My Brother Michael

by Mary Stewart

  The prostrate man’s head came painfully back. The red dust was thick in the black curls. The broad cruel face was smeared red with it, too, an archaic mask carved grimacing in red sandstone. It was Angelos who lay there in the dust, breath sobbing through the grinning lips, trying with weaker and weaker movements to throw Simon off his body.

  I stood there, the gun drooping in my hand, the driving purpose snapped in me, staring like someone in a dream at the two bodies that heaved, breathing as one, on the ground at my feet.

  A muscle bunched in Simon’s shoulder. The Greek’s head moved back another fraction. The grin was a rictus, fixed, horrible. His body gave one last desperate heave to rid itself of its killer, threshing sideways across the dusty rock. But Simon’s grip didn’t shift. Even as the two bodies, still locked, slithered a yard or so across the dusty rock to fetch up hard against the cairn where Michael had been murdered, I saw Simon’s arm tense, and jerk tightly back, and heard Angelos’ breath tear out of his throat in a sort of whistling gasp that broke off short …

  I knew then that Simon didn’t need me or the gun. I turned aside and sat down on the boulder. I leaned back very wearily against the hot rock and shut my eyes.

  After a while there was silence.

  Angelos lay still, sprawled face downward against the little cairn. Simon got very slowly to his feet. He stood for a moment looking down. His face was filthy with dust and blood, and lined with fatigue. I could see how his muscles slumped with weariness as he stood there. He put up the back of his hand to wipe the blood from his face. His hands were bloody too.

  Then he turned away and for the first time looked at me. He made as if to speak, and then I saw his tongue come out to wet the dust-caked lips. I answered his look quickly.

  ‘I’m quite all right, Simon. He–he didn’t hurt me.’ My voice had come back, hoarse and not too steady. But there was nothing to say. I whispered: ‘There’s a rope on the mule. It’s down by the cave.’

  ‘Rope?’ His voice wasn’t his own either. He was coming slowly towards me. ‘What for?’

  ‘Him, of course. If he came round—’

  ‘My dear Camilla,’ said Simon. And then, as he saw the look in my face, in a kind of anger: ‘What else did you expect me to do?’

  ‘I don’t know. Of course you had to kill him. It’s just – of course you did.’

  His mouth twisted. It wasn’t quite a smile, but nothing about him seemed, just at the moment, to be like himself. It was a stranger who stood in front of me in the blazing sunlight, with a stranger’s voice, and something gone from his face that I remembered there. He stood there in silence, looking down at his hands. I still remember the blood on them.

  The nausea had gone, and the world steadied. I said quickly, almost desperately, out of a rush of shame: ‘Simon. Forgive me. I – I guess I can’t think straight yet. Of course you had to. It was only … coming so close to it. But you were right. There comes a time when one has to … accept … things like this. It was damnable of me.’

  He did smile then, a trace of genuine amusement showing through the weariness ‘Not really. But – just exactly what were you planning to do with that?’

  ‘With what?’ Following his look, I stared stupidly down at the gun in my hand.

  He leaned forward and took it from me gently. The blood-stained fingers avoided mine. They were shaking a little. He laid the gun carefully to one side. ‘I think perhaps it’s safer there.’

  Silence. He stood over me, looking down still with that stranger’s look.

  ‘Camilla.’

  I met it then.

  ‘If you hadn’t got rid of that thing,’ he said, ‘I should be dead.’

  ‘And so should I. But you came.’

  ‘My dear, of course. But if he’d got to that gun …’ A tiny pause, so slight it didn’t seem that what he said could be important. ‘Would you have shot him, Camilla?’

  Quite suddenly, I was shaking uncontrollably. I said, with a sort of violence: ‘Yes. Yes, I would. I was just going to, but then you … you killed him yourself …’

  I began to cry then, helplessly I reached out blindly with both hands, and took his between them, blood and all.

  He was sitting beside me on the boulder, with his arm round me. I don’t remember what he said: I think part of the time he was swearing under his breath, and this seemed so unlike him that I had to fight harder to control the little spurts of laughter that shook me through the sobbing.

  I managed to say: ‘I’m sorry. I’m all right. I’m not hysterical. It’s–it’s reaction or something.’

