‘You have come a long way to find this book,’ Rallis said eventually. Adam was staring once again at the word ‘Euphorion’ on the leaf of vellum. He had indeed travelled far since he had first encountered the name written in the notebook belonging to poor Creech. And now here was the mysterious manuscript, the one in which, if Palavaccini, the editor of the first printed version was to be believed, the Greek writer spoke of “the golden treasure that lies hidden where the ancient kings buried it”.
‘We must show this to the professor,’ he said. ‘He will rejoice in this discovery as much as we do.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I think we must wait until the hegumen sees the logic in our proposal,’ Adam said. ‘To lose one manuscript from a library which they never use and gain in return enough money to feed his monks for months. He must see the sense in it.’
It was no more than an hour since he and Rallis had held the Euphorion manuscript in their hands. They had wished to remove it from the hidden library to show the professor. When they had proposed this, Demetrios had become very agitated. He had released a torrent of barely comprehensible Greek and had tugged at Adam’s sleeve as if intent on hauling him bodily from the library. In the end, they had had to leave the manuscript where it was. The wild-haired monk had led them back across the courtyard to speak to the hegumen. Rallis, exerting all his charm and eloquence, had made the spiritual head of the monastery an offer. The manuscript, he had told him, was of great interest to the Englishmen. The Englishmen would pay the hegumen many piastres for it. The hegumen had listened politely to the lawyer’s lengthy speech and then he had replied.
‘Ochi,’ he had said. The answer was no and always would be no. It was no to the other Englishman who had visited Agios Andreas. It was no to them. The treasures of the monastery were not for sale. Rallis and Adam had no choice but to retire to the professor’s room and inform him of the morning’s developments.
‘If we are obliged to wait for these credulous dunces to learn logic,’ Fields now remarked, ‘we shall wait until the Greek Kalends. It will never happen.’
He was consumed by irritation with what he had been told. He could not keep still and strode about the room, tugging hard at his beard as if it were a false one and he were intent on pulling it off.
‘We must force the abbot, nolens volens, to surrender the manuscript,’ he said eventually.
‘I do not think we can do that, sir,’ Adam said. ‘How do you propose that we dispossess him of it? At gunpoint?’
Fields stopped and stared intently at the younger man. For a moment, it seemed he was about to hail the suggestion as a brilliant means of breaking the deadlock. Then he shook his head.
‘No. As much as we want the manuscript, we can scarcely point our rifles at men of religion. Even men of so debased and superstitious a religion as this Eastern Orthodoxy.’
The professor looked disappointed that his scruples prevented him from the action the situation demanded. He began to patrol the room again. The other two watched him and exchanged glances. Rallis raised his eyebrows. Adam lifted his shoulders in the smallest of shrugs.
‘I shall go and speak to this hegumen myself,’ Fields announced, bringing his restless pacing to an abrupt end. ‘I shall see just how deaf he is to the voice of reason.’
The professor said no more but exited the room immediately. His boots could be heard clumping down the wooden walkway outside. His two companions looked at one another again.
‘Will his intervention alter the hegumen’s decision, do you suppose?’ Adam asked.
‘I doubt it very much.’ Rallis looked as if he could not decide whether to be amused or irritated by Fields’s sudden departure. ‘The hegumenos does not like the professor. He knows very little English but he heard some of what he said at breakfast. And he knew later that his relics were being mocked. I fear that Professor Fields may make the task of acquiring the manuscript more difficult rather than less.’
‘We had best hasten after him. Perhaps we can prevent him from insulting the old man’s religion further.’ Adam did not sound hopeful that they could. He and the Greek lawyer followed the professor from the room. They made their way back through the winding labyrinth of the monastery’s ancient passageways and tiny courtyards to the small cell which its spiritual leader called his own. As they approached, they could hear voices in Greek. One was raised in anger, the other spoke gently but firmly. It was not difficult to guess which belonged to Fields. They entered the chamber, empty save for a ramshackle cot in one corner on which the hegumen slept. An icon of the Madonna and Child and one of Saint Andrew were the only decorations. They found the professor shouting about the significance to classical scholarship of the manuscript in the library while the old hegumen bent his head and examined the stone floor of his cell. He looked up as his new visitors arrived and immediately began to address Rallis. Fields continued to rant for a moment or two before falling sullenly silent. Rallis listened to the monk and then turned to the other two to translate.
‘He says they are poor,’ he began.
‘Yes, yes, we know that already,’ Fields interrupted impatiently. He was almost beside himself. ‘Surely that means all the more reason for them to accept a gift in return for the manuscript.’
‘They are poorer now than they have ever been,’ the lawyer went on. ‘They once had lands in the north. In Wallachia. Many farms and fields and vineyards. But the Prince of Romania confiscated their estates there. Now they are very poor indeed.’
‘Damn him and his lost fields and vineyards!’ Fields was clutching his head in both hands. He reminded Adam of the villain in a melodrama about to tear his hair following the frustration of his wicked plans. ‘Why will he not sell us the manuscript?’
‘But however poor they have been, they have never sold the holy treasures that have been entrusted to them.’
‘Holy treasures!’ the professor screeched. ‘Does this old fool even know what we want? We have no interest in dispossessing him of his saintly shoulder blade. Or his lachrymose icon. We want a single manuscript from his library which probably no one has read since Suleiman the Magnificent was sitting on the Ottoman throne.’
‘Pray, calm yourself, Professor.’ Adam made soothing gestures towards the older man. ‘This is no way to win the hegumen’s agreement.’
‘I am not certain that I can be calm, Adam.’ Fields none the less made a mighty effort to recover his self-possession. ‘When I am faced by this unthinking refusal to accept reasoned argument.’
For a moment, Adam entertained himself with the notion of what the professor might consider unreasoned argument when his reasoned variety seemed to consist of such frothing rage. But the hegumen was now speaking again. His Greek was very different to the classical language that Adam knew but there was no need for Rallis to translate. There was no mistaking the old monk’s meaning. He was asking them, politely but firmly, to leave him alone in his stone cell.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
All negotiations with the hegumen proved fruitless. Despite the offers of cash, despite the charm that Rallis deployed, despite the fury with which the professor raged against his intransigence, the old monk remained adamant. No manuscript was leaving Agios Andreas while it was in his care.
‘Can we not read the manuscript in situ?’ Adam asked. ‘We could return with Demetrios to the hidden library and copy out the passages in Euphorion which are relevant.’
‘I am not certain that we will necessarily know which passages are relevant,’ the professor said gloomily. ‘It may be that the importance of Euphorion’s descriptions will become apparent only when the text and the ground it describes are closely compared. We will need the original when we travel north.’