A Most Extraordinary Pursuit

by Juliana Gray

  “Left? Where to?” said Silverton.

  “He did not say. If he had, we would have forwarded his post. I understood he was to return. I presumed he was merely carrying out additional research for his studies.”

  The foreman’s English was superb, his accent redolent of plum pudding and British public schools, only without the drawl that would have rendered it fully authentic. I glanced at his hands, which were ungloved and heavily calloused.

  “His studies,” said Silverton. “I see. Perhaps you had better start from the beginning, old man. I’m afraid I’m all at sea. What studies, precisely, was he carrying out here at Knossos?”

  Mr. Vasilakis lifted his eyebrows. He glanced at me, and then returned to Silverton. “You are not aware of Mr. Haywood’s area of specialty?”

  His lordship’s face was perfectly blank. “Are you?”

  The foreman reached for one of the stacks of papers at the end of the table and thumbed his way rapidly downward. “I presume you are familiar with the history of Knossos,” he began.

  “Not at all,” said Silverton, innocent as a babe. “Rather a dunce at history, in fact. Never could stuff another king inside the old noggin without an older one slipping back out the other ear.”

  Mr. Vasilakis had just pulled out a sheaf from his stack, and paused to impart an expression of utter disbelief: first at Silverton, who shrugged it away cheerfully, and then at me.

  “It’s quite true,” I said. “He’s perfectly useless.”

  Mr. Vasilakis turned to the woman at the stove, who was placing a series of demitasse cups on a battered enamel tray. He said something sharp to her, to which she replied just as sharply before carrying the tray to the table and setting it down in a rattle of angry porcelain.

  “You will forgive me,” said Vasilakis. “We do not often have visitors at this time of year.”

  The woman poured out the coffee in violent spurts. The air in the room—a tent, really, except for one wall made of ancient stone—reeked of damp canvas and turned earth, along with a faint hint of paraffin from the camp stove and the lantern on the table before us. I settled my nose into the steam rising from my cup and inhaled the nourishment of well-roasted coffee.

  “You do not take sugar?” asked Vasilakis, surprised. His own teaspoon hung poised over his drink, having already done its work.

  I looked at Silverton, who nodded sagely. “Sugar is much to be recommended in the case of Turkish coffee.”

  Mr. Vasilakis pushed the sugar bowl toward me, and I obediently emptied a spoonful into my cup. The drink was thick and black, and the sugar disappeared at once, as if it had never existed. I looked up again and found that the foreman now regarded me with considerably more interest, as if I were an artifact newly pulled from the earth.

  I clinked the spoon against the side of my cup. “The history of Knossos, Mr. Vasilakis?”

  “Yes, of course.” He set down his cup and picked up the sheaf of paper he had plucked from the stack. “Here we have a map of the site. As you see, we have completed excavation of almost the entirety of the complex, and have now turned our attention to the problem of restoration. Once uncovered, you see, after so many centuries, the features of Knossos stand in very great danger of decay. For one thing, there is the winter rain, which is so often like the deluge of God.”

  I drew a tentative sip of the brew before me. The strength and bitterness shocked my tongue, and I reached hastily to retrieve the sugar bowl. “How long has all this taken?”

  Mr. Vasilakis smiled in sympathy. “Mr. Evans began the purchase of the site from the native owners in perhaps 1894 or 1895, I believe, but it was not until the end of the civil war and the establishment of the independent state of Crete that he was able to begin excavation. That was five years ago.”

  “I say. Five years?” said Silverton.

  Mr. Vasilakis glanced at Silverton with an upward roll of his dark eyes. “The work, as you can perhaps imagine, is painstaking. In that time, we have uncovered an entire complex of political and administrative buildings, which was built and rebuilt several times during the ancient period, and created de novo a chronology of the Minoan and later occupations—”

  Silverton held up his hand. “Slow down, old man. Remember the sad state of my brains. Do you mean to say there were separate peoples occupying this place, one after the other?”

  “Yes, at least. In the very early days of the excavation, we were fortunate to uncover tablets written in two distinct linear scripts, as well as an older hieroglyph system, none of which we have thus far been unable to decipher, though Mr. Evans finds many points of similarity between the Cretan hieroglyphics and the Phoenician alphabet in his great work, Scripta Minoa. Perhaps you have read it?”

  Silverton gazed penitently into his coffee. “Afraid not.”

  Again, an expression of vague contempt from Mr. Vasilakis. “The two scripts we call Linear A and Linear B, as the former appears more ancient than the second. We have dated some tablets containing Linear B, in very approximate fashion, to the period just before the general collapse of Minoan civilization in the fifteenth century before Christ.”

  “How fascinating. Why did their civilization collapse?” I asked.

  Mr. Vasilakis shrugged. “This is not known, I am afraid. There is evidence of earthquakes, fires. This was also the time of the spread of the Mycenaean culture, quite clearly evident in the stratigraphical record across the entire Mediterranean, so it is possible our Minoans were simply usurped, perhaps by force. Though, to be sure, the palace remains show no sign of armament or fortification.” He smiled at me, showing his teeth, until I was compelled to smile in return. There was a bang of metal from the direction of the camp stove in the corner.

  “All very well,” said Silverton, “but where does my friend Haywood come into everything? I don’t recall that he was ever particularly interested in Cretan comings and goings.”

  A small gust of wind shivered the canvas above us. Mr. Vasilakis folded his hands atop the map of Knossos while the light from the lantern stroked his face. He could not have been much more than thirty, and yet, despite his rough work clothes and careless appearance—hair grown out, black mustache a trifle ragged as it arched luxuriously over his upper lip—he exuded an air of polished responsibility. I could well imagine why Mr. Evans had seen fit to leave his beloved Knossos in Mr. Vasilakis’s hands through the inhospitable winter.

  “Mr. Evans called your friend to the site about a year ago, I believe,” said the foreman, “because of his expertise in studying artifacts that—how shall I put this?—make no sense, from the archeological perspective.”

  “Make no sense? But from what you’ve just told us, very little of any of this makes proper sense.” Silverton waved an arm to indicate the entirety of Knossos, and perhaps even the world.

  “I mean from the perspective of chronology. Objects that do not fit—most profoundly do not fit—in the context in which they were discovered.”

  I had set down my satchel at the edge of my chair, and it rested now on the beaten dirt floor of the primitive room, slumped against one leg. To be kept strictly confidential, the duchess had written on the overleaf note to the photographs. But what about those who already knew about the frescoes? What about Vasilakis, who was intimately involved in the excavation and restoration of Knossos?

  A quiet cough came from the corner of the tent, against the ancient stones, and I turned my head to the right and saw my father, sitting atop a camp stool, one leg crossed over the other. He was looking not at the men, nor the map Mr. Vasilakis held to the table with his fingers, but at me.

  I pressed my thumbs into the curve of the porcelain cup before me, now nearly empty. The taste of the Turkish coffee filled my mouth, bitter and sweet and exotic.

  “Don’t fit?” said Silverton. “In what way?”

  “I mean they are anachronistic. An object fr
om one period is found where it should not—cannot—have existed.”

  “Oh, right-ho. I catch your meaning. But surely there’s some logical explanation? Some native worker dropping his pocket watch into an ancient pit?”

  “Usually there is,” said Vasilakis. “But not always.”

  He lifted his hands from the map and pushed it toward us again. We bent forward eagerly, like a pair of schoolchildren. “We had already found a few such objects, which we duly recorded and set aside. But it was not until we began the restoration of the frescoes that we discovered something for which, it seemed, no possible explanation could exist.” He tapped his finger on a small space on the map, indicating a room of some kind. “Right here, near the queen’s bedchamber.”

  “The queen’s bedchamber, eh?”

  “Yes. It is a fresco depicting three figures in transit, of which the lead figure was holding an object that can only be described as a device of wholly modern invention.”

