A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (16 page)

“But perhaps Mr. Evans has made inquiries.”

“You will have to ask Mr. Evans himself.”

“But Mr. Evans is currently back home at Oxford.”

“You are welcome to make use of the telegraph machine.”

Silverton had been staring curiously at the stack of papers, and now looked up, grinning his amiable grin. “The telegraph! I say. Bang up to date, aren't we?”

Mr. Vasilakis shrugged and returned a vague smile of his own.

“Where is the telegraph machine?” I asked.

“At the Villa Ariadne, where Mr. Evans is pleased to make himself at home when he is directing the excavation himself. Your friend, I believe, kept a room there, too. It's just back down the road, a few hundred yards, near the Little Palace. There is a housekeeper and a few members of the staff. They are frightfully bored at the present time, I suspect, and will be happy to assist you.”

“I don't suppose they would object to putting us up for a night or two?” said his lordship.

“I beg your pardon?”

“We had some trouble obtaining rooms at the hotel in Heraklion.” He presented an innocent aspect and spread his hands helplessly, as if he were quite incompetent either to understand the nature of this trouble or to resolve it.

Mr. Vasilakis blinked. “I don't see why they should not. Many of Mr. Evans's friends and colleagues have stayed there. It has something of the air of a boardinghouse, at times.” He turned to the woman, who had dropped silently into a chair from which she
watched us resentfully. He snapped out a few words, and she rose, black-eyed, and began to pile the coffee cups back on the tray. The camp stool behind her, I saw, was now empty of its brief illusion.

“If you will excuse me,” Mr. Vasilakis went on, lifting the chimney to blow out the lantern, “I must return to my men before there is some colossal mistake.”

Lord Silverton leapt to his feet. “We will not detain you for an instant. Miss Truelove?”

I rose more slowly, careful to avoid the wrathful tidying of Mr. Vasilakis's servant in the semidarkness. The wind whistled once more past the tent poles, making the canvas ripple.

“Very well,” I said. “To the Villa Ariadne.”

As soon as we were a hundred yards or so back down the road, map in hand and mule in train, I spoke up. “I suspect he may have been hiding something.”

“Ah! Do you, now?”

“Also, I should like to inspect Mr. Haywood's area of investigation personally, when we have settled ourselves at the villa. Did you happen to notice the place on the map where the frescoes were found, before Mr. Vasilakis pulled it away?”

“I believe I can reconstruct the memory, if pressed.”

“And of course we shall have to examine Mr. Haywood's old room at the villa. There are bound to be all sorts of clues lying around. If we're lucky, he may have left behind a note of some kind, or a travel itinerary.”

“That would be smashing, wouldn't it? Back home in a week.”

I breathed in the sharp air. The wind was still rolling briskly down the hills, smelling of clean rocks and vegetation, but it now
struck me as invigorating rather than oppressive. “Perhaps
hiding
is too strong a word. Withholding, perhaps. He had additional information, which he did not see fit to deliver to us.”

“And how did you arrive at this extraordinary conclusion?”

For an instant, I considered telling him the truth, or some version of it: the message my father had communicated to me—or rather, the message that my unconscious mind had communicated to me, through the illusion of my father—to
pay attention
to the map, to
pay attention
to the foreman's words.

Pay attention.
How many times had I heard him say those patient words?
Pay attention, my dear. It is not the main subject, but the details that matter.

“It was obvious from his manner,” I said. We were turning from the entrance path—the Royal Road, according to the general site map Mr. Vasilakis had given us, which was of ancient origin—and onto the main highway. To the left, just past a crossroads, the partially excavated remains of another building rose up from the roadside, of which I had taken no notice during our approach, my attention having then been fixed on the ruins of Knossos itself. I consulted the map. “This must be the Little Palace.”

“Palace, eh? How the mighty have fallen.”

“So should you, after three thousand years.”

“Touché, Truelove, as always. I say, I don't know about you, but I find all this tramping about has worked up a deuce of an appetite. Do you think a nice beefsteak is too much to hope for, in the heart of Knossos?”

Our footsteps echoed faintly among the stones. I glanced over my shoulder, where the mule plodded along, head bent to the ground, twitching his cross ears in an irregular manner, as if he meant to bolt at the first opportunity. I was not unsympathetic.

“I suppose, if the housekeeper is a female and reasonably sentient,” I said, “you're likely to have no trouble convincing her to feed you whatever you like.”

“Why, Truelove. I believe that's the kindest thing you've said to me thus far.”

“It wasn't a compliment.”

“Still.” He paused. “Did you catch that, however? Beefsteak and Knossos, I mean.”

“Amazingly clever.”

“
I
thought so. Always chuffs a man up, to amaze his friends with a bon mot from time to time, as one's humble wits allow. Is this the villa, do you think?”

I gazed past a stand of trees to a rambling, square-built stone house, surrounded by plantings of cypress and palm that granted a distinctly exotic air, particularly now, in the last weeks of winter. The front steps were new and immaculate. “I suppose it must be. It's certainly not an excavation.”

“My thought exactly.” He looped the mule's lead rope over a nearby bush and straightened his cap. “Would you care to make the first introduction, or shall I do the honors?”

“I am perfectly capable of knocking on a foreign door and introducing myself.”

“Then it's after you, my dear. And Truelove?”

“Yes, Silverton?”

“Do be nice.”

I saw no reason to flatter this admonition—delivered, as one might expect, beneath the usual devastating wink—with a riposte. I marched up the stone steps and let fall the knocker on a thick wooden door, which opened in due course to reveal a woman of Mediterranean aspect, perhaps thirty years old,
wearing an English-style uniform of black dress and white pinafore apron. A small lace cap adorned her hair. She gazed at me in perfect bemusement. “Madam?”

“Good afternoon. We are friends of Mr. Maximilian Haywood, who, we are given to understand, was a colleague of your master, Mr. Evans.”

A faint groan disturbed the air behind me. The servant's two thick eyebrows knitted almost into one. She was, I suppose, a pretty sort of woman, if one happened to favor that sort of olive-skinned exoticism. Her hair was straight and glossy, arranged in a knot at the back of her head; her eyes were as large and dark as warm coals, and about as comprehending.

But she must understand me
, I thought,
if she is Mr. Evans's servant
. Unless, of course, he had become accustomed to speaking to her in her natal tongue, which was not impossible.
Going native
, I believe, was the term: a common enough phenomenon among the sons of empire, who spent the greater part of their lives among remote populations.

I went on, a little more loudly, and enunciated my words with care. “We have not heard from Mr. Haywood in some time, and have come to Knossos to ascertain his whereabouts. Moreover, I am afraid we stand in some need of lodging and refreshment, as well as the use of your telegraph equipment.” I paused. “My name is Miss Truelove, and this gentleman is his lordship, the Marquess of Silverton.”

There was an astonished silence from the direction of the servant.

“Well. I suppose that about sums everything up,” said Silverton.

The woman looked past my shoulder, and her expression of hostile befuddlement melted at once into the kind of look one
sees on the face of a dog who has just caught sight of a rasher of bacon, left unattended.

“A very dear old friend, our Max,” said his lordship. (I can only suppose his smile exuded its usual glamour.) “We'd be most abjectly grateful for any assistance you might be kind enough to offer.”

The door opened wide. The servant stepped back.

“You are most welcome, of course,” she said, in excellent English.

The Lady returned to the Palace, where she occupied herself in the preparations for the reception of the Athenian tribute. On the first night, a banquet would be served in the Hall of the Labrys, and on the second night, the Lady of the Labyrinth was to wash the feet of the Athenian youths in water taken from the sacred spring under the last full moon.

On the third night, according to ritual, the hunt would begin.

Though the Lady kept busy, still the hours came and went like the passage of a snail across a garden, and each minute apart from her love was an agony to her. She gave instructions to the servants to fill her husband's cup with wine at every draining, for she feared above all that the Prince would call her to his bed, while the seed of the Hero was still newly planted in her womb . . .”

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

M
y mother was not a great beauty, but she
was
a coquette of tremendous charm. (You will conclude, I suppose, that my character must therefore resemble that of the man who fathered me, an assertion to which I would willingly subscribe, had I any idea who he was, or what he was like.) I know this fact not from my own personal recollection, but because her reputation has lived on so long after her corpse was laid in the damp earth of my early childhood.

Naturally, this interesting information did not reach my ears for some time after I came to live with my father—Mr. Truelove, I mean—at the Duke of Olympia's London town house. If it had, I don't suppose I should have properly understood the allusion. I do remember the first time someone spoke to me candidly on the subject. He was drunk, of course, which explains the candor. We were standing together on the outskirts of a party, a private
musical evening hosted by Their Graces, to which they had kindly invited me, knowing my love of such things. The great soprano Tetrazzini had performed a series of splendid coloratura arias, and my whole being was so suffused with that euphoria which follows the experience of great art, I accepted a glass of champagne from a passing footman and drank it quickly and quietly, heedless of consequence.

The action did not go unnoticed, and I was immediately approached by a man of perhaps forty or forty-five years, who offered me a second glass of champagne and told me I reminded him of someone, a woman he had once much admired. Her name, he said, was Araminta, and she had married a man named Truelove.

“Then you must mean my mother,” I said eagerly. (The champagne, you perceive, had gone straight to my head.)

His face transformed into an expression I now know well, but of which I was then entirely ignorant. “Ah, the great Araminta was your mother!” he exclaimed.

“Did you know her well?”

“I am happy to say I knew her very well indeed. The most
charming
, the most lovely woman. You have much the look of her.” He winked.

“Do you think so? But surely not. I have seen her portrait, and while I suppose we share a certain superficial resemblance—”

“On the contrary, my dear, you're her mirror image.” He stepped closer, and his voice dropped to a confidential murmur. “It makes one wonder what else you share with her.”

“I'm afraid I cannot enlighten you, sir, as I hardly knew her. She died when I was only five years old.”

“Only five years old! Then you must be . . . nineteen, perhaps?”

“Yes, sir. Nineteen next month.”

“Charming.” He glanced at my neck. “Perhaps, if you care to step outside for a breath of air, I will tell you all you wish to know about your dear mother.”

“I'm afraid it's terribly cold.”

“True. But your mother was just the sort of adventurous woman to disregard such little inconveniences, in the right sort of company.”

At which point in this conversation I began to realize his meaning, I cannot say. I am ashamed to suspect that it was quite far along, because my father had sheltered me so absolutely from such men, and I was unused to the effects of champagne. I remember looking up at his face, which was of the sort that had once been handsome and now lay in incipient ruin, and feeling a kind of trepidation at the intensity of his expression. Then his arm appeared around my elbow, and the feeling became a flutter, and the flutter became a roil of dread.

But where were we? Oh, yes. My adventurous mother.

“I am afraid I am not quite so adventurous, by nature,” I said. “I prefer a warm and well-lit room.”

“Do you, now? Then perhaps the library will prove more to your taste. Your mother liked a quiet library very much.”

I set down the second glass of champagne on a nearby table. “The library is closed to guests, sir, and I believe I must retire. I find I am—I am—” For a terrible instant, I couldn't remember the word, and for some reason this failure struck me as monumental. “Discomposed,” I said at last, and I fled through the crowd, sick and small, terrified that he would follow me: not because I was afraid of him physically, but because I did not want to hear more. I could not remember my mother's face in life, but I did recall her gentle arms and her singsong laugh, and I didn't want
to think that this horrible, ruined man had known them, too. I didn't want to think that he sought to know the daughter as he had known the mother, that Araminta's sins must inevitably become my own.

I didn't tell my father about this man. For one thing, he had already begun that decline in his health which would soon prove fatal, and for another, we scarcely ever spoke to each other on the subject of my mother. An odd, careful, unspoken agreement existed between us. She remained a mystery, a white void we never sought to fill, and I could not say whether our neglect arose because she was too sacred to us, or too profane.

But as I watched Lord Silverton beg the favor of a meal from Mr. Evans's pretty housekeeper—her name was Mrs. Poulakis, as his lordship readily discovered, though the title of
Mrs
. seemed only a dignity of her profession—and secure not only a pair of well-furnished rooms for our use, but the services of Mr. Evans's private telegraph machine as well, I began to understand a little of what the gentleman in that long-ago party meant by
charming
. After all, it's one matter to experience Silverton's powers of persuasion for oneself; to observe a third party, as she falls under his spell, is another perspective entirely.

“Is something the matter, Truelove?” asked his angelic lordship, spreading a soft English roll with butter. Mrs. Poulakis had just left to bring up another bottle of wine.

“Nothing is the matter, sir.”

“Because you have that particular look of distaste on your face, which usually signals some kind of misbehavior on my part. Do you consider a proper meal a waste of time?”

“No. One's body requires nourishment, even in times of urgency.”

“Wine not to your liking?”

“The wine is perfectly good, as one would expect, although perhaps not an
ideal
accompaniment to the concentration required of an investigation such as ours. I'm only thinking about how best to accomplish our objectives this afternoon, when the hours of daylight are in such limited supply.”

“You sound like a general planning a military campaign.”

“Is there anything wrong with that?”

“No, not at all.” He gazed at the ceiling and rolled the wine in his glass, preparing to drink. “Are you suggesting we divide and conquer?”

“Why not? We might accomplish twice as much.”

“I see. And which task would you have me undertake? The frescoes, or the villa?”

Like all Silverton's queries, this one was delivered as blandly as if the answer were of no significance at all. As if he were only making conversation. His Adam's apple slid up and down as he swallowed his wine, and when he put down the glass, he revealed an expectant smile.

“Which one would you prefer?” I said.

The door opened, and Mrs. Poulakis walked in, bearing a platter of sliced meat and ripe bosom, the latter of which balanced invitingly on the rim of the tray, flowing over from an inadequate bodice that had, in the course of her kitchen labors, unaccountably lost a pair of buttons.

“Dear me.” I set down my wine. “Mrs. Poulakis appears to have misplaced her pinafore.”

“A great shame.” Silverton followed the parabola of her progress around the opposite end of the table, drawing away, away, and then coming near, nearer, until she reached the edge of his
lordship's wineglass and leaned over to place her offering at his right hand.

“Some meat, sir?”

“Yes, please,” said Silverton. “The breast, if I might.”

“Among
polite
society,” I said, as Mrs. Poulakis used a silver fork to lay the viand, slice by slice, on his lordship's plate, “we use the term
white meat
.”

“Dash it all. I'm always forgetting these niceties. Thank you extremely, Mrs. Poulakis. Delicious, I'm sure.”

Mrs. Poulakis simpered—as well she might—and made her way back around the table in my direction. “Not that I mind, particularly, Mrs. Poulakis,” I said, “but in England it is customary to serve the ladies first and the gentlemen last.”

“Oh! Sorry, madam.”

“This is because, in civilized society, one naturally defers the choicest portions of each dish to the gentler sex. For example, Lord Silverton, in expressing a fondness just now for white meat over dark, was only being polite.”

The fork wavered uncertainly over the platter. “Some meat, madam?”

“The dark, please. I shall not, of course, mention so
slight
an error to Mr. Evans, though I hope you will take my hint in good spirit. Something amuses you, Silverton?”

“Not at all, not at all. I am only laboring, so far as I am able, to decide whether my paltry talents are better employed in tramping about the ancient ruins where Max worked, or in conducting a thorough search of the villa in which he slept.”

“Only you can determine that, your lordship.”

His gaze slipped past my shoulder to Mrs. Poulakis's departing figure. “Hmm. Yes. And you have no preference?”

“After such a substantial and recuperative meal, I find myself equally prepared to do either.”

‘Then the choice is wholly mine, is it?”

“Wholly yours. You have only your own conscience to consult.”

“Ah. My
conscience
.”

“Your conscience, sir. If you have one.”

Lord Silverton laid down his knife and fork and leaned forward. The table was large, and we sat exactly across from each other, parted by a wide snowfall of linen and a pair of brass candelabra, in need of polish. Against the backdrop of a new white plaster wall, his lordship's eyes shone an especially pungent shade of blue.

He steepled his fingers thoughtfully before his mouth.

“In that case, I fancy I'll ask that lovely Mrs. Poulakis to show me which bedchamber belonged to Max.”

One hears often that anger is an unwholesome emotion: a moral failing, which it is one's Christian duty to overcome. I find I cannot quite agree. Properly channeled, anger is not merely useful but sublime.

As I tramped back up the Royal Road to the Knossos ruins, map secured between the gloved fingers of my right hand, the fury poured like melted steel through my limbs and rendered them invincible. Or perhaps it was the wine, of which I had, I confess, taken another glass. In any case, I marched along the old uneven paving stones so swiftly, I might have been born on a mountainside; I skirted the central area of restoration and approached Max's site like a slight female juggernaut.

Nobody stopped me. Perhaps nobody dared. Perhaps that liquid steel actually flashed and clanged fearsomely through my
dress, so potent was its source material. A few crumbling steps appeared in my way; I climbed over them without hesitation.

My breath huffed from my lungs, damp and indignant and smelling of wine, and as I went on, I became aware of another set of lungs, huffing alongside mine with even more vigor, and I redoubled my effort.

“Slow down, you silly girl! Do you wish to kill me?”

“Impossible. You are already dead.”

“There is no need whatever for this unsuitable display. I did, after all, warn you of his lordship's propensities. I warned you away from this ill-favored expedition altogether.”

“I could hardly refuse, however.”

“Yes, you could, if you had a little more nerve. A little more sense of what is suitable to a young lady's dignity.” She spoke in self-righteous little puffs of air—
a . . . young lady's . . . dignity!
—and dragged her feet in metallic scrapes against the stone.

“There is nothing undignified about
my
behavior,” I said.

“You're a fool. Did you really expect him to conduct himself differently? Did you expect him to alter his habits for
your
sake?”