by Laura Gill
Tripodiskos proved surprisingly agile with his walking stick, and had little trouble navigating the stairs. Dikte could not quite believe what she saw. Was he trying to impress her, or had she seriously underestimated him? “You’re sure it’s not a hardship, Agathon?”
He grimaced. “Don’t call me that.”
“But your mother says your name—”
“I know what she says. She smothers me.” Tripodiskos reached the landing to balance beside her. “I like being called Tripodiskos. Besides, how many other young men do you know who Zeus has blessed with three feet? Usually you have to be an old man and wise before that happens.”
Dikte was taken aback. “I never thought of it that way.”
“When Mother’s around, you can call me ‘Husband.’” Tripodiskos adjusted his hold on the walking stick, which was a length of sturdy, knobbed oak with spirals and faces carved into it. “Oh, and no, it’s not a hardship. My leg doesn’t hurt unless I overexert myself or the cold gets into my bones. I suspect I might have trouble at Karfi, but there are ways around it. Mother will expect you to help.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“I don’t think you do.” Hobbling a step, he turned his right side toward her. “Go ahead and look, Dikte. It’s not catching and it’s not that horrible.”
Flushing, she dared a look. Tripodiskos’s right leg was shorter than his left, a mere covering of flesh over bone, and his foot, large by comparison, was misshapen, bent inward. On the surface, his deformity was not so dreadful as a missing eye or ear or a wrist stump, all of which she saw around the village. Yet those were the result of maiming rather than the curse of Eleuthia. It was all very well for Tripodiskos to claim that his defect was not catching, but she was expected to bear children by him when she did not understand what his mother had done to anger the goddess.
“The gods are capricious,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “Sometimes they show their anger by striking innocents in the womb. I suppose to them we’re nothing more than ants to be stomped or swept away.” Shrugging, he peered around the landing. “I’m surprised you don’t get lost down here. Ariadne had to give Theseus a clew of string to follow.”
Dikte gratefully changed the subject. “It’s not what you think. There are several rooms, but few ways to go, and you always end up back here. You just follow the light.” She indicated the diffuse sunlight spilling down the central shaft.
Tripodiskos maneuvered down the next flight of stairs. “So where did Theseus kill the Minotaur?”
She caught up with him. “I don’t know.”
Except on gloomy days, one did not need a lamp to navigate the basement level, for with the mass of the uppermost stories gone it was easier to see. Dikte showed Tripodiskos the scorch marks on the passageway walls and floor before leading him into the largest chamber. “There are still bits of painting on the walls.” Her voice echoed in the space as she indicated the remains of colored rosettes and spirals framing doorways and the room’s double light-wells. “Father says this was once Queen Pasiphae’s apartment. King Minos imprisoned her after she bore the Minotaur.”
Tripodiskos squinted at the fading outline of a maiden with flying hair. “How does he know?”
“In here.” Dikte led him into a side chamber where stood a ceramic tub encrusted with dried plaster. “Father says this was once the queen’s bathroom. I don’t know if it was. We use it now to mix lime to plaster the walls with.”
He nodded. “That makes sense. Can you imagine carrying all that water up and down the stairs just for one person to wash in?”
“No, I can’t.” As Tripodiskos bent to examine the inside of the tub, Dikte noticed the amulet swinging from a leather cord around his neck. Shaped like a leg, she recognized it as a type of votive the sick and lame often wore. “My uncles sometimes make those.”
“This?” Tripodiskos clutched the swinging amulet. “It’s special. My father made it. Come, I’ll show you.”
He hobbled from the chamber, across the larger room to the light-well. Then he turned the amulet over and with a broken fingernail indicated the scratches incised on the fired clay. “It says pa-ja-wo-ne. The name of Apollo the Healer.”
Dikte could not help but realize that in the act of examining his amulet she was standing so close that she could feel the warmth of his presence, even hear his breathing. Heat rose to her face. “You can read?” she stammered, taking a step back. She wished she could stop the near-constant round of blushing, glancing away, trying to cover her awkwardness.
