Greek Wedding (36 page)

‘And with you.' Brett bent to kiss her hand. ‘If I can be of service to you, ever, I am yours to command.'

‘The best thing you can do for me is get clear away. Goodbye.' She vanished into the dark cleft of the rock.

‘Well,' said Brett. ‘Here we are.'

‘Yes.' They had moved back with Oenone and stood now at the centre of the plateau. ‘Did you mean it when you said you hadn't decided which way to go?'

‘Of course not.' He had turned, already, and was moving away from the Kitries path. ‘You heard her say that the people this way are their enemies. It's our only hope.'

‘But, Brett!' There was so much they had not had a chance to discuss. ‘Suppose they've gone for help, on the
Helena
, they'll come to Kitries.'

‘Yes.' He was at the edge of the plateau now. ‘But not by tomorrow—not by today, I should say. Phyllida, there's no time for discussion. I'm going this way. Are you coming?'

‘What else can I do?' She swallowed a helpless sob. The path up from Kitries had been bad enough, but by Oenone's own admission, this one was worse. The throbbing in her head was louder than ever; she was almost surprised that Brett did not hear it. To look down, now, was agony.

‘Good.' He had expected nothing else. ‘Keep close behind me, and for God's sake watch your feet. A twisted ankle, and we're lost.'

‘Yes.' Tell him about her head? Tell him she could not do it? But, already, she was doing it. They were on the goat track, which was just enough of an indentation on the steep hillside to show as a shadow on the bare, moonlit rock. There was no vegetation up here, except an occasional huge cactus glittering like a sheaf of silver spears. Don't look at them, don't look anywhere but at Brett's back. When had he taken her bundle and added it to his own? What would he do if she was to sit down on the path and tell him, simply, that she could not go on?

A thousand hammers were beating out a rhythm in her head. ‘He'd go on,' they said. ‘He'd go on and leave you.' It was easier, a little, if she kept her head bent downwards, watching the darker shadows that meant loose stones on the path. For an endless while it went on, sideways and a little downwards, along the edge of the steep slope. Then, gradually, it turned upwards again. It made the walking a little easier, with less chance of a fall, but Phyllida's breath came harder and harder. If she opened her mouth, her throat hurt worse. The hammers in her head were beating faster now. At each step she took, she thought she was going to stop and tell Brett she could go no farther, but each time, somehow, the other foot dragged itself forward and she went on. At last, half an hour, a million years later, Brett stopped. She had lagged a little behind him and it took her a gasping moment to catch up. Each breath hurt now, all through her.

Brett was looking back, not at her, but beyond. ‘Thank God,' he said. ‘At last we're out of sight of the plateau. If the alarm
should be raised, they won't know which way we've gone.'

‘No.' It came out as a croak and he looked at her quickly, then away.

‘Heartless,' said the hammers in her head. ‘Quite heartless.' But already he had turned and moved on, downward again now, so that she understood, through an increasingly dizzy pain, that they had rounded an escarpment of the mountain. Surely, now, if they were out of sight, they could stop for a moment and rest?

‘Brett!' It hurt so much that it came our merely as a whisper and apparently he did not hear, but went steadily on ahead. ‘Brett!' No use. She could hardly hear it herself, the whisper of a lost soul, out there on the cold mountain. She thought she had told her feet to stop, to give up and let her lie down and die there, on the bare rock, but if she had, they ignored her, and went plodding on after Brett.

Up again. Down again. Up. Down. Slipping; sliding; stumbling. ‘Brett!' She stopped. ‘I can't.'

This time he heard her, turned, his face a blank in the moonlight. ‘You must.'

‘I can't, I tell you.' She was leaning, heavily, against an outcrop of rock that jutted up by the path. ‘Couldn't we rest, just a little?'

‘No.' Ruthless. ‘If you stop, you won't get started again. You know it as well as I do.'

‘I don't care. Just leave me then. No one would hurt me, a woman.'

‘No?' He looked upwards. ‘I never heard that vultures respected the sex.' He had moved back towards her as he spoke, now pulled her upright. ‘Come on.' Not an iota of sympathy in his tone. ‘You must see that I can't leave you. It's half an hour till dawn. There were horses, back on the plateau. How long do you think it will take them to find us, once they start to search? It's not only your own life you're risking but mine and Oenone's.' He was pulling her forward, awkwardly in the narrow path.

