September Castle

by Simon Raven

  ‘So, perhaps things aren’t too bad after all, Henri thought: it is his Écrevisse, when all is said, and if only it can be found and handed over without fuss, then he’ll go away happy, and I shall be given my rake-off, and no one will be any the worse for it. In which case, should he send for Lalage or return to Ilyssos with Phaedron? Well, there was no need to worry about that just yet.

  ‘So Henri now has a different perspective on the matter and is far happier than he has been for many a day. The Castellan, on the other hand, is in it up to the eyeballs. He does not know what is in the shrine, but he does know that he has been warned, on pain of death and worse, to keep absolutely out of it; and he also knows that a gang which tried to break into it some fifteen months ago came to a very sanguinary end – each and every one of them. On the other hand, this is not a drunken foot-soldier after loot, it is the Lord Phaedron of Ilyssos, ally of the Villehardouin Lords of Achaea, accompanied and vouched for by Henri, Sire de Longeuil, requesting to visit what purports to be his dead daughter’s shrine, where he will kneel and pray for her soul.

  ‘So if you were that unlucky Castellan, what would you do, chums?’

  ‘Send to Hubert at Avallon?’ suggested Jo-Jo. ‘It was Hubert who put the embargo on the shrine. Let him come and do the explaining.’

  ‘But, nittikins, it would take weeks to send to Avallon – and for anything they know Hubert has long since returned to Romany, thankfully leaving his stumpy, boring, patient dame behind him.’

  ‘I think,’ said Len, ‘that I’d have given this Kyrios number the key, then told him it was shopping day and vanished into Dieppe.’

  ‘There wasn’t a key. The shrine had been sealed and then re-sealed, remember. There was indeed a west door that faced the tilting meadow, but it was now secured by three colossal bolts on the outside, all of which had been welded into place by a master ironsmith – something else which the Castellan was going to have to explain, without, poor sod, having any idea of the reason, beyond Hubert’s exhortation to stay out at any price.’

  ‘Yes,’ conceded Len, ‘that Castellan was certainly on a crappy wicket.’

  ‘Right. And not the type to jump down it and hit the ball on the volley, which would have given him much the best chance. Look, he could have said, I’m afraid there is something wrong with that shrine, I saw what happened to the last lot that tried to get in, and I don’t want God knows what let loose in my nice Castle now; so if you’ll take my respectful advice, my Lord Phaedron, daughter or no daughter, you’ll go sensibly back home. And by the way, if you don’t like that advice, I’ve got a garrison here of twenty knights and forty mounted serjeants, and I can raise help from a score of castles within a dozen miles. That’s what he could and should have said, knowing what he did; but no. He was the ex-ranker, naturally deferential to the likes of the Lord of Ilyssos and the Sire of Longueil, he was the man “who knew his place and had his job to do”, who got his orders and obeyed them to the letter. When the orders were contradictory or inconsistent, he obeyed the set given by the higher-ranking superior. Messer Hubert of Avallon had said one thing, but now here was a noble relative of the Villehardouins and a Sovereign Greek Baron saying another – and having come a very long way to say it.

  ‘So. He puts on his hat and he leads Henri and Phaedron to the tilting yard, where he halts some ten yards from the shrine and then points to it – with that shifty, self-satisfied, spiteful mien that subordinates assume when they’re doing something on your orders and your responsibility but which they know to be against your interest. “There’s your rotten old shrine,” the Castellan’s sullen face seemed to say: “and now just what are you going to do with it?”

