Эдвард Бенсон
The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

"But how is the word of command to come," said Father Priketes, who had secretly hoped for a little independent campaign, "if you are not with us? Must I not act on my own judgment?"

"No, a thousand times no," said Nicholas. "What I have seen here shows me that you in Megaspelaion and Patras will be no small portion of our first success. How the war will spread afterwards, God knows; but when the first grapes are cut it will be you, so I think, to garner them. This is why you must obey absolutely. Nothing will be left to your judgment. A message will come, and you will obey."

"How am I to tell who your messenger is?"

Nicholas smiled.

"Some afternoon, when you are sitting in the spring sunshine, or perhaps some night in this next winter, when you are sleeping, a monk will come to you and say, 'There is a man here, or a boy it may be, or a girl even, who wishes to see you, and we cannot understand what he means.' Then you will delay not, but go and see what it is. You will say, 'I am Father Priketes; you have a message for me?' And the message will be in this form: 'I am bidden to ask you if there is corn to be given to those who need it?' And you will say, 'Is it black corn they need, and are the needy hungry, or are they Turks?' And the messenger will say, 'Send black corn for the Turks to Kalamata or Kalavryta, or wherever it is, and let two hundred or five hundred or a thousand men carry it.' Other instructions may come as well, but always in that form. And as you obey, so may the Lord give you a place among His saints in heaven."

Father Priketes was silent for a moment.

"You are right, Nicholas," he said; "and I swear by the picture of the mother of God that I will obey in all things. Come, shall we go up again?"

They climbed up into the chapel, and went out down the vaulted stone passage to the story below, where another passage, whitewashed and boarded on both sides, led to the monks' library and Father Priketes's own rooms. Nicholas, who carried in his hand an olive-wood stick, tapped the panelling carelessly as he went along, and once stopped a moment and smiled at Germanos.

"The wall seems to be a little less thick here than at other places," he said. "Mehemet Salik, however, was too cunning to attend to such simple things."

"The Lord be praised for making so many clever men," said Germanos, piously. "To have a fool for an enemy has been the undoing of more good people than Satan himself."

They went on to Father Priketes's room where they had supped before, and Nicholas lit himself a pipe.

"That is quite true," he said. "A fool is always blundering into the weak place by accident – there is nothing so disconcerting; whereas a clever man is on the lookout for less patent weaknesses, and passes over the patent ones on purpose. And the Turk is both clever and indolent – a very happy combination."

"For us," said Priketes, who had, as Nicholas once said, a wonderful faculty for seeing that which was obvious.

"As you say, for us," said Nicholas; "and we intend to profit by it. And now, father, with your leave I will go to bed. I have seen all I came to see, and think I had better push on to-morrow. You will find, no doubt, a prudent place for your granary. It is impossible to be too prudent now, just as it will be more than possible to be too wary hereafter. When once we get into the open we keep there until all is finished."

"Where do you go now?" asked Germanos.

"Southwards," said Nicholas. "I must travel as widely as I can in Messenia, and also see my cousin Petrobey. The Maina district will be raised by him. If once the war begins, as I would have it to begin, I shall be at ease about the rest. Only the beginning must be as sudden as the thunderbolt. Ah, but there is fever in my blood for that!"

Nicholas, as his custom was, rose early next morning and went from the dark-panelled room, where he had slept, down towards the chapel. The great green bronze bell hanging in the wooden balcony outside had just begun to ring for matins, and the sound, grave and sonorous, floated out over the valley like a dream. He waited there awhile looking at the blackened Byzantine paintings which covered the roof, till the monks began trooping up the cobbled passage, and with the first of them he went inside the chapel. From the centre of the roof hung a great gilt candelabrum in the form of a crown, and from side to side of the building ran a row of silver lamps – some thirty in number – which had been burning all night, but looked red and dim in the fresh morning light. Set in the gilt altar-screen were the paintings of the Panagia and of Christ, and at the south end – more precious to the faithful than all – the wax relief of the Virgin and Child. The silver panel, behind which it is placed, had been opened, and Nicholas, with the others, made his obeisance before it. The head of the Virgin and the head of the Child are all that can be seen, and these are black with age; the rest is one mass of chased gold. The crown which the Child wears is studded with rubies and emeralds grown dim; His mother's crown is less magnificent; and on the silver rail in front of it hang the offerings of those to whom, in the days of faith, its contemplation had brought healing of many diseases. Over the gate to the altar hung two stoles of red velvet, in which the priest who said the mass would robe himself. A border of gold holly leaves ran down them on each side, and down the middle they were embroidered with floreated and cusped ornaments in red and gold, in the centre of each of which was worked the figure of Christ. On the north wall, by the easternmost of the monks' stalls, hung the picture of the daughter of the Emperor Palæologus. She is dressed in a red cloak with golden eagles embroidered over it; her hair is golden auburn, and she raises a face charmingly childlike and naïve, and holds up hands of prayer to the gracious figure of the Virgin who stands beside her.

