Knossos

by Laura Gill

  At length, dressed and scented, Argurios took his place in the megaron downstairs. Wordeia, his royal councilors, and members of the Knossian damos awaited him. Priest-Architect Daikantos and High Priest Aktaios, representing the displaced priesthood of the Labyrinth, stood apart. Arms crossed, Daikantos glowered. Although he would have the commission of restoring the Labyrinth, where lesser, more compliant architects would have worked for less, he showed no gratitude. “The work of my forefathers is destroyed,” he complained. “Now you would have me rebuild? How the gods must despise me! Building a Labyrinth is the labor of a younger man, and my sons are useless.”

  Argurios could not care less what objections Daikantos raised. The architect’s overweening conceit would force him to accept the commission. All Daikantos could do to thwart him now was to publicly accuse Ariadne of sacrilegious arson. Not that anyone would believe that a daughter of the Labyrinth could have set the fire, but Argurios did not need the headache.

  As a matter of courtesy, he invited Aktaios to perform the libation at the hearth. Afterward, the herald summoned the elders of the damos to present their petition before the throne.

  The most senior elder went down on creaking knees. “Great and merciful Minos, on behalf of the people of Knossos, we beseech you for your intercession with the everlasting gods.” Diwios’s balls, how the man wheezed! Argurios did not have all morning. “We have heard many rumors. We know you have investigated the matter. Tell us, how have we offended the gods to cause them to destroy the Labyrinth?”

  Argurios glanced at Daikantos, who shifted and started to uncross his arms. Glaring, warning the man to stay silent, Argurios spoke, “The fault lies not with the townspeople of Knossos, but with a disobedient servant of the Labyrinth. A kitchen slave, besotted with the Lady Ariadne, found his way into her apartment where he accosted her and the Lady Phaedra. At that time, the young daughters of the Labyrinth were under the protection of one of our representatives, Bull Priest Kinata of Poseidon, who intervened on their behalf and ordered the slave to leave.” With a nod, he acknowledged Aktaios, Kinata’s chief kinsman.

  Did he sound convincing enough? Argurios swept the notion aside. “Regretfully, the youth was so unbalanced, so wounded by the love-darts of Eros and Pipituna that he defied Kinata’s authority and attacked him. During the altercation, the lamps in the apartment were upset.”

  Wordeia arched an eyebrow. Aktaios appeared skeptical. Daikantos’s stare became fixed. Meanwhile, the kneeling elder spread his hands. “Minos, we are hearing tales of a fearsome beast that terrorized the Labyrinth, and during the sacrifices Lady Ariadne was observed crying out the name of this creature. Who is this Minotauros who causes her such torment?”

  Argurios’s gaze wandered to the bull wrangling fresco behind the high priest. What a mistake the whole charade had been! “The bull-man of the Labyrinth is a story to frighten disobedient children with,” he explained. “As my representative to the young ladies of the Labyrinth, Bull Priest Kinata’s official title was ‘Minotauros.’ Lady Ariadne was particularly attached to him. She greatly mourns his loss.”

  Having known of the deception, Aktaios offered little observation. “Kinata served Poseidon according to his measure, and will be remembered with reverence. Yet as his chief kinsman, I speak for the entire family when I demand compensation for his murder. Tell us, Minos, who is this slave who dared lay hands upon him, and upon the daughters of the Labyrinth? We know you have not apprehended him, or he would have been presented for judgment. Tell us his name, Minos, so that we may call upon the avenging Erinyes to hound him.”

  Argurios had given much thought to this aspect of his ploy. To utter a name that belonged to an innocent man, whether dead or alive, freeborn or slave, would summon the Erinyes’ wrath upon his own head. For a petty crime he might have chanced it, but for blasphemous murder and arson, he dared not toy with the immortals. So he had scoured the census tablets of the town and Labyrinth, then the rosters of the dead and missing that Registrar Scribe Itamos had sent. Some of the kitchen slaves had perished trying to prevent the flames from reaching the pithoi of flammable olive oil in the west storerooms. Yet none had carried the name that Argurios now invented. None would have reason to haunt him for undeserved condemnation.

  “His name is Theseus.”

