The Roses of Picardie

by Simon Raven

  ‘What’s all what?’ Marigold rose from her tomb. ‘I think I’ll peek about for that heavenly gardener.’

  ‘No. Look at this. Down at the bottom here. Carved letters in a different style – it must have been done later. “S”, “A”, “C”…SACERDOS. SACERDOS EXORAVIT ET ADJURAVIT TE. The priest has exorcized and adjured thee.“T”, “A’”, “N”…TANDEM TACETO ET MANETO. At last be silent and be still.’

  Marigold’s cheeks froze over with goose pimples.

  ‘Let’s go and buy that Michelin,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps a word with that gardener first? He may know if there’s any story attached to the grave – something that explains that inscription.’

  ‘It’s all too clear to me. If you want me to stay with you on this hunt, Jacquiz, let’s get out of here and go to Saint Bertrand. Maybe you’ll find the full story there in those family records you spoke of – at a safe distance from this thing. To think I was sitting on it for all of five minutes.’

  Marigold shivered and wrapped her arms about her shoulders. Then she ran off in the direction of the avenue of cypresses. Jacquiz followed her at a walk, looking about him for the gardener, whom he did not see.

  PART FOUR

  Landscape with Hermits

  ‘Stavros Kommingi?’ Balbo Blakeney said.

  ‘If you please?’

  ‘I have a letter from your sister’s husband.’

  Kommingi held out a small, brown, filthy hand. Balbo passed him the letter. Kommingi began to read and Balbo looked about him.

  He was standing in front of a wooden shack, set down between two rows of stone blocks and broken pillars which had once, Balbo supposed, been one side of a cloister. Parallel to it and some forty yards away, divided from it by an area of dry earth and yellow weeds, ran a wall, still intact, which doubled as the opposite or North side of the cloister and the South wall of a church (or basilica, since it had no transept) the apse of which was visible beyond some tumbledown arcading that still stood at the cloister’s North-East corner.

  To reach the cloister and Stavros Kommingi’s shack, Balbo had walked a good half-mile from a jagged gap, which had once been a gate, in the old wall of Nicopolis, through piles of collapsed masonry, over hillocks covered with spiked grasses and ankle-wrenching tendrils, past an elegant odeon (a tiny area of civility in this stricken heath of savage flora and flinty soil), and finally through an orange grove which smelt of sweet decay. He had been warned when he left Previsa that morning (and indeed also warned by a couple of peasants on the boat from Heracleion to Patras) that Nicopolis, so far from being a decorative antiquity for tourists or a well ordered archaeological site for scholars, was a neglected wilderness; but he had still not been prepared for the desolation of the tract which he had just traversed or for the villainous decay of the holy edifice at which he had now arrived. Wind, dust and stone, thought Balbo; a wasteland. ‘All we need now is the rattle of dead men’s bones.

  ‘So,’ said Stavros Kommingi, handing back the letter, ‘you will like some lunch?’

  ‘Very kind of you.’

  ‘There is not much.’

  Nor was there. Half a glass of wretched white wine, a few wizened olives, some exceedingly tough sausage.

  ‘They forget to pay my money,’ said Stavros complacently. ‘The wage for this job is quite good, as wages go in Greece, but no one can be bothered to come from Arta to pay me. When I am desperate, I shall go to them. Meanwhile’ – he indicated the cracked basin of scrawny olives – ‘I manage as I can and I enjoy my work.’

  ‘What exactly is your work?’ said Balbo.

  ‘I show the place to visitors. I try to stop it falling down any more than it has. I take care of the mosaics. We will see them. Come.’

  He led Balbo across the cloisters, then along the south wall of the basilica and through a door into the nave. Between where they stood and the massy but battered screen which hid the sanctuary were several areas marked off by rope. Pausing by the first of these, ‘Birds, plants, beasts,’ Stavros said. ‘Simply but effectively done. Very durable.’

  Balbo looked down at a smiling, waddling duck. ‘Sympathetic,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Sympathetic.’ Stavros pronounced the word as though testing it, then screwed up the small, round, black eyes in his big, round, brown face. ‘Why have you come here, good Kyrie Blakeney?’

  ‘Didn’t your brother-in-law’s letter tell you that?’

  ‘He says you are interested in some French people who are – or were – called Comminges.’

  ‘And I think it conceivable that they may be the ancestors of the Kommingi. The Kyrios Pandelios says that you are knowledgeable of the family genealogy. I wondered if you could provide a link.’

  ‘Only that is not all. You are treasure-hunting,’ said Stavros flatly.

  ‘Did Pandelios tell you that?’

  ‘No. You yourself. You have that faint look of desperation that characterizes treasure-hunters. I too once had it – but now I have become a mere dreamer. More restful and scarcely less futile.’

  ‘Will you help me?’

  ‘Why not? I have no doubt you would be generous if you were successful. It will give me something else to dream about.’

  ‘Before I hunt for treasure,’ said Balbo, ‘I must hunt for the Comminges who may have it.’

  ‘I know of no Comminges,’ said Stavros. ‘All I know is, that as my family goes back it seems to have been richer and richer the longer ago we are thinking of, and to have been established further and further to the North and to the West. Conversely, you might say, time, which has made us poorer, has drawn us to the South and to the East.’ He spread ten filthy fingernails for Balbo’s inspection, and cackled. The only word for it, thought Balbo: cackled.

  ‘How far North and how far West,’ he said carefully, ‘have your researches taken you?’

  ‘My speculations have taken me boundless journeys, good Kyrie Blakeney. But my knowledge only takes me to Kerkyra.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘Kerkyra. Corcyra. Koryphos. Corfu. Look. A stork catching a snake.’

  ‘What about Corfu?’

  ‘That is as far as I go back with certainty. I know that we Kommingi once lived on Corfu, and that we had come there from further North and further West, though I do not know from what place. I also know why we left Corfu and when.’

  ‘When? Why?’

  ‘Look: the poet Virgil. The Greek characters under the portrait say so clearly.’ Stavros stooped to examine the mosaic more closely. ‘No pretence, no explanation. A pagan poet in a Christian church. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Tell me more about the Kommingi on Corfu.’

  ‘Why,’ insisted Stavros, ‘is a pagan poet on the floor of a Christian basilica?’

  ‘Perhaps because he wrote an Eclogue which some think foretold the birth of Christ.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘What has all this to do with the Kommingi?’

  ‘It has to do with the Komiki. Another family who lived on Corfu. The Komiki had an heirloom: a beautiful manuscript volume, illuminated, of the poems of Virgil. The illuminations at the beginning and end of the Eclogue to which you refer, the Messianic Eclogue, were the finest of all. So fine were they that the Venetian Governor of Corfu coveted the volume for these alone.’

  ‘But what has this to do with the Kommingi?’

  ‘Patience, good Kyrie Blakeney. I think you have been a scholar – so Pandelios says in his letter.’

  ‘A scientist.’

  ‘Then had you not better begin by asking about my sources of information? Treasure-hunting is an unreliable livelihood at best and much more exacting than merely dreaming. You must be satisfied that the information on the strength of which you proceed is sound information. Otherwise you will only waste what little money and energy yet remain to you.’

  ‘A very fair point. Well then: what are your sources of information?’

  ‘Dust and ashes.’ Again Stavros cackled. ‘V
olumes of local history and gossip in the library of the town of Corfu. Burnt when the library caught fire some years ago. Are you going to believe my account of them?’

  ‘I have no choice.’

  ‘Oh, but you have. You can just go home and abandon the whole thing. That is what reason advises. Why should you set out on a long trail, on the strength of information provided by a half-crazed curator of antiquities – who will be telling you, from his most unstable memory, what he thinks that he might once have read in books of light-minded tittle-tattle which no longer exist? Cease to be a treasure-hunter and stay at home dreaming like me.’

  ‘I have no home to dream in.’

  ‘Nor had I. I made one here.’

  ‘I have promised to search. There is a bargain.’

  ‘Ah-ha. So Pandelios is supporting the expedition. I might have known it. And you, the English man of honour, feel that you must give him value for his ill-gotten money?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘Poor Kyrie Blakeney. Chasing one illusion in deference to another. Pursuing fairy gold in the name of honour. But one must respect you. Oh yes. That mosaic down there is the Empress Theodora,’ he said, ‘a whore who took up virtue because she found that it paid better and was a great deal more comfortable than vice. She did the right thing for the wrong reason, as your English poet says. But you, Kyrie Blakeney, are doing the wrong thing for the right reason. Therefore one must respect you. So much must one respect you that I shall try to tell you only what I believe to be strictly true. Let us sit down.’

  They sat side by side on a set of twelfth-century sedilia. A piebald dog wandered up the nave, snarled rather slackly as it passed them, and scrabbled its way through an ugly hole in the screen and into the sanctuary.

  ‘It keeps its bones there,’ said Stavros. ‘Now then: Corfu. The family of Komikos, who are, in the plural, Komiki. Unlike the Kommingi, who are Kommingi whether they are one or many.’

  ‘Because, we hope, they are descended from the Comminges, who are also plural whether they are one or many.’

  ‘That is as it may be, good Kyrie. Meanwhile we have Christopheros Komikos and his family, the Komiki, and their beautiful illuminated manuscript of Virgil. What, we ask ourselves, have any of them to do with my ancestors?’

  ‘To start with, they are very similar in name, I suppose.’

  ‘Quite right, good Kyrie. Much, though by no means all of the tale I have to tell will turn on that. Listen and ponder. Two families lived in the city of Corfu, the Komiki, at the head of whom was Christopheros Komikos, and the Kommingi, at the head of whom was one Andreas Kommingi. Both families were wealthy, owning ships which traded all over the Levant, owning gorgeous Venetian houses, almost palaces, in the city, and villas with large estates in the country. The only difference was that, whereas the Komiki had always been there, the Kommingi were quite recent arrivals. They had come from the North and West – it is impossible to be more precise, for that is all that they themselves ever gave out – they had come from the North and West, in their own ship, in the first decade of the eighteenth century. We are now speaking, you should know, of the year 1728 and for all that the Kommingi had been on the island for more than twenty years, no one knew one iota more of the history of their line and their riches than had been learned on the morning when they first put into Corfu harbour, in their ship Cathar, with a cargo of silks, perfumes, fine clocks and young blackamoors, “from the north”.’

  ‘The cargo suggests Venice.’

  ‘But they hadn’t come from there. The Venetian authorities on Corfu, glad to see wealthy newcomers but anxious to check up on the provenance of both them and their wealth, inquired of them by the next packet to Venice, and drew blank. All other inquiries in all other places – Genoa, Naples, Amalfi – drew blank. The Kommingi had just sailed in from nowhere – probably, the authorities thought, from some shadowy region where their wealth had been far from licitly acquired and which they were much too prudent to divulge. In the end, the administration decided to respect their reticence. For there was much to recommend the Kommingi: their money was copious and good; the silks and blackamoors they offered for sale were in prime condition and reasonably priced; and when they were all sold, the good ship Cathar sailed away none knew whither; and returned laden down with more merchandise of similar quality and appeal…none knew whence.

  ‘Now, while the Kommingi were in general made welcome, there were certain Corfiot merchants who regarded them with suspicion as parvenus and with envy as rivals. Foremost and fiercest to take this view were the Komiki who lost no opportunity of thwarting and blackguarding the Kommingi, but for a long time fought a losing battle. Every day the Kommingi gained in wealth and influence on the island, and by the time of which we are speaking, they had long had the ear of the Governor himself, whom they used to supply, gratis, with the most succulent blacks of either sex from successive cargoes.’

  ‘Is this the same chap that coveted the Komiki’s manuscript Virgil?’

  ‘Alas, no. Listen and learn, good Kyrie Blakeney. This is the immediate predecessor of the bibliophile, a man called Lorenzo di Burano, a man of debauched life but undoubted administrative talent, particularly keen and busy on the afforestation of the island.’

