September Castle

by Simon Raven

  ‘What about the coffin? We know there wasn’t one; they didn’t.’

  ‘The body could have been merely draped, as far as they were concerned, and left in the crypt – on the couch.’

  ‘Like Juliet in the family tomb?’

  ‘Precisely. Something like that they must have assumed, and if the theory of the animal were true they had a good chance of recovering Xanthippe’s bones, which could then be honourably reburied. So down they went, inch by inch, clod by clod, following the burrow. The motive was respectable and Phaedron enjoyed the sympathy of all and especially that of the sycophantic Castellan…who, however, on the evening of the eighth day, told Phaedron that now there must be an end to it; the dig must be called off forthwith.

  ‘At first Phaedron looked cold and dangerous and simply asked in one word, “why?” Because, said the Castellan, the direction of the burrow and therefore that of the dig was no longer vertically downward but for some days now had been slanting further and further towards the south, i.e. under the foundations of the donjon and towards the shaft of the well that watered it. Now, anxious as the Castellan was to oblige his lordship, he could not endanger, or even run the slightest risk of endangering, the water supply of the Castle.

  ‘There were, observed Phaedron, other wells in the Castle. Indeed, my lord, and so there were, but this was the only one in the keep, and the whole point about a keep, as a warrior of his lordship’s experience and sagacity would certainly know, was that it was a last resort and must therefore be absolutely self-sufficient. The Castellan was sorry to disoblige, but his standing orders were clear beyond any possible qualification, nothing must ever be allowed to derange the water supply in the donjon for two seconds together, it was more than his job was worth. And so, with the utmost respect for his lordship and the deepest sympathy for his lordship’s cruel bereavement, the Castellan proposed to withdraw, as from dusk of that day, the sappers and labourers whom he had so far placed at Phaedron’s disposal.

  ‘Oh, did he? Then Phaedron would be compelled to report this exhibition of insolence to the Castellan’s master, the true Lord of the Castle – and meanwhile to continue digging with members of his own retinue, his own knights if need be. It was, Phaedron insisted, his sacred duty to his daughter. If the Castellan would only understand that and renew his co-operation, then Phaedron would happily forget their little disagreement and indeed give the Castellan very liberal proofs of his gratitude.’

  The mist rose from the marsh below. It was almost dark now, but they were only half a mile, thought Jo-Jo, from home. She must cook a really special dinner for beautiful Len, who had expressed generous and knowledgeable appreciation of the lunch. They walked over a ditch on a bridge of two planks. Jo-Jo looked down and saw a glutinous yellow scum. God, these fens, she thought: I must get Ptoly and myself out of them. Yet Ptoly seemed to thrive on the Fenland air, and she herself had yet to take harm from it. So much the more reason for leaving, she thought: let her depart while youth was still on her side, let her go while the going was good. But Ptoly must come too. She would not leave without her Uncle Ptoly.

  ‘“Sacred duty to his daughter,”’ she now said aloud. ‘“Liberal proofs of his gratitude.” That Phaedron had a strong hand.’

  ‘He did. But the toady had turned. The Castellan was an old soldier and had not reached his present rank and post for nothing. If Phaedron had a duty to his daughter, the Castellan had a prior duty to the Villehardouins and their Castle: he must obey one of the fundamental laws of soldiering, the one which states that until the Last Trump sounds you guard your water with your life. And that’s what he now told Phaedron…who lost his patience and flew into a ghastly tantrum.

  If a Giant had spawned a brawnsome brat

  And his mother’s bubs refused him suck,

  And the booby frotted and squealed and spat

  And squirmed and wailed and drooled his zluck -

  for that was what Phaedron put Henri in mind of, wrote Henri later that evening. The Castellan, by contrast, had kept his cool and his dignity, and had quitted Phaedron’s presence with veiled intimation of his intent:

  Let the Gryffon lordynge tell ‘aye’ or ‘nay’,

  The morrow would be another day.

  ‘And on the morrow, when Phaedron and his squad came to the site of the shrine, they found it surrounded by the Castellan’s mesnie knights and two hundred men at arms from Arques itself and friendly neighbouring castles. The Castellan was polite and regretful but very, very firm. The excavation had got to stop, he said; and though he would gladly entertain Phaedron and his knights (as his master would doubtless wish) for as long as they desired to linger in this agreeable countryside, he could not but think that Phaedron would by now be having business at home.

