Knossos

by Laura Gill

  Dusani appeared a short while later with a bowl of water and clean linens. “Time to change your dressings, Rusa.” She sounded apologetic, and acknowledged Yikashata’s unconscious presence with a nod. “As long as his wounds are clean and dry, and we keep chanting the right prayers to Payawon, there’s no reason why he should not heal.”

  Rusa could not muster the same optimism. His father was old, and he feared the immortals’ fiery fist had broken him inside. “Do you really believe that?” He gripped his walking stick, bracing himself to stand. “Or will Payawon turn on us, too?” His earlier frustration asserted itself.

  “Rusa!” she hissed.

  Removing his tunic, he lay face down on a nearby cot and steadied himself for the inevitable pain. Dusani undid the bandages and worked them free. “This isn’t so bad,” she observed.

  Rusa felt his skin peeling along with the linen. “It doesn’t feel that way.”

  At least the water today was cool. Dusani cleaned his wounds, recited the healing spell, and replaced the bandages. “Payawon hasn’t abandoned us, Rusa,” she told him. “Your burns have formed blisters. I’ve heard that as long as they remain clear and don’t break, no evil humors will afflict you.”

  Rusa chose to remain in the room and doze on Isiratos’s cot so he could be near his father. On the wall beside the bed his daughters shared, he noticed a fragment of surviving fresco: a partial hand holding a white lily, sacred to Diktynna. Rusa liked to think that the goddess was watching over the girls.

  Two matters required his attention that afternoon. First, his brother-in-law Yishana, whose left arm was bound in a sling, but who continued to supervise repairs to the mansion, came upstairs to deliver some important news. “It’s both good and bad.” He kept his voice pitched low out of respect for Yikashata. “Which would you rather hear first?”

  Mindful of his wounds, Rusa carefully stretched. “I would prefer not to have any unfortunate news, but I suppose you’d better start with that.”

  It concerned his house. “All the properties fronting the north pasture were destroyed, yours included. Thank the gods you weren’t there at the time, Rusa. The upper levels were knocked from the foundation and crashed into the courtyard as if some mighty hand sliced through them with a sword.” Yishana had not inherited his sister’s beauty, but he possessed a poetic tongue, and could sway listeners even when his face was dirty and his arm bound in a sling.

  Rusa sat stunned. He had been born and raised in that house, and had celebrated his wedding and the births of his children there; his history was inscribed in its foundations. He glanced over at his sleeping father. Could he hear their conversation? The news would devastate him. “Have you told Dusani?”

  “I will leave that to you.” Yishana looked sympathetic. “There is some good news, though. Almost everyone on that block was killed, but just a short while ago they found a survivor buried in the rubble of your next-door neighbor’s house. I believe Naptu is your children’s tutor?”

  “Naptu?” Rusa recalled then that the tutor had offered to stay with Danel in order to watch the house. “Is he all right?”

  “Some cuts and bruises.” Yishana smiled. “It seems the rubble that trapped him also shielded him from the terrible heat. He’s being looked after by distant relatives.”

  That was very good news, indeed. Rusa had been concerned about the fate of his neighbors, and while he mourned the loss of Danel and his family, he thanked any gods who might still be favorably disposed toward mortals for Naptu’s miraculous survival.

  The second matter concerned the junior scribes assigned to him. While he had not anticipated seeing them until tomorrow, they sought him out the moment they received their orders. One was an older man, Anepadu, whose intrinsic lack of ambition had prevented him from being promoted at court. The other was an ashen, frantic Ensham, who, vigorously protesting the injustice of the assignment, threw himself upon Rusa.

  “Who recommended me for this horror? I was never trained to handle corpses!” His voice reached neared hysterical pitch. “I don’t want to do this. Mother says the restless dead will attach to us and follow us home! We’ll be afflicted, struck—”

  Rusa saw no choice but to strike him. Ensham’s histrionics subsided, but the hunted gleam in his eyes persisted. “Someone from the temple will be there to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

  A white-faced, black robed priestess of Hekate was present the next morning to chant protective spells over the scribes and the conscripted laborers assigned the unenviable task of handling the dead. She sprinkled the men with salt water and wafted smoke from an oil lamp around them.

