by Simon Raven
‘All right?’ she said. ‘You know it makes no difference to what we have now. What we’ve begun to have since we started on this search.’
‘It may not,’ said Jacquiz, ‘be quite what you think it will be. With this boy, I mean. But if you’re prepared to risk it…’
‘A boy’s a boy. And what a boy.’
‘Agreed.’
‘You can hold them?’ said Sydney to Len.
‘For a little. Can it help?’
‘I’m playing a long shot.’
More rats from the shadows joined those already massed round Len. There was a renewed cheeping, possibly of the newcomers. Once again, this diminished into a low, general twitter.
‘These rats, I cannot bear the fucking bastards any longer, mother of God,’ Pandelios said. He slumped to the ground.
Balbo went to Pandelios.
‘No, Mr Blakeney. Come here to me,’ the girl said.
Balbo, remembering the caress she had given him when he spoke up for the twins in the car, turned eagerly to her, forgetting for the time his good friend from Heracleion.
‘Mrs Helmut,’ the boy said.
Balbo and Marigold came forward. The boy went briefly into the shadows and came back with a carved wooden box. The girl handed the burning brand which she was holding to Jacquiz, the torch bearer. The boy placed the box on the floor, at the feet of Balbo and Marigold. He opened it. There was a quick flash of red and gold in the light of Jacquiz’ brand. The boy and the girl knelt down, the boy before Marigold, the girl before Balbo. Then both rose, advanced on to Balbo and Marigold, and began to undress them and themselves, the girl assisting the boy with Marigold (and occasionally caressing her intimately), the boy assisting the girl with Balbo (stroking his thighs and buttocks), the girl turning for a moment to strip down her brother’s tights and reveal a perfect (if circumcised) crescent. This she briefly stroked, murmuring to herself, while he, also murmuring, passed his fingers along her cleft.
‘Who are you both?’ said Marigold, trembling. ‘Where will you go when we release you?’
‘I give the Roses of Picardie into your keeping,’ said the boy. Gently and neatly he eased himself into Marigold, who splayed where she stood to receive him.
‘I give the Roses of Picardie into your keeping,’ said the girl. She put her hands on Balbo’s shoulders, coaxed him on to the ground, and lowered herself, cleverly straddling and fingering back her lips, upon him.
‘Jesus Christ,’ howled Marigold, ‘he’s as cold as ice. Ice. Let me go, let me go.’ But the boy held her closely to him and pumped steadily with his buttocks.
Balbo yelled out in pain and tried to throw the girl off him. But she had him trapped and continued to ride him.
‘I can’t hold them any longer,’ called Len, ‘I can’t concentrate any more.’
He began to masturbate savagely, gazing at Marigold as she jerked and wriggled on the boy’s phallus. Already the rats had turned from him. With a sudden hysteria of squeals and yelps they raced across the floor.
Theta and Lambda stood and watched as the last of the Army’s RT equipment was carried out of the South-West Transept of Canterbury Cathedral.
‘No good,’ said Lambda. ‘Not one of them’s stirred in twenty-four hours. Except to examine the bait in the Crypt.’
‘No one will hold you to blame,’ said Theta. ‘I promise you that.’
Theta turned to look at the triple tomb of the Lady Margaret Holland. As he looked a small crevice opened just below the coronet of her second husband and ran slowly and jerkily down to the floor. There was a kind of muffled crunch, and the whole tomb tilted three inches to the right.
So soon, thought Theta: I thought it would take longer. He put his hand in Lambda’s arm and led him thoughtfully away.
