‘Move a yard or two back, Adam. You must not think of running at me. I am very fond of you but I will certainly shoot you. I have not come this far to fall victim to idle scruples about another death.’
The young man did as he was ordered, shuffling several paces backwards.
‘That is far enough,’ Fields said. ‘I would not have you falling into the trench. Now, where were we?’
‘You were about to explain to me why you have done this,’ Adam said quietly.
‘Ah, yes, so I was. I would not have you think entirely ill of me, Adam.’
For a moment, the eyes of the two men met. The young man was appalled by what he glimpsed in the red-rimmed and bloodshot gaze of his mentor. Here was someone who had stared at the abyss and then tumbled into it. Adam saw that there would be no return to reason for the professor.
Several miles further north, Quint and the mule were making slow progress. It would have been hard for any observer, had there been one close to hand, to decide whether man or beast was the more disgruntled. The mule had been aggravated by its removal from the area near the camp where it had been happily and idly grazing. It had retaliated by refusing to move at anything other than a snail’s pace, no matter how hard its rider had dug his heels into its flanks and made encouraging noises. On a number of occasions, Quint had been obliged to dismount and pull the reluctant creature by its reins. The sound of its outraged braying echoed along the valley through which they were travelling so slowly.
Quint himself was sweating and cursing as he tugged and chivvied the mule into motion. He was a man who was rarely at a loss for a grievance and this unwanted journey, he felt, was an injustice that even the most saintly of individuals would have found difficult to bear without complaint. He grumbled incessantly beneath his breath as he remounted the mule yet again. One minute he had been happily digging in the trench. Well, maybe not happily, he admitted to himself. Digging was almost as much of a bleeding pain in the arse as dragging this mule halfway across Thessaly. But he’d been resigned to it. That was the word, resigned. And then Adam had got it into his head that a message had to be sent to the others. When they could have just given themselves a slap on the back for finding the gold ornament and settled down for a kip in the shade until the others got back.
‘There’s some as wouldn’t reckernise a good thing if it came up and kicked ’em in the cods,’ Quint said bitterly to himself. He sometimes wondered if his master wasn’t as daft as a sheep before the shearers. How Adam had managed before he’d happened along to take him under his wing, he didn’t know. ‘Of course,’ he acknowledged, struggling to be fair-minded, ‘I got me a nice crib out of it.’ But it was Adam, Quint felt, who had got the best of the bargain. And now here the young sprig was, sending him out into the heat of the day with a brute that wouldn’t listen to a bleeding word you said.
‘Giddyup, you long-eared bastard,’ he shouted, digging his heels into the mule’s sides once again.
To Quint’s great surprise, the animal responded. It began to trot along the path they were following by the side of a meandering stream. As he clung to its reins, the beast increased its pace until it was travelling at a speed of which Quint had not imagined it capable. Bumping uncomfortably up and down on the saddle and watching the Greek countryside race past him, he began to wish that he had not given the mule any encouragement. This was worse — much worse — than pulling and wrenching at the beast to force it forwards a few yards.
‘Whoa, you hee-hawing devil, or I’ll see you in a bleedin’ stew-pan.’ Quint had now abandoned his faith in the reins and stretched himself full-length along the mule’s back, both his hands clasped around the creature’s neck. ‘This ain’t Derby Day and you ain’t Blue Gown.’
The mule took no notice of its rider. If anything, it upped its trot towards a gallop. Perhaps, Quint thought miserably, it did believe it was the famous thoroughbred that had won at Epsom two years earlier. He continued to wrap himself around the mule’s neck and hope that it would soon tire of its exertions. For a minute, he closed his eyes, figuring that it might be better not to know exactly where they were going. After a hundred yards, he decided he was wrong and opened them again. The stream to the left, he noted, had widened considerably. He struggled to twist his head forward so that he could look ahead of him. All he could see was a blur of green and, far in the distance, the grey stones of the mountains. He felt the dry, hard skin of the mule’s neck against his cheek. One of the hairs from its mane began to work its way up his nose, tickling him to the point where he wanted to sneeze. When he did so, his startled mount picked up pace even more.
‘Christ in heaven,’ Quint moaned. ‘Ain’t it jiggered yet?’ He risked raising his head slightly and was astonished by what he saw. A quarter of a mile ahead was a group of horses and riders. They had stopped by a small grove of trees and were all gazing towards Quint and his mule as the pair raced towards them. One of the riders was standing in his stirrups to get a better view.
Quint and his mount bore down on the group. At the speed they were travelling, the distance between them shortened rapidly. The man was yelling incoherently, the beast was braying at full volume. The horses and their riders scattered as the mule charged into their midst. It dug its hooves into the ground beneath it and came to a sudden stop. Quint did not. He hurtled over the mule’s head and crashed to earth. Stunned and winded, he lay in the grass as confused thoughts drifted through his mind. Briefly, he was back in Doughty Street, ushering a young woman into the sitting room. She was looking at him in a strange way. He was, of course, used to people looking at him in a strange way. Usually he didn’t mind but he felt a strong urge to explain himself to this young woman. He knew her name, he was sure of it, but he just couldn’t recall it. She leaned forward and stared into his eyes.
‘Mr Quint,’ she said. ‘Is that you? Are you all right?’
Emily, he thought, Emily something. Then he lost consciousness.
‘It was that contemptible man Creech who began all this,’ Fields said to Adam, his face screwing up with anger as he remembered the man with the crescent moon scar. ‘He sought to cheat me. He sought to make use of my scholarship and knowledge for his own sordid ends. And yet, when our plans to travel to Koutles and unearth the treasure were already well advanced, he wanted to cast me aside. He approached you, one of the few other Englishmen who had travelled in the region recently. He sent his daughter to discover more about you.’
Adam started with surprise. ‘His daughter?’
‘Did you not realise the identity of your mysterious visitor in London, Adam? The chit of a girl who has followed us to Greece? Perhaps you believed that it was your charms that attracted Emily to your company?’ The professor laughed. ‘She was working on her father’s behalf. At her father’s behest. He assumed that you would be more forthcoming when questioned by a pretty girl than you would be if he came to you in person. He was correct, of course.’
Adam’s face fell. He recalled the occasions on which he had met Emily Maitland. In Doughty Street. At Cremorne. Her questioning of him, he was forced to admit, had seemed odd. But not so odd that he had not wished to continue their conversations as long as possible. Not so odd that they had outweighed the power of her beauty and vivacity to stir him. He could not think what to say but that seemed to matter very little. Fields was in full flow. He wanted to talk.
‘Emily is not English, of course,’ the professor went on. ‘Not in the sense that you and I are English. Or even in the sense that Quintus is English. Where the name of Maitland has come from, I do not know. Plucked from the air or borrowed from one of her mother’s grubby cavaliers, I suppose. You must have noticed that although she speaks our language so well, she does not speak it as if it were her mother tongue. Her mother tongue — indeed, her mother — is Greek. She is the daughter Creech fathered on some Peloponnesian trollop when he was in Athens twenty years ago.’