Troubadour

PART ONE

The Oracle

So, on I went. I think I never saw

Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:

For flowers – as well expect a cedar grove!

But cockle, spurge, according to their law

Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,

You’d think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.

No! penury, inertness and grimace,

In some strange sort, were the land’s portion. ‘See

‘Or shut your eyes,’ said Nature peevishly,

‘It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:

‘’Tis the Last Judgment’s fire must cure this place,

‘Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.’

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk

Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents

Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents

In the dock’s harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk

All hope of greenness? ’tis a brute must walk

Pashing their life out, with a brute’s intents.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair

In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud

Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood…

Browning: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came;

X to XIII

‘Sarcophagi,’ said Fielding Gray, as Jeremy Morrison and he surveyed the avenue of the Alyscamps: ‘the specialty of Arles.’

‘Sarcophagi,’ echoed Jeremy: ‘eaters of the flesh. These have long ago eaten the flesh consigned to them – two or three times, one is told. First they ate the Roman colonists, then their Christian successors. The finest examples had pagan carvings on one side and Christian on the other.’

Fielding Gray looked, with his one eye, along the row of stone coffins that lay to the left-hand side of the avenue, all the way from the gate to the ruined church three furlongs away, while Jeremy inspected the right-hand rank, his round eyes bulging out of his round face.

‘Of course,’ Jeremy went on, ‘you won’t see any finely carven coffins round here. The best of them were either given to visiting notables, of whom something dirty or confidential was required, or, later on, displayed in a museum. To tell you the truth, old man, I’m getting a bit sick of tombs. After all, we’ve just been within measurable distance of installation in our own.’

‘Oh no. There was to be no tomb for any of us,’ said Fielding, ‘on the island of Palus Dei. Raisley Conyngham was just going to leave us to rot where we fell…dead of hunger or exposure…in the shifting dunes or the long ripple washing in the reeds.’

‘Nunc me fluctus habet,’ said Jeremy, ‘versantque in litore venti. Poor old Palinurus speaking: Now the wave has me and the winds wanton with me on the shore. ’

‘And that is what bloody Raisley intended for us. The mire on the shore of that lagoon…’

‘But as it was,’ said Jeremy, ‘darling Milo came back and led us to safety through the quagmire. When Raisley realises what has happened, he will be somewhat less than civil to Milo.’

‘He has expelled me,’ said Milo Hedley, coming up the avenue behind them, ‘with bell and book. ’ He drew level and walked between them, smiling his young, ageless Greek smile and taking an arm of both. ‘I have lost my Master, my Sorcerer, forever.’

‘And he,’ said Fielding, ‘has lost a very capable apprentice. How did you find us? Through what remains in you of Raisley’s art?’

‘Magic was not required. The people in your swish hotel at Barbazan told me that of your group Mademoiselle Salinger and Signor Caspar had booked flights back to England from Toulouse, while the Honourable Morrison and M’sieur le Commandant Fielding Gray had asked them to book two rooms by telephone at the Jules César in Arles. When I arrived there just now, the girl at the desk said that she had overheard, as you left your keys, a mild dispute between you about the quickest way to Les Alyscamps. So here I am.’

Jeremy kissed him on the lips.

‘You saved us,’ he said.

‘Demonstrations of love are ill advised in the Alyscamps,’ said Fielding. ‘A French poet wrote a poem warning lovers to beware of upsetting the ghosts here. Carnal contacts make them envious, you see.’

Sobered by this consideration, they walked on in silence through the tombs and towards the broken church.

‘The party’s over then?’ said Milo. ‘Carmilla and Piero are gone…’

‘They had their answer,’ said Jeremy. ‘All four of us have had it. It was time for them to go home and attend to the affairs of Lancaster College.’

‘What exactly,’ enquired Milo, ‘was the answer that you all received?’

‘That Raisley Conyngham,’ said Fielding, ‘is subtle, sinister, and, if it suits him, homicidal.’

‘You knew that already.’

‘In a general way, yes. We know now of one particular area in which he operates – the Cathar provinces here in the Languedoc – and we know the precise nature,’ said Jeremy, ‘of his operation: present and practical diabolism.’

‘And how,’ said Milo, ‘do you propose to prove this singular assertion? How can you use your knowledge to discredit Raisley? That’s what you want, isn’t it? To get the man out of the way, and especially out of Marius Stern’s way, by branding him as an agent of evil and corruption, totally unfit to instruct the young at a great English public school – or indeed anywhere else. That is what this entire business is about.’

‘Right,’ said Jeremy and Fielding together.

