on. ‘I have had my share of pain,’ she finally said, her voice faint and sorrowful. ‘I, too, lost someone once.’
Part Two
1
Crete, 1936–1950
Calliope gave birth to her firstborn, a baby girl named Froso, in the depths of winter in 1936 while the highest peaks of the mountains were covered in snow and the sea battering the coast roared like an angry beast. Giving birth was no more difficult for her than if she were climbing a rock to pick wild sage and thyme, with little fuss and bother and hardly enough pain to remember. But she wasn’t to know that the pain she had escaped in bringing her baby girl into the world would be bestowed on her many times over later on in her life. ‘Next time I’ll give you a son,’ Calliope said to Nikiforos, her husband, when he peered with slight disappointment into the cradle. But even if baby Froso hadn’t been the boy her father had hoped for, she was growing up to be as strong and tough as any boy, despite her feminine good looks. As an infant she was healthy and robust, with a mop of hair black as jet and eyes to match, strong lungs and an equally strong grip. Calliope did eventually give her husband the son he desired to help him in the fields, drink raki with him when he grew up, and fight by his side when needed, as fighting was an essential part of life in Crete. The island had seen much of it over the centuries, from the Saracens to the Venetians, from the Ottoman Turks to the Germans in World War Two. Readiness to fight was as fundamental to Cretan men as passion, heroism and honour; it ran hot in their blood in equal measures.
But although Calliope and Nikiforos Mavrantonis’s firstborn had been a daughter, she was the one who stood tall by her parents’ side, helping both mother and father in every way until the boy was old enough. Androulios was born long after Calliope had given up hope for another child.
‘I thought the Holy Virgin had turned a deaf ear to my prayers,’ she exclaimed after she discovered she was pregnant. ‘I lost count of how many candles I lit, begging her to grant me a boy.’
‘I don’t know how you know it’s going to be a boy, Mother,’ Froso said with irritation. She could never understand this obsession with sons. As far as she was concerned, most boys were a nuisance. A baby sister would have been more welcome.
‘Whatever it is, so long as it’s a healthy baby I’m happy,’ her mother replied, feeling a sense of shame for expressing her preference. ‘You are right, my girl,’ she hastened to add. ‘Look at you! I couldn’t be more proud to have a daughter such as you, as good as any son, and I would be more than happy if God granted me more daughters.’
By the time Androulios was born Froso was eight and she took a loving maternal role towards her baby brother; by the time she was in her early teens, she was already blossoming into adulthood.
‘He is luckier than the luckiest, this baby,’ her mother would tell her as the young girl helped with taking care of her sibling. ‘He has two mothers to look after him.’
By then Froso had stopped going to school, which she had attended for six years. A group of children would gather at the square where a bus would pick them up, take them to school in the nearest larger village in the hills and bring them home each day, until they completed their last and sixth year. Most of Froso’s childhood had been spent with World War Two raging in the background; then, after it ended at last, a bitter civil war broke out throughout the whole of Greece, prolonging any return to normal life.
The village up the hill, although not much larger than the village by the coast, was considered something of a centre for the region, having not only a school but also a post office, a small bank and two larger general stores as well as a weekly market. Once a month Calliope would accompany her daughter on the bus to do her errands and wait for Froso to ride back home with her. As the young girl grew, so did her good looks, and there were plenty of lads who were sweet on her. Calliope watched over her like a hawk, keeping