“We’re not on the mainland,” he said, “we’re on an island. I’m afraid this fellow reckons we’ll be here for several days, at least. This wind is a sirocco, and they’re expecting it to blow up a storm.”
Chapter 9
Cordelia wished she had been able to learn some Greek from Captain Vasiliadis. All around her in the cool, dim, low-ceilinged room, men and women and children chattered to James Preston, giving her an occasional smiling nod. After a meal of fried octopus washed down with a rough red wine, she was drowsy. She leaned her elbows on the table, her head drooping.
A hand tugged on her arm. She blinked up into a kind, wrinkled face, the mother of their host, Kostas, as she had managed to gather. The old woman said something and tugged again.
“Iakov?” She had to admit she could not very well call him Mr. Preston when she was pretending to be his sister.
“She is saying something about a bed and sleep. You look as if you can do with both.”
“You won’t leave, go to another house?”
“I’ll be here when you wake up, I promise. By then I’ll be able to tell you the name of every boy taken from the village to join the Turkish army in the past three hundred years. Sleep well, Cordelia, and don’t fret.”
Her Christian name sounded shockingly familiar on his lips, but she was too sleepy to care. She followed the old woman up stone stairs to a room where a huge bed with an elaborately carved head and foot awaited her. Her hostess patted the headboard proudly, and with great care folded back a coverlet of woven wool, patterned in colours bright in spite of the closed shutters. Beneath were reasonably clean, if not fresh, cotton sheets over a mountainous featherbed. It looked like heaven to Cordelia.
As Mrs. Kostas—for want of a better name—started to help her take off her kaftan, she remembered the purse she wore beneath it. Had James told people everything they owned had been stolen? If so, he would just have to pretend they had misunderstood. Surely it would not seem odd that a Turk had failed to search a woman as thoroughly as a man, had even failed to envisage a woman carrying a significant sum.
Besides, she would feel guilty not paying the villagers for any goods they were able to provide. Mrs. Kostas was quite neatly and respectably dressed in a widow’s black, but many of those Cordelia had seen below wore clothes scarcely better than rags. It must be a poor island, she thought, recalling the tiny, stony fields and the rugged interior.
With obvious admiration, Mrs. Kostas fingered the heavy silk of the kaftan before draping it neatly over a stool. She tactfully looked the other way while Cordelia untied the purse and dropped it on top. She kept the long waistcoat on, however, to hide the bulge of the diamond cloth about her middle.
“Thank you, Kyria,” she said as she climbed into bed.
The old woman patted her shoulder and said in a sympathetic voice, “
Bulgar, bulgar
,” then went away.
The sirocco wailed around the house, whistled through the gaps in the shutters and made them creak and tap against each other. From below came a murmur of conversation and an occasional laugh. The sounds faded from Cordelia’s consciousness and she slept.
When she woke, she was so stiff that putting her kaftan back on was a struggle. She untied her braid and shook out her long hair before she remembered she had no comb. Time to start making a list of all the things she needed to buy, for both James and herself. It wasn’t at all proper for her to be paying for clothes for a gentleman, but she would have to, after the story he had told.
She realized she had not the least idea whether he actually had any money or not. She had paid for Ibrahim’s passage on the
Amphitrite
, and James had not suggested reimbursing her. Had he planned all along to hang on her purse strings all the way to England?
If so, she decided, she would just have to let him. Any travelling-companion, even one more scoundrel than gentleman, was preferable to going on alone. Without him, her arrival in this village would have been greeted with suspicion at best—if she had ever arrived. She shuddered as she remembered the cliff.
The room below, lamp-lit now, was as crowded as before. A black-robed priest with a long grey beard sat at the table with James, Kostas, his two grown sons, and three other men. As Cordelia entered, they all looked up and called out greetings, as did the huddle of women in the corner. Before the battery of eyes, she felt herself blushing.
James jumped up and came towards her. “Your hair is beautiful,” he murmured. “Time I washed the lamp-black out of mine, though I cannot match your glorious gold. You should wear it loose more often.”
The warmth in her cheeks increased. His back was to the light and she was not certain whether he was teasing, genuinely admiring, or buttering her up for some reason of his own. “I have no comb,” she said.
