THE JEWEL AND THE CALIX is a treasure hunt set in France with a dramatic medieval background. It is, in effect, a complex detective story told through the eyes of the principal participants. The book is aimed at readers who relish a serious intellectual challenge. An undercurrent is the great pilgrimage to St  James’ shrine in Santiago de Compostela; another is a rare illuminated manuscript of the Song of Songs with surprisingly erotic drawings; another is an unknown reredos by the great sculptor Benedetto Antelami.

 

Opening of the book

 

       My father’s latest postcard from France was typically brief and teasing. I could have had no idea of the ultimate horror it would uncover.

     “Darling Julia, Mysteries! A medieval murder. A stolen treasure that has confounded the thief.  If that’s not enough, this place is haunted. To cap it all, the Castres connection has turned up. Home quite soon, I hope. Much love, Dad.”

       I was duly intrigued. He meant me to be. The Castres connection was an obvious reference to French forebears centuries ago. One had been prominent in the town of that name. Another was a Cathar priest who refused to recant his beliefs and was burnt as a heretic during the king’s crusade against the AIbigensian Heresy. Was the Heresy to be the subject of my father’s next book  it  had always fascinated him. A theft couched in the form of a riddle?. A haunting?

       My father loved riddles, cryptograms and rebuses. The tentative solutions I sent him would be marked on a scale from beta-minus (disappointing) to a rare alpha, but he never provided explanations before he sent the finished manuscript to his publishers, when all would fall into place.  Once I earned an alpha-plus for what was, I admit, an inspired guess.  I didn’t feel patronised.  I prized his compliments.  He was a better scholar than I would ever be.  But why had I never been able to persuade him to share his work?  To let me take on some of the tedious research which was my expertise and which must surely be the least rewarding part of writing a book?  All I got were paltry scraps of information and dark clues.  He could be infuriating, but I loved him dearly.

       It would be good to have him back home after several months.  He had  been away since April.  The previous year he’d  spent the summer in Parma working on a small but highly acclaimed book about the medieval sculptor Benedetto Antelami.  Ground research was his summer routine.  The first chapters of his new book would be completed before he came home.  I well remembered various home-comings.  Most of all when I was fourteen and at boarding school and he turned up unexpectedly, somehow charmed my housemistress, whisked me away against all the rules to tea in the town and presented me with a beautiful  icon he had brought back from Greece.  For the present, all I knew was that he was staying in a pension called Le Belvédère in Marcignac, a few kilometres from Auch in Gascony.

      His postcard arrived on the day I was to meet Nell Sheridan at the Wallace Collection in London.  I decided to show it to Nell and suggest we pay my father a surprise visit.  I never saw enough of him.  My mother seemed not to mind his absences and had no comprehension of his standing in the literary world. And no joy in her marriage. My father was everything to me outside my work. I valued every word I received from him and relished every hour I could spend with him. He was very self-contained: a man who wrote polished prose and seemed to live vicariously in whichever period he was studying, neglecting everything else, including his own well-being. ‘Home soon’ meant little. So I would go to Gascony- alone if Nell couldn’t get away And unannounced, for I knew he would object I told him my plans.

      Though Nell was ten years older than me - pushing thirty-five - we’d been close friends since we’d met as members of a mixed-voice London choir. I envied Nell’s talent as an artist and was amused by her vaguely Bohemian lifestyle. She in turn professed to admire my capacity to organise and manage my life. Our differences somehow kept us interested in one another. Currently, and unusually, there was no man in Nell’s life if you didn’t count the games she played with Patrice Roussillon the boss of the PR agency in Paris which provided most of her income. Patrice sounded to me like the kind of married rat any sensible woman would run a mile from but Nell enjoyed the dance she led him. She justified her cynical manipulations by saying she needed the work he gave her. The game of yes-no-maybe was part of the payment she exacted.

      For me, apart from my father and my colleagues in the Home Office, men were a distraction. Nell wondered what kind of an excuse this was for my celibate state and also how, with my qualifications, I could ‘waste’ myself on the Civil Service, even in the upper echelons.

      We met under the portico of Hertford House and climbed the grand staircase to the first floor.  It was to be a short visit, primarily to introduce me to the Collection and particularly to be tutored by Nell on some of her favourite pictures.  She steered me straight to the top floor gallery and watched my response to the first of her choices– the portrait of Rembrandt’s son Titus.  I evidently said the right thing– that the picture showed such affection.  She told me that some experts questioned whether it was by the great artist himself.  ‘How could you doubt it ?’she asked.  Just look at the way the boy regards his father!’

      I had seen reproductions of Reynolds’ delectable painting of little Miss Bowles and her Dog but had no idea what a large canvas it was for such an intimate study. On the next wall I was duly astonished to be confronted at eye level by the Laughing Cavalier looking as if he had been painted yesterday.  We lingered over the Watteaus and Fragonards and smiled at the plump, marshmallow-pink Boucher women on the staircase.  Finally I bought a postcard of The Swing to send to my father.

      We talked about him over lunch at a pleasant café round the corner from Hertford House.

      “He hopes to be home soon, whatever that means.”

      “What is he working on?”

      “I’ve no idea.  He never lets on  till he’s finished.  Superstition.

      “How tantalising!”

       I handed her my father’s postcard.  She read it with raised eyebrows.

      “ A medieval murder!”

      “He’s come across something for sure. He’ll tell me more when he’s ready.”

      “And a haunted place? Is that the house where he’s living?”

      “Could be. Then again perhaps not. It might be just one of his games. He loves setting me devious puzzles.

Tantalising, as you say.”

       Nell turned to the front of the card. “The Cathedral, Auch. Where’s that?”

      “A small city in Gascony. I’ve often wanted to go there. I have some leave due. Could you get away? We could fly to Toulouse and hire a car. Give my father a surprise.”

        Nell smiled ruefully. “I wish I could.  I am on call. I hope to get some valuable work in Paris.  I need it Julia.”

       We left the restaurant, agreeing to find a date for a concert. But when I got home there was a worrying message on the telephone from my mother. “Please call me as soon as you get home. Any time, it doesn’t matter.”

       Her choice of words told me something was wrong, but nothing so terrible as when I called back.  My mother could only say it as it was, that my father was dead.

       I felt numb and sick. I just fell into the nearest chair covering my mouth to prevent me from crying out for him. My mother was talking, explaining, but I didn’t  take it  in.  It couldn’t be true.  Had he been ill? My father was never ill.  He couldn’t afford to be ill.  Too much to do, he always said.  Or had there been an accident?  His postcard lay on the writing table, waiting to be pinned up with all the others.

      “Home soon.” There would be more postcards, wouldn’t there? Something to say it was all a mistake.

The Jewel and the Calix

By

Roger Coombs

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