Knossos

by Laura Gill

  Argurios snatched the scarlet tunic Aithalos started to hand him and pulled it over his head. “And what is that to you?”

  “Have his workers repair the landing to the Rhaya sanctuary. The plaster on the uppermost stairs is cracking.” Wordeia flicked her wrist as though issuing a command to the slaves.

  Too bad Argurios could not shove her down the stairs to crack her head open instead. “Do I look like your errand boy?” He raised his arms to let Aithalos belt the tunic. “Send a message yourself.”

  Her malicious smile informed him that she would do just that. “While we are on the subject of the Labyrinth,” she continued, “when are you going to send that troublesome girl away? The priestesses are complaining about her petty demands and tantrums, and the gods surely—”

  “Strange that no word of their complaints has reached my ears.” Argurios slung his baldric over his head so that the silver-studded blade with its gold and ivory hilt rested in its sheath against his left thigh. “Although if young Ariadne troubles you so much, perhaps I should keep her around.” He relished his wife’s scowl before waving her away. “Go on, woman. Take your grousing somewhere else.”

  As was her custom, Wordeia retreated sure in the knowledge that his choler would unsettle his stomach during breakfast and indigestion plague him throughout the morning petitions. Argurios shook his head sourly. When she first started needling him thus, he had barred her from his chambers, but Wordeia had countered with cold suppers and trivial interruptions while he was with other women. Beating her did no good. Her spirit was indomitable, and, mindful of her kinsmen, he dared not go too far with his discipline. While Argurios might win petty battles, Wordeia was winning the war with her simple creed: her husband did not have to like her as a wife, but as mistress of the household and acting high priestess of the Labyrinth she would not be ignored.

  Yet he had lied to her just then. Complaints from several senior-ranking priestesses regarding Ariadne’s tantrums had reached his ears. Argurios kept his own counsel for the moment because he remained undecided about the Labyrinth which Ariadne claimed as her birthright.

  As Argurios headed toward the megaron with his bodyguards in tow, he pondered the conundrum in which he now found himself. While his great-grandfather Alektryon might have restored the Labyrinth, consolidating his power and legitimizing his rule by bringing it under his secular authority, the temple had proven a simultaneous curse and blessing. A nexus for workshops, particularly for the lucrative wool and perfumed oil industries, and a network of sanctuaries focused on appeasing the capricious immortals, the Labyrinth had nevertheless grown too unwieldy and expensive to maintain. Where sanctuaries on the Hellene mainland were more modest, restricted to cult houses that served the gods with equal efficiency, the Labyrinth controlled too much of the Knossian economy, and claimed too much land and livestock that Argurios would have preferred to distribute among his followers. Its material wealth would be more profitably spent combating piracy and securing the sea lanes for merchants, and subduing neighboring provinces that remained independent of Knossian rule. Personal glory and enrichment, that was what the Minos’s followers demanded, and, needing their continued support, Argurios could not disagree with them.

  Moreover, great deeds at sea and raids against territories such as Kydonia would not only enhance his reputation—which sorely needed bolstering if he wanted his Hellene neighbors to take him seriously as a wanax—but also afford him a plausible excuse to leave Knossos and his bothersome wife for a season. And he had not enjoyed the pleasures of a good raid in the seven years since his father’s death.

  He endured with disinterest the morning petitions. Always, it was the same business: disagreements between neighbors about boundary stones, minor thefts, and adultery. Complaints about encroachments by the Labyrinth and requests for his intercession with unaccommodating priests, priestesses, or officials.

  “Minos, tell the priesthood not to demand so many animals from my flock.” The shepherd pleading his case stood as a good example of the grievances his subjects regularly burdened him with. “This official, Ekanor, he comes around threatening me with the wrath of Diwios if I don’t provide five sheep twice a year.” The elderly man clasped his age-knotted hands together. He was missing most of his teeth, which slurred his speech and piqued Argurios’s impatience. “Now I’m a pious man, Minos, and always remember to make my offerings, but—”

  “But the Labyrinth owns many sheep, more than they could ever sacrifice, and you do not, is that it?” Argurios finished. Grousers wasted his time, and those who protested the priesthood’s demands underscored his particular dilemma: that while he owned the final judgment, the tortuous administration of the Labyrinth made ruling against the priests a certain headache. While Alektryon might have appropriated the physical establishment, he had also assumed a bureaucratic burden that his descendants could not maintain.

