Carver's Quest Read online

  Adam nodded.

  ‘You must tell Polly to serve you one of his best bottles of burgundy at dinner tonight and charge it to my account.’ Garland took Emily’s hand to help her into the carriage. ‘He has a habit of forc-

  ing his guests to drink the most filthy wines if he is not watched carefully.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Carver,’ the young woman said, as she settled into her seat. ‘It has been a pleasure to meet you again in so unexpected a fashion.’

  Adam raised his hat as Garland climbed into the landau and tapped the driver on the shoulder with his stick. The horses were eager to be on their way. The carriage moved abruptly into the road and departed in a furry of dust. Adam caught a last view of Emily, her head turned to look at him and her hand waving farewell.

  * * * * *

  ‘Garland? That’s the MP chappie, ain’t it? My pater knows him, I think.’ Samways, seated behind a large desk in an airless office in the embassy, was red in the face and sweating fiercely. On the wall behind him was a portrait of the queen. The artist had caught Victoria at one of her sterner moments and she looked to be scowling down on her perspiring representative in Athens.

  ‘He is in the House, yes.’ Adam turned his eyes away from the glowering queen and glanced briefly from the one window in the room. He could see the leaves of a tree fluttering in a light breeze outside and hear the faint noise of traffic in the square below. ‘But he is in Athens at present. I saw him at St Paul’s on Sunday.’

  ‘Oh, I know he’s in Athens, old boy. Saw him at the service myself.’

  ‘And you know where he is staying in the city, do you?’ Adam had assumed that Garland was staying at the Angleterre but enquiries had shown this assumption was wrong. He was now hoping that the man at the embassy could help to locate him.

  ‘Might do, old boy.’ Samways moved a bronze inkstand from one side of his desk to the other. He stared at it, as if judging the aesthetic effect of shifting its position, and, clearly dissatisfied, moved it back again. ‘Might do. But I’m not sure I ought to let you in on the secret.’

  ‘It is a secret, is it?’

  The embassy man smiled slyly. ‘Not sure I’d go so far as to call it that,’ he said, tempting Adam to remark that that was exactly what he had just called it.

  ‘Did I, old boy? Just a turn of phrase. It’s not a secret. Or at least not a secret that the embassy wants kept. But Garland himself might not want you knowing it.’

  ‘This is not a matter of any great consequence, Samways.’ Adam tried to make his voice as casual in its tone as he could. He sensed that, if the man from the embassy thought there was much significance in his enquiry, he would not tell him what he wanted to know. It seemed there must be some hidden motive behind Garland’s arrival in the city, some reason for his visit of which the embassy was aware. Why else would Samways be so circumspect? ‘I met Garland at my club in London last month. The Marco Polo. I thought I would leave my card. But it is of no great moment. If you do not know where he is staying…’ Adam rose from his seat as if to leave the room.

  ‘I did not say that I didn’t.’ Samways’s desire to appear a man in the know was at war with his belief that discretion on the subject of Garland was required. He reached an arm across the table as if to seize Adam by the hand and prevent his departure. Discretion, it seemed, had lost.

  ‘Look, I’m sure you’re a man who can keep his mouth shut, Carver, when it’s required.’

  Adam agreed that he was.

  ‘Garland’s here on a delicate mission. Not many people know he’s here. Can’t tell you more than that. Probably shouldn’t have told you anything at all. But you’re a college man, ain’t you? If I can’t trust an old college man, who can I trust?’

  Adam assumed that the question was a rhetorical one and left it unanswered.

  ‘And if you know Garland of old, no harm in telling you he’s staying here at the embassy.’

  ‘At the embassy?’ Adam was surprised.

  ‘Thought he’d be more inconspicuous here than at the Angleterre. He’s only here for a few days. If you want to leave your card, I’ll make sure he receives it.’

  Adam reached into his pocket and took out his silver card case. He opened it and handed one of the cards to Samways. The diplomat turned it over suspiciously, as if he thought it might have some hidden message scribbled on its rear face, and then placed it in a small tray on his desk.

  ‘When you saw Garland at St Paul’s,’ Samways said, ‘you must have seen the girl who was with him.’

