Time Will Tell (26 page)

I was very angry. I railed against Desprez's treachery and accused him of many sins, chief amongst them jealousy. I suspected then – and voiced as much to Jehan – that there was more here than Desprez's foolish rivalry with Compère. Desprez was now a recognised figure, renowned throughout Europe, with no need of Jehan's support. What I feared – and what time would eventually prove – was that Desprez's hunger for fame and renown had grown to the point where he felt threatened by every other composer and composition. And Jehan's thirty-four-part motet was no exception. Josquin Desprez's fame had risen as Jehan's had declined, but Desprez feared that the wheel might turn once more and that the name of Jehan Ockeghem would eclipse that of Josquin Desprez.

Jehan, as ever, chose to find a more charitable explanation. Had I not pointed out on several occasions that Compère was unable to organise the simplest event? Perhaps Desprez, knowing this and aware of Compère's duties to the King, had chosen to take the responsibility upon himself rather than let the opportunity slip away?

At my insistence, Jehan wrote to Desprez to discover the truth. There was no reply. Once again, Jehan wrote. Again, no reply. And then, quite by chance, two incidents occurred that confirmed my suspicions.

Firstly, Jehan was visited by Johannes Tinctoris who was travelling back to Italy from Nivelles. Many younger composers came to pay their respects to a man who they knew could not live much longer and, in the case of Tinctoris, I think the real reason that he was there was to apologise. He now described as ‘youthful errors' the things that he had written about Jehan in his
Proportionale musices
and elsewhere, and Jehan, in an act that he described as ‘the gift of age', forgave him.

I was unable to attend their final meeting, but I know that the two men talked for some time. Privately I gave thanks. (I'm sure the fault is mine, but I have never been able to understand the fascination of music theory and have always preferred its practice.) The subject turned to that of composers, and Tinctoris mentioned that the clergy at St Géry in Cambrai were annoyed with Desprez. It was something to do, he said, with Desprez promising to visit them at least once a year – a promise which, hiding behind the skirts of the Pope, he had already broken and which he did not intend to honour. Tinctoris had heard the story from a singer at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Cambrai and could not confirm all the details. The theorist did not know of its significance to Jehan; if Desprez's commitment to St Géry was negligible, then clearly there would be no performance of Jehan's
Miserere mei.

A second visit confirmed Tinctoris' story. A young singer arrived to replace Jehan as a bass. Like me, he had trained as a choirboy and then been appointed 
as
petit vicaire
at Notre Dame in Cambrai. He, too, had heard stories of the of the clergy's dissatisfaction with Desprez, though his version had Desprez cursing the clergy behind their backs and other dreadful elaborations that I cannot repeat here. I also learned that, when Desprez had visited the clergy of St Géry only months earlier in order to increase the modest income that they had offered, he had said he came there with Jehan's own blessing. He claimed he had met Jehan a week earlier (that much at least was true), and that Jehan had said that, if they granted Desprez a benefice, Jehan would write a piece for St Géry to commemorate the event. Thus Desprez had obtained his position through outright deception using the promise of Jehan's
Miserere mei
as part of his recommendation.

Or at least that was the way I saw it. And I still do.

Jehan remained charitable. He was very guarded about stories that he could not verify. He reminded me how the reports of parties held in Dufay's house somehow became rowdier and more drunken with each year that passed. People sometimes chose to turn away from the truth, he said, for in so doing they made their lives on earth more tolerable. Nevertheless, it was clear, even to him, that Desprez deceived as easily as he breathed. And it was now obvious that the
Miserere mei
would not be performed, at least in Cambrai.

Yet still I hoped.

 

 

The walk in the fresh, still air through the streets of Tours was as effective as a strong cup of espresso in restoring Andrew's sobriety. His hand had started to throb again, the effectiveness of the painkillers once again diminishing, but he felt relaxed, the tensions of all the travelling and the demands of the past twenty-four hours draining from him, his limbs languid and heavy. A bell tolled twice somewhere in the distance, perhaps from the Tour de l'Horloge. Two o'clock. The first lecture began the following morning at nine: a short night. It didn't matter; there would be plenty of time to catch up on sleep. His meeting with Emma and Beyond Compère had convinced him that he'd made the right choice. Emma was capable, that much was clear, and she'd cut straight to the point: much more careful planning was required. But for now he would sleep.

He was relieved that he had finally told someone about the manuscript. It seemed more real now, and surrendering the transcription to their care had been surprisingly painless – a good sign, he thought. He had a feeling of liberation, the foretaste of an assured future in which all the editions of the motet and the commentaries upon it would be seen to issue from his trustworthy ownership. If he'd known that it would be like this he might have loosened his grip earlier, and he wondered if keeping the motet so secret had been wise. Karen certainly thought it was a mistake. On several occasions she'd chided him and urged him to share his discovery with others. Ultimately though, he knew that the intellectual territorialism of which she indirectly accused him was part of academia itself: unattractive, perhaps, but pragmatic. He had only followed the example of others who, presented with the same opportunity, would have set aside ethical qualms and pursued selfish ambition with the same obsessive zeal that he had. Till now he had made no great breakthroughs, had never found a missing biographical clue or solved some compositional riddle; nor had he casually floated an hypothesis which had rocked the academic community and earned him respect and recognition. And so, he reasoned, he'd needed to make the most of his good fortune; he was unlikely to get another chance.

His room was cold and he closed the bathroom window. He had promised to call Karen. Six hours' time difference. No: seven. Seven hours' time difference from France, he thought, congratulating himself, and it's now two o'clock. That's nine o'clock in the morning and Karen will be in the house, possibly on her own if it's a nursery day for John. Ringing from a hotel would be expensive, but that hardly mattered now. He got through first time.

‘Hello?'

‘Karen?'

‘Andrew,' she replied, a statement rather than a greeting.

‘It's by him!' he shouted. ‘By Ockeghem. I worked it out today. Numerology. It's definitely his name – it's a cipher. You give each letter and number and then add them up and then… And it quotes from his chanson, as well. On the word “me”. He's literally signed it.' Unable to celebrate the most recent solution to the riddle of authorship in the brasserie, one provided
gratis
by Beyond Compère's tenors, the words had spewed out of him only to be met by a chastening reprimand.

‘No, John,' Karen said gently. ‘He's trying to pour a drink on the floor. Aren't you?'

So John wasn't at nursery?

‘We're both fine, by the way,' she added. ‘You've done it again.'

‘Sorry?'

‘Rung at a bad time, Andrew.'

Maybe he'd got the time wrong, he thought, for why else would they be having breakfast this late?

‘What's the time there?' he asked, checking his watch once again.

‘Seven.'

‘Seven? You're up early.' Karen was a great believer in set times for meals, a discipline which she believed was beneficial to John. Breakfast in their house was regularly at eight. Andrew took her silence to be reproof of his own careless relationship with schedules and routines – yet another site of domestic conflict – and her eventual, neutral response was sarcastic in its brevity.

‘It's evening here.'

Evening? But there were seven hours between them, so it was morning.

‘Evening? Really? But seven hours…? Are you sure?'

‘Yes, Andrew, I'm sure. It's evening. And it's the middle of the night there, right?'

The tone was one she reserved for him, a modulated version of the patient, reasoning delivery she adopted with John, yet stripped of all warmth, an address which provoked in him the same childish selfishness of which he was accused. He'd got the time difference right but somehow, in his tiredness, confused the direction: America was seven hours behind, not ahead.

‘I'm tired,' he said sulkily.

‘Yes, well that makes two of us then,' said Karen. John was in the background banging something on the plastic table of his high chair.

‘John, put that down now. Thank you.' There was a pause, then Karen came back on the line. ‘So the paper went well?'

