by Peter Knyte
‘Perhaps we should compromise,’ I said almost innocently, ‘rather than just starting the entire search again, which Luke is quite right would be a bit demoralising. Why don’t we pick one particular area to try out the new approach just to see how it goes? We could start with the headland, that was one of our likely sites to begin with, and you never know we might run into Selene, Miriam and Thea again while we’re over there. They seem to have spent quite a bit of time there since we arrived and they might even be prepared to give us a few pointers to some of the more interesting bits that they’ve already found.’
It was amazing to see the change come over Luke as I suggested this. He’d obviously been winding up to agreeing with me, and then suddenly found himself wrong-footed. He noticeably stiffened at the sudden prospect, and stumbled over his words for a bit, even slipping back into Italian for a moment, which was something I’d never seen him do before. Then, pulling himself together and finding his feet again he launched into a dozen reasons why the headland would be the worst place to start, including the brazenly impudent suggestion that we might rouse the unwanted curiosity of Selene and her friends!
But my friends seemed to have picked up on my signal, as well as perhaps the implications of Luke’s response, and without any further coaxing threw their support behind the idea.
I met up with Jean and Marlow shortly afterward when we could get a few minutes away from the others, and explained my thinking, which they’d largely already figured out. But it was Jean who particularly liked the irony of the situation, and the possibility that it might be our adversaries themselves who lead us, or at least provided a shortcut, to our goal.
‘You were quite right mon ami, this is surely the plan that Ms Autieri and her friends have been working to all along,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘and if they could be so far ahead of us in this respect, why not also in terms of the location?’
‘Precisely,’ added Marlow thoughtfully. ‘But if Selene and her friends are convinced that the headland is the location, then they will pay particular attention to us while we search there, and it won’t take long for them to figure out we’re really looking below the water.’
He was right of course, we might be able to hide the real focus of our search from Luke if we were to start somewhere else. But picking the same area they were searching meant we were bound to be more closely scrutinised. It was definitely a gamble, but we had no guarantees with anything, so we would start with our new search as soon as the weather permitted.
After another whole day of wet and desultory conditions the weather finally changed, and we arose early on the Friday morning, an hour before dawn to discover the day cool but with clear skies and only a gentle onshore breeze. We needed to be at the headland as soon after sunrise as possible if we were to make the most of the light that would let us see through the water to the cliffs, rocks and seabed, while at the same time giving credence to our cover story. All of which meant a rather gruelling start to the day, but after a false start the previous morning, it felt good to be up and out, even at such an unreasonable hour.
We’d warned Stephanos that we wanted to make an early start, and true to form he had the boat ready and waiting when we got there, so that in no time we were off and moving over the dark water toward our destination. I’d again thought we might run into Selene and her friends at some point, but yet again they surprised me by just letting us get on with things without any attempt at hindrance or delay.
It took less than half an hour for us to get to the headland once we cleared the other boats moored in the marina and those near to the shore. Then it was just a short wait before the first spears of light appeared over the horizon to hit the rocky shore of the headland behind us.
We had to adjust things to account for the different arc of sun at this time of year, but even taking that into account I was still surprised by the angle at which the light appeared. You can never quite get a true impression of how things will work out when looking at a map, even a detailed one. But I’d obviously imagined the headland to be much more east-west than it was, and therefor presumed it would catch much more light first thing than it actually did. It was still a glorious sight and no mistake, but I think it was clear to all of us that we’d over estimated the number of likely places we should include in our search area.
We moved up and down the few miles of coast on the southern edge of the headland two or three times, checking and re-checking the sections of the coast that had both a view of the great cliff face behind Corinth, and the illuminating rays of the rising sun. As the sun grew higher and moved more westerly it obviously bathed more of the coast in its warmth and light, but for that first half hour of the day the sun’s rays fell only directly on the handful of places we’d seen picked out at first light.
It was an interesting discovery that caused us to once more question Androus about the translation of the scroll, and specifically the details concerning the description of dawn. But he was adamant that the description he’d translated was emphatically that of first-dawn, or literally the time before ‘the ball of the sun had fully emerged from behind the distant mountains’.
With no further dispute possible, and only a handful of locations to search, it was just a question of deciding where to start. We’d sailed right up to the tip of the headland, which also happened to be one of the most promising looking sites, with a small bottlenecked cove comprised of a tiny golden beach surrounded on all sides by craggy rocks and steep cliff faces. It seemed as good a place to start as any, so we got the dinghy out, and after dropping Harry and Jean onto the beach, Marlow, myself and Peter rowed back out to examine the surrounding cliffs and rocks.
In truth the light would have been at too shallow an angle if we’d tried to start our dinghy search any earlier, as the sun needed to be that bit higher before it went into the water rather than just reflecting off the surface. And there was still a good deal of squinting and peering even when the sun got into the right place.
