The Tomb of Zeus Read online

  I shall pray for her,” said Maria. “And for his boy. He is not a good man, but I can feel sorry for any man whose wife dies and whose only son is injured in such a short time.” Aristidis's mother was holding the photograph of the three diggers in her hands while listening eagerly to Letty's account of the weekend's proceedings, her eyes on Theodore Russell in the centre, her voice betraying decision but not a note of sympathy.

  They were sitting on either side of the table on Sunday evening, sipping a glass of Maria's homemade mulberry raki, and Letty could feel her revelations becoming more outspoken with every sip of the strong spirit. She made an effort to remember that some of her information was undoubtedly confidential and not meant to run the length of the Cretan grapevine. But gossiping was proving so seductive, she thought she had probably been lured into going too far. And Maria was the perfect audience, listening without interruption, absorbing and asking just the right questions to draw out the story. Certainly by tomorrow morning the affairs of the House of Russell would be common knowledge in Kastelli, traded over every doorstep.

  “You don't like Aristidis's employer, I think?” Letty inquired blandly.

  “My son dislikes him and does not trust him,” said Maria, and Letty smiled at the simple reply. No further explanation was needed. The son's judgement was clearly enough for the mother.

  “Have you ever met him?”

  “I don't care for the city and never go there…but I went to my niece's wedding at the Cathedral of Saint Minas last month. While we were gathering in the square before the ceremony, an elegant man walked by with his pretty wife. Such a striking couple—he so dark, she so fair—I asked Aristidis who they were. He told me that the gentleman was his employer, the Englishman, Russell. The one who has treated him so badly. His wife I understand to have been a good woman. Aristidis spoke warmly of her.”

  Maria filled up Letty's glass and offered a dish of mezedes. “Englishmen are so very different, one from the other, Aristidis says.”

  Letty pursed her lips. The son of the house was certainly Maria's porthole on the world outside, and she acknowledged that anything she confided to the mother would be, at the soonest possible moment, relayed to the son. The trouble was, Letty thought with rueful amusement, that she was rapidly heading in the direction of dependence on Aristidis herself. In the short time they had worked together, he had already established himself as a trusted and knowledgeable figure. Never in her way but always at her elbow when she needed him, never patronising, always encouraging. Theodore must have been mad to antagonise such a valuable foreman.

  “He has nothing but praise for this man. Gunning,” said Maria, pointing to Gunning's grinning face. “I think William has your respect and affection, too, Laetitia,” she added subtly, with a slight question in her voice.

  “Gunning? Respect and affection? Not in the least!” said Letty. “He is a useful and well-informed professional chaperon, a man who is in my father's confidence. But he is not a man who inspires affection and, indeed, I know very little about him. He's an army man—very much a man's man, I'd have said. He doesn't easily get along with women. Not had much practice, I suppose. He finds me very irritating and I think him awkward and overbearing.”

  Maria listened to this churning outflow, trying to understand. “I see. I think I see. But he is quite a good-looking man, wouldn't you say so?” she persisted, twinkling. “I may be elderly, but I still have an eye for a handsome man and I have good judgement. I cannot understand why such a fine fellow would be still unmarried at his age. It would not be so, here on the island. Perhaps it is on account of his injury that he goes unclaimed?”

  “Injury? Oh, his foot, you mean? I forget about it, he makes so little of it. No, I don't think it can be that. There are so many spinsters and widows in England left behind by the war, any unattached man putting his head over the parapet is pounced upon and marched up the aisle. It is really very strange that even Mr. Gunning should have managed to avoid matrimony for so long. I understand him to have spent the years after the war travelling on the continent instead of doing his duty and returning to plunge into marriage with some unfortunate girl.”

  Maria looked bemused. She reached out and put her hand over Letty's. “I think the girl he chooses will be fortunate,” she said, nodding wisely. “And I've decided to do something about it. I am making a list of suitable candidates. You know him better than anyone, I think…you must help me. We'll start with Angeliki. My young friend Angeliki is recently widowed and beginning to look around. She still has her looks, even after six children, and it would be a blessing for her to find kindness and culture after the ten years she spent married to that wild boar of a husband.”

