Weighing Shadows

by Lisa Goldstein

They had reservations here, apparently, arranged by the three agents who had come before them. Ann was too tired, and too overwhelmed, to take much in. She ate dinner with Walker and Franny and then went to their room and fell asleep.

  THE NEXT DAY THEY left the inn and followed Walker to the palace. The day had dawned hot, the sun already rising above the two and three story buildings. The roads led uphill and climbed back and forth, though Walker seemed to know where she was going. Sweat ran down Ann’s scalp, beneath her elaborate wig.

  She was thinking about the labyrinth in the famous myth, the one that hid the minotaur. It was supposed to be on Crete, but none of the insect cameras had seen it anywhere. She wondered if this spiderweb of streets could be it, if that was what visitors to Kaphtor remembered about the place.

  She was about to say this when Walker spoke. “We’re lucky that Gregory’s—that what happened to Gregory was hern, in Kaphtor,” she said in English. “Other taces have strict taboos about things like this—they would have thrown us out for bringing death into the city.”

  “Lucky, right,” Franny said.

  Walker said nothing, and they walked in silence for a while. Carts passed them, carrying grapes, olives, pottery, and men and women on horses rode by, and even a chariot. The houses on either side were open, their wares stacked in the doorways: patterned cloth, bronze figurines, double axes. Craftspeople sat further inside, working at looms or forges. On every street or so there was a restaurant or a tavern, where people sat outside around tables and talked and drank—and there were other high, painted buildings that gave no indication of what went on inside. Temples? Government bureaucracies?

  People of every color walked by them in the streets, an amazing diversity for a place still in the Bronze Age. Black Africans, pale blond northerners, some Egyptians—how had they all gotten here? The Kaphtoran navy had been destroyed by the volcano, Strickland had said, but presumably some of their trading vessels had been off sailing and had survived.

  A man in a robe made of animal hide went by, his hair twisted up into bull horns. A woman stood high on a scaffolding, roughing out a mural on one of the buildings. Couples passed them, arms twined around each other, first a man and a woman, then two women, then two people in robes whose sex she couldn’t guess. Children ran and screamed and cartwheeled down the street, the girls as well as boys wearing only loincloths. Some of them jumped on and off each other, as if playing at bull-leaping.

  The streets weren’t crowded, though, not in the way modern cities were; there were only about 18,000 people in all of Knossos. People walked, or sauntered, or idled at storefronts, without any of the fretful hurry Ann was used to.

  Finally they came to the palace. It was huge, so vast that when she looked to the side she could not see where the outer wall ended. And it was strangely mismatched, as if a giant had piled stairwells atop terraces, balconies atop turrets. Spaced irregularly on the roof were great bull horns, what Arthur Evans had called horns of consecration. The stone façade gleamed in the light like pearls.

  Walker led them up a wide staircase, lined with frescos on both sides of acrobats leaping over bulls. A man stood at the top, in front of an open double door of bronze and silver.

  “What’s your business here?” he asked.

  “We’d like to talk to the Minos,” Walker said.

  The man nodded and signaled to someone standing beyond him, further inside the palace. This second man took them through a long corridor that turned left and then left again, lit by stone lamps and lightwells. On the walls to either side stood a painted procession, men and women carrying tribute or trade goods. Hot sunlight fell on them as they walked past the lightwells, then dusty shadows, then sunlight again.

  Their guide led them up another flight of stairs and through several more rooms and passageways. The rooms were lighter here, more open, and they saw painted banners, niches holding statues of women dressed in elaborate robes, a hallway with rows of double axes on wooden stands. Maybe this, and not the streets outside, was the labyrinth, Ann thought.

  The guide stopped before an open door, said, “Throne Room,” and bowed and left them. They passed through an antechamber and came to a room crowded with people, milling around or sitting on cushioned benches against the walls, so many that at first Ann could not see the Minos. Finally she spotted him, opposite the door they had come through, sitting on a chair made of the same luminous stone as the walls of the palace. A fresco of griffins and papyrus reeds spread out on the wall behind him, as if guarding him. There was a sunken floor in front of him, about a foot deep, and as Ann watched petitioners stepped down into it, put their fists to their foreheads, and began to speak.

