Knossos

by Laura Gill

  Her wedding was tomorrow morning. Tomorrow, she would have to lie under Tripodiskos and submit to his touch. No matter what anyone said, she was sure he was disgusting. Why else would her acquaintances and friends have called him ‘dung eater?’ He looked normal enough in profile by the glow of the hearth, like any other eighteen-year-old youth, and he had seemed intelligent enough on her infrequent encounters with him in the village, but she was not deceived.

  Ephoros was still speaking. “Bring only what you need. Don’t burden yourselves with treasures. Zeus’s breath bites to the bone. You’ll need your warmest clothes, some sturdy leather shoes, and your gods. Release your house snakes. Bring your tools. Bring food and animals. Goats are the best. Leave everything else.” Gods, his words wrought such a bleak image! “The carts are strictly for provisions and the little ones, not your furnishings. There’s plenty of pine and oak in the mountains. You’ll have all winter to build yourselves beds and looms and whatever else you need.”

  Dikte’s elders left in a livelier mood than when they had arrived, though she could not comprehend why. When she voiced her consternation, Klymene had to explain it to her. “They’ve thought of everything. The settlement’s already established. There’s food and housing.”

  “Ephoros didn’t say how long we’d be there,” Karsinos pointed out. “That’s the only thing.”

  Between the anxiety caused by Ephoros’s words and her imminent departure, and tomorrow’s wedding rites, Dikte could not fall asleep that night. She tried not to disturb Klymene with her tossing and turning, but could do nothing about the ache in her belly. Tomorrow night she would be sleeping beside her bridegroom. His withered leg would touch hers, and his body... Tears threatened every time she started to think about that, but she dared not cry for fear her father would hear.

  The wedding day dawned hot and cloudless. Dikte’s kinswomen drew enough clean water to allow her to sponge herself down and wash her hair, which dried quickly in the heat. Her aunts had already laid out her wedding clothes: a blue smock that was the newest garment she owned, and the overskirt that was part of her priestess vestments; the scarlet of the flounces had faded to a pale pink, and the yellow, dyed with onion skins in lieu of the costly saffron her foremothers had used, was now the color of old ivory.

  Klymene oiled her hair and curled it insofar as she knew how to reproduce the old fashioned coiffures they had seen on scraps of surviving frescoes in the Labyrinth ruins. She had better luck with the sacral knot, a colored ribbon fastened at the nape of the neck to show that Dikte was a virgin bride of the priestly class. Dikte had a bracelet of glazed ceramic beads her uncle had made, and a necklace of five mismatched beads that she had discovered in the ruins and strung onto a length of twine.

  Her heart was racing a league a second. This was not how she had imagined her wedding day. She had always assumed that she would be glowing, bursting with joy at the thought of spending her days with her handsome, kind, generous, well-to-do bridegroom in a house nearby, perhaps a mansion salvaged from the ruins. How had she offended the gods to make them inspire her kinsmen to sell her to a family of lowborn herdsmen?

  Then she wondered, which family had approached the other first? “Aunt Klymene, did Father seek Tripodiskos’s kin for my hand, or did they ask him?”

  “Oh, they asked for you,” Klymene replied. “They wanted a wife for Tripodiskos who was close to the gods, who had some skill with healing and maybe midwifery. They approached your father when they heard Karsinos and Thale were leaving. Your having kinsmen among the refugees was a thing they used to persuade him.”

  Queasiness dulled Dikte’s appetite. All that negotiation done behind her back. “Close to the gods? Lysandra doesn’t want me to become a priestess. She told me there was no place for me in the cult house. You heard her.”

  Klymene uncovered a jar of ground limestone. “And how would she know how things stand in Karfi? I’m quite sure there’ll be a place for you, if you can manage to persuade Lysandra that your serving in the cult house would benefit her precious son. The way I see it, she doesn’t want you to get too full of yourself and heap scorn on Tripodiskos. Now hold still while I rub this chalk on your face.”

  Dikte closed her eyes while her aunt powdered her face, but she did not remain silent. “Would Father have sent me away if Tripodiskos’s family hadn’t asked for me to marry their son?”

