‘I wasn’t sure you’d come,’ he said. ‘It could only happen if you were willing.’
‘How could I be unwilling to spend my eternity with you?’ she asked.
She went towards him and he lifted her into the boat.
‘Eternity,’ he whispered.
The boat turned and began to make its way back across the water, until it vanished.
‘My darling, wake up, please!’
Slowly she opened her eyes, frowning a little. The underworld didn’t look as she’d expected. It looked more like a hospital room.
‘How did I get here?’
‘They came in time,’ Lysandros said from where he was seated beside her bed. ‘Somebody heard the gun go off and raised the alarm. Rescuers got us out.’
Now she could see him more clearly. His head was bandaged and his arm was in a sling.
‘How badly are you hurt?’ she asked.
‘Not much; it looks worse than it is. The doctor says we’re both badly bruised, but no worse.’
‘What about Nikator?’
‘He’s alive. I got a message to Homer, and he’s taking him away to a special hospital where I think he’ll need to stay for some time. I’ve told everyone it was an accident. Nobody else needs to know the truth. Never mind him. I was afraid you weren’t going to come round.’
Now she remembered. He had thrown himself between her and the descending roof.
‘You saved my life,’ she murmured. ‘You could have been killed.’
‘And so could you. Do you think I’d let you go on alone? I’d have followed, wherever you went, whether you wanted me or not.’
‘Of course I’d have wanted you,’ she murmured. ‘How could I be unwilling to spend my eternity with you?’
‘Do you mean that?’ he asked anxiously. ‘You spoke as though it was all over between us, and I don’t blame you, but then-’
But then he had chosen to die rather than live without her. It was the sign she had longed for, his offering on the sacrificial altar. Now she belonged to him in every way, in his way, and in her own.
She had no illusions about their life together. He would always be a troubled man, but his very troubles called on something in her that yearned to be vitally necessary to him. It would never be easy, but they belonged together.
‘I’ll never let you go again,’ he said, ‘not after that time I spent holding you down there, wondering if you were ever going to wake, whether you were going to live or die, whether you’d allow me to go with you.’
‘Allow?’
‘It was always up to you. You could have gone on ahead without me, or sent me on without you. I could only beg you to show me mercy. While you were unconscious I listened to the things you said, longing to hear something that gave me hope. But your words were strange and confusing.’
‘Tell me about them.’
‘Once you said, “The story is wrong.” What did you mean?’
‘The story about Achilles forcing Polyxena to die. He didn’t force her. He only asked her to follow him if she was willing. And she was.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Never mind. I know.’
‘Is this another triumphant “find” that will boost your reputation?’ he asked tenderly.
‘No, I’ll never tell anyone else but you. This is our secret.’
He reached out a hand to touch her face with tentative fingers.
‘Never leave me,’ he said. ‘You are my life. I can have no other and I want no other.’
‘I’m yours for as long as you need me,’ she vowed.
It was a few days before they were both well enough to leave the hospital. They paid a final visit to the villa and wandered through the grounds.
‘I’m having it demolished,’ he said. ‘I could never come here again. We’ll make our home somewhere else.’
‘What about Brigitta, and your child? We can’t leave them here. Let’s take them back to Athens and let them rest in the grounds there.’
‘You wouldn’t mind that?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘She’s part of your life, and but for her we might never have met.’
‘And if we hadn’t met my life would have gone on in the old dead, hopeless way. I have so much to be grateful for. I feared love as a weakness, but I was wrong. Love is strength, and the true weakling is the man who can’t love, or the one who fears to let himself love.
‘For years I’ve held myself behind doors that were bolted and barred, refusing to allow anyone through. I thought I was safe from invasion, but in truth I was destroying myself from within. Now I know that there’s no true strength except what you give me in your arms, and in your heart.’
She took his face between her hands.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It’s not a weakness to need people. It’s only a weakness if you don’t know that you need them, so you don’t reach out to them, and you’re left floundering alone. But if you reach out, and they reach back, then your strength can defeat worlds.’
‘And you did reach back, didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘It wasn’t just chance that we met again after so many years.’
‘True. I think the ancient gods gave their orders from Mount Olympus.’
‘And that’s why it’s been inevitable between us from the start-if you really feel you can put up with me.’
‘How could I disobey the orders of the gods?’ she asked him tenderly.
And what the gods ordered, they would protect. Their life together had been ordained, and so it must be. It would be a life of passion and pain, quarrels, reconciliations, heartbreak and joy. But never for one moment would they doubt that they were treading the path that had been preordained for them.
One day the River Styx would be waiting to carry them on, to Eternity.
But that day was not yet.
Lucy Gordon
LUCY GORDON cut her writing teeth on magazine journalism, interviewing many of the world’s most interesting men, including Warren Beatty, Richard Chamberlain, Roger Moore, Sir Alec Guinness and Sir John Gielgud. She has also camped out with lions in Africa, and had many other unusual experiences, which have often provided the background for her books. She is married to a Venetian, whom she met while on holiday in Venice. They got engaged within two days.
Two of her books have won a Romance Writers of America RITA ® Award-
