Time Will Tell (28 page)

She dreamed of full-length curtains that smouldered and then puffed into flame. She tried to beat out the fire but the heat was too fierce. Suddenly all that remained were charred curtain rings swinging from a blackened rail and sun was streaming through a sooty window, a bleached landscape beyond. And then the sun became an electric light shining in her eyes. Claire was bending over her, shaking her by the shoulder and trying to wake her, the phone ringing uselessly. At first Emma couldn't grasp what was happening or where she was. She was aware only of how floppy her body felt and the sense that something dreadful had happened. Only when Claire started hurriedly putting her few remaining belongings in her case did Emma realise that she'd overslept and a brittle memory of the previous evening locked into place like a door swinging wide on its hinges. She threw cold water on her face, brushed her teeth and dressed quickly.

‘Aren't you going to bring that?' asked Claire, looking towards the desk where the hat that Ollie had bought lay.

Emma hesitated for a moment. ‘No.'

When she stepped onto the bus, she was greeted with a quiet ‘morning' and reassurances that they hadn't been waiting long. Ollie was seated on the back row staring out of the window. Everyone knew.

It was only when they reached the outskirts of Paris that she remembered the Ockeghem manuscript.

‘Did you put the manuscript in my luggage?' she asked Claire.

‘Where was it?' asked Claire.

‘On the desk.'

‘Under the hat?'

Emma rang the hotel from her mobile phone and the desk clerk assured her he would get housekeeping to check the room. When she rang back half an hour later she was told that they had found a hat and could send it on to her. The papers? They had found no papers.

No matter: Andrew Eiger had a copy at home. It would be embarrassing to let him know she'd lost it within a few hours of him surrendering it to her care, but nothing more serious than that. The fifteenth century and Tours were a long way away and Emma had more important things on her mind.

 

♦ ♦ ♦

Andrew took a cab home from the airport. After three days of academic skirmishing, he'd been glad to climb aboard a mercifully empty plane, order a lunchtime drink and flick through the various handouts and notes he'd accrued. Everything he'd learned at the conference had added to his certainty of Ockeghem's authorship of the manuscript. Papers which investigated his musical style, small hitherto unknown biographical details including further information on Geoffroy Chiron who, it seemed, was a friend to Ockeghem as well as a colleague, and other circumstantial details left little doubt that Ockeghem's
Miserere mei
was Andrew's ticket to a starry future.

Karen and John were out when he arrived home, perhaps at the supermarket buying dinner. A note on the kitchen table would doubtless tell him when he could expect them. There was something different about the house and at first he put it down to the fact that he'd been away for a few days. It was undoubtedly tidier than usual, but it wasn't usually his presence that added to the domestic chaos but John's toys, which he managed to scatter everywhere, each room stamped with his presence with plastic bricks and toy cars. Karen had obviously been hard at work, preparing for Andrew's homecoming. He should have got her a present, but it was too late now.

The shredder stood on the table, a piece of paper protruding from it. He presumed that it had been broken, probably by John, and that Karen had placed it there in the hope that he could somehow draw on an innate male reserve and mend it. He'd buy another; he could afford it. He picked up the note.

‘I'm at my mother's,' it began – reason enough for concern – but Andrew read on blithely, failing to recognise the drift of Karen's message. Only when he reached the part about there being ‘many reasons' for her action did he begin to understand the stillness in the house. And when his eyes skated over the remaining words, desperately seeking purchase in any hint of their imminent return, he began to realise that the focus of his wife's resentment and criticism was here, destroyed in the shredder, the title still visible like a swimmer treading water, struggling to resist the forces that pulled it downward to the depths:

Miserere mei, Deus
.

Have mercy on me, O God.

Only when the letter from the archivist in Amiens arrived four days later and he learned that the original manuscript had been destroyed would Andrew understand the true meaning of those words.

The Memoirs of Geoffroy Chiron: Livre VII
ed. Francis Porter

Martius 19, 1524

It will not be long now. I have reached the final chapter of the life of Johannes Ockeghem and my own end draws near. My son has assured me that he will arrive soon and I trust that the Lord will deliver him to me:

In te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in æternum: in iustítia tua libera me, et eripe me.

[In thee, O Lord, have I hoped, let me never be confounded: deliver me in thy justice.]

 

Jehan was not well. For someone of such great age (the second oldest man in Tours) he was a man of great physical fortitude, but his mental faculties were not strong. Already he had relinquished much of the daily control of the Treasury to me, though he would still spend at least two hours each day signing the necessary documents, attending meetings, and dictating letters at St Martin. And, of course, he still sang in the choir, his voice not as loud as it used to be, though just as steady and assured.

He had always possessed an extraordinary memory. All singers could, of course, recite the psalms and the chants by heart, and he had no need of missals or tonaries. Jehan, though, could also recite poetry, and had intimate knowledge of the writings of Aquinas, Aristotle, Guido and Boethius, and
many of the ancients. His house was furnished with several books, yet he never consulted them; he could remember all the information contained therein. The signs of his decline, he admitted to me, were obvious to him well before they became apparent to others; he would forget people's names and where he had put things; he would walk into a room and forget why he had gone there. I suggested to him that this was common and that often I experienced exactly the same thing. He agreed that perhaps his examples described the natural infirmity of age, though he ventured that forgetting a whole day was perhaps not so common. He was also concerned that, although when asked he could still recite, say, Psalm 119 in its entirety, he could not necessarily remember that Psalm 119 was the longest psalm. And in order to begin the recitation of the psalm someone had to provide him with the first line. He knew that he had lost the ability to retrieve objects from his memorial store, though, once he located them, he knew them as if they were old friends.

We talked for a while on the subject of memory – of the writings on the subject by Aquinas and Tully, St Augustine and Albertus Magnus – and it was apparent to me that Jehan's intellect was as sound as it had ever been. Yet his fear was that without memory he would lack prudence: a cardinal virtue. I could not argue with that for, as Cicero tells us, memory, together with intellect and foresight, are essential to morality. Instead I tried to encourage his waning spirit by telling him of his fame and renown; whatever happened to his memory, his reputation would prevail.

‘I don't want to be remembered,' he said. ‘I just want to remember.'

 

Only one year later, not only could he not remember the importance of memory, he could not remember us having the conversation. It was as if his memory had been destroyed, wiped clean like the
cartella
he now carried with him upon which he would write things in case he forgot.

In choir his voice was still acceptable, though he could no longer remember the order of the service so he would look surprised when someone began singing the
Pater Noster
or the
Alleluia
. I would angle myself towards him and mouth the opening words, but even if he began to sing the psalm (and he would never forget the words once he started), he would be unaware that it was being sung antiphonally, so when we were meant to remain silent, he would still be singing.

The last service he sang at St Martin was a sad occasion. The Mass was in honour of St Martin himself and the polyphonic setting was Jehan's own: the
Missa De plus en plus.
It is, of all of his masses, the most difficult for the basses, demanding great vocal agility across a wide compass. But that morning he sang it as if he was a young man once again. The low notes were firm and secure, the high notes clear and loud, and his face shone as the disciples' when they were filled with the Holy Spirit. My own voice was not so secure but, like the angels, Jehan guided me until, as we processed out of the church, it was my turn to lead him. When we reached the vestry, he turned to me.

‘That mass was a marvellous composition,' he said. ‘Who wrote it?' 

 

He was never aware that he had been retired from the choir; I simply stopped coming to his house to take him to St Martin. Instead Christine, his housekeeper, would bring him to mass where we could occasionally hear him singing in his
stallum
, a distracting, strong voice to those who did not know him, but a joyful sound to those of us who did.

I would still visit him and he would recognise me, though he never knew why I was there. I would entertain him by reading from any of the books on his shelf and, if I looked up, I could see him speaking the words quietly to himself, perfectly in time with my delivery. A tall man, he developed a stoop like a hunchback and his hair began to thin. Yet during those sorrowful times I still maintained my hope that the
Miserere mei
might yet be performed. In fact, I felt that it might restore him to health, that hearing this music for the first time might somehow reach into his brain and his heart and repair his damaged memory. To that end I wrote to Compère and asked him to help, but there was nothing he could do. His service to Charles VIII left him far away in Italy and, when he visited us in the last year of Jehan's life, I had to warn him of the deterioration. When Compère entered Jehan looked at him as he would upon a stranger. Compère sat with Jehan a long time, talking about music in the hope that something would rouse the ailing man from his waking sleep, until he left the room in tears. And then, only then, did I accept that Johannes Ockeghem's
Miserere mei
would never be performed.

And as that year passed, so Jehan's memory failed to the point where he was unable to clothe himself and eat; now Christine had to care for him through the day and the night. Finally his mind forgot how to make the heart beat and the lungs breathe and, on a cold February day in 1497, he was taken by angels to heaven, there to meet with Dufay, Binchois, Busnois, and the Valois Kings whom he had served so loyally. 

 

The
Miserere mei
was never performed and thus the true portrait of Jehan's talent was never painted. It would be some time before Jehan Molinet would write his lament on the death of Johannes Ockeghem, and even longer before Desprez would set it to music, but the great poet Guillaume Crétin was swift to honour him in his
Déploration
, the long poem in which he acknowledged my friendship with the great composer.

Twenty-nine years have since passed and during that time I have frequently gazed upon the motet, possibly Jehan's greatest achievement. His will dictated that all his wealth and possessions be given to the church, and thus all that remains are his compositions and the example he set by the manner in which he lived his life. His music lives on, but for how long I do not know.

Domine labia mea aperies et os meum adnuntiabit laudem tuam. Non enim vis ut victimam feriam nec holocaustum tibi placet.
[O Lord, thou wilt open my lips: and my mouth shall declare thy praise. For if thou hadst desired sacrifice, I would indeed have given it: with burnt offerings thou wilt not be delighted.]

 

I will leave this humble account here in Tours. I am sure that the only reader it will ever have is its writer. I have, though, enjoyed honouring my dear friend and it is clear that this memoir has no purpose beyond that. My will is in order and rests here with my papers of tenure. As legal documents they will be respected, but I cannot be sure of the fate of anything else. Thus I will send Jehan's
Miserere mei
to my son in Amiens for safekeeping. These past thirty years, it has served as a constant reminder of true friendship. It is my most treasured possession and a part of history and it is my hope that it might yet have some purpose after my death. It was to remain a secret until its presentation before the singers and thus no one has seen it. As I look upon it now, I can only hope that somehow it will yet be heard. I fear, though, that new compositions are more attractive to younger men, and that the works of Johannes Ockeghem will not see service other than in Tours in the coming years.

Any achievements I may count are in the field of my labour for the Church and for God, as a singer and a clerk. All life has a purpose, all creation a design, and all our days upon this earth are but as nought when we are faced with death. The ways of men are understood only by God, and it is into His hand that I commend my spirit.

Miserere mei, Deus, secundum misericordiam tuam, iuxta multitudinem miserationum tuarum dele iniquitates meas. Amen.
[Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy. And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity. Amen.]