by Jason Foss
Byron’s Shadow
Jason Foss
Copyright © Jason Foss 1994
The right of Jason Foss to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1994 by Severn House Publishers Ltd.
This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
In Memory of
Sidney Monaghan
1933-1981
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Extract from Darkness Rises by Jason Foss
Chapter One
London rain lashed the windows of the houseboat. Warm rain, true; it was summer. Flint tapped a small invitation card against his left hand as he sat on the bed, watching raindrops obeying the rule of gravity. He would rush to the tube, then make his way to a reception given by the Hellenic Society in Gordon Square. He rarely thought of what had happened in Greece and spoke of it less: it had been seven years ago, he had been unprepared for tragedy and ran away from it at the first opportunity. The card drove a stiletto into his conscience. Some face would emerge from the crowd and a voice would begin to say ‘Didn’t you used to know...?’
He groaned. Soul-searching over the Greek tragedy had been abandoned years ago; a party was a party and the past was deeply buried. Flint fell back onto his bunk, thinking of a blazing summer’s afternoon and a woman in flaming red.
*
A dot in the distance resolved into a dust-covered coach approaching Palaeokastro in low gear. The road swept up from the Gulf of Argos, through the charmless village and beyond into the hills. Pitted and potholed, it had not seen a new surface since American engineers had re-routed and upgraded the donkey track which had existed in 1949. The coach passed the petrol station, with one hull-red petrol pump and an inattentive attendant, then emerged from the jumble of stucco-faced buildings. It began to slow down.
There was a time when English archaeologists were stern pith-helmeted ex-army men but these had given way to radical, bearded, and impoverished youngsters. Jeffrey Flint had been twenty-five, not quite free from University as he squatted by the roadside in his straw hat and John Lennon glasses. Trowel stuffed into his hip pocket, he felt the very model of a modern archaeologist.
Once the coach had come to rest, the door hissed open and out poured an inquisitive flock of tourists, hot from another day of concentrated culture. The archaeologist rose to his feet, dusting himself down to little effect as he searched for one red-skirted figure.
‘Hi there,’ he called.
Lisa, the courier, marched up to his side, clipboard at her waist, blonde hair pulled away from her face into a pony tail. ‘Sorry, we’re a bit behind.’
Flint shrugged off her apology in his usual relaxed manner. The world could wash away and it would leave him unperturbed.
‘Okay for tonight?’ he asked, establishing his priorities immediately.
‘We’ll see,’ she teased, turning to face her charges. Greece is at its kindest in late afternoon, when the savage heat of noon has mellowed, the sunlight no longer glaring back from the grey stones. Lisa took a few moments for the stragglers to catch up, then launched into the courier’s routine.
‘Now, as a special favour, we are going to he shown around a real archaeological excavation. This is Jeffrey Flint from Central College, London, who is assistant director of the Palaeokastro field survey. Although he won’t admit it, he’s also something of an expert on the Romans in Greece.’
Flint fidgeted at the accolade, then grinned through his beard as she handed over charge of the tour. He spread his arms, ‘Welcome...’
So the show began, with Flint as conjurer bringing the site back to life. He spoke quickly and excitedly about Palaeokastro—there was no castle—it was just one of those folk names. With a sparkle in his eyes and histrionic emphasis in his voice, he coloured the drab picture presented by tired stones and scattered ruins.
‘First it was a Greek town, then in 146 BC the Romans thought they would improve the place by burning it down—planning regulations were a little hazy in those days.’
This was the third time Lisa had heard his routine, his jokes and logical tricks. Flint thrived on attention and he knew he held Lisa’s; she was as firmly hooked as her paying public. Excited and animated, he led a rapid march past stunted remains of walls barely distinguishable from the natural grey rocks which littered the valley side.
‘The town was re-founded by the Romans around 40 BC and survived until it was deserted in the sixth century. The site was hacked about by German archaeologists in the nineteen-thirties and all the loot went back to Berlin. We’re not really sure what they found, thanks partly to the crude techniques in use at the time and partly to the activities of the Royal Air Force…’
Sweaty and grime-smeared co-workers were introduced and persuaded to pose for the photo opportunity. Flint could also be induced to stop beside a Doric capital, remove his hat and grin for the camera.
‘Where’s the diggin’ then?’ It was a fellow Yorkshire-man, gruff and practical.
Flint had spent seven years studying at University and now it was his turn to educate. ‘Excavating is slow and never gives you the big picture. I’m trying to do as little digging as I can, this is a field survey. The Germans dug up all the sexy bits of the town, such as the temples and public buildings, so what I’m looking for is evidence for the economy: field systems, aqueducts, outlying farms and so on…’
Anecdotes were sprinkled amongst the hard facts and the loose speculation. He’d studied college lecturers, separated the stimulating from the pedestrian, and rehearsed his own technique to keep back the yawns. Flint led his verbal dance towards a herders’ hut of breeze blocks and corrugated iron. A lightly-built woman emerged at his approach. She was in her early thirties but a whole generation separated her philosophy from the ebullient Flint.
