A Most Extraordinary Pursuit

by Juliana Gray

  The Lady closed her eyes and prayed to the gods for their intercession, and at that instant a new roar came to her ears, which she recognized as that of her brother the Beast, for the Hero had kept his promise to her and obeyed those instructions she had given him, and gone first to the chamber in which the Beast was kept to free him from his confinement.

  The Prince fled at once at the sight of the Beast, and together the Hero and the Beast contrived to loosen the chains from the walls. When he and the Lady were both freed, the Hero wished to pursue the Prince and sink his own dagger into the Prince’s cruel heart, but the Lady said, ‘No, remember our plan, and leave my husband to the vengeance of the gods.’

  So the Beast concealed himself in a storeroom, while the Lady and the Hero followed the thread until the Lady knew her surroundings, and found the King in his chamber, imbibing the juice of the poppy as the Prince had made his habit. Said the Lady, ‘This Hero has killed the Beast your son in the heart of the labyrinth, and therefore the annual tribute from Athens is forfeit . . .’

  THE BOOK OF TIME, A. M. HAYWOOD (1921)

  Sixteen

  I naturally declined dinner in the dining saloon, and instead crept into my familiar brass-railed bed on the starboard side. I know not at what hour I fell asleep, but I woke sometime shortly after dawn, to the sound of a knock on the door of my stateroom. The ship, I realized, was pitching and rolling with unusual vigor.

  In retrospect, I should not have presumed that my visitor was Lord Silverton. After all, his last sight of me had not been a salubrious one, though he had behaved like a gentleman, given the circumstances. He had found a washcloth and dampened it at the faucet; he had poured me a little brandy (which I did not dare to drink) and helped me to my own cabin by his own arm, in order to spare me the embarrassment of ringing for a steward. Shall I come inside and tuck you in? he had asked, all wicked smiles, and I replied that he had better not, if he had any regard for the beauty of his dressing gown.

  But I knew this gallant offer was intended only to prop up my flagging self-regard, for when I hazarded a glance in the mirror before retiring, I hardly recognized myself. I sank into bed in a misery of humiliation, and if I had given myself a moment to gather my logic, I should have known straightaway that the hand behind that eager knock the next morning could not possibly have belonged to Lord Silverton.

  I am afraid my surprise—I will not call it disappointment—showed on my face.

  “Only me,” said Mr. Higganbotham, flushed with high color. “I beg your pardon for the early hour. Are you well enough to speak?”

  “Of course. Please come in.”

  I was not feeling very well, in fact, and it occurred to me that this was the second time in twelve hours that I had entertained a gentleman in the privacy of a steamship cabin, while one of us wore only a dressing gown. Once loosened, my principles apparently meant to remain flaccid.

  Or perhaps it was only the effect of sea air, and our distance from England.

  Mr. Higganbotham walked in briskly, in the manner of a man who had already breakfasted well and enjoyed no ill effects from the raucous motion of the ship. I rather wanted to smack him. Instead, I said, “I hope you are well, Mr. Higganbotham, and have no bad tidings for me.”

  “Bad tidings? Why, no. Not at all.” He gathered his hands behind his back and looked grave. “I understand you have been subject to le mal de mer.”

  The Isolde, as if to emphasize his words, lurched drunkenly to port. I flung out my hand to catch myself against the wall, while Mr. Higganbotham merely braced his legs and rode out the movement.

  “Yes,” I said. “Have you happened to take note of the weather this morning? I’m afraid I haven’t dared to look outside the porthole.”

  “It seems a trifle tempestuous.”

  The ship pitched again. I clutched the corner of the dresser. “Mr. Higganbotham, I regret very much that I must ask you to be brief.”

  An expression of alarm overtook his face. “Oh. Indeed. Brief I shall be. I only wished to ask whether I might have another look at those photographs of yours. The ones taken of Mr. Haywood’s fresco.”

  “I—well, I suppose so.” For some reason, I found myself hesitating.

  “Of course, if you’d rather not—”

  “No, of course you may see them.”

  “Because I have no wish to cause any trouble between you and Lord Silverton.”

  I was staggering toward the writing table on the opposite wall, where my traveling desk had been placed the previous evening. I glanced back, over my shoulder. “Trouble? Between me and Silverton? Why on earth?”

  Mr. Higganbotham turned to gaze out the porthole, behind which a dim and monotonous steel-gray ocean met an equally monotonous steel-gray sky. “I had the impression that his lordship does not entirely trust my motives.”

  “His lordship is naturally suspicious. Suspicion is essential to his work, after all.” I turned back to the desk and opened the bottom drawer. “I disagree with him on this matter, of course, and I told him so.”

  “Thank you for that. I assure you, your trust is not misplaced.” He took the photographs from my outstretched hand, and, in a noble show of restraint, managed to avoid examining them at once. Instead, he fingered the edges, turning them upside down before righting them again. “The reason I asked is because—Forgive me, but I don’t wish to be indelicate—”

  “Indelicate? In what way?”

  Mr. Higganbotham discovered something interesting in the weave of the rug at his feet. “I had the impression that there is a kind of—of mutual—understanding, between you and his lordship.”

  “An understanding? Between me and his lordship?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  Mr. Higganbotham looked up from the rug, and his eyes were so hopeful, his lip so uncertain beneath his moustache, I felt the warmth of kindness soften my bones.

  “Quite wrong, Mr. Higganbotham. I assure you, Lord Silverton and I are merely colleagues, bent upon a similar goal. We share a certain degree of friendship, but nothing more, and I would go so far as to say that his lordship is hardly the sort of man to whom I could imagine myself offering anything more.”

  The entire aspect of Mr. Higganbotham’s face brightened, from hope to gratitude, and even in my discombobulated state, I could not help feeling the transformation as a compliment. Not that I had any designs on the gentleman, of course—goodness, no—but there was a certain small wound in my chest, a little open sore that was soothed by Mr. Higganbotham’s relief at the news that my affections were not in any way engaged by Lord Silverton.

  “Thank you, Miss Truelove, for your frankness.” He clutched the photographs to his chest. “And now I see that you would rather be left in peace, so I shall not detain you another instant. I hope to find you shortly recovered from your malady, thought I must say”—here he wove his way carefully to the tilting door—“judging by what I have seen of the weather this morning, the prospects for a steadier sea are not altogether good.”

  To say the least.

  I spent the rest of the morning in misery, trying to fix my gaze on some object that might have the courtesy to remain still, but even when I shaded the lights and closed my eyes, the sense of vertigo continued, as if I were spinning in the center of God’s palm while he carried me about, swinging his arms as he went.

  At noon I forced myself to rise and dress. I could not face lunch, but I wanted to step outside for a short time to assess the weather, and then perhaps to find the captain and discuss our progress (or perhaps our lack of it) toward Naxos.

  “What the devil are you doing out here?” demanded his lordship, as the door banged shut behind me.

  “The same thing you are! Taking the air!”

  I had to shout, because the wind snatched away my words at the very instant they left my mouth. I gazed out to the angry sea, and I could not believe this w
as the same world I had known yesterday. The deck slanted at an impossible angle, and a flume of water exploded into the air a few yards away, stinging my face with a hundred tiny pieces of cold salt shrapnel.

  “Go back inside!” Silverton shouted back, but his words had the opposite effect, and determined me to stay. I staggered to the rail and gripped it with both fists, gloved in leather, while my small woolen hat strained against the draft. And yet, I did not feel any worse. The fresh air, the mighty pitch of the ship, seemed to breathe new life into me.

  Silverton’s hands appeared next to mine. “Aren’t you sick?”

  “I shall manage.”

  “You’re a damned stubborn thing, Truelove. Hold on.”

  The ship found a particularly towering wave, and I lost my breath in the crash of water against steel, the groan of rivets, the tilting climb and weightless descent. I thought of the painting in the Duke of Olympia’s morning room, the tiny frigate on the wide ocean, and though I would never have said the words aloud, I was glad for the solid weight of Silverton’s woolen forearm nearby, and his large leather hand sharing the rail with mine.

  “How much farther to Naxos?” I shouted.

  “Another couple of hours, I should think. We should be there by now, if it weren’t for this damned weather!”

  “But how will we land?”

  “Damned if I know. Watch out!”

  We rode out another wave, and this time Silverton threw out an arm to steady me, or rather to steady us together, against the greedy tug of the sea. “I apologize,” he said, into my ear.

  “Apologize for what?”

  “For my—” Another sharp pitch. “For my conduct last night. There is a surge of elation after these adventures, which—”

  “I can’t hear you very well!”

  Without warning, he took me by the arm and dragged me inside the deckhouse. He had to fight the door with both hands in order to close it. We stood in the corridor, panting a little, wet and reeking of salt and ozone. Silverton took off his hat and shook it, sending off a fine spray into the glossy white wall.

  “You see, Truelove,” he said, examining the hat, “when a man fights his enemy and then escapes with his life—”

  “You fought him?”

  “A short struggle. But as I said, after he fights back the possibility of death, he naturally craves life.” He looked up, somber eyed and repentant. “An intense biological desire. Do you see what I mean?”

  “I suppose so.”

  He replaced the hat on his head. “I gave offense. It won’t happen again, I promise you.”

  “I quite understand. You were overwrought. I am not angry with you about that.”

  “But you’re angry with me for going back to Knossos in the first place, aren’t you?”

  I shrugged. “It was a matter of honor to you, having committed the act in the first place.”

  “I see. But I would have gone back anyway, Truelove, whether or not I had gone to bed with her. She had given us the information, you see. That was the act of trust I was bound to return.”

  “But she gave you the information because you had spent the night with her.”

  There must have been something in my voice, because he peered at me, beneath a disturbed brow. “Did it really pain you so much?”

  “Because it was thoughtless! Because it placed us both in danger!”

  He was frowning, patting his pockets as if he meant to pull out his pipe, and I had the impression that he wanted to say something more. The ship pitched, and we crashed together against the wall, and when we had mutually untangled, muttering overlapping apologies, we found ourselves doing so under the stern gaze of the Isolde’s captain.

  (To be sure, Silverton was much the taller man, but such was the natural schoolmaster’s authority of Captain Merriwether that he seemed to tower over us both.)

  “What ho! Any news, sir?” said Silverton cheerfully, straightening his jacket, as if he had not just been discovered in a stormy corridor, enjoying the close embrace of a female passenger.

  “I regret to say that we are unable to make a perfect reckoning of our location at the present time, given the force of the storm,” said Captain Merriwether, in the dark tones of a man who has certain other regrets, which he is too discreet to mention, “but I expect we shall reach the proximity of Naxos within the hour. We shall, however, be unable to enter the harbor under the present conditions.”

  “But the matter is urgent!” I said. “We have others in pursuit, and we cannot allow them to find Mr. Haywood first!”

  “Not at the cost of the ship, madam, or your life.”

  I turned to Silverton. “Can we get a boat in, do you think?”

  “A boat?” He shrugged. “Why not? I did enjoy a spot of sculling in my university days.”

  Captain Merriwether started in shock. “With respect, sir, I must urge you forcefully to wait until conditions are calmer. I cannot answer for your safety if you attempt the land in a boat.”

  “And how long until conditions are calmer, do you think?”

  “I can’t say. These Mediterranean blows are damned unpredictable. It might be over by tonight, or it might last several more days. My Marconi man is attempting to contact the station in Naples to gather any reports on the possible size of the storm.”

  Silverton considered me from the corner of his eye. “What do you think, Truelove? Wait here, or chance it in the boat?”

