Chapter 7
It seemed too good to be true, but an hour later they were all back on board the Helena, with the greater part of their possessions safely restored. ‘That’s a most remarkable young man,’ said Brett.
‘Isn’t he?’ Phyllida’s cheeks glowed as if the praise had been for her.
‘I’m more in debt to you than ever,’ he went on. ‘I begin to think it was the luckiest day of my life when you rowed out to the Helena.’
She laughed. ‘Just don’t try to pretend you were glad to see us at the time.’ And then, seeing his face change. ‘I’m sorry. That was a bad night for you, was it not?’
‘One day, perhaps, I’ll tell you just how bad. But now, if you will excuse me, I must find Barlow. It’s time to think about sailing. Thank God.’
‘But not before we thank—’ She hesitated. It was disconcerting not to know their rescuer’s surname.
‘Yes, indeed we must thank him. But in fact he promised to come aboard for a demonstration of our engine.’
‘Oh, I’m glad.’ Disconcerting to recognise just how glad she was.
But the demonstration was not a success. Mr. Brown, sweating and cursing, was beginning to discover just how much damage the pirates had done to his beloved engines. ‘As much wear and tear as on the whole voyage out.’ He summed it up gloomily. ‘It’s going to take me every spare part I’ve got to fix it. I think I can, but once anything else gives way, we’re done. Oh no,’ he answered Brett’s question. ‘Nothing wilful about it, I shouldn’t think. They just couldn’t resist playing with it.’
‘Of course not,’ Alex said. ‘My countrymen are like that, I’m afraid. No malice, and not much sense. How long do you think before you can get her going?’
‘Tomorrow sometime.’ Brown was wiping his hands on a bit of cotton waste. ‘We should make Nauplia by night.’
‘If it’s safe to go there,’ said Brett.
‘Safe?’ asked the young Greek. ‘Oh, you mean the Turks? No need to trouble yourself about them. I was in Nauplia yesterday. All’s quiet, or at least as quiet as we Greeks know how to be. But just the same I think I shall give myself the pleasure of waiting and escorting you to Nauplia. My friend in the Hera is an obstinate man.’
‘But if you were in Nauplia yesterday,’ Phyllida pounced on it, ‘you’d know if there was news of Peter.’
‘I’m afraid I probably would.’ He was too honest, she thought, to spare her. ‘But we will set further enquiries on foot. The refugees I talked to yesterday were in no state to think of much beyond their own troubles. But tomorrow while the engine is repairing, will you let me be your guide round Spetsai, kyria? There are none of the Greek antiquities you Franks set such store by, but some chapels, I believe, that are worth the visit.’
* * *
When they reached the quay next morning, the Hera was ready to sail. They paused to watch her go. ‘I’d as soon not leave your Helena till she’s well away,’ Alex told Brett. ‘I wouldn’t want to put temptation in my friend’s way. Even without her engines, yours is a splendid ship, milord.’
‘Yes, but she’s intolerably slow under sail alone. It was one of my major disappointments in her design.’
‘That wretched little square sail on the funnel? I was thinking about that. It seems to me that with a little of our Greek ingenuity, we could rig you something much better. You’ll let me experiment, when we have tired Miss Vannick out with chapels?’
‘If Captain Barlow agrees.’ Barlow and Miss Knight had both stayed on board, Barlow to help Brown and Miss Knight for a badly needed rest.
Phyllida, finding one faded Byzantine fresco very like another, was almost tempted to envy her aunt as the sun grew hotter and the odours of peasant living stronger. She was tired of picking her way through filthy alleys, tired even of listening to Alex and Brett talk about the course of the war. Her head was beginning to ache.
‘You’re tired.’ Brett took her arm to guide her round a particularly unsavoury pile of rubbish. ‘We’ve brought you too far. It was monstrous of me to forget all you’ve been through.’
‘Not at all.’ She was beginning the polite, necessary lie, when Alex, who had gone on a little ahead, came back to meet them.
‘I’ve a surprise for you.’ She wished he would go on calling her ‘sister of my friend’, but this time he made do with a warm, admiring smile. ‘I hope you’ll agree that I’ve not brought you all this way for nothing. You’ll let me—’ Somehow he had removed her from Brett’s supporting arm and was guiding her forward to a hilly corner beyond the houses. ‘There!’ He smiled with pleasure at her exclamation of surprised delight. ‘You see, your brother taught me how you Franks like a—what do you call it?—a prospect?’
He had brought them out on to a small, cleared plateau. In front, the ground dropped away sharply to the wine-dark sea. Ahead, clear in that extraordinary pellucid light, lay the mainland, Greece itself, the fabled shore she had longed to see. Those purple mountains, ranging away to the south, might once have harboured Zeus himself. She smiled at her own nonsense, and turned back to Alex, who was speaking again.
‘I have another surprise for you, kyria, one that I hope will please you too.’ He led the way across the open space to where a group of Greek sailors were busy under the shade of a huge mulberry tree. ‘We are to have a picnic here.’ And then, with a flash of white teeth,. ‘I little knew how grateful I should be to Petros for teaching me his language—and yours.’
Resting in the grateful shade of the mulberry tree, Phyllida was glad to drink the light white wine that Alex’s men had brought, to eat highly seasoned cold lamb in her fingers and listen to the two men talk. They seemed to have established, from the first, a surprisingly easy understanding. It pleased her enormously, and puzzled her at the same time, but as she listened and gazed out at the splendid sweep of sea and shore she thought she began to understand. In his own way, each was that extraordinary phenomenon to an American, an aristocrat. She had never heard of the Mavromikhalis, but listening to Alex talk of his home down south in the Mani she felt something of the power his family must wield there. And Brett? He, too, behaved with the calm confidence of one who had always been exempt from the minor problems of every day. Just the same, as Alex began to question him about life in England she saw a shadow cross his face and remembered what he had said to her. ‘One day I’ll tell you perhaps how bad.’ She was sure, now, that there was more wrong in his life than Helena’s rejection.
‘You have great estates in England?’ Alex was asking.
Brett’s face closed. ‘No. None at all. The Helena is my estate.’
‘Then I’m glad you didn’t lose her.’ Alex rose gracefully to his feet: ‘The sun is getting round to us. Time to go, perhaps? Your man struck me as someone who would always be better than his word. Who knows? He may have the engines working already. I can hardly tell you how I long to see the Helena with steam up. Is that the phrase kyria?’
‘Absolutely. You’re simply amazing, Mr.—’ She stopped, blushing.
‘Please call me Alex. Everyone does.’
‘Thank you.’ Doubtfully. Call him ‘Alex’ and go on calling Brett ‘Mr. Renshaw?’
‘If you do that, Miss Vannick,’ Brett himself came to the rescue. ‘I shall be sadly affronted if you don’t start calling me “Brett”. After all, compared with Alex here, I am an old, old friend.’
‘You are indeed—Brett.’
She had forgotten to expect Aunt Cassandra’s look of outrage when she heard this use of christian names. ‘But what else could I do, Aunt, when Alex doesn’t seem to use his other one?’
‘That young Greek!’ Cassandra’s tone was surprisingly sharp. ‘Frankly, I’ll be delighted to see the last of him. I wouldn’t trust that one an inch, and don’t you, Phyllida. I blame myself for letting you go ashore alone this morning. If I’d known Captain Barlow wasn’t going too, I’d never have stayed behind.’
‘Oh, Aunt.’ Phyllida felt an odd little qualm of sh
ame. She had known, and had taken very good care that her aunt did not find out.
‘Picnics and wine-drinking,’ went on Cassandra. ‘I tell you, Phyllida, I’ll be glad when we see the last of him.’
‘But he’s Peter’s friend.’
‘And since when has that been a recommendation? Peter’s a dear boy, but you know as well as I do that his choice of friends—Think of the rag-tag and bobtail he used to go bowling with at Harvard.’
‘But that was quite different. He was a boy at Harvard. Now he’s grown up; every thing’s changed. Alex’—she coloured but ploughed firmly on—‘Alex is a man. He’s fighting for his country. He takes life seriously. Look how he had Peter teach him English.’
‘And very useful it will be to him, too, in this war of theirs. Suppose Lord Byron had lived, Peter and this “Alex” might be his right-hand men by now, with a strong chance of getting into the first real Greek government. I’d very much like to know what hopes of that beautiful young Greek’s were snuffed out with Byron at Missolonghi.’
