Greek Wedding

by Jane Aiken Hodge

‘No. Nor do I care. Only that you are here, the priest is ready, all Alexandros’ promises to me broken, poured out like water on the ground. What does it matter what you think or say?’

  ‘But, Oenone, believe me: I would rather die than marry Alex.’

  ‘You think so now?’ The girl looked at her strangely. ‘Well, you may get the choice yet. Ah, here’s the water.’ She took it from a man at the door. ‘I’ll leave you to rest.’ Savage irony in her tone.

  ‘You’re going to lock me in?’ Phyllida was aware of the man waiting outside.

  ‘Of course. Fear nothing. Alexandros wants you alive. I have orders that your meals be brought you here, except when you eat with him. You will have plenty of time for rest.’ And with that she withdrew, slammed the door and turned the key from outside.

  Left alone, Phyllida hurried to one of the slit windows that pierced the four sides of the square room. The one where the light shone brightest, it commanded a thin strip of the view she and Brett had gazed at from the plateau. Far off, towards Zante, the sun was setting and the two narrow strips of sea were crimson with its light. Zante! The Helena. Where was she tonight? Had Peter really been able to take command?

  And now, at last, she must think about Peter, whose treachery was so infinitely worse than Alex’s. She sat down, shivering suddenly, on the bed-place. Peter and Jenny. Jenny and Peter. It was worse, infinitely worse than what had happened, what might happen to her. She was old, she felt now, a thousand years old in failure and despair. It hardly mattered what became of her. But Jenny, young, bright Jenny, so gay and therefore so vulnerable. Suddenly, her head was down among the sheepskins and she was crying as if her heart would break.

  Or had it, long ago? Vaguely considering this, she settled herself, without realising it, more comfortably among the warm, smelly sheepskins and fell fast asleep.

  When she woke, it was pitch dark and she could not think, for a moment, where she was. Then, with the sound of a low, steady knocking on the door, it all came horribly back. But she made her voice steady as she called ‘Come in,’ in Greek. To show panic would be to feel it.

  Oenone entered carrying a lamp, and once again Phyllida was aware of a man, half seen in the shadows at the door. Listening?

  ‘Alexandros sent me.’ Oenone’s voice still held the note of hatred. ‘To ask whether you would prefer to sup with him and Milord Renshaw, or by yourself here.’

  ‘Oh, here, please.’ Even to see Brett, she could not face another confrontation with Alex tonight. As soon as she had spoken, impulsively, she realised that it was the right answer so far as Oenone was concerned.

  ‘Very well.’ Was there the slightest possible softening in that uncompromising voice? ‘I will give the order.’

  ‘Oenone!’ Phyllida’s voice stopped her at the door. ‘Won’t you join me?’ What plea to use? What line to take? She took none, but left it there.

  Oenone put the lamp down on the table and paused to look at her, surprised. ‘You wish that?’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll ask Alexandros.’

  Twenty minutes later, she was back, ushering a man with a loaded tray. ‘Alexandros says he is glad you and I are to be friends.’ Irony vied with hatred in her voice, but Phyllida made herself ignore all but the words.

  ‘I’m glad too.’ She moved forward to help unload the tray. ‘Oenone—’ The man had retreated to his old place outside the door. ‘Must we have him listening?’

  ‘Yes. Those are Alexandros’ orders.’

  Phyllida almost despaired at the lifeless, acquiescent tone. Then she remembered Brett’s last glance, his unspoken command. Here was one of the weak links in the chain that bound them. Here was her chance. No use wondering what he and Alex were saying to each other, down in that gloomy dining hall. Her chance was here, with Oenone, who had so much to gain, so much to lose…

  She began very slowly and carefully, with general subjects, with the state of Greece, the fighting in Nauplia. Inevitably, Oenone was starved for news of the course of the war and listened eagerly when Phyllida talked of the hopes that were building up of intervention by the Allied Powers.

  ‘Peace?’ She tasted the word, wondering. ‘I hardly remember what it was like. And as for freedom … I’ve never known it. Not really…’

  ‘Tell me.’ Phyllida was quick to take advantage of this change of mood. ‘Where are you from, Oenone?’ It was the nearest she dared get to a more personal question.

