by Simon Raven
‘“And so I determined in my heart that this woman spake truth; and first I went to Master Comminges, her father-in-law, and asked him to his teeth what he knew of such hauntings and estoppals, for I had seen that he was often in attendance upon this woman (not by her wish, as she told me, though he came not into the church.” ’
‘But could presumably throw “mutterings” and “chucklings” from outside it,’ said Marigold.
‘From the South door to the screen? Perhaps. At least to the South side of the screen…or to the nest end of the screen from the West door,’ Jacquiz said. ‘But the priest implies that the noises came from all round it.’ He turned his eyes down to the book ‘“And he returned word”,’ Jacquiz read on, ‘“that he knew nothing of such foolishness; that his daughter-in-law was free to walk whither she would; and that if she feared ghosts, let her seek sanctuary in holy church, as for many hours each day she did. Then I asked him why he came not into holy church himself, and gave him my cross to kiss, and he shrank from me and sucked in his lips between his jaws, and said that he would come and go whither and whence and when and how he listed, and that our Cathedral of Saint Mary was little to his liking, for that it was sumptuous with ornament and vanity and was an affront to the True God and King.” ’
‘By which he, if he was a Comminges off the old block, presumably meant the Devil?’
‘“All of which matters standing thus”,’ Jacquiz translated, ‘“I did resolve in my soul on these acts: I must cleanse the Cathedral, cleanse the woman, and chase the spirit back to Hell which brewed it; and I must command the body to stay fast in its grave at Pau. And yet my heart misgave me lest my lord the Bishop should hear of this and be wrath; for he was a prelate of high blood and haughty mien, who scorned to believe that the Devil and his works could dare walk forth to defy him in the domains of his spiritual governance. Therefore, I counselled with myself to say nothing of this to my lord the Bishop, lest he should forbid me quite, but to act as my Lord Jesus would exige of me and do his work by stealth.
‘“Therefore did I keep fasts and watches by night within the church; and where and whenever the evil voices muttered or trilled, I did sprinkle fair holy water and command the demons to be gone in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, and of our sacred Mary Of Comminges. As the water made wet the wood of the screen, there was a loathely noise of hissing and slithering, as of vipers; and when I had done this on many nights, there was no more muttering or screeching from Saint Mary’s chancel screen.” ’
‘Round One to Mother Church,’ said Marigold.
‘On points,’ said Jacquiz. ‘“Next did I confront the spirit which assailed the woman”,’ he read, ‘“bidding it begone to its Master and cleansing the woman herself with a powder made of a precious relic of Saint Bertrand his body (to wit the tip of his great toe) which she swallowed in a gruel of grass grown in our cloister. And the woman said that the spirit’s voice and railing had ceased, and I heard them no more with mine own ears, and I thanked Our Blessed Lord that he had given me the strength so to prevail.
‘“Then did I tell my lord the Bishop (falsely, for which God forgive me, but I was about God’s business) that I must hie me to the town of Pau where mine Aunt that had reared me from an orphan babe lay dying. And my lord gave me leave, for though he was a proud man in spiritual dominion he yet was of tender kind in the things of this world, and he made me loan of his own ass. To Pau then I came, and to the grave of this Louis Comminges that had been the woman’s husband, and there I did sanctify the grave, that no evil being of body or spirit might defile or open it, and I besought the spirit and the body of this Louis, that the body should lie quiet till the Last Day and the spirit should stay in Hell and pray for God’s mercy at the time of Judgment.
‘“And I returned to Saint Bertrand, and told the woman all I had done, and she said that no sounds or voices had besieged her and she was still at peace. And I told all that had done to Master Comminges, the father of Louis; and he professed gladness that his daughter was no longer troubled, and urged her to go into the Cathedral yet more than even before, that her peace might be abiding: for the place, he said, was passing grateful to her, albeit that vanities of which he spake before did rankle much with him. As for my prayers and exorcisms at the tomb of his son, here too he declared himself well pleased; and he said it was his wish that the True God and King might in all things conquer.” ’
‘By which, being him, he meant the Devil,’ said Marigold for the second time. ‘But Mother Church has simply walked right over Lucifer in every round so far.’
