by Simon Raven
‘I understand, sir,’ said Symington politely. ‘I shall call upon the Provost to obtain such an order. Good afternoon, sir.’
In the cloister at Saint Bertrand-de-Comminges the Abbé Valcabriers handed Jacquiz a brown paper parcel.
‘You should return this to the last house on the right before you come to the Porte Lyrisson,’ he said, ‘a house with a gable protruding slightly over the street. Now, if you will excuse me, I must return to my duties as guardian inside.’
As they drove downhill out of Saint Bertrand Marigold said: ‘I wonder what he does if he’s not a priest of the Cathedral.’
‘He could be at another local church. Or he could have private means. There are ordained priests who have no cures.’
‘This is the Porte Lyrisson we’re coming to,’ said Marigold, consulting the green Michelin. ‘That must be his house. What a quaint house.’
Jacquiz slowed the Rolls.
‘“Comminges aed. 1567.”’ he read. ‘Above the door there. One way and the other Monsieur L’Abbé seems to make quite a hobby out of la famille Comminges.’
Oh God, oh God, thought Ivor. Whatever is going to happen when that wretched boy appears before the Provost and asks him for an order to view the Breviary? Constable will think that I’ve gone off my head. At best he’ll think I’ve made a silly mistake and just tell Symington that no such order is necessary. Then Symington will come back here and whatever shall we show him? I’ll never be able to stall him a second time, not after he’s seen the Provost.
The telephone rang.
‘Ivor,’ said the Provost’s voice, ‘Mr C A A Symington has been to see me.’
‘Already, Provost?’
‘Son of F A A Symington of 1946, whom we both remember. A very persistent man, Ivor. Like father, like son.’
‘Quite so, Provost.’
‘Well, of course you know what he came about. He wanted an order to view one of your more valuable manuscript volumes.’
There was a long pause.
‘Are you there, Ivor?’
‘Provost.’
‘I only wanted to say that I think it’s very sensible of you to introduce this new system – making people get an order to view. We can’t have every student in the place pawing at rare manuscripts just because the idea suddenly takes his fancy. But, Ivor…’
‘Provost…?’
‘I do think you should have warned me that you were going to do this. After all, I’ve got to sign the things.’
‘An oversight, Provost. I’ve had a lot to do in this new job… as I think you know.’
‘Yes, Ivor. I know. And because this is the case I’ve refused this Symington an order to view…’
‘– Provost –’
‘– And I shall refuse any similar requests for some weeks to come. We can’t have you overworked, Ivor. You’ve got enough on your plate without mealy-mouthed boys like C A A Symington – er – messing you about.’
‘I am most grateful, Provost. I hope Symington wasn’t too disappointed.’
‘He was very obstinate. He seemed to think he had some sort of right to look at that Breviary, however busy you were. So to keep him happy I said as soon as you’d settled in properly – some time in the New Year, Ivor I was going to get you to organize an exhibition of the College documents, manuscripts and whatever, in conjunction with the Librarian, for all to gaze upon. Of course I fully realize, Ivor, that this too may create problems for you…but I think we can manage them when the time comes. Goodbye for now.’
‘Goodbye, Provost, and thank you – very much.’
‘Not at all, Ivor. A loyal man deserves all the support I can give him.’
So that was it, thought Ivor as he rang off. Clearly, Lord Constable had sniffed the air when Symington made his odd request and had got some kind of whiff in his nostrils of what was afoot. He smelt trouble brewing for Jacquiz as requested and for the time being at least he was going to play along with Ivor. One problem solved, Ivor thought. The disappearance of the Breviary cannot now become known until it suits Len and me that it should be – i.e. at the next monthly check with the Third Bursar, this to occur, as provisionally agreed with him this morning, on October 30.
Marigold stood at a window and looked down on the stable yard of their hotel at Saint Girons.
‘Nearly dark, Jacquiz. Come and take a look before it’s too late.’
As he joined her, she took hold of his hand and gently scratched the palm with the nail of her second finger.
‘How are you getting on?’ she said.
‘It’s a kind of scrapbook. The Abbé has evidently made copies of local documents ranging from official proclamations in scurrilous broadsheets, anything which has been preserved in museums or public records, and from these he has cut out all the most striking or amusing sections and stuck them into this book.’
‘And la famille Comminges figures largely?’
‘Yes.’
‘As striking…or amusing?’
‘So far…as picturesque. The entries which concern them are more prominently placed and mounted than any others. I suppose the Abbé is especially interested in them because he happens to live in their house.’
‘Perhaps he’s a descendant. Or some kind of connection.’
‘I shall certainly ask him when I return the book.’
‘What does it say?’
‘I’ve only managed the earlier entries as yet. The first of them is in monk’s Latin – rather more difficult than usual because there are a lot of bastard words made up out of Provençal roots and Latin inflections. The author seems to have been a Canon of the Cathedral at Saint Lizier, writing towards the end of the fifteenth century, and his theme is the extirpation of the Albigensian heresy, to which a lot of locals subscribed. This Canon raises a great paean in praise of the triumph of orthodoxy in the Crusade led by Simon de Montfort the Elder nearly three hundred years before he wrote, and he then goes on to gloat over the humiliation of some of the grand families who protected or sympathized with the Cathars…first of all the Counts of Toulouse, of course, then the related Trencavels, Viscounts of Carcassone, and then, sweetheart…sweetheart, it is a pleasant thing to look out into the evening with you.’
‘And with you. Go on, nice Jacquiz. After the Counts of Toulouse and the Viscounts of Carcassone…?’
‘…The next lot to catch it were – guess whom – a famous family of Albigensians, the Vidames of Comminges. They didn’t just protect or sympathize with the Cathars, they were fully paid up subscribers to the heresy.’
‘The Vidames of Comminges…Vidames, Jacquiz?’
‘A Vidame was a French nobleman who held lands from a bishop or Prince of the Church in return for defending and representing him in secular matters. Sometimes, of course, a grateful bishop would make an absolute gift of lands or estates to his Vidame, or the Vidame would blackmail the bishop into handing them over. In that case the Vidame would come to hold the lands in question direct from the King of France – or far more probably, in this part of the world, from one of the semi-sovereign dukes or counts, such as Toulouse, or from the Holy Roman Emperor, who was Otto the Fourth at the time we’re talking of. As far as I can make out, however, our Vidames of Comminges claimed to hold their territory, which was a good third of what is now known as the Comté du Comminges, as an independent or palatine barony, acknowledging no overlord at all. From time to time their cousins, the Counts of Comminges, who held the rest of the region, tried to get the Vidames to pay homage for their piece, but without any success.’
‘So these Vidames were pretty big bugs in this particular rug,’ said Marigold.
‘Until Simon de Montfort came on the anti-Albigensian Crusade. He captured the reigning Vidame, Roger-Raymond-Louis de Comminges, shoved him in a dungeon in Carcassone (which he had taken from the Trencavel Viscount) and tortured him to death while putting him to the question about his fellow Cathars. The Vidame’s lady, who seems to have been a woman of resource, somehow s
muggled her three sons clear and lay low in Saint Gaudens – but with little enough to hope for, as most of the family’s castles and estates were sacked or ravaged during de Montfort’s Crusade and the Royal Crusade which followed, their lands were declared forfeit to the King of France – who now began to gain some control down here and their titles were pronounced invalid. Total disgrace in short. However, by some freak the Royal Clerks omitted the Seigneurie of Convênes later to be known as Saint Bertrand-de-Comminges, from the Warrant of Escheat. So although the family was no longer noble, since the Royal Warrant ordained that such vile heretics must forfeit even the use of the particle “de”, they did remain Esquires of Convênes or – Saint Bertrand as it was soon after renamed, in honour of the famous bishop. Eventually Roger-Raymond-Louis’ widow brought her sons back to live there, in a farmhouse just outside the town, and from 1229 onwards the family scraped a rough and ready living as low-grade gentlemen farmers. The monk’s chronicle ends with them still in this sorry condition nearly two hundred and fifty years later, in 1470; but at least they’d done better than their cousins, the Counts of Comminges, who were bled dry by Louis IX’s Seneschals after the Royal Crusade and vanished into a pit of debt and degradation well before the end of the thirteenth century. A bit hard on them, really, because although they’d supported the Counts of Toulouse against Simon, they’d never been heretics and they’d switched to the King’s side well before the end of it all.’
