“A historical mystery that has just about everything: a fresh, beautifully realized exotic setting; a strong, confident protagonist; a poignant love story; and an exquisitely complex plot.”
—Denver Post

“Evocative narrative, sensitive characterizations, artful dialogue, and masterly plotting.”
—Library Journal

Delightfully surprising
.” —Mystery News

“Cleverly combines a colorful historical setting…with a complex plot and well-developed characters…. Makes a natural for fans of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody.”

—Booklist

“Atmospheric…intricately plotted.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A deeply satisfying experience…A finely crafted, well-thought-out novel, with a deep penetration of the many layers to characters who refuse to live by the King's Rules.”

—Drood Review of Mystery

Since classical times, travellers setting their foot down on the stepping stone between three continents that is The Great Island have fallen under the spell it weaves. They have been enchanted by its beauty, its mystery, and the character of its people.

Some nations, sadly, have stayed on for centuries as conquerors and exploiters. But, through the long years of domination, the Cretans have remained determinedly themselves. I'm glad that my own people, the British, have trodden lightly, loving and respecting what they saw, and even fighting shoulder to shoulder with the islanders when times got tough. Only sixteen years after the action of this book, the English archaeologist John Pendlebury put down his spade, picked up a rifle, and died battling for Cretan freedom.

My story is no more than that—a story, a work of fiction. It owes much to the discoveries of the early diggers on Crete: Minos Kalokairinos, Sir Arthur Evans, Pendlebury, and many others of several nationalities through to the present day. Recent excavations on the slopes of Mount Juktas by the Greek archaeologists J. and E. Sakellarakis have been far more dramatic than any I could invent.

One of the latest in a long line of admirers of all things Cretan, I read with a smile of recognition the words of a much earlier one, a Scot, William Lithgow, who spent some time on Crete in 1609. He lists with evident appreciation the produce of the island—its Malmsey wine, its oranges, lemons, and melons, its cheeses, its three kinds of grape, and its “medicinable hearbes.” I've tasted them all. And I love the way he swoons (
can
this be a dour Scotsman writing? Perhaps he's drunk a bucket of the local
raki?
) into a description of Candia as it was called in his day:
the garden of the whole universe: being the goodliest plot, the Diamondsparke, and Honny Spot of all Candy.

Well, I'll raise a glass to that sentiment!

Candia, Crete. August 1898

T
he big gates were in sight and were standing open. I peered round the corner of the street, huddled at my mother's side, clutching a fold of her robe as I'd been told. I felt the sudden surge in her anxiety. We'd been terrified enough by the savage noise on all sides, but the unaccountable silence was even more paralysing. The drums had stopped banging; the muezzin's triumphant cries had ceased; the roaring of men, the screams and pistol shots had all mysteriously come to a climax and ended abruptly on the stroke of noon. Only the crackle from burning houses broke the stillness.

We had only a few yards to go when we turned into the tree-lined avenue. In the grand houses fronting it, I knew, the rich lived—the officials and the merchants. Time for boldness now, no more scurrying along in the shadows. I could see the Khania gate clearly, a pack of Janissaries manning it, a further platoon, riflemen, in position along the battlements, and beyond, drawing my gaze with the lure of a mirage, the gleam of silvery slopes covered with olive trees. I imagined I could smell the thyme on the hot hillside and make out a mule track zigzagging its way up to a village. To safety.

It was the dead donkey and its dead rider that unnerved me. I put my slippered foot into a pool of blood and offal, and I squealed. I'd seen worse sights that morning and stayed silent, but the stickiness of the clotting blood, the swarm of gathering flies, and the not knowing whether it was the man's or the animal's blood staining the hem of my dress made me cry out. My thin wail of surprise and horror was instantly picked up. Two Turkish soldiers burst through the open door of one of the grand houses, stuffing gold chains and necklaces into their pockets. They stood before us, blocking our way. They were not local men, I thought. Rough men with pockmarked faces. Some of the freshly imported reserves from Istanbul. Albanian, most probably.

One took his dagger from between his teeth to ask my mother in crude Turkish, “Where's your man? And where do you think you're going?”

My mother replied, eyes downcast even though they were obscured by her veil. “Sir, my daughter and I are on our way to the baths.”

The men hooted in derision. “Well, that's Turkish ladies for you! A bloody riot on, but they won't miss their weekly bath!”

