The Tomb of Zeus

by Barbara Cleverly

  She paused before an insignificant piece of plaster-covered rubble wall and pointed. “There, do you see it?”

  Bemused, Letty peered and squinted and finally said, “I see nothing significant, I think. Not really sure what I'm looking at.”

  Obviously exactly the answer Phoebe was hoping for. “And yet to me this dull little piece of walling brings the whole thing alive! Look. There. That's it. The patch of black…”

  “Oh, I see…Charring—from the shape, it looks as though the end of a wooden beam abutting the wall has gone up in flames.”

  “Right! And if you look beyond at the farther walls you'll see they have a coating of soot on them. You can tell which way the wind was blowing in the mid-1400s B.C. when the whole of the palace accidentally burned down—or, should I say, when someone put a torch to it? Yes, it was a strong southerly wind,” Phoebe said with emphasis. “A wind that blows in Crete in the last days of April and early May.”

  “The time of year Theseus is supposed to have killed the Minotaur and made off with the king's daughter, Ariadne,” Letty breathed, finding no difficulty in being the good pupil, “setting fire to the palace as they fled?”

  “Yes. Theseus! Legendary heir to the throne of Athens. Brave boy. Volunteered to come as one of the seven-yearly tributes of Athenian youths and maidens to be sacrificed to the royal monster that lurked at the end of the underground passages beneath the palace. A monster betrayed by his half sister. Ariadne gave Theseus a ball of thread and suggested that if he were to allow it to roll ahead of him he could follow it down into the centre of the labyrinth and—very important—it would guide him back up afterwards. I wonder how she felt, betraying her family and her homeland, handing the torch of destruction to an enemy? A foul deed when you think about it. She must have been very much in love, wouldn't you say?”

  Phoebe fell silent and let the words lie between them, clearly expecting a response.

  “Love! Huh!” Letty's tone was scornful. “Why is love always the excuse for madness and villainy and deception? Whatever happened to self-control and common sense?”

  The other woman appeared taken aback by her vehemence. “Well, we all know that ‘Cupid is a knavish lad, thus to make poor females mad.’ The fair sex can't help it, apparently. We're just the target of Love's arrows and—never forget—dear little Cupid never did learn to shoot straight. Or was he blind? I don't remember. Still, at least it can never be said to be one's fault.”

  Phoebe paused for a moment and then, suddenly, smiled her understanding. “I see. I think I see! There was I, imagining you'd come to Crete to dig up and reveal things, but now I begin to suspect you're here to bury something. Let me guess! You left some treacherous toad smarting on a northern shore? Some careless in-grate is even now wondering how he could ever have let you get away? How'm I doing?”

  “You're miles off target!” Letty lied stoutly, then thought it only honest to make up for it with a half lie. “There's no one at home I couldn't greet again with equanimity.”

  “Oh, indeed! I shall have to ponder that remark! I tend to distrust sentences with a double negative in them. And girls who blush when they're delivering them. I rather think I don't believe you. A girl doesn't get to your age, Laetitia, looking like you do, without leaving a trail of broken hearts. Give me a week and I shall know all! Even if I have to trade a few confidences in return!”

  “Well, naughty Ariadne got her comeuppance.” Letty was eager to divert Phoebe's attention back to the ancient lovelorn heroine. “It wasn't two minutes before Theseus abandoned her on the isle of Naxos. And then he turned the knife in the wound by making the sound political decision to marry her younger sister Phaedra, who was not tainted by treachery.”

  “Economically sound move, too,” agreed Phoebe. “Funny the way the old myth-makers shy away from giving the real reason for their raids! It was lust for gold and greed for trade routes that sent the ancient Greeks to Troy, not the righteous snatching back of the abducted Helen of Sparta. Jason's romantic quest for the golden fleece was a clear piece of piracy. Theseus's monster-killing exploits were a dramatic vindication for naked aggression. The forceful Mycenaean newcomers conquered, allied themselves, perhaps even absorbed, the more ancient and peaceable civilization.”

  “The thrusting young god triumphing over the tired old goddess?” murmured Letty. “Is that what the story's telling us?”

