by Mary Stewart
‘Of course we can. It’s not far. Do you realise you’re just about under our cactus field?’ He talked on, holding me close, deliberately soothing. Warmth seemed to come out of him in waves. ‘I told you we’d just got back, James and I … we’d been to Teguise to watch some Sunday procession he wanted to see … and we heard the landslip. We knew you were here, of course – saw your car in the yard – but then I saw Mother over on the schooner, and the boat just rowing back to it, so I assumed you were there, too. And the ship was obviously OK, but …’ He paused for a moment. ‘Well … I noticed that the slip had opened up that crevice under the cactus – you saw the one? I wanted to see how safe it was, so I came down by the goat path. I … I happened to have brought a torch, so when I found a lava tunnel had been opened up, that someone seemed to have used some time back … Well, it looked solid enough, so I went in to have a look at it.’
‘But to come right down!’
He said quickly: ‘I heard something moving about, and I thought one of the goats might have wandered in and got caught.’
‘A goat? But Mike, you might have been trapped yourself! It could have been—’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t. Now we’d better get back up as quickly as we can, if you’re better?’
‘Yes, thanks. Sorry, I was just cold.’
‘Good grief, so you are, you’re frozen, and no wonder. You’d better have my jacket – here, hold the torch.’
He pushed it into my hand while he took off his jacket. ‘There, put that on. Bare feet, too? You poor kid, this lava rock’s damned sharp – yes, I thought so, your feet are bleeding.’
‘I don’t feel them. No, honestly I don’t, they’re too cold. Leave it, Mike, we’d better hurry. Some of the ash was slipping over there—’
But he had already kicked off his shoes, and was pulling his socks off. ‘Never mind that, put these on or you’ll tear your feet to pieces climbing out. My shoes are no good to you, but the socks’ll help. Here.’ He pushed them into my hands, and started putting his shoes back on. ‘I’ll take the torch now – good God!’ He had caught sight of what showed in the moving beam. ‘For pity’s sake, what’s that?’
‘It’s a statue,’ I said. ‘I saw it when the ash began to scale away.’
‘Good Lord, so it is.’ The beam seemed to focus and intensify as he approached the thing. He sounded pleased and mildly excited. ‘Do you suppose we’ve discovered something valuable? How in the world did anything like that get here?’
‘Maybe this was used as a storeroom. Or to hide things away during the war, or something.’ I was struggling to get the second sock on, brushing the damp, sharp grit from my foot. ‘That would mean it was valuable, I suppose.’
‘You wouldn’t store works of art in caverns on a volcanic island, one would think,’ he said. ‘Hm, very odd. What sort of stone, I wonder?’
‘Mike, watch it, I wouldn’t touch, that ash is falling all the time.’ I dragged the sock on, and stood up. ‘The thing’s falling to bits anyway. Let’s get out of here, shall we? Look, a piece fell off, we can take that with us and show anyone who’s interested, and they can jolly well come themselves and prod round in this horrible cave.’ I snatched up the fallen fragment of white. ‘This is it, I think it’s a finger—’
I stopped dead. The torchlight flicked from the wall to my face, and then down to my hand. I didn’t need the light to show me what I held. It was the small bone of a human finger.
I dropped it. In the same moment, as if the downward flick of white had been a hand on the plunger, the wall came down. This time it was a big fall. It came rushing down towards us in a swishing, choking avalanche. In the flying seconds before the torch was knocked from Mike’s hand and extinguished I saw the rest of the grey stone-like figure show momentarily, like a ghost against darkness. It was not one figure, but two. In the curve of that shielding arm some smaller body was huddled. I saw merely the double hump of two heads, one bent over the other, the curve of the protecting shoulder, the hand, grey and stony, ending in the delicate, brittle bones – then Mike had whirled with his back to the fall, and dragged me under him with my head pulled down against his chest, and his body arched over mine to keep off the falling ash. The torch went out.