  Sensing the Minos was about to rule against him, the old man waited with a hangdog expression.

  Argurios made his decision, “You will deliver the three best of your flock to the Labyrinth twice a year.” The scribe perched on his footstool beside the throne inscribed the decree on a wax tablet, to which Argurios fixed his seal. As the shepherd’s eyes brightened, Argurios explained, “I grant you my ruling and my seal, but you will have to deal with the temple officials on your own.” If the old man wanted to tangle with the Labyrinth’s vast bureaucracy and withhold due offerings, then let the hassle and threat of divine punishment accrue to him alone.

  An hour before noon, the herald dismissed the remaining petitioners and closed the megaron, freeing Argurios to attend to other, more pressing concerns. Accompanied by bodyguards, he exited the royal mansion and headed east along a street terminating in the Labyrinth’s monumental west terrace and court. The day was cool, but the exercise warmed muscles stiffened by the sedentary hours of hearing petitions, and by the time he reached his destination he was sweating. Yet the exertion was worth it, for if anyone could solve his dilemma regarding the Labyrinth, then it must surely be the architect residing in the modest house below the temple mount.

  The servants, expecting him, ushered him and his men through to a pleasant inner courtyard sheltering tall cypress trees and beds of herbs. Moments later, one of the servants returned to usher Argurios down a portico into the cubicle that served as his host’s office. The bodyguards would stay outside in the courtyard to await his return.

  When Argurios entered the room, his host rose from a table cluttered with what the Minos regarded as trash: shards of pottery, lengths of twine, terracotta pipes, charcoal sticks, and bits of sunbaked clay. Papyri leaves lay alongside the garbage, and were even tacked to the walls. The place smelled of clay and of the embers burning in the brazier.

  “Forgive me for not fetching you personally,” the man said. “I was just finishing an experiment with these clay stamps.” He indicated a set of handmade seals, then a tablet on which he had impressed what looked like the opening phrase of a sample offering to the Labyrinth: da-da-re-jo-de—to the Daidalaion, which was another, more obscure name for the temple complex. “You see, if I can create an efficient system of mechanical script, perhaps these stamps, then we can produce more inscriptions with fewer scribes, and those inscriptions will be uniform.”

  Argurios recognized the benefits, but shook his head regardless. “Your tinkering is wasted here.”

  “You think so?” Priest-Architect Daikantos, an elegant, silver-haired man, was a descendant of the legendary Daidalos. He was the last such architect still attached to the Labyrinth, even though no new buildings had been erected since Alektryon’s reign. When he was not attending to the temple complex’s constant need for repairs, he tinkered with various projects: cult xoana with articulated joints for the sanctuaries, musical instruments that could produce haunting tunes without the aid of a musician, and marvelous toys that moved through the aid of hidden mechanisms of copper, ivory, and wood. “I have told you before, Minos, I hav
e no genius for shipbuilding or weapons of war. Launching flames and heavy stones at enemies? Would you have me commit an act of hubris by attempting to outdo the gods?” Daikantos indicated the clutter of his workshop. “What you see here are small, simple things, bits and pieces with which an old man occupies his spare time.”

  Argurios crossed his arms over his chest. “No” was not a word he tolerated. “I have heard that argument before. You were apprenticed in your youth to your mother’s father, a chariot maker, so do not tell me that you know nothing about chariots or other weapons of warfare.” While he had excellent archers, his chariot corps was in shambles, and without them he could not compete with the rising powers of Mycenae, Thebes and Sparta. Few of his charioteers were completely outfitted with the necessary vehicles, wheels, axles, and a team of trained horses, because without the supplemental wealth raiding would have provided, they could not afford their share of equipment.

  More and more, Argurios felt like Crete, as Kaphtor was now known, with its outmoded temples and priestly bureaucracies was becoming a backwater.

