by Simon Raven
‘Then let us hope the soldiers do their duty,’ said Q, ‘and there are no survivors. Meanwhile, it very much remains to be seen whether we can get through to them. After all, that was what we wanted Blakeney for.’
‘We wanted him to command or cajole them to get out. A difficult task, any attempt at which was bound to encounter strong resistance and even arouse violent hostility. The thing needed either very substantial authority over them or a very subtle insight into their idiom, both of which Blakeney might have had and we definitely had not. What we are now trying to do is something far easier: merely to inform them of something they are well equipped to understand. There must be some way of doing it.’
Theta poured more Evian. He took out a phial and shook some green powder into the glass.
‘By the by,’ said Q, ‘could we not recall Jones? We’re shorthanded as usual, and there’s no need for him to stay with Blakeney now.’
Theta patted his luxuriance of malfunctioning stomach.
‘It will be useful to know where Blakeney is for the time being, and what he is up to. Furthermore,’ he yapped in his poky little voice, ‘as you yourself remarked, Jones’ report of anything that might happen in the region of Blakeney could be extremely interesting.’
‘The first sensible person whom we meet,’ said Balbo to Syd Jones as they walked through the West Gate of the Cathedral of St Trophîme.
Outside the church the early morning had been bright and blue, with a light, dry chill of autumn; inside the building the chill became heavy and dank. It was almost as though a mist rose from the floor, crept upwards, crawled about the vaulting and down the walls and columns again, making dim the ranks of candles before the side-chapels.
Balbo and Syd Jones walked up the southern side and into the ambulatory. In front of the second chantry a black, cowled figure placed a lighted candle on a spike in the rack, crossed itself and backed away with bowed head. It started to mutter.
‘Funny,’ Balbo said; ‘it sounds like Hebrew.’
‘What do you know of Hebrew?’
‘Only what it sounds like. At Cambridge I had a Jewish friend who used to take me to a synagogue. He didn’t believe in it any more than I did, but we were interested to see and hear what went on. The rabbis sounded rather like that old woman, only in a lower register of course.’
‘Why should an old lady who crosses herself be talking Hebrew in a French Cathedral?’
The figure ceased muttering, turned East and continued before Balbo and Jones round the ambulatory. Balbo took three or four long, rapid strides until he had caught up with her, then looked down into the cowl and said: ‘Excusez-moi, madame. Je cherche le Monsignor Comminges. Où puis-je trouver?’
The figure halted and pulled back the cowl. A pretty face, thought Syd Jones as he came up with them, a girl’s face, almost a little girl’s face, the same face that had peered into the restaurant last night, the same face (only of course it couldn’t be) that had looked gravely down into the basket of roses on the beach at Positano. What was a girl like this doing, dressed in a monk’s habit, lighting candles, muttering Hebrew (or so Balbo maintained) in this dismal basilica?
‘You are sure you want the Canon?’ the girl murmured in English.
‘Oh yes indeed.’
‘I think you cannot know until you see him. And when you see him it will be too late.’
‘Too late for what, mademoiselle?’
‘Too late…for you not to have seen…what you will already have seen.’
‘Come, come,’ said Jones, S. ‘He can’t be that awful. He’s giving a public address in Tarascon before long.’
‘He may give the address but nobody will attend it, except myself and perhaps one other. Do you still wish to see Monsignor Comminges?’
Balbo looked at Syd Jones, who looked back. They both looked at the girl in the black habit and nodded.
‘Very well, gentlemen. Kindly follow me.’
Lambda of Bio/Chem was six feet and seven inches tall and as broad as a barrel. He smoked small cigars made with holders attached and laughed a great deal, even when what was being said, by himself or another, was not in the least funny.
‘We must remember,’ he said in Theta’s office, ‘that we are dealing with a new strain. More intelligent, probably, but in some way…alienated.’
‘So alienated as not to be interested in Blakeney and his fall from Grace?
