Phyllida could not help laughing. ‘You two! To listen to you, anyone would think she was thirty, instead of seventeen, with the world all before her. Time enough, surely, to start worrying when she’s an old woman of twenty-seven like me. But, Brett, is it monstrously selfish of me to keep you here? Quite apart from Jenny, ought you not to be back in England, carving out a career for yourself?”
‘What career?’ he said bitterly. ‘I’m educated for nothing.’
‘Or anything,’ said Cassandra. ‘Had you thought of the diplomatic service at all?’
He looked at her with quick respect. ‘Almost my first thought, Aunt Cass, when I found I needed a career. But, don’t you see, that famous jilting cooked my goose, as my inelegant sister would say, for that too.’
‘Then you’ll have to do something about it, won’t you?’ said Cassandra placidly. ‘I always thought it a crazy quixotic gesture of yours.’
‘And what do you suggest I do?’ Bitterly. ‘Put an announcement in The Times newspaper?’
‘You could begin by explaining the true facts of the case to your uncle. With him on your side—’
‘And have him think I was coming cap in hand to be reinstated as his heir? I hope I have more pride than that.’
She sighed. ‘Sometimes I think pride’s a deadly virtue—’
‘I had an idea the other day,’ Phyllida interposed diffidently. ‘I don’t know whether there might be anything in it. Only—why don’t you write a book, Brett?’
‘Write a book!’
‘Yes. About Greece. Don’t you see? Not just a travel and antiquarian kind of book, like Mr. Gell’s, but a political one, about the people, and the war. You’d do it wonderfully well, I’m sure, and Peter will help you when we find him. Just think of the information he’ll be able to give you. And Alex too—’ Infuriating to colour so when she mentioned him.
‘If he ever reappears,’ said Brett. ‘But, do you know, it’s not a bad idea.’ He laughed. ‘I told Barlow once I was going to write Childe Renshaw’s Pilgrimage. Mr. Murray was a friend of my father’s.’
‘Byron’s publisher?’ Cassandra leaned forward in her chair.
‘Yes.’ The idea was growing on him. ‘I’ll write to him directly. Phyllida, you’re my good angel! I must talk to the Resident here. Everyone knows I’m no Philhellene. Why should I not visit the mainland? Missolonghi? Murray would be bound to want a chapter on Byron. I could hire an Ionian mystic, as he did, for the crossing. Besides, when the Helena is repaired, what better cover for fetching Peter than the fact that we are collecting material for my book?’
‘If only Alex would come,’ said Phyllida, then wished she had not.
* * *
Brett plunged into the plans for his book with enthusiasm. ‘I haven’t enjoyed myself so much since Oxford,’ he told Cassandra. ‘I had hopes, then, that I might become a scholar—a Fellow of my College, perhaps. I had plans for an edition of Homer. My father’s death, and my elder brother’s, changed all that. My uncle insisted that I leave the University at once—he would not even let me stay to take my degree. I must make the Grand Tour; must marry; must waste my time elegantly as befitted the heir to a title. I’ve wasted ten years, and now look at me. No title, no wife … Aunt Cass—’ He and his sister had fallen naturally into the habit of calling her this. ‘Do you think there’s any hope for me?’
‘I just don’t know, Brett.’ She understood him perfectly. ‘But—go slowly, won’t you?’ How often, in the months that followed, was she to wonder whether it had been good advice.
* * *
Christmas was over. The marble floors of the palazzo struck chill against bare feet in the morning, and rain, lashing against the windows, kept Brett close to his work. ‘It rained like this while poor Byron was dying,’ he told Phyllida. ‘A terrible, mismanaged business that, like everything else to do with the Greeks. The more I learn about this rebellion of theirs, the less I think it likely to succeed.’ He watched hot colour rise in her cheeks and cursed himself for a fool. Luckily, Jenny bounced into the room to interrupt them.
‘The packet’s in,’ she said. ‘D’you think they’ll have our gudgeons?’
Brett was on his feet. ‘I’ll send Marcos down at once. There should at least be mail. As to the gudgeons, we’ll be lucky if they’ve come so soon.’
