The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

"The peace of God be upon this holy house and all within it, and His blessing be upon the work" – and his voice dwelt on the word – "upon the work you are doing."

Nicholas was already known to Father Priketes, but the latter looked as if he had seen a ghost when he caught sight of him.

"We heard you were dead," he said.

Nicholas smiled.

"I am delighted to know it, father," he said. "Do not destroy the idea, if you please."

They passed on to Father Priketes's rooms, where they were alone.

"I see your repairs are going on steadily," said Germanos. "We passed some laden mules on the way. Nicholas wished much to see what you were doing. He is – how shall I say it? – our overseer; we are the workmen. He will tell us when the work must be finished. Let us go at once to the chapel, my brother, and thank St. Luke, your founder, and the Blessed Virgin, that they have brought us here safe. That is the first duty of the soldiers of God."

Father Priketes led the way to the chapel, and pushed open the great brazen door for Germanos to enter. He knelt in turn before the great altar, the altar to the Beloved Physician, and before the black relief of the Virgin, made, as tradition says, by the hands of St. Luke himself, and said for himself and Nicholas a thanksgiving for the aid of the Saints which had brought them safely to the end of their journey. They then supped with Father Priketes, and went back to the chapel.

The place was but dimly lighted with oil lamps, and after locking the door behind them – for at present only a few of the monks had been trusted with the secret of the crypt – the father lighted a lantern and led the way up to the east end. Then after crossing himself he drew from underneath the altar a small crowbar, and creeping under with the lantern, he prized away a square paving-stone, which covered a hole large enough for a single man to creep through. Rough wooden steps had been erected from the floor of the crypt up to the level of this, and one by one they descended. The crypt was some forty feet long by twenty broad, and the light of the lantern struck from all the walls a reflection of steel. Since Germanos's last visit, they had largely added to the number of arms, and on a hasty glance Nicholas reckoned that there could not be less than fifteen hundred guns.

His eyes glistened as he moved the lantern round the walls, and he turned to Father Priketes.

"This will make a hole in the Turks bigger than the hole in your roof," he said. "You have enough, I think. They will be hungry, these reeds; grind their food for them, and do not let them feel stint of that."

"Already?" asked Father Priketes.

"Already! It is August now, and when our vineyards are green with the fresh leaves in the spring, the juice of the greater vintage shall be spilled. And there will be a mighty gathering; the wine-press will be running red, and fuller than the vats of Solomon. Where can you stow the food for all these hungry throats?"

"There is room here, is there not?"

"Surely, room and to spare; but it would not be well to keep it here. Whoever enters here must carry a light; a chance spark, and he may cry to the Virgin in vain."

Father Priketes paused a moment.

"You shall take a walk with me to-morrow and we will see. You are satisfied at present?"

"I shall never be satisfied," said Nicholas. "I should not be satisfied if I saw all the armaments of angels in array against the Turk. But it is time to think of other things. Could you raise men at once?"

"Five hundred in one minute from within these walls," said Father Priketes, "and two thousand more in the time it would take an eager man to climb up here from Kalavryta."

Nicholas looked round again, smiling as a man smiles to look on one he loves.

"This feeds my soul," he said. "And swords too, little sickles for the gathering! Look you, perhaps we shall not meet again till after our vintage has begun; but remember this: After four months from now, we cannot tell when the day of the beginning of the gathering will come, and so be ready. Whatever the archbishop orders, do it, for he and I work together. And, O Father, let no man take thought for himself on that day. What matters it to whom the honor and the glory go, if once Greece is free? If you desire such things, I give to you now by bequest all the honor and riches that may come to me. Forgive me for saying this, but that is the only loophole where failure may creep into our camp, and that I fear more than ten Sultans and their armies. I say the same thing to all, and I remind myself of it daily. I have been chosen to conduct this matter, for the present, in the Morea, and I will give my life and all I possess to it; and in company with others, of whom the archbishop is one, and Petros Mavromichales, of Maina, another, I will do my best, so help me God, honestly and without a selfish mind. The moment a single dissentient voice is raised, not in the matter of councils or plan of actions, on which we will listen to all that is to be said, but of command and obedience, I only ask leave to serve in the ranks. Let us deliberate together by all means till the time comes to act, but when that time comes, and a word of command goes through the country, let there be no delay. For all will depend, so I take it, on the speed with which we act when we come to action. This is the beginning and the end of success, and all that lies between."

"But how is the word of command to come," said Father Priketes, who had secretly hoped for a little independent campaign, "if you are not with us? Must I not act on my own judgment?"

"No, a thousand times no," said Nicholas. "What I have seen here shows me that you in Megaspelaion and Patras will be no small portion of our first success. How the war will spread afterwards, God knows; but when the first grapes are cut it will be you, so I think, to garner them. This is why you must obey absolutely. Nothing will be left to your judgment. A message will come, and you will obey."

"How am I to tell who your messenger is?"

Nicholas smiled.

"Some afternoon, when you are sitting in the spring sunshine, or perhaps some night in this next winter, when you are sleeping, a monk will come to you and say, 'There is a man here, or a boy it may be, or a girl even, who wishes to see you, and we cannot understand what he means.' Then you will delay not, but go and see what it is. You will say, 'I am Father Priketes; you have a message for me?' And the message will be in this form: 'I am bidden to ask you if there is corn to be given to those who need it?' And you will say, 'Is it black corn they need, and are the needy hungry, or are they Turks?' And the messenger will say, 'Send black corn for the Turks to Kalamata or Kalavryta, or wherever it is, and let two hundred or five hundred or a thousand men carry it.' Other instructions may come as well, but always in that form. And as you obey, so may the Lord give you a place among His saints in heaven."

