Death of a Fool

Chapter I Winter Solstice

Over that part of England the winter solstice came down with a bitter antiphony of snow and frost. Trees minutely articulate shuddered in the north wind. By four o’clock in the afternoon the people of South Mardian were all indoors.

It was at four o’clock that a small dogged-looking car appeared on a rise above the village and began to sidle and curvet down the frozen lane. Its driver, her vision distracted by wisps of grey hair escaping from a head scarf, peered through the fan-shaped clearing on her windscreen. Her woolly paws clutched rather than commanded the wheel. She wore, in addition to several scarves of immense length, a hand-spun cloak. Her booted feet tramped about over brake and clutch-pedal, her lips moved soundlessly and from time to time twitched into conciliatory smiles. Thus she arrived in South Mardian and bumped to a standstill before a pair of gigantic gates.

They were of wrought iron and beautiful, but they were tied together with a confusion of shopkeeper’s twine. Through them, less than a quarter of a mile away, she saw on a white hillside the shell of a Norman castle, theatrically erected against a leaden sky. Partly encircled by this ruin was a hideous Victorian mansion.

The traveller consulted her map. There could be no doubt about it. This was Mardian Castle. It took some time in that deadly cold to untangle the string. Snow had mounted up the far side and she had to shove hard before she could open the gates wide enough to admit her car. Having succeeded and driven through, she climbed out again to shut them.

“ ‘St. Agnes’ Eve, ach, bitter chill it was!’ ” she quoted in a faintly Teutonic accent. Occasionally, when fatigued or agitated, she turned her short o’s into long ones and transposed her v’s and w’s.

“But I see no sign,” she added to herself, “of hare nor owl, nor of any living creature, godamercy.” She was pleased with this improvisation. Her intimate circle had lately adopted “godamercy” as an amusing expletive.

There arose from behind some nearby bushes a shrill cachinnation and out waddled a gaggle of purposeful geese. They advanced upon her screaming angrily. She bundled herself into the car, slammed the door almost on their beaks, engaged her bottom gear and ploughed on, watched from the hillside by a pair of bulls. Her face was pale and calm and she hummed the air (from her Playford album) of “Sellinger’s Round.”

As the traveller drew near the Victorian house she saw that it was built of the same stone as the ruin that partly encircled it. “That is something, at least,” she thought. She crammed her car up the final icy slope, through the remains of a Norman archway and into a courtyard. There she drew in her breath in a series of gratified little gasps.

The courtyard was a semicircle bounded by the curve of old battlemented walls and cut off by the new house. It was littered with heaps of rubble and overgrown with weeds. In the centre, puddled in snow, was a rectangular slab supported by two pillars of stone.

“Eureka!” cried the traveller.

For luck she groped under her scarves and fingered her special necklace of red silk. Thus fortified she climbed a flight of steps that led to the front door.

It was immense and had been transferred, she decided with satisfaction, from the ruin. There was no push-button, but a vast bell, demonstrably phoney and set about with cast-iron pixies, was bolted to the wall. She tugged at its chain and it let loose a terrifying rumpus. The geese, who had reappeared at close quarters, threw back their heads, screamed derisively and made for her at a rapid waddle.

With her back to the door she faced them. One or two made unsuccessful attempts to mount and she tried to quell them, collectively, with an imperious glare. Such was the din they raised that she did not hear the door open. “You are in trouble!” said a voice behind her. “Nip in, won’t you, while I shut the door. Be off, birds.”

The visitor was grasped, turned about and smartly pulled across the threshold. The door slammed behind her and she found herself face to face with a thin ginger-haired lady who stared at her in watery surprise.

“Yes?” said the lady. “Yes, well, I don’t think — and in any case, what weather!”

“Dame Alice Mardian?”

“My great-aunt. She’s ninety-four and I don’t think —”

With an important gesture the visitor threw back her cloak, explored an inner pocket and produced a card.

“This is, of course, a surprise,” she said. “Perhaps I should have written first, but I must tell you — frankly, frankly — that I was so transported with curiosity — no, not that, not curiosity — rather, with the zest of the hunter, that I could not contain myself. Not for another day. Another hour even!” She checked. Her chin trembled. “If you will glance at the card,” she said. Dimly, the other did so.

“Oh dear!” said the ginger-haired lady and added, “But in any case come in, of course.” She led the way from a hall that was scarcely less cold than the landscape outside into a drawing-room that was, if anything, more so. It was jammed up with objects. Mediocre portraits reached from the ceiling to the floor, tables were smothered in photographs and ornaments, statuettes peered over each other’s shoulders. On a vast hearth dwindled a shamefaced little fire.

“Do sit down,” said the ginger-haired lady doubtfully, “Mrs. — ah — Buns.”

“Thank you, but excuse me — Bünz. Eu, eu,” said Mrs. Bùnz, thrusting out her lips with tutorial emphasis, “or if eu is too difficult, Bins or Burns will suffice. But nothing edible!” She greeted her own joke with the cordial chuckle of an old acquaintance. “It’s a German name, of course. My dear late husband and I came over before the war. Now I am saturated, I hope I may say, in the very sap of old England. But,” Mrs. Bünz added, suddenly vibrating the tip of her tongue as if she anticipated some delicious tid-bit, “to our muttons. To our muttons, Miss — ah —”

“Mardian,” said Miss Mardian turning a brickish pink.

“Ach, that name!”

“If you wouldn’t mind —”

“But of course. I come immediately to the point. It is this. Miss Mardian, I have driven three hundred miles to see your great-aunt.”

“Oh dear! She’s resting, I’m afraid —”

“You are, of course, familiar with the name of Rekkage.”

“Well, there was old Lord Rekkage who went off his head.”

“It cannot be the same.”

“He’s dead now. Warwickshire family near Bapple.”

“It is the same. As to his sanity I feel you must be misinformed. A great benefactor. He founded the Guild of Ancient Customs.”

“That’s right. And left all his money to some too-extraordinary society.”

“The Hobby-Horses. I see, my dear Miss Mardian, that we have dissimilar interests. Yet,” said Mrs. Bünz lifting her voluminous chins, “I shall plod on. So much at stake. So much.”

“I’m afraid,” said Miss Mardian vaguely, “that I can’t offer you tea. The boiler’s burst.”

“I don’t take it. Pray, Miss Mardian, what are Dame Alice’s interests? Of course, at her wonderfully great age —”

“Aunt Akky? Well, she likes going to sales. She picked up nearly all the furniture in this room at auctions. Lots of family things were lost when Mardian Place was burnt down. So she built this house of bits of the old castle and furnished it from sales. She likes doing that, awfully.”

“Then there is an antiquarian instinct. Ach!” Mrs. Bünz exclaimed, excitedly clapping her hands and losing control of her accent. “Ach, sank Gott!”

“Oh crumbs!” Miss Mardian cried, raising an admonitory finger. “Here is Aunt Akky.”

She got up self-consciously. Mrs. Bünz gave a little gasp of anticipation and, settling her cloak portentously, also rose.

The drawing-room door opened to admit Dame Alice Mardian.

Perhaps the shortest way to describe Dame Alice is to say that she resembled Mrs. Noah. She had a shapeless, wooden appearance and her face, if it was expressive of anything in particular, looked dimly jolly.

“What’s all the row?” she asked, advancing with the inelastic toddle of old age. “Hullo! Didn’t know you had friends, Dulcie.”

“I haven’t,” said Miss Mardian. She waved her hands. “This is Mrs. — Mrs. — ”

“Bünz,” said that lady. “Mrs. Anna Bünz. Dame Alice, I am so inexpressibly overjoyed —”

“What about? How de do, I’m sure,” said Dame Alice. She had loose-fitting false teeth which of their own accord chopped off the ends of her words and thickened her sibilants. “Don’t see strangers,” she added. “Too old for it. Dulcie ought to’ve told yer.”

“It seems to be about old Lord Rekkage, Aunt Akky.”

“Lori Loony Rekkage. Hunted with the Quorn till he fell on his head. Like you, Dulcie. Went as straight as the best, but mad. Don’t you ’gree?” she asked Mrs. Bünz, looking at her for the first time.

Mrs. Bünz began to speak with desperate rapidity. “When he died,” she gabbled, shutting her eyes, “Lord Rekkage assigned to me, as vice-president of the Friends of British Folklore, the task of examining certain papers.”

“Have you telephoned about the boilers, Dulcie?”

