Come Away, Death

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Come Away, Death Page 19

by Gladys Mitchell


  Smyrna had a mountain-encircled harbour, and the ship could not get to the foreshore, but landed the party in a boat. A main road leading to the station and served by modern vehicles of transport led along by the sea, and when all the baggage was landed – a part of the work which Sir Rudri left to Gelert and Dick whilst he and Alexander Currie commandeered a couple of Turks and questioned them regarding the way to the railway station – the party hired cars, and were soon set down outside an extraordinarily impressive station through which ran trains which were comparable with those on English railways.

  After the easy, self-indulgent, West-Irish ways of the Greeks, it was bracing and delightful, for a change, to come upon the efficiency and activity of the Turks. Two porters and the station-master came up and explained in English, French, and German, when the train for Selçuk would come in, how many train would come first, where they would go, and what was the advantage of travelling by rail in Asia Minor. Everywhere, in a strange, phonetic language invented, legalized, and enforced by Kemal Ataturk, were words which all the travellers could pick out and understand, and of which the examples greeted with the greatest enthusiasm by the party were those spelt ‘Vagonli Kook’. They were pointed out first by Dick, and were cheered to the echo. The vault of the station rang triumphantly with the sounds of the travellers’ voices chanting the magic words which signify home from home, an oasis in the desert of foreign incomprehensibility, a shepherd of English sheep in an unfamiliar fold.

  The train came in at the time appointed for its arrival. More beer was taken aboard when it was known that the travellers were British. Alexander Currie, however, who believed that a combination of hops and malt had been the ruin of a nation’s teeth, clung tenaciously to his pocket flask, which he had managed to get refilled at the hotel in Athens.

  The train moved off after a Turkish official had inspected the party, had seen that they were seated and that the windows were closed. It passed through the town and, from the windows, mountains could be seen, a low range between the railway and the sea, and a high one farther inland. The line ran almost due south, and was soon passing through miles upon miles of beautiful fen-land, the haunt of numberless birds, and covered with acres of water-lilies.

  After about forty miles of smooth journeying, the train stopped at the little station of Selçuk, and the party trooped on to the platform. The way out led through the garden of an inn, and soon Sir Rudri, gesticulating to shy villagers to get out of the narrow road, was pushing the party on to the local motor-bus, which had been chartered for the purpose, and pointing out the Roman aqueduct and the storks’ nests on the roofs of the villagers’ houses. A group of solemn children stood and stared, ready to take instant flight, a little girl scowled and spat, some women turned away their faces, and a young woman carrying a tiny baby made a sign to avert the evil eye and hurried away with the child, the Turkish driver, in European clothes, climbed aboard, the railway porter, assisted by Gelert and Dick, shoved all the luggage on to the vehicle, and then, when all was in readiness, off went the bus with the gait of a camel and at the pace of an express train.

  The vehicle had a roof, but no sides. Travelling in it was both exhilarating and highly dangerous. The seats were four-inch boards placed from side to side of the vehicle so that the passengers, in rows of three, faced the way that the bus was going. Here and there an upright of wood, which also supported the roof, provided a welcome means of holding on to the conveyance.

  The driver, talking rapidly to himself in Turkish, changed gear; the speed of the bus changed from fifty-five to sixty-five miles an hour; the road narrowed into a homely, dusty lane, and the party hurtled towards Ephesus.

  In about three minutes the bus pulled up, the party assisted one another out over the side, and Sir Rudri, warning them all to keep close together because the neighbourhood was the haunt of the wild boar, led the way across vegetation which tore their legs in a thousand tiny lacerations, every one of which bled in the most unsightly manner, to a large, unpleasant-looking pond.

  ‘Mosquitoes!’ said Alexander Currie. He turned in his tracks and made back at full speed for the bus.

  ‘The site of the temple of Artemis,’ said Sir Rudri, gazing at the mere, in which a broken column or two gave some sort of support to his otherwise incredible statement. ‘A great deal of the stone has gone to build that place up there.’

