The Moonspinners

by Mary Stewart

  But no Colin Langley. And no place to hide him.

  So much I took in while I was still climbing out of the stairwell. The place was as innocent as Stratos’ boat had been. There was no hiding place for anything much bigger than a mouse. As I stepped out on to the boarded floor, a mouse did indeed whisk out of the way between two tins, carrying some titbit in its mouth.

  But there was another stairway, and another floor . . .

  Beside me Sofia said, still in that colourless voice that was so unlike her: ‘Since you are interested, thespoinís . . . That is the chute down which the flour comes. You see? These are the scales for weighing it. You hang them up, so . . .’

  I watched her in the light from the single window. Was it imagination, or was she more waxen-pale than ever in the bright glare of morning? Certainly she was acting with a reserve which might have been construed as uneasiness, or even anxiety, but her stolid peasant dignity had come to her aid, and I could see nothing in her face that I could put a name to; except that, today, my intrusion and interest in her doings were less than welcome.

  She had finished whatever she was explaining to me, and began to dismantle the scales with an air of finality.

  ‘And now, if the thespoinís will excuse me—’

  ‘Oh, don’t put them away yet!’ I cried. ‘I know my cousin’ll want to see this – it’s terribly interesting! Frances!’

  I ran to the stairs and called down, adding warmly, as poor Sofia hesitated, scales in hand: ‘It’s awfully good of you; I’m afraid we’re being a lot of trouble, but it really is marvellous to see all this, and I know my cousin will love it all! Here she comes. Now I must just go up quickly, and see the rest—’

  ‘Thespoinís—’ Something had touched that colourless voice at last. It was sharp. ‘Thespoinís, there is nothing up there except the millstones, nothing at all! Do not go up; the floor is rotten!’

  This was true. From below I had seen the holes in the boards.

  I said cheerfully, not even pausing: ‘It’s all right, I’m not afraid. After all, I suppose it holds you when you have to come up here to work, doesn’t it? I’ll be careful. Heavens, are these the grindstones? It’s a marvel there’s ever wind enough to move them at all!’

  I hadn’t yet paused to think what I would do if Colin were there, but the small, circular room was empty – if one could apply that word to a space almost filled by the giant millstones, and crowded with primitive machinery.

  The ceiling was conical, and was the actual roof of the mill. From the apex of this wigwam-like thatch down the centre of the chamber, like a tent-pole, ran the huge axle on which the millstones turned. These, some eight to ten feet across, looked as if no power short of a steam turbine could ever move them. Jutting out from the wall was a metal lever by which the whole roof could be swung round on its central pivot, to catch any wind that blew; and a vast, pegged wheel, set at right angles to the millstones, no doubt transferred the drive to them from the sails. This driving wheel was of wood, hand-hewn and worm-eaten, like the floor. But everything was clean, and the room was fresh and very light, for there were two windows cut in the thick walls, one on either side, at floor-level. One of these was shuttered, and fastened with a wooden peg; and, beside it, pushed back into a rough pile against the wall, was a jumble of brushwood left over – as was apparent – from a recent job of thatching.

  I stepped over the hole in the aged flooring, and looked thoughtfully down at the brushwood. A clay jar hung from a nail near by, and a short-handled broom stood underneath it. The brushwood looked as if it had just been bundled back against the wall, and the floor had been newly swept . . .

  I wondered how recently the jar had been used, and whether, if I tilted it, I would find a few drops of water still in the bottom . . .

  I had no chance to try, for now Sofia was at the head of the stairs, and I could hear Frances coming up.

  I turned quickly. ‘Frances! This is wonderful, it’s like the Bible or Homer or something. Bring the camera up, there’s plenty of light!’ Then, brightly, to Sofia: ‘I’m so glad we’ve seen this! We have nothing like this, you know, in England – at least, I believe there still are some windmills, but I’ve never seen inside one. May my cousin take a picture? Would it be all right to open the other window?’

