The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

A curious hush had fallen on the others, and Maria's words were audible to them all. At her question they rose to their feet and came a little nearer, and a buzzing whisper rose and died away again.

"Corn for the needy or corn for the Turk?" asked Priketes, while round there was a silence that could have been cut with a knife.

"Black corn for the Turk. Let there be no famine, and have fifteen hundred men ready to carry it when the signal comes, and that will be soon. Not far will they have to go. It will be needed here, at Kalavryta."

Maria slipped down from her mule and spoke low to Priketes.

"And oh, father, there is something more, but I cannot remember the words I was to use; but I know what it means, for Mitsos, the nephew of Nicholas, told me."

Father Priketes smiled.

"Say it then, my daughter."

"It is this: if you have guns stored in readiness southward, get them back. It will not happen just as Nicholas expected. You will want all your men and arms here."

"It is well. What will the signal be?"

"I know not; but in a few days Mitsos will come from Patras. Oh, you will know him when you see him – as tall as a pillar, and a face like a spring morning or a wind on the hill – and to see him does a body good. He knows and will tell you."

"I will expect Mitsos, then," said Priketes. "You will stay here to-night; there shall be made ready for you the great guest-room – for you are an honored guest – the room where the daughter of an emperor once lodged."

Maria hesitated.

"I could get back to some village to-night," she said. "I ought not to delay longer than I need."

"And shame our hospitality?" said Priketes. "Besides, you are a conspirator now, my daughter, and you must use the circumspection of one. What manner of return would you make at dead of night to where you slept before, with no cause to give? To-morrow you shall go back, and say how pleased your novice brother was to see you – and the lie be laid to the account of the Turk, who fill our mouths perforce with these things – and how you had honor of the monks. Give your mule to the lad, my daughter. It shall be well cared for."

So Maria had her chance, and took it. An adventure and a quest for the good of her country were offered her, and she embraced them. For the moment she rose to the rank of those who work personally for the good of countries and great communities, and then passed back into her level peasant life again. Goura, as it turned out, took no part in the deeds that were coming. Its land was land of the monastery, and the Turks never visited its sequestered valley with cruelty, oppression, or their lustful appetites. Yet the great swelling news that came to the inhabitants of that little mountain village, only as in the ears of children a sea-shell speaks of remotely breaking waves, had to Maria a reality and a nearness that it lacked to others, and her life was crowned with the knowledge that she had for a moment laid her finger harmoniously on the harp which made that glorious symphony.

Mitsos' work at Patras was easily done. Germanos was delighted with the idea of the forged letter from the Turk, and was frankly surprised to hear that the notion was born of the boy's brain. Being something of a scholar, he quoted very elegantly the kindred notion of Athene, who was wisdom, springing full-grown from the brain of Zeus, for Mitsos' idea, so he was pleased to say, was complete in itself, mature from its birth. Mitsos did not know the legend to which the primate referred, and so he merely expressed his gratification that the scheme was considered satisfactory. The affair of the beacons took more time, for Mitsos on his journey south back to Panitza would have to make arrangements for their kindling, and it was thus necessary that their situation should be accessible to villages where Nicholas was known, and where the boy could find some one to undertake to fire the beacon as soon as the next beacon south was kindled. Furthermore, though Germanos knew the country well, it would be best for Mitsos to verify the suitability of the places chosen, "for," as the archbishop said, "you might burn down all the pine-woods on Taygetus, and little should we reck of it if Taygetus did not happen to be visible from Lycaon; but we should stand here like children with toy swords till the good black corn grew damp and the hair whitened on our temples."

As at present arranged, Mitsos would be back at Panitza on the 10th of March, after which, as Nicholas had told him, there would be more work to do before he could go for Yanni at Tripoli. It was, therefore, certain – taking the shortest estimate – that the beacon signal could not possibly occur till March 20th, but that on that evening and every evening after the signalmen must be at their posts waiting for the flame to spring up on Taygetus. For the beacons between Patras and Megaspelaion there would be no difficulty; two at high points on the mountains would send the message all the way, and the only doubtful point was where to put the beacon which should be intermediate between that on Taygetus and that on Helmos, which latter could signal to one directly above the monastery. Germanos was inclined to think that a certain spur of Lycaon, lying off the path to the right, some four miles from Andritsaena, and standing directly above an old temple, which would serve Mitsos as a guiding point, would answer the purpose. If so, it could be worked from Andritsaena, and the priest there, at whose house Mitsos would find a warm welcome if he stayed for the night, would certainly undertake it.

