Scandal's Daughter (14 page)

“Aargh!” She coughed and spluttered as the liquid set fire to the back of her throat, burnt its way down to her stomach, and brought tears to her eyes.

James rescued the bottle. “Not water, I take it. Are you going to survive?” He sipped. “Ouzo! Well, it would warm us but I don’t think it’s a good idea on an empty stomach, especially when we’re so thirsty. How much did you swallow?”

“Quite...ughaa...a bit,” she gasped. “What’s ouzo? It’s certainly warming!”

“A local type of brandy. In about thirty seconds you will be bosky, if not drunk as a wheelbarrow.”

Cordelia giggled. “I do feel a bit odd. Why a wheelbarrow? I shall be drunk as an oxcart.”

“I hope not!”

That was the last thing she remembered clearly when she woke up with her head on his shoulder. She had a vague impression of having found their plight uproariously funny. Returning to a cold, wet, twilight world, with crick in her neck, a slight headache, and a raging thirst, she could no longer see the joke. She groaned.

“With us again?” James’s smile was far too amused and insufficiently sympathetic. Just let him wait until next time he was seasick! “Good. We have reached a village at last.”

“Water!” Cordelia croaked.

“My throat is as dry as the rest of me is wet. I hate to think how you must feel. Ah, here we are, wherever here is.”

The oxen halted in a small, muddy square with a church on one side, a taverna opposite, and a well in the centre. James thanked their driver and vaulted over the side of the cart. His energy made Cordelia feel limper than ever. Bleary-eyed, she watched him turn the crank of the well, listened to the clank and creak as the bucket went down. The liquid sound of the splash as it hit the water roused her to action.

Clambering down, she did not clank but she could have sworn she heard her joints creak. She trudged over to reach him just as the bucket reappeared, full to the brim.

“Heaven!” She never would have believed plain, cold, clear water drunk from her cupped hands could taste so good. “Sheer heaven.”

“Fire and food next.”

The old man had disappeared, and the wooden benches and tables under the huge pine outside the taverna were deserted, but lamplight and the sound of voices came from within. Cordelia followed James into the low-ceilinged, smoky room.

Every voice fell silent, every head turned to stare. In the hush came a whisper: “The foreigners.”

One of them must be a partisan, which meant James and Cordelia had to go on claiming to be Swedish—and claiming to be man and wife.

The only woman in the room, Cordelia quailed beneath their combined gaze, half curious, half hostile. Then James said, “Kalespera!” and some of them responded, “Good evening,” before turning back to their wine, their backgammon, their pipes, their conversations, low-voiced now.

A tall, stout man in an apron came forward, looking them up and down with a disparaging expression. “What do you want?” he asked in a grudging tone.

Cordelia grasped very little of what he and James said to each other, but she understood the change in the man’s demeanour when James mentioned money. They were ushered into a back room. In here the air was steamy and smelled divinely of frying onions and garlic and spices. Five children seated around a table stared, while the taverna-keeper explained the situation to an equally large woman stirring a pot over the fire.

“My wife, Marika,” he said, and returned to his customers.

Clucking and tutting, Marika waved James to a bench beside the fireplace and tugged Cordelia through another door into a tiny room filled with a huge bed. The only other furniture was a wooden chest, from which she produced a voluminous black garment. This she laid on the bed and, with words and gestures, urged Cordelia to put it on in place of her wet clothes.

Fortunately she then returned to her cooking, as otherwise Cordelia would have had no space to turn around. She stripped off everything except the diamond cloth. Its outer layer was damp but somehow the inner layers had stayed dry.

Over it she put on her kind hostess’s gown. It was rather like wearing a tent. Folds bunched about her feet and there was room for three or four of her inside, while the neckline drooped almost to her bosom. She rolled up the sleeves to her wrists, with both hands raised the front of the skirt above the floor, and waddled back to the other room.

Marika, who was chattering volubly with James, took one look at Cordelia and laughed heartily. She produced a shawl for a girdle, a beautifully embroidered kerchief for a fichu. Then she sat Cordelia down at the table with the silent, wide-eyed children and set bread and a bowl of thick, savoury bean soup in front of her.

