The Tomb of Zeus (25 page)

T
he terra-cotta crashed to the ground, shattering into fragments on the jagged surface of a rock. The snake fell and instantly rounded on Aristidis, who had put himself between the reptile and the paralysed Letty. Gunning was suddenly at her side, seizing her by the waist and hauling her, rigid with shock, a few feet off. They watched, helpless, as Aristidis lashed out at the snake with his shepherd's staff and finally caught its neck in the forked piece at the end. The snake writhed and thrashed in impotent fury but Aristidis calmly took the knife from his waist, bent, and in two swift strokes sliced off its head.

Demetrios hurried over with a shovel and deftly began to scoop up the remains. He pointed to the bright orange stripes and the V behind its head.
“Ochendra,”
he commented. “Leopard snake. You're lucky to have your nose still, miss!” He went off to the cliff edge to dispose of the horror.

To her mortification Letty could not keep a limb still. She shivered, her teeth chattered and yet seemed clenched together, and no sounds would come, not even the pitiful wail she needed to express. She had revealed to no one her acute fear amounting to phobia for snakes and had hoped that, striding about with unconcern, as she did, in her boots, the men would take her for fearless and the snakes would give her a wide berth. Gunning put both arms around her, murmuring soothing nonsense, and held her closely, one hand firmly behind her head, pulling her face into his shoulder.

Finally, “Hell's bells! What on earth was that?” she managed to gasp.

“That was, as Demetrios says, a leopard snake. Poor creature! You disturbed him. Don't take it personally—he was just defending his home.”

Without releasing her, he stuck out a foot and turned over one of the broken pieces of pot. “A snake tube. That's what you un-earthed. They've been found on temple sites all over the island. The thought is that snakes were offered accommodation in these kennels and probably fed as well. A diet of milk and honey cakes, they say. Most likely they were de-fanged and used in religious ceremonies. Earth spirits. Chthonic beings. And just like the human inhabitants, your modern snake makes use of the ancient facilities if they're in good working order. It's my theory that the practice of keeping house snakes up on the Athenian Acropolis may have descended from the Cretan custom. And the goddess Athena, to whom they were sacred, perhaps a memory of the ancient mother goddess…”

His voice was reassuringly professorial. “He's talking to calm the baby,” Letty thought. “Well, I have to think it's working.” The warmth and the scent of his skin under the rough shirt were calming and the pounding of his heart intriguing. She could see no reason to break away. Odd that the danger threatening her had been averted by Aristidis with heroic panache, but her distress had needed to be assuaged by Gunning's presence. He was not a comforting man to her; he was barbed and slightly inimical—at best, awkward—but, standing here in his arms, within his defences, what she felt was a rightness, and more than that—the excited joy of a homecoming.

He was making no attempt to move away and the moment had been prolonged beyond what was socially acceptable. She was struck by the memory of one of Gunning's sly comments: “Oh, dear! William! Could you possibly be offending the men by this public demonstration of affection?” She turned her head to see if they were observed. The men had gathered into a group, passing around cigarettes. They were talking loudly to each other, reliving the moment with gesticulations, already embellishing the story— and every man was facing tactfully away towards the sea.

“I'm sure they understand it to be nothing more than what it is—a public demonstration of first aid and essential comfort,” he replied and then, hearing the hurtful dismissiveness in his gruff voice, his arms tightened again. “So—have a little comfort!” When she turned her face back towards him, he gently touched her nose with the tip of his forefinger. “Nice nose. Awfully glad you didn't lose it.”

“Well, whatever we've got here, it's not the Tomb of Zeus,” said Aristidis at noon on Friday. There was no disappointment in his voice, rather intrigue and excitement.

They had finished a light lunch supplied by Maria, standing about on the site rather than leave off to eat in the sheds, and Letty was gathering together the remnants of the meal into a basket. The men went back to busily finishing off in their trenches, leaving everything ready for a start again the following Monday. The sides were plastered with white labels marking out the changing strata, numbered from one onwards as the digging revealed them, down to base level. From here a further set of labels in red, many of these with question marks added, worked their way back up again from the very lowest stratum, which someone had hopefully labelled “Neolithic,” signifying the succeeding layers of civilisation.

“Not entirely sure we've got that right, Letty,” Gunning had said doubtfully. “We might get old Theo out to take a look. He's hot stuff when it comes to pottery dating. He'll know. Best we can do for the moment is be certain we've recorded everything correctly.” He was hurrying along the balks from one square to the next, sketching and photographing, establishing continuity between them and producing suggestions for further work based on the evidence unearthed.

“No tomb, no body, not even any charred remains in a cooking pot. But what we do have promises to be magnificent! William! Come and show Laetitia your sketch. There…” Aristidis laid out Gunning's drawing on the ground, put a boot on it, and pointed with his staff. “Tell me what you see.”

“A three-bayed something or other,” said Letty, feeling her way. “Unusual, would you say, for an outdoor site?”

“But not unknown.”

“Right…” Letty gathered her thoughts and spoke firmly: “What we have would appear to be some sort of temple, not just an open-air altar. A proper building, one storey high, as Gunning has established from the foundations and thickness of the walls. Lime-plastered walls, painted in dark red and white—must have been very striking! Beams of Cephalonian pine as at Knossos. It offers three good-sized rooms…what are we saying, William?…four yards wide? Central one a little more spacious than the east and west rooms? A plethora of potsherds in situ on what may be a stepped altar in the easterly room—let's call it number one. The rooms have doorways out onto a wide corridor to the north. Here…Now if this corridor proves to have been colonnaded, we've got rather spectacular views over the Aegean. Age? You have an opinion on this, Aristidis?”

Aristidis had an opinion.

“Minoan architectural style and decoration, probably contemporary
with the main palace building we see standing at Knossos today,” he said. “I'm saying Middle Minoan III. Walls of fine masonry, gypsum dado to the lower courses, signs of wooden columns.
Kasellas
—floor cists—just emerging in the eastern room…. Could be very interesting. Mason's marks very similar. Carvings of the double axe and the horns of consecration link it to the religious aspects of the Palace at Knossos. But I see evidence of rebuilding—after some disaster, perhaps? Earthquake? Conquest? More likely. The upper layers show evidence of a Mycenaean presence. The conquering mainland Greeks were here.”

He went to a finds tray and took out a small ivory carving. Letty leaned over and looked again with satisfaction at the object that had taken her breath away when it had risen from the soil. On a flat disk of ivory was carved in profile the perfect head of a Mycenaean warrior proudly wearing his helmet of boar's teeth.

“What did old Schliemann say when he dug up the gold mask at Mycenae?” Gunning came over to take a look. “‘Today I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon.’ Well, there you are, Letty! You can say today you have gazed on the face of Theseus! With probably just as much respect for the truth! Telegraph the London
Times
with the news, why don't you?”

He paused, puzzled by her silence. “What's up? Not happy with what we've got? Goodness, girl! What
will
it take to set you on fire, I wonder, if this won't do it? Oh, yes…The Tomb! You were really waiting for a body to be exhumed, I think? A male skeleton ten feet tall? I wonder what the toe bone of the King of the Gods would sell for on the black market? Or were you expecting a chryselephantine statue in silver and gold?”

She skewered him with her disdain. Since the shameful episode with the snake, he had kept his distance, occasionally, as now, closing in just long enough to annoy her with a sharp comment. Regretting his show of concern and redressing the balance, most probably, but she wondered if the demonstration was aimed at her or put on for the benefit of the men.

“Yes, William. Yes, I won't deny it. I came expecting a burial. Unless Theo has been lying to us all along, with, of course, Callimachus, Ennius, Cicero, and all the rest of those old boys ranged up alongside him in the dock, there
is
a tomb of some sort here. I don't believe the myth would have survived all those centuries without some concrete—or perhaps I should say kouskoura rock—foundation for it. I'm still hopeful.”

She dismissed him with a nod and a smile, picked up her basket, and walked off towards the goat sheds. She'd discovered that sharp words between them disturbed the crew and it was becoming her practice to walk away and avoid any public disagreement. After a short exchange with Gunning, Aristidis followed her, taking the basket from her hands and walking companionably along in step.

“I too am still hopeful, miss. I'm sure you're right about the temple building and no burial may be expected in its precincts. This tongue of land is not large…I think we should be using our heads before our spades to locate the tomb.”

“Agreed,” she said, turning to survey the site. “Let's imagine, then, the structure over there in the centre. We've found vestiges of a circular perimeter wall and can project the course of that out to about there…” She pointed. “So we must look in the area outside that.”

He put down the basket and they stood with their backs to the goat sheds, looking at the unpromising outskirts, boulder-strewn and tussocky.

“Remind me, Aristidis, from the few burial sites discovered on the island—how were the corpses aligned? Any pattern? I mean, if we were thinking of, let's say, Celtic burials in Europe, the bodies would have been laid out facing the rising sun. Feet to the east, heads to the west.”

“It is the same here,” he said.

“Well, these are not
gods
we're considering, shall we agree on that? If someone was buried hereabouts, then he was a person like us. Human, not divine. Whoever it was, he died and was buried.” She gave him a steady look. She had learned never to take anyone's religious principles for granted, had discovered for herself that the roots of ancient beliefs were deep and tangled and sprang occasionally and disconcertingly back to the surface.

Aristidis nodded his understanding.

“Let's assume his followers thought they knew what would please the dear departed. And that would be to lie looking in this direction.” She waved an arm to the east. “That would be at right angles to the temple. Their undertakers or whatever they used might also have considered the dead man—for it was undoubtedly a
human,
however impressive his credentials—might like to look out over his temple.”

Aristidis lined himself up as she suggested. Then he turned, threw out his arms, and gave a burst of derisive laughter. “You realise where that plants the King of the Gods? Firmly in one of my
goat sheds
!”

Letty looked over her shoulder and, amused, joined him in his laughter. They both saw it at the same moment and fell silent abruptly. They looked at each other, startled.

Aristidis began to speak in short bursts, in a voice lacking its usual confidence. “Forgive me! What a fool! I should have seen it! I can only plead overfamiliarity. I can say—this has been my playground for decades. I have worked here, I smoked my first cigarette here…I…” He stopped in some embarrassment and Letty knew he would have continued had he been talking to Gunning. “Every inch is familiar to me and therefore unregarded.”

“But you see what I can see?” she pressed. “The little stone building, almost buried to the lintel at the end of the run? It looks to me like a stunted French
bori
…a shepherd's hut?”

“A shelter. During the bad times, it was slept in by
palikares
on the run. Everyone knows about it. It's too small and unhealthy to put the beasts in there. You'll find it ankle-deep in cigarette ends…and other things less salubrious. Please, Miss Laetitia, I beg you not to enter.”

While he spoke they had begun to move quickly towards the unimpressive little beehive of a shack. As they walked, Letty looked around her, assessing the possibilities of the site. “A wonderful wide view over the plain below. Yes, if I were on the run, I'd think this was the place to be for a good lookout. No one could leave the village without my seeing them. And I have noticed, Aristidis, that the human voice carries in a quite extraordinary way between this spot and the valley below. Easy enough to arrange signals or even shout messages to and fro.”