Happy Holidays, jinxed_wood!
Title: The Best Laid Schemes 2/2
Author: Atalanta of the Golden Apples
Written for: jinxed-wood
Characters/Pairings: Methos, Amanda, Joe Dawson, Rebecca, Amy Brennan
Rating: Gen, with a light holiday seasoning of Het and a side of Sapphic Sauce.
Wordcount: 16,000
Author's Notes: Online .pdf notes from Professor William Harris of Middlebury College on variant translations of Sappho and Archilochus influenced this work, but all lyric misuses and errors are my own. Beta readers are from Above and Beyond.
Summary: A lot of work goes into planning a proper caper, whether in ancient Greece or modern France. A lot of discussion. And a lot of bar tabs. The question is, who picks up the bill?
Part One
They almost didn’t make it. The sleet had turned to drizzle, and Joe’s jeep, hauling an old steel horse trailer Amanda located in Rebecca’s abbey, squirrelled all over the icy roads despite the snow tires and four-wheel drive. He barely had enough traction to get up the shallow grade that overlooked the target. Now they stood on the last stretch of road looking upon the roundhouse, and despaired.
Just as Amanda had described in the jeep, the roundhouse was large enough to spin two railcars on the central track, mounted on a vast turntable, a merry-go-round for steam trains. A locomotive would glide into the circular workspace, and after repair, be spun around on the recessed platform and chug away, good as new.
Long abandoned, Rebecca’s roundhouse was now draped in ice, resembling an outtake from Dr. Zhivago’s Siberian scenes. Unlike Pasternak’s icy tombs, the roundhouse breathed steam and smoke, and the icy windows glittered with the hellish glow of coalfire.
"I can’t believe they got the old beast started again!" Amanda exclaimed as they gathered around Joe’s jeep and scouted the workshop from behind a screen of trees. "It hasn’t run since the Nazis abandoned the shop at the end of the last war!" She didn’t bother to keep her voice down. The engine was making enough of a racket to drown a marching band.
"I can’t believe the Watchers had this much imagination," Methos carped, looking and failing to find any sign of his backup agents. "What about the rail license, Joe?" He stamped his feet, still ruffled to be turfed out of Amanda’s warm bed to go sledding on the icy roads at dawn.
"Hey, don’t ask me," Joe retorted, blinking against the rain. "Still not E. H. Harriman. Multinational companies love to do each other favors, and the Watchers are about as multinational as they come. It looks like they’ve been here a while. What do we do now?"
"It would be a shame to waste all your arrangements. We’ll wait until they finish doing all the heavy lifting," Methos suggested, with the beginning of a frosty smile.
Amanda matched his smile, with more teeth. "And then we steal the train."
Joe slipped on a patch of wet ice, and caught himself on the Jeep door. "What, here? Now? Why not just follow it in the car? Then you don’t have to tangle with the crew in the shed."
"The crew in the shed will never know we’re here," Amanda said confidently. "We’ll hop the train at the edge of the forest before it picks up speed, and take care of the rest. It will be just like old times."
"Just remember, these are Watchers, not the SS. Please, no fatalities," he asked, clearly unhappy with the change in plan.
"Spoilsport," Amanda complained. "You follow in the Jeep. We convince the engineer to stop at the siding before we join the main line, and transfer the statue, done and done."
"And leave us a thermos," Methos commanded, blowing on his hands. "It might be a long wait."
Joe took one last despondent look before climbing back into the Jeep and handing out a knapsack with the coffee and sandwiches. "Damn. I always wanted to hop a train."
"Whatever for?" Amanda asked.
"It’s a blues thing. Forget I said anything. See you at the siding."
"Joe!" Methos grasped his forearm before he rolled up the window. "Remember what Archilochus said to Glaucus? ‘A soldier of fortune is your friend --- as long as he fights.’ "
"As long as he fights? Or as long as he can fight? Should I feel honored, guilty or offended?" Joe asked, digging deep into his memories. "‘And the moment he falters in standing by your side in battle, he is no longer a friend…’ "
"Remember Incitatus?" Methos asked.
"How could I forget?" Joe answered, definitely offended. "As happy endings go, that poem sucks," Joe announced, firing up the Jeep and revving the engine. "I’ll see you at the siding," he repeated.
Amanda waited till Joe reversed the Jeep and trailer and disappeared over the hill to smack Methos in the chest. "Joe doesn’t need any reminders about his age. Besides, he only just turned what...fifty?"
"Forty-six. There were a few miles of bad road. But we weren’t talking about age or his abilities. You said it yourself at the outset. Joe’s loyalties have always been divided."
"I’m not up on Archilochus. What’s the last line of the poem?"
"You don’t want to know the last line." Still, Methos could taste it on his tongue. "‘...For it is at the hands of your friends that you are strangled.’ "
* * * * * * * *
Not a half hour later, Joe hopped the train.
Granted, Amanda made very, very sure that the engineer kept the locomotive running at well under a mile per hour, and Methos spotted to make very, very sure Joe’s prostheses landed on the platform and not under the wheels when he grabbed the bars, but otherwise, Joe was a natural. As he pulled himself aboard, he had a grin as wide as the sky.
Methos settled him on a crate next to the carriage wall when the car started swaying as it picked up speed.
"No transfer?" Joe asked, slightly out of breath. "Change of plan?"
"The train, it turned out, is already headed straight for the docks," Methos picked up a bill of lading from atop an eight foot crate dominating the floor of the carriage.
"Convenient," Amanda wrinkled her brow, scanning the sheet over his shoulder.
"Too convenient," Methos scowled, pointing at the fine print under the port destination. "Isn’t that near the slip where the The Blue Lagoon docks? The old scow you use to transport stolen goods?"
"Used to use, yes. And a perfectly nice scow it is, too. It’s also the one I commissioned just yesterday to take Sappho to Toronto. But it’s also the closest commercial dock to Rebecca’s abbey, and the shortest route for the train. Whoever planned the heist couldn’t reroute train traffic for any long distance. This antique isn’t legal on most of the tracks."
Joe snaked the papers away and scanned them more slowly. "Check the date. Filed a week ago. Before you two caught rumor of the heist. But no one I’ve talked to up the chain of command admits to knowing anything about Sappho, the roundhouse, or playing with toy trains." thoughtfully, he rolled up the lading and put it safely away in his pocket. "Somebody is lying, of course."
"That’s the drawback in secret societies, Joe," Methos stated sagely. "All the secret squirrels."
"I resemble that remark. No guards?" he looked around for blood, and other signs of mayhem, visibly relieved to find none.
"Trying to find their way out of Rebecca’s Three Hundred Acre Wood. Should take them a while, yet."
"What about the engineer?"
"Solidly bribed, and happy to be paid twice for the same job," Amanda assured. "Once we get on the freighter, we’ll be in the clear."
"I hope you appreciate my sacrifice, Amanda," Methos said manfully. "I don’t board leaky buckets for just anyone."
"Just for twenty five hundred year old rock icons," Amanda nodded toward the crate, not letting the compliment go to her head.
So, you settled on taking her to Toronto?" Joe asked, just a bit wistfully.
"Best we move the goods before the looters regroup," Methos said, watching Joe. "Though I still think Switzerland was the sounder choice."
"Why? Do you have another idea?" Amanda looked more closely at Joe, who was starting to ravel after a long night and a dawn rising.
"I wouldn’t dream of interfering," Joe said with enough irony to stop the train cold in its tracks.
Methos saw him glance toward the large case in the center of the car. "Do you want to see Sappho?"
"Yes. Very much." Joe’s eyes gleamed green and amber as he squinted against the harsh light from the overhead fluorescents.
Amanda hadn’t forgotten the crowbar. She pried, leaving dents in the wood frame, while Methos worked his fingers into the gap. The lid came off with only a few splinters and a colorful Archilochean oath. The body was too tightly wrapped for viewing, but Methos did carefully uncover the face. Joe stood up and crowded over his shoulder to get a good look.
"Oh!" Joe’s breath hitched. "The color makes her live."
This was no Elgin marble, scrubbed pale and raw by time and indifferent care. Her skin was delicately layered in various shades of nut brown, carved strands of black hair gleamed under the carriage lights, errant curls tried to escape from under a purple ribbon.
"Stare at her smile long enough, and she does live, Joe," Amanda said softly. "It used to spook me. Rebecca kept her paint touched up. I’m not sure what we’ll do about that now. I don’t have the hand."
Joe stared long, and hard, all too aware of the rarity of the opportunity, until the rail car bumped over a set of points and sent Joe thumping hard back onto the crate behind him.
"Are you all right, Joe?" Amanda just caught him before he tipped over the back.
"Sure, sure," Joe said sharply, searching around for the cane that had gone flying.
"No. I think that Amanda is asking, ‘Are you all right, Joe?’" Methos said with a little more emphasis, handing back the cane.
Joe exhaled. "I see what you’re asking. But no. I’m fine. Five by five. Just the usual mortal flaking. I’m not hurting."
"Sappho had a phrase about mortality. Mortality and love, really. All her poems were about love," Methos stared at Joe.
...Pain penetrates
Me drop
by drop...
Methos left Joe to re-gather his dignity on his own, and gazed down at Sappho silently, then woke from a reverie to gently rearrange the wrapping, making sure the straps didn’t rub. "There’s artists in every century. We’ll get someone in to touch up the paint eventually, Amanda," he said, hammering the lid back down. Then, taking a new look at the crate Joe was using for a bench, he added briskly, "Up, now, Joe. I wonder what else caught our looters eye?"
Joe settled gingerly on Sappho’s crate as the train canted around a curve. "Sorry," he quietly apologized for the impertinence.
Methos made short work of the lid to the smaller crate. "And our fellow traveler is…?"
"You, apparently," Amanda said, reaching in and tweaking a familiar nose poking out of a barnacle encrusted face. A fine crack marred the paint on the face, running from the forehead down the bridge of the nose to tail off on the right cheek. The bust was nearly unrecognizable, much battered by time and tide. "Not your finest side," Amanda observed critically, "But with a little chipping and cleaning, there you are, in your winsome youth."
"This time, it’s going into the mid-ocean trench, I swear," Methos grumbled. "Last time I checked, the entrance to the cave had collapsed in an earthquake. Rebecca must have dug it out of that rubble of a shrine. Speaking of hoarding."
"At least Sappho had a companion with her to pass the time," Joe said, earning strange looks from both Immortals. "Just kidding. Sheesh."
The peal of a train whistle prompted Methos to hurriedly replace the lid. The arrival at the loading docks turned out to be anticlimactic. In the aftermath of the storm, the docks were dreary, wet and mostly deserted, but for some gloomy stevedores sheltering from the rain next to a shed.
Joe chivvied the two Immortals into organizing a forklift while he expedited the transfer paperwork, everyone keeping an eye out for wayward Watchers. "You’d better get a move on," he warned Amanda and Methos on his return. "According to the portmaster, The Blue Lagoon moved up its sailing time. You have about forty five minutes to hit the port store for beer and basics, if you’re really going to take her all the way to Toronto. In my opinion, taking the boat too good an opportunity to pass up. It would take me an hour to backtrack for the Jeep and trailer."
