After they'd unpacked their bags and had a cup of tea, Arnold sat out on the balcony with Hermione and watched the afternoon sun slowly descending to the horizon. Their cabin was located on the starboard side of the boat and it was pointing south at its berth, so their balcony faced west away from the port. They could hear activity coming from the other side of the boat as it prepared to leave for their first overnight sail. Hermione snuggled up to him:
'Arnold, darling, is it too early for us to celebrate being here? I spotted a bottle of champagne in the fridge and it seems an awful shame just to leave it there. What do you think?'
Arnold was about to answer her when there was a tapping at the door so he got up to answer it. Lucy came bounding in:
'God, you two, isn't it great? My room is too fab for words. Shall we have a drink, or what?'
Hermione burst out laughing so Arnold took that as a cue to fetch the bottle. Once they were out on the veranda again holding their glasses they felt a stirring in the depths of the boat and Arnold was sure he heard the engines start up, as if someone had just turned a key in the ignition of a car.
'Look, we're moving!' Lucy said.
Very slowly, the boat picked up speed and Arnold felt it turn westwards and by looking to his right he caught the edge of Volos port coming into view from behind the boat. They advanced slowly into the Pagasitic Gulf heading south, sipping champagne, with Arnold sat in one chair and Lucy balancing on the arm of Hermione's, and everything seemed to him to be in order. They were on their way to Crete where they would dock in Heraklion the following morning and take a trip out to see Knossos.
'Do you realise if it wasn't for good old Arthur Evans, an Englishman, Knossos would never have been discovered?' Lucy proclaimed.
'Well, I don't know about that' Arnold joined in, 'It would still exist in some form or other, I'm sure.'
'Yes, but what I mean is, the whole Minoan civilisation would be called something different. He came up with the word Minoan, didn't he? Can you imagine, nowadays, just buying up a vast. unexcavated piece of land abroad and then spending your whole fortune digging it up, just on a hunch? Apparently the word comes from the bull, which they worshipped. Very sexually oriented, they were, the ancient Cretans. That is what they were called, weren't they? I wonder if there's any link to the word 'cretin'?'
'There could be a link,' Arnold answered, ‘'Creta' is Latin for chalk, and the landscape of Crete is very chalky, and that's part of the origin of the word 'cretin', so you never know.’
'Wow, Arnold,' Lucy said, impressed, 'you are awfully clever.'
For a second he thought Hermione had said it but through the mist of the champagne he realised it had been Lucy. He looked at them both and it struck him how alike they were. They continued to chat and gazed at the changing landscape lining the gulf until the boat left the mainland of Greece and headed out into the Aegean Sea. Twilight arrived and they decided it was too cold to stay outside any longer. Lucy disappeared discreetly and they were left to themselves struggling to undo buttons and belts as they plunged into the bed to lose themselves in one another amidst the champagne. When they woke up they were incredibly hungry and Hermione got dressed and went next door to arrange a time for dinner with Lucy. They agreed to eat straight away in one of the restaurants with waiter service and they were back in their rooms by ten, ready to turn in for the early start for Knossos the next day.
Arnold was quite unprepared for all the activity the next day. Hermione had arranged for the three of them to take membership of the Club Lounge on board, so they were able to take a quiet breakfast away from the crowds, and browse through English newspapers the boat had picked up in Athens. They made their way down to the disembarkation point and it struck Arnold there was as much security getting on and off the boat as there had been at the airports for the planes. Three coaches were waiting on the quay and they filled up very quickly. Arnold made sure he got a seat next to a window and was happy to look out and see how Crete compared to Athens. The coach ride was a lot shorter than the one they had taken to Volos so he didn't have time to observe much but it struck him there wasn't a lot of difference between them, except Crete looked a little hotter and dustier, with fewer people.
