Carver's Quest (43 page)

‘No, it is useless. I simply cannot understand enough of this ruffian’s Greek to make sense of it,’ Fields said. He seemed to imply that the ruffian was entirely to blame for
this.

‘He has been saying that his family have lived on this land for generations,’ Rallis translated. ‘He has also been saying that foreign dogs should not trespass on his lands.
These things are probably not true. It is not his land, I think.’

‘He certainly does not look like a farmer,’ Adam remarked. ‘What else does he say?’

‘Now he says, “You foreign dogs are in our hands. Your money is ours. Your blood is ours.” ’

There was another impassioned burst of Greek from the man in the white capote.

‘ “I am the pasha here. I am a king to rule over English milords.” ’

‘He knows we are English, then,’ Adam remarked.

‘If he knows we are Englishmen, he knows we are not men with whom to trifle.’ Fields sounded exasperated that something as trivial as the arrival of ten heavily armed men should be
holding them up. ‘Tell him to be on his way. And to take his ragamuffin band with him.’

The leader of the band now made a gesture, first towards the mules and the horses and then towards the saddlebags.

‘He wishes to inspect the baggage,’ Rallis said.

‘The impudence of the man!’ Fields exclaimed. ‘You will tell this rogue that—’

‘Silence!’ Rallis’s sudden cry was the more surprising because of the studied politeness with which he usually spoke. ‘I will tell him nothing. This is not a game that
these men play. It is for us to listen, not to tell. And to obey.’

‘He is right, Professor,’ Adam said, placing a restraining hand on Fields’s arm as the older man made to move towards the bandit chief. For a moment, it seemed as if Fields
might continue to protest but he subsided into glowering silence.

The bandit chief shouted abrupt instructions and two of his men dismounted. They walked over to where the bags were lying on the ground and opened them. Within moments, all Quint’s work
that morning in packing the bags was undone. Meanwhile, another three men had also stepped down from their mounts and moved to where the horses and mules were tethered. They began to examine the
beasts, prodding at legs and slapping flanks.

Rallis called out to the leader of the group. The man jumped down from his horse and strolled over to where the lawyer stood. He laughed and slapped him so heartily on the back that Adam could
see Rallis stagger beneath the blow. The Athenian said something else and the man laughed again. Together the two of them walked away towards the shade of one of the plane trees. There they
remained while the ransacking of the bags and the assessment of the horses continued. After five minutes, Rallis walked back to his companions, followed a few paces behind by the brigand.

‘Put smiles upon your faces, gentlemen,’ the Athenian said as he approached. ‘I have told our friend here that we bear him nothing but goodwill.’

The travellers now stood, wreathed in smiles, as the brigand and two of his most ruffianly companions came closer. Even the professor twisted his face into a ghastly simulacrum of cheerfulness.
The chief of the supposed bandits leered amiably as he approached.

‘His name is Lascarides,’ Rallis went on. ‘He is at pains to assure me that he is an honest man. His colleagues are all honest men.’

‘Damn grinning scoundrels, the lot of them,’ Fields said, although, Adam noticed, he was careful to keep his mask of genial greeting in place.

‘However, they require our horses. They apologise for the inconvenience but they insist that we hand over our mounts.’

‘We appear to have little choice in the matter,’ Adam remarked.

‘None whatsoever,’ Rallis said.

Lascarides, now beaming from ear to ear as if he had just chanced upon a long lost brother, approached Adam and chucked him under the chin. Adam instantly made as if to strike the man a blow
but, recalling their situation, he restrained himself and merely widened his mirthless smile. The Greek laughed.

Beneath his fixed grin, Fields was almost beside himself with fury.

‘Are we to allow this to happen?’ he said, forcing out his words like a novice ventriloquist making his first appearance on stage. ‘Are we going to stand by and do nothing
while this ridiculous, tatterdemalion villain and his crew of scarecrows walk off with our horses?’

There was a burst of rapid chattering from Lascarides.

‘The wretch really does speak a version of Greek no gentleman could possibly understand,’ Fields dropped his pretence of grinning and spoke out loud. ‘What does he say, Rallis?
Something about trees and guns?’

