A Terrible Beauty (14 page)

“He must be in a great deal of pain,” I said.

“It is a blessing he is not conscious,” Colin said, “but astonishing that our moving the bone did not wake him.”

I could tell from his tone he did not expect the man to live. “He does not look Greek,” I said.

“Turkish, if I had to guess,” Colin said. The man had a long, drooping mustache and his clothes and his build suggested he was of sturdy peasant stock.

Fritz, Jeremy, and Margaret returned, carrying with them a cot, a blanket, four canteens of water, and a medical kit. The slope was too steep for the cot, so they left it on the hilltop. I rummaged through the supplies until I found iodine. “Be sure he stays still,” I said to Colin, and poured some of the disinfecting liquid over the injury on his head before covering it with gauze. The man did not move through any of this.

With great care, the gentlemen lifted him, Fritz supporting his head and shoulders, Jeremy lifting his uninjured leg, and Colin, doing all he could not to disturb the splint, cradling the man's broken limb. Slowly, they made their way back up the hill and placed him gently on the cot. Transporting him was much simpler now. It took only two of them to carry the cot, which meant they could take turns on the way down to the camp.

Margaret and I went on horseback to the nearest village, where we found a farmer with a donkey cart who agreed to carry the injured man the rest of the way home. We lined the cart with blankets before transferring him to it and then slowly made our way down the terrifyingly steep road. The farmer drove with Fritz, whose Greek was the best of all of us, while I sat in the back with my patient. There was little I could do, but I did not want to take the chance he might wake up during the trip and find himself scared and alone. Colin, Jeremy, and Margaret rode the horses, slowing their pace to the barest walk so as not to pull ahead of the donkeys.

Philip and the doctor, who must have ridden at a shocking speed, were waiting at the villa when we arrived, and before long the man was settled into a vacant servant's bedroom in the back of the house, where Colin and I watched the physician conduct his examination. He complimented us on the care we had given him in the field.

“I shall stitch the wound on his head and replace the splint, but beyond that there is little I can do for him.”

“Will he wake up?” I asked.

“He is in a deep coma, Lady Emily. I do not know if he will ever emerge.” He left us with some morphine to administer if he did awaken, and promised he would come back the following day to check on his progress. After he took his leave, Colin and I joined the others in the drawing room, where they were sitting in silence, a half-drunk pitcher of lemonade on the table.

“What a terrible accident,” Margaret said. “I have no desire to make anyone feel worse than I know we all do, but I wish we had not chased after him.”

“What was he doing or planning to do that he ran away when confronted?” Jeremy asked.

“There is more to it than we know,” I said, looking at Philip. “Is that not right?”

“There may be,” Philip said. “I only wish I knew more.”

“You said—”

He interrupted me. “Yes, I know what I said.” He cleared his throat. “I have been plagued over the past few years by a gentleman who is convinced I have something that belongs to him. His view is entirely in error, but nothing I say makes even the slightest impact. He has sent his henchmen to rough me up on more than one occasion—hence the current appearance of my nose and the scar on my chin—and I believe this man to be one of them.”

“What does he think you have?” Colin asked.

“I am certain you all recall the story of the Battle of Marathon,” Philip said. “After winning his spectacular victory against the Persians, the Greek general, Miltiades, took the helmet he had worn in the fight to the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. It has since been discovered by archaeologists and identified as such by the carving along the base: ‘Miltiades dedicated to Zeus.'”

“I have seen the piece in the museum at Olympia,” I said.

“You have gone to Olympia?” Philip asked, surprise in his voice.

“I wanted to see the Praxiteles Hermes and the Infant Dionysus,” I replied. “I am a fervent fan of the sculptor's.”

“I have—had—a fine copy of his bust of Apollo in the house in Berkeley Square,” he said. “Is it still there?”

Not knowing how much he knew about the events following his so-called death, I decided now was not the moment to reveal to him that, for a time, the original bust had resided at Berkeley Square, and that its discovery had led me, briefly, to think Philip was a thief of antiquities. “So far as I know it is. Please, though—Olympia.”