“I’m sure that can be remedied.” Turning to the young woman who had emerged from the group, he made gestures as if combing his hair and pointed at Cordelia. “This is Kostas’s second wife,” he told her, “consecutive, not simultaneous. He’s the wealthiest man in the village, and the most important apart from the priest. Be nice to her.”
“Of course! How do I say thank you?”
“
Efcharisto
.”
The young woman nodded. With a shy smile, she beckoned to Cordelia and led her back upstairs. She insisted on combing and plaiting her hair for her. Cordelia discovered that her name was Ioanna and that she was pregnant, an easy concept to convey by sign language.
She was a gentle creature, very much under her mother-in-law’s thumb but adoring and adored by her vigorous if middle-aged husband. In the days that followed, he would beam with pride when he came upon her sitting with Cordelia, carding wool from their small flock of sheep as she taught the foreign woman the rudiments of Greek.
One word Ioanna was unable to explain was “Bulgar,” as used by the elder Mrs. Kostas. Cordelia asked James what it meant.
He grinned. “Just what it sounds like: Bulgar—Bulgarian. They decided that’s what we are, chiefly because of our hair.” He ran his fingers through his light brown crop. “I see no need to disillusion them. The Greeks have their differences with the Bulgarians, but they’re all Orthodox Christians under the Ottoman heel, so it suits us well enough.”
English or Bulgarian, they were both dressed as Greek peasants when at last the wind dropped and they went aboard Kostas’s fishing yawl. They had changes of clothes, too, as well as other necessaries, all packed up in two sturdy baskets with hinged lids. Yet Cordelia’s purse was very little lighter, for the villagers refused to accept payment. She had given the priest, Father Georgios, some money to help those in need, and with difficulty she had persuaded Ioanna to take the kaftan.
Her Turkish shift, waistcoat, and trousers she kept. The shift protected her delicate skin against the coarse homespun of the peasant garments; the waistcoat would help keep her warm—winter was approaching; and the trousers were to wear in case she again found herself having to climb ladders or cliffs.
Settling forward of the single mast of the small vessel, Cordelia glanced up at the headland, towering over the village, as precipitous on this side as the other.
“I still have not thanked you,” she said to James as he seated himself beside her. She had not seen much of him in the three days since their arrival. The Greek men and women were not strictly segregated like the Turks but they tended to go their separate ways.
“For what?” he asked, surprised.
“For my escape from the next cove. I could not have climbed out alone, nor with only Ibrahim to help.”
“I expect you would have done it somehow. I don’t believe I have thanked you for my escape from Istanbul. Efcharisto.”
She smiled. “Efcharisto.”
“We need each other,” he said, gazing deeply into her eyes. His were such a fascinating dark shade of blue, like the sea on this cloudless morning but warmer.
Too warm. Cordelia tore her gaze away and waved to Ioanna, who stood on the ancient stone quayside wiping tears from her cheeks with her shawl. Half the village was there to bid them farewell, even Father Georgios, with his pectoral cross raised in blessing.
Kostas kissed his young wife and jumped aboard, roaring an order. Pushing off, his sons raised the sails. With Kostas at the tiller, they sailed out of the harbour before a gentle breeze, westward-bound for Stavros.
In Stavros, Kostas had explained, they might find a ship going to Piraeus. If not, they could hire horses to take them to the great port of Thessaloniki, an easy ride forty or fifty miles farther west, across the peninsula. Cordelia was not sure she regarded fifty miles of even the flattest country as an easy ride. An hour or two was the longest she had ever spent on horseback. But they could not expect Kostas to leave his beloved Ioanna for long enough to sail south around the peninsula and up the Gulf of Thermai to Thessaloniki.
Sighing, Cordelia wondered what it was like to be so loved.
Beyond the shelter of the headlands, the breeze was stiffer. The yawl cut through the sparkling waves with a lively rocking motion. A school of silvery flying fish soared across their bow, followed by several porpoises which leapt and cavorted as if the pursuit was more for fun than food.
“Oh, are they not marvellous?” Cordelia cried, turning to James. He gave her a wan grin and swallowed. “You are feeling seasick? You poor thing! Would it help to lie down?”
