Knossos

by Laura Gill

  From the hearth, where she and the other wives were baking bread, Hariana objected, “You can talk, Knos, but you’re not the clan chieftain. You don’t have the authority to say what the clan will—”

  “I have a ship.” Knos thumped his chest for emphasis. “Therefore, I may say whatever I like.” Once he saw that everyone, including his wives, grasped his point, he sat down again. “Those who want better fortunes can come with me. As for the rest, let them stay and be swindled out of their goods, out of their honor, and out of their future.”

  Menuash rubbed the coarse stubble along his jaw. “The sailors might be divided,” he pointed out. “Not all of them are Bull Clan, and even those who are will probably object to being uprooted from their ancestral homes.”

  Knos regarded his first mate, then his kinsmen and wives; he even exchanged a meaningful look with his two eldest sons, fourteen-year-old Astaryas and eleven-year-old young Knos. This was the summer that Astaryas should have accompanied him to make his first trading expedition, as Knos himself had gone with his own father twenty years ago. Knos winked reassuringly at him; the youth might yet make his initiatory voyage, in a manner of speaking.

  “This is all very sudden,” Fidra said quietly, “and a bit much to ask. How will you conduct your business? What about the harvest?” She added another round of flatbread to the basket; Knos had asked his kinsmen to stay for supper. “Does this place have obsidian, precious stones, alabaster for making figurines—what does it have that we can trade?”

  “I don’t know about obsidian,” Knos admitted, “but this place isn’t so far away that we can’t still trade with Melos or the mainland. There’s abundant cypress, pine wood, and juniper, and wild herbs grow everywhere. You can smell them in the air. There’s good grazing and pasturage. There are wild goats in the hills. As for the harvest, we can sail right after.”

  Fidra shook her head. “I don’t know...”

  Urope came over. “We’ll see what the ancestors and the gods say. There’s a woman in the hills, a woman of no clan with the gift of prophecy.” She nudged Aramo aside, hunkered down beside her husband. “She’ll know whether this is a sensible idea, or some nonsense born from your wounded pride.”

  Knos’s throat went dry. There was truth in what she said. “Then do it,” he croaked.

  When his wives served the meal, Knos choked down some hot bread and soft cheese, leaned against the plastered wall, and dozed. Gods, what was he doing, thinking of uprooting his clan and leading them somewhere he had only visited a handful of times? He could plan a voyage, navigate by the stars, handle a ship, and turn a profit, but organize an exodus of women and children over the sea, build a settlement, and accomplish the two dozen or so other tasks that must come with taking root in a new land? Who did he think he was to contemplate such a thing?

  In the afternoon, he went outside to see his men, none of whom had left the vicinity. They insisted on examining his bruises and other injuries. They also alerted him to the presence of men from the Dolphin and Octopus Clans stationed atop neighboring rooftops, cudgels, bows, and obsidian-tipped spears ready, he supposed, should he attempt to incite a riot. That would have been a terrifyingly easy thing to accomplish given the curses, taunts, and obscene gestures the sailors, inflamed by his humiliation, flung at them. It was much harder to persuade his men to calm down and disperse. “We’ll deal with the matter tomorrow. Meet me at the ship first thing in the morning.”

  Aramo’s two wives arrived just then to complain about the seizure of the livestock; they did not know what had happened aside from the hostile explanation Shobai’s men had given them.

  “Is it true?”

  “Is this all a fine for something Knos did?”

  Aramo had to explain yet again, while reassuring his women that something would be done about the theft.

  “I hope so!” his first wife exclaimed. “They took all the milk goats.”

  Knos kept his mouth shut about the voyage—warning his wives with a dire glance not to say anything, either—and even about the fact that Shobai had sworn a solemn oath on his own clan’s totem to leave his rivals some breeding stock. He was done with explanations.

  Abbek stayed the night, so that the house would not be without adequate defenders should Divos and his ruffians decide to make trouble again. He slept on a goat-hair blanket by the hearth, with an obsidian knife and axe near to hand, and an attitude that would have welcomed a fight.