  “He’d have found you someone else to marry.” Klymene’s movements put more chalk into the atmosphere than on Dikte’s face. Everyone coughed. “He and I want to see you properly provided for. It’s all fine and good to marry a man more worthy of your lineage, but things will be different where you’re going. You heard Ephoros last night. It’s better to be with a man who keeps goats and can work with his hands. At least that way you’ll be fed and clothed.”

  “Better to be practical than in love,” Thale agreed. “Klymene, you’d better stop. You’re getting dust all over her clothes and choking us all.”

  Thale had saved a little scented oil she had made last year from leftover coriander seeds, pine resin and olive oil. Because she had a steadier hand than Klymene, she was the one who applied the lampblack to Dikte’s eyelids, after which Klymene rubbed red ocher on the apples of Dikte’s cheeks. Never before had Dikte worn full cosmetics. Had it been for a different occasion, such as a particularly important rite in the shrine, she might have enjoyed it, but now she felt stiff and removed from herself, and could not decide whether or not that was a good thing.

  A pat on the cheek broke her reverie. “Smile, child!” Klymene exclaimed. “Your heart will gladden when you meet your bridegroom.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Thale chuckled. “You listen to too much gossip and don’t bother looking at any boy except the handsomest, no matter how bad for you he is.” She wore a knowing expression on her youngish face. “In a year, once you’ve gotten to know your new husband and have a babe at your breast, you won’t even remember why you objected.”

  Dikte glanced from one aunt to the other. Now that they had finished dressing her, the two women were donning their own finery. “Why is everybody so sure I’ll like Tripodiskos? He’s an ugly, clumsy, disgusting cripple.” Even as she said it, a small voice in her head countered that from what little she had seen, Tripodiskos owned pleasant if unremarkable features. But, she considered, as a cripple he probably was still clumsy and smelly and disgusting.

  At that, her aunts burst out laughing. Thale turned to Klymene and commented, “She doesn’t know him for sure.”

  Mindful of the lampblack outlining her lids, Klymene dabbed tears from her eyes. “What a surprise awaits you, child!”

  “What’s so humorous?” Lysandra’s shadow filled the open doorway. She wore a sun-faded green dress and her graying hair had been drawn back into a plait so tight that it appeared to pull the skin of her face as taut as a drum hide. Some of the women with her shared her severe, hawk-nosed, thin-lipped features. “I hope you aren’t enjoying a jest at Agathon’s expense.”

  Sniffling, shaking her head, Klymene waved her hands. “Oh, no, Lysandra. We’re teasing the girl about her wedding night. She’s being so...serious about it.”

  Behind the bridegroom’s mother and kinswomen came Karsinos. “Ah, there’s the blushing bride!” he exclaimed. “I’d kiss you, Dikte, but your aunts would kill me if I mussed your paint.”

  Lysandra insisted on inspecting not only Dikte’s raiment but her fingernails and behind her ears for filth. “Agathon isn’t going to bed a bride who doesn’t wash.” A grunt passed for satisfaction—at least Dikte assumed she was satisfied, because the woman did not order her to the basin to scrub again.

  At the door, Lysandra hesitated. “Remember, girl, his name is Agathon.” Her words trembled with a quaver of anxiety, as if she was imparting the most important message in the world, then, collecting herself, she harrumphed and was all business again.

  The ceremony took place at the bridegroom’s house on the extreme
outskirts of the village where Dikte never ventured. Grassy and windswept, a quarter-mile from the nearest house, it seemed so desolate. Raiders could attack, slaughter everyone, and no one else would know for days. Dikte suppressed a shiver of foreboding. Her kinsmen did not seem concerned about the arrangement, and she had to remind herself that it was only for a week or so, until Ephoros led them away.

  Dikte’s father had been with Tripodiskos’s kinsmen since dawn. They had propitiated the immortals, and the sacrificial goats were already roasting on spits and giving off a savory aroma when the bridal procession arrived. The groom’s party welcomed the women with good-natured ribaldry and the music of herdsmen’s pipes and drums. Dikte groaned inwardly when she realized that the men had started drinking early. Would Tripodiskos prove drunk and unruly, just like her neighbor the weaver’s husband whenever there was a festival?

  Thale grasped her wrist. “Look.”

