by Simon Raven
Ptolemaeos had ordained that after the sorbets of Calvados there should be an interval, before the partridges, of forty-five minutes, during which he would open the debate and conduct the earlier stages. It was not only a debate but also an enquiry. ‘What,’ Ptolemaeos was saying now, ‘has really been at the bottom of it all? It was to find out this that I first went into the thing.’ Yet always contiguous with this enquiry must be the debate, he continued, because his guests would find, as one after another of them made his or her deposition, that there were (if one allowed for minor variations) two possible explanations of the whole affair, the first entirely logical, mundane and rational, the second very much the reverse. It would be for those gathered at the round table to debate and to decide which must prevail.
‘Perhaps as good a starting point as any,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘will be a review of the events which took place on the second evening of the dig in the donjon of the Castle. Len…if you please.’
Len now told the company how Baby and he had discussed the evident absurdity of what they were doing (‘Joke grave-diggers in a “B” movie’) and had reached the conclusion that they were there as ground-bait just to get the local queer fish biting. And now they came to think of it, there had been a bite already: on the previous night, when they left the donjon, Jo-Jo had suddenly gone very peculiar, had had a kind of fit, as they passed a certain spot (a slight bump in the ground attached to a more prominent slope) near the north wall of the donjon.
They had therefore decided to take another look at the ground in that area. As they approached it, Baby had been much moved by the rustle of the spent wind from the sea and the cries of sea-birds, and had given voice to her pity for the poor little Greek Princess who had been tortured by these tokens of the element which she yearned for but was no longer allowed to look upon. Hearing the true love in Baby’s tone, Len had told her to use that love to summon the Lady’s soul.
‘We had been told that her soul was in some fashion imprisoned in what was left of her body,’ Len said. ‘It seemed to me that the way Baby Canteloupe felt she might be able to set the Lady’s soul free – if there was any truth in the tale. “Summon her,” I said. “Summon her with your love.” So Baby started. She found a suitable and simple phrase and a tune to go with it, and she chanted away under the moon and then began to dance.
‘Soon after she began to dance the moon went in. But we had a torch and I could see her pretty well, and it seemed to me that whenever she danced actually on the little bump in the ground she became more excited, more kind of vibrant, as if she were feeling a response. A little later she danced some paces away from the bump and I turned to watch her. Just then the moon came out again, and when this happened Baby suddenly seemed to see something behind me, on the bump perhaps; she rushed towards it and passed me with her arms outstretched, calling out cries of welcome – then dropped flat and didn’t stir. It was just about then that Jean Marie and Jo-Jo showed up –’
‘Cut right there,’ Ptolemaeos called. ‘We’ll continue with the further events of that evening in a little while. But first I want you all to hear Jo-Jo’s account, and Jean-Marie’s, of what they saw when they arrived up there near the donjon.’
Jo-Jo now reported that she had arrived with Jean-Marie during the concluding stages of Baby’s dance, just as the moon came out. The scene had been very much as described by Len, she said, except that she suddenly became aware that behind Len was standing a tall Lady in white. It was in order to welcome and embrace this figure that Baby had rushed past Len. It seemed to Jo-Jo that Baby had, as it were, stepped inside the Lady in white, so that for a split second a white margin had flickered round Baby’s whole body…after which the two forms merged into one – Baby’s – and that form fell to the ground.
Jean-Marie supported Jo-Jo’s account in every particular.
‘Well now,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘before we pass on to the later developments of that evening, I have just one question for my niece. Jo-Jo, darling, heart of my heart, why did you go running to Jean-Marie and blow our whole box of tricks wide open? You are the most loyal and loving girl a man could know…and yet you split on your Uncle and your friends like a rotten banana.’
Jean-Marie made jerky manual gestures towards Ptolemaeos, as if to say, ‘Don’t you dare bully my wife’, but Jo-Jo soothed him down with her little-boy smile across the table, and then answered Ptolemaeos.
