The Moonspinners (23 page)

I uncorked the bottle of
King Minos, sec
, and, with a silent blessing on Frances, who had insisted on my taking it, took a swig that would have done credit to Mrs Gamp and her teapot. After that I felt so much better that – in homage to the gods of the place – I poured a few drops on the ground for a libation, then tackled lunch with something like an appetite.

Frances had also given me at least two-thirds of Tony's generous lunch packet. With a little more help from King Minos, I ate a couple of the fresh rolls crammed with roast mutton, some olives from a poke of grease-proof paper, and then a rather tasteless apple. The orange I would not face, but dropped it back into the bag.

A little stir of the breeze lifted the tree tops above me, so that the sun-motes spilled dazzlingly through on to the water, and shadows slid over the stones. A couple of butterflies, which had been drinking at the water's edge, floated off like blown leaves, and a goldfinch, with a flash of brilliant wings, flirted its way up past me into some high bushes in an overhanging piece of cliff.

I watched it, idly. Another slight movement caught my eye, a stir of light colour among some piled boulders below the overhang, as if a stone had moved. Then I saw that there was a lamb, or an ewe, lying up there, under a tangle of honeysuckle. The breeze must have lifted the fleece, so that the ruffling wool had shown momentarily above the boulders.

I watched, attentive now. There it was again, the stroking finger of the breeze running along the wool, and lifting it, so that the light caught its edge and it shone softly for a moment, like bloom along the stone.

I had been wrong, then. The footprint had not been Mark's. The sheep were somewhere near by, and with them, no doubt, would be the shepherd.

I began quickly to pack the remnants of lunch away, thinking, more confusedly than ever, that now I had better revert to my first haphazard plan, and make for the cypress grove.

I got to my feet warily, then stood, listening.

No sound except the chatter of the water, and the faint hushing of the wind in the leaves, and the high liquid twittering of the goldfinches somewhere out of sight . . .

I had turned back downstream, to find a place where I could clamber more easily out of the gully, when it occurred to me that the sheep had been oddly still and quiet, all through the time that I had been eating. I glanced back. It lay on the other side of the stream, some way above me, half under the overhang. It could have slipped from above, I thought, unnoticed by the shepherd, and it might well be dead; but if it was merely trapped on its back, or held down by thorns, it would only take me a few moments to free it. I must, at least, take time to look.

I stepped across the stream, and clambered up towards the boulders.

The sheep was certainly dead; had been dead some time. Its fleece was being worn as a cloak by the boy who lay curled under a bush, in the shelter of the boulders, fast asleep. He wore torn blue jeans and a dirty blue shirt, and the sheepskin was pulled over one shoulder, as the Greek shepherds wear it, and tied into place with a length of frayed string. This, not Mark, was the quarry I had been stalking. The mud on his rope-soled shoes was hardly dry.

The noise of my approach had not disturbed him. He slept with a sort of concentration, deep in sleep, lost in it. A fly landed on his cheek, and crawled across his eye; he never stirred. His breathing was deep and even. It would have been quite easy to creep quietly away, and never rouse him.

But I made no such attempt. I stood there, with my heart beating in my throat till I thought it would nearly choke me. I had seen that kind of sleep before, and recently – that almost fierce concentration of rest. I thought I had seen those eyelashes before, too; I remembered the way they lay on the brown cheeks in sleep. And the way the dark hair grew.

The thick lashes lifted, and he looked straight at me. His eyes were blue. There was the quick flash of alarm shown by any sleeper who is startled awake to find himself being stood over by a stranger; then a second look, half-relieved, half-wary, as he registered my harmlessness.

I cleared my throat, and managed a hoarse ‘
Cháirete
.' It is the country greeting, and means, literally, ‘Rejoice.'

He stared for a moment, blinking, then gave me the conventional ‘Good day.'

‘
Kali méra
.' His voice sounded stupid and slurred. Then he thrust his knuckles into his eyes, and pushed himself into a sitting posture. He moved, I thought, a little stiffly.

