by Mary Stewart
This got through. Mark half-turned, but at that moment the note of the caique’s engine changed, and Lambis spoke, urgently and quietly:
‘Here, we go in now. See him? He will make fast in a moment. Colin, light the lamp again; he must have seen us now. When we get in, you make her fast; I will go to help Mark. Take the boat-hook; you know what to do.’
‘Yes.’ But the boy hesitated a moment. ‘If he has a gun?’
‘He won’t use it,’ said Mark. ‘He can’t know who we are, for a start.’
This was undoubtedly true, but it had already occurred to me that Stratos might be making a fairly shrewd guess. In any case, whether or not he guessed whose caique was pursuing him, he must know that its owners had rescued me from his murderous attack, and were bound on an errand, if not of violent retribution, then, at least, of angry enquiry – which would lead to the very uproar he wanted to avoid. We were, in other words, hard on the heels of a man both angry and involved to the point of desperation.
‘Anyway,’ Mark was saying, ‘we’ve got one too, remember. Now, don’t worry, here we go.’
I pushed the empty mug back into the cabin, and shut the door. I half expected to be told to go in after it, but nobody even noticed me. Lambis and Mark were both leaning out, watching the dim rocks of the shore rush to meet us. Colin, on the prow, held the boat-hook at the ready. The caique heeled more sharply still, then drove in.
Stratos had seen us, of course. But even at the cost of helping us, he had to have light. As the light-boat ran in to the landing, he switched on the huge lamps, and I heard Lambis give a grunt of satisfaction.
Stratos cut his engine, and the boat lost way abruptly, slipping alongside the rocks. I saw him, the figure of my nightmare, rope in one hand, boat-hook in the other, poised beside the lights. Then his boat touched, kissed stone, and jarred to a rocking halt as the boat-hook flashed out and held her. I saw him glance back, and seem to hesitate. Then the lights went out.
‘Ready?’ Lambis’ voice was almost inaudible, but it affected me like a shout.
‘Okay,’ said Mark.
The three of them must, of course, have worked together at berthing the caique many times before. This time, done fast and in semi-darkness, it was a rough berthing, but still surprisingly slick.
The engine accelerated briefly, and was killed. The caique jumped forward, then skidded sideways against the moored boat, using her as a buffer. I heard poor Psyche grind against the rock as the caique scraped along her sides. She was empty. Stratos was already on shore: I saw him, caught momentarily in our lurching lights, bending to fling a couple of rapid loops of rope round a stanchion.
Then Mark, in a standing leap from the caique’s bows, landed beside him.
As the Cretan swung to face the challenge, Mark hit him. I heard the blow connect, sickeningly, and Stratos went staggering back. Mark jumped after him, and then they were beyond the reach of our lights, a couple of plunging, swearing shadows, somewhere in the scented darkness under the tamarisks.
Lambis pushed past me, scrambling ungracefully on the thwarts to leap ashore. Colin said urgently: ‘Here, you tie her up.’ shoved a rope into my hand, and jumped after Lambis, belting across the gravel into the darkness, where the roughhouse of the century was now playing havoc with the peaceful island night. Tables hurtled over, chairs went flying, someone shouted from a nearby house, dogs barked, cocks crew, Stratos was shouting, Colin yelled something, and then a woman cried out from somewhere, shrill and frightened. Stratos’ homecoming could not have been more public if he had had television cameras and a brass band.
A light flashed on in the hotel.
I could hear a babel of other shouts, now, in the village street, and running footsteps, and men’s voices, curious and excited. They were bringing lights . . .
I suddenly realized that the caique – with me in it – was beginning to drift away from shore. Shaking like a leaf with cold, nerves and reaction, I managed somehow to find the boat-hook, pull her in, and crawl out on to the rock. I went stiffly to my knees, and began to wind the rope round the stanchion. I remember that I wound it very carefully, as if the safety of us all depended on how neatly I curled the rope round the metal. Four, five, six careful turns . . . and I believe I was even trying solemnly to knot the thing – all the while straining to see what was happening out there under the tamarisks – when the shadowy mêlée grew dimmer still, and I realized that the light in the hotel had gone out again.
