Free The Tomb of Zeus by Barbara Cleverly Page B

him. “The party's breaking up. I'll creep down the back stairs and make myself scarce.”
    He got to his feet and they stared at each other, unable to embark on further or deeper matters.
    “Remember the mouse if you get caught,” she whispered unnecessarily. “I'm quite certain I really did hear one earlier…scratching about somewhere…” She found she was not quite ready, at the last, to let him go.
    He opened the door, looking up and down the corridor, then turned to her, smiling. “I offer you a couple of lines I came across in
Medea
the other day:
‘A man and a woman working in harmony, together make an invincible stronghold.’
Good night, Letty.”
    “Good night, William. I'll see you on the battlements.”

A ll the church bells of Herakleion were ringing out an imperious call to service on Sunday morning, as Letty guiltily stayed in Iher seat at the breakfast table and accepted a second cup of coffee. “Ignore them,” Phoebe had told her. “I'll take you to Evensong instead.”
    The second summons was not so easily ignored. Theodore required the students to attend him in the library immediately after breakfast. All three leapt up and set off at once, Letty following the boys along to a spacious room on the ground floor at the rear of the house. The doors were standing open on a large courtyard, green with citrus trees and roses, and dotted with classical statuary. It was to this scene, unexpected in the centre of the city, that Letty's gaze was drawn. She was quite certain that the marble figure she caught a glimpse of was Artemis the Virgin Huntress, almost life-sized and playfully half hidden behind foliage. She was entertained to see that the goddess's extended, booted left foot and, likewise, her arrow, were pointing directly across the garden at the smooth bosom of an Aphrodite. The target, all gleaming, over-abundant curves, was standing in a clear patch of sunlight, admiring herself in a looking glass, oblivious to the threat from her sister lurking behind the laurel. Between the two, mocking their grace, stood a squat, rough-carved stone image of Dionysos. The God of Wine, drunken mouth open and carelessly about to shout out a secret, leered madly, his wild hair tangled about a crown of vine leaves.
    In spite of the obvious care someone had taken to set out the garden, Letty found she had no instinctive urge to step into it and enjoy it.
    Hesitating in the doorway, she looked about her at the library, admiring the coolly purposeful room, its walls lined with book-shelves, the centre occupied by a generous number of tables and chairs. A communal room if ever she saw one, and she calculated that Theodore Russell most probably had his own private retreat elsewhere in the large house. The lectern in pride of place, bearing an open copy of the first of Arthur Evans's volumes on his discoveries at Knossos, was sending out a sly message, she thought, and she smiled.
    “There you are! Don't stand about—come in! Good breakfast? Phoebe look after you all right, did she? Good. Good. William and I have been hard at it since five o'clock,” Theodore announced. Looking at the self-satisfied pair, each with shirtsleeves rolled up, discovered bending amicably over the largest of the tables, Letty could well believe it. The two men appeared to be examining a map extended over the table and held down at the corners with potsherds.
    “Now—who've we got?” Russell made a quick roll call: “Stewart, Dickie, and Laetitia. Step forward, Laetitia, and look at this! It's your itinerary we're planning, miss. Crete not well served by map-makers, I'm afraid. Captain Spratt had a go in…when was it, William? 1865? And made a remarkably good fist of it—for his time. But not adequate for this day and age. What you see before you…” They crowded round to inspect the paper patchwork in front of them. “…is the culmination of my own attempts to pin down this mysterious island and reduce its four majestic