Blood of an Empire: Helen of Sparta Read online

  They all drank.

  “And you saw more of the island, yes?” Minos asked, “how tiring.” He motioned his servants to refill the cups.

  Pasiphae drank the very watery wine gratefully, and it gave her fortitude. “He can’t go off doing this again,” she grumbled, “someone will try to harm my son.”

  Asterion snarled and flipped the girls to the dusty ground, and they cried with the pain. He looked at his adopted father curiously.

  “If we provided for him, then he wouldn’t have to go looking. Eh, Asterion? And he wouldn’t need to hobble them. We could provide for him just fine, and I know he would behave then.”

  Asterion rubbed his nether regions and grinned evilly. Then, he smacked his lips.

  “Porneia,” Pasiphae said, “and the eating of other humans, great Zeus, how can we abide this?” She held out her cup for more wine and motioned the servant attending Asterion to fill his cup, as well. The Minotaur gulped his wine and held his cup out for more.

  “We can curse Poseidon and Aphrodite for this problem, but we will make do, and Daedalus has a wonderful thing for Asterion. I salute Daedalus for his brilliance this time. Drink deeply with me.”

  They did, and the servants once again filled the cups.

  Asterion had become quiet and listened and considered, but his head buzzed strongly from the wine. It must have been the very good, very strong kind, despite the bitter under taste. He looked at his two captives on the ground and thought to do something with them. While he watched them, his vision wavered.

  “Asterion?” his mother called.

  But it seemed she spoke from far away. To the side, a mule and cart were approaching, and they stopped close by.

  “Are you tired, Asterion? Has the wine gone to your head? Silly boy, lie down in the cart so we can take you to your rooms.”

  He pointed to his two captives.

  “We’ll keep them until you awaken,” his mother said.

  Asterion fell heavily into the cart and was snoring when his head hit the planks. The poppy in his wine had drugged him, and he was fast asleep.

  “Quickly,” Daedalus told a few of the guards, “help me lead the donkey into the labyrinth. Only I know the way, but we should be fast in case he awakens.”

  Minos glanced at the two girls on the ground. “What about the dýo we have left?”

  Pasiphae shrugged. “Load them into the cart, too; let them go. Maybe he will be less angry if we do. But I will tell you this, husband….” she waved Daedalus and the guards into the maze, “he can only be kept in the maze and controlled if we bring him nubile boys and girls to quench his unholy desire for the flesh in both ways and for blood-wine.”

  Minos knew he would have to demand tribute from other kingdoms and villages to provide what was needed. He dared not have the Minotaur ravage his island, but he dared not kill him and anger his wife, either.

  Minos could say little about his lusty wife’s dalliances, as she was clever with spells and mischief. To keep him chaste, Pasiphae put a spell on Minos that caused him to ejaculate snakes, scorpions, and spiders.

  For the King and Queen, Daedalus had constructed a clever labyrinth under the castle with many confusing passages, and the Minotaur was imprisoned in the middle there; as long as he was given his food of choice, he was content to bellow and roar but remain in the mazes. In this way, the people of Crete were safe from his needs to rape and feed on maidens.

  Sadly, the only thing the Minotaur would eat was meat; his favorite was human flesh, and his drink was blood-wine.

  King Minos waged war against the city of Athens and said he wouldn’t stop unless Athens sent seven girls and seven boys to be given to the Minotaur for his blood thirst every few years. He did the same for many other neighbors. Aegeus, the King of Athens, had to comply or face his city being destroyed by war; he sent the fourteen young people to be sacrificed.

  The Minotaur fell on the victims each time, biting and ripping, shoving his horns through their bodies and tearing hands and feet free to be devoured. He would then eat the arms and legs as the victims screamed with the pain. Every drop of blood he licked from his fingertips.

  When the bodies and heads were consumed and the bones were gnawed until there was no more meat, he cracked those bones, sucked out the fatty middles and marrow, and snapped the shards of bones between his great teeth until they were mush.

  He did this twice. Each time, fourteen were eaten alive.

