Acquainted With the Night (9781101546000) (27 page)

“It's shaped in a circle,” he said, and walked over toward the north wall to examine a fresco.

“Jude?” She tugged the edge of his jacket. “What if that American woman calls the police?”

“They don't know we're staying at the Pension Arsenis. But we probably should move, and soon.”

“I don't see how she recognized me.” Caro raked her fingers through her hair. “Maybe I should've gone platinum blond. Aren't they supposed to have more fun?”

“She didn't recognize your outer appearance.” Jude reached for her hand. “It was your voice, your mannerisms.”

“Then I'm screwed.”

They left the church and turned up another stone staircase. Caro stopped next to a stone arch and watched a dove wheel through the haze. In the distance, the Piniós River twisted through the mountains. The wind blew over her face and she felt weightless, as if she could rise into the blue air.

“Now I understand why
Meteora
means ‘levitating,'” she said. The floating sensation continued as she turned up another series of curved steps. A pomegranate tree grew next to a terrace, and one fruit dangled from a limb. A monk with a white beard set a ladder next to the tree. The wind snapped his black robe as he climbed toward the fruit.

“Father?” Caro said.

The monk turned. “I am sorry, but the monastery closed at one,” he said. “Please, come back tomorrow at nine A.M.”

“We won't be here tomorrow,” Caro said.

The monk grasped the pomegranate. The branch dipped low and creaked, and then the fruit snapped free. The monk balanced it on his palm. “The monastery is closed,” he said, a bit louder this time. “I am late for prayers.”

He straightened his square hat. His eyes were the shape and color of Kalamata olives. Beneath them, deep grooves cut into the wrinkled flesh. He started to say something but seemed to reconsider. He slipped the pomegranate into his pocket, gripped the ladder, and started down.

“We were told that Father Thanatos lives at Varlaam,” Jude said.

The monk turned, blinking at Jude. “I have not heard that name in a while,” he said.

“Do you know him?” Jude asked.

“Indeed I do,” said the monk. “I
am
Father Thanatos. At least, I was. But that was many years ago. It was a nickname. I earned it by presiding over funerals in Kalambaka. My true name is Father Aeneas.”

“We've been looking for you,” Caro said.

“May I ask why?” The monk lowered his eyebrows.

“I was hoping you could explain,” she said, clasping her hands. How much should she tell?

“Pardon?” The monk looked confused.

“I think my uncle wanted me to find you,” Caro said.

“Who is your uncle, my child?”

“Nigel Clifford. He was an archaeologist.”

“Yes, yes. I know Sir Nigel. He is your uncle?”

She nodded.

“Why didn't you say this?” The monk smiled. “Sir Nigel and I are old friends. He brought you to Meteora once. I'm sorry, your name escapes me.”

“Caro Clifford.”

“Yes, yes. Now I remember.” Father Aeneas clapped his hands. “Where is Sir Nigel? Will he be joining us?”

Caro started to speak, but her throat tightened.

Jude put a steadying hand on her elbow. “Sir Nigel was killed,” he said.

The monk crossed himself and whispered something in Greek. “Please, follow me,” he said.

He climbed the wooden staircase, surprisingly agile for someone his age. Jude and Caro followed him into a breezeway with an arched, ribbed roof. The monastery spread out like a tiny town, with cobbled walkways, stone arches, storerooms, and the winch tower with nets and ladders.

The monk turned into a cloister and sat on a bench. He dragged a handkerchief from a deep pocket and wiped his face. In a raspy, wavery voice, he sang a few lines from “
O mio babbino caro
.” “It's a lovely aria, but you do not look like a
Caro
,” he said. “You look like a princess. A princess named Caroline. However, you were not named for a Puccini opera, were you?” He broke out into song again: “Oh, my dear papa . . .”

He's senile.
Caro looked up at Jude.

“When were you and Sir Nigel here?” Father Aeneas asked Caro. “Wasn't it twenty years ago? Or perhaps you were too young to remember.”

Caro had been young, but she recalled the trip. It was the year after her parents had died.

“Oh, my dear Caroline, I can see little flashes of that afternoon,” Father Aeneas said. “Your uncle carried you up the last forty steps to Varlaam. I gave you Turkish Delight—the sugar revived you. You were merrily turning cartwheels. Sir Nigel thought you would topple over the edge. I did, too. You had ceaseless energy.”

He broke off, gesturing at the cloister. It was surrounded on all four sides by the arched, covered walkways. “You played here. It was summer, and you picked cucumbers in my little garden. I still have one.”

He pointed to a straggly vine that snaked up a wall, and Caro saw a ghost of herself, a girl with thick dark blond curls, eating candy and picking cucumbers.

Father Aeneas made a humming noise, then he said, “Sir Nigel and I went into my study and looked at an unusual icon. If I am not mistaken, it belonged to you.”

Caro's head snapped up and she placed one hand on her bag. Jude touched her shoulder and said, “Show him.”

The monk's eyes widened as she pulled out the icon and removed the plastic. The sun glanced off the colors, sending up a blinding flash of gold.

“This is God's guiding hand,” Father Aeneas said. “May I hold it, please?”

Caro placed the icon on his lap.

“Look into the figure's eyes.” Father Aeneas pointed to the red-robed woman. “They will follow you, yes?”

Caro nodded. This was a detail she'd figured out long ago. “What else can you tell me?”

“About your icon? I am not an iconologist. But Greece is famous for them. Some of our brothers paint them for tourists. So I know a little.” He traced his fingers around the icon, his thick nails scratching over the mitered corners. “Every color is meaningful. Figures are also symbolic. I've never seen another one with a female.”

“Is she a saint or a martyr?” Caro asked.

“No, she is a metaphor,” the monk said.

“Of what?”

“I do not know.”

“What are these metal brackets?” Jude asked, pointing to the brass plates.

“Hinges,” Father Aeneas said. “This icon is part of a triptych.”

“What is that?” Jude squinted.

“Three individual panels of art. When you put them together they create a larger picture.” Father Aeneas placed the icon on his knees and framed it with his palms. He folded his hands, hiding the art, then parted them.

“Now you see it, now you don't,” he said. “That is the purpose of the hinges. Caroline's icon forms the center of the triptych.”

Caro stared at his hands. It seemed like a small detail, yet her uncle had never mentioned it. Had her icon been stolen? Ripped from its hinges by thieves, the panels sold on the black market?

“Where are the other panels?” she asked.

Father Aeneas ignored her and cut his eyes at Jude. “I didn't catch your name, young man.”

“I'm Jude. Caro's friend.”

“Come, let's move into the church,” Father Aeneas said. “It's on the other side of the cloister.”

Father Aeneas rose from the bench. Gripping the icon like a steering wheel, he led them across the cloister, into an archway, toward the church. Outside the door,
Agii Pandes
—“All Saints”—was carved into the stone.

Jude opened the door, and they stepped inside. Light streamed from high windows, illuminating swirling dust motes. On the left wall, candlelight flickered over a fresco that showed St. Sisois kneeling over the bones of Alexander the Great. The monk handed the icon to Jude and nodded at the fresco.

“Life passes on a butterfly's wing,” he said. “Death floats behind it on a ceaseless wind.”

He moved across the nave. “I came here before the Second World War. I stood on the balcony and watched Kalambaka go up in flames. The smoke was so thick I felt sure God would hide Meteora from the Nazis. But they came. The monasteries were picked clean. Varlaam held many treasures. Crucifixes, codices, icons, gold communion cups—all gone. They even took the monastery's bell.”

“Was it returned?” Caro remembered the bell she'd heard earlier.

“Never. A replacement was donated.” Father Aeneas pointed toward the south nave. “Do you see the three-paneled icon? It is a triptych. A classic example of dualism.”

“Did Hieronymus Bosch paint it?” Caro asked.

“Correct.” The monk's small yellow teeth flashed as he smiled. “A reproduction, of course. Notice the demons are blue.”

“They aren't frightening in the least,” Jude said.

“Those imps aren't what they seem,” Father Aeneas said. “They represent every possible emotion. Each demon is unique. The clergy were horrified by Bosch's work. They denounced him as an alchemist and linked him to the Cathars.”

“Cathars?” Jude asked.

“French heretics,” Father Aeneas said. “I'm not sure of their origins. But they developed quite a following in the eleventh century. They stopped tithing, and Rome threw a fit. Pope Innocent sent crusaders to teach the backsliders a lesson. It got out of hand, and the Cathars were butchered.”

“Was that the Albigensian Crusade?” Caro asked.

“Indeed.” Father Aeneas smiled. “You're a scholar like your uncle?”

“Not anymore.”

“No? A pity.” The monk tucked his hands into his sleeves. “The Albigensian Crusade ignited the Grand Inquisition.”

French history wasn't Caro's métier, but heretics were. She nodded politely. Jude gazed at the Bosch triptych, leaning closer to study the demons.

Father Aeneas pointed to the south wall. “You will appreciate this fresco. It depicts Jesus in the wilderness. The devil is here, too, causing mischief. More duality. Good and evil, with precious little in between. If you mix white and black paint, you create gray. You will never see this color in an icon.”

“So, in the world of medieval art, duality is good and evil?” Jude asked. “Or anything with two sides?”

“Both,” Father Aeneas said. “You've heard of yin and yang?”

“Of course.” Jude nodded.

“Augustine believed that God created darkness so we'd be sure to notice the light.”

“That's a hell of a way to go about it,” Jude said, hastily adding, “Sorry, Father.”

“I am not offended.” The monk looked up at the fresco. “I hear this daily. Tourists are shocked and fascinated by the graphic art. They wonder why pictures of devils and demons appear in a holy place.”

“More duality?” Jude asked.

“It means the devil can be found anywhere,” Father Aeneas said. “Even in a monastery.”

Father Aeneas fed them figs, cheese, and crusty bread with jam. Then he went off to his prayers. He caught up with them at dusk and led them up a spiral staircase, where blue light spilled through the arched windows. At the top of the stairs, Caro saw tall bookshelves.

“Welcome to my library,” Father Aeneas said. “Varlaam's manuscripts were removed to Saint Stephen's and Metamorphosis,” he said. “Theft is still a problem. Even the holy are tempted. We had to put the books behind bars—literally. But I managed to keep a few.”

“It's an impressive collection.” Caro ran her finger along a shelf, over books with ragged spines or no spines at all. At the other end of the room was a niche with glass doors. Inside, a book lay open on a pedestal, the gilt pages opened to brightly colored drawings.

“It's a twelfth-century Byzantine Psalter,” Father Aeneas said. “It was stolen from Varlaam during the war. Years later, it was found in Berlin. God's goodness brought it back to us.”

Jude walked over to the glass. “It looks well preserved.”

“It's in a place where light can't destroy it,” Father Aeneas said. “Even ultraviolet light is a danger.”

“Do you keep it open all the time?”

“I do. Some people bind them. However, this manuscript has survived a long while. It will be here after I am gone. Would you like to touch it?” Father Aeneas slid open the glass partition.

“Er, no.” Jude shrank back.

“Go ahead.” The monk stepped away from the niche, his robe billowing.

Jude moved forward, and his fingers grazed the page. “It feels like silk.”

“It's vellum. The leaves were made from sheepskin. Turn the page—notice the roughness? It was made from the woolly part of the hide.”

Jude and Caro exchanged glances.

“Notice how the handwritten text only covers a small percentage of each leaf.” Father Aeneas waved one gnarled finger. “See how the large paintings dominate each leaf? Illustrated manuscripts were pictorial tomes for the illiterate—a brilliant way for peasants to understand God's word.”

Father Aeneas walked to a long pine table and cleared a stack of papers. He smiled up at Caro. “Let's take a look at your icon, shall we?”

She set it down. The red-robed martyr seemed large, out of proportion to the background—a starry sky, castle, battlefield, and part of what appeared to be a turret. Behind the turret, sharp-edged mountains plunged into a distinctive V.

“Remember, symbolism is in every detail,” Father Aeneas said.