Knossos

by Laura Gill

  Following Knos’s example, everyone who could offered a day’s work to the immortal gods. Some cleared the ground and dug post-holes, cut and split timber, and mixed local clay and straw for bricks. Others gathered lime for plaster, ground ocher for coloring, and wove mats from river reeds. A completed sanctuary meant that the clan totems could be housed and the sacred hearth fire lit, so that the deities might at last settle among the people.

  By late afternoon, most of the clan had gathered below the hill; the runners had been thorough. Knos called out for order, then when everyone was listening, he addressed them. “You’ve been summoned here to help elect our elders and our priestesses.” Turning, he indicated the priest. “Yikadi is our most diligent high priest and singer, but he can’t possibly do everything. I know there have been some difficulties recently. It’s now time to appoint from among yourselves six elders to represent the Bull Clan, six men and women to judge and settle your disputes. And in turn, those six will appoint three priestesses to placate the goddesses and teach your daughters.”

  The people held their cheers. Knos nodded toward the high priest. “Yikadi, because you have no stake in this election you alone stand impartial, and can judge fairly.”

  True to his nature, Yikadi seized the opportunity to transform Knos’s humble request into a mandate from the gods, using his considerable bardic gifts to make the election into an occasion to be remembered. He had sent to his wife for his horned headdress and the cowhide robe decorated with shells that he had worn three days ago.

  He raised his arms to the heavens and called out, “Great gods, Father Potidnu, Great Bull, and Mother Raziya, Most Holy Goddess, lend your grace to your devoted servants of the Bull Clan as they elect elders to guide and judge them.” The priest’s audience hung on his every pronouncement. “Men and women of the Bull Clan, attend your sacred duty. Who will you have as your clan chieftain?”

  A tremendous noise went up, “KNOS!” So loud that the Mighty Bull in the heavens surely heard.

  Knos’s heart hammered at the acclamation; he found himself breathless and lightheaded. His elevation to clan chieftain did not really surprise him—for why not, after he had proposed, organized, and led the expedition?—half as much as the unanimous sentiment on display. After all the obstacles he had had to overcome in Rhodes, he expected at least one dissenting voice, one objection, but to his amazement encountered none.

  “I will take the oaths,” he said, when the furor died down and he could utter the words. “I will serve well and faithfully. I will serve the interests of the Bull Clan. Honor the gods. Never lie. Never cheat.” He could not seem to suck enough oxygen into his lungs to form complete sentences. “But who would you—who would you have stand with me?”

  This time, there was no universal acclaim. Half a dozen names were called out.

  “Aramo!”

  “Amanas!”

  “Menuash!” There were a great many calls for Marynos’s young captain to mount the little hill where the priest and new clan chieftain stood, and join them. Which he did, but not, to their dismay, to accept the nomination of his sailors or those passengers who had sailed with him. Rather, he gestured for silence, and then spoke, “Friends, friends! You do me a great honor—too much honor—but I am too young to serve. Moreover, I plan to go to sea again and trade, which I could not do as an elder.”

  With Menuash’s words, cold realization gripped Knos where a second before he had been basking in triumph. As an elder and clan chieftain, he could never again go to sea, never again captain a ship. His wives, those infinitely clever women, had maneuvered him right where they wanted him—at home, under their watchful gazes where he could not make trouble.

  Aramo accepted a position as elder, but Rauda declined, shyly protesting his inexperience; he wanted to get along with everyone and not have to judge. Masar grudgingly accepted in Menuash’s place. “You’re putting me out to pasture,” he grumbled at the sailors who had nominated him.

  “Then that makes two of us,” Knos joked.

  After the elections, Yikadi appointed his wife Nerissa as high priestess. That surprised no one, even though, being a vain and proud woman, she was not well loved. But when the priest called for pious women to join Nerissa in the groves, the people hollered their choice, “UROPE!”

  While Knos knew that many women looked to his first wife for guidance and leadership, he could not until now have fathomed the depths of their respect for her. Then she was climbing the rise to stand beside the high priest’s wife, whose upturned nose betrayed her sentiments about the choice.

