The Tomb of Zeus (23 page)

“Back?” he asked. “Back where? Back to Cambridge or back to Athens? Where is your world, Letty?” And, gently: “I'll take you. Wherever you want to go. You know that. You only have to ask.” But, as though regretting his show of sympathy, he added lightly: “I spent a season running at your stirrup last year, playing the
preux chevalier.
Seems to have become a habit, you know. For here I still am, trailing about after you.”

She was unable to reply, silenced by a dizzying sensation that she no longer knew where her place was, certain only that, wherever it might be, William Gunning was, inconveniently, at the centre of it.

The accident site wasn't difficult to spot. Skid marks on the road and torn turf where the wheels had fought for purchase on the lip of the chasm were clear markers. They dismounted and Gunning held the uneasy horses back as, in shuddering curiosity, Letty and Theo lay on their stomachs peering through the gorse bushes and over the cliff edge. The boom of the waves was deafening, the drop vertiginous and made more sickening by the glimpse of green metal far below, hidden for a moment by the crashing surf, then tormentingly revealed.

Theo drew back and got to his feet, muttering, “You think that's terrifying? The next hour will bring worse.” Unable to decide whether he was speaking to her or to himself, Letty stayed silent and she remounted, ready for the final half mile into the village.

When they turned around the shoulder of the cliff, the road gave out and the track way took on its ancient aspect. It wound its way down into a cluster of houses snugly occupying a valley bottom.

“A fishing village?” said Letty uncertainly. “But I can't see any access to the sea…”

“No, not fishing. Not much farming goes on, either. It's a village of craftsmen. Has been for generations. Basketwork, smithing, potting, leather work—you name it—the men and women of Mournia can turn it out.”

He reined in his horse to contemplate the pleasing arrangement of white two-storied houses, the central square of the village clearly marked out by its cluster of Cretan plane trees. The sheltering brown slopes, which a half mile farther on would rear up as aggressive cliffs, splintered into the shapes of a Braque painting.

Letty had a feeling he was wasting time, loitering, beginning to regret bringing them along with him on this strange mission. It was at just this point he might have refused the challenge he had set himself, turned his horse, and made off back to Herakleion. “When I was in Egypt,” she started to say, ignoring Gunning's histrionically slumping shoulders, “I saw a wonderful frieze showing representatives of different races bringing tribute to the Pharaoh— you know the sort of thing, Persians bearing perfume, Sudanese pulling along giraffes— Well, the hieroglyph for one of the races of men was deciphered as the ‘Keftiu.’ Andrew Merriman believes these men were the ancient Cretans and we ought properly to call them not Minoans, but Keftiu. And do you know what they were carrying as presents to the King of Egypt? Luxury craft goods! Pottery, jewellery, and baggy leather boots! I wonder if they were made here?”

“Good lord!” said Gunning, amused. “This is where I have
my
boots made. There's a man in the High Street who can accommodate my left foot to perfection. To think the Pharaoh and I share a bootmaker!”

They rode through the surprisingly noisy streets. Theodore seemed to know his way about, Letty noticed, as he led them with no hesitation through the warren of narrow cobbled alleyways, loud with clanging of metal, shouts, and laughter. Smoke reeked from chimneys and sparks flew from dark interiors of forges; men and women sat at the open doors of their workshops or houses, all busily engaged in producing something lovely or useful. Blankets and swathes of woven cloth hung from poles over house fronts—a different range of colours in use here, Letty noticed. In this village all was green and blue and brown, the colours of the sea and hillsides, whereas in Kastelli they burned a fierce red and orange and purple. Several of the villagers looked up and greeted Theodore shyly with a nod and a smile. One old black-clad lady raised her gnarled fingers from her embroidery to make the sign of the cross as he passed.

Having tethered their horses, they continued more easily on foot. They settled down at a café table by the Byzantine church and Theodore ordered coffee and cold water for the men and a glass of lemonade for Letty. As they sipped their drinks, one or two men going by exclaimed and came over to pat Theo's shoulder in a gesture of sympathy, murmuring a few soft words before moving on. Letty didn't doubt that George's story had gone the rounds of the village in no time.

After a while, Theo pointed to a house that had already claimed Letty's attention. Larger than the others fronting the square, it had an air of faded elegance. The style was Turkish, she thought. Sheltering walls offered a welcome privacy from the rest of the village, their austere intent softened by a curtain of tumbling bougainvil-lea; stout gates, standing open, led into a courtyard. Letty could just make out the start of a line of huge pots overflowing with bright flowers and could imagine a fountain splashing in the unseen centre.

