Knossos

by Laura Gill

  An infant’s wail roused her from her stupor. She was throbbing with pain, someone was wiping between her legs with a wet cloth, but her focus rested solely on that unexpected sound. With everything else she had brought forth there had been a dreadful silence, yet now there was every indication of life and vigor. The women were crowding around wanting a look and laughing with delight.

  “It’s a girl, a daughter,” Tana said, and that was the best news that could have come to that hearth. “The high priestess has a daughter!”

  Pasibe could not believe what she heard; she had to see it with her own eyes. “Show me.”

  Not yet. Supporting her, the priestesses helped her stumble from the birthing stool to her bed close by. Her joints protested after the long hours of crouching. The women finished bathing her, after which they padded her with absorbent fleece and tucked the blankets around her.

  Then they brought the infant, still wrinkled and red from the birth, but now freshly washed and swaddled in a blanket, her umbilical cord neatly severed.

  Pasibe undid the wrappings to inspect her for some defect, finding none. Her daughter possessed all ten fingers, all ten toes. Her eyelids were screwed shut, her tiny mouth a pursed rosebud. She was perfect. Pasibe’s eyes welled with tears, and she stifled a sob. She had a daughter, a healthy, beautiful daughter, and the birth had not killed her, and it was a miracle.

  “What’s her name?” someone asked.

  “She must have a name,” Melia added. “Amulets must be made for her. Spells must be chanted for her protection.”

  Pasibe had not considered any names for her child, so convinced had she been that it would die. So she searched her exhausted mind for whatever came to hand, whatever seemed fitting. “Phaedra,” she murmured. For it was an ancient name, a priestess name. A Phaedra had married the Great Bull and been a priestess in the beginning days. Old Lady Phaedra had danced with Velchanos, borne many children, and served the gods well into her eighth decade. Pasibe wanted her daughter to have proud namesakes to emulate.

  *~*~*~*

  Within two years, Pasibe’s moon-blood ceased. She never regained her voluptuousness after her pregnancy, retaining her thicker waist and acquiring gray hairs. No more lovers frequented her bed, and never again did she visit the grove. Yet now that she had a child, entering that venerable stage of life did not trouble her so much. Everything mortal had its season. Her daughter was all that mattered. Phaedra represented all that was young and beautiful in her world.

  It would have been so easy to spoil the child. Phaedra was so precocious, so pretty, with her mother’s heart-shaped face and brown hair, and her father’s willowy figure and sparkling eyes, that no one could refuse her charms. What saved her from becoming a brat was her gravitas. Phaedra’s moods were as changeable as the seasons; she was lighthearted one moment, contemplative the next. She liked stories and music, and herb lore and birds and all manner of sacred things. That last did not surprise Pasibe at all, considering the girl’s namesakes and the miracle of her being.

  Phaedra took an interest in everything, except for her father.

  Pasibe often asked her why she was so indifferent to her paternal grandparents, and why she never wanted to visit Sama’s tomb—the family had revealed the location, for the girl’s sake. Why did Phaedra never ask to reverence the blasted tree, whose stump had been removed to another site years earlier? Pasibe asked, but her unusual daughter always shrugged her shoulders and found some way to change the subject.

  As she flowered and entered womanhood, Phaedra showed no interest in marriage. Asterion, who kept trying to arrange a prestigious match for her, considered her disinterest a passing phase. Pasibe knew better. Once she made a decision, her daughter never changed her mind. Phaedra wanted children—she had said so—but also preferred to be her own mistress, like her mother. “If a woman doesn’t need a husband,” she stated, “then why should she have one?”

  Pasibe wondered where her daughter had gotten that peculiar notion. Certainly not from her, as she would have liked for Phaedra to discover something of the joy she had known with Dragas.

  “Well, there’s love,” she explained. “When a woman meets the man the gods have arranged for her, then it’s good to share a hearth and bed. I was very happy with my husband. I only wish we could have had children together.”

  Phaedra stopped spinning flax long enough to stretch her fingers. It was a bright spring day, and mother and daughter sat out in the garden to take advantage of the warmth and light. “If I want children, I can visit the grove.”

