Lament for Leto (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  Determined to have what she called her séance, Hero collected the coffee-cups after dinner that night and handed each in turn to Julian. At this point Dick, Henry, and Edmund left the saloon to go on deck, Henry to smoke a cigar, Edmund to gamble with the younger Greek while the older Greek was at the helm and vice versa when the crew changed over, Dick to enjoy the peace of the luminous night, its phosphorescence and its myriad brilliant stars.

  He was about to leave the rail and go below when Hero joined him. She stood beside him in silence for a few minutes and then said very quietly,

  “Papa Ronald, is it your wish that I should marry Simon?”

  “Really, my dear, I’ve never thought about it,” he replied, “but, since you ask me, I think you are too much alike and too much of an age. In any case—” he left the sentence significantly unfinished.

  “I think I would rather marry Julian if he were not so poor. Do you think he will write novels and make as much money as Mrs. Cowie?” Hero went on.

  “I have not the faintest idea how much money Mrs. Cowie makes,” said Dick, relieved by the change of subject.

  “She is very wealthy. I think that is why Mr. Owen wants to marry her.”

  “Oh, come, my dear! That is not a kind thing to say. Besides, Henry must have plenty of money. Look at that ring he has given her.”

  “The truth is often not kind. Don’t you want to know the fate that was in your coffee cup?”

  “You may tell me, if you wish, but you know I place no confidence in these childish predictions.”

  “Your cup said you will be married in five months’ time.”

  “Well, perhaps I had hoped to be, but there is no chance of it now.”

  “You mean you want to marry Mrs. Cowie?”

  “I had thought of it, of course, but I did not think you knew. In any case, I have completely changed my mind.”

  “There was death in one of the cups.”

  “Oh, now, really, Hero! You must not talk such nonsense!”

  “Julian told me. I asked him about it while Roger was doing the washing up, but he would not tell me who was going to die soon.”

  “Roger? He does not often offer his help—or was he pressed into service?”

  “No, no, like a good, willing boy, he offered. How brilliant the stars are! Look at that constellation! Is it Orion, do you think?”

  “I don’t know one star from another, my dear,” said Ronald Dick.

  “No? One thing I tell you about stars. Those in Mrs. Cowie’s ring, she pay nearly all for them herself.”

  “Oh, now, really, my dear! Anyway, what if she did?”

  “Do you believe in reincarnation, Papa Ronald?” asked Hero, after a long silence.

  “I have never thought about it, my dear.”

  “You don’t know one constellation from another and you did not know about Mrs. Cowie’s ring which Mr. Owen could not afford, and you have never thought about reincarnation? Mrs. Cowie believes in it. She was telling Mr. Owen this morning that she thinks she is the reincarnation of Sappho.”

  “Most unlikely, my dear.”

  Hero giggled.

  “You are unsympathetic,” she said. “Now you talk to me and tell me some good ideas you have.”

  “I have an idea—and it is not a comforting one—that we ought not to have avoided calling at Naxos. Mrs. Cowie seems most disappointed that I decided to leave it out.”

  “But we cannot go everywhere.”

  “She seems to be deeply impressed by the story of Ariadne, particularly her desertion on Naxos by Theseus. I received the impression that she connects it with some incident in her own life, but, of course, she is a romantic.”

  “She is like her silly, dreadful novels,” said Hero, giggling again. “Papa Ronald, do you mind it very much that she is going to marry Mr. Owen?”

  “Oh, no, not at all, my dear. My wish, of course, is for her happiness. Besides, I am not at all sure that she would have been the right wife for me. I had given up all thought of it, I assure you.”

  “She will not find life easy with those two boys.”

  “Oh, they’re good fellows. They wouldn’t make things difficult.”

  “Not Edmund, perhaps. I think Edmund has his own friends and, anyway, he is almost a man. But I am not so sure about Roger. He has a strange, secretive nature, I think, and also I believe he could be cruel.”

