by Simon Raven
‘Yes,’ he said at length. ‘I was to say to you, “Now gather round me, you, my Myrmidons, Here at the setting of the sun.” From your poet Shakespeare, I think.’
‘From Troilus and Cressida. A lesser known but very intriguing piece.’
‘You understand what the words are intended to convey?’
‘Oh, yes.’
They were the words which Achilles had used when instructing his warriors to kill Hector; what they conveyed was that Ptoly wanted this fat Greek dead before sunset.
After all their guests had gone, Ptolemaeos walked with Jo-Jo in the garden, in the evening of the day.
‘How was it with Baby, sweetheart?’
‘Prima,’ sighed Jo-Jo, ‘oh, prima.’
‘Good. It is always a great comfort to have pleasant memories of someone.’
‘What do you mean… “comfort” … “memories”?’
‘I mean…that it’s a long time, according to the schedule, before you’re due to meet Tullia again. But meanwhile you do have the comfort of these memories.’
‘Is that all you meant? Play square, Ptoly.’
‘There could be…complications. Someone has been sticking his nose in where it isn’t wanted. Ivan Barraclough has instructions to lop it off.’
‘Just his nose, Ptoly?’
‘Ivan will know what to do, pratty-pie. It should be dead easy, the way I’ve set it up for him. But if things did go a bit wrong, and if some nasty officious friend of the nose’s did perhaps follow Ivan to Saint-Gilles, then I suppose that Tullia and Canteloupe might find themselves in the line of fire.’
‘You haven’t warned them?’
‘No. In my view, it would only cause deleterious worry when the odds are there will be absolutely nothing to worry about. But because you love Baby Canteloupe – and don’t think I can’t see the galaxies in your eyes when we discuss her – because you really love Tullia, my darling, and do not merely hanker after her luscious bold limbs, I will warn them if you ask me to.’
‘Oh I love Tullia. But I believe, I absolutely believe, lovely Ptoly, in you. If you say it’s better not to warn them, then that’s all right by me.’
‘Good girl. Give us a kiss. Give us a hot deep kiss, “just like what you gave your Baby last night”.’
‘If you care to come with me,’ said Ivan to the Greek Messenger, ‘I will show you what the Fat Pharaoh meant by his quotation from Shakespeare.’
The Greek nodded. Ivan held up his hand for the bill. Messenger, he thought: in Greek, αγγελοζ, angelos, angel: some angel: I think I know why Ptoly told him to meet me here: here, rather than anywhere else: yes: it must be that.
When Ivan had paid the bill, they walked down a narrow street and out of the little village.
‘There are several monasteries on this island,’ Ivan explained to the Greek, who nodded in courteous admiration, as if amazed that Ivan should know. ‘There is the Monastery of Pantaleimon, where they killed Ali Pasha, which is near the water of the lake.’ The Greek nodded again. ‘But just beyond it,’ Ivan continued, ‘even nearer the waters, is the Monastery of the Prodromos, of the Man Who Went Before.’
Ivan now went before the Greek: into a wooden kiosk, at the entrance of which he bought tickets for them both, down steps and into a tunnel, up steps again and out on to rock. The cliff which now faced them was plumed by huge plane trees and pierced by a wide cave. In front of the cave, trying to nestle into it, was a chapel.
‘Agios Ioannis Prodromos,’ said Ivan. ‘Come.’
He led the way towards the chapel, into the nave and up to the screen.
‘Thirteenth-century, this part of it,’ Ivan explained. The Greek nodded gravely. ‘1232, or thereabouts. And almost at once they found that a kind of plant had started growing in the earth which gathered between the stones, a plant which put out a pinkish-grey flower, a pungent fragrance of tar, and a pretty leaf in shape rather like a spearhead. So they called the leaves “Myrmidons” after the Spearmen of Achilles. The Fat Pharaoh wants me to gather some, as they are of great botanical interest.’
Ivan started to pick the leaves off the creeper which trailed round the lower part of the wall. It was not of course true that they were called ‘Myrmidons’: he had said so only to explain the appearance of the word in Ptolemaeos’ message. But everything else he had said about them was true as far as he knew: the plant and the leaves had started to grow (according to the Special Appendix of the Chronicle of Hubert of Avallon) shortly after the building of the chapel. And again, the leaves were indeed of great botanical interest. They were also, as he would not be telling the Messenger, of other interest, so much so that many men had come to gather them, among these men Aristarchos of Veroia, in 1255.
