Chapter 3

From the four corners of the principality people flocked to the funeral of the Lady Mother and her daughter. Since time immemorial, events have always been one of two kinds: those that bring people together and those that tear them asunder. The first kind can be experienced and appreciated at market days, crossroads or coaching inns. As for the second, each of us takes them in, or is consumed by them, in solitude. It soon became apparent that the funeral belonged to both categories at once. Although at first sight it seemed to belong to the crowd and the street, what people said about it brought to the surface all that had been whispered or imagined within the walls of every house, and brought confusion to everyone's mind.

Like any disquiet that gestates at first in solitary pain before coming out into the open, rumours about Doruntine grew and swelled up, changing in the most unforeseeable ways. An endless stream of people dragged the story behind them but were yet drawn forward by it. As they sought to give it a shape they found acceptable, they were themselves altered, bruised or crushed by it.

High-born folk with family arms painted on their carriage doors, wandering monks, ruffians and all manner of other people filled and then emptied the high road as they made their way on horseback, in vehicles, but mostly on foot to the county town.

Funeral services had been set for Sunday. The bodies lay in the great reception hall that had been unused since the death of the Vranaj sons. In the gleam of the candles the family's ancient emblems, the arms and icons on the walls, as well as the masks of the dead, seemed covered with a silver dust.

Beside the majestic bronze coffins (Lady Mother had stipulated in her will that a large sum be set aside for her funeral), four professional mourners, seated on carved chairs, led the lamentations. Twenty hours after the deaths, the wailing of the mourners in the reddish gleam of the coffins' reflection had become more regulated, though more solemn. Now and then the mourners broke their keening with lines of verse. One by one, or all four in unison, they recalled various episodes in the saga of this unprecedented tragedy.

In a trembling voice, one of the mourners sang of Doruntine's marriage and of her departure for a distant land. A second, her voice more tremulous still,

lamented the nine boys who, so soon after the wedding, had fallen in battle against the plague-ridden army. The third took up the theme and sang of the grief of the mother left alone. The fourth, recalling the mother's visit to the cemetery to put her curse upon the son who had broken his besa, sang these words:

A curse be on thee, Kostandin!

Do you recall the solemn promise you made? Or has your besa rotted with you in the grave?

Then the first mourner sang of the resurrection of the son who had been cursed, and of his journey by night to the land where his married sister lived:

If it's joy that brings you here I'll wear a dress that's fair.

If it's grief that brings you here Weeds is what I must wear.

While the third responded with the dead man's words: Come, sister mine, come as you are.

Then the fourth and first mourners, responding one to the other, sang together of the brother's and sister's journey, and of the astonishment of the birds they passed on the way:

Strange things have we seen beyond count Save a living soul and a dead man

Riding by on the same mount.

The third mourner told of their arrival at the house and of Kostandin's flight towards the graveyard. Then the fourth concluded the lament, singing of Doruntine's knocking at the door, of the words with which she told her mother that her brother had brought her home, so as to keep his promise, and of her mother's response from within the house:

Kostandin died and was buried as he must. Three years have gone since he was laid to rest. Why then is he not now just soil and dust?

After a chorus of lamentations by all the women present, the mourners rested briefly, then took up their chants again. The words with which they punctuated their wailing varied from song to song. Some verses were repeated, others changed or were replaced completely. In these new songs, the mourners summarised episodes recounted in the earlier recitals, or else elaborated a passage they had previously mentioned only fleetingly or omitted entirely. Thus it was that one chant gave greater prominence to the background of the incident, or to the great Vranaj family's happier days, or the doubts about Doruntine's marriage to a husband from a distant land, and Kostandin's promise to bring his sister back whenever their mother wished. In another all this was recalled only briefly, and the mourners would linger instead on that dark journey, recounting the words that passed between dead brother and living sister. In yet another song all this was treated more briskly, while new details were offered, such as her brother's quest for Doruntine as he drifted from dance to dance (for a festival was under way in Doruntine's village at that time) and what the horseman said of the girls of the village: "Beautiful all, but their beauty leaves me cold."

The people Stres had sent to keep their ears open took careful note of the tenor of these laments and reported to him at once. The captain sat near the window through which the cold north wind blew and, seeming numb, examined the reports, taking up his pen and underlining individual words or whole lines.

"However much we might rack our brains day and night to find an explanation," he said to his deputy, "the mourners will go on in their own way."

