A Darker God by Barbara Cleverly Read Free Book Online Page A

just thinking about discarding their winter vests.
    Better get started before his brain began to simmer.
    Delaying one last moment before turning to his task, he leaned over the wrought-iron rail to enjoy the lunchtime bustle in the square below. Customers were beginning to drift in to the café tables, calling out orders for their thick black Greek coffee, lighting up their Turkish cigarettes, and opening their newspapers. They were men, all of them, clutching and fidgeting with their strings of worry beads. For a moment, Andrew thought of joining them, escaping into an inconsequential but involving discussion of the latest scandal or a lively argument about the coming elections. He was well known and always welcome down there. It had become his refuge.
    He was unable to duck back inside fast enough to avoid being seen and greeted by a man he knew—a visiting and very distinguished Italian professor on his way up the hill to the British School of Archaeology, where he was giving a series of lectures to students and staff. Andrew should have been up there waiting eagerly in the front row of the audience, not lounging about on his balcony. Ouch! This breath of air wasgoing to cost him dear. There’d be fences to mend. The two men acknowledged each other, exclaiming in Greek and Italian—
“Kathigitis! Professore!”
—with a show of joyful astonishment, and the Italian went on towards Lykkabettos swinging his walking cane.
    Andrew’s eye was caught by another middle-aged man who, like him, was observing the flamboyant Italian greeting the ladies with exquisite politeness as he passed. The stranger was loitering in the shade of a plane tree, and as Andrew watched, he finished his cigarette, stamped the stub into the grille under his feet, and looked about him. Becoming conscious that he was under scrutiny, he raised his eyes and saw the professor. The men held each other’s gaze for a moment, then the one below tipped his boater and walked off. Andrew, who had tensed with foreboding at the encounter, breathed out, calming himself.
    For a moment he’d thought he knew the man. He cursed himself for all kinds of idiot when he realised that, of course, he almost certainly did. The gaily beribboned straw boater worn at a rakish angle proclaimed the fellow below to be one of the increasing flock of taxi drivers who haunted the square. They seemed to have adopted the raffish headgear as their uniform this year. Professor and Lady Merriman had no doubt used the man’s services frequently. Perhaps he’d hurried forward on spotting Andrew in the anticipation of a summoning whistle from the balcony. Entrepreneurs, the Greeks, Andrew thought, approving. Greeks didn’t sit about scowling and truculent like Londoners. They came after their customers with a polite phrase or two. But Andrew disapproved of the excessive use of these motor vehicles by his rich and lazy neighbours. The spluttering cabs polluted the air with fumes and noise. He himself took pride in walking everywhere in this accessible city, when not encumbered by Maud. A lithe and energetic man, he spent the digging season working in the trenchesand his physique was still, in early middle age, more like that of a Greek hoplite than a deskbound academic. Perhaps he wouldn’t be picked for the front line of the Three Hundred at Thermopylae any longer, but he could certainly skirmish to good effect on the back row if called on, he thought.
    But now, his desk was calling him. He could delay no longer.
    With the ritual gestures of a priest tending an altar, he approached the resplendent gramophone he’d had shipped out at great expense and lifted the lid. He changed the needle, then selected an electric recording from his collection and slipped it from its cover. He waited to hear the first bewitching notes of Alexander Borodin’s piece of lush romanticism,
In the Steppes of Central Asia
. Written to celebrate the accession of Tsar Alexander III of Russia. Alexanders!