Amanda winked at Methos, a gleam of triumph in her eye. Sappho was going to the New World.
"I still say Geneva is lovely this time of year," Methos sulked as his bag was stowed aboard and the crates were hauled up by the crane and dropped down into the hold. Neither Joe nor Amanda bothered to reply. Amanda still basked in the glow of victory. Joe was more subdued, studying the movement of the cargo, avoiding the eyes of his friends.
The captain, a tall, stout Spaniard with a magnificent goatee, waved imperiously to the longshoremen as he readied for departure. He shouted at his crane crew to get one last pallet of tarp-wrapped crates lifted out of the hold and onto the dock before securing the hatch.
"Won’t you reconsider coming along?" Amanda asked Joe as she brought the last of her own bags aboard, though she knew the answer. The freighter did have decent staterooms for supercargo, but was ill equipped for Joe’s long term mobile needs, much less comfort.
"I can cover your tracks better from here," Joe said. "As you pointed out, I still have some contacts. Better exercise them before they dry up. And I’ll make sure to have some passports waiting for you on the other side. The longer the looters think you’re in France, the better."
"Traitor," Methos stared down his nose at Joe, discounting unspoken accessibility problems as either soluble or irrelevant. "You could at least come along and lose at poker. You know I hate crossing the Atlantic. Poseidon’s got it in for me."
"Maybe next time," Joe promised faithlessly. "Or maybe I’ll just tilt a beer in your general direction." Amanda did not get such short shrift, and did get a farewell kiss. "Alas, we part, milady."
"Watch your back, Joe."
"You’ll see me before you know it. Here, pack these away somewhere safe," he added, stuffing the new bill of lading for the voyage and the letters of transit for their passage in one of her shopping bags from. "Au revoir."
Amanda gave Joe far more than an au revoir. When he managed to pull away, she said, "Thank you, Joe. From me, and from Rebecca."
Joe fielded the show of gratitude uneasily, looking oddly guilty and terminally embarrassed. "Don’t thank me now. Wait until after you’ve been sailing with Sunny Jim over there for a few days."
"If we end up hitting an iceberg, I’m coming back to haunt you, Joe," Methos warned.
"You always do. That’s why you’re so lovable," Joe stepped back from the gangplank, waving as the hands cast off. Any more words were drowned as a cargo helicopter hovered over the full pallet the freighter had offloaded onto the dock. Joe put his collar up against rain and the wind from the blades and watched as the longshoremen attached the netting to the hoist and the cargo was whisked away. Then, with one last wave to Amanda, he turned his back on the boat and made his slow, careful way down the long dock, his back hunched against the last spitting remnants of the storm.
The Blue Lagoon was well out of the waterways of France and corkscrewing nicely in the shipping lanes of the English Channel when Methos roused from his silent vigil at the porthole in their shared stateroom. "Did you know we’re on a southerly heading?"
Disquieted, Amanda unpacked the shipping papers and read the fine print on their destination. "Methos? I don’t think you need to be worrying about icebergs, anymore. Did you know we were going to the Greek isles?"
Methos turned slowly, from where his head had been leaning against the cool glass of the porthole. He paged through to the export license, checking the names, dates, and signatures. "Final destination, Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece. Signed, E. H. Harriman."
"They’re all signed ‘E. H. Harriman’," Amanda said helpfully. "Even the railroad permit."
They looked at each other, and spoke simultaneously. "We need to check the crates."
Amanda waved cheerily at the deckhands as they passed into the forepeak, ‘exploring’ the ship. They found Sappho’s crate easily, well padded, dry, unopened, pristine. On closer examination, quite pristine. The tool marks that they had made in the rail car were nowhere in evidence. They wasted no time cracking it open.
"A workmanlike fraud, decent aging, but definitely not the original," Amanda judged. "I don’t see the crate with your bust, though, Methos."
They searched the hold thoroughly, and the engine room and lower compartments as well. They returned to the statue and replaced the lid. "He stole them both, from right underneath our noses." Amanda was having a hard time choosing between fury and admiration. "With a helicopter, no less."
"And I was starting to look forward to dropping that damn bust into the Hellenic Trench." Methos’ mood was darker, more veiled. "Joe lied. He’s learning."
"It looks like he also changed the final destination. Again." The bill of lading pasted on the crates had a new forwarding address beyond Lesvos. "And it’s COD. ‘Geneva, Switzerland,’" Amanda read. "I wonder what gave Joe that idea?"
"I swear, I’m going to strangle him."
* * * * * * * *
Captain Roghelio of The Blue Lagoon was quite helpful, and enormously pleased with himself to have conspired with the mysterious wealthy benefactor, E. H. Harriman, to provide the young couple with a romantic honeymoon cruise to the Greek Isles. Rogelio was large, bluff, and generous (with E. H. Harriman’s deposit), cultivating a mostly fictional piratical image. Methos didn’t strangle him as well, but only just.
Captain Roghelio assured them that he had kept their passports safe in the wheelhouse, and passed them out to his discomfited passengers along with some soothing Malbec from Ribera del Duero, which made some inroads on Methos’ ire. The effect was a bit spoiled when he realized the passports (some of the best work the Watchers had ever done) were in the names of Amanda and James Harriman.
Amanda leaned over his shoulder and read the name. "Buck up, Sunny Jim. The vintage isn’t bad."
With properly veiled sympathy, Captain Roghelio assured them that they would arrive in Lesvos in fine time, and the sunny Mediterranean passage would do wonders for young Mr. Harriman’s ‘condition.’
"I thought you contracted with this ship before, Amanda," Methos hissed, bristling like a feral cat.
"Never in person. Do I look like an amateur?"
"We both do, right now."
Blithely, the captain promised that champagne and caviar awaited them in the stateroom, where, no doubt, further delights of their own imagination would truly make their honeymoon memorable. And indeed, Methos and Amanda found salametti, Manchego cheese and a basket of apples to tide them over their wave of betrayal.
"Compliments of White Horse Wine and Spirits?" Amanda cocked an eyebrow, checking the label on the basket.
"Please. Joe’s sense of humor apparently has hitherto unexpected depths."
"There’s a card, too." Amanda flipped it over, reading, "‘Wish you were here.’ Mercifully, it’s unsigned. Do you recognize it?" The postcard showed a triptych of photos of a series of stone-lined outdoor springs and indoor pools, algae-green and steaming.
"The Polychnitos Baths. The springs come and go over the centuries, depending on the state of the volcano. Allegedly healthy. Mortal mileage varies. As will Joe’s, when I catch up to him."
"A clear invitation to rendezvous at the hot tubs." Amanda tapped the card on a bottle of Veuve de Clicquot, making it ring like a windchime. "We could get off in Gibraltar, jet over, and crash the party early."
"Joe would plan for that. And the Watchers have all the airports covered."
"Or we could be fashionably late, and make Joe wait and worry about what we’re up too." Amanda toyed with the gift basket, picking up one of the fruits and holding it out to Methos in the palm of her hand.
"Honeyapple?"
* * * * * * * * * *
In Mytilene, over a week later, Methos and Amanda debarked in style, weaving down the gangplank, waving goodbye with the last, very last, bottle of liquor on board The Blue Lagoon. Captain Roghelio, honeymoon over, winced as Methos pegged the (empty) bottle into the hold as the last of the cargo was unloaded. The crane swung the fake statue of Sappho over to the fenced off customs dock. A Greek longshoreman came over to the cargo netting, read the bill of lading, and looked to the skies, readying a hook.
From over the low hills surrounding the port of Mytilene came the ratchety hum of a helicopter.
"Seriously?" Methos sighed, shading his eyes to get a look at the pilot.
"The pilot bears a surprising resemblance to you, from a distance, of course," Amanda said. "He’s even wearing your jacket. But red pants? That’s so nineties."
"The passenger seems to be sporting your hairstyle of the month," Methos noted. "And the catsuit? Never out of style. But her profile resembles Joe’s favorite understudy, Amy. They seem in close cahoots. Very close cahoots."
"Do you think she does me justice?" Amanda inquired, shading her eyes.
"You are inimitable, Amanda," Methos assured.
"It’s time you noticed. Did you see the logo on the side of the helo?"
"Herodotus Helicopters. Archaeological Eco-Tours, Tourism and Transport. Just call Costos. Enterprising fellow, Costos. I wonder what he has over Joe and Amy? Or what they have over him?"
"The second statue was a good fake, as reproductions go," Amanda allowed. "Maybe with the help of a decent archaeologist. It had that academic touch. The expression was a little stiff, and the smile was a bit too ironic."
"Should we follow it to Geneva?" Methos did not sound enthused.
"I think it’s probably already rerouted to Lichtenstein, or Bruges, or Keflavik. A wild goose chase. Isn’t that what Joe told us he was going to do, right in the beginning? Besides, after a week on that freighter, I am more in the mood for a spa," Amanda decided.
"If we don’t find anything at the hot tubs?"
"We just call Costas."
The Polychnitos Baths were a long taxi ride from Mytilene, and it was late in the afternoon when the driver dropped them off at the parking lot. Just one other car remained in the lot, a rental with a telltale blue placard. The rear of the vehicle held camping gear, a cooler, a pick, shovel, rake and broom.
"No bodies or statues," Amanda said doubtfully.
"Yet," Methos agreed, without a smile. "We have all night to rectify that state of affairs."
The building housing the baths was topped with a red tile roof and built of mixed stone, some quarried, some recycled from previous baths and ancient buildings erected on the rift since long before Methos’ first visit to the island. The stone structure was just large enough to hold a couple of roomy plunges, cloudy with minerals and sea-green algae.
Methos sent the taxi driver away, over Amanda’s objections. "We leave here with Joe, or with his car as a trophy," Methos insisted, teeth bared in a Spartan smile.
"You know that Joe really wouldn’t really betray us," Amanda said, hesitating at the entrance, scouting the surrounding fields and hilly terrain as she spoke. "Not for money or extortion. He’s proved that in the past."
"Even Joe has an Achilles heel. Everyone does."
"He wouldn’t sell us out."
"He’ll do anything," Methos said. "Not for money. Not for his life. But for love? If he goes with his heart, he’ll sell out in a heartbeat."
"It’s still all circumstantial. We don’t absolutely know Joe’s behind it all."
"Anything’s possible. Our mysterious benefactor E. H. Harriman might even be real--a modern apex predator, honeymoon philanthropist by day, unstoppable art thief by night. You might be obsolete."
"No need to be insulting. Besides, if this mythical Harriman is an apex predator, that knocks you down a peg, doesn’t it?"
"Not yet." Methos stared at Amanda. "Look into your own heart, Amanda. You know it’s Joe."
"You’re taking this personally, aren’t you?" Amanda asked, chilled at the tone of his voice.
