Lights in a Western Sky

by Roger Curtis

  For many weeks the following Saturday evening had been earmarked for a barbeque in the garden. George’s recent trip to London explained the invitation of a number of professional colleagues not on the original list. ‘Leave the arrangements to me,’ he told a mildly surprised Alma that morning, ‘but you could help by getting a few more things from the supermarket.’ Reluctantly Alma agreed, accepting that for once her relationship with Fleance could withstand a missing session. ‘Take Wayne,’ George said. ‘Strong lad, he can carry the drinks.’

  While Alma and Wayne were away, George shot Fleance.

  The evening promised to be a great success. The weather had held and all in the garden glowed with that enchanting pale yellow-pink light unique to an Indian summer. Heavily spiced steaks and burgers sizzled over greying charcoal. Lightly browned chicken legs and sausages were tastefully arranged on the hot plate. And there were other treats besides. George’s speciality had always been to surprise his guests with the unexpected, and tonight he produced an old favourite of Alma’s: brains deep fried in brown butter with herbs and capers, thick succulent slices of which nestled temptingly amongst the other meats and delicacies. The guests approached in single file, and George filled their plates before dispatching them to the chips and salads.

  No-one enjoyed a joke more than George, but in his experience such things were never to be rushed. When all his guests had loaded their plates he made sure Alma and Wayne were served generously. With an amused smile he savoured the appreciative grunts of pleasure. Now, surely, was the time to tell. He clapped his hands for attention, lifted his plate, chose the juiciest morsel from it and began to chew with an exaggerated expression of delight. ‘I invite you all to guess…’ he began. But no-one could because at that moment the plate fell from his hands. He began to choke, and then cough violently. His face turned purple, his eyes rotated heavenwards. He fell to the ground…

  In the commotion that followed few noticed the several pairs of eyes fixed upon them, deep within the recesses of the laurel bushes. As Wayne remarked later, they were probably choosing Fleance’s successor.

  The Chapel of Antonis Stavros

  The Pelion Peninsula points like a fingerless appendage towards the islands of the western Aegean Sea. At its shoulder the town of Volos and, to its east, the bare mass of Mount Pelion guard its forested spine and fringing beaches against all but the more adventurous of travellers. For the previous two summers the Maxwells had holidayed there, benefiting from the seclusion and tranquillity. For Hugh Maxwell it had seemed a salve for an incident that had blighted the twilight of his career as a High Court judge, when he had, against his better judgement, presided over the conviction and hanging of an innocent man. But over the course of an otherwise successful career he had built up a resistance to the personal consequences of occasional errors and could live with it. Not so his young wife Emma, who knew more of the background to the case than she could comfortably bear. Nevertheless they stayed together. Their decision to purchase and renovate an old farmhouse had been shared, up to a point, though Emma had puzzled over Hugh’s choice of a remote location at the peninsula’s southern tip.

  In those days – in the early seventies – there were few neighbours, and none close. The farmhouse looked down a deep green valley of mixed deciduous and pine forest leading to the sea a kilometre away. From the tiny harbour a rough and indistinct track led back through an ancient olive grove, then upwards through the trees, passing close to the Maxwell’s veranda before continuing more steeply to reach the old monastery of Agia Triada perched precariously high above the house. Referring to the cliff, Emma had once jokingly compared it to a barrier against the traumas of their former life; but Hugh had turned away, unamused.

  These days the track saw only the occasional rambler, and it was a while before they learnt from the locals that it was part of a network of pack animal trails, once extensively used, connecting settlements throughout the peninsula. Knowing this, they one day scuffed away the soil and detritus with their feet and were surprised to find a paved – and surprisingly intact and serviceable – surface. But excursions into local history could wait, and they resumed planting the garden with oleanders and frangipani, and trailing bougainvilleas over the veranda trellis. Each evening they would sit with their glasses of rough local wine and thank providence for allowing them a few years yet to enjoy their new-found existence. But the bland deliciousness of it all had its downside in that, for the novel Hugh had promised himself he would write, the moving finger had perceptibly slowed, if not stopped altogether. The hand that should have held the pen more often than not was clutching a wineglass.

  From the veranda they would watch the fishing boats in the distance: tiny specks on the deep blue waters beyond the village and its harbour. In the evenings the lights would twinkle dimly, but one evening they were joined by another, bluish and brighter than the rest, that seemed to come from a boat moored a little way out to sea. Emma remembered that moment particularly because it coincided with the first appearance of a person on the track passing the house. The indistinct grey figure had emerged momentarily from the deep shadows beneath the overhanging branches of the chestnut trees.

  ‘Look, Hugh,’ she whispered.

  The urgency in her voice made him turn. ‘What have you seen?’

  ‘A figure, just for an instant, on the old track.’

  Hugh peered into the gloom. ‘I can’t see anything. No-one comes here when it’s getting dark. It’s just the breeze moving the branches.’

  ‘It stood quite still, watching us. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘I’ll get a torch, take a look.’

  ‘No, stay with me. You’re not to leave me alone.’

