‘Fourteen hundred miles. We should be in Vienna by midday. Fiume, say, half-past two. I ought to make Yanina by eight o’clock, with Rex taking turn and turn about flying the plane. After that it depends on what fresh transport we can get.’
Next, they were in the plane again lifting out of the fogbound Paris to a marvellous dawn, which gilded the edges of the clouds and streaked the sky with rose and purple and lemon.
Richard was flying the plane in a kind of trance, yet never for a moment losing sight of important landmarks or the dials by which he adjusted his controls. The others slept.
When Marie Lou roused, the plane was at rest near a long line of hangars dimly glimpsed through another ghostly fog. Someone said ‘Stuttgart’ and then she saw Simon standing on the ground below her, conversing in German with an airport official.
‘A big, grey, private plane,’ he was saying urgently. ‘The pilot is a short, square-shouldered fellow; the passengers a big, fat, bald-headed man and a little girl.’
Marie Lou leaned forward eagerly but she did not catch the airport man’s reply. A moment later Simon was climbing into the plane and saying to the Duke:
‘He must be taking the same route, but he’s an hour and a half ahead of us. I expect he had his own car in Paris. That would have saved him time while we were hunting for that wretched taxi.’
Rex had taken over the controls and they were in the air once more. Richard was sitting next to Marie Lou, sound asleep. For an endless time they seemed to soar through a cloudless sky of pale, translucent blue. She, too, must have dropped off again, for she was not conscious of their landing at Vienna, only when she woke in the early afternoon that the pilots had changed over and Richard was back at the controls.
Yet, in some curious way, although she had not actually been aware of their landing, fragments of their conversation must have penetrated her sleep at the time. She knew that there had also been fog at Vienna and that Mocata had left the airport there only an hour before them, so in the journey from Paris they had managed to gain half an hour on him.
The engine droned on, its deep note soothing their frayed nerves. Richard hardly knew that he was flying, although he used all the skill at his command. It seemed as though some other force was driving the aeroplane on and that he was standing outside it as a spectator. All his faculties were numbed and his anxiety for Fleur deadened by an intense absorption with the question of speedspeedspeed.
At Fiume there was no trace of fog. Glorious sunshine, warm and life-giving, flooded the aerodrome, making the hangars shimmer in the distance. The Duke crawled out from the couch of rugs and cushions that had been made up in the back of the cabin to accommodate a fifth passenger, and chosen by him as more comfortable for his wounded arm. He questioned the landing-ground official in fluent Italian, but without success.
‘From Vienna Mocata must have taken another route,’ he told Richard as he climbed back. ‘Perhaps a short cut over the Dinarie Alps or by way of Sarajevo. If so he will have more than made up his half-hour lead again. I feared as much when I saw that there was no fog here. I can’t explain it but I have an idea that he is able to surround us with it, yet only when we follow him to places where he has been quite recently himself.’
Rex took over for the long lap down the Dalmatian coast above the countless islands that fringe the Yugoslavian mainland and lay beneath them in the sparkling Adriatic Sea.
They slept again, all except Rex who, a crack pilot, was now handling the machine with superb skill.
As he flew the plane half his thoughts were centred about Tanith. He could see her there, lying cold and dead, in the library a thousand miles away at Cardinals Folly. That dream of happiness had been so brief. Never again would he see the sudden smile break out like sunshine rising over mountains on that beautiful, calm face. Never again hear the husky, melodious voice whispering terms of endearment. Never againnever again! But he was on the trail of her murderer and if he died for it he meant to make that inhuman monster pay.
The Adriatic merged into the Ionian Sea. The endless rugged coastline rushed past below them on their left; its mountains rising steeply to the interior of Albania, and its vales breaking them here and there to run down to little white fishing villages on the seashore. Villages that in Roman times had been great centres of population through the constant passage of merchandise, soldiers, scholars, travellers between Brindisi, upon the heel of Italy, and the Peninsula of Greece.
Then they were over Corfu. Banking steeply, he headed for the mainland and picked up the northern mouth of the River Kalamas. The deep blue of the sea flecked by its tiny white crests vanished behind them. Twisting and turning, the plane drove upwards above the desolate valleys where the river trickled, a streak of silver in the evening light. The sun sank behind them into the distant sea. They were heading for the huge chain of mountains, which forms the backbone of Greece.
A mist was rising which obscured the long, empty patches and rare cultivated fields below. The light faded, its last rays lit a great distant snow-capped crest which crowned the watershed.
A lake lay below them, placid and calm in the evening light but glimpsed only through the banks of fog. At its south-western end the white buildings of a town were vaguely discernible now and then as Rex circled slowly, searching for a landing-place. Suddenly, through a gap in the billowing whitish-grey, his eye caught a big plane standing in a level field.
‘That’s Mocata’s machine,’ yelled Simon who was in the cockpit beside him.
Rex banked again and, coming into the wind, brought them to earth within fifty yards of it. The others roused and scrambled out.
The mist which Rex had first perceived a quarter of an hour before, from his great altitude, now hemmed them in on every side.
A man came forward from a low, solitary hangar as the plane landed. De Richleau saw him, a vague figure, half obscured by the tenuous veils of mist; went over to him and said, when he rejoined them:
‘That fellow is a French mechanic. He tells me Mocata landed only half an hour ago. He came in from Monastir but had trouble in the mountains, which delayed him; nobody but a maniac or a superman would try and get through that way at all. This fellow thinks that he can get us a car; he runs the airport, such as it is, and we’re darned lucky to find any facilities here at all.’
Richard had just woken from a long sleep. Before he knew what was happening he found that they were all packed into an ancient open Ford with a tattered hood. Simon was on one side of him and Marie Lou on the other. Rex squatted on the floor of the car at their feet and De Richleau was in front beside the driver.
They could not see more than twenty yards ahead. The lamps made little impression upon the gloom before them. The road was a sandy track, fringed at the sides with coarse grass and boulders. No houses, cottages or white-walled gardens broke the monotony of the way as they rattled and bumped, mounting continuously up long, curved gradients.
De Richleau peered ahead into the murk. Occasional rifts gave him glimpses of the rocky mountains round which they climbed or, upon the other side, a cliff edge falling sheer to a mist-filled valley.
He, too, could only remember episodes from that wild journey : an unendurable weariness had pressed upon him once they had boarded the plane and left Paris. Even his power of endurance had failed to last and he had slept during the greater part of their fourteen hundred mile flight. He was still sleepy now and only half awake as that unknown demon driver, who had hurried them with few words into the rickety Ford, crouched over his wheel and pressed the car, rocketing from hairpin bend to hairpin bend, onwards and upwards.
The last light had been shut out by the lower ranges of mountains behind them as they wound their way through the valleys to the greater peaks which, unseen in the mist and darkness, they knew lay towering to the skies towards the east. Deep ruts in the track, where mountain torrents cut it in winter cascading downwards to the lower levels, made the way hideously uneven. The car jolted and bou
nded, skidding violently from time to time, loose shale and pebbles rocketing from its back tyres as it took the dangerous bends.
In the back Richard, Marie Lou and Simon lurched, swayed, and bumped each other as they crouched in silent misery, their teeth chattering with the cold of the chill night that was now about them in those lofty regions….
They were in a room, a strange, low-ceilinged, eastern room, with a great, heavy, wooden door, under which they could see the fog wreathing upwards in the light of a solitary oil lamp set upon a rough-hewn table. Bunches of onions and strips of dried meat hung from the low rafters. The earthen floor of the place was cold under foot. On a deep window recess, in a thick wall stood a crude earthenware jug, and a platter with a loaf of coarse bread upon it, which was covered by a bead-edged piece of muslin.
Marie Lou roused to find herself drinking coarse, red wine out of a thick, glass tumbler. She saw Rex sitting on a wooden bench against the wall, staring before him with unseeing eyes at the grimy window. The others stood talking round a lop-sided table. A peasant woman, with a scarf about her head, whose face she could not see, appeared to be arguing with them. Marie Lou had an idea that it was about money, since De Richleau held a small pile of notes in his hand. Then the peasant woman was gone and the others were talking together again. She caught a few words here and there.
‘I thought it was a ruin … inhabited still … they beg us not to go there … not of an official order or anything to do with the Greek Church. They look on them as heathens here … associates of Mocata’s?–– No, more like a community of outlaws who have taken refuge there under the disguise of a religious brotherhood … Talisman has affected them, perhaps. Forty or fifty of them. The people here shun the place even in the daytime, and at night none of them would venture near it at any price… . You managed to get a driver?–-Yes, of a kind- What’s wrong with him?–– I don’t know. The woman didn’t seem to trust him, but I had great difficulty in understanding her at all–– Sort of bad man of the village, eh? … Have to trust him if no one else will take us.’
De Richleau passed his hand across his eyes. What was it that they had been talking about. He was so tired, so terribly tired. There had been a peasant woman, with whom he had talked of the ruined monastery up in the mountains. She seemed to be filled with horror of the place and had implored him again and again not to go. He began to wonder how they had conversed. He could make himself understood in most European languages, but he had very little knowledge of modern Greek; but that did not matter they must get on get on….
The others were standing round him like a lot of ghosts in the narrow, fog-filled village street. A little hunchback with bright, sharp eyes was peering at him. The fellow wore a dark sombrero, and a black cloak, covering his malformed body, dangled to his feet; the light from the semi-circular window of the inn was just sufficient to illuminate his face. A great, old-fashioned carriage, with two lean, ill-matched horses harnessed to it, stood waiting.
They piled into it. The musty smell of the straw-filled cushions came strongly to their nostrils. The hunchback gave them one curious, cunning look from his bright eyes, and climbed upon the box. The lumbering vehicle began to rock from side to side. The one-storeyed, flat-topped houses in the village disappeared behind them and were swallowed up in the mist.
They forded a swift but shallow river outside the village, then the roadway gave place to a stony track. Ghostlike and silent, walls of rock loomed up on either side. The horses ceased trotting and fell into a steady, laboured walk, hauling the great, unwieldy barouche from bend to bend up the rock-strewn way into the fastness of the mountains.
Simon’s teeth were chattering. That damp, clinging greyness seemed to enter into his very bones. He tried to remember what day it was and at what hour they had left Paris. Was it last night or the night before or the night before that? He could not remember and gave it up.
The way seemed interminable. No one spoke. The carriage jolted on, the hunchback crouched upon his seat, the lean horses pulling gallantly. The curve of the road ahead was always hidden from them and no sooner had they passed it than they lost sight of the curve behind.
At last the carriage halted. The driver climbed down off his box and pointed upwards, as they stumbled out on to the track. De Richleau was thrusting money into his hand. He and his aged vehicle disappeared in the shadows. Richard looked back to catch a last glimpse of it and it suddenly struck him then how queer it was that the carriage had no lamps.
The rest were pressing on, stumbling and slithering as they followed the way which had now become no more than a footpath leading upwards between huge rocks.
After a little, the gloom seemed to lighten and they perceived stars above their heads. Then, rounding a rugged promontory, they saw the age-old monastery standing out against the night sky upon the mountain slope above.
It was huge and dark and silent, with steep walls rising on two sides from a precipice. A great dome, like an inverted bowl, rose in its centre, but a portion of it had fallen in and the jagged edges showed plainly against the deep blue of the starlit night beyond.
With renewed courage they staggered on up the steep rise toward the great semi-circular arch of the entrance. The gates stood open wide, rotted and fallen from their hinges. No sign of life greeted their appearance as they passed through into the spacious courtyard.
Instinctively they made for the main building above which curved the broken arc of the ruined Byzantine dome. That must be the Church, and the crypt would lie below it.
They crossed the broken pavements of the forecourt, the Duke leaning heavily on Rex’s arm. He nodded towards a few faint lights which came from a row of outbuildings. Rex followed his glance in silence and they hurried on. That was evidently the best-preserved portion of the ruin, in which these so-called monks resided. A gross laugh, followed by the sound of smashing glass and then a hoarse voice cursing, came from that direction, confirming their thought.
All the way up from the inn half-formed fears had been troubling De Richleau that they might fall foul of this ill-omened brotherhood. He assumed them to be little less than robbers under a thin disguise, who probably eked out a miserable existence by levying toll in corn and oil and goats’ milk upon the neighbouring peasantry, but this great pile upon the slopes of Mount Peristeri was so much more vast than anything that he had imagined. A matter of fifty men might easily be lost among its rambling courts and buildings.
They advanced through another great courtyard, surrounded by ruined colonnades which were visible only by the faint starlight from above. Built by some early Christian saint, when Byzantium was still an Empire and Western Europe labouring through the semi-barbarous night of the Dark Ages, the colossal ruin must once have housed thousands of earnest men, all engaged day by day in pious study, or various active tasks to provide for that great community. Now it was as dead as those African temples which have been overgrown by jungle, only a small fragment of it occupied by a small band of dissolute, uncultured rogues.
In wonder and awe they passed by the broad flight of steps, through the vast portico on which the elaborate carvings, worn and disfigured by time, were just discernible, into the body of the Church.
The starlight, filtering dimly through the great rent in the dome a hundred feet above their heads, was barely sufficient to light their way as they scrambled over broken pillars and heaps of debris round the walls until they found a low door. From it, a flight of steps led down into the Stygian blackness of the vaults below.
Marie Lou, stumbling along half-bemused between Simon and Richard, found herself wondering what they could be doing in this ancient ruin, then memory flooded back. It was here, below them, that the Talisman of Set was buried. There had been no fog in the courtyard outside so they must have got there before Mocata after allbut where was Fleur. She was going to die she felt that she was dyingbut first she must find Fleur.
The others had halted and Richard noticed then that De Richl
eau was carrying an old-fashioned lantern, which he supposed he had borrowed at the inn. The Duke lit the stump of candle that was inside it and led the way down those time-worn stairs. The others, treading instinctively on tiptoe, now followed him into the stale, musty darkness.
At the bottom of the steps they came out into a low, vaulted crypt which, by the faint light of the lantern, seemed to spread interminably under the flagstones of the church.
De Richleau turned to the east, judging the altar of the crypt to be situated below the one in the Church above, but when he had traversed twenty yards he halted suddenly. A black, solid mass blocked their path in the very centre of the vault.
‘Of course,’ Marie Lou heard him murmur. ‘I forgot that this place was built some centuries ago. Altars were placed in the centre of churches then. This must be it.’
‘We’ve beaten him to it, then,’ Rex’s voice came with a little note of triumph.
‘Perhaps he couldn’t get anyone to drive him up from Metsovo at this hour of night,’ Richard suggested. ‘Our man was supposed to be mad, or something, and they said that no one else would go.’
‘Those stones are going to take some shifting.’ Rex took the lantern and bent to examine the black slabs of the solid, oblong altar.
‘Are you certain that this is the right one?’ Richard asked. ‘My brain seems to be going. I can’t remember things properly any more but I thought when we got the information from Simon in his trance he said something about a side-chapel in the crypt.’
No one answered. While his words were still ringing in their ears each one of them suddenly felt that he was being overlooked from behind.
Rex dropped the lantern, De Richleau swung round, Marie Lou gave a faint cry. A dull light had appeared only ten paces in their rear. Leading to it they saw a short flight of steps. Beyond, a chapel with a smaller altar, from which the right-hand stone had been wrenched. And there, standing before it, was Mocata.
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