September Castle Read online

  ‘Leave aside that that explanation begs about a million questions,’ Jo-Jo said, ‘why should the Écrevisse, or those that had sent it, wish to kill poor Xanthippe?’

  ‘One answer, which is suggested by the events which now followed, is that Masullaoh, the daemon, wished to put on a particularly powerful and diabolic exhibition…which began when Lalage summoned Hubert to Xanthippe’s chamber later the following night. Xanthippe’s body had by now been lying in state for well over twenty-four hours and something, it appeared, was very badly wrong.

  ‘You see, according to the belief of Greek Orthodox Christians the soul of a dead person lingers near the body for quite a long time, being afraid to leave it. It is very important that during this period friends of the deceased should be in the same room as the body, to encourage the soul by their prayers and to protect both it and the body against the undesirable attentions of evil spirits who may happen to be passing. Later on the soul is endowed by the prayers said on its behalf with the courage to set out on its journey, which will be over Wilderness and through peril to the Throne of God – but with that we are not just now concerned. What does concern us is to understand that when the soul is about to set out on this journey it makes some sign to those gathered round the body, so that they may know it is now departing and is finally leaving its body to their ministrations.’

  ‘But as we know,’ said Jo-Jo carefully, ‘some Greek Christians from the Mani have an additional belief. They believe that the living body is the tomb of the dead soul – which is only released and brought to life by the death of the body. This surely makes a difference?’

  ‘It does indeed. Whereas the normal Orthodox belief is that the soul, regarding the body as its old friend and home, lingers near it anything up to three days, the belief of the Maniots (or at least of the Ilyssans) is that the soul, hating the body as its tomb and its prison, hangs about only for long enough to get its bearings after which it takes off to visit the places frequented, as it instinctively knows, by the body during its lifetime, in order to see what it itself has been missing.’

  ‘What about the Wilderness and the Throne?’

  ‘Ah. The soul is, of course, free to make straight for these and quite often it does so. Usually, on the other hand, it leaves the journey to the Throne until after its round of earthly visits; and sometimes it never attempts it at all. But we are not concerned with such details now. Our present business is to realize that according to the Ilyssan belief the soul stays by its body for twelve hours at the most. However, though its attitudes and destinations may be different from those posited by standard Orthodoxy, in one way it behaves precisely the same as any Orthodox soul: when it is about to depart it makes some sign to the friends who are praying by the cadaver and who must now prepare to dispose of it.’

  ‘What kind of sign?’

  ‘A noise as of wings. A violent disturbance, without the extinction, of the flames of the candles which surround it. A sudden and marked drop in the temperature. When the soul goes, Orthodox or Ilyssan, everyone present knows all about it.’

  ‘And I suppose,’ speculated Jo-Jo, ‘the trouble with Xanthippe was…that her soul had not gone as it should have done.’

  ‘Correct. After over twice the period allotted for an Ilyssan soul to take its departure en règle, there had still been no sign, not the very slightest. From which Lalage and her chums concluded that Xanthippe’s soul was still hanging about in the death chamber.’

  ‘Which would have been perfectly all right on the Orthodox belief but was very much not all right in the Maniot or Ilyssan version?’

  ‘Correct again. So there was Lalage, summoning Hubert to explain all this, and there was Hubert, saying how sorry he was but really there was nothing that he could do about it.

  ‘Ah, but there was, she told him. In crises like this one there was prescribed a formula of incantation, in which the soul was courteously but very firmly exhorted to be on its way before it became an embarrassment. The trouble was, a priest was needed to lead the incantation – not a Roman priest (who would refuse to conduct an Orthodox rite) but an Orthodox one, which in their case they had not got, as priests were thin on the ground in Ilyssos and there had been none to spare for Xanthippe when she left home. Which things being so, they would have to make the best of Hubert, who, though a Roman, was not in Orders and could have no conscientious objection. But was he worthy to stand for a priest? enquired Hubert. Well, they all knew him for a just, kind and righteous man, much loved by their late mistress, and they could only hope that he would be acceptable to God as a minister for this present purpose.