  Urope waited until the people quieted. “I will gladly share this honor with Nerissa, but let our numbers be three, for three is a sacred number.” She sounded remarkably composed, as though she had anticipated this moment. Perhaps she had. “My sister-wife Hariana is the daughter of a high priest. She is devout. You have consulted her for remedies and amulets—but do not take her on account of my words. Choose her for her own worth.”

  Hariana, too, stood forth when summoned. This, Knos realized, was not the product of an hour or even a day, but of several weeks of plotting. His women had known all along that a clan chieftain would be elected, and that their husband, captain of the expedition and founder of the settlement, was the most likely candidate. And they also knew that the priestesses would exercise supreme female authority within the clan. Knos could not overrule them, whether as husband or clan chieftain, but must seek their permission and blessing before undertaking any major decision.

  Catching his eye, Urope bestowed upon him a secretive little smile. Hariana turned her head also, and gave him the same enigmatic smile. Knos expelled a sigh, knowing his own defeat.

  Nevertheless, he asked them outright about their scheming on the way home. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  Urope adopted a tone of mock innocence. “Knew what?”

  Knos could not see her face in the darkness—the lamp Hariana carried barely illuminated the footpath ahead—but he was sure she wore that same smug little smile from earlier. “That as clan chieftain I would never be able to go to sea again,” he grumbled.

  Urope and Hariana made identical noises of false sympathy. “You say that as though it’s such a terrible thing!” Hariana cried. Was it his imagination, or was she sputtering with laughter?

  Knos countered, “You find this amusing, woman?”

  Urope answered instead, “What we find so amusing is that you, our very resourceful, clever husband, wasn’t shrewd enough to see that you’d have to give something to the gods in order to get what you wanted. Who else but you could be chieftain?”

  As the dirt path yielded to sand and gravel, all four slowed their pace. Knos heard the ocean’s rush and ebb, and the night’s breeze rustling through the sea grass. Stepping through the shadow of a gnarled coastal oak, he and his wives glimpsed the ruddy orange glow of the campfires. Moonlight glittered on the tranquil surface of the sea, a reflection of the manifold stars overhead. Ahead, dark against darkness, the beached ships rested.

  Knos found it difficult to imagine a life where he was not treading Dolphin’s well-worn planks, hearing the beat of the helmsman’s drum and splash of the oars striking the water, and feeling the salt wind in his face. Yes, he wanted to be clan chieftain, to rule, but the sea had a way of getting into one’s blood. Marynos was a severe master who expected much in exchange for the excitement of adventuring upon the sea.

  Urope seemed, as she so often did, to read his thoughts. Her voice was softly persuasive, and she set a comforting hand on his arm. “It’s Menuash’s time now, Husband, as it was once yours.”

  *~*~*~*

  Knos gave the bull skulls into the high priest’s keeping knowing that the man would guard them with his life.

  On the hill, people constructed wattle-and-daub enclosures where the elders allotted them land, and pitched their tents. Wood and thatch huts rose in lieu of permanent mudbrick dwellings, and on the hill’s west side, just north of the rising sanctuar
y, it was a week’s labor for a half-dozen men to set a foundation of stones and build a granary. The community’s food stores, supplemented by smoked meat and gathered fruits and nuts, was secure for the winter. With stone querns fashioned by the men, some of the women started grinding barley into flour to make bread for beer making.

  It took eight thousand bricks and timber from twenty trees to construct the sanctuary. Once the interior and exterior walls received several insulating coats of plaster, the structure was roofed over with cypress beams and tightly woven thatch. Women painted the hearth with red ocher swirls and dots, and washed the walls with shades of yellow ocher and pink. Then they pounded the earthen floor as hard as concrete, and laid down the reed mats they had woven. They arranged fragrant pine wood upon the hearth, and, once everything was tidy and perfect, sealed all access to await the dedication and lighting of the sacred fire.

