Kiss the Moonlight

by Barbara Cartland

  There were eagles just as she had imagined they would be hovering over the Shrine. There were six of them and the great span of their wings made them seem omnipotent—King of Birds—surveying in awful majesty the weakness of the mortals beneath them.

  Silhouetted against the sun they seemed to shine with a light of then-own and she watched them fascinated, until it seemed to her as if she herself was amongst them soaring in the sky, moving always higher and higher towards the sun ...

  How long she slept Athena had no idea but she came slowly back to mortal consiousness to realise that she was not alone. Someone was with her.

  For a moment it was only a shadowy thought and she was still with the eagles'.

  Half-asleep, hardly conscious of what she was doing or saying Athena murmured:

  "I was ... flying into the ... sun."

  The sound of her own voice made her open her eyes.

  Sitting looking at her as she lay amongst the flowers was a man. For a moment she looked at him hazily, finding it hard to focus her sight.

  "I was certain you were a goddess," he said in an amused voice, "but I am not sure if you are Aphrodite or Athena herself."

  Without thinking, without considering what she was saying, Athena answered him.

  "My name is Athena," she said, and woke up completely.

  "Then I offer you my most respectful homage," he said a little mockingly.

  Athena sat up and put her hands to her hair. She had taken off her bonnet as she had climbed down the twisting path from the Stadium because it had been so hot.

  Now she realised that she must look very strange lying bareheaded amongst the flowers and what was more, talking to a strange man to whom she had not been introduced.

  He was certainly very unlike the men she had met at home, and yet despite his appearance she was sure he was well-bred.

  He was wearing a white shirt without a tie and with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows of his sun-burnt arms. But when she looked at his face Athena forgot everything else.

  He had in fact the perfect classical features she had expected to find on every Greek, only at the Court of King Otho, at any rate, to be disappointed.

  As she stared at him he smiled at her and the smile took away the almost severe perfection of his face and made him very human.

  His deep set eyes were twinkling and she thought to herself that they had the light of Apollo in them. ,

  "We have now established that you are the goddess Athena," the strange man said, still speaking in English. "Perhaps I should introduce myself or would you prefer to guess my identity?"

  His tone made Athena feel self-conscious and the colour rose in her cheeks as she said a little uncomfortably:

  "I ... I am sorry ... I was asleep when you spoke to me ... and I did not know what I was ... saying."

  "You told me you were flying into the sun," the man said, "and surely no human being—if you are human—could ask for more."

  Athena made a movement as if she would rise. "I think ... I should be ... going."

  "Going where ? " the man asked. "Unless you are returning to Olympus from whence you must have come."

  She smiled at him because she could not help it.

  "You are very ... flattering," she said. "But I feel this is a very strange conversation to have with ... someone I have never met... before."

  "We have met now," he said firmly, "and you have not answered my question."

  As if it was a game in which she must take part, Athena said: "You are not Apollo—you are too dark."

  "I assure you I would not presume to such an exalted position as that of the god of light," her companion said, "even though I am a pale reflection of him. Try again."

  Athena thought for a moment, then she said:

  "Then you are not Hermes. I was thinking of him as I came up the hill from the Port, feeling he would protect me because after all he is the god of travellers as well as the messenger of the gods."

  "If that is who you wish me to be, then I am quite content to become Hermes," the man answered, "but actually my name is Orion."

  "The most famous and the most beautiful of all the constellations of stars!" Athena exclaimed.

  "Now I am indeed flattered. Is your name really Athena?"

  She nodded her head.

  "Yes, really."

  "And yet you are English?"

  "Is it so obvious?"

  "Only because you speak English. Otherwise you might be pure Greek. Athena when very young—not yet old enough to be the goddess of wisdom, but old enough to be the goddess of love."

  Again Athena blushed, and now she picked her bonnet up from where she had laid it beside her.

  "Do not put it on," Orion said quickly. "Your hair is perfect. Just the right colour against the marble and your eyes are the grey of the sea in the early morning."

  Instinctively Athena's face turned towards the Gulf of Krisa as it could be glimpsed through the rocks beyond the carpet of olive trees.

  "Also your nose is pure Greek," Orion finished.

  "That is what I have been told before," Athena replied, "and it makes me very ... proud."

  "You would like to be Greek?"

  "I have a little Greek blood in my veins and perhaps that has made me want all my life to be here, as I am now."

  There was a little throb in her voice which told the man listening how much it moved her.

  "And you came here alone?" he asked in surprise. He looked beyond her through the trees as if lie thought somebody else might be slumbering there whom he had not yet perceived. "Quite alone," Athena answered.

  Then she wondered if she had been indiscreet in telling him so much about herself.

  "That was brave of you," he said. "English ladies are seldom so adventurous. They come here in a party, and if the majesty of Apollo makes them feel awe-inspired they giggle with each other because they are embarrassed to admit the emotions he arouses in them."

  "You are speaking very scathingly," Athena said. "Do you not like the English?"

