September Castle

by Simon Raven

  ‘The Lord Phaedron had a son,’ said Ivan Barraclough, ‘the man who gave Henri Martel’s poems to the monks. This man in turn had two sons, both of whom, like their Aunt Xanthippe before them, suffered from epilepsy. The blood of the line was running sour, you see. The father of these two degenerate boys put them away –’

  ‘In a cemetery? –’

  ‘– In a monastery in Armenia, much the same thing, where they could not embarrass him. Not that they would have done so for long, as they both died under sixteen years of age. Their father had no further issue. The Lordship of Ilyssos devolved on a distant cousin, whose entire family was wiped out, as quislings, by the first Greek Emperor who finally dispersed the Franks of the Morea. Lord Phaedron, then, has no heirs to inherit the treasure.’

  ‘But one could make a case, I suppose, for giving it to the people of the Mani, of the Peloponnese, or of Greece as a whole,’ said Baby, ‘since that’s where it came from.’

  ‘No,’ said Ptolemaeos. ‘It was among my Greek agents that dissidence and disloyalty started. They gave me a lot of trouble – in return for liberal dealing.’

  ‘They were hardly representative, Ptoly, of the Greek nation.’

  ‘Anyhow,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘the Écrevisse came originally from Constantinople, which is now in Turkey. No one, I take it, would entrust such a marvel to the Turks?’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘that on the form the Marquis des Veules-les-Roses has as good a claim as anybody. He is the descendant of the Lady Lalage, who has nursed it for all these centuries.’

  ‘Having originally stolen it,’ said Canteloupe.

  ‘And having paid an appalling penalty for so doing.’

  ‘To say nothing,’ said Jean-Marie, ‘of successfully concealing it from Phaedron – but with the assistance of two Frenchmen, the Castellan and Hubert of Avallon. In all the circumstances, one might say that the Lady Lalage has been holding the Écrevisse in trust – for France.’

  ‘Why not give it to your old College?’ said Tom Llewyllyn to Ptolemaeos. ‘After all, you’ve borne the brunt of all this, so the Écrevisse should go somewhere that is acceptable to you. Now, if you give it to us in Lancaster, we shall place it on loan in the FitzWilliam, which will in turn lend it all round the globe. This way there will be a social benefit – the thing will be seen and enjoyed by millions – and also two personal benefits.’

  ‘And what might those be?’ enquired Ptolemaeos.

  ‘One to me. Amusement at the annoyance which this magnificent benefaction will cause among my left-wing Fellows, who will want to sell it to build hostels for subcretinous students and crêches for unmarried student mothers –’

  ‘And give the rest away to terrorists –’

  ‘– But will be prevented,’ said Tom, ‘by the terms legitimately stipulated by the benefactor…to whom will come the second personal benefit to which I refer, in the form of an Honorary Fellowship awarded propter gratiam donorum.’

  ‘I don’t think your left-wing Fellows would stand for that,’ said Ptolemaeos equably.

  ‘With Tom as Provost Select,’ said Len, ‘and with Constable and me advising him, there’s bound to be a way of fixing it. I defy any shower of Grots and Trots to get the better of us. Just look at the way Constable wished Tom on to them, for a start.’

  ‘And once appointed,’ said Tom to Ptolemaeos, ‘you could leave this unwholesome Fen of yours and come and live in College.’

  ‘Which sounds even less wholesome. Anyway, I love my Fen. I thrive on it.’

  ‘It will be lonely now Jo-Jo’s going.’

  ‘It was lonely before she came. I thrive on my own company – much as I’ve loved hers.’

  ‘We would appreciate your company, Ptolemaeos,’ said Tom. ‘There’s not so many of us left, you know. The old gang’s dying, my friend. As Provost from next Founder’s Day, I shall need your help.’

  ‘Hear bloody hear,’ said Len.

  ‘The sea,’ said Baby Canteloupe. ‘I hear the sea.’

  So did they all, as it pounded against the shore below Ilyssos. The Écrevisse shifted across the table and began its tune of lust… lust that knows no limit, no frustration, no prohibition and no death.