  He said with violence, the more shocking because it was the first time I had heard it from him: ‘I’ll not forgive myself in a hurry for dragging you into this, by God! If I’d had any idea—’

  ‘You didn’t drag me in. I asked to be in, so I had to take what came, didn’t I? It wasn’t your fault it turned out as it did. A man does what he has to do, and since you did feel like that about Michael after all, you did it. That’s all.’

  ‘About Michael?’

  ‘Yes. You said the tragedy was over, but of course once you knew Angelos was still alive—’

  ‘My dear girl,’ said Simon, ‘you didn’t imagine that I really killed him for Mick, did you?’

  I looked up at him rather numbly. ‘No? But you told Angelos—’

  ‘I was talking the language he’d understand. This is still Orestes’ country, after all.’ He looked down at the scuffled dust between his feet. ‘Oh, I admit it was partly Mick – once I found myself here, and facing him. I felt murderous enough about him when I knew he was still alive, even before Dimitrios told me the rest.’

  ‘Dimitrios? Of course. He told you?’

  ‘He was persuaded to, quite quickly. Niko turned up and helped me.’ A pause. ‘He told me what the two of them had done to Nigel.’

  ‘Then you know …’ The breath I drew was three parts relief. I remembered that look in Simon’s eyes, and the smooth single-mindedness with which he had killed Angelos. I shivered a little. ‘I see.’

  ‘And then,’ he said, ‘there was you.’

  I said nothing. My eyes were on two – no, three specks in the bright air, circling slowly, high above the corrie. Simon sat beside me without moving, looking at the trampled dust. He looked all at once unutterably weary. If it hadn’t been for the evidence sprawled across the stones one might almost have thought that he, not Angelos, had been beaten. Any man’s death diminishes me … I thought of Nigel, tumbled grotesquely behind the pile of dirt, and understood.

  The silence drew out. Away somewhere on the mountain I thought I heard something, the clatter of stones, a breathless call. Simon didn’t move. I said: ‘Tell me about Angelos. How did he get into it? Why did he wait till now to come back?’

  ‘He’s been before. We were right in our guesses about the search for the gold – the lights and voices, and Dimitrios’ questions – but we were wrong about the name of the seeker. It wasn’t Dimitrios himself. He knew nothing about the cache originally. When Angelos left Greece for Yugoslavia at the end of 1944, he intended to come back as soon as he could. But he committed murder – political murder this time – in his adopted country, and was put away for “life”. He was released two years ago, and came back secretly to look up his cousin. He let him into the secret, since he had to have somewhere to hide, and an agent to help him. They looked for the stuff – just as we guessed – but failed to find it. Dimitrios did his best to pump Stephanos, and the two of them must have searched desperately over the earthquake area at intervals through the spring and summer, then they gave up for the time being, and Angelos went back to live in Italy. I imagine he intended to come back again in the spring of this year, as soon as the snows had melted, but by then I had written to Stephanos, and the rumours were going about that I was coming to Delphi. He decided to wait and let us show him the place. That’s all.’

  He glanced down at me. ‘And now what happened to you?’ Why on earth did y
ou come out of the cave? Surely he never found you in there, in sanctuary?’

  ‘No.’ I told him then all that had happened since he had left me to follow Dimitrios. I found that I could tell it all quite calmly now, with that queer detachment I had felt in the cave, as if it were a play; as if these things had happened, not to me, but in some story I had read. But I remember being glad of the feel of Simon’s arm round my shoulders, and of the heat of the sun.

  He listened in silence, and when I had finished he still didn’t speak for some minutes. Then he said: ‘I seem to have rather more to forgive myself for than just bringing you in on – that.’ For the first time his eyes went back to the cairn where the body lay. They were as I first remembered them, vivid and hard and cool. ‘Quite a score,’ he said. ‘Mick, Nigel, poor silly little Danielle. And then, of course, you … It would almost take an Orestes, wouldn’t it?’ He took in his breath. ‘No, I doubt if the Furies, the Kindly Ones, will haunt me for this day’s work, Camilla.’

  ‘No, I don’t think they will.’

