The Roses of Picardie

by Simon Raven

  ‘Why on earth?’

  ‘It seems that a long time ago the Comminges family had been prominent Albigensians. For some reason which isn’t quite clear the taint of the heresy still clings to them and the thing is very much held against them. When Constance asks why, in that case, they didn’t make for the Pyrénées via Bordeaux and the West, he tells her that matters are just as bad for him in that area too. What it boils down to is that they must somehow get from Orange to Béziers, an old Cathar town where they will be safe, without using the main road. From Béziers on to the Pyrénées, via Narbonne, is no problem, but to get to Béziers itself without being arrested they must take a detour East by Carpentras and Cavaillon, then circle round to Arles (which apparently is not hostile), and after that proceed along the coast until they are almost due South of Béziers and can safely head North to the main road again.

  ‘Now, this means that they must go from Arles to St Gilles, then across some very wild country from St Gilles down to Aigues Mortes (in order to avoid Lunel), then through an area of lakes and sea marshes West of Le Grau, past Sete, and right on to Agde. Constance, writing to the widow Vibrot, tells her what is still almost true today – that much of that country is terra incognita, where be dragons and probably worse. Constance is therefore very frightened and very depressed by, among other things, her diminishing stock of clean underwear.’

  ‘I didn’t know they worried much about that in the seventeenth century.’

  ‘Perhaps they did in the type of Protestant household in which Constance was brought up. At all events, this second letter ends with the information that the Comminges are to set out for Carpentras the next morning at five. A coach has again been hired, despite the element of self-advertisement in such a proceeding, and in this they will go as far as Arles. After Arles they must rough it.’

  ‘And the third letter?’

  ‘Very brief and dated nearly a month later, from Narbonne. She simply says that they managed to journey safely to Aigues Mortes, that they stayed there more than a week because Comminges developed a marsh fever, and that they then moved on through the lakes to Béziers, where, mercifully, she had been able to get her undies washed.’

  ‘I’m relieved to hear it.’

  ‘Relations between Louis and Constance have improved during the journey – a certain camaraderie had arisen in the face of common dangers, one supposes, and perhaps the brute was grateful to her for nursing him through his fever. But she still hasn’t been told where they are going, only that they may be passing through Toulouse and will definitely, quite definitely, spend some days in Pau. Pau, it appears, is as far West as they can go without Louis Comminges again being in danger of arrest as the descendant of Albigensians.’

  ‘There’s a lot of explaining to be done about that. The Albigensian heresy had been wiped out centuries earlier. Why was anyone still worried because the Comminges had once adhered to it?’

  ‘A very good question, I’d say…the answer to which, along with the answer to many other questions, is reposing in the plumbing of the Youth Hostel in the Castle of Montreuil.’

  ‘So the only thing we can do, I imagine, is to follow their route to Pau, hoping to pick up something on the way. Carpentras, Aigues Mortes, and so on. Those marshes. Béziers, Narbonne, Toulouse…’

  ‘No,’ said Jacquiz. ‘We go straight to Pau. We can always go back along their route later on if we need to.’

  ‘Straight to Pau? Isn’t that rather precipitate?’

  ‘I have reasons. Pau, for a start, is the place about which Constance is most emphatic.’

  ‘But what can we be looking for in Pau?’

  ‘What can we be looking for anywhere, come to that? In Pau, of all places, there should be thread which we can find and follow.’

  ‘What thread? What thread can we conceivably pick up in Pau? Pau,’ announced Marigold in disgust, ‘is a spa town with nothing in it except stuffy hotels and dying oldies.’

