Seven Days in New Crete (Penguin Modern Classics) (23 page)

I glared at Sally. ‘You faggot!’ I said between my teeth.

‘I’m sorry you didn’t manage to defend your virtue any longer, my sweet!’

She shut the door in my face and bolted it after her. If See-a-Bird had not happened to come by at that moment, I think I should have run at it with my shoulder, broken in and scragged her. But there he stood beckoning, his gentle, sheep-like face turned appealingly to me, his whole body sagging.

‘What’s wrong now, old chap?’ I asked, following him into the sitting-room.

‘News has just come from the barber-shop: about two fresh graves by the waterfall at Zapmor. It’s thought…’

His voice failed him and he slumped down on the sofa.

‘I’m too old to face these trials much longer,’ he whispered. ‘We were such a happy family until three or four days ago –’

‘I hope you don’t mean to imply that I’ve disturbed the peace? I didn’t ask to be evoked…’

He smiled sorrowfully. ‘No, Edward, it’s not you, but what you have brought with you.’

‘You mean the brutch of Erica Turner?’

‘I do, indeed. Sally has told me about the obscene metal case found in Sapphire’s cupboard.’

‘Then allow me to correct you. I did not bring Erica with me. She’s been living here for years. She told me so herself.’

‘That cannot be true: we should have known of her presence long before this. She must have come with you, clinging to your hair. And now, it seems, a second brutch from your epoch is wandering about, the woman in the yellow-and-black skirt, who you say is your wife.’

‘Sally can explain that apparition, if you ask her. She created it herself, for reasons best known to herself.’

‘But Sally’s job is to lay brutches, not to create them.’

‘I entirely agree, and because I see that you still trust Sally, I refrain from comment.’

‘Why, of course I trust Sally. This is our age, not yours. We all trust one another and expect to be trusted in return.’

‘I hope the day keeps fine for you.’

‘Eh?’

‘My dear See-a-Bird, may I give you a piece of friendly advice?’

‘Please do.’

‘It’s this: I advise you to go to your room, collect your bits and pieces, and then report at once to whoever officiates on occasions of this sort, and announce your intention of becoming an elder. You’re old enough to qualify, surely? Good. Things in this house are bound to grow more and more confusing from now on, I suppose until I’m returned to my epoch, and then for a long time afterwards. Wriggle out from under the trouble while you still can. You’ll be perfectly happy in a nonsense house, where you need take nothing seriously, and where nobody outside will take you seriously.’

‘Oh, but, Edward, my dear friend…’

‘You mean that you don’t want to enter the local institution for fear of running up against Erica? No, See-a-Bird, you needn’t be afraid. Erica is both everywhere and nowhere. You’ll be as safe from her there as at the other end of the world; or as unsafe.’

‘Who is she then?’

‘Someone whom you know very well.’ For as I spoke I realized that Erica had not been an
idolon
of the same sort as the false Antonia, not, in fact, Sally at her tricks again. The cigarette case, which Sapphire had found in her cupboard while I was away in Sanjon, was concrete proof of that. No: behind Erica loomed a more powerful magic than any Sally could command – the magic of the incarnate Goddess herself, in whom, absurd though it may sound, I was bound to believe by the logic of my recent experiences.

See-a-Bird hesitated. Then he returned to the subject of the graves. He asked me timorously: ‘Is it true about the grave… that Fig-bread won’t be returning to this house?’

‘Such queer things have been happening here lately that I wouldn’t like to make a prophecy about his return. If I could be evoked from the remote past, I don’t see why Fig-bread can’t be evoked from the recent past.’

‘He is dead, then? And you buried him?’ He looked ghastly.

‘Yes, Sally asked me to dig both graves. The larger one contains his horse. The horse had turned on him and savaged him. Afterwards it felt conscience-stricken and brought Sally to the scene of the murder. She destroyed it. Then various other things happened. In the end two lovers spread their cloaks over Fig-bread’s grave.’

He cheered up a little. ‘Ah, then the horse was the murderer, after all. Mari be praised! A rumour was going around that Fig-bread had been struck a blow by a Zapmor man whom he was trying to separate from an opponent and that he died of his injuries. Now I understand everything. When you tried to take the short cut home across the water-meadows he must have ridden to head you off from the sacred grove, and accidentally disturbed the crane in her meditations. Involuntary trespass is always punished by a violent death and the Goddess has before now made a horse the instrument of her vengeance. Yet his death was an honourable one; love between man and man has not been broken, and Fig-bread’s name may still shine in the records. He sinned with good intention.’

