Carver's Quest Read online

  ‘Antio sas.’ Adam tipped his hat in farewell at the two shabbily dressed men at their table. They made no reply but continued to draw impassively on their cigarettes. He pushed aside the flimsy drape that separated the darkness of the café interior from the morning sunshine. As he did so, he heard a rumbling like distant thunder. It was so like thunder, he later remembered, that he was about to look up to the heavens in search of the clouds that must have materialised so suddenly. Instead, he could only stare in horror at what was racing towards them. Fields was still lost in his own world, his back to the street. Behind him, and approaching at tremendous speed, were the chestnut horse and its wooden cart. In the short time Adam had spent paying the café owner, something must have disturbed the beast and sent it careering across the junction of the two roads. Realising that it was charging towards a collision, the horse suddenly veered leftwards but, as it did so, the barrow it was pulling spun round in the direction of the café front. There were yells of warning from passers-by but the professor, still oblivious to the uproar behind him, made no movement.

  Adam acted without thought or hesitation. Instinct replaced reasoning and he hurled himself towards Fields, like a swimmer diving full-length into a river. His outstretched arms struck the professor in his midriff. Both of them were propelled sideways just as the cart crashed into the table where they had been sitting. Momentum drove it on and clean through the window of the café with a terrific noise of shattering glass and splintering wood until finally the vehicle came to a halt. Adam, now sprawled across the professor’s body, felt a waterfall of tiny shards of glass shower down upon them both. He continued to lie there, aware now of the frantic whinnying of the chestnut horse and a hubbub of voices in the background. To his relief, he could sense Fields breathing heavily beneath his weight. He moved his arms and legs gingerly. Miraculously, there seemed to be no great damage. The café owner had emerged from the wreckage of his business together with his two customers, apparently unhurt and shocked, not into silence, but into voluble complaint and indignation. All three men roared and yelled. Picking himself up, Adam could hear loud demands that the owner of the horse and cart should make himself known to them. They were also threatening such retribution that he doubted anyone would step forward from the crowd that had gathered. Indeed, the driver of the cart had vanished. His vehicle was scarcely worth claiming. It had all but disintegrated in the impact. The chestnut horse had bolted up the street.

  Amidst the continuing clamour, Fields pulled himself groggily to his feet.

  ‘Are you hurt, Professor?’

  ‘I think not.’ The old scholar raised his hand to his brow. He looked curiously at a red smear on it. ‘There is blood here but no serious injury. What happened? One moment I was thinking of the library manuscripts and the next, like Icarus, I was plummeting earthwards.’

  ‘A runaway horse.’ Adam kicked aside fragments of wood and glass and picked up his hat from where it had fallen. ‘An accident.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘What else could it be?’

  For once, Professor Fields was silent.

  * * * * *

  The large room on the embassy’s ground floor was already crowded when Adam and the professor arrived in the Square of the Mint. Most of the men in attendance were dressed in black tie and jacket. A few of the Greeks, wishing perhaps to advertise their patriotism, wore what had come to be seen since the War of Independence as national dress: richly embroidered velvet jackets, two or three inside one another, accompanied white fustanelles, bound round the waist by leather belts. One fierce-eyed individual even had a silver dagger and scabbard hanging by his side, as if to suggest that he was a warrior chieftain only recently descended from his mountain hideout. Samways, appearing briefly to point out the more interesting guests to them before pushing his way back into the throng, identified him as a journalist on one of the city’s more radical newspapers.

  ‘They’re like the damn Scotch,’ Fields said with disgust as he watched Samways’s back disappear into the crowd. ‘Marching around in their ridiculous kilts, pretending to be great heroes.’

  The embassy man was not gone for long. Within a couple of minutes he had returned, forcing his way through the crush of people in the company of the man Adam and the professor had come to meet. Rallis was one of the majority that had chosen western dress. Indeed, his immaculately tailored suit would not have looked out of place in Piccadilly or Bond Street. He was of medium height and olive complexion. Samways had told them that the lawyer was not yet out of his twenties, but his jet black hair was already receding and his high forehead gave him the look of an older man. He bowed deeply on introduction but made no attempt at first to shake hands with them. Adam had the feeling that, just as they had attended the reception to judge him, Rallis was there to assess them. He might meet with their approval but there was no guarantee that they would meet with his.