She stumbled. ‘I hate you.' Recovering herself, she found she was moving forward again. He had had to let go of her hand, and was plodding ahead once more as if nothing had happened. ‘Hate you … hate you … hate you,' rang the beat in her head. ‘Not only your own life … mine and Oenone's.' Cruel… cruel
… Alex would be better … Anything would be better … She slipped again, recovered herself and heard, above them on the mountain, an owl cry. Vultures, Brett had said. She imagined them, picking at living flesh, then bones bleaching to eternity on this bare rock. Another owl, and then, almost a miracle, the bleat of a goat, ahead and below, and not very far. And something else. Lifting her head for a moment, with an effort that hurt so much as to make even pain unreal, she saw, above them on the right, the ragged mountain edged with a thin line of brightness. Somewhere, far to the east (over Nauplia? over Jerusalem?) the sun was rising.

And, almost another miracle, ahead of her Brett had stopped. ‘The path's wider now. I can help you a little.' His voice was matter-of-fact. She almost pulled away, but his arm round her was too comforting. ‘Easier now,' said his voice, and the hammers in her head took it up. ‘Easier now … easier now … easier now.' Her feet kept time with his, slipping and stumbling among the loose rocks of the path, because, now that she had him for guide, she need not make herself look down, but kept beside him, passively, putting one foot in front of another.

‘Easier now … easier now … easier now…' When had she shut her eyes? Opening them, she was seared by pain, but saw, in the flash before they closed again, that the sun was up. Rosy-fingered dawn … rosy fingered … The hammers beat more and more slowly. She did not know that her steps were slowing to match them, that Brett, now supporting her almost entirely with his left arm, had turned to glance down at her anxiously.

Then, for a moment, she was conscious again, aware of figures all around them and voices, hostile … challenging … And above them Brett's. ‘Philhellenoi,' he said. ‘Angloi…'

She was sliding, down, down, a thousand miles down, into a blackness where only the drumbeat of pain spelt life.

*          *          *

She was warm. She was lying down. Above her, voices echoed strangely, speaking Greek, incomprehensible to her exhausted brain. One of them Brett's? She opened her eyes. ‘I hate you,' she said, and slept again.

Someone was making her drink a warm, vile brew. Brett, of course. ‘Sage berries,' said a voice. She could understand the
Greek now. ‘The best sudorific. Make her drink it all.'

She opened her eyes. Yes, it was Brett's hand that held the unspeakable brew to her lips. ‘No!' Feebly, she tried to turn her head away.

‘Drink,' said Brett's voice. ‘They risked their lives for you, gathering the berries.'

She drank like an angry, obedient child and instantly fell asleep again. Now she was not just warm, she was burning, sweating … Dying? Poisoned? She pushed away heavy coverings and felt them tucked firmly back round her. A hand felt her hot forehead. ‘Sweating like a pig.' Brett's voice of course.

‘Thank God.' A Greek. Praying? It sounded like it.

Sweating like a pig. ‘I hate…' She was asleep again, dreaming now, the wild dreams of fever … Blood … and fire … the weapon-hung hall, the old Greek, not asleep, but lying by the fire, his throat cut, bleeding horribly … like a pig…

‘Drink it!' Brett's voice, pulling her into reluctant consciousness, the same odious concoction held to her lips. What had he said? She knew she must drink, did so and sank fathoms-down into a real sleep.

‘Much better,' said a voice. The one she had heard praying? ‘Get some rest now, milord, we can look after her.'

‘No,' said Brett. ‘I must be here when she wakes.'

Phyllida opened heavy eyes. ‘I am awake.'

‘Speak Greek if you can.' Brett was sitting on the floor beside her, and spoke, himself, in Greek. ‘It's more courteous to our hosts, who have saved your life.'

‘So practical,' said Phyllida, and then, in Greek: ‘I'm sorry … Thank you.' She was asleep again.

Next time she woke, she was hungry. When had her throat stopped hurting? No voices. Nothing. She opened her eyes … The other times, surely, it had been dark, there had been lamplight, shadows … Now it was twilight. Morning? Evening? Impossible to tell, still more so to imagine how long she had lain here.