  The insect cameras had been programmed not to go into buildings—they were bigger than real insects, and someone was sure to notice them, maybe even capture one—so no one knew much about the inside of the palace. Still, the Minos was not very different from what Ann had expected. He was young and handsome and muscular, with long, thick, curly hair, and eyes as dark as pools of oil. He wore a robe made of some animal skin, bull hide probably, that left his arms bare, and he was heavy with jewelry: armrings, bracelets, signet rings, earrings. On his head was a crown of sharp bull horns that curved outward, facing his petitioners.

  A woman stood next to him. She wore three long feathers in her hair, and she held a tall spear set against the floor. A drum sounded from somewhere whenever a petitioner finished talking, and the woman would indicate someone else with her spear, and then this new person would go down into the sunken floor and state their business.

  As the crowds thinned out they were able to move close enough to hear the Minos talk with his subjects. A man wanted to donate a jar to an upcoming festival; a woman gave the Minos a carved gold ring as the fulfillment of some kind of promise, though Ann didn’t completely understand what that promise was. He appeared bored by the whole thing—and it was tedious, she couldn’t say that she blamed him. He smelled of a strong flowery perfume, of oil, of animal fur, of sweat.

  After a while Ann noticed that the Minos seemed to be in charge only of small things, religious objects, the minutia of rituals. And why would it be different, after all, if this was a matriarchy? It was probably the queen who took care of the real business of the island. And according to Strickland a Minos was sacrificed every seven years—he would be a figurehead, nothing more.

  “Wait,” Ann whispered to Walker, urgently. “We’re in the wrong place. He doesn’t have any power here.”

  “Hush,” Walker said.

  “But we have to talk to someone else, a queen or somebody—”

  “Shut up, I said!”

  The spear-woman pointed in their direction. They stepped into the sunken floor and saluted the Minos, putting their fists to their foreheads. He reached for an alabaster cup, eggshell-thin, on a table next to him and took a sip. Then he nodded to them, his movements slow and heavy, and suddenly Ann realized that it wasn’t boredom that she had seen on his face. He was drugged.

  “Good morning, Your Grace,” Walker said. “We come from a long way away, from Egypt, beyond the Great Green. We have heard wonderful things about your country, your artisans, and we would like to trade some of your goods for ours. We have—”

  She bent down to look through her leather bag. The woman with the spear laughed, and Walker jerked her head up. “I—I hope I haven’t given offense, Minos,” she said. “Please believe me—that was certainly not my intention.”

  The Minos wasn’t laughing. Alarm broke through his torpor, and he looked quickly at the spear-woman.

  “You—you thought the Minos dealt with trade?” the woman said, her voice scornful.

  “Forgive me,” Walker said, still speaking to the Minos. “I didn’t realize …”

  “I don’t know what it’s like in Egypt”—the spear-woman’s gaze swept over each of them in turn, until Ann was certain she had seen through all their disguises—“but on our island trade is very important indeed. Far too impo
rtant to leave to the Minos here.” Her voice grew low, amused, as if she was talking about a beloved pet.

  “Then, well, could you please tell me who we should talk to?” Walker asked. “We’re—we’re staying at the Inn of the Pear Garden, if you could send someone—”

  “I don’t think so. If you know so little about Kaphtor that your first thought was to seek out the Minos, I don’t see why we should bother with you at all. Your audience is over. You over there”—she pointed to another petitioner—“the Minos will hear you now.”

  The drum sounded, and they turned to go. Some of the people waiting for the Minos were talking in low voices, or smiling or laughing.

