A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (25 page)

I let my hands fall away, into the folds of the unfamiliar dress of navy wool that draped like a sack over my body. “I have no thoughts of marriage, madam.”

“Mr. Higganbotham would be ideal. He is a gentleman pursuing a genteel profession. He has a small but secure fortune with which to keep you. You might live a virtuous and unexceptionable life, in a part of the world in which your mother and her past are quite unknown.”

“My mother! What has my mother to do with any of this?”

“We are well aware that you have experienced embarrassments, from time to time, from certain men who were once acquainted with her.” She had reverted to the plural, as she liked to do when she meant to impress me with her importance.

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Don't you? I suggest you think very hard, Miss Truelove, about the future that awaits you when you return to England. Whether or not you discover the whereabouts of the new duke, you cannot continue as a personal secretary to a young and comely man who is a stranger to you. It is most improper, to say nothing of impractical. What will you do?”

“At the present time, I am only concerned with finding Mr. Haywood and ensuring his safe ascension to the title that rightfully belongs to him. I have no time for any other considerations.”

“Well, you should do. And I urge you forcefully to consider how a union with Mr. Higganbotham might render you far happier than any other of the possible courses open to you.”

“How utterly inspiring.”

“I only speak the truth.” She lifted her prim eyebrows. “For surely you don't imagine that a man of Lord Silverton's rank would wish to
marry
you?”

I lifted my chin and stretched my spine to its greatest possible length. “What I don't understand, madam, is why a woman who
has accomplished so much, who led our great British nation for the greater part of a century, should see marriage as the greatest height to which a female might aspire.”

The round blue eyes narrowed at me. “Because, my dear. Unlike me, you have a choice in the matter. I suggest you choose wisely. That is all.”

A knock sounded on the door. I turned my head and said, “Come in.”

A maid entered, bearing a tray, and I remembered that I had sent Mr. Higganbotham away to order a tea that I hadn't really wanted. I motioned to the table behind the sofa, and the young woman gratefully eased her burden on the wooden surface. I searched for Mr. Higganbotham, but he had not accompanied the maid back into the room.

The other armchair was now empty, as if the illusion had never appeared.

“Do you know where Mr. Higganbotham has gone?” I said to the maid.

She looked at me helplessly and shrugged her shoulders.

“Mr. Hig-gan-both-am.” I raised one hand a few inches above my own head, palm down, to approximate the height of a male companion. “The man who was here with me.”

She shrugged again, bequeathed me an apologetic smile, and then bobbed what might be called a curtsey and left the room.

I went to the tray and lifted the lid of the blue-and-white china pot. My hand, I realized, was trembling very slightly. The contents were not tea at all, but thick black coffee, still hot. I poured a cup and sipped it, considering the now-empty chair and the gloomy windows, and the liquid that burned my empty stomach.
More hungry than thirsty, I realized, and that was my excuse to leave the cozy room and go in search of my companions.

The hallway was silent, almost eerily so, and much cooler than the snug parlor in which I had spent the past hour. I walked past the rough white walls, clicking my ill-fitting shoes against a floor made of worn stone, and tried to retrace our earlier steps back to the common room.

As I drew closer, I heard the reassuring patter of low voices, and I followed the sound to the large room at the inn's entrance. A pair of men, dark-haired and wet, sat at one of the tables, drinking from a set of small glasses. They looked up in astonishment as I appeared in the doorway. I pretended not to see them, and instead spread my gaze extravagantly around the room, which seemed to serve equally as foyer, tavern, and dining room.

But no one else was there.

A flush crept upward from the shelter of my collar, burned there by the unwavering inspection of the two strangers, whom I still feigned not to notice. Where the devil had Silverton and Mr. Higganbotham gone? It wasn't a large inn, and surely they would not have ventured back out into the storm at this late hour, having neither dined nor informed me of their intentions.

One of the men spoke a few words, presumably in Greek, and began to rise from his seat. He had the leathery skin and broad hands of a fisherman. Beneath his dark beard, his expression was kind, almost soft, but for some reason the action filled me with alarm. I backed away from the doorway and into a solid human chest.

“Silverton!” I turned in relief.

But the chest did not belong to his lordship. It was the landlord,
who explained to me in halting English that Silverton had left the premises a quarter hour ago in the company of the inn's lovely barmaid.

Dinner, carried up to my room by the landlord himself, consisted of a fragrant vegetable soup, fish, bread, and pickled olives, accompanied by wine.

“A great shame,” said Mr. Higganbotham, for perhaps the dozenth time in the past hour. He sat back in his seat and sloshed the wine about in his glass, inspecting the results with a keen eye. “I might have expected better from a man of his parts and stature, but I suppose these aristocrats simply cannot help themselves.”

I picked at my fish and agreed that this tendency to amour represented an unfortunate weakness on his lordship's part, but I expected he would return by daybreak. He would never willingly jeopardize the investigation.

“Wouldn't he?” Mr. Higganbotham released a sigh and shook his head at his empty plate. His disappointment, thank goodness, had not affected his appetite.

“No. And it's entirely possible that he thought the girl had some useful information.”

“And
this
is his means of interrogation?” Another shake of that well-tended head. His hair was terribly thick and waved just so at the temples, so that I couldn't help wondering if nature were perhaps receiving some sort of friendly assistance. “How sorry I am, Miss Truelove, that a mind so delicate as yours must be exposed to such corruption.”

My room at the inn was not large, and when Mr. Higganbotham had swung down the stairs and directed our dinner to be served
here—the common room, he said, was far too public a stage for a lady of good English breeding—I had considered objecting. Mr. Higganbotham had placed his chair so close to my bed that his elbow rested, from time to time, on the corner of my pillow; my own chair sat only inches from the whistling fireplace and the rack from which hung my drying clothes. The entire effect was one of forced intimacy, and I had the distinct idea that if I turned, I would see my father standing by the mantel, attending closely to our conversation.

But then I relented, because anything was less awkward than having dinner with Mr. Higganbotham in his own room, and
here
, at least, I was in command.

I thought of the Queen's earlier words, or rather those words I had imagined the Queen to say. “I am not
quite
so delicate as that, Mr. Higganbotham,” I said crisply.

“Not by circumstance, perhaps. But surely by
nature
.” Mr. Higganbotham set down his wineglass and leaned toward me, over the dinner that had been set so carefully on the small wooden table in my room. “I am grieved, Miss Truelove,
grieved
that this crisis has forced you to witness all the degraded aspects of human nature, when you should be safely home in England, surrounded by a loving family.”

“And yet, it's the strangest thing. When I pause to reflect, I find I'm rather enjoying myself, Mr. Higganbotham, except for the anxiety over Mr. Haywood's welfare. And the inclement weather, of course. I begin to think that adventure agrees with me.”

“You've hardly eaten.”

“Only because of my present concern.”

Mr. Higganbotham reached across the table, and I withdrew my hand just in time, so that he was forced to divert himself to the stem of his wineglass at the last instant.

“I only wish I could relieve your
every
concern, madam,” he said quietly.

“Very kind of you, I'm sure, but where would we be without our concerns? An awfully bland sort of existence, I should think. What did you think of the photographs?”

He blinked. “Photographs?”

“The snaps of Knossos. The ones you were so ardent to study, you arrived at my stateroom door at seven o'clock in the morning.”

“Yes, that's true.” He dropped his gaze and shifted in his seat, as a schoolboy might when questioned about the contents of his desk. “They were—well, that is to say, they proved very much as I suspected from the beginning.”

“Dear me. Suspected what?”

Mr. Higganbotham looked up mournfully. “I'm sorry to have to break such untidy news, Miss Truelove, but I fear these particular frescoes are not genuine. I mean, they are frescoes right enough, but they cannot possibly have been painted during the period during which the palace was occupied.” He paused to take his lower lip under his teeth. “Can you tell me—do you think Mr. Haywood had truly based his studies on their discovery?”

“Ah,” I said.

“Ah?”

“Nothing. Yes, this is disappointing news. How extraordinary. Are you quite certain?”

“I cannot be certain, of course, without seeing the paintings in situ
.
But the subjects and the style are all quite wrong, and what is more, it makes no sense.”

“In what way?”

He was leaning forward again, but this time the animation in his expression had nothing to do with his concern for my delicate
mind. “Because we are meant to interpret the three figures as the triptych of the labyrinth—Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur—and yet they are positioned in such a way that defies every single known recounting of the myth.”

Was it my imagination, or did a swift intake of breath occur in the small space behind me? A gasp: but not of surprise, I thought, though I could not have said why I knew this.

Not of surprise, but dismay.

“I am afraid you have lost me. Did you say the fresco depicts Theseus and Ariadne?”

“And the Minotaur.” Mr. Higganbotham nodded vigorously. “Or so we are meant to believe, although the artist—whoever he may be—has chosen not to portray the actual head of the beast. But merely
placing
such an illustration inside what is deemed to be the palace of Knossos would naturally lead the viewer to assume that it represents the actual myth for which Crete is famous. Just as the repeated depiction of the labrys throughout the ruins leads us inevitably—almost
too
inevitably, if you understand me—to conclude that these buildings were, in fact, the Knossos of legend.” He tapped his forehead. “The human brain, you see, craves these connections. We want
sense
in our world; we want things to fall neatly into place. We want a guiding hand. Fate, or God himself.”

“Are you saying the palace
isn't
Knossos?”

“I only mean that we
assume
it is. It may well be, but how do we know for certain? And yet we pretend this is fact. In the same way, your average fellow sees a certain fresco on a wall at Knossos—assuming, as he does, that this building is the true Knossos—and he will say, at first sight,
Ah! These three figures must certainly be the great Knossos myth come to life; there can be no other explanation.
But the painting, I am afraid, does not make sense.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, a hundred small things. In the first place, it is Theseus leading Ariadne out of the labyrinth, when we know it was Ariadne's own ball of string that allowed Theseus to escape after having slain the beast. It is
Ariadne
who reigns in the labyrinth,
Ariadne
who leads, because of her love for Theseus.”

Mr. Higganbotham's eyes were bright with passion, and he was now arranging olives on his plate, demonstrating the relative positions of his mythological characters. His fingers were long and white, the nails neatly trimmed, and they maneuvered the olives with a certain capability, a tensile strength that mesmerized me. In the harbor, I had dismissed him as so much ballast in our struggle to make landing, but here he stood athwart his element. He had transformed from the miniature to the colossal.

“And there is the Minotaur. Why is his head hidden from us?”

“Because that part of the fresco did not survive.”

“But why? It's a damned coincidence, that everything else in the painting shows up beautifully, but the most interesting part—the Minotaur's head—doesn't survive. And then there's the matter of that camera in the hand of Theseus.”