I slammed the palms of my hands against it. It wouldn’t budge. I slammed it again to no avail. Then I noticed my hands were bleeding.
At least I thought they were; both were covered in blood. But when I examined them in the light, I saw no cuts or abrasions. Suddenly I realized the blood had come from the water coursing through the drain.
I’d been crawling through a river of water and blood. Apparently it was coming from farther up the line—which meant there had to be another opening.
The passage narrowed as I moved on ahead, forcing me to squirm on my belly. I strained to see into the inky blackness. My clothes grew sopping wet. I heard the plash of skittering rats.
Finally, I reached another opening. The pipeline continued on, but was far too narrow to crawl through. Dim light showed through the grate above; this was an interior space. I listened for a full minute. The only sound was the trickle of water coming down the drain line.
This time when I tried the grate, it jiggled in its slot. When I struck it with the palm of my hand, it popped loose onto the floor. I stuck my head through the opening and peered out into the room.
Pale daylight shone through the iron grate of a window. It fell on stacks of wooden crates and cardboard boxes, and on shelves holding packages of foodstuffs, glass jars, and bottles. Wine barrels were stacked in a pyramid against the wall. Near them lay piled rows of bulging burlap sacks. One corner of the room was heaped with firewood; in another corner a massive barrel stood on end.
I climbed out of the hole and replaced the grate over the drain. The cellar floor looked perfectly dry. Obviously it wasn’t the source of the trickling water and the blood; that must have been coming from farther up the line. As I glanced around, I noticed a muffled, suckling sound. A black cat was lying on a spilled sack of flour, nursing a litter of kittens. The fur of the kittens had turned white from the powder, and the mother was busily licking them clean.
Footsteps descended the stone stairwell. I glanced around frantically, looking for somewhere to hide. Across the room in the corner stood a large, upright wooden barrel. I hid behind it as the door creaked open.
First I heard light footsteps, then the murmur of a woman’s voice, cooing sweetly in Greek. I slowly peered out over the barrel and saw a figure in black—another veiled nun—crouching over the litter. She picked up one of the kittens and cradled it against her chest. At this point she was standing in the light from the window, and I could see her face quite clearly. She was young and pretty, with a beauty mark on her cheek.
I recognized her immediately. She had been at the table with Basri when we’d had our first drink at the club. Marina wore the blue scarf. This woman was Irene.
She set down the kitten, then stood and brushed the white flour from her chest. She glanced up at the window a moment, then crossed the room and moved aside something on the shelf. Under it she found a pack of clove cigarettes and a box of matches. She hastily lit up a cig, glancing again at the window. She took a deep drag.
I noticed bloody water from my sopping shoes had left wet footprints behind. They passed close by where the girl was standing. I slid back down behind the barrel, careful not to make a sound. The water was forming a puddle beneath me and moving out onto the floor.
The girl exhaled noisily. Again, I peered at her over the barrel.
She was staring down at the footprints, a puzzled look on her face. Her eyes started following them across the room.
I ducked down and held my breath. The woman started toward me. I wondered if I could jump her and keep her from screaming.
A shadow suddenly passed by the window, accompanied by the sound of footsteps. I watched Irene quickly put out her cigarette and stuff the pack back into her hiding place. She waved her hands in a futile attempt to disperse the lingering smoke.
A woman’s voice called down from the top of the stairs. Irene called back in Greek, then hurried to the pile of firewood and gathered up a bundle. She carried the wood across to the door and hastily left the cellar.
I listened as the irate voice outside scolded her in Greek. It continued reprimanding as the two of them walked away.
Alone again, I stepped out from behind the barrel and waited until the voices had vanished. Then I opened the door and crept up the stairs.
THE STAIRWELL let out onto a stone-paved alleyway between two buildings. One appeared to be a church or chapel, with arched windows of leaded glass. The other was the building from whose cellar I’d just emerged. I peeked through one of its ground-floor windows and saw it was the refectory—the monastery dining hall—with a long wooden table and high-backed chairs. The room was empty, but through a doorway beyond it was the kitchen, from which I could hear voices and the clatter of pots and pans.
I crept down the alleyway, ducked under the kitchen window, then crossed to the chapel. It was a small building of rough stone and looked to be very old. I peered through a window and could see no one inside. There was only the single entrance in front, set within a carved-stone archway. The coffered door showed traces of pale blue in the wood grain, but looked as if it hadn’t been painted in decades. I gently pushed it open.
Inside, it was silent and dark. Dim light showed through the rippled glass, but the end with the altar had no windows at all and lay completely in shadow. There were no pews, only the cold stone floor, and the walls held no paintings or tapestries. Candles were perched on floor stands by the door, and several more stood beside the altar.
I walked across the room to the massive block of stone. A large picture sat on this primitive altar, a Byzantine oil painting on a panel of wood, mounted within a massive, elaborately carved frame. The image was an iconic portrait of the Madonna and Child, set on a brilliant gold background. The Virgin had large almond eyes and a small mouth, and the baby Jesus looked like a tiny grown man.
