September Castle

by Simon Raven

  ‘I didn’t feel a thing. But evidently Jo-Jo did. I asked her later what it was, but she wouldn’t tell me. Nothing, she said. But I know my sweet Jo-Jo, and I know better.’

  ‘I think,’ said Len, ‘that we’d better take a breather and go and have a look at the place…where it happened to Jo-Jo. That might help…“get the party started”…as you put it.’

  ‘I think our hosts will proceed at their own speed,’ Baby said, ‘and in a way of their own choosing. It begins to seem that Jo-Jo is what they’ve chosen. But in any case at all I agree with you: we should go and take a look at the place where it happened.’

  They climbed out of the hollow, walked along a path which skirted the wild grass round the well, climbed a low but steep bank and descended on the other side of it, then came to a gap which had once been a gate in the east wall of the keep. The moon reappeared and helped light them on their way to the north-east corner and then along the north wall.

  ‘It happened about twenty yards further on,’ said Baby. She shone the torch ahead. ‘By that bump in the ground.’

  The sea wind rippled in the trees and was still. A gull who had sailed inland on it trilled in the dark.

  ‘Poor Xanthippe,’ said Baby. ‘Salt winds and cliff birds flew all about her Castle with their messages of the sea that was just beyond the hill; but never a sight for her of a single wave.’

  ‘Beware of pity,’ said Len.

  ‘If you do not pity, you cannot love.’

  ‘Then summon her,’ said Len, ‘if here indeed she be, summon her with your love.’

  When the Table de Banque was prorogued, Canteloupe changed his mind about dining in the Restaurant des Jeux and went to visit Jo-Jo, who had stayed in all day and was looking dreadful, strained, sweaty and pale yellow.

  ‘Come with me to the hotel restaurant,’ said Canteloupe, ‘and try to eat. Or at least drink some wine.’

  ‘All right. I couldn’t feel worse.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘That’s the trouble. I don’t know.’

  While Canteloupe whacked into a comprehensive menu, Jo-Jo picked at a sole, sipped Vichy and occasionally tried some of the Montrachet which Canteloupe was having with his first two courses. Halfway through the second of these the manager brought him a card.

  ‘Ask M’sieur to join us,’ Canteloupe said.

  A few minutes later a dapper, spare and slightly stooping figure appeared by their table.

  ‘Des Veules-les-Roses,’ said des Veules-les-Roses. He kissed Jo-Jo’s hand, grasped Canteloupe’s, bowed gracefully when offered a chair, and (rather creakily) sat.

  ‘I am sorry to disturb you at your dinner,’ he began, ‘but I have news which you should know. M’sieur Jean-Marie Guiscard of the Department of Monuments is in Dieppe for the night. Normally he drives over from Eu, which is not an hour away, for the inside of the day. It follows that if he is staying the night here he must be planning something novel. A moonlight visit to the Castle, perhaps?’

  ‘Why should he plan that?’

  ‘Because he is in love with the Castle. He is a very good sort of young man, Jean-Marie, if to us an annoyance. He loves the Castle and the Lady and the Ballad; and like all lovers he wishes, I expect, to pay his court by night.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘Where is he staying?’

  ‘In a little place by the port, my spies tell me. The Hostellerie de la Manche.’

  Without saying anything more, Jo-Jo left the two men at table. She ran along the Boulevard Verdun, turned right down to the Ferry Port, enquired frantically, and was directed to the Hostellerie de la Manche, where a sour-smelling man behind a zinc bar emitted a globule of something unspeakable and told her the number of the room of M’sieur Guiscard. She climbed three flights of decomposing stairs, knocked at a splintery door labelled 12bis, and was admitted by (she presumed) M’sieur Guiscard, who was getting himself up, in three sweaters and a jerkin, to go somewhere. Jo-Jo very much liked the look of his round farmer’s face, his bushy tow hair, and his rather shambly arms and legs, but she was not there, she reminded herself, to enjoy his appearance.

  ‘I had a French nanny,’ she said, ‘whom I very much loved and from whom I learned your beautiful language. Hear me, then.’

  Jean-Marie bowed to Jo-Jo and indicated his one lopsided chair. But she chose to stand in the middle of the floor.

  ‘Last night,’ she said, ‘I went to the Castle at Arques to help despoil it, to help find and steal the Treasure. I would be there again tonight, were it not that something happened to me which warned me to stay away and at the same time compels me to speak to you as I am speaking, although in doing so I must accuse my friends.

  ‘As we were leaving the Castle last night and passing along the wall of the keep, I felt suddenly as though I had stepped into a vacuum. My whole body was jolted and for a moment felt as if it must explode.’

  ‘“The confined spirit which shapes the air by its virtue.”’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This happened near the north wall?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If I am right,’ said Jean-Marie, ‘that is where the Lady – you know of whom I speak? – was laid to rest. There is, it appears from a chart in my possession, some old story that her soul, or a soul, is imprisoned there and makes influence on the air around.’

  ‘Ah. Then she could have made the vacuum into which I passed. Whether she intended it for me or for one of my friends, I do not know; but in any case they felt nothing. As for myself, after I had been threatened with explosion and then, just as suddenly, released from the threat, I felt…I felt sick, all here about my heart.’

  ‘No voices, mademoiselle?’

  ‘No voices. Only sickness and despair. For I now knew that there would be misfortune and misery for all concerned if I and my friends continued as we were. I knew that there was something wrong, not necessarily about what we were doing, but about the manner and the spirit in which we were doing it. I knew it was essential that I should stop my friends, in order that we might stand back for a while and take thought. All day I have been wondering how I might do this, and indeed whether I could do it at all; for the search is dear to the heart of a man whom I greatly love and who will be hurt and angry if I cause delay. But when I heard you were here, I saw how it must be. You love the Castle, and must come with me to save it and all those in it from this clumsy meddling of my friends.’

  ‘God help me, I was going to meddle there myself. In a few days, mademoiselle –’

  ‘What matters is now. You must come with me now, Jean-Marie Guiscard, before the daemons are roused and revenge is sought.’

  ‘What daemons? What revenge? I know there are some sad tales about the Castle, and some very odd ones too, but I have heard nothing of such evil as you suggest.’

  So as they went, Jo-Jo told him what Ptolemaeos had told her, compressing it as best she might into the twenty minutes or so which it took to find and activate his rattly car and drive it through the October night to September Castle.

  ‘What shall we do?’ said Canteloupe to des Veules-les-Roses.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But what does she want with Guiscard? Somehow or other she may give the game away. Ptolemaeos will be furious with her. His own niece.’

  ‘Mademoiselle has a face which betokens determination and truth,’ said des Veules-les-Roses. ‘When confronted by such a combination, one is well advised to sit still and let the thing go on as it may.’

  Jean-Marie stopped his car with a clank on the patch of rough grass in front of the Castle gate. He then, after considerable trouble, managed to light a storm-lantern, with the aid of which Jo-Jo and he padded through the barbican arch.

  They made towards the central archway. Through it they saw a torch flash, far off by the tilting yard. A little later they heard a light high keening, which grew in strength and pitch as they passed under the archway and began to cross the court of honour.

  Then the three-quarter moon
, which had been doused by mist since their arrival, suddenly rekindled, and what they saw and heard was this:

  Baby Canteloupe, chanting over and over again, to the tune of the famous spiral passage in Faurés Requiem, the words ‘Come, Xanthippe, come Xanthippe, come Xanthippe, come’, was dancing such a dance (thought Jo-Jo) as Nausicaa and her maidens must have danced on the beach of the magic island of the Phaeacians, swaying and fluttering and gently twirling, in the area immediately below the wall of the donjon and at the bottom of a slope. Standing nearby, in the posture of an umpire, was Len: standing behind Len, on a little bump in the ground which stuck out like a peninsula from the slope, was a tall lady all in white.

  Jo-Jo shuddered and grasped Jean-Marie’s hand. Jean-Marie crossed himself with his free one. Baby twirled again, saw the lady all in white, abruptly checked her chant and ran towards the lady, holding out her arms and smiling with great tenderness and joy.

  ‘Welcome, oh welcome,’ Baby called.

  As she came close to the lady and made to embrace her, their shapes seemed to merge, and Baby dropped to the earth.

  On the first day of full term, the assembled Council of Lancaster College, Cambridge, voted that the Provost, Lord Constable of Reculver Castle, being about to reach the age of retirement, should cede his Lodging, his authority and his title as Provost on the following Founder’s Day (December the sixth) in favour of some person to be elected by the Council during the intervening eight weeks.

  When Lord Constable rose to address the Council there was a murmur of affection and sympathy from most of the elder men present, notably from Tom Llewyllyn the historian, Ivor Winstanley the Ciceronian, and Balbo Blakeney the Custos Conviviarum (i.e. Steward in charge of College Feasts and Celebrations), while many of the younger men, by contrast, exchanged looks of spiteful jubilation. Lord Constable began by thanking his Fellows for their loyalty and support during the period of his incumbency, which had lasted for close on twenty years. He went on to say that he had given much thought to the question of a suitable successor, whether they should select him from among their own ranks or from the world outside, and whether –

  At this point a pimply face on a stove-pipe neck popped up to remark that the election of Provost Constable’s successor was a matter for the individual consciences of the members of the Council, who had no need of Provost Constable’s dissertation in the matter.

  Since this interruption appeared to the majority of those present, even the most disaffected, to be unnecessarily discourteous and dismissive, Provost Constable was invited to resume. What harm, after all, could he do them now, the radicals were thinking: he was going, he was making no trouble about going, and it might not be unamusing (for he had been a doughty and subtle Councillor in his time) to hear what he had to say about the succession.

  Provost Constable thanked his Fellows for their kind permission to continue. He was glad the word ‘conscience’ had been aired: he had recently had pressing cause to investigate his own. His problem had been whether or not to exercise his Special Prerogative.

  There was a puzzled silence while the phrase hung in the air above them.

  His Special Prerogative, Lord Constable now repeated: his Special and unquestionable Prerogative, virtually unknown but absolutely conferred by a royal statute of 1782, never repealed if never applied. The reason why it had never been applied was very simple: there were narrow and exigent conditions as to its application.

  The Royal Statute of 1782, In Patriae Salutis Causam (in the interest of national security), laid down that when a provost of the college was also a peer of the realm (a case which, in the event, had not arisen until now), such a provost, being a Lord in Parliament and Privy to the Councils of his Sovereign, and having therefore an especial obligation in duty and in honour to ensure the loyal service and lawful demeanour of the College which he ruled – that such a Provost, be it hereby decreed, was fully empowered and absolutely commanded to advise the Sovereign of the day if, in his expert and conscientious opinion, there was risk that an election of his successor might install hominem quemlibet vilem, hostem et Legis et Monarchi (some low fellow hostile to Constitution and Monarch) who might seek to subvert the Crown and frustrate its servants. In such case election should be barred and the succeeding Provost should be appointed by the Sovereign, in close consultation with the descendant. He, Provost Constable, now begged to produce the Statute before the Council.

  A scroll was now placed in the centre of the great table by the Senior Fellow. From the bottom end arose a peevish and incredulous mutter, such as one may hear from the lower class of spectator on a race course when the popular favourite has just been beaten by a short head by an outsider at 66 to 1.

  ‘Which things being so,’ the Provost pursued, ‘after a long inquisition of my conscience and experience, I at last decided to seek audience of Our Sovereign Lady the Queen, and to advise Her that the Council of Lancaster College, as at present constituted, is only too liable to elect a new Provost who would indeed seek to subvert the Crown and insult its dignity. In subsequent consultation with Her Majesty I have most earnestly put forward for the Provost-ship, and Her Majesty has most graciously accepted, the name of Thomas Ethelrydd Llewyllyn, Companion of the Order of the British Empire, Doctor Litterarum and Litterarum Doctor, better known to all of you round this table as plain Tom Llewyllyn.’

  It was bad luck, Ivan Barraclough reflected, that the first chappy to chew Aristarchos’ leaf (blubber-lips) had proved allergic to it, or so he must suppose; for instead of becoming Ivan’s immediate slave of mind and muscle, he had gone straight into a rabid and maniacal fury in which he started to claw the skin from his flesh and then the flesh from his bone. As a result the leader, who was about to take the herb himself, had very sensibly changed his mind, called up his two other colleagues to secure the first, and then destroyed the remains of the leaf in Ivan’s phylactery. There had been no further possibility of escape; and by now Canteloupe and his wife must long since have given him up and left Saint-Gilles, presumably for Dieppe. What would happen to them there without him? Ivan wondered.