  The two original captives he kept for lustier needs in between the other victims.

  When it was time for the third sacrifice, the people of Athens wailed and begged for their children not to be sent. They appealed to the King, but he didn’t know how he could get out of the deal until he heard, by chance, that a hero named Theseus, was making his way to Athens, killing beasts and monsters along the way.

  King Aegeus wondered about this hero. Many years before, he had visited Troezen and loved a woman there. She claimed that both Aegeus and Poseidon had impregnated her at the same time and her son, Theseus, was, therefore, almost divine.

  The king didn’t know if Theseus were his son, but he waited to see because he had told his lover that if she had a son, he should try to move a certain boulder.

  Under the boulder, strong King Aegeus dug a deep hole and hid his mighty sword and golden sandals, and only the strongest of men such as Aegeus himself, or his son, could move the boulder. If the hero wore the sandals and carried the sword, then the king would know he was his son and the true heir to Athens.

  All celebrated in Athens as they saw Theseus was, indeed, the King’s son. Theseus immediately said he would slay the Minotaur; his father pleaded for him not to go, but he said he had to go.

  On Crete, fourteen young people were locked away to become food for the Minotaur. Waiting in the dungeons, thirteen of them quaked with fear, but the fourteenth one was Theseus, and he had no fear at all.

  No one knew how he might have fared, but the King of Crete had a beautiful daughter who fell in love with Theseus the second she saw him and went to Daedalus, weeping for help. Daedalus told her he would give her one item and that was all; the rest was up to her true love.

  Ariadne, Mino’s daughter, gave Theseus the secret gift that Daedalus had given her. It was a ball of magical thread, and it would roll ahead of the hero to where the Minotaur slept, and Theseus could follow it to find the Minotaur, kill him, and then get out. In turn, Theseus promised he would marry Ariadne and take her back to Athens with him to be the queen.

  After tying the thread to the big gate that held back the Minotaur, Theseus entered the labyrinth, and he followed the thread for a very long way since the maze was enormous.

  In time, he found the Minotaur asleep and snoring loudly, amid the bits of bones he had saved from all of his victims. The beast smelled horrible because of the rotten meat and the dirty area.

  The two girls who had been taken as captives had long before taken the wooden sticks from their bodies, along with the wire, but stayed there with the creature of their own free will. They were quite crazy and filled with the plague that made them crave blood from victims, as well. They howled and gnashed their teeth for a mere cup of the crimson liquid.

  Theseus was appalled at the sight and scent of the lair, fell upon the beast, and killed him with his bare hands, striking the final blow with his sword. Both of the girls, he mercifully beheaded as they were large bellied with the evil offspring.

  The hero followed the thread out of the maze and freed the thirteen other Athenians. He and Ariadne, and her sister Phaedra escaped to Theseus’ ship.

  But before they could make it home, the god Dionysus whispered to Theseus that he was to leave Ariadne alone on the island Naxos since he had already chosen her as his bride. Sadly, the hero did as he asked. Later, Ariadne met the handsome Dionysus and loved him as dearly as he did her.

  As it happened, the trip home became even sadder. Theseus, because he was sad at having lost Ariadne, made a terrible m
istake. He was to fly the white sails to indicate that King Aegeus’ son Theseus was safe. Instead of putting up the white sails on the ship to indicate happy news, he left the sails of black flying. This meant bad news.

  When King Aegeus saw the black sails, he thought his newly found son was dead, killed by the Minotaur, and in sorrow, the king threw himself off a cliff and into the sea. The sea would be called the Aegean Sea, thereafter.

  Back on Crete, King Minos knew Daedalus must have helped Ariadne and was furious. He imprisoned the man in a tower. However, Daedalus built a set of wings, ingenious in design for himself and his son, warning that Icarus should not fly too close to the sun and should be careful. The wings were built in part of feathers and bees’ wax.

  Icarus did fly too high, unable to resist the temptation to soar with the birds, and the wax melted, and the boy plunged to the ground and died, but Daedalus flew to safety.

