needed a boost after the clash with the dragon of Kyrkiros. She walked over to the stalls, bought a couple of nut-filled honey pastries from one of them, and returned to her table to find a teenaged lad waiting there.
‘Kyria Talia sent for you,’ he informed her, indicating the tray on the table.
Eleanor smiled warmly and asked him to convey her thanks to the lady. She sat down to pour tea into a delicate china cup and smiled when she tasted an unmistakeably British blend. The pastries were doubly delicious with the tea as accompaniment. By the time Eleanor had finished her surprise treat, lamps were glowing along the terrace, the sudden darkness of the Aegean night had fallen, a singer had joined the musicians and she had almost recovered from the blow of her encounter with Alexei Drakos. She stiffened when an audible ripple of interest through the crowd heralded the arrival of the man himself as he ushered his mother to the adjoining table. One look at him revived her anger so fiercely it took an effort to smile when Talia beckoned to her.
‘Do come and join us, Eleanor. The dancing will start soon.’
Eleanor shook her head firmly; grateful it was too dark for her feelings to show. ‘It’s very kind of you but I wouldn’t dream of intruding.’
‘Nonsense! Why sit there alone? Stefan will bring your things.’
And, short of causing a scene, Eleanor was obliged to accept the chair Alexei Drakos held out for her next to his mother. She thanked him politely and smiled at Talia. ‘And thank you so much for the tea. It was just what I needed.’
‘I hoped it might be. I made it with my own fair hands.’ The radiance of Talia’s smile contrasted sharply with the expression on her son’s face. ‘Do stop looming over us and sit down, Alexei mou—you too, Stefan.’
Eleanor tensed, her stomach muscles contracting as a bull bellowed somewhere deep inside the Kastro, loud enough to be heard above the music and the noise of the chattering crowd.
‘Ah, we begin,’ said Talia with satisfaction.
Alexei eyed Eleanor sardonically. ‘Is something wrong, Miss Markham?’
‘Nothing at all,’ she lied, but sucked in a startled breath as the lights died. They were left in darkness for several tense seconds before the torches encircling the raised wooden platform burst into flame, and bonfires ignited one after the other along the outer edges of the beach.
‘How is that for Greek drama?’ crowed Talia, touching Eleanor’s hand. ‘My dear, you are so cold. What is wrong?’
‘Anticipation,’ Eleanor said brightly. With a defiant look at Alexei Drakos, she took out her camera. ‘For my article,’ she informed him.
‘You may take as many photographs of the dancers as you wish,’ he assured her, his message loud and clear. One shot of his beautiful mother and Eleanor Markham would be thrown off his island.
‘Thank you.’ She turned her attention to the stage, intrigued to see that the musicians had exchanged their modern instruments for harps and flutes which looked like museum exhibits. Along with some kind of snare drums, they began to make music so eerily unlike anything she’d ever heard before the hairs rose on the back of her neck and her blood began to pulse in time with the hypnotic beat.
With sudden drama, the great Kastro doors were flung open and a roar of applause greeted the dancers who came out two by two, moving in a slow rhythm dictated by the drum beat as they descended to the terrace. At first sight Eleanor thought they were all men after all, but when they moved into the dramatic ring of torchlight the girls among them were obvious by the bandeaux covering their breasts. Otherwise all the dancers wore loin guards under brief, gauzy kilts, glinting gold jewellery, black wigs with ringlets and soft leather sandals laced high up the leg.
Eleanor forgot Alexei Drakos’ hostility and sat entranced. The entire scene was straight off a painting on some ancient vase, except that these figures were alive and moving. The procession circled the torch-lit stage twice in hypnotic, slow-stepping rhythm before the dancers lined up in a double row to look up at the table where Alexei Drakos sat with his guests. The leader, a muscular figure with eyes painted as heavily as the girls, stepped forward to salute Alexei and Eleanor shook herself out of her trance to capture the scene on film in the instant before the lithe figures began to dance. They swayed in perfect unison, dipping and weaving in sinuous, labyrinthine patterns which gradually grew more and more complex as the beat of the music quickened. It rose faster and faster to a final crescendo as a bull bellowed off-stage, the doors burst open again and a figure out of myth and nightmare gave a great leap down into the torchlight. The crowd went wild at the sight of a black bull’s head with crystal eyes and vicious horns topping a muscular, human male body.
CHAPTER TWO
ELEANOR’S relief was so intense she had to wait until her hands were steady enough to do the job she’d come for as she focused her lens on the fantastic figure. She smiled in recognition as a new player leapt into the torchlight to face the beast, the testosterone in every line of the bronzed muscular body in sharp contrast to his painted face and golden love-locks; Theseus, the blond Hellene, come to slay the Minotaur.
Eleanor took several shots then sat, mesmerised, as Theseus and the dancers swooped around the central half-man half-beast figure, taunting him like a flock of mockingbirds as they somersaulted away from his lunging horns. She gasped with the audience as Theseus vaulted from the bent back of one of the male dancers to somersault through the air over the Minotaur’s horns. He landed on his feet with the grace and skill of an Olympic gymnast, an imperious hand raised to hush the applause as the troupe launched into a series of athletic, balance-defying somersaults, spinning around the central figure while the Minotaur lunged at them in graphically conveyed fury. In perfect rhythm the dancers taunted him with their dizzying kaleidoscope of movement as again and again Theseus danced away from the menacing horns. The music grew more and more frenzied until the dance culminated in another breath-taking somersault by Theseus over the great bull’s head, but this time he snatched up a golden double-headed axe of the type Eleanor had seen in photographs of Cretan artefacts.
The Minotaur lunged with such ferocity the audience gave a great, concerted gasp again as Theseus leapt aside to avoid the horns and held the axe aloft for an instant of pure drama, before bringing it down on the Minotaur’s neck. There was an anguished bellow as the man-beast sank slowly to his knees and then fell, sprawled, the great horned head at Theseus’s feet.
To say the crowd went wild again was an understatement. But, even as Eleanor applauded with the rest, her inner cynic warned that the sheer drama of the moment would end when the beast was obliged to get to his all-too-human feet as the performers took their bow. But, though the applause was prolonged, there was no bow. Still blank-faced as figures on a fresco, the dancers formed a line on either side of the fallen figure. With Theseus and the lead dancer at the impressive shoulders, the male members of the troupe bent as one man to pick up the Minotaur and heaved him up in a practised movement to shoulder height. The women went ahead, hands clasped and heads bowed as, still in rhythm with the wailing flutes and now slow, solemn, hypnotic drumbeat, the vanquished man-beast was slowly borne around the torch-lit arena, horned head hanging, then up the steep steps and through the double doors into the Kastro, to tumultuous applause and cheers from the crowd.
‘So what did you think of our famous taurokathapsia, Ms Markham?’ asked Alexei Drakos as the musicians took up their modern instruments again. ‘You seemed nervous before it started. Were you expecting something different?’
‘Yes.’ She exchanged a rueful smile with Talia. ‘I was afraid a real live bull was