‘Turncoats deserve everything they get,’ said Marigold. ‘Anyway, they’d had their lot, while the Vidame crowd had managed to hang on – after a fashion and up till 1470. Do we know what happened to them then?’
‘Yes. The story of the “Vidame crowd” – now, you remember, without any kind of title – is continued by a priest of Saint Bertrand, who was apparently writing in about 1670 in part as local historian, in part (at the later stages of his narrative) as an eyewitness. According to him, the surviving branch of the Comminges went on living virtuously and very humbly on their farm right up to 1515. Then, after nearly three hundred years of obscurity, they began to become famous again – or at least notorious.’
Jacquiz paused, kissed Marigold, felt her squeeze his hand three times in quick succession, then proceeded: ‘The point to remember is that the Comminges, although they had declared themselves converted to orthodoxy in 1229 (in order to forestall any attempt to take Convênes/Saint Bertrand from them), had in fact continued secretly as Albigensians. Now the Albigensian heresy amounts, very roughly, to saying that the material universe has been created by the Devil, and that everything in it must be eschewed by those who aspire to know the true God and to pass into the realm of the spirit. Most Albigensians therefore led pious and ascetic lives, shunning all fleshly gratification. But there were just a few who held that the Devil of the physical world was by no means inferior to the God of the spiritual (for if he were he would not have been permitted to operate) but was in fact equal to and independent of him. In this case, they said, the Devil’s creation must be equal to and independent of God’s creation – and hence arose Albigensian sub-sects of great dottiness and depravity, and many brands of neo-paganism.
‘Back to the Comminges in their farmhouse outside Saint Bertrand. Having lived blameless lives, ostensibly as orthodox Christians but in truth as pious Albigensians, for almost three centuries, they suddenly deviated to a more than usually perverse variant of the heresy, and declared publicly that the Devil was not just equal to and independent of God, but was positively victorious over Him and had in every way supplanted Him. From this it followed that Evil was now paramount, not only in the Devil’s terrestrial kingdom, but also in the spiritual kingdom formerly ruled by God; and that there was therefore an absolute religious obligation both to practise Evil and to worship it. The Comminges now emerged overnight as Satanists, Conjurers and Necromancers – and, quite incredibly, were allowed to get away with it. Partly because Saint Bertrand was at that time very remote, partly because the Church there had gone into a steep decline since the days of the Saint, partly because they terrorized their neighbours and petty tenants into covering up for them whenever outside inquiry threatened, they were able to continue and thrive in their Diabolism for two generations. By spell and subterfuge they ruled Saint Bertrand, became rich, acquired more and more property in the town itself (their previous “lordship” having mostly comprised poor land outside it); they built fine houses – like the one in which the Abbé now lives – and they became hated. Finally, when they became more hated than feared, someone sneaked on them to the Inquisition, an organization which was a match even for the Comminges. In 1597 they were purged and broken by a special Commission which came all the way from Avignon for the purpose. There is a copy of the Convening Order in the Abbé’s scrapbook.
‘But once again, a resourceful woman saved the family. A wife of a younger brother secreted, in the mountains above the Vallée du Lys, one son, one daughter and herself. In due course she returned with them to Saint Bertrand, professed innocence of the crimes of which the rest of the family had been convicted, induced both the Bishop and the Prefect to believe her (on pain of sleeping with both), and established herself, with their aid, in one of the Comminges mansions in the town. Her son and daughter grew, married, prospered – apparently by the uses of virtue. Her son’s son, however, was a bad lot, given to dicing and, what was worse, to losing, and was finally dispatched to serve the King in the North, supposedly as an Officer, in fact as a low-grade Commissary. This was the Louis Comminges who came to Montreuil and married Constance Fauvrelle.’
‘So now we know,’ said Marigold ‘why Louis had to be so careful what towns he went through on his way home. Presumably the case in 1597 made such a splash that the Comminges were still widely suspected and liable to be persecuted.’
