by Juliana Gray
I closed my eyes—they were no use, anyway—and in that instant the ache returned at full force, crushing the bones of my chest, leaving me gasping for breath.
I must find him.
I lifted my hands and pushed at the blankets, but even when they were gone, and the chill air drenched my clothes, the weight still sank against me. I sat up and turned on my hands and knees, trying to cough and not succeeding, while the vivid certainty of someone’s presence up above me, inside that black shadow at the uppermost corner of the cave, drilled into my every nerve.
He’s there, I thought. He must be there.
The longing increased, too intense for expression, and while I couldn’t find the balance to rise in that sightless chamber, I crawled across the rocky floor, scraping my knees and my palms, until I found the edge of the wall and spread my hands over its rough surface, searching for the ruts I had seen—had I really seen them?—a moment earlier.
“Hello?”
A male whisper drifted downward, and my fingers froze against the rock.
“Hello? Who’s there?”
I tilted my head upward. It’s me! I whispered back. I’m coming!
There was no reply, and I resumed my scrabbling, frantic now, until at last my fingernails dragged against a horizontal bar, cut into the rock, to a depth of perhaps two inches.
A foot above it, another bar.
I climbed upward in blind triumph, feeling for each bar in the ladder, slipping twice and still pushing on, until my head reached the place where the ceiling should be and plunged straight through, into a cold blackness suffused with the presence of life.
“I’m here!” I called out, in a whisper. “Where are you?”
“Against the far wall.”
I hoisted myself through the hole in the ceiling, to land on my stomach like a fish, legs waving wildly, hands grabbing for some sort of purchase on the uneven floor.
“Careful. The ceiling is low.”
The whisper was wet and exhausted. I levered myself up at last and crawled across the ground in the direction of the words.
“Silverton! Are you all right? What have they done to you? What’s going on?”
I reached him in a few short yards: found his prone legs stretched out, his two large feet covered by his boots, both still whole by the grace of God. I covered the leather with my hands and sank over his toes in relief.
He was alive, at least. As long as he was alive, the rest of it didn’t matter.
“Silverton?” The voice was now bewildered. “I’m afraid—Lord Silverton?”
I lifted my head. My hands traveled up his legs, his torso, his shoulders, until at last I held his face in my palms, his massive jaw, his cheeks covered by thick foreign stubble.
I fell back. “You’re not Silverton!”
“Of course not,” he said. “My name is Haywood. Who the devil are you?”
Again the Lady waited, deep inside the shelter of the cave, while the Beast her brother searched for food and water to sustain them until the Hero’s return. On the second day of his absence, a great storm grew outside and the wind whistled mightily along the rocks. She abased herself on the ground and prayed to the gods that her brother had found shelter, and that the Hero’s ships were not even now upon the sea in search of her, for they would surely be wrecked in the surf.
When the storm cleared, the Lady ventured outside in great anxiety, and magnificent was her delight at the sight of a fleet of ships safely at anchor nearby, and boats even now landing upon the beach below. She flew down the path from the cliffs, animated with joy that she would soon be gathered into the embrace of the Hero, from whose arms she vowed she would never allow herself to be parted again.
But as she reached the golden sand, she stopped short, for she saw that the man leading his party ashore was not the Hero at all, but her husband the Prince . . .
THE BOOK OF TIME, A. M. HAYWOOD (1921)
Twenty-One
Your Grace,” I whispered, into that hole in the darkness occupied by the stranger. His boots drove painfully into my side, and I shifted to my knees, taking care for the low ceiling of which he had warned me.
There was a faint rattle of metal. “No,” he said slowly, “you’re mistaken again. My name is Haywood. Max Haywood. A private gentleman only.”
“I’m afraid not, sir.” I gathered my breath, for I was shaken to my bones, and my brain spun madly within. “I am Emmeline Truelove, secretary to the late Duke of Olympia. I have been sent by the family to find you.”
“The late duke?”
“I am grieved, sir, most deeply grieved to inform you that His Grace passed away last month.”
The man did not reply. I could hardly blame him; the shock of it struck me afresh. I said his name firmly to myself—Maximilian, Duke of Olympia—and still I could not quite comprehend that he sat before me at last, the new and rightful duke, the object of our expedition.
How had he come here?
“My God,” he whispered. “It can’t be true. He— I thought he was immortal.”
“Yes. I believe we all did.”
“How did it happen?”
“An accident on the estate. He—well, it appears he lost his step along a footbridge, and drowned in the stream below.”
He made a disbelieving noise. “That hardly seems like Olympia.”
“It was January, and the bridge was icy.”
He absorbed this information quietly. “God rest his soul,” he said at last.
“Indeed. The service—the interment—I am so sorry you missed them. They were all—his friends were all—it was all quite, I hope, as you would have wished, had you been there.” My voice was failing me. I brought my hands together on my knees and went on: “You are therefore, of course, the new Duke of Olympia, and Her Grace—the dowager duchess, I mean—has been much concerned for your welfare. We hadn’t heard from you in some time.”
Another rattle of metal. “I have been otherwise occupied, it seems.”
