Tom Holt by An Historical Novel Olympiad

Author:An Historical Novel Olympiad [Olympiad, An Historical Novel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-04-07T21:15:11+00:00

‘So you see,’ Oenophilus said, ‘we’ve got to find the prince as soon as we possibly can, before he changes his mind. I’m afraid we were shamefully rude to him yesterday; we’d hate for him to go away and get help from somebody else.’

When I’d heard as much as I could take, I told them I’d go find Pentheus, and left the house. Actually, I did have a pretty shrewd idea of where I might find him; the previous day I’d noticed a fairly secluded spring welling out of the side of the hill, about two hundred paces from the house. Sure enough, there they both were. Dusa’s hair was wet, and she was combing it while Pentheus sat on a rock gazing at her as if she was Odysseus’ first sight of Ithaca.

‘All right,’ I demanded, ‘how did you do it?’

Pentheus spun round and scowled at me. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said. Dusa, though, just lifted her head and turned to look at me.

‘Flour,’ she said.

‘Flour?’

She nodded. ‘Just ordinary flour, sprinkled generously over a coat of olive oil. I was afraid the oil would seep through and leave big ugly yellow patches, but it didn’t. Of course, there wasn’t much light for them to see by, only what was coming from the little lamp we smuggled in.’

I was curious. ‘What about the flash of light at the end? That sounded like it was impressive.’

Dusa laughed. ‘That was just Pentheus with a mirror - that ivory-backed one we found in the wooden box on board the ship. Knew it’d come in handy for something. Anyway, he flashed the mirror and then immediately pinched out the lamp. Pretty convincing effect, don’t you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t there, remember? But my opinion doesn’t matter anyway; it’s the princes you have to deal with.’ I took a breath. ‘Talking of whom-‘ I added.

‘Well?’ Pentheus said. ‘Come on, time we weren’t here.’ He stood up. ‘You aren’t going to tell anyone, are you?’

‘He wouldn’t do anything like that,’ Dusa said. ‘Besides, if he goes to the princes and tries to make them believe that what they saw was just me all covered in flour, I don’t think he’ll succeed. And they might get quite upset, thinking he’d tried to make a fool out of them.’

I lifted my head. ‘At least you were considerate enough not to tell me what you were thinking of doing before you did it,’ I said. ‘If I’d known, I’d have worried myself to death. But what god put such a crazy idea into your heart to begin with?’

Dusa giggled. ‘It was that old story,’ she said. ‘You know, the illustrious ancestor who got slung out of his kingdom, and used the same trick to get back? That’s why I thought it might work. After all, it worked back then.’

‘Oh, so it was your idea, then?’ I said angrily. ‘Dusa, of all the idiotic-‘

‘It worked,’ she repeated. ‘Which means it wasn’t idiotic at all. Quite inspired, in fact.

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