Claiming Ariadne
Laura Gill
Published by Phaze Books
By Laura Gill
Claiming Ariadne
Honey Eater
This is an explicit and erotic novel
intended for the enjoyment
of adult readers. Please keep
out of the hands of children.
www.Phaze.com
Claiming Ariadne
Copyright © 2010 by Laura Gill
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Edited by Paul Hudson
Cover Art © 2010 by Deborah Ann Lewis
First Edition February 2010
ISBN-13: 978-1-60659-973-0
Published by:
Phaze Books
An imprint of Mundania Press LLC
6470A Glenway Ave., #109
Cincinnati, OH 45211
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, Mundania Press LLC, 6470A Glenway Avenue, #109, Cincinnati, Ohio 45211, books@mundania.com.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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Author’s Note:
The Late Bronze Age Aegean world described in this novel should not be confused with Classical Greek civilization; they are separated by a thousand years. Homer readers may recognize certain artifacts and customs, such as boar-tusk helmets and the pouring of libations, as straight out of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Other customs will be completely unfamiliar. Contrary to popular opinion, the Minoans were not Greek but Anatolian in origin and speech, and their religious customs are based on contemporary Near Eastern evidence.
Knossos presents a challenge to any writer wanting to set a story there. A complex site, truly labyrinth with its many levels, antechambers, and storerooms, it seems to have functioned more like a temple complex and monastery than a true palace. I based my interpretation on several reliable sources, including Sir Arthur Evans’s early reconstructions and more recent work.
The Sacred King mentioned in the story is based off the famous Prince of the Lilies fresco.
Poseidon, not Zeus, was the preeminent god of the Aegean Bronze Age. Quite often, the two gods were interchangeable.
Archaeologists have dated the Thera eruption to a period between 1628 BCE and 1500 BCE. Carbon dating of deposits found on Santorini and in northern Crete give a date around 1600 BCE. On the other hand, pottery remains, dated according to well-established Near Eastern chronologies, give a date around 1520-1500 BCE. I chose a date around 1510 BCE.
Readers of The Iliad will recognize the name Idomeneus. Since this novel is set two hundred years before the Trojan War, this is not the same Idomeneus who led eighty black ships to Troy, but a hypothetical ancestor.
Dramatis Personae
Knossos:
Agrias: a guard
Aktaios: a senior priest of Poseidon.
Amaja: a novice in the House of the Great Mother.
Aranare: chief scribe.
Ariadne: High Priestess of the Great Mother.
Dicte: queen and wife of Minos Echmedes.
Duripi: a charioteer.
Echmedes: the king
Elaphos: a junior priest of Poseidon.
Erika: a senior priestess of the Great Mother.
Iphis: Kitanetos’s mother. Deceased.
Iros: a male bull-leaper.
Kanako: the previous High Priestess of the Great Mother. Deceased.
Kitaja: a junior priestess of Hera.
Kitanetos: the High Priest of Poseidon.
Lasos: a male bull-leaper.
Meri: a priestess of Eleuthia, the daughter of Iphame. Deceased.
Nopina: a senior priestess of the Great Mother.
Onome: a senior priestess of Hera.
Pasiphaë: queen and wife of Minos Rasuros.
Pelinos: the previous year’s Sacred King.
Pemo: a senior priestess of the Great Mother.
Potinia: High Priestess of the Snake Goddess. Ariadne’s mother.
Rasuros: former king, great-uncle of Minos Echmedes.
Samo: a serving woman in the House of the Great Mother.
Sasara: Ariadne’s older daughter, now six.
Sasi: a novice in the House of the Great Mother.
Sinon: a senior priest of Zeus.
Sopata: a novice in the House of the Great Mother.
Thuriatris: High Priestess of Eleuthia.
Tukate: a novice in the House of the Great Mother.
Archanes:
Admaios: lover of the young Iphame.
Aja: a local woman.
Iphame: great-grandmother of Ariadne.
Kujara: the town midwife.
Kuparo: one of Iphame’s farmhands.
Orestas: one of Iphame’s farmhands.
Pakowa: the town priestess.
Sera: Iphame’s serving woman, mother of Tarato.
Tarato: Iphame’s servant and errand boy.
Katsambas:
Akuro: an older woman, the widow of Poros.
Erawa: a local woman, older sister of Meri.
Imena: a local woman.
Kanako: the eight-year-old daughter of Akuro and Poros.
Kitane: a local woman.
Meri: a local girl, younger sister of Erawa.