He was right. An apologetic letter from Galloway of Greenwich promised gudgeons by spring at the latest. The rest of the mail was equally discouraging. It was too early for an answer from Murray, but there was a long, angry letter from Uncle Paul for whom Jenny’s defection had been a last straw. They had chosen to defy him, had made him a laughing stock; they need expect no help from him.
* * *
‘We thought you’d forgotten all about us,’ Jenny greeted Alex when he appeared at last one bright January morning.
‘Kyria, an impossibility!’ He turned to Phyllida, who had hung a little back among the general greetings. ‘You have every cause to abuse me, but I hope the news I bring will earn my pardon.’
‘You really have news?’
‘Better than that.’ He pulled out a leather wallet and carefully removed a stained and tattered piece of paper.
‘A letter from Peter!’ She took it with a trembling hand, read it quickly, and exclaimed: ‘He’s in Athens!’
‘Yes, kyria. That’s why it’s taken so long. You heard that the French commander, Fabvier, fought his way in through the Turkish besiegers of the Acropolis just before Christmas? I was able to send a message in by him, and this is your answer. I confess I had hoped that Petros might contrive to escape through the Turkish lines. It would have made me so happy, kyria, to have brought him to you. But I have no doubt he tells you, as he did me, that he cannot abandon his friends at this time of danger.’
‘Yes.’ She was reading the letter for the second time. ‘But, Alex, how dangerous is it? Can it be a real siege, if people get in and out?’
‘Real enough. It would not be right to let you be too hopeful. But the Acropolis is as good as impregnable. If only our Greek leaders would stop quarrelling among themselves and take the Turks in the rear there’d be an end of the siege in no time.’
‘And what are your leaders doing?’ asked Brett. ‘We’ve heard nothing but gloomy reports all winter, of rival governments fighting each other instead of the Turks.’
‘It’s been bad,’ Alex admitted. ‘President Zaimis is a good enough sort of man, but he has no control over the capitani. My cousin, Petro Bey, does his best, but what can one man do? Don’t look so downcast, kyria, it is but to wait until spring and everything will change.’
‘For the better?’ asked Brett.
‘Yes. Lord Cochrane is on his way at last. And our good friend Sir Richard Church. When they arrive, with ships and funds, and their good counsel, you will soon see the Greek government united and the Turks swept into the sea.’
‘I wonder,’ said Brett.
‘Mr. Renshaw is writing a book about Greece.’ As so often, Phyllida must play peacemaker between the two men. ‘We are relying on you for all the latest news, Alex.’
‘You shall have it, kyria.’ A slight but unmistakable accent on the first word. ‘And there is good as well as bad. Karaiskakis has won a noble victory at Arachova, and Kolokotronis is harrying the Turks in the Morea.’
‘You mean, when we see smoke hanging over the mainland, it is the Greeks who are lighting the fires?’ asked Jenny.
‘It’s still Greek houses and olive groves that are burning,’ said Brett. ‘And what about that little matter of piracy on Hydra? Did Captain Hamilton really have to fire on your Greek ships in order to make them surrender their booty?’
‘You are well informed, sir.’ Alex did not like the question. ‘But it was merely a misunderstanding.’
Phyllida laughed. ‘The kind of misunderstanding you saved us from, Alex?’
‘That was the happiest day of my life,’ he said.
‘I shall never forgive myself for having
missed it,’ chimed in Jenny. ‘Only to think of being captured by real pirates! But, Alex, you haven’t told us what you’ve been doing all winter.’
‘My duty, I hope. Taking stores where they were most needed; keeping our lines of communication open; watching out for the Turks. I have longed to visit you sooner, kyria, with the good news of Petros, but my conscience to my country would not let me.’
‘Of course not.’ Phyllida’s voice held warm approval.
‘And now?’ Brett asked.
‘Once again I am the fortunate bearer of dispatches to Sir Frederick Adam.’
‘But you can stay with us overnight, Alex? And take an answer to my brother?’
‘Kyria, I will dine with you gladly, but must sail with the evening breeze. As to your answer for Petros, I shall give myself the pleasure of calling for that on my way back. But you understand, of course, that it may be months before I am able to get it to him.’
