Ngaio Marsh - Death of a Fool

“Ah, no! Not the genuine article like this one,” Camilla protested. “And I’m sort of specially interested because I’m working at a drama school.”

“Are you, now?”

Dr. Otterly glanced at the Andersens, but they were involved in a close discussion with Simon Begg. “And what does the Guiser say to that ?” he asked and winked at Camilla.

“He’s livid.”

“Ha! And what do you propose to do about it? Defy him?”

Camilla said, “Do you know, I honestly didn’t think anybody was left who thought like he does about the theatre. He quite pitched into me. Rather frightening when you come to think of it.”

“Frightening? Ah!” Dr. Otterly said quickly, “You don’t really mean that. That’s contemporary slang, I daresay. What did you lay to the Guiser?”

“Well, I didn’t quite like,” Camilla confided, “to point out that after all he played the lead in a pagan ritual that is probably chock full of improprieties if he only knew it.”

“No,” agreed Dr. Otterly drily, “I shouldn’t tell him that if I were you. As a matter of fact, he’s a silly old fellow to do it at all at his time of life. Working himself into a fizz and taxing his ticker up to the danger-mark. I’ve told him so, but I might as well speak to the cat. Now, what do you hope to do, child? What roles do you dream of playing? Um?”

“Oh, Shakespeare if I could. If only I could.”

“I wonder. In ten years’ time? Not the giantesses, I fancy. Not the Lady M. nor yet the Serpent of Old Nile. But a Viola, now, or — what do you say to a Cordelia?”

“Cordelia?” Camilla echoed doubtfully. She didn’t think all that much of Cordelia.

Dr. Otterly contemplated her with evident amusement and adopted an air of cozy conspiracy.

“Shall I tell you something? Something that to me at least is immensely exciting? I believe I have made a really significant discovery — really significant — about — you’d never guess — about Lear . There now!” cried Dr. Otterly with the infatuated glee of a White Knight. “What do you say to that?”

“A discovery?”

“About King Lear . And I have been led to it, I may tell you, through playing the fiddle once a year for thirty years at the winter solstice on Sword Wednesday for our Dance of the Five Sons.”

“Honestly?”

“As honest as the day. And do you want to know what my discovery is?”

“Indeed I do.”

“In a nutshell, this: here, my girl, in our Five Sons is nothing more nor less than a variant of the Basic Theme, Frazer’s theme — the King of the Wood, the Green Man, the Fool, the Old Man Persecuted by His Young — the theme, by Guiser, that reached its full stupendous blossoming in Lear . Do you know the play?” Dr. Otterly demanded.

“Pretty well, I think.”

“Good. Turn it over in your mind when you’ve seen the Five Sons, and if I’m right you’d better treat that old grandpapa of yours with respect, because on the twenty-first, child, hell be playing what I take to be the original version of King Lear . There now!”

Dr. Otterly smiled, gave Camilla a little pat and made a general announcement.

“If you fellows want to practice,” he shouted, “you’ll have to do it now. I can’t give you more than half an hour. Mary Yeoville’s in labour.”

“Where’s Mr. Ralph?” Dan asked.

“He rang up to say he might be late. Doesn’t matter, really. The Betty’s a free lance after all. Everyone else is here. My fiddle’s in the car.”

“Come on, then, chaps,” said old William. “Into the barn.” He had turned away and taken up a sacking bundle when he evidently remembered his grand-daughter.

“If you bean’t too proud,” he said, glowering at her, “you can come and have a tell up to Copse Forge tomorrow.”

“I’d love to. Thank you, Grandfather. Good luck to the rehearsal.”

“What sort of outlandish word’s that? We’re going to practice.”

“Same thing. May I watch?”

“You can not . ’Tis men’s work, and no female shall have part nor passel in it.”

“Just too bad,” said Begg, “isn’t it, Miss Campion? I think we ought to jolly well make an exception in this case.”

“No. No!” Camilla cried. “I was only being facetious. It’s all right, Grandfather. Sorry. I wouldn’t dream of butting in.”

“Doan’t go nourishing and ’citing thik old besom, neither.”

“No, no, I promise. Good-night, everybody.”

“Good-night, Cordelia,” said Dr. Otterly.

The door swung to behind the men. Camilla said good-night to the Plowmans and climbed up to her room. Tom Plowman went out to the kitchen.

Trixie, left alone, moved round into the bar-parlour to tidy it up. She saw the envelope that Camilla in the excitement of opening her letter had let fall.

Trixie picked it up and, in doing so, caught sight of the superscription. For a moment she stood very still, looking at it, the tip of her tongue appearing between her teeth as if she thought to herself, “This is tricky.” Then she gave a rich chuckle, crumpled the envelope and pitched it into the fire. She heard the door of the public bar open and returned there to find Ralph Stayne himself staring unhappily at her.

“Trixie —?”

“I reckon,” Trixie said, “you’m thinking you’ve got yourself into a terrible old pickle.”

“Look — Trixie—”

“Be off,” she said.

“All right. I’m sorry.”

He turned away and was arrested by her voice, mocking him.

“I will say, however, that if she takes you, she’ll get a proper man.”

In the disused barn behind the pub, Dr. Otterly’s fiddle gave out a tune as old as the English calendar. Deceptively simply, it bounced and twiddled, insistent in its reiterated demand that whoever heard it should feel in some measure the impulse to jump.

Here, five men jumped — cleverly, with concentration and variety. For one dance they had bells clamped to their thick legs and, as they capered and tramped, the bells jerked positively with an overtone of irrelevant tinkling. For another, they were linked, as befitted the sons of a blacksmith, by steel: by a ring made of five swords. They pranced and leapt over their swords. They wove and unwove a concentric pattern. Their boots banged down the fiddle’s rhythm and with each down-clamp a cloud of dust was bumped up from the floor. The men’s faces were blank with concentration: Dan’s, Andy’s, Nat’s, Chris’s and Ernie’s. On the perimeter of the figure and moving round it, danced the Old Guiser, William Andersen. On his head was a rabbit-skin cap. He carried the classic stick-and-bladder. He didn’t dance with the vigour of his sons but with dedication. He made curious, untheatrical gestures that seemed to have some kind of significance. He also chided his sons and sometimes called them to a halt in order to do so.

Independent of the Guiser but also moving as an eccentric satellite to the dance was “Crack,” the Hobby-Horse, with Wing-Commander Begg inside him. “Crack” had been hammered out at Copse Forge, how many centuries ago none of the dancers could tell. His iron head, more bird-like than equine, was daubed with paint after the fashion of a witch-doctor’s mask. It appeared through a great, flat, drum-like body: a circular frame that was covered to the ground with canvas and had a tiny horsehair tail stuck through it. “Crack” snapped his iron jaws and executed a solo dance of some intricacy.

Presently Ralph Stayne came in, shaking the snow off his hat and coat. He stood watching for a minute or two and then went to a corner of the barn where he found, and put on, a battered crinoline-like skirt. It was enormously wide and reached to the floor.