“Aunt Akky, the lines are down.”

“Well, order a hack and ride.”

“Aunt Akky, we haven’t any horses now.”

“I keep forgettin’.”

“But allow me,” cried Mrs. Bünz, “allow me to take a message on my return. I shall be so delighted.”

“Are you ridin’?”

“I have a little car.”

“Motorin’? Very civil of you, I must say. Just tell William Andersen at the Copse that our boiler’s burst, if you will. Much obliged. Me niece’ll see you out. Ask you to ’scuse me.”

She held out her short arm and Miss Mardian began to haul at it.

“No, no! Ach, please. I implore you!” shouted Mrs. Bünz, wringing her hands. “Dame Alice! Before you go! I have driven for two days. If you will listen for one minute. On my knees —”

“If you’re beggin’,” said Dame Alice, “it’s no good. Nothin’ to give away these days. Dulcie.”

“But, no, no, no! I am not begging. Or only,” urged Mrs. Bünz, “for a moment’s attention. Only for von liddle vord.”

“Dulcie, I’m goin’.”

“Yes, Aunt Akky.”

“Guided as I have been —”

“I don’t like fancy religions,” said Dame Alice, who with the help of her niece had arrived at the door and opened it.

“Does the winter solstice mean nothing to you? Does the Mardian Mawris Dance of the Five Sons mean nothing? Does—” Something in the two faces that confronted her caused Mrs. Bünz to come to a stop. Dame Alice’s upper denture noisily capsized on its opposite number. In the silence that followed this mishap there was an outbreak from the geese. A man’s voice shouted and a door slammed.

“I don’t know,” said Dame Alice with difficulty and passion, “I don’t know who yar or what chupter. But you’ll oblige me by takin’ yerself off.” She turned on her great-niece. “You,” she said, “are a blitherin’ idiot. I’m angry. I’m goin’.”

She turned and toddled rapidly into the hall.

“Good evening, Aunt Akky. Good evening, Dulcie,” said a man’s voice in the hall. “I wondered if I —”

“I’m angry with you, too. I’m goin’ upshtairs. I don’t want to shee anyone. Bad for me to get fusshed. Get rid of that woman.”

“Yes, Aunt Akky.”

“And you behave yershelf, Ralph.”

“Yes, Aunt Akky.”

“Bring me a whishky-and-shoda to my room, girl.”

“Yes, Aunt Akky.”

“Damn theshe teeth.”

Mrs. Bünz listened distractedly to the sound of two pairs of retreating feet. All by herself in that monstrous room she made a wide gesture of frustration and despair. A large young man came in.

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Good evening. I’m afraid something’s happened. I’m afraid Aunt Akky’s in a rage.”

“Alas! Alas!”

“My name’s Ralph Stayne. I’m her nephew. She’s a bit tricky is Aunt Akky. I suppose, being ninety-four, she’s got a sort of right to it.”

“Alas! Alas!”

“I’m most frightfully sorry. If there’s anything one could do?” offered the young man. “Only I might as well tell you I’m pretty heavily in the red myself.”

“You are her nephew?”

“Her great-great-nephew actually. I’m the local parson’s son. Dulcie’s my aunt.”

. “My poor young man,” said Mrs. Bünz, but she said it absent-mindedly: there was speculation in her eye. “You could indeed help me,” she said. “Indeed, indeed, you could. Listen. I will be brief. I have driven here from Bapple-under-Baccomb in Warwickshire. Owing partly to the weather, I must admit, it has taken me two days. I don’t grudge them, no, no, no. But I digress. Mr. Stayne, I am a student of the folk dance, both central-European and — particularly — English. My little monographs on the Abram Circle Bush and the symbolic tea-pawt have been praised. I am a student, I say, and a performer. I can still cut a pretty caper, Mr. Stayne. Ach, yes, godamercy.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Godamercy. It is one of your vivid sixteenth-century English ejaculations. My little circle has revived it. For fun,” Mrs. Bünz explained.

“I’m afraid I—”

“This is merely to satisfy you that I may in all humility claim to be something of an expert. My status, Mr. Stayne, was indeed of such a degree as to encourage the late Lord Rekkage —”

“Do you mean Loony Rekkage?”

“— to entrust no less than three Saratoga trunkfuls of precious, precious family documents to my care. It was one of these documents, examined by myself for the first time the day before yesterday, that has led me to Mardian Castle. I have it with me. You shall see it.”

Ralph Stayne had begun to look extremely uncomfortable.

“Yes, well now, look here, Mrs. — ”

“Bünz.”

“Mrs. Burns, I’m most awfully sorry, but if you’re heading the way I think you are, then I’m terribly afraid it’s no go.”

Mrs. Bünz suddenly made a magnificent gesture towards the windows.

“Tell me this,” she said. “Tell me. Out there in the courtyard, mantled in snow and surrounded at the moment by poultry, I can perceive, and with emotion I perceive it, a slightly inclined and rectangular shape. Mr. Stayne, is that object the Mardian Stone? The dolmen of the Mardians?”

“Yes,” said Ralph. “That’s right. It is.”

“The document to which I have referred concerns itself with the Mardian Stone. And with the Dance of the Five Sons.”

“Does it, indeed?”

“It suggests, Mr. Stayne, that unknown to research, to experts, to folk dancers and to the societies, the so-called Mardian Mawris (the richest immeasurably of all English ritual dance-plays) was being performed annually at the Mardian Stone during the winter solstice up to as recently as fifteen years ago.”

“Oh,” said Ralph.

“And not only that,” Mrs. Bünz whispered excitedly, advancing her face to within twelve inches of his, “there seems to be no reason why it should not have survived to this very year, this winter solstice, Mr. Stayne — this very week. Now, do you answer me? Do you tell me if this is so?”

Ralph said, “I honestly think it would be better if you forgot all about it. Honestly.”

“But you don’t deny?”

He hesitated, began to speak and checked himself.

“All right,” he said. “I certainly don’t deny that a very short, very simple and not, I’m sure, at all important sort of dance-play is kept up once a year in Mardian. It is. We just happen to have gone on doing it.”

“Ach, blessed Saint Use-and-Wont.”

“Er — yes. But we have been rather careful not to sort of let it be known because everyone agrees it’d be too ghastly if the artsy-craftsy boys — I’m sure,” Ralph said turning scarlet, “I don’t mean to be offensive, but you know what can happen. Ye olde goings-on all over the village. Charabancs even. My family have all felt awfully strongly about it and so does the Old Guiser.”

Mrs. Bünz pressed her gloved hands to her lips. “Did you, did you say ‘Old Guiser’?”

“Sorry. It’s a sort of nickname. He’s William Andersen, really. The local smith. A perfectly marvellous old boy,” Ralph said and inexplicably again turned scarlet. “They’ve been at the Copse Smithy for centuries, the Andersens,” he added. “As long as we’ve been at Mardian, if it comes to that. He feels jolly strongly about it.”

“The old man? The Guiser?” Mrs. Bünz murmured. “And he’s a smith? And his forefathers perhaps made the hobby-horse?” Ralph was uncomfortable.

“Well —” he said and stopped.

“Ach! Then there is a hobby!”

“Look, Mrs. Burns, I–I do ask you as a great favour not to talk about this to anyone, or — or write about it. And for the love of Mike not to bring people here. I don’t mind telling you I’m in pretty bad odour with my aunt and old William and, really, if they thought — look, I think I can hear Dulcie coming. Look, may I really beg you —”

“Do not trouble yourself. I am very discreet,” said Mrs. Bünz with a reassuring leer. “Tell me, there is a pub in the district, of course? You see I use the word pub. Not inn or tavern. I am not,” said Mrs. Bünz, drawing her hand-woven cloak about her, “what you describe as artsy-craftsy.”

“There’s a pub about a mile away. Up the lane to Yowford. The Green Man.”

“The Green Man. A-a-ach! Excellent.”

“You’re not going to stay there!” Ralph ejaculated involuntarily.

“You will agree that I cannot immediately drive to Bapple-under-Baccomb. It is three hundred miles away. I shall not even start. I shall put up at the pub.”

Ralph, stammering a good deal, said, “It sounds the most awful cheek, I know, but I suppose you wouldn’t be terribly kind and — if you are going there — take a note from me to someone who’s staying there. I–I — my car’s broken down and I’m on foot.”

“Give it to me.”

“It’s most frightfully sweet of you.”

“Or I can drive you.”

“Thank you most terribly, but if you’d just take the note. I’ve got it on me. I was going to post it.” Still blushing he took an envelope from his breast-pocket and gave it to her. She stowed it away in a business-like manner.

“And in return,” she said, “you shall tell me one more thing. What do you do in the Dance of the Five Sons? For you are a performer. I feel it.”

“I’m the Betty,” he muttered.

“A-a-a-ch! The fertility symbol, or in modern parlance —” she tapped the pocket where she had stowed the letter — “the love interest. Isn’t it?”

Ralph continued to look exquisitely uncomfortable. “Here comes Dulcie,” he said. “If you don’t mind I really think it would be better —”

“If I made away with myself. I agree. I thank you, Mr. Stayne. Good evening.”

Ralph saw her to the door, drove off the geese, advised her to pay no attention to the bulls as only one of them ever cut rough, and watched her churn away through the snow. When he turned back to the house Miss Mardian was waiting for him.

“You’re to go up,” she said. “What have you been doing? She’s furious.”

Mrs. Bünz negotiated the gateway without further molestation from livestock and drove through what was left of the village. In all, it consisted only of a double row of nondescript cottages, a tiny shop, a church of little architectural distinction and a Victorian parsonage: Ralph Stayne’s home, no doubt. Even in its fancy-dress of snow it was not a picturesque village. It would, Mrs. Bünz reflected, need a lot of pepping-up before it attracted the kind of people Ralph Stayne had talked about. She was glad of this because, in her own way, she too was a purist.

At the far end of the village itself and a little removed from it she came upon a signpost for East Mardian and Yowford and a lane leading off in that direction.

But where, she asked herself distractedly, was the smithy? She was seething with the zeal of the explorer and with an itching curiosity that Ralph’s unwilling information had exacerbated rather than assuaged. She pulled up and looked about her. No sign of a smithy. She was certain she had not passed one on her way in. Though her interest was academic rather than romantic, she fastened on smithies with the fervour of a runaway bride. But no. All was twilight and desolation. A mixed group of evergreen and deciduous trees, the signpost, the hills and a great blankness of snow. Well, she would inquire at the pub. She was about to move on when she saw, simultaneously, a column of smoke rise above the trees and a short thickset man, followed by a dismal-looking dog, come round the lane from behind them.

She leant out and in a cloud of her own breath shouted: “Good evening. Can you be so good as to direct me to the Corpse?”

The man stared at her. After a long pause he said, “Ar?” The dog sat down and whimpered.

Mrs. Bünz suddenly realized she was dead-tired. She thought, “This frustrating day! So! I must now embroil myself with the village natural.” She repeated her question. “Vere,” she said speaking very slowly and distinctly, “is der corpse?”

“ ’Oo’s corpse?”

“Mr. William Andersen’s.”

“ ’Ee’s not a corpse. Not likely. ’Ee’s my dad.” Weary though she was she noted the rich local dialect. Aloud, she said, “You misunderstand me. I asked you where is the smithy. His smithy. My pronunciation was at fault.”

“Copse Smithy be my dad’s smithy.”

“Precisely. Where is it?”

“My dad don’t rightly fancy wummen.”

“Is that it where the smoke is coming from?”

“Ar.”

“Thank you.”

As she drove away she thought she heard him loudly repeat that his dad didn’t fancy women.

“He’s going to fancy me if I die for it,” thought Mrs. Bünz.

The lane wound round the copse and there, on the far side, she found that classic, that almost archaic picture — a country blacksmith’s shop in the evening.

The bellows were in use. A red glow from the forge pulsed on the walls. A horse waited, half in shadow. Gusts of hot iron and seared horn and the sweetish reek of horse-sweat drifted out to mingle with the tang of frost. Somewhere in a dark corner beyond the forge a man with a lanthorn seemed to be bent over some task. Mrs. Bünz’s interest in folklore, for all its odd manifestations, was perceptive and lively. Though now she was punctually visited by the, as it were, off-stage strains of “The Harmonious Blacksmith,” she also experienced a most welcome quietude of spirit. It was as if all her enthusiasms had become articulate. This was the thing itself, alive and luminous.

The smith and his mate moved into view. The horseshoe, lunar symbol, floated incandescent in the glowing jaws of the pincers. It was lowered and held on the anvil. Then the hammer swung, the sparks showered and the harsh bell rang. Three most potent of all charms were at work — fire, iron and the horseshoe.

