Spirit of the Place

by Gregory Feeley

  Hamilton licked the burned spot and blew upon it, and as he reached down with his other hand for a book he heard the sound. A low groan, drawn out yet faint, as though most of its force was escaping breath. Hamilton froze, not from alarm but in order to make no noise as he listened for it again. The silence of the hold, which had seemed near total in contrast with the decks above, now was pierced with tiny creaks and pops, which resounded about him as though he stood within the body of a viola.

  After a moment he heard it again, a dry wavery tone fading slowly into silence. Despite his immediate recognition that it issued from no human throat, Hamilton felt the hairs on his nape prickle. Easy enough for a superstitious peasant to imagine he was hearing a person or ghost.

  He considered looking for the trunk or crate that was rubbing against a beam. Pressed by the weight of water and the twisting force of the masts, the hull writhed faintly in the torsion of currents and wind, and a piece of cargo wedged against it could produce a stridulous scrape. A glance back into the crowded darkness sufficed, however, to dissuade him, and Hamilton tucked the books under his arm and turned himself carefully about.

  The glow of Gavallo’s pipe grew slowly as he worked his way back. He was directly below it when he felt the rope ladder brush his face. “Hear any voices, sir?”

  “Take the books.” He handed them up one by one, then lowered the lamp to study the dunnage underfoot. The keelson and floors appeared intermittently beneath strewn rock, like roots burrowing through stone. Six inches beneath them lay the sea, but Hamilton was entertaining the conceit, pleasant and oddly attractive, that the water was oozing up through the stony, hallowed soil of Attic Greece.

  “Sir?” inquired Gavallo, either concerned or impatient. Hamilton stood and handed up the lamp, then climbed back to the platform deck.

  “Captain Eglen will have your hide if he catches you smoking below,” he told his servant. “Can you not smell the tar and timber down there?”

  “I thought I heard you splashing,” his man replied. Hamilton took back his lamp and books and told him to finish his pipe on deck. The close quarters oppressed him after his sojourn below, and he craved a semblance of solitude.

  In his compartment he set the lamp on the small table built into the corner and sat on his bunk with the books. He looked with longing at the Odysseia and, letting the volume fall open in the middle, found himself in Book XII, a schoolboy’s delight of monsters and shipwrack. Reading Homer as one sailed the breadth of the Mediterranean seemed the finest diversion Hamilton could imagine.

  The ship lifted on a long swell, tilting unpleasantly before righting itself. The wide-bottomed lamp did not tip, but Hamilton felt uneasily an impropriety in employing his privilege to keep a light belowdeck. It was, in any event, not good enough to read by—certainly not Greek. He blew out the lamp and pulled off his boots.

  Another swell, though it was easier to take now that he was lying down. Easy to forget that they were not yet on the high sea. Did Odysseus’s ship roll thus? Hamilton was trying to remember whether the ship had a name when a next, gentler swell carried him off. Sleep over water: Homer usually called it “sweet sleep,” but portrayed it once as death’s twin brother; and it is surely life that’s sweet. Dreaming above fathoms, Hamilton was at peace: for why does one go to sea except to flee the land?

  It was just after dawn that the harbor pilot cast off, waving to Malis as the oarsman rowed him away. Eglen was already shouting orders for the crew, doubtless still unbreakfasted, to set the sails, for a morning breeze blew smartly. Hamilton, unshaven and without coffee, watched the proceedings with a touch of chagrin: for eighteen hours he had imagined themselves all but under way, and now realized (though he should have done earlier) that they had merely been escorted, as it were, to the threshold. He might even have written a last letter to send ashore.

  “We shall break fast in the Gulf of Aegina,” commented Squire, who had taken out his watch and seemed ready to calculate the ship’s speed.

  “And dine tomorrow in the Mediterranean?” Hamilton asked. “It is possible, I suppose. Captain Eglen was careful not to overload, for all that his hold remains airy.”

  “We are riding a bit low, I believe. The captain did well not to fill up the remaining space.” Squire had meanwhile produced his memorandum-book, and was evidently recording the time. “When do we enter the Mediterranean proper? When we round the tip of Cerigo?”

