A Most Extraordinary Pursuit

by Juliana Gray

  I went to the tray and lifted the lid of the blue-and-white china pot. My hand, I realized, was trembling very slightly. The contents were not tea at all, but thick black coffee, still hot. I poured a cup and sipped it, considering the now-empty chair and the gloomy windows, and the liquid that burned my empty stomach. More hungry than thirsty, I realized, and that was my excuse to leave the cozy room and go in search of my companions.

  The hallway was silent, almost eerily so, and much cooler than the snug parlor in which I had spent the past hour. I walked past the rough white walls, clicking my ill-fitting shoes against a floor made of worn stone, and tried to retrace our earlier steps back to the common room.

  As I drew closer, I heard the reassuring patter of low voices, and I followed the sound to the large room at the inn’s entrance. A pair of men, dark-haired and wet, sat at one of the tables, drinking from a set of small glasses. They looked up in astonishment as I appeared in the doorway. I pretended not to see them, and instead spread my gaze extravagantly around the room, which seemed to serve equally as foyer, tavern, and dining room.

  But no one else was there.

  A flush crept upward from the shelter of my collar, burned there by the unwavering inspection of the two strangers, whom I still feigned not to notice. Where the devil had Silverton and Mr. Higganbotham gone? It wasn’t a large inn, and surely they would not have ventured back out into the storm at this late hour, having neither dined nor informed me of their intentions.

  One of the men spoke a few words, presumably in Greek, and began to rise from his seat. He had the leathery skin and broad hands of a fisherman. Beneath his dark beard, his expression was kind, almost soft, but for some reason the action filled me with alarm. I backed away from the doorway and into a solid human chest.

  “Silverton!” I turned in relief.

  But the chest did not belong to his lordship. It was the landlord, who explained to me in halting English that Silverton had left the premises a quarter hour ago in the company of the inn’s lovely barmaid.

  Dinner, carried up to my room by the landlord himself, consisted of a fragrant vegetable soup, fish, bread, and pickled olives, accompanied by wine.

  “A great shame,” said Mr. Higganbotham, for perhaps the dozenth time in the past hour. He sat back in his seat and sloshed the wine about in his glass, inspecting the results with a keen eye. “I might have expected better from a man of his parts and stature, but I suppose these aristocrats simply cannot help themselves.”

  I picked at my fish and agreed that this tendency to amour represented an unfortunate weakness on his lordship’s part, but I expected he would return by daybreak. He would never willingly jeopardize the investigation.

  “Wouldn’t he?” Mr. Higganbotham released a sigh and shook his head at his empty plate. His disappointment, thank goodness, had not affected his appetite.

  “No. And it’s entirely possible that he thought the girl had some useful information.”

  “And this is his means of interrogation?” Another shake of that well-tended head. His hair was terribly thick and waved just so at the temples, so that I couldn’t help wondering if nature were perhaps receiving some sort of friendly assistance. “How sorry I am, Miss Truelove, that a mind so delicate as yours must be exposed to such corruption.”

  My room at the inn was not large, and when Mr. Higganbotham had swung down the stairs and directed our dinner to be served here—the common room, he said, was far too public a stage for a lady of good English breeding—I had considered objecting. Mr. Higganbotham had placed his chair so close to my bed that his elbow rested, from time to time, on the corner of my pillow; my own chair sat only inches from the whistling fireplace and the rack from which hung my drying clothes. The entire effect was one of forced intimacy, and I had the distinct idea that if I turned, I would see my father standing by the mantel, attending closely to our conversation.

  But then I relented, because anything was less awkward than having dinner with Mr. Higganbotham in his own room, and here, at least, I was in command.

  I thought of the Queen’s earlier words, or rather those words I had imagined the Queen to say. “I am not quite so delicate as that, Mr. Higganbotham,” I said crisply.

  “Not by circumstance, perhaps. But surely by nature.” Mr. Higganbotham set down his wineglass and leaned toward me, over the dinner that had been set so carefully on the small wooden table in my room. “I am grieved, Miss Truelove, grieved that this crisis has forced you to witness all the degraded aspects of human nature, when you should be safely home in England, surrounded by a loving family.”