Priketes and Germanos were the last to enter, and when the short prayers were said, Nicholas went out with them, and they walked up and down the terrace awhile talking. Some of the elder monks, with their purple cassocks trimmed with fur wrapped closely round them, sat outside the iron-sheeted gate, under the fresco of Adam and Eve being driven out from Paradise, which fills the triangular space above it, watching them with eager attention, for it had become known who Nicholas was and what his errand. On their right rose the enormous mass of the monastery, crowned by an overhanging cliff of gray rock, which the smoke from the chimney had stained in places to a rich vandyke-brown, in the hollow of which, as in the hollow of a sheltering hand, the great pile of buildings stood, seeming rather to have been the core round which the rock rose than to have been built into it. In front the ground fell rapidly away into the valley, but was terraced up into little gardens, full of cypresses and poplars or figs and plane trees; under these stood many little wooden arbors, trellised over with vines, where the brethren spent their tranquil days; and a hundred riotous streams – some conducted down wooden shoots, some straying over the paths – rattled headlong to join the river below. Further down, the hill-side was covered with low-growing scrub, and on the opposite side of the valley, the village of Zachlórou hung on by teeth and nails to the climbing moor. A company of swallows cut curves and circles in the thin morning air, their black backs showing metallic, like oxidized steel in the sunlight, and a great flight of white pigeons clattered out of the rock above and settled in a cloud by the fountain. In one of these little arbors Germanos and Nicholas drank their coffee and smoked a pipe of the monastery tobacco until the latter's horse was brought round. Then, rising,

"We shall meet again," he said, "when the vintage is ripe, or, if we meet not, we shall both be laborers in the treading; you here, I perhaps in the south. So now, father, give me your blessing, for I must go on my way."

CHAPTER IX
THE SINGER FROM THE DARKNESS

November went out with a fortnight of cold showers and biting winds, and the woodcock came down in hundreds to the plain of Nauplia. Often when the curtain of cloud which veiled Mount Elias day by day was rent raggedly in two by some blast in the upper air, the higher slope of the mountain, it could be seen, was sprinkled with snow. Then the peak would again wrap itself in folds of tattered vapors as a beggar throws his torn cloak over his shoulder, and perhaps would not peer through the mists again for a couple of days. Down in the plain scudding showers swept across from north to south and east to west, and the earth, still thirsty from the long drought of the summer, drank them in feverishly as a sick man drains the glass by his bedside and turns to sleep again.

Mitsos had many round oaths for this horrible weather, but like a wise lad cursed and had done with it. The bay and the sweet possibilities of the bay were only in the range of thought, but the woodcock were more accessible, and with something of the air of a martyr he would pass a long day on the uplands towards Epidaurus, and come back, after the fall of dark, with a leash of woodcock, and an appetite which bordered on the grotesque, singing and contented. But later in the evening he would be twitched by an eager restlessness, and make many journeys to the door to see if the weather had cleared, or showed signs of clearing, only to be met by a buffeting clap of windy rain in the face, which made him close it again quickly, for where was the use, he argued, of lying rolling and rocking off the white wall if he was to be alone there? Once or twice during this fortnight he had sailed by it, but his wages were only a wetting. Constantine was somewhat puzzled and perplexed at Mitsos' behavior about this time, but he took it all with his habitual serenity of tolerance, and likened him in his own mind to a colt who is just beginning to find out that he is a horse, and, knowing his own strength and learning his needs, whinnies and kicks up his heels. He knew that it would be useless to try to extract unvolunteered information out of Mitsos, and he guessed more nearly to the truth than he knew, that Mitsos' somewhat spasmodic moods were merely the natural results of his budding manhood, and were as inexplicable to him as they were to his father. Meantime, though they had neither heard nor seen anything more of Nicholas, Constantine felt that Mitsos was growing in the way he would have him grow, and was increasing in self-reliance and surefootedness of mind just as he was increasing in bodily strength and stature.