Mitsos went off again the next day, with the solemn blessing of the archbishop in his ears and the touch of kindly hands in his, and reached Megaspelaion in two days. Here he had news of Maria's safe arrival. "And a brave lass she is," said Father Priketes. The business of the beacons was soon explained, and next morning Father Priketes himself accompanied Mitsos on his journey to the top of the pass above the monastery, in order to satisfy himself that from there both the points fixed upon – that on the spur of Helmos, and also that towards Patras – were visible.

Their way lay through the pine-woods where Maria had come three days before, and a hundred little streams ran bubbling down through the glens, and the thick lush grass of the spring-time was starred with primroses and sweet-smelling violets. Above that lay an upland valley, all in cultivation, and beyond a large, bleak plateau of rock, on the top of which the beacon was to burn. Another half-hour's climb saw them there, a strange, unfriendly place, with long parallel strata of gray rock, tipped by some primeval convulsion onto their side, and lying like a row of razors. In the hollows of the rocks the snow was still lying, but the place was alive with the whisper of new-born streams. A few pine-trees only were scattered over these gaunt surfaces, but in the shelter of them sprang scarlet wind-flowers and hare-bells, which shivered on their springlike stalks.

A few minutes' inspection was enough to show that the place was well chosen – to the south rose the great mass of Helmos, and they could clearly see a sugarcone rock, the proposed beacon site, standing rather apart from the main mountain, some fifteen miles to the south, just below which lay the village of Leondari, whither Mitsos was bound, and towards Patras the contorted crag above Mavromati. Here, so Priketes promised, should a well-trusted monk watch every evening from March 20th onward, and as soon as he saw the blaze on Helmos, he would light his own beacon, waiting only to see it echoed above Mavromati, and go straight back with the news to the monastery. And the Turks at Kalavryta, so said Priketes – for it was on Kalavryta that the first blow was to descend – should have cause to remember the vengeance of the sword of God which His sons should wield.

CHAPTER V

THE VISION AT BASSAE

From the village of Leondari, held in a half-circle of the foothills of Helmos, where was to be the second link in the chain of beacons, it was impossible to see Andritsaena; but the mass of Mount Lycaon stood up fine and clear behind where Andritsaena was, and a series of smaller peaks a little to the west would prove, so Mitsos hoped, to be the hills above the temple. He and his host climbed the beacon-hill and took very sedulous note of these, and next morning the lad set off at daybreak to Andritsaena, which he reached in a day and a half. The country through which he travelled, an unkind and naked tract, was not suspected by the Turks to be tinged with any disaffection to their benignant rule, and his going was made without difficulty or accident. He found welcome at the house of the priest to whom Germanos had given him a letter, and after dinner the two rode off, on a fair, cloudless afternoon, to the hills above the temple, to verify its visibility from Taygetus on the south and the crag of Helmos on the north. An Englishman, whom the priest described as a "tall man covered with straps and machines," had been there a year or two before making wonderful drawings of the place, and had told them it was a temple to Apollo, and that the ancient Greek name for it was Bassae. "Yet I like not the place," said Father Zervas.

An hour or so after their departure, fleecy clouds began to spin themselves in the sky, and as they went higher they found themselves involved in the folds of a white fabric of mist, which lay as thick as a blanket over the hill-side, and through which the sun seemed to hang white and unluminous, like a china plate. This promised but ill for the profit of their ride, but Zervas said it was worth while to push on; those mists would be scattered in a moment if the wind got up; he had seen them roll away as the housewife rolls up the bed-linen. But as they got higher the mist seemed to thicken, and the sun was expunged, and when, by the priest's computation, they must be near the temple, they could scarcely see ten yards before them, and the gaunt, contorted oak-trees marched swiftly into their narrow field of vision, and out again, like ghosts in torment. Shoulder after shoulder of gray hill-side sank beneath them, dripping with the cold, thick mist, and unutterably waste, when, after moving ten minutes or more across a featureless flank of hill, gigantic shadows peered at them from in front, a great range of columns faced them, and they were there.

