The Tomb of Zeus (15 page)

Letty smiled, not quite sure that she had been able to follow all that was said, but grateful for the older woman's understanding.

“But the best thing for recovering one's spirits is a good meal,” said Maria, reverting to practicalities and conclusively winning Letty's heart. “Come to the kitchen. We will have our lunch and then rest. And when your men arrive to take you off again you will spring around like a goat on those rocky slopes.”

Too wound up to waste any time sleeping, Letty passed an hour reading through her notes and the flimsy copies of Gunning's typed documents. The preparations must have been embarked on weeks before, and had been thoroughly done. She would have expected no less. He had researched the history of the site and set out a summary of all the known previous archaeological forays into the area. Objects claimed to have been found locally were listed with their provenance and present location.

The digging team was identified, the specialities of each man noted; the local conditions and resources were set out right down to the names of six village girls who were willing to act as pot-washers if called on. Equipment was itemised from donkeys to paper clips. She smiled to see that the measuring stick was reported to have been freshly painted. Only Gunning, the photographer, would have thought of that! Bleakly, Letty wondered what there remained for her to do. Apart from financing the whole expedition, it seemed—very little. The hilltop vantage point called, evidently. She almost checked her list for:
1) Lace gloves: 2) Parasol: Director, for the use of.

She leafed through the file looking for a location map but found none. She looked again. Surely the meticulous Gunning would not have missed such a fundamental item? She taxed him with this the moment he rode up with Aristidis to escort her to the mountain.

“Don't worry! We have one!” he told her cheerfully, taking an envelope from his pocket. “It's all very hush-hush! Theodore is careful in the extreme about the security of sites. And rightly so! You don't want word to get out—a good deal of premature amateur tomb-robbing goes on. Aristidis and I have looked it over and we think we know where we're going. There's a very clear marker for our patch—a range of dilapidated goat sheds in one corner. That will come in useful as the site and finds office, perhaps. Depends on its condition.”

He passed her the map, eager to be off. “It'll take half an hour to reach it.” Checking the sun, he added, “And as it's on the northern slope, we should get a good two hours of useful angled light.”

They stood in a row silently surveying the designated site, passing the map from one to the other, turning it this way and that, no one quite ready to be to be the first to speak out. Letty narrowed her eyes and surveyed once again the one-hundred-yard-long tract of land ahead of them, every dry hummock outlined by the late afternoon sun. The thin soil was almost bare of vegetation. Very little would struggle to grow on such hard-packed terrain.

“Tell me, William,” she asked, breaking the awkward silence, “did
you
have a hand in drawing this up?”

He replied thoughtfully. “Well, no. You have seen that Theo rather prides himself on his expertise with maps. And the initial exploration of the site was all his. I was not consulted.”

“And your family owns this land, Aristidis?” she said, turning to him.

“Yes, we do,” he said. “All that you can see on this slope.” A wide gesture embraced the spur of hill on which they stood. “Unproductive as you see, untouched for generations. Animals graze here occasionally, but that's the extent of it. The goat sheds are at present unoccupied and have a stout roof.” He pointed with slight embarrassment to the unlovely constructions that sprawled higgledy-piggledy down the slope. They were in varying states of repair, from the one or two which appeared weatherproof and useable to the last insignificant outlier, apparently no more than a mass of crumbling masonry, half buried under the soil.

“We can use them to sort and store any finds we may make. I will have them guarded at night.” He shuffled uncomfortably. “Should it prove necessary.”

Letty pulled herself together and said crisply, “Well, gentlemen, we are aware of our strategy; let's think about tactics, shall we? A foot survey of the ground may tell me otherwise in the next few minutes, but my first thought is that tomorrow when we have the men on site we'll start with an exploratory dig—no, no! Not for remains,” she said hurriedly, seeing them both stiffen with disapproval, “but to establish the position of the spoil heap.” They relaxed and exchanged a shifty look. She pointed to a flat piece of ground on the perimeter of the outlined plan. “I have my eye on that, but a trial trench will establish whether we're looking at barren earth and therefore a suitable place to tip our scrapings.”

Gunning and Aristidis nodded.

She took back the map and studied it. “Now, according to Theodore Russell, he made his find—the Venetian coin—thirty yards to the north of where we're standing.” She set off, pacing out the distance. Arriving at the spot she kicked about in the dust and moved three stones into a line as markers. She continued her stroll around the perimeter of the site, eyes constantly flicking to the horizon, taking in the unchanged aspects of the scene. The two men watched her with a disturbing lack of enthusiasm. They offered each other cigarettes, they drank from their flasks. They waited for her to return.