‘The last God King we know of,’ said Lambda merrily, ‘died of injections we gave him in order to resuscitate his Sign and charisma when they were fading.’ He guffawed loudly for several seconds. ‘He was promptly cremated. So we cannot know what would have happened to him. Nor can we know how the new strain reacted to his loss of Grace, as we did not, in any case, know of the new strain at that time. Our discovery of the new strain is even more recent than our discovery of the class of human God Kings, which God knows is recent enough.’ For some reason he found this fact hilarious. ‘But what we do now know about the latter is that human God Kings, recognized as such by them, have existed since very ancient times, are exceedingly rare, are often not conscious, or fully conscious, of their own power and position (or of having the Sign), and are immolated and consumed…by their subjects when their charisma, for whatever reason, dies away. I should add that this rite accounts for a number of ugly and hitherto unexplained deaths and disappearances (skeletons found in woods or quite literally in cupboards), such as those of Thyrios of Phocis in 29 BC, Alexander Bishop of Tyre in AD 984, John Coneycatcher of Norwich in 1569, and, quite lately, a certain Mrs Fisher of Tring, which have puzzled the historians or the authorities right down the ages. As to the God Kings, then, we are comparatively knowledgeable. But as to the new strain of them we are still abysmally ignorant. We do not know whether the new strain recognizes and obeys the authority of such as Blakeney, whether they will be interested in his loss of Grace, or what action they will take about it. But having made this profession of ignorance, let me put on record my belief that the new strain will react to the failure of a God King much as the old strains have always done. If those in Canterbury Cathedral are made aware of what has happened to Blakeney, then they will, in my view, wish to go after him.’
Lambda laughed very heartily indeed.
‘Has Blakeney finally lost the Sign?’ he inquired.
‘We are expecting a telephone call from Jones at any moment. But it is surely safe to assume,’ said Theta, ‘on the strength of your interpretation of the figures, that he will lose it?’
‘Yes. Probably within hours.’
‘Very well. Now to the nub. When Blakeney has lost his Sign and his Grace, they will wish to track him down – if they are made aware of his condition. They will leave the Cathedral and can then be destroyed by the soldiers in cordon…if, I repeat, they can be made aware of Blakeney’s condition and so enthused to a pursuit. But can they be told, Lambda? Can they be made aware?’
‘Yes. By a direct presentation to them of Blakeney himself.’
‘That is no good. We want to bring them out, not take him in.’
‘You could take him in briefly, then remove him rapidly, hoping that they would follow.’
‘Take him in where to? They are all skulking underneath the Cathedral or the precinct. Among the antique carrion.’
‘Take him into the crypt. They’d be aware of him then.’
‘Too dangerous. If they suddenly swarmed in that low and confined crypt, no one could protect or remove him. They’d pick him clean there and then.’
‘Then you’ve only one chance. If you can get hold of some part of his clothing, better still some part of his body, nail parings, hair, a piece of skin, they will be aware of this as having belonged to one who once had the charisma and now has not. A sort of superannuated Grace or Godhead still hangs about him, you see that is why they want to absorb him into themselves – and this would almost certainly show in even a small piece of his body or accoutrement…which should also be enough to give them a s
cent and put them on the trail, especially if you get hold of other such oddments and lay a regular spoor for them.’
‘We don’t want to lay a complete trail. We just want to get them out of the tombs and the fabric, so that the soldiers can kill them.’
Lambda laughed until he shook. ‘Well, I guarantee nothin,’ he said, ‘but I still think one small piece of Blakeney or his underpants would interest them enough to get them moving. It’s certainly worth trying.’
‘It certainly is,’ said Q. ‘When Jones rings in we can order him to procure some such fragment and despatch it to us.’
‘No,’ said Theta. ‘Jones will…smell a rat, if you’ll forgive the phrase. He is fond of Blakeney. He won’t do it – not this. I know my Jones.’
‘But if we explain that they will never actually reach Blakeney, that they’ll all be killed as soon as they come out into the open…?’
‘He wouldn’t trust the soldiers to be one hundred per cent competent. Any more,’ said Theta, ‘than we do. No. We must send another agent to fetch a piece of Blakeney or his kit. It shouldn’t be difficult.’
