Beneath the Cypress Tree

by Margaret Pemberton

  When they stepped into the Central Court at the heart of the palace, he came to a sudden halt. ‘Is this where Minoan youths leapt over the backs of charging bulls?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how does all that fit into the legend of Theseus and the Minotaur?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ she’d said, ‘not for sure. The present take on it is that the labyrinth the Minotaur was said to be kept in wasn’t an underground labyrinth, but the labyrinth of the palace itself – and when you realize how many narrow, dark zigzagging corridors ended in dead ends, it’s a theory that seems reasonable. As for the Minotaur, one theory is that in the sport of bull-leaping, a leaper, as he vaults the bull’s horns, was seen as having become one with the bull and therefore half-man and half-bull; and you also have to take into account that in antiquity, worship of the Sacred Bull was common all around the eastern Mediterranean and bull-leaping may simply have had a religious connection.’

  ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

  ‘Oh, I’m open to all sorts of theories,’ she’d said, happy at having something else to talk about, other than the grim reality of maimed men suffering, with very little in the way of pain relief, ‘but the one I like best is a Cretan legend my father-in-law told me.’

  ‘Which is?’ he’d asked as they’d reached the South Propylaeum and, to the right of it, the paved plinth on which Sir Arthur’s giant granite reconstruction of a bull’s horns rose in breathtaking beauty against a backdrop of a blazing blue sky.

  ‘That Theseus came to Knossos to take part in funeral games.’ For neatness’s sake while nursing, Ella wore her hair in a long, thick braid. It had fallen over her shoulder and she lifted it back again, saying, ‘King Minos had a wrestling champion named Taurus, who had never been beaten. Theseus threw him three times and claimed the championship and, in doing so, won the heart of King Minos’s daughter, Ariadne – which explains how Ariadne came into the legend. As Taurus is the word for “bull” as well as being a person’s name, the Minotaur – or Minotaurus – might simply have been a champion wrestler.’

  ‘I think I prefer the better-known legend,’ he’d said, ‘that of a cannibalistic half-man, half-bull monster snorting and rampaging in a subterranean maze.’

  Reaching into the breast-pocket of his army shirt, Sam had taken out a small photograph. From the creases in it, it was one that had been taken out and looked at many, many times.

  ‘My wife Jenny,’ he’d said simply, his voice thick with pride and love as he handed it to Ella, ‘and Emma, our baby. I haven’t held Emma yet. When she was born I’d already been posted overseas.’

  The photograph showed a young woman who looked like every Sunday-school teacher Ella had ever known. She had a lovely smile, which saved her from plainness, and there was something impish in her eyes, which had told her that Jenny was someone who, if they were to meet, she would like very, very much.

  She’d been so overcome with the relief that Sam was as happy in his marriage as she was in hers that a lump had formed in her throat.

  ‘It’s a beautiful photograph,’ she’d said truthfully.

  He’d slid it carefully back into his shirt pocket, saying, ‘Things worked out grand for both of us, Ella, and now we can again be what we were – and that’s best friends.’

  ‘Yes, we’ll always be that.’ The words had come from her heart.

  Now she was brought back to the present moment by the RAMC doctor she was working with in the Plaster Room saying, ‘I’m ready for the bandages, Ella.’

  She immersed the first of what would be several plaster-of-Paris bandages in a bowl of water and then, when the water had stopped bubbling, gently removed it, squeezing it from the ends to the centre. As she was pulling it back into shape before handing it over, the door opened and Nikoleta put her head around it, saying in hurried elation, ‘Daphne’s husband has just been brought in with a bullet lodged in his shoulder! I’m just going to get him ready for theatre.’

  ‘Does Daphne know?’

  ‘No, but as she’s working in the operating theatre, she’s soon going to find out.’

  The door slammed shut and the doctor said with weary patience, ‘The bandage, Ella, before it sets into a cast in your hands.’

