As far as damsel in distress stories go, the tale of Helen’s abduction by Paris, son of Priam, and the consequences must lay claim to being one of the earliest.
Although there are plenty who question whether or not she was a willing “abductee” when it came to Priam, she was a serial victim. Before she was married to Menelaus, King of Sparta, she had been abducted by Theseus, King of Athens (yes, the one that slew the minotaur) and the King of Larissa because they both wanted to make love to one of the daughters of Zeus. She had a troubled life, but maybe that‘s what you have to expect if your father rapes your mother while in the guise of a swan.
This tale is set against the same background but it’s not quite such an ambitious tale. It makes no claim to address the great themes of heroism, fate, jealousy, revenge, and lust that the Greek myths explore.
Well maybe lust.
It’s just a gallop through the Aegean word and what happens when Freddie Clegg’s comfortable Mediterranean base is disturbed by incomers.
So, as far as this story goes, the answer to the question, “Is this the face that launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium?” is….
“No, not really, but she has got a nice pair of tits.”
And while there is a Helen in this tale, she doesn’t get to see anything of Troy.
Needless to say the events and characters in this story are entirely fictional. No women were harmed in the production of this tale. J
Chapter 1 : Action On The Beach
“Few can argue that the island of Agoras is one of the most beautiful of the Aegean Greek islands. But the legends that surround the island speak of a past where beauty here was valued in coin. Oh, that’s no bloody good!” Bethany Howes, standing up to her knees in water, fifty feet off the beach, pushed her face into her hands shook her head and called to the group watching her from the beach. “Let’s go again!”
“Agoras is one of the most beautiful of the Aegean Greek islands,” she began once more. “But in the past, if legends are to be believed, beauty here was once valued in coin.” She stopped, put her hands on her hips and shook her head. Her long dark hair, with its tints of auburn glistening in the mid-morning sun, swung flirtatiously. It was exactly the effect she was looking for. She looked earnestly towards the beach. “And over the next few weeks, my team will be hoping to find evidence of those legends.” She strode purposefully out of the water and on to the scorching sand to join the small group of women assembled there.
As she reached them, one of them, holding a video camera, stood up. “Great, Bethany, great!” she called out. “That will be fine.”
Bethany looked sceptical. “Maybe,” she said. “We can always redo it if we have to. I just wish we could get on with the excavation. I’d rather get that under way and do these pieces to camera once we’ve got something definite to talk about.”
“Don’t worry,” the girl with the camera said. “The permits should be through today. Do you want to do the piece on the temple site now?”
Bethany looked around at the beach and over towards a rocky headland where a white villa sat perched on the low cliffs. A solitary figure was standing on the terrace of the villa looking out to sea. “No,” she said. “Let’s go back to the harbour. The ferry is due in soon. With luck our permit should be on it. If it is we can still get some work done today.” The group began to pack up their things.
On the headland, the solitary figure watched as they collected up their bags. It was too early in the season for holiday makers – not that there were many of them here even at the height of the season - and the group of five girls had intrigued him. They were obviously making a film; their equipment more than a tourist would bother with but less than a professional movie team would have. One girl had a substantial video camera, another a sound recorder and microphone. A third carried a large bag with folders, and a clip board. One other was lounging around looking bored and the fifth, evidently the focus of their endeavours, had been standing out in the bay.
Freddie Clegg had been looking through his binoculars at Bethany as she had repeated her walk out of the sea. It had taken her five attempts to get it right and Freddie had been happy to study her as she did it. All right, she was hardly Ursula Andress, or Halle Berry come to that, but she was an attractive woman in her mid thirties and, by the fifth attempt, the splashed spray from waves had made sure that her denim shorts and her tee-shirt were clinging agreeably to her figure. Freddie wasn’t keen on film makers here, especially just now, but the mermaid, as he had dubbed her, was easy on the eye at least. And the rest of her group were an attractive looking group of women too. Still, perhaps they wouldn’t be here for long. He could hardly believe he had felt that. He must be getting old, he thought.
All five of them had been down in the valley below the villa three or four days ago. Picking their way through the scrubby undergrowth, peering at the ground. At first he’d assumed that they’d lost something but then they had started sticking pegs in the ground, and picking up odd bits of rock. They had seemed quite happy when they finished. Clegg wasn’t. He valued his privacy.
As the girls left the beach Freddie decided he would go after them. They’d be going to the harbour, he decided, and he really wanted to know what they were up to.
In a dark room on Crete, fifty miles to the south west of Agoras, a helpless, twenty-one year old girl lay struggling against the ropes that bound her. Why her? Was it her own fault she kept asking herself? She should have taken more notice of the guys in the club. She shouldn’t have drunk so much. She certainly shouldn’t have taken that last drink. She didn’t know that, whatever she had done, it would have made no difference. From the moment that they’d seen her claiming her bags in the arrival hall at Iraklion Airport they’d decided on her. After that it had been simply a matter of where and when. Now though, the ropes were tight, cutting into her wrists and ankles, crushing her arms against her sides, bowing her legs up behind her. She had tried rolling this way and that. It made no difference except that at one point she had rolled off of the stinking mattress she was laying on and onto the hard floor. The cloth that filled her mouth and the tape that held it there made sure that she could make no cry. She couldn’t dislodge it. She had tried. She still didn’t know what they wanted. She hadn’t been raped. There was no reason she knew why should be kidnapped. Certainly no one was going to pay out a ransom and what other reason could there be? But then, modesty about her personal attributes was one of the things that people said was so nice about her. A vainer woman would have known. It was her breasts, her legs, her face, her figure. That was made her a saleable commodity in her captor’s eyes and that was what had led her here.
Chapter 2 : Coffee On The Quay
Freddie took a slow amble into the port of Agoras. He followed the dusty road that wound from the east of the island. It took him down from his villa, across the small valley where he’d first seen the girls and then staggered around the final bay into the clutter of white painted houses that was the island’s only real town.
It was a quiet walk for the most part. It was early in the year. Later there might be the occasional tourist revving their way past on one of the barely functional motor scooters that were for hire in the town but for now his walk was only disturbed by the raucous hooting of a single dusty lorry as it passed him heading the same way. Freddie waved to the driver as it passed him; another load of marble from the island’s one industry – the quarry.
He reached the port as the group of girls were piling their equipment in a barely ordered heap on the quayside outside Alexander’s bar. The five of them collapsed into wicker chairs. Freddie took up a place at an adjacent table. Alexander was nowhere to be seen, as usual at this time of day. His sister, Andrea, a dark haired girl that looked as if she had stepped out of the decoration of a black figure work vase, emerged from the bar. She was running things as usual. Freddie nodded. She knew he’d take his regular metrios; the tiny cup with its black thick coffee and sufficient sugar to take away the bitterness together with a cooling glass of water.
Andrea turned her attention to the girls, waiting patiently while they debated the merits of the twenty different sorts of coffees available according to the menu. Freddie that knew they were wasting their time. Unless it was a Greek coffee, brewed in its own little briki, they would be getting Nescafe with or without milk.
Eventually the hubbub of ordering came to a conclusion and Andrea disappeared inside the bar. Freddie sat staring out to sea. The daily ferry was just appearing around the northern coast. The girls chatted on.
“So, B, what will be the first steps?” the one that had been holding the camera leant forward towards the mermaid smiling eagerly.
The mermaid shaded her eyes against the sun as she peered out towards the ferry. “I’d like you and Helen to map the site before we do anything. Then a resistivity survey, ground penetrating radar too, assuming Norah got the equipment from Athens. Then, if there aren’t any other targets, I’d like to take a small trench across the edge of the enclosure and another across the centre on the seaward side to see if the enclosure was actually semi-circular or if half of it has been lost into the sea.”
The mermaid was making no attempt to talk quietly so Freddie felt quite permitted to join the conversation. He turned towards the group. “An archaeological dig?” he asked. “Here on Agoras? I didn’t think there was anything worth digging here.”
The mermaid turned towards him and smiled, unconcerned by the interruption and apparently happy for the opportunity to hold forth on her favourite subject. “You’d be surprised,” she said. “Agoras was at the cross roads in the Minoan and Mycenaean periods. Crete over there,” she gestured to the south west. Egypt over there. The Anatolian Coastal kingdoms and the Hittite empire over there.” She pointed towards the Turkish coast. “There’s not much been dug here and precious little documentary evidence but we think there are things to be discovered.”
“Well, good luck.” Freddie smiled. Andrea emerged from the back of the bar carrying Freddie’s coffee with its usual glass of water. “Ephcharisto,“ he thanked her as she put it down on his table. He turned back to the archaeologists. “Sorry, I should introduce myself. Freddie Clegg.”
“Hi,” the mermaid said. “Bethany Howes.” She seemed disappointed when Freddie didn’t react to her name but it meant nothing to him. “Maybe you saw my TV documentary on the cult of Diana at Ephesus?”
Freddie shook his head. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t get much time for television.” Apart from which, Freddie thought, I’ve never been keen on the idea of worshipping women - quite the reverse in fact. He did, however, remember at least one thing about Diana from his history lessons at school. If you had to worship a women, one with many breasts was probably the best sort to choose. Freddie remembered fondly the adolescent banter of his fellow students when they’d found a picture of her statue. He would have been disturbed to learn that these days academic opinion favoured the idea that what appeared to be multiple breasts on the Diana statues were, in fact, representations of bull’s testicles.
Andrea reappeared with a tray of coffees before the others could introduce themselves.
“So where is this dig?” Freddie asked, returning his mind from its contemplation of a many breasted Diana and the transfer of her remembered attributes to Bethany.
The others sorted out their coffees. Sharing them around with quizzical examination as they attempted to determine which might be latte and which cappuccino. There weren’t really many clues in the cups. In the end they decided that the ones with chocolate dusting on were probably meant to be cappuccinos.
As Bethany leant forward to pick up her cup Freddie suddenly found it difficult to imagine her with more than the two rather nice breasts that she had.
Bethany, not noticing Freddie’s interest, started to explain. “Well we’ve done what we call a field walking survey at a number of possible sites and we think the best bet is down at the far end of the bay,” Bethany nodded towards the road that Freddie had just walked along. “There’s a rocky headland with a villa on it, we’re going to be digging there in the little valley that runs up beside it.”
Freddie was concerned that she was confirming his fears but he didn’t show it. “In which case we’ll be neighbours,” he said. “That’s my villa. What are you hoping to find?”
“Good pictures and some sponsorship from the Discovery Channel,” the girl with the camera laughed. “Judy Fisher,” she called across Bethany, waving her hand. Freddie nodded.
“Helen Turton,” the girl who had been handling the sound recorder added. “Hopefully something to tell us about the reasons for the island’s legends.”
“I think that’s all together too optimistic, whatever I might say to the camera,” Bethany said. “Oh and this is Danni Prospect and Stacey Jackman.” She pointed to the other two girls.
“Legends?” Freddie asked, taking a sip of his coffee and one from the glass of water that had come with it. “Apart from the fact that the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Venetians and Turks stomped over it in turn I didn’t think there were any real legends.”
“Long before that” Danni cut in. She pulled a battered copy of Homer’s Odyssey from her bag. She flipped it open at a marked page. “Sea-set Agoras where priceless beauty has its price.”
Freddie looked blank. Bethany explained. “Most people think of the Greeks in antiquity as the peak of civilization but they had their unpleasant aspects. Their use of slaves for example. Perhaps as much as a third of the population of Greece in classical times were slaves. Slaves in the home were well treated enough but human beings were bought and sold. There is some historical evidence to suggest that Agoras was an important slave market in early Christian times, say 200 to 300AD. Pausanias writes ‘Close by Creta, and in the direction of Lydia, lies Agoras. The most renowned exploits of the people of Agoras is the trade they make in great beauties through their market for slaves.’ He doesn’t go any further though, Pausanias is often a problem like that.” Freddie went on looking blank. It didn’t discourage Bethany at all. “But what is interesting for me – for us - is that Homer was writing much earlier – around 700BC say – and much of his narrative has been shown to have echoes in the Greek dark ages up to 400 years earlier and the Mycenaean period, back as far as 1400 / 1500 BC. We know a little bit about slavery in Mycenaean times. Slaves are mentioned on tablets from Pylos on the mainland but we want to see if there is anything here to support the suggestion that Homer’s remarks mean that there was some form of slave market for women here.”
“And you’ve got just three days to find out?” Freddie parodied the introduction of the popular TV archaeology series. “Sorry, you did sound a bit like you were doing a voice over.” Bethany smiled with slight embarrassment, aware that she had been perhaps a little too enthusiastic.
“We’ll be taking more time than that,” Danni said. “Assuming our permit has turned up.” She looked over to the harbour mouth where the ferry was just entering the port.
“I can see it could make a good programme,” Freddie said, getting to his feet and tossing down some coins beside his coffee cup. If they were to be digging here for more than a week it would be a problem but he was very much afraid that they would be.
“Drop by when we get started,” Bethany invited. “I’ll be happy to show you what we’re doing.”
“Thanks,” said Freddie glad to be given the excuse to keep an eye on what the girls were up to. “I’d like that.”
As he headed off he heard Danni call, “There’s Norah!” Freddie looked around to see a dark green Land Rover lurched down the ramp from the ferry onto the quay. All right, he thought, that makes six of them.
For the helpless girl on Crete, things had got no better. They had come to her room hours before; two men, their faces masked. They’d untied the rope between her ankles and her wrists. For a moment she thought she might be freed. But then one of the men had produced a camera. He took picture after picture, the flashes bright in her eyes. They’d forced her to stand this way and that; face to the left and then to the right. They’d torn her dress and cut off her underwear and taken more pictures. They’d photographed her face, her naked breasts, her crotch. Then they’d put the ropes back between her wrists and ankles and they’d left her lying on the mattress, the tatters of her clothes around her. They ignored the groans and cries she tried to give behind her gag. They didn’t say anything. She’d tried to struggle free but her captors just looked on in unconcerned amusement. In time she fell back exhausted. She’d had no success in loosening the ropes and besides, one or other of her captors was always with her.
Chapter 3 : Resistance Is Useless
It was towards the end of the next day that Freddie decided to take up Bethany’s invitation. He made his way down from the villa into the valley. The land rover was parked by the track. Sitting on the tail gate, Bethany was staring glumly at the screen of a laptop computer. “Bloody geo-phys,” she muttered, “useless.”
“Afternoon,” he called jovially. “I wondered how things were going.”
Bethany looked up from her PC screen. “Pretty much how I thought it would at this stage,” she said, closing the screen and getting up. “Maybe something, maybe nothing. Come on, I’ll show you.” She led the way down the track, Freddie followed enjoying the site of her backside, as it fought against the constraints of her shorts, and her legs; nut brown from months spent outdoors excavating in the Aegean and the Anatolian peninsula.
It was odd, Freddie thought, the way that she combined the bookish air of a university don with the healthy outdoors-girl look. On the other hand he wasn’t complaining.
The track led down to where the valley widened as it reached the beach. The girls had cleared a lot of scrub and vegetation. Norah was dragging a tangle of brushwood across to a pile on one side of the site. She was built more heavily than the others. She looked like she was finding it hard work. On the other hand, thought Freddie, she looks like she could do with the exercise.
Bethany strode forward into the middle of the cleared area. “This is the site we’re going to be digging,” she said.
“Doesn’t look much to me,” said Freddie.
