Mortal Spoils

by D M Greenwood

  Theodora warmed to him. ‘Right. In that case we need to be orderly.’

  She took out a scuffed black Filofax and Tom reached into his breast pocket for his organiser.

  ‘The problem is, one, the identity and provenance of the corpse. The only clues are the boots and the cross. With regard to the latter, Gilbert Racy told me – have I mentioned Gilbert?’

  Tom looked intelligent as Theodora told him Gilbert’s views.

  ‘It does all rather point to the corpse being one of the Azbarnahi party if the cross is Byzantine.’

  ‘He also mentioned the Azbarnahi exhibition at the Galaxy. If the cross isn’t Anglican but is Azbarnahi, would it be a good idea to look it over? Catalogues, that sort of thing?’

  ‘If you do the boots and keep on with the cross, I’ll pursue the exhibition.’ Tom tapped a note into his organiser. ‘What we also need to do is to find out the movements of as many people as we can around two-thirty at Ecclesia Place.’

  ‘Given the state of the records as you’ve described them, that doesn’t sound too possible as an enterprise. Why not just concentrate on Truegrave, Teape and Clutch? They were the ones most concerned with the Azbarnah delegation.’

  ‘I’ll do my best but I really don’t have the nerve to question them properly. Perhaps I could get to them through Myfannwy, Clutch’s secretary. She’s a complete communications centre.’

  ‘You do that.’ Theodora rose to get on with the job. ‘There is just one thing more. When I saw Gilbert this morning, he was talking on the phone either to or about someone involved with the Azbarnahis and the Archimandrite.’ She repeated what she remembered of Gilbert’s conversation.

  ‘Could you ask him to clarify?’

  ‘Gilbert, if he’s that side out, would just refuse. Or else he’d want to know why I wanted to know.’

  ‘Can we meet this evening and see how far we’ve got?’

  ‘I’ll be late. I’m dining at Geoffrey’s. They’ve got Clutch coming.’

  ‘Perhaps something will come out at your dinner party.’ Was she mistaken or did Tom sound regretful that he wouldn’t be eating that meal. She looked at the remains of the treacle sponge.

  They walked together towards the embankment for a valedictory look at the river. Under the big plane tree at the far end of the court where the pub’s tubs ceased and the undecorated flagstones of Ecclesia Place took over, a cloud of pigeons, startled into fearful flight, rose in the air. As they cleared, two figures seated on the bench came into view.

  ‘The old girl in the gaberdine’s a regular,’ said Tom. ‘The clergy find her difficult. She calls them all “Rev”. She doesn’t beg but they feel she’s a reproach.’

  Theodora understood. ‘I’ve noticed. The poor are a difficulty for the higher clergy. They lose touch, not having parishes, and then feel guilty. Perhaps it’s conversation, a not too demanding human contact, that she wants, not money.’

  The pigeons began to settle again around the pair of women on the bench. The younger of the two tore up bits of bread into tiny pellets, breaking the bits with too much strength into the consistency of dough and then flinging them with a wild gesture into the heart of the flock. The older woman watched her maternally, turning her whole body towards her as though she might have something to learn from her actions.

  ‘Hello, Maggie. How’s things?’

  ‘’Lo, Rev.’

  ‘I’m not a Rev.’

  ‘All Revs at the Place.’ Maggie was authoritative. Then, ‘Got the time, dearie?’ she asked Theodora in order to prolong the contact. ‘That right?’ she said as Theodora answered. ‘Well I never. It’s getting late these days.’ She blew the crumbs off her brown gaberdine. Then, since that didn’t dislodge them quite, she got up and dusted herself down. She looked at her feet to see they were still all right. The black gymn shoe on the left foot contrasted with the beautiful brown boot on the right foot.

  Tom’s eyes travelled downwards. ‘Nice boot, Maggie. Where’d you get it?’

  ‘My nephew give it me.’

  ‘Didn’t know you had a nephew, Maggie.’

  He came vividly before her mind’s eye. She’d had him, hadn’t she, at least two days. ‘He give it me,’ she repeated, annoyed her word should be doubted.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Sometime.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘Where’s somewhere?’

  Maggie shook her head and gazed at the pigeons.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Game

  ‘The last shall be first and the first shall be last.’

  Anona made it sound like a spell. She sat at her table in front of the window which looked out from the attic room at the top of the Foundation of St Sylvester. She could see over the rooftops to the river and the gables of Ecclesia Place downstream in the far distance. Big Ben had just struck noon. It was the right time for the game.

  She opened the window and took a deep breath seven times. Then she turned back to the table. On it was a black and white chequered patchwork cloth. Next she took seven objects from various parts of the room and arranged them on the black hexagonals. She had assembled a key, a cross, a silver model of a crusader, a pebble, a small gilt flower, a thimble and a tiny candlestick. She folded her hands together and bowed to the bedecked cloth. Then she breathed in and out and keeping up the chant of the first last and the last first, she seated herself in front of the cloth and began to rock to and fro rattling dice in an egg cup. As the dice fell, she moved the pieces, seven throws for seven pieces.

  Outside she could hear the hum of late-morning traffic and the odd keening of the seagulls coming up from the river. As the last dice fell in the seventh move, she adjusted her last piece, the crusader. She stopped and read the board. Her eye swept it from right to left. ‘He comes not yet,’ she said. ‘He comes not yet. But he will come. He will return. I can’t be left with nothing. There is design and pattern in the world. There is balance and harmony. That’s what we’ve been taught. It’s all a matter of reversal.’

  Far below her she heard a door open and the sound of a group of people loosing from a session. She should have been there. Gilbert had said she mustn’t miss any more sessions. But they couldn’t turn her out. She was sure of that. A Christian house couldn’t turn someone as sick as she was out on to the streets. And she a widow, or almost.

  She was due to see Dr Hertzog this afternoon. She’d keep that appointment. She’d told them all, she was waiting. That was her career. She did it full time. It was just that others kept on interrupting her waiting. They didn’t seem to realise how very demanding waiting was. It took all your energy. She hadn’t time to do anything else. She remembered how often as a child her mother had told her to wait until she was grown up. So she’d waited, but she didn’t know if she was grown up yet. How could one tell? When she’d married she’d done a lot of waiting. Wait until you start a family. But she’d waited in vain there. Wait till. Now she knew. Waiting was a thing in itself, a full-time occupation. If you started doing other things you fell between two stools, polluted the waiting. Waiting had to be pure. Those that wait upon the Lord shall be refreshed. The only way out of the waiting game was the power game. This game. She pushed the crusader back a hexagonal and then returned him to his original position.

  She thought of the patchwork which lay outside the Foundation, the patchwork which was Betterhouse, then London, then England, then Europe. She could never get beyond Europe though she knew there was more. There was the world. But she couldn’t get to the world. All was part of the game of power. The transformation game, Gilbert called it. ‘The only reason I can’t get it to work is that I lack the chief piece,’ she had told Gilbert. But he had answered, ‘The only reason you can’t get it to work is you want pieces you can never have. You can only free yourself if you make the best of the pieces you have. That’s how the healing comes.’

  ‘I shall get him back,’
she’d told him. ‘No doubt of that.’

  She placed her hand over the pieces and imagined them, the crusader and the key, looking up and seeing her hand hovering over them. Then she thought of the mighty hand of God above us all. She felt the constriction in her throat, the shallow breathing and panic rising within her. She had not heard the tap at the door.

  Gilbert said quietly over her shoulder, ‘It isn’t like that, you know.’

  She looked up into his pale eyes. ‘How can you tell?’

  Theodora, returning to her new flat after lunch with Tom at the Calf, was not surprised to find her front door kicked in. She regarded the splintered wood round the lock and the marks of the toecap at the bottom. Cautiously she pushed the door. It didn’t feel like a door without its lock. It opened and she stood at the bottom of the steps listening. She’d cleaned the hall and stairs and sanded and Rentokiled the wood. But they remained uncarpeted. There was a faint smell of something other than Rentokil. Scent, was it, or aftershave? She mounted the steps to the first floor and remarked the door, which had no lock on it, standing open. There was no one inside.

  Theodora knew the local talent would do her over. It was partly thievishness, which few in the area would see as wrong; partly, too, curiosity. What did this odd woman have? She’d given some thought to that problem. In the warfare which was endemic to Betterhouse, in which those who had nothing to do or who wanted money for a habit roved about like loose dogs seeking what they might devour, either you could fit a steel door and an alarm or you could simply own nothing worth stealing. She had never been able to formulate any argument which gave a convincing answer to the question, why is it wrong to steal? If you had what others wanted, what reason was there in religion why they should not have it? So she made her decision. She’d have no goods other than necessities; as little furniture as possible, no videos, no mobile phones. The food even was day to day. She’d lived like that as an undergraduate, as a young curate in East Africa. Why not continue so? It obviated worry.

  She looked around. Whoever had visited had not been attracted by the ten-year-old black and white portable TV. The phone was still attached to its wires. The futon rolled up in the corner had been unrolled but not otherwise tampered with. She knew they didn’t sleep on futons around here. The sun poured into the clean white space. The luxury, the necessity was books. The visitors had not touched anything from the shelves either side of the fireplace. Pedersen on Israel, Mowinckel on the Psalms, the Summa Theologica and the range of classical and philosophical texts stood in their places. Theodora’s taste was for standard reference texts in the best scholarly editions; not a big market round here. She looked up at the ceiling. A thin pink line of new plaster ran from door switch to central fitment and the purple flex had gone. The electrician had come and done his work and departed. That would mean the robbers must have looked in over the lunch hour. Well, now they could put the word round the local pubs that she had nothing worth nicking.

  St Sylvester’s clock struck four. She checked her watch. She had a hospital visit to make, then some reading to do towards the confirmation class preparation, then supper with Geoffrey and Oenone. She’d better get a move on. She went into the kitchen lobby to take a final look. The teapot was safe. On the back of the kitchen door, her Barbour still hung where she had left it after Mass. She lifted it off its peg. Then a wave of physical panic swept over her. She drove her hand into each of the side pockets in turn. Nothing. She felt sick with apprehension. Frantically she went through the other four pockets inside. But she knew she was not mistaken. She’d left the cross in the right-hand outer pocket and it was gone.

  Theodora hated blunders or muddles of any kind. She was organised for maximum effectiveness. It was part of the disciplined life she’d set herself on entering the Church’s ministry. Nature, temperament had been perfected by training. How on earth could she have been so careless? The fact that neither she nor Tom knew whose the cross was made it worse. She felt she’d personally betrayed a trust. She reached for the phone. There was a delay.

  Finally a Welsh voice said, ‘Mr Logg is in conference at the moment. Can I take a message?’

  ‘Just say Miss Braithwaite would like to contact him urgently.’

  ‘Azbarnah, population estimated 1993, 5 million. Last census 1952. The name of the country may be derived from the Greek ‘Apbanikia’, which is itself probably a transliteration of the original Doric. The terrain is largely mountainous with the highest peak, Mt Dovraki, six thousand feet above sea level. The inhabited part of the country lies to the north of the River Borka which is a tributary of the Danube. In Roman times Azbarnah escaped conquest by the Roman army led by Aflanius Agricola 97AD whose forces were led into a swamp northwest of the chief city of Vorasi and left there to drown with never a weapon drawn. Roman lack of success perhaps accounts for the description in Tacitus of the people as a gens rudis et crudelis nec artibus nec scientiis imbuta. The Byzantine empire sent its ambassadors in the time of Kropartoman the Small c.832AD, but they were able to do little more than negotiate a deal over copper mining rights. Later a type of Orthodox Christianity was introduced into the country by the Slavic saint Busonvici the Bearded whose miraculous powers attracted large numbers of the peasantry to him in the early thirteenth century.’

  Tom, perusing the Historical Atlas of the World in the library of Ecclesia Place, turned the page of the large volume on its reading stand and tapped notes into his organiser.

