Come Away, Death

by Gladys Mitchell

  Mrs Bradley read to the end of the letter, which concluded with vague, gossiping generalities, sighed, and, lighting a match, burned the letter in the hearth.

  The whole of the next day was spent quietly by the whole party. Sir Rudri wrote up his diary and versed them all in the arrangements for visiting Epidaurus and Mycenae, but otherwise he rested, a disquieting sign, Mrs Bradley thought, in one of his temperament and character. Alexander Currie, brick-red and short-tempered, chartered the ship in which the pilgrims were to cross the sea to Nauplia. Whatever his shortcomings, he was not the man to be beaten over a bargain, and although Sir Rudri criticized adversely the terms upon which Alexander had obtained the use of the vessel, the price was remarkably low.

  The ship was lying in Phaleron Bay and the company went out to her in rowing-boats. She was named the Argos and was a coasting vessel possessed of great breadth, shallow draught, noisy machinery, and a peculiar bucketing motion all her own which gave her decisive although unpopular individuality. She struck boldly across to Aegina and on to Hydra, the pilgrims crowding her stout and clumsy rail – repaired at Sir Rudri’s expense before they set out from Phaleron – and so to Spezzia and up the gulf to little, friendly Nauplia, with its dusty harbour, its dirty litter of wind-blown paper, its pot-holes, cliff, surrounding mountains, and out-thrust, rocky neck below the walls of the Palamidi.

  With shouts of delight from the sailors, who appeared to think that they should be warmly congratulated upon having brought the ship to the port specified by Sir Rudri, the anchorage was made, and landing was effected by means of little boats. The port of Argos was not, at first sight, impressive, except for the scowling citadel on the high cliff which the little boys immediately clamoured to be allowed to climb, but as it had taken the ship the best part of two days to make the journey, and the sun was already setting, Sir Rudri announced that the party would remain in Nauplia for the night, and proceed to Epidaurus on the morrow. The whole party thereupon elected to climb the Palamidi. They mounted the steps opposite the Venetian lion, plump and apparently smiling, which was built into the wall, and were soon at the top amid the deserted, doorless cells which had once housed convicts. They toured the fortress, its courtyards loop-holed for muskets, its ramparts battered and broken.

  From the top the landscape was spread beneath them in all its breadth and beauty of sea and mountain, cape and triangular plain. The older members of the party pointed out to one another how the plain of ‘horse-rearing Argos’ narrowed to enclose the pass to Corinth; the younger either exclaimed at the beauty of the view, or threw little stones down on to the lower citadel, scoring hits on the cactus plants which grew on the rocky walls.

  ‘There,’ said Mrs Bradley to the stone-throwers, indicating a small island to the south, ‘is the island of Bourtsi. The Greek executioner lives there.’

  The little boys gazed (with an interest which Mount Euboea with the Heraeum, the mound of Tiryns, or the snow-capped mountain which rose from the coast of the gulf had not awakened in them) at the home of the ex-convict who only saves his own life by depriving other criminals of theirs. They questioned her closely regarding the executioner’s tasks and inclinations, mode of life, and chances of flight and escape; she replied with picturesque but mainly truthful detail, and the discussion was still going on when the party went back to the level ground and made their way to the inn.

  Nauplia, almost unique among smaller Greek towns in having a habitable inn, housed them respectably, and Mrs Bradley was on the point of putting down her book of modern poetry and getting into bed when there came a tap at the door. She put the book down, but, instead of getting into bed, she said, in her most dulcet tones, ‘Come in.’

  To Cathleen, who accepted the invitation, was presented the spectacle of a yellow-faced little old lady in a magenta dressing-gown – the little ship had been able to accommodate such tributes to civilization as dressing-gowns and bathing-costumes – who grinned amiably but fearsomely at her, and for whom she felt a sudden, trusting affection.

  ‘It’s only me,’ she said. ‘I wanted – could I speak to you? Are you tired?’

  ‘Not in the least, child.’

  ‘Well, look here, then, I think there’s something I ought to tell you. At least, I want to tell somebody, and Megan thought you’d be the best person – know what to do —’

  ‘Yes, child?’

