Knossos

by Laura Gill

Wedaneus, Alaia, and their children did not stay long once the sacrificial rites were carried out. Smoke from the direction of Knossos conjured alarming memories of that night three years earlier, and they hurried back into town to see what the damage might be. All through the journey, Alaia mumbled prayers to any god who would listen to spare their household.

  They returned to find furniture and vessels askew, plaster cracked, and Philomena injured; the woman had burned herself trying to catch a falling oil lamp. Forgetting her inhibitions, Alaia braved the chaos outside to fetch water from the well. She found some Egyptian aloe in the jumbled larder, and tended Philomena out in the court. Roof tiles had crashed there, too, but the aftershocks did not dislodge any others, and the pavement looked intact.

  Philomena winced as Alaia touched her blisters. “I’m sorry, Mistress, that I said anything to the Minos.”

  Alaia grasped the woman’s wrist to get her to hold steady. “Why are you telling me now?”

  “Because the gods are angry with him, that’s why.” Philomena shook her head. “They shouldn’t blame me for helping him spy on you. I didn’t want to do it—oh!” She drew in a hissing breath, but did not jerk back. “His agents threatened me if I didn’t—oh!—do what they said.”

  “You should have warned me.” Alaia did not know what else to say. To say that everything was all right, that the past was the past, struck her as false. Nor did she feel particularly forgiving. “Wedaneus and I knew you were listening, but you should have said something.”

  *~*~*~*

  The scaffolds left from Daikantos’s brief reconstruction efforts toppled and were abandoned. After the man Argurios had commissioned to replace the priest-architect deserted his post for fear of what further evils the vengeful gods might wreak upon the Knossians, no one else was willing to undertake the task of restoring the Labyrinth. The Knossian damos, with the consent of Argurios’s son and regent, agreed that, apart from the Labyrinthos shrine, the temple mount should be considered a taboo place until the immortals relented, and revealed their wishes.

  A distant kinswoman of Pasiphae came to Knossos to appease the gods with sacrifices and tend the renovated shrine, but she was not formally installed as high priestess as her predecessors had been.

  Ariadne had left Crete soon after the fire to become a priestess of Dionysus on Naxos. Word came back that she had married the god. Phaedra had left Knossos not long before the earthquake. Once she had flowered, the Minos had wedded her to a minor king on the Hellene mainland.

  With their separate departures, no Labyrinth, and no central authority to appoint a successor in their kinswoman Admete, the line of high priestesses at Knossos officially ended.

  *~*~*~*

  The Minos never returned from his quest to exact vengeance against Daikantos.

  Disillusioned followers who had abandoned their wanax trickled in through Katsamba with tales that Argurios, with no dedicated plan of action aside from obtaining personal vengeance, went wherever rumor took him, mostly to the lands far west of Hellas, to half-civilized settlements where the living was hard, the pickings meager, and the sightings of Daikantos unsubstantiated. When it became evident that Argurios would never return home without Daikantos’s head, and that he was no closer to finding the wily priest-architect than before the expedition started, his men began to desert. As they explained to his son, who criticized them for their lack of loyalty, a few sheep and uncouth women were not worth the trouble.

  In the seventh year of the expedition, the damos elected Argurios’s firstborn son Lakhuros as king, but did not grant him the title of Minos. Shortly after, a rumor began circulating that Argurios had met his end in the land of the Sikels, where the daughters of the local ruler sacrificed him to their goddess by boiling him alive in the welcoming bath.

  *~*~*~*

  Wrinkled and gray, now a mother-in-law and enthusiastic grandmother, Alaia cared nothing about Argurios’s demise. For all the yarns sailors and merchants exchanged in Katsamba that traveled back to Knossos, only one story concerned her, only one made her wonder.

  Where no one had ever believed in the existence, much less the culpability, of a menial named Theseus, now men from all over the Aegean began to share accounts of an Athenian sea captain of that same name. This Theseus boasted that he had traveled to Crete, where he had wooed the daughter of the Minos, and wrestled and slain the fearsome bull-man of the Labyrinth.