  ‘That was what Phaedron thought too. He was playing a losing game: he had better cut his losses, however bitter (one jewelled Écrevisse and one dearly loved daughter), and push off back to Ilyssos before anyone down there started getting big ideas. He would leave, he said, the next morning. For some reason, wrote Henri that afternoon, he seemed quite hurtfully indifferent to Henri’s plans or wishes. Henri himself is uncertain what to do:

  Shall I remain in my ain countrie,

  Where the maidens’ fesses are wet and warm?

  Or shall I ride South to Romanie,

  Where the wife of my bossom is seven months gone?

  ‘Phaedron, Henri tells us, had made it clear that he neither knew nor cared:

  ’Tis one to me whatever ye wist:

  Tarry or sally, ye’ll ne’er be missed.

  ‘And of course we know why. These were the last lines that Henri would ever write. As Meno’s Epistle makes clear, his father, who had probably bribed Henri’s servant or one of his “wet and warm” wenches to keep an eye open, had now been informed of Henri’s mocking and injurious verses. Anyway, Henri knew altogether too much and was a loose sort of fellow who might tell it abroad. So, “Come, gather round me, you, my Myrmidons, /E’en at the setting of the sun”, and see to it that a suitable “nasty accident” is arranged for Henri Martel, Sire de Longueil, instanter. Then secure all his beastly verses, and make sure they are put right and tight in my luggage – which must be good and ready and packed for the off tomorrow at half past eight.’

  The lights of Ptolemaeos’ house were in sight. They went through a postern in his wall and started up a lawn. Red caviar first, thought Jo-Jo: then Prawns Provençal (the frozen ones will do quite well for that), Zuppa Pavese, those early partridges (they’re just well enough hung), scotch woodcock and Tarte aux Pommes. Aloud she said:

  ‘A pity about poor old Henri. I was getting very fond of him.’

  ‘Requiescat,’ said Ptolemaeos; ‘but from the way he went on he was rather asking for something of the sort to happen. Anyway, Phaedron and his knights departed, leaving Henri and the Castellan behind; and the Castellan rolled his old soldier’s eye over the mess and started to clear it up. First of all he cleared up “poor old Hen” after his nasty accident, and sent round to Hen’s local friends and relations to certify that this had apparently been random and was in any case final. Then he turned to the stuff round the site of the shrine. Clearly, all of his horses and all of his men could never put this together again, and in any event, what was the point? The body had vanished; all the people who cared for Xanthippe were, in one way or another, gone; and there was a better use for valuable building materials. So bit by bit, as one may fairly conjecture, the whole of Xanthippe’s shrine, her cloister and her crypt would have been parcelled off to repair the battlements, the watch towers and the barbican; while the burrow which the sappers had been following would have been stopped up at the point they had reached (for after all, whatever might have gone down through it might just come up through it), and the tunnel which they had dug would have been carefully filled in and the earth tightly packed, under the old soldier’s knowing eye, to prevent future subsidence.

  ‘And then? And then the months passed
and the grass grew and very soon there was no trace of the shrine whatever. As for the Écrevisse which had disappeared in it, the only living people who knew of its existence were Phaedron, who had abandoned it; Lalage, who later came to live at Longueil with her son and Henri’s but steered clear of Arques, for her memories of it were not agreeable; the four other surviving hand-maidens, all of whom were far away in the Mani, growing prematurely old and crooked with repeated childbirth; the drunk priest, who thought it was some kind of devil which he had exorcised; and Messer Hubert of Avallon, who, having dictated the two versions of his Chronicle and caused the first to be copied and distributed, thereafter held his peace.’

  ‘And so,’ said Len, ‘if we believe Henri and do not accept supernatural accretion, we tell ourselves, as Phaedron must have done, that some kind of animal, who lived deep in the earth, made a burrow which came up in Xanthippe’s crypt; that it ate what was left of her body; that it separated the bones and dragged them down the burrow to its lair, where it proposed to gnaw them during the weeks to come; and that it also took a fancy to the Écrevisse, and was in the act of carting that off as well when surprised by Phaedron, Henri and the priest…all of whom spotted the Écrevisse but not the creature which was busy bagging it.’