  ‘I don’t like this business. Somebody is going to die before we get home.’

  ‘Oh, you think that, do you?’ said Mrs Bradley, interested. ‘Who?’

  ‘That’s what Megan asked me – I don’t know. It’s a feeling I’ve got – my people – second sight. It’s not very strong in me, but I’ve got it a bit. What can be done?’

  ‘Why, nothing.’

  ‘Don’t you believe me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Bradley, nodding slowly and rhythmically, ‘yes, I believe you. Tell me, what were you doing at Eleusis?’

  Cathleen flushed painfully. It did not seem as though she were going to speak. She managed to smile, however, and finally answered:

  ‘Kissing Ian.’

  Mrs Bradley, accepting this reply, mentally registered it as less than half the truth.

  ‘Ah yes, of course,’ she added.

  ‘We’re married,’ Cathleen continued.

  ‘Have you broadcast the fact?’

  ‘Everybody knows now, except father and Sir Rudri, and, of course, the people who aren’t in either family.’

  ‘Gelert, then?’

  ‘Yes. It’s —’ She lost her anxious expression, and suddenly chuckled. ‘It’s broken his heart.’

  ‘His mother was afraid of that,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I’m glad you’ve made everything clear to him, all the same. And where is Ian now?’

  ‘Still in Athens, poor man.’

  ‘Man!’ said Mrs Bradley.

  ‘You haven’t relieved my mind. Megan said you’d tell me what to do.’

  ‘I have told you what to do, child.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘I see nothing else to be done.’

  But she sat thoughtfully for some time after the girl had left her. Next morning, however, in spite of the late hour at which she had gone to bed, she was up as early as the little boys, whom she watched bathing from the rocks. A little later the girls and the young men came down from the inn to join them, and by about nine o’clock, with the day already hot, the party was proceeding, in three cars, eastwards to Epidaurus.

  Sir Rudri’s plan at Epidaurus was simple. He proposed to make sacrifice to Aesculapius, bed out the party among the ruins, and see what happened. He had also explained, as soothingly as he could, that Aesculapius, god of healing, sometimes manifested himself to his worshippers in the form of a snake, and that, should snakes be discovered at Epidaurus, they must be used with reverence.

  ‘Snakes!’ said Alexander Currie, with nervous irascibility. ‘Snakes! Beastly things. I’ve always hated them! Rudri, I shall sleep at the inn.’

  ‘There isn’t one,’ Sir Rudri replied with triumph. ‘There’s nothing but the museum. You can sleep there, if you want to. The keeper allows it, I believe.’

  ‘There won’t be any snakes, father,’ said Cathleen. She and Megan were sharing a car with Alexander Currie, Sir Rudri, and Kenneth. Quickness and craftiness had enabled Alexander Currie to obtain the seat beside the driver; the two girls had already established themselves in the back seat, and that left the tip-up seats for Sir Rudri and the boy. Dick, who was in the second car with Mrs Bradley, Gelert, Stewart, and Ivor, had offered to change places, but Sir Rudri refused to give up his uncomfortable seat, even to his daughter; in consequence, the constant jolting and jerking to which he was subjected as the car bucketed along a narrow, pot-holed road between poorish olive-yards and indifferent pasturage, through dust and always within sight of mountains, should have been making him more and more irritable as the journey proceeded. That this was not the case made Alexander Currie suspicious and watchful.r />
  Fortunately the ride was not a long one. The car swung off to the right, bumped a bit more than before, and came to rest by some trees. The parties of people bundled out, and, walking up a slope to their right, began to look about them. The magnificent theatre with its fifty-five tiers of seats was in almost perfect preservation. The little boys immediately proposed a race to the top; Gelert sat half-way up and read Greek tragedy conscientiously for nearly twenty minutes. Even Sir Rudri, to whom the theatre was of no importance, commanded Megan, Cathleen, and Dick to ascend into the auditorium, whilst he himself stood in the circle at the bottom and declaimed in trumpet tones a Pindaric ode in order to test the truth of what he had heard about the acoustics of the theatre.

  ‘Now you, Dick!’ he called out, when he himself had finished.

  Dick, sun-glasses covering his spectacles, turned nervously to Megan.

  ‘I say, do you mind if I do? They say the acoustics here are remarkable – they’re good in all Greek theatres, of course, but here —’

  ‘Go right ahead, big boy,’ said Megan, leaning back against the seats behind and stretching out her feet. Beyond the theatre were trees on gently undulating ground. Blocks of grey stone showed clean-cut against the brownish turf. The bright sky, broken by the branches, was blue and deep, and the sun shone on porous stone and gleamed on Dick’s white hat as he walked down the shallow, broken steps to the stone-edged circle below.

  ‘That poor boy,’ said Cathleen, shading her eyes to look after him as his slight figure retreated. ‘Why don’t you put him out of pain?’

  ‘One reason, he hasn’t said anything that one could call definite; also, because I’m not sure what I’m going to say when he does get to the point.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Cathleen. The admission appeared to cause her some slight surprise, and the courtesy of her Highland ancestry asserted itself in consequence by making her appear confused. ‘I thought – I’m sorry. I see.’

  ‘Not sure that you do,’ said Megan in cheerful tones. ‘Not sure that I do myself. I suppose it’s my motherly instinct that draws me towards him, poor little beast. He’s brainy, though, you know. Even Gelert admits it.’

  ‘Admits what?’ said her brother, from a section nearly twenty yards away. ‘Why the deuce can’t you stop babbling in a place like this? Who do you think wants to overhear your idiotic remarks?’

  ‘Listeners never hear any good of themselves,’ said Megan, the schoolgirl retort being the only one which rose immediately to her tongue. ‘Anyhow, you can put your old book down. Ronnie’s going to mouth out, “Gunga Din”.’

  Dick had reached the bottom, and now, his figure foreshortened, but not extraordinarily so, by the height and the distance, was waiting whilst Sir Rudri, who seemed to think that he had done his duty by the theatre and for the entertainment of the two young ladies, ambled briskly towards the rough track by which they had reached the theatre. He crossed it, and was lost to sight. He had gone to inspect the Hieron of Aesculapius, which lay in the valley below.

  Ronald Dick waited until he had gone; then, his feet apart, his hands slack at his sides, and his chin raised, he began to speak, from Book Twenty-two of the Iliad, of the death and shameful treatment of goodly Hector, and the lament and grief of Andromache.

  ‘And about Hector, as they dragged him along, rose the dust, his dark locks streaming loose on either side; and soon in the dust lay that head once so fair, for Zeus had given him over to his enemies, to suffer shameful treatment in his own native land.…

  ‘… and, standing still, she looked and saw him … ruthlessly were the swift horses dragging him away towards the hollow ship of the Achaeans.’fn1

  Gelert, who had been listening closely, put his book into his pocket, and sighed. He got up and came towards the gangway.

  ‘Fancy Ronnie being able to recite like that,’ said Megan, as she and Cathleen went out to the same line of steps. Gelert snorted, a contemptuous sound, and made way for them to go down in front of him. His broken heart was now dissolving in a flood of healthy ill-temper.

  ‘Poor Gelert has taken Ian very badly, Cathleen, you know,’ said Megan, when they reached ground level and were strolling away towards a little group of pine trees in order to benefit, if only for a moment, from the shade. Mrs Bradley, who had been an appreciative listener to the efforts of both orators, now descended also, and joined them by the trees.

  ‘I’ve some bottles of water in the car if anybody wants a drink,’ she said, looking up at the top of the theatre for the little boys, whom she appeared to have taken under her guidance and care. They were not visible, however, having pushed through the fringe of dark bushes which topped the auditorium in order to explore beyond them. Supposing that they would descend when they were ready, and having faith in the uncanny ability of the young to preserve their lives and their limbs in the most dangerous surroundings (among which she did not particularly include the theatre at Epidaurus) she led the way back to the cars and produced for her thirsty satellites two bottles of mineral water and a tin mug.

  2

  ‘And now,’ said Sir Rudri, when, their thirst assuaged, the three young people (now made into four, having been joined by Dick, who had also been given to drink) joined him outside the museum, ‘you would probably be well advised to go inside this place and make a careful study of all that is here. After that I may require some assistance with the serpents.’

