The Moonspinners (10 page)

He lifted the field glasses again. We lay as still as stones. A long, heart-shaking minute passed. The sun poured on to the rock; the scents of verbena and thyme and sage winnowed up around us in the heat. Encouraged by our stillness, a small brown snake crept out from the rock a few feet away, lay for a moment watching us, his little eyes catching the light like dewdrops; then he poured himself away down a hole. I hardly noticed; there was room for no more fear; this was hardly the moment to worry about a small brown snake, while a murderer stood down there at the edge of the alpine meadow, with his glasses to his eyes . . .

The swing of the glasses checked. The man froze like a pointer. He had seen the shepherds' hut.

If he was a local man, he must already have known of its existence, but it was obvious, I thought, that until this moment he had forgotten it. He dropped the glasses on their cord round his neck, and shifted his rifle forward once more; then, with his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the door of the hut, he moved forward, warily, through the asphodel.

I turned my head, to meet a question in Mark's eyes. I knew what it was. Was I certain I had removed all traces? Feverishly, I cast my mind back: the bedding; the floor; my bag, and its contents; Mark's haversack; the traces of our meal; the dressings from Mark's shoulder; the orange peel. Yes, I was certain. I gave Mark a jerky little nod of reassurance.

He sketched the ghost of a thumbs up sign, which meant congratulation, then gestured with his head towards the cleft behind us. This time there was a smile in his eyes. I returned it, after a fashion, then obediently slithered back, rather in the style of the small brown snake, into the shadow of the narrow cave.

The cleft ran back at an angle to the ledge, so that from where I settled myself, well towards the back, I could see only a crack of daylight, with a narrow section of the ledge, and one of Mark's legs, from the knee down.

For all its illusion of shelter, the cave was worse than the ledge, for there, at least, I had been able to see. I sat close, listening to my own heartbeats.

Presently, I heard him. He was walking carefully, but in the tranced stillness of the morning his steps sounded loud. They came nearer, moved from grass to stone, from stone to dust, were lost behind a barrier of rock where the trickle of the spring drowned them . . .

Silence. So long a silence that I could have sworn, watching that narrow section of light, that the sun wheeled, and the shadows moved . . .

Then suddenly, he was here, just below the ledge. The soft steps trod through the stony dust. The bushes by the fig tree rustled as he parted them. I saw the muscles of Mark's leg tense themselves.

The rustling stopped. The footsteps felt their way through dust again, moved away a little, paused . . .

In my mind's eye I could see him standing, as before, with the glasses to his eyes, raking the crannies and clefts above him for a possible hiding place. Perhaps even now he was discovering the cave where I crouched, and wondering how to get up to it . . .

A shadow swept across the sector of light. The kestrel. I heard, in that deadly stillness, the small sound it made as it met the edge of the nest: I could swear, to this day, that I heard the whiffling of air in its feathers as it braked, flaps down, for the final approach. The hissing, mewing delight of the young ones shrilled as piercingly in the stillness as a double-sized pipe band on the dead air of a Scottish Sunday.

The flake of shadow swept out again. The young ones fell abruptly silent. A twig cracked under the fig tree.

Then all at once, it seemed, the watcher had moved away. It was possible that the fearless approach of the bird had convinced him that there was nothing on that section of the cliff; whatever the case, he had certainly gone. The sounds retreated, faded, ceased. As my pulses slowly steadied, I found that I had shut my eyes, the better to hear that reassuring diminuendo.

Once more, at last, silence. I opened my eyes on the wedge of light at the mouth of the cleft, to see that Mark's leg had vanished.

If I had been in a fit state to think at all, I suppose I would have assumed that he had merely inched further along the ledge, the better to watch the Cretan out of sight. But as it was, I stared at the empty gap of light with horror, for two eternal minutes, with my common sense in fragments, and my imagination racing madly through a series of nightmare pictures that would have done credit to a triple X film . . . Perhaps, after all, the murderer hadn't gone; perhaps, even now, Mark was lying, throat cut, staring at the sky, while the murderer waited for me at the mouth of the cleft, with dripping knife . . .