Feet came running, lightly. I heard a quick tread on gravel, then he was coming, fast, along the rock towards me, dodging through the shadows. A glimmer of light from one of the advancing lanterns touched him. It was Tony.
I was full in his way, sitting there numbly, holding my rope. I don’t even remember being afraid, but even if I had been, I doubt if I could have moved. He must have been armed, but he neither touched me nor turned aside for me – he simply jumped straight over me, so lightly that one almost expected Weber’s long harp glissandos to pour spectrally from the wings.
‘Excuse me, dear—’ His voice was quick and high, and only a little breathless. Another leap landed him in the frantically rocking Psyche. There was a jerk at her rope as he cut it, the engine burst raucously into life, and Psyche lurched away from the rock so sharply that she must have shipped water.
‘. . . High time to leave.’ I thought I heard the light, affected voice quite plainly. ‘Such a rough party . . .’
Then lights everywhere, and men shouting, and the dogfight was coming my way.
Here was Mark, with a stain spreading across his shirt, reeling backwards from a blow, to trip over a chair, which, collapsing, crashed with him to the ground. Stratos aimed a kick at his head, which went wide as Lambis, charging through a tangle of metal tables, knocked him aside; and then the pair of them hurtled, furniture flying, through a crackling fog of tamarisk boughs, to fetch up hard against a tree trunk. A píthos of carnations went rolling wildly: Stratos, who must know, even in semi-darkness, the hazards of his own territory, side-stepped it, but it struck Lambis full in the legs, just as the Cretan managed, at last, to pull his knife.
Lambis, lunging for the knife-hand, trod on the rolling pot, missed, and went down, tangled with carnations, and swearing lamentably. And now Mark, on his feet again, was lurching forward through the cheval-de-frise of tables, with behind him a crowd of milling, shadowy figures responding enthusiastically – if blindly – to Lambis’ shouts.
Stratos didn’t wait. He must have seen Tony, heard Psyche’s engine, and thought the boat was ready there, and waiting. He swept aside the tamarisk branches with one powerful arm, and, knife at the ready, came racing for the edge of the sea.
He had suffered a good deal of damage; I saw that straight away, but it didn’t seem to affect the speed of this final, expresstrain rush for freedom. Then he saw me, crouching there over the stanchion, full in his path . . . and, in the same moment, he must have seen that Psyche had gone . . . but the caique was there, and he hesitated only fractionally before he came on.
The knife flashed as he lifted it, whether for me or the rope I was never to know, for Colin flew yelling out of the dark like a mad terrier, and fastened on the knife-arm with – apparently – arms, legs, and teeth combined.
It hardly checked the Cretan. He stumbled, half-turned, brought his free hand round in a smashing blow which brushed the boy off like a fly from a bull’s flank, then, a mad bull charging, he hurtled towards me down the last stretch of rock.
I lifted the rope I was holding, and it caught him full across the shins.
I have never seen a man go such a purler. He seemed to dive forward, full length, towards the rocks. The breath was driven out of him in a gasping cry, then, out of nowhere, Mark plummeted down on top of him in a sort of flying tackle, rolled over with him, then let his arms drop, and got rather unsteadily to his feet.
‘One more to you,’ he said, and grinned. Then he pitched down on top of the Cretan’s unconscious body, a
nd went out like a light.
20
Tho’ much is taken, much abides . . .
TENNYSON: Ulysses
The cabin of the caique was very full. There was Mark, rather white, and newly bandaged; myself looking in Colin’s pants and Mark’s enormous sweater like a beatnik after a thick night; Lambis looking tough and collected, but still smelling exotically of carnations; Colin, with a new bruise on his cheek, silent, and rather close to Mark’s side. That was the crew. With us, at the tiny cabin table, sat the headman of Agios Georgios, and three of the village elders, old men dressed in the savage splendour of Cretan heroic costume, which I suspected (from the speed with which they had arrived on the scene with every button in place) that they slept in. These were our judges – the Lord Mayor and all the Commissioners of Assize – while outside, in the well of the deck, and sitting on the engine coamings, and along the rocks, sat the whole array of jurors, the entire male population of Agios Georgios.
Four men had taken Stratos up to the hotel, there to watch over – and watch – him. Tony had, in the general confusion, got clear away. Although by this time most of the light-boats – attracted by the bedlam of noise and lights at the hotel – were converging on us across the bay, none of those near enough had had an engine, so Tony had dodged his way to freedom with the utmost ease and – it was reported – all the loose cash from the hotel, together with a sizeable number of his own portable possessions. But it should be simple, they said, to pick him up . . .
Myself, I rather doubted this. The cool-headed Tony, with his genius for dissociating himself from trouble, at large in the Aegean with a good boat, and the coasts of Europe, Africa, and Asia Minor to choose from? But I said nothing. We ourselves had need of all the sympathetic attention we could command.
It had not taken long for the four of us to tell our story. We had omitted nothing, down to the smallest detail of Josef’s death. Over this, there were grave looks, and some head-shaking, but I could see that the main climate of opinion was on our side. It seemed obvious that the actual acts of violence which Stratos had committed meant little, in themselves, to these men, and it might have gone differently with us if we had killed Stratos himself, whatever he had done in the course of his own private feud. But the death of Josef the Turk – and a Turk from Chania, at that – was (one gathered) quite a different thing. And in the matter of poor Sofia Alexiaki, who would have enough to bear when her brother’s story came to light, it could be seen as the mercy of heaven that now, at last, as a widow, she could once more be a free woman, and a Christian. She could even – Christ be praised – make her Communion this very Easter Sunday . . .
The rest was to be as easy. When Stratos later recovered consciousness, to be confronted with the discovery of the jewels in his fishing grounds, the body of Alexandros (which was in fact found buried in the field by the mill), the guilty defection of Tony, and, finally, the death of Josef, he took the easiest way out for himself, and told a story which, in essentials, seemed to be an approximation of the truth.
He and Alexandros were not (as Colin’s theory had had it) thieves, but had for some years been partners as ‘fences’, or receivers of stolen goods, with Tony as a kind of assistant and liaison officer. Stratos, running an honestly profitable little restaurant in Frith Street, had provided unimpeachable ‘cover’, and he and Alexandros had apparently had no connection other than a friendship, between compatriots. Even this friendship had a perfectly natural explanation, for Alexandros was a Cretan, too, a native of Anoghia, the village which lay in the heights beyond the ruined Byzantine church. So things had gone on prosperously for a time, until the affair of the big Camford House robbery.
But Stratos had the good business man’s instinct for getting out of the deal at the right moment, and, well before the robbery at Camford House, he had set about realizing his assets at leisure, and in good order, ostensibly to retire with his ‘pile’ to his native village. Alexandros – who could see only that a highly lucrative partnership was packing up in the moment of its greatest prosperity – bitterly opposed Stratos’ move. Argument after argument supervened, culminating in a violent quarrel on the very eve of Stratos’ departure, when Alexandros was driven to utter threats which he almost certainly had no intention of carrying out. The inevitable happened; tempers snapped, and knives were drawn – and Alexandros was left for dead in a back alley at least two miles from Frith Street, while Stratos and Tony innocently embarked that same night on the flight for Athens, for which their bookings had been made at least six weeks previously.
Recovering slowly in a London hospital, Alexandros held his tongue. Possibly he realized now – in the hue and cry over the disappearance of the Camford jewels – that Stratos’ withdrawal had been opportune. The only thing was, Stratos had taken the lot . . .
As soon as he was fit, and was sure that the police had not yet connected the obscure stabbing affair in Lambeth with the Camford robbery, Alexandros in his turn retired – armed – to his native land.
If it could ever be said that stupidity rated a punishment as final as murder, it would seem that Alexandros asked for what he got. Stratos and Tony received him – understandably – with a certain wariness, but soon, somehow, the affair was patched up, and there followed a scene of reconciliation and apology, made more plausible by the presence of Sofia and Josef. Stratos would, in good time, divide the spoils, and the three men would go their separate ways, but meanwhile it was only reasonable for all three to lie low for a period, until the jewels could, in some form or other, find their way gradually on to the market. This agreed, the family party (well wined and dined, Soho-fashion, by Tony) set out to escort Alexandros over to his own village, but on the way an argument had arisen, over the disposal of the jewels, which had sprung almost immediately into a quarrel. And then, Alexandros had laid a hand to his gun . . .
