by Simon Raven
‘But surely,’ Theta said, ‘the whole point is that these creatures will want to share in the feast of Blakeney’s flesh in order to absorb some of his wisdom and spirit. They won’t just want to give others the tip and not get a share themselves?’
‘I think we got that wrong too. I think we’ll find the whole point is this: that the race wants to absorb the wisdom and numen of its defunct God King, and this can be done quite easily by a few representatives on behalf of the entire species. No need for each individual to fight for a crumb. All that’s necessary is enough of them to make a clean job and ensure that nothing is wasted. The virtue that lay with Blakeney, though absorbed by only a few, would go to strengthen what you might call the corporate soul of all. It’s the corporate soul, incidentally, more fully understood and exploited by this new strain, that has enabled them to get up transmissions through the ether between themselves and separate groups or individuals a long way off. Before long the rest will learn the trick – if they haven’t already.’
‘So they are passing this message,’ said Theta slowly, ‘to their…friends and relations. Over how wide an area can they broadcast? England? The British Isles? France? Eastern Europe?’
‘What I’ve told you is little more than speculation. I can say nothing as to their precise capacities.’
‘Well, we’d better hope,’ said Theta, ‘that their carrying power falls short of the Peloponnese. That, Sydney tells me, is where he and Blakeney are heading now. Meanwhile, Brigadier, we had better leave your men at their posts for the time being. Here is another lesson that there is no such thing as an exact science,’ he said with a bland look at Lambda, ‘and there may be more surprises yet.’
The Kyrios Pandelios was waiting, as he had been instructed by his telegram from Balbo, at the Messenia Airport just outside Kalamata. Though encumbered with a coil of cable, a huge cement bucket, a pulley, and a live sheep, he had insisted on his democratic right to use the airport lounge, even though neither he nor the people he was meeting were flying by the airline but were simply using its ample and prominent premises as a convenient rendezvous. How, Pandelios wondered, were his interesting items of equipment to be transported where they were going? He had been definitively ordered in the lengthy telegram not to ‘bring or hire own vehicle’. No doubt the good Kyrios Blakeney knew best, but there would surely be a problem here.
It was very soon solved for him. As he was watching through the window for Balbo’s arrival, he saw the most beautiful yet brutal car he had ever seen, with a bonnet like the portcullis of a Byzantine castle, sweep into the car park, followed by a large Range Rover. Driving the car was a man with an imperial face, hooky nose, and powerful black and grey hair; next to him was a strongly set yet somehow dainty girl, ginger hair in page-boy cut, quivering snub nose, and firm lemon-shaped breasts. Behind them sat beloved Kyrios Balbo; on one side of him was a fair boy with a face like a satyr’s but without the grin or the leer; on the other side of Balbo was a girl with a sweet, rather lopsided face surmounted by a cowl. Driving the Range Rover was a robust, slightly tubby little man with a wide, coarse mouth and merry eyes; him Pandelios recognized as the cricketing man who had come to see him in Crete to ask news of Balbo some weeks back.
Pandelios went out into the car park.
‘Where’s the gear, sport?’ said the cricketing man. Pandelios gestured into the lounge. The cricketing man, the imperial man, the fair boy and Balbo all tumbled out of their respective seats and rushed in the direction which Pandelios had indicated.
‘Bear a hand, sport,’ said the cricketing man as he raced past, ‘then hop into the Rover with me. No time to lose. All hands to the pump, as the bishop said to the choirboy, and explanations later.’
Just South of Gerolimin, at the bottom of a hill, a rough track led to the right and towards the sea.
Worth a try down here, thought Len.
He parked his hired car by the side of the road and started down the track, along which swampy grass alternated with chunky rocks. A good thing I decided to walk, thought Len.
There was a wind blowing. This had not been evident before, as Len had been in the car and the car (until it reached Gerolimin) had been separated from the coast by low, scrubby hills; but now that Len was in the open, walking towards a little bay (which he could see about 200 yards ahead of him), he was aware that the wind was both very rough and very keen. He remembered Ivor’s telling him, when they had been discussing their possible trip, that the wind down here blew for 300 days of the 365.