  “I suppose,” Pasibe admitted. “But a man can provide and protect where a woman on her own might be at a loss.”

  “I don’t need a man to own property. You do very well without one, Mother. And no one would dare lay hands on a high priestess.”

  So she did, but Phaedra was too young and inexperienced to decide upon that path. How could she be so against the idea of marriage when other maidens her age wanted nothing more than to be wives and mothers? “Has your uncle been pressing you to marry Minos’s grandson?” Perhaps Asterion’s insistence had turned marriage into a revolting prospect for her daughter, although the young man in question was quite agreeable. Pasibe might have married him, had she been thirty-five years younger.

  “If I felt anything for him...” Phaedra tilted her head, smiling faintly, and retrieved her thread. Her work was very fine and even. “I can love a man without marrying him.”

  “You can, yes.” Pasibe shredded a weed, enjoying the simple pleasure in smelling and touching the sticky greenish sap. “But falling in love changes one’s perspective. You might change your mind. And in case you hadn’t noticed, there are plenty of men eager to fall in love with you.” She noticed the stubborn set of her daughter’s jaw; Phaedra had inherited that trait from her father. She relented. “Of course, you don’t have to marry. It’s just that I don’t want you to be alone after I’m gone.”

  “I won’t be alone.” Phaedra sounded so certain, when she was so young and inexperienced in such matters. It would be very different, though, Pasibe thought, when Phaedra felt middle age creeping up on her and realized that she had missed sharing her life with someone special. At least Pasibe had had that precious time with Dragas.

  “How so?”

  “There will be children.”

  Pasibe let the pieces of the weed fall; this year’s crop of dandelions outstripped her ability to uproot them all. “Goddess willing, yes.”

  She gave Phaedra her consent and blessing to surrender her maidenhood in Pipituna’s service, and was glad when her daughter conceived. The first child was a daughter, called Ereka. Pasibe rejoiced at having children in the house once more, although her old bones did not necessarily concur when she tried to keep up with them. And through it all, she never gave up hope that Phaedra might fall in love and marry.

  Pasibe died in her fifty-ninth year, surrounded by grandchildren, and much mourned. Phaedra inherited the house, and all her mother’s fields and herds and storehouses. By nine different men, including two sons of the House of Minos, she became the mother of nine children, and never married.

  In her later years, when she had had enough of the groves and Knossos, Phaedra left the mantle of high priestess to her eldest daughter and retired to the house beside the Alautha Cave.

  Although Phaedra never spoke of her father or visited his grave, the people remembered that Velchanos had visited Knossos as a bolt of lightning and drawn a handsome youth into the heavens. They also told stories of how the goddess in her benevolence had quickened the womb of an aging, childless woman who had subsequently became the progenitor of the line of high priestesses who reigned over them.

  At Knossos, the immortal gods reigned supreme.

  Three

  The Bull Dance

  2040 B.C.

  The triton call summoned everyone to attend the procession winding its way down from the hill of Knossos. More than two thousand villagers and hundreds of visitors from ou
tlying settlements flocked to the large wooden enclosure beside the Kairatos River. Some had traveled from many miles around and had camped there for days to ensure that they secured the best possible viewing spots. No one who could attend ever missed the Bull Dance.

  When the priests announced the schedule, people started wagering furiously, betting on everything from the order in which the initiates would be presented to which maneuvers the professional dancers would execute to which of them would take an injury. There would be music and pageantry, and with all the rituals the gods were certain to be in attendance. Nowhere else in Kaphtor could one see anything more magnificent.

  As with any spectacle, this one had its players.

  A cheer went up for the Minos, a vigorous man in his thirties, impressive in scarlet with gold and rock crystal ornaments. He had a name, Nashua, to which he had added the title of Minos upon his accession. For he was a direct descendant of Minos, first ruler of Kaphtor, who had been the son of the princess Europa and the divine Poteidan.

  There was some vestige of truth in the legend. Some generations after Pasibe’s death, a male descendant of Menes had married a female descendant of Phaedra to initiate a new ruling line. The bloodline of Knos and Urope yet lived on in Minos Nashua.