  "Not very much," he admitted. "Not the ones I have met so far."

  "Then it is certainly time for me to leave."

  "You know I did not mean that," he said in his deep voice. Now he looked into her eyes.

  "You are different—different from the average Englishwoman. But everyone who comes to Delphi is a pilgrim and as such acceptable to the gods, wherever they may have been born."

  "How I wish I could have seen this place in all its glory," Athena sighed.

  "There have been many Temples in this particular place," Orion said quietly. "The first was a very small shrine made of bees-wax and feathers. The second was of ferns twisted together."

  He paused.

  "The third of laurel-boughs; the fourth of bronze with golden songbirds perched on the roof."

  "I would like to have seen that one," Athena interposed softly.

  "The fifth was of stone," he went on, "which was burnt down in 489 B.C., the sixth was destroyed by an earthquake, finally about A.D. 400, the seventh was plundered and torn down by the Christian Emperor Arcadius."

  He hesitated for a moment before he continued:

  "But long before that the Emperor Nero had robbed the Sacred Shrine of seven hundred bronze statues and removed them to Rome."

  There was a note in his voice which told Athena how he resented the manner in which the Romans had appropriated treasures that were Greek. Then thinking of the Elgin Marbles she was silent.

  "So much has been taken away from us," Orion went on, "but they cannot take away the feeling that Apollo is still here."

  "No shelter has Apollo, nor sacred laurel leaves;

  The fountains now are silent; the voice is stilled."

  Athena spoke in a low voice and he turned to look at her in surprise.

  "Is that what yon feel ?"

  "No," she answered, "that is what the Oracle said to the Emperor Julian the Apostate when he came here in A.D. 562 and asked what he could do
to preserve the glory of the god."

  "How do you know all these things?" Orion enquired. "Who has taught you?"

  "I have heard the stories of Greek mythology ever since I was a child," Athena answered. "That is why I have always longed to come here and why, even though I see how little there is left to see, I am not disappointed."

  She felt that his eyes lit up at her words.

  "You belong here," he said quietly, and she knew that he could not have paid her a greater compliment. They sat talking for a long time.

  Orion who obviously knew everything that was known about Delphi, told to her more details of the Oracle than her grandmother had told her and described many of the ceremonies which had taken place when the pilgrims landed in the Port below and flooded along the Sacred Way

  .

  Apollo had ordered them to come in high summer and the scorching sunlight flashed off the rocks and the white and gold glory of his Temple must have shimmered almost blindingly.

  "They came very slowly," Orion said, "and yet there were always those who wished to lay their heart and their soul at the feet of Apollo. On one single day 50,000 pilgrims crowded through the Port of Itea."

  He paused, then he said:

  "Today there is hardly a visitor and after all what is there for them to see?"

  "Perhaps like us," Athena said, "they come to feel the presence of Apollo, and perhaps to hear within themselves the voice of the Oracle." Orion looked at her in surprise. "Is that why you are here?"

  She did not wish to tell him the truth, but she felt as if he forced it from between her lips. "Yes."

  "The Oracle has gone," he said, "but I think that not the Pythia but Athena will speak to you. How could she fail to listen to her namesake?"

  "Perhaps no-one can solve our problems except ourselves," Athena said.

  She wondered as she spoke how she could be talking to a man she had never met before in this intimate manner.

  Yet because he was a stranger, because he had appeared from nowhere while she was asleep, and because he could be of no importance in her life, it seemed easy and natural.

  With anyone from her own world she would have felt constrained.

  Besides never had she been able to talk to any man of her thoughts and feelings or of the gods and goddesses that to her were so real.

  Always the conversation must be of sport or of general affairs; but this man, whoever he might be, was different.

  It was obvious that to him Apollo and Athena were as real as they were to her, and so she was able to say what came into her mind and after the first few moments of waking not to feel embarrassed.

  The olive trees sheltered them from a sun that was scorchingly hot in the first part of the afternoon, then gradually the air grew a little cooler and finally almost regretfully, because she could not bear the thought that their conversation must come to an end Athena said tentatively:

  "Perhaps you could tell me of a place where I could find something to eat and stay the night?"

  "You intend to stay here?" Orion asked.

  Athena looked down into the valley.

  It would take her at least two hours, she thought, to reach the Port of Itea.

  It would be getting late when she arrived there and she was certain that it would be difficult to persuade the fishermen to venture out into the dark on the voyage round to Mikis.

  It would be better to leave early in the morning. She would be back at noon and perhaps, she thought, then she would feel stronger to face her Aunt's anger at the manner in which she had disappeared.

  Somehow she could not bear this perfect day to be disrupted by his-agreeableness as must inevitably occur if she arrived back at the Palace very late tonight.

  Orion appeared to be waiting for her answer and after a moment she said:

  "I would like to stay here if it is possible. I feel too tired to go all the way back to Itea, even if the horse on which I came here has waited to convey me down again."

