A Most Extraordinary Pursuit (28 page)

“But surely he doesn't mean the
actual
cave,” I whispered to Mr. Higganbotham, as we trudged along the road behind the landlord.

“I beg your pardon?” Mr. Higganbotham appeared to be lost in some sort of scholarly firmament high above, for his face was turned up to the watery sun, and his eyes had filmed softly over.

“The
caves
, sir. The caves to which this man is leading us. He can't actually
believe
these are the caves of Ariadne, that she really existed here. That these mythical events”—I gestured to the sea, much as the landlord himself had done a short while ago—“truly took place, three thousand years ago, on this soil.”

“Oh, I expect he does. That's the splendid power of myth, you know. It's marvelously flexible, allowing anybody to interpret events as he pleases.” He paused to negotiate a small rockslide obscuring the roadway. “Did you ever play that game as a child, in which you whispered a statement of fact into somebody's ear, and that friend passed it on to another, and so on?”

“Yes, and the friend at the end of the line announced what had been uttered in
her
ear—”

“And it was entirely different from the statement at the beginning, eh? Well, that's myth for you. Handed along from mouth to ear for millennia, until somebody wrote it down at last and made it fact. But what really happened? We haven't a clue.” He nodded to the road ahead. “Something interesting may very well have happened at these caves. Obviously our friends think so.”

“You mean the landlord?”

“I mean Mr. Haywood and his female companion.”

“But what could it be? What could possibly be so important that it's worth risking one's life for?”

Mr. Higganbotham considered. “Treasure, perhaps? A very great deal of treasure often tempts men into extraordinary deeds.”

I fell silent, because this was not the answer I craved, and I could not speak this yearning aloud. Above us, the sky had turned a brilliant morning blue, and the air was almost springlike, smelling of damp stone and new grass and sunshine. I removed my jacket and slung it over my shoulder. My shoes were beginning to pinch.

“How much farther?” I asked Mr. Higganbotham.

He called obediently to the landlord, who turned his head and shouted something back.

“Ah, I see,” said Mr. Higganbotham.

“What did he say?”

“Six or seven miles.” He cleared his throat. “Or perhaps eight.”

“Eight miles!”

But it was no use protesting. There was too much distance already behind us to turn back, and so we marched on, pausing only briefly to eat the bread and the hard sheep's cheese that the landlord had taken from the cupboard in the cottage. The terrain became rockier, the cliffs more sheer. The sun reached its zenith and began to fall slowly to earth, and a series of clouds scudded into view from the southwest, before a strengthening wind.

Mr. Higganbotham examined the sky. “I do hope it's not a scirocco.”

“A scirocco?”

“It arises from the Sahara at this time of year. Nasty sort of wind, carrying dust along, stirring up trouble. There is a whole category of study devoted to its effects.” He tapped his forehead. “It's been known to do things to one's mind.”

The heel of my shoe slipped into the crack of a rock, and I nearly
fell to the ground. Mr. Higganbotham's arm reached out to steady me, which for some reason I rather resented. I drew away and, to cover over the ingratitude, said, “To think I once imagined the Mediterranean climate as a dry, sunny, salubrious sort of thing.”

“Oh, no,” he replied cheerfully. “You have been grossly misinformed, I'm afraid.”

Contrary to Mr. Higganbotham's stated hopes, the wind picked up briskly, and a haze of ominous dust filled in the gaps between the clouds. The landlord muttered to himself and increased his pace, though the light was starting to fail. In the distance, a headland was taking shape, and I could not see whether the road went around its face, next to the sea, or crossed the steep and rocky neck.

The landlord marched on, as if he were quite sure of his route. As if he had made this voyage several times before.

I leaned toward Mr. Higganbotham. “Something's wrong. I cannot believe that Silverton and the woman traveled this road last night, in the dark, during the storm.”

“It seems improbable.”

“We should have stopped him. We should have refused to go, or at least sent some message back to the
Isolde
. Nobody knows where we are.”

He didn't reply.

I thought,
But we had no choice. We have no choice but to follow him.

The headland grew in detail, rocky and forbidding. I could not tear my gaze away. Something about the shape of it, which seemed to resemble that of a man's head, bearing an enormous bony nose and a chin that disappeared into the cliffs below, encoded some deeper meaning that transfixed me.

Without quite realizing that I did so, I eased my hand into the pocket of my jacket and ran my fingers around the slim, ridged
rim of the Knossos medallion. An image arose in my head—Lord Silverton, leaning against a rocky wall, smiling very slightly at one corner of his mouth, while his blue eyes remained narrowed and serious—accompanied by a rush of longing so intense, I buckled beneath it.

“Why, what's wrong?” asked Mr. Higganbotham, starting toward me.

I braced one hand against the boulder on which I had sunk, while the other hand remained in my pocket, clutching the medallion. “I don't know,” I gasped.

Mr. Higganbotham turned to the landlord and whistled.

“No, it's all right.” I lifted my eyes to the headland, and again the wave struck, except that this time I was expecting it, and did not flinch. “Let's press on.”

“We can't. You're not well.”

“But Silverton—”

“Hang him.” He turned to address the landlord, who had come up grudgingly, wearing an expression of thunderous impatience. They exchanged a few phrases in rapid Greek, while I fought down the emotion clawing at my ribs and examined the headland, and its strange formation of rock, with the dispassion of a scientist.