Her tour finished, she rejoined them. All uncertainty apparently gone, she spread the map on the ground, kneeling and inviting them to pore over it with her. “Your pencil, William? Got a good thick drawing pencil in your pocket, have you? Thank you. Well, now. Look closely. This is my initial finding.”

The pencil hovered over the discreet cross in the centre of the outlined site, which indicated the find of the ancient coin. “Now— X marks the spot, you see.” She swiftly drew around it a child's version of a treasure chest, complete with skull-and-crossbones insignia.

Aristidis began to chuckle. Gunning snatched the pencil from her fingers and, in a few quick strokes, added the scrolled and tattered edges of an ancient treasure map. He drew in an arrow pointing to the north-northeast in the direction of Herakleion and wrote in an attempt at medieval script
Here be Dragons.

“Of course, it may well all look different in the morning,” Letty said, “but for now, I'm thinking we've been sent to a piece of land barren in more senses than one. I'll try a few
sondage
trenches in the prescribed manner but, honestly, I'm not very hopeful.” She sighed and swept another long look around the hillside. “If Zeus had a hand in choosing his resting place, I somehow can't imagine that he'd have picked out this spot. It doesn't speak to me with the spine-chilling voice of the god. And, I observe that you two are not exactly a-quiver with religious awe! I'll tell you what—I have a feeling that the King of the Gods is not particularly pleased that we're here! Do you see his thunderclouds in the west?”

The light was slanting down through a gap in gathering purple clouds, seemingly whirling down at them from the heights of distant Mount Ida. Aristidis squinted up at the sky. “Let's get the horses. I reckon we have twenty minutes before the heavens open,” he calculated. “And I think we're in for a bad one. You won't get much sleep tonight, miss, with Juktas growling at you!”

Laetitia spent hours of the night awake, from time to time climbing the ladder to look out onto the mountain, deafened by crashing thunder, fascinated by the lightning that flashed around its summit, silhouetting the swaybacked crest of the mountain. She would not have slept much anyway, she thought resentfully, since the digging team, cousins and brothers, had gathered with Gunning at Maria's house for what seemed to be a party. A lyre player had joined them, and his music and chanting grew louder in direct proportion to the number of glasses of raki he consumed.

Peering down from her floor, Letty watched the pitcher of brandy circulate, punctuated with bottles of red wine and plates of
mezedes
to keep the strong liquor in its place. Poetry and songs floated up. She thought she heard Gunning attempting his own version of a lilting
mantinada,
a spontaneous and witty four-line song. His effort was rewarded by an outburst of laughter and applause, and she wondered crossly what he'd made up.

The garden was grey and chill, the sun just a promise below the horizon, when Letty struggled out of bed the next morning. She crept downstairs to find no signs remaining of the drunken revelry. Maria called a greeting from the stove, where she was grinding coffee beans, and announced breakfast in ten minutes. Ablutions were carried out in a small bathroom behind the house but on her way, Letty paused to scoop up handfuls of water from the fountain. No water had ever tasted or would ever taste as good, she decided. Strong coffee and bread hot from the oven went some way to restoring her will to live, and she was booted and spurred and waiting by the front door when her team arrived to collect her.

Annoyingly the men showed no signs of wear and tear from the evening's celebrations, just a quiet purposefulness. The horses slipped on mud and loose stones dislodged by the outburst of rain which had poured down gullies from the summit of the hill. At least it would make the digging an easier task, Letty calculated as they were joined in the valley at the approach to the goat track by the diggers with their supplies of spades, shovels, baskets, and eelbarrows. A gang of boys were already on the mountain, come to join in the excitement. With a pang of foreboding, she wondered if they would still be eager to associate themselves with the activities at the end of the day. Or would they have trailed away in boredom as the layers of yet another unpromising trench were exposed?

While Gunning supervised the tethering of the animals and the stocking of the equipment, Letty stood with Aristidis on the spot they had occupied the previous evening. She decided to speak her mind. “We're wasting our time, aren't we, Aristidis? I can hardly spell out why I think so, but all the evidence of my senses is that we will find nothing of interest here. Russell's malice couldn't possibly run to annoying…shaming…fooling every member of this party, could it? Surely not? Do I find myself the unwitting—and undeserving!—piggy-in-the-middle in a very masculine crossing of swords? I must know!”

All Letty's past experience of male ill will came to mind—ill will ranging from unemphatic and unconsidered derision to open enmity—and a rising despair and anger were evident in her voice.

“I would put nothing past that man,” he answered. “And you are right to suspect that he would not welcome a noteworthy discovery by a protégée—and a female one at that. Some men take pleasure in bringing forward their pupils, sharing their knowledge, encouraging them and rejoicing at their success. Russell is not such a one. He sees any other man's achievement as a loss to his own esteem. Poor man! He leads a tormented life!”

They stared on together at the featureless landscape and sighed.

A joyful shout and a cry of
“Baba!”
made them turn their heads. Aristidis's oldest son, Nikolas, was running towards them. He thrust the small object he was carrying into his father's hand, chattering excitedly in Greek.

Aristidis's smile grew broader. “If you want to know what's under the ground hereabouts, you should start your enquiries with the village boys,” he told Letty. “Worth more than a dozen
sondage
trenches! Nikolas is saying that he and the gang were about here early this morning, poking about. The boys know the ways of the mountain. It's their playground! They know the rain loosens interesting things sometimes and brings them to the surface. And last night's deluge was especially productive. See what they've found!”

He put into her hand a small metal object. The unmistakable gleam of gold showed through the mud. Catching the boy's excitement, Letty lifted a fold of her cotton skirt and gently began to clean the gold ring. When she was satisfied she had done as much as was safe she took a magnifying glass from her satchel. “Heavy signet ring. Gold, with a very broad circular boss and what looks to me like a very accomplished design,” she said, not quite managing to keep her voice level. She held it up to Aristidis and offered the glass. “A beautifully executed picture of a bull.”

Aristidis gave a low whistle. “A bull caught in a thicket by the horns. There are two men, one on either side, approaching. One carries a net, the other a rope.”

“It's Minoan, wouldn't you say?”

He nodded. “It could be Mycenaean—the subject would seem to say that…it's very male—no doves, flowers, or goddesses in froufrou, which is more common. But the workmanship at any rate is Minoan.” He raised his head and yelled for Gunning. “Come and join us, my friend! It seems the King of the Gods has decided to leave his calling card!”

G
unning opened his eyes wide on seeing the ring and grinned. “Lead on, Nikolas!” he invited, and they set off to follow the boy.

“It's not far—down here, the other side of the sheds,” Nikolas announced, and bounded off in a direction diametrically opposite their designated area. After only a hundred yards or so along the goat path, the character of the land changed. The surface became more uneven; tall-growing herbs appeared here and there, rocks projected from the surface of the field. But, above all, it was the siting that claimed Letty's attention. They had come out on the opposite flank of the northern spur, and it was at this point that the green, cultivated land of the valley rolled upwards and lapped at the edge of the limestone slope. She had the sensation of standing on the deck of a vast ship. The edge of the rocky outcrop curved round in front of her like a prow. Ahead was the brilliant blue of the Aegean leading onwards to the mainland and, poised invitingly, the first stepping-stone to the Cyclades, the island of Dia. The morning mist heaving gently over the plain in between enhanced the impression that she was afloat and her sails filling with a southerly wind, set for Greece.

“I haven't been up here for years,” muttered Aristidis. “But of course!”

Suddenly she could see what he was seeing.

Scattered over the field, four small boys were standing importantly to attention. Set there by Nikolas, it seemed, as the moment they appeared, each one raised a hand. Living site markers of finds made that morning, she suspected, and admired the disciplined stage-managing that had worked to keep four energetic lads in their places. But she was noting also with a surge of triumphant insight other markers scattered around the site. Tufty fennel plants appeared to be thriving here. Dr. Stoddart's herb lore, remembered from their stroll around Knossos, came back to her and she wondered whether she had guessed the secret of Aristidis's alleged magical diagnostic powers. Well, as far as she was concerned, it could remain his secret.

She leaned close and whispered. “I think we're looking at a promising site here, don't you, Aristidis? I like it! Look—it's covered in my lucky herb! Fennel!”

He smiled back at her, surprised and approving. “You admire it, too? Such a useful plant! Are you aware?—I think you must be!— that its roots penetrate the soil to quite a depth. And, of course, there's nothing they enjoy so much as a
disturbed
subsoil. A soil concealing ancient walls, tombs, grave shafts—”

Letty could stand still no longer. “Shall we? I see Gunning's already started!”

He had headed straight for the boys, listening to each one's story, examining objects proudly presented on grubby palms, exclaiming and congratulating. To her surprise, Aristidis caught her quickly by the arm, instantly apologising and pointing to the path at her feet.

“Take care, miss! Fennel roots are not the only things that slither down holes in the ground. Those trails you see on the path there were left by snakes. Another sight that points to something interesting under the earth. They like to hide themselves in fallen masonry. I will have the site combed and the creatures removed. There are men in the village who can do this.” He handed her the twisted shepherd's staff he always carried over his shoulders.
“Just
in case. I can see that the idea of vipers does not deter you. Perhaps this will deter
them.
Bang it on the ground or bang them on the head.”

Letty was thankful to take the offered staff.

An exhausting hour later, they gathered back in the shelter of the goat sheds. The boys had been rewarded for any finds they wished to turn in, and these were already nestling in a tray awaiting cleaning and identification. One boy only had been reluctant to hand in a particularly handsome seal stone in agate with a carving of a cow and its suckling calf. When questioned by Letty, with Aristidis's help, he had shyly explained that his mother was about to give birth to her fourth child and she'd always had what he described as “troubles.” He wanted to keep his find and give it to her. He looked away in some distress when his friends gleefully counted their coins and made outrageous plans for spending the money, starting with a trip to the village confectioner's. Letty admired his determination.

Her slight nod to Aristidis was instantly interpreted. “Here, son, take this,” he said, counting coins into the lad's hand. “Miss Laetitia insists you have half the value of the stone, and it is a very good one! You will keep it, of course, and give it to your mother, but, by declaring it and revealing the place you found it, you are helping the excavation and that should not go unrewarded.” He spoke loudly and firmly for the benefit of the other boys. Then he turned to Laetitia with a smile and a shrug and confided: “I do not spoil them, miss! The amount they received was carefully judged. They are happy, but not so overwhelmed they will broadcast to all their classmates that you are…”

He hesitated and Letty supplied the words: “A soft touch?”

“Yes. That! I explained to them that you are not a trader buying these things to have as your own or sell on at a profit, but to give them to the Cretan museum where they and their own children may visit them whenever they wish.”

When the boys had gone whooping off back to the village, Gunning approached with Russell's map outspread and a serious expression.

“And where do you suppose all this leaves us?” he asked. “Consent to excavate isn't easy to obtain, you know. It's going to take months to redraft and reapply! And, in the meantime, the whole of the country will be hearing stories that you've discovered El Dorado up here, Letty. In spite of your optimistic version, Aristidis, I don't think we'll be able to keep the lid on! Might as well pack up and go home,” he grumbled.

“No! No!” said the site manager cheerfully. “This is my land also. I give permission! And look—there has been a slight misunderstanding. I am sure it can be no more than a misunderstanding, though perhaps
not
one made by a clerk in the Office of Archaeological Development…But watch! If you do this…” He took hold of the map and turned it up and over, pivoting it on its corner. “There now, do you see? We have the goat sheds—no longer in the southeast corner but the northwest. But still my goat sheds and still my land, extending down here over this so interesting stretch. This is not the original map he's given us—it's a tracing and we all know how mistakes may be made with tracings. I'm sure that if we were to tax Mr. Russell with this he would be mortified that such an error had cost us a few hours' work. And then he would have to congratulate us on our quick thinking in—literally!—reversing his error. Would he not?”

Before he'd finished speaking, Letty had grabbed a pencil and was sketching in a trial trench to establish the new site of the spoil heap.

While the men worked on this, she and Gunning walked over the site, planting markers in the places where the boys had made finds and hunting for evidence of the Venetian explorer's original investigation. Puzzled, they had to agree that it was undetectable.

“The rain?” suggested Letty. “A shallow scraping by Theo might well have been obliterated by the winter's downpours…he didn't tell us exactly when he was here. And a dig over four hundred years distant is hardly likely to show up. We'll take it for granted, shall we? And just go ahead and excavate. I have good feelings about this place. And at least it has a soil covering we can get our spades into. There could be something under there. If only we had an idea what we're looking for. A tomb? Could be anything from a simple shaft grave to a marble mausoleum.”

“A
tholos—a.
beehive-shaped tomb? A simple pot filled with cremated remains? Both have been found on the island…I must say”—Gunning perched on a rock and held his drawing board across his knees—“now I come to sketch this I could more easily imagine a Viking burial taking place up here. Some old warrior king being laid to rest where he can still command a view of the sea lanes, wouldn't you say?”

