The Sea King’s Daughter

Chapter 13

AS I SAT THERE STARING AT THE DAMNING, INCONTROVERTIBLE evidence of my scraped soles, I had to fight down a crazy impulse to run, out of the room and out of the house, just as I was-bare feet, gossamer nightgown, and all.

However, after the first moment of panic I realized that the incident had broken the spell Kore had cast. It was nothing less than that, a combination of drugs, amateur hypnotism, charisma-and a normal human reluctance to accept the incredible. Up to that point I had not been sure what was real and what was my imagination. But the marks on my feet were a fact.

Kore spent longer than usual that morning fussing over me, rubbing oil on my hands and body, arranging my hair in intricate coils. I had to set my teeth to keep from shouting at her, but I managed to keep quiet. I didn’t know what she would do if I faced her with the truth. She might try to keep me there by force. Kore and Keller, even without the servants, were a match for me. I couldn’t count on Keller to help me; the man’s motives were a mystery.

So I smiled and chatted and ate my lunch like any polite visitor, and as soon as I was left alone, I got up. The clothes Frederick had brought me were in the wardrobe. The coarse, unpressed denim felt good against my skin; I was sick of clinging softness. Carrying my sneakers, I tiptoed to the door and eased it open.

The corridor was deserted. I couldn’t hear a sound. Apparently all the members of the household were resting. I made my way cautiously down the stairs, prepared to make a run for it if anyone tried to stop me.

I met no one. But I didn’t draw a deep breath until I was outside the villa, with the high white walls behind me.

Within a few minutes I was sweating. It was a hot, hazy day, and the air had the peculiar stillness I had learned to dread. But I was willing to risk an earthquake-a small one-to be free of the atmosphere of that troubled house.

Jim and I hadn’t settled on a specific meeting place, so I walked along the path that led toward the village. I was a little late. I didn’t see him, though, so as soon as I was out of sight of the villa I sat down on a big rock to wait for him.

My thoughts were not good company. By now I was fairly sure I had figured out Kore’s plans. Jim had been right about her. She had resurrected some antique cult and was playing high priestess, with half the women of the village dancing-literally-to her tune.

In my ignorance I found this knowledge less frightening than one might suppose. Kore had been trying to fit me into the unwanted part of the young goddess, or junior priestess-Ariadne the Most Holy, Persephone to her Demeter-Kore, in fact. I was to be Kore, the maiden, and she was to be… Who? It didn’t matter. I had quitthe cast, and she would have to put on her play without me.

Keller was the one who worried me, because I didn’t understand him. He had warned me to get away. But his apparent concern for my well-being might be a sham, or a delusion born of his feelings of guilt. Perhaps he meant to warn me about Kore’s uncanny but harmless activities.

Or did the warning have something to do with the fact that someone had shot at him? I couldn’t get over the way they had reacted to that attack, without even trying to investigate it. They assumed the would-be killer was one of the villagers. That seemed implausible to me, after years of peace, and in a year when there were three newcomers on the island who had good reason to resent Keller.

I didn’t like the direction my thoughts were taking, but I couldn’t completely reject the possibility that Jim had fired that shot.

I was so wrapped up in my depressing thoughts that I jumped convulsively when I heard someone approaching. I had almost forgotten that I was a fugitive. The footsteps were coming, not from the direction of the village, but from up the hill.

When Keller came into view I got to my feet. He was wearing sunglasses; the dark ovals hiding his eyes gave him a sinister look. He might not be young, but he was in excellent physical condition. I wondered how fast he could run.

As soon as he saw me he stopped. “Don’t be afraid,” he said quickly. “I followed only to be sure you were safe.”

“I’m meeting Jim,” I said. “He should be here any second.”

“Good.” He sounded genuinely relieved, and I felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Apparently he didn’t suspect Jim of shooting at him.

“You must not be alone,” he went on. “I will wait.”

“Really, you needn’t bother,” I said politely.

“I wait.”

We waited. Keller stood perfectly still, as if he realized that any advance on his part would start me running. I shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. I wasn’t really afraid, but I wished he would take off the dark glasses that masked his expression. His eyes were his most attractive feature; with their warm brown hidden, he looked like a stony-faced stage Nazi. Finally, after what seemed like hours, I heard someone coming, his feet crunching the pebbles of the path. It was Jim.

For a moment I felt as if I were not seeing Jim but another man who strongly resembled him. Presumably that man had also been tall and slender, with unruly brown hair and skin toughened by sun and rough weather. Maybe his eyebrows had had that same upward angle, and his mouth the same warm curve when he smiled. He must have been quite a man to inspire such a fury of repentance in his murderer. Even Frederick ’s voice had softened, momentarily, when he spoke the name. Vince. No one else had referred to him by his first name, but Frederick remembered him that way.

