The Troubadour Read online

  ‘We can question that wish,’ said Jeremy, ‘knowing what we do about Raisley. Why on earth did Maisie choose him?’

  ‘As far as Maisie was concerned,’ said Milo, ‘Raisley Conyngham was a rich and cultured gentleman, who had kindly invited Tessa along with Marius Stern (and, as it happened, myself), to spend her holidays in the spring of nineteen eighty-one in his country house, Ullacote, on his delectable estate. He was also, for good measure, a senior and successful dominie.’

  ‘Some pretty nasty things happened at Ullacote that spring,’ said Fielding: ‘Tessa took off home.’

  ‘But only towards the end of her stay in Somerset,’ said Milo; ‘and being the nice, kind girl she was, she didn’t sneak to Auntie Maisie. Now what could have been more natural, if Maisie had a twinge or two in her ticker about that time and thought she’d better check up on her will, than to appoint the egregious country gentleman, who could easily have lived at leisure but thought it his duty to be of some use in the world, as dear little Tessa’s guardian?’

  ‘It would have been more natural,’ said Jeremy, ‘to make someone like “Young” John Groves her guardian.’

  ‘Maisie probably thought that lawyers were a stuffy lot,’ Milo said, ‘and wanted something a bit jollier for her Teresa.’

  ‘But Maisie never even met Raisley.’

  ‘They’d corresponded,’ said Fielding, ‘before Tessa’s visit to Ullacote. Raisley writes charming and plausible letters. John Groves probably writes pedantic and ponderous letters (and charges fifty guineas a go). Provided Maisie never heard about the goings-on at Ullacote, she might well have decided that Raisley was a most admirable man to have charge of Teresa for a year or two – in the unlikely event of her own death.’

  ‘Whatever the whys and wherefores,’ Milo said, ‘Raisley is now Tessa’s guardian – if I can believe my ears – and that’s all about that. Clearly he is in a position to promote more injury and corruption than ever.’

  ‘So what do we do,’ said Jeremy, rather feebly, ‘to stop him?’

  ‘We take counsel once more,’ said Fielding, ‘with Carmilla and Piero.’

  ‘When we get home,’ said Jeremy, and all God’s creation that lay near to them seemed to connive in blessing his indulgence. The sun shone on the Alyscamps; the birds chattered along the branches; and even the crooked church gave them good time of day as they approached it.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fielding: ‘when we get home. Ver purpuratum exiit. “The coloured spring will soon be forth.” Time for pleasure.’

  Where, he thought to himself, had he last heard that line of Latin which had so suddenly come to his lips? It was from one of the songs in the Cambridge Collection…yes, that was it, yes, it was his Headmaster, many years ago, who had quoted the entire verse:

  Ver purpuratum exiit,

  Ornatus suos induit,

  Aspergit terram floribus,

  Ligna silvarum frondibus.

  That time in Wiltshire, in 1945, over the grave of the Troubadour Knight, Lord Geoffery of Underavon, who, the Headmaster had conjectured, while he could not have sung that particular song, would have sung something very like it. ‘The coloured spring is forth’: time for pleasure. Lord Geoffery, the Headmaster had explained, had had altogether too much pleasure, with local wives and daughters. Six black, vengeful knights had lain him low in a meadow, while his page fled into the forest and his dogs whimpered among the flowers.

  ‘You don’t seem very urgent, you two,’ said Milo. ‘Very soon now Raisley, fresh from his sabbatical excursion among the Cathar tombs, will return to the school on Farncombe Hill and come close, once more, to his prize pupil, Marius Stern, and his virgin ward, Teresa Malcolm.’

  ‘Raisley will be more cautious for a while,’ said Fielding slyly. ‘Knowing that we have escaped him, knowing what we now know about him, he will take pause.’

  ‘And meanwhile,’ said Jeremy, ‘I have a mission to complete. My instructions are plain and the journey will not take very long, unless we loiter. Shall we loiter?’

  ‘What mission?’ said Milo.

  ‘You will see, carissimo, if you care to come on it with Fielding and me. I shall be your host, Milo, you my sweet guest. When do you have to be back in Cambridge?’

  ‘Mid-April.’

  ‘Then you have plenty of time. But I think,’ Jeremy said, ‘that we shall not be lovers any more, my darling. You will have heard that there is now a shadow hovering over the realm of Eros. Semper aliquid novi ex Africa vel ex America: always something new out of Africa or out of America: in this case, I gather, no one is quite sure out of which. But out of one or the other – this they know – a spectre ten times more vicious and spiteful than that loathly damsel, the pox. For all I know, that spectre may have tweaked me with his finger, and I would not pass his slime on to you.’

  Milo nodded, then waved a hand towards the church.

  ‘Thank you, God,’ he called, ‘for your bounteous mercy and loving kindness to us, your creatures.’

  After dismissing Milo Hedley, Raisley Conyngham paid the bill for both of them at the Auberge des Langoustes at Sète, and drove himself west by south towards Narbonne.

  ‘How odd,’ he said to the driving mirror as he was passing Béziers on Autoroute Nine, ‘that Milo should behave so sentimentally. Never trust a sentimental man; sentimentality is often the motive of treachery; we have a prime instance here. This aberration has been particularly conspicuous since E. M. Forster remarked that he hoped he would have the courage to betray his country before his friend. I really am amazed that they gave Forster a Companionate of Honour, let alone the Order of Merit: if a few more people followed his precept, England would become ungovernable.’

  And at about the time he was turning off the A9 for Narbonne-Est, Raisley remarked to his face in the mirror:

  ‘Of course, Milo was a very attractive boy with that sly adolescent smile and those long, loose limbs. But since I am mercifully exempt from any form of sexual desire, his appeal to me was merely aesthetic or, at the most, sensuous. Like Marius’ appeal, come to that; though Marius is an altogether more serious matter, and it would certainly not do to lose him…particularly just now, when the influence – the authority – which I have just been granted over Teresa Malcolm, combined with the loyal obedience which I have long elicited from Marius, has a very grave (if also piquant) potential.’

  When Raisley had managed to park his car (a tedious proceeding) in Narbonne, he went to the Museum of Antique Sculpture, which is in the Priory Church. There he spoke to the curator, a smooth-faced, spiky-nosed, husky Frenchman of the Midi called Jacques-Emile Gagneac, who sat behind a fine sarcophagus as if it had been a desk in the chantry which he used as an office.

  ‘I have two reasons for coming to see you,’ said Raisley Conyngham. ‘First, to assure you that you need fear no complaint against you from the four antiquarian investigators in whose discomfiture you assisted me by decoying them to Palus Dei. They are not interested in you or your breach of the laws of France, only in me and my destruction.’

  ‘So I supposed,’ said Jacques-Emile Gagneac; ‘still, from several points of view it might turn out to be a pity that they were allowed to return whence they were taken.’

  ‘Indeed it might,’ Raisley Conyngham said. ‘Secondly, therefore, I think it would be wise to postpone all acts of worship or celebration at Palus Dei or anywhere else in this area until further notice. It is now known, by four highly intelligent and articulate people, exactly where the island of Palus Dei is situated and exactly where the monument on it is to be found. Quite apart from being my enemies, they are people of scholarly interests and intellectual repute; if they should start talking about the island, men of standing will listen to them. It is therefore desirable that none of our brethren should leave traces of any kind on Palus Dei that might indicate recent ceremony or rite. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed,’ echoed the Curator Gagneac.

  ‘I shall now go briefly into Spain and Italy, in orde
r to inspect our congregations there and to warn our brothers and sisters of a need for discretion. I shall be back at my address in England shortly after the middle of March.’

  ‘Back teaching at that school, Maître?’ said grinning Gagneac. ‘Oh happy boys and girls that have such a peerless minister.’

  ‘The quarter, that is the term, will be just about over,’ said Raisley, ignoring Gagneac’s sarcasm, ‘but I shall be in time to talk with two pupils of whom I have high hopes. One has just become my ward; the other has long since been my creature. Their services will one day be acceptable in the sight of Our Lord. Fairly soon now – but not yet, not yet – I shall bring them closer to the Rule and Commands of the Demiurge and explain their destiny.’

  When Raisley had gone clear of Narbonne, he rejoined the A9, but now he was heading east, for the Italian border. On his way home, he told himself, he would cross the Pyrenees by Roncevalles for a brief circuit of the congregations in northern Spain.

  ‘And then back to school on Farncombe Hill,’ he told his face in the driving mirror, ‘to attend to Teresa and Marius. As I told Gagneac, it will soon be time for them to learn about the latter day resurrection of Cathars in the Languedoc, Navarre and Lombardy, and how they must both serve its purposes. Soon; but not yet.’

  ‘How did you get on?’ said Marius Stern to Tessa Malcolm, as they walked away from the examination centre (as it had recently been renamed) at their school on Farncombe Hill.

  ‘I did not like the ancient history paper,’ said Tessa; ‘it was too woolly.’

  They had just been sitting their O levels, which had been postponed (because of ‘strike action’ by examiners in protest against the failure rate among ‘deprived’ (i. e. illiterate) candidates from Midsummer’s Eve of 1981 to Hallowmas to Advent to Ash Wednesday of the following year, until now, on the Ides of March, they were finally done with.

  ‘The questions were too vague,’ glossed Tessa: ‘as if they were an invitation to write about anything one wanted to.’

  ‘They were,’ said Marius. ‘The idea is that nobody should be allowed to fail and nobody to excel. Imprecision in questions makes for imprecision in answers, which enables the examiners to penalise talent as misapplied and excuse stupidity as misunderstanding.’

  ‘I wasn’t at my best anyhow,’ Tessa said, as they walked through the northern entrance to a little cloister, then paused to listen to the midday chime. When the last stroke had faded, Teresa went on: ‘I’ve heard from my solicitors – from my mother’s solicitors – Groves and Groves. They say that my mother appointed Raisley Conyngham as my guardian, until I came of age.’

  ‘Groves and Groves?’ said Marius, astonished into repetition. ‘They’re my lawyers too,’ he said, pulling himself together; ‘I deal with “Young” John Groves, who is rather sympathetic in a cynical sort of way. He helped me stop my mother from interfering with my allowance.’

  They walked on, towards the Domus Vestalis (the Vestal or Virginal House) in which Tessa and other girls lived, safe, as was supposed, from masculine attentions.

  ‘My letter was signed by a John Groves,’ Tessa said. ‘I don’t think he can be of any help to me. He just said I was Mr Conyngham’s ward. And that would appear to be that.’

  ‘Your mother must have thought you liked him. After all, we both stayed with him at Ullacote a year ago.’

  ‘She didn’t know what happened there. When I went home early, I told her it was because I was missing her. Which of course I was…though not as much as I pretended. I said it to please her. That was when I still thought she was my aunt, who’d done everything for me when she needn’t have. So you see I was anxious to thank her; and the last thing I wanted to do was upset her, by telling her how horrible Mr Conyngham and Milo had been. And now this is my reward for trying to be considerate: I get landed with Raisley Conyngham as my guardian.’

  ‘The bond is not a tight one,’ said Marius, ‘and it will only last two years, until you are eighteen. I may be bound to him – and very closely bound – for life.’

  ‘Why should you be? You will grow up, go away from here –’

  ‘– I am bound by love, of a special kind. By love, and by custom, and by fear.’

  ‘Love will die when you see through him, as soon you must, for the repulsive man he is. Custom will soon be staled.’

  ‘And fear?’ said Marius.

  ‘You are clever and strong. You can conquer fear. You must begin as soon as Mr Conyngham returns…from his research. Do you think it is really that?’

  ‘Why not? He is learned – and inquisitive. But you are right,’ said Marius, halting as they came near to Tessa’s Domus. ‘Fear is to be conquered. ’ He paused. ‘I think Jeremy Morrison will help me.’

  ‘How?’ said Tessa.

  ‘Fielding and Jeremy are going on from France to the Peloponnese. I have given him a message to take to my father. Not exactly a message: a greeting from me, as his son.’

  ‘How can anyone greet your father, who is dead?’ said Tessa, being of logical and literal inclination. ‘Or is he searching for his ghost?’

  ‘He is simply representing me, in paying the respect required by pietas, by loyalty and loving memory. Pietas, if it be sincerely felt and practised, can help a man conquer fear. If my father… should make any kind of answer…it would strengthen pietas.’

  ‘How can your father make answer?’ said prosaic Tessa.

  Marius shrugged and turned. Tessa went to her Domus.

