Beneath the Cypress Tree

by Margaret Pemberton

  Helmut’s deep groans ended only when he intermittently lapsed into unconsciousness. At first Lewis had been colossally thankful for those periods of time, but as the stretches of unconsciousness became longer and longer, they only increased his fear that Helmut wasn’t going to survive.

  When he finally felt Kalamata’s village plateau beneath his feet and saw its white-sailed windmills in the distance, relief washed over him in crashing waves.

  ‘Run and tell Kate what’s happened,’ he said to Nico, ‘tell her I need boiled water, raki, clean linen and towelling. If she isn’t at home – if she’s gone up to the dig – get Ella to go to the house and get things ready. And Nikoleta nursed with Ella at Villa Ariadne. Find her as well.’

  Their entry into the village was sombre. The children who rushed noisily to greet them came to a bewildered, silent halt the minute they saw Helmut’s unrecognizable bloody figure slumped on the mule. Old Zenobia, who was seated in her doorway spinning, crossed herself, heaved herself to her feet and retreated into her ramshackle cottage. Other women had a different reaction, watching the sight of a wounded German being taken through their streets with deep apprehension.

  Andre was standing outside the cafeneion, arms folded. So far no trouble had come to Kalamata, but he knew executions had taken place elsewhere, when men of a village had been held responsible for the death of a German soldier; ten Cretans for one soldier seemed to be the going rate, but he had heard rumours of far higher numbers of men and boys having been executed in reprisal for a German death.

  ‘Nico has been for Ella,’ he said to Lewis as the little procession drew level with him. ‘I know who is on the mule. God willing, he’ll survive and be gone before he brings trouble here.’

  Lewis nodded wholehearted agreement, grateful that when Helmut had been on the Kalamata dig he had been popular among the villagers. Another thing he was grateful for was his certainty that there were no collaborators in Kalamata; that no one would run to the nearest German garrison with information as to where Helmut could be found.

  ‘Kate is at the dig!’ Ella’s words came out in a rush of shock and disbelief as he and Christos lifted Helmut from the back of the mule. ‘Nikoleta is here, and I have sent word to Apollonia.’

  Helped by Yanni and Nico, Lewis and Christos carried the unconscious Helmut into the house and laid him on a bed that Ella had protected with an old blanket. Together, as gently as they could, they began easing him out of his jacket.

  ‘What happened?’ Nikoleta demanded, putting a bucket by Lewis’s side for the bloodied shirts. ‘Who shot him?’

  ‘A Leskla shepherd.’ Lewis handed Helmut’s jacket to Ella, saying, ‘Have you got a fresh compress ready?’

  ‘Yes, and a sash for bandaging.’

  As Lewis tentatively lifted the last blood-saturated shirt from Helmut’s chest, Kate hurtled into the room. At the sight that met her eyes she came to a stunned halt, whispering devoutly, ‘Oh, my God!’

  She wasn’t the only person in the room to be inexpressibly shocked at the sight that met her eyes. Ella and Nikoleta had both had plenty of experience of bullet wounds when nursing at the Villa Ariadne and it was immediately obvious to them, as it was to Lewis, that Helmut’s life couldn’t be saved by them. That it could only be saved by a surgeon in an operating theatre.

  Fresh blood began seeping through the coagulated blood, and Lewis worked as swiftly as he could, swabbing the wound with cooled boiled water and then, in the hope that it would act as an antiseptic and ignoring Helmut’s cries of agony, with raki.

  With the blood beginning to flow faster, Ella handed Lewis a compress of thick towelling. Grim-faced and helped by Christos, Lewis bound it in place with the clean sash.

  ‘He has to be got back to his garrison.’ Kate’s face was chalk-white. ‘His only chance of survival is for him to be flown to a German army hospital.’

  Christos rounded on her. ‘How in the name of the Holy Virgin is that possible? The nearest garrison is in Heraklion and there are a dozen military posts between here and Heraklion. And even if by a miracle I were to reach Heraklion and drive into the garrison with him, I would never drive out alive. I would either be accused of being the person who shot him, or tortured to reveal who it was that had shot him. The same goes for Lewis and for Yanni and Nico.’