But Mitsos was exercising more self-control than his father gave him credit for. That acquaintance with Suleima, the Greek girl in the harem of the Turk, begun so strangely, had ripened no less strangely. He had sat below the wall night after night and talked to her from his boat, rocking gently in the swell, or standing still and steady in the calm water, till with a sign she motioned him away, seeing some other woman of the harem or one of the servants come out into the garden.

Then Suleima had made a confidante of one of the elder women, who, seeing Mitsos' handsome, laughing face, had given her sympathy, and, what was better, a practical exhibition of it, and had promised to watch in the garden so that they might talk without fear of interruption; stipulating, however, through Suleima as interpreter, half laughing, yet half in earnest, that Mitsos should give her a kiss for every time she watched for them. Suleima had felt herself flushing as she interpreted this into Greek, but Mitsos' tone reassured her as he answered,

"She might as well do it for nothing. Oh, don't translate that, but say we are very much obliged. Pay-day is long in the house of a Turk."

Then there came an evening, only just before the weather had broken, when Mitsos took down to the boat a little rope ladder. Suleima had told him that he was to come there late, not before midnight, and she would have gone to her room early, saying she was not well. Then, if possible, she would come out to him, and they would go for a sail together.

It was an evening to be remembered – to be lived over again in memory. Her reluctance and eagerness to come; the terrorizing risk of discovery, which none the less was a whetstone to her enjoyment; her delight at getting out, though only for an hour or two; her half-frightened, childish exclamations of dismay as Mitsos put about, when the water began to curl back from the forefoot of the boat as they went hissing out to sea before the wind; her face looking as if it was made of ebony and ivory beneath the moonlight, with its thin, black eyebrows, and long, black eyelashes; her sense of innocent wickedness, as in response to Mitsos' entreaties she unveiled it altogether; her curious, fantastic story of how she was carried off years ago by a Turk, and had forgotten all about her home, except that her father was a tall man with a long, black dress; her pretty, hesitating pronunciation of Greek; her bewildering treatment of himself as if he was a boy, as he was, and she a person of mature experience, as she was not, being a year younger than he; the view which she took of this moonlight sail as just a childish freak, heavily paid for if discovered, and to be repeated if not, while to him it was the opening of heaven. Then, as he still remained serious, looking at her with wide eyes of shy adoration, she too became just a little serious as they turned homewards, and said that she liked him very much, and that old Abdul Achmet was a fat pig. Then in answer to him – Oh, no, she was quite content where she was, except when Abdul was in a bad temper or the eunuch beat her. There was plenty to eat, nothing to do, and they were all much less strictly looked after than in other harems, for Abdul was old and only cared for one of them. For herself she was a favorite servant of his chief wife, and not really in the harem. It was not very exciting, but if Mitsos would come again now and then and take her for sails she would be quite happy. Finally, it was useless for him to come except when it was fine, for the harem was always locked up in wet weather, and she would not be able to get into the garden. Also, she hated rain like a cat.

Then intervened the fortnight when the climate of Nauplia, which for the most part is that of the valley of Avilion, gave way to the angry moods of a child – to screaming, sobbing, and steady weeping. The surface of the bay was churned up by the rain and streaked with foam by the wind, and the big poplar-tree, under which Maria had slept, shook itself free of its summer foliage and stood forth in naked, gnarled appeal to the elements. For a fortnight the deluge continued, but on the night of the 1st of December, Mitsos, waking at that strange moment when the earth turns in her sleep, and cattle and horses stand up and graze for a moment before lying down again, saw with half an eye the shadow of the bar of his window cast sharply onto the floor of his bedroom by the slip of the crescent moon, which rode high in a starry sky, and when he woke again it was to see a heaven of unsullied blue washed clean by the rain.