The impression lasted only for a second; but it was so strong I wondered whether I was receiving Keller’s thought waves. The sight of Jim really bothered him, even now, when he was prepared and waiting. Jim wasn’t too happy to see Keller either.

“What’s going on?” he demanded.

“Herr Keller is acting as my bodyguard,” I said lightly.

“That’s nice of him,” Jim said. “But it would be more to the point if Herr Keller told us what he’s guarding you from. And,” he added, turning on Keller like a duelist, “don’t give me any more of that stuff about my uncle. He’s dead and gone. Your guilt feelings don’t concern me, Keller. I need information. And not about what happened thirty years ago, that’s dead and gone too.”

Keller laughed harshly. “The past is never dead. You and this girl think you are free of it? You are wrong. The past shapes the present, and our lives are circumscribed by the acts of others long dead. We are all of us trapped in the labyrinth of time.”

The speech might have sounded contrived and theatrical if it had not been for the fact that the man was in deadly earnest. And what had prompted him to select the metaphor of the labyrinth? I shivered. Jim put his arm around me.

“No,” he said. “I’m not trapped, and neither is Sandy. At the moment we’re inconvenienced, not by your past actions but by your present behavior. Damn it, if you have something to say, why don’t you say it? I’m tired of vague hints and wild-eyed warnings.”

“I cannot,” Keller whispered.

He covered his face with his hands. To me he seemed a very pathetic figure, but Jim was unmoved.

“You said last night there was something you ought to tell me,” he insisted. “I’m not stupid, Keller. It’s no accident that your old adversaries came to Thera this summer. Why did they come? What secret do you all share?”

Keller lowered his hands, but he did not speak. After a moment Jim went on.

“I’ll start the ball rolling, then. When Sandy was hurt the other day, it was no accident. The amphora she found had been planted, with a booby trap attached. I knew when she described it to me that it couldn’t have been underwater for three thousand years. Not only was it free of marine incrustations but it was entire, unbroken. Wave action will shatter a pot that’s only twenty-five or thirty feet deep. The amphora had to be a good one, so that Sandy would be moved to dig it out, but it isn’t impossible to find vessels of that caliber. The museum at Phira has some, and I would guarantee to rob that place any night of the year, it’s so poorly guarded. Or if a man lived here for years, excavating in an amateur fashion, he might discover unbroken amphorae. Why do you want Sandy to stop diving, Keller? What’s out there in the bay?”

“Ships,” said Keller. “The fleet of the sea king.”

His surrender was so complete, so unexpected, that Jim was taken aback.

“What?” he gasped.

“Yes.” Keller let out a long, shuddering sigh. “It is yours by right. It was his. I am only the guardian.”

Jim’s arm tightened around my shoulders.

“He’s right,” I said. “ Frederick knows about it too. That’s why he brought me here.”

“Wait a minute,” Jim said dazedly. “I can’t take it in, it’s too much. A fleet? One Bronze Age ship was found in Turkey. A trading vessel, fantastically well preserved, but not carrying a rich cargo. Are you trying to tell me that an entire Minoan fleet sank in that bay, and that it survived? No. I don’t believe it.”

“He saw it,” said Keller. As always, he avoided the name, but neither of us wondered who the pronoun “he” referred to. “Two years before the war, when he was on Thera for a few days. To hear him describe it, was an experience one could never forget. The sea bottom for many acres strewn with rotting ships and cargo-anchors, masts, amphorae, even the ropes of the rigging.”

The words came pouring out of him. The sheer relief of being able to speak, after years of silence… Or was it more than that? Words aregiven to us to conceal our thoughts; people sometimes talk about one subject in order to avoid another that is more dangerous. The suspicion flashed through my mind and then was gone, in the fascination of Keller’s story.

“It was a summer of bad weather. Storms and winds and earthquakes. He had come, after a season’s work in Crete, to pursue a personal theory. He had read the reports of the early excavators- you know, of course, that Fouque discovered Minoan houses here in the 1870’s. Nothing was done to follow up those discoveries, and since Fouque’s time the excavations on Crete had opened up an entire new civilization. So he came, dreaming, as young men do, of making great discoveries.

“Do you believe in accident? If so, you will say that by pure accident he arrived between two storms, one of which swept the bottom of this bay clear of the sand that had covered the fleet for thousands of years. He had hired one of the fishermen to take him on a trip around the island. The man was reluctant to go because he feared more bad weather, but at last he was persuaded.

“They anchored briefly in this bay, so that he might search the base of the cliffs for ruins. Diving, he struck his hand on an anchor that protruded out of the ocean floor. Accident, you say? Cling to that thought. It is not pleasant to think we are the toys of vast forces indifferent to man…

“You were thunderstruck to hear of his discovery. Imagine his sensations, seeing it spread out before his very eyes. But he was trained, he knew these islands and their people. He knew that if the ship’s captain learned what he had found, there would be looting, hasty and destructive. He dared not remove any object large enough to be noticed by the crew. He took only one thing-”

“The dagger,” I interrupted. “Like the inlaid daggers from Mycenae, Jim. Frederick has it now. How did he get it?”