  “I think so. And it all started here!” Phoebe stamped on the hard-packed earth under her feet. “There are terrifying deep places under here, not all discovered yet, I do believe. When the bull roared, this palace shook. Quite literally! And I've heard him roar! It's the legend-writer's way of referring to an earthquake. This region is very prone to them. Arthur was here the year before last, working in his room, and experienced for himself the quake that came in June. The Villa Ariadne stood firm and was unscathed, but what struck—and enchanted—him was the sound that preceded and accompanied the shaking. He swears it was just like the roaring of a bull, right under the palace.”

  As she spoke she had been leading Letty eastwards into the centre of the site.

  “And this huge space”—she pointed to a flat rectangle the size of a parade ground—“is at the very heart of the complex. Do you remember what Theseus had come here to do, in the legend?”

  “To be sacrificed to the Minotaur, though some say he and the other thirteen victims were made to take part in the sport of bull-dancing,” said Letty, enchanted. “He had to learn to challenge the fierce creatures they kept here—half bull, half wild aurochs. The dancers were trained to seize the huge horns and use the bull's instinctive tossing motion to be propelled upwards and backwards in a somersault onto its back. If you were lucky, you'd spring off again and be caught on the way down and steadied onto your feet by one of your team—a girl or a boy, as both sexes performed. How many acrobats must have died, been gored to death or trampled! There's a fresco, I think, showing exactly such a performance? And I've seen lots of representations carved on seal stones and signet rings.”

  “But none of them show pain or death,” remarked Phoebe, softly. “Just lithe youths and maidens performing for a delighted audience with never a drop of blood! And the bulls were obviously revered. They were not put to death in the arena as they are in those disgusting Spanish displays. Nothing but sweetness and light at Knossos.”

  “I do see that it's much more appealing to us on an emotional and imaginative level than the Egyptian civilisation. No reference anywhere to war, violence, conquering…no stomach-churning lists of ten thousand foreskins and right hands lopped off as a symbol of victory…no fifty-foot-high statues of the supreme ruler to bow down to…”

  “No. The only tangible reminder of the Ruler is a very human-sized throne carved in alabaster. You can try it for size before we leave! And there's another one, a little wider—no doubt to accommodate the more ample buttocks of the Queen! And here's where the royal party would have gathered,” Phoebe announced, “up there on a balcony to watch the displays.”

  Letty looked around her at the dilapidation surrounding the space they had entered. She tried to conjure up the wild excitement, the screams and the splendour. “And this is where it all happened?”

  “It could be. Something important to the Minoans went on here. Bull-leaping? Acrobatics? Dancing? Religious ceremonies? Imagine ranks of verandas and galleries built onto the houses surrounding the court.” Phoebe twirled, conjuring up the levels with her hands, spinning an animated townscape from her imagination. Letty smiled to see the outburst of good humour.

  “All crowded with people. It must have looked like a cross between the audience at an East End music hall and the Delhi Durbar. And the extraordinary thing, Laetitia, is that we know what the audience looked like! Can you believe it! A Minoan artist painted onto still damp wall plaster a fresco showing what he saw with his own eyes. Over there in the northwest corner beyond the staircase—do you see the reconstructed floor, there over the throne room— they
've hung the portraits of the citizens. They're still here, you know! Come and meet them!”

  They climbed a grand flight of stairs, admiring its tapering columns of deep red crowned with bulbous capitals of blue-black banded with gold, then turned right into a long corridor. After a few yards Phoebe led the way into a room finished in rough modern plaster. The walls were hung with a series of brilliantly coloured reproductions of Minoan artistry. Straight opposite the door, Letty recognised on entering, was an image she had long been familiar with from textbooks: “The Ladies in Blue.” No goddesses these, inscrutable and terrifying—the three girls she smiled at were her own age, girls she felt she could have sat alongside and chattered with. Straight from the hands of their maid, shining black hair curling fashionably about their faces, bare-bosomed, bangled, the trio sat with a suggestion of fluid movement, friends, glad to be in each other's company, out for an afternoon of pleasure with much to gossip about. Letty wondered whimsically at whom their admiring and coquettish glances had been directed. At the latest star of the arena? The daring young stripling from Athens?…Rumour has it, my dear, that he is a king's son. Barbarian, of course, but a personage in his own land, they say…. Letty only hoped that Theseus, leaping for his life in the arena, had become immune to the sight of so much attractive flesh on display. It would have been fatal to be distracted by it when the bull came thundering in.