  ‘Her soul went to Ilyssos,’ Baby said, ‘as Hero told me it would. She is crying out from Ilyssos for the companion that was taken from her grave.’

  The waves crashed and the gulls cried. The Écrevisse moved towards Baby; its tune spiralled and rippled, conjuring the delight of the unspeakable.

  The waves and the sea-birds and the music ceased.

  ‘Very well,’ said Ptolemaeos. ‘Though some Greeks in my employ did me an ill turn, they were not, as I am reminded, representative of their nation. From Ilyssos this creature came to France and England: to Ilyssos let it now return.’

  Then there was silence, the silence of assent.

  ‘Just a little lower down, sweetheart,’ said Ptolemaeos to Jo-Jo: ‘that’s it – just under the sack.’

  Jo-Jo and Ptolemaeos were having one last little time together, by special permission of Jean-Marie, who much admired Lord Canteloupe’s unselfish attitudes in these matters (as reported to him by Jo-Jo) and thought that this was a very stylish and aristocratic way to go on.

  ‘And anyway, darling,’ Jo-Jo had said, ‘it simply doesn’t count with Ptoly because neither of us ever comes – nor ever has.’ Even so, Jean-Marie privately thought he was being pretty daring and emancipated. Whatever would his parents in Clermont-Ferrand, or his landlady in Eu, or even the sophisticated M. Socrates have thought? O brave new world that had such people in it!

  ‘We reached a good decision tonight,’ said Ptolemaeos, paddling his fingers in Jo-Jo’s modestly ripening breasts.

  ‘I thought you were against giving it back to the Greeks.’

  ‘I said I was at first in order to make it appear that I was open to other views. But in fact Greece was what I wanted. And of course that performance of Baby’s was a help. All those suggestive noises.’

  ‘What was behind all that, do you suppose?’

  ‘Collective sensibility,’ said Ptolemaeos glibly.

  ‘Or could it be,’ said Jo-Jo, ‘that those two old women were up to their tricks? It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve entertained your party – by special prior arrangement. Anyway, why are you so pleased that thing is going back to Ilyssos? No one there will have any use for it these days. They won’t even have a proper place to put it.’

  ‘Precisely, my little juice-pot. (Just round the corner – that’s my girl.) So some bossing official, some odious and conceited Greek version of that Director of Jean-Marie’s will come nosing round and take it off to Athens.’

  ‘And what’s so splendid about that? Jesus Christ, Ptoly Tunne, no one can tickle a girl there like you can. Just what’s so kosher about that Écrevisse going to Athens? After all your trouble.’

  ‘I once made a vow to Athene, my own heart’s darling Jo-Jo. In return for her gifts to me and to all men, in return for her lessons of tolerance and sweet reason and moderation – the lessons that save those that hear them from utter destruction of mind and spirit, and have certainly saved me despite an arrogant disposition and enormous wealth – in return for these her gifts, I say, I vowed to Athene that I would give to her the most beautiful thing that came into my possession before the end of my thirty-fifth year, which has now come and will very soon be gone. For a long time I thought I should have to give her you; but now I have decided that she – or at least her city – shall have the Écrevisse. It is a gift worthy of a goddess.’

  ‘I wonder whether I should have been. How would you have gone about…making me over?’

  ‘I should have had to sacrifice you, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m quite glad you didn’t. I’ve got a lot to live for just now.’

  ‘You know,’ said Ptolemaeos, ‘since this is the last time we shall ever be together, I’m absolutely going to break my rule: I’m going to come.’

&nb
sp; ‘Not just yet, I hope.’

  ‘No. Very slowly and with great relish.’

  ‘Then so shall I. Very slowly and with great relish. There… there will be best for me, my darling, and I think that…there… will be best for you. Oh Ptoly, Ptoly, my own angel of evil and of love. But one thing you must promise me, before I begin to lose myself: never tell my beautiful Jean-Marie: I will not have him hurt.’

  ‘A pity that Ptolemaeos wouldn’t take up my offer of an Honorary Fellowship,’ wrote Tom Llewyllyn in his journal the last thing before he went to bed; ‘but at least I’ve made an excellent recruit in Ivan Barraclough. I’m sure that Constable and Len and I between us can get him on the books by the New Year…which will give him plenty of time to clear up his household and other affairs in the Peloponnese (which include a boy, I gather, but a purely domestic one). Not only is Ivan a distinguished scholar of Maniot folklore and religion, but he has the manners and address of a gentleman. Dear God, how one does long for these nowadays in Lancaster.’

  ‘Darling Canty,’ said Baby, ‘I do like stroking your hair.’

  ‘What’s left of it. Will you mind stroking a pate?’

  ‘I shall always adore stroking anything of yours. You are my first love and my last.’

  ‘I’m glad you manage to fit a few others in between… though now I come to think of it a bit more, I’m not all that keen on Len. A bit – well – creepy?’

  ‘Very fetching. Oh yes. There’s something compulsive about Len. But perhaps he isn’t altogether suitable…to father a future Marquess.’

  ‘My darling girl?’

  ‘My lord must have a son,’ said Baby. ‘You shall choose the father: I shall love the child as yours for your sake, and you shall love it as yours for mine.’

  ‘Well, well. Tricky problem. Choosing the sire, I mean.’

  ‘Don’t let’s leave it long, Canty. I’m sick of voices and visions.’

  ‘What have they got to do with it?’

  ‘Auntie Isobel – she gets them too, you know –’

  ‘I well remember –’

  ‘– Auntie Isobel says they stop when you’re made preggers. What a relief that will be.’

  ‘You really drummed up something this evening. Aida wasn’t in it.’

  ‘It was all faked,’ said Baby. ‘The only true sounds were those I heard inside me, which started just before the rest of it. That was the work of those two old women. They’ve got a local reputation as witches, Jo-Jo once told me, but really they’re just natural conjurers, and they’re very clever at operating all Ptoly’s electronic equipment. I expect they thought that my starting up was as good a cue as any…though quite what it was all in aid of is hard to say. Some plot of Ptoly’s, I suppose.’

  ‘Anyway, one result is that the Écrevisse is going back to Ilyssos. You must be glad of that.’

  ‘Yes…I was with her, Canty, looking down from the hills to the sea. She told me that now she had come back to Ilyssos she was going to stay there. She was not going to attempt the Wilderness, because for one thing there would be no sea. Then she said that she knew, she sensed, that the Écrevisse, her beloved friend and toy, had been released from whatever place it had been taken to from Arques. She yearned for it in Ilyssos, as Hero had now left her to seek One or Other Throne (she was not quite sure which) on the far side of the Wilderness, and she was lonely without her. The sea was a great comfort and happiness, but she missed her Creature, her gift from the Rivers of Death. I’m telling you the truth, Canty. But all of them tonight, they have found – and can prove – another truth. Do you think I’m potty?’

  ‘I think…that there are many truths, and that in places some of them overlap. They have found signs; they have read inscriptions, made logical inferences, infused some plausible conjectures, and in the end they have arrived at an explanation which is probably fairly close to the physical and historical facts. They, in short, have deduced the plain man’s truth. But you… you have perceived your own truth in all this, just as Henri Martel, the sweet singer, once perceived his.’

  ‘Thank you, dear Canty. I still think I shall be better off when preggers and off the air. There may be some distressful messages coming up later, which I should really prefer to miss. I mean…when that Creature reaches Ilyssos, which hardly exists any longer, so Ivan Barraclough says, some busybody is going to grab it for the swish museum in Athens. Now, if they are right, if their literal and scientific terms are the true ones, this won’t matter much to anyone. But if I am right, it will matter a lot to Xanthippe. Oh, poor Xanthippe.’

  ‘Not so poor,’ said Canteloupe, ‘thanks to you and brave Jo-Jo, who gave her back her sea.’

  April, 1981, to May, 1982

  Dieppe, Deal, Hove, Corfu, Cortona, Dieppe.

  Footnotes

  1The Roses of Picardie, by Simon Raven (House of Stratus; 2001). Vide passim.

  2As he who goes to Barville may see for himself, if he approach the Chapel from the road to the east of it. He is unlikely, however, to be able to verify the interior features described by the Princess, as the Chapel is nowadays kept locked and Claudine has been instructed to open it to nobody – for reasons which will become abundantly plain before this narrative concludes.