‘They are famous, among other things, for a pungent yet delectable flavour,’ said Ivan. ‘Try chewing one.’ Unseen, he tore a leaf very slightly to release the sap; then offered it to the Messenger.
The Messenger looked as if he would have preferred to refuse the offer, but such a refusal would have been against Greek laws of courtesy, the more so as Ivan had now put a leaf in his own mouth.
After Ivan had pretended to chew (leaving the flesh of his leaf uncut by his teeth) for three or four minutes, and after the Greek had pretended to chew but had nevertheless absorbed the sap of his torn leaf for a like period, Ivan said:
‘Why does the Fat Pharaoh of the Fens wish you to be killed?’
‘Because I found out what you were seeking,’ the Messenger said bleakly.
‘How did you find out?’
‘I went to the Pharaoh’s great house in England to receive instruction, I found the Chronicle – and the special part of it. A safe had been left unlocked.’
‘You understand what I must do to you?’
The man nodded dully.
‘Or rather, what you must do to yourself.’
For one minute Ivan told the Messenger exactly how, when and where to commit suicide. There was no question, he told himself, as he left the chapel, but that he would be obeyed. The effect of the leaf, both fresh and later when dried, had been tested, time and time again, though with less deadly intent, by Ptolemaeos and himself. What remained to be seen, thought Ivan, as he walked under the murmuring plane trees towards the village and the quay, was whether the other effect of the leaf had been correctly reported in the Appendix of the Chronicle: whether the Mage Aristarchos had been right in the special directions he had given the Despoina Xanthippe for its use in the extremes of her affliction.
Maurice Bertrand Martel, Marquis des Veules-les-Roses, Comte d’Offranville et de Cany-Barville, Vicomte de Barville, hereditary Capitaine de Fécamp et d’Etretat, and Sire de Longueil, walked down the drive of his huge and handsome house (early eighteenth-century; twelve bays) near Cany-Barville, in the company of his elder sister (late nineteenth-century; two bays, amazingly prominent) and even elder dog. Which is to say that the Marquis was eighty, his sister (Magdalene Françoise, Princesse d’Héricourt-en-Caux) was eighty-five, and the dog, a golden labrador, was seven times eighteen equals one hundred and twenty-six. Yet the trio was spruce, and kept up a brisk pace en route for the nearby chapel of Barville, where they were to inspect some damage done to the wood carvings, allegedly by some German hitch-hikers.
‘Male and female,’ said Madame la Princesse. ‘Young and filthy. Claudine watched them go in, she told me on the telephone, from the door of her cottage.’
‘If she had the wit to observe that they were young and filthy, she should have had the wit to go in after them. Anyway, how did she know they were German?’
‘They conversed in grunts.’
‘So does every nation north of France. None of this explains why she did not follow them.’
‘Oh, she did. But when she reached the porch she heard the girl wailing like a banshee, and the man bellowing like a hippopotamus, and she felt it would be indecorous to witness what was clearly going on inside.’
‘But if they were so agreeably occupied, why, and wh
en, did they damage the carvings?’
‘The bellowing ceased almost at once, whereupon the wailing turned into a grizzle of disappointment which was succeeded by shrill insults – there was no mistaking the tone, Claudine said – in the Nordic tongue aforesaid. Clearly the damage was done as the result of deprivation in the female or failure in the male, or both. I diagnose premature ejaculation followed by discontent on the one part and humiliation on the other.’
They turned off the drive and walked across a meadow to a stream that was lined by weeping willows. The chapel was about a hundred yards upstream, partly visible from the point they had reached, partly masked by rhododendra.
‘If this sort of thing is to continue, Magdalene, we may have to keep the place locked.’
‘Or have the carvings removed, Bertrand. They are the only things of value inside.’
‘How badly are they damaged?’
‘That is what we have come to ascertain. Good-day, Claudine.’
A woman of about sixty, so ill-favoured and malformed that she could only (one might hazard) have been spawned on a witch by the Devil, bobbed a curtsey to the Princess and her brother.
‘Madame la Princesse. M’sieur le Marquis. I shall show you.’
With long, hobbling strides Claudine led the way into the porch and thence into the chapel. She passed up the nave and into the chancel, where she made a sudden dart to the right, pounced on the southern choir stall, and lifted one of the seats to reveal the carven misericord beneath it. The labrador, who had followed hard on Claudine’s clogs, began to tense its left rear leg against the woodwork, then remembered where it was, snuffled, and withdrew.
