Knossos

by Laura Gill

  Alaia’s tactic was bearing fruit, if not exactly the kind she sought. She kept the conversation going. “I did not know you had brothers. What are their names?”

  A meaningful cough from the stolid middle-aged woman seated on Ariadne’s left sabotaged Phaedra’s reply. “You should not speak so freely with strangers,” she admonished.

  “Why should I not, Mistress Myrna?” Phaedra challenged. “Lady Alaia’s conversation interests me.”

  “Perhaps, but she is the wife of a common wool scribe, and not a lady of the court.” Myrna’s quick, disapproving glance discouraged further questions. “In fact, you should not address her at all.”

  “I think she is very beautiful, like a goddess,” Ariadne mused, tilting her head as she shredded a ribbon between her gaunt fingers. “Did you know that in Egypt the immortal ones have hair of lapis? You have hair of lapis, Lady.”

  Alaia lowered her eyes, lest people think she welcomed such comments. “But I am not a goddess, Lady Ariadne.”

  “No,” Myrna affirmed icily, “the woman is most certainly not a goddess.” Alaia restrained the same urge to defend herself that she felt whenever her kinsmen and neighbors criticized her. Sharing space with the conservative nursemaid seemed no different to her than braving the stares of the women at the well curb, only the young ladies were probably too sheltered to know what a concubine was, and Myrna too mindful of their innocence to label Alaia a whore outright.

  Ariadne leaned forward with a tinkling of beads and gold bangles. Her touch against Alaia’s hand was clammy and cool, like the damp clay Wedaneus worked with. “Do not listen to my nurse, Lady. I know what a goddess looks like. Mother Rhaya stepped down from the wall when I became a woman and first danced for her. She kissed me.”

  What was she saying? If she had considered Ariadne strange and secretive before, Alaia now wondered whether the girl might have been touched by Dionysus’s rod of sacred madness. Had Pasiphae drunk strong wine and danced with the wild god before conceiving her elder daughter? Ariadne’s enigmatic utterances made her wonder.

  *~*~*~*

  Lady Alaia was the most exquisite woman Ariadne had ever seen, with dainty, long-fingered hands, full lips, and, curled and piled high on her head with blue ribbons, hair so midnight black that it held traces of lapis lazuli. Ariadne’s Egyptian maid Tuya had spoken truly: the gods did have blue hair. Was Alaia’s presence an omen that Ariadne’s desires were about to be fulfilled?

  Ariadne was glad she had dressed for the occasion. She had a pretty new dress that Myrna had helped her make over the winter, and a necklace of blue faience flowers that the Minos had sent her upon her first flowering. Maybe the goddess was testing her to see how well she behaved before granting wishes. Ariadne squirmed on the cushions. She would have to try especially hard to sit quietly and be attentive, but she was confident she could succeed if she applied herself. Minotauros had always told her so. Had he sent the goddess to reward her diligence? He must have, and withheld the secret so as to surprise her. She must remember to thank him later.

  What should she wish for? To be invested as the high priestess, of course. And what else? Ariadne thought hard. Maybe a house in the countryside like her grandmother Aleksandra’s, with green meadows and fragrant herb beds and animals. She could take Minotauros with her. Did bull-men like pastureland? Picturing him bending to nibble on the grass, she giggled despite herself, then stopped when the goddess stared at her. She must be good.

  What else did she want? Maybe she would make the Bull Dance more interesting, because, gods knew, it was excruciatingly dull. She had wanted so much to have an old fashioned initiation—swinging and leaping in the arms of Minotauros, as wondrous as Europa dancing with Poseidon—but her boring old tutor had told her that Knossos’s young noblemen and noblewomen no longer met the god before the people. When her flowering ended, she had not paid public reverence to Poseidon in the Bull Dance, only received presents, dedicated a lock of her hair to Rhaya, and purified herself of her monthly blood in the adyton nearest her apartments. She had not liked ritual purification. The water the priestesses had poured over her head had been freezing cold, and then when they anointed her with the consecrated oil their hands had roamed all over her body, even to her private places. She disliked the smothering attention of women.

