Beneath the Cypress Tree

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘To you, Tom,’ he said, looking out over the magnificent panorama of mountains. Then, after pouring a libation to the gods, he drank deeply, remembering the day just before Tom had left for Spain, when the two of them had climbed to where he was now sitting and, while talking of their great hopes of discovering a palace to rank alongside those of Phaistos and Mallia, had demolished a bottle of King Minos between them.

  That had been just under a year ago, and all he had to show for last season’s dig were a few tombs and a villa. The Neopalatial tombs were, it was true, grandiose and indicative of a palace nearby; the villa, too, had been pleasingly substantial and of the same period; and the necklace that Christos had knifed free from thirty centuries’ weight of earth had been equal in beauty and workmanship to jewellery found at Knossos. But the villa hadn’t been a palace, and if the palace wasn’t found this year, then it wouldn’t be found at all – or at least not by him.

  The Greek government had already informed Nathaniel they would be reviewing his permit to excavate for a third year; and, even if they had not, his godfather’s seemingly bottomless purse wasn’t literally bottomless, although there were many people in the international world of high finance who, Lewis knew, would find that hard to believe. As far as finding a Minoan palace was concerned, this coming season was going to be a case of make-or-break.

  He took another swig from the bottle of King Minos, reflecting on how relatively easy things had been for Sir Arthur Evans. Tradition as far back as Homer’s The Odyssey stated that the palace of the Kings of Crete had stood on Kephala, a hill at Knossos. Heinrich Schliemann, the archaeologist who had found Troy, had visited Kephala twice in the 1880s, but Crete had still been under Turkish control and he had been refused permission to excavate. In 1897 an uprising against the Turks brought about the end of Turkish rule, and two years later Sir Arthur bought the site. Together with two fellow archaeologists and a team of local workmen, Evans’s first trial-pit had been sunk on the twenty-third of March 1900.

  On the second day, his team had uncovered the remains of an ancient house with fragments of frescoes. Another four days, and the team were clearing the top and part of a terrace. From then on, discovery followed discovery. There was a great paved area with stairways; a fresco of olive sprays in flower; tablets of baked clay covered in strange symbols; a great relief in painted stucco of a charging bull. Within a month, a labyrinth of buildings was revealed and Sir Arthur knew he had found a palace – a palace more than three thousand years old.

  Lucky old Arthur, Lewis thought grimly, re-corking the bottle and putting it back into his rucksack. No couple of tombs and a villa for him, after a season’s work. Sir Arthur had found what he had hoped he would find, and it had been the find of a lifetime; or, as the great man had written in his diary at the time, ‘a find one could not hope for in many lifetimes’.

  Lewis rose to his feet. He, too, for his own sake and his godfather’s sake, was hoping to make the find of a lifetime – and this season he would have a friend joining the team whose judgement he trusted implicitly.

  He’d first worked with Helmut Becke when, fresh from university, he’d gone out to join a dig in Mesopotamia, at Uruk. Helmut was only two years his senior and they had bonded immediately. Later, in northern Greece, they had worked together again. When Tom had left the Kalamata dig to fight in Spain for the Republican cause, Lewis had contacted Helmut to see if he was interested in joining him on Crete. Helmut had been keen, but his present contract had had another twelve months to run. With the contract now nearly at an end, he had contacted Lewis; and just before Lewis had begun his return journey to Crete, they had met up in the bar of London’s Victoria Station.

  ‘I’ll be with you by the first week of April, Lewis,’ Helmut had said, only a slight guttural accent betraying his nationality. ‘But as the last two Kalamata digs were void – void of a palace at any rate – where is your last-shot dig going to be?’

  Lewis had swirled the brandy around in the glass he was cradling. ‘There’s a small upland plain a thirty-minute climb higher than the Kalamata village plateau. I’d like you to see it.’

  ‘And when I see it, what will make me think it could be the bullseye?’

  Lewis had taken a drink of brandy and had said, ‘There’s a palace in, or near to, Kalamata, Helmut. I can practically smell it. As I’ve failed to find it on the plateau itself, it’s the only other place it can be.’

