Damian read the answer in her eyes and let out a breath, smiling. ‘You know, you’re going to be a part of the island’s history now,’ he said. ‘I had a call from the Ministry. They’re falling over each other with excitement. They’ve studied the photos I sent and even before inspecting the site they’re almost certain it has to be the lost city of Helice.’
‘I can’t even begin to take it in somehow,’ said Oriel dreamily. ‘The city I used to imagine as a child when I lay in bed, unable to sleep … I’d try to picture its temples, its great bells tolling … and I’d think of Poseidon glaring out over the waves, magnificent and glittering in the sunlight.’
‘And now it’s your home, my love,’ he said tenderly. ‘So you think you could be happy at Helios and really love it, and regard it as your home, not only mine?’
The humility and stark simplicity of his question seemed to tear her heart.
Oriel smiled up at Damian. ‘Your island, like the dragon that rules it, has captured my soul, Kyrios,’ she said simply. ‘What more can I say except to go on repeating that I love you, that I am home when you hold me in your arms … home when you kiss me and say I’m yours. Is that a good enough answer for you, agápi mou?’
She could see the surge of emotion that had risen in him at her answer and knew that he was on fire to touch her. ‘Yes, quite enough!’ He drew her back into his embrace. ‘Tóte eíste sto spíti gia pánta, then you are home forever,’ he whispered against her mouth, his hold on her tightening.
The moonlight streamed on to Oriel, standing before him in her lilac chiffon, her hair sweeping her shoulders.
Damian smiled down at her. ‘Remember always, matia mou,’ he said, his tone tender and intimate. ‘There’s no room for pride in our love. There should be no secrets between us, no quarrels that cannot be bridged. Other people may find causes to quarrel and separate over, but never us. Our love is too big for anything or anyone to part us. You must believe that you are my first and last love. It is a precious thing that holds us together, one we must guard eternally because a one-time love can never be repeated. Come,’ he murmured, taking her hand. ‘Let’s look out to sea, out towards Helios … our home.’
He led her slowly towards the beautiful carved balustrade. Below lay the blanched and moving waters of the Ionian, creaming and foaming on the rocks, with the sand and pebble beaches and the far-off islands all frosted by the moon.
Oriel smiled up at him radiantly. She had come into Damian’s kingdom, Helios, and they would be returning there soon – to the living present, the ghosts of an unfortunate, unhappy past and the burning hope of an endless future. They were at the start of their journey, which she knew would last a lifetime. The curtain was coming down on the first act of her Greek drama but her romantic adventure was just beginning.
And Aphrodite wept, finally, for joy.
THE END
AUTHOR NOTE
I chose two real-life sites as inspiration for my underwater archaeology story.
The first is a famous wreck of a Roman galleon, first explored in the early fifties by Jacques Cousteau and his team. It had been discovered by a lobster gatherer near a small island, Le Grand Congloué, situated across the water from Marseilles on the southern French coast. The galleon had been carrying a mixed cargo, including amphorae filled with wine. Cousteau actually tasted the two-thousand-year-old wine, still sealed in one of the earthenware pots his team brought to the surface, although it had long lost its alcohol content. He reportedly declared it to be ‘a poor vintage century’.
On the seals of these large amphorae were stamped the owner’s trademark – SES – which identified the cargo as having belonged to the Roman shipping magnate Marcus Sestius in the third century BC. Sestius was an intriguing character, who had settled on the Greek island of Delos, where he had built up a sizeable export business. He became almost more Greek than Roman over time, changing his name to its Greek version, Markos Sestios, in 240BC after he had been granted Delian citizenship, which would have been a great honour. A group of ruined Roman villas on the magical island of Delos today includes one, the House of the Trident, with a beautiful mosaic floor on which is depicted a trident, complete with two Ss forming a bracket in the space between the tines. Archaeologists have speculated that this was Marcus Sestius’s insignia (because his trademark also included a basic trident shape).
The second piece of history that set my imagination on fire is the sunken seaport of Helike (or Helice). In the seventies, when my story is set, this port was still thought to be located under 10 metres of mud in the Gulf of Corinth. This Greek city was mentioned by Homer when he listed the powerful cities that assembled against Troy. What we didn’t get from Homer, however, is where the city lay. We hear of its location from another writer, Pausanias, who describes coming to the river Selinus and ‘about 40 stadia from Aegium is a place called Helice near the sea’. It was a very important city, he tells us, and the Ionians had built there ‘the most holy temple of Poseidon of Helike’.
We know from Strabo, a Greek geographer writing a half century before the birth of Christ, that Helike was overwhelmed by the waves in the winter of 373BC. Strabo gives an account of Eratosthenes, who was alive a century after Helike’s destruction, visiting the scene of the disaster. The boatman who ferried him over the spot told him that in the midst of the drowned ruins could be seen a massive bronze statue of Poseidon, holding aloft a hippocampus, a mythical beast with the head and torso of a horse and the tail of a fish.
