by Juliana Gray
Silverton lifted one finger. “That, my dear, is what I mean by making inquiries.”
We had slowed to a crawl now, maneuvering around the shipping to find a berth against the multitude of docks thrusting out into the harbor waters, and this was why I loved the Isolde, even though she made me sick. She was so solid and protective. She had waited for us so faithfully in Piraeus, and borne us across the seas while we lay safe in our berths, free from any danger of gun-toting intruders, and now used her power and dignity to secure us the most advantageous position in the harbor, so that we might disembark without any injury or even inconvenience. Without the competition of other passengers striving alongside, each bent on a separate goal.
Because of Isolde, we were ourselves mighty. We could do anything.
Except we could not secure lodgings. This was my fault, for which I cannot apologize. I insisted on scrupulous honesty as regards my relation to Lord Silverton—none—and the clerk’s expression of open greed turned instantly grave.
“Explain to him that we will take separate rooms,” I said to his lordship. “Quite on opposite sides of the hotel, if necessary.”
“My dear Truelove, have you already forgotten the events of the night before last? I must insist on your keeping a room next to mine, though I should naturally prefer to share accommodation, just to be quite safe.”
“Sir!”
“I should sleep on the floor, of course.”
“Impossible.”
“Impossible that I should sleep on the floor, or impossible that—?”
“Just secure us two rooms, sir. Two separate rooms.”
He shook his head. “The chap won’t allow it, now that you’ve spilled the beans. I had him quite convinced and happy, and you would refuse to sign the register as Lady Silverton—”
“I can’t tell a lie, your lordship.”
“It’s not a lie, precisely. Well, I suppose it is. But when one goes gallivanting across the globe, dodging assassins and ducking bullets, one’s naturally put to the wall. In extremis. One’s forced to commit a few petty sins simply in order to—”
“Pretending to be united before God is not a petty sin, sir. If necessary, we can resume our berths on the Isolde each evening. Knossos is only a few miles away.”
“Hardly convenient. What about our baggage?”
“Perhaps the proprietor will be so good as to allow our trunks temporary accommodation, even if he will not extend the invitation to their owners.”
Lord Silverton heaved an aggrieved sigh and turned back to the hotel clerk, who was regarding our exchange with haughty Mediterranean disapproval. After some deliberation, he conceded that our luggage faced no moral temptation from cohabitation, and allowed us—or Mr. Brown, rather, who was lurking near the entrance, keeping watch on the street outside while stifling his evident amusement—to place the trunks in a single dark room at the back of the lobby. For a fee, of course, which Silverton delivered in jingling five-drachmae coins, casting me dark looks as he counted them out.
“Ask him if he knows where Mr. Evans can be found,” I said, when he had finished.
“Already have, Truelove.” He removed his spectacles from his inside pocket and set them in place. He was wearing a Norfolk suit of gray British tweed, perfectly pressed, and a cap of matching tweed that settled comfortably over his gold hair. A pair of smart leather gaiters topped his sturdy shoes. He looked like a man off to denude a Scottish glen of its grouse. “He’s up at the ruins, overseeing restoration, and mine host is happy to loan us a mule to assist our journey.”
“Why, how far is it?”
“A few miles only. The roads aren’t up to snuff, however. Years of civil war and all that. Evans’s show is about the only reliable source of employment at the moment. Come along, then, and look sharp. I don’t suppose you happen to be on familiar terms with mules?”
I was not familiar with mules, and especially not the beady-eyed, rough-haired specimen presented to us in the alleyway behind the Hotel Alabaster. “You can always change your mind later,” Silverton said as he led the reluctant animal up the road in the space between us. The sky had cleared to a brilliant Greek blue, and the wind blew steadily in the gaps between the rocky hills around us. By now the hour was approaching noon, and a brave winter sun stood high above the peaks, shedding what feeble warmth it could.
“I am an excellent walker, I assure you,” I said.
“Yes, I expect you are. I say, I’m rather looking forward to this. Max’s mysterious doings aside, one hears of such astonishing things emerging from the old stones up there.”
I thought of the photographs, which were presently tucked inside the small leather satchel that bumped along the side of my leg. “What sort of things?”
“Why, the palace itself, to start. Who would have thought that Knossos actually existed? They say the complex is very like a maze, just as the Greeks had it in their myths.”
“Myths often begin as actual events, don’t they? I believe I read that somewhere. Nobody makes things up out of whole cloth.”
“Do you believe that, really? You think there was an actual Minotaur kept in the labyrinth? Theseus and Ariadne and the ball of string?”
“Not all of that, of course. But surely there might have been some kernel of truth in the middle of it all, some actual beast that was defeated. Why not?”
Silverton had resumed his spectacles, presumably to better negotiate the rocky ground, and he now drew his pipe from his jacket pocket. “Hmm. Yes. Then the story gets handed down, and the poets layer it all over with magic and gods and turn it into myth, until we’ve got Theseus the magnificent nobly volunteering to sail to Crete among the annual tribute of Athenian youths to King Minos. Naturally, being such a strapping young fellow, he inspires instant passion in the tender breast of the king’s daughter—”
“Ariadne.”