  The following morning Hugh and Emma climbed the track to the monastery. Most of the building was hidden behind a formidable rough stone wall. Hugh pulled on a cord beside the studded oak door that somewhere within caused a bell to be struck. A minute later the door swung open to reveal the surprised face of young monk who seemed at first reluctant to admit them. They entered a courtyard neatly laid out with beds of carefully tended vegetables, at odds with the rampant reds and purples of the bougainvilleas clothing the surrounding walls. The monk led them through a door into a dark hallway where another monk, elderly with greying hair and a shrivelled face, introduced himself as Father Petros. ‘From my cell I could see you coming up the track,’ he said. ‘Few people come that way nowadays. It’s much easier to reach us from the road higher up the mountain.’

  ‘We did see one person on the track last night,’ Emma said cautiously.

  ‘Really, that surprises me. The locals are far too superstitious to use it at night.’

  ‘Perhaps one of your monks…’

  ‘Tucked up in their cells by six. Not possible, I assure you. Sometimes our eyes play tricks on us.’

  ‘Exactly what I told her,’ Hugh said.

  ‘I know what I saw.’

  ‘A foolhardy tourist, then,’ Father Petros said with a smile, ending the discussion. Now, after some tea I’m sure you would like to see something of our humble community.’

  They climbed a flight of steep stone steps leading from the hallway. ‘As you see,’ Father Petros said, ‘much of the building is carved out of the solid rock. We’ll begin with the library at the top. My old legs find it easier to do the hard bit first. Once it was the scriptorium – that was when we had fifty monks here and not the present six.’

  ‘But this is a remarkable collection,’ Hugh said, running his eye over the many shelves of dusty volumes. ‘May I look?’

  ‘Of course, But let me draw your attention to these few volumes,’ he said, pointing to half a dozen bound codices on an upper shelf. ‘These are why we keep this door locked. They date back to the time of the inquisition.’

  ‘The Spanish Inquisition?’ Emma’s eyes widened.

  ‘Hardly here,�
� Father Petros said. ‘Inquisitions were common throughout the medieval period, in all sorts of places.’ He reached for one of the codices; as he opened it a sheet of parchment fell to the floor. ‘This is a summary of the questioning of one of the monks of this monastery. The charges were without foundation but unfortunately that was realised only after it was too late to save him.’

  ‘Was he… tortured?’ Emma asked.

  ‘I’ll come to that,’ Father Petros said, ‘when we go downstairs.’

  They entered a stone-vaulted room with windows looking out over the valley and the sea. The sole item of furniture, besides a couple of chairs, was a massive wooden table in the centre of the room, placed parallel to the windows. ‘We believe this is the actual table used by the inquisitors,’ Father Petros said. ‘But the brothers fear to come here, so this room is rather wasted.’

  ‘I can imagine the inquisitors sitting with their backs to the sunlight,’ Emma said, ‘so that their victims couldn’t see their faces.’ She drew up one of the chairs, in the supposed position of an accused, and looked across to where her husband was observing her from the other side of the table, his face in shadow. ‘Uggh!’

  ‘Beneath this room,’ Father Petros said, ‘is a cellar where we believe… But I’m sure you don’t wan’t to go there.’

  ‘But I…’ Hugh began.

  ‘I think we’ve already taken too much of the good Father’s time,’ Emma said. ‘I’m sure there will be other occasions.’ She looked at Father Petros for acquiescence but was surprised to see no sign of it in his expression.

  Father Petros said, ‘Should you think of coming again, you would be most welcome to attend when the monks meet for singing liturgical chant. The few visitors that do attend write to us to say what an uplifting experience it has been. I suppose it’s our way of communicating with the outside world. The door is left open at such times – you can come straight in.’ As he opened the door for them he said, ‘Now, as you go back down the track be sure to note the remains of a chapel on your left. It’s dedicated to Antonis Stavros, the unfortunate novice we spoke about.’ He lowered his voice. ‘It’s rather grim and partly why the locals choose not to come this way. You hear all sorts of stories, but I’m inclined not to believe any of them. I’d advise you to do the same.’

  The chapel turned out to be little more than a pile of rubble and Emma passed it by without further interest. She was surprised, on looking back, to see Hugh stiffly contemplating the displaced stones, deep in thought.

  That night Hugh slept badly. A dream that on previous nights had been a chaotic jumble of indeterminate shapes and colours took more tangible form. Faces dimly familiar but never quite remembered mingled with images of forested mountains and precipitous descents into black and turbulent seas. In the morning Emma told him of his nocturnal sweats and incoherent ramblings. It became the pattern for subsequent nights, except that animate objects in his dreams began to assume more recognisable form. Then one morning he awoke with an after-image of himself sitting at a vast table that remained with him throughout that day. So occupied with it was he that when Emma said she was leaving for her weekly traditional dancing class in a nearby village he was startled by his forgetfulness. Then he realised what he had suppressed during the past few days: an urge to revisit the monastery. Was it just fortuitous, then, that this was the evening when the chanting of the monks would be shared with the public? No, he told himself, and as soon as Emma had gone he locked up the house and set off up the track.

