Seven Tears for Apollo

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  “You’ve gone completely out of your mind,” Fernanda said. “If you keep this up, I’ll have to call a doctor.”

  “Let her alone,” said Johnny, sharp with Fernanda for the first time in Dorcas’s memory. “You can see that something has happened to her.”

  “I know what’s happened to her.” Fernanda’s hand upon Dorcas’s arm permitted no opposition. There was a determination in her that would not be resisted.

  Dorcas found herself firmly propelled in the direction of the car. When they reached it, Johnny helped her gently into the front seat, leaving Fernanda to the back.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “You aren’t alone, you know. I’m with you all the way on this. You’ve had a bad fright, but you mustn’t let it destroy the steps ahead you’ve taken.”

  For all his concern and kindness she knew by his tone that he did not believe it had really been Gino. There was nothing to do except get herself in hand, lean on herself. She did not doubt for a moment what had happened. What she was dealing with now was real. The misty confusion, the self-doubts were gone. Her fears had been fearfully justified beyond all expectation.

  At the hotel Fernanda would not permit her to go alone to her own room. “You must stay with me tonight,” she decided. “We can’t let you frighten Beth while you’re in such a state.”

  Again she was parroting words Gino had spoken that other time—the warning that Beth must be protected from her mother. This was something Dorcas had experienced before and if she was not careful it would have her once more pounding helplessly against the walls of what amounted to a prison. But Johnny was here now. Johnny would not let that happen, even though he, too, seemed helpless to oppose Fernanda at the moment.

  A second bed was brought to Fernanda’s room. Vanda was summoned to fetch Dorcas’s night things. Johnny lingered, helping when he could, looking unhappy and not a little alarmed. Dorcas sat in a chair and watched them. The tears had dried on her cheeks and she was quiet now.

  Once Fernanda stopped before her and spoke, not unkindly. “Dorcas dear, we’re not doubting that something happened to frighten you. It’s the way you’re interpreting this that’s upsetting you so badly. Any flirtatious male might make a gesture toward a pretty girl alone.”

  “And disappear so quickly afterward?” Dorcas asked.

  Fernanda shrugged largely. “Who knows what a Greek will do? But for you to think it was Gino—my dear!”

  Dorcas said nothing. No one but Gino could know of a caress that had been his special sign of affection in the early months of their marriage and a frightening mockery of affection later.

  From a bottle in her medicine kit Fernanda shook two capsules into her palm. Johnny went for a glass of water.

  “A good sleep will help,” Fernanda said. “You’ll be over this by morning. For Beth’s sake you must be.”

  She did not want the capsules. She wanted to think, to weigh, to understand. But there was no resisting Fernanda. Her strength was waning in sick reaction. As she took the glass of water, she looked at Johnny.

  “Philerimos tomorrow?” she said.

  He was clearly miserable. “We’ll see how you are when tomorrow comes. You may not be up to the trip, Dorcas.”

  “I’ll be up to it,” she said. “You promised me.”

  She felt like a child pleading for a reward: “If I am a good girl you will give me the mountain.” There was little logic in her conviction that she must go to Mount Philerimos. She knew only that it was an active step, something to do when no other way of fighting seemed possible.

  “What are you, talking about?” Fernanda demanded suspiciously.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Johnny said. And to Dorcas, “The promise holds.” He put a finger beneath her chin to tilt her head and his touch was not like Gino’s. “Have a good sleep tonight. Your friends are close and there’s no need to worry.”

  She closed her eyes, accepting his assurance as far as it went. Johnny still did not believe in the cause of her fright. And he did not understand that Fernanda stood with Gino against her.

  When he went away and she was alone with Fernanda, she could only sit staring at her in aversion.

  “Come,” Fernanda said, “let me undo that back zipper.”

  She made herself stand docile while Fernanda ran the zipper down and helped her pull the dress over her head. As Fernanda shook it out and reached for a hanger, Dorcas stepped mechanically out of her pumps.

  “I hate to say this, dear,” Fernanda spoke over her shoulder, “but I’m afraid you’re not very good for Johnny Orion. I’m fond of that young man. I’d hate to see—”

  “Yes, I know,” Dorcas said. “If I have a husband alive, I’m obviously the wrong girl for Johnny Orion.”

  After that she did not speak to Fernanda again. The fact did not seem to disconcert Miss Fern Farrar. Her assumption that she was dealing with someone emotionally disturbed was clear. Her movements were as efficient as those of a nurse, kindly but impersonal.

  When Dorcas was in bed, Fernanda went to bed herself and sat up with the reading lamp turned carefully away from Dorcas’s eyes, while she read a paperback mystery novel.

  Dorcas lay with her face toward the wall and let the thoughts come as they would. If Gino was alive and hiding here in Rhodes, then she would be faced by the most fearful of all problems before this thing was done. First of all, the problem of Beth. The little girl must not fall into her father’s hands. Gino was capable of any unscrupulous action that would give him what he wanted. And if he were alive, he would not let Beth go forever.

  Tomorrow on the trip to Philerimos she would talk calmly to Johnny. The panic of first fright would be over by then. She would make him understand and believe, as she had not been able to do tonight. Johnny would help her.

  Next there was the problem of Fernanda. If Gino was alive, it was not possible that Fernanda did not know. Under any and all circumstances Gino could trust Fernanda. If she was useful to him, he would use her, and she would allow herself to be used. That was clearer than ever now.

  But why would Gino make his presence known to his wife? The gesture he had made was typically cruel and devastating, as only Gino would know it could be. But why, if he was safely hidden for some purpose of his own, would he choose to betray himself to the one person he had most reason to distrust? Had he seen her with Johnny? Had he seen Johnny kiss her?

  The chill wash of terror went through her again. Never had Gino relinquished anything that belonged to him. What he possessed, he possessed with an all-enveloping grasp, whether the item had lost value for him or not. He would never have let her go by any choice except his own. What Gino arranged could be permitted. The choice of others did not exist Perhaps, from the beginning, Fernanda in her role of devoted handmaiden had encouraged his tendency to play the role of a god-like being who could do no wrong and to whom all that he wished must be given. There had been no one like Johnny’s father to take hold and do what needed to be done with Gino as a young boy. Or would it have been hopeless anyway?

  Gradually the sedative took effect and all feeling deadened. The sense of struggling against walls that closed about her faded and she slept.

  In the morning her mouth was dry and she had a headache. She awakened to see that Fernanda was dressed and opening the balcony doors wide to morning air. Dorcas sat up on the edge of her bed, struggling from the fog that had blotted out consciousness all night long. For a moment she did not know why she was in this room.

  “Beth?” she said. “Where is Beth?”

  “Good morning,” Fernanda said cheerily. “Vanda has just taken her down to breakfast. We didn’t know how long you would sleep. How are you feeling now, my dear?”

  It was all there again, emerging from the fog to engulf her sickly. She stared at Fernanda with a dislike she had never felt before.

  “Gino is alive,” she said. “You needn’t try to fool me any more. He gave himself away last night.”

  Fernanda came briskly t
o her side and felt her forehead. “A bit of a temperature, perhaps? Why don’t you lie down again, dear? I’ll send a tray up for you when I go downstairs.”

  Dorcas pushed her hand away and got up to walk unsteadily to the bathroom. Under a stinging shower she came slowly to life. She hated this thick-headed feeling. Today Johnny was to take her to Mount Philerimos. She needed to think clearly, to be calm and unemotional. She would not pretend with Fernanda that Gino had not touched her last night, but she would give her no handhold for treating her like an invalid.

  When she came out of the shower, Fernanda had gone downstairs, leaving her a note to come along if she felt like it. Coffee would help, the postscript said. She dressed, fumbling a little, and followed the others downstairs.

  Every morning two of the small tables at the dining end of the lobby were put together for them at breakfast—since Vanda and Beth joined them for this meal. They were all there ahead of her—Fernanda looking calm and collected and not at all as though she hid any terrible secrets. Johnny was making Beth laugh, while Vanda watched the child with the same absorption Dorcas had noted in her before and which always made her uncomfortable.

