The Moonspinners

by Mary Stewart

  I stood up, relieved, and ready to dismiss my fears. That story would do, and meanwhile I would put it away, and I must certainly remember to return it to Lambis. He would have been missing it.

  The thing slipped from my fingers, and fell, to quiver, point down, in the floorboards. I was sitting on the bed again, my hands to my cheeks, my eyes shut in a vain effort to blot out the picture that my memory had conjured up . . .

  Lambis, relaxed in the sunshine beside Colin, whittling away at the little wooden lizard. After we had left the church; after I had taken this knife from his pocket. He hadn’t missed it at all; his own knife, his accustomed knife, had had a wooden handle . . . I remembered it now, and remembered the sheath of embossed leather that he had worn thrust into his waistband, and which lay beside him as he did his carving . . .

  And this knife? This enamelled copper affair that I had taken from his pocket, and forgotten to return? This pretty, deadly bit of Turkish enamel work?

  ‘He pulled his knife,’ Mark had said, ‘and then went down hard, with his head on the rock, and that was that . . . We took everything else he had, and buried the boots.’

  Josef. Josef’s weapon, marked and notched into unmistakability. Found in my pocket by Josef’s wife. Shown to Tony; shown to Stratos. Then quietly slipped back where they had found it.

  I didn’t stop then to consider what they might make of it, or if I could invent some story of finding it on the hillside. I just sat there, fighting off the waves of senseless panic that bade me get away, myself and Frances, get away, straight away, that very night, to friends and lights and normal places and people and sanity.

  To Mark.

  After a bit, I put the knife in my suitcase, steadied myself, and went down the stairway.

  18

  Thus far her Courage held, but her forsakes:

  Her faint Knees knock at ev’ry Step she makes.

  DRYDEN: Cinyras and Myrrha

  ‘Ah, Miss Ferris,’ said Stratos.

  He was in the hallway, behind the table, not doing anything, just standing there, waiting for me. From behind the closed door of the office came voices, Tony’s and Sofia’s, the latter lifted on a high, urgent note, which stopped abruptly as Stratos spoke.

  ‘I hope you had a pleasant day,’ he said.

  ‘Very, thank you,’ I smiled, hoping he couldn’t tell that my lips were stiff, and the nerves tingling in my fingertips. ‘A pretty long one, but I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly.’

  ‘So you’ve been across to the old church, Tony tells me?’ His tone was quite normal, friendly even, but something in it drove me to respond as if to an accusation.

  ‘Oh, yes, I did.’ My voice was hoarse, and I cleared my throat. ‘The track was quite easy to follow and the church was well worth visiting – you were quite right about that. I was only sorry I hadn’t a camera with me.’

  ‘Ah, yes, it is Miss Scorby who is the photographer, is it not?’ Still nothing in the even voice that I could put a name to. The black Greek eyes watched me. I find it hard at the best of times to read in them any but the more normal expressions: Stratos’ eyes, now, might as well have been behind smoked glass.

  I smiled into those blank eyes, and put another brick of truth on the wall of innocence I was trying to build. ‘We got some marvellous pictures this morning, up in the fields. I think the one of your sister at the mill should be a winner. Did she tell you she’d been playing film star?’

  It was difficult to keep myself from glancing towards the office door. Behind it, Sofia was talking again, on a dreadful wailing note. Stratos’ eyelids flickered, and he raised his voice. ‘Sofia told me about it, yes. She showed you over the mill, I believe.’ Behind him the sounds sank abruptly to a murmur; then I heard Tony speaking softly and urgently. ‘I hope you found it interesting,’ said Stratos politely.

  ‘Oh, very. I only wish I could have seen it working, but I suppose that only happens when someone wants some corn grinding?’

  ‘Perhaps that will happen while you are here.’ His voice was noncommittal, his eyes suddenly alive, intent and wary.

  I saw it then. He had not yet had time to think, to assess what had happened. Tony must just have told him that Colin was no longer in the mill, and Sofia – bewildered and no doubt frightened by the discovery of Josef’s knife in my pocket – had walked into the conference, to be met with angry accusations, and a startled reassessment of the situation. What I was hearing now from behind the office door must be the tail end of quite a pretty scene. And it was apparent that Stratos himself was considerably shaken; he was confused, alarmed, and very ready to be dangerous, but for the present, wariness held him back. He wasn’t prepared, yet, to be bolted into the open. He wanted time to think. And all he needed from me, for the moment, was reassurance on two points: namely, that nothing had happened to make me suspicious and therefore dangerous: and – a corollary to this – that I was prepared to stay placidly in Agios Georgios, under his eye, until my holiday came to its natural end. The one would presuppose the other. I only hoped that the knowledge would content him.

  I said, smoothly enough: ‘If it does, I hope you’ll let me know.’

  I smiled at him again, and turned away, but he made a slight movement as if he would have stopped me. ‘Tell me this, Miss Ferris—’

  He was interrupted. The office door opened, and Tony came out. He didn’t come far; just shut the door, very softly, behind him, and stayed there leaning back against the jamb, loose-limbed and graceful as ever. He was smoking, the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He neither smiled nor greeted me, just stood there, and when he spoke he didn’t trouble to remove the cigarette.

  ‘Were you asking Miss Ferris about the fishing?’ he said.

  ‘Fishing?’ The Greek’s head jerked round, and the men’s eyes met. Then Stratos nodded. ‘I was just going to.’ He turned back to me. ‘You were asking me before about the fishing.’

  ‘Fishing?’ It was my turn to sound blank.

  ‘You said you would like to go fishing, did you not?’

  ‘Oh. Yes, I did. Of course.’

  ‘Would you care to come out tonight?’

  ‘Tonight?’ For a moment, both thought and speech were beyond me. My brain felt light and empty as a bubble. Then I saw what to say. Whatever he suspected, whatever he was trying to find out about me, it could do nothing but good to establish those two facts for him here and now.

  I said: ‘Why, I’d love it! Thank you so much! You mean light-fishing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’ve missed the gri-gri.’

  ‘Oh, you saw them? I do not go with them. I told you I fish for pleasure, not for food. I stay near the shore. Then you will come?’

  ‘I’d love it,’ I said enthusiastically. ‘What about Frances?’

  ‘I have spoken to her. She does not wish to go.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Then—’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Tony had removed the cigarette at last, and was smiling at me, his eyes light and cold.

  I smiled back at him. I was sure, now, that they weren’t going to mention the knife, and relief made me genuinely gay. ‘Will you really? That’ll be fun! I didn’t think boats would have been your thing, somehow.’

  ‘Oh, they’re not. But this is a trip I wouldn’t miss for worlds, dear. I can crew for Stratos.’

  ‘There’s no need.’ The Greek spoke roughly. His big hands moved sharply among some papers on the table in front of him, and I saw a vein beating in his temple, up near the hairline. I wondered just what was going on; if Tony was insisting on coming along in order to keep a tight eye on his companion, or merely to help him in whatever plans he might have for me . . .

  ‘Will you be going tomorrow night?’ I asked.

  ‘Tomorrow night?’

  I moistened my lips, looking from one to the other in what I hoped was pretty apology. ‘The thing is . . . if it’s all the same to you . . . I think I honestly am a bit tired tonight. I’ve had a long d
ay, and now that heavenly dinner’s made me sleepy. Would you be going out tomorrow night?’

  A tiny pause. ‘I might.’

  ‘Then would you – yes, I think I would rather leave it till then, if it’s all the same to you?’

  ‘Of course.’ Of all the emotions, relief is the hardest to conceal, and I thought there was relief in the gesture with which he dismissed the plan. He was sure of me now. He smiled. ‘Any time. The boat is at your service.’

  I lingered, hesitating. There was no harm in making him even surer. ‘There was one thing I was going to suggest, Mr Alexiakis. You remember how you said we might make a sea trip one day in the Eros? Well, I did wonder if we might hire it some day soon? I wondered if it would be possible to take a trip along the coast, that way’ – I waved vaguely eastwards – ‘to where the ancient harbour was? The thing is, I found a plant growing on the ruins, today, that’s got my cousin all excited. She says it’s Cretan dittany, do you know it?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Well, she wants to see it growing, and to photograph it, but I think it would be too far and too rough for her to go the whole way over by the track. I did wonder if it wouldn’t be rather fun to take the sea trip. I thought if we could land at the old harbour, then we could simply walk inland to the church; it can’t be far, I could see the sea from just above it. Then she could see the dittany growing, and get her pictures. Come to that, I’d like some pictures of the church myself, and of the harbour. Do you think we could do that? There’s no hurry,’ I finished, ‘any day will do, when you’re not wanting the caique.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said heartily, ‘of course. It is a good idea. I will take you myself. You must just tell me the day before you wish to go. And, for the light-fishing . . . that is settled? Tomorrow night?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, I’ll look forward to it.’

  ‘So shall I,’ said Stratos, smiling, ‘so shall I.’

  This time, he made no attempt to detain me when I went out to where Frances sat with the coffee under the tamarisks. Their boughs were ethereal in the diffused electric light, like clouds. Behind them was the black, murmuring sea, and the black, blank sky The night of no moon. I thought of Stratos, the pallikarás, with that vein beating in his temples, and a murder weighing on his mind. And of Tony. And of myself, out in a small boat with them, alone out there somewhere in the blackness . . .

  I didn’t really pause to ask myself what he could be planning to do, or whether I really had won for myself a respite until tomorrow. I only knew that somewhere out in that same blackness was a lightless caique, with Mark on board, and that, come hell or high water, Frances and I were getting out of this place tonight.

  The stone treads of the stairway were comfortingly silent under our feet. Somewhere, once, a dog barked, and then fell quiet. The sea whispered faintly under the offshore wind; a wilderness of darkness; a huge, quiet creature breathing in the night.

  ‘Keep to the rocks if you can,’ I breathed to Frances. ‘The shingle will make a noise.’

  We padded, soft-shoed, along the smoothed ridges of the rock, where the mats of ice daisies muffled our steps. The night was so dark that, even from here, the solid oblong of the hotel was hardly visible – would have been quite hidden if it had not been blocked in with whitewash. No light showed. Further down the village the darkness was thick also; only two pinpricks of light showed where someone was still awake well after midnight. The faintest ghost of a glimmer from the church hinted at lamps left burning in front of the ikons all night.

  We felt our way along, each yard an agony of suspense; having to move so slowly, but longing to switch on the torch and hurry, hurry . . .

  Now, perforce, we were on shingle. It sounded as loud as an avalanche under our cautious steps. After a dozen slithering paces, I put a hand on Frances’ arm, and drew her to a halt.

  ‘Wait. Listen.’

  We waited, trying to hear beyond the sound of our own breathing. If we had made any noise loud enough to be heard, so, if we were being followed, would our pursuers.

  Nothing; only the breathing of the sea.

  ‘You’re sure there’ll be no moon?’ whispered Frances.

  ‘Sure.’ The sky was black velvet, obscured by the veil of cloud drawing slowly across from the White Mountains. Later, perhaps, it would be thick with stars, but now it was black, black and comforting for the hunted. The moonspinners had done their work. Somewhere out beyond the black horizon, the drowned moon was waiting to unspin in stranded light towards the shore. But not tonight.

  I touched Frances’ arm again, and we went on.

  It is only when one has been out in the night for some time that one begins to see the different densities, even the colours, of darkness. The sea, a living darkness; the shingle, a whispering, shifting, clogging darkness; the cliffs that rose now on our right, a looming lamp-black mass that altered the sound of our footsteps, and of our very breathing. Our progress here was painfully slow, with the cliffs pressing close on our right, thrusting out jagged roots of rock to trip us, and, on the other side, barely a yard away, the edge of the sea, giving a foot, taking a foot, always moving, only visible as a faintly luminous line of pale foam; the only guide we had.