  “And yet, it’s the strangest thing. When I pause to reflect, I find I’m rather enjoying myself, Mr. Higganbotham, except for the anxiety over Mr. Haywood’s welfare. And the inclement weather, of course. I begin to think that adventure agrees with me.”

  “You’ve hardly eaten.”

  “Only because of my present concern.”

  Mr. Higganbotham reached across the table, and I withdrew my hand just in time, so that he was forced to divert himself to the stem of his wineglass at the last instant.

  “I only wish I could relieve your every concern, madam,” he said quietly.

  “Very kind of you, I’m sure, but where would we be without our concerns? An awfully bland sort of existence, I should think. What did you think of the photographs?”

  He blinked. “Photographs?”

  “The snaps of Knossos. The ones you were so ardent to study, you arrived at my stateroom door at seven o’clock in the morning.”

  “Yes, that’s true.” He dropped his gaze and shifted in his seat, as a schoolboy might when questioned about the contents of his desk. “They were—well, that is to say, they proved very much as I suspected from the beginning.”

  “Dear me. Suspected what?”

  Mr. Higganbotham looked up mournfully. “I’m sorry to have to break such untidy news, Miss Truelove, but I fear these particular frescoes are not genuine. I mean, they are frescoes right enough, but they cannot possibly have been painted during the period during which the palace was occupied.” He paused to take his lower lip under his teeth. “Can you tell me—do you think Mr. Haywood had truly based his studies on their discovery?”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Ah?”

  “Nothing. Yes, this is disappointing news. How extraordinary. Are you quite certain?”

  “I cannot be certain, of course, without seeing the paintings in situ. But the subjects and the style are all quite wrong, and what is more, it makes no sense.”

  “In what way?”

  He was leaning forward again, but this time the animation in his expression had nothing to do with his concern for my delicate mind. “Because we are meant to interpret the three figures as the triptych of the labyrinth—Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur—and yet they are positioned in such a way that defies every single known recounting of the myth.”

  Was it my imagination, or did a swift intake of breath occur in the small space behind me? A gasp: but not of surprise, I thought, though I could not have said why I knew this.

  Not of surprise, but dismay.

  “I am afraid you have lost me. Did you say the fresco depicts Theseus and Ariadne?”

  “And the Minotaur.” Mr. Higganbotham nodded vigorously. “Or so we are meant to believe, although the artist—whoever he may be—has chosen not to portray the actual head of the beast. But merely placing such an illustration inside what is deemed to be the palace of Knossos would naturally lead the viewer to assume that it represents the actual myth for which Crete is famous. Just as the repeated depiction of the labrys throughout the ruins leads us inevitably—almost too inevitably, if you understand me—to conclude that these buildings were, in fact, the Knossos of legend.” He tapped his forehead. “The human brain, you see, craves these connections. We want sense in our world; we want things to f
all neatly into place. We want a guiding hand. Fate, or God himself.”

  “Are you saying the palace isn’t Knossos?”

  “I only mean that we assume it is. It may well be, but how do we know for certain? And yet we pretend this is fact. In the same way, your average fellow sees a certain fresco on a wall at Knossos—assuming, as he does, that this building is the true Knossos—and he will say, at first sight, Ah! These three figures must certainly be the great Knossos myth come to life; there can be no other explanation. But the painting, I am afraid, does not make sense.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, a hundred small things. In the first place, it is Theseus leading Ariadne out of the labyrinth, when we know it was Ariadne’s own ball of string that allowed Theseus to escape after having slain the beast. It is Ariadne who reigns in the labyrinth, Ariadne who leads, because of her love for Theseus.”

  Mr. Higganbotham’s eyes were bright with passion, and he was now arranging olives on his plate, demonstrating the relative positions of his mythological characters. His fingers were long and white, the nails neatly trimmed, and they maneuvered the olives with a certain capability, a tensile strength that mesmerized me. In the harbor, I had dismissed him as so much ballast in our struggle to make landing, but here he stood athwart his element. He had transformed from the miniature to the colossal.

