Night of the Furies

by David Angsten

  “The nuns of Panaghia?” He had been astonished, then delighted, to discover I was capable of making up such lies.

  If I had seen bones and meat at the monastery, then it had to be the nun’s cook preparing a beef stifado. He insisted that Basri’s head had been delivered to the morgue. The chapel I had snuck into was occasionally used for Ogygian weddings; the bird in the wheel was a harmless charm, a traditional Greek talisman of love. And as far as the bone room in the tower of the church, everyone in Ogygia knew what that was: the bones were those of islanders killed in the Greek War of Liberation, the infamous Ogygian massacre of 1822. At one time it had been a part of Damiana’s tour.

  With my arguments thus deflated, and Dan and I now shut in jail, it was up to Phoebe to save us. She’d been out there for over an hour, trying to talk him into taking us to the monastery so that I could show him Basri’s bones. It was the only chance we had of proving the nuns had committed the murder. But Vassilos had been busy with other matters, mostly to do with the tourist evacuation—irate phone calls, angry drop-ins, missing baggage, missing people, and arguments with hoteliers and merchants upset about losing business. I thought he must have begun to wonder if the evacuation was necessary, but the whole thing had gotten so far along that he couldn’t call it off, and certainly not before verifying that Dan and I were the only murdering rapists on his otherwise peaceful island.

  I showed Dan the Ziplocked bird and asked him if he’d ever seen one.

  He sat down on the cot, extracted the bird in the wheel from the bag, and examined it gingerly in his fingers. “The bird is called an iynx,” he said, dangling it from the loop of string. “In English, it’s known as a wryneck because of the way it twists its neck with sudden, crazy jerks.”

  “Vassilos said it was a symbol of love.”

  “That comes out of the myth. Iynx was a sorceress who offered Zeus a love potion. When he drank it and fell in love with a girl, his wife, Hera, took revenge by turning Iynx into a wryneck. ‘Iynx’ is where we get the word ‘jinx.’”

  “What’s with the wheel?”

  “That was Aphrodite’s doing. Remember Jason and the Argonauts?”

  “I remember the movie.”

  “Well, this part is not in the movie.” Dan set the wheel on his lap and started twisting the loop of string. “To get the Golden Fleece, Jason needed to win over Medea—another beautiful sorceress. But how do you cast the spell of love on a sorceress? Aphrodite, being the goddess of love, had an idea and decided to help him. She fastened a wryneck inside a wheel and hung it from a string. Its jerking neck set the wheel spinning, and Jason used its hypnotic whirl to mesmerize Medea.”

  Dan raised the now tightly braided string and lifted the wheel off his lap. The string began unwinding, and the wheel with the bird spun in the air. “It’s a symbol of possession,” he said, watching it whirl. “The crazed twisting of the neck, the obsessive circular motion of the mind. These little wheels were said to have been hanging from the ceiling of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.”

  I thought of Phoebe that night in the temple, and the ecstatic female figure on the museum vase. I’d noticed similar spasmodic movements with the girls during the orgy on the yacht.

  Dan dropped the dead bird on my lap and went back to peer through the window.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “She’s flirting with that son of a bitch.”

  Somehow this didn’t surprise me. “Does it look like it’s working?”

  “No.”

  He turned away and paced the room.

  “What do you think was in that stuff we drank? Do you think it might have been the kykeon?”

  “I’ve been thinking about little else,” Dan said. “I figure it must have been some sort of barley wine—I could taste the grain, along with a strong, almost bitter mint flavor, what I thought must have been pennyroyal. Pennyroyal is a mild hallucinogen, but if the drink was made from barley, it may fit into Wasson’s ergot theory. Ergot is a fungus; in fact, it forms into tiny little mushrooms. Claviceps purpurea is the type that forms on barley, which may have been what gave the drink that weird, purplish color.”

  “Purple haze?”

  “It’s like I told you. Claviceps contains ergonovine. Ergonovine is a psychoactive lysergic acid amide, a precursor to LSD.”

  “But how do you explain the sexual arousal? I’ve never been so horny in my life.”

