My Brother Michael (27 page)

A pine branch cast a bar of shade across his face, but I thought I saw a smile behind the light-grey eyes. ‘You know the reasons quite well,
Kyria
Haven.’

‘Reasons?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I know the first. I wished a little too hard for an adventure, so I can darned well take what comes, and four eyes are better than two if we want to find Nigel and the cave?’

‘Not quite. I had the idea that you were looking rather hard for something on your own account.’

I turned abruptly and led the way up the narrow path between the pines. I said, after a bit: ‘Perhaps I was.’ Then, later still: ‘You – do see rather a lot, don’t you?’

‘And you know the second reason.’

It was shady under the pines, but my cheeks felt hot. I said: ‘Oh?’ and then felt furious with myself because the syllable seemed to be inviting an answer. I added hastily: ‘I can show you where the cyclamen is, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Simon agreeably.

We had reached the stadium. We crossed the slanting shadows of the starting-gate and left the trees. Behind us in the holly-oaks and cypresses the birds flashed and sang. The singing echoed and rang up the limestone cliffs.

We crossed the stadium floor in silence and took the steep path that led to the rocky reaches of Parnassus.

We saw no one on our way to the corrie.

Most of the way from Delphi the track was easy to follow, and, apart from one open stretch soon after we had left the top of the Shining Ones, it wound along rocky valleys which would have offered plenty of cover in case of alarm. But the hot desert of broken rocks seemed as empty as yesterday. We travelled in short bursts, going fairly fast, but with frequent pauses in the shade to get our breath and to scan the surrounding country for signs of movement.

At length, as we made our way up a steep dry watercourse, I looked upwards to the right and saw the line of cliffs that held the corrie. Simon, who was ahead of me, stopped and turned.

‘We’ll wait here, I think, and eat. Look, here’s a good place, in the shade between those two boulders. We can’t be seen, and we can keep an eye on the valley and
on those cliffs. I’d like to be quite sure no one else is about before we make our way up.’

I sat down thankfully in the place he indicated, and he produced food from the haversack. The rolls didn’t taste quite as good as they had done in the cool of the morning, but as I ate I began to feel better. The tepid water was a benison, and the fruit was ambrosia itself.

I let Simon do the watching. After I had eaten I relaxed against the rock with eyes half-shut against the light, and he lit a cigarette for me. He showed no signs of hurry or impatience, or even curiosity. We smoked in silence, and I saw his eyes move almost idly across the landscape, up to the corrie, along the cliff, down the screen, back to the corrie.

At the very edge of my vision there was a movement.

I turned my head sharply, eyes fully open now. I could see nothing. But there had been a movement; of that I was sure. I was just about to touch Simon’s arm when I saw it again; it was as if one of the rocks of the scree had moved … a goat. It was only a goat. As it walked forward, taking shape against the void of tumbled rocks, I saw others with it, two, three of them, moving purposefully along some age-old track of their own. I was wondering half-idly if there was a goat-herd with them, and if, perhaps, they had strayed from the troop, when I thought I heard, far away over the cliff-top, the sound of a pipe. Even as I heard it and strained my ears to catch the notes, it faded, and I dismissed it as fancy. The thin, broken stave had been purely pastoral, something from a myth of Arcady, nymphs
and shepherds and Pan-pipes and green valleys. But this was Parnassus, home of more terrible gods.

I relaxed again and watched the smoke from my cigarette wind up in the sunlight. I remember that I didn’t think at all about the business of the day. I thought about Parnassus, and the gods who lived there, and Simon …

I stole a look at him. He was looking almost dreamily up towards the cliffs. He looked about as tense and vigilant as in the fifth hour of the House Cricket Match. He caught my look and smiled, and moved his hand lazily to knock ash from his cigarette. I said: ‘A penny for them?’

‘I was wondering if there was anyone with those goats. I don’t think so.’

‘I thought I heard a pipe being played, away over there,’ I said, ‘but I expect I imagined it. Did you hear anything?’

‘No. But it’s possible. I don’t think those three would be up here on their own. You must have very good hearing. I never heard a sound.’