Phyllida hurried away to stir up the cook into unwonted activity and then pause, irresolute, in her own room. It was almost a year, now, since her father’s death. Surely the good news of Peter would justify her in celebrating with the white silk dress that hung temptingly in her closet?
She had had it made on severely classical lines, relieved only by the heavy gold embroidery she had found in the bazaar. ‘Ravishing!’ She turned from the glass at Jenny’s voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ the girl went on. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you, but I can’t do up my back buttons.’
Phyllida laughed. ‘Better me than Price. Yes,’ she was busy with the tiny silk buttons that ran all the way down Jenny’s slim back. ‘I thought this was an occasion that justified light colours.’ There was the faintest hint of apology in her voice.
‘Of course it is,’ Jenny agreed warmly. ‘I’m in my best too. Will he call us twin graces, do you think, or the spirits of the isle? What a man! What an air—Thank you, love!—And what a voice. When he calls me kyria as if I was the only lady in the world, it sends shivers right down my back. And then he does just the same for you, and I stop shivering.’
Cassandra, pausing in the doorway, heard the end of this speech and was delighted. She had been meditating some kind of carefully careless warning of her own to Phyllida, but thought Jenny had done it for her, and done it just right. They all went downstairs together and found Alex and Brett waiting for them in the saloon. Brett’s evening dress was immaculate as usual, but no one had eyes for him. Alex had put on the white kilt, or fustanella, that was rapidly developing from the Albanian to the Greek national dress. They had seen it often enough, isabella-coloured with much use and no washing, but this one was of brand new, crisp white woollen and was worn with a dark velvet close-fitting jacket that made Alex every inch a figure from romance.
‘Lord, aren’t we all fine!’ said Jenny irrepressibly.
‘Fine!’ Alex was kissing first Phyllida’s hand and then hers: ‘A pair of goddesses, no less.’ And wondered why Jenny dissolved suddenly into delighted laughter.
It was a gay evening. Phyllida had felt a curious load lifted from her mind by Jenny’s light-hearted comments on Alex. For the first time, she admitted to herself that she loved him. Madness, of course, but delicious madness. For tonight, she would simply let herself be happy in his company. It made it, somehow, easy to be unusually kind to Brett. Over dinner, she steered the talk to his book and was delighted to have Alex prove both enthusiastic and helpful. ‘It’s just what we need,’ he said. ‘Our story told for us by an Englishman who is known not to be biased in our favour. Command me in everything, milord.’
‘Splendid.’ When the ladies left them alone together, Brett plied him with questions. But something had been puzzling him. ‘You haven’t suggested that we accompany you back to Aegina where the government is?’
‘Alas, no, since your Helena has still not got the use of her engines. You and the ladies must not risk yourselves near the Turks with only sail. Besides—I can hold out little hope that Athens will be relieved before spring. That will be time enough for you to sail round. By then, I hope, Cochrane and Church will have arrived; a very much happier scene will greet you.’
Chapter 12
Phyllida read and reread Peter’s short letter. ‘Of course he cannot escape from Athens,’ she told Brett. ‘For one of the few remaining Philhellenes to behave in so cowardly a fashion—It’s unthinkable.’
‘I was afraid any brother of yours must feel that. Let us hope that the Greeks don’t lose the Acropolis out of sheer incompetence, as they did Missolonghi. How Byron must have turned in his grave. Do you know, the more I find out about him, the better I like him—as an unlucky man, not at all the satanic figure I used to imitate.’
She was delighted with him. ‘What in the world happened to that skull-shaped goblet you had?’
‘I threw it overboard that night in Constantinople. Not out of good sense, I’m afraid, but bad temper.’
‘Like all those bottles of sal volatile right here in the harbour.’ Hard to believe that episode had only been a few months ago. ‘What a reformed character you are.’
‘You know who’s to thank for that—’
‘Aunt Cassandra, of course.’ She did not let him finish. ‘She could reform a saint, if he happened to need it. But, Brett—I need your advice.’ This was the best way she knew to get the conversation back to earth.
‘Of course!’
‘It’s about Peter. He wants Mr. Biddock to sell up his share of our father’s estate and devote the proceeds to the Greek cause.’
