The Tomb of Zeus (28 page)

He moved forward to kneel where Letty had knelt, looking tenderly at the bony skull. He leaned over and solemnly kissed the vestige of face where the lips might once have been. Then he stood, saluted again, and scrambled, with the help of many offered hands, out of the tomb.

The men had fallen silent, but were smiling and nodding approval at Gunning. Proper respect had been shown. This was not their deity, but it was the goddess of their ancestors, a priestess or a princess, and due reverence was to be expected. Some were crossing themselves and peering, fascinated, at the remains below. Demetrios, defiantly smiling, essayed a Minoan salute in imitation of Gunning. Aristidis seemed to have calmed himself.

The newfound peace was disturbed by a slow hand-clapping from Theodore. “Good gracious, man! Whatever do you do for an encore? The fairy song from
Iolanthe?
”

The men looked at each other, hands clenching, not understanding the words but hearing the unmistakable sneer. Letty threw caution and convention to the winds. She stalked over to Russell, took up a stand an uncomfortable hand-span away from him, and looked him in the eye. What he saw there made him take a step back.

“The lady has slept in solitary state for too long. Perhaps we should offer up a companion? Like the royal burials at Ur of the Chaldees. How do you measure up, Theodore? Are you volunteering to lie alongside or shall we chuck you in?”

Not pausing for a reply, she seized Gunning by the arm and walked off to the goat sheds to help him collect his tripod and photographic gear, still fuming. She suddenly realised that the arm she held so tightly was quivering. He was stifling a laugh.

“Not a bad idea, Letty! But why contaminate such a good site? Let's stuff him in one of those cists when we've got them opened up. Nobody's ever going to find him there.”

They stood together in the sudden dark of the goat shed workroom, gathering clipboards, notebooks, rolls of film, and photographic plates into a pile on the workbench, each understanding the other's working methods, not needing to comment or question.

“Are you ready?”

“Ready. Oh, no. Hang on a minute! Just move into the light, will you, William?” She took hold of his chin and turned his head, peering into his face. “Oh, good! For a minute I thought you were growing a moustache again. But I see it's just goddess dust. A fine film of it on your top lip. Here, let me see to it.”

She took his handkerchief from his pocket and as he turned a smiling and obliging face to her, she suddenly regretted her intimate gesture. “The life you lead, William, it's a wonder to me that you manage to keep your hankies so crisp,” she said nervously. She rubbed and dusted until satisfied, surprised that he was suffering her ministrations without resistance.

“There. You'll do. That's a nice mouth. It looks firm and honest. The goddess is probably counting herself fortunate indeed that there was such a handsome chap on hand to greet her. That grating noise we heard—it was the sound of her bony toes curling in ecstasy.” She was talking nonsense into the silence, hardly aware of what she was saying, confused by his closeness. For the first time, no mask of indifference or scorn was being raised in defence, his eyes were showing humour and…and…well,
affection
was as far as she was prepared to go. Until he kissed her.

“There. That's the second goddess I've kissed in ten minutes. I must say I prefer the warm, willing lips. I love you, Letty. Always have. And I think you've always known it.”

“No. You're wrong. I held no such hopes last night. You were quite ready to push me over the cliff.”

“It was a storm we had to weather. And we're not through it yet. There are squalls ahead still, I'm afraid. I'm not quite sure I'm standing here, holding you…I didn't understand until a few moments ago that you might really care for me. When you rounded on Theo…you didn't say much but you did something to shake him. I've never seen him give an inch before to anyone, certainly not recoil from a woman.”

“I looked a curse at him! It's very primitive, the urge to protect someone you love.”

“Someone you love,” he repeated softly, taking in her meaning. “Are you sure I'm worth a declaration of war, Letty? Because that's how Theo will interpret your challenge—all the more demeaning to him for being delivered in front of the men.”

“Let him! He knows now that if he harms you in any way, he'll have me to reckon with.” She pushed her arms inside his jacket, sighing upwards into another kiss.

“The diggers, William? They'll be waiting for us. We've been here uninterrupted for ten minutes. I've been expecting the sound of clumping boots every second. They're not even whistling in a marked manner.”

“Ah. That's because I notice Aristidis is standing guard on the path. He won't let anyone approach.”

“What!” Letty looked about anxiously. “You mean he knows?”

“Seems to have guessed. In fact he's offered to kidnap you.”

“Kidnap? Me? What on earth are you saying?”

“That's what they do here in Crete. If a girl is willing, her young man arranges with his friend—his best man, if you wish—to snatch her, like Persephone, away from her friends and family and deliver her, sobbing and distraught, to the church. Quite a few Europeans, witnessing such scenes, have been taken in by the high standard of performance by the principal actors and have intervened on the girl's behalf. Skulls have been cracked, backs belaboured with walking canes, only for the girl in the case to have turned on her would-be saviours for spoiling her fun.”

“I'm sorry, William. If this is a proposal you're making, it's a very odd one and I shall have to decline. Weeping and wailing and being dragged along, you say?” She shook her head. “I would stride happily down the aisle with a nauseating grin of triumph on my face!”

“Well, if ever we get that far, there's just one small thing I must insist on. That your wedding getup doesn't include a digging knife.”

He broke away for a moment to slide the belt at her waist around a few inches, moving the knife to the small of her back. “Ouf! Thank God for that! Didn't like to mention it earlier. Could have broken the spell.”

W
ith Gunning's presence being demanded at the burial pit by Theodore, Letty went over to the temple site with Aristidis, dreamy, radiating good humour. She was even content to sit on a stone and watch while they set about their work. A parasol would have come into its own, she thought, at this moment, to hide her pink, self-satisfied, and totally betraying face.

Aristidis went straight to work, directing three men to reveal and tidy up the storage room to the west, a room lined with large
pithoi
that must have contained olive oil, wheat, honey, wine—all the gifts destined to honour what she now had to assume was the Mother Goddess, the same one worshipped in palaces all over the island. Was Theodore disappointed when his theory—that the all-conquering young god of the mainland Greeks had lived, died, and been buried on this windy mountainside—was shot to pieces by the presence in the burial pit of a woman?

She didn't hesitate to answer her own question. Yes! He would have made much of a King of the Gods figure resurfacing to the world's attention. With his own forceful features on the front page of all the newspapers, dark-eyed, bearded like a Mycenaean warrior, aggressively masculine, people would have been entranced. They would have seen the rightness of it. They would have flocked in their thousands to the site. And Arthur Evans's star would have been eclipsed.

An excited shout broke through her daydreams. She recognised the voice of Demetrios and sat up, instantly attentive. Every crew seems to have one—a lead hound who runs ahead of the others, a finder by luck or instinct. She had learned to pay attention whenever Demetrios gave tongue. He was busy in the central room of the temple, opening up the row of cists. Large, underground stone coffers, they sometimes still contained remnants of a shrine's treasures. The snake goddesses had been found in one such at Knossos. But, Letty was aware, more often than not they had been broken open and the contents removed. She was holding herself back from a fevered anticipation.

She called out: “What can you see, Demetrios?”

“An eye, miss! Someone's looking up at me!”

“Careful!” she shouted, with dire memories of her underground snake. She shot to her feet and ran over to him.

Aristidis got there at the same time, passing him a torch. “Here, before we take the lid off, shine this through the hole.” He squinted up at the sun whose rays, almost overhead, must have struck something and been reflected back. “A snake? A lizard? Better check before we release it.”

“
Blue
eyes? Never seen a snake or lizard with blue eyes,” muttered Demetrios. “Sorry I yelled—gave me quite a shock!”

“Go on with you! What did you have for breakfast—a bucket of raki?” Aristidis teased him gently, taking back the torch and shining it down the hole in the cracked cover. The stone box, coffin-shaped, was four feet long and eighteen inches wide. He moved the beam about for a bit, then drew in a deep breath. “Come and look here, miss! He's right! It's an eye!”

Dubiously, Letty took the torch and peered, following the beam. In her effort to restrain a female squeal of surprise she almost choked. “Heavens! Oh, I say! Yes, that's an eye all right.”

A small almond-shaped object, silver-blue, with a crystalline appearance and a centre as black as jet, looked back at her—she was relieved to see—unwinking. “Never seen anything like it before. Has anyone?” Heads were shaken; eyes fixed her, willing her to give the order. “Right then—off with the top? Shall we?”

It took four men to lift the lid and lower it to the ground. They stood, six figures, grouped around the cist, heads bowed, staring down at the contents.

“You look as though you're all gathered at the graveside, waiting for the trumpet to sound the Last Post,” came Gunning's cheerful voice. “What's up, Letty?”

“I think this may be just that, William,” said Letty. “A grave—of sorts. Designed for single occupancy, you could say. Come and look and tell us: Who do you suppose this might be?”

Gunning looked. He caught one of the young diggers, standing by openmouthed, by the hand. “Petros, fetch Kyrie Russell, will you? Quickly!”

He looked apologetically around at the others.

“Oh, let Russell have his moment,” said Aristidis, comfortably. “He's waited long enough.”

Theo came barrelling up, sweating and dishevelled in his shirt-sleeves and breeches, suspicion and anticipation warring on his face. The men took a step back to allow him to gaze into the cist by himself. Surprisingly, he was speechless. No recitation of dimensions and enumeration of artefacts came from him. He fell to his knees on the ground, making a palpable effort not to thrust eager hands into the stone container and draw out the precious contents.

Finally, and they had to lean closer to hear his whispered words: “He's very delicate. If you so much as
attempt
to kiss him, Miss Talbot, I will smack your bottom!”

Then, mastering his thoughts and aware once more of his audience: “It is he,” he intoned, claiming their attention. “We are looking on the face of Zeus. The young Greek god Zeus. And this is his tomb.”

His eyes flicked sideways to Gunning's notebook.

With a sardonic smile, William recorded the moment. “I say, Theo, can you be so sure of that?” He put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “I mean…well…it's perfectly lovely, we'd all agree, but it's just a statue. Half life-sized. Three feet tall, would you say? Unique to date, I think. It's made of ivory, if I'm not mistaken, and carved most wonderfully. Cretan workmanship? I wonder? Brilliant…unusual…even for the artists of Minos. Do you know— I can't keep the name ‘Daedalus’ from popping into my mind.” He smiled apologetically for his flight of fancy and peered more closely into the stone box. “But I'll tell you what—whoever and whatever this is—it's been very badly damaged.”

“It's a god,” said Letty, her certainty cancelling out his doubts. “It
could
perhaps be the young god the Mycenaeans brought with them to depose the Mother Goddess. But an Olympian? Straight from the Top Table? I'm not so sure of that.”

“Are you about to upend him to check his bona fides?” Theodore could not resist the spiteful jibe.

“His provenance is not in question,” she said tartly, annoyed at the interruption. “Do you see his hair? Whoever damaged him left his hair intact. It's spun gold. The most delicate fibres of gold thread. And his eyes are blue rock crystal. His face is lovely, pale and of the finest-grained ivory. He's a Spring God, twenty years old at the most.
I
would worship at his altar! His limbs…so slender-look, do you see, they're jointed onto the body like those of a modern doll. Perhaps you can move them? And look at his hands! Every vein, every fingernail is perfectly carved.”

She fell silent, keeping her gaze and her comments above the waist, reluctant to describe the devastation below.

It was Gunning who echoed all their thoughts: “He's been badly treated. Do you know, if this were a human body we'd dug up, I'd be sending for our friend Mariani. I'd say he'd been murdered. It's not as though he's been crushed in an earthquake or been cut to pieces in battle. His injuries are calculatedly inflicted. He's missing some of his parts,” he said delicately, with regard for his mixed audience. “And his feet are gone because they've been burned away. Do you see the signs of charring? Just to the feet. He's been held sideways over a fire, quite deliberately. Tortured to death, you'd say.”

The respectful silence as they contemplated the young god's anguish was broken by Theodore's voice, officious and prosaic: “Tell you what I'm minded to do, William, when we've completed our recording,” he said. “I'm going to box him up again and take him in to Stoddart. For a postmortem examination. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but on this occasion, the doctor may have something interesting to tell the archaeologists.”

Work went on until the customary hour before sunset. Exhausted but elated, Letty joined Aristidis, putting the finishing touches to the dig. Tarpaulins were being stretched over the exposed sections, the remaining crates of potsherds being carted off to the sheds. The only figure not scrambling to tidy up was moodily standing on the edge of the precipice looking out to sea, legs splayed—at the helm, you would have said, Letty thought.

She shared the thought with Aristidis. “Ah, yes! I never forget that he was a naval man! And he never lets anyone else forget it,” he said.

“I wonder if he's a bit unhappy that the god he's uncovered looks so unlike him? Well, I mean—he couldn't be more different, could he? Slender, youthful, blond with bright blue eyes? Not a bit like any of the representations of Zeus in the art of
any
age or culture! You know—heavy of muscle, shaggy of hair, thunderbolt at the ready? Poor Theo! Nothing seems ever to be what he expects. Shall we go over and congratulate him on the day's achievements? He ought to be thrilled—cracking open the champagne!”

“He is not happy,” Aristidis agreed. “But please, Miss Laetitia, do not think of trying to improve his state of mind. I know the goodness of your heart tells you to seek the happiness of others, but sometimes all human effort is in vain.”

Letty was surprised at his assessment of her character, and dis-believing.

“He is as God made him.” Aristidis nodded lugubriously. “An unhappy man and a dangerous one, for he feels bound to communicate his unhappiness. He can stir up thunderclouds over everyone's head!”

“I wonder what he's contemplating at this moment?”

Aristidis stared, suddenly alert, at the still figure standing far too close to the crumbling rim for safety.

Letty gave an evil grin to lighten the mood. “To jump or not to jump? Is that his question? Perhaps we could do him a favour? Help him to answer it?” She mimed giving a gentle push.

Aristidis, for once, did not laugh with her. “A perfectly awful thought! I cannot joke about it. This is my land! Here he is my guest, though he does not acknowledge it.” He considered for a moment. “If I thought he were seriously contemplating killing himself I would, at this moment, be running over to stop him. And you, I believe, would be the first at my side to restrain him! But, see—he's buckled on his spurs. He's prepared to take the conventional route down to the valley.”

They stayed on watch, however, but to their mutual relief, Theodore didn't put them to the test. Just cutting a dramatic figure, Letty decided. Playing Poseidon. He turned and walked slowly away from the edge, calling for his horse to be brought to him.

Stoddart was so surprised he could hardly get his words together when they arrived on his doorstep at midday on the following day.

“A postmortem? On ancient body parts you're carrying in a finds box? Are you mad? I know you lose all track when you're out in the country but here, in town, it's a Sunday.”

Theodore was impatient. “Just take a look, will you. One glimpse will be enough.”

He slid the lid open a few inches to show the head of the statue.

Stoddart opened the door at once and ushered them inside. “Laetitia…William…Good morning. Look—take that thing, whatever it is, into my examination room and put it on the table, will you?” He glanced at his watch and looked over his shoulder. “I can give you half an hour before Ollie calls me in to lunch.”

The enticing smell of roast lamb followed them along the corridor, and they all prayed that Olivia would remain busily basting the joint and directing operations in the back quarters until their consultation was over.

“Good lord! I've only just sent one smashed-up blond young man back to you, Theo, and here you are bringing me another,” he said as they laid out the figure on the examination table. “What have you done to poor George this time?”

He took a few moments to stare at the figure, joviality giving way to awe as he spoke again: “Extraordinary! Exquisite!” He looked at them across the table, his face full of wonder, and spoke slowly. “Do you know, I can't think when I've been more moved by a piece of sculpture? Degas's little dancer? A clumping frivolity compared with this! ‘The Charioteer’? A mere lump of marble! There's a perfect grace in every limb.”

He shook himself out of his state of adoration. “I shall want to know sometime where on earth you came by him but,” he looked again at his watch, “time is of the essence and all that! William— you'll find a sherry bottle in that cupboard and some glasses. Do the honours, will you? I think we'd all like one. Large dry one do you?

“Now!” He put on a pair of spectacles, took a bracing sip of his sherry, and looked long and carefully before speaking. “Male. Young, say between eighteen and twenty-two. In perfect health before death. Good grief! I'm getting as barmy as you! The boy was never alive—hang on to that, Stoddart! Fair hair, grey-blue eyes, of a northern European racial type. If George were here, he'd specify: dolichocephalic, I'm sure. No evidence of excessive, emphatic, or imbalanced musculature. By that I mean one arm is not more developed than the other, which might have given us a clue that he was an archer or a discus thrower. His waist—normal proportions. And that's a surprise. I note he's not wearing the tight corset-belt that we see in representations of Minoan men.