  “Cerigo?” asked Hamilton blankly. “Ah, you mean Kythera. I have never been able to accept the name the Venetians gave it. Yes, Kythera is the southernmost extent of the Peloponnesus: I think we could then fairly call ourselves at sea.”

  Squire nodded and made a note. Impressed by this faith in mensuration, Hamilton wondered if one might work out the time scheme of Odysseus’s voyages. The weeks lost in the land of the Cyclopes or the island of Helios were doubtless beyond reckoning; but the geography of his wanderings was plain enough, if recent scholars were correct in their identifications.

  Which is to say that the size of the Mentor’s cargo, and its demand upon the ship’s capacity, were nowise upon Hamilton’s mind as the passengers sat down to breakfast. It was McFarlane, the purser, who raised it.

  “I hear you took a tour of inspection in the hold last night,” he said.

  “I was but fetching my trunk,” Hamilton replied equably.

  “Ah, indeed?” The purser smiled. “You doubtless remarked how easy it is to recover items from our hold when the greater part of its volume remains unused.”

  This was impertinence, Hamilton recognized. “Indeed,” he answered, still agreeable. “Had the ship’s cargo been sponges, one might prudently have loaded to the hatches.”

  It was a reply to discourage engagement, but the purser chose to be obstinate. “Owners are quick to lade their merchandise heavily,” he observed, as though in justification. “Especially when they fear losing it else. Crews resent attempts to lumber their ships.”

  “Which does not obtain here.” Hamilton was not sure whether to smack down this tally-keeper or reason sweetly with him. “Why do you suspect the motives for my last night’s errand? Did the crew hear me moving beneath the forecastle and think it those voices in the hold?”

  “Voices?” The purser seemed puzzled by this. “The supposed voices were in the stern. What has that to do with this?”

  “Mr. McFarlane, what has your concern about imprudent traders to do with this voyage? I need not tell you that his Lordship cares more for this cargo, to say nothing for the safety of his crew, than a Smyrna merchant does his tomatoes.” Hamilton stopped. “The sounds came from the stern, you say?”

  McFarlane scowled. “They did, sir. I am surprised that you take an interest in such matters.”

  Hamilton pushed his chair back and rose. “If you look for me where I am not, sir, you will miss me where I am. Good morning, gentlemen.”

  This time he had Gavallo bring two lamps. “Where does the purser get his intelligence?” he asked as they pushed the curtain aside.

  “The purser? He speaks to the captain yet speaks to the crew, so you don’t know where he’s comin’ from.” Gavallo raised the candle in the deep gloom: it was, of course, as dark as it had been last night. “So what he says could blow from either direction. But a purser, bein’ a costive bastard, could simply be passin’ coin of his own making.”

  “You have a point there.” Hamilton took the unlit lamp and put it into his pocket. “He’s certainly no sailor, or he would wonder at strange sounds where the hull was just repaired. I don’t like the idea of noises issuing from new-fitted planks.”

  “Likely just nonsense, sir.” Gavallo plainly gave a low rating to intelligence that originated before the mast.

  “I expect so, Peter. But I will sleep better for having investigated it.” He descended the ladder, then reached up to take the lamp.

  “Will you be needing me, sir?” Gavallo asked as he passed it down.

  “No, you can go,” Hamilton replied
, happy for a moment’s solitude. He had spoken at a near whisper, for his voice sounded strange in the crowded darkness. The sound of Gavallo’s footsteps retreated, and then it was quiet. A wooden creak above and fore: the mast, bending slightly in a breeze and rubbing where it passed through the deck.

  Hamilton waited while his ears attuned themselves to the silence. Various tiny noises disclosed themselves to his quickened hearing; and he waited longer for them to recede into a pattern, like wallpaper, that would show the contrast of any interposing phenomenon. The Mentor was made of live oak and cedar, superior woods for shipbuilding, but the new planking was of ash, the hardest timber in the Athens shipyards, aged beams that Hamilton had inspected himself. The idea that it could be contracting audibly now seemed absurd. He rested his elbows upon a case, confident that the noise would resume in time, and his unmoored consciousness drifted in idle currents.

  When he heard the sound, it came clear as a voice in his ear. Deeper than Hamilton’s startle was his surprised realization that it was a voice. The utterance, made abruptly and not repeated, was a single word: “Anereipsanto!”

  Hamilton’s Greek was merely adequate, but after a moment he recalled the word: it meant “snatched away.” Quietly he turned, leaving the lamp in its circle of light. The sound had indeed come from the stern, and low on the port side, just where the new planks were. Any thought of warping boards could now, of course, be set aside.

  He slipped the second lamp from his pocket and lit its candle from the first. Shielding its light with his hand, Hamilton took a step forward. His foot touched quietly on a floor, but the second step crunched loudly. Stealth lost, he uncovered the light and thrust it forward, ducking his head as he came beneath the platform.

  Cases and casks leaped into view, unmoving as in a still life. Hamilton looked this way and that, tilting the lamp to cast its beam into corners. It was untenanted space, his eyes plainly told him, from which the voice, recognizably female, spoke as though from the planks before him:

  “Tis estin?”

  Well might she ask who it was. Hamilton raised the lamp and a drape of shadow vanished—revealing, however, nothing but more cargo. Nobody could have retreated through such clutter without making some sound, but Hamilton’s ears had detected nothing.

  The voice, which had seemed to emanate from the planks directly before him, must have (he now realized) been reflected off it from another part of the hull. Parabolic surfaces could warp sound strangely, especially in oddly spaced chambers.

  It seemed plain that there was a female smuggled on board, likelier by one or more of the Greek crewmen than by the English. Hamilton considered pushing aside trunks to discover her, and found the task not to his liking. Let the purser, who thought he knew all, discover in a day or two that there was one extra mouth to feed.

  It was not until he was back above and holding a cup of ale that Hamilton realized that Anereipsanto was not demotic but ancient Greek, the language of Hesiod and Pindar.

  It was in the heat of noon, while the crew labored in the lines to catch a breeze and Gavallo was cleaning his cabin, that Hamilton ventured into the hold again. He passed through the curtain in his stockinged feet, felt for the rope ladder without uncovering his lamp, then descended partway and paused, swaying slightly in what currents eddied through the hold, as he listened to the sounds of the Mentor’s bowels. It was only after he ascertained the quiet muttering, coming once more from the stern, that he descended to the keelson and tiptoed it, stealthy as a savage, aft toward the stern.

  Once the voice fell silent and Hamilton froze, certain that he had made a noise. Then it resumed as before, unwavering. The woman was plainly talking to herself, and the rasp in her voice sounded less and less like that of a young woman, even one who (Hamilton’s first surmise) had been weeping.

  “Nymphai . . . aiskhos . . . Melias . . .”

  Hamilton could not catch the sense, for he knew this Greek only on the page, where he could take it at his own pace. But he could make out scattered words. “Melia” was the word used for spear in Homer, but it actually meant something slightly different—an ash spear, the shaft made from an ash tree or else the tree itself. And “aiskhos” meant disgrace, an old concept. “Nymphai” he knew, and again he heard “anereipsanto.” A young woman’s lament?

  “O ti to kakon!” She was decrying the cruel fates. Simple repetition helped him make out more words. “Lost . . . miserable . . . snatched away . . . geron nymphai . . .”

  The last phrase gave Hamilton trouble. Old bride? A nymph was a marriageable young woman, or else a married one; but an old woman would surely not be called by that word.

  “Mogerai melia . . .” Words she had used before, though her sense was no clearer. Poor spear, or poor ash tree—

  Realization trickled through Hamilton like ice water. He listened, disbelieving, then slowly leaned farther into the darkness beneath the platform, straining to confirm the words’ source.

  The rest of the hold creaked softly, popped, and sighed from its various shifting joints, but Hamilton hung silently as he listened to the old, inhuman voice whisper from the wrought planks of the ship.

