As she’d made herself secure on the pillion, he’d given an expressive shrug of leather-jacketed shoulders.
‘And if we’re not,’ she’d said, filled with a hideous sense of unease, ‘what then?’
‘Then you can’t expect me to be here waiting for you, whenever you choose to spend a few days of the year at home.’ And with that, he’d kicked the bike into life and the noise of the engine had made any response impossible.
Bradford’s Manningham Park was a good twenty minutes away, and in those twenty minutes Ella had had a lot to think about. In all the time she had known Sam, she had never known him sound so determined, or so grim, and she hadn’t had a shadow of doubt that he’d meant every word he’d said. If she didn’t accept that they were a couple – and by that, she was certain Sam meant an engaged couple – then he wouldn’t be there for her the next time she came home.
To her startled surprise, the prospect had appalled her.
She’d thought of how she would feel if, next time she returned to Yorkshire, Sam was dating someone else: if he had become engaged to someone else, someone he had met in Scooby. The picture it conjured up was so unpleasant it made her feel queasy. She’d thought about what becoming engaged would mean for her, and decided that although it would, of course, mean that she and Sam would eventually get married, their getting married wasn’t something that would happen within a year, or perhaps even within two or three years. What Sam wanted from her was a public declaration that they were a couple, and she’d known from the way she’d looked forward to seeing him again that their being a couple was what she wanted, too.
She’d also known that once they were engaged, and though he would miss her, Sam would accept her need to return to Crete to finish the Kalamata dig; and that he would accept other digs in the future as well, just as long as they were either near to home or, if abroad, digs of reasonably short duration.
No longer feeling a hideous sense of unease, no longer appalled, she had tightened her arms around his waist, hoping to indicate to him that everything was going to be all right.
The noise of the fair had been audible long before they reached it. Sam had slewed the motorbike to a halt in a street thronged with people making their way towards the park entrance.
‘Before we go into the park, I have to finish saying my piece,’ he’d said when he’d dismounted, his shoulders tense, his face set and pale. ‘I’m not a bloke that goes in for demands and ultimatums, but as I said before, I can’t go on like this.’
‘I understand, Sam,’ she’d said.
It had been as if she hadn’t spoken.
‘I could endure being apart from you for months on end, if there was a proper understanding between us.’ His eyes had been agonized, his voice resolute. ‘But if there’s never going to be one . . .’
‘There is, Sam.’
‘. . . then I have to feel free to be courting elsewhere.’
‘No, you haven’t—’
Again, he hadn’t let her finish and he’d made no move to take her in his arms, or even to hold her hands.
‘There’s a girl at Scooby, Ella,’ he’d said. ‘Her name is Jenny Gulliver and she’s the receptionist at the surgery. I’ve taken her out a few times . . .’
Ella had heard enough and hadn’t wanted to hear any more. Closing the small gap Sam had so carefully ensured had been between them, whilst he’d said what he’d had to say, she’d slid her arms around his neck, saying, ‘Don’t take her out again, Sam; at least not in a romantic way. As your fiancée, I wouldn’t like it.’
It had, she reflected now, been a reckless thing to say. What if, in Sam’s eyes, being a couple was a far different thing from their becoming engaged? What if he’d no longer had marriage in mind?
The worry had been unnecessary.
‘Fiancée?’ Disbelief had flashed through his eyes, and then understanding. With a whoop of exultation he’d lifted her off her feet, whirling her round and round. When he’d finally set her unsteadily back on the pavement, he’d said, a broad grin splitting his face, ‘Can we have a replay of the last few minutes, Ella love? I’d like to propose properly. On one knee. And more than anything else in the world, I’d like to actually hear you say “Yes”.’
‘You can’t propose on a crowded pavement,’ she’d protested, laughter in her voice.
‘Oh, but I can,’ he’d said.
Dropping down on one knee and causing a man with a child riding high on his shoulders to sidestep him adroitly, Sam had taken her hands in his and said, his voice choked with emotion, ‘My dearest, darling Ella. I love you more than anyone – or anything – in the world. Will you marry me, and let me love and care for you always and forever?’
