The Rings of Poseidon (27 page)

"Well done," said Alan, "I didn't think there
was room to squeeze in."

"Well I'll tell you one thing for nothing,"
remarked Manjy. "She can squeeze out again before I take over."

Gill, on the other hand, was feeling very
satisfied with her first attempt at driving on the continent.

"Right," she said, "Let's go to that hotel we
saw round the corner. We can worry about food when we've got
rooms."

* * *

The Volvo estate edged slowly down the
gangway and into the car deck in the depths of the car ferry. Once
in place the four people got out, Ian locked up and they walked
through the fire door and upstairs to the passenger deck.

"I need a drink," said the second woman, and
marched into the bar, followed by Ian, Juliana and another man.

Where Juliana was a very ordinary, though
attractive woman in her 30s, the second woman was ... well,
striking. For a start she was tall for a woman. In that she was
rather like Gill, but there the similarity ended. The woman's hair
was a vivid red: it might have been a natural colour years ago when
she was younger but by now had considerable help. About forty-five
or a well preserved fiftyish, she carried herself confidently and,
to judge from the way in which she ordered the drinks, was
arrogant.

"Thanks Stella," said Ian, taking his and
Juliana's.

"Here you are, Cornelius," said Stella to the
fourth member of the party. He nodded and took the drink without
saying anything. He too was tall: a big man, with a balding head
and trimmed beard.

"I still think we should have gone on the
Cherbourg route," said Ian, just making conversation.

"We went into that before," Stella answered
as if confronted and challenged. "There's no hurry. We cross to
Calais, spend the night there and tomorrow we take turns at driving
until we cross the border at San Sebastian. We can overnight
tomorrow night in northern Spain somewhere. Three days to get there
without hurrying. Juliana needs her rest in her condition."

"Come on, I'm only a couple of months
pregnant yet."

Stella addressed Cornelius. "You have the
letter Robert left in the safe with details of the location?" He
nodded. "I can perform the necessary ritual, but I will need you
all to help. To recover the rings requires nothing like the power
needed to send them out of time in the first place."

"You're sure you can do it?" asked Ian.

"Of course."

* * *

There were only three people missing from the
dig, but it seemed like many more, perhaps because Steve was
affected by the absence of Gill. At any rate, when Steve, after
dinner that evening, produced a bottle of wine he had brought back
from Stromness, Frank and Alicia cheered up considerably.

"I'm supposed to stay off alcohol," he said,
"but that mainly means beer. I don't think I'm likely to start a
fight after one glass of wine."

Frank grinned. "Well, if you start getting
feisty, don't pick on me," he said.

"Not too much risk," Steve answered, also
smiling a little. He raised his glass. "To the success of Gill,
Manjy and Alan in recovering the rings," he said.

"To Gill, Manjy and Alan," they repeated.

Chapter 22

“There's the sign to Boloña. Turn right
here," said Alan, glancing at the map again.

Manjy, who was taking a turn driving, slowed
the car and turned right. They had been barely two hours on the
road: at first only a country lane through farmland and then the
main Cadiz-Algeciras road, level and fairly straight. Latterly
there were high hills all around, some with towns or villages
clinging to them.

"I notice there's both a hotel and a filling
station at the turn-off." said Gill from the back adding, "Are
hotels called 'hostales' in Spanish?"

"Only the cheaper ones," Alan said
cryptically, and went on to explain that the main difference, apart
from price, was to do with whether they offered dining facilities.
"Full dining and they're 'hoteles'," he said. "Less than full, down
to no restaurant at all, and they're 'hostales'."

The minor road, rather less than two cars
wide, wound steadily, but not steeply, up towards a ridge between
two rugged mountains. Rocks lay tumbled below high crags, as if
shaken loose by some past earthquake.

At the crest of the ridge they could see a
sandy beach stretching golden and empty below them, the vivid blue
of the Atlantic and, beyond the sea, the hazy outline of distant
mountains.

"That must be north Africa," said Alan,
consulting the map. "Morocco, I think. And the ruins are somewhere
to the right, close to the beach."

Manjy drove quite slowly, though there were
few other cars or people and not many buildings either. There were
about a dozen vehicles in the car park. The road led alongside the
ruins, which were clearly extensive and firmly behind a wire fence.
There was a path down to the beach with two or three
restaurant-bars. However, the way from the car park was closed to
vehicles by a barrier and a sign which read 'Prohibida a
Pasar'.

"Entrance is free. Guided tour each hour,"
said Alan, translating the sign by the entrance.

"The next trip is just over quarter of an
hour," Manjy said, glancing at her watch.

"Let's walk down to the beach while we're
waiting," said Alan. "I could murder an ice cream," he added.

"The chain-link fence is just along the front
and dividing it from the car park," observed Gill.

"Yes. It looks like an ordinary three strand
wire fence dividing it from the fields further over," Alan
agreed.

"I still want to look as closely as we dare
without attracting attention and study the route we'd have to take
in the dark. I don't want to break a leg on some unexpected
obstacle," said Gill.

They were all archaeologists and such ruins
were interesting in a general sense, as well as being a hiding
place for the rings. They could see a number of columns still
standing, and the walls of buildings were several feet high. Roads
and squares were paved. Clearly this wasn't just a villa: no holes
in the ground with a bit of mosaic - it was a whole town.

There were only three other people in the
tour, but the guide didn't seem to mind the smallness of the group
and his English was reasonable. He explained that systematic
excavations had occurred only recently and that there was still a
lot they didn't know. The ruins were of a town called 'Bella
Claudia' but probably originally called 'Baella' and, seemingly,
entirely built up round the making of a sauce highly prized in
Rome. The main ingredient was tuna fish caught here and the sauce
itself was made at a factory just outside the walls, which he would
show them later. The town had had a Forum (a sort of 'town hall'),
three temples, the workshops and homes of various artisans, paved
streets and walls. Water had been brought down from a spring on one
of the mountains by aqueduct, most of which remained, and a
drainage system, which also was largely intact, emptied into the
sea. It was all very impressive.

At 'three temples' Gill pricked up her ears.
One temple was to Mercury, one to Vesta and one to Neptune.

"Let's see," said Manjy, "Vesta was the
goddess of hearth and home. Neptune was god of the sea."

"I imagine he'd have been popular with
fishermen," observed Alan.

"Wait a minute," said Gill. "Wasn't Neptune
the same god as Poseidon? Manjy, you're the classics
specialist."

"Neptune is the Roman name for a god the
Greeks called Poseidon, yes - effectively they're the same person,"
said Manjy, "I bet that's the hiding place," she paused for a
moment. "And that's a somehow 'stirring' ruin still, with those
broad steps up to raised remains. It must have been even more
imposing when it was complete.

"Well, let's finish the tour," said Gill.

The guide explained that archaeologists had
discovered a cemetery on the nearer hillside, about a mile away,
and were working there. He seemed to imply that more work should be
done on the factory, which he showed them next.

"You tend to think of a 'factory' as
something that didn't exist before the industrial revolution," Alan
remarked, "but this was big. It must have occupied more than an
acre."

There were great stone mixing and cooking
bowls with a heating system and arrangements for filling
containers. The whole thing was vast and must have employed a lot
of people. The remains were reasonably well preserved, with the
greater part of the walls and most of the pillars supporting the
roof remaining, though the roof itself had gone and the level of
the sandy soil around had risen over the years.

"Some of the pillars are Roman style," said
the guide, "but some appear to be older. They are Phoenician
style."

Language problems made it impossible for them
to be certain whether part of the factory was much older or whether
it was just that the styles varied.

"Perhaps it predated the Romans," said Gill.
"They may have just taken it over and extended it."