Half the day he spent dreaming and dozing in the veranda, for he meant to be out on the bay that night, and after his mid-day dinner he went down to overhaul the boat, taking with him his fishing-net and a bag of resin. He had wrapped up in the centre of the net the pillow from his bed, for Suleima had said that the net on which she sat before smelled fishy. But after supper that night he found himself beset by a strange perplexity, the like of which he had never felt. His fustanella was old and darned; it was hardly suitable. It did very well before, but somehow now – and the moon would be larger to-night. The perplexity gained on him, and eventually he took out and put on his new clothes, only worn on festa days, which were thoroughly unsuitable for rough fishing by night. He brushed his hair with extreme care, and wished it was sleek and smooth like Yanko's, instead of growing in crisp, strong curls, put his red cap rakishly on the side of his head, and laced up his brown cloth leggings to the very top. All this was done with the greatest precision and seriousness, and he went down-stairs on tiptoe for fear of wakening his father, who was already abed, and had left injunctions with him to lock the door and take the key with him if he was likely to be late.

It was about half-past ten when he set off, and the moon had risen. It took him an hour or more to reach the dim, white wall, for the breeze was yet but light and variable. As he neared it he began to feel his heart pulsing in his throat, as it had done one night before when he passed the scene of the hanging by the wayside, but somehow differently, and he peered out anxiously into the darkness to see if there was any one there. Something white glimmered on the wall, down went his sail, and a few minutes later the nose of his boat grated against the stone-work.

She gave a little chuckling laugh.

"I thought you would come," she said, "on the first night of stars. They are all in bed. I listened at Mohammed's door; he was Mohammed no more – only a grunt and a snore."

Mitsos said nothing, but threw the ladder and rope on the wall and sprang up himself.

"Yes, I have come," he said. "Ah, how I have been cursing this rain – may the saints forgive me! – but I cared not, and cursed."

Suleima looked at him a moment.

"Why, how smart you are!" she said. "Is it the Greek use that a man goes fishing in his best clothes? Oh, my clean fustanella!" she cried, looking sideways on him.

Mitsos smiled. The best clothes had been a good thought, in spite of a momentary confusion.

"Hush!" he whispered, "we will talk in the boat. I will hold the ladder. There, it is quite steady."

The girl stepped lightly down the rungs, and Mitsos, directing her to sit still, threw the ladder and rope back and let himself down onto the side of the boat.

"Where shall we go to-night?" he asked.

The girl laughed gently – the echo, as it were, of a laugh.

"Oh, out, out to sea," she said; "right away from this horrible place. Where shall I sit?"

Mitsos took the pillow out of the net and put it for her at the stern of the boat.

"See," he said. "I remembered that you said the net smelled fishy, and I have brought you my pillow to sit on. There – is there a more comfortable seat in all Greece?"

She sat down, and the boy busied himself with the boat for a few minutes. He had to row out a dozen strokes or so until they got from under the lee of the wall, and the wind, catching the sail, slowly bulged it out taut; the boat dipped and bowed a moment and then began to move quickly forward towards the mouth of the bay. He stood a few seconds irresolute until Suleima spoke.

"Well, have you finished?" she asked.

"Yes. We shall run straight before the wind as far as you like."

She pointed with her hand to the seat beside her.

"Come and sit by me," she said.

There was silence between them for several minutes – she with a smile hiding in the depths of her dark eyes; he, serious and tongue-tied. The air was full of the freshness of the night and of the sea, but across that there came to him some faint odor from her – a warm smell of a live thing, too delicate to describe. Then she drew from her pocket a small box and opened it.

"See what I have brought you," she said – "Rahat-la-koom. How do you call it in Greece? Sweets, anyhow. Do you like sweets?"

She took a lump of the sticky, fragrant stuff out of the box and offered it to Mitsos as a child offers sweets to another child.

"Do you like it?" she asked again. "Abdul gave me the stuff last night. I was afraid when he gave it to me, but he did not stop. As I told you, I am not of the harem."

Mitsos flushed. Suleima spoke with the naïveté of a child, and yet somehow it made him ashamed to think that even he was sitting alone with her, and furious at the thought that that fat Turk, whom he had seen at Nauplia only a few days before, should dare to give her sweets.

"How silent you are, Mitsos!" she went on. "Tell me what you have been doing all this time. For me, I have done nothing – nothing – nothing. I have never been so dull."