“Yes, quite,” he said. “Or actually, we must now move to Troy. While digging there, in a location likely to have been part of the Greek encampment outside the city walls, I found a strip of metal—bronze—not far from the remains of a temple. It appears to be the bottom of a helmet, and carved on it—”

“Is it Hector's?” I leapt to my feet, unable to help myself, so excited was I at the prospect of something—anything—of the valiant man's having survived more than a thousand years.

“No, Kallista, it was not. It belonged to the superior warrior, Achilles.”

This ridiculous description of Achilles raised my ire, but I did not correct Philip. That could wait until later. “How do you know it belonged to Achilles?”

“As was Miltiades' helmet, this, too was engraved:
ΑΧΙΛΛΕΥΣ ΑΝΕΘΕΚΕΝ ΤΟΙ ΔΙ
. Akhilleus dedicated to Zeus.”

“How is it I have never heard of such a thing?” I asked. “Surely such a discovery would have garnered considerable publicity.”

“It would have, yes, if it had been made known,” Philip said. “When I found it, I was far off from the rest of our group, working only with a single assistant, a native man who, until that moment, had proven competent enough. As I bent over the bronze, brushing the dirt from it, he struck me on the head with a rock. When I came to, both he and metal strip were gone.”

“How can you be certain it was he who struck you?” Colin asked.

“I cannot, I suppose, but there was no one else in the vicinity,” Philip said. “I staggered back to the main area of our dig and told my colleagues what had happened. No one believed me—no one expects to find firm evidence of the existence of Achilles—and they convinced me I had fallen victim to nothing more than petty theft. My watch, my compass, and the small amount of money I had with me were all gone.”

“But the bronze—” I said.

“I was quickly convinced it had been nothing more than a figment of my imagination—a product of the head injury I suffered when I had been robbed. Everyone assumed the man, desperate for anything he could sell, targeted me because I had chosen to work further afield than the rest of our team. I was content with the explanation until the following morning, when, upon exiting my tent, I nearly tripped over the body of the so-called thief. He had been strangled.

“The general consensus,” he continued, “was that someone from his village had executed him, as theft from the Europeans, who are generally giving the natives good pay for honest work, is not tolerated in some quarters. I, however, read the situation differently. The way his corpse had been placed in front of my tent felt to me like a warning. I am certain I did discover a piece of Achilles' helmet, and that this man stole it, probably to give to someone who had offered him an exorbitant price for anything that could be sold on the antiquities market. My reaction to the piece could not have been more enthusiastic, and I explained in detail how rare and significant it was. Perhaps he decided to keep it for himself, to sell, rather than give it to his employer, if I may call him that, and said employer, dissatisfied, had him killed.”

“If that were the case, why deposit him in your camp?” Colin asked.

“Perhaps the employer was never able to locate the bronze and is convinced I still have it. All I can say with certainty is that someone has been hounding me ever since.”

“Did you tell Herr Dörpfeld this?” I asked.

“I did, but he was not persuaded of the veracity of my story, particularly as further excavation where I had found the bronze yielded nothing of note. That, combined with the blow I had taken to my head and the fact no one heard even a whisper about the piece on the black market, led everyone to dismiss my theory out of hand.”

“So why do you cling to it?” Margaret asked.

“Because twice more while I was at Troy, men came looking for me and asked what I had done with the Achilles bronze. When I had no acceptable answer for them, they threatened me. When my work at the site had finished, and I had moved on to Ephesus, their methods became more violent. I still bear the scars of their delicate attentions.” He winced as he said the words.

“Have you gone to the authorities?” Colin asked.

“I have, both in Turkey and in Greece, but there is nothing to be done. There is no evidence to prove my story, and I have not the slightest clue as to the identity of the man sending others to do his dirty work for him.”

“This is the first time you have had any contact with them here on Santorini?” Margaret asked.