‘It’s exactly as I told Jean-Marie, Ptolykins. As I walked along the donjon wall, just by that bump which Len talks of, I felt a terrible jolt, almost as if I was being blown apart, and after that I absolutely knew that nothing but wretchedness could ensue if we went on digging in the manner and the spirit in which we had started. I knew that it was imperative that I should make everyone at least pause and think what he was doing. I thought how upset you’d be, my sweetheart, and I agonized all day, but when M’sieur des Veules-les-Roses told me that a man from the French Department of Monuments was in Dieppe, I knew that this must be my cue.
‘So I tracked Jean-Marie Guiscard down in his hotel, and he came with me to the Castle, and later on he was so kind and trusting, and loyal and understanding that…that…that…’ Then Jo-Jo ceased to falter and said in a low clear voice:
The die is cast, and thus the matter is:
My true love has my heart, and I have his.
There was a murmur of pleasure round the table, after which Ptolemaeos smiled at Jo-Jo, blew his nose rather loudly, and then:
‘So there we are,’ he said. ‘Baby flat out in the moonlight, Jo-Jo and Jean-Marie advancing over the old tilting meadow, and Len already bending over Baby. Had you seen a Lady in white, Len?’
‘No. Strictly no Lady in white from where I stood.’
‘And yet you had turned as Baby ran back past you, so if the Lady had been there you must have seen her?’
‘You’d certainly think so. But as far as I was concerned Baby was just embracing the air.’
‘I see. Jo-Jo and Jean-Marie, could you have been deceived by some trick of the light? After all, the moon had only just come out again and there was mist about. Perhaps you saw a refraction of moonbeams?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘and perhaps. But if so it was a powerful enough illusion to make me shiver like a fen willow and to set Jean-Marie crossing himself like the Baptist. You should also remember that Baby obviously saw someone there behind Len…as Len himself will allow.’
‘Certes,’ said Len.
‘What do you say, Tullia?’ Ptolemaeos asked Baby.
‘I’m afraid I don’t remember,’ Baby whispered wanly.
‘I’m not surprised. It was only a split second before you passed clean out. But in any case,’ said Ptolemaeos, turning to Jo-Jo, ‘you agree that any sign of this Lady had vanished by the time Baby fell to the ground and Len started to bend over her.’
Jo-Jo, Jean-Marie and Len all nodded.
‘Very well,’ said Ptolemaeos: ‘Jo-Jo, you take it from there.’
‘Baby was right out for the count,’ Jo-Jo said, ‘and nothing made any difference. She was breathing heavily and regularly, as though she were merely asleep, but nothing could wake her. Len had some Cognac, and he got the flask into her mouth and poured some down, but she slept as deep as ever. I tried tickling her’ – Jo-Jo flushed slightly – ‘where I know she’s sensitive, and Jean-Marie blew in her ear –’
‘I wish,’ said Baby perking up, ‘that I’d known about all this at the time –’
‘– But simply nothing happened. Eventually we all agreed that she must be allowed to sleep it out and should not be moved. Jean-Marie put his jerkin under her…and then we all – well – huddled together for company, to keep the cold away. I shared Jean-Marie’s jerkin with Baby, and the other two put their arms round us. They must have had a horrid time on the damp grass – but it didn’t last long, because Baby started talking. When this happened she knelt at first and then stood, so of course we all stood up too.’
Jo-Jo paused
and frowned, weighing some nicety.
‘It was Baby’s voice,’ she said at last, ‘but it wasn’t Baby. This inclined me to think that…whatever it was…could not be bad. If something bad talks through the mouth of a person, then it talks in its own voice. Since we were hearing Baby’s voice, I was reassured. In any case it was soon clear that the speaker had good intentions. She said…she said that she was called Hero, once upon a time the chief lady-in-waiting to the Despoina Xanthippe of Ilyssos. She said that Xanthippe had devoured her – or rather, that the daemon Masullaoh had devoured her, using the body and organs of Xanthippe, and that her immortal spirit had been appointed by Masullaoh to keep company with that of Xanthippe after Xanthippe’s death. She wasn’t actually jailer to Xanthippe’s spirit because Masullaoh had imprisoned it in Xanthippe’s corpse with so powerful a spell that it could never in any case escape. The point seemed to be that Masullaoh, though angry with Xanthippe for wishing to break away from him and though determined to punish her most horribly, nevertheless loved her as he always had and wished in some way to mitigate her sentence. So he gave her Hero’s soul for company, and also let her keep a miraculous image of a water-creature which he had brought to her in a dream.’