The mounting of the picture seemed peculiar. I noticed the panel was not fully attached to the frame, but seemed to float inside it, held in place by metal tabs at the top and bottom, and by tiny wooden doll rods at the middle on either side. The tabs had left scrape marks on the edges of the painting. Curious, I slid the tabs from their slots. The picture immediately swiveled loose, and with a little nudge, the painting flipped, top over bottom, to reveal another painting on the back side of the panel.
I was astonished.
The painting was much older and in far worse condition, yet it looked immediately familiar. It pictured two women standing on either side of a youthful male, with one of the women handing something to the boy. It took me a moment to realize this was the same subject we had seen in the relief sculpture at the National Archeological Museum. The sculpture had come from Eleusis, and the women were the goddess Demeter and her daughter, Persephone. Demeter was handing an ear of grain to the boy, whom Dan had insisted was Persephone’s son—none other than the god Dionysus.
I stared at it, intrigued. The painting, with its great age, looked mysterious and strange. A relic of the pagan past; but what did it mean exactly? I wondered if I could somehow use it to make our case to the police.
Finally, I turned away from the altar and started back to the door. For the first time I noticed there were small objects floating above me, difficult to see in the dark. I paused and peered up at them. They hung from the ceiling on long loops of string, and appeared to be some sort of ornaments.
I moved directly under one. It consisted of a small, round wheel with spokes, with something hanging inside it. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw that what was tied to the spokes was a small dead bird.
“What the hell?”
Dozens of these macabre birds hung down from the ceiling. There was something weirdly unnerving about the way their dead heads dangled.
The icon on the altar was too big to carry off, but this little curiosity was certainly not. I jumped up, grabbed a wheel, and snapped it loose from the ceiling. The wheel was made of vinelike twigs braided into a tightly woven circle. Four spokes formed a cross, at the center of w
hich the bird was attached. The bird had a long neck and a large, oddly shaped head, with a speckled pattern on its wings and chest. It looked like a small woodpecker. I wrapped the loop of string around it and stuffed it gingerly into my pocket.
Outside, there was no one in sight, but I could hear the sound of women singing. I crept down the alleyway toward the sound and came to an open courtyard.
In a rock-rimmed circle at the center stood a magnificent, long-needled pine tree. Pinecones littered the shaded ground around it, and the broad expanse of stone pavement was overgrown with grass. The square was framed by a colonnaded cloister—or at least by what was left of it; whole sections of the walkway had long ago collapsed, perhaps from an earthquake or fire. Across the way, a white-stoned church, blackened with age, shimmered like a mirage in the hazy sunlight. The church was the source of the women’s singing.
No doubt it was the so-called Pan-Hellenic Women’s Chorus. The hymn they sang sounded medieval, but like their chanting on the yacht, it had the same vibrant passion, as if the women’s very souls were bound up with their song.
A bell rang out. The same brass bell I had rung at the monastery gate. I listened. It clanged again. Someone wanted in.
I left the courtyard and hurried toward the sound. It seemed to have come from farther up the alleyway on the other side of the buildings. I stuck close to the walls and shadows, trying to keep out of sight. The sound of the women’s chorus gradually faded away behind me. I could see a column of thick smoke rising from a chimney. This, I thought, was where Irene must have been taking the firewood.
I cut through a narrow passageway that stunk of cat urine. It ran between what looked like a large dormitory building and a single floor lavatory set alongside it, from which a puddle of water had leaked. The passage, as I’d guessed, opened into the entry courtyard. I got there in time to see a nun walking toward the gate. She was a large woman, and she wore an apron with her sleeves rolled up; I immediately assumed she was the monastery’s cook.
The boy I’d seen on the bicycle was waiting outside the gate. The two exchanged greetings, and the nun opened the gate to let the boy in. He rolled his bike inside and set it against the wall. Then he pulled from the handlebar basket a package wrapped in butcher’s paper. He carried it as she turned and led him back the way she had come.
I wondered if this was how the nuns had their meat delivered. It was doubtful they’d be capable of hunting or preparing wild game; they must have relied on local hunters, or purchased their meat from butchers in town. This bicyclist was no doubt the delivery boy.
As the two of them crossed the yard, I recognized the nun. She was the big woman from the yacht, the one with the massive breasts and thighs I had seen straddling Basri. She and the boy vanished through a passage in the wall. The moment they were out of sight, I snuck along the wall to follow them. When I reached the passage, they were exiting its opposite end. I hurried after them, but when I got to the other end, the two had vanished again.
I was standing at the edge of a long, narrow, overgrown courtyard. The buildings that bordered it were built of crumbling and decaying stone, and appeared to be abandoned. One looked like another dormitory, its windows black and vacant. A second appeared to be the ruins of a chapel that looked as if it had been bombed. Across from it was the building with the chimney from which the smoke was rising.
I cautiously made my way toward it.
The stone walls seemed blackened with age and were thickly covered with ivy. It was a hexagonal structure, with the chimney rising from the center. I had toured a monastery in the Italian Alps, and remembered it had what they called a calefactory, or warming house, that looked very much like this. But here we were in the middle of the day, with winter a long way off. These nuns were apparently using it to cook.
