by Tom Harper
'Don't believe everything you read in the papers, Professor. There's not much poetry in war.'
'"My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity".'
'Wilfred Owen was a hopeless romantic. There's not much pity in war either. I learned that much from my dad.'
Reed, far too steeped in the ways of an Oxford don to enquire further, fell silent. They walked on with the crowd, out of the town and towards the church on the headland at the mouth of the bay. The flash of fireworks lit up the sky like a distant storm.
'It was the smell, you know.'
'Pardon?' Surprised from his thoughts by Reed's unexpected remark, Grant looked up.
'The story Miss Papagiannopoulou…'
'Call her Marina,' Grant interrupted. 'It'll save you years of your life.'
'The story she referred to. The women of Lemnos didn't just spontaneously murder their menfolk. They did it because they'd been shunned. They'd been afflicted by a curse that gave them terribly bad breath — they'd offended Aphrodite — so, naturally, their husbands refused to kiss them. Or offer other, erm, marital favours. So they killed the men.'
'Doesn't exactly solve the problem.'
'That's what they discovered. A few months later Jason and the Argonauts popped by on their way to find the golden fleece. The women practically held them at spear-point until the Argonauts obliged them.'
'Must have been a hard life, being an Argonaut.'
'Hm?' Reed wasn't really listening. 'It's funny how all these old stories about Lemnos revolve around odour. Philoctetes' stinking wound, the women's foul breath. Almost as if Lemnians had a reputation.'
He trailed off, lost in his own thoughts as they reached the end of the promontory. A square, whitewashed church rose above them — but they couldn't get any nearer, for the crowds had completely surrounded it. From inside, Grant could just make out the drone of the priests chanting the Easter liturgy, though no one seemed to be paying much attention. Children chased each other through the forest of legs, while adults greeted each other and gossiped quietly.
'Not quite C of E, is it?' Reed grinned.
A hawker, with pairs of candles hanging from his arms like onions, moved up towards them. Grant would have sent him packing, but Reed beckoned him over and, after some brief haggling, came away with two candles. He handed one to Grant. 'The Greeks say if you burn it down it burns away your sins.'
Grant squinted down the length of the slender taper. 'Do they come any bigger?'
A hush fell over the crowd. Up on the hilltop a spark appeared in the door of the church. It hovered for a second, divided in two, then again and again, multiplying from candle to candle as it passed through the crowd.
'The original light comes from Jerusalem,' Reed whispered. 'Every year the patriarch of Jerusalem crawls into the Holy Sepulchre — Christ's tomb — and a holy fire spontaneously kindles itself out of the air. The patriarch lights a candle from it and passes the flame on to his congregation.'
'Sounds like hocus-pocus to me. He's probably got a lighter stuffed down his pants.'
'Maybe.' Again, Reed seemed to filter out everything but the sound of his own thoughts. 'Extraordinary to think, though, that in ancient times the islanders waited for the boat to bring the sacred fire. And here we are, three thousand years later, doing exactly the same thing.'
Grant trawled through his memory. He felt as if he'd learned more history in the past week than all the previous thirty years of his life combined. 'You mean the fire ritual? The one where they turned out all the lights for nine days?'
'Indeed. Interestingly, according to one of the sources, the ritual was meant to purify the island after the episode I told you about earlier. The darkness was a time of penance, symbolic death to atone for the historic murder of the menfolk. Then the light arrived, symbolising new life and rebirth.'
'Pratolaos.' The name jumped into Grant's mind. 'The first man, reborn in a cave.'
'Not so different from another man who was buried in a cave and came back to life.' Reed stopped talking as the man in front of him, a burly farmer in an ill-fitting suit, turned round. Grant braced himself for a complaint, but the man only smiled and reached out his candle, tilting towards Reed's. The wicks touched; Reed's took the flame and flared into life. A bubble of wax trickled down towards his fingers.
'Christos anesthi,' said the farmer. Christ is risen.
'Alithos anesthi,' Reed replied. He is risen indeed. All around them the greeting and counter-greeting whispered through the crowd, like moths on a summer night. He turned to Grant and offered him the flame. 'Christos anesthi.'
