“You still look rather Turkish. Tuck up the skirts of your robe into your girdle so that it looks more like a long shirt. That is better, but I hope we can buy new clothes in the village. If we ever get there.”
“Don’t think about that now. Look at that sky!”
As they ate, the eastern sky changed from green, to primrose, to gold, while above delicate pink puffs of cloud scurried before the breeze. Small crabs as pink and delicate as the clouds scurried about their feet, scavenging crumbs, until a gull landed nearby and frightened them off. The grey and white bird, head cocked, fixed Cordelia and Preston with an enquiring, hopeful eye and squawked.
“It’s saying please,” said Cordelia, and Preston threw it a crust. “No more,” she advised quickly, laying her hand on his wrist. “We may want the scraps ourselves before we reach civilization.”
He nodded and touched her hand. She instantly withdrew it, her cheeks burning. It was all too easy to treat him just as a friend—the first real friend she had ever had—and to forget that he was also a man.
“It’s light enough now to study the cliffs,” she said, head bowed over the basket as she packed up the remains of their meal.
The gull flapped away with another squawk, indignant this time, as they stood up. They went around their rock and stared up at the cliff, now illuminated by the first rays of the sun. It no longer seemed a sheer wall. Instead it was a bewildering patchwork of sunlit rock and shadow, grey upon black upon grey, blotched, streaked, impossible to interpret. Here and there a small, wizened tree or a tuft of straw-coloured grass clung to a ledge.
Cordelia glanced at Preston. He stood very still, his eyes alive in his thin face, darting back and forth across the face of the cliff. Then he gave a sudden, decisive nod.
“We can do it. Whether we can manage the basket and your bundle I don’t know. Have you any valuables stowed away?”
“No.” Her hand went to her throat, where the pearls hung under her kaftan.
He grinned. “You carry your wealth around your neck? Good. We shall see how far we get encumbered but I don’t want any nonsense about risking your life to save your clothes, or even your books. That shawl is going to be in your way. Have you a kerchief you can wear over your head?”
“Yes. Do you really think we can climb all the way to the top? I cannot see how.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s possible. The difficulty is always that once one starts one can no longer see the way. I’ll study it some more while you kilt up your kaftan as you made me do. What a pity you’re wearing those Turkish trousers.”
Glaring at his oblivious back, Cordelia tucked the hem of her kaftan into her girdle. If it weren’t for the trousers she wouldn’t dream of doing so.
Except that it would be the height of folly to try to climb with her skirts tangling around her ankles.
She turned and stared at the cliff. The angle of the sun’s rays had already changed a little, and the pattern of light and dark took on a three-dimensional aspect. It was still a formidable barrier and her heart failed her.
“Perhaps we should wait a while to see if a fishing boat passes,” she said hopefully.
“Conditions are perfect now. The breeze has died and it’s not too hot. The sooner we start up the better.” He glanced at her. “It’s not so bad, truly, but if you prefer to stay until I can fetch you by boat—”
“No. I don’t want to stay here alone.” She took a deep breath and picked up the basket. “Let’s go.”
“Hold hard! Before we start, I want to point out to you what I think is the best route, just in case.”
In case of what, Cordelia didn’t care to consider. Listening carefully, she followed his pointing finger as he explained. Whether she was actually looking at the same formations he was describing she was not at all certain, but the marks began to make a sort of sense. She nodded as he indicated the spot where he hoped to reach the top.
“What about the other side?”
“We’ll worry about that when we come to it. For all we know it’s a gentle slope with houses built all the way up. We’d best abandon the basket, I think. The food can go in the bundle. I’ll combine the water from the two bottles and hang the full one on my belt.”
The leather water-bottles had loops for that purpose. While Preston threaded his girdle through, Cordelia transferred their meagre supplies to the bundle and knotted the four corners of the cloth tightly. He picked it up with a cheerful smile.
“On our way,” he said jauntily.
The silvery sand ended in a jumble of rocks and shingle, interspersed with pools. The bottom foot or so of the rocks was encrusted with barnacles, limpets, and mussels.
“Whatever tide there is, is low,” Preston commented. “In my still earlier youth, before I took up rock climbing, I used to spend hours harassing sea-anemones and hermit crabs in the tide-pools.”
“In Cornwall?” Cordelia accepted his proffered hand to help her over a ridge, before she remembered she had meant to refuse aid unless it became absolutely necessary. “Is that where your home is?”
“It was, until my father died.” He stopped, gazing ahead with his hand shading his eyes. “That’s where I want to get to. You see that ledge? I couldn’t see the part below before. It’ll be a bit of a scramble.”
To Cordelia, the slab of rock below the ledge looked completely blank and practically vertical. Preston put down the bundle and scuttled up like a crab.
“Easy.” Five feet, seven feet, perhaps ten...an infinite distance above her, he lay down flat on his front and reached down. “Pass me the bundle.”
She picked it up, clutched it to her chest, looked up at him in sudden terror.
“Don’t be a widgeon, I’m not going to rob you of your clothes and abandon you. If I intended anything of the sort, I’d have chosen a better time and more valuable booty. What a low opinion you have of my morals and my common sense!”
Equally abashed and annoyed at his percipience, she passed up the bundle. She had to stretch to let him reach the knot on top. He set it beside him and leaned over again.
“I can’t do it!”
“Of course you can. The surface is covered with tiny knobs and ridges and grooves, and at that slope you don’t need proper handholds. Let your fingertips cling where they may for balance and just walk up.”
Biting her lip, she felt the rock just above her head. Little roughnesses, barely visible, met her touch. Surely not enough to support her!
“Shall I come down and give you a heave from behind?”
“No!” She set one foot at an angle on the steep slope, then the other. The leather of her shoes caught on the rough surface. Tentatively she raised one hand to feel above her again.
She promptly slid down.
“You can’t do it slowly. Keep moving and your feet won’t have time to slip. Come on, one more try.”
One more try or else what? He’d go on and leave her wondering whether he would be able to find a boat to fetch her? Or he’d come down and lay hands upon her person to heave her up? She didn’t like either alternative.
Fingers scrabbling for purchase, she swarmed up until she could grasp the edge of the ledge and haul herself the rest of the way. Preston grinned at her as she crouched beside him, a trifle breathless and feeling quite pleased with herself.
“I thought I was going to have to unwrap the bundle and use the carrying cloth as a rope. I told you it wasn’t difficult. You shouldn’t give up so easily.”
“If I gave up easily, I should now be sitting at home in Istanbul awaiting Mehmed Pasha’s visit,” she pointed out coldly. “Why didn’t you suggest making a rope, instead of talking about heaving.”
“Oh Lord, have I rubbed you the wrong way again? You really are the touchiest female! I wanted you to get up by your own efforts to give yourself confidence in your abilities. We have a long way to go.”
“Oh.” To avoid looking at his exasperated face, Cordelia craned her neck to peer upwards. From here the top was invisible, which made it seem even farther away.
“You can stand up now. Careful, the ledge is narrow. Try not to look down. Do cheer up, Miss Courtenay. I’ll tell you this much: You may take offense at the drop of a hat but there’s no other female of my acquaintance I’d even consider taking along on such an adventure.”
Why his praise should warm her from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes she could not imagine, but it did, and made her determined not to disillusion him. Not that she’d dream of telling him so. “I am ready to go on,” she said.
“All right. I shall be ungentlemanly and go ahead—”
“I could not pass you here if I wanted to.”
“True,” he said with the patient air which always infuriated her. “The next little way is straightforward, but when we meet the next difficulty you must watch how I go and copy me exactly. If you cannot reach, tell me at once, or if for any reason you fall behind. Understood?”
Turning, he picked up the bundle and led the way. The ledge sloped upwards, steep and narrow but straightforward as he had said—for several yards. Then there was a gap of eighteen inches with nothing to break a fall to the beach, already an alarming distance below, before their path continued at a slightly higher level. Preston stepped across as if the gap was not there.
Don’t look down,
Cordelia reminded herself, and she followed.
“Well done!”
The next obstacle was a vertical crack like a chimney, which had to be climbed. Then a wide, short ledge took them to a flat slab like the one down on the beach, less tall but terrifying because of the drop below. Cordelia made no protest when Preston told her to go first. His steadying hands on her hips let her get high enough to grasp the rim at the top, and his lifting grip on her ankles helped her over the edge. She had to lie still on her stomach for a moment to allow her heartbeat to slow before she reached down for the bundle. A moment later, he joined her.