She beckoned James into the bedroom, returning with Cordelia’s wet clothes. These she hung on a rope tied across the ceiling, among braided strings of onions and garlic. James’s wet clothes joined them when he reappeared in a shirt and breeches several sizes too large, eliciting another guffaw from Marika.

Grinning, he said to Cordelia, “I don’t mind being a figure of fun as long as I’m fed. Is that as good as it smells?” He sat down beside her.

“Just as good, though I should have been happy with dry bread.”

“Those shish kebabi seem an awfully long time ago,” he agreed, gratefully accepting the bowl of soup Marika brought him. Half of it disappeared before he spoke again. “Ah, that’s better.”

Cordelia finished her soup. Marika promptly refilled her bowl, but the edge was off her appetite and she started to think ahead. “They haven’t room here to put us up for the night, have they?”

“Unless we want to sleep in a cow-byre, I gather, only one house in the village is large enough, and that belongs to a cantankerous widow. She has no children and no aged parents. Luckily she’s as renowned for piety as for ill-temper, so Marika has sent her son to fetch the priest, in hopes of persuading him to persuade the widow Eleni to accommodate us.”

“In separate rooms.”

“What, you don’t want to spend the night with your dearly beloved husband?” he mocked.

She scowled at him. “Separate rooms.”

“We’ll be lucky to get any room at all.”

Before he finished his second bowl of soup, the priest came in. A thin, nervous young man with a sparse black beard and liquid black eyes, he seemed bowed beneath the dignity of his sacerdotal robes and headdress.

According to James’s translation, he was perfectly willing to do his best for them. However, as he shyly confessed, while Eleni was undoubtedly devout and had followed the least suggestion of his predecessor, he himself had yet to win her wholehearted approval. Still, the gospels had something to say on the subject of taking in strangers. He would try.

Marika encouraged him, and he went off looking determined.

The children were asleep on paliasses on the floor by the time the young priest returned. Eleni refused point-blank to have a man in the house. If they did not object to separating, he said apologetically, Cordelia might go to Eleni and he would find a corner for James.

Cordelia breathed a sigh of relief.

Her relief was compounded the next morning when she discovered her monthly courses had begun. Explaining that to James would have been even more difficult than convincing him she did not want him to make love to her, whatever she had allowed in Captain Hamid’s tent. As it was, explaining her needs to her hostess was far from easy, but at last Eleni understood and, grumbling, provided the necessary cloths.

Now all Cordelia had to do was delay their departure until her menses finished. Thank heaven the flow had not started sooner! She could not possibly travel with James for a few days.

Which brought to mind the question of whither they were to travel. Mehmed Pasha awaited her in Thessaloniki. Soldiers hunting for them on the coast road surely meant other nearby ports were being watched. Where could they go?

Chapter 14

“James, thank heaven you have come!”

“Now that’s the kind of welcome I like to hear.” With a grin, he sat down beside Cordelia on the courtyard bench sternly indicated by Eleni. The wood was damp, but the sky above was blue again, washed clean by yesterday’s rain. “Has your hostess been browbeating you?”

“I think she has tried, but since I don’t understand more than one word in three she has not had much success.”

“She appears to have succeeded in cowing her plants,” said James, glancing round the small courtyard. The mulberry tree in the centre was pruned to a few stubs and the small baytrees in terracotta pots had round-cropped heads which would have done credit to Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers. In a raised bed, onions, garlic, and herbs grew in strictly serried ranks, beneath a clothesline laden with dripping laundry. “Lucky it’s a fine day or I daresay she’d make me sit out here in the rain to talk to you.”

“I could have met you elsewhere if I had anything to wear besides Marika’s tent. My clothes dried overnight but they were so filthy I could not bear to put them on, so I washed them and now they are wet again.” She waved at the clothesline.

“Mine too. Father Stephanos’s wife found me these, which fit more or less, and washed mine, though I gather it’s not normal to launder until Easter.”

“Oh, is that what Eleni was trying to tell me? I just wish the Greeks had adopted the Turkish custom of frequent baths. What would I not give for a hammam!”

“No such luck. I’ve put word about that we wish to buy clothes, as well as provisions and mules and a tent.”

