Knossos

by Laura Gill

Never before had anyone asked with such genuine concern. The mule-faced architect really did have the most beautiful soul, and Narkitsa managed to tell him so before she broke down and wept on his shoulder. As for the cause of her grief, as passionately as she yearned to confide in him, she could not form the words, and was heartbroken and relieved and ashamed all at once. Had he known what she really was, Aranaru would have recoiled from her in disgust.

  On the matter of the broken necklace, he would not yield, and left it with her. After the awkward exchange, she had entered the sanctuary and deposited the blood-red stones—the goddess’s own color—in the cracked kernos below her altar.

  Narkitsa cried herself to sleep, and woke bleary-eyed and dispirited, but determined to work hard that day.

  Ashluli, accompanied by a temple guard and two women wearing the blue and saffron of the goddess Rhaya, intercepted her on the way out. “There has been a last-minute change, Narkitsa.” The head priestess looked pale and drawn, and spoke haltingly. “You are to go with these priestesses to the sanctuary of Rhaya. They...they have work for you there.”

  Once, Narkitsa had hoped to transfer from the service of Ashera to Rhaya, but Arishat would not recommend her. Maybe the high priestess had noticed her industriousness and wanted her to scrub the sanctuary floor, or serve in some other capacity. A year ago, she would have preened and daydreamed about the glorious possibilities. Now, she merely wrapped herself in her cloak and meekly waited for the women to instruct her, but they did not acknowledge her except to order her to accompany them.

  Outside, it was raining hard. Hustling her along, the priestesses sprinted across the central courtyard and down the ramp to a sheltering portico. The air inside smelled damp. Ensconced torches illuminated the stairs leading up to the sanctuary of Rhaya. Narkitsa had always wanted to be one of the elegant ladies attending High Priestess Ereka, impeccably dressed and processing to the rattle of cymbals down that regal staircase.

  Lamps burned inside the sanctuary. Narkitsa was startled to see that the antechamber fronting the innermost sanctum was filled with people. High Priestess Ereka in her goddess regalia occupied the high-backed throne to the right of the door. High Priest Nikanur was there, too, among men that Narkitsa recognized as priests of Poteidan. Temple guards flanked the doors and the high priestess’s dais. How was Narkitsa to clean the room when it was so crowded?

  “Priestess Narkitsa of the Ashera sanctuary,” an official called out, “step forward.”

  What was going on? Clasping the edge of her threadbare cloak, she did as she was commanded.

  She held her breath as the high priest approached, and then as he circled her, appraising her. He would not be there unless he knew that she had done something wrong. Surely he knew. The high priest had direct access to Poteidan. As for the high priestess, Ereka could become Rhaya, and Narkitsa was certain that the goddess whispered to her in her sleep.

  Narkitsa said nothing, for she knew that she could not have spoken even if she wanted to. Could the high priest hear her heart pounding? Of course he could. Otherwise she would not be there.

  Nikanur then addressed a youngish man standing beside one of the scribes. “Is this the woman?”

  The man was a goatherd, brown from the sun and smelling like the animals he tended. Peering at her once, he nodded, “Yes, that’s her.”

  A murmur passed through the assembled priests, priestesses, and officials. Narkitsa swallowed. Had someone seen her that fateful day? She could have sworn that she had been alone with Arishat. Of course, the gods had seen everything, and... Suddenly she felt dizzy.

  “Priestess Narkitsa.” Nikanur was speaking again. “On the day of the second earthquake, on the day when High Priest Urtanos and Head Serpent Priestess Arishat died, were you and she alone together seeking out Ashera’s messengers on the hillside overlooking the quarry road?”

  Narkitsa nodded soundlessly, but that was not good enough. The priestess at her elbow hissed at her to speak up. “Yes,” she croaked.

  “This man...” Nikanur indicated the goatherd. “This herdsman claims to have seen you that day. He saw the landslide, saw Head Priestess Arishat fall during the earthquake, and he was on his way to assist you when he saw you, a stout, ill-favored woman, climb down to where your superior lay. He claims that he saw you pick up a stone and strike her about the head. What do you have to say, Priestess? Do you deny the charge?”