Mitsos' pony, tired with the four days' journey, was lagging behind, and Mitsos had got off to relieve it on the steeper part of the ascent, when suddenly there came from out of the chill, blank fog a scream like that of a lost soul. For one moment a superstitious fear clutched at the boy, and his pony, startled, went off at a nimbler pace to join the other, and Mitsos had to break into a run to keep up. Then suddenly the sun stared whitely through the mists, and in five seconds more the wind, which had screamed so shrilly, was upon them. In a moment the hill-side was covered with flying wreaths of vapor, which the wind tore smaller and smaller till there was nothing left of them; it ripped off ribbons from the skirts of the larger clouds, which it drove like herded sheep down the valleys, and as Mitsos gained the ridge where the temple stood, a brilliant sun sat in cloudless blue, looking down upon the great gray columns. At their feet in every direction new valleys, a moment before muffled in mist, were being carved out among the hill-sides, and already far to the south the plain of Kalamata, rimmed with a dim, dark sea, sparkled green through thirty miles of crisp air. Down in the valley through which they had come some conflicting current of air tilted the mist up in a tall column of whirling vapor, as if from some great stewing-pot below, and as it streamed up into the higher air it melted and dissolved away, and in five minutes the whole land – north, south, east, and west – was naked to the incomparable blue.

Mitsos gazed in wonder at the gray columns, which seemed more to have grown out of the hill than to have been built by the hands of men; but the priest hurried him on.

"It is as I hoped," said he; "the wind has driven the clouds off; but they may come back. We must go quickly to the top of the hill."

The lad left his pony grazing by the columns and ran up the brow of the hill some two hundred feet above the end of the temple. Northward Helmos lifted a snowy finger into the sky, and clean as a cameo on its south-eastern face stood the cone above Leondari, as if when the hills were set upon the earth by the stir of the forces of its morning it had been placed there for their purpose. Then looking southward they saw Taygetus rise shoulder above shoulder into the blue, offering a dozen vantage points. But Father Zervas was a cautious man.

"It seems clear enough, Mitsos," he said; "but Taygetus is a big place. This will I do for greater safety. You go straight south, you say, and will be at Kalamata two evenings from now, and on the third night you will sleep at some village on the pass crossing Taygetus over to Sparta. On that night directly after sundown I will kindle a beacon here, and keep it kindled for two hours, and in that time you will be able to choose a well-seen place for the blaze on Taygetus. Look, it is even as I said, the mists gather again; but the winds of God have favored us, and our work is done."

Even as he spoke a long tongue of mist shot up from the valley below, and came licking up the hill like the spent water of a wave on a level beach, and Mitsos ran down quickly in order to find his pony in case it had strayed even thirty or forty yards, before the clouds swallowed them up again. But he found it where he had left it, browsing contentedly on the spicy tufts of thyme and sweet mountain grass, and for a couple of minutes more, before the earth and sky were blotted out, he stared amazedly at the tall gray ruins which stood there crowning the silence and strength of the hills, still unknown to all but a few travellers and to the shepherds that fed their flocks in summer on the hill-tops – a memorial of the life and death of the worship of beauty, and the god of sunlight and health and imperishable youth.

He waited there till the priest joined him, and was surprised to see him cross himself as he passed by the door into the temple, and asked why he did so.

"It is a story of a devil," he said, "which folks tell about here. Whether I believe it or no, I know not, and so I am careful. We will make haste down this valley, for it is not good to be here after night."

The mists had risen again over the whole hill-side, but not thickly, and as they turned to go Mitsos looking back saw a strange shaft of light streaming directly out of the ruined door of the temple – the effect, no doubt, of the sun, which was near its setting, striking through some thin layer of cloud.

"Look," he said to the priest, "one might almost think the temple was lit from within."

Father Zervas looked round, and when he saw it dropped lamentably off his horse and onto his knees on the ground, and began muttering prayers, crossing himself the while.

Mitsos looked at him in surprise, and saw that his face was deadly pale, and a strangling anguish gripped at the muscles of his throat. The light cast through the temple door meantime had been choked by the gathering mists, and when Father Zervas looked up from his prayers it was gone.

"Quick, quick!" he cried to Mitsos; "it is not good to be here," and mounting on his pony he fairly clattered down the hill-side, and did not draw bridle till they had reached the main road from Andritsaena.

Mitsos followed, half amused, but conscious of a lurking fear in his mind, a fear bred by the memory of the winter evenings of his childhood when he used to hear strange stories of shapes larger than human, which had been seen floating like leaves in the wind round the old temples on the Acropolis, and cries that came from the hills of Ægina, where stood the house of the god, but no human habitation, at the sound of which the villagers in the hamlets below would bolt their doors and crouch fearfully round the fire, "making the house good," as they said, by the reiterated sign of the cross. Then as he grew older his familiarity with morning and evening and night in lonely places had caused these stories to be half forgotten, or remembered only as he remembered the other terrors and pains of childhood – the general distrust of the dark, and the storms that came swooping down from the gaunt hills above Nauplia. But now when he saw the flying skirts of Father Zervas waving dimly from the mist in front, and heard the hurried clatter of his pony's feet, he followed at a good speed, and in some confusion of mind. Zervas had stopped on reaching the high-road, and here Mitsos caught him up.