  “I speak only the truth. But I have otherwise done as you requested.” Daikantos rummaged through the sheaves of papyri. “Somewhere here I have a list of non-essential buildings and personnel.”

  The list Daikantos produced was inscribed in the ancient tongue of Crete. Argurios suppressed a grimace. Why must the priest-architect be so eccentric, so irritating in his habits? The script was defunct, even among the priesthood.

  Daikantos cleared his throat, though not a place for Argurios to sit and rest while he paraphrased his findings. “The Labyrinth employs seventy-seven scribes, thirty-two of whom are married and live here in the town. The remaining forty-five lease cubicles in the north quarter. There are one hundred and seven unmarried priestesses who reside in the women’s dormitories in the south quarter. Eighty-two of them have families here in town, nine are orphans, two have families in Archanes, and four have relations in Tylissos. The Labyrinth provides for all their expenses. Thirty-eight bachelor priests lease lodgings in the southwest quarter. All of them can afford to reside in the town. All but two have families within walking distance of the Labyrinth.”

  Argurios, spent from the walk and growing weary of standing, shifted a stack of diptyches in order to sit. Daikantos’s expression signaled displeasure, but he offered no comment. “So these residents can be evicted and their quarters demolished?” Argurios asked bluntly.

  “I would not recommend doing so all at once, unless you want a public outcry,” Daikantos answered. “That also applies to the dismantling of any buildings. Were I you, I would begin with the scribes, and gradually. Those without access to the Labyrinth do not understand that only a fraction of the temple mount is dedicated to the sanctuaries. Ease the transition, Minos. Calm the people’s apprehensions. Then you can eventually relocate the priests and priestesses.”

  Everything Daikantos suggested was sensible, diplomatic, but impatience tugged at Argurios. He wanted—no, needed—the burden of a bloated Labyrinth reduced now. Nevertheless, he found himself forced to agree. “What else can be closed?”

  Daikantos did not glance at the papyrus, for those tallies, as with all other matters pertaining to the Labyrinth, were imprinted in his memory. “Over the years, a number of chambers have been sealed off. Dismantling them, however, poses certain engineering challenges. For example, in the western quarter, the unused storerooms provide structural support for the wool archives above. I would not recommend that you remove Master Orkhillos’s offices or shift his records. The volume of fleece that the Labyrinth’s hundred thousand sheep produce...”

  Argurios found his attention starting to drift. So many obstacles. At times, he was tempted to adopt the simplest, most brutal policy, take a torch to the Labyrinth and let the priesthood, craftsmen, and bureaucrats sort themselves out. And why not? The Labyrinth seemed to him not only cumbersome with its web of chambers, antechambers, storerooms, winding passages, and courtyards, but ominous. It cast a sinister shadow over town and countryside. It was a colossus inside which angry gods seemed to be slumbering, waiting to unleash chaos. Fear of them kept him from venturing inside the Labyrinth unless the occasion demanded—fortunately, a rare occurrence—and stayed his hand against ordering its total destruction.

  Such thoughts returned him to the problem of Ariadne. Regardless of what Alaia reported during that day’s excursion, Argurios already suspected that young Ariadne would never be prepared to assume a high priestess’s responsibilities and serve the Labyrinth. There was no reason why Pasiphae’s daughters should continue to inhabit their subterranean apartments, and not return to their kinsmen. Perhaps the sanctuary of Poseidon could be restored, and the newer sanctuary established seventy years ago by Alektryon dismantled to create—

  “Minos?” Daikantos had ceased reciting from his lists, and was now staring expectantly in his direction. “I assume you are carefully considering everything I am telling you?”

  Argurios scratched his beard. “Yes, yes, I heard. Begin taking down any unused structures. I will arrange with High Priest Aktaios and Master Scribe Pikreus to release the scribes.”

  *~*~*~*

  The young woman before her was not what Alaia expected from a daughter of the late High Priestess Pasiphae. Far from being the educated and refined lady she had assumed all highborn priestesses of the Labyrinth were, Lady Ariadne was goggle-eyed and bony, ignorant of the world outside her apartments, and uninterested in the topics of young men and fashion with which Alaia hoped she might engage a noble maid of sixteen. When she spoke, it was with a shrill voice.