“—who with fiendish cleverness gives him a simple ball of string so he can find his way through the labyrinth—odd that he couldn’t think of that one himself, mind you—to defeat the Minotaur and end the annual sacrifice. The fellow then goes on to perform endless acts of derring-do, aided by the gods, and goes down as one of the great heroes of history.”
“I have never considered Theseus a great hero,” I said. “It’s abominable, the way he treated Ariadne.”
Silverton held a match to the end of his pipe, cupping one hand lovingly around the bowl. “Oh, do you mean that bit about how he leaves the poor girl in the lurch, stranded on Naxos, while he heads back to Athens and a hero’s spoils?”
“Abominable. And then he married her own sister.”
“Oh, but Ariadne did settle herself well, in the end. You can’t deny that. You could do far worse than marriage to Dionysus. Think of the jolly times.”
“Only a man would say that.”
“Just what have you got against laughter and pleasure, Truelove? Frankly, I believe she’s better off with old Bacchus. Damned tiresome, I should think, to be married to a hero. His time’s not his own. He’s got all these bloody public duties. He probably thinks he’s entitled to a mistress or two, to keep up his spirits, and then you’re stuck home with a couple of heirs squalling round your feet, while he goes off cleaning out the Augean stables and whatnot . . .”
“That was Heracles.”
“Irrelevant. The point is, Truelove, if a woman’s got to be married at all, she might as well be married to a chap who’s going to treat her to a night on the town once in a while. Who doesn’t give a damn if she likes a bit of wine to go with her meat. Who’ll laugh along with her when the gods chuck those little thunderbolts their way.”
Our shoes crunched together along the road, which was rutted by cartwheels and illuminated almost to whiteness by the noon sun. We had passed out of town, and the buildings had long given way to elegant columns of native cypress. Silverton held the mule�
��s rope in his left hand and the pipe in his right, and his face, when I glanced his way, seemed to be tilted slightly upward, knit with contemplation.
“But you’re forgetting the main point, Lord Silverton,” I said. “The only point. She was in love with Theseus.”
“Ah, well.” He sucked on the pipe. “I can’t answer that. But it seems to me that if a fellow hasn’t the good sense to return a woman’s love, she should the devil find herself another chap who will.”
The air slipped from my lungs. I pressed my lips together and counted my steps, crunch crunch crunch, and when the passage of oxygen returned, I said, “It is rarely so straightforward as that, I understand.”
Silverton had left his pipe in his mouth, and his hand swung carelessly by his side as he marched along the road, leading the mule. “Why, now, Truelove,” he said gently, from the corner of his mouth, “one would almost suspect you’ve been disappointed in love.”
I waited an instant too long before I replied, “Then one would be quite mistaken,” and I knew by his silence that he did not believe me.
The climb was steady but not steep, and in little more than an hour the scrubby brush gave way to pale quadrangles of excavated earth. A cart rolled out from a beaten path onto the main road, laden with lumps draped in canvas, and Silverton hailed the elderly driver. I sat down on a nearby boulder and gazed back down the hillside, where the square buildings of Heraklion massed together around the mouth of the harbor. The air smelled of dust and a peculiar spicy scent I didn’t recognize.
Silverton turned from the driver. “This is the place, all right. Right up that path. How are you holding up?”
I took in a long breath of cool air. “Magnificently.”
“Carry on, then.” He tugged at the mule, and I rose from the boulder to follow him along the path.
I don’t quite remember what I was expecting when the ruins of Knossos opened up before us. Naturally I would not have imagined an actual palace gleaming in the sunshine, flags snapping from the turrets, but I thought there ought certainly to be something recognizable as a building, instead of a jumble of haphazard stone walls and staircases that ended in midair.
Silverton removed his pipe from his mouth, knocked away the ash, and said, “I say, where’s all the fuss? It looks remarkably somnolent, for the greatest ancient discovery in modern times.”
“Perhaps they’re all indoors.”
“Indoors where?”
But we continued toward the gravitational center, a series of dun-colored walls that stretched higher than the others, lined with what might once have been columns. I said to myself, These are ancient columns, these are the relics of Minos, but my imagination failed me. The expected tingle failed to gather at the back of my neck.
“Just the sort of place one expects to find Max,” Silverton said. “With any luck he’ll emerge from a grotto any moment, covered in dust, wondering what the devil we’re doing here.”
“So absorbed in his work, he’s neglected to read or reply to his post?”
“It’s happened before, I assure you.”
I thought of the ransacked flat and poor dead Mr. Livas, and the intruder in the hotel with his lethal pistol, and I didn’t reply. We skirted gingerly around the crumbling walls, and at last, carried on the wind, came the sound of human occupation: a raised voice, speaking in Greek, coming from the central structure.
“There we are,” said Silverton.
“It’s Mr. Haywood?”
“It’s somebody, at any rate.” He led the mule to a nearby cypress tree and tied the rope to the trunk. I found the spicy scent again, stronger now, and I realized that it came from the cypress itself. I filled my lungs and thought, This is the same smell that Homer knew. This is the smell that perhaps filled the lungs of some genuine Theseus, as he approached these palace walls three thousand years ago.
