Doctors Wear Scarlet

by Raven, Simon

  “How else? If the name changed, then the goddess would desert it. But then there is also the priests. So to make them happy, the goddess must become a saint.”

  He spat with elegance and then fell silent.

  “What did the mayor mean just now?” Roddy was saying to Piers. “That he and his people could not actually go to Richard?”

  “They are afraid.”

  The mayor was leading, with myself and Roddy and Piers strung out, in that order, behind him. So doubtless Piers had not thought to be overheard. But the mayor pricked up his ears when Piers made his remark, and for a moment I thought he would protest. He simply shrugged, however, and then looked resignedly in front of him. Roddy, seeing what had happened, sought to make amends.

  “From what I hear,” he said firmly, “Cretans are afraid of nothing.”

  The mayor squared his shoulders slightly but did not turn his head.

  “They are afraid of this,” said Piers, “and they do well to be so.”

  “It’s time you made yourself clear.”

  “You will know all you wish to in time,” interrupted the mayor. “And now we must soon be out of this valley. After this the way is hard and steep and hot. It is my advice that you do not waste your strength in arguing.”

  There were both courtesy and command in his words; so that Roddy said no more.

  And now indeed the valley was turning into a re-entrant: the trees were thinner, there was more rock; the hills on either side were closing in and now seemed grudging and even hostile, seemed to shimmer with malice in the heat. The soft path became a crude stone track, which for a time went straight up the re-entrant but soon started to twist and turn, cheating the vicious gradient but causing even the clever mules to falter and jerk, until remaining in one’s seat, though never really difficult, became a steady grinding effort of muscles and the will. There was no shade now. The sun, almost at the zenith, beat straight down on mules and men. But the patient animals, for all their occasional faltering, kept steadily on and upwards; while we who were their burden, our heads drooping in weariness and despair, our bodies aching in every inch, went on and upwards with them – and would have been unable, for an Emperor’s ransom, to break the silence which had been earlier enjoined upon us.

  When we reached the head of the re-entrant, we found we were at one end of a long and narrow ridge. On either side, and stretching for some miles to the North, were groups of foothills, which were dotted here and there with villages and broken by modest patches of cultivation. The ridge itself kept straight on, at approximately the same height as we ourselves had reached though occasionally dipping and rising again, until it was joined by another which swept in towards it from the East. At this point it became broader but it also began to rise; at first fairly gently, so far as we could judge, but then steeply and yet more steeply, until it towered up, many miles distant from us, among a magnificent mass of gleaming peaks and buttresses – The White Mountains of Crete.

  An hour or so later we descended for half a mile from the top of the ridge to a group of stone huts which stood on the slope below it. Here we were offered water, olives, some salted fish in oil, and a small quantity of strong and bitter wine. Then, having ascended once again to the crude path on the ridge’s back, we rode on through the afternoon towards the looming mass ahead, which reflected, like dull silver, the now somewhat kinder rays of the slowly westering sun.

  It was about ten o’clock when the storm broke.

  Just before darkness we had paused in our journey to eat and drink once more – white cheese and olives, the same bitter but heartening wine – and had then ridden on to where the ridge from the East joined our own. From here on, as we had foreseen, we were always ascending; the path, straight at first, began to twist and prevaricate as the slope became steeper; and finally we were no longer on a ridge but on a mountain: a bare, cruel mountain, all of it rock, it seemed, rock relieved by only the most occasional patches of scrub.

  “Your friend,” the mayor had said, “is on the other side of the mountain.”

  Even so we had seemed to continue upwards, rather than round the mountain flanks. But it was cool without being cold, there was only a hint of wind, and the journey had now been a happy one were it not for the occasion: for the stars had shone with rare brilliance in the thin mountain air, such a sight as may come only once or not at all in a man’s life.

  “There is the son of Peleus,” Piers had said, “and there Orion the Hunter. And there, most beautiful of all, are the Pleiades, of whom Sappho sang in Lesbos.”

  And in a low voice he had begun to quote the beautiful Greek, until the tears pricked behind my eyelids and I forgot, for a time, that I was riding on a vile wooden saddle toward a friend in deep and nameless distress, and scarcely realised that now at last we had ceased to ascend and were working round a shoulder toward the slopes on the far side of the mountain. For Orion had shone and the Pleiades; and Piers’ pleasant voice had murmured to me through the night.

  And then the storm broke.

  One moment there was calmness and starlight. The next the whole sky was blotted out, there was a great blast of wind, and rain which was half sleet and half hail was lashing across my face. Somewhere just to my left the lightning struck, and at the same moment the thunder crashed on to the rocks about us; while over the mountains came wind to reinforce the gale that was already raging, moaning and shrieking through the pinnacles and bastions, plunging past the summits and wailing over the ravines.

  And then I found that I was on a broad shelf of rock and that the mayor in front of me had stopped and dismounted.

  “Your friend is not far,” he shouted above the wind. He pointed to an ascending path which led from the shelf we were on, up through the rock above us, and disappeared.

