“What on earth is the problem now? Oh, Mother of God, Yanni, what have you been up to? There must have been a better lead growth. Don’t tell me . . . Yes, here. Your knife slipped, I suppose. And then you’ve left three side shoots almost on top of each other. Where’ve you put your brain? Why does it always seem to be somewhere else when I need you to give me a hand?”
And in the end, “Yanni, I simply can’t stand this any longer! Go home! Go down to the tavern and tell the others what a stupid, useless great baby you are. Men are the most useless of the Good Lord’s inventions, and you’re the most useless of men! Or will be, if you ever grow up enough to be a man! Go on! There’s money in the pot. Take enough for one mug, if you can count that far! Oh, go away! I’m sick of the sight of you!”
So, weeping with shame and anger and frustration, he had done what she had told him and taken the money and gone down to the tavern, and had had a horrible time there too. Usually the men just ignored him, but to night . . .
He pulled himself together and refused to think about it.
As he reached the cottage the door opened. Euphanie stood in the doorway, black against the lamp glow, about to toss something out into the dark. She halted the action and peered.
“Yanni? Are you all right? You must be soaked. Get inside. What happened to you?”
“All right now. Only wet. I went to the tavern. The men don’t really want me there, you know. Mostly they ignore me, but to-night they decided to get me drunk. I didn’t realise. I thought they were just being friendly at last. Then they threw me out for not standing my round. I’d told them I couldn’t, but . . .”
“Bastards! Always trying to beat each other. I don’t know what to do. You’ve got to learn somehow how to deal with them. It’s so much easier for women . . . Anyway, I shouldn’t have talked to you like that, whatever sort of a mess you were making. I’m sorry.”
“It was your head. How’s it feel now?”
“Much better. Gone. Like magic. The moment the first drops fell. What’ve you got there?”
“Look.”
He brought his hand out, moved to the lamp and cradled the fluffy scrap of life between his palms. It gaped up at them, blinking, apparently unalarmed. Euphanie craned over and studied it.
“A little scops owl, I think,” she said. “Where did you find it?”
“In the House of the Wise One.”
“You went there! And on a new-moon night, almost! Are you crazy?”
“I don’t know how I got there. I was drunk, remember. I’d no idea where I was. It was blind dark and I just finished throwing up and there was a flash of lightning and I saw this bird. It was only afterwards that I realised I was in the House, and I’d been leaning on the Bloodstone to throw up. Look, it’s hungry, what do owls eat?”
“Mice and voles and beetles and things,” she muttered, not thinking about it. “They swallow them when they’re hunting and cough them up for the babies when they get back to the nest.”
And then, after a pause, and more slowly, but still in a hushed voice, “Yanni, the owl, the scops owl, is the Wise One’s own bird. I think she brought you to her House. I think you were meant to find it. And look.”
She showed him the thing she had been about to throw into the dark when he had come home. It was a dead mouse, one the cat must have brought in, as it often did.
Yanni loved and admired his sister. She was five years older than he was, and since their mother had died seven years ago she had looked after him, as well as doing most of the work on their smallholding, far up the mountain called Crow Castle. He had no memory of his father, who had left the island soon after Yanni was born, telling only a few friends that he was going—but not his wife, because she might have talked him out of it. She was a strong woman, and had managed almost as well (better, some people said) without him. Euphanie was of the same sort, whereas Yanni himself, he guessed, was more like his father. His one determination in an otherwise unfocussed existence was that he would somehow learn to be different.
He waited till Euphanie had lined a small bowl with bits of rag and then settled the owl into it. Determined, this once, to do something right, he sharpened a knife and with still-trembling fingers skinned and gutted the mouse, filleted out the larger bones and chopped up what was left. Not good enough, he decided. He didn’t think he could actually swallow and regurgitate the food, but he spooned some of it into his mouth, chewed it up bones and all, spat the mess into his palm, took a morsel between finger and thumb and eased it into the gaping beak. The owl simply looked at him, waiting, so with the tip of his little finger he poked the mess as far as he could down the gullet. Now the owl closed its eyes and its beak and with a look of extraordinary blissful smugness gulped the mess down and gaped again. When it had eaten all his first chewings he repeated the process. Euphanie, normally fastidious about everything they ate, watched without protest.
“Do you think it will live?” he asked her.
“If the Wise One sent it,” she said, broodingly. “Yanni, Nana Procephalos kept an owl.”
“Lots of people do.”
“Not any longer. Not since . . . Yanni, don’t tell anyone you’ve got it. If they find out, don’t tell them where you found it. Say the cat brought it in.”
Yanni was scared. Scared by what she said. Scared by her tone.
“I . . . I could take it back.”
“Not now we’ve got it . . . seeing how it came.”
While he finished feeding the owl Euphanie reheated the supper she’d prepared. It was well after their normal bedtime when they sat down to eat. Yanni chewed without noticing the food. He was thinking about Nana Procephalos, and what had been done to her.
Until a summer ago the island priest had been a cheery, easy-going old man, who had understood the islanders well and been much loved by them. But then, just as he was about to celebrate Eucharist, a dreadful thing had happened. Helped by a visiting priest he had tottered up the steps of the church and turned to bless his parishioners, who were waiting to follow him into the service, that being the custom of the island. At that moment, in front of everyone, he had had some kind of a seizure. His body had convulsed, he had thrown up his arms and given a strange bellowing cry. His face had contorted and gone almost black, and he would have tumbled forward down the steps if the other priest hadn’t caught him and lowered him to the ground.
Everyone had watched in horrified silence while the priest had knelt by his side, feeling his pulse, and at last looked up and pronounced the old man dead.
“I will conduct a shortened version of the Eucharist,” he had announced, “and we will pray for the good man’s soul. After that I will write to the bishop telling him what has happened, and then, if you wish, I will remain on the island until a new priest is appointed.”
So it had all been done, until letters arrived from the bishop confirming the visiting priest in his post on a more permanent basis, apparently as much to his surprise as everyone else’s.
His name was Papa Archangelos. He was quite a change, not yet forty, but still a stern, imposing figure, forceful and determined. People wondered why he should have accepted a job in such a backwater. Perhaps the bishop felt that the island needed to be shaken out of its torpor. But he had thrown himself into the task. Within a few months he had visited every household on the island, saying he wanted to get to know his flock, and them him. There was far more of the former than the latter. He asked many questions in a quiet, confiding voice, and listened so sympathetically that even the suspicious islanders tended to tell him secrets that they had long hidden from their neighbours. They learnt almost nothing about him in return, except that he had grown tired of the city and longed for the sea, and the peace to write a great medical book that he had in his head.