A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (27 page)

The door was old and thick. I pounded on it with my fist. “Hello! Silverton! Hello!”

There was no answer, no sound at all.

I pounded again, and this time Mr. Higganbotham's cries joined mine, calling Silverton's name in an urgent chorus made to shake the heavens.

“Shall we try the door?” said Mr. Higganbotham, when our efforts died away into silence.

I didn't answer, but rather placed my fingers on the handle of the door and pushed. To my surprise—or perhaps not—the portal yawned easily open, unbolted.

“Well, there's a lucky stroke,” said Mr. Higganbotham.

Inside, the house was chilled and damp, the fire unlit. Through the eastern window came a square of pale sunlight, the sole source of illumination, which reflected efficiently against the whitewashed walls to give the impression of great and fleeting lightness.

The room in which we stood contained the necessities of life, and nothing else: a hearth at one end, surrounded by various implements intended for the preparation of food, and a rectangular table at the other, bearing a pair of candles and served by four rush-seated chairs, all of which had been pushed in snugly, as neat as a pin.

I knelt before the hearth, removed one glove, and passed my hand over the pile of ashes therein. Not a trace of warmth remained.

“There's a bedroom back here,” called my companion, and I rose and turned, replacing the glove over my fingers. He was standing in the narrow doorway at the opposite end of the room—it was not large, this living chamber, perhaps twelve feet square—as if he had not quite made up his mind whether it was proper to step inside.

I had no such scruples. I nudged him aside and slipped through the opening, and though my heart beat fast and my head felt a
little dizzy, I saw at once that I had no need for embarrassment. The narrow bed lay empty and neatly made, exhibiting not the slightest sign of recent passion.

“It's empty,” I announced, though unnecessarily, as Mr. Higganbotham had stepped in behind me and now stood, frowning, turning his head from one side of the room to another. “And I don't believe anyone slept here, either.”

“Unless she—or they—rose early and returned to town by another route than ours.”

I placed my hand atop the flat quilt. “I don't think so.”

“But how do you know?”

I could not quite explain this to Mr. Higganbotham. How could I sensibly describe the scent that remained in the air, the peculiar metallic salt, after recent human habitation? How could I represent, in words of logic a scholar might comprehend, the lingering electricity of the human spirit, which was not something to be seen or heard or smelled or touched, but rather to be felt in the marrow of one's bones, in the folds of one's brains?

This bedroom was empty of both.

“I just do.” I turned away, and as I did, I caught sight of a small, leather-covered trunk in the shadow beneath the window.

A trunk of some sort was to be expected in a bedroom, particularly in the absence of a wardrobe or a chest of drawers. I should not have given the object a second glance. And yet it drew my gaze irresistibly back, though I could not have said why.

A leather trunk, secured with a pair of brass buckles, perhaps two and a half feet wide: a compact space, speaking for the parsimony of its owner.

Or else because it is a traveling trunk,
I thought. An English traveling trunk, nearly identical to the one I owned myself, down to
the small brass plate in the center of the lid that would—if, in fact, the trunk
were
identical to mine—bear the owner's initials.

“Wait a moment,” I said to Mr. Higganbotham, who had already turned to leave. I stepped to the window, which faced south toward the slope of a green hillside, and bent over the trunk. Though the light was dim, I could read the Roman letters perfectly well, for they were etched in a deep and confident type:

AMH

“My God!” I exclaimed. “We've found him!”

But I was not to know Mr. Higganbotham's immediate reaction to this news, for the last word was swallowed by the decisive bang of the front door, and a Greek voice demanding to know who the devil we were.

(Or so I deduced, for the Greek language remained a mystery to
me.)

The Hero carried the stricken Lady ashore in his own arms, and found shelter for her among the caves. In the morning, the storm had cleared and the Lady was much improved, yet she was loath to revisit the sea while still so delicate, and told the Hero, ‘Return to your ships so that the King your father will have news of your safe redemption, and the mothers of your companions may embrace their sons and daughters once more, and I will wait for you here in Naxos as a bride awaits her bridegroom.'

The Hero made protest, for his love for the Lady did each day grow a hundredfold, from the proof of her bravery and her loyal heart, but she held her hand to his lips to silence his grief, and said, ‘Do not fear, for I swear by my love for you, and by our child that grows in my womb, that you shall find me faithful in these caves when you return, and my arms will open for you as the flower opens for the bee.'

So the Hero embraced the Lady tenderly and left her with such food and drink as he could spare, and set off for Athens with heavy heart, as fast as the wind could carry him . . .

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

A
t the sound of the intruder, Mr. Higganbotham's startled eyes met mine. Of course I hadn't thought to bring a weapon, and I very much doubted that he had, either.

