‘I suppose I can,’ the yardmaster murmured. ‘I suppose I can. I’d want to talk over certain items, like ballasting when there’s this weight in the bows. And I’ll want a model made to demonstrate these crazy fore-and-aft sails. But… yes, we can surely talk further.’
‘Good. We’re bound to reach agreement.’
‘Oh, wonderful!’ Erissa hugged Reid’s waist.
He thought: Less wonderful than I’d hoped for. It’ll keep me busy, what times you don’t, my beautiful; and that’s essential, or I’ll go to pieces brooding. It should win me more authority, more freedom, than I’ve got – maybe enough that I can persuade the Minos to save … whatever is possible. And mainly, it’s one screaming anachronism for me to be aboard, so that maybe I’ll be noticed and rescued by the time travelers who’ll maybe come here to watch doomsday.
For us to be aboard, Erissa?
Christmas approached.
Reid could hardly think of the solstice festival under its right name. Now Britomartis the Maiden gave birth to Asterion, who would die and be resurrected in spring, reign with his consort Rhea over summer and harvest, and fade away at last before Grandmother Dictynna. Atlantis had less need of mid-winter rejoicing than they did in the gloomy northlands, Reid remembered. But its people lived close to their gods. They honored the day by processions, music, dancing – in the streets, after the maidens had danced with a bull in the town arena – exchange of gifts and good wishes, finally feasts that often turned into orgies. For a month beforehand, they bustled and glowed with readymaking.
Erissa took Reid around as much as her duties and his shipyard work allowed. The purpose was to sound out prospective crewmen; but in this season especially, he and she were apt to be welcomed with wine, an invitation to dinner, and conversation afterward until all hours. The motive wasn’t only that her presence was considered to bring luck to a house and he was a celebrity – would have become more of one were he less withdrawn, less inclined to sad reveries. The Atlanteans were glad of any new face, any fresh word; their whole spirit was turned outward.
Often he couldn’t help sharing their gaiety and Erissa’s. Something might yet be done to rescue them, he would think. The construction project was going well, and fascinating in its own right. So if several rhytons had eased him, and Erissa sat gazing at him with lamplight soft upon her, and an old skipper had just finished some tremendous yarn about a voyage to Colchis, the Tin Islands, the Amber Sea … once, by God, storm-driven to what had to be America, and a three-year job of building a new vessel after the Painted Men were persuaded to help, and a long haul home across the River Ocean … he would loosen up and tell them, from his country, what he guessed they could most easily understand.
Afterward, walking to their boat, the links they bore guttering in the night and now lifting her out of shadow, now casting her back: he wasn’t sure if he himself understood any longer what he had been talking about.
The day after solstice dawned clear and quiet. In the town and the farmsteads they slept off their celebrations, on the isle their devotions. Reid, who had had little of either, woke early. Wandering down dew-soaked garden paths, he found Erissa waiting for him. ‘I hoped you would come.’ He could scarcely hear her. The lashes moved along her cheekbones. ‘This is … a free time … for everyone. I thought – I packed food – I thought we might—’
They rowed, not to the city but to a spot beyond which she indicated. Their route passed through the shadow of the volcano; but it too was still this day, and little silvery fish streaked the water. Having tied the boat, they hiked across a ridge, the narrowest on Atlantis, to the seacoast. She knew these hills as well as did any of the bulls they glimpsed, majestically dreaming near hay-filled racks in an otherwise empty huge landscape. A trail led them to a cove on the southern shore. Cliffs enclosed it, save where they opened on a blueness that sparkled to the horizon. Closer at hand the water was green and gold, so clear that you could see pebbles on the bottom yards from the sandy beach. Wavelets lapped very gently; here was no wind. The dark bluffs drank sunlight and gave it back.
Erissa spread a cloth and on it bread, cheese, apples, a flagon of wine and two cups. She wore a plain skirt and in this sheltered place had thrown off shoes and cloak alike. ‘How peaceful the world is.’ she said.
Reid gusted a sigh.
She considered him. ‘What do you mourn, Duncan? That you may never win home again? But—’ He saw the reddening; she grew quite busy laying out their picnic. ‘But you can find a new home. Can’t you?’
