by Simon Raven
He therefore gave a clear account, over coffee and cognac, of what Provost Constable had been planning for Jacquiz and what part Ivor Winstanley had been bullied into playing. Then, omitting the theft of the two manuscripts, he described how Ivor had determined to revolt and how Elvira Constable had unexpectedly come to their aid with her tale of Constable’s monstrous behaviour with Balbo’s notes.
‘So the question is,’ said Len to Balbo, ‘will you help us? Will you support Elvira’s story, and can you put your hand on that folder with the tea-stained notes? I’ll just pop off to the loo and give you a few minutes to think it over.’
Balbo had left his room key on the dinner table when they rose to go into the hotel lounge for coffee, and Len had loitered and snapped it up. He now departed to Balbo’s room, opened it, took a dirty pair of socks from the bottom of Balbo’s wardrobe, a few strands of hair from his comb, and a used strip of Elastoplast, which had a faint stain of blood on it, from the wastepaper basket in the bathroom. Blood they should appreciate, thought Len, whatever they may be up to; let’s hope they’ll be pleased with little Lenny.
He then went to his own room, put his pickings in a large envelope provided by Jermyn Street, sealed it with Sellotape also provided by Jermyn Street and zipped it into the overnight bag which, complete with washing gear, fresh shirt, pyjamas, pants, socks, brush and comb, and tie, Q had obtained for him from a special store in the department just before he was driven off to Heathrow.
The envelope he would deliver to Jermyn Street when he returned the next day. Meanwhile, with his official mission now fully on schedule, he returned to the party in the lounge to see how his personal business was marching. He found that everyone, including Jones, was very amused by the notion of checkmating Lord Constable in the manner proposed.
‘I always thought Elvira would rebel sooner or later,’ said Jacquiz; ‘for the last ten or twelve years she’s been simply a servant.’
‘What I won’t forgive is his meanness to Ivor,’ Balbo said. ‘Hear, hear,’ said Len.
‘What about his meanness to me?’ said Jacquiz.
‘You can take care of yourself. Ivor, for all his worldliness, is too innocent.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Len again. ‘So you’ll stand by Elvira’s story?’
‘I will.’
‘And what about the folder? Can you put your hands on it?’
‘Not at once. It’s deposited, with a few other things, with my friend Pandelios in Heracleion.’
‘How soon can you get it?’
‘That depends,’ said Balbo, and glanced at Jones.
‘Could you give me a letter to this Pandelios, authorizing me to take the folder?’
Balbo hesitated.
‘We want everything sewn up tight,’ said Len, ‘as soon as possible.’
‘All right,’ said Balbo reluctantly. ‘I’ve got pen and paper in my room.’ He rose, as did Jones. ‘Damn. I’ve left the key in the dining-room.’
‘Key’s on the floor,’ said Len, pretending to pick it up and passing it over. ‘Must have fallen out of your pocket.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Jacquiz,’ said Marigold, ‘please get me my handbag. I left it in our bathroom, I think.’
Jacquiz looked troubled. Marigold smiled.
‘Please,’ she said.
Jacquiz rose and went.
Marigold brought her shining face very close to Len’s spotty one. She put her hands on the insides of his thighs and scratched lightly with her fingernails.
‘Nice Len, lovely Len,’ she said. ‘O lovely, beautiful Len…’
‘What’s in it for you?’ said Syd Jones to Balbo. ‘You write this letter, that chap Len collects your folder of notes from this Pandelios chap in Crete –’
‘You met him, didn’t you? Shall I send him your regards?’
‘– And then on the strength of those, everyone starts screwing up Lord Constable, or rather, getting their way with him, which comes to the same thing. But what do you get?’
‘I quite liked Ivor Winstanley,’ said Balbo, ‘and I quite liked Jacquiz Helmut. I don’t want to see them fucked up. Come to that, I rather liked Constable too – he was quite generous to me when things were bad – but I don’t mind seeing him put in his place for this once.’
Balbo finished writing the letter to Pandelios. He signed it, added a greeting from Sydney (‘“Here’s piss in yer socks from Syd, cobber” – an interesting example of the pseudo-Australian vernacular’), and put it in an hotel envelope.
‘I’ll tell you an interesting thing,’ he said to Sydney. ‘Those people – we don’t know who they were, but they were probably Communists – those people to whom Constable leaked my notes…if they had tried out some of the lines which the results of the experiments suggested, then they could…they could, Sydney…have produced rats of this new strain that’s occupying Canterbury Cathedral. Some of my experiments were to do with producing scavenger rats who would serve the purpose of cleaning up devastated areas by eating all animal corpses, if possible bones and all. This was when the backroom boys were working towards the atom bomb – though of course I didn’t realize that at the time – and they were envisaging huge areas of contamination and decay, bigger than had ever been known in history. Put the rats in, you see, and let them take at any rate the top off the mess before they themselves die on the job.’
‘You’d still have had the rats to clear up.’
‘They were going to be trained to incinerate themselves, only we never got that far with it. But you see what I’m getting at? If the Russkies or anyone else had the use of my notes, then an attempt to produce “bones and all” scavengers might well have produced a strain which liked very old corpses and skeletons. Which is what, it seems, you’ve got in Canterbury. Perhaps I’d better have a look at those notes myself before we go there.’
‘We’re not going there,’ said Jones, S.
‘You mean – they’ve dealt with the problem?’
‘No. I mean you can’t help them any more. Not at Canterbury. So the pressure’s off. You’re free to go where you like for as long as you like.’
‘Good.’
‘Not good. Why do you think I’m still here? Why do you think they’re letting me stay with you and go on treating you?’
Balbo was silent.
‘They want me to watch what happens, Balbo. You see, you’ve lost the Sign we spoke of. It’s clean gone. They want to know what will happen next.’
‘Nothing will happen next. I’ve never really believed in that Sign.’
‘Take it from me: you had it and it’s gone.’
‘Even so, it’s years, thirty years, since I worked with them; and only two or three years less since I finished my thesis about them. Since then I’ve had nothing to do with them. I can mean nothing at all to them.’
‘Lets hope you’re right.’
‘From what I can see, my chance of finding out about the Rubies constitutes a far greater danger than any rats. Look what they’ve done to the Canon. It seems that the Curse can affect anyone who…comes in range, so to speak, with some sort of claim on them. Look how they killed Clovis. I’ve been looking for them; they might reckon that as a claim, they might reckon me as rightful an object of the Curse as they reckoned him.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Sydney. ‘At the moment all you’re doing is waiting, with the rest of us, while the Canon tries to discover to whom they really and truly belong. They can’t hold that against you.’
But what Syd Jones was really thinking was this: if the tales we’ve been hearing should be true – and of course they can’t be, it’s all a load of crocodile crap – but if some small part of it all should be somehow true, then no one who gets near those Rubies, who even gets near just knowing where they are, is safe; and another thing: the Curse has a way of using the means that come easily and logically to hand – which in Balbo’s case could be his quondam subjects and worshippers, the rats.
‘…So it’s beca
use I want you so badly,’ Marigold said to Len, ‘because I long for the things you’ve done to me and could do again, that I am humbling myself to you, here in this hotel lounge, confessing my sheer lust for you and begging you not to take advantage of it. Begging you not to tempt me any more but to let me go.’
‘Why don’t you just let it rip? We could go to my room for a few minutes later on. No one would miss us, and it wouldn’t much matter if they did.’
‘Once it would not have mattered. Now it would. The journey I have just made…am still making…with my husband, a weird, exciting, happy journey, has made the difference. Because of it I am trying to love Jacquiz, and even if I cannot quite succeed, I cannot again hurt him. Please…lovely, beautiful, adorable Len…let me go.’
She shrank back into her chair and huddled there, looking at him with huge, watery eyes.
‘Okay,’ said Len, ‘I’ll not stretch a finger. On one condition: you tell me what’s going on.’
‘Nothing that concerns you.’
