The Daughter of Night (12 page)

'Poor little, safe little daughter,' he corrected. 'Two years ago, when we lived near Catanzaro, in Calabria, there was a kidnap attempt. Here, she's safe from things like that.'

'Sorry,' Hester wiped perspiration from her forehead. 'You
did
say six hundred steps?'—unbelievingly—'I'll be dead before I get to the top!'

'You only need to climb the last hundred,' he comforted her. 'There's an easier way, it's well hidden and it takes a little longer, but,' he urged her to where Aphrodite was head down among the sparse vegetation, 'you'll have to ride, so get into the saddle.'

It was just like riding the donkeys on the sands at Margate, only now she wasn't a child any more, she was a full grown woman and her feet dangled to within six inches of the ground on either side. 'The latest safety model,' she quipped to cover her embarrassment, and then, 'The things we'll do for money! Come on, my fiery steed, let's see what you're made of!' and Aphrodite moved off quickly towards what looked like a crack in the rocks.

'I honestly never thought I'd do it.' Hester pushed her way through a wooden gate set in a stone arch to enter a small courtyard. 'You did say only a hundred, didn't you? I could have sworn it was nearly a thousand!' She staggered theatrically across to a stone seat set conveniently near and flopped down on it to remove her sandals with a groan of relief and lift her face to the cool breeze. 'If I lived here, I'd never go down,' she said succinctly. 'I couldn't face climbing back up again!'

'You're out of condition.' Demetrios stood over her and she noticed he wasn't even breathing heavily, but anything else he would have said was cancelled out by the squeak of a door and a glad cry. Hester lifted her eyes to see a wooden door, bleached to a pale grey by sun and wind, being flung open and a child running across the courtyard. She blinked, gasped and felt her heart drop right down to the soles of her feet.

Athene! It was her first thought. Of course, it wasn't Athene, the size and shape were wrong, but in everything else, here was Demetrios' 'distant cousin' running to greet them. The hair, the shape of the face, eyes, mouth, even the lift of the chin and the grace of the flying figure, they all shrieked 'Athene'. Suddenly there was no warmth in the sun and the breeze, which had been cool and refreshing, became an icy blast to send goosepimples down her back and make her shiver.

Her thoughts were muddled as she tried to work out the implications—so muddled that nothing made sense. Athene had said she expected Demetrios to wait for her—instead he had married her, Hester, rushed at it like a bull at a gate. If he'd waited only a week, until Athene had arrived in London, would it have made any difference? She gave up, deciding she hadn't enough information to unravel the tangle of her thoughts. Instead she smiled brightly as Katy cried 'Papa!' and hurled herself at her father.

There was another thing as well—nothing he'd said had prepared her for a child as old as Katy—she stole a glance at the girl, hanging on Demetrios' arm and chattering nineteen to the dozen. Hester had somehow arrived at the idea that her new stepdaughter was about six years old but Katy, for all her small bones and delicate build, was older than that—much older. Hester decided perhaps twelve or even a bit more, anyway, a teenager, not the child she had been expecting. A child would have been easier, teenagers were always an unknown quantity, and for Katy to be that old, it meant Demetrios had been very young— in his very early twenties—when she had been conceived—a youthful affair with his 'distant cousin'? Oh hell! What did it matter to her, Hester—a hundred steep stone steps had robbed her of any desire to indulge in mental gymnastics…

Demetrios' voice interrupted her dismal thoughts. 'And Katy, this is Hester, she's not a governess like Miss Mungo—we're married.'

Hester interrupted quickly, cursing the bumbling heavy-footedness of men.

'Hullo, Katy,' she gave the girl a quiet smile. 'Like your papa says, we're married, but you don't have to call me Mama, not if you don't want to.' She dredged around in her memory and remembered Mia. 'I knew a little girl about your age once, she always called me "Hes". I thought we could start off by just being friends, and isn't it a good thing you speak English, because I'm hopeless at languages—I only know two words of Greek.'

Katy beamed. 'Miss Mungo taught me,' she said with a definite Scottish accent. 'She said I was a wizard at languages. I can speak French and Italian as well. When I grow up, I'm going to work for the United Nations as an interpreter.' She took a step backwards and adopted a very grown-up manner. 'Lunch won't be ready for about half an hour, would you care to partake of some refreshment now?'

