by Mary Stewart
In a few moments I saw why. I came up a steepish ramp through thinning pines, and emerged at once from the shade of the gorge, on to an open plateau perhaps half a mile in width, and two or three hundred yards deep, like a wide ledge on the mountainside.
Here were the fields belonging to the people of Agios Georgios. The plateau was sheltered on three sides by the trees: southwards, towards the sea, the land fell away in shelving rock, and slopes of huge, tumbled boulders. Behind the fertile ground, to the north, soared the mountainside, silver-tawny in the brilliant light, clouded here and there with olives, and gashed by ravines where trees grew. From the biggest of these ravines flowed the river, to push its way forward across the plateau in a wide meander. Not an inch of the flat land but was dug, hoed and harrowed. Between the vegetable fields were rows of fruit trees: I saw locust trees, and apricots, as well as the ubiquitous olives, and the lemon trees. The fields were separated from one another by narrow ditches, or by shallow, stony banks where, haphazard, grew poppies, fennel, parsley, and a hundred herbs which would all be gathered, I knew, for use. Here and there, at the outlying edges of the plateau, the gay little Cretan windmills whirled their white canvas sails, spilling the water into the ditches that threaded the dry soil.
There was nobody about. I passed the last windmill, climbed through the vine rows that terraced the rising ground, and paused in the shade of a lemon tree.
Here I hesitated, half inclined to stop. There was a cool breeze from the sea, the lemon blossom smelt wonderful, the view was glorious – but at my feet flies buzzed over mule-droppings in the dust, and a scarlet cigarette-packet, soggy and disintegrating, lay caught in weeds at the water’s edge. Even the fact that the legend on it was ΕΘΝΟΣ, and not the homely Woodbine or Player’s Weights, didn’t make it anything but a nasty piece of wreckage capable of spoiling a square mile of countryside.
I looked the other way, towards the mountains.
The White Mountains of Crete really are white. Even when, in high summer, the snow is gone, their upper ridges are still silver – bare, grey rock, glinting in the sun, showing paler, less substantial, than the deep-blue sky behind them; so that one can well believe that among those remote and floating peaks the king of the gods was born. For Zeus, they said, was born in Dicte, a cave of the White Mountains. They showed you the very place . . .
At that moment, on the thought, the big white bird flew, with slow, unstartled beat of wings, out of the glossy leaves beside me, and sailed over my head. It was a bird I had never seen before, like a small heron, milk-white, with a long black bill. It flew as a heron does, neck tucked back and legs trailing, with a down-curved, powerful wing beat. An egret? I shaded my eyes to watch it. It soared up into the sun, then turned and flew back over the lemon grove, and on up the ravine, to be lost to view among the trees.
I am still not quite sure what happened at that moment.
For some reason that I cannot analyse, the sight of the big white bird, strange to me; the smell of the lemon flowers, the clicking of the mill sails and the sound of spilling water; the sunlight dappling through the leaves on the white anemones with their lamp-black centres; and, above all, my first real sight of the legendary White Mountains . . . all this seemed to rush together into a point of powerful magic, happiness striking like an arrow, with one of those sudden shocks of joy that are so physical, so precisely marked, that one knows the exact moment at which the world changed. I remembered what I had said to the Americans, that they, by bringing me here, had given me a day. Now I saw that, literally, they had. And it seemed no longer to be chance. Inevitably, here I was, alone under the lemon trees, with a path ahead of me, food in my bag, a day dropped out of time for me, and a white bird flying ahead.
I gave a last look behind me at the wedge of shimmering sea, then turned my face to the north-east, and walked rapidly through the trees, towards the ravine that twisted up into the flank of the mountain.
2
When as she gazed into the watery glass
And through her brown hair’s curly tangles scanned
Her own wan face, a shadow seemed to pass
Across the mirror . . .
WILDE: Charmides
It was hunger, in the end, that stopped me. Whatever the impulse that had compelled me to this lonely walk, it had driven me up the track at a fair speed, and I had gone some distance before, once again, I began to think about a meal.
