Knossos

by Laura Gill

  She weathered a troubled night, but woke early and dressed for the sanctuary. Just donning the high priestess’s regalia strengthened her; the polos headdress and flounced skirt supported her like armor. The goddess’s vigor flowed into her. She wore a smile on her way into the misty morning.

  Her ebullience died the moment she saw Yallit dressed and painted for the sanctuary, leading her own entourage bearing offerings for the immortals. It was no accident, no coincidence, for Pasiphae had sent the woman a message last night informing her that her services were no longer necessary. Yallit had grown too comfortable, too haughty in her proxy rule.

  A glance at the woman’s hand exposed the missing ring. “You should not be here.” Pasiphae infused as much icy hauteur into her tone as possible. “You should be at home preparing for your wedding.”

  Yallit clutched her furs to her ample breasts. “Has Yishharu told you already?”

  Pasiphae drew the woman’s gaze to the hand grasping the furs. “What a lovely ring! Where did you get it?”

  Yallit glanced down at the ornament. “I had a jeweler in Amnissos copy that beautiful ring you inherited from High Priestess Akalla.”

  Lying bitch. If that was so, then where was the original? “Go home,” Pasiphae repeated. “Your service to the goddess is finished. I will tend the altar now.”

  “Are you sure?” A blustery wind had picked up; the tassels on Yallit’s polos headdress fluttered. “You have been very ill. No one wants you to catch a chill.”

  “I am well enough, thank you.”

  Pasiphae proceeded on into the sanctuary with less than a clear head. Yallit would like nothing better than to see her catch a chill, and her brother probably shared those sentiments. How convenient it would be for both of them if she died! Then the two of them could rule together as high priest and high priestess.

  Her hands trembled as she placed the offerings in the kernos, her distress magnified by the sense that Rhaya was displeased with her halfhearted efforts. She stumbled in chanting the sacred hymns, and then was embarrassed, filled with doubt. Perhaps she was trying to do too much, too soon.

  Yishharu encountered her later wrapped in furs and seated beside the brazier in her bedchamber. “Dear sister, I fear I have forgotten to return this to you.” He held out the missing ring. “Yallit wanted a copy made for her betrothal gift.”

  So Yallit had been telling the truth—or she had gotten Yishharu to lie for her. Pasiphae mumbled her thanks, returned the ring to her finger and pondered her next move.

  Toward midnight, as she prepared for sleep, her thoughts turned toward the necklace of golden lilies and lapis hidden in her jewel box. If Yallit liked purloining ornaments so much, then Pasiphae had the perfect wedding gift for her.

  *~*~*~*

  Daidalos attended the high priest’s wedding, but kept to the background. Yishharu’s bride was the woman who had acted as Pasiphae’s proxy during the high priestess’s mysterious illness. She was big-boned and buxom with exceptionally poor taste in jewelry, to gauge from the muttered comments of various onlookers.

  Colorful awnings spread around the central courtyard hosted feasting tables. Guests who had not seen the new construction except from afar complimented the porticoed facade of the sanctuary of Poteidan, and the rising sanctuary of Rhaya. Whatever materials could be covered over had been. Garlands hung everywhere. Daidalos was not looking forward to tomorrow’s inevitable delay when his men were obligated to clean the mess; the servants, hung over themselves, never did an adequate job.

  A nobleman’s wedding, he reflected, was not so very different from a commoner’s: a woman agreed to live with a man, the families gave their consent, man and woman were joined before witnesses, and everyone feasted. There was simply more spectacle when the participants had wealth to flaunt.

  The high priestess’s kitchen supplied a twelve-course feast. Acrobats and musicians performed. The bridal party celebrated with the sacred circle dance. Then Yishharu and his bride vanished for an hour into Pasiphae’s house and returned to catcalls and cheers. The sun sank, dusk descended on the hill and the servants lit so many torches that night turned back into day.

  Daidalos ate and drank little, and once he had performed his obligation to make an appearance, contemplated an avenue of escape. He might have succeeded sooner had so many nobles not sought him out. Inviting themselves to his table, they inquired about his travels, asked his opinion about renovations to their mansions, praised his work on the temple complex and pressed him for details about coming construction, especially the ceremonial walkway he had begun on the western side of the hill. A few expressed their condolences on the loss of his son.