After the tour the three of them went for a
coffee in the middle one of the three cafes. The choice was
arbitrary, there being no way of deciding between them. "I think
I'll have something longer and colder," said Alan, and ordered a
beer and two coffees. They sat outside, under the shade of a straw
veranda and looked at the beach and the sea. It was a quiet and
restful scene, the sun was getting hotter and there seemed no hurry
to do anything.

"We may as well eat here and then sleep
somewhere," said Gill. "It looks as if we can get into the ruins
quite easily after dark."

"You're going to try the ritual?" asked
Frank.

Gill did not answer directly. "Manjy, have
you got that photograph with you?" she asked.

"In the car."

"So are the papers relating to the ritual.
We'll get them later. If the arrow on the photograph points to a
spot in the ruins of the temple of Neptune I'll read through the
ritual again with a view to trying it tonight."

She paused while the waiter brought the
drinks and Alan told him they had decided to eat. The man was not
much older than them and very friendly. He told them the restaurant
was busier at weekends and in July and August, when cities like
Seville were too hot for comfort. Right now they were able to order
at leisure and have their meal brought to their table quickly.

"This wall runs east-west," said Gill, "and
there are a couple of trees here. If we go round to the north side
of the wall there should be some shade. I'll get the papers and the
photographs. I want to get my bearings."

"With the natural or the supernatural?" asked
Alan.

"Both," replied Gill seriously.

"I'll go to the car for you," said Manjy. "I
need the loo, so I've got to wander around and look for one
anyway.

"Round the side of the cafe where we had
dinner," said Alan.

He and Gill flopped down in the shade and
Manjy joined them later. The Spanish habit of having a siesta
seemed eminently sensible.

Gill re-read the papers concerning the ritual
for the umpteenth time and was at last beginning to understand
them. The scientific side of her from this incarnation didn't
really accept the ideas, but other, deeper chords from other lives
were struck. She began to understand exactly what she must do,
though believing it was another matter.

The first part of the ritual must be done
standing, since it involved moving about. There were images to
visualise - she wondered whether she would be able to do that
sufficiently well. Her assistants in the ritual would need to
visualise as well and she wondered whether they could do it.

"At least archaeologists spend a lot of their
time trying to picture what something or other must have looked
like in its original state," she thought. "Maybe that will
help."

The latter part involved crossing into the
astral. Since that meant leaving her physical body she would need
to lie down.

"I wonder if I'll be able to project," she
thought to herself. "It will be a real let down if I can't!"

She looked at the papers yet again. "I start
with the banishing ritual of the pentagram."

She reached for her notebook and her biro
from her bag to make notes of the sequence.

"Well that's easy enough, drawing pentagrams
in the air. Then I follow the paths as indicated by the ritual,
past the guardians as shown on the Tarot cards. That's okay, but
this is all early medieval: you'd expect something earlier. Oh
well. Then you throw incense appropriate to Binah - what the hell's
Binah?....the great all mother; the sea. Aha. Appropriate to
Poseidon. Then you lie down and project. To do that I'll wear the
talisman as protection in case anything nasty fancies my body while
I'm out of it."

Alan sat up rubbing his eyes and saw Gill
reading, but by now she was resolved and ready. "I think it's 'go'
for tonight," she said.

"We may as well enjoy the rest of the day,"
Alan said, "We won't be able to start work 'till late, because the
Spanish keep very late hours."

"I'm missing Steve," Gill told him. "I fancy
a swim and a sunbathe, but I'd much rather be sunbathing with
him."

Manjy woke up and shook herself. "Did you
bring your swimming things with you?" Gill asked her.

"Yes," she said, thinking that a 'nice' girl
from her community didn't wander around the beach half dressed.
'Dammit, I'm going to be unconventional for once,' she thought, and
all three of them went to get their things from the car.

There were no changing facilities but the
beach was almost empty. So Alan and Gill both risked changing in
public. Manjy disappeared into the toilet at the cafe and came out
in her swimsuit. Nobody seemed to notice. The water was pleasantly
warm and the slope of the beach gentle, but there was no sign of
any lifeguard, so they took no risks.