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  ‘We must show this to the professor,’ he said. ‘He will rejoice in this discovery as much as we do.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  I think we must wait until the hegumen sees the logic in our proposal,’ Adam said. ‘To lose one manuscript from a library which they never use and gain in return enough money to feed his monks for months. He must see the sense in it.’

  It was no more than an hour since he and Rallis had held the Euphorion manuscript in their hands. They had wished to remove it from the hidden library to show the professor. When they had proposed this, Demetrios had become very agitated. He had released a torrent of barely comprehensible Greek and had tugged at Adam’s sleeve as if intent on hauling him bodily from the library. In the end, they had had to leave the manuscript where it was. The wild-haired monk had led them back across the courtyard to speak to the hegumen. Rallis, exerting all his charm and eloquence, had made the spiritual head of the monastery an offer. The manuscript, he had told him, was of great interest to the Englishmen. The Englishmen would pay the hegumen many piastres for it. The hegumen had listened politely to the lawyer’s lengthy speech and then he had replied.

  ‘Ochi,’ he had said. The answer was no and always would be no. It was no to the other Englishman who had visited Agios Andreas. It was no to them. The treasures of the monastery were not for sale. Rallis and Adam had no choice but to retire to the professor’s room and inform him of the morning’s developments.

  ‘If we are obliged to wait for these credulous dunces to learn logic,’ Fields now remarked, ‘we shall wait until the Greek Kalends. It will never happen.’

  He was consumed by irritation with what he had been told. He could not keep still and strode about the room, tugging hard at his beard as if it were a false one and he were intent on pulling it off.

  ‘We must force the abbot, nolens volens, to surrender the manuscript,’ he said eventually.

  ‘I do not think we can do that, sir,’ Adam said. ‘How do you propose that we dispossess him of it? At gunpoint?’

  Fields stopped and stared intently at the younger man. For a moment, it seemed he was about to hail the suggestion as a brilliant means of breaking the deadlock. Then he shook his head.

  ‘No. As much as we want the manuscript, we can scarcely point our rifles at men of religion. Even men of so debased and superstitious a religion as this Eastern Orthodoxy.’

  The professor looked disappointed that his scruples prevented him from the action the situation demanded. He began to patrol the room again. The other two watched him and exchanged glances. Rallis raised his eyebrows. Adam lifted his shoulders in the smallest of shrugs.

  ‘I shall go and speak to this hegumen myself,’ Fields announced, bringing his restless pacing to an abrupt end. ‘I shall see just how deaf he is to the voice of reason.’

  The professor said no more but exited the room immediately. His boots could be heard clumping down the wooden walkway outside. His two companions looked at one another again.

  ‘Will his intervention alter the hegumen’s decision, do you suppose?’ Adam asked.

  ‘I doubt it very much.’ Rallis looked as if he could not decide whether to be amused or irritated by Fields’s sudden departure. ‘The hegumenos does not like the professor. He knows very little English but he heard some of what he said at breakfast. And he knew later that his relics were being mocked. I fear that Professor Fields may make the task of acquiring the manuscript more difficult rather than less.’

  ‘We had best hasten after him. Perhaps we can prevent him from insulting the old man’s religion further.’ Adam did not sound hopeful that they could. He and the Greek lawyer followed the professor from the room. They made their way back through the winding labyrinth of the monastery’s ancient passageways and tiny courtyards to the small cell which its spiritual leader called his own. As they approached, they could hear voices in Greek. One was raised in anger, the other spoke gently but firmly. It was not difficult to guess which belonged to Fields. They entered the chamber, empty save for a ramshackle cot in one corner on which the hegumen slept. An icon of the Madonna and Child and one of Saint Andrew were the only decorations. They found the professor shouting about the significance to classical scholarship of the manuscript in the library while the old hegumen bent his head and examined the stone floor of his cell. He looked up as his new visitors arrived and immediately began to address Rallis. Fields continued to rant for a moment or two before falling sullenly silent. Rallis listened to the monk and then turned to the other two to translate.