"Joe stole my likeness. Sappho, that may have been an avarice his muse could not resist. That, I understand. But my likeness carved in stone? That’s personal." Methos put his hand inside his coat, heavy with hardware, and walked softly to the entrance, motioning Amanda to stay outside.
Amanda skipped ahead of him and planted herself on the threshold. "You’re not going to go after Joe with a sword. Give it to me."
"Trust you with my sword?" Methos stopped short, taken aback at the concept.
"Trust me, or we part ways now. Whatever’s driving him, I don’t believe Joe would sell us out." Amanda still held out her hand for the sword.
"You’re young, yet," Methos said softly. The familiar Aeolian scents on the wind, new-tilled earth, a hedge of rosemary, wakened Methos’ memories of an earlier age. "But as you wish," he added brightly, shedding his coat and stuffing it in her arms, slipping neatly past her. "You vastly underrate me, if you think I’d go after Joe with a sword. I’m hurt, I tell you. Stunned."
"Sorry," Amanda said, not particularly convinced.
"Now, since you’re the one armed to the teeth, do try to keep an eye out here and don’t let anyone surprise us. We’ll both die of mortification if we get conned twice in two weeks."
"You have a point. Go. Scare some sense into Joe."
In the dim anteroom, shadowed stone hallways lead to the dressing rooms and pools. Noting the signs marking the men’s pool from the women’s, Methos removed his shoes and socks, padding silently down the right hand passage to the dressing room. There was no attendant, but dim sounds made clear he wasn’t alone in the baths. Methos folded up the sleeve to his sweater, exposing the pommel of his knife, checking that it slid easily out of the sheath strapped to his forearm.
A low, rhythmic, rumbling vibrated the thick, steaming air from the stone arch leading to the bathing chamber. Methos crouched and peered around the corner, knife to hand. Joe’s bag, cane, and battered travel chair were parked at the end of the bench next to the pool, legs stacked high and dry.
Joe paid no attention to his entrance. He was alone, unguarded. Water droplets decorated his beard. The illusion of a sage waiting upon his students in the Hellene Age was deflated by the sadly anachronistic pair of faded cutoffs he wore, and the unmistakable bullet scars he bore. He sprawled bonelessly in the green water, barely anchored by an outstretched arm. Vapor danced on the water around his body like temple smoke. Methos would have feared he’d been struck dead already, but for the volume of his stentorian snores.
Garment by garment, Methos slipped out of his clothes. Sweater. Shirt. Trousers. Garment by garment, the centuries slipped away, and the ancient stone foundations recalled whispers of the old languages, the old songs, the old ways. Slowly, skin prickling from the heat, he slid soundlessly into the unruffled pool, knife held blade down, parallel to his forearm, nearly invisible under the cloudy water.
The stink of mineral vapor filled his lungs as he inhaled deeply. Holding his breath, he submerged, the water burning into his ears and scalp. His feet found the stone siding, and he launched forward under the water, arrowing toward his unsuspecting prey.
He made no sound, but a forewarning ripple in the algal waters stirred Joe’s base instincts when the leading pommel of Methos’ knife was just an ell’s length from his quarry’s chest. Erupting from sleep, Joe’s arms crashed into the water, his huge, calloused hands wrapping around the fist holding the knife, trapping the blade against the underside of Methos’ wrist. Decades of supporting his full weight on his hands hardened Joe’s grip.
Rolling blind in the water, Methos struggled to free himself, but Joe shouldered into his belly, and air burst from his lungs. Floating unmoored, both men sunk below the surface, Methos on his back, Joe driving both bodies underwater with his own weight, while still hauling on Methos’ arm for leverage.
Methos had the long term advantage--youth, strength, legs, healing. Joe had the core strength to balance on his thighs for hours, and he might hold Methos down for a few seconds, but that wouldn’t be enough to overcome him after Methos found his feet. If he found his feet.
What Methos didn’t have, was air. Joe, on the other hand, had musician’s lungs, Marine training, and a very cranky attitude when somebody disturbed his nap.
Ears roaring, Methos gathered himself in a ball, got his feet in Joe’s belly and put all his effort into one explosive push. Without warning, Joe let go one hand, twisting sideways, and the force of Methos’ kick shot harmlessly past Joe to the surface. An unexpected tactical flaw in the situation revealed itself when equal and opposite extension cracked Methos’ head on the concrete pool floor, momentarily slacking his grip.
Recovering, somersaulting, Methos finally got his feet under him and shot to the surface, gasping in lovely gouts of sulfurous air. Joe was waiting for him, face and chest dark red from the heat and effort, hauling in air in perfect counterpoint. He hung onto the side of the pool with his left hand to steady himself, while holding the tip of Methos’ own knife under Methos’ own chin with the right. The steel was as warm as blood.
"E. H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad?" Methos asked.
"I thought about using Butch Cassidy, but it just didn’t scan the same."
Giving no further explanation, and asking none, Joe reversed the blade and with a wet smack slapped the hilt into Methos’ bare chest. Methos grabbed it before it could sink to the bottom of the murky pool.
Before either could fully catch their breaths, they both collapsed back into the water, almost drowning again, laughing their asses off.
"What...the hell…tryin'...ta kill me?" Joe found words first, leaving out the inessentials. "Damn near... heart attack."
"What...spoil a perfectly good...murder?"
Joe hacked, and coughed, and sighed, levering himself out of the pool to cool off. "Christalmighty. What a dream I was having. It would be worth murder to get it back," Joe shook his head, closing his eyes, with a smile Silanion might carve for the ages.
"I could still oblige," Methos offered, but the atavistic anger that had possessed him since the theft of his stone effigy had been sated in the struggle.
"You were holding back, old man," Joe accused.
"I ran out of air," Methos denied.
"Why didn’t you just breathe underwater, like Connor?"
Methos shuddered, throwing water droplets like a dog. "I hate getting water up my nose."
After a second mutual fit of the giggles subsided, and Joe started returning to a less parboiled color, Methos snagged Joe’s towel, buffed his knife dry, and tossed it back.
"You’re naked," Joe accused.
"Just noticing? You really were asleep, weren’t you?" Methos laughed, relaxing completely into the water. "You should get out of those shorts, too, and dry off. I suspect you’ve been soaking too long."
"Yeah, sure," Joe waved him off, though he did drape the towel over his shoulder.
"The Polychnitos Baths. Hottest mineral spring in Europe. Touted for easing arthritis, myalgia, gout, pleurisy and a host of other maladies. Also, and this is less widely advertised, they happen to be just the teensiest bit radioactive."
Joe had the cutoffs off in record time, wrapping the towel around his waist securely, daring Methos with a glare to comment.
"Are you boys through bumping chests, now?" Amanda was also dressed in a towel. Barely. She leaned on the stone arch on one hand, and dangled two swords from the other. "Can I look forward to being ravished by the victor?"
"I could use more practice, if you’re up for it," Methos said, the picture of Hermes committing an ancient impertinence. "What about you, Joe?"
Joe cleared his throat, red face returning. "There’s probably a few things we should straighten out, first."
"Business before pleasure? If you must. But I’ve found it works both ways," Amanda spoke from experience. "There’s nobody within a half mile of the building, by the way. I got tired of the boys having all the fun." She placed Methos’ sword at the end of the bench, and her sword just within Joe’s reach, then dropped her towel at the edge and descended into the green pool. Both men keenly admired the way the living water embraced her skin.
"Where are the statues, Joe?" Methos cut to the chase, finally sheathing his knife. "You and Amanda can haggle over the Sappho, but I want the bust."
"The Sappho’s safe, for now. If I told you where the bust was, what would you do?" Joe asked, strangely hesitant.
"I think I’ll try dropping it in a volcano, this time."
Joe relaxed, as much as he could while sitting in a towel with Amanda in the room. "You should have dropped it in Olympos two thousand years ago," Joe said, stealing the offensive. "Careless of you, losing track like that."
"The bust, Joe."
"When that story about your monument to yourself slipped out, you threw my timetable all out of whack," Joe complained. "My...people...were not happy to hunt around for a second statue at the last minute. We’re just damn lucky we had someone who could recognize a Silanion by the carving style. Because I sure didn’t want to describe you."
There was a short silence while Joe dug into his bag and started pulling on his clothes.
"Joe, I really think you should tell him where the bust is," Amanda recommended. "And if you keep dressing that way, you’re going to put your boxers on backwards," she added helpfully.
Joe was still getting wound up, and Amanda was not helping. He aimed his ire at Methos, who was uncharacteristically silent. "You know how long I’ve been working to convince the Watchers you’re still just a harmless former researcher? Hopelessly unprepared to survive long in the game? If the antiquities department had found your pre-Roman schnoz on an Attic era statuary, we’d both be toast."
"Something has happened to the statue, hasn’t it?" Methos broke the rant with a sudden inspired guess. "You lost it. It’s missing. Or your man Costas stole it himself."
"Whoa. Yes. No. No. Definitely not. I just...returned it. That’s all. Most of it, anyway," Joe finally admitted.
"Most of it?" Methos asked, tentatively waving his hand across his neck. "You beheaded it?" He was no stranger to atavistic fear.
"Oh, hell no." Joe sounded truly appalled at the thought, which considerably relieved both Immortals. He dug around in the bag, coming up with a heavy chunk of stone. "It broke. Right down the middle. Right between the eyes." He tossed the marble to Methos. "Sorry about that."
The stone was indeed cloven from crown to jaw. The nose had suffered the worst. An intent eye peeked out where the barnacles had broken away, but the nose was no longer Methos.
"You broke me?" Methos asked, sounding unexpectedly crushed.
"Not on purpose. And you were going to throw it in Mount Olympos, remember?" Joe said, refusing to rise to the bait. "There was an old crack in the marble, probably from one of those earthquakes you were going on about. The helicopter ride shook it apart."
"Piloted by our man Costas?" Amanda guessed. "A man of many talents."
"So I’ve heard," Joe said wryly. "He’s also a former NATO pilot."
"Currently winging his way to Switzerland with your protégé," Methos nudged. "They seem...close."
"And Oslo, and Monaco, after that," Joe replied, ignoring the dig. "The decoy Sappho will probably end up gracing a casino, after the art world catches up and debunks it," he added. "Too bad. We put a lot of work into it."
"I’ll steal the fake for you for your birthday someday, if it leaves the real one safe from those vultures." Amanda promised, before she was struck by a terrible thought. "The real Sappho. She wasn’t damaged, too?"
"She’s fine, Amanda," Joe said quickly. "They spent a lot more time and care on her. Remember, the bust was just an afterthought. There was a leak somewhere in the Paris office, or you never would have been involved. I couldn’t take a chance on leaving it behind."
"Thereby saving me from a fate worse than death," Methos intoned dramatically. "Let me guess. You returned the rest of him to the shrine? "To watch over Aphrodite’s shrine, and look out for all manner of marauding Mycenaeans? Sinister Sidonians? Rampaging Romans?"
