Lament for Leto (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  “Before Zeus became the patron of the Games, the site was dedicated to Hera. I think I will pay my respects to her temple before I leave this spot.”

  “It is only two Doric columns and some broken stone steps.”

  “It is set among deciduous trees and more of these agreeable pines, and is dedicated to a goddess and so commands our sisterly regard.”

  “And tomorrow we go to Corinth, which I have never seen.”

  “You seek always some new thing?”

  Instead of answering, Hero suddenly exclaimed.

  “Look! Look over there! Is it not Mary Cowie?”

  “Indeed it is, and alone.”

  “Something must have happened. They must have changed their minds,” said Hero, in an excited voice. She left Dame Beatrice and caught up with Mary. “Well!” she said. “What are you doing here? Where are the others?”

  Mary stared at her stupidly. She was obviously completely taken aback by the encounter.

  “I thought you’d gone to Corinth,” she said weakly. “I certainly didn’t expect to find you here. You said you were going to Corinth. Why haven’t you gone?”

  “We are on our way.”

  “But this isn’t on your way. I thought you were going by way of Tripolis.”

  “We thought it would be more interesting by way of Pyrgos and the coast. But what are you doing at Olympia? Are the others with you? I do not see them.”

  “You mean you don’t see Julian, I suppose,” said Mary, rallying.

  “Well, except for Mr. Owen, he is the tallest of the party, so he would be easy to pick out, I suppose,” said Hero, good-humouredly, “but you have not answered my question.”

  “Why should I? It’s no business of yours where the others are. If you want to know, they are having to hang about at Patras because they can’t get a boat for a couple of days, so I thought I might just as well see Olympia while I had the chance, that’s all.”

  “Yes, I see. I think that was very sensible of you.”

  Dame Beatrice joined them.

  “Well,” she said to Mary, “how nice to see you again. But are you alone?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Mary. “As I’ve just explained to Hero, we found we had to wait two days at Patras for a boat, so I hired a car and came on here. I suppose I’d better be getting back before my aunt begins to panic.”

  “She does not know you have come?”

  “No. I’m supposed to be doing some shopping for her.”

  “Dear me! I am afraid she will think the shopping is taking rather a long time. Have you had any lunch?”

  “Oh, yes, of course. I had it in Pyrgos. Well, it has been fun meeting you. I certainly didn’t expect it.”

  “Mary thought we would be in Corinth,” explained Hero.

  “Of course she did. You know,” said Dame Beatrice, leering kindly at Mary, who was obviously very ill-at-ease, “I really think it would be better if you stayed at the hotel here for the night. You can telephone your aunt to let her know what is happening, and then return to Patras early tomorrow morning.”

  “No, I must get back. My aunt will be quite sufficiently put out, as it is, to think that I’ve taken the initiative for once, and acted without her permission or knowledge. Besides, I’ve told my driver to wait for me and take me back to Patras.”

  “Have you seen all you wish to see, or have you just arrived?”

  “Oh, I’ve seen enough. I’m sick and tired of ruins.”

  “Then why,” asked Hero, innocent-eyed and speaking softly, “did you travel through the heat of the day to visit Olympia?”

  “Simply because, if you come to Greece, it’s one of the places you’re supposed to have visited,” replied Mary. “Anyway, it’s beautifully peaceful here, and the temple of Zeus makes a change from all these shrines of Apollo.”

  “Have you visited the museum?”

  “No. I don’t care about museums. I’m always being sent to the Victoria and Albert to make notes on things for my aunt’s horrible books. She likes to ‘get the atmosphere right,’ as she calls it.”

  “A very worthy aim,” said Dame Beatrice. Mary pulled a face and was turning away when Hero, who appeared to be in a mischievous if not a malicious mood, observed:

  “If you admire the temple of Zeus, you must on no account fail to visit the museum, whether you like to visit museums or not.”

  “Why?” asked Mary, suspiciously. Hero waved a beautiful brown hand.