  ‘Tripolitza. We had a big house there. I used to play in the orange groves—’ She had forgotten Phyllida, gazing back into that vanished past. ‘I remember the day it all started.’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘How they screamed and ran, those wretched Turks, and a Greek vengeance waiting for them at every turning. There was a child I used to play with, up and down the terraces, Fatima, her name was, the daughter of the Aga. How she wept! How she prayed and clung to my dress! She, who used to call me her little slave. I wonder where she is now.’

  ‘She wasn’t killed then?’ Phyllida manged to keep her tone merely enquiring.

  ‘Oh no. Not many of the women and children were. Just sold into slavery. I’d have liked to have kept her myself, but mother didn’t want her. Mother—’ Her iron-hard composure was cracking at last.

  ‘What happened to them? Your parents?’ She thought Oenone had forgotten who was listening, in the relief of talking about it at all.

  ‘What do you think? They were killed, both of them, when the Turks retook Tripolitza. At least, I hope my mother was killed.’

  ‘And you?’ Dared she ask it.

  ‘I was lucky, I suppose. I had gone into the mountains with our flocks. It was the spring, you see. When Ibrahim came, my mother sent word I must stay. My cousin would come for me. Alexandros.’ The word brought her back to the present. ‘Why am I telling you this? You, of all people!’

  ‘Because we’re two women in a houseful of men? Because it’s good to talk about these things. The Turks killed my father.’ Algerian pirates, Turks, what was the difference…

  ‘They did?’ Oenone’s interest was caught.

  ‘Yes. And took me prisoner.’ Briefly, not to lose Oenone’s hard-won attention, she told the story of her captivity and escape.

  ‘Now I see.’ Oenone seized on it. ‘It is the milord you love, the strange, stiff Englishman who will let nothing move him.’

  ‘Yes.’ Why deny it?

  ‘And he?’

  ‘Loves an Englishwoman, who would not have him.’ Was it still true? How right Oenone was about Brett: he would indeed let nothing move him.

  ‘So!’ Oenone’s eyes had that strange half-mad sparkle again. ‘You will marry Alexandros to make the Englishman sorry.’

  ‘No!’ It came out almost as a shout. ‘I told you. I’d rather die. Alex and I are of different worlds. It would be a disaster. I’ll tell you the truth, Oenone. I did accept him. I was mad. I knew it almost at once, and told him so. I’m guilty towards you, both of you. Though of course he did not tell me he was engaged to you.’

  ‘I see.’ At last, Oenone was thinking as well as feeling. ‘I could not understand why he was in such a passion about it. He doesn’t love you. How could he? It’s his pride. How did you dare treat him so?’

  ‘I don’t know. But you must understand, we look on things differently in America.’

  ‘You must indeed. To dare treat a man so. And Alexandros, of all men!’

  ‘I have never regretted anything so bitterly in my life,’ said Phyllida. It was true, but how extraordinary to be actually apologising to this furious Greek child. For as the strange conversation continued, she had realised how young Oenone was. Her dark, shapeless dress, the lines of pain in her face, and her present state of tension had all combined to hide the fact that she was probably younger even than Jenny.

  Jenny! It brought her back, horribly, to the present. But Oenone was on her feet now, collecting dishes on the tray. She thought she had gone far enough for tonight, and was increasingly aware of the silent listener at the door. She made no eff
ort to detain Oenone. Play for time, Brett had urged her, in that extraordinary silent communion. But time, after all, was what they had. Or was it? Would Alex insist, tomorrow, that she write to Biddock, that Brett write to his ‘family’ in England. Or would he wait until he had heard that Peter had succeeded in taking over the Helena?

  At least Oenone had left the lamp. Phyllida prowled about the room, fighting anxiety, fighting despair. Then she stopped, motionless, at the sound of a commotion on the stairs outside. Brett’s voice, raised: ‘I must say goodnight to the lady!’ A man’s voice, refusing, a scuffle, the slam of a door … Brett had let her know that he was down there, now, in the room below her. And the guard? She was at her own door, head close to the hinge, listening. Yes. Footsteps echoed away down the long stair. The guard would stay comfortably in the room at the bottom of the tower.

