The tears were pouring down her hollow cheeks. She lifted her arm in its ragged sleeve to brush them away and, loosing her hold on the rock, fell to her knees. Then she saw that the girls had paused in their invocation and were looking at her.
She tried to run away, to hide herself in terror in the shadow of the bushes, for to her bruised spirit any human creature seemed an enemy, but she was too weak to stand and could only sink back on to the sand. Already the girls were all around her, bending over her curiously and talking rapidly in a tongue which bore little resemblance to ancient Greek. The tall woman approached more slowly, and the chattering circle parted respectfully before her.
Bending over the castaway, she put aside the tumbled mass of dark hair, sticky with sand and sea-water, and lifted the waxen face down which the tears still coursed. Marianne did not understand the question put to her but she murmured, without much hope:
'I'm French… lost… be kind to me…'
A gleam shot through the kneeling woman's dark eyes and, to Marianne's astonishment, she whispered quickly in the same language:
'Good. Be quiet now. Do nothing. We will take you with us…'
'You speak—'
'Be quiet, I said. We may be watched.'
Swiftly unfastening the golden fibula that clasped the classical peplos of white linen that she wore over her pleated tunic, she put it round the other woman. Then, still in the same low voice, she issued a number of orders to her companions and they lifted Marianne, silently now, and held her upright, supported by the shoulders of two of the strongest of their number.
'Can you walk?' the woman asked, and answered her own question at once:
'No, of course you can't. Your feet are bare. You would not get past the first bend in the path. We'll carry you.'
All the girls set to with remarkable speed and efficiency and constructed a kind of litter made of interlaced branches tied together by the fillets from their hair. They laid Marianne upon it, and then six of her new friends raised her on their shoulders, while the rest plucked trails from a wild vine that grew nearby, and asphodels, and some of the strange silvery weed that straggled all over the beach, and arranged these over her just as if it were a funeral bier. When Marianne's eyes turned inquiringly to the strange priestess, she smiled briefly.
'It is best that you should feign death. It will save us from the possibility of awkward questions. The Turks think us mad and fear us on that account… but moderation in all things!'
As a further precaution, she laid a fold of the peplos over Marianne's face, without giving her time to protest. All the same, the latter's curiosity impelled her to whisper:
'Are there Turks here?'
'They are never far off when we come down to the shore. They wait for us to leave before they steal the jars of wine we put by the goddess. Now be quiet or I'll leave you here.'
Marianne took the hint and made herself lie as still as possible as the procession of women returned by the way they had come, chanting another hymn, this time with all the solemnity of a funeral dirge.
The journey was a long one, over a route that seemed remarkably steep and difficult. Lying on her uncomfortable stretcher of branches, with her head often lower than her feet, and the cloth over her face making breathing difficult, Marianne felt one of her attacks of nausea coming on. Her bearers, however, must have had unusual stamina because they did not once falter in their pace in all that interminable ascent, nor interrupt their singing. All the same, she could not help a sigh of relief when at last they put her down.
A moment later she was lying on a mattress covered with some rough fur which seemed to her the height of comfort, and the linen cloth was removed from her face. At the same time the heat that beat down out of doors gave way to an agreeable coolness.
The room in which she found herself was long and low, and a pair of narrow windows opened on to a blue vista that might have been the sky or the sea or both. It seemed to have undergone a good many vicissitudes down the centuries. Two sturdy Doric columns supported a cracked ceiling on which were traces of old gilding, radiating outwards from the central figure, probably representing a saint, with a thin, bearded face, a halo and huge, staring eyes. Fragments of old frescoes still clung to the brick walls, as incongruous as the pictures on the ceiling. On one side the remains of a pair of ephebes pranced, long-legged, towards a row of flaking Byzantine angels, stiff and unbending in their striped robes and all squinting atrociously. On the other side was a whitewashed wall with a simple niche containing a magnificent funerary vase of black and white on which a wistful god in a green cloak with a lance sat brooding on a slate-blue throne. A gilt bronze masque lamp with multicoloured glass hung from the ceiling, just below the beard of the hollow-cheeked saint. Besides the bed covered with goatskins on which Marianne was lying, the furniture consisted of a few stools, and a low table holding a big earthenware bowl heaped with fat grapes.
Standing in the midst of all this, the worshipper of Aphrodite, in her long white tunic, no longer looked quite such an anachronism.
Her arms were folded over her splendid bosom and she was considering her find with obvious perplexity. Marianne sat up and saw that the two of them were quite alone. The girls had gone. The woman saw her staring about her and interpreted the look.
'I sent them away. We have to talk. Who are you?' The tone was hard and far from friendly. The woman was suspicious of her.
'I told you. A Frenchwoman. I was shipwrecked and—'
'No. You're lying. Yorgo the fisherman left you on the beach before dawn. He told me he had found you last night, just as you went into the water from a boat. You were half dead from thirst and exposure. What were you doing in that boat?'
'It's a long story…'
'I've plenty of time,' the woman said, pulling up a stool and sitting down.
It was strange, like talking to an antique statue come to life by magic. The woman was herself the epitome of her extraordinary room. To begin with, it would have been hard to tell her age. Her skin was smooth and unwrinkled but her gaze was that of a mature woman. More than anything, she looked like an incarnation of Athena, yet her almond eyes were almost as disproportionately huge as those of the Byzantine face on the ceiling. She had said that she was reputed mad, and yet there emanated from her a quiet strength and assurance that impressed Marianne and certainly did not strike her as in any way alarming.
'I was in that boat,' she said simply, 'dying of thirst, as you yourself said, and the reason I let myself slip into the water was to make an end the sooner.'
'You had not seen Yorgo and his boat?'
'I was past seeing anything. There was something red, but I thought it was only another mirage. Do you know what it means to die of thirst?'
The woman shook her head but there had been a revealing tremor in Marianne's voice on the last words, and she lay back, white-faced. The stranger frowned and rose quickly.
'Are you still thirsty?'
'And hungry…'
'Wait, then… You shall talk afterwards.'
A few minutes later, after swallowing a little cold fish, some goat cheese, bread, grapes and a cup of a remarkably heady wine, Marianne felt restored to life and able to satisfy her hostess's curiosity, in so far as that was possible without running into fresh perils.