me, I’m still a blind man.
“I fret over what your Cretan leman may whisper to you,” Theseus said. “Or do to you by her arts. Diores warns me she’s a weird creature, closer than most to the All-Mother.”
“I ... did not know ... you worshipped her Goddess, my lord.”
Like sundown in a desert, the hardheaded statecraft dropped from Theseus, primitive dread fell upon him, and he whispered, “She is very mighty, very old. Could I but find an oracle to tell me She’s only the wife of Father Zeus—Hoy!” he yelled to his horses, and cracked the whip across them. “Get going there!” The chariot rocked.
X
The chance to talk privately came three days afterward, when Diores brought Oleg and Uldin back to Athens. They had been days of total fascination for Reid, a torrent of sights, sounds, smells, songs, stories, sudden explosive realizations of what this myth or that line of poetry really signified. And the nights—by tacit agreement, he and Erissa put no word about their fate into their whisperings at night. For the time being, anxiety, culture shock, even homesickness were largely anesthetized in him.
The Russian and the Hun had been still better off. Oleg bubbled about the chances he saw to make innovations, especially in shipbuilding and metallurgy, and thus to make a fortune. In his dour fashion. Uldin registered enthusiasms of his own. Attica held an abundance of swift, spirited horses at the right age for breaking to the saddle and of young men interested in experimenting with cavalry. Give him a few years, he said, and he’d have a troop that nothing could stand against when they rode off a-conquering.
This was related in the hall before Aegeus, Theseus, Diores, and the leading guardsmen.
Reid cleared his throat. “You suppose we can never return to, our countries, don’t you?” he said.
“How can we?” Uldin retorted.
“It must be talked over.” Reid braced himself “My lord king, we four have much to decide between us, not least how we can try to show you our gratitude. It won’t be easy to reach agreement, as unlike as I fear it would be impossible in the hustle and bustle of this establishment. You won’t think ill of us, will you, my lord, if we go off alone?”
Aegeus hesitated. Theseus frowned. Diores smiled and said smoothly, “Zeus thunder me, no! Tell you what I’ll do. Tomorrow I’ll have a wagon ready, nice comfortable seats, a stock o’ food and drink, and a trusty warrior to drive her wherever you like.” He lifted his palm. “No, don’t deny me, friends. I insist. Nothing’s too good for shipmates o’ mine. Wouldn’t be sensible to leave with a good-looking woman and just two o’ you who can handle a blade.”
And that, Reid thought grimly, was that. They would never be allowed to talk in private.
But when he told Erissa, she, was undismayed for some reason.
The fall weather continued pleasant, crisp air, sunshine picking out the gold of summer-dried grass and the hues of such leaves as had started faintly to turn. The wagon, mule-drawn, was indeed easy to ride in. The driver was a big young man named Peneleos, who addressed his passengers courteously though his glance upon them was ice-blue. Reid felt sure that, besides muscles, he had been chosen for especially keen ears and a knowledge of Keftiu.
“Where to?” he asked as they rumbled from the palace.
“A quiet spot,” Erissa said before anybody else could speak, “A place to rest alone.”
“M-m, the Grove of Periboea? We can get there about when you’ll want your midday bread. if you’re a votaress of Her, my lady, as I’ve been told, you’ll know what we should do so the nymph won’t mind.”
“Yes. Marvelous.” Erissa turned to Oleg. “Tell me about Diores’ farm. About everything! I’ve been penned. No complaint against the most gracious queen, of course. Achaean ways are not Cretan?’
She has a scheme, Reid realized. His pulse picked up.
Keeping the conversation neutral was no problem. They had a near infinity of memories to trade, from their homes as well as from here. But even had the case been different, Reid knew Erissa would have managed. She wasn’t coquettish; she drew Oleg, Uldin, and Peneleos out by asking intelligent questions and making comments that, sparked replies. (“if your ships, Oleg, are so much sturdier than ours that the ... Norsemen, did you say? ... actually cross the River Ocean—is that because you’ve harder wood, or iron for nails and braces, or what?”) Then she listened to the reply, leaning close. It was impossible to be unaware: of her sculptured features, sea-changeable eyes, lips slightly parted over white teeth, slim throat, and of how the light burnished her hair and the wind pulled her Achaean gown tight around breasts and waist.
She knows men, Reid thought. How she knows them!
The sacred grove was a stand of laurel trees surrounding a small meadow. In the center lay a huge boulder whose shape, vaguely suggestive of a yoni, must account for the demigoddess Periboea. To one side stretched an olive orchard, on the other a barley field, both harvested and deserted. In the background Mount Hymettus dreamed beneath the sun. The trees broke the wind in a lullaby rustle, the sere grass was thick and warm. Here dwelt peace.