“Only a little.” Thank the gods, he did not seem to notice her consternation. “My family once counted sheep for the king, but that was long ago when there were many more flocks and traders came to exchange woolen cloth for gold and other precious things.”
Dikte could count, too, and there were places in the ruins where the stones had markings. The sign of the labrys meant that the pillar or orthostates on which it was scratched could not be killed. She sometimes discovered bits of burnt clay inscribed with pictures: a man, a woman, a ewe, a jar. “Can you write the names of all the gods?”
“A few. Zeus, Rhea, Hermes.” Tripodiskos leaned his walking stick against the bench abutting the light-well then sat down. “Join me, Dikte. I think maybe we should talk.”
Startled, she hesitated. “Why?”
His earnest look was enough, even without his words. “Because I know you didn’t want this marriage. You think my leg is disgusting.” When she started to protest, he cut her short. “Don’t lie to me. If you’d walked—hobbled—in my steps for even an hour you’d know how to read others the way I read them. I can see in the twitch of your mouth or the wrinkle of a person’s nose what they’re thinking. I’ve learned to ignore it, but you, you’re my wife. You’re better-bred than most people. You won’t ask petty questions or taunt me, or you’ll ask your friends behind my back and they’ll fill your head with nonsense.”
Dikte knuckled away the tears filling her eyes. How easy it would be to act like a typical girl and cry! No one would have blamed her, but she did not want to make a scene. “I...I don’t...”
“Sit down.” Tripodiskos’s words took on the tone of command. Not knowing what else to do, she obeyed. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn’t mean to hurt you yesterday, either. But I’m tired of having others look askance at me. They do it here and they’ll do it in the new place, in Karfi. So if you’re thinking something about my affliction, now’s the time to come out with it.”
Despite herself, she could not suppress the need to cry. “I’m sorry.” She covered her face with her hands to hide her shame. “They didn’t tell me till a few days ago,” she blubbered. “And then they said I had to go away, and...” She knew she was acting foolishly, making excuses. Real women like Lysandra and her aunts did not whimper like children. They squared their shoulders, took a deep breath and met their troubles head-on. A woman who broke down at the first or even second hardship was no good. “I only... I didn’t...” And then, though she feared what her silence might bring, she closed her mouth.
“Ah, no, don’t cry,” he groaned heavily. She felt his hand clamp her shoulder, give her a shake. “Dikte, no, I don’t want you to cry. Not here. The spirits of this place... The Minotaur’s ghost, he might wake and think you’ve been scolded because you’re bad and...” She heard a scrape of cloth and flesh against stone, and then his arms were around her, ineptly patting her back and hair. “Please stop. I didn’t mean to make you cry. The Minotaur will—”
“He only cares about children, and we’re not children,” Dikte whimpered, sniffling. She withdraw from the embrace as she thought of what her mother-in-law would say when Lysandra discovered Tripodiskos’s tunic splotched with her tears and snot. She felt raw, vulnerable, and more than a little rattled. “I wasn’t told about the betrothal until almost the last minute.” Calmer now, she tried to articulate her distress as a woman would, without sobbing. “I didn’t know you, except that you had a withered leg.”<
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“And you thought it was the end of the world?” Tripodiskos sounded angry yet self-deprecating. “It isn’t as though anyone asked what I wanted, either.” His tone cut through her with the humiliating possibility that maybe he had not wished to marry her anymore than she had wanted to marry him. Yet then he softened, became apologetic in confessing, “I never really thought I would ever have a wife. It’s one thing to be maimed—those things happen—but to be born misshapen?”
“You’re not ugly.” The admission spilled forth before Dikte could prevent it. “It’s only that when we have children—if the goddess blesses us, that is—will they be born whole or...?” She could not bring herself to say “deformed” or “cursed” or “misshapen.”
Tripodiskos hummed in his throat. “I’ve no idea. That’s what bothers you, that our children might be afflicted?”
“The gods can be hard,” she admitted, “especially when nobody knows why they’re angry.”
“I know.” A long pause reinforced her anxiety. Then he asked, “So you don’t think me ugly?”