We’d been searching for only about half an hour and had just come alongside the mouth of the little cove near to where the boat was anchored, when Marlow spotted it. We’d already been past the spot once when we’d rowed out of the cove, but the light mustn’t have been quite right. Now as Marlow told us where to look, it seemed quite clear.
‘We’re a bit too close to the boat for me to point,’ he began, but you can see the pale sand of the seabed extend right into the cliff, in fact it looks like there might even be two caves rather than one.’
‘Luke appears to be interested in what we’re doing,’ commented Peter who was on the oars, ‘might be worth waving your arms around a bit as though you’re talking about a bit of the cliff-top.’
We followed his advice without looking around, but continued to discuss what to do next.
‘It seems a bit early to be getting into the water,’ I ventured. ‘We could come back later if this still seems a likely spot.’
‘No this is about as likely as it gets,’ said Marlow looking thoughtfully at the shimmering area of pale blue sea-bed. ‘This is where I’d choose if I wanted to remove myself from everyone else. It’s remote and has little to attract anyone, but with a place to draw up a small boat you could be back over to Corinth in under an hour, perhaps less with a sail.’
‘Yes, I’m with Rob on this one.’ said Peter, ‘That looks like a cave, and this looks like the perfect location, we might as well get in there.’
Enough had been said. We moved the little boat as close into the cliff as we could, which wasn’t that hard as the water was quite calm on this side of the headland, got our masks on and then it was just over the side.
Marlow went first, slipping into the cool water over the back of the boat, but I followed him a few seconds later. The water was a little bit cooler than it had been a few days before on account of the overcast weather, but it was still warm enough to not have to worry about a chill as long as we kept moving.
I deliberately didn’t loo
k round to see if Luke was still paying attention, and then taking a couple of deep breaths Marlow was gone. I felt the adrenaline kick in then, and a second later I was following him through the clear, sapphire water. There was no point discussing what we going to do, and even less once I saw what lay beneath the water.
From the surface it was fairly clear that the sandy sea bed extended into the cliff face suggesting a cave. But the second I got below the water I could see it was much more than just a suggestion, as the coruscating light of the morning sun penetrated the water it illuminated the shadowy depths of a large cave within the cliff.
The top of the cave mouth was only just below the surface, maybe four or five feet, and Marlow had already swum down far enough to see further in. As I swam down to join him, I could see he’d hesitated for the briefest of moments before he was off, into the cave. A moment later I could see why he’d hesitated. It was a wondrous sight, the light filtered through the cave mouth filled the interior of the cave with a pale light. But this wasn’t the only shaft of light, there were others that must’ve been coming from other openings further along the cliff. Each shaft of light waving and shifting slightly as the waves outside rose and fell, refracting the light a dozen different ways, and giving the sea bed inside the cave an almost theatrical stage illumination. Not only that, but the entire effect was mirrored in the pale silvery underside of the water inside the cave, which also indicated there was air.
I could have gazed on that spectacle for an age, but Marlow was getting ahead of me, so half reluctantly I swam on into the cave.
It was only a short distance, but it was far enough for me to be concerned about swimming back if the air was no good. So, as Marlow made for the surface, I hesitated again in case he suddenly came back down or started to show signs of distress. But instead I saw him rise slowly to the surface of that silvery mirror, extend a hand before him, which disappeared through, followed by his head and shoulders. His arm came back down and as he started to tread water I could tell he was looking around at the inside of the cave.
Following him, I emerged beside him into the cave, and was again stunned by the beauty of my surroundings, though this time it was the beauty above the water.
It was a biggish cave that swelled and grew as it went further back into the rock. It was lit mostly by the blue rippling light coming through the water, which gave the interior a strange magical appearance, enhanced further by a single shaft of light coming straight through a narrow fissure in the rock face. It was more than bright enough once my eyes adjusted, but I was still gazing around at the wonder of it when Marlow pulled my attention back to our purpose.
‘George,’ he said simply, ‘do you see that on the far wall?’
I turned around in the water to look where he indicated, and could clearly see the familiar shape of the ancient clock symbol carved out of the wall above a ledge at the back of the cave.
‘I do indeed,’ I said, feeling my heart begin to race.
We swam over quickly, aware that our friends would be getting concerned about us if we didn’t go back soon, but just needing to take a quick look first.
The ledge was just above water level, and as we climbed out onto it I could immediately see that it had been shaped and carved by man to make it more regular and probably more useful, including what may have once been a tunnel leading to the surface. But I could also see that the site was badly damaged and there was a great deal of broken stone, including pieces of lapis lazuli strewn all over the ledge.
I saw Marlow bend down and pick up a small piece of the blue stone, and understood exactly the expression on his face as he turned it over in his hand and saw the remains of those deeply incised symbols.
