by Mary Stewart
Frances was sitting in the garden, but the door to the hall was open, and as soon as Tony and I entered the hotel, she saw us, and came hurrying in.
‘My dear! Practically a search party! Tony was sure you’d be lying with a broken leg, surrounded by vultures, but I assured him you’d be all right! Had a good day?’
‘Wonderful! I’m sorry if I worried you, but I decided while I was up there that I’d make for that old Byzantine ruin I told you about, and it’s positively miles! But I had a marvellous day!’
Tony had lingered to watch our meeting, but now disappeared through the door behind the reception table. He left it ajar. I heard Stratos’ voice say something in soft Greek which I couldn’t catch.
Frances’ eyes were on my face, worried and questioning. I must have looked very different from the depressed messenger she had seen off that morning.
‘Are those for me?’ She was conscious, as I was, of the open door.
‘Yes . . . If only you’d come a little bit farther up, I found the very thing we were looking for! Brought it back, too, alive and undamaged. Here, hawkweed Langleyensis hirsuta, as good as new.’
I detached the common little hawkweed from the bunch, and handed it to her. I saw a spasm pass across her face, to be followed swiftly by something like understanding. Her eyes came up to mine. I nodded, every muscle of my face wanting to grin with triumph; but I fought them into stillness. I saw her eyes light up. ‘It should be all right, shouldn’t it?’ I said, touching the yellow petals. ‘It’s quite fresh and undamaged.’
‘Darling,’ said Frances, ‘it’s a treasure. I’ll put it straight away. I’ll come up with you.’
I shook my head at her quickly. It might be better not to look as if we wanted to hurry off together into privacy. ‘Don’t bother, I’ll bring the things down for you when I’ve changed. Here are the rest. I don’t suppose there’s much that matters, but there wasn’t much time. Order a tsikóuthia for me, will you, like a lamb? I’ll join you out there till dinner, and let’s pray it’s soon, I’m starving.’
I ran upstairs to my room, where the last of the sunlight still lingered as a rosy warmth on the walls. The shadows of the vine were blurred now, ready to fade and spread into the general darkness.
I took off my linen jacket, and dropped it on the bed, then kicked off my dusty shoes. Only now did I begin to realize how tired I was. My feet were aching, and grimed with dust that had seeped through my canvas shoes. The thin straw matting felt gratefully smooth and cool to my bare feet. I pulled off my frock and threw it after the jacket, then went over to the window, pushed it wide, and leaned on the cool stone sill, looking out.
In the distance, above their gold-rimmed bases, the cliffs towered, charcoal-black. Below them, the sea lay in indigo shadow, warmed, where the sun still touched it, to a deep shimmering violet. The flat rocks near the hotel, lying full in the lingering light, were the colour of anemones. The ice daisies had shut, and the mats of leaves that covered the rocks looked dark, like seaweed. The wind had changed with evening, and a light breeze blew offshore, ruffling the water. Two gulls sailed across the bay, shadows identifiable only by their long, grieving cry.
I looked out towards the open sea. A caique was setting out for the night’s fishing, with its gri-gri, the unpronounceable little Indian file of small boats following behind it, like ducklings behind the mother duck; light-fishers being towed out to the good fishing-grounds. Presently, away out, the lights would scatter and bob on the water like points of phosphorus. I watched them, wondering if the mother-boat were the Eros, and looked beyond her, straining my eyes over the dimming sea for a glimpse of another caique, a stranger, slipping lightless along, far out.
Then I pulled myself up. This wouldn’t do. If I was to play the innocent, I must clear my mind of any thoughts of the others. In any case, they were out of my picture. Lambis’ caique would slip past in the darkness towards the Bay of Dolphins, with three people on board who had probably forgotten all about me, and had their faces and thoughts thankfully set for Athens, and the end of their adventure. And meanwhile I was tired, hungry, and dusty, and I was wasting time. If Stratos’ hotel would run to a hot bath . . .
It would. I bathed fast, then, back in my room, hurried into a fresh frock, and quickly did my face and hair. The bell sounded just as I was slipping on my sandals. I seized my handbag, and ran out, almost colliding with Sofia on the landing.