‘No,’ he said.
She gave him a stricken look. ‘Why, is there someone?’ And he realized he had never mentioned Pamela to her.
‘I haven’t told you,’ he blurted. ‘The Ariadne desired me not to. But I think – I know – I’m not here for nothing.’
‘Of course not,’ she breathed. ‘When you were brought that strangely from a land that magic’
He dared speak no further. He looked at her and she at him.
He thought: Oh, yes, explanations are cheap, and Pamela (unfair; I) would be glib with them. This girl is over-ready for a man, and here I come as a mysterious, therefore glamorous foreigner. And I. I’ve known her older self, and fell a ways in love, as far as I’ve sometimes fallen in the (my) past, which was not too far to climb back out and refind reasonable contentment with Pamela; but how can any woman stand against the girl she once was, or any man?
He thought: Suddenly I have a new goal. To spare her what that other Erissa endured.
He thought: Those eyes, those half parted lips. She wants me to kiss her, she expects I will. And she’s right. No more than that… today. I don’t dare more, nor dare say her the whole truth. Not yet. But the older Erissa told me that we will – but that’s in the future I must steer her from – but that’s thinking, and I think too much, I waste these few days in thinking.
He leaned toward her. A gull mewed overhead. Light streamed off its wings.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘Yes, your friends are doing fine,’ Diores said. ‘They send their regards.’
Reid tried not to glower at him. They sat alone in an offside room of the temple, to which the American had drawn the Athenian after the latter’s long private interview with Lydra. Diores’ smile continued bland; he lounged back at ease on the stone bench. ‘Just what are they doing?’ Reid asked.
‘Well, Uldin’s breaking horses and training men for his cavalry. Or aims to. It’s slow, scarcely begun, among other reasons because he’s got only the one saddle – hasn’t found a leather-worker who can make ’em right, he says. Oleg… hm… shipbuilding, like I hear tell you are. I’ll be mighty interested to see what you’ve started.’
‘I’m afraid that’s forbidden, ’Reid answered. ‘State secret.’
It wasn’t, but he meant to contact the governor and have the declaration made immediately. Why give the enemy a break? And Theseus was the enemy, who would pull down Erissa’s sunny cosmos unless somehow history could be amended.
No, not even that. Wouldn’t the legends and the archeology be the same, three or four thousand years hence, if Minoan Crete lived a little longer? Not much longer; the lifetime of a girl; was that unreasonable to ask of the gods?
‘Why are you here?’ he demanded. ‘And a picked crew, ’They were no ordinary sailors, he’d heard, but warriors of the royal household, who kept to themselves and scarcely spoke to the Atlanteans.
‘As to that last,’ Diores drawled, ‘you don’t get common seamen who’ll travel in winter. Too risky.’ As if to bear him out, wind hooted and rain plashed beyond the richly tapestried walls. ‘Oleg says he can build a year-round ship, but meanwhile we use what we’ve got, right?’
‘You haven’t told me what brought you.’
‘Can’t, either. Sorry, mate. I carry a confidential message. You’ll quite likely see me here a few times more. I will say this. Your oracle ordered Athens and Knossos should pull closer together. Fine. But how? What kind of alliance a
nd divvy-up? Why should the Minos want to raise us from vassalage? What trouble could the envy of others cause? That sort of question. It’s got to be explored; and statecraft don’t work when it’s put right out in public view; and seeing as how Theseus has a friend in the Ariadne, wouldn’t you agree she’s the logical person to begin talking with? Let’s say they’re feeling each other out.’
Diores snickered. ‘She’s not too long in the tooth for a man to feel,’ he went on. ‘About that, I hear you’re running around with a right tasty morsel yourself.’
Reid bridled. ‘Erissa’s a bull-dancer.’
‘Same’s your lady love of the same name used to be, hm? Makes me think there’s something special here somewhere. By the way, you haven’t asked me about her.’
Reid wondered: Was I afraid to? Aloud: ‘Well?’
‘She’s not doing badly either. Moped a lot at first, but lately – Remember Peneleos?’ Diores nudged Reid and winked. ‘He’s been giving her what she needs. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘No,’ Reid said faintly.
