Doctors Wear Scarlet

by Raven, Simon

  “It says quite plainly here, sir,” he said, “that this is the Royal–”

  “They all say that,” interrupted the little man, shuffling up to the throne and seating himself cautiously on the edge of it. “Guide books, scholars, pundits – they all say it. Sir Arthur himself, God rest him, he said it. But it isn’t, you know. I know it isn’t.” He jutted his beard. “Yes, I know,” he said, “and I’ve told them all, but they come here from Athens or London or Berlin and they don’t listen to me. I can prove it, but they wouldn’t listen if Minos himself came back from the shades to tell them.”

  “Oh,” said Roddy courteously, “and why not?”

  But the little man turned his head to one side and seemed to contemplate, with disinterested passion, the darkened wall over to his right. Then he recollected himself and pulled his head back to face us.

  “You’ll excuse me,” he said. “My name is Arnold. Doctor Arnold, sometime Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. I work on the site here.”

  He nodded his head gently.

  “I spend all my time here,” he said. “The rest of them come and go, do this, do that. But old Ratty Arnold is always here.” He giggled defensively. “That’s what they call me, the young men from Athens and London. ‘Ratty’ Arnold. Ratty Arnold who never leaves Cnossos: who just scrabbles his life away on the site and builds up his crazy theories. Wrote a book which they wouldn’t publish. But they let me stay. I’m useful in a way, you see. Ratty Arnold digs about and uncovers things. ‘Never mind his theories,’ the young men say: ‘he does his digging and uncovers things, and it’s no sweat off our backs’.”

  He laughed in a kind of high-pitched whine.

  “And then Ratty Arnold takes care of the villa. Keeps the caretaker up to the mark. Reminds him that it’s not just his own house, it’s for scholars to live in. He waits on Ratty Arnold and remembers his place in life. I’m useful all right.”

  It was now almost dark inside the chamber. I looked at my watch uneasily. I could scarcely see the ridiculous, wizened head of poor Doctor Arnold as he went on muttering into the gloom.

  “But I’m right, you know. The steward of the bull ring had this room, not the King, not the King… But you don’t care, do you?” he said, a sort of hysterical resignation in his voice. “You don’t give a rap for the King or the bulls.”

  He paused, and seemed to survey us through the darkness as a cunning child might regard a wild animal through the bars of its cage, pleasurably debating whether or not to cast the beast the morsel it coveted. At last, with great coyness, he said: “You want young Fountain, don’t you? He told me some people would come.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, “you could tell us about him somewhere else? In the villa? Because they’re going to shut–”

  “Please don’t interrupt, Anthony,” said Roddy quietly but very firmly. And then to the old man: “Please go on, sir.”

  It was now so dark that the old man and the throne he was perched on could only be seen in the dimmest outline. I was vaguely aware of a nodding head and two crab-like hands clawing at a pair of skimpy knees. And always the high, mad voice, which seemed as though it were striving to contain itself, as though it were desperate to form itself into words, aware that at any moment it might just become a prolonged, meaningless, unmodulated wail.

  “He agreed with me, young Fountain, or so he said. But perhaps that was because he wanted something out of me. First, he wanted to have his woman at the villa. So he had to get me to agree. Then he wanted me…to show him things.”

  At this recollection, the old man burst into an appalling screech of merriment.

  “What things?” said Piers.

  “Keep quiet, will you,” hissed Roddy. “Let him get on.”

  “Things and things,” said the old man slyly. “And then he told me what to tell the police. He knew they were coming, you see. Oh yes, he knew. He told me he was going to Phaestos and then to the hills near Mount Ida. I could tell the police that, he said. But after Mount Ida – he didn’t want anyone to know. He was going to disappear, see, and he didn’t want a mortal man to find him – except for you, the friends he was expecting. There were times when he seemed not to want you to know either, but other times when he did. So all in all I think I might tell you. But what do you think, gentlemen?” Once again he cackled with laughter. “Because if I were you, I should go back to England and forget young Master Fountain. I wouldn’t want to catch up with him and his woman, not if it was me.”

  And then, for all the darkness, I distinctly saw him make, in a wide gesture, a gesture almost of parody, the sign of the cross.

  “I’m a scholar,” the whining voice went on, “and I know so much that I believe in almost nothing. But if I believed in evil…” He broke off, and there was a sound of scratching: I imagined him clawing at his pathetic old knees. “…Him and that woman,” he said, “may God help us all. So what do you think, gentlemen?” – and now his tones were those of the purest Cambridge courtesy – “Do you still want to find your friend?”

  “If you will be so good as to tell us where he is,” said Roddy.

  “He went to Mount Ida,” said the old man in tones which seemed to be growing fainter, “and then he disappeared. And nobody can find him at all. But he said to tell you that he liked islands. He liked Crete, he said, and he liked other islands too, because, he said, water is best. Now you know Greek, gentlemen, classical Greek anyhow. Water is best: αρισοσν μεν υδωρ : ariston men hydor. That’s what he said. So now you know. But if it was me…”

  And then his voice trailed away into nothing and he was silent.

  “For Christ’s sake,” I said, “we must all get out of here and talk sense where we can see ourselves.”