  “It’s probably an aphrodisiac added to the wine. The ancient Greeks developed a bunch of these concoctions, called satyrion, after the mythical satyr. Dioscorides—the original pharmacologist—mentions a satyrion derived from an orchid. I’ve always thought it might be the same plant Theophrastus wrote about centuries earlier. It was sent to Greece from the king of India, and the slave who carried it boasted of making seventy consecutive ’sacrifices’ to Aphrodite.”

  I’d always written off Dan’s interest in aphrodisiacs as just another one of his cockamamie obsessions. Now, after what had happened on the yacht, screwing seventy consecutive times didn’t strike me as all that unlikely.

  But the orgy had gone well beyond the act of sex. “What about the violence? Those women literally tore Basri apart.”

  Dan began pacing the room. “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “When Theophrastus wrote about the satyrion, he used the verb existimi, which means ‘;to excite, stimulate.’ But the same verb also has the meaning ’to make someone go mad.’ Which suggests it might create a chain reaction when combined with the ergonovine. Lysergic acid has a powerful effect on the neurotransmitter serotonin, which regulates things like mood, sexuality, anger, aggression, and is linked to obsessive-compulsive behavior. It also has effects on other transmitters, like dopamine and adrenalin. So depending on the mixture of the kykeon, it might trigger anything from a blissful euphoria to an uncontrolled adrenalin rage.”

  “You think there was too much ergot?”

  “It’s possible. The trick isn’t just the mixture but the method of preparation. You’ve got to extract the psychoactive compounds and exclude the more toxic alkaloids. Nobody’s been able to figure out how they did it. The original formula was kept by the priests of an ancient family, descended from the kings of Eleusis. It was held in secret under penalty of death and passed down from generation to generation for centuries. Then, almost overnight, it vanished. All the pagan cults, including Eleusis, were outlawed by the Roman emperor in AD 391.”

  “After what happened to us on the yacht,” I said, “I can understand why they’d shut it all down.”

  “The ritual on the yacht was different,” he said. “There was something sinister about it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The kykeon is only a catalyst,” he said. “Everything depends on the context and the setting—and most of all, the intent. At Eleusis, the intent was to experience a profound spiritual awakening. Everything was carefully arranged to channel the energy in that direction. Each initiate had a personal guide to accompany them through the ceremonies, and the kykeon was imbided in the strictly controlled environment of the Telestrion, following a tried-and-true ritual procedure, a sacred tradition developed over centuries.”

  Dan stopped pacing and faced me. “On this island, these women…We don’t know what their intention was.”

  “I think their intention was murder,” I said.

  “You may be right,” Dan said. “If we want to prove we’re innocent, we’ve got to find out why.”

  AANOTHER HOUR passed before Phoebe finally gave up on Vassilos. It was nine o’clock at night and the three of us were starving. She talked him into allowing her to pick us up some gyros, then ate with us together in our pathetic little cell.

  We puzzled over why the women would have murdered Basri. Dan wasn’t aware that Basri had any enemies, and said his shady business dealings were a thing of the distant past. If the killing was purely religious, as Phoebe seemed to believe, I wondered how they had decided on this particular guy.<
br />
  “It may have been a matter of fate,” Dan said. “Wrong place at the wrong time. He did meet the women in a bar, after all—”

  Keys rattled, and Vassilos opened the door.

  He pointed to me and then to Phoebe. “You two will please come with me.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “The monastery,” he said.

  We all exchanged a glance. “Why?” Phoebe asked.

  “The morgue called,” he said. “Someone has stolen the head.”

  17

  WE RODE up to the monastery in the backseat of Vassilos’s squad car. The car was a dilapidated clunker and a thorough mess inside, yet remarkably nimble on the winding mountain road. I took the car as a metaphor for Vassilos himself. He was an overweight slob with a drinking problem, but he had an alert mind and a certain charm about him, a graceful, almost delicate manner. His voice was delicate, too; coarsened from years of smoking, I assumed, but now refined to a gravelly whisper. I had to keep leaning forward to hear him.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “I am asking the lady if she mind the cigarette.” It dangled unlit from his lips.

