‘One at least. Euphorion of Thrace,’ Fields said. ‘Author of a text entitled Ellados Periegesis. He is an exceedingly obscure writer. Never studied at either of the universities. I find it difficult to guess what his name could mean to Creech. Or to an enquiry agent, whatever one of those might be or do.’
‘Ellados Periegesis. “The Description of Greece”. That is surely the same name given to the work of Pausanias?’
Adam knew the writings of the Greek geographer and traveller of old. He could recall translating several pages of Pausanias’s lengthy account of his visit to Delphi as punishment for some schoolboy transgression involving a cricket ball and a broken window.
‘Yes, Euphorion was a slightly younger contemporary of Pausanias,’ Fields said. ‘Second century ad. Most of his work is a direct plagiarism of the older man’s but written in even less elegant Greek. Which probably explains why Euphorion’s work is largely ignored by scholars.’
‘But there is no mystery about this man’s writings? Creech kept talking of a secret within the manuscript. What secret could there be hidden in an ancient travel book?’
‘No particular secret of which I know, but there is one fact about this Euphorion which may be relevant.’
‘And that is?’
‘There are only half a dozen passages of his book which are not very obviously borrowed from Pausanias. All of these refer to areas in which the older writer did not, as far as we know, travel.’ Fields paused for a moment. ‘All are in Macedonia.’
Adam sat in silence for a minute, thinking of the implications of the professor’s remarks. Perhaps Creech had read something of the Macedonian villages he had mentioned at the Speke dinner in the pages of Euphorion. Yet the man with the crescent scar had seemed no student of the classics. Adam remembered again his failure to recognise a commonplace phrase from Homer.
‘Has Euphorion’s book always been available to scholars?’ he asked eventually. ‘Modern editions have been published, surely?’
‘Indeed, they have. Not many — but Aldus Manutius the Younger published a critical edition in Venice in the late sixteenth century. The work of a scholar named Palavaccini. That is the editio princeps. And a gentleman at the University of Edinburgh named Robert Munro produced another, some time in the 1760s or 1770s.’
‘So any secret in the book has been hiding in plain sight for nearly three hundred years. What about manuscripts?’
‘Only three survive. All from the Byzantine centuries, of course. Your late acquaintance may possibly have discovered another. One hitherto unknown to scholars. That is a possibility.’
‘I have no idea whether or not he possessed a manuscript. He spoke merely of knowing about one. He spent much time in the East. He might have come across one in Constantinople, I suppose.’ A sudden recollection struck Adam. ‘Or Athens. Sunman at the FO told me that Creech worked there before the war in the Crimea.’
There was a pause. Adam speculated again about the depth of Fields’s interest in the subject under discussion. Maybe he was only indulging a favoured former student, but the professor seemed to have devoted some time to unearthing the information about Euphorion of Thrace.
‘I am forgetting,’ the young man said after a moment. ‘Creech must know you. He was asking after you in London. He spoke of you to Cosmo Jardine.’
‘Jardine? Is that young rogue still wasting oil paint and canvas somewhere in Chelsea? Why would this man Creech ask Jardine about me?’
‘I have no notion.’
‘Nor I. I have never come across the man.’ Fields, Adam noticed, was almost too firm in his denial. He wondered briefly if the older man was telling him the full truth.
‘When he visited Jardine’s studio, he was calling himself Sinclair.’
‘The only Sinclair I know is a fellow of Magdalene who wrote a very bad book on the Nicomachean Ethics.’
‘Well, Creech certainly gave Jardine the impression that he knew you.’
‘He did not, but my name must have been familiar to him. He must have wished to speak to me of our travels in European Turkey.’ The professor shifted in his seat, as if struggling to find the most comfortable position in it he could. ‘If he wished to consult with a junior member of the expedition such as yourself, he must have been even more eager to pick the brains of its leader.’
‘Perhaps he thought you might be able to provide him with information about Euphorion.’
‘That is certainly a possibility.’ Fields was yawning. His interest in Adam’s tale seemed to be fading. ‘Well, it seems that Euphorion may have cost him his life. And the life of at least one other man. Or am I indulging too freely in melodramatic speculation?’
Adam thought a while before replying.
‘No. I believe a manuscript could have been the reason why Creech and Jinkinson were both killed. This morning I was of the firm opinion that their deaths resulted from their attempts to blackmail someone. But now I am not at all sure that there is not some strange connection between their deaths and this ancient writer.’
‘I can help you to research Euphorion of Thrace further,’ Fields said. ‘If you think it would be valuable to do so, of course.’
‘It can do no harm to learn more of the man. Who knows? A little more information may throw light on the puzzle.’
‘I cannot be certain without checking, but I believe the library will have a copy not only of Munro’s Edinburgh edition but of the earlier volume as well. The college has rather a fine collection of Aldine books.’ The professor yawned again and placed his empty glass carefully on the table by his chair. ‘But looking for them is a task for the morning. At present the chimes of midnight are upon us and it is time to retire. You have a room awaiting you in First Court, I believe.’