He shook his head miserably. “Not much,” he groaned, then suddenly dived across to the side of the boat. Leaning over, he was violently sick.
Cordelia reached for the nearest water-bottle and went after him. She damped her handkerchief, gently wiped his greenish face, and held the bottle to his lips. He rinsed out his mouth, spat over the side.
“Drink a little,” she urged.
“I’ll only bring it up.”
“It is better if you have something in your stomach to bring up. Just a sip or two.”
Meekly he obeyed. “A fine escort I am,” he croaked.
“I have heard Lord Nelson was always indisposed at the start of a voyage,” Cordelia said consolingly.
“Indisposed!” He clutched the side with both hands and leaned over again, retching.
Cordelia glanced astern to see what Kostas and his sons were making of poor James’s agonies. All three were gazing southward, shading their eyes and looking worried. She followed their gaze. Not the Turkish Navy! she prayed.
Far to the south, the sky was no longer blue. The line of slate-grey clouds looked alarmingly familiar.
Kostas handed over the tiller and came forward, ducking under the boom as it swung. Hands on hips, balancing with the tilt and roll of the boat, he stared down at the oblivious James. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he shrugged his shoulders and turned to Cordelia.
“Kyria,” he began. He spoke slowly and carefully and aided by his gesticulations she picked up a word here and there. As she had guessed, another sirocco was blowing up, or perhaps the present calm had proved to be only a lull. The voyage to Stavros had become dangerous, maybe impossible. He pointed ahead, and she realized they had already turned northward, flanking the island instead of sailing away from it.
“Do you understand what he’s saying?” she asked James urgently.
“Yes,” he grunted. “He’s taking us to a mainland town, a small port, and it’s much closer than Stavros. Thank heaven!”
With the sirocco chasing them across the steely waves under a louring sky, they reached the town by mid afternoon. Leaving his sons to guard his precious boat, Kostas took them to a taverna just beyond the harbour. He sat them down at a table, their baskets at their feet, and embarked upon a spirited discussion with the landlord, involving as usual much waving of arms. They both spoke much too fast for Cordelia to follow.
When he returned to their table, he slowed his speech, but she still had to turn to James for an explanation.
“He says we are in luck, there is a mule train leaving for Thessaloniki in the morning. Or we can wait until the storm blows over and hire a boat.” He faltered momentarily but went nobly on, “The choice is yours.”
Regarding his still pallid face, the arms clasped protectively about his middle, Cordelia set aside her qualms at the prospect of an even longer ride. “You have had enough of the sea for the present. Let us try the mules.”
James looked distinctly relieved, but he warned her, “It will probably take several days longer.”
“Perhaps we shall at least get where we are going!” she said tartly. “Aesop was Greek, was he not? I daresay he modelled his fable of the hare and the tortoise on the swift ship and the slow mule train.”
He summoned up a weak laugh. “I daresay. We’ve not had much luck, have we? I’ll find out how we go about joining the mule train.”
Kostas would organize all. They must wait here and he’d return shortly to give them the details. He had already arranged beds for them for tonight, here with his good friend Spiro—he waved at the plump innkeeper, who nodded and bowed and beamed.
“What was it he whispered?” Cordelia asked as Kostas strode out.
“He’s telling everyone we are ‘foreign Greeks,’ settlers from Anatolia, because here on the mainland many people are prejudiced against Bulgars.”
“How I should like simply to be English again! Would it not be easier just to admit it? Surely England is too far away for prejudices to have arisen against us.”
“And too far for easy explanations of our presence here, besides which, the Turks are looking for an Englishman.”
“They know you are English? I did not realize that.”
“Yes, that’s why they...uh, why I regretted your telling your servants I’m English—remember?—and I why have to pose as absolutely anything else.”
What had he been going to say? Cordelia was about to demand to know when the innkeeper came over to ask if they wanted something to eat or drink. Still queasy, James rejected the offer with a shudder.
“You will feel much more the thing if you eat,” Cordelia advised him. “Something simple like bread and fruit, and tea to drink, if they have it, rather than coffee or wine.”