He crushed out his cigarette and got up, reaching a hand down to me. ‘Shall we go up now? I think we’re unobserved, but I don’t want to cross that big open stretch towards the corrie “gateway”. If we skirt it, and go up that gully there, I think we can get round without the risk of being seen, and it’ll bring us out above the cliff where we were yesterday. It’ll be a bit of a stiff pull, I’m afraid. Are you tired?’

‘Not a bit.’

He laughed. ‘One up to British womanhood. Come
along. And keep down. This is where the real stalk starts.’

Simon lay flat at the corrie’s lip, looking downwards. I crouched behind him, a little way back from the cliff edge. I waited, watching him for a signal.

It seemed an age before he moved. Then he turned his head and lifted a hand, with a slow cautious movement that carried its own warning.

In spite of myself, I could feel tension pull my nerves taut, like cold wires touching my skin. I inched forward until I lay beside Simon. I was screened by one of the low holly-oaks. I lifted my head slowly till my eyes were above the level of the edge. I looked down into the corrie. There was no one there.

As I looked at him, with surprise in my face and a question, he put his lips to my ear. ‘Dimitrios is here.’

Again that coward jerk of the heart. Every vein in my body was contracting, little thrilling wires tightening till my muscles wouldn’t obey me. I found I had ducked my head down again behind the holly-oak, and my cheek was on my hand in the hot dust. The hand was cold.

Simon breathed, just beside my ear: ‘He’s just vanished somewhere underneath us. I saw him duck under that piece in the corner.’ He jerked his head slightly towards it. ‘Is that where you went exploring yesterday?’

I nodded. I swallowed, and managed to say quite evenly: ‘What was he doing?’

‘I don’t know. He just seemed to be hanging about.
Waiting for someone or something. Nigel, perhaps, or—’

He broke off and seemed to go lower into the ground. I shrank down beside him. The holly-oak hid me, and I peered down.

Then I saw Dimitrios. He came out from somewhere below us, ducking his head as he passed under the flying buttress that seemed to shore up the cliff. He was smoking, and his eyes were frowning and narrowed against the high blaze of the sun. He walked carefully over the rocky floor of the corrie towards the northern gap in the wall. Every now and again he stopped, and slanted his head as if to listen.

He reached the corrie entrance, and stopped there, looking down towards Amphissa. Once he turned his head and looked the other way, the way we had come, from Delphi. Then he came back into the corrie. He flung down the butt of his cigarette and lit another. I noticed sweat on his dark face and dust yellowish-white on his clothes. He wasn’t in the dark suit today; he was wearing dungarees in dull faded blue, and a khaki shirt with a red kerchief knotted at the neck.

The cigarette was lit now. He dropped the match, then looked round him for a few moments as if undecided. He took a few steps into the corrie, and I thought he was going back towards the corner where the cyclamen was, but he stopped suddenly, as if impatient of waiting, turned sharply on his heel, and walked, rapidly now, as if his mind was at last made up, out of the corrie.

Simon said in my ear: ‘Gone to meet Nigel, or Danielle, do you suppose? Give him a minute or two.’

We gave him five. They seemed very long minutes. There was no other sound in the hot morning but our own breathing. The sun beat down on us as we lay on the bare earth. I was thankful when Simon moved at last.

We got quickly to our feet, and went down the twisting little path like a couple of mountain goats. We almost ran across the corrie floor and ducked under the fallen rock into the corner.

There it was, the patch of brilliant green, and the drifts of tiny blue bells, the lovely traces of the mountain rain. But today it was different.

Simon had checked. ‘Is this the place?’

‘Yes, but—’ I caught my breath and pushed past him, to stand staring at the cliff.

The cyclamen had gone. Where it had clung to its crack in the rock there was now a black fissure. The crack had widened, split, and gaped open, as pressure had been exerted on the weather-rotted rock. I could see the raw white marks where the crowbars had gained their leverage.

A slab, similarly marked, lay at our feet, newly fallen, and crushing the fresh grass. Yesterday it had been leaning against the rock-face, masking what lay behind from my casual glance. Today there was a split in the face of the rock, some seven feet high by a foot and a half wide – a narrow fissure which angled sharply up to a point at the top. It opened on to darkness. The cave. Michael’s cave.

My mouth was dry. I said hoarsely: ‘Yesterday that slab was leaning up against the cliff, at an angle. There
was a crack behind it, very narrow. I remember now. It didn’t look like an entrance to anything, but that must have been it.’

