by Gavin Scott
“Father and daughter had fled into the tower,” said Beamish.
“Ah, yes. Well, as soon as he knew the last two survivors were at the top, Fulk ordered the ballista to be trained on it, and by the time the Knights of St. James had fought their way up, the place was in ruins.”
“And Bohemond and his daughter were dead?”
“Well, thereby hangs a tale. I think the besiegers had indeed expected to find them dead, but they had a surprise waiting for them.” Runcorn began to scramble up the tumbled wreckage of the spiral staircase, but turned to speak as they started to follow him. “Be very careful here – it’s all rather fragile. Make sure you don’t dislodge the stones onto those coming up behind you.”
It was a nervous climb, both because of the danger of causing the rest of the staircase to collapse and the claustrophobic narrowness of the stairwell. But at last, to Forrester’s relief, they were at the top. It was a small platform, crowded once they were all on it, but the view was extraordinary. It seemed as if they could see the whole Aegean, dotted with islands and glittering in the afternoon sun. But it was the sea immediately below the castle walls that caught their attention, and suddenly everyone understood the meaning of the Greek phrase Durrell had used: Roufíchtra Medusa.
Medusa’s Whirlpool.
It was as if some infuriated goddess was spinning there, deep beneath the surface, her maw open, drawing anything that approached into the maelstrom. If there was ever an image of nature ready to seize and devour, this was it.
“My God,” said Sophie, taking Forrester’s arm and stepping away from the edge of the tower, “that is a terrible place.”
“What on earth was Bohemond thinking, bringing his daughter up here?” asked Beamish, his face white.
“You must draw your own conclusions,” said Runcorn. “But this is what happened. When the Crusaders finally emerged from the stairwell, Bohemond and his daughter Persephone were ready for them – wearing the Urim and the Thummim.”
“The breastplates,” said Ariadne.
“Wearing them?”
“Yes, wearing them, like biblical priests.”
“How terrible and splendid at the same time,” said Sophie.
“As father and daughter swung their swords, according to Fulk’s deathbed statement many years later, there emerged ‘fierce beams of light, red, green and azure, blinding any who approached’. So effective was the defence put up by Bohemond and Persephone that the besiegers were actually being driven back – and Fulk ordered one more shot from the ballista. It might have killed his own men, of course, but Fulk wasn’t the kind of man to care about that, and in fact he was lucky. The boulder smashed into Persephone, crushing her.”
“Bastards,” said Helena.
“Poor girl,” said Sophie.
“And then the most extraordinary thing happened,” said Runcorn.
“It’s hard to imagine anything more extraordinary than what you’ve just told us,” said David Venables.
“Well, listen to this,” said Runcorn. “Bohemond took his dying daughter in his arms and climbed with her onto the battlements. Then he kissed her, whispered something in her ear, and leapt out over the maelstrom.”
“Oh God,” said Sophie. “So it swallowed them up.”
“That’s the fascinating part,” said Runcorn. “Apparently not. As they fell, the two breastplates touched, and there was a flash of light so intense many of those who witnessed it did not recover their sight for days. And when the light died away, neither Bohemond nor his daughter were to be seen – not in the air, not in the sea and not on the rocks below the castle. They had vanished as if they had never been – and the Urim and the Thummim with them.”
There was a silence as each of them saw, in their mind’s eye, that final scene.
“What did Fulk do?” asked Forrester at last.
“What could he do?” said Runcorn. “He gathered his men together and left the island within the week. He went first to Rome to report to the Pope what had happened, and then resigned from the Order and retired to Melk Abbey in Austria. Much of what I’ve told you comes from the account he left there.”
No one spoke for a while, imagining the last moments of Count Bohemond and his daughter, gazing at the extraordinary panorama spread before them before hurling themselves into – what? Heaven? Hell? Or another dimension of reality altogether?
“Sometimes I hate men,” said Helena, half to herself.
