by Simon Raven
‘The Lady’s work – or that of her pet?’
‘Either way, that put a stop to further incursions. The Castellan and Hubert sealed the shrine again, and as far as we know no illicit attempts have ever been made since.’
‘Though one is intended now?’
‘If we can find the shrine.’
‘By the jousting yard, you said. North of the donjon.’
‘There have been many things added and many taken away in seven hundred years.’
‘No one would have dared disturb the shrine.’
‘Shrines subside. Cloisters crumble and crypts gape. But of this more later. Meanwhile, picture to yourself the resealing of the shrine by Hubert and the Castellan (the incident was tactfully concealed from Henri); then a ceremony of farewell in one of the outer courts; and then the procession moving under the raised portcullis and winding down the hill to take the road east for Paris and then south for Avallon: Hubert and Henri leading, the ladies on palfreys behind them, then a troop of local knights, vassals of Villehardouin led by the Constable of Eu, and finally a squad of mounted serjeants in the rear. Picture this, oh heart of my heart; assume (since it was still October) that the party had untroubled passage to Paris and on to the south; imagine Hubert taking farewell of Henri and the girls at Avallon; wave the gallant Sire de Longueil and the ladies on their way, for now we must part from them for this time; and then, then, my poppety-poo, think of Hubert, his journey over and his duty done, home at last in his manor on the western slope of the valley that lies between fair Avallon and towered Vezelay. Think of him, as he walks in his orchard or sits in his hall, while the autumn creeps damper and colder along his valley. He has finished, by now, the business that brought him home; he has already tired of the dumpy wife who has waited so long to welcome him; and there is nothing to keep him from setting out on his journey back to the Morea, to reclaim the fief which he has left in the charge of his steward.
‘But he does not go. He has no heart for voyaging. He loiters in his bare orchard and drinks in his draughty hall until it is too late to leave, even if he wished to. He must wait until the springtime now. He has three long dark months to ponder what he has seen and heard since he left Glarentza with Xanthippe and her maidens many months before. He has a burden on his soul; he must discharge himself of this before he sets out again for Romany; that is why he has lingered – anxious to discharge himself but uncertain how best this may be done.
‘But at length he thinks he knows. One morning in December, just before the Birthday of Christ, he comes to shrive himself in the Église Saint-Lazare in Avallon. “O Ghostly Father, I me confess…” He has a tale to tell, he says, a tale that should be preserved. But the priest at Avallon is busy with preparations for the Festival of the Birth of God, and is in any case no great hand with a pen. He directs Hubert to seek out a certain learned monk in the cloister of the Basilica Sainte-Madeleine in Vezelay, and dictate his history to him. So Hubert comes to Vezelay –’
‘– And tells two stories to the same man. He tells him a nursery version, which pretty well accords with Henri’s ballad but has a few faint hints that all is not quite so straight forward as it seems: the Chronicle of Hubert of Avallon. He also dictates an Appendix full of wonderments and horrors and daemons, daemons who frequent the Courts both of God and of Satan, and bring jewelled gifts from realms beyond the Universe. Was he romancing, Ptoly? Had he flipped? What did he think he was up to?’
‘Luckily we have a point from which we may begin to conjecture. We know that the jewelled Écrevisse, two cubits long by nine inches high by six inches wide, actually existed. It is recorded in a Byzantine catalogue of the eighth century as having been fashioned for a certain Sebastocrator Demosthenes Commenos from jewels and metals which he looted while suppressing a rebellion at Trebizond. Its value was computed at the rough equivalent of six million sterling of today’s money.’
‘Did it play tunes which encouraged incestuous orgies? Like Xanthippe’s?’
