There was no sign of Nikoleta, which meant she was already taking a small group of tourists around the Palace of Minos: a small group because in November all tourist groups were small.
A breakfast of hard toast and honey was waiting for her on the table that stood in the centre of the stone-floored room. When she had first moved in with the Kourakis family, Ella had thought she would never get used to having hard toast. Now she never gave it a thought, just as she had long ago stopped giving a thought to having everything cooked in lashings of olive oil and eating omelettes served with jam.
Having deposited the buckets of foaming goat’s milk in the lean-to where Eleni would turn it into cheese, Christos was now, by the sound of the splashing that Ella could hear, having what her granddad called a ‘swill-down’ at the garden pump. This meant he would be bare-chested, and Ella – though it was a secret she kept to herself – liked the sight of a semi-naked Christos performing his daily ablutions.
With a slice of toast in her hand, she walked across to the window that looked out on to the water-pump. Clad only in the baggy breeches that all Cretan men wore, and which were tucked into his boots, Christos was vigorously splashing water on to his face and then on his olive-toned and well-muscled chest, shoulders and arms. Finally he bent his head low so that the water drenched his hair. There was something very primitive about seeing a man washing himself in the open air and, watching Christos, it occurred to Ella that although she and Sam were engaged, she had never seen him splendidly bare-chested as, nearly every morning, she saw Christos.
Returning to the table to spread honey on a second slice of toast, she reflected that for an engaged couple, the level of intimacy between herself and Sam had barely moved off the starting blocks – something that wasn’t, she reminded herself, Sam’s fault. She had been the one who, for an agonizingly long time, had refused to accept he even came into the category of being a boyfriend; and when, six months ago, she had realized that she did have romantic feelings for him – and that she certainly didn’t want him having romantic feelings for anyone else – she had taken him completely by surprise by accepting his proposal and had then promptly returned to Crete.
Since then she had been back home only once, in August, and most of that time had been spent trying to come to an agreement as to when they were going to be married. Never had they had any real courtship time, so it was understandable that Sam was anxious for a wedding as soon as one could be arranged. Seen in that light, Sam being prepared to forgo the Christmas wedding that he and her parents had originally been hoping for, for a June wedding in eight months’ time, really wasn’t all that unreasonable. Or wouldn’t be, if it wasn’t that the dig on Kalamata’s upper plateau was turning into the dig of a lifetime and she absolutely did not want to miss a minute of it.
Ella wondered if her lack of urgency about tying the knot with Sam indicated that she was sexually frigid. She hoped not, because it would be so unfair to Sam if she was. How, though, was she to know? Although she’d had a handful of dates when she was at St Hugh’s, none of them had developed into a regular boyfriend/girlfriend situation. She’d been far too focused on getting a good degree to be interested in a social life. She’d had her friendships with Kate and Daphne, and that had been enough.
It had been the same when she had been at grammar school. Other than Sam, boys had never featured in her existence. She had been far too busy, nose to the grindstone, swotting to get a place at Oxford. And as her friendship with Sam had had no romantic overtones, or at least hadn’t had any for her, it had never interfered with her school work.
They had met in Bradford’s Central Library when she was fourteen and he was seventeen. She had been carrying a far-too-large pile of books and had dropped them. He had picked them up for her. From then on, they had seen each other regularly and were now, thanks to her realization that Sam was an integral part of her life and that she didn’t want to lose him, far more than friends.
They were not, however, yet lovers. Not in the fullest sense of the word. At twenty-three she was still a virgin, a not-uncommon state of affairs for an engaged girl of her class, when virginity was the only sure-fire way of not becoming pregnant. Only moneyed and reckless upper-class girls were able to escape the consequences of an illegitimate pregnancy by disappearing for the duration to somewhere like Switzerland; and could then, with the baby adopted, return to the hectic whirl of their social lives as if nothing untoward had happened. Even if she’d been born into money, it wasn’t behaviour she would want to emulate.
