He rose abruptly to his feet. ‘Perhaps.’ He ran a hand through his unruly hair. ‘Or perhaps she will return to England and marry.’ He turned to Nikoleta. ‘Lewis is at the Villa, giving the Squire and Kit Shelton an update on the progress we have made.’
Nikoleta’s face lit up in eager anticipation. ‘Did he tell you to let me know he was at Knossos?’
Christos nodded, not wanting to say anything in front of their mother that would alert her to the true nature of Nikoleta’s feelings for Lewis. Shrewd though she was about many things, the fact that Nikoleta had hopes of marrying Lewis would be as incomprehensible to their mother as if, years ago, a village girl had fallen in love with the widowed Sir Arthur Evans and had lived in similar hope. Lewis was a foreigner and, as director of a dig, a man of importance. No matter how friendly men like him became with the island’s peasant families, they didn’t marry into them.
Having worked for Lewis for two years, Christos felt that the tradition of their not doing so was one that might be about to be broken. It wasn’t a thought he’d shared with Nikoleta. Simply by accepting the close nature of her relationship with Lewis, he was acknowledging that such a possibility existed and, more importantly still, that he was happy with it.
‘Come on,’ he said now to Nikoleta. ‘You may as well walk to the Villa with me. A handful of Mrs Hutchinson’s roses are still in bloom, but once it’s August they’ll be gone. This may be your last chance to see them.’
Nikoleta leapt to her feet with alacrity. The Villa Ariadne’s garden had always served as a trysting place for her and Lewis, and it would be where he was expecting to find her. When he did, he would tell her, as Christos had, all about the find at Kalamata. The difference would be, though, that Lewis would be able to tell her things Christos hadn’t been able to. Lewis would be able to tell her if the find on the upper plateau meant he would now be in Crete for years to come, and not just for the remainder of the present season.
When Sir Arthur Evans had discovered Knossos he had made a home for himself at the Villa Ariadne, and throughout all the years of Nikoleta’s childhood he had returned to Crete year after year, extending his area of excavation, reconstructing, restoring, struggling to make unity out of a dizzying array of pottery and stone, walls and pavements.
And that was how she imagined it would now be for Lewis. In future years he wouldn’t be excavating in fresh places – places like Egypt or Iraq – places so far away from Crete that she might never see him again, and where, in time, he would forget her. Instead his work would continue to be in Crete: at Kalamata. The prospect made her heart soar with joy.
It was scorchingly hot and when they reached the side gate leading into the Villa’s rear garden, Christos said, ‘I’m going to the cafe to buy cigarettes and have something to drink in the shade. Once Lewis has caught up with you, he’s heading into Heraklion and, as I’m going with him, this is goodbye for now.’
She nodded understandingly and as, with a wave of his hand, he continued up the dusty road towards the Palace of Minos’s entrance and the tourist cafe opposite it, she opened the gate and walked up the tree-shaded path and into the garden.
Lewis was already there. He had been sitting on one of the wrought-iron garden seats, one arm resting along the seat’s back, a cigarette in his hand. The minute he saw her, he crushed the cigarette out and jumped to his feet.
‘Lewis!’ She ran straight towards him and into his arms. ‘Lewis! Do you know how long it’s been? Over six weeks! Nearly eight.’
He hugged her tight. ‘Is that all?’ There was amusement in his voice. ‘And in that short space of time I’ve found a palace.’
‘Have you?’ She pressed her hands against his chest so that she could look up into his eyes. ‘Have you really? Is it going to be as big a palace as the Palace of Minos?’
‘God, no.’ His amusement deepened. ‘Nothing again could ever be so big.’ At the immediate disappointment in her eyes, he kissed the top of her hair. ‘And it doesn’t have to be so big to be of major importance, Niki. Hazarding a guess, I’d say I’m in the early stages of finding a palace similar to Mallia.’
Mallia was the third-biggest Minoan palace yet found. As a matter of course, tourists who flocked to the Palace of Minos afterwards visited Phaistos, the next-biggest palace, and then they visited Mallia. If the palace at Kalamata proved to be anything at all like Mallia, then Lewis’s reputation as an archaeologist would be internationally respected. At the thought of how the wife of such a man would be regarded, the blood sang through her veins.
‘I want to know exactly what has been found,’ she said, as he took hold of her hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. ‘And I want to see the site for myself. Can I go back with you today, Lewis? Will you show me the palace today?’
It was a question he had been expecting and as they sat down, shaded from the heat by the wide-spanning branches of an urn-potted mulberry tree, he said, ‘Not today, Niki,’ knowing the kind of prurient speculation such a visit would arouse in some members of his team. ‘When you first see the site, I’d like you to do so when more of the palace has been uncovered. Because we’re a small team it’s going to be a long process. It’s impossible to work at speed, when the tiniest thing found has to be measured and recorded on a grid sheet so that later, when it’s being studied off-site, the exact location of where it was found is known; and the artefact, even if it’s as small as a pottery sherd or a flake of fresco, can be tied to its context within the site.’
Nikoleta knew the kind of grid sheets he was talking about because Christos had once tried to explain to her the way a Cartesian coordinate system worked, but she hadn’t been interested then, and she wasn’t interested now.
The finer mechanics of excavation work bored her. She only liked the final, wonderful results, and then only truly responded to them when, as at Knossos, the site had been partially reconstructed. She wondered if, at Kalamata, Lewis would reconstruct in the same way.
Christos had told her it was something that was never likely to happen. ‘Lewis is too much of a purist,’ he’d said, when she had brought up the subject with him. ‘He appreciates that Sir Arthur’s reconstructed pillars and frescoes enable visitors to more easily envisage what the Palace of Minos looked like three and a half thousand years ago, and although such reconstructions weren’t frowned upon in the 1920s when the work took place, they are now. Even if the Greek government sanctioned it, it isn’t a route Lewis would want to go down.’
His arm was around her shoulders. Nikoleta leaned into him, enjoying the faint tang of lemon aftershave. All the Greeks were heavily moustached and after working on the dig – and apart from Adonis – were bearded as well. Even Helmut now sported a light-blond beard. She tried to imagine what Lewis would look like, moustached and bearded, and knew that he would look Greek.
It wasn’t something she wanted. She liked the fact that he wasn’t Greek; that he was Scottish, although a Scot with no discernible Scottish accent. Ella had told her that not only was Scotland far colder than Crete – something she did, of course, already know – but it was even chillier and wetter than England. The thought of living there wasn’t enticing. As he told her of the flakes of fresco that had been found, she listened with only half an ear, pondering the problem of Scotland’s disagreeable climate.
She most certainly would never want to live there, but as Lewis’s habit was to return home only for a short visit at the end of each season’s dig, it was a prospect that might never arise.
‘. . . As far as I can tell at this stage, the layout at Kalamata is going to prove to be the same as at Mallia,’ he was saying, unaware that he had lost her attention, ‘four wings set around a rectangular central court.’
‘Lewis,’ she squeezed hold of his hand, another thought occurring to her, ‘when the site is fully excavated and the tourists come, can I be the palace’s chief guide?’
‘Guide?’ Startled, he broke off from what he had been saying. ‘There will nev
er be a need for a full-time guide at Kalamata, Niki. The site is simply too difficult to reach for it to attract visitors in the numbers that Phaistos and Mallia do.’
She pulled away from him, deeply shocked. ‘But if it is not to be famous, what is the point of it?’
Lewis didn’t know whether to be amused by the naivety of her question or despairing. He reminded himself that her knowledge of the Palace of Minos wasn’t down to an academic archaeological education, but due to her father having been a member of the palace’s excavation team throughout all the years of her childhood, and of Nikoleta having been practically brought up on the site.
‘The point of it is what it will tell us about a society that lived more than three thousand years ago,’ he said patiently. ‘And the palace at Kalamata is going to throw an entirely new angle on what we’ve learned from previous palaces, because no way can it have been intended to fulfil the same functions they did. All three previous palaces were easily accessible. This one isn’t. Knossos, Phaistos and Mallia are all near the sea. Knossos is not quite as near it as Phaistos and Mallia, but near enough for its closeness to have been taken into account when the palace was built. Phaistos has not just one port, but two. At Mallia there is a road still intact that leads from the sea directly to the palace. There’s no such sea access for Kalamata. It’s been built as far away from the coast as, in Crete, it’s possible to get.’
Nikoleta was uncaring as to how near, or far, Kalamata was from the sea. What mattered to her was that it should become a world-famous site, for if it didn’t, how could Lewis’s name become world-famous?
‘A road,’ she said. ‘A road must be built from Kalamata village to the palace.’
At the idea of a road being hacked out of the upper reaches of Kalamata’s mountain, Lewis winced. ‘Any road leading to the upper plateau would have to wind around the mountain almost vertically, and no government would even consider a project so mammoth and costly.’
‘But of course they would, if they realized the palace would be a second Knossos and if . . .’
Lewis drew in a deep breath, belatedly realizing that the excitement Nikoleta felt at the finding of the palace was far removed from the kind of excitement he and his team felt.
Giving her hand a squeeze to show he hadn’t fallen out of patience with her, he said, ‘I thought I’d made it clear that whatever has been found at Kalamata, it isn’t a second Knossos, or even a second Phaistos or Mallia. The double-axe engravings in the stonework, the indications of a great central courtyard and the traces we’ve found of a sophisticated sewage and drainage system indicate beyond any possibility of doubt that we’ve found a palace. But please, Niki, get any idea that it’s a second Palace of Minos completely out of your head.’
‘But . . .’
‘And get the possibility of a road being built from Kalamata village to the upper plateau out of your head as well. It isn’t going to happen, and it’s the last thing on earth I would want to happen.’
‘But why?’ Her bewilderment was total. ‘So many people would be able to see what you have found. Thousands of people.’
‘They will be able to experience the palace by reading about it and seeing photographs of it.’ Despite his best intentions, Lewis couldn’t keep the exasperation from showing in his voice. ‘There doesn’t need to be a monstrous road disfiguring the mountain for them to appreciate the palace’s significance – a significance that’s still unknown.’
She withdrew her hand from his, hoping it would indicate the depth of her disappointment and that, once he realized it, he would begin thinking differently.
Instead of showing any signs of doing so, Lewis rose to his feet.
‘I have to be in Heraklion for twelve. Christos is coming with me. Do you want to come into the Villa to say goodbye to us both?’
‘No.’ Her voice was petulant and she didn’t care. ‘I have already said goodbye to Christos, and I think you will find him not in the Villa, but at the bus-stop cafe.’
He waited for her to rise to her feet so that he could give her a goodbye kiss on the cheek, as he’d always given Sophie.
She didn’t do so, and although he knew she was waiting for him to sit down again beside her, he didn’t. When a teenage Sophie had behaved childishly, he had refused to be manipulated and had ignored her fits of pique until she was over them, something that had never taken very long.
Taking the same kind of action now, he said, ‘Give my best wishes to your parents Niki, and to Georgi, and when you next see your brother tell him that when he isn’t tending sheep he’s very welcome at the dig.’ Then, as she still stubbornly made no response, he turned away from her and, with his fists shoved deep into the pockets of his trousers, headed in the direction of the side gate.
Tears stung the back of Nikoleta’s eyes. More than anything in the world she wanted to run after him, but pride, and the bewilderment and frustration she felt, prevented her. Fiercely she told herself that she had done and said nothing wrong. It was Lewis who was in the wrong. She had been so looking forward to his taking her back with him to Kalamata; to their walking around all that had been excavated so far and to his explaining it all to her; and yet when she had asked that he take her to the site, he had refused. True, he had been going into Heraklion with Christos, but he could have called for her on his way back to Kalamata; and if he couldn’t have done that, he could have said he would take her to the site later in the week – or perhaps even next week – instead of which he had put her off indefinitely.
And then when she had asked Lewis if, when the site was opened to tourists, she could be its chief guide, he had said that because the site was one it was so difficult to reach, he didn’t envisage it ever being opened to tourists – certainly not in the numbers that would require the kind of guide she clearly imagined herself being.
Her bewilderment and frustration turned into resentment. How could what he had said be true? What was the point of discovering a palace if no one could visit it?
A petal from one of Mrs Hutchinson’s roses fell on to her hair and crossly she brushed it away. Tourists would want to see the palace, even if it meant them having to be taken to it on the backs of mules. She certainly intended to see what Lewis had found and, just to show that she wasn’t entirely dependent on him saying that she could or couldn’t, she wanted to see it now. How, though, was she going to be able to do so?
The door leading from the Villa into the garden opened and then closed. Footsteps came down the shallow flight of stone steps and then came to a sudden halt.
As the footsteps weren’t Lewis’s, Nikoleta didn’t trouble to turn around.
Kit hesitated. He knew Lewis and Nikoleta were in the habit of meeting in the garden, but there was no sign of Lewis being there now, and there was nothing happily expectant about the set of Nikoleta’s shoulders. Instead she was leaning forward a little, as if her hands were clasped in her lap, and suddenly he was certain that far from being expectant, she was deeply despondent.
He cleared his throat. ‘Nikoleta?’
He walked towards her, and it wasn’t until his shadow fell across her that she finally made a response. ‘I’m just leaving, Mr Shelton.’ She rose to her feet, aware that as she was neither a resident nor a guest at the Villa, she had no real right to be there.
‘There’s no need for you to leave.’ He wished she would refer to him as Kit, but though he’d asked her to do so several times, she’d never yet taken him up on the offer. ‘Are you waiting for Lewis?’
‘No. I’ve already seen him.’
Now that they were face-to-face, Kit was appalled to realize that his assumption about Nikoleta’s unhappiness had been correct. There was none of the usual sparkle in her eyes, and the fizzing gaiety that was so much a part of her personality was entirely absent.
‘You’re upset,’ he said bluntly. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’
Behind the lenses of his horn-rimmed spectacles, his eyes were full of concern.
/> For as long as she had known him, Nikoleta had barely acknowledged Kit’s existence. Now, though, she found his concern comforting.
‘I was hoping Lewis could take me today to see the site at Kalamata, but he has business in Heraklion.’
Both statements were true and, even though the conclusion Kit would reach about them was false, they did at least save her pride. She wasn’t going to let Kit know that Lewis had no intention of showing her the site until more of it had been excavated.
Relieved that the cause of her unhappiness wasn’t too dire, Kit smiled.
‘That’s a problem easily solved,’ he said, uncaring that he had been about to set off for a day’s work at the necropolis site in Fortetsa. ‘Let me take you up there.’
Nikoleta’s frustration vanished in a flash. If Kit took her to the site, she would not only have her passionate desire to see it fulfilled, but she would also be showing Lewis that he should have more regard for her; and that, if he didn’t, then someone else just as important as he was did.
At the thought of making Lewis even a tiny bit jealous, Nikoleta’s spirits soared.
‘Now?’ she said eagerly. ‘This minute?’
‘Of course this minute.’ Kit felt a surge of satisfaction. He would take her up there in the Sally and stay there with her for as long as Lewis remained in Heraklion.
‘You are very kind, Mr Shelton.’
‘Kit,’ he said. ‘Please call me Kit.’
‘You are very kind, Kit,’ she said, and as they began walking out of the garden to where the Villa’s transport was parked, she not only smiled at him, but slipped her hand into the crook of his arm.
It was all Kit could have asked for.
Chapter Thirteen
Kate had written to Daphne in her distinctive scrawl:
It’s already October, and by the end of the month we will again have to halt work on-site, this time not just for a month, as in August, but until next March – or, if the winter is a bad one and the ground is exceptionally hard, until next April.
Beneath the Cypress Tree Page 13