‘I see,’ said Ptolemaeos. ‘With very slight differences Hero was taking the same line as Hubert’s Appendix.’
‘Yes. Masullaoh had been coming to Xanthippe ever since she was thirteen; he had presented her with the jewelled horn to intensify her orgasms (which were also, in a sense, his own, because he entered her as they took place); his visits were sudden and could be embarrassing; he demanded meat, which he consumed through the mouth and entrails of Xanthippe; he brought intelligence both of Heaven and Hell – and so on and so forth. Pretty much Hubert’s line, as you say.’
‘Not rationalizing? Not suggesting any commonsense explanation? Paradoxical as it sounds, you know, ghosts sometimes do.’
‘Not this one. She told us – Hero did – that she had certain powers and privileges. Unlike Xanthippe, she was not tied to one place. She could move, at any rate to the ground above what had once been Xanthippe’s shrine. She could make her wishes felt over quite a distance – if given someone sensitive with whom to communicate.’
Jean-Marie nodded. ‘That morning under the ramparts,’ he muttered.
‘She could also sense any threat to her mistress’ remains of dishonour or interference. Over the centuries she had been, in effect, the Guardian of Xanthippe’s resting place and whatever was inside it –’
‘The miraculous water-creature? The Écrevisse?’
‘At first, yes. Thus she had been responsible for the death of the soldiers who tried to loot the shrine shortly after Xanthippe was confined to it. She had so possessed them that they savaged each other’s throats with their nails and teeth. Then again, when she felt the more massive threat posed by Lord Phaedron and his men –’
‘She never suggested that the Écrevisse might have belonged to Phaedron?’
‘Certainly not. In Hero’s version Lord Phaedron had heard rumours about what was in his daughter’s tomb and was coming to grab it. But it wasn’t his. It had been part of no dowry. It had come out of another world as Masullaoh’s gift, and it was Hero’s duty, with such assistance as Masullaoh might offer, to defend it. But this time the opposition was very formidable, and on Masullaoh’s advice Hero decided that she and Xanthippe and the Écrevisse had better take refuge deeper in the earth. So Xanthippe, who was still in one piece and animated by the soul which could not leave her corpse, scrabbled and clawed a kind of tunnel down through the soil and under the donjon wall. Down this tunnel she escaped with the Écrevisse (only just in time, Hero said, just like it happened in Henri Martel’s saga) to a lair near the well shaft, where her remains and her Écrevisse, with the soul of Hero, would pass the coming eternity.’
‘But were very nearly found, even there.’
‘It seems Masullaoh told them not to worry. The searchers would never reach them where they now were, he said. And of course we know from Henri’s poem that he was right. But there was now another threat looming. Masullaoh had been disgraced. He had abused his privileges as an emissary who could move between God and Satan: he had tried to violate an Angel in Heaven, and had been sentenced, by God and Satan in concert (for they were strict respecters of each other’s ordinances) to be confined for a millennium of millennia to the Nethermost Pit.
‘He paid them a last visit, Hero said, on parole, so to speak, before his final committal. Hero and Xanthippe begged him to release Xanthippe’s soul from her poor mouldering corpse, before he was put away, and to release Hero from her distressful charge, but he refused. If he must suffer confinement for the next million years, he said, so could they. What was more, he would need distraction: Xanthippe and Hero had each other; he would have nobody – so he would now take back the Écrevisse into the realms from which he had first brought it, in the hope that its brilliant presence and its haunting song of forbidden pleasure would lighten the weary centuries before him.
