by Simon Raven
‘You hadn’t done all that much to make us love you,’ Marigold remarked.
‘Are we not beautiful, my brother and I?’
‘In any case,’ said David, ‘you passed the final test. Doctor Helmut came to the cloister, as we hoped that he or another of you would, and we gave him the two documents which would make all plain to you. And then we waited by the way for you and extracted a promise. You promised to obey, and so you have; but we know we cannot compel your obedience to the extent of freeing us and thus destroying the Roses: that is a great matter and must be of your own will.’
There was a long silence. Eventually Balbo said: ‘Speaking for myself, and, I think I can safely say, for Sydney and Pandelios, I am of opinion that the only decent thing, whatever the real truth behind all this, is to do what we are asked. Our two friends here say that it is what they wish, and I think we should respect that wish, never mind what may happen to the jewels. If people pray to be released, whoever they may be and whatever, precisely, they may mean, then one must help them as best one can. Otherwise, you know, one finds it difficult to look in the mirror.’
Rebecca put her hand on Balbo’s thigh; he felt a sudden piercing spurt of lust, lust of such quality that it was enough simply to have experienced it; it was so weird and thrilling that it was its own satisfaction.
‘Agreed,’ Marigold said.
David pressed his thigh against Marigold’s. She writhed in her seat and nearly moaned aloud.
‘Yes,’ said Jacquiz, ‘but it would be nice to see the Rubies, as they are, first.’
‘You will see them first.’
Both David and Rebecca reached to stroke Jacquiz’ hair with their fingertips. He whistled softly.
‘You could have got round us all at once just by…just by touching us.’
‘But we could not prove your good will just by touching you. You had to show that of yourselves, without being enticed. Now you have done this, and we are going to the place where the Rubies are hidden. Before you can release us, you must see them and hold them; there is also a ceremony to be performed. Now it is night: soon we shall stop for you to dine, as you must, and for the two gentlemen in the vehicle behind to be told all and acquainted with your decisions. Then we shall go on through the darkness and come to a certain place. There we shall seek out the Rubies, the Roses of Picardie, and do all else that must be done.’
‘Ah, Ivor,’ intoned Lord Constable as he swept across the lawn of the Great Court of Lancaster. ‘Ah, Ivor,’ he grated, as he halted and gathered his multifarious gown about him. ‘Ah, Ivor,’ he snarled, as he lifted his mortar board in courteous greeting, ‘have we any news of your Under-Collator?’
‘I can’t say we have, Provost.’
‘Due back yesterday, wasn’t he?’
‘Or today, Provost. Aeroplanes don’t always run at our exact convenience.’
‘Today is nearly over, Ivor. Today is now this evening.’ He loomed imperious in the dusk, cassock and bands and full-length gown. He was still holding his mortar board above his head, but now replaced it, dead central but tilting slightly downwards, so that one corner pointed straight at Ivor’s throat. Like a Provost in an eighteenth-century print, thought Ivor, but lifesize: a figure comprising the entire English academic tradition, comprising Bentley, Arnold, Jowett, Cornford, Robert Birley and Whipping Keat.
‘Indeed, Provost, the day is far spent, and the night is at hand. But truth will out,’ said Ivor sententiously, ‘even in the darkness.’
‘Will it, Ivor? We shall see. Just remember this: that poor fool, Elvira, is a bungler. Even when she doesn’t bungle, anything she takes up has a way of going wrong. How is she, by the way?’
‘“Well, I thank your Lordship; well, well.” ’
‘Gentlemen in converse,’ said Lord Constable, ‘confine themselves to occasional and strictly relevant quotations. Yours, Ivor, are profuse and dispensable. It is, they say, a sign either of bad nerves or premature senile decay.’
The Provost raised his mortar board to Ivor Winstanley and stalked off into the fenny mist.
Jacquiz, instructed by the twins, stopped the Rolls just South of Gerolimin. The Range Rover stopped behind. All disembarked from both vehicles and gathered in a group between the two, lit by the headlights of the Range Rover.
