“I know, child, we must go.”
“We can’t leave him here.”
“We must. Quickly now, go.”
They went as they had arrived, bent, stumbling, leaning heavily upon each other as they left the dying house.
Fotis lay on a damp patch of grass at the edge of the driveway. Andreas sat down beside him while Ana rushed past them to where Matthew knelt on the gravel, heaving and spitting. The Snake’s body was slack, all tension gone, as if the cord of his life force had been cut. Only the blinking eyes showed that there was anyone inside. There were black streaks of ash in Fotis’ hair, his left temple was bleeding, and there were bruises over the rest of his head. The thin, fragile limbs and gaunt face were the same as they had been at that troubling dinner a few weeks before, but the vibrant energy that had animated them then was utterly gone. He was not simply old but used up, dying. It might be tomorrow, thought Andreas, or a few months off, but it would be soon.
“Well,” Fotis whispered.
“It’s gone.”
The eyes closed for several moments, then opened again, staring at the sky.
“You killed him?”
“No,” Andreas answered, bemused. “The girl did.”
“The girl?” In different circumstances, Fotis might have laughed. The best he could manage now was a grimace.
Behind them there was a roaring rush, windows shattered, and flames licked out of the empty frames. The entire house would be consumed shortly. Nothing would be left but the exterior stone wall of the ground floor. From where they sat the two old men could feel the heat.
“You’ve killed me also,” Fotis continued. “All of you. You’ve taken what I needed to live. For what? To feed it to the flames? Better it should be destroyed than I should have it?” There was bitterness in his words, but little heat. “You’ve killed me.”
The words made Andreas tired. He could not expect wisdom or peace to come to his friend so near the end, but still it made him sad. It was a painting, nothing more. Pigment on wood, no pumping heart, no ageless spirit, no soul. He had held it himself, and he knew. They were all mad.
“You are dying from the inside, Foti. No one can help you.”
“You can help me. You can finish the job. You are the one who showed me the icon, made it necessary to my life. Then took it from me, twice. I do not understand why you have worked so hard to destroy me, but at least finish it.”
Andreas looked to the two young people. Ana was attempting to bind Matthew’s hand with her scarf.
“Send them away,” whispered Fotis, “so they will not see. Then put my body in the burning house. I am not brave enough to do it myself, Andreou. You must help me.”
“No.”
“And what if I tell you I killed your bastard brother.”
“I would not believe you.”
“I let him die, then. I was in the crypt, waiting for that fat Mavroudas.”
“But he got out through the flames, instead. So the plan was yours.”
“You knew that before now.”
“Including burning the church.”
“No, that was Mavroudas’ idea.”
“But you went along. You agreed to it. Or else you would not have expected him to use the crypt for his escape.”
“All right, then. I burned your brother’s church. I watched him come down the steps and fall at my feet, bleeding. And I did nothing. I left him to die. How does a brother punish that?”
“There was nothing you could have done. The wounds were too serious. It was evil to leave him like that, but you did not kill him. Your sins are heavy enough without borrowing others.”
“Andreou.” Fotis’ voice became pleading. “Cancer is a terrible death. And I have had these dreams. I am afraid to do what I should. You must help me.”
Nothing Andreas had just learned surprised him, yet it struck deeply. He had not wanted it to be true, had buried it in his heart, fastened upon the hunt for Muller as a means of leading himself away from the truth. His connection with Fotis could not survive this news. He had lost his friend already. And he could imagine no worse judgment than that which nature had already decreed. There was nothing for him to do.
“My punishment for Mikalis,” he said, gripping his old friend’s shoulder for the last time as he pulled himself to his feet,
“is to let you live.”
Andreas wandered over toward the younger people, hesitant to invade their intimacy, yet needing to speak to them. Sirens could be heard now, still far distant. A fragment from his dream, or memory, or whatever it had been, came back to the old man suddenly. Something he had not thought of in more than fifty years. He saw the icon there by the table near Kosta, the space between the two panels dug at with some tool. And then, after he had shot the boy, he noticed little scraps upon the table, paper-thin bits of beige cloth. And it had occurred to him that it was one of these which Kosta had placed upon his tongue to swallow with his wine. That last sacrament. He must tell Matthew, sometime. Or perhaps, in fact, he would not.
There was another rushing boom, and part of the roof collapsed, sending gouts of red sparks high into the air. Andreas watched intently. Nothing could have survived in there, and yet he would sift the ashes until he found Muller’s bones. The icon would be only dust. There would be no evidence of its destruction. They would have to trust to logic. They would have to take it on faith.
SUMMER 2000
EPIROS, GREECE
T he church of Katarini had been built over the ruins of its burned predecessor, and if he looked carefully, Matthew could see the places where the old stone met the new. He had been to this village and this church before, but not for years, and never with his grandfather’s unearthed memories, or the image of the lost Holy Mother, so clearly in his mind. According to the priest, the new construction followed the destroyed original closely, and Matthew tried hard to imagine the past still present in this place that was both at once. Was this the window that the andarte captain Elias had looked through for signs of his brother? Was this the same stone floor that had bruised the knees of his pious great-grandmother while she prayed, and her mother before, and so on for generations? Was this the patch of wall behind the altar where the Holy Mother was hidden for three years? Then abducted, rescued from fire, only to perish in fire in the end. Was fire its fate all along? Matthew was not a strong believer in fate, but he was withholding judgment on a number of such matters at present.
The church was large for the village it dominated, but smaller than his imagination had made it, and sufficiently cluttered with the usual assortment of modern improvements to impede his experiment in conjuring up history. The priest flicked a switch behind him and the bright chandeliers, ubiquitous in any Greek church now, cleared every shadow of ghosts. The images in the iconostasis-John, wild and lean; Mary, gentle and sad; Christ dressed in the white robes and miter of a bishop-were expertly rendered, but without