  ‘There was a girl with him, yes.’

  ‘Quite a stunner, ain’t she? She’s staying here as well. Calls herself his god-daughter.’ Samways leered unpleasantly. ‘Ain’t heard that one before.’

  Adam felt a strong temptation to lean across the desk and punch the embassy man on the nose, but he resisted it.

  ‘She’s very beautiful, certainly. Do you know anything more of her?’

  Samways shook his head.

  ‘Garland has a reputation, though, don’t he? Randy old devil. He’s old enough to be her grandfather, never mind her godfather.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The young Englishman drew a long breath as he reached the top of the Acropolis. He turned to his companion and forced a strained smile to his face. Their exertions, so soon after breakfast, had tired him more than he had thought they would. Adam was a fit man. He had been one of the first men at Cambridge to box under the new Queensberry rules for the sport and he had rowed on the river as one of the college eight. Since moving in to Doughty Street, he had been a regular patron of the German gymnasium in St Pancras where he had exercised with dumb-bells and weights. And yet the climb from the ancient agora to the Acropolis had taken its toll in the morning heat. Behind him, the white colonnade of the Parthenon gleamed in the sun. Adam took a handkerchief from his pocket. He removed his hat and mopped his brow. Now standing at his side, Rallis, just as elaborately attired as the Englishman, seemed not to feel the heat.

  ‘It is a fine sight, is it not?’ he said.

  ‘The finest in the world,’ Adam agreed. ‘I saw it once before, in sixty-seven, and I have never forgotten it. The memory of it has warmed many a chilly day in London in the last few years.’

  The two men continued to stand and admire the ancient temple to Athena. Adam, recovering swiftly from the rigours of the climb, was the first to move.

  ‘It is a great pity that it was impossible to bring my camera to Athens,’ he said, holding up his hands to frame the view he might have taken.

  ‘It has been difficult enough to carry our own selves up to this point,’ the Greek lawyer said, smiling. ‘I am by no means certain that we could have carried your photographic equipment as well.’

  ‘We could have hired men to bring it. It has been done often enough before. I have seen photographs of the buildings here while sitting in the library of the Marco Polo Club back in Pall Mall. A chap named Stillman showed them to me. An American who was staying in London.’

  Adam began to pick his way across the rocks on the summit of the Acropolis. He gestured back towards the path where they had climbed up.

  ‘What is that unsightly horror? I remember it from my visit with Fields. And it was in one of Stillman’s photographs.’

  Rallis looked over his shoulder at the tall stone building to which his companion was pointing.

  ‘The Frankish Tower. It was built by the Florentines several centuries ago. The Turks, when they occupied the city, used it to store gunpowder.’

  ‘It is a filthy excrescence,’ Adam exclaimed. ‘A blot on the landscape. It does its very best to spoil the approach to the sublime. Someone should use gunpowder to blow it up.’

  ‘It would not be missed, would it?’ the Greek agreed. ‘But let us continue to turn our backs on it and feast our eyes on the temple to Athena. Or on the maidens of the Erechtheum.’ He waved his hand towards the ruins of a smaller temple to their left, the columns of its porch shaped into female fi
gures carrying the weight of the building on their heads.

  ‘Ah, the caryatids!’ Adam was filled with enthusiasm once more. ‘I see these regularly in London.’

  Rallis looked puzzled. ‘In the photographs of Mr Stillman again?’ he asked.

  Adam shook his head. ‘Copies of them stand guard over the crypt of the new church of St Pancras. In the Euston Road. But they look better here in the Greek sun than they do beneath the English rain.’

  The two men seated themselves on one of the fallen stones that littered the surface of the Acropolis. It was still early in the morning and there were few other visitors to disturb the tranquillity.

  ‘It is enjoyable to act the tourist,’ the Greek said after a few moments. ‘But I have also been busy in the days since we first met.’

  Adam raised an eyebrow enquiringly. The meeting at the embassy party had been a huge success. Rallis had been intrigued by their plans. Adam, and more importantly Professor Fields, had been impressed by the Greek. It was now accepted that the lawyer would join them on any expedition out of Athens.

