September Castle Read online

  He was here, more precisely, to remind himself of a monument. It was not a tomb, because the Lady whom it commemorated, though born and brought up in Ilyssos, had been buried far away in another country. It was just a plain slab of stone, a ‘stele’ as the Ancient Greeks would have called it, which recorded the name and rank of the Lady, the date, place and circumstances of her death, and the authority for this information. The stone was affixed to the south wall of a large and ugly church which, built at the expense of an Ilyssan who had struck gold in Australia in the mid eighteen hundreds, had replaced the tiny twelfth-century basilica where the Lady herself would have made her orisons. When the latter building had been criminally torn down to make place for its hideous successor, somebody or other had at least sensed that the tablet in its sanctuary was the record of a sad, a poetic and even an historic event, and this somebody or other had ensured the tablet’s preservation by finding it the position which it now occupied in the new church.

  Ivan tried the door of the church. Locked. But almost immediately a little old man came scuffling and muttering, the only person to be seen in the whole street, and unlocked the door with a crooked key which he took from under his armpit. Ivan entered. The old man trembled and babbled along behind him, then made a low whine of protest when Ivan stopped by the slab on the south wall.

  The characters were remarkably clear, if one considered that seven centuries had passed since they were inscribed; nor was the mediaeval Greek difficult to translate, so simple was its message:

  ΑΓΓΕΛΟΣ ΕΚ ΦΡΑΓΓΙΑS ΗΛΘΕΝ

  Ivan read:

  A HERALD CAME FROM FRANCE

  ON THE BIRTHDAY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST

  IN THE ELEVENTH YEAR OF THE REIGN

  OF THE LORD [KYRIOS] PHAEDRON OF

  ILYSSOS BY THE BLOOD OF GOD HE BROUGHT

  WOEFUL TIDINGS EVEN THAT THE

  PRINCESS [DESPOINA] XANTHIPPE

  WAS TWO MONTHS DEAD THE ONLY

  DAUGHTER OF OUR GOOD LORD PHAEDRON

  WHO HAD GIVEN HER INTO THE KEEPING

  OF THE FRANKS AS A PLEDGE OF HIS LOYALTY

  TO VILLEHARDOUIN PRINCE OF ACHAEA

  THE LADYS BODY

  LIES IN THE FAR

  CASTLE OF THE BOREAN

  FRANKS WHERE SHE WAS

  MEWED AND DIED

  BUT PRAY FOR HER SOUL

  THAT IT MAY RETURN IN

  PEACE TO THIS HER OWN

  LAND FOR DESIRE WHEREOF

  SHE SICKENED IN HER

  HEART AND PERISHED

  BEING IN HER EIGHTEENTH YEAR

  For some time Ivan had been aware that the old man’s unease at his interest in the tablet had become active disapproval. A series of sharp tugs at his cuffs and his coat tails indicated a strong wish to see him out and off. Well, he had seen what he had come to see, and there was no point in hanging around where he wasn’t wanted.

  Having given the scowling midget a coin of ten Drachmae, Ivan started the Land Rover and coasted down towards Limenaion, from which he would mount once more for Areopolis and thence take the road for Gytheion and Sparta, where he would seek lodging for the night. On his left the ravine opened like the Pit, while to his right, far below, the sea stirred and struck. Very odd, he thought: the correct Christian prayer should surely have been that the Lady’s soul should dwell in the presence of her God, not that it should return to her home, to a place on earth. Only unhappy souls linger on earth, where they are not peaceful. Whose prayer was it then? No priest would have subscribed to such a wish. Was it the prayer of the Lord Phaedron, that of a lonely old man who loved his daughter and wished her to be with him, even if only as a shade, asking the impossible, that such a shade should ‘return in peace’?

  Or had there been a lover? Or had one of her brothers, a younger brother, perhaps, whom she had bathed and petted, longed for her to come once more and fondle him in the night?

  Answers to such questions would be interesting and useful. But of far more immediate import to himself and his endeavour was to confirm, as he now had, that the Despoina, Lady, or Princess had been definitely reported (1) as having died two months before the Greek Christmas in the eleventh year of her father Phaedron’s Lordship (which could be computed from the reference books as 1255) and (2) as having died and been buried ‘in the far castle of the Borean Franks where she was mewed’.

