The Lake of Sorrows (34 page)

He shoved her away, banging her head against the stone wall, and stomped off. Tahir followed reluctantly.

“T
ell me my son has improved, doctor!”

Alhi was standing on a balcony, sipping his ninth cup of tar-like Turkish coffee, watching the intense activity in the palace courtyard. Eminee’s funeral had been a brief, but splendid affair. The Pasha himself had not attended. He had been in the war council room, dictating a score of letters to Vajas, snapping orders at his officers, snarling at his majordomo. Now the levies were back, being armed and dusting off their skills, more were on their way, messengers were leaving and arriving every hour, servants dashed around the courtyard with food and wine to the officers.

Finally allowing himself a break, Alhi had summoned the doctor to report on his patient.

“I gave the young Bey a sedative, my Pasha. The agitation of … the arrest has stolen much of his strength. But, given time to rest, I believe he will heal.”

“I expected nothing less.” Alhi emptied his cup with relish, motioned for a servant to refill it and let his gaze run up and down the doctor. “But you seem in need of a doctor yourself, Karayannis?”

Karayannis did. His clothes were rumpled and reeked of days of fearful sweating, his cheeks were swarthy with stubble and his eyes scarlet with lack of sleep - and the craving for opiates. Nevertheless, he painfully drew himself up to his full height and looked the Pasha of Hyperus straight in the eye. “And I have a confession.”

The Pasha looked amused more than surprised. “You do? Let us hear it then. I am, after all, the final arbiter of justice in Yannina.”

“It was I who killed your wife.”

The guards within earshot gasped. The Pasha smiled.

“You? Your opiates must be colluding with your tiredness, doctor.” Still looking amused, Alhi inclined his head and twirled his beard between his fingertips. “Surely a doctor does not kill?”

Drawing in a deep breath, the doctor swallowed hard and then spoke in a rapidly thinning voice. “I poisoned her. I … thought she was a danger to the lady Froshenie.”

“I see. And how did you accomplish this dastardly deed?”

“I … offered the lady Eminee a cup of wine when she came to see how her son was. The poison … a slow-acting poison … I slipped it into — “

Alhi waved him off, already tiring of the game. “Enough, doctor. You talents as a liar leave everything to be desired. And besides, I know who poisoned my wife.”

“It was not Froshenie!”

“I know.”

“It was — you
know?
”

“Pashou told me. And even if she had not, my wife told me herself.” A flash of pain flickered across Alhi’s face, but he brutally banished it. “In a letter. A confession.”

Karayannis cringed. “A lie! I did it. I swear I did it.”

“You are being pathetic, doctor. I wonder why you are so hungry for — oh, no, I do not.”

Scarlet with humiliation, Karayannis gritted his teeth, but could find no answer.

“Sacrificing yourself to save your little patient - and wanting to die when you realize you cannot. That is more dedication than one can expect even from a physician from the academy of Genoa, is it not, doctor?”

Still speechless, Karayannis bit his lip until blood flowed.

“Enough of the charades already, doctor. I could have diagnosed your heartsickness for the little Vassiliou woman the first time I asked you about her. But let us say that this has been your
confession
today.” Alhi waved a hand airily. “Now kindly get out of my sight. You know the way to the gate. Go home, get some rest, or put yourself to eternal sleep with your opiates. I could not care less.”

Karayannis found his voice, a savage wail. “I will never return! And even if you make me, I will do nothing for your son. Or yourself.”

“So? My son, though tired, is recovering, I do not need you any more. I
need
noone, doctor! All I need is to cure my son’s mind and I already have the perfect balm for that.”

“I will find a way to poison
you
. I will — “

“You really are hungry for death, are you not, doctor? A pity I have no wish to oblige you. The Lion of Hyperus does not bother to step on ants. Guards! Throw him into the courtyard. He can find his own way from there.”

A trio of burly guardsmen stepped forward and Karayannis, kicking and screaming incoherently, found himself dragged through the corridors to the nearest door to the main courtyard. There, the soldiers flung him down the stairs. The steps were few, but they were stone, and the tumble left him lying in a crumpled heap in the yard’s dust.

