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Cecilia suspended the morning clinic to attend the funeral with Isabella and Dorcas. The housekeeper loaned Isabella a dark shawl, and in her dark blouse and skirt, she blended with the other women. Cecilia wore a Parisian sheath and jacket as well as a cloche with a lash veil, all in black. Dorcas scowled at her appearance, which was more London society lady on a courtesy visit than somber respect. She walked with them to the church then joined the village women.
As the service began, Frederick Petrie slid in beside them. After his comments about continuing work on the dig, his presence surprised Isabella. He shifted constantly on the pew, sighing heavily through the Orthodox mass. As soon as they emerged from the church, he stopped at the archway to light a cigarette.
“Give me a smoke, Petrie.” Cecilia lifted her lash veil.
Isabella watched the villagers watching them as they poured from the little church.
Petrie cupped his hand to guard the match from the wind. When the cigarette tip glowed, Cecilia tossed her head back and exhaled slowly. “Will you go to the dig now?”
He shook out the match then flipped it onto the rocky ground. “Don’t know that it will do any good. The workers are here.”
The Spirios family emerged in advance of the coffin. Crowded to the opposite side of Cecilia and Petrie, Isabella watched the sad little procession. The pallbearers followed, six men carrying the bier high, then the priest. He glanced at Cecilia and Petrie. He paused at the arch, as if to speak with them—although afterwards she thought his hesitation was to let the pallbearers reach the gate. He glanced at her and nodded briefly then stepped down, and the family and other villagers fell into place behind him.
“Nigel and Monty are working the site, so they won’t entirely lose two days. You did contract to help them on this dig, Frederick.”
“You surely don’t expect them to accomplish anything? Madoc’s in Heraklion. The locals work twice as hard for him. The professors will be lucky if they scrap up a half-dozen trays.”
“Which must still be sorted. Since I have the clinic this afternoon, you should take over sorting the trays. Then we have not completely wasted another day.”
Although her suggestion was gently spoken, Petrie reacted as though she’d issued an edict. He flung his cigarette down and stalked away. When he thrust open the gate, it slammed against the rock wall.
Ignoring his temper, Cecilia turned to Isabella. “Will you help me at the clinic?”
“I have only basic skills, Cecilia. I nursed my father during his last illness, and I helped during the influenza outbreak. I know little else.”
“That little will be sufficient, Isabella, believe me. My work is primarily hygiene, clean dressings, and a good diet. Children, for the most part, who have deep cuts and teeth to pull. I give them a lemon drop after. Sometimes I think I have the only medical skills the women have encountered beyond the village midwife. I know I am the only outsider they have seen. You will be a rarity indeed, an outsider who speaks a little of their language. And don’t tell me you cannot. I have heard you nattering to our housekeeper.”
With Kouri as their escort, Cecilia drove to a neighboring village that she hadn’t visited in three weeks. Chickens scattered off the road in front of the motorcar, and children ran behind it as they drove into the village. Then they also scattered to spread the news. The taverna proprietor didn’t protest when she commandeered the tables out front. Within an hour of their arrival, a crowd had gathered. The easiest patients were the children and older adults who were not reticent about their pains and would willingly point.
At their first break, Cecilia produced steaming coffee and two cups. “I shall have to throw away this thermos when we return to civilization. Dorcas’ coffee has ruined it for anything else. How is the language barrier?”
Isabella swallowed the bracing brew. “My Greek may be stiff, but it serves well enough.”
“I knew I was right to bring you. Greek past and present is little changed. Gawen says it’s like his grandfather’s Welsh, unchanged for millennia.”
Throughout the afternoon, “Gawen says” peppered Cecilia’s conversation. “Nigel says” was rare. Isabella recognized the unconscious betrayal of a woman’s attraction, when the beloved’s every word and deed crowded the conscious. She recalled Madoc’s belief that an unconsummated affaire only intensified the fascination. Ruefully, Isabella admitted that her own tally of “Madoc says” equaled Cecilia’s. She hoped that she would never be so desperate as to chase a man. She could not say what Cecilia was. Chasing? Enthralled? Obsessed? The Tarrant brothers’ separate charms worked too well.