  They looked up as she approached the table, Beth with a cry of pleasure, Johnny with a question in his eyes.

  “What plans today?” Dorcas asked Fernanda over her first cup of coffee, trying to sound casual.

  “I’ve some appointments,” Fernanda said. “And Johnny tells me he has promised you a drive to Philerimos, if I can let you both off. I can’t make it up there with you today, but he’s probably right that a change of pace will do you good. I won’t ask you to make notes, or do any observing for me. I don’t think there’s much to be seen up there anyway except for the monastery and the view. What time will you leave?”

  Johnny smiled at Dorcas. “An hour or so before noon, I’d say.” He had remembered about the “hour of devils.”

  When breakfast was over, Fernanda sent Mrs. Petrus on an errand, and somehow Beth went with her. When Dorcas tried to object and keep the child in her own company, she was quickly overruled.

  “You’re oozing disquiet,” Fernanda told her when they were back in her room. “You must know that it isn’t good to be with Beth when you’re like this. It frightens her. I hope you’ll return from your drive fully recovered from your upset of last evening.”

  In spite of good resolutions, Dorcas lost her temper. In words that spilled but in anger, she repeated her account of what had happened while she waited beneath the castle walls last night. Fernanda listened impassively with the endurance of a nurse who must humor a difficult patient. Before Dorcas was through, she knew fully how hopeless it was. Fernanda had closed a door in her mind and there was no way to get through unless she chose to open it again.

  During the morning Dorcas went for a long walk through the streets of the outer city. By the very vigor of physical movement she held herself in check. To accept reality meant to deal with it. There need be no shame in fear so long as she stood up to it.

  Standing up to the fact of Gino was desperately hard. All the ramifications were sweeping in now to engulf her. Where yesterday she could move easily at Johnny’s side, Gino now stood between—which might well mean danger to Johnny, as well as hurt to herself. She had only to recall what had happened to Markos. Worst of all was the fact that Gino was Beth’s father, and the knowledge that he would never willingly give her up. With Fernanda’s help it might be rather easy to remove Beth from her mother’s hands and give her over to her father, to return Dorcas to the hospital.

  She fought back the touch of familiar hysteria that started at the pit of her stomach. This time she would not go to pieces. This time she would fight back with full knowledge of the treachery around her, full confidence in her own sanity. Johnny had given her that. Johnny did not dream how much he had given her.

  That morning she saw no man with a pulled-down cap when she came out of the hotel or when she returned from her walk. But just before she left her room to join Johnny, she looked down from the balcony and he was there again. She called Johnny into her room to show him the watcher. The man must have seen them looking down, for he ground out his cigarette beneath his heel, and went around the corner, stepping lightly and quickly, for all his hunched-over stance. Johnny was unimpressed. Nevertheless, when they got into the car, he drove about the neighborhood to please her. The man she had noted was not to be seen. For the first part of the drive an uneasiness about him remained and she had the same feeling she’d had before—that of being followed.

  Again they took the shore road that ran toward Camiros. Johnny talked idly, cheerfully as he drove, and she knew he was trying to distract her from her own fearful thoughts. Only once did she break in on his words.

  “You trust Fernanda, don’t you?”

  “She has never been anything but honest with me,” he said readily.

  “Even that other time when Gino was along?”

  “Even then,” he said. “As I told you, I thought he was using her as an innocent cover. I don’t believe she had any suspicion of what it was all about.”

  “This time she would have to know,” Dorcas said. “She is helping him deliberately.”

  “Unless you’ve made some sort of basic mistake,” said Johnny gently.

  After that she stared straight ahead through the windshield and did not try again. The old walls were closing to seal her in. Even if she were crushed by them, no one would hear her cries. Not even Johnny. A prisoner falsely accused must feel like this, she thought. Able to get through to no one, to make no one believe. Unless—unless Fernanda and Johnny were right and she was wrong. Unless she was really suffering from a persecution sense, a fear of Gino that made him seem alive and a constant danger to her. But then, surely, she would see him everywhere. She would have believed the watcher at the hotel to be Gino, and this was not true. While she had not seen the man’s face, he had been a big man, far larger than Gino.

  It was the first time she had wavered into self-doubt since she had come to a reckoning with herself, and she would not allow it. There was no question now that she was dealing with anything but reality.

  The shore road ran through little villages. Often the doors of houses they passed were painted a bright particular blue seen often in Rhodes. Drying wreaths hung upon many of the doors—spring wreaths that would later be burned in midsummer ceremonies on Saint John’s Eve.

  Their way left the sea and they were again upon the road to the airport. In the distance, across the open plain, could be seen the airport building and the hangars. On the left rose the sheer rocky flank of Mount Philerimos. It was a long bulk of mountain with a flat plateau on top.

  “There’s a lot of hill up there,” Johnny said. “Where shall we start the search?”

  “The place must be near the Castle of the Princess,” Dorcas said. “That is the church and we can start looking around there. Something will come to us. I’m sure it will.”

  After the attractive suburban village of Trianda, the road turned directly toward the mountain. Back and forth it zigzagged among the pines, climbing steeply now, until they came out at last on a wide expanse near the top. A tourist bus was there ahead of them and as they got out of the car, a stream of sight-seers came toward them through iron gates that led to the monastery enclosure. Fortunately, the group was leaving, and it appeared that Dorcas and Johnny would have the mountaintop to themselves.

  The day had turned gray and intermittently cloudy, with a strong, whipping wind. They stepped through the gates and climbed the steps into the open space before the old monastery. Dust and sand rose with every gust of wind and Dorcas felt the sting of it through her stockings.

  “Over there is all that remains of Iyalisos,” Johnny said.

  In a corner of the grounds lay what few foundations were to be seen of the city that had occupied this height long before the monastery was built. There was little to see, although Dorcas stood for a few moments on the brink of the excavation,
looking down upon the handful of broken stones.

  “Does anything come to you?” Johnny asked. “The sun is right,” he added, glancing up at the sky where a few rays filtered through clouds directly overhead.

  Dorcas felt a shiver run through her. The crumbling stones of Iyalisos seemed a place of the dead. Here there was none of the dreaming peace of Camiros. There were no shadows. Everything was gray and lifeless—except the wind.

  She turned in relief toward the great medieval buildings of the monastery. Here there was still evidence of life. A huge round bell tower with a deeply arched doorway in its base rose at one end of the building. Narrow stone steps climbed outside the tower. In the courtyard stood an old well, very deep and hollow sounding when Johnny dropped a pebble into it. All about were cypress trees, their tall heads swaying in the wind. No human stirred, and they turned toward low, red-tiled buildings where monks had walked the arcaded passage of a cloister for hundreds of years after the gods of Greece had taken their leave.

  This orderly, well-kept place seemed unlikely for their search. There must be caretakers inside, although they were invisible now. The two walked around to the rear of the buildings and found an expanse of field where small daisies and bright red poppies grew wild. Nearby rocky cliffs plunged toward the plain far below. Anywhere—or nowhere—might have been chosen for the “grave.”

  “How could the person who received that note know where the marble head was buried?” Dorcas said despairingly. “The clues are all given, except the one most important one—where.”

  “Maybe there’s something we’re missing completely,” Johnny said. “Let’s not give up yet.”

  But searching here seemed pointless and Dorcas turned into the wind and walked toward the iron gates, her skirts blowing against her legs, sand stinging her face.

  “There must be a lookout point,” she said. “I suppose we ought to see the view, since we’re here.”

  A path opposite the gates ran in a long, straight line toward the place where the light beacon stood. They followed it between cypress trees and discovered that they followed a Way of the Cross. At intervals bronze plaques had been set into stone columns, each representing a Station of the Cross—a scene in relief from Christ’s passion and suffering. On the left side of the Way as they passed the fourteen stations lay the steep drop off of the mountain. On the other, beyond guardian cypress trees, lay an open field, flower-sprinkled, and rimmed around with a forest of pines. On the cliff side of the path thistles grew thick, their heads in purple bloom.