‘Cleanliness seems to be a virtue not much admired in monastic circles,’ Adam said.
‘The old bastards stink is what you mean.’ Quint had also left his cell and was standing by the wooden railings, scratching his stubbled chin and hitching up his trousers. ‘I could smell ’em from yards off last night.’
‘These are holy men, Quint,’ Adam said. ‘Their concern is with their souls not with their bodies. Anyway, if truth be told, neither you nor I nor even the professor can lay claim to great fragrance after traipsing the plains of Thessaly for several days.’
‘I can accept the bodily odours of the monks,’ Fields said. ‘Anyone who has spent any time in the Senior Common Room of a Cambridge college has learned to accustom himself to the redolence of his fellow man. It is the insect life that I cannot abide.’
The same monk who had conducted them to their rooms the previous night now appeared to usher them towards their breakfasts. Beckoning the three of them to follow him, he set off along the walkway. He took them down a short flight of stairs and into a stone-flagged corridor which led to a massive wooden door. The monk pushed it open and entered a room larger than any other they had so far seen in Agios Andreas. Three long tables, with benches by them, stood within it. One crossed the room at its far end. The other two were set at right angles to it. In the far left-hand corner was a lectern.
‘The refectory, I assume,’ the professor said, as Theophanes indicated by smiles and gestures that the far table was to be theirs. ‘And we are to be guests at their equivalent of high table. The similarity to colleges by the Cam grows. Although I suspect the food may not be as appetising.’
‘But healthier, perhaps,’ Adam suggested.
An elderly monk with a beard of particular luxuriance was standing by the top table, bowing repeatedly.
‘This will be the hegumen.’ Fields examined the old monk as if he were some curious animal of which no specimen had previously come to his attention. ‘As ignorant as his fellows, I have no doubt.’
The monk, smiling beatifically, continued to bow and nod.
‘The hegumen?’ Adam sounded momentarily puzzled. ‘Ah, the one in charge.’
‘The abbot, in effect.’
‘We must hope that he does not speak English, Professor. Or he might take offence at your words.’
‘He will be a monoglot Greek, I have no doubt.’ Fields, still staring at the hegumen like a visitor encountering one of the odder beasts in the Regent’s Park zoo for the first time, was unabashed. ‘And his Greek will be some barbarous dialect that is barely comprehensible.’
Adam responded to the monk’s politeness with bows of his own and a greeting in Greek. The old man looked delighted to be addressed in his own language. He replied with a volley of swiftly delivered remarks, few of which Adam was able to catch. They all took their seats and watched as the door opened again and the other monks trooped in together. Behind the caloyeri were Rallis and his huge servant. Fields waved at the empty places on the bench and the two Greeks joined the Englishmen in their place of honour. Andros, struggling to accommodate his vast legs beneath the table, made it rock gently on his knees before he was able to settle into his seat. Rallis, taking his place more gracefully, greeted his fellow travellers warmly. He bowed respectfully to the hegumen. There was no trace of embarrassment in his manner, Adam noted, no suggestion that he knew they had witnessed his midnight excursion and his mysterious signalling or that, if he did know, he cared greatly.
The young servant who had been present the previous day when the visitors were hauled up the rock now appeared, placing plates of dry bread and salt cheese in front of them. Another boy set glasses and a tankard of red wine on the table. Adam picked up the tumbler he had been given for the wine and examined it in the dim light. It looked very ancient and bore on it several unmonastic engravings of little cupids wrestling and shooting arrows. Was the tumbler Venetian, he wondered? It certainly looked to be. If it was, what roundabout journey had brought it to this remote spot? As he was pondering this, one of the monks moved away from his companions and stood by the lectern. Opening the large and ancient Bible on it, he began to read aloud. His fellow monks were silent but otherwise seemed to be paying little heed to him. Their attention looked to be more focused on the breakfast to come.
When, after a minute or two, the reader ceased speaking, closed the Bible and returned to his place, the others fell on the bread and cheese like men who had scarcely eaten that week. A slight hum of hushed conversation rose from the monks’ table. From time to time, one of the younger caloyeri raised his head and looked at the visitors, but if Adam caught his eye, he looked down immediately at his plate. The others seemed remarkably uninterested in anything other than their food. The hegumen continued to chatter cheerfully to Adam in Greek which the young man found difficult to follow. The old man, he thought, was asking him about London. He wanted to know about the state of the monasteries there. Were they rich and well-populated? Adam laboured to provide the hegumen with adequate answers to his enquiries. Fields, meanwhile, was taking the opportunity to question Rallis.
‘You have put forward our request to see the objects these monks possess?’ he asked.
‘I did so,’ the Greek replied. ‘But there was no need. The hegumenos assumed that the only reason we travelled so far was that we wished to pay our respects to the relics. He could imagine no other. He has agreed to show them to us later this morning.’
‘And their library?’
‘I believe that will also be included in the tour.’
Once breakfast was finished, the hegumen led his guests from the refectory. He beckoned them into a squat building that stood next to the chapel where Adam and Quint had admired the wall paintings the previous night. The two servants were left outside. The hegumen ushered Adam, Fields and Rallis into a rectangular stone cell where the treasures of the monastery had been laid out on a wooden desk for their inspection. From a cupboard in the corner, he took an embroidered stole and placed it round his neck. He waved his arm at the desk. The three visitors moved closer to examine what was on it.
‘There are beautiful objects here,’ Adam remarked, pointing to a jewel-encrusted box.
The hegumen made encouraging noises as he did so, like a schoolmaster trying to embolden a bright but bashful pupil.
‘That is a very holy relic,’ Rallis said. ‘The monks believe it to be part of the body of Agios Andreas. Saint Andrew.’ He reached his right hand behind his neck and tapped on his own back. ‘I do not know the name of it in English but it is here.’
‘The shoulder blade,’ Adam said.
‘Ah, the shoulder blade. Like the blade of the sword.’ Rallis smiled at the curiosities of the English language. ‘The monks believe they possess the shoulder blade of Agios Andreas in the jewelled box. It is their greatest treasure.’
Fields grunted with distaste. ‘These Eastern Christians are worse than papists,’ he said. ‘All these saints’ bones. What else do they claim to hold here? The right hand of St Thomas? Mary Magdalen’s left foot?’
‘They are not sophisticated, perhaps, Professor,’ Rallis said soothingly, ‘but their religious feelings are sincere.’
‘They are mired in unreason. In thrall to absurd superstitions. Do they seriously expect us to believe that bits and pieces of the body of Saint Andrew, a man who died eighteen hundred years ago, are scattered about the monasteries of Greece and the Levant?’
‘The relic is certainly many centuries old.’ Rallis continued to speak to Fields in a placatory tone of voice. ‘The monks say it belonged once to the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus. It was brought from Byzantium by the first abbot of the monastery.’