In The Image of God

by Simon Raven

  ‘Of love,’ said Jeremy; ‘or so we may hope.’

  ‘Of temptation,’ said Jean-Marie. ‘I tell you, ma chèrie, that if you are to stay here with us, you must hear no more voices.’

  ‘How can Oenone help hearing voices if they speak to Oenone? Always, Poppa, after you speak, they speak.’

  ‘Then I shall speak to you no more,’ her father said.

  ‘You must. Or Oenone will hate you. Help me put my nightie on.’

  After a lot of clumsy fumbling with the garment both by Jeremy and Jean-Marie, the nightdress descended over Oenone’s innocent form. She climbed into the little bed beneath the crucifix of the rood-screen. Without another word she closed her eyes.

  Milo Hedley went to see Dean ffoliott-Hume of Trinity, a man gross yet dandified, with a face like that of an adult and disillusioned cherub.

  ‘“My master hath need of me,”’ Milo quoted Raisley Conyngham: ‘“prithee, sir, let me go.”’

  Ffoliott-Hume looked shaken, then wobbled all over.

  ‘Has your Master any message for me?’ he enquired.

  ‘No, sir. Only the request I have just spoken in my own behalf.’

  ‘He never has need of me now,’ whined ffoliott-Hume. ‘Not for seventeen years has he had need of me.’ He started to cry in rather a feeble way, as though his favourite aunt had died and had not, despite her promises, left him any money. ‘Then go to your Master,’ he said through his sobs: ‘return by mid-April; until then you may serve your Master with my blessing.’

  As Milo approached the door, ffoliott-Hume added, snivelling and dribbling, ‘You may serve him with your whole heart now, but in the end he will abandon you, if it suits him, just as he has abandoned me. He abandons even the most loyal of his servants.’

  I wonder whether he will abandon Marius, thought Milo, hope rising.

  ‘Thank you, Dean,’ he said to ffoliott-Hume: ‘thank you for the tip.’

  ‘Jean-Marie Guiscard,’ said Jeremy to Carmilla, as they walked in the winter woods round Barbazon the morning after Jo-Jo’s dinner at St-Girons and Jeremy’s conversation with Oenone and her father, ‘Jean-Marie Guiscard has written several passable books.’

  ‘He rates pretty fair as an amateur scholar,’ said Carmilla with condescension.

  ‘His best was probably the one about the Castle at Arques,’2 said Jeremy: ‘He has – or had – a deft way of dealing with the occult, of making it appear more or less natural, at worst a nuisance or an inconvenience rather than something horrible or perverse.’

  ‘And so?’ Carmilla said.

  ‘He is now studying the Cathars. But this time he is not treating the occult lightly and deftly, he is making heavy weather, black heavy weather. I know this because Oenone…whom I have known well from the time she was a baby…took me into her confidence and told of some of the things which Jean-Marie has been saying. She also claims that there are “other voices”, which begin when Jean-Marie ceases and say even more macabre things than he does. But I think she imagines this – or perhaps wishes to attribute the foul things that are said to someone other than her father, of whom she is obviously fond.’

  ‘What…foul things?’

  ‘Suggestions of incest and ritual manipulation of corpses in their coffins; the dismantling of cadavers to provide magic objects, and to preserve the strength and prosperity of the dead to assist the domus or household to a prosperous future. This is what Jean-Marie and “the voices” have been talking of to Oenone. As I say, I think “the voices” are merely the voice of Jean-Marie which probably becomes more excited or agitated as his discourse continues, giving Oenone an excuse to predicate a spokesman other than her father.’

  ‘Does Oenone understand these things?’ Carmilla asked. ‘She has heard a lot of things, which little girls do not usually hear, from her mother and her mother’s lover, Isobel Stern. She is evidently conscious that even very little girls can exercise some kind of physical enticement; when going to bed last night she showed herself off to me and her father.’

  ‘Which,’ said Carmilla, ‘is all very ill for Oenone and not much help to us. I thought it was a mistake to come here so soon, without further consideration.’

  ‘The only mistake would be to despond so soon. You remember what Glastonbury had to say on that Christmas card which was intended for Raisley Conyngham but was sent by mistake to our old “Chamberlain” at Luffham?’