The way grew steeper as the gorge widened, the trees thinned, and sunlight came in. Now the path was a ribbon along the face of a cliff, with the water below. The other side of the ravine lay back from it, a slope of rock and scrub studded here and there with trees, but open to the sun. The path was climbing steeply, now, towards the lip of the cliff. It did not seem to be much used; here and there bushes hung across it, and once I stopped to gather a trail of lilac orchids which lay, unbruised, right at my feet. But on the whole I managed to resist the flowers, which grew in every cranny of the rock. I was hungry, and wanted nothing more than to find a level place in the sun, beside water, where I could stop and eat my belated meal.
Ahead of me, now, from the rocks on the right, I could hear water, a rush of it, nearer and louder than the river below. It sounded like a side stream tumbling from the upper rocks, to join the main water course beneath.
I came to a corner, and saw it. Here the wall of the gorge was broken, as a small stream came in from above. It fell in an arrowy rush right across the path, where it swirled round the single stepping stone, to tumble once again, headlong, towards the river. I didn’t cross it. I left the path, and clambered, not without difficulty, up the boulders that edged the tributary stream, towards the sunlight of the open ground at the edge of the ravine.
In a few minutes I had found what I was looking for. I climbed a tumble of white stones where poppies grew, and came out on a small, stony alp, a level field of asphodel, all but surrounded by towering rocks. Southwards, it was open, with a dizzying view down towards the now distant sea.
For the rest, I saw only the asphodel, the green of ferns by the water, a tree or so near the cliffs, and, in a cleft of a tall rock, the spring itself, where water splashed out among the green, to lie in a quiet pool open to the sun, before pouring away through the poppies at the lip of the gorge.
I swung the bag off my shoulder, and dropped it among the flowers. I knelt at the edge of the pool, and put my hands and wrists into the water. The sun was hot on my back. The moment of joy had slackened, blurred, and spread itself into a vast physical contentment.
I stooped to drink. The water was ice cold, pure and hard; the wine of Greece, so precious that, time out of mind, each spring has been guarded by its own deity, the naiad of the stream. No doubt she watched it still, from behind the hanging ferns . . . The odd thing was – I found myself giving a half-glance over my shoulder at these same ferns – that one actually did feel as if one were being watched. Numinous country indeed, where, stooping over a pool, one could feel the eyes on one’s back . . .
I smiled at the myth-bred fancies, and bent to drink again.
Deep in the pool, deeper than my own reflection, something pale wavered among the green. A face.
It was so much a part of my thoughts that, for one dreaming moment, I took no notice. Then, with that classic afterthought that is known as the ‘double take’, reality caught up with the myth; I stiffened, and looked again.
I had been right. Behind my mirrored shoulder a face swam, watching me from the green depths. But it wasn’t the guardian of the spring. It was human, and male, and it was the reflection of someone’s head, watching me from above. Someone, a man, was peering down at me from the edge of the rocks high above the spring.
After the first startled moment, I wasn’t particularly alarmed. The solitary stranger has, in Greece, no need to fear the chance-met prowler. This was some shepherd lad, doubtless, curious at the sight of what must obviously be a foreigner. He would probably, unless he was shy, come down to talk to me.
I drank again, then rinsed my hands and wrists. As I dried them on a handkerchief, I saw the face there still, quivering in the disturbed water.
I turned and looked up. Nothing. The head had vanished.
I waited, amused, watching the top of the rock. The head appeared again, stealthily . . . so stealthily that, in spite of my common sense, in spite of what I knew about Greece and the Greeks, a tiny tingle of uneasiness crept up my spine. This was more than shyness: there was something furtive about the way the head inched up from behind the rock. And something more than furtive in the way, when he saw that I was watching, the man ducked back again.
For it was a man, no shepherd boy. A Greek, certainly; it was a dark face, mahogany-tanned, square and tough looking, with dark eyes, and that black pelt of hair, thick and close as a ram’s fleece, which is one of the chief beauties of the Greek men.
