There was silence in the kitchen, then Orion rose to his feet.
Swiftly as he moved the Bandit was swifter.
He drew the pistol from his belt and pointed it at him.
"Any opposition from you," he said, "and not only you will die but also the Argeros' and anyone else who interferes with me!"
"You shall have your food," Madame interrupted. "You are fortunate there is some left. Here is wine."
She set a bottle down on the table with a bang as she spoke and walked towards the stove. No-one else moved. Then slowly, without the impetuosity he had shown the first time, Orion rose.
"Madame will provide you with your needs," he said, "and I shall make no effort to interfere. But this woman is my wife. We have not been married long, but she is with child."
The Bandit looked across the room at Athena and at the slimness of her figure.
"That is why she is retiring to bed," Orion said firmly. "Do you understand ? "
The Bandit looked at him as if to make certain he was telling the truth. Orion's eyes met his fairly and squarely.
After a moment he grunted, poured out a glass of wine and swilled it down without speaking.
Orion crossed the room, put his arm around Athena and took her through the door which led to the stairs. He deliberately left it open as if to let the Bandit see that they were not escaping.
"Go up to bed and lock your door. You will be quite safe," he said in English.
"You are ... sure?"
Athena was trembling.
"Quite sure," he answered.
He did not touch her, but he watched her as she climbed the stairs, and heard her go into the room overhead.
There was no lock on the door, but there was a bolt made of wood and Athena pushed it into place.
The shutters over the window were closed and she made no effort to open them, she could not bear to look at the moonlight. Nonika had left a rush candle burning and by the light of it Athena undressed and got into bed.
She thought it would be impossible to think of anything but the Bandit sitting downstairs, but although she could hear the murmur of their voices she began to relive the moment when Orion had kissed her in the Sacred Shrine.
With her eyes closed she could still see the outline of the Temple, the silver mist in the valley and the glimmer of the sea.
It all seemed to glow within her with the shining light which she knew came from Apollo himself.
It was perfect, it was wonderful, and even now she could hardly believe that her spirit, having soared to the Heavens in Orion's arms, was back within the confines of her body.
She would never see him again. He was leaving her, as strangely and mysteriously as he had come. Orion—the stranger who was no longer a stranger but a part of herself.
She felt cold with the pain and misery of it. She wanted him, wanted him with an intensity that was violent.
How could she lose him? How could she forget the moment when she gave herself to him completely and absolutely, keeping back nothing, merging her whole being into his until they were one person?
She wanted to cry out in despair, and yet her eyes were dry and she knew there were no words by which she could express her feelings, not even to him.
For one moment of her life she had been transformed from a conventional English girl into, as he had said, the goddess of love.
Now when he left her, she would return to what she had been before except that nothing could ever be the same again.
Having once touched the very fount of happiness and of ecstasy, having once known the rapture of the initiated into the mysteries of the gods, how could she return to ordinary life?
How could she face commonplace people and the thought of living perhaps three-score-years-and-ten without the man she loved?
Put into words it seemed incredible.
How could she love a man she had never met until this afternoon? Yet she knew inexorably and irrefutably that this, as Orion had said, was the love that all men sought.
Journeying as pilgrims, following twisting philosophies and innumerable religions they sought in their souls what she and Orion had captured in one immortal moment on the broken steps of the theatre.
"I love him!"
She said the words to herself, and they seemed to be emblazoned across the darkness in letters of fire.
"I love him ! I love him ! He is the only person who understands."
To anyone else the story would sound ridiculous: they would laugh and tell her she was just an imaginative, romantic girl, carried away by the moonlight.
But Athena knew it was something fundamental and eternal.
It was soul reaching out to soul, spirit reaching out to spirit, a woman finding the man who was hers and to whom she had belonged from the beginning of creation.
This was love, this was the fate which drew two people to each other, so that whatever the appearances against it they became one in the real and spiritual sense of the word.
"When Orion leaves tomorrow he takes my heart with him," Athena whispered to the darkness.
A long time later she heard him coming up the stairs.
There was silence below and she guessed that the Bandit must have gone, doubtless taking with him all the money the Argeros' had in the house and anything else of value he fancied.
As Orion reached the landing and opened the door of his room she fancied that he stood for a moment listening as if to ascertain that she was all right.
She wanted to cry out to him, but she knew that that was something he did not want—and anyway modesty kept her silent.
Orion went into the other room and shut the door.
She heard him walking about on the uncarpeted floor then she heard the bed move beneath him.
She wondered what he looked like asleep, perhaps younger and gentler, and not so overwhelmingly masculine as he had looked when his deep-set eyes sought hers and she felt shy yet excited by the expression in them.
"I love him! I love him!" Athena whispered to herself.