Father Priketes was silent for a moment.

"You are right, Nicholas," he said; "and I swear by the picture of the mother of God that I will obey in all things. Come, shall we go up again?"

They climbed up into the chapel, and went out down the vaulted stone passage to the story below, where another passage, whitewashed and boarded on both sides, led to the monks' library and Father Priketes's own rooms. Nicholas, who carried in his hand an olive-wood stick, tapped the panelling carelessly as he went along, and once stopped a moment and smiled at Germanos.

"The wall seems to be a little less thick here than at other places," he said. "Mehemet Salik, however, was too cunning to attend to such simple things."

"The Lord be praised for making so many clever men," said Germanos, piously. "To have a fool for an enemy has been the undoing of more good people than Satan himself."

They went on to Father Priketes's room where they had supped before, and Nicholas lit himself a pipe.

"That is quite true," he said. "A fool is always blundering into the weak place by accident – there is nothing so disconcerting; whereas a clever man is on the lookout for less patent weaknesses, and passes over the patent ones on purpose. And the Turk is both clever and indolent – a very happy combination."

"For us," said Priketes, who had, as Nicholas once said, a wonderful faculty for seeing that which was obvious.

"As you say, for us," said Nicholas; "and we intend to profit by it. And now, father, with your leave I will go to bed. I have seen all I came to see, and think I had better push on to-morrow. You will find, no doubt, a prudent place for your granary. It is impossible to be too prudent now, just as it will be more than possible to be too wary hereafter. When once we get into the open we keep there until all is finished."

"Where do you go now?" asked Germanos.

"Southwards," said Nicholas. "I must travel as widely as I can in Messenia, and also see my cousin Petrobey. The Maina district will be raised by him. If once the war begins, as I would have it to begin, I shall be at ease about the rest. Only the beginning must be as sudden as the thunderbolt. Ah, but there is fever in my blood for that!"

Nicholas, as his custom was, rose early next morning and went from the dark-panelled room, where he had slept, down towards the chapel. The great green bronze bell hanging in the wooden balcony outside had just begun to ring for matins, and the sound, grave and sonorous, floated out over the valley like a dream. He waited there awhile looking at the blackened Byzantine paintings which covered the roof, till the monks began trooping up the cobbled passage, and with the first of them he went inside the chapel. From the centre of the roof hung a great gilt candelabrum in the form of a crown, and from side to side of the building ran a row of silver lamps – some thirty in number – which had been burning all night, but looked red and dim in the fresh morning light. Set in the gilt altar-screen were the paintings of the Panagia and of Christ, and at the south end – more precious to the faithful than all – the wax relief of the Virgin and Child. The silver panel, behind which it is placed, had been opened, and Nicholas, with the others, made his obeisance before it. The head of the Virgin and the head of the Child are all that can be seen, and these are black with age; the rest is one mass of chased gold. The crown which the Child wears is studded with rubies and emeralds grown dim; His mother's crown is less magnificent; and on the silver rail in front of it hang the offerings of those to whom, in the days of faith, its contemplation had brought healing of many diseases. Over the gate to the altar hung two stoles of red velvet, in which the priest who said the mass would robe himself. A border of gold holly leaves ran down them on each side, and down the middle they were embroidered with floreated and cusped ornaments in red and gold, in the centre of each of which was worked the figure of Christ. On the north wall, by the easternmost of the monks' stalls, hung the picture of the daughter of the Emperor Palæologus. She is dressed in a red cloak with golden eagles embroidered over it; her hair is golden auburn, and she raises a face charmingly childlike and naïve, and holds up hands of prayer to the gracious figure of the Virgin who stands beside her.

Priketes and Germanos were the last to enter, and when the short prayers were said, Nicholas went out with them, and they walked up and down the terrace awhile talking. Some of the elder monks, with their purple cassocks trimmed with fur wrapped closely round them, sat outside the iron-sheeted gate, under the fresco of Adam and Eve being driven out from Paradise, which fills the triangular space above it, watching them with eager attention, for it had become known who Nicholas was and what his errand. On their right rose the enormous mass of the monastery, crowned by an overhanging cliff of gray rock, which the smoke from the chimney had stained in places to a rich vandyke-brown, in the hollow of which, as in the hollow of a sheltering hand, the great pile of buildings stood, seeming rather to have been the core round which the rock rose than to have been built into it. In front the ground fell rapidly away into the valley, but was terraced up into little gardens, full of cypresses and poplars or figs and plane trees; under these stood many little wooden arbors, trellised over with vines, where the brethren spent their tranquil days; and a hundred riotous streams – some conducted down wooden shoots, some straying over the paths – rattled headlong to join the river below. Further down, the hill-side was covered with low-growing scrub, and on the opposite side of the valley, the village of Zachlórou hung on by teeth and nails to the climbing moor. A company of swallows cut curves and circles in the thin morning air, their black backs showing metallic, like oxidized steel in the sunlight, and a great flight of white pigeons clattered out of the rock above and settled in a cloud by the fountain. In one of these little arbors Germanos and Nicholas drank their coffee and smoked a pipe of the monastery tobacco until the latter's horse was brought round. Then, rising,

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