  Alaia had never expected to hear that name on the lips of outsiders. Could the men on the Katsamba waterfront have been exchanging tales about Keos? Once, in the summer, she went with her daughter and son-in-law to Katsamba to find witnesses who might answer her questions, but not a single description of Theseus the Athenian matched her son. In fact, very few of the stories even agreed with each other. She headed home empty-handed.

  Dejected, she spent the next several days chastising herself for wasting an afternoon seeking Keos among fast-talking seamen. Her only solace lay in the fact that Merope was pregnant with her first child.

  At length, Wedaneus found her weeping beside the bread oven. He took her floured hands in his. “Are you still stricken over your visit to Katsamba? You should not have gone without me.”

  She could scarcely see him through the blur of her tears. “I did not want to trouble you, Husband.”

  “Why not?” Patting her hands, he released her. “Did you honestly think that I never made inquiries? I hear the name Theseus all the time now. Why, last week in the market while Anaxoitas was negotiating for scarlet dye, I met an Attic leather merchant who told me that Theseus’s mother was a priestess and his father the king of Athens. Then a messenger from Amnissos I met in the counting house yesterday swore that Theseus is a dispossessed horse breeder’s son from the Argive vassal state of Troezen. They say he came here with a shipment of slaves bound for Poseidon’s altar. They say Ariadne fell in love with him and helped him murder Minotauros, and when he took her away with him, he abandoned her on the isle of Naxos.” Wedaneus grunted his disapproval. “Sailors enjoy a good story. I would not be surprised to hear that Theseus himself is responsible for multiple versions of the tale. Keos never boasted so.”

  Even after she dried her eyes on a kitchen rag, Alaia could not bring herself to meet Wedaneus’s gaze. She felt bone cold, as though Keos’s shade occupied the room along with them. “I want him to be alive, Husband,” she murmured. “I do not care how he makes his living, whether he raids and murders, or is simply a fisherman or herdsman hiding from the authorities, as long as he is not dead. At least then I might see him again.” Alaia heard how strange and impious her utterance was, but so much had changed since she had last seen her child.

  “I care,” Wedaneus retorted. “I would rather that Keos were dead and unburied in the rubble than to have him live on as this Theseus. To acknowledge that marauder as our Keos would be to say that, yes, he killed the bull priest and burned the Labyrinth, and that, yes, he makes his living on the suffering of others.” He took her hands again, held them tightly, and squeezed her fingers. “Alaia, dear wife. Forget Theseus. Let our son be dead. Let him go.”

  As he held her, she tried to obey, to release the memory of Keos to the realm of Lady Hekate while lavishing her attention on Kassandros and Merope, and her grandchildren with their laughing, smiling faces. Yet her grief, never far from her consciousness, caught her sometimes upon smelling a certain aroma that she associated with him, hearing a young man’s strident voice, or glimpsing a head of curling black hair that might have been his. Her loss tugged at her whenever her gaze strayed toward the ruins of the Labyrinth upon the desolate mount, where the wind stirred among the cold ashes, and the only things now living were the crows and the old priestess of the shrine.

  Ten

  Exodus

  1197 B.C.

  The three men that the king’s followers shoved into the marketplace bore little resemblance to the fearsome marauders of Dikte’s imagination. They were bedraggled and weather-worn, and stricken with a des
peration she did not associate with monsters. From her place in the crowd, she could smell their stench: a pathetic combination of shit and sweat and urine.

  “They’re pissing themselves,” her uncle Karsinos observed. He kept one hand on the dagger thrust into his belt, a prudent move in the clamorous atmosphere. The crowd of their neighbors spat and hurled dung and pebbles as well as insults. Dikte tried to comport herself with the dignity expected of a priest’s daughter and hold back, but when the nearest prisoner fixed his rabid gaze on her, she started. Raiders like him had stolen her friend Glauke and Glauke’s mother when they went to harvest wild herbs at the beginning of summer. Wretches like him were the reason no woman of Crete could go anywhere nowadays without a man’s protection.

