Jim gave me an eloquent look and a shrug. I shrugged back.
“As you can see, he’s alive and kicking. Don’t worry about us. I’ll come down later, when I see what’s happened at the villa.”
“Okay.” Jim turned away. I watched him go with an unreasonable sense of abandonment, and then turned back to my father.
“Let’s go. Unless you have any objections to seeing Keller again.”
“Why should I?” Frederick stood up, pushing my hands away as I tried to steady him. I started to say something nasty, but he looked so awful, all dusty and bloody, with his arm hanging limp, that I bit my lip and remained silent.
We started walking. After a few steps I put my arm around him and he let it remain, which was an admission of something, from Frederick. It took us forever to retrace the route that I had covered in a quarter of an hour earlier that day. The path was almost obliterated, and twice we had to detour around cracks that Frederick was too feeble to jump. The air had darkened, not to the quiet blue of evening, but to a sickly grayish shade that made all objects look corroded and rotten. The ash continued to fall. I was coughing, and Frederick ’s breath came in strained gasps. He leaned more and more heavily on me.
When the walls of the villa came into sight I could have wept with relief. They seemed to be intact. As we neared the front gate I saw some evidence of damage. Stones littered the path and the gate itself hung askew. An acrid smell of burning reached my nostrils, and with alarm I remembered the charred debris of Knossos. Fire, spreading from lamps and cooking fires, had caused as much damage as the earthquake itself.
In the courtyard many of the earthenware pots, with their green contents, had tumbled and shattered. The smell of smoke grew stronger.
As we approached the front door, Keller came out. He didn’t speak, but came quickly to relieve me of Frederick ’s weight. Frederick was drooping; he didn’t seem to realize that he had changed hands. I rubbed my aching shoulders and followed Keller into the house. It felt cool and clean after the outdoors, and I noticed that the windows were tightly shuttered.
“We keep out the ash, if possible,” Keller said. “You are unhurt? What has happened in the village?”
His hands were moving over Frederick as he spoke. When he touched the arm, Frederick ’s eyes opened and he let out a profane remark.
“It is not broken, I think,” Keller said calmly, before I could answer his first question. “The servants have gone. You will have to fetch bandages and water. Luckily our reserve tank was not damaged.”
“Where is Kore?” I asked.
Keller’s eyelids flickered. “She is safe. She rests now. We had a fire in the kitchen. It is extinguished, there is no need to fear. You will find supplies…”
He gave me directions. It took me a while to find the things he wanted. Then I held a flashlight while Keller bandaged Frederick ’s arm. The room was quite dark, but he didn’t turn on the lights. Either the wires were down, or he was afraid of risking another fire from shorted electrical circuits.
Except for swearing, Frederick didn’t say anything. I wondered about leaving these two old enemies alone together; and then decided cynically that I didn’t really care what they did to each other.
“I’m going down to the village,” I said.
“You would be better to stay,” Keller said. “This house is as safe as any structure could be; I saw to that when it was built.”
“You think there will be more quakes?”
“I cannot say. But I am not so concerned about that as about the volcano. The ash is falling thickly.”
His voice was quite matter-of-fact; his hands, arranging a sling around Frederick ’s neck, were steady. Apparently his nerves got out of hand only when his imagination tormented him. In an ordinary physical crisis he was first-rate, and I found his presence a lot more consoling than I did Frederick ’s.
“I’ll risk it,” I said. “I may not be able to help, but-”
“Why don’t you be honest?” Frederick asked. “It’s that boy you’re worried about. The whole village could go up in smoke so long as he survives.”
“What do you care?” I said. “You didn’t even ask me if I was hurt.”
“I could see you were not,” Frederick said. “Why should I ask?”
I couldn’t think of any answer that was rude enough, so I simply walked out. But when I opened the front door, it was all I could do not to slam it shut and retreat. Day had turned to night, or rather to a dismal twilight. The air stung my eyes and smelled funny. I started to cough.