  “The temple pediments are there,” she said. “It is not far to go. You get to it by crossing the Kladeos. Quite simple. You will enjoy the drunken fight and the chariot race, and you will see Apollo at his best and noblest. Then you will be able to tell your aunt that you have only been carrying out Papa Ronald’s wishes, and she will forgive you and perhaps make you another little present of money. Who knows? Such strange things happen in Greece. That you should spend on a taxi the money she gave you for her shopping!” Hero concluded.

  During this speech Mary’s face had turned dark red and then white, first with fury and then with what Dame Beatrice diagnosed as fear. Realising what was likely to happen, she flicked out a thin arm and with powerful yellow fingers gripped Mary’s wrist.

  “No,” she said. “That will not prevent Hero from displaying unkindness and ill manners.”

  “If she strikes me like she did Mr. Owen,” said Hero, in an unemotional tone but with blazing eyes, “I kill her.”

  “If she had struck you, you would well have deserved the blow,” said Dame Beatrice, “but these primitive reactions serve no useful purpose. And now, my dear Mary, let me accompany you to your car and speed you on your way.” She released the wrist she had been holding and gave Mary a kindly little pat on the shoulder. “You had better wait for me here,” she said to Hero. “I shall have something to say to you later.”

  “You are making me afraid,” said Hero, with simple accuracy. “I do not like to be scolded.”

  “Well,” said Dame Beatrice, returning to her after what seemed a long interval, “I agree with you that strange things happen in Greece.”

  “You are not going to scold me?”

  “I never scold people. If they are sensitive, their own sensibilities tell them that they have shown themselves not at their best. If they are not sensitive, then scolding is more likely to make them obstinate than ashamed.”

  “You are a very wise woman, I think. But did you not agree with what I said, however badly and unkindly I express myself?”

  “I could tell what you were thinking, and, of course, the same thought had crossed my own mind.”

  “The tiger-aunt cannot have been in Patras when Mary escaped. She would never have sent her shopping all by herself, and given her all that money. Besides, Mary was very much afraid. What do you think has happened?”

  “Well, we have to allow for the fact, perhaps, that Mrs. Cowie and Mr. Owen are engaged to be married. They may sometimes prefer to be alone together and that, to some extent, would leave Mary free.”

  “That is not the impression I have. The tiger-aunt insists on a chaperone. Perhaps she thinks Mary is an inexperienced young girl! What an idea, that!”

  “Now you are being unkind again,” said Dame Beatrice mildly. “Your pointed remark about money, however, reached a very sensitive spot. What made you think of saying what you did?”

  “You know what made me say it. A taxi all the way from Patras and back again, and the driver to wait for her while she studies the ruins of which she is sick and tired? There is a big mystery here, and I like, above all things, big mysteries.”

  “Well, I suggest that you do not involve yourself in this one. It is, after all, no business of ours if Mary chooses to ride about the Peloponnese in taxi-cabs.”

  Hero giggled, her equanimity completely restored.

  “Well, it is no business of ours, as you say,” she agreed, “but me, I shall continue to think about it. I cannot at present understand the circumstances. All is so strange, like I say. Thi
nk, now, of what we know, and then reconcile it with Mary’s visit here. And she, how she was so much surprised to find us here. She was not only surprised, did you think? She was not pleased. She was not pleased at all. Her plans, whatever they were, we put them wrong. We should have been at Corinth. She had counted upon that. And then to find us at Olympia, it was a great shock, as anybody could tell. So I ask myself why it should be a shock of the unpleasant kind, and not a surprise of the delightful kind, to find us here. Me she does not like, of course, but of you she can have nothing but the kindest thoughts, because you are so sympathetic towards her.”

  Dame Beatrice thought of Mrs. Solomon’s rubies, and was less sure than Hero seemed to be of Mary’s kindest thoughts.

  “Naturally it gave the poor child a shock to find us here when she thought we had gone to Corinth,” she said. “There would be nothing more in it than that.”

  “Very well, then,” said Hero. “Nevertheless, I am greatly exercised in my mind about this Mary. She is never—but never—allowed to please herself in what she does. For her to travel alone, to hire a car, to cause the others to hang about and wait while she indulges herself to see a place they do not wish to see, it is incredible. Has she asserted herself some more, as she did at Bassae? Has she told the tiger-aunt of her right to a life of her own? Has she persuaded Julian to take her side, or has that uncouth Edmund, perhaps, encouraged her to defy the tiger-aunt again? Has she, like Apollo, killed the Pytho?”

  “Beware how you speak such words, even in jest,” said Dame Beatrice. “I agree, though, that the event is without precedent, so far as we know, except, as you say, for that significant outburst at Bassae—or, rather, at Andritsena.”

  “Then there is the money of which I spoke unkindly to her. I repeat to you: it is not cheap to hire a car from Patras to Olympia. Does she receive such money from her aunt? I think not. I think she is given a little pocket-money, perhaps, and a fee for the hairdresser—something like that—but otherwise, if I am to judge, the purse-strings with Mrs. Cowie are very tight.”

  Dame Beatrice had nothing to say to this, knowing, as she did, that Mary was not above helping herself to what was not her own if the circumstances seemed to be favourable and the risk appeared to be slight. There was another aspect of the matter which puzzled her, however. The botanists had had three days’ start of her own party. It was difficult to believe that they were still at Patras. Even if Henry Owen had agreed to sail from there instead of from Kyllini, he would be anxious to get to Leukas to satisfy Chloe, and even more anxious to reach Corfu on his own account.

  “This Corinth is dull,” pronounced Hero two days later, when, to please Dick, the party had visited the temple of Apollo there. “Why do we stay any longer?”

  “Well,” said Dick, “now that we have seen the temple there is nothing to keep us here and we could put in the extra time at Delphi. The ferry plies from Rion which is almost at the end of an excellent road which runs from here back to Patras. It is only about eighty miles, I believe. We could do it easily tomorrow morning if we make an early start. I don’t think it is a car ferry, though, so we may have to return by the same route and go to Athens by way of the Isthmus.”

  “As we have time to spare, and there is a doubt whether there is a car ferry—in fact, I am inclined to think that the passage you mention is by local steamer—is there any good reason why we should not cross the Isthmus straight away and go to Delphi by way of Megara, Thivai, and Levadia?” Dame Beatrice mildly enquired.

  “A far better idea,” said Simonides, “and will save a great deal of trouble. But, first, I think Hero and I take the small journey to Xylokastron, where there is a beach. Will you come, Dame Beatrice, with my father?”

  So early in the year the beach was not crowded. From the hotel, one of the only two which were actually on the sea front, Dame Beatrice and Dick watched the scene while, in the clear, warm water of the almost tideless bay, the twin children of Leto splashed and laughed and swam.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Polymnia, the Muse of Divine Hymns

  “From the first foundation of this city, we have had a custom to celebrate the festival day of the god . . .”

  “Thus when they had spoken . . . they took cups of gold and sang hymns to the god . . . and laid them down to sleep.”

  “Mary Cowie came to Olympia!” exclaimed Dick, later, when Dame Beatrice had made her next remark in continuation of their conversation while they watched the swimming. “But how could she have got there? I’ve been wondering about that ever since Hero first told me that you and she had met her.”

  “I was puzzled about that myself. I still am at a loss to explain it. I know she came in a hired car, but that is all.”

  “And she actually spoke to you?”

  “Also to Hero, as you know, so, you see, there was no mistake about it. We could not both have imagined it.”

  “No, no, of course not! But what can have happened? Has Henry changed his plan of going to Corfu?”

  “It did not sound like it. Mary was anxious to return to Patras and not to keep the rest of the party waiting for her there.”

  “But they could have got to Patras half-a-dozen times since they left us! Something must have delayed them. I wonder what it was?”

  “Mary made mention of some delay in hiring a boat.”

  “Oh, well, speculation is idle. We shall hear all about their adventures later on, no doubt. There is one thing about it: we certainly need not expect to meet them at Delphi. There will only be time for them to drive directly to Athens if they are to stay on schedule.”