“No,” said Bethany with a worried look. “And to be honest I’m not sure it does to me right now. The resistivity survey hasn’t been much use. Looking for rocks in a rocky soil on a subsoil of rock doesn’t give very good results. Plus there’s what is obviously a sewer pipe or something similar running right down the middle of the valley,” she gestured to a line following the track that they’d come down, “and that is completely foxing things.”
“Disappointing,” said Freddie. He wasn’t sure whether he should be pleased or not. On one hand, it made things more difficult, perhaps they’d go and find somewhere else to dig. On the other hand, he didn’t imagine that they would be put off so easily and it meant that it would all take longer.
“Well maybe. There is something though. And when we get the results from the GPR,” she pointed to Danni who, wearing a bikini that looked designed for lounging rather than working, was dragging a heavy looking, sledge like, box across the clearing, “we should get a better picture.”
“GPR?” Freddie was never good with acronyms.
“Ground Penetrating Radar. It’s another way of looking under the ground. Where the resistivity survey looks at how electrical current passes through the soil, GPR works with sound waves. You can get better results in this sort of terrain.”
“Good,” said Freddie. He looked around. “You’ve not started digging yet, then?”
“No. Not until we’ve finished this. It’s too big an area for us to try to attack without some pin-point targets.”
“You said you thought that there was something.”
“Well, yes. It’s on the edge of the resistivity survey away from the area where the sewer is distorting the readings.” She waved her arm in an arc. “We’d come to the conclusion from the field walking that there is some sort of semi-circular enclosure or structure with its edge running along that line. It’s there on the resistivity as well; just. It could be a boundary wall or the edge of a building. If you follow the arc around it dives under the edge of the headland. Obviously there’s been land slippage back towards your villa that’s buried one edge of it.”
“And the straight edge?”
“Well it runs across the valley from side to side at the seaward end just above the beach. I’m not sure if this was a circular structure and the other side has been washed out by the sea or if it was always semi-circular. That’s one of the things we want to explore first.”
“What might it be?”
“It’s hard to tell. If it’s semi-circular it could be something like a theatre or a council chamber. If it’s circular then I suppose it could be a grave circle like those at Mycenae, though it’s much smaller than that and its not in the right sort of place. It might be a temple or some sort of cult site.”
“That’s the usual cop-out for archaeologists isn’t it? If you find something you can’t understand? Ritual enclosures? Lustral basins?”
“I know what you mean. I blame Great Great Uncle Arthur.”
“Great Great Uncle Arthur?”
“Arthur Evans. He dug Knossos. Virtually discovered the Minoan culture. He was probably why I got into archaeology. Never met him of course – he died in 1941 – but of course the stories went on being told. It became a bit of a family obsession.”
Clegg nodded. He had heard of Evans, at least. He’d even been to Knossos and some of the other Minoan sites. He’d had a few days to kill on Crete when they’d come out here looking for locations in the Mediterranean. They’d ended up choosing Agoras because they’d thought it was off the beaten track. It had been up until now.
“But he was a bit keen on the whole ’ritual significance’ thing, I’d agree. Nowadays we try not to say that unless there’s pretty strong evidence for it. There’s not even a consensus that Knossos was a palace, these days. Still that’s why we dig, I guess.”
“It all sounds like a long job.”
“I’m guessing three or four weeks assuming that there’s anything at all when we start digging.”
He didn’t say so but Freddie wasn’t at all happy with that. He had rather hoped that they would all be gone before the end of the next week. He’d need to do some exploration of his own.
The girl on Crete was now in the back of a small truck. She’d been blindfolded before they took her from the room but they hadn’t bothered to dress her. She was still wearing the tattered remnants of the dress they had cut open when taking the photographs. It was night, she thought, the air had been cool on her almost naked body as they hustled her outside. She could tell from the sounds of the truck that they were driving along the road between Iraklion and Chamia or Agios Nikalaos. There weren’t many roads with tarmac this good and the chance to drive without continually stopping and starting. She wasn’t sure what use this speculation might be though. Her wrists and ankles were still locked tightly together with rope; her mouth stuffed with sound deadening cloth. And that was ignoring the fact that one of her guards was sat beside her, one hand idly toying with her breasts, the other pressing the barrel of a pistol against her neck.
© Freddie Clegg 2008
No posting or reproduction without permission
All characters fictitious.
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Chapter 4 : Moussaka and Chips
“You are cordially invited,” the card slipped under Freddie’s door had said. “To a celebratory dinner tonight at the Mermaid Café. Eight o’clock to whenever! Hope you can join us. Bethany and the Diggers.”
Appropriate venue, Freddie thought, given that he’d dubbed Bethany ‘the mermaid’ when he’d first seen her. He was happy to join them. It was obvious that they had found something and that meant they’d be staying for a while yet, which wasn’t at all convenient. He needed to decide what he was going to do about it.
The Mermaid Café was run by Stephanos, one of Alexander’s brothers. It backed directly on to the beach, a wooden building that stood up in spite of the years of neglect that had been heaped upon it. Stephanos didn’t go in for menu’s much, especially before the tourists started to arrive. In any case it was easy enough to tell what was on offer tonight. A large swordfish was draped across a table immediately inside the front door. It looked as if it had thrown itself out of the water only minutes before. As far as Stephanos was concerned it was inconceivable that you would want anything else but, if you should, a quick tour of the kitchen would reveal the available options.
Bethany and the others were already there. They had already started when Freddie arrived. Danni was leaning over the bar, chatting to Stephanos in a way that seemed calculated to arouse his passions on one hand while at the same time fending him off effectively. Freddie could see Stephanos was finding it irritating. The archaeologists had grabbed a table inside It was still too cool in the evenings to eat on the beach. The television over the bar was showing the inevitable football match. It depressed Freddie. He could remember when scratchy rock and roll records were the entertainment here. He thought back to the skinny Canadian singer with the strange voice that had picked out songs on the guitar she carried everywhere. Was it really more than thirty years ago? He remembered the fights that had started with Carey when some of the lads had tried to drown her out. And he remembered being puzzled, when the album came out, that she had set it in Crete. Freddie had never been keen on Matala but he guessed that it must have seemed more “credible”; the hippy colony had its reputation even then.
No music now, he gloomed, just football. Somehow the antics of Panathinaikos, Olympiakos and the rest didn’t match up.
Two grizzled old men were sitting on the far side of the restaurant, slapping down counters in a game of backgammon. They were almost always there. Freddie guessed that they were related to Stephanos and Alexander in some way but he didn’t really know how. There was one other, the guy that drove the truck from the quarry. He sat watching the game.
They were all smoking. The smell of the tobacco drifted across the room. Stacey looked shocked. Freddie didn’t mind. Since he’d given up cigarettes, down-streaming others was the only tobacco fix he got and now that it had been banned in most public places it was getting harder and harder to indulge his second-hand pleasure.
Bethany’s smile was welcoming. Danni, who had already put away a couple of large ouzos if Freddie was any judge, was even more encouraging. “Mr Clegg,” she called, as she abandoned Stephanos in favour of Freddie, “come and sit with me.”
Freddie felt his mood lift and, never one to pass up an invitation of that kind, obliged. “You all seem very happy,” he said.
“And it’s all down to me!” Danni exclaimed, throwing her arms around Freddie.
Freddie did nothing to discourage her but looked across at Bethany. “Well, not quite all,” she said. “But the radar survey was a clincher.”
Alexander’s sister, Andrea, emerged from the kitchen and came to take their order. She seemed to move from the bar to the restaurant or to Stephanos’s car hire office or to wherever she was needed. Tonight she was the waitress in the Mermaid Café.
Bethany went for the swordfish. Stacey wondered if there was some sort of vegetarian option before, in the face of complete non-comprehension from Andrea, opting for moussaka. The other girls asked for steak. That was a bad idea in Freddie’s view. They must know there was no sign of a cow anywhere nearby, or even on the island come to that. At best it would be fresh from the freezer. At worst it would just be from the freezer. Freddie couldn’t think of anything he’d rather have than the swordfish.
A jug of wine appeared from somewhere and Danni helped Freddie to a glass. He held it aloft. “Well,” he said, “whatever it is that you have to celebrate, congratulations!”
“It’s not clear what we have got, but we have got something,” said Bethany.
“A mysterious enclosure,” interjected Danni with Ouzo fuelled enthusiasm. “A mysterious Mycenaean enclosure. And I found it. I did.”
Bethany looked on with slight disapproval as Danni took another triumphal slug of Ouzo. “Danni’s radar survey gave us a much better picture of the site. The enclosure is well defined, certainly. The centre of it doesn’t look to have been disturbed so it’s not likely to be a grave circle or anything like that but there’s a lot of disturbance outside the perimeter of the enclosure.”
“But its definnn – definitittievly – definitely, Mice, Meece, Mycenaean!” Danni evidently considered it very much her discovery.
Norah nodded putting a small plastic box on the table. She took off the lid and peeled back the packing. Inside was a half-dozen fragments of pottery. Freddie peered at them without seeing anything significant. “We found these as we were clearing the site. Just lying in the topsoil. It’s Mycenaean all right. I’ve seen similar shards from Cyprus and the field walking surveys in the Nemea Valley. Probably about 1400BC at a guess.”
Bethany nodded in agreement.
The girls were all obviously excited by the discoveries. Freddie just felt that it would mean that they were going to stay even longer. He could manage things for the end of the next week, probably, although it was inconvenient. But if it looked like they were still going to be around after the end of the month then he wasn’t sure what he was going to do.
He managed to avoid much of the drink that Danni in particular was pressing on him. The meal was fine; the swordfish vindicated as the best choice of the evening. The Mermaid Café always managed simple food well. Expecting anything else was being overly optimistic. After a final complementary brandy from Stephanos he got to his feet and made his farewells. Danni looked disappointed that he was going so soon.
Freddie made his way back to his villa. All was in darkness except for the floodlights in the swimming pool. He stood for a while on the edge of the headland staring out to sea. A few lights blinked from fishing boats. Out near the horizon the twinkling lights of an enormous cruise ship slid steadily by. At least the cruise ships hadn’t started coming to Agoras, thought Freddie. That really would be the last straw.
Then it was time for the last job of the night. He turned off the lights in the pool and headed down to the villa’s basement. Behind a metal cupboard there was a concealed door. He went through it, closing and locking it behind him. He carried on down a flight of stone cut steps.
“Bloody archaeologists,” Clegg thought. “They’d probably think this was a tomb or something.”
At the foot of the stairs Clegg unlocked another door. Within, a dim amber light revealed a circular room. Clegg locked the second door and turned on the lights. At once a series of grunts and groans went up on all sides.
Clegg looked around with a smile of self-satisfaction. Eight steel barred cells surrounded the central chamber. Seven of the cells each held a naked, helpless, gagged woman. The eighth was empty. He opened each in turn, checking that the woman inside was securely chained and that her gag was firmly locked in place before chaining her down to the steel framed cot that each had at the back of their cell. It was one of the best shipments that he had been able to put together for a while, he thought, surveying the group for a last time before putting the light out again.
With the one due in next week he had the basis for a good auction. Certainly the pictures suggested she’d fetch a good price, assuming they hadn’t bruised her too much by the time she got here. Freddie normally liked them to be on site for a couple of weeks before the auction to make sure they were in the best of condition. Still this one had only just become available. He’d be able to ship her in provided the archaeologists weren’t working twenty four hours a day, but the auction was another matter. He couldn’t see his customers wanting to turn up with a swarm of archaeologists sweating away in the valley beside the villa. Still there was no way that Bethany and her friends were going to stop that going on. Something would have to be done.
It was a nuisance that he was here on his own. Harry was off organising the last of the shipments, Elly was back in London keeping an eye on the business end of things. He’d told the usual heavies to take a couple of weeks off. Once the girls had been successfully installed they weren’t normally needed. He could get them back, he supposed, if needed but it might be fun just to sort things out with the resources he had to hand.
For the girl on Crete the truck ride had finished at a harbour side house in Sithia. She was down on the floor again, tied as securely as ever. There was a new guard keeping her company. She’d heard the others turn her over to him just after she’d been brought in from the truck. They took no interest in whether or not she heard what they were planning for her. She knew now that she was being shipped out north east. That she was being sold. That they thought he’d fetch a good price. That the way things were going with the markets these days she’d be more likely to fetch up in the Far East than Central America. Everything they said seemed to open a new window of horror but they took no notice of her groaned whimpers of fear. She was learning one of the most important lessons already – how to be quiet. At least the new guard had taken off her blindfold. He was still masked of course but she had already given up the idea that she might be able to escape. The guard took off her gag once she’d promised to keep quiet. He had given her some water; she’d been grateful. Then he’d forced her to suck him off. She’d begged him not to but of course he hadn’t cared. Why should he? Then he put the gag back. leaving her choking on his cum and the knotted cloth.
There had been plenty of activity in the valley over the previous few days. Freddie decided that it was time to find out a bit more about what was going on and found his way down from the road and onto the site. Bethany was sitting to one side of the valley, puzzling over a plan of the site. Clegg waved a greeting. She beckoned him across.
“Good morning,” he called.
“Hi,” said Bethany. “Checking up on us?”
“Just interested to see if you’ve found your temple or tombs or whatever it is.”
“Well, we don’t think it’s either of those. Do you want to come and see what we have so far?”
“Sure,” said Freddie, following Bethany as she led the way towards two trenches at the far end of the valley.
They reached the first. In it, Judy and Stacey were hard at work. Even with Clegg’s limited understanding of archaeology he could see they had found a fairly substantial wall. It curved across the trench. Judy was working away at part of it, flicking soil away from the stones with a brush. Stacey was busy scraping her trowel across the bottom of the trench.
“That’s the enclosure wall,” said Bethany. “From the curve we now know it was about eight metres across. And Stacey is down onto the original surface. It looks as if it was flagged with stones.”
“There’s no sign that there’s anything below this floor surface,” Stacey said. I’ve followed the edge of the wall and its straight down onto the natural.”
“I’ve been getting more Late Helladic pottery from here,” Judy said. “The context is good. This wall is definitely Mycenaean. Probably 1400BC give or take.”
“So, you’re happy. Problem solved?” Freddie enquired optimistically.
Bethany laughed. “Nothing like. We still don’t know what it was for. It’s certainly not a theatre; they aren’t known before about 550BC at the very earliest. This is almost a thousand years older. And there are a whole series of features on the radar beyond the wall. We’re going to take this trench back to see what they are. It looks like there are some sort of rooms or chambers arranged around the enclosure. Come and see how Danni has been getting on.”
Across in what Freddie assumed was the centre of the enclosure was another trench. Down at the same level that Stacey had been working at, Danni was easing a piece of dirt from a block of stone with the pointed end of a trowel. On the far side, Norah had exposed the base of a narrow column which had broken off about six inches above the ground. Behind her a circular piece of stone showed where the rest of the column disappeared into the wall of the trench.
Danni wearing a bikini top, a pair of very short shorts, sandals and a baseball cap, grinned up at Freddie from the trench. She was fully aware that from where he was standing he had an excellent view of her cleavage. The evenness of the tan that she managed to acquire suggested that she paid as much attention to where she was in relation to the sun overhead as she did to the archaeology beneath her feet. Norah had less room at her end of the trench. Her tee-shirt was streaked with sweat and dust and her hair was full of dust as well. She didn’t seem worried.
“This is some sort of plinth,” Bethany explained. The pillar was right in the centre of the back of the enclosure according to my calculations. It was definitely a semi-circle. There’s the trace of the back wall behind this plinth. So there would have been the pillar here with a semi circular wall out there.”
It does look a bit like some Greek theatres, doesn’t it?” said Freddie. “But on a much smaller scale.”