  “I don’t wish to put you in any unnecessary danger . . .”

  “But you’re itching to land before our fellow with the earring beats us to it.” He nodded. “Very well, Captain Merriwether. Make the boat ready, if you will.”

  “But, sir!” The captain was appalled.

  The ship began its familiar climb, and I braced my arm against the wall, waiting for the inevitable slow fall. My stomach lurched queasily, whether because of the ship’s motion or dread of the ordeal to come. We crested, and when I stumbled once more against the corridor wall, despite my best efforts to remain standing, Silverton’s shoulder was already there to cushion the impact.

  Oh, the fellow had more faults than I could name, but I could not deny that his lordship was a good man to have at one’s back.

  I straightened from the wall and turned my head to meet Silverton’s gaze.

  Are you with me? I asked silently.

  “No doubt we shall be killed,” said Silverton, as cheerfully as ever, “but they do say drowning’s the best way to go.”

  “This is madness,” gasped Mr. Higganbotham, as we lurched from wave to wave through the darkening water. “I can’t even see the island!”

  “That’s because it’s behind you,” I said. I was sitting in the boat’s stern, holding the rudder, while Silverton and Mr. Higganbotham pulled for shore. At the time, I was not an expert on the steering of a vessel, even one so small as the Isolde’s tender, but Silverton had assured me that it was as simple as guiding a bicycle. Which I had not done, either, to be perfectly honest, but I cared not to mention this to his lordship at such a precarious moment.

  In fact, the storm had steadied somewhat since the middle of the day, or else we might not have attempted this landing at all, even for the sake of outrunning our enemy. The captain thought it might blow over by morning, and we might as well wait, but I could not. I could not stand off Naxos throughout the rest of the afternoon and all night, while the answers to all our vexing questions lay within sight. So now I sat on a plank of wood in the tender’s narrow stern, directing a tiller by I know not what instinct, ignoring the churn of my belly and my head as we fought the current and tilted past the harbor entrance, filling our lungs with rain at every breath.

  Ahead, the smudges on the horizon began to resolve into individual buildings, though I could not tell them apart as they bobbed in and out of view around the laboring heads of Lord Silverton
and Mr. Higganbotham. Silverton’s spot of sculling, as it turned out, encompassed the Henley singles championship for Oxford two years running (or so the captain had reverently confided in me), and under his brief instruction, Mr. Higganbotham now pulled with remarkable dexterity, if not exactly ease. As we cleared the mouth of the harbor, my spirits began to lift, despite the wind and rain and waves and nausea: I thought, We might actually make it.

  But the harbor was not the open water, and the storm had brought every vessel into port. The fishing boats strained at their moorings, cavorting about like horses on picket lines, and it fell to me to avoid the capricious twists and swings of each craft as we passed, the vicious eddies that formed and disappeared around these obstructions.

  Mr. Higganbotham was tiring fast, and even Silverton’s teeth were now bared with the effort of fighting a current that wished to dash us against the ancient stone wall protecting the harbor. I had to brace both hands on the tiller, which shuddered under my grip, and the surge of hope that had filled my limbs as we crossed into the port now turned to panic. The force of the current shoved us to starboard, so vengefully that I could scarcely maintain my hold on the tiller, and in a minute, in two minutes, even Silverton’s great strength could not save us. The landing was too far away. The forward motion was no match for the lateral.

  Beware the lee shore, my father used to warn me, speaking metaphorically, and now I saw in literal fact that he was right.

  Silverton must have seen our conundrum reflected on my face. His bared-tooth animal expression turned into a grin—Never fear, Truelove, we shall fight our way clear of this—and when I tried to yell back that I couldn’t do it, that I simply could not battle the tiller one single instant longer, he seemed to understand. He leaned forward and muttered something into the tiring Higganbotham’s ear, and Mr. Higganbotham dropped his oars and dove forward to take the tiller from my hands.