Tales of the Old World

by Marc Gascoigne

  Who mourns a necromancer? Kalispera thought, echoing the priest’s words with a hint of ironic triumph. Two men at least, it seems, are not so cowardly that they dare not show their faces here. I thank you, young sir, with all my heart.

  Before he bowed his head again, he favoured the younger man with a discreet smile. The priest of Morr saw, and disapproved, but there was nothing he could do save resume the ceremony with all due expedition.

  As soon as it was all finished, though, the priest graced the newcomer with a scowl more hateful than any he had previously contrived. Then he hurried off, leaving the grave gaping like a fresh wound in the green hillside.

  The sexton, who must have been almost as old as Alpheus Kalispera, and every bit as feeble in wind and limb, shuffled from his hiding place to begin the work of filling in the grave.

  The need for a respectfully bowed head now gone, Kalispera looked long and hard at the second mourner—and suddenly found the name which had momentarily eluded him. “Cesar Barbier! As I live and breathe!” he said.

  Barbier smiled, but thinly, as though he had not the heart for a proper greeting. “Aye, Magister Kalispera,” he said. “You did well to remember me at all, for it’s a fair while since I was a student here—and I have not been in Gisoreux for some years, though I have not been far away.”

  “In Oisillon, perhaps?” Kalispera said. “I remember that we thought you destined to be a luminary of His Majesty’s court.”

  Now the magister had the name, the rest was not too hard to remember. The Barbiers were one of the great families of the region, more celebrated for breeding soldiers than scholars. But Cesar had been a clever student, more attentive than many to what his teachers had to tell him. Young men of his class came to the university primarily to sow their wild oats at a safe distance from home, and in truth Barbier had certainly done his share of that, but his interests had eventually extended at least a little beyond wine, women and the dance.

  Barbier shook his head. “I have been in Rondeau,” he said, naming a small town some miles to the south of the great city. Kalispera frowned, trying to remember whether Rondeau was part of the Barbier estate—and, for that matter, whether Cesar had yet succeeded to his father’s title. A good Bretonnian was supposed to know such things, even if he were a high priest of Verena and a magister of a university, devoted by vocation to more permanent kinds of wisdom. Cesar Barbier certainly did not look like a Tilean nobleman, for he wore no powder and no wig, and his clothes were honest leather—but if he had come to Gisoreux on horseback he might easily have consigned his finery to a saddlebag.

  “I am glad to see you here, my lord,” Kalispera said guardedly. He dared not ask whether Barbier had really come to Gisoreux simply to attend the funeral—or, if so, why.

  Barbier gave another slight smile when he heard the magister call him “my lord”—an appellation to which custom had not entitled him while he was a student. “And I am glad to see you, sir,” he replied in turn, “though I must confess to a little disappointment that I find you alone. I came as soon as I heard that Magister Chazal had died, but I fear that the news had made slow progress in arriving at Rondeau. Still, it seems that I came in time.”

  As he spoke he looked at the ancient sexton, who was shovelling earth as fast as he possibly could, clearly no more anxious than any other to be too long in the company of a corpse of such evil repute.

  “Aye,” Kalispera said, “you came in time. But I doubt that you would have come at all, had rumour of Lanfranc’s last years reached Rondeau before the news of his death. I am alone because no other would come. It has been rumoured of late that my friend was… was a necromancer, and I dare say that you know as well as any other what damage such rumours can do. I am glad to see you, as I said—but perhaps I should rather be sorry that you have taken the trouble, if you came in ignorance.”

  “I did not come in ignorance, I assure you,” Barbier said solemnly. “I came because I knew, far better than any other, what kind of man he really was.”

  Kalispera felt tears rising to his eyes, and he bowed his head. “Thank you for that,” he said.

  “Oh no,” replied the other, reaching out to take the older and frailer man by the arm. “It is for me to thank you on his behalf—for you stood by him when no one else would.”

  They stood together, silently, for two or three minutes more. When the sexton was finished, Barbier gave him a suitable coin, which the old man accepted without any word or gesture of thanks.

  “Is there somewhere we can go?” the young nobleman asked gently. “I think we both stand in need of the warmth of a fire and a cup of good wine.”

  “Of course,” Kalispera said quietly. “I would be most honoured if you would be my guest, and would share with me in the remembrance of my friend.”

  “I will do it gladly,” Barbier assured him. The two went down the hill together, quite oblivious to any inquisitive eyes which may have stared after them.

  Alpheus Kalispera took Cesar Barbier to the room where he worked and taught. The sun had set by the time they arrived there, but the autumn twilight always lingered in the room, because its latticed window faced the south-west. Kalispera had always found it to be a good room for reading—and an excellent place for deeper contemplation.

  At Barbier’s request, Kalispera told him about the shadow which had been cast over Lanfranc Chazal during the last years of his tenure at the university.

  “No charge was brought against him in any court, sacred or secular,” he was at pains to explain. “He was condemned exclusively by scurrilous gossip and clandestine vilification. I have even heard it said that his death was a manifestation of the wrath of Verena, delayed for so long only because Verena was a calm and patient deity who loved her followers of wisdom just a little too well. That was terrible, truly terrible.