‘How weary these would be,’ Jo-Jo continued, ‘Hero now understood well enough. For she and Xanthippe had passed only seven centuries together in the earth, a tiny fraction of what Masullaoh must endure, and both of them had long since desired to be utterly extinguished. For Hero it was a little better: she could at least rise to the surface, to the old entrance of the shrine of which she was Guardian, and there she could feel through the pores of her spirit (her expression) the passing of the seasons and the advent of the spent winds from the sea. But for Xanthippe…she was chained to her skeleton in the lair near the well shaft. The days had long since passed when her soul could bring her corpse into effective movement, for whatever her will might be the crumbling limbs were no longer capable of response. From time to time Hero tried to accost those who passed near the little bump (the sole relic of the shrine) where she was permitted to station herself, in order to rouse their pity or ask their help. But all she succeeded in doing was annoying or bewildering them: none knew the full tale, few knew any of it, and those that did thought it was the spirit of Xanthippe that was trying to speak with them, the sad ghost of the girl who had died for want of the sea; and so such men would shed a tear for her and pass on their way swiftly, having sorrows enough of their own.
‘But then at last Hero the Guardian received warning that for the first time in many centuries men were coming to seek the Écrevisse. That it had long since gone, taken by Masullaoh, made no matter: the soul of Hero had been endowed with an instinct that told her when there was threat to the Écrevisse or to her mistress, and such a threat, in intent, now approached. But she also realized something else through her instinct: that these seekers, unlike those who passed over the shrine from time to time and could not understand what she would tell them – that these seekers all knew the full history of her mistress, and there was one among them who might, at last, be able to bring help.’
Jo-Jo paused and looked at Baby, who seemed preoccupied.
‘Did you know you were saying all this?’ Jo-Jo asked.
‘I knew it was being said to me,’ Baby replied. ‘Or rather, it wasn’t actually said but somehow the sense of it all was communicated.’
‘So you acted as interpreter,’ said Tom Llewyllyn, ‘and passed it on to the rest of them?’
‘I suppose I must have done, since they all heard it.’
‘Can you remember,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘what was communicated to you next?’
Baby nodded, wary and somewhat embarrassed.
‘Hero had sensed,’ said Baby, ‘that I had a special love for Xanthippe…which Hero thought might save Xanthippe, might indeed save both of them; for if Xanthippe could be released from her prison, then Hero would be released from her duty as Guardian and companion. And so Hero asked if I would come with her to meet Xanthippe; and when I told her that I could not physically accompany her into the earth, she began to plead.’
‘You heard this, Len?’ said Ptolemaeos.
‘Yes,’ said Ptolemaeos: ‘I get you. What happened then?’
‘What happened,’ said Jo-Jo, eyes shining, ‘was Jean-Marie. He doesn’t speak much English yet, but I was keeping him au fait, and when he realized what Hero wanted and why Baby had to refuse, he said to me: “You are close to this lady, I think, this little Canteloupe. Can you make yourself heard by her…while she is in this state?” And I said I thought I just might, although I had failed before, when the trance first came on her. “Then tell her,” said Jean-Marie, “that if she is willing, I can bring here tomorrow men who will make a path to this…this place where dwells Xanthippe; and then she can meet with her. For I too love Xanthippe,” said Jean-Marie, “and now that it is at last clear to me how things are with her, I would well wish her to be freed.”
‘So,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘I came and stood very close to Baby, who was still pleading and whimpering to herself on behalf of Hero, and I did something to her which she really goes for – not just the half-hearted kind of goosing which I’d tried before – and I did it with all my knowledge and my love of her. She stopped quarrelling, went limp, said my name. Then she went horribly taut, as though something inside her was insisting on her attention. So before things could get any worse, I spoke Jean-Marie’s message into her ear, hoping that she would hear it and translate it to Hero, or that Hero would contrive to pick it up, that somehow it would get through. And so it did, thank Heaven. Baby was still again. I knew everything was all right because she kissed me, kissed me like the first time we were ever together, such a kiss as there are not many in a girl’s life…and just as well, perhaps.’
