The Tomb of Zeus Read online

  THE TOMB OF ZEUS

  Contents

  Title Page

  Frontispiece

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  About the Author

  Also By Barbara Cleverly

  Preview: Tug of War

  Copyright

  For Sophia and Stella Panayiotopoulos-Cleverly

  Praise for the award-winning novels of

  BARBARA CLEVERLY

  “Spectacular and dashing. Spellbinding.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “Stellar…as always.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Smashing…marvelously evoked.” —Chicago Tribune

  “A historical mystery that has just about everything: a fresh, beautifully realized exotic setting; a strong, confident protagonist; a poignant love story; and an exquisitely complex plot.” —Denver Post

  “Evocative narrative, sensitive characterizations, artful dialogue, and masterly plotting.” —Library Journal

  Delightfully surprising.” —Mystery News

  “Cleverly combines a colorful historical setting…with a complex plot and well-developed characters…. Makes a natural for fans of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody.”

  —Booklist

  “Atmospheric…intricately plotted.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “A deeply satisfying experience…A finely crafted, well-thought-out novel, with a deep penetration of the many layers to characters who refuse to live by the King's Rules.”

  —Drood Review of Mystery

  Since classical times, travellers setting their foot down on the stepping stone between three continents that is The Great Island have fallen under the spell it weaves. They have been enchanted by its beauty, its mystery, and the character of its people.

  Some nations, sadly, have stayed on for centuries as conquerors and exploiters. But, through the long years of domination, the Cretans have remained determinedly themselves. I'm glad that my own people, the British, have trodden lightly, loving and respecting what they saw, and even fighting shoulder to shoulder with the islanders when times got tough. Only sixteen years after the action of this book, the English archaeologist John Pendlebury put down his spade, picked up a rifle, and died battling for Cretan freedom.

  My story is no more than that—a story, a work of fiction. It owes much to the discoveries of the early diggers on Crete: Minos Kalokairinos, Sir Arthur Evans, Pendlebury, and many others of several nationalities through to the present day. Recent excavations on the slopes of Mount Juktas by the Greek archaeologists J. and E. Sakellarakis have been far more dramatic than any I could invent.

  One of the latest in a long line of admirers of all things Cretan, I read with a smile of recognition the words of a much earlier one, a Scot, William Lithgow, who spent some time on Crete in 1609. He lists with evident appreciation the produce of the island—its Malmsey wine, its oranges, lemons, and melons, its cheeses, its three kinds of grape, and its “medicinable hearbes.” I've tasted them all. And I love the way he swoons (can this be a dour Scotsman writing? Perhaps he's drunk a bucket of the local raki?) into a description of Candia as it was called in his day: the garden of the whole universe: being the goodliest plot, the Diamondsparke, and Honny Spot of all Candy.

  Well, I'll raise a glass to that sentiment!

  Candia, Crete. August 1898

  The big gates were in sight and were standing open. I peered round the corner of the street, huddled at my mother's side, clutching a fold of her robe as I'd been told. I felt the sudden surge in her anxiety. We'd been terrified enough by the savage noise on all sides, but the unaccountable silence was even more paralysing. The drums had stopped banging; the muezzin's triumphant cries had ceased; the roaring of men, the screams and pistol shots had all mysteriously come to a climax and ended abruptly on the stroke of noon. Only the crackle from burning houses broke the stillness.

  We had only a few yards to go when we turned into the tree-lined avenue. In the grand houses fronting it, I knew, the rich lived—the officials and the merchants. Time for boldness now, no more scurrying along in the shadows. I could see the Khania gate clearly, a pack of Janissaries manning it, a further platoon, riflemen, in position along the battlements, and beyond, drawing my gaze with the lure of a mirage, the gleam of silvery slopes covered with olive trees. I imagined I could smell the thyme on the hot hillside and make out a mule track zigzagging its way up to a village. To safety.

  It was the dead donkey and its dead rider that unnerved me. I put my slippered foot into a pool of blood and offal, and I squealed. I'd seen worse sights that morning and stayed silent, but the stickiness of the clotting blood, the swarm of gathering flies, and the not knowing whether it was the man's or the animal's blood staining the hem of my dress made me cry out. My thin wail of surprise and horror was instantly picked up. Two Turkish soldiers burst through the open door of one of the grand houses, stuffing gold chains and necklaces into their pockets. They stood before us, blocking our way. They were not local men, I thought. Rough men with pockmarked faces. Some of the freshly imported reserves from Istanbul. Albanian, most probably.

  One took his dagger from between his teeth to ask my mother in crude Turkish, “Where's your man? And where do you think you're going?”

  My mother replied, eyes downcast even though they were obscured by her veil. “Sir, my daughter and I are on our way to the baths.”

  The men hooted in derision. “Well, that's Turkish ladies for you! A bloody riot on, but they won't miss their weekly bath!”

  “Twice weekly, if you please!” said my mother with some spirit and they laughed again.

