The Lost Labyrinth

EIGHTEEN
I

Gaille went into the petrol station to pay while Iain filled his tank. 'You're already doing so much for me,' she said, when he came in. 'You must let me pay for this.'

'Too kind.' He got out some money anyway, to buy mints and a packet of sweets. 'I've got a bit of a throat,' he explained. 'All this talking; I'm not used to it.'

'Then they're on me too. You wouldn't be talking if I wasn't asking.'

'You'll spoil me.'

'I think that ship has sailed.'

They laughed together as they went back out to the car. Iain opened the sweets and poured them haphazardly into the coin-tray between them, then grabbed a mint for himself and squeezed it between thumb and forefinger until it squirted out of its wrapper straight into his mouth. 'Where were we?' he asked.

'You'd just proved Minoan Crete was Atlantis.'

'Ah, scepticism. An academic's best friend.'

'It's always served me well. Especially on questions that can't be answered.'

He leaned forward to make sure there was no traffic coming, pulled out onto the road. 'I wouldn't be so sure of that. I mean, all those points of correspondence I just gave you must mean something. And then there are the inadvertent clues in Plato.'

'Inadvertent clues?'

'Sure. You know the kind of thing. Like that story in Herodotus, about the pharaoh who wanted to circumnavigate Africa. He commissioned some Phoenicians to sail south down the east coast, then back up the west.' He sucked on his mint a couple of times, then switched it from cheek to cheek. 'They reappeared three years later, claiming they'd done it. But Herodotus openly mocked them, because they said the sun had been to their right when they'd rounded the cape, when everyone knew that Africa didn't extend south of the equator. But of course we now know it does extend south of the equator, which makes pretty compelling evidence that they did actually complete the circumnavigation properly.'

'And there are similar details in Plato's account of Atlantis, are there?'

He nodded vigorously. 'People forget that the story of Atlantis is also the story of Athens, because it was the Athenians who led the fight against Atlantis. Plato and his contemporaries didn't know much about early bronze age Athens, other than for a few anecdotes in Thucydides. Yet Plato's account of Atlantis includes remarkably accurate details about bronze age Greek cities.' He popped another mint, gestured expressively at his throat. 'And he mentions a spring in the Acropolis, for example, blocked up by an earthquake. There was no such spring in his time, yet archaeologists found one back in the 1930s. How could he have known about that? Was it really just a lucky guess?'

'It's hardly proof of Atlantis.'

'No, but it makes his account worth taking seriously. And who knows what's still out there, just waiting to be found? It's one of the reasons I love hiking in the mountains here so much; there's still every chance of discovering an important new site. And if not here, there's always Santorini. There are still whole Pompeiis to rediscover beneath the volcanic ash. What if we found something specifically mentioned by Plato? A scene from his story represented in a frieze, say. Or that golden statue of Poseidon in a chariot pulled by six winged horses. Or some of the hundred Nereids upon their dolphins? Would those be enough for you?'

'Sure. If you found them.'

'Maybe we already have. Or traces of them, at least. You'd be amazed by how many artefacts we've recovered at Knossos that we've barely even looked at, let alone studied. Who can say what treasures aren't waiting for us among them?'

'I'm surprised you could tear yourself away,' smiled Gaille.

'Hey,' he grinned. 'Who can say what treasures aren't waiting for us at Petitier's place, either?'