The Tomb of Zeus Read online

  She had noticed George Russell earlier. Several times from embarkation onwards her gaze had been drawn to him. A good head taller than herself, he had—remarkably—the same colouring as her own: light complexion darkened by a Mediterranean sun, grey eyes, and fair hair worn rather long. Earlier she had even toyed with the idea of standing close to him at the rail in the distant hope that someone would take them for brother and sister, and a laughing introduction might well have ensued. A friendship could have blossomed under the Greek sun, gazing out over the wine-dark sea, she had thought whimsically.

  She had not for once followed her impulses, however, contenting herself instead with admiring him from a distance, embarrassed to meet his eye, edging around him with the odd sideways glance she might have cast at the statue of the naked sea god she'd covertly admired in the Athens museum. And now, thanks to a discarded book, here she was, arm in arm and chatting comfortably with this heroic figure. She wished she could have cut a better dash herself. In her getup, consisting of dripping canvas motoring coat thrown on over shirt and trousers, she surely presented a far from glamorous image. She was conscious of her squelching tennis shoes and, crowning all, the damp fastenings of her brother's old leather flying helmet dangling with inelegant insouciance, dripping water down her neck.

  George Russell must have caught her thought or perhaps a betraying twitch of her hand towards the helmet. “It's very becoming!” he assured her. “I took you for a Sylkie—shining round head and enormous eyes…you look quite like a wet seal.”

  “But it was the bristly moustache that really impressed you?”

  They laughed together and she allowed him to draw her forward to the prow of the boat. There he braced himself, nose to the wind, looking out eagerly towards the island as they cut their way through the still turbulent waves.

  “Ah! The wind's gone about…we won't have a problem getting into port,” he said. “And here you are, Laetitia—your home for the next season.”

  Letty stared, speechless, struck dumb by the wild beauty of the scene, wishing she could paint. It would take a Turner, she decided, to record on canvas the unearthly quality of the slanting light piercing through the storm clouds now fleeing, ragged, before the wind; to choose just the colours to conjure up the intermingling of sea, sky, and spray: Tyrian purple, jade, steel grey, and flashing silver. In the far distance, beyond the huddle of the Venetian harbour, adding the element of earth to the kaleidoscope, sprawled a range of mountains, their summits, still snow-covered, catching the sun and lighting up white as swans' wings.

  They gazed on in companionable silence, not even attempting by an exclamation to comment on the lavish display. When Laetitia found her voice, she was mortified to hear the flat, Baedeker tone of her comment: “We're much closer than I had expected,” she said. “I can make out Herakleion clearly now.”

  “Herakleion? Ah, yes. Forgive me. I always think of it by its old name. Candia.”

  Laetitia felt herself corrected and, in a strange way, excluded from his communion with the old seaport. “You'll find the town very foreign,” he went on. “By that I mean—very un-Greek. It carries the stamp of centuries of conquerors—Venetian…Turkish…There's the fortress guarding the harbour entrance. The ferry must go a little farther beyond the harbour—it's too small to take larger vessels. And those high arched structures just beyond the inner docks, do you see them?…The Venetian arsenal. The boatyards.”

  She looked and admired the cluster of white, red-roofed houses crammed in picturesque disorder within the fortifications. But her eye was drawn beyond, caught by a shape looming between the town and a farther, higher mountain range. “George—tell me—what is that hill—mountain?—the one with the extraordinary shape over there?” She pointed.

  “Ah! That's Mount Juktas. The mountain sacred to the king of the gods, to Zeus. He was born here on Crete, you know. In a cave on Mount Dicte. I must take you to call on him. Can you ride a donkey?”

  Letty smiled to hear him speak so familiarly about the deity who was clearly on his calling list, a valued acquaintance.

  “Now keep your eyes fixed on old Juktas,” he continued. “I want you to turn your head slightly sideways, Laetitia…No, like this…” He put a gentle hand under her chin. “Look again at the shape of the mountain and tell me what you see. Here comes the sun, on cue! It's beautifully backlit! You must see it!”

  Letty gasped. “Yes, I do! I can see a silhouette. The outline of a man…or is he a god? Look—he's lying down…his head's over there.” She laughed in delight. “He has a jutting beard…like an Achaean warrior!”