He fought to get to his feet, but one of the soldiers had followed him and now drove his boot between the doctor’s shoulder blades, slamming him back down. “That is enough from you, doctor. We do not want anyone to vex the Pasha, he is more dangerous than ever now. He may not want your head taken off, but we can still break your legs!”

The guardsman kicked him again to drive home his point and walked away, leaving Karayannis lying in the dust among the bustle of soldiers and servants, sobbing with rage. Noone took any notice of him, noone wanted to be friendly to the Pasha’s enemies.

And yet, suddenly a voice chirped in his ear. “Doctor Karayannis? You must help me!”

The shocked, sorrowful voice was accompanied by an insistent tugging at his sleeve. Karayannis slowly raised his face from the dust and found himself looking into Chryssie’s tearful face.

Somehow, the Vaya managed to keep down her voice and yet scream. “They took her, doctor. The soldiers took my little angel! They threw her into the dungeons. They will not let me go to her. You must help me! You were always the one who knew what to do. Please, doctor! You must do something.”

Karayannis managed to get up on all fours, head dangling. “I cannot help anyone any more these days, poor Chryssie.” He let out a bitter, cackling laugh. “I cannot even get myself killed.”

“You cannot
what?
”

With a supreme effort, he lurched to his feet. He began dusting himself off, then gave it up. He tried to look away from Chryssie’s insistent face, but she would not let him. “I do not know what they have done to you, doctor, but we must
do
something. I heard the guards coming up from the dungeon laugh their filthy laughs and tell their comrades that the Pasha will … force Froshenie to enter his harem. Or drown her in the lake at midnight.”

T
he feverish activity in the palace had lasted well into the evening, but, towards midnight, the courtyard was finally peaceful. The levies had been marched to camps around Yannina, the officers invited to luxurious quarters in the palace and the servants had fallen onto their beds in utter exhaustion. Even the guards at the gate and on the battlements leaned on the walls and fought not to fall asleep.

They snapped back to alertness, however, as the main double doors to the Pasha’s own wing of the palace were flung open and Alhi marched out into the courtyard, flanked by his captain and followed by a dozen guardsmen.

Striding purposefully across the yard, towards the forbidding black door that was the entrance to the stairs leading down to the palace dungeons, the Pasha drew both envious and lecherous looks from his soldiers. The Greek woman in the dungeons had been under a rotating guard of six guardsmen ever since she had been chained to the wall down there, and tales of her beauty had been swapped for rumors of the Pasha’s intentions.

Tahir was speaking
sotto voce
to his master as they walked. “Once more I urge discretion, my Pasha. The men are gawking at us. At you. They will tell tales in the taverns of Yannina. The Greek population — “

A contemptuous chuckle escaped Alhi. “I
want
them to gawk, you old fool. I
want
their tales. Let those Yanniote hypocrites visit their mistresses furtively and in shame, such timidity is alien to the Lion of Hyperus. They abandoned this woman to me and I shall rub their cowardice in their faces.”

“Alhi!”

The cry echoed across the near-empty courtyard, ricocheting back and forth between the ghostly-white walls.

The Pasha, his captain and his guards all stopped, dumbfounded, for noone but his late wife ever addressed the Pasha of Hyperus simply by name. They turned to see a lone figure emerge from the shadows under the palace wall.

It was doctor Karayannis, filthy and disheveled as before, but with an oddly dignified bearing. Something glinted in his hand. A knife.

In the bluish semi-darkness of the moonlit courtyard, the doctor’s pale, swarthy face looked peaceful and intent. His voice was firm and fearless when he called out to the Pasha. “I challenge you, Alhi of Hyperus.”

“Really, doctor, this beyond pathetic. You have been born a few centuries too late!” Alhi let out a booming laugh. “In our enlightened age, even the kings and
kaisers
of the West have forbidden duels.”

Karayannis strode forward, reducing the gap between them to less than a dozen paces. The guardsmen stirred, a few took a step forward. The doctor waved the knife at Alhi. “Men of honor still accept a challenge, you dog!”

Alhi’s laugh succumbed to irritation, as he noticed more and more doors and windows opening around the courtyard. “This childish comedy has gone on for long enough, doctor. Guards! Throw him out of the palace. And none too gently, either. If you break a few bones, he should know how to set them.”

“You call yourself the Lion of Hyperus and yet you do not even have the courage of a Tepeleni goatherd! I call you a coward before your own soldiers. In your own palace! You claim to be teaching your son how to be a man and you act like a woman yourself, hiding behind your men.”

For a moment, even the walls seemed to be holding their breath.

Then Alhi stepped forward, shoving aside his guards. “A knife!”

Tahir stepped forward. “My Pasha, surely you are not thinking of — “

Alhi cuffed him offhandedly. “A knife, you dim-witted old fart! If this lump of goat’s turd thinks he can insult me by calling me a Tepeleni, I shall kill him like a Tepeleni would.”

Eyes and cheek both burning, Tahir took a dagger from one of his men and handed it to Alhi, who was pulling off his robes. The scars on his dark-skinned torso shone in the moonlight and deep shadows rippled along his bull-like back and shoulders. For even if his belly was that of a Pasha who never lacked for anything, one could still tell that he had once been a tribal warrior of the mountains.

Holding the dagger low, point upwards, thumb on the edge, he advanced on the doctor like a man about to slaughter a goat. An excited mumbling from the guards brought a fierce smile to his face.

Karayannis swallowed and stepped sideways, holding up his knife like a timorous
sabreur.

With a snarl, Alhi feinted lazily at him. The doctor yelped and jumped back. A chorus of jeers rose from the soldiers.

Alhi’s smile widened, teeth glistening, as he and the doctor circled each other - the doctor jerkily, licking his lips, the Pasha leisurely, mockingly.

Presently, Alhi stopped, straightening up. “For a man so insistent on a duel, doctor, you seem oddly willing to let it drag on all night. Do we fight, or are you planning to bore me to death?”

A roar of laughter rang out from the guardsmen and the growing throng of spectators that had emerged from officers’ and servants’ quarters.

The doctor took yet another hesitant step sideways - and lunged forward, slashing wildly. A growl of pain escaped Alhi, then the doctor tumbled past him, lost his balance and crashed to the ground. He rolled over, still slashing spasmodically, came up on one knee, panting - but Alhi had not followed him.

The Pasha was stroking his cheek, cursing. Holding out his hand, he found it red with blood. A final curse was followed by a wolf’s grin. “At last, some spirit, doctor. I shall remember you when I see the scar in my mirror.”

He advanced once more towards Karayannis, who rose to his feet, drawing in a deep, shivering breath. “Now, doctor, oblige me by not — “

Alhi lunged in mid-sentence. Shoving aside Karayannis’ knife-arm with his own left, he drove his dagger into the doctor’s midsection, point up, thumb on the edge.

” — running away this time.”

The doctor tensed into a statue. Alhi smiled at him, teeth bared and drove his blade in deeper, to the hilt. “There, doctor, you have had your wish. Now I will go have mine with your little temptress, both as a Tepeleni goatherd and a Pasha.”

Karayannis’ knife bumped onto the ground, but he clawed at Alhi’s shoulders, drawing himself close to the Pasha. There was a triumphant smile on his lips, bloody though they were, as his shining eyes bore into those of the Lion of Hyperus. “Then you will have your wish over the dead body of your son. Or he will save her over yours.”

Confusion and rage burst onto Alhi’s face. Snarling, he twisted the knife and the doctor jerked, then drew himself in close again, his voice rapidly fading away so that only the two of them heard his final words. “Either way, I will have freed Greece from the tyranny of your house — although your final end may yet be long in coming. But I have managed to force fate’s hand tonight. I guess no man can ask for more than that.”

And he slid down into the dust, drawing a trail of blackish blood along the length of the chest and belly of the Pasha of Hyperus.

“Tahir! To me!” Yelling over his shoulder, Alhi rushed across the courtyard towards the entrance to the dungeons. His guardsmen broke into a run, trying to catch up. Alhi turned on them as he tore open the heavy door. “Stay!”

The booming voice stopped the men as if they had run into a fortress wall. The Pasha and his captain descended into the darkness of the dungeon.

T
he dungeon of Yannina palace had two doors between its dark netherworld and the sunlight above. Behind the upper door leading out into the courtyard, a spiraling staircase descended to the lower door, built by another tyrant long ago, to give the accused time to confess before the tortures, and the condemned time to repent before the execution. The screams of the tortured were meant to penetrate to the staircase, but not to the world above.