by Gavin Scott
The Peloponnesian current. None of this would be happening if it had not been for the Peloponnesian current.
The Peloponnesian current and the storm.
Or, more accurately, it would have been happening, in some slightly altered form, but he would not have been here to be part of it.
Then he was outside and looking down the steep village street towards the moonlit sea. But instead of walking down towards the bay he turned left, uphill, away from the kastello, towards the pinewoods on the hills above.
He heard the voices as soon as he entered the shadow of the trees. The whispered words were indecipherable at first, and appeared to come from everywhere at once. It seemed to Forrester that he was listening to a language that had been spoken long before even the classic age of Greece, words from the time when the gods themselves were young. He stood for a long moment, trying to identify the direction from which they came – and then began walking deeper into the wood.
He peered into the shadows of the tree trunks, trying to make out who was speaking, but it seemed as if the voices were retreating before him. At last he stopped again, and suddenly he could see two figures close to one another less than thirty feet away, a man and a woman. Forrester was slightly uphill from them, looking down at them through the trees, and they were silhouetted against the relative lightness of the sea.
“I understand,” he heard the man say, and then “your duty,” followed by a string of angry, bitter words from the woman that were too low to make out – except for “… will die. I promise you.” The man seemed tall enough to be Ari Alexandros, but the slope made it hard to judge. And the woman: could it be Helena Spetsos? Or Penelope Alexandros? He couldn’t be sure. He had to be sure.
But as he stepped down the hill towards them, a twig snapped under his foot and instantly the two figures melted into the darkness. By the time he reached the place where they had been there was no one in sight in any direction, just the silent bay.
He stepped out onto the path, hesitated for a second and turned left, in the direction of the monastery, the direction he believed they’d gone. But ten minutes later he was sure he had made the wrong choice, because there was no sign of either the man or the woman, and he was standing on an empty grassy patch looking down on the monastery’s sleeping walls.
Uncertain what to do, he lay down on the grass at the edge of the trees, thinking of Stephanides lying in its infirmary. For a long time he watched, arranging and rearranging the pieces of the puzzle in his mind. Who had he seen on the fringes of the wood? Had Alexandros been trying to kill Stephanides when he found him beside the fallen shrine? Had Helena killed Keith Beamish to protect her lover? Was she blackmailing Alexandros with what she knew? Or was it the other way round? And who had the woman promised would die next?
But gradually, Forrester’s eyelids began to droop and long before the puzzle had resolved itself into any satisfactory shape he had fallen asleep in the grass.
23
THE FIELD TELEPHONE
Sophie woke within minutes of Forrester leaving the house, conscious even in her sleep that he had gone. She lay there for a while and then, uneasy when he did not return, rose and went downstairs. But instead of simply glancing into the main room as he had done, she went in and sat in one of the deep armchairs, considering his absence. How long she sat there she could not be sure, and perhaps she dozed because when she opened her eyes a woman was standing directly in front of her, looking down. Sophie suppressed a jolt of fear and then made out, in the darkness, the woman’s face. It was Penelope.
“I couldn’t sleep,” said Sophie, “and Duncan seems to have gone for a walk.”
“I need to walk too,” said Penelope. “Will you come with me?”
Moments later, Sophie, dressed now and with her bag over her shoulder, was beside Penelope as they passed like two ghosts through the narrow lanes of the village. They crossed a hump-backed bridge over a little stream that chuckled beneath them in the darkness, and then they were out of the village and walking along a narrow path cut into the face of the cliff. Finally they reached a little balconied belvedere tucked into the rock and sat down on a lichened stone bench. In one direction Sophie could look back towards Kastello Drakonaris, and in the other along the coast, where the nearby islands emerged from the dark sea like a pod of dolphins frozen in place as they leapt.
“I used to come here to think during the war,” said Penelope. “Just to get away.”
“It must have been a terrible strain, keeping the islanders safe from the Germans.”
“No one was safe from the Germans,” said Penelope. “But I did my best.”
“I have some idea what that must have been like,” said Sophie. “I had an estate in Norway when we were occupied and I had to try and shield my people from those bastards. There was a lot of smiling through gritted teeth.”
Penelope gave her a long look. “Gritted teeth,” she said. “Yes, I know all about the gritting of the teeth.”
Both women sat in silence for a while, looking out over the night.
“Do you think your husband understands what it was like for you?” asked Sophie.
“Of course not. When he saw Germans, he killed them. He could never know what it was like to live with them.”
Off to her right Sophie heard the scrape of stone on stone and felt suddenly certain they were no longer alone. Whether Penelope felt it too, she could not be sure, but she knew, without doubt, that the tension on the balcony had suddenly increased. As if to break it she spoke again. “I felt so bad for you, about the ceremony. If I had been you I would have wanted to kill Helena Spetsos on the spot.”
“If I had had a gun in my hand at that moment,” said Penelope, “she would have been dead before she hit the floor. Fortunately I did not have a gun in my hand.” She paused. “Or perhaps not so fortunately.”