  So? Now she was prowling about the room with a purpose, anxiety and despair alike forgotten. An old tower, roughly built, the walls huge blocks of stone, the floor heavy planks, but securely nailed down, as if, no doubt, this room had been used as a prison before. And Brett, below there…

  She picked up the lamp and began a minute inspection of the floor. Nothing. Not a crack. Not a chink. And if the ceiling of Brett’s room was as high as hers, not a hope of communication between them. But she had the lamp. Burn a hole in the floor? No, she told herself; not yet. And, finally, slept.

  Chapter 24

  Phyllida waked to broad daylight and the sound of shouting. Extraordinary to have slept so soundly, and yet to wake feeling exhausted. She put an instinctive hand to her forehead, felt it sticky, and told herself, dismissing a quick spurt of anxiety, that she had merely slept too heavily among that tangle of odorous sheepskins. But she wrapped one round her, against the dank morning air of the tower, before hurrying across the room to the slit window that commanded the plateau.

  Maddening to be able to see so little, but something was obviously going on down there. Alex’s voice came up to her, shouting a series of orders, unintelligible at this distance. She saw him for a moment, moving across her narrow line of vision, then he disappeared among a shouting crowd of his followers. Something was certainly happening, but what?

  No sound from the room below. But then, why should there be? Or how should she hear it? Brett might have been killed in the night, and she not know. She would not think like that: absurd, cowardly thinking. Alex had no intention of killing them, so long as there was a chance of making money by them alive.

  Horrible to think she had let him fool her so, had actually agreed to marry him. And by doing so, had started all this? His pride, Oenone had said. He would marry her to prove something to himself. All her fault…

  No. She moved away from the window and made herself go through the best morning toilet she could. A jug of cold water; a visit to the sordid corner of the room Oenone had indicated … All the time she was arguing with herself, discussing every episode in her fatal relationship with Alex. What a frightening, patient, waiting game he had played. When she had accepted him, he must have thought he could have it all, legitimately. Changing her mind, she had signed what might well be all their death warrants. Her teeth were chattering. She would not admit to herself how ill she felt, or how frightened.

  Someone knocked on the door. ‘Come in.’ She expected Oenone, felt a craving for hot coffee, took an involuntary step backward when Alex appeared.

  Thank God she was up and dressed. ‘This is a very early visit.’ She made her voice cold and steady.

  ‘Yes.’ He made no pretence at apology. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye. For a while. Ibrahim is out from Navarino. He threatens Kalamata once again. I’m sending every man I can spare.’

  ‘You’re not going yourself?’

  He turned on her furiously. ‘Your brother has betrayed me. There’s been no word from the Helena.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Relief and happiness sang in her.

  ‘I don’t know.’ It infuriated him to have to admit it. ‘She must have sailed in the night. God knows how.’

  ‘And Peter?’

  ‘Gone with her, for all I know.’ He was angry beyond thought. ‘To Zante. no doubt, to announce your death and claim your estate.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He’ll regret it till the day he dies. Which may not be far off. The wind’s in the right quarter today. It will take more than the Helena’s engines to save him from my vengeance.’

  ‘You’re going after them? To Zante?’

  ‘What else? You can be composing your letter to your agent while I am gone. I have told Milord Brett to do the same. They will have to wait till I return. I dare not lose a minute now, but would not leave without saying farewell to my wife.’

  He cares nothing for me, she thought, compared with the Helena. Hard to tell whether this was cheering or not. But—something she must say: ‘Alex!’

  ‘Yes.’ He turned back, impatiently, at the door.

  ‘I’ll write you a letter now, if you wish. In five minutes. Giving you everything; my whole estate; if you’ll only let us go, Mr. Renshaw and I.’

  He paused for a moment, his hand on the door. ‘And who would believe it? Not your Mr. Biddock, that’s certain. Only our marriage makes the whole thing possible. So, be ready, when I return—’

  ‘But, Alex, Oenone—’

  ‘God damn Oenone!’ He was gone, the door slamming behind him. And then, a scuffling on the stairs; the sound of something crashing to the floor; silence.

  Five minutes later, Oenone appeared, very pale, very composed, with coffee and two slices of hard, black Greek bread.