‘Mother Church has not walked right over anybody,’ said Jacquiz. ‘As I said just now, so far she has won – or seemed to win – on points. There are several, more rounds still to run.’
‘Lucifer makes a comeback?’
‘Listen and learn,’ Jacquiz said grimly, and bent his head again to the Abbé Valcabriers’ scrapbook.
‘So what it amounts to is this,’ Lord Constable said: ‘some time between the previous count, which was in August, and the count this morning, both The Wandrille Georgics and The St Gilles Breviary have been taken from their respective coverings and two worthless paper volumes placed there instead.’
‘That’s about it, Provost,’ Ivor said.
‘No question of it,’ the Third Bursar said.
‘Spot on,’ said Len.
Provost Constable went to the window of his study and gazed down on the Great Lawn of Lancaster.
‘In August,’ he said with his back to them, ‘the count was conducted by you, Third Bursar’ – he jabbed a finger back at this functionary without turning to aim – ‘and by you, Under-Collator’ – a similar blind but accurate jab of the finger – ‘and by the Collator of the Manuscripts of Lancaster College, that is to say Doctor Jacquiz Helmut?’
‘That’s about it, Provost.’ Ivor said.
‘No question of it,’ the Third Bursar said.
‘Spot on,’ said Len.
‘And on that occasion the books were taken from their coverings and absolutely recognized as the genuine volumes?’
‘That’s about – ‘Ivor began, but the Provost turned from the window and held up a hand.
‘Now then,’ Lord Constable said: ‘who had access?’
‘I did,’ said Len, ‘all the time. Ive here didn’t, because I kept all the keys. But Jake did, because he had his own set – what he’s taken away with him.’
‘Very succinctly summed,’ the Provost said. ‘Well, Third Bursar, you have played your part, I think. It is now a matter for myself and the incumbents of the Chamber of Manuscripts… present and past. A very good morning, Third Bursar.’
‘A very good morning, Provost,’ said the Third Bursar, and reluctantly retired.
‘Pray be seated, gentlemen,’ said the Provost to Ivor and Len, gesturing at two low stools which were placed in front of his desk. With some difficulty Ivor and Len sat down on the stools, while Lord Constable seated himself behind the desk.
‘I am disappointed in you, Ivor,’ Lord Constable said.‘Officers are meant to do the work assigned to them themselves, not to bribe semi-menial underlings to do it for them.’
‘Who are you calling a semi-menial underling?’ said Len.
‘Thank you, Under-Collator. I suspected but was not sure that you and Mr Winstanley were in collusion. By rising so swiftly to so crude a bait, you have confirmed my suspicions. So now we know exactly where we stand.’
‘Maybe you know, Prov,’ said Len, ‘but I’ll be buggered if I do. What are you going to do about it all? And anyhow, how did you suspect that Ive and me was in collusion?’
‘From the very obvious glances and grimaces which you have been exchanging ever since you came into this room. A truly amateur performance.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Len, miffed. ‘But what are you going to do?’
‘Make the best of a bad job, Under-Collator. As Mr Winstanley will doubtless have told you, I consider that the p
resent state of Doctor Helmut’s private life and private fortune renders him…of dubious value…as a Fellow and officer of the College. I should like him…gracefully…to retire, and I asked Mr Winstanley to find and show me good reason why he should be required so to do.’
‘Well, now you’ve got it. Things were so badly organized in the Chamber, you can say, that two of the star items got snatched.’
‘Very good, Under-Collator. But who snatched them? If Doctor Helmut retires under the present circumstances, he will be suspected, not merely of incompetence, but possibly of crime. I cannot allow any such suspicion to attach to him. That would not be just. I may – I do – wish him away from this College. But I shall not allow him to be savagely and unfairly defamed. Doctor Helmut will be…pressed to resign…on grounds of inefficiency; but guilt for the felony must be definitely fixed elsewhere, for all to see.’
‘You mean on us, Prov,’ said Len good-naturedly, ‘on me and Ive?’
‘No, Under-Collator. Not on you…and Ive. That would be to stain the honour of the College. That such a theft of College treasure should have been perpetrated by established members and beneficiaries of the College would be very shameful. The unspeakable ingratitude of it… No. The blame must be fixed elsewhere.’
‘But to fix it on the innocent would be unjust by your tenets,’ Ivor Winstanley said.
‘Precisely, Ivor. Perhaps you now understand what a thoroughly nasty muddle you have made? Whom can I find who can justly be compelled to bear the burden of this guilt without at the same time impugning the honour of the College? Nobody, I think. The next best thing is to find someone who will willingly take the blame for this crime, though it be not his by right, either because he wishes to be of service or because he is offered a suitable reward. It must, remember, be someone who has nothing to do with the College, and yet somebody to whom the guilt for the theft can plausibly be imputed.’
‘Very tricky job to find such a person, Provost.’
‘Yes, indeed, Ivor. And to whom, in all the circumstances can I more fairly depute the job of finding him…than to you? You have bungled very badly, Ivor, but you need not give up all hope of re-election in January. Provided you find a suitable person or persons who will accept blame and punishment for this robbery, thus enabling the College to preserve its dignity and honour, if not its property, then you shall be duly re-elected. Meanwhile I shall inform the College Council in confidence of the larceny that has occurred, and say that for the moment the inquiries will be only of a private nature. And one thing more.’
‘Provost?’
‘If, as I suspect, one or both of the two missing books have been disposed of for money, then I would suggest that this money might fitly be used to persuade and reward our scapegoat.’
Len and Ivor exchanged dismal glances.
‘Never you worry, Ive,’ said Len. ‘We’ll find a way.’
‘I hope so, indeed I do,’ said Provost Constable pleasantly: ‘I shall be very interested to know what it turns out to be.’
‘“For a sennight after I had ridden back on my lord’s ass from Pau”,’ Jacquiz translated to Marigold as they sat below Saint Bertrand in the Rolls, ‘“the woman Constance was tranquil and the chapels of the Cathedral were still. Then, one morning, the woman was not at her accustomed place in the Cathedral, at prayer in the Virgin’s Chapel as was her wont. At first I thought nothing of this, thinking she had business else to attend to; but seeing Master Comminges, as he loitered in the square by the West door, I did question him of his daughter-in-law, to which he returned answer that she had come early to the Cathedral, with the first light of the day, and that he had not seen her since she went through the portal.
‘“Then did I hasten back into the Cathedral, thinking it exceeding strange that the woman should have been that many an hour inside without I myself had clapped eyes on her. And still seeing her not, I did make question of one and another, till at last an old sacristan said that he had seen her kneeling in the Chapel of the Virgin and kneeling by her side a figure, a man, as he thought, dressed and hooded all in white, as it were a monk, and thinking it no ill that she should be praying with a holy man he had passed by, but that when he passed again they were no longer there. Then went I to the Chapel of the Virgin and found that which most I feared, that the door to the Vault of the Family Comminges, which is in the wall of that Chapel and hard by the tomb of Hugues de Châtillon – that this door was loosed and swung open at my touch.
‘“And beneath, at the bottom of the stairs, among the sepulchres, was this Constance lying on a stone slab as for dead; but yet did she live, for she turned her head and smiled at me, and babbled that her husband had lain there with her not an hour past and she had had great delight of him, and he was now gone to get her treasure (for she had told him, in her pleasure, where it was hid) and would come soon again to her that they might take their joy of love.” ’
‘It must have been Poppa Comminges,’ said Marigold. ‘If he got himself up in a shroud, and if it was pretty dark, as it was yesterday in that Chapel, and if she was terrified, as she must have been at first, and if he remembered how his son spoke and acted, he could have passed himself off as Louis – as indeed vocally we think he already had.’
‘A lot of “ifs” and “ases”,’ Jacquiz said.
‘It can’t have been Louis, because Louis, quite apart from being dead, was a rotten lover, you remember, on Constance’s earlier showing, and now here she was “having great delight of him”. It must have been Poppa, who was perhaps more talented in that department, who’d maybe learned a thing or two from his young bride, and was now giving Constance the benefit.’
‘The priest thought something of the kind – to begin with. “At first I chided her, that this could not be, and that being a widow and grown riggish she had taken some peasant or prentice boy into the tomb to do her wanton business, and being now all thing disordered and ruttish, her juices all awash, she did boast, in a mood of knavery, that it was her husband had come for her. ‘Indeed it was he,’ she crieth, ‘for should I not know the body and flesh of my own, and wondrous it was that though I had no happiness of him before his very touch now maketh me to tremble as I would swoon.’ ‘Come, wench,’ said I, ‘he has been these many weeks agone in his winding sheet, and can be no object of desire.’ And then she did look at me, with a sly and crooked pravity, and smiled at me, and bared her teeth, and showed her tongue betwixt; and then did I know what foul and most unnatural lust had come upon her and what monstrous congress she had had in that place and looked to have again ere long. Blindly I ran forth from the Vault, and forth from the Cathedral of Our blessed Mary, and thence to my lodging, where I tell asweating and apraying and could not venture forth until the hour of the last office.” ’
Jacquiz looked up from the book. ‘You see what he’s saying,’ he said.
‘Yes. He was saying that Constance was a necrophiliac and that her husband had had to die to arouse her. But I say,’ said Marigold, ‘that she was simply mistaken about identities. She thought she was coupling with her husband because of certain superficial similarities, and though she’d dreaded the idea previously, when it came to the point she found it very exciting; but the person with whom she in fact coupled was her father-in-law obscured by a shroud.’
‘What do you say she was aroused by? Her father-in-law’s amorous skills? Or the notion of doing it with…with a revenant?’
‘Both, I dare say…so long as we are absolutely clear that the latter was only a notion or delusion. And another thing. She was obviously so crazily randy with what had happened and what was going to happen, with being aroused for the first time ever, that she didn’t know what she was saying. I bet she went back on it later.’
‘She didn’t get the chance, sweetheart… “…When I came out from my lodging the bell was ringing for Compline” – that is, “the last office” referred to above – “and I made haste towards the Cathedral. As I came into the place before it, a group of
people came forth from the West door, of whom some two or three were supporting a body, the body of the woman, Constance Comminges. Not half an hour agone, they said, there had been a great squealing from the Vault of the Family Comminges, and those who had gone thither had found the woman, her legs splayed and her robe lifted ready to make the beast with two backs, and her throat rent from jaw to jaw. There was none other there among the sepulchres whom they might charge with this foul murder, and so now they were taking the corse to her father-in-law’s house, and would then make report to the Praefect. And at that minute Master Comminges himself, roused by the crowd and the commotion, came forth from his house to receive (though he knew it not at first) his daughter’s corse.” ’
‘He knew it all right,’ said Marigold. ‘He’d done her in, and then hidden in one of the family tombs in the Vault. In those days they often didn’t seal the slabs down, you know. So he’d hidden with the remains of one of his ancestors, slipped out when they’d taken her up the stairs, and whizzed round and home by some side door (through the cloister perhaps) while they were carrying her out of the main exit.’
‘Why should he have wanted to kill her?’
‘She told him where the loot was during their first bout – remember? He’d now got the necklace safe. Henceforth Constance could only be an extra mouth to feed or an extra mouth to blabber about the Rubies and in general a big embarrassment. Perhaps his young wife knew that he’d rogered her, and though allowing it once in order to get the treasure – had come down very firmly against second helpings. Perhaps she herself killed Constance in jealousy –’
‘– But Constance was all arranged for more coupling when she was killed –’
‘– Perhaps she health the wife’s footsteps and was so over-excited she mistook them for…her lover’s. Perhaps it was indeed her lover – Poppa Comminges, that is who’d been persuaded by his young wife that he must kill her while she was still down there waiting. Perhaps the young wife came too to make sure that Poppa did a good job. Perhaps he came alone and had her again before he cut her throat.’