The intensity of his stare bored into her, forcing her to glance aside. His lighthearted query left her fumbling for a suitable reply. Akastos used to tease her like that, but she had always stepped aside with him anticipating that sort of play. No one had warned her that Tripodiskos, too, might be capable of it. “I never said—I mean, no, you’re not. Not ugly, that is.”
“Good. You, um, you looked pretty yesterday.”
“So did you.” Dikte spoke without realizing what she was saying, and then when she did she could not help but sputter and burst out laughing. Tripodiskos’s face reddened as he joined her. For the first time in almost two hundred years, laughter filled the nether regions of the Labyrinth.
When they finally regained control of themselves, he said, “Now it’s my turn to ask you something. Why are you called Dikte? Is it for Zeus’s sacred mountain?”
As she nodded, Dikte caught herself leaning closer to him. Had she been introduced to him without knowing about his withered leg, without seeing him with his foot wrapped or with his walking stick, she would have judged him very good-looking. Perhaps the gods had afflicted him so to keep him pious and humble, unlike Akastos. “There was thunder and lightning from the direction of Mount Dikte the night I was born,” she explained. “Father said it was a sign of Zeus’s favor.”
“You know that Karfi’s on a ridge of Mount Dikte, don’t you?”
“Ephoros said that, yes.”
“Do you think it’s a good omen?” Tripodiskos sounded so uncertain that Dikte was compelled to glance over at him. His heavy brows were pulled together in a deep frown.
“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
“I’ve never been anywhere but Knossos. I keep wondering how hard the journey will be, how steep the mountain paths, how long the winters.” The muscles in his cheeks worked as he clenched and unclenched his jaw. “I didn’t want to ask Ephoros for fear he might tell me to stay behind with the old and sick, and that others would hear and say the same thing.” Tripodiskos bunched his fist on his knee. “I’m not a cripple. Any man would ask.”
“I would ask, too,” Dikte agreed. It struck her how selfish she had been, thinking herself the only person who might be homesick. With few exceptions, none of the other people leaving for Karfi had ever been more than a half-day’s walk from Knossos, either.
Upon returning to the courtyard, they discovered that her father and aunt had gone. Timaios remained, seated on a broken step studying the weeds breaking through the limestone paving. Seeing them, he stood and approached them with a smile. “I thought you might have gotten lost down there.”
“No, Father.” Now Tripodiskos was blushing, ducking his head to avoid meeting Timaios’s gaze. Dikte suppressed a giggle while hiding her own blush. “We were just exploring.” Then he groaned. “Exploring the Labyrinth, I mean.”
Timaios laughed. “Let’s go down. There are things to do.” Pausing, he regarded his daughter-in-law. “Ready, young lady?”
They left the Labyrinth by way of the west court, where Priest-Architect Aranaru’s monumental facade had long ago burned to its foundation, and where Ariadne had danced with the fire demons on the last night of the Labyrinth. They strode across broken pavement covering the ruins of the house that had once been the mansion of the Minos, where seven hundred years ago great Daidalos had laid down the plans for the first Labyrinth. Bansabira had crossed that ground, and god-touched Pasibe with her miraculous daughter, and Knos in the final years of his life when the hilltop had been the farmstead of Aramo. Had they but known it, that hill contained more than five thousand years of their history.
Tripodiskos and Dikte hung back while his father went ahead. “I’ll miss the river,” Tripodiskos mused wistfully. “Ephoros says there are eagles in the mountains, that it’s good goat country. I heard him tell Melanthos the other night that on a clear afternoon you can look down and see the plains and out across the sea, but I don’t know that that’ll be enough to compensate for all this.”
Dikte slowed her pace to accommodate his. “Now I feel sad again.”
Tripodiskos became apologetic. “I don’t want you to feel sad. Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about the river and the frogs and the kingfishers. There are wild goats with great curving horns in the highlands. There’ll be walls to protect the settlement. We won’t have to sleep at night in fear. We’ll be in Zeus’s domain.” He nodded as though trying to convince himself, but his next words came across as heartfelt. “Leaving home doesn’t seem so bad now that I have a wife beside me.”