Only a glimpse I had, then he was gone. I stared at the place where the head had vanished, troubled now. Then, as if he could still be watching me, which was unlikely, I got to my feet with somewhat elaborate unconcern, picked up the bag, and turned to go. I no longer wanted to settle here, to be spied on, and perhaps approached, by this dubious stranger.
Then I saw the shepherds’ hut.
There was a path which I hadn’t noticed before, a narrow sheeptrod which had beaten a way through the asphodel towards a corner under the rocks, where a hut stood, backed against the cliff.
It was a small, unwindowed penthouse, of the kind that is commonly built in Greece, in remote places, to house the boys and men whose job it is to herd the goats and sheep on the bare hillsides. Sometimes they are used as milking places for the sheep, and cheeses are made there on the spot. Sometimes, in stormy weather, they serve to house the beasts themselves.
The hut was small and low, roughly built of unshaped stones, the spaces packed with clay. It was roofed with brushwood and dried scrub, and would hardly be seen at all from any sort of distance, among the stones and scrub that surrounded it.
This, then, was the explanation of the watcher of the spring. The man would be a shepherd, his flock, doubtless, feeding on some other mountain-meadow above the rocks where he lay. He had heard me, and had come down to see who it was.
My momentary uneasiness subsided. Feeling a fool, I paused there among the asphodel, half minded, after all, to stay.
It was well after noon now, and the sun was turning over to the south-west, full on the little alp. The first warning I had was when a shadow dropped across the flowers, as sudden as a black cloth falling to stifle me.
I looked up, with a gasp of fright. From the rocks beside the spring came a rattle of pebbles, the scrape of a foot, and the Greek dropped neatly into my path.
There was one startled moment in which everything seemed very clear and still. I thought, but not believing it: the impossible really has happened; this is danger. I saw his dark eyes, angry and wary at the same time. His hand – more incredible still – grasped a naked knife.
Impossible to remember my Greek, to cry, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Impossible to run from him, down the breakneck mountain. Impossible to summon help from the vast, empty silence.
But of course, I tried it. I screamed, and turned to run.
It was probably the silliest thing I could have done. He jumped at me. He caught me, pulled me against him, and held me. His free hand covered my mouth. He was saying something half under his breath, curses or threats that, in my panic, I didn’t understand. I struggled and fought, as if in a nightmare. I believe I kicked him, and my nails drew blood on his wrists. There was a clatter of kicked stones, and a jingling as he dropped the knife. I got my mouth free for a moment, and screamed again. It was little more than a shrill gasp this time, barely audible. But in any case, there was nobody to help . . .
Impossibly, help came.
From behind me, from the empty mountainside, a man’s voice called out, sharply, in Greek. I didn’t hear what it said, but the effect on my attacker was immediate. He froze where he stood. But he still held me, and his hand clamped tightly again over my mouth.
He turned his head and called, in a low, urgent voice: ‘It’s a girl, a foreigner. Spying around. I think she is English.’
I could hear no movement behind me of anyone approaching. I strained round against the Greek’s hand to see who had saved me, but he held me tightly, with a low, ‘Keep still, and hold your noise!’
The voice came again, apparently from some way off. ‘A girl? English?’ A curious pause. ‘For pity’s sake, leave her alone, and bring her here. Are you mad?’
The Greek hesitated, then said sullenly to me, in strongly accented but reasonably good English: ‘Come with me. And do not squeak again. If you make one other sound, I will kill you. Be sure of that. I do not like women, me.’
I managed to nod. He took his hand from my mouth then, and relaxed his hold. But he didn’t let go. He merely shifted his grip, keeping hold of my wrist.
He stooped to pick up his knife, and motioned towards the rocks behind us. I turned. There was no one to be seen.
‘Inside,’ said the Greek, and jerked his head towards the shepherds’ hut.
The hut was filthy. As the Greek pushed me in front of him across the trodden dust, the flies rose, buzzing, round our feet. The doorway gaped black and uninviting.
