Phaedra, p.1
Phaedra, page 1
Phaedra
A Novel
Laura Shepperson
For Amelia
ta tou dramatos prosopa Dramatis Personae
Crete
Residents
Phaedra—princess of Crete
Minos—king of Crete and father of Phaedra
Pasiphaë—queen of Crete and mother of Phaedra
Ariadne—princess of Crete and sister of Phaedra
Kandake—maid to Pasiphaë
Helia—bull leaper
The Minotaur—reputed monster who lives in the labyrinth under the palace
Visitors
Xenethippe—Athenian tribute
Theseus—prince of Athens and son of Aegeus, disguised as a tribute
Pirithous—Theseus’s captain and friend
Athens
Residents
Aegeus—king of Athens
Hippolytus—prince of Athens, son of Theseus and grandson of Aegeus
Trypho—adviser to the king
Cassandra—maidservant to Medea
Criton—a prosecutor
Visitors
Medea—princess of Colchis, ex-wife of the hero Jason; reputed to be a witch
Agneta—her maidservant
A woman like this can you embrace? Can you be left in the same chamber with her and not feel fear, and enjoy the slumber of the silent night? Surely, she must have forced you to bear the yoke, just as she forced the bulls, and has you subdued by the same means she uses with fierce dragons. Add that she wishes her name writ in the record of your own and your heroes’ exploits, and the wife obscures the glory of the husband.
—Ovid, Heroides VI, 95–101
(trans. by Grant Showerman, 1914)
PROLOGUE
The Bard
“Gather round, welcome guests and good citizens of Athens, gather round. I have a tale to tell you, one close to your heart. It’s about your brave king, Theseus, and the evil monster he slew for you. A beast with the torso of a man and the head of a bull. The Cretan crime against nature they called the Minotaur.”
The little man played a couple of notes on his whistle, then sat back on his stool as he waited for the rumblings.
Sure enough, the crowd responded. “We know this one already, foreigner. Why would we want to hear it again, and from you?” The citizens of Athens, predominantly young, healthy-looking men in their prime, began to trickle away.
The bard allowed the tiniest of smiles to flicker across his face, and began to croon his tale. He started with the Cretan princess. Not the one who was giving evidence in the trial, but the older one, Ariadne of the beautiful hair. And many other beautiful places, he began to imply. Seduced by their very own king, Theseus, a man who’d never spoken a word to any of them, but who featured often enough in the bards’ songs to make him as familiar as a regular drinking companion. The Cretan princess had barely begun to disrobe before Theseus before the crowd shuffled back again, sheepishly at first, then more exuberantly as the wine started flowing. By the time the promiscuous princess had bared her breasts, they were whooping.
* * *
The story the bard sang wasn’t the truth. He had no idea what the truth was. He wasn’t from Athens, and he’d been passed on the song by another traveling minstrel in exchange for his last piece of bread. But as he sang, he observed the crowd jeer when he sang about the princess, and cheer when he mentioned Theseus’s son, Hippolytus. He began to tailor his story to their liking. Tentatively at first, then more confidently, he shifted his story to topical news, the trial that was taking place in the palace the very next day. It was a risk, but he saw his crowd growing. He plumbed the depths of his memory for every shred of information he’d picked up about the trial, both on the road and in Athens. The princess was bewitched by Aphrodite. The prince was abandoned by Artemis. His audience lapped it all up. Because he was a more observant man than most, he noticed the shadowy figures on the edge of the assembly, cloths pulled over to disguise their faces, which would surely be female faces. Unlike the others, they were not whooping and cheering for the young prince and his heroic father. The bard noticed their disapproval, but he didn’t care. He didn’t sing for women. They couldn’t pay for his songs.
He would inform other singers he met on the road of the Athenian preferences too, provided they weren’t too stuck up to share food and information with him in return. But he might stay in Athens a little while yet. The trial was just beginning, and while Athens itself was a poor hole of a palace, men had come from far and wide to view it, bringing the smell of money with them, more than enough to attract a man who lived by his wits.
As the sun began to set, causing the newly built temple, higher on the hill than any of its predecessors, to glow like a beacon, the little man brought his tale to a close. He looked upon his audience, barely able to stand, hugging one another and shaking their fists at the Cretan princess. A good day’s work. No one would run him out of the court now. He stood up and sauntered toward the kitchen to enquire about the dinner he had earned, and perhaps even a maid to accompany it.
ACT I
CRETE
The men of Athens are muttering to one another under their breaths, the normal boisterous shouts having given way to the silence reserved for a sacred ceremony. The room, the same one used for meals, has been cleared of tables. The long benches have been repurposed for the jurors, as they are being called. The maids have done their best, but there was little time between breakfast and the start of the trial. One man is sitting in a pool of meat juices. His clothes will reek of it later, but for now he hasn’t noticed, and when he does, well, there’s a maid for that too.