"It seemed like the right thing to do," Joe allowed, just stating a matter of fact. "Until you could show up to take possession again. Speaking of taking possession, the Sappho…"
"I think we’ll use air freight to Toronto this time," Amanda jumped in. "I’m afraid Captain Roghelio didn’t appreciate the full advantages of our patronage."
"We can rent a van and have it safe in Switzerland without it ever having to leave the ground," Methos parried. "Besides, my underground gallery is climate controlled."
"Naturally. Would I provide less?" Amanda responded, nettled.
"She’s out of sight for now," Joe reassured. "Costas’ has a tighter crew than Paris, most of them related by blood. They are very proud of their native poet, and will keep her safe. When the hue and cry dies down, you can rig up a new crate and freight tag, and take her wherever you decide," Joe said, sounding oddly depressed at the thought.
"Joe, you’ve got a great deal of unexpectedly low cunning. I like that in a man," Amanda encouraged. "How did you find out about the real Sappho in the first place?"
"Costas again. He was involved on one of our sponsored digs, out in the lava beds over by the petrified forest. They cleaned out a rockfall near Rebecca’s old villa, and found a bare shrine to Aphrodite, and near the altar a buried set of paintbrushes and a color key with a diagram and instructions on how to paint the statue. In Rebecca’s own hand. Costas took it to me, since Rebecca’s Watcher had retired, and I was...well…"
"Bored?" Methos took a shot in the dark.
"Outta my gourd. So I started researching. The more I read, the more I sort of...fell in love with the subject. I became interested…"
"...Obsessed?" Methos substituted, going with the flow.
"...interested," Joe repeated firmly, "in finding the statue. And, to be honest, I was hoping Rebecca had written down some of the lost poems. There were enough hints in Rebecca’s Chronicles that I could make an educated guess on her general whereabouts--originally, I hoped to fine tune the location on my own."
"Why?" Amanda asked.
"What?" Joe looked up, caught by surprise by the question.
"Why?" Methos pressed. "You could have just asked me."
"Us," Amanda corrected.
"I was going to surprise you. For Christmas. With a new home for Sappho, and if I really got lucky, an old song to sing in her honor. But then, the rumor got out in Paris. Someone in that office still holds a grudge. And I decided it was better to have you two around as a backup plan than chance losing her altogether."
"We were your backup plan?" Amanda stalked out of the pool and stood over Joe, dripping radioactively.
Methos cracked up again, folding up at Amanda’s implacable expression and invincible nudity, falling tail first back in the pool.
"Hey, it worked." Scooting back from Amanda’s thunderous expression, and desperately trying not to laugh, Joe offered up his only defense. "Merry Christmas?"
* * * * * * * *
Amanda had calmed considerably by the time she and Methos had dropped Joe off at a local bed and breakfast (run by Costas’ uncle), still mostly intact, if considerably chastened. He had drawn them a rough map to the dig where Methos could reclaim the rest of his bust. "Just in case you ‘forgot’ where it was," Joe couldn’t help prodding Methos as they parted.
"Why do you think Joe never settled down and had a proper litter of a dozen or so Dawsonlets for us to torture in the future?" Methos asked, as they scrambled over a petrified fossil sequoia outside Sigri. His inflection indicated he already knew most of the answer, but was curious about Amanda’s opinion.
"Probably because he knows you’re too easily amused. Though honestly? You missed MacLeod’s foray into matchmaking with Betsy, his old girlfriend. It tanked spectacularly," Amanda sighed as she stepped lightly over the volcanic tuff. "And I don’t think he ever got over losing Lauren to an Immortal. Twice burned, thrice shy."
"MacLeod playing yenta. That had to be a traumatizing experience," Methos sympathized. "Still, you were the one who set him up with the gymnast from the Seacouver performance of the Cirque du Soleil. Joe disappeared for days. I nearly died of thirst."
"Matilde. He needed to work on his flexibility," Amanda smiled at the memory, her humor restored, the picture of Virtue.
"Good point." Methos reconsidered. "And he did stop complaining about that crick in his neck."
"When in doubt, go with a professional."
"It pays to stay in practice," Methos confirmed.
Amanda’s smile faded. "Lady Aphrodite is fickle in granting gifts of love. Sometimes her passionfire doesn’t strike twice in a century, even for those of us who have centuries."
"We don’t stop trying to light the lantern just because one match got wet," Methos protested as he pulled Amanda over the bole of another petrified tree trunk, and surveyed the landscape. "The centuries are too long, and too cold."
"And too lonely, and too dark," Amanda whispered in agreement, as they descended into a shadowy ravine that opened eastward to the rising full moon. The sun had now set, sending red fingers of light reaching along the cirrus overhead to paint the moon’s face rose in the twilight.
"Will you join me?" Methos turned to her with unwonted formality, and ushered her down into a heretofore hidden fold in the earth. Before them both now yawned the mouth of a volcanic vent. Tumbled rocks from a collapsed tube had been cleared away from the entrance, and the rocky floor smoothed with sand.
"Joe guessed the placement just right," he said, staring into the stygian portal, glimpsing the hollowed chamber of an intact lava dome beyond. The cloven bust was placed just inside the entrance, its one eye glaring balefully out, trapped forever in the threshold of the shrine.
"The bust blends right into the rock. And the damage hides that telltale nose of yours quite well," Amanda decided. "Is it safe to stay? It looks like it belongs."
"Safe for now," Methos judged grudgingly. "Nothing is safe for always."
Methos turned and surveyed the wounded bust’s field of vision. Then he pointed to the remains of a fire ring just beyond the precincts of the shrine, where once devotees had waited their turn to appeal to Aphrodite.
"No wonder Joe looked a little rough around the edges at the baths. He must have spent a lot of time out here, out of sight, off the grid, waiting for the boat to dock while the rest of the Watchers were scurrying hither and yon after a rumor."
"He watched over your broken statue for you for days." Amanda stepped back a pace and watched Methos’ eyes. "I have to ask. What was that scene in the baths really all about? Why did you go after Joe with a knife? You and Joe were laughing, but it wasn’t really a joke, was it?"
"There are no better jokes." Methos paused as he mulled over the question, not joking. "It was a test. Joe has a pattern, a certain rhythm in his responses to danger. When he’s attacked, he fights. But when he’s been made helpless, kidnapped or been compromised, in word or deed, he tends to offer up his throat first."
"So when you threatened him with a knife, and he didn’t immediately surrender and try to talk you down…which would have been the most logical and reasonable reaction, by the way," Amanda tried to point out.
"He fought. He fought on, even after he recognized me, just for the joy of it. So I knew he hadn’t betrayed us, not down deep in the soul, where it counts the most. Joe’s thumos doesn’t lie."
"I trust this means we get to postpone any strangling," Amanda commented archly. "Though if you ask me, I still think Archilochus was a jerk."
"I trust this means the winner still pays up on our original wager," Methos said with a certain air of anticipation. "Where do we take Sappho’s crate for safekeeping, Toronto? Switzerland? We could share custody, even. Have visitation rights, like a proper modern couple."
"Details," Amanda waved off. "We’ll still let Joe decide. The important thing is, who gets to teach Joe proper Greek? He’s right, the songs should live."
"Joe doesn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about either location, now that I think about it," Methos said. "Either is a no-win situation for him."
"New wager. I’ll teach Sappho, you tutor Archilochus, we’ll see who gets to work on his accent in bed first. Joe wins either way."
"Unfair advantage!" Methos protested. "Joe’s always been a love over war kind of guy. And he has fierce...predilections."
"I’m counting on it," Amanda cooed. "All’s fair, as they say."
"Maybe I can get Matilde on retainer," Methos speculated, already planning ahead.
"Proxies don’t count," Amanda warned.
"Polyandry counts. In fact, it’s mandatory under the lesson plan, if we’re going to have a proper symposium." Methos’ mind started to craft a variety of vengeances for Joe Dawson’s foray into fraud. "If we work this right, when Joe retires from the Watchers, we could make a fortune on tour, selling Sapphic blues. We could be Joe’s roadies. Or even his backup dancers. ‘Jiving Joe Dawson and the Aphrodisiacs.’ "
"His own personal groupies. The Fanboy of the Apocalypse rides again! It sounds like a plan. We’ll have to test it again over ouzo." Amanda cast her eye around the hidden vale, warmed by the vision. The evening breeze off the sea tugged at her hair, and she raised her collar as the rays of the setting sun faded. "Look. There’s more to see inside the cave. There’s a light."
A single smokeless LED Coleman lantern gleamed in the darkness beyond, casting light where no torch had burned in two millennia. Slowly they edged inside the entrance, stepping beyond the guardian. The lava tube widened beyond the tumbled entrance, sealed in by the blockage for two millennia. Whorls of cooled lava wound around the walls of the alcove. The chamber itself was sere and austere, ending just twenty paces within, blocked by another collapse of the tube. The central space was occupied by a modest altar, dusted but dull, all decoration long stripped by inattention and time.
Sappho’s warm visage, transformed with an archaic smile, gazed at them from beside the ancient altar, gracing the precincts within as the cloven bust held sentry without. Her statue nestled into a natural niche as if it had never been molested by mortal hands or Immortal designs.
"Sappho has come home," Methos felt his hackles rise, and the ancient songs came flooding back as designs on distant tombs in Toronto and Geneva drained away.
"How did she get here?" Amanda whispered. "There’s no road."
"There’s no footprints." Methos studied the ground. "Dropped from the heavens? There’s no vehicle tracks, either."
"The archaeologist’s helicopter," Amanda deduced, relaxing. "The footprints were blown away."
"And he recruited some local stevedores to do the heavy lifting. Probably Costas’ cousins, now that I think about it," Methos said, adding to himself, "Bright, bright bard, keeping it all in the family."
"What was that about family?" Amanda’s sharp ears tuned in to the word.
"We’ll have to kindle a Haephaestian flame just for Joe," Methos said. "At least a token branch or two, in honor of lost loves, and loyal companions. Too bad I left my incense in my other toga."
"Rebecca would approve," Amanda agreed, "As long as we don’t soot up Silanion’s statue. What else can we do? You’re the one who knew Sappho. How do we rededicate the shrine?"
"Sing. And honor Aphrodite." Methos stepped before the entrance, and spoke in soft entreaty:
Songs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,
Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity,
Hearing, to hear them.
"Do you trust me?" Methos held out his hand to Amanda as a tender new spark of sanctified space tickled the nape of his neck. "It’s been too long since I laid an offering to Aphrodite."
The ancient flame in his eye made her pause. Amanda slowly placed her moon washed hand in his, trusting, for now. "It pays to stay in practice. I feel it too. Holy ground."
Methos’ eyes adjusted to the light as they stepped within the alcove. "Look. Joe left something on the plinth. At least, I hope it was Joe." He peered into the gloomy corners of the precincts, as the prickle of holy ground grew stronger, and Sappho’s archaic smile came to life.
Amanda smiled as well, honoring the solitary offering, gleaming rosy gold upon the altar.
A honeyapple.