  “You seem restless, Lady Ariadne.” The goddess was speaking to her again in that musical voice! She must pay attention. “Is the excursion not to your liking? Your sister is enjoying herself.”

  Phaedra was a stupid child who liked everything. Yet Ariadne dared not voice her sentiments. She dared not even think bad thoughts about her sister, however well deserved, because the goddess might peer inside her and find her wanting. “Spring is so different outside the Labyrinth,” she told the goddess. “My mother died in the underworld.” Then she felt Myrna’s hard fingers pinch her upper arm. Her nurse was so tiresome—unnecessary, really, now that she was a woman—always scolding her for speaking, for wanting to go outside, and for not comporting herself like the highborn young lady she was. Myrna always wanted her to behave more like Phaedra.

  The goddess’s expression became sad, pensive. “I am sorry for your loss, Lady Ariadne.”

  Ariadne, absently rubbing her bruised arm, shifted as far away from Myrna as the cushions would allow. “Oh, let us not talk about death today, Lady. You do not come as Hekate, and spring is not the season for dying, even though my mother was buried in the springtime.”

  “Ariadne...” There Myrna went again, warning, tsk-tsking, interjecting where her opinion was neither needed nor desired. “This woman is not a priestess of Hekate, or any servant of the Labyrinth.”

  “Did I say she was?” Ariadne made a shooing motion. “Stop being a bother and go away.”

  Yet the incident unsettled her mood, making it necessary for her to calm her nerves before engaging the goddess once more. Only, Ariadne could not find the harmony she sought through the susurration of the gently flowing river or the green of the countryside.

  Glancing away from the river god’s realm, she regarded the rowers for the first time. She used to think boys were gross, crude, mean-spirited creatures reveling in a gods-granted freedom she could never know, but now that she was a woman flowered she found them much more interesting. Their lithe bodies and bare chests underscored their resemblance to the bull dancers and adorants featured in the Labyrinth’s oldest frescoes.

  Ariadne was suddenly glad to have been born a woman.

  One young man in particular, seated closest to the awning, captured her attention. He was neither taller nor handsomer than the rest, and he paid her no mind as he worked his oar, yet something about the way his night-black curls kissed the side of his neck above his beating pulse fascinated her. The whiteness of his knuckles juxtaposed against his brown skin, the black hairs downing his arms, and the curve of his muscular calves caused her heart to race faster. If Minotauros were to shed his pelt and slough his skin like the house snake, he would surely appear so to her eyes—no longer as the stern, broad-shouldered Great Bull Poseidon, but as Velchanos, the beautiful young god, he who danced and drank wine and consorted with the goddess.

  The Lady had brought her lover to meet the high priestess. First, Poseidon had sent Minotauros, then the goddess Rhaya had visited in the guise of mortal flesh, and now Velchanos himself was rowing the pleasure boat along the river. Ariadne swallowed the dryness in her throat. Could a daughter of the Labyrinth possibly be more favored by the gods than she had been?

  *~*~*~*

  Ariadne was not only not paying attention to her, Alaia realized, but she had become fixated on Keos. She stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed at him as if she had never seen a man before, as if she wanted to unhinge her jaws like a snake and devour him whole.

  “Do I know you, young man? Are you Velchanos?” Ariadne’s query was a ragged murmur.

  Worse than bad, the girl thought Keos was the young god, year-consort of the Lady. Alaia saw the horror on the faces
of Ariadne’s attendants. She shared in it herself, and quickly interjected to mitigate the damage. “Oh, no, Lady Ariadne. Keos is my son, a scribe’s apprentice. He is only here because we were short an oarsman. Is that not right, Mistress Myrna?”

  Myrna harrumphed loudly, signaling a chorus of agreement from Ariadne’s handmaidens and grunting laughter from the other young men. Keos shrugged off the criticism.

  Ariadne, however, heard nothing but what she wanted to hear. Her eyes glittered feverishly as she edged forward and extended her hand as if touch Keos. Alaia dared not breathe. “Sweet Keos, do you find me pretty?”

  She could not have asked him a worse question, Alaia thought. Keos preferred intelligent, athletic girls, and strictly on his terms, meaning, when they made no unreasonable demands and not interfere with his friendships. Alaia clenched her hands together, praying that Keos remembered that Ariadne was so far above him in status that to mock her would be to offend the gods.