  Kindling the fire was done in the ancient way, by the high priest twirling a sharpened stick and blowing on the shavings. People normally carried an ember in a pouch when traveling, and so the clan had done throughout their journey, but according to the ancient code a new, gods-given fire had to be laid on the hearth of a new sanctuary. Every hearth of the Bull Clan was extinguished; the priestesses went throughout the countryside the previous day to ensure that everybody obeyed the elders.

  Knos realized right away that the high priest had never, ever built a fire from scratch; any sailor or herdsmen could have accomplished the task more quickly and efficiently had they been allowed to help, but to his credit Yikadi concealed his shortcomings with his usual theatrics. He called upon Potidnu, exhorting his support while inviting him to abide within the sacred flame.

  The people held their collective breath, waiting for the Lord of the Heavens to grant his blessings. If Yikadi could not summon the god’s spirit and kindle the life-giving flame, his failure meant a wholesale failure for the people and their new settlement.

  Knos tried to ignore the perspiration forming along his hairline, and relax his breathing. Already, some had noticed the delay, and were shaking their heads and muttering to their neighbors.

  He stared down at Yikadi, crouching on his haunches and spinning the stick between his elegant hands, and willed him to succeed while every single fiber of his being cried out for him interrupt the rite and do it himself.

  At long last, the priest managed to coax a wisp of smoke into flame, and from that he lit a brand which he brandished before the people. “Praise to Potidnu, Mighty Lord of the Heavens, for his manifold blessings.” The crowd roared its acclamation. Knos found himself trembling with relief. “Let this gift of the gods be taken within.”

  Nerissa took the brand, entered the sanctuary, and kindled the hearth. Knos smelled the resinous pine burning in the god’s honor. Each household would have to wait, though, until the sanctuary was dedicated and the clan’s totems housed within before carrying the sacred fire back to their cold hearths.

  Yikadi sacrificed a wild goat, sprinkled the threshold with the hot blood, and ordered Urope and Hariana to collect the remainder for the sacred grove they had discovered nearby. Knos watched with pride as his wives performed their duties. Although Nerissa had obsidian and quartz beads around her neck and shells sewn onto her goat-hair skirt, it seemed to Knos that his women, who had no ornament but their braided hair and their full, ocher-tipped breasts, truly embodied the mystery of the goddesses.

  Yikadi led the elders from the sanctuary threshold down to his hut on the northernmost side of the hill, and brought out the bull skulls entrusted to his keeping. There were not enough skulls, however, for all six elders and the priest to carry in the procession, a conundrum which troubled some.

  “The triton, too, must be carried to the sanctuary. Let me take it,” Knos said reassuringly, “and walk with the priestesses.” He cast a salacious wink toward his bare-breasted wives, whose baleful glare dared him to try, just try, to attempt any lewdness on so solemn an occasion.

  So he went outside, put his lips to the mouth of the triton, the ritual horn fashioned from the shell of a giant gastropod, and blew a deep, bellowing note to summon the gods to the housing of the clan totems. The procession started before the last echoes faded, with the high priest walking ahead of the elders. Knos waved the priestesses on and, slinging the triton across his chest by its leather thong, swiftly retrieved from the hut the bundle that he had stored there with the other sacred paraphernalia awaiting transfer to the sanctuary.

  Because no one but the high priest and the other elders had known about the shortage, no one along the processional route took any special note of the skull Knos carried—not until he stood upon the sanctuary threshold and lifted it in both hands to present to the people.

  Yikadi’s eyes bulged under his ponderous headdress, and his jaw fell open. Aramo stared, as did many others who had, over the years, occasion to visit the old sanctuary on Rhodes. For the skull Knos held between his hands was yellow with extreme age while the others were bleached white, and so ancient that some claimed it had crossed the channel from the mainland to Rhodes with the hero Katsa.

  Knos sensed the crowd’s sudden unease, the fears of sacrilege. “People of the Bull Clan!” he called out. “Bear witness to the holy command of the Lord of the Heavens, the Mighty Bull himself!”