I wetted my lips, and hesitated. ‘You're from Agios Georgios?' I still spoke in Greek.

He was eyeing me warily, like a shy animal. ‘
Óchi
.' The denial was hardly audible, a thick mutter as he got quickly to one knee, and turned to grope under the bush, where he had put down his shepherd's stick.

This was the genuine article, gnarled fig-wood, polished by years of use. Shaken by a momentary doubt, I said sharply: ‘Please – don't go. I'd like to talk to you . . . please . . .'

I saw his body go tense, just for a second; then he had dragged the stick out from where it lay, and was getting to his feet. He turned on me that look of complete and baffling stupidity that one sometimes sees in peasants – usually when one is arguing the price of some commodity for which they are overcharging by about a hundred per cent.
‘Thén katalavéno
(I don't understand),' he said, ‘
adio
,' and jumped past me, down the bank towards the stream. Round the wrist of the hand that held the stick was tied a rough bandage of cloth in a pattern of red and green.

‘Colin—' I said, shakily.

He stopped as if I had struck him. Then, slowly, as if to face a blow, he turned back to me. His face frightened me. It still looked stupid, and I saw now that this was real; it was the blank look of someone who is beyond feeling punishment, and who has long since stopped even asking the reason for it.

I went straight to the root of the matter, in English. ‘Mark's alive, you know. It was only a flesh wound, and he was quite all right, last time I saw him. That was yesterday. I'm on my way to find him now, I – I'm a friend of his, and I think I know where he'll be, if you'd care to come along?'

He didn't even need to speak. His face told me all I wanted to know. I sat down abruptly on a boulder, looked away, and groped for a handkerchief to blow my nose.

14

‘Wonder of time,' quoth she, ‘this is my spite,

That, thou being dead, the day should yet be light.'

SHAKESPEARE
:
Venus and Adonis

‘Do you feel better now?' I asked.

It was a little time later. I had made him sit down then and there, by the stream, and drink some of the wine, and eat the rest of the food I had brought. I hadn't asked him any questions yet, but while he ate and drank I told him all I could about Mark's end of the story, and my own.

He said very little, but ate like a young wolf. They had fed him, I gathered, but he ‘hadn't been able to eat much.' This was all he had said so far about his experiences, but the change in him – since the news about Mark – was remarkable. Already he looked quite different; the bruised look was gone from his eyes, and, by the time the
Minos Sec
was half down in the bottle, there was even a sparkle in them, and a flush in his cheeks.

‘Now,' I said, as he gave the neck of the bottle a final wipe, corked it, and set it down among the wreck of papers that was all he had left of my lunch, ‘you can tell me all your side of it. Just let me get all this rubbish stowed away, and you can tell me as we go.
Were
you in the windmill?'

‘I'll say I was, tied up like a chicken and dumped on a bundle of rubbish,' said Colin warmly. ‘Mind you, I hadn't a clue where I was, when they first took me there; it was dark. In fact, I didn't know till today, when I left, except that I'd got the impression I was in a sort of round tower. They kept the shutters up all the time – in case I saw them, I suppose. What are you doing?'

‘Leaving the crumbs for the mice.'

‘Crumbs for the
mice
?'

I laughed. ‘You'd be surprised how much the mice have done for us today. Never mind, skip it. How did you get away? No, wait, let's get on our way. You can tell me while we go; and start at the very beginning, when Mark was shot at, and the gang jumped on you.'

‘Okay.' He got to his feet eagerly. He was very like his brother to look at; slighter, of course, and with a frame at once softer and more angular, but promising the same kind of compact strength. The hair and eyes, and the slant of the brows were Mark's, and so – I was to discover – were one or two other things.

‘Which way are we going?' he asked briskly.

‘For the moment, back down the gully for a bit. There's a place quite near, a clump of cypresses, which you can see from anywhere higher up. I'm going over to that. If he and Lambis are somewhere about, they'll be keeping a lookout, and they'll surely show some sort of signal, then we can go straight up to them, via the gully. If not, then we'll aim for the caique.'