  The afternoon sun blazed unmoving, as though the ship, now beyond sight of land, had entered a region freed of time as well. Hamilton stood at the port railing, looking across the Gulf of Salonikos. Beyond the horizon lay the Cyclades, and farther still the Persian lands, whence had come once a threat to Attic civilization and its ideals of rationality, proportion, and philosophy.

  Recalling this, Hamilton felt as though he had leaned against a supporting column and found it insubstantial as vapor. His fingers tightened on the railing, which dipped as the ship listed. He wondered if he were feeling numb.

  “The ancient Greeks called it topos,” Leake was saying. “Though what we know of their geography is lamentably scant. The Romans learned how to alter their landscape—earthworks and aqueducts—but I have come to doubt that the Greeks did, at least before they became a Roman colony.”

  “When every grove is a temple . . .” Hamilton murmured.

  “Eh? I doubt that religious scruples stood in their way: the Israelites fought invaders on their Sabbath, and Greek heroes routinely outraged the gods in pursuing their affairs. Greece is a land of coasts and mountains, unchanged since antiquity because it is obdurate to change.”

  “What do you know about Greek mythology?” Hamilton asked suddenly.

  “Just what I read in poems, though I daresay that’s enough. The tales of Greek gods have watered well the gardens of our own verse.”

  Leake, though no older than Hamilton, had the poetical tastes of an earlier generation. Perhaps this was common among military men.

  “Overmuch watering breeds mold. I confess that my taste is for verse that looks straight upon its object, rather than dancing to old poetical conventions. Freedom to pursue the spontaneous impulse—to send forth leaves in the direction of the Sun—is the essence of poetic genius.” Three years from Oxford and he could still spout this stuff without thinking.

  Leake laughed and shook his head. “My dear friend, your organic metaphor creates a false likeness. A poem is a deliberate wrought object, like a sculpture. You make it seem a kind of cunning tree. Here now, is something wrong?”

  “I am fine,” gasped Hamilton after a moment. Leake was looking at him with unfeigned concern. “The motion of the ship . . .”

  “Is no greater than when we sailed the Levant. Nervous exhaustion has overcome you, I fear. Where is your man? I shall have him give you a brandy.”

  And the topographer did, after helping him below deck and seeing him into a chair. Hamilton protested weakly, but a glass was being pressed into his hand, and he realized after the first gulp that in truth he did not feel well. “Too much worry over those bloody stones,” Leake said firmly. “You are but a month recovered from your fever, and should be resting more.” He told Gavallo to see that his master rested, bade Hamilton to finish his glass and put his feet up, an
d left them.

  “I trust I don’t look like an invalid,” Hamilton muttered. He felt like a fool.

  “A bit ghastly, but the drink will see that right.” Gavallo seemed quite cheerful, doubtless from seeing his master shaken by something that had left him untouched. He propped a cushion behind Hamilton, who had to take care not to slop his drink. It would not do to get fuddled at this hour, Hamilton reflected; not with what he had to do.

  “Go above and thank Captain Leake for his kindness,” he told Gavallo. “I shall go forward and take a brief rest.” When Gavallo looked askance, he added: “The list is less pronounced along the ship’s axis, and I can’t lie in the passageway.”

  Shaking his head, his servant departed. Hamilton took a last swallow and set down his glass, then stood to test his feet. The “nervous shock” had passed quickly; he had merely been clipped from an unexpected angle, as waves sometimes do. Walking softly (he suddenly wondered whether his steps could be heard below), Hamilton took up a candle, then proceeded down the corridor and through the curtain.

  He paused a moment before the ladder, wondering whether nerves or brandy might impede his climb. In fact he felt calm, perhaps thanks to the brandy, and descended without incident. He heard a low murmuring as he came down the rope, but it stopped when his boots touched bottom.

  Just as well that it knows I’m here, he thought. He stepped into the darkness beneath the platform and held the candle so that it shone upon the expanse of new planking, distinguishable only by shade. “Tis estin?” he said aloud.

  There were several seconds of what felt like startled silence, although Hamilton could not have said why.

  “And you?” the voice finally said. The language was readily understandable. Its sound had no discernible source, but seemed to resonate in the hollow of the curved planks.