The Moonspinners (6 page)

‘He is fifteen.'

‘Oh, God. Go on.'

‘I do not find him. But now it is light, and I am afraid they – whoever it is who has done this – will come back to look for Mark. I cannot take him back to the boat, it is too far. I carry him away, off the path, up through the rocks and along under the ridge, and then I find this place. It is easy to see that there has been nobody here for many weeks. I look after Mark, and make him warm, then I go back to the place where I find him, to cover the marks with dust, so that they will think he recovered and went away. I will tell you of that later. Now I will tell you what Mark told me, when he could speak.'

‘Just a minute. You've not found Colin yet?'

‘No. There was no sign.'

‘Then – he's probably alive?'

‘We do not know.'

The whistling in the cliff had stopped. The kestrel flew out again, rocked in a lovely curve below eye level, then tore away to the right, and vanished.

‘What did Mark tell you?'

Lambis had taken out another cigarette. He had rolled over on his stomach, and gazed out over the hot hillside as he talked. Still briefly, unemotionally, he told me Mark's story.

Mark and Colin had walked to the little church (he said), and had their meal there. After they had explored it, they had walked on, up into the hills, intending to spend the whole day out before returning to the caique. Though the day had been fine, clouds had begun to pile up during the latter part of the afternoon, so that twilight came early. The two brothers had gone perhaps a little further than they had intended, and when at length they regained the path with the ‘worn stones' that led down towards the church, the dusk was already gathering. They were walking fast, not talking, their rope-soled shoes making very little sound on the path, when suddenly, just ahead of them round a bend in the track, they heard voices speaking Greek, raised as if in some sort of quarrel. Thinking nothing of this, they held on their way, but, just as they came round the bluff of rock that masked the speakers from them, they heard shouts, a scream from a woman, and then a shot. They stopped short by the corner, with a very eloquent little tableau laid out just ahead of them at the edge of a wooded gully.

Three men and a woman stood there. The fourth man lay on his face at the gully's edge, and it didn't need a closer look to know that he was dead. Of the three living men, one stood back, aloof from the rest of the group, smoking – apparently unmoved. He seemed, by the very calmness of his gestures, no less than by his position, to be demonstrating his detachment from what was going on. The other two men both had rifles. It was obvious which one had fired the recent shot; this was a dark man in Cretan costume, whose weapon was still levelled. The woman was clinging to his arm, and screaming something. He shook her off roughly, cursing her for a fool, and struck her aside with his fist. At this the second man shouted at him, and started forward, threatening him with his clubbed rifle. Apart from the woman, whose distress was obvious, none of them seemed very concerned with the fate of the dead man.

As for Mark, his first concern was Colin. Whatever the rights and wrongs of what had happened, this was not a moment to interfere. He dropped an arm across the boy's shoulders to pull him back out of sight, with a muttered, ‘Let's get out of this'.

But the third man – he of the unconcerned cigarette – turned, at that unlucky moment, and saw them. He said something, and the faces of the group turned, staring, pale in the dusk. In the moment of startled stillness before any of them moved, Mark thrust Colin behind him. He had opened his mouth to shout – he was never afterwards quite sure what he had been going to say – when the man in Cretan costume threw his rifle to his shoulder, and fired again.

Mark, as the man moved, had flinched back, half-turning to dodge out of sight. It was this movement that had saved him. He was near the gully edge, and, as he fell, the momentum of his turn, helped by the swing of the haversack on his shoulder, pitched him over it.

The next few minutes were a confusion of pain and distorted memory. Dimly, he knew that he was falling, bumping and sprawling down among rocks and bushes, to lodge in a thicket of scrub (as he found later) some way below the path.

He heard, as from a long way off, the woman screaming again, and a man's voice cursing her, and then Colin's voice, reckless with terror: ‘You've killed him, you stupid swine! Mark! Let me get down to him! Mark! Let me go, damn you!
Mark
!'

Then the sound of a brief, fierce scuffle at the gully's edge, a cry from Colin, bitten off short, and after that, no further sound from him. Only the woman sobbing, and calling in thick Greek upon her gods; and the voices of the two Cretans, furiously arguing about something; and then, incongruously – so incongruously that Mark, swimming away now on seas of black pain, could not even be sure it was not a dream – a man's voice saying, in precise and unconcerned English: ‘At least take time to think it over, won't you? Three corpses is a lot to get rid of, even here . . .'

And that, said Lambis, was all that Mark remembered. When he awoke to consciousness, it was almost daylight. The thought of Colin got him, somehow, up out of the gully and on to the path. There he lay awhile, exhausted and bleeding, before he could summon the strength to look about him. The dead man had gone, and there was no sign of Colin. Mark had retained the dim impression that the murderers had gone inland, so he started to crawl along the path after them. He fainted several times in his passage of three hundred yards. Twice the rain revived him. The last time, Lambis found him lying there.

Lambis' voice had stopped. I sat for a few minutes – for ages it seemed – in silence, with my hands pressed to my cheeks, staring, without seeing it, at the bright, far-off sea. I had imagined nothing like this. No wonder Lambis had been afraid. No wonder Mark had tried to keep me out of it . . .

I said hoarsely: ‘I suppose they'd left Mark for dead?'

‘Yes. It was dark, you see, and they may not have wanted to go down the gully after him. It was a very steep place. If he was not then dead, he would be dead by morning.'

‘Then – when the Englishman told them to “think it over”, he must have been meaning Colin? The other two ‘corpses' being Mark, and the dead man?'

‘It seems so.'

‘So Colin
must
have been alive?'

‘The last Mark heard of it, yes,' said Lambis.

A pause. I said, uncertainly: ‘They would come back, by daylight, for Mark.'

‘Yes.' A glance from those dark eyes. ‘This I guessed, even before I heard his story. When I went back to cover our tracks, I brushed the dust over them, and went down for the haversack, then I hid above, among the rocks, and waited. One came.'

Again the breathless impact of that sparse style. ‘You saw him?'

‘Yes. It was a man of perhaps forty, in Cretan dress. You have seen this dress?'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘He had a blue jacket, and dark-blue breeches, the loose kind. The jacket had some – what is the word for little balls of colour along the edge?'

‘What? Oh – I suppose I'd call them bobbles, if you mean that fancy braided trimming with sort of tufts on, like a Victorian fringed table-cloth.'

‘Bobbles.' Lambis, I could see, had filed my thoughtless definition away for future reference. I hadn't the heart to dissuade him. ‘He had red bobbles, and a soft black cap with a red scarf tied round, and hanging, the way the Cretans wear it. He was very dark of face, with a moustache, like most Cretans; but I shall know him again.'

‘Do you think it was the murderer?'

‘Yes. It was very nearly dark when the shooting happened, and Mark did not see faces, but he is certain that the man who did the shooting was in Cretan dress. Not the others.'

‘What did he do when you saw him?'

‘He looked about him, and went down into the gully, looking for Mark. He took a long time, as if he could not believe that he had gone. When he could find no body, he looked puzzled, and then anxious, and searched further, to see if perhaps Mark had crawled away, and died. He searched all the time below, in the gully, you understand. He did not think that Mark could have climbed up to the path. But when he looked for a long time without finding, then he came back to the path. He was very worried, I could see. He searched the path, then, but I think he saw nothing. After a time he went off, but not towards Agios Georgios. He went up there—' a gesture vaguely north ‘—where is another village, high up. So we still do not know from where the murderers come.'

‘No. I suppose you couldn't—?' I hesitated, picking my words. ‘I mean, if he was alone . . . ?'

For the first time, Lambis smiled, a sour enough smile. ‘You think I should have attacked him? Of course. I do not have to tell you that I wait for the chance to force him to tell me the truth, and what they have done to Colin. But there is no chance. He is too far from me, and between us is the slope of open hillside. And he has his rifle, which he carries, so.' A gesture, indicating a gun held at the ready. ‘He is too quick with his gun, that one. I have to let him go. If I take a risk, me, then Mark dies also.'

‘Of course.'

‘And because of Mark, who looks to be dying, I cannot follow this Cretan, to see where he goes . . .' Suddenly he sat up, turning briskly towards me. ‘So now you understand? You see why I speak of danger, and why I do not dare to leave Mark, even to find where Colin is? Mark wishes me to go, but he is too ill, and when he has the fever, he tries to leave the hut, to look himself for his brother.'

‘Oh, yes, I see that all right. Thank you for telling me all this. And now, surely, you'll let me help?'

‘What can you do? You cannot go down now to the village, and buy food or blankets, and then come back here. The whole village would know of it within the hour, and there would be a straight path back there, to Mark. And you cannot go to the boat; it will be dark soon, and I have told you, you could not find the way.'

‘No, but you could.'

He stared.

I said: ‘Well, it's obvious, isn't it? You go, and I'll stay with him.'

You would have thought I had offered to jump straight off the side of the White Mountains. ‘
You?
'

‘What else is there to do? Someone has to stay with him. Someone has to get supplies. I can't get supplies, therefore I stay with him. It's as simple as that.'

‘But – I shall be gone a long time, perhaps many hours.'

I smiled. ‘That's where the luck comes in. The hotel doesn't expect me until tomorrow. Nobody in Agios Georgios knows I've arrived. Whatever time I get there, nobody's going to ask questions.'

He scooped up a handful of the dry juniper needles, and let them run softly through his fingers. He watched them, not looking at me as he spoke. ‘If they come back, these murderers, to look for Mark, you will be alone here.'

I swallowed, and said with what I hoped sounded like resolute calm: ‘Well, you'll wait till it gets dusk, won't you, before you go? If they haven't been back and found the hut before dark, they're not likely to find it afterwards.'

‘That is true.'

‘You know,' I said, ‘this isn't silly heroics, or anything. I don't
want
to stay here, believe me. But I simply don't see what else there is to do.'

‘You could do what Mark told you, and go down to your hotel and forget us. You will have a comfortable bed, and a safe one.'

‘And how well do you think I should sleep?'

He lifted his shoulders, with a little twist of the lips. Then he gave a quick glance at the western sky. ‘Very well. At first dark, I shall go.' A look at me. ‘We shall not tell Mark, until I have gone.'

‘Better not. He'd only worry about me, wouldn't he?'

He smiled. ‘He does not like to be helpless, that one. He is the kind that tries to carry the world.'

‘He must be half out of his mind about Colin. If he could only sleep, then you might even be able to go, and get back again, without his knowing.'

‘That would be best of all.' He got to his feet. ‘You will stay up here, then, until I give you a signal? I shall see to him before I leave him. There will be nothing for you to do except see that he does not wake with fever, and try to crawl out of the hut, to look for his brother.'

‘I can manage that,' I said.

He stood looking down at me with that unreadable, almost surly expression. ‘I think,' he said slowly, ‘that you would manage anything.' Then suddenly, he smiled, a genuine smile of friendliness and amusement. ‘Even Mark,' he added.

4

Mark how she wreaths each horn with mist, you late and labouring moon.

WILDE
:
Panthea

Lambis left at dusk. Soon after the sun had vanished below the sea, darkness fell. I had been watching from the ledge, and, in the two long hours before sunset, I had seen no sign of movement on the mountainside, except for Lambis' short trips from the hut to get water from the pool.

Now, as the edges of sea and landscape became dim, I saw him again, small below me, appearing at the door of the hut. This time he came out a short way, then stopped, looked up in my direction, and lifted a hand.

I stood up and raised an arm in reply, then made my way carefully down to meet him.

He said, low voiced: ‘He is asleep. I gave him the rest of the coffee, and I have bathed his arm. It looks better, I think; he has been a little feverish, talking stupid things, but no longer fighting to be out. He will be okay with you. I have filled the flask now with water; you will not need to come out again.'