My Brother Michael (36 page)

He stopped abruptly as he caught sight of the body lying against the cairn. He gulped, and flashed a look at Simon. He looked at me as if he were going to speak, but he just shut his mouth again, tightly, and then went – it seemed reluctantly – across to where Angelos lay.
There was the sound of slower footsteps from the gateway of the corrie, and Stephanos came into sight. He paused there for a moment, just as Simon had done, then came deliberately down the ramp towards us. Simon got stiffly to his feet. The old man stopped at my elbow. His eyes, too, were on Angelos. Then he looked at Simon. He didn’t speak, but he nodded, slowly. Then he smiled. I think he would have spoken to me then, but Niko had straightened up and now came running back. A flood of Greek was poured out at Simon, who answered, and presently seemed to be telling his story. I caught the name
Michael
several times, and then
the Englishman
, and
the French girl
, and the word ‘
speleos
’, which I took to mean ‘a cave’. But I was suddenly too tired to pay any attention. I leaned back into a bar of shadow and waited, while the three of them talked across me. Presently, with a word from Simon, he and Stephanos left me and went towards the cave.

Niko lingered for a moment. ‘You are not well, beautiful miss?’ he asked anxiously. ‘That one – that Bulgar – he hurt you?’

To call anyone a Bulgarian is the worst term of abuse a Greek can think up; and they have quite a range. ‘Not really, Niko,’ I said. ‘I’m a bit shaken, that’s all.’ I smiled at him. ‘You should have been here.’

‘I wish I had been!’ Niko’s sidelong glance at the cairn was perhaps not as enthusiastic as his voice, but apparently it took more than murder really to dim his lights. He turned his look of dazzled admiration on me. ‘I should have dealt with him, me, and not on account
of my grandfather’s cousin Panos, but for you, beautiful miss. Though
Kyrie
Simon,’ he added generously, ‘did very well, not?’

‘For an Englishman,’ I said deprecatingly.

‘Indeed, for an Englishman.’ He caught my look and grinned, unabashed. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘I help him with Dimitrios Dragoumis. I, Niko.’

‘He told me so. What did you do with him?’

The black eyes opened wide. He looked shocked. ‘I could not tell you that. You are a lady, and – oh, I
see
.’ The devastating smile flashed out. ‘Afterwards, you mean? I take him down to the road, but not to Delphi, because I want to get back and help
Kyrie
Simon, you understand. There is a lorry, and I explain to the men, and they take him to Delphi to the police. The police will come. I shall go presently to meet them and guide them here. And so.’

‘And so.’ I said it very wearily. It seemed as good a period to the day as anything.

Beyond my bar of shadow the sun seemed white-hot. Niko had on a shirt of vivid electric blue, patterned with scarlet lozenges. The effect was blinding. He seemed to shimmer at the edges.

I heard him say cheerfully: ‘You are tired. You do not want to talk. And the other men will be needing me, not? I go.’

As I shut my eyes and leaned back, I heard his crossing the corrie at his usual impetuous gallop.

It seemed a long time before the three of them came out of the cave again into the sunlight.

Niko came first, leading the mule. He seemed subdued
now, and a little pale. He didn’t come over to me again, but swung himself on to the mule’s back, kicked it into reluctant motion, and, with a wave to me, clattered out of the corrie.

Stephanos and Simon stood talking for a few minutes longer. Stephanos looked sombre. I saw him nod to something Simon said, then he gestured upwards towards the blazing arch of sky where those black specks still hung and circled. Then he turned and trudged slowly across to a patch of shade near the body. He sat down there, and settled himself, as if to wait, leaning forward with his head against the hands clasped on his staff. He shut his eyes. He looked suddenly very old – with that Homeric head and the shut eyes as old as time itself.

It was a picture I was never to forget, that quiet tailpiece to tragedy. There was the blue arch of the brilliant sky; there the body that the Kindly Ones had hunted down and killed on the very spot where he himself had shed blood; there the old man, bearded like Zeus himself, nodding in the shade. At the head of the cliffs stood the black goats, staring.

From somewhere, not too far distant now, came the little stave of music; the goat-herd’s pipe whose sound, drifting down through the light-well, had led me to the Apollo of the holy spring. At the sound the goats lifted their heads, and turning, moved off, black against the sky, an Attic frieze in slow procession.

Simon’s shadow fell across me.

‘Niko’s gone to guide the police here. He wanted to escort you to Delphi, but I told him you wouldn’t be fit
for the trek quite yet. You and I have something still to do, haven’t we?’