  ‘As it happened, Hubert had a goodish bit of Greek from his time in the Morea and was pretty well able to get up the refrains and recitative required of him. So off they went. First of all, they addressed Xanthippe’s soul with polite wishes for its welfare, then expressed a fear that all was not quite thik hai with it – for why had it not gone about its business as it long since should have done? Was there, in short, anything which Xanthippe’s friends could do to help?’

  Ptolemaeos paused and shuddered. He led Jo-Jo away from the window.

  ‘Come to bed, sweetheart,’ he said.

  ‘Not till you’ve finished about Xanthippe.’

  ‘I’ll finish there.’

  As they climbed the stairs, Jo-Jo said: ‘But what did they think they could possibly do to help?’

  ‘Nothing. It was just a rhetorical question put out for the sake of good manners, and like all rhetorical questions it neither required nor expected an answer. The nub of the incantation was still to come – and for that good manners would be shelved and Xanthippe would be told in pretty brisk terms to take herself off as she ought to.’

  Again Ptolemaeos fell silent. They undressed hurriedly, crawled into Ptolemaeos’ enormous bed, and discreetly cuddled each other.

  ‘The trouble was,’ said Ptolemaeos, drawing his right forefinger slowly down Jo-Jo’s spine, ‘that just for once the rhetorical question got a most unwelcome answer. Xanthippe talked back.’

  Ivan Barraclough was beginning to feel hungry. He had had nothing to eat since his dinner the previous night, and the morning was now far spent.

  So was his petrol. By his reckoning he had perhaps an eighth of a tank left; enough for another sixty miles, which would take about an hour and a quarter at the speed he was now averaging.

  Still the maroon Lancia loitered patiently along behind him. An hour and a quarter, Ivan thought. Well, as long as he had petrol he could at any rate choose where he would stop. For at least another hour he could choose the place of confrontation. Surely he could devise something, surely he could come up with some ruse or another (with the help of a suitable location) in that period. Eyes front looking, then: watch for the right spot.

  ‘And no discouragement,’ he sang,

  ‘Shall make him once relent

  His first avowed intent

  To be a pilgrim.’

  Feeling much better, he launched into the second verse. He was just rendering his favourite line about ‘hobgoblins and foul fiends’ when there was a discreet thud from his rear offside. The discreet thud of an undramatic puncture. He looked left: salt-marsh and the distant sea. He looked right: pine forest gently rising among sand dunes. Well at least, he thought, as he coaxed the wounded Land Rover on to the verge, they may fix me up with some breakfast.

  ‘Oh Ptoly, for the Lord’s sake,’ said Jo-Jo for the twentieth time.

  ‘For the Lord’s sake,’ repeated Ptolemaeos for the twenty-first time, ‘XANTHIPPE TALKED BACK.’

  The mist swirled against the bedroom window, mist shot with sunbeams; for now it was day and had been for some time. I must sleep, thought Jo-Jo. No, not yet: I must hear this out.

  ‘All right,’ she said: ‘I’m sorry for interrupting. Please go on.’

  ‘According to Hubert, Xanthippe lay on her bed, dead and motionless…motionless except for her lips, which said something so appalling that at first they
could none of them take it in.’

  Jo-Jo slowly withdrew her arms from Ptolemaeos’ neck and chest and felt for his hand.

  ‘Yes?’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘She told them what had gone wrong. When her body died, her thymos, i.e. her whole system of physical and mental and nervous responses, had of course died with it, while her soul, her psyche, had duly come to life.’

  ‘Which was just as it should be.’

  ‘Yes. The bother was, though, that her soul could not leave her body. It wasn’t hovering around the room, as they had supposed, and getting ready to go: it was still in her body and could not escape.’

  ‘Could not escape?’

  ‘It was prevented. Prevented by the soul of Hero, who had been sent to watch her. You see, since Xanthippe had devoured Hero, Hero, with some assistance from Masullaoh, had become intimate with Xanthippe’s being and was able to exercise certain powers over it. And one of these was to ensure that Xanthippe’s soul, though now awake and fully alive, remained a prisoner in her body.’

  ‘How? Had Hero entered Xanthippe’s body to constrain her?’

  ‘I think…that Hero somehow enveloped her. Hubert is not precise about their relationship. But three things he does make clear. First, Xanthippe’s living soul is confined within her dead body. Secondly, since the soul cannot take over the vital function of the now dead thymos, which was to inform and quicken the limbs and senses, her body will soon begin to decay in the usual manner –’

  ‘– And her aware of it, for Christ’s sake, Ptoly, aware of what’s happening? As if I suddenly started to rot while lying here with you?’

  ‘Pretty much the same as that. You see, in these circumstances, with the thymos dead but the psyche or soul now living and trapped in the body, the soul begins to assume certain mechanical functions of the thymos. This is the third point on which Hubert of Avallon is very clear. Although Xanthippe’s soul could not co-ordinate mind and nerves and sinews as her thymos had done, and although it could not keep the flesh and blood healthy and in proper operation as the thymos had done, it could achieve a certain physical control of the cadaver. It could learn to activate it. Xanthippe had already started to talk: soon, she said, very soon, she would be able to use her dead limbs and sense organs.’

  ‘Like a zombie or a vampire?’

  ‘No, sweetheart. Zombies and vampires have ways of keeping their bodies in good condition. Although they are dead, they have some special physical dispensation. The hideous peculiarity of Xanthippe’s condition was that she had no such dispensation: that although her soul was in control all right, what it controlled was not her body but her corpse, something which would decompose until it became a skeleton of bones which would finally fall apart.’

  ‘And would her soul still be imprisoned?’

  ‘Yes. It was doomed to stay linked with the body as long as Hero watched over it…i.e. as long as Masullaoh willed it.’

  ‘But why was Masullaoh doing this to her?’

  ‘Because she had rebelled, she said. Because she had planned to become captain of her own soul and her own fate through the use of the herb which Aristarchos had given her. She was being made an example. She wanted everyone to know and be warned. She also hoped that if she acknowledged Masullaoh’s powers in this way, he would eventually relent and release her.’

  ‘But Ptoly, how were Hubert and the hand-maidens behaving during all this?’

  ‘It seems that thirteenth-century Greeks had a strong stomach for this kind of affair. The girls, after the initial shock, stood their ground and listened, while Hubert, being the man of the party, was in honour bound to conduct himself as steadily as his inferiors.’

  ‘But what in God’s name did she propose that they should do with her?’ Jo-Jo let go of Ptolemaeos’ hand and joined her own two in supplication over his breast. ‘I mean…they couldn’t bury her alive, so to speak. And they couldn’t have her walking around dead – or not for very much longer.’

  ‘She proposed that they should make a shrine with a crypt and a little cloister for her. If they would do this, and if they would let her have the beautiful Écrevisse to help her pass the years, perhaps the centuries, of the suffering which was in store for her, she would promise to confine herself to this precinct and never to issue out and show herself in the increasingly repellent form she would assume. She was not yet sure whether she would need nutriment: if so, the creatures of the crypt and the cloister would probably provide it. Masullaoh was perfectly content, she said, that this accommodation should be come to: for even if she did not exhibit herself in her full horror, the shrine, crypt and cloister would give rise to a legend quite powerful enough for his purposes. One final condition: let no one ever try to take her beloved water-creature from her. It was her murderer, by the will of Masullaoh, but it was also her joy, her solace, her treasure, from which she could never be parted.

  ‘And she then, according to Hubert, gave point to her address by slowing pivoting her trunk to a vertical position, then horizontally pivoting her nether limbs, and finally rising from the bed and stalking away to the ramparts, in a series of ungainly and jerky movements like those of an arthritic. This, she promised, would be her last walk at large in the Castle, provided only they did what she had asked in all matters.’

