A Terrible Beauty

by Tasha Alexander

  “Very well done,” he said after I had related to him the events of the evening. “We must prepare ourselves. It is unlikely Demir will descend upon us in the night, but if he is on Naxos, and if he has the means to secure a ship—which we must assume he does—he could be here in the space of six hours or so. I suggest we get ourselves off the roof and do everything we can to secure the house.”

  “I do not think we should expect attack,” I said. “I made it clear in my telegram I wanted a meeting and am willing to sell him the Achilles bronze. Furthermore, I told him I am staying in Fira.”

  “We know he and his thugs are capable of violence,” Colin said. “It would be foolish not to prepare for the worst. You may have told him Fira, but it would not prove difficult for him to learn where we live.”

  “I did not give him my actual name,” I said. “I signed the message ‘Athena.’”

  “Athena?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I considered ‘Artemis,’ but upon reflection came to the conclusion ‘Athena’ is preferable in this situation. I made sure to include for him enough details about both the bronze and Philip that he cannot doubt I am a force with which to be reckoned.”

  “You are a constant revelation, my dear. Regardless, it is best we take defensive action,” he said, and kissed me before going downstairs and disappearing into the courtyard. The rest of us removed ourselves to a sitting room—one whose traditional Cycladic windows, small and high up on the wall, made us less vulnerable to invasion. I sent Jeremy and Fritz to close and lock all the shutters in the house, but did not let Philip out of my sight.

  “You should let me help,” he said.

  “You are the one Demir wants,” I said. “I will not make it easy for him to get to you. I may have failed you as a wife, but I will not fail you here.”

  Margaret emitted a sound akin to a low growl and rolled her eyes at me.

  “Margaret—” I started.

  “Your friend is correct to object,” Philip said. “You did not fail me, Kallista. I suppose I had imagined you to be Penelope, and I your Odysseus.”

  “Penelope did not have every reason on earth to believe Odysseus was dead,” I said. “She thought the gods were keeping them apart. Furthermore, I have no interest in weaving.”

  This made him smile. “My expectations—no, my hopes, as I expected nothing—were unreasonable, and I would not have you believe you failed me by not making them real. It is I who failed you, first by not returning to England sooner, and then by not immediately making my presence known once I was there. I have no one to blame for my loneliness but myself.”

  I met his eyes. “Philip, even if you had made your presence known in London, I already loved Colin. You might have legally got me back as your wife, but we would not have gone on to live the way you picture in your dreams. I would have been heartbroken and sad every day for the rest of my life. You speak of Penelope? I would have become like her. I would have learned how to weave. I might even have told you that when I finished my tapestry I would abandon my affection for Colin and give my heart to you. But like Penelope, I would have unwoven my day’s work every night, and the tapestry would never be finished.”

  “I have loved you so very dearly for so long.” Sadness filled his voice.

  “You love the idea of me,” I said. “That is all you have ever known. We were barely acquaintances when you proposed.”

  “I did know you then, and came to know you even better during the time—short though it was—of our marriage. Do you discount entirely our wedding trip? Why, I even decided to read Lady Audley’s Secret after you spoke so highly of it. I have never had a passion for sensational fiction, but already knew I could trust your opinion on the subject.”

  “Did you read it?” I asked.

  “I purchased a copy en route to Africa, but I am afraid I never got the chance to finish it.”

  “Regardless,” I said, “we cannot claim there was a deep connection of souls between us. How could there have been? You were infatuated, I did not object. Like most couples of our class, we had no reason to believe we would bring each other happiness once your infatuation wore off. You are sad because you believe you have lost something, and perhaps you have, but it is not what you think. You mourn a dream, not something that was ever real. The Fates were never on our side. They brought Colin to me, and now all is as it should be.”

  I spoke with a passion so consuming I hardly noticed anything around me, but when I stopped I saw that Margaret had moved to sit closer to Philip, and had put her hand tentatively on his arm. She looked uncomfortable, but I am certain he appreciated the gesture. Behind them stood my husband, immobile, leaning against the doorjamb, looking like a perfect Praxiteles Apollo, his dark eyes sparkling.

  “I do hate to break up this scene, but our patient has awakened,” he said. “Furthermore”—he held up the two identical statues of Hermes, the one I had given him that I had found in Oia and the one I knew he must have taken from Philip’s bag after I told him I had seen it there—“Ashton and I are long overdue for a little chat. Given what you told me about our prisoner’s reaction to seeing this, it’s clear they are significant to anyone dealing with Demir. It’s time Ashton explains.”

  Philip

  Santorini, 1899

  A few weeks earlier

  This year, when his colleagues had returned from their winters abroad, Philip felt not the slightest temptation to watch for Kallista’s ship pulling into the port at Thera. This year would be different. This year, he would take matters into his own hands and no longer be a mere spectator in what ought to have been his life. All the years he had spent being patient would at last come to fruition. He knew she would be arriving soon. Last year, Reiner had done reconnaissance for him; this year Philip himself had shared drinks with the villagers in a taverna in Fira, and had learned from a boy employed to work in the stables at the villa that the English holidaymakers were expected at the end of the week.