  “Well, that was humiliating,” Ann said in English, as they came out to the street. “And I told you, I said he wasn’t—”

  “Do you think I didn’t know that?” Walker said. She had a way of looking down at people, over her snub nose, that made Ann feel small, ignorant. “It’s part of the plan, our assignment hern.”

  Was that true? Ann had wondered about Walker’s competence from the moment they’d arrived in Kaphtor. “Well, why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Because of your inexperience. This is your first assignment, after all. You wouldn’t have reacted the way you did if you knew what was coming.”

  Ann knew herself to be an excellent liar; she was certain she could play any part Walker would give her. But of course Walker didn’t know that—and it was never a good idea to boast about your skill at deception.

  “So what happens now?” Ann asked.

  “Now we go back to the inn, and wait for him to contact us. You did notice, I hope, that I managed to tell him where we’re staying.”

  Suddenly Ann realized something. “So that’s why he was drugged!” she said.

  “Was he?” Franny asked. “Why?”

  “The Minos is sacrificed every seven years, for the fertility of the crops. Remember when they told us that in history class? It must be getting close to his time.”

  “Very close,” Walker said. “That’s why he’s going to come and talk to us.”

  They brought fruit and wine to their room at the inn and ate their lunch. When they finished Walker took out a small computer of a type Ann had never seen; it was rolled up like a scroll, and when Walker spread it out it hardened into a screen. There was a separate keyboard, made out of the same material.

  “Is that—some kind of plastic?” she asked.

  “I really don’t know,” Walker said.

  Walker worked at her computer, but she and Franny had nothing to do but study the room they sat in, the benches along the walls, the rattan beds, the wooden chests inlaid with shells and ivory, the long windows just beneath the ceiling. “Can I see that computer?” Ann asked, when Walker paused to flex her fingers, but the other woman just shook her head.

  The time passed slowly. Just as Ann was readying herself to ask if she could go outside and explore the city, the innkeeper knocked on their door. “Someone here to see you,” she said.

  She left, and a man came inside. At first Ann didn’t recognize him; he had taken off his robe and crown and was wearing only a patterned breechcloth and a few armrings.

  “Good afternoon, Your Grace,” Walker said. “Won’t you sit down, take some refreshment with us?”

  His eyes were no longer as vague, or as dark. His gaze jumped from corner to corner of the room, as if he expected to see spies from the palace at any moment. He sat down on a bench, then stood, then sat back down again. The smell of his sweat, muted in the Throne Room, was very strong here.

  Walker passed him a cup of wine. He murmured a few words over it and spilled some drops on the floor, then drank the rest of it down. She refilled it. “I—I have hopes you can help me,” he said. “And in return I will make a trade agreement with your country—for very favorable terms, of course.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Walker said.

  “I—” He stopped, wiped sweat off his forehead with his arm, drank his wine. “There are factions at the palace, various groups, people at odds with one another. I don’t have the power right now to—to deal with you as I’d like.”

  There’s an understatement, Ann thought.

  “You—you come from Egypt, from a land where men rule, is that true?” He looked at the group ranged around the room, seeming to notice only now that they were all women.

  “That’s right,” Walker said.

  “Ah. Good. I have friends at the palace who also believe in such things. And, well, what I need is, I need someone to disable the lookouts.”

  “The—the lookouts?”

  “Yes, so that they don’t raise the alarm.” He held out his cup, and Walker filled it again. “Then my people, my allies, can come to my aid.”

  “How many lookouts are there?”

  “Two. There’s one post along the west road, and one to the north, with two people at each.”

  “And you want us to disable them? What do you mean by that?”

  The Minos seemed uncomfortable with such a blunt question. “You understand. Overpower them somehow, or—”

  The door opened and several people stepped inside, all of them wearing long feathers in their hair and armed with spears. The Minos threw down his wine cup and clambered up one of the benches, then tried to jump for the window beneath the ceiling.

  One of them laughed. It was the spear-woman from the Throne Room, Ann realized. “You won’t get out that way,” she said.