  When he did not acknowledge her, Ariadne grew visibly impatient, bordering on peevishness. Alaia glanced apologetically at Myrna before prompting her son. “You must answer the lady, Keos.”

  “Umm, yes,” he mumbled.

  A nothing answer, but Ariadne was plainly young and untried, and, Alaia could see, deciphered his response according to her own longings. Alaia could read her because she still remembered the delusional fervor with which she, at the tender age of fourteen and before her arranged marriage to Wedaneus had quashed her girlish notions of love, had hounded a handsome youth whom she had liked.

  No amount of persuasive chastening would change Ariadne’s mind, for there was no mortal quite as stubborn as a newly flowered maiden who believed she was smitten.

  “Draw up on the bank there!” Calling out to no one in particular, Ariadne waved to a grassy bend in the river. “Let us have a picnic. I am hungry. I want to walk and dance and sing.”

  The steersman requested Myrna’s leave to land on the east bank. Word given, he shouted orders, the rowers adjusted their strokes, and the boat moved from the central current toward shallower water, where the men could ship the oars and jump overboard to beach the vessel. Ariadne hollered after them, trying to capture Keos’s attention, her stick-gaunt arms waving like two saplings bending in a strong breeze. She might have raced after the men, but between them Alaia and Myrna managed to halt that foolishness.

  The men assisted each woman from the boat by lifting her onto the shore. Ariadne squirmed in the steersman’s burly arms, plainly hurt and confused that Keos had not taken advantage of the situation to make time with her. Instead, he sought refuge in helping his mother.

  “You didn’t tell me she was an imbecile,” he muttered close to Alaia’s ear, while his arms were still wrapped around her waist. “What do I do now?”

  “Hush!” Alaia whispered sharply. “You shut your mouth. We are being observed. Continue as you have been, and you will be fine. The lady must be stricken with sacred madness.”

  The men returned to the boat for blankets, vessels, and baskets of food. Alaia was tempted to help, yet painfully aware that doing so would draw deprecating remarks about her lesser status. Already, Myrna was indicating with derogatory glances that she should be gathering firewood or fetching water, anything but loitering with those who outranked her.

  “Mistress Myrna, I see some fair wildflowers, if the ladies desire garlands,” she said, hoping to ameliorate any false impressions. Nonetheless, she felt like a slave trying to curry favor with a temperamental mistress, as she often felt with the Minos. “Shall I bring them some?”

  Myrna took her time, obviously enjoying making the Minos’s concubine wait on her pleasure. Turning her head, Alaia regarded Ariadne. The girl stood solitary among the other women, fidgeting, yet fixated on her heart’s desire. Following her gaze, Alaia noticed Keos helping the steersman carry bundled kindling from the boat. Keos was doing exactly what she would have done in his situation, assisting where he could while maintaining his distance. She thought briefly of sending him back to town on the pretext of fetching a more suitable replacement, but decided that she did not want him out of her sight for fear of how he might describe the situation. She must coach him first.

  “Hmm, yes,” Myrna said. “I see there are some colorful blooms, perfect for weaving garlands with. It will give the ladies something appropriate to do while the men prepare the meal.”

  Clapping her hands, the nurse marshaled her charges where they had just seated themselves on the blankets and were arranging their flounced skirts to best advantage. “We cannot feast without garlands. Come, Ariadne, Phaedra, girls. Crown yourselves with the goddess’s bounty.”

  Alaia was perfectly content to let the woman pretend the idea was hers, as long she helped keep Ariadne and Keos apart. She followed the ladies as they descended with delight upon the flowering purple lupines and the poppy anemones in their bright array of pinks, yellows, reds, and white. Ariadne hung back, seeming not to notice the blooms until Alaia, observing her, ventured to ask what was the matter. “It is spring, Lady. Time to rejoice and play. See? Pink looks very well on you, with your lovely dark hair.” Alaia proffered the blossom she had plucked along the way, tucking it behind Ariadne’s ear.

