by Simon Raven
‘What on earth did that poor priest do?’ she said.
‘First, he asked her what made her think that the spirit would soon be able to follow her into the Cathedral. To this she answered that every time she entered the Cathedral she felt that the spirit was clinging yet closer to her, and that its capacities of adherence were steadily increasing – to the extent that when she had come in that very day she had sensed that the spirit had been separated from her by the powers of sanctity at the door only with enormous effort, and that soon those powers would be unable to control the spirit at all. This impression was borne out by the words with which the spirit habitually took leave of her as she passed onto holy ground. “I have friends that work within,” the spirit would say; “soon I too shall enter.” Or, “Only a little while now, Constance Comminges, only a little while and your faithful husband will follow you even here.” ’
‘Certainly,’ said Marigold, ‘there is something not at all wholesome about the church. I had a very odd feeling when I went in.’
‘Constance told the priest that the spirit seemed to be telling her that certain diabolical forces were conspiring, as it were, with the weaker agents of holiness in the Cathedral to subvert Godhead and prepare the ground for the penetration of evil.’
‘All I know is that yesterday I was mocked…scorned and mocked…by something malignant and obstructive. Faces loomed and leered and mouthed at me, and what they were saying was that I should never find what I came for, but that if by some miraculous chance I did…well, I’d better watch out.’
‘Watch out for what?’
‘The consequences of finding out what I wasn’t meant to know.’
Jacquiz slowed the car.
‘We’d better turn back,’ he said. ‘Forget Saint Bertrand, forget the whole thing.’
‘We must return the Abbé’s book.’
‘All right. And then go straight back to England.’
‘What a waste of a Sabbatical year. No,’ said Marigold. ‘I’ve already told you: whatever I may have said at the beginning, now I mean to see the thing through. It’s totally riveting.’
‘I am starting to think that it’s also extremely perilous.’
‘So is anything exciting. So now go on. Constance told the priest that the spirit of Louis was in continual attendance on her and was soon, as she thought, going to gain access to the Cathedral. What next?’
Jacquiz drove doubtfully on. The road took a long curve towards the East. To the left of them spread a flat, yellow plain, to their right the white knights of the Pyrénées still paraded slowly towards them, and straight ahead, now, was a tiny, distant ridge, like a cardboard cutout, on which stood a two-dimensional town of tissue and at its centre a Cathedral of silver foil. Saint Bertrand-de-Comminges.
‘What next? said Marigold.
‘The priest asked her about the spirit’s threat that the actual corpse of Louis would rise from its grave at Pau and come to Comminges. How often was the threat made? What form did it take? She replied that the threat was by now being made daily and that it was totally clear and straightforward, begging no questions whatever. How, one might well wish to know, was Louis’ body to get out of its coffin and dig its way up past the stone? This interesting question had been anticipated by Louis’ spirit, which had early informed Constance that it could claim the service and loyalty of certain living associates, who would, at his spirit’s command, disinter his body and help it on its way to Saint Bertrand. Not that it would need much help once it was clear of the grave: for as soon as the corpse had been disinterred, the spirit would rejoin and reanimate it. You thus get the extremely powerful and disagreeable concept, to be found also, I believe, in voodoo doctrine, of a corpse that is propelled and controlled by its own returned soul.’
‘Good grief,’ said Marigold. ‘How soon was this going to happen?’
The town on the ridge ahead, from being a mere silhouette of coloured paper, had now acquired a third dimension and with it rather more reality. But it was still only a toy town on its little citadel, no more to be taken seriously than a child’s castle with lead soldiers on its ramparts.
‘It was going to happen soon,’ said Jacquiz, ‘but the spirit refused to be precise. Constance told the priest she thought the spirit was doing this to increase the terror: after all, she pointed out, it’s bad enough expecting the arrival of a living corpse at a definite and stated hour, but only to know that it may, or may not, turn up at any time at all over the next fortnight is more than flesh and blood can bear. The priest took a different view: he said that the paramount reason for the spirit’s imprecision was that, even given the Comminges family’s talent for necromancy, this kind of resurrection was very difficult to arrange and might prove impossible. So the spirit was in no position to make an exact engagement on behalf of the cadaver.’