‘We know from the catalogue that it could move with the aid of a clockwork mechanism, and that while it moved little bells inside it played music – the nature whereof is not specified. We also know, from the same source, that the Sebastocrator and all his treasure were seized by pirates while he was later voyaging from Constantinople to Smyrna. The pirate chief is named as Crito of Ilyssos. We infer that the Écrevisse passed to Phaedron of Ilyssos as an heirloom five centuries later –’
‘And that he put it in the Lady Xanthippe’s luggage to make part of her dowry. He wanted to marry her off quick because of her peculiar habits. So he said to Hero, the senior hand-maiden, “Keep her out of trouble, for Christ’s sake, and take this golden Écrevisse, and this jeweled horn” – the one she used to do it, Ptoly – “and this, that and the other, and use these things, if you have to, as an impressive and ready dowry, cash on the table, so to speak, to get her married off to this Henri de Longueil or any other fucker that may fancy her, because, sweet Hero,” he would have said, “I love her very dearly, but boy, oh boy, oh boy, is she an embarrassment.” Right, Ptoly?’
‘Roughly, I think.’
‘But then her illness, her madness, got worse and worse. She frotted herself in public, and devoured raw meat in a frenzy, and made up more and more appalling commands from Masullaoh. So Hero, to humour and soothe her, brought out the objects from the chest. She encouraged her to dream of such things, and then pretended they had come from her daemon and this world beyond time and space. Like a mother quietens her child with toys which she says have come from Father Christmas, to give them a sort of faerie glamour. For a time this worked, if rather uneasily. Finally, though, Xanthippe turned on Hero and rended her…at which stage Lalage, the second-in-command, decided it had to stop. For good and all. So one night she said she was going to the loo, killed Xanthippe with the sharp edges and claws of the scaly Écrevisse, and herself raised the alarm. She hoped that everyone would connive and more or less believe in a tale whereby the magic shellfish would seem to have destroyed Xanthippe; and she wanted both it and her buried good and deep and there and then, and so an end of it.’
‘Whooaah there, sweetheart. Stop to consider a simple question. Did Hubert know any of this? And if so, why does he mention it neither in his official Chronicle nor in his Appendix?’
‘Hubert loved her. So at first he gave a simple and harmless version of her death – but realized that it might not be believed. There are always odd people, loitering servants and so on, who see or hear more than they should, and Xanthippe’s behaviour might well have given rise to rumours. So in case this had happened, in case some of her enormities came to be known about, he devised a version which explained them in a mysterious and grandiose manner. As I see Hubert, as I feel him, Ptoly, he was not going to have his Xanthippe written off as a mere common madwoman, as a Bedlam drab subject to vulgar seizures, he was going to present her as something splendid, diabolical but splendid, as a medium of mighty spirits which moved between God and Satan. So he perjured himself to the monk who took his dictation. He said to this monk, “Look, here is one story, the story that the Princess died of yearning for her home and her sea. It will be better for her memory if this is believed. It is not true, that I know, but as men of charity you and I would wish that some such history of her, if any, should survive. However,” he would have gone on, “there was that in her life which may cause great scandal if ever it be known…and known it may well be. So having wished all this upon you, I must in fairness tell you the entire truth, and you must record it. If you record only what I have so far told you, you may hereafter be taken for a booby or a crook. Hear, therefore, the full sum of all.”
‘But then, Ptoly, Hubert proceeded to tell the monk a great pack of fibs. And his aim was this: if ever the preferred tale, the tale told by the Chronicle and the Ballad, should be discredited –’
‘And there was plenty of evidence, of the kind Ivan is reviewing on his way home, to discredit it –’
‘– Then the monk could release Hubert’s second version, the Appendix, which was a huge fabrication explaining the poor girl’s miserable affliction in such a fashion as to make her a mighty figure of myth. Not just a squalid little epileptic who showed off her honey pot and had bestial cravings, but the chosen companions of Archangels of Good and Evil, of the Messengers of God and Lucifer.’
‘Ingenious, pretty Jo-Jo. But why should Hubert have found it necessary to make up this horrible story of her survival after death? By all means let us agree that Hubert wished to present her as a kind of superior Sybil to save her from being thought a mere lunatic: but why on earth should he make up this revolting tale that her soul was imprisoned in her decaying corpse? What good could that do her memory?’