  On the hillock on the other side of the lake was a fort, or a mosque – it was not easy, observing its ruinous condition, to say which. All stared obediently at it, except for the little boys, who conceived an ambition to paddle.

  ‘Leeches,’ said Mrs Bradley, who had not the slightest idea whether the site of the temple was the abode of leeches or not, but who knew that those creatures are dreaded by most of the young. The boys put on their socks and sandals again, and decided to play at trying to push one another into the water.

  ‘Now for Ephesus,’ said Sir Rudri.

  Cathleen, who had been glancing round very anxiously for the wild boars, led the way back to the bus. The party assisted one another in scrambling aboard. The bus careered on towards the sea, but suddenly swung left through a gap, and then drew up.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Sir Rudri, his face alight with enthusiasm, sweat gathered beadily on either side of his nose, and the Viking moustache at its most optimistic angle. ‘We have here —’ he consulted a small map.

  ‘I say, Dick,’ said Gelert, as the party climbed over the sides of the bus and Dick was paying the driver, ‘what on earth made father bring the vipers?’

  ‘The vipers?’ said Dick. ‘Oh, the vipers!’ He lugged the box on to the ground, then thrust it back on to the bus. ‘I don’t see why we should sweat to carry the baggage any farther than we need. Those sleeping-sacks alone weigh a ton. Leave the lot of them together, and the rest of the stuff, and let’s see how far the bus can drive towards the ruins. We’re to sleep in the theatre, I believe.’

  The driver, nothing loth, started up his engine again, and, the two young men coming loping behind like lurchers behind a country cart, drove carefully past the Gymnasium of Vedius, and came to a bumping halt at the ruined Stadium.

  Dick tipped the driver and wiped his own face. ‘Get Ian to come along and give a hand,’ he said. Whilst Gelert was gone he lugged out the sleeping-sacks with the help of the grunting driver, who proved to be an able and obliging assistant, and by the time Ian, bandy-legged and powerful, came trundling along with Gelert, the sacks were laid out on the ground, each discreetly but plainly labelled with the name of its owner. Most of the sacks were bulging with parts of the portable camping outfit, which was larger and more varied than Gelert thought necessary.

  ‘This one – it’s mine, I think – yes, it is – has got all the stuff for the photographs bundled into it,’ said Dick. ‘I think all the pots and kettles and things are in yours and Ian’s, Gelert. The kids have got all the spare socks and vests in theirs. I should think that everything could remain here for the present, though, it’s not in the way. Perhaps, after all, that hilly bit above the Greek market-place would be the best site for the camp, but Sir Rudri suggested the theatre because there we could get under cover in the stage passages.’

  ‘Better, perhaps, to leave all the stuff stacked here,’ Gelert agreed. ‘I don’t see why each person shouldn’t take his own sack and camp out where he likes, though. Bags I the top of the theatre. I’m not going to be cooped up in a passage.’

  The last port of call on Sir Rudri’s extraordinary tour was certainly the largest, the most interesting, and the most romantic. Even Epidaurus, for all its upland beauty and the glory of its almost perfect theatre, could not compare – at any rate, in the eyes of the little boys – with a district which was in many ways so like an English landscape as to banish all sense of strangeness, all feeling of not being at home. There was nothing remote or fearful, nothing awe-inspiring or uncomfortable about Ephesus. Before them, as they gathered about the baggage near the Stadium, stretched a winding
, inviting path which soon branched off to give a wide view of the ruins. The ruins themselves were not desolate. It was rather as though some experimental building had been abandoned before completion. There was nothing sad about Ephesus. The uncovered, excavated part of the Sacred Way, the exciting and inviting little path which led up to the back-stage passages of the theatre, the theatre itself, weed-grown, ruinous, and delightfully sunny and friendly, the royal road, the Roman arcadiane, leading from the harbour to the city, the stepped library of Celsus and his solid, inviolate tomb, combined to enravish the party, particularly Cathleen, Ian, and the utterly contented little boys.

  ‘Now this I call a holiday place,’ said Kenneth. ‘I say!’ He paused and looked round, but his elders, deep in learned discussion, were, if not out of earshot, at least completely oblivious of what he was saying. ‘I say, you men, let’s give the jolly old vipers a little run.’