  ‘Something about Red Gold and Black Tombs?’

  ‘Right. Jean-Marie speaks of “Black Tombs” or “Coffins”, with small black images on the inside, near where the head would rest. He thinks these coffins were those of “Black” Cathars, i.e. those that had chosen to follow and adore the “Satan-God”, as opposed to “White” Cathars who obeyed the “Good God” of Heavenly Light. He had theories about what “Red Gold” could mean in this context…’

  ‘The trouble with all this stuff of Jean-Marie’s,’ said Piero Caspar over luncheon in the hotel at Barbazon, ‘is this: he posits a Devil who is not only de facto et de jure the equal of God but one who may also succeed in overcoming him. But any such total victory must surely be highly improbable, given equality and co-eternity (that is, an equality which has already lasted for an eternity) in the subjects in question. The probability, even the certainty, must be that they will remain evenly balanced, neither of them finally victorious over the other nor indeed wishing to be (for has not equality suited them very well for the Eternity past), for all the Eternity to come, i.e. forever. This means that a human being can choose between them without fear of penalty. This, in turn, makes the rules very different from those which govern, for example, Black Magic. Black Magicians perpetrate their evil in the name of a perpetually subordinate Devil, probably a disgraced archangel or seraph. The satisfaction that the practitioners of Black Magic obtain lies in slaking their hatred of the Good and Beautiful and Supreme God by occasionally bringing off annoying forays into his domain. Such practitioners are doomed and know themselves to be so. There is therefore something heroic (no matter how perverse) in their endeavours.

  ‘Now Catharism, on the other hand, has always made things easy for its adherents. Even in its early days, when the Good God of Light was considered by Cathars to be incontestably superior and the Devil or Satan merely a noisome creature of material temptation – even then you were still allowed, by the tenets of the Cathar belief, to spend your life among diabolical and fleshly pleasures but at the last to repent, with the assistance of a so-called “perfect, parfait or perfectus”, on your death bed, after which you would go unscathed to your reward with the God of Spiritual Light in Heaven. Among later Cathars things were made even easier. No need, now, of death-bed repentance, with the lifelong risk of falling suddenly under a bus, so to speak, and having no opportunity to repent. Repentance was quite beside the point. All you had to do was choose whether to support the Satanic God or the Spiritual God, and whichever you chose would take care of you forever.’

  ‘You are forgetting one thing,’ said Fielding Gray. ‘From first to last all Cathars were hunted down and burned at the stake by the Inquisition and the agents of orthodox Catholicism. This at least Cathars had in common with Black Magicians and Witches. And again, however different the theory, the Satanic Cathars did, in effect, adopt practices and customs very similar to those of classical Witchcraft.’

  ‘Enough of your theories,’ said Carmilla. ‘Where does all this lead us?’

  ‘It must lead us,’ said Jeremy, ‘to the Black Tombs and Coffins, those marked with the little black figure who is kneeling (to judge from Oenone’s description) both in adoration and with thighs splayed in lust. Now, in the graveyards of this part of France there is often, though not always, an area of early graves and of loose and scattered sarcophagi, exhumed or exposed for various reasons but in any case now vulnerable to interference and inspection. There are not so many here in Barbazon and St-Bertrand-de-Comminges because, as Jesty Hyphen told Carmilla and Piero, this is very much the border o
f Cathar country, not the heartland. I suggest investigation of tombs and coffins, here and elsewhere. I also suggest that if we can locate a typical domus or family house of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, we have a very close look at that.’

  ‘Shall we go to Foix?’ said Fielding. ‘Or Ax-les-Thermes? Or Pamiers?’

  ‘I have been reading an interesting book,’ said Piero, ‘by a Frenchman (not Jean-Marie Guiscard) and called Montaillou. It deals with the period that most concerns us – the early to mid-fourteenth century, by which time the doctrine of an equal dualism between Satan-God and Good-God was well established. I have here a note of a passage which intrigued me…a quotation from a Cathar preacher who was addressing the shepherds of Montaillou, not, of course, in the church: “Satan entered into the Kingdom of the Father,” said this preacher, “and told the Spirits of that Kingdom that he, the Devil, owned a much better Paradise. ‘Spirits, I will bring you into my world,’ said Satan, ‘and I shall give you oxen, cows, riches and a wife for company…’” You see?’ said Piero, neatly dissecting a pigeon. ‘Easy access from the Earthly Paradise to the Spiritual one. No hostility on either side. Satan, boastful but not overweening, clearly planning nothing much against God except to win over a few of his adherents, fearing nothing from him though on his territory… If these were the kind of views that obtained in Montaillou in 1300 or thereabouts, it might be a suitable place for us to begin our research.’

