Читать книгу Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 7: Off With His Head, Singing in the Shrouds, False Scent - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 20

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, unworldly 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.

Behind the Mardian Stone was the archway in the battlements through which the performers would appear. Figures could be seen moving in the shadows beyond.

The party of three consulted their programmes, which had been neatly typed.

‘WINTER SOLSTICE’

The Mardian Morris of the Five Sons

The Morris Side: Fool,	William Andersen
Betty,	Ralph Stayne
Crack,	Simon Begg
Sons,	Daniel, Andrew, Nathaniel, Christopher and Ernest (Whiffler) Andersen

The Mardian Morris, or perhaps more strictly, Morris Sword Dance and Play, is performed annually on the first Wednesday after the Winter Solstice. It is probably the survival of an ancient fertility rite and combines, in one ceremony, the features of a number of other seasonal dances and mumming plays.

ORDER OF EVENTS

1	General Entry		The Five Sons
2	The Mardian Morris
3	Entry of The Betty and Crack
4	Improvisation		Crack
5	Entry of the Fool
6	First Sword Dance	(a) The Glass is Broken
		(b) The Will is Read
		(c) The Death
7	Improvisation		The Betty
8	Solo		D. Andersen
9	Second Sword Dance
10	The Resurrection of the Fool.

Dulcie put down her programme and looked round. ‘Everybody must be here, I should think,’ she said. ‘Look, Aunt Akky, there’s Trixie from the Green Man and her father and that’s old William’s granddaughter with them.’

‘Camilla?’ the Rector said. ‘A splendid girl. We’re all delighted with her.’

‘Trousers,’ said Dame Alice.

‘Ski-ing trousers, I think, Aunt Akky. Quite suitable really.’

‘Is that woman here? The German woman?’

‘Mrs Bünz?’ the Rector said gently. ‘I don’t see her, Aunt Akky, but it’s rather difficult – She’s a terrific enthusiast and I’m sure –’

‘If I could have stopped her comin’, Sam, I would. She’s a pest.’

‘Oh, surely –’

‘Who’s this, I wonder?’ Dulcie intervened.

A car was labouring up the hill in bottom gear under a hard drive and hooting vigorously. They heard it pull up outside the gateway into the courtyard.

‘Funny!’ Dulcie said after a pause. ‘Nobody’s come in. Fancy!’

She was prevented from any further speculation by a general stir in the little crowd. Through the rear entrance came Dr Otterly with his fiddle. There was a round of applause. The hand-clapping sounded desultory and was lost in the night air.

Beyond the wall, men’s voices were raised suddenly and apparently in excitement. Dr Otterly stopped short, looked back, and returned through the archway.

‘Doctor’s too eager,’ said a voice in the crowd. There was a ripple of laughter, through which a single voice beyond the wall could be heard shouting something indistinguishable. A clock above the old stables very sweetly tolled nine. Then Dr Otterly returned and this time, after a few preliminary scrapes, struck up on his fiddle.

The air for the Five Sons had never been lost. It had jigged down through time from one Mardian fiddler to another, acquiring an ornament here, an improvisation there, but remaining essentially itself. Nobody had rediscovered it, nobody had put it in a collection. Like the dance itself, it had been protected by the commonplace character of the village and the determined reticence of generation after generation of performers. It was a good tune and well suited to its purpose. After a preliminary phrase or two it ushered in the Whiffler.

Through the archway came a blackamoor with a sword. He had bells on his legs and wore white trousers with a kind of kilt over them. His face was perfect black and a dark cap was on his head. He leapt and pranced and jingled, making complete turns as he did so and ‘whiffling’ his sword so that it sang in the cold air. He slashed at the thistles and brambles and they fell before him. Round and round the Mardian Stone he pranced and jingled while his blade whistled and glinted. He was the purifier, the acolyte, the precursor.

‘That’s why Ernie wouldn’t clear the thistles,’ Dame Alice muttered.

‘Oh, dear!’ Dulcie said, ‘aren’t they queer? Why not say so? I ask you.’ She stared dimly at the jigging blackamoor. ‘All the same,’ she said, ‘this can’t be Ernie. He’s the Fool, now. Who is it, Sam? The boy?’

‘Impossible to tell in that rig,’ said the Rector. ‘I would have thought from his exuberance that it was Ernie.’

‘Here come the rest of the Sons.’

There were four of them dressed exactly like the Whiffler. They ran out into the torchlight and joined him. They left their swords by Dr Otterly and with the Whiffler performed the Mardian Morris. Thump and jingle: down came their boots with a strike at the frozen earth. They danced without flourish but with the sort of concentration that amounts to style. When they finished there was a round of applause, sounding desultory in the open courtyard. They took off their pads of bells. The Whiffler threaded a scarlet cord through the tip of his sword. His brothers, whose swords were already adorned with these cords, took them up in their black hands. They waited in a strange rococo group against the snow. The fiddler’s tune changed. Now came ‘Crack’, the Hobby Horse and the Betty. Side by side they pranced. The Betty was a man-woman, black-faced, masculine to the waist and below the waist fantastically feminine. Its great hooped skirt hung from the armpits and spread like a bell-tent to the ground. On the head was a hat, half topper, half floral toque. There was a man’s glove on the right hand and a woman’s on the left, a boot on the left foot, a slipper on the right.

‘Really,’ the Rector said, ‘how Ralph can contrive to make such an appalling-looking object of himself, I do not know.’

‘Here comes “Crack”.’

‘You don’t need to tell us who’s comin’, Dulcie,’ Dame Alice said irritably. ‘We can see,’

‘I always like “Crack”,’ Dulcie said serenely.

The iron head, so much more resembling that of a fantastic bird than a horse, snapped its jaws. Beneath it the great canvas drum dipped and swayed. Its skirts left a trail of hot tar on the ground. The rat-like tail stuck up through the top of the drum and twitched busily.

‘Crack’ darted at the onlookers. The girls screamed unconvincingly and clutched each other. They ran into the arms of their boyfriends and out again. Some of the boys held their girls firm and let the swinging canvas daub them with tar. Some of the girls, affecting not to notice how close ‘Crack’ had come, allowed themselves to be tarred. They then put up a great show of indignation and astonishment. It was the age-old pantomime of courtship.

‘Oh, do look, Aunt Akky! He’s chasing the Campion girl and she’s really running,’ cried Dulcie.

Camilla was indeed running with a will. She saw the great barbaric head snap its iron beak at her and she smelt hot tar. Both the dream and the reality of the previous night were repeated. The crowd round her seemed to have drawn itself back into a barrier. The cylindrical body of the horse swung up. She saw trousered legs and a pair of black hands. It was unpleasant and, moreover, she had no mind to be daubed with tar. So she ran and ‘Crack’ ran after her. There was a roar of voices.

Camilla looked for some way of escape. Torchlight played over a solid wall of faces that were split with laughter.

‘No!’ shouted Camilla. ‘No!’

The thing came thundering after her. She ran blindly and as fast as she could across the courtyard and straight into the arms of Ralph Stayne in his preposterous disguise.

‘It’s all right, my darling,’ Ralph said. ‘Here I am.’

Camilla clung to him, panting and half-crying.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Dulcie Mardian, watching.

‘You don’t see anythin’ of the sort,’ snapped her great-aunt. ‘Does she, Sam?’

‘I hope not,’ said the Rector worriedly.

‘Here’s the Fool,’ said Dulcie, entirely unperturbed.