"That's true," his aide replied. "They have no doubt at all that he returned from the dead."

"A legend is being born right before our eyes," Stres said, handing him the sheaf of reports with their underlined passages. "Just look at this. Until two days ago, the songs gave little detail, but since last night, and especially today, they have taken shape as a well-defined fable."

The deputy cast an eye over the pages of underlined verses and words, dotted with brief marginal notes. In places, Stres had drawn question marks and exclamation points.

"Which doesn't mean that we can't get something out of the mourners anyway," he said, with the hint of a smile.

"That's right. I've noticed that an ancient way of bewailing the dead has recently come back into use. It's called 'lamenting within the law'."

"Yes", the deputy concurred.

"I don't know if the phrase exists in any other language, but as a servant of

the law, I am, for my own part, struck by such an expression to describe women's wailing at a funeral."

"Indeed", said the deputy.

"Maybe it means that this kind of keening means more than it appears to mean. That it tends to become a law."

His aide was at a loss for a reply.

Through the window you could see the main road, and on it a continuing stream of people coming to attend the burial. Local inns, as well as those for miles around, were overflowing. There were old friends of the family and relatives by marriage. There were representatives of both churches, Byzantium and Rome, as well as members of the prince's family and other lords of neighbouring principalities and counties. Count Thopia, the Lady Mother's old friend, unable to make the journey (whether for reasons of ill health or because of a certain chill that had arisen between him and the prince, no one could say), had sent one of his sons to represent him.

The burial took place on Sunday morning as planned. The road was too narrow to accommodate the crowd, and the long cortège made its way with some difficulty to the church. Many were compelled to cross ditches and cut through the fields. A good number of these people had been guests at Doruntine's wedding not so long ago, and the doleful tolling of the death knell reminded them of that day. The road was the same from the Vranaj house to the church, the same bells tolled, but on this day they sounded very different – protracted and muffled, as if obeying the laws of another kingdom. But apart from that, there was much that was similar: as in the wedding procession three years before, the members of the funeral cortège craned their necks to see the hearse in the same way they had gaped at the bridal steed; the road itself again seemed unable to contain such a milling throng, be it gathered in joy or in grief, and pushed many aside.

Between Doruntine's marriage and her burial, her nine brothers had died. It was like a nightmare of which no more than a confused memory remained. It had lasted two weeks, the chain of calamity seemingly endless, as though death would be satisfied only when it had closed the door of the house of Vranaj for ever. After the first two deaths, which happened on a single day, it seemed as if fate had at last spent its rage against the family, and no one could have imagined what the morrow would bring. No one thought that two more brothers, borne home wounded the evening before, would die just three days later. Their wounds

hadn't seemed dangerous, and the members of the household had thought them far less serious than the afflictions of the two who had died. But when they were found dead on that third day, the family, already in mourning, this new grief compounding the old, was struck by an unendurable pain, a kind of remorse at the neglect with which the two wounded brothers had been treated, at the way they had been abandoned (in fact they hadn't been abandoned at all, but such was the feeling now that they were dead). They were mad with sorrow – the aged mother, the surviving brothers, the young widowed brides. They remembered the dead men's wounds, which, in hindsight, seemed huge. They thought of the care they ought to have lavished on them, care which they now felt they had failed to provide, and they were stricken with guilt. The death of the wounded men was doubly painful, for they felt that they had held two lives in their hands and had let them slip away. A few days later, when death visited their household again with an even heavier tread, carrying off the five remaining brothers, the aged mother and the young widows sank into despair. God himself, people said, doesn't strike twice in the same place, but calamity had struck the house of Vranaj as it had done nowhere else. Only then did people hear that the Albanians had been fighting against an army sick with the plague, and that the wounded and most of those who had returned from the war alive would probably suffer the very same fate.

In three months the great house of Vranaj, once so boisterous and full of joy, was transformed into a house of shadows. Only Doruntine, who had left not long before, was unaware of the dreadful slaughter.

The church bell continued to toll the death knell, but among the many who had come to this burial it would have been hard to find a single one who had any distinct memory of the funerals of the nine brothers. It had all happened so nightmarishly, in deep shadow. Coffins were carried out of the Vranaj house nearly every day for more than a week. Many could not recall clearly the order in which the young men had died, and, before long, would be hard pressed to say which of the brothers fell on the battlefield, which died of illness, and which of the combination of his wounds and the terrible disease.

Doruntine's marriage, on the contrary, was an event each and every one remembered in minute detail, one of those that time has a way of embellishing, not necessarily because they are so unforgettable in and of themselves, but because they somehow come to embody everything in the past that was beautiful, or considered so, but is no more. Moreover, it was the first time a young girl of the country had married so far away. This kind of marriage had

stirred controversy since time immemorial. Various opinions were expressed, and there were endless conflicts and clashes over it. One group was adamant that local marriages, or at least those within the same village or region, kept the clan free from turmoil and especially from suspect foreign blood. They used as a warning to naysayers the plight of coastal towns like Durrës and Lezhë, where the noble race of the Arberësh had been obliged to mix with all kinds of newcomers. Their prime example was Maria Matrenga, a woman famed for her beauty, who had married a man from another county, and as a result of the distance, the different climate and different customs of her husband's abode, had wilted and finally faded away.

Those who favoured distant marriages made the opposite claim. They invoked the ancient kanun, the customary law that prohibited marriage within the four-hundredth degree of relatedness, and scared folk by hinting at the results of inbreeding. To counter the sad story of Maria Matrenga, they reminded people of Palok the Idiot, a seventeen-year-old retard whose parents were close cousins, and who could be seen wandering around the village at all hours.

The two camps fought it out for a long time. At times it seemed that the celestial tale of Maria Matrenga, sprinkled with gold dust like an icon, was in the ascendant, especially at twilight and at the change of seasons; but along came damp and smelly days, when the spittle and stutter of the poor cretin struck fear into people's hearts.

The distant marriage faction had begun to gain ground, but although those who feared inbreeding were easily dissuaded from local marriages, they were equally pained by the prospect of separation. In the beginning, then, the distances were kept small, and marriages two, four, even seven mountains away were countenanced. But then came the striking separation with Doruntine, divided from her family by half a continent.

Now, as the throng following along behind the procession of invited guests headed slowly towards the church, people talked, whispered, recalled the circumstances of Doruntine's marriage, the reluctance of her mother and the brothers who opposed the union, Kostandin's insistence that the marriage take place and his besa to his mother that he would always bring Doruntine back to her. As for Doruntine herself, no one knew whether she had freely consented to the marriage. More beautiful than ever, on horseback among her brothers and relatives – who were also mounted – misty with tears, as custom requires of every young bride, she was a wraith already belonging more to the horizon than to them.

All this now came to mind as the procession followed the same path the throng of guests had taken then. And just as crystal shines the more brightly on a cloth of black velvet, so the memory of Doruntine's marriage against the background of grief now gained in brilliance in the minds of all those present. Henceforth it would be difficult for people to think of the one without the other, especially since everyone felt that Doruntine looked as beautiful in her coffin as she had done astride the horse caparisoned for the wedding. Beautiful, but to what end? they murmured. No one had partaken of her beauty. Now the earth alone would enjoy it.

Others, in voices even more muted, spoke of her mysterious return, repeating what people had told them or denying it.

"It seems," someone said, "that Stres is trying to solve the mystery. The prince himself has ordered him to get to the root of it."

"Believe me," a companion interrupted, "there's no mystery about it. She returned to close the circle of death, that's all."

"Yes, but how did she come back?"

"Ah, that we shall never know. It seems that one of her brothers rose from the grave by night to go and fetch her. That's what I heard, it's really astounding. But some people claim that – I know, I know, but don't say it, it's a sin to say such things, especially on the day of her burial. We should rather pray for the poor girl, let the earth not weigh on her too heavily!"

Talk turned once again to the wedding of three years ago, and many felt that the funeral was only its extension, or, more exactly, was the wedding itself, turned upside down. After her bridal journey, Doruntine had simply gone on another outing, one that was macabre … with a dead man, or … an unidentified

… Well, whoever it was, it was a most unusual journey … or rather, an unnatural one … and what's more, with a corpse … or worse still, with a … But let's drop all that, it's a sin to speak of such things. May God forgive the sinners that we are, and may the earth lie lightly upon her!

And people cut short their discussions, tacitly agreeing that a few days hence, perhaps even on the morrow, once the dead were buried and tranquillity restored, they would speak of this again, perhaps less guardedly, and surely with greater malice.

Which is exactly what happened. Once the burial was over and the whole story seemed at an end, a great clamour arose, the like of which had rarely been heard. It spread in waves through the surrounding countryside and rolled on farther, sweeping to the frontiers of the principality, spilling over its borders and

cascading through neighbouring principalities and counties. It was as if many of the people who had attended the burial had carried bits of it away to sow throughout the land.

