Knossos

by Laura Gill

  “Begging your pardon, Priestess,” the foreman answered, “but we’ve been ordered to fast till the work’s done.”

  She saw through the lie, because they could have accepted her hospitality afterward. Nonetheless, they worked hard and were deferential, apologizing for any noise or mess.

  Not so Sama’s mother and aunts, who, a short time later, barged right past a loitering Kamash and banged on the door. “We’re here for his things,” his mother barked.

  The women refused to cross the threshold or to accept the high priestess’s hospitality. Pasibe, who had never liked them, did not insist, but she brought out the baskets containing Sama’s clothes and toiletries and ornaments and gear, and then observed with barely concealed distaste how the women inventoried everything right there, right down to the last bit of leather and crystal bead.

  “Where’s his ring?” his mother pressed. “He had a ring of rock crystal. I saw him wearing it. Where is it?”

  She had not even asked whether Sama had cried out when the lightning struck him, whether he had suffered. “I held it back,” Pasibe answered calmly, “as an appeasement offering to his shade.” She indicated the spot, now trampled and muddied by the workmen. “Dig for it if you insist, but remember that Velchanos watches this place.”

  Sama’s mother shook her head, but during the night someone disturbed the ground; Turro the herdsman was an indifferent guard, it seemed. Did the herdsman and Sama’s kinswomen have no respect for the holy tree? Apparently not. Pasibe did not investigate further, only murmured to the specter of her dead lover, “Your kinsmen are greedy, Sama. Haunt their dreams, but not mine. I did warn them.”

  *~*~*~*

  The following day, Pasibe found that she could no longer bear to stay indoors combing and spinning wool and staring at idols. If the gods would not speak to her there, then she must seek them out where they dwelt. She bundled bread and goat’s cheese into a cloth, filled a skin with wine, and donned sturdy shoes. It would take several hours to walk where she was going.

  Kamash, who had the watch, met her outside. “You shouldn’t go out,” he said gruffly.

  Pasibe promptly ignored his advice. “If anyone comes asking for me, inform them that I’ve gone to the Alautha Cave.”

  “You shouldn’t travel.”

  Gods, but he was thick! “I must consult the goddess.” She adjusted her shawl. The rain clouds had moved south, but the morning was still cool. “Don’t let anyone enter, especially not my sister-in-law Pinaruti, no matter what excuse she might give you.” When he started to argue, to stubbornly reiterate the orders he had been given, Pasibe decided to pull rank. “I am the high priestess of Knossos, and I say this house is under the seal of Lord Potidas and Mother Rhaya. Anyone who violates that protection will be plagued with afflictions. Remember that.”

  Taken aback, Kamash nodded.

  Descending the hill, Pasibe left the cluster of plastered mudbrick houses that constituted the village of Knossos, and headed into the countryside. A muddy track followed the Kairatos River north toward the sea. The air smelled like green grass and animal dung, the odors of spring. Seagulls wheeled and screeched overhead, a reminder that the ocean was but a short distance away.

  She crossed the river where an ancient stone bridge joined the north-south Knossos-Katsamba road to the east Amnissos road; the Alautha Cave sanctuary lay within sight of Amnissos’s double harbor and the promontory which Knos the mariner had liked so well forty-three centuries ago.

  In times past, Pasibe had enjoyed making this journey with her husband. Dragas used to wait for her outside the cave, for men could not enter the goddess sanctuary, and when she finished her devotions they would head down into the village to spend the night with his family.

  She met men and women headed to the Amnissos market from outlying farms, but otherwise she enjoyed a solitary journey.

  The Alautha Cave was concealed behind a stand of fig trees in a gully on the right-hand side of the road. In order to enter the cave, a pilgrim had to pause at the guardian’s house, wash the dust of traveling from her hands and feet, and offer a goddess-toll. Pasibe greeted the bent old woman, performed her ablutions in freezing water drawn from one of the cave’s rock pools, and presented the vessel of scented oil she had brought.

  “I thought you might visit the goddess,” Mia said, “ever since I heard about that boy of yours. Sama, was it?” She smacked her toothless gums, sniffed the lip of the vessel approvingly. “Oil of narcissus. Nice. There’s no one in the sanctuary now. You’ll have the goddess to yourself.”