  And come to that, what was going to happen to himself? It was now seven days since the violent miscarriage of the Aristarchos scheme, seven days during all of which he had been closely confined to the low-built house. Although his bonds were sometimes taken off or loosened to allow him to stretch a little, they were always replaced within the hour. The unfortunate fellow who had chewed the herb and gone dervish had been removed and had not reappeared; the rest ignored Ivan totally, save when his bonds must be loosened or replaced, or when it was his (once daily) feeding time, or when he asked to be led to the bucket which served as a jakes. He had the impression that the leader with the frizzy hair had sent away for instructions and would do nothing until he received them. Why they had suspended their intention to torture him, he did not know. Possibly the hideous effect of the herb on blubber-lips had caused them to suspect him of having further and similar resources which he might apply if too far provoked.

  This reminded him of Ptolemaeos’ uncharitable remarks about peasants’ incapacity to shed superstition; and he was just considering the possibility of renewing his attempts to exploit this ancient debility, when the leader, who had been out for nearly four hours, strode into the room, smacked him three times over the chops (the second blow being a backhander) and then began to untie his ropes. When this was done, he helped Ivan to his feet, led him to the door, blinked rapidly, shook his head and pushed Ivan out into the night.

  ‘Go,’ said the leader: ‘it is finished.’

  From somewhere below came a light splash of water; all about him was a rustle of pine.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘What does it matter? In the morning you will see, and then you will use your money. Nothing can matter much to a man as long as he has sight and money. That is why we needed you – to tell us where the treasure was so that we might take it and have money. But now all that is over, at least for us.�
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  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I do not exactly know. But for us it is over.’

  ‘Why have you not taken my money? It would have been some sort of consolation.’

  ‘When a man has been close to a mine of gold, English, he is not happy with pilfering small copper. Later, no doubt, we shall change our minds, and think how foolish, since the treasure is denied us, not to take what he had from the English. But as it is we have not the heart to trouble, so go now while you still may.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Ivor Winstanley to Tom Llewyllyn as they left the Council Chamber. ‘If only the Angry Brigade in there doesn’t assassinate you.’

  ‘They haven’t the guts. But they may make themselves very unpleasant, Ivor, so I’m slipping off for a day or two. My daughter Tullia hasn’t been at all well – some sort of brain fever, I gather – but now she’s out of danger and recuperating at Ptolemaeos Tunne’s place near Ely. I’ll go there for a while and see her. I hear Ptolemaeos has got some intriguing guests as well as Tullia, including our old chum, Len…’

  ‘All ways round, a fascinating experiment,’ Ptolemaeos said.

  For now the fight had been fought and already the wounds were healing; now halfway between golden Michaelmas and grey Hallows, the season when campaigns cease and men sit over the grateful wine, it was time to debate the matter of September Castle. The usual rectangular table in Ptolemaeos’ dining-room had been replaced by a far larger one, round. In honour of the occasion Jo-Jo had prepared blinis with red caviar and sour cream, a soufflé of tench with a sauce of Écrevisse, sorbets of Calvados (to refresh the palate), partridges stuffed with chestnuts, pancakes framboise. Since there were many people present, and since Jo-Jo must take a prominent part in the debate which would accompany the meal, the dishes were being served (very efficiently) by octogenarian twin sisters from a nearby village. (If one lived to be sixty in the Fenland, Ptolemaeos used to say, one was thereafter indestructible.)

  Present at this collation were Ptolemaeos Tunne; the Marchioness Canteloupe (on his right); Jean-Marie Guiscard (on her right); Madame la Princesse d’Héricourt-en-Caux; Tom Llewyllyn (Provost Select of Lancaster College in the University of Cambridge); his newly appointed Custos Arcanorum (confidential secretary and hatchet man) in the person of Len; Monsieur le Marquis des Veules-les-Roses; Madame Jean-Marie Guiscard (née Jo-Jo Pelham); Ivan Barraclough (rather battered after a difficult journey); and Captain the Most Honourable Marquess Canteloupe, of the Aestuary of the Severn, to give him, just for once, his full and proper title.