It is probable, even, that Alexandros was not quite so stupid or credulous as the story made him. Stratos swore, and continued to swear, that he himself had never intended murder. It was Josef who had killed Alexandros, Josef who had shot at Mark, and who had gone, on his own initiative and without orders from Stratos, to make sure of Mark’s death. As for Colin, who had been dragged off in a moment of panic-stricken and drunken confusion, Stratos swore that it was he himself who had given the order for Colin’s release, and here (he said, and nobody doubted him) his sister would bear him out.
And, finally, the attack on me . . . Well, what did anyone expect? He had gone to make a routine check of his spoils, and had found a girl whom he suspected of some connection with Josef’s mysterious absence, diving after his pots. He had only done what any man would have done in his place – and here, it was obvious, the meeting rather agreed with him – and in any case he had only been trying to frighten, not to kill me.
But all this was for morning. Now, the first explanations over, our story pieced together, weighed, and at last accepted, someone came across from the hotel with coffee for everyone, and glasses of spring water. By the time dawn broke, Agios Georgios had settled happily down to the greatest sensation since the Souda Bay landing.
I sat, weary, drowsy, and warm, with the cut in my thigh throbbing painfully, and my body relaxed into the curve of Mark’s arm. The air of the cabin was slate-grey with smoke, and the walls vibrated with the noise of talking, and the clash of glasses as emphatic fists struck the little table. I had long since stopped trying to follow the thick, rapid Greek. Leave it to Mark, I thought sleepily; leave it all to Mark. My part in it was over; let him cope with the rest, then, soon, we could all sail away, free at last to salvage what remained of our respective holidays . . .
A memory cut through the smoky cabin like a knife-blade of cold air. I sat up abruptly, out of the circle of Mark’s arm.
‘Mark! Mark, wake up! There’s Frances!’
He blinked. ‘Do you mean to tell me – dear heaven, of course, I’d clean forgotten! She must be back there in the bay!’
‘Well, of
course she is! She’s sitting there on a rock with a twisted ankle. Frances, I mean, not the rock. Oh dear, how could we? That’s twice I’ve remembered – at least forgotten, but—’
‘Pull yourself together,’ said Mark kindly. ‘Look, sweetie, don’t start another panic; she’ll be all right. Believe it or not, it’s barely an hour and a half since we picked you up. If we go straight back there now—’
‘It’s not that! She’ll be wondering what happened! She must be half out of her mind!’
‘Not she,’ he said cheerfully. ‘She’d seen us haul you in. She was yelling for help while you were in the water, with Stratos after you. It was the noise she made that brought us in – that, and the odd way his light was behaving, so near our rendezvous. Then, once we got near enough, there was too much to do, and I clean forgot her. Oh, and she threw a rock at Stratos.’
‘Did she? Good for her! Did she hit him?’
‘Did you ever know a female hit anything? That she aimed at, I mean? She hit me,’ said Mark. He got to his feet, and addressed the concourse in Greek. This was to the effect that there was another English lady to be rescued, some way westwards along the coast, and that they would have to trust him and his party not to run away, but we must immediately go and fetch her.
Instantly every man present was on his feet. I am not quite sure what happened, amid the passionate babel of Cretan Greek, but in a very few minutes, as the caique swung away from shore, she was as well attended as a Cunarder edging her way out into Southampton Water. Not a man in Agios Georgios but would have died on the spot sooner than stay behind. Those light-boats that possessed engines had now caught up with us, lights blazing. Those that had not bobbed valiantly in our wake. Astern of us loomed the bigger mother-shapes of the Agia Barbara, and the innocent Eros, It was a noble procession.
To Frances, sitting nursing her sore ankle on her lonely rock, we must have been a brave sight, a pack of lighted boats swinging round the headland, our lamps yellow against the growing dawn.