11: The Bread & the Knife
La nostr' amor va enaissi
Com la brancha de l'albespi
Qu'estai sobre l'arbre tremblan,
La noig, ab la ploi' e al gel,
Tro l'endeman, qe.l sols s'espan
Per la fueilla vert e.l ramel.
Our love goes thus
Like the branch of the whitethorn
That's trembling on the tree
At night, in the rain and frost,
Until next day, when the sun spreads out
Through green leaf and bough.
Guilhem IX of Aquitaine (1071-1126), Ab la doussor del temps novel
"Thank you so much for arranging today with Dr Hepburn," Raoul said, at dinner. In the public rooms of the hotel, he and Ismini continued conversing in Greek, as a protection against the other guests, most of whom seemed to be Americans. "She will certainly be made welcome on her next visit."
Ismini nodded. "I thought she'd be helpful. Mind, I half-expected to be asked to write an essay by the time she'd finished!"
"I know what you mean! I'm only relieved that none of my verses to Agnès survive, or she would have numbered me among the third-rate poets – fourth-rate, probably! I was painfully unoriginal in two languages."
"Surely that's an achievement in itself? – But she thinks well of you in other respects."
"But, I wonder," he mused, "is it better to be remembered as a brave and pious fool, or as a demonic genius?"
"She didn't call you a fool!"
"Not in so many words; but I read her mind a little."
"You do realise that's the psychic equivalent of David trespassing in your office?"
"I know," he said disarmingly. "But you do it, too! – She's fond of my former self – of that I have no doubt; but I also have no doubt that she thinks him… a child, in many respects. Utterly naïve."
"You're lucky, then, that she doesn't know you as I do!" Ismini teased. "It still strains my brain to picture you with the paupers!"
"I was not then as I am now: I had renounced the world's vanities. It took me a few centuries to realise that asceticism itself can be a vanity, spiritually. Self-denial and humility become other means of claiming superiority."
"At least no-one could accuse you of either, now!"
"And that does not displease you?"
"Monastic virtues don't appeal to me! A little obedience perhaps, but not poverty or chastity!"
He smiled, and took a sip of the Saint-Emilion. It was impossible to be in Scotland and not drink claret, he thought, remembering his last visit just over two hundred years ago. And it went well with this evening's venison. "Have you given much thought to what happens when we return home? Are you returning to your practice in Athens?"
"Yes. I said I had been called abroad by a family crisis – illness – and arranged cover. I'll have to sort out all of that, catch up on cases. What about you?"
"Paperwork, I expect. There must be a mountain of it on my desk: the Colonel can only deal with so much of it in my absence. And I should probably organise another meeting of the Brethren, given that the last one was… disrupted by my health."
"Why do you do it? What do you hope to gain?"
"Gain? In what sense? Not materially, if that's what you mean. The on-going work on the castle devours most of the fees."
"In a broader sense, then. Surely you have, at least, some power?"
"Influence, not power – not for myself. There is a difference. I saw what was left in Europe after these last great wars. Taking the long view, I believed that I could foster the careers of people who had the ability to avert such destruction in the future; encourage them to share ideas. I keep an eye on potentially disruptive factors – the financial markets, the arms trade, et cetera – and occasionally adjust them where necessary. After all, if non-existent companies sell non-existent weapons to morally questionable authorities, the latter can hardly complain publicly of their non-arrival," he said mischievously. "But it took me some years to devise the Brotherhood; the ritual aspects are a personal memorial to my Order. And after buying Saint-Théodore, I had a suitable location, with the necessary privacy."
"Not to mention your personal security system!" There was a barb in her teasing: she could not forget that there had been at least one death. "So you are the latter-day Templar conspiracy?"
"An éminence grise, perhaps: one Templar hardly makes a conspiracy! But I need always to occupy myself with some project or other."
"Like rebuilding your ruins?" she asked. She thought: it prevents you turning inwards, because you know where too much time, too much introspection could lead. With less intellectual discipline, less displacement activity, your mental state would be far worse than it is; but even now… It's easier for you to rebuild physical stones and mortar, easier to erect walls around yourself inwardly, than to restore yourself psychologically and emotionally …
"Yes. And I meet a great many interesting people from variousmetiers: politics, finance, arts, sciences. You would find them fascinating, I'm sure."
"And?" Ismini tried to draw him out further.
"Sometimes one feels the lack of… an intelligent and articulate hostess at such gatherings: a salonnière. If it does not inconvenience you, I should like to hope that I may call upon you when you are on Rhodes…"
"Of course. I'm curious about what you get up to there. And I'd be honoured to meet your guests."
"Which reminds me: I ought to telephone Sir Joseph and Lady Marcus before I return to Rhodes; perhaps even visit them. Since I was semi-conscious when last he saw me, they may be concerned; I can, at least, assure them that I am well."
"I understand: it must have been a… great shock." She knew she had had no choice but to stab him, but still it discomfited her to think of it. "Incidentally, how did he manage to get out of that appointment with the Prime Minister?"
"He had a family crisis: a recurring one. You see, it's curious how, whenever he is invited to Chequers, his invalid cousin in Tel Aviv relapses," Raoul said, with a particularly innocent expression.
Ismini laughed. "You're incorrigible!"
He shrugged. "It was not my idea, but his – well, Wilde's originally, I think.1 He would much rather spend a weekend at Saint-Théodore than in England with… They studied chemistry together at Cambridge, and he disliked her even then! And our weather is generally better, too, is it not? – Lady Marcus is a charming woman, very Viennese; we have an understanding."