It was, Andrew felt, a cruelly casual enquiry. He'd told her he had no concerns about his talk, or at least he'd never expressed any worries – which amounted to the same thing, but surely she'd remembered his meeting with Emma? He was tempted to echo her indifference with a noncommittal response and it was with some coldness that he commenced, but, as his report unfolded, he found himself becoming more and more excited by an almost hallucinatory description of the evening's progress. He couldn't contain his admiration and affection for the members of the group: Emma, their leader; Claire, who at first had seemed so hostile, yet was merely intense; Marco and Charlie, the cultured Oxbridge tenors with a genuine interest in history; Craig – how he could tell a story; Allie and Ollie, great guys when it came down to it; Peter, the camp one; and Susan, the glamorous one who, though he said it himself, seemed to have a thing for him. He was right to have given them the transcription; it was safe in their hands. Karen was right: he should have done it sooner. But she would still need to keep it a secret from others until a number of other things were in place.

‘Sorry, Andrew. I didn't hear all of that. John managed to tip his food on the floor and I had to clear it up. So you had a nice evening then?'

‘How much did you hear?' he asked suspiciously.

‘Oh, stuff about the lovely people you're been hanging out with. Enough to get a picture.'

He couldn't tell if Karen was annoyed and, if so, about what exactly. He could understand that she might resent him enjoying himself, but the socialising was, after all, part and parcel of the important business of commissioning the group. Two could play at that game.

‘How are you two?' he asked, hoping that he matched her level of disinterest.

‘We're fine. Aren't we, John?'

Exhaustion nudged Andrew, his arm holding the phone to his head suddenly heavy. The two of them were fine: they were together. He was on his own, and, as suddenly as he had been overcome with elation, now futility possessed him. He needed sleep.

‘I probably won't ring again. Before I come home, I mean. The conference lasts a couple more days, but nothing significant is going to happen here. And I'll get a cab back from the airport.'

‘Sure. Whatever,' said Karen.

‘OK then.'

‘OK.'

‘Say bye-bye to John for me.'

‘Daddy says bye-bye.'

He put the phone in its cradle and lay on the bed, still fully clothed. He turned onto his side and curled into a ball, drawing his hands together and touching them under his chin as if praying. The last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was the white bandage on his right hand, the blackened fingers of his left; his past and his future melted away and the glorious amnesia of a dreamless sleep overtook him.

 

♦ ♦ ♦

Leaving your spouse was a decision that should be made angrily out of slighted passion, but Karen was depressingly calm as she considered her actions and gently resigned to the consequences. If Andrew had told her that he'd just slept with the woman with whom he seemed suddenly to be smitten – Susan was her name, she thought – Karen might have doubted herself, but the idea of Andrew conducting an affair was faintly comical and she actually laughed. As her sister had cruelly pointed out in the early days of their relationship, Andrew's level of attraction to the opposite sex was minimal. And, if the opportunity of casual sex ever presented itself to her husband, Karen would be the first to know; he would seek her permission. Whatever interest he had in this singer, it came a long way second to his infatuation with the manuscript.
That
was his real mistress and Karen had indulged his obsession for too long.

He was consumed by the damn thing, all his thoughts and actions traceable back to that single sheet which she had still not even seen. In fact, now she thought about it, no one had seen it. Did it even exist, or was it a fictional Holy Grail, a product of a bitter sense of inferiority, a fantasy that fulfilled his every desire, both valuable historical artefact and the solution to his aspiration for advancement? She dismissed the thought. It was only her hesitation talking, not a genuine theory. This was the last, guilty bid to justify her hitherto meek tolerance of his behaviour. He was not delusional. Obsessed, perhaps. Or was he possessed? Was the manuscript cursed, a buried treasure upon which a spell had been cast?
Pull yourself together
, she told herself. It was the gravity of her decision that was making her seek fanciful last-minute explanations. Ascribing to the manuscript a mystical power made Andrew the victim of a demonic force, but Karen was not going to indulge a theory of medieval voodoo to excuse her husband's obvious selfishness. Nevertheless, it gave her an idea. Their marriage was, for the moment, over and the role of the manuscript in its demise needed to be illustrated.

After putting John to bed, she rang her mother and asked if she and John could come and stay for a week. John had a cold, she said. Some Florida sunshine would do him good and, with Andrew away at a conference, they might as well be there as here at home. Without asking why the plan was so last-minute, an omission which suggested that her mother suspected the real reason for the visit, she replied that she'd be delighted to see them both. Before going back upstairs to haul the cases and some summer clothes down from the loft, Karen went into the study where Andrew spent so much time. The code for the safe was 1497, Ockeghem's death year, and she retrieved the original copy of the manuscript, the exemplar from which all of his working editions had been made. The transcriptions had all suffered the same fate, shredded in the overused machine which she now unplugged and carried into the kitchen, the customary place where she and her husband left notes for each other.

The gesture, she reasoned, was entirely symbolic; she would never destroy the original, whatever its role in hers or others' lives, and she knew it still lay safely in Amiens. Besides which, he had a copy with him, so no real harm would be done. She did, though, want him to be brought up short, to realise the full force of her fury, to fear, just for a moment, that his behaviour had pushed her so close to insanity that she had committed a criminal act of historical vandalism.

She plugged in the machine, placed the paper in its waiting jaws, and switched it on. It angrily chewed the manuscript, pulling it into the tray beneath. When only two inches of the paper remained, she switched off the machine, leaving just the heading showing:
Miserere mei
. It might not be as savagely resonant as burning a book, but a message like that, she reasoned, could not be misunderstood, even by him.

 

♦ ♦ ♦

‘Get that thing off the bed,' shouted Ollie. ‘Don't you know that it's bad luck to put a hat on a bed?'

‘What's the sentence? Seven years?'

‘No, that's breaking mirrors.'

Emma picked up the hat and placed it on her head. The woman who stared back at her from the mirror had the brim elegantly tilted, hiding one of her eyes, her hand placed coquettishly on her hip.

‘What do you think?' She turned to Ollie. ‘Alluring?'

He looked up slowly from his magazine. ‘Yeah. But don't leave it on the bed. Seriously. It's bad luck.'

She wasn't entirely sure why Ollie was still in her room. There were only five hours to go till the bus picked them up and he was obviously tired, and more than a little drunk. In similar circumstances, they would have gone to their separate rooms knowing that the following morning would soon be upon them, but he had followed her to her room suggesting she might need help restoring Andrew's sodden transcription. She was surprised, if only because he had shown such little interest in the manuscript in the brasserie, he and Allie sitting at the other end of the table, all but ignoring Andrew's presentation. And, walking back towards the hotel, as she had chatted excitedly about the discovery, Ollie had ignored the gentle interrogatory lift of her speech, her gentle invitation to discuss the good news. Her sentences had hung unanswered in mid-air, making her discourse sound self-absorbed, less a conversation than a monologue. Still, it was Ollie who'd rescued the manuscript from its fiery end. As Craig had made his way back to his seat, he'd banged the table just as Allie was reaching for the tray of flaming Sambucas. The glasses had toppled, spilling blue fire across Andrew's copy. Ollie had acted swiftly, slapping his hands down and smothering the flames. As he explained later, it was a trick they used to do as kids – covering their hands with lighter fuel, setting light to it, then extinguishing it with a loud clap. The only damage done was that the paper was now soaked in sticky, white liqueur, something which could be remedied by air-drying it overnight.

Now that it was laid out on the desk, Emma could study it more carefully. With Andrew scrutinising her earlier, she'd measured her reactions, keen to impress upon him the realities of promoting a concert. Now she was free to imagine that future – the premieres, the recording, perhaps even a television documentary?