Knossos

by Laura Gill

  Without acknowledging his grievance, the sentries came down and took his arms to escort him home. Only at the threshold did the senior man address him. “A word of advice, Master Daidalos. Do as you’re told. Stay at home and don’t stir up trouble with the high priestess.”

  Daidalos burned with humiliation, but regarded the episode as a temporary setback. Better to try later, by night, he surmised. Because if the sentries and their treacherous mistress thought he was going to let them keep him from Ikaros, well, then they badly underestimated him.

  That was until a trio of sentries appeared at his door an hour later. “We’ve orders to watch the house,” the captain gruffly informed him. “If you want exercise outside, we will escort you.”

  Damn them all to the underworld! Daidalos punched the doorjamb in frustration before the pain radiating through his hand and arm made him regret the outburst. Let demons gnaw Pasiphae’s bones! High priestess or not, she was not going to get away with treating him so abominably. Whatever was required, and however long it took, he vowed to make her pay.

  Brave words for one who could not even escape his lodgings! Daidalos spent the remainder of the day pacing the house and brooding over his impotence. When the servant woman set down the evening meal, he waved the fare away with disinterest even though he realized he needed to eat to maintain his strength.

  He had just started to reconsider when a knock diverted his attention to the door. The servant woman hastened to answer, then, bowing, shuffled backward to admit two women wearing scarlet cloaks. One was an attendant, but the other... Daidalos held his breath while withholding the customary greeting.

  This was not the first time he had seen Pasiphae dressed in her finery. She had arrayed herself in costly ornaments and raiment for the feast where he and Ikaros had been among her guests. He had seen her on the way to the sanctuary in the flounced skirts and headdress of a priestess. But he had never seen her dressed as the goddess, with the distinctive Kaphti open bodice that both supported and enhanced her ample bosom. Jewels sparkled at her throat and hung from her ears. Chalk-white face paint created a canvas for the crimson suns dotting her cheeks like drops of blood, but it was those same suns haloing her nipples that captured his attention.

  “You look well this evening, Daidalos.”

  Her sultry purr broke the spell. “Why have you come?” Hoping against hope that Pasiphae had perhaps brought Ikaros, Daidalos let his gaze flicker to the doorway. Nothing.

  Pasiphae took a jug from the handmaiden before dismissing the girl and the servant woman. “I brought wine. Let us drink and be glad.”

  Her eyes revealed far more than her words. Daidalos clenched his jaw. Had the shameless bitch come to seduce him, or was he imagining it? Gods, let it be a figment of his imagination! “Why should we drink together and make merry, High Priestess?” he inquired warily. “It’s not a festival day.”

  Pasiphae made a show of retrieving the cups from the hearth curb. Daidalos had witnessed more subtlety in the brothels of Akkad. “Are we not friends and business partners about to embark on a holy venture?” she crooned. “I have experienced their delight for their project through my sacred visions, so why should you as their architect not share in the pleasure?”

  Had she been anyone but the high priestess of Knossos and his son’s jailor, Daidalos would have laughed outright at her transparent wiles. Did she, an elegant priestess and noblewoman, seriously intend to throw herself upon a ragged old commoner like him? What a jest!

  “You’ve a strange way of treating those you want to be friends with.” Daidalos crossed his arms over his chest. “And we’re not business partners. I thought I made that very clear earlier.”

  “You are so angry, so troubled in your mind.” As she sauntered over to him, she enunciated every word as though in the throes of passion. “I came to reassure your doubts.”

  “Then where is my son?”

  “Oh, stop worrying about your son,” she pouted, pressing a cup of wine into his hand. “But if you must know, Ikaros is fine. He is enjoying supper. Tonight he will sleep in a soft bed, and tomorrow he will bathe and don rich clothes. You could do the same, my dear Daidalos, if you would let me soothe your worries.”

  Daidalos remained stone-faced even as she touched his arm. “You violated my guest-right and his,” he repeated. “If you’re trying to seduce me into taking on your project, you’re wasting my time.”

  At once, Pasiphae recoiled. A harpy’s mask replaced the sultriness of a moment before. “Seduce you? Do you take me for a common whore?”