‘Aunt, you’re being horribly unfair.’
‘Am I?’ Something in Phyllida’s tone had sounded a warning bell in her aunt’s receptive ear. ‘I’m sorry, child. I expect I am. Forgive me, I’m a little tired still, and crotchety to go with it. It’s an old maid’s privilege…’
Phyllida was glad to finish combing out her rebellious curls and return to the cheerful party on deck. She left her aunt with a good deal to think about. But, Miss Knight reassured herself, they would be parting from this too handsome young Greek at Nauplia. He was in the engine room now, watching Brown put the finishing touches to his repairs. No need to hurry after Phyllida who had joined Brett up on deck. She sighed, rebuked herself for a shameless match-maker, and wished that Alexandros (wild horses would not have made her even think of him as Alex) had never rescued them.
* * *
They steamed into Nauplia just as dusk was falling, and Phyllida standing eagerly at the forward rail, was delighted to have Alex and Brett, one on each side of her, to tell her about the temporary Greek capital.
‘That’s the Palamede,’ Brett pointed up to the citadel, high above the town. ‘It’s as good as impregnable, they say.’
‘Yes,’ said Alex, ‘but not, I’m afraid, a classical marvel for Phyllida.’ It was the first time he had used her name, and she felt his quick glance ask her approval.
‘Oh, is it modern then?’ She smiled up at him.
‘Comparatively. Like so many of our fortresses, it was built by the Venetians. You will see their arms over the great gate when I take you there.’
‘But we must not trouble you with our sightseeing.’ Brett was beginning to share Aunt Cassandra’s feelings about the young Greek.
‘No, please,’ chimed in Phyllida. ‘You are going to find out everything you can about Peter for me, are you not?’
‘Of course I am. My own pleasure must come a long way second to that. Besides, what greater pleasure than to serve you.’
‘Oh, thank you…’ She had never much liked the compliment direct. ‘What’s that island?’ She pointed.
‘That’s another stronghold. We call it the Burj. I’m glad Nauplia is to be your first Greek town, kyria, It’s one of the few that have not been fought over. It’s been in our hands ever since the first rising.’
‘And the massacre of the Turks that went with it,’ said Brett.
Phyllida felt Alexandros stiffen, as he leaned on the rail at her side, but he spoke calmly enough: ‘It’s easy for the free to indulge in the humane virtues. Slaves must use what weapons they can. You must understand that,’ he turned to Phyllida. ‘You who have been in the hands of the Turk.’
‘Yes.’ She shuddered, remembering the massacre of the Janissaries, and her shoes caked with dried blood.
‘Nonsense!’ Aunt Cassandra intervened. ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right, young man. Never have and never will. I agree with Mr. Renshaw. You Greeks have done your cause untold damage by the innocent blood you have shed.’
‘Innocent!’ His eyes flashed. ‘After four hundred years of tyranny, no Turk is innocent to us. Wait, Miss Knight, until you know what has happened to your nephew before you speak of “innocent Turks”. And now, milord, ladies, I must leave you. Don’t try to go ashore until I have spoken to my uncle about you. I am sure he will understand that since you have already been to Spetsai there is no need for you to suffer quarantine.’
‘Your uncle?’ asked Brett.
‘The head of my family. Petro Bey, the Turks call him. He has some influence here in Nauplia. He will be glad to exert it in the interest of beauty in distress. Sister of my friend, I kiss your hand.’ He did so, with emphasis, sending a curious little shiver through Phyllida and one of surprising irritation through Brett.
‘And who is this Petro Bey?’ Cassandra asked, after Alex had gone agilely down hand over hand into the Helena’s boat and been rowed away towards the shore.
‘A very odd fish indeed,’ Brett told her. ‘The very name gives it to you. He co-operated with the Turks for all it was worth, so long as it was worth anything. Now he’s the better part of the Greek government, I believe. Such as it is!’
Phyllida turned from watching Alex leap lightly on shore. ‘I do wish you’d try to speak more kindly of the Greeks, Mr. Renshaw.’
‘I wish you’d try to call me Brett. If you can use that young pirate’s first name—’
‘How can you?’ she interrupted him angrily. ‘ “That young pirate”, as you call him, has just saved us all—and your precious ship, too.’