Mitsos looked up suddenly.

"Are you less dull now?" he said. "Do you care to come out like this with me?"

"Surely, or else I should not come. I think I have even missed you, which is odd, for I never missed any one before. I care for none of those in the house, and some I hate."

Mitsos took her hand in his.

"Promise you will never hate me," he said.

Suleima laughed.

"That is a big thing to promise," she said, "for 'never' is the greatest of all words, greater even than 'always'; but I don't feel as if I should ever hate you. I liked you since the first, even before I had ever seen you, when you sang that song out of the darkness. It was very rash and foolish of you, for Abdul would make nothing of having a sailor-boy shot. Supposing I had been – well, some one else – I should have told Abdul, and thus there would have been no more songs for Mitsos."

"But because it was you, you did not?" asked Mitsos, awkwardly. "Yet if it had not been you, I should not have sung to you."

The girl's hand still rested in his, but suddenly she disengaged it.

"You are talking nonsense," she said, quickly, yet finding nonsense somehow delightful; "of course, if you had not sung to me you would not have sung to me. By the way, Zuleika – "

She stopped suddenly.

"Who is Zuleika?" said Mitsos; "and what of her?"

"Oh, nothing. Zuleika is the woman who watched to see that no one came while we talked. She's quite old, you know, though not as old as Abdul. Well, why shouldn't I tell you? Zuleika is getting impatient for her payment. She watched four times, she said, but I am sure it was only three. Won't you pay her?"

Mitsos got up and stood in front of her.

"Zuleika, what is Zuleika to me?" he said again.

The girl stared at him for a moment. "Are you angry, Mitsos? Why should you be angry? But – but – "

Mitsos turned away impatiently.

"Why are you angry?" repeated the girl. "Is it because of what Zuleika said? I told you because I thought it would please you. Most men, I think, would like to hear that sort of thing. Zuleika says you are the handsomest boy she ever saw, and she is pretty herself – at least I suppose she is pretty."

Mitsos had the most admirable temper, and though it had been touched in a quarter where he could not have anticipated attack, he regained it in a moment.

"Never mind Zuleika," he said, sitting down again; "go on talking to me. I like to hear you talk, and give me your hand again. Put it in mine; it is so soft and white. I never saw a hand like yours!"

Suleima laughed.

"There you are, then. Oh, Mitsos, don't squeeze it so; you hurt me! What shall I talk about? I have nothing to talk about. Nothing ever happened to me. Zuleika – "

"Don't talk about Zuleika!" said Mitsos, between his teeth.

"Well, you told me to talk. I don't want to talk about Zuleika. Oh, Mitsos, look how far we are out! There is Nauplia behind us. We must go back!"

"No, not yet."

"But we must! It will take us an hour or more to get back! Please let us go back, Mitsos?"

Mitsos sat still a moment.

"Tell me you don't want to go back," he said, in a whisper.

"Of course I don't; why should I tell you that? I should like to be thus with you always, you alone, and no other."

Mitsos sprang up.

"I'll put about," he said.

There were two or three moments of confusion, as the heavy sail flapped and shook. The wind had veered a point towards the east, and they could get back in a couple of tacks. Mitsos stood up till the boat had settled down on the homeward journey, and then, with the tiller in one hand, he sat down again by Suleima's side.

"It will be fine weather now," he said, "and will you come out with me again? You tell me you like it."

Suleima nestled a little closer to him. "Yes, I like it," she said, "but we must not go too often. But if you care to, you can come to the wall in fine weather always, and I will tell you whether it is possible. And, Mitsos, next time we go out bring your spear and resin, and let me see you fish. I should like to see you do that. Do you catch many?"

"The devil fly away with the fish!" said Mitsos. "I would sooner talk to you."

"How funny! I would sooner you fished; and, you see, we can talk, too. Will you let me help?"

Mitsos took up one of her hands again.

"It would be a heavy net you could draw in!" he said. "You have never felt the tug of a shoal."

"A whole shoal?" asked Suleima. "How many fish go to the shoal?"

Mitsos laughed. "Fifty for each of your fingers," he said, "and a hundred to spare. Sometimes they all swim together against the net, and though they are very little, many of them are strong, and pull like a horse. I cut my finger to the bone once against the net-rope. Look, here is the mark."