  George Russell smiled and nodded. “And, of course, as you've guessed—that's Zeus himself. Laid out on a marble slab, perhaps? Dead, at any rate. It's said his tomb lies somewhere at the foot of the mountain.”

  “His tomb? George, what are you saying? Zeus is an immortal god and the gods don't die!”

  “If they can be born, they can surely die?” He shivered and put up the collar of his jacket. “It's a beautiful but blood-soaked soil you're about to step onto, Laetitia Talbot. On Crete, even the gods may die.”

  The light was beginning to fail and oil lamps were being lit in the houses as they threaded their way, headlights blazing, horn honking, scattering alarmed men and beasts off the road before them.

  “They haven't seen a Bugatti two-seater sports-tourer before, I'd guess,” Letty shouted over the motor's roar. “Not sure I have myself, I now confess. Certainly never ridden in one.”

  “Really? But you seemed to know your way about the engine!”

  “I think they're all pretty much alike. Carburettors all seem to flood in the same way. I say, the next bit looks rather narrow…are you sure about this?”

  “I know these alleyways to the inch. Built with enough room for two laden mules to pass each other. I chose the smallest, toughest car I could find. We should scrape through. Curses! That wasn't there last time! Excuse me a moment.”

  Leaving the car idling, George Russell climbed out and in fluent Greek apologised to the wizened lady whose display of oranges he had knocked over, gathering them back up into a pile and passing her a coin or two. He paused to exchange news with her, said something that made her roll about in a fit of giggling, then dallied longer to pay court to her ginger cat when it came to twine about his ankles. Through her impatience to be off, Letty noticed that the woman, clothed from head to foot in black, smiled at him as though he'd done her a great kindness, and when Letty turned her head as they started up again, it was to see her, still beaming, making a blessing sign after George's retreating back.

  “Here you are, Laetitia,” he said, tossing a large orange onto her lap. “Your first! The orange and lemon harvest has just started.”

  “I've never seen one with its leaves on, freshly tugged from the tree!” she exclaimed, delighted with the simple gift. She dug her fingernails into the rough skin and inhaled the scented oils that burst from it. “Delicious! I shall have it for breakfast.”

  “Breakfast! I don't know what you've become accustomed to in Athens but don't expect the typical British spread, will you? My father takes quite a pride in living a Cretan life. He keeps a Cretan cook, too. Breakfasts tend to be a bit sketchy at the Villa Europa. It'll be homemade yogurt, delicious bread, fruit, of course, and I can promise that the coffee will be good. That's one habit Father won't give up easily. Only a few more yards to go. It's the rather grand house on the corner.”

  They had entered a wider street lined with spacious houses of Venetian architecture, their regularity relieved here and there by small plazas and triangles of greenery. “An avenue, no less!” Letty read off the sign: “Odhos Avgoustou ikosi pende. Did I get that right? That's the Twenty-fifth of August Street, isn't it? Oh, dear! I get a bad feeling about a street named with a date. It usually spells calamity for someone.”

  “You're not mistaken. And, indeed, there was bloodshed. The full name of the street is ‘The Martyrs of the Twenty-fifth of August.' In thi
s case it was a bit of a disaster all round, I'm afraid, and the martyrs were a mixed bunch. But it was a disaster which was to prove rather crucial for me! Thirty years ago or thereabouts the native Cretans—Christians—were pushing (with the help of the Great Powers) to throw off the Turkish yoke. The Turks outnumbered the Cretans here in the city by nine to one, so it was a sadly onesided affair. On the date in question, a detachment of British soldiers was escorting Cretan officials along this street to the harbour. They were ambushed by a Turkish mob. A frightful riot ensued in which hundreds of Cretans died along with seventeen British soldiers and—the unfortunate British consul.”

  “Oh, no! I hardly like to ask what happened next.”

