Carver's Quest Page 36

  ‘Ah, of course, you are right.’ Fields was unmistakably disappointed but he waved his hand to Theophanes to indicate that he was ready to move on. ‘Another time, perhaps, another time.’

  * * * * *

  As midnight passed, Quint and Adam prepared for a nocturnal excursion. Brother Theophanes had led the travellers to the sparely furnished stone cells which were the monastery’s guest rooms. Adam had explained to their host that they were weary and wished to rest. They required no food. They needed only to sleep. The day was drawing to an end and darkness had already fallen. The monk, accustomed to retiring early to bed himself, had seemed to understand. Hand on his heart, he had bowed and left them. After a little conversation, the professor, Quint and Adam had gone their several ways to their own rooms. Some hours later, the manservant, obeying whispered instructions he had been given earlier, had tapped on his master’s door. Now the two of them stood in Adam’s room, ears cocked for the sounds of other people moving about, and prepared to reconnoitre the monastery.

  ‘We must not spend too long in exploration,’ Adam said. ‘But I cannot resist the temptation to escape the eagle-eyed scrutiny of the monks and look at the place myself.’

  ‘Ain’t some of these bearded buggers going to be still awake?’

  ‘They will all rise in the night at least once to perform their devotions. Probably several times. But they will be asleep now. I think we have an hour or two in which to investigate the monastery. Lead on, Quint.’

  The manservant opened the door and peered out.

  ‘What can you see?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Sod all. It’s as black as Newgate’s knocker out there.’

  ‘There will be light in the courtyard. Light from the moon. Let us take candles for the corridors.’

  Adam crossed the room and took the candles from the two iron sconces attached to the far wall. He handed one to Quint and the two men crept furtively into the passageway outside.

  ‘Which way?’ Quint hissed.

  His master motioned to the left and they began to shuffle in that direction. They passed the doors to other rooms and then came to the top of the flight of stone steps they had ascended earlier in the day. Even with the light from the candles, they found it difficult to see where they were going and Quint, in the lead, nearly stumbled and fell before he realised where he was. He cursed briefly and began to edge down the stairs. At the bottom, the archway opened onto the courtyard, which as Adam had predicted was lit by the moon. Quint cupped his hand protectively round the flame of the candle but the night was so still that he had scarcely need to do so.

  ‘Through the archway, Quint,’ Adam whispered. ‘Keep moving to the left. Let us see what other buildings face onto the court.’

  The servant made his way through the next arched doorway, his master close behind him. They found themselves in what was clearly a chapel. It was tiny, only a few yards square, but its walls and roof were covered in paintings. In the flickering light of the candles, Adam could make out the figure of Christ in majesty, surrounded by what were, he guessed, images of the saints. Peering more closely, he could just see the Greek lettering that identified them all. Even in the poor light, the rich colours the painter had applied three centuries earlier still glowed. One saint had a model of a church in his hand and was holding it out as if inviting the viewer to admire its architecture. As Adam turned to the left, an image of the Virgin and Child swam into view, the pudgy infant grasping the middle finger of its mother’s hand. She stared serenely into the middle distance. Fields would claim these paintings were nothing but primitive daubs, he thought, and yet there was something about them that held the attention. Numinous and otherworldly, they lodged themselves in the imagination.

  A smell of incense percolated through the chapel. Adam moved his candle again to look at the next wall. Here the painting appeared to depict the martyrdom of two saints. On the left of the picture, a man hung upside down from a gallows while another, not much more than a boy, was stabbing him in the neck. Blood was dripping to the ground. To the right a gridiron stood over open flames and another saint, recognisable by his halo, was strapped to it. Given his circumstances, he seemed to be remarkably cheerful. There was even the slightest hint of a forgiving smile on his face, as if he pitied his tormentors and wished he could point out to them the uselessness of torturing one of God’s elect.