At first I could see nothing. By contrast with the bright light at my back, the interior of the hut seemed quite dark, but then the Greek pushed me further in, and in the flood of light from the doorway, I could see quite clearly even into the furthest corners of the hut.
A man was lying in the far corner, away from the door. He lay on a rough bed of some vegetation, that could have been ferns or dried shrubs. Apart from this, the hut was empty; there was no furniture at all, except some crude looking lengths of wood in another corner that may have been parts of a primitive cheese-press. The floor was of beaten earth, so thin in places that the rock showed through. What dung the sheep had left was dried, and inoffensive enough, but the place smelt of sickness.
As the Greek pushed me inside, the man on the bed raised his head, his eyes narrowed against the light.
The movement, slight as it was, seemed an effort. He was ill; very ill; it didn’t need the roughly swathed cloths, stiff with dried blood, on his left arm and shoulder, to tell me that. His face, under the two days’ growth of beard, was pale, and hollowed under the cheekbones, while the skin round his eyes, with their suspiciously bright glitter, looked bruised with pain and fever. There was a nasty looking mark on his forehead, where the skin had been scraped raw, and had bled. The hair above it was still matted with the blood, and filthy with dust from the stuff he was lying on.
For the rest, he was young, dark-haired and blue-eyed like a great many Cretans, and would, when washed, shaved, and healthy, be a reasonably personable man, with an aggressive looking nose and mouth, square, capable hands, and (as I guessed), a fair amount of physical strength. He had on dark-grey trousers, and a shirt that had once been white, both garments now filthy and torn. The only bed-covering was an equally battered windcheater jacket, and an ancient khaki affair which, presumably, belonged to the man who had attacked me. This, the sick man clutched to him as though he was cold.
He narrowed those bright eyes at me, and seemed, with some sort of an effort, to collect his wits.
‘I hope Lambis didn’t hurt you? You . . . screamed?’
I realized then why he had seemed to be speaking from some distance away. His voice, though steady enough, was held so by a palpable effort, and it was weak. He gave the impression of holding on, precariously, to every ounce of strength he had, and, in so doing, spending it. He spoke in English, and such was my own shaken condition that I thought at first, merely, what good English he speaks; and only afterwards, with a kind of shock, he is English.
Of course that was the first thing I said. I was still only just taking in the details of his appearance; the bloody evidence of a wound, the s
unken cheeks, the filthy bed. ‘You’re – you’re English!’ I said stupidly, staring. I was hardly conscious that the Greek, Lambis, had dropped his hand from my arm. Automatically, I began to rub the place where he had gripped me. Later, there would be a bruise.
I faltered: ‘But you’re hurt! Has there been an accident? What happened?’
Lambis pushed past me, to stand over the bed, rather like a dog defending a bone. He still had that wary look; no longer dangerous, perhaps, but he was fingering his knife. Before the sick man could speak, he said, quickly and defensively: ‘It is nothing. An accident in climbing. When he has rested I shall help him down to the village. There is no need—’
‘Shut up, will you?’ The sick man snapped it, in Greek. ‘And put that knife away. You’ve scared her silly as it is, poor kid. Can’t you see she’s nothing to do with this business? You should have kept out of sight, and let her go past.’
‘She’d seen me. And she was coming this way. She’d have come in here, as likely as not, and seen you . . . She’ll blab all over the village.’
‘Well, you’ve made sure of that, haven’t you? Now keep quiet, and leave this to me.’
Lambis shot him a look, half defiant, half shamefaced. He dropped his hand from the knife, but he stayed beside the bed.
The exchange between the two men, which had been in Greek, had the effect of reassuring me completely, even if the discovery of the sick man’s nationality hadn’t already (absurdly enough) begun to do so. But I didn’t show it. At some purely instinctive level, it seemed, I had made a decision for my own protection – which was that there was no positive need for me to betray my own knowledge of Greek . . . Whatever I had stumbled into, I would prefer to stumble out of again as quickly as possible, and it seemed that the less I knew about ‘this business’, whatever it was, the more likely they were to let me go peaceably on my way.