Claiming Ariadne (11 page)

Had Taranos come knocking on her door with a similar, frantic plea, Ariadne wondered whether she would trust him enough to put her hand in his and forsake all she knew to escape with him. Her great-grandmother, she decided, was a very brave woman.

Iphame continued, “There’s high ground above Malia. It took us half a day to reach it—running, walking, stumbling breathless in the ashen air. It was so hot and muggy, even though the sun never really came out, it was such hard going. Whenever I wanted to stop, whenever I pleaded with Admaios, he always urged me on. So up we went, climbing the goat path, when we heard the roar. Oh, this was thunder, but not of Zeus’s making. Poseidon shook the ground under us, but above that rumble there was something else, something so ominous and yet familiar, I didn’t know what it was except that it frightened me. Then Admaios seized me by the arm, he spun me about and pointed—there!

“On a clear day, you can see for many miles across the sea. Ash misted the air. An eerie gray twilight settled on the land, but I saw enough. Malia lay below us, with its narrow streets and houses and palace. Rooftops were blanketed with soft, fine ash like snow. Everything was gray. You could no longer see the pretty washes the people used to color the plaster. Out in the harbor I saw the ships—oh, they looked so tiny! But then, the most curious thing caught my eye. All those ships listed to one side, because, you see, the sea had pulled back. I don’t know how far, just that I saw a long stretch of exposed seabed, as though Poseidon had drawn up the waters like a blanket.

“I was wondering at that when—oh, gods, Ariadne, you have no idea at the sudden terror I felt, realizing what was happening! Where the sea pulled back, it rolled in again, one long, great, terrible wave that kept coming and coming. It swallowed the waterfront, but it didn’t stop there. Waves barreled down those narrow streets, crashed right over the tops of houses three and four stories high, and everywhere people who heard the roar and came out to see were running, running to save their lives, but you can’t outrun Poseidon when he’s angry. The foaming sea smashed into them, knocked them down, and just swept them along.”

Ariadne listened spellbound and blinked when she realized her mouth hung agape. She knew about the devastation that struck the northern coast that awful day and night when Kalliste died; it was a tale told in the nursery to frighten the younger children. She knew about the long years of darkness and famine afterward. At Knossos, no one was allowed to forget. Poseidon must be kept placated. Even the faceless Theran goddess, Qe-ra-sija, had a small shrine in his precinct, and her offering bowls were replenished daily with wine, olive oil, or pumice stones.

“I screamed,” said Iphame. “I wailed and tore my hair. My mother, my father, my siblings—they were all gone in an instant. I would have run back down the hill, for all the good it would have done, but Admaios held me back. He knew the sea wasn’t finished yet. Waves surged past the town to drown the fields and vineyards, it plowed into the sanctuaries and caught the priests who tried too late to run, and it came toward us. Admaios pulled me along and we ran, stumbling and slipping in our haste until we reached the highest ground. Behind us, we heard the god’s roar, we smelled the rushing sea, and we thought, now we’re done for, there’s nowhere else to go.

“But the sea never came for us. Just as we found a little hollow to shelter in, the waters receded. How long we stayed there, shivering and terrified, I don’t know. Some goatherds found us. They showed us a hut they used when they drove their goats up to higher pasture. They gave us food and built a fire, for the night was so dark there was neither moon nor stars, and when daybreak came—such as it was—we ventured down with them.

“Oh, it was horrible, the destruction we saw. Complete and utter ruin. On the very slopes we’d climbed, we saw a ship lying broken like a child’s toy, snapped in half, its hull smashed. Huge stones littered the ground—the sea had scooped them up as easily as pebbles, when they were the blocks of great buildings. We saw broken
pithoi
and cups and plates, bits of furniture, and bodies everywhere. We searched among the dead but found no one we recognized, they were so battered. We wanted to bury them, but the goatherds refused to stay and help us. Malia was an evil place now. They said the sea would come back. Better to go inland, they said, or go west to Knossos, so we gathered up anything of value we found, took what little food we had, and went west.”

“Did you stay with Admaios?” asked Ariadne. For if Minos Rasuros was her great-grandfather as her mother claimed, something must have separated Iphame from her young lover.

Iphame continued, “Yes, we traveled together. Knossos was damaged a little from the shaking. I’m sure others told you it was destroyed and had to be rebuilt, but that was later. When we arrived, it was already crowded with refugees from Katsambas and Amnissos, but somehow Admaios found us a place in the town below the palace. He went to work as a carpenter and I helped the women cook and clean for hundreds—no, thousands—and in the evenings we told our hosts stories from Kalliste.

“Perhaps Admaios told the story of our escape too well, or perhaps it was something else that marked us out as ones to watch, but it wasn’t long before the king noticed me. I was a pretty girl. Not as beautiful as you, Ariadne, but pretty enough. Minos Rasuros was a lustful and greedy man. He kept many beautiful women in addition to his queen. Now he wanted a girl from the land Poseidon destroyed.

“The wisest thing to do, of course, would have been to go to him and submit until he tired of me. We would have eaten better, and perhaps there would have been gifts. But when you’re young and in love with someone else, you become foolish. Admaios and I planned to marry once times were better, and we both objected when the summons came.

“For a time, the king left us alone. Starvation and disease took many the sea did not. At Knossos, there would have been stores enough to last two years, had there not been so many extra mouths to feed. When spring came, it still felt like winter, and the ground still trembled. So the priests of Poseidon went to the king and said there must be a special sacrifice. Or perhaps he suggested it to them—I never learned which.”

Ariadne sat frozen, not daring even to breathe. Her fingernails bit crescent moons into her palms as Iphame spoke again. “Even the Minos knew better than to suggest a name outright. But he must have dropped hints, or someone among the priests knew his mind and chose for him. One morning the priests came with armed men and took Admaios away, tore him right out of my arms as we lay in bed together. Then more armed men took me away.”

Iphame offered a sad smile. “Later I heard the priests told the people that Admaios was special, that he had a gift—oh, he never should have mentioned the warning he had from Poseidon! He was young and handsome, they said, so he would please the god. I never learned exactly when or how he died, or where he was buried. I never saw him again.

“By then, I was the king’s woman. That very first night he had me. He came and laid hands on me and made no effort to be kind. I thought I would die from misery—you see how everything is much worse when you’re young? I moved from the town into the palace, into rooms above the Western Court. The Minos kept his girls there, away from the queen. Thank the gods for that! Pasiphaë was such a sharp-tongued harpy! We had good food to eat, though not much of it, and pretty clothes to wear, and we were given only light work to do. And within a month, I was pregnant.”

Which man was the father? It could have been either one, decided Ariadne, and even her great-grandmother might not be sure. “Was it…?”

Iphame passed over the question. “Finally, the earthquake came, the great one that destroyed the palace. I survived by jumping from a second story veranda onto the Western Court. Oh, I broke my ankle in the fall, but that was small compared to what befell the girls who stayed behind. Some burnt to death when the oil lamps tipped over and caught. Others were crushed, like Pasiphaë in her pretty apartments.

“I stayed on at Knossos because it never occurred to me to escape. Where else would I have gone? I helped clear the rubble and prepare food for the priests and workers, and when my time came I gave birth in the sanctuary of Eleuthia. It was a hard birth. I was weak, and Meri was so small and frail I thought she might die. There was so little to eat by the time she was born, I had to give her to other women to nurse. In those days, we ate anything and everything edible, from snails and boiled leather to things it’s just better not to mention.”

Ariadne saw Iphame swallow hard. What came next didn’t surprise her because her childhood nurse had frightened her with such tales. “Minos Rasuros began ordering us to eat the corpses of the dead. By then, we’d already been doing it. We had no choice, truly we didn’t, but we took precautions to avoid offending the gods or the shades of the dead, and we made certain no one consumed their own kin.”

Tears spilled from her eyes; she brusquely wiped them aside. “The Minos came with his men. He forced his way into houses and took only the children. Tribute, he said, to make up for the measures of wheat, wine, and olive oil the people couldn’t pay.

“I don’t know how many there were. I never saw them. I only know they were taken down into the passages near the Pillar Crypt and butchered. Many say their bones are still there. Mothers still tell that story here to terrify their unruly children. They say wicked old Minos will come eat them, but sometimes the truth is more horrifying than any story. To this day, I shudder to remember. When we saw the blood on the horns of consecration, we knew it didn’t come from any bull. We thought we heard the children’s screams at night. We thought we saw their shades staring out at us from the shadows, asking why, why had we done this?

“That was the end. The families of the children Rasuros took decided they’d had enough. They gathered followers who feared their children would be next, who were terrified the Goddess would curse the land still further and twist their unborn babies in the womb. The Minos was supposed to respect the gods and protect his people. Instead, he profaned the god’s worship.

“So the people stormed through the town and set fire to the Little Palace where the Minos went to live after the quake. What they did there was just as evil as anything he did to them. They butchered everyone, young and old, except for the daughter who betrayed his hiding place. They beat him with rods and hauled him up to the palace. They dragged in the corpses of his youngest children and dismembered them before his eyes. I saw them down in the Western Court. They started to roast the meat on the god’s altar while he howled in anguish. I couldn’t watch after that. I was so frightened they would come for Meri that I took her from the nursery and fled with her down, down into the great empty storerooms under the workshops and climbed into one of the
pithoi
. I don’t know how long I stayed there, listening for them, waiting for the god’s anger to bring down the roof and kill us all. Meri’s crying brought a temple servant who told me it was safe to come out.”

Though she strove to contain it, Ariadne felt her nausea returning. Everyone knew how this grisly tale ended.

Iphame noticed her pallor. “There’s a jar in the next room, girl.”

“No, finish the story, Great-grandmother.”

“The woman told me how Minos Rasuros died. The people dragged out the High Priest of Poseidon, but when he refused to make the sacrifice, when he cried sacrilege,
they
seized the
labrys
and hacked off the Minos’s head. Then the people chose a new king.

“I don’t remember very much about that Minos, except that he was a very pious, soft-spoken man. When he learned from the priestesses who I was, and how I’d been taken, he decided it offended the gods, and that I must be treated with great care. Once Meri was weaned, he gave me this house and the land, and over the years he made sure we prospered. Meri joined the novices of Eleuthia when she was old enough. Everyone believed she was Minos Rasuros’s daughter.”

Now came time to ask the question that begged an answer. “
Was
she the king’s daughter?”

“Meri was so bright, so gentle, so much like Admaios,” Iphame said wistfully. “But then I look at your mother—so cold, so loveless—and I see Rasuros there.”

In a heartbeat the spell passed. Iphame smacked dry lips and reached for her cup. “Girl, you haven’t touched anything I put before you.”

Ariadne looked at the bread and cheese. Taranos had finished off all the olives. “I’m not sure I could eat now.”

“Nonsense, girl! You have to stay strong for your baby.” Iphame tore a piece of flat bread in half and pressed it on her. “Here, eat this, and never mind about what I told you. It all happened long ago.”

Ariadne obediently nibbled at the sourdough. Even with a woman to cook and launder, Iphame still prepared most of her own meals. Somehow, knowing that her great-grandmother made this bread just for her made the food go down better. As she ate and drank a little watered wine, she became aware of a warm weight: Taranos’s large hand, resting comfortably on her thigh.