I did not care to undeceive him. ‘You should have warned me about the crane,’ I said.

He was going into the garden to break the news to Starfish when he stopped with his hand on the door knob. ‘But, Edward, I implore you to trust Sally. Your lack of love towards her has caused us all great pain.’

‘Lack of love!’ I exclaimed. ‘That’s rich! It may interest you to know that last night Sally honoured me by offering me the rights of fatherhood, and that our love has now been consummated.’

‘So it was you?’

‘What do you mean by “So it was you”?’

‘But I thought that you and Sapphire had a lovers’ understanding?’

‘That’s right. If Sapphire had been about, things would have taken a different turn.’

He came back miserably to the sofa. ‘I think that, after all, I shall take your advice and apply for elderhood,’ he muttered.

‘What’s wrong now?’ I asked.

‘Starfish is deeply in love with Sally, and I know, as truly as I know anything, that this further blow will wound him to the heart.’

‘You mean that he’ll be jealous of me?’

‘No, it isn’t that. He wasn’t jealous of Fig-bread when Sally invited him to her bed last Friday. Poets are never jealous. But he’ll be deeply mortified, feeling that he, not you, should have been invited to share her cloak on his brother’s grave.’

I could not correct this slight misapprehension without saying more than I intended. ‘That’s exactly what I tried to make Sally see,’ I growled as I put on my hat.

‘Where are you going now?’ he asked.

‘I’m going to ride to Dunrena and find Sapphire. The situation here is becoming impossibly complicated.’

‘And when you’ve found her?’

‘Then I’ll warn her never to come back, not even to collect her belongings. The servants can see to all that. I’m not coming back either. I’m sticking to Sapphire.’

‘But that sounds as though you didn’t love Sally after all – as though you… I fail to understand.’

‘Don’t try to understand. You’re completely out of your depth. Don’t even try to explain things to Starfish – Sally will do that. Get your things together and clear out as soon as possible. Leave these two alone here to work things out as best they can.’

I went to the stables and called a groom. ‘Saddle me a horse and get someone to fill my saddle-bags with food and drink for two days.’

When the groom came back from the kitchen, he asked: ‘Do you think, Sir, the Witch will be exercising the Nymph’s mare this morning?’

‘What? Has Sapphire gone off on foot?’

‘I suppose so, Sir; I was not about when she left. She didn’t take the mare out yesterday either; the beast is getting fretful.’

‘But the Witch told me distinctly that she had ridden off to Court.’

‘You must have misheard her, Sir.’

This was bad. It looked as if Sapphire meant, after all, to turn commoner, or kill herself: as if Sally had persuaded her to break that promise to me. I told the groom: ‘I’ll take the mare with me. I can manage the two of them.’

‘Will a headstall be enough?’

‘No, put a saddle on her.’

A window opened above us. I could feel Sally’s eyes piercing my back, but I did not look up.

A mile down the road I saw the Interpreter sitting on a stile, and stopped to pass the time of day. Near him stood a little old man with a face like a wizened apple, who eyed me shrewdly.

‘This is your learned colleague Quant, I presume?’ I asked in English. (His name, by the way, meant ‘How Much?’ but I shall always think of him as Quant.)

He spoke for himself. ‘Yes, that’s who I am, Mr Venn-Thomas, and I’m delighted to meet you. Mallet-head here has been sending in detailed reports on your English vocabulary and syntax, which have cleared up many of our outstanding
cruces
. We’re most grateful to you for your help.

Have you a moment to spare, by the way?’

‘Not for a discussion of anomalous past participles, I fear. I’m going off to Dunrena to find my friend Sapphire.’

‘Yes, I recognize her mare. Do you know anyone at Court?’

‘Not a soul.’

‘Is it even certain that she has gone there?’

‘No, not altogether. Can you give me any news of her since she left home?’

‘I can. She came straight to me for advice.’

A New Cretan woman magician going to a man-recorder for advice! But the Interpreter interposed, beaming with admiration: ‘Sacred parentage exists between him and her, i.e. he is her mother’s brother. But,
ceteris paribus
, everyone comes to my colleague Quant for advice, because he is the most practical of men, and also he is the most sympathetic.’

Quant winked at me, almost imperceptibly; but as the first wink I had been given in New Crete it startled me. It implied a secret from which his colleague was excluded, and I recognized this as something thoroughly un-Cretan: since my arrival everyone had been impressing on me that the cornerstone of society was perfect frankness between man and man.