  ‘I have asked questions of many people I know. Of scholars who know much about the ancient manuscripts that are still to be found in Greece. Not one of them knows anything of Euphorion.’

  Adam looked crestfallen. ‘It seems we are on a wild goose chase,’ he said.

  ‘Not necessarily, my friend.’ The Greek was smiling to himself. ‘I have spoken also to a fellow countryman who spends his days drinking coffee at the Oraia Ellas.’

  ‘The café in town?’ Adam knew the Oraia Ellas as a haunt of visitors to Athens. He had been there himself on two occasions. The tables had been filled with Frenchmen and Germans, Americans and English. Any Greek who spent long hours there, he thought to himself, was probably a government agent employed to eavesdrop on the conversation of foreigners.

  ‘You know it, of course. My fellow countryman remembers an Englishman who came there several times. About a year ago.’

  ‘Every Englishman who arrives in Athens visits the Oraia Ellas at least once, Rallis. What is the significance of one visitor out of hundreds? Thousands?’

  ‘This Englishman was tall. And he had a scar near his right eye.’ The lawyer waggled his finger above his own brow. ‘Like a crescent moon, my fellow countryman said.’

  ‘Creech. That must have been Creech.’

  ‘Precisely, my friend, the man you described to me two days ago. And he was asking a lot of questions. Some of them were very peculiar questions. He wanted to travel out of the city. But not to the usual places Englishmen want to travel. Not to Marathon or to Missolonghi. This Englishman wanted to head north, out of the kingdom and into Turkey in Europe. He wanted to go to the monasteries at Meteora.’

  ‘Meteora?’

  ‘You do not know Meteora, Mr Carver?’

  Adam again shook his head. ‘Although Fields spoke the other day of Greek monasteries,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he meant these ones at Meteora.’

  ‘They are on the plains of Thessaly. They are among the most surprising buildings that we Greeks have constructed.’ Rallis smiled to himself at the thought of how surprising the monasteries were. ‘This English gentleman with the strange scar, he wanted to go to one in particular. Agios Andreas.’

  ‘And Agios Andreas is known to you? It is one of the monasteries?’

  ‘Its fame is not as great as that of the Great Meteoron or the Holy Monastery of Varlaam. But, yes, I know of it. It has its own small renown.’ The Greek continued to smile, as if at a private joke he might possibly be willing to share if the moment was right.

  ‘What kind of small renown, Rallis? You must not keep me in suspense in this malicious way.’

  ‘According to what I have been told, its library is said to contain many ancient manuscripts.’

  ‘Endless works by the dullest of the church fathers, no doubt.’

  ‘No, my informant believed that Agios Andreas held more than just religious works. It has manuscripts of the ancient pagans. Of Aristotle and Homer.’

  ‘Aha! And of Euphorion, perhaps.’

  The Greek lawyer inclined his head, as if to suggest that this was indeed possible.

  ‘Did this man with the crescent moon scar who was so eager to visit Agios Andreas find the answers to the questions he was asking?’

  ‘Alas, my fellow countryman does not know. The Englishman, he says, did not come again to Oraia Ellas after the summer months. But whether or not he succeeded in travelling to Meteora…’ Rallis shrugged. ‘Who can tell?’

  * * * * *

  Two days passed and Rallis invited Fields and Adam, accompanied by a grumbling Quint, to join him at his house overlooking Constitution Square. As noon approached on another hot and cloud-free day in the city, the professor climbed the three steps to the main entrance and stared at the large brass knocker on the door. It was fashioned into the face of an old man with flowing hair and untamed beard.

  ‘It is intended to represent Poseidon, I believe,’ he remarked, peering at the door knocker as if uncertain what purpose it might serve. ‘It seems a curious choice of decoration. I cannot see what connection there can be between the god of the sea and admittance to a man’s house.’

  ‘Perhaps Hestia, as goddess of the hearth, might be more appropriate,’ Adam said, ‘but we are not here to debate Rallis’s choice of household decoration, Professor. Do make use of Poseidon’s head.’

