A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (35 page)

“He is not worth your grief,” I said. “He is not worth another living thought.”

Desma plucked my hand from the page, without hostility, and smoothed her palm across the paper.

“Anyway, it's just stories. Stories handed down by men, told by men. You are welcome to imagine it's all true. You're welcome to imagine whatever you please. But it will not return to you this lover of yours, whoever he is. You're much better off getting on with your life. We shall arrive in Athens in a matter of hours, and you will be married by nightfall.”

Married by nightfall
: the words sounded so final. Perhaps Desma understood more English than I realized, for her fingers made a kind of spasm on the page, as if the hand had received an invisible wound.

My God
, I thought.
The poor duke.

I continued, “You'll be a mother soon, after all. You've got what you needed, a husband to make you respectable in the eyes of the world, and it's turned up trumps for you. Don't waste any more tears. I daresay he hasn't wasted many for your sake.”

She turned the page again, back to the death of Theseus, and her forefinger traced the line of his profile. A single tear rolled down her pristine cheek, and leapt from her chin to the back of her hand.

Una furtiva lagrima
. Caruso's voice.
Negli occhi suoi spuntò.

“You're mad. Poor dear, it's all an illusion. But the duke is quite real, and I'm sure he will make you as happy as he can. He will at least—”

She turned to me. “Go,” she said. Her eyes were wild.

“Go?” I said, in affront. “But it's
my
cabin!”

She jabbed her finger at the illustration. “Go!” she said again, quite desperate.

I frowned and peered again at the page.
Plate no. 127. The great hero visits the island of Skyros, where the king Lycomedes, afraid that his guest plans to overthrow him, tosses the unsuspecting Theseus from a cliff. He perishes and is buried in obscurity, until his remains
are discovered and returned to Athens in 475 BC by the conquering king Cimon.

“My dear girl,” I said, “you are about to be married. You must relinquish these morbid thoughts at once.”

A single blast of the ship's horn vibrated the wall of the cabin.

“You see? We've sighted the port already. The good reverend awaits. Indeed, I should begin giving orders directly for the preparation of the main saloon for the ceremony, and the cook is already making the cake ready, or I shall have his—”

“Go!” said Desma.

“—hide,” I finished.

She slammed the book shut and tilted her chin, and the look she gave me from within those lustrous dark eyes was nothing short of imperious.

“Go. Skyros.” The fist came down on the front cover. “Now.”

The next day, the Hero's ships arrived at last on the beach below the cliffs, and his heart quickened with fear when he saw no sign of his Lady awaiting him on the sand, nor in the caves in which he had left her. For many weeks he searched the island, sending out his men far and wide to inquire after her, but he found only the rumor that a great Prince had come to Naxos to seek his beloved, who was mourning another man, and they had disappeared together.

In despair, thinking the Lady had betrayed her promise, the Hero returned to Athens and ruled the city with great wisdom for many years, though he was never again to find a true and faithful love among the many women he took in bed and in marriage. It is said that he died by the hand of Lycomedes in Skyros, and that his bones were returned to Athens a thousand years later, though there are those who whisper that he met a different fate altogether . . .

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

M
y first love affair ended not by some dramatic quarrel, but in tranquil and agonizing neglect. (If, indeed, anything so brief and undignified can be properly called an affair.) I remember the helpless period of his silence, for of course I could not write to him; I remember how I would lie awake, conceiving and discarding various schemes by which I would encounter him accidentally, on a London street or at some musical performance, or even inside His Grace's study while waiting for an appointment. It came to nothing, and now I am glad I did not. He was cruel to ignore me, but perhaps his kindness would have been worse in the end.

Inevitably, we met again. Our world—the world, that is, of the Duke of Olympia—is not small but actually minuscule, and twelve months after our final hasty assignation, we quite literally bumped into each other while queuing for tea at Covent Garden, during
the second intermission of
Il Trovatore
. (Our initial conversations had flourished over a shared passion for Verdi.) I had prepared a curt remark for this stranger whose elbow had intruded so carelessly into my arm, and I had looked up and seen his familiar smooth cheek and hooded eye, and the remark had died on my lips. His irritated expression brightened into genuine pleasure. “Why, Emmeline! It's uncanny! I was
just
thinking I should see you here tonight.”

