by Laura Gill
As to Daidalos, the guard Ekur had reported that the man and his son had spent much of the Bull Dance conversing in Akkadian. “I heard them mention Lord Asterios and Lord Yishharu.”
Pasiphae did not like the sound of that at all. Daidalos must be keeping something from her if he insisted on speaking a tongue that her man could not follow. Kurra had nothing to report, but then Daidalos had expressed dislike for the scribe and kept things from him, even going so far as to appointing an assistant scribe to spy upon him. Oh, she had the man’s measure. He was prevaricating, making excuses, merely pretending conformity while waiting for her to slacken her grip so that he could escape with his son.
Abandoning all efforts to sleep, Pasiphae sent for Ikaros. The boy came straightaway, wearing a solemn face in place of the costly raiment and ornaments he had worn yesterday. “Good morning, Ikaros,” she said, inviting him to take the chair Minos Rasuros had vacated. “Did you enjoy yourself at the Bull Dance?” He nodded soberly. He was always so reserved around her.
“And your lessons?” she pressed. “How are you doing with your signs and figures? Master Dhipatsu says you are a diligent student.” Pasiphae wished she could have said that about her own children. Her eldest son Asterios was unruly and malicious, and her eldest daughter haughty and spoiled. Only her younger daughter, Akalla, showed any promise. A shame Ikaros was of such low birth. She might have held him up as an example of proper obedience.
“Thank you, Lady.” Ikaros anxiously chewed his lip. “May I be apprenticed? I’m old enough to learn my father’s trade.”
Pasiphae sensed Daidalos’s influence in the child’s request. “How can you be apprenticed to a man who does nothing?”
At that, he came alive. “Oh, no!” he protested. “Father showed me what he’s doing. He has his men building terraces to take the weight of the buildings. When that’s done, they’ll build a court—”
“Yes, yes.” Her throbbing headache could not bear any more of the boy’s piping voice, especially when he was just parroting his father. “When he actually builds something, then we can discuss an apprenticeship.” Only when Daidalos laid the first stones, only when the first actual building started to rise, would she be convinced that he had truly committed to the project, and that he deserved the privilege of having Ikaros returned to him.
*~*~*~*
Balashu put forward the name of a potential another master mason. “Enusat does excellent work laying courtyards and floors.”
Overhearing, Diwinaso laughed good-naturedly. “Trying to get your brother-in-law on the crew, are you? Enusat does very good work, yes,” he told Daidalos, “but he’ll beggar you with the cost of his materials because he insists on working with only the very best.”
“He’ll work with what he’s given.” Daidalos was not in a jesting mood. Yishharu had been sympathetic, but had failed to talk sense into his sister. Ikaros could not be apprenticed. “All that concerns me is whether this Enusat is competent and willing to work hard and take instructions.”
Balashu insisted that his wife’s brother was equal to the task. Daidalos reserved his judgment until he had viewed a sample of the man’s work, then contracted him to dress foundation stones for the first storehouse.
Enusat was a small but energetic man who talked big. He had also laid the Minos’s ceremonial walkway, and grieved when he saw its current condition. “I did that work only twelve years ago. Give me leave to repair it. I will import the very finest Tura limestone from Egypt to make the path gleam—”
“I make the decisions regarding materials.” Daidalos had not encountered such a huckster of a craftsman since his days in Sippar, when a brickmaker had tried to sell his employer on covering an entire house in attractive but expensive blue and green colored tiles. “Tura limestone costs a fortune. The local quarries are sufficient. You will have plenty of opportunities later to do decorative work, but that will be solely at my discretion. Is that understood?”
Enusat spread his hands, while granting Daidalos a broad smile of goodwill. “Let me amaze you with what I can do.”
“Amaze me with a block of well-built storerooms,” Daidalos said, though not unkindly. “Scribe Kurra will direct you to the available materials. You will get your supplies from him—oh, and the storeroom floors will be of rammed earth. Save your skills with flagstones for later.”
Three days later, while he worked with the laborers on the storehouse site, he saw the high priestess approaching, deep in conversation with a young nobleman. Pasiphae never ventured into the construction area, but there she was, smiling and gesticulating with her attendants and guest. The man’s fringed kilt and lovelocks were at odds with his potbelly and knobby knees.
Whatever he said to her, Pasiphae laid her hand on his braceleted arm and laughed. Notwithstanding her attempt to seduce him, Daidalos had seen her flirt unabashedly with young men and old priests, but there was something about the way her guest fawned over her that pricked his interest.
“You’re absolutely right, High Priestess! How can anyone ask for a more splendid view?” Daidalos did not catch Pasiphae’s answer. The nobleman caught her hand and raised it to his lips, though Daidalos doubted that any part of him liked women. “Oh, I agree wholeheartedly. The site is being wasted on these unsightly huts. I envision a magnificent portico with gypsum surrounds, and...”
Was the man an architect? Daidalos smelled a rival. Moreover, this effeminate poser was just the type to appeal to the high priestess’s vanity.
Despite his irritation, Daidalos had no intention of starting an altercation with an obsequious young architect who, from what little Daidalos had overheard, had no idea how to build anything. So he turned his back on the high priestess and her visitor, and returned to his task of supervising Enusat and his crew in establishing the foundations of the first block of storerooms.
After a time, the high priestess departed with her attendants, leaving the young architect behind. Daidalos continued to ignore him, even when Enusat and his masons indicated their confusion. Sooner or later, the interloper would grow peevish in the summer heat and dust, and leave.
Then, to Daidalos’s astonishment, a troupe of assistants appeared over the lip of the hillside. The young architect directed them toward the storehouse site. Obediently, they tramped over Daidalos’s carefully laid foundation channels, and, pretending not to notice Daidalos or the masons, proceeded to plant their own stakes and lines. Enusat raised an eyebrow. The masons appealed to him, then to Daidalos, who bade them with gestures to be still.
Once he established that there would be no confrontation, Daidalos slowly, calmly approached the other architect.
“Begging your pardon, sir,” he began, “but...”
The young man favored him with a condescending smile. “Do not concern yourself, grandfather. We are simply taking over the project from your architect.” He must have been blind as well as stupid, not to have realized just from casual observation who he was talking to. “Stand back, old man.” He thrust out a bejeweled hand. “You are obstructing our view.”
Daidalos would have liked to obstruct his view with a good, hard backhand, but he knew how to play the game. If a dusty old laborer was all this idiot saw, Daidalos would give him precisely that. “But who are you, sir?”
“I am Samushanas, Master Architect of Tylissos.” The young man gestured to his assistants to adjust one of the stakes. A quick look told Daidalos that the other architect was laying out a portico. Daidalos suppressed an ironic snort. Of all the structures Samushanas might have erected, the amateur was going to start the temple complex with a useless portico!
“But what about...?” Daidalos waved to Enusat’s masons with a befuddled air. “That’s supposed to—”
Samushanas put out a hand as if to push him away. “Be gone with you.”
As the other architect moved to confer with his assistants, Daidalos finally lost his patience and dropped the charade altogether. “Do all Kaphti builders put the cart before th
e donkey, or are you a spectacularly incompetent exception?”
Samushanas turned, bewilderment writ large on his carefully painted face. “Are you questioning your betters, old man?”
“When I encounter one of my betters, I’ll ask him.” Enusat and his masons, hearing this, snorted and guffawed. Samushanas’s assistants, meanwhile, appeared as confused as their master.
Daidalos indicated the intrusive stakes. “When did you survey the hill to determine that that was the best location for a portico? Are you certain the slope can sustain the weight of a new temple?” He shook his head. “Any architect worth his plumb-line knows that a temple complex starts with its central court and storerooms.”
“Are you suggesting that I am ignorant of my craft?” Samushanas’s nostrils flared.
Daidalos casually crossed his arms over his breast. “No,” he said calmly. “I am telling you.”
Samushanas’s eyes narrowed. “And who are you to tell me anything?”
“Who do you think I am, boy?” When Samushanas did not answer, Daidalos added, “I suggest you go back to Tylissos and apprentice yourself to a builder who knows what he’s about.”
At this, Samushanas said nothing; he was shaking hard, either from anger or humiliation. After a few moments, he withdrew, leaving his assistants in the lurch. They, too, quickly departed, in the process neglecting to pull up their stakes.
Daidalos watched them depart, then calmly returned to his work. The masons surrounded him, clapping his shoulders and laughing. He did not share their amusement. “Remove the stakes,” he told Enusat. “That amateur won’t be returning.”
*~*~*~*
Pasiphae received the afternoon’s correspondence with a sour demeanor. Samushanas had hastily excused himself from the project a scant hour after reassuring her in the most confident terms that he could provide her with a magnificent temple complex in two years’ time.
Daidalos had not taken the hint, but had pulled up Samushanas’s stakes and gone right back to doing nothing. Damn that stubborn old man! Why was it so hard to get what she wanted?
Yishharu entered the narrow room just as she broke the seal on the monthly tallies from her estate manager in Archanes. “I see you brought that charlatan back from Tylissos,” he observed.
“Samushanas is not a charlatan.” As Yishharu moved closer, Pasiphae noticed that he was limping. “What did you do to yourself?”
“Asterios thought it was amusing to trip his uncle on the stairs.” Yishharu rubbed his right shin through his robe. “You need to do something with him. A season with his father might do him—”
“Absolutely not.” Pasiphae skipped over her manager’s lengthy salutations. “He has a mischievous streak, is all. He’ll outgrow it.” She perused the tallies, despite a growing headache. In the heat of midday, she ought to have been resting on her couch, but that meant reviewing her correspondence later, when the light was weaker. “Was there something you wanted?”
Yishharu claimed the corner footstool. “The architect from Tylissos,” he reminded her. “Of all the architects you could have sent for to review the project, it should not have been Samushanas. He does not know what he is doing.”
“He can give me a temple in two years.” Having finished examining the tallies, Pasiphae turned her attention to the next document, which bore the seal of Amaya, the priestess of the winds in Katsamba. Pasiphae curled her lip in irritation; that sour harridan did nothing but complain. She shoved the message to the bottom of the pile.
“I highly doubt that.” Yishharu raised a hand to beg her indulgence when she would have interrupted him. “When I heard you had sent for him again, I had my agent investigate him further. That mansion he built three years ago in Katsamba, the one he spent an hour describing in loving detail to you last night? It might be lovely to look at, but it already has cracks in the foundation. He dares not show his face in Katsamba for fear the owners will haul him before the local council. And he grossly overcharged a widow in Amnissos for a storeroom that holds only half the pithoi he promised. Do you really want him building your temple?”
Pasiphae selected a message bearing the seal of the high priest of the Juktas sanctuary. “He assured me that was unfounded libel.”
“Well, he is a liar. You prefer him over Daidalos because he dresses well and tells you what you want to hear.” Yishharu stroked his clean-shaven chin. “I cannot understand your logic about this project when you are so careful in everything else. You have exercised great patience and cunning in securing the land for the temple and placating the dislocated families, yet now you are behaving like a fool.” She started to interject, but he talked over her. “The gods send you a master builder, you break sacred oaths to secure his services, you even take his son hostage, and yet you still cannot decide what you want.” He lowered his voice. “What is it, Pasiphae? What troubles you so?”
“Nothing.” The answer came automatically to her lips, though it was not the truth. She could not articulate, even for her brother, how she needed the temple as her testament to the immortal gods, how she sat awake in the night with her many sins fearing that she might die before the temple was finished.
Yishharu stared at her as if he could see straight into her soul. “Let Daidalos do his work.”
“Can he even do it?” Pasiphae hated the uncertainty in her voice. Yishharu was right: she could not make up her mind.