  “You hardly need to!” He smiled. “What do the British always do when someone gives them a bloody nose? They sent in a gunboat! Well, actually, it was more in the nature of a small fleet. The first thing they did was capture the ringleaders of the uprising, and they hung a symbolic seventeen of them. Then they cleared the land of Turkish troops before you could say knife! And that was the beginning of the end of two hundred and thirty years of Turkish rule in Crete. And the beginning—though he didn't at that time know it—of an important stage in the life of one of the young British naval officers aboard that gunboat. This is where the story becomes significant for me.

  “The officer's name was Theodore Russell. My father. After the turmoil had subsided, he took some leave on the island and fell in love with it. He was also to fall in love with the daughter of a German archaeologist working here.”

  “Ah! Your mother?” said Letty, sensing a romance.

  “Yes, indeed. My mother's family was well established in the Middle East—archaeological aristocracy, you might say! I do believe my mother was born in a trench with a silver trowel in her mouth! Anyway, the upshot was—Father decided that this girl and this world were for him. And as soon as he could, he married his Ilse. Engaged though she was by that time to someone quite other. He's a very determined man, my father, you'll see! Not a man to allow the inconvenience of an established fiancé to get in his way!”

  “How romantic!” Letty said. “I look forward to meeting your mother.”

  “Not possible, I'm afraid.” George's voice lost its warmth. “She's dead. She returned to Germany to visit her family in 1914 and never came back. She was quite insouciant about the political climate of the time—‘But the Germans and the British are cousins, my love,' I remember her saying to me. ‘It will never amount to war. Never!' My father had concerns, and rightly so, as it turned out. She died in Europe. Not in the fighting—a river ferry overturned and she was drowned. Father was devastated. So was I. I was twelve years old. I remember her well.”

  “You have her looks?” Letty asked quietly.

  “Yes. You'll see my father is dark—he's often taken for a native Cretan, which pleases the old rogue no end!” After a pause he went on: “But never think you're about to land in an eagle's nest of nothing but male brigands—you'll be welcomed by my stepmother. Phoebe.” He gave Letty a speculative glance, then decided, “You'll get on well. She's not much older than you. A lively lass! Has to be to cope with my father! She makes him very happy. Oh, I should prepare you for the other residents,” he added, slowing the car for a file of donkeys. “There are three others. All chaps. The two youngest ones are archaeology students attached to the British School in Athens. The odd oldest one is an architect.”

  “An architect? What on earth would an architect be doing here on Crete?”

  “They're very much in demand! Every excavation hopes to acquire one! Arthur Evans set the style. Digging's not just about the holes in the ground, you'll find. Reconstruction—that's the thing! With two or three floors often supported by pillars, flights of stairs, and miles of corridors to make sense of in these ancient palaces, you need an architect's eye to inform you. And there are palaces popping up everywhere, it would seem! ‘The island of a hundred cities,' as Homer called it, is proving to be exactly that! There are digging teams of many nationalities at work here, all vying with each other to reveal the next Knossos to the world. So if you have an architect with a neat drawing hand who'll help you to get into print before your competitors, you have a decided advantage.

  “And the one my father has in tow at the moment is top-hole. These fellows can draw sketches from the evidence the spade turns up to show you what the palace would have looked like in its heyday, and then they can even supervise the rebuilding. They tell me it's essential for preservation, too. I'm no archaeologist, but I've seen their anguished faces when the gypsum thrones and wooden piers they've dug out and exposed to the elements with such gay abandon rot and dissolve in the foul wet weather we get in the winter.” He gave a smile at once indulgent and dismissive. “Steel struts shipped out from Sheffield and modern ferroconcrete robustly take the place of the crumbling Minoan originals. And what a stroke of luck it is—you will agree, I'm sure, when you've seen Knossos— that the ancient architect whom King Minos employed should prove to be so in tune with the taste of his confrères thirty centuries in the future! I hope you're fond of oxblood?”

  “Oxblood?”

  “The colour. Dark reddish-brown, much favoured by the restorers of palaces out here.”

  There was something in his tone she could not quite seize. It was amused, certainly, but the amusement was a light veil for disparagement, she thought. Letty repressed a smile. Most of the young men she knew affected this attitude of unconcern. It was tedious and, faced with languid masculine world-weariness, Letty's response was always brisk. “If there's evidence of authenticity—and the slightest smear of ancient paint on a pillar will convince me— then I shall approve and love it,” she said crisply.