I had apologized, smiled, and asked how she did, before it struck me, like a fresh shock, that this very day I had seen her husband’s grave. The thought caught at my speech, and made me trail off into some stammered ineptitude, but she seemed to notice nothing wrong. She spoke with her former grave courtesy, though, now that I was looking for them, I could see the strain lines, and the smudges of sleepless terror under her eyes.
She looked past me through the open door of my room.
‘I’m sorry, I should have tidied it,’ I said hurriedly, ‘but I’ve only just got in, and the bell went . . . I did clean the bathroom.’
‘But you should not trouble. That is for me.’ She walked into my room and stooped to pick up my shoes. ‘I will take these down and brush them. They are very dirty. You went far today, after I saw you at the mill?’
‘Yes, quite a long way, right across to the old church your brother told me of. Look, don’t bother about those old things—’
‘Yes. They must be cleaned. It is no trouble. Did you meet anybody . . . up there?’
I wondered if it was Josef she was worrying about, or Colin. I shook my head. ‘Nobody at all.’
She was turning the shoes this way and that in her hands, as if studying them. They were navy canvas, much the same colour as the ones Colin had been wearing. Suddenly, I remembered the way his foot had prodded at that dreadful grave. I said, almost sharply: ‘Don’t bother about those, really.’
‘I will do them. It is no trouble.’
She smiled at me as she said it, a gesture of the facial muscles that accentuated, rather than hid, the strain below. Her face looked like yellowed wax smeared thinly over a skull, all teeth and eye-sockets. I remembered Colin’s brilliant blaze of happiness, the vivid change in Mark, and the light-hearted way the two of them had fooled with Lambis. This, we owed to Sofia. If only, if only it were true that Josef had been a brute, and could die unmourned. If only it were true that she had hated him . . . But could one ever really, honestly, hate a man with whom one had shared a bed, and to whom one had borne a child? I thought not, but then, one thinks like that at twenty-two . . .
I lingered for a moment longer, fretted by that feeling of guilt which was surely not mine, then, on an awkward ‘Thank you,’ I turned and hurried down the outer stair and round the side of the hotel to where Frances awaited me with a vermouth for herself and a tsikóuthia for me.
‘How you can drink that stuff. It’s quite revolting.’
‘All true Philhellenes cultivate the taste. Oh, that’s good.’ I stretched back in my chair, and let the drink trickle back over my palate and into my throat. I lifted the glass to Frances, and at last allowed the triumph of the day to reach my mouth and eyes. ‘It’s been a lovely day,’ I said, ‘a wonderful day. Here’s to . . . us, and our absent friends.’
We drank. Frances regarded me smilingly. ‘I’ll tell you something else, you ignorant little blighter. Among that first-class bunch of weeds you brought me, you have put, by – I am sure – the merest chance, a thing that is really quite interesting.’
‘Great Zeus almighty! Good for me! D’you mean Hairy Hawkweed?’
‘I do not. It’s this.’ A few plants stood in a glass of water at her elbow. She detached one of them gently, and handed it to me. ‘It was clever of you to bring the root as well. Careful, now.’
The plant had round leaves, furry with white down, and purple, trailing stems, vaguely familiar. ‘What is it?’
‘Origanum dictamnus,’ said Frances.
‘Oh?’
‘You may well loo
k blank. Dittany, to you, a kind of marjoram. You may even have seen it in England – not that you’d have noticed, but it’s found sometimes in rock gardens.’
‘Is it rare, or something?’
‘No, but it’s interesting that you found it here. It’s a Cretan plant – hence the name. Dictamnus means that it was first found in this very spot, on Dicte.’
‘Dicte? The birthplace of Zeus! Frances, this is exciting!’
‘And Origanum means “joy of the mountain”. Not because it’s anything much to look at, but because of its properties. The Greeks and Romans used it as a healing herb, and as a dye, and for scent. They also called it “the herb of happiness” and used it to crown their young lovers. Nice, isn’t it?’
‘Lovely. Have you just been looking all this up to impress me with?’