‘Yes,’ she’d said, filled with the happy certainty that she had made the right decision: the decision her parents had always hoped she would make.
Six weeks later, it was the way she still felt. Both Kate and Daphne had taken the news that she was engaged to Sam as if it was news they had long expected and, once she had told them it was going to be a long engagement, had made all the right noises. Agata had kissed her on both cheeks, saying with deep affection, ‘Happy I am for thee. A good husband is a gift from God. From God such men come.’ On a visit to the Villa Ariadne, Ella had been toasted in champagne by Kit and the Squire. All the team, apart from Pericles and Christos, had teased her mercilessly. Not being teased by Pericles was no surprise, as he rarely joined in any team jollity, but as Christos had teased her almost from the first moment they had met, she had found his not doing so disconcerting, until Kate had pointed out that one-to-one teasing was different from team teasing and that, as Christos was site supervisor, he had probably felt it was something he should keep aloof from.
Her way up the track now was intermittently edged with clumps of paper-white cyclamen, their beauty compensating for the many mule droppings she had to avoid. The mules accompanied the team every morning, carrying picks, buckets, spades and other gear necessary for the day’s work.
Faintly, in the crystal-clear air, came the sound of men’s voices. Though she couldn’t be sure, she thought two of the voices – who sounded to be arguing over a football result – belonged to Nico, one of the youngest members of the team, and Yanni, the oldest member of the team. Someone else was whistling. Ella smiled, certain the whistler would be Adonis. Christos had told her that Adonis’s constant whistling was an irritation to Lewis, but she liked it. Her dad was a whistler, and Adonis’s cheerful whistling reminded her of him.
The path finally crested the rim of the plateau. A hundred yards or so away, beneath the soaring silver-grey and silver-white upper ridges of the mountain, was the beginning of the site, a large area that over the last few weeks had been arduously cleared of all undergrowth and was now beginning to be criss-crossed with trial-pits. So far none of the pits had yielded any signs of ancient walls or terraces, or any signs of anything ever having been built there. ‘Which means,’ Christos had said to her glumly, ‘that Lewis’s gut feeling is wrong once again.’
No one else on the team had put that thought into words, but Ella knew it was something they were all beginning to fear.
She had arrived just as most of the men had temporarily downed tools for a tea break. Dimitri was the self-appointed tea-maker and, as she drew closer, she could smell the distinctive aroma of the aptly named Mountain Tea brewing.
‘Does Dimitri call it “Mountain Tea” because we’re drinking it halfway up a mountain?’ she had asked Christos the first time she had tasted it.
Christos had laughed so much he’d given himself a stitch. ‘No, Ella,’ he’d said at last, when he’d finally been able to speak. ‘He calls it “Mountain Tea” because it’s made from Sideritis leaves, and Sideritis only grows at a height of over three thousand feet.’
Later, Lewis had told her that in Crete, Mountain Tea – as well as being a popular daily drink – was also regarded as a cure for all kinds of ailments and was part of every family’s medici
ne chest. ‘But it needs to be served with a spoonful of honey and a dash of lemon,’ he had added, shooting her one of his rare smiles. ‘It’s a challenge to the tastebuds to take it neat.’
Before meeting Lewis, and because of what Kate had told her about him, Ella had been prepared to find him difficult to work for, and hard to like. It had taken only a couple of days on the dig for her to find out how wrong her expectations had been. Lewis certainly wasn’t a hearty ‘treat-me-as-if-I’m-just-another-member-of-the-team’ kind of employer and site director, but she didn’t mind that. Once he had told someone what he wanted from them, and knew them capable of it, he let them get on with it, without unnecessary interference, and his work team treated him with confidence and respect.
Everyone was enjoying their tea break apart from Kate and Christos, who were still a distance away, working beneath a shade cloth on trial-pit five, and Lewis, who was seated at a camp table covered in survey maps and ground plans.
She had just been about to join the tea-drinkers, two of whom were still arguing about football, when Lewis noticed her arrival.
‘A minute Ella, please.’