* * * * * * * *
τελικού
Author: Atalanta of the Golden Apples
Written for: jinxed-wood
Characters/Pairings: Methos, Amanda, Joe Dawson, Rebecca, Amy Brennan
Rating: Gen, with a light holiday seasoning of Het and a side of Sapphic Sauce.
Wordcount: 16,000
Author's Notes: Online .pdf notes from Professor William Harris of Middlebury College on variant translations of Sappho and Archilochus influenced this work, but all lyric misuses and errors are my own. Beta readers are from Above and Beyond.
Summary: A lot of work goes into planning a proper caper, whether in ancient Greece or modern France. A lot of discussion. And a lot of bar tabs. The question is, who picks up the bill?
Part One
They almost didn’t make it. The sleet had turned to drizzle, and Joe’s jeep, hauling an old steel horse trailer Amanda located in Rebecca’s abbey, squirrelled all over the icy roads despite the snow tires and four-wheel drive. He barely had enough traction to get up the shallow grade that overlooked the target. Now they stood on the last stretch of road looking upon the roundhouse, and despaired.
Just as Amanda had described in the jeep, the roundhouse was large enough to spin two railcars on the central track, mounted on a vast turntable, a merry-go-round for steam trains. A locomotive would glide into the circular workspace, and after repair, be spun around on the recessed platform and chug away, good as new.
Long abandoned, Rebecca’s roundhouse was now draped in ice, resembling an outtake from Dr. Zhivago’s Siberian scenes. Unlike Pasternak’s icy tombs, the roundhouse breathed steam and smoke, and the icy windows glittered with the hellish glow of coalfire.
"I can’t believe they got the old beast started again!" Amanda exclaimed as they gathered around Joe’s jeep and scouted the workshop from behind a screen of trees. "It hasn’t run since the Nazis abandoned the shop at the end of the last war!" She didn’t bother to keep her voice down. The engine was making enough of a racket to drown a marching band.
"I can’t believe the Watchers had this much imagination," Methos carped, looking and failing to find any sign of his backup agents. "What about the rail license, Joe?" He stamped his feet, still ruffled to be turfed out of Amanda’s warm bed to go sledding on the icy roads at dawn.
"Hey, don’t ask me," Joe retorted, blinking against the rain. "Still not E. H. Harriman. Multinational companies love to do each other favors, and the Watchers are about as multinational as they come. It looks like they’ve been here a while. What do we do now?"
"It would be a shame to waste all your arrangements. We’ll wait until they finish doing all the heavy lifting," Methos suggested, with the beginning of a frosty smile.
Amanda matched his smile, with more teeth. "And then we steal the train."
Joe slipped on a patch of wet ice, and caught himself on the Jeep door. "What, here? Now? Why not just follow it in the car? Then you don’t have to tangle with the crew in the shed."
"The crew in the shed will never know we’re here," Amanda said confidently. "We’ll hop the train at the edge of the forest before it picks up speed, and take care of the rest. It will be just like old times."
"Just remember, these are Watchers, not the SS. Please, no fatalities," he asked, clearly unhappy with the change in plan.
"Spoilsport," Amanda complained. "You follow in the Jeep. We convince the engineer to stop at the siding before we join the main line, and transfer the statue, done and done."
"And leave us a thermos," Methos commanded, blowing on his hands. "It might be a long wait."
Joe took one last despondent look before climbing back into the Jeep and handing out a knapsack with the coffee and sandwiches. "Damn. I always wanted to hop a train."
"Whatever for?" Amanda asked.
"It’s a blues thing. Forget I said anything. See you at the siding."
"Joe!" Methos grasped his forearm before he rolled up the window. "Remember what Archilochus said to Glaucus? ‘A soldier of fortune is your friend --- as long as he fights.’ "
"As long as he fights? Or as long as he can fight? Should I feel honored, guilty or offended?" Joe asked, digging deep into his memories. "‘And the moment he falters in standing by your side in battle, he is no longer a friend…’ "
"Remember Incitatus?" Methos asked.
"How could I forget?" Joe answered, definitely offended. "As happy endings go, that poem sucks," Joe announced, firing up the Jeep and revving the engine. "I’ll see you at the siding," he repeated.
Amanda waited till Joe reversed the Jeep and trailer and disappeared over the hill to smack Methos in the chest. "Joe doesn’t need any reminders about his age. Besides, he only just turned what...fifty?"
"Forty-six. There were a few miles of bad road. But we weren’t talking about age or his abilities. You said it yourself at the outset. Joe’s loyalties have always been divided."
"I’m not up on Archilochus. What’s the last line of the poem?"
"You don’t want to know the last line." Still, Methos could taste it on his tongue. "‘...For it is at the hands of your friends that you are strangled.’ "
* * * * * * * *
Not a half hour later, Joe hopped the train.
Granted, Amanda made very, very sure that the engineer kept the locomotive running at well under a mile per hour, and Methos spotted to make very, very sure Joe’s prostheses landed on the platform and not under the wheels when he grabbed the bars, but otherwise, Joe was a natural. As he pulled himself aboard, he had a grin as wide as the sky.
Methos settled him on a crate next to the carriage wall when the car started swaying as it picked up speed.
"No transfer?" Joe asked, slightly out of breath. "Change of plan?"
"The train, it turned out, is already headed straight for the docks," Methos picked up a bill of lading from atop an eight foot crate dominating the floor of the carriage.
"Convenient," Amanda wrinkled her brow, scanning the sheet over his shoulder.
"Too convenient," Methos scowled, pointing at the fine print under the port destination. "Isn’t that near the slip where the The Blue Lagoon docks? The old scow you use to transport stolen goods?"
"Used to use, yes. And a perfectly nice scow it is, too. It’s also the one I commissioned just yesterday to take Sappho to Toronto. But it’s also the closest commercial dock to Rebecca’s abbey, and the shortest route for the train. Whoever planned the heist couldn’t reroute train traffic for any long distance. This antique isn’t legal on most of the tracks."
Joe snaked the papers away and scanned them more slowly. "Check the date. Filed a week ago. Before you two caught rumor of the heist. But no one I’ve talked to up the chain of command admits to knowing anything about Sappho, the roundhouse, or playing with toy trains." thoughtfully, he rolled up the lading and put it safely away in his pocket. "Somebody is lying, of course."
"That’s the drawback in secret societies, Joe," Methos stated sagely. "All the secret squirrels."
"I resemble that remark. No guards?" he looked around for blood, and other signs of mayhem, visibly relieved to find none.
"Trying to find their way out of Rebecca’s Three Hundred Acre Wood. Should take them a while, yet."
"What about the engineer?"
"Solidly bribed, and happy to be paid twice for the same job," Amanda assured. "Once we get on the freighter, we’ll be in the clear."
"I hope you appreciate my sacrifice, Amanda," Methos said manfully. "I don’t board leaky buckets for just anyone."
"Just for twenty five hundred year old rock icons," Amanda nodded toward the crate, not letting the compliment go to her head.
So, you settled on taking her to Toronto?" Joe asked, just a bit wistfully.
"Best we move the goods before the looters regroup," Methos said, watching Joe. "Though I still think Switzerland was the sounder choice."
"Why? Do you have another idea?" Amanda looked more closely at Joe, who was starting to ravel after a long night and a dawn rising.
"I wouldn’t dream of interfering," Joe said with enough irony to stop the train cold in its tracks.
Methos saw him glance toward the large case in the center of the car. "Do you want to see Sappho?"
"Yes. Very much." Joe’s eyes gleamed green and amber as he squinted against the harsh light from the overhead fluorescents.
Amanda hadn’t forgotten the crowbar. She pried, leaving dents in the wood frame, while Methos worked his fingers into the gap. The lid came off with only a few splinters and a colorful Archilochean oath. The body was too tightly wrapped for viewing, but Methos did carefully uncover the face. Joe stood up and crowded over his shoulder to get a good look.
"Oh!" Joe’s breath hitched. "The color makes her live."
This was no Elgin marble, scrubbed pale and raw by time and indifferent care. Her skin was delicately layered in various shades of nut brown, carved strands of black hair gleamed under the carriage lights, errant curls tried to escape from under a purple ribbon.
"Stare at her smile long enough, and she does live, Joe," Amanda said softly. "It used to spook me. Rebecca kept her paint touched up. I’m not sure what we’ll do about that now. I don’t have the hand."
Joe stared long, and hard, all too aware of the rarity of the opportunity, until the rail car bumped over a set of points and sent Joe thumping hard back onto the crate behind him.
"Are you all right, Joe?" Amanda just caught him before he tipped over the back.
"Sure, sure," Joe said sharply, searching around for the cane that had gone flying.
"No. I think that Amanda is asking, ‘Are you all right, Joe?’" Methos said with a little more emphasis, handing back the cane.
Joe exhaled. "I see what you’re asking. But no. I’m fine. Five by five. Just the usual mortal flaking. I’m not hurting."
"Sappho had a phrase about mortality. Mortality and love, really. All her poems were about love," Methos stared at Joe.
...Pain penetrates
Me drop
by drop...
Methos left Joe to re-gather his dignity on his own, and gazed down at Sappho silently, then woke from a reverie to gently rearrange the wrapping, making sure the straps didn’t rub. "There’s artists in every century. We’ll get someone in to touch up the paint eventually, Amanda," he said, hammering the lid back down. Then, taking a new look at the crate Joe was using for a bench, he added briskly, "Up, now, Joe. I wonder what else caught our looters eye?"
Joe settled gingerly on Sappho’s crate as the train canted around a curve. "Sorry," he quietly apologized for the impertinence.
Methos made short work of the lid to the smaller crate. "And our fellow traveler is…?"
"You, apparently," Amanda said, reaching in and tweaking a familiar nose poking out of a barnacle encrusted face. A fine crack marred the paint on the face, running from the forehead down the bridge of the nose to tail off on the right cheek. The bust was nearly unrecognizable, much battered by time and tide. "Not your finest side," Amanda observed critically, "But with a little chipping and cleaning, there you are, in your winsome youth."
"This time, it’s going into the mid-ocean trench, I swear," Methos grumbled. "Last time I checked, the entrance to the cave had collapsed in an earthquake. Rebecca must have dug it out of that rubble of a shrine. Speaking of hoarding."
"At least Sappho had a companion with her to pass the time," Joe said, earning strange looks from both Immortals. "Just kidding. Sheesh."
The peal of a train whistle prompted Methos to hurriedly replace the lid. The arrival at the loading docks turned out to be anticlimactic. In the aftermath of the storm, the docks were dreary, wet and mostly deserted, but for some gloomy stevedores sheltering from the rain next to a shed.
Joe chivvied the two Immortals into organizing a forklift while he expedited the transfer paperwork, everyone keeping an eye out for wayward Watchers. "You’d better get a move on," he warned Amanda and Methos on his return. "According to the portmaster, The Blue Lagoon moved up its sailing time. You have about forty five minutes to hit the port store for beer and basics, if you’re really going to take her all the way to Toronto. In my opinion, taking the boat too good an opportunity to pass up. It would take me an hour to backtrack for the Jeep and trailer."