“Are the caves inside there?” I asked the landlord, interrupting the exchange. I lifted my hand and pointed toward the rocks.

He glanced over his shoulder. “Yes! We cannot stop now.”

“But night will be falling soon, and we have been walking all day,” said Mr. Higganbotham.

I rose from the boulder. “Our friend is right, Mr. Higganbotham. It would be foolish to stop so close to our goal. I am more than equal to finishing the journey.”

“Nonsense. You're done in.”

“My present vigor, whether small or large, is quite irrelevant. I am deeply concerned for the safety of Lord Silverton, to say nothing of Mr. Haywood, and both men have every right to expect our most strenuous efforts to discover them.” I turned back to the landlord, who stood akimbo, gazing fiercely at us both, and said firmly, “Lead on, sir, if you will.”

Less than half an hour later, the main road began an inland curve to the right, declining the harsh edge of the headland. The wind now blew steadily, warm and just slightly damp, as if, like a thirsty cloth, it had soaked up a fine layer of seawater along its journey from the African deserts. A bit of dust caught in my throat, and as I coughed, I thought in wonder,
This is the dust of the Sahara.

The landlord shouted impatiently and waved his hand.

“He has left the road,” I said to Mr. Higganbotham.

“So he has.”

The man was about fifty yards ahead, and as we drew closer, I saw that he had taken a faint path, almost invisible in the stony landscape, that forked away from the main road, toward the sea.

Mr. Higganbotham and I had both slowed our steps. The wind blew against my back. “Do we follow?” he asked, in a low voice.

I gazed at the landlord, silhouetted against the monstrous gray spine of the headland. His black hair twisted angrily in the wind beneath the edges of his woolen cap, and his eyes had narrowed into slivers against the African dust, giving him a wild and exotic bearing. Behind him grew the cliffs, silent and impervious to so temporary a condition as a common Mediterranean
scirocco, showing no sign of recent human activity. The longing swelled again in my chest, holding down my breath.

He is hiding something
, I thought, and then I said aloud, with great effort, “You may certainly turn back if you like, Mr. Higganbotham. You are under no obligation whatever, and have put yourself in enough danger already. But I'm afraid I must go on.”

He sighed heavily, because of course he had to go with me; no man of any character could allow a lady to proceed into peril and forbear to accompany her. But he didn't like it, didn't like it at all; and furthermore, neither did I.

Yet the scirocco was at my back, and propelled me forward to this strange and massive formation of rock. A prickly pear stood by the fork in the road, where the new path beat through the stones toward the cliffs, and at the exact instant that we turned down the narrow track, a gust of wind struck the tree, making it shiver and bend and whistle.

The landlord, seeing that we had obeyed his summons, turned and resumed his march, and I struggled into a half run, in order to catch up with him. My mouth filled with dust.

“I say!” exclaimed Mr. Higganbotham, hurrying up behind, but the energy had returned to me, and I kept on striding, while the heels of my low boots slid on the stones and my right hand, still in the jacket pocket, clutched the medallion.

We had almost reached the first craggy face of the rising rock before I saw it: a small lean-to, built of stone and nestled into a fold of the escarpment.

The landlord, still several yards ahead, plunged inside without hesitation. I heard Mr. Higganbotham calling behind me, but I was now wholly gripped by that same urgency that had
lured me onward from my first sight of the stern profile overlooking the sea. I ducked under the lintel, half expecting to be crushed on the head by a primitive club, but instead saw only the landlord, turning about in the murky darkness.

“They are not here,” he said, sounding bewildered.

Outside, Mr. Higganbotham was shouting something. I narrowed my eyes and peered into the shadowed corners of the shelter, but the room was quite small, and I could easily perceive that it contained only a straw pallet, a few blankets, a small hearth for a nonexistent fire, and a locked wooden chest. The air smelled of stale smoke and damp stone, of the scat of curious animals.

“No one has lived here for some days, at least,” I said.

“How do you know this?”

I considered how to reply to this reasonable question, but before I could open my mouth, a loud bang shattered the air outside.

“Mr. Higganbotham!” I exclaimed, turning for the door.

But the way was already blocked by a man's broad shoulders, and by the persuasive heft of the large pistol he gripped in one hand.

So the Lady remained hidden in the cliffs by the shore, attended only by the Beast, who had also come ashore to protect his sister in the absence of her beloved. Their days passed quietly in the heat of the late summer, and as the time for harvest approached, and the nights grew longer, and the babe began to quicken in the Lady's womb, the two of them watched the horizon for the approach of the Hero's ships.

But the long weeks came and went, and the air grew cool, and still no black sail appeared over the edge of the sea to answer the Lady's hopes. Their stores of food, though carefully husbanded, began to dwindle, until at last nothing remained of the supplies the Hero had left behind for the nourishment of his Lady.

One morning the Beast said, ‘I will disguise my monstrous form under a cloak and hood, and I will take this gold bracelet into the nearest village and exchange it for bread and meat. But you must hide yourself carefully while I am gone, and do not reveal your face to any man until I return, for we know not what dangers may lie around us . . .'

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