  A half-dozen sailors returned with bows and spears, and slept upon the house’s flat roof, from which they could take turns watching for trouble, while a dozen others went down to Dolphin to safeguard her. Knos retired into the rear chamber with his family.

  It had been almost a year since Knos had shared a blanket with his first wife. Whenever he annoyed her, which was often enough, or when she had her monthly courses and was impure, Urope could not stand his physical presence. Therefore, it amazed him that, after last night’s argument when she had kicked his shin, she would agree to let him lie beside her. Past experience, though, warned against daring to hope that she had forgiven him.

  Nonetheless, he ventured an arm around her waist, then, when she did not resist, he squeezed her breast through the worn skin of her tunic. Her body was buxom but compact, much as it had been when he married her. Knos liked that. He liked the way she smelled, too. Like fresh dough, earthy, familiar, and good to eat.

  “Not tonight,” she grumbled, pushing his hand away. “You’ve been enough trouble since you came home.”

  “Hmm, we won’t be able to do this on the voyage.” Knos marched his fingers back up the ample mound of her breast to tease her nipple. She reminded him of the woman who had first initiated him into sex behind the clan’s cowshed.

  She shoved his hand away more insistently this time. “Keep your attention on navigating and trading, and less on the women.” It was not the first, or even the twentieth, time she had told him that.

  Knos leaned in to nibble the flesh of her neck. “I’m the best navigator on the island, my dear. Where we’re going, we’ll be there in no time.”

  “You don’t even know that there will be a voyage. Only the gods and the ancestors know that.”

  “Of course there’ll be a voyage. It’s the best thing we can do for ourselves.” At least, he thought so, and did not see why the ancestors should not agree. Knos ventured toward his wife’s breast again, where her nipple stood erect. A bit more manipulation, a little more persuasion, and she would relent.

  Or would she? She grabbed his wrist and refused to release him, muttering, “What in the hell is the matter with you? Why can’t you keep your cock where it belongs?”

  Knos winced at the pressure; his first wife was as strong as any man. “Well, when was the last time any of you spread your legs for me, heh? I come home, I bring you beads and trinkets, but I might as well have brought you pestilence for all the welcome I get.” Urope was not responding; he felt her refusal in the stiffness of her body. It was an old argument—the paucity of his welcome versus how little he did around the house, versus the inevitability of his sexual exploits abroad. “I like women,” he confessed, “and not only because they make better customers than the men. I make them feel pretty for an hour, and they buy everything I have.” Which was entirely true, but not relevant to the issue.

  “No, you like the danger and excitement of it all.” Urope snatched the blanket from him and heaved her bulk away from him, putting an end to any possibility of love-play.

  Sighing, Knos rolled onto his back, staring into the blackness between the roof beams. What she said, he supposed that was all true—but so was what he said about women being better customers than men. True, too, that they were also shrewder negotiators.

  In the hour before dawn, Knos found his men assembled on the seashore beside the beached vessel, muttering among themselves as they rubbed their hands together in the morning mist. Knos acknowledged their mumbled greetings as he walked past, braced his hands on Dolphin’s
timbers, and clambered onto the deck in order to command their attention. Aramo was a good talker, Knos usually deferred to him when at home, but when the need arose or he got his blood up, he could equal his brother’s eloquence with ease. Yesterday he had been at a disadvantage. Now, however, he was in his element, with an audience that knew and respected him.

  “Men of Dolphin, sons of Marynos!” he called out. “You know the outrage visited on us yesterday. Menuash has already told you that my family and I have decided to leave Rhodes.” He allotted the sailors absolutely no time to mull that over, to voice their objections. “Yesterday wasn’t about that poor, stupid girl I lay with. Yesterday was the final insult to our clan.

  “While we’ve been away at sea, trading and earning wealth for our clan and others, our kinsmen have been robbed and intimidated by those who covet our meager fields and flocks. Yes, I lay with the woman, but I never recognized that she was Shobai’s daughter or Rabbas’s wife, because she played the harlot, painted her face and withheld her name. The fine we’ve had to pay wasn’t about her, though, or even her kinsmen’s honor. It was an excuse to extort our substance, our very livelihoods!”

