Knossos

by Laura Gill

  “He may yet,” Menuash said. “He’s only fifteen, and has much to learn about the world.”

  *~*~*~*

  Menuash sailed to Melos in the summer to trade. He returned almost a fortnight later with a ship crammed full of goods and livestock, two new sailors from Melos, and much to tell.

  The handcrafted items were a success. The night of his return, Menuash joined the elders and high priest in the sanctuary to relate the tale of his journey. “You remember Nabarru, the Cuttlefish Clan chieftain?” he asked Knos. “You should have seen the look on his face when he saw that shepherd’s staff. There was no question then that he intended to have it, only a matter of how much he was willing to barter.”

  The agreed-upon price was four cattle and six sheep. Another elder paid handsomely in obsidian for Rauda’s comb to give his wife, and the charming animal figurines brought leather hides and wooden bowls. There were also lengths of linen, needles and awls of deer antler, and two pigs. Last of all, Nabarru had sent presents. “I told him about the troubles we encountered on Rhodes, and the voyage to settle these shores.” Menuash nodded toward Knos. “He admires your strength and spirit, and wishes you and he could meet again.”

  The Melian Cuttlefish Clan chieftain had sent beads for Knos’s wives and for Knos himself a magnificent leather cape collared with soft rabbit fur, and decorated with patterns of spirals worked in obsidian and quartz beads, so that it caught the light and sparkled. However, it was weighty and had been designed with a taller man in mind, causing it to drag on the floor when Knos tried it on. But because it was a gift meant especially for him, and he liked it so well, he refused to hear of trading it for another present.

  “Glad you like it.” Menuash had, Knos noticed, added two glittering obsidian beads to the shark teeth adorning his topknot.

  “You look ridiculous.” Masar wore a red leather cap sewn with shells, a present from the elders of Melos to the elders of the Bull Clan.

  Knos scowled good-naturedly. “No one asked you.”

  “There is one thing the Melians wanted to know that I could not tell them,” Menuash continued. “Our land does not have a name.” He glanced at Knos, who exchanged looks with Yikadi and Aramo, and so the question spread all around the hearth.

  “I’ve never really thought about it,” Knos admitted. The cape’s new leather smelled wonderful, and it had been so expertly tanned that it melted against his skin. Wait until his wives saw.

  Yikadi spoke, “I have, but then other matters stole my attention, and I never mentioned it.” He caressed the beaded leather pouch the Melians had sent for him to store his sacred implements in. “In the Song of Katsa, the hero and his followers sojourned for a time in the land of Kaphtor.”

  They all knew the tale. After wandering two years in the harsh and barren highlands where many died, Katsa and his people descended into the coastal plain, a bountiful land of five rivers called Kaphtor. And there the hero fell in love with the princess Orana. Orana called upon her gods to tempt Katsa to renounce his quest to establish a new homeland. She tempted him with an offer of marriage and kingship, whereby he could settle his people among the Kaphti. Desiring the princess, Katsa wrestled with his conscience until in a dream Potidnu had admonished him for disobeying the command to wander until he found an island with a sacred spring untouched by man.

  “Kaphtor.” Yikadi rolled the name around on his name. “It has a well-favored ring to it.”

  “Where was the original Kaphtor?” Menuash asked Knos. “We never encountered it during our voyages.”

  Knos shook his head. “Gone. My father once spoke to an old man on the mainland who said that the gods caused the sea to rise and inundate Kaphtor so marauders would never find and attack it. Father said the old man told him how the Kaphti survived as fish under the waves.”

  “I like the name,” the farmer-elder Amanas admitted, “but will the gods approve?”

  Masar cast the bones on the floor beside the hearth. “The gods have no objection.”

  Aramo passed around the wineskin. “Kaphtor, it is, then.”

  *~*~*~*

  In the fifth year of the settlement, Menuash sailed back to Rhodes. He returned with a bride from the Cypress Clan, fourteen settlers with their livestock, trade goods, and news of their old village.