  ‘Knossos isn’t halfway up a mountain. Neither is Phaistos or Mallia.’

  ‘Maybe not, but they are all on high ground. And the plain above the plateau gives a stupendous view north, south, east and west. Strategically, it ticks all the right boxes.’

  ‘And?’ Helmut had asked.

  ‘And there is the fact of tombs, which can only be described as royal, being found not too far away on the village plateau. And the villa, too, of course, and the sumptuousness of the necklace found in the villa.’

  ‘And?’ Helmut had said again.

  Lewis had grinned. ‘And there is a two-acre area knee-deep in fennel.’

  Helmut had cracked with laughter. ‘So we are now trusting in peasant folklore, are we?’

  ‘Why not?’ Lewis’s voice had been full of answering amusement. ‘Vegetation always gives clues, and both you and I know from experience that fennel grows rampant where the earth has been deeply disturbed, even when the disturbance was thousands of years ago. Think of the fennel at Uruk.’

  Helmut had thought of it and had said in mock resignation, ‘Okay, lieber Freund. I will be with you on Crete in the first week of April, though I will take care, I think, not to arrive on April Fool’s Day!’

  When they had said goodbye to each other, and before he had boarded the boat train, Lewis had gone to a call box on the station concourse and telephoned his godfather.

  ‘Helmut Becke will be joining the team in April,’ he had said, his satisfaction obvious.

  ‘I hate to doubt your judgement,’ his godfather had said, from the suite at Claridge’s that he always stayed in when in London, ‘but is bringing a German aboard wise, when the political situation is as it is?’

  ‘Helmut isn’t a Nazi. Do you think I would have any truck with an admirer of Hitler’s?’

  ‘And he’ll fit in with the team?’

  ‘As easy as clockwork,’ he’d said reassuringly.

  ‘Then all good luck with things, Lewis. Perhaps you would give Sophie’s double a special good wish from me?’

  There had been a catch in Nathaniel’s aged voice as he’d uttered the name of his late god-daughter.

  ‘Yes.’ There had been an answering catch in Lewis’s voice. ‘Of course I will. Goodbye, Nathaniel. I’ll write.’

  His hand had been slightly unsteady as he replaced the receiver on its rest.

  Six years ago, Lewis’s sister and his parents had died in a sailing accident off the isle of Islay in the Hebrides. Sophie, who’d been five years younger than him, had been seventeen. He’d had no other siblings. No other family. His South African godfather, a childless bachelor, had stepped into the breach and, with his help, Lewis had eventually found life bearable again. And then, on Crete, he’d met Nikoleta; and Nikoleta, with her heart-shaped face, tumbling hair, dark-blue eyes, wide smile and vivacious personality, had seemed such a reincarnation of Sophie that when he’d first met her, he’d thought his heart was going to fail him.

  He’d sent a photograph of her to Nathaniel; and Nathaniel, too, had agreed that the likeness was extraordinary.

  Right from the beginning Lewis had known the thin ice he was skating on, but hadn’t been able to help himself. Being with Nikoleta had been like being back in the past. There had been times when he’d almost been able to believe that his parents weren’t dead; that Sophie wasn’t dead; that everything was as it once had been.

  The complications had set in almost from the beginning. When it was obvious that Nikoleta’s feelings for him were overwhelmingly romantic, he’d gently explained to he
r that she was too like his dead sister for him ever to be able to reciprocate them. She hadn’t cared that she reminded him of Sophie and, to his horror, he realized that he’d been lying to her; that it would be terrifyingly easy to respond to her in the way she wished him to and that, if he did so, the complex incestuous feelings that would follow would be more than he could sanely manage.

  He’d known for months that he should begin seeing less of Nikoleta, but doing so would, he knew, be like cutting off his right arm.

  And then, as if his private life wasn’t in enough of a shambles, in the first minutes of New Year’s Day he’d added to his difficulties by drunkenly kissing Kate Shelton on the mouth.

