by Simon Raven
‘You do.’
‘Then just let her go.’
‘She is unhappy.’
‘Even you, Provost, are not magnificent enough to bring happiness to your wife or any other member of the human race. Only God can do that, and he mostly prefers not to, no doubt because he finds the spectacle of other people’s happiness rather annoying, as we all do. Shall we let it go at that? And talk of something important and interesting, like the best way of teaching undergraduates from comprehensive schools how to behave as gentlemen? If the college managed to make a gentleman of me,’ Len said, complacently smoothing his mauve silk tie, ‘it can make a gentleman of anybody.’
About a hundred yards beyond the gatehouse, the maiden halted. The ephebe joined her at the head of the little column. The maiden then went to the rear, and the ephebe began to lead them down a long, steep and narrow flight of stone steps.
‘Is Teresa Malcolm coming here for the Easter holidays from school?’ Canteloupe said.
‘Of course.’
‘When will she arrive?’
‘Any time now,’ said Theodosia Canteloupe. ‘She has finished her O levels, which tired her. I have persuaded the head of her Domus to let her go a few days before the end of the term.’
‘Of the quarter,’ said Canteloupe. ‘What’s Domus? We didn’t have them in my day.’
‘I suppose not. A Domus Vestalis is where some of the girls live.’
‘How extraordinary. Change for the sake of change.’
‘You wouldn’t expect the girls to live with the boys?’ Lady Canteloupe said.
‘Why not? They’re always going on about how they’re absolutely equal. No distinction or discrimination.’
‘Teresa,’ said Theodosia, ignoring Canteloupe’s male chauvinist folly, ‘will bring Rosie Stern with her. She too is being released early, at my request, although she has not been doing her O levels. She is younger than Teresa.’
‘So I recall, Thea. Rosie Stern is the little dark Jewy girl with the remarkably thin legs.’
‘As good a description as any,’ Thea Canteloupe conceded. ‘She has been a very sweet friend to Teresa at school, at a very difficult time, just after Maisie Malcolm’s death. You will be kind to little Rosie…for my sake?’
‘For her own sake,’ Canteloupe said.
As Fielding followed the ephebe down the steps, he realised that the whole descent was illuminated by a series of dim yellow lights which were glowing from behind thick glass panels (six inches horizontal by three inches vertical) that had been inserted flush with the stone walls. When they reached the bottom step, the boy paced into the middle of a circular arena of sand (say a cricket pitch in diameter) which formed the base of a hollow, round tube which ascended for perhaps one hundred and fifty feet and was open, at the top, to the sky. The wall of this shaft was scattered with lights similar to those that had lit the steps, and the visible disc of sky was decorated by a few large stars, and one obvious planet of blood red. No lesser stars were visible; evidently the cloud that had covered the sky since they disembarked from the caique was now much thinner but not entirely gone.
Directed by the maiden, Fielding, Jeremy and Milo formed a line at the bottom of the staircase. The girl herself went to join her brother in the centre of the sand. There was the plangent sound of a lute: after two or three bars, Fielding decided that it was coming through a loudspeaker or tannoy system, no doubt used to purvey information to tourists and to entertain them with special effects. I hope the show is going to be brief, Fielding thought: it is getting near time for dinner, and since Ephyra (if one is to judge from its appearance so far) will certainly provide none, we may have to travel, i. e. walk, a long way to get it.
After the lute came the snorting of several horses, a young male voice screaming in terror and diminuendo, a hysterical barking of at least two dogs, a creaking of upholstery, a rattle of spurs and armour, and the galloping of a single horse. Then a tableau in the middle of the arena. Where the twins had been lay a body in long, soft robes, and by its side a discarded lute. The head was uncovered and split into halves from the apex of the skull to the bridge of the nose, which, with the riven brow, was tilted towards the audience.