As she now put the jar of honey back on a shelf that formed part of Eleni’s pantry, Ella turned her thoughts back to Sam. Christmas wasn’t too far away and if she went home for it, the two of them would at last be able to have some proper courtship time together.
Christos stepped into the room, buttoning a waistcoat that was shiny from wear over a shirt that was the same dark blue as his distinctive Cretan breeches.
‘I’ve had breakfast,’ she said to him with her usual sunny smile, ‘and so I’m ready to leave whenever you are.’
‘I’m ready also.’ He wound a long mulberry-coloured sash several times around his waist and, as he always did, rammed a lethal-looking long knife into it. Although he wasn’t in full Cretan heroic dress – he would have had to be wearing a bobble-trimmed sleeveless jacket and a fringed bandana for that – the sash and knife were a part of heroic dress that, like all the other Cretans on the dig, Christos wore as naturally as he wore breeches and boots. Unlike his father, Yanni and a hefty proportion of the island’s male population, he didn’t, though, always have a rifle slung over his shoulder. Even if he had, Ella had grown so used to the sight of village men carrying hunting rifles that she wouldn’t have found it at all odd.
As they reached the parking area Ella said, ‘Will Georgio have brought his sheep down from summer pasture by now?’
‘Probably. He winters them on the green coast.’
She stepped into the truck. ‘Is that far away?’
‘It’s the area around Canea.’ He slammed the truck into gear. ‘I’ll take you to see him one day, if you would like?’
‘Yes, I would. I would like that very much.’
His mahogany-tanned face split into a wide grin. ‘I warn you, though, that Georgio is not like me. Even at eighteen, he is still very shy. It is why a shepherd’s life suits him.’
A shepherd’s life would not, she thought, suit Christos, who was the most gregarious, outgoing person imaginable.
The truck bucketed out of the parking area and on to the road and she said, ‘Have you heard from anyone what Lewis’s reaction was, to Kit having shown Nikoleta around the site at a time when he wasn’t there?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘No. That’s why I asked. And I thought that if Lewis was going to give his opinion about it to anyone, he would have given it to you.’
‘He hasn’t. Are you thinking that perhaps it annoyed him? Because if you are, I think you are barking up the wrong bush.’
‘Tree.’
‘Tree.’ Christos was still occasionally stumped by English idioms. ‘Why should Lewis be annoyed by it? Nikoleta is naturally curious, and it was a kind thing for Kit Shelton to have done.’
‘Yes, it was.’ As Christos obviously didn’t think, as she did, that Kit’s kind action had probably annoyed Lewis, she changed the subject. ‘I’ve finally decided what I’m going to do for Christmas, and I’m going to spend it at home. Two Christmases away in succession would be a bit much, don’t you think? Especially as I’m an only child.’
Christos’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. By spending last Christmas with his family, Ella had made his Christmas extra-special and he had been hoping she would be making it extra-special again this year.
‘Your fiancé will be pleased,’ he said – only the hardening of his jaw indicating how he truly felt. ‘It is right that you should be spending Christmas with him. I would certainly not want my fiancée to be spendin
g Christmas nearly two thousand miles away from me.’
By now well aware of the fiery temperament where romance and the Cretan male were concerned, Ella could well believe it. Nikoleta had told her that only a week ago, in a mountain village not far from Kalamata, a young girl had been ‘bride-abducted’.
‘It is a tradition in Crete,’ Nikoleta had said. ‘If a man wishes to marry a girl badly enough, and if the family of the girl objects, then sometimes a man will abduct his bride. It is not, I think, something that happens in England?’
‘No,’ she had said drily, ‘it is not something that happens in England.’
The apparent habit of bride-abduction was something she intended asking Christos about, although not just yet, when she had important news to share with him.
As they left the narrow streets of Archanes behind them, she said, ‘I’ve something to tell you. I meant to keep it as a surprise, but I can’t, because if I don’t tell you I shall burst.’
