Carver's Quest (53 page)

He awoke with a start. He could see the dark outline of a man standing on the lip of the trench. The man was holding a revolver, aiming it at his heart. As Adam, still half asleep and rubbing
his eyes, began to struggle to his feet, the man silhouetted against the sun swivelled the revolver abruptly. He shot into the side of the trench and then swung the gun back towards Adam’s
body. The noise of the shot reverberated thunderously around the camp.

‘Stay where you are!’ the man shouted. Adam recognised the voice immediately. It was Fields.

‘Professor?’ Although the voice was so familiar, Adam could not yet quite believe that the person directing the gun at him was his old tutor and mentor. ‘What is this? What are
you doing? Where are Rallis and Quint?’

Fields shook his head in irritation as if Adam’s questions were pointless distractions from the matter in hand.

‘It is all over, Adam. I have thought through the possibilities most carefully. I have no other choice.’ The professor sounded weary. He continued to point the gun at the young man.
‘I regret very much that it should come to this. Rallis forced my hand at first with all his stupid ideas about stealing the legacy of the ancient Greeks. As if the wretched Greeks of today
were capable of appreciating their past. The more of their treasures that pass into the hands of Englishmen, the better. At least we are civilised enough to look after them. And now the arrival of
this man Garland puts paid to my alternative plans.’

He gestured with the gun.

‘Climb out of the trench, Adam. But do so with the utmost care. If you make any movements that suggest you are planning to dispossess me of my weapon, I shall shoot you.’

Adam looked to his left to where Quint had cut primitive footholds into the side of the trench. He used them to haul himself out of the grave-like excavation. He pulled himself over the lip of
the ditch and struggled to his feet. Fields still had the gun directed at him. Adam looked beyond the professor’s shoulder. The older man noticed the movement of his eyes.

‘There is little point lifting your eyes to the hills, Adam, for no help will come from that direction. Rallis is not on his way.’

‘Where is he?’ Adam was still confused, still uncertain of what was happening. ‘Where is Quint?’

‘The lawyer is out there lying under the Greek sun.’ Without moving his revolver, which was still trained on Adam’s midriff, Fields jerked his head in the direction the men had
ridden no more than a few hours ago. ‘It was necessary to shoot him. And his gargantuan servant.’ The professor gave a short and mirthless laugh.

‘The fools obliged me by travelling in the vanguard. It was easy enough to make use of the weapon I had hidden.’ Fields shifted his weight from one foot to another. ‘As for
Quintus, I passed him an hour or more ago. Riding one of the mules and looking very sorry for himself. Luckily for him, he did not see me. If he had, he would have been even sorrier for I might
have been forced to kill him as well. Which I would have regretted. I have always been fond of Quintus, rogue though he is.’

‘I hope you are not planning to kill me, Professor?’

‘Of course not, my boy. Whatever gave you that idea?’ Fields laughed again, more amiably than before. He seemed to find Adam’s question genuinely funny. ‘Not unless you
do something very foolish and I do not believe that you will.’

‘I will do nothing foolish,’ Adam promised. He had recovered from the surprise of the professor’s arrival and was now struggling to make sense of the sudden revelations about
Rallis’s murder. Fields, it seemed, had lost his mind. What other explanation could there possibly be for the terrible deeds to which he was cheerfully admitting? ‘But what is to happen
next? We cannot stand here for ever like figures from Madame Tussauds.’

‘It will be two hours, maybe even three, before Garland arrives.’ The professor appeared curiously calm and rational. He might have been sitting down in his study in Cambridge to
conduct a tutorial on pre-Socratic philosophy rather than standing by a half-dug trench in Thessaly, waving a gun at his favourite pupil. ‘Before Rallis and I parted company with the village
headman, he told us exactly where Garland and his companions were. However swiftly they travel, they cannot be here sooner. And they may well stumble across the bodies of Rallis and Andros, which
will delay them further. There is time for us to talk.’

‘Perhaps we should wait for Garland to arrive,’ Adam said cautiously. ‘We can travel back to Salonika with him.’

‘Oh, I think not, my boy,’ Fields replied amiably. ‘You are assuming, of course, that I have gone mad. You are humouring me in the hope that rescue will arrive sooner than I
expect.’

The professor shook his head from side to side. Adam had seen him do the same a hundred times in the past when confronted by the stupidity of the average undergraduate.

‘I can assure you I am not mad. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw, as the gloomy Prince of Denmark said.’

‘I have no doubts about your sanity, sir,’ Adam lied, ‘but you have, by your own admission, killed two men. That cannot just be ignored or forgotten. We should wait for
Garland. We will convince him that you shot Rallis and Andros in self-defence. That they attacked us when we discovered gold. Which Quint and I did only a short time after you left. We will tell
Garland that—’

Fields did not wait to hear what they would tell Garland. With a sudden twist of his arm, he pointed the revolver upwards and shot into the air. The explosion of the gun sent birds squawking in
terror from the nearby trees. Adam, silenced and half-deafened, watched the professor swing his gun back into a position where it was directed once more at him.

‘That is enough,’ Fields shouted. The sounds of the birds slowly died away and a strange quiet descended.

‘Now, I shall tell you what will happen,’ the professor said. ‘You will submit to being tied and bundled into the trench. I will return to Volos. From there, I will be obliged
to travel into exile. I do not think Cambridge will now welcome me back with open arms but I have always had a great fondness for Tuscany. I do not think that many questions will be asked of an
Englishman who takes a villa in the hills outside Florence. Most probably I shall enjoy my exile. I have an income from my long-departed father’s estate. I have the fruits of my association
with Creech, of which I assume you know. I shall not be like poor Ovid in his banishment by the Black Sea.’

The professor paused as if to relish the prospect of an enforced sojourn in Florence. Adam could scarcely believe what he was hearing. Did Fields really believe that it was feasible for him not
only to ecape from European Turkey but to make his way to Italy and settle in a Tuscan villa? Did he think that no consequences would follow his actions in shooting Rallis? If any further proof
were needed that the ageing scholar had taken leave of his senses, here it was. Aware of the revolver pointing towards him, the young man was in no position to argue but he risked throwing a
tentative remark into the silence.

‘What of our excavations here?’ he asked. ‘The treasure may nearly be ours.’

Still holding the gun level in one hand, the professor swatted away the words like troublesome flies with the other.

‘Thanks to the foolish interference of others, I must abandon our diggings,’ he said. ‘But I can return. Perhaps in a year, perhaps in two years. In five years, if necessary. I
can wait. I have the Euphorion manuscript and the rest of the world does not.’

‘Garland will know where to dig. He will see where we have been digging.’

Fields shook his head as if dismissing the idea but otherwise he ignored Adam’s words. The young man wondered whether the professor was capable any longer of thinking clearly on such
subjects. He seemed to have reached a point where he almost believed that his wishes alone could transform reality. The Macedonian gold was destined to be his so there could be no chance that
Garland or anyone else would dig it up. It would sit here beneath the earth until Fields could return for it.

‘Before I take horse for Volos,’ he went on, ‘I must explain myself. I wish you to know the precise reasons why I have acted as I have.’

Adam risked a glance to his left: perhaps Quint had turned back to the camp soon after Fields had seen him and was even now approaching. But he could discern nothing but one of the mules,
tethered to a post and grazing on the grass at its feet.

‘I wish you to understand what has been behind all this, my boy,’ the professor said, speaking with sudden feeling. ‘You must appreciate that I have been driven to these
terrible but necessary deeds by the idiocy and avarice of others.’

Fields’s head dropped. For a moment he looked like a man who had reached the end of his road. I can disarm him now, thought Adam, readying himself to rush towards the gun, but it was as if
the professor overheard his inner voice. His head jerked up again and he waved the revolver at the young man.

‘Move a yard or two back, Adam. You must not think of running at me. I am very fond of you but I will certainly shoot you. I have not come this far to fall victim to idle scruples about
another death.’

The young man did as he was ordered, shuffling several paces backwards.

‘That is far enough,’ Fields said. ‘I would not have you falling into the trench. Now, where were we?’

‘You were about to explain to me why you have done this,’ Adam said quietly.

‘Ah, yes, so I was. I would not have you think entirely ill of me, Adam.’

For a moment, the eyes of the two men met. The young man was appalled by what he glimpsed in the red-rimmed and bloodshot gaze of his mentor. Here was someone who had stared at the abyss and
then tumbled into it. Adam saw that there would be no return to reason for the professor.

* * * * *

Several miles further north, Quint and the mule were making slow progress. It would have been hard for any observer, had there been one close to hand, to decide whether man or
beast was the more disgruntled. The mule had been aggravated by its removal from the area near the camp where it had been happily and idly grazing. It had retaliated by refusing to move at anything
other than a snail’s pace, no matter how hard its rider had dug his heels into its flanks and made encouraging noises. On a number of occasions, Quint had been obliged to dismount and pull
the reluctant creature by its reins. The sound of its outraged braying echoed along the valley through which they were travelling so slowly.

Quint himself was sweating and cursing as he tugged and chivvied the mule into motion. He was a man who was rarely at a loss for a grievance and this unwanted journey, he felt, was an injustice
that even the most saintly of individuals would have found difficult to bear without complaint. He grumbled incessantly beneath his breath as he remounted the mule yet again. One minute he had been
happily digging in the trench. Well, maybe not happily, he admitted to himself. Digging was almost as much of a bleeding pain in the arse as dragging this mule halfway across Thessaly. But
he’d been resigned to it. That was the word, resigned. And then Adam had got it into his head that a message had to be sent to the others. When they could have just given themselves a slap on
the back for finding the gold ornament and settled down for a kip in the shade until the others got back.

‘There’s some as wouldn’t reckernise a good thing if it came up and kicked ’em in the cods,’ Quint said bitterly to himself. He sometimes wondered if his master
wasn’t as daft as a sheep before the shearers. How Adam had managed before he’d happened along to take him under his wing, he didn’t know. ‘Of course,’ he
acknowledged, struggling to be fair-minded, ‘I got me a nice crib out of it.’ But it was Adam, Quint felt, who had got the best of the bargain. And now here the young sprig was, sending
him out into the heat of the day with a brute that wouldn’t listen to a bleeding word you said.

‘Giddyup, you long-eared bastard,’ he shouted, digging his heels into the mule’s sides once again.

To Quint’s great surprise, the animal responded. It began to trot along the path they were following by the side of a meandering stream. As he clung to its reins, the beast increased its
pace until it was travelling at a speed of which Quint had not imagined it capable. Bumping uncomfortably up and down on the saddle and watching the Greek countryside race past him, he began to
wish that he had not given the mule any encouragement. This was worse – much worse – than pulling and wrenching at the beast to force it forwards a few yards.

‘Whoa, you hee-hawing devil, or I’ll see you in a bleedin’ stew-pan.’ Quint had now abandoned his faith in the reins and stretched himself full-length along the
mule’s back, both his hands clasped around the creature’s neck. ‘This ain’t Derby Day and you ain’t Blue Gown.’

The mule took no notice of its rider. If anything, it upped its trot towards a gallop. Perhaps, Quint thought miserably, it did believe it was the famous thoroughbred that had won at Epsom two
years earlier. He continued to wrap himself around the mule’s neck and hope that it would soon tire of its exertions. For a minute, he closed his eyes, figuring that it might be better not to
know exactly where they were going. After a hundred yards, he decided he was wrong and opened them again. The stream to the left, he noted, had widened considerably. He struggled to twist his head
forward so that he could look ahead of him. All he could see was a blur of green and, far in the distance, the grey stones of the mountains. He felt the dry, hard skin of the mule’s neck
against his cheek. One of the hairs from its mane began to work its way up his nose, tickling him to the point where he wanted to sneeze. When he did so, his startled mount picked up pace even
more.

‘Christ in heaven,’ Quint moaned. ‘Ain’t it jiggered yet?’ He risked raising his head slightly and was astonished by what he saw. A quarter of a mile ahead was a
group of horses and riders. They had stopped by a small grove of trees and were all gazing towards Quint and his mule as the pair raced towards them. One of the riders was standing in his stirrups
to get a better view.