“Twice weekly, if you please!” said my mother with some spirit and they laughed again.

“But you haven't told us—where's your man?”

“My man is lying dead. In the Greek quarter.” Mother gestured back the way we had come, releasing a trace of musky perfume from her sleeve. “Last week. He was a tax inspector. The giaours—curse all Greeks—slit his throat. The Pasha himself came to tell me. I've searched every day for his remains. And now I must wash the filth of the unbelievers off my body.”

I'd never heard my mother lie before and suddenly here were eight lies, one after the other, and all told with absolute conviction. I have never been more proud of her. I shuddered and mewled pitifully in support and swished my bloodstained hem about.

“Well, you have no luck today. Baths not open for business.”

“Stokers not manning the furnaces,” said the second slyly.

The first gave a full-throated guffaw, as though his companion had made a joke. “Not manning exactly…
fuelling,
perhaps! We chucked them in!”

My mother's hand tightened on mine. But her voice betrayed no alarm as she replied: “A good use for them. I expect they burn well—all that oil they consume.”

They roared with laughter. “Take my advice, mistress: Go back home by the shortest route and put up the barricades. This is going to get worse.”

She thanked the pair meekly for their advice and, instantly forgetting us, the two men turned back to their pillaging As we hesitated, preparing to make our run, we saw the gates slowly begin to close and heard the clang as they came together. The Khania gate had never been closed at noon before. We and thousands like us were trapped in a city of red-eyed madmen wielding scimitars, daggers, and rifles. Men who would eviscerate a donkey whose owner was not of their religion wouldn't hesitate to slaughter a small girl and her mother.

We reached our cousins' house intact by walking with unconcern back along through the alleyways. No scurrying or slinking! With her basket over her arm, my mother appeared to be off to market, an everyday sight, unalarming attracting no attention.

It took a threat to knock the door down noisily before anyone would come to let us in. We didn't know these city cousins well—had stayed with them only while we attended my great-grandfather's funeral. It pleased us no more than it pleased them to be stranded in their house in the Greek quarter while death and destruction swirled on all sides. It was my father who finally heard us and opened their door. He hugged us, glad to see us back again but devastated by the failure of our attempt to escape the city.

“It's worse than we had supposed,” my mother reported. “You should never have sent us to try! There is no safety. The streets are full of crazy soldiers, pillaging and killing Muslim—Christian—it no longer matters. All are dying No one is in command. We must sit it out. If the worst comes to the worst, and the enemy comes through the door, you must kill us both. We have seen what they can do.”

I looked at my father's fierce face and the sinewy brown hands that were never still and never far from the silver hilt of the dagger in his belt. His ancient rifle was propped against the door frame, loaded and ready. My father was not a man to sit anything out. Now that he had his wife and ten-year-old child at his heels to defend, he would not consider simply getting away. He would turn and fight. And all I longed for at that moment was to throw off my constricting skirts, seize a pistol, and take my place at his elbow.

* * *

Two more days passed and we survived. My father made occasional forays into the street, mostly at night and prompted, it seemed to me, by mysterious raps on the door. He would return, panting, wild-eyed, and wipe his blade on the rag my mother handed him. Our water butt was running low and we were down to the last crumbs of barley bread. We could smell fire; we heard shots and shouting Once my father called for silence while he listened through the door he'd opened a crack.

“Father, what do you hear?”

“Bugles. Commands in a foreign tongue.”

He was not smiling Not relieved. Not yet. He stayed on watch.

An hour later there was a banging on the door and someone shouted my father's name. One of his cousins stood on the threshold, blood-spattered, breathless, not seeking entry.

“Come! Now! We need y our help,” he urged my father. “They've arrested Suleiman. Your uncle Suleiman. They'll execute him if someone doesn't speak for him. You're a Man of Law—come and do your bit! You speak Greek, Turkish, Italian…you'll make them understand somehow. Leave your weapons behind, man! They'll shoot you dead as soon as look at you if you present yourself bristling like a palikare!”

“A moment!” My father took his knife from his belt and gave it to me, then handed me his ancient pistol. “These were your grandfather's. If it comes to it—trust the knife before the gun. Don't be taken alive,” he said, resting his hand on my head. He kissed my mother and left with his cousin.

I never saw my father again.

I know my mother saw him once more, but she has never spoken of it to me.

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