  ‘Not too difficult to explain,’ said Jo-Jo, as they turned for a last look down the lawn towards the slowly coiling vapours at the end of it. ‘It could have been lurking down the steps which led to the passage. A quick flick of its paw from underneath could have dislodged the Écrevisse, which it could then have dragged off to the mouth of the burrow. It was given quite a long time, you see, while they found that lantern.’

  ‘Granted. But on Henri’s showing it was almost unbelievably nippy getting off the mark in the first place. During a couple of seconds at most, while the invaders ran to the head of the steps, our nimble beastie shifted itself and that great load of loot into the dark and out of sight. Now you see it – all two cubits by nine inches by six – and now you don’t. Good going, girlie; far too good from where I sit. Nevertheless,’ said Len, ‘we might, for the sake of a working hypothesis, accept your theory as far as it goes. Which is not far enough to solve the following conundrum: what kind of creature lives deep in the ground, eats dead human beings, and also has a taste for artefacts?’

  ‘Rats?’ suggested Jo-Jo. ‘They’re said to be intelligent…to like looking at pretty things.’

  ‘No,’ snarled Len angrily, ‘not rats. Not here.’

  ‘No need to bite my head off.’

  ‘Sorry, girl. It’s just that I’m rather touchy about rats. As I told you both last night, I once had something very unpleasant4 to do with them…so unpleasant that I don’t want any kind of repetition.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Ptolemaeos; ‘the mere fact of your not wanting anything more to do with rats does not disqualify them from being the agents here, but might disqualify you from continuing to assist us, if rats it really were.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Len. ‘But it’s not rats. During that other business I learnt a lot about the kinds of rats that like the flesh and bones of dead humans. They wouldn’t have been hanging about Xanthippe’s shrine, they’d have been down at the local churchyard or in the Castle burial ground. Where was that, by the way?’

  ‘Outside the wall, about a quarter of a mile to the north-east. The prevailing wind was westerly, you see, so that the Castle was well up wind of the dead – an arrangement they very sensibly preferred whenever it was feasible.’

  ‘Well, that’s where your intelligent rats would have been. Xanthippe’s shrine was strictly a one-off number – not worth the trip.’

  ‘But what was done,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘about burying people during a siege?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know,’ said Ptolemaeos. ‘I imagine they made temporary arrangements.’

  ‘In which case,’ persisted Jo-Jo, ‘flesh-eating rats might have found their way into the Castle during some siege, then perhaps liked the place and hung about afterwards – and would have been very glad of Xanthippe.’

  ‘Look, Miss Jo-Jo,’ said Len. ‘If you and I are going to get on as well as I hope we’re going to get on, you must drop this natter about rats. Just accept that I have a special understanding of them – though I very much wish that I hadn’t – and that I should know if rats had been mixed up in any of this.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jo-Jo, flushing with pleasure at this admonitory address, ‘no rats. Then what?’

  ‘It will be,’ remarked Len, ‘amusing to find out. Meanwhile,’ he said, turning to Ptolemaeos, ‘what’s with this “eight days” bit? You have insisted that this Ivan Barraclough must be in Dieppe with eight days to spare before the Froggies show up to do their restoration. Why eight days?’

  ‘Call it a hunch,’ said Ptolemaeos. ‘I like seeing patterns in things. It took the Castellan’s sappers and serfs eight days to dig from the mouth of the burrow to the point, dangerously near the shaft of the well, where the Castellan called a halt. And here’s another hunch. If the sappers were nearing the well, they were probably nearing their goal, as it is unlikely that this was on the other side of the well. So there it is: eight days I reckon as par for the dig. Call it, if you like, a matter of tradition.’

  ‘But this is crazy, Ptoly man. If it took a crowd of sappers and the rest eight days, it will take Ivan about eighty.’

  ‘No. The sappers had to proceed inch by laborious inch, testing everything for fear of doing damage. Ivan need have no such inhibition. Until he gets pretty near the place where the treasure now must be, he can go as fast as he likes.’

  ‘But how is he going to find the right direction? That tunnel from the crypt was filled in.’

  ‘He won’t be starting from the crypt. He won’t be following the old tunnel or the burrow. He knows that the tunnel led from Xanthippe’s crypt (the location of which we have pretty well), under the foundations of the donjon, and on towards the shaft of the well – the head of which is still plain to see. So he will start to dig inside the donjon, fairly near the wellhead, and at a point immediately above the line which the tunnel must have followed as it approached the well’s shaft. He will therefore hit this line at some point near where the Castellan stopped the last dig, which was probably, as I said just now, very near the actual goal.’

