September Castle

by Simon Raven

  Ptolemaeos took a bumper of cayenne vodka.

  ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘Hubert comes out as a straight man who was devoted to Xanthippe both in love and in duty. Strictly not a venal number who would have crabbed her for cash. As for any suggestion of forgery, all the internal evidence – style and manner, methods of narration and so forth – indicates that the man who dictated the Chronicle also dictated the Appendix, and, to judge from the orthography, dictated it to the same monk. And so, heart of my heart: if there is one thing in which I trust as surely as I trust in red gold, it is Hubert of Avallon’s Appendix, a clear and honest account, I will stake my cod on it, of all that he saw happen…much of which was not pretty, my own one, my liebling, not pretty at all.’

  ‘Then why, Ptoly, did so many other people – Lord Geoffery de Bruyère for example – find her wholly entrancing? I mean, if she had all these things wrong, how could they?’

  ‘Oh yes they could. The point is that she was entrancing, much and even most of the time. So the answer to your question is that Lord Geoffery saw nothing sinister about her, because there was nothing sinister to see, during the brief period he was with her.’

  ‘That sculptor in his castle saw something pretty peculiar. The one who carved the imp.’

  ‘Perhaps he caught her at a bad moment, when Geoffery wasn’t present. Perhaps his sense of such things was sharper than Geoffery’s. Or perhaps they both had the same vision, but Geoffery took a more lenient view of it. You must remember that even some of her accusers – like that Bishop-Chaplain of the Villehardouins – believed that she herself was innocent even at the bad times, even when the daemon was with her. And you must remember, too, that the daemon, according to Hubert, sometimes brought her good dreams, good messages, good impulses: the daemon came from the Throne as often as it came from Gehenna.’

  ‘Yes… Intermittent visits, you said earlier. Some from Heaven, some from Hell. So that most of the time there was either no daemon or the daemon was being a good influence. A man could consort with her for days or weeks before the daemon turned up with something nasty.’

  ‘And even when it did, she might be in her private quarters, and no one else knew of it except her ladies-in-waiting, who were all old friends of her family.’

  ‘Certainly Lord Geoffery never seems to have known…or not enough to have minded… Are you sure it was the same daemon, Ptoly, for good and bad? Couldn’t there have been two?’

  ‘No. The daemon always announced itself by the same name.’

  ‘A trick?’

  ‘No. Daemons set great store by their names, which bestow certain powers upon them. So they have to take nomenclature seriously.’

  ‘I see. And Hubert found all this out. How?’

  ‘He was with Xanthippe for a long time. For the whole journey from Glarentza to Arques. And then at Arques until she died. Sooner or later he had to be present when the daemon appeared. And one day, later rather than sooner, he was.’

  ‘What happened, Ptoly?’

  ‘Wait. I’ll get the Appendix from the safe.’

  While Ptolemaeos was gone, Jo-Jo collected the caviar plates. That safe, she thought: how could I have left it open that time…that time when the Greek was in the house? I’d simply gone to it for some of Ptoly’s special pills, something I do almost every day, nothing to be excited or nervous about – and yet somehow I was in such a flurry I forgot to lock it. I found it open the next morning, just ajar. Thank God Ptoly never noticed. But that Greek agent did. Or so it seems. He must have got at the Appendix and found things out, much more than he was ever meant to know; and then started scheming when he got back to Greece; and Ptoly must have learned about this and sent Ivan instructions to…cut his nose off; and Ivan has done what he was told and now he’s in trouble. All my fault. Shall I own up? No good now. Christ, I hope no one ever knows. But if anything happens to Ivan, the blame, the guilt, will all be on my head. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. God, please let me off this hook. I couldn’t bear anything to happen to Ptoly’s friend because of me, and what I really couldn’t bear is for Ptoly to be angry with me, send me away perhaps, oh, Christ I do love him so much. Jesus, how could I have been such a careless little fool? HOW COULD I? Stop, girl, stop, or you’ll drive yourself mad.

  ‘Massage my shoulders,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘while I read you a bed-time story.’ He opened a ragged exercise book. ‘“And on a fair day early in September,”’ he read out, ‘“we came to the city of Rouen and there found lodging prepared for us, on the order of Guy de Villehardouin Captain of Les Andelys, near the Western gate. And on the evening after we arrived, I waited on my Lady Xanthippe in her apartments, where she had dined with her women.” Just a little harder and higher, darling. “And at first she was full of courtesie and merriement, recalling a party of players we had met by the way, who had enacted for us the Tale of Ulysses of Ithaca, how he escaped from the Giant who would devour him by clinging ’neath the belly of a ram. But by and by my Lady quietened and seemed about to sink into a sleep. A glaze came upon her eyes and her face fell empty. Her woman signed to me directly that it was time to depart and let their Lady rest, and indeed I had all but risen to take leave when a most curious thing occurred. And that I tell truth I vow by Mary, sweet Mother of Christ. I swear in that holy name that the Lady Xanthippe did draw up her robe above her knees and then still higher to the fork, and began to fondle and probe her secret parts, as though none else were present.

  ‘“And I was uncertain, whether to remonstrate with her for unseemliness, or to welcome this as a sign of lust, that she would have me do the like; for I was both saddened in my heart by this lewdness and yet much fired in my loins by the fresh silken cuisses which she revealed. But before I could move or speak, the tallest of her maidens rose and signed to me to be silent, shaking her head as one who, being well acquaint with such ’haviour, would fain warn that great danger might lie in any disturbance of the Lady. And this same maiden went to a chest and returned with a device of horn fashioned like a rampant cod and furnished with a fine ruby at the tip, which she did offer to the Lady. The Lady, not seeing it (for her eyes were now closed), yet did take it in her hands and, with a low growling of her breath, did ease it full into her cunnis and then thrust it against it most mightily, two, three or four times, until she gave a gasp, and then a groan all over, then jerk and shudder and shake as one who is stricken with the falling sickness, save that she fell not. Again she howled like a beast, then opened her eyes, and there was another there behind them.

  ‘“‘I am Masullaoh,’ she spake in a deep, melodious voice, such as would have befitted a Chancellor or mighty Judge: ‘this time of my coming hither I bring messages neither of good nor ill. Yet I must be refreshed for my next venture.’

  ‘“Whereupon the tall maiden nodded to two others, who went forth and returned with a sheep; and the Lady Xanthippe rose from her chair – by God’s Mother I speak only the truth – the Lady Xanthippe rose from her chair, and seized and rent the sheep, and devoured it while it yet lived in great gobbets of raw flesh and streaming blood, bowells and bladder and entrails, cramming the meat down her throat as though she were an ogre that had been starved for a twelve month” – okay, poppet, now up to the neck and head,’ said Ptolemaeos, and closed the exercise book.

  ‘Oh Ptoly, go on. If you don’t, I’ll stop.’

  ‘It now becomes a bit dull by comparison and is better abbreviated,’ Ptolemaeos said. ‘After gorging herself on the sheep, Xanthippe falls into a heavy slumber, and the senior maiden – the tall one – takes the opportunity of repossessing herself of the horn and ruby dildoe (which was still where Xanthippe had put it) and placing it back in the chest. She then decides that Messer Hubert had better be treated to a word or two of explanation.

  ‘It seems that according to this handmaiden, who, by the way, was called Hero, Xanthippe had been visited by the daemon Masullaoh ever since she was thirteen years old. The visits always took a similar form. First of all Xan
thippe would grow quite dozy, then she would just lift her clothes and start wanking, regardless of where she was or with whom; then she would have an enormous orgasm, and there would be Massullaoh inside her, looking out through her eyes.

  ‘He always introduced himself formally, “I am Masullaoh”, and often went on to announce some message, usually theological in type, that had emanated from God or the Devil. These messages conveyed something of the relation between the two, and also of the state of the struggle between them; for according to Masullaoh Satan was definitely not a mere demiurge acting under God and with God’s indulgence, he was self-created, co-eternal and equally powerful. In the beginning he could, if he wished, just have lived at peace with God, each in their separate ethereal domain, but he had chosen instead to create the physical universe and challenge God to try to rescue the damned and doomed souls of the people whom he placed in it. Masullaoh, who was apparently morally neutral, had access to both camps, and hence his excellent intelligence as to the state of the contest.

  ‘After he had delivered these bulletins, Masullaoh would require “refreshment”, which was invariably consumed through the body of Xanthippe and in the bestial fashion which Hubert had just witnessed. After this Xanthippe would go into a deep sleep, in the course of which, as she herself avowed, she was treated to more curious instruction about Satan’s Universe and God’s efforts to save its inhabitants. Towards the end of her dreams she would often be presented with a gift of some kind, either Divine or Satanic, which she usually found in her hand or in her bed on her awakening. The phallus of horn had been one such gift – the first – and she had been very exigently instructed to teach Hero to present it to her for insertion at the first indication that her orgasm was coming, as it facilitated Masullaoh’s passage into her.

  ‘After the long sleep Masullaoh’s custom varied slightly. Sometimes he would be gone when the sleep was over. Sometimes he would still be there, looking out through her eyes, and would linger for hours or even days, but at this stage he seemed to allow Xanthippe to reassume autonomy. She could think and act for herself, while Masullaoh remained passive and uncommunicative inside her – though when he was finally ready to leave he always spoke a message of farewell.’

  ‘Like telling them when he was coming next?’

  ‘Not exactly. What he would tell them was the sort of “refreshment” – generally a sheep, sometimes a lamb, on one occasion a hare and on another a whole ox – which they should have ready against his next visitation, and by what date, at the latest, they should procure it. He was very reasonable about recognizing when things would be difficult – at sea, for example – and ordered his menus with great consideration for Hero, who was responsible for the Commissariat, and expressed much gratitude to her. The thing was, you see, that he depended on these meals of flesh, for somehow or other they were transmuted into the spiritual energy which he had used up in his latest venture or would need for the next.’

  ‘Had he other sources? Or was Xanthippe his only supply station?’

  ‘No one liked to ask. But since the amounts of flesh he ordered varied, it was thought that sometimes he must have made visits and had meals elsewhere in the intervals between coming to Xanthippe.’

  ‘So when he left the message was, “Please expect me again some time after the first of next month, and have the following goodies available?”’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And where was all this getting Xanthippe?’

  ‘It was getting her very knowledgeable about the Powers which were disputing over the fate of the Universe – or at least that of its inhabitants.’

  ‘I meant, Ptoly, where was all this getting Xanthippe in regard to our present purpose?’

  ‘You’ll see. But first a few snippets of occultist theory. There was an ancient Greek belief, prominent for a time in the early sixth century BC and summarised by the pundits as ζωμα – ζημα, or “flesh the tomb”. According to this, the body, or sóma is the tomb (séma) of the ψυχη, the psyche or soul.’

  ‘Nothing very original in that.’

  ‘Wait for it, sweetheart. The body is the tomb of the soul, which lies dead within it, and will be released and given life only when the body dies. The soul was alive in a previous state, before it was mewed up in the body, and it will be alive again when it is set free, but while it is actually in the body, it is dead.’

  ‘What a very disagreeable notion,’ said Jo-Jo, toying cleverly with the lobe of Ptolemaeos’ left ear.

  ‘Isn’t it just? But let us, for a moment, assume that it is true. How would the dead soul, lying in the tomb of Xanthippe’s body, react to the comings and goings of a live daemon, who inspired Xanthippe to acts of colossal indecency and had caused her to devour, in the most bestial fashion, several entire raw sheep and on one occasion an ox?’

  ‘If Xanthippe’s soul were dead,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘it would not react at all. Far more to the point to enquire how it would react if it were alive – which is far more likely.’

  ‘So you might think. But the point is that in the part of the Mani where Xanthippe was born, the belief in the flesh as tomb of a dead soul had endured from the sixth century BC right on into the Christian era. Several times it had nearly perished, but it had always been revived and re-inculcated by various sages, notably Semandios of Mistra and Dionysios of Kythera, just in the nick of time. It was particularly strong from about 50 BC, when its exponent, Apollodoros of Paros, came to live in Ilyssos, so strong that it had to be accepted and accommodated by the Orthodox Church, after the establishment of Christianity, in the whole area from Gythaion south to Taenaros. This, then, would have been the belief of Xanthippe herself, and of her attendant damsels, and, of course, of her father.’

  ‘Ah. Daddy. Did he know about the daemon?’

  ‘Yes. And very much hoped she would be safely married off before she made a public exhibition of herself. Hero had strict instructions to guard against that, and had pretty well succeeded (though the odd nose here and there had been set twitching a bit) until her mistress broke out in front of Hubert…which wasn’t as bad as it might have been, as Hubert, by then, was almost part of the family. But back to Xanthippe and the daemon, and her dead soul, as she believed it to be. How, one asks oneself, would she have viewed the situation in her saner moments?’

  ‘First tell me what was supposed to be keeping her going at all…when the daemon wasn’t there…if her soul was dead.’

  ‘The θυμοζ, the thymos or living personality, a sort of superficial soul, which, they thought, initiated and controlled all mental and physical activity in a person – until that person died. The theory was that the thymos died with the flesh which it transformed, giving place to the newly resurrected and now independent psyche or soul.’

  ‘But Ptoly, darling delectable, desirable Ptoly, all this is NONSENSE ON STILTS. Please can we be rational for two seconds at a time. Plainly, what we have here is a disordered girl, given to fits of masturbation (not uncommon), which were followed by an insane craving for raw meat. A deplorable phenomenon, most embarrassing for friends and relations, but nevertheless explicable in medical terms (if allowance is made for obvious exaggeration) and requiring no bizarre apparatus of daemons, dualisms and dead souls.’

  ‘What about the presents which she received in her dreams – and found in her hand when she awoke?’

  ‘Some hanky-panky of that dismal bitch, Hero.’

  ‘What have you got against Hero?’

  ‘Bossing everybody about. She probably wanted to gain some ascendancy over the Princess, so she encouraged her naughty habits and put valuable presents in her bed while she was asleep – and then persuaded her, when she woke up, that she had dreamed about receiving them.’

  ‘There is a great deal, as it happens, in what you say. Hero was certainly up to something, though you will be rather surprised when you know exactly what. But in any case, poppety-poo, you must accept the terms in which I am talking as the terms in which Xanthippe
would have been thinking. As far as she was concerned, with one catastrophic exception, she was a perfectly ordinary girl who had inside her a dead soul, which could be released and revived only by her own death, and a living thymos which, for all present and practical purposes, fulfilled the functions of soul, mind and spirit altogether. It ran the show for the time being, though it was mortal as the flesh was mortal and would eventually die with the flesh. So far, so good; all this was perfectly correct form according to the beliefs in which she had been brought up. But then we come to the exception, the anomaly: this visiting daemon – not a thing a normal girl should have.

  ‘And clearly the thymos was no match for it. The daemon took over as and when he wanted, and either allowed the thymos to function or prevented it just as he pleased. He made her do hideous things, used her as a fuelling station, so to speak, by converting the animal matter which she consumed into some kind of ethereal energy, he looked out at people through her eyes and ordered everyone about as if he owned her. Which indeed it seemed likely he did. Certainly her poor futile thymos, her own living personality, could do nothing about it.

  ‘And then, one day, something must have occurred to her. What about her soul? Even if the thymos were powerless, surely the eternal, the God-given soul would have something to say about this…when, that is, it came alive again. It would certainly be angry with the daemon for telling theological lies, for suggesting that God was no more than the equal of Satan; it would want to punish the daemon and drive him away, to free her of him, to destroy him – only the trouble was that by then she would be dead, because she could not bring her soul into action (so she believed) except by dying. And this brings me back to my original question: how would the dead soul have reacted to the daemon?’

  ‘It also brings us back to my original answer: if the soul was dead it could not react. Which must have been what Xanthippe believed too.’