at her trial since her beauty might trick his advisors
into recommending a merciful response.
Cooped in her tower, she couldn’t hear
her husband declaring she had to die
along with the freak her lust had delivered.
This death sentence made Daedalus
shiver, but his words shielded his fear:
O, once again your wisdom has outshone
the glory of your throne—o, great Minos,
conqueror of Greece—from ungrateful Megara
to treacherous Athens! I’ve contrived many
tortures before, but they’re too gentle
for that cruel woman, whose crime will disgust
virtuous ladies in lands whose names
we’ve never heard of. . . . Nonetheless—
Then Polyeidos plucked his lyre:
Lord Minos, this man would remain silent
if he had any sense. They say he gave
the foolish queen a pharmakon
that made her want the white bull’s love.
Maybe that rumor is wrong, but I know
it was Daedalus who lured the white bull:
This Athenian fashioned a false heifer
so beautiful no bull could refuse it.
Daedalus replied: This poet, this cat-gut
plucker’s the traitor: don’t trust a word
an Argive says. Pasiphaë cast
spells and bewitched the white bull herself.
Why would Circe’s sister require
me to seduce a mindless beast?
Hupakoë listened to the belligerent squabble
but made no comment. Minos was aware
that Daedalus brewed the drinks that had enabled
Pasiphaë to suffer her husband’s
aweful embraces. He was also aware
that Daedalus had a history of lying.
Snot was crusting his snaggly beard,
and the hands Minos commanded him to wash
till eczema dyed their indelible grayness
were trembling. He could trust the Argive
though he used to sing for Pasiphaë:
the bard seemed to trim his beard daily,
and Minos admired his immaculate hands,
which didn’t tremble. Daedalus whined
through the whole process of his removal
from the megaron. Minos leaned back
on his gypsum throne, thrusting his jiggly
paunch into view. Hupakoë watched
Minos pretending that the tesserae
of dolphins engrossed him: Daedalus, that geek,
will die tomorrow! Do it where the monster
and that whore can see what will happen to them
in the near future when her father drives
latten horses down his lowest path.
The monster didn’t manage to see
Daedalus gargle on the deal gallows.
But the queen’s body couldn’t block out
his mourner’s wailing. It wasn’t true
that Pasiphaë and her son were doomed.
Her other son, who seemed human,
was good for nothing but gulping wine,
yet in this predicament that would do.
Hupakoë came to Deucalion’s chambers,
surprised to learn the symposium
would be held for him and his host alone.
Panthea mixed and poured their wine.
The prince’s hetaera was Pandion’s daughter,
but she’d fled Athens before his exile.
The king had traded his concubine,
Panthea’s mother, for a pearl-ringed krater,
a gift from his son, a Megaran geezer.
Panthea tried to track her down.
Her abundant breasts had barely begun
fulfilling their potential when she took passage
on a merchant ship. The mariners,
marveling both her at her beauty and her music,
discerned the sails from the south too late.
Panthea became pirate cargo.
They sold her in Knossos to Pasiphaë.
She never gazed on Megara’s walls.
When Deucalion passed out, Panthea mixed
the last krater and leaned on her guest
and poured him wine and whispered this warning:
If you let Minos murder the queen,
we won’t survive the revenge he’ll attract.
No one can dissuade him from this suicide:
he’s a fool, and he’s gone too far to back down.
Despite the slander that is circulating,
The queen’s incapable of casting spells,
and can’t save herself or her cursed son.
But her father isn’t weak at the winter solstice:
Gaia’s pitch gives him the appearance
of weariness, but he’s no less able
to kill us all by coming closer.
You’re the only one who can ward this off.
Let Minos say he’s the son of Zeus:
Zeus won’t save him. An assassination
would rescue the rest of the royal family.
Are you loyal to Crete or that lunatic?
Hupakoë departed in silence.
Minos had delighted in the look Daedalus
gave his accuser when he called him out
for helping the queen with a hollow cow.
Minos appointed Polyeidos
to be his bard and burnish his reign
with daily paeans to his perfect greatness—
only outdone by his Idaean father’s.
The bard became his constant companion.
The slow sunrise signaled that soon
the queen must dangle from the deal gallows.
Clemency emptied its clepsydra.
Every morning Minos insisted
on taking a walk in the west garden,
where lily stems logged his frustration
on days his scepter served as a scythe.
The bard was careful to keep close
to the panting king’s calcified heels.
A statue of Zeus stood in their path,
and behind it Hupakoë was holding a spear
and waiting for Minos to walk past him.
The bard believed he was alone with the king,