  He had thought very carefully about this moment, and how to dispel any accusation of blasphemy. “On the night of the fires this past summer,” he continued, “Lord Potidnu came to me in a dream of bull heads and blood, and ordered me to sacrifice seven bulls to make new totems for the clan, and for the sacred horns which the high priest must wear.” Knos related this with a perfectly straight face, because it was true, after a fashion. He had dreamt of bull heads and blood that night, before his frantic wives had awakened him to a burning house.

  “And then, the Lord of the Heavens led me into the sanctuary, showed me the ancient totem collecting dust and dishonor, and he commanded me to bring it forth.” When he dared focus upon particular faces in the crowd, he saw nods of agreement starting to appear amid confusion and looks of open wonder. Had the god truly manifested himself to the clan chieftain? “In making our voyage,” Knos finished, “in coming to this new shore, we have not left the Bull Clan behind, for we are the Bull Clan!”

  All throughout that day, when people asked how he had accomplished the removal of the ancient totem without anyone noticing, Knos omitted Menuash’s crucial role, and explained that the skull had magically appeared aboard Dolphin, and that Potidnu had left a substitute in its place. But when others inquired whether their possession of the skull meant that the gods would now turn their faces from those kinsmen left behind, Knos had no ready answer because he honestly did not know, having never considered the question when planning his revenge against Dravan.

  *~*~*~*

  Fidra’s son was born in mid-spring. The people welcomed him, the very first child born in the new land, as an omen of abundance to come. Knos named his ninth child Dharos for a hero in an ancient song. As he held the infant on his lap, he grew thoughtful. Ten months ago he never could have imagined that he would be a clan chieftain in a new land.

  People complained about the lack of obsidian, but quickly found solutions to mitigate the shortage. During the winter months, Knos had noticed a certain resourcefulness among the settlers. Rauda had come around on cold days after the livestock had been tended to visit and work a beautiful wooden comb. “Lairi wants it, of course,” he said, “but in the hands of an expert bargainer it might purchase some new breeding stock.” Rauda turned the comb around in his hand to blow away the wood shavings and, squinting in the firelight, examine the reposing goat decorating the horn.

  A neighbor with a hand for shaping clay had begun working charming figures of bulls and goats, and painted patterns of swirls and zigzag lines and stripes with red and brown ochre. “A little something to barter,” she said cheerfully, showing the figures to Knos and his wives, “for some fresh shards of obsidian.” />
  Masar had spent his idle time incising patterns onto an awl made from antler bone. Amanas, a farmer known for his carpentry skill, had alternated between shaping and pounding posts and crafting a length of ancient oak into a shepherd’s staff worthy of Potidnu himself; goats chased each other around and around, bounding over rocks, climbing higher and higher. It was not a thing for everyday use, but befitting a high priest or clan chieftain. Knos envied whoever was destined to receive it, for he would have liked to own it himself.

  Knos rued the fact that he did not have such talent with wood or clay or bone. Oh, he could split a plank and hammer a post as well as any man, twist a rope out of hemp, and flake obsidian or flint to make a sharp knife, but he had neither the imagination nor the patience to create.

  He did not visit the beach to see Dolphin, an excruciatingly hard thing for him when each day he woke with a yearning to return to the sea so fierce and deep that it physically hurt. Some nights, he woke bathed in a cold sweat and gripped by an irrational fear that his beloved vessel had gone derelict.

  Menuash reassured him that all was well with the ship. “The men are looking after her,” he promised, “and we’ll take her out whenever Marynos is drawn up for repairs.”

  Knos had news of his eldest son, too. Astaryas had gone to live among the bachelor sailors in their huts above the beach, and rarely showed his face around the family hearth. He had come to welcome baby Dharos into the clan only because his mother had threatened to drag him home otherwise. “I keep him well occupied,” Menuash assured Knos, “and out of trouble.”

  “I would have thought by now...” Knos shook his head ruefully. Whatever his failings as a father, he could not fathom why Astaryas continued to remain so distant. Not even his mother understood him these days. “I want him to captain Dolphin when he’s old enough, but...”