  *~*~*~*

  Ariadne wept when the ship’s captain sacrificed a bull to Poseidon. Even when her priestess-chaperone whispered that the blood offering would safeguard their voyage, Ariadne thought of Minotauros and was morose. The sailors regarded her suspiciously, but the captain had assured her that none would insult or otherwise molest her. “Your person is sacred to holy Dionysus,” he said. “There’s not a man in my crew who doesn’t know how the god deals with those who disrespect him.”

  He even told her a story about the young god transforming into wild beasts a crew of pirates who had attempted to enslave him. “So you see, Lady, my wife would prefer that I don’t come home as a shrew.” Ariadne giggled, and for a time felt better about leaving land. Everybody in Knossos was cruel and horrible. Daikantos despised her, and the Minos, and Phaedra had tried to claw out her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to be gone from the Labyrinth, but confronting the vast expanse of the ocean made her apprehensive. Suppose the ship foundered and sank, or there was a sudden storm? She could not swim.

  She did not like how the rolling and pitching of the ship made her sick, but she liked sitting in the sternsheets under the tasseled awning the sailors had erected for her, and watching the world. Poseidon’s domain amused her more than she had anticipated. Mewling gulls hunted the whitecaps for fish. Dolphins leapt and cavorted in the ship’s wake.

  The priestess of Dionysus explained how the gods in their benevolence had sent the dolphins to escort her ship to the island of Naxos where Dionysus had his cult. “Do you remember the seal stone I showed you while you were still in the house of the Minos?” she asked.

  Ariadne nodded, recalling the golden lozenge depicting a priestess conveying a sacred idol across the water in a boat. A sun and moon had hung in the sky, and a leaping dolphin had shown the way. Oh, the Minos had given her beautiful clothes and ornaments to adorn herself with when she reached Naxos, but nothing so fine as that. “Will the god give me a wonderful ring like that for a bridal gift?”

  The priestess smiled and petted her cheek. She was much nicer than Myrna. “We will see, Lady Ariadne, but for now remember what you saw. This voyage is like the scene depicted on that ring. I am the priestess poling the barge, and you are the goddess under the awning, making the arduous journey across the water to marry the god.”

  *~*~*~*

  The Labyrinth would never be restored.

  Two years had passed since the fire. In that time, Daikantos had overseen salvage operations, retrieving gold and silver, ivory and jewels and amber from some of the temple repositories, and refurbishing the surviving Labyrinthos shrine as a catch-all sanctuary to the immortals.

  Argurios ground his jaw when he thought about the priest-architect, then he hurled his kylix against the wall. Wine smeared the checked dadoes, running down like blood. Why had he not realized sooner that his treacherous wife and the old man had crowned him with cuckold’s horns? And, more importantly, who else knew about the situation? He shook with indignation to imagine his rivals in Kydonia, not to mention that bitch’s kinsmen in Tiryns, chortling over his dishonor.

  He should have seen it sooner. The way Wordeia always heaped praise on Daikantos and assisted him in acquiring materials and men, Argurios should have known there was something more than a high priestess’s patronage of a defunct Labyrinth behind their interactions.

  A shame he would never be able to catch them together and exact the kind of swift retribution that would have satisfied his honor. Wordeia remained within reach in his own house, presumably ignorant of the fact that her husband now knew about her adultery, but Daikantos, that damnable old trickster, had outwitted him. The priest-architect had left Knos
sos ten days ago on the pretense of acquiring more cypress wood from the foothills of Mount Ida. Word had come yesterday that he had instead backtracked to Katsamba and boarded a ship bound for western shores. His sons and their families, easy targets for vengeance, had disappeared into the landscape.

  At last, Argurios would have his campaign, though not quite in the manner he had desired. He would muster his followers later that day, but first he must make obligatory offerings to great Diwios, Ares Enyalios, and the Mistress of Battles. He had already sent to Aktaios to bring Mother Labrys from its sanctuary. He himself would provide the sacrificial victim.

  Aithalos had reported that the altar was prepared, the ropes and sacred meal and cleansing fire awaiting his pleasure. Argurios had no doubt that the gods would accept his offering. All that remained now was to bathe and dress, and fetch the high priestess to the Labyrinth.