Then there was a distant clatter of stones and Forrester looked down to see Yanni clambering in through the breach in the walls.
“Up here,” he shouted, and waved.
Minutes later the Cretan had joined them on the tower.
“Is the bastard here, boss?” said Yanni as he emerged into the sunlight, breaking the mood created by the legend of Bohemond.
“It’s a possibility,” said Forrester. “There aren’t many other places to hide around here. But none of us have seen him yet.”
“So we go around the castle and flush him out,” said Yanni. “Somebody staying up here to watch if he runs, then yelling to rest of us if they see him.”
Forrester nodded. “Not a bad idea,” he said. “If he is in residence. Perhaps the ladies would stay up here as watchers?”
“It’s too hot to stay up here,” said Helena. “I will join the hunt.”
“Me too,” said Ariadne. “Will you come with me, Keith? To look after me?” Again, Forrester saw Beamish blush like a schoolboy.
“When we search,” said Forrester. “We search as a group. I’m not taking the risk of Kretzmer grabbing any one of us as a hostage. Sophie, would you stay here and be our spotter? We need someone with sharp eyes.”
“Yes,” said Sophie. “I need to sit down anyway,” and she placed herself carefully on a fallen stone as far from the wall’s edge as possible.
“Needless to say, if you see Kretzmer coming anywhere near the tower, yell bloody murder.”
“You can rely on that,” said Sophie, looking at him coolly. “I have no desire to be trapped here with that unhappy soul.”
But it turned out that the sticking-together part of the plan was easier said than done, because after they climbed back down to ground level and began to move steadily clockwise around the castle, the architecture of the place and the random nature of its ruination steadily broke the search party into units. As a result, quite often one or other of them was either alone or visible to just two or three other members of the search party. Forrester was acutely aware of the danger and kept stopping to herd them all back into a bunch, but for minutes at a time, he knew, they were horribly vulnerable. He wondered whether he was right to let them risk themselves like this, but the search, once begun, had a momentum of its own.
Besides, if he was honest with himself, the risk did not weigh more heavily with him than the prospect of finally laying his hands on the Minoan Rosetta Stone.
The first place they searched was the old guardroom. Forrester’s initial instinct was that a glance would suffice to show it was empty, but when they went inside he realised the upper part of the walls were broken and provided innumerable hiding places, each of which had to be checked. And each of which proved to be empty.
Next came a series of tiny rooms, probably storage places and closets. In each one – nothing.
It was an eerie feeling as they entered the tall chamber that must have been the main hall of the castle. Forrester could imagine Bohemond and his consort presiding over his loyal retainers here, wondering when his former brothers in the Order of St. James would catch up with him, perhaps eyeing Michael doubtfully and wondering whether he had made the right decision in making off with the precious artefacts. And then perhaps looking at the beautiful Greek woman beside him, and the beloved daughter they had produced together – and concluding that whatever happened, this was the place he was destined to be.
They scrambled up a stairway onto the fighting platform that ran below the crenellations, with heart-stopping views
out over the island and enough piles of rubble for Kretzmer to have secreted himself several times over. But he did not manifest himself. Every few minutes Forrester glanced over at Sophie on the tower. Each time she indicated with a shake of her head that she had seen nothing. Forrester also kept glancing at the spiral stairs to reassure himself that Kretzmer was not trying to get up there after her.
Finally they came to a point where the fighting platform was broken beyond repair and there was no way across the gap, and as the chapel was immediately below on their left, they decided to climb down and make it their next area of search.
The nave of the church was in a particular state of ruination, as if Fulk and his invading Crusaders had taken special pleasure in smashing up the renegades’ place of worship, but it was still possible to make out, carved into the walls what looked like bas-reliefs of moons and stars. Images, Forrester thought, which would have been more appropriate in an astronomer’s observatory than a Christian church. Low down in one corner was a Latin inscription that must have escaped the iconoclastic hands of Fulk’s men.
