any age or mystery behind them. The nave was crowded with unadorned pews, where once there would have been only a few, for the old, while the rest of the congregation stood, for hours sometimes, swaying half asleep on their feet, drugged by incense and the priests’ chanting. There was a big clock on the church tower, donated by an American businessman-village time eradicated, forced into hiding in the hills and caves, or down in the crypt.
The priest beckoned. Matthew followed him through the opening in the icon screen and around the altar to where a narrow passage ran back to the priest’s chambers. There was an almost invisible door in the wall of the passage.
“You want to go down?” Father Isidoros asked.
Matthew placed a palm on the wooden door. “Yes, I do.”
He turned and looked to where his father stood by the altar. Alex’s hair had come back gray, still surprising Matthew every time he caught sight of it. Yet the leanness had vanished, and the older man carried himself with the upright posture and determined stride that had been his signature before the illness. He was trying to take an interest in the church for Matthew’s sake, but he kept looking at his watch, as if he had an appointment somewhere else.
“Dad, we’re going into the crypt. Are you coming?”
Alex shook his head.
“No. I was down there once, years ago, that was enough. Enjoy yourself. I’d better find your mother.”
“She can’t get lost in a village this size.”
“Don’t underestimate her.”
The priest unlatched the door, switched on an electric lantern hanging from a peg within, and started down the narrow steps. A cool draft struck Matthew’s face, a high, earthy smell, like a garden shed. He took a deep breath and started down.
They had buried Fotis in a cemetery outside Ioannina. The old man had made the arrangements years before, so the logistics were not difficult for his executor, Matthew Spear. At one point it had seemed that only Matthew, his mother, and the priest would be at the graveside, but Alex had agreed to accompany them at the last moment, and Andreas had come up from Athens. He would not follow them on to the village, though. He had not been back to Katarini in decades and did not intend to see the place again. He was an Athenian now, and would die there.
Ana had wanted to come with Matthew. Or she had offered, in any case-a significant gesture. The fire, the killings, the whole business of the icon had traumatized her deeply, and she’d needed a few weeks to be away from everything having to do with it, including him. Even once they had started to see each other again, del Carros, Benny Ezraki, and the Holy Mother of Katarini were off-limits for discussion. Fotis’ death had opened something in Matthew, had freed him of some burden. Responding either to that or to her own heavy therapy, Ana seemed to be coming out the other side of her grief as well. In spite of this, Matthew had been slow to take up her offer. Perhaps intuiting that he needed to do this alone, she made plans to go to Rome with her friend Edith instead. Now he felt the separation keenly, and wondered if he had not made a mistake.
The bottom steps were deeply worn and polished by the passage of thousands. This was the old church. Father Isidoros moved slowly, holding the lantern up here and there. Matthew could feel the tightness of the chamber, the low ceiling, the narrow passages. So much history forced into this little space. There were fewer bones visible than he expected. The compartments mostly hid them, or maybe some had been moved elsewhere. Did they even use the ossuary anymore? In a far corner of the chamber, the priest stopped and looked back at Matthew.
“Here, this place here, is your family.”
The younger man glanced at the shelves, but there were almost no bones to see, and those there looked no different from any others. The conformity of death. Yet those yellow shards were his ancestors, maybe souls his grandfather had known in life, not so long ago.
“There,” Isidoros continued, pointing to the ground, “is where your great-uncle Mikalis died.”
Matthew knelt then and put his hand on the dusty floor, feeling around a bit, as if there might still be a warm spot where the body had lain. Nothing. If he sensed a presence here below, it was not to be found in any one place but was everywhere at once, in the very air. Nevertheless, he knelt upon that sad spot for many minutes, and finally the priest moved away and left him to his meditation. Prayer was no more available to him now than it had ever been, and seemed less necessary. He had nothing to ask, only a last task to perform.
From his pocket he took the smooth jade beads that had spent so many hours in his godfather’s hands. What worries had they absorbed, what secrets? What penance could they do now for a man damned by his own conscience before death took him? What was the life of one priest in the weighty scale of Fotis’ sins? Mikalis had forgiven, or not, in his last moments, and nothing that Matthew did now mattered. He sighed. Such an evanescent faith was no faith at all. He squeezed the stones in his hand and thought of his grandfather. For Andreas? Could it be for him? But no, the old man would not care, the gesture would be lost upon him.
A memento, then. Like flowers upon a grave. That would have to be good enough. Abandoned by the priest’s lantern, in darkness, Matthew placed the beads upon the stone floor and rose to his feet. A slight dizziness took him, and he leaned upon the cases of his ancestors’ bones to steady himself. The air down here was too thin for the living; they must go. He wandered back toward the entry, looking about the chamber once more, fixing it in his mind. He wondered if he would return, or whether this might be the last time that a Spyridis visited this ancestral space. Did it matter that the connection would perish with him? Surely the dead did not care either way.
The priest waited for him by the stairs, and they went up. After the crypt, the newness of the upper church struck Matthew more forcefully. The Holy Mother could never have come back here; it would not have belonged. The thought of the vanished icon opened that dark, aching place within him, as it had done a hundred times already in the past three months. Yet each time with less force. Deep breaths steadied him; he turned his face away from the priest. He would mourn its loss for a long time, the rest of his life, but perhaps Father Ioannes had been right. Perhaps there was no place for such a sacred work in such a compromised world. Except a monastery. Yes, that was the answer. Meteora, Mount Athos, Saint Catherine’s in the Sinai. The world still did not know all the treasures hidden away in those places. The Holy Mother of Katarini would have been quite safe. Why had he and Ioannes not thought of that when they contemplated its fate? It hardly mattered now.
The afternoon sun had gone behind the mountains when they emerged into the courtyard, and Matthew could feel the day’s heat dissipating, cool dusk coming on swiftly, as it did in these hills. Ana had given him the number of her hotel in Rome. She did not expect him to call, had encouraged him not to, in fact. But she had given him the number. Words were untrustworthy, false. The face spoke the truth. The eyes did not lie, if you knew how to read them. Remember her face, that day he had last seen her. What had it asked of him?
Orange light bathed the top of the distant hill called Adelphos, little brother to the mountains behind it. He would have liked to climb that hill with his grandfather, but he would do it on his own. Find the caves, maybe grow a beard and change his name, live like an andarte or a mad hermit. Matthew smiled at the thought. He would settle for climbing the hill, but not today, not just now. Now he had to find a telephone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My agent, Sloan Harris, provided countless insights into the troubles that beset earlier versions of this work, and proved himself the embodiment of patience, perseverance, and good humor. Dan