  ‘The person taking him wouldn’t have to reach the garrison gates, or Heraklion. All they would have to do is take him to the nearest military post. From there on, the Germans would see that Helmut reached the garrison in double-quick time – and though none of you may be able to get away with taking him to a military post, a woman could get away with it. My Greek is good enough for a German not to suspect that I’m British. I could take him.’ Before Lewis could angrily reject the idea, Kate said urgently, ‘Unless he is taken to a military post – and taken there quickly – not only will he die, but as a reprisal for his disappearance, innocent Cretans will also die.’

  To Kate’s surprise, it was Nikoleta who backed her up. ‘She speaks the truth,’ she said, ‘but although she may deceive a German if he should stop and question her in the street, she would never deceive one under torture. Not,’ she added with rare generosity, ‘because Kate would give way under torture, but at a time like that would she scream out in Greek, not English? I do not think so. I do not think it is humanly possible that she would do so. And so I will be the one to take him.’

  She held Lewis’s eyes defiantly, knowing that if he rejected her proposal he would both have to watch Helmut die and know himself responsible, when news filtered back to him of reprisal executions in Leskla.

  It was Helmut – whom they had thought to be unconscious – who broke the silence, saying faintly and with great difficulty, ‘It will work, Lewis. I will say I was questioning a Cretan – that he fired at me and that before I collapsed, I fired back and killed him. That way no village or villager will be involved. Nikoleta found me and is to be thanked for bringing me to a military post.’

  A pulse throbbed at the corner of Lewis’s jaw. ‘You would have to be taken in on a donkey cart – you’d never survive another journey on the back of a mule – and if Nikoleta is to do this, she runs the risk of being recognized as the young woman who passed information to the resistance when she was part of General Müller’s household staff. And that would result in arrest and execution.’

  Nikoleta shrugged the risk away. ‘Only colonels and brigadiers and major-generals came and went when I was a maid for General Müller. There will be no colonels and brigadiers and major-generals at the military post – and who, in their right mind, would expect a woman with a price on her head to be driving a wounded German officer to a military post?’

  Aware that he was between a rock and a hard place, Lewis said to Nico, ‘Bring Zenobia’s donkey and cart to the house – and bring plenty of straw with it. He’ll need to be hidden until the last moment. Any Cretan seeing him will immediately finish him off – and probably shoot Nikoleta, too.’

  Nico headed for the door and Lewis said to Christos, ‘Round up the rest of the team. We’ll shadow Nikoleta as far as it’s possible to shadow her – and if it looks as if she’s meeting with trouble, we’re going to get her out of it, no matter what the cost.’

  A brief half-hour later, as Lewis, Christos and Yanni were carrying Helmut out to the donkey cart, Ella picked up Helmut’s jacket. Manhandling him back into it had been out of the question, and yet it was important when he arrived at the military post that his jacket and cap were in clear view, making his rank instantly obvious. As she walked out of the house with it she felt something small and sharp in one of the breast-pockets. Curious, she unbuttoned the pocket’s flap. The object was a silver crucifix on a chain. With it was a photograph.

  And the photograph was of Daphne.

  It had been taken at Knossos. Wearing a white halter-necked sundress and a white wide-brimmed sun hat, Daphne was sitting on one of the steps leading to the South Propylaeum. Her arms were clasped around her
knees and she was laughing, brimming with happiness.

  It was a photograph of a woman in love with the person taking the photograph and, certain that person had been Helmut, Ella replaced it in his jacket pocket and carefully rebuttoned the pocket’s flap, tears pricking the backs of her eyes at the realization of how much Daphne had meant to him – and of how much she still meant.

  With Helmut laid in the back of the cart and covered by straw, Nikoleta at the reins and, until the foothills of the mountain were reached, a heavily armed Lewis and an equally heavily armed team following on foot close behind, the grim little convoy set off for the nearest military post.