  What in the world had possessed him? It wasn’t as if there’d been any likelihood of her laughing the incident off. There had never been any camaraderie between them, and for that he had been initially at fault when he’d been so unenthused at the thought of having her as a replacement for Tom – and for letting his lack of enthusiasm show. From then on, Kate had combined the scrupulous correctness due to him as director of the dig with the kind of chilly frostiness that would have done an ice-queen credit.

  He slung his rucksack over his shoulder. When Helmut joined the team, it wasn’t a frostiness that would extend to him. Kate was far too professional not to want a good working relationship with all of her fellow team members. Only with him was she Alaskan ice personified.

  And yet . . . And yet . . .

  When, in his befuddled brain, it had seemed a good idea to begin the New Year by kissing her in the manner he had, there had been a long, unforgettable moment when her mouth had opened beneath his and her response had been all he could ever have desired. Or at least he’d thought it had been.

  It hadn’t been a thought that had lasted for long.

  There had been no mistaking the violence with which she had wrested herself free of his embrace, or the nature of her whirlwind exit from the room. Since then he had only seen her twice, both times at the Villa, and if she had been expecting him to apologize for his behaviour at New Year, she had been disappointed.

  He hadn’t apologized and had no intention of doing so, which meant that when the dig began again in a few weeks’ time, it would again be a case of scrupulous, icy correctness on her part, and indifference to her iciness on his.

  As he began making his way back down the mountain he wondered if, where he and Kate were concerned, he should have put Helmut in the picture, and then he shrugged the thought away. Mentioning it would make it important – and it wasn’t important. All that was important was that this season he found a Minoan palace: a palace that would make his name as an archaeologist known worldwide.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘’Bye, Agata!’ Ella called out cheerily as she ran down the last of the cafeneion’s outside steps.

  ‘Goodbye,’ Agata shouted back from where, in a wired-off area, she was milking a goat. ‘God be with you!’

  With Agata’s daily blessing ringing in her ears, Ella set off through the village in the direction of the mule track that led to the mountain’s small upper plateau. Once on the track, the way was steep, but she was young and fit and, just as important, after three weeks on the dig she was already getting used to the daily climb.

  Usually she set off for the upper plateau with all the other members of the team, but this morning, because she had been doing paperwork for Lewis, she was an hour or so behind them and the mid-morning sun was hot on her back.

  She adjusted the strap on her haversack so that it would fit more comfortably and, as she did so, the engagement ring on the fourth finger of her left hand sparkled and shone. Even though she had been wearing it ever since her trip home six weeks ago, the sight of it still gave her a jolt of pleasure and surprise.

  How had it happened? She had certainly not had the slightest intention of becoming engaged to Sam when, in late March and before the year’s dig had begun, she had left Crete to spend ten days with her parents and granddad. As well as looking forward to seeing them, she had, of course, also been looking forward to seeing Sam. Ever since they had first met there had never been a time when she hadn’t looked forward to seeing him. She hadn’t been expecting to become engaged to him, though. At the time she had left Crete for England, nothing had been further from her mind.

  She paused in her climb in order to gain a little more breath, before setting off on the last part of it, thinking back to her ten days at home. As it had been Easter, and a warm, sunny Easter, Wilsden had been looking its best. The fields had been full of young lambs, the roadside verges had been thick with primroses and even though it was far too early in the year for the heather to be in bloom, in the near distance the sunlit moors were as inviting as ever. Her mother had baked a whole shoal of Tetley favourite recipes. Ale-and-walnut bread, currant teacakes, oatcakes, parkin and last, but by no means least, curd tarts.

  ‘It’s going to take till Whitsuntide to eat this lot up,’ her father had said, cutting a thick slice of the ale-and-walnut bread and then breaking off a piece of Wensleydale cheese to eat with it. He had looked across at her and winked. ‘It’s your mother’s way of tempting you back home, lass. I can’t say I mind it. Your mother’s the best baker of bread and cakes this side of Hebden Bridge.’

  Sam had motorcycled all the way from Scooby, and her mother had laid on a Yorkshire high tea in his honour. The minute she had heard Sam’s bike roar past the Ling Bob, Ella had run out of the house to meet him. To her exasperation, her mother had followed hard on her heels, and her father and granddad had followed them as far as the open front door.

