September Castle

by Simon Raven

  ‘Why take him in the first place?’

  ‘Must have someone to look after my gear on the way down, you know.’

  Ptolemaeos opened and shut his mouth, like a fish.

  ‘Now, now, Canteloupe,’ said Baby, coming to the rescue, ‘that’s just silly. You know very well that poor old Corporal of yours would only be in the way, quite apart from the fact he’s gone potty. An ex-soldier from Canty’s old regiment,’ she explained to Ptolemaeos and Jo-Jo, ‘a terrific old darling and as loyal as the Flag itself, but he went funny a few years back, when Canty succeeded, and insisted on being called the Chamberlain of the Household. Not what we need on this sort of an outing.’

  ‘Then who’ll take care of my gear on the way down?’ grumbled Canteloupe. ‘And who’ll explain it all to Barraclough?’

  ‘I shall,’ said Baby, patting his head very gently. ‘I’ll do Jeeves until Barraclough shows up. You know I’m jolly good at it, and it gives you a nice feeling to order me about. As if I was his study fag at school,’ she said aside to Jo-Jo. ‘Gibbs Minimus. He once called me that by mistake.’

  ‘How sweet.’

  ‘So that’s settled,’ said Ptolemaeos, holding up a regal hand to quell the girls’ chatter. ‘You meet Ivan at Saint-Gilles, you travel north with him through France, you give him an absolute guarantee of respectability and raison d’être – and at Dieppe he busies himself unnoticed with…with what he must then do. Later, when he gives the word, you cross the water for home, possibly with Ivan, possibly without him but with…whatever he entrusts you withal.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘You know,’ said Canteloupe, ‘you’ve been pretty clear about everything except the one thing a fellow wants to know. What, just what, might Barraclough be going to entrust to us… withal?’

  Ptolemaeos’ eyes dilated, then contracted and started to glint.

  ‘First let me recap the history for you,’ he said.

  ‘You told us all that at the start.’

  ‘It is important you should have it at your fingers’ tips, down to the very last detail I can dispense.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Canteloupe wearily. ‘Re-run the history.’

  ‘In the spring of the year 1255 an important Greek baron, Phaedron of Ilyssos, Lord Paramount of the Mani, agreed to give his daughter, the Despoina Xanthippe, into the keeping of the Villehardouin Prince, William of Achaea, as a surety for his good behaviour. Had Phaedron refused to do this, William intended to go down in the Mani and dispossess him. As William had a very powerful following and would almost certainly have succeeded, Phaedron toed the line and passed over Xanthippe. Prince William then despatched her to a Villehardouin Castle in Normandy, and notified Phaedron that it was at least possible that an advantageous match might be arranged for her. All right so far?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Canteloupe, ‘except that I don’t quite see why she had to be sent all the way to Normandy.’

  ‘William was keen to marry her to a Norman vassal and cousin of his, called Henri Martel, Sire de Longueil, a small fief near the Castle of Arques – the very Castle in which he was going to park Xanthippe, so that she should be nice and handy for wooing and wedding. This Martel was a poor relation and a constant embarrassment, even at a distance, and William hoped to mend all that by handing him Xanthippe on a plate – and with her a fat dowry from her Daddy’s treasure chamber, which was stuffed with the loot of generations of pirates.’

  ‘And this was the “advantageous” match which William was holding out to Phaedron?’

  ‘Yes. And advantageous it certainly was. This Henri Martel might be rather low on ready money, but he was a descendant of Charlemagne and had the noblest blood in Europe in his veins. Not at all a bad cop for a little Miss from the Mani.

  ‘Now, all this we know from the Chronicle of Avallon, which was related to a monk at Vezelay by Hubert of Avallon, the chap who accompanied Xanthippe from Glarentza. According to Hubert, her father had sent her off in rare style. Six ladies-in-waiting, trunks full of expensive kit on a squadron of donkeys, and a bodyguard 200 strong to bring her up from Ilyssos to William’s castle at Mistra, where she was officially handed over to William and then fêted for a whole week.