  In the gathering dusk, Kate, Ella, Aminta and Apollonia watched them go, each with their own anxieties. Kate’s anxiety was that Helmut would again be unconscious when they reached their destination and, being unconscious, would not be able to give Nikoleta the cover story she so desperately needed. Ella’s was that Christos, always hot-headed, would open up with gunfire before it was necessary, thereby precipitating a calamity. Aminta’s were all for her husband, for if it became necessary for the team to come to Nikoleta’s aid, she could envisage no other outcome but his death. Apollonia couldn’t imagine death for Pericles, but she could easily imagine Nikoleta’s death – and the manner of it.

  As the donkey cart and men faded from view, the women returned sombrely to the house to do what women in their situation had done from time immemorial: to wait and take comfort and strength from each other.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  JULY 1943

  Striding up a ravine on the eastern slopes of Mount Ida, Kate couldn’t remember when she had last felt so happy and carefree. She was with Lewis, Christos, Nikoleta and the hard-core team of Dimitri, Angelos, Pericles, Nico, Adonis and Yanni. In North Africa, Rommel and his Afrika Korps had been utterly routed. Cairo was no longer under threat. Daphne and Caspian were safe.

  In Britain, the fear of invasion had long since vanished and so her parents in Canterbury and Ella’s family in Wilsden were also safe. The icing on the cake had been the news transmitted to Nick Virtue that the Allies had landed on Sicily. ‘Which is a clever ruse of Mr Churchill’s to make Hitler believe that our invasion of Europe is going to begin on Sicily, not Crete,’ Christos had said to her in high satisfaction, ‘and Hitler will be unprepared for it, which is a very clever idea, is it not?’

  Everyone – Lewis, Sholto, Kit and the other SOE officers who had now been landed on the island – was as convinced as Christos that Crete had long been intended as the jumping-off point for an Allied invasion; an invasion that, driving up through Greece and the Balkans into the heart of Hitler’s stronghold, would bring an Allied victory and an end to the war. To aid such an invasion was what, for the last two years, they had been preparing for. Their present trek to meet up with Sholto and his thirty-strong band of partisans on Mount Ida was another in a long line of indications that Crete was to be the invasion’s springboard, for a large arms-drop on Ida was due that night and, when they returned to Kalamata, they would be doing so with a string of mules carrying cases of handguns, rifles, sub-machine guns and ammunition.

  The way the war was now going and the imminent arms drop weren’t the only causes for Kate’s sense of well-being. Four months ago Ella had given birth to a healthy baby girl that she and Christos had named Alice Ariadne. Although it was now ten months since Nikoleta had risked her life in taking the gravely injured Helmut to a German military post, the relief that she had done so successfully still lingered; and, for some reason Kate didn’t understand but was grateful for, Nikoleta’s attitude towards her had changed since then. Although not the bosom friend she was with Ella, Nikoleta was now on amiable terms with her and, as they neared the head of the ravine, was walking only yards away from her.

  ‘It’s going to be something of a family reunion for Christos, Nikoleta and Georgio,’ Lewis had said, as they had set off. ‘Since Georgio joined Sholto’s resistance group, Christos has met up with him several times, but this will be the first time Nikoleta has seen Georgio in over a year.’

  As well as now being friendly towards her, Nikoleta had changed in other ways. Ever since she had returned from Athens she had stopped dressing in a citified way. Today she was dressed like Kate, in a shirt, trousers that were tucked into knee-high boots and a bobble-fringed sariki. Both of them had rifles slung over their shoulders. Even Ella always had a rifle to hand now and was familiar with how to use it.

  ‘It is necessary,’ Christos had said to her, ‘and it is also necessary that you learn how to use it – and how to use it with accuracy.’

  Long before they reached the cave that was their destination, members of Sholto’s band came running and leaping down the steep scree towards them, shouting greetings.

  Moments later Nikoleta was being hugged by her tousled-haired younger brother, and all around Kate other enthusiastic greetings were taking place. Dimitri and Angelos were exuberantly meeting up with a couple of their cousins; Yanni was meeting up with a nephew and Nico with a god-brother. Only she, Adonis and Pericles were left out of the loop – Adonis because, as the runner between Sholto and Lewis, he was so often with the partisans now swarming around them as to be counted as one of their number, and Pericles because he was a mainland Greek with no relatives or god-brothers on Crete, and because there was something about him that made even Cretans keep a respectful distance.

  She wasn’t left out of the loop for long, because Sholto, in full heroic rig, his light-brown hair hidden by a black tasselled sariki and let down only by a moustache and beard that were too close to being blond to be Cretan, came striding towards her.

  ‘Welcome to Mount Ida, Kate!’ He gave her a bear-hug. ‘Does Kit know you’re roaming Crete armed with a rifle?’

  ‘Probably not – and I’m living in hope that I never have to use it. Is Kit here? I don’t see him.’

  The noisy melee of those greeting and being greeted was now making its way up the steep scree to the mouth of the cave.

  ‘Kit is down in the Amari valley, meeting up with Xan Fielding, the SOE officer responsible for western Crete; and Nick is in the cave, huddled over his wireless transmitter in case there are any alterations to the timing of tonight’s drop.’

  As he was talking to her and they were climbing the scree, in the wake of everyone else, his eyes were on Nikoleta as, sandwiched tightly between her brothers, she headed towards the cave.

  Seeing what she took to be natural curiosity, Kate said, ‘You haven’t met Nikoleta yet, have you, Sholto? I’ll introduce the two of you properly when we reach the cave.’

  ‘As if the three of us were at a Canterbury tea party?’ There was vast amusement in his voice. ‘There’s no need, Kate. I met Scarlett when she was part of the nursing staff at the Villa Ariadne and I was there with a bullet buried in my shoulder.’

  ‘Her name is Nikoleta, Sholto. Not Scarlett.’

  ‘Not to me it isn’t,’ he said, with such intensity in his voice that Kate wondered if his troglodyte existence was beginning to get him down.

  When they finally reached the cave she was interested to see that it was almost as big as the one at Kalamata – and that it had been made almost as comfortable, with blanket-covered beds of deep brushwood all around the sides. A fire was burning, on which meat was roasting, and in the glowing ashes, potatoes were baking. As always, there was an abundance of locally made raki and, mindful of the trek that would soon have to be made to the dropping zone, Kate resolved to treat it with caution. After their meal, as dusk deepened into night, the singing of mantinádes began.

  Mantinádes fascinated Kate. They were rhyming couplets sung to musical accompaniment. Each mantináda was complete in itself, but it was usual for a verse to receive a verse in response, and this would lead to another verse, and then another. When she had asked Christos why the framework of the couplets was so inflexible, he’d said simply, ‘Because it has always been so, Kate. Even since the fifteenth century and the time of
the Venetians it has been so. Never will it be changed.’

  Now, seated with Lewis in the flickering firelight on blanket-covered, sweet-smelling thyme and juniper brushwood, she waited expectantly as Angelos Mamalakis began playing a lyre and Georgio stood up to sing.

  He sang about his love for his country; for the brotherhood he shared with those he had broken bread with; how, if he died, he would not want his mother told and made sad, but would rather she was told that he had married and was living in a far-distant part of Greece. And as he sang it was quite obvious that, singing, he no longer felt shy.

  Other mantinádes followed, some sung by other members of Sholto’s resistance group and some by members of their own group, with Adonis and Yannis carrying away the honours. Afterwards the traditional maleviziotis was danced by the men, with much twirling and leaping and clicking together of booted heels, and then there was another men-only dance; and then, finally, dances that she and Nikoleta could enthusiastically join in.

  By the time it came for setting out in deep darkness for the drop site, Kate was having such an exhilarating time dancing shoulder-to-shoulder between Lewis and Christos that she’d almost forgotten why they were all there.

  For security’s sake, the drop site was a good distance from the cave. ‘And so even if those billy-goats, the Germans, are alerted to the drop, they will not find Kyrie Sholto’s headquarters,’ Georgio said, no longer quite as shy with Kate, ‘and as the site is high and flat, it is also where I graze my sheep.’