  “Yes.”

  Scarcely had he uttered the word than she flung the contents of her cup in his face. “How dare you insult the vessel of the Great Goddess!”

  Without thinking, Daidalos returned the favor. Wine dripped from her nose and chin, smearing her cosmetics; the crimson suns melted. “I see no vessel of the goddess here. Get out,” he snarled, “and don’t come back without my son.”

  “Your son, always your son!” Liquid streaks ran across her breasts. Her bodice was ruined. “You are beginning to grow tiresome. Perhaps you do not deserve to see your Ikaros ever again.”

  Never mind that she was the high priestess of Knossos, that there were witnesses in the handmaiden, servant woman and sentries who had burst through the front door the moment Pasiphae raised her voice. Daidalos seized her arm. “Bitch! Harm my son and I swear, I will kill you.”

  Even as she tried to wrench free and the sentries started to intervene, he unhanded her with an air of contempt. “Get out.” Daidalos jabbed a finger toward the threshold before sweeping up the jug of wine and hurling it at the doorjamb. It shattered, showering broken shards and dark liquid onto the floor.

  Only when the high priestess, her handmaiden and the sentries left did Daidalos notice how hard he was shaking. He could not believe what he had just done, manhandling and threatening a woman of Pasiphae’s status; he could not remember the last time he had laid violent hands on a woman. Yet he had done so, had been within his rights to do so, and was subsequently not at all sorry.

  A movement to his left startled him. The servant woman stood several paces away, proffering a damp cloth as if she was holding a hunk of raw sirloin toward a lion. Fearful, she indicated that he should take it and clean his face.

  Swiping it from her grasp, Daidalos started scrubbing away the stickiness of the wine. “Has the world gone mad?” he barked at her. “A host who violates her sacred obligations, a servant who doesn’t speak, a noblewoman who throws herself at me—me, an old man, a commoner!”

  Although she watched his every movement, the woman did not answer, either with a shrug or a shake of her head. Daidalos had not expected her to.

  *~*~*~*

  “That lowborn cretin! How could he refuse me?” Pasiphae pinched the maidservant trying to wipe the ruined paint from her face; the girl winced. “How dare he! No one ever refuses me.”

  Her brother had no sympathy for her plight. “Had I known you would stoop so low,” Yishharu observed gravely, “I would have stopped you. I could have told you your charms would have no effect on him.” The mirror of polished bronze in her hand distorted his image. “Have you no shame?”

  “Shame?” Pasiphae sat up straighter. “I am Rhaya’s sacred vessel, instrument of her divine will. She sent me a dream commanding me to do whatever is necessary to build the temple.” Yet Pasiphae in her deepest heart was ashamed. Manipulating her servants and eliminating enemies was nothing to her, but she had had to fortify herself with prayers before approaching Daidalos. Not that she would have lain with him—she was not as debauched as Yishharu claimed—but had he cooperated she might have strung him along with strategically placed caresses and whispered sweet nothings.

  “Keep telling yourself that, Sister.” Who had appointed Yishharu her judge, anyway? “Gods know, you have done more damage to our cause on this night than in all the days you have held Ikaros captive.”

  Ikaros. Mention of the architect’s son
revived memories of Daidalos’s threat. Godless fool, did he really think he could harm her when she was under the protection of the gods? And yet, he had seized her without divine reprisal. “I am doing what I must.” Pasiphae seized the washcloth from one of her handmaiden’s hands and began rubbing her face. Not even the wretched old Minos had ever dared hurl wine at her!

  Yishharu’s wavering image left the mirror surface and appeared before her. “Why frustrate yourself further?” he asked softly. “Subtlety might work better with Daidalos. Leave him to me. He does not blame me for taking his son. I am also a man. I know what to say to better persuade him to join our holy venture.” He thought for a moment. “Perhaps you should release the boy to me. You have so much to do, and are so aggravated. I could look after Ikaros.”

  “You will not return him to that man,” Pasiphae said sharply. “I will not have them slipping away. Not that I want either of them around, you understand. Gods, I despise that stubborn, insolent old wretch. I would choose another architect if I could, but the gods have demanded him.”

