Philip’s shoulders slumped when he saw the statues of Hermes my husband was holding. “I should have been more forthright with you,” he said.
“This is not the time for apologies and regrets,” Colin said. “I need you to tell me everything you can about Demir. Emily, Margaret, will you leave us, please?”
“Why don’t we stay—” I started.
“No, Kallista,” Philip said. “Leave us be. It is time for Hargreaves and me to face each other.”
I would have given nearly anything to hear the conversation between them, but could hardly deny them privacy. Margaret and I went to see our patient, who was, as Colin had said, awake, but not coherent. Unable to extract any useful information from him, we found Jeremy in the sitting room. He and Fritz had alerted Mrs. Katevatis to the situation, and she insisted on going to the village to summon assistance. Not wanting her to go on her own, Fritz had accompanied her, as Adelphos insisted on guarding our prisoner. Barely an hour had passed before they returned, accompanied by every able-bodied man in the village, armed with old rifles, sticks, and a few pitchforks.
By this time Colin and Philip, both looking grim, had rejoined us, and Colin set about stationing the villagers around the perimeter of the house, a task not so easy, as in Santorini buildings are constructed almost one on top of the other. The walls on the sides of the villa abutted directly against those of our neighbors, and a person of malicious intent could climb from rooftop to rooftop until he reached ours. Fortunately, we had the manpower to place someone at the door of each house and on each roof. In front of us stood only the cliff path and the sheer drop to the caldera, and behind us, because Philip had purchased enough land to construct the barn and courtyard, there were no houses near enough to offer our enemies a good vantage point for attack.
Despite our best efforts, Margaret and I did not manage to convince the gentlemen that we, too, ought to be armed and standing guard. Instead, we had no choice but to reluctantly accept a forced retreat into an interior room, where we sat, waiting.
“Have you ever experienced something more tedious?” I asked.
“I had great hopes for the experience of being pursued by a maniac,” Margaret said, sighing. “One expects it would be exciting, yet I have never been more bored in my life.”
“He might not be a maniac, just a vicious criminal without remorse,” I said. “But I do agree with you about our current plight—it can induce nothing save ennui. Colin tells me his work is often like this: high stakes, but seemingly endless time in a prolonged state of expectancy.”
Mrs. Katevatis entered the room, bringing cups of steaming mountain tea, and sat with us. “Adelphos is in the courtyard,” she reported. “Nico is on the roof. The men argued about what to do with the viscount, but in the end agreed to allow him to assist them, as what Nico called a ‘fallback.’ He is in the drawing room.”
“It would be too risky to let him outside, given he is Demir’s target,” I said. “Not to mention he is injured and unlikely to be much use in a fight.”
“He was not happy about it,” Mrs. Katevatis said, “but his friend the German said many harsh words to him about putting the ladies in danger, and then the viscount relented.”
We passed the entire night in that small room without any sign of disturbance. Once the sun had risen, Colin reorganized our forces, sending most of them back home to sleep, as we would need them again when darkness fell; in daylight, it would be easy enough for a handful of observers to raise the alarm if need be. We breakfasted inside rather than on the terrace, and so began a most wearisome day.
“You ought to nap,” I said to my husband, who had come inside to gulp down a dish of tangy yogurt, as an accompaniment to a full English breakfast. No matter where we were in the world, he always managed to have something that reminded him of home. “You have been up all night.”
“I do not require rest when I am working. I can go days without it when necessary. But you and Margaret must not have slept well,” he said, “her on a chair and you wrapped in blankets on the floor. Look at how she is already yawning.”
“It was an adventure,” Margaret said. “Emily and I both felt strongly that Mrs. Katevatis ought to have the settee.”
“That was good of you,” he said.
“A telegram has come,” Mrs. Katevatis said, entering the room and handing the envelope to me. I ripped it open and read it through.
“Demir will arrive tomorrow morning and will be waiting for me in the taverna in Fira at noon.”
“Well done, my dear,” Colin said.
“It was only just sent from Naxos,” I said, studying it, “but we cannot assume that means Demir is still there.”
“Quite right. There are very few strangers on this island and it would be easy enough for him to locate us, just as it was easy for us to locate him on Naxos. Furthermore, everyone knows the archaeologists came to us after the attack. I am afraid we must resume our defensive posture,” he said, blotting his mouth with a napkin before kissing me and heading back up to the roof, from whence he could watch for any approaching marauders.
Margaret and I returned with little joy to the small room that had begun to feel like a prison, where we both tried to read. Our minds were too unsettled to make sense of words on paper. Midway through the afternoon, we visited our patient, who was sleeping soundly and still had not uttered a single intelligible word in the brief moments he spent awake. Adelphos, who, like my husband, refused to nap, was dividing his time between patient and prisoner, keeping a close eye on both.