  The old Narkitsa would have pleaded and clutched at every possible excuse. Instead, she studied the herdsman. He was a nondescript man, but with earnest eyes. “Did the gods send you to make the truth known?” she asked softly. “They see everything, you know.”

  Although he did not speak, his gaze seemed to say that she was doing right by confessing. “I do not know what possessed me.” She knew what had happened. The herdsman had seen nothing; it was, rather, the deity inside him who had borne witness to her crime.

  A rush of words spilled from her mouth. Once she had started, Narkitsa found that she could not stop. How good it felt to give voice to her silent suffering! “I hated Arishat, yes, but I never planned to do anything to her. I’ve tried to wash it away, you know. I’ve given up my vanities. I’ve tried to be pious and work hard, but the demons of restlessness and tears keep afflicting me.”

  “She’s mad,” muttered the priestess behind her.

  Now the high priestess raised a hand for silence, and when Narkitsa obeyed, she spoke. “Priestess Narkitsa, for the crime of murder this is your punishment: we relinquish you to the servants of the Great Bull.” Hers was the voice of the goddess, not sympathetic and motherly as Narkitsa had always imagined, but harsh and stern. “You will go now with High Priest Nikanur from this sanctuary to the place which has been prepared for you.”

  Something in Narkitsa gave way then, and she rushed forward to clasp the goddess’s ankles and kiss her hennaed feet. “Thank you, Great Lady, thank you!” she wept.

  The priestesses tugged at her arms and shoulders to pull her away from the goddess’s sacred person. Narkitsa heard their jibes—murderess, blasphemer, unclean woman—but had no ears for them, only for the goddess when she spoke again. “Narkitsa, that which awaits you in the domain of the Great Bull is not freedom.”

  “Oh, but it is!” Surely Mother Rhaya understood, even if her mortal vessel did not. “I can finally lay down this terrible burden.”

  The priests of Poteidan then led her unresisting from the sanctuary, down the staircase toward the one place in the entirety of the Labyrinth where women were forbidden to go. But she was no longer a woman. The moment she had knelt and kissed the goddess’s feet, she had undergone an apotheosis, transformed into a holy offering, and the thought brought a tremulous smile to her lips. She imagined herself emerging like a lowly caterpillar from her cocoon to become a beautiful butterfly, an embodiment of the soul’s release.

  There were even paintings on the walls! Bull leapers and charging bulls, and white lilies greeted her on her way down to the nether world. What things of beauty! She had been sad that she was to depart on a day without warmth and sunshine, but with the immortal gods in their infinite mercy having granted her this unlooked-for gift, she had no more regrets.

  Too bad the priests would not let her pause to study the paintings. The atmosphere grew more claustrophobic, the farther down they led her, until she found herself in a gloomy cellar rife with antechambers, narrow corridors, and storerooms. Nikanur walked ahead of her; she could watch the way the tassel of his polos hat thumped against the small of his back with his every step. Because no one would speak to her, all Narkitsa heard was the soft tread of multiple footfalls and the pattering of rain in the dim light-wells.

  Then they entered a large antechamber fronting an inner sanctum that was closed off by sets of sliding pier-and-partition doors, a recent introduction to the temple. Narkitsa did not know what she had expected, but the so-secret, forbidden realm of Poteidan was not so very different from the domain of Rhaya three stories above. Her harsh l
aughter echoed through the space, earning her hostile glares and hissed reprimands.

  Through gestures, the priests compelled her to remove her cloak. Someone unsheathed a knife and grabbed her braid. She sucked in a startled breath. She felt her hair splitting, parting from her scalp, and then she was staring at her severed plait where the priest dropped it onto the stuccoed floor. Narkitsa had time to ponder how they would do it, even when the answer was obvious. Would it hurt? Sometimes the sacrificial bull did not die right away, but lowed and thrashed in pain. Ah, but she presented much less challenge, with her smaller neck. Surely the blade would cut through her flesh on the first stroke.

  Might they drug or stun her first? Narkitsa had just begun to wonder when Nikanur entered her field of vision carrying an object that she had never seen up close, that she had believed destroyed with its sanctuary. Mother Labrys’s bronze butterfly blades gleamed so brightly that by the light of the priests’ lamps she saw her own face reflected there.

  The priests seized her arms for the offering. She scarcely noticed, fascinated as she was with the image the double axe presented to her. A mirror of herself, distorted, her open mouth yawning, her eyes dark hollows, a glimpse of the corpse she was to become. She was ugly, truly ugly, and it horrified her so much that she screamed, and kept on screaming, until nothing was more welcome than the blow to the back of her head that silenced her forever.

  *~*~*~*

  Aranaru thought that he must be the only one who was sorry to see the serpent priestess executed. She had committed murder, true, but now that he understood the rationale behind her cryptic statement about her ugliness and his, he pitied her.

  In the days after her death, he began to pay closer attention to the lives of the people around him, and to wonder how his own life fit into the pattern of theirs. If he never married, and his family continued to shun him, would his work be enough to sustain him? Supposing that he survived to an old age, would he one day nurse regrets over roads not taken and missed opportunities?

  It was in this mood that he washed, donned his best clothing, and sought out Humusi. “I swear on Mother Rhaya’s bosom that I will never, ever ask another woman what I am about to ask you.” His palms were sweaty. Should he have come wearing his priestly vestments? What thoughts lurked behind her warily expectant look? Once she heard him out, maybe the old Humusi would laugh at him. He was not so certain how he would bear up under that kind of rejection.

  “Now,” he continued, swallowing, “I might be as ugly as a mule, but the truth is that I like you. You are completely unlike any other woman I know.” He heard himself starting to ramble. Gods knew, he could not help it, for the moment he stopped talking she would answer, and should she refuse or laugh or... “You understand my work, you give me good advice, and, well, and you would be honoring me if you would—”

  “Aranaru?” she said.

  “Yes?” He was a wreck of anticipation.

  Closing the short space between them, Humusi took his face between her hands. “Yes. Now shut up.” Then, fastening her mouth on his, she kissed him long and soundly, till they were both breathless.

  When he presented himself to Eshmal, the old man practically danced with delight. “I always wanted the gods to give me a son to be an architect.” He wiped a sentimental tear from the corner of his eye. “What strange and wonderful ways they have!”

  Eshmal invited him to seal the matter by taking his betrothed to bed that very night, and Humusi herself was willing, but Aranaru wanted to bring his bride into a proper home, which did not describe his current living arrangement. He was an indifferent housekeeper, with a cot barely big enough for one person, let alone two. Eshmal called in a favor the next day, and arranged for Aranaru to move from his bachelor cubicle into a two room suite above a potter’s workshop. Or rather, he and Humusi moved Aranaru’s scant possessions and hers into the new dwelling space. Aranaru returned from work to find two cots lashed together and piled with fleeces to make a single bed, a fire burning in the portable brazier in one corner, and his intended wearing only a thin robe and combing her hair.

  Aranaru knew exactly what she was about, but, as before, he had not come prepared to bed her. “Humusi,” he said, “look at me.”

  Setting down the comb, she took the worn leather sack containing his tools and placed them on the floor beside the bed. “Hmm, yes, I see you.”

  “I haven’t bathed yet.” She had, that much was obvious by the way her skin glowed and her dark curls were still damp around her ears. He gestured toward the fleeces. “I wouldn’t want to make a mess.”

  Humusi swept him up and down with her gaze. “How much work did you actually do today?”

  Not much, he had to admit. With winter coming, the building season was effectively over. Aranaru had spent the morning supervising the installation of kaselles in the newest storeroom, and planning second floor workshops and living quarters. “Well, I...” Her proximity was starting to enflame him. He could see her curves outlined through her lightweight woolen robe, a marked contrast with the shapeless garments she usually wore. Humusi was no longer so plain in his eyes, but lush and sensual. Aranaru sensed that in bed his intended would not behave like a coy, virginal girl, but as a woman who knew exactly what she wanted.

  Grasping his chin, she turned his face to hers. “What’s wrong? Do you need more persuasion?” Humusi then released him and peeled off her robe so that she stood naked before him.

  Aranaru was cognizant of the heat emanating from her body—or was it his?—and swallowed hard. “I-I don’t want to disappoint,” he stammered.

  “Are you a virgin?” she asked point-blank, and not unkindly. When Aranaru shook his head no, she added, “Well, neither am I,” and sealed her words with a kiss. That was the last either of them said for the next hour.

  Only afterward, as the coals in the brazier burned low, did he wonder who her previous lover or lovers had been. Then he remembered her vehement statement after that official had insulted her, and decided that it was, indeed, none of his business.

  The very next day, Eshmal accompanied Aranaru and Humusi to give the news to Aranaru’s family. Aranaru’s father was scandalized. A priest-architect’s daughter with a pittance of a dowry? “What were you thinking, boy?” Dipanasu groused. “Had you been smart you could have had a scribe’s daughter with a handsome dowry, but, no, you had to—”

  “What are you calling a pittance?” Eshmal argued hotly. “Your grandchildren will be the descendants of Daidalos, priest-architects with access to all parts of the Labyrinth. And we’re not exactly paupers. We have goods and a parcel of land with its groves and vines, and sheep.”

  “How many sheep?”

  “Enough sheep to satisfy even your avarice, old man,” Eshmal shot back.

  Dipanasu took immediate umbrage, as Aranaru knew he would. “This is outrageous. Aranaru, I forbid you to take this woman as your wife. Gods only know what ill-behaved children you would make.”

  Humusi, standing behind Dipanasu, looked ready to clobber him over the head with the vessel of oil she had brought as a gift. Giving her a placatory look, Aranaru decided to state his case. “Father, you can forbid all you like, but as a man of independent means I do not answer to you. I can and will marry this woman, with or without your consent.” Regretfully, he watched his father’s face turn from outraged scarlet to ashen white. “I would, however, prefer it if you rejoiced and came to the feast.”

  “A priest-architect’s daughter—pah!” Dipanasu thumped the floor under his stool with his walking stick. “You can do better than this.” Eshmal looked livid, Banabiru embarrassed, and Humusi outraged. Aranaru commiserated with all three.

  “Father, I am also a priest-architect, as you seem to have forgotten,” he pointed out. Dipanasu sat up straighter, a prelude to an epic tongue-lashing. Aranaru kept going. “Now, Priest-Architect Eshmal and I have come here as a courtesy, because you are my father, but we don’t have to—”

  “Of course, yes. We’
re delighted by the news.” Banabiru strode forward and, taking his brother’s hand, wrested control of the situation from their father. “She’s a lovely woman, and, yes, it’s an honor to join our house with that of the distinguished Daidalos.”

  The wedding itself was a simple affair. The families agreed, the couple consented, Banabiru provided the bull for the sacrifice that Aranaru and Eshmal carried out, and the priesthood of Daidalos roasted four whole goats and provided bread and wine for the guests. Aranaru’s work crew was there. Banabiru’s wife brought the confections but would not let anyone touch them until the nuptial couple was almost ready to retire. Tabna and Labasha came with their wives, who fussed over Humusi’s plain raiment, and insisted that she borrow their jewelry. Aranaru’s father was the only one who did not enjoy himself, but then that was his way.

  As his wedding gift to the couple, Eshmal gave Aranaru something he had long wanted: permission to design and execute his own plans for the west facade of the temple. “Your work on the new storerooms has been excellent,” his new father-in-law said, “and your renovations to the second floor weaving room, I’m told, are a great improvement over what was there before. You were, after all, my pupil, and I expect nothing less than superior results. So let’s see what you can do with the ceremonial porch and facade.”

  Aranaru accepted Eshmal’s confidence in him as the very best wedding present that he could have received. During the long winter nights, while the wind and rain banged at the shutters, he huddled under the fleeces with his bride and a wax tablet, making sketches, rejecting some, and altering others. He did not want to disappoint Eshmal or the temple, or even the legacy of his wife’s bloodline.

  Humusi had a mind of her own. She insisted on seeing his sketches, and discussing them with him when he would rather succumb to a post-coital stupor. Sometimes she made corrections—always with his consent—and offered suggestions. “Use the rear wall of the storeroom block for the facade. Keep the southwest for the porch.”