  ‘He says they are poor,’ he began.

  ‘Yes, yes, we know that already,’ Fields interrupted impatiently. He was almost beside himself. ‘Surely that means all the more reason for them to accept a gift in return for the manuscript.’

  ‘They are poorer now than they have ever been,’ the lawyer went on. ‘They once had lands in the north. In Wallachia. Many farms and fields and vineyards. But the Prince of Romania confiscated their estates there. Now they are very poor indeed.’

  ‘Damn him and his lost fields and vineyards!’ Fields was clutching his head in both hands. He reminded Adam of the villain in a melodrama about to tear his hair following the frustration of his wicked plans. ‘Why will he not sell us the manuscript?’

  ‘But however poor they have been, they have never sold the holy treasures that have been entrusted to them.’

  ‘Holy treasures!’ the professor screeched. ‘Does this old fool even know what we want? We have no interest in dispossessing him of his saintly shoulder blade. Or his lachrymose icon. We want a single manuscript from his library which probably no one has read since Suleiman the Magnificent was sitting on the Ottoman throne.’

  ‘Pray, calm yourself, Professor.’ Adam made soothing gestures towards the older man. ‘This is no way to win the hegumen’s agreement.’

  ‘I am not certain that I can be calm, Adam.’ Fields none the less made a mighty effort to recover his self-possession. ‘When I am faced by this unthinking refusal to accept reasoned argument.’

  For a moment, Adam entertained himself with the notion of what the professor might consider unreasoned argument when his reasoned variety seemed to consist of such frothing rage. But the hegumen was now speaking again. His Greek was very different to the classical language that Adam knew but there was no need for Rallis to translate. There was no mistaking the old monk’s meaning. He was asking them, politely but firmly, to leave him alone in his stone cell.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  All negotiations with the hegumen proved fruitless. Despite the offers of cash, despite the charm that Rallis deployed, despite the fury with which the professor raged against his intransigence, the old monk remained adamant. No manuscript was leaving Agios Andreas while it was in his care.

  ‘Can we not read the manuscript in situ?’ Adam asked. ‘We could return with Demetrios to the hidden library and copy out the passages in Euphorion which are relevant.’

  ‘I am not certain that we will necessarily know which passages are relevant,’ the professor said gloomily. ‘It may be that the importance of Euphorion’s descriptions will become apparent only when the text and the ground it describes are closely compared. We will need the original when we travel north.’

  ‘Your suggestion of reading the manuscript here is no longer feasible, Adam.’ Rallis sounded in no doubt. ‘The professor has offended the hegumen deeply. Mortally, is that the word you use? He is unwilling to let any of us enter the library again.’

  ‘Wretched man that he is,’ Fields said with venom. It was clear that the idea that he might bear any blame in the dispute had not occurred to him.

  ‘We have only one option left open to us,’ Adam said. ‘We cannot use violence against the monks.’ For a moment, Fields looked willing to dispute this but he contented himself with an angry shake of his head. ‘We will have to go over their heads. The monasteries here at Meteora are under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox authorities at Larissa?’ />
  Rallis nodded.

  ‘Then we must go there and persuade the bishop to give us written permission to buy the manuscript. He is likely to be a more worldly man than our friend here. He will understand the logic of our arguments better.’ Adam had no great desire to embark on the plan of action he was himself proposing, but he could see no other honourable way of taking possession of the Euphorion manuscript. ‘When he approves our purchase, we can return to Agios Andreas and the hegumen will be obliged to bow before a higher authority.’

  ‘Weeks will be wasted in this senseless rigmarole,’ Fields protested.

  ‘There is, alas, no alternative, Professor.’ Rallis spoke with certainty. ‘We will take advantage of the hospitality of the caloyeri for one further night and then we will journey to Larissa.’

  And so, on the following morning, after they had breakfasted on bread and olives, the men sat once more in the monks’ net and were lowered down the rockface. They collected the mules from Kalambaka where an amiable farmer, his palm crossed with the silver of several piastres, had stabled them, and took the road east towards Larissa.

