by Simon Raven
‘The acolyte at Saint Bertrand.’
‘Who? Where?’
‘The gardener at Pau. We must follow him.’
Marigold hurried after the boy as he slipped out of the Museum; Jacquiz reluctantly started after Marigold. The white stockings turned left down the street, left down another, and left down another. Finally they turned left yet once more, into a portico.
‘The Arlaten Museum,’ said Marigold, glancing at Michelin. ‘All the folklore. What a lot of culture for one morning.’
Inside the portico was a ticket office and inside the ticket office was a goitrous old man who said, disagreeably, that yes, a boy had indeed just come in and gone up the stairs, and, even more disagreeably, that no, he did not know of a local house belonging to anyone called Comminges, and, more or less civilly at last, that entrance was three francs a head for adults, which Jacquiz promptly paid.
‘Did the boy pay?’ asked Marigold, on impulse.
‘No,’ said the old man; and then, after a pause, ‘He had a student’s card.’
Jacquiz and Marigold went up the stairs and walked through several rooms which contained wax tableaux of Provençal characters engaged in elementary activities. There was no sign of the boy in white stockings.
‘It says in the Michelin that this place was started by a poet called Frédéric Mistral,’ Marigold reported.
‘He was potty. He wrote in the local lingo.’
‘Not so potty but what he won a Nobel Prize. In 1896. That’s how he got the money to set this up.’
‘What are we doing here, Marigold?’
‘Following the boy to see what turns up.’
‘That’s mad.’
‘No. Frightening, rather. You see, it’s the boy you saw yesterday in the Lautrec gallery in Albi.’
‘How do you know? You didn’t see him.’
‘You said he was like the officer in the painting. So is this one. Younger, but almost identical. Anyway, I know. He’s been with us for some time, you see.’
‘No, I don’t see… A very pretty boy?’
‘Yes,’ said Marigold. ‘Frighteningly pretty. I think this must be Monsieur Mistral.’
On the wall was a huge canvas of the bullring in the Roman Arena. A self-important man with a pointed beard and an operatic hat was arriving to take his seat, while everyone else stood up and clapped him.
‘The French paying homage to letters,’ said Jacquiz. ‘I expect he commissioned it himself, in order to hang it here. Typical Frog conceit. Like Courbet painting that picture of local bigwigs bowing and scraping to Courbet.’
‘Frederic Mistral all right,’ Marigold said, examining the black and white numbered diagram which hung beneath. ‘Number One in the key. Jeee-sus, what a creep. I’m glad to say there’s one man looking very sour and not clapping…and he is… Number Nine… Almighty God, Jacquiz, sweet, sweet heart, M’sieur Joseph Comminges.’
No, said the goitrous elder in the ticket office a few minutes later, he did not know anything about any Joseph Comminges, his forebears his house or his offspring.
‘He was important enough,’ said Jacquiz, ‘to be very near M’sieur Mistral in the picture.’
The old man shrugged and pouted. His two goitres wobbled malignantly, rubbing against each other. Jacquiz produced a hundred-franc note. The old man hissed like a faulty tap. Jacquiz produced a five-hundred-franc note. The old man took it, then extracted the hundred-franc note from Jacquiz’ other hand as an afterthought.
‘It is our shame,’ said the old man equably, ‘and of it we do not speak. Of the Joseph Comminges in the picture all we need say is that he, like his ancestors, enjoyed some prosperity as a merchant but was subject to maladies, many kinds of which seemed much to afflict his family. He has sick headache, a migraine, in the picture. That is why he is scowling, no one would otherwise dare scowl at the great Mistral.’
‘What’s so shaming about any of this?’ Marigold inquired.
‘His grandson, madame. His grandson is still with us in Arles. He is a priest.’
‘How eminently respectable.’