When they returned to the house, they learned that the police had returned to Heraklion without finding Timon Spirios’ murderer. Nigel Arkwright looked upon the failure as good fortune; Gawen Tarrant refused to comment. Monty Standings scowled. “They’ll be back, disrupting us again.”
After dinner, as the others drank coffee on the terrace, Gawen asked Isabella to his study. He left the door open; they could hear the others without seeing them. The conversation lacked the easy flow of previous nights, and no bright laughter sparked it.
Isabella perched on the edge of the cot. She missed Madoc’s large presence. Alone in Heraklion, what would he do to escape his thoughts? She hoped he merely honed a taste for the capitol’s wine, as he’d told Cecilia earlier. And she chalked another tally in the “Madoc says” column.
Gawen handed her a sheaf of papers. “The next article. Dating potsherds and using them to create a chronology. This article ranges more widely, from Egyptian to Greek and on to the Assyrians. You’ll find a little on European pottery as well. You should have no dearth of ideas for your illustrations.”
“I may have already thought of one. I considered it for the first article, but when Madoc and Petrie mentioned that copper bracelet—.”
With a teasing glint reminiscent of his brother, he interrupted her. “Why are women so fascinated by jewelry?”
“It’s genetic. We have worried about what to wear since Eve.”
“Carl Jung would call it part of your collective unconscious. The bracelet was a good choice for the first article. Even though you work in pen and ink, you captured its value. Tell me about this other idea.”
“I thought to draw a pot or a stirrup jar. Preferably one found in pieces that you have been able to reconstruct. Juxtaposed with pieces that could not possibly be reconstructed.”
“Ah, the challenge of what we want to do with what we find. I like that. We do have a couple from early in the dig. Petrie can show you. They’s in the storeroom. And there’s not a lack of potsherds for the other. You obviously need no guidance from me, Miss Newcombe. No, don’t leave yet. I want to thank you for the excellent work on the first illustrations. I should have said so last night but—.” He stopped, avoiding the unnecessary explanation. After a pause, he said, “Your illustrations provide the very interest that Madoc prodded me to add. My publisher will be ecstatic.”
“When will you hear from him?”
“I sometimes think we are in the back of beyond here. Give it more than a fortnight. The dig will be close to winding down by then. As for your next illustrations, I do have one protest and a request. I am flattered that you thought my brother and myself had the potential to pique interest. However, I ask that you do not use us as models. Standings or Arkwright or one of the students would be better choices. When did you see us standing like that?”
“On Tuesday morning, when the workers were arguing.”
“Amazing. You had to work fast. I can’t believe you aren’t a trained artist.” His vital point covered, he stood, and she followed. “Over the weekend, think about the next illustrations. You aren’t limited to our sites. Mallia or Sitía are close enough for a daytrip.”
She thought the words a dismissal and started out. His questions stopped her on the threshold. “Did you attend the funeral this morning? Did anyone else attend?”
As she answered, briefly describing the service, she glanced out at the others seated on the terrace. She knew that Prof. Tarrant rarely joined them and would not tonight.
The lamplight created an intimate circle. Petrie lit a cigarette for Kat Standings. Lamb and Castlereagh propped their feet in a single spare chair. Standings gestured as he explained a point to the Matthews. Arkwright had an arm across the back of his wife’s chair. An insular group who needed no one else. Cecilia lifted her face to speak in her husband’s ear. He laughed, and his arm dropped from the chair-back to her shoulders. How many times today had she heard the woman’s “Gawen says”?
She looked back into the small room. The professor had leaned back in his chair. He frowned slightly as he stared at the group. The direction of his attention was impossible to discern, yet she had no doubt his focus was Cecilia.
“You helped Cecilia today, didn’t you? How was her clinic? Where did you go?”
“We went inland. I don’t know the name of the village. The housekeeper’s son went with us. We had no difficulties, even with my ancient Greek. Everyone was kind and helpful.”
“Was the village at the crossroads, with one road going to Mt. Dikté and one to the coast? I know the place. Cess has gone there before. Some of these villages no one ever thinks about, and they’re more than happy to keep it that way.” He shifted to face the desk and drew a opened book toward him. “Talk to Petrie about the pottery you want, Miss Newcombe. He can find them tomorrow before he goes down to the site.”
