Ngaio Marsh - Death of a Fool

Now, in the character of man-woman, and wearing a face of thunder, Ralph, too, began to skip and march about in the Dance of the Five Sons. They had formed the Knot, or Glass — an emblem made by the interlacing of their swords. Dan and Andy displayed it, the Guiser approached, seemed to look in it at his reflection and then dashed it to the ground. The dance was repeated and the knot reformed. The Guiser mimed, with clumsy and rudimentary gestures, an appeal to the clemency of the Sons. He appeared to write and show his Will, promising this to one and that to another. They seemed to be mollified. A third time they danced and formed their knot. Now, mimed old William, there is no escape. He put his head in the knot. The swords were disengaged with a clash. He dropped his rabbit cap and fell to the ground.

Dr. Otterly lowered his fiddle.

“Sorry,” he said. “I must be off. Quite enough anyway for you, Guiser. If I knew my duty I wouldn’t let you do it at all. Look at you, you old fool, puffing like your own bellows. There’s no need, what’s more, for you to extend yourself like that. Yours is not strictly a dancing role. Now, don’t go on after I’ve left. Sit down and play for the others if you like. Here’s the fiddle. But no more dancing. Understand? ’Night, boys.”

He shrugged himself into his coat and went out. They heard him drive away.

Ernie practiced “whiffling.” He executed great leaps, slashing with his sword at imaginary enemies and making a little boy’s spaceman noise between his teeth. The Hobby-Horse performed an extraordinary and rather alarming antic which turned out merely to be the preparatory manoeuvre of Simon Begg divesting himself of his trappings.

“Damned if I put this bloody harness on again to-night,” he said. “It cuts my shoulders and it stinks.”

“So does the Betty,” said Ralph. “They must have been great sweaters, our predecessors. However, toujours l’art , I suppose.”

“Anything against having them washed, Guiser?” asked Begg.

“You can’t wash Old ’Oss,” the Guiser pointed out. “Polish iron and leather and hop up your pail of pitch. Dip ‘Crack’s’ skirt into it last thing as is what is proper and right. Nothin’ like hot pitch to smell.”

“True,” Ralph said, “you have the advantage of me, Begg. I can’t turn the Betty into a tar-baby, worse luck.”

Begg said, “I’d almost forgotten the hot pitch. Queer sort of caper when you come to think of it. Chasing the lovely ladies and dabbing hot tar on ’em. Funny thing is, they don’t run away as fast as all that, either.”

“Padstow ’Oss,” observed Chris, “or so I’ve ’eard tell, catches ’em up and overlays ’em like a candle-snuff.”

“ ’Eathen licentiousness,” rejoined his father, “and no gear for us chaps, so doan’t you think of trying it on, Simmy-Dick.”

“Guiser,” Ralph said, “you’re superb. Isn’t the whole thing heathen?”

“No, it bean’t, then. It’s right and proper when it’s done proper and proper-done by us it’s going to be.”

“All the same,” Simon Begg said, “I wouldn’t mind twenty seconds under the old tar barrel with that very snappy little job you introduced to us to-night, Guiser.”

Ernie guffawed and was instantly slapped down by his father. “You hold your noise. No way to conduct yourself when the maid’s your niece. You should be all fiery hot in ’er defence.”

“Yes, indeed,” Ralph said quietly.

Begg looked curiously at him. “Sorry, old man,” he said. “No offence. Only a passing thought and all that. Let’s change the subject: when are you going to let us have that smithy, Guiser?”

“Never. And you might as well make up your mind to it. Never.”

“Obstinate old dog, isn’t he?” Begg said at large.

Dan, Chris and the twins glanced uncomfortably at their father.

Dan said, “Us chaps are favourable disposed as we’re mentioned, Simmy-Dick, but the Dad won’t listen to us, no more than to you.”

“Look, Dad,” Chris said earnestly, “it’d be in the family still. We know there’s a main road going through in the near future. We know a service station’d be a little gold mine yur on the cross-roads. We know the company’d be behind us. I’ve seen the letters that’s been wrote. We can still have the smithy. Simmy-Dick can run the servicing side on his own to begin with. Ernie can help. Look, it’s cast-iron — certain-sure.” He turned to Ralph. Isn’t it? Isn’t it ?”

Before Ralph could answer, Ernie paused in his whiffling and suddenly roared out, “I’d let you ’ave it, Wing-Commander, sir. So I would, too.”

The Guiser opened his mouth in anger, but, before he could speak, Dan said, “We here to practice or not? Come on, chaps. One more dash at the last figure. Strike up for us, Dad.”

The five brothers moved out into the middle of the floor. The Guiser, muttering to himself, laid the fiddle across his knees and scraped a preliminary call-in.

In a moment they were at it again. Down thumped their boots striking at the floor and up bounced the clouds of dust.

And outside in the snow, tied up with scarves, her hand-woven cloak enveloping her, head and all, Mrs. Bünz peered through a little cobwebby window, ecstatically noting the steps and taking down the tunes.

All through the following week snow and frost kept up their antiphonal ceremony. The two Mardians were mentioned in the press and on the air as being the coldest spots in England.

Up at the castle, Dame Alice gave some hot-tempered orders to what remained nowadays of her staff: a cook, a house parlourmaid, a cleaning woman, a truculent gardener and his boy. All of them except the boy were extremely old. Preparations were to be put in hand for the first Wednesday evening following the twenty-first of December. A sort of hot-cider punch must be brewed in the boiler house. Cakes of a traditional kind must be baked. The snow must be cleared away in the courtyard and stakes planted to which torches would subsequently be tied. A bonfire must be built. Her servants made a show of listening to Dame Alice and then set about these preparations in their own fashion. Miss Mardian sighed and may have thought all the disturbance a bit of a bore but took it, as did everybody else in the village, as a complete matter of course. “Sword Wednesday,” as the date of the Dance of the Five Sons was sometimes called, made very little more stir than Harvest Festival in the two Mardians.

Mrs. Bünz and Camilla Campion stayed on at the Green Man. Camilla was seen to speak in a friendly fashion to Mrs. Bünz, towards whom Trixie also maintained an agreeable manner. The landlord, an easy man, was understood to be glad enough of her custom, and to be charging her a pretty tidy sum for it. It was learned that her car had broken down and the roads were too bad for it to be towed to Simon Begg’s garage, an establishment that advertised itself as “Simmy-Dick’s Service Station.” It was situated at Yowford, a mile beyond East Mardian, and was believed to be doing not too well. It was common knowledge that Simon Begg wanted to convert Copse Forge into a garage and that the Guiser wouldn’t hear of it.

Evening practices continued in the barn. In the bedrooms of the pub the thumping boots, jingling bells and tripping insistences of the fiddle could be clearly heard. Mrs. Bünz had developed a strong vein of cunning. She would linger in the bar-parlour, sip her cider and write her voluminous diary. The thumps and the scraps of fiddling would tantalize her almost beyond endurance. She would wait for at least ten minutes and then stifle a yawn, excuse herself and ostensibly go upstairs to bed. She had, however, discovered a backstairs by which, a few minutes later, she would secretly descend, a perfect mountain of hand-weaving, and let herself out by a side door into a yard. From here a terribly slippery brick path led directly to the near end of the barn which the landlord used as a storeroom.