The Sea King’s Daughter

by Barbara Michaels

  “I’m meeting Jim,” I said. “He should be here any second.”

  “Good.” He sounded genuinely relieved, and I felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Apparently he didn’t suspect Jim of shooting at him.

  “You must not be alone,” he went on. “I will wait.”

  “Really, you needn’t bother,” I said politely.

  “I wait.”

  We waited. Keller stood perfectly still, as if he realized that any advance on his part would start me running. I shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. I wasn’t really afraid, but I wished he would take off the dark glasses that masked his expression. His eyes were his most attractive feature; with their warm brown hidden, he looked like a stony-faced stage Nazi. Finally, after what seemed like hours, I heard someone coming, his feet crunching the pebbles of the path. It was Jim.

  For a moment I felt as if I were not seeing Jim but another man who strongly resembled him. Presumably that man had also been tall and slender, with unruly brown hair and skin toughened by sun and rough weather. Maybe his eyebrows had had that same upward angle, and his mouth the same warm curve when he smiled. He must have been quite a man to inspire such a fury of repentance in his murderer. Even Frederick ’s voice had softened, momentarily, when he spoke the name. Vince. No one else had referred to him by his first name, but Frederick remembered him that way.

  The impression lasted only for a second; but it was so strong I wondered whether I was receiving Keller’s thought waves. The sight of Jim really bothered him, even now, when he was prepared and waiting. Jim wasn’t too happy to see Keller either.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  “Herr Keller is acting as my bodyguard,” I said lightly.

  “That’s nice of him,” Jim said. “But it would be more to the point if Herr Keller told us what he’s guarding you from. And,” he added, turning on Keller like a duelist, “don’t give me any more of that stuff about my uncle. He’s dead and gone. Your guilt feelings don’t concern me, Keller. I need information. And not about what happened thirty years ago, that’s dead and gone too.”

  Keller laughed harshly. “The past is never dead. You and this girl think you are free of it? You are wrong. The past shapes the present, and our lives are circumscribed by the acts of others long dead. We are all of us trapped in the labyrinth of time.”

  The speech might have sounded contrived and theatrical if it had not been for the fact that the man was in deadly earnest. And what had prompted him to select the metaphor of the labyrinth? I shivered. Jim put his arm around me.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not trapped, and neither is Sandy. At the moment we’re inconvenienced, not by your past actions but by your present behavior. Damn it, if you have something to say, why don’t you say it? I’m tired of vague hints and wild-eyed warnings.”

  “I cannot,” Keller whispered.

  He covered his face with his hands. To me he seemed a very pathetic figure, but Jim was unmoved.

  “You said last night there was something you ought to tell me,” he insisted. “I’m not stupid, Keller. It’s no accident that your old adversaries came to Thera this summer. Why did they come? What secret do you all share?”

  Keller lowered his hands, but he did not speak. After a moment Jim went on.

  “I’ll start the ball rolling, then. When Sandy was hurt the other day, it was no accident. The amphora she found had been planted, with a booby trap attached. I knew when she described it to me that it couldn’t have been underwater for three thousand years. Not only was it free of marine incrustations but it was entire, unbroken. Wave action will shatter a pot that’s only twenty-five or thirty feet deep. The amphora had to be a good one, so that Sandy would be moved to dig it out, but it isn’t impossible to find vessels of that caliber. The museum at Phira has some, and I would guarantee to rob that place any night of the year, it’s so poorly guarded. Or if a man lived here for years, excavating in an amateur fashion, he might discover unbroken amphorae. Why do you want Sandy to stop diving, Keller? What’s out there in the bay?”

  “Ships,” said Keller. “The fleet of the sea king.”

  His surrender was so complete, so unexpected, that Jim was taken aback.

  “What?” he gasped.

  “Yes.” Keller let out a long, shuddering sigh. “It is yours by right. It was his. I am only the guardian.”

  Jim’s arm tightened around my shoulders.