Poros: a fisherman, husband of Akuro.
Sasara: a local woman.
The Achaeans:
Alektryon: the king of Mycenae.
Amphimedes: a sentry.
Argurios: an Achaean warrior.
Augeas: an Achaean assigned sentry duty at Knossos.
Ekhinos: a captain.
Glaukos: an Achaean warrior.
Idomeneus: prince of Tiryns. Leader of the Achaean fleet.
Kerkios: Taranos’s sixteen-year-old bastard son by Pylia.
Klymenos: an Achaean assigned sentry duty at Knossos.
Kretheus: prince of Tiryns, father of Taranos.
Philaretos: a captain.
Pylia: a slave woman, mother of Kerkios. Deceased.
Taranos: prince of Tiryns, younger son of Kretheus.
Tros: an Achaean warrior.
Chapter One
Ariadne rose at dawn to prepare for her marriage, as she had done each spring for the last seven years.
One at a time, her ornaments emerged from the ivory trinket box: golden hoops, glass paste beads in shades of turquoise and indigo, rosettes on delicate chains, carnelians and amethysts the size of lentils, agate bangles, and diadems. Her handmaiden laid out the glittering display. “Which ones will you have today, Mistress?”
Ariadne allowed the novice priestess to choose. Amaja had much better taste than she did.
Another novice painted her face, laying down a chalky foundation of white lead oxide before outlining her brown eyes with smoky galena and kohl. Sopata used ochre mixed with goose fat to stain her lips pomegranate red, and with the rounded end of a stick she dotted suns on Ariadne’s cheeks, brow, and chin.
Seeing her wavering reflection in the mirror Sasi held for her, Ariadne nodded at the result. With her chalk-white face, she looked like a goddess in a shrine. Little remained of the nineteen-year old woman she was.
She looked like a High Priestess. “Yes, that will do.”
Ariadne only wished the woman under the regal mask exuded such calm. After seven years, she ought to be accustomed to it, yet her heart beat wildly in her chest, forcing her to take deep breaths. Last night, she’d hardly slept at all. Today she would either renew her union with her current consort, or send him to the Underworld and take a new consort, a complete stranger, into her bed. Either way, the prospect filled her with apprehension.
“Do you think it will be Pelinos again this year, Mistress?” Sopata asked.
Seeing their mistress frown at the interruption, the other novices hastened to hush the girl. “Only the gods can say for certain,” Ariadne said. “Come, finish my hair and put on my jewels. Everyone is waiting.”
A fourth novice coiled Ariadne’s long black hair into ringlets and fixed a golden diadem across her brow. Sopata dabbed her throat and wrists with costly oil of iris. Amaja looped strands of gold rosettes and carnelians about her neck; they felt cool against skin bared by her ritual open bodice. For this occasion, Ariadne would walk as a goddess among the worshippers, her naked breasts glistening with olive oil and still firm even after four pregnancies.
Sasi held up the polished bronze mirror again. “How do you like it, Mistress?”
Ariadne appraised the image one last time before rising from her chair. Her blue and yellow flounced skirts glittered with gold appliqués. She sucked in a breath at how tightly Sopata had cinched her girdle while dressing her. At least this year she wasn’t recovering from childbirth. “Tell the priestesses I am ready.”
But the priestesses, stationed by her door since dawn, already knew. Clapping their hands, they called for her to come out: the mourning Goddess pining for her slain consort, the Maiden Bride about to enter into the sacred mysteries of the Great Marriage, and the Mother who brought forth life.
From her chamber in the House of the Great Mother, she, her handmaidens, and her most senior priestesses made the short walk to the Shrine of the Labrys. Their ornaments sparkled and chimed as they walked, and they exuded a cloud of costly fragrance as they passed.
Inside the sanctuary, assembled by Poseidon’s horned altar, all sixteen priests wore full regalia: blue fringed cloth wrapped around pristine white gowns. Garlands draped the altar and the god’s cult image. Long ago, the Great Bull had come up from the sea near Amnissos and lay with Europa, the first High Priestess of Knossos. From that union had come the Minos, the king, and untold blessings upon Crete. And each year thereafter, the god sent a young man to wed and bed the High Priestess, and spill his blood for Mother Crete.
The High Priest of Poseidon bowed deeply to the High Priestess and her attendants before yielding the right of precedence.
As she took her place at the head of the procession, Ariadne acknowledged the sacred double-headed axe Kitanetos carried. Today, the labrys would bite into human flesh. Today, the horns of consecration upon the altar would drink deeply of a year-king’s blood.