  “To another boy, perhaps, but he would have no way of being cruel to a grown woman, especially a woman of the world such as Chloe Cowie.”

  For some reason obscure to herself, Dame Beatrice felt that at Santorin the pilgrimage had its true beginning, although even on this startling volcanic island the party were together for only some of the time.

  Donkeys were chartered for the women and Roger, mules for Dick, Henry Owen, Edmund, and Simonides, and on these much-enduring animals the company mounted broad white steps cut in the multi-coloured cliff and picked their way up the zig-zag ascent among the donkey-droppings until they reached the white-walled village at the top of the hill.

  “Eight hundred steps,” said Roger, when they had alighted. “But, look! We could have walked up—easily!” On the further side of the island a gentle slope led downwards to the sea.

  “Yes, but we could not bring the yacht to anchor except in the gulf,” said his father. “Well, now that we’re here, what is there to do? We seem to have passed the local junkyards on our way up.” He was referring to the devastation wrought by a fairly recent earthquake.

  “I think our object, when we have admired the view, is to proceed to the ancient city, from which this one takes its name. We go by way of the monastery. From the port I believe we can take a taxi, but I’m afraid it means a rather tiring trek after that to reach the excavations,” said Ronald Dick.

  “I do not wish to see the excavations,” said Simonides. “I am told that to take a boat to the Burnt Islands is the best thing to do from here. There are volcanic craters, still active, and much that is strange and interesting. Besides, one gets a better view of Santorin from the sea than from up here. It is a most impressive island, but one needs to see it in perspective.”

  “Very well,” said Dick. “If you will organise your expedition, I will accept volunteers for mine. Which do you prefer, Dame Beatrice? And you, Mrs. Cowie? Henry? Mary?”

  The company divided up unequally. Except for Dame Beatrice, Hero, and, strangely, Roger, everybody opted for the boat-trip, and it was agreed that the next meeting should be on board the yacht when all the sight-seeing was over.

  The climb to ancient Thera, although it was taken on mule-back from the monastery terrace, was both long and arduous, and Dame Beatrice reflected that nothing but loyalty to the leader of the expedition had caused her to undertake it. Hero complained openly and Dick remained enduring and apologetic. Apart from the uncomfortable ride, with the mules stumbling at times over deep ruts and potholes in the primitive roadway, the wind was exceptionally strong and blew furiously all the way from the monastery up to the excavated site.

  Dame Beatrice loitered behind when the others went exploring. She sat down and had just made up her mind that she ought to move across to the temple of Apollo Karneios, protector of the island flocks, when she was joined by Roger, who approached her by leaping like a goat from step to step of the semi-circular auditorium, for she had chosen to seat herself in the excavated theatre.

  “I say,” he said, “pretty lousy here, isn’t it? Wish I’d gone with the others to see the volcano things on those little islands.”

  “Well, you had to make your choice,” said Dame Beatrice sympathetically, “and I thought at the time that you might have enjoyed the sea-trip better.”

  “So did I, but Edmund wouldn’t let me go with them.”

  “Really? Why was that?”

  “I don’t know.” He kicked the stone seating, a sign not of resentment, Dame Beatrice felt, but because he was keeping something to himself. He added, after a pause, “Still, I always do wha
t he says.”

  “I was thinking of walking over to the temple. Do you care to accompany me?” Dame Beatrice enquired.

  “No jolly fear! Oh, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve already been there. I say, you know what a crank Mr. Dick is?”

  “I have never regarded him in that light.”

  “Oh, haven’t you? Well, he is! Do you know what Suffolk was telling me last night? He said that there were a lot of inscriptions on some walls here in memory of boys who used to dance at the festival time.”

  “A pleasant custom, surely?”

  “Yes, but Suffolk said that Mr. Dick might want Simon and Edmund and me to do the same thing—in honour of the god, you know. I expect he was pulling my leg, but, anyway, that’s why Edmund wouldn’t come.”

  “It is not the right time of year for that particular festival. The youths you speak of danced to commemorate the grape harvest which, in this island, was held to be the gift of the god. I think you will be perfectly safe.”