“Oh, yes,” said Letty. “But I think this place was important to people right back into prehistory.” She hit the ground with her staff, rattled a furze bush, turned over a stone to ensure there were no lurking horrors beneath, then settled down next to him. “And perhaps particularly in very ancient times. The early farmers who lived here were protected from invasion by the miles of ocean surrounding them, but in case unwelcome visitors got through and pulled their boats up onto the beaches near Herakleion and showed signs of moving inland, they'd be spotted from up here.”

“Better view from the summit?” Gunning suggested.

“But a shorter and easier run from here to take a warning message to the village. Halfway up a mountain can be a much more strategically useful position to occupy than a summit. You can see all you need to see from here, your communications chain is easier to maintain, and it's sheltered by the bulk of the mountain behind you. Much more comfortable than standing about, teeth to the wind, on the top. I think we should prepare for several layers of occupation before we reach bedrock,” she said with anticipation.

She remembered suddenly she was talking to a clever man who'd managed to live through four years of all-out warfare. There was nothing she could explain to Gunning about survival tactics and defence systems. Trenches, redoubts, communications—these had all been life or death to him. But he listened, smiled and nodded, and bent his head to his drawing board.

Letty leaned over, admiring the swift strokes of his pencil, recognising the economical conventions for rock, soil, and vegetation she'd seen him use in Burgundy. He never showed any sign of irritation or discomfort when she peered over his shoulder, tending rather to involve her in the process with his comments as a drawing master might. She was more likely to hear an inviting: “Come and see this, Letty!” than a tetchy: “I say—do you mind!”

“You're quiet, Letty. Am I getting this wrong? Or are you having second thoughts?”

“No, no! I was just thinking about Phoebe,” she replied. “I was looking forward to getting back to the Europa to share the news of our discoveries. She was so eager to hear. I can't believe she won't be there, William. It's ridiculous—I only knew her for a day or two but…but…she flashed across my world like a shooting star. It's a cliché—don't tell me!—but sometimes a hackneyed old phrase is exactly the one you reach for—for the good reason that it says exactly what you want. She was gone in an instant but the light she gave out stays on in my mind's eye.”

“Quite agree,” he said gruffly and busied himself with a piece of hectic cross-hatching.

Unsatisfied by his response, she persisted, determined to communicate her feeling of loss. “So much I was looking forward to…it's…it's like missing the boat train, hearing that Christmas is cancelled…She was snatched away in the middle of a conversation and I'm still waiting to hear her answer.”

He remained silent, his pencil moving swiftly over the page.

“You know, William, it was Phoebe I was really going to be reporting to. Not Theodore. Oh, he would have—
will—
read the written accounts, assess the scale drawings, and assign dates to each stratum as we uncover it, but the real story of the dig I'd have kept for her. Those keen, clever boys this morning…the shy, loving one so determined to hold on to his stone—she'd have wanted to hear about that!”

“I'm sure she would.” Gunning was refusing to be drawn down into her grief.

“Her death turns all this poking about among the dry bones of the past into an irrelevance, don't you think? Here we are, along with eight good men and true, all armed with spades and raring to go…but I'm wondering—what are we doing here in this strange place, William? Seeking to unearth a foreign god, buried thousands of years deep. If he existed at all. And Phoebe, so alive I can still hear her laughing, is lying scarcely cold and not yet buried. Demanding…deserving answers.”

“Know what you mean. You needn't go on.”

He turned his head away from her. Hiding his emotion? Letty was instantly contrite for her self-indulgent outburst. Gunning had known Phoebe for several months. They'd had time to grow close. It was thoughtless of her to trail her own distress in front of him when he was struggling to deal with his own. Letty sensed that there had been a warm relationship between the two, and was not surprised by the notion. Women were drawn to Gunning. She'd noticed it early in their acquaintance, while affecting to find it inexplicable. She remembered wondering about the attraction out loud to her friend Esmé.

“You're asking what might be his special qualities?” Esmé had seemed very ready to give the problem her serious attention. “I mean, apart from his good looks, charm, wit, and chestful of medals? Well…let me try to think beyond those…You know, Letty, it could be that he's so jolly
mysterious.
Oh, I know you've ferreted out enough information on him for an entry in
Who's Who
or even a slim monograph, but he's no clear rushing stream is he?”

Esmé, the aspirant student of psychology, was always prepared to abandon scientific vocabulary to indulge in female chatter and speculation. “I think of him as a deep pool. Half the surface is in sunlight, the other shadowed by the overhanging branches of a tree.”