  ‘From Mistra Lord Geoffery of Bruyère took her on to his castle at Karyteina, and thence to Glarentza, where Hubert of Avallon took her over, sailed with her by the devious route we have spoken of to Palermo and Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, and brought her over land, by way of Saint-Gilles, Albi, Angoulême, Poitiers, Tours and Rouen, to the Castle of Arques. There she arrived in mid-September of the same year, 1255, and was placed by Hubert in the care of the Castellan, a long service and good conduct hack on the Villehardouin pay roll.’

  ‘And then, I suppose,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘round came grotty Henri de Longueil with his tongue hanging out.’

  ‘He came to pay his respects…and barely had time to do so before she pined away and died. The news reached Phaedron in Ilyssos on Christmas Day, by which time she had been dead, according to the messenger, for something over two months. Someone composed an epitaph, in which he expressed the wish that the Lady’s soul might return to her own country… “for desire whereof she sickened in her heart and perished” …and there is also a ballad on the subject written by – guess whom – none other than poor grotty Henri, who turns out to be a considerable minor poet, in his fashion. I’ve got a copy here,’ he said, passing it to Jo-Jo. ‘Rather your sort of a read.’

  ‘None of which is making any clearer to me,’ said Canteloupe, ‘what Barraclough is looking for and what, in consequence, he may entrust us…withal.’

  ‘I have told you that Xanthippe had six ladies-in-waiting and a mountain of gear. Somewhere in all that lot there was, or at least there subsequently appeared, a special item of which one special attendant had very special charge.’

  ‘A special attendant?’ said Jo-Jo, looking up from the ballad. ‘You mean one of the six ladies?’

  Ptolemaeos laughed rather awkwardly.

  ‘There is some obscurity on that point,’ he said. ‘The matter has been, as they say, fudged.’

  ‘How fudged?’ said Baby.

  ‘Well, the main text of the Chronicle ceases with the following passage.’ Ptolemaeos opened a note book and read aloud to them: ‘“At the Lady’s wish I lingered at the Castle of Arques, to be of what cheer I could to her, for we had had much adventure and merriment together on our journey. But now that this journey, with its perils and its wonders, was behind her and she was mewed in this said Castle of Arques, far from her father and her home of Illyssos by the fair dancing waves of the sea, the poor Lady did sink with sadness. Messer Henri Martel did come to pay her court, but this gladdened her not – the greater pity, as he was a comely youth of good parts and quick understanding.” Then he goes on to say that Henri, for his part, didn’t care much for the Despoina, so that it was all no good anyway. But Henri hung about for a bit, trying to get something done for the poor girl – he was sorry for her, if nothing else – all to no purpose. “After the second time he came to her she would not receive him, nor could her maidens nor the Castellan nor I myself persuade her thereto. She neither ate nor drank nor took any pleasure in any wise; ever did she fade before our eyes, and was gone from us before the last leaves fell, as sweet a damsel as ever trod this earth, being scarce turned eighteen years.

  ‘“Her body they buried near the chapel of the Castle. Her Treasure and its Guardian did stay with her. Her ladies the noble Henri Mattel (who had made a ballade of her death) did escort back to Romanie, he being eager of adventure and strange lands, whereof he might devise new rhymes.”

  ‘You see,’ said Ptolemaeos. ‘“Her Treasure and Its Guardian.” “Thesauros et Custos” in the monk’s Latin. God knows what they were called in Hubert’s old French. Or perhaps he dictated in Latin, and the words were his. Anyway, “Her Treasure and Its Guardian” is the best that I can do. That is how the special item and its attendant are always described. No
rmally the phrase is easily construed as meaning one special item which one lady was detailed to take care of. But what can it mean here? “Her Treasure and Its Guardian did stay with her.” As I say, the thing is fudged. Stay with her where? In the chapel? In a shrine near her tomb perhaps? The Guardian now taking on the job of a caretaker as well? One of the ladies, as normally? But they all went back to Romany with Henri Martel. Yet did they? Did they all go? Hubert says “her ladies”; he does not say how many. Perhaps one or more stayed behind.’

  ‘Or perhaps they didn’t,’ chuckled Baby, ‘so then who or what did?’

  ‘What you’re saying,’ said Canteloupe, ‘is that something special came to Arques in little Xanthippe’s luggage, something special with its own attendant or guardian and that this is what Barraclough and you are after now?’