A faint tingle at last.
Silverton turned from the mule and slipped his empty pipe back into the large pocket of his Norfolk jacket. “Right-ho,” he said, a little too cheerfully.
More voices joined the first as we made our way to the building in the middle. We turned a corner, and a new front appeared to us, covered with ropes and scaffolding and a few hardy figures. A man stood at the bottom of a ladder in a worn brown suit, looking up fiercely at the workmen above. His hands were cupped around his mouth.
“That’s not Max,” said Silverton. “Or Evans, come to that.”
“How do you know?”
“Evans is a short little fellow, not five and a half feet. I saw him once at a lecture in Oxford, this museum he directs. The Ashmolean. You can’t mistake him.”
“Then who is this?”
“Let’s find out, shall we?”
The man at the bottom of the ladder turned in astonishment at Silverton’s halloo. He was about thirty years old, with olive skin and curling dark hair beneath his beaten cap: a native, evidently.
“Hello, there,” said Silverton. “Speak English?”
“Yes, I do.” The man adjusted his cap and placed his hands warily on his hips.
“Good morning, then. My name’s Silverton, and this is my colleague, Miss Truelove. We’re looking for a man named Haywood. Max Haywood. Friend of ours. I believe he’s been working with Mr. Evans this past year.”
One by one, the workers on the wall lowered their tools and gazed down at the three of us. I became conscious of my dusty shoes, my hair slipping untidily from my hat. Next to me, Lord Silverton stood close, in a pose that appeared negligent but wasn’t. In fact, the arm that brushed mine was as taut as a magnetic wire, and his position—a quarter step ahead, legs slightly apart—I recognized as protective.
Before us, the foreman took in Silverton’s stance with steady and intelligent eyes. He did not waste his gaze on me; I was quite invisible to such a man, in my plain clothes and serviceable wide hat. The silence widened and took on weight, until someone muttered a few words from the wall above.
“Well?” said Silverton. “Never heard of him? I understand he’s been working on Knossos for some time.”
The foreman’s hands fell away from his hips. He tilted his head upward and shouted something to the workers on the scaffolding, who picked up their tools in unison and turned back to the stone face of the building, which I now saw was unnaturally perfect.
The foreman looked at us, and though his mouth curled in a welcoming smile, the rest of his face remained grave.
“Come inside, please,” he said. “I will make us some coffee.”
For three days and three nights the Lady remained in the great hall by the sea, in communion with the Hero, until their souls were fully joined and there was no joy left that had not been revealed to them. On the morning of the fourth day, the Lady’s handmaid knocked on the door and said that the period of seclusion would soon end, and they must return to the Palace before the Prince’s suspicions were raised.
So the Lady prepared to depart from her love, and though she knew he would soon arrive at the Palace and deliver them from the wickedness of the Prince her husband, she felt great fear at the thought of their separation. ‘Remember to do exactly as I have taught you,’ she said, ‘and do not forget your promise to me.’
‘My own Lady,’ said the Hero, ‘every word you have spoken to me is graven on my heart, and with the blessing of the gods we shall soon be united once more, and I will restore to you the throne you have given up for my sake, and you will bear me children to carry our name into eternity . . .’
THE BOOK OF TIME, A. M. HAYWOOD (1921)
Ten
The coffee was of the Turkish variety, the foreman said, the only worthwhile thing left behind by the Ottomans. He did not actually brew it himself; there was a small woman, in a shapeless dress and apron, who lit the small camp stove and measured the grounds in jerky little motions that suggested annoyance. The foreman hoped we
liked it strong.
“The stronger the better,” said Silverton. “And you, Miss Truelove?”
I said that I looked forward to drinking Turkish coffee for the first time.
Silverton turned back to the foreman. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Not at all.”
Silverton drew out a chair from the table and offered it to me. I sat and watched him take the neighboring chair, settle his long legs, and withdraw his pipe and tobacco pouch from beneath the wide flap of his pocket. I wondered what else he kept there. The pistol, probably.
The table was long and rectangular and spread with what appeared to be blueprints, which the foreman now stacked hastily into piles at one end. “You will pardon the disorder,” he said, in well-cultivated English. (His name, he had told us, was Vasilakis.) “Mr. Evans is presently away, and I have the entire site to manage.”
“Oh? Where has Evans got to?”
“He has been called back to England and his collections at the museum.” Mr. Vasilakis produced a box of matches from his pocket and bent over the paraffin lantern that rested in the center of the table.
“What a shame. I was hoping he could give us some news of our friend, who has not replied to our recent letters. There’s been a death in the family, you see.” Silverton assumed a sorrowful expression.
“My deepest condolences,” said Mr. Vasilakis, also sorrowful. The wick caught slowly. He replaced the globe, shook out the match, and lowered himself into a chair on the opposite side of the table. “I have kept his post in my office. You are welcome to take it with you.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Has something happened to Mr. Haywood?”
Mr. Vasilakis turned to me, blinking, as if he had quite forgotten I was there. Or perhaps he hadn’t even noticed me to begin with. “Happened? Not that I am aware. Mr. Haywood left our company at the beginning of winter, and I am afraid we have not heard from him since.”