‘Which view do you take?’ asked Marigold.
‘Neither. I try to take the rational, the scientific view. Obviously the whole thing was somehow being faked by Louis’ father, in order to frighten her into giving up the wealth to which Louis had referred in his letter. For if the spirit of dead Louis had been capable of reaching Constance, it would also have been able to communicate with his father, in which case it could have gone straight to him and told him exactly what to look for and also (spirits being traditionally omniscient in such matters) where no need for all this haunting and threatening of Constance. But as it was, I tell myself, of course there was no ghost nor spirit, only a clever and greedy old man playing conjuring tricks; a lot of ventriloquism, I expect, with hypnotic suggestion thrown in, which would account for how they stopped her walking more than two hundred and fifty paces. Of course the old man would have had to play it very carefully: he did not know what he was looking for, whereas the spirit he was purporting to be did know, which meant that he would have to choose his words very carefully to disguise his ignorance. But I dare say he was shrewd enough to manage that; and once he got a firm grip on Constance, which he clearly had by the time she approached the priest, she wouldn’t have been asking very many logical questions. So there we are: reason says the whole thing was a try-on and that the threat of Louis’ bodily resurrection was the big-time bluff by which Poppa Comminges helped to compel Constance, who was badly scared already, finally to chuck her cards in.’
‘Did the priest ever show any signs of taking a rational line?’
‘Most definitely not. The nearest he came to that was to inform Constance, as I told you just now, that resurrection was heap big magic and hard to encompass. In principle he was with her, ghosts, rising corpses and all, every inch of the way. If priests took a rational line, sweetheart, they’d soon be out of a job.’
‘But you, Jacquiz…you are sure of your rational line?’
‘I’m just a dreary don, as you’ve so often reminded me. We tend to be rational.’
‘You seemed to be…rather nervous…just now. You said this whole business was beginning to seem perilous.’
‘I’m not denying that it’s becoming very peculiar. By “perilous” I only meant that I thought…it might badly upset you. Just because the story is so horrid.’
‘I’m not upset by horrid stories, Jacquiz. What might have upset me badly, if anything was going to, was what…what I saw and felt…when I went into the Cathedral yesterday. Would you like to give me your rational line about that?’
Silence. The car slunk on between tall hedges.
‘I suppose you’re going to say I was hysterical,’ Marigold said.
‘Imaginative.’
But two large drops of sweat were standing on Jacquiz’ forehead, just under the line of his hair.
‘You’re only trying to reassure me,’ Marigold said. ‘You do think there’s something…abnormal…here.’
‘Unusual…perverted, yes.’
‘No. Abnormal…unnatural…supernatural, Jacquiz.’
‘There are elements…which are very difficult to account for. So far as we have come, one can
make a rational explanation. But for what is about to happen…for all that I’m going to tell you now…it is not at all easy to account in everyday terms.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, the next thing Constance told the priest was that the spirit said that when his corpse did arrive from Pau, then either Constance would have to hand over her “treasure”, or, if she refused…’
‘Go on.’
‘…She would be compelled by the corpse to submit to its marital…attentions.’
‘Jesus.’
‘In fact, the spirit said, once the cadaver had made the effort necessary to rise and come to Saint Bertrand, even if Constance handed over her “treasure” to the family straight away, the cadaver might feel that after its prodigious journey it deserved to embrace its lawful spouse in love. And once it had done that, of course, and relived earthly delights, it might not be at all willing to return to the place whence it came.’
‘Jesus,’ said Marigold again.
‘All of that,’ said Jacquiz, ‘rather supports my rational explanation. Obviously, I could say, old Comminges was putting on heavy pressure in order to scare Constance into handing over the loot as soon as possible.’