"Ah, ah!" he gasped, "but it is a sore trial the Lord has sent me, for I am no braver than a hare when it comes to dealings with that which is no human thing. It is even as Demetri said, for the evil one is there, the one whom he saw under the form of a young man, very fair to look upon, but evil altogether, a son of the devil."

And he wiped a dew of horror from his brow.

Mitsos must have felt disposed to laugh had not the man's terror been so real.

"But what did you see, father?" he asked. "For me I saw naught but a light shining through the door."

"That was it, that was it," said Zervas, "and I – I have promised Germanos to see to the beacon business, and on that hill shall I have to watch while perhaps the young man, evil and fair, watches for me below. I cannot pass this way, for my heart is cold water at the thought. I shall have to climb up from the other valley, so that I pass not the place; and then, perhaps, with the holy cross on my breast and the image of the Crucified in my hand, I shall go unhurt."

"But what was it Demetri saw?" asked Mitsos.

"It was this way," said Father Zervas, who was growing a little more collected as they attained a greater distance from the temple. "One evening, a spring evening, as it might be to-day, Demetri, of our village, whom I know, was driving his sheep down from the hill above the temple, where the beacon will be; and, being later than he knew, the sun had set ere he came down to where the temple stands; therefore, as he could not herd the sheep in the dark down the glen, he bethought himself to encamp there, for the night was warm and he had food enough with him and wine for two men. Inside, the temple is of two rooms, and into the hindermost of these he penned the sheep, and in the other he lit a sparkle of fire and sat himself down to eat his supper. And having finished his supper he lay down to sleep, but no wink of sleep came near him, and feeling restless, he sat up and smoked awhile. But his unrest gained on him, twitching at his limbs and bidding him go; so out he fared on the hill-side to see if he could find sleep there – or, at any rate, get air – for it seemed to him that the temple had grown unseasonably warm, and that it was filled with some sweet and subtle perfume. Outside it was cooler, and so, laying himself in a hollow of the hill opposite the temple gate, he nestled down among the grasses and again tried to sleep.

"But it seemed to him that from below there came dim songs such as men sing on feast-days, and looking down to see whence such voices came, he saw, even as you saw and I, a strong great light shining out of the temple door, and next moment came a clattering and pattering of feet, and out through the door rushed his sheep, which must have leaped the barrier of boughs he had put up, and ran, scattering, dumb, and frightened, in all directions. He got up and hurried down to stop any that were left, for as for herding those that were gone he might as well have tried to herd the moon-beams, for the night was dark but for the space illuminated by that great light that shone out from the temple. So down he ran, but at the temple door he stopped, for in the centre of the great chamber stood one whom it dazzled his eyes to look upon. Fair was he and young, and lithe as a deer on the mountains, and from his face there shone a beauty and a glory which belong not to mortal man; and the lines of his body were soft with the graciousness of youth, but firm with the strength of a man. Over one shoulder was slung a quiver of gold, and his left hand held a golden bow; golden sandals were on his feet, and on his head a wreath of wild laurel. For the rest, he was as naked as the night of full moon in May, and as glorious. Two fingers of the hand which held the bow were rested on the head of one of Demetri's rams, the father of the flock, and the beast stood there quiet and not afraid. No other light was there in the temple, but all the splendor which turned the place to a summer noonday sprang from him. Only in front of the youth still smouldered the fire by which Demetri had eaten his supper, and that seemed in the blaze that filled the temple to have burned low and dim, like a candle in the sunlight, and a little blue smoke from it came towards him, full of some wonderful sweet perfume. The sheep, frightened, had collected again round him, and in that light he could see to right and left score upon score of their white heads and twitching ears; they stood close to him and huddled, yet all looked at that immortal thing within the temple. And as he stood there, stricken to stone, marvelling at the beauty of the youth, and forgetting in his wonder to be afraid, the god – yet no god was he, but only evil," said Zervas, hastily, again crossing himself – "raised his eyes to him and said:

"'Thou that makest a sheep-pen of my sanctuary, art thou not afraid to do this thing?

"But he spoke, so said Demetri, not harshly, and in the lustre of his eyes there was something so matchless and beyond compare that he knelt down and said:

"'Forgive me, Lord, for I knew not that it was thine.'

"Then said the other: