Popes and Phantoms

The Year 1486 ‘SWIMMING LESSONS: After a sad and lonely childhood, cast as an orphan into the wicked world, I discover my vocation and philosophy of life. Piracy suits me very well.’

‘No, I’m sorry. I’m afraid you’ll have to walk home.’

The Venetian nobleman looked down at Admiral Slovo and raised an enquiring eyebrow.

‘Well, yes, I know,’ explained Slovo to the man poised on the deck rail. ‘Call me faithless if you like …’

‘You are faithless,’ obliged the Venetian. ‘You promised me my life.’

‘Agreed,’ conceded the Admiral, folding his arms and leaning convivially against the rail, beside the Venetian’s feet. ‘But that was then and this is …’

‘Now. Yes, I quite see,’ interrupted the nobleman. ‘And I must say I take your decision personally, you know.’

‘Oh dear, I do wish you wouldn’t,’ replied Slovo, reasonably. ‘Put yourself in my shoes …’

Some of the crew, who had nothing better to do than watch the show, found grounds for bestial amusement at this aside but the Admiral silenced them with a glance.

‘What I mean,’ he continued, ‘is that despite doubtless genuine grounds for grievance, you are refusing to see the problem in the round. His Holiness and your Serene Republic are nominally at peace at this juncture. It would not do, therefore, for me to return to Ostia bearing the sole survivor of a forbidden piratical venture, would it now?’

They both turned to look at the nearby once-grand galley, now afire and sinking; its crew (bar one) dead in battle or by subsequent murder, still aboard.

‘Come to think of it,’ the Admiral mused, ‘my commission from His Holiness even precludes attacks on fellow Christians. Venetian though you may be, I assume that you come within that category …?’ And when the nobleman shrugged, Slovo added, ‘Well, there you are then, you see the quandary my greed-inspired oath puts me in.’

The Venetian looked underwhelmed by the Admiral’s dilemma. ‘You just want my library, that’s what it is,’ he stated calmly. ‘I saw you leafing through it with lust in your eyes. You wish for undisputed title.’

Admiral Slovo admitted the possibility with a shift of the shoulders. ‘Well, that may have something to do with it, but I’d thank you to keep your voice down. Bibliomania does not accord with my professional image. The crew might nurture false notions, requiring bloody suppression.’

‘That library has been generations in the acquiring,’ said the Venetian firmly. ‘I’m not giving it up.’

Admiral Slovo stood up and stretched. ‘I’m rather afraid you are,’ he said. ‘To prepare yourself for Paradise, your books and heart must surely part. Now off you go, there’s a good chap.’

The Venetian glowered at the half circle of buccaneers below him but realized that his position was futile. ‘I do not consider this conversation to be at an end,’ he said equably. The pirates smiled. Then, with as much dignity as could be mustered, he turned and walked off the plank into the Mediterranean sea.

‘Stop oars!’

The strokemaster’s roar echoed off into silence. All the crew were shifting in their appointed stations and straining to see.

‘Keep to your places, if you please,’ said Admiral Slovo to his Bosun. As intended, he relayed the command to the crew in louder and coarser terms. There was a just acceptable lowering of the level of frenzy.

‘Look, there he is!’ shouted the look-out in the stern. ‘Out there!’

Slovo strode to join him and peered into the distant blue. ‘It’s possible,’ he conceded eventually. ‘How interesting.’

The Bosun, who had no other name known to man, had for career’s sake emphasized the animal within but in fact he retained a worthwhile intellect and was invited to join them.

‘Can’t be sure at that distance,’ he barked. ‘It’s blurred – might be jetsam.’

‘I think not,’ said the Admiral authoritatively. ‘I have never heard of swimming jetsam. Look, one can see the rise of an arm.’

‘There’s any number of overboards in the sea,’ replied Bosun indefatigably. ‘It don’t mean it’s our man.’

Slovo nodded his tentative agreement. ‘I don’t see how it can be the Venetian either. He could hardly have lasted two days in the water. On the other hand, it does look awfully like him. If only he’d come a little closer so that his face was less … indistinct.’

Bosun looked shocked at the expression of such a wish. ‘Let me go and get my crossbow, Admiral,’ he asked. ‘That’ll sort him!’

‘I think not,’ answered Slovo slowly. ‘If it’s a mere lost sailor, the sea will soon deal with the matter. Should, however, it be the Venetian, I cannot but feel that our weaponry will be of little avail. If we must be pursued by a revenant, I’d prefer it not to have a crossbow bolt in its brow.’

