Scandal's Daughter (19 page)

As a result, next morning before setting out they bought a tent, a compass, a cooking pot, and a tin bucket to melt snow for the animals to drink. They also hired the guide he recommended.

Dinko was a blithe young Macedonian who had left his isolated village to make his fortune in the big city of Skoplje. He scraped a living guiding travellers along the mountain tracks to his home, which lay on the most direct, if not the easiest, route to the Dalmatian coast.

He agreed, for a modest sum, to lead James and Cordelia the thirty miles to his village and as far beyond. After that, they must rely upon finding in each village a guide to the next.

Besides his knowledge of the way, Dinko’s chief virtues were cheerfulness and a total lack of inquisitiveness. He expressed no interest whatever in his clients’ affairs. If he guessed that Cordelia was not the boy she tried to appear, as seemed probable in the circumstances, he considered it none of his business. Having discovered her excessive modesty in regard to bodily functions, he was careful always to disappear behind a rock or a bush to relieve himself. Nor did he wish to share the tent, an effeminate invention, however cold it was outside.

And it was cold. Soon after leaving Skoplje, they started up a single-file path zigzagging across a steep, rugged slope. Before they had gone far, a glance across the river gorge at the north-facing crags on the south side revealed snow clinging in patches wherever the rock was flat enough to hold it. The brigands’ cloaks and sheepskins were now necessities without which they’d have fared badly.

As the beasts plodded upward, Dinko’s estimate of ten miles a day began to look optimistic, not meagre, as James had supposed. Worse, he reckoned ten miles on the ground equalled at most three in a straight line. The two hundred miles on the map between Skoplje and Ragusa—Dubrovnik the Slavs called it—might easily stretch to a thousand.

James kept his conclusions from Cordelia, but she was no fool. She stopped talking about Christmas in Italy. Had he been mad to let Hamid persuade him to bring her this way?

The zigzag climb ended in a plateau, inches deep in snow and littered with boulders. The few, leafless bushes were stunted, for lack of soil, according to Dinko. Without him they would never have found the track which meandered for several miles to the start of the descent.

Barren plateaux cut by deep, narrow, wooded valleys; paths carved into the sides of ravines or climbing dizzying precipices; tiny, hospitable villages of thatched huts perched on the sides of mountains, between riverbank winter pastures and high summer pastures; now and then the distant howls of wolves. James and Cordelia learned to choose a camp site sheltered from the biting north winds, to build a campfire that would burn all night. She never complained.

She need not have worried about sharing a tent with him. Though no more snow fell, it was far too cold to contemplate removing anything but his boots, and those he often kept on. He watched her face grow thinner, wondering about the figure hidden beneath layer upon layer of clothing.

Heartily welcomed by Dinko’s family, they spent a night in his home village, then pressed on. Three days later, when another, indistinguishable village came into view a half a mile ahead, he announced he could take them no further.

“Those people Albanian Moslems,” he explained in the hybrid tongue they used. “Don’t like Christians, don’t like Macedonians, but for travellers from far away no trouble.” With that he left them, turning back alone as jauntily insouciant as he had started out.

The Albanians proved dour, but quite willing to sell bread and sheep’s milk cheese for gold. Several of them spoke a little Turkish, just enough to understand that James and Cordelia wished to hire a guide to the next village and to explain that no guide was available. All the younger men were either down in the valley with the flocks or out hunting. However, the way to the next village was easy, as it ran along the side of a gorge with no side turnings to lead them astray.

“Perhaps we should stay here until the hunters return,” James said doubtfully.

“They say they may be gone for days, and it’s only six miles. Let’s go,” Cordelia urged.

An old man led them to the edge of the village and pointed out the path. It looked quite straightforward, so they rode on.

Within an hour James heartily wished they had not. First the sky swiftly clouded over, then big, feathery flakes of snow began to fall. A fierce wind swirled along the gorge, blowing snow in their faces and trying to pluck them from the path. There was no shelter in sight, not so much as an overhanging crag. Soon he could scarcely see his pony’s ears ahead, and behind him Cordelia was no more than a dark blur.

