by Simon Raven
M’sieur Socrates, thought Jean-Marie, as he switched off the lamp in his bachelor bedroom, thinks that there is rich scandal there. For myself, I think that there is great sadness. But what there most certainly must be, sad or scandalous, grim or gay, is a mystery: who lingers in September Castle, and why?
‘Another snag,’ said the Marquis des Veules-les-Roses to the Princesse d’Héricourt-en-Caux, as he returned to the breakfast table from the telephone room.
‘More trouble from the Department of Monuments?’
‘No. They are giving neither less trouble nor more. They start their work in nine days’ time, and that is that. What is new, Magdalene, is that Ivan Barraclough has failed to arrive at Saint-Gilles. Ptolemaeos has just told me that his friend Canteloupe rang up from there last night, and then again, as instructed, this morning: still neither sight nor sound nor sign of Barraclough. Since this Barraclough is a man of a punctuality positively officious, and since he is well versed in the use of European systems of communication, it is to be assumed that something…untoward…has occurred.’
‘And is that something likely to make itself felt this far north?’
‘One cannot be sure. Meanwhile, the operation must continue without Barraclough. To postpone it now would be to abandon it forever.’
‘The thing is,’ said Ptolemaeos to Len, as they watched the morning fog billow along the lawn, ‘that without Barraclough we are also without the herb of Aristarchos. He had been especially charged to collect a new supply as the last lot we had had crumbled to dust.’
‘The herb of Aristarchos,’ said Len carefully. ‘Let’s see if I have this right. It was to be used – was it not? – to gain control over recalcitrant elements, and, more particularly, to gain control of the Despoina Xanthippe’s soul and then command it to free itself from her body…this in despite of her jailer or guardian, Hero, and her daemon, Masullaoh.’
‘Correct…always provided of course, that those sort of terms turned out to be relevant. Myself,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘I think it most unlikely that they are relevant, most unlikely that the explanation of the whole affair is of this order. But it was as well, Ivan and I had agreed, to be prepared, and therefore to cull a fresh supply of Aristarchos’ herb.’
‘And now,’ said Len, ‘no herb and no Barraclough.’
‘Giving you your big chance,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘to prove your assertion that you could be of use to us.’
He paused while this sank in.
‘So far,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘your only contribution has been to swear to us, from your specialized knowledge, that the explanation of the burrow which led beneath the donjon could not possibly be rats. Now you will have the opportunity to go and find out for yourself exactly what it is instead.’
‘All right,’ said Len. ‘I’ll have a go. Providing Jo-Jo comes too.’
‘Tullia Canteloupe was to have helped Ivan.’
‘And now it’s to be Jo-Jo helping me. Baby too, if she wants, but I will have Jo-Jo.’
‘Very well. But we must think how to fit her in. You will be joining the Canteloupes at Marseille this afternoon. Your flight is already booked, and a car to take you to Heathrow will be here in an hour’s time.’
‘You can fit Jo-Jo in on all that.’
‘Oh yes. But remember why you are going all the way down to Marseille. It is so that you can drive up to Dieppe with the Canteloupes overnight, thereby giving substance to the pretence that you are their servant – the camouflage which we had devised for Ivan and which will do as well and even better for you.’
‘Go on: rub it in that I’m common.’
‘There is nothing common about being valet and courier to a nobleman. These days it is an extremely rare profession. But the question is, as I say, where do we fit in Jo-Jo? Is she to be your fellow-servant – Tullia’s maid, perhaps? Or is she to retain upper class status?’
‘She’d like looking after that Baby,’ said Len reluctantly. ‘They’d have a high old time prinking each other up.’
‘This is no time for frivolous diversions. I want everyone’s attention on the task. Nevertheless, I think Jo-Jo had best be lady’s maid to Tullia. If they want physical proximity, there will be no way, however we cast Jo-Jo, of keeping them apart.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ said Len.
‘Stop snivelling like a jealous schoolboy,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘and listen to me. In under an hour, you and Jo-Jo will leave here for Heathrow and Marseille. At Marseille the Canteloupes will meet you – in a bigger and faster hired car, which they will have changed for the present one at the airport. You will then drive the party through the night to Dieppe, and when you are there, at the Hotel Présidence, you will comport yourself courier-chauffeur-valet, while Jo-Jo will assume the role of lady’s maid to the Marchioness. So far, it’s all very simple. What is very far from simple is the instruction which I now have to give you about how to proceed in the Castle during the eight days and, more particularly, nights that will precede the start of the restorations. Ivan knew it all by heart. He also had the advantage of years of research into the habits and progress of the Princess – research of which his recent journey was to have been the culmination. Ivan was soaked in the whole bloody business, Len: he ate it, drank it, breathed it, slept it. Your situation is very different, and I must therefore request your closest and most intelligent attention to the schedules and techniques which I shall now propose to you…’
‘The King wanted a harbour down here,’ said Baby, ‘so that he could assemble a fleet for a Crusade. In those days the sea would have come almost up to these walls, or at any rate there would have been creeks and channels through the marsh deep enough to float the kind of ships which they had then.’
Baby and Canteloupe looked south from the ramparts of Aigues Mortes, over the salt-marshes and towards the distant gleam of the sea.
‘Aigues Mortes,’ said Canteloupe. ‘Dead Waters. Aptly named.’
And indeed nothing stirred in the scrub beneath the walls nor in the reeds beyond. Funny, thought Baby: as everyone knew, the marshes of the Camargue were full of wild life, carefully fostered and guarded; and yet here, between these ramparts and the sea, there was a stillness as of world’s end; it was as though God had gathered up all his creatures from this place and carried them hence in his bosom to some new country far away.
‘So,’ said Canteloupe, wishing to break the forlorn peace, ‘a change of plan. Ivan Barraclough will not come. We shall be working with Len instead.’
‘When Xanthippe landed at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer,’ said Baby, ‘and travelled across the swamps towards Aigues, these walls were hardly begun. And yet she must have seen them. According to Hubert’s Chronicle some guardian angel or spirit kept them safe from the sloughs and quicksands, and brought them past here and on to Saint-Gilles.’
‘Ptolemaeos says we must hire a larger car at Marseille,’ said Canteloupe, ‘as Jo-Jo is coming as well. I think Avis can run to rather a swish BMW, with plenty of room for four bodies and their kit. But they’re probably in short supply. Perhaps I should telephone ahead to book one?’
‘When they saw these walls,’ Baby said, ‘or rather what little there then was of them, they should have known that they were over the worst. Even in those days, from here to Saint-Gilles must have been relatively easy going. But did they realize that? Did they say to themselves, from now on there will be well-marked tracks, and ploughed fields, and dykes where the swamps still linger? Or did they regard these walls as just a mark of distance covered, beyond which there would be so many miles more of treacherous quagmire and creeping fever?’
‘We must go, darling. Whether or not we ring up the Avis people in Marseille, time’s getting short. Len and Jo-Jo should be landing at just after three.’
‘Xanthippe is riding with Hubert,’ said Baby in a small, precise voice. ‘The men at arms in the party are too afraid of the marsh to ride in front, so Xanthippe and Hubert are leading. She, being a Princess o
f the Mani, must show fear of nothing, and he, being her knight, must ride with her for very shame. But inside her, her heart is full of fear; fear of the Dead Waters and of the spirit that has guarded them thus far.
‘Just behind her is Hero, who is cold of heart yet honours Xanthippe as her mistress and pities her for what she is else. With Hero is Lalage, whose heart I cannot read. Behind them are four more hand-maidens, singing a round song.
In my father’s garden
There is a wood
Where young men and maidens
Sport as ne’er they should
Under the green leaves
In frolic they moan;
But when the leaves have fallen
The maidens cry alone.
‘It cannot be a song of their own land, my lord; for in the Mani there is no autumn as we know it. Perhaps Hubert of Avallon has taught it to them or composed it for them. They love Hubert and they are happy to sing his song, trusting him and their Princess to bring them to safety.
‘I do not feel the presence of the spirit who has guided them, only Xanthippe’s fear of him, and also Hero’s. In both of them the fear is mixed with longing, I still cannot read the heart of Lalage.
‘Whatever their other fears and troubles, Hubert and Xanthippe are glad to have reached this place, because they have been told that from here on the journey will be easier. Already their minds are opening to Saint-Gilles and the many towns and cities beyond, and Xanthippe is questioning Hubert about the country and the Castle for which they are bound…and for which we too are now bound, my lord, we too, Xanthippe,’ called Baby, waving over the Dead Waters, ‘and I shall find you there.’
Footnotes
1The Roses of Picardie, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001). Vide passim.
2This line could refer either to the ravine near Ilyssos, or to the fabled entrance to Hades at Cape Taenaros, not far to the south of Ilyssos. This note is reprinted by courtesy of P Tunne from The Ballads and Ballades of Henri Martel de Longueil, edited by P Tunne and published by the Fitzwilliam Press, Cambridge, in 1979.
3It is a convention of translating poems from late Latin, Provençal, or, as in this case, early French, that a final long å may be pronounced to rhyme with ‘ray’ instead of with ‘car’.
Note reprinted by courtesy of P Tunne from his edition of Henri Martel’s poems.
4The Roses of Picardie, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001). Vide passim.
PART THREE
The Agape
‘Carte pour le premier tableau,’ intoned the croupier, ‘et carte pour le second…’
But before the cards could be issued the banker must show his hand.
‘…Et neuf en Banque,’ the croupier concluded.
‘That’s the third natural the Bank’s had in the last four hands,’ said Canteloupe to Baby, ‘and his ninth win running. What’s more he’s already had a winning run’ – Canteloupe consulted his record – ‘of seven, during this session, and one of fifteen during the previous session. I think he must have a pact with the Devil.’
Canteloupe was having a hairy time opposing the Baccarat Bank in the Casino at Dieppe, while Baby was sitting behind him and making sympathetic noises.
‘It does seem rather fierce,’ she said now, ‘but the banker’s such a dear little man that I’m sure he’d never deal with the Devil.’
‘How can you know?’
‘He isn’t – well – Faustian enough to look at.’
‘Faust started out as a humble scholar. “What a dear little man,” I expect his landlady used to say as she darned his socks. The point about dealing with the Devil is that part of the deal is that you don’t look as if you’d dealt with him.’
‘Faust did.’
‘Only for theatrical purposes. In real life the Devil’s creatures do not sprout horns or come sizzling up through the floorboards. They walk in and out the usual way, looking pretty much like anybody else.’
The door at the far end of the Sal des Jeux now opened to admit Len. Dressed in striped trousers, Marlborough jacket and winged collar, he stalked majestically past the roulette tables to the Table de Banque, where he came to an almost military halt and made a courtly bow to Baby and Canteloupe. As the French began to giggle and mutter, variously in amazement, amusement and suppressed admiration, Len articulated:
‘My lord marquess, will it please your lordship to instruct me as to your wishes about your evening repast.’
‘I shall dine presently in the Restaurant des Jeux,’ said Canteloupe. ‘Please to escort her ladyship back to the hotel, where she will require a light collation in her suite.’
As the French goggled and scowled, Baby rose, Len bowed once more. Baby moved past him, Len resumed the upright and turned to follow her, and both marched in immaculate time and stride towards the doors, Len a yard behind and a yard to the right of Baby. As they passed the Black Jack tables their seigneurial progress was nearly obstructed by a crossly departing loser, whom, however, Len removed from Baby’s path by a flick of the fingers.
‘I thought the idea was,’ said Baby Canteloupe to Len, ‘that you should use your position as Canty’s valet to camouflage yourself. If you go on like you did in that Casino just now, you’ll be the most conspicuous thing in Dieppe.’