  Angry and afraid, she scooped up a pebble and hurled it at him. The missile struck his arm, already bruised and bleeding from dozens of other such stones. Only the presence of the king’s followers with their spears and ox-hide wicker shields prevented the crowd from turning into a mob that tore the three apart. And why not? The captive raiders would be executed, anyway. Dikte thought they should answer for the suffering they caused honest people. They should be questioned to make them tell what they had done with the livestock and women they had stolen; her elders had shaken their heads and told her not to inquire about Glauke or Glauke’s mother. “Better you don’t think about it, girl,” they admonished.

  Fourteen was old enough to understand. Dikte scrabbled in the dirt for another stone. Perhaps this time she might hit the man’s head.

  As a triton call announced the arrival of the king, Karsinos grabbed her arm. “Your father wouldn’t be pleased to see you joining the mob.”

  Her aunt Thale, on Karsinos’s right, concurred. “Leave justice to the king and his followers.”

  Catcalls continued to pierce the hot summer morning, only now insults against the ruler of Knossos mingled with the barrage of abuse aimed at the prisoners. The king’s followers shifted their stance. Dikte backed away, edging closer to her uncle’s side. She wanted to see the captives executed, yet the threat of violence from the followers unnerved her. The sweat beading her forehead and neck felt cold. Her breath came short. Little distinguished those men from the raiders they had captured.

  At last, the unrest subsided enough that the king could make his appearance. Archelaos was a wiry, middle-aged man with a receding hairline, quite unremarkable. He never did anything about the missing women or livestock, or the constant complaints from the village damos that his men, led by his unruly sons, were abusing their responsibilities by violating hospitality and forcing themselves on any woman who caught their fancy. It was a wonder Archelaos had not yet been overthrown—or rather, the marvel could be attributed to his fearsome queen and her powerful relations.

  Dikte’s attention immediately strayed from the pathetic Archelaos to her father. Bull Priest Ormesilas stood a head taller than the king. His gray hair was combed back under a misshapen polos hat that had seen better days, and his threadbare vestments needed a fresh dyeing, but his air of dignity far outweighed his appearance. Sometimes prisoners were sacrificed to the immortals. Dikte prayed that he had been selected to wield the double axe for the ritual. Archelaos’s offerings drew nothing but contempt from the gods.

  To her disappointment, Klymene, her father’s unmarried sister, expressed an opposing sentiment, “If they offer him Mother Labrys, Ormesilas should yield to the king. Too many honors will bring too many enemies.” Sometimes, when she was alone with the ghosts in the Labyrinth, Dikte allowed herself to indulge in the thought that perhaps her father ought to be king.

  A sudden gleam of bronze reflected the sun’s light. “Mother! Mother!” the people exclaimed. Myriad arms reached toward Mother Labrys, the ancient relic borne aloft in the hands of the queen, who served as the high priestess of the Knossos cult house.

  Klymene’s mood soured when she saw both labrys and woman. “I should be the one carrying the Mother.” Dikte agreed. She and her aunt were descended from the legendary priestesses of the Labyrinth and, faithful to the last, tended its one remaining shrine. Even so, Queen Irana and the women of the cult house never invited her to observe with them the harvest celebrations or the festival of the vines. When Klymene tried to join the rituals regardless, the queen always asked mockingly, “Foolish woman, why do you bother with that decrepit old ruin?”

  “Because,” Klymene always answered, “that ‘decrepit old ruin,’ as you call it, is still powerful.”

  Several king’s followers kicked the feet out from under the prisoners, sending the trio sprawling onto their faces. Pausing before them, the king spared them a contemptuous look before addressing the crowd. “People of Knossos!” His was a reedy voice matching his unimpressive visage, especially when he had to screech to make himself heard over the muttering of the crowd. “These wretched raiders, these blasphemers, beached yesterday at Katsamba.”

  Not that the marauders would have found much at Katsamba. But for a few stubborn fishermen, the people had abandoned the port town a year ago, moving inland. Amnissos, too, stood empty.

  “They would have crept upon us unaware.” Archelaos pumped his small fist. “They would have burned our homes. They would have raped our women and carried them and our children off into bondage. They would have killed our men and aged parents.” For good measure, he aimed his foot at the nearest prisoner’s face, but kicked up more dust than punishment. What bravery! Dikte thought scathingly. The crowd howled, taking advantage of the captive’s suffering to heap more abuse upon him and his comrades until a shout from the captain of the king’s guard restored order. Dikte was sorry that her neighbors had not started hurling stones again. She would have liked to aim one at Archelaos for his incompetence, till she realized that she might have hit her father instead.

  “Let us give thanks to Father Zeus that our scouts discovered these miscreants in time!” The king raised his arms heavenward. “Let us give thanks to Athena the Mistress of Battles and to Ares Enyalios that we were successful in averting disaster. Ten enemies we slew on the shores of Poseidon’s domain.” Dikte heard her uncle snort. “These three wretches we have brought back as offerings to the gods. Let the immortals continue to bless us!”

  One of the men bellowed as the sentence was pronounced. A swift blow to the head silenced him, while the other two were bound and gagged.

  Dikte wiped the perspiration from her forehead. The condemned prisoners did not deserve the honor of an execution by Mother Labrys. Dispatching them so cheapened the sacrifices of those who went willingly. She remembered how the previous spring a neighbor youth, Iltanos, had volunteered for the sacrifice. He had been a lithe, jovial sixteen-year-old, always turning cartwheels and showing off for the girls during festival time. He used to dance with the bulls in summer. Dikte had wept openly when she saw him, garlanded and drugged, stumble toward the altar. She had turned her eyes away when her father cut the boy’s throat. Iltanos’s shade still haunted her nightmares.

  Offering the captives would never persuade the immortals to keep the Knossians safe anymore than previous sacrifices had convinced the gods to relent and end the drought. Everywhere, the immortals were angry. The last merchants who had come to Knossos reported chaos in the greater world. Mighty centers such as Mycenae, Orchomenos, and Thebes had fallen to marauders from the north. Hattusas was abandoned. Egypt had been attacked, but its king had managed to repel invasion. Pirates roamed the seas.

  That had been ten years ago. Traders stopped coming, the trickle of news became haphazard, unreliable.

  She watched the queen present Mother Labrys to the king. “Here, then, is the instrument of the goddess’s vengeance.” Irana’s voice was louder and deeper than her husband’s. “Take the holy labrys in your hands, king of Knossos, and deliver unto these miscreants the goddess’s judgment.”

  The king pressed his lips to the polished bronze to honor the gods of Knossos. Dikte heard her elders harrumph under their breath. Was he actually
going to perform the sacrifice? More often than not, he left the bloodshed to the priests. The queen herself sometimes dispatched victims.

  “About time he showed those raiders who’s in charge,” the nearest of the king’s followers said. Melissos was kinder than most of his companions; he did not demand favors from the local women in exchange for protection. “Go, Archelaos! Deliver the enemy to Tartarus!”

  “Pah!” A wad of greenish phlegm landed in the dirt beside the sentry as Pyrkoros the smith showed his disdain. “Let him stand aside for the queen.” His words earned him a reproving glance, no more.

  A collective pause gripped the crowd as the king stepped forward to carry out justice. His work owed more to enthusiasm than skill, because as he hacked the captives about the head and neck he gave the impression that the labrys weighed more than he could manage. When he stepped back, his bare legs and raiment were spattered with blood, and the dead captives—for surely they were dead by now—resembled raw meat.

  The priests moved in to collect the blood. Some of the crowd lingered to watch the priests quarter the carcasses. Dikte departed with her aunts and uncle. Household tasks beckoned, they needed nothing in the marketplace, and the heat and blood were already attracting flies.

  One of the king’s followers called out, “Hey, pretty ladies!” Dikte preferred to pretend they were talking to someone else. On those days when she worked with her kinsmen in the fields, she always felt the followers’ eyes crawling up her back, wanting her because they had not had her. That she was the bull priest’s daughter would not have counted for anything had they caught her alone.

  “Our spears are hard!” another called. Dikte walked closer to her uncle. Klymene shielded her with her body.

  “Don’t go without us!” a third shouted. “There might still be raiders around.”

  Klymene flashed them the sign against evil, while Thale shouted, “Then you’d better hunt them down and not stand about.”