  He would not watch for her, but neither would he keep away, not any longer, and he felt confident his plan would work. When she saw him, apparently near death from an illness he could readily feign, the feelings she had long ago buried would begin to resurface, and her love for him would return. Hargreaves was bound to prove problematic, of that he had no doubt, and although he once would have believed himself incapable of harming his dearest friend, he found the idea not so unpalatable anymore. All that remained was to set his plan in motion.

  On that count, the unexpected storm proved a bit of good fortune, as if Zeus himself had come to his aid, ready to return to him his lawful wife. The downpour had started suddenly, with a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder following without delay. The rain, coming hard and in sheets, blown in every direction by the strong winds high on the mountain, had bashed at the sides of his tent, but it did not blow over his cozy—if now damp—domicile. Nonetheless, it would be simple enough to convince his friends, once they believed him to be dangerously ill, to remove him from the wet and battered camp. When Kallista reached the villa tomorrow, she would find him already there, in desperate need of care. He was convinced the dramatic accounts—they would be dramatic—of his arrival during the storm would further endear him to her.

  Reiner, drenched, stuck his head into Philip’s tent.

  “Friedrich invites us to come to his tent. It’s the largest and the sturdiest of all of ours, and he has a fine bottle of schnapps. Bohn is finishing up some work and then will be along. You will come?”

  “In a moment,” Philip said. “I have some notes from today’s work to complete first. I will join you shortly.” Once the faint glow of Reiner’s lantern had disappeared, Philip realized the time had come for action. Or inaction, such as it was. He would not go to the professor’s tent, and when, after enough time had passed, his friends became worried, someone would come looking for him, only to find him on his cot, delirious. Heaven knows he had enough experience with illness to be able to feign delirium with skill.
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  First, though, he had to bide some time, and continued to work on his notes. No more than a quarter of an hour had gone by when someone again pulled back the flap of his tent. This time, Gerhard Bohn stuck his head in.

  “Could you help me, Chapman? The storm has managed to blow hard enough to dislodge one of the stakes of my tent, and I fear the whole thing will be lost to the wind if I don’t replace it. I don’t have a hammer.”

  “I’ve got one,” Philip said, removing from under his cot a wooden box of tools. “Will your lantern be enough?”

  “May as well bring yours,” Bohn said. “I can pull the tent back into place while you deal with the stake. Together we can make short work of it.”

  And they would have, except that when they reached the tent, they could not locate the missing stake, and were forced to search for it, their lanterns barely illuminating the rain-filled darkness. Philip, moving away from the camp, thought he caught a glimpse of something shiny, and headed for it. Before he could reach it, he lost his balance when he stepped on a slick rock and careened forward. He had not realized how close he was standing to the edge of the plateau on which they had set their camp, and he cried out as he tried to break his momentum, grabbing for anything that might give him purchase.

  Somehow, Bohn had heard his call, and in the flash of an instant, he reached his fallen colleague. Simultaneously, Philip had started to roll onto his side, an act that enabled him, in one swift movement, to come to his feet. But the force of motion he mustered in order to stand knocked over Bohn, whom he could not see in the dark, and sent his rescuer tumbling down the side of the hill.

  “Bohn!” Philip scrambled to catch him, but failed. Keeping low to the ground so as not to fall again himself, he made his way down the steep slope, until he came upon his friend. He held his lantern to reveal a grisly scene: Bohn was lying on his back, a bloody gash at the base of his skull. He was unresponsive, but breathing, though only shallowly. Not knowing what else to do, Philip picked him up and somehow got him back to the top of the hill. He set him down gently, then peeled off his jacket and put it over the injured man in a vain attempt to insulate him from the weather, and rushed to the professor’s tent.

  His head throbbed. Now he had a legitimate excuse to go to the villa. Bohn needed medical attention and to be somewhere clean and dry, and although the villagers in Kamari would gladly offer their assistance, they would not be able to provide what his friend needed. There was an English-speaking doctor in Oia, at the northern tip of the island. He would take Bohn to the villa and then go for the physician on one of the horses he knew Hargreaves kept in the stables. He had never felt so sick in his life, convinced his scheme had somehow brought about his friend’s injury.

  Not wanting to risk further injuring Bohn, who remained unconscious, he, Reiner, and the professor carried him, balancing him carefully between the three of them, down the slick cobbled road. When they reached the bottom, Reiner ran to the village, rousing one of their workers to bring a wagon to the road. Philip was hardly aware of the trip across the island to Imerovigli, only feeling alive again when they clattered into the courtyard behind the house. He leapt from the wagon and banged on the back door, shouting.

  A maid, one of the local girls, opened it, looking annoyed at being disturbed. He started to speak, but she was not listening. She raised her lantern and murmured what sounded like a desperate prayer.

  “Can it really be you?” she asked. “Lord Ashton?”

  21

  Philip’s shoulders slumped when he saw the statues of Hermes my husband was holding. “I should have been more forthright with you,” he said.

  “This is not the time for apologies and regrets,” Colin said. “I need you to tell me everything you can about Demir. Emily, Margaret, will you leave us, please?”

  “Why don’t we stay—” I started.