‘He is a man of strange beliefs and strange arts. He has les maladies de la famille worse than any before him. He is…maudit, madame. And yet, despite all his traffic, despite the – the visiteurs du soir that come at his summons, the Church still respects him. He is the Right Reverend Monsignor Comminges, also the Very Reverend the Canon Resident of the Cathedral of Saint Trophîme. We do not understand it, and naturally we do not like to speak of it to étrangers.’ He paused, then looked down at the banknotes in his hand, evidently decided that he had not yet given full value, and with a truly French respect for money proceeded to complete the package, just as a restaurateur might deem it only proper to throw in petit fours with the coffee for those taking any menu at over 100 francs. ‘That boy who came in here before you,’ he snuffled furtively, ‘is Canon Comminges’ nephew – or so he is sometimes called. There is also a niece. But how can there be nephew or niece when Monsignor Comminges is an only child of an only child, the only surviving Comminges of them all? The girl I have hardly seen, of the boy I know only this for certain, that he is – how do you say? – a familiar, a messenger of the Right Reverend Monsignor, and that he comes and goes, with or without message or mission, exactly as he pleases. It was not true, what I told you, that he had a student’s card. I admitted him for very fear.’
‘We didn’t see him up there.’
The old man crossed himself over his goitres and spat; then told Jacquiz and Marigold where they might, at a need, find the Canon.
‘So now we are all assembled,’ said Canon Comminges, his voice buzzing and burring through his linen mask. ‘Doctor and Mrs Helmut, welcome. Mr Blakeney and Mr Jones, my renewed greeting. You have all displayed ingenuity and persistence in order to come here, and I trust that your efforts will shortly prove to have been worthwhile.’
Well, well, well, Balbo Blakeney thought: Jewy Jake Helmut and a fizzing new wife. When Jacquiz and Marigold had been ushered in by the girl in black only a few moments after his own arrival with Sydney, Balbo’s first feeling was one of amazement – what in hell was Jacquiz doing here? – and his second one of embarrassment. After all, Helmut would certainly remember the squalid scandal which had led to Balbo’s expulsion from Lancaster. But after Jacquiz had greeted him quite civilly (though not without reciprocal surprise) and the new wife had given him a lively smile, Balbo felt reassured on the latter count and less resentful on the former. Helmut, he told himself, was known as an historical scholar with a strong inclination towards the rare, the beautiful and the bizarre; and the Roses of Picardie were therefore quite definitely his dish (as Sydney might have put it) though God alone knew how and where he had come in on the whole caper. And what, one might ask oneself, was his precise motive? Scholarship or pelf? There were also a good many more somewhat pressing questions (what about the little girl who had shown them up, for a start?); but surely there must now be every chance, Balbo thought, that if one could stomach the creature in the shroud for the next hour or two, either he or another would come across with the answers.
‘Before I tell you anything further,’ pursued the Canon, ‘about the matter which has brought you all here, I shall say a brief prayer to God and His Servants to guide us to good intent and good understanding. Audi nos, Domine, si tua est voluntas, vel iube Servos Tuos nos audire…’
That Balbo Blakeney, Marigold thought: oh, those cherubic cheeks and kind, sad eyes. Yes I know I’m trying to love Jacquiz very much just now, but there are times, there are just times, when a girl feels like an hour or two’s change.
‘…Igitur te precamur,’ droned the Canon, ‘ut nos omnes sancta sophia Tua impleas ad gratiam Tuam penitus fundas in animas animosque…’
The Sheila fancies my old Balbo, thought Syd Jones: well, jolly good luck to both of them. That, as it happened, was the very least of Syd’s troubles: for it had now appeared to him that all the elements were present of a very cons
iderable muddle. What with this Canon character who couldn’t or wouldn’t show his physog (impetigo? deformity? pox?), and what with this nun-girl who seemed to have been popping up all over the place, and what with the appearance of Doctor Jacquiz come lately Helmut from Balbo’s old College (what game was he playing? Sydney wondered) never mind his pert little madame – what with all this and Jermyn Street too, it was very important, Sydney felt, to arrange one’s thoughts with care. Very well then. One: he must let Jermyn Street know, as soon as he got out of the Canon’s lodging, that Balbo’s forehead was starting to crinkle and that he had definitely lost the Sign. Two: he must not, however, leave in a hurry or before anyone else, in case he missed something. Three: if Theta meant what he said last night (that in the event of Balbo’s losing the Sign Jones was simply to hang about with him and telephone in twice a day from wherever they might happen to be), then there was a very good chance of a ringside seat for whatever might happen next. Four: surely one had to face the fact that Balbo’s loss of the Sign could, just could, mean trouble for him with his rodent subjects-cum-worshippers; for even though he had broken his connection with them many years before, had they broken their connection with him? Five: one must therefore be very wary lest…well, lest exactly what? Since Jones could not answer this question, he settled for just wary. Six: one must also be pretty leery of the Canon, who, whatever his physical or facial disqualifications, was evidently pretty cute at working out arrangements – witness the almost simultaneous arrival here of all four of his petitioners, a consummation which his manner and tone implied to have been brought about by his deliberate contrivance. So watch your step, Jonesy boy, said Jones to Jones, S, and don’t let yourself be fobbed off with fibs and fiddles when question time comes round.