I hardly heard the question. I said, apprehensively: ‘The police?’

‘Don’t worry. There’ll be no trouble for me. Apart from everything else, and God knows he’s done plenty, he was trying to kill you.’ He smiled. ‘And now, are you coming? Stephanos is asleep, by the looks of it, so he won’t wonder where we’ve gone.’

‘You didn’t tell him and Niko about the shrine?’

‘No. The question of what to do about the guns and gold is out of our hands now, thank heaven, but the other question’s our own to answer. Do you know the answer?’

I looked at him inquiringly: perhaps a little doubtfully.

Then he nodded, and I said, slowly: ‘I suppose so.’

He smiled and put down a hand to me.

We went into the cave in silence. Simon’s torch was almost dead, but it showed the way. It was not strong enough to probe too far into the shadows. He paused just inside the entrance, and I saw him step aside and stoop over something that lay near the pile of rubble where the boxes had been. He straightened up with one of Angelos’ crowbars in his hand. I didn’t look further, but followed the mercifully dimming light through the pillared vaults until the slab barred the way.

The light paused on the old marks of tooling in the stone. ‘There,’ said Simon softly. ‘It should slide back easily enough. Even another three or four inches
should block the entrance … I’ll leave this here for the moment.’

He laid the crowbar down and we went through the cleft for the last time, and up the curving tunnel that led to the bright citadel.

He had stood there without move or change for more than two thousand years: now, it seemed a miracle that in the last hour he had remained untouched, unaltered. The sun had slid further towards the west, and the light fell more slantingly through the leaves; that was all.

We knelt at his feet and drank. I cupped hands under the spring and splashed the water over my face and neck, then held my wrists under the icy runnel. It stung on the bruises and the scraped flesh of my wrists, a sharp remedial stinging that seemed to signal my body’s return from whatever numb borderlands of shock I had been straying in. I sat back, flicking the cool drops off my hands.

I noticed then that the mark had gone from the third finger of my left hand. There was no sign at all of the pale circle where Philip’s ring had been.

I sat looking at my hands.

Simon was leaning forward, putting something on the stone plinth at the statue’s feet. There was the gleam of gold.

He caught my look and smiled, a little wryly. ‘Gold for Apollo. I asked him to bring Angelos back, and he did it, even though it was done in that damned two-edged Delphic way that one always forgets to bargain for. However, there it is. It was a vow. Remember?’

‘I remember.’

‘It comes to me that you made a vow, too, in this very shrine.’

‘So I did. I’ll have to share your coin, Simon. I’ve nothing here to give.’

‘Then we’ll share,’ he said. That was all; in that casual easy voice with no change in it; but I turned quickly to look up at him. The vivid grey eyes held mine for a moment, then I turned from him almost at random and picked up Nigel’s little water-pot. ‘We’ll leave this here too, shall we?’

Something glinted, deep in the grass, down beside the edge of the stone plinth. I smoothed the long stems aside and picked it up. It was another gold coin.

‘Simon, look at this!’

‘What is it? A talent? Don’t tell me Apollo’s provided a ram in the thicket for—’ He stopped short as I held my hand out towards him.

I said: ‘It’s a sovereign. That means Nigel did find the gold as well as the statue. He must have left this here.’

‘Must he?’

‘Well, who else—?’ Then I saw his face and stopped.

He nodded. ‘Yes. Of course. Michael made an offering, too.’

He took it from me gently and laid it beside the water-pot, at the feet of the god.

Also by Mary Stewart

Madam, Will You Talk?

Wildfire at Midnight

Thunder on the Right

Nine Coaches Waiting

The Ivy Tree

The Moonspinners

This Rough Magic

Airs Above the Ground

The Gabriel Hounds

Touch Not the Cat

Thornyhold

Stormy Petrel

Rose Cottage

THE ARTHURIAN NOVELS

The Crystal Cave

The Hollow Hills

The Last Enchantment

The Wicked Day

The Prince and the Pilgrim

POEMS

Frost on the Window

FOR CHILDREN

The Little Broomstick

Ludo and the Star Horse

A Walk in Wolf Wood

Mary Stewart, one of the most popular novelists, was born in Sunderland, County Durham and lives in the West Highlands. Her first novel, Madam, Will You Talk?, was published in 1955 and marked the beginning of a long and acclaimed writing career. All her novels have been bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic. She was made a Doctor of Literature by Durham University in 2009.