‘He says that he will tie the old man to the tree and get his men to use him for shooting practice unless he shuts up,’ Rallis translated impassively. ‘He is weary of hearing
the old man’s voice.’

‘The impertinence!’ Fields exclaimed and then fell silent.

Lascarides and his men now wasted no time in further threats or intimidation. Three of them hitched the horses they had commandeered to their own mounts and they all prepared to depart.
Lascarides tipped his hat ironically at the professor. One of his followers yelled and shot his pistol in the air. The bandits wheeled their horses about and cantered away.

The travellers watched as they disappeared into the distance. Shouts and outbursts of raucous laughter drifted back to them as they turned their attention to the ruins of their campsite. No more
than half an hour had passed since Andros had first drawn his master’s attention to the riders approaching.

‘At least they did not kill us or kidnap us,’ Adam remarked.

‘They thought we were madmen,’ Rallis said. ‘I told them we came from Athens to look for ancient writings. They decided we were insane. And who would kill lunatics?’

‘Or pay a ransom for them?’

‘Exactly.’ Rallis smiled. ‘They were particularly certain that the professor was one who had lost his mind.’

‘Why did they not steal the mules as well as the horses?’

Rallis shrugged. ‘Too much trouble to take them. Too little profit to sell them. Who knows?’

Andros and Quint repacked the saddlebags and loaded them on the mules. With the horses gone, the beasts that were left were doubly laden. There was no chance now for any of the party to ride.
All five men would have to walk. Rallis looked up at the position of the sun and then stretched out his arm.

‘That is the way we must go,’ he said.

As they set off, they disturbed a covey of partridges which flew suddenly upwards with a noisy flapping of wings. Above them an eagle soared in the air currents, looking no doubt for the very
prey the men had just put to flight.

Rallis strode out in front. Behind him Andros and Quint guided the mules. Adam followed them and the professor brought up the rear. Soon the group was stretched, Indian file, across the plain.
For nearly thirty minutes they travelled in a silence broken only by an occasional bray from one of the mules. Then Fields increased his pace and caught up with Adam.

‘What do you make of our Greek friend?’ he asked, in a conspiratorial whisper.

‘Of Rallis?’

‘Who else? Should we trust him, do you think?’

Adam was taken aback by the question. Was it not the professor who had first argued that he was the ideal person to assist them in organising the expedition to Thessaly and beyond?

‘I can see no reason why we should not.’

‘You do not find the arrival of those thieving wretches today somewhat surprising?’

‘We knew that we risked encountering bandits wherever we went in the countryside. Some of the regions in which we are travelling have an unpleasant celebrity for
klephti
and
thieves and rogues of all kinds. But we made plans to evade them before we left Athens.
Rallis
made plans for us to evade them. Even so, we ran a risk. You are surely not suggesting that
he deliberately arranged for those men to cross our path?’

‘I merely suggest that our Greek friend should be watched. And what he says must be taken
cum grano salis
.’

‘But you cannot think that he is conspiring against us?’

‘I do not know what to think, Adam. I do know that those rogues appeared to have been informed that we were travelling from the bay of Volos towards Meteora. How else could they have come
across us so conveniently in hundreds of square miles of terrain?’

‘But what possible advantage could Rallis gain from the theft of our horses? Like us, he is now stranded miles from the nearest shelter. It makes no sense.’

‘Little does make sense in this benighted country,’ the professor said bitterly. ‘Nothing has made sense in it for the best part of two millennia.’

‘It is true that some of the most notable men of Athens have links with some of the greatest villains in the country. The Dilessi affair earlier this year proved that, if nothing
else.’

‘It’s just as you say,’ said Fields with sudden excitement. ‘It’s extraordinary. Politicians in the city are shamelessly and almost openly in league with brigands
who roam the country looking for foreigners to kidnap and murder. It’s as if Mr Gladstone were to be in charge of a gang of garrotters and send them out onto the streets of London to steal
purses to add to the exchequer.’

‘However,’ Adam continued, striving to soothe the professor, ‘there is not the slightest evidence that Rallis has any connection with brigandage. He is a lawyer and an amateur
archaeologist – not a politician.’