Mrs. Bünz saw that while his assistant was a sort of vivid enlargement of the man she had met in the lane and so like him that they must be brothers, the smith himself was a surprisingly small man: small and old. This discovery heartened her. With renewed spirit she got out of her car and went to the door of the smithy. The third man, in the background, opened his lanthorn and blew out the flame. Then, with a quick movement he picked up some piece of old sacking and threw it over his work.

The smith’s mate glanced up but said nothing. The smith, apparently, did not see her. His branch-like arms, ugly and graphic, continued their thrifty gestures. He glittered with sweat and his hair stuck to his forehead in a white fringe. After perhaps half a dozen blows the young man held up his hand and the other stopped, his chest heaving. They exchanged roles. The young giant struck easily and with a noble movement that enraptured Mrs. Bünz.

She waited. The shoe was laid to the hoof and the smith in his classic pose crouched over the final task. The man in the background was motionless.

“Dad, you’re wanted,” the smith’s mate said. The smith glanced at her and made a movement of his head. “Yes, ma-am?” asked the son.

“I come with a message,” Mrs. Bünz began gaily. “From Dame Alice Mardian. The boiler at the castle has burst.”

They were silent. “Thank you, then, ma-am,” the son said at last. He had come towards her but she felt that the movement was designed to keep her out of the smithy. It was as if he used his great torso as a screen for something behind it.

She beamed into his face. “May I come in?” she asked. “What a wonderful smithy.”

“Nobbut old scarecrow of a place. Nothing to see.”

“Ach!” she cried jocularly, “but that’s just what I like. Old things are by way of being my business, you see. You’d be —” she made a gesture that included the old smith and the motionless figure in the background—“you’d all be surprised to hear how much I know about blackschmidts.”

“Ar, yes, ma-am?”

“For example,” Mrs. Bünz continued, growing quite desperately arch, “I know all about those spiral irons on your lovely old walls there. They’re fire charms, are they not? And, of course, there’s a horseshoe above your door. And I see by your beautiful printed little notice that you are Andersen, not Anderson, and that tells me so exactly just what I want to know. Everywhere, there are evidences for me to read. Inside, I daresay —” she stood on tiptoe and coyly dodged her large head from side to side, peeping round him and making a mocking face as she did so — “I daresay there are all sorts of things —”

“No, there bean’t then.”

The old smith had spoken. Out of his little body had issued a great roaring voice. His son half turned and Mrs. Bünz, with a merry laugh, nipped past him into the shop.

“It’s Mr. Andersen, Senior,” she cried, “is it not? It is — dare I? — the Old Guiser himself? Now I know you don’t mean what you’ve just said. You are much too modest about your beautiful schmiddy. And so handsome a horse! Is he a hunter?”

“Keep off. ’Er be a mortal savage kicker. See that naow,” he shouted as the mare made a plunging movement with the near hind leg which he held cradled in his lap. “She’s fair moidered already. Keep off of it. Keep aout. There’s nobbut’s men’s business yur.”

“And I had heard so much,” Mrs. Bünz said gently, “of the spirit of hospitality in this part of England. Zo! I was misinformed it seems. I have driven over two hundred —”

“Blow up, there, you, Chris. Blow up! Whole passel’s gone cold while she’ve been nattering. Blow up, boy.”

The man in the background applied himself to the bellows. A vivid glow pulsed up from the furnace and illuminated the forge. Farm implements, bits of harness, awards won at fairs flashed up. The man stepped a little aside and, in doing so, he dislodged the piece of sacking he had thrown over his work. Mrs. Bünz cried out in German. The smith swore vividly in English. Grinning out of the shadows was an iron face, half-bird, half-monster, brilliantly painted, sardonic, disturbing and, in that light, strangely alive.

Mrs. Bünz gave a scream of ecstasy.

“The Horse!” she cried, clapping her hands like a madwoman. “The Old Hoss. The Hooded Horse. I have found it. Gott sei Dank, what joy is mine!”

The third man had covered it again. She looked at their unsmiling faces.

“Well, that was a treat,” said Mrs. Bünz in a deflated voice. She laughed uncertainly and returned quickly to her car.