  Gnawing her lower lip, Ariadne cast a glance toward Keos. “Would the young god object to my weaving him a garland? The gods bleed purple, you know. Royal purple, the purple of the grape and the wine-dark sea.” Her gaze became unfocused again, her speech rambling.

  Alaia strove to disguise her alarm at the mention of blood and the young god. Did the high priestesses sacrifice their partners to the goddess? Was that why they never publicly acknowledged the fathers of their children? Alaia had heard of those arcane practices persisting in remote, mountainous places where for a season women left their families, neighbors, and the laws and habitations of men to dance with Dionysus.

  Not in ten thousand years was Alaia about to let this sallow, goggle-eyed moon-calf claim Keos for sacrifice, even if she had to offer herself in his stead. What Ariadne really needed, she thought, was a good whipping across the backside and to be sent to bed without supper, but she supposed that no one dared discipline the girl. “Keos is but a humble scribe’s apprentice.”

  Ariadne stubbornly raised her chin. “The young god can assume whatever guise he wishes.”

  The daughters of the Labyrinth and their three handmaidens brought back heaps of flowers with which to fashion garlands. Alaia accepted a place at the edge of the blanket to weave with the women, fastening blooms and winding stems as they directed; she claimed nothing for herself except when Phaedra offered her a pink anemone to tuck into her hair. Ariadne took only purple flowers, and talked at length to herself while weaving matching garlands for herself and another. Alaia knew she was going to try to crown Keos with the flowers.

  “That is a lovely garland, Lady,” she ventured, nodding toward the girl’s unfinished work. Ariadne’s hands were clumsy, even shaky, and as a result the garland she had created sat askew on her head. “You look well in purple, but would you not like to add some white, for the purity of your maidenhood?”

  Ariadne ceased her muttering, straightened herself from her slouch, and gave Alaia a defiant look. “This is in honor of the god.” She thrust her chin toward Keos, who was mercifully beyond earshot with the other men. “Purple for immortal blood, for the bountiful grape, for the wine-dark sea.”

  “The scribe’s boy is not the god, young lady.” Myrna assumed a bloodlessly didactic tone, where Alaia would have grasped the stubborn maid by the shoulders and shaken the nonsense from her.

  “You do not see because you are a blind old woman,” Ariadne shot back in her shrill voice. Blossoms, stems and shredded leaves spilled from her lap as she rose, and with a half-finished garland wandered over to the men. All scrambled to their feet and touched their fingertips to their foreheads when she approached. Keos, trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, sidled behind the steersman, but Ariadne gravitated towar
d him like a bitch to the scent and presented her garland. “This is for you, Lord Velchanos.”

  What a ridiculous picture she made—tiny and stick-thin, moon-eyed, her ill-fashioned garland drooping from her brow as she thrust a similar mass of stems and flowers at her unwilling lover. Alaia saw him tense, his hands flex and clench, when Ariadne clearly expected him to bend down and let her crown him. But Keos stood stunned, mute except for the questioning, wounded look he threw his mother: must he accommodate the girl?

  Alaia followed Ariadne to Keos’s side. “Keos is embarrassed at being so honored by the daughter of the Labyrinth when he is of such low station.” She threw an apologetic glance toward her son, while encouraging him to play along.

  “Yes, Lady,” he answered. “My name is Keos, and this, uh, honor is...” His cheeks burned at having to speak, to fumble for words. Another might have mistaken the glow for shyness. Alaia knew better. Keos was growing frustrated, as he often did in the counting house. He believed the other scribes mocked his rough touch upon the clay, his gouging of the wax, and his inability to remember the abbreviated spellings of the tallies. And when Keos believed others were attacking him, his anger swelled.

  Yet this was not the counting house, and the maiden before him not a mistake to be corrected in a fit of resentment. Alaia willed her son to remember that. “Let the Lady crown you,” she told him. When he did, and forgot his manners in the act of allowing Ariadne to smother him in purple blooms, she prompted him again. “What do you say to the Lady for giving you this honor?”

  “Thank you, Lady,” Keos croaked. “It’s, uh, lovely.” Alaia noticed his fingers twitching. He looked a hair’s breadth away from dragging the garland from his head and throwing it away.