Knossos

by Laura Gill

  The lineages were not written down, but, like the histories, passed down orally between generations. It never occurred to anyone, much less Naptu, that much could be lost in transmission, or even distorted. If a fragment of information had not survived, learned men reasoned, then it was not important enough to have been remembered in the first place.

  The boys studied five hours in the morning, with a break at midday for food and the afternoon sleep. Afterward, they exercised and were sometimes allowed to visit with friends, unless their tutor had decided that they needed to apply themselves harder. Balinaru almost always spent his afternoons laboring over the lessons he had not mastered that morning, and might work until nightfall. “It’s because my lessons are more advanced than yours,” he told Rusa.

  Dida, playing in a corner, tactlessly chimed in, “It’s because you’re stupid.”

  Scowling, Balinaru grabbed his wooden soldier away from him and threw it out the open window. Dida raced from the cubicle red-faced, howling that his brother was mean. Kitane came upstairs to scold Balinaru a short while later, but let him go with only a halfhearted reprimand when she heard his side of the story.

  The brothers were accustomed to eating supper without their father. Kumurru kept a miserly table, but on those occasions when the Minos held a feast in his great mansion, Yikashata brought home the most wonderful leftovers for the family to eat the next day. Kumurru’s mysterious stomach ailments miraculously vanished when presented with delicacies such as spiced mussels, pickled sea urchins, fried cheese bread, skewered lamb seasoned with coriander, cumin, and celery, poached octopus ink sacs—which the brothers dared each other to try—almond and honey sweet cakes rolled in sesame seeds, and grilled, herbed fish. While meat, enjoyed on holy days after a score of sacrificial animals went to the altar, was a special treat, fish was even rarer, because it had to be brought from the market at Katsamba. The fish the family ate was usually salted, but wealthy men like Minos Hammuras could afford to have their fish delivered live and fresh in earthenware tubs.

  The Minos dined very well, indeed. Rusa was proud of his father for serving such a powerful and generous man.

  That evening, Kitane and her servants bustled around the house, airing fleeces in the darkened courtyard, sweeping the threshold and stairs, and laying down reed mats in the spare room reserved for visitors. “I had a message today,” she told Kumurru, when the old man demanded to know what the commotion was about. “My brother-in-law Lagish is coming tomorrow. He’s bringing his family.”

  “He’s doing what?” Kumurru shook with such choler that his face turned purple. “Coming without my invitation, to freeload from my pantry and sleep under my roof?” He waved his thin arms. “That’s out of the question, woman!”

  All three boys were delighted. They adored their uncle, a sea captain who always had exciting and sometimes ribald tales to tell about his adventures. Moreover, he always brought gifts, usually curiosities from the lands he visited. Then there was Aunt Elissa, who baked the most wonderful sweets, and their five children, the cousins, to play with. Rusa exchanged a conspiratorial grin with Balinaru, because they both knew that with company in the house there would be no lessons.

  “Well,” Kitane stated firmly, working her broom around Kumurru’s feet, much to his annoyance, “it’s too late to do anything about it now.”

  He wrinkled his nose, as though she exuded a bad odor. “You’ll just have to turn them away.”

  Kitane neither argued nor capitulated, but simply ignored his grousing about her unforgivable lack of manners, low breeding, and general unsuitability as a daughter-in-law. Rusa wondered what would happen tomorrow. Why did his grandfather have to be so disagreeable? He so wanted to see his relatives! If they could not come, it would be grossly unfair.

  Then, unexpectedly, his father came home early.

  Yikashata had been tall and willowy in his youth, but encroaching middle age had thickened his girth somewhat; his scribal vestments concealed his potbelly. He kept his hair short, his face clean shaven as was customary for the Minos’s servants, and, apart from the pectoral dangling from his breast and the amethyst seal stone on his wrist, both of which were gifts from Minos Hammuras, and therefore mandatory decorations, his only concession to personal vanity was a thin application of kohl around the eyes. The Minos’s personal scribe had scarcely closed the door behind him when Kumurru started airing his grievances. “Do you have any idea what this lazy slattern has done? She’s gone and invited her kinsmen to raid my larder, and nary a word to me who’s master of this house.”