  Ptolemaeos opened the back door and they all marched into the kitchen.

  ‘Hit or miss,’ said Len.

  ‘There is an element of that – inevitably.’

  ‘And what sort of cunt is this Barraclough going to look, digging away like a ghoul in the donjon? He’ll be noticed, man; word will go round there’s a freak in the Castle, and they’ll probably send a man to carry him off to the bin.’

  ‘One: he will be working at night – and there will be no night watchman to hinder him until the French have brought in their equipment, which, des Veules-les-Roses tells me, will not be until the first day of their schedule.

  ‘Two: the donjon is not visited by many people, as it is awkward of access. It is rather a favourite with adventurous children, but these will not be up there at night – nor indeed will anyone else.

  ‘Three: even if someone does visit the donjon while Ivan is working there, he probably won’t see Ivan…whose starting point is in a little hollow near the wall, a hollow largely concealed by a gorse bush.

  ‘Four: even if a visitor does see Ivan, or hears him at work in his hole, he won’t take it in, because Baby Canteloupe will be there to make imploring eyes at him – to imply that she and Ivan have come up there for a tumble and would the kind stranger please leave them to it.’

  ‘He’d probably hang around in the hope of watching.’

  ‘As you say. In which case something must be improvised. Baby is good at improvisation. And now,’ said Ptolemaeos crossing the kitchen, ‘as Jo-Jo will tell you, this kitchen is not my domain. I have some letters to write in my study.’

  ‘Tell me first,’ called Len, ‘who is this Baby Canteloupe? I mean, I know
she’s Tom’s daughter, but what else about her?’

  ‘Hang around while I get going on the dinner,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘and I’ll tell you what else about her. That’s all right,’ said Jo-Jo, looking forlornly at Ptolemaeos, ‘isn’t it, Ptoly? Len staying here with me? Perhaps he can do little things to help, and sometimes, you know, a girl gets lonely cooking, however much she –’

  ‘Soul of my soul,’ said Ptolemaeos, holding up his left palm to cut her short. ‘I am neither a possessive nor a jealous man, and those that are I despise, from the bottom of my corrupt old heart. But please remember my old warning. Please remember, in this case as in all others, that to reach what they call the right true end of love is often, indeed, to reach the end of love. Or to approach it. Or at least to begin to approach it. So beware of orgasm…of orgasm, that is the drain of pleasure in the short term, and, in the long term, the death of love.’

  So this is it, thought Ivan Barraclough: I can’t complain; I’ve not had at all a bad innings as the game goes. Still, it would have been pleasant to have had just a little longer; I had plenty of interesting questions still to ask, about the history, morals and religion of the Maniots, notably about pagan survivals, whether superstitious or philosophic, in the liturgy and rituals of the local Orthodox church. I’d already unearthed some very curious beliefs about the soul – comparable with, though often in contrast to, that weird notion entertained by the Ilyssans and others that the soul was a dead thing entombed in the body until the body’s death resurrected and released it. This and other matters would have absorbed my attention for many happy years, provided we’d found Ptolemaeos’ treasure and I’d had my share to live off.

  But now this treasure hunt of Ptoly’s has been my undoing, Ivan Barraclough thought. These people, these agents of Ptoly’s in Greece and Yugoslavia, have somehow discovered the magnitude of the prize and think that they can win it for themselves if they only have enough information. They think I can provide that information. They require certainty: they do not understand that this whole enterprise has been built of speculation, of the tentative interpretation of dubious texts (Hubert’s Chronicle and its Appendix) the original motive behind which is as highly conjectural as is the method of narration; for how far the latter is literal truth (or at any rate supposed to be) and how far it is purposeful metaphor (but to what purpose?), it is now impossible to discriminate. Yet where doubt is of the essence, these men want certainty. I have told them that they cannot have it; they do not believe me. They wish me to say, ‘Dig there, and at this level you will find that.’ They have convinced themselves that the matter is that simple; they will not be dissuaded; and now, since I refuse to tell them, cannot tell them, anything precise, they are going to torture me in order to extract precision. What they do not know is that I have a dicky heart and a low pain threshold (as Mr Bone the dentist used to say), and that even quite elementary experiments in this kind will probably kill me instanter.