‘Oh yes. A gentleman’s gentleman – not what people expect to find these days. Major-Domo, courier and personal body servant all rolled into one. A figure from an Edwardian romance (Belchamber, perhaps), stately suave and loyal, dedicated to the service of the House of Canteloupe yet with a persona and integrity of my own –’
‘You’re reading too much into the part –’
‘And in no case the sort of character you would suspect of sneaking away up to this donjon with his mistress and digging holes by candlelight.’
‘Torchlight.’
‘Don’t be so literal,’ said Len. ‘We need all the poetry we can get in this dump. How am I getting on?’
Baby played the torch near the bottom of a large bush which was rooted in the side of a small hollow, and together they surveyed a hole some four feet deep and two in diameter.
‘How far down do you suppose…it…will be,’ said Len, ‘and precisely what are we expecting when we get there?’
‘The remains of a mortal body and a priceless artefact, an indefinite distance down and not far off the shaft of that well.’
Len leaned on his shovel. ‘Doesn’t it strike you,’ he said, ‘that there is something anti-climactic, something positively bathetic, about this performance? I mean, all those years of scholarly research, all those agents posting hither and thither all over the Balkans, a huge paraphernalia of manuscripts and monuments and mediaeval chronicles – and at the end of it all just this, you and me like joke grave-diggers in a “B” movie, scratching away with a garden spade.’
Baby looked at the rough towering walls on every side. She walked up out of the hollow in which Len was digging and looked at the jagged wall-head, some ten yards away across a patch of wild grass. She looked up at the misty three-quarter moon, and down at Len, and she listened to the remnant of the sea wind as it gratefully settled and died in the trees on the ridge.
‘We’re here to start things off,’ she said, ‘to stir it all up.’
‘Stir what up?’ said Len, peevishly poking the earth.
‘There is a Lady buried here with her treasure. It is said that her soul is somehow confined to her dead body. It is also said that there is a Guardian who will be roused if anyone comes deliberately seeking the treasure.’
‘Do we believe any of this?’
‘We do and we don’t.’ A cloud obscured the gibbous moon. Baby came down close to Len and shone the torch on his spade. ‘We allow for the possibility of some of it being in some sense true. And then we tell ourselves that if there are (in some sense) souls or Guardians, which may be (in whatever fashion) disturbed or roused, the thing to do is to send some intelligent people – us – to disturb or rouse them and so get th
e party started.’
‘So Ptoly’s throwing us in as ground-bait?’
‘So I judge from what Jo-Jo told me. That was always the idea, even when Ivan Barraclough was to have done the digging, only of course he knew more about it all than you, and he would have had those herbs to help him.’ Baby glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. ‘The thing is,’ she whispered, ‘that if once you rouse a Guardian then (a) you know there’s something there to guard, and (b) there’s a good chance that the Guardian, without meaning to, may lead you to it.’
‘This is our second night here, sweetheart. No sign of Guardians.’
‘I’m not so sure. You saw what happened to Jo-Jo last night.’
‘Sure. She got a little sick. The curse coming on, she told me later. That’s why she’s not fit to come up here tonight.’
‘Jo-Jo never worried about the curse in her life. Anyway, we’re neither of us due for three weeks. She just got bad vibes, Len.’
‘You mean…that you think…that she thinks…that you’re angry with her for having it away with me?’
‘No. I’ve told her I’m not angry. And I know that you’re not really having it away. She’s just doing with you what she does with Ptoly: teasing and being teased. I’m the only one with whom she crosses the line, Len. She keeps the real thing for me. So I’m not jealous, and I wish her all the slap and tickle in the world until the time comes for her to be together again with me. And then she’ll come to me, Len, as she does to no one else – and all this she knows very well for herself.’
‘All right,’ said Len crossly. ‘Then what did get into her?’
‘Whatever it was got into her on the other side – on the outside – of that wall.’
Baby pointed to the north wall of the donjon.
‘When we were leaving,’ Baby said, ‘she stopped, went stiff… and then sort of retched.’
‘I thought you were meant to be the psychic one.’