‘Hullo!’ I said to myself, ‘here’s a fellow-human at last!’

‘Well,’ I told Quant, ‘if I can’t be sure of finding Sapphire at Dunrena, it would be stupid to take her horse there. I’ll tell you what: shall we sit down somewhere and settle the Late Christian inflexions of irregular and defective Old English verbs?’

‘Capital! By all means.’ Quant turned to the Interpreter: ‘Cut along now, or you’ll be late.’

‘Are you sure that I can be of no further service, my dear?’ the Interpreter pleaded.

‘Your duty lies in the concert room,’ said Quant with decision. ‘I should never forgive myself if I thought that you had held up the performance for my sake.’ Turning to me again, he explained: ‘My colleague Mallet-head plays the oboe. He plays it correctly and dispassionately. However, he’s a superb croquet-player, and in croquet those are the qualities that win matches.’

The Interpreter took his leave, smiling happily: it was clear that he had missed the critical force of Quant’s ‘however’.

‘Sapphire’s not gone to Dunrena,’ said Quant, when we were alone.

‘She’s not even left the village – I was to tell you so privately. You’ll not be needing either of those horses. Why not take them up the side of that wood and through the gate into the paddock beyond, unsaddle them, and then come back here?’

I did as he suggested. The paddock contained a set of hurdles for jumping-practice and I left the horses going faultlessly round the course together, whinnying for pleasure at the turns. Then Quant and I crossed the road by the stile and struck across country until we came to a small weatherboarded hut in a quince-orchard.

‘We can talk here undisturbed,’ he said, pushing open the door, ‘and I don’t mean about past participles.’

The hut was furnished with a table, two chairs, a charcoal stove and a bunk.

‘Make yourself at home,’ he added, sitting down.

‘Whose place is this?’ I asked.

‘It’s a painters’ hut; that’s why it’s in a quince-orchard.’

‘I don’t see the connexion.’

‘Quinces are sacred to Mari, who inspires our painters of magical pictures. As you may know, we have two kinds of painting, the magical and the popular. The commons paint their house-signs and decorate their fire-boards and chests with flowers, fruit and animals, or with lively illustrations of barber-shop ballads; but that’s about all. No, they aren’t allowed to paint portraits of living people; not even magicians may do that, for fear of bringing ill-luck. The magical painting is done in quince-huts. Colours, brushes and boards are on the shelf above your head, if you feel inspired.’

‘I won’t; but tell me about magical painting.’

‘It’s a way of consulting the Goddess. The magician paints a picture on a mythical subject, and when it’s done the answer to the problem, whatever it was, is found on the board.’

‘What sort of a problem?’

‘Every sort. It may be diagnostic: for example the cause and cure of an epidemic. Or it may be about love. Or about some question of public morality. I’ll give you a simple instance. A few years ago, a body was found in a peat-marsh, well-preserved and wearing a waistcoat with gold buttons, one of which was missing. There was a bottle in his pocket, also a snuff-box. The buttons were made from coins, but the finder asked permission to wear them. He claimed that they had long been converted from money into buttons and that, since they were struck by hand, they were not against custom. The problem was referred to a council of magicians and one entire morning its fifteen members sat staring at the buttons, but not one of them felt inspired to say a word. At last Bee-flight – who is the mother of See-a-Bird’s children and an elder now – stood up. “Perhaps the quince-trees have a message for us,” she said. The others then went out into the garden and played cambeluk; it was a Thursday.’

‘What’s cambeluk?’

‘A game not unlike chess or draughts for two players, played with nine pieces a side – eight commoners and a captain: you’ll have to learn it. Bee-flight went off at once to this very hut, said a prayer to Mari, and got down to work. She painted the legend of Nimuë, Dobeis and the golden wheels and when she had come out of her trance, she tied the board behind her and rode home. She waited until the cambeluk tourney was finished, because we never interrupt a game unless in an emergency, and the council reassembled to look at the picture. There stood Nimuë, her hand poised in the act of killing Dobeis, and in the background was a liquor shop. The man in the waistcoat, his face bloated with drink, had cut off one of the buttons and was handing it over the counter with his left hand, while with the other he reached for a bottle. From the shop a path wound across a marsh, and a raven hovered in the sky. That, of course, was decisive. Clearly, the buttons had served as money and one of them had caused the man’s death – he had got drunk on his way home and the marsh had swallowed him up.’