The Lost Labyrinth

II

'You must have heard the theories,' said Franklin. 'Why would people as sophisticated as Sophocles and Aristotle be so enraptured by the Mysteries, unless they'd experienced something truly transcendent? And what's the simplest explanation? Some ravishing coup de theatre? Some exquisite philosophical insight that has eluded us ever since? Or a generous dollop of acid in the drink? After all, one of the few things we know about Eleusis is that celebrants drank a barley brew called kykeon. Ergot grows on barley, and LSD is made from ergot. And it wouldn't be the only time that drugs were used as a way to experience the divine. The Hindu soma, for example. Peyote in Mexico. Cannabis in Germany.'

'The blue lotus in Egypt.'

'Exactly. The Aztecs called psilocybin mushrooms teonanacatl, which literally means flesh of the gods. The Greeks had the same conceit. Mushrooms were Zeus's plant because they so often spring up after thunderstorms. It's the rain, of course, but many people believed that they were a product of lightning strikes.' A man and a woman walked past the window at that moment, arms around each others' shoulders, looking at each other as they talked, rather than at the pavement. 'Zeus was the god of lightning,' continued Franklin, 'therefore mushrooms were his plant. And if you eat magic mushrooms, you certainly get a glimpse of extraordinary things. Petitier used to claim that the Catholic Eucharist was originally just amanita muscaria-those red-and-white capped mushrooms, you know.'

'The fly agaric,' said Knox.

'Exactly. There's plenty of evidence that they were held sacred by the early church. Those wonderful mushroom frescoes in Plaincourault and elsewhere, for example. Think of it: the body of Christ an hallucinogenic mushroom.'

'I begin to see why you and Petitier ran into problems,' said Knox.

'There are more serious problems with the theory than that it trod on toes, unfortunately,' said Franklin. He took a final puff of his cheroot, stubbed it out in the glass ashtray, tiny embers scattering. 'Ergot doesn't grow with any dependability, for one thing, and rarely in the kind of quantities they'd have needed. Extracting LSD is complex and precarious. Experiences would have been decidedly mixed. Some celebrants would have got sick or even died; others wouldn't have noticed anything at all. Besides, the Greeks were intimately familiar with drugs and their effects. They mixed their wine with all kinds of potent herbs. They used hemp and opiates regularly. Is it likely that so many highly intelligent and experienced people could have got stoned without realising it? And if they had realised it, would they truly have considered it the great numinous centrepiece of their lives?'

'Opiates and hemp give very different experiences than LSD,' said Knox.

'You sound just like Petitier,' smiled Franklin. 'He was certain he'd found the answer. As far as he was concerned, there was only one question to answer: how they prepared the potion with the technology available to them.'

Knox pushed to his feet and took both their glasses back to the drinks cabinet for a refill. 'Don't tell me,' he said, returning to the chairs. 'That's why you were really in trouble? You and Petitier searching for the secret of kykeon?'

Franklin shrugged acknowledgement as he took back his glass. 'We tried everything you could imagine. LSD, LSA, LSM and other such derivatives of ergot, all mixed up with opiates, marijuana, magic mushrooms and lord knows what else. We convinced ourselves it was serious and bold academic research. That we were pioneers!' He threw back his head and laughed heartily. 'We'd write up notes afterwards. Petitier insisted on that. It was utter gibberish, of course. We were kidding ourselves. The truth is, we were young men having fun. Too much fun.'

'Too much?'

He raised his glass in a wry toast. 'I began craving it every night. LSD isn't addictive; nor is hemp. But others of our ingredients were. My left hand began to tremble. I could feel my concentration wavering. I lost interest in things that had once compelled me. I was aware of all this, but I didn't know what to do about it.' He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. 'That was when I met Maria. It's one of the reasons I fell for her so hard, I suspect. Self-preservation. She was my lifeboat.' His expression softened, his gaze lengthened. 'Have you someone like that in your life? Someone who makes you want to do absurd things for them?'

'Yes,' said Knox.

'Keep good hold of them.'

'I intend to.' He put down his glass. 'So you met your wife-to-be and stopped taking drugs. What about Petitier? Presumably if your drug use was known about, his was too.'

Franklin nodded. 'The French School couldn't ignore it any longer, not after the scene he made at the Evans lecture, because he was roaring drunk at the time. And so he left. The irony is that his ideas have since gained traction. I think most people now accept that there was something in the kykeon. For one thing, celebrants described their experiences in such physical terms. They talked about sweating, about getting the cramps. They gave the impression that it was an ordeal as much as it was an ecstasy. Take my word for it: that's exactly like acid. It feels as though your soul is being torn from your body. The heart of the word intoxication is "toxic", after all; drugs are poisons, only in smaller doses.'

'It must have been a hell of a shock for you when Petitier reappeared,' said Knox. 'After all that time trying to bury your misspent youth, I mean.'

'Yes,' agreed Franklin. But there was something in his tone that made Knox look curiously at him. 'Oh, it was a shock, all right,' insisted Franklin. 'It's just, I've been thinking a great deal about it recently, and perhaps it shouldn't have been.'

'How do you mean?'

'It's one of the hazards of being an archaeologist here in Greece that farmers and other landowners keep pestering you with the magnificent treasures they're certain are buried on their properties, which they'll happily sell you for a very reasonable sum.'

'We have them in Egypt too,' smiled Knox. 'Amazing how rarely they find anything exciting on good agricultural land.'

'Quite. It was part of Petitier's job to answer such letters. He used to bring some of them back to the house, to give us all a laugh. But he'd visit Crete quite often too, and check some of the more promising leads out. And then he came into some money, I remember. His grandmother died; he celebrated with champagne.'

'What a charmer,' said Knox. 'So you think one of these letters may have alerted him to a real Minoan site; and that he bought it with his inheritance?'

'It's possible, don't you think? After all, he'd pretty much burned his academic bridges here; no one else was likely to employ him. And it would have been just like him to sulk off into the wilderness, vowing never to return; or not until he could prove himself right, at least, and all his critics wrong.'