Then I thought of Jim and the children and old people in the village, and I stepped out into the courtyard. I hadn’t gone far, however, before a shape loomed up out of the shadows. I knew it was Jim; I would have known him in the dark of a lightless cave. I greeted him with an exclamation of relief and joy. He didn’t reply, just caught my hand and turned me around.
“What-” I began.
“They’ve gone crazy down there. Come back to the villa.”
It was a strange feeling to be walking in and out of the house as if it were a public building. Keller glanced indifferently at us as we ran in, and went on pouring brandy into a glass that he handed to Frederick.
“Ah,” said the latter unpleasantly. “The humanitarian has given up.”
“There’s nothing I can do down there,” Jim said. He was still holding my hand, so tightly that it hurt. “I came to warn you. Better not leave the house.”
“Why?” Keller asked. “Was there much destruction?”
“Not as bad as it might have been. Some of the older houses collapsed and the hotel is pretty well demolished. It’s not that. It’s…” Jim ran his fingers through his hair; a gray cloud of dust surrounded his head, halolike, for a moment before settling. “They wouldn’t let me help. They were saying some rather ugly things. Some of the kids threw rocks.”
“Typical,” Frederick said. “When a catastrophe occurs, the primitive mind seeks a scapegoat.”
“But they’re friends of mine,” Jim said. “I don’t understand this.”
“Sit down,” Keller said, motioning toward a chair. “Leave them alone. They will quiet. This has happened before.”
Jim shook his head. “I’m going back. I just came here to warn you to stick to the house. You especially, Sandy.”
“What makes you think you’re any more impervious to rocks than I am?” I demanded. “If you’re going, so am I.”
“I’m not going to the village. I-I can’t find Chris.”
“Oh, Jim! The hotel-”
“No, he wasn’t there. They told me that much before they… I’m going to the dig. I can circlearound, above the village.”
I didn’t try to argue with him. I knew how he felt about his boss, and indeed the idea that the man might be lying injured in the increasingly foul air disturbed me too. I’d even have gone to look for Frederick under those circumstances.
I followed Jim out into the hall. He turned at the door and took me by the shoulders.
“No, Sandy, you can’t come.” His voice was very low, almost a whisper. “I want you to keep an eye on things here. There may be trouble. That crowd in the village could turn into a mob. Your father is right. They want a scapegoat.”
“No,” I said. “It couldn’t happen.”
“It could. I’ll bring Chris here, if I can find him. In any case I won’t be gone longer than I can help. Lock the place up tight. And you might ask Keller if he’s got any firearms.”
With that shocking suggestion he was gone.
I turned slowly back into the house. Earlier that day I had wondered whether anything more could happen to complicate my life. In one sense the cataclysm had simplified the situation. An order of priority had been established. Survive. That was the first problem. Survive an erupting volcano, complete with earthquakes, and a potential mob. After that we could worry about lesser difficulties.
The sight of the two men exasperated me almost beyond endurance. They were
sitting and drinking their brandy like two old gents in a club.
“Aren’t you going to do something?” I demanded of the shadowy figures.
“What is there to do?” Keller asked remotely. “We can only wait. What will come, will come.”
“How about Kore?”
“Leave her alone. She is sleeping. I gave her a sedative, she was disturbed.”
“Jim said I should ask you if you had a gun in the house,” I said, hoping to shake him out of his fatalistic mood.
“As you saw,” Keller said indifferently. “They are in that cabinet.”
I found the arsenal, with the help of the flashlight. The.22 Kore had used was there. It had several shells in the chamber. There was another rifle, a heavier one, and a couple of handguns, all loaded and ready to go.
Nobody seemed to care what I did, so I went exploring. The house was deserted; no doubt the servants had gone to the village to see if their families were all right. There was a fine drift of ash over every flat surface. Moved by some obscure impulse, I wrote my name: Sandy, on the top of the dining-room table, and then stepped over a pile of broken crystal on my way to the stairs. The house itself had stood, but there were a lot of broken dishes lying around. Pictures had fallen from the walls, too. I started to pick one up and then dropped it again. This was no time to clean house.
