It had been freshly oiled, and opened silently. There were wooden steps below, and a far dim lamplight shining through them. They went down deep. There were smells of grain and oil and wax, and a cold smell of earth.
I went down a few steps, and looked round below me, and saw great store jars standing, taller than men. The clay was worked in handles all about them, so that they could be moved; in the half dark these looked like ears and fingers. I waited for my guide; she leant down, and spoke in my ear. “Go to that column there, beyond the grain jars. A thread is tied about it. Take the thread in your hand, and follow where it leads you. Keep hold of it, and you will not come to harm. If you stray into the treasure vaults, the guards will kill you.”
“Why are you leaving me?” I said, and took her wrist to keep her. I did not like it; it had a smell of treachery and ambush. She said proudly and angrily, “You have my oath. Neither I nor those who sent me are used to be forsworn. Let be; you hurt me: you had best be more civil, where you are going.” Her anger rang true, and I set her free. She said, with a bitterness aimed beyond me, “Here my errand ends; to know the rest does not concern me. So I am commanded.”
I went down the steps, and heard the trap close softly. Around me every way stretched the vaults of the Labyrinth; long pillared passages lined with bins, or shelves for jars and boxes; crooked hooks full of clay-sealed vases with painted sides; tunnels with bays set back for casks and chests; a maze of dim caves, stoppered with darkness. A great gray cat leaped past me, something fell clattering, and a rat gave its furious death-squeal.
I went round the grain jars, of which each could have held two “men standing, and found the pillar. It had a ledge with a little lamp, a twist of wick in a scoop of clay. Joined to the dressed stone was an offering bowl, smelling of old blood. Black stains with feathers stuck in them ran down to the floor and a shallow drain. It was one of those master-pillars of the house, at which the Cretans offer sacrifice, to strengthen them when the Earth Bull shakes the ground.
The thin cord round it had been tied there lately, for it was clean of blood. When I picked up the slack from the pavement, a house snake went whipping into its pierced clay pot, not a yard from my hand. I started back with gooseflesh on my arms; but I had the cord, and followed it.
It led winding through dark narrow storerooms, smelling of wine and oil, of figs and spices. Every so often, at a turn, there would hang on the black dark a little seed of light, from such a lamp as the first, beckoning the way rather than showing it. As I groped round a pillar, a strange harsh cry, low down, made my hair rise. In the moist floor an old well smelled dankly; a great frog sat on its coping, pale as a corpse. Then the way narrowed, and either side I touched rough stone walls, where creeping things scurried from my fingers. And as I paused, I heard from within the wall a muffled beating, uneven like a heart in terror; when I laid my ear upon the stone, faint and deep a voice was cursing and shouting, calling for light, and upon the gods. But only a few feet on I could hear it no more; the prison must have been a good way off.
Next I found a great place full of crooked shadows, where old furniture was stored, lamp-stands and vases. A long arm of it stretched away into the dark; but peering down it, I could just see piles of dusty shields and spears. Then I was sorry I had not marked my way; and working out a flake from the nearest pillar, I scratched on it the trident sign of Poseidon. After that I marked each one I passed.
From there the thread led into a passage all in darkness, where I could only feel my way along the walls. My face tickled with cobwebs, and a rat ran over my foot. I thought of snakes, and trod delicately. This passage sloped upward, and the air felt warmer. At the end was another lamp, and a great room of archives: shelves of scrolls rustling with mice; moldy rolls of ancient leather; bundles of palm leaves inked with faded signs; chests and baskets full of clay tokens and tablets. The dust made me sneeze, and the mice went scampering.
Then after a narrow place again there was a light. I came into a long chamber that was a storehouse for sacred things. There were tripods and bowls, anointing vases with wide bases and narrow necks; libation cups with breasts sculpted on their sides; sacred axes and masks and knives of sacrifice; and a great stack of dolls with jointed limbs. The thread wound about, round piles of incense-stands, and emblems on long poles, and a gilded death-car such as princes are wheeled on into their tombs. It passed a tall press, bulging open with women’s vestments, gold-crusted and smelling of cassia. Then there were stone steps leading upward, and a door ajar. The end of the thread was tied to its handle.
I pushed the door, which opened without a whisper. Now there was tall space all about me, and a clean floor below. I smelled scented oil, beeswax, incense, spiced wine, and burnished bronze. A great shape reared before me, dark against glimmering lamplight; the back of a woman ten feet high, standing on a plinth and crowned with a diadem. It was the Goddess of the great sanctuary, where the nobles had bid for our dedication when first we came. But now I stood behind her, in the hidden place.
Then I saw that within her shadow another stood, smaller and darker. It was a woman, wrapped head to heel in a long black robe. Nothing showed but her eyes. They were Cretan eyes, dark and long, with thick lashes and soft brows, and the forehead above them was smooth as cream. More I could not see, neither her shape nor her hair, for the robe she was folded in covered everything; only that she seemed slender-waisted, and was not very tall. I closed the door on the thread behind me, and came in. My borrowed cloak was filthy with dust and cobwebs. I dropped it, and stood waiting.
She made a little gesture to call me nearer, just slipping her finger-tips out of the robe. I approached to within two paces of her; then I could tell by her eyelids she was young. But she did not speak, only drew the robe about her so that it hid even her fingers. So I said, “I am here. Who sent for me?”
She spoke at last, but without dropping the robe from before her mouth, so that her voice came small and muffled; yet it had a clearness, as a blade has though it is sheathed. “Are you Theseus, the bull-dancer from Athens?”
I thought it strange she should not know me; all Knossos goes to the dance. “If you doubt that,” I answered, “I cannot prove it.” But her eyelids trembled, and were young; so I said, “Yes, I am Theseus. Who wants me, and why?”
“I am a priestess,” she said. “I serve the Goddess-on-Earth. She sent me here to question you.” Then she let the robe slip down from her face. I saw it was made delicately, unpainted, and very pale. Her nose was straight and fine, and her mouth seemed small because the eyes were so dark and wide. When she had unveiled her head, she paused, looking at me, and pressing herself back against the base of the statue. I waited, and then said, “Yes?”
I saw the tip of her tongue move across her lips. The old woman, too, had been afraid. Yet I could not believe that here in the holiest place anyone would murder me. Nothing seemed sense. I saw the robe moving, where her fingers twisted within.
“It is a heavy matter,” she said, “touching impiety. The Goddess says you must be questioned.” There was a tight bunching in the robe, where she had clutched it up. “You must answer, on pain of cursing. We have heard that the High Priestess of Eleusis chose you King of the Year; that after you had married her, you roused the people against her, and put her to death; that you have maimed the Mother’s worship and profaned the Mystery. Are these things true?”
“Only,” I said, “that I am King of Eleusis. The Goddess chose me, or so I was told. And it was the last year’s King I killed, according to the custom, not the Queen.”
She wrapped the robe tighter, so that it showed her crossed arms. “What is that custom? How did you kill him?” I said, “With my hands, at wrestling.” She gazed at me with big eyes, then only nodded. I said, “I was away in the border land, when the House Snake stung the Queen. She took it as a sign of the Mother’s anger, and went away. I do not even know if she is dead; I will swear, if you like, that I did not kill her.”