  Early in the morning the car took the main road through quiet Megara and just before reaching Eleusis branched off for Thivai. The battlefield of Plataea lay to the left, but the party did not stop, and at Thivai, the ancient Thebes, they followed the road north-west to Livadia, situated below Mount Helicon. They approached Parnassos. The mountain road proceeded in a series of hairpin bends and on the edge of ravines. The fields, if such they could be called, and the perilous verges of the road, were bounded by drystone walls. Apart from the ubiquitous goats and their herdsmen, there was not a soul to be seen. Occasionally Simon would stop at wayside springs to cool the engine or to give his passengers a chance to cool themselves in the shade of trees.

  The road crossed the upper ravine of the Platania and began to climb the principal mountain range. It followed the pattern laid by the conformation of the indented precipices. Parnassos dominated the scene, until, from the col of Arakhova, over three thousand feet up, the winding road, rounding a succession of rocky spurs, at last revealed the modern village, and in the distance a speck of white indicated the situation of the Delphi museum.

  From this point, high above the village, the views were magnificent and Dame Beatrice could understand why, apart from its ancient sacred associations, Dick had left Delphi until the last. The road descended in a series of hairpin bends which, one after another, opened up a changing panorama. There was still snow on the high tops, but, as the car crept onwards down the mountain, there were vineyards on the steep and sun-drenched slopes, and there were groves of olive trees so thickly planted and so numerous that they formed, with their strangely contorted trunks and Arthur Rackham-like gnarled and writhing branches, a witchcraft forest about the banks of a waterless stream.

  There were terraced fields on the lower slopes of the hills, poor, rocky and small, but the almond trees were in leaf, their virgin blossoms long dispersed on the winds of the Grecian spring, and, nearer the village, some cheerful peasants, walking beside or ahead of their laden donkeys, greeted the travellers with smiles and a salutation of friendly, waving, brown hands.

  The hotel was air-conditioned and it overlooked, from its cliff-top eyrie, the gorge of the River Pleistos and the outspread plain below. Eyrie was the operative word, for the mountainside was the haunt of eagles and buzzards. Nearby, to the south, was the Gulf of Itea and beyond it could be seen the distant mountains of the Pel
eponnese. Behind the village, which was called Castri, rose Parnassos, and dropping from a high plateau on the awesome mountainside were the great cliffs of the Phaedriades, named (almost in Celtic fashion and reminiscent of the host of the Sidh) the Shining Ones, a name to inspire a supernatural terror. Not for nothing, thought Dame Beatrice, raptly gazing upon this place of grandeur, earthquakes, and beauty, had Apollo in Asia been designated Lord of Tigers.

  “He was the destroyer, as well as the protector,” said Hero, joining her and appearing to read her thoughts. “However, when we have been with Papa Ronald to the sanctuary tomorrow, I think I do not shop in the village, although I had hoped to do so. Here are nothing but thick woollen rugs and tasteless patterns on bags and, of course, always the picture postcards. When I shop, I shall shop in Athens. How pleased I shall be when we go there again. And you? How do you feel?”

  “I observe that there is no sign of the other party,” said Dame Beatrice, avoiding the question in which she felt no particular interest, “Perhaps they will join us tomorrow, although I believe Mr. Dick does not expect them.”

  “So much nicer without those boys and Mrs. Cowie,” said Hero. “And for Mr. Owen I do not care so much, either. He is a brigand, do you not think? I wonder whether that stupid little Mary arrived with them again? I do not mind either way, except that it will be a great nuisance if she has run away from her aunt, but I think I would like Julian to be here, although I cannot believe that the bread earned by slave labour can taste as good as other bread. Julian is slave to those nasty little boys and Mr. Owen is a taskmaster, although not, I think, a severe one. You see I change back my mind about Julian, but perhaps I alter it again.”

  In the morning they paid their first visit to the ruins. The climbing was steep and arduous and although Simon (who wanted to spend as much time in Athens as possible) pointed out that the exploration of the ruins could be accomplished in one day, Dick had wisely allotted two. The weather was already extremely hot, even at that high altitude. The sky was cloudless and the landscape reflected that strange, indescribable light which belongs to Greece and is unmatched elsewhere.