  Nashua’s influence extended beyond the valley of Knossos, encompassing a territory undreamt-of by his ancestors. He was considered a stern but fair administrator, a conscientious judge, a shrewd negotiator, as well as an excellent athlete.

  Moments later, a respectful hush greeted the appearance of High Priestess Europa. She was child-like in stature, but her small frame contained the aura of a goddess. She wore the ancient costume of the grove, the seven-tiered skirt and breast-baring bodice which had since become the official vestment of the priestesses of Knossos, and upon her head a pancake-shaped polos headdress whose yellow tassel brushed against her hips. Her face was white, her mouth blood-red, and scarlet suns dotted her cheeks. Anyone compelled to approach her did so with a pious dread, and gods forbid that anyone should be caught disparaging her, for she had a notoriously mercurial temper.

  The ritual object she carried was almost too big for her. The labrys, the holy double axe, was of gleaming bronze, that expensive but marvelously hard and useful alloy of nine parts copper to one part tin. Mother Labrys, as this particular axe was called, reputedly possessed a hunger for human sacrificial blood.

  People raised their fists to their foreheads, shielding their eyes from the goddess and holy Mother Labrys, and held their salute until she passed. Few were allowed to meet the high priestess’s gaze when she went abroad as the goddess-on-earth; to do so without express permission or the proper respect would inspire the Great Goddess’s wrath.

  Behind the high priestess came a double file of priestesses in yellow and blue, then the two priests of Poteidan responsible for staging the Bull Dance. Theirs was a difficult burden. Everything had to be perfect this year, for last year’s harvest had been meager despite the lavish blood offerings to Rhaya and Poteidan; there had been three poor harvests in the last ten years. Last autumn, a youth had been sacrificed, and his blood and ground bones plowed into the earth to assure this year’s harvest; thus far the deities had been kind, allowing the crops to ripen under the summer sun. However, the more the growing population requested of the immortals, the easier it became to offend them.

  *~*~*~*

  Bansabira found his regalia stiff and uncomfortable. The blue tunic glistening with its sheen of olive oil was light enough for a stifling summer’s day, but the thigh-length cowhide kilt and the tasseled woolen sash slung over his shoulder made him sweat. At least it would be somewhat cooler under the awning.

  He lived for the Bull Dance, and in the week before Poteidan’s midsummer festival had gotten no more than eight hours of sleep, despite his wife’s best efforts to relax him. “You will send yourself to an early grave,” Melisa had told him yesterday, “when your relentless attention to your duties has already given you gray hair.”

  “There are so many details—the right wine for the libations, the cushions for Europa’s chair, the order of the dancers, the choosing of the bull—”

  Melisa grasped his chin, and turned his face to hers. “And you manage every year.” She kissed him soundly, until he yielded, then released him. “Nothing will go wrong.”

  Bansabira wished he could believe that. “This dance means everything to the people.” He gazed through the upper-story window of their bedchamber toward the yellow hills and Mount Juktas; the room faced south, and was stuffy during the day. “This is our last chance to appease the gods before the harvest.”

  Groaning, his wife nudged his ribs. “You’ve done all you can. Now, lie down and relax.” He stripped his linen kilt from his loins and lay down on the fresh linens. “The Minos always enjoys the dance,” she continued, “and as for the high priestess, someone else can worry about her cushions. I will send Dusenni to ply the fan, and later you will eat and think of nothing.”

  Bansabira’s conundrum was not so much that he had to arrange the Bull Dance festivities, for he shared that responsibility with another priest of Poteidan, but that he had bulls in his blood. He could not recall a time when cattle, specifically the sacred bulls employed for the dance, had not been part of his life. He had always been fascinated by their curving horns and stomping hooves, their powerful muscles flexing under sleek hides, and their unpredictable dispositions. One moment a bull could be placid, chewing grass in a meadow, and the very next moment aggressive, murderous, embodying the god himself. Poteidan could make the sun shine—gently to nourish the crops, or so fiercely that drought ensued; he could even withhold the sun to allow Velchanos to gather furious storm clouds and deluge fields. Worse, Poteidan’s anger could cause the earth to shake. That was why the Bull Dance had to be perfect, magnificent, to placate the god’s capriciousness. And that was why Bansabira lost so much sleep.

  No one now living knew that the Bull Dance was one of the last surviving vestiges of the prehistoric Bull Clan that had founded Knossos. Clan affiliations had become increasingly less important since Pasibe’s time, until they were forgotten altogether; one’s trade was what mattered nowadays. Bansabira knew that he was descended from old stock, otherwise he could never have been initiated or become a priest, and he would not have been at all surprised to have learned that his forefather Rauda had selected and herded ashore the very first bulls seen on Kaphtor. Bansabira himself owned many cattle—his family had served Poteidan as herdsmen and then as priests for generations, accumulating wealth and status in the process—and though his wife loved him, she sometimes complained that he came home smelling like cattle. Bansabira did not consider his odor unpleasant, but healthy, masculine, and vigorous like the god himself.

  The night before the Bull Dance, he ate little, and lay awake in the darkness beside his slumbering wife staring at the plastered ceiling, and listening to the cicadas in the garden outside. In the predawn twilight, he stirred to wash himself downstairs and don his vestments. Melisa also rose early, reheating yesterday’s bread upon the hearth to make sure that Bansabira ate something. He took only a morsel of bread and goat’s cheese, mostly to please her, because from previous experience he understood that his stomach would be wound up in knots until the evening. “When the last dancers leave the sand and the final libations are poured,” he assured her, “then we can feast with everyone else.”

  Now he was walking in the procession in his uncomfortable vestments under a blazing morning sky, and it was too late to change anything. Had he forgotten some small but crucial detail? No, he had made lists in clay using the hieroglyphs that had been employed by the scribes of Knossos for the last century; he had checked and rechecked them. Everything had been accounted for right down to the rhyton for the Minos’s libation and water sprinkled along the cobbled processional route to keep the dust down.

  But were the initiates ready to meet the Great Bull? Bansabira could name at least one who particularly worrie
d him, and he would have postponed that youth’s initiation had it been possible. He had taken the boy aside and spoken with him that morning, urging him to keep faith as he had sworn to do. “Perform only what we practiced, and remember that you are not a bull dancer priest,” he cautioned. “No one expects you to match them.”

  Beside him limped Kubaba, thin and angular, wearing identical vestments; underneath his cowhide kilt a fading scar puckered his thigh where the bull had grazed him during his initiation thirty years earlier. Kubaba wore the mark of the god’s horn with pride, and kept hale and trim so that his limp should never become debilitating. He worked as hard as Bansabira arranging the Bull Dance, but remained seemingly impervious to any anxiety surrounding the dancers or the myriad details that kept Bansabira awake at night.

  “You haven’t eaten a bite this morning, have you?” he asked through the corner of his mouth.

  Bansabira kept his gaze fixed on the twelve priestesses ahead of him. His daughter wanted to serve the high priestess when she was old enough; he thought her ambition foolish, because she was too clever and good-natured to waste on that harridan, and he had no intention of approaching Europa on her behalf. “When the god is satisfied,” he mumbled back.

  Then all he heard was the crowd cheering as the dancers, six youths and six maidens, appeared. All twelve were fifteen years old, scions of the greatest, oldest families of Knossos. After last year’s dance, Bansabira and Kubaba had received the fourteen-year-olds before Poteidan’s sanctuary upon the hill, anointed and dedicated them to a year’s service in the god’s honor, looked after them in their sequestered lodgings, and supervised their training; the maidens found strict chaperones in the priestesses of Rhaya, who knew all the ways in which vulnerable, excited young girls might be snared into losing their maidenhood. Even now, those formidable women walked behind the initiates.

  Bansabira had mentored six, three youths and three maidens. He taught them everything he knew about bulls, some of which was knowledge they already possessed, and schooled them in the proper rituals, in recognizing and acknowledging the god’s divinity during the dance. For those twelve months, he became their surrogate father, and they his children. He celebrated their triumphs, and suffered with them during their illnesses, injuries, and, on very rare occasions, deaths.