The Hermaphrodite's Curse Ch. 30

PART FIVE - MOUNT IDA

- 1 -

"I can see why they stopped calling it Mountain of the Goddess and started calling it Goose Mountain," Saphy sneered as they bumped along an increasingly rough road.

Saphy and Gabe had had some trouble making their way out of Bodrum. They had no money, no credit cards, one of them was dressed in essentially a piece of sacking and without shoes. Saphy understood Ancient Greek and Latin but she had little knowledge of modern Turkish, which made negotiating difficult.

Finally, through a combination of mangled Greek and gesturing, they had managed to hitch a lift north to Izmir. Four hours later, having managed to snatch a little sleep, they had had to find someone to take them onwards to Edremit, another four hours. In the end, this had taken the best part of the day and, in Edremit, it had been nearly impossible to find somebody to take them the final part of the journey to the mountain. It seemed, as far as they could gather through the language barrier, that very few people made the journey from city to mountain.

After a long search that took them into the following morning, Saphy had managed to find the one person who was driving to Kazdağı. It was a small truck that looked as if it had been first bought in the 1970s and had been little worked on since. It had an open back that was used to transport chickens, ducks and, the mountain's namesake, geese. With no room up in the cab, both Gabe and Saphy were stuck sitting amongst crates of smelly birds, making angry clucking and honking at the confined space they were trapped in.

While the roads around Edremit had been reasonable to travel on, by the time they got out of urban areas and into the more sparsely populated countryside around the mountain, the roads had become rougher, barely more than dust and gravel, and the suspension of the truck was not so good at dealing with it. For over an hour, the truck bounced up and down on the track, throwing Saphy and Gabe about, slamming them against crates of squawking birds.

A crate of geese slammed across from one side to the other, showering Saphy in feathers and bird stink. The sun beat down and both already felt hot and sweaty even without the discomfort of the journey.

"I mean, I doubt this was how Venus used to travel," Saphy was saying.

"Let's just focus on the end," Gabe said, every part of his body aching from hours of uncomfortable travel, "We're so close now."

"And what will we find when we get there?" Saphy looked uncomfortable and not at all happy, "Is there going to be an army of naiads protecting it? How are we going to handle them, when we saw what just one can do back in Bodrum?"

"That was odd though, why did Atalanta use her only arrow on the other naiad?" Gabe said in response, "Why kill her and not Gerard?"

"A couple of reasons that I can think of," Saphy looked pleased to be distracted from the uncomfortable travelling arrangements by the conversation, "For one, they care above anything about their secret not getting out, so killing the naiad in captivity would make sure there was no way of her ever being broken enough to tell."

"That seems pretty harsh."

"That kind of harshness is probably how they've kept the secret for so long. But, there's another reason as well. For the naiads, their virginity, like with Diana their goddess, is an integral part of their existence, it's what defines them. Once that had been violated then she would no longer be a naiad. There'd be no place for her. Atalanta probably killed her out of mercy as much as anything else."

Their debate was interrupted as the bumping of the truck slowed and stopped and Gabe and Saphy were released from the back. Pointing at the truck driver's map gave them a reasonable sense that they might be where they wanted to be. Mostly, they were just pleased finally to stretch their legs and leave the ducks and geese behind. Gabe was not quite sure how he would manage a long walk the way his legs were feeling, but right now it was preferable to more sitting in a cramped, hot space.

The driver pointed them in a direction that he indicated through arm waving sign language would bring them to a river, hopped back in his cab and drove off along the rough, bumpy road. Gabe and Saphy set off into the shelter of the trees, seeking out the sound of running water they could just about hear in the otherwise perfectly peaceful landscape.

The mountain was fairly high but the ascent was not steep. In the distance, they could see the peak of the mountain looking harsh and lacking in vegetation. Behind them they could just about see the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean. Around them, however, was a surprising amount of lush green plants and trees.

The surroundings were pleasant but progress was slow. Both were hot and tired and, without shoes, Gabe struggled to walk on some of the surfaces beneath them. He felt the hot stones under his feet cutting into him, sweat ran down his back and across his forehead into his eyes, but a sense of excitement pushed him on, made him ignore the discomfort for the hoped for goals ahead.

After a while, the road was left far behind and the sun partly blocked out by the shelter of pine trees. Although they knew roughly the right direction to be heading and could still just about hear the sound of running water, neither was entirely sure that they were on completely the right track.

"We're sure this is the right way, aren't we?" Gabe asked, not sure at all himself.

"No," Saphy admitted, "Not really, but we can only hope and keep searching."

"But that could take --"

Gabe had no chance to finish this thought, however, as he felt Saphy grab his arm tightly and fiercely. She looked suddenly alert as she placed her finger to her lips to keep him silent. A moment later, he knew why as he heard the sound of a snapping branch.

Very gently and quietly they crept up towards where the sound had come from and looked out through the treeline to see a group gathered in a clearing, a group that looked painfully familiar. All were dressed in the black robes and white crosses of the Hospitallers. From one of the hooded figures came the voice of Raymond Gerard, the Grand Prior.

"Consult the map," he was saying, "We must be close."

Another of the hooded figures pulled out and unfolded a large sheet of paper that seemed to show the same contours and landscapes as the one in Gabe's underwater photograph.

"Map?" Gabe whispered to Saphy, "How did they get a map? And then get here so soon?"

"Shhh," was all she responded.

That was enough, however, to alert somebody of their presence. A second cracking sound and Saphy spun round. Not quick enough, though, to prevent two Hospitaller guards from grabbing her. Gabe looked around in panic, but he was free for barely any longer. Another guard clamped Gabe's arms against his sides and the two of them were dragged out into the clearing.

"Ah, I had been wondering when you two would show up," Gerard exclaimed, removing his hood to look straight at them with a triumphant sneer, "There were many times since we first met when you should have left all this well alone, when I would have been happy to have you killed. And, yet, I suppose it is fitting to have you here now, at the end, to have your final moments bearing witness to my new world order."

He laughed triumphantly as Saphy and Gabe struggled half heartedly and unsuccessfully against their captors. There was indeed a sort of inevitability that they would come up against Gerard and his religious fanatics at least once more on their journey. It had been almost too easy to get away from them in Bodrum. It seemed to Gabe, from his life behind cameras and in front of TV screens that their escape had been an unsatisfactory resolution to the adventure.

"You must have had a rather slow journey to only now have come to this point," Gerard went on.

It dawned on Gabe then that it was not a case of the Hospitallers making it up to Mount Ida with surprising speed, more that Saphy and his days of hitchhiking had not been the quickest route up the mountain.

"But how..." he stammered, "How did you know where to go?"

"You told me. You two gave me all the information I needed back at the Castle," he said, still looking smugly triumphant as his guards held Gabe and Saphy tightly in place, "You were the ones that realised the pool beneath the castle held a map. All we needed to do then was go back and copy it."

"But if you knew where to find the map what did you need that naiad for?" Gabe demanded, "You needn't have done those horrible things to her."

"No," he grinned in a way that appeared intended to provoke an angry reaction, "Perhaps not," he paused to let that thought sink in, "But then she could teach us so much more than you two. She had access to valuable knowledge where all the pair of you do is stumble upon things. She could have provided a much more precise location than this map of yours. And she could have revealed, once we reach the Fountain, quite how it must work. Without the knowledge of the Fountain's power all this has been worthless."

"You mean, you never knew how it works?" Gabe asked, surprised, "Or even if it does."

"Of course not," Saphy was, to Gabe's ongoing surprise, the one to answer this one, "That was clear from the naiad's interrogation."

"Indeed," Gerard agreed, happy to let Saphy reveal just how much she knew.

"Professor Robert White knew though, didn't he?" she was the one with a smug look on her face now, appearing keen to show off all her knowledge now that they may not have long to live, "That was what you wanted from him and what he found out tracking all those Hermaphroditus statues around the world. He had all your answers and all you had to do was use your best interrogation tricks to get them out of him."

"But, I don't understand," Gabe, not for the first time, felt his mind was having to race to catch up with Saphy's deductions, "How could you know that Robert White had discovered all about the fountain? How could you know what happened to him?"

"Haven't you figured it out?" she responded, "It was so obvious and yet I couldn't quite believe it. Couldn't believe it because it meant believing too much else that I wasn't ready to accept."

"It's not obvious to me."

"We know just what happened to Professor White," Saphy explained, "We know because we were there. We saw him die. It was Professor White who died at the naiad's arrow in front of the Rokeby Venus. He was the victim in the London National Gallery murder. It was his death that set us both on the path that lead us here!"