But his manhood quickly asserted itself. He gathered himself upward, held up one strong, gloved hand, mouthed a muscular
Stay here!
in my direction, and strode through the doorway to the main chamber.

I followed him directly.

A man stood outlined near the entrance of the cottage, dressed in a thick woolen jacket and a cap drawn low over his forehead. The sunlight struck the side of his face, and I thought he looked familiar, though I could not quite place the point of recognition.

Mr. Higganbotham addressed him in Greek, and when the intruder gruffly replied, glancing at me from beneath a dark and stony brow, I realized who he was.

The innkeeper.

“Why, what are
you
doing here?” I exclaimed.

Mr. Higganbotham lifted his eyebrows and spoke dryly. “I believe he asks the same question, more or less, of
us.
”

I addressed the landlord directly. “
Us?
We're here because your barmaid went off with Lord Silverton last night, and he hasn't turned up again, and here's Mr. Haywood's own trunk, right here in her house—”

“And my Desma has not come to the inn this morning! So I ask you, what sort of man is this English lord, and what is he doing with my Desma?”

“I rather thought that was obvious,” I said.

He shook a fist. “She has not done this before! She is a good girl.”

“They're all good girls, aren't they? Until they're not.”

The landlord turned to Mr. Higganbotham and spoke in fluid Greek, something with a great many details and flourishes, until I tapped Mr. Higganbotham on the shoulder and demanded to know what they were talking about.

“I beg your pardon. It seems he's genuinely worried about the girl. She's never done anything like this before, lives here quietly with her brother, virtuous as the day is long.”

“Her
brother
! I don't understand. Does he mean Mr. Haywood?”

“So I presume.”

“But Mr. Haywood hasn't got a sister, and in any case, where would he sleep?”

The innkeeper pointed to the window, and I followed the direction of his finger to the small stone outbuilding, just within view. “
There?
” I said, astonished.

“Yes, there! But
he
is not inside, either,” the man said. “Something is happen, and is all because of this English lordship!”

I thought of the trunk inside the bedroom, bearing Mr. Haywood's monogram.
Brother
, indeed. But if the innkeeper spoke the truth, and he slept by himself in a tiny and presumably unheated shelter, then why on earth had he gone to so much trouble and secrecy to elope with this Desma? If, indeed, Desma was the woman in whose company he had left Knossos.

And if she
was
that woman, and Mr. Haywood had been living here with her all this time, why had the innkeeper claimed yesterday to know nothing of Mr. Haywood's whereabouts?

And, good heavens, if Silverton
had
indeed actually discovered Mr. Haywood's whereabouts last night—had perhaps even
met
him, within the walls of this very house—then why hadn't he sent us word?

Mr. Higganbotham was frowning pensively. I turned back to the innkeeper, whose eyes had formed into suspicious dark slivers beneath his thick eyebrows, examining first me, and then my companion, as if we were a pair of spiders that had wandered into his kitchen.

Rather than the other way around.

“You seem to bear a great deal of concern for this girl,” I said. “
And
for her brother. Perhaps you can tell us more about them? Our friend Silverton, after all, seems to have involved his fate with theirs.”

Mr. Higganbotham shot me an amazed look, and then returned his gaze to the innkeeper, whose lips had compressed in an expression of stubborn silence. My blood raced along my limbs, light and keen, anticipating the thrill of discovery. I folded my arms.

“I believe he knows something,” I said.

“Knows something? Knows what?”

I said to the landlord, “She's not your barmaid, is she?”

She had arrived at the inn on a windswept day in early November, when the weather had just begun to cool, the landlord told us reluctantly: illiterate and incomprehensible, dressed in pale summer clothing. In exchange for the beautiful gold bracelet she wore on her left arm, he had given her warm clothes and shelter. Her confusion and her modest demeanor had soon enlisted his chivalry—such as it was—and he returned the bracelet. Eventually he had ascertained that she came from Crete, and helped her book passage to Heraklion, where he thought she might rejoin her friends.

At this point in the narrative, the landlord stopped, turned to us, and tapped his temple with his forefinger. She was not in her right mind, he had thought at the time. He could understand a few of her words, but as if they were passed through a meat grinder first: all jumbled and misshapen. She was perhaps struck on the head.

“Ah! Very interesting! Can you perhaps describe the nature of her particular dialect?” said Mr. Higganbotham, leaping across a gleaming puddle to land at the man's side. For the past half hour, we had walked swiftly along the road that paralleled the northern coast, leaving the town and the barmaid's cottage well behind us. I still did not quite understand where the landlord was taking us, and could only hope that the tale he spun now—strange, full of odd and gaping holes—might somehow make the point of our journey more clear. My gaze kept shifting to the left, toward the sea, and the muscles of my abdomen clenched with urgency.

“Hang her dialect,” I said. “Where has she
gone
? And what has she to do with Mr. Haywood?”

The landlord spun about and launched himself determinedly forward. “I have already said. She is his sister.”

“But he's English!”

“That is what she say.
Brother
, she say.”

“Miss Truelove,” said Mr. Higganbotham, sotto voce
.
He brought a tactful fist to his mouth and coughed into it. “Surely it does not need further explanation.”

I looked sideways at Mr. Higganbotham, who had found some point of interest on the distant hills, and then at the back of the landlord's rigid head. My cheeks grew warm. “Of course. I
mean,
how did they—? That is, to what extent is he—?” I cleared my throat. “How did he come to Naxos with her?”

The landlord shook his head. “She leave here alone, in December, and then I send her to Crete, where she from. She return a week later, with her brother, except they have some fear. They say to me,
We must hide, you must find us a shelter outside of the town, you must say nothing to any person who ask.
” He glanced toward me at last, and his face bore the same stony-browed glare as before. “And now this English lord come and take her away.”

“He has not taken her away,” I said. “He's a good, sensible, reliable fellow, and only wants to help. I should say it's the other way around, and she has taken
him
off somewhere, for whatever purposes of her own.”

The landlord grunted his doubt. His stride lengthened, eating up the ground with remarkable efficiency for so stocky a man.

“In any case, Mr. Haywood has left with them, and we know already that he is attached to her, and has gone to great effort to keep her from harm.”

Another grunt. “He has not left with them.”

“What's that?” I said, panting a little.

“She come to the inn, last night, in the storm. She say that her brother has gone to the caves, that he has not return. She ask
for help. So I say to her, we will go in the morning, she must stay the night at the inn, she cannot stay at her house alone.”

“Very sensible,” said Mr. Higganbotham.

“What caves?” I demanded.

The landlord raised a fist in the air. “And then she go off with the English lord! Into the night!”

Mr. Higganbotham said cheerfully, “Now, now. It isn't all that bad. He's an honorable fellow, I assure you.”

“Yes, but
what
caves?” I halted in the middle of the road and crossed my arms across my chest. “I won't go another step until somebody explains what's going on. Who
is
this woman, and where did she come from, and where are these caves to which you're leading us?”

The landlord stopped and turned, making a broad gesture with his right arm, corresponding roughly to the sweep of the sea down the cliffs. He said, in the kind of gruff, impatient voice that suggested I was an imbecile, or at the very least inattentive: “The caves of the myth! The caves where the Lady of the Labyrinth rise to heaven with her husband.”

I don't know at what age I first realized that my parents were not in love. (Love, I mean, as the poets and the composers had it; love such as Antony felt for Cleopatra, or Tristan for Isolde, or Des Grieux for Manon. The unselfish agony such as Radamès feels for Aida, when he realizes she inhabits the tomb with him, and all the might of his strong arms cannot force the stone away to free her.)

I had never seen any sign, for example, of a passionate courtship. When I was still quite small, but yet old enough to remember such things, my mother announced that she was to be married,
and shortly afterward the deed was done: a visit to a church in London, a brief wedding breakfast at a magnificent marble house I now know to be that of the Duke of Olympia, and then a rattling train journey the next morning back to East Sussex. “Now we will be perfectly provided for,” my mother said—I recall this very well, for there was something terribly momentous about the way she said it, all glossy and radiant in a rose-colored traveling dress, while her new ring sparkled on her finger—and she was right. I never wanted for a single thing, so far as my memory serves. My father came down from London to stay with us every weekend, and repaired to a bedroom he shared with my mother, who remained a breathtaking beauty—so I am told, for I can't quite picture her face, only the shape of her hair around it—even in her pastoral seclusion from the worldliness of London. One day, in fact, when I was nearly six, Mama and my father sat down with me and told me with great delight that I was going to have a little baby brother or sister.

So we were very much a family, and yet while I observed many instances and gestures of affection between them, there was not that magnetic power I later understood from books and from stage. My father treated Mama with tender respect, and I believe he would have died for her: but he would have laid down that life because of duty, not because of passion.

I don't know why that should have made any difference to me, but I believe it must have. For when I was fifteen, and my father took me to Covent Garden for the first time to watch a performance of
Siegfried
, I knew a kind of despaired young yearning as Brünnhilde awoke to the embrace of her hero: as if I had just discovered the gaping existence of a hole in my breast that could never, in this modern world made of steel rails and monstrous engines, be filled.