Bosun was thinking this one through when, with a voice of joy, he noted that the figure had gone. In an explosion of relief, the crew threw discipline to the winds and scrambled to line the sides. No one had the heart to reprimand them. In a silence broken only by the call of gulls, everyone searched the waves for their obscure and elusive companion of the last day and night.

‘Down to Hell and fare ye well,’ said Bosun at last, when all agreed that sea and sky were all there was to see.

The celebration was spoilt by the sound, starting low but rising to a thunderous roar, distorted by its passage through water and hull, of knocking from beneath the ship.

After a further day of being shadowed at the very edge of sight, quite regardless of whatever turn of speed that wind and oar could produce, Admiral Slovo decided to head for land. For all he cared, the dead Venetian could follow him and hammer on his ship for eternity. Alas, however, the crew were not so philosophical. Even Bosun, who feared neither God nor State (not fully understanding the power of either) was getting edgy. Slovo, who maintained control by a record of success and the occasional exemplary death, knew when not to push his luck too far.

As they rowed home with unusual will, Slovo dallied at the stern and considered what problems this change of heart would bring. His words to the Venetian about inter-Christian piracy had not been idle ones and should their companion remain, a leech-like embarrassment, when they came to dock, then … difficult questions would be asked.

Still, never mind, thought the Admiral at length, never one to worry long. Better the chance of a Papal scaffold than the certainty of mutiny. He even waved to the Venetian with his newly acquired reading book, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

‘This is good stuff,’ he shouted. ‘I’m much obliged to you.’

Slovo was awoken by the sound of a ragged rattle of oars and a lack of progress. He had only to raise himself up from the deck to discover the reason for both.

Half a league off and silhouetted against the dawn was the Venetian, standing on the water and blocking their path.

Order took a bit of time to restore, even with the flat of a sword, and in the end it was easiest just to tell them to put about. That at least, the crew were glad to do.

One bank of oarsmen fidgeted on their benches whilst the other furiously tore at the sea and, bit by bit, gradually turned the galley’s back on the sodden, silent, watcher. Then, using their joint efforts, they sped away from home into deep water, for once not needing the strokemaster’s hypnotic call.

Admiral Slovo, seated at the stern, studied the swiftly receding Venetian and the compliment was returned in kind. Then, mission apparently fulfilled, the corpse slowly slipped back, inch by inch, beneath the waves, its guessed-at gaze never deviating until the water closed over its green, floating locks.

Bosun shuddered, not caring who saw him do so.

‘I’ve not seen the ship move so fast since that encounter with the Ottoman harem-ship,’ said the Admiral, jocularly. Bosun appeared not to hear him and Slovo felt entitled to allow his disgruntlement a further outing. ‘I spent what was it?’ he mused, ‘on the Satan’s-head ram which adorns the prow of this ship. Why then, Master Bosun, did we not employ it to sunder apart this persistent little man who dogs our steps?’

Before Bosun could reply, the look-out called out. ‘Ahoy! He’s back!’

They saw that this was so. The swimmer had returned.

‘Might is right – but not always applicable,’ said Bosun in reply to Slovo – inadvertently revealing, in his agitation, hidden depths and a secret taste for metaphysics.

‘You could just be right, you know,’ said the Admiral, making a note to keep an even closer eye on this dark horse. ‘Perhaps philosophy is the answer. Tell them to up oars.’

Very reluctantly, the rowers were persuaded to desist whilst their Captain came to stand before them. He delayed a moment to achieve the required mental downgrading to permit communication.

‘It’s like this,’ he said when finally prepared for the contamination. ‘We’re being chased – us, chased! Us wot as faced the ships of Sultan Bayezid and put holes in the galleons of the Mamelukes! Now, tell me, is this right? Is it proper?’

He paused for dramatic effect. No one answered. Only from beneath the ship came the sound of urgent knocking.

The following day, Admiral Slovo woke to the more than usually sullen stares of the crew and knew straightaway that something had happened. He enquired as to the state of play from Bosun.

‘As soon as we get too far for his fancy, he blocks our way and the crew put about, orders or no. We’re going nowhere fast.’

‘Ultimately, life is like that,’ said Slovo sharply. ‘As a philosopher, you should appreciate that.’