  ‘Rich dying oldies,’ emended Jacquiz, ‘who go there for the superb view of the Pyrénées and to benefit from the salutary climate. A climate whose medicinal virtues were discovered by the Romans and have been appreciated ever since…by, among others, retired merchants from Bordeaux and their vain and purse-proud wives. Such people were much the same in the seventeenth century as they are now, probably even more so. Now then, Marigold: if you had a valuable necklace to dispose of, a necklace to which your title was at least questionable (because your wife had it from a dying painter who had it in dubious circumstances from a Countess who had only a life interest in it, if that), a necklace which might at any minute become what in modern parlance is called “hot”, what better place could you choose to dispose of it than a remote spa town, to which news of its “hotness” should be slow in coming, full of rich, worldly, bored, ageing and self-made men, who would not be too scrupulous in asking the precise provenance of something which they or their nagging wives were eager to possess?’

  ‘All right,’ said Marigold. ‘So Comminges wanted to flog that necklace in Pau. But that still doesn’t tell me what we’re looking for there. There’ll hardly be a receipt in the local museum, or a plaque on a wall saying, “This is the house in which Louis Comminges sold the Roses of Picardie to Monsieur and Madame Frump.”’

  ‘Retired merchants,’ said Jacquiz, ‘may not be too scrupulous about provenance but they are very exacting about quality. Anyone who had a mind to possess that necklace would have wanted it valued by a master jeweller. Any master jeweller who had sight of such a piece would record a description of it and the details of any sale over which he presided – together with the amount of his commission. So we are looking in Pau for a house of antique jewellers which has connections, by inheritance or transference or sale or amalgamation, that reach back to such a house as might have existed in the seventeenth century. In short, a house whose anterior records go back three centuries.’

  ‘Back to a master jeweller,’ said Marigold, ‘who, had he set eyes on the celebrated Roses of Picardie, might well have spotted what they were, even if he did live in a remote province, and then have denounced Comminges to the police. In one word, Jacquiz, Comminges would never have taken the risk of letting those Rubies be valued in Pau or anywhere in France, nor would he have tried to sell them, not until he got abroad somewhere. That must have been why he was now heading West – to take a ship from the Atlantic coast.’

  ‘I’ve just told you: according to Constance he wouldn’t be safe if he went anywhere West of Pau.’

  ‘He could have gone skulking down byroads – he’d done a good bit in that line already.’

  ‘If Comminges had wanted to go abroad,’ said Jacquiz, ‘he could have taken ship from the North of France, within walking distance of Montreuil. Or he could have turned left from Orange for Italy instead of right for the Pyrénées. Or he could have gone South from Narbonne and crossed the border into Spain. He did none of these things. He went to Pau. Why? Perhaps because he knew of a jeweller there whose…tact…he could rely on in assisting him to a sale; or who would break the necklace up for him into smaller and more easily saleable lots. It is now almost certain that the Comminges family lived somewhere in that part of the world – a Gascon family, perhaps. Gascons, being poor, were always taking service under the French King. Hence Comminges’ own quasi-military career. This was now over, so he was coming home to Gascony with his loot and calling on someone he knew in the area who would have the necessary skills, knowledge, associates and discretion to help him dispose of it – and that in a town full of rich potential buyers.’

  ‘Very plausible,’ said Marigold, ‘very donnish.’

  ‘What else would you suggest?’

  ‘Nothing really. I just liked the idea of some of the other places. Aigues Mortes…the name and the marshes.’

  ‘We’ll see those one day. Later on this trip, perhaps – we may well have to go back in our tracks. But first of all…Pau. All right?’

  ‘Yes. Pau, Pau, Pau
. Very much all right.’

  ‘Even with all those stuffy hotels you complained of?’

  ‘I’ve only heard from Papa. Never been there. And anyway, you can show me the view of the Pyrénées.’

  ‘Happily.’

  He came towards her, but Marigold slid off the bed and away.

  ‘Shall I start packing? she said.

  ‘Please.’ He sighed, made towards her again, and then thought better of it and returned to his chair. ‘Where’s that map? I want to look out the route… We’d better go into Rouen, for a start, and cross the Seine there.’

  ‘No,’ said Marigold, ‘I know of a better way across the Seine.’

  ‘Quicker?’

  ‘Maybe. Anyhow, better. My present to you, Jacquiz. Something I can show to you.’

  Marigold directed Jacquiz to drive back into Jumièges.

  ‘There again? It’s a dead end.’

  ‘Oh no. You remember I told you that Papa once took me to see the Abbey, years ago? He also showed me something else.’

  They drove past the Abbey on their left and the Vibrots’ café on their right.

  ‘There’s a small right turn,’ Marigold said, ‘here.’

  For about half a mile they drove down a straight and narrow road, which the Rolls occupied comfortably all to itself. At first there were depressing bungalows on either side.

  ‘Those weren’t there before,’ Marigold said. ‘I hope they stop soon.’

  They did, giving place to small, very flat fields, heavily hedged. Then the car rounded a bend.

  ‘Ah,’ Marigold said.

  On the bank of the Seine was a small office and just beyond it a stone ramp which led down to the river. The far bank of the river was 300 yards away; it rose almost sheer from the water for 300 or 400 feet, and was totally obscured, except for two white patches of cliff, by tall, swaying trees, which spread right along to where the river curved away North out of their sight, about half a mile from where they now stood. Enveloped by the trees above and on either side was a small inn which stood on a wooden quay. Surely, Jacquiz thought, the inn could be come at only by water, so closely was it contained (all but submerged) by shimmering foliage.

  At first the only sound to be heard was the rustling of the leaves on the South bank, a rustling which carried clearly, in the quiet of the place, to Marigold and Jacquiz on the North. But after a while there was a light chugging. A small open motor boat was crossing the river, bringing with it a square and shallow barge lashed alongside.

  ‘The ferry,’ said Marigold. ‘Every hour and on the hour.’

  ‘Ferry? Where to?’

  ‘South.’

  ‘There’s a way up that bank? Out of those trees?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘I’d better get a ticket then.’

  Jacquiz turned towards the office.

  ‘It’s free,’ said Marigold.

  ‘Free?’

  ‘Papa said this was the ferry the monks and scholars used, visiting or leaving the Abbey. There is a sort of…right to be carried over free. Hildebrand came this way and Fulbert of Chartres, he told me; Marbod of Rennes and Peter Damian; Abelard, perhaps, when he went South to meet Heloïse, having stayed in the Abbey for the night to debate with the learned Abbot and examine the new books from Rome. Oh, Jacquiz,’ said Marigold, ‘to ride out the same ferry as Abelard.’

  ‘The Rolls seems rather incongruous…and rather sham.’

  But the two men who worked the ferry seemed pleased enough to nurse it down the ramp and into the barge. They even refused a tip.

  ‘What’s got into them?’ said Jacquiz.

  ‘Be quiet,’ said Marigold. ‘Just for once, even you be quiet.’

  On the far side of the Seine a little road led from the landing place, round the back of the inn, and zig-zagged up the steep riverbank through a tunnel of trees.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jacquiz. ‘That was a good present.’

  She put one hand on his knee and let it rest there. They came over the crest of the slope and then, sometime later, out of the trees. The road lay straight ahead of them over a flat, yellow plain; two spires, one to left and one to right, rose out of copses in the distance.

  ‘The Plain of Neubourg,’ said Marigold. ‘Straight on for the South.’

  II

  GARDEN WITH CYPRESS

  Ivor Winstanley, tacking to and fro and up and down on the back lawn of Lancaster, from Sitwell’s Building to the Cam and back to Sitwell’s Building, striking obliquely towards the Provost’s Lodge, crossing thence to the North and so to the walled garden of Tertullian Hall, wheeling South and back to the Provost’s Lodge, setting full sail West by North for the river and there heaving to on a commodious bench – Ivor Winstanley, voyage as he might, could find no answer and no comfort in any quarter of the compass.

  The position, as he told himself for the hundredth time, was this: the Provost wanted something damaging that he could use against Jacquiz Helmut in the latter’s absence, in return for which ‘something’ he would ensure the renewal of Ivor’s Fellowship in January next; there was, however, no ‘something’ to be found in Jacquiz’s very competently ruled department; unless, that was, the Under-Collator and assistant archivist (‘Call me Len’) could be heavily enough bribed to find it, or rather, since it was not there, to cook it up.

  Now, thought Ivor Winstanley, leave aside any moral repugnance which he himself might feel at employing such methods against a colleague who had once been his close friend, there were two very formidable and immediate problems (to say nothing of the long-term difficulties, which latter, however, could wait). In the first place, the ‘something’ must be so cleverly cooked up that the Provost would accept it as genuine; for Lord Constable was too scrupulous to be unscrupulous except on what he considered to be grounds of total authenticity. And in the second place there was the oppressive matter of the Under-Collator’s reward. This he had indicated must be substantial, and he had suggested the guarantee of a Fellowship. But Ivor was in no position to guarantee Fellowships; only Lord Constable could do that, and there could be no question (vide Problem 1) of inviting His Lordship’s accomplicity.

  What it all boiled down to, then, was this: what bribe could he, Ivor, dredge up that would be sufficient inducement to Len to do such a job on the College manuscripts (a very high quality job) as would lend Lord Constable a good conscience when and if he came to scupper Jacquiz?

  Money? As to that, he could raise £2000 in cash but no more, and he himself had exigent need of over half of it. In any case, it was clear to him that Len was out for something durable – something comparable at least with the Fellowship for which he hankered. Expertise? Could Ivor provide Len with advice and assistance that would make the Under-Collator’s dissertation, when presented, of such excellence as to win through Ivor’s intellectual contribution what was not to be had through Ivor’s mere machination? Ivor doubted this. He himself was a Latinist, while Len, he understood, was some sort of social scientist. The only help Ivor could give would be in matters of style and taste, the very last commodities which would recommend Len’s thesis to the sociologists who would assess it. Affection then? Could Ivor make a friend of Len, and induce him to render for love the services for which Ivor could not pay in kind or cash? Absolutely not.

  But there must be some answer, thought Ivor, as he rose from the bench and paced the grass by the river. He was a man of long experience and by Cambridge standards at least, intricate worldly knowledge. There must be something within his skill or within his gift which would meet the price of Len’s treachery.

  But what it was he must discover very soon. It was high time he looked in on the Chamber of Manuscripts again, and it was also nearly time for lunch, which he would take that day in Hall. The Chamber of Manuscripts lay on his direct route to the Senior Common Room and his aperitif; he would drop in on Len for a few minutes first. A little diplomatic probing might establish at least the area of possible negotiation.


  ‘Well, that’s about that,’ said Marigold on the balcony of the Boulevard des Pyrénées in Pau. ‘Jewellers in plenty, antique jewellers in profusion, but none of ’em with records that go back more than eighty years. So what do we do now?’

  ‘Look at the view,’ said Jacquiz.

  Leaning on the balustrade, they both looked down on the invalids’ funicular railway, which ran all of a hundred yards, from the Boulevard-Balcon down to the gardens opposite the main line station. Beyond the station was a complacent strand of suburbs, beyond these were ridges of green which rolled in towards Pau, flecked with an occasional white foam of churches or farmhouses, like waves in the light breeze, and beyond these again the mighty breakers of the Pyrénées, a murderous grey under a green sky, for ever threatening to engulf the city but for ever keeping their distance, respectful of bourgeois Pau, of its trim Boulevard-Balcon, of the comfortable tourists who lounged along with Marigold and Jacquiz. Over all these the sun dispensed a soothing yellow benison, while somewhere a clock struck twelve, taking twice the usual time to do it.

  ‘We might start thinking about lunch,’ Marigold said.

  ‘The Curse,’ said Jacquiz.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘The Curse of the Roses of Picardie. When they came to Pau, Constance and Louis Comminges had been in possession of the necklace for some weeks. And yet apart from Louis’ marsh fever at Aigues Mortes, no misfortune…no serious misfortune…had befallen them.’

  ‘Why should it have?’