  There was a shout from the gateway behind us. With a clatter of stones, Niko hurled himself into the corrie and raced down towards us.

  ‘Beautiful miss!’ he yelled. ‘Kyrie Simon! It’s all right! I’m here!’

  He slithered to a halt in front of us. His startled gaze took us both in – my torn and filthy dress, the bruises, my scraped wrists and hands, and Simon covered with blood and dust and the marks of battle. ‘Mother of God, then he was here? Angelos was here? He got away? He—’

  He stopped abruptly as he caught sight of the body lying against the cairn. He gulped, and flashed a look at Simon. He looked at me as if he were going to speak, but he just shut his mouth again, tightly, and then went – it seemed reluctantly – across to where Angelos lay. There was the sound of slower footsteps from the gateway of the corrie, and Stephanos came into sight. He paused there for a moment, just as Simon had done, then came deliberately down the ramp towards us. Simon got stiffly to his feet. The old man stopped at my elbow. His eyes, too, were on Angelos. Then he looked at Simon. He didn’t speak, but he nodded, slowly. Then he smiled. I think he would have spoken to me then, but Niko had straightened up and now came running back. A flood of Greek was poured out at Simon, who answered, and presently seemed to be telling his story. I caught the name Michael several times, and then the Englishman, and the French girl, and the word ‘speleos’, which I took to mean ‘a cave’. But I was suddenly too tired to pay any attention. I leaned back into a bar of shadow and waited, while the three of them talked across me. Presently, with a word from Simon, he and Stephanos left me and went towards the cave.

  Niko lingered for a moment. ‘You are not well, beautiful miss?’ he asked anxiously. ‘That one – that Bulgar – he hurt you?’

  To call anyone a Bulgarian is the worst term of abuse a Greek can think up; and they have quite a range. ‘Not really, Niko,’ I said. ‘I’m a bit shaken, that’s all.’ I smiled at him. ‘You should have been here.’

  ‘I wish I had been!’ Niko’s sidelong glance at the cairn was perhaps not as enthusiastic as his voice, but apparently it took more than murder really to dim his lights. He turned his look of dazzled admiration on me. ‘I should have dealt with him, me, and not on account of my grandfather’s cousin Panos, but for you, beautiful miss. Though Kyrie Simon,’ he added generously, ‘did very well, not?’

  ‘For an Englishman,’ I said deprecatingly.

  ‘Indeed, for an Englishman.’ He caught my look and grinned, unabashed. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘I help him with Dimitrios Dragoumis. I, Niko.’

  ‘He told me so. What did you do with him?’

  The black eyes opened wide. He looked shocked. ‘I could not tell you that. You are a lady, and – oh, I see.’ The devastating smile flashed out. ‘Afterwards, you mean? I take him down to the road, but not to Delphi, because I want to get back and help Kyrie Simon, you understand. There is a lorry, and I explain to the men, and they take him to Delphi to the police. The police will come. I shall go presently to meet them and guide them here. And so.’

  ‘And so.’ I said it very wearily. It seemed as good a period to the day as anything.

  Beyond my bar of shadow the sun seemed white-hot. Niko had on a shirt of vivid electric blue, patterned with scarlet lozenges. The effect was blinding. He seemed to shimmer at the edges.

  I heard him say cheerfully: ‘You are tired. You do not want to talk. And the other men will be needing me, not? I go.’

  As I shut my eyes and leaned back, I heard his crossing the corrie at his usual impetuous gallop.

  It seemed a long time before the three of them came out of the cave again into the sunlight.

  Niko came first, leading the mule. He seemed subdued now, and a little pale. He didn’t come over to me again, but swung himself on to the mule’s back, kicked it into reluctant motion, and, with a wave to me, clattered out of the corrie.

  Stephanos and Simon stood talking for a few minutes longer. Stephanos looked sombre. I saw him nod to something Simon said, then he gestured upwards towards the blazing arch of sky where those black specks still hung and circled. Then he turned and trudged slowly across to a patch of shade near the body. He sat down there, and settled himself, as if to wait, leaning forward with his head against the hands clasped on his staff. He shut his eyes. He looked suddenly very old – with that Homeric head and the shut eyes as old as time itself.

