Carver's Quest (49 page)

‘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.

A
ll 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 thieves 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.’