ET CONCEDENTE PERFECTIONES LUMINA ET LOCUTUS EST SUPER CAELOS CAELORUM. ET QUI SUPER CAELO. ALIUS PRAETER SAECULA SAECULORUM.
“‘The lights and perfections have spoken’,” said Lawrence Durrell, translating.
“‘And vouchsafed that there is a heaven beyond the heavens.’ What on earth does that mean?”
“And a heaven beyond that,” read Forrester. “And another beyond that, for all eternity.”
“An infinity of universes,” said Durrell. “How very vertigo-making.” He peered closer. “Cave ne absorbeat et in tenebras lucem,” he read. “‘Beware of the darkness lest it swallow up the light.’ Not a very cheerful thought, is it?”
At which point the chapel darkened, there was a scraping noise directly above, and a rectangle of grey granite slid into view in a hole in the chapel roof.
“Scatter!” yelled Forrester, as a massive block of stone plunged down at them, hit the chapel floor and exploded with the force of its descent. Had they remained where they were for a second longer at least one of them would have been dead.
Forrester raced outside, but by the time he got there the chapel roof was empty.
“There he is!” shouted Sophie from the tower, pointing towards the ramparts, and Forrester looked up there at the very moment a figure vanished into a doorway. Suddenly people were scrambling from all directions to go after him. In vain Forrester yelled at them to regroup, stay together, but the madness of the chase was on them and after the near miss in the chapel each one of them felt they had something to avenge.
Then a woman on horseback appeared on the brow of the hill directly in front of the castle, and spurred the animal to gallop furiously down towards it. As she rode, Forrester recognised her.
It was Penelope Alexandros.
And then Keith Beamish appeared, silhouetted against the sky on the castle ramparts, and shouted something as a gunshot rang out and he toppled slowly backwards into the sea. Forrester reached the spot where he had fallen just in time to see his body circle twice around the vortex before being sucked, forever, into its depths.
21
AFTERMATH
Forrester, almost overwhelmed by guilt and anger, could scarcely remember the journey back across the island, and it was only when they were back in their room in the kastello and he lay on the bed, his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling, that Sophie was able to speak to him directly.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said.
“The hell it wasn’t. The only reason Kretzmer was here on this island was because of me. And I let them follow him into the castle – if I’d stopped them he would still be alive.”
“But we don’t know it was Kretzmer who shot him,” said Sophie.
“Of course it was Kretzmer,” said Forrester. “Who else could it have been? Besides, you saw him yourself after he shoved the stone down through the chapel roof.”
“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” said Sophie. “I’m not sure I did. All I know for certain is that there was somebody scrambling from the chapel onto the walls. I just assumed it was him.”
“It had to be,” said Forrester. “Everybody else was in the nave with me.”
“Constantine Atreides wasn’t,” said Sophie. “Penelope Alexandros wasn’t. And can you be absolutely certain all the people in our party came into the chapel with you in the first place?” Forrester stared at her bleakly, but it was a moment before he replied. The truth was he couldn’t be totally sure who had been peering down at the inscription with him. And once he had rushed out of the place to go after Kretzmer he had no real idea who had gone where.
“But that still doesn’t get around the fact that nobody had any motive to kill Keith,” he said, “apart from Kretzmer.”
“Kretzmer had no motive either,” said Sophie, reasonably. “He might have killed him because he’d felt trapped, but apart from that…”
“Apart from that,” said Forrester, “who else had any reason to murder Keith? Nobody.”
“What about Helena Spetsos?” said Sophie. “After the way Ariadne was flirting with him on the walk.”
“It would be a pretty extreme reaction to shoot somebody because of that,” said Forrester.
“But we know Helena Spetsos is a woman given to extreme reactions, don’t we?”
“Well – yes,” said Forrester. “But all the same—”
“She’s just finished three years guerrilla fighting in the mountains, killing anything or anyone that threatened her. And she’s just met a major setback in her campaign to get Ari Alexandros back. Not a good time for young Keith to get in her way.”