  “You misunderstand my intentions.” Would Yishharu ever sit down? After her humiliation, having to stare up into his judgmental face was among the last things Pasiphae wanted to do. “I share your vision, Sister. I, too, believe the gods sent Daidalos to us to build the temple. Yet your methods have not worked. You have reached the limit of any possible negotiation with him. You have been direct, perhaps a little forward. Let me exercise some subtlety.”

  Pasiphae wrestled with the prospect of letting Yishharu take control of the situation. While they both wanted to maintain their hold on power and to glorify the gods, the temple project was hers alone. Everything must be to her exact specifications. “What do you intend to do?”

  Leaning against the wall, her brother crossed his arms over his chest. “Daidalos is fascinated with any and all kinds of buildings. Do you remember the many questions he asked during the feast?” Pasiphae did not. “Any craftsman can be ordered to work, but cannot be ordered to create a masterpiece unless his heart is in it. I can turn Daidalos’s heart toward building our temple.”

  “How?”

  Yishharu had to detail his plan for her. Clever, though she expected nothing less from him, but even then she was not sure he could accomplish his goal. Daidalos was so very stubborn. Suppose Yishharu made things worse. “Tomorrow you will dedicate an offering of two white bull calves to all the gods,” she said. “Entreat them for a sign. If the omens are favorable, then you have my blessing.” Pasiphae sighed, feeling the weight lift from her shoulders. She could trust Yishharu, whose cunning had rescued her from many a dilemma. As long as she never had to see or hear from Daidalos again.

  *~*~*~*

  Silence reigned the following day, and the next, when Daidalos fully expected the authorities to arrest and imprison him for his behavior toward Pasiphae. Not that he cared. Pasiphae could do with him as she pleased. All that concerned him now was whether she retaliated by harming Ikaros.

  Querying the guards provided neither answers nor relief; they had no access to their mistress’s house, and had scant sympathy for him. Agitated, he turned to the servant woman. “Have you ever been to the high priestess’s house?” She slowly nodded. “Have you seen my son there?”

  When she shook her head, he kept pressing her. “Is he even kept there?” A nod. Gods, why had he been cursed with a woman who could not talk? “Have you heard no news of him at all?”

  To his astonishment, she shyly ventured forward and reassuringly patted his arm. “Are you telling me he’s all right? You have contacts in the house?” This time when the woman nodded she wore a timid little smile.

  It calmed his mind to know that. Thanking her, Daidalos tried to occupy himself with exploring the house with its many chambers and stairs, its double light-well and fading decorations. He had made some observations before the crisis, while he and Ikaros were still guests, but his mind then had been focused on the goal of getting to Katsamba and finding transportation to Naxos.

  Kaphti houses were not much different than those in Canaan and Akkad. The mudbrick construction typical of the civilized world was further reinforced with horizontal timbers and coated in many layers of plaster. Colored washes turned neighborhoods into riotous expanses of coral, orange, and pale yellow. Generous windows upstairs provided excellent views and ventilation where the downstairs was windowless and gloomy; the narrower upstairs windows in Egyptian and Akkadian houses could not compare with the Kaphti panoramas of sea and mountains. Flat rooftops provided suitable sleeping on sweltering summer nights, mirroring similar construction elsewhere. Light-wells funneled fresh air throughout the houses and illuminated the stairways. The most refined Kaphti mansions even boasted stone seats for elimination. Daidalos could not see why Pasiphae demanded his talents when any competent native architect would have done just as well. Someone younger and more amiable could have handled a newer, larger sanctuary, even the intensive reconstruction of the terraces.

  He had never been able to fathom the motivations or thought-world of the nobility. Priests he found even more inscrutable. In his eyes, Pasiphae came across as a capricious, oversexed twit who heard only what she wanted to hear. So during the feast, when he had related that he had worked in Egypt, she must have jumped to the conclusion that he had designed a pyramid such as the colossi at Giza. Had he not explained that those monuments were more than five hundred years old? Daidalos distinctly remembered saying that the closest he had ever come to working on a pyramid was the staircase he had helped chisel into a princess’s tomb at Lisht to accommodate the woman’s sarcophagus. And when he mentioned working in Ur and Sippar, Pasiphae had assumed that he had designed and built ziggurats. Daidalos had corrected her, but now he regretted having told her anything at all. Her assumptions obviously could not be altered any more than his words that night could be unsaid.