It seemed ages before either of us dared to move. We huddled, clinging together, half buried, half choked by the clogging, shifting ash. Fortunately this was dampish, or we might have been choked in earnest; as it was, the stuff weighed heavily, shifting and pressing closer with every movement, scoring the skin and tearing like a sandstorm at the membranes of mouth and throat as one tried to breathe.
Crouching, my mouth and nose buried in Mike’s shirt just above his suddenly thumping heart, I heard, with infinite relief, his little choking sneeze, and felt the cautious movement of head and shoulder above me.
‘Perdita?’ A hoarse whisper right at my ear.
I licked my lips. ‘I’m all right. You?’
‘Still alive.’ He cleared his throat. ‘God, that’s better. It’s stopped, I’m pretty sure. Hold still a minute, love, till we see what’s what … I don’t want to start this lot moving again by trying to get out too quickly. It won’t be difficult, don’t worry.’
‘Can you see? Has it blocked the way out?’
‘No, it’s blocked the way you came up, as far as I can make out. Yes, I can see a little … I’m afraid the torch has gone, but there’s enough light to get out by … Can you get your hands over your mouth and eyes? I don’t want this stuff pouring in when I lift away from you.’
‘Yes.’ My hands had been spread against his chest, clinging there. I moved them cautiously in, cupping them against my face. The grit was horrible, and hurt, but I could breathe.
‘Right?’ His heart had slowed almost to normal now. His voice was comfortingly ordinary.
‘Right.’
‘Hang on then, I’ll try it out.’
It was not as easy as he had made out. We were fairly tightly entangled together inside our cocoon of ash, which had engulfed us to the shoulder-blades: or rather, it had engulfed Mike, who hung over me, his body covering mine as a bird covers its young. Slowly, and with great caution, he began to lift himself off me, pushing the weight of the ash back with his shoulders a little at a time, then waiting for the displaced ash to pour into the gap before he moved again. It was, I imagine, like pulling oneself out of a quicksand, with the added difficulty that he dared not make any sudden or strong movement for fear of starting another perilous slip, or of course of engulfing me. But at last he managed to shoe-horn himself free of the ash, then, kneeling, reached his arms round me from behind, and with infinite caution began to pull me out.
It was the same crushingly slow process. With every movement the ash shifted and poured into the gaps, gripping with its abrasive weight. But I came slowly free, to the waist, to the hips, to the knees – and then with a run that sent Mike staggering backwards, still holding me, so that the pair of us rolled together clear across the floor to collapse in a hard-breathing tangle against the outer wall.
The fact that neither of us made any move to free ourselves this time was – naturally – only because we were exhausted … And – naturally – when I turned back into his arms I put my own round him and pulled him to me tightly. His heart had started to thud again, and this time it showed no signs of slowing down. Naturally not …
He said, ‘We must be crazy.’ Then, ‘Are you warm enough now?’ And later, ‘You taste of salt and ashes. Lot’s wife or something.’
‘At least make it Eurydice.’
‘And still in the underworld, my poor darling.’ He let me go. ‘For goodness’ sake, we’d better get out of here! I don’t know what we were thinking about!’
‘No?’
‘Oh, well …’ he said, and gave me a hand up into the upper passageway.
At the top of the rough tunnel the sunlight waited beyond the crack in the cliff face. Mike put an arm round me and half lifted me through into the golden day.
For a minute or two I could only stand there, dazzled by the light, holding on to him and taking in great gulps of the clear beautiful air.
He shaded his eyes, looking down.
‘There’s Mother, look, just getting out of the boat. He’s beached it. She must have been half out of her mind. They’ll have been rowing along the foot of the cliff to see if they could see a sign of you.’
He let out a yell, and waved. Mrs Gresham looked up, and saw us above her on the cliff. Even at that distance, I thought I could detect a wild relief in her gestures as she waved back.
‘It’s a mercy she can’t see what you look like, she’d go straight into orbit,’ remarked Mike.
‘My lover,’ I said warmly. ‘Though come to think of it, I must look at least as awful as you, which is saying a lot.’
He laughed. ‘Making love in the dark has its points, wouldn’t you say? My poor darling, do those scratches hurt?’