  Now that he had established his momentum, Knos kept going. “Those of us who are tired of this constant extortion and humiliation are heading southwest, to the empty lands beyond Karpathos and Kasos. You know those shores. We’ve watered there, hunted game, found fresh water, and gathered kindling. Not another mortal soul in sight. Why didn’t we realize it before? It’s a sign that the gods intended that land for the Bull Clan! Even now, my wives go to consult the ancestors. They will surely be with us.

  “Brothers, bring your families aboard Dolphin, bring your livestock and seed. Even those of you who were not born into our clan, come. If you want to make a new beginning in a land free from fear and extortion, join us. We will adopt you. Anyone who wishes to come is welcome.”

  And then, he reached that place where he had said everything there was to say, where it was time to fall silent and wait for others to consider his words. Clearly, the men were torn, frowning, shaking their heads, muttering between themselves. It would have been better had he waited for his wives to return with good news, but such, he admitted ruefully, was his confidence that he had gone ahead.

  He needed things to go his way, for without his crew behind him, and without the ancestors to grant their approval, Knos had nothing but resentment and hot air.

  A hand was raised. “The ship isn’t big enough!” Sirouk was the youngest oarsman, a dimwitted and tactless sixteen-year-old whom Knos often regretted taking aboard.

  Masar, a grizzled older oarsman, enthusiastically shouted out, “Then we’ll build another ship, as many ships as we need, and take ourselves away from Shobai and his snot-nosed ruffians!”

  They insisted on consulting the oracle bones, just to be sure. Masar owned a leather pouch of bird bones inscribed with portentous symbols. The crew gathered around while he crouched down, sketched a circle in the sand, and then upended the pouch to let the gods scatter the bones as they would.

  “Stand back,” Masar grumbled. “Stand back and let me see. Ah, the arm of disaster is mostly outside the circle. Long life hangs at the center, crossed with prosperity and—what’s this?—it’s just touching hardship, but not by much.” He hemmed and hawed, and sat back on his haunches. Knos restrained his natural impatience, though others did not.

  Masar waved them silent, with a look of intense concentration scrunching his face. Knos held back his breath. “All right, this is what the bones say: we’ll be successful—” He and Knos simultaneously gestured for silence as the men started whooping and hollering. “But there will be a short period of hardship. I don’t know what. There might be troubles here at home or some difficulty with the voyage—it’s hard to say—but if the bones speak clearly, then we’ll make it.”

  Knos exhaled a grateful sigh of relief. The gods and his crew were with him. “Menuash,” he said, “take some men and head up into the hills to find some suitable wood.”

  No sooner had the first mate started organizing a woodcutting party than a group of elders appeared on the path leading down to the beach from the waterfront storage houses. A quartet of men and one woman wearing robes of spotted cowhide fringed with shells and beads from the mainland. The breaking dawn shone through the mist to glint off the obsidian beads hanging from the clan chieftain’s horned headdress. Women with their waterskins and idle children followed behind, hanging upon whatever business the clan’s elders had with the sailors on the beach.

  Knos exchanged a frustrated look with Menuash. “What does Dravan want?” The clan’s useless chieftain could complicate the situation, as no doubt he would.

  Anticipating trouble, huffing a dissatisfied breath, Knos strode over to meet the elders. Although he had not indicated that anyone should follow, by the time he reached the head of the path he had the entire crew at his back. “Elders,” he said, “it’s very early.”

  “Indeed, it is.” Dravan’s small stature within the village extended to his physical bearing; the crown of his head came level with Knos’s nose, and Knos was not a tall man. A breeze stirred wisps of white hair poking out from his headdress, creating the effect of seagull feathers fringing the obsidian beads under the bull’s horns. “What is this talk about you leaving Rhodes and taking the clan with you?” His voice carried—not at all like him to speak quietly when discretion was needed, or shout when he ought to take a stance—allowing the women to overhear, and begin muttering and shaking their heads among themselves.