  ‘For gawdsake, knock on the bleedin’ door, will you?’ Quint muttered, although not loudly enough for the professor to hear him. ‘It’s ’ot enough to fry eggs on the pavement out ’ere.’

  Fields lifted the hinged image of the god. He rapped it firmly against the door. The sound of brass on wood echoed and reverberated through the house and was then followed by silence. The professor was about to raise Poseidon once more when Adam rested a hand on his arm.

  ‘There is no call to do so, sir. I can hear footsteps inside.’

  It was Rallis himself who opened the door.

  ‘I have allowed the servants to take the day off,’ he said, spreading his arms in a gesture of welcome. ‘All save one. We shall have the house to ourselves as we make our plans. No eyes or ears upon us. Come this way, gentlemen.’

  The lawyer directed them towards the staircase across the hallway, its perimeter lined with statues of nymphs in loose drapery. With Quint loitering a moment to examine the marble maidens more closely, the three men followed their host up the stairs.

  ‘My library,’ Rallis said, throwing open a door on the first floor with a flourish. He stood to one side and allowed his guests to enter before him. There was another man already in the room. He was standing in the shadows by the window drapes. It was difficult to see anything of his face but it was impossible to miss his size. Quint whistled as he saw him.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said under his breath. ‘ ’E’s the size of St Bride’s steeple.’

  ‘Andros has spent much of the morning watching the traffic passing,’ Rallis said. ‘He is not accustomed to the city. It is only the second time he has been in Athens.’

  The man, Adam thought, was like one of the Gigantes, giants of Greek legend. He towered over the other men in the room. Adam was more than six feet tall himself but Andros was at least a head higher.

  ‘He was born on one of the farm estates my family owns in Attica,’ the lawyer continued. ‘He has lived and worked there, all his life.’

  ‘Are they all ’is size in Attica?’ Quint asked.

  ‘No, Mr Quint. Andros is an exceptional man there as he would be everywhere else.’

  The huge Greek moved out of the shadow but he continued to stand impassively at the window, looking down at the streets below. Adam could tell that he was aware the others were talking of him. The giant turned and spoke briefly to his master.

  ‘He is curious about the carriages in the street. He had forgotten how many there were.’ Rallis made a swift remark to his servant in Greek and then turned back to his guests. ‘But let us
go through to my study.’

  The lawyer opened an oak door between the bookshelves and indicated that they should all walk into the next room. As they did so, Andros, bringing up the rear, was obliged to stoop in order to avoid knocking his head on the lintel of the door. Rallis’s reference to his study had suggested some cramped retreat from the world, but the room they entered was almost as large as the library. Light streamed into it from a pair of long windows at its far end and fell onto a baize-covered writing desk beneath them. Another escritoire, pens and paper spilling from its numerous drawers and compartments, was placed against the opposite wall. By its side was a large globe on an iron pedestal. Fields walked across to it and, reaching out his hand, set it spinning. More bookshelves ran along the walls at either side.

  In the centre of the room stood a mahogany table and three chairs. They looked out of place, as if they belonged elsewhere in the house and had only recently been brought here for this conference. The Greek lawyer gestured towards them and Adam and the professor seated themselves at the table. Like two mismatched sentries guarding the entrance to a temple, Quint and the giant Greek took up positions standing either side of the door through which they had all just come.

  Rallis walked to the bookshelves behind Adam. He reached up and took down something from one of them. He came to the table and placed it in front of the two Englishmen. It was a map. The lawyer carefully unrolled it.

  ‘Please hold the ends of the chart, gentlemen,’ he said. He crossed to the desk beneath the window and picked up first a glass paperweight and then a silver inkstand with a small figure of Hercules, club in hand, standing on it. Returning to the mahogany table, he positioned both on the map.

  ‘Those will suffice, I think,’ he said. ‘And now we can look down, like eagles, on the land where we propose to travel.’

  ‘Which road shall we be taking?’ Adam asked, his eyes quickly scanning the chart.

  ‘There are few roads in my country that are worthy of the name. I am embarrassed to admit it, but once we have travelled from Athens to Piraeus, there is no road to take. Certainly no road to match your English roads.’