Round the body stood six men in cowls and hauberks of chain mail; the hauberks reached nine inches below their knees, while their shins were encased in greaves of plate armour; from their shoulders hung surcoats of black which carried small white Maltese crosses on the chest. The men were sheathing short swords; after a brief look at their victim, they turned away toward some shadowy horses in the background. The horses whinnied as they were mounted by their cumbersome masters; two dogs (a little nearer the spectators and of vaguely heraldic aspect) cowered among pretty wild flowers. The horses wheeled, the dogs whimpered, the tableau faded into nothing.
‘Clever optical effects,’ said Jeremy to Fielding.
‘Not very Greek,’ said Milo; ‘perhaps it was some incident from the days of the Frankish Empire. Rather recondite for tourists, though: as the guide book suggested, they’d be expecting Achilles and that lot.’
‘Lord Geoffery,’ said Fielding; ‘Lord Geoffery of Underavon, the Troubadour. Murdered in a meadow by six knights. But that was in England.’
‘Just what, darling, are you trying to tell us?’ Jeremy said.
‘Your father knew the story,’ Fielding babbled. ‘I told him, and Muscateer told him in India – Muscateer was the heir of the last Lord Canteloupe, the one before this one. Muscateer died in India,10 and his father died childless after that, which is why Detterling – that’s what this one was called – inherited in some labyrinthine way…through the female line.’
‘Calm, calm,’ Milo said. ‘Precision and order, if you please.’
‘Very well. ’ Fielding took a deep breath. ‘There was once a crusader,’ he said, ‘called Geoffery of Underavon. In the twelfth century. Possibly an ancestor of the Sarum family, though they were nothing until Agincourt and only got the title of Marquis or Marquess Canteloupe in the late eighteenth century. Anyway, while this Geoffery of Underavon was returning to England from the Holy Land, he lingered among troubadours in Provence. The troubadours, for all their talk of pure and ideal love, had naughty habits which Geoffery imported into Wiltshire, whither he went to claim the manor which he had been awarded for his services. The local Wiltshire gentry didn’t care much for Geoffery’s winning ways with their wives and children, and six black knights waylaid and slaughtered him while he was riding with his page en route for a louche appointment.’
‘This lot wore Maltese crosses,’ Milo said. ‘Were all these rural vigilantes Knights Hospitaller? Six knights of St John in Wiltshire, all at the same time? I doubt whether they even had the Maltese connection as early as the twelfth century. Malta was the last territory conferred on them, long after Rhodes.’
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ said Fielding. ‘It’s only a story, at best a legend.’
‘And this thing just now,’ said Jeremy, ‘was only some kind of charade.’
‘Of course,’ said Milo, ‘you have to remember that some people think a Maltese cross is a sign of ill omen. Do the Sarums, the Canteloupes, think that? After all, you said that Lord Geoffery could have been an ancestor of the house of Sarum, and you also said that Jeremy’s father first heard the tale from a dying heir to the marquessate. Leave aside any quibbling about historical accuracy, there seems quite a lot of room for a symbol of ill omen somewhere in this.’
‘No one who passed on Muscateer’s story ever spoke of Maltese crosses,’ said Fielding; ‘not as far as I know.’
‘An embellishment by the local producer here in Ephyra?’ said Jeremy Morrison. ‘The Thespian gang always get this kind of thing wrong. More than ever likely to happen if the scene was done by some conceited wretches from Athens.’
‘Where are those two children?’ said Fielding, losing interest and thinking once more of his stomach. ‘We need them to get us out of bloody Ephyra.’
The twins were not to be seen. Fielding and Co. turned uncertainly towards the steps which led up and out – out of the necromanteion at any rate, as Jeremy remarked. As they began to mount the staircase in the dim yellow light, a low, pleasant, cultivated voice whispered down from the walls:
‘I owe you my best thanks, gentlemen. You came all the way to Zante to greet me; but of course there is nothing to greet in a grave. This place, however, is something else again; and here I can make some kind of answer. Am I an actor? Actors were traditionally used in this kind of role – but as to that I shall not bore you with tedious speculation, you must simply form your own opinion.
‘I too was a horseman. I too was murdered, though I was not riding a horse at the time, and my murderers, too, were unmounted; for as two at least of you will recall, I was in fact crucified. Even so, I feel a kinship with the murdered man whom you have just seen. A troubadour, most certainly. Lord Geoffery of Underavon? That doesn’t matter very much. Killed by Knights Hospitaller who sported an anachronistic emblem? That doesn’t matter much either. What does matter is that he was a troubadour, a poet and a musician, and, not least, an entertainer.’
They stood still, one behind the other, on the steep stone stairs.
‘I see I have your attention. Good. I think my son hoped that I might have something to say when he asked you to come to me, and I should like to be well understood. I cannot tell you all I might wish, of course; no ghost is ever permitted to do that. You will remember that even Tiresias was somewhat misleading. But what I can, I shall now tell you, and shall hope not to confuse you, though I grant you my message is rather difficult to interpret.
‘It comes in the form of a riddle. The riddle has to do with a crisis in the life of my son, Marius, which at present preoccupies you and some of your friends. The riddle runs like this: The struggle will come to an end, though no one will be able to draw an edifying or even a satisfactory moral from its ending, when the following events have occurred: when a silver horseman shall overcome a cerise horseman; and when a gold horseman shall win the sword of the cerise horseman (what a lot of horsemen – I’m afraid it can’t be helped) and shall slay, both in innocence and in guilt, a dark horseman from the Vales of the West. So there you are. Let me just iterate the salient conditions that will precede the outcome of the affaire Marius, listing them once more at the necessary risk of boring you – so that none of you shall be able to say that you have not been warned. A silver horseman must overcome a cerise horseman, whose sword will be used by a golden horseman to kill, both in innocence and guilt, a dark horseman from the West. As always, in such enigmas, there is only one easy clue, at least for the observant, but also one rather nasty catch. I wonder – don’t you? – just what it can possibly be.
‘And now, gentlemen, you have had a long day, I fear. You can find a taxi if you knock on the door of the second house on the left down the hill from our gate-house. Disregard the lack of light: just knock. I advise you to take the taxi to Prevéza, where you will arrive in time for dinner (of a kind) at the Xenia Cleopatra, an establishment of the delta category, despite its promising name. Here you may also spend the night. Do not go searching by the rivers or the seashore for our two young friends and their caique: their part in this affair is now concluded. You may take the public ferry from Prevéza back to Zacynthos at four thirty a. m.; or, if you wish to lie later in the distressful beds of the unheated Xenia, you may hire your own vessel for the equivalent in drachmae of about one hundred pounds sterling.
‘Just one more thing before you go, gentlemen: although, as I have indicated, this business of Marius will sooner or later come to a bearable if rather shabby solution, I should warn you that everyone concerned will encounter some very nasty setbacks before it is done with.’
Footnotes
1 See The Face of the Waters, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001).
2 See Blood of My Bone, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001).
3 See Blood of My Bone, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001).
4 See The Roses of Picardie, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001).
5 See New Seed for Old, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001).
6 See Morning Star, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001).
7 See New Seed for Old, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001).
8 See The Roses of Picardie, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001).
9 See Blood of My Bone, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001).
10 See Sound the Retreat, by Simon Raven (Blond & Briggs; 1971).
PART TWO
The Interpreters
Sick men’s dreams, dreams out of the ivory gate, and visions before midnight.
Sir Thomas Browne
You’ll have to stand back to Zante,’ said Fielding to Jeremy at dinner; ‘this whole thing is a damnable rip off.’
‘I shall gladly pay your entire passage and refection from here and now on,’ said Jeremy, ‘if only you will stop bloody well whingeing and whangeing.’
‘You use those sort of expressions much too much,’ said Fielding Gray. ‘It’s as good as shouting out loud that you’ve been in an Australian prison.’
‘Everyone bleeding knows I have. You just stop whingeing, whangeing, grizzling and grinding about money,’ Jeremy Morrison said, ‘and I’ll see, as I’ve already promised, what can be done for you when we get back to England – though bear in mind that I am not offering you life cover.’
‘Right, girls,’ said Milo: ‘that’s now settled. May we please discuss the events of the day?’
‘Who asked you to stick your nose in?’ Fielding said.
‘I did,’ said Jeremy, ‘when I invited Milo to come with us. Besides, Milo knows Marius as well as anyone and his advice will be valuable. Will you please, Fielding, stop going on like a screech owl pissing fish hooks.’
Fielding took three deep breaths.
‘Very well,’ he said: ‘Fielding’s himself again. It would appear, from this evening’s son et lumière, that somebody or something from somewhere is telling us that when certain things happen, then certain other things will happen, and that these will solve the present problem of Marius Stern. It would further appear that this solution will not be morally uplifting, and that large numbers of “horsemen” will be involved. The expression, “horsemen”, is, one may presume, a metaphor of some kind.’
‘Why a metaphor?’ Milo said. ‘Several people close to Marius are known to be proficient on horseback. His father did mounted duty with the Household Brigade in London; his father’s friend, Detterling, later Canteloupe, was in Hamilton’s Horse, as indeed, Fielding, were you –’
‘– Hamilton’s Horse,’ said Fielding, ‘has long since lost its horses –’
‘– But still had them when Detterling first joined –’
‘– Dear Milo,’ said Jeremy, ‘you seem to have gone very well into it –’
‘– I have,’ Milo said. ‘I find it all highly entertaining. And if I may continue: Marius’ instructor and bad fairy, Raisley Conyngham, owns a small string of steeplechasers (though he has now given them into somebody else’s care) some of which he often exercised in person. Marius himself, come to that, rides beautifully. Horsemen, in short, are all about him.’
‘So much so,’ said Jeremy, ‘that the term is otiose. Whoever was speaking to us –’
‘– Purporting to be Gregory –’
‘– Might just as well have referred us,’ Jeremy continued, ‘to Marius’ friends and relations, one of whom would do this to another who would do that, and so on and so forth. The trouble is that whether or not the word “horsemen” is metaphorical, their predicted actions are certainly so. All this talk of “overcoming” and “swords” and “slaying” – what could it possibly mean?’
‘Why should it not mean what it said?’ said Milo.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Fielding.
‘Nothing ridiculous about it. People do get slain and overcome, eve
n nowadays, with swords or without.’
‘The general idea seemed to be,’ said Fielding, ‘that in whatever case there was nothing much any of us could do. Perhaps that was the message.’
‘But who was broadcasting it?’ said Jeremy. ‘A voice which resembled, and which claimed to be, that of Marius’ dead father.
An actor of some kind? A con man or mountebank? And what about that scene with the horses? My father has indeed repeated to me, several times, the story of the six black knights in the meadow, as told by Muscateer in India and by others elsewhere; but who on earth would think of re-enacting it? In Ephyra, for Christ’s sake? Unless Carmilla has been arranging one of her productions – as she did in Brindisi a few months back.1 She had those twins to help her then, come to that, and she knows some talented actors, any of whom –’
‘– Carmilla,’ said Fielding, ‘has not been back in England long enough to arrange anything so complicated.’
‘But those twins,’ said Milo, ‘as Jeremy has just remarked, were in on the affair at Brindisi, and they obviously know how to get this sort of show together. It could have been their work – not just leading us there but the whole production. The message given to us,’ he went on, ‘never mind for the moment who was giving it, was that violent horsemen can and do kill. There it was right under our noses. The voice then provided a gloss on the tableau, by saying that at some time in the future various horsemen of various colours would kill and be killed, and that this process would somehow solve the problem of Marius, though there was no mention of any kind of evangel or redemption. Nor, for that matter, was there any mention of any action which might or should be taken by us.’