Xenia shifted her attention to the wall behind the throne. She gave Griffin an amused look. “I should think this fresco would be your favorite.”
The scrivener laughed.
Cassie looked from one to the other, puzzled by their secret joke.
“Do you know what these creatures are?” Xenia asked the pythia.
Cassie studied the figures. They were crouching or rather resting on all fours. They had animal bodies and the heads of birds. Like all the other frescoes of animals in the palace, they seemed light and joyful. The lines of their bodies were curved, not angular. Their heads were turned upward, the expression on their faces was soft and expectant.
The pythia shrugged. “Not a clue. What are they?”
“They are griffins,” the trove keeper said.
Cassie looked doubtfully at Xenia. “They belong to Griffin?”
The young man laughed out loud. “No, not ‘griffin’s’ possessive, ‘griffins’ plural. These are mythical creatures with the heads of eagles and bodies of lions. They are called griffins.”
“According to ancient lore, griffins are often found protecting treasures of one sort or another,” Xenia explained.
“You picked the right line of work then,” Cassie observed.
“My parents were not unaware of the irony when they named me,” Griffin admitted.
The trio studied the walls of the throne room, searching for their elusive symbols to no avail.
“Where to next?” Cassie asked. Her neck was beginning to ache from looking up and down at so many walls.
“We haven’t paid a visit to the prince yet,” Griffin suggested.
Xenia nodded.
Cassie followed them silently since they seemed to know exactly where they were going. Crossing the central court, they walked down a corridor until Griffin stopped before a picture of a youth with a feathered headdress set against a backdrop of lilies.
“Lilies at last!” Cassie exclaimed.
“This image has been called either a ‘Priest-King’ or the ‘Prince of Lilies,’” Xenia said.
“And he’s very famous,” Griffin added significantly.
“Why’s that?” Cassie didn’t see anything particularly noteworthy about the image. It looked typical of the other frescoes she had already seen.
“I would draw your attention to the skin tone,” the scrivener hinted.
She noted the white skin of the figure and remembered what she had been told about Minoan painting styles. Men were reddish brown, and women were white. “It’s a woman?” she asked in disbelief.
“In all probability that is the case,” Griffin agreed.
Xenia pointed toward the top of the fresco. “In addition, the feathered headdress is a style that would have been worn by a woman and not a man.”
“But what about the chest?” Cassie objected. “It’s flat, and the figure is wearing something that looks like a jockstrap.”
“It’s called a codpiece actually,” Griffin corrected. “It would have been worn by male or female athletes when engaged in a rough contact sport. Bull-leapers of both sexes wore them. As for the shape of the figure, that may have been imaginative reconstruction on Sir Arthur’s part.”
“Sir Arthur himself admitted that his restoration might not have been accurate,” Xenia explained. “The only parts of the original fresco that remained intact were the headdress, part of the torso, and one leg.”
“With so little to go on, this is what he came up with?” Cassie registered surprise.
“The fresco has stirred up heated debate for quite some time,” Griffin admitted. “In all likelihood, it was an image of a female bull-leaper, but no one can be certain.”
“What is more troublesome to me is his conclusion that the boy would be a priest-king,” said the trove keeper. “Minoans were a matristic society. While it is possible they might have had a king, the central religious figure would certainly have been a high priestess. Sir Arthur came from the Victorian Age, and he made many assumptions about a male-dominated social structure here.”
Cassie sighed. “Since all of this was reconstructed, I’m guessing that the lilies in the picture aren’t a clue left for us.”
“Quite so,” Griffin agreed. “Also, the lilies are painted on plaster, not incised into stone.”
“Then why are we here?” the pythia asked flatly.
“To search the corridor around the fresco,” the scrivener said. “Best be about it then.”
The trio looked up and down the hall but still couldn’t find the elusive lilies for which they were searching.
“Where else?” Cassie urged. Her fatigue was returning, and she needed a distraction to stay awake.
“The Queen’s Chamber perhaps?” Griffin looked at Xenia questioningly.
“Yes, we forgot to check that one,” Xenia concurred.
They crossed the central court once more to an elegant suite of rooms.
“This is called the Queen’s Chamber,” Xenia explained. “It is so named because it is smaller than the other living space which is called the King’s Chamber. Sir Arthur again concluded that the grandest living accommodations would belong to a king when in fact they probably belonged to the high priestess.”
As they inspected the Queen’s Chamber, Cassie noticed that one of the walls held a fresco of fanciful blue dolphins swimming through a white sea. “Look!” she pointed to the decorative motif below the dolphins. “Isn’t that like the spiral hieroglyph on the granite key?”
Griffin paused to consult his page of symbols. “It is indeed like one of the key symbols, but the context is wrong. You see the symbol is repeated, and we’re looking for a sequence of alternating symbols that will translate into a Linear B phrase. Besides, there’s no lily that would denote this image pertains to the Bones of the Mother.”
“Oh,” Cassie said in a small disappointed voice.
“Chin up. Have a look at this,” Griffin said. “It will take your mind off the problem.”
Cassie followed to where the scrivener was standing. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Indeed,” Griffin said proudly. “A flush toilet. Though one would need to pour a bucket of water into the toilet to make it flush, but there is a drain line below to carry the waste away. And there’s also a bathtub in the adjoining room.”
He gestured toward a large stone tub. “It would have to be filled manually but could also be drained through the floor. Conventional history would have