  Gamon had been stoned to death the day of the expedition’s departure. Dravan had not been executed, but, stripped of his authority, he lived in disgrace on the fringes of the community. “I visited him once before we left,” Menuash said. “He apologizes for nothing, and he clings to the illusion that all he did was to hold the clan together. He curses your name, Knos.”

  Knos could care less what the bitter, treacherous old man thought. “Does he know about the clan totem?”

  “No one has even noticed.” Menuash crooked a smile; he had not been able to stop grinning since his return. Matrimony agreed with him immensely. “And I said nothing. It’s better for the people that they never find out.”

  Divisions and hardships beset the Bull Clan there. As Knos predicted, the stronger clans took advantage. Bull Clan families married their daughters into more prosperous clans whenever they could, and some families even left the community altogether, to seek homes elsewhere on the island. All of the new settlers were Bull Clan—all that Menuash could accommodate aboard Marynos. “They begged me to return and bring over more,” he said. “I told them I would have to consult with my elders.”

  In fact, the elders wanted more settlers, and of all different kinds. Sons and daughters reaching maturity needed spouses, and the village needed farmers and craftsmen. Herdsmen needed more livestock.

  Menuash related one final note. “You remember how Divos was to take your place making trading voyages?” Knos nodded. The other elders around the hearth leaned forward to hear more. “Iroas told me that his first voyage was his last, and an absolute disaster. He wrecked his ship on a sandbar a day southeast of Kos, and then antagonized the locals so much that he practically had to give his cargo away just to repair his vessel.” He snickered. “Iroas’s clan does the sailing and bartering, and they seem to be doing a decent job of it. They speak highly of you, Knos—there in Rhodes and in all the ports. Wait until they hear about Kaphtor. You will be a legend, like Katsa.”

  Knos smiled sadly. His hunger for the sea had never left him; he continued to dwell with it as an old man endured arthritic aches. He had no particular desire to become a legend, only to be granted his heart’s desire to sail once more over the horizon in the ship he loved.

  *~*~*~*

  A day came when Dolphin died.

  The sailors took good care of her, as they had promised, but over time they neglected her for longer and longer periods, forgetting to take her out, or to tend her aging timbers. Astaryas might have claimed her as his birthright, for he had become a superb mariner, yet he gravitated toward Marynos, the ship he sailed on and knew intimately, and the crew that had become his family. To him, Dolphin represented a second-best relic, a creaky and decaying memento of his father’s many absences. Astaryas did not aspire to follow his father’s example; he wanted to be Menuash.

  The man who knocked on Knos’s doorjamb was a carpenter and occasional farmer. He was nearly forty, a husband and father of seven, where he had once been a naïve and rather stupid oarsman of sixteen. When a young man answered, he gave his name and was ushered inside.

  Knos was in his fifty-seventh year, his face seamed with grooves and his hair white where it had once been black. A toothache was giving him trouble, and his eyesight was not what it was; he had to squint in order to see the visitor as something more than a blur, and then could not place him. He turned to his youngest son, who had admitted the man, and asked, “Who is this again?”

  “This is Sirouk,” answered Dharos, “who says he has some important news for you.”

  “Sirouk...” Knos turned the name over and again on his tongue. It sounded familiar, but he simply could not recall.

  The m
an cleared his throat. “I sailed with you on Dolphin, before we left Rhodes.”

  Now Knos knew; he was not as senile as some thought him, only slower on account of his diminishing vision and age, and it did not help that so many of his old crewmen were no longer sailing, but had become fishermen and farmers, scattered all over the area. “Ah, yes” he sighed. “How are you, young man?”

  He bade his daughter-in-law, Dharos’s new wife, to bring refreshments, but Sirouk demurred. “Forgive me, Knos, but I cannot stay. I only came to tell you something, this one thing.”

  He was as gentle as he could be in the telling. Dolphin’s stern had split open during the night, leaving an irreparable gap. She was more than forty years old, and while Marynos had blessed her with speed and strength, and with good fortune upon the waves, she could not survive the vicissitudes of sun and cold fog and salt air forever. “Forgive me.” Sirouk took Knos’s gnarled and shaking hands in his own and kissed them. “No one noticed the crack until it was too late. How easily they neglect their mothers, these boys who sail with Menuash.” He wept openly, his salt tears falling on Knos’s cold skin.

