He had come late to the remoteness of Crow Castle, but didn’t seem to have wearied of his task. He had grieved for Euphanie and Yanni over the loss of both parents, and promised to see if he could confirm the rumour of their father’s death. He had praised Euphanie for her courage in running the smallholding, and caring for Yanni like a mother, when she herself was hardly out of her childhood. He wondered how they would manage, so far from help, should one of them fall ill, told Euphanie some remedies for common ailments, and asked her for any herbal lore she had learnt from her mother before she died. For his book, he had said. Euphanie had told him the few things she knew, and added that really for that he should talk to Nana Procephalos.
“So I hear,” he had said, smiling. “But she is strangely secretive.”
They had stood at the gate and watched him stride away down the hill.
“Too good to be true,” Euphanie had muttered.
“I didn’t like him either,” Yanni had answered. “I don’t know why.”
“We’d better start going to church every Sunday from now on. In case he notices we’re not there. . . I wish I hadn’t told him about Nana.”
“It sounds as if a lot of other people did too.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Three months later a special court, sent by the bishop from the mainland, had found Nana Procephalos guilty of witchcraft and sentenced her to death by stoning. The evidence seemed incontrovertible. Spies, also from the mainland, had kept watch on her, followed her one new-moon night, and caught her in the House of the Wise One, in the act of sacrificing a black cockerel on the Bloodstone. So by order of the bishop she died in that place, under a hail of rocks.
Papa Archangelos had let it be known, in his sermon before the stoning, that those who refused to attend it would lay themselves open to suspicion of sympathy with witchcraft. A few of the islanders had contrived excuses, Euphanie among them, saying that Yanni was ill and she had to nurse him. But most had gone. Some of the men had joined in the stoning, whooping as the rocks went home. For several weeks after they continued to boast in the tavern of what they’d done.
Now the islanders learnt that rumours had reached the bishop of witchcraft being rife on the island, and that Papa Archangelos had been originally sent to investigate, and then confirmed in his post to destroy this nest of evil. Too late the islanders began to regret some of the things they had told him. But all, like Euphanie and Yanni, became regular churchgoers, and those who had failed to attend the stoning became very careful of what they said and did.
So from the very beginning Yanni and Euphanie did their best to see that there was no trace of the owl’s presence. Islanders tended not to name their domestic animals. The cat was simply “the cat.” But in case they were at some point overheard they decided to name the owl, and since they didn’t know whether it was male or female, for the time being they called it Scops, a name that somehow stuck after she’d laid her first egg. That was much later.
Yanni looked after her. Normally slapdash and forgetful, he was as careful about her as Euphanie would have been. Her habits made his task easier. Until she fledged she lived in the bottom of a large earthenware jar at the back of a shelf in the barn with a bit of fishing net tossed carelessly over it in case the cat took an interest, though it showed no sign of doing so. In fact it played an active part in the task. Next time it brought a mouse in Euphanie rewarded it with a scrap of the fish she was cooking, and after that had happened a couple of times more it seemed to get the idea and kept up a steady flow of owl food.
Scops woke at dusk, shrilly demanding to be fed, and Yanni would cram chewed mouse into the gaping mouth until she turned her head away and with a quick, gulping shudder excreted neatly over the side of her nest into the bottom of the jar. Then he would move her, nest and all, into a smaller bowl which he carried into the house and set on the table beside him so that he could feed her chewings of what he was eating, his ears pricked for the rattle of the chain that fastened the gate at the top of the steep path. Every few evenings he practised the drill of whisking her into the old bread oven and piling against it the logs he kept ready beside it. In the end he could do this to a count of eight, whereas he always fastened the gate in such a way that even in daylight it took a count of fourteen to unwrap the chain and reach the door. The need never arose, but it was a way of reminding himself to be careful.
Scops spent the night in the oven with the door a crack ajar, and at first light was already calling for food. Never in his life had Yanni regularly risen so early. He fed her before he breakfasted and took her out to the barn when he and Euphanie set off for their day’s work.
In two weeks she had doubled her size, and the same two weeks later. By then she had learnt to scrabble out of her bowl and explore round the table while they ate. Already she was moulting her baby down and the quills of her first true feathers were poking through what was left. Her head could swivel through a complete circle in either direction, so that if she happened to be looking Yanni’s way when she stretched and flapped her skimpy wings, her large-eyed owl stare gave her an expression of utter bafflement that they hadn’t done their job and carried her into the air.
Mobility made the problem of her droppings much more difficult. Birds, Euphanie said, were untrainable, so Yanni watched her every instant she was loose, at first with a damp cloth ready to hand. Soon though he learnt the almost imperceptible signal and if he was quick enough could catch the splatter directly onto the cloth. He applied the same vigilance to all her leavings, the moulted feathers, the little pellets of mouse bones she would from time to time cough up, and so on.
“You are getting even more fussy than me,” said Euphanie, teasing.
“Going to church helps,” said Yanni, dead serious. “Seeing him again, week after week. He’s not going to give up.”
By now it was high summer. The spring rains had been kindly, almost healing the ravages of last year’s drought. Between the dew-sweet dawns and the dusty cool of the evenings the island seemed to drowse its days away, purring gently as it slept. But it was not at peace. Papa Archangelos was a disturbing priest. People didn’t know what to expect when they saw the tall black figure pacing towards them along one of the network of tracks that crisscrossed the island. True to his promise he knew everyone in his flock by now, not only their names but their hopes and troubles, and their place in the complex kinships that, rather like those connecting tracks, linked the community together. On meeting he would bless you, and ask a few friendly seeming questions, bringing himself up to date with your affairs since you had last met him, but as you parted you felt he had seen into your inmost heart. Few of the islanders went to formal confession, and those only once a year, travelling to a priest on another island to do so for greater secrecy. Papa Archangelos put no pressure on his flock to come to him. There was no need. He knew.
He was a wonderful preacher, using images of fishing and farming and housekeeping, things the islanders understood. He spoke of the Lord Jesus as if he had met him and talked with him face-to-face, walking the same earth they did and breathing the same air. But every now and then he spoke of a different Christ, the huge-eyed frowning judge whom they could just make out up in the smoky mosaics in the dome of the church, and to whom they would answer on the day of judgment for every ill deed, every sinful thought, every wicked dream in all their lives. At these times he seemed to grow taller as he spoke, and darker, the soft voice whispering though the breathless stillness until the air in the church felt midwinter cold. More than once someone listening had screamed, or shouted in terror, and rushed out into the sunlight. Yanni needed no other reminders to be careful to keep the existence of Scops a secret.