  “He’s right,” I said. “ Frederick knows about it too. That’s why he brought me here.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jim said dazedly. “I can’t take it in, it’s too much. A fleet? One Bronze Age ship was found in Turkey. A trading vessel, fantastically well preserved, but not carrying a rich cargo. Are you trying to tell me that an entire Minoan fleet sank in that bay, and that it survived? No. I don’t believe it.”

  “He saw it,” said Keller. As always, he avoided the name, but neither of us wondered who the pronoun “he” referred to. “Two years before the war, when he was on Thera for a few days. To hear him describe it, was an experience one could never forget. The sea bottom for many acres strewn with rotting ships and cargo-anchors, masts, amphorae, even the ropes of the rigging.”

  The words came pouring out of him. The sheer relief of being able to speak, after years of silence… Or was it more than that? Words aregiven to us to conceal our thoughts; people sometimes talk about one subject in order to avoid another that is more dangerous. The suspicion flashed through my mind and then was gone, in the fascination of Keller’s story.

  “It was a summer of bad weather. Storms and winds and earthquakes. He had come, after a season’s work in Crete, to pursue a personal theory. He had read the reports of the early excavators- you know, of course, that Fouque discovered Minoan houses here in the 1870’s. Nothing was done to follow up those discoveries, and since Fouque’s time the excavations on Crete had opened up an entire new civilization. So he came, dreaming, as young men do, of making great discoveries.

  “Do you believe in accident? If so, you will say that by pure accident he arrived between two storms, one of which swept the bottom of this bay clear of the sand that had covered the fleet for thousands of years. He had hired one of the fishermen to take him on a trip around the island. The man was reluctant to go because he feared more bad weather, but at last he was persuaded.

  “They anchored briefly in this bay, so that he might search the base of the cliffs for ruins. Diving, he struck his hand on an anchor that protruded out of the ocean floor. Accident, you say? Cling to that thought. It is not pleasant to think we are the toys of vast forces indifferent to man…

  “You were thunderstruck to hear of his discovery. Imagine his sensations, seeing it spread out before his very eyes. But he was trained, he knew these islands and their people. He knew that if the ship’s captain learned what he had found, there would be looting, hasty and destructive. He dared not remove any object large enough to be noticed by the crew. He took only one thing-”

  “The dagger,” I interrupted. “Like the inlaid daggers from Mycenae, Jim. Frederick has it now. How did he get it?”

  Keller’s mouth tightened. “If he told any other of his find, I was not informed. He told me, because he could not bear that it should be lost, and because he knew I felt as he did about archaeology.”

  Jim had been frozen throughout the long speech. Now he said, in a croaking voice, “But why didn’t he come back? Why didn’t he tell someone-other archaeologists, the Greek government-”

  “He did come back,” Keller said. “Three days later, after the second storm. He came on foot, overland, and swam, recklessly, alone. He found nothing. Another convulsion-accident, my young friends?-had reburied the ships. He had not the opportunity to do more. You must remember that this was before the war, before the development of the self-contained breathing apparatus for diving. His find was deep, deeper than you”-he nodded at me-“have yet gone. Fifty feet, perhaps more. Oh, certainly, divers c
ould work at greater depths, even without the clumsy suits that were the only equipment available then. The sponge divers of the Aegean have been doing it for centuries. But this was an entirely new field. None of the techniques of underwater archaeology had been dreamed of, much less worked out. He was dazzled by the immensity of the problem; and he had also a touch of the hoarding instinct all scholars have. The find was his, his alone, and no one else should see it until he was in a position to handle it as it deserved. Also, I think, he was something of a mystic. It was as if someone had opened the sea to him with one sweep of a giant hand and said, ‘Here. It is for you. I have kept it for you for three thousand years.’ What had waited so long could wait a little longer. The warclouds were gathering, and the Greek government was not concerned with protecting antiquities. At any moment the waters might be closed to him and his people; to speak out would disclose the secret to those who would exploit it for themselves or neglect it in the more urgent demands of survival. You shake your head; you cannot understand. But I can. Even now, I think I would have acted as he did under those circumstances.”

