‘It has been difficult enough to carry our own selves up to this point,’ the Greek lawyer said, smiling. ‘I am by no means certain that we could have carried your photographic equipment as well.’
‘We could have hired men to bring it. It has been done often enough before. I have seen photographs of the buildings here while sitting in the library of the Marco Polo Club back in Pall Mall. A chap named Stillman showed them to me. An American who was staying in London.’
Adam began to pick his way across the rocks on the summit of the Acropolis. He gestured back towards the path where they had climbed up.
‘What is that unsightly horror? I remember it from my visit with Fields. And it was in one of Stillman’s photographs.’
Rallis looked over his shoulder at the tall stone building to which his companion was pointing.
‘The Frankish Tower. It was built by the Florentines several centuries ago. The Turks, when they occupied the city, used it to store gunpowder.’
‘It is a filthy excrescence,’ Adam exclaimed. ‘A blot on the landscape. It does its very best to spoil the approach to the sublime. Someone should use gunpowder to blow it up.’
‘It would not be missed, would it?’ the Greek agreed. ‘But let us continue to turn our backs on it and feast our eyes on the temple to Athena. Or on the maidens of the Erechtheum.’ He waved his hand towards the ruins of a smaller temple to their left, the columns of its porch shaped into female figures carrying the weight of the building on their heads.
‘Ah, the caryatids!’ Adam was filled with enthusiasm once more. ‘I see these regularly in London.’
Rallis looked puzzled. ‘In the photographs of Mr Stillman again?’ he asked.
Adam shook his head. ‘Copies of them stand guard over the crypt of the new church of St Pancras. In the Euston Road. But they look better here in the Greek sun than they do beneath the English rain.’
The two men seated themselves on one of the fallen stones that littered the surface of the Acropolis. It was still early in the morning and there were few other visitors to disturb the tranquillity.
‘It is enjoyable to act the tourist,’ the Greek said after a few moments. ‘But I have also been busy in the days since we first met.’
Adam raised an eyebrow enquiringly. The meeting at the embassy party had been a huge success. Rallis had been intrigued by their plans. Adam, and more importantly Professor Fields, had been impressed by the Greek. It was now accepted that the lawyer would join them on any expedition out of Athens.
‘I have asked questions of many people I know. Of scholars who know much about the ancient manuscripts that are still to be found in Greece. Not one of them knows anything of Euphorion.’
Adam looked crestfallen. ‘It seems we are on a wild goose chase,’ he said.
‘Not necessarily, my friend.’ The Greek was smiling to himself. ‘I have spoken also to a fellow countryman who spends his days drinking coffee at the Oraia Ellas.’
‘The café in town?’ Adam knew the Oraia Ellas as a haunt of visitors to Athens. He had been there himself on two occasions. The tables had been filled with Frenchmen and Germans, Americans and English. Any Greek who spent long hours there, he thought to himself, was probably a government agent employed to eavesdrop on the conversation of foreigners.
‘You know it, of course. My fellow countryman remembers an Englishman who came there several times. About a year ago.’
‘Every Englishman who arrives in Athens visits the Oraia Ellas at least once, Rallis. What is the significance of one visitor out of hundreds? Thousands?’
‘This Englishman was tall. And he had a scar near his right eye.’ The lawyer waggled his finger above his own brow. ‘Like a crescent moon, my fellow countryman said.’
‘Creech. That must have been Creech.’
‘Precisely, my friend, the man you described to me two days ago. And he was asking a lot of questions. Some of them were very peculiar questions. He wanted to travel out of the city. But not to the usual places Englishmen want to travel. Not to Marathon or to Missolonghi. This Englishman wanted to head north, out of the kingdom and into Turkey in Europe. He wanted to go to the monasteries at Meteora.’
‘Meteora?’
‘You do not know Meteora, Mr Carver?’
Adam again shook his head. ‘Although Fields spoke the other day of Greek monasteries,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he meant these ones at Meteora.’
‘They are on the plains of Thessaly. They are among the most surprising buildings that we Greeks have constructed.’ Rallis smiled to himself at the thought of how surprising the monasteries were. ‘This English gentleman with the strange scar, he wanted to go to one in particular. Agios Andreas.’
‘And Agios Andreas is known to you? It is one of the monasteries?’
‘Its fame is not as great as that of the Great Meteoron or the Holy Monastery of Varlaam. But, yes, I know of it. It has its own small renown.’ The Greek continued to smile, as if at a private joke he might possibly be willing to share if the moment was right.
‘What kind of small renown, Rallis? You must not keep me in suspense in this malicious way.’
‘According to what I have been told, its library is said to contain many ancient manuscripts.’
‘Endless works by the dullest of the church fathers, no doubt.’
‘No, my informant believed that Agios Andreas held more than just religious works. It has manuscripts of the ancient pagans. Of Aristotle and Homer.’
‘Aha! And of Euphorion, perhaps.’
The Greek lawyer inclined his head, as if to suggest that this was indeed possible.
‘Did this man with the crescent moon scar who was so eager to visit Agios Andreas find the answers to the questions he was asking?’
‘Alas, my fellow countryman does not know. The Englishman, he says, did not come again to Oraia Ellas after the summer months. But whether or not he succeeded in travelling to Meteora…’ Rallis shrugged. ‘Who can tell?’
Two days passed and Rallis invited Fields and Adam, accompanied by a grumbling Quint, to join him at his house overlooking Constitution Square. As noon approached on another hot and cloud-free day in the city, the professor climbed the three steps to the main entrance and stared at the large brass knocker on the door. It was fashioned into the face of an old man with flowing hair and untamed beard.
‘It is intended to represent Poseidon, I believe,’ he remarked, peering at the door knocker as if uncertain what purpose it might serve. ‘It seems a curious choice of decoration. I cannot see what connection there can be between the god of the sea and admittance to a man’s house.’
‘Perhaps Hestia, as goddess of the hearth, might be more appropriate,’ Adam said, ‘but we are not here to debate Rallis’s choice of household decoration, Professor. Do make use of Poseidon’s head.’
‘For gawdsake, knock on the bleedin’ door, will you?’ Quint muttered, although not loudly enough for the professor to hear him. ‘It’s ’ot enough to fry eggs on the pavement out ’ere.’
Fields lifted the hinged image of the god. He rapped it firmly against the door. The sound of brass on wood echoed and reverberated through the house and was then followed by silence. The professor was about to raise Poseidon once more when Adam rested a hand on his arm.
‘There is no call to do so, sir. I can hear footsteps inside.’
It was Rallis himself who opened the door.
‘I have allowed the servants to take the day off,’ he said, spreading his arms in a gesture of welcome. ‘All save one. We shall have the house to ourselves as we make our plans. No eyes or ears upon us. Come this way, gentlemen.’