‘You have a point,’ Jo-Jo said.
‘What we have to consider is the possibility that Hubert’s Appendix is, in some senses, a true version of what happened – that although he knew all about Hero and the trunkful of dowry and Phaedron’s instructions to marry her off good and fast, he nevertheless saw the thing on a higher, on a mystical or celestial plane, so that out of poor Xanthippe’s lunacy he created a kind of cosmic allegory.’
‘Which still does not explain,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘why he presented her death and immurement in such a sickening way. Don’t tell me that’s an allegory.’
‘It could be an allegory of a great many things.’
‘All of them quite disgusting. It could not possibly help to enhance her memory.’
‘There remains the possibility,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘that Hubert was quite simply telling the truth about Xanthippe’s death – or at least what he believed the truth to be. Perhaps his conscience caught him. Having deceived the monk with all the earlier stuff – the spirits of the vasty deep and so on – he decided that in the matter of her death and her survival of it he must tell the truth, if only to warn the world what lay in the Castle of Arques.’
‘But if we are right, if Xanthippe was just a madwoman (the simplest and most likely explanation of her behaviour), then why should she have survived in this ghastly way? Why should her soul have been trapped in her rotting flesh…and be able to announce the fact through lips that were already putrefying? There is no reason, no sense, no purpose in any of it.’ Jo-Jo paused and grasped at the empty air as if for an explanation. ‘Perhaps she was alive, really alive, all the time. Perhaps she just put on an act in order to get them to shut her away, so that she could at least die alone and in peace, and shed her torment and misery?’
‘If she’d wanted to make away with herself, there were simpler ways than that.’
‘Are you saying, Ptoly…that you think…that whatever else he made up… Hubert is telling the truth about the way she ended – as a walking and talking corpse?’
‘I’m saying, Jo-Jo…that I think…that one would be prudent…to concede the possibility – and to make preparations accordingly.’ Ptolemaeos rubbed the palm of his hand gently over both her nipples. ‘For whatever the terms in which Hubert is talking,’ he continued carefully, ‘whether literal or figurative or allegorical, the inference is that what happened was so distasteful that one must be very wary indeed when going (as Ivan is going) to encounter the aftermath, wherever it is, buried in September Castle.’
‘So what precautions is he taking?’
‘He will carry some of the herb from Ioannina, the same as that with which Aristarchos presented Xanthippe on Corfu. That part of Hubert’s story turns out to be true – or at least the herb grows where he says it does. We have identified it, basically, as a member of the Convolvulus family – Chamaetisos Hyptios – but in a slightly different form, with a powerful smell and special pharmaceutical properties that possibly derive from the peculiar silt of the lake, which penetrated the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist, where the herb is found. These special qualities are marked by the addition to the name of the epithet “Spanopouloēdes”, a word meaning from the dwelling place of the Anticipator (φθανων), a suitable description of the precinct. As you remember, Xanthippe was at one stage about to use the herb to awaken her soul to fight the daemon. But before she could do this, it disappeared…stolen, we are told, by Masullaoh.’
‘Hero’s work, you think? Or Lalage’s perhaps?’
‘I don’t know that it matters. The point on which to concentrate is this: according to Aristarchos, that herb could enable one absolutely to command either one’s own soul or that of another. There must, of course, be some doubt about all that, but experiments which we have conducted prove this much at least, that the herb, if orally administered, can be very effective as an aid in persuading people to do the most improbable and bizarre things, even when these are totally against their own interest. It is therefore permissible to hope that it may have the absolute power over the human soul which Aristarchos claims for it.
‘And so,’ said Ptolemaeos in a patient and everyday sort of voice, ‘if Ivan should be confronted with what is left of Xanthippe, and if he should be informed by her that her soul is still imprisoned there, he will administer the herb to her, and command her to command her soul to free itself.’
‘This will not please Hero and Masullaoh – if they are still around.’
‘We do not need them to explain what happened to Xanthippe. As we agreed, when rationalizing the earlier part of Hubert’s Appendix, there is no Masullaoh, only a girl having fits, just as there were no supernatural gifts from beyond space and time, but simply a series of valuable objects brought out of the trunk in which they had been transported from Ilyssos. As for Hero, who got the objects out of the trunk, she was merely Xanthippe’s nurse, who perished at the hand of her patient. Quite a common thing to occur.’
‘And yet, Ptoly, you seem to think that the last bit Hubert dictated, the bit about the trapped soul, could be true. How could it, unless all that it says about Hero and Masullaoh is also true?’
‘There could be other explanations of Xanthippe’s condition after her death…or her apparent death.’
‘Like what?’
‘That herb. The last we heard about it is that it had disappeared, spirited away by Masullaoh. But as you plausibly suggest, it had probably been hidden by Hero or Lalage; and even in the former case it is likely enough that Lalage knew where. Now then. Suppose that Lalage, as we think possible, had decided that Xanthippe must be got rid of, being by now really too much of a bad thing. Suppose that she went to Xanthippe’s chamber, picked up the Écrevisse and wounded the sleeping Princess with it, wounded her quite seriously and very messily, but not fatally; suppose that when her mistress awoke as a result of the attack she administered the herb to her, in a glass of water perhaps, and then instructed her that she was now dead.’
‘Xanthippe would have replied that she was very much alive, thank you, and enjoying her glass of water, but what was all this blood?’
‘Then the boot goes in. For the herb takes charge and makes Xanthippe believe whatever Lalage says. And Lalage says that she, the Despoina, is indeed dead, dead of the wounds from which the blood has issued; and that the reason Xanthippe thinks she is still alive is because her soul, though awakened by death, has been imprisoned by special command, in her deceased body.’
‘Why should Lalage do this?’
‘Jealousy. Jealousy of the noble and quasi-royal House of Ilyssos. Boredom. Resentment and fury at being the servant of a lunatic, at being made to fetch and carry for a so-called Princess who often conducted herself like a common whore. Revenge. Do you see? Lalage, with the help of the herb, was going to persuade poor Xanthippe, to convince her, that she was a living soul shut up in a decaying carcase. She was going to submit Xanthippe to the most hideous punishment to avenge her own fancied wrongs: she was going to confine her, while yet she lived, to what was to all intents a tomb, and leave her to die by slow degrees there, during which time she would have the agony of thinking that her entombment would last forever and would also endure terrible throes and pains (from her untreated wounds and c
reeping debility) which she would attribute to the fancied decomposition of her flesh. Can you imagine a more horrible way to die? Thinking, up to the very last, that her torment would persist forever and that the obscenity of her bodily state would daily spread until she could see her own bones through the worm-eaten flesh. That was what Lalage condemned Xanthippe to.’
‘Might have condemned her to. Why, if all this was Lalage’s work, did the Despoina babble on about Hero and Masullaoh? We’d thrown them out, remember?’
‘Hubert would have described her as talking like that in order to give continuity to the whole scenario – in order to bridge the gap between his earlier fictions about Xanthippe’s daemon and his later and true account (true from where he stood) of her fate after death.’
‘So,’ said Jo-Jo thoughtfully, drumming the fingers of her left hand on Ptoly’s fair-haired chest, ‘we have two superlatively beastly possibilities. Either Xanthippe’s soul has been living for the last seven centuries chained to her own rotting corpse; or else she died in agony, already more or less entombed, believing that she must forever dwell amid the garbage of her person. If the former, Ivan can expect an uncivil reception. If the latter – well, if there are ghosts, this is surely the sort of situation that creates them, and he might find something even nastier.’
‘I rather agree,’ said Ptolemaeos. ‘I can only assure you that he is being well paid and will be given a fair share of the prize, if any.’
‘If any? I thought you said that Écrevisse was definitely the real McCoy. Assembled by Byzantine jewellers for this Sebastocrator, worth six million sterling, pinched by the Ilyssan lot, et cetera, et cetera.’