Drawing rein, he called back against the howl of the wind. “It’s not safe to go on. We’ll have to stop.” Not that sitting still in the middle of a snowstorm was exactly safe, he reflected wryly.

Chapter 18

Behind a barricade composed of two ponies and a donkey, James and Cordelia huddled against the cliff. He put his arm around her waist and pulled her closer to his side. She looked up at him, nothing but her eyes visible between the sheepskin hat, topped by her cloak’s hood, and the shawl across her lower face. A snowflake landed on her eyelashes. He wanted to kiss it away before it melted, but his own face was equally swathed.

“Cold?”

“No, not really, not yet. I daresay I shall be if we have to sit for long.” She laughed, to his astonishment. “Do you recall telling Captain Hamid death by freezing is not unpleasant? I hope you are right.”

“We are not going to find out. If there is no sign of the storm abating soon, I shall go on and fetch help. On foot I can feel my way, and the village cannot be very far ahead.”

“Three or four miles. You are not going without me, James.”

“My legs are longer, to plough through the snow, and I’m heavier, less likely to be blown over the edge.”

“But if you were blown over, I’d rather fall with you than be left to freeze alone. With you going ahead, leading Aeneas, you will trample a path in the snow for me.”

“I suppose so.”

“Don’t agree with me! Arguing is very warming.”

James laughed. “Boys should have more respect than to argue with their elder brothers,” he said provocatively.

“Never having had a brother, I cannot offer an opinion. But I’m glad you didn’t say ignorant females should not argue with men.”

“No one could call you ignorant, though as a general principle I support that opinion.”

They disputed the subject in a bantering way for several minutes before Cordelia fell silent. The wind had slackened somewhat, but the snow fell thicker than ever, drifting against the animals. James could not see how deep it was beyond them.

“I should hate to be stuck here in the dark,” Cordelia said softly.

James stood up and peered into the swirling flakes. Though visibility was already minimal, he supposed darkness might make it worse. Even without the wind tugging at them, one false step on the narrow track would be fatal. He wished he had a good, solid wooden staff to probe the way ahead. If only he could guess how much longer it was going to go on snowing.

“James, look!”

He swung round, reaching for the nearest musket. A tall, black figure loomed through the white obscurity like a monster from a nightmare, an afreet, an ogre, a cyclops, or a troll.

The troll raised a hand and spoke in a deep, reassuring voice, in Serbian. Something about children?

“Be at ease, my children,” Cordelia translated, continuing in Serbian-flavoured Polish, “Who are you?”

“Father Josif.”

“A priest!” she exclaimed in English.

They exchanged a few more words, James catching bits and pieces, then the priest said in excellent Greek, “It is not good to be benighted on the mountainside in the snow. If you will follow me, I shall lead you to the monastery.”

“Monastery!” James offered Cordelia a hand to help her struggle to her feet. “We were going to the next village.”

“So was I, but in such weather the nearest shelter is the best. The village is a good eight miles off, the monastery not more than one.”

“We were told six miles village to village,” James said indignantly, “and no one mentioned a monastery at all.”

“The Moslems would not think to direct anyone thither.” Father Josif gave Cordelia a searching glance as she bent down to take Dido’s cheekpiece, urging the pony to rise. “And even in such weather, alas, I cannot be sure the monks will admit a woman to their cloisters. Their rule against it has stood for half a millenium.”

“This is my little brother,” James said firmly, grabbing Achates’ mane as the donkey followed Dido’s example. He was alarmingly close to the edge, even for so sure-footed a beast.

“Then you must be St. Francis.” Father Josif’s laugh was an echoing boom. “No, no, I know what you meant. Allow me to help you load this little brother.” Leaning a stout staff—the sort James had just been wishing for—against the cliff, he picked up a basket as easily as if it were empty.

Though no troll, he was a head taller than James and brawny beneath the long black robe flapping about his ankles, with a pack on his back adding to his bulk. He seemed oblivious of the cold, sandals on his feet and his head bare but for a dusting of snow. His long, full beard was untouched with grey.

“You are not a monk?” James asked, tying the basket to the pack-saddle.

“I am a humble parish priest. Few of the villages hereabouts are Christian, and fewer still are large enough for a church, so I make my rounds, winter and summer. I daresay I could walk this path blindfold. The ascent to the monastery is a little tricky, but if you follow me closely we shall have no trouble.”

Father Josif agreed that it was safer not to ride, so they gave part of Achates’ burden to the ponies. Leading Aeneas, he strode confidently ahead through the drifting snow, two large feet and four hooves tramping out a path for Cordelia, who followed with Dido. James brought up the rear with the donkey. To him the priest was invisible, Cordelia a dark patch veiled with white. The wind had died and the flakes fell straight down now, a slow, unceasing, mesmeric cascade. He kept his eyes on Dido’s bobbing rump.

“Please, not so fast!” Cordelia called out in Greek, a phrase she knew well from her lessons.

The priest’s booming laugh came back to James. “My apologies, little brother. I walk so often alone, I forget the good Lord gave me extra-long legs to help me carry out my duties.”

James translated into English for her. “I’m afraid he has guessed you are a woman,” he went on. “Did you understand what he said about the monks?”

“Monks! What monks?”

“He’s taking us to a monastery.”

“I thought we were going to the next village.”

“Apparently the monastery is much closer. The trouble is, no women are allowed.”

“And you think Father Josif has guessed? Oh James! Will he tell them?”

“I believe not, to judge by the way he called you little brother. As a village priest—and Orthodox priests marry, remember—he’s probably more tolerant than a bunch of celibate monks shut away from the world on a mountaintop.”

“And surely they would be less likely than he to suspect I’m not a man.”

“That would depend on the monastery’s...er...conveniencies.”

“You mean they may have communal...?”

“Privies,” he said, deciding to give her the word without the bark. “Dormitories for visitors, too, rather than cells.”

“Oh no! And if they find out, what will they do? Throw me out in the middle of a snowstorm?”

“We’d be no worse off than before Father Josif came along,” James pointed out.

“And no better. I... What did you say, Father?”

“Be careful here. We turn off the main track and there are steps. Soon it will grow steep, too steep for horses perhaps, but pack-mules come up with supplies in the summer so your animals will not find it too difficult, I trust.”

James translated.

“Off the track?” Cordelia exclaimed in English, stopping. “The Albanians said there was no way off. Perhaps we should go on to the village after all.”

“Father Josif says it is much farther than we were told, and if there is one side path there may be others. We might easily lose our way.”

“Suppose we ask him what the accommodations are?”

“We’d have to explain. As long as he doesn’t know for sure I doubt he will give you away, but if we told him he might feel obliged to inform them. I would prefer to go on to the monastery, but I leave it to you to choose.”

After a moment’s silence, she said with a sigh in her voice, “Very well, the monastery. At least we may get a little rest and shelter and a hot drink before we are ejected.”

“Courage, little brother. I shall think of some excuse to—”

“Are you in difficulties?” Father Josif called in Greek, then repeated the query in Serbian, having apparently worked out that Cordelia understood it better.

“No, we are coming,” they assured him multilingually.

James was beginning to appreciate being a native of an island where—apart from the Gaelic and Welsh fringes—everyone spoke the same language. More or less, he amended. A Yorkshireman and a Cornishman were pretty near mutually incomprehensible.

Thereafter, Father Josif gave his warnings in both languages. The way grew steep, the drifts deeper, and the wind picked up again. The falling snow swirled and eddied, sometimes clearing so that James could see Cordelia plodding on with bent head, and the tall shape of the priest in the lead. Once a gust parted the white curtain just long enough to reveal a masonry wall of smooth stone blocks, seemingly growing out of the sheer rock from which it rose.

Catching a glimpse of the vertical drop to his right, James was glad when the curtain of snow closed down again.

Not long after, they came to a stone archway with a weathered Greek
chi-rho
carved on the key-stone. Its heavy, iron-barred gates were closed, the scarred wood suggesting they had withstood more than one siege. There was no room outside them for battering ram or cannon, James noted grimly, always supposing besiegers could get either machine up the hill. The flat space, enclosed on the outer side by a low wall, was crowded with three people and three beasts.