Amanda winked at Methos, a gleam of triumph in her eye. Sappho was going to the New World.
"I still say Geneva is lovely this time of year," Methos sulked as his bag was stowed aboard and the crates were hauled up by the crane and dropped down into the hold. Neither Joe nor Amanda bothered to reply. Amanda still basked in the glow of victory. Joe was more subdued, studying the movement of the cargo, avoiding the eyes of his friends.
The captain, a tall, stout Spaniard with a magnificent goatee, waved imperiously to the longshoremen as he readied for departure. He shouted at his crane crew to get one last pallet of tarp-wrapped crates lifted out of the hold and onto the dock before securing the hatch.
"Won’t you reconsider coming along?" Amanda asked Joe as she brought the last of her own bags aboard, though she knew the answer. The freighter did have decent staterooms for supercargo, but was ill equipped for Joe’s long term mobile needs, much less comfort.
"I can cover your tracks better from here," Joe said. "As you pointed out, I still have some contacts. Better exercise them before they dry up. And I’ll make sure to have some passports waiting for you on the other side. The longer the looters think you’re in France, the better."
"Traitor," Methos stared down his nose at Joe, discounting unspoken accessibility problems as either soluble or irrelevant. "You could at least come along and lose at poker. You know I hate crossing the Atlantic. Poseidon’s got it in for me."
"Maybe next time," Joe promised faithlessly. "Or maybe I’ll just tilt a beer in your general direction." Amanda did not get such short shrift, and did get a farewell kiss. "Alas, we part, milady."
"Watch your back, Joe."
"You’ll see me before you know it. Here, pack these away somewhere safe," he added, stuffing the new bill of lading for the voyage and the letters of transit for their passage in one of her shopping bags from. "Au revoir."
Amanda gave Joe far more than an au revoir. When he managed to pull away, she said, "Thank you, Joe. From me, and from Rebecca."
Joe fielded the show of gratitude uneasily, looking oddly guilty and terminally embarrassed. "Don’t thank me now. Wait until after you’ve been sailing with Sunny Jim over there for a few days."
"If we end up hitting an iceberg, I’m coming back to haunt you, Joe," Methos warned.
"You always do. That’s why you’re so lovable," Joe stepped back from the gangplank, waving as the hands cast off. Any more words were drowned as a cargo helicopter hovered over the full pallet the freighter had offloaded onto the dock. Joe put his collar up against rain and the wind from the blades and watched as the longshoremen attached the netting to the hoist and the cargo was whisked away. Then, with one last wave to Amanda, he turned his back on the boat and made his slow, careful way down the long dock, his back hunched against the last spitting remnants of the storm.
The Blue Lagoon was well out of the waterways of France and corkscrewing nicely in the shipping lanes of the English Channel when Methos roused from his silent vigil at the porthole in their shared stateroom. "Did you know we’re on a southerly heading?"
Disquieted, Amanda unpacked the shipping papers and read the fine print on their destination. "Methos? I don’t think you need to be worrying about icebergs, anymore. Did you know we were going to the Greek isles?"
Methos turned slowly, from where his head had been leaning against the cool glass of the porthole. He paged through to the export license, checking the names, dates, and signatures. "Final destination, Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece. Signed, E. H. Harriman."
"They’re all signed ‘E. H. Harriman’," Amanda said helpfully. "Even the railroad permit."
They looked at each other, and spoke simultaneously. "We need to check the crates."
Amanda waved cheerily at the deckhands as they passed into the forepeak, ‘exploring’ the ship. They found Sappho’s crate easily, well padded, dry, unopened, pristine. On closer examination, quite pristine. The tool marks that they had made in the rail car were nowhere in evidence. They wasted no time cracking it open.
"A workmanlike fraud, decent aging, but definitely not the original," Amanda judged. "I don’t see the crate with your bust, though, Methos."
They searched the hold thoroughly, and the engine room and lower compartments as well. They returned to the statue and replaced the lid. "He stole them both, from right underneath our noses." Amanda was having a hard time choosing between fury and admiration. "With a helicopter, no less."
"And I was starting to look forward to dropping that damn bust into the Hellenic Trench." Methos’ mood was darker, more veiled. "Joe lied. He’s learning."
"It looks like he also changed the final destination. Again." The bill of lading pasted on the crates had a new forwarding address beyond Lesvos. "And it’s COD. ‘Geneva, Switzerland,’" Amanda read. "I wonder what gave Joe that idea?"
"I swear, I’m going to strangle him."
* * * * * * * *
Captain Roghelio of The Blue Lagoon was quite helpful, and enormously pleased with himself to have conspired with the mysterious wealthy benefactor, E. H. Harriman, to provide the young couple with a romantic honeymoon cruise to the Greek Isles. Rogelio was large, bluff, and generous (with E. H. Harriman’s deposit), cultivating a mostly fictional piratical image. Methos didn’t strangle him as well, but only just.
Captain Roghelio assured them that he had kept their passports safe in the wheelhouse, and passed them out to his discomfited passengers along with some soothing Malbec from Ribera del Duero, which made some inroads on Methos’ ire. The effect was a bit spoiled when he realized the passports (some of the best work the Watchers had ever done) were in the names of Amanda and James Harriman.
Amanda leaned over his shoulder and read the name. "Buck up, Sunny Jim. The vintage isn’t bad."
With properly veiled sympathy, Captain Roghelio assured them that they would arrive in Lesvos in fine time, and the sunny Mediterranean passage would do wonders for young Mr. Harriman’s ‘condition.’
"I thought you contracted with this ship before, Amanda," Methos hissed, bristling like a feral cat.
"Never in person. Do I look like an amateur?"
"We both do, right now."
Blithely, the captain promised that champagne and caviar awaited them in the stateroom, where, no doubt, further delights of their own imagination would truly make their honeymoon memorable. And indeed, Methos and Amanda found salametti, Manchego cheese and a basket of apples to tide them over their wave of betrayal.
"Compliments of White Horse Wine and Spirits?" Amanda cocked an eyebrow, checking the label on the basket.
"Please. Joe’s sense of humor apparently has hitherto unexpected depths."
"There’s a card, too." Amanda flipped it over, reading, "‘Wish you were here.’ Mercifully, it’s unsigned. Do you recognize it?" The postcard showed a triptych of photos of a series of stone-lined outdoor springs and indoor pools, algae-green and steaming.
"The Polychnitos Baths. The springs come and go over the centuries, depending on the state of the volcano. Allegedly healthy. Mortal mileage varies. As will Joe’s, when I catch up to him."
"A clear invitation to rendezvous at the hot tubs." Amanda tapped the card on a bottle of Veuve de Clicquot, making it ring like a windchime. "We could get off in Gibraltar, jet over, and crash the party early."
"Joe would plan for that. And the Watchers have all the airports covered."
"Or we could be fashionably late, and make Joe wait and worry about what we’re up too." Amanda toyed with the gift basket, picking up one of the fruits and holding it out to Methos in the palm of her hand.
"Honeyapple?"
* * * * * * * * * *
In Mytilene, over a week later, Methos and Amanda debarked in style, weaving down the gangplank, waving goodbye with the last, very last, bottle of liquor on board The Blue Lagoon. Captain Roghelio, honeymoon over, winced as Methos pegged the (empty) bottle into the hold as the last of the cargo was unloaded. The crane swung the fake statue of Sappho over to the fenced off customs dock. A Greek longshoreman came over to the cargo netting, read the bill of lading, and looked to the skies, readying a hook.
From over the low hills surrounding the port of Mytilene came the ratchety hum of a helicopter.
"Seriously?" Methos sighed, shading his eyes to get a look at the pilot.
"The pilot bears a surprising resemblance to you, from a distance, of course," Amanda said. "He’s even wearing your jacket. But red pants? That’s so nineties."
"The passenger seems to be sporting your hairstyle of the month," Methos noted. "And the catsuit? Never out of style. But her profile resembles Joe’s favorite understudy, Amy. They seem in close cahoots. Very close cahoots."
"Do you think she does me justice?" Amanda inquired, shading her eyes.
"You are inimitable, Amanda," Methos assured.
"It’s time you noticed. Did you see the logo on the side of the helo?"
"Herodotus Helicopters. Archaeological Eco-Tours, Tourism and Transport. Just call Costos. Enterprising fellow, Costos. I wonder what he has over Joe and Amy? Or what they have over him?"
"The second statue was a good fake, as reproductions go," Amanda allowed. "Maybe with the help of a decent archaeologist. It had that academic touch. The expression was a little stiff, and the smile was a bit too ironic."
"Should we follow it to Geneva?" Methos did not sound enthused.
"I think it’s probably already rerouted to Lichtenstein, or Bruges, or Keflavik. A wild goose chase. Isn’t that what Joe told us he was going to do, right in the beginning? Besides, after a week on that freighter, I am more in the mood for a spa," Amanda decided.
"If we don’t find anything at the hot tubs?"
"We just call Costas."
The Polychnitos Baths were a long taxi ride from Mytilene, and it was late in the afternoon when the driver dropped them off at the parking lot. Just one other car remained in the lot, a rental with a telltale blue placard. The rear of the vehicle held camping gear, a cooler, a pick, shovel, rake and broom.
"No bodies or statues," Amanda said doubtfully.
"Yet," Methos agreed, without a smile. "We have all night to rectify that state of affairs."
The building housing the baths was topped with a red tile roof and built of mixed stone, some quarried, some recycled from previous baths and ancient buildings erected on the rift since long before Methos’ first visit to the island. The stone structure was just large enough to hold a couple of roomy plunges, cloudy with minerals and sea-green algae.
Methos sent the taxi driver away, over Amanda’s objections. "We leave here with Joe, or with his car as a trophy," Methos insisted, teeth bared in a Spartan smile.
"You know that Joe really wouldn’t really betray us," Amanda said, hesitating at the entrance, scouting the surrounding fields and hilly terrain as she spoke. "Not for money or extortion. He’s proved that in the past."
"Even Joe has an Achilles heel. Everyone does."
"He wouldn’t sell us out."
"He’ll do anything," Methos said. "Not for money. Not for his life. But for love? If he goes with his heart, he’ll sell out in a heartbeat."
"It’s still all circumstantial. We don’t absolutely know Joe’s behind it all."
"Anything’s possible. Our mysterious benefactor E. H. Harriman might even be real--a modern apex predator, honeymoon philanthropist by day, unstoppable art thief by night. You might be obsolete."
"No need to be insulting. Besides, if this mythical Harriman is an apex predator, that knocks you down a peg, doesn’t it?"
"Not yet." Methos stared at Amanda. "Look into your own heart, Amanda. You know it’s Joe."
"You’re taking this personally, aren’t you?" Amanda asked, chilled at the tone of his voice.