‘If it's still there.'

This thought had been worrying me, too, but I wasn't going to admit it. ‘It will be. They knew, if you were free, that you'd make straight for it; where else could you go? Even if they've moved it again, you can bet your life they're keeping a good lookout for you.'

‘I suppose so. If you're going up into the open to signal them, had I better stay down here?'

‘Oh, yes. And whichever way we go, we'll stay in cover. Thank goodness, anyway, one of my problems is gone – you'll know the way from the old church to the caique. Come on.'

‘How did you find me, anyway?' asked Colin, scrambling after me across the stream, and down the narrow gully-path.

‘Followed your tracks.'

‘You heard. That's one of the things we'll have to put right before we go. You left some smashing prints down by the stepping stones. You can sweep them out while I go up to the cypress grove.'

‘Well, but how did you know they were mine?'

‘Oh, I didn't; I thought they were Mark's. You've the same sort of shoes.'

‘Have a heart, Nicola, he takes nines!'

‘Well, I wasn't really thinking. Anyway, you'd slipped in the mud, and the toe and heel were blurred, so the prints looked longer. If it hadn't been for recognizing Mark's shoes, I'd never have noticed them. He was – a bit on my mind, at the time. All the same, you'd better wipe them out.'

‘Gosh—' Colin sounded thoroughly put out at this evidence of his inefficiency – ‘I never thought of prints. I suppose, with its being dark, and then I was pretty well bushed—'

‘You had other things to think about. Here we are. There, see them? Now, I'll go up, and if there's no one to be seen, then I'll give the all-clear, and you can come out and deal with the evidence, while I show myself up yonder and wait for the green light.' I paused, and looked at him uncertainly. In the shadow of the trees he looked disconcertingly like his brother. ‘You – you will still be here, won't you, when I come back?'

‘You bet your sweet life I will,' said Colin. ‘But look here—'

‘What?'

He was looking uneasy. ‘Look, I don't like you going out there, it mightn't be safe. Can't we think of some other way?'

‘
I'm
quite safe, even if I bump head-on into Josef, as long as
you
keep out of sight,' I said firmly. ‘You're very like your brother, aren't you?'

‘For my sins,' said Colin, and grinned.

He waited there in the dappled shade while I climbed to the rim of the gully. I looked about me. The landscape was as bare of life as on the first four days of Creation. I gave Colin a thumbs-up sign, then set off briskly for the cypress grove.

The track was smooth, the sun brilliant, the sky a glorious, shining blue. The tiny yellow flowers danced underfoot, like jewels in the dust. The goldfinches flashed and twittered over the lavender bushes, and the freckled snake slipping across the path was as beautiful as they . . .

Everything, in fact, was exactly the same as it had been an hour before, except that now I was happy. My feet were as light as my heart, as I almost ran across the rocks towards the dark, standing shadow of the grove.

I had been wondering how to attract the men's attention quickly. It now occurred to me, for the first time, that there was no reason why I should not simply make a noise. I felt like singing. Well, why not sing?

I sang. The sound echoed cheerfully round the rocks, and then was caught and deadened by the cypresses. Remembering how sound had carried on this same hillside yesterday, I was certain that I would be heard clearly by anyone in the reaches immediately above.

I took my stance, deliberately, in front of the thickest backdrop of cypress, then paused, as if to look at the view. At last I was able to tilt my head, shade my eyes, and stare towards the head of the main ravine.

Even knowing the place as well as I did, it took some time to get my bearings. I had to start from the ravine, and let my eye travel to the rock where the naiad's spring was . . . yes, there was a recess – looking absurdly small – where the flower-covered alp must lie. The shepherds' hut would be back in that corner, out of sight. And the ledge . . .

The ledge defeated me. It might have been in any one of half a dozen places; but I had the general direction right, and I watched patiently and carefully, for something like six minutes.

Nothing stirred. No movement, no flicker of white, no sudden flash of glass or metal. Nothing.