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found very
little. What could Creech know that those French archaeologists did not? The villages themselves had been habitations from a nightmare.
    Adam remembered the scene when he had ridden into Koutles, Quint twenty yards behind him, grumbling relentlessly about the heat and the flies. He could close his eyes and immediately bring to
mind the dirt and the degradation. The men and women, in filthy clothing, staring at them with undisguised suspicion. The sullen children, old beyond their years, who refused to return his smiles.
It had taken an hour of negotiation with the
proestos,
the village headman, to win them even a place to stay for the night. They had been obliged to bed down in a poor cottage where eight
people and two goats had huddled together in the same room to sleep.
    The following morning, no one had been prepared to admit to possession of any food. Requests for eggs, chickens, even bread and milk, had been met with denials that the villagers had any for
themselves, never mind any to spare for idle travellers. The goats with which they had shared accommodation were, according to the
proestos
, dry and could give no milk. Used to the
open-armed hospitality that most Greek villages had extended to them, Adam had been disturbed by the hostility at Koutles. He had hated the place, and he and Quint had lost no time in leaving it
behind them the following day. Barbes, another wretched village built of mud and faggots, had been little more welcoming when they had passed through it. Why should Samuel Creech care a fig about
Koutles and Barbes? Or wish to enlist the assistance of someone who had travelled there?
    * * * * *
    In the Chelsea studio of his friend, Cosmo Jardine, Adam was able to relax. He and Jardine had known one another both at Shrewsbury, where they had shared a study, and at
Cambridge, where, although they had attended different colleges, they had met for dinner at least twice a week. Since Adam’s return to London, the two men had fallen into an easy habit of
association. Weeks might pass in which they saw nothing of one another but Adam knew that he was always welcome to call whenever he liked at the house in Old Church Street, which Jardine shared
with two other impecunious artists.
    ‘What is this masterpiece in the making?’ Adam asked, indicating a small canvas propped on an easel in one corner of the room.
    Jardine, wearing a loose-fitting white smock over his everyday clothes and carrying palette in one hand and brush in the other, was looking more like a
Punch
caricature of an artist
than any real painter should.
    ‘An oil sketch for my grand Arthurian work:
King Pellinore and
the Questing Beast
.’
    Jardine walked across his studio and joined Adam in front of the easel. The two men stood for a while side by side, staring at the helmeted head of a medieval knight.
    ‘It is all wrong,’ Jardine said at last. ‘I need a model. I have even been thinking of asking you to sit for Pellinore, Carver.’
    ‘My dear fellow, I would as soon be the Questing Beast. Although I wish you well in your chosen career and I would help if I could. Anyway, if you recall, I have already sat for my
portrait. And it provided you with your only success at last year’s Academy show.’
    ‘Even though it was skied and one needed the neck of a giraffe to see it. Clearly you bring me luck.’
    ‘However, I draw the line at impersonating an Arthurian warrior.’
    ‘Ah, well. It was just a thought.’
    The two men stood a little longer in front of the canvas, each wrapped up in his own thoughts. Jardine was the first to break the silence.
    ‘I am to take tea with Mr Millais on Saturday.’ The young painter was unable to disguise the hint of smug delight in his voice. Adam laughed.
    ‘You are the most infernal name-dropper, Jardine. You speak as if this were some intimate tête-à-tête with Millais. Yet both you and I know that it is nothing but a
regular “at home”, and there will be a