The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes

by Sterling E. Lanier

  "Still, the light grew and the wind dropped and we somehow held on, aided by the fact that the crate was lower in the water and we could rest our chests on it a bit, if we were careful. If we weren't, it would fling you off.

  "Suddenly, the clouds all vanished at once and there was the sparkling blue sea, only a bit choppy now; the bright blaze of the morning sun and about a half-mile off, an island.

  "It must, I still feel, be one of the odd bits that lie in the triangle between Naxos, Ios and Amorgos. I am not really sure to this day and I confess I have no intention of going back to find out. It was small and rocky, we could see that, you know, even low in the water as we were, perhaps a mile long, not more. There was a little cluster of white houses near the water's edge where a harbor opened and a larger building set up on a cliff, some distance above. It looked like heaven, I can tell you.

  "We began to kick and push our clumsy raft as hard as we were able. Neither of us dared swim for it—too tired for that—but we hoped to get ashore by floating. The current seemed to help and we had actually gotten near the harbor entrance, before a sign of life appeared.

  "A small boat, rowed by two men, put out from the shore and we were hauled out of the sea and carted to the beach. When the boat grounded, we tried to stand, but neither of us had the strength and the boatmen, not roughly, but not gently either, picked us up and dumped us on the sand. As we lay, still panting, we got a most unpleasant shock.

  "A sneering voice said in excellent English, 'An obvious Englishman, probably a deserter, looks like a ragamuffin, and a piece of Greek offal who could be anything, so long as it were sufficiently unsavory. Not much of a catch.'

  "I looked up and saw that we were lying at the feet of an immaculately uniformed German officer, wearing the black collar tabs of the Waffen SS and the insignia of a Sturmbannfuhrer, which was equivalent to our major. A thoroughly nasty-looking piece of work he was, thin, blue-eyed, blond, narrow-headed to boot—could have passed for Heydrich's own brother. His only concession to actual war was that he wore a helmet rather than the uniform cap. He now holstered a huge Browning pistol, since we were obviously helpless, and ordered the two men to pick us up and bring us along. He spoke as good modern Greek as he did English, stilted by our standards, but good.

  "One of the men answered, in a curious, slurred, sing-song dialect, that the Kyrios (lord) would be obeyed, and each one put a shoulder under one of ours and one of our arms around his neck. Half supported, half dragged, we were taken in a direction away from the cluster of houses and up a narrow and rocky path to the larger building I had seen earlier. It was quite a steep climb and although the Nazi marched arrogantly along in front, never even turning around, our two supporters were soon panting. But they never said a word and gave us all the help they could.

  "They were shortish, sturdy chaps, both quite young I should say, dark and heavy of feature. Their black eyes were not the usual animated Greek orbs however, but utterly blank, as if nothing at all interested them or ever would. Not dead precisely, but dumb, as in a dumb beast, such as a cow or better still, an ox.

  "Eventually we reached the top of the path and the building lay before us. There was a rather surprising garden, mostly tamarick sorts of shrubs and low trees, but laid out well and there were some very fine-looking marble statues here and there. Even in my depressed state I noticed one of an ancient Greek warrior in Hoplite armor, which if genuine ought to be priceless. The man had an arm raised to ward off some danger, and the horror and rage on the face were remarkably done, the work of some master equal to Phidias or Scopas at their best.

  "The building was very large, not anywhere over two stories and most of it one, but long and sprawling. The base tier of stones was of huge marble blocks and I saw at once that a great temple had surely stood here once upon a time. Some of the later work was good, some was not and various rough and smooth courses of stone had been added at various times. Everything not already of white marble had been whitened by stucco so that the surface effect was not inharmonious.

  "And yet—the major impression was quite unpleasant. It was as if some vast, inchoate creature had built or accumulated a strange nest, or as if a cosmic whirlpool had gathered house materials and never let any one of them go. There was rather the same feeling I once got on contemplating an underwater cave in the South Pacific, where a large octopus had lived for a long time. There were all sorts of empty shells and fishbones around the cave's entrance and I had the feeling that something inside was patiently waiting. It was like that.

  "Here, though, there was an added touch, and this was simply age. The great, rambling structure, patched and repaired, seemed immeasurably old, more like a piece of the island than something built upon it. The over-all feelings induced, even in the glaring Aegean sunlight, were not particularly happy.

  "I was brought sharply out of this semi-conscious reverie by the Nazi, who had just ordered us dropped on to some turf in front of him. He was now sitting on a moss-covered marble bench and had taken his helmet off. Connie and I managed to sit up, but that was about all we were good for. The two Greek boatmen stood behind us in silence.

  "The German stared at us for a moment and then surprised me. He extended a pack of cigarettes that he produced from his uniform, and when we had each taken one, lit them for us. He also had some water brought in earthenware cups from a fountain nearby. He was no fool.

  " 'Neither a Greek peasant nor the average Tommy as a rule wears gold seal rings, Gentlemen,' he said, when we were all smoking. 'I am Obersturmbannfuhrer Freiherr Klaus von dem Bruch-Wiletzki of the Waffen SS. I may as well tell you that at the moment I am the only German on the island. My plane, which was part of the invasion force of Crete, crashed and I am the sole survivor.'