  The temple was built on rock and from the markings scratched on its threshold it was clear that it had indeed been a place of pilgrimage, but the worshippers appeared to have been of one mind in their dedicatory epigraphs.

  “I should think they would scratch a picture of their feet if they had to climb up here,” said Roger, when Dame Beatrice pointed out the pious markings. “I should think they jolly well felt the god ought to do them a bit of good after they’d sweated like that, wouldn’t you? I should think their feet were killing them, and a sacrifice has to be killed.”

  “Well, have you had a good day?” said Henry Owen to Dame Beatrice when the whole party were together again on the yacht and dinner was still a couple of hours away.

  “If that is not a rhetorical question,” she replied, “I will say that, having visited the ancient sites on Santorin once, I feel that once is enough.”

  “Of course, the earthquake of fourteen or fifteen years ago did a lot of damage. You should have come with us. We had a great time, although if you’ve seen Solfatara you don’t really want to bother much about the Burnt Isles, I suppose. Chloe didn’t get particularly excited about them. She seems a bit off colour, as a matter of fact. I don’t think the ride up the cliff steps this morning did her an awful lot of good. She seems to have developed a fit of nerves for some reason. She gets giddy if she looks down from a height, I believe, and she’s very highly strung, or so she says. She thought that climb this morning was dangerous. I thought, myself, that it was merely very uncomfortable. How did you regard it?”

  “Philosophically.”

  “Ah, yes, I suppose that’s the best way to look at things. By the way, I hope Roger behaved himself this afternoon.”

  “Had you any doubts about it?”

  “Well, you know how it is with kids. He’s only fourteen and boys of that age are apt to get into mischief when they’re bored.”

  “He did not appear to be bored so much as apprehensive.”

  “Apprehensive? Roger?”

  “He feared he might be asked to dance naked in front of the temple of Apollo, and, of course, he is about the right age and is certainly handsome enough,” said Dame Beatrice solemnly. Before Henry could challenge the second of these statements Chloe Cowie came up to where they were standing at the rail.

  “Oh,” she said, “are you telling Dame Beatrice about my dreadful experience?”

  “What dreadful experience, my dear?”

  “Oh, really, Henry! When I was getting into the little boat and somebody lurched against me and deliberately tried to push me into the water!”

  “Oh, that! I’d forgotten all about it. In any case, it was the merest accident.”

  “You only say that because you didn’t see it happen.”

  “No, I went first, to give you a hand if you needed to be helped into the boat. Anyway, everything was all right, because the boatman steadied you.”

  “Yes, but he might not have got to me in time, and there was a shark in the water! I saw it!”

  “Now, now, steady on! Even if you had gone in, you’d only have got a wetting and the sea is very warm at this time of year. We’d soon have fished you out with the boathook.” He laughed, throwing back his leonine head, a Viking of a man and aware of the fact.

  “You’re silly and heartless. What about the shark?” cried Chloe. “That wretched girl saw it and deliberately thrust me towards it.”

  “Oh, those which come as far inshore as that are females and are perfectly harmless. As harmless as Hero, whom you accuse of trying to push you in. The thing’s absurd.”

  “Well, if that’s your attitude . . .!” Chloe looked at him angrily, jerked her chin in the air, and walked away. Henry gave a short, vexed laugh.

  “See what I mean about her nerves and all that?” he said. “Of course she wasn’t pushed, and of course there wasn’t a shark.”

  “I think there is no doubt she had a fright,” said Dame Beatrice. “Is the yacht going to remain here until morning, do you suppose?”