  It was a picture I was never to forget, that quiet tailpiece to tragedy. There was the blue arch of the brilliant sky; there the body that the Kindly Ones had hunted down and killed on the very spot where he himself had shed blood; there the old man, bearded like Zeus himself, nodding in the shade. At the head of the cliffs stood the black goats, staring.

  From somewhere, not too far distant now, came the little stave of music; the goat-herd’s pipe whose sound, drifting down through the light-well, had led me to the Apollo of the holy spring. At the sound the goats lifted their heads, and turning, moved off, black against the sky, an Attic frieze in slow procession.

  Simon’s shadow fell across me.

  ‘Niko’s gone to guide the police here. He wanted to escort you to Delphi, but I told him you wouldn’t be fit for the trek quite yet. You and I have something still to do, haven’t we?’

  I hardly heard the question. I said, apprehensively: ‘The police?’

  ‘Don’t worry. There’ll be no trouble for me. Apart from everything else, and God knows he’s done plenty, he was trying to kill you.’ He smiled. ‘And now, are you coming? Stephanos is asleep, by the looks of it, so he won’t wonder where we’ve gone.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him and Niko about the shrine?’

  ‘No. The question of what to do about the guns and gold is out of our hands now, thank heaven, but the other question’s our own to answer. Do you know the answer?’

  I looked at him inquiringly: perhaps a little doubtfully.

  Then he nodded, and I said, slowly: ‘I suppose so.’

  He smiled and put down a hand to me.

  We went into the cave in silence. Simon’s torch was almost dead, but it showed the way. It was not strong enough to probe too far into the shadows. He paused just inside the entrance, and I saw him step aside and stoop over something that lay near the pile of rubble where the boxes had been. He straightened up with one of Angelos’ crowbars in his hand. I didn’t look further, but followed the mercifully dimming light through the pillared vaults until the slab barred the way.

  The light paused on the old marks of tooling in the stone. ‘There,’ said Simon softly. ‘It should slide back easily enough. Even another three or four inches should block the entrance … I’ll leave this here for the moment.’

  He laid the crowbar down and we went through the cleft for the last time, and up the curving tunnel that led to the bright citadel.

  He had stood there without move or change for more than two thousand years: now, it seemed a miracle that in the last hour he had r
emained untouched, unaltered. The sun had slid further towards the west, and the light fell more slantingly through the leaves; that was all.

  We knelt at his feet and drank. I cupped hands under the spring and splashed the water over my face and neck, then held my wrists under the icy runnel. It stung on the bruises and the scraped flesh of my wrists, a sharp remedial stinging that seemed to signal my body’s return from whatever numb borderlands of shock I had been straying in. I sat back, flicking the cool drops off my hands.

  I noticed then that the mark had gone from the third finger of my left hand. There was no sign at all of the pale circle where Philip’s ring had been.

  I sat looking at my hands.

  Simon was leaning forward, putting something on the stone plinth at the statue’s feet. There was the gleam of gold.

  He caught my look and smiled, a little wryly. ‘Gold for Apollo. I asked him to bring Angelos back, and he did it, even though it was done in that damned two-edged Delphic way that one always forgets to bargain for. However, there it is. It was a vow. Remember?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘It comes to me that you made a vow, too, in this very shrine.’

  ‘So I did. I’ll have to share your coin, Simon. I’ve nothing here to give.’

  ‘Then we’ll share,’ he said. That was all; in that casual easy voice with no change in it; but I turned quickly to look up at him. The vivid grey eyes held mine for a moment, then I turned from him almost at random and picked up Nigel’s little water-pot. ‘We’ll leave this here too, shall we?’

  Something glinted, deep in the grass, down beside the edge of the stone plinth. I smoothed the long stems aside and picked it up. It was another gold coin.

  ‘Simon, look at this!’

  ‘What is it? A talent? Don’t tell me Apollo’s provided a ram in the thicket for—’ He stopped short as I held my hand out towards him.

  I said: ‘It’s a sovereign. That means Nigel did find the gold as well as the statue. He must have left this here.’

  ‘Must he?’

  ‘Well, who else—?’ Then I saw his face and stopped.