I crept around the building, looking for the entrance. When I found it, I noticed the boy in the grass nearby, playing with a spotted gray-and-white cat. He was dangling a string in front of it—presumably the same string that had wrapped the butcher’s package. The cat was going crazy with the teasing, and the boy seemed completely preoccupied. I made my way toward the door.
Just then, the big nun emerged from inside, and I flung myself against the wall. She was carrying a wooden bucket of water, and I noticed for the first time that her apron was smudged with blood. She set the bucket down by the boy, dipped a ladle into the water, and offered him a drink. He thirstily gulped it down. Then he gave her back the ladle and she dipped it once again. As she handed him this second drink, I slipped inside the door.
A gagging stench filled the air. I could barely breathe. Except for the fire, the room was completely dark. The building had no windows. I stood near the door with my back against the wall, waiting for my eyes to adjust. The crackling fire blazed in an open hearth in the center of the room. Two nuns with their backs to me were tending it with pokers. They, too, wore aprons, and had their sleeves rolled up. I edged along the wall and crouched down behind a pile of kindling to hide in the flickering shadows.
A huge black kettle was boiling on the fire. Large hunks of bone and meat lay on a table beside it. The boy’s package, partially unwrapped, lay on the table, too, along with another bucket of water and a pair of iron tongs.
When one of the nuns turned to the table, I saw that it was Irene. She grabbed the tongs and, with the help of the other nun, who was prodding her poker into the pot, pulled out a long flank of boiled meat and carried it over to the table. She dropped it there, steaming, then clamped a raw and bloody piece from the uncooked pile, carried it back over, and plunked it into the pot.
The other nun went to the table and ladled cold water onto the boiled meat, sending a sizzle of steam into the air. Is this woman Marina? It was hard for me to tell. Her head was wrapped tightly in the black scarf, and I couldn’t get a look at her face.
The water she poured spilled off the table and splashed to the floor, where it flowed through an iron-grate drain. This, I realized, was where the bloody water was coming from in the drain line I had crawled through.
Using a meat cleaver and her bare hands, the nun stripped the cooked meat off the large bone and flung the meat into the fire.
My eyes stayed with the bone. I had thought at first it must have been the femur of a cow. Then I thought, with revulsion, it might have belonged to a horse, given its thickness and considerable length. Finally, as Irene picked it up in her iron tongs and carried it back to the pot, I began to think it may have come from another creature entirely.
She dropped the femur into the boiling water.
The fat nun came back inside with the bucket and set it down roughly on the table. Then she pulled open the butcher paper and lifted out the bicycle boy’s hand-delivered prize.
I slowly rose to my feet, staring in astonishment.
She was holding Basri’s head.
15
I WAS so stunned by what I had seen, I froze and stood there, gaping. As she dropped the rotting head into the pot, the big nun turned and spotted me. She shouted something loudly in Greek, and the other women suddenly wheeled in fright.
Marina held up the bloody cleaver in her hand. Irene raised her poker like a club. The fat lady yanked out a log from the fire and came at me like a thundering ogre.
I ran.
Right out past the kid with the cat. Across the open courtyard. I tripped on a broken flagstone and fell, sliding on my hands and knees. Irene came down with her iron poker. I rolled aside and it clanged to the stone. Marina took a swipe with her cleaver. I dodged it, got up, and ran.
The women were shouting at the top of their lungs. A bell started tolling loudly. For a second, I didn’t know where to go—everything looked the same: black buildings, gaping windows, a maze of passageways. The fat lady slugged me in the head with her log. A burning ember caught in my ear. As I screamed and shook it out and went stumbling away, the iron poker stuck me in the ribs. I angrily grabbed ahold of it and yanked Irene to the ground. The two oth
er women came charging toward me, and I swung the poker at them. The big nun grabbed it in her meaty claw and snapped it out of my hand.
I tried to grab it back, but the cleaver came flying through the air at my head, and I quickly whirled to avoid it. Irene, on the ground, grabbed hold of my ankles. I tumbled and crashed to the stone.
When I looked up, I saw the boy running off, heading into a passage. I rolled as again the poker came down, chipping the stone by my head. As I started up, Marina struck my neck with the stick, then tried to jam it into my throat. I grabbed it and held off the glowing tip, then shoved it aside and again rolled away.
I took off after the boy.
He had gone into the same passage I’d followed him through earlier. The one that led to the entry. I raced full bore through that passageway now, desperate to catch up to him. As I emerged from the other end, I saw nuns pouring out of doorways and passages, spurred by the tolling of the bell. The boy was heading through the gateway with his bike, and I reached him just as it was closing.
“Sorry, kid—I owe you one.” I grabbed the bike away from him and took off down the road. He didn’t even try to come after me. As I glided along the edge of the mountain, I glanced back and saw the nuns crowding at the gate.
I don’t know why, but I waved.
IT TOOK me less than an hour to make my way back to town. Most of the road was downhill, and for much of it I simply coasted. This proved to be a blessing, for I was in too much pain to exert myself. My hands and knees were smarting from the tumbles I’d taken, the side of my face still burned, and two of my ribs were so painfully sore I feared they might be broken. In spite of all this—or because of it—I felt lucky to have escaped alive.
Night of the Furies Page 15