“What’s that? That noise?”
“Ah. Those are the chains, Miss Truelove, that hold me to this wall.”
“Dear God!” I reached forward and found his wrists, which were covered by a pair of thick iron manacles, and followed the chains to a heavy iron bolt in the rock nearby. “How long have you lain like this?”
“I don’t quite know. A day or two, I think. It’s hard to tell, in the darkness.”
“But who did this? And why?”
“The same fellows, I imagine, who have imprisoned you here as well.”
“And Lord Silverton? Are they holding him as well?”
The duke paused. “Silverton? Do you mean the marquess?”
“Yes. His lordship was good enough to accompany me, in search of you. You haven’t seen him?”
“No, I have not.”
“Oh, heavens,” I whispered, and sat back. My eyes stung. I thought, I will not cry. There was no point in crying, here in the dark, in front of a man I had only just met, and whose face remained a mystery to me.
Simply because he was not the man I hoped to find here.
“There is a woman,” the duke said softly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t suppose you know anything about her? She accompanied me to Naxos some weeks ago, and I am very much afraid for her safety.”
“Do you mean Desma? The barmaid at the hotel?”
“She is no barmaid, Miss Truelove,” he said gravely, but without offense. The chains clinked again, as he shifted position, and I had the impression that he was leaning closer to me. “Have you heard any news of her?”
“I met her briefly, at the hotel—”
“Yes, I told her to stay there, until I returned.”
“I am afraid, however, that she left last night, during the storm, in the company o
f Lord Silverton. We set out after them this morning, but her cottage was empty, and the landlord—”
“I beg your pardon,” said the duke. “Did you say we?”
“Yes. I have lately been accompanied by your friend Mr. Higganbotham, from the Athens School.”
“Higganbotham.”
“Yes. From the British School at Athens. You wrote to him earlier, if you’ll recall, and arranged to meet him here on Naxos, except—”
“Miss Truelove,” he said, in the manner of a man accustomed to having his patience tried by inferior intellects, “perhaps you had better start over again, from the beginning.”
No doubt you have noticed that Lord Silverton and I both persisted, throughout our journey, in calling the new Duke of Olympia by his previous name, even though Maximilian Haywood was entitled to the full style of that splendid rank from the moment of the old duke’s death. I am not quite certain why. Perhaps we felt too much respect for the great lion to hand off his name so cavalierly to another.
Perhaps we were simply afraid to tempt Providence.
In any case, he remained plain Mr. Haywood, in my mind and (I am afraid) in my heart. What other man could possibly deserve the name Olympia? Who was worthy to follow the grand old duke, who had held each crowned head of Europe in his palm, at one time or another? (In the case of its female sovereigns, quite often literally.) Who else had bestrode the great empire like a silver-haired colossus, never asking so much as a gram of treasure in return, and yet richer in mind and body than any petty potentate he had outwitted and outmaneuvered in his long, illustrious life?
No, I could not name Maximilian Haywood by his proper title. I could not bear to think of this stranger walking the earth as the Duke of Olympia.
And yet.
Here we sat at last, improbably and intimately, on the damp rock floor of a cave hidden in the cliffs of distant Naxos. And I could not see him, could not even make out the shadow of his shape in this black hole, and the air was cold and smelled of despair.
But as I crouched next to him, explaining the history of our expedition in a hushed voice that rose only just above a whisper, while he listened earnestly and without interruption, I found that I addressed him, from time to time, as Your Grace, in a style of newfound reverence. I found reassurance in the measure of heat that issued from his body, from the indomitable stillness with which he sat against the wall, from the olympic patience in his manner. In his demeanor, I discovered an intense familiarity, so real and pungent that I nearly forgot I was attending the present duke, and not the former.
Near the end of my story, he stopped me. “There was no sign of their presence in the shelter? No indication whatever that Silverton and my friend had reached these caves?”
“None at all, I’m afraid. We saw no trace of them anywhere.”
“I see. I suppose I may take some comfort in that. Silverton is a resourceful fellow, and largely trustworthy.”
“Only largely?”
“He has his little weaknesses, as I’m sure you’ve discovered. And then you were brought here, I presume, and placed under guard.”
“Yes. They gave us a little food, and one of the men remained behind to prevent our escape. In any case, it was too dark to make an attempt, on such a treacherous slope.”
“Yes. I hope you were not hurt.”
I touched the back of my neck. “No.”
“No?”
“A trifle.”
“I see,” he said again, nothing more.
I cleared my throat. “I have told you what I know. Perhaps you have some idea what is to be done? Mr. Higganbotham and I stand at your service. Surely we can defeat these two men, if we can conceive a sound plan.”
“Yes, I think so. The prospects are altogether brighter than they were an hour ago.”
I waited for more. My feet had begun to grow numb, under the weight of my crouching body, and I shifted position, accidentally encountering his knee. “I don’t mean to intrude on your private affairs,” I said at last, “but I confess we have been at a loss to explain your actions since December. Perhaps you can explain some part of this mystery? Who these men are, I mean, and why they have pursued you with such extraordinary persistence?”