“You mean because she’s still here,” said Sophie, “and still trying to take your husband away?”
“She will never take my husband away,” said Penelope. “Do you think for one moment I am going to let her have everything I sacrificed so much to save?”
Sophie looked at her and as she did she was sure there was something Penelope was not telling her, some shape in her narrative that was being deliberately shrouded.
“Sacrifices,” said Sophie. And then went on, with sudden intuition, “Men don’t know what sacrifices women have to make in times of war.”
Penelope glanced at her and Sophie suddenly knew there was something this woman would kill for – and it was not to prevent Helena Spetsos stealing her husband.
“Who do you think killed Keith Beamish?” she asked. “Do you have any idea?”
There was a long pause before Penelope Alexandros spoke again. “All I know is that whatever Constantine Atreides said, I saw him going into the castle before I heard the shot.”
“But why?” said Sophie. “Why would Prince Atreides want to kill that young man?”
“I have no idea,” said Penelope, flatly. “I just know what I saw and heard.”
She stood up. “It’s getting cold. We should get back.”
Sophie got to her feet too. “We should. If Duncan finds me gone when he returns, he’ll be worried.”
“Yes,” said Penelope. “The island has become a dangerous place again. Perhaps that is its natural state.”
* * *
Forrester was woken by the monastery bell, chiming for the first service of the day. He got to his feet as the rising sun began to warm the grass, and then walked down towards the monastery’s massive walls. The first small door he tried was open and he found himself inside the shady courtyard, savouring its coolness. He listened as the voices of the chanting monks rose from the chapel and, drawn by the sound, slipped into its dim, incense-scented interior, where Abbot Vasilios Spyridon was leading the monks in prayer.
“As eucharistísoume ton evergetikó kai filéfsplachno Theó, ton Patéra tou Kyríou mas, ton Theo kai Sotíra, ton Iisoú Chri
stó…”
Forrester was not a believer, but the words flowed over him like balm, as if, despite his lack of faith, the belief of others, nurtured here for two thousand years, was nurturing him now. He certainly felt in need of nurture. At the end of the service he remained seated as the monks filed out, until he and Abbot Spyridon were the only two there. The Abbot came to sit beside him. “My son,” he said. “You are troubled.”
“I am troubled,” said Forrester. “You have heard how the young British artist was killed at Bohemond’s castle. If it was done by the German I seek, the German who has stolen the Cretan stone, I feel responsible. But I don’t know if that is what happened, and I must find out.”
“And you think I can help you?” said the Abbot, looking at Forrester from under bushy brows.
“Perhaps,” said Forrester. “For example, I understand you grew up here on Hydros with Ari and Giorgios.”
“I did,” said the Abbot.
“And that they were boyhood friends, and both were close to Penelope.”
“That is also true. When we were all children this island was our world. We were poor, but Giorgios was rich in imagination, and through his dreams, it became a paradise. You know the lake in the middle of the island? It was our magic ocean. We built our own Venetian galley there, you know, and went fishing for karavída.”
“Crayfish?”
“Only we called them dragons, and Penelope was the island’s goddess, and when we gave them to her she turned them back into crayfish, and we cooked and ate them by the lakeshore. That was when Penelope and Giorgios married.”
“They married?”
“They were only ten. It was all make-believe, part of our game. We were crusading knights that day, I think. I married them: I was the Archbishop of Athens, if I recall rightly.”
“I have heard that people expected Penelope to marry Giorgios for real when they grew up.”
“They did. I amongst them. But Giorgios went to Athens to write his book and became famous, being pictured in the papers with film stars, and Penelope thought he had grown beyond her. Ari took advantage of his absence. He too loved Penelope, of course, but when Giorgios was there he was overshadowed. Only when Giorgios seemed to have forgotten Hydros and Penelope too was Ari able to win her heart. Thus emboldened, he joined the army and became a great man in his own right. A hero, such as we imagined ourselves to be when we were children.”
“I have heard that Penelope and Giorgios remain very close to this day.”
“We all four remain very close,” said the Abbot guardedly. “We have been through much together.”
“Let me be frank,” said Forrester. “I found Ari bending over Giorgios at the fallen shrine. At the time I assumed he was trying to help him, but since then I have asked myself if he was trying to kill him.”
“That is a grave accusation.”
“It’s not an accusation at this point. It is a speculation. But do you think it’s possible? That it was in revenge for some sort of liaison between Giorgios and Penelope?”
The Abbot looked away. “Such a thought would not occur to me,” he said at last – but Forrester sensed he had touched a nerve, just not the nerve he had been probing for. He tried again.
“Of course both Ari and Giorgios have been away from the island for a long time,” he said. “Penelope has had years to think about them both.”
“She has,” said the Abbot. “But during that time she had to think principally about how to protect the people of Hydros from the Germans.”
“And I gather she succeeded,” said Forrester. “There were no atrocities here during the war.”
“There were not.”
“And you credit that chiefly to her leadership?”