‘So they came on with this tremendous rush, millions of them, squealing like banshees. Then suddenly they stopped, cobber, absolutely dead,’ said Sydney Jones to Pandelios (who was being told what had happened after he fainted), ‘and two of the bigger ones came out of the ruck and seemed to kind of detail off a company of about a hundred of the bastards all told. Then the bigger of the two big buggers looked at Len, who was busy beating his meat and gawping at the fornication scene, and Len gave a hopeless shrug, and the company of a hundred ran straight to Balbo, where he was lying on the floor being rogered by this gorgeous girl but yowling with the pain of it. “Cold, so cold,” he kept moaning, just like Marigold. But just as you could have sworn they were about to dismember Balbo under our own eyes, the company split into two. Half of ’em leapt up at the girl without even touching Balbo – and that did move her. She was off his cock in a trice, rolling round on the floor with the rats all over her, on her thighs, on her belly, in her hair, at her ears. And the other half of the squad, bazza, had, gone for the boy – who was out of Marigold in no time and rolling on the ground like his sister. And as they struggled, they both – well, they both kind of cackled…a sort of dreadful, tortured laugh they made, as if they were laughing on the other side of their faces at what was happening to themselves. Then at last the boy, with ten of them at his throat, raised his hand to his sister, who raised hers back, as if they was sort of saluting each other, and called out: “This way too we are released. My duty is done.”
‘“And mine,” she called back.
‘A few seconds later the rats had split their windpipes and that was that for them, but not for the chosen rats, who started in to gorge themselves on the bodies. Len, who had finished abusing himself, watched in a kind of trance. Inside ten minutes those rats had stripped both of ’em clean, bellies and all, after which they rejoined the ranks and were crowded round, as if they were being congratulated and asked what it tasted like. Then all of them, the whole lot, suddenly dribbled away into the darkness and were gone. At this stage, Len came to, and said: “There was something for them in this feast which they would not have had from Balbo. The wisdom of centuries. They understood that just in time.” ’
Syd Jones permitted himself a brief smirk of self-congratulation.
‘“The inherited wisdom of centuries,” Jacquiz kept insisting.
‘“But even so,” said Len, “they would have had Balbo too – had not the essence of his virtue passed into the girl at their joining. As it is, having absorbed him through her, they will not worry Balbo any more.” ’
‘What about the Rubies?’ Pandelios said.
‘Come and look.’
Balbo led Pandelios out of his hotel bedroom and along a corridor.
‘Where are we?’ said Pandelios.
‘Sparta. We knew there was a comfortable Xenia here, so we drove up this morning. You were asleep. You hardly knew it even when we put you to bed.’
Syd knocked on a door.
‘Come in,’ called Jacquiz’ voice.
Jacquiz was standing by a window, looking out on to a little clump of fir trees. Balbo and Marigold were sitting on the bed. Between them was the wooden box which the boy had produced the previous night. On the sides, Pandelios saw, were carved little semicircular ships, which sailed through curly billows. The lid was up. Pandelios could not see what was on the outside of the lid, but on its inside were more ships, caiques, sailing from an island on the shore of which tiny figures shook fists and brandished swords. Below this scene, in the box itself, lay a bright yellow chain to which were attached, by crystal pendants, several stones of sullen red.
‘The gold is gold and the Rubies are rubies still,’ Jacquiz said from the window. ‘Perhaps the boy’s assumption, that his release and that of his sister would mean an end of the Curse, was unfounded. It needs that the Curse should die, you remember, before the Rubies turn to glass. Perhaps, despite their death, the Curse remains.’
‘Look here,’ said Jones, S. ‘That boy was very clear that the Curse was associated with him and his sister. They, and their ancestors, have administered the Curse since it began: how can it survive without them?’
‘Because they will have issue,’ said Marigold. ‘T
hat boy… discharged himself into me just before the rats came. “My duty is done,” he said, just before he died. And it had been done. I felt an icy flood where before there had been an icy dagger, thrusting. There will be twins: David and Rebecca; Jewish twins for me to rear with my Jewish husband, who is not, who cannot be, their father.’
Jacquiz, by the window, nodded, accepting her entire statement.
‘They were weary,’ said Balbo, ‘but they had sworn an oath–’
‘– Their ancestors had sworn an oath,’ insisted Jacquiz. ‘– And they knew it must be kept,’ said Marigold. ‘So they tricked us with this tale of release to them and an end of the Rubies. They, perhaps, are indeed released, at any rate for a time; but they have left the Rubies to Balbo and me, their paramours, and they have left the Curse, which lies dormant, but only for a while, in my womb.’
‘How can you know this?’ Pandelios said.
‘We know it,’ said Balbo. ‘When you have coupled with the living dead, as we have, you understand their will. Marigold will be mother to the new twins; Jacquiz, appropriately a Jew, will be in name their father; and I, having been joined with the girl, Rebecca, will be their godfather. Godfather? Father in Satan. For the girl too has done her duty, as she claimed. For all the pain of it, I left my seed in her, and so there is a bond, a bond between me and whatever Marigold may bring forth.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Syd. ‘You mean…almost as if your seed has passed through her to him and into Marigold.’
‘Succubus and incubus?’ said Jacquiz from the window.
‘Something of the kind; morally if not physically.’
Pandelios and Sydney, assuming all this to be a temporary disorder brought on by the events of the night, did not attempt to argue any more. Jacquiz brooded by the window. Eventually Pandelios said: ‘Where’s that Len?’
‘He drove back to Kalamata to fly home,’ said Jacquiz. ‘He has business in Cambridge with those notes of Balbo’s. At least he should be able to bring Constable to heel.’
‘Apart from all that,’ said Syd Jones, ‘what was actually in those notes?’
‘I told you in Arles, said Balbo. ‘Information and suggestions which might have enabled anyone who followed them up to produce just such a strain of rats as are now, it seems, infesting Canterbury. A durable strain which could eat through old bones…which could eat through a stone fabric that carried, after many centuries, the savour of death.’
‘Surely,’ said Jones, ‘now that Len is enjoying their favour, he could get them out of Canterbury?’
‘Perhaps. That is no longer my concern. My concern lies here.’ Balbo touched Marigold’s belly.
‘What shall you do with the Roses?’ said Sydney. ‘To whom do they rightly belong?’
‘God knows,’ said Jacquiz. ‘We shall place them for keeping with the FitzWilliam Museum in Cambridge. The matter will be made known and claimants may come forward if they wish.’
‘There will be no claimants,’ said Marigold. ‘The Roses belong to Balbo and me. But since it will please Jacquiz, and since I have come to bear great charity towards him, I have said, and Balbo has agreed, that he may present them to the FitzWilliam Museum as his gift, on condition that Mr Pandelios, who has been so kind to Balbo and put him in funds for the search, is named as co-donor.’
‘I shall be most heartily honoured,’ said Pandelios, flushing with pleasure.
‘You too, Sydney,’ said Balbo: ‘you can be a co-donor.’
‘Good on you, sport. But that wouldn’t go down at all smooth in Jermyn Street,’ said Syd Jones. ‘I shall go to Cambridge and look at ’em often, Balbo; look at ’em and remember.’
‘They may as well be there as anywhere else,’ Marigold said. She stroked her stomach. ‘Though what these may think remains to be seen.’
‘Very well,’ said Constable to Ivor and Len. ‘I yield. I give you the terms you ask for. Ivor to be re-elected a Fellow; Jacquiz Helmut to remain in the College, when he returns at the end of his Sabbatical, on his present footing; Balbo Blakeney to be in some way reinstated – perhaps as Fellows’ Steward; and you, Mr Under-Collator, to be free to depart with your monetary gains and The Wandrille Georgics at the end of the academic year.’
‘Very civil of you, Provost,’ said Ivor.
‘And now everything is so agreeably settled,’ said Len, ‘there is one question I long to ask. When you had copied Balbo’s notes, all those years ago, to whom did you in fact send them?’
‘Although I have outraged all canons of academic and social decency,’ said Lord Constable, ‘although I did indeed pirate Balbo’s notes, I am not a traitor. I sent those notes where conscience and duty bade me – to the appropriate department of the British Labour Government of the day, where Balbo, black reactionary as he was, would never have placed them.’
‘Did you ever hear what use was made of them?’
‘For obvious reasons, I sent them anonymously. But much later on, inquiring in a roundabout way, I did hear that my contribution had been considered indecipherable by all the scientists to whom it was shown and had been used, in that lean period, to light an Under-Secretary’s fire. I dare say,’ said Constable, ‘that I was an incompetent copyist. It is one more lesson to us all not to interfere in matters which we do not understand.’
Theta was speaking to somebody very superior indeed on the security telephone.
‘And so, sir,’ Theta was saying, ‘it appears that there is now another forlorn hope. We positively know of another man who has been granted the kind of Grace or Godhead with which Blakeney was formerly endowed… A graduate student, sir, of Lancaster College, Cambridge, and Under-Collator of the Manuscripts there. One of my own agents, junior but highly trustworthy, was present, on a singular occasion in Greece, when the said Under-Collator received the obeisance and at least partial obedience of a huge number of rats in the cellar of a ruined house on the coast of the Mani… Yes, sir. I can vouch for the total integrity of my agent, and I believe the story he has told me. The question now must be, do we give the Under-Collator a trial at Canterbury? Do we invite him, as we would have invited Blakeney, to try to exert his authority over those creatures in order to expel them from the Cathedral?… That, sir, I cannot answer. He definitely had some control, if not total, over the rodents of the Mani; whether he would have the same influence over the rodents in Canterbury is, I agree, another matter.’
Theta now listened for some minutes. At the end of them he said, ‘Yes, sir, I understand.’ Then he put down the receiver and looked steadily at Jones, Q, Lambda and Len, who were sitting in a semicircle in front of him.
‘Change of policy,’ he said. ‘Quite logical in all the circumstances, I suppose. Economic and probably effective.’
There was silence along the semicircle.
‘Since it is plain,’ said Theta, ‘that no one can guarantee to remove those creatures from the Cathedral in order that they may be destroyed by the troops outside it, and since they must be destroyed before they reproduce themselves to an uncontainable number, it is clear that they must be destroyed where they are. In situ.’
‘But,’ began Lambda, ‘there is no known poison that will –’
‘Precisely,’ said Theta bleakly. ‘So there are only two things for it. Explosion or combustion. Since explosions are too haphazard, the rats must be burnt out, by troops with flame-throwers both within and without, burnt out inch by inch, down through the Crypt and into the tombs, beneath the tombs and into the earth far below.’
‘Even so,’ said Lambda, ‘some might escape.’
‘Not very many. A controllable number, wherever they go next.’
‘But this operation is impossible,’ said Q, ‘without destroying the foundations of the whole Cathedral and therefore the building itself.’
Theta nodded. There was a light, bright gleam of a tear in Syd Jones’ eye.
‘When you played on the County Ground in Canterbury,’ he said, ‘you always knew it was there. You
couldn’t quite see it from the ground, but you knew it was there. It won’t be the same, playing at Canterbury without it.’
‘You won’t be playing at Canterbury,’ said Len, not unkindly. ‘Not any more.’
‘I s’pose not.’
‘They might have given me a chance,’ said Len. ‘I might have got them out without destroying the Cathedral.’
‘After our last failure,’ said Theta, ‘they are in no mind to fiddle about. Orders have already been given. Irreversible orders. It is now necessary, you see, on every possible count, to act very swiftly indeed…before there is some serious public accident, or before the rats leave of their own accord, not to be slaughtered while they escape, as they would have been during Falx, but at liberty to infest more and more churches and cathedrals, more and more (as they breed) of the country at large.’
‘So that’s it,’ Len said.
‘As far as we public servants are concerned. Not quite, Mr Under-Collator, as far as you are concerned. Although my correspondent on the telephone was sceptical about your – er – qualifications, he is inclined to concede that your position vis à vis the rodents is in some way privileged or special. He therefore thinks it important to procure your…let us say, discreet good will. He is prepared to reward you quite handsomely for how shall I put it?…simply and entirely ceasing to interest yourself in the matter. I dare say you will find the terms acceptable.’
‘I can quite easily,’ said Len, ‘find a lot of other interests. But I think I should warn you: those rats out in Greece – I reckon they’re beginning to go the same way, I got a feel of something very worrying in their minds – their corporate mind, rather – when they made…the choice which they did make. Old bones,’ he said aside to Jones, S, who nodded. ‘And once it starts spreading on the continent,’ Len mused, ‘it may not be easy to stop.’
‘We’ll have stopped it here at any rate,’ said Lambda. ‘As for Europe,’ he said, laughing raucously, ‘let those damned foreigners take care of their own bloody rats.’
Extract from Peterborough Daily Telegraph, 2 January 1975: