A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (14 page)

The Hero cried out when he saw the marks upon the Lady's fair body. ‘Indeed I will deliver you from this evil man,' he said, ‘and it shall be the honor of my life to sink my dagger into his heart for your sake.'

‘Let it not be for my sake,' she replied, ‘but for the sake of those youths he has destroyed, and for the sake of my brother, whom they call a beast, and whose honor and youth have been stolen from him.'

The Hero scored his palm with his dagger and swore by his own blood that he should free her brother as well as herself, and when he saw that the Lady was shivering from the audacity of her deeds this night, he took her to his bed and soothed her fears . . .

T
HE
B
OOK
OF
T
IME
,
A. M. H
AYWOOD
(1921)

B
y the time the
Isolde
steamed into harbor in Heraklion, some thirty-six hours after the incident in the Hotel Grand Bretagne, I was thoroughly in love with her.

Not because I was any less sick this time. Goodness, no. My innards had forgotten all they ever learned from the Bay of Biscay, and reverted to their original state of disarray almost as soon as I climbed the gangplank. During the hours of the voyage, I neither ate nor slept, but existed in a kind of miserable netherworld, bearable only because it wasn't inhabited by a meddling and officious regent, imagined or otherwise.

“I say, you're not going to be sick again, are you?” asked Lord Silverton, as we stood bravely on deck in a brisk wind, watching the awed boats scatter before our prow. His face was drawn with worry; whether for my health or for the sanctity of his nearby breeches, I didn't care to ask.

“I shall give you fair warning, I promise.”

“That's the spirit. I imagine you'll want to lie down at the hotel for a few hours, while I head out to make inquiries—”

“Certainly not.”

“Very dull sort of work, making inquiries.” He was wearing his spectacles, and the salt spray was getting the better of them. He removed his handkerchief, pinched the specs from his nose, and wiped the glass clean. “Especially when one doesn't speak Greek.”

“Nonetheless, I should like to accompany you.”

“What, have I still not gained your trust?”

“No, it's the opposite. You don't believe I have anything to contribute to this investigation. You consider me a millstone around your experienced neck.”

“And you wish to prove me wrong.” He replaced the spectacles on his nose and aimed his face at the solemn ochre lines of the Venetian fortress at the mouth of the harbor. “You think it's all glamour and derring-do, don't you? Blakeney and that rot?”

“You
are
masquerading as an idiot, after all.”

“I protest. I'm not masquerading at all.” He spread his hands. “Simply born this way, I'm afraid. Only I happen to have a talent for mathematics and languages, which others seem to think is useful in this line of work.”

“You have more than that.” I propped my elbows on the railing and gazed down at the fitful uncurling of the white-capped waves below. My head swam with them. “What sort of inquiries are we making? Where do we start?”

Silverton's tweedy arms appeared next to mine, atop the polished wooden rail. His hands were encased in snug black leather gloves, which strained against the enormity of the flesh and bone
within. He knit his fingers together and pressed the thumbs into a steeple. “We start with Mr. Arthur Evans, don't we? He's the chap in charge at Knossos, after all, and a managing sort of fellow at that, from all accounts. If anyone knows where Max is, or ought to be, Evans will have caught wind of it.”

“
How
do you know that Mr. Evans is a managing sort of person?”

He looked surprised. “Common knowledge.”

Of course. I imagined the leathery interior of a London gentlemen's club, filled with smoke and common knowledge in magnificent gassy clouds, where some corpulent Royal Society fellow was leaning back in his wing chair, lighting a cigar, and shaking his head:
Oh, that Evans, he's a managing chap, right enough.
Then accepting a glass of cream sherry from a passing waiter.

“I suppose that depends on how one defines the word
common
,” I said.

“Am I about to be lectured again?”

“No. You can't help what you are. Where can we find Mr. Evans, do you think? In town, or at Knossos itself?”

Silverton lifted one finger. “That, my dear, is what I mean by making inquiries.”

We had slowed to a crawl now, maneuvering around the shipping to find a berth against the multitude of docks thrusting out into the harbor waters, and this was why I loved the
Isolde
, even though she made me sick. She was so solid and protective. She had waited for us so faithfully in Piraeus, and borne us across the seas while we lay safe in our berths, free from any danger of gun-toting intruders, and now used her power and dignity to secure us the most advantageous position in the harbor, so that we might disembark without any injury or even inconvenience. Without the
competition of other passengers striving alongside, each bent on a separate goal.

Because of
Isolde
, we were ourselves mighty. We could do anything.

Except we could not secure lodgings. This was my fault, for which I cannot apologize. I insisted on scrupulous honesty as regards my relation to Lord Silverton—none—and the clerk's expression of open greed turned instantly grave.

“Explain to him that we will take separate rooms,” I said to his lordship. “Quite on opposite sides of the hotel, if necessary.”

“My dear Truelove, have you already forgotten the events of the night before last? I must insist on your keeping a room next to mine, though I should naturally prefer to share accommodation, just to be quite safe.”

“Sir!”

“I should sleep on the floor, of course.”

“Impossible.”