‘Now you come to mention it, they’re stinging like mad. I feel as if I’d been through several beds of nettles.’
‘They’ll sting worse when you get under the shower. Let’s go and do that very thing, shall we? Look, Mother’s got your clothes, she’ll bring them up. I suppose I’ll have to let you have the shower first, but I warn you, if you take more than five minutes I shall come in.’
‘Make it six, I’ve got to wash my hair. Mike—’
‘Yes?’
‘I haven’t said thank you for … looking after me the way you did.’
‘Nonsense, you’d have got out all right by yourself.’
‘I – I might not have. I might have been stuck down there for ages, perhaps for ever. I could have been buried alive, just the same as—’
I stopped. The air rustled in some blue flowers close by my hand. A pair of goldfinches, bright as butterflies, flew wrangling sweetly into some grey shrub with yellow flowers.
Mike’s eyes met mine. They were sombre. Then he laughed. ‘Worse than death? Don’t relax for a minute, love, that’s still to come. But first, that shower. Six minutes, mind, and not one second longer.’
6
The sculptured dead.
KEATS: The Eve of St Agnes
‘But it could be, quite easily!’ Mrs Gresham was excited. ‘What you’ve found is a Guanche necropolis-cave … Perdita, don’t you remember reading about them? Yes—’ this to Mike – ‘the primitive Canary people, before the Spaniards came, they mummified their dead. I think it’s the only place it was ever done, apart from Egypt and Peru. They used to preserve the bodies with spices and various plants and the sap of the dragon tree, then they dried them in the sun, and wrapped them in goatskins and put them into caves. Since there aren’t any proper caves in Lanzarote, they’d have to use the holes in the lava.’ She looked from Michael to me. ‘What do you say?’
We were all in the patio. Mike and I had showered and tended our bruises and emerged in turn to meet Mrs Gresham’s transports of relief and James Blair’s solicitude, which latter included a command to stay and share the Sunday cold duck and salad; so we had duly relaxed with big tulip-glasses of sherry in the shade of the palms, while Mike and I told our stories.
‘What do you say?’
I shook my head. ‘They weren’t mummies. That wasn’t goatskin, it was like plaster or – or some kind of composition. I don’t understand—’
‘But the finger-bone? You’re sure it was a real finger-bone?’
‘Quite sure.’ I looked up from my glass to find Mr Blair’s eyes on me. As if he had spoken, I answered him. ‘But it looked like stone, and it felt like it, too. How could it have happened like that?’
‘Have you ever been to Pompeii?’
‘Why, yes, but—’
I saw Mike look across at him, sharply. ‘So that’s it? You think it’s possible?’
‘It’s all I can think of. Listen.’ He picked up a book, and glanced at me. ‘Mike gave me a quick sketch of your story while you were still in the shower, so I looked this out. It’s from the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 1863, and it’s an account of the excavations at Pompeii, and it tells you how they made the casts of those bodies you can see in the museum.’ He began to read: ‘“The ashes in which the bodies were buried must have fallen in a damp state, and hardened gradually by the lapse of time, and as the soft parts of the bodies decayed and shrank a hollow was formed between the bodies and the crust of soil. This formed the cavity into which the plaster was poured. In the bony parts, the space left void being very small, the coat of plaster is proportionately thin, and many portions of the extremities and crania are left exposed. So intimately did these ashes penetrate, and so thoroughly has the cast been taken that the texture of the under garments, drawers, and a sort of inner vest with sleeves is distinctly visible …”’ He looked up. ‘It goes on to say that the folds of the dresses were quite distinct and the bones of the feet protruding.’ He shut the book. ‘So if they were caught by the gas, and then the ashes buried them – well, compared with the two thousand years of the Pompeii corpses, ninety years is nothing.’
‘And the cement I’ve been pouring down the lava cracks had the same effect as the plaster at Pompeii?’
‘It seems so.’
There was a short silence. ‘Poor children,’ said Mrs Gresham, ‘they didn’t get far, that night. Yes, I’m with you now, James. Are you going to tell anyone?’