There were some folk who had prayed for Doruntine on Sunday at the funeral, asking over and over again that the dust and mud treat her kindly and not weigh too heavily on her breast. But now it didn't occur to them that the calumnies they were putting about were more crushing than any amount of earth or stone.

Passing from ear to ear by word of mouth, the rumour was borne by every breath of air and certainly conveyed many a reproach, of the sort that everyone refrains from expressing directly but is prepared, in such circumstances, to evoke in roundabout ways. And as it grew more distant it began to dilate and change its shape like a wandering cloud, though its essence remained immutable: a dead man had come back from the grave to keep the promise he had made to his mother: to bring his married sister back to her from far away whenever she so wished.

Barely a week had gone by since the burial of the two women when Stres was urgently summoned to the Monastery of the Three Crosses. The archbishop of the principality awaited him there, having come expressly on a matter of the greatest importance.

Expressly on a matter of the greatest importance, Stres repeated to himself again and again as he crossed the plain on horseback. What could the archbishop possibly want of him? The prelate did not leave his archiepiscopal seat very often, especially to travel in such awful weather.

A chill wind blew over the frosty, autumnal plain. On either side of the road, as far as the eye could see, despondent hayricks looked as if they were slowly collapsing on themselves. Stres pulled up the collar of his riding cape. What if it had to do with the Doruntine story, he wondered. But he rejected that possibility out of hand. Ridiculous! What did the archbishop have to do with it? He had enough thorny problems of his own, especially since tension in the Albanian territories between the Catholic Church of Rome and the Orthodox Church had reached fever pitch. Some years before, when the spheres of influence of Catholicism and Orthodoxy had become more or less defined, the principality remaining under the sway of the Byzantine Church, Stres had thought that this endless quarrel was at last drawing to a close. Not at all. The two churches had once more taken up their struggle for the allegiance of individual Albanian

princes and counts. Information regularly reaching Stres from the inns and relay posts suggested that in recent times Catholic missionaries had intensified their activities in the principalities. Perhaps that was the reason for the archbishop's visit – but then Stres himself was not involved in those matters. It was not he who issued safe conduct passes. No, Stres said to himself, I have nothing to do with that. It must be something else.

He would find out soon enough what it was all about. There was no point in racking his brains now. There was probably a simple explanation: the archbishop may have come for some other reason – a tour of inspection, for instance – and decided incidentally to avail himself of Stres's services in resolving this or that problem. The spread of the practice of magic, for instance, had posed a problem for the church, and that did fall within Stres's remit. Yes, he told himself, that must be it, sensing that he had finally found some solid ground. Nevertheless, it was only a small step from the practice of magic to a dead man rising from his grave. No! – he almost said it aloud – the archbishop can have nothing to do with Doruntine! And spurring his horse, he quickened his pace.

It was really cold. The houses of a hamlet loomed briefly somewhere off to his right, but soon he could see nothing but the plain again, with the haystacks drifting towards the horizon. The puddles beneath his horse's hooves reflected nothing, and thus seemed hostile to him. The plain is in mourning … he muttered, repeating one of the lines of the professional mourners' chants. He had been astonished to come across the phrase again in his informers' reports. He'd certainly heard it said of a person that he or she was in grief, or in mourning … But not of a landscape!

The Monastery of the Three Crosses was still some distance away. Along that stretch of road, Stres kept turning the same ideas over in his mind, but in a different order now. He brought himself up short more than once: nonsense, ridiculous, not possible. But though he resolved repeatedly not to think about it for the rest of the journey, he couldn't stop wondering why the archbishop had summoned him.

It was the first time Stres had ever met the archbishop in person. Without the chasuble in which Stres had seen him standing in the nave of the church in the capital, the archbishop seemed thin, slender, his skin so pale, so diaphanous, that you almost felt you could see what was happening inside that nearly translucent body if you looked hard enough. But Stres lost that impression completely the moment the archbishop started to speak. His voice did not match his physique.

On the contrary, it seemed more closely related to the chasuble and mitre which he had set aside, and which he would no doubt have kept by his side if he had not had such a strangely powerful voice.

The archbishop came straight to the point. He told Stres that he had been informed of an alleged resurrection said to have occurred two weeks before in this part of the country. Stres took a deep breath. So that was it after all! The most improbable of all his guesses had been correct. What had happened, the archbishop went on, was evil, more evil and far-reaching than it might seem at first sight. He raised his voice. Only frivolous minds, he said, could take things of this kind lightly. Stres felt himself blush and was about to protest that no one could accuse him of having taken the matter lightly, that on the contrary he had informed the prince's chancellery at once, while doing his utmost to throw light on the mystery. But the archbishop, as if reading his mind, broke in.

"I was informed of all this from the outset and issued express instructions that the whole affair be buried. I must admit that I never expected the story to spread so far."

"It is true that it has spread beyond all reason," said Stres, opening his mouth for the first time.

Since the archbishop himself admitted that he had not foreseen these developments, Stres thought it superfluous to seek to justify his own attitude.

"I undertook this difficult journey," the archbishop went on, "in order to gauge the scope of the repercussions for myself. Unfortunately, I am now convinced that they are catastrophic."

Stres nodded in agreement.

"Nothing less would have induced me to take to the highway in this detestable weather," the prelate continued, his penetrating eyes still fixed on Stres. "Now, do you understand the importance the Holy Church attaches to this incident?"

"Yes, Monsignor," said Stres. "Tell me what I must do."

The archbishop, who apparently hadn't expected this question so early on, sat motionless for a moment, as if choking down an explanation that had suddenly proved unnecessary. Stres sensed he was on edge.

"This affair must be buried," he said evenly. "Or rather, one aspect of it, the one that is at variance with the truth and damaging to the Church. Do you understand me, Captain? We must deny the story of this man's resurrection, reject it, unmask it, prevent its spread at all costs."

"I understand, Monsignor."

"Will it be difficult?"

"Most certainly," said Stres. "I can prevent an impostor or slanderer from speaking, but how, Monsignor, can I stop such a widespread rumour from spreading further? That is beyond my power."

A cold flame glimmered in the archbishop's eyes.

"I cannot prevent the mourners from singing their laments," Stres went on, "and as for gossip—"

"Find a way to make the mourners stop their songs themselves," the prelate said sharply. "As for rumour, what you must do is change its course."

"And how can I do that?" Stres asked evenly. They stared at each other for a long moment.

"Captain," the archbishop finally said, "do you yourself believe that the dead man rose from his grave?"

"No, Monsignor."

Stres imagined that the archbishop had given a sigh of relief. How could the man have dreamed that I was naive enough to credit such insanity, he wondered.

"Then you think that someone else must have brought back the young woman in question?"

"Without the slightest doubt, Monsignor."

"Well then, try to prove it," said the archbishop, "and you will find that the mourners will suspend their songs mid-verse and rumour will change of itself."

"I have sought to do just that, Monsignor," Stres said. "I have done my utmost."

"With no result?"

"Very nearly. Of course there are people who do not believe in this resurrection, but they are in a minority. Most are convinced."

"Then you must see to it that this minority becomes the majority." "I have done all I can, Monsignor."

"You must do even more, Captain. And there is only one way to manage it: you must find the man who brought the young woman back. Find the impostor, the lover, the adventurer, whatever he is. Track him down relentlessly, wherever he may be. Move heaven and earth until you find him. And if you do not find him, then you will have to create him."

"Create him?"

A flash of cold lightning seemed to pass between them.

"In other words," said the archbishop, the first to avert his eyes, "it would be advisable to bear witness to his existence. Many things seem impossible at first

that are crowned with success in the end."

The archbishop's voice had lost its ring of confidence. "I shall do my best, Monsignor," said Stres.

A silence of the most uncomfortable kind settled over the room. The archbishop, head lowered, sat deep in thought. When he next spoke, his voice had changed so completely that Stres looked up sharply, intrigued. His tone, as polite, gentle, and persuasive as the man himself, now matched his physical appearance perfectly.

"Listen, Captain," said the archbishop, "let us speak frankly." He took a deep breath.

"Yes, let us speak plainly. I think you are aware of the importance attached to these matters at the Centre. Many things may be forgiven in Constantinople, but there is no indulgence whatever for any question touching on the basic principles of the Holy Church. I have seen emperors slaughtered, roped to wild horses, eyes gouged, their tongues cut out, simply because they dared think they could amend this or that tenet of the Church. Perhaps you remember that two years ago, after the heated controversy about the sex of angels, the capital came close to being the arena of a civil war that would have certainly led to wholesale carnage."