  “Oh, I can understand,” Jim muttered. “Certainly I can understand his desire to keep it for himself. But it’s like a-like a fantastic dream. Even if he wasn’t hallucinating, the ships can’t be there now.”

  “I think they are gone,” Keller said calmly. “I, too, have searched. When I was younger and stronger, I swam often in the bay. Never did I find a scrap. For ten years now I have done nothing. When Frederick came here, I suspected that he also knew. How he found out I do not know. I never spoke to anyone, not even to Kore.”

  “How did Kore and Frederick know each other?” I asked, since he seemed to be in an informative mood.

  But Keller had finished for the day. “Kore’s life is her own to discuss,” he said curtly. “She has been loving and faithful to me, and that is all that concerns me. You asked me what I knew; I have spoken.”

  He swung on his heel in a neat military about-face and walked away.

  Jim sat down on the rock, pulling me down with him. He let out a long whistle.

  “That hit the jackpot, didn’t it? Sandy, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t know it was your uncle’s discovery. I don’t remember exactly what Frederick told me, but he certainly implied that he found the ships himself.”

  Jim was silent, but his silence was suggestive. I went on, answering the question he hadn’t asked.

  “Maybe your uncle told him.”

  “Maybe,” Jim said dubiously. “We’ll never know, not if we expect Frederick to tell us. I passed the house on the way up here. He was in the courtyard washing pots, as if that were the most important thing on his mind.”

  “I’m not sure he believes in the ships himself,” I said. “His behavior has been so erratic, almost as if he were afraid to pursue the idea for fear it will turn out to be a mirage. Jim, now that you know, what are we going to do about it?”

  “Damned if I know. It’s too big to take in all at once, and too amorphous. And there are more pressing problems.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you. I can understand now why you’re reluctant to leave Thera. I was pushing you too hard. How about a compromise?”

  “Such as?”

  “You could move to a hotel in Phira for a few days while we consider the situation. I know you’re worried about money, but that’s a minor consideration. With what we know now, we can blackmail Frederick if we have to. We need time and freedom from pressure to sort out all the possibilities.”

  “What about the hotel in the village? Does Angelos still refuse to rent me a room?”

  “I wouldn’t take it if he offered. Things have gone from bad to worse down there. We haven’t gotten any work done for days. The men show up, but they don’t do anything; they stand around in groups muttering.”

  “What is Sir Christopher doing about it?”

  “Sir Christopher,” said Jim, “is one of the people I want to talk to. I think we need a high-level conference, with everybody being candid for a change.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s a good idea, Jim. I’ll go today if I can find transportation.”

  The look of relief on Jim’s face made me realize how worried he had been.

  “I’ll get you there,” he promised. “I’m glad, Sandy. I was afraid you were going to insist on staying with Kore and her crazy boyfriend.”

  “I don’t ever want to see that place again.”

  “Why? Has something happened?”

  “Yes.” I brushed at the knees of my jeans. They were covered with a thin layer of dust. “At first I thought I was just having peculiar dreams. I’ve had them before-about Theseus and Ariadne and the dancing floor-”

  His expression stopped me at that point. “Where did you hear about the dancing floor?” he asked sharply.

  “A book I was reading last night.”

  “Oh.” His face cleared. “I thought maybe you had been up the mountain. You shouldn’t go by yourself; the terrain is pretty rough.”

  “Why should I go up there?”

  “There’s a level spot higher up, with the remnants of stonework,” Jim explained. “The local people call it the dancing place. There may actually be a folk memory of some ancient ritual. The dances weren’t for entertainment, they had a religious function-”

  He broke off with an exclamation, as the rock on which we were sitting shifted sideways. We were facing north, toward the flank of the mountain and the center of the island. We were almost ten miles away from the action, but that wasn’t far enough.

  A thick column of slate gray went straight up toward the sun. It looked like one of the pillars that held up the sky in the old legends, and when it broke and spread outward, it was as if the vault of heaven were collapsing in a rain of stone and crumbling mortar. Ash began to fall, and then my ears were overwhelmed by a thundering, bellowing roar-the herds of the Earthshaker in stampede. Solid ground became unstable as water. Deafened, and blinded by terror and the spreading dust, I felt the rock on which I sat heave like a living thing, flinging me flat on the ground. I tried to press myself into the dirt, clawing at it with my nails. Even after the sound stopped, I could hear the echoes inside my head.

  Hands caught me around the waist and tried to pull me up. I clutched at dusty weeds with both hands, resisting. Another roar, and another shifting of the earth… I couldn’t breathe. Dust filledmy mouth and nose. I was being buried alive, but the earth wouldn’t let me stay buried, it was shaking and heaving, trying to eject me from its womb.

  I must have passed out from sheer terror. When I came back to consciousness, Jim was holding me in his arms and yelling in my ear.

  “Come on, Sandy, snap out of it. We’ve got to get down to the village; see if they need help.”

  He yanked me to my feet. I looked up. The smoke was a dark, menacing cloud, covering half the sky, hiding the sun. Ash was falling over everything. I was coated with it.

  “What about them, up there?” I gasped, nodding in the direction of the villa.

  “The villa is solidly built and fairly new. Some of those shacks in the village have been on the verge of collapse for years. There may be a tsunami, a tidal wave. Hurry, Sandy.”

  His face was a grotesque mask of dust and streaked blood and rising bruises. My own must have been as bad. My nose and forehead stung where I had rubbed them against the ground.

  “Okay,” I said. “Sorry I lost my nerve.”

  “Don’t blame you. I’m supposed to be used to quakes but that was the worst I’ve ever experienced. Volcanoes aren’t in my line either. There may be poisonous gases as well as ash in that cloud. We’re in for a rough time.”

  We staggered down the path. Tumbled rock had obliterated sections of the way, and at one point we had to jump a foot-wide fissure that had not been there before. We had reached the lower slopes before I realized that something was missing. I should have seen the roof of our house from this point. It was
no longer there.

  “The house,” I shouted. “ Frederick -”

  Jim didn’t stop running, he just changed direction. The closer we got, the more appalling the damage appeared. The house was gone; the tumbled heap of plaster and rubble that had taken its place bore no resemblance to a man-made structure.

  We found Frederick in the wreckage of what had been the outer wall of the courtyard. He had gotten a few feet along the path when the wall gave way and caught him. The most horrible thing, to me, was the way the ash had already covered his motionless body with a thin gray film.

  He had been thrown down with considerable force. One side of his face was scraped raw. Aside from that, the only damage seemed to be a badly bruised and possibly broken arm. He was out cold, but he groaned when I ran my hands up and down to check for broken ribs, and soon he opened his eyes.

  “Yell if it hurts,” I said, and jabbed my thumb into his side.

  “My books,” said Frederick. “Are my books buried?”

  “They are, and you’re lucky you aren’t,” I said. “How are your legs? Can you walk? There’s no point hanging around here; we haven’t even any water left, much less medical supplies.”

  Frederick sat up. He surveyed the situation, his eyes moving from the heap of rubble to the clouded sky, and then back to me, passing over Jim as if he had been invisible.

  “I think my arm is broken,” he said. “You had better start digging out-”

  “Your books? Forget it. We’ll get you down to the village-assuming there is any village left. Although why I bother, God knows.”

  “I have no intention of going to the village,” Frederick said.

  “I do.” Jim stood up. “Better take him to the villa, Sandy. If he’ll go.”

  “He’ll go. How about you?”

  “I must see if they need any help down there.” Jim gnawed at his lip. “Unless you need me-”

  “We don’t need you,” Frederick said, with a sneer that would have done credit to Erich von Stroheim on the Late Show. “Run along and play humanitarian. Perhaps you can extract Chris from under a pile of rock and win his undying gratitude.”