  I chattered on at her, as disarmingly as I could. After all, she could only be annoyed: I had shown myself yesterday to be a busybody without manners, and if an extension of this character today would get me what I wanted, then my reputation was gone in a good cause.

  Frances came quickly up, exclaiming with pleasure. Sofia, unbending perhaps at her palpably innocent interest, moved willingly enough to unlatch the window, and began to explain the action of the millstones. I translated what she said, asking a few more harmless questions, and then, when Frances had started work with the camera, and was persuading Sofia to mime some of the movements with lever and grain chute. I left them casually – oh, so casually! – and started down the stairs again.

  I had seen what I was looking for. Of that I was sure. Sofia had cleaned up efficiently, but not quite efficiently enough. After all, I myself had just done the selfsame job in the shepherds’ hut, and my eye was fresh to the signs. Nobody who was not looking for it would have guessed that, until recently, a prisoner had been kept in the mill. But I had known what to look for.

  I was sure I was right. The brushwood on the top floor had been ruffled up again, and pushed back, but someone had lain there. And Sofia had swept the floor, but had overlooked the fact of the rotten boards beside the bedding. Some of her sweepings must have fallen through on to the floor below . . .

  I ran lightly down the steps, and paused on the landing.

  Yes: again I had been right. On the boards beneath the hole were a few fragments of broken brushwood and dusty fronds. This, in itself, would have meant nothing, but among them there were crumbs. It had been a crumb of bread that I had seen the mouse carrying. And here were more, as yet unsalvaged, tiny traces of food which, without the mouse, and the sharpened eyes of suspicion, I would never have seen.

  I never thought I should live to be grateful for the time that one has to wait about while Frances takes her films. I could hear her now, conversing with Sofia with – presumably – some success, and much laughter. Sofia, no doubt feeling herself safe, appeared to be relaxing. The whirr of the camera sounded loud in the confined space. I ran on down the stairs.

  I had remembered the coil of rope that lay beside the grain sacks. If you had a prisoner, presumably you tied him. I wanted to see that rope.

  I reached the ground floor, and paused for a moment, throwing a swift glance round me. I could hear them still busy with the camera, and, even if they came down, I should have plenty of warning: they could not see me until they were halfway down the stairs. I bent over the rope.

  The first thing I saw was the blood.

  It sounds simple when I write it like that, and I suppose I had even been expecting it. But what one expects with the reasoning mind, and one’s reactions to it as a fact, are two very different things. I think it was the driving need for haste, and secrecy, that saved me. Somehow, I managed to stay cool enough, and, after the first moment or so, to look more closely.

  There was very little blood; only (I told myself) the sort of stain one might get from bound wrists scraped raw with struggling. The slight staining came at intervals along one of the ropes, as it might if this were coiled round someone’s wrists.

  Somehow, I fumbled among the coils to find the ends of the rope. They were unfrayed, still bound.

  As I let them fall back where they had lain, Sofia’s shopping bag caught my eye, standing near. Without a second’s compunction I pulled the mouth wide, and looked inside.

  There wasn’t much; a bundle of the faded, red-and-green patterned cloth that I had seen in her house, a crumpled newspaper stained with grease, and another strip of the cloth, much creased, and stained as if with damp.

  I opened the
bundle of cloth; there was nothing in it but a few crumbs. The newspaper too; the marks on it could have been made by fat, or butter. She must have brought the boy’s food wrapped in paper, then bundled up in a cloth. Then there was the other cloth, the creased strip, that looked as if it had been chewed . . .

  Just that, of course. The boy could hardly have been left here, lying bound. They would have had to gag him.

  I dropped it back into the bag, with hands that shook, then pushed the other things back after it, and straightened up.

  It was true, then. Colin had been here: and Colin had gone. The unfrayed rope told its own tale; there had been no escape, no bonds sawn through. The rope had been untied, then neatly coiled away, presumably by Sofia when she had cleared away the gag, the bedding, and the traces of food.