Stres did recall some disturbances, but he had never paid much attention to the sort of collective hysteria which erupted periodically in the Empire's capital.

"Today more than ever," the archbishop went on, "when relations between our Church and the Catholic Church have worsened … Nowadays your life is at stake in matters like these. Do I make myself clear, Captain?"

"Yes," said Stres uncertainly. "But I would like to know what all this has to do with the incident we were discussing."

"Quite," said the archbishop, his voice growing stronger now, recovering its deep resonance. "Of course."

Stres kept his eyes fixed upon him.

"Here we have an alleged return from the grave," the prelate continued, "and therefore a resurrection. Do you see what that means, Captain?"

"A return from the grave," Stres repeated. "An idiotic rumour."

"It's not that simple," interrupted the archbishop. "It is a ghastly heresy. An arch-heresy."

"Yes," said Stres, "in one sense it is indeed."

"Not in one sense. Absolutely," the archbishop said, nearly shouting. His voice had recovered its initial gravity. His head was now so close that Stres had to make an effort not to take a step backwards.

"Until now Jesus Christ alone has risen from his tomb! Do you follow me, Captain?"

"I understand, Monsignor," Stres said.

"Well then, He returned from the dead to accomplish a great mission. But this dead man of yours, this Kostandin – that is his name, is it not? – by what right does he seek to ape Jesus Christ? What power brought him back from the world beyond, what message does he bring to humanity? Eh?"

Stres, nonplussed, had no idea what to say.

"None whatsoever!" shouted the archbishop. "Absolutely none! That is why the whole thing is nothing but imposture and heresy. A challenge to the Holy Church! And like any such challenge, it must be punished mercilessly."

He was silent for a moment, as if giving Stres time to absorb the flood of words.

"So listen carefully, Captain." His voice had softened again. "If we do not quell this story now, it will spread like wildfire, and then it will be too late. It will be too late, do you understand?"

Stres returned from the Monastery of the Three Crosses in the afternoon. His horse trotted slowly along the highway, and Stres mulled just as slowly over snatches of the long conversation he had just had with the archbishop. Tomorrow I'll have to start all over again, he said to himself. He had, of course, been working on the case without respite, and had even relieved his deputy of his other duties so that he could spend all his time sifting through the Lady Mother's archives. But now that the capital was seriously concerned at the turn of events, he was going to have to go back to square one. He would send a new circular to the inns and relay stations, perhaps promising a reward to anyone who helped find some trace of the impostor. And he would send someone all the way to Bohemia to find out what people there were saying about Doruntine's flight. This latter idea lifted his spirits for a moment. How had he failed to think of it earlier? It was one of the first things he should have done after the events of 11 October. Well, he thought a moment later, it's never too late to do things right.

He glanced up to see how the weather looked. The autumn sky was completely overcast. The bushes on either side of the road quivered in the north wind, and their trembling seemed to deepen the desolation of the plain. This world has only one Jesus Christ, thought Stres, repeating to himself the archbishop's words. The sound of his horse's tread reminded him that it was this very road that Kostandin had taken. The archbishop had spoken of the dead man

with contempt. Come to think of it, Kostandin had never shown much respect for Orthodox priests while he lived. Stres himself hadn't known Kostandin, but his deputy's research into the family archives had produced some initial clues to his personality. Judging from the old woman's letters, Kostandin had been, generally speaking, an oppositionist. Attracted by new ideas, he cultivated them with passion, sometimes carrying them to extremes. He had been like this on the question of marriage. He was against local marriages and, impassioned and extremist in his convictions, had been prepared to countenance unions even at the other end of the world. The Lady Mother's letters suggested that Kostandin believed that distant marriages, hitherto the privilege of kings and princesses, should become common practice for all. The distance between the families of bride and groom was in fact a token of dignity and strength of character, and he persisted in saying that the noble race of Albanians was endowed with all the qualities necessary to bear the trials of separation and the troubles that might arise from them.

Kostandin had ideas of his own not only on marriage but on many other subjects too, ideas that ran counter to common notions and that had caused the old woman more than a little trouble with the authorities. Stres recalled one such instance, which had to do primarily with the Church. Two letters from the local archbishop to the Lady Mother had been found in the family archives in which the prelate drew her attention to the pernicious ideas Kostandin was expressing and to the insulting comments about the Byzantine Church he had occasionally been heard to utter. To judge by the report that Stres had read, Kostandin and some of his equally pigheaded friends had been against the severance with Rome and the compact with the Eastern Church. And there were other, more important matters, his aide had told him, but these would figure in the detailed report he would submit once he had concluded his investigation.