‘There is a car parked just ahead of us,’ Jacquiz said.
‘Ah,’ said Pandelios.
He went to examine the car and returned.
‘As I thought,’ he said. ‘I have seen lately a young man from Cambridge, the Kyrios Under-Collator Len of Lancaster College. He seems to know something of this matter.’
‘Does he, by God?’ said Jacquiz.
‘How?’ said Balbo.
‘In any case,’ said Pandelios, ‘that car is the one he hired in Kalamata. I saw him driving past in it, with these own eyes, as I came out of the shop with the damn bucket.’
‘There was another present,’ said the boy, David, ‘on the night of the séance in Saint Honorat’s. I was at the end of the electric speaker when he applied for permission with the password. Something, I do not know what, something in my head told me that he had a part to play in what was doing, so I pressed the switch and let him in. This will be he.’
‘Delectable Len,’ said Marigold lubriciously. ‘But there isn’t any sign of him.’
‘Never mind Len,’ said Jacquiz; ‘let’s get on with what we came for.’
The boy and the girl, with torches, led the way slowly down the track, which Len too had taken, towards the sea. The sheep followed behind them like a dog. At their command, Jacquiz and Syd Jones carried the coil of cable between them, Marigold and Pandelios carried the pulley, and Balbo the bucket, which was all but too large for him. The wind had ceased altogether since Len passed that way in the morning, and the squares of cypress ahead of them stood absolutely straight in the light of a three-quarter moon.
‘There are two gates to the place where we are going,’ the boy’s voice floated back to those behind. ‘Only one may be opened from outside, and it is very dangerous. My sister and I shall gain entrance that way, then we shall open the other gate from inside to admit all of you.’
‘Where are we?’ asked Jacquiz.
‘A forgotten port of the Roman Empire of the East. You may see some ruined houses on your left. It was called Ventilitus, the shore of the wind, by the Romans, though some say it was used before by the Phoenicians and had a name in a tongue even older than Greek. Where we are going was once the Roman Governor’s garden.’
David and Rebecca led the party over the wall of cypress on the right. They went through the cypresses, through the other trees inside them, into an open space with bushes and tall dead flowers, which spiked jaggedly into the torchlight. They came to a circle of stones.
David handed his torch to Rebecca, who applied them both while her brother set up the pulley, attached the bucket to the cable, passed the bucket through the circle made by the stones and into the cylindrical shaft which ran down from them into the earth. Rebecca handed one torch to Jacquiz, then slipped neatly down and stood in the bucket, the rim of which cut into the base of her buttocks; her brother got down and stood belly to belly with her.
‘Lower the bucket,’ said the boy to Jacquiz and Jones, ‘until I call out. Then stop; secure the cable, so that the bucket will stay steady at the depth it has reached; and then go to the shore, where the stream runs into the sea. Just before the stream reaches the beach there is a small stone house, with two rooms and no roof. Once a Customs’ House, they say. Wait in the room to the right of the door but keep well clear of the seaward wall. Bring the sheep.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better if one of you stayed to show us the way?’
‘You have the moon and one torch. It is better that Rebecca and I make this entrance together. Sometimes, in the past, it has been necessary, when there was no help, that I should go first and then admit her by the other gate, after she had lowered me. But this they do not like. Of
late they have been changing very much, and I do not wish to risk giving them offence.’
‘Giving whom offence? The Rubies?’
‘Lower, please.’
Very carefully, Jacquiz and Sydney played out the cable through the pulley. The torsos and heads of the children disappeared. The sheep nuzzled Marigold and Pandelios.
‘I wonder what’s in store for you, girl,’ Marigold said.
After some minutes of heavy breathing from Jacquiz and Sydney, a call came from the depths.
‘That is enough. Secure the cable and go.’
Sydney locked the pulley and further secured the unused length of cable by winding it round a tree and knotting it.
‘Bonza job,’ he said.
Jacquiz then led them, with the torch, back through the close-packed ranks of trees and out on to the track. The rest of them followed him (the sheep now in close attendance upon Marigold) down to the beach and then to the right and along it. After seventy yards or so they came to a small, whispering stream. As the boy had said, there was a little stone house beside it, just where bush and thorn gave place to pebbly sand.
They waited in the right-hand room for a long time.
‘What a peaceful night,’ Marigold said.
The sea pattered on to the shore and the moon flashed in the sea. The sheep made a pile of droppings and a small noise as of apology.
‘Granted, I’m sure,’ Marigold said to it.
A stone flag in the floor, very close to the seaward wall, slowly rose.
‘One cannot lift this from outside,’ the boy’s voice said to them softly. ‘It would not do to have an entrance which could be opened from outside and in such an obvious place as this. The other entrance, as you will have deduced, is three-quarters of the way down that well.’
‘Where is delectable Len?’ said Marigold, à propos of nothing.
‘You shall see,’ said the boy. He climbed up into the room. ‘There are steps.’ He pointed at the raised flag. ‘You will go first, Doctor Helmut, with the torch; then Mr Jones, then the Kyrios Pandelios; then Mrs Helmut –’
‘– Marigold –’
‘– Then Mrs Helmut. I shall come last, to make sure that this stone is properly down, and I shall bring the sheep.’
One by one they climbed through the square hole and started down narrow, winding steps.
‘The way down to the Governor’s store rooms and dungeons,’ came the boy’s voice behind them. ‘A Governor of even so small a port as Ventilitus reckoned to make his fortune out of excise.’
The sheep, which was finding the going difficult, made a sharp bleat of disapproval. Jacquiz reached the bottom of the steps and started along a broad, high corridor. Damp streamed down the walls and warm, heavy drops fell on to his head from the ceiling. When he trained his torch up on to it, he saw that it was barrel-vaulted with thickly cracked stone.
‘I have always heard,’ said Pandelios’ voice in answer to his thought, ‘that there is many hot springs and underground streams in bloody Taygetus. They are pissing down my neck now.’
‘Kindly be silent, Kyrie,’ the boy said. ‘We are nearly there.’ The corridor took a bend to the left. The boy came up and joined Jacquiz.
‘Raise your torch, Doctor Helmut.’
A strong arch with elegantly carved Roman letters.
‘The Governor’s Treasury,’ said the boy: ‘appropriate.’
He preceded Jacquiz through the arch. The sheep loitered with Marigold and turned its face into her thighs, but the boy reached back to seize it by the hind legs, whereupon it gave a hideous, pitiful, long-drawn baah –
‘– I knew that sheep was not going to have a nice time, poor darling –’
– and was flung violently forward by the boy.
‘An offering,’ he said. ‘Stand clear and watch.’
Peering through the arch, Jacquiz saw a tall, dim chamber, lit by a burning brand of wood which was held aloft by Rebecca. Round her feet scurried a torrent of little furry creatures, squeaking and scrabbling.
‘The rats guard the necklace for the Guardians,’ said the boy, ‘and have done for many centuries since Andreas Kommingi first hid it here. When we come, we bring them a sheep on which to feast. So they know us, and admit us, as they would none else. They do not like it when we come separately, for they seem to know that our trust is for both of us together.’
‘But is Len in here?’ said Marigold. ‘And is he all right? You did say we’d be seeing him.’
For a moment the boy looked irritated, the first time his face had ever expressed anything so petty, Marigold thought, and he did not answer. Meanwhile the rats scurried on over the floor towards the sheep which was trying in vain (on the slippery stone floor) to struggle to its legs. But as the rats came up to it, the little creatures stopped. They seemed to be looking beyond the sheep at the visitors under the arch. Thousands of little gold eyes stared steadily ahead of them. No squeaks, no scrabbling now; total silence.
‘I think,’ said Balbo, ‘that they have recognized me for what I am, or what I was. They were bound to, I suppose. They must know that I once had grace with them and have now lost it,’ he said, low but clear, ‘either from what they scent in myself, or even’ – he came forward and craned, as if listening – ‘because they have somehow been told that such a one as I might come.’ He paused. ‘Yes, that is it. Word has spread across the whole continent,’ he said in equable tones, ‘that one such as I has been traced to this region. So they are not altogether surprised to see me, and now, with the greatest respect, they will…do what they must with me. They will not, I think, this time,’ he said to the boy, ‘be much interested in your offering of a sheep.’