  “And there is the Minotaur. Why is his head hidden from us?”

  “Because that part of the fresco did not survive.”

  “But why? It’s a damned coincidence, that everything else in the painting shows up beautifully, but the most interesting part—the Minotaur’s head—doesn’t survive. And then there’s the matter of that camera in the hand of Theseus.”

  “You noticed it?”

  “Miss Truelove, I’m wholly familiar with Mr. Haywood’s field of interest. I naturally assumed that some anachronism would exist in this fresco that so fascinated him. And there it was, so obvious as to be laughable. No, the fresco is obviously a fraud, the unskilled effort of a mediocre artist who retains only a superficial understanding of his subject.”

  “But why? Why go to such trouble?”

  Mr. Higganbotham gave up his olive and nudged the plate away. “If it weren’t for the question of Mr. Haywood, I should say it was a hoax. You would be surprised, Miss Truelove, to see the lengths some men will go for a silly joke.” His eyebrows expressed exactly what he thought of silly jokes.

  “But because of Mr. Haywood, you think it’s something more sinister.”

  “Bait,” he said succinctly.

  The same conclusion to which Silverton and I had arrived earlier, but I wanted Mr. Higganbotham to say it on his own. “Bait?” I said innocently. “Bait for what? Why would anyone want to lure Mr. Haywood to Crete?”

  “There you have me.” He paused. “Of course, now that I understand he’s been made a duke, it casts a different light on the matter.”

  “He wasn’t made a duke. He simply inherited the title when his great-uncle . . .” I felt as if an icy palm had just been laid against my neck.

  “When his great-uncle died,” Mr. Higganbotham finished for me.

  “Yes. When the previous duke died.”

  I thought, Maybe this isn’t about Knossos at all. Maybe we have all been fools.

  “Miss Truelove? Are you all right? You look rather pale.”

  “Only tired, I’m afraid.” I passed my hand over my eyes and thought, I must speak to Silverton. I must speak to him at once. “Such an exhausting day.”

  “My God, yes. What an ass I am. Here I sit, rattling on about old myths and frescoes, when you have faced down death today.” He folded his napkin and laid it next to his plate. “I will leave you in peace. Shall I call the maid to clear away the dinner things?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He smiled and rose from the table. “Do try to eat a little more first, Miss Truelove. You are too slight already.”

  I agreed that I would, and Mr. Higganbotham straightened his cuffs and his collar and turned for the door. I stared at my plate. The cold hand had lifted from my nape, but the chill remained under the skin, making my head ache. I lifted my fingers to rub my forehead, and as I did so, I realized that Mr. Higganbotham had not left the room, but instead stood arrested, while his hand gripped the back of the chair.

  “Is something wrong, sir?”

  He shook his head, as if coming out of a trance. “Nothing, nothing. It’s just—for an instant there— No, no. It must be the strain of the day.”

  The cold hand returned, exerting an icy pressure on the base of my skull. “For an instant—what?”

  “Well, for an instant, I thought I saw a woman, standing there by the hearth, looking rather dismayed.” Another shake of his head, and he stepped to the door. His borrowed jacket hung over his shoulders, a bit too large. He put his hand on the knob and looked back, and the smile he gave me was small and rueful.

  “Obviously, I was mistaken.”

  As the door closed, I felt a renewed and desperate need to speak to Lord Silverton. I rose from my chair and peered out the single tiny window, but there was only darkness outside, a thick and restless night I could not penetrate, and the glass, when I pressed my fingers against it, was as cold as ice.

  A moment later, the landlord himself arrived to clear away the dinner tray. I inquired after Lord Silverton, and he replied that the English lord had not yet returned to the inn, nor the barmaid with whom his lordship had departed. He said this in a voice just above a growl, which did not bode well for Silverton’s health when he did reappear.

  “No doubt he will turn up smiling at the breakfast table,” I said, and in the privacy of my own head I added, Where I shall happily poison his coffee.

  For two days, the ships sailed north toward Athens under a hot blue sky, while the Lady and the Hero gave thanks to the gods for the blessings that had come upon them, but on the third day the wind grew mighty, and the rain rolled across the sea, and the green waves washed over the decks of the ships.

  As the storm tossed the fleet about, the Lady was taken much ill, and so great was her misery that the Hero, fearing for her life and for the tiny babe that grew in her womb, ordered the ships to put ashore on the nearest land, which proved to be the island of Naxos, cradle of Zeus . . .

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

  Eighteen

  I woke just before dawn, as suddenly as if I had been dropped from a cliff. The fire had gone out during the night, and the room was damp and chilled. I rose and went to the window to inspect the charcoal world outside. The storm had died away, but the sun had not quite risen, and the nearby rooftops were oily with rain. Around me, the walls and floors of the inn stood still in expectation of daybreak.

  I dressed hurriedly in my own now-dry clothes, pinned my hair, and crept down the silent corridor to Silverton’s room. There was no answer to my soft knock. I tried again, but he was either absent or heavily asleep.

  The barmaid, I knew, was really quite lovely. Like Mrs. Poulakis, she had had dark hair and eyes, and that smooth golden-olive skin, as if she were bred for the sun, though she was taller and less bountifully made, and wore a shapeless brown dress. She had not flirted with Lord Silverton, however. I remembered thinking that she was a modest young woman, who kept her eyes cast low and her shoulders straight. She hadn’t spoken as she fetched the brandy and set out the glasses, and we had taken very little notice of her.

  Well. It seemed Silverton had taken notice of her after all, and she had not objected to his interest. The women, it seemed, rarely objected to Lord Silverton.

  Did he remember them all? I wondered. Or, over time, did they all blend and merge in his memory, faces and breasts and bottoms all converging into some pleasurable feminine mean, an Ur-woman he could address conveniently in his thoughts by a single name?

  Was he still with her? It
was a chilly morning, in the dissolution of the storm. I thought again of the Queen’s words, and the effects of waking in your lover’s embrace in the early dawn. The intimate warmth of someone’s skin against yours. The scent, not of perfume or soap or tobacco, but of a man’s genuine smell, the salty familiar musk of a human body. I could almost taste it at the back of my throat: the flavor of longing.

  I turned away from Silverton’s door and marched down the back stairway. I found the common room empty, but the landlord seemed to hear my entrance, for he appeared a short moment later, wiping his hands on the oversized apron that covered him from breast to knee.

  His expression was dark. No, the Englishman had not returned, and if the landlord was not mistaken, my other companion had also walked out the door, not ten minutes ago.

  Would madam be pleased to break her fast?

  I was not pleased, but I sat down anyway. The landlord returned shortly with coffee and fried cakes and dates, and as if the food itself had found voice and summoned him, Mr. Higganbotham blew through the entrance a moment later.

  “Ah! Breakfast,” he said.

  “Where have you been?”

  He sat down heavily in the chair opposite, smelling sharply of the outdoors, and grasped the coffeepot. “Why, making inquiries. The lads out back, I thought, would know where Silverton’s gone. That is to say, they’ll know where to find this pretty barmaid of his.”

  “Were you right?”

  “Yes.” He was piling his plate. “She lives in a cottage just outside of town with her brother, and I shall go there directly after I’ve had a bite to eat.”

  “You?”

  He peered up from his work. “Should we send someone else, do you think?”

  “I meant that I should go with you.”

  “Go with me? Miss Truelove!”

  “You object?”

  Mr. Higganbotham gathered his composure in a mouthful of date, chased down by an enormous gulp of coffee. When he spoke, his voice had taken on the reasonable cadence of a father explaining to a greedy child why he cannot have a second slice of cake. “I could not live with myself, Miss Truelove, if I were to expose you to the sordid scene we are likely to encounter at the house of this barmaid.” (As he might say harlot.) “Moreover, she is not worthy to have the honor of your notice.”