  ‘We’d never catch them again,’ objected Ivor, visualizing his father’s wrath if the vipers were lost or anybody got bitten. ‘They’re off like a streak of lightning.’

  ‘Oh, rot,’ said Kenneth. ‘I bet you they’re the slowest snakes on earth. I bet you if we had a race with them – I say!’ he added, his face lighting up with the joy of a new idea. ‘Let’s just have three of them out and have a race with them. I say! Do let’s do that. I say! I think that would be too beastly good for words. I say!’

  ‘Oh, stow it,’ said Ivor brusquely. ‘To begin with, we’d never know them apart, and you’d be sure to swear yours was the winner, whether it was or not, just because we couldn’t tell from the markings. It’d be like it was with the golf balls that time, just because yours was needled and mine was needled, and I jolly well know I threw mine ever so much farther than you did, and just because, when we found it, it was needled —’

  ‘Oh, dry up,’ said Stewart. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll just go and take a snoop at the old vipers, and see if they look as if they thought they wanted a run. If they seem sleepy and fed up with being shut up in their tin, we can let them out for a bit, but if they seem as though they are going to scoot about and bite people, we won’t.’

  This eminently reasonable programme was accepted by the others without argument, and the boys trotted back to where the baggage had been left. There Kenneth turned on Stewart.

  ‘You ass! We haven’t got the key. We can’t open the box they’re in.’

  Stewart replied:

  ‘Yes we can, you ass. I spotted long ago that the lock was broken. It broke when the beastly box fell off the train. I spotted it when the Turkish porter lifted it. I say, I’d like to have seen his face if he’d dropped it and all the beastly snakes had fallen all over him.’

  The other little boys agreed that this would have been an agreeable spectacle. Kenneth knelt down and gingerly lifted the lid. The vipers, with lidless eyes, took no notice whatever of the sudden inrush of light and the golden air. Nevertheless, the little boys hesitated, and it was in agreement with the general feeling, although this remained unspoken, that Kenneth gently closed the lid and stood up, brushing the palms of his hands together as though he had actually touched the scaly creatures.

  Later on the boys took another look at the seemingly comatose creatures. But the broad flat heads scarcely moved, the short, thick snakes remained stolid. They had dark diamond-shaped markings on their brownish backs. Two were lighter in colour than the others, and one was cream and black instead of two shades of brown. But, unprovoked, they remained disappointingly languid. The boys studied them closely, kneeling on the ground and breathing with heavy interest on to the backs of the reptiles. Kenneth even prodded one of them gently with his finger before the lid was closed down again and the boys had taken a second farewell of what they now regarded as their pets.

  2

  Sir Rudri’s instructions with regard to the sleeping arrangements were to be followed on the second and not on the first night of the stay in Ephesus. On the first night, members of the party were to sleep in any part of the ruins that pleased them.

  ‘My chief idea is that for the next twenty-four hours or so we all familiarize ourselves with the lie of the land,’ he said. He issued numbered plans of the excavated parts of the city – plans which even the little boys could understand – and the company spent a zestful couple of hours in the late afternoon exploring every yard of the site and commenting upon their findings.

  Mrs Bradley, having familiarized herself with the plan, set up a small camp stool in the arcadiane, and read and knitted whilst Sir Rudri, Dick, Alexander, and Gelert discussed the Austrian excavations and agreed it was a pity that the Austrians had not explored the Hellenistic and Ionian cities.

  ‘Of course, the site of the temple is the all-important place for my investigations and experiments,’ Sir Rudri concluded, looking hopefully at Alexander Currie. But Alexander Currie, shying like a badly startled horse, pronounced a malediction in the pond in which the broken columns, half-pathetic remnants of glory, witnessed to the temple never to be restored.

  ‘Mosquitoes!’ he said, dancing about to emphasize his point. ‘The place is a hot-bed of mosquitoes: If you go there, you go without me!’

