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Off With His Head
Ngaio Marsh


Pagan revelry and morris dancing in the middle of a very cold winter set the scene for one of Ngaio Marsh’s most fascinating murder mysteries.When the pesky Anna Bünz arrives at Mardian to investigate the rare survival of folk-dancing still practised there, she quickly antagonizes the villagers. But Mrs Bünz is not the only source of friction – two of the other enthusiasts are also spoiling for a fight.When the sword dancers’ traditional mock beheading of the Winter Solstice becomes horribly real, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn finds himself faced with a case of great complexity and of gruesome proportions…









Ngaio Marsh

Off With His Head










Copyright (#ulink_181539e9-94c5-56fa-a2eb-86f6f80499d4)


HARPER

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009 Off With His Head first published in Great Britain by Collins 1957

Copyright В© Ngaio Marsh Ltd 1956

Ngaio Marsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of these works



A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author–s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780006512455

Ebook Edition В© OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007344727

Version: 2018–04–03




Contents


Cover (#u0873ec49-59c1-5625-86ab-72dacff6cd2e)

Title Page (#u903a47c0-1b49-5be7-a64b-e10552c75cfb)

Copyright (#ub236b336-f32c-5f9d-84a1-a6a822cbbf69)

Cast of Characters (#u0020f560-61c8-5e61-aaa7-7698e63d05f0)

Author’s Note (#u1c0aaefc-39d8-5a05-ba44-397ed7d24816)

1 Winter Solstice (#u8b60e718-be99-526b-a4eb-a0886c88652a)

2 Camilla (#uaca59b3e-028f-5806-be42-3490598975d7)

3 Preparation (#ubcd8e92a-2996-5715-975c-2a30c1202d12)

4 The Swords Are Out (#ud56b1d17-a92f-5f3b-90e5-93bc382807dc)

5 Aftermath (#litres_trial_promo)

6 Copse Forge (#litres_trial_promo)

7 The Green Man (#litres_trial_promo)

8 Question of Fact (#litres_trial_promo)

9 Question of Fancy (#litres_trial_promo)

10 Dialogue for a Dancer (#litres_trial_promo)

11 Question of Temperament (#litres_trial_promo)

12 The Swords Again (#litres_trial_promo)

13 The Swords Go In (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Cast of Characters (#ulink_1b440c01-97b9-58da-a8a5-0f974603861e)








Author’s Note (#ulink_63032318-6b6f-544a-9bc1-73a631c7a0f7)


To anybody with the smallest knowledge of folklore it will be obvious that the Dance of the Five Sons is a purely imaginary synthesis combining in most unlikely profusion the elements of several dances and mumming plays. For information on these elements I am indebted, among many other sources, to England’s Dances by Douglas Kennedy and Introduction to English Folklore by Violet Alford.

N.M.





CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_9e128d65-0975-56d0-8c19-1d4531692169)

Winter Solstice (#ulink_9e128d65-0975-56d0-8c19-1d4531692169)


Over that part of England the Winter Solstice came down with a bitter antiphony of snow and frost. Trees, minutely articulate, shuddered in the north wind. By four o’clock in the afternoon the people of South Mardian were all indoors.

It was at four o’clock that a small dogged-looking car appeared on a rise above the village and began to sidle and curvet down the frozen lane. Its driver, her vision distracted by wisps of grey hair escaping from a headscarf, peered through the fan-shaped clearing on her windscreen. Her woolly paws clutched rather than commanded the wheel. She wore, in addition to several scarves of immense length, a handspun cloak. Her booted feet tramped about over brake and clutch-pedal, her lips moved soundlessly and from time to time twitched into conciliatory smiles. Thus she arrived in South Mardian and bumped to a standstill before a pair of gigantic gates.

They were of wrought-iron and beautiful but they were tied together with a confusion of shopkeeper’s twine. Through them, less than a quarter of a mile away, she saw on a white hillside, the shell of a Norman castle, theatrically erected against a leaden sky. Partly encircled by this ruin was a hideous Victorian mansion.

The traveller consulted her map. There could be no doubt about it. This was Mardian Castle. It took some time in that deadly cold to untangle the string. Snow had mounted up the far side and she had to shove hard before she could open the gates wide enough to admit her car. Having succeeded and driven through, she climbed out again to shut them.

�“St Agnes Eve, ach bitter chill it was!”’ she quoted in a faintly Teutonic accent. Occasionally, when fatigued or agitated, she turned her short o’s into long ones and transposed her v’s and w’s.

�But I see no sign,’ she added to herself, �of hare nor owl, nor of any living creature, godamercy.’ She was pleased with this improvisation. Her intimate circle had lately adopted �godamercy’ as an amusing expletive.

There arose from behind some nearby bushes a shrill cachinnation and out waddled a gaggle of purposeful geese. They advanced upon her, screaming angrily. She bundled herself into the car, slammed the door almost on their beaks, engaged her bottom gear and ploughed on, watched from the hillside by a pair of bulls. Her face was pale and calm and she hummed the air (from her Playford album) of �Sellinger’s Round.’

As the traveller drew near the Victorian house she saw that it was built of the same stone as the ruin that partly encircled it. �That is something, at least,’ she thought. She crammed her car up the final icy slope, through the remains of a Norman archway and into a courtyard. There she drew in her breath in a series of gratified little gasps.

The courtyard was a semi-circle bounded by the curve of old battlemented walls and cut off by the new house. It was littered with heaps of rubble and overgrown with weeds. In the centre, puddled in snow, was a rectangular slab supported by two pillars of stone. �Eureka!’ cried the traveller.

For luck she groped under her scarves and fingered her special necklace of red silk. Thus fortified, she climbed a flight of steps that led to the front door.

It was immense and had been transferred, she decided with satisfaction, from the ruin. There was no push-button, but a vast bell, demonstrably phoney and set about with cast-iron pixies, was bolted to the wall. She tugged at its chain and it let loose a terrifying rumpus. The geese, which had reappeared at close quarters, threw back their heads, screamed derisively and made for her at a rapid waddle.

With her back to the door she faced them. One or two made unsuccessful attempts to mount and she tried to quell them, collectively, with an imperious glare. Such was the din they raised that she did not hear the door open.

�You are in trouble!’ said a voice behind her. �Nip in, won’t you, while I shut the door. Be off, birds.’

The visitor was grasped, turned about and smartly pulled across the threshold. The door slammed behind her and she found herself face to face with a thin, ginger-haired lady who stared at her in watery surprise.

�Yes?’ said the lady. �Yes, well, I don’t think – and in any case, what weather!’

�Dame Alice Mardian?’

�My great-aunt. She’s ninety-four and I don’t think –’

With an important gesture the visitor threw back her cloak, explored an inner pocket and produced a card.

�This is, of course, a surprise,’ she said. �Perhaps I should have written first but I must tell you – frankly, frankly – that I was so transported with curiosity – no, not that, not curiosity – rather with the zest of the hunter, that I could not contain myself. Not for another day, another hour even!’ She checked. Her chin trembled. �If you will glance at the card,’ she said. Dimly, the other did so.

�Mrs Anna Bünz,’ she read.

FRIENDS OF BRITISH FOLKLORE

GUILD OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS

THE HOBBY HORSES

Morisco Croft, Bapple-under-Baccomb, Warwickshire

�Oh dear!’ said the ginger-haired lady, and added: �But in any case, come in, of course.’ She led the way from a hall that was scarcely less cold than the landscape outside into a drawing-room that was, if anything, more so. It was jammed up with objects. Mediocre portraits reached from the ceiling to the floor, tables were smothered in photographs and ornaments, statuettes peered over each other’s shoulders. On a vast hearth dwindled a shamefaced little fire.

�Do sit down,’ said the ginger-haired lady doubtfully, �Mrs – ah – Buns.’

�Thank you, but excuse me – Bünz. Eü, eü,’ said Mrs Bünz, thrusting out her lips with tutorial emphasis, �or if eü is too difficult, Bins or Burns will suffice. But nothing edible!’ She greeted her own joke with the cordial chuckle of an old acquaintance. �It’s a German name, of course. My dear late husband and I came over before the war. Now I am saturated, I hope I may say, in the very sap of old England. But,’ Mrs Bünz added, suddenly vibrating the tip of her tongue as if she anticipated some delicious titbit, �to our muttons. To our muttons, Miss – ah –’

�Mardian,’ said Miss Mardian, turning a brickish pink.

�Ach, that name!’

�If you wouldn’t mind –’

�But of course. I come immediately to the point. It is this, Miss Mardian, I have driven three hundred miles to see your great-aunt.’

�Oh dear! She’s resting, I’m afraid –’

�You are, of course, familiar with the name of Rekkage.’

�Well, there was old Lord Rekkage who went off his head.’

�It cannot be the same.’

�He’s dead now. Warwickshire family, near Bapple.’

�It is the same. As to his sanity I feel you must be misinformed. A great benefactor. He founded the Guild of Ancient Customs.’

�That’s right. And left all his money to some too-extraordinary society.’

�The Hobby Horses. I see, my dear Miss Mardian, that we have dissimilar interests. Yet,’ said Mrs Bünz, lifting her voluminous chins, �I shall plod on. So much at stake. So much.’

I’m afraid,’ said Miss Mardian vaguely, �that I can’t offer you tea. The boiler’s burst.’

�I don’t take it. Pray, Miss Mardian, what are Dame Alice’s interests? Of course, at her wonderfully great age –’

�Aunt Akky? Well, she likes going to sales. She picked up nearly all the furniture in this room at auctions. Lots of family things were lost when Mardian Place was burnt down. So she built this house out of bits of the old castle and furnished it from sales. She likes doing that, awfully.’

�Then there is an antiquarian instinct. Ach!’ Mrs Bünz exclaimed excitedly, clapping her hands and losing control of her accent. �Ach, sank Gott!’

�Oh crumbs!’ Miss Mardian cried, raising an admonitory finger. �Here is Aunt Akky.’

She got up self-consciously. Mrs BГјnz gave a little gasp of anticipation and, settling her cloak portentously, also rose.

The drawing-room door opened to admit Dame Alice Mardian.

Perhaps the shortest way to describe Dame Alice is to say that she resembled Mrs Noah. She had a shapeless, wooden appearance and her face, if it was expressive of anything in particular, looked dimly jolly.

�What’s all the row?’ she asked, advancing with the inelastic toddle of old age. �Hallo! Didn’t know you had friends, Dulcie.’

�I haven’t,’ said Miss Mardian. She waved her hands. �This is Mrs – Mrs –’

�Bünz,’ said that lady. �Mrs Anna Bünz. Dame Alice, I am so inexpressibly overjoyed –’

�What about? How de do, I’m sure,’ said Dame Alice. She had loose-fitting false teeth which of their own accord chopped off the ends of her words and thickened her sibilants. �Don’t see strangers,’ she added. �Too old for it. Dulcie ought to’ve told yer.’

�It seems to be about old Lord Rekkage, Aunt Akky.’

�Lor’! Loony Rekkage. Hunted with the Quorn till he fell on his head. Like you, Dulcie. Went as straight as the best, but mad. Don’t you ’gree?’ she asked Mrs Bünz, looking at her for the first time.

Mrs Bünz began to speak with desperate rapidity. �When he died,’ she gabbled, shutting her eyes, �Lord Rekkage assigned to me, as vice-president of the Friends of British Folklore, the task of examining certain papers.’

�Have you telephoned about the boilers, Dulcie?’

�Aunt Akky, the lines are down.’

�Well, order a hack and ride.’

�Aunt Akky, we haven’t any horses now.’

�I keep forgettin’.’

�But allow me,’ cried Mrs Bünz, �allow me to take a message on my return. I shall be so delighted.’

�Are you ridin’?’

�I have a little car.’

�Motorin’? Very civil of you, I must say. Just tell William Andersen at the Copse that our boiler’s burst, if you will. Much obliged. Me niece’ll see you out. Ask you to ’scuse me.’

She held out her short arm and Miss Mardian began to haul at it.

�No, no! Ach, please. I implore you!’ shouted Mrs Bünz, wringing her hands. �Dame Alice! Before you go! I have driven for two days. If you will listen for one minute. On my knees –’

�If you’re beggin’,’ said Dame Alice, �it’s no good. Nothin’ to give away these days. Dulcie.’

�But, no, no, no! I am not begging. Or only,’ urged Mrs Bünz, �for a moment’s attention. Only for von liddle vord.’

�Dulcie, I’m goin’.’

�Yes, Aunt Akky.’

�Guided as I have been –’

�I don’t like fancy religions,’ said Dame Alice, who with the help of her niece had arrived at the door and opened it.

�Does the Winter Solstice mean nothing to you? Does the Mardian Mawris Dance of the Five Sons mean nothing? Does –’ Something in the two faces that confronted her caused Mrs Bünz to come to a stop. Dame Alice’s upper denture noisily capsized on its opposite number. In the silence that followed this mishap there was an outbreak from the geese. A man’s voice shouted and a door slammed.

�I don’t know,’ said Dame Alice with difficulty and passion, �I don’t know who yar or what chupter. But you’ll oblige me by takin’ yerself off.’ She turned on her great-niece. �You,’ she said, �are a blitherin’ idiot. I’m angry. I’m goin’.’

She turned and toddled rapidly into the hall.

�Good evening, Aunt Akky. Good evening, Dulcie,’ said a man’s voice in the hall. �I wondered if I –’

�I’m angry with you, too. I’m goin’ upshtairs. I don’t want to shee anyone. Bad for me to get fusshed. Get rid of that woman.’

�Yes, Aunt Akky.’

�And you behave yershelf, Ralph.’

�Yes, Aunt Akky.’

�Bring me a whishky and shoda to my room, girl.’

�Yes, Aunt Akky.’

�Damn theshe teeth.’

Mrs BГјnz listened distractedly to the sound of two pairs of retreating feet. All by herself in that monstrous room she made a wide gesture of frustration and despair. A large young man came in.

�Oh, sorry,’ he said. �Good evening. I’m afraid something’s happened. I’m afraid Aunt Akky’s in a rage.’

�Alas! Alas!’

�My name’s Ralph Stayne. I’m her nephew. She’s a bit tricky, is Aunt Akky. I suppose being ninety-four, she’s got a sort of right to it.’

�Alas! Alas!’

�I’m most frightfully sorry. If there’s anything one could do?’ offered the young man. �Only I might as well tell you I’m pretty heavily in the red myself.’

�You are her nephew?’

�Her great-great-nephew actually. I’m the local parson’s son. Dulcie’s my aunt.’

�My poor young man,’ said Mrs Bünz, but she said it absentmindedly: there was speculation in her eye. �You could indeed help me,’ she said. �Indeed, indeed, you could. Listen. I will be brief. I have driven here from Bapple-under-Baccomb in Warwickshire. Owing partly to the weather, I must admit, it has taken me two days. I don’t grudge them, no, no, no. But I digress. Mr Stayne, I am a student of the folk dance, both central European and – particularly – English. My little monographs on the Abram Circle Bush and the symbolic tea-pawt have been praised. I am a student, I say, and a performer. I can still cut a pretty caper, Mr Stayne. Ach yes, godamercy.’

�I beg your pardon?’

�Godamercy. It is one of your vivid sixteenth century English ejaculations. My little circle has revived it. For fun,’ Mrs Bünz explained.

�I’m afraid I –’

�This is merely to satisfy you that I may in all humility claim to be something of an expert. My status, Mr Stayne, was indeed of such a degree as to encourage the late Lord Rekkage –’

�Do you mean Loony Rekkage?’

�– to entrust no less than three Saratoga trunkfuls of precious precious family documents to my care. It was one of these documents, examined by myself for the first time the day before yesterday, that has led me to Mardian Castle. I have it with me. You shall see it.’

Ralph Stayne had begun to look extremely uncomfortable.

�Yes, well now, look here, Mrs –’

�Bünz.’

�Mrs Burns, I’m most awfully sorry but if you’re heading the way I think you are then I’m terribly afraid it’s no go.’

Mrs BГјnz suddenly made a magnificent gesture towards the windows.

�Tell me this,’ she said. �Tell me. Out there in the courtyard, mantled in snow and surrounded at the moment by poultry, I can perceive, and with emotion I perceive it, a slighly inclined and rectangular shape. Mr Stayne, is that object the Mardian Stone? The dolmen of the Mardians?’

�Yes,’ said Ralph. �That’s right. It is.’

�The document to which I have referred concerns itself with the Mardian Stone. And with the Dance of the Five Sons.’

�Does it, indeed?’

�It suggests, Mr Stayne, that unknown to research, to experts, to folk dancers and to the societies, the so-called Mardian Mawris (the richest immeasurably of all English ritual dance-plays) was being performed annually at the Mardian Stone during the Winter Solstice up to as recently as fifteen years ago.’

�Oh,’ said Ralph.

�And not only that,’ Mrs Bünz whispered excitedly, advancing her face to within twelve inches of his, �there seems to be no reason why it should not have survived to this very year, this Winter Solstice, Mr Stayne – this very week. Now, do you answer me? Do you tell me if this is so?’

Ralph said: �I honestly think it would be better if you forgot all about it. Honestly.’

�But you don’t deny?’

He hesitated, began to speak and checked himself.

�All right,’ he said. �I certainly don’t deny that a very short, very simple and not, I’m sure, at all important sort of dance-play is kept up once a year in Mardian. It is. We just happen to have gone on doing it.’

�Ach, blessed Saint Use and Wont.’

�Er – yes. But we have been rather careful not to sort of let it be known because everyone agrees it’d be too ghastly if the artsy-craftsy boys – I’m sure,’ Ralph said, turning scarlet, �I don’t mean to be offensive but you know what can happen. Ye olde goings-on all over the village. Charabancs even. My family have all felt awfully strongly about it and so does the Old Guiser.’

Mrs Bünz pressed her gloved hands to her lips. �Did you, did you say “Old Guiser”?’

�Sorry. It’s a sort of nickname. He’s William Andersen, really. The local smith. A perfectly marvellous old boy,’ Ralph said and inexplicably again turned scarlet. �They’ve been at the Copse Smithy for centuries, the Andersens,’ he added. �As long as we’ve been at Mardian if it comes to that. He feels jolly strongly about it.’

�The Old Man? The Guiser?’ Mrs Bünz murmured. �And he’s a smith? And his forefathers perhaps made the hobby horse?’

Ralph was uncomfortable.

�Well –’ he said and stopped.

�Ach! Then there is a hobby!’

�Look, Mrs Burns, I – I do ask you as a great favour not to talk about this to anyone, or – or write about it. And for the love of Mike not to bring people here. I don’t mind telling you I’m in pretty bad odour with my aunt and old William and, really, if they thought – look, I think I can hear Dulcie coming. Look, may I really beg you –’

�Do not trouble yourself. I am very discreet,’ said Mrs Bünz with a reassuring leer. �Tell me, there is a pub in the district, of course? You see I use the word pub. Not inn or tavern. I am not,’ said Mrs Bünz, drawing her hand-woven cloak about her, �what you describe as artsy-craftsy.’

�There’s a pub about a mile away. Up the lane to Yowford. The Green Man.’

�The Green Man. A-a-ach! Excellent.’

�You’re not going to stay there!’ Ralph ejaculated involuntarily.

�You will agree that I cannot immediately drive to Bapple-under-Baccomb. It is 300 miles away: I shall not even start. I shall put up at the pub.’

Ralph, stammering a good deal, said: �It sounds the most awful cheek, I know, but I suppose you wouldn’t be terribly kind and – if you are going there – take a note from me to someone who’s staying there. I – I – my car’s broken down and I’m on foot.’

�Give it to me.’

�It’s most frightfully sweet of you.’

�Or I can drive you.’

�Thank you most terribly but if you’d just take the note. I’ve got it on me. I was going to post it.’ Still blushing he took an envelope from his breast-pocket and gave it to her. She stowed it away in a business-like manner.

�And in return,’ she said, �you shall tell me one more thing. What do you do in the Dance of the Five Sons? For you are a performer. I feel it.’

�I’m the Betty,’ he muttered.

�A-a-a-ch! The fertility symbol, or in modern parlance –’ She tapped the pocket where she had stowed the letter. �The love interest. Isn’t it?’

Ralph continued to look exquisitely uncomfortable. �Here comes Dulcie,’ he said. �If you don’t mind I really think it would be better –’

�If I made away with myself. I agree. I thank you, Mr Stayne. Good evening.’

Ralph saw her to the door, drove off the geese, advised her to pay no attention to the bulls as only one of them ever cut up rough, and watched her churn away through the snow. When he turned back to the house Miss Mardian was waiting for him.

�You’re to go up,’ she said. �What have you been doing? She’s furious.’




II


Mrs Bünz negotiated the gateway without further molestation from livestock and drove through what was left of the village. In all, it consisted only of a double row of nondescript cottages, a tiny shop, a church of little architectural distinction and a Victorian parsonage: Ralph Stayne’s home, no doubt. Even in its fancy dress of snow it was not a picturesque village. It would, Mrs Bünz reflected, need a lot of pepping-up before it attracted the kind of people Ralph Stayne had talked about. She was glad of this because in her own way, she too was a purist.

At the far end of the village itself and a little removed from it she came upon a signpost for East Mardian and Yowford and a lane leading off in that direction.

But where, she asked herself distractedly, was the smithy? She was seething with the zeal of the explorer and with an itching curiosity that Ralph’s unwilling information had exacerbated rather than assuaged. She pulled up and looked about her. No sign of a smithy. She was certain she had not passed one on her way in. Though her interest was academic rather than romantic, she fastened on smithies with the fervour of a runaway bride. But no. All was twilight and desolation. A mixed group of evergreen and deciduous trees, the signpost, the hills and a great blankness of snow. Well, she would inquire at the pub. She was about to move on when she saw simultaneously a column of smoke rise above the trees and a short man, followed by a dismal dog, come round the lane from behind them.

She leaned out and in a cloud of her own breath shouted: �Good evening. Can you be so good as to direct me to the Corpse?’

The man stared at her. After a long pause he said: �Ar?’ The dog sat down and whimpered.

Mrs Bünz suddenly realized she was dead-tired. She thought: �This frustrating day! So! I must now embroil myself with the village natural.’ She repeated her question. �Vere,’ she said, speaking very slowly and distinctly, �is der corpse?’

�Oo’s corpse?’

�Mr William Andersen’s?’

�Ee’s not a corpse. Not likely. Ee’s my dad.’ Weary though she was she noted the rich local dialect. Aloud, she said: �You misunderstand me. I asked you where is the smithy. His smithy. My pronunciation was at fault.’

�Copse Smithy be my dad’s smithy.’

�Precisely. Where is it?’

�My dad don’t rightly fancy wummen.’

�Is that where the smoke is coming from?’

�Ar.’

�Thank you.’

As she drove away she thought she heard him loudly repeat that his dad didn’t fancy women.

�He’s going to fancy me if I die for it,’ thought Mrs Bünz.

The lane wound round the copse and there, on the far side, she found that classic, that almost archaic picture – a country blacksmith’s shop in the evening.

The bellows were in use. A red glow from the forge pulsed on the walls. A horse waited, half in shadow. Gusts of hot iron and seared horn and the sweetish reek of horse-sweat drifted out to mingle with the tang of frost. Somewhere in a dark corner beyond the forge a man with a lantern seemed to be bent over some task. Mrs Bünz’s interest in folklore, for all its odd manifestations, was perceptive and lively. Though now she was punctually visited by the, as it were, off-stage strains of the Harmonious Blacksmith, she also experienced a most welcome quietude of spirit. It was as if all her enthusiasms had become articulate. This was the thing itself, alive and luminous.

The smith and his mate moved into view. The horseshoe, lunar symbol, floated incandescent in the glowing jaws of the pincers. It was lowered and held on the anvil. Then the hammer swung, the sparks showered, and the harsh bell rang. Three most potent of all charms were at work – fire, iron and the horseshoe.

Mrs BГјnz saw that while his assistant was a sort of vivid enlargement of the man she had met in the lane and so like him that they must be brothers, the smith himself was a surprisingly small man: small and old. This discovery heartened her. With renewed spirit she got out of her car and went to the door of the smithy. The third man, in the background, opened his lantern and blew out the flame. Then, with a quick movement he picked up some piece of old sacking and threw it over his work.

The smith’s mate glanced up but said nothing. The smith, apparently, did not see her. His branch-like arms, ugly and graphic, continued their thrifty gestures. He glittered with sweat and his hair stuck to his forehead in a white fringe. After perhaps half a dozen blows the young man held up his hand and the other stopped, his chest heaving. They exchanged rôles. The young giant struck easily and with a noble movement that enraptured Mrs Bünz.

She waited. The shoe was laid to the hoof and the smith in his classic pose crouched over the final task. The man in the background was motionless.

�Dad, you’re wanted,’ the smith’s mate said. The smith glanced at her and made a movement of his head. �Yes, ma’am?’ asked the son.

�I come with a message,’ Mrs Bünz began gaily. �From Dame Alice Mardian. The boiler at the castle has burst.’

They were silent. �Thank you, then, ma’am,’ the son said at last. He had come towards her but she felt that the movement was designed to keep her out of the smithy. It was as if he used his great torso as a screen for something behind it.

She beamed into his face. �May I come in?’ she asked. �What a wonderful smithy.’

�Nobbut old scarecrow of a place. Nothing to see.’

�Ach!’ she cried jocularly, �but that’s just what I like. Old things are by way of being my business, you see. You’d be’– she made a gesture that included the old smith and the motionless figure in the background –�you’d all be surprised to hear how much I know about blackschmidts.’

�Ar, yes, ma’am?’

�For example,’ Mrs Bünz continued, growing quite desperately arch, �I know all about those spiral irons on your lovely old walls there. They’re fire charms, are they not? And, of course, there’s a horseshoe above your door. And I see by your beautifully printed little notice that you are Andersen, not Anderson, and that tells me so exactly just what I want to know. Everywhere, there are evidences for me to read. Inside, I dare say –’ She stood on tiptoe and coyly dodged her large head from side to side, peeping round him and making a mocking face as she did so. �I dare say there are all sorts of things –’

�No, there bean’t then.’

The old smith had spoken. Out of his little body had issued a great roaring voice. His son half turned and Mrs BГјnz, with a merry laugh, nipped past him into the shop.

�It’s Mr Andersen, senior,’ she cried, �is it not? It is – dare I? – the Old Guiser himself? Now I know you don’t mean what you’ve just said. You are much too modest about your beautiful schmiddy. And so handsome a horse! Is he a hunter?’

�Keep off. ’Er be a mortal savage kicker. See that naow,’ he shouted as the mare made a plunging movement with the near hind leg which he held cradled in his lap. �She’s fair moidered already. Keep off of it. Keep aout. There’s nobbut men’s business yur.’

�And I had heard so much,’ Mrs Bünz said gently, �of the spirit of hospitality in this part of England. Zo! I was misinformed, it seems. I have driven over two hundred –’

�Blow up, there, you, Chris. Blow up! Whole passel’s gone cold while she’ve been nattering. Blow up, boy.’

The man in the background applied himself to the bellows. A vivid glow pulsed up from the furnace and illuminated the forge. Farm implements, bits of harness, awards won at fairs flashed up. The man stepped a little aside and in doing so, he dislodged the piece of sacking he had thrown over his work. Mrs BГјnz cried out in German. The smith swore vividly in English. Grinning out of the shadows was an iron face, half-bird, half-monster, brilliantly painted, sardonic, disturbing and, in that light, strangely alive.

Mrs BГјnz gave a scream of ecstasy.

�The Horse!’ she cried, clapping her hands like a mad woman. �The Old Hoss. The Hooden Horse. I have found it. Gott sie danke, what joy is mine!’

The third man had covered it again. She looked at their unsmiling faces.

�Well, that was a treat,’ said Mrs Bünz in a deflated voice. She laughed uncertainly and returned quickly to her car.





CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_23618e87-46b7-5d6e-877d-2f25a3a4173d)

Camilla (#ulink_23618e87-46b7-5d6e-877d-2f25a3a4173d)


Up in her room at the Green Man, Camilla Campion arranged herself in the correct relaxed position for voice exercise. Her diaphragm was gently retracted and the backs of her fingers lightly touched her ribs. She took a long, careful deep breath and as she expelled it, said in an impressive voice:

�Nine Men’s Morris is filled up with mud.’ This she did several times, muttering to herself, in imitation of her speechcraft instructor whom she greatly admired, �On the breath dear child: on the breath.’

She glanced at herself in the looking-glass on the nice old dressing-table and burst out laughing. She laughed partly because her reflection looked so solemn and was also slightly distorted and partly because she suddenly felt madly happy and in love with almost everyone in the world. It was glorious to be eighteen, a student at the West London School of Drama and possibly in love, not only with the whole world, but with one young man as well. It was heaven to have come alone to Mardian and put up at the Green Man like a seasoned traveller. �I’m as free as a lark,’ thought Camilla Campion. She tried saying the line about Nine Men’s Morris with varying inflexions. It was filled up with mud. Then it was filled up with mud, which sounded surprised and primly shocked and made her laugh again. She decided to give up her practice for the moment, and feeling rather magnificent helped herself to a cigarette. In doing so she unearthed a crumpled letter from her bag. Not for the first time she re-read it.

Dear Niece,

Dad asked me to say he got your letter and far as he’s concerned you’ll be welcome up to Mardian. There’s accommodation at the Green Man. No use bringing up the past I reckon and us all will be glad to see you. He’s still terrible bitter against your mother’s marriage on account of it was to a R.C. So kindly do not refer to same although rightly speaking her dying ought to make all things equal in the sight of her Maker and us creatures here below.

Your affec. uncle

Daniel Andersen

Camilla sighed, tucked away the letter and looked along the lane towards Copse Forge.

�I’ve got to be glad I came,’ she said.

For all the cold she had opened her window. Down below a man with a lanthorn was crossing the lane to the pub. He was followed by a dog. He heard her and looked up. The light from the bar windows caught his face.

�Hallo, Uncle Ernest,’ called Camilla. �You are Ernest, aren’t you? Do you know who I am? Did they tell you I was coming?’

�Ar?’

�I’m Camilla. I’ve come to stay for a week.’

�Our Bessie’s Camilla?’

�That’s me. Now, do you remember?’

He peered up at her with the slow recognition of the mentally retarded. �I did yur tell you was coming. Does Guiser know?’

�Yes. I only got here an hour ago. I’ll come and see him tomorrow.’

�He doan’t rightly fancy wummen.’

�He will me,’ she said gaily. �After all he’s my grandfather! He asked me to come.’

�Noa!’

�Yes, he did. Well – almost. I’m going down to the parlour. See you later.’

It had begun to snow again. As she shut her window she saw the headlights of a dogged little car turn into the yard.

A roundabout lady got out. Her head was encased in a scarf, her body in a mauve handicraft cape and her hands in flowery woollen gloves.

�Darling, what a make-up!’ Camilla apostrophized under her breath. She ran downstairs.

The bar-parlour at the Green Man was in the oldest part of the pub. It lay at right angles to the Public which was partly visible and could be reached from it by means of a flap in the bar counter. It was a singularly unpretentious affair, lacking any display of horse-brasses, warming-pans or sporting prints. Indeed the only item of anything but utilitarian interest was a picture in a dark corner behind the door; a faded and discoloured photograph of a group of solemn-faced men with walrus moustaches. They had blackened faces and hands and were holding up, as if to display it, a kind of openwork frame built up from short swords. Through this frame a man in clownish dress stuck his head. In the background were three figures that might have been respectively a hobby-horse, a man in a voluminous petticoat and somebody with a fiddle.

Serving in the private bar was the publican’s daughter, Trixie Plowman, a fine ruddy young woman with a magnificent figure and bearing. When Camilla arrived there was nobody else in the Private, but in the Public beyond she again saw her uncle, Ernest Andersen. He grinned and shuffled his feet.

Camilla leant over the bar and looked into the Public. �Why don’t you come over here, Uncle Ernie?’ she called.

He muttered something about the Public being good enough for him. His dog, invisible to Camilla, whined.

�Well, fancy!’ Trixie exclaimed. �When it’s your own niece after so long and speaking so nice.’

�Never mind,’ Camilla said cheerfully. �I expect he’s forgotten he ever had a niece.’

Ernie could be heard to say that no doubt she was too upperty for the likes of them-all, anyhow.

�No I’m not,’ Camilla ejaculated indignantly. �That’s just what I’m not. Oh dear!’

�Never mind,’ Trixie said, and made the kind of face that alluded to weakness of intellect. Ernie smiled and mysteriously raised his eyebrows.

�Though of course,’ Trixie conceded, �I must say it is a long time since we seen you,’ and she added with a countrywoman’s directness: �Not since your poor mum was brought back and laid to rest.’

�Five years,’ said Camilla nodding.

�That’s right.’

�Ar,’ Ernie interjected loudly, �and no call for that if she’d bided homealong and wed one of her own. Too mighty our Bessie was, and brought so low’s dust as a consequence.’

�That may be one way of looking at it,’ Trixie said loftily. �I must say it’s not mine. That dog of yours stinks,’ she added.

�Same again,’ Ernie countered morosely.

�She wasn’t brought as low as dust,’ Camilla objected indignantly. �She was happily married to my father who loved her like anything. He’s never really got over her death.’

Camilla, as brilliantly sad as she had been happy, looked at Trixie and said: �They were in love. They married for love.’

�So they did, then, and a wonderful thing it was for her,’ Trixie said comfortably. She drew a half-pint and pointedly left Ernie alone with it.

�Killed ’er, didn’t it?’ Ernie demanded of his boots. �For all ’is great ’ordes of pelf and unearthly pride, ’e showed ’er the path to the grave.’

�No. Oh, don’t! How can you!’

�Never you heed,’ Trixie said and beckoned Camilla with a jerk of her head to the far end of the Private bar. �He’s queer,’ she said. �Not soft, mind, but queer. Don’t let it upset you.’

�I had a message from Grandfather saying I could come. I thought they wanted to be friendly.’

�And maybe they do. Ernie’s different. What’ll you take, maid?’

�Cider, please. Have one yourself, Trixie.’

There was a slight floundering noise on the stairs outside, followed by the entrance of Mrs BГјnz. She had removed her cloak and all but one of her scarves and was cosy in Cotswold wool and wooden beads.

�Good evening,’ she said pleasantly. �And what an evening! Snowing again!’

�Good evening, ma’am,’ Trixie said, and Camilla, brightening up because she thought Mrs Bünz such a wonderful �character makeup’, said:

�I know. Isn’t it too frightful!’

Mrs Bünz had arrived at the bar and Trixie said: �Will you take anything just now?’

�Thank you,’ said Mrs Bünz. �A noggin will buck me up. Am I right in thinking that I am in the Mead Country?’

Trixie caught Camilla’s eye and then, showing all her white teeth in the friendliest of grins, said: �Us don’t serve mead over the bar, ma’am, though it’s made hereabouts by them that fancies it.’

Mrs Bünz leant her elbow in an easy manner on the counter. �By the Old Guiser,’ she suggested, �for example?’

She was accustomed to the singular little pauses that followed her remarks. As she looked from one to the other of her hearers she blinked and smiled at them and her rosy cheeks bunched themselves up into shiny knobs. She was like an illustration to a tale by the brothers Grimm.

�Would that be Mr William Andersen you mean, then?’ Trixie asked.

Mrs BГјnz nodded waggishly.

Camilla started to say something and changed her mind. In the Public, Ernie cleared his throat.

�I can’t serve you with anything then, ma’am?’ asked Trixie.

�Indeed you can. I will take zider,’ decided Mrs Bünz, carefully regional. Camilla made an involuntary snuffling noise and, to cover it up, said: �William Andersen’s my grandfather. Do you know him?’

This was not comfortable for Mrs BГјnz, but she smiled and smiled and nodded and, as she did so, she told herself that she would never never master the extraordinary vagaries of class in Great Britain.

�I have had the pleasure to meet him,’ she said. �This evening. On my way. A beautiful old gentleman,’ she added firmly.

Camilla looked at her with astonishment.

�Beautiful?’

�Ach, yes. The spirit,’ Mrs Bünz explained, waving her paws, �the raciness, the élan!’

�Oh,’ said Camilla dubiously. �I see.’ Mrs Bünz sipped her cider and presently took a letter from her bag and laid it on the bar. �I was asked to deliver this,’ she said, �to someone staying here. Perhaps you can help me?’

Trixie glanced at it. �It’s for you, dear,’ she said to Camilla. Camilla took it. Her cheeks flamed like poppies and she looked with wonder at Mrs Bünz.

�Thank you,’ she said, �but I don’t quite – I mean – are you –?’

�A chance encounter,’ Mrs Bünz said airily. �I was delighted to help.’

Camilla murmured a little politeness, excused herself and sat down in the inglenook to read her letter.

Dear Enchanting Camilla (she read),

Don’t be angry with me for coming home this week. I know you said I mustn’t follow you, but truly I had to because of the Mardian Morris and Christmas. I shan’t come near you at the pub and I won’t ring you up. But please be in church on Sunday. When you sing I shall see your breath going up in little clouds and I shall puff away too like a train so that at least we shall be doing something together. From this you will perceive that I love you.

Ralph

Camilla read this letter about six times in rapid succession and then put it in the pocket of her trousers. She would have liked to slip it under her thick sweater but was afraid it might fall out at the other end.

Her eyes were like stars. She told herself she ought to be miserable because after all she had decided it was no go about Ralph Stayne. But somehow the letter was an antidote to misery, and there went her heart singing like a lunatic.

Mrs Bünz had retired with her cider to the far side of the inglenook where she sat gazing – rather wistfully, Camilla thought – into the fire. The door of the Public opened. There was an abrupt onset of male voices; blurred and leisurely; unformed country voices. Trixie moved round to serve them, and her father, Ron Plowman, the landlord, came in to help. There was a general bumble of conversation. �I had forgotten,’ Camilla thought, �what they sound like. I’ve never found out about them. Where do I belong?’

She heard Trixie say: �So she is, then, and setting in yonder.’

A silence and a clearing of throats. Camilla saw that Mrs Bünz was looking at her. She got up and went to the bar. Through in the Public on the far side of Trixie’s plump shoulder she could see her five uncles: Dan, Andy, Nat, Chris and Ernie, and her grandfather, old William. There was something odd about seeing them like that, as if they were images in a glass and not real persons at all. She found this impression disagreeable and to dispel it called out loudly:

�Hallo, there! Hallo, Grandfather!’

Camilla’s mother, whose face was no longer perfectly remembered, advanced out of the past with the smile Dan offered his niece. She was there when Andy and Nat, the twins, sniffed at their knuckles as if they liked the smell of them. She was there in Chris’s auburn fringe of hair. Even Ernie, strangely at odds with reality, had his dead sister’s trick of looking up from under his brows.

The link of resemblance must have come from the grandmother whom Camilla had never seen. Old William himself had none of these signs about him. Dwarfed by his sons he was less comely and looked much more aggressive. His face had settled into a fixed churlishness.

He pushed his way through the group of his five sons and looked at his granddaughter through the frame made by shelves of bottles.

�You’ve come, then,’ he said, glaring at her.

�Of course. May I go through, Trixie?’

Trixie lifted the counter flap and Camilla went into the Public. Her uncles stood back a little. She held out her hand to her grandfather.

�Thank you for the message,’ she said. �I’ve often wanted to come but I didn’t know whether you’d like to see me.’

�Us reckoned you’d be too mighty for your mother’s folk.’

Camilla told herself that she would speak very quietly because she didn’t want the invisible Mrs Bünz to hear. Even so, her little speech sounded like a bit of diction exercise. But she couldn’t help that.

�I’m an Andersen as much as I’m a Campion, Grandfather. Any “mightiness” has been on your side, not my father’s or mine. We’ve always wanted to be friends.’

�Plain to see you’re as deadly self-willed and upperty as your mother before you,’ he said, blinking at her. �I’ll say that for you.’

�I am very like her, aren’t I? Growing more so, Daddy says.’ She turned to her uncles and went on, a little desperately, with her prepared speech. It sounded, she thought, quite awful. �We’ve only met once before, haven’t we? At my mother’s funeral. I’m not sure if I know which is which, even.’ Here, poor Camilla stopped, hoping that they might perhaps tell her. But they only shuffled their feet and made noises in their throats. She took a deep breath and went on. (�Voice pitched too high,’ she thought.) �May I try and guess? You’re the eldest, You’re my Uncle Dan, aren’t you, and you’re a widower with a son. And there are Andy and Nat, the twins. You’re both married but I don’t know what families you’ve got. And then came Mummy. And then you, Uncle Chris, the one she liked so much, and I don’t know if you’re married.’

Chris, the ruddy one, looked quickly at Trixie, turned the colour of his own hair and shook his head.

�And I’ve already met Uncle Ernie,’ Camilla ended, and heard her voice fade uneasily.

There seemed little more to say. It had been a struggle to say as much as that. There they were with their countrymen’s clothes and boots, their labourers’ bodies and their apparent unreadiness to ease a situation that they themselves, or the old man, at least, had brought about.

�Us didn’t reckon you’d carry our names so ready,’ Dan said and smiled at her again.

�Oh,’ Camilla cried, seizing at this, �that was easy. Mummy used to tell me I could always remember your names in order because they spelt DANCE: Dan, Andy, Nat, Chris, Ernie. She said she thought Grandfather might have named you that way because of Sword Wednesday and the Dance of the Five Sons. Did you, Grandfather?’

In the inglenook of the Private, Mrs BГјnz, her cider half-way to her lips, was held in ecstatic suspension.

A slightly less truculent look appeared in old William’s face.

�That’s not a maid’s business,’ he said. �It’s man’s gear, that is.’

�I know. She told me. But we can look on, can’t we? Will the swords be out on the Wednesday after the 21st, Grandfather?’

�Certain sure they’ll be out.’

�I be Whiffler,’ Ernie said very loudly. �Bean’t I, chaps?’

�Hold your noise then. Us all knows you be Whiffler,’ said his father irritably, �and going in mortal dread of our lives on account of it.’

�And the Wing-Commander’s “Crack”,’ Ernie said monotonously pursuing his theme. �Wing-Commander Begg, that is. Old ’Oss, that is. ’E commanded my crowd ’e did: I was ’is servant, I was. Wing-Commander Simon Begg, only we called ’im Simmy-Dick, we did. ’E’ll be Old ’Oss, ’e will.’

�Ya-a-as, ya-a-as,’ said his four brothers soothingly in unison. Ernie’s dog came out from behind the door and gloomily contemplated its master.

�We can’t have that poor stinking beast in here,’ Trixie remarked.

�Not healthy,’ Tom Plowman said. �Sorry, Ern, but there you are. Not healthy.’

�No more ’tis,’ Andy agreed. �Send it back home, Ern.’

His father loudly ordered the dog to be removed, going so far as to say that it ought to be put out of its misery, in which opinion his sons heartily concurred. The effect of this pronouncement upon Ernie was disturbing. He turned sheet-white, snatched up the dog and, looking from one to the other of his relations, backed towards the door.

�I’ll be the cold death of any one of you that tries,’ he said violently.

A stillness fell upon the company. Ernie blundered out into the dark, carrying his dog.

His brothers scraped their boots on the floor and cleared their throats. His father said: �Damned young fool, when all’s said.’ Trixie explained that she was as fond of animals as anybody but you had to draw the line.

Presently Ernie returned, alone, and after eyeing his father for some moments, began to complain like a child.

�A chap bean’t let ’ave nothin’ he sets his fancy to,’ Ernie whined. �Nor let do nothin’ he’s a notion to do. Take my case. Can’t ’ave me dog. Can’t do Fool’s act in the Five Sons. I’m the best lepper and caperer of the lot of you. I’d be a proper good Fool, I would.’ He pointed to his father. �You’re altogether beyond it, as the doctor in ’is wisdom ’as laid down. Why can’t you heed ’im and let me take over?’

His father rejoined with some heat: �You’re lucky to whiffle. Hold your tongue and don’t meddle in what you don’t understand. Which reminds me,’ he added, advancing upon Trixie. �There was a foreign wumman up along to Copse Forge. Proper old nosey besom. If so be – Ar?’

Camilla had tugged at his coat and was gesturing in the direction of the hidden Mrs BГјnz. Trixie mouthed distractedly. The four senior brothers made unhappy noises in their throats.

�In parlour, is she?’ William bawled. �Is she biding?’

�A few days,’ Trixie murmured. Her father said firmly: �Don’t talk so loud, Guiser.’

�I’ll talk as loud as I’m minded. Us doan’t want no furreignesses hereabouts –’

�Doan’t, then Dad,’ his sons urged him.

But greatly inflamed, the Guiser roared on. Camilla looked through into the Private and saw Mrs BГјnz wearing an expression of artificial abstraction. She tiptoed past the gap and disappeared.

�Grandfather!’ Camilla cried out indignantly, �she heard you! How could you! You’ve hurt her feelings dreadfully and she’s not even English –’

�Hold your tongue, then.’

�I don’t see why I should.’

Ernie astonished them all by bursting into shouts of laughter.

�Like mother, like maid,’ he said, jerking his thumb at Camilla. �Hark to our Bessie’s girl.’

Old William glowered at his granddaughter. �Bad blood,’ he said darkly.

�Nonsense! You’re behaving,’ Camilla recklessly continued, �exactly like an over-played “heavy”. Absolute ham, if you don’t mind my saying so, Grandather!’

�What kind of loose talk’s that?’

�Theatre slang, actually.’

�Theatre!’ he roared. �Doan’t tell me you’re shaming your sex by taking up with that trash. That’s the devil’s counting-house, that is.’

�With respect, Grandfather, it’s nothing of the sort.’

�My granddaughter!’ William said, himself with considerable histrionic effort, �a play-actress! Ar, well! Us might have expected it, seeing she was nossled at the breast of the Scarlet Woman.’

Nat and Andy with the occasional unanimity of twins groaned: �Ar, dear!’

The landlord said: �Steady, souls.’

�I really don’t know what you mean by that,’ Camilla said hotly. �If you’re talking about Daddy’s Church you must know jolly well that it isn’t mine. He and Mummy laid that on before I was born. I wasn’t to be a Roman and if my brother had lived he would have been one. I’m C. of E.’

�That’s next door as bad,’ William shouted. �Turning your back on Chapel and canoodling with Popery.’

He had come quite close to her. His face was scored with exasperation. He pouted, too, pushing out his lips at her and making a piping sound behind them.

To her own astonishment Camilla said: �No, honestly! You’re nothing but an old baby after all,’ and suddenly kissed him.

�There now!’ Trixie ejaculated, clapping her hands.

Tom Plowman said: �Reckon that calls for one all round on the house.’

The outside door was pushed open and a tall man in a duffle coat came in.

�Good evening, Mr Begg,’ said Trixie.

�How’s Trix?’ asked Wing-Commander Simon Begg.




II


Later on, when she had seen more of him, Camilla was to think of the first remark she heard Simon Begg make as completely typical of him. He was the sort of man who has a talent for discovering the Christian names of waiters and waitresses and uses them continually. He was powerfully built and not ill-looking, with large blue eyes, longish hair and a blond moustache. He wore an RAF tie, and a vast woollen scarf in the same colours. He had achieved distinction (she was to discover) as a bomber pilot during the war.

The elder Andersens, slow to recover from Camilla’s kiss, greeted Begg confusedly, but Ernie laughed with pleasure and threw him a crashing salute. Begg clapped him on the shoulder. �How’s the corporal?’ he said. �Sharpening up the old whiffler, what?’

�Crikey!’ Camilla thought, �he isn’t half a cup of tea, is the Wing-Commander.’ He gave her a glance for which the word �practised’ seemed to be appropriate and ordered his drink.

�Quite a party tonight,’ he said.

�Celebration, too,’ Trixie rejoined. �Here’s the Guiser’s granddaughter come to see us after five years.’

�No!’ he exclaimed. �Guiser! Introduce me, please.’

After a fashion old William did so. It was clear that for all his affectation of astonishment, Begg had heard about Camilla. He began to ask her questions that contrived to suggest that they belonged to the same world. Did she by any chance know a little spot called �Phipps’ near Shepherd’s Market – quite a bright little spot, really. Camilla, to whom he seemed almost elderly, thought that somehow he was also pathetic. She felt she was a failure with him and decided that she ought to slip away from the Public where she now seemed out of place. Before she could do so, however, there was a further arrival: a pleasant-looking elderly man in an old-fashioned covert-coat with a professional air about him.

There was a chorus of �Evenin’, Doctor.’ The newcomer at once advanced upon Camilla and said: �Why, bless my soul, there’s no need to tell me who this is: I’m Henry Otterly, child. I ushered your mama into the world. Last time I spoke to her she was about your age and as like as could be. How very nice to see you.’

They shook hands warmly. Camilla remembered that five years ago when a famous specialist had taken his tactful leave of her mother, she had whispered: �All the same, you couldn’t beat Dr Otterly up to Mardian.’ When she had died, they carried her back to Mardian and Dr Otterly had spoken gently to Camilla and her father.

She smiled gratefully at him now and his hand tightened for a moment round hers.

�What a lucky chap you are, Guiser,’ said Dr Otterley: �with a granddaughter to put a bit of warmth into your Decembers. Wish I could say as much for myself. Are you staying for Christmas, Miss Camilla?’

�For the Winter Solstice anyway,’ she said. �I want to see the swords come out.’

�Aha! So you know all about that.’

�Mummy told me.’

�I’ll be bound she did. I didn’t imagine you people nowadays had much time for ritual dancing. Too “folksy”– is that the word? – or “artsy-craftsy” or “chi-chi”. No?’

�Ah no! Not the genuine article like this one,’ Camilla protested. �And I’m sort of specially interested because I’m working at a drama school.’

�Are you now?’

Dr Otterly glanced at the Andersens but they were involved in a close discussion with Simon Begg. �And what does the Guiser say to that?’ he asked and winked at Camilla.

�He’s livid.’

�Ha! And what do you propose to do about it? Defy him?’

Camilla said: �Do you know, I honestly didn’t think anybody was left who thought like he does about the theatre. He quite pitched into me. Rather frightening when you come to think of it.’

�Frightening? Ah!’ Dr Otterly said quickly. �You don’t really mean that. That’s contemporary slang, I dare say. What did you say to the Guiser?’

�Well, I didn’t quite like,’ Camilla confided, �to point out that after all he plays the lead in a pagan ritual that is probably chock full of improprieties if he only knew it.’

�No,’ agreed Dr Otterly drily, �I shouldn’t tell him that if I were you. As a matter of fact, he’s a silly old fellow to do it at all at his time of life. Working himself into a fizz and taxing his ticker up to the danger-mark. I’ve told him so but I might as well speak to the cat. Now, what do you hope to do, child? What rôles do you dream of playing? Um?’

�Oh, Shakespeare if I could. If only I could.’

�I wonder. In ten years’ time? Not the giantesses, I fancy. Not the Lady M. nor yet The Serpent of Old Nile. But a Viola, now, or – what do you say to a Cordelia?’

�Cordelia?’ Camilla echoed doubtfully. She didn’t think all that much of Cordelia.

Dr Otterly contemplated her with evident amusement and adopted an air of cosy conspiracy.

�Shall I tell you something? Something that to me at least is immensely exciting? I believe I have made a really significant discovery: really significant about – you’d never guess – about Lear. There now!’ cried Dr Otterly with the infatuated glee of a White Knight. �What do you say to that?’

�A discovery?’

�About King Lear. And I have been led to it, I may tell you, through playing the fiddle once a year for thirty years at the Winter Solstice on Sword Wednesday for our Dance of the Five Sons.’

�Honestly?’

�As honest as the day. And do you want to know what my discovery is?’

�Indeed I do.’

�In a nutshell, this; here, my girl, in our Five Sons is nothing more nor less than a variant of the Basic Theme: Frazer’s theme: The King of the Wood, The Green Man, The Fool, The Old Man Persecuted by his Young: the theme, by gum, that reached its full stupendous blossoming in Lear. Do you know the play?’ Dr Otterly demanded.

�Pretty well, I think.’

�Good. Turn it over in your mind when you’ve seen the Five Sons, and if I’m right you’d better treat that old grandpapa of yours with respect, because on Sword Wednesday, child, he’ll be playing what I take to be the original version of King Lear. There now!’

Dr Otterly smiled, gave Camilla a little pat and made a general announcement.

�If you fellows want to practise,’ he shouted, �you’ll have to do it now. I can’t give you more than half an hour. Mary Yeoville’s in labour.’

�Where’s Mr Ralph?’ Dan asked.

�He rang up to say he might be late. Doesn’t matter, really. The Betty’s a freelance after all. Everyone else is here. My fiddle’s in the car.’

�Come on, then, chaps,’ said old William. �Into the barn.’ He had turned away and taken up a sacking bundle when he evidently remembered his granddaughter.

�If you bean’t too proud,’ he said, glowering at her, �you can come and have a tell up to Copse Forge tomorrow.’

�I’d love to. Thank you, Grandfather. Good luck to the rehearsal.’

�What sort of outlandish word’s that? We’re going to practise.’

�Same thing. May I watch?’

�You can not. ’Tis men’s work, and no female shall have part nor passel in it.’

�Just too bad,’ said Begg, �isn’t it, Miss Campion? I think we ought to jolly well make an exception in this case.’

�No. No!’ Camilla cried, �I was only being facetious. It’s all right, Grandfather. Sorry. I wouldn’t dream of butting in.’

�Doan’t go nourishing and ’citing thik old besom, neither.’

�No, no, I promise. Goodnight, everybody.’

�Goodnight, Cordelia,’ said Dr Otterly.

The door swung to behind the men. Camilla said goodnight to the Plowmans and climbed up to her room. Tom Plowman went out to the kitchen.

Trixie, left alone, moved round into the bar-parlour to tidy it up. She saw the envelope that Camilla in the excitement of opening her letter had let fall.

Trixie picked it up and, in doing so, caught sight of the superscription. For a moment she stood very still, looking at it. The tip of her tongue appearing between her teeth as if she thought to herself: �This is tricky.’ Then she gave a rich chuckle, crumpled the envelope and pitched it into the fire. She heard the door of the Public Bar open and returned there to find Ralph Stayne staring unhappily at her.

�Trixie –’

�I reckin,’ Trixie said, �you’m thinking you’ve got yourself into a terrible old pickle.’

�Look – Trixie –’

�Be off,’ she said.

�All right. I’m sorry.’

He turned away and was arrested by her voice, mocking him.

�I will say, however, that if she takes you, she’ll get a proper man.’




III


In the disused barn behind the pub, Dr Otterly’s fiddle gave out a tune as old as the English calendar. Deceptively simple, it bounced and twiddled, insistent in its reiterated demand that whoever heard it should feel in some measure the impulse to jump.

Here, five men jumped: cleverly, with concentration and variety. For one dance they had bells clamped to their thick legs and, as they capered and tramped, the bells jerked positively with an overtone of irrelevant tinkling. For another, they were linked, as befitted the sons of a blacksmith, by steel: by a ring made of five swords. They pranced and leapt over their swords. They wove and unwove a concentric pattern. Their boots banged down to the fiddle’s rhythm and with each down-thump a cloud of dust was bumped up from the floor. The men’s faces were blank with concentration: Dan’s, Andy’s, Nat’s, Chris’s and Ernie’s. On the perimeter of the figure and moving round it danced the Old Guiser, William Andersen. On his head was a rabbit-skin cap. He carried the classic stick-and-bladder. He didn’t dance with the vigour of his sons but with dedication. He made curious, untheatrical gestures that seemed to have some kind of significance. He also chided his sons and sometimes called them to a halt in order to do so.

Independent of the Guiser but also moving as an eccentric satellite to the dance was �Crack’, the Hobby Horse, with Wing-Commander Begg inside him. �Crack’ had been hammered out at Copse Forge, how many centuries ago none of the dancers could tell. His iron head, more bird-like than equine, was daubed with paint after the fashion of a witch-doctor’s mask. It appeared through a great, flat, drumlike body: a circular frame that was covered to the ground with canvas and had a tiny horsehair tail stuck through it. �Crack’ snapped his iron jaws and executed a solo dance of some intricacy.

Presently Ralph Stayne came in, shaking the snow off his hat and coat. He stood watching for a minute or two and then went to a corner of the barn where he found, and put on, a battered crinoline-like skirt. It was enormously wide and reached to the floor.

Now, in the character of the man-woman, and wearing a face of thunder, Ralph, too, began to skip and march about the Dance of the Five Sons. They had formed the Knot or Glass – an emblem made by the interlacing of their swords. Dan and Andy displayed it, the Guiser approached, seemed to look in it at his reflection and then dashed it to the ground. The dance was repeated and the knot reformed. The Guiser mimed, with clumsy and rudimentary gestures, an appeal to the clemency of the Sons. He appeared to write and show his will, promising this to one and that to another. They seemed to be mollified. A third time they danced and formed their knot. Now, mimed old William, there is no escape. He put his head in the knot. The swords were disengaged with a clash. He dropped his rabbit cap and fell to the ground.

Dr Otterly lowered his fiddle.

�Sorry,’ he said. �I must be off. Quite enough anyway for you, Guiser. If I knew my duty I wouldn’t let you do it at all. Look at you, you old fool, puffing like your own bellows. There’s no need, what’s more, for you to extend yourself like that. Yours is not strictly a dancing role. Now, don’t go on after I’ve left. Sit down and play for the others if you like. Here’s the fiddle. But no more dancing, understand? ’Night, boys.’

He shrugged himself into his coat and went out. They heard him drive away.

Ernie practised �whiffling’. He executed great leaps, slashing with his sword at imaginary enemies and making a little boy’s spaceman noise between his teeth. The Hobby Horse performed an extraordinary and rather alarming antic which turned out merely to be the preparatory manœuvre of Simon Begg divesting himself of his trappings.

�Damned if I put this bloody harness on again tonight,’ he said. �It cuts my shoulders and it stinks.’

�So does the Betty,’ said Ralph. �They must have been great sweaters, our predecessors. However: toujours l’art, I suppose.’

�Anything against having them washed, Guiser?’ asked Begg.

�You can’t wash Old ’Oss,’ the Guiser pointed out. �Polish iron and leather and hot up your pail of pitch. Dip Crack’s skirt into it last thing as is what is proper and right. Nothin’ like hot pitch to smell.’

�True,’ Ralph said: �you have the advantage of me, Begg. I can’t turn the Betty into a tar-baby, worse luck.’

Begg said: �I’d almost forgotten the hot pitch. Queer sort of caper when you come to think of it. Chasing the lovely ladies and dabbing hot tar on ’em. Funny thing is, they don’t run away as fast as all that, either.’

�Padstow ’Oss,’ observed Chris, �or so I’ve ’eard tell, catches ’em up and overlays ’em like a candle-snuff.’

�’Eathen licentiousness,’ rejoined his father, �and no gear for us chaps, so doan’t you think of trying it on, Simmy-Dick.’

�Guiser,’ Ralph said, �you’re superb. Isn’t the whole thing heathen?’

�No, it bean’t then. It’s right and proper when it’s done proper and proper done by us it’s going to be.’

�All the same,’ Simon Begg said, �I wouldn’t mind twenty seconds under the old tar barrel with that very snappy little job you introduced to us tonight, Guiser.’

Ernie guffawed and was instantly slapped down by his father. �You hold your noise. No way to conduct yourself when the maid’s your niece. You should be all fiery hot in ’er defence.’

�Yes, indeed,’ Ralph said quietly.

Begg looked curiously at him. �Sorry, old man,’ he said. �No offence. Only a passing thought and all that. Let’s change the subject: when are you going to let us have that smithy, Guiser?’

�Never. And you might as well make up your mind to it. Never.’

�Obstinate old dog, isn’t he?’ Begg said at large.

Dan, Chris and the twins glanced uncomfortably at their father.

Dan said: �Us chaps are favourably disposed as we’ve mentioned, Simmy-Dick, but, the Dad won’t listen to us, no more than to you.’

�Look, Dad,’ Chris said earnestly, �it’d be in the family still. We know there’s a main road going through in the near future. We know a service station’d be a little gold mine yur on the cross-roads. We know the company’d be behind us. I’ve seen the letters that’s been wrote. We can still have the smithy. Simmy-Dick can run the servicing side on his own to begin with. Ernie can help. Look, it’s cast-iron – certain sure.’ He turned to Ralph. �Isn’t it? Isn’t it?’

Before Ralph could answer Ernie paused in his whiffling and suddenly roared out, �I’d let you ’ave it, Wing-Commander, sir. So I would too.’

The Guiser opened his mouth in anger but, before he could speak, Dan said: �We here to practise or not? Come on, chaps. One more dash at the last figure. Strike up for us, Dad.’

The five brothers moved out into the middle of the floor. The Guiser, muttering to himself, laid the fiddle across his knees and scraped a preliminary call-in.

In a moment they were at it again. Down thumped their boots striking at the floor and up bounced the clouds of dust.

And outside in the snow, tied up with scarves, her hand-woven cloak enveloping her, head and all, Mrs BГјnz peered through a little cobwebby window, ecstatically noting the steps and taking down the tunes.





CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_3190e9a0-8912-581d-a4b1-5ea00c1f16c9)

Preparation (#ulink_3190e9a0-8912-581d-a4b1-5ea00c1f16c9)


All through the following week snow and frost kept up their antiphonal ceremony. The two Mardians were mentioned in the press and on the air as being the coldest spots in England.

Up at the castle, Dame Alice gave some hot-tempered orders to what remained nowadays of her staff: a cook, a house-parlourmaid, a cleaning woman, a truculent gardener and his boy. All of them except the boy were extremely old. Preparations were to be put in hand for the first Wednesday evening following the 21st December. A sort of hot cider punch must be brewed in the boiler-house. Cakes of a traditional kind must be baked. The snow must be cleared away in the courtyard and stakes planted to which torches would subsequently be tied. A bonfire must be built. Her servants made a show of listening to Dame Alice and then set about these preparations in their own fashion. Miss Mardian sighed and may have thought all the disturbance a bit of a bore but took it, as did everybody else in the village, as a complete matter of course. �Sword Wednesday,’ as the date of the Five Sons was sometimes called, made very little more stir than Harvest Festival in the two Mardians.

Mrs Bünz and Camilla Campion stayed on at the Green Man. Camilla was seen to speak in a friendly fashion to Mrs Bünz, towards whom Trixie also maintained an agreeable manner. The landlord, an easy man, was understood to be glad enough of her custom, and to be charging her a pretty tidy sum for it. It was learned that her car had broken down and the roads were too bad for it to be towed to Simon Begg’s garage, an establishment that advertised itself as �Simmy-Dick’s Service Station.’ It was situated at Yowford, a mile beyond East Mardian, and was believed to be doing not too well. It was common knowledge that Simon Begg wanted to convert Copse Forge into a garage and that the Guiser wouldn’t hear of it.

Evening practices continued in the barn. In the bedrooms of the pub the thumping boots, jingling bells and tripping insistences of the fiddle could be clearly heard. Mrs BГјnz had developed a strong vein of cunning. She would linger in the bar-parlour, sip her cider and write her voluminous diary. The thumps and the scraps of fiddling would tantalize her almost beyond endurance. She would wait for at least ten minutes and then stifle a yawn, excuse herself and ostensibly go upstairs to bed. She had, however, discovered a back stairs by which, a few minutes later, she would secretly descend, a perfect mountain of handweaving, and let herself out by a side door into a yard. From here a terribly slippery brick path led directly to the near end of the barn which the landlord used as a store-room.

Mrs Bünz’s spying window was partly sheltered by overhanging thatch. She had managed to clean it a little. Here, shuddering with cold and excitement, she stood, night after night, making voluminous notes with frozen fingers.

From this exercise she derived only modified rapture. Peering through the glass which was continually misted over by her breath, she looked through the store-room and its inner doorway into the barn proper. Her view of the dancing was thus maddeningly limited. The Andersen brothers would appear in flashes. Now they would be out of her range, now momentarily within it. Sometimes the Guiser, or Dr Otterly or the Hobby Horse would stand in the doorway and obstruct her view. It was extremely frustrating.

She gradually discovered that there was more than one dance. There was a Morris, for which the men wore bells that jangled most provocatively, and there was also sword-dancing, which was part of a mime or play. And there was one passage of this dance-play which was always to be seen. This was when the Guiser in his rГґle of Fool or Old Man, put his head in the knot of swords. The Five Sons were grouped about him, the Betty and the Hobby Horse were close behind. At this juncture, it was clear that the Old Man spoke. There was some fragment of dialogue, miraculously presenved, perhaps, from heaven knew what ancient source. Mrs BГјnz saw his lips move, always at the same point and always, she was certain, to the same effect. Really, she would have given anything in her power to hear what he said.

She learnt quite a lot about the dance-play. She found that, after the Guiser had acted out his mock-decapitation, the Sons danced again and the Betty and Hobby Horse improvised. Sometimes the Hobby Horse would come prancing and shuffling into the store-room quite close to her. It was strange to see the iron beak-like mouth snap and bite the air on the other side of the window. Sometimes the Betty would come in, and the great barrel-like dress would brush up clouds of dust from the store-room floor. But always the Sons danced again and, at a fixed point, the Guiser rose up as if resurrected. It was on this �Act’, evidently, that the whole thing ended.

After the practice they would all return to the pub. Once, Mrs Bünz denied herself the pleasures of her peepshow in order to linger as unobtrusively as possible in the bar-parlour. She hoped that, pleasantly flushed with exercise, the dancers would talk of their craft. But this ruse was a dead failure. The men at first did indeed talk, loudly and freely at the far end of the Public, but they all spoke together and Mrs Bünz found the Andersens’ dialect exceedingly difficult. She thought that Trixie must have indicated her presence because they were all suddenly quiet. Then Trixie, always pleasant, came through and asked her if she wanted anything further that evening in such a definite sort of way that somehow even Mrs Bünz felt impelled to get up and go.

Then Mrs BГјnz had what she hoped at the time might be a stroke of luck.

One evening at half past five she came into the bar parlour in order to complete a little piece she was writing for an American publication on �The Hermaphrodite in European Folklore.’ She found Simon Begg already there, lost in gloomy contemplation of a small notebook and the racing page of an evening paper.

She had entered into negotiations with Begg about repairing her car. She had also, of course, had her secret glimpses of him in the character of �Crack’. She greeted him with her particularly Teutonic air of camaraderie. �So!’ she said, �you are early this evening, Wing Commander.’

He made a sort of token movement, shifting a little in his chair and eyeing Trixie. Mrs Bünz ordered cider. �The snow,’ she said cosily, �continues, does it not?’

�That’s right,’ he said, and then seemed to pull himself together. �Too bad we still can’t get round to fixing that little bus of yours, Mrs – er – er – Bünz, but there you are! Unless we get a tow –’

�There is no hurry. I shall not attempt the return journey before the weather improves. My baby does not enjoy the snow.’

�You’d be better off, if you don’t mind my saying so, with something that packs a bit more punch.’

�I beg your pardon?’

He repeated his remark in less idiomatic English. The merits of a more powerful car were discussed: it seemed that Begg had a car of the very sort he had indicated which he was to sell for an old lady who had scarcely used it. Mrs BГјnz was by no means poor. Perhaps she weighed up the cost of changing cars with the potential result in terms of inside information on ritual dancing. In any case, she encouraged Begg, who became nimble in sales talk.

�It is true,’ Mrs Bünz meditated presently, �that if I had a more robust motor car I could travel with greater security. Perhaps, for example, I should be able to ascend in frost with ease to Mardian Castle –’

�Piece of cake,’ Simon Begg interjected.

�I beg your pardon?’

�This job I was telling you about laughs at a stretch like that. Laughs at it.’

�– I was going to say, to Mardian Castle on Wednesday evening. That is, if onlookers are permitted.’

�It’s open to the whole village,’ Begg said uncomfortably. �Open house.’

�Unhappily – most unhappily – I have antagonized your Guiser. Also, alas, Dame Alice.’

�Not to worry,’ he muttered and added hurriedly, �it’s only a bit of fun, anyway.’

�Fun? Yes. It is also,’ Mrs Bünz added, �an antiquarian jewel, a precious survival. For example, five swords instead of six, have I never before seen. Unique! I am persuaded of this.’

�Really?’ he said politely. �Now, Mrs Bünz, about this car –’

Each of them hoped to placate the other. Mrs BГјnz did not, therefore, correct his pronunciation.

�I am interested,’ she said genially, �in your description of this auto.’

�I’ll run it up here tomorrow and you can look it over.’

They eyed each other speculatively.

�Tell me,’ Mrs Bünz pursued, �in this dance you are, I believe, the Hobby Horse?’

�That’s right. It’s a wizard little number, you know, this job –’

�You are a scholar of folklore, perhaps?’

�Me? Not likely.’

�But you perform?’ she wailed.

�Just one of those things. The Guiser’s as keen as mustard and so’s Dame Alice. Pity, in a way, I suppose, to let it fold up.’

�Indeed, indeed. It would be a tragedy. Ach! A sin! I am, I must tell you, Mr Begg, an expert. I wish so much to ask you –’ Here, in spite of an obvious effort at self-control, Mrs Bünz became slightly tremulous. She leant forward, her rather prominent blue eyes misted with anxiety, her voice unconvincingly casual. �Tell me,’ she quavered, �at the moment of sacrifice, the moment when the Fool beseeches the Sons to spare him: something is spoken, is it not?’

�I say!’ he ejaculated, staring at her, �you do know a lot about it, don’t you?’

She began in a terrific hurry to explain that all European mumming had a common origin: that it was only reasonable to expect a little dialogue.

�We’re not meant to talk out of school,’ Simon muttered. �I think it’s all pretty corny, mind. Well, childish, really. After all, what the heck’s it matter?’

�I assure you, I beg you to rest assured of my discretion. There is dialogue, no?’

�The Guiser sort of natters at the others.’

Mrs BГјnz, clutching frantically at straws of intelligence on a high wind of slang, flung out her fat little hands at him.

�Ach, my good, kind young motor salesman,’ she pleaded, reminding him of her potential as a customer, �of your great generosity, tell me what are the words he natters to the ozzers?’

�Honest, Mrs Bünz,’ he said with evident regret, �I don’t know. Honest! It’s what he’s always said. Seems all round the bend to me. I doubt if the boys themselves know. P’raps it’s foreign or something.’

Mrs Bünz looked like a cover-picture for a magazine called �Frustration’. �If it is foreign I would understand. I speak six European languages. Gott im Himmel, Mr Begg – what is it?’

His attention had wandered to the racing edition on the table before him. His face lit up and he jabbed at the paper with his finger.

�Look at this!’ he said. �Here’s a turn-up! Could you beat it?’

�I have not on my glasses.’

�Running next Thursday,’ he read aloud, �in the three-fifteen. “Teutonic Dancer by Subsidize out of Substiteuton!” Laugh that off.’

�I do not understand you.’

�It’s a horse,’ he explained. �A race-horse. Talk about coincidence! Talk about omens!’

�An omen?’ she asked, catching at a familiar word.

�Good enough for me, anyway. You’re Teutonic, aren’t you, Mrs Bünz?’

�Yes,’ she said patiently. �I am Teuton, yes.’

�And we’ve been talking about Dancers, haven’t we? And I’ve suggested you Substitute another car for the one you’ve got? And if you have the little job I’ve been telling you about, well, I’ll be sort of Subsidized, won’t I? Look, it’s uncanny.’

Mrs BГјnz rummaged in her pockets and produced her spectacles.

�Ach, I understand. You will bet upon this horse?’

�You can say that again.’

�“Teutonic Dancer by Subsidize out of Sustiteuton!”’ she read slowly, and an odd look came over her face. �You are right, Mr Begg, it is strange. It may, as you say, be an omen.’




II


On the Sunday before Sword Wednesday, Camilla went after church to call upon her grandfather at Copse Forge. As she trudged through the snow she sang until the cold in her throat made her cough and then whistled until the frost on her lips made them too stiff. All through the week she had worked steadily at a part she was to play in next term’s showing and had done all her exercises every day. She had seen Ralph in church. They had smiled at each other, after which the organist, who was also the village postman, might have been the progeny of Orpheus and Saint Cecilia, so heavenly sweet did his piping sound to Camilla. Ralph had kept his promise not to come near her but she hurried away from church because she had the feeling that he might wait for her if he left before she did. And until she got her emotions properly sorted out, thought Camilla, that would never do.

The sun came out. She met a robin redbreast, two sparrows and a magpie. From somewhere beyond the woods came the distant unalarming plop of a shot-gun. As she plodded down the lane she saw the spiral of smoke that even on Sundays wavered up over the copse from the hidden forge.

Her grandfather and his two unmarried sons would be home from chapel-going in the nearby village of Yowford.

There was a footpath through the copse making a short cut from the road to the smithy. Camilla decided to take it, and had gone only a little way into the trees when she heard a sound that is always most deeply disturbing. Somewhere, hidden in the wood, a grown man was crying.

He cried boisterously without making any attempt to restrain his distress and Camilla guessed at once who he must be. She hesitated for a moment and then went forward. The path turned a corner by a thicket of evergreens and on the other side Camilla found her uncle, Ernie Andersen, lamenting over the body of his mongrel dog.

The dog was covered with sacking but its tail, horridly dead, stuck out at one end. Ernie crouched beside it, squatting on his heels with his great hands dangling, splay-fingered, between his knees. His face was beslobbered and blotched with tears. When he saw Camilla he cried, like a small boy, all the louder.

�Why, Ernie!’ Camilla said, �you poor old thing.’

He broke into an angry torrent of speech, but so confusedly and in such a thickened dialect that she had much ado to understand him. He was raging against his father. His father, it seemed, had been saying all the week that the dog was unhealthy and ought to be put down. Ernie had savagely defied him and had kept clear of the forge, taking the dog with him up and down the frozen lanes. This morning, however, the dog had slipped away and gone back to the forge. The Guiser, finding it lying behind the smithy, had shot it there and then. Ernie had heard the shot. Camilla pictured him, blundering through the trees, whimpering with anxiety. His father met him with his gun in his hand and told him to take the carcass away and bury it. At this point, Ernie’s narrative became unintelligible. Camilla could only guess at the scene that followed. Evidently, Chris had supported his father, pointing out that the dog was indeed in a wretched condition and that it had been from motives of kindness that the Guiser had put it out of its misery. She supposed that Ernie, beside himself with rage and grief, had thereupon carried the body to the wood.

�It’s God’s truth,’ Ernie was saying, as he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and became more coherent. �I tell ’ee, it’s God’s truth I’ll be quits with ’im for this job. Bad ’e is: rotten bad and so grasping and cruel’s a blasted li’l old snake. Done me down at every turn: a murdering thief if ever I see one. Cut down in all the deathly pride of his sins, ’e’ll be, if doctor knows what he’m talking about.’

�What on earth do you mean?’ cried Camilla.

�I be a better guiser nor him. I do it betterer nor him: neat as pin on my feet and every step a masterpiece. Doctor reckons he’ll kill hisself. By God, I hope ’e does.’

�Ernie! Be quiet. You don’t know what you’re saying. Why do you want to do the Fool’s act? It’s an Old Man’s act. You’re a Son.’

Ernie reached out his hand. With a finicky gesture of his flat red thumb and forefinger, he lifted the tip of his dead dog’s tail. �I got the fancy,’ he said, looking at Camilla out of the corners of his eyes, �to die and be rose up agin. That’s why.’

Camilla thought: �No, honestly, this is too mummerset.’ She said: �But that’s just an act. It’s just an old dance-play. It’s like having mistletoe and plum pudding. Nothing else happens, Ernie. Nobody dies.’

Ernie twitched the sacking off the body of his dog. Camilla gave a protesting cry and shrank away.

�What’s thik, then?’ Ernie demanded. �Be thik a real dead corpse or bean’t it?’

�Bury it!’ Camilla cried out. �Cover it up, Ernie, and forget it. It’s horrible.’

She felt she could stand no more of Ernie and his dog. She said: �I’m sorry. I can’t help you,’ and walked on past him and along the path to the smithy. With great difficulty she restrained herself from breaking into a run. She felt sick.

The path came out at a clearing near the lane and a little above the smithy.

A man was waiting there. She saw him at first through the trees and then, as she drew nearer, more clearly.

He came to meet her. His face was white and he looked, she couldn’t help feeling, wonderfully determined and romantic.

�Ralph!’ she said, �you mustn’t! You promised. Go away, quickly.’

�I won’t. I can’t, Camilla. I saw you go into the copse, so I hurried up and came round the other way to meet you. I’m sorry, Camilla. I just couldn’t help myself, and, anyway, I’ve decided it’s too damn silly not to. What’s more, there’s something I’ve got to say.’

His expression changed. �Hi!’ he said, �Darling, what’s up? I haven’t frightened you, have I? You look frightened.’

Camilla said with a little wavering laugh: �I know it sounds the purest corn but I’ve just seen something beastly in the copse and it’s made me feel sick.’

He took her hands in his. She would have dearly liked to put her head on his chest. �What did you see, my poorest?’ asked Ralph.

�Ernie,’ she said, �with a dead dog and talking about death.’

She looked up at him and helplessly began to cry. He gave an inarticulate cry and gathered her into his arms.

A figure clad in decent blacks came out of the smithy and stood transfixed with astonishment and rage. It was the Guiser.




III


On the day before Sword Wednesday, Dame Alice ordered her septuagenarian gardener to take his slasher and cut down a forest of dead thistles and briar that poked up through the snow where the Dance of the Five Sons was to be performed. The gardener, a fearless Scot with a will of iron and a sour disposition, at once informed her that the slasher had been ruined by unorthodox usage.

�Dame,’ he said, for this was the way he chose to address his mistress, �It canna be. I’ll no’ soil ma hands nor scald ma temper nor lay waste ma bodily health wi’ any such matter.’

�You can sharpen your slasher, man.’

�It should fetch the blush of shame to your countenance to ask it.’

�Send it down to William Andersen.’

�And get insultit for ma pains? Yon godless old devil’s altogether sunkit in heathen clamjamphries.’

�If you’re talkin’ about Sword Wednesday, McGlashan, you’re talkin’ bosh. Send down your slasher to the forge. If William’s too busy one of the sons will do it.’

�I’ll hae nane but the smith lay hands on ma slasher. They’d ruin it. Moreover, they are as deep sunk in depravity as their auld mon.’

�Don’t you have sword dances in North Britain?’

�I didna come oot here in the cauld at the risk o’ ma ain demise to be insultit.’

�Send the slasher to the forge and get the courtyard cleared. That will do, McGlashan.’

In the end, the slasher was taken down by Dulcie Mardian, who came back with the news that the Guiser was away for the day. She had given the slasher to Ernie with strict instructions that his father, and nobody else, was to sharpen it.

�Fancy, Aunt Akky, it’s the first time for twenty years that William has been to Biddlefast. He got Dan Andersen to drive him to the bus. Everyone in the village is talking about it and wondering if he’s gone to see Stayne and Stayne about his will. I suppose Ralph would know.’

�He’s lucky to have somethin’ to leave. I haven’t and you might as well know it, Dulcie.’

�Of course, Aunt Akky. But everybody says old William is really as rich as possible. He hides it away, they say, like a miser. Fancy!’

�I call it shockin’ low form, Dulcie, listenin’ to village gossip.’

�And, Aunt Akky, that German woman is still at the Green Man. She tries to pump everybody about the Five Sons.’

�She’ll be nosin’ up here to see it. Next thing she’ll be startin’ some beastly guild. She’s one of those stoopid women who turn odd and all that in their fifties. She’ll make a noosance of herself.’

�That’s what the Old Guiser says, according to Chris.’

�He’s perfectly right. William Andersen is a sensible fellow.’

�Could you turn her away, Aunt Akky, if she comes?’

Dame Alice merely gave an angry snap of her false teeth.

�Is that young woman still at the Green Man?’ she demanded.

�Do you mean William Andersen’s granddaughter?’

�Who the deuce else should I mean?’

�Yes she is. Everyone says she’s awfully nice and – well – you know –’

�If you mean she’s a ladylike kind of creeter, why not say so?’

�One doesn’t say that somehow, nowadays, Aunt Akky.’

�More fool you.’

�One says she’s a “lidy”.’

�Nimby-pimby shilly-shallyin’ and beastly vulgar into the bargain. Is the gel more of a Campion than an Andersen?’

�She’s got quite a look of her mother, but of course, Ned Campion brought her up as a Campion. Good schools and all that. She went to that awfully smart finishing school in Paris.’

�And learnt a lot more than they bargained for, I dare say. Is she keepin’ up with the smithy?’

�She’s quite cultivating them, it seems, and everybody says old William, although he pretends to disapprove, has really taken a great fancy to her. They say that she seems to like being with them. I suppose it’s the common side coming out.’

�Lor’, what a howlin’ snob you are, Dulcie. All the more credit to the gel. But I won’t have Ralph gettin’ entangled.’

�What makes you think –?’

Dame Alice looked at her niece with contempt. �His father told me. Sam.’

�The rector?’ Dulcie said automatically.

�Yes, he’s the rector, Dulcie. He’s also your brother-in-law. Are you goin’ potty? It seems Ralph was noticed with the gel at Sandown and all that. He’s been payin’ her great ’tention. I won’t have it.’

�Have you spoken to Ralph, Aunt Akky?’

�’Course I have. ’Bout that and ’bout somethin’ else,’ said Dame Alice with satisfaction, �that he didn’t know I’d heard about. He’s a Mardian, is Master Ralph, if his mother did marry a parson. Young rake.’

Dulcie looked at her aunt with a kind of dim, watery relish. �Goodness!’ she said. �Is Ralph a rake, Aunt Akky?’

�Oh, go and do yer tattin’,’ said Dame Alice contemptuously, �you old maiden.’

But Dulcie paid little attention to this insult. Her gaze had wandered to one of the many clocks in her aunt’s drawing-room.

�Sword Wednesday tomorrow,’ she said romantically, �and in twenty-four hours they’ll be doing the Dance of the Five Sons. Fancy!’




IV


Their final practice over, the eight dancers contemplated each other with the steady complacency of men who have worked together in a strenuous job. Dr Otterly sat on an upturned box, laid his fiddle down and began to fill his pipe.

�Fair enough,’ said Old William. �Might be better, mind.’ He turned on his youngest son. �You, Ernie,’ he said, �you’m Whiffler as us all knows to our cost. But that don’t say you’m toppermost item. Altogether too much biostrosity in your whiffling. No need to lay about like a madman. Show me your sword.’

�No, I won’t, then,’ Ernie said. �Thik’s mine.’

�Have you been sharpening up again? Come on. Have you?’

�Thik’s a sword, bean’t ’er?’

Ernie’s four brothers began to expostulate with him. They pointed out, angrily, that the function of the Whiffler was merely to go through a pantomime of making a clear space for the dance that was to follow. His activities were purest make-believe. Ralph and Dr Otterly joined in to point out that in other counties the whiffling was often done with a broom, and that Ernie, laying excitedly about him with a sword which, however innocuous at its point, had been made razor-sharp farther down, was a menace at once to his fellow-mummers and to his audience. All of them began shouting. Mrs Bünz at her lonely vigil outside the window, hugged herself in ecstasy. It was the ritual of purification that they shouted about. Immensely and thrillingly, their conversation was partly audible and entirely up her street. She died to proclaim her presence, to walk in, to join, blissfully, in the argument.

Ernie made no answer to any of them. He stared loweringly at his father and devotedly at Simon Begg, who merely looked bored and slightly worried. At last, Ernie, under pressure, submitted his sword for examination and there were further ejaculations. Mrs BГјnz could see it, a steel blade, pierced at the tip. A scarlet ribbon was knotted through the hole.

�If one of us ’uns misses the strings and catches hold be the blade,’ old Andersen shouted, �as a chap well might in the heat of his exertions, he’d be cut to the bloody bone. Wouldn’t he, Doctor?’

�And I’m the chap to do it,’ Chris roared out. �I come next, Ern. I might get me fingers sliced off.’

�Not to mention my yed,’ his father added.

�Here,’ Dr Otterly said quietly, �let’s have a squint at it.’

He examined the sword and looked thoughtfully at its owner. �Why,’ he asked, �did you make it so sharp, boy?’

Ernie wouldn’t answer. He held out his hand for the sword. Dr Otterly hesitated and then gave it to him. Ernie folded his arms over it and backed away cuddling it. He glowered at his father and muttered and snuffled.

�You damned dunderhead,’ old William burst out, �hand over thik rapper. Come on. Us’ll take the edge off of it afore you gets loose on it again. Hand it over.’

�I won’t, then.’

�You will!’

�Keep off of me.’

Simon Begg said: �Steady, Ern. Easy does it.’

�Tell him not to touch me, then.’

�Naow, naow, naow!’ chanted his brothers.

�I think I’d leave it for the moment, Guiser,’ Dr Otterly said.

�Leave it! Who’s boss hereabouts! I’ll not leave it, neither.’

He advanced upon his son. Mrs Bünz, peering and wiping away her breath, wondered momentarily if what followed could be yet another piece of histrionic folklore. The Guiser and his son were in the middle of her peepshow, the other Andersens out of sight. In the background only partly visible, their faces alternately hidden and revealed by the leading players, were Dr Otterly, Ralph and Simon Begg. She heard Simon shout: �Don’t be a fool!’ and saw rather than heard Ralph admonishing the Guiser. Then, with a kind of darting movement, the old man launched himself at his son. The picture was masked out for some seconds by the great bulk of Dan Andersen. Then arms and hand appeared, inexplicably busy. For a moment or two, all was confusion. She heard a voice and recognized it, high-pitched though it was, for Ernie Andersen’s.

�Never blame me if you’re bloody-handed. Bloody-handed by nature you are: what shows, same as what’s hid. Bloody murderer, both ways, heart and hand.’

Then Mrs Bünz’s peepshow re-opened to reveal the Guiser, alone.

His head was sunk between his shoulders, his chest heaved as if it had a tormented life of its own. His right arm was extended in exposition. Across the upturned palm there was a dark gash. Blood slid round the edge of the hand and, as she stared at it, began to drip.

Mrs BГјnz left her peepshow and returned faster than usual to her back stairs in the pub.




V


That night, Camilla slept uneasily. Her shallow dreams were beset with dead dogs that stood watchfully between herself and Ralph or horridly danced with bells strapped to their rigid legs. The Five Sons of the photograph behind the bar parlour door also appeared to her with Mrs Bünz mysteriously nodding and the hermaphrodite who slyly offered to pop his great skirt over Camilla and carry her off. Then �Crack’, the Hobby Horse, came hugely to the fore. His bird-like head enlarged itself and snapped at Camilla. He charged out of her dream, straight at her. She woke with a thumping heart.

The Mardian church clock was striking twelve. A blob of light danced on the window curtain. Down in the yard somebody must be walking about with a lanthorn. She heard the squeak of trampled snow accompanied by a drag and a shuffle. Camilla, now wide awake, listened uneasily. They kept early hours at the Green Man. Squeak, squelch, drag, shuffle and still the light dodged on the curtain. Cold as it was, she sat up in the bed, pulled aside the curtain and looked down.

The sound she made resembled the parched and noiseless scream of a sleeper. As well it might: for there below by the light of a hurricane lanthorn her dream repeated itself. �Crack’, the Hobby Horse, was abroad in the night.





CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_3e88d90c-470f-58b0-8bb8-2916d32e1ea5)

The Swords Are Out (#ulink_3e88d90c-470f-58b0-8bb8-2916d32e1ea5)


On Sword Wednesday, early in the morning, there was another heavy fall of snow. But it stopped before noon and the sun appeared, thickly observable, like a live coal in the western sky.

There had been a row about the slasher. Nobody seemed to know quite what had happened. The gardener, McGlashan, had sent his boy down to the forge to demand it. The boy had returned with a message from Ernie Andersen to say the Guiser wasn’t working but the slasher would be ready in time and that, in any case, he and his brothers would come up and clear a place in the courtyard. The gardener, although he had objected bitterly and loudly to doing the job himself, instantly took offence at this announcement and retired to his noisomely stuffy cottage down in the village, where he began a long fetid sulk.

In the morning Nat and Chris arrived at Mardian Castle to clear the snow. McGlashan had locked his tool-shed, but, encouraged by Dame Alice, who had come down heavily on their side, they very quickly picked the lock and helped themselves to whatever they needed. Simon Begg arrived in his breakdown van with the other three Andersen brothers and a load of brushwood, which they built up into a bonfire outside the old battlemented wall. Here it would be partially seen through a broken-down archway and would provide an extra attraction for the village when the Dance of the Sons was over.

Torches, made at the forge from some ancient recipe involving pitch, resin and tow, were set up round the actual dancing area. Later in the morning the Andersens and Simon Begg were entertained in the servants’ hall with a generous foretaste of the celebrated Sword Wednesday Punch, served out by Dame Alice herself, assisted by Dulcie and the elderly maids.

In that company there was nobody of pronounced sensibility. Such an observer might have found something distressing in Simon Begg’s attempts to detach himself from his companions, to show an ease of manner that would compel an answering signal from their hostesses. It was such a hopeless business. To Dame Alice (who if she could be assigned to any genre derived from that of Surtees) class was unremarkable and existed in the way that continents and races exist. Its distinctions were not a matter of preference but of fact. To play at being of one class when you were actually of another was as pointless as it would be for a Chinese to try and pass himself off as a Zulu. Dame Alice possessed a certain animal shrewdness but she was fantastically insensitive and not given to thinking of abstract matters. She was ninety-four and thought as little as possible. She remembered that Simon Begg’s grandfather and father had supplied her with groceries for some fifty years and that he therefore was a local boy who went away to serve in the war and had, presumably, returned to do so in his father’s shop. So she said something vaguely seigniorial and unconsciously cruel to him and paid no attention to his answer except to notice that he called her Dame Alice instead of Madam.

To Dulcie, who was aware that he kept a garage and had held a commission in the Air Force, he spoke a language that was incomprehensible. She supposed vaguely that he preferred petrol to dry goods and knew she ought to feel grateful to him because of the Battle of Britain. She tried to think of remarks to make to him but was embarrassed by Ernie, who stood at his elbow and laughed very loudly at everything he said.

Simon gave Dulcie a meaning smile and patted Ernie’s arm. �We’re a bit above ourselves, Miss Mardian,’ he said. �We take ourselves very seriously over this little show tonight.’

Ernie laughed and Dulcie said: �Do you?’ not understanding Simon’s playful use of the first person plural. He lowered his voice and said: �Poor old Ernie! Ernie was my batman in the old days, Miss Mardian. Weren’t you, Corp? How about seeing if you can help these girls, Ernie.’

Ernie, proud of being the subject of his hero’s attention, threw one of his crashing salutes and backed away. �It’s pathetic really,’ Simon said. �He follows me round like a dog. God knows why. I do what I can for him.’

Dulcie repeated, �Do you?’ even more vaguely and drifted away. Dan called his brothers together, thanked Dame Alice and began to shepherd them out.

�Here!’ Dame Alice shouted. �Wait a bit. I thought you were goin’ to clear away those brambles out there.’

�So we are, ma’am,’ Dan said. �Ernie do be comin’ up along after dinner with your slasher.’

�Mind he does. How’s your father?’

�Not feeling too clever today, ma’am, but he reckons he’ll be right again for tonight.’

�What’ll you do if he can’t dance?’

Ernie said instantly, �I can do Fool. I can do Fool’s act better nor him. If he’m not able, I am. Able and willing.’

His brothers broke into their habitual conciliatory chorus. They eased Ernie out of the room and into the courtyard. Simon made rather a thing of his goodbye to Dame Alice and thanked her elaborately. She distressed him by replying: �Not’t all, Begg. Shop doin’ well, I hope? Compliments to your father.’

He recovered sufficiently to look with tact at Dulcie, who said: �Old Mr Begg’s dead, Aunt Akky. Somebody else has got the shop.’

Dame Alice said: �Ah? I’d forgotten,’ nodded to Simon and toddled rapidly away.

She and Dulcie went to their luncheon. They saw Simon’s van surrounded by infuriated geese go past the window with all the Andersens on board.

The courtyard was now laid bare of snow. At its centre the Mardian Dolmen awaited the coming of the Five Sons. Many brambles and thistles were still uncut. By three o’clock Ernie had not returned with the slasher and the afternoon had begun to darken. It was half past four that Dulcie, fatigued by preparation and staring out of the drawing-room window, suddenly ejaculated: �Aunt Akky! Aunt Akky, they’ve left something on the stone.’

But Dame Alice had fallen into a doze and only muttered indistinguishably.

Dulcie peered and speculated and at last went into the hall and flung an old coat over her shoulders. She let herself out and ran across the courtyard to the stone. On its slightly tilted surface which, in the times before recorded history, may have been used for sacrifice, there was a dead goose, decapitated.




II


By eight o’clock almost all the village was assembled in the courtyard. On Sword Wednesday, Dame Alice always invited some of her neighbours in the county to Mardian, but this year, with the lanes deep in snow, they had all preferred to stay at home. They were unable to ring her up and apologize as there had been a major breakdown in the telephone lines. They told each other, rather nervously, that Dame Alice would �understand’. She not only understood but rejoiced.

So it was entirely a village affair attended by not more than fifty onlookers. Following an established custom, Dr Otterly had dined at the castle and so had Ralph and his father. The Honourable and Reverend Samuel Stayne was Dame Alice’s great-nephew-in-law. Twenty-eight years ago he had had the temerity to fall in love with Dulcie Mardian’s elder sister, then staying at the castle, and, subsequently, to marry her. He was a gentle, unworldy man who attempted to follow the teaching of the gospels literally and was despised by Dame Alice not because he couldn’t afford, but because he didn’t care, to ride to hounds.

After dinner, which was remarkable for its lamentable food and excellent wine, Ralph excused himself. He had to get ready for the Dance. The others sipped coffee essence and superb brandy in the drawing-room. The old parlourmaid came in at a quarter to nine to say that the dancers were almost ready.

�I really think you’d better watch from the windows, you know,’ Dr Otterly said to his hostess. �It’s a devil of a cold night. Look, you’ll see to perfection. May I?’

He pulled back the curtains.

It was as if they were those of a theatre and had opened on the first act of some flamboyant play. Eight standing torches in the courtyard and the bonfire beyond the battlements, flared into the night. Flames danced on the snow and sparks exploded in the frosty air. The onlookers stood left and right of the cleared area and their shadows leapt and pranced confusedly up the walls beyond them. In the middle of this picture stood the Mardian dolmen, unencumbered now, glinting with frost as if, incongruously, it had been tinselled for the occasion.

�That youth,’ said Dame Alice, �has not cleared away the thistles.’

�And I fancy,’ Dr Otterly said, �that I know why. Now, how about it? You get a wonderful view from here. Why not stay indoors?’

�No, thankee. Prefer out.’

�It’s not wise, you know.’

�Fiddle.’

�All right! That’s the worst of you young things: you’re so damned headstrong.’

She chuckled. Dulcie had begun to carry in a quantity of coats and shawls.

�Old William,’ Dr Otterly went on, �is just as bad. He oughtn’t to be out tonight with his heart what it is and he certainly oughtn’t to be playing the Fool – by the way, Rector, has it ever occurred to you that the phrase probably derives from one of these mumming plays? But, there you are: I ought to refuse to fiddle for the old goat. I would if I thought it’d stop him, but he’d fiddle and fool too, no doubt. If you’ll excuse me I must join my party. Here are your programmes, by the way. That’s not for me, I trust.’

The parlour-maid had come in with a piece of paper on her tray. �For Dr Otterly, madam,’ she said.

�Now, who the hell can be ill?’ Dr Otterly groaned and unfolded the paper.

It was one of the old-fashioned printed bills that the Guiser sent out to his customers. Across it was written in shaky pencil characters: �Cant mannage it young Ern will have to. W. A.’

�There now!’ Dr Otterly exclaimed. �He has conked out.’

�The Guiser!’ cried the Rector.

�The Guiser. I must see what’s to be done. Sorry, Dame Alice. We’ll manage, though. Don’t worry. Marvellous dinner. ’Bye.’

�Dear me!’ the Rector said, �what will they do?’

�Andy Andersen’s boy will come in as a Son,’ Dulcie said. �I know that’s what they planned if it happened.’

�And I s’pose,’ Dame Alice added, �that idiot Ernie will dance the Fool. What a bore.’

�Poor Ernie, yes. A catastrophe for them,’ the Rector murmured.

�Did I tell you, Sam, he killed one of my geese?’

�We don’t know it was Ernie, Aunt Akky.’

�Nobody else dotty enough. I’ll tackle ’em later. Come on,’ Dame Alice said. �Get me bundled. We’d better go out.’

Dulcie put her into coat after coat and shawl after shawl. Her feet were thrust into fur-lined boots, her hands into mitts and her head into an ancient woollen cap with a pom-pom on the top. Dulcie and the Rector hastily provided for themselves and finally the three of them went out through the front door to the steps.

Here chairs had been placed with a brazier glowing in front of each. They sat down and were covered with rugs by the parlourmaid, who then retired to an upstairs room from which she could view the proceedings cosily.

Their breath rose up in three columns. The onlookers below them were wreathed in mist. From the bonfire on the other side of the battlements, smoke was blown into the courtyard and its lovely smell was mixed with the pungent odour of tar.

The Mardian Dolmen stood darkly against the snow. Flanking it the torches flared boldly upon a scene which – almost of itself, one might have thought – had now acquired an air of disturbing authenticity.

Dame Alice, with a wooden gesture of her muffled arm shouted: �Evenin’, everybody.’ From round the sides of the courtyard they all answered raggedly: �Evening. Evening, ma’am,’ dragging out the soft vowels.




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