“Me? I am afraid you mistake the matter. It is not me these men wish to capture.”
“Who, then?”
“Her,” he said, but the word was smothered under the weight of a loud noise from below: an explosion that sounded very much like the firing of a pistol.
“Mr. Higganbotham!” I exclaimed, and started for the opening in the rock.
But the air that drifted up from the cave below already rang with shouts. “Wait!” said the duke, and I hesitated, straining to pick out the voices, while my pulse pounded thunderously in my ears.
But the shouts tangled together, a melee of oaths and grunts and thumps, a howl of pain. I pressed one palm against the wall and leaned over the edge, desperate for news.
“Who is it?” demanded the duke, just as the words Up your bloody a——! carried upward, loud and distinctly British.
My breath caught.
Then came a sound between a shout and a squeal, a word I did not recognize, from a throat that could only belong to a female, or else a very young male.
The latter possibility, I decided, was distinctly remote.
I turned to Olympia. “There’s a woman.”
The duke let out a low roar, and the chains rattled in fury. The noise distracted me only a few seconds, but in that short time the tide of battle seemed to shift, and as I turned back to the opening, I saw that a light was growing below, illuminating the charcoal walls of the cave, and the sounds had grown loud and immediate.
I fell back, just as a golden head thrust upward from the hole.
“—shall rip your filthy b——locks from your ar——e with my own bare—”
But his sentence was cut short, as the rest of his body flew over the edge of the opening like a breaching whale, arms and legs bound together with rope, and slid a few feet across the rock, knocking me on my back.
I scrambled away, while the man before me lifted his head and squinted his eyes upward.
“Why, Truelove!” he said. “Dash it all. I was counting on you to ride to our rescue.”
Our reunion was short-lived, to the tune of perhaps four seconds.
“I’d watch out, if I were you,” Silverton said cheerfully, “for I expect the chap who sent me up—”
A large figure burst forth from the opening. His legs and arms were quite at liberty.
“Ah! There he is now.”
From the shadows, the Duke of Olympia shouted, “Where is she, man? Where’s Desma?”
Silverton turned his head. “Who the devil’s that?”
“It’s Haywood, you damned fool. What have you done with her?”
“Haywood! I say! We’ve been looking for you. There’s beastly news, I’m afraid.”
“Where is she?”
“Why, Desma? She’s down below, old boy, and in much better condition than I am. For some reason these fellows seem actually to value her life, unlike that of your poor humble servant.”
During the course of this conversation, the man behind him climbed out of the hole and rose to his feet. In the new glow around us, I saw it was the ginger-haired fellow, bearing his familiar pistol in one hand and a curious electric torch in the other, which he cast about the walls until the light fell upon the figure of the Duke of Olympia, no longer recumbent but crouching like a predator about to spring, at the far limits of his chains.
“So, b——ch,” said the man. “Looks like we found her after all, without your help. What do you think of that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I shall not repeat the oath uttered by the newcomer; I have, I believe, given you enough
flavor of his conversation. He gave voice fluently, and then said, “Come on, man. It’s over. We’ve got the woman. Time to start talking, okay? Nice and slow, so we don’t miss a thing.”
“You are mistaken,” said the duke. “Wasting your time.”
The man hadn’t seemed to notice me, kneeling next to the fallen Silverton, a few feet away. Men usually didn’t, did they? A woman was nothing to be afraid of, nothing to take into account, except perhaps as a useful pawn. A chip with which to bargain.
I found my feet, one by one, and edged around the far side of Silverton’s body.
The duke made no sign that he had seen me. He lifted his arms and rattled the chains. “Release me, or there will be the devil to pay. I assure you, I have powerful friends, who will pursue you with the full might of the British crown behind them.”
The man laughed and jerked his head at Silverton’s bound limbs. “Powerful friends like this one, right? I’m shaking in my boots.”
“I say,” Silverton said, in an offended voice.
“The thing is, you’ve got no idea what I am, right. No idea who I am. You can brag all you want about your powerful friends, but to me and my crew, they’re dead and gone. Dead and—”
I brought up my fist and knocked the torch from his hand, and in the instant of his shock, I grabbed for the opposite hand, the one with the pistol.
At the same instant, Silverton rolled like a dervish, crashing into his ankles, and the pistol slipped into my hands. I grasped it properly, as Silverton had shown me, and flipped back the safety latch.
The man swore and launched himself at me, but I had already taken aim, and my finger squeezed the trigger just before the blow landed.
We fell together in a heap, to the sound of splintering metal. His weight crushed me into the rocks. He swore in my ear, and his rank breath smothered my face as he attempted to heave himself up, but I wrapped my legs around his, tangling us both in the folds of my dress and petticoats.
“Ugh! You f——ing b——ch!”
He was trying to land a blow of some kind, but we were too closely entwined, and I had the advantage because he required the use of his arms to hoist himself up. I grabbed a fistful of ginger hair and yanked it. The word b——ch transformed into a howl of anguish. He whipped his head backward, trying to dislodge my hand, but I held on viciously while his fingers grasped for my throat and his thumbs found my windpipe.