Old Erissa had been through many hands. It was the maiden whom he hoped to save.
‘No,’ Lydra said, ‘I will not tell you what passes between Theseus and me. You’re presumptuous to ask.’
‘But he’s part of the danger!’ Reid protested.
She looked down at him from her elevated throne. Behind her lean body and stern countenance, the Griffin Judge awaited the dead. ‘How do you know?’
‘B-b-by my foreknowledge.’
‘What then of the oracle commanding alliance?’ Her tone cracked like a blow across his ears. ‘Or did you lie about that?’
Lamps flickered in a cold space that besides they two held only shadows. But guards waited beyond the door. They were unarmed; no weapons might be brought to the sacred isle. However, four strong men could quickly make a prisoner of Duncan Reid.
‘Criminals go to the quarries on Crete,’ Lydra said. ‘They do not live long. Nor do they wish to.’
‘I did not – my lady, I – I asked for this audience before Diores leaves b-b-because I suspect him and his master—’
‘On what grounds? Aegeus rebelled but is now a dotard. Theseus slew his Cretan-raised cousins but then turned into a dutiful prince. He will become the same kind of king.’
‘I listened – to what they, the Achaeans, what they were saying—’
‘Oh, yes. They grumble, they bluster, no doubt a few of them plot, but to what end? Theseus can be expected to keep a rein on them, the more so if he may hope to win a higher place in the Thalassocracy for himself and his realm.’ Lydra stabbed a finger at Reid. ‘Are you trying to sow discord, outlander? Whom do you serve?’
He thought: I have to tell her the truth, whatever the risks. There’s no choice left.
‘My lady,’ he said slowly, ‘I never lied to you, but I did hold back certain matters. Please remember, I’m a complete stranger here. I had to find out what the situation is, the rights and wrongs, the ins and outs. Including whether you would believe the whole story. I don’t yet know that. But will you listen?’
She nodded.
‘The reason I can prophesy,’ he said, ‘is that I come from the future.’
‘The what?’ She frowned, trying to understand. The Keftiu language didn’t lend itself well to such a concept.
But she caught the idea faster than he had hoped. And apart from signing herself and kissing her talisman, she was curiously little shaken. He wondered if she, living in a world of myth and mystery, looked on this as only another miracle.
‘Yes,’ she murmured, ‘that explains a great deal.’
And later: ‘Knossos will indeed fall? The Thalassocracy will be less than a legend?’ She turned about and stared long at the portrait of the Judge. ‘Well,’ she said low, ‘all things are mortal.’
Reid went on, describing what he could of the basic problem. His chief omission was the fact that the two Erissas were identical. He feared the possible consequences to the girl. It seemed merely needful to be vague about the date from which the woman came. The name was not uncommon and Lydra was being given a monstrous lot else to think about. He also skipped the tradition that she, traitress to the Minos, would herself be betrayed. It looked too insulting, thus too dangerous.
‘What you tell me,’ she said, flat-voiced, ‘is that the gods decree Theseus shall overthrow the sea empire.’
‘No, my lady. The single thing I’m certain of is that the volcano will wipe out Atlantis within months, the Cretans will be conquered, and a story will tell how a Theseus killed a monster in Knossos. The facts need not hang together very closely. The tale could be quite false. I know already it’s wrong in several ways at least. No one Minotaur ever existed, half human and half brute, just a series of sacrificial bulls. The youths and maidens from Athens are not slain but well treated. Ariadne is not the king’s daughter. The Labyrinth is not a maze imprisoning the Minotaur, simply the chief palace of your priest-king, the House of the Double Ax. I could go on. But you must understand my meaning. Why should the Thalassocracy not survive the foundering of this island, perhaps for many generations?’
‘If its holy of holies is destroyed by divine will, then the wrath of the gods is upon the people of the Minos,’ Lydra said quietly.
‘They could lose heart on that account,’ Reid agreed. ‘But I swear, my lady, the causes will be as natural as … as a rock happening to fall on a man’s head.’
‘Is that man not fated to die by that rock?’
Reid warned himself: You’re dealing with an alien world-view. Don’t stop to argue.