  “Yes,” Knos answered smoothly. Who had told them? It must have been last night, because they would have needed sufficient time to don their regalia. “There’s empty land to the southwest. Anyone who wishes is welcome to join us.”

  “You have not consulted us,” Dravan pointed out.

  “I don’t require your permission to go anywhere.”

  The lone female elder, a second cousin of Dravan’s, loudly cleared her throat. She wore a spotted cowhide apron and leather skirt below naked breasts half-obscured by the mass of necklaces draped around her throat. “This ship belongs to the clan.” A proprietary sweep of a fleshy arm indicated Dolphin.

  “No,” Knos corrected, folding his arms across his chest. “The product of my trading belongs to the clan, but Dolphin belongs to me, as my inheritance from my father.” Thank the gods his enemies had not thought about his ship, or else Sarduri would have persuaded Shobai to seize that, too.

  “You may go wherever you wish, Knos, and after yesterday no one will blame you for wanting to leave,” Dravan answered, “but when you talk about uprooting the entire clan and—”

  “Only those who wish to come. We’ve consulted the bones and the gods give their approval, but you’re welcome to stay home.” Stepping forward, Knos thrust his forefinger into the chieftain’s face. “How dare you offer my life to those thieves and bullies like some sort of sacrifice!”

  “Now see here,” interjected a younger elder, Dravan’s brother-in-law. “You can’t—”

  “You shut your hole.” Masar’s reprimand elicited a chorus of muttered assent from the crew. “You’ve said enough. Now let Captain Knos have his say.”

  And Knos did, unloading his wrath. “You sent your miserable worm of a son around to order my men to cooperate with the Dolphin and Octopus men holding them and their families hostage.” There was angry grousing from the crew; the mood was turning ugly. Knos gave Dravan’s shoulder a little shove. “You gave me such a fair hearing yesterday that you might as well have bent over and let Shobai fuck you in the ass.”

  Meanwhile, the other elders became increasingly uncomfortable, either because they were all in on it, or because they were just realizing how their chieftain had misrepresented them at the council. Knos could care less. “I speak for my own family and for the men who crew my ship. They’ve taken a vote and decided to leave Rhodes. We’ve consulted the gods, and found them in agreement, and you’ve nothing to say ab
out it.”

  Faced with such opposition, the elders withdrew their complaint and left the beach, until someone informed them about Menuash’s trip inland for timber. Then the messages went flying back and forth between the village and beach. Knos defiantly ignored all injunctions to cease, and turned his attention to more pressing matters: namely, the sailors’ wives and sisters thronging the beach to debate the question with their men. Not a single woman wanted to go. Furthermore, they were crying and shouting, inciting a dozen quarrels, and compelling Knos to intervene.

  “Ladies, ladies,” he crooned, turning on the charm. “You haven’t even laid eyes on this new land, and already you’re complaining. How would each of you like your very own house, as large as you please, with fruit trees and wild herbs where all you have to do to harvest them is step out your front door? There are wild goats. Think of the marvelous milk and cheeses you can make!”

  “Stop that!” Sirouk’s aunt shoved aside the consolatory arm he had draped around her shoulders. “You have a wicked way with women.”

  Knos patted her cheek. “Ask any of the crewmen who’ve been there, my dear. It’s a land of bees and honey.”

  “So what do you call it, this gods-blessed land?” another woman challenged.

  He beamed at the skinny, prickly harridan. “We’ll call it whatever we like.”

  “I don’t want to go,” a third whined.

  “Of course you do!” It was that morning’s speech all over again, but lacking the earlier venom and appeals to clan pride. Women wanted to hear that there would be enough shelter and forage and safety from enemies. They wanted assurances that they would be prosperous and happy. “Sweet Shiri, look at the small house you and your bridegroom have now! Come with us, and you can have a brand-new house with two or three rooms—as large as you like.”