  But if Colin was still alive – my brain was missing like a faulty engine, but it hammered on, painfully – if they still had Colin, alive, then surely he would still be bound? If the rope was here, discarded, then might it not mean that Colin had been set free deliberately, and that he might now, in his turn, be looking for Mark?

  I had been standing, staring blindly down at the clutter of stuff beside the wall. Now, my eyes registered, with a jerk that was almost physically painful, the thing at which they had been staring, unseeingly; the thing that stood there beside the rope, gleaming in its obviousness.

  The spade. Once I had seen it, I could see nothing else.

  It was an old spade, with a well-worn handle, but the blade shone, with recent use, as if it were new. There was still earth clinging to it. Some of this had dried and crumbled, and lay in little piles on the floor. The spade had been used very recently, and for deep digging: not just the dry, dusty topsoil, but the deep, damp earth that would cling . . .

  I shut my eyes on it then, trying to push aside the image that was forming. Someone had been digging; all right, that was what a spade was for, wasn’t it? The fields had to be tilled, hadn’t they? It needn’t mean a thing. Anybody could have been using it, for a variety of reasons. Sofia could have been digging vegetables, or Josef, or Stratos . . .

  And now the picture, unimportant, unremembered until this moment, showed complete – yesterday’s picture of these tranquil fields: the sleeping boy; the man, alone, digging behind that patch of sugarcane, beyond the mill. He had been a broad-shouldered man, with a red kerchief round his neck. He had not noticed me, nor I him. But now, in my mind’s eye, I could see him again, clearly.

  As I had seen him later, when he had finished his work and had come down to Sofia’s cottage to tell her what he had done, and that she could come up to the mill to clear away.

  Somehow, I got outside. The sun was brilliant on the irises, and a sulphur butterfly quested among the purple petals.

  The back of my hand was pressed so hard to my mouth that my teeth hurt it.

  ‘I’ll have to tell Mark,’ I said, against the bitten flesh. ‘Dear God, I’ll have to tell Mark.’

  13

  Ah! if you see the purple shoon,

  The hazel crooks, the lad’s brown hair,

  The goat-skin wrapped about his arm,

  Tell him that I am waiting . . .

  WILDE: Endymion

  ‘Nicola – Nicky, honey – what is it?’

  ‘It’s all right. Give me a minute, that’s all.’

  ‘I knew there was something. Look, we can sit down here. Take your time.’

  We had reached the wayside shrine above the lemon-grove. The fields were out of sight; the windmill no more than a gleam of white through the trees. I could not remember getting here: somehow, I must have taken a civil leave of Sofia; somehow waited, while she and Frances exchanged farewell compliments; somehow steered a blind way up through the trees, to stop by the shrine, staring worldessly at Frances.

  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘have a cigarette.’

  The sharp smell of the match mingled, too evocatively, with the scents of verbena and lavender that grew beside the stones where we sat. I ran my fingers up a purple spike of flowers, shredding them brutally from the stem, then let the bruised heads fall; but the scent of lavender was still stronger on the flesh of my hand. I rubbed it down my skirt, and spoke to the ground.

  ‘They’ve killed Colin. You were right. And they’ve buried him down there . . . just near the mill.’

  There was a silence. I was watching some ants scurrying to examine the fallen flower heads.

  ‘But—’ her voice was blank – ‘how do you know? Do you mean you saw something?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I see. The mill. Yes, why not? Well, tell me.’

  When I had finished, she sat a little longer in silence, smoking rather hard. Then I saw her shake her head sharply, like someone ridding themselves of a stinging insect. ‘That nice woman? I can’t believe it. The thing’s fantastic.’

  ‘You didn’t see Mark, lying up there in the dirt, with a bullet hole in him. It’s true enough, he’s dead. And now I’ll have to tell Mark. We can get the police on it, now that it’s too late.’ I swung round on her, anxiously. ‘You said you guessed something was wrong. You mean I showed it? Would Sofia guess I knew something?’

  ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t. I wasn’t sure myself, and I know you pretty well. What could she have guessed, anyway? She’s not to know you knew anything about it; and there was nothing to see, not unless someone was deliberately looking for traces.’