  ‘Henri and Phaedron, seeing the massive bolts and not knowing when and why they had been fitted, both came to the same conclusion – that inside the shrine there was not only a tomb and a body but something which somebody wanted to keep safe. Who? And what? Obvious answer to first question: the Castellan, either on his own behalf, or on that of his masters, the Villehardouins, or in conspiracy with Hubert. Obvious answer to second question: something very valuable, quite possibly the Écrevisse. Third question – now put to the Castellan for the form of the thing: why? why has my daughter’s shrine been sealed up in this monstrous fashion? The Castellan shrugs: he doesn’t know and he doesn’t want to know. Very well: send for the master ironsmith to open it up. But at this stage Henri sees something in the Castellan’s face which Phaedron, heavily engaged in ordering people about, does not see: fear. And he remembers something; he remembers one of the reasons why he did not care much for Xanthippe: “another was watching me from behind her eyes.” So could there be…something not quite comme il faut…about her tomb? Best to be on the safe side: should we not, he says to Phaedron, send for a priest as well as the master ironsmith? Phaedron pauses for a moment, and then, since this is obvious good sense when one is tampering, however licitly, with the fittings of a sacred edifice, nods in agreement.

  Let him bring the blessèd

  Cross this day And sweet incense and

  Holy Book, And let him chant a prayerful lay

  To her that lies here so long forsook.

  ‘Phaedron speaking, or Henri?’ Jo-Jo asked.

  ‘Henri’s poem, Phaedron’s lines. In any case, a very proper sentiment. For it was evident from the state of the bolts that no one had entered the shrine since a long while. The incumbent had indeed been forsaken. For whithersoever the soul may depart, both in Henri’s view and in Phaedron’s you paid respects to a dead person at his or her shrine or tomb. This had not been done here, by anyone at all, for a disgracefully long time… So fetch the Castle priest, now that we are here, and make it all look as pukka as possible.

  ‘And now, a Joker in the pack. As you may remember, Xanthippe had had no priest of her own in attendance, for no Orthodox priest had been available to accompany her from the Mani. Neither Xanthippe nor her girls seemed to miss such a ministrant very much, but they were in any case adamant that in no circumstance would they sit under the prayers, preachments or personal admonitions of a priest of the Church of Rome. When a real crisis arose, after the apparent death of Xanthippe, Hubert, as an honourable lay man, had been called in to assist, rather than the Catholic priest of the Castle chapel, who had been roundly warned from the start to hold himself utterly apart from the Greek girls, their quarters, their everyday affairs and their religious practices. This the priest, a drunkard and an idler and a toyer with kitchen wenches, had been only too glad to do, rather than have a lot of extra work with people who didn’t even speak his lingo; and so he knew nothing at all of Xanthippe’s interment, except for the bare fact that she was reported to have been buried in the shrine near the foot of the mound. As to the shrine itself, it was Greek Orthodox territory, as far as he was concerned; he had had nothing to do with its conception, erection or inauguration; it was part of a scene from which he, as a priest of Rome, had been specifically excluded.

  ‘And so he refused to come?’

  ‘On the contrary. Bad priest though he might be, normally unconcerned with his office, he did resent the intrusion of a rival ecclesiastical edifice slap in his own domain and hardly a stone’s throw from his own chapel. The feeling was personal (a matter of face) rather than religious, but it was none the less fierce for that, and he was determined to take his chance now that he had got it. Certainly he would bring the blessèd Cross and sweet incense – he would also bring Bell, Book, Water and Candle, and thoroughly exorcise the place of whatever foul foreign profanities were lurking in it. Since he was not sober when summoned (if not yet drunk), any theological qualms were easily set aside, leaving him full of zeal, hate and bombast.

  ‘And so the scene is set. Phaedron and his knights gathered outside the shrine; Henri looking on, perplexed and curious, hoping for the best; the half tipsy priest gabbling preliminary incantations; the Castellan fidgeting about at a very safe distance; and the master ironsmith going to work on the bolts.’
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  ‘Now just hang on a tick,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘You told me that after that first attempt was made on the shrine none had ever been made since. Ours would be the second, you said. But here you are now, describing another one in full swing.’