  “But you haven't told us—where's your man?”

  “My man is lying dead. In the Greek quarter.” Mother gestured back the way we had come, releasing a trace of musky perfume from her sleeve. “Last week. He was a tax inspector. The giaours—curse all Greeks—slit his throat. The Pasha himself came to tell me. I've searched every day for his remains. And now I must wash the filth of the unbelievers off my body.”

  I'd never heard my mother lie before and suddenly here were eight lies, one after the other, and all told with absolute conviction. I have never been more proud of her. I shuddered and mewled pitifully in support and swished my bloodstained hem about.

  “Well, you have no luck today. Baths not open for business.”

  “Stokers not manning the furnaces,” said the second slyly.

  The first gave a full-throated guffaw, as though his companion had made a joke. “Not manning exactly… fuelling, perhaps! We chucked them in!”

  My mother's hand tightened on mine. But her voice betrayed no alarm as she replied: “A good use for th
em. I expect they burn well—all that oil they consume.”

  They roared with laughter. “Take my advice, mistress: Go back home by the shortest route and put up the barricades. This is going to get worse.”

  She thanked the pair meekly for their advice and, instantly forgetting us, the two men turned back to their pillaging As we hesitated, preparing to make our run, we saw the gates slowly begin to close and heard the clang as they came together. The Khania gate had never been closed at noon before. We and thousands like us were trapped in a city of red-eyed madmen wielding scimitars, daggers, and rifles. Men who would eviscerate a donkey whose owner was not of their religion wouldn't hesitate to slaughter a small girl and her mother.

  We reached our cousins' house intact by walking with unconcern back along through the alleyways. No scurrying or slinking! With her basket over her arm, my mother appeared to be off to market, an everyday sight, unalarming attracting no attention.

  It took a threat to knock the door down noisily before anyone would come to let us in. We didn't know these city cousins well—had stayed with them only while we attended my great-grandfather's funeral. It pleased us no more than it pleased them to be stranded in their house in the Greek quarter while death and destruction swirled on all sides. It was my father who finally heard us and opened their door. He hugged us, glad to see us back again but devastated by the failure of our attempt to escape the city.

  “It's worse than we had supposed,” my mother reported. “You should never have sent us to try! There is no safety. The streets are full of crazy soldiers, pillaging and killing Muslim—Christian—it no longer matters. All are dying No one is in command. We must sit it out. If the worst comes to the worst, and the enemy comes through the door, you must kill us both. We have seen what they can do.”

  I looked at my father's fierce face and the sinewy brown hands that were never still and never far from the silver hilt of the dagger in his belt. His ancient rifle was propped against the door frame, loaded and ready. My father was not a man to sit anything out. Now that he had his wife and ten-year-old child at his heels to defend, he would not consider simply getting away. He would turn and fight. And all I longed for at that moment was to throw off my constricting skirts, seize a pistol, and take my place at his elbow.

  * * *

  Two more days passed and we survived. My father made occasional forays into the street, mostly at night and prompted, it seemed to me, by mysterious raps on the door. He would return, panting, wild-eyed, and wipe his blade on the rag my mother handed him. Our water butt was running low and we were down to the last crumbs of barley bread. We could smell fire; we heard shots and shouting Once my father called for silence while he listened through the door he'd opened a crack.

  “Father, what do you hear?”

  “Bugles. Commands in a foreign tongue.”

  He was not smiling Not relieved. Not yet. He stayed on watch.

  An hour later there was a banging on the door and someone shouted my father's name. One of his cousins stood on the threshold, blood-spattered, breathless, not seeking entry.

  “Come! Now! We need y our help,” he urged my father. “They've arrested Suleiman. Your uncle Suleiman. They'll execute him if someone doesn't speak for him. You're a Man of Law—come and do your bit! You speak Greek, Turkish, Italian…you'll make them understand somehow. Leave your weapons behind, man! They'll shoot you dead as soon as look at you if you present yourself bristling like a palikare!”

  “A moment!” My father took his knife from his belt and gave it to me, then handed me his ancient pistol. “These were your grandfather's. If it comes to it—trust the knife before the gun. Don't be taken alive,” he said, resting his hand on my head. He kissed my mother and left with his cousin.

  I never saw my father again.

  I know my mother saw him once more, but she has never spoken of it to me.

  Herakleion, Crete. March 1928

  Miss Talbot! Wait!”

  Laetitia Talbot staggered on. She didn't glance back to discover who was calling her name. An abrupt turn of the head would have aggravated the seasickness that racked her; would have made her lose her balance on the slippery deck—might even have provoked a further stomach-wrenching attack of the unproductive retching that had tormented her for a good six hours.