  The last of the paintings the candles revealed before the two men turned and left the chapel was the pièce de résistance. It was a depiction of the Last Judgement. At the bottom a huge and hideous devil was sitting in a pool of fire and gnawing upon the bodies of several unfortunates. Around him capered a troop of merry imps armed with tiny tridents who prodded the damned as they milled aimlessly around the flames of hell. Up above sat the souls of the blessed, appearing unsurprisingly smug.

  ‘Look at them little bastards with the forks,’ Quint whispered. ‘They’re ’appy as pigs in shit.’

  ‘They do look as if they are enjoying their work, don’t they?’ Adam agreed. ‘But we cannot stay to admire their devotion to duty. We must move on.’

  They left the chapel and entered once again the small, paved courtyard which looked to be the centre of the monastery. In the dim light from the half-moon they could now make out two cypress trees in the far corner. Two more arched stone doorways opened off the courtyard. Quint looked briefly into the first one they approached.

  ‘Nothing ’ere,’ he said. ‘It’s just another door into the room where we come in. I can see the winding gear as fetched us up.’

  The next building had the outward appearance of another chapel. The two men stood outside its door, which appeared to have been designed for exceptionally short monks. For a moment, Adam wondered whether or not it was even worth entering, but the temptation to look at whatever wall paintings it might hold was enough to persuade him to duck his head and go in. Quint followed him. The room they entered was like a prison cell. Once inside, neither man could stand upright without grazing his head on the rough stone that formed its ceiling. As the light from their candles illuminated the darkness, both of them started back in surprise.

  ‘Sweet Jesus in ’eaven,’ whispered Quint hoarsely. ‘What in ’ell are these doing ’ere?’

  At the back of the room, there was a recess in the wall. It was piled high with human skulls. More than a hundred stared sightlessly out of the shadows. Adam had now recovered his composure. He held his candle high and allowed it to throw its flickering light into the empty eye sockets.

  ‘It is an ossuary, I believe,’ he said. ‘These are the skulls of monks from long ago.’

  ‘Ain’t they got no decency?’ Quint said, in disgust. ‘Why didn’t they give ’em a proper burial like a Christian should?’

  ‘They have different beliefs from ours in England. To them it is no disrespect to leave the bones thus.’

  Quint shook his head as if in sorrowful acknowledgement that, beyond England’s shores, the world was a bizarre and poorly governed place.

  ‘Wouldn’t take much to plant ’em in the ground,’ he commented.

  ‘You forget that we are a long way above it, Quint.’

  There was a sudden sound from outside. Both men doused their candles and fell silent. They moved warily to the entrance of the ossuary and peered out. On the far side of the small courtyard, two figures were silhouetted against the dim moonlight. One was instantly recognisable from its enormous height.

  ‘That’s Andros,’ Quint hissed.

  ‘And, unless I’m much mistaken, the other is his master.’

  Rallis had in his hand a dark lantern. As they watched, he slid back its shutter and its light shone out. Standing by the parapet overlooking the drop, the lawyer waved the lantern from side to side.

  ‘’E’s signalling to someone,’ Quint whispered, ‘someone down on the plain.’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Where’d ’e get the light from?’

  ‘The bags, I suppose. The monks
hauled up two of our bags after we all made it to the top.’

  The Greek continued to move his light from side to side. From where Adam and Quint crouched in the doorway to the ossuary, it was impossible to tell whether or not there was any answering signal from below. Several minutes passed and then Rallis closed the shutter on his lantern for the last time. He turned to his giant companion and spoke a few brief words which the watchers were unable to hear. The two Greeks left the courtyard. For a minute, the silence was broken only by the sound of some night bird cawing among the rocks beneath the monastery.

  ‘What the ’ell was all that about?’ Quint asked eventually, his voice still a whisper.

  ‘I have absolutely no notion,’ his master replied. Adam’s mind was racing with possible explanations for the lawyer’s behaviour. None that he could imagine cast Rallis in good light. It seemed as if the professor had been right to suspect the man of treacherous intent. And yet Adam could scarcely bring himself to think badly of the Athenian. Even in the short period of their acquaintance, he had grown to like and admire him. ‘He was making contact with someone in the village below. Or someone camped on the plain. That much was evident. But, for what purpose, I cannot tell.’