  “Until after lunch tomorrow, so Dick says. My own opinion is that we shall be lucky to get away then. You know what he is. Fanatical where his pet subject is concerned. They are digging out a Mycenaean palace which must have been buried at some time in ash and lava, as Pompeii and Herculaneum were, and he wants to go and take a look at what they’re doing. Personally, I couldn’t care less, and we’ve plenty in front of us without wasting another day here. He doesn’t consider my point of view. After all, I’ve only come on this trip to add to my collection, and I’ve seen nothing worthwhile here. Why couldn’t we have stopped off at Naxos and Amorgos? Here, I’ll tell you what! Suppose we persuade him to stay ashore tonight so that he can have all day tomorrow to look at this dig? Then the rest of us could go to Amorgos—it isn’t all that far—and I could look for specimens of Muscari. I know it grows there. Let’s assemble the party in the saloon and see if Dick’s willing to go it alone tomorrow. Then we could cast off tonight, spend the day on Amorgos, and pick him up in the evening.”

  Dick made no objection to the plan. In fact, he welcomed it, remarking that it would give the younger members of the party something to do. The father and son who formed the yacht’s crew took him ashore in the yacht’s tender and waited while he ascertained that the beautifully situated Hotel Atlantis could give him dinner, a room, and breakfast. The yacht then left her moorings and turned northwards to an island which had been among those which Dick, at first, had planned to visit but which he had subsequently left out of his itinerary.

  The yacht was capable of ten to twelve knots in clement weather, and the evening and night were fine. On the following morning, as soon as it was light, Henry, his sons, Julian, Chloe, and Mary went ashore, Julian unwillingly in charge of Roger. Dame Beatrice, Hero, and Simonides made a late and leisurely breakfast and were content to admire, from the deck of the yacht, the mountain scenery and the great cliffs of orange limestone which rose so grandly from the eastern side of the island.

  The botanical party got back early, for, to Henry’s ill-concealed annoyance, Chloe had been tripped up (by Julian’s carelessness, she alleged), had hurt her knee and her ankle, and insisted upon Henry’s taking her back to the yacht in person. By the time this had been done and first-aid rendered, it was too late for him to go ashore again and the rest of the party had returned. Julian repeated his apologies for the accident and those were ignored. He, Henry, and Chloe were still ruffled when the yacht picked up Dick that evening, a state of things not improved by Hero, who was overheard to say to Simon that middle-aged women should not go scrambling on rocks with fanatical flower-gatherers and young men who were too spineless to refuse to accompany them.

  The next part of the pilgrimage was to take place on the mainland, so the yacht put in at Nauplia for Epidauros. The company landed, and while Dick, Hero, and Simonides went in quest of the two cars which, by arrangement, were to pick up the party at the port, Julian, Roger, and Edmund mounted to the citadel. Dame Beatrice, Chloe
, Henry, and Mary sat at a table on the quay, drank ouzo, and watched the cheerful and lively scene.

  Whether the leisurely progress of the yacht from Santorin had given sufficient time to put Chloe back on her feet, or whether (as Dame Beatrice, who had insisted upon treating it, thought) it had received nothing more than a slight twist, Chloe’s ankle seemed to give no trouble once they were ashore. They heard no more about it.

  When the cars arrived, driven by Dick and Simon, there was an hour’s delay while Julian, Roger, and Edmund returned from their jaunt and joined the party, and then it was decided to take lunch at the hotel and set off for Epidauros in the late afternoon.

  Dame Beatrice had recollections of the first time she had visited the place sacred to Asclepius, when she had gone there in company with Sir Rudri Hopkinson and his disciples, and she was looking forward to seeing it again. It was too much to hope for serpents, those healing agents formerly sacred to the god, especially as it was not Asclepius this time who was the cult-object. They were there to honour the much earlier Apollo the Healer, whose sanctuary his son Asclepius in a sense had taken over, but, in her case, her main interest in the visit was to obtain another sight of the theatre. As the party was to stay at one of the two bungalow-hotels quite near to it, she would have the opportunity and all the time she wanted to admire and test the acoustics of the masterpiece.

  Early in the morning which followed their arrival she was seated about three-quarters of the way up the auditorium when she was joined by Julian.

  “Pretty good, isn’t it?” he said. “I’d love to come to a play here. They use it, you know, quite a lot.”