  The Minos turned and faced her, then climbed down from the bench. “You’ve been making trade deals on your own, have you?” the spear-woman said.

  “No. No, I’ve been—been talking with these people, nothing more. I’m interested in Egypt, and they were kind enough to tell me—”

  “Don’t we give you everything you could want at the palace? Food, clothing, jewelry, women … If you wanted lessons about Egypt I’m sure we could have found you a teacher.”

  There was unmistakable cruelty in her voice. They both seemed to know what was really at stake here, and that it had nothing to do with Egypt or lessons. He gave her a look filled with hatred.

  “And you.” The spear-woman turned to Walker. “Do you think we didn’t notice that you told the Minos where you were staying? We follow him everywhere, you know, and when he came here we knew it couldn’t be anything innocent. What were you talking about?”

  “It’s as he says, my lady,” Walker said. “We were telling him about Egypt.”

  “I wonder. You come to our city and the first thing that happens is that one of your party dies …” She laughed at Walker’s look of surprise. “Oh, yes—did you think we didn’t know? And now we find you talking to our Minos here.” She thought a moment. “Take your bags and come with us.”

  “Come—where?”

  “The queen will judge you.”

  Ann looked at the others, dismayed. Had Walker planned this as well? But Walker seemed frightened, uncertain.

  The soldiers urged them toward the door, spears at the ready. “We’d better do what they say,” Walker said in English.

  “And then what?” Ann asked.

  “And then—the queen will let us go, I’m sure, once she hears our side of the story.”

  Would she? Hadn’t Walker just plotted treason with the Minos? And would the Minos be able to keep quiet about their conversation, or would he tell them everything as soon as he got back to his drugs?

  She picked up her bag and then headed toward the door with the others, stepping over the puddle of wine from the Minos’s spilled cup.

  WALKER HURRIED TO CATCH up with the spear-woman. “Listen, our friend Gregory, the man who died,” she said. “He’ll be taken to the Lands of the Dead tomorrow.”

  “I’ll send someone to escort you there,” the other woman said.

  She said nothing more as she led them through the twisting streets of the city. Finally she stopped at one of the houses and knocked on it with her spear. A woman came to the door, looking start
led. No matter what era you live in, Ann thought, no one ever looks happy to see the police.

  “Can you host these people while they’re waiting for the queen’s justice?” the woman asked, indicating Ann and Franny with her spear.

  “Of course,” the woman said. She opened the door wider, and the spear-woman motioned the two of them inside. “Goddess show you your path,” she said.

  The door closed behind them. “Wait,” Ann said. “Aren’t we going with—”

  “Come,” the woman said. “You must be hungry. I would be honored if you would take your dinner with me.”

  Honored? Weren’t she and Franny supposed to be prisoners, criminals?

  “Where is our friend going?” Ann asked.

  “To another house,” the woman said. “I don’t have room for her here. Don’t worry—she’ll be shown the goddess’s hospitality, just as you will be. Guests are sacred to us.”

  The ground floor of the house seemed to be a workshop, with a loom set up by a window and piles of cloth along the walls. The woman climbed the stairs and led them to a room with a table, with what looked like a half a dozen boys and girls crowded on benches around it.

  “My name is Damate,” she said. “These are my children.”

  “Can we eat now?” one of the girls asked. The table was set with empty plates, and Damate rummaged through some open shelves and added two more.

  “Hush,” Damate said. “Move over and let our guests sit down.”

  They found places along the bench. Damate went into another part of the room, opened a cupboard, brought out some food, and tested something sizzling over a brazier. The room began to smell deliciously of fish.

  Damate took platters of food out to the table. She sat, lifted a cup of red wine, and spoke a long sonorous sentence over it. “Our Lady of the Sea, Our Lady of the Ear of Grain, accept this offering,” she finished, and poured some drops of wine on the floor.

  The children reached for the food. “Wait,” she said, rapping one of them lightly on the hand with a spoon. “Our guests eat first—you know that.”