“A lovely house,” she said. “Do you know the owner?”

He nodded and sipped his coffee, on edge, uncomfortable with their presence.

Somewhere close by a cracked bell struck nine and suddenly, with shouts of encouragement and instruction from several female voices from the interior of the house opposite, two small boys dashed out carrying shopping bags. An elderly woman in long black skirts hurried to the gate to call after them: “Make that
two
kilos of tomatoes and don't forget to check that they're ripe, Andreos! If there's any change you can spend it at the cake shop, but don't tell your mother!”

Letty found the comfortable domestic scene strangely moving and reassuring after the high drama she had lived through under the Russells' roof in the past nine days.

“What beautiful boys!” she said, admiring the slender dark-eyed pair. “Like something off a Cretan fresco!” To her astonishment, Theodore stood, oblivious of his companions, with eyes for no one but the boys, and without a word went to meet them. When he arrived within a few feet they looked up and saw him. Their faces burst into smiles of recognition and they rushed towards him calling
“Pappou! Pappou!”

Gunning and Letty exchanged confused glances.
“Pappou?”
said Letty. “Is that what they're saying? Oh, good lord! That doesn't mean what I'm thinking it means, does it? Can those boys possibly be…?”

Gunning was too astonished to reply at once. When he could collect his thoughts he said, “No. It doesn't mean ‘Daddy’ That would be
baba—or papa.
You heard Nikolas calling to Aristidis, remember.” He considered for a moment, unsure how to continue. “Lord Almighty! I've had this hideously wrong! Theodore's not their father. He's their
grandfather.”

T
hey watched in fascination as the boys came to an abrupt halt a stride in front of Theodore. Letty had been expecting them to rush towards him and clutch him by the knees as she would have done at the same age but, while continuing to smile expectantly, both held themselves still and silent, waiting for his response. He bent and shook their hands and patted their heads, murmuring to them in Greek. He put his hand in his pocket, took out some coins, and selected one for each boy. They thanked him politely and seemed to be asking if they might spend it at once. Theo made a show of careless generosity, Letty thought cynically, most probably for their benefit, and, with a promise to see the boys again before he left, he dismissed them to continue on their way to the shops.

“You will have guessed, William, because I have long suspected my household has few secrets from you, that the house over there is where Eleni lives. And those are her children.”

Gunning made no reply. It was obvious to Letty that his insight had been vastly overestimated by Theodore. Not even William had had an inkling of what was going on. She herself was still trying to untangle the skein of intrigue and, unable to attack the central issue head on, began to skirt around the periphery, hoping that, if she asked the right questions, or any questions at all, explanations would be offered and everything would become clear. “Doesn't Eleni find it hard—working with you in the city all week and only seeing her sons occasionally at the weekend?” was the first question that came to mind.

Both men looked at her in astonishment. It was Gunning who spoke first. “Boys of that age in England are sent away from their parents for weeks, years on end, occasionally taking tea with them in a Lyons Corner House, two Saturdays a term, with a visit to the zoo thrown in if they're lucky. At least Eleni sees them nearly every week. And their father also, I suspect, makes time to visit. As last Sunday, Theo? The day Phoebe died, George and I came out to examine the skeletons in a cliff cave a mile or so from here. He disappeared for three hours before rejoining me at the city gates. I'd guess he came here. To see his sons? He'd want to see his sons after six months' absence, wouldn't he?”

At last it had been spoken. The relationship was out in the open.

“We were dismal together in that grim old house a year after George's mother died—you can imagine,” Russell said. “Just the two of us, George's English tutor, and a mostly male staff. I decided to bring a little female colour and influence into that masculine environment. Eleni and her older sister Kalliope had lost their father in the troubles. Mother left without family to support them and barely able to cope. No income…orphanage looming for the girls. By then Kalliope was old enough to be married off and she escaped destitution, but Eleni was only fifteen. I was told her sad story, took pity on the child, and offered her respectable employment at the Europa—maid of all work—bit of female company for young George, who was thirteen at the time.”

Hearing the naiveté of his words, he hurried on in his eagerness to justify his actions. “With my obsession for all things Cretan, it was my idea that she would teach him the language. I was anxious that my son should at least feel easy getting about on the island-since he refused to be sent away to Europe for schooling.” He gave an amused snort. “Huh! The lad has always thought of himself as Cretan, in spite of his looks. All that blond hair and those grey eyes…much more of the Hellene about him. He could have stepped down off a Parthenon frieze…He always said the same thing when I pointed this out to him: ‘It's a melting pot, Pa, and I'm just the latest ingredient.’” Something like a look of tender recollection flitted over the stern features. “To sighs of relief all round, Eleni moved into quarters at the villa, under the nominal chaperonage of the old cook, the only female staff we kept in those days, and the wife of our butler. Cretan women are not generally employed outside the family home, you understand.”

He gave Letty an assessing stare. “I will speak bluntly because I do not take you for a prim miss, miss! Attractive girl, Eleni. She hadn't been long under my roof when I—I attempted—I unwisely…”

He hesitated just long enough to afford Letty the satisfaction of an interruption: “If it's a blunt phrase you're searching for, Theo, why not say—you attempted to seduce her?”

“Yes. Something like that. No matter. She roundly turned me down.” The beard jutted defiantly. “I didn't insist. I'm not quite the beast you take me for.” He allowed a pause for concerned objection or polite agreement, then plunged on into the silence: “You can imagine, however, my dismay, when a couple of years later I discovered that her relationship with my son had…had…developed…”

Gunning's feeling shudder told Letty that not only had the man had a mother, he had also at one time been a fifteen-year-old boy.

“…developed…blossomed into something quite extraordinary.”

“I really can't see why you'd be surprised, Theo,” said Gunning, exasperated. “George was fifteen—a big boy for his age, I shouldn't wonder—and Eleni seventeen? An explosive situation. And, knowing the strength of the characters involved, I think you would always be looking at a
Romeo and Juliet
scenario rather than…shall we say?…Prince Hal and Doll Tearsheet—
tragedy,
not comedy, brewing under your roof.”

“She was so damned good at her work!” Theo exclaimed, in an attempt at self-justification. “Efficient, forward-thinking, intuitive. The staff came to depend on her. I trusted her. It wasn't long before she was running the household. She made our lives easy.”

“ ‘Harbouring a snake and a strumpet in your bosom,’ isn't that what you said, Theo? You'd been through all this before, hadn't you?” said Letty with belated insight. “You were ready enough to believe George a sinner because he'd betrayed you before. And in the most hurtful way—with the helpless, dependent girl you'd fancied for yourself!”

“Not so dashed
helpless!
Eleni is clever and she's damned manipulative! By the time she was eighteen, she was pregnant with the son of the Young Master and had made herself an indispensable figure in our establishment. Well, you can imagine, I did the right thing by them. I offered any amount of discreet help—which was rejected. My son refused to countenance her being sent away or, indeed, any threat to their child. Said he'd run away and marry her. And many other hysterical threats were made. Like a chapter out of a melodrama! Dickens would have rejected it as far-fetched! But George never spoke lightly in his life. Oh, no. He would have done it. The upshot was—if I wanted to retain my son, I would jolly well have to retain his paramour. Against my better judgement, I capitulated.”

“And you gave him enough leeway to make the mistake a second time?” Gunning commented.

Theo gave a bark of cynical laughter. “Not like me, you're thinking? To be caught out like that twice? George is single-minded, headstrong, and infuriatingly righteous. Even when he's discovered sinning—up to his armpits in the honey pot—he has the knack of making you think
you're
in the wrong for catching him out. At all events, I think even he knew he'd gone too far. He agreed to be shipped off to Europe for a few months to stay with a cousin of mine. Man of the world, if you understand me. George came back having learned some essential principles of modern life and…so far, so tolerable.”

“And with his record for amatory intrigue, you allowed yourself the liberty of jumping to the conclusion that he'd had an affair with your wife—before all the evidence was in,” said Gunning.

“You saw them! For God's sake, man! Always muttering in each other's ears, in corners. Sighing affectedly over dusty old texts. Going off on expeditions to the coast. Rambles along the cliffs…
You,”
he rasped accusingly, “were very nearly as bad! Quite the Sir Lancelot, were you not? But I can't say I blame you. Men were attracted to Phoebe. She couldn't help it. She was warm and loving and…” He gulped and ran out of words.

“And made every man she spoke to feel he'd been singled out for her attention,” said Gunning, remembering. “And with Phoebe it wasn't just a finishing-school trick…you know—‘one hundred and one ways to attract and keep your beau’ I do believe she had no veneer—she really understood our problems, our prejudices, our enthusiasms. We told her things we'd never even admitted to ourselves. She made us laugh and forgive ourselves.”

“Made me feel like the third wheel on the bicycle sometimes. You and George both!” grumbled Theo.

