Palewski grinned. “George Compston. Highly ridiculous, as you say. But he happens to be a Byron fanatic. And if I’m not mistaken, that’s him arriving now.”
A few moments later they heard a heavy tread on the stairs, and Marta ushered in a stout young man with a shock of yellow hair and an open, cheery red face.
Compston’s infatuation with the life and legend of Lord Byron had begun on the ship that carried him to his first diplomatic posting in Istanbul. It was a six-week voyage, and Compston had kept close to his berth throughout. By the time the ship reeled into the Sea of Marmara he had not only read the epic poem The Giaour, but was able to pronounce its title, too; an indulgent relative had kept him supplied with Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and his adulation had advanced and ripened over the past two years. Nowadays he wore a cummerbund without reflection, and a pencil mustache, and tilted at the knee when talking to European ladies, to “make a leg.”
It was his friend and mentor at the embassy, Ben Fizerly, who first noticed his limp and later remarked, a little crushingly, that it seemed to travel uneasily from foot to foot; but few people meeting Compston for the first time, cummerbund or no cummerbund, would have readily associated the boy with the open red face and big soft hands with the saturnine poet whose untimely death all Europe had mourned.
Compston did not mind. He had reached that stage in a young man’s passion for an idea when all that he looked on conformed to it and confirmed it in his mind. A set of chestnut ringlets recalled Byronic locks; a sigh, Byronic looks; a friendly wave, a Byronic gesture. His letters home to his sister had become so full of Byronic paradox and risque skits that she could hardly understand them anymore; and his speech was truffled with quotations from Childe Harold. Even Fizerly had declared that Compston was becoming quite a bore.
Over dinner-boiled beef, with a sorrel sauce-Yashim more than once found himself unwittingly echoing Fizerly’s opinion. It was not until Marta had cleared away the plates and set a decanter of port on the table that Palewski coughed and brought the Englishman to the theme in hand.
Compston put his fingers to his chin and talked in profile.
“Missilonghi, Excellency? The pride-and the shame of Greece.” He sighed. “The sultan had brought the armies of Egypt into Greece, as you’ll remember. They linked up with the Albanians, and Ibrahim Pasha drove the Greeks back into this forlorn spot, nothing but a marsh, really, running along the shore, and there, for a year, the banner of freedom fluttered above the wretched town, shattered by the Egyptian artillery, and cut off from all hope of aid.”
He poured himself a glass of port.
“I often try to imagine it. There’s a bit of coast where I’m from, Burnham Overy, with simply miles of dunes. Just imagine Burnham Overy with palm trees, and that’s Missilonghi. Hotter than Burnham Overy, of course. Otherwise the palm trees wouldn’t grow!”
“Quite so,” Palewski murmured.
“Of course we don’t get any Greeks in Norfolk, either. One or two in Norwich. I think you get a few Jews. A parcel of Greek fugitives-they’d cause quite a stir! Without doubt.”
He downed his glass and stared hard at the decanter.
Yashim coughed gently. “But Missilonghi, Mr. Compston.”
“Yes, of course. Missilonghi-there were thousands of Greek rebels there, men with their women and their children. Bit of a town. Too many tents. All protected by an earth bank. And every day they died, like Lord Byron himself. Cholera, hunger, Egyptian gunnery.” He squinted at his glass. “Not much like Burnham Overy at all, really,” he added.
“They couldn’t break out?”
“It’s like this, monsieur. In the first place, Ibrahim had them surrounded. In the second-well, the Greeks were divided among themselves, in spite of Lord Byron’s noble efforts to bring about a reconciliation. I happen to believe that’s what killed him-he was too generous with his energy and time, not to mention his money. Bringing the Suliotes up to scratch as soldiers. Trying to appease the rivalries between the factions.” Compston rubbed his eye with a finger. “The patience of that man! He knew what fools the Greeks were, but he never complained. Not to their very faces, at least. He died of a noble heart.”
Yashim cocked his head. “I heard he died of fever, and bad doctors.”
Compston looked aggrieved. “Well, that of course. We shouldn’t blame the doctors. Not really. I suppose they did their best,” he added bitterly.
Palewski harrumphed quietly. “More port, Mr. Compston.”
“Dr. Millingen attends the sultan now,” Yashim pointed out.
“Yes. But there were others.”
“I’d heard-Stephanitzes, perhaps? Dr. Lefevre?’
“Lefevre?” Compston frowned and shook his head. “Stephanitzes was the only Greek among ’em. Jenkins, Bruno.” Compston had forgotten his Byronic poses and was now leaning forward, frowning, like a small boy trying to remember his lesson. “And poor Meyer, too.”
“Poor Meyer?”
“Well, unfortunate. A Swiss. Byron said he had no manners. Banned him from coming to his house. Meyer edited a sort of journal. Chronica Hellenica, I think. He and Byron had differences about the paper.”
“And what happened to them all-after Byron’s death, I mean? At the end?”
“I’m sure you know, monsieur, how Missilonghi ended. They were down to gnawing hooves and bones, and they decided to break out. Two thousand rebels succeeded in pushing through the Turkish lines, and escaping to the hills. The others-I’m afraid they lost their nerve. Turned and fled back into Missilonghi. Ibrahim saw his chance. Unleashed his army. Albanians and Egyptians. Terrible, terrible times,” Compston murmured vaguely.
“But the doctors like Millingen, they got away?”
“Mostly. Millingen was captured a year later, by your lot. Spent a while in prison, then came on out here. Stephanitzes-I don’t know. Oh, Meyer didn’t make it, of course.”
“The unpopular Swiss?”
“That’s right. Not altogether unpopular, I should say,” Compston added, with a huge wink at the port. “According to Lord Byron’s letters, Meyer seduced a girl at Missilonghi.” He struck his knee. “Come to think of it, we had a case like that in Burnham Overy a few years ago. Caused a lot of bad blood, actually. Father fixed it up, in the end. Same way Byron did, once he’d got wind of the affair-I mean the one in Missilonghi; Byron never came to Burnham Overy. Meyer wanted to bluff it out, but Byron set the Suliotes on him. Blacked his eye, knocked out two of his teeth, and pretty much dragged him up the aisle. Quite right, too-Byron saw it as a question of morale.”
“So what happened to him?” Yashim asked.
“The chap in Burnham Overy?”
“Meyer.”
“Married the girl.”
“I mean afterward,” Yashim said, with infinite patience.
“Oh, I see what you’re after. No, he didn’t get out. Must have been included in the general massacre which followed the fall of the town.” Compston frowned and sat a little straighter. “A rather inglorious moment in your history, I’d say.”
“I don’t know that war ever reflects well on anyone. Except your friend Byron, of course.”
“Byron’s a special case, monsieur.” Compston took out a big lace handkerchief and blew his nose. “S’what genius means, I suppose.”
He sat, broad and glum, staring at the polished table. His eyelids fluttered and closed; and then, very slowly, he keeled forward, resting his forehead on the table and began to snore.
Palewski and Yashim regarded him in silence.
“I was about to offer coffee. Yashim?”
They took their coffee to the window seat, having turned Compston’s head so that his nose was not pressed flat against the mahogany. Outside it was dark, the distant sound of barking dogs mingling with the slow rumble of the English boy’s snores.
“Poor Byron!” the ambassador exclaimed. “One minute the chap had a headache-who wouldn’t with all those Greeks dunning him right, left, and center-and the next, dead. Bled and physicked by a pack of quacks. He didn’t stand a chance.”