The famous diver-explorers Cousteau and Peter Throckmorton each separately tried to locate the lost city but it was only in 2001 that Helike was rediscovered, buried in an ancient lagoon near the village of Rizomylos and not in the Gulf of Corinth after all.
In Aphrodite’s Tears I’ve connected the Roman trader Sestius and his wrecked cargo to an island of my invention, Helios. Although Sestius was actually trading a century or so after Helike was submerged, I’ve rewritten history – as purveyors of fiction are often wont to do! In my story, Sestius’s business was destroyed by a massive tidal wave following an earthquake, his ships stranded in the harbour, lost beneath the waves until our hero and heroine make their exciting discovery.
Because there was much seismic activity over the years in the Mediterranean, Helike was by no means the only city to be submerged by a tsunami but it is my favourite. Who can resist the legend of a vast, glittering-bronze statue still waiting to be discovered beneath the waves?
Hannah Fielding
January 2018
A LETTER FROM HANNAH
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Aphrodite’s Tears. I hope that Oriel’s and Damian’s wildly romantic story of rediscovered love and unforgettable passion kept you turning the pages long into the night.
If you did enjoy the story, I’d be eternally grateful if you would write a review. Getting feedback from readers is incredibly rewarding and also helps to persuade others to pick up one of my books for the first time.
For news of my next releases, please come and visit me at my website – www.hannahfielding.net or join me on Facebook or Twitter @fieldinghannah.
Best wishes,
Hannah
About the author:
Q AND A
WITH HANNAH FIELDING
A Greek Odyssey
What drew you to Greece as a setting for your new novel?
Greece is very special to me. I grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, at a time when it was a very cosmopolitan place. Many of my parents’ friends and my school friends were Greek. As Greece is a Mediterranean country, the sun, sea and warmth appeal greatly. So too, of course, does the mythology.
The ancient Greeks left such a rich inheritance of legends – stories full of wisdom, with a god or goddess for everything from love and war to wine-making. Add to that the many antiquities, each with its own tale to tell, and it’s easy to see the fascination for a storyteller such as myself. To this day, the culture and traditions of Greece are rich
and diverse, reflecting its location bridging East and West.
What I love most about Greece, though, is that it is such a romantic country. I bought my wedding dress there and my husband and I honeymooned on Rhodes and Santorini, where, like Oriel and Damian, we saw the most spectacular sunsets.
What Greek qualities do you most admire?
Joie de vivre: Nowhere is this more evident than in the traditional dances and songs performed by both men and women. They are filled with such passion and exuberance that it is impossible to watch without yearning to join in.
Hospitality: Whenever I travel to Greece, I am struck by the friendliness of the people. Many a time I have been welcomed warmly to a restaurant, taverna or shop and have ended up chatting for ages with the proprietor and, quite often, his or her family, too.
Sentimentality: Like Damian in Aphrodite’s Tears, the Greeks are a people who feel deeply and are not afraid to show it – they are wonderfully open, which is something I like very much.
Importance of family: The close-knit family is an important part of Greek culture. As you see in Aphrodite’s Tears, the Greeks can be fiercely loyal to their family members and feel a strong sense of duty to protect and support them, which I very much respect. I especially like their strong traditions when it comes to marriage (a man still asks a father for his daughter’s hand, which I find very romantic).
What aspect of Greek life did you most enjoy exploring in the book?
The mythology springs to mind – because I so enjoyed revisiting all the stories I’d been told as a child – but for this book I also really enjoyed learning about Greek cuisine.
Greek food is the perfect example of the traditional Mediterranean diet. It’s based around a variety of colourful and flavoursome foods that are high in nutrients and low in animal fats. Greek cuisine incorporates a host of fresh ingredients, among them garlic, onions, fennel, zucchini, grapes, apples, dates and figs, into a variety of local dishes, some of which can be traced back to ancient times.
The mezedes of which Oriel and Damian are very fond, and which appear often in my novel, are appetizers, served before or with the main dishes. They come in individual small plates with various dips such as tzatziki. My favourite of them all is dolmades, vine leaves stuffed with rice and vegetables, and spanakopitakia, small triangular filo pastries filled with spinach and feta. I have learned to make these myself using ingredients from my kitchen garden, and my guests always ask for more.
On Heroes and Heroines
What traits are inherent in your romantic heroes?
After a lifetime of romantic imaginings, I have no absolutely problem dreaming up all my heroes’ swoon-worthy qualities. A hero is handsome, usually with a rugged edge, and he takes care of his physique, which is strong (deep down, I think all women respond to strength). He is intelligent, hard-working and tenacious; he is confident and he has a good sense of himself. He is, of course, very sensual, virile and passionate.
But he is not perfect! How could the heroine, a flawed human as we all are, have a hope of building a future with a god? A hero may be arrogant, he may be secretive, he may be tormented. He may, like Damian in Aphrodite’s Tears, have a touch of machismo about him: strong masculine pride and a traditional mindset. Of course, when taken to the extreme, there can be a downside to this but for Damian, leader of Helios, it rather comes with the territory.
