Carver's Quest (48 page)

At that very moment there was a tap upon Adam’s door.

‘Come,’ the young man cried. The door opened and the wild-haired Demetrios, looking like a distraught prophet from one of the more obscure books of the Old Testament, bustled into
the room. He came to a stop when he saw the two men and bowed his head in greeting.

‘Here is the very man of whom we were speaking,’ Adam said, returning the monk’s salute. ‘And, like the earl in Tennyson’s poem, his beard is a foot before him and
his hair a yard behind.’

Demetrios spoke rapidly to the young Englishman, nodding his head up and down with great energy. Adam, able to follow only one word in three, smiled encouragingly.

‘As you have probably surmised,’ Rallis said, when the monk’s brisk torrent of Greek came to an end, ‘he is here to take us to the library.’

Beckoning the two men to follow him, Demetrios left the room and walked into the passage outside. He led them through an arched gateway at its end which took them into the main courtyard. Adam
waved his hand in greeting to Quint and Andros, still sitting on the wall a dozen yards away and staring at cards. Both were too engrossed by their game to respond. Looking back to ensure that his
visitors were still following him, Demetrios crossed the courtyard and approached a building which Adam had noticed earlier and assumed to be a storehouse for food. The monk stopped in front of its
low wooden door and, delving into the inner recesses of his clothing, extracted a rusting key. He waved it in front of Adam’s eyes for a moment or two, like a conductor using a baton to beat
time with an orchestra. Then, with a final flourish, he thrust it into the keyhole. The key turned. Demetrios placed his shoulder against the door, shoved vigorously and disappeared into the
interior of the building.

Adam and Rallis followed the monk through the door and found him struggling to light a candle. As the flame took hold, its light revealed the contents of the room. An ancient wooden cupboard
stood against one wall. In one corner was a heap of rotting monastic robes. Opposite these were fragments of twisted metal that might once have been an iconostasis. The only other piece of
furniture was largely hidden by curtaining. Demetrios twitched the fabric aside to display seven shelves of old and decaying books. The musty smell of neglect hung in the air above them. Leather
bindings peeled away from cracked spines. Several volumes seemed to have disintegrated altogether and all that was left of them were handfuls of torn and stained pages thrust between their
fellows.

‘
Bibliotheka
,’ the monk said, with a hint of pride in his voice. Silence followed as the two visitors stared in dismay at the shelves Demetrios had revealed. One of the
books, disturbed by the monk thrusting aside the curtain, fell sideways on its shelf. Small clouds of dust rose upwards.

‘This is the library we have come so far to see?’ Adam asked eventually. He spoke to Rallis with a hint of reproach as if the Greek was solely responsible for the reputation the
monastery had gained. The lawyer looked abashed.

‘Many scholars I know in Athens tell me that Agios Andreas has very interesting books in its possession.’

‘Your Athenian friends must have been misinformed.’

‘Perhaps the books are more valuable than they seem.’

Adam reached out and took a volume at random from the middle shelf.

‘
The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom
.’

He put the book back in its place and extracted another.

‘
St Basil on the workings of the Holy Spirit
. These are the sort of works we could find in many eastern monasteries, Rallis,’ he said, deeply downcast. ‘I doubt very
much there is anything here for us.’

Demetrios had been standing by the library, beaming with pleasure and taking deep breaths, as if intending to inhale an aroma of scholarship that clung to the books. Now he sensed the
disappointment of his visitors. He put a hand on Adam’s arm and began to speak to him with great earnestness.

‘Rallis, I cannot understand the Greek our friend here speaks. I would be most grateful if you would translate for me.’

‘He is telling you that you are not the only Englishman to see the library. Another of your countrymen came here last year.’

‘He must have been as disappointed as we have been, then.’

‘No, the other Englishman liked very much what he saw in the library.’

‘Did he, indeed? He is certain the visitor was English?’ Adam asked, his interest now aroused. ‘Perhaps he knew only that he came from the West.’

Rallis conferred with the monk once again.

‘The man was most definitely English. He spoke English. And he behaved all the time as if the monastery belonged to him.’

The Greek’s face was impassive as he translated.

‘Brother Demetrios is also telling me that he was once English himself.’

‘Was he, by Jove?’ Adam said. He looked at the bearded and bedraggled monk who grinned at him, revealing a mouthful of blackened teeth. ‘But he is no longer?’

The monk spoke rapidly to Rallis. Adam could make out only a handful of Greek words and could not connect them into any meaningful sentence.

‘He was born in Cephalonia, he says. The English ruled there when he was born but they gave the island back to the Greeks. He likes to be Greek now but sometimes he wishes he still was
English.’

The monk nodded as if in vigorous approval of the precision of Rallis’s translation and then began to speak again.

‘There is another library which the monks keep hidden,’ Rallis said after Demetrios had finished. ‘But for English travellers he opens it. Because he remembers being English
himself. He opened it for the Englishman last year. He is asking if you also would like to see this hidden library.’

Adam could scarcely contain his delight at this information. ‘I rather think I would,’ he said. He bowed his head several times in Brother Demetrios’s direction and was
rewarded with another black-toothed grin. The monk moved to the large wooden cupboard in the corner of the room and opened its door. Inside, was a second door which he threw back to reveal a small
chamber cut into the thick stone walls. Shelves had been fitted round the chamber and sitting on them were dozens of musty volumes.

‘Holy books,’ said Demetrios in English.

Adam began to examine them. Clouds of dust arose as he picked each book from the shelf. On first inspection, most seemed as commonplace as the ones in the outer room. Gospels and liturgies by
the score. Works by long-dead Orthodox theologians. Editions of Greek classics that would have been welcome enough additions to college libraries back in Cambridge but hardly worth the trouble of
travelling most of the way across Europe to consult. Adam continued to feel that only disappointment awaited them but he moved on into the dark recesses of the hidden chamber. Demetrios, who had
left them briefly, returned with a lantern which lit up the furthest shelves. Beyond the last of the printed books were what looked to be the few bound manuscripts the monastery possessed. As Adam
moved his hand to reach for them, the old monk spoke.

‘Those are the ones the English always like,’ Rallis translated. ‘The other Englishman wanted to buy one of them.’

‘Did they sell it to him?’ Adam asked anxiously. The other Englishman, he felt certain, could only be Creech. The man with the crescent scar had been asking in Athens about
travelling to the monasteries. He must have succeeded in doing so. He had found the manuscript he had been seeking. If he had been able to buy it, their own journey would be in vain.

Rallis spoke quickly to the monk, who sounded indignant as he replied.

‘No, they did not sell to him. There is not enough gold in the whole of the country to buy any of the holy books.’

‘This one is not very holy,’ Adam said, examining one of the more ancient-looking manuscripts. ‘Unless I am very much mistaken, it is a collection of poems by Anacreon. It is
probably just as well that the monks choose not to read this.’

‘Some of the
caloyeri
would not be able to read it, even should they wish to do so. They are very close to illiterate.’

‘Well, that would save their blushes. Anacreon on drinking, they might like. But Anacreon on women might be rather strong meat for them.’

Adam continued to root through the volumes on the innermost shelves, picking up the occasional one and turning the pages swiftly. The smell of long-neglected literature hung in the air.
Demetrios’s hidden cubicle was not, he thought, so dissimilar to some of the darker corners of a college library back in Cambridge.

‘Which was the manuscript the other Englishman wanted to buy?’ he asked.

Rallis spoke again to the monk.

‘It is the one by your left hand. The small one bound in black leather.’

Adam took hold of the volume indicated and carefully opened it.

‘It is written on vellum,’ he said.

‘Are they not all written on vellum?’

‘The majority will probably be paper. Vellum manuscripts will, I assume, be the oldest.’

‘Is it the one which we seek?’ The lawyer’s voice was as hushed as if he was in the monastery’s church.

Adam turned the leaves of the manuscript one by one. He blew gently on one of them and a small cloud of dust particles rose into the air.

‘Adam, is it the book we have come for?’ Rallis sounded as if he was struggling to maintain his usual calm.

In reply, Adam held out the manuscript, open at the page on which he had blown. He pointed to the Greek lettering inscribed on it hundreds of years earlier. The ink was fading but the letters
were still clear and legible. He indicated one of the words at the top of the page.

‘ “Euphorion”,’ he said in a hushed voice. ‘Unless my ability to decipher Greek has deserted me entirely, that word is Euphorion.’

‘It is,’ Rallis replied. ‘And there beneath it is the word “
Periegesis
”. There can be no doubt about it. This is the missing manuscript of
Euphorion’s travels.’

The two men looked at one another with poorly suppressed excitement. For a moment, neither man could think of anything further to say.

‘You have come a long way to find this book,’ Rallis said eventually. Adam was staring once again at the word ‘Euphorion’ on the leaf of vellum. He had indeed travelled
far since he had first encountered the name written in the notebook belonging to poor Creech. And now here was the mysterious manuscript, the one in which, if Palavaccini, the editor of the first
printed version was to be believed, the Greek writer spoke of “the golden treasure that lies hidden where the ancient kings buried it”.

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

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.’