They drove through the large arrival gates at Knossos and the group was split into six. Each had its own local guide and Hermione picked one with a clear voice so they could easily follow what she was saying, and they positioned themselves near that guide to make sure they joined her group. The site was immense so each group set off in a different direction to avoid confusion with overlapping commentaries. Arnold was spellbound as they explored some of the palaces thousand or so rooms and it became clear the extent to which it was a microcosm of a city. All the rooms seemed to be interlocking and apparently there were rooms dedicated to artists, wine manufacturers, food, prayer and even bureaucracy. He was impressed until he heard that evidence of human sacrifice had been proved, at which point he became disappointed with the whole set-up. It was also clear the labyrinthine nature of the palace meant any sacrificial victims would have trouble escaping their fate. The human mind seemed to be ingenious at devising methods for cruelty; it was something he'd also noticed from reading his book about the Inquisition. He perked up a bit when the complex sanitation arrangements were described as he had a lot of respect for cleanliness. Apparently they had baths, the first flushing toilets, and piped in spring water distributed through gravity feed systems, whose speed was controlled by zigzagging channels. Very clever, he thought. Being so big, most of the rooms had no windows, so sunlight was maximised by them being arranged around courtyards. There were frescoes everywhere featuring a lot of bulls, and in all of them the men had ruddy cheeks and the women had milky complexions, so no change there, he thought. The mystery seemed to be what had happened in the winters as there was no evidence of central heating but also no depictions of the harsh winters of Crete. Arnold emerged at the end of the tour into blinding sunlight and was left pondering this conundrum. Hermione and Lucy were chatting away next to him but he was oblivious, lost in thought, trying to work out the possibilities. Perhaps the winters in those days weren't so extreme? Or perhaps they all upped sticks and went south for the winter, like migrating birds? It seemed odd there was no evidence of winter clothing amongst all the relics they'd found. He was disturbed by Hermione shaking his arm:
'Arnold, love, are you alright? Come on, it's time for a spot of lunch.'
He was dragged by his shirt sleeves along with the rest of the group to a cafeteria where they were joined by the rest of the party from the boat. They sat down and were served the same salad, bread and a bottle of water. It tasted fine but Arnold objected to being herded about, as if they were all non-thinking bovine stock, being fed and prepared for some more sinister purpose. He tried not to let it affect him. Besides Hermione and Lucy were quite happy as they talked about what they'd seen:
'So there you go, mum, the women WERE in charge. And I'll tell you another thing I heard at Uni, the Minoan women athletes used to wear sports bras! And that's at least 1500 years before Christ.'
'Well, I am impressed, sweetheart. I had no idea Christ wore one too. I just loved the frescoes, especially the ones in the throne room, with the gryphons, they were wonderful...'
And it carried on, and drifted into the background of his thoughts.
It was true. All this had been going on two thousand years before Christ, and served to put Arnold's religious beliefs in perspective. He felt uncomfortable at the significance of this. Did it mean God wasn't around throughout that whole time? And if he had been there, why did he wait so long to show himself to the world? With child sacrifices taking place, the very thought of which horrified Arnold, what had made him wait another two thousand years? Perhaps he was busy elsewhere in the Universe...
'Arnold, would you like a coffee? They want to know if you want a coffee,' Hermione was asking him and he thought it might perk him up, so he said 'yes please'.
All the way back on the coach Arnold was preoccupied. The coffee had woken him up but his mind was still troubled by the possibilities the visit to Knossos had highlighted. He was sure it hadn't all been made up. A certain amount of reconstruction and embellishment had been done by Arthur Evans and his workers, but it didn't alter the basic information regarding the way the Minoans had led their lives and the facts regarding their history. Arnold started to feel very small and it reminded him of the dream he'd had when he was young, in a bed in the middle of a vast room with tall ceilings. He imagined himself going out through the top of the coach and rising up into the air and looking down to see the coach speeding along the road back to the port, racing with its own shadow. Then he rose even higher and could see the boat at anchor in the harbour at Heraklion, and then he went higher still, so he could see Crete sitting in the Aegean Sea, and then the whole of Greece, and then the complete Mediterranean Sea, and then the whole world, which was just the size of a golf ball, and he realised how insignificant he was, and how insignificant everything was at that moment.
When they reached the ship, Arnold was ready for a cup of tea. He was relieved to be back in their cabin again and after his tea he just wanted to lie down in bed with Hermione to hold on to, to stop himself whizzing off into the air again. She seemed to know instinctively how he was feeling as she helped him undress and slipped his naked legs under the sheets. It reminded him of the first time they had made love the previous summer. Soon she was inside the bed too holding him close just as he'd wanted and they lay there quietly looking out of their window watching the world go by. The ship's engines started up like a little car again and the boat gently drifted out of Heraklion port heading South on Christmas Eve.