‘Yes. Except in the old Cathar strongholds, where traditional hatred of the Inquisition would guarantee sympathy for those pursued by it – even for those who, like the Comminges, had disgraced and perverted Cathar doctrine. Thus Louis couldn’t go to Avignon, where the Inquisition was established in strength, but he could go to Arles, where any victim of the Holy Office (however vile) was seen as a martyr who had suffered in the same cause as the sons of old Provence.’
‘And from Arles he came at last to Pau, where he died. But to judge from that inscription on his gravestone, Jacquiz, the family was still given to Diabolism…Necromancy…or something in that area.’
‘The inscription was adjuring him to rest.’
‘Exactly. Implying that at one stage he must have been restless. Who raised him? Or did he raise himself? At best, it can be explained as mere rumour or illusion. But even that is hardly wholesome. Not wholesome at all, nice Jacquiz.’ She twined her fingers in his. ‘But go on. What happened next? What did poor Constance find in the way of family when she got to Saint Bertrand?’
‘I don’t know. The Priest and I have only got to Constance’s marriage.’
‘You know all that bit.’
‘I want to check his account against our other sources. And then I shall get on to…what exactly happened in Pau.’
‘And after.’
And after,’ said Jacquiz, rocking slightly as she squeezed his hand (once, twice, thrice).
‘But an interval now,’ she said. ‘Dinner.’
‘Only dinner?’
‘Only dinner…now.’
‘And then…?’
‘More reading for you. I want to know about Constance. We are, after all, related.’
I wonder, thought Len, if something has gone wrong.
He looked over at the agent who had come from his client in Bavaria. The agent nodded back and then went on reading the München Tageblatt, which the hotel had specially procured and sent up for him that morning. Len looked at the Breviary, which lay cushioned on its wash-leather pouch in the middle of a low table halfway between himself and the agent. No, he thought: the man was satisfied when he examined the merchandise; I heard him telephone
the authorization; nothing has gone wrong, it’s just that the bank in Geneva is taking its time about sending my wire.
And yet, he thought, we have both been sitting here since yesterday lunchtime – that is, for well over twenty-four hours. Surely the money should be in my account in Geneva and I should have had my telegram by now. It’s ridiculous, this situation, ridiculous and horrible: we distrust each other so much that every time one of us wants to piddle, we both have to go to the lavatory, each holding a corner of the Breviary. Thank heaven that neither of us has yet wanted to crap.
I want to get home to Cambridge, Len thought. Ivor will be worried if I’m not back after two days. I want to get back to the Chamber and talk to dear old Ivor, learn more of the things which he teaches me without knowing it. I want to have a long private look, in my own private room, at my own private edition of the Georgics, my exquisite ‘Wandrille Georgics’. I hope it will be safe where I’ve hidden it: inside the folding wooden chess set, with a label on the pouch saying ‘Correspondence Games in Progress’. I know that old slag of a landlady sniffs around when I’m away, but I don’t think she’ll stick her snout into Correspondence Chess.
And now what next? he thought. How soon can I cut the painters and sail away into the good life? Be patient, Lenny boy; there’s no hurry; you’ll have quite a happy time in Cambridge, looking at ‘The Wandrille Georgics’, learning things from old Ive. If you fuck off too fast, you’ll fuck the whole thing up – and if you do that, quite apart from anything else, you’ll be letting down old Ive. Just sit there, Lenny boy; yes, Lenny; just sit down, as Ivor would say, quiet, and let the thing go on.
But I don’t want to sit down in here much longer. Tick-tock goes the marble clock. Funny, you don’t often see a clock on the mantelpiece (sorry, Ive, mantel-shelf) of a room in a hotel. But then this isn’t just any old hotel, now is it? But oh Christ, I wish I was out of it. Tick-tock, tick-tock. For Christ’s sake, God, for God’s sake, Christ – where is my wire from Geneva? Marigold sat by the window, looking down on the stable yard as it lay in the moonlight and wondering why the universe should ever have come to exist. If one looked at it logically, she thought, there should never have been anything, not even empty space…just nothingness, like a sleep. Who or what had wakened nothingness, and how?