‘I have, actually.’ She laughed, and picked up the book that lay on the table beside her. ‘It’s a book on Greek wild flowers, and it quotes some rather nice things. There’s a long bit about Origanum, quoted from a medical book by a first-century Greek, Dioscorides. It’s in a rather heavenly seventeenth-century translation. Listen.’ She turned a page and found the place—
‘“Dictamnus, which some call Pulegium Sylvestre (but some Embactron, some Beluocas, some Artemidion, some Creticus, some Ephemeron, some Eldian, some Belotocos, some Dorcidium, some Elbunium, ye Romans Ustilago rustica) is a Cretian herb, sharp, smooth, like to Pulegium. But it hath leaves greater, and downy and a kind of woolly adherence, but it bears neither flower nor fruit, but it doeth all things that the Sative Pulegium, but more forcibly by a great deal, for not only being drank but also being applied and suffumigated it expells the dead Embrya. And they say also that ye goats in Crete being shot, and having fed on the herb do cast out ye arrows . . . Ye root of it doth warm such as taste it; it is also a birth hastener, and likewise ye juice of it being drank with wine helpeth ye bitten of serpents . . . But ye juice of it, being dropt into a wound, it forthwith cures.”
‘What are you looking like that for?’
‘Nothing. I was just wondering if the Cretans still used it for healing. I mean, a thing that’ll do anything, “from abortion to snake bite—’”
‘Nothing more likely. They’ll have lores passed down, time out of mind. Ah, well, so that’s “the joy of the mountain”.’ She took it from me and replaced it in water. ‘Well, it’s nothing very great, I suppose, but it would be very interesting to see it actually growing. Do you remember where you got it?’
‘Oh, my goodness, I’m not sure.’ Lambis and I had, so to speak, grazed in motion, like harried deer. ‘But I could probably pin it down to within a couple of square miles. Very steep,’ I added kindly, ‘about one in three . . . and occasionally perpendicular. Would you have liked – I mean, do you really want to go and see it?’ Mark’s plan for our leaving was humming in my head like a knell. Poor Frances; it seemed hard. And what danger, what possible danger could there be?
‘I would, rather.’ Frances was watching me with a slightly puzzled look.
‘I – I’ll try to remember where it was,’ I said.
She watched me a moment longer, then got briskly to her feet. ‘Well, let’s go and eat. You look dog-tired. Tony has promised octopus, which he says is a delicacy unknown even to the better London restaurants.’
‘Understandably.’
‘Oh? Oh dear. Well, all experience is an arch wherethrough,’ said Frances. ‘Oh, give me the polythene bags, will you? It doesn’t matter about the rest, but I’d like to get Origanum safely under hatches. I’ll look at it later.’
‘Oh, lord, I forgot them. I did get them from your room, but I dropped them in my jacket pocket, and then came down without it. I’ll get them now.’
‘Don’t bother; you’ve done enough for one day; it can wait.’
‘No, really, it’ll only take a second.’ As we traversed the hallway I caught a glimpse of Sofia, with my shoes in her hand, vanishing through Stratos’ office door. She must have finished upstairs, so, I thought thankfully, I shouldn’t run into her again. Disregarding Frances’ protest, I left her at the restaurant door, and ran up to my room.
Sofia had left it very tidy: my jacket hung behind the door, the discarded dress lay neatly over the chair-back, the towels had been folded, and the coverlet taken off the bed. Frances’ polythene bags weren’t in the first pocket I tried – when was anything, ever? – but I found them in the other, and ran downstairs again.
Dinner was a cheerful meal, and even the octopus passed muster, as we ate it under Tony’s apparently anxious surveillance. The lamb which followed it was wonderful, though I had not even now grown reconciled to eating the tender, baby joints from the suckling lambs. ‘They can’t afford to let them graze,’ I said, when I saw that Frances was distressed. ‘There just isn’t enough pasture to let them grow any bigger. And if you’re going to be in Greece over Easter, I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to seeing the Paschal lamb going home with the family to be eaten. The children treat it as a pet, and play with it, and love it; then its throat is cut, and the family weeps for it, and finally feasts on it with rejoicing.’
‘Why, that’s horrible! It’s like a betrayal!’
‘Well, that’s what it’s symbolizing, after all.’
‘I suppose so. But couldn’t they use our sort of symbols, bread and wine?’