  ‘What would ’e want to be waving ’is bleeding lantern at anybody for?’

  ‘As I say, Quint, I do not know.’ Adam moved cautiously into the courtyard. He looked from left to right and then beckoned his servant to follow him. ‘Presumably he was not relaying instructions to them about the feeding of the mules.’

  ‘What we going to do about it? We going to ask ’im what ’e’s been up to?’

  ‘I cannot believe that he would necessarily tell us.’

  ‘We got to do something,’ Quint persisted.

  ‘We will keep an eye on our Athenian friend. And we will not always assume that he is our friend. We will listen out for anything that might be said that will cast some light on his nocturnal prowling.’ ‘That won’t do no good,’ Quint said. ‘Not for me. What with Rallis and the monks gobbling Greek all the time. Even if I do listen out, I ain’t going to make much sense out of anything I ’ear.’

  ‘Well, if your ears prove useless, keep your eyes open. But, for now, we shall retire. The monks will no doubt be stirring before too long. We would not want them to catch us creeping about their domain like thieves in search of booty.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  In the tiny cell he had been given, Adam awoke to the sounds of birds and to the muffled gong of the semandron summoning the monks to prayer. He had heard it once in the dark hours of the night but it had disturbed his rest only briefly. Now it proved impossible to ignore. He opened the shutters of the unglazed window to the room and allowed the sun to enter. After dressing, he ventured onto the wooden walkway that ran outside the guest chambers and skirted the eastern side of the monastery. A white goat, a bell around its neck, was wandering along the walkway. While Adam watched, the beast disappeared round the corner but he could still hear it jingling on the far side of the building. Looking across the flimsy railings of the walkway which were the only protection against a precipitous drop, Adam shaded his eyes against the rising sun. He could see where another of the pillars of rock thrust its way up from the plain. It too had a monastery on its summit. The building seemed almost like a natural outcrop of the rock. It was difficult to tell where geology ended and architecture began. Adam cast his eyes downwards. At the foot of the rock pillars, he could see the box-like houses of Kalambaka with their red roofs and he could just make out the tiny figures of some of the inhabitants as they emerged to begin their day. In the background, across the valley, the peaks of the Pindos Mountains soared into the sky, their slopes green with the trees that cloaked them.

  He heard a sound behind him and turned to find that Fields had emerged from his cell and was standing on the walkway.

  ‘Good morning, Professor. I trust that you slept well.’

  ‘I did not, Adam.’ Fields was flapping a hand in front of his face and looked to be in a cantankerous mood. ‘Perhaps you recall the story of Domitian and the flies? Of how he spent days in seclusion doing nothing but catching flies and stabbing them with a sharpened stylus?’

  ‘I believe I do remember it. From Suetonius, is it not?’

  ‘I have often thought it a curious occupation for an emperor but, after a night amidst the insects of Agios Andreas, I can only wish that I possessed the same skills Domitian had. Do you suppose it is possible to stab fleas as well as flies?’

  ‘It is probably an art that requires practice.’

  ‘We shall undoubtedly have the opportunity for much practice before we leave this wretched abode of penury and superstition. I am bitten half to death and I am filthy. I could see no means of performing my toilet in that dingy stall they gave me.’

  ‘Cleanliness seems to be a virtue not much admired in monastic circles,’ Adam said.

  ‘The old bastards stink is what you mean.’ Quint had also left his cell and was standing by the wooden railings, scratching his stubbled chin and hitching up his trousers. ‘I could smell ’em from yards off last night.’

  ‘These are holy men, Quint,’ Adam said. ‘Their concern is with their souls not with their bodies. Anyway, if truth be told, neither you nor I nor even the professor can lay claim to great fragrance after traipsing the plains of Thessaly for several days.’

  ‘I can accept the bodily odours of the monks,’ Fields said. ‘Anyone who has spent any time in the Senior Common Room of a Cambridge college has learned to accustom himself to the redolence of his fellow man. It is the insect life that I cannot abide.’