With that definite dismissal, Isabella stepped down to the terrace and rejoined the others. No one asked about their conversation. Gawen Tarrant remained in his study while they lingered on the terrace. Was his habit essentially solitary? Or did he consider himself above the gossip about St. George’s close community? Did he refuse to give Nigel Arkwright an opportunity for another argument? Or did he refuse to feed his attraction to Cecilia Arkwright, who looked especially lovely in the lamplight, her pale face glowing in the frame of her dark hair? Isabella suspected the last, since he paced nightly in his room.
She dreamed that night of broken stirrup jars. She had to sort the pieces, and the dirt of centuries stained her fingers brown and red. When she fit the potsherds together, she had constructed Timon Spirios’ casket. As they lowered it into the ground, it fell apart. And someone repeated over and over, “We have to dig it up.”
* * *
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 11
Isabella worked virtually all day on the pottery illustration. To break up the sitting and avoid cramp, she took two long walks. Dorcas’ grandson accompanied her on both. During the morning walk, Kouri taught her the streets and side lanes of the village. In the afternoon, they climbed the ridge beyond the house, dropped down the rise, then headed up the mountain. Unable to keep up with his faun-like springs, she called a halt and rested, looking over the brow of the ridge at the village clustered on a hill and beyond, to the fields and the winding road, and far beyond, the elusive sparkle of the sea. Cobwebs cleared by the walks, she completed the illustration before day’s end.
Freshly bathed, she was combing her hair dry on the terrace when Madoc returned.
He set two bottles of wine on the table before dropping into a chair. With his shirt unbuttoned and his hair ruffled, he looked wind-blown after a good run, a tiredness that had lifted weights from his shoulders. “The wine’s from Ayios Nikólaos. A better vintage than I would’ve credited, from the looks of the taverna.”
Beyond his first intent look, Madoc gave no other greeting than that. He just joined her, as if resuming a conversation broken when he’d had to step out briefly. He didn’t ask if she had missed him, and she was glad. The question implied an arrogance she didn’t associate with him. He crossed his stretched-out legs at the ankles, folded his hands over his stomach, and watched her dry her hair while he described his drive.
The prescient Dorcas brought him coffee and her minted tea. Madoc drank thirstily.
“No memorable sights in Heraklion?”
“What’s memorable about sitting on my—about wasting hours at the dock to get the university crate loaded for shipment? Luckily I went first to the museum. The curator was so glad to see me that he had workers waiting to unload the crate. Then he was eager to see the back of me so he could assess what I’d brought. I was late getting to the hotel, but I didn’t go hungry as I’d feared.”
Isabella drew the comb slowly through her hair and watched his eyes watching her. “Did you get the wine yesterday or today?”
“Today. Yesterday I was pressed for time. After my late start this morning, I still drove back in good time.”
“What delayed you?”
“I saw Inspector Stavros.” He met her sharp glance without a flicker of his eyes. “He says he can do nothing more on Timon Spirios’ murder until more evidence surfaces.”
She remembered the close questions that had asked everything except what she had seen beside the pool. A deliberate omission that suddenly loomed with threat. “Did he track you down to ask more questions?”
“I stopped at the constabulary station. He was surprised to see me. We talked a bit. He listened to my theory about stolen antiquities, but that’s all. As he said, without a missing artifact for proof, it’s hard to give credence to a theory. I pointed no fingers, much as I wanted to after my dinner last night with Harcourt-Smythe.” At her startled look, he straightened. He added more softly, “I’m sorry, Isabella. That dinner wasn’t my choice. Even though I was late to the hotel, he was still in the dining room. He insisted I join him. He didn’t know you had landed with us. It came out before I thought. I described your drawing of that bracelet, trying to see what kind of bite he would take on that bait, and he wanted to know about the artist. I’m sorry.”
She carefully placed the comb on the table. Her gaze drifted to the bougainvillea with its droning bees. Red petals had dropped onto the flagstones, like the blood dripping from her fingers in last night’s dream. She wiped her hands on her towel. “I was going to write him with my direction. That was only courtesy. I consider my employment with him ended. He has no control over me.”
“At it should be, the way he left you with that bill at the hotel.” He propped his elbows on his knees. “I had a stronger reason than hunger for joining him. At the docks I heard that some Englishman had Bronze Age artifacts for sale.”
“And you think Mr. Harcourt-Smythe is that Englishman?”