‘He doesn’t know he has no share?’
‘No. And I don’t mean to tell him. But I don’t know what to do for the best. It’s a great deal of money. Rightly used, it might make a real difference to the Greeks. But—how can I be sure that it will be rightly used?’
‘You can’t,’ he said at once. ‘Look what happened to the British loans at the beginning of this war. Squandered on silver-mounted pistols and yataghans—’ He did not let himself add: ‘Such as Alex wears.’
‘I’ll consult Alex, of course.’ Had she read his thoughts, and was this her answer?
‘You know what he’ll say.’
‘I suppose so: that I should give it to his government, the one at Aegina. But what do I know of Zaimis and Petro Bey? Father always said, “Never invest money in a ship you haven’t seen”. And this is Peter’s money, not mine.’
‘But it is yours.’ He was not at all sure which side to take in this dialogue of hers with herself. In many ways, he would be delighted to see her give away the greater part of her fortune, since it would put them so much more on a level. But just the same…
‘Of course it’s not mine,’ she said. ‘Just because poor father left an angry will … I’d always meant to share half and half with Peter. If I do give his half to the Greeks, then, of course, we’ll share what remains.’
‘He may not agree to that.’
‘Not if he knows about it. That’s one of the many reasons why I won’t quarrel with Mr. Biddock, however impossibly his wife behaves.’
‘You’ll never get Biddock to connive at deceiving your brother.’
‘You think not? I wonder … But in the meantime, what shall I say to Peter? I must have the letter ready for Alex when he comes.’
‘I think you should tell him that you will keep the money until Cochrane and Church arrive. Alex himself said that he counts on them to unite the rival Greek governments. Your proposed gift might even help persuade them to quit quarrelling and work together for the relief of the Acropolis.’
‘Of course! Brett, I do thank you. I knew you’d give me good advice. And by then, the Helena should surely be ready and we can go ourselves to make the offer.’
‘If it’s safe for you.’
‘Dear Brett, no “ifs”. You must see that I can only agree to delay the gift on that basis. I must be there to see that it is used, first and foremost, for the relief of the Acropolis. If I can’t be sure of that, I’d best give the money to A
lex right away.’
‘No.’ Every instinct cried out against this.
‘Very well. Then promise me that whatever happens, you and I will sail round to Aegina—or wherever the legitimate government is by then—in time to greet Cochrane and Church. If you think it dangerous, of course we’ll leave Jenny and Cassandra here, but I know you’ll come with me.’
‘Thank you. Very well, I promise. And, Phyllida—’
‘Yes?’
‘Will you tell Alex about this plan?’
‘Of course. Why not?’ Her tone warned him to say no more.
* * *
Phyllida and Jenny were out on the terrace a few days later when the Philip made her characteristic daring swoop into the harbour.
‘Beautiful!’ Phyllida had watched, breathlessly, until the manoeuvre was successfully completed.
‘And dangerous,’ said Jenny. ‘Like the man himself.’
‘Dangerous?’
‘Don’t you think so? In some ways, he reminds me a little of Helena. They both have that glossy look of someone used to having their own way. It always makes me wonder what will happen if they don’t. Helena used to throw things,’ she added thoughtfully.
Phyllida nearly said, ‘And so does your brother,’ but restrained herself. She was to learn soon enough what Alex did when crossed. He arrived half an hour later, kissed both their hands with his usual ardour, and held Phyllida’s for an extra moment. ‘Tell me I am to have the privilege of taking my brother Petros’ gift to the Greek Government?’
‘Peter’s gift?’ She should have expected this. ‘He told you? But, Alex, I’m not sure—’ It was surprisingly difficult to tell him her decision.
‘So!’ The furious tone drew her eyes up to meet the fire in his. ‘Your brother’s wishes—his orders even—are to be ignored! A woman’s whim is to deprive Greece of the funds that would be lifeblood in her hour of need! I tell you, a Greek woman would know better than to behave so. But you will think again.’ Something he saw in her face made him modify his tone. ‘You have listened to the advice of cautious old men, kyria, when you should follow the dictates of your heart.’
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