  ‘It was the mouse. If I hadn’t seen the mouse with that bit of bread, I’d never have found anything. I’d have wondered about the brushwood, but it would never have entered my head to hunt for crumbs, or to look at that rope.’

  ‘Well, she didn’t see the mouse, so it wouldn’t occur to her, either. I should stop worrying about that side of it. She’ll have gone off quite satisfied with the result of her tidying-up, and you and I are still well in the clear.’

  The ants were scurrying about aimlessly among the lavender flowers.

  ‘Frances, I’ll have to tell Mark.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘You agree I should, now?’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to, darling.’

  ‘Then – you think I’m right? You think that’s what’s happened?’

  ‘That Colin’s dead? I’m afraid it looks like it. In any case, Mark ought to hear the evidence. It’s got well beyond the stage at which he can deal with things himself. Are you going now?’

  ‘The sooner I get it over, the better. What about you?’

  ‘You’ll be better on your own, and in any case, I ought to be here to cover up for you if you’re late back. I’ll stay around taking film and so on, and then go back for tea, as arranged. I’ll tell them that you’ve gone farther than I cared to, but that you’ll keep to the paths, and be back by dark.’ She gave me an anxious smile. ‘So take care of yourself, and see that you are. I’m not at all sure that I could be convincing if you chose to spend another night up there!’

  ‘You needn’t worry about that, I’ll be even less welcome than I was last time.’ I hadn’t meant to speak quite so bitterly. I got quickly to my feet, adding prosaically: ‘Well, the sooner the better. How about dividing the lunch packet?’

  My plan, if it could be called a plan, was relatively simple.

  It was possible that Mark and Lambis, after last night’s foray, had gone back for the rest of the night to the shepherds’ hut, sooner than undertake the long trek over to their caique. But, if the blood in Sofia’s shed was evidence, Mark might not have been able to face the stiff climb to the hut. He and Lambis could have holed up till morning somewhere nearer the village, and it might even be that Mark (if his wound had broken open badly) would have to stay hidden there today.

  Whatever the case, it seemed to me that my best plan was to find the track which led across to the ruined church – the track on which the first murder had been committed – and follow that along the lower reaches of the mountainside. It was a reasonable way for a tourist to go, it would lead me in the sa
me general direction that Mark and Lambis would have to take, and it was, as I knew, visible for long stretches, not only from the alp and the ledge, but from a wide range of rocks above.

  I remembered how clearly the Cretan had stood out, yesterday, against the stand of cypresses beside the track. If I stopped there, and if Mark and Lambis were anywhere above me, they would surely see me, and I could in some way make it apparent that I had news for them. No doubt – since I had promised that I would only interfere again if I had vital news – they would show some sign, to let me know where they were, and after that I could make my way up to them as cautiously as I could. If no signal showed from above, then I would have to decide whether to go up and look at the ledge and the hut, or whether to push on along the track, and try to find the caique. It was all very vague and unsatisfactory, but for want of more exact knowledge, it was the best I could do.

  As for the murderer, whom I was determined, now, to identify with Josef, I had coldly considered him, and was confident that there I ran very little risk. If I should meet him on the track, I had every excuse (including Stratos’ own advice to visit the Byzantine church) for being there. It was only after I had exchanged signals with Mark that I should need caution, and then no doubt Mark and Lambis would make it their business to protect me. It was odd that this idea didn’t irk me, as it would have done yesterday. Today, I could think of nothing beyond the moment when I should have discharged my dreadful burden of news, and with it the responsibility for future action.

  From the shrine, where I had left Frances, a narrow path led up through the last of the lemon trees, on to the open ground above the plateau. Like the track from the bridge, it looked as if it was much used by the village flocks, so it occurred to me that it might eventually join the old mountain road which led towards the church and the ‘ancient harbour’.

  This proved to be the case. Very soon my narrow path took me upwards over bare, fissured rock where someone had tried to build a dry wall, to join a broader, but by no means smoother, track along the mountainside.