The Thread by Victoria Hislop Page A

one!’
    She clamoured to be allowed off but her desperate attempts to stand up caused the little vessel to rock precariously and her panic was clearly putting everyone in danger.
    ‘People are fighting to get on these boats, not off!’ insisted a burly man, grabbing her wrists and pulling her down. ‘Now just bloody well sit down so we can get out of here! Someone else will bring your kid.’
    A wall of people now stood between the five-year-old and the water, obscuring the sight and sound of her sobbing mother.
    The little girl was preternaturally calm. This was her home city and she was certain to find someone to help her. Surrounded by the maelstrom of shouting, fear and burning, she wandered away from the port. The agony of her raw skin now began to torment her.
    Meanwhile, Leonidas continued to meander blindly away from the crowds. There was an intense throbbing inside his head, as though the screams around him were within his skull. He sank down in a doorway and buried his head in his hands, wanting to block out the chaos around him.
    Eventually he looked up, as if he could feel the child’s eyes on him. In her white dress, she looked like an angel without wings, and behind her pale silhouette the distant fire surrounded her with a supernatural glow. She was a fairy, a spirit, but she was crying.
    This vision stirred him to action and he stood up.
    This little angel made him feel brave. He saw that she was clutching her arm.
    ‘It hurts,’ she said, bravely.
    ‘Let me look.’
    The vulnerable patch of raw skin needed protection and, without a moment’s hesitation, he ripped off his shirtsleeve.
    ‘You must get it bandaged up properly, but this will do for now,’ he said, tying the fabric round her arm. The heavy cotton khaki looked incongruous next to the fine white muslin, which he noticed was embroidered with delicate flowers.
    ‘So where are you going? Why are you wandering about alone?’
    ‘My mother and sister have gone …’ she turned and pointed towards the sea, ‘… on a boat.’
    Her innocence was transcendent.
    ‘We have to get you on a boat, then, don’t we?’
    She held her arms out so that he could pick her up and together they went back towards the clamouring crowds.
    ‘What’s your name?’ he asked her. ‘And where do you come from?’
    ‘I’m Katerina. And I don’t come from anywhere.’
    ‘You must come from somewhere,’ he teased, happily distracting her with their conversation.
    ‘I didn’t have to come from somewhere. I was already here.’
    ‘So this is where you live. In Smyrna?’
    ‘Yes.’ Almost impossibly, Leonidas found himself smiling. Her childlike detachment from her situation seemed almost mystical. His own despair seemed to lift.
    Katerina was weightless in his arms. As light as a fairy, he mused. He had only ever lifted one other child, his nephew, Dimitri, and that was more than a year ago. Even then, Dimitri had been heavier than this little person. In spite of the rank odour of sweat and smoke around him, he could smell that the child who wrapped her arms so tightly round his neck gave off an aroma of clean linen and fresh flowers.
    The dense crowd responded to his authoritative voice and what remained of his soldier’s uniform, and parted to let them through. He could feel the crunch of broken glass and had to avoid tripping on all the abandoned domestic objects underfoot. A small child, especially a barefooted child, as so many were, would not have survived for a minute all alone in this chaos.
    Leonidas spoke to a woman who seemed in charge of the boats and explained that the child was injured. Soon she was being helped into a boat.
    ‘Look after my sleeve!’ he shouted cheerily. ‘I’ll need it back!’
    ‘I promise!’ the little girl called out.
    Hers was the first smile he had seen in a year. In all his time in active service, he had rarely seen such stoicism.
    Leonidas waved until she was a speck on the horizon. Then he headed back to the