‘…Neve obliviscamur,’ the Canon was saying in a very earnest voice, ‘Comitum Tuorum, sub te, Domine, positorum sed plane Te Ipso editorum, Seraphorum et Cheruborum, Principatuum et Potestatium, Sedelium et Dominationum, Archangelorum Angelorumque, eorum qui viribus manibusque terrestrem mundun gubernant, Te remoto spectante. Sed Unius simus memores super omnes, in opere hoc ad quod iam accedimus, Illius qui pallidulas mortuorum animas ducere, vincere, condere, praebere, tandem de profundis solvere per Te potest. Per Christum et Omnes Dominos Nostros, Amen.’
‘“Nor let us forget”,’ Jacquiz translated to himself, ‘“Thy Companions set beneath Thee, Lord, but surely sprung from Thee, the Seraphim and Cherubim, Principalities and Powers, Thrones and Dominions, Archangels and Angels, those who govern the physical world with their strengths and by their hands, while Thou dost watch from afar. But of One above all else let us be mindful, in this task which we now draw near – of Him who, through Thee, is empowered to lead, bind, hide, show forth, and at last to loose from the depths the pale souls of the dead. Through Christ and all our Lords…” ’
Eccentric, to say the least, Jacquiz thought. He thinks God leaves the care of the physical universe to certain semi-divinities or underlings which he created, and watches only from afar. He believes in a Lord of the Dead whom he has just invoked. Not quite the Devil, I dare say, but not far off it: ‘empowered to loose from the depths…de profundis’. The man’s a raging Manichee: after all these centuries the Comminges are still Cathars, or near enough to be going on with if you bend a point here and there. Well, thought Jacquiz, it looks as if he’s going to come to the meat of the matter at any minute. Listen hard now, and think about other problems later: poor old Balbo, for example, not exactly a problem, perhaps even an asset, but undoubtedly a new factor, to say nothing of his friend. And another thing: where’s that girl who showed us in, and what’s become of that boy – the ‘nephew’? If he was appointed (as his ‘uncle’s’ familiar or messenger) to lead us here, why did he have to do it in such a roundabout and chancy way? But never mind any of that for now: just listen to this abominable priest.
Monsignor Bernard Comminges, the Very Reverend Canon Resident of the Cathedral of St Trophîme, crossed himself after his concluding apostrophe and surveyed his audience through the twin holes in his mask.
‘This’ – he pointed to the speckled linen which covered his face – ‘has been inflicted on me by the Curse which attends the Ruby Necklace known to us and to the world as the Roses of Picardie. It is not, as some of you may have assumed, the ravages of the Italian Lazar or the Raw-Boned Knight of England or whatever charming euphemism we may select to designate the American disease; it is the final stage of an undiagnosed sickness of the skin that has failed to yield to – indeed has positively been nourished by – all the most powerful drugs prescribed by modern science.
‘At the same time, I should remark, I enjoy many benefits of the type traditionally conferred by the Roses. I am highly placed in the Church, I hold an office which accords well with my tastes and temperament, I am protected, or at least tolerated, by my ecclesiastical superiors despite my heterodox theories and the hostility of the local populace. I am also extremely well situated in all temporal and monetary matters. For all this I have the Roses to thank. After all, it takes a very powerful influence indeed to reconcile the Vatican to a Monsignor who habitually pronounces neo-Albigensian doctrines –’
‘– Does anyone come to listen, sport?’ said Jones, S.
‘– Very few. But the doctrines are pronounced, and are known to be pronounced, alienating many of the faithful. Yet I remain, by favour of the Roses, a Canon-Resident of a venerable and beautiful Cathedral Church. That is much.’
The Canon paused. He quivered slightly, then suddenly clutched at his mask. After a few seconds his hands began to sink, slowly and painfully as though forced down by some huge effort of the will, and eventually clasped one another in the Canon’s lap.
‘It is much,’ he growled through the linen, ‘but it is not enough. Not enough to compensate me for the relentless torment and foul humiliation of my illness. In order to be rid of that evil, I will gladly be rid’ – he gestured widely round the richly tapestried chamber – ‘of this good. I must be rid of the Curse and if needs be of the Blessing as well. I must be rid of the Roses of Picardie.’
He thrust himself forward in his chair, picked up a poker and hacked viciously at the fire.
‘So I said to myself,’ he continued, ‘I shall restore them whence they came. We know, from the old records, that they were once in the possession of the family of the Counts de la Tour d’Abbéville; it was not too difficult to trace the last survivor of that line who was capable of receiving, or rather of collecting, the necklace. I sent for the Vicomte du Touquet in order to tell him where it was and to bid him take it; for although it was not (and is not) here with me, only when it was removed, by another, from the place where I, its present inheritor, knew (and know) it to be – only then would the Curse be lifted from me. Or so I believed. And so I summoned du Touquet to do what I wished.’
‘But before he even reached you,’ Balbo said, ‘he was battered to pieces in Aix-en-Provence.’
‘After he had left me,’ corrected the Monsignor, ‘after he had been told where to find the Rubies and was already on his way to collect them – it was then that he died. Clearly, his knowledge and potential possession made him eligible for both Curse and Blessing, both of which, in his case, took a particularly swift and violent form.’
‘Rather hard on him,’ said Marigold. ‘Knowledge or no, he hadn’t even set eyes on them. Or could he have?’
‘No,’ said the Canon, ‘he could not. The Roses are a very long way from here, much further than Aix-en-Provence. The reason why both Curse and Blessing operated so fiercely, on one who merely knew where the Stones were hidden, was probably that Clovis du Touquet came of a line whose ancestors had connived at the original theft of the Jewels from the Jew of Antioch and the Jew’s murder. Later, when the Rubies came into their hands, although they well knew where to find the Jew’s heirs, they kept the treasure for themselves. Morally speaking, it was as though Clovis’ family had itself stolen the jewels from the Jew.’
> ‘Your family also stole the jewels,’ said Jacquiz, ‘stole them from Constance, wife of Louis, after hideously murdering her one way or another. Yet neither Curse nor Blessing seems to have been so monstrous with the House of Comminges.’
‘Yes, we stole them, Doctor Helmut. But not from a rightful owner. The last rightful owner, as far as we know, was the Jew of Antioch. Naturally, his Curse must be much more powerful against the line of those connected with the original thieves and murderers than against those who have merely come by the jewels through a chain of later thieves.’
‘And the Blessing? How do you account for the varied intensity of its operation?’
‘That the Blessing operates at all,’ said the Canon, ‘has always been and remains a mystery. Meanwhile, please let me continue. It seemed to me that the brutal death of Clovis du Touquet was a sign to me that it would not be enough to give the Roses away just to anyone at all, or even to a descendant of previous possessors; if the Curse was to be lifted from me, the Roses must be restored to someone of the line of the last rightful owner, the Jew of Antioch aforesaid. But how was I to find any of his descendants? There was need of more than learning, more than mere detection here. So for many weary months I have been conducting certain…experiments; and I believe that very soon now I may have the knowledge which I seek.’ He eyed them all and chuckled, like a frog cackling at the approach of rain. ‘It was in the course of my search that I learned, incidentally but quite explicably, that, you Mr Blakeney, and you, Doctor Helmut, with your respective companions, were on your way.’
‘How did you learn that?’ said Marigold.
‘It will all be made plain, Mrs Helmut, as time goes on.’
‘That boy?’
‘Pray be patient, Mrs Helmut. I learned of, permitted, and indeed in some ways assisted your approach; for I had decided that your assiduity and ingenuity made you all worthy of the honour of being present when I finally discovered the rightful heir to the Rubies and then bestowed them upon him. It might even be that someone among you…one whom I trust…being stronger and more able to travel than I, might assist me in the bestowal. As to that, we shall see. Meanwhile, the final discovery has yet to be made, the final experiment to be performed. Tonight? Yes, why not tonight? I invite you all to wait on me tonight.’