In fact it was twenty minutes later when Marianne and her companion stood beneath the monastery's tall white walls. Marianne, still barely recovered from her recent ordeal, was breathless and thankful that it was night: by day, in the glare of the sun, the climb must be intolerable, for there was not so much as a tree or a blade of grass. She was sweating under her black cotton skirts and knew how to value the draught that swirled under the big entrance portico, a massive semicircular arch surmounted by an open pediment hung with bells. An iron gate, adorned with the two-headed eagle of Mount Athos, to which Ayios Ilias belonged, creaked open. A shadow stepped out from among the thick dark shadows of the doorway, but there was nothing alarming in it. It was the plump shadow of a fat little monk, bearded and pigtailed, who, to judge from the odour of sanctity that emanated from him, was not inclined to waste the island's precious water supply unnecessarily. He said something in an undertone to Sappho and then rolled away like a little ball on his short legs, leading the two women along a terrace by a white wall, past a stone-built cistern and elegant Byzantine basin, before plunging into a maze of passages, curved bays opening on to empty vestibules and stairways which, in the light of the smoky torches that burned here and there, looked as if carved out of snow. At last he opened a painted door into the monastery chapel.
Two men were standing in the light of the great bronze lamp in front of a massive eighteenth-century iconostasis, carved and painted in a primitive style, like a child's picture book. But if there was something primitive about the chapel, with its silver-mounted icons and white walls decorated with the two-headed eagle of the Holy Mountain, its two occupants had nothing of the freshness and innocence of childhood about them.
One, wearing a long black robe and gleaming pectoral cross, was the higoumenos Daniel. He had the narrow, emaciated face of the ascetic, made to look still longer by his grey beard, and his eyes were those of a visionary and fanatic. He had the power to annihilate time, and as she crossed the chapel towards him, Marianne had the unnerving feeling that he could see right through her, as though she had no real substance or personal identity.
The other man was almost a giant. He was of bear-like proportions, and to his muscular figure was added a face strong to the point of savagery. His eyes were fierce and commanding, his long hair hung down his back from beneath a round cap with a silken tassel, his moustaches were arrogant, and stuck in the red belt which he wore under his sleeveless goatskin jacket there protruded the butt of a silver-mounted pistol and the hilt of a long knife.
Sappho, meanwhile, having apparently forgotten all about her prayers to Aphrodite, had moved forward humbly to kiss the abbot's ring.
'Here is she whom I told you, most holy father,' she said, speaking in a Venetian dialect. 'I believe that she may be of great use to us.'
The Greek priest's eyes looked straight through Marianne but his hand made no move towards her.
'If she so wills it,' he said slowly, and the habits of monastic life, with its eternal whispering, had given a curiously muffled, toneless quality to his voice. 'But does she?'
Before Marianne could answer, the giant flung himself impulsively into the conversation.
'Ask her rather if she would live or die! Or moulder here until the flesh shrivels from her bones. Either she helps us, or she never sees her own land again!'
'Be quiet, Theodoros,' Sappho said quickly. 'Why should you treat her as an enemy? She is French and the French are not our enemies, far from it! Think of Korais! Besides, I know that refugees are given asylum in Corfu, and that is what she is here, a refugee. It was the sea brought her to us, and I believe with all my heart that it was for our good.'
'That remains to be seen,' the giant growled. 'Did you not say she was cousin to the Haseki Sultana? That ought to teach you caution, Princess!'
Marianne looked round, startled at the title which was clearly addressed to her companion. The worshipper of Aphrodite smiled at her surprise.
'I belong to one of the oldest families in Greece. My name is Melina Koriatis,' she said, simply but not without pride. 'I told you that I was going to trust you. As for you, Theodoros, you are wasting precious time. You know quite well that Nakshidil is a French-woman carried off by Barbary pirates as a girl and given to old Abdul Hamid for his harem.'
Seeing that the giant was still frowning obstinately, Marianne decided that she had remained silent long enough. It was time she took a hand.
'I do not know yet what you want of me,' she said, 'but before you come to blows about it, would it not be simpler to tell me? Or must I agree without hearing? I owe you my life, I know – but it might occur to you that I have other things to do with it besides devote it to your affairs.'
'I have told you the choice before you,' Theodoras said.
'She is right,' broke in the abbot. 'And it is also true that we are wasting time. You agreed that she should come here, Theodoros, and you have a duty to listen to her. And you, young woman, listen to what it is we ask of you. You shall tell us afterwards what you feel but before you answer, beware. We are in a church and God's eye is on us. If your tongue is ripe for falsehood, then you had better go now. You do not seem very willing to aid us.'
'I have no love for lies, or for dissimulation,' came the answer. 'And I know that if you have need of me, then I also have need of you. Speak.'
The priest appeared to think for a moment. His head dropped on his breast and he closed his eyes briefly, before turning to the silver icon of St Elias, as if in search of counsel and inspiration. Only then did he begin.
'You, in your western lands, know very little of Greece, or rather you have forgotten because, for centuries now, we have not owned the right to freedom, to live our own lives.'
In his strange, flat voice, which could still show flashes of bitterness, anger and grief, the higoumenos Daniel gave Marianne a rapid summary of his country's tragic history. He described how the land that had produced the purest light of civilization had been ravaged successively by Visigoths, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Bulgars, Slavs, Arabs, the Normans of Sicily, and then by the crusaders from the west brought by the Doge, Enrico Dandolo, who after the capture of Byzantium had carved up the country into a multitude of fiefs. These fiefs, in turn, had fallen to the Turks and for almost two hundred years Greece had ceased to breathe. Abandoned to the mercy of despotic Ottoman governors, she had been reduced to slavery, ground beneath the heel of the pashas, who were never the sort to let the post of executioner go unfilled. The only freedom left to the Greeks had been freedom of worship, since the Koran displayed a fair degree of tolerance in this respect, and the one person who had to answer to the Sublime Porte for the behaviour of the enslaved nation was the patriarch of Constantinople, Gregorios.
'But we have never lost hope,' the abbot went on, 'and we are not yet quite dead. For fifty years, the corpse of Greece has been stirring and struggling to rise. The Montenegrins of Epirus rebelled in 1766, the Maniots in '69, and the Souliots, more recently, in 1804. The scurvy dog, Ali, crushed them as bloodily as others had been crushed before them, but the harvest is raised from the blood of martyrs. More than ever we are determined to shake off the yoke. Look at this woman.—'
His thin hand, with the bright ring gleaming on it, rested affectionately on the so-called Sappho's arm. 'She comes of one of the wealthiest families of the Phanar, the Greek quarter of Constantinople. For a hundred years her people have been compelled to give pledges to the Turks and have occupied exalted positions. More than one has been hospodar of Moldavia, but the youngest among them chose freedom and made their way to Russia, our sister in the Faith, and are at this moment fighting the enemy in Russia's ranks. Melina herself is rich, powerful, and a cousin of the patriarch. She could have chosen a carefree life in her palaces on the Bosphorus or the Black Sea. And yet she has chosen to dwell here, in the guise of a madwoman, in a half-ruined house on this god-forsaken island ravaged every now and then by fire, for the very reason that Santorini, beneath which the volcano never wholly slumbers, is of all Greek islands the one least watched by the Turks, who have no interest in it and consider it a shame even to be sent here.'