  The same monk who had conducted them to their rooms the previous night now appeared to usher them towards their breakfasts. Beckoning the three of them to follow him, he set off along the walkway. He took them down a short flight of stairs and into a stone-flagged corridor which led to a massive wooden door. The monk pushed it open and entered a room larger than any other they had so far seen in Agios Andreas. Three long tables, with benches by them, stood within it. One crossed the room at its far end. The other two were set at right angles to it. In the far left-hand corner was a lectern.

  ‘The refectory, I assume,’ the professor said, as Theophanes indicated by smiles and gestures that the far table was to be theirs. ‘And we are to be guests at their equivalent of high table. The similarity to colleges by the Cam grows. Although I suspect the food may not be as appetising.’

  ‘But healthier, perhaps,’ Adam suggested.

  An elderly monk with a beard of particular luxuriance was standing by the top table, bowing repeatedly.

  ‘This will be the hegumen.’ Fields examined the old monk as if he were some curious animal of which no specimen had previously come to his attention. ‘As ignorant as his fellows, I have no doubt.’

  The monk, smiling beatifically, continued to bow and nod.

  ‘The hegumen?’ Adam sounded momentarily puzzled. ‘Ah, the one in charge.’

  ‘The abbot, in effect.’

  ‘We must hope that he does not speak English, Professor. Or he might take offence at your words.’

  ‘He will be a monoglot Greek, I have no doubt.’ Fields, still staring at the hegumen like a visitor encountering one of the odder beasts in the Regent’s Park zoo for the first time, was unabashed. ‘And his Greek will be some barbarous dialect that is barely comprehensible.’

  Adam responded to the monk’s politeness with bows of his own and a greeting in Greek. The old man looked delighted to be addressed in his own language. He replied with a volley of swiftly delivered remarks, few of which Adam was able to catch. They all took their seats and watched as the door opened again and the other monks trooped in together. Behind the caloyeri were Rallis and his huge servant. Fields waved at the empty places on the bench and the two Greeks joined the Englishmen in their place of honour. Andros, struggling to accommodate his vast legs beneath the table, made it rock gently on his knees before he was able to settle into his
seat. Rallis, taking his place more gracefully, greeted his fellow travellers warmly. He bowed respectfully to the hegumen. There was no trace of embarrassment in his manner, Adam noted, no suggestion that he knew they had witnessed his midnight excursion and his mysterious signalling or that, if he did know, he cared greatly.

  The young servant who had been present the previous day when the visitors were hauled up the rock now appeared, placing plates of dry bread and salt cheese in front of them. Another boy set glasses and a tankard of red wine on the table. Adam picked up the tumbler he had been given for the wine and examined it in the dim light. It looked very ancient and bore on it several unmonastic engravings of little cupids wrestling and shooting arrows. Was the tumbler Venetian, he wondered? It certainly looked to be. If it was, what roundabout journey had brought it to this remote spot? As he was pondering this, one of the monks moved away from his companions and stood by the lectern. Opening the large and ancient Bible on it, he began to read aloud. His fellow monks were silent but otherwise seemed to be paying little heed to him. Their attention looked to be more focused on the breakfast to come.

  When, after a minute or two, the reader ceased speaking, closed the Bible and returned to his place, the others fell on the bread and cheese like men who had scarcely eaten that week. A slight hum of hushed conversation rose from the monks’ table. From time to time, one of the younger caloyeri raised his head and looked at the visitors, but if Adam caught his eye, he looked down immediately at his plate. The others seemed remarkably uninterested in anything other than their food. The hegumen continued to chatter cheerfully to Adam in Greek which the young man found difficult to follow. The old man, he thought, was asking him about London. He wanted to know about the state of the monasteries there. Were they rich and well-populated? Adam laboured to provide the hegumen with adequate answers to his enquiries. Fields, meanwhile, was taking the opportunity to question Rallis.

  ‘You have put forward our request to see the objects these monks possess?’ he asked.