He said, ‘We can’t be sure what’s ordained for Crete. Aster-ion wills men to strive bravely to the end. Evacuating your folk to safety can be our way of striving.’
Lydra sat still; she might have been carved from the same marble as her throne, and in the dull uneasy light she had scarcely more color.
‘The mainlanders could use the chance to seize your cities,’ Reid plodded on. ‘If they do, they might regret it when the destruction comes. But we ought to plan against that event too. Everything, both the old story I read and what I have seen and heard in this age, everything makes me doubt Theseus.’ He paused. ‘And that’s why I asked what message he has sent you, my lady.’
Lydra remained moveless, expressionless. Reid had started wondering if something was wrong with her when she said: ‘I’m sworn to secrecy. The Ariadne cannot violate her oath. However, you may have guessed that he is … interested in the idea of closer relationships with the Labyrinth … and would naturally see if I might be persuaded to help.’
‘Diores told me that much, my lady. Uh, uh, could you keep him in play? Prolong negotiations, immobilize him till the crisis is past?’
‘You have been heard, Duncan. But the Ariadne must decide. I will not receive you soon again.’
And suddenly, strangely, Lydra’s shoulders bowed. She passed a hand across her eyes and whispered, ‘It is no easy thing being the Ariadne. I thought … I believed, when the vision came to me in that hallowed place … I believed priestesshood would be unending happiness and surely the high priestess lived in the eternal radiance of Asterion. Instead – endless rites, endlessly the same – drab squabbles and intrigues – whisker-chinned crones who abide and abide, while the maidens come and serve and go home to be brides—’ She straightened. ‘Enough. You are dismissed. Speak no word of what has passed between us.’
They sought their cove on another day. ‘Let’s swim,’ Erissa said and was unclad and in the water before he could answer. Her hair floated black on its clarity, her limbs white below. ‘Nyah, afraid of cold?’ she shouted, and splashed at him.
What the hell, he decided, and joined her. The water was in truth chilly. He churned it to keep warm. Erissa dove, grabbed his ankle and pulled him under. It ended in a laughing, gasping wrestling match.
When they went ashore the breeze made them shiver again. ‘I know a cure for this,’ Erissa said, and came into his
embrace. They lay down on a blanket. Presently she grinned. ‘You’ve stronger medicine in mind, haven’t you?’
‘I, I can’t help it. O gods, but you’re beautiful!’
She said, gravely and trustingly, ‘You can have me whenever you want, Duncan.’
He thought: I’m forty and she’s seventeen. I’m American and she’s Minoan. I’m of the Atomic Age and she’s of the Bronze Age, I’m married, I have children, and she’s a virgin. I’m an old idiot and she’s the springtime that never was in my life before she came.
‘That wouldn’t be good for you, would it?’ he managed to ask.
‘What better?’ She pressed against him.
‘No, hold off, seriously, you’d be in trouble, wouldn’t you?’
‘Well – I am half consecrated while I’m here as a dancer— But I don’t care. I don’t care!’
‘I do. I must. We’d better put our clothes on.’
He thought: We have to survive. Until what? Until we know if her country will. Afterward – if it does, will I stay here? If it doesn’t, will I bring her home with me? Can I do either? May I?
His tunic and her skirt resumed, they sat back down. She snuggled. Her fingers ruffled his beard. ‘You’re always sorrowful, down underneath, aren’t you?’ she asked.
‘I have some knowledge of what is to be,’ he replied, though he dared not get specific, ‘and it does hurt.’
‘Poor darling god! I do think you’re a god, even if you won’t admit it. Must you live every unhappiness twice? Why not every happiness, then? Look, the sky’s blue and the water’s green and the sand’s soaked full of sunshine and here’s a beaker of wine … no, let me hold it to your lips. I want your arm around my waist and your other hand right here—’
A good many compromises had had to be made as work progressed on the ship, some with Keftiu prejudices and requirements, some with the limitations of local technology, some with aspects of hydrodynamics that Reid discovered he had not known about. The end result was smaller, less handy, and less conspicuously extratemporal than he had hoped.
The Dancer from Atlantis Page 13