"You haven't told –?"
"No, but… we have been in the same place: one always senses that, even subconsciously. Another survivor. She rarely speaks of it. Usually she wears a broad bracelet; it hides the number."
Ismini thought of the sea-horse fountain in the Old City. "Dr Hepburn was right: there is a continuum, isn't there?"
"Hell always remains open for business: the staff merely change their uniforms from time to time," he answered.
Afterwards, they walked together slowly down through the gardens. Dusk was falling as they followed the path into the wilderness. There was no nightingale, but a blackbird sang as melodic substitute for its brown, southerly cousin.
"I rather like the idea of being a salonnière, you know," she said. "But you have more than that in mind, I hope?"
"Yes, " he replied, "and yet… I wonder what it would do to you."
"No: what it would do to you. Because you've seen everything and everyone you've loved destroyed or lost to you."
"Les neiges d'antan.2 In the end, I have always been alone."
"Until now." And, she thought, you are wary of imagining the alternative, because half of you likes playing Nerval's melancholy 'Prince of Aquitaine in the broken tower', while the other half is desperate to be free…
"Until now. But it is to ask a great deal of you."
"You asked me to trust you: I do. You offered to teach me to live as you do: I agree."
"Does that not frighten you?"
"No."
"Perhaps it should." He stopped beneath the hawthorn tree where she had found him that morning, and took both her hands in his. "I remember when I understood the cost of what I had gained. It was about thirty years after Saint-Théodore. I had survived mortal wounds; I was nearing my allotted 'three-score-and-ten'; I should have been an old man, and yet I was – as I am now. There was a visitation of disease, the Great Pestilence. Wherever I travelled, all that I saw in every country, every village and town was death. Men, women, children, of all estates… Not enough gravediggers left to bury them. It seemed we had entered the Last Days – and I passed through them, untouched. I was horrified, but only as if it were a painted scene before my sight: the Danse Macabre that arose in those times. I felt nothing."
She gazed into his eyes, wanting to reassure him. "Anyone would be numbed by the scale of that. And I'd hazard that you were still in shock: you'd put all your powers, all your psychic energy into healing your body, while your mind… It's not because of immortality."
"So you are not afraid of it?"
"For that, I'd have to fear life itself; and I don't: I've never learned to fear it. And you… you have fought in battle; you have, as you said yourself, passed through Hell – damaged, yes, but not broken – never broken completely. Why should you fear anything now?"
"Because you may regret it. Because you may grow to resent it – and me."
"I don't believe that for a moment!"
"You may become bored, then."
"I can't imagine us ever getting bored with each other – even after centuries. Infuriated, exasperated, possibly slightly murderous – but not bored! The fact is, we need each other. I know it; you know it."
"For you, it is so simple?"
"You tried to kill my friends; I gave you a punctured lung. And if the others hadn't been there that night – which is impossible, because if they hadn't, you wouldn't… Oh God, whatever it is, I wouldn't call it simple!"
He nodded in agreement. "How is it that the old song ends?
…Some go bragging about love;
We have the bread and the knife of it.
– But I think Count Guilhem did not mean literally for the knife to…" He gave her a wry look. "That is hardly how love is supposed to go!"
"And how much do you know about that? In theory, you're rather out-of-date, and in practice, you were borrowing another body!"
He shrugged. "It seemed a good idea at the time; foolish in retrospect, but… I have learned."
"Good. Because you're not like anyone else, and I love you for it. No masks. No mind-games."
He smiled gently, and reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. For a moment he feared he had left the envelope in his day-suit, before changing for dinner (he hated having to manage without a valet), but no. He drew it out, and opened it carefully. Agnès's pearl fell, glimmering, into his hand.
"You returned this to me, from someone to whom I should never have given it to begin with. You should not have –" He hesitated, rephrasing what he wanted to say. "I mean, I should have liked you to keep it. They say it's Byzantine, so it's only fitting that it should find its way back to…"
"Raoul, I've told you already – Your generosity… This ispriceless!"
"No. Its price was my life. If I had killed Anne, do you think I could have retained any sanity, any desire to live? When you killed me, you saved me – saved all of us – from that. I saw it plainly, in that moment…"
The darkened bedroom, the knife, the blood; raw pain, anger, fear, and longing. Grey eyes and brown eyes burning into each other, with all emotional and psychic barriers torn down. And so now they gazed at each other again, without pretence or defensiveness.
He fastened the chain around her neck, his fingers softly brushing against her skin. "This once belonged to the woman I loved, and now… it does so again."
There was nothing she could say that would not sound stupid or schoolgirl-sentimental, so she simply put her arms around him.
When, at last, she decided to speak, she could not resist teasing again: "You'd make a fascinating case-study, my love – but I really mustn't take you on officially as a patient."
"No?"
"Ethical complications."
"You killed me once – but you are not planning to do itagain, I hope?"
She grinned. "There are other ways of breaching doctor-patient ethics…" And with that, she drew him even closer, so that in a moment, his mouth was on hers.
He held her close, as if his soul depended on it. Perhaps it did. A light breeze shook the hawthorn branches, and a flurry of small, pale petals, fragrant with decay, fell on and around them.
Que tal se van d'amor gaban;
Nos n'avem la pess'e.l coutel3
To be concluded:
Notes:
1The Importance of Being Earnest.
2 From François Villon's Ballade de Dames du Temps Jadis, 15C: "But where are last year's snows?"
3 Guilhem IX of Aquitaine, Ab la doussor del temps novel.