  S R

  3Still prominent.

  4Still prominent.

  The Works of Simon Raven

  Published by House of Stratus

  First Born of Egypt Series

  These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  1. Morning Star 1984

  2. The Face of the Waters 1985

  3. Before the Cock Crow 1986

  4. New Seed for Old 1987

  5. Blood of My Bone 1989

  6. In the Image of God 1990

  7. Troubadour 1992

  Novels

  1. Brother Cain 1959

  2. Doctors Wear Scarlet 1960

  3. Close of Play 1962

  4. The Roses of Picardie 1979

  5. An Inch of Fortune 1980

  6. September Castle 1982

  Stories/Collections

  1. The Fortunes of Fingel 1976

  2. Shadows on the Grass 1981

  3. A Bird of Ill Omen 1989

  Synopses of Simon Raven Titles

  Published by House of Stratus

  Before The Cock Crow

  This is the third volume in the First Born of Egypt saga. The story opens with Lord Canteloupe’s strange toast to ‘absent friends’. His wife Baby has recently died and Canteloupe has been left her retarded son, Lord Sarum of Old Sarum. This child is not his, but has been conceived by Major Fielding Gray. In Italy there is an illegitimate child with a legitimate claim to the estate, whom Canteloupe wants silenced. The plot also sees young Marius Stern and his school friend, Tessa Malcolm, drawn into Milo Hedley’s schemes and into a dramatic finale orchestrated by Raisley Conyngham, Milo’s teacher.

  Bird if Ill Omen

  This hilarious instalment from Simon Raven’s entertaining autobiography takes the reader to the four corners of the globe. A lifetime spent travelling – as a soldier and as a civilian – brought Raven into contact with an amazing selection of characters: Gore Vidal, Christopher Isherwood, Morgan Grenfell, plus eccentrics such as Colonel Cuthbert Smith and ‘Parafit’ Paradore. Army life, travels, meetings, dinners and calamities take place in Kenya, Bombay, the Red Sea, Greece and California, among other exotic locations. Wherever he is, Raven entertains us in typical style.

  Blood of My Bone

  In this fifth volume of Simon Raven’s First Born of Egypt series, the death of the Provost of Lancaster College is a catalyst for a series of disgraceful doings in the continuing saga of the Canteloupes and their circle. Marius, under-age father of the new lady Canteloupe’s dutifully produced heir to the family estate, is warned against the malign influence of Raisley Conyngham. Classics teacher at Lancaster, Conyngham is well aware of the sway he has over Marius, who has already revealed himself a keen student of �
�the refinements of hell’. With fate intervening, the stage is set for another deliciously wicked instalment.

  Brother Cain

  Expelled from school, advised to leave university, and forced to resign from the army, Captain Jacinth Crewe has precious few options open to him. For a man in his position, an approach to join a sinister British Government security organisation, with a training centre in Rome, is not an opportunity to be turned down. In Rome, he learns fast how to be ruthless. There is one final mission to complete his training however – to kill an American diplomat and his wife. The setting for the final test is Venice, the occasion, a New Year’s Eve costume ball. As the clock nears midnight, the choice has to be made. And there is no turning back.

  Close of Play

  They are young and entirely unconventional. They have finished at Cambridge and done the tour of Europe. Now the three friends need to earn a living, so they have set up a unique organisation – a very exclusive London club with high membership fees, affordable only to a select few, and where the services on offer are richly varied and exotic. The menu is sex, in every imaginable form, guaranteed to satisfy any craving and fulfil any desire. Some of the world’s most prominent people make up the clientele.

  Doctors Wear Scarlet

  All his life, Richard Fountain has known only success. He is handsome, with an enviable record for school, army and university. A future career as a talented archaeologist seems assured. That is, until he travels to Greece and meets Chriseis. Chriseis is beautiful, mesmerising and mysterious – also evil. A spellbound Richard is lured into her dark world of vice, vampirism and ritual, high up in the Cretan mountains. When his rescuers finally reach him, he has changed beyond all recognition and is seemingly destined for a tragic end. The final act at a double funeral provides a tumultuous climax to a shocking story.