  Knos did not hear him; his spirit had flown a thousand leagues away, far, far away, to a younger time, when his father had cut and shaped the planks to build that vessel, when he had first sailed upon her, away from Rhodes toward shores and adventures yet unknown, and when he had filled his lungs to swelling with the crisp ocean air and fallen helplessly, irrevocably in love. Now his breath came short, laboriously, and he choked up with tears. He could feel his heart breaking within his chest.

  Knos never recovered from the loss of Dolphin. From that day forward, he stooped when he walked, ate only enough to sustain life, and spoke little. Menuash visited that same night, condolences and apologies weighing his tongue, and dragged Astaryas along with him, implying that the young man’s disinterest had hastened Dolphin’s demise. Knos did not blame his son any more than he did Menuash, and accepted, painful though it was, that without a captain and dedicated crew to maintain her, Dolphin had languished like a neglected wife. If anyone, he blamed himself for staying away, even though at the time that had seemed like the wisest, most sensible course.

  After a month, his second son approached him with a proposition. “Father, I finished building that house on Aramo’s hill that I told you about last summer.” Young Knos was no longer quite so young, but a thirty-one-year old farmer with a wife and children of his own. Unlike his eldest brother, he had always remained close to his family, and viewed his father’s decline with increasing concern. “Bana and I think it might do you some good to stay with us for a while.”

  Knos stared morosely into the hearth fire. He was always cold now, even in summer. “That’s kind, boy, but I don’t want to become a burden on you and your family.”

  “What are you saying? Of course you’re not a burden.” Young Knos leaned over, and carefully draped a loving arm over his father’s frail shoulders. “Listen, I haven’t told you this, but last month I had Menuash’s men cut timbers from Dolphin, whatever could be salvaged, and bring them to the new house. So the posts and doorjambs and roof timbers are all pieces of Dolphin. Why, you’d be surrounded by your old ship, because Hamaya has blessed her and let her live on in my house.”

  Knos lifted his head when he heard that. His aged wives and youngest son gathered around him, and urged him to accept the offer. Urope kissed his hands. “The gods love you still.”

  He patted her cheek, the first affectionate gesture he had offered in nearly five weeks. “You must come with me, dear. Fidra will want to stay with Dharos and his family.” Hariana had died last winter, bequeathing her priestess duties to her eldest daughter.

  So it was decided. Knos and his first wife would move inland, away from all sight and sound of the sea. Within the week, Aramo, a still-vigorous fifty-eight, personally arrived with an ox-drawn cart to convey his brother and sister-in-law and possessions to his farmstead in the next valley. “We’ll plant carrots and onions,” he promised Knos. “I’ve a little garden facing the mountain. There are fruit trees and pistachios. It gets marvelous sun all year round. You and Urope will love it there. And this year’s pomegranates look promising.” He chuckled, while giving Knos a boost into the cart-bed. “Wait till we ferment them.”

  His farmstead occupied a low hill overlooking the river where it met a stream flowing from the mountain. Five rectangular houses sat upon the north height, and wattle-and-daub huts where itinerant herdsmen and hunters dwelt in fair weather occupied plots on the west end.

  Although neither Aramo nor anyone else recognized its significance, his farmstead at the confluence of the waters was singularly blessed above all other watered places in that land, for its banks never diminished at the height of summer.

  Knos settled into the life of a gentleman farmer, working the sun-warmed soil with his hands, and enjoying the views of the mountain peak and tree-clad hills all around. He no longer went to the village. Whenever the elders convened to resolve disputes, they came to him on the hill, and when the clan chieftain’s presence was required for rituals, he sent young Knos in his stead. The beaded cloak rested more elegantly on the boy’s shoulders than on his.