I swam back out of the cave, taking Marlow’s mask with me so that someone else could swim in, feeling my enthusiasm and eagerness once more waning, but desperately trying to hang on to the hope that somewhere in the wreckage there might be something we could salvage.
We’d obviously been a bit too long in the cave, and when I surfaced outside the cave mouth I found Peter getting ready to go into the water himself, and everyone on Stephanos’ boat gathered on the near side rail looking expectantly towards the cliff.
I explained the situation briefly to Peter as he helped me back into the dinghy, and then rowed us back over to the main boat. Peter hadn’t told them anything, so as he rowed we quickly put an excuse together for why we’d both gone into the water, where we’d just happened upon the cave, just to make sure we were consistent with our cover story.
As we got back on the main boat, I was immediately assailed with questions about what was going on, to which I was finally allowed to answer.
‘It’s the most extraordinary stroke of luck.’ I began. ‘We thought there was something unusual about the sea bed, it seemed to be piled up against the cliff face below the water, and we thought maybe the sand had built up to cover something, so we went in to have a look.
‘But it wasn’t built up at all, what we’d thought was a bank of sand was the seabed extending into a large cave. There are carved walls and pieces of lapis. This is it, this is the cave of Alcathous that we’ve been looking for.’
I really didn’t want to get into any more detail until we’d had a chance to pick Harry and Jean up, but Luke just kept pressing me. It was clear he didn’t know what to think yet. Horror that we’d found the cave before Selene and the others, or relief that it seemed as though the tablets had been destroyed. His emotions were so clearly written upon his face, that for the first time since we’d discovered his betrayal I found it hard to even look at him. Fortunately, Androus was there with his much more pragmatic approach and questions that made me concentrate on the work to be done.
I went back into the dinghy with Peter to retrieve Harry and Jean from the cove, which also gave me the opportunity to vent my anger about Luke, and meant I could brief them all properly on the way back, not only about the cave but also about Luke.
Androus didn’t really fancy trying to make the dive, as he was not only a poor swimmer, but also seemed to be getting a bit of cough, but Luke was unfortunately more than happy to have a go. Neither Harry nor Jean were particularly happy about the prospect, as neither were particularly strong swimmers, but with the aid of a couple of ropes we managed to get them inside.
Marlow had done what he could while we were outside, and had already collected together quite a few of the bigger fragments of lapis, but he’d been thwarted by some of the bigger bits of stone that still covered much of the rubble.
Once Harry had got his breath back and been able to assess the situation, he took control and brought a bit more order to our search, starting with a more thorough search of the area and of course the documentation. Though getting the paper in and out in a dry state proved an unexpected challenge, until Stephanos remembered he’d got a water-tight aluminium map case we could use.
After we finally got the basics out of the way, Harry tried to piece together a theory of what we were looking at, and what might have happened.
‘There’s a whole load of damage here that’s for sure,’ he began, as he re-examined the debris pile and the wall at the back. ‘but this, this looks like natural damage to me. Maybe subsidence, or an earthquake or both. And the damage looks old too, there’s evidence of lichen growing over some of the broken edges, and much of this dust and dirt is not only settled, it’s compacted too. All of which can only really happen over a considerable period of time.’
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ chipped in Peter. ‘Some kind of ground movement caused the tunnel and part of that back wall to fall first, dislodging the cover stone and the tablets from their carved housing. Then, judging by the presence of this large rock on top of these two which look like they’ve fallen from the ceiling and the wall, I’d say at least this section of wall fell next, which undermined the ceiling above and caused that to fall later.’
‘So if there’s anything left of them, then the tablets could be underneat
h all of this,’ I asked.
‘It’s possible,’ answered Harry, ‘some may have escaped over the edge of this ledge and into the water, so we should probably check there first. Then we remove the rest of this stone one piece at a time.’
It hadn’t occurred to me to look in the water, so while the others were figuring out how to tackle the larger blocks of stone, I went back in with Peter, and we started to search the sandy sea floor. The sand was very fine, and in no time visibility was down to nothing, but between us we managed to find the fragment of one tablet and another almost entirely intact barring a piece missing from one corner. But their time in the water had come at a cost and while they were still intact, they were worn quite badly in places, leaving only about twenty percent of the writing still legible upon them.
Similar results were achieved on the ledge. As the debris and stones were cleared away, the remains of the tablets were gradually recovered, but only one tablet came out entirely intact, miraculously preserved from the falling rocks, the rest were either entirely destroyed or reduced to intricate jigsaw puzzles of fragments that might take years to put together again. But at least we’d got something, and there was always the chance that the one tablet we had held something significant, or might give us a pointer to one of the other locations.
Much as he tried to conceal it, Luke was definitely not happy that we’d come away with so much, and after a while simply fell silent, doing what was asked of him, but nothing more.