‘Look, sweetheart. I’ve come here on business to Balbo Blakeney…who has some kind of agent with him that’s been tagging him all across Europe. I also find my old boss from the Chamber of Manuscripts – whom, incidentally, I’m busy protecting in a roundabout way – and his randy wife. I find them all sitting in the same hotel, conspiring like a whole gang of Guy Fawkeses and sweating with excitement at the same dinner table. I also notice that Balbo Blakeney, my man of prime interest just now, once the lushiest lush who was ever tossed out of Lancaster College into the garbage bin, is at the table and not underneath it, drinking indeed, but only like any other moderate middle-aged gent. So miracles may happen, sweetheart, but don’t tell me that nothing’s going on or that it doesn’t concern little Lenny.’
Jacquiz entered the lounge, carrying Marigold’s handbag. Through another entrance came Balbo and Sydney, Balbo carrying the letter.
‘I haven’t time to tell you, Len.’
‘You tell me, baby, or I’ll turn you on like a geyser right under Jake’s Jewish nose.’
‘Follow us when we leave the hotel tonight. We’re going to walk to a sort of graveyard place called the Alyscamps – just before midnight. There’s a password – Au bord des tombes. Let us get clear, then say it at the gate, and you’ll be let in. I can’t explain any more; you’ll just have to see for yourself.’
Len rose, took the proffered letter from Balbo, and said thank you very politely.
‘All right if I go on to Heracleion at once?’ he said. He glanced at the address on the envelope. ‘You think he’ll be at home?’
‘If not, his wife will know where he is.’
‘Okay, Balb. That’s great,’ said Len. Then to Jacquiz, ‘I want you to know, Jake, that Ive and I will do our very best. You’ll be back where you belong, in the Chamber of Manuscripts, you take it from me.’ And to Jones, S, ‘It’s been swell meeting you, Syd. I wish you many runs and wickets in the Great Game which you’re now playing.’ And last, to the seated Marigold, ‘Goodbye, Mrs Helmut.’ He raised her hand to within an inch of his lips with an exquisite grace, then bowed elegantly to the gentlemen. ‘Manners,’ he grinned at the gaping company: ‘I have them when I want them. Dear Ivor is giving me lessons.’
The Tracery Gate which guarded the entrance to the Alyscamps was locked. There was no sign of anyone who might have been waiting to open it, though a nearly full moon threw a clear light on all the approaches. A small chapel, which stood a few yards beyond the gate and had apparently been turned into a lodge, was unlit in any of its windows.
‘Nobody around,’ said Jones, S.
‘Just say the password,’ Marigold suggested, ‘and see what happens.’
‘Au bord des tombes,’ said Jacquiz, in a low, firm voice.
There was a brief buzz, then a snap of metal. The gate idled open.
‘Operated from a distance,’ said Balbo, ‘like the front doors of those houses which have been split into separate flats.’
‘Only there,’ said Marigold, ‘you have to ring a bell first and talk into a machine, so that the person you want can hear you. How did anyone hear Jacquiz just now? And where’s the switch that must have been pressed?’
‘In there?’ said Balbo, pointing at the lodge.
‘Empty, by the look of it,’ said Jacquiz. ‘No point in asking unanswerable questions. Let’s just press on to the Church.’
Two by two (Jacquiz with Jones and Balbo with Marigold) they walked down the avenue between the rows of sullen-lipped sarcophagi. The autumn trees muttered along their ranks, as if expressing surprise and suspicion that a party should be walking beneath them at such an hour as this; and the moon, briefly streaked by an occasional cloud, shone through the hollow, round-arched tower that capped the ruins of St Honorat’s, transforming it into a lantern hung from on high to mark the pilgrims’ goal.
From behind a tree which sprouted from the pavement near the gate into the Alyscamps, Len watched the quartet recede down the avenue. Why didn’t they come by car, Jake’s car? he wondered. Anonymity, I suppose: they think there may be dirty work afoot. Let ’em get well ahead… After a while he stepped up to the gate, found it locked, and cooed at it: ‘Au bord des tombes.’
Although nothing whatever happened, Len had a feeling, intense if inexplicable, that somebody, somewhere, was considering his application and what to do about it. Eventually there was a buzz and a click. As a distant clock called a light, dulcet twelve, Len passed into the Alyscamps; he did not close the gate, which, however, swung to of itself with a gentle clunk.
Len walked on the left of the avenue, between the tombs and the trees. Here he was in shadow, not to be searched out by the moonrays of St Honorat’s lantern. The party ahead disappeared through an arch. The last stroke of twelve rang and withdrew. Len quickened his pace, flitted along the line of stone coffins, slid through the arch sideways like a shade, and surveyed an area of sarcophagi, no longer ranked but scattered. He picked his way across till he came to a blank wall ahead of him (above which there appeared to be a crude pediment) and a second, a tumbled wall, which jutted out among the sarcophagi from the right-hand end of the first. A little to the left of the corner formed by the two walls was a narrow, jagged gap, through which, Len thought, those whom he pursued must surely have passed. Very slowly and carefully he pushed his head through and then slightly round to the left, and what he now saw, some fifteen yards away from him, was this:
Balbo, Marigold, Jacquiz and Sydney Jones, in that order and about a yard apart, were standing in a row that stretched away from him with a slight slant to the right. They were facing to the right, as observed by Len, towards an exceptionally large marble sarcophagus, the lid of which had a pronounced central ridge, with correspondingly steep sides, and corners elevated in the Greek fashion. The lid was very slightly out of true, with the result that there was a small triangular gap at the front corner of the coffin which was the nearer to Len.
Standing at the centre of the far side of the sarcophagus and facing towards Balbo and the rest was a tall, upright figure in a black cassock; a white hood hung between its shoulderblades, while its head and its face, Len realized with a rather sick feeling at his stomach, were entirely encased by a shroud of white, in which were two holes for the figure’s eyes. At the near end of the sarcophagus, just to the right of the corner with the gap, stood what was, to judge from the stance and figure as seen by Len from the rear, a youthful male; since his head was cowled and his face in any case invisible to Len, there could be no certainty, but line and poise suggested elegant virility. At the far end of the coffin, looking almost straight at Len but evidently seeing nothing (for the eyes were misted over in reverie or trance), was a young girl in black, cowled like the presumptive boy, but showing enough of her sweet and beguiling face (made somehow the more fascinating by an unequally cleft chin) to establish her sex beyond question; for here was the grave half-smile which had responded to the Announcement of the Angel or hovered above the Child
in the Meadow.
The sarcophagus and the tableau round it were on a dais of stone about a yard high and were backed by an apsidal recess. The whole arrangement very much suggested a former sanctuary, in which an altar would have stood where the tomb now was. About twenty feet above the shrouded head of the central figure there was a window in the curving wall, unglazed and divided vertically by a thin central column some ten feet high; and down through this window shone the moon, by the unassisted light of which Len was able to see, very clearly, all that he had seen and all that he was now about to see.
At first, however, it was more a matter of listening. Some kind of exposition was in progress, which apparently (thought Len) had to do with some jewels with the fancy name of the Roses of Picardie. These, he gathered, were owned (wrongfully) by the figure in the shroud, who was now explaining, in round English but tones slightly muffled by his mask, just what he proposed to do with them, which was…
‘…To restore them to the true heir, that the Curse may leave me. This must be an heir sprung from the loins of that old Jew of Antioch, from whom by violence certain serjeants had the Rubies at the sacking of the city, and from them by his command Count Bohemond, and from him by theft the Lord Baldwin du Bourg, and from him by gift the Lord Clovis du Bourg, and from his descendants by wit and lechery the painter Van Hoek, and from him for love the Demoiselle Constance Fauvrelle who was to become Mistress Comminges, and from her, by witchcraft and murder, the family Comminges, whose sole remaining descendant am unhappy I. Therefore to the Jew of Antioch we must return, the last rightful owner that is known to us, and ask of him where and who his lawful descendants now may be.’
Followed a long chanted prayer in what Len failed to recognize as Hebrew. Then the figure in the shroud raised its arms on high, the boy and girl at either end of the tomb knelt down, and suddenly a cloud smothered the moon. All went dark except for a tiny light, a pinkish red light, playing over one elevated corner of the coffin lid, the Greek moulding of which it faintly illuminated. The light began to divide itself, into three, into six, into twelve small red glowing particles, suspended in the air.