  For many miles, as they trudged on, they were able still to look behind them and see the strange pinnacles of Meteora on the horizon, like the unearthly architecture of a fevered dream.

  They travelled for most of the day in silence. For Andros this seemed to be his natural state. The others were wrapped in their own thoughts. Quint was forced to struggle with the mule he was leading, and what little he said consisted largely of curses directed against its obstinacy. Adam and Rallis, relieved of any duty to guide the mules, had the leisure for conversation but found almost nothing to say to one another. The young Englishman spent his time running through the events of the last few days in his head. The delight he had felt at locating the Euphorion manuscript was fading a little but was still present. The obstinacy of the abbot in refusing to part with it, he thought, had been aggravating but understandable. Their enforced journey to Larissa was a nuisance. Nonetheless,

  they would soon return, almost certainly armed with the papers necessary to buy the manuscript. Despite what Fields’s bad temper might suggest, the delay was endurable. And then they could read what perhaps only one other man since the old Venetian scholar Palavaccini had read. The very great secret of which Creech had spoken at the Speke dinner in London might be revealed.

  And yet there was still so much of which Adam could make little sense. Where did Rallis fit into the equation? Whose side was he on? What had the Greek lawyer and his servant been doing in the monastery the night before last? To whom had they been signalling? Adam could think of few legitimate reasons to doubt the lawyer. Had Rallis not led them here to the manuscript as he had said he would? Had he not argued their case to the hegumen as eloquently as he could? However, the young man could think of equally few reasons to trust him. What, after all, did they know of him? Little more than what Samways had told them. Perhaps, as Fields had suggested before the party had even reached Agios Andreas, Rallis had some involvement with the brigands who had robbed them of their horses. Adam began to think he should have told the professor of the lantern-waving in the night. He had chosen not to do so because he still retained his belief in Rallis’s essential goodwill towards them. Fields, if informed of what he and Quint had seen, would have had no such belief. Who knew what consequences would have followed?

  Adam looked at the professor. Blessed with a more tractable beast than the one at which Quint was swearing, his old mentor was wandering ahead of the group. Earlier in the day, Adam had seen him take a book from his pocket and begin to read it. He was still holding it now. A volume of his beloved Thucydides, the young man assumed. The professor’s mule was travelling towards Larissa with little need of any guidance. Fields had one arm looped through the animal’s halter and his eyes half on the road in front of them and half on his book. Adam noted with surprise that the rage which had possessed the professor so thoroughly the night before seemed to have entirely dissipated. He was now a study in serenity.

  That night, they camped once again beneath the stars. Andros took a hatchet from his bag and, hacking at branches of a tree only he could reach, swiftly gathered enough wood for a fire. The travellers sat round it in a circle to eat. They stared morosely at one another through the flames.

  ‘We shall be in Larissa in little more than a day,’ Adam said eventually, breaking the silence. ‘Is that not so, Rallis?’

  ‘Perhaps by tomorrow evening. Or the following morning.’

  ‘With luck we shall quickly win an audience with the bishop. He will see reason in our proposal, Professor.’ Adam was struggling to remain as optimistic as he had been in the morning. He was beginning to wonder whether the bishop might be no more willing to countenance their taking possession of what they wanted than the old hegumen. ‘We will be back at Agios Andreas in no more than a week with permission to take the manuscript. They will not be able to deny us again. The manuscript will be ours.’

  The professor was hunched by the fire, looking like a pile of old clothes awaiting a washerwoman. As he listened to what Adam said, his shoulders began to shake and strange sounds emerged from deep within him. For several terrible moments, the young man thought that Fields might be weeping. How, he wondered, was a gentleman supposed to behave in the wilds of a foreign land when a distinguished scholar broke down in tears in front of him? Should one ignore the outburst? Or attempt, however clumsily, to offer comfort? Adam was still pondering these unexpected questions of etiquette when it dawned on him that the professor was not crying, but laughing. The rocking of his body was not the result of sobs and lamentations but of great waves of laughter. Adam looked across the fire at Rallis. The Greek was clearly as puzzled as he was. He turned to Quint, whose face was split by a fiendish grin. The manservant began to make the unearthly wheezings that his master recognised as his own peculiar version of mirth.