Lambda applauded with a volcanic laugh.
Balbo and Syd Jones followed the black figure, which had now once more covered its head with the cowl, out of St Trophîme, to the left for fifty yards and to the left again down the Rue de Cloître. The figure then turned left yet once more, through an open gate in a high wall, past which Balbo and Jones followed it into a narrow courtyard. Then the figure halted, turned back towards them, and held up a hand.
‘Stay until I come again,’ the girl’s voice said.
Balbo and Sydney nodded, then turned towards each other.
‘What do you make of her?’ Balbo said.
The lines, thought Jones, S; the lines are on his forehead. I can only just see them, minutely tenuous and shallow creases, but they are there. I must let Theta know as soon as possible. That beautifully smooth and unmarked forehead…alabaster, the poets would say…the Sign of Grace…now rumpled, ruffled, coarsened and cankered by the touch – the touch of what? Time, age, fate, unworthiness? But if ever he was worthy, he is worthy now.
‘Did you hear me, Sydney?’
‘Yes, Balbo. I don’t know what to make of her. She is very young.’
The girl in black came out of a low door in the wall to their right. Her cowl had again been pushed back. Black eyes looked out of a small, slightly asymmetrical face, the chin being deeply cleft and rather crooked, its right bulb hanging lower than the left.
‘Now come,’ she said.
They followed her through the door, up a flight of stone steps and through a low arch on to a balcony that overlooked a plot of grass and faced across it towards a similar balcony, underneath which was a gallery arcaded in the early Gothic style.
‘The Cloister of Saint Trophîme,’ said Balbo.
Their guide led them along the balcony to a point where it made a right angle with another such. She opened a door which faced them, went up three or four steps, turned right up more steps, knocked on a stanchioned door, opened it without waiting to be commanded, and held it while Balbo and Jones, S, passed through.
They were in a long, high, splendid chamber, which must run parallel, Jones thought, to the balcony over the West gallery of the Cloister. Along the walls were tapestries of mythical scenes; all down the room were marble statues of slender goddesses and piping fauns; in the centre was a fountain, in the form of a little boy pissing a high arc of water on to the inner thigh of a laughing nymph. At the far end a figure in a cassock sat with its back to them, looking into a cavernous fireplace in which burned a large, blue fire.
‘The two English gentlemen, Monsignor,’ said the girl.
The figure slowly turned its head, the back and top of which seemed to be closely hooded in white, until it was at last facing its guests. It did not rise.
‘Good morning, sirs,’ it said in a somewhat muffled voice: muffled, because its face, like the rest of its head, was entirely concealed, all save two red eyes, by a mask of white linen irregularly dappled by small bright stains of red.
PART NINE
Au Bord des Tombes
‘She’ll never do it,’ said Ivor to Len in the Chamber of Manuscripts. ‘Why should Marigold Helmut take the blame for stealing those books? What’s in it, as your generation would say, for her?’
‘She likes me. Once she let me tongue her – right here in this room, on this very table. So you see, I’ve got quite a way with her when I’m trying, and I think, given a fair chance, I might persuade her. And then she likes annoying Jake – that’s one reason why she let me tongue her, so’s she could rush back home and tell – and this would certainly annoy him.’
‘But she won’t, for Christ’s sake, be prepared to go to prison for the pleasure of annoying him.’
‘She won’t have to. She can pretend it was all some kind of joke she rigged up at his expense – some kind of marital pay-off and the law will go all soppy about her deprived womanhood and all that crap, and let her down light.’
‘Only,’ Ivor said, ‘if she could produce and return the two books. If she could do that, I agree with you that a case could be got up to the effect that she’d done it simply to score off a cruel and domineering husband. But as it is, though The Wandrille Georgics can be returned, the Breviary’s gone forever. If she couldn’t give that back, she’d be bound to go down for a stiff sentence.’
‘No. She could say she’d destroyed it in a fit of rage or frustration, out of her resentment of something or other. Resentment’s considered pardonable these days, Ive, even respectable. “Justifiable resentment”, that’s the phrase they always use. So if she tells them she’s done it all because her husband is a big rich pig, and here’s one book back but she’s very sorry; she burnt the other to get her own back on capitalist society for nourishing fat cats like Jake and not loving the niggers enough, they’ll not only let her go, Ive, they’ll positively pat her on her pretty little bottom and tell her how beautifully compassionate she is.’
‘That would depend very much on the judge and jury. There’s been a swing the other way lately – thank God. But even suppose,’ said Ivor, ‘that you’re right about that, remember that Constable has told us we’re not to use anyone who’s connected with the College.’
‘She’s not actually a member. She’s hostile to all that it stands for, and Constable doesn’t care for her one little tiny bit. I’m pretty sure he’d agree that if she were found guilty it would in no way dishonour the fair name of Lancaster – which is all he’s really interested in, that and doing down Jake.’
‘It would be nice to save Jacquiz as well as ourselves.’
‘Difficult. Getting Jake sacked is very much part of the bargain. But if that’s what you want, we might try what we can do later. Meanwhile,’ said Len, ‘if we get Marigold to take the rap in the way I’ve suggested, we’ve got a lot going for us. True, we’ll have to give up the Georgics, but we keep the cash for the Breviary, and you keep your Fellowship.’
‘But you assume far too easily that she will be ready to help us. You say that you can talk her over – that she’ll be glad to fall in with your plan because she enjoys annoying Jacquiz. But is she so very malleable? Is her regard for you so very high – just on the strength of occasional conversations and one bout of cunnilingus? Might she not have been reconciled to Jacquiz during their travels? The mere fact that she consented to go with him at all indicates some extent of underlying loyalty. And above all, pace what you say about the possibility of the law’s letting her down lightly, why should she be prepared to run the still considerable risk – about fifty-fifty, I’d say – of the law’s turning up very nasty?’
‘I just think I might persuade her, Ive. I know where to scratch her, so to speak.’
‘You’ve got to find her first. God knows where they are, she and Jacquiz?’
‘There, I admit, we have a real problem. I did say, Ive, that all I had was a notion. I never guara
nteed anything.’
‘Nor you did, Lenny.’ Ivor patted Len lightly on the shoulder. ‘And come to that, it’s quite a clever notion. But Lenny, but… And then again, the more I think of it, the keener I am to turn the tables on Constable and somehow preserve Jacquiz, and I hardly think your scheme provides for that. Marigold’s confession would do nothing to mitigate Constable’s imputation of Jacquiz’ incompetence.’
‘You can’t have everything, Ive.’
‘Oh yes, you can,’ said a voice.
Ivor and Len looked up. Elvira Constable was standing in the doorway.
‘I know more about what’s going on than you might think,’ she said. ‘Although my husband does not exactly confide in me, he likes to think aloud in my presence, in rather the same way as some people think aloud to their dogs or cats…as a useful exercise in the precise formulation of the problem in hand. So I have heard all about your activities and your difficulties while metaphorically sprawled on the mat at my master’s feet. Now then. I wish you to understand that if you will listen to what I can tell you, you can find a very simple solution to the whole affair.’
Ivor rose and offered Lady Constable a chair.
‘But may one ask…why you should wish to assist us?’ he mused.
‘Because I’ve been condescended to in the most insulting way…treated like the dogs and cats I was just talking of…for far too long. I suddenly find, Mr Winstanley, that I can bear it no longer. I want a bit of my own back after all these years, and with God’s help and yours I mean to get it.’
On their way to Arles, Jacquiz and Marigold had stopped at Albi. By the time they had moved into their hotel it was still only four o’clock, exactly the same time on exactly the same day as Balbo and Jones, S, were visiting the Church of Sainte Marthe or Saint Martha in Tarascon.
‘Cathedral or Toulouse-Lautrec?’ Jacquiz said.
‘Toulouse-Lautrec. I’ve had rather enough of churches.’