  There filtered, through her discomfort, the puzzling thought that she knew no one on the ferry. The only man on the boat who was aware of her existence was the Greek captain and he was unlikely to be chasing after a passenger, fully occupied as he was at the controls in this unexpected squall. She corrected herself: mad March gale. She corrected herself again: fully blown Greek storm, stirred up personally by Poseidon with his disgusting seaweed-dripping trident. So who would be calling out her name with such confidence? Perhaps she'd failed to notice an acquaintance in her circuits of the deck? She winced at the thought of holding up her end of the conversation that might ensue if she turned around: “…Three summers ago…at Binkie's coming-out do…surely you remember? You've been in Athens? But why? What on earth can you have been doing there, Letty?”

  “Laetitia Talbot?” The English voice came again. Less peremptory. More uncertain. But closer.

  Letty sighed and stood still, grasping the metal strut of a lifeboat housing and waited for her pursuer to draw level. A moment later a hand grasped her firmly by her free arm and tucked it under his own. This would have been an unforgivably intimate gesture under normal circumstances, and Letty would have shrugged it off with a sharp comment, but normality, she'd discovered, was suspended on ferryboats. She found she was glad of the unexpected support, and the touch of the rough Scottish tweed jacket was reassuring.

  The stranger held out the book she'd carried up on deck with her that morning in a futile attempt at distraction from the horrors of the sea-crossing to Crete.

  “You dropped this in a puddle,” he said, eyes narrowed against the wind, white teeth gleaming in a friendly grin. Good lord! The man appeared to be relishing the storm. His wet hair was plastered to his skull and seawater dripped from his nose, chin, and eyebrows, but no adverse weather conditions, Letty decided, could detract from the nobility of this young man's jutting features.

  She focused woozily on her battered copy of Persuasion.

  “I do apologise,” she managed to reply politely through gritted teeth, “but I don't believe I know you?”

  “You're quite right. We've never met,” he admitted cheerfully.

  “Then how…?”

  “I opened your book and read the name on the front page. So— unless you've stolen this, you are the Laetitia Talbot who received it as a prize in the…what did it say?…” He flicked the volume open and read in a magisterial tone: “Good Conduct Award——Most Improved Pupil, at the Cambridge Academy for Girls in 1919. ‘Improved,' eh? One is bound to speculate as to the less-than-perfect state of affairs that preceded the improvement. So, Miss Talbot, you must forgive me for saying—I feel I know who you are!”

  He pressed on before she could protest: “A Sprightly Girl but a Romantic who has matured sufficiently to become an ardent reader of the divine Jane's ripest work—I'm judging by the general dog-eared condition of the book. A volume now rendered quite unreadable by Cretan seawater. I'm hoping you'll reject it with a gesture and say I may keep it. I've never actually read Persuasion, and I hear such good things…”

  Amused by the teasing formality and enchanted by the striking good looks, Letty smiled for the first time in a very long day. “You may keep it…Mr………. er…Look—shall we consider ourselves introduced by the agency of the prescient Miss Austen?”

  “Splendid! I think she'd be amused. And that's the way I shall tell it if anyone asks. My name's Charles St. George Russell. My father is Theodore Russell. At present resident in Herakleion.”

  He enjoyed her surprise at his announcement and the recognition of his name. “Yes, Laetitia, that Russell. And I'm guessing you are the Miss Talbot who is to be our guest at the Villa Eu
ropa…if we ever make it into port…”

  “Gosh! How do you do? You'll have to excuse my trembling— I've never met a saint before.”

  “Friends just call me George,” he answered easily. “I was born on the twenty-third of April so—naturally—named after the patron saint of Cretan shepherds. But we weren't expecting you until next week, Miss Talbot, surely? Do I have that wrong? Look here—I'm about to have a most spectacular motorcar unloaded. It's had quite a journey from Paris via Marseille and Athens, and when we arrive I shall have to spend a good hour or so shouting at crane operators while they swing her onto the dock in a net. You're welcome to wait for me while I do this and, assuming I can start her, I'll be delighted to run you up to the villa in splendour and state.”

  He considered her bedraggled state for a moment, then: “Look here—common sense and courtesy urge me to recommend you turn down my harebrained suggestion and allow me to put you in a taxi. The city does now boast a taxi.”

  Letty quickly weighed her options. “I'd be delighted to accept your offer of a lift. In fact, I'll stand by with a screwdriver while you get your motorcar started. I've quite a useful pair of hands,” she said, extending them for inspection, wet and shaking with cold. “Oh, dear! Not impressive! I couldn't do up my shoelaces with these! The weather was so clear in Athens—hot, sunny, calm…I couldn't wait to get to Crete! I telegraphed your father with my change of plans and took the first ferry of the sailing season. I think even careful old Jason might have thought it safe to venture forth in the last week of March, with or without his Argonauts. And, quite obviously, you didn't mind risking the wrath of Poseidon, Mr. Russell…George.”

  “Nothing is ever predictable in this part of the world, you'll find. I take it this is the first time you've ventured out onto the Aegean, Laetitia? Yes? Well, the first thing you must know is that those coloured postcards you buy in Athens are quite misleading. It's not always an improbably blue sky over a calm, turquoise, mermaid-infested sea….”