‘And the look-out is gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Sometime during the night and silent as you like. Only I should say, he’s not entirely gone.’

‘How so?’

‘The Venetian left half the rib-cage behind.’

Slovo refused to be out-cooled. ‘That was considerate of him,’ he said. ‘At least we’re left in no doubt.’ Then, quoting from The Meditations, he said, ‘It is not the thing that disturbs thee, but thine own judgement about it?’

Bosun looked ruefully towards the rising sun. ‘This is quite some “thing” we’re facing here, Admiral,’ he said. ‘Do you reckon Look-out made his judgement of it before it got him?’

Eventually Slovo was called on by name and he was glad of it. It was undignified being harried back and forth, subject to the impertinences of a restive crew, and far better matters should end this way rather than in death by thirst or mutiny.

The Venetian, afar off and a mere matchstick figure, clung to an ancient buoy and added his voice to its doleful bell.

‘SLO-VO! he called, over and over, in time with the bell-note. ‘SLO-VO! Despite the distance his voice was loud and clear.

Without being bidden the crew had upped oars and thus declared themselves spectators while the galley drifted, becalmed.

The prisoner of his professional image, Admiral Slovo remained impassive. Lolling in his Captain’s chair, he called across to the Venetian, confident that in nature’s present suspension his unraised voice would carry. ‘Well then, hello again,’ he said. ‘And what can I do for you?’

There was a long pause before the Venetian replied. ‘MY BOOOOOOOOKS!’ he howled at last.

Slovo had anticipated this. He signalled to Bosun that the prepared cask of book-booty be cast overboard like its former owner.

Before the noise of the splash had died away the Venetian called again, ‘AND THE MEDITATIONS OF AURELIUS …’

The Admiral grimaced. That particular book had spoken to him on levels he did not know he owned. He’d very much wished to keep and finish it.

‘So be it,’ he answered eventually and, fetching the text from its hiding place, flung it over the rail.

The quiet returned. Slovo fancied the Venetian was savouring his post-mortem triumph. In order to spoil this gloat, he resumed the conversation. ‘And what now?’ he asked.

Another long pause and then: ‘NOW I’D LIKE YOU TO SWIM WITH ME.’

Most of the crew turned their attention to the Admiral. How he dealt with this would determine his position in the Mediterranean pirates’ hall of fame.

‘I can’t swim,’ he answered simply.

There was no shame in this. Most mariners of the time preferred not to learn how to prolong the agony should Mother Sea claim them. Not a bad point, judged the crew and looked back at the Venetian.

‘YOU’LL MANAGE,’ he shot straight back. ‘YOU’LL FIND, AS A CORPSE, YOU HAVE A CERTAIN FACILITY IN THE WATER.’

His shipmates were still reeling this one in as Slovo countered, ‘You are not being a reasonable man.’

‘THANKS TO YOU,’ came the reply, ‘I AM NO LONGER A MAN AT ALL.’

There was no real answer to this and Slovo subsided into his seat.

From below the galley there erupted the hammering of many hands. Unlike hitherto, the Venetian remained visible. It seemed he could now call on helpers.

‘IT IS TIME,’ came the call. ‘COME TO ME.’

The pounding on the hull rose and threatened to turn it into matchwood. Slovo realized that between the vengeful ghost and the fearful crew there was little to choose: his life was over and all that remained was to leave it with style. When he rose and snapped his finger at the Venetian, by nods and mumbles the crew signalled their approval of this defiance in the face of despair.

The sea erupted and bubbled. All around the galley and for some distance outwards, the water was alive – no other word for it – with floating corpses.

‘THEY WILL BEAR YOUR WEIGHT, ADMIRAL,’ wailed the Venetian. ‘COME TO ME.’

Slovo ignored a final spasm of weakness which made him wish he could turn and look to his crew for support. He knew that he had lost them; their reservoirs of primal dread outweighing any such latecomer concepts as loyalty or courage. Nothing else for it: Admiral Slovo was alone again. He vaulted over the ship’s rail.

The dead men dipped and rocked but, as promised, they formed a path of sorts. Ignoring their undead stares – eyeless or otherwise – Slovo made his way to the Venetian. Close up, he saw that three days in the company of King Neptune and his little fishes had not been kind to the body.

‘Hello, Slovo.’ The greeting was uttered through nibbled lips.

