The Long Sword(156)

            We had the pleasure of riding up to the great and ancient citadel of the Acropolis, which some men call ‘the castle of Athens’. Many of the antiquities are in ruins, of course, but the magnificent church of Saint Mary is in the ancient temple of the Virgin Goddess of the Greeks, and part of it is now the ducal palace.

            I had never seen anything so moving in my life. I have seen Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople and my beloved London, Venice and Baghdad and Vienna and Krakow and Prague, and to me, none of them have the ancient majesty of the citadel of Athens, which seems to me to be as ancient as man’s presence on the world of sin. And it makes me feel odd … small, and somehow weak, to imagine that this was built by men like me, so long ago that we have lost the crafts by which it was made.

            Bah! My views on ancient architecture bore you. So be it. The King of Sicily was, at that time, the Duke of Athens, and the city was held by the bishop – an Italian. He was, to all intents, at war with the Duke of Thebes, who was French: Roger de Luria, of whom I might say more later. Suffice it to say that this man, the Marshal of Achaea, was, despite his high-sounding title, a routier, and was in league with the Turks. Nerio seemed to know everything about Greece and I learned from him many a curious fact, not least of which was that his father already owned land all over Romania (as we call it) or Greece.

            He gave his lopsided smile. ‘I am myself the Baron of Vostitza,’ he said, waving a hand airily toward the Morea.

            I wanted to ride farther afield. Greece is rich; the farms on the plain behind Athens are magnificent and well-tilled, yet a third of them stood fallow and the castle at the edge of the plain was burned.

            Nerio shrugged. ‘Romania is falling apart,’ he said. ‘Bad government, greed – mostly our own greed.’ He looked at me. ‘My father has strong views on how Greece should be ruled. You should ask him.’ He looked out over the plains. ‘For myself, I love it,’ he said.

            I was falling in love myself. The air was so clear, and the overwhelming sense of the ancient was very beautiful to me.

            It must have been that night – I suppose we were only in Piraeus three days – when we went up to the town of Athens that nestles under the castle. Everywhere you can see the ancient city, like bones of soldiers long dead on an old battlefield. Some bones were well preserved – a Greek priest told us that the temple with a church that we admired had once been dedicated to Hephaestus, the smith god of the ancients. But the town was very small, with fewer than five thousand people. Nerio said it was so small for the same reason that the castle on the plain was burned – the constant state of war.

            ‘The Frankish lords fight each other,’ he said. ‘And the Franks fight the Despot at Mistra. And the Greeks fight among themselves, and fight the Vlachs and the Albanians. The Genoese fight the Venetians. The Turks attack everyone, but no one fights them.’ He spread his hands. He might have said more, but we were climbing in the last light into the occupied parts of the town on the slope of the acropolis, and he saw a girl leaning over the door of her house, and he smiled at her, and she probably smiled back and I lost him.

            I might not even remember that evening, except that Fiore felt better and my friends ordered a dinner from a big taverna, perhaps the only taverna, almost directly under the walls. It was a pleasant building and had tables out on the roof of the next building down the steep slope, and we seemed to be sitting among the stars while we ate lamb and rice. The local wine was good, but Nerio was anxious to be away; we all knew him by then, and Miles smiled at me.

            ‘He wants to get to church,’ I said.

            There was, in fact, a pretty little church, a Greek church, but we were not so choosy in those days, and the Greek priest rang the bell himself and welcomed us to compline. Nerio had chosen the taverna and seemed very eager to be at Mass.

            I had never been in a Greek church before. Everyone calls them schismatics and heretics – I once asked Father Pierre to explain how they were heretics, and he laughed.