  Maria burst into triumphant laughter at the agonised and betraying expression she had provoked.

  * * *

  Aristidis was full of pride next morning as they stood together on Juktas surveying the dig. The extra men they had hired to work at the end of the week had cleared the site of concealing grass and most of the shrubs, though any protruding stones had been left in place. Tapes had been stretched from pegs outlining the plots they had agreed should be dug, and the men were standing by with picks and shovels and wheelbarrows ready for the off.

  The first of the sondage pits had revealed such a wealth of finds, they had decided to extend their luck by extending its sides and follow the intriguing suggestions of masonry walls where they led. Stone ledges had come to light, pottery sherds and what Letty thought might prove to be a small shrine. She was confident they had prepared well. All was ready. At least, not quite all. Where was the recorder and photographer?

  Gunning strolled on site, a shepherd's twisting staff carried across his shoulders, his two hands hooked over the ends in the island manner. One of the men shouted a derisive comment and burst out laughing. Gunning instantly went into a parody of a swaggering Cretan walk, provoking more amusement and some crude suggestions. He responded by lowering the stick and swinging it in his hand like a cane, moving into a Charlie Chaplin routine. He tipped an imaginary bowler, he tripped over his stick and landed on his behind in a wheelbarrow.

  This was a side of Gunning Letty had not so far caught a glimpse of, and she suddenly understood that this was a sample of behaviour learned in the trenches of Flanders. The sight of a padre fooling about would have been a boost for morale, perhaps the only incitement to laughter for days, in that hellish place. And these men liked him. Following on his performance, they'd gone smoothly into action, each with his appointed task, each with a smile on his face. They felt free one minute to seek his opinion, the next to deride his ignorance. An easy relationship. And one she could never, whatever her wealth, influence, or talent, emulate. She felt a familiar flash of anger.

  Well, physical activity had always been a release for frustration. She grabbed a pick and a spade and made for an outcrop of stones breaking the surface a few yards away from the main dig, thinking to sink a test pit of her own and leave the rest of the oiled machine to run on without her. With a sharp memory of Knossos and Phoebe she pulled up a root of feathery fennel to clear her way, and began to dig. The stones she removed seemed to have been cut and used as part of a wall or a building of some sort. No pottery fragments came to light, in fact, nothing of interest as in the other pits. She glanced around and decided that if she was right about the position of the main activity site, she was now working on one of its outlying areas.

  She was on the point of giving up and slinking away when a change in colour and texture was revealed by her slicing spade. Terra-cotta. A man-made object. Intrigued, she knelt and peered more closely. She took a trowel from her pocket and poked the enrobing earth away from it. It fell away cleanly, and she put out her hands to grasp the artefact and gently move it with the idea of drawing it from its bed in one unbroken piece. Heavy and some eighteen inches long, the tubular shape came away with surprising ease, revealing a hole, beyond which lay another terra-cotta pipe of the same diameter. Sewage system? These we
re well known in the palace at Knossos. Sanitary engineering of a quite sophisticated quality had been undertaken there. But up here on a hilltop in the wilderness? What would they need to pipe away?

  With her fingers she began to clean off the earth, fascinated to see that what she held was a decorated pipe. And therefore probably not meant for sewage or water overflow dispersal. What would you call this decoration in pottery terms? She racked her brain. Repoussé? Not quite right. Appliqué, that was it! Gunning would know for sure. Or Aristidis. She stood and held up the heavy pipe and waved in their direction, hoping to catch their eye. Strips of the terra-cotta clay had been moulded into thickish ropes and attached with fanciful Cretan sinuosity to coil around the body of the cylinder. Not even the arty Minoans would bother to do that for something utilitarian that they intended to bury under the floor, surely?

  Perhaps it was a container? She raised the open end to her eye to look down the length of it, certain that there was something inside.