  ‘I am delighted to meet you, gentlemen. Mr Samways has told me much about you.’ Rallis now reached out his hand to Adam. ‘I trust that you are enjoying your visit to Athens.’

  ‘It is a city that every lover of truth and beauty must enjoy,’ Adam said. ‘But we are finding the heat near intolerable. We are not used to such temperatures as yet.’

  ‘Ah, the heat, yes. It is fierce, is it not? Enough to drive a man as mad as the March hare.’

  ‘You have a fine grasp of a good old English simile, Mr Rallis,’ the professor said, shaking the Greek’s hand in his turn, and was rewarded with the briefest of smiles.

  ‘Oh, Alexander speaks English better than I do,’ Samways said. ‘He lived in London in the early sixties.’

  ‘I was there as a very young man.’ The Greek spoke as if he was now full of years and looking back on his distant past. ‘I was a student but I was also busy with the task of persuading your fellow countrymen to support the rightful claims of my people.’

  Adam raised an eyebrow enquiringly.

  ‘Our claims to land that should be Greece but which is ruled by the Turk,’ Rallis continued. ‘It is what we Greeks call the Megale Idea, the Great Idea. We long for a time when the nation will encompass all Greeks.’

  ‘Dreaming that Greece might still be free and all that?’ Samways said, clearly bored, his eyes idly roaming around the room.

  ‘A part of Greece is already free, Mr Samways. But the kingdom of Greece is not the whole of Greece. The Greek is not only he who inhabits the kingdom. The Greeks of Ioannina, of Salonika, even the Greeks of Constantinople, do they not deserve their freedom? What kind of a Greece is it that does not include Mount Olympus? Where the ancient gods look down on a land ruled by Turks?’

  Rallis was growing warm in his enthusiasm. His voice was raised above the ordinary level of social conversation, so much so that several people in his vicinity turned their heads to look at him.

  ‘All sounds a bit too political for me, old boy,’ Samways commented. ‘We embassy chaps should always steer well clear of politics.’

  ‘I see it is the same with the English as with the French or with the Germans. I discovered that it was so when I was in London,’ Rallis said. He had noticed that he was attracting attention and had lowered his voice. He was now smiling to take any sting from his words. ‘You are always kind enough to allow us a glorious past, but it is seldom you concern yourselves with our future.’

  ‘The future’s no business of ours, Alexander old chap. Difficult enough keeping up with what’s going on in the present.’ Samways had seen someone he wished to flatter on the other side of the room and was eager to extricate himself from the conversation. ‘I shall leave you with these two gentlemen. Although I suspect that they will prove to be like the rest of us. More interested in the past than the future.’

  Rallis watched the English diplomat push his way through the crowd and then turned to Adam and the professor.

  ‘I think that Mr Samways, perhaps, does not always concern himself even with my country’s present. But he is a good man.’<
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  Fields snorted. ‘Felix Samways is what he always was. A man with more money than he has brains. But he recommends you, Mr Rallis.’

  The Greek bowed his head as if to suggest that this recommendation merely proved the diplomat’s essential goodness.

  ‘He is very kind. However, for what is he recommending me? Not for legal work, he tells me. He speaks instead of ancient manuscripts. I must confess myself puzzled. But I am also intrigued. What manuscripts do these English gentlemen seek? I wonder to myself.’