He gave an unabashed grin. “Hoped he was. A case of wanting him to be the crook. He visits site after site here on Crete. He’s wealthy enough to avoid the customs check. All he needs is a connection to the artifacts. When I steered the conversation that way, he steered it another.”
Isabella tied a blue ribbon to hold back her hair. “He is no fool, Madoc. He is a shrewd man. I have watched him manipulate people from England to France and Italy and into Greece. In many respects, he is very likable. His only fault is that he ignored ‘no’, in word and action.”
“He didn’t understand why you didn’t fall for him?” He picked up her towel, sniffed it.
“It was like reading a bad dime novel. Only I’m a governess instead of the poor chambermaid.”
“The servant caters to the master’s desires? That went out with the worst of the Victorians. And you don’t know your English literature. Jane Eyre fell for her Mr. Rochester, and he had a mad wife locked away. Perhaps he expected the same from you. Has he driven his wife mad?”
Isabella sputtered a laugh. “His wife would be impossible to lock away. And her madness is confined to the society pages. High society obsesses her. She always talks about whom she’s seen and where. The best parties, the best hotels, the best clothes. She was very impressed with Cecilia, even more than with the Standings. While Nigel has connections to nobility, Cecilia apparently filled the society pages during the war.”
“Yet Mrs. Harcourt-Smythe doesn’t protest when her husband drags her to Crete?”
“A stop on their Grand Tour. We visited Paris and Chartres, Venice and Rome, Athens, Olympia, and Delphi. They planned to wind up in Cairo for the Valley of the Kings and the great pyramids. One little island is a brief bump in that journey.”
“Think what you will miss because you wouldn’t play,” he teased, a wicked glint in his blue-blue eyes.
“I’ve had the tour of my dreams, thank you,” she said as dryly as she could. “Egypt never enthralled me. Too much funerary obsession. Besides, how much would I see while keeping one eye on the incomparable daughters and the other on my employer?”
He promptly whined, “I’m hot. That camel spit at me. I’ve got sand in my shoe. It’s only stacked blocks. Eeuw, Mummy, that mummy is a dead body.”
She laughed at his imitation of the girls. “Thank you, Madoc. I will never regret leaving that position.”
Madoc served his wine at dinner and treated them all to an account of his drive to Heraklion, complete with sheep and a washed-out drainage ditch. He spoke of his dinner with Harcourt-Smythe but did not mention his morning interview with the police inspector.
* * *
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 12
For once, Isabella escaped her young escort and climbed the ridge alone. On the mountain slope she reached a spot far above yesterday’s walk. Soft grass and wildflowers in the shade beckoned. With a breeze to cool the lasting heat, she had discovered a little Eden. As she sketched the house and the village stretching beyond it, her mind played with the radiant palette needed to capture the scene.
Only as she set her work aside did she realize that she was planning beyond the excavation, preparing for art as her future. The illustrations would serve for Gawen’s articles, but a London gallery would demand paintings. She envisioned a handful of watercolors: this view, the terrace with its invasive bougainvillea and splashing fountain, the blinding houses in the simmering heat, a red-sailed boat moored at a dock. Landscapes that would help people escape the dreary gray of London’s worst days.
She lay on the soft grass. The wind ruffled her skirt and the leaves of her sketchbook. Far-off, bells jingled as a goatherd moved to new pasture. She drifted to sleep.
And woke to intense voices, not angry but vehement. Strong as Welsh rock.
“. . . has to be a plan to steal the artifacts. We must check the entire storeroom and match the contents to the logs.”
“We don’t have time for wasted work, Madoc. The inspector was right: it takes facts to prove a theory. The fact is that nothing was missing when we crated the two shipments.”
“Neither shipment has had anything valuable. Everyone knew what we planned to crate, from the weekend before you left for Knossos.”
The brothers didn’t move away. They seemed to have stopped a little distance below her. Isabella stealthily closed her sketchbook then lay still, unashamedly eavesdropping.
“Just whom do you suspect, Madoc?”
“I saw some damned guilty looks when I mentioned Harcourt-Smythe.”
“I can’t believe any of them would be involved in stealing artifacts.”
“Don’t blind yourself, Gawen, just because lust is blinding your eyes.” One of them said something low and hoarse that she couldn’t distinguish, then Madoc added, “Damned suspicious. Or do you think that bracelet walked out of its box on its own? I haven’t got eyes in the back of my head, to see everything they pull out. More than half of it is trash, too broken to tell what it is. They don’t get excited about that. Something had them excited that day, all eager to talk to Harcourt-Smythe. Then Arkwright demanded to do the supply run to Heraklion. And you don’t think that’s suspicious?”
“What do you think they found?”
“You tell me. They don’t get excited about stone bowls or metal taglets.”
“We’re too deep for Minoan. They said nothing about a new find.”
“They wouldn’t, would they, if they were going to sell it?”
“So now you have all of them in it? You can’t have it both ways, Madoc. One’s a crook; all of them are crooks. Which is it to be?”
“I may have misread their excitement when Harcourt-Smythe arrived. As Petrie said, we’re isolated. We work so hard at the dig that any intrusion from the outside is an occasion. Especially here, well off the main road. I have a regular break, going for supplies. They don’t. The week at Knossos and that Sunday trip to Mallia are the only times they’ve left.”
“Have you backed off your accusation?”
“Look at it this way, Gawen. It only takes one of them. You have the most to lose. Your reputation is at stake.”
“Any theft would also blot their reputations. Neither Arkwright nor Standings would risk it. Both want to fund their own dig. A theft would hurt their chances.”
“That leaves the students. How would they have the contacts?”
“Whoever it is could be working for Arkwright or Standings.”
“A conspiracy? Look, whoever it is only wants the cash. Your reputation won’t matter at all. It could be either of them or both of them. And in a choice between their blue blood and your common red, who will seem more credible? You’re not their class. You’re starting to build your reputation; the BSA never asked for references for them. You’re in charge only because you have active experience and they didn’t. Face it, Gawen.”
“I do know fieldwork, none better. That’s the reason I’m in charge.”
“And is that reason enough when you walk the halls of St. George’s?”
A long silence, then Gawen said heavily, “Never enough.”
Isabella knew that truth herself. She was well-born, but it wasn’t enough, especially in England where the uppercrust frowned upon America’s self-made men. Acceptance required blood and beauty or blood and money or money and beauty, never one alone. Mix intelligence into the equation, and suspicion steamed out, for either they didn’t understand it or they resented it. Only perfection was to be accounted equal to blue blood.
She recalled Petrie’s dig about gossip at St. George’s. Gawen Tarrant constantly had to prove himself worthy of his professorship. The other professors likely had life sinecures.
“Gawen, do you think the guilty party won’t try to blacken you with his crime? They can blacken us easily. I have wartime connections to the black-market in Greece and Turkey. Grandfather owns a shipping firm. All it takes is a shadow of suspicion, and you’re banned for life. Don’t leave the dig again.”
Another low comment that Isabella couldn’t hear. When next Madoc spoke, they were farther away. She waited until she couldn’t hear them before she sat up. They were out of sight. She gathered up her sketchbook and satchel and headed down the mountain.
As she came around a stand of young cedars, she saw movement in the shadowy dip between ridge and mountain, where the oaks overhung the stream. She shrank back into the shadows. Brown clothes, brown hair. Petrie leaped onto the bank and started up the steep slope. He halted twice, looking far ahead of his path. Isabella followed his gaze.
The path worked through the oak grove. As she watched, the brothers emerged. From this distance she couldn’t tell which was which. They walked through the trees’ deep shade. Petrie moved quickly after they disappeared, following the same path at a speed that kept them in earshot. Isabella hissed with anger. He would run and tattle like a schoolyard snitch to Nigel Arkwright and Montgomery Standings. She could almost hear his gibing voice, repeating Madoc’s suspicions and dissections of their upper-class snobbery.
Dinner would be extremely tense. She considered begging Dorcas for a tray.
Yet dinner was relaxed; the expected tension was absent. Conversation had a bonhomie that it had lacked since her arrival. The only foreboding note was the lizard that appeared on the terrace step. It flicked its tongue, tasting the air, then skittered back to the terrace. Nigel did drink steadily. Cecilia flashed several wary looks at her husband, yet no argument or subtle taunt marred the table. Retiring to the terrace, everyone talked long into the night then drifted off to their individual rooms without anything untoward slithering out.