  The bullet had been in Sholto’s shoulder for three days, and only when he’d begun to suspect that septicaemia was setting in had it occurred to him that he should do something about having it removed. His head was spinning, but that was because of the fever he now had and because the nurse looking after him wasn’t a no-nonsense army nurse, or a nun. With flawless skin, dark-haired, dark-eyed and dazzling, she looked like Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.

  ‘If this bullet has been in your shoulder for three days, why did you not come in sooner?’ she was saying scoldingly as, having removed his shirt, she began sponging the area of the wound with antiseptic.

  ‘Because . . . because it didn’t feel to be doing any great harm.’ His voice seemed to be coming from a long distance away. It didn’t surprise him. He knew his temperature was so high it had to be off the scale.

  ‘And how would you know?’ She was looking at him from beneath a sweep of soot-black lashes. ‘You are not a doctor, are you?’

  ‘No.’ He wondered if she was real, or if he was hallucinating. He wanted her to be real. He could feel himself slipping into unconsciousness and fought against it. ‘I was brought up with guns.’ The words were mumbled, but it didn’t matter. She was still there. Still the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. Scarlett O’Hara and a dark-haired Madonna by Raphael, all rolled into one.

  Nikoleta frowned. ‘You are English. The English don’t know about guns.’

  He was about to try and explain the aristocratic pastime of pheasant-shooting and deer-stalking, but the effort was beyond him. Instead, as he slid into spiralling blackness, he said clearly, and meaning every word, ‘One day . . . one day, Scarlett, I’m going to marry you.’

  In Brigade Headquarters, Lewis was staring at one of Brigadier Chappel’s colonels in stunned disbelief.

  ‘What do you mean Miss Shelton isn’t here? Goddamit, I know she’s here. She’s here acting as an interpreter.’

  ‘Her skills weren’t needed – and at a time like this, a woman amongst so many men was a distraction that was most certainly not needed. Immediately she arrived she was ordered to leave.’

  Lewis’s hands bunched into fists, and Adonis thought Lewis was going to deck the colonel. He didn’t know much about acceptable and non-acceptable conduct in the British army, but was pretty sure that a Military Intelligence captain striking a colonel covered in stripes and pips would end up with the captain being court-martialled, and certainly with the captain in jail.

  As Adonis held his breath, Lewis fought for control and said, white-lipped, ‘She was ordered to leave here – when the battle had already begun?’

  ‘Of course not unaccompanied, and the JU 52s hadn’t yet come in.’ There was angry spittle at the corners of the colonel’s mouth. ‘An officer, Lieutenant Illingworth, was detailed to escort her and they left by jeep.’

  ‘And where is Lieutenant Illingworth now? I need to speak with him – and I need to do so fast!’

  For the first time the colonel looked seriously discomposed. ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. Lieutenant Illingworth is missing in action. And I have now given you as much of my time as I am able to give.’

  With a sharp, decisive salute he stalked away.

  Lewis’s mind raced as he tried to think of the most likely place Kate would have asked to be escorted to.

  An Australian who had been within earshot of his heated exchange with the colonel came up to him. ‘Illingworth isn’t MIA in quite the way Pickering indicated,’ he said. ‘He never returned, after he left on May the twentieth. He and the young woman with him either got caught in defensive ground-cover fire as the JU 52cs flew in or were attacked by paras who landed in the first wave. I’m sorry, Captain. That’s all I can tell you.’<
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  ‘What does he mean, Lewis?’ Adonis asked fearfully as the major moved away. ‘Does he mean the lieutenant and Kate are dead?’

  ‘He means it is thought they are. But Kate isn’t dead. She can’t be. If Kate had been killed five days ago, I would have known. She couldn’t be dead and for me not to know. It isn’t possible.’

  With a pulse pounding at the corner of his jawline, he was already heading out of the cave, pushing his way through a mass of harassed army personnel.

  ‘Then what are we going to do now?’ Adonis’s handsome face was etched with anxiety.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Lewis rasped as they stepped out into the quarry. ‘What we’re going to do is find her!’

  Once back in the truck, he revved the engine, fighting down panic as he struggled to think of where Kate would have asked Illingworth to take her. Kalamata was too far even to come into the equation. As the invasion had started within minutes of Illingworth and Kate leaving the quarry, where would they have headed? The only obvious place was the Villa Ariadne.