Slowing, Tripodiskos extended his left hand to her. She accepted it without hesitation, and together they descended the temple mount.
Dikte could not think of a better way to leave the Labyrinth.
*~*~*~*
Seven days later, Dikte took with her to Karfi her ancestral gods and the memory of home.
Karfi was high and remote, a knob on a ridge of Mount Dikte. The air was bracing and gusty, in sharp contrast with the heat of the lowlands. Tripodiskos found himself in his element, for Karfi was goat country, and his skillful way with the animals earned him the acknowledgment of the older herdsmen. Lysandra’s maternal pride expressed itself in many ways, chief of which was a desire to become a grandmother. “Don’t neglect your prayers to Eleuthia,” she told Dikte, and stood watch every morning and evening until the ritual was finished.
Dikte did her best to acclimate to her new surroundings. The houses were warm and secure, with a large central room, a larder, and a loft for additional storage. The community welcomed the newcomers with fuel for the frigid nights and wood to craft furnishings. Their arrival was cause for celebration and sharing news of kin left behind. Some of those who now called Karfi home had originally come from Knossos. Others were from Amnissos and Katsamba, Archanes and places whose names Dikte did not know. But their stories were all alike: raiders threatened from the sea, the gods were angry, and the lowlands were no longer safe.
Nevertheless, knowing a year might pass before she heard anything, Dikte longed for word about her father and aunt at Knossos. She tried to busy herself with helping around the house, cooking and spinning wool, and working to help weight the brand-new loom. Lysandra was an excellent weaver, but in her possessiveness over the loom she would not let anyone else take a turn weaving. Dikte would have liked to while away a few weeks working the colored yarns into blankets and lengths of fabric for smocks and cloaks. What pleasure she had she found in sewing warm clothes for her husband.
Snow blustered down in drifts on the coldest nights, but when the weather was clear Dikte could see the peak of her white-mantled namesake rising to the north. Sometimes she could see north over the lowlands all the way to the broad blue ocean. Once Tripodiskos, who had learned it from another herdsman, pointed out Mount Juktas, but though she squinted Dikte could not distinguish Knossos.
Ephoros went down from the mountains in the summer. When he returned, t
hough, there was no celebration. Only five refugees had come with him, and no one whom Dikte knew. “Knossos is burned, abandoned. The king’s house is in ruins. All the people are dead or scattered—taken captive, fled into the wild, no one knows but the vultures and the gods,” the herdsman said, shaking his head.
In her shock, Dikte fled home before Ephoros could introduce the old man, woman, and three children he had encountered. She wept into the fleeces. Her family was dead. She ignored her husband’s attempts to comfort her. She ignored Karsinos and Thale when they came bearing their sympathies. She even ignored her mother-in-law’s offer to let her use the loom that evening. What she would not give to be able to return to ruined Knossos, to climb the mount again and offer libations to the shades of her father and aunt. Her heart told her to go immediately, however much her head and the child that had already quickened in her belly protested the impracticalities.
She cried herself to sleep. The next morning, Lysandra bundled her in shawls and hustled her to the cult house. “The girl is the daughter of a bull priest of Knossos,” Lysandra told the priestess. “Dikte has training. She communed with the spirits of the Labyrinth.” A swift sign against evil described in the air revealed Lysandra’s thoughts on that matter. “Agathon tells me there was a thunder-omen from Zeus the night of her birth. Why do you think her parents named her Dikte?” All the while, the priestess stood silently listening to Lysandra’s verbiage, her expression inscrutable. “Let her serve with you as a midwife. Just don’t let her neglect the gods in her grief.”
Dikte spent the rest of the day with the priestess learning the peculiarities of the cult house and its ritual equipment. Yet no one, least of all Lysandra herself, could explain the sudden turnaround. Nor was it merely a thing of the moment, for from that day on Dikte’s mother-in-law referred to her as the junior priestess of Karfi. It took Dikte the experience of motherhood and many years to understand that Lysandra, so formidable, so seemingly fearless, was heartsick over the news from Knossos and, afraid for the future, was grasping for a connection to her ancestors.