In my memory I had pictured a stony knife-edge, but in fact I was on a wide neck of land that had once been terraced for farming. There was an olive grove ahead of me, and to my disbelieving joy a real, man-made track. I adjusted the dead woman on my back and set off at a fast stroll.
Now that I was not surrounded by the scrape of twigs and the clatter of stones, I could hear the sounds of the night. The cicadas were quieter, but they had been joined by other things that peeped and chirped. Somewhere above, an owl was hunting, and nightingales were awake in the olive trees. I remembered the last time I had been alone in the countryside at night: my dark journey to Dartmouth. For months – in truth I did not know how long it had been – I had lived on the Cormaran, where solitude meant nothing. It was strange to be alone under the stars again. The air was warm, and sweat was gathering on my back where the false saint clung to me. I had given her almost no thought. Gilles had been right: she was just a thing, empty of the last presence of her existence, and I was thankful for it. Up ahead, the olives stood like a gnarled coven. But it felt safe, and I picked my way past the ancient, latticed trunks, the nightingales stilling, dry leaves crunching underfoot.
The faint silver light of the stars was enough to light my way. The going was easy up here. It had looked fierce, but I found that the spur rose in a series of gigantic steps and the steep parts were mercifully short. Here and there I had to climb over a tumbledown wall that must have marked old boundaries, but as far as I could tell I was making good time. I could already see the shape of the crag above and to my left. I would have to pick my way through a patch of huge boulders, which as I came up to them proved to be even more gargantuan than I had thought. They threw great shadows of pitch blackness, and for the first time since I had left the beach I felt a stab of disquiet. I reached out and touched the nearest stone; it still had a ghostly warmth to it, a last vestige of the day, and that made me feel less uneasy. It was not particularly hard climbing the crag, which was deeply fissured and furrowed, as if more monstrous boulders were struggling to birth themselves from the living rock. I had to be careful not to use my back as I squeezed up one long gutter, and once a root which I had stupidly grabbed came away in my hand and I had a second of panicked scrabbling before my fingers found another hold. But before I realised it, I was pulling myself up onto the rocky platform where I had sat with Gilles and the Captain mere hours before. There was a big old fig-tree, I remembered, at the entrance to the walled track that would bring me to Tula's shrine. There it was, and that must be the shrine, a pale daub at the far end of the passageway. I plucked a plump fruit and turned it inside out into my mouth. I was parched, and the seed-filled pulp felt good as it slipped down my dry throat. I picked another. A bat flitted past me and dived between the walls. Suddenly there was a great clattering, and two black shapes were rushing me from the mouth of the track. Before thought could form I hurled the fig at my attackers and had Thorn half-unsheathed. But they rattled past me and I saw four sickle horns against the sky before the goats hurled themselves down some secret path in the cliff. Only then did I hear the hollow clank of their copper bells.
My heart was beating itself out from between my ribs. I shoved my knife back and cursed silently, viciously. By some miracle I had not had time to lurch backwards, or my passenger would have surely been smashed to dust against the trunk of the fig-tree. And what fucking good, I thought, would that fig have done? Somehow the futility of trying to defend myself with a fruit had shaken me more than the goats. I stood and quivered for a good few minutes until I had mastered myself enough to set off again. And I also wondered whether something – someone – had scared the beasts, or if this was just what Greek goats got up to after dark. But at last I bit my lip and started towards the shrine. It seemed lighter in the stone circle. The little shrine appeared to give off a glow of its own, the whitewash shimmering between the black brushstrokes of the cypresses, or perhaps the starlight reflected more brightly from the pale stone walls and the white gravel. There were no goats about, and everything was still except for the rattle of the cicadas. To make sure, I walked slowly around the outer walls, peering around each opening in turn, but there was no one. Only then did I strike out across the gravel to where the shrine waited for me.
Stepping down into the sunken area before the door, I slipped the False Cordula from my back and propped her against the earth wall. I ducked down and untied the bundle that held the lamp. The tinder struck first time, and I fitted the lit candle into the tiny steel box. To my surprise, it threw a strong, thin beam of yellow light. I reached out and gingerly tried the door: it was unlocked, as before. I would not be needing the chisel, so I tucked it into my boot. It was time. I took a deep, diver's breath and opened the door.
As I had feared, the darkness inside was absolute. It seemed to pour out over the threshold like spilled ink. But the beam from my lantern cut through and broke the spell. I stepped inside and closed the door gently behind me. I had rehearsed the next move in my mind over the last endless hours of waiting. Laying my pack down, I untied the knots that held it together. The splints fell away easily, and I unfolded the oilcloth to reveal the dead woman inside. I did not care to look at her: the blackness of her skin seemed to have some affinity with the shadows around me, and I felt my flesh begin to prickle. Rubbing the sweat from my hands, I padded over to the reliquary, from which the lantern beam was striking shards of metallic brilliance. I propped the lantern on the nearest pew so that it threw its light lengthwise across the lid, searched out the catches with my fingers and opened them. Then, with my flesh crawling in earnest now, I slowly raised the lid itself and let it settle back on its chain.
In the dim light, Cordula had lost even the vestige of benign peace she had seemed to possess that afternoon. Now she lay rigid and clenched, her hands like talons. I could hardly bring myself to touch them. They were hard as wood and very smooth, but at least the rings came off, clicking faintly but horribly over the knuckles. I lifted off the pectoral cross and laid it, with the rings, on the oilcloth behind me. Then the slippers. That was worse: the feet were more dead than the rest of the body, somehow; at once pathetic and threatening. I bent over the coffin and slipped my hands around the body. As I lifted, I inadvertently looked into the saint's face. It was strange how Cordula had retained so much more of life's vestige – essence, as Gilles had said – than had the stacked bodies on the ship. I could sense disapproval in the raised eyebrows, and a warning in the curled, desiccated lips. A warning…
And then I heard it, a faint chink chik! chink chik! not much louder than the cicadas but out of place in the choir of the night. Metal against metal. I let go of the body in my arms, and it sank back into its nest of linen with a faint whisper. On my haunches now, I laid my forehead for a moment against the cold silver of the coffin. The worst had come to pass, as it had to. I was dead. This would teach me to volunteer. I would never see Anna again. All these thoughts and a hundred more hurtled around my mind like sparrows trapped in a room. Then I noticed that the sound had not come any nearer, and was quite unhurried. Perhaps there was time… for what? Quivering, I reached up, grabbed the lantern and set it on the floor, glass against the stone of the altar. Instantly the shrine was plunged into complete darkness. I did not wish to crush the other body or trip over some hidden thing, so as quickly as I could I crawled on my belly to the door. Prying it open, I slipped outside into the little sunken space.