'If you say so.' Grant lit his candle and held it awkwardly, trying not to drip wax on his shoes.
'Are you uncomfortable?'
Grant gave a bashful grin. 'Confused. I'm not sure if I'm burning away my sins, apologising for those husband-slaughtering women, worshipping Jesus or conjuring up Pratolaos.'
Reed smiled. 'Now you're getting the idea. But you mustn't hog the fire. You're supposed to pass it on.'
Grant turned round. The fire had already spread beyond him: most of the candles behind were lit. But one seemed to have missed out. He reached forward. The two candles collided, knocked against each other a few times in a clumsy courtship, then finally settled long enough for the flame to leap between them.
'Christi anesthu,' Grant mumbled.
She retracted her candle and held it up in front of her. Orange light shone on her face and the reflected flame burned in her eyes.
'Marina?' Grant almost dropped his candle. 'Jesus Christ!'
'… Is risen indeed.' She turned away; Grant half lifted a hand, but she was only passing the fire on to the man behind her. When she had finished she turned back. She had been crying, and even among the crowd she looked strangely vulnerable, as if she couldn't decide whether to spit in his face or run away.
'I'm sorry about Muir,' said Grant. 'He's… He's an arsehole.'
'I didn't sell you out to the Russians.' Her voice was brittle.
'I never said you did. But you can see why Muir's jumpy. Someone must have told the Reds where we were. And it's a shame you shot the Russian. It would have been useful to find out what he knew.'
He gave her a sideways glance, which she answered with an uncompromising glare. 'There was a bulge under his coat and he was reaching for it. What would you have done?'
'That was the tablet.'
'Then it's lucky I didn't hit it.'
He reached out a tentative hand and brushed back a strand of hair that had fallen over her cheek. She didn't stop him.
'Anyway, Muir doesn't matter any more.' A breeze stirred through the crowd and Grant cupped his hand round the candle to protect it. 'There's nothing at that sanctuary. This trail was three thousand years old before we started. It's not just cold: it's bloody frozen in the depths of time. Might as well give up now and go back to Crete.'
There was a discreet cough from behind. Grant and Marina turned, to see Reed watching apologetically. With the candle clutched in his hand, he looked like a choirboy on Christmas eve. 'Actually, I think the trail's warming up nicely.'
Grant and Marina stared at him in disbelief. 'How?' Reed tapped the side of his nose. 'The clue was in the ancient stories.' He smiled. 'You just have to follow your nose.'
Ten
Therma, Lemnos. Next morning
'Are you sure you've got this right?'
They were standing in a shallow valley at the end of a dirt road. It was a pleasant spot: poplars and cypress trees shaded the stream that bubbled down the valley, while in front of them stood a neat, four-square, neoclassical building. It felt vaguely Swiss to Grant: its red-tiled roof and vigorous white walls; the fresh paint on the doors and the starched curtains in the windows. Everything seemed healthy and efficient. Everything except the smell, which festered in the valley: the eggy, noxious stink of sulphur.
'Perhaps not,' said Reed. He sounded unaccountably cheerful. 'But this is where the hot
springs are. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier. They've been in use since at least Roman times.'
'I hate to be the one to tell you, but a hot spring isn't the same as a volcano. Even the ancients probably knew the difference.'
Reed shrugged. 'All the legends about the foul-smelling Lemnians will have been rooted in some sort of collective memory. If this was the place where they had their shrine, they must have smelled rather unpleasant after nine days of rituals.'
They had walked the few miles from Myrina that morning. There wasn't much to be found in the town on Easter Sunday, but between them Grant and Marina had managed to scrounge a few tools, an oil lamp, a length of rope and a donkey to carry it all to the spa at Therma. Now they were there, breathing in air that seemed anything but healthy to Grant.
'So what do we do? Ask the attendant if he's found a three-thousand-year-old meteorite in the bath?' He pointed to the locked door and the dark rooms behind the lace curtains. 'It looks shut.'
'Bank Holiday.' Reed peered around. 'But the thermal springs don't rise inside the spa. The water gets piped in from somewhere. Let's have a look.'