  A hard body crashed into her from behind with a shout of warning, knocking her off balance. With one fist Aristidis smashed the pipe from her grasp, a split second before the occupant shot out with the speed of a hurled lance, mad eyes seeking a target, pink mouth open wide, sticky white fangs gleaming, head darting in attack.

  The terra-cotta crashed to the ground, shattering into fragments on the jagged surface of a rock. The snake fell and instantly rounded on Aristidis, who had put himself between the reptile and the paralysed Letty. Gunning was suddenly at her side, seizing her by the waist and hauling her, rigid with shock, a few feet off. They watched, helpless, as Aristidis lashed out at the snake with his shepherd's staff and finally caught its neck in the forked piece at the end. The snake writhed and thrashed in impotent fury but Aristidis calmly took the knife from his waist, bent, and in two swift strokes sliced off its head.

  Demetrios hurried over with a shovel and deftly began to scoop up the remains. He pointed to the bright orange stripes and the V behind its head. “Ochendra,” he commented. “Leopard snake. You're lucky to have your nose still, miss!” He went off to the cliff edge to dispose of the horror.

  To her mortification Letty could not keep a limb still. She shivered, her teeth chattered and yet seemed clenched together, and no sounds would come, not even the pitiful wail she needed to express. She had revealed to no one her acute fear amounting to phobia for snakes and had hoped that, striding about with unconcern, as she did, in her boots, the men would take her for fearless and the snakes would give her a wide berth. Gunning put both arms around her, murmuring soothing nonsense, and held her closely, one hand firmly behind her head, pulling her face into his shoulder.

  Finally, “Hell's bells! What on earth was that?” she managed to gasp.

  “That was, as Demetrios says, a leopard snake. Poor creature! You disturbed him. Don't take it personally—he was just defending his home.”

  Without releasing her, he stuck out a foot and turned over one of the broken pieces of pot. “A snake tube. That's what you un-earthed. They've been found on temple sites all over the island. The thought is that snakes were offered accommodation in these kennels and probably fed as well. A diet of milk and honey cakes, they say. Most likely they were de-fanged and used in religious ceremonies. Earth spirits. Chthonic beings. And just like the human inhabitants, your modern snake makes use of the ancient facilities if they're in good working order. It's my theory that the practice of keeping house snakes up on the Athenian Acropolis may have descended from the Cretan custom. And the goddess Athena, to whom they were sacred, perhaps a memory of the ancient mother goddess…”

  His voice was reassuringly professorial. “He's talking to calm the baby,” Letty thought. “Well, I have to think it's working.” The warmth and the scent of his skin under the rough shirt were calming and the pounding of his heart intriguing. She could see no reason to break away. Odd that the danger threatening her had been averted by Aristidis with heroic panache, but her distress had needed to be assuaged by Gunning's presence. He was not a comforting man to her; he was barbed and slightly inimical—at best, awkward—but, standing here in his arms, within his defences, what she felt was a rightness, and more than that—the excited joy of a homecoming.

  He was making no attempt to move away and the moment had been prolonged beyond what was socially acceptable. She was struck by the memory of one of Gunning's sly comments: “Oh, dear! William! Could you possibly be offending the men by this public demonstration of affection?” She turned her head to see if they were observed. The men had gathered into a group, passing around cigarettes. They were talking loudly to each other, reliving the moment with gesticulations, already embellishing the story— and every man was facing tactfully away towards the sea.

  “I'm sure they understand it to be nothing more than what it is—a public demonstration of first aid and essential comfort,” he replied and then, hearing the hurtful dismissiveness in his gruff voice, his arms tightened again. “So—have a little comfort!” When she turned her face back towards him, he gently touched her nose with the tip of his forefinger. “Nice nose. Awfully glad you didn't lose it.”

  “Well, whatever we've got here, it's not the Tomb of Zeus,” said Aristidis at noon on Friday. There was no disappointment in his voice, rather intrigue and excitement.