But here, at last, some sort of courage and common sense asserted itself. For one thing, the man had had a rifle, and for another, disabled though Mark was, the Cretan could hardly have shot, stabbed, or clubbed him to death in perfect silence . . .

I craned forward to see. Nothing but a tuft of salvia, purple-blue, with scented grey leaves, flattened where Mark had lain. Nothing to be heard, either, but a faint rustling . . .

The snake. That was it. He had been bitten by the snake. With hideous promptitude, the new picture presented itself: Mark, dead in (silent) agony, lying with blackened face, staring at the sky . . .

If I didn't stare at the sky pretty soon myself, I should go mad. I crawled forward to the mouth of the cleft, lay flat, then peered out.

Mark wasn't lying dead, and his face wasn't black. It was, on the contrary, very white indeed, and he was on his feet, looking as if he had every intention of climbing down from the ledge in pursuit of the murderer. Of the latter there was no sign. Mark was pulling aside the trails of honeysuckle that masked the entrance to the ledge.

He turned, as sharply as if I had thrown something.

I was across the ledge like an arrow, and had hold of his sound arm. I said furiously: ‘And just where do you think you're going?'

He answered with a sort of desperation: ‘He's gone back along the hillside. I want to see where he goes. If I could follow, he might lead straight to Colin.'

I had just been very badly frightened, and was still ashamed of my reactions to that fear. It made it difficult, for the moment, to think straight. ‘Do you mean to tell me that you were just
going
, and leaving me
alone in there
?'

He looked bewildered, as if the question were irrelevant; as I suppose it was. ‘You'd have been quite safe.'

‘And you think
that's
all that matters? You think I don't even care whether you—?' I stopped short. Things were coming straight now, rather too straight for speech. In any case, he wasn't listening. I said, still angrily, because I was annoyed with myself: ‘And just how far do you think you'd get? Have a grain of common sense, will you? You wouldn't get a hundred yards!'

‘I've got to try.'

‘You can't!' I swallowed, conscious of the greatest reluctance to say anything more at all. I never wanted to leave the shelter of that ledge as long as I lived. But one must save a rag of pride to dress in. ‘I'll go,' I said huskily. ‘I can keep out of sight—'

‘Are you mad?' It was his turn to be furious; more, I could see, with his own helplessness than with me. That the conversation was conducted in hissed whispers did nothing to detract from its forcefulness. We glared at one another. ‘You don't even begin to—' he began, then stopped, and I saw his face change. The relief that swept into it was so vivid that for the moment all exhaustion and worry seemed wiped away, and his smile was almost gay. I swung round, to look where he was looking.

A man had dropped lightly from the tumble of rocks above the little alp, and was making a cautious way between the clumps of asphodel. Brown trousers, dark-blue jersey, bare head: Lambis. Lambis, watching the watcher, following him down to Colin . . .

In a few moments more he, too, skirted the base of the cliff, and vanished.

‘He got away,' said Lambis, breathlessly, in Greek. ‘There's another gorge further along the hill, where a stream runs down. It's full of trees – plenty of cover. I lost him there.'

It was perhaps an hour later. Mark and I had waited, watching the hillside, until we saw Lambis returning. He approached slowly and wearily, pausing at length at the edge of the flowery plateau to look up towards the rocks where we lay. It was obvious from his bearing that he was alone, so Mark had waved some sort of signal to show him where we were, while I had made a hurried way down, to meet him on the narrow path above the spring. He was empty-handed still. I guessed that he had cached whatever he had been carrying, in order to follow the Cretan.

‘Was he heading downhill – down the gorge?' I asked quickly. ‘That's probably another way down to Agios Georgios; in fact, I don't see where else it can go. Did you see?'

The Greek shook his head, then rubbed the back of his hand over his forehead. He looked tired, and was sweating profusely. He had spoken in his own language as if too exhausted to attempt English, and I had answered in the same tongue, but he gave no sign that he had noticed this. ‘No. I couldn't get too close to him, you understand, so it was not easy to follow him. I lost him among the rocks and bushes. He could have climbed out of the gorge and gone further east, or he may have been making for the village. Look, I must tell Mark. He got up there?'

‘Yes. I helped him up. He's much better. What about Colin?'

‘Eh? No. Nothing. He wasn't there. He had not been to the boat.' He spoke, I thought, as if his mind was not quite on what he was saying. He had hardly looked at me, but kept his eyes on the upper rocks where Mark lay. He rubbed a hand again across his damp face, and made as if to push past me without further speech.

I caught at his sleeve in a sudden flash of apprehension. ‘Lambis! Are you telling me the truth?'

He paused and turned. It seemed to take two or three seconds before his eyes focused on me. ‘The truth?'

‘About Colin. Have you got bad news for Mark?'

‘No, of course I haven't! Of course I'm telling you the truth, why not? I went to the boat last night; he was not there. There was no sign, no sign of him at all. Why should I lie to you?'

‘I – it's all right. I just thought . . . Sorry.'

‘It is because I have nothing to tell him that I am angry now. If I had found out something from this man—' a quick exasperated shrug – ‘but I did not. I have failed, and this is what I have to tell Mark. Now let me go, he will be wondering what's happened.'

‘Wait just a moment, he knows you haven't got Colin, we were watching you from the ledge. But the food – did you get the food and stuff?'

‘Oh. Yes, of course I did. I brought all I could carry. I should have been here a long time ago, but I had to stop and hide, because of that one.' He jerked his head downhill, a curiously dismissive gesture. ‘When I saw him come this way, I hid the things, and came, quickly. It was a good thing you'd left the hut.'

‘He saw it, did you know?'

‘Yes. I guessed that he had. When I came here, he was just coming along under this ledge, and I knew he must have seen the hut. But he was still hunting . . . and I had heard no shot . . . so I knew that you had gone. I guessed you would be here.'

‘Where did you put the food? We ought – never mind, Mark'll want to hear your news first. Come along, then, let's hurry.'

This time it was Lambis who hung back. ‘Listen, why don't you go for the food straight away, yourself? Just the food, leave the other things; I can carry them later.'

‘Well, all right. If you think I can find the place.'

‘It's near the top of the gorge where I lost him. Follow round where you saw me go – see? There's a goat track of a kind; it takes you along the foot of the ridge to where the stream runs down into the gorge. It's rocky at the top, but there are trees, lower down. You can see their tops.'

‘Yes.'

‘At the head of the gorge, where the spring leaves the rocks, there is an olive tree. It is in shelter, and has grown big, and very old, with a hollow body. You must see it, there are no others near. I left the things inside it. I shall come when I have seen Mark.'

Almost before he had finished speaking, he had turned away. I got the sharp impression of preoccupation, almost as if I had been dismissed, and with relief. But the nagging little thought that this brought to me didn't last long. Even if Lambis (having presumably fed on board the caique) could so lightly dismiss the thought of food and drink, I could not. The very thought of what the hollow tree contained drove me towards it at the speed with which a pin approaches a magnet.

I found it easily enough. It was the only olive tree in sight, but even without that, I felt sure that I should have flown straight to the food by instinct, like a vulture to its kill, even had that been buried in the very middle of Minos' labyrinth.

I rummaged eagerly in the hollow trunk. There were two blankets, wrapped round what appeared to be a sizeable collection of stuff. I untied the blankets, and foraged for what he had brought.

There were medical supplies, bandages, antiseptic, soap, a razor . . . But for the moment I pushed these aside, to concentrate on the food.

The thermos flask, full. Some tins, among them one of Nescafé, and some sweetened milk. Tins of corned beef. Biscuits. A small bottle of whisky. And, final miracle, a tin opener.

I threw these happily into one blanket, tied the corners up into a bundle, and set off back again.

Lambis met me halfway. He didn't speak, just nodded at me, as he made way for me on the path. I was glad of this, as it is not easy to speak politely with one's mouth full of Abernethy biscuit, and to speak Greek – which contains gutturals – would have been less elegant still.