‘They have gardens walled off in squares by cypress trees,’ Ivor had said.
There were two of these side by side on Len’s right. On his left was a slope strewn with ruined stone houses of indeterminate date; the slope ascended quite steeply past the houses and ended sharply in a cliff. There was another cliff over to the right as well (beyond the gardens and the cypress trees), and in its face, about 300 yards along the beach, the high, triangular entrance of a cave. The cliffs delineated the jaws of the bay; they dipped in the centre, at its throat, to allow a tiny stream to piddle over the beach and into the salt water. On either side of the stream the ground was flat for about 100 yards. Len’s path was about 70 yards to the left of the stream, as it ran to the sea, and parallel with it; he was therefore well over to one side of a wide, flat corridor which ran between road and beach, almost under the slopes with the ruins. The cypress gardens to his right were about 150 yards from the sea and halfway between himself and the stream.
This path is as near as the devil on the right latitude, thought Len; this is as good a place as any to hide tainted jewels. He shivered from the wind and wished he’d had his lunch before coming there. That cave, thought Len. Too obvious. Those ruined houses to my left? But which?
The cypresses swayed in the wind, urging Len to them, inviting him to come into their shelter. Why not in a garden, Len thought, a garden among the trees? Oh the bitter wind; warm trees. There was fir and umbrella pine as well as cypress (odd, thought Len vaguely, I didn’t think they grew down here), and Aleppo pine and ilex, lime tree and quercus robur, aeschylus and yew, all these inside the cypresses and forming a second wall against the wind, a wall so thick that there was hardly any space for the garden, which indeed consisted only of clumps of dear iris and long-necked sage of Jerusalem. Towards these Len walked as the trees swayed and soothed and enticed him, through these he blundered, to find at his feet a circle of low stones, over one of which he tripped, then fell, down and down into the darkness, until he landed heavily in water, sank a few inches, and settled (how cosily, thought Len before he thought no more, oh, how cosily) into thick, warm mud.
As Jacquiz drove the Rolls through Kalamata and then on to the road on which they would wind down the Mani, the twins, David and Rebecca, spoke of what had been and what was yet to come.
‘When it was known to us,’ said David, ‘that you, Doctor Helmut, were coming from the West and that you, Mr Blakeney, were coming from the East, Monsignor Comminges made a plan for you all, and so did we.’
‘But ours was different from that of Monsignor Comminges,’ Rebecca said.
‘Monsignor Comminges’ plan was that you should be assisted to Arles if you faltered on the way, but that on the whole you should be left to guide yourselves, as a test of your worthiness. So we watched, my sister and I, we listened and followed and we occasionally put a clue, which otherwise you might have missed, in your way. The cheap copies of the Tarasque Medallion at Paestum, Mr Blakeney; the scrapbook in Saint Bertrand, Doctor Helmut. And as time went on you were found worthy.’
‘Found worthy by the Monsignor for what he wished of you; found worthy by us for what we wished of you,’ Rebecca said.
‘So that’s why everything was so…so devious,’ said Marigold: ‘we were being tested. In the Musée Arlaten, for instance: that picture of Mistral and the Monsignor’s grandfather – a test of observation, I suppose.’
‘No,’ said David. ‘That was accidental.’
‘It brought us to the Cloister at just the right time.’
‘That would have been done in any case, by my sister or me, if you had not found out the Cloister by yourselves.’
‘Then what was that Museum bit?’
‘Accidental, as I say. There was no intention that you should follow me. I was going to the Arlaten to collect certain properties for the performance which we were later to put on at Saint Honorat’s Church. The Director of the Museum would, I knew, look kindly on my requests as I appeared before him dressed like a schoolboy in the days of his own adolescence. It seems that he has memories.’
‘Were you required to share them with him?’
‘No. Merely to wear the clothes and be deferential.’