His voice was grim and, with nothing found to indicate building of any era, let alone the Neo-palatial era, she knew the reason why. It was still early days, though, and at the thought that he might be about to write off the dig, her tummy muscles knotted with tension.
‘Look at these results, Ella.’ Lewis indicated the daily reports on the trial-pits. ‘They’re not encouraging.’
‘No,’ she said cautiously. ‘They’re not. But the present pits aren’t sufficient in number to mean the plateau is void. Are we going to be extending the area of search?’
‘Yes. And with a bigger team.’
Before she could make a response, Helmut Becke walked up to them, carrying a mug of tea for Lewis. ‘Are you beginning to lose heart, mein Freund?’ he asked sympathetically, handing him the mug.
‘I’m disappointed.’ Lewis ran his free hand distractedly through his hair. ‘I’d expected we would at least be finding pottery sherds by now.’
Helmut moved some papers to one side and perched on the corner of the table, one leg swinging. ‘I overheard Ella say that the present trial-pits aren’t sufficient to come to any kind of a conclusion, and she’s right. A bigger team would move things along faster. What do you think, Ella?’
Ella, who had been wondering if it was perhaps time for her to excuse herself, decided it wasn’t. ‘A big team always moves things along faster, but only if it means the extra men are as experienced as the team we already have.’
This was so true that neither Helmut nor Lewis disagreed with her, but the expression on their faces told her that assembling a bigger experienced team wouldn’t be easy.
Lewis pushed his camp chair away from the table. ‘For now, we’ll begin digging new trial-pits on the western edge of the site,’ he said, his voice indicating that, for the moment, there was nothing more to be said.
As Ella began walking away in the direction of the pit that was her responsibility, Helmut fell into step beside her.
‘Not easy for Lewis, is it?’ he said, his thumbs tucked into the pockets of dusty khaki shorts. ‘If this was a straightforward British School dig, it would have been called off by now.’
Ella, who had forged an easy relationship with Helmut, said wryly, ‘But then the British School would never have sanctioned it, would they?’
‘Zu blutig wahr!’ he said, laughing. ‘Too bloody true!’
She laughed with him. Before Helmut had arrived, Dimitri and Angelos had been very unenthusiastic about having a German as a member of the team. ‘The Germans we worked with at Olympia were no fun,’ Angelos had said glumly. ‘They were as stiff as sticks and nothing ever made them laugh.’
‘How unfortunate,’ Helmut had said, when Adonis had told him of what they had been expecting. ‘Quite obviously the Germans you speak of were not from Berlin. Ich bin Berliner, and Berliners have a very relaxed attitude.’
He was a typical north German in looks: tall and lean, with a narrow, high-cheekboned face and blond hair.
Ella thought his hair colour very like Sam’s, but where Sam’s hair was a thick, coarse thatch, Helmut’s hair was fine, straight as a dye and cut en brosse.
She was just about to ask him how long he thought they could continue working the plateau, without a find of any kind to encourage them, when he suddenly said, ‘Look, Ella! A lammergeier!’
High in the sky, a bird with an enormous wingspan was circling over one of the topmost ravines.
Ella stood still, looking in the direction he was pointing. ‘It’s huge!’ With rising excitement she shaded her eyes from the sun. ‘Are you sure it’s a lammergeier, Helmut? They’re terribly rare. Perhaps it’s an eagle?’
‘Wrong colouring and shape. And can you see a flash of orange on its chest? Lammergeiers get that distinctive coloration from rubbing against ferrous rock. Ist es nicht wunderbar?’
It was indeed a wonderful sight, and by now everyone else near them was looking up and enjoying the sight as well. So much so that when Christos came sprinting towards them, no one took the slightest notice of him, until he shouted: ‘Kate’s uncovered ashlar masonry! It’s limestone and looks like walling!’
The impressive sight of a lammergeier was forgotten in an instant.
‘Jesus Gott!’ Helmut broke into a run, heading for trial-pit five with everyone else running in his wake, apart from Lewis, who was already yards ahead of him.
Kate was squatting beside the masonry she had uncovered, a mattock in her hand, her forehead and cheeks streaked with dirt and a smile of huge satisfaction on her face.
