The Moonspinners (31 page)

‘Great Zeus almighty! Good for me! D'you mean Hairy Hawkweed?'

‘I do not. It's this.' A few plants stood in a glass of water at her elbow. She detached one of them gently, and handed it to me. ‘It was clever of you to bring the root as well. Careful, now.'

The plant had round leaves, furry with white down, and purple, trailing stems, vaguely familiar. ‘What is it?'

‘
Origanum dictamnus
,' said Frances.

‘Oh?'

‘You may well look blank. Dittany, to you, a kind of marjoram. You may even have seen it in England – not that you'd have noticed, but it's found sometimes in rock gardens.'

‘Is it rare, or something?'

‘No, but it's interesting that you found it here. It's a Cretan plant – hence the name.
Dictamnus
means that it was first found in this very spot, on Dicte.'

‘Dicte? The birthplace of Zeus! Frances, this is exciting!'

‘And
Origanum
means “joy of the mountain”. Not because it's anything much to look at, but because of its properties. The Greeks and Romans used it as a healing herb, and as a dye, and for scent. They also called it “the herb of happiness” and used it to crown their young lovers. Nice, isn't it?'

‘Lovely. Have you just been looking all this up to impress me with?'

‘I have, actually.' She laughed, and picked up the book that lay on the table beside her. ‘It's a book on Greek wild flowers, and it quotes some rather nice things. There's a long bit about
Origanum
, quoted from a medical book by a first-century Greek, Dioscorides. It's in a rather heavenly seventeenth-century translation. Listen.' She turned a page and found the place—

‘“
Dictamnus, which some call Pulegium Sylvestre
(
but some Embactron, some Beluocas, some Artemidion, some Creticus, some Ephemeron, some Eldian, some Belotocos, some Dorcidium, some Elbunium, ye Romans Ustilago rustica
)
is a Cretian herb, sharp, smooth, like to Pulegium. But it hath leaves greater, and downy and a kind of woolly adherence, but it bears neither flower nor fruit, but it doeth all things that the Sative Pulegium, but more forcibly by a great deal, for not only being drank but also being applied and suffumigated it expells the dead Embrya. And they say also that ye goats in Crete being shot, and having fed on the herb do cast out ye arrows . . . Ye root of it doth warm such as taste it; it is also a birth hastener, and likewise ye juice of it being drank with wine helpeth ye bitten of serpents . . . But ye juice of it, being dropt into a wound, it forthwith cures
.”

‘What are you looking like that for?'

‘Nothing. I was just wondering if the Cretans still used it for healing. I mean, a thing that'll do anything, “from abortion to snake bite—'”

‘Nothing more likely. They'll have lores passed down, time out of mind. Ah, well, so that's “the joy of the mountain”.' She took it from me and replaced it in water. ‘Well, it's nothing very great, I suppose, but it would be very interesting to see it actually growing. Do you remember where you got it?'

‘Oh, my goodness, I'm not sure.' Lambis and I had, so to speak, grazed in motion, like harried deer. ‘But I could probably pin it down to within a couple of square miles. Very steep,' I added kindly, ‘about one in three . . . and occasionally perpendicular. Would you have liked – I mean, do you really want to go and see it?' Mark's plan for our leaving was humming in my head like a knell. Poor Frances; it seemed hard. And what danger, what possible danger could there be?

‘I would, rather.' Frances was watching me with a slightly puzzled look.

‘I – I'll try to remember where it was,' I said.

She watched me a moment longer, then got briskly to her feet. ‘Well, let's go and eat. You look dog-tired. Tony has promised octopus, which he says is a delicacy unknown even to the better London restaurants.'

‘Understandably.'

‘Oh? Oh dear. Well, all experience is an arch wherethrough,' said Frances. ‘Oh, give me the polythene bags, will you? It doesn't matter about the rest, but I'd like to get
Origanum
safely under hatches. I'll look at it later.'

‘Oh, lord, I forgot them. I did get them from your room, but I dropped them in my jacket pocket, and then came down without it. I'll get them now.'

‘Don't bother; you've done enough for one day; it can wait.'

‘No, really, it'll only take a second.' As we traversed the hallway I caught a glimpse of Sofia, with my shoes in her hand, vanishing through Stratos' office door. She must have finished upstairs, so, I thought thankfully, I shouldn't run into her again. Disregarding Frances' protest, I left her at the restaurant door, and ran up to my room.

Sofia had left it very tidy: my jacket hung behind the door, the discarded dress lay neatly over the chair-back, the towels had been folded, and the coverlet taken off the bed. Frances' polythene bags weren't in the first pocket I tried – when was anything, ever? – but I found them in the other, and ran downstairs again.

Dinner was a cheerful meal, and even the octopus passed muster, as we ate it under Tony's apparently anxious surveillance. The lamb which followed it was wonderful, though I had not even now grown reconciled to eating the tender, baby joints from the suckling lambs. ‘They can't afford to let them graze,' I said, when I saw that Frances was distressed. ‘There just isn't enough pasture to let them grow any bigger. And if you're going to be in Greece over Easter, I'm afraid you'll have to get used to seeing the Paschal lamb going home with the family to be eaten. The children treat it as a pet, and play with it, and love it; then its throat is cut, and the family weeps for it, and finally feasts on it with rejoicing.'

‘Why, that's horrible! It's like a betrayal!'

‘Well, that's what it's symbolizing, after all.'

‘I suppose so. But couldn't they use our sort of symbols, bread and wine?'

‘Oh, they do. But the Easter sacrifice in their own homes – well, think it over. I used to think the same as you, and I still hate to see the lambs and calves going home to their deaths on Good Friday. But isn't it a million times better than the way we do it at home, however “humane” we try to be? Here, the lamb's petted, unsuspicious, happy – you see it trotting along with the children like a little dog. Till the knife's in its throat, it has no idea it's going to die. Isn't that better than those dreadful lorries at home, packed full of animals, lumbering on Mondays and Thursdays to the slaughterhouses, where, be as humane as you like, they can smell the blood and the fear, and have to wait their turn in a place just reeking of death?'

‘Yes. Yes, of course.' She sighed. ‘Well, I don't feel so dreadful for having enjoyed that. The wine's rather good; what did you say it was?'

‘Then here's to the “herb of happiness”.'

‘Here's to it, and to
hawkweed Langleyensis
– oh!'

‘Now what?'

‘I've just remembered where I found it, your dittany.'

‘Oh? Good. I hope it's somewhere I can get at.'

I said slowly: ‘I think it is. It was actually growing at the old church; in fact, it was growing
on
it. And I'm sure there was more where that piece came from.'

‘That's fine; I'd very much like to see it growing. Did you say there was a reasonable track the whole way?'

‘There's a track, yes, but I wouldn't call it “reasonable”. It's beastly rough in places. You'd be all right though, if you watched your step. All the same—' I smiled at her, my illogical feeling of guilt fading – ‘it would be much easier, and far more fun, going by boat. Apparently there's an old harbour not too far from the church. We might take a caique along the coast one day, and just walk straight into the hills from there.' I was thinking, thankfully, that now I needn't feel so guilty about having to drag Frances away from here in the morning. We could take a car over from Heraklion to Agia Gallini, and hire a caique from there, and I would show her the exact spot where Colin had pulled the dittany off the wall of the little church.

‘We'll have to fix it up,' said Frances, ‘but it can wait a day or two; you won't want to go straight to the same place tomorrow. Oh, Tony, may we have coffee on the terrace, please? If you're ready, Nicola . . . ?'

‘I think I'll get my jacket after all,' I said, as I rose. ‘Give
Origanum
to me; I'll put him out of harm's way upstairs.'

I laid the polythene bag with its precious plant carefully on my table, and lifted my jacket down from behind the door. As I put it on, something – something hard – in one of the pockets, swung against a corner of the table with a dull little thud. I put my hand in, and touched cold metal; the thin, sharp blade of a knife.