‘I shall have to, I think. I suppose they should have Christian burial, and then we have to see that the place is safe. The lower cave is almost certainly completely shut, and the fall that nearly caught Mike and Perdita must have sealed off the lower stair.’
‘When I think of it …’ My employer drew in her breath. ‘She might never have been able to drag herself out of that alone. Thank God you went down, Michael! Of all the marvellous chances! There you are, James, that’s how it happens – pure chance, luck, “denial of causality”—’
‘Denial of causality be damned,’ said James Blair crudely. ‘He told me he was going down the cliff to find Perdita, and where the hell was the torch? I said that Perdita was over in the ship, and what did he need a torch for in the middle of the afternoon? I won’t tell you exactly what he said to that because it was – well, abusive, but what it boiled down to was would I kindly shut up and stop wasting time and where the sweet so-and-so was the such-and-such torch, because he thought the old lava tunnel had opened up and he had a feeling—’
‘I always thought it must be a lava tunnel.’ Michael spoke smoothly, and only a little more loudly than usual. ‘Most interesting, geologically speaking. If you’ve never seen lava stalactites, James, you should go down before we close it up.’
‘What’s a lava tunnel?’ said I.
James Blair looked from Michael to me, and back to Michael. Then he cleared his throat. ‘Very well. I should hate it to be said of me that I couldn’t take direction. A lava tunnel, Perdita, is a natural hollow in a flow of molten lava. The surface crust of the lava cools by its contact with the air, and the under-layer on contact with the earth, and these layers insulate the core, so that it stays molten and goes on flowing after the outer crusts have stopped. When the supply of lava eventually ceases, the molten core empties itself – in this case into the sea – leaving a kind of hollow tunnel. That side of the bay seems to have been one such flow. And then later, with cooling and weathering, the thin upper surface – the roof of your tunnel – might crack and leave fissures which could be filled by the next eruptions of gas and ashes. Did you see the Cueva De Los Verdes, Cora?’
‘Yes. Just a hole in the lava field.’
‘That was the roof of a lava tunnel which had fallen in. This might eventually do the same. If the farm records went back far enough we’d probably find that the cave and the tunnel became a “smugglers’ way”, and the steps and landing stage were made. Or perhaps there never was a record, and Miguel had found the way by chance, as Perdita did, from the sea. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Dol
ores’ father to look for them there.’
‘“The wind from the north still blows, and it is all she shall inherit,”’ said Mrs Gresham. ‘Poor girl. Would it be quick?’
He hesitated. ‘I think we can assume it. The people in Pompeii weren’t buried alive, they were killed by the gases, and from the description, that might be what happened here. The concentration of ashes and gas must vary with the lie of the land, so the farm might tend to get off lightly while the main wind overleaped it and dropped the stuff along the headland. You might say it was the wind from the north that killed our young lovers. Oh, yes, it would be quick. A few moments of intense fear, that would be all. Merciful enough.’
I thought to myself: Not even that. I know how she felt, and she wasn’t afraid. She hadn’t got further than hearing the beating of his heart, so close, and yet suddenly so sure. Never even alone together before, not properly, and, yet so sure, so sure, that it didn’t matter whether ‘for ever’ meant life’s long slow span, or only the next few quiet seconds …
Mrs Gresham mistook my silence. She said quickly; ‘Of course we may all be quite wrong – this is probably no such thing as we’re thinking. We’re obsessed with James’ story, so we’ve rather jumped to conclusions. It wasn’t the lovers at all.’
‘Oh, yes, it was,’ I said.
‘What is it, darling?’ asked Michael gently. I saw his mother glance quickly at him, but she said nothing.
‘This.’ I unclasped my hand and held it out to him. ‘I found it in your jacket pocket, when I was cleaning the ash out. It must have fallen in when we were buried there.’
‘A chain?’ He picked it off my palm. It was something like a necklace, only shorter, of metal, corroded and blackened. But you could see from the scratches that it was silver, and that each bead had been made like a leaf of the cochineal pear.
Envoi
And they are gone.
KEATS: The Eve of St Agnes