Keller’s mouth tightened. “If he told any other of his find, I was not informed. He told me, because he could not bear that it should be lost, and because he knew I felt as he did about archaeology.”

Jim had been frozen throughout the long speech. Now he said, in a croaking voice, “But why didn’t he come back? Why didn’t he tell someone-other archaeologists, the Greek government-”

“He did come back,” Keller said. “Three days later, after the second storm. He came on foot, overland, and swam, recklessly, alone. He found nothing. Another convulsion-accident, my young friends?-had reburied the ships. He had not the opportunity to do more. You must remember that this was before the war, before the development of the self-contained breathing apparatus for diving. His find was deep, deeper than you”-he nodded at me-“have yet gone. Fifty feet, perhaps more. Oh, certainly, divers could work at greater depths, even without the clumsy suits that were the only equipment available then. The sponge divers of the Aegean have been doing it for centuries. But this was an entirely new field. None of the techniques of underwater archaeology had been dreamed of, much less worked out. He was dazzled by the immensity of the problem; and he had also a touch of the hoarding instinct all scholars have. The find was his, his alone, and no one else should see it until he was in a position to handle it as it deserved. Also, I think, he was something of a mystic. It was as if someone had opened the sea to him with one sweep of a giant hand and said, ‘Here. It is for you. I have kept it for you for three thousand years.’ What had waited so long could wait a little longer. The warclouds were gathering, and the Greek government was not concerned with protecting antiquities. At any moment the waters might be closed to him and his people; to speak out would disclose the secret to those who would exploit it for themselves or neglect it in the more urgent demands of survival. You shake your head; you cannot understand. But I can. Even now, I think I would have acted as he did under those circumstances.”

“Oh, I can understand,” Jim muttered. “Certainly I can understand his desire to keep it for himself. But it’s like a-like a fantastic dream. Even if he wasn’t hallucinating, the ships can’t be there now.”

“I think they are gone,” Keller said calmly. “I, too, have searched. When I was younger and stronger, I swam often in the bay. Never did I find a scrap. For ten years now I have done nothing. When Frederick came here, I suspected that he also knew. How he found out I do not know. I never spoke to anyone, not even to Kore.”

“How did Kore and Frederick know each other?” I asked, since he seemed to be in an informative mood.

But Keller had finished for the day. “Kore’s life is her own to discuss,” he said curtly. “She has been loving and faithful to me, and that is all that concerns me. You asked me what I knew; I have spoken.”

He swung on his heel in a neat military about-face and walked away.

Jim sat down on the rock, pulling me down with him. He let out a long whistle.

“That hit the jackpot, didn’t it? Sandy, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know it was your uncle’s discovery. I don’t remember exactly what Frederick told me, but he certainly implied that he found the ships himself.”

Jim was silent, but his silence was suggestive. I went on, answering the question he hadn’t asked.

“Maybe your uncle told him.”

“Maybe,” Jim said dubiously. “We’ll never know, not if we expect Frederick to tell us. I passed the house on the way up here. He was in the courtyard washing pots, as if that were the most important thing on his mind.”

“I’m not sure he believes in the ships himself,” I said. “His behavior has been so erratic, almost as if he were afraid to pursue the idea for fear it will turn out to be a mirage. Jim, now that you know, what are we going to do about it?”

“Damned if I know. It’s too big to take in all at once, and too amorphous. And there are more pressing problems.”

“Like what?”

“Like you. I can understand now why you’re reluctant to leave Thera. I was pushing you too hard. How about a compromise?”

“Such as?”

“You could move to a hotel in Phira for a few days while we consider the situation. I know you’re worried about money, but that’s a minor consideration. With what we know now, we can blackmail Frederick if we have to. We need time and freedom from pressure to sort out all the possibilities.”

“What about the hotel in the village? Does Angelos still refuse to rent me a room?”

“I wouldn’t take it if he offered. Things have gone from bad to worse down there. We haven’t gotten any work done for days. The men show up, but they don’t do anything; they stand around in groups muttering.”

“What is Sir Christopher doing about it?”

“Sir Christopher,” said Jim, “is one of the people I want to talk to. I think we need a high-level conference, with everybody being candid for a change.”

“Okay,” I said. “It’s a good idea, Jim. I’ll go today if I can find transportation.”

The look of relief on Jim’s face made me realize how worried he had been.

“I’ll get you there,” he promised. “I’m glad, Sandy. I was afraid you were going to insist on staying with Kore and her crazy boyfriend.”

“I don’t ever want to see that place again.”

“Why? Has something happened?”

“Yes.” I brushed at the knees of my jeans. They were covered with a thin layer of dust. “At first I thought I was just having peculiar dreams. I’ve had them before-about Theseus and Ariadne and the dancing floor-”

His expression stopped me at that point. “Where did you hear about the dancing floor?” he asked sharply.

