Читать книгу Herotica 2 - Kerry Greenwood - Страница 5

In the far off times of peace, when Minos ruled the waves and cities had no walls ¹, the demos ² of Karanthos in Kriti ³ had two problems. You might think that having only two problems was fortunate, but they were sizeable ones, worth a hundred small annoyances.

The first was the Beast ⁴ in the Grove. No one had ever seen it, though they had heard it howling. It demanded first fruits and regular supplies of everything - cheese, bread, vegetables, fish, wine, oil. And it demanded, every year when the Pleiades were at their height and the Seven Sisters were all visible, a willing virgin, naked, leading a kid and carrying a lamb. Each year a virgin had entered the grove and never been seen again. In return, the Beast ensured that no wolf or bandit entered the valley. After some gruesome scrunching was heard at the first inroad and a few short, cut-off shrieks, the bandits avoided Karanthos like a place struck by the arrows of Apollo ⁵.

It had seemed like a reasonable bargain until this year. Because of the second problem. His name was Demetrios. When he was a baby his mother, distracted by a thorn in her foot, had dedicated him to Aphrodite the Stranger ⁶, rather than Hera the Queen, which had been her intention. His Goddess smiled upon him. He was tall and lissom and had a smile so full of dark delights that maidens swooned, old women smiled, and even female goats eyed him speculatively - enough to make the billy-goats stamp when he walked, swaying his shapely buttocks, through the herds. It wasn’t Demetrios’ fault - it was well known that he was a dear, sweet boy whose head had been turned by his Goddess - but not only was he as attractive as an Antikythera Device ⁷, but he was incurably light minded. Demetrios might bend all his attention on one maiden or another for a day, or a week, or as long as it took for enthusiastic consent - the record was two months, and that maiden had joined the sisterhood of Hecate the next day - but he would have his way with her. Or him. And then would become bored and seek other diversions.

His mother blamed Aphrodite and meditated darkly on the source of that thorn in her sole.

But the presence of Demetrios meant that, with the Peliades rising higher every night, the demos of Karanthos had, at present, no virgins over the age of puberty. They had any number of pretty children, but the Beast had been firm in its demands. Fourteen years old at least. And that was when Ion, all unsuspecting and sixteen years old, walked into the agora, leading his donkey, carrying a load of dyed wool for the tapestry which the women were weaving for the temple of Athena Pronaia Parthenos ⁸.

The fifth son of a Karanthian widow, Ion had been dedicated to the temple of Athena as a hungry five year old. He liked the temple. He was allowed to learn as much as he wished and his duties were light - sweeping, polishing the statue of the Goddess, tending the lamps. And he was allowed out, to deliver supplies to the weavers, and again to collect the finished work. The dyers had given him a bunch of grapes and he had been sharing them with the donkey as they walked along.

The demos of Karanthos looked at Ion. He crunched the last grape and smiled at them. They continued to stare at him, as though he was edible. As a wolf stares at a very slow, very old, sheep. Stuck fast in a bush.

Ion became uncomfortable and the donkey shifted her hoofs. He was about to lead her away to find some grazing while he gave out the wool when the elders descended on him.

He was hustled into the council chamber. They sat him down on a padded chair. They served him undiluted wine ⁹ mixed with the honey of the Goddess.

‘The wool...’ he protested.

‘Kyria Demeter will tally and distribute it,’ they assured him. ‘Now, Ion, we must ask you a question. The fate of the village of your birth depends on it. Will you answer truly on your oath?’

Ion privately considered that the village of his birth hadn’t shown any previous signs of affection for him, but he nodded. His mother still lived here. He was fond of her.

‘Are you yet maiden?’ hissed Kyrie Iraklios.

Ion laughed. This must be a joke. They glared. He shrugged.

‘I am a maiden yet,’ he confessed. ‘There are not a lot of potential lovers at a temple dedicated to a virgin Goddess.

‘So we hoped,’ replied Kyrie Iraklios. ‘Have some more wine.’

‘What brings on this sudden rush of xenophilia ¹⁰?’ asked Ion, looking at them over the rim of his red-figure terracotta kylix ¹¹. ‘You never welcomed me like this before.’

There was muttering and shuffling. The elders avoided each other’s eyes. Then Ion, who was both learned and intelligent, added I to I and got II and exclaimed, ‘You want to sacrifice me to the Beast in the Grove! Go on, deny it!’

No one denied it.

‘No virgins left?’ demanded Ion. ‘Not one?’

‘Demetrios,’ sighed Kyrie Iraklios.

Ion had visited Karanthos on many occasions. Of course he had heard of Demetrios. Unfortunately, for his present plight, he had never encountered him.

‘No,’ he said, adamantly. ‘You can’t make me. Willing sacrifice, the Beast said. I’m not willing. I’m not going to walk to an unknown and probably horrible fate with two innocent animals just because you haven’t dedicated Demetrios to Attis ¹² yet ¹³.’

‘But, sweet Ion....’ they protested. ‘Ion, our golden one...’

Ion had known from the beginning that his resistance was futile ¹⁴. But it was pleasant to be urged and persuaded and flattered and fed choice delicacies and plied with yet more of the best wine, sweetened with the precious hymettus ¹⁵ honey. When they brought in his mother to plead, he decided it was time to surrender or he would have to be carried to the grove.

‘I’ll do it,’ he announced. ‘But I have a price.’

‘Anything,’ said Kyrie Iraklios.

‘Tell the temple I am not faithless, and return the weaving when it is done,’ said Ion. ‘And the demos is now responsible for my mother. If I can come back from whatever doom the Beast has in mind for me, I will return to haunt you unless she lives the rest of her life in luxury. Deal?’ he demanded.

‘Bargain,’ sighed the demos.

Thus it was that a rather tipsy Ion, stripped, washed, oiled, combed and prepared as if for roasting (as he privately considered) walked unsteadily to the edge of the grove, carrying the lamb and leading the kid. The elders kissed him and gave him a gentle push, and he went in under the ilex trees ¹⁶.

It was prickly underfoot. He was pleased that he had retained his sandals. As there was a trodden path, Ion followed it. He was watching the reactions of the goat. Ion had the highest opinion of the sense of self-preservation of goats (sheep not so much) and this one was tripping forward on its little hoofs, occasionally trying a prance. Not concerned at all. It did bleat once, but that was during an educational experience, ie, that holly leaves are too thorny even for goats to eat. Especially baby goats who have soft mouths.

The path led to a clearing in which there was a temple with gorgeously painted red and golden walls. It was made of stone, faced with plaster. It was beautiful. Ion put down his lamb and released his kid to graze amongst the ferns and flowers. Above the temple was a patch of sky. The Pleiades soared into the empyrean.

Soon. Suddenly Ion was not drunk at all. He saw that the temple had a bench and sat down on it. He examined the paintings to keep fear way as long as possible. They were surprising. Some were of animals, cleverly depicted and beautifully coloured. Some were of people, everyone from old men to young boys. But there was no dedicatory statue. No image of the God or Goddess to whom this temple belonged.

He was mulling this over when he heard the most dreadful howling that had ever insulted mortal ear. He clutched his head. The sound went on and on, shaking him to the bones. He fell to his knees. The lamb cowered against him. The kid had vanished.

And then came the Beast.

He was huge. His body was man-shaped, streaked with blood and blue paint, but his head was the head of a bull, with lolling tongue and rolling eyes. A minotaur. Just Ion’s luck, he thought. The howling cut off. The Beast stared, fists on hips. It glared through its strangely glassy eyes.

‘A fine evening,’ said Ion, getting to his feet and bowing as he did to his own Goddess. He was not going to be just torn apart and eaten like common prey. The Beast was going to remember Ion.

The beast did not reply. Ion approached it. The beast did not move. Ion sniffed. He knew that scent. A herbal smell connected with making tapestries.

‘You are a very beautiful beast,’ he said. ‘Can I be of some service? Polish your horns? Comb your forelock? Which I now perceive to be horse hair? And I can smell glue. And woad. That bull mask must be very heavy. Wouldn’t you like to take it off and explain to me what this is all about?’

A strange noise came from the bull mask. It took Ion a while to identify it. Inside that echoing shape, the Beast of the Grove was giggling helplessly.

Ion helped him to sit down on the bench and lifted off the mask. It was heavy and packed with some sort of machinery ¹⁷.

He set it gently on the floor. The Beast was revealed to be a good looking man with the blue eyes and golden hair of a God. He put both hands to his aching belly and positively cried with laughter, gathering Ion to his painted chest the while.