  “I always think they must be sharing some salty piece of scandal about this fine young fellow over here,” remarked Phoebe, and Letty went to examine a painting on the south wall.

  “It's called ‘Captain of the Black Regiment,’” said Phoebe.

  “Oh, yes! A fellow like that—he'd attract salacious gossip!” agreed Letty. “What a cockerel!” She laughed to see the lean, wasp-waisted figure in its tight belt, gold anklets and diminutive yellow loincloth stepping out, two spears in hand, at the head of his squad of Sumali soldiers. An officer, judging by the horned skin cap he wore.

  “The originals are preserved in the museum—but the colours and techniques are accurately reproduced,” Phoebe told her. “And here are the two miniatures I wanted you to see—scenes of crowds gathered to watch the spectacle, whatever it was, that was taking place just below us in the main court.”

  Laetitia looked in silence for a very long time, absorbing what she saw. Finally, she murmured: “Between this artist and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec there must be a gap of three and a half…four thousand years? And yet they would have understood each other perfectly. They could have compared techniques! It's a piece of Impressionism, don't you think? In the front row of the gallery we have the poster girls, the larger figures of ladies in blue or yellow dresses with puffed sleeves, and they're doing what Minoan ladies apparently love to do—sitting about talking and gesticulating! And in the background a happy crowd—men and women mingling together. Not segregated as at a Greek or Roman theatre. It's amazing!”

  Gratified by the obvious pleasure her guided tour was giving, Phoebe led her out and back into the courtyard, promising further delights. “The Prince of the Lilies…the Cup-Bearer…the blue dolphins in the Queen's rooms…the blue bird in the garden…the first flushing lavatory in Europe…” She seized Letty's hand in her enthusiasm. “And you're off to start your own dig! I can't wait to hear how you get on! Perhaps you'll find something to rival this? Perhaps you'll have a simply huge success and put Theo's nose out of joint! Look, why don't we take out a little insurance? Come on! It can't do any harm!”

  She led Letty over to the eastern façade and they slipped between two columns, out of the sunlight and into a dark chamber. No light wells here. Letty could just make out the flash of Phoebe's ring as she pointed to a looming shape in the centre.

  “The household shrine,” she whispered. “That pillar, rooted in the earth, represents the deity. It's a sort of altar top plugged into the underworld. This is where the court of Minos made their sacrifices and their offerings to the goddess. I always come to pay my respects.”

  Letty's eyes were adjusting to the gloom and she saw Phoebe turn to the truncated pillar, bow her head, and touch the stone side with her right hand. She began to murmur quietly, her words not audible to Letty. Then she took something from her pocket, a white disc apparently, and placed it carefully on the flat top.

  Letty was still struggling with her curiosity as they emerged into the courtyard again.

  “A Bath Oliver!” said Phoebe, answering her unspoken question. “I brought the goddess one of your biscuits. A new experience for her! The Palace Deity used to enjoy offerings of food and wine, so they tell us. A sort of Communion in reverse, if you think about it.”

  She turned in the direction of the Royal apartments. “Now, you're to have an audience with His Highness, the Prince of the Lilies! Come on!” But she came to an abrupt halt, staring anxiously in the direction of a confusing jumble of half-repaired walls to their right. She frowned and hissed, “Tourists! Drat! Did you see them, Letty?”

  “Er…no. I can't see anyone.”

  “I'm sure I caught sight of someone. There's one person, at least, down there. A man, I'd say. I was thinking just for once we were going to have the place to ourselves. It was some chap in a panama hat. English probably. Double drat! I don't much want to have to stop and pass the time of day with a fellow-countryman.” Her voice sank to a stage whisper. “We'll creep over to the throne room and skulk about until they've gone by. Follow me.”

  For a light-headed moment, Letty felt herself back on a school outing, slinking off with an adventurous friend, making for a discreet corner. She could almost feel the clandestine packet of Craven A and matches tucked away in the pocket of her knickers.

  The cheerful halloo stopped them in their tracks.

  “Coo-ee! Phoebe! It's me!”

  Oh! Oh, I say! It's not a man at all—it's…yes, it is…it's Olivia!” Letty followed her gaze and saw a woman emerge from behind one of the walls. She was tall and well-built, wearing trousers and a man's panama hat.

  “Coo-ee!” Phoebe called back excitedly. “Hello there, Ollie!”

  The two women hurried across the courtyard to greet each other with an affectionate hug and kiss. Phoebe turned, blushing with pleasure, to introduce Letty. “Olivia, this is the student I told you about: Laetitia Talbot from Cambridge. I'm just giving her my edited highlights tour. Laetitia, this is my good friend and bridge partner Olivia Stoddart. I think I mentioned that I travelled as far as Paris with her last December? That Stoddart. Or should I say— those Stoddarts? What have you done with Harold, Ollie? Left him basting the Sunday joint?”

  “Oh, he's about the place somewhere,” replied Olivia cheerfully, taking off her hat and fanning her face. Olivia Stoddart was the kind of woman who was always cheery, Letty thought. Her straw-coloured hair had been tentatively bobbed by an inexpert hand and her skin, darkened by weather and early spring sunshine, flattered the watery green of her eyes under their sandy lashes. She exuded health and good humour. Flat-chested and angular, she could not have presented a more different picture of womanhood from the dark-eyed voluptuous beauties they had so recently been admiring. “We bicycled up. Can't stand donkeys,” she explained to Letty. “Awful little squirts—I always feel I should be carrying them. Boots trailing in the dust…one feels so silly…Harry? He's probably found some trench to fossick about in. Or dug up some herb he's never seen before. Harold!” she shouted in a voice that would have carried the length of a hockey field. “Present yourself!”

  A figure kneeling twenty yards away broke cover and stood up reluctantly. He began to shamble slowly towards them. This was turning into just the kind of expedition Letty found annoying: enforced jovial time-wasting with two strangers she had no particular desire to meet. Not when her attention was claimed with such magnetic force by her miraculous surroundings. Not when the Prince of the Lilies was next on her calling list.

  Harold Stoddart when he reached them was introduced as Dr. Stoddart…“If you fall over and break your ankl
e within a hundred miles of Herakleion, it's Harry who'll minister to you…” Phoebe prattled. “We're all so lucky to have him on the island…I should have called him in last night to advise on your seasickness, Laetitia—he's wonderful with seasickness…”

  Letty looked at the doctor and decided she was being unkind. Though no rival for a golden, almond-eyed Minoan in flamboyant crown of lilies and peacock feathers, Dr. Stoddart at close quarters was a very presentable man. He took off his straw hat and smiled. Ah! Better than presentable, Letty thought. In fact, jolly handsome in a very English way. In early middle age, he had a pleasant face, with the friendly but guarded expression doctors seemed to acquire. His hazel eyes were warm, his thick chocolate brown hair was turning grey, and he wore a well-trimmed moustache. He transferred a clump of herbs to the hat he held in his left hand, dusted off his right on his trouser leg, and seized Letty's hand in a warm and gritty clasp.

  “Fennel,” he explained. “Doesn't grow everywhere…lucky to find it. I usually come across it up here. It's my theory—though I'm no botanist—that its great long roots enjoy a disturbed soil. They go deep and like it best when they're encountering no resistance. It makes an excellent tisane, did you know?”

  Small talk apparently was not his speciality. Letty's opinion of the doctor continued to rise. “No, I didn't!” she answered. “Now tell me—would that be the root or the green feathery bit you use?” She peered into his hat. “The seeds? Ah, really? Last evening, before retiring, I had dittany—prescribed by Phoebe. I see I shall have to try a different one every night,” said Letty and began to respond to his enquiries about her reactions to the brew Eleni had served up.