  ‘The economy in the classical and mediaeval era was founded for the most part on brigandage; the inhabitants were notorious for preying on the caravan trains which passed from the old Byzantine empire into southern Russia. The natives thus acquired a degree of luxury in the Middle Ages for which they had not paid a penny. In the nineteenth century the country escaped being annexed to the Austro- Hungarian Empire. Germany in the First World War did not think it worthwhile invading it. In the Second World War the Russians preferred to allow it to be governed by its own indigenous leaders with a form of communism which was scarcely more than titular and closely resembled the tribal- and family-dependent organisation of previous centuries.’

  Tom gathered that the writer didn’t think much of the Azbarnahis’ social skills while evincing a reluctant admiration for their commercial talents. He ran his eye down the page. ‘Although the country is not without natural resources, copper and tin, in the mountains, good building stone in the foothills and some timber on the lower slopes of the mountains, these have remained unexploited. On the whole the population has until comparatively modern times considered themselves traders, with a little farming as a basic economic stratum. The political organisation of the country has since the fifteenth century consisted of the rakdomia, an annual meeting of elected representatives of the main landowning families who after transacting the business of the state disperse once more to their own concerns. Hence Azbarnah has reached the modern era remarkably free of modern influences. In general it seems not too harsh to say that Azbarnahis have always managed to take what they wanted from foreigners while leaving themselves untouched though richer.’

  Tom turned the pages of the Atlas, which was published in 1974, the latest edition owned by the library. The library of Ecclesia Place was buried below modern ground level. It was in fact a crypt. There were five stone arches with whitewashed bays between the bare stone ribs. Where the altar might have been, stood the librarian’s desk, stacked with catalogues and half-empty mugs of coffee. The lighting was subdued, scarcely revealing the arcading of the roof. Libraries and churches have something in common, Tom reflected. They both sedate the raucous and unregenerate parts of us and demand a certain decorum. The silence was formidable. At five-thirty, it was not crowded. In fact Tom, cautiously rotating his head for fear of making a noise, could see only one figure, that of a small woman with a large head and small body padding slowly round the metal catwalks which stretched across the far ends of the library. These were reached by aesthetically satisfyi
ng spiral stairs. Every now and then he caught the gleam of the light on her fine reddish-gold hair as she reached down a volume. Of the archivist and librarian, Canon Teape, there was no sign.

  ‘Find out what you can about Azbarnah and its Church,’ Theodora had said, ‘history and current state.’ Tom had genuinely done his best but the gleanings had not been great. This was the third account of the history of Azbarnah from Bronze Age to Cold War which he’d skimmed. They all attested to the transport difficulties, the independence of the people (or their recalcitrance and rapacity depending on whether you admired brigandage or not), their freedom from outside influences. The standard reference texts on Orthodoxy traced Russian, Greek and Bulgarian strands of theological practice, the only clear doctrine being an undifferentiated hatred of Jews, Muslims and Roman Catholics. The strange thing was the lack of information about post-war development. There seemed to be nothing about how the country had fared under communism. What had they done for the last forty years?

  Tom turned to the other works lying on his table. He tapped the title of the smallest of them with the date and publisher into his organiser: The Cold War Frontiers and the Church, ed. Ellis Bernhardt Truegrave, pub. Ecclesia Place Press 1990. A plate in the front indicated the volume was the gift of the author to the Ecclesia Place library. The contents page looked more hopeful than his last volume. Tom had all the intellectual curiosity of a youth with a non-specialist education. Those who had taught him at school had not been experts or scholars. The comprehensive system recruited where it could. Most of the humanities staff were geographers; the scientists had degrees in music and biology. But this had worked well as far as Tom was concerned. If it had deprived him of standards, it had also saved him from both fear and snobbery. Anyone could teach him about anything. Taste and see was his motto. He saw no reason why he shouldn’t tackle and master anything. Getting down to a bit of ecclesiastical politics on the outer edges of Europe with no training in either discipline seemed to him a perfectly sensible procedure.