  “What a dreadful accident,” one old lady said, “but we always knew that boy would one day hurt somebody.”

  At first, having learned to shut down whenever people mentioned Ikaros, Daidalos did not immediately register what the bedizened crone had said. That boy. It dawned on him then that she was not talking about Ikaros. We always knew that boy would one day hurt somebody. She could not be, because when had that description ever applied to Ikaros? Daidalos shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

  The elderly noblewoman blinked slowly at him. She was a walking cloud of retsina, but she somehow managed to carry on a conversation. “Oh, young Lord Asterios was a terrible mischief maker. A terrible shame, what he did.” In the lamplight, Daidalos noticed how bloodshot her eyes were.

  Ikaros had once mentioned something about Asterios, about his bullying ways. Daidalos tried to concentrate long enough to remember. His heart beat madly. What had the high priestess’s son done?

  Just as he started to ask, a boisterous old gentlemen appeared. “There you are, woman!” He seized her fleshy arm with a proprietary air and tugged her from her footstool. “You’ve drunk quite enough.”

  She swatted him with her free hand; her bracelets jangled discordantly. “You always want to leave early! Well, I’m not going anywhere.”

  Daidalos tried to intervene. “Wait, Lady. Tell me, what did that boy Asterios do to my son?”

  But the old noblewoman, drunk and frustrated by her husband, had utterly forgotten about him. Her husband, noticing Daidalos for the first time, responded with strange haste to end the interaction. “Asterios? Dear gods, what has my wife been saying? Don’t listen to her nonsense, Master Daidalos. Always nonsense when she’s been drinking. That’s why she’s going home.”

  “No, I’m not!” the old woman screeched. She flailed haplessly as her husband dragged her away; her blows struck air more often than they connected with him. Few partygoers noticed, as quite a number of them were drunk.

  Daidalos watched the scene with increasing apprehension, mulling over what fragments the old woman had given him until he reached a horrifying conclusion. He glanced around, searching for the high priestess, for Yishharu, for someone who could give him answers, until suddenly he could no longer bear the press of the festival crowd. He had to get out of there, escape.

  He found his way home, but found no surcease once he got there. Even the mansion’s thick walls and distance could not block out the clamor. All the music, the dancing and inebriated revelry agitated him. How dare Knossos celebrate when he felt such turmoil? He tore off his garland and hurled it to the floor.

  “IAPYX!”

  The young boy dashed down the stairs. Not having been invited, he and Pu-abi had observed the festivities from the rooftop. “Sir?”

  “You—you were there that night on the stairs. You saw what really happened.” Daidalos aimed an accusing finger at him. “You lied to me.” Shaking his head in frenetic denial, Iapyx took one step back for every inch Daidalos advanced. “It was the boy Asterios, wasn’t it? You lied. You let me think Ikaros slipped and fell. You let me believe it was an accident.”

  Pu-abi, attracted by the commotion, came hastening from around the corner. Daidalos roared at her to stay where she was. Her eyes went large, moist and she clutched a fist to her mouth.r />
  “Who else knows?” Daidalos seized Iapyx’s shoulders and shook him hard. All of Knossos knew. He did not need the servant boy to tell him that. “How dare you keep it from me!”

  “It was ordered!” Iapyx cried. The moment Daidalos loosened his grasp, the youth scrambled back to the relative safety of the staircase. “High Priest Yishharu ordered us—everybody—not to say anything.” His explanation was rushed, quavering. “But it was true, though. Asterios pushed him, but the stairs were slippery, there was mud, and...” Iapyx was weeping, and Pu-abi, too, was crying, soundlessly lamenting, covering her face while shaking her head. “Nobody lied!” Iapyx wiped his runny nose with the back of his hand. “Ikaros did slip and fall. It was true, it was!”

  Except for the part that was a bold-faced lie. Daidalos turned aside, wrenched open the door again and headed back into the night with no particular destination in mind, only a determination to get as far away from the mansion, the feasting in the central courtyard and Knossos as possible. Captain Mesehti and his guards were not on duty that night. No one stopped him.

