Death of a Fool ra-19

by Ngaio Marsh

  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 on either side were torches that flared boldly upon the 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, “E venin’, 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 grand-daughter with them.”

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

  “Trousers,” said Dame Alice.

  “Skiing 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, but the hand-clapping 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 perfectly 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. Utterly 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 boy friends 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.

  The Fool came out of the shadows at a slow jog-trot. On his appearance “Crack” stopped his horseplay and moved up to the near exit. The Betty released a flustered Camilla.

  “Aunt Akky, do look at the German woman —”

  “Shut up, Dulcie. I’m watchin’ the Fool.”

  The Fool, who is also the Father, jogged quietly round the courtyard. He wore wide pantaloons tied in at the ankle and a loose tunic, He wore also his cap fashioned from a flayed rabbit with the head above his mask and the ears flopping. He carried a bladder on a stick. His head was masked. The mask was an old one, very roughly made from a painted bag that covered his head and was gathered and tied under his chin. It had holes cut for eyes and was painted with a great dolorous grin.

  Dr. Otterly had stopped fiddling. The Fool made his round in silence. He trotted in contracting circles, a course that brought him finally to the dolmen. This he struck three times with the bladder. All his movements were quite undramatic and without any sense, as Camilla noted, of style. But they were not ineffectual. When he had completed his course, the Five Sons ran into the centre of the courtyard. “Crack” re-appeared through the back exit. The Fool waited beside the dolmen.

  Then Dr. Otterly, after a warning scrape, broke with a flourish into the second dance: the Sword Dance of the Five Sons.

  Against the snow and flames and sparks they made a fine picture, all black-faced and black-handed, down-beating with their feet as if the ground was a drum for their dancing. They made their ring of steel, each holding another’s sword by its red ribbon, and they wove their knot and held it up before the Fool, who peered at it as if it were a looking-glass. “Crack” edged closer. Then the Fool made his undramatic gesture and broke the knot.

  “Ernie’s doing quite well,” said the Rector.

  The dance and its sequel were twice repeated. On the first repetition, the Fool made as if he wrote something and then offered what he had written to his Sons. On the second repetition, “Crack” and the Betty came forward. They stood to left and right of the Fool, who, this time, was behind the Mardian dolmen. The Sons, in front of it, again held up their knot of locked swords. The Fool leant across the stone and put his head within the knot. The Hobby-Horse moved in behind him and stood motionless, looking, in that flickering light, like some monstrous idol. The fiddling stopped dead. The onlookers were very still. Beyond the wall the bonfire crackled.

  Then the Sons drew their swords suddenly with a great crash. Horridly the rabbit’s head dropped on the stone. A girl in the crowd screamed. The Fool slithered down behind the stone and was hidden.

  “Really,” Dulcie said, “it makes one feel quite odd, don’t you think, Aunt Akky?”

  A kind of interlude followed. The Betty went round with an object like a ladle into which everybody dropped a coin.

  “Where’s it goin’?” Dame Alice asked.

  “The belfry roof, this year,” the Rector replied and such is the comfortable attitude of the Church towards the remnants of fertility ritual-dancing in England that neither he nor anybody else thought this at all remarkable.

  Ralph, uplifted perhaps by his encounter with Camilla, completed his collection and began a spirited impromptu. He flirted his vast crinoline and made up to several yokels in his audience. He chucked one under the chin, tried to get another to dance with him and threw his crinoline over a third. He was a natural comedian and his antics raised a great roar of laughter. With an elaborate pantomime, laying his finger on his lips, he tiptoed up behind the Whiffler, who stood swinging his sword by its red ribbon. Suddenly Ralph snatched it away. The Hobby-Horse, who was behind the dolmen, gave a shrill squeak and went off. The Betty ran and the Whiffler gave chase. These two grotesques darted here and there, disappeared behind piles of stones and flickered uncertainly through the torchlight. Ralph gave a series of falsetto screams, dodged and feinted and finally hid behind a broken-down buttress near the rear entrance. The Whiffler plunged past him and out into the dark. One of the remaining Sons now came forward and danced a short formal solo with great exactness and spirit.

  “That’ll be Dan,” said Dulcie Mardian.

  “He cuts a very pretty caper,” said the Rector. From behind the battlemented wall at the back a great flare suddenly burst upwards with a roar and a crackle.

  “They’re throwin’ turpentine on the fire,” Dame Alice said. “Or somethin’.”

  “Very naughty,” said the Rector.

  Ralph, who had slipped out by the back entrance, now returned through an archway near the house, having evidently run round behind the battlements. Presently, the Whiffler, again carrying his sword, re-appeared through the back entrance and joined his brothers. The solo completed, the Five Sons then performed their final dance. “Crack” and the Betty circled in the background, now approaching and now retreating from the Mardian dolmen.

  “This,” said Dulcie, “is where the Old Man rises from the dead. Isn’t it, Sam?”

  “Ah — yes. Yes. Very strange,” said the Rector, broad-mindedly.

  “Exciting.”

  “Well —” he said uneasily.

  The Five Sons ended their dance with a decisive stamp. They stood with their backs to their audience pointing their swords at the Mardian dolmen. The audience clapped vociferously.

  “He rises up from behind the stone, doesn’t he, Aunt Akky?”

  But nobody rose up from behind the Mardian dolmen. Instead, there was an interminable pause. The swords wavered, the dancers shuffled awkwardly and at last lowered their weapons. The jigging tune had petered out.

  “Look, Aunt Akky. Something’s gone wrong.”

  “Dulcie, for God’s sake, hold your tongue.”

  “My dear Aunt Akky.”

  “Be quiet, Sam.”

  One of the Sons, the soloist, moved away from his fellows. He walked alone to the Mardian dolmen and round it. He stood quite still and looked down. Then he jerked his head. His brothers moved in. They formed a semicircle and they too looked down: five glistening and contemplative blackamoors. At last their faces lifted and turned, their eyeballs showed white and they stared at Dr. Otterly.

  His footfall was loud and solitary in the quietude that had come upon the courtyard.

  The Sons made way for him. He stooped, knelt, and in so doing disappeared behind the stone. Thus, when he spoke, his voice seemed disembodied, like that of an echo.

  “Get back! All of you. Stand away!”

  The Five Sons shuffled back. The Hobby-Horse and the Betty, a monstrous couple, were motionless.

  Dr. Otterly rose from behind the stone and walked forward. He looked at Dame Alice where she sat enthroned. He was like an actor coming out to bow to the Royal Box, but he trembled and his face was livid. When he had advanced almost to the steps he said loudly: “Everyone must go. At once. There has been an accident.” The crowd behind him stirred and murmured.

  “What’s up?” Dame Alice demanded. “What accident? Where’s the Guiser?”

  “Miss Mardian, will you take your aunt indoors? I’ll follow as soon as I can.”

  “I will if she’ll come,” said Dulcie, practically.

  “Please, Dame Alice.”

  “I want to know what’s up.”

  “And so you shall.”

  “Who is
it?”

  “The Guiser. William Andersen.”

  “But he wasn’t dancing,” Dulcie said foolishly. “He’s ill.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait a bit.”

  Dame Alice extended her arm and was at once hauled up by Dulcie. She addressed herself to her guests.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Must ’pologize for askin’ you to leave, but as you’ve heard there’s bin trouble. Glad if you’ll just go. Now. Quietly. Thankee. Sam, I don’t want you.”

  She turned away and without another word went indoors followed by Dulcie.

  The Rector murmured, “But what a shocking thing to happen! And so dreadful for his sons. I’ll just go to them, shall I? I suppose it was his heart, poor old boy.”

  “Do you?” Dr. Otterly asked:

  The Rector stared at him. “You look dreadfully ill,” he said, and then, “What do you mean? For the love of Heaven, Otterly, what’s happened?”

  Dr. Otterly opened his mouth but seemed to have some difficulty in speaking.

  He and the Rector stared at each other. Villagers still moved across the courtyard and the dancers were still suspended in immobility. It was as if something they all anticipated had not quite happened.

  Then it happened.

  The Whiffler was on the Mardian dolmen. He had jumped on the stone and stood there, fantastical against the snow. He paddled his feet in ecstasy. His mouth was redly open and he yelled at the top of his voice:

  “What price blood for the stone? What price the Old Man’s ’ead? Swords be out, chaps, and ’eads be off. What price blood for the stone?”

  His sword was in his hand. He whiffled it savagely and then pointed it at someone in the crowd.

  “Ax ’er,” he shouted. “She knows. She’m the one what done it. Ax ’er.”

  The stragglers in the crowd parted and fell back from a solitary figure thickly encased in a multiplicity of hand-woven garments.

  It was Mrs. Bünz.

  Chapter V

  Aftermath

  “Has it ever occurred to you,” Alleyn said, “that the progress of a case is rather like a sort of thaw? Look at that landscape.”