‘No one,’ he gasped after some time, ‘no one has ever reacted like that. Come, bring the lamb, come to my house. I’ll tell you everything, my wise young virgin.’

Ion complied. The beast lived in a pleasant, conventional house. Ion added his lamb to the small flock grazing outside. The walls inside were painted by the same hand as the temple - radiant, ingenious, engrossing. The Beast watched as a couple of maidens sat Ion down, washed and dried his feet, and gave him a clean tunic. Then, smiling, they laid out a feast, filled wine cups, and left, hand in hand.

‘You don’t kill the sacrifices, do you?’ he asked. ‘You aren’t even interested in changing their status.’

The Beast snorted. He really was very good looking, once you got used to the pale eyes. His mouth was red, with full sensual lips. His voice was deep and pleasant.

‘Of course not. I take virgins so they won’t be leaving a spouse or a baby. I take the ones who want to leave the village. And find them proper destinations. However, Elene and Sappho wanted to stay with me. And now, make a good meal,’ urged the beast, ‘and I will explain.’

Ion remembered that hour as the strangest that ever clepsydra ¹⁸ measured. He ate soft cheese and new bread and listened avidly. The beast was attractive, though his colouring was so strange. He was having a Demetrian effect on Ion, who had never missed having a lover before. Now he was wondering what the beast tasted like, if he were to just touch the tip of his tongue to that scarlet mouth.

The beast spoke fast and used idiom freely, but Ion suspected that this was not his native tongue. And his story was strange, but to someone who had spent a childhood reading Hesiod ¹⁹, not impossible to believe.

‘So you travel in time, you were bored where you were born, and you came here to paint and because you like the people and the climate,’ he summarised.

‘Indeed,’ sighed the Beast, scratching idly at the flaking paint on his hip. Ion went on.

‘You guard the demos of Karanthos with strange devices, including that howling produced by sub-sonics, whatever they are ²⁰, and in return the demos feeds you,’ continued Ion.

‘Yes,’ said the Beast, popping another olive into his mouth. ‘The olives of the future have lost all savour.’

‘And you take a tribute so they don’t take you for granted, and find places for the virgins the village didn’t want, and who didn’t want to stay.’

‘I specified a willing sacrifice,’ replied the Beast. ‘I never had such a beautiful and clever one before.’

‘Will you let me stay with you?’ asked Ion. ‘Take me with you when you leave?’

‘Yes,’ said the beast, starting slightly as Ion laid a hand on his painted thigh.

‘And, since I am now dedicated to another God,’ Ion breathed into his mouth, ‘meaning you, I don’t have to stay a virgin anymore.’

‘Charite,’ said the Beast of the Grove, embracing him.

Footnotes

1. Minoan cities, indeed, were not defended, which argues command of the seas, see Rule Brittania.

2. basic unit of Greek government - the village council.

3. Crete.

4. The original word is thirio, which is beast, not echidna, which is monster. An important difference.

5. When cross, Apollo fired his arrows of plague into a village and everyone died. A touchy deity.

6. Aphrodite came from Cyprus, and thus as known as ‘the Stranger’. She was the goddess of Erotic Love.

7. A complex machine of wheels and gears, probably designed by Heiron of Alexandria, as such things tended to be, also a magnetic compass.

8. Athene the Powerful Self-born, a virgin goddess.

9. Wine was usually mixed in proportions of one in four - three for drunks.

10. Love of strangers, to which Greeks are still prone.

11. A really expensive wine cup.

12. The cult of Attis required votaries to remove their genitalia with a sharpened clam shell.

13. Ouch.

14. This phrase is apparently older than presently believed.

15. Honey from the bees of the Mother Goddess, feeding on thyme and oregano on Mount Hymettus. Pound for pound worth much more than mere gold. A cure for everything but advanced cases of death.

16. Groves of holly trees were uniformly bad news. They were the haunt of the cthonic deities - death and fate. Among others even more unpleasant.

17. Scholars suggest that this may have been made by Heiron of Alexandria.

18. Sand-clock, see Heiron of...etc.

19. A cosmogeny so confusing that each page of his writing has more footnotes than print. Study of Hesiod produced several cases of brain fever and one duel (fortunately not fatal) amongst Oxford Graecians in the 18thC.

20. Posited but never proved by Heiron of Alexandria, due to lack of time.

21. Rejoice!