  George grinned and pulled up in front of an imposing Venetian façade. The three-storied house was graced by wrought-iron balconies at the long windows and a double flight of marble steps led to a door flanked by carved stone panels. Letty peered upwards, impressed.

  “The carvings are of lions like the ones in St. Marks,” he said, following her gaze. “Well, Laetitia—what are you thinking?”

  “I'm thinking this is no villa,” she answered. “It's beautiful…a knockout…but what it is is an elegant town house. Where does all this ‘villa' nonsense come from?”

  He seemed entertained by her comment. “Of course, you're right—the house does have a grander and more authentic Italian name. But everyone in Crete knows that my father has always seen himself as a rival to Sir Arthur Evans and a challenger for the old boy's position of master of the Cretan archaeological world. With old Arthur long established on the island as genial host to the wandering cosmopolitan high society at the house he built for himself in the country overlooking his site at Knossos…”

  “The Villa Ariadne? Ah! I begin to understand!”

  “…inevitably, when my father set himself up here, some joker-come to think of it, it might even have been Pa!—referred to it as ‘the Villa Europa.'”

  “Europa being Ariadne's granny!”

  “Thereby mischievously establishing a precedence. And making Sir Arthur look like a parvenu villabuilder from Wimbledon. Well—the name stuck. The Villa Europa perfectly summed up my father's piratical style…Are you ready for this?”

  He gave a brisk hoot on the Bugatti's horn, but the great door was already being flung open. A slender, fairhaired woman wearing a floating ankle-length gown ran down the stairs to greet them. Calling and cooing excitedly, she kissed George on both cheeks, then turned at once to open the door for Letty, not waiting for an introduction. The bones of the hand she offered were as light as a kitten's. Letty hardly dared to return the pressure.

  “Oh,how wonderful! Our two birds in one Bugatti! I'm Phoebe, George's stepmother. Did he remember to tell you he had one, Laetitia? Oh, good! He sometimes forgets and people are left standing about wondering quite who I am.” Her voice was warm and throaty; the words spilled out excitedly. “We're delighted you made the connection with each other on
the ferry. How sensible! We would have wired to suggest George escort you but there wasn't time to telegraph before your boat sailed. George—what have you done about Laetitia's baggage? I don't see it!”

  “It's on a mule somewhere between here and the harbour. Well, two mules. There was rather a lot. No room in this car for anything but people.”

  Phoebe looked with concern at Letty's wet clothes and noted that she had no luggage with her, apart from a leather satchel thrown over her shoulder. She began to scan the avenue with some urgency. “Oh, there it is! I think I see it on its way. Something bulky's just come round the corner. Thank goodness for that! I'll send someone up to help you unpack. Come in, you poor thing— you look quite exhausted! I'll have a cup of tea brought to your room. Ah, Laetitia, here's my husband. Theo! They've arrived, darling! Together!”

  Theodore Russell, at last. Letty was looking forward to meeting him, though slightly nervous about the prospect. An ex-navy man turned diplomat, he had been the éminence grise behind two Prime Ministers. In his middle years he had become an amateur archaeologist of renown and was generally held by his compatriots to be the rising authority on Cretan life and history. Sir Arthur Evans was now approaching eighty years of age and loosening his ties with the island that had made him the foremost archaeologist of the twentieth century. Already, the world was looking to Theodore Russell to fill the gap, scientific and social, that the absence of the grand old man would leave.

  And here he was, descending the last few stairs into the hallway, already in his dinner jacket and presenting a reassuringly conventional figure. He was dark and stocky, with an austere appearance relieved solely by a heavy silver ring of antique design that he wore on the hand he now extended to Letty. Rough, she noted with approval, and warm. Theodore Russell's beard was black, beginning to brindle with grey, and neatly trimmed in what she took to be a naval style. Being a tall girl, Laetitia was accustomed to finding herself on eye level with many men, and she was amused, but not surprised, to detect an automatic straightening of the spine and raising of the chin in the man now greeting her. The pressure of his handshake increased. He murmured polite enquiries but she was aware that his eyes were skittering past her, seeking out his son, who'd followed a pace or two behind.