My first thought was that he was not quite so handsome as I remembered. My second was that
I
, by contrast, had not considered the possibility of encountering him at all; I had not, in fact, thought about him in many weeks, and perhaps this inattention meant I hadn't really even loved him to begin with, that I had only imagined my attraction to him was love, because I so badly wanted to love and be loved. This revelation occurred in an instant, over the course of his single sentence, and it gave me such a sense of my own power that I was able to answer, with perfect composure, “Why, good evening, Mr. M——d. It must be true; one sees everyone at the opera.”

We exchanged the usual pleasantries. He insisted on buying my tea, and I allowed him because I thought it would be more particular to refuse than to accept. As we parted, I had the idea that he wanted to continue the conversation, that I had regained just enough novelty to be interesting again.

But I was a year older and a century wiser, and I gave my farewell firmly, though his dark and hooded eyes, for a single instant, seemed to hold their old magic. And I remember feeling, as I took a cab home to the Duke of Olympia's house in Belgrave Square, that this was how all love affairs should end. That one should never
try to regain what was lost, because it no longer existed. Like a pair of rocks reshaped by the passage of time and tide, you no longer fit together the way you once had. Only the four walls that had sheltered your secret could recall that connection.

I had not allowed myself to think about that moment of farewell in some time, but I thought about it now, as the island of Skyros took shape before us. I stood near the bow of the
Isolde
, next to Desma on my left side and Lord Silverton on my right, inhaling the comfortable scent of his lordship's pipe as it mingled with the sunny draft.

“I don't suppose she's mentioned what she hopes to gain from this little expedition,” Silverton said, quite as if the lady in question were not standing a few feet away, breathing the same marine air.

“What every woman does, I expect. She wishes to make a proper farewell to the old love before she begins her life with the new one.”

“Poor old Max.”

I hazarded a glance at the railing on the opposite side of the bow, where the Duke of Olympia was engaged in close conversation with Mr. Higganbotham over the flapping ends of a map. “He seems to be taking the challenge in the proper spirit,” I observed.

Silverton pulled the end of the pipe from his mouth. “Ah, don't let his military mien fool you, Truelove. He may look as if he's planning a campaign of imperial invasion, but in reality he's just an ordinary lovestruck blighter, trying to make some slight impression in the heart of the bird he adores.”

I chanced a sidelong glance at the bird in question, who seemed not to notice the subject of our conversation or, indeed, our very existence by her side. She gripped the rails with two fierce, gloved hands, and her shoulders tilted forward, as if she
could, by the strain of her own muscles, propel the ship faster along the water. Her eyes were narrow against the draft.

“I hope she understands her good fortune,” I said. “I hope she doesn't mean to throw aside her own future happiness for the sake of a past passion.”

“But hers isn't just any old passion, Truelove. It's one of the great passions of all time.”

I turned in surprise. “But surely you don't believe that!”

“Why not?”

“It's impossible! You must be mad, to believe in such a thing. For God's sake, you're a mathematician, not a fantasist.”

Silverton replaced the pipe in the corner of his mouth. “The more one studies mathematics, my dear, the more one realizes what an elegant mystery it all is, this vast universe around us. Have you heard of a chap called Einstein?”

“I've heard something about him, yes.”

“Lives in Vienna. Published a few scientific papers last year. Audacious stuff. Time and space and matter and all that.” He let out a long curl of smoke from between his lips, which the wind whisked instantly away.

“And?”

He turned to face me, leaning one elbow on the railing. The bruises, I realized, were already fading from that lusty skin. His eyes behind his spectacles were blue and warm. “And it seems, quoth the Bard, that there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Truelove's philosophy. We are as insubstantial as a dream, you and I and everything else, composed of little bits of stray electricity, and if one chances to find something solid to hold on to in this whole damned unstable mirage, why, one had better reach out boldly and grip it with both hands.”

We landed on Skyros a short while later. Following the calculations of Mr. Higganbotham and the Duke of Olympia, the
Isolde
dropped anchor not in the main harbor, but near a headland to the northwest, and we went ashore in the tender. The suspicious gaze of Mr. Brown followed us across the water to a narrow strip of pebbled beach, and I could not say I blamed him.

The sky was warm and tranquil. We had eaten a brief luncheon before we left, and carried water in glass bottles that hung in slings from the shoulders of the men. “She wishes to see the place where he died,” the duke said to me, as we climbed carefully up the side of the hill, where the slope was gentler than the cliffs to the north.

“But how can we know for certain? These events—if they really occurred—happened three thousand years ago. The hills have no doubt shifted, the vegetation has regrown. And even if everything
were
the same, we still would have no idea at which exact point the king made the fatal push.”

“Mr. Higganbotham has spent the past two days studying the various texts.” The duke nodded at the eager figure climbing the hillside a dozen yards ahead. “Plutarch on Theseus, and the
Achillead
.”

“What, Achilles?”

“The account of his time on Skyros at the court of Lycomedes, just before his departure for the Trojan War, is exceptionally detailed.”

“I see. And Mr. Higganbotham has scoured these tea leaves for the true and correct notch upon the cliffs?”

“You are skeptical, Miss Truelove.”

I concentrated on the path before me, which was now growing rough and steep. “Mine is not to question why,” I said.

“But you believe it is all a devil of a waste of time.”

I paused and turned to him. “It is my personal opinion that we are better off returning to England and resuming our proper lives, sir, but I understand the peculiarities of your position, and that the whims of a lady in a certain condition are to be indulged whenever possible. I am only concerned, sir,
deeply
concerned by the cost to yourself.”

The duke paused, too, resting one foot on the boulder obstructing our path. His breath, unlike mine, was not remotely troubled by the exertion of our journey, and the wind tufted the dark hair on his forehead. He had yesterday exchanged the bulky dressing on his shoulder for a smaller one, and the transformation was startling: you would hardly know he was injured at all, except for a certain stiffness of movement. He set a hand on his burly knee and said, “I am moved by your sense of duty, Miss Truelove. But you must understand that I do not make this detour solely for the sake of Desma's whims, as you put it.”

“What, then?”

He gestured with one hand. “There's a great mystery here, an enigma of such breadth and power that it takes my breath away. It has been chasing me all my life. It has driven men to their deaths, out of lust for it. And I find I should like to undertake this final attempt, before I resign myself to the life that God in his wisdom has apparently ordained for me.”

He was wearing a tweed suit almost identical to the one worn by Silverton, except gray-toned rather than brown. The color suited his square dark features and pale skin. I thought he looked as if he were made of the same stone as the island around us,
rugged and ascetic, and that God was perhaps mistaken: this man did not belong in England at all.

“There is another thing,” he went on, glancing down the hill, where Lord Silverton, a cane hooked over his elbow, was assisting the lady Desma over a patch of rubble. “I cannot bear to see her unhappy.”

“As you like,” I said.

The duke's eyes narrowed as he watched the progress of his beloved. He reached into his pocket and said, in a low voice, “I am, however, more than a little concerned for her.”

“She should not attempt such a climb, in her condition.”

“It isn't that. She's as strong as a mountain goat, I assure you. But she gave me this last night.” He held out his hand and opened his fingers, and upon his palm rested the medallion from Knossos, the one I had returned to Desma two nights ago, flashing in the sunshine.

“But that's hers! A protection against death. Would she not want to keep it for her own safety? Carrying a child?”

“I am afraid, Miss Truelove, most
deeply
afraid that she means to leave me here, and join her lover.”

“
Join
him? But he's—” I looked into the duke's grave eyes and comprehended him. “Surely not. Surely she would not end her own life, and that of her babe.”

With his thumb, he turned the medallion over, revealing the double ax etched into the metal. “I have not touched her,” he said quietly. “I have offered her nothing but friendship and respect, though my true desire is, at times, almost impossible to suppress.”

“Perhaps if she knew the nature of your devotion . . .”

“She loves him.” He shook his head and replaced the medallion in his pocket. “She loves him with a tenacity that cannot be turned,
or even dented. It is ageless. She would die for him without a second thought, and such is my—my
admiration
for her, I would allow her to do it. Because to do otherwise is to condemn her to a lifetime of unending sorrow.” He turned and levered himself easily up the boulder, extending his good left arm to assist me in following him. “But
you
will keep an eye on her for me, won't you, Miss Truelove?”

I took his hand and climbed up beside him. “I will do whatever you ask of me, sir.”

“Good. Now head up that path and ask Mr. Higganbotham how much longer we are to tramp along before reaching our destination. And
I
shall go back to make sure she gets up this damned path without giving birth along the way.”