  “People talk sense when they can see each other,” said Roddy very softly in my ear, “but they often cease to tell the truth.”

  “But when,” said Piers, ignoring the two of us and walking urgently towards the throne, “when was he going to…disappear from Mount Ida?”

  There was no reply.

  “Speak up, sir,” said Roddy crisply: “When was this to happen? And what is this talk about water?”

  At the same time Piers struck a match. The light flickered round the ceiling and the stone walls, wandered over the recess from which the old man had first come, thence on to the stiffly marching figures of a restored wall painting, and finally fell on the crude and now empty little throne.

  “Answer me, will you?” shouted Roddy, almost as if he had been on his own barrack square back in Ludlow.

  But the only answer he had was his own voice ringing round the throne room, and then the whisper of the wind in the pine trees outside.

  “Seek and ye shall find,” said Piers at dinner that evening. “Doctor Arnold was certainly most prompt in executing his commission… If I wasn’t actually eating this food, I wouldn’t have believed that food could be so nasty…”

  “We’re not the only people seeking,” said Roddy.

  “We know that,” I said. “We know the police are after Richard. But they haven’t had the full benefit of Ratty Arnold’s information.”

  “Perhaps not. But they’re making quite sure that we don’t steal a march on them.”

  “What–?”

  “–You may have noticed,” Roddy said, “that two respectable looking gentlemen got on the bus at the first stop on the way back from Cnossos.”

  “And so?”

  “And so they’re following us.”

  “How can you know?”

  “I have an instinct about being watched. There were several occasions during the war… Anyway, look there.”

  He glanced, as though casually, through the window of the Restaurant, across the square with its pretty Venetian fountain and towards a small café. It was now a damp and unpleasant evening, for it had started to rain about an hour before; but two respectable gentlemen were seated outside under the awning, drinking minute cups of coffee and looking calmly
back across the square.

  “They’ve rumbled us,” Roddy said. “I dare say the manager of the hotel… After Piers mentioned Richard this morning.”

  “What can we do?”

  Roddy shrugged.

  “Ignore them. Try to give the impression that we have no idea at all that anyone could conceivably want to bother with us. Then they may deduce that we’re not consciously up to anything; or at least they’ll take our actions at face value.”

  “Face value,” said Piers meditatively. “Tell me, what would you say was the face value of Doctor Ratty Arnold?”

  “He was an old man,” Roddy said, “who has gone half cracked after years of obsession with the remote past.”

  “Agreed. But when I was talking to the hotel manager this morning about Cnossos and the villa, he – well, he seemed to think there was no one there except the caretaker.”

  “How should he know what goes on up there? He’s got his own worries.”

  “I dare say. Still, when we got back just now, I asked him about Doctor Arnold. After all, if the old boy’s been living there for years they must know something about him in Heraclion.”

  “And did they?”

  “Hard to tell,” said Piers; “the man just looked at me rather oddly.”

  “Like when you mentioned Richard to him?”

  “Oh no. When I spoke of Richard he was very abrupt and denied knowing of him. But this evening he was more…pitying.”

  “Hardly surprising,” said Roddy. “The poor old man’s a clear nut case if ever there was one. I expect the manager’s sorry for him.”

  “He seemed more sorry for me.”

  “The important point,” said Roddy firmly (but with an uneasy look at Piers), “is that the old man has given us all the information we have to go on and he says that we’re the only people he’s given it to. Now just what did all that nonsense mean? If it meant anything at all?”

  “Richard told him to tell us,” I said, “that he liked islands, that he liked Crete but other islands as well, because water is best. It very much looks as if he’s gone to another island. Though why and how…”

  “More to the point,” said Roddy, “to ask which.”

  “Water is best,” said Piers: “ariston men hydor. I’ve been thinking about this. There was a legendary town called Hydra; and there has been much controversy among scholars as to whether it took its name from the monster killed by Hercules or from the Greek word for water – hydor.”

  “And the town is still standing?” asked Roddy.

  “Not as far as I know – though I fancy there was some talk of excavating it. In any case it is on the mainland. But there is also an island called Hydra – thought to have been inhabited, in the first place, by people from the original city…”

  Roddy considered this, and then looked at the index of his guidebook.

  “I can’t find it here,” he said.

  “Look under ‘I’. In English it is often spelt ‘Idra’. To give us a better idea how to pronounce it.”

  “Idra… Yes, Idra. Island of.”

  He turned the pages of the guide.

  “‘A small island (pop. 3000)’,” he read, “‘some four hours by steamship from the Piraeus. The visitor will disembark at the harbour to find himself in the charming town of Idra (or Hydra), which is arranged in the manner of an amphitheatre on the slopes of the surrounding hills. He will be surprised by the opulence of many of the buildings, which were originally erected in the eighteenth century: during which period the privateering families of the island were at the height of their power and wealth, and indeed for some years enjoyed almost entire control of Eastern Mediterranean trade routes…’ Sounds pleasant enough,” he said, “but I can’t think why Richard should want to go there.”

  “Go on reading.”

  Roddy shrugged but read on.

  “‘Early in the nineteenth century, however, the chief Idriot families gave both their ships and their magnificent fortunes to assist in the struggle against the Turks. The war, as is well known, was ultimately successful, but the Idriots were never adequately compensated for their sacrifice. Since they had no agricultural resources, the islanders were threatened with ruinous poverty; but public outcry compelled the Government of the day to provide assistance, albeit meagre, and the inhabitants were thus enabled to re-equip themselves after a fashion. Meanwhile, however, many of them had left the island, which has shown little sign of regaining its former predominance…’ Still want me to go on?” Roddy said.

  “Please.”

  “‘Among other items of interest, it should be noted that certain ancient religious cults of a curious nature, supposedly imported from the legendary parent city of Hydra on the mainland, are rumoured to have been kept alive on the island, sometimes in the guise of local festivals, until within living memory. This has been strongly and repeatedly denied by representatives of the Greek Orthodox Church, it being urged that the festivals in question are of a harmless traditional kind and there is no trace whatever of other or darker observances. Three such protests are recorded as having been made by the Church during the nineteenth century, and one as recently as 1927. The visitor will of course draw his own conclusions, seeing so improbable an allegation only as the product of the romantic and even disordered fancies of earlier Near Eastern travellers, not all of whom were noted for integrity of character. It is said, however, that the poet Lord Byron, on his return from his first journey in Greece, surprised several of his friends by references to some indelicate scenes which he vouchsafed had been described to him in Athens by a trader newly arrived from the Aegean Islands…’ I see what you’re getting at,” said Roddy. “Richard being professionally interested in religious cults?”

  “And even emotionally interested,” Piers said.

  “What sort of cults do you suppose these were?”

  “I don’t know,” said Piers uneasily. “But the inhabitants of the original Hydra did not have too good a reputation. You see, scholars say that the myth whereby Hercules, or Heracles as he should be called, destroyed the hundred-headed monster, the Hydra – that this myth reflects an actual historical occurrence, which was that a real king called Heracles sacked the city of Hydra as a protest against the cruel and vicious behaviour of the inhabitants.”

  “This would be very ancient history?”

  “It would indeed – otherwise it would not have been transposed into the form of a myth. But if one considers,” said Piers, “that the mythical equivalent of the city was cast in the shape of a hundred-headed serpent… What does that indicate to you? About the possible nature of the real city and the practices of its citizens?”

  “Nothing very wholesome,” said Roddy without interest, “but there’s no need to go into that kind of detail just now.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Piers, his eyes looking anxious; “but remember that these same practices may have survived in some form or other in the island of Hydra, having been brought there by the original settlers from the mainland city. And if Richard…”

  He broke off and called to the waiter for more wine.

  “The trouble with you and Anthony,” said Roddy, “is that you’re both forever trying to work out Richard’s motives and forgetting that we’re simply here to get him safely home… But now you’ve mentioned it, what do you think the hundred-headed Hydra stands for? One of those religious whichwhats that Richard finds so fascinating?”

  “More or less,” said Piers. “But I’d rather not go into it.”

  “You started it all. Can’t back out now.”

  “Something phallic,” I said: “the serpent…”

  “Perhaps,” Piers said unwillingly. “But the essential point of the hundred heads – and remember that these grew again as swiftly as they were cut off – is that from one main trunk there are growing a great many separate branches, each of which has some sort of identity of its own but renews itself, when destroyed, by virtue of some power it derives from the central body. In other
words, you might see the whole thing as some form of contamination or infection, which starts with one person, or a solid central group, but spreads out in various directions and makes whomsoever it touched a part or branch of the original person, infected by him and now forever dependent on him.”

  “And the renewal of these branches?”

  “Some form,” said Piers, “of immortality… Does any of this remind you of any particular kind of cult or superstition?”

  “It reminds me of all superstitions,” I said. “Christianity, to take one of the better known. A central group, the apostles, spreading their influence like a particularly malicious growth… Immortality guaranteed by the central authority…”

  “Ingenious, Anthony. But in this case – the one I have in mind – the analogy of the Hydra has a far greater exactitude. The similarity is almost physical. Have you no idea what I mean?”

  Roddy and I shook our heads.

  “In which case,” said Piers firmly, looking Roddy straight in the the eye, “I do not propose to discuss it further now.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “if Richard is only interested academically…”

  “Considering the position he seems to be in, I doubt whether he would be going anywhere just now merely for academic interest.”

  “And that’s enough of that,” said Roddy in a sharp, practical tone. “Let us just consider what we actually know and what, in consequence, we can do. We know we are being followed by the police, who are interested in us because we are interested in Richard. And secondly, if we are to believe old man Arnold – who in any case provides our only evidence – then Piers’ interpretation of his gibberish makes sense and may be accepted, for the time being, as knowledge. Richard likes islands; water, or hydor, is best. Therefore Richard has gone, with or without his woman, to the island of Idra or Hydra, which is some four hours’ sail from the Piraeus and boasts an attractive eighteenth century harbour town. As for these cults, I’ll believe in them when I see them. What we want to find is Richard – and without having the police sniffing behind us when we do so. So what action, gentlemen?”