  ‘What is it, Quint? What is going on?’

  The servant said nothing but continued to sound like an incompetent piper slowly filling his bag with air. The professor swayed back and forth in front of the fire and then let out one last shout of laughter.

  ‘The manuscript is already ours, Adam,’ he said. ‘I sent Quintus out last night to take it from that damp hutch those benighted monks call a library.’

  There was silence. Adam looked in astonishment from the professor to Quint and back again. Rallis, his face tight with anger, stood and moved away from the fire.

  ‘You have stolen the Euphorion manuscript?’ Adam was numb with disbelief.

  ‘I would prefer not to use the verb “to steal” in any of its tenses or moods. I believe that what I have done is liberate Euphorion from the custody of those who did not understand what they possessed.’

  ‘It remains theft, whatever words you choose to describe it.’

  ‘Do not be so moralistic, Adam. It ill suits you.’

  ‘We have taken shameful advantage of the hospitality the caloyeri offered us.’ The young man turned to where the Greek lawyer was staring out into the night. ‘I had no knowledge of this, Rallis, I assure you. I did not know what the professor planned.’

  The lawyer, his back turned to the Englishmen huddled around the fire, made no comment.

  ‘And, what of you, Quint? Damn you!’ Adam rounded on his manservant in a sudden burst of fury. ‘Did you not think to ask me whether or not you should be employed as a thief in the night?’

  Quint, still wheezing slightly, was indignant.

  ‘Don’t get your trumpet out of tune. ’Ow was I to guess you didn’t know all about it?’

  ‘Do not blame poor Quintus, Adam.’ Fields spoke in conciliatory tones. ‘He was just the delivery boy, you know. What you might call an unlikely Hermes, with winged feet and caduceus in hand, who travelled between one part of the monastery and another, bearing a gift.’

  ‘A fine choice of god with whom to compare him, Professor. As you know as well as I, Hermes was also the patron of t
hieves and liars.’

  Fields shrugged, as if to acknowledge that Adam might have a point but it was now an irrelevant one.

  ‘The professor asks me to do it so I done it.’ The unlikely Hermes was now eager to defend himself. ‘I thought you was as keen on getting ’old of the bleedin’ book as ’e was. I wasn’t about to say no now, was I?’

  ‘Apparently not. Although refusing the requests of your superiors is scarcely an act with which you are unfamiliar.’ Adam slapped his hand to the ground in exasperation. He leaned forward and, picking up a burning branch, thrust it further into the fire. Sparks flew upwards into the darkness.

  ‘We must turn back tomorrow morning and return what we have taken to the hegumen,’ he said decisively.

  ‘That is out of the question,’ Fields replied with equal firmness. ‘I have not been lowered one morning from a precipitous height with an ancient manuscript strapped beneath my attire, only to return the next day and give it back. What am I to say to the monks? That I had not noticed it was there?’

  ‘We will admit our crime and make our apologies.’

  ‘I will not do so. It is ridiculous to suggest that I should.’

  ‘What is ridiculous is that a gentleman and a scholar of your standing should stoop to such petty theft.’ Adam had rarely, if ever, spoken to his mentor in such a way but he was almost beside himself with anger that Fields should have behaved in so dishonourable a way.

  Rallis had walked back to the fire. He sat down once more.

  ‘I am not certain that any good purpose will be served by going back to Agios Andreas, Adam,’ he said. ‘If the loss of the manuscript has been discovered, they may not wish to see us again. They will fear the theft of further treasures. They will not pull us up in their net.’

  ‘And if it has not been discovered?’

  The lawyer shrugged. ‘Perhaps, for them – what is your English saying? – ignorance is bliss. We can show the manuscript to the bishop in Larissa. Tell him our story and let him be the Solomon who makes a judgement. Whether we should keep it or give it back to the caloyeri.’