  Drinking eagerly, Phyllida found that the coffee was little more than lukewarm. Her throat hurt, and she could not make herself eat the dry bread. Should she have tried to make Oenone stay? She thought not. There had been something about her this morning that forbade talk. Had she, in fact, been on the stairs and heard what Alex said about her? Was this cool coffee the second breakfast tray she had brought? Phyllida thought she must hope so.

  Her head ached, but she was full of hope. The Helena had vanished, without a word from Peter. Surely it must mean that Jenny and Cassandra—yes, and Barlow and Brown—had refused to be fooled. Had they gone for help? Might the Cambrian steam suddenly into Kitries harbour?

  And what good would that be? It was two hours hard riding over the mountains to this impregnable fortress. Could Captain Hamilton be expected to waste his time on such a rescue when the whole of Greece cried out for his help? And, yes, she reminded herself. There had been Trelawney, that wild young follower of Byron’s, who had attached himself to the rebel Odysseus, and been rescued by Hamilton from a cave on Mount Olympus—a place, by all reports, even wilder and more remote than this one. Thinking of this, she thought she was glad that Alex had refused her offer this morning—gladder still that he had not stayed a moment longer. If he had, might she not have promised to marry him, anything, if he would only let Brett go?

  The plateau was quiet now. The distant, narrow view of sea, and hill, and sea again was serene. Only a few small clouds, scudding across the brilliant sky, told of Alex’s following wind. But he thought Peter had taken over the Helena and was bound for Zante. Suppose just suppose he was wrong … She did not know what instructions Brett had left, but knew him well enough to be sure they had been full of good sense. Suppose Peter, intending surprise, had been himself surprised. Suppose the Helena was off, under steam, to fetch help. Then she would be going in the other direction, back round Cape Matapan, for Nauplia, and Captain Hamilton.

  No good hoping too much, or fearing too much either. She remembered Brett’s half-spoken instruction the night before. He had wanted time. Well, miraculously, it had been granted to them. And her task, obviously, was Oenone. If she had really heard Alex’s ruthless dismissal of her that morning, might it not have made that task a little easier?

  It was a bitter disappointment when her frugal luncheon was brought by an old, old Greek woman, who hardly seemed strong enough
to carry it. Thanking her. Phyllida resisted the temptation to ask for Oenone. The hot vegetable soup and a glass of wine made her feel better. She had merely been imagining things, this morning, when she thought she was ill. She was tired, that was all, and glad to pass some of the endless afternoon in sleep.

  Once more, she woke with a headache, but forgot it when Oenone appeared with her supper.

  ‘Please stay with me?’ She had noticed at once that the rough wicker-work tray held food only for one. ‘It’s so lonely up here.’ And then, as Oenone hesitated. ‘And with nothing to do … Isn’t there something useful I could be doing? Sewing perhaps? For you?’

  Oenone’s eyes were swollen as if she had been crying all day. She looked at Phyllida sombrely. ‘Do you not understand anything? You are in my power, now Alexandros has gone. You should be on your knees, begging me not to kill you. And instead, you offer to sew for me! What, pray? My bride-linen?’

  ‘If you like. I tell you, Oenone, talk of killing means nothing to me. I would gladly die rather than marry your Alexandros.’ She had noticed how Oenone disliked her use of the diminutive, ‘Alex’.

  ‘You really mean that.’ Oenone turned to give an order to the man on duty at the door. ‘You’re not even afraid to be locked in with me?’ She said it almost in amazement, as the man locked the door on them and went to fetch the wine she had asked for.

  ‘Of course not.’ But she was, a little. ‘Oenone,’ she went on quickly. This moment alone together was too good to be wasted. ‘I am sure we can help each other, you and I.’

  ‘How?’ It was uncompromising enough. ‘Don’t think, kyria, that you can blandish me into betraying Alexandros. In the eyes of God, he is my husband. It is my duty to do his will in all things.’

  ‘Even in this, which is flouting the will of God?’ And then seeing that this was too complicated an argument for the girl to grasp: ‘Oenone, I must tell you. This morning, I offered Alexandros all my fortune if he would only let us go, Milord Renshaw and I. Would not that be better? You know, as well as I do, that I am no wife for him. He must know it, himself, in his heart. It’s only his pride—’