Death of a Fool

Chapter IV The Swords Are Out

On Sword Wednesday, early in the morning, there was another heavy fall of snow. But it stopped before noon and the sun appeared, thickly observable, like a live coal in the western sky.

There had been a row about the slasher. Nobody seemed to know quite what had happened. The gardener, MacGlashan, had sent his boy down to the forge to demand it. The boy had returned with a message from Ernie Andersen to say the Guiser wasn’t working but the slasher would be ready in time and that, in any case, he and his brothers would come up and clear a place in the courtyard. The gardener, although he had objected bitterly and loudly to doing the job himself, instantly took offence at this announcement and retired to his noisomely stuffy cottage down in the village, where he began a long fetid sulk.

In the morning Nat and Chris arrived at Mardian Castle to clear the snow. MacGlashan had locked his toolshed, but, encouraged by Dame Alice, who had come down heavily on their side, they very quickly picked the lock and helped themselves to whatever they needed. Simon Begg arrived in his breakdown van with the other three Andersen brothers and a load of brushwood which they built up into a bonfire outside the old battlemented wall. Here it would be partially seen through a broken-down archway and would provide an extra attraction for the village when the Dance of the Sons was over.

Torches, made at the forge from some ancient receipt involving pitch, resin and tow, were set up round the actual dancing area.

Later in the morning the Andersens and Simon Begg were entertained in the servants’ hall with a generous foretaste of the celebrated Sword Wednesday Punch, served out by Dame Alice herself, assisted by Dulcie and the elderly maids.

In that company there was nobody of pronounced sensibility. Such an observer might have found something disturbing in Simon Begg’s attempts to detach himself from his companions, to show an ease of manner that would compel an answering signal from their hostesses. It was such a hopeless business. To Dame Alice (who if she could be assigned to any genre derived from that of Surtees) class was unremarkable and existed in the way that continents and races exist. Its distinctions were not a matter of preference but of fact. To play at being of one class when you were actually of another was as pointless as it would be for a Chinese to try to pass himself off as a Zulu. Dame Alice possessed a certain animal shrewdness but she was fantastically insensitive and not given to thinking of abstract matters. She was ninety-four and thought as little as possible. She remembered that Simon Begg’s grandfather and father had supplied her with groceries for some fifty years and that he therefore was a local boy who went away to serve in the war and had, presumably, returned to do so in his father’s shop. So she said something vaguely seigniorial and unconsciously cruel to him and paid no attention to his answer except to notice that he called her Dame Alice instead of Madam.

To Dulcie, who was aware that he kept a garage and had held a commission in the Air Force, he spoke a language that was incomprehensible. She supposed vaguely that he preferred petrol to dry goods and knew she ought to feel grateful to him because of the Battle of Britain. She tried to think of remarks to make to him but was embarrassed by Ernie, who stood at his elbow and laughed very loudly at everything he said.

Simon gave Dulcie a meaning smile and patted Ernie’s arm.

“We’re a bit above ourselves, Miss Mardian,” he said. “We take ourselves very seriously over this little show tonight.”

Ernie laughed and Dulcie said, “Do you?” not understanding Simon’s playful use of the first person plural. He lowered his voice and said, “Poor old Ernie! Ernie was my batman in the old days, Miss Mardian. Weren’t you, Corp? How about seeing if you can help those girls, Ernie?”

Ernie, proud of being the subject of his hero’s attention, threw one of his crashing salutes and backed away. “It’s pathetic, really,” Simon said, “he follows me round Like a dog. God knows why. I do what I can for him.”

Dulcie repeated, “Do you?” even more vaguely and drifted away. Dan called his brothers together, thanked Dame Alice and began to shepherd them out.

“Here!” Dame Alice shouted. “Wait a bit. I thought you were goin’ to clear away those brambles out there.”

“So we are, ma-am,” Dan said. “Ernie do be comin’ up along after dinner with your slasher.”

“Mind he does. How’s your father?”

“Not feeling too clever to-day, ma-am, but he reckons he’ll be right again for to-night.”

“What’ll you do if he can’t dance?”

Ernie said instantly, “I can do Fool. I can do Fool’s act better nor him. If he’s not able, I am. Able and willing.”

His brothers broke into their habitual conciliatory chorus. They eased Ernie out of the room and into the courtyard. Simon made rather a thing of his goodbye to Dame Alice and thanked her elaborately. She distressed him by replying, “Not ’tall, Begg. Shop doin’ well, I hope? Compliments to your father.”

He recovered sufficiently to look with tact at Dulcie, who said, “Old Mr. Begg’s dead, Aunt Akky. Somebody else has got the shop.”

Dame Alice said, “Oh? I’d forgotten,” nodded to Simon and toddled rapidly away.

She and Dulcie went to their luncheon. They saw Simon’s van surrounded by infuriated geese go past the window with all the Andersens on board.

The courtyard was now laid bare of snow. At its centre the Mardian dolmen awaited the coming of the Five Sons. Many brambles and thistles were still uncut. By three o’clock Ernie had not returned with the slasher and the afternoon had begun to darken. It was at half-past four that Dulcie, fatigued by preparation and staring out of the drawing-room window, suddenly ejaculated, “Aunt Akky! Aunt Akky, they’ve left something on the stone.”

But Dame Alice had fallen into a doze and only muttered indistinguishably.

Dulcie peered and speculated and at last went into the hall and flung an old coat over her shoulders. She let herself out and ran across the courtyard to the stone. On its slightly tilted surface which, in the times before recorded history, may have been used for sacrifice, there was a dead goose, decapitated.

By eight o’clock almost all the village was assembled in the courtyard. On Sword Wednesday, Dame Alice always invited some of her neighbours in the county to Mardian, but this year, with the lanes deep in snow, they had all preferred to stay at home. They were unable to ring her up and apologize as there had been a major breakdown in the telephone lines. They told each other, rather nervously, that Dame Alice would “understand.” She not only understood but rejoiced.

So it was entirely a village affair attended by not more than fifty onlookers. Following an established custom, Dr. Otterly had dined at the castle and so had Ralph and his father. The Honorable and Reverend Samuel Stayne was Dame Alice’s great-nephew-in-law. Twenty-eight years ago he had had the temerity to fall in love with Dulcie Mardian’s elder sister, then staying at the castle, and, subsequently, to marry her. He was a gentle, unwordy man who attempted to follow the teaching of the Gospels literally and was despised by Dame Alice not because he couldn’t afford, but because he didn’t care, to ride to hounds.

After dinner, which was remarkable for its lamentable food and excellent wine, Ralph excused himself. He had to get ready for the dance. The others sipped coffee essence and superb brandy in the drawing-room.

The old parlour-maid came in at a quarter to nine to say that the dancers were almost ready.

“I really think you’d better watch from the windows, you know,” Dr. Otterly said to his hostess. “It’s a devil of a cold night. Look, you’ll see to perfection. May I?”

He pulled back the heavy curtains.

It was as if they were those of a theatre and had opened on the first act of some flamboyant play. Eight standing torches in the courtyard and the bonfire beyond the battlements flared into the night. Flames danced on the snow and sparks exploded in the frosty air. The onlookers stood to left and right of the cleared area and their shadows leapt and pranced confusedly up the walls beyond them. In the middle of this picture stood the Mardian dolmen, unencumbered now, glinting with frost as if, incongruously, it had been tinselled for the occasion.

“That youth,” said Dame Alice, “has not cleared away the thistles.”

“And I fancy,” Dr. Otterly said, “that I know why. Now, how about it? You get a wonderful view from here. Why not stay indoors?”

“No, thankee. Prefer out.”

“It’s not wise, you know.”

“Fiddle.”

“All right! That’s the worst of you young things: you’re so damned headstrong.”

She chuckled. Dulcie had begun to carry in a quantity of coats and shawls.

“Old William,” Dr. Otterly went on, “is just as bad. He oughtn’t to be out to-night with his heart what it is and he certainly oughtn’t to be playing the Fool — by the way, Rector, has it ever occurred to you that the phrase probably derives from one of these mumming plays? — but, there you are. I ought to refuse to fiddle for the old goat. I would if I thought it’d stop him, but he’d fiddle and fool too, no doubt. If you’ll excuse me I must join my party. Here are your programmes, by the way. That’s not for me, I trust.”

The parlour-maid had come in with a piece of paper on her tray. “For Dr. Otterly, madam,” she said.

“Now, who the hell can be ill?” Dr. Otterly groaned and unfolded the paper.

It was one of the old-fashioned printed bills that the Guiser sent out to his customers. Across it was written in shaky pencil characters:

“There now!” Dr. Otterly exclaimed. “He has conked out.”

“The Guiser!” cried the Rector.

“The Guiser. I must see what’s to be done. Sorry, Dame Alice. We’ll manage, though. Don’t worry. Marvellous dinner. ‘Bye.”

“Dear me!” the Rector said, “what will they do?”

“Dan Andersen’s boy will come in as a Son,” Dulcie said. “I know that’s what they planned if it happened.”

“And I ’spose,” Dame Alice added, “that idiot Ernie will dance the Fool. What a bore.”

“Poor Ernie, yes. A catastrophe for them,” the Rector murmured.

“Did I tell you, Sam, he killed one of my geese?”

“We don’t know it was Ernie, Aunt Akky.”

“Nobody else dotty enough. I’ll tackle ’em later. Come on,” Dame Alice said. “Get me bundled. We’d better go out.”

Dulcie put her into coat after coat and shawl after shawl. Her feet were thrust into fur-lined boots, her hands into mitts and her head into an ancient woollen cap with a pom-pom on the top. Dulcie and the Rector hastily provided for themselves and finally the three of them went out through the front door to the steps.

Here chairs had been placed with a brazier glowing in front of each. They sat down and were covered with rugs by the parlourmaid, who then retired to an upstairs room from which she could view the proceedings cozily.

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.

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.