  “Alas for poor Lanfranc, he had the misfortune to age less gracefully than he might, and he came to suffer from a certain disfiguration of the features which his enemies took to be evident proof of his dabbling with forbidden knowledge. One expects to hear such folderol from common peasants, of course, but I had thought better of Gisoreux and the university. If the men who call themselves the wisest in the world can so easily fall prey to such silly suspicions, what hope is there for the future of reason?

  “Long before he was consigned to the grave where we saw him laid today, Lanfranc had begun to take on the appearance of a dead man, with whited skin and sunken eyes. I tried in vain to persuade our colleagues that it was merely an illness of old age, with no dire implication, but my ideas on the subject had always been considered unorthodox, and no one would listen to me. Even his friends were content to accept his disfigurement as evidence of a secret interest in the practice of necromancy. ‘All illness comes from the gods,’ they said, ‘and is sent to educate us.’ Lanfranc Chazal never believed any such thing, and neither do I, for we had seen too many sick men and women in our time. Alas, we were the only two remaining who remembered the great plague of forty years ago, and how dreadfully it used the magisters of the day. Now there is only me.”

  Kalispera realized that his tone had become very bitter, and stopped in embarrassment. The twilight had faded while he spoke and the room was now as gloomy as his mood, so he covered his embarrassment by looking about for the tinderbox in order that he might light a candle. He had mislaid it, and was forced to get up in order to conduct a scrupulous search.

  Cesar Barbier did not say anything to him while he searched for the box, found it and struck a light. But when the candle finally flared up, he saw that the younger man was watching him very quizzically from his place by the fireside.

  Kalispera resumed his own seat, then smoothed his white beard with his right hand as if to settle himself completely. “You are probably astonished to hear all this,” he said.

  “On the contrary,” Barbier replied with a guarded look. “There is nothing in it which is news to me, but I am glad to hear your account of it. He would have bee
n very pleased and proud to know that his truest friend did not desert him, even at the end.”

  “You knew!” Kalispera exclaimed. “But you said that you have not been in Gisoreux for some time. How could you know about Lanfranc’s illness, the changes in his appearance?”

  “He visited me in Rondeau,” the young nobleman said. “We have seen one another frequently over the years. I always regarded him as my mentor—he was ever the man to whom I turned for advice and help, and he never failed me. He told me more than once how grateful he was for your amity, and I know that it weighed upon his conscience that his claim upon your good opinion was not as honest as he would have wished.”

  Alpheus Kalispera started in his seat and his eyes grew suddenly wide. “What are you saying?” he cried, angrily. “Do you mean to insult my grief?”

  Barbier sat upright as well, but then leaned forward to reach out a soothing hand. “No, magister!” he said. “Anything but! Lanfranc Chazal was the best and noblest man I ever knew. I came here to share my grief, not to insult yours.”

  Kalispera stared at him angrily for a moment, but then relaxed with a sigh. “I do not know what you mean,” he said. “Lanfranc said nothing to me about visiting you in Rondeau—nothing at all. And I cannot believe that he deceived me, even in a matter as small as that.”

  “Alas, sir,” Barbier said, “he did deceive you, even in matters much weightier. I can assure you, though, that it was not because he doubted you that he kept his darkest secrets from you, but only because he doubted himself.”

  There was a long moment’s silence before Kalispera said in a horrified whisper, “Do you mean to tell me that Lanfranc Chazal was a necromancer, after all—and that you were party to his experiments?”

  “That is what I mean to tell you,” the other confirmed, in a low voice. “But I beg you not to condemn me—and certainly not to condemn Magister Chazal—until you have heard me out.”

  Alpheus Kalispera felt that the features of his face were firmly set in a mask of pain, and that his heart was unnaturally heavy in his breast. Nevertheless, he made every effort to speak boldly. “Explain yourself, my lord,” he said. Despite the title, it was the patronising command of the instructor, not the humble request of the commoner.

  “I intend to explain, magister,” said the young man, quietly, “and I beg you to forgive my clumsiness in going about it. You will remember, I am sure, that I was not the best of students. I was, after all, one of those sent by a pretentious father to acquire the merest veneer of culture and learning, not one intended to learn the skills of a scrivener or the training of a priest. I was something of a noble fool in my early days, and although Magister Chazal taught me in the end to be less of a fool than I was, still my wisdom is of a very narrow kind. Let me tell you my story in my own way, so that we may mourn together the passing of a great and generous man.”

  Kalispera had to admit that this was a pretty speech, and he believed that he could hear within its phrases the influence of his friend Lanfranc Chazal. But there was another thought echoing its derision inside his head: Who mourns a necromancer?

  Could it be, he wondered, that the world had been right after all, and he the lone fool?

  “I am sorry, my lord,” he said, however, with honest but troubled humility. “Please say what you have come to say. I will listen patiently.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Cesar Barbier said, relaxing again in his turn. He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts, and then he proceeded to tell his story.

  “You know my name,” Barbier began, “and I assume that you know whose son I am. Perhaps you remember my father from his own student days, when I am sure he impressed you with his command of those aristocratic virtues befitting a man whose service to our king has been of the military kind. He is now as he undoubtedly was then: bold in word and deed, with a will and stomach of iron. Neither wine nor passion has the power to disturb his firmness of mind, and I dare say that you found his head quite impregnable to wisdom or sophistication.

  “When I first became a student here I set out to do my best to be like my father, and I think that for a while I succeeded well enough to convince almost everyone that I was a perfect example of that kind, save only for Magister Chazal. He saw through my facade of reckless intolerance to the, well, the gentler soul within. He knew what a creature of dishonesty I was, and helped me to use my years here to become a better man.

  “In public he never gave evidence by word or gesture that he knew what a poseur I was, but in private he talked to me in a different way. He taught me to trust him, and be honest in what I said to him. With him and him alone I was my true self: full of doubt, full of passion and tender of sentiment—all traits which my father despised, and despises still. Magister Chazal never advised me to break down my public pretence, but was content to give me an opportunity to lay it aside. I cannot tell you how much it meant to me to have that relief.

  “When the time came for me to leave Gisoreux and take up the business of accepting the responsibilities of my position, I quickly began to use the gift of lettering—which was one of the valuable things which I had learned within these walls—in the writing of letters to Magister Chazal. I was his guest here in Gisoreux on numerous occasions. He was the one and only person to whom I confided my true feelings, and by degrees I won his confidence too, so that he began to say to me those things which he dared not say to people of his own kind.

  “It was from Magister Chazal that I learned about your beliefs, Magister Kalispera. He told me that you had drawn conclusions about the nature of disease which were, if not openly heretical, at least unorthodox. He told me about your sceptical attitude to the medicines and treatments established by custom. He told me too about your insistence that disease and suffering make no discrimination between the guilty and the innocent, and are far less often the result of magic or divine intervention than we are prone to believe. He respected you for holding those beliefs, and for setting what you believed to be the truth over the advantages to be gained by conformity. He thought that you might respect his own opinions, but hesitated to burden you with anymore unorthodoxy than you had already accepted.”

  Alpheus Kalispera had begun to see where this account was leading, but he kept silent while Barbier paused, and looked at him very gravely.

  “It is the common belief,” the younger man continued, “that any magic but the pettiest is inherently good or evil. Any magic which involves trafficking with the dead or the undead is held to be supremely wicked. Magister Chazal was prepared to doubt that. His view was that although any knowledge might be used for evil ends by evil men, knowledge as such is always good. Ignorance, he used to say, is the greatest evil of all.”

  Kalispera nodded his head then, for he had certainly heard Chazal say that on many an occasion.

  “For that reason,” Barbier went on, “Magister Chazal had studied the arcane language of necromancy and had read books written in that language. His intention in so doing was not to become a master of necromantic magic, but to learn more about the mysteries of death—to enhance his understanding. He was not a man to play with the conjuration of ghosts or the reanimation of corpses; for him, the written word was enough. He valued enlightenment far more than power.

  “The story of these researches he confided to me by degrees, over a period of more than a year. In return, I talked to him about my own very different problems, which arose from friction between myself and my father as to the managements of our estates and our lives.

  “I found myself in disagreement with my father on many matters of principle—on the matter of the unhappiness which he caused my mother and my sisters, for instance, and on the matter of the relentless tyranny which he exerted over his tenants and his bondsmen. But I could not successfully oppose him because I was still forced by convention and circumstance to pretend to be like him. I had begun to hate my father, and in so doing had begun to hate myself too, for being so obviously his son.

  “Then, quite ou
t of the blue, disaster struck me. I fell in love.

  “Love was not a factor in my father’s calculations of advantage, and he had already contracted marriages for my two sisters on the basis of his commercial interests. It would have been bad enough had I fallen in love with a woman of my own class, had it not been the one which he considered most useful to the family interest, but in fact I fell in love with a commoner, who was very beautiful but of no account whatsoever in my father’s scheme of things.

  “To my father, the very idea of love is bizarre. He has not an atom of affection in his being. I, by virtue of some silly jest of the gods who determine such things, am very differently made, and my honest passion for the girl—whose name was Siri—was quite boundless. I could not envision life without her, and life itself came to depend in my estimation upon my possession of her. By possession I do not mean mere physical possession—my father would have raised no word of objection had I been able simply to rape and then discard the girl—but authentic union. That, of course, my father would never tolerate, and yet it was what I had to have.

  “When I said all this to Magister Chazal, he did not presume to tell me what to do, but he gave me every assistance in dissolving my confusion and seeing clearly what kind of choice I had to make. He helped me to understand that the time had come when I must either break completely with my father or utterly destroy the secret self which I had so carefully preserved for many years. I could not cut out and burn my own heart. And so I eloped and married Siri in secret, resolving never to see my father again.

  “I anticipated that my father would disown me and forbid my name ever to be mentioned again in his house or his estates. That was what I expected, and was prepared to accept. But I had underestimated him. Perhaps it would have been different had he had another heir to put in my place, but I had no brother and nor had he. He could not face the thought of allowing his lands and his titles to become subservient to another name in being diverted to one of my sisters.