“A book I was reading last night.”

“Oh.” His face cleared. “I thought maybe you had been up the mountain. You shouldn’t go by yourself; the terrain is pretty rough.”

“Why should I go up there?”

“There’s a level spot higher up, with the remnants of stonework,” Jim explained. “The local people call it the dancing place. There may actually be a folk memory of some ancient ritual. The dances weren’t for entertainment, they had a religious function-”

He broke off with an exclamation, as the rock on which we were sitting shifted sideways. We were facing north, toward the flank of the mountain and the center of the island. We were almost ten miles away from the action, but that wasn’t far enough.

A thick column of slate gray went straight up toward the sun. It looked like one of the pillars that held up the sky in the old legends, and when it broke and spread outward, it was as if the vault of heaven were collapsing in a rain of stone and crumbling mortar. Ash began to fall, and then my ears were overwhelmed by a thundering, bellowing roar-the herds of the Earthshaker in stampede. Solid ground became unstable as water. Deafened, and blinded by terror and the spreading dust, I felt the rock on which I sat heave like a living thing, flinging me flat on the ground. I tried to press myself into the dirt, clawing at it with my nails. Even after the sound stopped, I could hear the echoes inside my head.

Hands caught me around the waist and tried to pull me up. I clutched at dusty weeds with both hands, resisting. Another roar, and another shifting of the earth… I couldn’t breathe. Dust filledmy mouth and nose. I was being buried alive, but the earth wouldn’t let me stay buried, it was shaking and heaving, trying to eject me from its womb.

I must have passed out from sheer terror. When I came back to consciousness, Jim was holding me in his arms and yelling in my ear.

“Come on, Sandy, snap out of it. We’ve got to get down to the village; see if they need help.”

He yanked me to my feet. I looked up. The smoke was a dark, menacing cloud, covering half the sky, hiding the sun. Ash was falling over everything. I was coated with it.

“What about them, up there?” I gasped, nodding in the direction of the villa.

“The villa is solidly built and fairly new. Some of those shacks in the village have been on the verge of collapse for years. There may be a tsunami, a tidal wave. Hurry, Sandy.”

His face was a grotesque mask of dust and streaked blood and rising bruises. My own must have been as bad. My nose and forehead stung where I had rubbed them against the ground.

“Okay,” I said. “Sorry I lost my nerve.”

“Don’t blame you. I’m supposed to be used to quakes but that was the worst I’ve ever experienced. Volcanoes aren’t in my line either. There may be poisonous gases as well as ash in that cloud. We’re in for a rough time.”

We staggered down the path. Tumbled rock had obliterated sections of the way, and at one point we had to jump a foot-wide fissure that had not been there before. We had reached the lower slopes before I realized that something was missing. I should have seen the roof of our house from this point. It was no longer there.

“The house,” I shouted. “ Frederick -”

Jim didn’t stop running, he just changed direction. The closer we got, the more appalling the damage appeared. The house was gone; the tumbled heap of plaster and rubble that had taken its place bore no resemblance to a man-made structure.

We found Frederick in the wreckage of what had been the outer wall of the courtyard. He had gotten a few feet along the path when the wall gave way and caught him. The most horrible thing, to me, was the way the ash had already covered his motionless body with a thin gray film.

He had been thrown down with considerable force. One side of his face was scraped raw. Aside from that, the only damage seemed to be a badly bruised and possibly broken arm. He was out cold, but he groaned when I ran my hands up and down to check for broken ribs, and soon he opened his eyes.

“Yell if it hurts,” I said, and jabbed my thumb into his side.

“My books,” said Frederick. “Are my books buried?”

“They are, and you’re lucky you aren’t,” I said. “How are your legs? Can you walk? There’s no point hanging around here; we haven’t even any water left, much less medical supplies.”

Frederick sat up. He surveyed the situation, his eyes moving from the heap of rubble to the clouded sky, and then back to me, passing over Jim as if he had been invisible.

“I think my arm is broken,” he said. “You had better start digging out-”

“Your books? Forget it. We’ll get you down to the village-assuming there is any village left. Although why I bother, God knows.”

“I have no intention of going to the village,” Frederick said.

“I do.” Jim stood up. “Better take him to the villa, Sandy. If he’ll go.”

“He’ll go. How about you?”

“I must see if they need any help down there.” Jim gnawed at his lip. “Unless you need me-”

“We don’t need you,” Frederick said, with a sneer that would have done credit to Erich von Stroheim on the Late Show. “Run along and play humanitarian. Perhaps you can extract Chris from under a pile of rock and win his undying gratitude.”

Jim gave me an eloquent look and a shrug. I shrugged back.

“As you can see, he’s alive and kicking. Don’t worry about us. I’ll come down later, when I see what’s happened at the villa.”