The upstairs looked like a hotel in the off season-dark, silent, dusty. I looked into the room I had occupied and saw the book I had been reading lying open on the bedside table. It gave me an eerie feeling to think how much had happened since I left the room only a few hours ago.
I had no idea which room Kore occupied, so I tried one door after another, meeting only darkness and emptiness, until I found a door that wouldn’t open. I banged on it.
“It is locked,” said Kore’s voice, from inside.
“Please unlock it,” I said, wondering. “It’s only me.”
“I know it is you,” Kore said. “I cannot unlock. Jürgen has the key.”
“He locked you in?” It was a stupid question; she didn’t bother answering it. Then, belatedly, I realized that from the first she had spoken in English.
“How did you know it was me?” I asked.
From behind the locked door came an uncanny chuckle.
“I knew.”
I had been about to offer to let her out. The lock wasn’t very complicated; I could have picked it easily. The queer laugh made me reconsider. Keller might have a darned good reason for locking her up.
“Are you all right?” I asked. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Not now.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “If…anything…happens, I’ll make sure you get out. You’re as safe in there as anywhere.”
“I am safe,” Kore repeated. Only it didn’t sound like a simple repetition of my reassurance; it sounded like a statement of fact.
I retreated. Even the two silent men in the parlor would be better company than that voice.
They were still sitting there when I returned. They reminded me, not of clubmen now, but of those plaster casts archaeologists have made of the victims of the Vesuvius eruption. Hardening ash made a perfect mold of the bodies before they fell into dust; centuries later, scholars poured plaster into the cavities and recreated the dead of Pompeii, men and women, children and dogs, lying as they had died in the last futile struggle for breath.
It was not the most comfortable thing to recollect just then. I poured myself a glass of brandy and drank. Then I went to the window and peered out through a crack in the draperies. I thought the air was a little clearer. It was hard to tell because the sun was setting, up there beyond the clouded skies.
I turned back to my silent companions and lifted my glass.
“Morituri te salutant,” I said. “That’s what the gladiators used to say to the emperor, remember? ‘We who are about to die salute you.’ I bet you wonder how I know that. Me, the semiliterate. Well, one of the girls on the hockey team thought that was a cute motto. She used to say it to the coach before-”
“Put that brandy down,” Frederick interrupted. “You have no business drinking at your age.”
“Ah,” I said. “It can talk. Go on, Frederick, lecture me some more. Even your croaking is preferable to silence.”
Frederick didn’t respond, so I tried again.
“You ought to show a little concern, you know. If I don’t live through this adventure, it will be your fault. You got me here.”
“You came of your own free will.” Frederick ’s voice sounded livelier.
“You conned me,” I said. “Don’t you feel a little, teeny bit guilty? Come on, Frederick. Feel guilty.”
“Guilty.” The word made me jump. I had almost forgotten Keller, silent in the shadows. “We are all guilty. Guilty of mankind.”
The reverberant pounding that followed the speech sounded like a symphonic accompaniment. Doom, knocking at the door. Then I got hold of myself.
“It’s Jim,” I said, with a long breath of relief. “I forgot, I locked the door when he left.”
I ran to open it. Jim didn’t say hello; he pushed me out of the way and bolted the door again before leading the way into the living room.
“You didn’t find Sir Christopher?” I asked.
“No. I looked everywhere. Damn it, can’t we have some light in here?”
I gave him the flashlight. It wasn’t much help.
“What is the situation?” Frederick asked, blinking as the beam focused on his face.
“The volcano is quiescent, for the moment. The air is clearing a little.”
“Good,” I said. “Then the village should be calming down.”