  ‘The story is a long one, sir. But it is one that you should hear. It begins in London at a dinner in my club. A gentleman named Samuel Creech introduced himself to me.’ Adam took Rallis gently by the arm and, with the professor on his other side, guided the Greek lawyer towards a less crowded corner of the room.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sitting towards the back of the little Anglican church of St Paul’s, listening as best he could to the preacher’s quiet drone, Adam was able to survey the English community in Athens at worship. It was not, he decided, an altogether prepossessing sight. He could see Samways, stifling a yawn, in one of the pews further forward. Looking beyond the young diplomat, he could see more men he assumed were attached to the embassy. Some he recognised from the night of the reception. Others in the congregation, well-fed and well-dressed men and women with a look of indestructible self-satisfaction in their eyes, he took to be businessmen and their wives. One white-bearded old man, sitting stiffly to attention near the front, might have been one of the generation of English Philhellenes who had fought on the Greek side in the War of Independence. Bored by the service, Adam indulged himself in idle speculations about the life the elderly gentleman might have led. He might have witnessed the kind of adventures in the 1820s of which the young man had dreamed as a boy. He might have been one of Byron’s comrades at Missolonghi or a man who had sailed with the British fleet at the Battle of Navarino. These thoughts were enough to distract Adam slightly from the tedium of the service. He had not wished to attend St Paul’s this Sunday morning but the professor had insisted. Fields, it seemed, was too busy to go to church himself, but it was imperative that Adam should go.

  ‘There are few more revealing sights than our fellow countrymen at prayer,’ he had said. ‘You will lean more about the English Athenians in one hour at St Paul’s than in a week spent observing them elsewhere.’

  Adam was unsure that he wished to know much more about the English in Athens than he knew already. He was very certain that the professor was wrong in his assumption that they would best display their true characters while worshipping their god. However, he had chosen not to argue with Fields and had dutifully made his way to the Anglican church for the morning service. Now, here he was, crammed uncomfortably into a wooden pew, wondering anew why he had come. His eyes moved on from the ageing Philhellene and further towards the front of the congregation. He almost exclaimed aloud in surprise at what he saw. Sitting in a pew immediately beneath the pulpit was Emily Maitland. She was leaning forward, her lips slightly parted, listening to the sermon with more apparent attention than it deserved. Seated next to her, his face set in a faintly mocking smile, as if he could scarcely credit what the preacher was saying, was Lewis Garland.

  Adam was astonished to see them together. The MP’s presence in Athens was, of course, no great surprise. Adam had seen him in the restaurant of the Angleterre earlier in the week. At the time, the young man had made every effort to avoid Garland’s notice, slipping out of the room before the MP had spotted him. An encounter just at that time, Adam had thought, would have proved too complicated to negotiate. He had told Quint of his sighting, but not Fields. Yet what was Emily doing in the city? This was Athens, not Switzerland or Salonika. And why was Garland in the company of the enigmatic young woman who had visited Adam in London? How did an English businessman and member of the House of Commons know her? Was she another of his conquests? It was not a pleasant notion. As the clergyman continued to mumble relentlessly about the wages of sin, Adam found he could not begin to bring his thoughts into order or to find adequate answers to all the questions that filled his mind.

  When the service finally stumbled its way to its conclusion, he was the first on his feet and the first to make his way into the bright sunshine of the Sunday morning. His initial thought was to avoid coming face to face with Garland and Emily. If they had not seen him, what purpose was there in renewing acquaintance with them? If Emily was indeed one of the ageing Don Juan’s paramours, why torment himself with meeting them together? He began to walk away from St Paul’s, but he had gone no more than a hundred yards when curiosity and the overwhelming desire to speak to the young woman got the better of him. He turned and retraced his steps. The English expatriates were still trooping out of their church. The street was filled with their carriages. Ahead of him, Adam could see Lewis Garland escorting Emily towards a black landau. He hastened to intercept them.

  ‘Good morning, sir. I trust that you are enjoying your visit to Athens.’

  The MP smiled wrily as he shook the hand Adam proffered.

  ‘Miss Maitland said that she was sure she had noticed you among the congregation, Mr Carver. But we could not, at first, see you as we left. And – forgive me for saying this – I had not put you down as a regular churchgoer.’

  ‘You are right, sir, I am not. But I was told that I could not miss the Sunday service at St Paul’s. That everybody would be here. Well, everybody English, that is.’

  ‘And, as you can see, your informant was correct. Everybody is here.’

  Adam turned and raised his hat to the young woman.