  Noticing the chariots and a handful of men watching from a nearby hill, Dikte briefly forgot about Tripodiskos. Sometimes the king’s men disrupted weddings by demanding food and drink and a kiss from the bride. Dikte had heard gossip that they demanded other things, too, from people living farther out in the country, but she did not know whether the tales were true.

  Karsinos had his hand on his knife. “They’d better not cause trouble.”

  “Surely they wouldn’t harass the bull priest of Poseidon, would they?” Lysandra’s nervous query heightened Dikte’s own anxiety.

  Klymene sounded more optimistic. “They never have before.”

  The bridegroom’s kinswomen had woven garlands of poppies and other summer blooms in such abundance that anything that could be smothered with flowers was. “Ladies, don the blessings of the goddess!” Timaios, the groom’s father, slurred. The men went around crowning all the women but the bride.

  Ormesilas announced, “Let the bride meet her bridegroom!” Minus the leather apron in which he conducted sacrifices, he was wearing his priestly vestments; the blue band of his headdress was dark with perspiration. Dikte wondered if he had noticed the king’s men on the hill. Others kept turning their heads to see whether the chariots would approach, but Ormesilas appeared oblivious.

  Then her aunts were leading her forward to greet her bridegroom. Because she had scarcely eaten that morning, her stomach embarrassed her with its loud rumbling. Not that she feared being rejected by Tripodiskos—there was nothing at all wrong with her—but she was afraid the sight of his withered leg or the sweatiness of his hands or his body odor would be offensive and cause her to show her disgust. She had better breeding than to make a public spectacle, yet she knew she could only bear so much.

  Tripodiskos, wearing a wreath of scarlet, hobbled forward clutching a chaplet of pink and white. Music and clamor ceased. Dikte regretted the abrupt silence. All the guests were watching. They were judging her wedding attire and marking her expression. She should be glowing, ready to leap into her bridegroom’s arms. Dikte did not see how anyone could have known one way or the other through her paint.

  “Welcome, Dikte.” Tripodiskos had a deep, pleasing voice. Dikte managed a shy, upward glance that revealed a face framed by masses of curling black hair. He had a strong jaw and a straight nose, none of the hawkish severity of his mother. Yet because he needed one hand to hold his walking stick, he fumbled when trying to drape the wedding wreath over her head. So he was clumsy! Blushing, she kept her gaze demurely lowered, while debating whether she ought to assist him. Someone—she did not see who—helped arrange the flowers over her curls.

  When he took her hand to lead her to the makeshift altar where her elders awaited, Dikte was relieved to find that Tripodiskos’s skin was not as sweaty or as clammy as she had feared, and was even surprised to discover that his hold on her was firm rather than clumsy or crushing, as she had assumed a cripple’s grasp might be. Her father had said Tripodiskos had clever hands, able to work stone and wood to repair or fashion household implements, to shear goat hair and twist it into rope, and to do many other things that were useful. He did not smell bad that she could tell; he did not even reek of alcohol. Yet his hobbling gait, which she was obliged to accommodate by walking on his left hand, served as a stark reminder that her bridegroom was not and never would be a whole man.

  Dikte recognized the ceramic bull’s head rhyton in her aunt’s hands as part of the Labyrinth’s cult equipment. Klymene was doing her a singular honor, because she never removed that vessel from the shrine. Now she turned, and with her back to Dikte and Tripodiskos raised the rhyton over the makeshift altar where the sacrificial offering still smoldered. “Let Father Zeus and Mother Rhea witness this rite of marriage. You immortal gods, bless the joining of Agathon, son of Timaios, with Dikte, daughter of Ormesilas.” The embers sizzled as the libation of honeyed wine splashed the altar. “Grant them long life and fruitfulness together.”

  Once the gods were invoked and propitiated, Klymene switched the rhyton for a red ribbon to wind around the couple’s joined hands. “This ribbon represents the Thread of Life,” she intoned. “Each of you owns a thread, woven and measured by the Fates. In the act of marriage, your threads cross. They weave together in the making of children, and become stronger.

  “The red color is the blood of Life. Let your blood mingle. Become one flesh and become fruitful.”

  Dikte blushed harder when she heard that. The bedding rite was still to come. Would Tripodiskos be gentle or rough? Would she recoil from his body when his withered leg touched hers? And would the act hurt as much as some of the women warned it might? Earlier, her aunts had shown her how to moisten her inner thighs with olive oil to ease the way, but knowing that the blessings of womanhood were achieved mostly through pain and blood only added to her trepidation.

  Then bride and groom had oaths to exchange. In her unbound hand, Dikte took the wedding kylix her father passed to her and drank to her husband’s health. “Let Father Zeus and Mother Rhea witness my solemn oath to my husband Agathon. I, Dikte, daughter of Ormesilas, vow to be your faithful and fruitful wife. As the gods grant, let your joys become my joys, and your hardships become my hardships.” Then she faltered. What was the last part? She had attended other weddings; she ought to know. Tripodiskos’s brow creased with concern, and his mother looked even more anxious. Dikte swallowed while wracking her memory for the formula.

  Klymene prompted her with a whisper, “Let us dwell...”

  There it was! Now she remembered the rest. “Let us dwell together in harmony as husband and wife.”

  Tripodiskos needed a kinsman’s assistance to take his cane and support him while he performed the wedding toast. Was that a bad omen? If anyone was guilty of making an unfortunate omen, it was she.

  Yet Tripodiskos faltered, too. Ormesilas guided him through the vows when he stumbled, and he steadily gained confidence, meeting her gaze. Dikte reddened. Not from desire. The intensity of his look confused her. Did it mean he liked her? Could he pierce straight through her and see everything she thought about him? Then he would know that she considered him plain and disgusting. Or did she? She wanted to tear herself loose from the bridal bond and run away and hide until she could sort out her feelings.

  Klymene unwound the ribbon to release them, but Dikte stayed rooted. Would Tripodiskos try to kiss her? After the vows, the bride and groom usually kissed. Tripodiskos made no attempt to touch her, or even to speak to her. Was he simply nervous, or was his reticence a sign that he disliked her?

  The wedding guests surged forward to bestow felicitations on the couple and to urge them toward the house to consummate the union. Though Dikte knew what to expect from having observed other weddings, now that it was her turn she found the reality a far harsher thing. Hands grasped and pulled her, jostling, denying her the dignity of walking to her husband’s house of her own accord. Something snagged her hair. Her chaplet vanished. Glancing around, all she saw were faces with yawning mouths. All she smelled was too much wine and the reek of sweat. She wished
she could plug her ears. Her kinsmen’s vulgarisms about her untried maidenhead and her bridegroom’s member unsettled her more than she expected they would.

  Where was Tripodiskos? She lost sight of him. Panic threatened to overwhelm her. “Stop!” she cried. “You’re hurting me!” If she lost her footing she would be trampled. The ultimate bad omen: a dead bride. She screamed. Someone grabbed her arm, thrust her squirming into the dimness of the house, and shut the door after.

  As she strove to regain equilibrium, she realized that she was not alone. Tripodiskos stood a few feet away. His wreath hung askew and he looked as flustered as she did. She avoided looking at his leg, but the brief glimpse she had told her that his withered limb was hidden behind bindings of scarlet cloth.

  Dikte held her breath as she waited for him to move toward her, to manhandle her as she had feared he might, yet nothing happened. An abashed Tripodiskos kept glancing around, his focus on everything but her. “I’m sorry they were so rough.”

  “My clothes are torn.” Dikte worried over a rip in her priestess’s overskirt. She had spent hours attaching that fringe of blue and yellow-dyed goat hair, being careful to tack it down and not snarl it while plying her needle. Of course, she knew, that had nothing to do with anything at that moment. She knew she was delaying the inevitable, as was he.

  Tripodiskos seized upon the excuse to hobble forward and make a show of examining the tear, even though she knew he had no interest in her clothing. “I’m sure it can be mended,” he assured her. Then he hesitated. “Uh, maybe we should go over to the bed.”

  He showed her his sleeping place, a straw mattress just wide enough for two to cram together; it had been piled with clean but worn fleeces that did not look particularly inviting in the close warmth of the house. Garlands covered the packed earth floor around the bed and hung from the rafters above.