  “By God. Extraordinary,” said Silverton, as if he had never seen the photographs in my possession. “And you called in my friend Max to sort it all out?”

  “He arrived here last winter, and began immediately his work. He consulted the stone tablets, the other frescoes and mosaics, the objects we had found earlier. He conducted some additional excavation. I am afraid I am unfamiliar with the details of his investigation, as it was kept under the utmost secrecy. He consulted only with Mr. Evans. And his assistant, of course.”

  “His assistant?” said Silverton, and there was something about the way he asked the question that made me suspect, for the first time, he did not already know the answer. I glanced, from the corner of my eye, at the camp stool in the corner, and I thought I saw my father leaning forward, his finger pads pressed intently against each other.

  “Yes, his assistant. A young Turkish student by the name of Anserrat, who I understand accompanies him in all his investigations.”

  His lordship lifted the coffee cup to his lips. If I believed in such things, I would say that a kind of electromagnetic ether had begun to gather around his figure, scintillating with invisible purpose. He bent his head back over the map.

  “I see. And what did the two of them conclude?”

  “I’m afraid I cannot answer that question. As I said, this particular investigation took place independently of our own work.” He hesitated and pulled back the map. “They departed altogether at the end of December, and we have not heard from them since.”

  “And you have not made any inquiries?” I said.

  Mr. Vasilakis stood and began shuffling the papers to his right. He slipped the map somewhere in the middle and said, “No, of course not. Why should I? It was not my business.”

  “But perhaps Mr. Evans has made inquiries.”

  “You will have to ask Mr. Evans himself.”

  “But Mr. Evans is currently back home at Oxford.”

  “You are welcome to make use of the telegraph machine.”

  Silverton had been staring curiously at the stack of papers, and now looked up, grinning his amiable grin. “The telegraph! I say. Bang up to date, aren’t we?”

  Mr. Vasilakis shrugged and returned a vague smile of his own.

  “Where is the telegraph machine?” I asked.

  “At the Villa Ariadne, where Mr. Evans is pleased to make himself at home when he is directing the excavation himself. Your friend, I believe, kept a room there, too. It’s just back down the road, a few hundred yards, near the Little Palace. There is a housekeeper and a few members of the staff. They are frightfully bored at the present time, I suspect, and will be happy to assist you.”

  “I don’t suppose they would object to putting us up for a night or two?” said his lordship.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “We had some trouble obtaining rooms at the hotel in Heraklion.” He presented an innocent aspect and spread his hands helplessly, as if he were quite incompetent either to understand the nature of this trouble or to resolve it.

  Mr. Vasilakis blinked. “I don’t see why they should not. Many of Mr. Evans’s friends and colleagues have stayed there. It has something of the air of a boardinghouse, at times.” He turned to the woman, who had dropped silently into a chair from which she watched us resentfully. He snapped out a few words, and she rose, black-eyed, and began to pile the coffee cups back on the tray. The camp stool behind her, I saw, was now empty of its brief illusion.

  “If you will excuse me,” Mr. Vasilakis went on, lifting the chimney to blow out the lantern, “I must return to my men before there is some colossal mistake.”

  Lord Silverton leapt to his feet. “We will not detain you for an instant. Miss Truelove?”

  I rose more slowly, careful to avoid the wrathful tidying of Mr. Vasilakis’s servant in the semidarkness. The wind whistled once more past the tent poles, making the canvas ripple.

  “Very well,” I said. “To the Villa Ariadne.”

  As soon as we were a hundred yards or so back down the road, map in hand and mule in train, I spoke up. “I suspect he may have been hiding something.”

  “Ah! Do you, now?”

  “Also, I should like to inspect Mr. Haywood’s area of investigation personally, when we have settled ourselves at the villa. Did you happen to notice the place on the map where the frescoes were found, before Mr. Vasilakis pulled it away?”

  “I believe I can reconstruct the memory, if pressed.”

  “And of course we shall have to examine Mr. Haywood’s old room at the villa. There are bound to be all sorts of clues lying around. If we’re lucky, he may have left behind a note of some kind, or a travel itinerary.”

