The Secrets of Stelida

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Archaeologist Martin Day is invited to visit a site that is being excavating by his old university friend, Tim Lovejoy. Tim is working on Stelida, Naxos’s double-peaked hill, which has been a prehistoric workshop since the Stone Age; on its southern peak, however, is a Bronze Age sanctuary that is revealing extraordinary secrets. This is Day’s area of expertise and he enthusiastically joins the excavation, but between enjoying the traditional music of the Cyclades and rescuing a victim of the criminal underworld, he also discovers a more recent and much darker secret on the sun-scorched flanks of Stelida.

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Tormented by the relentless sun, and raked by gales that drive across sea and land, Stelida is an inhospitable and yet alluring place. From its lofty ridge that rivals great Mount Zas only in the wordless challenge that it makes, the solitary walker revels in the view: the glittering Aegean, nearby Paros island, Naxos’ ancient castle and its populated town. Yet ancient Stelida has been shaped by the storms and nudged by the tremors that jolt the Cycladic lands. Seabirds may ride the thermals, and ravens come and go, their cries carrying on the wind, but never does a songbird sing near the cave between the peaks, nor a crested lark ascend from the desiccated vegetation on the slopes. The earth remembers and the stones retain the secrets of the place.