‘We meet once more, Master Venetian.’ So saying, Slovo raised his lace kerchief to his nose. The once exquisite nobleman was now less than social in company.

‘You wouldn’t believe the number of us down here,’ said the Venetian by way of small talk and indicating his carpet of comrades. ‘Many of them put there by the likes of you. That fact may account for the assistance vouchsafed me in my quest. Even the sea has moral standards, it transpires.’

‘Who’d have thought it?’ quipped the Admiral.

The man and the revenant regarded each other with mutual distaste. Then the Venetian left the rusted buoy, causing its bell to toll, and reached out to grasp Slovo’s throat. He did not meet any resistance and the saturated flesh of his plump and swollen fingers easily covered the Admiral’s neck from ruff to chin.

Eye to eye with his nemesis (save that its eyes were in some fish somewhere), Slovo patiently awaited the application of pressure – and whatever lay beyond. After a while he realized that pain and death were a long time coming. The Venetian, poised upon fulfilment of his last wish, appeared undecided.

At last, the green mouth opened and, on a gale of salt-breath, it spoke into Slovo’s face. ‘Never allow yourself to be swept off your feet,’ he quoted. ‘When an impulse stirs, see first that it will meet the claims of justice … to refrain from imitation is the best revenge.’

‘Meditations?’ croaked Slovo.

The Venetian rocked his wobbly head. ‘Of the divine Marcus Aurelius,’ he confirmed. ‘The guiding light of my life – both of which you took. One has been returned but the other …’

Admiral Slovo said nothing – mainly because it would have hurt too much.

‘His Stoic principles attended my every thought and action: to the very point where I quietly trod a plank at your request.’

It seemed to Slovo that the vice-grip on his windpipe had eased somewhat, although he did not yet dare to hope.

‘You did not deprive me of my faith during life,’ mused the Venetian, ‘why should you have that victory in death?’

‘Why indeed?’ Slovo hissed.

The Venetian nodded again. ‘I will not kill you,’ he said.

Less happy than he should be, the Admiral waited in vain for the hand to release him.

‘I will take from you less than what is owed me,’ the Venetian went on. ‘I will have from you the energy to sustain my half-life – and thus condemn you to the same fate. There is justice in that, a moderation of vengeance. Such restraint is truly Stoical.’

With this, he applied his lips to Slovo’s and they grappled in an obscene French kiss. Nauseated beyond endurance, Slovo felt himself losing … something, and then was calm.

The Venetian dropped him and stood back. He seemed reinvigorated and exultant. ‘Your life-force is good,’ he said. ‘It will last me till my flesh and sinews at length decay. I shall have time to read my books!’

Admiral Slovo regained his footing and wondered why he felt so uninvolved.

‘And you,’ the dead man said, answering the unspoken question, ‘I have left you with enough to live out your life. Life, of a sort, at least. I have been merciful.’

‘Then thank you,’ said Slovo politely.

The Venetian smiled – which was the worst sight of all. ‘You are changed already,’ he said. ‘Such aridity! I afflict you with a curse and you thank me!’ So saying, he sank beneath the waves.

Admiral Slovo turned rapidly back for his ship, not knowing how long the ex-human footway would last. In a gentle kind of way he was looking forward to the reunion with his crew and, still a way off, favoured them with a tigerish smile. Their disloyalty no longer worried him. He felt happy about the changes that would be made – by knife and rope and shot. And he was less troubled, less disturbed by flibbertigibbet thoughts and his own emotions than before. It might well be the peace of the desert, but at least he had found peace of mind.

Vengeance? he thought as he clambered over the side and the sea-dead fled to their proper place. A curse? I’d have paid good money for this!

After a wide-ranging and enjoyable discussion on Plato and the efficacy of the spells prescribed by the god Hermes Trismegistus in his masterwork, Corpus Hermeticum, the senior of the two Vehmists indicated that they should proceed to more mundane business.

The lesser brother, a member of the Rhodian Military Order of St John and appropriately armed and dressed, was weary after coming direct to this interview from his long journey. Even so, he sat up straight in his ornate carved chair and awaited some sign that he might deliver his report.

The other man, older than the first but clothed in equal splendour in the High academic gown of the Gemistan[2] Platonic School, levered himself up and crossed the room. There he checked for potential eavesdroppers and then closed and locked the door. Only after that, with a wave of his ancient and be-ringed hand, did he urge his guest on. Even in their Grecian citadel at Mistra, the Vehme had varying degrees of trust.

‘Honourable Master,’ said the Knight of St John, his Greek, though probably not his first language, faultless and courtly, ‘I can convey both a measure of success and failure …’

‘I know you, Captain Jean,’ smiled the old scholar, ‘your failures are ordinary men’s glorious triumphs. Your past service to the cause would excuse a thousand disasters to come. So, tell me all without fear of reprimand.’

The Knight savoured the high compliment before proceeding. ‘I have discovered the fate of our man,’ he said, ‘but failed to retrieve his murdered body.’

‘How so?’ asked the scholar.

‘The sea has him, and her returning of borrowed objects is most capricious. We have scanned the likely rocks and beaches unsmiled on by fortune.’

‘At this remove of time,’ the scholar mused, looking idly out of the diamond-paned window down the spur of Mount Taygetus and at the landscape of the Morea (or Sparta, as he would archaically have termed it) below, ‘I doubt there would be anything whole or wholesome for us to revere with burial.’

The Knight nodded his agreement. ‘You are undoubtedly correct, but I fastidiously forbore to mention the point. Some of the cadavers we did discover were quite … impermissible!’

‘Just so, Captain. Very well then, let our brother roll in the embrace of the waves. He shall have his oratory hymn all the same. Its composition is near complete – as doubtless is his decomposition – a most moving conceit in which the styles of Pindar and Sappho meet and conjoin.’

The Knight smiled warily. ‘A most unlikely mating,’ he said, ‘given the predilections of either poet.’

The scholar chose to miss the allusion. ‘In the Academy we have talents capable of such … problematic graftings,’ he said. ‘The art of the ancients may be incomparable but we have come to be passably good mimics. I think the death of our Consul of the Venetian Vehme merits some little exertion on our part – even if it’s only artistic, don’t you? Incidentally, did you ascertain who killed him?’

The Knight’s face suddenly became hardened, the speed and ease of transformation suggesting that this was its normal state. ‘It was a pirate,’ he said lightly. ‘We know that much, but not his name. He must be a new arrival in the Middle Sea or else we would have him already.’

‘An alternative explanation might be that he is subtle and full of craft beyond the norm,’ ventured the scholar gently.

‘There is that possibility,’ said the Knight, forcing himself to consider the proposition. ‘But it does not affect the ultimate issue – merely its timing. He will be found, in due course, and made to render full restitution for his crime.’

‘It will be so,’ agreed the scholar. ‘We are enacting a morality play for the benefit of the gods and those generations who are yet to come. Let it be done then to our script and according to virtue.’

‘Amen!’ chorused the Knight. ‘He’s as good as dead.’

‘Goodness, no!’ said Enver Rashi, Pasha of the Ottoman-conquered sanjak of Morea. ‘Quite the contrary!’

He had just informed the Gemistan Platonic scholar that the name of their Venetian brother’s killer was already known to him. The scholar had promptly vowed the murderer’s speedy extinction.

‘Esteemed little brother,’ he said to the puzzled older man, ‘I fear your donkey trek from the Mistra Citadel to my court was partly wasted. Our late companion has already found means of conveying your news to me.’

The scholar, being complete master of his chosen academic field, was little used to radical surprise.

‘This dead … colleague … has told you?’ he stumbled, eyeing the Pasha for signs of mockery or, almost as bad, a trap. The shameless hussy laid out on the couch beside her master in turn lazily surveyed the Greek as if he were some unappetizing carcass.

‘Effectively,’ confirmed the Turk. ‘At least, he permitted me to know.’ As he signalled to the towering Janissary guard by a side door, a bedraggled captive was shoved into the dazzling white reception chamber. ‘This man was the actual conveyance the message took,’ he explained.

This unfortunate, a European of obvious base birth, was well rehearsed. Under the baleful gaze of the Janissary, he recited his tale to the stranger present. ‘I was fishing,’ he said, in what was clearly – and painfully – rote-learnt pigeon Turkish, ‘off Malta where I live.’

‘Lived,’ corrected Enver Pasha. ‘Past tense.’

‘Lived. Then the man – or what was left of a man – rose out of the sea before me and stood there like he was on solid land, or he were Christ upon Galilee.’

The scholar, whose love of Greece and Rome led him to fear and resent Christianity and its founder, daintily curled his lips at such a reference. The Circassian girl, bored beyond measure, yawned and prepared to doze.

‘Then he told me where I was to go, what I was to say and to whom. He promised me great riches if I did as I was bade and damnation if I did not. And so here I am.’

‘And there you go!’ quipped Enver Pasha, capping the fisherman’s speech and indicating with one fat hand that he should be bundled from their presence. ‘The Venetian,’ Enver then gravely advised the scholar, ‘did not forget his duty either side of the grave. He was one of our finest.’

‘Perhaps still is …’ hazarded the scholar.

‘No,’ replied Enver Pasha airily, ‘the sea and its inhabitants do the most horrible things to lifeless flesh. His magic could not counter those sundering influences for ever.’

‘So that is it!’ crowed the old scholar, who knew all too much about the rapid dissolution of the body.

‘Of course,’ answered the Pasha, beaming a smile of white and gold. ‘How else? You must know that the Hermeticum instructs how to instil divine essence into a statue …’

‘I do,’ the scholar confidently affirmed. ‘And thereby we preserve the Pagan pantheon for future days.’

‘Just so. Well, the Venetian had access to a deeper teaching by which the fleeing soul may be chained just a little longer to its prison of meat.’

‘I had no idea!’ gaped the scholar, forgetting considerations of image for a brief moment, such was his amazement.

‘Being so menial in our counsels,’ said the Pasha brutally, ‘we chose not to enlighten you – until it was necessary. The fisherman was instructed to tell me one thing only – the name: Captain Slovo.’

‘But you do not wish me to remove this … grit in our sandal?’ asked the scholar, his private world now all turned topsy-turvy.

‘No,’ said the Pasha, gently stroking the gauze-clad rump of the houri prone beside him. ‘I want you to find him.’

‘May I ask why?’

The Pasha nodded, his hand now moving to an even more intimate role. ‘At your new – as of this moment – level, yes, you may. It transpires, by the strangest of coincidences – in which, as you know, we do not believe – that this Slovo is one of ours. Of all those available for the job, the Venetian found the one pirate in our ranks to be killed by. How odd, how strange, that this man should simultaneously return to our attention and create his own vacancy. He is clearly as favoured as the Venetian was not. In fact, I learn that he is a major investment, a piece of steel of our own forging. That is why, when he is found, I want you also to activate the Papal Chapter, excluding only the deepest buried treasures. It appears Slovo figures in many divergent plans and so, far from killing him, you will bring him home and pave his way.’

‘It shall be so,’ said the scholar and bowed as deeply as his traitorous joints would permit him.

‘It must be so!’ answered the Pasha. ‘Now please leave – amorous instincts are storming the walls of my rational faculties.’

Being a mischievous as well as a learned old man, the scholar turned back after reaching the door to the outer audience chamber. As he’d hoped, proceedings were already well advanced and the houri’s lustrous head was buried deep in the Pasha’s crotch. ‘And the fisherman?’ he asked innocently.

Enver Pasha regained control of his eyeballs and disengaged his intimate accomplice. ‘Service in the galleys of the Sultan seems best,’ he said as evenly as he could. ‘The man is used to a maritime career.’

‘But no riches?’

‘It is possible,’ replied the Pasha, leaning back in anticipation of a professionally choreographed hour or two to come. ‘Once every decade or so, a ship gets in such a desperate position that it frees and arms its galley-slaves. Of those unfortunate ships a few might even go on to win the fight. A rare sea-captain, one whom life has not yet hardened beyond human gratitude, might reward a slave who’d fought, performed mighty deeds of valour, and yet survived. It could just happen … and certainly he had no greater chance of fortune as a Maltese fish-grabber.’ Enver Pasha managed to sound the most reasonable of men. ‘Therefore of what have we deprived him?’

The scholar conceded the point by withdrawing and closing the double doors. He then made haste to leave the Pasha’s Athenian palace since sight of its present state, captured, altered and debauched to Islamic tastes and usage, upset him. Other more worthy feet should be treading the same ground. Perhaps even … his step could have graced that ravished spot. It didn’t bear thinking about he decided as the silk-glorified Janissaries grimly monitored his exit from the premises. Outside, he was careful to avert his gaze from the dishonoured Acropolis above.

How monstrous, mused the scholar, as he threaded his donkey through the decayed streets of once-Imperial Athens, that anything should presume to exist without reverence for the gods, Plato and antiquity. High time that civilization was rearranged so as to compel it!