“Yes, I believe he can. Since you began this project, I have applied myself to the study of architecture. Daidalos is excavating channels to give the foundations a firm footing. His carpenters already have the wood measured and cut for the framework, and the masons have sawn the ashlar blocks. I have seen his sketches. He knows what he is doing.”
Pasiphae glanced away, toward the small square of light that was the chamber’s sole window. “I have not seen his sketches.” She knew she was making excuses. “I have not seen anything.”
“Have you asked him?” Yishharu paused. She heard him sigh. “I have seen the sketches, Sister. I know what should be done.”
Pasiphae hesitated. When would her restlessness subside? “Just make sure that it is done.”
*~*~*~*
Autumn brought the last of the warm weather as the Knossians celebrated the grape harvest and festival of the vines. High Priestess Pasiphae led a procession of women south to Mount Juktas to drink and sacrifice wild animals to Dionysos. Vintners pressed grapes to ferment into wine. Farmers prepared for the late autumn slaughter and the olive harvest. Enusat’s masons finished cutting blocks and laying the ashlar foundation courses for the first storerooms. The northern end of the central courtyard was already finished, its limestone gleaming in the sun.
Then the weather turned cold. The leaves curled and dropped, scattered across the courtyard. Work on the site became intermittent.
Daidalos spent rainy days indoors with his drawings, working on the plan of the sanctuary of Poteidan, which would be comprised of an aggregation of smaller sanctuaries honoring each aspect of the god. Yishharu, who often visited with news of Ikaros, offered advice regarding the layout. The high priest claimed to have studied the rudiments of architecture in order to assist his sister with the temple project. Daidalos normally disliked it when clients pretended to know something about his trade, but in this case Yishharu demonstrated that he had been paying attention.
Taking Daidalos’s reed stylus, Yishharu drew a prospective floor plan for the Earth-Shaker’s sanctuary on a fresh tablet of wax. “Kaphti temples are always partitioned into storerooms, shrines, corridors.” He sketched in a dogleg passage leading from one chamber to another. “This is so the space can serve multiple functions, but there are other reasons. We believe that one should not be able to glimpse the end from the very beginning, so we follow a roundabout path that enhances the mystery of what is to come.” Yishharu added a cluster of rooms around a large central chamber, then rubbed out the wax to indicate entrances. “Each passage and doorway in a temple serves a different purpos
e.”
Laying aside the stylus, he picked up Daidalos’s seal from where it rested beside the architect’s inkwell. “It is like this maze, you might say. The journey of the soul toward the divine.”
Yishharu must have put in a good word with Pasiphae, because Ikaros was released four times that winter to visit his father. Each time, he brought his servant-companion with him. Iapyx was twelve years old, a year older than Ikaros. He was athletic and good-looking, but deferential to the extreme, retreating to a corner or excusing himself to assist Pu-abi during visits.
Ikaros proudly showed his father the Kaphti signs he had mastered. “It’s not that hard. It’s easier than cuneiform, because there aren’t so many signs, and they don’t have to be so perfect and even.”
Daidalos humored him, saying, “The best time to learn is when you’re young.” But as Ikaros handed back the wax tablet on which he had demonstrated his proficiency, Daidalos noticed marks on his son that he had not seen before. “What’s this?”
Ikaros shrugged over the bruises on his wrists and arms. “Oh, I got those boxing.” But his expression betrayed that he had gotten into a scrape. As long as his son had not been whipped by his tutor for unruliness or sloth, Daidalos did not press the issue. Boys would be boys.
No matter how many visits they had together, and no matter that Ikaros was getting a good education and eating well, it was never enough. Daidalos did not want to release his son back to his captors. Ikaros needed to remain close, and for reasons other than learning the architect’s trade. Past projects had taken Daidalos away from his wife and child, often for months at a time. Time in which he had missed his son’s first babblings and baby steps, in which he had failed to notice the early signs of his wife’s terminal illness until she collapsed. Had he known, had she only said something, he would have stayed in Sippar and sent for an ashipu to heal her. Later, in Cyprus, he had left Ikaros with the wives of his workers, women who had their own large broods to manage, and who had been indifferent to him.