  “Remain bound to this earthly plane,” she intoned. “You are the rock, the flame, the shield. Let dark Hekate cast her veil between you and the many-numbered dead.” Setting the lamp aside, the priestess acted as the goddess, fluttering the sheer linens of her veil among the men; they smelled of sour old herbs and the tomb.

  Once, Rusa spared a glance toward the ruins of his house and immediately regretted doing so; the emotions the sight evoked made it all the harder to concentrate on his task. Pyramesos had chosen the meadow where Rusa and his brothers used to play, and where so many displaced earthquake victims had perished, for the mass burials. The sweet-smelling verdant grass was now withered and dusted with ashes, and the old shepherd was nowhere in sight. Had he died, too, with his flocks and dog? Rusa’s stomach churned at the prospect of cataloguing so many deaths when he could not comprehend why the gods had spared some people and taken others. It seemed so random, so capricious.

  The laborers had been working since early yesterday preparing the first grave, a pit measuring twelve feet by twelve by fifteen feet deep. Its occupants were the casualties from the earthquake three days ago. Because Rusa as senior scribe had the responsibility of making certain the numbers and, wherever possible, gender and names of the dead were correctly recorded, that left the junior scribes with the unpleasant task of identifying the corpses.

  Ensham did not last long. He collapsed retching and sobbing after the seventh corpse went into the ground, and swore he absolutely could not go on. Rusa was torn between removing him from the task and forcing him to continue, when Kleonikos stepped forward, grasped the young scribe by the arm, and hauled him back to the graveside. “Be a man,” the Hellene barked.

  Ensham shakily resumed his task, until he fainted dead away a quarter of an hour later. Kleonikos moved to revive him with a kick to the side.

  “Leave him alone,” Rusa said sharply. “He’s just a boy.” He was not at all sure he should be challenging the Hellene, but he could not allow the spectacle to continue. “I have another task for him.”

  A tense moment passed where it seemed the Hellene would hold his ground, but then Ensham regained consciousness. Kleonikos dragged him upright, pulled him away from the grave, and dumped him on the ground behind Rusa’s folding chair.

  Anepadu worked without complaint, though there was no mistaking his ashen pallor. As each corpse was handed down into the grave, the shroud covering the face was drawn back. Sometimes the older scribe called out a name in a trembling voice. He indicated whether the body was male or female, old or young, or, in some circumstances, undetermined. Each face was then covered again, and the body laid to rest.

  As he worked, focusing on the wax diptych to avoid looking at the dead, Rusa occasionally heard a name he knew, paused to collect his composure, and continued on. The children were the worst. He blanked out all thoughts of his own family, and the dread of encountering the names of his relations, from whom he had not heard since before the earthquake.

  Twice, the priestess interrupted the laborers to chant over the deceased and deposit offerings of idols and libations of wine and honey. She twirled and rattled the sistrum in her hand to frighten away evil spirits. She wailed and raked her cheeks with her fingernails, and implored the goddess Hekate. “Dark goddess, Lady of the Crossings, receive these dead of Knossos. Gather them in your shadowy mantle of prote
ction. Return them to the shrouding earth of the Mother’s womb.” The priestess did not recite the formula for each corpse. There were simply too many.

  141 bodies went into that first grave, stacked together like so many amphorae. The laborers observed a moment of silence, then started mounding the earth over the corpses. Another grave was already being dug; the next group of dead was being collected in a canvas tent. In a second tent, the deceased’s possessions were kept under heavy guard—whatever valuables they had been wearing when their corpses had been recovered. By contrast, only a single guard watched the dead themselves. Their belongings, Rusa soberly reflected, had become more important than their bodies.

  Cataloguing the valuables proved to be a more strenuous task than counting the dead. The scribes had to separate the goods by type, tally and make notations, and then pack everything away. Unfortunately, the salvage crews had not bothered to distinguish which corpses had yielded which items, an oversight that could present difficulties if the next of kin came forward later with property claims. One of the scribes occasionally recognized an item, such as a seal stone or piece of jewelry. Then that had to be inventoried separately, tagged, and set aside, even though no provision seemed to have been made to contact relatives living elsewhere. Rusa wondered whether the Minos intended to appropriate everything regardless, or if the valuables were destined for the temple storehouses. He dared not raise the subject with Kleonikos or his subordinates, or even the minor official Pyramesos had appointed to oversee the salvage operation.

  Lastly, the sorted, catalogued items were placed inside pots, and their lids sealed with twine and wax to which Rusa affixed his seal. The pots were then labeled, stacked in wheelbarrows, and carted away. That work took the rest of the day, and, because more items constantly kept coming, still was not finished when the official announced it was time to go home. The scribes surrendered their tallies. Rusa had already relinquished the tallies of that day’s burials to the priestess of Hekate, as instructed. Whether the documents would be delivered straight to Minos Pyramesos, or transferred to the temple archives to be copied, he could not say.

  A little sunshine entered into Rusa’s day when he returned home and found Naptu waiting for him. Expressing their mutual relief with exclamations of joy, the scribes embraced—carefully, in consideration of each other’s wounds—and, after offering Mother Rhaya a thanksgiving libation of undiluted wine, fell to talking about their recent trials.

  “I remember very little,” Naptu said of the blast and searing wind, and Danel’s house collapsing around him. “One moment I felt this immense shock, then heat, and then nothing.” Staring into the cup of wine he clasped between bruised hands, he shook his head. “Everyone else in that house was killed. There’s no explanation for it.”

  Rusa could not enlighten him, only provide reassurance. “You would not be alone, Naptu. Two days ago, I thought the gods were going to destroy us all. Then I heard you’d survived, and just today a man digging graves told me how he was caught outside when the killing wind struck, but somehow it went around him, as if Mother Rhaya or some other benevolent immortal shielded him with their hands.” He drank, the strong wine a welcome indulgence after the day’s hardship. “I have no idea what to think now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about Yikashata.” Naptu cautiously drank his wine, but had not touched the bread or cheese Dusani had set out. Rusa doubted he had received much nourishment or consideration from his relations; he had always been closer to Yikashata’s family.

  “He’s comfortable, at least.” Rusa hated how dismissive that sounded. “I don’t know what else to say.”

  Naptu set down his cup. “He’s fortunate that he has his loved ones with him.” He paused, appearing to consider something. “Is there anything I can do to help? I don’t mean about your father, though I wouldn’t mind sitting with him and keeping him company, and I don’t mean the children. They seem to have found a new tutor with their...”

  “It’s only a temporary arrangement,” Rusa explained hastily. “We didn’t know what happened to you.”

  Naptu shook his head. His graying hair was mussed and he still wore the dirty, threadbare clothes in which he had been rescued. Rusa had no intention of allowing him to return to his kin, if that was how they treated him. “I meant as a scribe, Dadarusa. I am qualified to help you in your task, if you would have me.” He looked pale, despite his dark coloring. “Only, I seem to have misplaced my writing materials.”

  “I will find you some.” Rusa could not refuse this unexpected windfall. Ensham’s immaturity and squeamishness were liabilities. All the young scribe was good for was cataloguing salvage.

  Naptu agreed to stay the night, and to accept new clothes and a bath, though he kept protesting that he did not want to impose on Kikkeros. He made himself useful almost immediately, sitting with Yikashata and freeing Zabibe to look after the baby. Yikashata’s prognosis was worse. Dusani’s talismans and prayers had no effect. Yikashata was wracked with chills, his skin had become clammy and cold, and under the bandages his burns had assumed a pale, leathery consistency.

  Rusa felt sick. The end had to be near. As far as he was concerned, his father was not going into a mass grave. When the time came, Yikashata would be interred in the family tomb with his wife and parents, and receive the veneration of his descendants.

  The laborers had two graves ready by the next morning. Soon after starting work, Anepadu called out Ankeros’s name. Rusa signaled to the laborers and scribes to grant a moment’s silence. The priestess of Hekate came over to peer at the corpse, nodded, and the workers covered the dead scribe’s face. Rusa wondered where Ankeros had been found, and whether it had been in the Minos’s tent where Rusa had last seen him.

  That thought prompted another: when and where was Minos Hammuras to be buried? Royal funerals were occasions of ceremony and grandeur, and, like all other Kaphti burials, always took place within two days of death. However, Rusa had heard nothing about the interment of Minos Hammuras, and no one, not even Kleonikos, who might have known something, could enlighten him.

  No one was even asking about the old Minos. Everyone appeared to have accepted Pyramesos’s assumption of power without question. Rusa did not think the populace at large knew about Hammuras’s blasphemy that final evening, although maybe, deep down, they suspected he had somehow incited the gods into sending the thunder and burning wind. Rusa knew what he believed.

  The tallies for the first grave numbered 188 corpses, and the second numbered 161, yielding a total of 725 dead when added to the figures from yesterday. Awaiting interment, more bodies were piled in the mortuary tent, where the workers had sprinkled lime over the corpses to counter the smell of decomposition. The caustic vapors emanating from the tent discouraged most visitors.

  One such visitor was the priestess of Hekate, who each dawn renewed her protective spells around the space. After the second day’s interments, and needing some essential information, Rusa sought her out. “Are the dead from the temple being brought here?”

  She lowered the sistrum she had been using to frighten evil spirits. Her hands were slender, almost skeletal, and she had a long face. “Dead from the temple and the temple’s estates, yes,” she answered in a voice hoarse from wailing. “More are coming, Scribe Dadarusa.”

  Rusa found himself wondering whether the creepiness she exuded derived from the goddess who possessed her when she wore the vestments of Hekate, or if that was her natural state. “When is Minos Hammuras to be buried? The death of a Minos is a matter of civil concern.”

  She blinked. Her eyes were bloodshot, probably from the vapors inside the tent. “A Registrar should not peer into shadows where he has not been invited,” she muttered. “A Registrar should not ask awkward questions.”

  “His death and burial fall under my jurisdiction.” Yet the moment the words left his mouth, Rusa regretted them. Her words were a dire warning. “Other authorities are seeing to it?” His voice wavered, broke. “Of course.�
� He knew he should have turned and departed, forgotten the episode, but turning his back the priestess while she was channeling the goddess seemed a sacrilegious thing to do. He did not want her to think him a fool. “Forgive me, but do you know Priest-Architect Didanam?”

  She tilted her head at an odd angle. “Hmm, I have seen a priest of Daidalos moving among the workers, always twitching with energy, twenty steps ahead of everyone else. Is this man the Didanam you seek?”

  “Yes, that’s him. My younger brother.” The priestess had described him to the life. “When Lady Hekate releases you, will you give him a message?” One could not ask so menial a thing of an immortal goddess. “Tell him that his father, Master Scribe Yikashata, is injured and possibly dying.” To say Yikashata was definitely dying to a priestess of Hekate while the goddess still inhabited her flesh was to invite her specter. “If Didanam intends to visit him, he had better do it now.”

  “Tell Priest-Architect Didanam his father is dying.” The priestess gave the sistrum a disconcerting rattle. “Yes, the Lady is pleased do this.”

  Rusa refrained from the urge to throw up his hands. “No, the Lady has no need to perform this mundane task. I ask it of her mortal servant only.” He should have asked elsewhere, except that she was the only representative of the temple he had seen in days. “I humbly beseech the Lady not to claim my father before his time.”

  “Would you withhold the comfort of the Lady’s kiss from a dying man?” Fathomless black eyes searched his, and a sensation of helplessness suddenly overpowered him. Rusa managed to raise his hand to his forehead, for this was no mortal woman speaking, but the immortal goddess herself. Would Hekate take his father now, because Rusa specifically asked her not to? What had he done? “Yikashata’s life will run out when his thread reaches its terminus, not when you desire it,” she told him. Poppy-red lips bloomed in a macabre smile. “Meanwhile, I will convey your message to the twitching servant of Daidalos, though I cannot guarantee an answer.”