‘Yes, Miss Vannick, and have you thought at all about how he was able to do so? I admit I didn’t understand all of what he was saying to the Hera’s captain, but I got a strong impression that it wasn’t so much law and order he was preaching as might and right. If you’re a small Greek captain, you don’t lightly cross one of the Mavromikhalis.’
‘And so much the luckier for us.’
‘Oh yes, I agree with you there. I just wish I felt entirely happy about his motives.’
‘His motives?’ She flushed angrily. ‘Friendship for my brother, of course. Didn’t he tell us so?’
‘Yes, so he did.’
* * *
Alex returned with depressing news. There was typhus in Nauplia. For their own sakes, they would be well advised not to go ashore. ‘As for quarantine,’ he spread his hands in a gesture that reminded Brett of the pirate captain. ‘My uncle says that any friend of mine is free to do what he will… but the typhus is something else. And there is no coal in Nauplia. You will have to let me make you a larger sail, milord, and escort you to Zante so. There, you will certainly be able to get coal for your beautiful Helena.’
‘Escort us?’ Brett’s reaction was predictable. ‘What need have we of an escort?’
Alex smiled. ‘Do you really think my friend and the Hera so far away? He was not at all pleased to have his beautiful prize snatched from his grasp. He will be waiting, trust me, somewhere down the coast between here and Matapan. And, down there, too, there are other hazards. We have been pirates of necessity for so many centuries, we poor Greeks, we cannot mend our ways all in a moment.’
‘But Peter?’ Phyllida asked. ‘Have you any news of him?’
‘A crumb,’ he took her hand. ‘A morsel of hope to feed a hungry sparrow. Don’t make too much of it, Kyria Phyllida.’
‘But what is it?’ Cassandra moved between them so that he had to let go of Phyllida’s hand.
‘I have been out to the huts beyond the city wall where the refugees from Missolonghi are living.’ He turned on Brett, eyes aflash. ‘If you saw that misery, you would not talk of massacres. Think of them, desperate, starving, planning their escape. And betrayed…’
‘By one of themselves?’
‘No! By a Bulgarian, a wretch, a turncoat … They made their preparations, buried the type of the Missolonghi Chronicle, kissed each other the long goodbye … They broke out; the Turks were waiting, and de
ath.’
‘But my hope?’ Phyllida intervened again. ‘My crumb of comfort? What is it?’
‘A very little crumb. I would not be your friend if I should bid you hope much. But one of the men I spoke to—a skeleton of a man, dying as he stands—I recognised him, just, as a friend of my brother Petros. He told me that when the disaster struck, Petros was one of the band that cut their way out. He saw them, fighting gallantly, breasting the waves of the Turks. And that is all he saw.’
‘So we still don’t know?’ Cassandra summed it up.
‘No kyria, but we still have hope.’
* * *
It was hot in the landlocked bay of Nauplia. The Helena’s deck was a scene of furious activity as the crew worked, under Alex’s orders, to rig the new set of sails he had planned. Only in the evening could Phyllida and her aunt emerge from the saloon to enjoy the cooling air and watch the stir of life in the town across the bay. No one was allowed on shore. Brett had gone once, and had returned, very gloomy, to confirm Alex’s warning about typhus and condemn Nauplia as a stinking hole. ‘You’re not missing much in staying on board,’ he told Phyllida. ‘It looks better from here than close to. And smells better. And there’s no news that one can believe. And no mail from England. We shall have to wait until Zante for that.’
Here, Phyllida was sure, lay the reason for his gloom. Had he, perhaps, expected some word from Helena?
Even Alex was growing impatient with the dilatory behaviour of the Greek government. ‘It’s over a month since Missolonghi fell,’ he told Phyllida, ‘and what have they done? Put on mourning—and talked. And meanwhile the Turks have laid siege to Athens. It only remains for Ibrahim to attack Nauplia and we Greeks might as well jump into the sea, as the women of Suli did when they were defeated.’
‘You don’t mean that?’
He flashed his smile at her. ‘No, kyria, I don’t. If I were the last Greek alive, I would still die fighting the Turk. If only we had more money—’
‘Money—’ Brett had joined them on the foredeck. ‘What happened to the immense loan that was raised in England when the rebellion first broke out?’
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