  "I have always suspected personally he had the only parachute or something, but who can say?

  " 'Now, Gentlemen,' he went on, 'as you may or may not be aware, Crete has almost certainly fallen by now. The Axis forces will be all through these islands in a very short time. I suggest you cooperate fully with me, give me your names and ranks for a start, and we will try to live in a civilized manner until the time when you will have to be sent to a prison camp. What do you say?'

  "Here was pretty solid truth, at least in most of what he said. These islands could not be held without air cover and the Germans did indeed end up roping them in before the end. I looked at Connie and he looked at me and shrugged. A German baron who was enough of a Nazi to be a field grade SS officer must be an unpleasant customer, but he was telling the truth and what could we do about it?

  "Well, we gave him our names and ranks. He said, rather surprisingly for someone of that type, that since we were obviously not yet clearly behind German lines, the matter of uniforms would not be brought up and they would be considered lost at sea. He may actually have grown tired of associating with the scum he normally commanded; I don't know.

  " 'This is a strange island, Captain Ffellowes,' he said to me at length. 'I have been here now two days and am living in the big house here as a guest. The family who owns it runs the whole place, almost, one could say, owns it all—the people and every other thing. But so far as I can see, no other island people, not even local fisher folk, come here. And, look, we are high up. Can you see another island?'

  "It was true. We were at one of the highest points on the island and yet, looking about, nothing but empty sea could be discerned.

  " 'By my last accurate calculations and those of my dead pilot,' von dem Bruch-Wiletzki went on, 'there should be many such islands nearby. Also, we crashed on a clear day. Suddenly came a mist out of nowhere and, since we were flying quite low, when the engine suddenly failed, pfui, all was gone. Peculiar, nicht wahr?"

  "Well, it was peculiar, but that was all one could say. An interruption of a quite different kind brought all three of us to our feet just then.

  "Apparently out of nowhere, but actually from the strange building behind us, a girl seemed to have materialized.
r />   "She was blond and very pale, an incredibly rare thing for a Greek and quite beautiful in an indefinable and also non-Greek way. Her face was both round and rather flattened, so that except for her blue eyes, which were also very round, she looked something like a blonde Chinese. She wore a simple, white, flowing garment, rather archaic in cut, and, sandals. I judged that she was about eighteen.

  "She seemed amazed and yet very pleased at the sight of us. She clasped her hands together in delight and almost skipped with pleasure, the round eyes showing whites all the way around the irises.

  " 'Two more and one fair-skinned,' she cooed.

  "I shouldn't have thought we looked that delightful—unshaven, coated with rime and dressed in water-soaked rags—but she did. Her voice was low and pleasant but her Greek was simply amazing. It was nothing less than Attic, the ancient language of the Classical period. It was highly inflected and singsong, which Demotic is not, but it was not at all the Classic Greek that I had learned in school. It contained a number of modern or at least reasonably modern words, but its inflections made it hard, though not impossible for me to understand, and it was not the dead and arid thing one gets in school texts. Connie, who was a real scholar, perked up his head and bowed grandly.

  "She looked at him with interest, but one could see there was a difference. The Nazi and I were blonds and this was obviously more important to her.

  " 'You are not the same as our folk,' she said to him, pointing to the two silent men who still stood behind us, just as horses might, fidgeting but patient. 'But you are more like them than these two. Perhaps once you were as they, or once they were as you. Who shall say?' She laughed, a pretty sound, but not exactly heartwarming after her strange little speech.

  " 'But come, you two, I must take you in to see the ______'

  She used a word I had never heard but which Connie later told me was a very ancient one, which meant something between 'relatives' and 'persons in authority.'

  "Von dem Bruch-Wiletzki interrupted at this point. 'I shall accompany them, Fraulein,' he said ponderously. 'Pray precede us.'

  "She looked at him for a moment and then shook her head. He was speaking Demotic and apparently she could understand it just as he and I could understand Attic, but not speak it.

  " 'They have seen you,' she said pleasantly. 'You will remain until I return.'

  " 'I must insist,' he said harshly and one hand moved to his pistol holster. Then a strange thing took place. He stopped moving. That was all. Hand still resting on the holster flap, head thrown back, staring at nothing now, for the girl had moved slightly, the German simply froze, his mouth slightly open.

  "Connie and I gaped at the girl who still smiled pleasantly at us.

  " 'Come,' she said. 'He is very impatient, your friend. He can wait here until we are through inside. He must learn patience. We do not like impatient people here.' She shook a finger at us in mock reproof, half play, half admonition.

  "We followed her up a broad but shallow flight of steps and entered a large open door. Just before going in, I looked back and there was the Nazi, hand on hip, staring at nothing. It was eerie.

  "Inside it was cool and ought to have been refreshing, but it was not. Rather like the overdone air-conditioning one gets in so many shops over here, actually; all dank and chill. The room was large and dark as indeed were all the rooms in this strange house, and any details were hard to make out. There seemed to be no windows and yet a dim, diffused light came in from some place or other.

