Hermes, the Roman Mercury, was the son of Zeus by Maia, the eldest of Artemis’s troop of huntresses. I bet the goddess was furious with her papa for having done the dirty on one of her muscular virgins, but evidently she couldn’t do anything to prevent it. Zeus made this son the Messenger of the Gods, so he wore winged sandals and wings in his tin hat, just as you often see his picture on postage stamps. As he got around a lot, that naturally led to his becoming the god of Travel. In those days there were no Hellenic cruises on which people went just for pleasure; travel meant going places on business, so Hermes was also the patron of Commerce. That, of course, included cattle, as in ancient times herds largely represented wealth. But he was a bit of a bad hat, and the very day he was born he took to stealing. His first exploit was to drive off fifty heifers from a pedigree herd of which Apollo was in charge, and when accused of the theft he refused to come clean. Luckily for him, while on this raid he had found a tortoise and turned its shell into a lyre. Apollo was so pleased with this new musical instrument that he forgave his baby brother and even gave him a magic wand to play with. Hermes became a very active glib-tongued young rogue. He was the patron of thieves, athletes and inventors, and himself invented the alphabet. He had a sense of humour, too, and was always playing tricks on his relations. At various times he stole Poseidon’s trident, Artemis’s arrows and Aphrodite’s girdle. But he must have had a lot of charm, for they always forgave him and he became the pet of the family.
Dionysus was Zeus’s son by Semele, a daughter of King Cadmus. He was the god of Wine and went about crowned with a wreath of ivy and laurel and with bunches of grapes dangling from his ears. He was frightfully keen on letting people know what a jolly good drink wine is, so he became his own representative and travelled all over the place giving vine roots to anyone he could induce to plant them. He even went as far as India, and brought back with him a team of tigers to draw his chariot. Apart from his sales campaign he didn’t do much except preside over revels as a rather cynical host. Like Artemis he had a number of constant companions. The chief of these was Silenus, who had been his tutor. This old fellow followed him round rolling from side to side on the back of a donkey, because he was always tight, but he was incredibly wise and could foretell the future. The rest of Dionysus’s set consisted of goat-footed Satyrs and a crowd of lecherous women known as Bacchantes. They all gave the glad hand to anyone who was ready to join in their fun but could turn very nasty to people who refused. Anyone like St. Paul would have got very short shrift from them. They danced in a drunken frenzy round spoil-sports like him, then tore them in pieces.
Pallas Athene was another virgin goddess and an extremely powerful one. The gentle reader will recall that Zeus swallowed his first wife Metis when she was already with child. Evidently he could not digest them because one day he got a most frightful headache. Apparently Metis’s baby had gestated, or whatever you call it, and gone to his head. To relieve the pain Hephaestus took what seems to me rather a drastic measure; he crowned the old boy with an axe. However, it did the trick. Out of his split skull sprang Pallas Athene fully grown and fully armed. She was very keen on arts and crafts and everything to do with women in the home. But her most important role was as a protectress of cities into which she had introduced order, law and justice, and, having been conceived by Metis, she was much the wisest of the goddesses.
Hera was even more annoyed with Zeus for having a child off his own bat, than by his seducing all sorts of not too unwilling pretty strumpets; so she decided to see what she could do by herself.
Hephaestus was the result of her effort, but she bungled things badly. He was born lame in both legs and such an ugly little bag of bones that in a savage rage she threw the poor mite out of heaven. A Sea Nymph, named Thetis, rescued him and brought him up in her grotto, where he taught himself to make all sorts of lovely and ingenious toys. Then, wishing to get a bit of his own back on his mama, he sent her a beautiful golden throne. Hera was delighted, but it was the original of those Renaissance contraptions on which chaps like the Borgias used to invite their guests to sit before cutting their throats. The moment Hera sat on it the arms flipped across her and there she was, caught like a bird in a snare. All the other Immortals had a go at freeing her but none of them could, so Hephaestus had to be sent for. His price for pressing the secret spring that would let his mama out was that one of the prettiest goddesses should consent to become his wife. That being agreed upon, mother and son decided to let bygones be bygones and he was made Blacksmith to the gods with the Cyclopes as his assistants and a forge in Mount Etna. It was he who supplied Zeus with thunderbolts and forged arms and armour of all kinds for his family, as well as building palaces for them, will see mod. cons, and lots of gadgets. Very ungratefully, I think, owing to his limp, his ugliness and his begrimed appearance, the others used him as their butt, and whenever he visited Olympus they made dirty cracks at him. Nevertheless, it was Aphrodite, the loveliest goddess of them all, who agreed to become his wife.