She knew that he intended to rise early in the morning before she was awake, but she was sure that after all that had happened she would be unable to sleep, and if he made the slightest sound she would hear it.
It would be a worse agony than anything she could imagine to hear him going downstairs and leaving the house without saying goodbye.
And yet what could they say to each other that had not already been said?
It would be a bathos that was unthinkable to shake hands or even to kiss each other perfunctorily after what had happened at the shrine.
No—there would be nothing she could do but listen to him leaving, and know that after he had gone she must return to the world from which she had escaped for one brief ecstatic day.
"However long I live I shall never be able to love anyone else," Athena thought.
Deep in her thoughts she was vaguely aware of a scrabbling sound against the wall of the house.
She had not really noticed it, but now she distinctly heard a footstep
overhead.
It was not loud, and yet it was followed by another one, and she looked up apprehensively in the darkness at the ceiling.
Again she heard a noise and now with a sudden shock of terror she knew what it was.
Someone was on the roof over her head and it was not difficult to guess the intruder's identity. He was obviously trying to open the trap-door which was built in most flat-roofed houses to let in the cool night air when the weather was hot.
Athena sat up in bed.
It was Kazandis who was overhead—and she knew that he intended to enter her room from the roof above.
He would know where she was sleeping because he would have heard her moving about when she went to bed, and although he had pretended to accept Orion's story that she was his wife and with child it was doubtful if he had been deceived.
Terror-stricken, she realised that the trap-door in the roof was opening.
It was
obviously stiff through not having been used since last year, but although she could not see in the darkness she felt that strong fingers were already raising it.
There was a creaking noise, then a faint light above her!
With a cry like a frightened animal Athena jumped out of bed.
She ran across the room and groped with frantic, trembling fingers for the bolt on the door.
As she found it she heard the trap-door fall back on the roof and felt the night air on her face.
Then she pulled the door open, ran across the landing and grasped the handle of Orion's door.
Chapter Four
Orion had opened his shutters when he went to bed, and in the moonlight flooding into the room he could see, as he sat up, Athena at the door.
She turned to push in the bolt which was similar to the one on the door of her bedroom, then frantically she ran across the room towards him.
"What is the matter? What has happened?" he asked.
Without thinking she threw herself against him and his arms went round her.
"Th ... that man," she managed to gasp, "he is... getting into my bedroom f ... from the ... roof."
Orion's arms tightened for a moment. Then he said quietly:
"Shut your eyes. I am going to get out of bed."
He moved as he spoke, and hardly understanding what was happening Athena had a glimpse of his body, slim, athletically muscled, silver in the moonlight, and realised he was naked.
Hastily she covered her face with her hands.
She sat trembling on the bed, her back towards him until, as he moved about, he said:
"Get into the bed. I will not let him touch you."
Fearfully she turned her head to see that Orion dressed in his trousers and shirt was pulling the furniture in front of the door.
Automatically, still too bemused really to know what she was doing, she got into the bed as he had ordered and pulled the sheet over her.
It was a large bed, larger than the one in her room, but she sat upright watching Orion dragging first the chest-of-drawers, then a table and various other pieces of furniture in front of the door, piling them up one upon the other.
He made a considerable noise while he was doing it, and she thought that if Kazandis was by this time in her bed-room he must realise what was happening.
She knew now that Orion had gambled on the Bandit respecting her because he had said she was not only a married woman but also carrying a child.
Perhaps he had believed, as she did, the age-old saying of the Ancient Greeks that the three most beautiful things in the world were a ship in full sail, a cornfield blowing in the wind, and a woman with child.
He had been mistaken.
Kazandis respected nothing and nobody, and Athena trembled as she thought that if she had been asleep he would have entered her bed-room and been beside her before she was aware of his presence.
Then there would have been no escape.
Even now when she though! of the huge man with his pistol and his knife and the lustful expression in his eyes she could mil he sure she was free of him.
She looked up at the ceiling trying to see if there was a trapdoor to the roof in Orion's room as there had been in hers.
Then she realised that even if there were Kazandis would not have risked entering the room by such a method when there was a man in it.
He would be too vulnerable to assault as he descended, for there would be no other way of coming down except feet first.
Then even as she thought about it she heard a heavy footstep on the landing outside.
Kazandis must have got into her bed-room as he intended only to find that his prey had flown.
He would have guessed where she had gone and he would know now that he had been right in assuming that Orion had lied to him when he said they were man and wife.
Athena held her breath, and she fancied that Orion standing back a little way from the door and listening was also holding his.
She noticed that while he had pulled most of the furniture against the door there was a strongly made wooden chair beside him.
She guessed he intended if necessary to use this as a weapon and thought despairingly that although it might prove effective against an un-armed man, it would be useless against a bullet from a pistol with which Kazandis was doubtless an expert.
There was no sound of movement outside on the landing, and yet he was certainly there.
It was almost as if they could hear him breathing, almost as if they could see, mentally, his brain working, wondering if he should force his way into the room and overpower Orion, which he could be quite capable of doing, and then take Athena as he wished to do.
It must have been only a few seconds, but it seemed to Athena as if hours ticked by.
She was conscious only of the frenzied beating of her heart and the straining of her ears.
Then abruptly, unexpectedly, they heard Kazandis stump noisily down the stairs.
It was as if by the very noise he made he defied them and refused to acknowledge defeat.
They heard him fling open the door leading into the kitchen, cross the room beneath and let himself out of the Taverna, slamming the door behind him.
Athena felt her whole body relax and it was almost painful because the tension had been so strained.
Now Orion turned to face her and she saw in the moonlight that he was smiling.
"He has gone."
He came across the room towards her and sat down on the bed lacing her, his eyes taking in the thin white muslin nightgown she was wearing, trimmed with lace, her fair hair falling over her shoulders and her eyes wide and frightened, looking into his.
"You are safe, Athena," he said again as if she had not understood. "He has gone."
"Suppose he ... comes back?" she whispered.
"He will not. I should have anticipated that something like this would happen and I apologise for not taking better care of you."
"It was not your ... fault," Athena said. "I thought he ... believed you."
"I hoped he did, but marriage vows mean nothing to Kazandis and he has a reputation with women as with everything else."
"Can there be ... women who like a man ... like that?" Athena asked. Then she added wonderingly, "I did not ... understand that men could ... feel that wayr."
"About what?" Orion asked.
She was silent for a moment, then said in a voice he could hardly hear: "He ... asked for food and a ... woman as if they were the ... same kind of thing."
There was something so shocked in the tone of her voice that Orion reached out and put his hand over hers.
"Forget it," he said. "In the sheltered life I imagine you have led and will continue to lead when you go home you are never likely to meet another man like Kazandis. But you see, I was right in warning you that you must take care of yourself."
Athena drew in her breath.
"If ... you had ... not been ... there ..." she whispered.
"But I was here," Orion said firmly. "Forget it, Athena, it is something that might happen once in a million times, and then only to someone like yourself who has run away from those who are looking after her."
He paused before he asked:
"You have run away, have you not?"
Athena's eyes flickered and she looked down.
"Yes," she admitted after a moment.
"I can understand your wanting to go to Delphi alone," he said. "The presence of other people can spoil such an unforgettable experience as a first visit to the Shrine. At the same time you are too beautiful, Athena to take chances with yourself."
There was a note in his voice which made her glance up at him quickly, and then it was impossible to look away.
For a moment they both stared at each other and Athena knew that something magnetic passed between them and she felt as if once again she was in his arms and his lips were on hers.
Abruptly Orion rose to his feet.
"I know you will not wish to go
back to your own room," he said, "so we will change places."
Without thinking Athena put out her hands towards him.
"No ... do not ... leave me," she begged. "Please ... do not ... leave me."
She did not realise what she was asking, she only knew the fear of what had happened swept over her, and her whole body shrank from being alone and from the fear that however securely Orion might fasten the door Kazandis would somehow reach her
There were two windows in this room and she was sure there was also a trap-door in the ceiling.
In her imagination she could almost see Kazandis killing Orion while he slept. Then there would be no-one to protect her or to prevent him from battering down the door and coming to her if he wished to do so.
It was the cry of a frightened child as she repeated:
"I ... cannot be alone ... I could not ... bear it."
Orion walked to the window to stand in the moonlight. She could see his profile with its perfect Greek features etched against the lintel and she thought, as she had thought before, that no man could be as handsome or indeed so irresistible.
"I understand what you are feeling, Athena," he said after a moment, and she thought that his voice was deliberately controlled. "So you will stay here and I will stay with you, but you must understand that it will he difficult for me and I dare not touch you."
"Why?" Athena whispered.
She felt as if his words conjured up an enchantment that crept over her insidiously like a warm wave
Now she was trembling, but not with fear.
She felt the same excitement she had felt when he kissed her and carried her up into the sky, where they had ceased to be human beings and had become gods.
"You know the answer to that," Orion answered harshly. "We said goodbye to each other, Athena. It is something we had to do because you have your life to live and I have mine. I had steeled myself not to see you again."
He sounded reproachful and Athena replied:
"I am ... sorry."
She knew as she spoke that she was nothing of the sort, since now that the horror that had driven her to him was over, he was there.
She could look at him, she could listen to his voice even if it were only for a short time until once again they must leave each other.
Kiss the Moonlight Page 7