‘Why would he do that?’
‘The Turks are often cruel masters. That is why we Greeks wish to be free.’
‘I am not at all certain that that is the case, my dear Rallis,’ Fields said, prepared as ever for argument. ‘Not unnaturally, you believe that your fellow Greeks on this side of the border are all yearning to join your new nation, but I remain unconvinced. As long as they pay their taxes and commit no open crime, I suspect that the Greek subjects of the Porte are as happy with their government as those of their fellows who are ruled from Athens.’
For a moment, it seemed to Adam as if Rallis might dispute the professor’s statement but he remained silent.
The party stopped for lunch under the shade of a group of plane trees. Horses and mules drank from the stream which ran past it. With the exception of Fields, who settled himself at the foot of one of the planes and opened a book, the men began to unload the saddlebags from the drinking beasts. After half a minute, Andros paused as he reached across the largest of the horses to unfasten its saddle. The huge Greek spoke briefly to Rallis and pointed towards the horizon. Rallis, shading his eyes against the sun, looked in the direction his manservant was indicating.
‘We have visitors, gentlemen. There are men on horseback coming across the plain.’
Adam and Quint both turned from the saddlebags they had lifted to the ground and looked up across the sun-scorched landscape. The professor, either because he was oblivious to any danger the visitors might present or because he had not heard the Greek’s words, continued to read his copy of Thucydides.
‘Who are they?’ Adam asked.
Rallis shrugged. ‘Who can say? I think we are many miles from any village.’
Adam stood and watched the small group of riders. The sharp eyes of Andros had been able to pick them out from the landscape before anyone else, but now they were clear to all the travellers. Even Fields had lifted his eyes from his book and was following the horsemen as they approached in clouds of dust.
‘Are they brigands?’
‘I know no more than you, Adam,’ Rallis said. ‘We must hope not.’
‘Should we make a run for it?’
‘It would be pointless. We have only three horses for five men. And the mules could not move at a pace sufficient to escape. These men, whoever they are, will be with us in ten minutes.’
Rallis’s judgement of time was a good one. Almost exactly ten minutes had passed when the riders, shouting and yelling to one another, pulled up their horses twenty yards from the trees. There were ten in the party, all of them looking like a cross between a pantomime villain and a scarecrow. Each man carried a miniature arsenal of small arms at his waist, a yataghan and a pair of pistols at the least thrust into his belt. All had long black hair which hung down to their shoulders in bedraggled tresses.
A man in a dirty white capote and breeches who appeared to be the leader spurred his horse forward and began to address Rallis in a loud and threatening voice. His followers crowded behind him, bellowing approval of his words and occasionally brandishing their guns in their air.
‘What is the man saying?’ Fields asked impatiently. He had hauled himself to his feet as their visitors clattered into the camp and thrust his volume of Thucydides unwillingly into his jacket pocket. ‘He speaks such a barbarous dialect I can barely catch a word in three.’
The leader, urged on by his comrades, continued to roar his threats at the travellers.
‘Oh, that the language of Homer and Pindar should descend to this!’ the professor remarked to no one in particular. ‘If I am not mistaken, he seems to be talking a great deal about blood and death and the valour of his ancestors.’
‘He is certainly modelling his behaviour on that of a brigand chieftain in a Drury Lane melodrama,’ Adam remarked. ‘He could not have seen one in this desolate spot, could he? Surely no company has come this far on tour?’
The brigand chief was now pointing at the professor and was directing his words at him. Fields looked at the Greek as if he was an exceptionally dim student he was obliged to tutor.
‘No, it is useless. I simply cannot understand enough of this ruffian’s Greek to make sense of it,’ Fields said. He seemed to imply that the ruffian was entirely to blame for this.
‘He has been saying that his family have lived on this land for generations,’ Rallis translated. ‘He has also been saying that foreign dogs should not trespass on his lands. These things are probably not true. It is not his land, I think.’
‘He certainly does not look like a farmer,’ Adam remarked. ‘What else does he say?’
‘Now he says, “You foreign dogs are in our hands. Your money is ours. Your blood is ours.” ’
There was another impassioned burst of Greek from the man in the white capote.
‘ “I am the pasha here. I am a king to rule over English milords.” ’
‘He knows we are English, then,’ Adam remarked.
‘If he knows we are Englishmen, he knows we are not men with whom to trifle.’ Fields sounded exasperated that something as trivial as the arrival of ten heavily armed men should be holding them up. ‘Tell him to be on his way. And to take his ragamuffin band with him.’
The leader of the band now made a gesture, first towards the mules and the horses and then towards the saddlebags.
‘He wishes to inspect the baggage,’ Rallis said.
‘The impudence of the man!’ Fields exclaimed. ‘You will tell this rogue that—’
‘Silence!’ Rallis’s sudden cry was the more surprising because of the studied politeness with which he usually spoke. ‘I will tell him nothing. This is not a game that these men play. It is for us to listen, not to tell. And to obey.’
‘He is right, Professor,’ Adam said, placing a restraining hand on Fields’s arm as the older man made to move towards the bandit chief. For a moment, it seemed as if Fields might continue to protest but he subsided into glowering silence.
The bandit chief shouted abrupt instructions and two of his men dismounted. They walked over to where the bags were lying on the ground and opened them. Within moments, all Quint’s work that morning in packing the bags was undone. Meanwhile, another three men had also stepped down from their mounts and moved to where the horses and mules were tethered. They began to examine the beasts, prodding at legs and slapping flanks.
Rallis called out to the leader of the group. The man jumped down from his horse and strolled over to where the lawyer stood. He laughed and slapped him so heartily on the back that Adam could see Rallis stagger beneath the blow. The Athenian said something else and the man laughed again. Together the two of them walked away towards the shade of one of the plane trees. There they remained while the ransacking of the bags and the assessment of the horses continued. After five minutes, Rallis walked back to his companions, followed a few paces behind by the brigand.
‘Put smiles upon your faces, gentlemen,’ the Athenian said as he approached. ‘I have told our friend here that we bear him nothing but goodwill.’
The travellers now stood, wreathed in smiles, as the brigand and two of his most ruffianly companions came closer. Even the professor twisted his face into a ghastly simulacrum of cheerfulness. The chief of the supposed bandits leered amiably as he approached.
‘His name is Lascarides,’ Rallis went on. ‘He is at pains to assure me that he is an honest man. His colleagues are all honest men.’
‘Damn grinning scoundrels, the lot of them,’ Fields said, although, Adam noticed, he was careful to keep his mask of genial greeting in place.
‘However, they require our horses. They apologise for the inconvenience but they insist that we hand over our mounts.’