  I have no idea how long this part of the journey took. It seemed like hours. But at last we had traversed the full curve of the bay, and towering in front of us was the high, cathedral-like cliff that stuck out into the sea, right out into deep water that lapped hollowly round its base, creaming up among the fallen boulders of the narrow storm beach which provided the only way round. We had clambered round the point by daylight; could it be done in the dark?

  It had to, of course. But, as a form of exercise, I cannot recommend carrying a suitcase for a mile or so along sand and shingle at dead of night, and then edging one’s way along a narrow path where a false step will mean plunging into a couple of fathoms of sea that, however quiet, is toothed like a shark with jagged fangs of rock.

  I glanced back as I reached the point. The last pinprick of light from the village had disappeared; the bay we had traversed showed only as a gap of darkness.

  Frances, behind me, said breathlessly: ‘Out to sea . . . lights. All over the place.’

  I turned to look, disconcerted to see the blackness alive with tiny lights. Then I realized what it was.

  ‘It’s the light-fishers,’ I told her. ‘They’re a long way out. I saw them going. I suppose we were too low to see them from the bay. Can you manage this? We oughtn’t to show the torch yet.’

  ‘Faint yet pursuing,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Actually, I can see fairly well; I’ve got my night-sight now.’

  The second bay was small, only an inlet, paved with beautifully firm, pale sand that showed up well in the gloom, and provided safe walking. We made good time, and in ten more minutes we had reached the second headland, where, too, the going was comparatively easy. A fairly obvious path had been beaten along the narrow storm beach which lay piled against the point like the foam under a moving prow. I made my way cautiously round the cliff, then down to the hard sand of the Bay of Dolphins. I could see Frances, still on the path, as a vaguely moving shadow, feeling her way carefully down to where I waited.

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Yes.’ She was breathing rather heavily. ‘Is this the bay?’

  ‘Yes. The spit of rock runs out from the far side of it. We’ll have to get out along that, over the deep water. Now we can use the torch, thank heaven. Here—’ I pressed it into her hand – ‘you’d better have it. Give me your case.’

  ‘No. I can easily—’

  ‘Don’t be daft, it isn’t far, and my own weighs nothing. The going’s tricky here . . . it looks as if there are rock pools and things . . . so one of us had better be mobile, and light the way. You can take my shoulder-bag; here. I’ll follow you.’

  Reluctantly, she handed me her case, and took the bag and the torch. The beam of light looked brilliant after the unalleviated blackness; it threw the sand
and rocks into such vivid relief that for the first few moments the sense of distance and proportion was almost annulled.

  At least, that was how it seemed to me, and I must suppose that is what happened to Frances, for she had taken only three or four steps when, suddenly, with a bitten-off exclamation of pain, she seemed to lurch forward, then pitched down on to the sand as if shot. The darkness came down like a blanket as the torch flew from her hand, to be doused on the nearest rock with the ominous, the final sound of breaking glass.

  I dropped the cases and was down beside her. ‘Frances! What is it? What happened?’

  Such had been the havoc wrought on my nervous system during the last three days that I honestly believe that, for a mad moment, I expected to find her dead.

  But she was very much alive, and swearing. ‘It’s my blasted ankle. Did you ever know such a fool, and I had the torch, too. Is the bloody thing broken?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. But your foot—’

  ‘Oh, it’s the same old ankle. It’s all right, don’t worry, it’s only wrenched; the usual. If I sit here a moment and swear hard enough, it’ll pass off. Hell, and I’m wet! You were right about the rock pools; the sand just seemed to shelve straight down into one, or something. I couldn’t see. And now, if the torch has gone—’ She broke off, aghast. ‘Nicky, the torch!’

  ‘Yes, I know. It can’t be helped. He – he’ll surely come close in to look for us, anyway, and we can hail him.’