“Impossible that I should sleep on the floor, or impossible that—?”

“Just secure us two rooms, sir. Two
separate
rooms.”

He shook his head. “The chap won't allow it, now that you've spilled the beans. I had him quite convinced and happy, and you
would
refuse to sign the register as Lady Silverton—”

“I can't tell a lie, your lordship.”

“It's not a lie, precisely. Well, I suppose it is. But when one goes gallivanting across the globe, dodging assassins and ducking bullets, one's naturally put to the wall. In extremis. One's forced to commit a few petty sins simply in order to—”

“Pretending to be united before God is
not
a petty sin, sir. If necessary, we can resume our berths on the
Isolde
each evening. Knossos is only a few miles away.”

“Hardly convenient. What about our baggage?”

“Perhaps the proprietor will be so good as to allow our trunks temporary accommodation, even if he will not extend the invitation to their owners.”

Lord Silverton heaved an aggrieved sigh and turned back to the hotel clerk, who was regarding our exchange with haughty Mediterranean disapproval. After some deliberation, he conceded that our luggage faced no moral temptation from cohabitation, and allowed us—or Mr. Brown, rather, who was lurking near the entrance, keeping watch on the street outside while stifling his evident amusement—to place the trunks in a single dark room at the back of the lobby. For a fee, of course, which Silverton delivered in jingling five-drachmae coins, casting me dark looks as he counted them out.

“Ask him if he knows where Mr. Evans can be found,” I said, when he had finished.

“Already have, Truelove.” He removed his spectacles from his inside pocket and set them in place. He was wearing a Norfolk suit of gray British tweed, perfectly pressed, and a cap of matching tweed that settled comfortably over his gold hair. A pair of smart leather gaiters topped his sturdy shoes. He looked like a man off to denude a Scottish glen of its grouse. “He's up at the ruins, overseeing restoration, and mine host is happy to loan us a mule to assist our journey.”

“Why, how far is it?”

“A few miles only. The roads aren't up to snuff, however. Years of civil war and all that. Evans's show is about the only
reliable source of employment at the moment. Come along, then, and look sharp. I don't suppose you happen to be on familiar terms with mules?”

I was not familiar with mules, and especially not the beady-eyed, rough-haired specimen presented to us in the alleyway behind the Hotel Alabaster. “You can always change your mind later,” Silverton said as he led the reluctant animal up the road in the space between us. The sky had cleared to a brilliant Greek blue, and the wind blew steadily in the gaps between the rocky hills around us. By now the hour was approaching noon, and a brave winter sun stood high above the peaks, shedding what feeble warmth it could.

“I am an excellent walker, I assure you,” I said.

“Yes, I expect you are. I say, I'm rather looking forward to this. Max's mysterious doings aside, one hears of such astonishing things emerging from the old stones up there.”

I thought of the photographs, which were presently tucked inside the small leather satchel that bumped along the side of my leg. “What sort of things?”

“Why, the palace itself, to start. Who would have thought that Knossos actually existed? They say the complex is very like a maze, just as the Greeks had it in their myths.”

“Myths often begin as actual events, don't they? I believe I read that somewhere. Nobody makes things up out of whole cloth.”

“Do you believe that, really? You think there was an actual Minotaur kept in the labyrinth? Theseus and Ariadne and the ball of string?”

“Not all of that, of course. But surely there might have been
some kernel of truth in the middle of it all, some actual beast that was defeated. Why not?”

Silverton had resumed his spectacles, presumably to better negotiate the rocky ground, and he now drew his pipe from his jacket pocket. “Hmm. Yes. Then the story gets handed down, and the poets layer it all over with magic and gods and turn it into myth, until we've got Theseus the magnificent nobly volunteering to sail to Crete among the annual tribute of Athenian youths to King Minos. Naturally, being such a strapping young fellow, he inspires instant passion in the tender breast of the king's daughter—”

“Ariadne.”

“—who with fiendish cleverness gives him a simple ball of string so he can find his way through the labyrinth—odd that he couldn't think of that one himself, mind you—to defeat the Minotaur and end the annual sacrifice. The fellow then goes on to perform endless acts of derring-do, aided by the gods, and goes down as one of the great heroes of history.”

“I have never considered Theseus a great hero,” I said. “It's abominable, the way he treated Ariadne.”

Silverton held a match to the end of his pipe, cupping one hand lovingly around the bowl. “Oh, do you mean that bit about how he leaves the poor girl in the lurch, stranded on Naxos, while he heads back to Athens and a hero's spoils?”

“Abominable. And then he married her own sister.”

“Oh, but Ariadne
did
settle herself well, in the end. You can't deny that. You could do far worse than marriage to Dionysus. Think of the jolly times.”

“Only a man would say that.”

“Just what have you got against laughter and pleasure, Truelove? Frankly, I believe she's better off with old Bacchus. Damned
tiresome, I should think, to be married to a hero. His time's not his own. He's got all these bloody public duties. He probably thinks he's entitled to a mistress or two, to keep up his spirits, and then you're stuck home with a couple of heirs squalling round your feet, while he goes off cleaning out the Augean stables and whatnot . . .”