“Okay.” Jim turned away. I watched him go with an unreasonable sense of abandonment, and then turned back to my father.

“Let’s go. Unless you have any objections to seeing Keller again.”

“Why should I?” Frederick stood up, pushing my hands away as I tried to steady him. I started to say something nasty, but he looked so awful, all dusty and bloody, with his arm hanging limp, that I bit my lip and remained silent.

We started walking. After a few steps I put my arm around him and he let it remain, which was an admission of something, from Frederick. It took us forever to retrace the route that I had covered in a quarter of an hour earlier that day. The path was almost obliterated, and twice we had to detour around cracks that Frederick was too feeble to jump. The air had darkened, not to the quiet blue of evening, but to a sickly grayish shade that made all objects look corroded and rotten. The ash continued to fall. I was coughing, and Frederick ’s breath came in strained gasps. He leaned more and more heavily on me.

When the walls of the villa came into sight I could have wept with relief. They seemed to be intact. As we neared the front gate I saw some evidence of damage. Stones littered the path and the gate itself hung askew. An acrid smell of burning reached my nostrils, and with alarm I remembered the charred debris of Knossos. Fire, spreading from lamps and cooking fires, had caused as much damage as the earthquake itself.

In the courtyard many of the earthenware pots, with their green contents, had tumbled and shattered. The smell of smoke grew stronger.

As we approached the front door, Keller came out. He didn’t speak, but came quickly to relieve me of Frederick ’s weight. Frederick was drooping; he didn’t seem to realize that he had changed hands. I rubbed my aching shoulders and followed Keller into the house. It felt cool and clean after the outdoors, and I noticed that the windows were tightly shuttered.

“We keep out the ash, if possible,” Keller said. “You are unhurt? What has happened in the village?”

His hands were moving over Frederick as he spoke. When he touched the arm, Frederick ’s eyes opened and he let out a profane remark.

“It is not broken, I think,” Keller said calmly, before I could answer his first question. “The servants have gone. You will have to fetch bandages and water. Luckily our reserve tank was not damaged.”

“Where is Kore?” I asked.

Keller’s eyelids flickered. “She is safe. She rests now. We had a fire in the kitchen. It is extinguished, there is no need to fear. You will find supplies…”

He gave me directions. It took me a while to find the things he wanted. Then I held a flashlight while Keller bandaged Frederick ’s arm. The room was quite dark, but he didn’t turn on the lights. Either the wires were down, or he was afraid of risking another fire from shorted electrical circuits.

Except for swearing, Frederick didn’t say anything. I wondered about leaving these two old enemies alone together; and then decided cynically that I didn’t really care what they did to each other.

“I’m going down to the village,” I said.

“You would be better to stay,” Keller said. “This house is as safe as any structure could be; I saw to that when it was built.”

“You think there will be more quakes?”

“I cannot say. But I am not so concerned about that as about the volcano. The ash is falling thickly.”

His voice was quite matter-of-fact; his hands, arranging a sling around Frederick ’s neck, were steady. Apparently his nerves got out of hand only when his imagination tormented him. In an ordinary physical crisis he was first-rate, and I found his presence a lot more consoling than I did Frederick ’s.

“I’ll risk it,” I said. “I may not be able to help, but-”

“Why don’t you be honest?” Frederick asked. “It’s that boy you’re worried about. The whole village could go up in smoke so long as he survives.”

“What do you care?” I said. “You didn’t even ask me if I was hurt.”

“I could see you were not,” Frederick said. “Why should I ask?”

I couldn’t think of any answer that was rude enough, so I simply walked out. But when I opened the front door, it was all I could do not to slam it shut and retreat. Day had turned to night, or rather to a dismal twilight. The air stung my eyes and smelled funny. I started to cough.

Then I thought of Jim and the children and old people in the village, and I stepped out into the courtyard. I hadn’t gone far, however, before a shape loomed up out of the shadows. I knew it was Jim; I would have known him in the dark of a lightless cave. I greeted him with an exclamation of relief and joy. He didn’t reply, just caught my hand and turned me around.

“What-” I began.

“They’ve gone crazy down there. Come back to the villa.”

It was a strange feeling to be walking in and out of the house as if it were a public building. Keller glanced indifferently at us as we ran in, and went on pouring brandy into a glass that he handed to Frederick.

“Ah,” said the latter unpleasantly. “The humanitarian has given up.”

“There’s nothing I can do down there,” Jim said. He was still holding my hand, so tightly that it hurt. “I came to warn you. Better not leave the house.”

“Why?” Keller asked. “Was there much destruction?”

“Not as bad as it might have been. Some of the older houses collapsed and the hotel is pretty well demolished. It’s not that. It’s…” Jim ran his fingers through his hair; a gray cloud of dust surrounded his head, halolike, for a moment before settling. “They wouldn’t let me help. They were saying some rather ugly things. Some of the kids threw rocks.”