  No wonder Minos Argurios had not asked Lady Wordeia or any of the court’s noblewomen to act as chaperones; none would have appreciated the dubious honor. Alaia thought he was surely playing some colossal joke on her. That would not have surprised her.

  The pleasure craft in which she and the daughters of the late high priestess plied the Kairatos was equipped with six oars and a tasseled blue, gold, and white awning to shield delicate complexions from the sun. Knossos had celebrated the vernal equinox a week ago, and the blessings of Diwios and Mother Rhaya had brought the warmer spring weather, allowing the women to discard their shawls by day.

  Alaia observed the verdant pastures and tree-clad hills on the opposite side of the river. She liked being outdoors among the dewy green scent of meadow grass and water reeds, and the telltale odor of the valley’s numerous sheep farms, however much those smells evoked memories of holidays spent with her husband and children picnicking across the river. How long had it been since they had gone out together? Eight months, an entire year? Too long, that was all she could say with certainty.

  The rhythmic dipping of the oars through the water made a soothing sound. Renting such a craft for an afternoon was beyond Wedaneus’s means.

  She regretted having accompanied him to the royal inspection of the fleece master’s counting house where he worked. The Minos complimenting her on her loveliness and kissing her hand had brought pleasure of a sort, affirmation that Alaia, at thirty-four, could still turn heads. Satisfaction that had become a curse when later that week the Minos had summoned her, explained in coarse detail what he wanted from her—and had given her no opportunity to refuse. He was an inconsiderate lover, expecting her to feign wantonness to avoid his ire. He was fulsome with his crude remarks and gross in his personal habits, and expected her to work toward his pleasure, yet in return he was stingy with his favors. Her kinsmen still could not grasp why they failed to advance. Where were the gifts, the endowments of lands and court position?

  Her attention alighted on her eighteen-year-old son Keos, seated in the first row of oarsmen. The less the Minos had to do with her personal life the better, which was why Keos’s presence aboard the craft made her uneasy. He should not have been there at all, and certainly would not have been had the sixth designated rower, the Minos’s second-born son Ortinawas, appeared according to schedule.

  The strumming of a lyr
e brought her focus back to the young women she had been charged with observing. An air of sanctity and remoteness clung to them. She knew enough about the Labyrinth to comprehend that their lives were governed by cult strictures, which forbade them from associating too intimately with commoners such as herself, yet she also understood that if she did not try harder to take Ariadne into her confidence, the Minos would hear of it. At least one person aboard that boat was a spy ordered to observe her while she observed Ariadne. Setting aside her grim ruminations, Alaia applied herself once more to engaging the sisters. “Are you enjoying yourselves?”

  Ariadne ignored her. The atmosphere surrounding the young woman crackled with tension, as if a storm were about to break. Alaia was reluctant to push her too hard. Would angering a high priestess’s daughter violate some obscure religious code? Alaia had to assume so.

  “Oh, yes!”

  In contrast to her high-strung sister, Lady Phaedra was a normal eleven-year-old, pretty and inquisitive, much like Alaia’s own daughter. Alaia knew that she and Ariadne were half-sisters, sired by different fathers whose identities were the subject of intense speculation. As far as Alaia knew, most priestesses married, but high priestesses such as Pasiphae hewed to the old traditions, and took consorts from among the ranks of the priesthood.

  “And do you go often upon the river?” Alaia decided that if she could not get information from Ariadne directly, young Phaedra might let slip some observation about her sister.

  Phaedra’s coiffed ringlets remained perfectly in place as she shook her head. “But we used to when we lived with our grandmother. There were animals on her farm, and we had meadows to explore and great gnarled oaks to climb.” Her diction was flawless. She did not fidget. “We also had our brothers to keep us company. They used to tease us, though, because we were much younger than them and they thought we were silly.” Since her posture was already rigid, not a hint of slouching, she lifted her chin proudly. “They would find that we are older, and no longer so silly.”