The cold shape met my palm with the tingle of a small electric shock. Then I remembered. I brought the thing out of my pocket, and looked at it. Lambis' knife, of course; the one I had taken from him during that ghastly, serio-comic skirmish up there in the ruined church. I should have remembered to return it. Well, I could still do so, when my gay ‘see you in Athens' came true.

I was turning to put the thing out of sight in my case, when something occurred to me that brought me up all standing, with a little formless fear slipping over my skin like ice-water. When I had come up to get the polythene bags for Frances, surely I had felt in both pockets of the jacket? Surely I had? I frowned, thinking back. Then certainty came; I had my hand in both pockets; I could not have missed the knife. It hadn't been there.

Sofia. It was the only explanation. Sofia must have found the knife when she hung my jacket up. She had taken it . . . why? To show to Stratos and Tony? Had she taken it with her, that time I saw her vanishing into Stratos' office, only to return it quietly while I was at dinner?
Why?

I sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed, furious at the wave of panic which swept over me, trying to think coherently.

Lambis' knife. It didn't matter; I must remember that. It didn't matter. Nobody here would recognize it: nobody here had seen Lambis, or even knew of his existence. The knife could not possibly link me with the affair; not possibly.

Why, then, had Sofia done what she had done? Simply because, I told myself, she and her companions were, like all criminals, touchy at the least thing. It wasn't usual for the ordinary, innocent woman tourist to carry an unsheathed and very businesslike knife. She had thought it worth showing to her brother; but that was, surely, as far as it would go? There was no reason why I should not have bought such a thing as a souvenir; businesslike though it was, it was also rather pretty, with the copper hilt worked with blue enamel, and a sort of filigree chasing on the root of the blade. I turned it over in my hand, examining it. Yes, that was the story: if anyone asked me, I would say that I had bought the thing in Chania, partly as a toy, and partly because I knew I should want some sort of tool to dig up plants for Frances. That was why I had taken it with me today . . . Yes, that would do . . . I had used it today . . . that would account for the used look of the thing, and the couple of chips and notches that showed in the enamel of the handle.

I stood up, relieved, and ready to dismiss my fears. That story would do, and meanwhile I would put it away, and I must certainly remember to return it to Lambis. He would have been missing it.

The thing slipped from my fingers, and fell, to quiver, point down, in the floorboards. I was sitting on the bed again, my hands to my cheeks, my eyes shut in a vain effort to blot out the picture that my memory had conjured up . . .

Lambis, relaxed in the sunshine beside Colin, whittling away at the little wooden lizard. After we had left the church; after I had taken this knife from his pocket. He hadn't missed it at all; his own knife, his accustomed knife, had had a wooden handle . . . I remembered it now, and remembered the sheath of embossed leather that he had worn thrust into his waistband, and which lay beside him as he did his carving . . .

And this knife? This enamelled copper affair that I had taken from his pocket, and forgotten to return? This pretty, deadly bit of Turkish enamel work?

‘
He pulled his knife
,' Mark had said, ‘
and then went down hard, with his head on the rock, and that was that . . . We took everything else he had, and buried the boots
.'

Josef. Josef's weapon, marked and notched into unmistakability. Found in my pocket by Josef's wife. Shown to Tony; shown to Stratos. Then quietly slipped back where they had found it.

I didn't stop then to consider what they might make of it, or if I could invent some story of finding it on the hillside. I just sat there, fighting off the waves of senseless panic that bade me get away, myself and Frances, get away, straight away, that very night, to friends and lights and normal places and people and sanity.

To Mark.

After a bit, I put the knife in my suitcase, steadied myself, and went down the stairway.

18

Thus far her Courage held, but her forsakes:

Her faint Knees knock at ev'ry Step she makes.

DRYDEN
:
Cinyras and Myrrha

‘Ah, Miss Ferris,' said Stratos.

He was in the hallway, behind the table, not doing anything, just standing there, waiting for me. From behind the closed door of the office came voices, Tony's and Sofia's, the latter lifted on a high, urgent note, which stopped abruptly as Stratos spoke.