“Typical,” Frederick said. “When a catastrophe occurs, the primitive mind seeks a scapegoat.”

“But they’re friends of mine,” Jim said. “I don’t understand this.”

“Sit down,” Keller said, motioning toward a chair. “Leave them alone. They will quiet. This has happened before.”

Jim shook his head. “I’m going back. I just came here to warn you to stick to the house. You especially, Sandy.”

“What makes you think you’re any more impervious to rocks than I am?” I demanded. “If you’re going, so am I.”

“I’m not going to the village. I-I can’t find Chris.”

“Oh, Jim! The hotel-”

“No, he wasn’t there. They told me that much before they… I’m going to the dig. I can circlearound, above the village.”

I didn’t try to argue with him. I knew how he felt about his boss, and indeed the idea that the man might be lying injured in the increasingly foul air disturbed me too. I’d even have gone to look for Frederick under those circumstances.

I followed Jim out into the hall. He turned at the door and took me by the shoulders.

“No, Sandy, you can’t come.” His voice was very low, almost a whisper. “I want you to keep an eye on things here. There may be trouble. That crowd in the village could turn into a mob. Your father is right. They want a scapegoat.”

“No,” I said. “It couldn’t happen.”

“It could. I’ll bring Chris here, if I can find him. In any case I won’t be gone longer than I can help. Lock the place up tight. And you might ask Keller if he’s got any firearms.”

With that shocking suggestion he was gone.

I turned slowly back into the house. Earlier that day I had wondered whether anything more could happen to complicate my life. In one sense the cataclysm had simplified the situation. An order of priority had been established. Survive. That was the first problem. Survive an erupting volcano, complete with earthquakes, and a potential mob. After that we could worry about lesser difficulties.

The sight of the two men exasperated me almost beyond endurance. They were sitting and drinking their brandy like two old gents in a club.

“Aren’t you going to do something?” I demanded of the shadowy figures.

“What is there to do?” Keller asked remotely. “We can only wait. What will come, will come.”

“How about Kore?”

“Leave her alone. She is sleeping. I gave her a sedative, she was disturbed.”

“Jim said I should ask you if you had a gun in the house,” I said, hoping to shake him out of his fatalistic mood.

“As you saw,” Keller said indifferently. “They are in that cabinet.”

I found the arsenal, with the help of the flashlight. The.22 Kore had used was there. It had several shells in the chamber. There was another rifle, a heavier one, and a couple of handguns, all loaded and ready to go.

Nobody seemed to care what I did, so I went exploring. The house was deserted; no doubt the servants had gone to the village to see if their families were all right. There was a fine drift of ash over every flat surface. Moved by some obscure impulse, I wrote my name: Sandy, on the top of the dining-room table, and then stepped over a pile of broken crystal on my way to the stairs. The house itself had stood, but there were a lot of broken dishes lying around. Pictures had fallen from the walls, too. I started to pick one up and then dropped it again. This was no time to clean house.

The upstairs looked like a hotel in the off season-dark, silent, dusty. I looked into the room I had occupied and saw the book I had been reading lying open on the bedside table. It gave me an eerie feeling to think how much had happened since I left the room only a few hours ago.

I had no idea which room Kore occupied, so I tried one door after another, meeting only darkness and emptiness, until I found a door that wouldn’t open. I banged on it.

“It is locked,” said Kore’s voice, from inside.

“Please unlock it,” I said, wondering. “It’s only me.”

“I know it is you,” Kore said. “I cannot unlock. Jürgen has the key.”

“He locked you in?” It was a stupid question; she didn’t bother answering it. Then, belatedly, I realized that from the first she had spoken in English.

“How did you know it was me?” I asked.

From behind the locked door came an uncanny chuckle.

“I knew.”

I had been about to offer to let her out. The lock wasn’t very complicated; I could have picked it easily. The queer laugh made me reconsider. Keller might have a darned good reason for locking her up.

“Are you all right?” I asked. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Not now.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “If…anything…happens, I’ll make sure you get out. You’re as safe in there as anywhere.”

“I am safe,” Kore repeated. Only it didn’t sound like a simple repetition of my reassurance; it sounded like a statement of fact.

I retreated. Even the two silent men in the parlor would be better company than that voice.

They were still sitting there when I returned. They reminded me, not of clubmen now, but of those plaster casts archaeologists have made of the victims of the Vesuvius eruption. Hardening ash made a perfect mold of the bodies before they fell into dust; centuries later, scholars poured plaster into the cavities and recreated the dead of Pompeii, men and women, children and dogs, lying as they had died in the last futile struggle for breath.

It was not the most comfortable thing to recollect just then. I poured myself a glass of brandy and drank. Then I went to the window and peered out through a crack in the draperies. I thought the air was a little clearer. It was hard to tell because the sun was setting, up there beyond the clouded skies.

I turned back to my silent companions and lifted my glass.