‘Burst?’ Beneath his luxuriant moustache, Christos cracked a smile. ‘What is this burst? It sounds painful.’
‘It means I can’t keep the news to myself for another minute.’ Ella had always found it more comfortable, when travelling in the truck, to do so with her legs bent and her feet pressed against the dashboard. They were on the dashboard now and, with clasped hands, she hugged her knees. ‘We are about to have a visitor from England: someone who has never before been to Crete.’
Christos’s amusement vanished. He could only think of one person who fitted that description and whose imminent arrival would cause Ella so much excitement, and that was her Yorkshire fiancé. His hands tightened on the steering wheel. Why was Sam Jowett coming out to Crete now, in late November? Was it because he didn’t yet know of Ella’s intention to return home for Christmas? And where was he going to stay? He wasn’t an archaeologist and, as he had no links to the British School, it was unlikely he would be staying at the Villa Ariadne.
As if reading his thoughts, Ella said, ‘Which is the nicest hotel in Heraklion? I want one with recognizable plumbing.’
At the thought of a man caring about the plumbing, when snatching a few days with the woman he was to marry, Christos made a disparaging sound in his throat and was tempted to give her the name of the biggest flea-pit he knew of. Fighting the temptation and keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the road, so that she wouldn’t see the expression in them, he said, ‘The Astoria,’ and then, ‘when will your visitor be arriving?’
‘At the weekend. She had been going to visit last month, but she had a wonderful reconciliation with an old boyfriend and, instead of coming to Crete, the two of them went off to Madeira together.’
‘She? It is a woman visitor you are expecting? Not your fiancé?’
‘Of course it isn’t my fiancé! Sam is a doctor. He can’t just take time off on the spur of the moment.’
‘And your friend can?’ For Christos, the world was suddenly a bright and beautiful place again. If he hadn’t been driving, he would have hugged her.
‘Daphne is the daughter of an earl and can do pretty much what she wants, when she wants.’
They were driving westwards now, deeper into the mountains. ‘And her boyfriend? If they have just had a – how do you say? – a reconciliation, will he not mind her travelling to Crete without him?’
‘No. He works for the Foreign Office and when she will be in Crete, he will be in Geneva attending a meeting of the League of Nations.’
‘And at Christmas?’
‘By Christmas they will be together again, but I don’t know where. Maybe they will be in London, or maybe they will be in the country with either her family or his, or maybe even in another country.’
Christos had never been further than mainland Greece and the very idea of travelling the world with the ease with which Ella’s friend, and her friend’s boyfriend, travelled it staggered him.
It was not, however, something he would want to do himself, and especially not at Christmas time. That foreigners didn’t always display the same kind of fierce attachment to the land of their birth as Cretans did was a perpetual mystery to him.
He said now, thinking of Kate and Kit and Lewis, ‘And is Kate going home for Christmas?’
‘Yes. She would have been leaving any day now, but because Daphne is coming out, she’s staying on and will be leaving when Daphne leaves, which is what I will be doing as well.’
The terrain was becoming ever steeper, winding between cliffs of granite studded with oak and chestnut trees, the leaves of the trees glowing every possible shade of red and gold.
‘And Kit?’ he asked, changing into a still-lower gear. ‘Will he be spending the winter at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, as he did last year?’
‘He’d planned to, but he’s now changed his mind. Instead he’s going to spend the winter here, writing a book about the necropolis sites.’
Christos said nothing. Although he had never said so to Ella, he’d always sensed an undercurrent of professional rivalry between Kit Shelton and Lewis; and, as Lewis was also going to be spending the winter at Knossos, he wondered if, in such close proximity, the rivalry might begin to show.
Ella quite obviously had no such misgivings about Kit and Lewis’s relationship. ‘It’s nice that Kit and Nikoleta occasionally spend time together, isn’t it?’ she said, as the track neared the lip of the village plateau. ‘It means Lewis won’t have to worry about Nikoleta moping, when he leaves for his yearly visit to his sponsors in Scotland.’