‘Oh, they do. But the Easter sacrifice in their own homes – well, think it over. I used to think the same as you, and I still hate to see the lambs and calves going home to their deaths on Good Friday. But isn’t it a million times better than the way we do it at home, however “humane” we try to be? Here, the lamb’s petted, unsuspicious, happy – you see it trotting along with the children like a little dog. Till the knife’s in its throat, it has no idea it’s going to die. Isn’t that better than those dreadful lorries at home, packed full of animals, lumbering on Mondays and Thursdays to the slaughterhouses, where, be as humane as you like, they can smell the blood and the fear, and have to wait their turn in a place just reeking of death?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ She sighed. ‘Well, I don’t feel so dreadful for having enjoyed that. The wine’s rather good; what did you say it was?’
‘King Minos.’
‘Then here’s to the “herb of happiness”.’
‘Here’s to it, and to hawkweed Langleyensis – oh!’
‘Now what?’
‘I’ve just remembered where I found it, your dittany.’
‘Oh? Good. I hope it’s somewhere I can get at.’
I said slowly: ‘I think it is. It was actually growing at the old church; in fact, it was growing on it. And I’m sure there was more where that piece came from.’
‘That’s fine; I’d very much like to see it growing. Did you say there was a reasonable track the whole way?’
‘There’s a track, yes, but I wouldn’t call it “reasonable”. It’s beastly rough in places. You’d be all right though, if you watched your step. All the same—’ I smiled at her, my illogical feeling of guilt fading – ‘it would be much easier, and far more fun, going by boat. Apparently there’s an old harbour not too far from the church. We might take a caique along the coast one day, and just walk straight into the hills from there.’ I was thinking, thankfully, that now I needn’t feel so guilty about having to drag Frances away from here in the morning. We could take a car over from Heraklion to Agia Gallini, and hire a caique from there, and I would show her the exact spot where Colin had pulled the dittany off the wall of the little church.
‘We’ll have to fix it up,’ said Frances, ‘but it can wait a day or two; you won’t want to go straight to the same place tomorrow. Oh, Tony, may we have coffee on the terrace, please? If you’re ready, Nicola . . . ?’
‘I think I’ll get my jacket after all,’ I said, as I rose. ‘Give Origanum to me; I’ll put him out of harm’s way upstairs.’
I laid the polythene bag with its precious plant carefully on my table, and lifted my jac
ket down from behind the door. As I put it on, something – something hard – in one of the pockets, swung against a corner of the table with a dull little thud. I put my hand in, and touched cold metal; the thin, sharp blade of a knife.
The cold shape met my palm with the tingle of a small electric shock. Then I remembered. I brought the thing out of my pocket, and looked at it. Lambis’ knife, of course; the one I had taken from him during that ghastly, serio-comic skirmish up there in the ruined church. I should have remembered to return it. Well, I could still do so, when my gay ‘see you in Athens’ came true.
I was turning to put the thing out of sight in my case, when something occurred to me that brought me up all standing, with a little formless fear slipping over my skin like ice-water. When I had come up to get the polythene bags for Frances, surely I had felt in both pockets of the jacket? Surely I had? I frowned, thinking back. Then certainty came; I had my hand in both pockets; I could not have missed the knife. It hadn’t been there.
Sofia. It was the only explanation. Sofia must have found the knife when she hung my jacket up. She had taken it . . . why? To show to Stratos and Tony? Had she taken it with her, that time I saw her vanishing into Stratos’ office, only to return it quietly while I was at dinner? Why?
I sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed, furious at the wave of panic which swept over me, trying to think coherently.
Lambis’ knife. It didn’t matter; I must remember that. It didn’t matter. Nobody here would recognize it: nobody here had seen Lambis, or even knew of his existence. The knife could not possibly link me with the affair; not possibly.
Why, then, had Sofia done what she had done? Simply because, I told myself, she and her companions were, like all criminals, touchy at the least thing. It wasn’t usual for the ordinary, innocent woman tourist to carry an unsheathed and very businesslike knife. She had thought it worth showing to her brother; but that was, surely, as far as it would go? There was no reason why I should not have bought such a thing as a souvenir; businesslike though it was, it was also rather pretty, with the copper hilt worked with blue enamel, and a sort of filigree chasing on the root of the blade. I turned it over in my hand, examining it. Yes, that was the story: if anyone asked me, I would say that I had bought the thing in Chania, partly as a toy, and partly because I knew I should want some sort of tool to dig up plants for Frances. That was why I had taken it with me today . . . Yes, that would do . . . I had used it today . . . that would account for the used look of the thing, and the couple of chips and notches that showed in the enamel of the handle.