“Morituri te salutant,” I said. “That’s what the gladiators used to say to the emperor, remember? ‘We who are about to die salute you.’ I bet you wonder how I know that. Me, the semiliterate. Well, one of the girls on the hockey team thought that was a cute motto. She used to say it to the coach before-”

“Put that brandy down,” Frederick interrupted. “You have no business drinking at your age.”

“Ah,” I said. “It can talk. Go on, Frederick, lecture me some more. Even your croaking is preferable to silence.”

Frederick didn’t respond, so I tried again.

“You ought to show a little concern, you know. If I don’t live through this adventure, it will be your fault. You got me here.”

“You came of your own free will.” Frederick ’s voice sounded livelier.

“You conned me,” I said. “Don’t you feel a little, teeny bit guilty? Come on, Frederick. Feel guilty.”

“Guilty.” The word made me jump. I had almost forgotten Keller, silent in the shadows. “We are all guilty. Guilty of mankind.”

The reverberant pounding that followed the speech sounded like a symphonic accompaniment. Doom, knocking at the door. Then I got hold of myself.

“It’s Jim,” I said, with a long breath of relief. “I forgot, I locked the door when he left.”

I ran to open it. Jim didn’t say hello; he pushed me out of the way and bolted the door again before leading the way into the living room.

“You didn’t find Sir Christopher?” I asked.

“No. I looked everywhere. Damn it, can’t we have some light in here?”

I gave him the flashlight. It wasn’t much help.

“What is the situation?” Frederick asked, blinking as the beam focused on his face.

“The volcano is quiescent, for the moment. The air is clearing a little.”

“Good,” I said. “Then the village should be calming down.”

“No.” Jim flicked the light across his body, and I gasped. His shirt was torn and streaked with blood. “When I found no sign of Chris at the dig, I had to go back to the village,” he went on. “I had a few words with the priest. He wasn’t too coherent, but the gist of the speech was ‘Get out and stay out of sight.’”

“The priest,” I exclaimed. “But he, of all people-”

“He was trying to help,” Jim said. “If I had followed his advice, I wouldn’t have gotten these bruises. It was my old landlord, Angelos, who started the fight. He seems to blame us for the damage to his damn hotel. Half a dozen of them jumped me then. Not all the men are crazy; your foreman Nicholas was one of the guys who intervened so I could get away. The women… Thewomen are gone.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t see a single female,” Jim said. “Not one.”

“In their houses, like good Greek ladies,” I said. “Tending the wounded, praying…”

“They aren’t praying,” Jim said. “At least… Where’s Kore?”

“Upstairs. Locked in her room.”

“You locked her in?”

“No,” Keller said. “I did.”

“Then you know,” Jim said. “You know what she’s doing.”

The flashlight beam struck Keller full in the face, but he made no move to shield his eyes. The pinpoint pupils, shrinking against the light, gave him a ghostly look.

“I know,” he said, barely moving his lips. “There is no harm. She does no harm, it is only a game-”

“Then why did you lock her in? You know it’s no game. It’s dangerous as hell.”

“So Kore’s fantasies have found an outlet.” Frederick ’s face was illumined now, as Jim turned the light in response to his voice. “What a fitting occasion. The old gods are angry; they must be propitiated. But Kore’s self-appointed role must have been useful all along. By convincing the women of her powers, she controlled the entire village. It always was a woman’s cult-”

“You cold-blooded bastard,” Jim said. “Perched on your academic pedestal lecturing about cults… You know what your blasted cultinvolves, don’t you? The details are obscure, ofcourse-” His voice was a savage mockery of Frederick ’s pedantic tone. “But we can be sure that a vegetation cult involved some form of sacrifice. The victim was killed in order that his blood might bring about the resurrection of life in spring. The dying god, Osiris and Attis, Persephone… Kore can choose between several versions of the ritual. Which one does she fancy, Keller? The myth of Persephone, who died and was reborn yearly? It’s one of the oldest myths, older than the Greeks, older than ancient Crete, and Sandy makes a perfect patsy, doesn’t she? Ariadne, the Most Holy, who was the Cretan equivalent of Persephone. Or is it the Dionysian rite Kore follows? In that case any warm male body will serve the purpose. Is Chris being chased around the hills right now, by a crowd of howling maenads?”

“Absurd,” Frederick said. “Hysterical nonsense.”

I only wished I could believe it. I knew Jim was right about the cult. What I had not known was the complex and perilous meaning of the role Kore had selected for me. The women of Zoa, filing past my bed that night, in a solemn, ritual viewing of the new “goddess”-Kore’s daughter-substitute in a ritual so old that its hoary antiquity weighed down the mind. The priestess was the incarnation of the goddess, and She was the mother, the oldest of all the gods, the Earth herself-dying in winter, born again in spring with the new leaves, the young lambs, the sprouting corn. The women were the food gatherers and the ones who brought forth life. Yes, it was a woman’s cult, and the women of Zoa were only following tradition, revering a mother far older than the bright and tender Virgin.