Letty was beginning to find the turn in the conversation disturbing. She decided to bring their heads back round to the course. “And this house, this discreet situation, was your response to your problems of miscegenation and acculturation?” she asked, trying for a neutral tone.

Russell took her question for a serious enquiry. He replied thoughtfully. “Yes. Not as smooth and easy as you might think, looking at it. Impossible to be discreet in a village—or even on the island. You have to find other ways of ensuring goodwill. The people here are of a religious bent. Their faith survived centuries of Ottoman rule, so it has deep roots, and they have far higher moral standards than we have back home. The relationship between the two would have been incomprehensible and much to be condemned had it not been for two factors.

“George let it be known that he was to marry Eleni as soon as this was possible…He was convincing because he was himself convinced that this is what would happen. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that word's got out that he
has
married her—it would be the outcome all were looking for. You see, the Cretans are nothing if not romantic—puritanical they may be, but they love a happy ending to a romance as much as my great-aunt Honoria. And this one had all the makings of a fairy tale—well, half a dozen fairy tales. Cinderella, who is really the Princess Aretousa, gets her man, her Erotokritos, in the teeth of opposition from the wicked King Iraklis. You will recognise
me,
I think, in the scenario.

“And just to ensure George's presence was welcome in the village, generous donations were made to the school and the church. Money well spent in more ways than one. With the padre and the schoolmaster in our corner, we were well on the way to acceptance.”

“Acceptance,” echoed Gunning. “Quite the most difficult state to attain on this island. Suspicion of foreigners goes deep, and who shall blame them? After the years of oppression they suffered?”

“And it's never easy, sailing in as liberator, you know. I was on the
Griffin—
junior officer—sent out to teach the Ottoman a lesson in '98.” Theodore grimaced. “Candia was a powder keg! But with a little decisive action, we defused the situation. We'd had seventeen British soldiers massacred by the Turks. Well, if you tweak the lion's tail, you're likely to get your head bitten off. To be expected. Hard decisions have to be made. We bit back. Exacted just retribution. Seventeen of the Turkish ringleaders were apprehended and strung up on the hanging tree they'd used themselves for executions. Desperately unpleasant, of course, but it sent the right message.

“Cretans duly grateful, naturally. And, under patriotic pressure from the inhabitants, the man they were all clamouring to see-Prince George of Greece—eventually arrived from the mainland aboard a British ship to greet his people and reclaim the island. I was there when he stepped ashore. Stirring times! I'm honoured to have been able to play a small part.”

“So, with the reputation of the British navy behind you and the chink of cash in your pocket, you achieved some sort of acceptance?”

He became aware of Letty's frosty reception of his explanation. “Quite. But the best card in our deck was one even you could not possibly sniff at, miss! And quite uncalculated. The lads themselves. You've seen them.” His expression softened. “Andreos and Teodoro. They're strong, lively, witty boys. Good boxers, too. I've had them taught. Important to be able to hold your own on the quarterdeck or in the playground, don't you know. I'm thinking they might enjoy a naval career…But, as I say, they're very impressive. They have their mother's striking looks. And,” a smile of satisfaction twisted his lips, “it pleases me to think—something of their grandfather also, wouldn't you say?” He paused, concerned to hear their response. “And they appear Cretan to the bone. They fit in. They're accepted for themselves.”

“You're not planning to ship them off for an English education, then, Theo?” Gunning asked.

“Good lord, no! They'd refuse to go anyway. With their parentage to contend with—I wouldn't stand a chance. Their roots are here. Their aunt Kalliope—their highly respectable aunt Kalliope— uncle and cousins live just up the road. Their grandmother—you saw her just now—is a rock and has largely brought them up. No, they wouldn't want to move away.”

“But for the present—let me be clear about this—George and Eleni remain unwed?” Gunning asked.

“Yes, that was part of the bargain. I agreed to underpin this domestic setup here—and by that I mean buying the house and paying the bills—as long as they agreed to hold off making the relationship official. As the alternative was a runaway marriage and life of poverty together, I imagine it was Eleni who talked George into accepting my terms. I suppose I was playing for time…hoping all the while that my son would see sense, that Eleni would lose her attractions, that he'd meet someone of his kind and his class. Wouldn't have done for him to find himself, hands tied and encumbered, when Miss Right sailed over the horizon.” He gave a wicked smile and cocked an eyebrow at Laetitia. “Someone like yourself, miss? Well, why not? Wouldn't have been bad! But I could see that was never going to work. Women don't seem to view my son as a marriage prospect. Good-looking, athletic chap though he is, they don't even seem to be attracted to him.”