  Daidalos woke the next morning to the din of workers outside his window. A comfortingly familiar sound, yet oddly disconcerting when he had not committed to any construction project, and when the environs of the deserted hill had been so silent for so many days prior.

  Opening his shutter and peering down, he saw workmen laboring nearby. Men with wheelbarrows and shovels were shifting rubble to cart it away. An architect was taking measurements with string; two young men who were clearly his assistants fixed stakes into the earth. So Pasiphae was going ahead with her project. Daidalos scratched his head. If she had hired an architect, then she did not need him.

  Going downstairs, he encountered the servant woman. “Did you know about the work outside? Has the high priestess hired an architect?” She shook her head. Daidalos found that strange. Surely the man taking measurements was in charge of the operation. “Is she going to return Ikaros to me?”

  Again, the woman shook her head, but the sympathetic furrow between her brows indicated she understood his dilemma.

  Daidalos could not help but return to the window to watch the goings-on near the mansion. The laborers diligently shoveled and carted away rubble. More measurements were taken, more string unrolled and more stakes hammered into the ground. Noon came and the workers went away for the customary rest. Mid-afternoon saw them return. And through everything, no one knocked on Daidalos’s door. No one asked for his assistance or even apologized for the noise. He told himself that he did not care, that it was not his endeavor, except for the little voice in the back of his head that kept reminding him that he was an architect, that he wanted to know what was going on.

  “No,” he firmly told the voice. “Not in a thousand years will I do anything for that woman.”

  Late afternoon brought a visitor, when he had relinquished any hope of encountering anyone.

  Plainly dressed, his elegant curls pulled back in a utilitarian ponytail, Yishharu bade Daidalos a formal good afternoon, taking Daidalos’s hands in his. “Forgive me for disturbing you, but I wanted to express my sincere apologies for any inconvenience you might have experienced the oth
er night. I know you were embarrassed and offended. Believe me when I say I did not encourage her.”

  Silence. What did Yishharu expect him to say? That all was forgotten and forgiven? Never. “When will Ikaros be returned?” He indicated the space around him. “Your sister obviously doesn’t need my services.”

  “Ah, yes. She has not decided.” Reaching into his tunic, Yishharu produced a familiar swatch of fabric. “I understand your actions, but Minos Rasuros is not in a position to assist you.”

  Daidalos’s face burned as he reclaimed his confiscated message. “I have the right to petition him.”

  “You do,” Yishharu conceded, “but it would not have helped you. Pasiphae knows nothing about this, I assure you.” Searching around, he found a place to sit. “I can also assure you that this unfortunate incident will not affect your son. I have since taken Ikaros under my protection. He still dwells in my sister’s house—that I cannot change—but I have arranged for him to have a tutor. There is no reason why a boy should sit idle when he could have an education.”

  Daidalos narrowed his eyes. While the offer sounded generous and harmless enough, there must be some catch. High-ranking priests like Yishharu did not provide commoner children like Ikaros with an education for nothing. “Ikaros’s education is my concern, not yours.”

  Yishharu spread his hands. “Of course. I mean no offense. Naturally you want to apprentice your son, but from what I understand of the craft, architects need to know how to calculate sums, read and write. Ikaros does not seem to have had much opportunity to learn during your travels.”

  The truth stung. The itinerant nature of his work coupled with his low status as a foreigner had meant Daidalos could not establish his family as he would have liked. Ikaros’s education was lacking, he knew that, but if he agreed to allow High Priest Yishharu to become his son’s benefactor that also meant that he would have to stay and take on an unwanted commission.

  “My education in Naxos was adequate,” he answered firmly. “Your sister has her architect. She doesn’t need me, she doesn’t want me, and Ikaros doesn’t need all these fine trappings. Send him back to me. Release us.”