‘That certainly fits.’
‘But what makes me uneasy is the memory of that picture by Van Hoek which we saw in the castle at Montreuil. The circumstances in which Constance now found herself are beginning to resemble, quite closely, those dreadful scenes which Van Hoek painted using Jumièges as background. You remember: the bride and…and whatever it was she had married…moving through those cloisters attended by cowled monks. The similarity between the fate of the bride in the painting and the enormity with which Constance was now being threatened is too near for comfort. It is as though Van Hoek, in his death throes, had had some satanic vision of Constance’s future. And the quality of that vision somehow seems to…to guarantee…the reality of what Constance was now in fear of, until one feels that the threat against her cannot merely have been a random piece of nastiness faked up by a rapacious old mountebank, but that it must have been genuine, must have come from where she thought it came and must, actually and faithfully, have promised what she thought it promised.’
‘The resemblance could be coincidence. That there is a resemblance does not mean that there has to be a connection. Van Hoek’s maniacal picture does not rule out your rational explanation.’
‘No; but it shakes one’s confidence. And other things,’ said Jacquiz, ‘come very near to destroying it.’
‘What other things?’
Jacquiz slowed the car and parked by the side of the road. The town and the Cathedral were close above them now, occupying all the narrow segment of vision defined by the tall hedges.
‘I’ll read you the priest’s account of what followed,’ he said, leaning over and lifting the Abbé’s scrapbook from the back seat. ‘Of course, it may well be just a prime instance of superstition, panic, misapprehension or sheer gullibility. But somehow, as I think you’ll agree, it rings true.’
Len passed Ivor the key of the cash box. Ivor opened it and took out the key of the safe. He opened the safe and with Len’s assistance, since he was new to the job, he produced several items, which were duly checked off his list by the Third Bursar. He then produced the two oilskin bags.
‘The St Gilles Breviary,’ he said, looking at the labels, ‘and The Wandrille Georgics.’
‘Right,’ said the Third Bursar, and ticked them off on his list – hardly bothering to look at the bags, he’d done it so often.
‘But I think,’ Ivor then said, ‘I think, as it’s the first inspection to take place during my tenure, that we’ll open up those oil bags and check the contents.’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Len, ‘we only do that every six months, on account of it being bad for the books to be taken in or out, old and fragile as they are, and passed round and pawed at and in general exposed to the air.’
And the Third Bursar said, ‘Yes, that’s right, Ivor, every six months, in March and August. I saw them in August with Jacquiz and that’s good enough.’
But Ivor said, ‘No, I’m new in this, and I want to look at what I’m responsible for. However delicate those books are, they ought to be taken out of those bags and checked more often, being as how they’re worth a stack of bread – sorry, I mean, considering how valuable they are – especially if no one has been through that safe for nearly ten weeks.’
Real busybody bippering on Ivor’s part, the Bursar thought, and was duly impressed at such conscientious behaviour; and then Ivor opened up the bags, and took out two floppy leatherbound volumes, superficially similar to the fourteenth-century originals, and opened one of them.
‘If this is The Wandrille Georgics,’ Ivor said sweatily, ‘then I’m a wet fart. I’m sorry: I mean, of course’ – handing the volume to the Bursar – ‘something seems to have gone wrong.’
‘Woow-eee,’ the Third Bursar said.
On the morning of the day of the monthly check of the Manuscripts of Lancaster College, Ivor had been remorseful, fascinated and extremely nervous.
First, Ivor was remorseful because of what he was helping to do to the absent Jacquiz. Jacquiz was a pig and a coward, a glider away who had once glided away in the most vilely treacherous manner at a crisis in the College affairs which closely concerned himself and Ivor; but for all that, Ivor thought, he is a scholar and a man of taste, and he does not deserve this.