  ‘When not keen and busy on young niggers of either sex?’

  ‘Right. As time went on the Kommingi made it clear that they would very much like to be ennobled. As you know, at that time, although Venetian noblemen bore no title – only the appendage to their names of the letters NH (nobilis homo) – the Venetian Council often saw fit to ennoble eminent men in their foreign dependencies with the title of baron or count; and the Governor of Corfu now informed the Kommingi that he could arrange with the Council in Venice for the elevation of Andreas to the latter and higher dignity, on two conditions: first, that the supply of tender black flesh should be kept up and stepped up, novelty now being a necessity to a middle-aged man whose powers were waning; and secondly, to make it appear ε’υ τα′ ξει in Venice, that the Kommingi should contribute abundantly to the funds for afforestation. All this having been agreed, application was made by the Governor for a patent – a patent which was duly forthcoming and duly despatched from the Serenissima. But it was at this very promising stage, alas, that the affair began to turn sour.’

  ‘The Komiki?’

  ‘The Komiki.’ Stavros emitted a long cackle and spread his cracked and filthy palm just under Balbo’s chin. To listen to Stavros, thought Balbo, was like listening to a lecture from a Regius Professor issue from the lips of a tramp.

  ‘Oh dear me, yes,’ said Stavros. ‘Those Komiki. The rumour that the Kommingi were about to be ennobled was more than they could bear. They considered reporting the Governor to the Doge for depravity, in the hope that this would invalidate his recommendation on behalf of the pimp who had supplied him, but they abandoned the scheme as several members of their own clan were open to retaliation in kind. They considered a deputation to the Governor, to urge that the Kommingi were unworthy; they considered a bribe; they even played with the notion of assassination. But they need not have troubled themselves so sorely: for on the day before the patent was expected to reach Corfu, the Governor slumped dead as a stuck pig while sitting at stool on a choice commode and inspecting a new consignment of choice piccaninnies.

  ‘Whereupon his Deputy or Lieutenant took over until a new appointment could be made from Venice – and it was this Deputy, now Governor in substance, who so admired the Komiki’s Virgil. A deal was quickly done. The new Acting Governor would return the Kommingi patent to Venice, with the comment that it had been wrongly drawn – that by an easily understandable confusion the name “Kommingi” had been erroneously inserted in his predecessor’s application instead of the correct name, which was “Komikos”. In return for this service, the Komiki would present the Acting Governor, on the day the revised patent arrived in Corfu, with the illuminated Virgil.

  ‘All of which was done. For Christo
pheros Komikos’ county was in due course ratified in Venice and the emended patent returned to Corfu. It was now the Kommingi’s turn to be unhappy.’

  He paused as the piebald dog scrambled through the broken screen into the nave and slouched past them. A tile fell to the floor just behind it and was totally ignored both by it and by Stavros who now continued: ‘They had lost their main ally, the Kommingi, in the dead Governor. The new Acting Governor had always disapproved of them because of their influence with and easy access to the old, and he, like the Komiki, was scared lest they should raise a row about the doctored patent of nobility. Added to all this, was another factor: the new Acting Governor was a man of curious integrity. Although he had accepted the Virgil for his services, he would accept nothing else, no money, no jewels, no houses, no favours from the Komiki women. The fact was that the Virgil was the only thing he had ever yearned for so fiercely as to desert the paths of virtue, and that, in so far as procuring the altered patent was the only corrupt act he had ever committed, he was that much the more anxious to dispose, effectively but without committing a further crime, of those who might bear witness against him. There were, as the Komiki now informed him, excellent and strictly licit grounds for disposing of the Kommingi. For the Komiki were conducting investigations from which it had recently appeared that an indictment of piracy could almost certainly be laid against their enemies. Not all those skills and black ephebes had been acquired in the fair course of commerce. Let the Acting Governor now take over the investigations himself, with the ampler resources available to him, and no doubt hard proof of the Kommingi’s delinquent methods of trading would soon be discovered – whereupon the Kommingi themselves could be summarily suppressed.