  ‘And so they did?’

  ‘And so they did. In those days, labourers and craftsmen were cheap when not gratuitous (if firmly approached) and swift in operation. For a week the Despoina Xanthippe lay in her bed-chamber, attended by Lalage and the other girls, surrounded by autumn flowers and smoking censers, making occasional rather heavy conversation about her condition and gazing always on her beloved Écrevisse. At the end of the week the shrine, the crypt and the cloister were ready. The Princess immediately took possession of the crypt, which was crudely furnished with couch, chair and table, and from which she had easy access to the shrine and thence to the cloister: but the only exit to, or entrance from, the outer world was a door at the west end of the shrine, which looked on to a jousting yard north of the donjon; and this door, with Xanthippe’s full knowledge and consent, was to be sealed. “And so,” says Hubert, “her maidens and I attended her to the tomb in which she must live and left her there with her beloved water-creature (which was scaled in such richness as would purchase a fair dukedom). There were many tears at parting, and her maidens were eager to give and receive the final kisses; but ‘No,’ quoth she, ‘this may not be, for already my lips harbour the poison of decay, and I would not sully your fair flesh. Go your ways, and pray for my soul that is mewed in so foul a coffin; and may God give you goodly husbands.’ ”’

  ‘Do we know any details?’ asked Jo-Jo. ‘Could she sleep, for example? Did she in the end require food?’

  ‘Hubert thinks not. Sleep and nourishment are requirements of a living organism: Xanthippe was just a cadaver which was propelled by the power of her pent-up soul.’

  ‘This sounds absurd…but was she given books?’

  ‘There would not have been many of those at that time in a place like the Castle of Arques. She had much food for thought, and she had her Écrevisse which a daemon had brought her from the Court of Satan. Let us hope these kept her occupied.’

  ‘And you are still expecting me to believe all this?’

  ‘It is a matter of interpretation. I’ll come to that in a moment. Meanwhile, you should know that Henri de Longueil turned up, the day after Xanthippe was immured, and started asking a lot of awkward questions. After all, there had been talk of marriage and settlements and so on, and now he was absolutely left flat.’

  ‘So what? He never liked her.’

  ‘He was sorry for her – and he might have liked her dowry, for all his protests against arranged marriages. Anyway, he was inquisitive about what had gone on. So Hubert told him the tactful story that subsequently inspired his ballad, and suggested that he might like to escort Xanthippe’s young ladies back to Ilyssos, where he could have a word with Xanthippe’
s father, Phaedron, and then present himself to his Villehardouin connections. Either Lord Phaedron or Prince William might well prove glad of his services, and besides, Hubert pointed out, travel would be of inestimable value to Henri qua poet. Henri, having nothing much else to do, pronounced this a topping idea, and they engaged to travel together as far as Avallon, where Hubert must give his belated attention to the affairs which had originally called him home.

  ‘So they set about the final arrangements that had to be made before their departure. It was decided to send an express messenger on ahead to the Lord Phaedron of Ilyssos, to tell him that Xanthippe had died of homesickness, and that her former suitor was coming to pay his respects and deposit the hand-maidens in due course. Henri busied himself with his ballad (which he intended to present to Phaedron) while Hubert took the Castellan on one side and adjured him, on pain of horror worse than death, to keep clear of Xanthippe’s shrine. This was popularly supposed, by inmates of the Castle, to be a conventional mausoleum of a conventionally deceased Princess who had been interred there with some of her valuables, in those days a standard incitement to all and sundry to come looting. Hubert tried to make the Castellan understand that anyone who broke the seal on the door of the shrine would find, too late, that he was playing in far too tough a league; and the Castellan in turn undertook to spread the word down the line. At first to no avail. A gang of imbeciles tried to break into the shrine the very night before Hubert, Henri and the girls were due to leave – and the whole bloody shower was found the next morning, outside the door, which they had opened, with their throats ripped out.’