How important is a career to your heroines?
All of the heroines I write are career women. I believe it’s important for a heroine to be following her own course in life, reliant on her own talent and hard work, so that while she may fall in love with a man, she need never be dependent on him. Some traditionalism may be present in their relationship – for example, I believe the hero should be a gentleman, opening a door for the heroine or lending her his jacket on a cool evening – but they are both on an equal footing.
In Aphrodite’s Tears, Oriel faces a real challenge because, as an archaeologist in the 1970s, she is a woman in a man’s world. Although she is excellent at her job, Oriel feels she has to prove herself. Falling in love with her employer complicates matters, of course, but that doesn’t mean she will be anything less than the consummate professional and earn the respect that is rightfully hers.
Packing Up My Suitcase
How important is travel to your writing?
Absolutely essential!
Experiencing a new culture is a common theme in all my novels. I take a young woman out of the comfortable, safe (and perhaps a little staid) life she has always known and plunge her into a brand-new culture: one that is colourful, vibrant and appealing but also, by the nature of being foreign, somewhat alien and overwhelming at times. Emotions run high as this new environment challenges the heroine to her very core. Who is she? Where does she belong: in the new world or her former one? Where will she choose to live – in what cultural landscape? Most importantly, what kind of man will she fall for: one from her past or one from this heady new place?
The journey that my heroines take is one with which I identify strongly. I grew up in Egypt and because the government put my family under a sequestration order, we were not able to travel for many years. As a child that didn’t concern me too much – Egypt has much to occupy the mind of a little girl with a big imagination. But by the time I was a young woman, with a degree in French literature from the University of Alexandria, I had a deep-seated need to see the world.
In my twenties, I spent several years travelling, predominantly in Europe, and then met my husband at a drinks party in London. Ever since, we have lived something of a cosmopolitan life, moving between different cultures. In the year I wrote Aphrodite’s Tears, for example, we divided our time between our homes in Ireland, England and France, travelled to Egypt to see family and also went to the Greek islands as part of my research for the novel.
For me, experiencing different cultures and their people is as essential a part of life as reading and writing. As Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta said: ‘Travelling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.’ Travel makes me the writer that I am. That is why all my novels are infused with a passion for experiencing new peoples and places – and also with a love of coming home to wherever it may be that you truly belong.
A Writer’s Life
Why do you write in the third person?
I have always written in this style – as the narrator, not speaking as the characters themselves. The third-person narrative is as old as time. Imagine ancestors telling stories at the fireside – fairy tales such as Cinderella or Aladdin – the storyteller always told the story in the third person. There is an intrinsic sense of comfort in hearing (or reading) a story in which the narrator is one step removed and not a part of the tale. As a little girl, I lived for story time and for me that meant listening to tales. My governess would challenge me to come up with my own stories, and I did. So my first steps into storytelling were in the third person and as a result, when I write now, it feels right and natural to tell a story this way.
The third-person narrative allows me occasionally to move into the hero’s point of view as well. It’s important to me that he should have a voice, a perspective on the love story – and it helps the reader to see the heroine from another angle. It also allows me to follow the hero to different locations and focus on his interaction with characters other than the heroine, enabling me to paint the world of my romantic protagonists as vividly as possible for the reader.
From where do you draw inspiration for your characters?
My characters are products of my vivid imagination but they are shaped by an essential – although covert – pursuit: people-watching.
I think all writers are observers of life. Truthfully, few are happier than when ensconced in a café with a favourite drink and a notebook, quietly watching the world around them. There, in a place where people come and go, the writer can find a new voice, type of behaviour, motive or look for a character. They can think up a new plo
t direction or twist, or perhaps discover a means by which to navigate around or obliterate a stumbling block. Writing is a solitary pursuit but people-watching offers solace as well as inspiration.
The beauty of people-watching is that, over time, you build up a great understanding of human behaviour and you have an ever-growing resource from which to draw as you write. Films, books, plays, photographs and painted portraits are wonderful sources of inspiration but you want the characters in your story to feel real, and to achieve that you need to shape them with first-hand knowledge of real people.
My aim is always to write tangible characters that make the central love story believable; characters who make you feel, as you’re reading, that you too could meet a man like Damian and even become mistress of an island like Helios. I think it is that ability to believe in romance that makes reading romance novels such a compelling pleasure – it is not merely an escape but a restoration of hope.
Find out more at www.hannahfielding.net
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hannah Fielding is an award-winning romance author, who grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, the granddaughter of Esther Fanous, a revolutionary feminist and writer in Egypt during the early 1900s. After graduating she developed a passion for travel, living in Switzerland, France and England. After marrying her English husband, she settled in Kent and subsequently had little time for writing while bringing up two children, looking after dogs and horses, and running her own business renovating rundown cottages. Hannah now divides her time between her homes in England and the South of France.
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