  “No, Kallista,” Philip said. “Leave us be. It is time for Hargreaves and me to face each other.”

  I would have given nearly anything to hear the conversation between them, but could hardly deny them privacy. Margaret and I went to see our patient, who was, as Colin had said, awake, but not coherent. Unable to extract any useful information from him, we found Jeremy in the sitting room. He and Fritz had alerted Mrs. Katevatis to the situation, and she insisted on going to the village to summon assistance. Not wanting her to go on her own, Fritz had accompanied her, as Adelphos insisted on guarding our prisoner. Barely an hour had passed before they returned, accompanied by every able-bodied man in the village, armed with old rifles, sticks, and a few pitchforks.

  By this time Colin and Philip, both looking grim, had rejoined us, and Colin set about stationing the villagers around the perimeter of the house, a task not so easy, as in Santorini buildings are constructed almost one on top of the other. The walls on the sides of the villa abutted directly against those of our neighbors, and a person of malicious intent could climb from rooftop to rooftop until he reached ours. Fortunately, we had the manpower to place someone at the door of each house and on each roof. In front of us stood only the cliff path and the sheer drop to the caldera, and behind us, because Philip had purchased enough land to construct the barn and courtyard, there were no houses near enough to offer our enemies a good vantage point for attack.

  Despite our best efforts, Margaret and I did not manage to convince the gentlemen that we, too, ought to be armed and standing guard. Instead, we had no choice but to reluctantly accept a forced retreat into an interior room, where we sat, waiting.

  “Have you ever experienced something more tedious?” I asked.

  “I had great hopes for the experience of being pursued by a maniac,” Margaret said, sighing. “One expects it would be exciting, yet I have never been more bored in my life.”

  “He might not be a maniac, just a vicious criminal without remorse,” I said. “But I do agree with you about our current plight—it can induce nothing save ennui. Colin tells me his work is often like this: high stakes, but seemingly endless time in a prolonged state of expectancy.”

  Mrs. Katevatis entered the room, bringing cups of steaming mountain tea, and sat with us. “Adelphos is in the courtyard,” she reported. “Nico is on the roof. The men argued about what to do with the viscount, but in the end agreed to allow him to assist them, as what Nico called a ‘fallback.’ He is in the drawing room.”

  “It would be too risky to let him outside, given he is Demir’s target,” I said. “Not to mention he is injured and unlikely to be much use in a fight.”

  “He was not happy about it,” Mrs. Katevatis said, “but his friend the German said many harsh words to him about putting the ladies in danger, and then the viscount relented.”

  We passed the entire night in that small room without any sign of disturbance. Once the sun had risen, Colin reorganized our forces, sending most of them back home to sleep, as we would need them again when darkness fell; in daylight, it would be easy enough for a handful of observers to raise the alarm if need be. We breakfasted inside rather than on the terrace, and so began a most wearisome day.

  “You ought to nap,” I said to my husband, who had come inside to gulp down a dish of tangy yogurt, as an accompaniment to a full English breakfast. No matter where we were in the world, he always managed to have something that reminded him of home. “You have been up all night.”

  “I do not require rest when I am working. I can go days without it when necessary. But you and Margaret must not have slept well,” he said, “her on a chair and you wrapped in blankets on the floor. Look at how she is already yawning.”

  “It was an adventure,” Margaret said. “Emily and I both felt strongly that Mrs. Katevatis ought to have the settee.”

  “That was good of you,” he said.

  “A telegram has come,” Mrs. Katevatis said, entering the room and handing the envelope to me. I ripped it open and read it through.

  “Demir will arrive tomorrow morning and will be waiting for me in the taverna in Fira at
noon.”

  “Well done, my dear,” Colin said.

  “It was only just sent from Naxos,” I said, studying it, “but we cannot assume that means Demir is still there.”

  “Quite right. There are very few strangers on this island and it would be easy enough for him to locate us, just as it was easy for us to locate him on Naxos. Furthermore, everyone knows the archaeologists came to us after the attack. I am afraid we must resume our defensive posture,” he said, blotting his mouth with a napkin before kissing me and heading back up to the roof, from whence he could watch for any approaching marauders.

  Margaret and I returned with little joy to the small room that had begun to feel like a prison, where we both tried to read. Our minds were too unsettled to make sense of words on paper. Midway through the afternoon, we visited our patient, who was sleeping soundly and still had not uttered a single intelligible word in the brief moments he spent awake. Adelphos, who, like my husband, refused to nap, was dividing his time between patient and prisoner, keeping a close eye on both.

  Back inside, we stopped in the kitchen when Mrs. Katevatis, who had started to prepare dinner, called, urging us to help her. “It is no good for a lady to know how to cook nothing,” she said. “You are too competent to be useless, so I will show you.” Soon she had us with our sleeves up, seasoning feta for tyropita, then rolling out the thin phyllo dough, and finally supervising us as we formed the delicate cheese pies. Our first several efforts were disastrous, as we kept tearing the fragile dough, but eventually we met with success.

  “They are not pretty, perhaps,” I said, brushing melted butter on the triangular tops of the pastry before we slid them into the hot oven, “but they will taste good.”