“But does she really care about Ariadne enough to kill for her?”
“I don’t know,” said Sophie. “Do you?”
Forrester had to admit he did not. He did not even bother to raise the question of whether Helena had actually had a gun with her at the castle. There was no reason to suppose she couldn’t have laid her hands on one if she’d wanted to, and in the chaos after Beamish had been killed she could easily have concealed it. And even if they had the murder weapon there was no way of linking it directly to Beamish’s death.
“I’d like to think it wasn’t Kretzmer,” said Forrester. “Keith was a nice kid. He didn’t deserve to die.”
“He didn’t,” said Sophie, “and I don’t believe it was your fault he did.”
It was several long moments before Forrester spoke again. “What should I do about Kretzmer? Assuming he’s still at large?”
“I don’t know,” said Sophie, “but I don’t want you going looking for him again. If there’s one lesson from today, it’s that. Do you agree?”
Forrester sighed. “I suppose so,” he said.
“Good,” said Sophie. “Then let’s go down and join the others.”
“You go first,” said Forrester. “I need to speak to Ari.”
* * *
He found Alexandros on the terrace, pacing up and down, smoking furiously.
“So, it goes on,” said Forrester, declining the proffered packet.
“It goes on,” said Alexandros, half to himself. “On my island.”
“We’ll get the bastard,” said Forrester. “Whoever it is. And speaking of that, did you find out anything about who sent that decoy message yesterday?”
“I tracked down the family of the shepherd boy,” said Alexandros.
“And what did they have to say?”
“They told me he has left the island.”
“Left the island? What do you mean?”
“I mean he has gone to see his uncle on Antikythera.”
“Damn!” said Forrester. “Is this just chance or did somebody get him out of here?”
“The parents say they know the uncle and he does sometimes visit Hydros in his caïque.”
“They didn’t see who spoke to their son, did they? When he was given the message for you.”
“No, b
ut they heard him speaking to someone outside the cottage just before he went off.”
“Man or woman?”
“A man apparently.”
“Speaking English or Greek?”
“It would have to be Greek, because the boy doesn’t speak English. They didn’t say it sounded like a foreigner, though.”
“So it could have been somebody from the island?”
“Yes, my friend, it could,” said Alexandros heavily. “So we are no better off for all my inquiries. What have you discovered?”
“I went back to the grove this morning,” said Forrester. “They used Nobel 808 and a timer.”
“808? The British explosive.”
“Plenty of that in these islands since the war. Anybody could have got hold of it.”
“How long a timer?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Ten…” said Alexandros. “They can’t have been far away when…”
“By the way, while I was looking for the timer somebody took a pot-shot at me. Chased him, didn’t catch him, so we’re no better off there. How’s Giorgios doing?”
Alexandros met his eyes briefly. “He is conscious again, in some pain, and very angry,” he said. “As he has every right to be.”
* * *
It was a shocked-looking group that gathered in the kastello dining room that night. Penelope presided over it with grim efficiency, as if determined by her very presence to instil a kind of normality. If she was amazed that after the events of the previous evening Helena Spetsos had the gall to show her face in the house, she hid the fact. The servants tiptoed in and out of the room with each course as if they were walking along the rim of a volcano.
“What is happening on my island?” said Alexandros as he finished his first glass of wine. “First the ikons are smashed—” he looked quickly at Helena, forestalling an interjection “—which I accept was an accident.” Penelope snorted, but her husband ignored her. “Then the shrine is destroyed and my best friend is almost killed, and finally today, one of my guests is shot and plunges to his death in the Roufíchtra Medusa.” He glared round at them. “What is going on?” he demanded.
“Surely poor Beamish was killed by Forrester’s Nazi?” said Lawrence Durrell. “Perhaps that same Nazi was responsible for the attack on Colonel Stephanides too?”