  ‘I expected you to be taking the fresh mountain air by now, Miss Maitland. When we met last, I understood that you and your mother were soon to travel to Switzerland.’

  ‘Our plans were never set in stone, Mr Carver.’ Emily flushed very slightly as she replied. ‘After some consideration we decided that we should return to Salonika. But we have chosen to visit friends here in Athens for a week before we travel further north.’

  She looked at him almost defiantly, as if he might be tempted to dispute her statement.

  ‘I had not realised until a few minutes ago that you and Miss Maitland knew one another, Carver. She tells me that you met in London.’ Garland made his remark seem a casual one, but there was no disguising his curiosity about the circumstances in which Adam had encountered the young lady.

  ‘We were introduced by friends of my mother’s, were we not, Mr Carver?’ Emily was swift to intervene. ‘In Kensington.’

  ‘Yes, of course, Kensington.’

  ‘As I was saying to my godfather’ – Emily inclined her head towards the MP – ‘it was at an afternoon tea party. In aid of charity.’

  ‘And what charitable organisation is it upon which you bestow your patronage, Carver?’ Garland asked. ‘I do not think that you mentioned its name, Emily.’

  Adam struggled to think of some philanthropic body that he, together with Emily and her mother, might plausibly patronise.

  ‘The Society for the Employment of Necessitous Gentlewomen,’ he said, after a lengthy pause.

  Emily stifled a giggle, transforming it into a genteel clearing of her throat. Garland raised his eyebrow and looked from the girl to the young man and back, but could scarcely express the disbelief he clearly felt.

  ‘What did you make of the preacher here at St Paul’s, Carver?’ he asked, changing the subject. ‘Is he a bawler, would you say? Or more of a squeaker?’

  ‘I’m not sure I catch your meaning, Mr Garland.’

  ‘Every reverend gentleman I have ever heard is one or the other. Either they bawl so loud you need earmuffs or they squeak so you can’t hear more than one word in ten.’

  Adam laughed. ‘The gentleman who has delighted us this morning is more of a squeaker, I would say,’ he suggested.

  ‘I agree with you. Squeak, squeak, squeak. I was unable to follow his argument. Or even to hear it. His text appeared
to be from Ecclesiastes and to refer, as one might expect from that depressing book, to the vanity of human wishes, but whatever benefit there might have been in his thoughts on it was entirely lost on me. What about you, my dear? Did you gain wisdom and insight from the preacher’s sermon?’

  ‘There is always wisdom and insight to be gained from a sermon, Mr Garland, is there not?’ Emily said, looking as if this were the last thing she truly thought.

  The older man smiled. ‘So we are always led to believe, my dear,’ he said, ‘but you will excuse me for a moment. We must be on our way.’

  He turned to beckon his driver towards them. Adam and the young woman looked at one another but said nothing. The black landau began to approach.

  ‘And how is your man Quint, Mr Carver?’ Emily said hurriedly, eager to fill the sudden silence. ‘Is he here in Athens with you?’

  ‘He is, Miss Maitland. And, arrived in the birthplace of democracy, he has proved even more of a free spirit than he was in London. It is sometimes difficult to look at the pair of us and decide which is the master and which the man.’

  ‘You have encountered Carver’s servant, Emily?’ Garland said, turning back to them and seizing on the girl’s remark. ‘Was he also devoting his time to the assistance of necessitous gentlewomen?’

  Emily said nothing. She looked at Adam.

  ‘He was waiting with a cab when I left the tea party,’ the young man said. ‘Miss Maitland was good enough to condescend to speak briefly to him then. He has not forgotten it. He will be gratified that you remember him,’ Adam added, certain that Quint would be nothing of the kind.

  The carriage, with its two greys, now stood close to them. One of Garland’s servants was sitting with reins in hand. Another had climbed down from the landau and opened one of its doors.

  ‘I am sorry that we cannot stay longer, Carver,’ the MP said. ‘No doubt you and Emily would find further Kensington memories to share. But we have a luncheon appointment that cannot wait. Perhaps we will see you again. You are at the Angleterre, I assume?’