Some of them think to last night, when they saw the defendant cheering and drinking with the others, stretching out his legs at the table as if he had not a care in the world. And what should he have to fear from this court of men? There is only her word against his. What man has not witnessed the malice of a jealous woman?
And she is not a woman like other women. Daughter of a king, sister of a monster, a princess of Crete. All have heard stories of the women of Crete.
Outside there is a shuffling of feet. The men straighten in their seats, nudge their neighbors. Heads turn expectantly towards the door. She is coming.
It begins …
Phaedra
I was eight years old when I first heard about my mother’s reputation, although I didn’t understand what I was hearing then. We were outside the palace, and I was trailing behind Ariadne and Mother. Even at eleven or twelve, Ariadne was already as tall as most women, and I dawdled behind, watching their legs move in time, their long auburn hair swish back and forth, and I longed for the time when I would be as lithe and elegant as they were. That time never came.
I cannot recall now where we were going. I do remember that my father was away, and we were surrounded by soldiers and guards, men with long spears who wouldn’t even look at me out here in the open, although when we were in the palace they would often smile at me, offer me a sweet if my mother wasn’t looking, and tell me about the little girls they had left at home. They never told Ariadne such things, even though she was far prettier than me. Ariadne turned back and glared at me. “Keep up, Phaedra.”
My mother paused and turned. It was uncanny how much they resembled one another, their hazel eyes shining in the sun, their skin tanned and glowing, as though my sister was not my mother’s daughter, but her own self again, preserved in time. Perhaps that was the first time I realized that all the growing in the world was never going to turn pale, plump little me into a beauty like my mother and my sister.
“Phaedra, you are walking very slowly. Do you need one of the guards to carry you back to the palace?” I’m sure Mother said it out of concern, but even now I can feel the bolt of humiliation that shot through me at the thought of being carried through the palace gates like a sack of grain, bundled up in the arms of a guard. Ariadne snickered. I shook my head, resolute.
“No, Mama.”
“Then do keep up, please.”
She turned around again and began to walk once more. But the distraction had been enough to attract some peasants, working in a field, who came to stare at us, their jaws slack. I wasn’t afraid. What could peasants do to us? We were surrounded by no less than eight armed men, every one of whom had placed his right hand on his sword or spear. We were royalty. Nothing could touch us.
And then one of the peasants called out something. I didn’t understand what he’d said—I’d never heard the word before. My mother stumbled, her usually sure feet missing their mark. I frowned, bemused. From behind it seemed as though she had reacted to what he’d said, been hurt by it even, but surely that couldn’t be possible. I ran to her side and saw her face, white, and Ariadne, clutching her other arm, stared back at me with confusion.
“Show some respect to your queen,” one of the soldiers called, and slammed his spear into the ground, raising a cloud of dust that made me cough and splutter. My mother blinked a couple of times, then slowly drew herself back up to her full height.
“Leave them, please. We do not quarrel with peasants.”
The soldier nodded curtly, and we moved on. Ariadne and I continued to stare at one another from our places flanking our mother, surprised by the note of fear in her voice. This was as shaken as we had ever seen her. And yet even then, I did not come to the proper conclusion, that even though we were royalty and were surrounded by men whose sole duty was to keep us safe, we could still be hurt.
That night my mother came by our room as we were preparin
“Girls, you are getting older now, and you will be hearing rumors around the court. Rumors spread by our servants and even by our subjects. Words like the one the man shouted today. I want you to know that there is no truth in these rumors.”
I turned to stare at her, mystified. Ariadne stopped brushing her hair and said, “What rumors, Mama? Do you mean any in particular?”
My mother inhaled sharply, then said, “There are rumors that I have been unfaithful to your father. These rumors follow every beautiful queen, as I am afraid you two will one day discover when you are married to a king, and they are very seldom true. In my case, they are certainly not. Do you understand me, Ariadne? I have never been unfaithful to your father, with no man, or”—she broke off and looked down at the floor, then continued—“or otherwise.”
“I understand, Mama,” Ariadne said. “I never believed it anyway.”
I had no idea what they were talking about. I looked at them both, uncomprehending. I knew that there were courtiers who were starting to admire my sister; she had told me so herself, when she could bring herself to speak to me. Did courtiers admire my mother too? Not for the first time, I wished that I was not a girl, and a younger sister at that, but a boy, my world filled with possibilities. I wished my future offered more than growing up to become a queen, and a lesser one than either of the two women before me.
My mother left as abruptly as she had come. I wish she had shown some affection to me; patted me on the head, even. But she did nothing, and Ariadne got into bed and turned away from me, a sure sign that she had no interest in talking. So I was left to sit on my bed, turning the new word that I had heard over and over in my mind. Kthenobate. Was it something to do with animals? What could it possibly mean? There were two conclusions I could have drawn from that day, and I chose the wrong one. I had heard the fear in my mother’s voice, the way that she had been embarrassed to speak to us, and I associated her words with her shame. Those peasants, with no weapons and no power, had been able to destabilize the queen of the palace, and I decided it was because of her own wrongdoing. If she had been true to the gods, the gods would have protected her. If she had been innocent, she would not have feared what anyone had to say about her.
