“It’s all very well their being nice, but will they let us out?” broke in Zoe.
“Certainly not at present, but I shall work at them patiently. I haven’t quite got at the state of affairs yet, but there seem to be two parties among the monks, and one of them may be more pliable than the other.”
“And are they going to keep us shut up in this room?”
“Why, you see, you really have no business here at all. Thanks to Eirene’s greatness, you are in the quarters reserved for lady pilgrims of the very highest rank, but you can’t be let out while the monks are about, lest you should distract their minds. I believe that when they are safely in church you will be allowed to walk about outside, and then you will have to spend part of your time in sitting under my window and talking to me, for I shall be locked up. The idea is that if we were all free at once, we might escape, you see. But there are little bits of garden mixed up with the buildings, where you may walk, only you must take care not to go too near the edge of the rock, for there’s no protection whatever. And of course your wardress, or duenna, or whatever her capacity is, will chaperon you everywhere. Isn’t she a caution? I spent ever so long trying to get her to go up and ask you if I mightn’t come and call, and her only answer to my blandishments was to threaten to brain me with her keys. Ah, there goes the semantron—the wooden gong thing that calls the monks to church. I’ll retire gracefully to my cell, and you will profit by my self-effacement.”
The exterior of the buildings of Hadgi-Antoniou became well and wearily known to the two girls during the days that followed, as they paced from courtyard to garden-patch and back again, to the accompaniment of the lusty shouts from the church which marked the monks’ responses to the service. The regularity noticeable in western monastic edifices was here conspicuous by its absence, for though the church, the refectory, and the two blocks of rooms devoted to visitors might be conceived to have been intended to occupy the sides of a square, all symmetry had been destroyed by the crowd of smaller chapels, and of cottages occupied by the monks, which seemed to have been dropped down anywhere and at every angle. There was no encircling wall, which the impregnable position of the monastery rendered unnecessary, and though here and there a tower, or the end of a building, reached the very edge of the plateau, its fringes were generally occupied by uninteresting pieces of garden, in which the girls would sit, looking at the cloudy mountains to the north, or the dim country to the south, until their gaoler would rattle her keys to intimate that the service was nearing its end, and they must return to the custody of their room. Once they stood in the narthex, or porch, of the church, which was decorated in fresco with lively representations of the Torments of the Lost, and with infinite precaution, peeped in, to see the monks at worship, leaning on their crutched staves, and shouting incessant responses, while the metalled and jewelled figures on the ikonostasis made a blaze of light and colour in the prevailing dimness.
Permission to see Maurice any nearer than the courtyard was still rigorously refused, but he spent most of his free time under their window; and when the difficulties of cutting out with a hopeless pair of scissors had been overcome, Zoe, congratulating herself on her diplomacy, announced that the need of clothes was too urgent to allow of his being entertained by more than one at a time. Accordingly, she sat working at one of the farther windows while Eirene talked to Maurice at that looking into the courtyard, but she would have found it difficult to formulate definite reasons for her altruism. A vague feeling that the more closely Eirene’s interests were linked with theirs, the more hope there would be of a satisfactory compromise in the future, was perhaps her strongest impression. But one afternoon Eirene called to her excitedly to come, since Maurice had news. Zoe flew to her side.
“No, no, not news from outside,” said Maurice quickly. “Why did you put it like that, Eirene? It’s only that I have found out what’s wrong among the monks here. It seems that there are two parties, a Greek and a Thracian party, as in Emathia generally. The Greeks are in possession, of course, and the Hegoumenos is a Greek, but the other lot are pretty strong, and have been gradually ousting the Greeks from the minor offices of the community. Their idea is to carry the monastery over to the Exarchist side—what you and Professor Panagiotis call the schismatics, Eirene—and Scythia is giving them a helping hand. The poor old Hegoumenos has only one idea—to keep matters from coming to a crisis; for though he knows the few he can trust, and the ringleaders on the other side, he doesn’t know how the main body of the monks would vote, but he fears the worst. It seems to have been a Scythian emissary who arranged for our being brought here, on the pretext that Eirene’s life was in danger outside. At least, that was what they told him, but I should say that the Thracian party knew something more. At any rate, I have some hope of getting him to let us go if we are left alone long enough. I’m on the track of the dodge by which they let the ladders down so as to make a way to the ground, with a rope-ladder at the bottom, and if they would leave us unguarded one night we might get down by that, for we could never work the capstan without half the monks to help. Then we might hide in the village till we could get a message through to Wylie.”
“But why not send the message at once?” cried Zoe.
Maurice held up empty hands. “Unfortunately, we can only pay in promises,” he said.
“But can’t you get the Hegoumenos to let us go?”