  She had been sure this meant she was going to be cheated of a proper reunion, but Sam had leapt from his bike, pushed his goggles high into his thatch of straw-coloured hair and, uncaring of their audience, had pulled her joyfully into his arms and kissed her soundly.

  If it had been anyone else, her parents and granddad would, she knew, have been outraged by such behaviour in public, but as they read Sam’s action as indicating that an engagement was in the offing, not even her granddad frowned or clicked his tongue.

  Instead, standing on the doorstep in trousers held up by a broad leather belt without the benefit of belt loops, and a striped collarless shirt, he had called out wheezily, ‘Come on in, lad. Tea’s on t’table.’

  ‘No need to tell the entire street,’ her mother had said chidingly, as she had ushered them all into the house.

  Her father had dropped his arm in a matey way around Sam’s shoulders. ‘Mother’s made curd tarts,’ he’d said, referring to Alice in the way most West Riding men of his age referred to their wives. ‘She makes ’em with rosewater, not currants. They’re so soft and creamy you’ve never tasted the like of ’em.’

  An hour later, after a salad of Yorkshire ham helped down by all the sweet foods Alice had prepared, Sam had to agree with Alfred: where Alice’s curd tarts were concerned, none he’d ever tasted had been even half as good – and being Yorkshireborn, he’d tasted a good many.

  ‘’Ow abaht an ’and of gin rummy, lad?’ her granddad had said to Sam, as the plates were being cleared from the table.

  Ella, impatient to have some time with Sam on her own, had raised her eyes to heaven.

  Reading her mind, Sam had looked across at her and grinned. ‘Maybe another day, Mr Tetley,’ he’d said to Jos, rising to his feet. ‘For now, I’m going to take Ella over to the Easter Fair in Manningham Park.’ He’d turned to her mother and said, ‘Thank you for the grand tea, Mrs Tetley. Living in digs in Scooby, I haven’t had a tea like that in a long time.’

  Her mother had flushed with pleasure. ‘You’re very welcome, lad,’ she’d said. ‘It’s always a pleasure to see you. Don’t leave it too long before you’re back.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he’d said, picking up his cycling jacket and shrugging himself into it. And then, to Ella, he’d said, ‘Put on something warm, love. It may be lovely and sunny now, but it will be late tonight before we’re back, and it will be chi
lly riding pillion.’

  It had been as good a way as any at letting her family know they needn’t wait up for her and, as she’d run upstairs for her coat, Ella had had a happy smile on her lips.

  The first thing he’d said to her when they’d left the house, and even before she had got on the bike, had been, ‘I’ve missed you badly, Ella.’ There had no longer been easy affability in Sam’s eyes and voice. ‘I can’t get used to you being so far away, and for such long stretches of time.’ His eyes had been dark with intensity, his voice fierce.

  Her blissful happiness had faded. The conversation was one she’d known they were bound to have, but she hadn’t expected him to embark on it so soon, or that he would do so with such unnerving urgency. Worse, she hadn’t known how to respond. She’d known that Sam wanted her to say that she wouldn’t return to Crete, and it was something she couldn’t say because she was going to return there – and she was going to remain there for as long as there was a dig to work on.

  He’d taken hold of her hands, holding them so tightly he’d bruised the backs of them.

  ‘Let’s have this conversation a little later,’ she’d said, knowing that to anyone seeing them, it would look as if they were having a heated argument – and that they were in fact on the verge of one.

  She’d shot a quick look towards the house and seen a net curtain fall quickly back into place.

  ‘Mum’s already giving a running commentary,’ she’d said, ‘and I don’t want her, Dad and Granddad worrying that we’re at odds with each other. Give me a hug. It will set their minds at rest.’

  He’d looked towards the house and seen a curtain twitch. ‘You win,’ he’d said reluctantly, giving her the hug she’d asked for.

  When he’d released her, Sam straddled his bike, his face sombre. ‘But we’re going to have to talk about this, Ella,’ he’d said, putting his goggles on. ‘We can’t go on as we have been doing. Either we are a couple, or we’re not. And if we’re not . . .’