"Joe stole my likeness. Sappho, that may have been an avarice his muse could not resist. That, I understand. But my likeness carved in stone? That’s personal." Methos put his hand inside his coat, heavy with hardware, and walked softly to the entrance, motioning Amanda to stay outside.
Amanda skipped ahead of him and planted herself on the threshold. "You’re not going to go after Joe with a sword. Give it to me."
"Trust you with my sword?" Methos stopped short, taken aback at the concept.
"Trust me, or we part ways now. Whatever’s driving him, I don’t believe Joe would sell us out." Amanda still held out her hand for the sword.
"You’re young, yet," Methos said softly. The familiar Aeolian scents on the wind, new-tilled earth, a hedge of rosemary, wakened Methos’ memories of an earlier age. "But as you wish," he added brightly, shedding his coat and stuffing it in her arms, slipping neatly past her. "You vastly underrate me, if you think I’d go after Joe with a sword. I’m hurt, I tell you. Stunned."
"Sorry," Amanda said, not particularly convinced.
"Now, since you’re the one armed to the teeth, do try to keep an eye out here and don’t let anyone surprise us. We’ll both die of mortification if we get conned twice in two weeks."
"You have a point. Go. Scare some sense into Joe."
In the dim anteroom, shadowed stone hallways lead to the dressing rooms and pools. Noting the signs marking the men’s pool from the women’s, Methos removed his shoes and socks, padding silently down the right hand passage to the dressing room. There was no attendant, but dim sounds made clear he wasn’t alone in the baths. Methos folded up the sleeve to his sweater, exposing the pommel of his knife, checking that it slid easily out of the sheath strapped to his forearm.
A low, rhythmic, rumbling vibrated the thick, steaming air from the stone arch leading to the bathing chamber. Methos crouched and peered around the corner, knife to hand. Joe’s bag, cane, and battered travel chair were parked at the end of the bench next to the pool, legs stacked high and dry.
Joe paid no attention to his entrance. He was alone, unguarded. Water droplets decorated his beard. The illusion of a sage waiting upon his students in the Hellene Age was deflated by the sadly anachronistic pair of faded cutoffs he wore, and the unmistakable bullet scars he bore. He sprawled bonelessly in the green water, barely anchored by an outstretched arm. Vapor danced on the water around his body like temple smoke. Methos would have feared he’d been struck dead already, but for the volume of his stentorian snores.
Garment by garment, Methos slipped out of his clothes. Sweater. Shirt. Trousers. Garment by garment, the centuries slipped away, and the ancient stone foundations recalled whispers of the old languages, the old songs, the old ways. Slowly, skin prickling from the heat, he slid soundlessly into the unruffled pool, knife held blade down, parallel to his forearm, nearly invisible under the cloudy water.
The stink of mineral vapor filled his lungs as he inhaled deeply. Holding his breath, he submerged, the water burning into his ears and scalp. His feet found the stone siding, and he launched forward under the water, arrowing toward his unsuspecting prey.
He made no sound, but a forewarning ripple in the algal waters stirred Joe’s base instincts when the leading pommel of Methos’ knife was just an ell’s length from his quarry’s chest. Erupting from sleep, Joe’s arms crashed into the water, his huge, calloused hands wrapping around the fist holding the knife, trapping the blade against the underside of Methos’ wrist. Decades of supporting his full weight on his hands hardened Joe’s grip.
Rolling blind in the water, Methos struggled to free himself, but Joe shouldered into his belly, and air burst from his lungs. Floating unmoored, both men sunk below the surface, Methos on his back, Joe driving both bodies underwater with his own weight, while still hauling on Methos’ arm for leverage.
Methos had the long term advantage--youth, strength, legs, healing. Joe had the core strength to balance on his thighs for hours, and he might hold Methos down for a few seconds, but that wouldn’t be enough to overcome him after Methos found his feet. If he found his feet.
What Methos didn’t have, was air. Joe, on the other hand, had musician’s lungs, Marine training, and a very cranky attitude when somebody disturbed his nap.
Ears roaring, Methos gathered himself in a ball, got his feet in Joe’s belly and put all his effort into one explosive push. Without warning, Joe let go one hand, twisting sideways, and the force of Methos’ kick shot harmlessly past Joe to the surface. An unexpected tactical flaw in the situation revealed itself when equal and opposite extension cracked Methos’ head on the concrete pool floor, momentarily slacking his grip.
Recovering, somersaulting, Methos finally got his feet under him and shot to the surface, gasping in lovely gouts of sulfurous air. Joe was waiting for him, face and chest dark red from the heat and effort, hauling in air in perfect counterpoint. He hung onto the side of the pool with his left hand to steady himself, while holding the tip of Methos’ own knife under Methos’ own chin with the right. The steel was as warm as blood.
"E. H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad?" Methos asked.
"I thought about using Butch Cassidy, but it just didn’t scan the same."
Giving no further explanation, and asking none, Joe reversed the blade and with a wet smack slapped the hilt into Methos’ bare chest. Methos grabbed it before it could sink to the bottom of the murky pool.
Before either could fully catch their breaths, they both collapsed back into the water, almost drowning again, laughing their asses off.
"What...the hell…tryin'...ta kill me?" Joe found words first, leaving out the inessentials. "Damn near... heart attack."
"What...spoil a perfectly good...murder?"
Joe hacked, and coughed, and sighed, levering himself out of the pool to cool off. "Christalmighty. What a dream I was having. It would be worth murder to get it back," Joe shook his head, closing his eyes, with a smile Silanion might carve for the ages.
"I could still oblige," Methos offered, but the atavistic anger that had possessed him since the theft of his stone effigy had been sated in the struggle.
"You were holding back, old man," Joe accused.
"I ran out of air," Methos denied.
"Why didn’t you just breathe underwater, like Connor?"
Methos shuddered, throwing water droplets like a dog. "I hate getting water up my nose."
After a second mutual fit of the giggles subsided, and Joe started returning to a less parboiled color, Methos snagged Joe’s towel, buffed his knife dry, and tossed it back.
"You’re naked," Joe accused.
"Just noticing? You really were asleep, weren’t you?" Methos laughed, relaxing completely into the water. "You should get out of those shorts, too, and dry off. I suspect you’ve been soaking too long."
"Yeah, sure," Joe waved him off, though he did drape the towel over his shoulder.
"The Polychnitos Baths. Hottest mineral spring in Europe. Touted for easing arthritis, myalgia, gout, pleurisy and a host of other maladies. Also, and this is less widely advertised, they happen to be just the teensiest bit radioactive."
Joe had the cutoffs off in record time, wrapping the towel around his waist securely, daring Methos with a glare to comment.
"Are you boys through bumping chests, now?" Amanda was also dressed in a towel. Barely. She leaned on the stone arch on one hand, and dangled two swords from the other. "Can I look forward to being ravished by the victor?"
"I could use more practice, if you’re up for it," Methos said, the picture of Hermes committing an ancient impertinence. "What about you, Joe?"
Joe cleared his throat, red face returning. "There’s probably a few things we should straighten out, first."
"Business before pleasure? If you must. But I’ve found it works both ways," Amanda spoke from experience. "There’s nobody within a half mile of the building, by the way. I got tired of the boys having all the fun." She placed Methos’ sword at the end of the bench, and her sword just within Joe’s reach, then dropped her towel at the edge and descended into the green pool. Both men keenly admired the way the living water embraced her skin.
"Where are the statues, Joe?" Methos cut to the chase, finally sheathing his knife. "You and Amanda can haggle over the Sappho, but I want the bust."
"The Sappho’s safe, for now. If I told you where the bust was, what would you do?" Joe asked, strangely hesitant.
"I think I’ll try dropping it in a volcano, this time."
Joe relaxed, as much as he could while sitting in a towel with Amanda in the room. "You should have dropped it in Olympos two thousand years ago," Joe said, stealing the offensive. "Careless of you, losing track like that."
"The bust, Joe."
"When that story about your monument to yourself slipped out, you threw my timetable all out of whack," Joe complained. "My...people...were not happy to hunt around for a second statue at the last minute. We’re just damn lucky we had someone who could recognize a Silanion by the carving style. Because I sure didn’t want to describe you."
There was a short silence while Joe dug into his bag and started pulling on his clothes.
"Joe, I really think you should tell him where the bust is," Amanda recommended. "And if you keep dressing that way, you’re going to put your boxers on backwards," she added helpfully.
Joe was still getting wound up, and Amanda was not helping. He aimed his ire at Methos, who was uncharacteristically silent. "You know how long I’ve been working to convince the Watchers you’re still just a harmless former researcher? Hopelessly unprepared to survive long in the game? If the antiquities department had found your pre-Roman schnoz on an Attic era statuary, we’d both be toast."
"Something has happened to the statue, hasn’t it?" Methos broke the rant with a sudden inspired guess. "You lost it. It’s missing. Or your man Costas stole it himself."
"Whoa. Yes. No. No. Definitely not. I just...returned it. That’s all. Most of it, anyway," Joe finally admitted.
"Most of it?" Methos asked, tentatively waving his hand across his neck. "You beheaded it?" He was no stranger to atavistic fear.
"Oh, hell no." Joe sounded truly appalled at the thought, which considerably relieved both Immortals. He dug around in the bag, coming up with a heavy chunk of stone. "It broke. Right down the middle. Right between the eyes." He tossed the marble to Methos. "Sorry about that."
The stone was indeed cloven from crown to jaw. The nose had suffered the worst. An intent eye peeked out where the barnacles had broken away, but the nose was no longer Methos.
"You broke me?" Methos asked, sounding unexpectedly crushed.
"Not on purpose. And you were going to throw it in Mount Olympos, remember?" Joe said, refusing to rise to the bait. "There was an old crack in the marble, probably from one of those earthquakes you were going on about. The helicopter ride shook it apart."
"Piloted by our man Costas?" Amanda guessed. "A man of many talents."
"So I’ve heard," Joe said wryly. "He’s also a former NATO pilot."
"Currently winging his way to Switzerland with your protégé," Methos nudged. "They seem...close."
"And Oslo, and Monaco, after that," Joe replied, ignoring the dig. "The decoy Sappho will probably end up gracing a casino, after the art world catches up and debunks it," he added. "Too bad. We put a lot of work into it."
"I’ll steal the fake for you for your birthday someday, if it leaves the real one safe from those vultures." Amanda promised, before she was struck by a terrible thought. "The real Sappho. She wasn’t damaged, too?"
"She’s fine, Amanda," Joe said quickly. "They spent a lot more time and care on her. Remember, the bust was just an afterthought. There was a leak somewhere in the Paris office, or you never would have been involved. I couldn’t take a chance on leaving it behind."
"Thereby saving me from a fate worse than death," Methos intoned dramatically. "Let me guess. You returned the rest of him to the shrine? "To watch over Aphrodite’s shrine, and look out for all manner of marauding Mycenaeans? Sinister Sidonians? Rampaging Romans?"
"It seemed like the right thing to do," Joe allowed, just stating a matter of fact. "Until you could show up to take possession again. Speaking of taking possession, the Sappho…"
"I think we’ll use air freight to Toronto this time," Amanda jumped in. "I’m afraid Captain Roghelio didn’t appreciate the full advantages of our patronage."
"We can rent a van and have it safe in Switzerland without it ever having to leave the ground," Methos parried. "Besides, my underground gallery is climate controlled."
"Naturally. Would I provide less?" Amanda responded, nettled.
"She’s out of sight for now," Joe reassured. "Costas’ has a tighter crew than Paris, most of them related by blood. They are very proud of their native poet, and will keep her safe. When the hue and cry dies down, you can rig up a new crate and freight tag, and take her wherever you decide," Joe said, sounding oddly depressed at the thought.
"Joe, you’ve got a great deal of unexpectedly low cunning. I like that in a man," Amanda encouraged. "How did you find out about the real Sappho in the first place?"
"Costas again. He was involved on one of our sponsored digs, out in the lava beds over by the petrified forest. They cleaned out a rockfall near Rebecca’s old villa, and found a bare shrine to Aphrodite, and near the altar a buried set of paintbrushes and a color key with a diagram and instructions on how to paint the statue. In Rebecca’s own hand. Costas took it to me, since Rebecca’s Watcher had retired, and I was...well…"
"Bored?" Methos took a shot in the dark.
"Outta my gourd. So I started researching. The more I read, the more I sort of...fell in love with the subject. I became interested…"
"...Obsessed?" Methos substituted, going with the flow.
"...interested," Joe repeated firmly, "in finding the statue. And, to be honest, I was hoping Rebecca had written down some of the lost poems. There were enough hints in Rebecca’s Chronicles that I could make an educated guess on her general whereabouts--originally, I hoped to fine tune the location on my own."
"Why?" Amanda asked.
"What?" Joe looked up, caught by surprise by the question.
"Why?" Methos pressed. "You could have just asked me."
"Us," Amanda corrected.
"I was going to surprise you. For Christmas. With a new home for Sappho, and if I really got lucky, an old song to sing in her honor. But then, the rumor got out in Paris. Someone in that office still holds a grudge. And I decided it was better to have you two around as a backup plan than chance losing her altogether."
"We were your backup plan?" Amanda stalked out of the pool and stood over Joe, dripping radioactively.
Methos cracked up again, folding up at Amanda’s implacable expression and invincible nudity, falling tail first back in the pool.
"Hey, it worked." Scooting back from Amanda’s thunderous expression, and desperately trying not to laugh, Joe offered up his only defense. "Merry Christmas?"
* * * * * * * *
Amanda had calmed considerably by the time she and Methos had dropped Joe off at a local bed and breakfast (run by Costas’ uncle), still mostly intact, if considerably chastened. He had drawn them a rough map to the dig where Methos could reclaim the rest of his bust. "Just in case you ‘forgot’ where it was," Joe couldn’t help prodding Methos as they parted.
"Why do you think Joe never settled down and had a proper litter of a dozen or so Dawsonlets for us to torture in the future?" Methos asked, as they scrambled over a petrified fossil sequoia outside Sigri. His inflection indicated he already knew most of the answer, but was curious about Amanda’s opinion.
"Probably because he knows you’re too easily amused. Though honestly? You missed MacLeod’s foray into matchmaking with Betsy, his old girlfriend. It tanked spectacularly," Amanda sighed as she stepped lightly over the volcanic tuff. "And I don’t think he ever got over losing Lauren to an Immortal. Twice burned, thrice shy."
"MacLeod playing yenta. That had to be a traumatizing experience," Methos sympathized. "Still, you were the one who set him up with the gymnast from the Seacouver performance of the Cirque du Soleil. Joe disappeared for days. I nearly died of thirst."
"Matilde. He needed to work on his flexibility," Amanda smiled at the memory, her humor restored, the picture of Virtue.
"Good point." Methos reconsidered. "And he did stop complaining about that crick in his neck."
"When in doubt, go with a professional."
"It pays to stay in practice," Methos confirmed.
Amanda’s smile faded. "Lady Aphrodite is fickle in granting gifts of love. Sometimes her passionfire doesn’t strike twice in a century, even for those of us who have centuries."
"We don’t stop trying to light the lantern just because one match got wet," Methos protested as he pulled Amanda over the bole of another petrified tree trunk, and surveyed the landscape. "The centuries are too long, and too cold."
"And too lonely, and too dark," Amanda whispered in agreement, as they descended into a shadowy ravine that opened eastward to the rising full moon. The sun had now set, sending red fingers of light reaching along the cirrus overhead to paint the moon’s face rose in the twilight.
"Will you join me?" Methos turned to her with unwonted formality, and ushered her down into a heretofore hidden fold in the earth. Before them both now yawned the mouth of a volcanic vent. Tumbled rocks from a collapsed tube had been cleared away from the entrance, and the rocky floor smoothed with sand.
"Joe guessed the placement just right," he said, staring into the stygian portal, glimpsing the hollowed chamber of an intact lava dome beyond. The cloven bust was placed just inside the entrance, its one eye glaring balefully out, trapped forever in the threshold of the shrine.
"The bust blends right into the rock. And the damage hides that telltale nose of yours quite well," Amanda decided. "Is it safe to stay? It looks like it belongs."
"Safe for now," Methos judged grudgingly. "Nothing is safe for always."
Methos turned and surveyed the wounded bust’s field of vision. Then he pointed to the remains of a fire ring just beyond the precincts of the shrine, where once devotees had waited their turn to appeal to Aphrodite.
"No wonder Joe looked a little rough around the edges at the baths. He must have spent a lot of time out here, out of sight, off the grid, waiting for the boat to dock while the rest of the Watchers were scurrying hither and yon after a rumor."
"He watched over your broken statue for you for days." Amanda stepped back a pace and watched Methos’ eyes. "I have to ask. What was that scene in the baths really all about? Why did you go after Joe with a knife? You and Joe were laughing, but it wasn’t really a joke, was it?"
"There are no better jokes." Methos paused as he mulled over the question, not joking. "It was a test. Joe has a pattern, a certain rhythm in his responses to danger. When he’s attacked, he fights. But when he’s been made helpless, kidnapped or been compromised, in word or deed, he tends to offer up his throat first."
"So when you threatened him with a knife, and he didn’t immediately surrender and try to talk you down…which would have been the most logical and reasonable reaction, by the way," Amanda tried to point out.
"He fought. He fought on, even after he recognized me, just for the joy of it. So I knew he hadn’t betrayed us, not down deep in the soul, where it counts the most. Joe’s thumos doesn’t lie."
"I trust this means we get to postpone any strangling," Amanda commented archly. "Though if you ask me, I still think Archilochus was a jerk."
"I trust this means the winner still pays up on our original wager," Methos said with a certain air of anticipation. "Where do we take Sappho’s crate for safekeeping, Toronto? Switzerland? We could share custody, even. Have visitation rights, like a proper modern couple."
"Details," Amanda waved off. "We’ll still let Joe decide. The important thing is, who gets to teach Joe proper Greek? He’s right, the songs should live."
"Joe doesn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about either location, now that I think about it," Methos said. "Either is a no-win situation for him."
"New wager. I’ll teach Sappho, you tutor Archilochus, we’ll see who gets to work on his accent in bed first. Joe wins either way."
"Unfair advantage!" Methos protested. "Joe’s always been a love over war kind of guy. And he has fierce...predilections."
"I’m counting on it," Amanda cooed. "All’s fair, as they say."
"Maybe I can get Matilde on retainer," Methos speculated, already planning ahead.
"Proxies don’t count," Amanda warned.
"Polyandry counts. In fact, it’s mandatory under the lesson plan, if we’re going to have a proper symposium." Methos’ mind started to craft a variety of vengeances for Joe Dawson’s foray into fraud. "If we work this right, when Joe retires from the Watchers, we could make a fortune on tour, selling Sapphic blues. We could be Joe’s roadies. Or even his backup dancers. ‘Jiving Joe Dawson and the Aphrodisiacs.’ "
"His own personal groupies. The Fanboy of the Apocalypse rides again! It sounds like a plan. We’ll have to test it again over ouzo." Amanda cast her eye around the hidden vale, warmed by the vision. The evening breeze off the sea tugged at her hair, and she raised her collar as the rays of the setting sun faded. "Look. There’s more to see inside the cave. There’s a light."
A single smokeless LED Coleman lantern gleamed in the darkness beyond, casting light where no torch had burned in two millennia. Slowly they edged inside the entrance, stepping beyond the guardian. The lava tube widened beyond the tumbled entrance, sealed in by the blockage for two millennia. Whorls of cooled lava wound around the walls of the alcove. The chamber itself was sere and austere, ending just twenty paces within, blocked by another collapse of the tube. The central space was occupied by a modest altar, dusted but dull, all decoration long stripped by inattention and time.
Sappho’s warm visage, transformed with an archaic smile, gazed at them from beside the ancient altar, gracing the precincts within as the cloven bust held sentry without. Her statue nestled into a natural niche as if it had never been molested by mortal hands or Immortal designs.
"Sappho has come home," Methos felt his hackles rise, and the ancient songs came flooding back as designs on distant tombs in Toronto and Geneva drained away.
"How did she get here?" Amanda whispered. "There’s no road."
"There’s no footprints." Methos studied the ground. "Dropped from the heavens? There’s no vehicle tracks, either."
"The archaeologist’s helicopter," Amanda deduced, relaxing. "The footprints were blown away."
"And he recruited some local stevedores to do the heavy lifting. Probably Costas’ cousins, now that I think about it," Methos said, adding to himself, "Bright, bright bard, keeping it all in the family."
"What was that about family?" Amanda’s sharp ears tuned in to the word.
"We’ll have to kindle a Haephaestian flame just for Joe," Methos said. "At least a token branch or two, in honor of lost loves, and loyal companions. Too bad I left my incense in my other toga."
"Rebecca would approve," Amanda agreed, "As long as we don’t soot up Silanion’s statue. What else can we do? You’re the one who knew Sappho. How do we rededicate the shrine?"
"Sing. And honor Aphrodite." Methos stepped before the entrance, and spoke in soft entreaty:
Songs that move the heart of the shaken heaven,
Songs that break the heart of the earth with pity,
Hearing, to hear them.
"Do you trust me?" Methos held out his hand to Amanda as a tender new spark of sanctified space tickled the nape of his neck. "It’s been too long since I laid an offering to Aphrodite."
The ancient flame in his eye made her pause. Amanda slowly placed her moon washed hand in his, trusting, for now. "It pays to stay in practice. I feel it too. Holy ground."
Methos’ eyes adjusted to the light as they stepped within the alcove. "Look. Joe left something on the plinth. At least, I hope it was Joe." He peered into the gloomy corners of the precincts, as the prickle of holy ground grew stronger, and Sappho’s archaic smile came to life.
Amanda smiled as well, honoring the solitary offering, gleaming rosy gold upon the altar.
A honeyapple.
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