‘Quelle cochonnerie did you intend!’ the Princess admonished the animal. ‘Not but what your instinct in the matter was apt.’
The carving represented a rather bedraggled lady who was peering through a gap in the parapet of a rampart. Closer inspection revealed that she had hoisted the hem of her robe over the crook of her left arm, the hand at the end of which she was unmistakably applying to her pudenda. The damage, now indicated by Claudine, consisted in the removal of a very small piece of the lady’s hair, which had left a minute area of splintered wood.
‘Accidental, not malicious,’ said the Marquis to his sister. ‘Let me suggest an alternative scenario. The young people came to admire the misericords, which are mentioned in the guide book. Excited by the subject of this one, the male fingers it, does so clumsily, unintentionally removes a small piece of rotting wood. After which, his excitement being unabated, he proceeds to rut with the female, who is wailing, not in pleasure, but in distress at such blasphemous conduct in a holy place. But very soon it is finished for him, whereupon the wail of distress subsides and becomes, first a whimper of reproach, then, as she sees the confusion which he had made about her person, a sharp rebuke that he had taken no precautions. On the available evidence this interpretation is in every way as rational, chère Magdalene, as yours.’
‘How did they look,’ the Princess asked Claudine, ‘as they left?’
‘Tired and cross, Madame la Princesse.’
‘That would fit either rendering,’ said des Veules-les-Roses.
‘The trouble with yours,’ his sister rejoindered, ‘is that these days the young take no precautions, comme d’habitude, and she would never have rebuked him on that account. All this, however, is but idle conjecture. The immediate lesson to be learned from this sorry affair is that the carvings need treatment for rot. I believe we can have them injected or anointed.’
‘I shall telephone the office at Eu and find out?’
‘Which office?’
‘Our own people. The Norman Committee of Historic Preservation.’
‘Cher Bertrand. That committee is well enough for deciding what should or should not be done, but it knows nothing about how to do it. For that we must go to the Office in Eu of the Department of Monuments and Antiquities.’
‘Cher Magdalene. If I go to that Department, they will send somebody, almost certainly that nosy young man Jean-Marie Guiscard, to examine the damage. He will come, he will be reminded, quite properly, of the legend of the Despoina Xanthippe at the Castle of Arques-la-Bataille.’
‘Why should he be reminded?’
‘Most of these misericords, as you well know, have defied interpretation. But this one, it is understood, represents the Despoina Xanthippe while she was imprisoned in the Castle of Arques.’
‘It represents a young woman standing on a wall and pleasuring herself. It has never been established that the sculptor had in mind the Despoina Xanthippe.’
‘Nevertheless, it will remind Jean-Marie Guiscard of the story, and the story will remind him of the Castle, and he will start thinking, once again, of how restorations are needed there, and by association of thought he will equate the immediate necessity of les reparations here with the immediate necessity of les reparations there, and before we can turn round he will have his men and his machines in the Castle – just when M’sieur Ptolemaeos Tunne and I least want them there.’
‘But you have persuaded M’sieur Guiscard and the Department to leave the Castle alone for the time being.’
‘With great difficulty, yes, I have persuaded them. I particularly do not wish their interest in the Castle to be re-aroused. So I must send for this affair’ – he gestured at the delinquent lady on the rampart – ‘to the Norman Committee.’
‘Who can and will do nothing for us. Viens, Coco,’ the Princess called to the dog. ‘Your master would leave the family treasures to rot to pieces, and all because of some fantastical scheme he has with a fat, mad English to possess themselves of what is not there and would do them no good if it were. Bon jour, Claudine. Be diligent, mon enfant, and pray to God to forgive your parents their sin.’
‘Bon jour, Madame la Princesse. We shall lock the chapel from now on? It will save me from having to watch all day.’
‘That,’ said the Marquis, ‘is what you are employed to do. To unlock the chapel at dawn and to watch who goes in and ensure that they come out. You will continue.’
‘Comme tu dis, papa,’ said Claudine spitefully. ‘Au revoir, Maman. Au revoir, Coco.’