She would watch the sacred combat on a porch garlanded with blossoms and colored ribbons. All around, on steps, rooftops and porches surrounding the vast Central Court, Knossos had gathered to mark the vernal equinox. Elsewhere, in the Western Court and below the palace, thousands waited to receive the year-king’s blessing.
Two men stood alone in the sacred space, floored with sand brought up from the coast. Ariadne avoided looking at them, Sacred King and sacred challenger. Their faces, their bodies, their names meant nothing to her: the Sacred King was an ideal, an embodiment of the Great Mother’s young lover, not a real man, not her legal husband. Over the years, Ariadne had heeded the advice given to her: receive the young men who won the right to bed her, but do nothing more. Spread her legs and conceive, but withhold a woman’s love. Never become attached to a year-king doomed to die.
An early spring chill clung to the air. In her open bodice, Ariadne shivered. Her hennaed nipples hardened into pebbles. It still felt like winter.
At last, she had to acknowledge the two men. Pelinos was willowy and fair, his first beard fuzzing his cheeks. For two years he had worn the Sacred King’s crown of lilies and peacock feathers. He had spent two years at the High Priestess’s side and fathered a child with her, but from the moment Ariadne stepped onto the porch and saw his opponent, she knew there wouldn’t be a third year or a second child with him.
Pelinos was going to die. As with every consort she sent to the Underworld, Ariadne wished she had liked him better.
Tall and dark-haired, with a closely trimmed beard and broad shoulders, the sacred challenger was much older than she expected. Most men who challenged the Sacred King for the right to bed the High Priestess were young. Pelinos was now eighteen—a mere boy compared with the man facing him. Ariadne couldn’t judge the sacred challenger’s age, except to guess he must be at least thirty. She could only trace the pink scars standing out against the sun-browned flesh of his arms and torso, and know this was a man who’d been in battle many, many times before.
When had the priests ever chosen a warrior?
She neither had time to reflect, nor to turn to the High Priest and ask. All Knossos awaited her with an anticipatory hush.
Lifting her arms, she spoke, and her words echoed throughout the courtyard. “Great Mother Rea, I am your most holy High Priestess. Today, I take the consort that you and Poseidon choose for me, and send his rival to the Underworld as a sacrifice. Gaze upon these two men who come to compete for your favor.”
Beside her, silver-haired Kitanetos raised the labrys so it glinted in the sunlight. “Honor the god with blood!” he called. “Nourish Mother Crete!”
There were no rules, except that one man must die. Each was armed with a dagger and his fists, but the method of death didn’t matter as long as blood was spilled.
Pelinos made the first move, lunging in and sweeping with his dagger through the empty air where his opponent’s belly had been. Seeming hardly to move, the man inched back; his abdominal muscles rippled as he sucked them in.
At this, Pelinos hesitated, then paced a wary circle around the man, who circled with him. Pelinos waited, and then lunged in as the man appeared to move to the right. A clever feint. Instead, the man jerked to the left and kicked Pelinos to the ground with a sudden leg sweep. Pelinos landed heavily on his right side. The dagger went flying.
A perfect moment to tackle an opponent and stab him, but the man didn’t oblige. As a dusty Pelinos scrambled for the dagger and struggled to his feet, the man watched with his hands firmly planted on his hips.
Ariadne narrowed her eyes. She’d never seen a man show off during sacred combat as thoroughly as this one did. Why did he just stand there and let Pelinos retrieve his weapon? Why didn’t he just end it? Laughter, mingled with a slight undercurrent of impatience, erupted from the audience. A few catcalls, directed at both Pelinos and his reticent opponent, swiftly subsided.
“He’s getting angry,” Kitanetos quietly observed.
Ariadne had no doubt whom the High Priest meant. Pelinos, red-faced and breathing hard, began shouting curses at the other man who merely stood his ground and smiled. His bovine indifference reminded Ariadne of the idiots who sometimes performed menial tasks in the temple workshops, and for a moment she experienced a twinge of fear that the priests had chosen just such a man for the ritual.
When he saw the man wouldn’t fight him, Pelinos dipped, scooped up a handful of sand, and flung it toward his face. The man sidestepped the throw at the last second so that the grains showered off his elbow. The mild disinterest melted from his strong, square-jawed face like a mask. Anger steeled his gaze, his jaw clenched, and his lips curled back in a feral grin: the mask of a warrior who’d been toying with his younger, inexperienced opponent and was now about to end the game.