  ‘Does Montaillou still exist?’ asked Fielding Gray.

  ‘A ruin in the mountains near Prades,’ Piero said, ‘not far from an attractive watering-place called Molitq-les-Bains. If we could find a Cathar domus there…or a Black Coffin buried on or near the premises…’

  ‘What could they tell us?’ said Carmilla.

  ‘They could tell us whatever they told Raisley Conyngham,’ said Jeremy, ‘during his various expeditions among these ruins or those like them. They could point us in whatever direction, and towards whatever enormity, they pointed him.’

  ‘How very agreeable,’ said Fielding Gray. ‘A picnic in the hills tomorrow, near Montaillou. It will make a change from this pretentious dining room. But a teeny bit chilly at this time of the year?’

  ‘We can eat in the car,’ said Piero. ‘The batteries are specially charged for such an emergency!’

  ‘All these towns of pilgrimage,’ said Raisley Conyngham to Milo Hedley, ‘have the same dreary texture made up of middle-class humbug mixed with puerile credulity. Lisieux, Rocamadour, Assisi… However seemly the town may be (as with Assisi) or unseemly (as with Lisieux), there is the same underlying and unpalatable moral gristle – the same stupidity and ignorance, the same mistrust of secular knowledge and worldly grace. I verily believe, however, that Lourdes is the most distasteful of all such places. The whole spirit of Lourdes is symbolized by the mass-produced plastic madonna –’

  ‘– Or the souvenir statuette of some witless peasant girl rendered visionary,’ said Milo, ‘by non-stop masturbation while watching her sheep.’

  ‘Do not elaborate overmuch, Milo. Now then. Our prey. The hunters who will themselves be hunted. They are interested in Raisley Conyngham the Albigensian, the dabbler in Catharism. They think, you see, that he dabbled until his fingers reached filth which he then stirred vigorously in order to see what hideous creatures would emerge from it. Perhaps they are not so wrong (in their own terms) as all that.’

  They came to a roundabout. Raisley selected the road to Pau. They drove out of the dismal suburbs of Lourdes, passing some cowed foothills of the Pyrenees which were over to their left.

  ‘Pau?’ said Milo. ‘We are going away from what is called the action. They will be directing their attention to known Cathar districts – Tarascon or Junac or Sarbathès.’

  ‘Indeed they will, Milo. And in all of those places I have agents or correspondents who will make sure that there is a satisfactory (though never spectacular) show for them. Tasteless vulgarity must be avoided: just enough material provided to tempt the seekers on to the next stage. My correspondents know all about that. They have been sought out, sought out and tested over many years, Milo, during long periods in 1955 and 1956 or in 1975 and ’76, during shorter periods, visits of two or three days or even just a few hours, of which Carmilla and the rest know nothing. All my agents know and love their subject; they will appreciate exactly how much to exhibit to that overgrown hoyden, Carmilla Salinger, and her pack of chums…who for all the world resemble a gang of children in a tale by Enid Blyton.’

  ‘Who are these correspondents, these agents?’ Milo said.

  ‘The keepers of the Cathar faith. It is not to be supposed that a movement once so powerful and numerous is now entirely defunct. They are the men and women who saw me searching when I first came here with good old Jesty Hyphen, and they have helped me to search ever since. Wherever Carmilla & Co. may take themselves, Milo, to Ax-les-Thermes or Prades or Carcassone, or even into Andorra, they will find courteous guides to help them to what they wish to see – just enough of it, Milo, not faked but tailored to suit their taste. Meanwhile, you and I can have a pleasant walk on the Promenade at Pau, admiring the distant peaks and watching the local stalwarts play Pelota on the court below the terrace; and later on we might take tea in the Casino and, greatly daring, try a little roulette.’

  ‘The most important part of a domus, or ostal as it was called in the vernacular,’ said Piero, ‘was the inner kitchen where they kept the fire – the sacred fire which must on no account be extinguished. There were rooms adjacent where they slept, two or three to a room, to a bed if necessary. When somebody died, his body would be placed in an open coffin beside the sacred fire in the kitchen.’

  The walls which divided the kitchen from the outer rooms and these in turn from the open air were now six inches high. A lugubrious guide held an umbrella over Carmilla as wisps of snow quivered round her amply trousered form.

  ‘The fire would have been about here,’ said the guide, pointing to the centre of the ‘kitchen’. ‘There was no hearth, no chimney – or not here in Montaillou. Perhaps in richer or more elegant towns –’

  ‘And so the coffin would have been laid just here,’ said Piero, ‘to the east of the fire.’

  ‘With the head by the fire?’ suggested Fielding Gray, ‘so that if the corpse raised its head it could, theoretically, look towards Jerusalem?’

  ‘A black Cathar would surely wish to look away from Jerusalem,’ said Jeremy Morrison.

  ‘I do not know whether such niceties were considered,’ Piero said. ‘I can simply tell you that the coffin was normally laid to the east of the fire, and that in the case of a black Cathar the coffin would be marked inside, near the head, with a little black figure, as Oenone explained to Jeremy the other night. Hair, nails, possibly one testicle or even both – sometimes the entire ensemble of privata – would be cut away from the corpse to be preserved and ensure the future prosperity and good fortune of the domus or ostal.’

  ‘That might also be done,’ articulated the guide primly, ‘even with a white Cathar who worshipped the Good God, though in the latter case probably only hair and nails would be taken, not the genitalia.’

  ‘The coffin would then be sealed,’ said Piero, ‘and taken out for burial. Possibly the coffin would be placed inside a larger sarcophagus. There were many lying around even then – Roman, you see. Or the body would be taken from the coffin and placed in a sarcophagus, and the sarcophagus marked inside with the little black pin-man (like a primitive cave drawing) adoring and concupiscent. Possibly the sarcophagus would be entombed, if the family was rich, in a vault; or the coffin would be concealed somewhere, if no sarcophagus, Roman or other, was handy. In case of extreme poverty, the body might be buried without the coffin and the coffin kept for future use.’

  ‘How do you come to know so much?’ said Fielding Gray. ‘I’ve been reading that book of yours – Montaillou – and there’s nothing like this in it.’

  ‘I am extrapolating from the cus
toms of my own country,’ Piero said.

  ‘You must not use the word “extrapolate”,’ Carmilla told him. ‘It is vulgar jargon, used by louts from the Midlands universities.’

  ‘Forgive a poor bloody foreigner,’ Piero smiled thinly then said to the guide, ‘Do we know where the burial ground was?’

  ‘By the church, signore,’ said the guide, who had spotted that Piero Caspar was Sicilian long before he had apologized for being a foreigner. ‘It is, in the words of the English poet, Tennyson, “A broken chancel with a broken cross”; but just as in Tennyson’s poem, around it “There lie the mighty bones of ancient men”. Or at least, if their bones weren’t mighty (for we are taught that ancient men were often of puny build) their tombs were. There is one huge Roman sarcophagus of the kind of which you spoke, inside which are the remains of a coffin of wood, inside which (in turn) is a small tablet. There are no bones or human remains of any kind, but you may find the tablet of great interest. In this case, for whatever reason, the little black pin-man of which you speak was traced, not on the side of the coffin or the sarcophagus, but on the tablet.’

  They trudged through whirling snow and stony soil. The church (or rather chapel) was roofless, the west door surmounted by a crude Romanesque tympanum. Not far from this door lay a sarcophagus of which one side and both ends were blank, but the remaining side was carved, in low relief, with a file of ghosts (distinguished as such by grave-clothes) who were led by Hermes with his wand as they cavorted gaily towards a satyr seated on a tree trunk. The satyr was affectionately teaching an eager and unclothed ephebe to play the lyre, while at the same time looking up civilly to greet the arrival of Hermes and the mob in his charge.

  The lid of the sarcophagus was leaning against the outer wall of the chapel. The guide leant over one side of the sarcophagus and fished about among some strips and slivers of rotten wood. Eventually he produced a small tablet of rough marble.