He nodded, but he wasn’t looking at me, or at the mouth of the cave. He looked past me, up at the cliff-top, the corrie-walls, all round us.

No movement: no sound.

There was a pile of mule-droppings on the grass, that hadn’t been there yesterday. I pointed to them silently, and Simon nodded. He said softly: ‘We were right, then … We’ll go in. You wait here a moment. And keep those ears of yours open. I won’t be long.’

He disappeared into the darkness of the cleft. I waited. Once again, far away, I thought I heard that little thread of music, the ghostly echo of the Panpipes. Heard now, in this hot cruel corrie, the sound spoke no longer of Arcadia, and the kindly god of flocks and herds. It was a panic prickle along the flesh.

It had gone. I had imagined it again. I stood with my hands tightly clasped together in front of me, and made myself wait without moving.

Simon showed in the darkness of the cleft, like a beckoning ghost. I almost ran towards him into the cool darkness of the cave.

After the glare of day the place was dead-dark. It was like running against a black velvet curtain. I stopped, blinded. I felt Simon’s arm come round me, guiding me in out of the light, then he switched on a torch. The light seemed feeble and probing after the blaze of day, but we could see.

We were in a widish passage which sloped gently
downwards for some five or six yards and then turned abruptly to the left. The original entrance must have been wide, but it had been blocked by successive falls of stone to leave only the narrow cleft through which we had come. The passage itself was clear enough, and smelt fresh and cool.

Simon said: ‘The slope gets steeper. There’s another twist down to the right, and then the cave itself … Here. Quite a place, isn’t it?’

It was indeed. The main cave was huge, a great natural cavern the size of a young cathedral, with a high curved ceiling that vanished into darkness, and clefts and recesses that swallowed the feebly-probing torchlight. Stalactites and stalagmites made strangely-shaped, enormous pillars. Fallen rock lay here as well. In some of the dimly-seen apses there were boulders and masses of rough stone showing, in the elusive light, like the massive tombs that lie between the columns of a cathedral. Somewhere I could hear the faint drip of water. The place was impressive, magnificent even, but it was a ruin. Dust and rubble lay everywhere, some of it recent-looking, some of it apparently undisturbed for centuries.

The torchlight moved, swept, checked …

Simon said: ‘There.’

He said it softly, almost idly, but I knew him now. My heart gave that painful little jerk of excitement. The light was holding something in its dim circle, a circle which seemed to have brightened, sharpened, focused … There was a pile of rubble by a column to the left of the cavern-mouth. It looked at first like any of the other
heaps of fallen debris, then I saw that among the shapes of the broken rock, more regular shapes showed … a cubed corner … the dusty outline of a box … And beside them in the rubble the dull gleam of metal: a crowbar and a shovel.

The torchlight swept further. ‘See that? They’ve shifted some of it already. See where it’s been dragged through the dust?’ He sent the light skating quickly round the rest of the great cavern. Nothing. Another time I would have exclaimed over the ghostly icicles of rock, the arches, the chambered darknesses that the corners held, but now my whole interest, like the torchlight, was centred on that pile of rock-debris and what it contained.

Simon paused for a moment, cocking his head. No sound except the drip of water somewhere, very faintly. He moved forward with me beside him, and bent over the exposed corner of the box.

He didn’t disturb it. The torch worked for him. ‘There’s the Government stamp. This isn’t gold, Camilla. Its guns.’

‘Guns?’

‘Uh-huh. Small and useful sten guns.’ He straightened up and switched the light out for a moment. In the thick darkness his voice was soft and grim. ‘There’s an excellent market for this sort of thing at several points in the Med. just now. Well, well.’

I said: ‘I don’t believe that Nigel would do that.’

The torch flashed on again. ‘Come to think of it, neither do I. I wonder …’ He moved off round the pile, exploring deeper into the darkness behind the big stalagmite.

‘Simon,’ I said, ‘d’you mean these were flown in here during the war?’

‘Yes. I told you. Gold and arms galore.’

‘But that was 1942 wasn’t it? They wouldn’t keep, surely?’

I heard him laugh. ‘You talk as if they were fish. Of course they’ll “keep”. They’re packed in grease. They’ll come out as good as new … Ah …’