  He stumbled down the east ramp away from the glow of the torches, headed blindly toward the river, not knowing what he meant to do once he got there. Darkness reclaimed the pathways. A cool breeze soughed through the nearby trees. He heard an owl hoo-hooing above the gurgle and rush of the Kairatos.

  Morning found him sprawled in a ditch in a dusty olive grove, with scant recollection of how he had gotten there. Not that it mattered. Now that he was free of Knossos, one place seemed as good as another. He shut his eyes to the dawn light filtering through the silver-dark olive leaves, and opened them again, reluctantly, only when a man crouching over him asked what he was doing in his grove. He did not answer, merely squinted and raised his hand to his eyes to block out the sunlight. A moment later, perhaps longer—he could not tell, caught between sleep and waking, someone was dribbling water from a skin onto his face.

  “Will you come inside, my lord?”

  Where had the man gotten the idea that Daidalos was a lord? As Daidalos struggled into a sitting position, he noticed that he was still clad in yesterday’s fine raiment, though the embroidered yellow wool was now rumpled and filthy from his having slept in the dirt.

  Staring at an ant crawling along his left shin, then at his worn hands, he sadly shook his head. “I had a wife and a son.” He felt as ancient as the olive trees as he spoke. “All gone. Only the temple remains.”

  He would not accept bread or water without payment, even though the man, hospitable and pious, requested nothing from him; he clearly did not want the necklace Daidalos shoved into his hands.

  Daidalos spent the day meandering through the countryside, avoiding roads, keeping to the trees. Once, he found some edible berries. Purplish juice stained the scratches the brambles left on his hands and arms, but he did not care. At night, he gathered leaves to burrow under and slept beneath a spreading oak, for which his arthritic joints did not thank him; he could scarcely move come dawn.

  He thought for a time that he might lie there forever. What reason did he have to rise again? It was as he had told the farmer yesterday: he had no wife or children, no kinsmen, only what he had built with his hands—inanimate, indifferent creations that would not mark his passing. He could die now, return to the earth, and it would not matter. He might even find some peace.

  No. He could not fathom why, but he was not ready to meet the dread Lady Hekate, Mistress of the Crossings.

  It took a while for him to get moving, but when he did, he shuffled along in search of wood to fashion into a walking stick. An hour wandering under the trees yielded a suitably sized fallen branch from which he trimmed the burls and twigs, and which padded with a strip of cloth torn from his tunic. Crude though it was, that small accomplishment pleased him more than all the tombs and temples he had ever built.

  He spent another night in the wilderness, after an entire day encountering no one. Someone from Knossos ought to have followed him, to bring him back—the thought flashing through his head soon vanished amid the pleasure of his newfound solitude.

  At length, he made his way to higher ground, the low, scrub-clad hills overlooking the valley. The herdsmen he encountered left him alone; his bedraggled finery and hermit’s ramblings lent him a sacrosanct aura they were reluctant to disturb, except to leave a food offering at a respectful distance.

  So the herdsmen thought him a wandering god! He laughed at the notion, although amusement was not what he felt when he consumed the bread and goat’s milk. Daidalos the Master Architect, a god! Making a flat, sun-warmed rock his perch, he watched the landscape below. The valley of Knossos was a patchwork of fields and groves and vineyards, bisected by the north-south running Kairatos, and sprinkled with multitudes of white-and-color-washed buildings. The Lord of the Heavens must have replaced his imperfect mortal vision with an eagle’s eyes to allow him to make all that out. Amid all the houses, he glimpsed the hill of Knossos with its long white courtyard and rising sanctuaries, and imagined he could see the people—the priests and priestesses, servants and laborers—like ants upon an anthill of his devising.

  What were the workings of ants when compared with the realm of the sacred? No wonder the gods were blind to human suffering. Mortals and their problems were so infinitesimal, insignificant, that the immortals never noticed.

