Knossos

by Laura Gill

  Umpara responded favorably, if only to seize the chance to see what was happening above. Yet Klumenos and his men did not escort her to the central courtyard as she had assumed, merely to a private inner court accessed via a corridor whose frescoes depicted Hellene-style waisted shields. Three additional guards flanked the doorway. The courtyard smelled of the potted herbs rescued from her house, but her only view was of the high surrounding walls, and there was not sufficient space to take more than eight steps. “Is there nothing else? I can scarcely see the sky above.” Umpara craned her neck, indicating to Klumenos the scant ribbon of blue visible between the walls of the multistoried sanctuary complex.

  “This is all.”

  All. She shivered, despite the heat of the afternoon. In winter, torrential rain would reduce the court to an ankle-deep pool. “Am I not allowed in the Rhaya sanctuary?” She thought she sounded peevish, but, mindful of Melana’s warning, she dared not take a more aggressive tone. “I am the high priestess, you understand. I must have access to the Lady’s altar.”

  “The goddess is being attended to.” Even though Klumenos was courteous, he volunteered nothing. She had a quarter-hour to pace the courtyard, then he and his guards escorted her downstairs again.

  Once they left, Umpara stood in the middle of the antechamber with its frescoes of leaping dolphins and dancing girls, unable to focus on anything. Could it be true that this confinement, this deprivation of space and light and information, was her new reality? Was nobody coming? She stared at the floor tiles, laid out in the crazy-paving pattern popular elsewhere in the temple, and tried to ignore Melana’s avid interest while deciding what to do next.

  Did Alektryon believe that she had never known hardship? Her childhood had been determined by cycles of famine, disease, and civil unrest; her struggles had molded her personality. She was no weak female to be crushed underfoot. No, the Minos would not vanquish her that easily.

  She allowed her women to undress and bathe her. Not as a signal of defeat or submission, she told herself, merely as a tactical retreat, a cautionary reassessment of her resources.

  In the following days, Umpara received a pair of visitors. The former Bull Priest Malachos made an official call as the new High Priest of Poseidon. He looked well in his regalia, and complimented her on her health, yet his courtesies were tinged with a hint of condescension. She did not know by what means the Minos had shunted aside Kitanetos’s successors and legitimized the election of a bull priest to the office. By sheer force of will, probably.

  The second visitor, from the Minos’s own household, genuinely alarmed her. “I am Master Scribe Opilimnios,” he said, bowing. “I have been assigned to act as your personal scribe.”

  Umpara took an instant dislike to the scribe with his short stature, bald head, and squinting eyes. There was something shifty about his demeanor. “Your services are not necessary,” she answered coldly. “I have already appointed a personal scribe.”

  Without waiting for her permission, Opilimnios took a seat in the inlaid ebony chair across from her. “If you are referring to Priest-Scribe Rabbel, he was dismissed days ago. Henceforth, I will review your household accounts, supply your needs, arrange your appearances, and censor any correspondence you might send or receive.” Giving her an insincere smile, he produced his writing materials.

  Did he expect her to dictate a letter right then and there? And how dare he, this wheedling little official, presume to curtail her authority! “What news do you have of the outside?” Captain Klumenos and Melana had told her nothing, and she had not thought to inquire of Malachos.

  “There is much news today, just as there is much weather.” Opilimnios regarded her slyly, that disingenuous smile still spread across his face. “What specifically did you wish to know?”

  So he was going to make her itemize everything, the insufferable bastard! Next, he would make her beg. Umpara forced herself to draw a deep breath. “Who is tending the sanctuary in my absence? How fare my daughters? Are there any other changes in the priesthood I have not heard about?” She wracked her brain for possible questions, no matter how trivial. Let Opilimnios stagger under the weight of a hundred thousand insignificant queries! “What is for supper tonight? Grilled fish, I hope. When will the laundresses come, or must we do our own laundry now? And must my women trouble the sentries each and every time they have to fetch water?”