‘The man who sells tickets was afraid of you.’
‘The man who sells the tickets is, as you would say, of the dregs of mankind.’
‘But you must admit,’ said Balbo, ‘that there is something disturbing about you both. I mean…you appear and disappear at the drop of a hat, you turn up in the most extraordinary places, wearing the most astonishing kit…and on top of it all you make sure that we get hold of that exercise book of the Canon’s and read all that stuff about Alexander’s boyfriend and Noah of Joppe, thus more or less inviting us to identify you with the Guardian Twins in the legend who administer the Curse of the Roses.’
‘It is no legend, Mr Blakeney. The Canon’s researches have been very accurate.’
‘But nobody can believe that tale about the twins.’
‘Can they not? It is at least some sort of explanation,’ the boy said. ‘Two people who conspire to bring happiness and misery as they see fit, by their own agency and exertion. This is more credible than some vague kind of magical influence, some spell cast by the jewels themselves.’
‘But it can’t have been the same two people for the last two and a half thousand years,’ Marigold said.
A small, square fort loomed (almost like a geometrical figure) above the hairpin bend round which the Rolls was now turning.
‘Frankish?’ said Balbo.
‘Byzantine,’ said Jacquiz; ‘not enough vertical aspiration for the Franks. People often forget how skyward-minded they were. Thank God for power steering,’ he said as they moved smoothly out of the bend. ‘I suppose’ – he looked briefly across Marigold at the boy, David – ‘I suppose there might be an inherited commitment, passed down from the original twins through generation after generation, to watch over and reward and punish the owners of the Rubies. I imagine that your function, if it is your function, is hereditary?’
‘It is our function,’ Rebecca said. And then, after a pause, ‘You have yet to hear the plans that were made for you, ours and the Monsignor’s.’
‘His plan,’ said the boy, ‘was to employ you, as people proved intelligent and fitting, to take the Rubies from where they were hidden, and thus disembarrass him of the so-called Curse, and of my sister and myself who implement it. Once you had the Roses, he thought, we would leave him for you. He could not tell you the true story of the Curse – how it was made by Arphisses of Thebes and its enactment was entrusted to myself and Rebecca –’
‘– To your ancestors –’
‘– Is at any rate our sworn duty – he could not tell you that story, lest you should realize that the Curse would indeed come to you along with the Rubies. So he told you the false but often accepted story, that the Jew of Antioch first made the Curse, and assured you that if the Rubies were returned to his descendants the Curse would cease to operate. He then conducted his séance at Saint Honorat’s. Had things gone as he wished, a rightful owner would have been fraudulently named, and you would then have agreed to fetch the jewels from the secret place and carry them to this owner – who did not, of course, exist. Thus you would have acquired Curse and Roses together, and would not easily have made yourselves free of them. As for him, he would at last have been released.’
‘But things did not go as he wished.’
‘No,’ said the girl. ‘We had another plan.’
‘Another plan,’ said the boy, ‘to which there must be a preface.’ He rested his hand very lightly on Marigold’s knee, as if to reassure her. She gave a sharp gasp of pleasure, whereupon, but without haste, he removed it. ‘Has it ever occurred to you,’ he said, ‘to wonder why the Curse – that is, We – operated so swiftly and finally at the expense of Clovis du Touquet? We cut him to pieces in Aix-en-Provence within hours of his being told by the Canon how he might possess the Roses. We did this because if ever a possessor, or near-possessor, deserved such a fate, it was this Clovis.’
‘Oh, I say,’ said Balbo, ‘he wasn’t as bad as all that. Don’t tell me you two fixed the tables in the Casino for that incredible run of his just before he died.’
‘Oh yes. He had left the Canon in Arles and was on his way to find the jewels. We met him, suggested he should spend a night in Aix-en-Provence, and should go to the Gaming-Rooms (once a favourite amusement of his), where we would arrange that he won heavily – providing that he promised he would cease to gamble when we gave him the sign (no more diamonds in his hand of cards) and also promised to grant one special request which we would proffer to him later. He duly promised, and so we procured a ticket for him (by theft), as both his identity card and his passport had long since been endorsed against admission to such places, and escorted him during his triumphant progress. In the event he kept his first promise –’
‘– But how had you rigged the tables?’
‘Not the tables, the cards he received. We are skilful conjurors, as you should know by now. He was standing back from the card table. We could easily substitute, in his hand, the cards he needed for the cards he had been given. He hardly knew it himself.’
‘But the roulette wins which started him off? And helped him later with funds for the baccarat game?’
‘Pure luck. Gamblers sometimes win. These gains simply saved us the trouble of putting him in funds for the card tables by stealing plaques from the Caisse – or picking clients’ pockets.’
‘I see. So he went on playing until you issued him with cards which no longer had diamonds among them?’
‘Yes. A crude symbolism. Red diamonds to stand for red rubies, which playing cards do not carry. As soon as the red jewels were withdrawn, he was to desist.’
‘And desist he did, as he had promised?’
‘But he did not keep his other promise. When we accosted him outside the Casino, he heard our request and then refused it: he would not grant it, he said, until we had made for him une vraie fortune – a hundred times what we had won for him that night.’
‘But did he really deserve to be butchered like that – like a pig in a shambles?’
‘He had, at any rate, refused our request.’
‘And what was this request?’
‘Rebecca and I are weary of our task. But we may only abandon it if the possessor of the Rubies sets us free. We have him in our Guardianship, along with the necklace, but he has us in his, because we may only be released from our oath as Guardians if the possessor consents to this.’
‘Why should he possibly object?’
‘Because the Curse of Arphisses states, you remember, that on the day the Curse ceases to operate, on that day the Rubies will turn to coloured glass. For fear of this, many succeeding owners have refused to release us. So did Clovis du Touquet, when we approached him after he left the Casino.’
‘But for God’s sake, why have they refused to release you? By releasing you from your oath – from your distant ancestors’ oath – they release themselves from you and from the Curse. Surely the Canon would have jumped at it. He didn’t need to make elaborate plans to shift the ownership: all he had to do was release you.’
‘He would not do this, out of greed and out of pride. It had been the same with all of them before him. To know that there were such rare and ancient jewels, and they were his –’
‘– But he was plotting to get rid
of them –’
‘– Yes. That he would do. He could endure that his stones went to another, but not that they should cease to exist. They had been his and his family’s for so long: he might dispose of them, but in his pride, some might say in his honour, he would not destroy them.’
‘And neither would Clovis?’ Balbo asked.
‘No. For greed was on him and arrogance of birth. His House, he thought, had a most just and ancient claim that went back through many centuries of time. So in his haughtiness and folly we destroyed him. And then, when we discovered that you were all coming, we made our plan. We too found you worthy, as the Canon did but for different reasons. Not only were you brave and clever enough to venture into the abominable place where the Roses are hidden, you were also honourable enough and kind enough to give me and my sister our quittance. You will…Mr Blakeney, Doctor Helmut, Mrs Helmut…you will set us free?’
‘From your hereditary oath,’ said Marigold carefully. ‘Have we the power?’
‘If you have the Rubies, you may, if you will, free us from the oath that has been binding for so long. That is what we have prayed, Rebecca and I. We changed the form of the séance, to give you the first hint of the true story of Iskander’s Catamite (a sad name for the friend whom we loved), of Iskandrou Paidika. I played the Jew, with properties from the Arlaten Museum to assist me. We killed the old man by suffocation first, and as the séance ended we hypnotized you by using the little red lights that were meant for the Rubies, into brief unconsciousness on your feet while we escaped. (Yes, we Guardians have learned many such tricks in our generations.) Then came the last test of all. Would you read the Canon’s body, then dispose of it and escape from the Alyscamps? Or would you raise the cry against us with the police? If the former, you were of the calibre we needed. If the latter, you had failed us both in courage and in love.’