  ‘Right. And now is the word. It’s time to pick it up now, because now we know as much about it as we ever shall (though I still hope Ivan may come up with an extra tip or two on the strength of his journey) and it may not be there much longer.’

  ‘But what makes you think,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘that it still is? Hundreds of people must have read that Chronicle. Are you going to tell me that this treasure – whatever it may be – has been left undisturbed all these centuries?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you know?’ rapped Baby.

  ‘Special information. What you might call an Appendix to the Chronicle.’

  ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘No,’ said Ptolemaeos, very sternly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It might…trouble you. Just let’s say that a special Appendix, to which I alone have access, puts me in possession of special clues and special knowledge.’

  ‘I’m getting rather tired of that adjective,’ said Baby. ‘Everything in this affair seems to be “special”, one way or the other. And you most of all.’

  ‘Precisely so,’ grinned Ptolemaeos. ‘For unlike anyone else, except Ivan, I know what the Lady’s treasure was. It wasn’t just any little trinket, as you might assume from reading the Chronicle – something she made a silly, girly fuss about and insisted on appointing a joke Guardian for. The Special Appendix, the special knowledge which neither I nor anyone else was ever supposed to come by, tells me what it was, what it is, and what it’s worth. Believe me, it’s worth having.’

  ‘And the Guardian?’

  ‘That’s rather the problem,’ Ptolemaeos said. ‘It’s also the reason why it’s still there in the Castle. The Guardian has kept it safe. Most people assume that it, the Treasure, was some trivial but moderately valuable toy which has vanished with time and was probably pilfered. I know that it is still there, and I know why.’

  ‘Because of this Guardian,’ said Baby, like a good girl who repeats her lesson correctly but thinks it rather a silly one.

  ‘Yes,’ snapped Ptolemaeos.

  ‘Then why,’ said Canteloupe, ‘if this Guardian is so effective, might it, the treasure, not be there for very much longer?’

  ‘There is talk of restorations. That is the “mild cause for anxiety” to which I referred earlier. In the event of restorations, even the Guardian might not be able to prevent its being found – by the wrong persons.’

  ‘They don’t know there’s still anything there to look for. Only we know that.’

  ‘They may find it nevertheless. By accident. Or they may destroy it without knowing. The Guardian could not prevent that either.’

  ‘What chance of these restorations?’ asked Canteloupe.

  ‘Restorations are the idea of the French authorities at Eu. The Department of Monuments and Antiquities, equivalent to our Ministry of Works. As it stands, the Castle is extremely dangerous. There are whacking great blocks of donjon just waiting to drop on a fellow’s nut and crush him flat as a flounder; there are hidden pits to fall into, enticing staircases which shoot you over sudden precipices or lead into Minoan labyrinths.

  ‘A few months ago Master Théophile Didier, aged twelve, threw his baby brother down an open well in the keep. That does it, said the authorities: we’ll close the place down; and slam went the portcullis. Oh no you don’t, said all the urchins, picnickers, antiquarians and country copulatives who enjoyed the place; and they got a battering ram and opened it up. All right, said the authorities: carry on going there, but for Christ’s sake be careful, and one of these days we’ll get round to tidying it up and making it safer: restorations.’

  ‘One of these days?’ said Canteloupe.

  ‘Yes. When I first heard what was proposed, I was worried. Restorations were the last thing to suit my programme. But I have an ally who lives there – you’ll probably meet him when you go to Dieppe – called the Marquis des Veules-les-Roses.’

  ‘Pretty name,’ said Baby, and tickled Jo-Jo’s palm with her forefinger.

  ‘He sits on some local committee to do with preservation and so on, and as soon as he heard what the authorities were thinking of doing with Arques, he persuaded them (a) that the money needed would be better used to shore up the church at Varengeville, and (b) that Arques was past being restored anyway.’

  ‘So that’s all right.’

  ‘For the time being, I think. But sooner or later they’ll have to make some token gesture to make Arques less perilous (remember Master Didier’s baby brother) and even a token gesture could wreck our enterprise. So we act now.’

  ‘And our big worry,’ said Canteloupe, ‘is the Guardian. How is it that this Guardian makes such problems for us, and has protected the treasure against predators down the centuries, and yet will be incapable of fending off these restorers, if they ever come?’