  ‘But I wonder,’ said Ivan aloud, as he drove past the tiny harbour of Limenaion and started to ascend the main street, ‘I wonder who did compose that heterodox prayer for you, my Lady, and so wilfully and sinfully bade others to echo it?’

  ‘He’ll be on his way by now,’ said Ptolemaeos Tunne to his niece, Jo-Jo Pelham. ‘He’ll be spending the night in Sparta and tomorrow morning at Mistra.’

  ‘Is he coming here at all?’ asked Jo-Jo.

  ‘Only if things go wrong. If everything goes approximately to plan, we shan’t see Ivan this side of the Channel till it’s all over. Perhaps not even then.’

  Ptolemaeos and his niece lived in the middle of the Fens east of Ely. Luckily Ptolemaeos had a very substantial private income, as the bills for the electricity and basic fuels needed to keep his large Queen Anne house warm and dry ran well into five figures annually. What made them even bigger than they might have been was the amount of cooking which had to go on. Ptolemaeos was a huge man and liked huge meals: at this very moment Jo-Jo and he were tucking into a dinner of seven courses.

  ‘Pity,’ said Jo-Jo. ‘I’d like to meet him.’

  ‘You will, poppet. Sooner or later. If he doesn’t come to England, I’ll take you to Greece to see him.’

  ‘From what you say, Ptoly, his establishment in Greece isn’t quite what you’re used to.’

  ‘He could meet us in Athens. Not that the food there is anything to bring on an erection.’ Ptolemaeos considered the plate in front of him. ‘I must say, darling,’ he said, ‘these frogs’ legs are bloody marvellous. Crisp, as they should be, not sagging about in tomato pulp. Alpha plus – or at any rate pure Alpha.’

  Jo-Jo did the cooking (her French nanny had taught her) because she loved cooking and loved to please Ptolemaeos. Some months since, when her mother and father died in a car smash with both her little brothers, she had come, as a matter of course, to live with Ptolemaeos, who was her mother’s brother and the only relative she had left. After a few weeks a Public Nose (female) came to the house and said that she must be placed in Public Care: she could not go on living with a bachelor uncle, said the Public Nose, revelling in the anguish which it hoped it was causing, because it wasn’t for Her Own Good. What the Public Nose didn’t realize, because it hadn’t done its homework properly and took Jo-Jo, who was rather underdeveloped for her age, to be about thirteen, was that Jo-Jo was on the eve of her sixteenth birthday, after which she would be entitled to live anywhere she wanted, provided she had means for her support. Since she had inherited a cosy sum from her parents (not as cosy as what Ptolemaeos had in the bank but quite enough to be going on with) she certainly had that. When, therefore, the Public Nose had arrived a few days later with an ancillary Public Nose (also female) who was to escort Jo-Jo to a Special Place, she was able to put both of them roundly out of joint, metaphorically by producing her birth certificate, and then in physical fact for good measure, as she had two brisk little fists and two stout arms, undeveloped in some ways as she might be. A charge alleging assault, brought by the National Association of Public Noses, did not lie, as Jo-Jo was able to make out a plausible case that the Noses had been illegally abducting her against her will.

  ‘Entrecôte Marchand de Vin next,’ she now said as she removed the remains of the frogs’ legs: ‘I thought it would make a nice contrast.’

  ‘Bless your little pussy,’ said Ptolemaeos, and tickled it as she passed him.

  I should now explain that, although Jo-Jo and Ptolemaeos lived on terms of total familiarity, both verbal and physical, although they had baths together and talked to each other while they were goi
ng to the loo, were forever in and out of each other’s bed and constantly practised the most intimate caresses – that nevertheless, despite all this, they were not and never had been lovers, in the sense that the world understands the term. They deliberately stopped short of ‘the right true end of love’: they didn’t even come. This was the secret of their happiness; for as Ptolemaeos was fond of saying, ‘“The right true end of love” can indeed be the end of love. It needn’t be, my love-bird, but often it is. It leads to satiation and hence to indifference and hence, very often, to disgust.’