Lain where? A pile of sheepskins on a floor of beaten earth … A very odd-shaped room; shadows looming down on her … an attic? Suddenly, terrifyingly, she imagined herself back in the tower of the Mavromikhalis … on the very top storey now … left there to die? ‘Brett!' Had it all been a dream? No.
‘Sweating like a pig,' he had said. How could she have imagined that?

She must have spoken Brett's name aloud. A figure detached itself from the shadowed corner of the strange room and came forward, lamp in hand, to stand over her as she lay, helpless and terrified, on the ground. Black skirts … black … a long white beard. Was she going mad? No. Suddenly the foreshortened figure made sense. A Greek priest.

‘You are better, my daughter.' The other voice, the one that had prayed over her.

‘Yes, Father. Thanks to you.'

‘And to the milord, who has nursed you night and day. He is sleeping now. I made him, when I saw you were better. No sense having him ill too.'

‘No.' The effort of understanding his peasant Greek had exhausted her already.

He must have seen it. ‘Rest,' he said. ‘When you wake, there will be food. We have a chicken, saved for your recovery. I'll tell them to kill it and start making the soup.'

Soup. The idea was delicious. This time she slept lightly, in and out of dreams, and waked again to that strange twilight. And Brett, beside her, automatically leaning forward, as she stirred, to tuck the sheepskins back round her. A little light filtered in from one of the corners of the odd-shaped room. It showed him exhausted, the mark of sleepless nights heavy on his thin face … ‘Nursed you night and day,' the priest had said. Brett.

‘How tedious for you.' She opened her eyes wide in the half light to gaze up at him.

‘Tedious?' This time he spoke English, like her. His voice was exhausted, like his face, but just the same there was a new note in it, one she had never heard before.

‘Having to nurse me all this time. How long?' She began to raise herself on an elbow, to face him, was aware of sheepskins slipping in all directions, and thought better of it.

‘It's all right.' Could there be laughter in Brett's voice? ‘You're perfectly respectable, you know.'

‘Respectable!' She was taking it all in now. ‘You've been nursing me!'

‘I have indeed. Do you still hate me, love?'

‘“Sweating like a pig,”' she quoted. And then, ‘What did
you call me?'

He
was
laughing. ‘You did hear that. I rather thought you had. You started hating me all over again about then.
Isn't
it a lucky thing none of our hosts speak English?'

‘I don't understand.' But did it matter whether she understood or not, so long as he spoke to her thus, in this voice he had never used before?

‘It's not fair to tease you.' He had taken both her hands, somehow, in one of his. ‘Darling Phyllida, I should break it to you that you have been delirious for over a week.'

‘A week! And you've been nursing me?'

‘And you've been talking. How you talked! You hated me like poison for the first few days, and, frankly, I don't blame you. But admit, love, if I'd so much as hesitated, back there on the mountain, you'd just have lain down and died.'

It was perfectly true. Sympathy would have been the end of her. ‘But, Brett, you keep calling me—' She stopped.

‘ “Love,” ' he supplied it. ‘Well, so I should, since when you stopped saying you hated me, you proposed marriage to me.'

‘What?'

‘Several times. And as if you meant it, too, so don't start trying to talk your way out of it. You're well and truly committed, my love.'

‘But—'

‘Yes?' He was bending over her, dizzily close.

‘Did you accept me, Brett?'

‘Ah, that's asking, isn't it?' His smile smoothed out troughs of fatigue from his face. ‘After all that talk about hating me, I might well have said no, mightn't I? And then where would we be? But you put it to me so pressingly, love, I was afraid it might make you worse if I refused. So, very much against my better judgment, yes, I accepted you, my darling. Look.' He lifted her left hand and she saw that she was wearing his signet ring. ‘It's a bit big, I'm afraid. But you see, I was taking no chances. You're not going to be allowed to change your mind this time.' The loving tone deprived the words of their sting.

‘Brett, I'm going to cry.'

‘No you're not. You're going to eat some soup. And here it is.' He turned to thank the woman who had come soft-footed out of the shadows. And then, still in Greek. ‘They saved their last cockerel for you, Phyl.'