  ‘The Guardian,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘is alerted by the intention of the seeker. The intent to find the treasure puts out psychic waves which send the Guardian into action. The restorers do not know of the treasure –’

  ‘Why not? Haven’t they read the Chronicle?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Do civil servants, even French civil servants, bother to read such things? And even if they have, they assume, like everyone else who has read it, that the treasure was some piece of frippery which has long since vanished. A lost vanity. So they have no intention of seeking it: no waves emanate from them, the Guardian sleeps on. And then perhaps the restorers accidentally find it and smash it with one of their bulldozers – and it is too late.’

  ‘But in our case,’ said Baby, ‘we’re going to be anticipated. Our knowledge, our deliberate purpose, will put out vibes and get this Guardian jumping about. How near do we have to be before the Guardian wakes?’

  ‘Good question, Tullia. I wish I knew the answer.’

  ‘And what in any case,’ said Baby, ‘can the Guardian actually do?’

  ‘Another good question. There are hints…in this Appendix I have spoken of. They imply that it can be very disagreeable.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Ptolemaeos hesitated.

  ‘It is not specific.’

  Jo-Jo eyed Ptolemaeos, whom she suspected of evasion, but decided to let it pass for the time being.

  ‘And another question,’ said Baby, who enjoyed going into things: ‘is this Guardian the same one that protected Xanthippe’s party when they were crossing the sea marshes to reach Saint-Gilles? I believe you quoted the Chronicle to that effect?’

  ‘I did. Yes, Tullia. I would imagine it was the same protector.’

  ‘One of the ladies-in-waiting was a white witch perhaps? And commanded her familiar to protect them all…and later to become Guardian of the treasure?’

  ‘The Appendix does not deny such a conception. Nor does it remotely encourage it.’

  ‘Look,’ said Baby, ‘if Canty and I are going to help out in all this, can’t we just read the jolly old Appendix, find out exactly where we stand, and take it from there?’

  ‘No,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘no, no, no no: no.’

  ‘I think you’re mean.’

  ‘It’s for your own good. You’ll probably find it all out in
time, and very sorry you’ll be that you have. You may very well have to be told at some stage, particularly if things go wrong. But not yet. Not yet.’

  Baby pouted. Jo-Jo stuck out her tongue at Ptolemaeos. Canteloupe crossly examined a recently scuffed patch on his left toe-cap.

  ‘So that’s all for now,’ Ptolemaeos said. ‘All you have to remember just now, Canteloupe, is that you and Tullia must be dining in the Hotel Cours in Saint-Gilles not later than eight p.m. this day week. Reservations have already been made for you. Just drive yourselves down there, clock into the place on the right day – late afternoon, I suggest – and wait for Ivan to introduce himself.’

  ‘Isn’t all this exciting?’ said Baby to Jo-Jo.

  ‘Oh, yes. That poor little Xanthippe, and the treasure and the Guardian and the Castle –’

  ‘No, no, you fool,’ said Baby. ‘I meant this.’

  And she planted a huge wet kiss between Jo-Jo’s tiny breasts.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ Jo-Jo said, ‘I wish mine were like yours.’

  She cupped one of Baby’s in her palm.

  ‘You’re lovely,’ said Baby: ‘just like a fine strong boy with a cunt.’

  ‘Would you sooner it was a cock?’

  ‘I like everything,’ said Baby with zest, ‘that’s good in its own kind. Your cunt,’ she said after affectionate investigation, ‘is really super.’

  ‘I am glad you still like it. I thought perhaps that since we’re doing it two weeks ahead of schedule you might not be so keen.’

  ‘Keen,’ said Baby, wriggling her finger in Jo-Jo’s fundament, ‘is not the word. I’m ravenous. And so must you be. That’s if Ptoly and you still have the same old thing about not coming with each other.’

  ‘We still have it,’ said Jo-Jo. She passed her forefinger down Baby’s spine. ‘There for you too?’

  ‘Um,’ Baby said.

  ‘Oh, yes. We still have it. No one goes over the top in this house – unless you’re here. Ptoly still goes to his massage parlour once a month, though he says the expense is now wicked, and I just wait for you.’