Afterward, walking to their boat, the links they bore guttering in the night 4and now lifting her out of shadow, now casting her back: he wasn’t sure if he himself understood any longer what he had been talking about.
The day after solstice dawned clear and quiet. In the town and the farmsteads they slept off their celebrations, on the isle their devotions. Reid, who had had little of either, woke early. Wandering down dew-soaked garden paths, he found Erissa waiting for him. “I hoped you would come.” He could scarcely hear her. The lashes moved along her cheekbones. “This is ... a free time ... for everyone. I thought—I packed food—I thought we might—”
They rowed, not to the city but to a spot beyond which she indicated. Their route passed through the shadow of the, volcano; but it too was still this day, and little silvery fish streaked the water. Having tied the boat, they hiked across a ridge, the narrowest on Atlantis, to the seacoast. She knew these hills as well as did any of the bulls they glimpsed, majestically dreaming near hay-filled racks in an otherwise empty huge landscape. A trail led them to a cove on the southern shore. Cliffs enclosed it, save where they opened on a blueness that sparkled to the horizon. Closer at hand the water was, green and gold, so clear that you could see pebbles on the bottom yards from the sandy beach. Wavelets lapped very gently; here was no wind. The dark bluffs drank sunlight and gave it back.
Erissa spread a cloth and on it bread, cheese, apples, a flagon of wine and two cups. She wore a plain skirt and in this sheltered place had thrown off shoes and cloak alike. “How peaceful the world is,” she said.
Reid gusted a sigh.
She considered him. “What do you mourn, Duncan? That you may never win home again? But—” He saw the reddening; she grew quite busy laying out their picnic. “But you can find a new home. Can’t you?”
“No,” he said.
She gave him a stricken look. “Why, is there someone?” And he realized he had never mentioned Pamela to her.
“I haven’t told you,” he blurted. “The Ariadne desired me not to. But I think—I know—I’m not here for nothing.”
“Of course not,” she breathed. “When you were brought that strangely from a land that magic.”
He dared speak no further. He looked at her and she at him.
He thought: Oh, yes, explanations are cheap, and Pamela (unfair; I) would be glib with them. This girl is over-ready for a man, and here I come as a mysterious, therefore glamorous foreigner. And I, I’ve known her older self, and fell a ways in love, as far as I’ve sometimes fallen in the (my) past, which was not too far to climb back out and refind reasonable contentment with Pamela; but how can any woman stand against the girl she once was, or any man?
He thought: Suddenly I have a new goal. To spare her what that other Erissa endured.
He thought: Those eyes, those half parted lips. She wants me to kiss her, she expects I will. And she’s right. No more than that ... today. I don’t dare more, nor dare say her the whole truth. Not yet. But the older Erissa told me that we will—but that’s in the future I must steer her from—but that’s thinking, and I think too much, I waste these few days in thinking.
He leaned toward her. A gull mewed overhead. Light streamed off its wings.
XIV
“Yes, your friends are doing fine,” Diores said. “They send their regards.”
Reid tried not to glower at him. They sat alone in an off-side room of the temple, to which the American had drawn the Athenian after the latter’s long private interview with Lydra. Diores’ smile continued bland; he lounged back at ease on the stone bench. “Just what are they doing?” Reid asked.
“Well, Uldin’s breaking horses and training men for his cavalry. Or aims to. it’s slow, scarcely begun, among other reasons because he’s got only the one-saddle—hasn’t found a leatherworker who can make ‘em right, he says. Oleg ... tun ... shipbuilding, like I hear tell you are. I’ll be mighty interested to see what you’ve started.”
“I’m afraid that’s forbidden,” Reid answered. “State secret.”
It wasn’t, but he meant to contact the governor and have the declaration made immediately. Why give the enemy a break? And Theseus was the enemy, who would pull down Erissa’s sunny cosmos unless somehow history could be amended.
No, not even that. Wouldn’t the legends and the archeology be the same, three or four thousand years hence, if Minoan Crete lived a little longer? Not much longer; the lifetime of a girl; was that unreasonable to ask of the gods?
“Why are, you here?” he demanded. “And” a picked crew?’ They were no ordinary sailors, he’d heard, but warriors of the royal household, who kept to themselves and scarcely spoke to the Atlanteans.
“As to that last,” Diores drawled, “you don’t get common seamen who’ll travel in winter. Too risky?’ As if to bear him out, wind hooted and rain plashed beyond the richly tapestried walls. “Oleg says he can build a year-round ship, but meanwhile we use what we’ve got, right?”
“You haven’t told me what brought you!’
“Can’t, either. Sorry, mate. I carry a confidential message. You’ll quite likely see me here a few times more. I will say this. Your oracle ordered Athens and Knossos should pull closer together. Fine. But how? What kind of alliance and divvy-up? Why should the Minos want to raise us from vassalage? What trouble could the envy of others cause? That sort of question. It’s got to be explored; and statecraft don’t work when it’s put right out in public view; and seeing as how Theseus has a friend in the Ariadne, wouldn’t you agree she’s the logical person to begin talking with? Let’s say they’re feeling each other out.”
Diores snickered. “She’s not too long in the tooth for a man to feel,” he went on. “About that, I hear you’re running around with a right tasty morsel yourself”
Reid bridled. “Erissa’s a bull-dancer.”
“Same’s your lady love of the same name used to be, hm? Makes me think there’s something special here somewhere. By the way, you haven’t, asked me about her.”
Reid wondered: Was I afraid to? Aloud: “Well?”
“She’s not doing badly either. Moped a lot at first, but lately—Remember Peneleos?” Diores nudged Reid and winked. “Het been giving her what she needs. You don’t mind, do you?”
“No,” Reid said faintly.
Old Erissa had been through many hands. It was the maiden whom he hoped to save.
“No,” Lydra said, “I will not tell you what passes between Theseus and me. You’re presumptuous to ask.”
“But he’s part of the danger!” Reid protested.
She looked down at him from her elevated throne. Behind her lean body and stern countenance, the Griffin Judge awaited the dead. “How do you know?”
“B-b-by my foreknowledge.”
“What then of the oracle commanding alliance?” Her tone cracked like a blow across his ears. “Or did you lie about that?”
Lamps flickered in a cold space that besides they two held only shadows. But guards waited beyond the door. They were unarmed; no weapons might be brought to the sacred isle. However, four strong men could quickly make a prisoner of Duncan Reid.
“Criminals go to the quarries on Crete,” Lydra said. “They do not live long. Nor do they wish to.”
“I did not—my lady, I—I asked for this audience before Diores leaves b-b-because I suspect him and his master—”
“On what grounds? Aegeus rebelled but is now a dotard. Theseus slew his Cretan-raised cousins but then turned into a dutiful prince. He will become the same kind of king.”
“I listened—to what they, the Achaeans, what they were saying—”
“Oh, yes. They grumble, they bluster, no doubt a few of them plot, but to what end? Theseus can be expected to keep a rein on them, the more so if he may hope to win a higher place in the Thalassocracy for himself and his realm.” Lydia stabbed a finger at Reid. “Are you trying to sow discord, outlander? Whom do you serve?”