  She had no idea what was coming.

  *~*~*~*

  The more time that passed, the more diminished Alaia’s world seemed to become. Following the fire, those who did not rebuild emigrated from Knossos, heading south to Archanes, or west to Tylissos and Kydonia. She herself had lain awake nights wondering whether she and Wedaneus should also leave, to seek a sanctuary where no one would ever suspect that she had been the Minos’s lowborn concubine, or that her son had bedded Lady Ariadne and then been suspected of burning the Labyrinth.

  Before the smoldering embers had even cooled on the temple mount, the choice was stripped from her. Just when her fear reached its height, a representative of the Minos had visited the house to inform the family that, whether Keos was dead or still alive, free or apprehended, no one would harm them. Wedaneus even received assurances that his employment was secure.

  Gifts from an apologetic Minos? The representative was courteous, all smiles and reassuring words, but Alaia knew Argurios too well. He had never given her anything but heartache. Sparing her and her family when he would have been justified in executing them for conspiring to destroy the Labyrinth was not necessarily a kindness. She suspected that she and Wedaneus were bait to lure Keos home, and that the Minos wanted her to suffer indefinitely, because her ostracism did not end with the representative’s visit.

  Yet her son never came home. There was no word of him, dead or living; he had vanished as surely as if the gods had plucked him from the mortal world. She wept nights. Wedaneus brooded. Keos’s name was mentioned less and less frequently, until he became a memory that had once inhabited the house. Once a year, on the feast days of the dead, Wedaneus made an offering in his name. In all other things, Kassandros assumed the responsibilities of the firstborn son. He became his father’s apprentice, thriving as a scribe where Keos had failed, and Anaxoitas expressed interest in him as a possible match for his youngest daughter.

  The wool industry did not suffer overmuch from the loss of the Labyrinth, as it had always been sourced from farms in the countryside. Bales of fleece continued to arrive in Knossos’s counting house each spring. Master Scribes Orkhillos and Anaxoitas continued supervising the tallies before distributing the wool to the skilled women who had once spun thread and woven cloth in the Labyrinth, but now shifted their industry to the town. Alaia herself even took on spinning, dyeing, and weaving where she could, to supplement the household’s wages.

  In time, she knew, the Labyrinth would be restored. All Knossos knew the stories of how, in ages past, the capricious immortals had thrown down the temple with fire and earthquake, and after each destruction the Labyrinth had arisen bigger and more splendid than before. Those who could, donated their pious labor to Priest-Architect Daikantos and High Priest Aktaios. Alaia hesitated to contribute her service. She feared that the priestly authorities would not allow her, the mother of a suspected blasphemer, on the temple mount. Even Wedaneus’s assurances offered little comfort.

  “You keep too much to the house. It is not good for your health,” he admonished. “Let us go out together.”

  “The people will stone me.” She visualized it in her head—the shouts in her ears, the thud and pain of the stones hitting her, the blood on the ground—so often that she could not think of her neighbors without thinking about death. Would she be unrecognizable afterward, and more importantly, would she be allowed a proper burial?

  Wedaneus shook his head. “This is foolish talk. If they meant to kill you as a blasphemer, they would have knocked down the door already and taken you. And they would have to had to get through me first.”

  She clung to his hand all the way from their house to the temple mount. Once there, astonishment robbed her of her breath. Having been housebound since the fire, and thus unaware of the magnitude of the destruction, she could not believe that the conglomeration of blackened buildings before her was all that remained of the Labyrinth. Had her son, her own flesh and blood, truly committed such an unspeakable act? Overcome, she buried her face in her husband’s chest and sobbed—for her lost son, for the overwhelming ruin around her, and for shame. Whether or not the people bought the Minos’s lie about a disobedient slave named Theseus, there was no deceiving the omniscient gods. Alaia had not raised her son to be a blasphemer, but in her heart she knew it must have been him, and that she was partially responsible.

  Wedaneus held her, stroked her shoulder, while explaining to someone, “Forgive the outburst, but this is the first time she has seen the ruins. She is beside herself with pious remorse.”

  A man answered, “Of course, Scribe Wedaneus. We are all stricken by the disaster. Take her aside and let her compose herself. When she is ready to rejoin us, the gods will welcome her aid.”

  Why was he speaking so loudly? Glancing up, Alaia realized to her horror that the speaker was none other than High Priest Aktaios himself. Kinsman of the man Keos had supposedly slain. A lump rose in her throat, threatening to choke her. “Should I have come?” she croaked.

  Aktaios’s smile appeared genuine. “Why not, Alaia? Are you not also a devout worshipper of the gods?” Everyone within earshot had ceased working and milled about to eavesdrop. “Anyone who wishes to expiate their sins and offer their labor to the everlasting immortals is welcome.”

  “Thank you, High Priest,” Wedaneus answered. “We have come prepared to do hard labor.”

  Alaia had not expected an iota of acceptance from the high priest. She could bear Aktaios’s conditional forgiveness; a thorough welcome would have been disingenuous, and more than she could have handled. Nodding, she let her husband steer her toward a bench at the edge of what had been the Labyrinth’s elaborate west court. After a time, agitated by the sidelong glances people gave her, and the impropriety of her inactivity, she felt brave enough to work. Wedaneus undertook harder labor, assisting the carpenters removing charred beams, but not without making certain that Alaia was not left alone. She had her children, and Wedaneus’s relations formed a barrier of protection around her.

  She donated five days to the site, and would have given more, had Wedaneus and his mother not gently reminded her that she was neglecting her own hearth. Alaia reluctantly returned to her household duties, but always with the intention of donating more to the restoration of the Labyrinth—labor, votives, honey and wine from the house’s own stores—whatever she could give to convince the gods that she should be forgiven for raising a blasphemer.

  Then everything changed again, and her hopes died. Daikantos, who had been involved in a secret liaison with Lady Wordeia, fled Knossos. His sons and grandsons disappeared. The townspeople were shocked—not so much that Wordeia had horned her husband, but that she had done so with a man past seventy.

  Minos Argurios rallied his followers and went in pursuit of Daikantos, but not before dealing with his adulterous wife.

  Alaia had not gone to the cleared west court to witness the sacrificial offerings and supplications to Diwios and the Mistress of Battles; she preferred to stay home whenever Argurios went abroad. And thank the gods she had not gone. Wedaneus and Kassandros returned ashen-faced with a tale of ho
w the Minos’s followers had subdued and bound Lady Wordeia, and stretched her upon the altar for Mother Labrys. Alaia could not believe the goddess would allow her high priestess to be slain without Wordeia’s own ritual consent. She heard the next-door neighbors exclaiming in horrified disbelief, and thought, yes, Argurios would do such a thing.

  For some in Knossos, the murder of their high priestess was enough. Gathering their families and goods, they left the area. Alaia knew that Wedaneus would never consent to emigrating, and she would not leave him. “Were I twenty years younger,” he confessed one night, “and not such a creature of habit, I might seek a new start in Kydonia or even on the mainland.” He gathered her closer under the fleeces. An icy northern wind battered at the shutters. “But you and I both have gray in our hair. We were born in Knossos and will die here.”

  Snuggled in her husband’s arms, their bedchamber a cocoon against the winter night, Alaia took some comfort in that.

  Then came the earthquake.

  *~*~*~*

  What the fire of three years ago had not destroyed, the angry gods threw down in an instant.

  Alaia and Wedaneus enjoyed good fortune that afternoon, for they were in the countryside visiting Boukolion’s farm when the Great Bull’s hooves stomped the earth. The ground shook for what seemed like several moments. Trees in the neighboring olive groves swayed and clouds of dust blanketed the hills. Boukolion’s family and servants fled the farmhouse as roof tiles shattered. An overturned lamp started a fire, but Boukolion and Wedaneus braved the aftershocks to hurry back indoors to stamp it out. Then the women hastened in with cloths dampened from the well to make doubly certain the fire was dead. Hearths were covered, lamps blown out, and blankets and provisions carried outside with the household gods. Boukolion and his sons went among the flock to select the finest specimens, hoping that Poseidon could be placated.