Not all the women were involved, of course, only the more susceptible and superstitious. But there were enough of them, and their influence was great enough to keep Kore and her lover safe all these years. No doubt that was how the game had begun. But now… How far would Kore goto fulfill the demands of her votaries? Was she entirely sane?

Keller’s mind was apparently running along the same line. He got up and left the room, almost running. His footsteps pounded up the uncarpeted stairway. He was back very quickly.

“She’s gone,” he said. “One of the women must have let her out.”

Jim started for the door-and ran smack into a chair. As he stood swaying I snatched the flashlight from him and turned it on his face. He closed his eyes and put his hand up, but not quite soon enough.

“Your eyes,” I said, horrified. “What happened?”

“The fumes, I suppose,” he said fretfully. “Let go, Sandy. I’ve got to find Chris.”

“You can’t even see! Are you crazy? What’s to prevent them from picking you as their star performer instead of Chris? You fit the part better. You’ll blunder right into them.”

“Unlikely,” said Frederick. “If the performance takes the form I anticipate, it will resemble the bacchic orgies, with some form of circling dance. There will be considerable noise.”

He got up from his chair and went to the window. Jim was making feeble attempts to free himself from my grasp. I hung on with both hands.

“The air seems to be clearing,” Frederick said. “However, our young hero is in no condition to go out. I see I shall have to assume the role, ill as it suits me.”

“You!” I exclaimed.

“Don’t misunderstand,” said Frederick. “I am immensely curious. The chance of seeing such a survival may never come again. Kore’s contributions cannot be denied, but she must have worked with a residuum of folk memory handed down in these islands for millennia. Fascinating.”

In that instant, on that last word, my feelings for him died. Oh, I had felt them, much as I wanted to deny them; I had hoped he might have some tenderness buried under his cold, formal manner. I had deluded myself.

“Go ahead,” I said. My voice was as flat as my emotions. “Go on, watch the women dancing and cheering and tearing their victim limb from limb.I hope you will take notes. You may find it a little difficult to write left-handed, but if I know you, you’ll manage.”

“I will.” He put out a hand as Jim surged toward him and shoved him back. “Keep that young fool here. Naturally I will interfere if matters go as far as he suggests, which I don’t expect for a moment. The victim will be a goat or a sheep. I shall return in good time.”

Jim had fallen into a chair and was struggling to get up. I sat on his lap to hold him down, and tried to calm him.

“Just let me bathe your eyes and fix you up a little. I promise you can go. Later. After you feel better.”

As I spoke, Frederick left. I heard the front door close.

Keller helped me work on Jim. We found a lantern that shed more light than the flashlight we had been using. The eyedrops seemed to help.

When Keller had finished, he rolled his shirt sleeves down and buttoned them neatly.

“I too must go,” he said. “I must find Kore.”

“She’s in no danger,” Jim muttered. “ Sandy is the one I’m worried about.”

“Me?” I said, pretending surprise. This was not the time to tell him what I knew about Kore’s religious doctrines, especially the ones that concerned me personally. But I underestimated his intelligence.

“Why do you suppose I keep coming back here instead of looking for Chris?” Jim demanded. “I have a pretty good idea what Kore is up to. When I realized that the women were gone from the village, I started putting the rest of it together. Kore’s talk about reincarnation and her references to a female deity-whom we naïvely identified as the Virgin Mary-your dreams, the hints the priest threw out… Keller, for God’s sake-youought to know what’s going on in that woman’s mind, if anyone does. What will she do?”

“She never spoke to me of that,” Keller said. “It was her private affair.”

“It’s not private now,” Jim said.

“But I tell you, she will harm no one.” Keller was standing just beyond the light; it left his face in shadow, but shone on his hands. They were tight, white-knuckled fists. “You young fools, frantic about imaginary dangers… There is danger walking abroad tonight, but it will not be from my poor Kore. It will be for her. And for others.”

Jim took the wet cloths off his eyes and sat up.

“I think you had better tell me,” he said.

Keller slumped into a chair as if his legs would no longer support him.

“Yes, I must tell you. For thirty years I have kept this burden on my soul. I can bear the weight no longer.”

Jim glanced questioningly at me. Was Keller about to go through the same old story again?

“I know about your guilt feelings,” Jim said. “But you’re mistaken if you think anyone harbors a grudge about that. A murderous grudge, anyway. The idea of revenge-”

“Revenge!” Keller’s voice cracked with emotion. “I do not speak of a motive so juvenile! I speak of treachery and fear! How do you think your uncle fell into our hands? It was not by accident, or by our cleverness. He was betrayed, I tell you-given over to us by a man he trusted like a brother, in exchange for immunity. Would such a man hesitate to kill now, in order to keep the secret of his shame?”