A dozen yards away, Adam emerged from the blankets in which he had wrapped himself the previous night. He had spent the hours of darkness turning from side to side in the hope that he might chance upon the one posture in which sharp stones did not make their presence felt. He had failed to find it. He had ended by gazing up at the stars. He had wondered whether there were any other creatures up there somewhere in the heavens looking down on the earth and, if there were, whether they were as uncomfortable as he was. He had finally drifted into a fitful doze an hour before sunrise. Now, barely two hours later, a new day was upon him. He yawned and, rising to his feet, trudged towards the small stream beside which they had set up their encampment.
The giant Greek, Andros, as impassive as a cigar-store Indian, was already standing by the water. He was gazing to the north-east in the direction in which they would have to travel that day. He turned as Adam approached.
‘Kakos dromos,’ he said briefly and then walked away.
‘A bad road, eh?’ Adam said to himself. ‘Well, we have little choice but to follow it.’
In the distance, about a quarter of a mile away, he could see Rallis and Fields, the other two members of their little party. The professor, as so often, appeared to be delivering a lecture. Adam could hear the sound of his voice but could not distinguish what he was saying. The lawyer was listening, his head politely inclined towards that of his companion. Adam crouched down by the stream and cupped his hands in it. He poured the water over his head and allowed it to course through his hair and down on to his chest. Refreshed, he stood up and made his way back towards the camp. Quint was still struggling to instil obedience in the mule.
‘This bleedin’ beast is aimin’ to be the death of me,’ he said as Adam approached.
‘You must learn to have faith in the poor creature. It is behaving so wilfully because it is aware that you do not trust it.’
The animal lashed out a back leg and both men leapt sideways to avoid it.
‘That mule has a sly look in its eye,’ Quint said flatly. ‘It ain’t a mule a man can trust. And what’s more, it’s a mule as pisses pretty much where the ’ell it wants.’
‘Mules are intended by nature to be intractable beasts,’ Adam said complacently. ‘The best one can do is cajole them in the direction you wish them to go. There is no point in trying to coerce them, Quint. And there is certainly no point in endeavouring to control their habits of urination.’
‘That’s what you say. But you ain’t the one who’s spent the last half-hour wading about in mule piss.’
‘You have my sympathies, Quint.’ Adam yawned and stretched his arms. He did not seem unduly concerned by his servant’s troubles. ‘However, I cannot think seriously of anything until I have partaken of breakfast. Where is the bread? And the smoked meat?’
‘On that mule’s back,’ the servant said, with noticeable satisfaction. ‘The rest of us ate ours an ’our gone. While you was still snoring like an ’og.’
‘Well, the victuals and viands must be unpacked. I shall have to breakfast alone.’
‘Ain’t no time. The professor wants to be on the move. That’s why I’m lockin’ ’orns with this bleedin’ mule.’
Fields and Rallis had returned to the camp and were saddling their horses. The lawyer’s servant, who had ambled with giant strides beside the horses the previous day, was awaiting his master’s orders to set off once more. Adam looked to where he had left his tangled bedding in order to walk down to the stream. It was no longer there. While he was washing, Quint had folded the bag and blankets and strapped them to one of the mules. Both of these beasts, even the most troublesome of the pair, now appeared anxious to move.
‘Come, Adam,’ the professor shouted, already on horseback. ‘We have many miles to go before noon.’
The young man sighed. There was no help for it. Breakfastless, he mounted his own horse and the expedition headed off towards the north-east.
They had left Athens a week earlier. On the first day, they had travelled by the newly finished railway line from the Greek capital to its port of Piraeus. There they had taken a boat. Sailing southwards, they had rounded the tip of Attica and turned north. With the island of Euboea rising mountainously to starboard, they had continued to sail towards Chalcis, the port on the narrow strait of Euripus. Negotiating the waters around the port, they had emerged into a huge bay with a distant view of Mount Pelion. ‘Where Achilles was taught by Chiron,’ the professor had been eager to tell the others. ‘We are approaching the land of centaurs and lapiths.’
At the port of Volos, nestling beneath the slopes of Pelion, they had disembarked in the clear light of early morning. Turkish officials had hurried to intercept them, apparently intent on causing the maximum amount of inconvenience, but vigorous waving of the papers the professor possessed in front of the officials’ noses, in conjunction with the judicious use of baksheesh, had limited the delay to a few hours. Just as he had promised back in Athens, Rallis had arranged for men to be waiting near Volos with mules and horses. Adam had briefly wondered how the lawyer’s influence could make itself felt across the border with European Turkey, but the proof that it could was in front of his eyes. He had pushed the question to the back of his mind. Within a few hours more, they had climbed clear of the town. They could look back to the bay where they had landed and see its blue waters dotted here and there with the white sails of fishing boats. With the horses and baggage-laden mules, they had travelled nearly twenty miles on the first day before they had decided to make camp.
‘We are well beyond the frontiers of liberated Greece,’ Fields had said with great satisfaction.
Now, on the following morning, as Adam’s empty stomach rumbled and Quint continued to mutter about mules beneath his breath, they made their way further into Thessaly.
Both Adam and Rallis were wearing English shooting jackets and broad-brimmed wide-awake hats. Quint had a shapeless canvas cap thrust onto his head. The professor had purchased in Athens a large white umbrella to shield him from the sun but he was finding it difficult to combine holding his reins in one hand and the umbrella in the other. He often rode bareheaded for an hour or more. Adam worried about the effects the heat might have upon him, but Fields showed no signs that he was troubled by it. As time passed, the younger man found himself marvelling anew at the stamina and endurance of the Cambridge scholar. At least twenty years older than any of his companions, the professor showed few signs that age was slowing him.
For more than an hour that morning they travelled through countryside where the roads were all but effaced. The fields had been left to return to an uncultivated state and the houses and villages were deserted. They saw no one.
‘What has happened here?’ Adam asked, but neither the professor nor the Greek lawyer could give him a conclusive answer.
‘Perhaps the Turkish landlord has driven his peasantry from the land,’ Rallis suggested.