  “That would be smashing, wouldn’t it? Back home in a week.”

  I breathed in the sharp air. The wind was still rolling briskly down the hills, smelling of clean rocks and vegetation, but it now struck me as invigorating rather than oppressive. “Perhaps hiding is too strong a word. Withholding, perhaps. He had additional information, which he did not see fit to deliver to us.”

  “And how did you arrive at this extraordinary conclusion?”

  For an instant, I considered telling him the truth, or some version of it: the message my father had communicated to me—or rather, the message that my unconscious mind had communicated to me, through the illusion of my father—to pay attention to the map, to pay attention to the foreman’s words.

  Pay attention. How many times had I heard him say those patient words? Pay attention, my dear. It is not the main subject, but the details that matter.

  “It was obvious from his manner,” I said. We were turning from the entrance path—the Royal Road, according to the general site map Mr. Vasilakis had given us, which was of ancient origin—and onto the main highway. To the left, just past a crossroads, the partially excavated remains of another building rose up from the roadside, of which I had taken no notice during our approach, my attention having then been fixed on the ruins of Knossos itself. I consulted the map. “This must be the Little Palace.”

  “Palace, eh? How the mighty have fallen.”

  “So should you, after three thousand years.”

  “Touché, Truelove, as always. I say, I don’t know about you, but I find all this tramping about has worked up a deuce of an appetite. Do you think a nice beefsteak is too much to hope for, in the heart of Knossos?”

  Our footsteps echoed faintly among the stones. I glanced over my shoulder, where the mule plodded along, head bent to the ground, twitching his cross ears in an irregular manner, as if he meant to bolt at the first opportunity. I was not unsympathetic.

  “I suppose, if the housekeeper is a female and reasonably sentient,” I said, “you’re likely to have no trouble convincing her to feed you whatever you like.”

  “Why, Truelove. I believe that’s the kindest thing you’ve said to me thus far.”

  “
It wasn’t a compliment.”

  “Still.” He paused. “Did you catch that, however? Beefsteak and Knossos, I mean.”

  “Amazingly clever.”

  “I thought so. Always chuffs a man up, to amaze his friends with a bon mot from time to time, as one’s humble wits allow. Is this the villa, do you think?”

  I gazed past a stand of trees to a rambling, square-built stone house, surrounded by plantings of cypress and palm that granted a distinctly exotic air, particularly now, in the last weeks of winter. The front steps were new and immaculate. “I suppose it must be. It’s certainly not an excavation.”

  “My thought exactly.” He looped the mule’s lead rope over a nearby bush and straightened his cap. “Would you care to make the first introduction, or shall I do the honors?”

  “I am perfectly capable of knocking on a foreign door and introducing myself.”

  “Then it’s after you, my dear. And Truelove?”

  “Yes, Silverton?”

  “Do be nice.”

  I saw no reason to flatter this admonition—delivered, as one might expect, beneath the usual devastating wink—with a riposte. I marched up the stone steps and let fall the knocker on a thick wooden door, which opened in due course to reveal a woman of Mediterranean aspect, perhaps thirty years old, wearing an English-style uniform of black dress and white pinafore apron. A small lace cap adorned her hair. She gazed at me in perfect bemusement. “Madam?”

  “Good afternoon. We are friends of Mr. Maximilian Haywood, who, we are given to understand, was a colleague of your master, Mr. Evans.”

  A faint groan disturbed the air behind me. The servant’s two thick eyebrows knitted almost into one. She was, I suppose, a pretty sort of woman, if one happened to favor that sort of olive-skinned exoticism. Her hair was straight and glossy, arranged in a knot at the back of her head; her eyes were as large and dark as warm coals, and about as comprehending.

  But she must understand me, I thought, if she is Mr. Evans’s servant. Unless, of course, he had become accustomed to speaking to her in her natal tongue, which was not impossible. Going native, I believe, was the term: a common enough phenomenon among the sons of empire, who spent the greater part of their lives among remote populations.