  ‘Serpents!’ said Alexander Currie, who had also appeared, apparently from the dip in the land which they had just crossed. ‘I shall go nowhere near them!’

  ‘I was not asking for your assistance, my dear fellow,’ replied Sir Rudri, soothingly. ‘You are probably quite right to sleep in the museum, and I have already made arrangements with the good person who looks after it to give you a bed.’

  Alexander snorted, a speech of thanks which Sir Rudri, who seemed inordinately pleased with himself, received with a sweet smile. His Viking moustache, Mrs Bradley noticed, already seemed less grey than it had done in Athens; a golden tinge appeared to illumine it in the bright clear light of the sun-filled upland valley, as though the god Apollo, come from Delphi, had laid his fingers on it.

  ‘Serpents?’ said Mrs Bradley, mildly, but in a tone of faint surprise and very faint reproach. ‘Surely you are not persuaded that this is the Garden of Eden?’

  ‘It is, at any rate, no place for facetiousness,’ Sir Rudri answered, still good-naturedly. ‘Let me persuade you that the serpent is the symbol of the god Aesculapius, the son of Apollo. With serpents he healed the sick and bestowed families upon the childless, and in the form of a serpent he would come upon his worshippers, infesting – I should perhaps rather say, insinuating himself into – their dreams, and thus he healed them.’

  ‘Serpents?’ said Cathleen. ‘I think, father, I would prefer to spend the night here, in an unzoological building, as you are going to do.’

  ‘I am not so sure about its being unzoological,’ said Megan. ‘Judging by other buildings in Greece we have stayed at, I should say that the serpents might be the lesser of two evils. Where are they, father?’

  ‘Yes, where are they, father?’ asked Gelert; whilst Dick, who did not care for them, and would have been sick if he had been obliged to lay his hand on one – legacy of a visit to Regent’s Park when somebody, probably meaning well, had put one round his neck when he was seven – recoiled completely, and began to walk with brisk furtiveness in the direction of the theatre.

  So Gelert and Megan went off with their father to the third car, which, having had the most room in it, had been chosen as the repository for the serpents. The reptiles were in a long tin box with air-holes. It had been placed across the two tip-up seats and, being weighted with dry sand to accustom the reptiles to the arid nature of the sphere in which their activities would be required, it had been strapped firmly into place and padlocked. Sir Rudri had the key and, so far as he was aware, there was no duplicate.

  Gelert and Megan unfastened the straps, and th
en Sir Rudri and his son lifted the tin box from the car and placed it gently on the ground.

  ‘Hi! Dish! Dmitri!” yelled Sir Rudri. The servants, English and Greek, came up to him. They had been standing, smoking cigarettes, a short distance from the cars, with the three drivers. ‘Unload the food and water,’ ordered Sir Rudri. ‘You men had better help.’ Having watched them for a minute or two to make sure that they were going to work methodically to unload the stores, he decided that the work, supervised by Dish, was going to be carried out satisfactorily. He pointed out the museum to Dish, for the provisions were to be stored there, and then, assisted again by Gelert, he lifted the box of snakes and bore it tenderly towards the Hieron of Aesculapius. ‘There! They won’t hurt for a bit. They are quite accommodating creatures,’ he observed, when the box had been placed in what had been one of the hostelries for visitors in the days when Epidaurus attracted its patients from all the country round and had housed them as near as possible to the sanctuary of the god of healing. ‘Later on we can come and let them out for a bit. The man assured me they were absolutely harmless.’

  ‘It’s to be hoped that they are,’ Gelert observed. ‘I suppose the air-holes are not big enough for them to squeeze through? I have heard that it is remarkable what a genius for escape even quite large reptiles have.’

  ‘It is some time since they were fed,’ Sir Rudri admitted. ‘I particularly told the man that I did not want lethargic, distended serpents. I shall give them some milk later on. But I don’t think they can get out through the air-holes, which are extremely small as you see. Perhaps, though …’ he added. He raised his voice. ‘Hi! Ivor! Kenneth! Stewart!’