‘So you came here to find out what he was up to, and now you know. But you can prove nothing – nothing even remotely injurious to Raisley Conyngham. Yes, he will say, indeed I was in the Languedoc early this year. I have been there many times – ever since nineteen fifty-one, when I first went with the lady who taught me the Classics at Brydales. It was she that first instilled into me a love of the Languedoc and its history…so great a love that for the last thirty years I have been conducting research into its people, its customs, its religion. My efforts as a scholar in this line have been recognised by my old college – Marcian College, Cambridge – the council of which subsidised and strongly encouraged my research during the sabbatical year (nineteen seventy-five to six) that the school where I teach awarded me in order to pursue it. As for my most recent visit, on which my accusers set so uncharitable a construction, I had urgent cause to check previous findings with a view to their forthcoming publication. The fact that their vulgar curiosity in some matter or other led them to lose themselves in the swamps of Aigues Mortes is nothing to do with me.’

‘But you could put the record straight about that,’ said Fielding to Milo: ‘you could tell the world what Raisley tried to do to us.’

‘And what I too tried to do to you as his accomplice,’ said Milo. ‘Yes, yes, I know I thought better of it and came back to rescue you. The fact remains that I willingly helped Raisley to trap the four of you in the middle of that abominable bog, and it is not a matter which I wish to discuss with the authorities.’

‘That’s the trouble with Raisley,’ Jeremy Morrison said: ‘no one can accuse him of anything or ever could. Either the evidence is too flimsy, or the charge would also destroy his accusers.’

‘That’s what Raisley said to me when he excommunicated me,’ said Milo. ‘You can prove nothing that any sane man would believe, he said, and if you try, you will be the first of your own victims. Now get out, you nasty little toad; and remember that though those glands of yours are throbbing with poison, you can never dare to spit. I hope the surfeit kills you. But,’ continued Milo Hedley, ‘that wasn’t quite the end of the interview – or not as far as I was concerned. Just as I got to my own bedroom, the telephone rang in Raisley’s. You know how thin the walls of French hotel bedrooms are – you hear every quaver in the sexual scale from opening squawk to the final squeal – so with a bit of concentration I was able to listen to Raisley’s telephone talk. And what it was all about was this: Raisley had been rung up by Mrs Maisie Malcolm’s lawyer, John Groves he’s called –’

‘– Young John Groves,’ said Fielding; ‘heir to the secrets of half the peerage. One of Maisie’s smart clients must have put her on to him. Perhaps Young John Groves was one of her clients,’ said Fielding speculatively, ‘when she was still a swish whore…so she became one of his –’

‘– Anyway, it seemed that he’d made her will for her. And was executor, and so on. He’d traced Raisley to Lourdes, where he’d missed him, and now on to Sète, to tell him about a codicil in this will, made in the spring of 1981, which appointed Raisley to be guardian to Tessa (properly called Teresa) Malcolm in the event of Maisie’s dying before Tessa came of age.’

After a silence, Fielding said: ‘Of course it was sensible of Maisie to name a guardian in succession to herself…if only because little Tessa will now be very rich. She will own Maisie’s half of Buttock’s Hotel. As it happens,’ he added with a puzzled air, ‘I own the other half. The question is, what to do with it. The place is now worth millions – but old mother Buttock bound her heirs in honour not to sell it. She knew, you see, that developers would just pull it down and put up some cheap and modish obscenity on the site – like what happened to the dear old Cavendish. Although one sees the old bag’s point, Buttock’s can’t just go on being fossilised by mortmain. It was – it is – an attractive hotel of its kind, but if it’s not pulled down soon it’s going to fall down. It will be pertinent to find out what view Tessa is going to take…’

‘That will depend,’ said Milo, ‘on what view Raisley Conyngham takes. While he’s her guardian, he can presumably pre-empt her decisions.’

‘Only until she is eighteen. Is he in charge of her money as well as her mores?’ Fielding asked. ‘I should imagine there’s a financial trustee as well as a guardian…in which case they would both have to be in agreement before anything radical was determined.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Milo. ‘All Raisley seemed to be getting was the basic news – that he was to be Tessa’s guardian.’

‘Which raises some interesting questions,’ said Jeremy, ‘quite apart from what is to be done with the hotel. For instance, I’ve often wondered by what authority Mrs Malcolm became Teresa’s guardian in the first place; and now one asks, by what authority can she bequeath the guardianship? She purported to be Tessa’s aunt and her nearest living relative; but the welfare nargs can’t have been too happy about handing Tessa over to a rackety old number like Maisie, even if she did own half a hotel. And come to that, she must have adopted Tessa long before she ever went to Buttock’s.’

‘All that’s easily explained,’ Fielding said. ‘Although Maisie masqueraded as Teresa’s aunt, it is now an open secret that she was in fact her mother. And now Maisie’s dead nobody can reasonably question her wish that her daughter should be under the care of a respectable schoolmaster at the school where Tessa is a contented and promising pupil.’

‘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