“Have you no nerves?”
He laughed. “Not many. I’ve found them on the whole a useless encumbrance. Come on.”
The climb became a blur of rock before her face, rock beneath her feet, rock between her clutching fingers. Her purse weighed her down and she blessed Aaron for suggesting she carry diamonds rather than gold. The weight of the gems was insignificant, but the cloth around her waist in addition to her clothes made her feel as if she was in the hot room of a Turkish bath. Sweat ran down her forehead into her eyes and she had to stop to wipe it away.
The moment her footsteps ceased Preston turned his head. “What...? Oh, it’s getting hot, isn’t it?” He took out a handkerchief and blotted his own beaded brow.
“You were right not to wait any longer before we started up.”
“Just a little farther and there’s a shelf where we can sit down for a drink.”
Cordelia had insufficient energy to object when the shelf turned out just wide enough for them to sit touching at shoulder, hip, and thigh. Gratefully she took a gulp of stale, lukewarm water from the leather bottle. “I’ve never tasted anything better,” she said, handing it back. “Oh, look at the view!”
The sea spread below them, aquamarine in the nearby shallows, cobalt-blue further out, into a distance dotted here and there with sails, white or rusty-red. On the horizon floated smudges which might be clouds or islands. Gulls wheeled above, and Cordelia realized she had heard their cries all along without consciously noticing. A flight of white pelicans skimmed the water, wings blazoned with black, their clumsy beaks so heavy-looking one expected them to topple headfirst into the waves.
“It almost makes the climb worthwhile, doesn’t it?” Preston swallowed a mouthful of water. “Not yet mid-morning by the sun. It’s going to get hotter. Why don’t you take off that kerchief?”
“A lady never permits a gentleman to see her outdoors with her head uncovered.” Oh, the irony of quoting her mother on the subject of ladylike behaviour!
“I distinctly recall your telling me I am no gentleman, so you need have no qualms. You might be more comfortable without the kaftan, too.”
“Certainly not!” she snapped, then admitted to herself that he could not know her shift was of the finest gauze, almost transparent.
Her response let him guess, however. He gave her a long, slow look which burned all the way from her shoulders to her waist, as if he saw through both kaftan and shift. But he said only, “Well, I shall take off my dolman, if you wouldn’t mind sitting with your...ah...limbs over the edge to give me a little more space.”
She complied, turning her back on him. He stuffed his robe into the bundle, along with her kerchief, which he accepted without comment. They set off again.
At first Cordelia wished Preston had kept his dolman on. She was uncomfortably conscious of the way his white shirt revealed his muscular shoulders, back, and arms. But soon she had to concentrate on where he put his hands and feet, so as to follow him over a steep, awkward ridge. After that she was too tired to think of anything but the protest of her own muscles at each new effort.
She was taken completely by surprise when he stopped, turned, and said quite casually, “Well, here we are.”
Gaping up at him, she saw he was silhouetted against a brassy sky. The breeze had risen again, ruffling his short, unnaturally black hair. She could not stir, simply could not take the last step.
He dropped the bundle, reached down to take her hands, and pulled her up beside him. Her legs promptly gave way. She sank to the ground.
Preston sat down beside her. “Water? And I think we deserve a little something to munch on.” He handed her the water-bottle and delved into the bundle. She tried not to think of the intimate garments therein. “Here, nuts and raisins and a bit of cheese should keep you going.”
“Going! I shall never move again.”
“Yes, you will, and we must not sit here too long or you’ll stiffen up.”
Cordelia groaned. “Is it much farther?”
“I haven’t really had a chance to spy out the land,” he said cautiously.
“At least it must be downhill from here!”
“You’re full of pluck, Miss Courtenay. I’ll admit I wasn’t sure you would make it.”
“That climb must be ten times worse than your Cornish cliffs.”
“Oh no. A bit higher than most, but easier in some ways. In Cornwall the rock is often slick with spray or rain, and some of it is brittle shale, tends to break off in your hands. What’s more, your hands are usually cold.”