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel. The only way to get to Knossos from where they were was to drive into Heraklion on the road they were now on, and then leave it by the Jesus Gate. And with Heraklion under attack, it wasn’t reasonable to imagine Kate asking Illingworth to take her there. She simply wouldn’t have put his life at risk in such a way. She would have wanted to be taken to the Villa – but not via Heraklion.

  He said suddenly, ‘Do any tracks run cross-country between here and Knossos?’

  Adonis frowned. ‘There is a dirt track over rough country to the small village of Stavria, and then a few steps from Stavria there is a slightly better track that leads eventually into the Knossos–Archanes road.’

  Even before Adonis had finished speaking, Lewis had slammed the truck into gear.

  ‘The track may not be wide enough to take the truck,’ Adonis said apprehensively, ‘and there are Germans everywhere south of the town.’

  Lewis made a non-committal sound in his throat, aware of the problems and heedless of them.

  The road from Heraklion to the quarry had been grim enough, with German dead lying by the roadside unburied and with houses bombed into nothing but rubble, but the number of Germans who had been shot down in their parachute harnesses in fields and vineyards was stupefying. At one point they passed a German major swinging lifelessly from a tree, his parachute enmeshed in the branches above him, a dangling monocle incongruously catching the light of the sun. Looking at him, Lewis wasn’t remotely surprised that, where Heraklion was concerned, the Germans were now biding their time.

  At the foot of a hill, a cottage some distance from the track came into view and Adonis said, ‘It is not a cottage of Stavria. It is too soon for it to be already Stavria.’

  They bucketed around a corner and came to a dead halt. In front of them, slewed half on and half off the track, was an abandoned jeep.

  Lewis leapt from the truck, ashen-faced.

  Bullet holes ran down one side of the jeep. There was blood on both the driver’s and the passenger’s seat and the track bore the imprints of four pairs of booted feet, a pair of smaller sandalled feet and then heel-marks, showing that someone had been dragged away in the direction of the cottage.

  ‘Only four men at most,’ Adonis said. ‘Not a platoon. To take care of four of them will be no problem.’

  Lewis shook his head. ‘No. That’s not the way to go about it. Even if you’re right and it is only four men, if we open up with rifle fire, Kate and Illingworth are at risk of being caught in the crossfire or shot deliberately. Before I decide on a plan of action I want a rear-view of the cottage. A rear-view might give us more cover. Stay with the truck. I’ll only be five minutes.’

  Out of sight of the cottage and with five years’ practice of climbing Cretan mountains, Lewis took the hill at a sprint. Once on top of it, and as he approached a vantage point giving a good view of the cottage, he dropped down, wriggling the last few yards on his belly.

  The fenced-off rear of a garden was clearly visible, as was a small thicket of trees a little way beyond it. No soldiers were in the garden, but a Cretan girl was in one of them, feeding hens. She was wearing the usual black bodice and ankle-length skirt, her hair hidden by a black head-kerchief.

  He’d seen all he needed to and turned his head away, about to wriggle back.

  Then he stopped, turned his head and took another look.

  She was too far away for him to see her face clearly, but he could see the way she walked and the way she moved, as she threw seed down for the hens.

  Kate wasn’t dead, and she wasn’t wounded. He didn’t have to wonder why she was so obviously making no effort to escape, when no one was standing over her with a gun. He instantly knew why. It was because she had no intention of abandoning an injured Lieutenant Illingworth. He wondered whose idea it had been that she would be safer, as they set off through country thick with Germans, if she was believed to be a Cretan. Whoever’s idea it had been, it seemed to be working, but although the disguise had probably saved her from being shot, it wouldn’t – and perhaps hadn’t – saved her from being raped.

  At the very thought, bile rose in his throat. Kate had to be got out of the cottage fast, as did Illingworth. But how? At the very least there were four armed Germans in it. No stealthy approach from the front could be made; the ground between the track and the cottage was far too open, and although there was a thicket of trees at the rear of the cottage, it wasn’t near enough to the building to serve as good cover.

