Read Online Strangers in Company by Jane Aiken Hodge - Free Book Online Page B

younger females of the party suggested a more likely interest. They were handsome enough themselves to get several covert sideways looks as they loped past, up the hill and out of sight.
    The Mercury party, straggling more slowly up the slope, struck Marian as disgustingly cheerful. Had they no sense of history? Probably not, she thought. Even the schoolmistresses were giggling happily together, having shared their first brave bottles of wine at the Belle Hélène. Only Stella was silent, deep in her own thoughts, and Marian was glad to walk, just as silently, beside her, up the hillside resplendent in the appropriate royal purple and gold of a thousand vetches and small, strange daisies. And then, turning a corner of the path, she saw ahead the great gateway, with the two headless lions guarding the entrance to Agamemnon’s palace. Her first feeling was complete disappointment. She had imagined, for some reason, a kind of cross between Trafalgar Square and those extraordinary lions on Delos that turned up in all the picture books.
    Stella, too, was looking at the stone figures with less than enthusiasm. “I don’t see how their heads fitted in,” she said.
    â€œI think they were gryphons.” Mrs. Duncan had joined them “I never saw a gryphon.” Stella’s tone was so rude that Mrs. Duncan moved away with a quick, at once surprised and sympathetic glance for Marian.
    Mike was saying his piece about the weight of the huge stone lintel, interrupted from time to time by the necessities of the various photographers of the party. “The light’s hopeless.” One of the schoolmistresses had given it up. They moved forward raggedly through the great gate to see the rough path leading still upwards.
    â€œOuch!” Mrs. Hilton, just in front of Marian and Stella, turned an ankle and swore. “These damned shoes. Hey,you, Mike!” And as he turned back towards her, “Do we come back this way? I’ve half a mind to stay here.”
    Mike shrugged. “As you please. But the shaft graves where Schliemann found the golden death masks are just at the top here. You could sit and rest there, if you like, while the rest of us go down to the hidden spring.”
    â€œCome on, Mrs. Hilton.” Cairnthorpe had stayed behind buying their tickets at the gate but now caught up with them and took her arm. “It’s worth the climb, I promise you.”
    â€œOh, very well, if you say so.” Leaning on Cairnthorpe’s arm, she flicked a quick, spiteful glance at her husband. “That’s what I needed.”
    â€œWe’ll get you some espadrilles in Nauplia,” said Mr. Hilton.
    Stella wanted to take a picture back through the lion gate, and Marian was glad of the excuse to let the Hiltons get on ahead. She was beginning to find Mrs. Hilton’s whining voice and perpetual grumbles an increasing irritant, and worse still, it was all too obvious that Mrs. Hilton intended to make friends with her.
    The professor, too, had lingered and now came hurrying up through the gate. “Ah.” He moved sideways to keep out of Stella’s picture. “I was beginning to wonder if I’d lost you. There’s supposed to be a bird here that croaks the doom of the House of Atreus. I’ve never managed to get a proper description of it from anyone, but I keep hoping to hear it every time I come.”
    â€œI shouldn’t think it would do much croaking with us chattering all over the place.” Stella had taken her picture and slung her camera back over her shoulder.
    â€œNo,” he agreed. “I’d give my eyeteeth to stay here one day and come up in the evening.”
    â€œUgh.” Stella shivered. “I bet it really would feel haunted then.”
    â€œIt does now.” Marian surprised herself. It was curious; she had not quite realised how much she had felt it, the strange, heavy atmosphere of the place. It was like, and yet