  No longer was there the bright sunshine of the week before. The freshening wind was already disturbing the boughs of the chestnut trees and the tips of the pines were bending perceptibly. And was the light really beginning to fade this early? He drew level with the ruined chapel, keeping well to the opposite side of the track. He looked around for the figure that he only half-believed Emma had seen.

  As soon as he pushed open the door in the wall of the monastery he could hear the chanting from the chapel. But he had no intention of going there and tiptoed past into the hallway where Father Petros had first greeted them. He was surprised to find the door of the inquisition room unlocked. Funny how just looking at that massive table could conjure up images from his past, as if its surface had been impregnated with some invisible substance that had ‘legal persecution’ written on its jar. He thought of Tony Savage, one of the last men in England to have been hanged, and it came back to him how he had allowed the man’s arrogance in the dock to sway his summing up to the jury. And how, before the verdict was given, he had read innocence in the man’s eyes – and seen disbelief and hatred in the eyes of the family in the gallery above. He drew up a chair to sit at the centre of the table with the light behind him and wondered if the inquisitor who had faced Antonis Stavros had entertained similar doubts. He withdrew from his pocket the fragment of parchment that he had taken from the codex in the scriptorium, and had perused in secret during the days since. He spread it flat on the table. So powerful were the words of incrimination it contained that he looked up sharply, as if to see the novice monk’s face crease up in terror while his own expression was concealed by shadow. Involuntarily he pointed a finger and felt, as much as heard, himself say the words ‘take him down for torture.’ His gaze drifted across the room to where a small door gave access to the cellar below. He rose, walked to it and pulled at the handle; but like the door to the inquisition room it was unlocked. Hearing heavy footsteps in the hallway outside he closed the door behind him and descended the narrow staircase between walls damp with mould that brushed his shoulders.

  He reached a rock-hewn chamber – more a cave than a room – with a masonry wall on the side facing the valley and the sea, in which a tiny aperture high up was the only source of light. He let his eyes wander over the rusted metal implements laid out, as if ready for use, on a stone bench and on the floor. Terrible though the scene was, he had, somehow, known what to expect. He fingered each object in the sure knowledge of what had been its purpose and how it had been used. Waves of remorse swept through his body. He needed air, but knew he could not return to the room above, having no believable excuse to be found there. He took hold of a stool – the stool on which…? – and placed it against the masonry wall. Stretching his body upwards he could just apply his face to the aperture. He could see below him the headlights of what must have been Emma’s car returning and down the valley to the little fishing village, beyond which the solitary pale blue light seemed to burn with greater intensity. Then, for what reason he would never be in a position to know, the structure of the wooden stool on which he was standing gave way, sending him crashing to the floor.

  An hour after her return, and having searched the house desperately for a note, Emma’s predicament seemed dire. Hugh’s absence was inexplicable; however strange his behaviour over the past few days had been she knew he would never leave her by herself. It was the nightmare scenario she had raised with him time and time again when they were still contemplating buying the house, because of its remoteness and lack of a telephone. Her first reaction had been to drive back to the village she’d left, but the petrol guage showed empty – her own fault for not filling up when she had the chance – and she had no idea were Hugh kept the spare can, even if there was one. Worse still, when she’d made the decision to risk it, she found one of the tyres was flat. Believing that these elements were conspiring against her in a way somehow ordained she poured herself a whisky and sat on the veranda, drumming her fingers on the table surface. Then, just as she raised the glass to her lips there was a frisson in the vegetation beside the old trackway. She felt the presence of the figure she had seen a week before. She needed help, and the only help available lay two hundred yards further up that abominable track. She walked around the house and let her eyes follow the cliff face upwards to where a single faint light – surely in Father Petros’ cell – was burning. For all its terrors, that was a better option than remaining where s
he was. Taking a torch she set off up the track.

  The ruins of the chapel came upon her jagged and threatening in the torchlight. But her terror was suddenly magnified by something worse. At first it was just a faint movement on the track ahead. Then, silently, there emerged from the darkness a figure leading an animal whose shape at first had no meaning. She shrank back into the vegetation beside the track. The torch slipped from her hand, sending its useless beam deep into the undergrowth. As the pair came closer she saw that the animal was carrying across its back something heavy and bound in sackcloth. Still there was no sound. It had to be that they would stop, having seen her torch, but they pressed on, as if not needing light, taking no notice of her. She tried to call after, but the words were stifled in her throat. Then the pair was gone.

  Scrabbling in the undergrowth she recovered her torch and continued up the track. Father Petros must have seen the light from his cell, for he was waiting for her at the open door of the monastery.

  Emma woke the following morning to find herself lying on a simple straw mattress covered by a single blanket. The curtains were being drawn back by a woman dressed in the black habit of a nun. Light flooded into the room, hurting her eyes.

  ‘We thought it sensible to let you sleep,’ the nun said. ‘When you’re ready we can go across to Father Petros. He’s waiting to speak with you.’

  Father Petros handed her a mug of tea. ‘I asked Sister Melina to come and look after you. It’s lucky the convent is so close. The police are still searching the monastery but so far there’s been no sign of your husband. With daylight we should be able to find him.’

  ‘You think he came here?’ she asked.