Back inside, we stopped in the kitchen when Mrs. Katevatis, who had started to prepare dinner, called, urging us to help her. “It is no good for a lady to know how to cook nothing,” she said. “You are too competent to be useless, so I will show you.” Soon she had us with our sleeves up, seasoning feta for tyropita, then rolling out the thin phyllo dough, and finally supervising us as we formed the delicate cheese pies. Our first several efforts were disastrous, as we kept tearing the fragile dough, but eventually we met with success.
“They are not pretty, perhaps,” I said, brushing melted butter on the triangular tops of the pastry before we slid them into the hot oven, “but they will taste good.”
“They are an absolute scandal,” Margaret said. “Mine especially. Yours at least aspire to be triangles. Mine gave up altogether.” The pan in front of her was covered with an assortment of shapes, most a variety of odd-looking lumps without any of the sides required by a triangle.
Mrs. Katevatis shook her head. “This is very bad, Mrs. Michaels,” she said. “You shall try again tomorrow. I will not permit you to leave the island until you can prepare these well. Then you can go back to England and make them for your husband.”
“You know, Mrs. Katevatis, Mr. Michaels might well enjoy that. May I make another batch now?”
This request was immediately denied, with a lack of dough cited as the reason, but I suspected Mrs. Katevatis could take only so much of our incompetence at a time, and I pulled Margaret back into the main part of the house before she could protest. We were both covered with flour and in dire need of baths. When the time for dinner came, we again ate inside, and the gentlemen were vastly amused by our culinary efforts.
“It is good to cook,” Fritz said. “My mother is excellent in the kitchen and rarely allows the servants to prepare meals. I am impressed you ladies have made the effort when so few of your peers are willing to even try.”
I had insisted Colin take a break for nourishment, and he reluctantly agreed we might all dine together while one set of villagers stood guard outside the house, but insisted he would return to his post as soon as we had finished. The other gentlemen would do the same.
“After I meet with Demir tomorrow, I propose we return to the mainland as soon as possible,” I said.
“I agree,” Margaret said. “Regardless of what happens when you see him, we know he is not a man to be trusted, and we cannot remain holed up here indefinitely. He might follow us to Athens, but we would be in a much stronger position there.”
Colin nodded. “It is a worthy proposition,” he said. “I will go to Fira in the morning and arrange for a boat.”
As had become his habit, Philip helped Mrs. Katevatis bring our coffee and baklava to the drawing room after dinner. Try though he might, she resisted all of his efforts to win over her goodwill. It was not, she had explained to me, that she found him unpleasant, but she believed he considered himself the master of the house, when that role by rights belonged to Colin—or Nico, as she called him, her voice warming whenever she uttered the name. Tonight, given his injury, Philip could not carry the heavy coffee tray as he normally did, and was instead relegated to being baklava-bearer.
I filled all of the cups with coffee, taking only a small amount for myself as I did not much care for it, while Margaret placed pieces of rich walnut baklava on plates. The sparse conversation as we sat in the sitting room reflected everyone’s somber mood. Jeremy barely picked at his pastry, and Colin would not stop pacing. I poured him a second cup of coffee and pressed it into his hands.
“You will need this if you mean to stay up all night,” I said. He accepted it with a grunt.
Philip, too, kept rising to his feet, starting for the door whenever he thought he heard a sound. Only Fritz, cool and imperious, polished off his baklava and his coffee without distraction.
“Are you ladies ready to retire?” Colin asked. “You will be safe in your bedrooms tonight. I have had no reports of anyone matching Demir’s description from my lookouts on the island. That does not mean he is not here, but I am confident we have matters well in hand. I would, however, implore you to keep your shutters closed and locked.”
We did as he instructed, but the lack of air flowing through my room stifled me. I expected to have difficulty sleeping, between the hot, heavy stillness and my general unease at our situation, but my lids grew heavy quickly, and I fell fast asleep before I had a chance to close my volume of Sophocles and blow out the lamp next to my bed.
When I awoke the next morning it had already passed nine o’clock. The lamp had burned itself out, and my Sophocles was crumpled beneath me on the mattress. Ordinarily I am immediately alert upon waking, but today even the act of getting out of bed took considerable effort. The anticipation of my meeting with Demir should have caused me to rise before the sun, and I ought to have been filled with impatient energy the moment I opened my eyes. I cracked the door to my room, expecting to find the mountain tea Mrs. Katevatis always left for me, but it was not there. Something was amiss. I dressed as quickly as possible and went downstairs without delay.