Christos gave her a look of startled surprise. ‘In what way will Lewis not have to worry? And I don’t think the excavation’s sponsors are situated in Scotland. I think last year Lewis’s meeting with them took place in London.’
‘Did it?’ Lewis was always so close-mouthed about the financing of the dig that Ella was amazed Christos knew even that much. Equally amazing was that he didn’t seem to realize that, while Lewis was away, Kit would try to cheer up Nikoleta – and would probably do so by taking her out for the occasional meal in Heraklion.
By the time she had explained this to him they were on the plateau, and the village, surrounded by its fields and cluster of white-sailed windmills, lay before them.
She gasped with pleasure at the sight of it, as if she was returning after months away, not just a few weeks.
Christos looked across at her and then, overcome by feelings he could no longer contain, brought the truck to a sudden, shuddering halt. ‘So already you have missed the village?’ he said, an arm across the wheel as he swung round to face her. ‘Think how one day you will miss Crete! And that is because you belong here. You belong here in a way that – though they have a love of Crete – Lewis, Kit, Kate, Helmut, the Squire and Mrs Hutchinson do not. You should be marrying a Cretan, not an Englishman who is happy to see you only a couple of times a year.’
It was said with such passion that Ella’s eyebrows flew nearly into her hair. ‘That isn’t fair!’ she protested. ‘Sam isn’t happy that I’m working so far away from him and—’
‘If he is not happy, why has he never come here and taken you back to England with him?’ Christos’s eyes, usually so full of laughter, were fierce. ‘A Cretan would not behave so. I would not behave so!’
Ella could well believe it. She said, ‘Just because Sam doesn’t react to things in the way you would react doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel things just as deeply. Englishmen aren’t known for showing emotion – and Sam is a Yorkshireman, and men from Yorkshire are the worst of all when it comes to keeping their feelings to themselves.’
She remembered the recent incident of bride-abduction that had taken place not far from Kalamata and said with amusement, hoping to put things between them back on an even keel, ‘You wouldn’t want Sam to bride-abduct me and race off with me on the back of a horse, would you?’
For once she received no answering smile. Instead, grim-faced, Christos slammed the truck into gear. ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he said, revving the engine. ‘But if
I was engaged to you, it is what I would do!’
Even though she knew he was teasing – for he had to be – it was teasing that left her with a very odd sensation in the pit of her tummy. The sensation didn’t go away and she didn’t attempt to analyse it, for she had long suspected that analysing her feelings where Christos was concerned would be a very, very dangerous thing for her to do.
Chapter Fifteen
With only a month until Christmas, the weather at Knossos was still warm and Kate wasn’t wearing a jacket as she drove the short distance from the Villa Ariadne to the Kourakises’ cottage. Daphne was arriving in Heraklion by seaplane in just over an hour’s time, and Kate was hoping that she’d made it quite clear in her last letter that although the weather was mild in areas near the coast, the temperatures were different inland, and especially so in mountain villages such as Kalamata. She had added in a postscript:
It snowed at Knossos last December, and the palace looked so beautiful under snow that I’m hoping it will snow again this year, so bring suitable clothing just in case, and especially bring boots for the upper plateau climb.
Daphne’s plan was to stay for two weeks, and Ella and Kate’s plan was that they would return to England with her and that, once there, Ella would travel north to spend Christmas in Yorkshire, and Kate would head south-east for a family Christmas in Canterbury.
Apart from the fact that Daphne had chosen a very odd time of the year to visit Crete and was doing so for what was, in Kate’s eyes, an almost unforgivably short period, there was the advantage that the major Minoan centres of Knossos, Phaistos and Mallia would be less crowded than they would have been if Daphne’s visit had been made in the spring or the summer. The downside was that as excavation work on Kalamata’s upper plateau was at an end until March or April, there would be no chance of Daphne joining them on-site and having her passion for archaeology reawakened.
Beneath the Cypress Tree Page 15