Lewis jumped down beside her, running his hand reverently over stone whose surface had been precisely cut, in exactly the same way that stone at Knossos and Phaistos and Mallia had been cut.
‘Bloody marvellous, Kate!’ His eyes blazed with exhilaration. ‘You’ve saved the day! This is a moment I’ll never forget.’
Kate flushed scarlet, and for a moment Ella thought Lewis was so relieved at having his instincts about the site proved right that he was going to kiss her until she was breathless.
She was fairly sure Kate was thinking the same thing, and then Lewis checked himself. ‘Let’s start digging,’ he said exultantly to the rest of the team. ‘Let’s find out how far this thunderingly beautiful line of ashlar extends!’
Chapter Twelve
Christos was sitting on a rickety metal chair on the patch of ground that served the Kourakis family as a garden. It was July and the first time since Kate’s find that he had been back home and able to share all the excitement of the last few weeks with Nikoleta and his mother.
‘The expertly cut walling Kate found stretched for an incredible fifteen yards,’ he said ebulliently, as scrawny hens pecked their way around them, ‘and in one of the new pits to the west of it, Helmut and Pericles uncovered a limestone door lintel.’
‘A door lintel?’ The query came from Eleni. Though Christos and Nikoleta were sitting in their garden, Eleni was seated in the open doorway, spinning. ‘A door lintel is a door lintel.’ She paused in what she was doing, in order to gesture expressively. ‘Georgio’s shepherd’s hut has a door lintel. Perhaps from a shepherd’s hut it came?’
Christos shook his head. ‘This door lintel had an outline of a Minoan double-headed axe engraved on it.’
Nikoleta gave a cry of satisfaction and Eleni nodded, understanding at last the lintel’s importance. At the Palace of Minos there were many carved depictions of double-headed axes. Kostas had told her that, to the ancient Minoans, the double-headed axe was a symbol of sacred royalty and power. If it had been found on a lintel at the Kalamata dig, then it meant Lewis Sinclair had at last found the palace he’d been searching for; it also meant that just as her husband had once been part of a dig of historical importance, so her son might also now be discovering a palace that, like Knossos, Phaistos and Mallia, would be in all the guidebooks.
‘And artefacts? Has Lewis found artefacts?’ Nikoleta asked, eager to bring Lewis’s name into the conversation. Since Kate Shelton’s find, she hadn’t seen him. Like Christos and the rest of his team, Lewis had spent each and every day in further excavation of what the team were now referring to as a summer palace.
Christos, who knew that by ‘artefacts’ Nikoleta was thinking of jewellery similar to the magnificent gold necklace he had unearthed when excavating the villa on the village plateau, said, ‘Nothing to match the necklace, but it’s still early days. What is important is that we’re uncovering something bigger than a villa. This week we found part of a drainage system full of pottery fragments and bits of fresco. The bits aren’t enough for us to know what the fresco depicted, but Ella thinks they are part of a woman’s hand and that she is holding the section of a stem – perhaps the stem of a flower or a spray of leaves.’
‘She is smart, the little Ella. Smart she is.’ From a fleecy-white mass, Eleni was again pinching wool on to the leader cord of her spinning wheel. ‘In August, when heat puts an end to work at Kalamata, will she stay in Heraklion?’ she asked, her fingers moving as fast as light, while at a slower rhythm her feet worked the wheel’s treadle. ‘In Heraklion will she stay?’
Nikoleta waited for Christos’s reply with interest. In the manner of brothers, he had never spoken to her about any girl in whom he had been romantically interested, and he had certainly never spoken to her about Ella. She knew, though, that Ella mattered to him. When Ella had returned to Crete with an engagement ring on her finger, Christos had been so subdued that their mother had thought he was sickening for something.
He said now, carefully not catching her eye, ‘No. I do not think so. I think that now she is engaged, she will return to England until the weather is cooler and work on the dig begins again.’
‘And when it is winter?’ Eleni asked, hope in her voice, for last winter, when Ella had lodged in Heraklion, she had visited their home often. ‘In winter will she again stay in Heraklion?’
Beneath the Cypress Tree Page 12