Thirty yards ahead, the man of whom they spoke had stopped and turned towards them. He waved his arm at the surrounding countryside.

‘The beauties of Thessaly, gentlemen,’ he shouted.

Adam returned his wave.

‘You will notice,’ the professor said, ‘that our friend seems remarkably cheerful in the circumstances. Our loss does not appear to have hit him as hard as it has the rest of
us.’

With this parting shot, Fields increased his walking speed again and caught up with Quint and the mules.

Left alone in the rear, Adam wondered if there could be any basis for the professor’s sudden suspicions of the Greek lawyer. It was true that there had been times in the journey when
Rallis had seemed uncertain of the path to take. There had been times when they seemed to be turning their faces in the direction of whichever point of the compass seemed momentarily appealing.
There had been times, Adam was obliged to admit to himself, when he had thought that Rallis either did not know where he was leading them or, at the least, did not choose to tell them. And yet what
purpose in travelling with them could the lawyer have other than the ones he had acknowledged? His love of his country’s past. His desire to unearth more examples of its former glory. These
provided him with his motivation, did they not? There was no evidence to support Fields’s sudden distrust of Rallis.

F
or the next two days, they continued to make slow progress. Thessaly, Adam knew, was populous and prosperous. The plain was fertile agricultural
land but the travellers came across little evidence of this. Rallis insisted that they keep off frequented roads and travel across rough country instead. They saw few people. On the first
afternoon, they happened upon a wagon, with spokeless wheels of solid wood, which had been abandoned by the roadside. As they stood by it, they noticed a distant caravan of horses making its way
along the road, laden with sacks and bags. Three tiny figures accompanied it, occasionally chivvying the beasts with sticks. Adam looked enquiringly at Rallis.

‘Small traders carrying goods to the coast, perhaps,’ the Greek said. ‘We travel in a different direction. We will let them pass.’

That night they came near enough to a village to hear the furious barking of dogs in the distance and yet no one troubled them. They slept out under the stars once again.

On the second day, they came across the carcass of a horse with two black vultures circling above it.

‘Those villains have left one of our beasts to die,’ Fields exclaimed upon seeing it.

Rallis approached the dark shape on the ground, a kerchief in front of his face. Flies rose from the decomposing animal.

‘It was dead long before we met Lascarides, Professor. It has been here a week at least.’ The Greek lawyer looked up at the birds wheeling menacingly above their heads. ‘Those
are not the first to feast on the poor creature.’

‘Why should it be lying out here?’ Adam asked. ‘We are surely many miles from the village where we heard the dogs last night. Who rode it and left it here to die?’

Rallis shrugged. ‘Perhaps, like us, it had wandered far from home.’

Leaving the rotting beast behind, they moved on. The vultures, which had flown off as they examined the horse, returned. Another night in the open awaited the travellers, but as shadows
lengthened and they began to think of stopping, Andros hailed his master. He pointed through the gloom to what seemed to Adam no more than a pile of stones in the distance. As they came nearer, the
pile slowly transformed itself into a rude shed, its walls battered by the elements but its roof still intact. There was even a wooden door, hanging at a skewed angle on iron hinges. Rallis pushed
it open and all but Andros made their way inside. Adam lit a candle and they watched as the flames flickered on the four walls.

‘What is this place?’ he asked.

‘The hut of a shepherd, perhaps.’ Rallis sounded uncertain. ‘Or an outhouse from an old khan. A lodge for travellers.’

‘There are no signs of any other buildings. The khan must have long gone.’

‘Not only the khan,’ Fields remarked. ‘There is no indication that there is any road beside which it might have stood.’

‘It may have been abandoned a hundred years ago,’ the Greek said. ‘Or more. A road may once have passed this way.’

‘It is of no consequence to us now whether this was part of an old hostelry or the retreat of some lonely herdsman.’ Adam held the candle high so it illuminated as much of the
building as it could. Some of its stones had fallen to the ground but the walls were largely undamaged. ‘The place is just about large enough to shelter us all.’