  Those were the stories about Theseus that Helen had heard, most of them several times.

  “You are the Theseus the bards sing about? The one who killed the Minotaur?”

  “That’s me,” he motioned for her to walk with him, “and what part of the story do you like, Helen? The fight with the beast? About Ariadne? What can I tell you about?”

  “You married Ariadne’s sister.”

  “Yes, Phaedra.”

  “And for a while, you lived happily.”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “But then you attended a wedding feast….”

  Theseus chuckled, “Ah, that is the part you enjoy? The fight? Oh, little girl….” He smiled to himself and shrugged.

  “My friend, Pirithous and I were as close as brothers, and he married a Lapith princess. Many were at the wedding feast, but among them, were several young centaurs that were notoriously bad guests with poor manners.

  They became drunk, and before our eyes, they grabbed the princess bride and several other of the women and galloped away with them.”

  “And you and your friend were angry?” Helen asked.

  Theseus laughed, throwing his head back, “Oh, you like the gory parts. We were furious and chased them down. They used entire trees to fight us, swinging them and trying to batter us, but we won the fight and made them flee the lands.”

  Helen clapped her hands. “Good, and then what? Ahhh, your trip to see Hades.”

  Theseus frowned. “Yes, That was a little while after. Pirithous’ bride died, and he desired a new one. We boasted we would marry daughters of Zeus himself. Pirithous said he wanted to marry Persephone, Queen of the Dead.”

  The two friends descended to the Underworld, and they forced their way past Cerberus, the guard, who was a three-headed hound, loyal to the god of the underworld, who kept spirits who had crossed the River Styx from returning to the world of the living.

  Hades was unhappy but heard the plea from the heroes and invited them to sit on a bench and rest as they explained their errand to him. Hades demanded blood from the men, or he would slay them; they had to comply. Magically, the bench trapped the two heroes; no one could leave once he sat down. For a long time, they sat, unable to run away, and Hades came often for his blood payment.

  It was a long time before Heracles came down below on his own errand and found the two men.

  With a mighty tug, he released Theseus, but Pirithous stayed on the bench as the gods thought he had been too haughty in demanding a goddess as his wife. As Heracles yanked Theseus off the bench, some of his skin remained, and that lent to the saying that the Greeks had trimmer buttocks and thinner thighs than others.

  Theseus escaped, but his friend did not.

  As Theseus talked, telling Helen his stories, they walked closer to the shoreline. She laughed about his thighs although she did feel compassion for his pain.

  “Will you ask my father to receive you, or will you go home?”

  “I am going home. It will do you no good to fight or scream, but you are going with me, Helen.”

  “What? I am not,” she said as she stomped a bare foot.

  Theseus laughed again, heartily. “Oh, but you shall. This will be said to have been a kidnapping, but your father knew this was to be. If politics go in my favor, I will marry you; you will be my bride, the daughter of Zeus. I will have what Pirithous and I wished for.

  If the tides are not favorable, then you will return home, and alas, I will have worse problems than simply losing my promised bride.”

  Helen shivered and repeated, “‘Bride,’ he said.”

  Theseus escorted her to his awaiting ship and gave orders to sail as soon as possible. Helen looked at the ship and at the men who sailed it, all of them strong and working as one machine. The boards under her feet were tightly fitted, worn smooth, and very clean.

  When the sails were up and the ship was out to sea, Helen stared back at Sparta. To travel across the seas and see her home in this way was something she would never forget.

  Θεσμός Theseus

  “Helen, this ship, Life of Theseus has always been kept for me as it was the ship I sailed on to Crete. When a board becomes rotted, it is replaced. She is kept always in pristine condition, and over the years, I suppose, everything has been replaced, reworked, or repaired. Do you think the original ship remains, or is it a new ship now?”

  Helen considered this riddle. “If you were injured and lost a foot here, an arm, a leg, ribs, then another arm, and so on, would you not still be Theseus?”

  “I would. But because of this.” He pointed to his head.