  Pasibe hesitated. “I wasn’t sure I would be allowed to enter.” She still did not know whether Rhaya would blast her the moment she tried to set foot in the cave. “They’re keeping me from my duties at home.”

  “Well, then they’re fools.” Mia patted the vessel with gnarled brown hands. After she took whatever she needed from the jar to sustain herself, the guardian would dedicate everything else in the cave. “How are you supposed to know if the gods will receive you unless you’re allowed to go before them? And if you can’t go before them, well, then you’ll surely offend them.” Mia rolled her eyes. “Yes, you’ve done the right thing by coming here. Go on in. Speak to the goddess. Then come back and break bread with me. I haven’t had company in two days.”

  Pasibe lit a torch from the hearth fire and descended into the cave. Inside, the ground sloped on a gentle grade into a single great chamber with a low ceiling, where limestone stalactites sluiced water into sacred rock pools, and stalagmites represented the goddesses of the earth and underworld. Named for the goddess of childbirth, but dedicated to the Great Goddess, the Alautha Cave was where untold generations of women had come to petition the goddess for the increase of their wombs, for the safety and well-being of their children, and for the initiation of their daughters. Pasibe knew the cave intimately, having descended countless times into the stygian darkness to beg a child from Alautha, and to beseech forgiveness and comfort each time she miscarried.

  The torchlight illuminated eerie faces and half-human shapes trapped in the limestone. She heard the soft rustle of nesting bats farther back, and caught a whiff of guano. A stone enclosure separated the faithful from a tall, slender stalagmite, the earth’s own rough-hewn image of Rhaya. Pasibe knelt down, touched her hand to her forehead, then her forehead to the stones comprising the temenos. The floor was uneven and cold, and the act of obeisance hurt her joints more now than it used to.

  “Mother Rhaya, what have I done wrong?” The darkness seized her soft query and amplified it. Oftentimes, the cave itself answered her, prompted deeper contemplation; descending into the earth where the chthonic powers resided was a transformative experience, like dying and coming back—at least, she had heard it described thus by a young woman who had been revived after almost drowning in the river. But it was not like that now, not when she needed it. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she realized that she was shaking. What was so wrong that the goddess refused to speak to her? Pasibe felt as though she was doing nothing more than kneeling in a drafty hole in the ground, and it was a sickening sensation. What sin had she committed that she could not see the truth of it, and that she should be made to feel this way?

  “Am I impure, then?” She must be. The wrath of Velchanos must have marked her somehow. “Then tell me what my sin is, and what I must do to be clean again. Should I marry again, as Asterion wants? Is he right about my taking lovers but not bearing children? I have done all I could to conceive. You know that.” Pasibe felt foolish making excuses; the gods did not care about extenuating circumstances. “Did I forget to perform some ritual, and thus stint you or Velchanos?” Her plea grew desperate. “If I have displeased you, then forgive me.” Her forehead hurt where it pressed against the hard stone. “You should have blasted me instead of Sama. He was not to blame.”

  After a time, Pasibe rose on sore knees and wobbled back to the cave entrance, where she stood trembling, blinking at the daylight, and smelling t
he sea air. She had never felt so dejected after a visit, even after all those times when she had asked the goddess why her babies kept dying.

  Mia hobbled out on her walking stick to guide her into the hut. “You’re distressed.”

  Pasibe submitted, allowing the woman to seat her by the hearth where it was warm, and set before her black bread, soft white cheese, and reviving wine. “The goddess refused to speak to me.”

  “That’s not always a bad thing.” Mia had tended the sanctuary since before Pasibe was born, and knew more than anyone did about the powers dwelling below. “The goddess only speaks to mortals, even her high priestess, when she’s got something to say.”

  “She wasn’t there.” Pasibe found the notion so repellent, so sacrilegious, that she dared not speak above a whisper. “Have I offended her in some way? Has Velchanos turned her against me?”

  Mia clucked her tongue. “How women always blame themselves when the goddess is absent! Has it occurred to you that she might be walking abroad now that spring has come, or that she might be resting or busy answering the petition of some other mortal?” She thumped her walking stick on the earthen floor of her dwelling. “Believe me, if Rhaya were angry with you, you and everybody else would certainly know it.”

  Pasibe listened intently. When she grew old, she wanted to become Mia—sensible and warm and fiercely independent—but at that moment she doubted the woman’s wisdom. “My lover was blasted to ash before my eyes. Is that not sign enough?”

  Mia made a face, shrugged. “Who’s to say it wasn’t Sama who offended the gods? I heard you were reproaching him for leaving you when it happened, that you had a curse on your—”

  “No, not that.” Pasibe choked on her wine. She sputtered, coughed, tried to speak, while Mia leaned over and patted her back. “Not—no—not a curse, not like—” She coughed so hard it hurt. “I didn’t curse him like that.”

  Mia understood. “Not as a high priestess, then,” she finished, “but as a disgruntled woman. Rhaya sometimes answers those prayers, you know. Not often enough, I think, after the complaints I hear from some women, but once in a while...” She harrumphed. “And Sama was an insolent boy, too, for all his prettiness. Not to lecture, but were I you I would have gifted him less and smacked him more, till he learned the proper gratitude and respect.”

  “Yes, he was insolent, but...” Pasibe’s mind went blank when she tried to remember his faults. It had been the same with Dragas, too, in the months after his passing; she could recall only his illness, and then, when the initial storm of her grief subsided, their happy moments together.

  Mia read her. “But he’s dead, and it’s impious to speak ill of the recently departed. Look here, you’ve had a dreadful shock, witnessing the god’s wrath, and you’re grieving. What you need is time for rest and reflection.”

  “I’ve had three days alone shut up in my house.” Pasibe stared at the goat’s cheese before her; she had eaten hardly a morsel. “I hate the solitude. It makes me uneasy.”

  “That’s because you’re not used to it,” Mia pointed out. “Me, I go about my business. I don’t seek out the gods but let them come to me whenever they deem me ready to receive their wisdom.” She nodded toward the bread and cheese. “Eat something. You’re pale, and you’ve got dark circles under your eyes. You’ve got to keep up your strength. Then you can help me weed the vegetables out back to thank me for my wise counsel.” She chuckled. “Heh, you’ve no urgent need to hurry back. Stay the night, stay tomorrow, even. I would enjoy the company.”

  *~*~*~*

  Pasibe stayed two days with Mia, gardening and cooking, spinning wool and milking goats. Mia was correct; no one required her presence back home, not yet. Kamash knew where she had gone, and had there been an emergency, Minos or Asterion would have sent a messenger. It was liberating to have no responsibilities except the minor ones her host gave her. She and Mia tended the household gods together, and fed the house snake, and it was a simple and gratifying thing.

  The one thing she did not do during her stay was venture again into the cave. On the second day, a woman came up from Amnissos with her young daughter and a priestess; the girl had experienced her first moon-blood, and it was time for her to be initiated into the mysteries of womanhood—a time for rejoicing. Pasibe congratulated the girl, and, recalling her own menarche and the excitement of leaving her childhood behind, wished her well.

  Mia prepared the altar for the sacrifice of the lamb and dove, exchanged a few words with the aged priestess of Amnissos, who was a friend of hers, and collected her fee of flour and olive oil. Then the priestess of Amnissos dispatched the offerings, slicing quickly and deftly with an obsidian dagger, and Mia assisted by catching the blood in a granite bowl to take into the cave and pour at the feet of the stalagmite goddess.

  Although she was invited—for it was known that any kindly female stranger met along the way might well be the goddess herself—and she very much wanted to participate, Pasibe nevertheless demurred and remained behind when the three women escorted the girl below.

  Mia chided her upon her return. “That was not well done, Pasibe. I had to explain to them that you were seeking purification for a malady.”

  “For all I know, I may very well be ritually impure.” Hearing the chanting issuing from the cave, Pasibe had wrestled with the temptation to join them. “I did not want to spoil the ceremony.”

  “Oh, stop that!” Mia pulled off her shawl and flung it over her footstool. “The only maladies you’re suffering from are doubt and shock. Down in the cave, I had a thought that the gods don’t punish women with lightning bolts, but with sickness and blood and lost—” Mia gave a start and fell silent, screwing up her mouth against finishing the thought.

  Pasibe glanced aside. “I never understood what I did that so angered Mother Rhaya that she had to take my babies.”

  Mia said apologetically, “I didn’t mean to imply... No. I never meant that. Sometimes, I think, it’s just fate that denies us children.”

  “Is there any difference?” Pasibe did not want to discuss it any further. “The result is still the same.”

  “We may be so small in the gods’ eyes that we’re like insects, and they don’t understand us at all.” Mia took her walking stick and prodded the hearth fire. There would be meat that night, from the portion of the sacrifice she was allowed to keep, and fresh bread, but Pasibe had lost her appetite.

  “That’s no comfort.”

  Mia reached for the flour to make the bread. “It’s not for them to comfort us,” she said, “but for us to fear and worship them. I suppose it’s easy to forget that at Knossos, where everybody wants something in exchange for their offerings, and I suppose we’ve made of our worship a kind of barter, but I find it’s simpler and more honest not to expect anything from the gods.” She found a wooden bowl and mixed together flour and water, working vigorously to form the dough. “Don’t expect revelations from the gods. Just thank them for every day they grant you life without affliction, for every small delight, and for every hour of sunshine and blue sky and flowers. Then you will be content.”

  Pasibe slept poorly that night, despite Mia’s admonishments to abandon all expectations of the gods and be thankful for what they granted her. She very much wanted to, she did, but did not see how she could.

  She left the following morning. She had imposed long enough on Mia’s hospitality, although she was not quite ready to return home to the politics of the sanctuary or the elders. Instead, she headed northwest along the route leading to Katsamba and the sea. She passed vineyards and olive groves, and fields under cultivation, having no particular destination in mind. She might worship at a seaside shrine, or dabble her toes in the ocean, or talk to the fishwives—whatever caught her fancy.

  Katsamba was not quite the same village that the original inhabitants had established. Since then, the sea level had risen, swallowing the site of the beach encampment. The descendants of Knos’s followers had transformed their village i
nto a prosperous seaport. That Katsamba owed its name to an ancient Anatolian hero was knowledge long forgotten; the Song of Katsa had not been sung for the last forty-one centuries.

  Pasibe forgot about exploring the waterfront and offering at the seaside shrine, meandering instead into the trees. She took the familiar path toward the holy grove—the same grove where Urope and Hariana had served as priestesses. Generations of sacred trees had grown, died, and been reborn since then. New rites had been added. Along with the worship of Amaya, Lady of the Boughs, the present-day priestesses also served Pipituna, the Dove Goddess, an erotic aspect of Rhaya, by consorting with the male worshippers.

  The grove was cool and shady during the hot summer months, smelling of cypress, moist earth, and fragrant undergrowth. After her fourth miscarriage, Pasibe’s husband had urged her to serve Pipituna there in the hope that she might conceive and bear the child he could not seem to give her; she recalled how anxious and reluctant she had been at first. And then, one year after Dragas’s death, Pasibe’s friends had taken away her dark veil, and brought her to the grove in order to give her life a greater purpose. Perhaps she might meet someone, they intimated, for she was still young and beautiful; her miscarriages had thickened her waist but a little, and her breasts were as still round and as firm as a girl’s. And while she might show some graying at the temples, her brown hair was still thick and glossy, and her face was unlined.

  Pasibe had been a favorite at the grove. She had met her first lover there, and most of the others, and had spent many wonderful afternoons and evenings serving Pipituna, but she had not visited the grove of late. Should she return to the goddess’s service and simply enjoy the pleasures of the moment, or leave the task to younger women? She would be thirty-five at summer’s end, and while she could serve the goddess as long as her moon-blood continued flowing, she did not want to think about growing old. Sama used to tease her about imaginary wrinkles—surely they were imaginary—and suggest how everyone might mistake them for mother and son if she kept worrying about things.