Secondly, Ivor was fascinated and curious because he loved a plot and he dearly wanted to see whether this one would work. As far as he could make out, the mechanics of the thing were pretty sound (provided he could play his own part plausibly) up to the time when the substitution of the fakes would be discovered. What was in doubt was whether or not Lord Constable would react as Len had predicted, whether he would exculpate Ivor himself, that was to say, then accuse Len but accept Len’s plea that Jacquiz must be at least equally suspect, decide to keep the whole business quiet, ‘unload Len on a grotty polytechnic’ (in Len’s words), and demand Jacquiz Helmut’s resignation. Constable was, as Ivor knew, in general very much on Ivor’s side in this intrigue and had already been of material assistance; but whether Constable would condone the actual method which Ivor had adopted (and in particular whether he would tolerate the very considerable element of profit which, as Constable would surely realize, must have accrued either to Len or himself or to both of them) was another matter. Lord Constable was an old-fashioned socialist from way back, and he did not approve of anyone’s making a profit, even though such a person might at the same time be furthering his (Constable’s) designs.
So what with, first, remorse and, second, curiosity, Ivor was, thirdly, nervous. There was another reason too for this. On the success or failure of this day’s work depended the renewal of his Fellowship. Remorse was one thing and curiosity another, but a man’s livelihood (not to say his entire raison d’être) was something else again. Food, drink, friends, hearth, servants, occupation and (more or less) honour, all of these, in descending order of importance, were guaranteed by his Fellowship. Without its renewal he would be nothing. It was enough to make any man nervous, and it had made Ivor so twitchy that he had all but made a hash of his lines. Luckily the Bursar, who had been half asleep most of the morning, did not appear to have noticed.
But now he was really sitting up.
‘Wooow-eee,’ he said again: ‘that’s torn it. What had we better do?’
‘We must finish the routine check, gentlemen,’ said Len respectfully but authoritatively, ‘in order to see if anything else is missing; and then we must go to the Provost.’
And then we’ll see, thought Ivor: I wonder if, once my Fellowship has been safely renewed in January, there is anything I could do to help Jacquiz; it would be so very agreeable to have my cake and eat it, particularly at the expense of Lord Constable.
‘“Having heard the wench through”,’ Jacquiz translated to Marigold from the Abbé Valcabriers’ scrapboo
k, ‘“I bethought me what I should now do, both as a priest of God and a servant of man. And first I did make this Mistress Comminges walk two hundred and fifty paces from her own door towards the wall of the town, that I might see with mine eyes whether she was truly hindered in her going or was but making pretence of it, the which I might tell from the manner of her walking and her arrest, and from what at that time should be revealed in her face and eyes.
‘“Surely enough, when she had walked two hundred and forty paces the flame of hope, which had burned strong till then as she walked with a holy priest, flickered and faded in the windows of her soul; and her breath came forth in sharp gusts; her limbs dragged; she did utterly halt; and it was as though, she said, her legs and whole body had come up against an unseen wall of stone. ‘I can march no more, good father,’ cried she; and when I, being a man of ample arm and girth, did urge her body from behind with all my might, I could not budge her but one inch nor the smallest part thereof. And so it seemeth to me that in this thing the woman spake truth, and wherefore not in else?
‘“For certain true it was that she was mightily plagued by a spirit, who vaunted itself to be her husband, at many times, and most wickedly of all when she would fain enter our sacred Cathedral of Mary of Comminges: for I myself heard the voice of the spirit – ”’
‘– Poppa Comminges’ ventriloquism?’ Marigold interrupted.
‘One would like to think so. There is a reference to his hanging about the place later on. “For I myself heard the voice of the spirit”,’ Jacquiz continued, ‘“how it did rail at her that soon it would come with her into the holy place that should be holy then no more. And I went with her, a score of times, around the screen that doth hedge the chancel, and did hear the muttering and chuckling (but not the words) of divers voices, which issued as from the mouths of the corbel-heads that beautify the screen but must surely have no place in God’s church, so sly and odious were their cacklings to mine ear.