Hester concealed a smile. Miss Mungo, whoever and wherever she was, had tutored her pupil very well. 'How nice,' she answered gravely and formally. 'It's been a very hot and strenuous journey from the boat, and a cup of tea would be delightful.'

'How old is Katy?' Hester and Demetrios were alone, the sun had gone down and shadows had swiftly fallen, and Katy was in her bed cuddling a well-worn koala bear whose bedraggled fur testified to many years of use. 'I had this mad idea that she was about six or seven.'

'She's nearly thirteen.' Demetrios leaned back comfortably, cradling a cup of black Turkish coffee in his hands. He sipped it thoughtfully. 'She was born when I was a little more than twenty one, a very raw young man.' He lifted his nose disdainfully. 'Had she been the age you thought, none of this would have happened, the man would have been at an age to realise that bringing a child into the world entailed some responsibilities.'

Hester moved uncomfortably and changed the subject—she didn't want a blow-by-blow account of his love affair with Athene—he mightn't mention the girl's name, but every time he said 'she', Hester would know who he was talking about. A 'very raw young man', indeed! She didn't, she couldn't, she wouldn't believe that; he'd been born with a fatal kind of charisma, guaranteed to undermine any girl's morals and get him his own way.

'Katy's going to need a whole new wardrobe,' she remarked surlily. 'I've had a look at her clothes and although it's all very good, there's not much that's suitable for an English winter.'

'Changing the subject?' Demetrios shook his head in mock reproof. 'How you do love to wriggle out of things, my Hester! I wouldn't have thought you'd suddenly shy away from the subject of a child born out of wedlock. If I remember rightly, you were very hot and went on quite lengthily about the subject one night when we were eating out.'

'And I don't much care for your island either.' She ignored him and what he said. 'It's—it's infertile, and as for this abode—I can't call it a house,'—she recalled her very brief examination of what had been the sleeping quarters in the monastery, a long line of little cells, unlit except for the pierced arches high up in the wall that separated them from the corridor, 'it reminds me of those places where they keep battery hens.' Her lips quirked as she visualised the corridor itself. Rows of wooden doors on one side and on the other, tiny windows set high in the outer wall with pictures of saints, bishops and other holy men painted like a frieze the whole length of the wall. 'Something to look at while they were meditating,' she murmured, 'but precious little comfort. Thank heaven you don't expect me to sleep down there, I'd go mad in the night!' She paused as a frightening thought struck her. 'You're not thinking of asking me to live here with Katy, are you? It'd be like being walled up alive!'

'Something you wouldn't endure, even for money?' Demetrios lit a long, thin cigar and peered at her through a cloud of blue smoke.

'Here we go again!' she sighed disgustedly.

'No, it's not "here we go again",' he almost snarled at her. 'But I'm afraid you'll have to spend a few days here, alone with Katy. I've a few things to straighten out in the hotel in Rhodes—I'll do it more quickly on my own—I haven't time to take you round sightseeing…'

'Nobody asked you to,' Hester interrupted fiercely. 'Personally, I'll be glad of the privacy. How are you getting to Rhodes—you're not going in that fishing boat, I hope?'

'No.' Demetrios set down his coffee cup and stood up. 'There's a boat coming for me tomorrow morning, a perfectly adequate cabin cruiser. That's why I couldn't spare the time for you to look around Athens. So, as I'll need to be up early, shall we go to bed?'

'To sleep, perchance to dream,' she quoted sardonically. 'Dream that this is all a dream and that one day I'll wake up to a world where everything's sane and sensible and
you
don't exist.'

'But that's the dream,' she thought he was laughing at her. 'This, my adorable wife, this is reality.'

'How nicely you put it!' she glared at him in the dimness of the room. 'Myself, I'd say this was a nightmare. I've a good mind to pray very hard to all those painted saints and bishops to have you exorcised!'