  They had finished a light lunch supplied by Maria, standing about on the site rather than leave off to eat in the sheds, and Letty was gathering together the remnants of the meal into a basket. The men went back to busily finishing off in their trenches, leaving everything ready for a start again the following Monday. The sides were plastered with white labels marking out the changing strata, numbered from one onwards as the digging revealed them, down to base level. From here a further set of labels in red, many of these with question marks added, worked their way back up again from the very lowest stratum, which someone had hopefully labelled “Neolithic,” signifying the succeeding layers of civilisation.

  “Not entirely sure we've got that right, Letty,” Gunning had said doubtfully. “We might get old Theo out to take a look. He's hot stuff when it comes to pottery dating. He'll know. Best we can do for the moment is be certain we've recorded everything correctly.” He was hurrying along the balks from one square to the next, sketching and photographing, establishing continuity between them and producing suggestions for further work based on the evidence unearthed.

  “No tomb, no body, not even any charred remains in a cooking pot. But what we do have promises to be magnificent! William! Come and show Laetitia your sketch. There…” Aristidis laid out Gunning's drawing on the ground, put a boot on it, and pointed with his staff. “Tell me what you see.”

  “A three-bayed something or other,” said Letty, feeling her way. “Unusual, would you say, for an outdoor site?”

  “But not unknown.”

  “Right…” Letty gathered her thoughts and spoke firmly: “What we have would appear to be some sort of temple, not just an open-air altar. A proper building, one storey high, as Gunning has established from the foundations and thickness of the walls. Lime-plastered walls, painted in dark red and white—must have been very striking! Beams of Cephalonian pine as at Knossos. It offers three good-sized rooms…what are we saying, William?…four yards wide? Central one a little more spacious than the east and west rooms? A plethora of potsherds in situ on what may be a stepped altar in the easterly room—let's call it number one. The rooms have doorways out onto a wide corridor to the north. Here…Now if this corridor proves to have been colonnaded, we've got rather spectacular views over the Aegean. Age? You have an opinion on this, Aristidis?”

  Aristidis had an opinion.

  “Minoan architectural style and decoration, probably contemporary with the main palace building we see standing at Knossos today,” he said. “I'm saying Middle Minoan III. Walls of fine masonry, gypsum dado to the lower courses, signs of wooden columns. Kasellas—floor cists—just emerging in the eastern room…. Could be very interestin
g. Mason's marks very similar. Carvings of the double axe and the horns of consecration link it to the religious aspects of the Palace at Knossos. But I see evidence of rebuilding—after some disaster, perhaps? Earthquake? Conquest? More likely. The upper layers show evidence of a Mycenaean presence. The conquering mainland Greeks were here.”

  He went to a finds tray and took out a small ivory carving. Letty leaned over and looked again with satisfaction at the object that had taken her breath away when it had risen from the soil. On a flat disk of ivory was carved in profile the perfect head of a Mycenaean warrior proudly wearing his helmet of boar's teeth.

  “What did old Schliemann say when he dug up the gold mask at Mycenae?” Gunning came over to take a look. “‘Today I have gazed on the face of Agamemnon.’ Well, there you are, Letty! You can say today you have gazed on the face of Theseus! With probably just as much respect for the truth! Telegraph the London Times with the news, why don't you?”

  He paused, puzzled by her silence. “What's up? Not happy with what we've got? Goodness, girl! What will it take to set you on fire, I wonder, if this won't do it? Oh, yes…The Tomb! You were really waiting for a body to be exhumed, I think? A male skeleton ten feet tall? I wonder what the toe bone of the King of the Gods would sell for on the black market? Or were you expecting a chryselephantine statue in silver and gold?”

  She skewered him with her disdain. Since the shameful episode with the snake, he had kept his distance, occasionally, as now, closing in just long enough to annoy her with a sharp comment. Regretting his show of concern and redressing the balance, most probably, but she wondered if the demonstration was aimed at her or put on for the benefit of the men.