Brian Aldiss: Greybeard

“Stay where you are,” Pitt said from the door. He had an arrow notched at his bow and aimed at Jingadangelow. His two remaining teeth gleamed behind the feathered Right. Charley stood by him, watching the corridor with his knife in his hand. “If anyone moves out of turn, I’ll shoot your Master without one second’s hesitation.”

“Get hold of their guns, Martha,” Pitt advised. “You okay, Greybeard? What do we do now?”

Jingadangelow’s henchmen showed no disposition to fight. Greybeard took their two revolvers from Martha and put them into his pockets. He dabbed his cheek on his sleeve.

“We’ve no quarrel with these people,” he said, “if they are prepared to let us alone. We will go on to Hagbourne and leave them there. It’s doubtful if we shall ever meet them again.”

“Oh, you can’t let them go like that!” Pitt exclaimed. “Look what a chance you’re passing up. Here’s our opportunity to get hold of a perfectly good boat. We can ditch this mouldy crew at the nearest bit of bank. Power!”

“We can’t do that, Jeff. We’re getting too old to turn pirate,” Martha said.

“I felt the power coming back to me, just as when I was a young man,” Pitt said, looking at no one.

“Standing there with my bow, I suddenly knew I could kill a man again. Gor… It’s a miracle…”

They looked at him without understanding.

Greybeard said, “Let’s be practical. We could not manage this ship. Nor could we get it out of the Sea of

Barks.”

“Martha’s right,” Charley said. “We’ve no moral right to pinch their boat, scoundrels though they may be.”

Jingadangelow straightened himself up and adjusted his toga. “If you’ve all finished arguing, kindly leave my cabin. I must remind you that this room is private and sacred. There will be no more trouble, I can assure you of that.”

As they left, Martha saw a wild dark eye regarding them through a rent in the curtain over the far window.

When Hagbourne appeared late that afternoon, it emerged not out of the mist but from curtains of heavy rain, for the morning mist had been dispersed by a wind that brought showers with it. They died away as the steamer was secured along a stone quay, and the line of the Berkshire Downs rose behind the small town. The town Jingadangelow called his base appeared almost deserted. Only three ancient men were there to greet the steamer and help tie it up. The disembarkation that followed lent some life to the dreary scene.

Greybeard’s party detached their own boats warily from the steamer’s crew. Jingadangelow did not give the appearance of a fighting man. What they did not expect was the appearance of Becky, who came up as they were loading their belongings into the dinghy.

She set her head on one side and pointed her sharp nose up at Greybeard.

“The Master sent me to speak with you. He says you owe him some labour for the privilege of the tow he gave you.”

“We’d have done his work if he hadn’t attacked Greybeard,” Charley said. “That was attempted murder, that was. Those that worship false gods shall be damned for ever, Becky, so you better watch it.”

“You keep your tongue to yourself, Charley Samuels, afore you speak like that to a priestess of the Second Generation. I didn’t come to talk to you anyhow.” She turned her back pointedly on him and said to Greybeard, “The Master always carries true forgiveness in his heart. He bears you no malice, and would like to give you shelter for the night. There is a place he has empty that you could use. It’s his offer, not mine, or I wouldn’t be making it. To think you struggled with him, laying hand on his person, you did!”

“We don’t want his hospitality,” Martha said firmly. Greybeard turned to her and took her hands, and said over his shoulder to Becky, “Tell your Master we will be glad to accept the offer of shelter for the night. And see that we get someone with a civil tongue to take us to it.”

As she shuffled back up the gangplank, Greybeard said urgently to Martha, “We can’t just leave without finding out more about that young girl of Jingadangelow’s, where she comes from and what’s going to happen to her. The night looks stormy in any case. We are surely in no danger, and will be glad of dry billets. Let’s bide here.”

Martha arched what would, in a different lifetime, have been her eyebrows. “I admit I don’t understand the interest that untrustworthy rascal holds for you. The attractions of that girl, Chammoy, are altogether more obvious.”

“Don’t be a silly little woman,” he said gently.

“We will do as you wish.”

A flush spread from his face over the dome of his head. “Chammoy has no effect on me,” he said, and turned to instruct Pitt about the baggage.

The quarters that Jingadangelow offered them proved to be good. Hagbourne was an untidy ruin of drab twentieth-century houses, many of them council-built; but at one end of the town, in a section Jingadangelow had chosen for the use of himself and his disciples, were buildings and houses in an older, less anaemic tradition. Over the area, vegetation grew thick. Most of the rest of the place was besieged by plants, elder, dock, willow herb, sorrel, nettle, and the ubiquitous brambles. Beyond the town, the growth was of a different nature. The sheep that once cropped short the grass of the downland had long ago disappeared. Without the flocks to eat the seedlings of shrubs and trees, the ancient cover of beech tree and oak was returning, uprooting on its way the houses where the sheep-consumers had lived.

This vigorous young forest, still dripping from the recent rain, brushed against the stone walls of the barn to which the party was directed. The front and rear walls of the barn were, in fact, broken in, with the result that the floor was muddy. But a wooden stair led up to a small balcony, on to which two rooms opened, snug under a still effective roof. They had recently been lived in, and held the offer of a comfortable night. Pitt and Charley took one room, Martha and Greybeard the other.

They made a good meal of a pair of young ducks and some peas Martha had bought off one of the women on the boat, for the priestesses had proved not adverse to a haggle in their off-hours. A search for bugs revealed that they were unlikely to have company during the night; with this encouragement, they retired early to their room. Greybeard lit a lantern and he and Martha pulled off their shoes. She began to comb and brush her hair. He was pulling the barrel of his rifle through with a piece of cloth when he heard the wooden stairs creak.

He stood up quietly, slipping a cartridge into the breach and levelling the rifle at the door.

The intruder on the stairs evidently heard the click of the bolt, for the voice called, “Don’t shoot!”

Greybeard heard Pitt next door call out a challenge. “Who’s that out there, you devils?” he shouted. “I’ll shoot you dead!”

“Greybeard, it’s me — Jingadangelow! I wish to speak to you.”

Martha said, “Jingadangelow and not the Master!”

He extinguished their lantern and threw open the door. In the protracted twilight, Jingadangelow stood half-way up the stairs, a small lamp held above his head. Its light, slanting down, lit only his gleaming forehead and cheeks. Pitt and Charley came out on to the little balcony to look at him. “Don’t shoot, men. I am alone and mean you no harm. I only wish to speak to Greybeard. You may go to bed and sleep securely.”

“We’ll decide that for ourselves,” Pitt said, but his tone suggested he was mollified. “You saw earlier on that we’ll stand no nonsense from you.”

“I’ll handle him, Jeff,” Greybeard said. “You’d better come up, Jingadangelow.”