Stres had not been particularly impressed by this aspect of Kostandin's personality, possibly because he himself harboured no special respect for religion, an attitude that was in fact not uncommon among the officials of the principality. And for good reason: the struggle between Catholicism and Orthodoxy since time immemorial had greatly weakened religion in the Albanian principalities. The region lay just on the border between the two religions and, for various reasons, essentially political and economic, the principalities leaned now towards one, now towards the other. Half of them were now Catholic, but that state of affairs was by no means permanent, and each of the two churches hoped to win spheres of influence from the other. Stres was

convinced that the prince himself cared little for religious matters. He had allies among the Catholic princes and enemies among the Orthodox. In truth, the principality had once been Catholic, turning Orthodox only half a century before, and the Roman Church had not given up hope of bringing it back to the fold.

Stres was a servant of the state, and strived to remain neutral on the issue of religion, which was not really close to his heart in any case. All the same, he wasn't pleased to see a part of Arbëria absorbed by the Eastern Church after a thousand years of Roman Christianity. Indeed, he might well have sought some excuse not to respond to the archbishop's summons were it not for the fact that the prince, eager to avoid poisoning relations with Byzantium, had recently issued an important circular urging all officials of the principality to treat the Church with respect. The circular emphasised that this attitude was dictated by the higher interests of the state and that, consequently, any action at variance with the spirit of the directive would be punished.

All this passed through Stres's mind in snatches as his glance embraced the bleak expanse of the plain. The October cold filled the air. Suddenly Stres shivered. Behind a bush several paces off the road he caught sight of the skeleton of a horse standing out in all its whiteness. It was a section of the ribcage and the backbone; the skull was missing. My God, Stres thought to himself a little further on, what if that had been his horse?

He drew his cloak tighter around him, trying to drive the image from his mind. He felt sad, but it was not a painful sadness. The shape of his melancholy had been softened in the great stretch of plain, in which winter's approach could be read. What possessed you to come out of the earth, what message did you mean to bring us? Stres was astonished at the question, which had risen like a sigh from the depths of his being. He shook his head as if to clear his mind. He who had laughed so derisively at everyone who had believed that story! He smiled bitterly. What nonsense! he said to himself, spurring his horse. What a gloomy afternoon! he thought a moment later. Dusk was falling as he urged his mount into a canter. All the rest of the way to the village he strove to purge his mind of anything connected with the case. He arrived in the dark of night. The lights of the houses shone feebly here and there. From time to time the barking of dogs in the distance broke the night silence. Stres guided his horse not homeward, but towards the town's main street. He had no idea why. Soon he reached the vacant lot that stretched before the house of the Lady Mother. There was no other house to be seen. The dark and dismal mass of the great abandoned

building loomed at the far end of a desolate field studded with tall trees that now, in the dark, seemed to droop even more sharply than usual. Stres approached the doorway, gazed for a moment at the darker rectangles of the windows, then turned his horse in the direction from which he had come. He found himself among the trees. A man standing where he now stood could be seen from the door.

The night of 11 October must have been more or less like this one: no moon, but not too dark. It must have been here that Doruntine parted from the unknown horseman. It suddenly occurred to Stres that he had been in this spot before. But his memory of the occasion was all in a muddle, buried under rubble, as it were. For a moment even his horse's hooves went silent. It was as if he was riding through the air. Rubbish, he thought. His imagination was so disturbed that fragments of the incident were sticking to him like flakes of wet snow. The sound of his horse's hooves came back to life and soothed him … So this must be where Doruntine parted from the night rider. When her mother opened the door, he was probably riding off, but perhaps she had already seen something from the window. Something that caused that fatal shock … Stres turned his horse again. What discovery had the old woman made in the semidarkness? That the man riding off was her dead son? ("It was my brother Kostandin who brought me back," Doruntine had told her.) Or perhaps, on the contrary, that it was not her son and that her daughter had deceived her? Maybe, but that wouldn't explain her shock. Or perhaps, just before they separated, Doruntine and the unknown rider had embraced one last time in the dark— Enough! Stres said to himself sharply, and turned his horse back towards the road. At the very last moment, with the furtive movement of a man trying to catch a glimpse of someone spying on him in the darkness, he turned his head towards the closed door once more. But there was nothing, only the dark night that seemed to be mocking him.