A brief reconnaissance of the buildings didn't reveal much. They left Muir with the donkey and spread out, gradually working their way further up the valley behind the spa. The sulphurous smell faded away, drowned out by the sticky scent of wildflowers, and their pace slowed as they waded through the long grass. At the top of the valley the stream disappeared. Grant spent a fruitless quarter of an hour looking for its source but found nothing. He sat down on a rock in the sun, watching the lizards dart among the stones. The withered husk of a snakeskin lay coiled at his feet.
'What's over there?' Reed had come up behind him, his face flushed under the sunhat. He was pointing up the hill, where a mounded hilltop swelled out of the rolling landscape. The valley had hidden it, but from the ridge they could see it quite clearly. Reed took the field glasses that hung round his neck and pressed them against his spectacles, then handed them to Grant. Unsure what he was looking for, he twisted the dial until the blurred image came into focus.
'There's a cross on top of it.' It was a steel cross about six feet tall, held in place by four guy ropes. A hawk was sitting on one of the transepts, preening itself.
Grant lowered the field glasses. 'I know I'm not a historian, but aren't churches a bit later than what we're looking for?'
'Have you ever been to the Roman forum? When Christians took over the empire, they just bricked up the pagan temples and turned them into churches. You can still see the classical columns built into the walls. The Parthenon in Athens was used as a church — and a mosque when the Ottomans captured it. Buildings come and go, but sacred places have a way of persevering.'
'I suppose we can try.'
Picking their way over the loose stones, they worked their way towards the summit. From the ridge it had looked like a normal hilltop, but as they edged round its shape changed. The far side seemed to drop precipitously — then, as they came a little further, they saw that there was no far side at all. The whole face had been hollowed out under the summit, so that the hill swept over like a wave poised to break. The cavern underneath must have been at least a hundred feet high. Nestled inside, almost hidden in its shadow, was a tiny whitewashed courtyard with a church against its far wall.
'Sacred places,' murmured Reed.
Marina nodded. 'It's almost as if nature made it for this. A giant rock womb — or a furnace.'
'Even looks a bit like a volcano, if you squint,' Grant conceded.
'And look.' Marina pointed to the gatepost. On a mosaic in the wall, blue tiled letters spelt out AΓIA ΠANAΓIA on a golden background.
'Ayia Panayia,' Reed elaborated. 'A title of the Virgin Mary. It means "All Holy". It emphasises her aspect as God's partner in the conception of Jesus. If you're inclined to think heretically, you can derive it back from the ancient cults of an all-powerful, all-fertile goddess who herself gives birth to gods.' Reed saw Marina's appalled look. 'From an anthropological point of view, of course.'
They passed through the open gate into the small compound. The air went suddenly cold as they came under the shadow of the hill, and the noise around them deadened. The only sound was the splash of water, pouring from a spout in the wall shaped like a serpent's head into a marble basin. Grant sniffed it and smelled the familiar odour of rotten eggs. 'Sulphur.'
But Reed and Marina didn't hear — they were already at the church door. They tried the handle and the door swung open. Grant followed them in.
It was a simple church: a low, oblong room with plain walls, slit windows and a barrelled roof. Skeletal bundles of dried flowers quietly disintegrated in the corners, and a few red glass jars clustered on the step by the altar, though the candles they held had long since burned out. At the back of the church a single icon of the Virgin Mary stood facing towards them, her legs apart and her hands held up as if in blessing. The infant Jesus peered out at them from a golden circle in her stomach.
'If you think there's something familiar about that pose, you're entirely correct.' Reed pulled out Pemberton's battered journal and turned to an early page. An ink sketch leaped out: a wasp-waisted woman with long skirts, bared breasts and a snake writhing along her outstretched arms. 'The Minoan mother-goddess.'
'She's got better tits than the Virgin Mary,' said Grant. He didn't look at Marina, though in the corner of his eye he saw her cross herself.
'And look at the Christ figure. He seems to be inside her — in her womb.' Reed made a half-turn, taking in the whole church. 'Are you familiar with the Hindu concept of the avataram?. Aspects of the gods' incarnations change, but the underlying truths are eternal.'