  Yikashata folded his hands. “Yes, I know, Father,” he answered quietly. “I gave permission.”

  “You?” the old man sputtered.

  “Yes, on account of the fact that Lagish and his family are leaving Katsamba,” he explained. “They’re moving to the colony on Minoa Kalliste.” Yikashata held up his hand to forestall further protests. “Lagish assures me that they’ll bring their own bedding and food, Father, and there will be gifts.”

  Kumurru subsided somewhat. “You should have consulted me,” he rumbled. Maybe, Rusa thought, hearing that there would be food and presents changed his mind. “This useless woman—” He gestured dismissively to Kitane. “She said nothing about them bringing their own substance.”

  Yikashata did not dignify that statement with a reply, instead turning to his sons. “Have you behaved yourselves today?”

  All three nodded, even Dida, who had received a scolding for taunting Balinaru. Kitane held her tongue.

  Rusa liked his father’s quiet dignity, the way Yikashata seemed to have more authority about the house than he actually did; that must be the way he carried himself in the Minos’s court. By contrast, his maternal uncle was boisterous, uncouth, a broad-shouldered mariner burnt brown by the sun and wind. When Lagish arrived, the entire neighborhood knew by the way he shouted and waved, and by the jingling bells attached to the harness of the mule pulling the cart containing the family’s bedding, bundles of food and gifts, and an earthenware vessel with live fish swimming around inside.

  All three boys, dressed in their best, could scarcely contain themselves for their excitement, and gratefully dashed down the narrow lane to meet the cart when their father granted permission. Lagish handed the mule’s tether to his eldest son, then opened wide his arms to gather his nephews in a fierce bear-hug. “You’re all growing so fast!” he roared joyfully. “Look at this one.” He seized a squealing, laughing Dida to toss him into the air. “You were as small as a minnow last time I saw you.”

  Kumurru hobbled out on his walking stick, hardly addressing his guests as he poked among the bundles. Kitane and Yikashata, the latter wearing a scarlet tunic and tasseled kilt, took it upon themselves to welcome Aunt Elissa and the children, three boys and two girls ranging in age from fifteen to five.

  Lagish, missing nothing, intercepted Kumurru before he had the first bundle open, and thumped him across the shoulders with an audible smack. “How are you, old man?” He shouted, pretending that Kumurru was hard of hearing. “See anything you fancy?”

  “He fancies everything.” Zuhatta had come, too, to visit with his daughter and his grandchildren before they left for Minoa Kalliste. Kumurru shot him a threatening glare, but said nothing.

  Lagish stood aside to let his wife rearrange the bundles. “Well, everything’s already packed and stowed aboard the ship,” he said. Rusa had never seen his uncle’s ship, called Asterion, but was sure that it must be wonderful. “We’ll be in Minoa Kalliste before another fortnight passes.”

  From Naptu, Rusa had learned all about the Minoas, the colonies which several generations of Knossian rulers had founded and named after themselves. Trade and a growing population had necessitated expanding preexisting outposts throughout the Cyclades and Dodecanese; the first, Minoa Kythera, had been founded almost five hundred years ago, and others had gradually followed. Karpathos, Iasos, Melos, and even Rhodes, the birthplace of Knos, now formed the stepping stones
of a prosperous Kaphti trading network that stretched from one end of the Aegean to the other.

  The servants had come out to unload the cart and unhitch the mule. “Is it necessary for you to move so far away?” Zuhatta asked. “It seems to me that Katsamba is as good a port as any.”

  Lagish scratched under his armpit. “Maybe so, but business is booming in Minoa Kalliste. We’re going to be rich. I just secured the opportunity of a lifetime in the saffron trade.”

  Rusa noticed how distressed Aunt Elissa looked; her hennaed smile was forced. Maybe she was not feeling well. He could understand that. Sometimes his stomach ached when company came over, and he had been instructed to keep his mouth shut and not offend them because they were important people. Rusa dared not ask his aunt what was wrong, because it was bad manners to pry into an adult’s affairs, and so he obediently fell in behind with his brothers and cousins as Yikashata led everyone through the house to the courtyard where Kitane had laid out refreshments.

  Zuhatta and Lagish carried on their conversation even as the merchant paused near the hearth to reverence the household deities; his wife quietly followed suit. “Minoa Kalliste dominates the saffron trade,” he explained. “I’ve finally managed to wrangle my way into a partnership with a local nobleman who’s expressed his faith in my ability to get his saffron to market without incident.” Lagish’s animated talk filled the courtyard. “You should see the house he helped me purchase. Three stories high, bigger by far than the one we had in Katsamba, with splendid paintings on the walls.”

  “That’s what he says,” his wife said quietly.

  Lagish turned to her with an air of mock injury. “What, you don’t believe me?” His bushy black eyebrows twitched. “Why, my dear, everybody there is obscenely rich. We’re going to make a fortune. Then you can spend outrageously, take a handsome but pompous young lover, and plot my demise while I loll around the house gorging myself on salted pistachios, scratching and belching to my heart’s content.”

  “Why should I want a pompous child for a lover when already I have you?” Elissa sounded peevish rather than affectionate, and her anemic smile proclaimed her lack of enthusiasm over moving to the colony.

  Zuhatta stroked his neat beard as Kitane handed him a cup of wine. “I’ve heard the Kallisteans keep some strange customs.”

  Lagish rubbed the trident tattoo on his wrist. Most sailors sported such talismans, he once explained, to secure Marineus’s divine protection at sea. “That’s because they’re not Kaphti.”

  Kumurru, rattling his throat, tipped a few drops of wine onto the paving stones, and mumbled the usual formula thanking the gods for bringing visitors safely to his hearth. Rusa knew that he did not really mean what he said. He wondered whether the gods would be offended. No one, however, chastised the old man, merely made their libations in turn, and resumed their conversation.

  “The Kallisteans at court appear no different than any Kaphti,” Yikashata observed, “except for their provincial accents.”

  “Well, no, not here,” Lagish conceded, “but on their own island, that’s another tale entirely. For example, you can always recognize a married woman by the way she paints the outer shell of her ears scarlet. It’s rather flattering, I think.” He did not appear at all embarrassed to be making this observation in front of his disapproving wife and sister-in-law, but, slapping his knee, chuckled merrily. “My dearest, I eagerly await the day you decide to adopt the native fashions. Scarlet always becomes a married woman, as does a sheer linen blouse on a hot summer’s day.”

  His wife’s eyes flashed with anger. “I do not,” she announced tightly, “care what color you prefer.”

  “Oh, come now!” Lagish set out to be simultaneously placating and coaxing. “Your beautiful ears will put the local women to shame.”

  Rusa did not grasp everything. He could not be certain his uncle was not double-talking, that “ears” was not grown-up code for “breasts” or something else, like the thatch of hair between a woman’s thighs. That would be naughty enough to make his aunt angry.

  Zuhatta interjected, “You’re very bad man, Lagish, to be talking so shamelessly to my daughter in front of such impressionable youngsters.” Yet it was a halfhearted reprimand, a shared joke. Even Rusa’s father, who at all other times was very staid and proper, was chuckling.

  “I thoroughly enjoy being bad,” Lagish confessed pleasantly. “Good men lead dull lives.”

  “Kallistean women sound like hussies,” Kitane stated. “I wouldn’t want my daughters around such bad influences.” She indicated her nieces, girls of eleven and seven, placidly spinning wool while the adults conversed around them. “What are you going to do to ensure their virtue?”

  When Elissa arched an eyebrow to reiterate the question, Lagish reassured them, laughing, “Oh, you have the wrong idea, getting sore over a bit of scarlet ocher. Kallistean women are quite proper, faithful to their husbands, and very strict about their daughters. I couldn’t find a single respectable woman willing to share my fleeces the whole time I was staying there. Can you believe that?” He scratched the back of his neck. “I never have that problem elsewhere.”

  “Boys,” Yikashata told Rusa and his brothers, “you can go outside if you promise to behave. Amanas, you and Hamo will be responsible.”

  Lagish reinforced the order with a good-natured nod. “Go on, boys. Nothing but us adults grousing here. Take some food, play a game, stay out of trouble—oh, and Hamo, I’d better not hear that you swindled your cousins over draughts.”

  All the boys promised to behave. Dida was also allowed to go, though no one else wanted him along.

  Freedom at last. Rusa took some bread and cheese, and gratefully followed his cousins from the house.

  Open ground was but a few yards away. Kumurru’s house, unlike most others in Knossos, did not stand upon the ruins of a previous dwelling, but had been constructed on a virgin plot on the outskirts of town; Kumurru had acquired it dirt-cheap from a desperate merchant who had lost his fortune speculating in copper on Seriphos. There was a verdant pasture where sheep grazed. Rusa and his brothers enjoyed running through the grass with neighbor boys. They boxed and wrestled, rolled wooden hoops and tossed pigs’ bladders whenever they could get them, and were generally tolerated as long as they did not disturb the herd.

  The shepherd’s friendly black and white dog bounded over the smell the newcomers, before the elderly shepherd himself left his shady post under an oak and walked over to greet them. “What’s this?” he asked the boys. “Have strangers come to town?”

  “Not strangers, Naro, but our cousins.” Balinaru named Amanas and Hamo for the shepherd; the third boy cousin, only five, had stayed behind with his mother and sisters. Meanwhile, Dida was laughingly fending off slobbery licks from the dog, and Rusa was wondering what they ought to do. “We won’t bother the herd.” Balinaru gave the shepherd an extra piece of cheese he had taken from the kitchen.

  Thirteen-year-old Hamo looked around with dismay. “No other boys?”

  “Not this time of day, no, and not here.” Balinaru did not go on to explain that the neighbors were lower-class herdsmen and craftsmen whose sons were laden with chores. Kumurru had purchased the house without caring too much about the neighborhood. “Sometimes by the river on hot days, though.” Balinaru chewed his lower lip ruefully, his sentiments writ large on his square face. Outdoors, he became something more than the awkward, slow-witted student. He was an excellent swimmer, good wrestler and boxer, a confident leader of excursions, and a proficient hunter of small game. “Wish it was warm enough.”

  On rare occasions, Rusa and his brothers went to the marketplace to gawk at the marvelous goods from foreign lands. Merchants came from all over to peddle their wares in Knossos. Vendors from Byblos hawked furniture, toys, and musical instruments of fragrant cedar. Men from Babylon with elaborately curled beards sold trinkets, strange idols, and shimmering fabrics from farther east that only the very wealthy could afford. Egyptian magicia
ns offered futures in palm reading; they also sold amulets and advertised remedies against physical ailments and demonic possession. Tall, robust Hellenes and ebony-skinned Nubians hired themselves out as sentries, bodyguards, and mercenaries. Rusa’s mother cautioned the boys to stay far away from those men. “They would murder their own grandfathers,” she said.

  Sometimes a herald from the Labyrinth would stride down the thoroughfare ordering everyone to make way, because a priestess had come to visit the market, or was on her way somewhere else. There was never much to see, only the brightly colored palanquin and its bearers, and maybe a woman’s silhouette shadowed behind the linen curtains. Was she beautiful? Was she dressed in flounced skirts like in the frescoes? Rusa had never seen a priestess of the temple up close.

  Amanas and Hamo, however, had visited many, more impressive marketplaces during their travels, and were not interested in exploring the town unless there was a chance of somehow sneaking into the Labyrinth. Violating the sacred enclosure was out of the question, though.

  “We’ve never been there,” Balinaru said. “Even Father can’t go without special permission, and he serves the Minos.”

  “Never?” Hamo grimaced. “Damn, you’re boring.”

  They flopped down under the oak near the shepherd, who welcomed their company. “You ever swim in the sea?” Amanas asked his cousins. At fifteen, he was tall, brown, and handsome, with the first fuzz of a beard downing his cheeks. His voice was deeper, too, more like a man’s. Rusa could tell his brother envied him. “Last year, Hamo and I went sponge diving with some boys near Minoa Phylakopi.”

  “Yeah,” Hamo added, laughing. “Those sponge divers go very deep, though. We couldn’t match them.”

  Balinaru looked uncomfortable. Rusa wished he could have been there. The Minoas sounded much more interesting than anything at home.

  “We’ve never been to the sea,” Balinaru confessed.

  Hamo turned up his nose. “Then what do you do?”

  “Do you want to wrestle?” Balinaru asked.