  The Jewish Burial Ground on the island of Zacynthos is on a hillside which commands a fine view of the harbour and thence over the sea towards the castles of Clairmont and Glarentza on the mainland of the Peloponnese. Sheep graze and loiter on the green grass among the tombs, which are simple stone slabs, standing fast and upright, often engraved with the coronet of an Ionian baron. No Jews, however, or none in this gallery, appear to have been created counts or princes. No sarcophagi are visible above ground (as they are in so many pagan or early Christian graveyards): Jews, once buried, have the good manners and good sense to stay below.

  On one slab there are the words:

  I

  GREGORY STERN

  RODE WITH THE KING’S MEN

  ‘It seems,’ said Jeremy Morrison to Fielding Gray and Milo Hedley, ‘that he was very proud of his service with the Household Cavalry.’

  ‘I wish I could be proud of my service,’ Fielding said: ‘I was a rotten soldier.’

  ‘You were wounded with your face towards the enemy,’ said Milo, ‘and honourably discharged.’

  ‘What do you know about it?’

  ‘I have made enquiries. It was when you were serving with your regiment in Cyprus. It was there that you lost your eye.’

  ‘I had made a truce with the terrorists.’

  ‘And they broke it.’

  ‘I should never have made it,’ Fielding said; ‘or having made it, I should have been the one to break it. All terrorists should be killed on sight, even if you shoot them in the back. Filth. Scum. Vermin. Faeces.’

  ‘Steady,’ said Jeremy, as the rage twisted the cicatrix that was Fielding’s mouth. ‘Steady, old love. Attention, both of you. Some time ago, Marius told me his father was buried here by his own request, which was in a late codicil to his will…made after a visit here with Isobel, his wife. Now, for many months after his crucifixion on Buranos1 the Italian police kept his body on ice. But at last they let it go, and then, by permission of the Zantiot Jews, who were inclined to honour the petition of a brave man, it was buried here. When I wrote to tell Marius we were going to make a tour of the Peloponnese before coming home, he telephoned to me at the Jules César and said:“Go to Zacynthos and greet my father for me.” “What shall I say?” I said. “What you will.” So now, my friends, what shall I say to the man who rode with the King’s Men?’

  ‘And published my books,’ Fielding said.

  Two lightly clad figures, a leggy ephebe like Bronzino’s Eros and a maiden who might have been hi
s sister, were walking towards them up the hill.

  ‘Surely,’ said Milo, ‘those are the twin children of Jacquiz Helmutt? I saw them when I stayed with Tom Llewyllyn at Lancaster last summer. Striking. They’ve grown.’

  ‘We saw them – Jeremy and I – in Italy last autumn,’ Fielding said. ‘As you observe, they have grown.’

  ‘They seem to favour the Mediterranean coast,’ Jeremy said. ‘You two,’ he called in a familiar and almost paternal voice (for, after all, he had seen them not only last autumn at Bari2 but often when they were much younger and he himself was a boy at Lancaster), ‘you two twins, here is Gregory Stern, who was the friend of Tom Llewyllyn, who was Provost, before he died, of Lancaster College, of which your father is now Provost. I am charged by Gregory’s son, Marius, to bear greetings to his father here. What shall be my words?’

  ‘They say those children never speak,’ said Fielding, ‘except perhaps to their parents.’

  ‘Maybe they will speak now. Gregory went often to Lancaster and Marius with him, a tall dark man and a tall bright boy. These two must surely remember them. What shall be my words,’ Jeremy repeated, as the twins came nearer through the stones, ‘to Gregory, father of Marius Stern?’

  The ephebe beckoned with a curious circular motion of the wrist and arm, then turned with his sister down the hill towards the harbour.

  In Cambridge Piero Caspar and Carmilla Salinger met for dinner, some three weeks after they had returned from the Languedoc. The cooking in their college, Lancaster, had declined very noticeably of late, along with the decline of Balbo Blakeney, the Steward; so they had decided to dine outside the college, at a new and fashionable restaurant called the Caring and Sharing.

  ‘Time to discuss what happened in those marshes near Aigues Mortes,’ Carmilla said, ‘and draw our conclusions. We may properly omit any element of the supernatural, I think, and confine ourselves to human action and reaction.’

  ‘By which you mean “the facts”. It is not like you, Carmilla, to talk jargon.’