‘There is a passage here in Latin. It is not part of Euphorion’s Greek text.’ Sitting at a reading desk in the college library, Adam looked up from the book he was examining. The professor, hunched over his pocket volume of Thucydides, did not raise his head from its pages. Adam watched his old mentor turn a page in the book. Not for the first time, he wondered how old Fields really was. Fresh-faced on his arrival at Shrewsbury School and first encountering him, he had thought him ancient, a man long teetering on the brink of the grave. Fields had left Shrewsbury for the professorship at Cambridge when Adam was in his final months at the school. A year into his own soon-to-be-interrupted Cambridge career, Adam had had chance to think again about the professor’s age and had taken ten years off his original schoolboy’s guess. Then the two of them had been companions on the expedition into Turkey in Europe. After two months of trekking the arduous terrain of Alexander’s one-time kingdom and watching Fields take each day’s travel in his stride, Adam had been obliged to revise his opinion again. Now, poring over the volume of The Peloponnesian War, the professor looked every inch a decrepit and decaying scholar, but Adam remembered well enough the vigour he had shown during their months away from civilisation.
‘It will be a note of exegesis by the editor,’ Fields said, head still bowed over Thucydides. ‘It was a common practice in the Aldine volumes.’
‘No, I do not think that is what it is. Not exactly, anyway. “In hoc libro dignissimus et famosus Euphorion…” ’ Adam began to translate. ‘“In this book, the most worthy and renowned Euphorion listed the villages and towns and cities of the fair land of Greece which he had visited and recorded their places of worship and their ancient traditions.” ’
‘I doubt very much Euphorion himself had visited many of them.’ Fields’s tone was dismissive. ‘He was mostly copying what Pausanias had already written.’
‘Perhaps not. There is more to this Latin note, though. The Aldine editor, assuming it was he, writes of the manuscripts he has seen.’
‘The three of which I told you.’
‘Possibly, possibly not. “In one manuscript only does the most worthy Euphorion write of the golden treasure that lies hidden where the ancient kings buried it. Of this treasure I have learned no more and I have chosen therefore not to transmit to posterity words which are most probably but lies and idle fantasies.” What do you make of that?’
The professor finally looked up from his volume of The Peloponnesian War. He took the Aldine book from Adam and read the passage himself.
‘Hmm, interesting. What could have been the treasure to which the manuscript referred?’ He gave the book back to Adam. ‘But, as Palavaccini says, probably no more than an idle fantasy of hidden riches.’
‘But what if it was more than fantasy? What if one of the manuscripts of Ellados Periegesis did contain details of some ancient treasure? And what if Creech had come into possession of it? That would be reason enough to speak of a “very great secret”.’
Fields waved his hand in dismissal. ‘There can be nothing in the three manuscripts,’ he said, with apparent certainty.
‘Perhaps there is a fourth manuscript,’ Adam went on, his excitement growing as his thoughts raced ahead of him. ‘Last night, you said yourself that Creech might have found another.’
‘I said it was a possibility, Adam. I do not believe it is particularly likely.’
‘I am not sure that it is not the only explanation. Other scholars have no doubt seen the three manuscripts that are known to exist and found nothing in any of them which can possibly justify the remark about the golden treasure. Ergo, there must be another manuscript. One which Palavaccini saw in the sixteenth century but which had disappeared by the time Munro put together his edition two hundred years later. Creech must have seen that missing manuscript. He must have known where it is. Or was.’
‘As I say, it is not beyond all bounds of possibility that another manuscript exists.’ Fields still sounded dubious. ‘This man Creech might have read it and realised what he was reading. But it still seems improbable to me.’
Adam thought for a moment.
‘I don’t think Creech was sufficiently a scholar to have read the manuscript himself. I remember at the Marco Polo dinner he did not seem to recognise a very familiar phrase from the Iliad. He must have had someone whose Greek was very much better than his own to translate it for him.’
‘Creech’s Greek may have disappeared with the passage of time. I know of men who were fair enough scholars in their youth who could not now construe a Greek verse if their lives depended upon it. Some of them continue to teach in the university. However, as I have said, we do not know that such a manuscript exists.’
‘You must admit, Professor, that there is — at the very least — a possibility that one does.’
‘I have acknowledged as much already, Adam. But I will go no further than to reiterate that it is only a possibility. Nothing more. If another early manuscript of Euphorion does survive, it cannot be anywhere in Western Europe. Scholars would know of it.’
‘Creech might have seen it in Greece or Turkey.’ Adam felt a rising certainty that he was correct. ‘He spent much of his life in the lands of the Ottoman Empire.’
‘That is true.’ Fields seemed to have caught some of the excitement which was stirring his one-time pupil. His voice now possessed an animation it had not so far done. ‘There are undoubtedly manuscripts that have never been properly catalogued or recorded. In obscure libraries and isolated monasteries.’
The professor stood. He thrust his small volume of Thucydides into his jacket pocket.
‘We must both read more of Euphorion, Adam. There is a riddle here to be answered.’
‘I shall continue to read here this afternoon.’
‘No, no, you must return to London. There is a train at three.’
Fields retreated into the darker recesses of the library. Adam could hear him moving books on one of the shelves.
‘I could stay longer in Cambridge,’ he called.
‘There is no need for you to do so, my boy.’ A book fell noisily to the floor. There was a muffled curse and then the professor appeared again by the reading desks, holding an old volume bound in calfskin. He blew gently on it and coughed as clouds of dust rose from it. ‘Here is a copy of the Munro edition. No one has looked at it for decades, it would seem. Possibly since it was first published. Take it back to town. I cannot countenance the borrowing of one of the college’s Aldine volumes, but the Munro is another matter. Perhaps there is some further clue to be found within its pages.’
‘And you shall read the Aldine edition here?’
‘I shall.’ The professor ran his hand through his hair where much of the dust from the book had settled. ‘I shall also make more enquiries of my confrères at high table. I shall even speak to Dandridge again. Together you and I will get to the bottom of this mystery.’