  ‘Well, well, never mind that now,’ said Sir Rudri soothingly. It was amazing, Mrs Bradley thought, how much better he seemed since the short stay at his home in Athens. The party joined together to eat their second meal and, for fear of wild boars – referred to in accents of horror by Cathleen – it was arranged that the young men should act in turn as watchmen over the camp. Cathleen said that she wanted to sleep in the village; that there was an inn there; that they had walked through part of its yard when they came from the station platform on to the road. With difficulty she was persuaded to remain with the rest of the party.

  ‘But, look here,’ said Ian, ‘you’ll not be wanting, all of you, to sleep in the same place, most likely. As to the boars, I think there is little to fear. Do you all go where you will. Cathleen will be safe with me. We can sleep in the passage of the theatre. That will be almost the same as being inside a house.’

  It was arranged that the little boys and Mrs Bradley would also sleep under cover. The others dispersed themselves as they would, all of them in or very near the theatre passages. Each one was within shouting distance of the others.

  This last fact was discovered in dramatic and terrifying fashion at about one o’clock in the morning. The inside of the passage was almost as black, and almost as oppressive to the spirits, as the interior of a tomb. The masonry, which was very heavy, was arched overhead, and the whole passage was a vaulted tunnel with openings at either end. These were doorways to the theatral area for which it formed the back of the staging. Mrs Bradley could sense the discomfort of the others, and although the little boys were soon asleep, she was not surprised to hear Ian fidgeting and grunting, and, later, Cathleen muttering in her sleep. After those two were at rest, Ivor woke up, crawled out of his sack, and crept along to her side.

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ he said. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, quite all right, dear child,’ Mrs Bradley murmured comfortingly.

  ‘But people have been killed in this place, haven’t they, by the Romans?’

  ‘No, not in this place, child. This was not an arena for beasts.’

  ‘Oh, but I thought —’

  The child did not tell her what he thought, for suddenly a most unearthly babbling and screaming broke out at the opposite end of the passage. Ivor; reverting to his babyhood in immediate reaction to the sounds, flung himself into Mrs Bradley’s arms, clasping her with agonized fear, shaking, trembling, and sweating like a frightened animal.

  Cathleen’s voice cried, ‘Ian!’

  Sir Rudri shouted, ‘What’s that?’

  Alexander Currie swore loudly and fiercely at the noise, and, not succeeding in divesting himself entirely of his sleeping-sack, crawled with it cumbering his legs, bumped his head hard against the wall in the dark, swore again, and, reac
hing out, clutched Stewart and Kenneth who, flattened against the wall, were prepared to sell their lives dearly.

  Gelert said, ‘Stand still, you devil, until I get at you!’ His voice was hysterical.

  ‘I don’t think we’re behaving very well,’ said Mrs Bradley suddenly, loudly and cheerfully. ‘Ronald Dick, where are you?’

  ‘I say! I’m terribly sorry! I’m afraid I must have shouted in my sleep. I woke myself, I expect. I think I had a nightmare or something,’ said Dick’s voice out of the darkness.

  ‘Well, don’t have it again,’ said Alexander Currie crossly. ‘Never heard such an unearthly screeching in my life. You couldn’t have made more noise if you had been murdered.’

  He sat down and, after some difficulty, shed the sack. Then he rearranged himself in it and in about two minutes was asleep.

  ‘I – I think I’ll get up and walk about outside,’ said Dick, still very apologetically.

  ‘Best thing. Best thing. Shake off the dream completely. Don’t make a noise coming back,’ said Sir Rudri, not at all cordially.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Dick, with diffidence, ‘I’d better not come back. I might disturb you again. Look here, I’ll take my sack and sleep outside.’

  All right, my boy. Good night.’ Sir Rudri also composed himself for sleep.

  ‘I vote we go with old Ronald and explore by night,’ said Kenneth, who had soon got over his fright.

  ‘Oh, rot,’ said Ivor, who was still exceedingly nervous, although he had now returned to his place. Stewart’s reply was to grope his way back to his sack and crawl inside it, and the intrepid proposer of the jaunt was left to go alone or to remain where he was. He found his sack and snuggled into it.

 

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