“No.” Jim flicked the light across his body, and I gasped. His shirt was torn and streaked with blood. “When I found no sign of Chris at the dig, I had to go back to the village,” he went on. “I had a few words with the priest. He wasn’t too coherent, but the gist of the speech was ‘Get out and stay out of sight.’”
“The priest,” I exclaimed. “But he, of all people-”
“He was trying to help,” Jim said. “If I had followed his advice, I wouldn’t have gotten these bruises. It was my old landlord, Angelos, who started the fight. He seems to blame us for the damage to his damn hotel. Half a dozen of them jumped me then. Not all the men are crazy; your foreman Nicholas was one of the guys who intervened so I could get away. The women… Thewomen are gone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t see a single female,” Jim said. “Not one.”
“In their houses, like good Greek ladies,” I said. “Tending the wounded, praying…”
“They aren’t praying,” Jim said. “At least… Where’s Kore?”
“Upstairs. Locked in her room.”
“You locked her in?”
“No,” Keller said. “I did.”
“Then you know,” Jim said. “You know what she’s doing.”
The flashlight beam struck Keller full in the face, but he made no move to shield his eyes. The pinpoint pupils, shrinking against the light, gave him a ghostly look.
“I know,” he said, barely moving his lips. “There is no harm. She does no harm, it is only a game-”
“Then why did you lock her in? You know it’s no game. It’s dangerous as hell.”
“So Kore’s fantasies have found an outlet.” Frederick ’s face was illumined now, as Jim turned the light in response to his voice. “What a fitting occasion. The old gods are angry; they must be propitiated. But Kore’s self-appointed role must have been useful all along. By convincing the women of her powers, she controlled the entire village. It always was a woman’s cult-”
“You cold-blooded bastard,” Jim said. “Perched on your academic pedestal lecturing about cults… You know what your blasted cultinvolves, don’t you? The details are obscure, ofcourse-” His voice was a savage mockery of Frederick ’s pedantic tone. “But we can be sure that a vegetation cult involved some form of sacri
fice. The victim was killed in order that his blood might bring about the resurrection of life in spring. The dying god, Osiris and Attis, Persephone… Kore can choose between several versions of the ritual. Which one does she fancy, Keller? The myth of Persephone, who died and was reborn yearly? It’s one of the oldest myths, older than the Greeks, older than ancient Crete, and Sandy makes a perfect patsy, doesn’t she? Ariadne, the Most Holy, who was the Cretan equivalent of Persephone. Or is it the Dionysian rite Kore follows? In that case any warm male body will serve the purpose. Is Chris being chased around the hills right now, by a crowd of howling maenads?”
“Absurd,” Frederick said. “Hysterical nonsense.”
I only wished I could believe it. I knew Jim was right about the cult. What I had not known was the complex and perilous meaning of the role Kore had selected for me. The women of Zoa, filing past my bed that night, in a solemn, ritual viewing of the new “goddess”-Kore’s daughter-substitute in a ritual so old that its hoary antiquity weighed down the mind. The priestess was the incarnation of the goddess, and She was the mother, the oldest of all the gods, the Earth herself-dying in winter, born again in spring with the new leaves, the young lambs, the sprouting corn. The women were the food gatherers and the ones who brought forth life. Yes, it was a woman’s cult, and the women of Zoa were only following tradition, revering a mother far older than the bright and tender Virgin.
Not all the women were involved, of course, only the more susceptible and superstitious. But there were enough of them, and their influence was great enough to keep Kore and her lover safe all these years. No doubt that was how the game had begun. But now… How far would Kore goto fulfill the demands of her votaries? Was she entirely sane?
Keller’s mind was apparently running along the same line. He got up and left the room, almost running. His footsteps pounded up the uncarpeted stairway. He was back very quickly.
“She’s gone,” he said. “One of the women must have let her out.”
Jim started for the door-and ran smack into a chair. As he stood swaying I snatched the flashlight from him and turned it on his face. He closed his eyes and put his hand up, but not quite soon enough.
The Sea King’s Daughter Page 21