  Pride escaped him. Joy eluded him. He felt nothing now but a weighty sorrow, a sense that he had become inexorably trapped in a maze such as that depicted on his seal. Not a roundabout path to the divine, as Yishharu insisted, but a web from which, that no matter how fast or far he ran, he could never escape.

  The next day, he decided to return. No particular reason drove him, no overwhelming desire for shelter or human contact or pressing need to complete the temple complex. He was simply finished with the wilderness.

  The sun had just set, creating a still-life of bronze and violet shadows, when the sentries challenged him. He barked his name, the first word he had uttered since encountering the farmer, and shuffled past them.

  He found Iapyx and Pu-abi seated cheek-by-jowl at the hearth. Pu-abi was marking something on a clay tablet, with the youth’s hand to guide her. Daidalos tapped the stuccoed floor with his stick. The sudden noise prompted Iapyx to reach for the knife at his belt and stand to face the intruder. “Is that you, Master Daidalos?” He lowered the knife. “Forgive me. I—”

  Daidalos waved him silent. Having experienced the pleasure of not hearing another human voice for days, he was not yet prepared to endure a barrage of conversation. Pu-abi hurried about the house collecting food and drink. She jostled Iapyx, indicating that he should fetch water to wash the master’s feet.

  The water felt good against his aching feet. Daidalos contemplated at the fire in the hearth, then idly perused the tablet that Iapyx and Pu-abi had been working on. He recognized the marks upon it as number signs, and at the bottom he saw a familiar word: ku-ro, meaning “total.”

  “What is this?” he asked.

  Iapyx’s hands continued working, kneading and scouring Daidalos’s feet. “I was showing Pu-abi how to do figures.”

  “I didn’t know you knew how to calculate.” Speaking came strangely after days of disuse. Daidalos took a swig from the cup Pu-abi had placed at his side. “Can you also read and write?”

  “Only a little bit.” Iapyx lowered his gaze. “Your son taught me.”

  “Ikaros?” Daidalos said the name, since the boy would not.

  Iapyx hid his reaction behind his work. “I wasn’t allowed to have lessons with him, but at night we’d stay awake together and he’d show me everything he’d learned that day. I never really had a friend before him.” He paused to collect himself. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have had the tablet or stylus. I practice at night, but it’s above my station.” He squeezed out the sea sponge; the water was filthy. His voice quavered. “I shouldn’t be teaching Pu-abi, either. I won’t do it again.”

  Daidalos reached dow
n to touch his shoulder. He realized that he had been too harsh with Iapyx, when it was clear that the boy was also grieving. “I had no idea. But no, you shouldn’t stop. Ikaros gave you that gift out of the kindness of his heart. Who am I to take it away?”

  After he ate, Pu-abi insisted on bathing him in the ceramic tub. That night, determined that he should escape again, she climbed under the fleeces with him. Daidalos slept soundly through the night and did not wake until late the next morning.

  As he dressed, Iapyx informed him that the workers, who knew that he had returned, were all waiting on him. “It’s been like that for the last several days,” he explained. “No one will touch the site without your permission.”

  “That’s ridiculous. What if I hadn’t returned?” Had they wasted an entire morning watching his doorway? “Go and tell Enusat to get to work flooring the sanctuary. Balashu’s crew ought to have the walls finished already. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  He rested throughout the day, seeing no one, not even Kurra, who had tablets requiring his seal. No word came from the temple except for a message inquiring whether he was well; Yishharu was still celebrating his nuptials, and Pasiphae had nothing to do with him these days. Pu-abi grilled skewered lamb and onions and baked bread; she was determined to undo the privations he had endured. Iapyx sat on a footstool in the light-well working on a list of tallies Isiratos had provided.

  Daidalos watched him for a while. The youth showed remarkable diligence, inventing problems with which to practice when he had no real-life examples. Mistakes seemed not to trouble him; he simply studied harder and tried again. “Iapyx,” he finally asked, “how would you like a tutor?”

  Iapyx looked up from his tablet. “Sir?”

  “A tutor, young man. An apprenticeship,” Daidalos repeated. “A trade other than servant.”

  “A trade? Yes, I would.” Iapyx slowly shook his head in disbelief. “Am I to be your apprentice?”