  On the night before becoming chieftain, young Knos sacrificed five bulls to Potidnu and buried their skulls with their raw meat on the hill’s eastern slope. After a priest from Katsamba anointed him with salt, earth, and bull’s blood, young Knos returned to his hearth to report that the omens were good. Knos gave him the beaded cloak to keep for his own, and considered the deed well-done.

  Others visited Knos there on the hill: his children, grandchildren, long-ago shipmates, and traders from the nearby islands who had heard about his exploits and wished to pay their respects. When he died, seven years after moving to the hill, his bones were interred in a cave which became a place of pilgrimage. From that time forward, people visited every winter and summer, leaving offerings of food and drink. And when they felt the shadow of death approaching, they instructed their children to inter them as close as possible to their founder.

  As for the house on the hill, young Knos continued to dwell there, as did his eldest son and grandson—all of whom were named Knos to honor their ancestor, and all of whom became clan chieftains in their turn.

  And after several generations, the people of the Bull Clan utterly forgot that the hill at the confluence of the waters had originally been the farm of Aramo, and began calling it the Place of Knos.

  Knossos.

  Two

  The Young God

  2800 B.C.

  A flash of lightning, a deafening boom, and he was gone.

  An hour later, Pasibe hunched beside the hearth in her fine whitewashed house while the priests, elders, and Minos the chieftain debated outside her door. Her ears were still ringing, and she felt ice cold where only a short time ago she had burned hot with anger.

  Once the elders questioned her, no one spoke further to her. It was an inconceivable travesty, when she, the high priestess of Knossos herself, she who had witnessed the wrath of Velchanos, should have been at the heart of interpreting the lightning sign.

  Normally, she would have insisted, but the god’s sudden manifestation coupled with the loss of her lover rendered her numb. Was Velchanos punishing her for some unwitting offense, or had his anger been directed at Sama? Whenever Pasibe tried untangling the mystery, her memories overwhelmed her and she could not think.

  She could have used some comfort just then, though she was not accustomed to asking for it. The junior priestesses, Minos’s wife, and the senior elders’ wives cramming into her house all behaved like wretched curiosity seekers. They should have deferred to her as high priestess, comforted her as a bereaved woman, but no, they stared at and avoided her as though she carried some plague. Even her brother’s haughty, meddlesome wife was silent. Did they expect her to somehow burst into flame? Did they think that she would cause them to die in an instanteous flash of lightning?

 
Her nerves gave way. “Either do something or leave,” she snapped at them. Would that she have better controlled the trembling in her voice! Bad enough that she was in shock, but she could not afford to appear completely incapable of controlling herself.

  Melia, Minos’s wife, spread her hands. “High priestess, we don’t know what to do.”

  “You might start by covering him.” Pasibe took a deep breath to try to calm her quavering, to little avail. The thunderous boom that had shaken the house and the earth beneath it still reverberated inside her; her ears were ringing and her teeth rattled. Velchanos’s lightning-forked hands had shoved her to the ground; the god’s touch was too strong even for one whose family had been devoted to the service of the gods of Knossos for the last forty-five centuries. “For decency’s sake, cover him.”

  Sama lay where he had fallen; his limbs, once so supple and lean, were like charcoal sticks: black, smoking, and unrecognizable. And the cypress tree under which he had died had been blasted by the same lightning bolt—transforming it, she now realized, into a sacred tree.

  If she closed her eyes and concentrated, Pasibe could still feel the heat of the god’s hand. To know the intimate presence of Velchanos’s fearsome lightning was to be hammered with white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, to be stripped naked and rendered helpless. It was a thing she never wanted to experience again.

  Now that the storm had rolled through the valley, the sun shone once again through the clouds. Except now the watery daylight falling through Pasibe’s doorway had a different slant to it.

  Again, Melia was the only one who addressed her. “The elders are still examining his body.”

  What holy message did Minos and the elders expect to divine in those heat-contorted limbs? Pasibe had seen only the warping and twisting that was evidence of the god’s wrath, and the endless scream issuing from Sama’s mouth. His eyes, they had been sightless, smoking... She winced, tried to turn from the thought as if from a physical thing, but she could not escape it. “Close the door.”