  "However, our guide beckoned us to another door and we dutifully, and wearily, I may add, followed her through a succession of similar rooms. There seemed to be no halls, just large rooms, all tacked on to each other in the strangest way.

  "Eventually, after passing through at least a dozen of these rooms, we came to an extra large one which seemed to have even worse light than usual. Across the far half of it there was a sort of vast hanging, of something thin and translucent, like fine linen. But it was ragged and not clean and looked more like a sort of grey dusty spider web grown much too large.

  "There were two stools and a low round table set in front of the curtain. On the table were a jug of wine and some cups as well as a plate of some small cakes. The girl motioned to us to sit and then poured for us. When we had tasted the wine, very heavy sweet stuff, but refreshing, she nodded and simply left us sitting there. We were hungry and pitched into the cakes and the huge room was silent except for us crunching and sipping for some minutes.

  "Then suddenly, we were aware that we were not alone. I stopped in the middle of a bite and looked up, and so did Connie. He told me later that he got the feeling, just as suddenly as I, of being observed.

  "Behind the great dirty hanging, someone was moving in the gloom. Although only a vague shape or impression came through the dim, dark air and the filthy drape, I got the impression of a person of considerable bulk. A sudden dull crash indicated that something quite heavy had been knocked over and a clumsy scraping sound followed. Then there was a heavy sigh and a series of muffled sounds which seemed to indicate that someone was settling down.

  "Then came the voice. It was slow, heavy and grating, most unpleasant to listen to, I do assure you. And there was a suggestion of size and loudness, deliberately muffled about it, too. But it was also bleak and despairing. There was something hopeless and lost about it that would have aroused one's sympathy if the over-all effect had not been so thoroughly ghastly. I can still hear it as I sit here.

  "It spoke the same strange archaic Greek as the girl did and like hers it was perfectly intelligible, if one concentrated.

  " 'Why have you come here? We seek no visitors, except once in a long, long while. The urge comes seldom. Keto, she who brought you here, was the last of the daughters for long, for many, many great tides. I say again, Strangers, what do you want?'

  "Well, d'you know, I could make nothing of this speech. It sounded like raving of some kind. I gathered only two things, one being that the girl's name was Keto, a pretty name I thought, and that the person addressing us was female. Somehow, under all the grating and rumbling, the tone was that of a woman, an extremely old woman at that. Apparently some half-demented matriarch, some Miss Faversham of the Cyclades was now interviewing us.

  "Tired, dirty and now cold as well, because this last room was like an ice chest, I had no idea what to say. Connie though was sitting bolt upright, staring fixedly at the dirty hanging and the shadows moving, or seeming to move, behind it. He spoke in answer and his classical Greek was really superb, although he didn't use the strange inflections these people did.

  " 'I am sorry we may not see you, Lady,' he began. 'It is very dark in here and our eyes are used to the light. As for coming here, the sea brought us and we are thus in the lap of the Gods, castaways who ask protection.'

  "There was a long silence, so long I thought the old creature must have gone to sleep. But the rasping, croaking voice boomed out from behind the curtain at last.

  " 'Are you Greeks, Acheans or other kinds?' it said.

  " 'I am of Greek blood,' said Connie calmly. 'My companion is from the West and the other man is a barbarian of the far North.'

  "Again there was a long silence. Then the unpleasant voice did something even more unpleasant; it laughed. The noise sounded to me like a barrel of old nails and broken glass dropping on wet cement. Then again, more speech:

  " 'The other one is cold, cold as the House of the Eye. He plots and schemes and listens and pries. He cannot find me and the other sister and this makes him angry. And now a Greek has come and with him yet another from far away.'

  "The voice died away for a moment and I caught only the word 'dream.' Then it strengthened.

  " 'Greek, you wish to see me. Well, perhaps you will later, although I do not love the light. Now go and let me be in peace.' Again there came that decidedly nasty laughing noise. This was followed by a loud clatter and the sound of slow-heavy steps going away from us. We could hear them quite a long way
off until they finally seemed to cease, lost in some far recess of this strange house.

  "The light was good enough for me to see Connie clearly, although it was anything but bright. He was sitting, eyes shut, with his hands clenched on his knees and his face was very pale and drawn. He seemed to open his eyes with an effort and looked at me and tried to smile, but it wasn't easy for him.

  " 'Donald,' he said in a low voice, leaning over to tap my knee, 'we must get off this island at once. We are in terrible danger here, far worse than anything you possibly can imagine.'

  " 'I thought the old lady sounded a bit bonkers, I agree,' I replied. 'But do you feel she's a real menace? Let's not get the wind up.'

  "I know this bit sounds very stuffy and British of me, but I was trying to put some starch back in Connie. He was badly shaken and I didn't like it. It didn't work, though.

  " 'A bit bonkers—old lady,' he repeated in despairing tones. 'Damn you, Donald, you English idiot, did you see what the girl did to that German in the garden? The way he was made to stay put there? Well, did you?'