Aphrodite was unique among the heavenly brood because she had not even one physical parent—that is unless you can count the bits that Cronos cut off his father Uranus. These were cast into the sea not far from Cyprus, and they acted like a ton of dynamite. A huge water-spout leapt up and for miles around the sea was churned into foam. From this foam Aphrodite sprang to life, already grown up and endowed with breathtaking beauty. She was one of those langaorous types, with so much S.A. that no man could resist her, and being the hottest ever of hot-mommas she couldn’t keep her hands off the men either. She even took to having parties with that oaf Ares when he winked a bloodshot eye at her, but Hephaestus got to hear of it and played a neat trick on them. One afternoon when he was hard at it in his forge, Ares came lumbering into Aphrodite’s boudoir, gave the V sign and said: ‘What about it?’ She smiled back and replied: ‘O.K. by me.’ So they both took their clothes off, went over to her couch and lay down on it. But the cunning Hephaestus had fashioned a net so fine that it was invisible, yet so strong that it could not be broken, and fixed it up above his wife’s couch. Under the pressure of their combined weight a spring beneath the couch released the net which fell round it, trapping them. After they had had their fun they dozed for a bit, until it was time for Ares to make himself scarce. Then they both nearly threw a fit because they found they were in a cage.
Now it’s a funny thing, but the Immortals were really a very modest lot and, except when making love, were ashamed to be seen with their clothes even a little disarranged, let alone with no clothes on at all. Hephaestus came home from work, saw that his trick had worked, then brought everyone he could find on Olympus to come and have a look at the guilty couple. At the sight of them both starko and red with shame trapped on the couch, all the other Immortals laughed themselves nearly sick, and afterwards Aphrodite and Ares could hardly hold up their heads for months. Still it didn’t cure Aphrodite from being unfaithful, because she was made that way. But for the future she took handsome mortals as her lovers, and any number of lucky chaps spent nights with her that must have left them wondering in the morning what had hit them.
With Zeus in the Chair, the gods and goddesses I have described, except for those who did not dwell on Olympus, were the Twelve who formed the Great Council of the Gods. But there were many other Immortals, and I will mention a few of the better-known ones before closing this chapter.
Prometheus was a cousin of Zeus. It was he who made Man, by modelling a piece of clay into a body, copied from those of the gods, but of course very much smaller, then giving it life. He was so pleased with his toy that to help it support itself on earth he stole for it from Olympus the invaluable gift of Fire. As Fire was considered sacred, when Zeus heard of this sacrilege he blew his top. He had the wretched Prometheus chained to a rock in the Caucasus and sentenced him to have his liver picked out by an eagle every day for thirty thousand years. For the old man to be so vindictive he must have been terribly put out, but perhaps this happened on a
day when he had been chasing a pretty nymph and she had changed herself into a hedgehog, or something, just as he got at her. Anyhow, he was so peeved about the whole affair that, to cancel out Prometheus’s gift, he had Hephaestus make Woman, and sent her down to bring every sort of trouble to Man.
Pandora was the name given to her, and Zeus’s children, feeling that their papa had been an awful meanie, rallied round to soften up her impact. Aphrodite gave her beauty, Apollo taught her how to sing, Hermes instructed her in artfulness and so on. But Zeus still had a card up his sleeve. He gave her a beautiful box and told her not to open it. Of course, the cunning old so-and-so knew jolly well that she would not be able to resist the temptation to look inside, and sure enough she did. Out flew plague, jealousy, deceit and all the vices and ills that afflict mankind.
Atlas was another of Zeus’s cousins. He sided with Cronos in the war against Olympus, and as a punishment Zeus condemned him to hold earth and sky apart for ever with his mighty shoulders.
Asclepius was a son of Apollo. To him his father delegated the power of healing. This Doctor god got so good at it that he went too far and began to restore the dead to life. Zeus took that as a frightful piece of cheek, so consigned him to oblivion, but not before he had had time to pass on his knowledge to his daughter Hygeia, and the many temples to him scattered all over Greece show how jolly grateful everybody was for what he’d done for them.
Orpheus was another of Apollo’s sons, and was trained by his father to become a great musician. He had most rotten luck in a love affair, but I’ll tell you about that later.
Cupid was Aphrodite’s son. He usually took the form of a laughing cherub, and it was his job to make people fall in love. Anyone wounded by one of his arrows did so with the next person he or she set eyes on. He must have had a very busy time of it, but he had a lot of fun arousing passions that often led to most comical situations.
Pan was the son of Hermes who, for some strange reason, in order to enjoy Pan’s mother, turned himself into a goat. This resulted in Pan being born with the legs of a goat and little horns sticking out of his curly head. Although this was obviously Hermes’s fault, he was so ashamed of his son that the boy was never allowed to join in the jollifications up on Olympus, but was left to fend for himself in the woods. Compared to most of the other members of the Royal Family, Pan was at first very small fry, but later he made a name for himself that was to continue to ring a bell many centuries after those of most, of his relations had come to mean nothing to the majority of people. As half-goat, half-man, he could give even his old grandfather points in chasing likely lasses round the bushes, and as he attached himself to Dionysus there was nothing anyone could tell him about drunken orgies. It was no doubt because of that, and the fact that he became a great Master of Magic, which accounts for the Christians later regarding him as the embodiment of Evil, or even the Devil in person.
Of course there were minor gods and goddesses of all sorts, and other Immortals like the Furies and the Fates who at times made things very uncomfortable for people. We shall come across most of them when I tell you about the extraordinary adventures of the Heroes, as I hope to do later on. Anyhow, gentle reader, what I have written so far should give you a good background to the Royal Family that between them ran ancient Greece.
* * * * *
As Robbie laid his exercise book down, his brown eyes shone, no longer with tears but with happiness. Reading that first chapter had restored his belief in himself. As there were not many long words in it, he thought it was probably not very high-class English; but he felt that he had made up for that quite a bit by using some very impressive Americanisms picked up from the gangster paper-backs he had been reading in recent months. In any case, the pictures of the characters he wished to describe were perfectly clear to him, and, being so fascinated by them himself, he felt confident that other people would find what he had written interesting. Therefore, it was going to be a good book; and as neither his uncle nor Euan had yet read any of it, they had no right to say otherwise.
But it would be many weeks, at least, before he could finish it and enjoy the triumph of showing it to them. In the meantime he must continue to smart under their disparagement of his capabilities, unless—yes, unless he could prove them wrong.
Already, as he had run sobbing upstairs, his distress had engendered in him a desperately wild idea. But now it did not seem so very wild. If he was capable of writing a readable book, why should he not also become a successful secret agent? If he could find out what lay behind the Czechs’ deal with the Greeks, what a triumph that would be. His time was his own, he had ample money and he could talk both languages. What investigator could ask for more—except the brains to use them? That was the crux, and if he succeeded he would have proved himself once and for all. It was a challenge, like those he had so often read about. He made up his mind to accept it.
3
Unorthodox Behaviour
When Robbie awoke next morning, the resolution he had made the previous night came swiftly into his mind. Having pondered it for a while, he began to realise that it was one thing to decide to ferret out the secrets of a foreign Power and quite another for anyone like himself to think of a way to set about it. Yet, uncultivated as his brain was in many respects, its very simplicity led to its working logically.
He would have been prepared to bet a pound to a penny that he had interpreted correctly the conversation between the two Czechs, but there was always the outside chance that he had misunderstood a part of it. Therefore, the first thing he must do was to confirm that the Czechs had actually bought the Greek tobacco crop. If they had, arrangements for its delivery must soon cause the news to become public, so it could not be regarded by the Greek Government as a very closely kept secret. Obviously then, to start off with, he could put the question to somebody who was in a position to know.
While he breakfasted downstairs, almost in silence, with Sir Finsterhorn and Euan Wettering, he got quite a lot of amusement from imagining the expressions their faces would take on if he announced how he intended to occupy himself that morning; but he knew from experience that neither of them would ask him his plans for the day and, if either of them did, he could for once reply evasively.
Breakfast over, he went to the office of his uncle’s secretary and looked up the name of the Greek Minister for Commerce. It was Mr. D. Nassopoulos. Noting the address of the Ministry, Robbie collected his hat and sallied forth on the first stage of his secret mission.
At the Ministry he asked to see the Minister. As he had no appointment, he would have been turned away but for a gentle persistence that was part of his character. That got him as far as the Minister’s secretary, a severe-looking woman with crisp, iron-grey hair. With her, the name of Grenn rang a bell, and she asked if he was related to the British Ambassador. He told her that he was Sir Finsterhorn’s nephew, but refused to give her any indication of the business upon which he had come. She said that her Chief had a very busy morning; but another of Robbie’s long suits was patience, and he replied that he was quite willing to wait there until the afternoon. The result of his evident determination to remain until he obtained an interview with the Minister was that, twenty minutes later, he was shown in to him.
Mr. Nassopoulos proved to be a middle-aged man with slightly wavy black hair parted in the centre, a broad forehead and a narrow jaw. He was wearing glasses with thick, tortoiseshell rims, a black jacket and pin-striped trousers that could be seen through the kneehole of his big desk. As Robbie entered the room, the Minister politely stood up, flashed two rows of white teeth at him, extended his hand, and said:
‘Mr. Grenn, a pleasure to see you. I hope His Excellency, your uncle, is well. Please to sit down and tell me to what I am owing the pleasure of this visit.’
Robbie took the proffered hand, sat down, made his acknowledgement in Greek, and continued in that language. ‘I came, sir, to enquire into the possibility of buying the Greek tobacco crop.’
A momentary flicker in the Minister’s eyes showed his surprise. After a very brief silence to collect his thoughts, he replied in Greek, ‘This is the first I have heard that the British Government might be interested. I wish very much that we had been informed of this before, because my Government would have been very happy to enter into negotiations with yours on this matter. But, unfortunately, it is too late. This year’s crop has already been sold to another country.’
Robbie gave him an amiable nod. ‘Yes, I thought it had; but I wanted to make certain. I gather that most years you have some difficulty in getting a decent price for it, so please accept my congratulations on having unloaded it on the Czechs. As they can get plenty of tobacco from Russia quite cheaply, they must have been very keen to get this concession you have granted them to prospect here for oil.’
Nassopoulos’s eyes opened wide and his voice held a distinct trace of annoyance, as he said: ‘Mr. Grenn. We are all aware that, in diplomatic circles, transactions have a way of leaking out; but so far no official announcement has been made about this deal. Therefore, you surely must be aware that it is against protocol for you to pay me an official visit for the purpose of discussing it.’
Mayhem in Greece Page 4