In the end, the Princess won her way, by the simple expedient of telephoning the Department of Monuments and Antiquities at Eu without any further reference to her brother and requesting that an expert on woodwork be sent to Cany-Barville. The expert who came was indeed ‘that nosy young man’ Jean-Marie Guiscard, and he was indeed reminded by the misericord, as the Marquis had predicted he would be, of the Despoina Xanthippe and the sad state of the Castle of Arquesla-Bataille. But to be fair to the Princess, none of this made any difference to the course of events that followed; what happened would have happened in any case, whether she had summoned Guiscard or no: for at much the same time as Coco was tensing his leg against the Despoina Xanthippe’s image in the choir stalls at Cany-Barville, and several days before Jean-Marie actually came to the chapel to make his inspection, the following conversation was beginning in the Office of the Department of Monuments and Antiquities in the Rue de Tréport in Eu.
‘Arques-la-Bataille,’ said Jean-Marie Guiscard to the Director of that Branch of the Department, Monsieur Socrates Besançon.
‘What about Arques-la-Bataille?’ said M. Socrates wearily. ‘We have just agreed with the recommendation of the Norman Committee of Historic Preservation that the case of Arques is hopeless and that the money at present available will be better applied to the church at Varengeville. That is all, dear Jean-Marie, about Arques.’
‘We must reverse the decision. The Norman Committee has no authority. It is just a self-elected gang of rich busybodies. We have the power to decide, cher Directeur, and we must decide to do something for Arques while there is still…just…time.’
‘But why this obsession about Arques, Jean-Marie?’ M. Socrates wiped his bald head with a mauve silk handkerchief. ‘Many would say that it is better as is – a picturesque and crumbling ruin.’
>
‘A very dangerous ruin…that may crumble away altogether.’
‘If people will go there, they must risk the danger. They have been comprehensively warned of it.’
‘But if it rots away to nothing?’
‘That donjon will last forever.’
‘But the barbican? The arch? The guard room? The observation towers?’
‘Agreeable but unimportant. Écoute, Jean-Marie: we have neither the duty nor the resources to preserve every pile of ancient rubble in Normandy.’
‘Arques is special. Because of what happened there. It is…a place of poetry. In the name of poetry it must be preserved.’
‘Convince me, dear boy. You have ten minutes to convince me.’
So Jean-Marie rose from his chair and propelled his gawky frame round and round the Director at his desk, gesturing and declaiming and pleading, telling the story of the Despoina Xanthippe of Ilyssos and how she came to the Castle of Arques. With some of this story you are now familiar, but parts of Jean-Marie’s narrative may open up new angles of vision, may suggest new attitudes to be adopted.
‘This same vexatious Marquis des Veules-les-Roses,’ said Jean-Marie, ‘the one who so constantly pesters us with his inane suggestions and opinions, had a thirteenth-century ancestor called Henri Martel, who, like his insufferable descendant, was Sire of Longueil, at that time a small barony not twenty miles from Arques which Henri ruled over justly and liberally – so liberally that he never had a silver piece to call his own. The other important thing about him was that he wrote poetry, and was a source of high embarrassment to his many royal and noble connections both at home and abroad, who relished the poet as little as they did the pauper.’
‘How so?’ said M. Socrates. ‘Surely the Art of the Troubadour was much prized at that time. A singer was held in honour; the composition of songs was considered an accomplishment very desirable in Princes.’
‘Cousin Henri’s songs were unacceptable – at any rate the early ones. They were radical. Under the guise of telling tales or celebrating amours he was quite clearly deprecating feudal conditions and proposing extensive reforms. He was a traitor, as his relations saw the matter, to his and their whole class. They considered dispensing of him in summary fashion, but they were a good-natured lot and in the end decided that what Cousin Henri needed was simply to make a suitable marriage and settle down – too many romps in the hay with pretty peasants, that was one source of his silly egalitarian notions. So in 1255 he was notified that his Villehardouin kinsman, William, Prince of Achaea, had decided to do something for him. The Prince had a Greek hostage or surety, the Lady Xanthippe of Ilyssos, whom he was sending for safe keeping to the Castle of Arques, which was at that time a Villehardouin stronghold administered and commanded by a one-time Serjeant in the family service, who had by now risen to be a kind of commissioned quartermaster and enjoyed the title and privileges of Castellan. All Cousin Henri had to do was to hack over to Arques, where the Castellan would make him very comfortable, and pay court to the Lady Xanthippe, whose father, Lord Phaedron of Ilyssos, was only too happy with the idea of a well connected French son-in-law and was prepared to find a very handsome dowry from his own and his forefathers’ piratical profits.