'They wouldn't do it.' He looked serious, but a small smile flickered round his well cut mouth and his heavy lids drooped so that his eyes were almost hidden and she couldn't tell whether the gleam in them was sardonic or not. 'They—those ancient churchmen— agreed wholeheartedly with the married state for the laity—they practically insisted on as many children as possible—fruits of the union which swelled the ranks of the army of God.'

'And speaking of children,' her own eyes sparkled as she took up the verbal battle, speaking calmly and judiciously. 'Have you given any thought to the matter of genes and chromosomes? I have, and I'm appalled at the evidence. I've been thinking about it a lot—it's very important, this genetic factor thing…'

'And where has all this thought taken you, have you arrived at anything positive?' he queried. 'You can't have read much on the subject, not as it applies to us—you haven't had time.'

'Only that, for the best results, you should have chosen somebody else.' She looked up at him, making her face serious and her eyes glow with a candid light. 'I'll leave you out of the calculations, because although I suspect you've fathered one child, a daughter, I consider the evidence to be incomplete, so I'm just working on my side of the family. My mother was an only child, a girl, and I'm also an only child, female. That's not a good track record for a man who wants a son!'

When she had finished, Demetrios was laughing uproariously, but whether it was at what she'd said or the way she'd said it, she didn't know. He seemed to be fighting for control over his amusement, and when his voice steadied, he answered her in the same clinical way that she had used.

'Then we shall just have to try, try and try again.' If it was supposed to comfort her, if failed lamentably. 'We've at least ten, possibly as many as fourteen years before you're too old to bear more children. We're almost bound to strike it lucky some time! And if we don't, think how much happiness we'll get from a really big family—and it won't be all that much hard work. You'll have Katy to help with the first two or three, and after that, the older ones will help with the babies. You look a bit stunned, my darling—don't you like the idea?'

'Ooh!' Hester squealed on a high note of indignation, and hurried past him out of the room, fumbling her way through the darkened maze of the place to find the bedroom, where she stumbled about in the dark.

Demetrios followed her, his hand touched a switch and the room sprang into light. For a moment, it meant nothing to her—one flicked a switch, light came—there was nothing marvellous about that, but— here on this lonely, barren rock of an island—miles from anywhere! Her mouth dropped open in surprise.

'A generator.' Demetrios followed the workings of her mind as though it was all written large on a blackboard as she looked around at more painted saints and bishops whose Byzantine faces and Eastern eyes watched her from the wood-panelled walls. 'It runs the lights, a large freezer, the fridge and a radio transmitter. If you want me while I'm away, Katy will show you how to use it.'

Hester hardly heard him, her fascinated gaze was on the pictures, the colours of the robes, faded by time but the gold of crowns and haloes glimmering as if newly painted.

'Don't be shy of them.' He drew her towards him and started to unfasten the buttons on her shirtwaister, smoothing the soft cotton stuff from her shoulders. 'They were a very understanding lot of men, well aware of human frailty.'

'Please!' she muttered, her eyes agonised and her hands fluttering ineffectually as she tried to push his away.

'But it'll be better this time,' he promised soothingly. 'You'll enjoy it.'

'Y-you come with a gold-plated guarantee?' Even at this stage, when she was trembling with embarrassment, she could still drag out a tart riposte.

'There's nothing plated about it,' he assured her. 'Twenty-four-carat and solid all the way through! No, don't try to hide yourself from me.' He pulled his hands away from where they were vainly trying to cover her breasts. 'I'm your husband, remember, I have the right.'

Some time during the night, Hester started a dream that turned into a nightmare, a senseless thing connected with the painted faces on the wall, and it set her bolt upright in bed, her mouth parted in a frightened scream. Demetrios stirred beside her.

'Something wrong?'

'No.' She fought her way back to reality, wiping her wet palms on the sheet. 'A nightmare, something I've eaten, I expect or all that olive oil—the Russian salad was swimming in it.'

'You feel sick?'

'No again.' She slumped back on her pillows and closed her eyes determinedly. 'And if I did,' she muttered savagely, almost to herself, 'there's no need for you to put the flag up, we've only been married three days!'

He switched on the bedside light, took a look at her face and switched it off again to pull her close to him and he laughed as she slapped at his hands. 'Never mind, sweetheart, tomorrow you can organise the cooking yourself—it'll help to pass the time until I return.'