  At the same time, Ptolemaeos was well aware that never to get one’s nuts off was to invite a deleterious state of frustration. He took care of the matter by going, once a month, to a skilled masseuse in London. Although he was only thirty-five, he found that once a month was quite enough: as he remarked to Jo-Jo, ‘After waiting a month a fellow goes off like a firework. It is one more instance of the rewards of self-restraint.’

  The problem of providing such salutary combustion for Jo-Jo had also been solved in a different but equally satisfying manner, as will be demonstrated in due course.

  ‘I thought we’d have watery nursery marrow with the entrecôte,’ said Jo-Jo, coming back with two clean plates and beginning to serve.

  ‘Clever girlie. One should always have one thing absolutely plain. Most people would have done the marrow in butter. Boiled in water is right.’

  ‘You do know how to appreciate a girl,’ said Jo-Jo. And then, when she had finished serving them both, ‘I think my tits are coming on a bit. Shall you mind?’

  ‘No. I adore them as they are, dear little chestnuts, but a gradual change will be very amusing.’

  ‘What about the other?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure the other will feel the same. Which reminds me. We must have both the others to stay next week at the latest. As soon as possible really.’

  ‘But that’s a fortnight ahead of schedule.’

  ‘I know, little honeypot, but you’re only thinking of that. My point is that they will have to join Ivan Barraclough in ten days. Before then they must be briefed, and best briefed here. You do see?’

  ‘Yes of course, Ptoly. I do see.’

  ‘So you won’t mind having that two weeks early for once? It may be your last chance for some time.’

  ‘As for having that two weeks early, mon vieux, I’m entirely happy. But there are times, dear old beanie, there are just times when I could wish that the others weren’t having any part in all this with Mr Barraclough.’

  ‘It’s Ivan who’ll be running the risks. As the thing is presently planned, the others are responsible only for the admin.’

  ‘Admin?’

  ‘That’s what Canteloupe calls it. (Have some of this La Tâche.) It’s military lingo for administration. Canteloupe was a soldier, you know, about a century ago.’

  ‘Well, if he’s happy about it…’

  ‘He longs for it. And you must see that he is so very suitable. I went over all the preliminaries with him in Pratt’s the last time I went up for a rub-off. He understands the part perfectly and he fits it absolutely pat. His name, his air of distinction, that cool blasé, definitely senior presence…its beaut, darl’, it’s just beaut – as our Australian cousins say.’

  ‘But is Baby Canteloupe just beaut? Well, beaut in one way she certainly is, nom d’un nom, but does she fit in…with this Barraclough affair…as smoothly as His Lordship? I mean, she does bounce a bit, Baby does. She might make a particularly noisy bounce at the wrong moment.’

  ‘Good point. But there is…or there may be,’ said Ptolemaeos gravely, ‘one particular thing which only Baby can do. You could probably have done it too, only you’re a little too inexperienced, I think, and you’re not called the Marchioness Canteloupe.’

  ‘Getting snobby, sweetheart?’

  ‘No. It’s just that Baby’s job needs, or may need, a person with a heavy label as well as light hands. As for all that bouncing – well, Canteloupe will do his best to stop her being too effervescent. He said that for the duration of the project he was going to call her by her real name – Tullia, Tullia Llewyllyn she was christened – and that just might make her a bit less scaramouche.’

  ‘Being called Tullia? I should think it would squash her flat. Poor Baby.’

  ‘Not poor Baby. Rich, lucky little Baby, much loved and much loving. (Pass the La Tâche, my own bottykins.) Adorable, delectable baby, and clever with it. This entrecôte is point nought one per cent too well done, but the sauce is quite mythical.’

  ‘Do you think Baby would like me to ask her Dad over from Cambridge for the night?’

  ‘Old Tom? Ask him for luncheon, if you like, my darling, but not for the night. I’ve got a lot to go over with Canteloupe and Baby – I mean Tullia – and her old poppa might be in the way.’

  ‘Right. I’ll ring up and ask them for dinner and the night as soon as they care to make it. And I’ll ask Tom to luncheon the following day, by which time, I suppose, you’ll be through with the briefing?’