“Yes. There’s no skene or anything like it. There’s no evidence of seating where the theatron would be. This plinth is on a low platform and bit like a modern stage but Greek theatres didn’t have that. And this pillar was in the middle. It’s all very odd. Still it’s early days yet.”
I was afraid you would say that, thought Freddie. He looked at his watch. There were things that needed doing back at the villa. Freddie said his goodbyes and headed back.
It was always the same with an auction, Freddie thought. Actually acquiring the girls was the least of the problem. The clients were always so fussy about the accommodation arrangements and security was an issue of course. The worst part though was making sure that there were enough buyers to get the prices going. And tastes kept changing all the time as well. Once upon a time it had been enough to make sure that the merchandise was blonde, long legged and big chested. These days though it was almost impossible to predict what was going to sell. Freddie’s business concentrated on quality rather than quantity, though, and he was confident that his latest lots would attract both bidders and bids.
As he climbed the hill towards the villa, he remembered that he still had to review the end of year forecasts and next years budget plans as well. He found himself gripped by a heavy, depressing sensation. He was sure that this wasn’t what he had wanted when he started out. He’d started out enjoying what he did, but what did he do now? Now it was all administration and monitoring and man management. It wasn’t at all what he’d had in mind thirty years ago.
As for the girl on Crete; she was on the last leg of her journey. Now she was in the cabin of a small yacht. She still had ropes around her wrists and ankles. All that had changed was the gag and the blindfold. They’d replaced the knotted cloth that filled her mouth with a wad of foam and strip after strip of adhesive tape plastered over the lower half of her face. Before they took her on board they swapped her blindfold for a hood. It made no real difference to the girl. For her it was just another terrifying step.
The boat with the girl from Crete came in just after sunset. As the guys in Iraklion had said she was worth waiting for, Freddie felt. At least with only her on board, there wasn’t any problem with getting her unloaded while the archaeologists were around. They had finished up at the site once the light started to go, so the boat coming in just after dusk had been OK.
Freddie had been looking forward to this one arriving. She made up the set. There were six of them now. An afro-carribean girl, one Japanese, an Australian, two from Pakistan and now this very English looking girl; pale skinned, brown haired, and with the sort of figure that should appeal to the traditionalists among his customers.
Freddie always found the girls’ reactions to their arrival in the cellar amusing. Their horrific realisation of their situation gave him a thrill. This one was no different. Freddie had let her captors bring her in from the boat with her head still covered by a hood. He’d watched her tentative footsteps on the cold stone floor of the corridor from the dock as they had pushed her forwards. He’d smiled as she started at the clang of the steel door between the dock and the cellar itself. He listened as she tried to control the panic in her breathing beneath the hood. She wasn’t doing very well, as they hurried her forward the short snullfles and whimpers beneath the hood told of her increasing terror.
Then they took her hood off. The cellar was lit dimly so it didn’t take her long to get used to being able to see again. And what she saw did nothing to comfort her. There were the two masked men that had been her constant companions from the last few days. And there was another man; older, staring at her with an appraising glance, and, most worrying of all, without a mask.
Freddie studied the way that her body betrayed how her captors had treated her. Good work with the ropes he thought, not elaborate, just effective. And whatever they had used to stuff her mouth was working too. It didn’t matter down here of course, there was no one to hear her, or at least no one that could do anything to help her, but Freddie was always pleased when adequate precautions were taken. She was whimpering a little behind the strips of tape strapped across her face. It gave her an appealing charm. The poor girl’s clothes were cut and torn, of course, but that didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be needing them. Freddie studied her body. They’d chosen well from the perspective of her physical conformation.
The girl looked around again and realised that not only was she in the centre of a room surrounded by steel barred cells, each of them except one was occupied by a naked and ball- gagged woman. Her muffled squeals increased. Freddie smiled again, delighted by her response. He nodded towards the empty cell and the girl’s captors hustled her inside. The door clanged shut behind her. Clegg shook the hands of the two men and followed them back out to their boat. They were gone less than fifteen minutes after arriving. They would be back in Sithia before morning. Their commission would be paid within the week. Freddie liked to keep the commercial side of things straight. It avoided problems.
Clegg didn’t bother with the girl immediately. She would keep, helpless, silenced and alone in her cell. Besides, he had other things to do. From the terrace of his villa Freddie watched the boat slip back out to sea. He looked across to the valley where the archaeologists were working. They were definitely a thorn in his side. They were showing no sign of finishing their digging. Quite the contrary; there had been a lot more coming and going in the valley. They’d got themselves a small hut down there now, a rickety wooden building that had arrived on the back of a truck.
The next morning, Freddie went down to the site, just to keep an eye on what was going on.
Bethany greeted him cheerily. “Hullo!”
“How’s it going?” Freddie said.
“Slowly, but that’s how we work. This isn’t something we can rush at. Look, I’ll show you.” Bethany led the way to a trench where Stacey was working. The trench was only about six inches deep, little more than a scrape in the floor of the valley. Stacey was gently brushing at a piece of pottery that was protruding from the floor of the trench, cleaning soil away from one side of it, slowly exposing the curvature of the pot as it dived away beneath the surface.
Bethany crouched down beside the trench and Freddie joined her. Stacey kept on with her painstaking work. “You see,” Bethany began, “when we find something the real problem is that we don’t know what we’re dealing with. Take this for example. It could just be a broken piece of pot. It might go no further down into the ground than another half inch or so. On the other hand it might be an entire pot.”
“And then we don’t know what’s in it,” Stacey chipped in. “Pots like this can contain food remains which can tell us a lot about diet and economies. So we’ve got to be careful when we lift it that we don’t lose any of the evidence.”
“It’s a time consuming process,” Bethany said. “But it has to be if we are to make any sense of what we find.”
“Well it all looks like hard work,” said Freddie. “Not a glamorous job by any stretch of the imagination.”
“No,” said Bethany, smiling and pushing back a strand of hair from her face. As she did so she left a streak of dirt where the dust from her hand mixed with the sweat on her forehead. “Any archaeologist that thinks Indiana Jones or Lara Croft is a good model is in for a disappointment.”
As Freddie and Bethany chatted, Danni wandered across carrying a wooden orange box loaded with potsherds. She was wearing the same tight shorts as she’d had on the day before but this time she had teamed them with a bright yellow halter necked top. Freddie noticed these things.
“There’s enough crockery on this site to start a china shop,” she said with a smile.
“Better watch out for Minoan bulls, then,” Freddie responded.
“You do know a bit about this then,” said Bethany, amused. She reached out and picked a couple of pieces of pot from the tray. “Nothing very interesting here, though. This is all first century BC at the earliest, I’d say. It’s nothing that you wouldn’t expect around here.” Norah waved to Bethany from her trench on the other side of the site. “Excuse me,” said Bethany to Freddie and headed off to see what it was that she wanted.
“So nothing very exciting,” Freddie said to Danni, enjoying the site of her tanned body.
“Not in the finds so far,” she said.
Judy joined them. “No, but this is a fun project to be involved with. I mean it’s great that we get to make a video of what we’re doing as well as doing the digging,” she said.
“Well I guess it makes a change.” Freddie was conscious that Danni was scowling at the other girl evidently irritated that she had cut in on their conversation. He didn’t mind.
“Take last night. Bethany wanted some shots at sunset so we came back here after we’d finished digging and took some shots out across the bay. It was great, the light on the water, an old fishing boat or yacht or something sliding across the bay.”
As she chattered on about the filming Freddie realised that they had been shooting their video as the girl from Crete had been brought in. It might not be a problem, he thought, but then, on the other hand, it might. Freddie let her finish. Danni, he noticed, was hoping that she would go but to her disappointment he made the decision to leave himself.
“Well,” he said, “I hope the filming goes as well as the digging. I‘ve got to go. Have a good day.”
Freddie headed off. He wanted to think. It really wasn’t good news that they had filmed the boat that the girl from Crete had arrived in. It wasn’t as though they would have seen anything, he supposed. But even so, he’d have to think what to do about their video.
© Freddie Clegg 2008
No posting or reproduction without permission
All characters fictitious.
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He’d come to a conclusion. It was unlikely that the tape contained anything incriminating but, even so, he wasn’t going to take the chance. Normally he’d have one of his heavies deal with it. The only problem was that they weren’t around.
For this auction he had decided about a month ago that he would look after things on his own. In retrospect perhaps that wasn’t a good idea. The arrival of the archaeologists was, thought Freddie, bloody inconvenient. And now he had to deal with things himself. That’s what comes of trying to save money, he grumbled to himself as he trudged through the darkness towards the tourist apartments at the back of the port. The first thing was to steal a car.
The idea was to burgle the site cabin; to get the video and maybe make a bit of a mess to give the girls the idea that they might not be welcome. The car was to give the impression that whoever had done it had come from some way away.
There were three pale green Fiat Punto’s in varying states of rusting deterioration, pulled up outside the Dimetrios Apartments. The first one that he tried had the keys under the driver’s floor mat, left there by the last renter. Freddie didn’t know why tourists bothered to rent cars on the island. There weren’t many places to go and the bus went all round the island anyway. Still, at least this gave him the opportunity he needed. He slid behind the wheel and drove off towards the site of the dig.
He parked and looked at his watch. Half past ten. Late enough around here. He looked around. There was no sign of anyone.
Freddie found that he fell into the routine easily. It made a change, Freddie decided, as he pulled the ski mask from his back pack. It was a long time since he’d done this. That was the worst part of being a criminal master mind; the other guys got to do the fun bits. The only down side of this little project was that the burglary wasn’t meant to look too subtle. There wasn’t any need to go about things with any finesse. It wouldn’t do for it to look like it had been done by someone that knew what they were up to.
He made his way across the valley to the cabin that Bethany’s team had brought in. From his visits to the site he knew that they kept their equipment in there overnight. The door was locked with a padlock but Freddie found a shovel leaning beside the cabin and that provided sufficient to break the hasp away from the cabin door. He pulled the door open and slipped inside. It was even darker inside the hut but with the help of the glimmer from a dim torch he soon got his bearings; the desk at one end, a filing cabinet beside it and against the far wall a steel cupboard. Along the back wall of the cabin was a long table with plans laid out along it and piles of crates containing the finds so far beneath it. Copies of the geo-phys and GPR survey results were pinned to the wall. Freddie thought he’d find the video in the cupboard. It was locked.
He was searching for a key and had just found a possibility in the drawer of the desk when he saw through the cabin window the light of a torch flickering backwards and forwards across the clearing. It was coming straight towards him. He knew he had no time to get out of the cabin. All he could do was to hope that whoever it was would see the signs of the break in and run off for help. Hoping for the best, he crouched down between the back of the door and the steel cupboard. He could see the light of the torch getting closer.
Then there was the sound of Judy’s voice. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed. She’d obviously seen the shattered padlock hasp and come to the right conclusion. Her response, however, was entirely the wrong one. She pushed open the door and came inside.
Clegg didn’t really need to decide what to do. His body remembered skills he had thought that he had forgotten as he uncurled from his hiding place stretching one gloved hand around to clamp across Judy’s mouth while grabbing her around the waist with the other to pull her back against him.
Judy squealed and tried to bite into the hand that gagged her. She kicked out with her feet but, although she made contact against her attacker's shins with the heel of her trainers, she didn’t manage to break free. She tried to gasp for breath as her attacker pulled her back, her nose filled with the smell of the man’s leather gloves. As she struggled she succeeded in swinging the heavy torch down and behind her to slam it into Freddie’s side. The shock made him loosen his grip for an instant and Judy tried to break free. Freddie, determined that she shouldn’t, reached out, grabbed at her arm, and pulled. Judy swung back, tripping over Freddie’s leg and slamming herself against the steel cupboard. She slid to the floor stunned by the impact.
Freddie was coughing from the blow from the torch, and remembering why he’d given all this up a while ago in favour of a more managerial role, but at least he now had the initiative.
As the stunned Judy groaned quietly, he rolled her over onto her face and dragged the belt from her jeans. It wasn’t ideal for tying someone up with but it would do at least for now. He pulled her wrist together and wound the belt tightly around them. He found a measuring tape and used that to tie her ankles. For good measure he took a turn around her knees as well.
Judy started to stir. In one of the finds crates Freddie found a wad of cloth used to pack around fragile pieces of pot. Conveniently nearby was a reel of adhesive tape that he’d seen Stacey using to help assemble pieces of pottery into something that looked more like a plate or jug. As Judy started to struggle against her bonds Freddie knelt across her and rolled her over on to her back. She went to yell, terrified by her masked assailant. Freddie wedged the cloth between her lips. Judy coughed as Freddie thumbed the cloth in, packing her mouth until her cheeks bulged like a hamster. By the time he’d finished with the cloth Judy was throwing herself from side to side trying to dislodge him. Clegg ignored her efforts and pulled strip after strip of the tape across her face. He found some more cloth to blindfold her and taped that in place too. Satisfied that she wasn’t going far, he took some time to take stock of the situation.
As far as he could tell, she had been alone. She hadn’t called out to anyone. He hadn’t heard anyone else and with her mouth stuffed as full as it was there was no danger she was going to be heard from more than a few feet away. In any case, thought Freddie, it didn’t matter. He would just make sure that she wouldn’t escape. Then he would find the tapes and the video camera and get clear as he had originally planned. He got the steel cabinet open and, sure enough, found the video. He ran the tape, looking at the indicators that showed it was indeed footage taken the previous evening. He tossed the camera into his bag, turned over a couple of the find trays to make it look as though he’d been looking for valuables and then turned his attentions back to Judy.
She was still struggling in a way that left Freddie thinking she’d free herself in time. She could use a paint brush to clean dirt off a pot daintily enough but Freddie guessed she was pretty fit from swinging a shovel too. Freddie knew he needed something to slow her up but there wasn’t anything in the cabin to tie her to. They hadn’t bothered to get a chair for the desk and the desk itself looked too rickety to make it a serious proposition.
Then Freddie spotted the ranging poles. There were half a dozen red and white striped poles used for surveying the site and for showing scale in the photographs of the trenches that Bethany was using to record the dig. As he grabbed the poles, he found a coil of the rope that they’d been using to mark out trenches. This was more like it. Freddie wedged one of the poles between Judy’s arms and her back and tied her arms to it before taking the rope across her chest and around her arms again. Thinking about it he was disappointed that it hadn’t been Danni. Her pert breasts would have looked good with rope around them like that. Freddie got his mind back on his work. He untied Judy’s ankles and tied them spread legged to one of the other poles. Then, rolling her over onto her face he pulled the two poles as lose together as he could tying them so that Judy was bowed back. Once he had finished he knew that, in spite of her spirited grunts and struggles, she’d be exhausted long before she managed to free herself. And tied like that there was no way she’d be able to shuffle herself outside to attract attention.
He grabbed his back pack and left. It was only when he got back into the car that he realised how much his side was hurting. He remembered why he had stopped doing this sort of things. He was getting too old for it. Even so, he had felt more alive in the last few minutes than he had for some time. He really needed to find something between sitting on management committees and having seven kinds of shit kicked out of him on operations. He’d have to think about it.
Chapter 8 : Police Investigations
There was plenty of activity down at the site the following morning but it wasn’t of the archaeological kind. The island’s one police car sat in the valley, its blue lights flashing. One of the island’s two police man stalked around peering into the cabin and talking to the girls. Freddie watched from the terrace of his villa. He knew that Petros would be up to talk to him soon enough.
It was just before midday when the policeman that Freddie had watched in the valley arrived at Freddie’s door. His colleague had come along too. Clegg invited them in. “Kalimera, Petros,” he smiled. “Have you got problems down at the site?”
“Indeed, Freddie, indeed,” Petros responded taking off his hat.
“Would you like something to drink?” said Clegg walking out to the terrace with the policemen.
Petros’s colleague shook his head. “Just a coke,” Petros answered, “I think I may be getting some ‘help’ from the mainland. You know how it is.”
“Of course.” Freddie picked a can from the fridge and passed it to him. “What’s happened?”
“Not nice,” Petros said, “not here on Agoras. OK maybe sometimes we have some drunk tourists, maybe sometimes pickpockets, but not like this. Someone broke into their hut. Attacked one of the girls.”
“Attacked? Is she all right? Which of them was it?”
“Miss Judy Fisher. Yes, she is all right but shocked of course. A burglar. Tied her up. Left her there. She could not get free. The others found her this morning when they came to start digging.”
“Appalling. It’s unusual here? Something like that? I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
“You’re right. Did you hear anything? Last night? About eight o’clock maybe?”
“No, I don’t think so. I was here all evening but, no, I don’t think I did.”
“That’s OK. I didn’t think you would. It was only one man. With a car, I think. But it’s all right. I know who did it.”
“Really.”
“Sure. This is not Greek. Over behind the Dimetrios Apartments - there’s some Albanians staying. The car came from Dimetrios, I’m sure. There’s a scrape of paint on the gate post of the site. There’s not so many cars on this island Freddie with that pale green colour. I’ll find that one of them has a scratch I’m sure. This has Albanians written all over it. My friends on the mainland agree.”
“But they are still coming to see?”
“Oh yes. I think they like the idea of a trip out here for a day. They may want to talk to you. Seeing as how you’re right here.”
“Of course. I’d be happy to.”
“On the other hand maybe they’ll just pick the Albanians up.”
“Did they take much?”
“No, just a video camera. That’s all there was of value in the hut. They must have thought the archaeologists had dug up something more interesting that pottery.”
“And Judy’s all right?” Freddie asked.
“Yes,” he nodded. “A bit sore but that’s all.”
“Well,” said Freddie, “I’ll go down to the site and see if there’s anything I can do to help. It’s a shocking business.”
“Yes, and it’s going to mean too many forms to fill in too!” Petros got to his feet, bid Freddie farewell and grunted at his colleague to follow.
Freddie made his way down to the site at the end of the afternoon. All the girls except Judy were busy, working away in the trenches. Clegg waved to Bethany. “I heard about your problem. Is Judy OK?”
Bethany put down her trowel, pushed back a strand of hair and stood up. “Yes. She had a nasty fright but she’s all right. She’s resting up – she was trussed up on the floor of the hut all night.”
“Dreadful. Did they take much?”
“No, just the video camera. That’s all there was really. There was some footage in it but nothing we can’t re-shoot. They turned over some of the finds trays but none of it was really important stuff, luckily. Stupid people. They must have thought there were artefacts of some value, I guess.”
“Like you say, stupid,” Freddie responded. “Well, I hope Judy feels OK soon. Give her my best wishes. Petros should get it sorted out. They don’t get much crime here but he’s bright, he knows his stuff.”
“Yes,” Bethany said, “I thought that. He seemed to think he had a lead. A paint scrape on the gatepost.”
“So he said,” Clegg replied, thinking that he was pleased Petros had spotted it. He had taken a great deal of care to leave it there. “How’s the digging going?”
“A bit slower without Judy here,” Bethany said ruefully. “But we are starting to get down onto the Mycenaean levels. A few nice pieces of pottery. Look.” She reached across to the finds tray, pulled out a pale shard of pottery with a dark lined design and passed it to him. “This is typical stuff for round about 1200 BC.”
“As old as that? Over three thousand years!” Freddie was impressed. He put it back in the finds tray carefully. “Well, I’ll let you get on. Let me know if I can do anything.”
“Thanks,” said Bethany, “that’s kind.”
Freddie headed back to the villa. He needed to check on his guests.
As always his arrival in the cellar started them up again. They’d had time to get used to the regime by now, he felt, why were they still kicking up every time he appeared? They knew it would do them no good. The latest girl, the one in from Crete, well she had some excuse. Only a couple of days ago she’d been enjoying a holiday in the sun; it was all a bit sudden for her, Freddie acknowledged. But the others! Heck, they’d been here for two weeks or more. They must know the score by now.
The Australian set them off this time. Soon they were all grunting and groaning through their gags. Years of experience told him the difference between the plaintiff grunts of despair and the groans of desperate defiance. In the end though it made no difference. The girls all found their new homes and they learned to keep their mouths shut. Except when their owners had a use for them.
It was feeding time. Freddie liked to keep a regular regime going, It made the girls easier to manage and he was less likely to forget something important. For the Australian, he kept her hands cuffed behind her and kept one hand on his tazer. She was still keen to abuse him when he took the ball out of her mouth. He ignored her fowl mouthed suggestions as to his sexuality and parentage, grabbed her by the back of her neck and pushed her face down in the dish of food. He gave her the chance to take a mouthful or two but when it became clear that she was more interested in swearing than eating he jammed the ball gag back in place and buckled it tight. She was still making a noise; the gag didn’t stifle every sound. It didn’t really matter; the cages were under the ground, hidden beneath the swimming pool on Freddie’s terrace. There would have been no danger of her being heard even without a gag. Freddie just liked the effect. To make the point about just who was in charge, he clipped the ring on her collar to a staple on the wall. She could spend a few hours standing on tip toes, Freddie thought. That way she’d have something to take her mind off her complaints.
Seeing how the Australian girl had been treated seemed to have the desired effect on the others. They all took their food in silence, letting Clegg remove and replace their gags without a sound. All of them, that was, except the girl from Crete.
“Please,” she said as Clegg took off her gag, “please, what is happening to us? What do you want with us?” She spoke quietly, desperately, in hesitant tones.
“Don’t worry,” Clegg responded, “you are quite safe.” And, of course, they were. As far as Clegg was concerned this collection of eight women represented a substantial amount of income for his business in this quarter of the year. He certainly didn’t intend anything to happen to them that would jeopardise that. “Just take your food,” he urged.
She looked at him with a thousand questions in her mind and the certainty that none of them would be answered. She took the food and then, when she had finished, knelt quietly while he fastened her gag back in place, grunting only once as he pulled the strap tight behind her head to hold the ball that filled her mouth in place. Freddie cuffed her wrists behind her back again and made sure that the chain running from her ankle was securely fastened to the ring on the wall of her cage.
As he did so he looked down at her pleading expression. The girl didn’t know it but Freddie could resist anything except such a look of pathos. The sight of a woman staring at him, wide eyed and desperate. appealed to him beyond almost anything. As he knelt beside her taking her cheek tenderly in his hand, she hoped that her captor had been moved to treat her more kindly, but it wasn’t compassion that the woman’s look aroused in him.
Instead, her hopes turned to despair as his hand drifted from her cheek to her naked breast, at first stroking, then squeezing then pinching and while he did so she watched with increasing distress as his other hand began to unfasten his trousers. And her distress fuelled his desire. The woman was crying now, whimpering into her gag as she realised what was to happen. The others too were grunting their dismay at the girl’s treatment; the Australian perched on her toes, growled in anger at his actions as much as at her own treatment.
Clegg ignored them all; using his strength to overcome the girl’s struggles; forcing himself on her naked body; pressing into her with his cock, all the time telling her that she should not worry and that she would be quite safe.
Her dismayed, desperate, look served only to arouse him more. She never realised it but her distress helped to reduce her ordeal as her tortured response to his actions brought him more quickly to orgasm, draining himself into her. He left her with the others, locked inside her cage, sobbing into her gag.
Chapter 9 : Finds In A Mycenaean Context
It was as he was sitting by the pool thinking about his forthcoming delivery that Bethany hailed him from the road. “Exciting news,” she called. “we thought you’d want to know.”
Excitement was just what Freddie could do without right now but he followed Bethany down to the site.
“This could be just the thing we were looking for.” Bethany was sounding as excited as Danni had on his first visit.
The first trench had been extended back beyond the perimeter wall and, sure enough, as the radar survey had predicted they had found a series of small rooms. Bethany pointed to pile of dark red dirt. Stacey sat grinning beside it. “There was a fire here,” she said, and best of all we’ve found some clay tablets. She picked up a plastic box and opened the top. Inside were four small sticks of reddish clay. “Linear B,” she said pointing to the incised characters on the tablets.
Freddie looked puzzled. “Not Greek?” he said.
“No,” said Bethany patiently. “This is from 500 years before the Greeks, the Bronze Age. The Mycenaeans seem to have spoken a form of Greek but their writing was quite different. It was only in the 1950’s that archaeologists could even start to read it and it still isn’t fully deciphered. We can read quite a lot of it though. The trouble is most of it is usually just tallies; so many jars of olives, so many sheep, so many chariots and so on.”
“Not great literature, then?”
“No sadly. Of course there are always the lunatics who think they’ll turn up some precursor of Homer, or an eye-witness account of the Ark Of The Covenant or even the last will and testament of King Priam but I think that shows a mis-understanding of the Mycenaen mind. Poetry was spoken and shared. What point would there be in writing it down? Keeping track of the number of sheep or how much oil you had, well that’s a different matter!”
Freddie had some sympathy with her point of view. He’d always felt it was a good idea to keep track of your assets.
Bethany carried on. “We’ve got a phenomenally rich picture of the economy of Mycenean society as a result but it’s a bit as though archaeologists had dug up the archives of tax returns at the Inland Revenue. They wouldn’t know whether or not Shakespeare’s plays existed.”
“Though they might find some great works of fiction,” Freddie smiled.
“True. These four tablets are much the same as others but in the context we have them they are intriguing.”
“How come?”
“Well, I’m not an expert but these are well preserved – baked in this fire – and easy to read. Each of them starts with a different word that we can’t translate. That’s not unusual - there are lots of words that we can’t translate because they don’t fit with later Greek words. As they are here though they look suspiciously like names. There’s this untranslatable word then the signs for a woman slave – ‘do-e-ra’ and then there’s a number”. So this one says ‘name, women, four” and this one ‘name, women, five” and this one ‘name, women, three’. This last one has the same name again but with six women.”
“Well you said you were looking for a slave market – it looks like you found the accounts books.”
“We can’t be that hasty just on the basis of the tablets but there are other finds that point that way too. Look in this room.” Bethany pointed over the wall at a dark green mass of material clinging to the side of the wall.
“Metal?”
“Bronze.”
“You said it was Bronze Age. Hardly surprising.”
“No but this is interesting. It’s a ring set into the wall. There’s one on each of these small rooms or cells.”
“That sounds like you’re naming things to suit your prejudice. Are you sure you’re not harking back to Great, Great, Uncle Arthur?”
“Well, maybe. But there’s more evidence here.” Bethany led the way across to the other trench. Danni was finishing work on the fallen part of the column which now looked to have been about six feet high. It was only as she moved away from it that Freddie could see that the top of the column had been fashioned in the image of a massive phallus and that there were bronze rings fitted to the column just below where the head of the phallus began to bulge out. “It doesn’t take too much imagination to make this into a slave market. Put a poor Mycenaean slave girl chained against that pillar in the middle of this arena; the slave seller standing on this podium; the buyers ranged on seats above the perimeter wall; other slave girls brought out from the cells beneath the seating and paraded around in front of the buyers.”
“Well it’s plausible to me as a layman. I couldn’t say what an academic would make of it.”
“Nor me,” Bethany giggled. “But the folks at the Discovery Channel will love it.”
Freddie could bet that they would. It was always interesting to note how much approbation was heaped on activities like these but how much time the prurient media invested in analysing and “exposing” such activities. He couldn’t help but feel it was all a bit hypocritical
“So is that it then?”
“Goodness no, this is a major find. We’ll want to survey the other side, over there towards the headland.” Bethany pointed ominously to the cliffs that hid Freddie’s own slave accommodation. “Discovery Channel will want to send a proper team out here rather than relying on our hand-held camera work. Maybe the National Museum in Athens will want to send a team. We have to let them know what we’ve found and see what they want to do. That’s why Norah’s going back on the ferry tonight. You must know what the communications are like from here. It’s better for her to do it from over there. We’ve put together a collection of photographs, some video footage and casts of the tablets. She’ll take those and go and talk to the people at the Ministry of Culture and we’ll see what happens next.”
Freddie came to a conclusion pretty much there and then. He didn’t want anyone talking to the Ministry of Culture before his auction. Actually the last thing he wanted was a whole heap of TV cameras and archaeologists turning up here at any time. He didn’t like having to act hastily but it looked like he wasn’t going to have any choice.
That was why he found himself on the harbour side watching the arrival of the Agoras – Santorini – Piraeus ferry as it docked that evening. As the hawsers came down to be fastened to the quayside boards he headed back inland.
He’d carefully chosen his spot. The path from the apartment where Norah was staying led down through the old part of the village, winding between the whitewashed houses, twisting this way and that, down donkey steps and finally coming out in the town square right opposite where the ferry was moored. There were a few lights but not enough. About half way down the path went between a group of abandoned properties. They weren’t close enough to the port to be good for shops nor high enough on the hill to be converted as tourist lets. They were, however, ideal for the purpose Freddie had in mind.
Norah had been surprised to see him, when he had stepped out of the ramshackle doorway as she edged her way down the track towards the harbour. “Oh, hello, Mr Clegg,” she said, “You startled me.”
“Oh, sorry, Norah,” he said as he stood back to let her pass.
Her fears allayed by Freddie’s friendly response, she edged by; pulling her suitcase behind her. As she did so, Freddie took his opportunity.
Like riding a bicycle it was a skill once learned, never forgotten. One arm around the chest, pulling her back against him, forcing the wind out of her. Next the hand across her face, the chemical soaked pad clamped to her nose and mouth so that as she gasped for breath she took a heavier dose of the anaesthetic. Then hold tightly, as her struggles weaken, keep the pad in place, keep checking up and down the path. She goes limp. Keep the pad in place for another thirty seconds or so. He’d done it so many times but it still excited him. Freddie realised he was enjoying himself again, just as he had with the burglary. These days he seemed to spend all his time running the business. Sometimes it was good to get back to basics. To be out of the road, reliant on his own resources and with just one thing to worry about for the moment; how to get the drugged Norah back to where he intended she should stay until after the auction. And this time at least he hadn’t been bruised for his trouble.
Norah was completely unconscious, Freddie decided. He eased her back into the derelict house that he’d stepped from, laying her gently down on the ground with the pad still across her face.
He checked the path again and retrieved her suitcase; there was still no sign of anyone. He felt for his bag in the darkness. He could do this without light. One of the benefits of practice, he thought. Now he just had to get Miss Norah Roberts closely acquainted with several yards of good quality rope. Two short lengths; one for the wrists, one the ankles. Two longer hanks, one for the knees, one for the waist and arms. He lifted the pad from her face. She was still out. He rummaged in his bag. A narrow strip of tape between her lips pulling the corners of her lips back. In front of it, a wad of foam pushed between her lips. A strip of tape across the whole thing, plastered over her lips, and then another and another, each criss-crossing her mouth and stretching own under her jaw.
She was still showing no signs of consciousness. Freddie had time to deal with her suitcase, taking it out through the back of the house to where one of the Punto’s was parked.
The suitcase was followed by Norah. He pushed her down across the back seat and covered her helpless and drugged form with a blanket. It was completely dark now as Clegg, backed the Punto out through the maze of narrow tracks and up onto the road that wound around the back of the village.
After he got her back to the villa he was able to make her secure as she began to wake up. He returned the car to its parking lot. By the time he got back to the villa Norah was fully recovered and struggling strongly albeit without result.
Clegg was more than a little pleased. From observation of the wriggling Miss Norah Roberts he had decided that, beneath her rather dull dress sense, there was almost certainly a body that would have a distinct appeal to many of his clients. Some of them had been complaining that western girls were all skin and bone with no meat. Norah should prove a welcome alternative and at least he had earned some time before things got any more complicated on the island.
© Freddie Clegg 2008
No posting or reproduction without permission
All characters fictitious.
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The DVD that Freddie was watching in the lounge of his villa was proving useful from a number of perspectives. Freddie had thought it would be helpful but it had also proved both informative and entertaining. “The Spartan Women” was a documentary that Bethany had done after a series of excavations a year or two before and Freddie had learned a few things from it.
The main thing he had learned was that Bethany, whatever her academic qualifications, was an accomplished flirt as far as the camera was concerned. The video had opened with her sitting on a hill over looking the modern city of Sparta. The camera had zoomed in as she explained how women had played an essential role in the development of Spartan society. Her hair was loose, its auburn highlights picked out by the sunshine. The top she was wearing, light cotton in a vibrant purple, hung seductively askew to bare all of her right shoulder. The shot had been lit carefully. With all Freddie’s years of experience he couldn’t be sure if her top had revealed a glimpse of nipple as it stretched across her breasts or whether it was a convenient (or inconvenient) shadow. He still wasn’t sure after re-running the scene several times.
It was all very different from the archaeologists that had been on TV in his youth, Freddie thought. Then, the main qualification seemed to be a bristling moustache and a military bearing. Now you needed nipples or the jolly bonhomie of the bloke next door.
As the programme continued, she dropped her eyes coyly as she mentioned some of the sexual practices that had supposedly accompanied a young girl’s coming of age but looked straight into the camera as she concluded the point she was making. She brushed an errant strand of hair away from her face as the shot dissolved into one of the Bodleian library in Oxford. Bethany appeared wearing a sober grey suit with a dramatic flash of colour from a bright green neck scarf. She went on to explain how translations of many of the Greek classics handed down to us in libraries such has this had given a distorted view of the contribution that Spartan women had made.
Freddie looked at the clock. It was coming up to five o’clock. He’d enjoyed watching Bethany but now he was going to have the opportunity to meet the real thing again. He’d invited the girls up for a drink after their day’s digging. “Come and use the pool,” he’d said. “Wash some of the dust off.”
They had been happy to accept. He’d been pleased. He’d decided what to do next and he needed to make sure that the girls weren’t about to do anything that would change his plans.
Bethany and the others all arrived together about 15 minutes later. Freddie had put out some wine and beer. Bethany sank down gratefully into one of Freddie’s pool side chairs and tossed her leather satchel to one side. The others were busily pulling on swimming costumes under carefully managed towels, encouraged by the prospect of the clear, cool, water in Freddie’s pool.
Freddie picked up a bottle of wine and offered it to Bethany. She nodded. “Oh, yes please,” she said. “It’s been a busy day.”
“Productive?”
“Oh yes,” Bethany smiled. “Definitely. But we’ve all been hard at it.”
Freddie poured a glass for Bethany and one for himself too. He lounged back in his own chair as Danni and Helen showered themselves off beside the pool and dived in. Judy and Stacey weren’t far behind. Bethany’s face was streaked with dust and sweat but she was evidently happy. She was wearing a cream shirt and the same dusty khaki shorts that she had on when Freddie had first seen her standing in the sea. She took the wine in one hand while unfastening her shirt with the other. Mistaking Freddie’s look of interest for one of shock, she apologised. “Don’t look so worried,” she said, “I’ve got my swimming things on too!”
“I expected no less,” said Freddie gallantly but, nonetheless, disappointed.
She shrugged her shirt back and took a sip of the wine. “Mmmm,” she said. “That was needed and it has been definitely earned.”
“So,” said Freddie taking a drink himself. “More successes?”
“Yes,” said Bethany firmly. “When Norah gets the TV folk over we’ll really have something to show them. It all goes to show that you never do know what’s under your feet.”
No, thought Freddie, I guess you don’t. He considered the fact that what was under Bethany’s feet right now, in one of his hidden cages was the helpless Norah. It probably wasn’t the time to tell her. Instead he said, “Anything a layman like me would understand?”
“Well, there’s this,” she reached into her satchel and pulled out a small plastic box. As she opened the lid, Freddie could see a layer of paper inside. She pulled it back and Clegg saw the glint of a piece of buttery, yellow gold. She held it out towards him.
“May I?” he said.
“Yes of course. Be careful though. That ring is over two and half thousand years old.”
“It looks as good as new,” Freddie said examining it closely. “Like it was made yesterday.”
“That’s the wonderful thing abut gold,” Bethany said. “Unlike the rest of us it never shows its age.”
“But it’s that old?”
“Yes. It was in a small pit that had been cut down into the Mycenaean levels. It’s much later than the clay tablets we found. But it’s interesting given our suppositions about the site. Do you see the design on it?”
Clegg peered at the dark stone that was set in the ring. It did indeed have a carving but he couldn’t really make out what it was supposed to be. “Yes,” he said, “but if you told me it was a portrait of Helen herself I’d have to believe you.”
“I know. It’s difficult to recognise these things without a lot of practice but I can tell you what it is or rather who. That is Andromeda.”
“And the significance is?” The name rang a bell with Freddie but he couldn’t place it.
“She was the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia.” Clegg felt he was better informed but really no wiser. “In order to placate a sea monster her parents had her chained to a rock on the coast and left as a sacrifice. She was rescued by Perseus.”
Clegg nodded. He remembered the legend. He also remembered a number of agreeable paintings of it that had fuelled his adolescence. It was odd, he thought, how a naked woman chained helplessly could be art at one moment and pornography at the next. “I see what you mean about its relation to the site. Chained up women in legend, chained up women in reality.”
“Yes. And what’s really interesting is that this is about seven hundred years after the clay tablets; maybe a thousand or more years later than the earliest pottery we’ve found. It implies a considerable continuity of tradition, if not of actual use.”
Clegg wondered what she would make of the evidence for continuity of tradition that the captive Norah, 10 metres below, represented.
Bethany pulled a wad of papers from her satchel and passed them to Freddie. “And have a look at these too,” she said, “while I take a dip. I’m longing to get rid of the dust from the site.”
She got to her feet, shrugged off her shirt and peeled off her shorts. The pale yellow, one piece, swimming costume was cut high on her hips and low at the back. Archaeologists aren’t meant to look like that, Clegg thought as she half ran, half skipped, across to the pool side shower and then to the pool where her team was loudly encouraging her to join them. On the other hand she was certainly more agreeable to look at than a bearded bloke in a stripy jumper, so Freddie thought her really ought not complain.
Clegg looked at the papers that Bethany had given him. They were computer printouts, maps or plans of some sort printed out on a grid. He studied them as Bethany swam strongly up and down the length of the pool. They looked, he thought, like a series of plans of the site but he could not tell what the blocks of colour were supposed to represent. He could, he thought, make out the semi-circular shape of the so-called slave market. Around it were a series of dark red blobs that he supposed showed where the buried cells had been. There was a similar row of blobs along one side of the plan. Bethany finished her swim and climbed from the pool like Botticelli’s Venus arising from the waves; though perhaps with heavier thighs, Clegg thought uncharitably. It was as she started to walk towards him that he suddenly realised what the blobs on the side of the plan might be – they could just be something to do with the complex of rooms under the swimming pool.
She came across to where Freddie was sitting and tossed the towel that she had used to dry her hair down onto the chair. Standing with her hands on her hips, she put her head on one side and smiled. “Can you tell what it is yet?”
“Well,” said Clegg, “I assume its more work with the ground penetrating radar.”
“Very good,” said Bethany indulgently. “And?”
“Well, this is the area you’ve been digging,” he pointed to the semi circular ring of blobs.
“Correct.”
“But this is something new, I imagine. It looks like it’s on this side of the valley between your site and the headland.”
“Right under where the headland starts. It looks like a series of chambers or structures that have been cut out under the headland itself. They could go right under here.”
“What could it be?” Freddie was worried what her answer might be. He thought he had a pretty good idea of what it was.
“Well, it could be an extension of the current site. It could be quarries or something like that although these responses look like voids rather than something that has been backfilled. It’s all a bit odd. It’s more than we can deal with though. I’m going to discuss with the people from the TV when they turn up. If then can let us have more resources we can do something about it. If not it will have to wait until another expedition.”
Freddie was more relieved than ever that he had intercepted Norah.
“You won’t say anything about this will you though? I mean not just about this but the ring as well.”
Freddie shook his head. “No one I know is interested in archaeology,” he said.
“Thanks, it’s just that, well, after the incident with the Albanians or whoever it turns out to have been, I’d hate it if someone came down here thinking there was gold to be dug out of the site.”
There was the sound of excited horse play coming from the pool. Freddie looked up. “Well, at least Judy seems to have got over her ordeal,” he said as the girl he had bound and gagged in the hut chased the others over towards them.
“Yes,” said Bethany. “It takes more than an Albanian to frighten her off.”
True, thought Freddie, but sometimes being frightened off is the right response. The ground penetrating radar results had been the last straw.
Chapter 11 : The Collective Noun For Archaeologists
“Bronze age societies became resourceful in the face of an external threat, combining their resources their resources to counter an enemy. This is what the Ship List in Homer’s Iliad shows us.” Bethany Howes’s assertion at the start of her programme, “The Ships of the Mycenaeans” reminded viewers of just how modern some ancient societies were, or perhaps how primitive modern societies can be. Freddie had just finished watching it. He looked at this watch. It was time for a swim.
What Bethany had asserted to be true of the Achaeans was proving to be no less true of those on the island of Agoras itself. Freddie had found no difficulties in bringing together all his local resources, once he had decided what needed to be done.
While Freddie didn’t really like calling on his island friends for help too often, they had been happy to respond. As a result, Freddie’s response to the threat posed to his livelihood by the archaeologists ran through the island like the thread that Ariadne gave to Theseus as he headed off into the Labyrinth in pursuit of the Minotaur.
It wasn’t a mythical silken thread, though, that was currently wound around Danni’s wrists as she lay on the floor of the room she shared with Judy in one of the old white painted houses up behind the harbour. Danni’s wrists were tied with a length of relatively modern one inch rope.
She was slowly recovering consciousness, her vision painfully coming into focus with the shape of her attacker’s weapon, a stone replica of an Athenian owl, in front of her.
Gradually, she became aware of her predicament. Her arms wouldn’t move; her wrists had been tied. Her legs wouldn’t move either; there was something around her ankles. She could feel something in her mouth, cutting into the corners. She went to groan but whatever it was that was stuffing her mouth turned her moan into a garbled grunt. She shook her head, trying to clear the pain from the blow at the back of her neck. Her first thought was that this had been the same people that had attacked Judy, though she could not imagine why they would do this to her, here. She tried to wriggle free, twisting her arms, trying to loosen the ropes around her wrists.
“I shouldn’t bother.” She heard a voice from behind her and struggled to turn around to see where it was coming from. Andrea was sitting on the bed, looking down at her with a smile.
Danni’s puzzled, “What?” came out as “Ghhart?”
“The ropes,” Andrea said. “I don’t think you will loosen them. I help my brothers with their sheep. They don’t get loose, you won’t either.” Andrea picked up a pack of cigarettes, pulled one out and lit it. She picked up a book from Danni’s bedside table and thumbed through it. “You like thrillers?” she said looking at the book’s cover. “That’s good. You’re part of one.” Ignoring Danni, she started reading the book.
Danni continued to struggle on the floor of her room. She was still wearing the bikini top and shorts that she had put on ready for a day’s digging. As she struggled she realised that Andrea was watching her with an appreciative stare. “Harrungh,” she grunted, kicking out at the bed.
“Not nice!” Andrea scolded, interpreting Danni’s grunt as one of disapproval. “I can make things more difficult for you.” She got up laid the book down on the bed and found some more rope from somewhere. Danni, not anxious to be more immobilised than she already was, tried to wriggle away but Andrea was soon beside her. “This will help,” she said, threading the rope around her arms and tying it across and between Danni’s tits. She used a further length to jerk Danni’s elbows close together behind her back, forcing a squeal from behind the girl’s gag and another to fix her knees together. She finished of her efforts by tying Danni’s ankles to her wrists and then extending the same rope around her mouth over the cloth that gagged her so that her head was pulled back towards her elbows. “See, more difficult,” said Andrea, as if it was some strange initiative test. “Now you stay still and quiet. We wait.”
“Mmuunggh!” A quiet groan of discomfort was all that Danni could manage as Andrea turned back to reading her book.
Judy had turned up at Alexander’s bar in the hope of meeting the others for breakfast. It was still quiet this early. There was no one else around but the bar was open, as always. She was sitting outside enjoying the warmth of the early morning sun. They were late. She wasn’t worried. There would be time for a coffee, some bread and jam and maybe some eggs, before they needed to get started.
“Hey!” she heard Alexander call from inside, waving the handset of the phone. It must be Danni or Stacey, she thought, probably they’ve overslept. Why hadn’t they tried her mobile?
Judy got up, pushed her sunglasses up over her forehead as she went in from the bright outside to the dark of the bar, and headed towards the phone. It took her some time for her eyes to get acclimatised to the light inside but when she picked up the phone there was no one there. Irritated she slammed the handset back down. As she did so a hand reached across her mouth and she felt herself being pulled backwards.
“Oh no! Not again!” was all she could think. Whoever had grabbed her had one hand around her waist and the other over her mouth. She could make no sound and her assailant was much stronger than she was, stronger even than the man that had attacked her at the hut. Whoever it was, they were pulling her down behind the bar, forcing her first to her knees and then to the floor.
Some sort of cloth was over her mouth, she thought at first it was drugged as she gasped trying to catch her breath. In fact, it was just a wad of cloth being wedged into her mouth by her attacker to silence her cries. He held her down flat against the floor with a knee in her back while he fixed the cloth in her mouth with another strip pulled across it and then turned his attention to her wrists, wrenching them around behind her and dragging cords around them, with even more ferocity than that shown by the burglar at the hut. She groaned as the man pulled the cords from her wrists around her waist so that her hands were locked into the small of her back.
Her attacker rolled her over. To Judy’s shock she saw it was Alexander and thought, at once, why was he doing this? Her puzzled reaction was cut off when Alexander grabbed her ankles and tied those together too. As he did so, she lurched back hitting her head against a shelf under the bar, knocking herself unconscious for what she assumed was a few moments. Alexander was unconcerned, he had taken the opportunity of her being out cold to finish tying her up; knotting cords around her knees and more around her chest, fixing her arms to her sides.
He examined his work critically before giving a satisfied nod. “Stay there,” he ordered as he got to his feet and went to the front of the bar to shut up shop. Judy didn’t think she had much choice.
At around the same time, Stacey was arriving at the Mermaid Café, hoping to meet up with Danni. To her annoyance, a delivery truck was almost blocking the road at the back of the Café and she was having to squeeze past between the side of the truck and the whitewashed wall of the café itself.
She got to the rear of the van and had to turn sideways to get past the van doors. It was as she cleared the back of the van that something was pulled down over her head and down below her waist. Suddenly everything was dark, she couldn’t see at all. She felt herself being pulled backwards and before she could cry out a hand was clamped over her mouth. She tried to kick out as someone pulled ropes or a strap around her waist so that she couldn’t shake herself free of the sack or whatever it was that was covering her. The hand came away from her mouth for moment but as she attempted to cry out a knotted rope was pushed between her lips and tied off around her head gagging her with the rough cloth of the sack forced back into her mouth. More ropes were pulled around her wrists and she felt legs grabbed as she was lifted, she assumed into the truck. She heard the doors slam shut as someone tied rope around her ankles and then the truck began to move. The whole thing had taken less than a minute and, with the streets so quiet so early in the day, Stacey knew it was very unlikely that anyone had seen her abduction. What was going on, she wondered, scared, as the van bounced off along the islands roads. Was it the Albanians again, imagining there was something of value to be got from the site after all?
Stacey wasn’t the only one having an uncomfortable ride. Helen had been on her way down to the harbour, taking the short cut that she always used between the flat where she was staying and the road that lead to Alexander’s bar. It was a favourite walk cutting around the back of an old shepherd’s hut, through an olive grove and down between some ramshackle stone walls until the path emerged onto the road with a stunning view of the sea, the houses around the harbour and, across to the right, the valley where they were excavating. Helen had just reached the road. Parked across where the path came out was a car; one of the pale green Punto’s that the police had said they were looking for. As Helen edged around the car, she saw Petros peering under the bonnet. She walked up to him to ask what the problem was, wondering if this was some sort of clue to the burglary at the site. She bent forward and said, “Hello.”
As she did so Petros let loose a spray, directly into her face. Startled, coughing and spluttering from the effects of the gas, Helen had little opportunity to resist Petros as he grabbed her wrists, jerked them behind her and locked them together with handcuffs.
“Hey,” she began to call, “what is – mummph.” Her question was cut off as Petros slapped first one, then two, then three strips of tape across her lips. With the girl silenced he wrapped tape around her ankles and knees too. Peering around the car and making sure that there was still no one in sight he picked her up, carried her to the back and dumped her, unceremoniously, in the boot. After he’d fitted her in he pulled a cloth around her eyes as a blindfold and then taped that in place.
Pausing only to pick up Helen’s back pack, tossing it into the cramped space of the tiny boot with her, Petros slammed the car’s boot door shut and drove off with the helpless archaeologist, hummphing and trying to kick her way free.
The car journey didn’t take that long. It was just as well, Helen felt herself bounced painfully against the inside of the boot as the Fiat bucked over the pot-holed roads of the island. She was almost dazed when the car stopped. A clunking sound and a breath of fresh air told her that the boot had been opened once again. She felt hands on her legs and at her shoulders and then felt herself being lifted from the boot. She tried kicking out at whoever was moving her but without success as she was lifted and hung across the shoulder of her captor. She was still kicking as he patted her backside. “No need, for that,” she heard Petros say. “If you kick, I might drop you.” That was sufficient to stop her struggles. After all, even if she got free of Petros, there’s wasn’t much she could do.
She felt herself being carried indoors. It got much cooler. They went down some steps. There were the clanking noises of locks opening and bolts being drawn. Helen was panicking, terrified by her speculations about whatever could be happening to her. “Don’t fret,” said Petros. “No problem. You are quite safe here. No worries.”
She didn’t feel reassured.
Petros lowered her down to a cold stone floor. There were foot steps as he left her, the sound of locks and bolts again and then silence. She gave a muffled whimper of despair through the tape of her gag.
It was answered by a similar sound. She realised that she was not alone. She squealed again and was rewarded with the same response. She realised it was coming from behind her she struggled to roll herself up around towards the sound. In spite of the cold stone floor, now she was sweating with the effort of her struggles. She collided with something soft. Another squeal told her that there was someone else here, probably bound and gagged like she was. She twisted herself to push her face against the other captive, feeling rough ropes and what could be arms. She worked her way down, following the line of the arms with her face until, at last, she could feel the fingers of a pair of hands. She pushed her face against the hands, mummmphing and squealing to suggest to whoever it was that they should pick at the tape that gagged her.
Eventually the other captive got the idea, scratching with her fingers at Helen’s gag. A corner came loose, a strip of tape was dislodged and pulled free, and then another. Eventually Helen was able to push the wad of cloth that filled her mouth out from between her lips, coughing and gasping with relief at being free of the gag.
“Roll over,” she said, “I’ll try to pick yours off too.” The other captive grunted into her own gag but did as Helen asked and in time, Helen had managed to prise free the tape that plastered the other captive’s face. Another wad of cloth followed Helen’s onto the floor.
“Helen?” the other captive said.
“Danni?” Helen responded realising who it was that she had just helped. “What’s happened? Where are we?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see. They, she, blindfolded me.”
“She? Who did this to you?”
It was Andrea. She hit me. Knocked me out.”
“I’m blindfolded too. Here try to pick it off.” Helen struggled herself around and pushed her face back against Danni’s hands.
“Should we call for help?” Danni asked fumbling at the tape that held Helen’s blindfold in place.
“Wait for now. We may just bring them back. Let’s see if we can work out what’s going on first,” Helen responded. “Yes, that’s it. You’ve got a bit. Now pull!” Danni worked away at the tape. “Oww!” Helen yelped as a piece came away pulling some of her hair with it.
“Sorry!” Danni apologised. “This is difficult.”
“That’s all right. I think you’ve got enough tape off now. I’ll twist my head around, try to jerk the blindfold off.” Helen wriggled to turn herself around so that the back of her head was against Danni’s hands. As she did so the hog-tied Danni tried to turn her self more towards Helen, toppling over in the process and kicking Helen in the head. Helen groaned but finally managed to get her head in place. Danni’s fingers picked at the knot that held Helen’s blindfold. Eventually it came loose and Helen could at last see. She blinked in the half light. The two of them were in a small stone walled room. A short flight of steps led up to a heavy wooden door. A single naked light bulb hung from the ceiling above them. “That’s it,” she said to Danni, “you’ve done it. Let me try to get yours off now. Lay on your side.”
Helen sat herself up and shuffled her backside across the floor until her hands were at Danni’s head. She looked down. Danni had been blindfolded as she must have been with strips of tape holding a cloth scarf in place. Now that she could see what she was doing by craning her neck so that she could look over her shoulder it was much easier. She managed to get hold of the tape and eased it off strip by strip, then doing for the knot on the scarf what Danni had done for her.
“Oh, yes!” exclaimed Danni with relief as the cloth came free. Her relief didn’t last long though as she looked around the room. “Oh shit!” she sighed, seeing the heavy door and the complete lack of windows. At the same time she took in a row of pegs that lined one wall. From each of the pegs was hanging coils of rope of various lengths. “Oh, shit!”
“I know what you mean,” Helen said. “I don’t think there’s much point in us calling for help unless we can get loose. Is there any chance you can get free? Petros handcuffed me and I can’t get my wrists free.”
“I don’t know,” Danni said trying to turn around. “These ropes are really tight and the way my feet are tied back to my wrists I can’t get any leverage at all.”
“Let me see if I can loosen that off at least,” said Helen. “That would be a start.” Danni rolled over with a grunt putting her back towards Helen. Helen shuffled along on her backside until she had got her hands on the rope that linked Danni’s wrists and ankles. As she tried to pull at the knots, jerking the rope around Danni’s wrists, Danni grunted in discomfort.
The two girls rolled back and forth, trying one way after another to get themselves free, until both were soaked in sweat and no nearer to getting loose. They were still firmly bound when they heard the sound of footsteps outside and the clank of the lock and the bolts. They weren’t surprised to see Petros and Andrea. They were shocked, though, to see both Judy and Stacey, helplessly tied and gagged, being pushed into the room as well.
Petros smiled at the two girl’s efforts. “So industrious! Look how hard they work.” he laughed as he used a finger to trace on Helen’s shirt the outline of the dark stain of a patch of sweat from her belly. He bent down checking the ropes and cuffs that still held Danni and Helen secure. Andrea held on to Judy and Stacey while they grunted and squealed into their gags. “It seems these young ladies cannot be trusted to accept their fate. That is a shame. It means we must make things less comfortable.”
Petros dragged Helen to her feet and began to half push, half carry her across the room. With her ankles still tied, she could do little more than hop with him. He led her to one of the heavy wooden pillars that ran along just in front of one wall, took some rope from the coils hanging on hooks beside it and fastened Helen to it with lengths around her wrists, ankles, waist and chest.
Andrea did the same for Judy against the pillar next to Helen.
As she finished tightening the ropes that criss-crossed Judy’s chest, she spotted Stacey trying to struggle up the steps of the room and out of the door. In just a few steps she was by the girl’s side, grabbing her by the hair and dragging her back into the room that was the girls’ prison. “Not planning to leave your friends, surely?” Andrea said, earning a gagged growl from Stacey in response.
Petros smiled. “So much spirit,” he said. “That promises well for the auction.”
For the first time the four captives realised what their fate was likely to be. The gag-muffled squeals of Judy and Stacey and the cries of defiance from Helen and Danni only amused Petros further.
Petros lifted Stacey up from the floor and dumped her down on a heavy wooden chair. Andrea set to with rope lashing her immovably to it.
“You can’t sell people,” Helen spluttered, trying ineffectually to wrench at the ropes that held her to the pillar.
“I think you’ll find that we can,” Petros replied, in good humour. “It’s not so difficult.” He returned his attention to the racks of ropes on the wall and selected another short length. Helen watched him with worried curiosity as he tied a large knot into the middle of it. It was only as he came towards her that she realised his intention was to use the rope as a gag. He forced the knot between her lips and pulled the rope tight behind her head, before knotting it behind her neck. All Helen could do was grunt in discomfort as he tied a further knot fastening the gag rope behind the pillar, holding her head rigidly against it.
Petros and Andrea turned back to Danni. In all honesty they could have left her as she was. She had made no progress in freeing herself from the hog-tie but both Petros and Andrea felt the urge to amuse themselves at Danni’s expense. Petros was still keen to revenge himself for Danni’s incessant prick-teasing and Andrea wanted to pay her back for the way she’d been treated by her when waiting at table in the Mermaid Café.
As a result when Andrea bent down to check the rope between Danni’s ankles and wrists it wasn’t because she wanted to free her. Danni yelped, “Let us go you bitch”, and kicked out as her legs came loose.
“No! No!” admonished Andrea, smiling and shaking her head at Danni as she struggled on the floor. She took another length of rope and fixed it around Danni’s elbows pulling them closely together behind her back.
Danni groaned as Andrea pulled the rope tight. “Owww, that hurts!”
“Of yes,” said Andrea, with a smirk. “I am sure that it does. But so will this, I am afraid.” Another loop of rope was attached to that between her elbows. Andrea led it up to Danni’s head passing it between her teeth and then knotting it behind her head. Pulling on the other end of the rope she hauled Danni’s head back until the rope was taut, cutting into the corners of the girl’s mouth and holding her head back as far as it would go towards her elbows. Andrea carried on with another length of rope, ignoring Danni’s sobs of discomfort. She tied it to the rope between Danni’s elbows, passed it down between her legs so that it cut across her crotch and then tied it off around her waist. Now as Danni tried to move she either pulled on the rope binding her ankles, the one gagging her mouth and holding her head rigid or the rope that cut into her crotch. No matter what she did she could gain no comfort.
Andrea was pleased with her efforts.
Even Petros had to admit that the girl had done an expert job. The archaeologists could stay there while they got the main cells ready and then they’d be put into chains and ball gags like the others.
Chapter 12 : Peer Polity Interaction In The Eastern Aegean
On the deserted beach by the archaeological site in the valley, Bethany was getting ready for an early morning swim before meeting up with the rest of the girls for the day’s work. She slipped off the towelling robe that she was wearing over her dark green, one- piece costume. She folded it neatly and placed it on a large rock at the water’s edge. She padded down to the water, wincing slightly at the cool temperature of the sea. It might be the Aegean bit it was still early in the year.
Steeling herself to the chill she splashed in until she was waist deep; then she struck out strongly, heading out into the bay. As she got close to the rocks of the headland she swam over a dark shape she took to be a large fish. She was about to dive down to take a closer look when something grabbed her by the ankles, stopping her dead in the water. As she tried to work out what on earth was happening, whatever it was became a dead weight, dragging her under. She took a gulp of air as her head was pulled beneath the surface. As she thrashed around trying to free herself, she was first astonished by the appearance of a diver in scuba gear and then relieved when the diver pushed the mouthpiece of an oxygen set between her lips, and strapped the cylinders on to her back.
Her relief though turned to horror when she realised that what was holding her legs was a strap attached to a heavy block that sat solidly on the seabed. She pointed down to it, hoping that the diver would free her. The diver responded by swimming around behind her and dropping a belt over her head so that her arms were pinioned to her sides. Unable to free herself from the straps and terrified in case her mouthpiece became dislodged and she drowned, she could only tell herself to keep calm and watch in dismay as the diver swam away. Bethany gasped at the oxygen from the tanks, swaying in the water like some exotic under sea plant or animal, her hair streaming out like the fronds of an auburn sea anemone. She saw the diver returning but her relief turned to dismay as she saw he was carrying a weighted net.
He dropped the net over her, gathered the net as the weights fell to the sea bed and then with Bethany helplessly enmeshed, cut the strap that held Bethany down. The weights on the net were sufficient to keep her below the surface as the diver began to tow the helplessly struggling Bethany away towards the rocks of the headland.
It was with considerable relief that the terrified Bethany felt herself being lifted up and out of the water. The diver had fixed a hook to the bottom of the net and she was now being winched up, feet first. As her head broke the surface she saw she was in some sort of cave, alongside a stone built dock under, she imagined, the headland on which Clegg’s villa was built. She was swinging from a crane operated by someone she recognised – Stephanos from the Mermaid Café.
Once she was clear of the dock he swung the arm of the crane around and lowered her carefully, still in her net, down on to the stone floor. The diver who had rescued her (or captured her – she still wasn’t sure which) was climbing up an iron ladder on the dockside. He pulled off his scuba mask and mouthpiece and she saw that it was Clegg.
Bethany just wanted to get free of the net but her struggles with the belt still around her arms and waist did nothing to release her. Clegg came across and, after watching her for a moment - seemingly amused by her efforts, disentangled her from the net and then removed the oxygen set from her back. As Bethany spat the mouthpiece from between her lips she said, “What on earth is happening? What are you doing?” She turned and saw Petros, Stephanos and Andrea as well.
Clegg looked apologetic. “No real time now to chat,” he said. “It’ll all become clear. Come on I’ll show you.” Bethany looked astonished at Clegg’s matter of fact response. He turned towards the others and said, “Stephanos, Petros, would you mind,” with a wave of his hand.
Before she could react, Petros had stepped up behind Bethany and dropped the bright red ball of a gag in front of her face, jerking it back between her lips as she opened her mouth to cry out in surprise. At the same instant, Stephanos slipped linked leather cuffs around her wrists.
Bethany tried to spin around, calling out angrily into her gag. Stephanos pulled her back around, grabbing the chain that linked her wrists. He clipped the links to another length of chain and hauled on its other end dragging Bethany’s arms upwards. He slipped the belt from around her arms and waist and then pulled on the chain still further until Bethany’s arms were up above her head and she was standing on tip toe. At the moment Bethany felt she could stretch her arms no higher, Stephanos passed the other end of the chain to Freddie.
“Thanks,” he said, starting to move off along the dock. Bethany looked up, the chain from her wrists ran to a block which ran on a rail in the ceiling. As Freddie walked on tugging on the other end of the chain she had no choice but to follow, the block following along the rail, pulling her forward.
“Garrk!” Bethany cried as she stumbled, almost jerking her arms from her sockets. Clegg seemed unconcerned, he carried on leading the way, pulling the block forward on its rail with Bethany in tow and Stephanos, Andrea and Petros following along behind.
Bethany followed Clegg along the dockside and up a ramp, the rail in the ceiling leading the way along a stone cut tunnel. Eventually the tunnel widened out into a circular hall and there to her horror stood the other girls, each strung up like she was with their hands over their heads and their mouths filled with sound deadening rubber balls. The gags only served to muffle the cries of concern as Bethany appeared in the hall behind Clegg and the others saw her. Their distress at seeing their colleague captured was evident.
“Well,” said Clegg, “this is nice. Now we’re all here.” As he stopped he reached for a pole and pressed a catch on the block that Bethany’s chain was attached to. It stopped moving on the rail. Clegg returned the pole to its rack. Bethany tried to shake the chain at her wrists but without effect. As her eyes became more accustomed to the gloomy light in the hall she looked around with increasing horror. Not only were Stacey, Danni, Helen and Judy all there but behind them in a sort of cage-come-cell was a naked Norah and each of the other cells held a naked woman too. “And this must all be very gratifying for you; having discovered a Mycenaean slave trading centre. Fancy there being a modern day one on virtually the same site! I think it’s what you archaeologists would refer to as continuity in peer-polity interaction, isn’t it?”
Bethany growled in response. Professor Colin Renfrew would probably have agreed with Clegg but Bethany didn’t feel that the time was right for academic debate.
Clegg went on. “I think what we have here is, in the jargon, the basic resources of a polity in a redistributive exchange system based on a human-monetary exchange infrastructure. I’ll let you work out which side of the trading equation you are on at the moment, Ms Howes.” He strolled across to where Danni was swinging from her own wrist chain. “I suppose I could benefit from a more sociological or economic perspective on our activities,” he said. “I’m never sure which should be the approach to establishing the trading platform. Whether we should concentrate on the younger, slimmer, more promiscuous resources such as this?” He reached out to stroke Danni’s hair. “Or the more innocent and thus more corruptible ones such as Stacey here?” As Clegg reached for her she tried to move away from him but without success. “Or whether the more experienced, more worldly ones such as yourself Ms Howes, represent the better option. It’s a puzzle. I let the market decide. It would be nice to have a strategy, I suppose but I imagine I’m like my predecessors. I take what I can and make of it what I can. We’ll just have to see if ‘sea-set Agoras’ manages to come up with the price for the beauties I have to hand right now.”
He walked across to where Bethany was standing, hands stretched up towards the roof. “Now, let me see how you are likely to shape up on the block, as it were.” He reached into a pocket in his wet suit, pulling out a diver’s knife. Bethany squirmed, looking at him partly in horror and partly in disbelief as he moved towards her. He brought the knife up to her neck and with one jerk, sliced through the halter neck strap of her lime green swim suit. He pulled the swim suit down at the front, exposing her breasts and encouraging a grunt of approval from Petros, Aexander and Stephanos. “Well, not too bad at all,” he said. He peered at Bethany’s tits. Thinking back to the DVD he decided it probably was a glimpse of nipple that he’d seen after all. He turned towards Petros and passed him the knife. “Do the others,” he said, “Let’s have a good look at them.”
Petros needed no further encouragement and Stephanos was only too happy to help. They started with Helen, Stephanos holding the struggling girl’s shoulders as Petros took the knife first to the buttons of Helen’s blouse and then to the strip of fabric that joined the two cups of her bra. Helen tried to pull away from the two men, groaning as her breasts fell free of her clothing.
By now Stacey, Judy and Danni were all squealing in fright but each received similar treatment. Judy’s tee-shirt sliced down so that in hung in shreds from her shoulders; Danni’s bikini top cut open as Helen’s bra had been; Stacey’s shirt wrenched open to show her naked breasts beneath as well.
Clegg and Alexander watched Petros and Stephanos appreciatively. Even Andrea seemed to approve of their efforts. Freddie went around checking on each of the girls, handling their breasts as a grocer might check grapefruit for ripeness. He seemed pleased with what he had.
Stephanos approached him. “Could I?” he said with a nod towards Danni. “She was very - you know – to me…”
Freddie didn’t blame him. He remembered Danni’s prick-teasing behaviour at the Mermaid Café. “Sure,” he said. He always liked to reward a good effort.
Stephanos walked over towards the girl and let down her chain so that she was no longer stretched upwards. The tension removed from her arms, she sank gratefully to the floor. Stephanos reached for the strap that held her gag in place and unfastened the buckle. She spat the ball from her mouth. “Oh, thank you,” she gasped.
Her thanks proved to be premature as Stephanos reached for another gag to replace the ball. This time he took a leather wrapped steel ring mounted on strap. Danni looked in confusion as he advanced on her with it, then coughed and choked as he wedged it in, forcing her lips apart and her mouth wide open. “She always has her mouth open, this one,” Stephanos smirked. “Now it can be of some use.”
Danni looked in horror as she realised what was about to happen. Stephanos unzipped his fly, pulled out his cock and advanced towards Danni. Grabbing her by the back of the neck and ignoring her protests he thrust his cock through the ring of the gag and into her mouth. Danni gagged and tried to struggle away but, realising that Stephanos could easily choke her with his cock, slowly gave in, accepting the Greek’s thrusts into her mouth.
Freddie could see how Stephanos’s action had horrified the other girls. “Don’t worry,” he said, enjoying the opportunity to feed their distress, “I’m sure you’ll all get a chance to show your skills before too long.” His remarks triggered a wave of mewling from the gagged archaeologists. Only Bethany showed any sign of defiance, tossing her head and wriggling her arms to struggle against the chain that held them over her head. Clegg didn’t mind, the result of her efforts served mainly to jiggle her tits in an agreeable manner.
Stephanos spent himself into Danni’s throat leaving her choking through the ring gag as he pulled his cock clear. “Not bad,” he said. “Maybe she needs some practice, but not bad at all.”
“All right,” said Freddie to Stephanos, “you’ve had your fun. Put them in with the others for now.” He turned to Alexander and the others. “Don’t worry; you’ll have your chance to play as well. They’ll need some conditioning before the auction. It would hardly be fair to put them up for sale without some preparation.”
The girls grunted in dismay at Freddie’s remarks as Stephanos manhandled them into the cages; each one of them one alongside each of the earlier occupants. “I’ll leave you to your fates, though I’m not sure if Andrea here is Clotho, Atropos or Lachesis,” Clegg smiled, pleased with the allusion.
The girls grunted in despair.
Petros, Alexander and Andrea looked on with smug smiles of anticipation.
© Freddie Clegg 2008
No posting or reproduction without permission
All characters fictitious.
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Bethany struggled to get as comfortable as she could in the cell. The cells were obviously only intended to hold one. She’d been pushed in with a Japanese girl. The two of them had barely enough space to curl up on the floor at the same time. Clegg had kept them shackled and gagged. The only times that they had any freedom at all was when they were fed.
It had been a long day. Bethany wondered how many more there would be before they were killed or before? What?
This day they’d been told they had to learn how to behave. She guessed that meant Clegg had something else in mind for them. Alexander had delighted in training them to stand or kneel to order. His methods were simple. All of the girls now bore the welts from the strap and canes that he used to reinforce his instructions.
Bethany fell into a fitful sleep, slumped against the bars of the cell, brought back to consciousness from time to time by the pull of the chain around her neck.
Suddenly she was standing in a large room. In the centre, a fire burned in a hearth. Thin wisps of smoke climbed towards a vent in the roof. The walls were plastered and brightly painted. In a small room to one side she could see painted figures of a colossal bull attended by men and women each carrying what she took to be offerings. With a shock she recognised it. This was Pylos, Nestor’s palace on the mainland; the great central room, the megaron. How could she be here?
She looked down at herself, surprised to see that she was dressed as the women in the wall painting. Her flounced skirt was ankle length, swinging just clear of the floor, the tight waistcoat with its short sleeves stiff as she tried to move. She realised her breasts were bare, that her hair was braided and dressed hanging down in a long tail from the back of her head.
Two figures appeared in the doorway; warriors, clutching great figure eight shields as tall as themselves, wearing domed helmets covered with boar’s tusks. As they lowered their shields, Bethany saw that they were both naked except for a leather codpiece and soft leather boots. The two men’s skin was as bronzed as the short swords that they carried. It was Alexander and Stephanos.
“Be - tha – noi,” the warrior Alexander greeted her holding his sword aloft. She nodded in acknowledgement of her name.
“The offering,” the warrior Stephanos said pointing with his sword to a decorated kylix standing on the floor at Bethany’s side. She hadn’t seen it before but bent to pick it up, delighting in the intricate octopus design and the scent of oil and herbs from the two handled bowl.
Alexander led the way from the megaron. Bethany followed holding the kylix aloft, Stephanos behind her, stepping slowly through the palace. At a small stone altar the party stopped. “The offering, Be- tha – noi,” Stephanos said again, pointing to the altar.
Knowing what was needed to be done but somehow not knowing how she knew, Bethany knelt and poured the contents of the kylix onto the stone. In an instant it turned to dark scented smoke, filling the room and darkening the light that streamed through the windows high in the walls.
As the smoke cleared Bethany was no longer in the palace. Instead she was hurtling through the countryside between olive groves, the air thick with the scent of pines, standing in a two wheeled chariot, wedged between Alexander and Stephanos, still clutching the kylix.
The chariot stopped beside a tall mound. A stone-lined way let to a portal into the mound. Alexander pointed to it. “Be – tha - noi,” he said.
She stepped down from the chariot, at once aware that she was walking slowly along a dromos the entrance way to a tholos, a great stone beehive shaped tomb. As she got closer to the portal she realised this was the so-called Treasury of Atreus. But that was at Mycenae, she thought, 75 miles or more from Pylos. How could she be there?
She walked slowly forward carrying the kylix and emerged into the central hall of the tholos. The corbelled roof stretched high above her. Standing between two bronze tripod-cauldrons, were Alexander and Stephanos No longer dressed as warriors they wore short kilted tunics. But how had they got there? They had not passed her in the entrance way and there was no other route into the tholos. They beckoned her to approach them. As she did so they waved her to her knees. She looked up to see their faces were now covered with hammered golden masks.
Bethany’s confusion mounted, One moment in Pylos, the next in Mycenae; the tholos; the warriors and now these masks from the grave circle, three hundred years older that the tholos.
And then she was in the open air again. The great corbelled roof of the tholos was gone and she was standing in the scorching Greek sun. As she stood there, Alexander and Stephanos waved towards her kylix and then to an altar stone. She placed the kylix on the altar stone as she did so the two men stepped towards her and took her by the arms. She felt leather thongs being drawn around her wrists and then the two men urging her to her knees.
As she knelt, she turned to see a great black bull; its horns capped with gold, a gold rosette in the centre of its forehead. It was staring directly at her and pawing the ground. Alexander and Stephanos bowed towards Bethany and then stepped away from her. As they did so they seemed to dissolve into the haze of the day’s heat and the bull moved towards her. Unable to move, Bethany could only watch as the bull approached; its hot breath hard in her face.
She woke; still in her cell, still chained, with Clegg’s face inches from hers.
“Time you were up,” he said with a cheery smile. “I’ve got people looking forward to meeting you.”
Chapter 14 : Where Priceless Beauty Has Its Price
Andrea was well practiced. She had forgotten how many times she had helped her brother and the curious Englishman, prepare the women for sale. Sometimes there were not so many women, sometimes there were not so many buyers. Always, though, the arrangements were the same. Prepare the women for parade, take them to their sale posts, make them ready for the auction, package for despatch. Alexander helped. Well, he thought he helped. Like in the bar. She snorted at the thought of it. For him, helping in the bar meant drinking with the customers. It was the same here.
The women were quiet when she came into the hall in the middle of the cells. They had been cowed by the last week of mistreatment. Even the six newcomers had learned quickly that obedience was the best approach. Andrea showed them all the taser she carried, just to remind them to behave well.
Each was taken from her cell in turn, allowed to shower, dressed in a cloak that fastened only at the collar, and then directed up the stairs into the central hall of the villa.
It made a pleasant venue for the auction, Freddie thought. Twelve pillars held up a high ceiling. One wall was glass, looking out across the swimming pool and on to the deep blue of the Aegean, Homer’s wine-dark sea.
By the time the buyers arrived, the merchandise was in place. Freddie liked to let them see what was on offer. The twelve girls were all tied, one to each pillar, a single cord around each of their necks sufficient to keep them in place. They stood as they had been instructed, silent, motionless, eyes cast down. Freddie was pleased. Andrea had done a good job. He liked it when the stock did as it was told.
Freddie, ever the good host, saw to his friends’ drinks and guided each of them to the lots he felt would most interest them. “Narod, something interesting for you,” he enthused, steering the man towards Judy. “You said you were hoping for something with a little more covering.” Freddie pulled open the front of Judy’s cloak exposing her naked body beneath.
Narod Jesper looked approvingly at Judy’s ample curves. He didn’t content himself with looking though, reaching out to take hold of her left breast weighing it in his hand and nodding agreeably. “And you say she’s not been trained at all?” Jesper gave Clegg one of his piercing stares.
“No more than needed to keep order in here,” Clegg smiled. “You know that Andrea can’t resist giving them a little encouragement if she feels they aren’t doing all as they should. Nothing formal at all, though. Imagine how well she’d look in a corset. She’s quite an intelligent girl but I’m sure you could make a good house maid of her in spite of that. And there’s no reserve price on this one. I’m really taking a risk that someone here will want her.”
“Hmm,” snorted Jesper. “If you’re left with stock on your hands it will be a first, Clegg. I’ve no doubt you’ve had this conversation with at least two of the other buyers.” He ignored the hand spreading that Clegg intended to signify “As if I would” and carried on examining Judy, running his hands along her flanks and across her buttocks. “But in fairness this looks like a possibility. We’ll have to see how the bidding goes.” He moved across to where Bethany was shackled. “How about this one? She must be over thirty!”
“Yes, but not in bad shape, wouldn’t you say?”
Jesper gave Bethany a close inspection, pawing her belly and breasts as she tried to struggle away from his attentions. “Hmm, well, not bad. Spent a bit too much time in the sun maybe. The skin isn’t great but she’s not badly put together. I’m not sure what I’d use her for though. What did you say she was? Archaeologist? Not much of a call for those in my harem!”
“Come on, Narod! There’s always a place for a well put together body surely?” Freddie gripped Bethany’s robe and pulled it back to give Jesper a better view of her.
“Sure, Freddie, sure,” he responded but I’ve got enough playthings, you know, I need something a bit different if I’m going to add another.”
“Look at the mouth,” Freddie said. “I’m sure she could be trained to be useful in that way.” Bethany scowled at Freddie. He ignored her and reached up to loosen the strap that held in place the ball that gagged her. She groaned as he pulled the ball clear of her lips. “You see she’s got quite a pout and a big mouth too. You could have fun in there I’m sure.”
“Can I try?” Jesper asked. Bethany looked alarmed.
“Oh my, Narod,” Freddie scolded amicably, “No free road tests. You’ll have to use your imagination.” I’m sure there will be other bidders if you don’t think she’d be useful for you.”
Bethany tried to break away from Freddie’s grip. “You’re a barbarian!” She snarled “Interested only by what you can get from women. Concerned only for sex or money.”
“You say that like it was a bad thing,” Clegg returned amiably,
“Bastard!” she exclaimed. “Bastard!” She was still abusing him as he pushed the bright rubber ball of a gag between her lips. It just came out as “Bar-bar-bar….”
“Funny,” said Freddie, “If I remember rightly from one of your programs, it’s just that noise that caused the Greeks to come up with the word ‘barbarian’. You see, education is never wasted.”
He smiled and tightened the cord that held the scowling, struggling and still growling Bethany to her pillar.
It was later.
Freddie watched the buyers closely. There was a crucial moment, he always felt; the point when they slipped from enthusiasm for examining the lots to eagerness for the bidding to begin. Like a surfer catching a wave, Freddie caught the swing in the buyers’ mood and brought them together for the auction to begin. He called for the attention of the dozen buyers in the room, Stephanos and Petros waved to indicate that the telephone bidders that they were looking after were on their calls. Freddie peered down at the laptop with its web cam and the window showing bids from his internet clients. “Ladies & gentlemen,” he said, “welcome. Let’s not waste any time. I’m starting with the first lot in the catalogue. A twenty two year old Caucasian woman of Australian origin. You’ve all had a chance to examine her or to study the on-line photographs so let me have your initial bids please.”
Andrea hustled the struggling, naked and helpless girl out to the platform beside Freddie’s dais and the auction began. Stephanos and Alexandra looked in on the others as they sat waiting their turn. Each showed a mixture of fear and defiance, occasionally testing the chains that held them, their eyes wide, taking in each turn of events as they were led, one after the other, to face the judgement of the wallets of the buyers.
Freddie didn’t take much notice of their concerns – he was too busy watching the twitches of interest, the glances flickering backward and forth as buyers sought to assess the opposition, the sharp inward breath as a bidder reached what they felt was their limit for a particular lot. Freddie took his time, running an auction was a little like conducting an orchestra. The secret was to bring the bidders to a crescendo at the crucial moment, building each flurry of interest, one upon the other until two bidders, each one intent on proving their skill as much as winning the lot, would drive the price higher and higher.
Chapter 15 : Metaxa and Melancholy
Freddie watched as the buyers began to leave. Narod Jesper’s yacht slid towards the horizon. The Beaver floatplane Steve Glennis had come in lifted off from the bay. Even the Kushtians had gone.
It was always the same after a sale; Clegg felt flat, empty almost. He always hated saying goodbye to the merchandise and although the buyers could be tedious at times he’d known most of them for a long time and he was sorry to see them go, too.
The auction had gone well. All of the original lots had gone for more than their estimates. Slowdown in the global economies and the credit crunch not withstanding, Freddie’s market was proving as invulnerable to recession as ever. The archaeologists had made surprisingly good prices, given that the buyers had not been given advanced notice of their availability. Bethany had attracted some agreeably competitive bidding between two buyers that recognised her from her television programmes. She had become more alarmed as the bidding increased, imagining – rightly - that the higher the price, the more that was likely to be demanded of her.
Of course, now there were a lot of loose ends to be tied up. He hated that. It was always the downside of having to improvise. He much preferred to have things all set out beforehand but that hadn’t been possible this time. The puzzle of the five missing archaeologists would have to be explained. Well, he’d be able to fix something with the help of Petros, he was sure. The non-existent Albanians were already in the frame for the burglary at the site. It shouldn’t be too hard to stage something convincing to account for the disappearance of the girls.
Then, there was something to be done about the excavation site. He needed to make sure that the next lot of archaeologists that turned up on the island stayed away from his corner of it. It could only be a matter of time before more of them turned up with their trowels and brushes and radar and resistivity machines. Still at least he had the finds that the girls had turned up. Perhaps they could be used to salt another site. In the mean time he decided that he really ought to buy the land in the valley. At least that would give him some measure of control, and, besides, he’d been thinking that he ought to build some tennis courts and maybe a golf course. If nothing else even if he just got started it would give him an excuse to bulldoze the work that had been done there so far. Stephanos would square it with the island’s council.
He was pondering the issue when Alexander appeared with his sister.
“Mr Clegg,” Alexander said. “The shipment is ready if you would like to check it.”
Freddie nodded. “I’m sure they’re fine,” he said. “But I’ll come and see.” If only the buyers would take their purchases with them, they’d save money and he’d have a lot less effort. On the other hand it was more revenue and it gave him an edge over some of his competitors. Clegg’s customers knew that their purchases would arrive securely and in good condition.
The only one that was taking any of their purchases with them was Pashim Bey. He’d been successful in the bidding for all of the archaeologists – Freddie wondered for a few moments what he had planned for them. Bethany, though, was to accompany him. His ghanjah would set sail for Alexandria as soon as she was loaded but she would have to wait until the others were dealt with. They had a ferry to catch.
Freddie was confident that Andrea and Alexander had done a good job on packing the shipment but he knew that his approval and encouragement were important to them. He followed them down. It was already getting dark when they got to the yard. The truck would be here soon.
Freddie had been pleased with the idea of the stone blocks. He could remember when they’d thought of it. That was the good thing about working with Harry, this was just the sort of thing he was great at; innovative but practical, too.
They’d been sitting out by the pool, before they’d made the changes in the villa’s cellar. They’d been discussing how they would get the girls in and out. One of the quarry trucks had bounced by on the road, throwing a great cloud of white dust up into the air. Freddie had said, “Well it can’t be any harder than moving stone can it?” Two days later Harry had come back with the design.
Freddie walked across to the pile of stone blocks. From any distance greater than about a foot they looked like the perfect white marble that came from the quarry. It was only up close that you could see the tiniest of cracks outlining a small square panel. Freddie pressed it and it swung open. Inside an array of small dials gave the vital data; beats per minute, blood pressure, oxygen content, respiration rate. The needles on the gauges all pointed to the green sector on their dials, the occupant of the block was fine. Beside the gauges was a locked switch. Freddie took his key and opened it. Pressing the button withdrew catches with a clunking sound. The top of the block lifted slightly.
Freddie lifted off the false lid of the block. Inside, helplessly secured and plumbed in to the block’s various systems, was Helen. Thinking about Helen’s situation, Freddie recalled the story of the wooden horse. This was much the same idea, he felt, but an altogether more peaceful application of the concept.
The sedative that they gave the girls before shipping had already taken effect, Helen barely registered the fact that the block had been opened, in spite of the fact that she was staring straight up at Freddie. The strap across her forehead held her head rigid against the padded packing of the block. A heavy neck corset fixed to the block, also helped to keep her head still. The sedated girl hardly needed the strap gag that held the thick leather plug deep in her mouth but it had been fitted nevertheless. You never knew for sure how long the sedatives would last.
Helen stared up at him through the hazy veil drawn across her consciousness by the drugs. She seemed to look half uncomprehending, half in despair. It was always hard to be sure about the drugs. The gag, on the other hand, was much more predictable and besides it carried her feeding tube as well.
Freddie ignored the sensors for the girl’s vital signs, they were evidently working. He did check that the twin vibrating dildoes were firmly in place and operational though. They wouldn’t be run for long but their occasional input would help to stop her from getting bored during the journey.
The straps around her chest, waist, thighs, calves, wrists and ankles were all fixed securely too. There was no risk of her moving around in the block and coming to any harm.
“Neatly done, Andrea,” Freddie praised, checking the tension in the straps. “Tight enough to keep her secure but not so tight as to be any risk to her circulation. I assume the others are the same?”
“Of course, boss,” Andrea smiled, pleased that her expertise had been recognised
Freddie pushed the lid of the block back into place. It clicked home with a reassuring sound. As it did so the stone truck from the quarry appeared, Stephanos at the wheel.
Using the truck’s hoist, Stephanos and Alexander soon had Freddie’s shipment on the back of the truck, the false blocks mixed in with real blocks of stone from the quarry. Freddie waved Stephanos away, he had time enough to catch the ferry but there was no point in leaving things until the last minute. The girls in their blocks would feel little physical discomfort, the drugs would see to that. Their journeys, locked immobile within their tiny prisons, would have mental terrors though. In some ways, Freddie thought, at least it prepares them for their new lives. Restrained and helpless, controlled by outside forces, unable to decide anything for themselves; their journey into captivity was as good a metaphor of their future lives as you were likely to find.
Andrea watched the departing truck. “Now for Bethany?”
“Yes,” said Freddie. “Now for Bethany. Pashim Bey was quite specific about the arrangements for her shipping.”
Bethany was sitting disconsolately in her cell, chained by her neck to the wall. By now resigned to her fate, the arrival of Andrea and Freddie brought no more than a quiet moan from her ball-gagged mouth. With her wrists cuffed behind her back she could not prevent Andrea from administering the injection that would sedate her in readiness for her despatch. The drug took effect. Bethany was still conscious but unable to move. Andrea released her from the neck chain and handcuffs. Freddie lifted her naked body and carried her from the cell to place her on a large table at one end of the room.
In her helpless state Bethany could do nothing as Clegg went to work. He pulled out a roll carrying narrow linen strips. He started by binding her ankles together and then her knees. He wound further strips so that her feet were locked in place one beside the other. Moving up to stand beside her chest he took her unresisting arms and crossed them on her chest before fastening her wrists together and running more strips around her torso, fastening her arms securely against her body.
Bethany lay on the table, unmoving, unable to struggle, unable to complain about her treatment. She watched with a horror that she could not give voice to as she saw Clegg first leave the room and then return pushing an Egyptian mummy case. “I’m not sure if you will recognise this,” Clegg said engagingly. “I know that the Aegean is really your sphere of knowledge but perhaps you’ve looked at what was going on in Egypt too.” In spite of the drug, Bethany found it in her to struggle momentarily and moan incoherently. “This mummiform coffin is a replica of one from the New Kingdom; from the reign of Thutmose the First. He’d be about contemporary with your Myceneans, wouldn’t he? Pashim Bey’s frightfully keen on his heritage. Absolutely insisted that you be shipped in this.” Bethany moaned quietly again, the panic evident in her wide open eyes.
Clegg carried on with the linen strips. Now he was winding them around her legs, moving upwards from her feet and encasing her completely. Once he had reached her waist he had Andrea hold Bethany in a sitting position so that he could continue winding the strips of linen tightly around her upper body.
Eventually he reached her head. Carefully he unbuckled the head harness that held her ball gag in place. As Freddie pulled the ball from her mouth, Bethany could manage no more than a quiet, gargled grunt. “Now,” said Freddie, “my understanding is that as part of the process of mummification the body cavities were packed with linen or other materials. We can do that with your mouth.” As good as his word, Freddie pushed wads of cloth between Bethany’s lips until her mouth was stuffed and her cheeks were bulging. Satisfied, he taped her lips shut and completed his work with the linen strips bandaging around her head until she was completely swathed in cloth apart from a small gap immediately beneath her nostrils.
As the sedative began to wear off, Bethany in panic at her situation tried to wriggle in her cocoon of linen but without result. Freddie and Andrea lifted the helpless, blinded, silenced, archaeologist from the table and placed her, standing, in the mummiform coffin. Her gag allowed her only the slightest groan of terrified complaint as the coffin lid closed. She heard, dimly through the wood of the coffin, Freddie’s voice saying, “There, now we can get a couple of Pashim Bey’s men to carry that down to his boat.
Minutes later Bethany felt the coffin and herself within it being lifted and carried off.
Freddie, Andrea and Stephanos watched Pashim Bey’s ghanjah as its sails were unfurled and it pulled away from the island. It slipped out of sight beyond a headland. On the cliffs overlooking the sea where the phosphorescence of the wake of ghanjah could still be seen, stood a low white building with a blue domed roof, the chapel of Aghios Nikalaos.
Bethany had quite a voyage ahead of her, Freddie thought, Alexandria, Suez, Port Said and then – well, Freddie wasn’t really sure. Where ever she was headed with Pashim Bey it would be a while before she was free of the linen bandages. Freddie looked across at Andrea. She was still staring out to sea.
“You look sorry to see them go,” he said to her.
Her brother laughed, “Sure she is Freddie, no more toys to play with for a while at least.”
Andrea nodded. “It is more fun than serving tourists in the bar,” she said. “There will be more?”
Freddie nodded. “Not for a while. We have to tidy up a little.” He nodded towards the diggers efforts in the valley. “And then the tourists will be here. But, in the autumn, more guests, another auction.”
Freddie felt tired. Suddenly it all seemed like the same sort of treadmill that he had always tried to avoid. He could feel himself subsiding, as though his flesh had determined that it would no longer do his bidding.
Alexander, sensing Freddie’s malaise, lent forward. “We’ll take some Metaxa, Freddie. Come to the bar tonight. It’s been a good day.”
Freddie looked at him. Sure it had been good for him, good for them, good for Narod, Steve, Pashim Bey and the others. Not so good for Helen, Judy, Danni, Bethany, Stacey, Norah and, and, and the rest of the women. He realised that he had no idea of what any of the other girls were called. The Australian. The girl from Crete. The Japanese. They were all just catalogue entries. He supposed Harry knew who they were. Maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe the Metaxa would be a good idea. Maybe it was just time to do something else.
And then, in the bar that evening, his mood lifted. Maybe it was the Metaxa. More likely it was the girl that arrived looking for rooms.
“Parakalo, pou bïri syo ia vri ena thomatio,” she stuttered haltingly to Freddie.
Clegg looked at her. She was twenty two or twenty three, he guessed. She was tall for a woman – she had to stoop to come through the door into the bar - thin and with dark wavy hair. She had the sort of fresh faced eager look that so many of his customers liked. The only trouble was it was a look that wore off quite quickly given what most of his customers did with most of the girls that had it. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said, “I barely understand a word of it, but I might be able to help.” He offered the girl one of his most disarming smiles. In his experience, the English accent, his balding head and the middle-aged spread that meant all his trousers seemed a little tighter than was good for them, had the combined effect of reassuring younger women that he was no threat.
She looked gratefully at him. “Oh, thanks,” she said. “You’re English?”
“Guilty as charged,” Freddie responded. “And you’re Canadian.”
The girl looked astonished. “You’re the first person in Europe that hasn’t accused me of being American,” she said. “Sorry. I’m Suzi, Suzi Strong. I’m looking for rooms around here somewhere.”
“Clegg,” Freddie said, introducing himself, “Freddie Clegg. If you don’t mind indulging an old man, let me buy you a drink and I’ll introduce you to Stephanos who has some rooms here and higher up in the village.”
“Well, thanks,” the girl said. “I appreciate it. You never know when you turn up on a new place what the people are going to be like.”
“You’re on you’re own?” Freddie could hardly believe his luck.
“Mmm,” she said. “Skipped college, dumped the boyfriend, only stopped to grab my passport. I left all of the dross behind in Toronto. I really needed a few months to write with nobody bothering me. I just grabbed my notebook, enough clothes to fill this bag,” she hefted the carpet bag from her shoulder dropped it by Freddie’s table as she sat down opposite him, “and that was it.”
“Well,” said Freddie feeling more cheery by the moment, “this is a hospitable place. I’m sure you’ll be well looked after.” Freddie waved to Andrea. She brought across another glass. Freddie poured a Metaxa for the girl. “Do you know much about Agoras?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Well as a writer you’ll be interested in the legends. Let me tell you about them,” he began. His earlier mood of melancholy had subsided. He was sure that Suzi Strong would soon discover that, in sea-set Agoras, priceless beauty still had its price. This might take some thinking about, though, Freddie pondered. It would never do to have another disappearance here so soon after the others.
The End
© Freddie Clegg 2008
All Characters Fictitious
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