  “No,” Phoebe said. “I don’t mind.”

  “Very kind,” he said, flaring up his lighter. “I will lower the window.”

  The charm was focused solely on Phoebe; me he seemed to resent. Perhaps he thought it was impolite to have ravaged one of the nuns. He had once again clapped me in the steel handcuffs, though this time he had mercifully buckled them in front, which made it more comfortable to sit.

  “If the circumstances were different,” Phoebe said, “I imagine I would have liked this island.” She was sitting beside me, gazing out her window at the shoreline far below. Cool night air breezed through the car and lightly ruffled her hair.

  I wondered why Vassilos had brought her along. Obviously, he couldn’t leave her alone at the jail with Dan, and I suppose he hoped to keep her out of trouble. But I couldn’t help thinking there might be another reason; that any man—sheriff or not—who happened to cross paths with Phoebe was bound to develop something of a crush on her.

  The road leveled off into a gently rolling stretch of vineyards. I remembered this was where the fieldworkers had gotten off the bus. “Do the islanders make their own wine?” I asked.

  Vassilos turned and briefly glanced at me, as if he resented being asked to play the tour guide. When he answered, he spoke to the windshield. “The vineyards are owned by the monastery,” he said. “The monachai make the wine.”

  I turned in confusion to Phoebe.

  “The women monks,” she said. “In the Eastern Orthodox Church, there’s no real difference between a monastery for men and a monastery for women. But in English we still call the women monks nuns.”

  “So, these nun-monks—they make wine?”

  “Apparently.” She leaned to catch Vassilos in the rearview mirror. “How long has the monastery been here?” she asked.

  “Was built in eleventh century,” he said.

  Phoebe waited in vain for him to elaborate. “Can you tell us any more about it? Why is it called Panaghia? It means ‘the Virgin,’ doesn’t it? How did it come to be built here?”

  He shrugged halfheartedly. “I can tell you, but… is only a story.”

  “I’d like to hear the story,” she said. “It’s what I do for a living—put together stories from the past.”

  “You are historian?” he said.

  “Archeologist,” she said.

  “Then you know these stories—they are only myths.”

  “Often there is truth to a myth.”

  He scratched his scalp. “Yes,” he said. “Sometimes…is true.”

  “Then you’ll tell us?” She was smiling coyly into the rearview mirror, and I realized she was flirting with him again to try to get him to talk.

  Vassilos was driving effortlessly, with only his thumb on the bottom of the wheel, as if he had ridden this route all his life. He glanced several times at Phoebe in the mirror. Finally, he began telling us the story of the monastery.

  “Eleventh century—a thousand years ago, yes? The Eumolpidae, a very old and respected family, lived on this mountain. They have a daughter with a beautiful voice, and she is singing, always singing in praise of God. One day, she find an ikon buried up on the mountain. It is a statue of the Virgin Mother, the Panaghia, and the people of Ogygia, they believe it is a miracle. They go to the emperor, ask him to build a monastery and church at this place, the very place where the ikon was found.” He turned and glanced at us. “That is how the Monastery of the Panaghia came to be.”

  “What happened to the girl?” Phoebe asked. “The daughter of the Eumolpidae.”

  “She join the monastery. And when she is older, she become the abbess. She was known as Mother Melitta.”

  I said behind my hand to Phoebe, “The original singing nun.”

  Vassilos overheard me and snapped, “The monachai are famous for their singing. They perform all over Europe.”

  Phoebe said, “Some of these monasteries are repositories of Byzantine music. They’ve managed to keep it alive for centuries. The chants are descended from the choral music of the ancient Greeks. Isn’t that right, Mr. Vassilos?”

  His gaze shifted again to the mirror. “So I am told, Miss. The sisters’ singing is very beautiful.”

  “Yeah, very beautiful,” I said. “On the yacht they sang a lovely little chant—just before they killed our friend.”

  Vassilos glared at me in the rearview mirror. The tires began crunching gravel on the shoulder, and he swerved back onto the road.

  Phoebe shot me an angry look, then tried to calm him down. “It makes sense—your story about the girl from the aristocratic family. In Byzantine society, if a proper, educated woman had musical talent, the only place she’d be allowed to express it was in sacred music, in the nunneries and monasteries. They could be a kind of cultural retreat for women who didn’t marry.”

  I looked at Phoebe like she’d gone insane. Cultural retreat! The monastery we were heading into was a brothel full of witches.

  I’d begun to worry that the nuns knew we were coming. Certainly, they would have expected that I’d return with Vassilos. If so, they would have hidden away the remains of Basri’s body. What would I do if we couldn’t find anything? I might have no choice but to try to escape. Vassilos, I had noticed, carried a holstered gun. And he kept the keys to the squad car and the handcuffs clipped to a loop of his belt.

  The road turned inland and climbed higher into the pines. Vassilos focused on the tightly curving route, winding through a tunnel of trees lit by the beam of his headlights. When we finally came over the saddleback ridge into the steep ravine, the view opened up, and we could once again see the far-off Aegean glistening in the moonlight, and harbor lights twinkling on the shore down below.

  Up ahead on the gloomy tower of rock, the monastery came into view. The crumbling walls looked like ruins in the moonlight, and the structures and towers within it seemed dead. Only the central dome of the church looked to be fully intact; it gleamed like the skin of an onion.

  I asked Vassilos what had happened to the place. “It looks like it’s been through a war,” I said.

  “It’s been through many wars,” he said. “Worst of all was the katastrofi.“

  “You mean the Greek revolution?” Phoebe asked.

  “The Ottoman Empire ruled us for centuries. When the War of Liberation came, they decide to make our island an example. Their soldiers came into our streets and houses, slaughtered our men, women, children. Thousands they took as slaves. Many fled to the mountain, to take refuge in the monastery. The soldiers followed them. They dynamite the walls, set fire to the church, destroy the library, burn the convent, rape the nuns.”

  He glanced at me as he said this last bit. No wonder he hates me, I thought. I remembered the shelves full of skulls in the church tower. Testament to a massacre.

  “Why?” Phoebe a
sked.

  “The soldiers are looking to destroy the famous ikon, the statue of the Virgin. But the monachai hid it on the mountain. Most of them were killed, and no one has ever found the ikon since.”

  Phoebe and I glanced at each other.

  “Do you think it’s true?” Phoebe asked him. “Or just another myth?”

  “You said yourself, Miss. Sometimes there is truth in the myth.”

  Vassilos drove the car to the entrance and parked near the monastery gate. The place looked dark and deserted. He and Phoebe got out of the car, and Phoebe came around to open my door and help me out. We followed after Vassilos as he headed up to the gate. The stone wall loomed ominously above us, blocking the light from the moon. The only sound was our footsteps on the gravel; the night was utterly silent.

  Vassilos clanged the bell at the gate. The noise seemed to shatter the air. We waited. No one appeared. Again, Vassilos rang the bell. Still no one came. Phoebe and I pressed closer to the gate, peering into the darkness. The narrow plaza was empty.

  Vassilos undipped the key ring from his belt, shuffled through the keys, and plugged a long-stemmed skeleton into the lock. As he turned it, the gate creaked open.

  We stepped into the shadowy courtyard. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Vas silos called out a greeting in Greek—“Akousate!” It hung in the air like the sound of the bell, answered by a deafening silence. The few windows facing the courtyard were lightless, and the corridors between the buildings were dark. There was something unsettling about the silence of the place, and I noticed Phoebe unconsciously moving closer to my side. She put her hand lightly on my arm.

  “There’s no one here,” she whispered.

  “Then why do I feel like we’re being watched?”

  Vassilos quietly moved ahead. We followed him into a dark corridor, and as I stepped across a puddle, I realized it was the same route I had walked through earlier in the day—the passage between the dormitory building and the one-floor lavatory. The moon was reflected in the puddle, and when I looked up to find it in the sky, I noticed something else: the roof of the lavatory was made of thatch.