‘Emma will show you our goodies,’ he said, remaining breezy, but inwardly waiting for the tension to show.
Emma narrowed the small hazel eyes that hid behind her glasses, then turned from Flint to the assembled tourists. She wore a floral head scarf, but the rest of her clothes were a shapeless jumble of cloth and dust. The contrast with buxom, well-groomed Lisa reminded Flint what a sexless occupation he’d chosen. Flint took a seed box from Emma, who immediately launched into her own, slightly shrill, slightly too rapid explanation of the meagre finds: well-weathered potsherds, fragments of brick, bone and tile. She made an effort to rival Flint’s enthusiasm, trying to make something of the assemblage and possibly succeeding. The tourists had seen far
greater treasures at Athens, Mycenae and other halts on their lightning tour, yet were prepared to pick amongst the finds and appreciate them for what they were. Still damp from washing, or still dusty and awaiting cleaning, the immediacy of the collection made up for its poverty.
‘Have you found any gold?’ A red-faced Essex woman in bright white sunhat was first to race out the obvious question.
Flint interrupted whatever Emma was about to say. ‘Ah, popular misconception number one; archaeologists are only after treasure. Nothing could be further from the truth.’ He injected a little irony into what he was saying, preparing the audience for his next trick. ‘However, it just so happened that this morning, I found this.’
From the hip pocket of the cut-down jeans, Flint produced a chunk of glittering metal. The gasp was instant and even Lisa was fooled. She took her turn at fondling the golden artefact, half amused, half disappointed. It was a fountain pen, gold plated, of dated design and rather crushed.
‘Did the Greeks have biros?’ One wag thought he was being funny.
The remark was ignored. ‘I found it in a water channel, close by the road,’ Flint waved up-slope towards an olive grove. ‘I was investigating an anomaly in our resistivity survey.’
The Yorkshireman demanded details and Flint gesticulated heavily as he explained how a resistivity meter was able to detect features such as walls and pits just below the surface. ‘Or that’s the theory. Personally, I hate the thing, today is the first time I managed to get it working. When we located the anomaly, we did a little digging, but found a tip of modern rubbish at the edge of the road. Hence, modern treasure.’
Sensing that maximum joy had been squeezed from the jaunt, he raised his eyebrows to draw Lisa’s attention. Immediately, she made a pro-forma speech of thanks then began to usher her charges back aboard for the drive to Nauplion.
She cast a look over her shoulder, her ponytail whipping around. ‘Are you coming?’ she asked.
No question. ‘Sure!’ One obstacle to surmount, then he was free. ‘Emma, I’m off.’ Flint dodged past Emma into the hut.
‘Where?’ the woman asked his back.
‘Town, back tomorrow.’ He avoided her eyes and grabbed a bulging army surplus satchel.
‘Who’s clearing up?’ Emma demanded.
He avoided her glare and the inevitable argument. ‘Andy, he knows what he’s doing. Bye.’
Lisa was waiting for him, directing a practised, insincere smile towards Emma. He followed the courier onto the coach, then sat down beside her in a cloud of dust.
‘If looks could kill,’ she mused.
‘Emma? Don’t worry about Emma, she hates everyone and the feeling is mutual.’
The coach bumped into motion.
‘Well, you changed your story again...’ Lisa began.
‘…we make it up as we go along.’
‘Intellectuals.’ She shook her head, never completing her criticism. ‘Still, our arrangement is working out very nicely.’
‘How nicely?’
She lowered her voice, ‘Last week’s tips were very good. They should run to dinner plus wine.’
‘Suits me.’
But did he suit her? Flint wondered.
‘I thought I’d take you to Andreas’ place,’ she said, ‘Do you know Andreas? He’s a real character, his bar’s always full of locals.’
‘Sounds great, I’ll need decontaminating first.’ He brushed at a little more dirt.
‘I’ll sneak you into the hotel and you can use my shower. There may still be warm water if you’re lucky.’
Lucky, yes he felt lucky. Lisa was leading him from Purgatory to Paradise. Dimitris the driver hummed to himself as he urged the coach uphill towards the village of Anatoliko, where he could find space to swing the vehicle around. On the right lay the olive grove, on the left, the grey hill rose sharply, its slopes dotted with brambles and scrub. The coach crossed an embankment over the dry gully where Flint had found his ‘treasure’ and continued in low gear for another mile.
Anatoliko clings to a sharp spur of the hills, its low white houses tumbling from the heights where a bell tower points the way to God. At the summit is a small square, with the church forming the eastern side. Dimitris slowed almost to a halt and heaved at the wheel, the coach turning around a life-size bronze statue flanked by a pair of needle-pointed conifers.
‘Who’s that old bird?’ Flint asked.