  ‘By which time I should certainly be through with the briefing. Oh darling, a cheese fondu. I think I shall dip you in it and eat you.’

  ‘Silly Ptoly. But look, if I spread some of it here…and under here…you could come and lick me clean, now couldn’t you?’

  Ptolemaeos and Jo-Jo did not rise very early the next morning, unlike Ivan Barraclough, who, having dined rather more sparely than they in the Xenia at Sparta the previous evening and having none of their delicious dalliance to keep him from his rest, was up and abroad with the rosy-fingered dawn. For the site at Mistra would open at 7.30 in the morning; and Ivan, having far to go, was eager to be done with his business there and on his road.

  It was in the Castro, the Castle at the top of the hill, that Ivan’s business lay. This was not the Castle, September Castle, that was his goal, for that was still hundreds of leagues to the north; but there was something that the Castle of Mistra had in common with September Castle, something, indeed, that all the places which he would visit on his road had in common with it. What trace still remained of that something he must now determine – or rather, confirm, for he had several times visited Mistra on the same errand since he had been living in the Mani, and this visit was merely one of revision, part of a final check which he was making of all the links in the chain, so that he might be absolutely certain that it was sound and that he was not risking his life and honour to no purpose.

  But although Ivan’s business lay up in the citadel, Villehardouin’s citadel, and although he had been determined to go straight up there, inspect what he had come to inspect and leave immediately, he loitered in the sweet autumn morning, he lingered on his way up the lovely hill: for Ivan regarded beauty and pleasure as the two elements without which life was unbearable, and he could never for long eschew either, no matter how exigent his affairs or immediate their burden. He dawdled in the quaint cathedral and tarried to listen to the fountain in the cloister; he brooded in the Courts of the Despots and all along the terrace of their palace; then he sat down and looked out over the valley below. A fine, rich valley for such a barren land. The Valley of Sparta, of Lacedaemon, of La Crèmonie, as old Villehardouin and his Frankish knights had called it when they built the Castle over 700 years ago. Old Villehardouin, that was Prince William of Achaea, and of Lamorie, the Morea…what was it he had said at the time? ‘Whoever holds Mistra holds La Crèmonie.’ Well, yes; yet Prince William had held neither very long. But while he had still held the Castle, a girl had come there on her way from Ilyssos to Glarentza and the coast, a girl with companions and baggage befitting her noble rank. She had stayed for seven nights, the Chronicle recorded, not because she needed so long a rest, but in order that Prince William might show honour to her and so to her father, for the code of chivalry required the generous entertainment of noble hostages. There was feasting, and there was a tournament on the terraced tilting yard; and each victorious knight dipped his lance in salute to the Despoina
Xanthippe of Ilyssos, who was being taken far away from Ilyssos, from Lamorie, from Greece itself, to be a surety for the peaceful behaviour of her father, the Maniot Lord Phaedron of Ilyssos, towards his Frankish overlord.

  On the eighth day the little Princess and her companions and her baggage train were sent on their way, accompanied by a guard of knights which was commanded by the Banneret Geoffery of Bruyère. Lord Geoffery and his mesne would escort her to his own Castle of Karyteina, then on to the port of Glarentza, where she would be put into the care of Messer Hubert of Avallon; for Messer Hubert had business in his fief at home, and had gladly consented to Prince William’s request that he should have charge of the Despoina Xanthippe on her sea voyage from Glarentza to the north and then the west, and should later guide her and guard her from her place of landing to the place where she must go.

  All this was common knowledge (among such as cared for such knowledge) and beyond any possible dispute. What was not common knowledge, and would have caused considerable dispute if it had been, was the existence, in a cell near the Castle chapel in Mistra, of an aumbry which had, in one side, a hinged stone that would turn at a touch to reveal an inscription on its rear. It was this inscription which Ivan Barraclough had come to examine, or rather to re-examine, in order to make quite sure that it said what he thought it said and that what it said was a sound link in the chain which he was checking.

  And so now Ivan touched and turned the aumbry stone, and this is what he read: