The streets lacked sidewalks; closely packed buildings hemmed them in between walls or booths. But they were wide, reasonably straight, paved with well-dressed stone. A market square displayed a stunning mosaic of octopus and lilies; at its center splashed a fountain, where children played under the eyes of mothers or nurses. The outdoor cleanliness was due to a sophisticated drainage and refuse disposal system. The workaday bustle recalled that of Athens but was somehow more orderly, easygoing, and happy. And it included sights unknown among those Achaeans who had not adopted Cretan civilization—shops offering wares from as far as Britain, Spain, Ethiopia, or India; public scribes; an architect sketching on papyrus his rendering of a proposed house; a school letting out, boys and girls together carrying styluses and waxed tablets for their homework and not appearing to be exclusively children of the rich, either; a blind lyrist playing and singing, his bowl at his feet for donations of food
“Like rainstorms on an autumn sea, Sun-stabbed by spears of brazen light, Your whirlwind love nigh capsized me. Like rainstorms on an autumn sea, You’ve left a gentle memory.
Come back and whip the billows white Like rainstorms on an autumn sea, Sun-stabbed by spears of brazen light!”
The harbormaster’s house was large enough to require two patios for ventilation. Its rooms were decorated with ..escos of animals, plants; waves in the lively and naturalistic Cretan style. Floors were pebbled cement covered by mats; you removed footgear before entering. Pamela would have admired the furniture: wooden chests, bedsteads, and chairs; round-topped stone tables; lamps, jars, braziers of different sizes and shapes. The workmanship was exquisite, the colors pleasing. A niche held a terra-cotta image of the Goddess in Her aspect of Rhea the Mother. The entire family washed themselves, knelt, and asked Her blessing before dinner.
After Aegeus’ board, Reid rejoiced in well-prepared seafood, vegetables, wheat bread, goat cheese, honeycake for dessert, an excellent wine. The conversation was that of a civilized host, especially interested in astronomy and natural history, who didn’t mind letting his wife and their offspring join in. No one got drunk and no slave girls waited in the guest chambers. (In fact, while slaves were common elsewhere in the Thalassocracy, they were forbidden to be brought to holy Atlantis. There a servant was usually the daughter of poor parents, paid in food, lodging, and an eventual dowry.)
Lying in a bed too small, Reid wondered how the Kefiiu, preservers of law and peace, carriers of a trade that brought prosperity to every realm it touched, clean, friendly, mannerly, learned, gifted, totally human, would come to be remembered for a man-devouring monster in horrible corridors. Well, he thought, the victors write the chonicles, eventually the legends.
He opened his eyes. For the sake of fresh air, he’d left the door to the adjoining courtyard open. The night was clear, murmurous, frosted with stars. But up across them reared the black mass of the volcano; and it had begun to smoke.
Lydra, the Ariadne of Atlantis, touched Reid’s brow. “In the name of the Goddess and Asterion, blessings.” Her formal words were flattened out by the wariness that looked from her eyes.
He bowed. “Forgive an outlander, my lady, if he does not know what is proper behavior,” he said awkwardly.
Silence fell and continued in that long dim room. At its southern end, the door giving on a light well was closed against rain. Opposite gaped darkness, a hallway leading deeper into the maze of the palace-temple. A mural on the south side showed Her three aspects together, Maiden, Mother,, and Hag. On the north side, human figures who had the heads and wings of eagles escorted the dead to judgment. The pictures had all the Cretan realism, none of the Cretan joyfulness. By flickering lamplight, they seemed to stir. Smoke from bronze braziers curled before them, sweetened by sandalwood but stinging nostrils in this bleak air.
“Well.” The high priestess, sought her cushioned marble throne. “Be seated if you wish.”
Reid took a stool beneath her. What next? he wondered. Yesterday he and Diores had been received with ritual courtesy. Afterward a pair of consecrates gave the American a guided tour of the publicly showable areas while the Athenian and the Ariadne were closeted alone for hours. That evening, back at the harbormaster’s house, Diores was evasive: “—Oh, she wanted the gossip from our parts. And I had orders to ask about getting the Temple’s help toward liberalizing the treaty—like letting us keep more watercraft for protecting our interests in the Euxine where the Cretans don’t patrol—you know. She’ll see you in private tomorrow. Now have another cupful, if our host’ll be that kind, and simmer down.”
Reid studied her as carefully as he dared. Lydra was in her later thirties, he’d been told: tall, stiffly erect, slender on the verge of gauntness. Her face, likewise lean, bore blue-gray eyes, arching nose, severely held mouth, strong chin. The brown hair had started to fade, the breasts to sag, though she kept part of the bull-dancer physique from her youth. She wore the full farthingale, the high brimless hat, the golden snake bracelets seen upon images of Rhea. A blue cloak was thrown over her shoulders. Reid felt like a barbarian in his Achaean tunic and beard.
Or was his unease because he distrusted her? He’d found a chance to tell Erissa: “A story persisted to my day that ... an Ariadne ... helped Theseus slay the Minotaur. What could be the truth behind it?”
Erissa had shrugged. “I heard—will hear—rumors that he and she were in conspiracy. But the only clear fact is that after the disaster she joined him in conducting sacrifice and later she departed in his ship. Well, what choice had she? He needed her to cast some thin legitimacy over his conquest of Knossos, and had the strength to compel her. She never reached Athens. He left her and her attendants on the island of Naxos. There, despairing, they gave up the pure faith and turned to a mystery cult. If anything, does such treatment not show that no bargain existed, that she was—is, will be—innocent?”
“But, well, I hear Theseus has been on Atlantis more than once, and messages often travel back and forth.”
Erissa had uttered a sad small laugh. “Why should he not cultivate the spiritual head of the Thalassocracy? She did have a Kalydonian grandfather. But fear not her ever serving in earnest a worldly cause. Her maidenhead was scarcely fledged when she had a revelation in the cave of Mount Iouktas. Since, she’s always called herself a bride of Asterion. After her bull-dancing days, she took the vows of a priestess—among them celibacy, remember—and served so devotedly that she was elated to regnancy over the Temple at the lowest age on record. I well recall her austerities. her strict enforcement of every observance, her lectures to us lay sisters about our vanities, levities, and laxities.” Seriously: “What you must do is convince her you are an agent of good, not evil; and that may not be easy, Duncan, darling.”
Right, he now thought, gazing into the implacable countenance.
“These are grave matters, touching on secrets that the gods withhold from mortals,” Lydra said. “And I do not mean things like your fire-spouter, or the iron and the horse riding that Diores spoke of. Those are simple human works. The moon-disk you bear on your arm, however—”
He had demonstrated his wristwatch yesterday and noticed how awed the attendant votaresses were. Though folk used sun and stars to mark off units as small as hours, these blades which busily scissored away each successive instant were too reminding of Dictynna the Gatherer.
He saw an opportunity. “Besides a timepiece, my lady, it’s an amulet which confers certain prophetic powers. I’d planned on giving it to the Minos, but maybe the proper repository is here.” He took it off and laid it in her hand, which closed almost convulsively around it. “The oracle did not come to us outlanders by chance. I can foresee terrible dangers. My mission is to warn your people. I dared not tell the Athenians.”