  "It has doubtless waited," Orion said with a smile, "as his owner knows that you will require his services. At the same time I think you are wise to stay the night. There is only one Taverna I can recommend. It is on the other side of the village and it is primitive. But it is clean and you will be welcome."

  "Would you be so kind as to show me the way there?" Athena asked.

  There did not seem to her to be anything reprehensible in asking this stranger for guidance. Somehow she had the feeling that he would protect her.

  Perhaps because she had been so cosseted and looked after all her life it had made her more trusting than another woman might have been.

  At the same time because of what they had said to each other and the manner in which they had talked together she felt a confidence in him that she had never felt for any other man.

  "If you have had nothing to eat all clay you must he very hungry," he said. "I should have thought of it before, but we were feeding our minds rather than our bodies."

  That was what Athena thought and she flashed him a smile as she rose to her feet.

  He picked up her bag in which she had put her few requirements and she remembered how heavy it had seemed when she had to carry it all the way up to the Stadium.

  She did not attempt to put on her bonnet, not only because Orion had asked her not to but also because it gave her a feeling of freedom and lightness to be without it.

  She was well aware that her Aunt and all her other relatives would think it very reprehensible for a lady to be walking about without a covering on her head and especially to be accompanied by a man in his shirt sleeves with his collar open.

  Then Athena told herself they would never understand why she was here or what it had meant to her to come to Delphi.

  She admitted that her delight had been not only in the Sacred Shrine but also in having someone who understood, to talk to about it. Someone who she felt now was in fact protecting her and looking after her as the god Hermes might have done.

  They moved through the olive trees, then climbed some rough steps onto the road above.

  For a moment they both stood looking up at the Shining Cliffs and at the great ravine on one side of it from which the cascade of water fell silver and shimmering onto the rocks below.

  "Is that the water of Castalia which Byron found to have a 'villainous tang'?" Athena asked.

  "It may have been," Orion replied, "but I think you need something more sustaining than water, however blessed. So I suggest we seek the Taverna where they have quite a passable local wine and delicious coffee."

  "You are making me feel thirsty, and I admit to feeling very hungry," Athena said. "It is rather lowering to realise that while our minds and hearts are in the heights our bodies are still mundane enough to remain very material."

  "I shall never believe that of your body," Orion replied. 'As I suspected when I saw you this afternoon, you move like a goddess with a grace that only the nymphs that sprang from the spray of the waves could emulate."

  Athena gave a little laugh.

  "I like your compliments," she said. "They are so different from any I have ever received before."

  "And you have obviously received very many," he said mockingly. "Not really," she answered.

  Now (here was a wistful note in her voice as she remembered that the compliments she had received in Athens and which at first had seemed so delightful had doubtless been lip-service to her fortune rather than to herself.

  It struck her as they moved along through the village that was built above and below the Sacred Way

  that this was the first time in her life that anyone was talking to her without being aware of her background or her rank as her father's daughter.

  To this strange man, Orion, she was just Athena. He accepted that as her name and asked no further questions.

  Yet they had conversed as equals in the manner of two scholars who had met each other across the centuries of time and to whom there was nothing of importance except the searching of each
other's minds.

  "While I commend your courage," Orion was saying as they walked along, "at the same time I do not advise you to make many such expeditions in Greece without being accompanied either by someone older than yourself or at least a courier."

  "Why not?" Athena enquired.

  "The first reason is obvious," he replied. "You are young and you are very beautiful."

  “And another?"

  'There are always bandits in this part of the world."

  "Bandits?" Athena exclaimed.

  "Bandits—brigands—whatever you like to call them," he replied. "They have no respect for property nor in some cases for the female sex."

  Athena remembered that when she was in Athens she had soon found that the most talked about person at Court was an Albanian General.

  She had been told with bated breath that he was a Pallikare who was certainly amongst the most striking of the many races who were crowded into the city.

  "They are a legendary lot," someone had said in her presence, "mercenaries and cut-throats, and originally bandits from the Albanian mountains."

  "It is all very well to disparage them," another man answered, "but they fought magnificently in the War of Independence and it is to keep them amiably disposed that the King has named their Chief, General Xristodolous Hadji-Petros as one of his aides-de-camp."

  The General was certainly a splendid figure, Athena thought.

  Ferocious-looking, he wore an Albanian costume with crimson and gold embroideries and he bristled with pistols and yetaghans.

  His horses' bridles and saddles were decorated with gold and silver and his men, with long moustachios, swaggered about in great shaggy cloaks and looked like bears.

  It was during the week that Athena had spent in Athens that a sensational scandal had broken.

  A famous English beauty, Lady Ellenborough, who after a very chequered career in which, it was whispered, she had been not only King Otho's mistress but also previously that of his father, King Ludwig of Bavaria, had run away with the General into the mountains. Despite his magnificent appearance he was over sixty, a widower with children.

  But among those who had been very conscious of his attractions was Queen Amelia, and apparently she, as Athena heard, was furious and jealous that the General should have eloped with someone who moved in Court circles.