  Opilimnios raised a hand. “First things first. Your daughter, Lady Sarmatia, has been acting as your surrogate in the sanctuary. As for the priesthood, there have been some...rearrangements. Hmm, let me see.” The scribe rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Bad enough that she had to rely on him for news, but now he was going to taunt her through dithering? “Head Priestess Tanqara has most unexpectedly resigned her office and departed Knossos to attend to matters in Kydonia. Also, Head Priestess Amunisa has been strangely unwell ever since the feast, but she is expected to recover.”

  Tanqara had been exiled. As for Amunisa, she had the constitution of a goddess. Umpara knew what was happening. There would be no rescue because her supporters themselves were under attack, exiled, poisoned. Dare she inquire about other friends and acquaintances? At least her family did not seem to have suffered by her demotion. “Sarmatia had no message?” What else could she say, when whatever she said would probably be reported?

  Opilimnios shrugged, as though her question was a mere afterthought. “Oh, well, she asked after your health.” No elaboration, nor anything else. Umpara tightened her knuckles about her armrests and breathed. Had the Minos commanded his scribe to be so irritatingly nebulous, or was Opilimnios malicious by nature and taking advantage of his newfound authority?

  “Shall I recommend that you return to your duties?” Opilimnios queried her with the tone of a father asking his daughter whether she had been good. “The Minos will want assurances that you will not cause mischief.”

  Not trusting her tongue, Umpara inclined her head, but as she feared he insisted she speak. “How can I record a gesture?” he mock-complained. “I need your precise words to convey your intentions. You certainly had enough to say on previous occasions. Surely now you—”

  “I have noticed, Scribe, that you have not once addressed me by my title.” Umpara paused to consider her next words. “The Minos has made his position, and mine, abundantly clear. Either he trusts me to carry out my duties in the sanctuary, or he does not. A few scratches in wax will not change those facts, so you should not seek to drag out these proceedings.”

  His stylus froze, and he frowned. His eyebrows, she noticed, had been plucked and redrawn higher on his forehead with winged strokes of stibium. “Are you resolved to be difficult?”

  No acknowledgement of her title, only a taunt. “I should ask you the same question, Scribe,” she answered. “Do you bear me some particular ill will, or are you always so courteous?”

  Opilimnios set down his stylus, and, staring straight at her, he answered, “Let us understand each other, High Priestess.” He spat out her title with contempt. “Your agents falsely accused my brother of heresy. I need not explain what disastrous fate those charges brought him and his family. Out of respect for your sacred office, I have refrained from throttling you.”

  She focused on his pudgy hands, imagining them around her throat. “I did not accuse him.”

  “No,” he said coldly, “but you deputized the official who did, and encouraged his activities.”

  Umpara swore no oaths, because, she sensed, the Minos had not insisted upon the measure, and she would not give Opilimnios the satisfaction. If his kin had been executed as heretics, then they surely must have deserved the punishment.

  When Opilimnios returned the next day, she ignored him, even when he recited a message from the Minos inquiring after her health. After a few moments of this treatment, Opilimnios brazenly reproved her. “Do not be insolent, woman. The Minos expects a response.”

  Umpara’s attention remained on the spindle in her hands. She disliked working woo
l during the summer, but she needed the distraction. “I am sure you will tell him what you please.”

  The scribe noisily cleared his throat. “Unlike you,” he answered, “I am capable of candor.”

  She wound the spun woolen thread around the distaff. “Then tell me how my family fares.”

  Yet there was only silence. Umpara sensed the resentment flowing from him. Nevertheless, when she deigned to glance at him, she saw the stricken look in his eyes, and realized what she had said. “It was not my intention to recall any personal tragedy, Scribe, merely to state the fact that you come and make demands, yet you give nothing in return. If Minos Alektryon wishes to know how I fare, then I in return expect to hear news about my family.”

  Opilimnios’s stare lost nothing of its piercing cold, but he nodded and said, “Lady Sarmatia resides here in the Labyrinth while she looks after the goddess’s sanctuary, but no, you may not see her. Your other relations have retired to await the harvest at your Katsamba estate according to the Minos’s orders. All your other estates are to be auctioned off after the grape harvest to repay your creditors.”

  She stopped the twirl of the spindle whorl. Was she to lose everything? It seemed irrevocably so. Yet she would not, could not, allow Opilimnios or anyone else see how it affected her. “Then tell the Minos how much you irritate me.” She gave the amber spindle whorl a flick. “Otherwise I am in excellent spirits.”

  Perhaps Opilimnios passed the message on, perhaps not, but a week later she was permitted to resume her duties in the Rhaya sanctuary. Sarmatia was no longer in residence, having left the night before. Would it have been such a hardship, Umpara wondered, for Alektryon to have granted mother and daughter a few moments together?

  The priestesses she encountered on her return to the sanctuary were not her familiar subordinates, but, like Melana, were strangers, transplants from other sanctuaries. They became her constant companions in the world above, unwelcome shadows who accompanied her everywhere, and, needing no special permission, called upon her often in her subterranean domain to spy on her. Umpara never touched their occasional gifts of food, olive oil, or perfumed unguents unless she observed them also partaking.

  The Minos sent gifts, too. Fleeces and fuel as the nights grew colder, purple-dyed woolen threads to work, a monkey for her amusement, and sweet confections from his own kitchen. By the winter solstice, Umpara had her handmaidens cooking for her, and tasting whatever they prepared before serving it to her, just as her former agents had told her that Kitanetos had had to do. She ate sparingly, only enough for nourishment, and preferred plain fare. Spices could mask the taste of poison. Sweets might give her a stomachache, and cause her to vomit and void her bowels. Goddess help her, she would not succumb that easily.

  Alektryon visited her on occasion, bringing furs and mittens, for in the winter it was chilly and dank below ground, and her arthritis bothered her. “Are you not well, High Priestess?” His concern sounded genuine, to the point where he sent her his own physician bearing well-known, effective Egyptian remedies, but Umpara could not be sure—not of him, not of the priest-healer of Payawon, not of anything else. Sometimes his solicitousness seemed like a form of mockery.

  Her fingers in the new woolen mittens were awkward working the shuttle of her loom, and she exhaled smoke with every breath. She kept busy with weaving and embroidery, instructing the novices according to her reduced means. She had her personal idols arranged in a closet near the main hall. She also had a serpent she kept in a jar and handled whenever ritual prescribed that she speak to the gods through Lady Ashera. She also had poppies for more rigorous spiritual consultation, although she feared using opium in that precarious space. The ancient sanctuary creaked and settled, held mysterious cold spots, negative energies. Sometimes she sensed the presence of a bull roaming the corridors at midnight, other times the mad bitterness of a woman who manifested as a gray mist where no woman’s shade should have been. Were the gods granting her a vision of herself, trapped, remorseful, as she would be after her death? Umpara drew her coverlet over her head and squeezed her eyes closed. Winter always brought ruminations of mortality, increasingly grim with the passing of the years. Her unnatural, enforced confinement only deepened her depression.

  At midwinter, the time of the Serpent Dance, her spirits recovered enough that she insisted on rinsing her hair with henna and painting her nails. She whispered prayers of retribution and deliverance to her house serpent before returning her to her hibernation. Lady Ashera would hear, speed her entreaties to Rhaya, and she would soon be released from her ordeal. Although Melana and the other priestesses eyed her askance, she could not guess whether they had overheard. Ah, but what difference did it make? Tonight, she had the goddess’s ear, and with the torches blazing as fierce and hot as the midsummer sun, and the drums beating their primal rhythm, she felt young again.

  Mother Rhaya answered one of her prayers days later, when the Minos granted permission for her daughters and grandchildren to visit her in her confinement. While they exchanged gifts and feasted, Sarmatia commented on her pallor. “Have you not been well, Mother?”

  Umpara did not want to mar the occasion with her complaints. “Winter is always a hardship.” She dandled her youngest granddaughter on her lap; the child had been born only three weeks ago. Aleksandra was a pretty child, despite her Hellene name. Alas! Her middle daughter was obviously trying to curry favor with Alektryon. Had she been present for the naming, she would have forbidden it. “Have I been much missed?”

  Sarmatia cautiously glanced about the chamber. “At home, very much so,” she answered. “Elsewhere, and here in the Labyrinth, well... There have been so many changes recently, you see, and we receive news so rarely these days. Our messengers are forbidden to go abroad, and in the marketplace the women curb their tongues around our servants.” She twisted her jeweled fingers. Her voice became low, tremulous. “I honestly do not know what else to tell you, Mother.”

  Her hesitation bespoke Umpara’s worst fears. There was no public outcry—why, her absence had not even been noticed! She wept herself to sleep that night, and when her handmaidens brought the henna to color her hair the following week, she turned them away. What benefit was there in making herself beautiful when the whole world, it seemed, had forsaken her?

  In the spring, the Minos, laden with presents and wearing an obscene amount of scent, called upon her again. Just like an unwelcome suitor, she reflected sourly, yet she did not decline his invitation to accompany her above. He escorted her around the Labyrinth, pointed out the latest decorations, commented on the beauty of the blooming fruit trees, and took immense pleasure in showing her the work going on everywhere.

  “Now look there.” Alektryon indicated the tripartite shrine dominating the west side of the central courtyard. Finished, it was a stately arrangement of three pillars surmounted by horns of consecration, the whole colored red, blue, and yellow, with checkered borders of black and white.

  Umpara’s teeth clamped her nether lip to still the quivering. Workers under Priest-Architect Daida’s direction were moving back and forth from the sanctuary where every nine years the Minos reaffirmed his sacred charge; she heard the master builder’s voice issuing commands. Her throat tightened as she contemplated how Alektryon had incorporated the Labyrinth into his dominion. What was left for her, the descendant of thirty generations of high priestesses, and for her daughters and granddaughters and the generations to come when Alektryon had usurped everything?

  Now he was addressing her, scrutinizing the grim set of her features. “You look displeased.”

  What could she say? Certainly not the truth. Swallowing hard, she sought an answer. “Are you aware that the scribe you appointed to manage my affairs has a personal grievance against me?”

  “Does he?” Alektryon’s bemused tone told her that he knew all about Opilimnios’s circumstances. Which meant that he had inflicted the man upon her on purpose. He nonchalantly leaned upon a pillar. “Now why should he
bear a grudge against so gracious a lady such as yourself?”

  “Stop toying with me, Minos.” Six months ago, Umpara would have struck him. Not now. “I asked you a simple question.”

  “Very well, then.” His demeanor darkened, and he straightened, edging closer. “Yes, Master Scribe Opilimnios bears you a grudge. I knew that when I appointed him. In fact, Umpara, I know everything that goes on in your household. I know that your handmaiden Shanara is having an affair with one of Captain Klumenos’s sentries, and that she hopes to conceive so he will marry her. Too bad he already has a wife and child in Katsamba. I also know that you sweat some nights because your monthly bleeding has ceased, and that you frequently do not sleep at all for fear of murderers.” Alektryon leaned so close that each aspirated word was a hot breath against her cheek. “Did I not assure you that you would be spared?”

  Only insofar as he would not accrue blood pollution for her death. But she did not mention that aloud. “You did,” she croaked. “Yet others do not seem to have the same scruples.”

  “Your fears are solely in your mind.” He reached up to pat her cheek, as one might console a child. “I understand that winter made your quarters gloomy and cold, and that ill humors have made you despondent. But it is spring now, and time for you to smile. The goddess will not grant us her blessings if her most faithful servant is glum and listless.” Alektryon’s casual touch made her skin crawl, and his assurances rang false, but Umpara appreciated what the Minos did next.

  He granted her and her ladies the occasional privilege of spinning and sewing in a colorful courtyard north of the Rhaya sanctuary. As she worked the spindle, twisting fibers, Umpara’s mind drifted. She recalled old stories of priests and rulers who had tried to wrest control of the temple from her foremothers, only to have their designs thwarted. Even Lady Europa had been banished, sent to Juktas by her son Minos, who had not wanted to share authority. The disapproving gods intervened, effecting a reconciliation whereby she had returned in triumph. Umpara felt certain that she, too, would have her day, her moment of triumph, when the gods would notice her dignity in the face of her suffering and unjust demotion, and intervene.