‘Someone asks the same question every week,’ she replied, ‘Stylanos Boukaris, schoolteacher and local hero,’ Lisa recited, ‘He had his leg shot off fighting the Germans and was killed by the communists during the Civil War.’
‘That’s what, 1948?’
‘Somewhere around then; history was never my best point and you’ll never get the Greeks chatting about the Civil War. It’s not a polite topic of conversation.’
*
Flint had taken only a glance at the statue, but its image remained with him; a balding man with flowing moustache and eyes fixed on infinity. Dead heroes and secrets of the past were the stuff which kept him in business.
Chapter Two
The rain had eased and Flint could raise an umbrella and stroll to Camden Town tube station. Smalltalking with academics normally appealed, but that night, he wanted something more, something exotic, like dinner for two outside a small backstreet taverna in old Nauplion. One day he’d go back there, to that heap of houses surrounded on three sides by the sea and surmounted by a low Venetian fort. From a distance, Nauplion reminded Flint of one of his childhood sandcastles, encrusted with limpet shells, about to be swept away by the tide. The smell of burning fat carried from the doorway of a Kebab house and Flint had to stop, watch the greasy meat turning, cast his eyes on a faded print of the Parthenon and feel the shadow of the past creeping towards him.
*
Andreas ran the sort of small, outwardly squalid place which was frequented solely by Greeks and the wily tourists who take pride in avoiding other tourists. Nauplion had not yet been overrun by foreigners; Lisa’s clients were on an expensive and highly select tour programme, but she seemed to want to escape from them whenever she could. She would send them to eat along Akti Maouli with its holiday brochure harbour views, whilst she led Flint into the enchanting maze of Venetian buildings and Turkish fountains which lay beyond.
Only three small tables had sneaked from the taverna onto the sloping alleyway. All were occupied, whilst seated in half the chairs within the yellow-flushed interior were local men, lingering over ouzo or coffee. Others lounged over the counter.
Gently, gently, Flint could unwind. A scene with Emma had been avoided, his getaway had been clean and the night was his. Between the overhanging balconies, a long slit of sky was passing through China blue into shades of night. Lisa had been retelling her latest batch of tourist horror stories, adjusting her voice to mimic unfortunate victims of circumstance, using slow hand-motions to illustrate the catastrophes. Flint responded with one of his wild and unlikely diggers’ tales. He made her laugh, which was good, even if she refused to swallow the yarn.
‘It’s true!’ he implored.
‘Alright,’ she said, dismissing him with a laugh. ‘I believe you.’
Her eyes were a wholesome nut-brown, but at night, with pupils dilated, they seemed almost black. Lisa wore very little make-up, just a little mascara to thicken up her eyelashes, but Flint liked the natural look. She had washed and let down her hair; now Lisa was toying with her wineglass, swirling the contents around and around, watching the red liquid and flicking her eyes up to meet his.
‘I’ve always been amazed that anyone with brains can spend a whole summer picking around in the dust,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t do anything else. Travel the world, meet people, play in the dirt. It’s like joining the army without the snag of having to shoot people. In truth, it’s an excuse to have a good time.’
Lisa leaned forward, demanding intimacy. ‘So how did you get into it all? Somehow, I just
can’t picture you as a six-year-old saying, “Daddy I want to be an archaeologist”.’
‘Oh but I did; by seven, the man is made. My dad loved old films and I got hooked on epics: Fall of the Roman Empire, Cleopatra, and of course,’ he laid on an American accent, ‘Spartacus. I stood no chance of making it in movies, so with a name like Flint, it was archaeology or nothing.’
As he trotted out his life story, Flint assessed Lisa under the irregular lighting. At first glance she might have been taken for a Greek, with her tanned skin, brown eyes and dark, partly plucked, eyebrows. Only the bottle blonde hair and its black roots betrayed the image.
‘So, is that grotty old pen the only treasure you have found?’
Her accent was educated southern middle class and she tended to speak lethargically, giving her words a relaxed, sultry tone. It did not seem to belong to a travel courier; something deeper and richer must lie in her past. Flint withdrew the pen from the breast pocket of his lumberjack shirt and rotated the find, watching it glitter in the light of a failing bulb.
‘Gold! Treasure! Riches! An archaeologist’s dream!’
Lisa snatched it from him. ‘Your sponsors are going to be very, very disappointed my boy, if this is the best thing you take home.’
‘We are not treasure hunters!’ He was far from sure about the ‘boy’; she was no more than four or five years his senior.
‘So you’re not a treasure hunter, but you were digging for something. What were you hoping to find?’
‘Nothing, it was only a quick sondage.’
‘Stop. You’re doing it again,’ she warned.
‘What?’
‘Bullshitting. What’s a sondage?’
‘A little hole.’
‘Isn’t saying “little hole” easier?’
‘Less precise.’
‘Well, it’s precise enough for me. What else did you find?’
‘All sorts of boring modern junk. It’s what we call made ground; rabbits are disturbing it and bringing this stuff to the surface.’