  Helen touched his dark curls lightly and then touched him over his heart. “You are Theseus because you are here and here, and you carry it on. The ship is still Life of Theseus because you are here and you keep it original and also new. You are the ship’s heart and mind.”

  “And when I die?”

  “If you have a son, he might carry it on, but I think it would be just a ship if you died, not something to praise anymore as the psyche will be gone.”

  “Beautiful, witty, and philosophical. Ah, Helen, you fascinate me.”

  “Tell me another story.”

  “I shall tell you a sad tale,” Theseus said, looking out over the water.

  He traveled to the land of the Amazons, where women used men for breeding but nothing else and were trained to be warriors all of their lives

  They provided for themselves. Male children were sent away or left to die. The women were great warriors, and the greatest was Antiope, the Queen of the Amazons, who brought gifts aboard the ship, maybe wanting the ship’s men to father a new set of children, hopefully girls.

  There came a plague upon the ship, and several of the men became weak, hungered but could not eat and thirsted but could not drink. They raved and grew violent; they had to be shackled. Theseus asked Antiope what dark magic was at work, for surely she must know.

  “Male children are kept a while, Theseus, for they provide something we need to live. Each month, we crave blood, not for the simple appetite, but to live. Without it, we grow weak and pale, but with it, we are faster fighters. When I feed, I can run longer and battle anyone, I am invincible, and I am beautiful.”

  Theseus was shocked but thought about Hades and his love for blood-wine on occasion, but the god had not passed on the infection as the women had. “And if I put you in shackles and didn’t allow you to have blood, what then?”

  “I would age. I would grow weak, fade, and grow old and gnarled. In time, I would crumble to dust and be blown away by the wind.”

  At first, Theseus was taken with Antiope’s beauty and ordered his men to sail away with the Amazon woman as his prisoner and bride. The men were dispatched with knives of silver, as Antiope suggested, and Theseus allowed her only one man she could feed upon, a criminal who had stolen from the other men and from Theseus.

  Theseus liked to watch her feed. She would grow more youthful and beautiful right before his eyes as he watched, and her power and strength were amazing. He licked her lips as she finished feeding, waitin
g for a sizzle or a change in the way he felt, but there was nothing.

  She bore him a child named Hippolytus. In time, Theseus found that while he could lie with Antiope and hunt with her, he simply could not talk to her and share things. They had nothing in common to speak of. He let her go, telling her to return to her people, but to her misery, he kept the boy baby with him.

  “When Ariadne and I escaped from Crete, we took the prisoners back and several of her servants and her little sister, who was a mere toddling child.

  When I returned home many years after visiting the Amazons, I found that the little sister had become a very lovely woman; I fell in love with Phaedra the second I saw her.”

  Theseus and Phaedra were married, and she bore him two sons, but Phaedra was not true to her husband, and she watched Hippolytus, who had grown into a strong, handsome man much like his father. Phaedra begged Hippolytus to make love with her, but he declined as he was a devotee to Artemis and chaste. She slapped his face and raked nails down his cheek.

  He still refused to bed her.

  In a fit of fury and weeping, Phaedra ran to Theseus with her peplos torn and said Hippolytus had tried to rape her, but she had fought him off. Theseus found his son, Hippolytus, with the handprint still livid and the nail marks showing.

  Losing his mind, the hero grabbed his son and beat him; the boy leaped onto his horse and was escaping, when a sea serpent, coiling and slithering, came from the sea. It had the face of a bull and shining scales and smelled of carrion. Hippolytus’s horse panicked and threw its rider. Hippolytus fell to the ground and hit his head on a rock. He died there before Theseus’ eyes.

  In great sorrow, Phaedra wrote on a clay tablet the truth: she had lied and Hippolytus had been innocent. She left it for her husband, went into a grove of trees, and hanged herself with a headscarf.

  “Oh, Theseus,” Helen said, tears in her eyes, “I am so sorry for your losses.”

  “It seems I am not meant to have a wife, yes? My princess from Crete killed herself, and I fell out of love with an Amazon princess.”