Marina frowned. 'If you're going to dismiss two thousand years of Christian teaching, could you at least do it outside?'
'New religions are terrible magpies — they love to build on the foundations of the faiths they've barged out of the way. Both theologically and physically.'
'Are you proposing we demolish this church?'
'No. But we do need to do what the archaeologists do.'
"What's that?' asked Grant.
'Get to the bottom of things.'
Reed paced the length of the room, staring at the heavy stones paving the floor. Three yards back from the altar, he suddenly went down on one knee and started scrabbling at something. Marina and Grant crouched beside him. An iron ring was set flush into the floor. Reed pried it up and tugged. Nothing moved.
He turned and looked apologetically at Grant. 'Would you mind?'
Grant planted one foot on either side of the stone, crouched and heaved. The cracks around it were thick with dirt — it must have lain shut for years — but it slowly yielded to his pressure. A crack opened and Marina slid the blade of the shovel inside. Together they heaved and levered the stone away until they had opened a hole wide enough to climb through. A dark chasm loomed below.
'I wonder what's down there?'
Grant took one of the glass candle holders and dropped it through. It thudded against something hard, but didn't break. Reassured, Grant swung his legs through the hole and lowered himself down. He had only reached shoulder height when his feet touched solid ground: his head was still sticking up through the church floor and he had to wriggle down to see underneath. He struck a match.
He was standing on a beaten earth floor, in a low chamber whose dimensions seemed to be the same as the church's. All around him stone pillars sprouted out of the ground to support the church floor. Some were intact, still crowned with ornate capitals, but others had obviously snapped at some point in the past and been cemented back together, or repaired with crude fieldstones. Strands of straw scattered the ground and a few tools lay resting against the far wall. Grant could make out a masonry trowel, a bucket, a rake and a scythe. Otherwise, it was empty.
'Is there anything down there?' Reed peered in, his face almost completely blocking the light from above. At the same time Grant felt the heat of the flame
burning towards his fingers. He dropped the match and was suddenly in darkness.
'Nothing except some gardening tools. There's a scythe — does that symbolise something? Death?' Grant thought of the weathervane on top of the pavilion at Lord's. 'Time?'
'The caretaker probably uses it for cutting the grass.' Reed disappeared and the blue-tinged daylight filtered back in.
'We'll have to start digging.'
* * *
They fetched the donkey. Muir came too. Grant hung the lanterns between the supporting pillars, while Marina drove a row of stakes into the ground about a yard back from the innermost wall. In the flickering lamplight they crouched on the earth floor under the altar and stared at the walls.
'The church is Byzantine,' Marina explained. 'But these foundations are Hellenistic — about 200 BC, when a lot of the mystery cults flourished.' She pointed at the crudely cut stones mortared together. A few of them seemed to be missing and layers of flat bricks filled the gaps. 'You can see where they were repaired when the church was built. But it's possible that the site goes back considerably further than that.'
She indicated the line she had staked out. 'This is the north wall of the church. But I think there's evidence that the sanctuary was reorientated during the Christian period so that its altar would face east.' She swept her arm round, pointing out each of the walls in turn. 'Do you notice anything about the south wall?'
Grant stared, trying to probe the shadowy recesses where pillars blocked the lamplight. 'The stones look smaller — and they're not as well put together.'
'Exactly.' Marina looked pleased. 'This was probably added later to partition the existing foundations into something small enough to support the church. It's likely the courtyard gives a more accurate outline of the original temple's dimensions. In which case the sanctuary would have been somewhere near here.'
'Then let's get started.'
It was slow, aching labour. Unable to stand upright, they had to stoop low and attack the packed earth with short, ungainly jabs. After a while, once the ground was broken, they evolved a system whereby Marina, Reed and Muir filled the bucket with soil, which Grant then hauled away and tipped out on the hillside. The air in the cellar, stuffy to begin with, grew stifling. Marina knotted the tails of her blouse together round her midriff, while Grant stripped off his shirt and worked bare-chested. Even Reed removed his tie and rolled up his shirtsleeves.