He held up his great brown hand, and Suleima traced with her little finger a white scar running up to the second joint of his forefinger.

"How horrid!" she said, concernedly, still drawing her finger up and down his. "Did it bleed much?"

"Half a bucketful. I must put the boat on the other tack. Take care; the sail will come across again."

The air struck cold as they went more into the wind, and Suleima wrapped her black bernouse more closely round her and nestled under shelter of the lad.

"You are cold?" he asked, suddenly.

"No, Mitsos, not if you sit like that. But isn't it ice to you? Have another piece of Rahat-la-koom?"

Mitsos grinned, showing his white teeth. "That will keep out the cold finely," he said. "Give it me yourself!"

They were rapidly approaching the wall, and in ten minutes more Mitsos stood up and took in the sail. The speed slackened, and, standing at the bows, he leaned forward, and, thrusting out with the pole, he brought the boat alongside. Then, springing up again, with the rope in his hand, he told Suleima to throw him up the end of the ladder. This he held down with his foot on the far side of the wall while she climbed up, pleasantly feeling the muscles of his leg strain as she stepped onto the rope.

The ground on the inside was a foot or two below the top of the wall, and, standing on the top a moment before stepping down, she suddenly bent her head down to him, and, brushing back his curls with her hand, kissed him lightly on the forehead.

"Good-night, little Mitsos," she whispered.

Then all in a flash her face flushed. "Mitsos," she said, quickly, and with a curious shyness, "promise me you will never kiss Zuleika; she is an old witch!" and without waiting for his reply she ran across to the dark house.

Mitsos sat perfectly still, tingling and alert, and he felt the blood throb and beat in his temples. He half started from his place to run after her, and half raised his voice to call, but remembered in time that he was close to the Turk's house. Something which let the two sit together like children was dead, but something had taken its place, and his heart sang to him.

He dropped down again into the boat, and for half an hour more he sat there without stirring, hearing the ripples tap against the side, and seeing them break in dim phosphorescent gleams of light. Then, with wonder on his lips and a smile in his eyes, he went silently home through the still night.

It was the night of the 1st of January, 1821, and Mitsos and Suleima were again sailing across the bay; this time, however, not out to sea, but to the shelving bays underneath the Tripoli hills, the scene of the fishing with Nicholas. It was the first time the two had been able to go out together since the night last recorded, for on that occasion Suleima had been caught by the eunuch coming in from the garden. Luckily for them both, Mitsos had not been seen, and her excuse was that she had a headache and could not sleep, so had sat in the garden for a while. Nothing more could be got out of her, and Zuleika, for one reason or another, had been loyal enough to preserve silence. But Suleima got beaten, and she judged it more prudent not to have any more headaches for a time. But as the fate that watches over wooings would have it, one night a fortnight afterwards the eunuch was found drunk, a particularly heinous crime, and, to one of his religion, blasphemous; and he was, therefore, dismissed. Suleima was sedulous to note the habits of his successor, and observed with much approval that he went to bed early and slept soundly, and at length she ventured to resume her excursions. She had more leisure than usual after her detection, for she was solitary behind lock and key; she had no sweets to eat, and her thoughts were ever with Mitsos. She, who had hardly seen a man, and had certainly never in the last ten years spoken to one except to the black, thick-lipped eunuch and Abdul Achmet, whose small, sensual eyes looked at her like a mole's about his fat, pendulous cheeks, could hardly believe that they and Mitsos, with his sun-browned, boyish face and fit, slender limbs, were creatures of the same race. From the first time that she had seen him only dimly as he sat in his boat, swaying regularly and gracefully to its motion, and heard him singing the old song which she remembered from her childhood, she had thought how charming it would be to live on his pattern, as free as the spring swallows, wholesomely and cleanly in the open air. Surely he had caught something, indefinable perhaps, but none the less certain, from wind and sun – a something which reminded her of a clear, light summer morning, when it was so pleasant to come out of the close, perfumed house, to have a breath of a more airy fragrance thrown at her by the sea-breeze, and feel with a cool shock a few dew-drops from the great climbing rose about the door shaken onto the bare flesh by the wind; for, unlike the Turks, she came of an outdoor race, and the inherited instinct had not been altogether eradicated by her hot-house, enclosed life.