  He thought of Kate with her fluent Greek, dressed as a Cretan and quite obviously passing for one.

  He thought of his own very good German, honed to fluency by his long friendship with Helmut, and knew exactly how, with Adonis’s help, he was going to remove Kate and Lieutenant Illingworth from the cottage – and how he was going to do it without a single shot being fired.

  Chapter Thirty

  Daphne’s relief at the sight of Sholto was profound. She had become so convinced he had been killed in the fighting that she had spent hours worrying about how much he’d hate being buried on Crete, instead of in the Hertford family vault with the rest of his illustrious ancestors. A second huge wave of relief followed fast, for he wasn’t suffering from septicaemia and therefore unlikely to die. Although severe, the infection in his wound was one that he was already beginning to recover from twenty-four hours later.

  ‘Well, at least you’re lucid again,’ she’d said tartly, in no mood to forgive all the anxiety he’d put her through, now that she knew he could have sent word to her that he was still alive. ‘I was beginning to think you were dead and, believe it or not, I really didn’t want you to be dead.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, because I didn’t want to be dead, either. I have to see the RAMC officer in charge, Daphne, and I have to do so immediately.’

  ‘Stop being all-important, Sholto. It can wait until I’ve changed your dressing.’

  ‘It bloody can’t wait!’ He struggled to his feet and for a shocked moment she thought he was about to hit her. ‘Canea, Suda Bay and Maleme are all in German hands.’ He’d swayed on his feet, looking as if he was about to faint. ‘An evacuation of all troops is to begin tomorrow – or have I lost a day, and is tomorrow today? How many days have I been delirious? Get me to the officer in charge, Daphne, and do it now!’

  The officer in charge that morning was Sam.

  For a second he, like Daphne, wondered if Sholto was still delirious. He didn’t think so for long.

  ‘Communications have been established with General Freyberg in Canea,’ Sholto said to Sam, still looking as if he could pass out at any moment, ‘and the news is disastrous. Although both Heraklion and Réthymnon are holding out and are in control of their city’s airfields, Canea, Suda Bay and Maleme are all in German hands and, with the Luftwaffe now flying hundreds of fresh troops and artillery into Maleme twenty-four hours a day, there’s no way the island can b
e held. There is to be an evacuation.’

  ‘Evacuation?’ Sam struggled to comprehend it. A withdrawal he could have understood – withdrawal until a new assault could be mounted – but an evacuation, leaving Crete and the Cretans entirely in German hands? And after the fierce and bloody fight that had taken place in Heraklion, and when they had all been so confident that there had been similar successes as far as, and including, Canea, Suda Bay and Maleme?

  He didn’t have to ask what would happen to the wounded. The walking wounded would be amongst the thousands of troops to be evacuated; the others – the critically wounded – would be taken prisoner.

  ‘The order hasn’t been made official yet,’ Sholto continued. ‘When it is, it will be at the very last minute, as no risks can be run of the Germans getting wind of it. I’m giving you advance warning, so that you can have your walking wounded in full readiness for an immediate off into Heraklion, which is where, as we’re still in possession of the harbour, the entire Heraklion sector is to be evacuated from.’

  Sam nodded, deeply grateful for the advance information and fairly sure he knew one of the reasons he’d been given it. Sholto Hertford was determined that when the evacuation began, his wife, like Villa Ariadne’s walking wounded, was going to be at the front of the queue, when it came to boarding a Royal Navy ship.

  Minutes later, when they were on their own and Daphne was changing his dressing, Sholto said, ‘This time there can be no acts of deceit, Daphne. When the evacuation from Heraklion begins, you have to leave as well.’

  Daphne paused in what she was doing. ‘There will still be wounded men needing nursing care.’

  ‘The wounded who are not evacuated will be in prisoner-of-war camps, and the Villa will no longer be a field hospital. It will revert to being a private residence – and not the private residence of a curator of Knossos, but of whichever German general has command of this part of central Crete.’