The front rank of the rats began to edge forward round the sheep. Behind were squadrons more, regiments, whole armies.
‘Do something,’ said Jacquiz to the boy.
But the boy shrugged.
‘I know nothing of this,’ he said.
‘Jesus Christ, won’t some bugger get rid of these bastards,’ shouted Syd Jones. He stepped forward and began to kick at the rats. They leaped nimbly over his shoes, evading but otherwise ignoring him.
‘This cannot be,’ said Pandelios faintly.
The girl held the torch higher. Len, naked, stepped out of the shadows.
The rats hesitated then turned; a swirling mass of cheeping fur.
‘He was here when we came,’ the boy said. ‘I do not understand this. I only know what I have always known. Us, my sister and me, they recognize and admit here. But this is different.’
The rats were crowding back past the sheep and on to where Len stood, poised like a classical Greek statue, left hip above right, right leg slightly bent at the knee joint. There was another flurry.
‘They’re lying down,’ said Marigold.
‘They’re offering their throats,’ said Balbo. ‘That means that they surrender themselves, they obey, they adore, they worship. They offered them to me once…’
‘…And now,’ said Jacquiz, ‘they’re offering them to Len.’
‘He has the Sign,’ said Sydney. ‘I was told how to recognize it. For one thing, look at his forehead.’
Jacquiz took a step forward and flashed his torch on to Len’s face. Len’s forehead was smooth, unlined.
‘It wasn’t like that, not when ’e flew across with me yesterday,’ Pandelios proclaimed.
‘The Sign appears,’ said Jones, ‘in response to their desire that it should appear – if, and only if, a man is worthy.’
‘Do you mind, Jake,’ said Len. ‘That torch is rather bright. Thank you. I think…they somehow called me. I went into a daze and wandered into those trees – and the next thing I knew I’d fallen into that well. They came and got me out, and brought me here. They took off my wet clothes, and dried me, and put me into a sort of bed. And then, when I came to again, I realized.’
He surveyed the carpet of supine rats. Others were scampering from all directions, laying themselves down on top o
f their fellows, till in places they were two or three deep.
‘They have already done this once,’ said Len. ‘Then it was in welcome and in acclamation. Now it is in courtesy. They are asking my permission to go ahead and perform their customary sacrament. With Balbo.’
‘You must forbid them,’ said Jones, S.
Len turned his head, then tilted it as if listening.
‘I’m not sure that I can. You see they’re asking me only as a courtesy, as a formality.’
‘Try.’ Sydney turned to the boy. ‘The Roses? Where are they?’
‘They will be handed to those who now possess them while they perform the rite of releasing my sister and myself.’
‘But which of us is to release you? Which of us counts as possessing the jewels?’
‘Any or all of you that have come here to get them.’
A wild idea crossed Sydney’s mind.
‘Let it be Mr Blakeney.’ And to Len: ‘Ask those creatures to wait.’
Len looked uneasy.
‘They’re not liking it,’ he said. ‘They say – that is, their collective soul says – that it is their custom and duty to consume, in all piety, the man that has been their God but is no longer.’
‘Ask them to wait just while he himself performs another rite, a rite which will increase his value as their victim.’
Len closed his eyes and passed his hands up and down his body. The rats cheeped louder; then their noise diminished, slowly and reluctantly, into a low twittering of provisional consent.
‘It is best,’ said the boy, ‘that there be another as well as Mr Blakeney. My sister and I…before we are released…we must offer ourselves, and be taken. It is easier, I think, for two people to take us than for one. My sister can offer herself to Mr Blakeney; by whom shall I be taken?’
‘By me. For Christ’s sake, by me,’ said Marigold, remembering how the boy had touched her with hand and later with thigh while next to her in the car.
She smiled at Jacquiz.