It was not until ten summers later, when Theseus came to Crete, seeking power beyond what we could give him, that I learned the truth: that any man can throw words up into the air, and it is women who must pay when those words land.
* * *
In the meantime, I banished the incident from my mind. Besides, there was enough to occupy me. Ariadne and I had a tutor who tried to school us in the basics of learning. It was a fancy of my father’s, in which my mother humored him, even though she knew that there was no real reason for us to learn anything much, other than how to apply our face paint and how to ensure that a palace was well run, the honored guests taken care of, and the slaves properly directed.
But instead, my father, missing the son who had died before I was born, asked that we be taught matters of statecraft, of how to ensure that a kingdom was protected and how to make sure that peasants properly paid their dues to the court. We met all the slaves who worked so hard to keep Crete functioning, as well as the noblemen who advised my father and sometimes brought their children to court to meet us—hoping, especially if the child was a son, that we might just be tempted to fall in love, or at least in ill-timed lust, so their place at the palace would be elevated.
We learned basic accounting skills, although both of us balked at learning the notation that the counting slaves were expected to apply. We barely tolerated these lessons, and I’m afraid we were dreadful to our tutor, an elderly slave himself. For all her beauty, Ariadne longed to be out in the open air, firing arrows at targets. And me? I had a similarly unfeminine desire of my own: I wanted to paint.
Crete was famous for many things. Visitors who came to our palace, Knossos, were awed by so many features—our underground pools, our stately rooms, even our flowing water. Sometimes we suspected these visitors were just trying to flatter my father, and then we would see them holding their hands in the water fountains, exclaiming as the dirty water flushed itself away, and clean water flooded the fountains in its place. Knossos was the very center of civilization, and we knew we were lucky to live there. Or we thought we knew anyway; you can never know how lucky you are to have something until it’s taken away.
But above all, Knossos was known for its murals. They decorated every spare wall, vast images so colorful and elaborately painted it was not unheard of to find visitors to the palace stroking the leaves to discover whether they felt soft, or even sticking their tongues against a dripping spoon of honey to try and taste the sweetness. The ingredients in the paints were a secret, known only to Knossos-born painters, who refused to share their recipes with outsiders.
Eventually, after much begging and crying, my father allowed me to paint one myself, on the wall outside the bedroom I shared with my sister. My mother was horrified. Painting was not an appropriate pastime for a young lady. But I loved my mosaic, the pinks and peaches I’d chosen showing off my unnaturally curved griffins. Every spare moment I had, I spent following the painters, longing to be allowed to work with them.
Most of the murals included that famous symbol of Crete, the Cretan bull. I didn’t care for the bull myself, although I would never have dreamed of uttering that thought aloud. Because, as our tutor had drilled into us, we were the descendants of the Cretan bull, the form that the king of all gods Zeus had taken when he joined with our grandmother Europa, who went on to produce my father.
So, Minos was the son of the god Zeus; that was why we were the ruling family at Knossos. No one dared to challenge us, even though my father was getting older and had only daughters to secure his claim. Everyone knew that the gods looked after their own.
And we were doubly blessed. Because my mother, too, was the child of a god, this time the sun god Helios. I preferred this story because it was a gentler story, involving no deception or seduction. Helios had married a sea nymph, who gave birth to four children, of which my mother was one.
Ariadne preferred this story, too, for reasons of her own. When she had enough of lessons, she would slyly remark, “It’s time for me to worship my grandfather,” and she would stroll into the open courtyard and lie down on the grass, watching her brown limbs turn browner. And when we grew tired of being outside, there was the labyrinth and its hidden delights to tempt us, a second palace beneath our feet, with its own rules and its own ruler.
And so my days drifted by, a joyous mix of sun worship, escaping from lessons, and the heavy leaden smell of paint. The gods had blessed us, and I was faithful to them in return. Even though my mother tried to rein me in, to warn me that one day soon I would have to be married, to live the more restricted life of a queen, I didn’t quite believe her, just as I had never quite believed in her innocence. I believed those days would carry on forever, not just for me but for Ariadne too, both of us living behind the veil of security that hid from us the true ugliness of the world. And maybe they would have done, were it not for the tributes arriving from Athens. And, in their midst, naturally, Theseus. The worst monster of all.
Xenethippe
We were the tributes, fourteen young men (if you could call Theseus young) and fourteen young women, crowded into the main hall in the Cretan palace. Knossos, it was called. And it was the most beautiful room I have ever been in. The ceiling was high, held up by magnificent columns and pillars so big I couldn’t have placed my arms around them. And the walls were decorated with pictures, which someone told me later were called murals, depicting scenes from the tales of the gods.