  “Follow this path,” he shouted. “When you are there, you will know. Take light.” He handed me a torch. “Take one of your cases.” He gestured toward the rearmost mule. “You will need dry clothes.”

  “And you?” asked Roddy. “And the mules?”

  “We will wait here until you have done what is necessary and are ready to leave.”

  “How long can you wait?”

  “We are patient men. We shall be content.” He pointed to an overhang which would provide some shelter. “Take food,” he said, passing Piers a small canvas sack. “Take food, and do what you must, and return to us. This one,” – he nudged Roddy and myself and pointed to Piers – “will know what is to be done. Do not worry about us here. But do not delay more than you must. And now go.”

  He shook each of us by the hand. The two attendant footmen crossed themselves.

  “Go,” shouted the mayor through the storm.

  Roddy turned, took the torch from me and lifted one of the small valises in his other hand, then started away up the path. Piers and I followed. The storm, from which we had been slightly protected on the ledge, now came at us with fury. But Roddy pressed slowly on and upwards, until we turned a corner and began a gradual descent down and round the slope, a descent which in turn became a level passage and then once more steepened against us…

  How long we walked I shall never know. I was conscious only of the vicious lashing sleet, of the agony of the wind, and of the brave figure of Roddy, moving very slowly, but always moving, in front of me. But after a time, minutes or hours, we came to some steps, broad and graceful, which led to a door in a stone wall. Roddy fumbled with a large ring-handle, then flung the door open with a crash; and beyond the door, in the white light of a storm lantern, we saw a woman crouched against a wall and a figure lying on the floor wrapped in blankets. The figure was very still, and its white face stared straight up at the ceiling, sightless and immobile, like a mask of death.

  IX

  “The place must have been a Venetian stronghold,” said Piers. We were outside looking at the low, square tower, with its narrow pointed windows and crenellated walls, which the light of morning revealed. The wind was still strong; but i
t had stopped raining now, and there was promise that the blanket of white cloud above us might later yield to the sun.

  “They must have had a troop of soldiers here,” Piers went on, “keeping watch over the mountains.”

  “I hope,” I said, “that they were frequently relieved. One night in the place is enough.”

  “We shan’t be able to move Richard for a day or two,” said Roddy, who on account of some slight experience in the field was acknowledged by us as a kind of crude medical expert.

  “Just how bad is he?” I asked.

  “Very weak,” said Roddy with a puzzled look. “As far as I can tell he just needs rest and food. Building up. But it will be some time before he can take much of anything solid.”

  “So long as we can keep that woman away from him,” Piers said, “he will be all right.”

  Roddy looked at him thoughtfully.

  “Will she come back?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “She bolted fast enough when we appeared last night.”

  “She was taken unawares. But soon she will pull herself together, and she will wait for her opportunity, and then she will…” His voice trailed away.

  “Will what?” said Roddy.

  “…will return, for Richard.”

  “The three of us should be able to manage her.”

  “She will have…resources,” Piers said.

  For a time we were silent. The towering peaks crowded about us, but there was a gap between two of the mountains through which I glimpsed a green plain far below. Familiarity, I thought, security: home.

  “We’d best go in and look to Richard.”

  When we returned into the fort, Richard, for the first time, was awake. He was still as white as marble and he looked desperately weak; but he smiled softly at us and said, without apparent surprise – “So you got here all right. Piers… Anthony…and you, Roddy. It was good of you to come.”

  “We came as soon as we could.”

  “Where did you sleep?”

  “Here. With you.”

  “No blankets,” said Richard, turning his head with effort and looking round the inside of the fort. “You must have been cold.”

  “Never mind that,” said Roddy; “don’t worry about us. Sleep.”

  “Yes,” said Piers, “you must sleep.”

  But Richard was still gazing, restless and anxious, round the bare stone walls.

  “Where is… Chriseis?” he said at length.

  “She went away last night when we came.”

  “We will take care of you now.”

  “You must watch for her,” said Richard. “She will come back. She…is…clever.”

  Then his eyes closed and he fell asleep.

  But later that day, early in the afternoon, he awoke once more. We gave him some yoghurt, which he swallowed with difficulty, and a little wine. And then he seemed disposed to talk.

  “You must watch for Chriseis. If she comes back, I shall not be able to fight her. Neither, perhaps, will you. Even when I was well and strong…when I first met her months ago in Corinth… I could not fight her. But then, of course, I thought she was something different…liberation, escape.

  “A dreary town, Corinth. Modern and hard. How should such a creature come from those everyday streets, the bright shops, the neat houses? But the was there, and she found me, and I thought she loved me. And indeed I loved her. For herself and the escape I thought she offered. But even then I couldn’t… I couldn’t…”

  He broke off and looked despairingly at Piers, who put out a hand and began to stroke the tumbled hair back from his forehead.

  “Never mind, my dear, never mind. We understand. Don’t force yourself to tell us.”

  “But I want to tell you. You must all know.”

  His voice was becoming urgent and he raised his head from the pillow.

  “I couldn’t…make love…like a man.”

  His head sank back and he seemed much relieved.

  “But Chriseis, she said it didn’t matter, there were other things. And so there were – fearful, ugly things. But I went with her, dazed, not really knowing what I did, but helping her all the same, because, you see, I felt I had betrayed her by my lack of manhood, and now she meant so much I couldn’t leave her. And so together we did these things.”

  He gave a soft moan and looked at Piers once more.

  “And then,” he went on, “I had to leave Corinth for a time, to go to Athens and then to Delphi, where I had work. Some of the way she came with me, but after a time she had to return to Corinth. For a while I missed her desperately, but then it got better, and I began to realise that what I really needed was to forget her, was to have my own proper friends once more. That was when I wrote to Piers to ask him to come in the summer.”

  He stretched out a hand to Piers, who took it lightly and rubbed it between his own to warm it.

  “But later,” said Richard, “when I had done my work and returned to Corinth, she came to me again. I had hoped she wouldn’t…that she would have forgotten me and found someone else. But within a week of my return to Corinth – I had more work there, you see, and had to go back – within a week, she came to me. And it was then that something different began between us. We no longer went out and did…the things we used to. She turned herself entirely on to me, and thenceforth all the suffering was mine. You know what I mean, Piers. I can see it in your eye. But you, Anthony? And Roddy?”

  A frustrated look appeared on Roddy’s face. He opened his mouth as if to ask a question, but thought better of it when he saw Piers shake his head.

  “You will find out, Roddy, as time goes on,” said Richard, who had apparently noticed this exchange. “You will find out. For the present you must just understand that she made me suffer and began to make me ill. I tried to get away. Although I wanted her to go on making me suffer, at that time I was still strong enough to want to escape from her also, and in the end I decided to leave for Crete several weeks before I had planned. I found the strength to leave without telling her; but she followed me to Athens and found me. Do you know, I was glad to be found. But I was also desperate, because I now knew that she was going to kill me. Sooner or later she would have taken everything she could, and then I would be dead. So from Athens I wrote to Anthony, begging him to bring you and follow me to Crete; because I was still strong enough and clear enough to know that I must have help and that you, who were my friends, would help me. And now you have come…

  “Now you have come, but there is still danger. For I know she is not far from here, and soon she will come back…”

  He broke off, and then returned to the story of his love.

  “So when we got to Crete, I became less and less clear, but all the time I knew that you would come. But somehow Chriseis knew too, and persuaded me to come with her to Hydra, thinking to elude you. The police were interested in us, she said, and we must go where we were not known. And then the monks in Hydra would make me strong. They would make me so strong that she would be able to love me, in her vile way, forever, and yet I would never again get weak. So I listened to her lies and believed them; but although she tried to prevent me I left a clue for you, so that you could follow. I managed to speak to the old man, Arnold, though even then her influence was so strong that I found myself speaking in riddles, and whether I was trying to cheat her or trying to cheat you I shall never know. Still, it was a simple riddle, so I suppose you understood…

  “By the time we had gone to Mount Ida and then on to Hydra, I was very ill. So ill that I cannot remember how I was brought there. But the monks made me well. In a few days they made me so strong that I could stand up to her; and then I insisted that we went back to Crete. Because I was terrified that you would not find Arnold, or would not understand my riddle, and in any case all this was still in June: so that at this time you had yet to come to Crete, and by going there straight away I might hope to find you. And in the end Chriseis gave way. She let me charter a caique owned by a Ger
man, and we came round to the coast near Sphakion. I wanted to go to Heraclion and wait there for you; but she didn’t want this, because she hated you and was also afraid, or so she said, that there might be trouble with the police. And since I was already beginning to get weaker again, I gave in to her and let her bring me to Sphakion. From there she took me to several villages, while I was growing weaker all the time; but always the villagers seemed to understand what she was doing, and they would drive us out after a day or two, until at last we ended up here on the mountain. We have been here for days now. And all the time I have been growing weaker and weaker… Why did they have no charity, those villagers? Why did they not try to save me, instead of turning me away with her? I suppose they were afraid of what she might do. For all the time they could see what she was doing to me. How I was growing weaker…

  “But now you have come and I shall get well. All I need is rest and food. The monks in Hydra have a special wine, and they did some other things, so that I became well very quickly. But even without their wine and their care, I shall get well in time, if I can only rest. And if that fiend will stay away from me,” he said, his voice quivering with anger and disgust, “so that the life within me can grow. Watch for her, Anthony, and you, Piers. Watch for her, Roddy. She is not far away, I know, and she will come again…”

  And suddenly, as had happened that morning, his eyes closed and he fell asleep.

  By now it was early evening and we must make some sort of plan.

  “The mayor must be told,” said Roddy.

  “He said he would wait.”

  “He has already waited a night and a day. We must tell him that we shall be here at least another night, and warn him how difficult it will be to carry Richard down… It may be possible to bind him to one of the mules – but then it could be days before he is strong enough to stand it… But in any case we must speak with the mayor. Courtesy requires it.”

  Piers and I nodded.