“It is,” he said. He had risen from his seat and now leaned against the wall next to a Monet painting of the seaside at Étretat. “Enough time had passed without an incident that I started to feel safe again. I came to Thera with Hiller von Gaertringen two years ago, and until today had all but forgot about Achilles and his bronze.”

I watched him carefully as he spoke. His story, though outlandish, was credible enough, except for one point. Philip, Viscount Ashton, had written monographs praising Achilles and comparing him to Alexander the Great. He was a man who adored the Greek warrior in a way I, as a passionate admirer of Hector, could never understand. Having read every word he had ever written about his hero, no part of me believed Philip would ever have abandoned hope of seeing the Achilles bronze once again.

 

Philip

Troy, 1893

The death of their worker had left the archaeologists less jovial than usual, but this did not stop them from teasing Philip over breakfast the next morning. Being fully aware of the incredible nature of his story, he could hardly blame them. Who among them had not dreamed of finding something—anything—that might have belonged to one of the great heroes of the Trojan War? Dörpfeld told him to push the incident out of his mind, and sent for a doctor to tend to Philip's injury. His head still throbbed, but no one could make him believe he had imagined holding the bronze piece with Achilles' name etched into it. This was no hallucination brought on by concussion.

Three days later, his head no longer ached, but it took another fortnight before his colleagues stopped teasing him, calling him over to where they were digging only to laugh when he got there and say, look, this is not a shard of pottery, this is Achilles' sword, or a piece of his armor. Eventually, they tired of the game, and that was the end of the incident so far as they were all concerned.

No one claimed the dead man's body, but one of the men from the village, although unwilling to take responsibility for the execution, admitted someone might have killed him to punish his crime. He agreed to see to his burial, shrugging, saying someone would have to do it, and it might as well be him. The man had no friends. He had moved to the area only recently and had not made much of an impression on his new neighbors.

Philip, still convinced there were darker forces at work, went to the village and combed the man's filthy hut for anything indicative of a larger purpose for the theft, but he found nothing, and would have been prepared to forget about the matter altogether had two large, well-armed men not stopped him halfway back to the archaeologists' camp.

“I am Hakan and have been sent, along with my colleague, Batur, to tell you Demir knows you have what is his,” the taller of the two said. Deep lines cut across his forehead, his face tanned the color of old leather by the sun. “It would be best if you returned it at once.”

“First off, I don't have the slightest idea who this Demir chap is,” Philip said, squinting in the bright sunlight. The men had positioned him at a disadvantage by forcing him to stand directly in its light. “Second, I can assure you I have nothing belonging to him or anyone else.”

Batur, broad and built like an ox, pointed his rifle at Philip. “We will always be able to find you, so it would be best if you gave it back without requiring more persuasion.”

“You are welcome to search me if you like,” Philip said. “You'll find nothing.”

“This is just a warning, my friend,” Hakan said. “Demir is a man of business and does not like violence. He did not expect you to be carrying something so valuable with you. I will come next week to collect it. Be ready.”

The following week, Philip made a point of sticking close to his colleagues and never worked away from the group. On Thursday, Hakan entered the site, demanding to speak to him. Dörpfeld at his side, Philip again explained that he did not know Demir and had nothing belonging to the man. Hakan uttered no response, only nodded and walked away across the plain, eventually disappearing from sight.

“These natives,” one of the other archaeologists said as they sat around the fire that night. “Difficult to tell what they are ever thinking. I do hope this Demir doesn't have a daughter you've trifled with, Chapman.”

“I would never do such a thing,” Philip said. “All I can think is that the bronze—”

“There is no bronze, Chapman. Just some deceitful Turk who's trying to shake you down for money. Pay him off and forget about it.”

 

10

After listening to Philip's astonishing tale—the second he had told us in the span of only a few days—the time had come to retire to our rooms to freshen up. Jeremy offered to lend Fritz a spare suit so he could change out of his working clothes, but Philip, looking rather sullen, refused Colin's offer to do the same.