“Tents. I shall give you a diamond to pay for everything.” She seemed unaware of the incongruity of handing out diamonds yet washing her own laundry. Other matters were on her mind. “James, it’s all very well buying mules, but where shall we go? Mehmed Pasha is in Thessaloniki and the Janissaries will surely be watching the other nearby ports. Can we go directly west to the Adriatic?”

“In summer perhaps, but I’d rather not attempt it at this season. It’s mountains all the way, snowbound in winter, populated chiefly by Albanian brigands. You are right about the Turks guarding the ports, though, so I believe our best hope is to travel by land to Athens.”

Cordelia smiled. “Anything to postpone the agonies of a sea voyage?” she said teasingly.

“If you suffered as I suffer! But they cannot question every traveller on every road so if we avoid Thessaloniki and the main highways we should be safe. However, that will make a long journey still longer. The sooner we start the better, tomorrow at dawn if I can obtain all we need by then.”

“Oh no! I mean, I need a few days to recover. You may be accustomed to adventure but I am not!”

He eyed her critically. Her cheeks were rosy, brown eyes bright, if anxious, her flaxen hair escaping in exuberant wisps from her braid—she must have washed it in spite of the lack of a bath. “Adventure seems to suit you. You look delightful, in spite of that extraordinary garment.”

“I am not fishing for compliments, I assure you,” she retorted sharply. “Indeed, I need to rest before we set out.”

“Don’t tell me your hostess is pressing you to stay?”

She grimaced. “Hardly. Oh, please, James, what difference will two more days make in the end?”

“None, I suppose. It may even allow the Janissaries’ vigilance to decline.” He shrugged. Game as she was, it must be difficult to face exchanging the comparative comfort of Eleni’s house for a week or more on the road. Her thighs would be stiff and sore for some days, too, making even a sidesaddle devilish uncomfortable. “As you wish. Now, Eleni seems to be as well to pass as anyone in the village. Let me have a diamond and I’ll see what she will offer.”

Blushing furiously, she jumped up. “Yes, I’ll go and...and fetch one,” she said, and ran into the house.

James pondered Cordelia’s blush. He remembered her sudden notion of bribing the soldiers with her diamonds. That, not the partisans’ gunfire, was what had abruptly curtailed his seduction attempt. And the thought had struck her when his questing hand came to the unexpected obstruction about her waist. Ergo, she was probably carrying the diamonds wrapped around her, and a very good thing too or they would have been lost in the attack with the rest of their belongings.

So she would have to undress to give him a diamond. No wonder she had blushed. A curious combination of practicality and primness, passion and prudery, Miss Cordelia Courtenay!

He had never known a woman like her. He wanted her, but he also wanted to know what had made her the way she was. He was going to have plenty of time to find out, he reflected, on the long road to Athens.

Hearing her footsteps returning he looked up, to see Eleni peering at him suspiciously from a window. Talking to the Greek woman was unlikely to make Cordelia view men with a more favourable eye. No doubt the widow had her reasons, but he wished Cordelia had not insisted on staying with her an extra couple of days. And that was odd, too. He did not believe she needed to rest and he would have expected her to be as eager to move on as he was. He frowned.

“What is wrong?”

“Nothing. Let’s see.” Taking the diamond from the palm of her hand, James held it up to the sun. Though small, its fiery glitter set rainbows dancing about the courtyard. “We’ll never get its true worth here,” he said regretfully.

“I just hope it will pay for what we need. I do have some cash left but if we spend it all here we may find ourselves wishing for it later.”

“Very likely. I’m glad you were able to retain it in the confusion. Is your Greek up to asking Eleni to come out here, if she still refuses to let me into the house?”

“I’ll try.” She returned in a few minutes, shaking her head. “I think she understood, and I think she said she won’t speak to you without the priest. I could not explain what you wanted.”

“No matter. I shall try elsewhere first and come back with Father Stephanos if necessary.”

“Come back anyway.”

“Of course. I’ll have to tell you what goes on, and I should not dare purchase any clothes for you without your approval! Once you have something decent to wear, you can go about paying morning calls on Father Stephanos’ wife and Marika at the taverna. Unless you are too tired?”