  ‘I think I said – I certainly meant – that no illicit attempt had been made since. The original gang who unsealed the shrine were common thieves. So shall we be. But on the occasion of which I am telling you now, a father was opening up his daughter’s shrine to pray, as he thought, at her tomb, and to recover, as he hoped, a piece of his own property.’

  ‘Try telling that to the Guardian. You did say that any conscious effort to find the treasure, the Écrevisse, would set up vibrations which roused him?’

  ‘So Hubert believed, apparently.’

  ‘Well, what was the Guardian doing while all these people were monkeying about outside?’

  ‘I simply don’t know, sweetheart. I am not sure whether the Écrevisse constituted its own Guardian, being animated, perhaps, by Masullaoh or some other spirit, or whether the Guardian was entirely separate. Do please remember, we agreed that all that apparatus of spirits and so forth, though to be regarded with tactful wariness, could probably be discarded. But in any case, I do not know what the Guardian, if any, was up to at this stage, because Henri, who knew nothing of him, does not tell us, and to judge from his narrative there was no visible or audible manifestation from the shrine.

  The ’Smith he toiled at the massy bars

  And my lord, he watched with eager e’en,

  And the Priest, he called on the Thrones and Powers;

  And else was aught neither heard nor seen.’

  ‘If that priest knew his job,’ said Len, ‘no evil spirit would have been able to act anyhow.’

  ‘Ah. Remember that Masullaoh and his attendant spirits, if they existed, were neutral, not diabolic.’

  ‘Sure, Ptoly man: but a neutral spirit, who enjoyed right of access both to God and Satan, would presumably think it proper to behave himself nicely if so requested by the agent of either party.’

  ‘Good point, good point. Anyway, nothing whatever happened until the last of the three bolts had been loosed. Then Phaedron, as was his right, strode to the door and opened it.’

  Ptolemaeos ceased talking while he negotiated an awkward stile. The black pool was gone now and in its place was a wilderness of huge weeds, angrily thrusting and clutching, slily exuding a low grey mist.

  ‘Within a second of opening it,’ said Ptolemaeos, after Len and Jo-Jo had lowered him to the ground, ‘he let out a long, deep grunt.’

  ‘Like he was cross,’ said Len, ‘or like he was just going to come?’

  As if from his belly a rumble arose

  Making his girth to ripple and quake,

  And then from his throat and ears and nose

  A doughty hog’s bladder of wind did break.

  ‘So at all events it was clear that he had seen or felt something worthy of remark, and since he had evidently sustained no damage, Henri was bold enough to come up behind him and peer round him. And then Henri saw it too: a giant, jewelled Écrevisse,

  Its limbs enamelled in crimson hose,

  Its head encrusted with carbuncles

  Of purple and saffron and cerule and rose,

  all the monstrous two cubits by nine inches by six inches of it, crouched under the altar at the top of the steps that led down to the passage and the crypt.

  ‘Crouched?’ said Jo-Jo.

  ‘Well, sitting. Or whatever Écrevisses do when they’re on dry land. So Henri looked at Phaedron and Phaedron looked at Henri, but before either could do anything more the boozy priest, frantic to get on with his exorcism of Orthodox harlotries or which what, came busting through and issued a tremendous anathema:

  In the Name of the Father, the Ghost and the Sun;

  By the Essence of Three and the Essence of One;

  By the Blood of the Christ and the Tears of His Mother;

  By the raw Wounds of God and the Ark of Jehovah;

  By the Flesh and the Bones and the Bowells of Our Saviour:

  By the Book and the Bread and the Wine and the Bell -

  Nunc Retro Satanas: BEGONE BACK TO HELL.