“I do,” said the Abbot. “I too perhaps played some small part, but she bore the brunt of it.”
Forrester waited for more, but nothing came. “What were the German commandants like? Many of those sent to the islands were beasts, I know, but some could be quite decent men.”
This time, despite the gloom of the chapel, Forrester saw the Abbot’s eyes flick toward him.
“We had three altogether,” he said. “And one of them was a Prussian. But all were finally persuaded to behave like decent men, and few islanders were badly treated.”
Forrester was about to ask how this had been achieved when the Abbot took his turn to ask a question.
“Where is your German now?” he asked. “The fugitive who may have killed the young artist? Is he still in Bohemond’s castle?”
Forrester met the old man’s shrewd eyes: it was a good question. “Probably not,” he said. “If I were him I would have moved on. Whether or not he killed Keith Beamish, he knows we are aware of the castle as a possible hiding place and we could come back at any time.”
He was about to return to the question of just how the German commandants had been persuaded to treat the islanders leniently when the Abbot said, “Have you heard the story of our field telephone?”
“Field telephone?” asked Forrester, puzzled.
“When the Germans were here they had an outpost on the island of Paxa, which is so close you can see it from here. It is very small but it was important because it gave them a lookout over the shipping lanes. The outpost was connected to us by a field telephone. They laid a cable across the bottom of the sea and put the receiving post in this very monastery. Perhaps you would like to see it?”
Forrester could not see the point of this unexpected offer but judged it polite to show interest. “Certainly,” he said.
The Abbot gathered up his robes and led him down the length of the chapel, behind the altar, and through a small door in the wall. On the other side of the door was a steep, narrow stone staircase, which wound up to the top of a tower and ended in a tiny room. When Forrester was inside the Abbot closed the door carefully behind them. The windows of the room looked down on the monastery and the sea beyond, but it was what was in the centre that held his attention. It was a simple wooden table with a single chair beside it. On the table was a Wehrmacht field telephone.
“One night towards the end of the war a party of British commandos came ashore on Paxa in rubber boats and attacked the German outpost. As soon as they realised they were under attack, the oberleutnant called his superiors on this telephone. The German commandant was summoned and took the call. The line remained open throughout the attack.”
“What happened?”
“The fight was very fierce. There was no question of quarter on either side. As the commandant listened on the telephone you see here, he heard machine-gun fire, then grenades, and finally the screams of men being killed with knives and bayonets. That was less clear, of course, but in the end, all six German defenders were dead.”
“How macabre,” said Forrester.
The Abbot nodded. “The garrison was never replaced,” he said, “because it was too late in the war, and Paxa remained deserted. But no one ever dismantled the field telephone.”
Forrester looked at the instrument. “So I could call the island if I wished to?” he said.
“You could,” said the Abbot, meeting his eyes, “but if you did all you would hear would be the sound of dying men.”
“You’re saying it’s haunted.”
“It is. I have listened many times. If you lift the instrument and wind the handle, you will hear it for yourself.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
The Abbot smiled enigmatically. “There are many mysteries on this island,” he replied. “Perhaps your German fugitive has become one of them.”
* * *
Before he left the monastery Forrester went to see Giorgios Stephanides. The colonel lay in the monks’ infirmary, pale, heavily splinted and bandaged, but able to speak. Forrester sat down beside the bed and after the usual preliminaries said, “Ari asked me to help him find out who might have tried to kill you.”
“That was very thoughtful of him,” said Stephanides.
“W
ho do you think it was?” said Forrester.
Stephanides closed his eyes. “That is impossible for me to say.”
“Let me be frank with you,” said Forrester. “I have wondered if Ari himself might have wanted to kill you because you were too close to his wife. Do you think that is possible?”
There was a long silence. “Penelope and I were meant to be together,” said Stephanides. “We were meant to be together from the day we were born. All I cared about then was her. All Ari cared about was himself. But she and I quarrelled and I went away to Athens, where I wrote my novel about the pain she had caused me, and tried to impress her by going out with film stars. And while I was making a fool of myself and getting my picture in the papers, Ari put on an army uniform and swept her off her feet. By the time I got back it was too late.”
With an effort he turned his head and his dark eyes flashed as they met Forrester’s. “All through the war, even as I fought alongside him, I wanted to kill the bastard.”
“Why didn’t you?” asked Forrester.
“Because he is a hero and a great man, and also my friend. But that does not stop me hating him.”
“It almost sounds as though you might have been trying to kill him instead of the other way around,” said Forrester.
“If I had been going to kill him, there were plenty of opportunities during the war. I would not have needed to use some sort of booby trap.”
“Then I return to the question,” said Forrester. “Was he trying to kill you? Perhaps because he thought you stood in the way of his reconciliation with Penelope?”
“I cannot believe he would think such a thing or do such a thing,” said Stephanides. “I am his friend.”
“You said he is your friend, too – and yet you hate him.”
“Life is strange that way,” said Stephanides, and closed his eyes. “I wish to sleep now.”