  ‘Well now,’ said Jo-Jo: ‘if it was Masullaoh or one of his subordinate spirits acting as Guardian in there, either animating the creature or hovering around it, he would have been pretty offended by this. It would have been one thing for the priest to request his good behaviour, as Lovely Len puts it: a neutral spirit would obviously accept that, from God’s agent or the Devil’s. But to be seen off, to be absolutely ordered back to hell as if he were some squalid number like Belial or Beelzebub who had no business anywhere else – that would have got right up his nose.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Len, ‘he might have been bound to obey the formula (which, incidentally, would have been a great deal more precise and technical than Henri’s flamboyant rendering). The Rules might well have required any spirit who was not positively pro-God and anti-Satan to take itself off when accurately addressed in the proper style for dismissing devils.’

  ‘Let me remind you both,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘that we think we have explained away all that sort of paraphernalia…though of course we shall continue to insure against the possibility that it exists and operates. Either way, what we know is that the Écrevisse, whether having spirit or no spirit within or around it, whether offended or warned off or whatever, now vanished. Or rather, it moved off down the steps that led beneath the altar to the passage, pursued by the Priest, Phaedron and Henri, in that order. But before they’d any of them essayed the steps, which were in pitch darkness, Phaedron had whistled up a couple of his boys and had the turbulent cleric removed. He then went down two or three steps, came back, ordered a lantern, and drummed his heels until somebody arrived with one. Having told off Henri to hold the thing and light the way, Phaedron proceeded down the steps, turned right – the only way he could turn – along the little passage, and so came to the crypt. Nothing in the passage; nothing, except for the couch, the table and the chair, in the crypt.’

  ‘And a second altar, you said?’

  ‘And a second altar. But no Écrevisse. And, now Phaedron came to think of it, no Xanthippe – unless she was entombed in one of the altars. But there was no inscription or any other indication that this was the case. Perhaps she was under the floor of the shrine? Or the floor of the crypt – which, by the way, was just earth? But again, there was no indication of any kind. And of course, nobody could tell him anything. Neither the Castellan nor Henri had ever been inside the place before or knew anything about the arrangements for the Lady Xanthippe’s burial. Clearly a thorough search would have to be made – and could quite properly be made, with no raised eyebrows, on the ground that Phaedron was looking for his daughter’s body, even if in truth he was more interested in the Écrevisse.’

  ‘And so,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘he started pulling things apart?’

  ‘But both reverence for his daughter’s remains and care for the Écrevisse (for damage was desirable to neither) necessitated a very slow and painstaking process. There was none of the smashing and ripping which Henri had been dreading. Phaedron, though a quick-tempered man, was much too canny for that. First the cloister, then the shrine, then the passage, then the crypt were totally dismantled, stone by stone, piece by piece. But there was no Xanthippe and no Écrevisse: neither inside the altars, nor under the floors, nor concealed in the walls. Nothing…except towards the end of the search, one possible lead. A piece of loose stone, under the couch in the crypt, was shifted, and underneath it was what looked like a rabbit’s burrow.

  ‘For eight days the workmen, closely supervised by Phaedron, dug into the ground beneath the crypt, following the direction of the burrow. As before, they had to work with great thoroughness and caution, leaving not a pebble unturned, scraping their way inch by inch, constantly mindful that a careless blow with a pick or a shovel might violate the poor body which
they sought.’

  ‘Or the rich Écrevisse which they sought.’

  ‘Only Phaedron and Henri knew about the Écrevisse, for only they had seen it.’

  ‘What about that priest?’ said Len.

  ‘The priest, who became and remained even drunker than usual for several days, reported that he had seen the head of a dragon or of a snake, in either case that of the Great Beast of the Greek Communion, at the foot of the altar. Since people were used to his drunken hyperboles, they discounted this vision accordingly.’

  ‘Phaedron’s lads who whisked the priest away,’ said Jo-Jo; ‘had they seen nothing?’

  ‘No. The Écrevisse had vanished down the steps before they were even summoned. In effect, then, only Henri and Phaedron knew that this was a treasure hunt. Everyone else thought that the search was for the vanished corpse of Xanthippe. The theory was, in so far as there was one, that some animal had dismembered it and dragged it piecemeal down the burrow and into its lair.’