Three-Cornered Halo

by Christianna Brand

  The Grand Duke waited until the Mass was technically over; and then, not waiting for the Dismissal, rose to his splendid height, put out his hand to the Grand Duchess and led her slowly out—slowly, magnificently, deliberately pacing, not across the altar front and to the side door as is the Grand Ducal custom, but straight down through the body of the church, the people falling back, awed and amazed, to let them pass: down the long nave, out through the great West door and on to the cathedral steps. His carriage, elaborately carved and gilded, had been hastily brought round and he handed La Bellissima in. El Gerente de Politio shouted an order, his men stamped and shuffled their dirty white gym-shoes, slapped silver-chased blunderbusses with filthy brown hands. The carriage drove off. Up at the High Altar, the Mass went quietly on to its conclusion. Alone before Juanita’s glass coffin, the Arcivescovo knelt with outstretched arm, and prepared for the terror to come.

  * In the old days of humility before God, it had been the tradition for the Juanese Grand Dukes to serve as altar boys at Mass. With the steady maintainence of their hereditary immensity, however, and the consequent inconvenience of having them lumbering about, ill-disciplined, in the circumscribed space of the sanctuary before the altar, the duties whittled down to a single offering of incense immediately prior to the reading of the Gospel, before the Canon of the Mass. The thurible, a treasure preserved for this purpose alone, is a thing of remarkable beauty attributed to Cellini and the pious loot of El Pirata himself; handed down from generation to generation and exclusively in the charge of the current Arcivescovo, whose care the cathedral is.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE vagaries of the British on (conducted) tour have been described elsewhere. ‘Gay ones, jolly ones, vulgar ones; refined ones looking down upon the jolly ones and hoping they wouldn’t shame them by whipping out funny hats.… Easy-going ones. Complaining ones. Experienced ones. Robust ones who drank Water out of taps and confounded the experienced ones by not going down with bouts of dysentery, anxious ones who refused all shell-fish, raw fruit and unbottled beverages and went down with dysentery before they had even started; neurotic ones, turning pale together at the sight of heaped dishes of death-dealing green figs and peaches, hearty ones calling loudly for lo nachurelle and assuring one another that a smattering of French would take one all over the world.… Pretty ones, plain ones, downright repellent ones.…’

  The Major’s grouppa, aboard the Bellomare’s privately hired vaporetto, formed a fairly representative collection. They stood about in chatty little groups, for all the world, cried Mr Cecil, like the Noyades, bound together in bundles and spinning down the Loire to Nantes: only they were chugging, with much steaming and hooting, across the five-mile wide stretch from San Juan to the satellite island of Tenebros. There was a ponderous lady novelist in search of a setting for yet another volume of childhood dark doings and subsequent in-growing remorse: all written in language so obscure as to force even the most literate to read only between the lines. There were the inevitable half dozen widows whose husbands had overworked themselves to a premature death, apparently for no reason than to enable their relicts to console their loss with expensive trips abroad. There was the gentleman who, having cheerfully invested two hundred pounds in this outing of pleasure, now made himself miserable night and day, lest he be cheated out of a penny’s worth (he had a curious walk, the feet straddled widely apart and was known to the group as Fuddyduddy); and there were two ladies suffering from stomach trouble who always did suffer from stomach trouble when they went abroad but who went abroad religiously, year after year, and proudly boasted the capitals they had been sick in; and a spinster aunt with her handsome niece whose chances of marriage she was, from some obscure reasons of jealousy, though devoted to the niece, resolutely destroying: Grim and Gruff they were named—Mr Cecil had met them on a previous Odyssey Tour. And there were the Bilsons.

  Mr and Mrs Bilson were known as the Back-Homes. He was a builder, back home in California, and they were on their first trip to the beautiful continent of Europe; but displeased to find so little poverty there, for it was well known that Europe was supported entirely by U.S. dollars and they could not approve the general air of well-being and bonhomie. The Major, ever anxious to oblige, was always on the lookout for a barefoot child for them but those they saw looked depressingly as if they went without shoes because they didn’t like shoes. Mrs Bilson was pledged to give a lecture to her Women’s Club back home and exercised exclusively with the collection of data for this assignment; Mr Bilson had not yet recovered from the lack of initiative shown by the Italians in the matter of the leaning tower of Pisa. They were happy, however, in the knowledge that everything they saw in the way of Art was either faked or frankly a copy, the real stuff being all back home in the U.S., centred largely upon the Forest Lawns Cemetery, California. They were tactful and courteous about it; but absolutely firm.

  The hotel had put up a picnic lunch for its party and all was madly gay. Mr. Cecil, dressed to the nines in Juanese costume (modified to suit in the workrooms of Christophe et Cie.) was the very spirit of fiesta, darting from one group to another, retailing his joke about the eight-nooser, trying out his Restorationese before its London debut. The Major also was in splendid form, surrounded by his grouppa, the admiration of the six widows in his brass-buttoned blazer and a curious little round hat made of stitched white linen. He had intended locking himself into the ship’s excusado and hurriedly mugging up bits about Tenebrossa; but this proving impracticable, for the single apartment was available to ladies and gentlemen alike and not very agreeable to either, had contented himself with a couple of stiff Juanellos and a Quiet Talk with Hat who was apt to interrupt without ceremony. Thus fortified, he gathered his party about him—others might listen-in if they wished to, the Major was entirely complacent—and, balancing himself on a bollard above the heads of the crowd, began a little speech. “H’rm, h’rm. Few-words-’bout-today’s-expedition. Island of Tenebrossa, small island, five miles off San Juan el Pirata. Old custom, two hundred years old—go there, hang a lot of convicts: dare say you’ve read it all up in your guide-books? And the custom goes on to this day. They don’t really hang the fellers now,” added the Major reassuringly, respectful of the delicate nerves of the memsahibs. “Got a sort of harness now, worn round their middles, dangle up there quite comfy, just pretending. Jump about a bit, though, as though they were hanging. Disagreeable business, hanging.…”

  “Back home in the States …”

  “… nearly as disagreeable as electrocution, I wouldn’t be surprised,” said the Major, neatly. But it had thrown him. “Er—where was I?”

  “You were going to explain about the hoods,” suggested Miss Cockrill in a voice of silk.

  “Ah, yes, hoods. These chaps brought over here by a special vaporetto—Vaporetto of Death, it’s called: say nine of ’em. All in hoods and sort of nightgowns; you know, à la Kloo Klux Clan. Nobody knowing who was who. Thing is, one of ’em was going to get off, only no one knew which—feller didn’t know, himself. Forced to do a dance, just sort of shuffling around, you know: and shuffling’s the word, because that’s just what they were doing, shuffling themselves like a pack of cards and the other fellers, the hangmen fellers, just strung up the next that came along and the next.… Bets going on like billy-ho, down in the arena below the hanging rock—who’ll get away with it? and relatives hopping like sandfleas, of course, as each one went up, wondering, Is that our Willie? Finally—say nine fellers, like I said: eight hanging there, one left. Poor chap wearing the hood and all that, still didn’t know what was happening: suddenly got hold of, shoved into a coffin, coffin fastened down, stood on end under the gallows—opened, hood pulled off, feller ‘rose from the dead.’ General sentiment of Don’t do it again, and he got off scot free. If,” said the Major with a rare moment of sentience, “you can call it scot free.”

  A boy came round, piping mellifluously, with a tray of wares: limonado, Juanello, carafes of the filthy red win
e made on the island which, to the amazement of the native, the touristi were apparently willing to pay for and drink; and snacks—biscotti and toasti, and pizzi of fresh-baked dough strewn with anchovy and herbs and tomato, the hot cheese bubbling over all. There was a sharp argument with Fuddy-duddy who thought the hotel should be paying out for this refreshment, ending as usual in the Major diving a hand into his own tight pockets with mutterings about anything-for-peace.… Fuddyduddy, having won his point and made everyone unhappy and embarrassed, then said he didn’t want any, anyway, it was the principle. Mr Bilson said that back home they would just drop into a drug-store and everything there would be covered in cellophane. Mrs Bilson made a note in her large black book, ‘Isl. Tennerbrozzer, people hung in old days, sandwiches on boat, flies.’ The woman novelist looked searchingly into the limpid eyes of the little boy carrying the tray. Miss Cockrill said that now perhaps Major Bull could go on?

  “But that’s all,” said Major Bull.

  “What about the dances?”

  “Oh, well, yes, the dances.” He gave her a look of reproach. “Yes. Well. Lot of dancing on the island. Everyone dead keen.”

  “I was reading last night,” said Miss Cockrill in a loud cool, determined voice, “that nowadays dances commemorate all these old customs the Major has described to us. The young people dress up and execute them; like our Morris dancing, for example—er—back home. There is a special dance from the landing-place to the rock, the ‘Dance to the Gallows’…”

  “Come Haste to the Hanging,” suggested Mr Cecil.

  Miss Cockrill bent on him a humorously appreciative eye. “Exactly. And then, of course, there’s the Shuffling Dance as the Major has called it.” She paused, looking at their bear-leader as though, so far prompted, he surely might take up the cue.

  Major Bull did not fail her. “By Jove, yes. And the ‘Hanging Dance.’ Fellers jigging about in the air, you know, held up by these belts like I told you.…”

  “Meanwhile, individual groups are doing dances on their own: supposed to be relatives of the different men.”

  “Yes, by Jove, and then feller gets up out of the coffin and he does a dance. Relief you know. And then they all dance, everyone joins in, pleased as punch.” Pleased as punch himself after this dispensation of cultural knowledge, the Major climbed down from his bollard, adjusted the round linen cap and stumped off in pursuit of the boy with the drinks. The lady novelist had him pinned against a stanchion and was putting him through a third degree examination as to his feelings for his father. As the small boy, being an orphan, kept reiterating only ‘Innocento!’ which she took to mean that they had been innocent (most disappointing!), they were not getting on very fast. The Major bought a drink for himself and offered one to Gruff who happened to be standing by; but she refused it brusquely—she could just about manage to buy her own drinks, she said, and was warmly applauded by Aunt Grim, who overheard all. “Jolly good! Old brute, I suppose he’s After You,” said Grim. All men were beasts.

  Tenebrossa is so called because of the darkness which envelopes, or long ago enveloped, the victims of the gallows; for the hoods were as blindfolding to the wearers as impenetrable to spectators. The island was doubtless chosen originally as being perfect for the purpose of a spectacle. Composed largely of rock, its western side is lightly wooded with oleander and wild olive, but to the south-east it is bare as the mountains of the moon, hollowed out into a natural amphitheatre with only one great, flat rock jutting out into the arena. On this the old gallows still gauntly stand: a line of stout upright posts, once vividly decorated; with eight metal pulleys of antique design through which a rope could be jerked by hand, leaving the victim to strangle slowly, dancing as he died. The whole, on fiesta day, is gaily beflagged and beflowered as in days of yore, a carpet of petals, intricately patterned, leads from the landing stage to El Exaltida’s private pavilion; every hummock is claimed as a picnic table, bright cloths are spread and soon piled high with colour—brown bread, red wine, pimientos scarlet and green, pale yellow folded omelettes, purple grapes. The women have abandoned the black cloaks and veils of the morning and both sexes in their fiesta costume are bright as humming birds: and indeed, the chatter and colour would outmatch the most crowded of tropical aviaries.

  There is no such thing on the Domenica di Boia, as reserving a picnic pitch; but the Diretore of the hotel, by dint of sending a dozen of the heavier-built members of his staff, had held off all invaders of a site in the arena chosen by himself, and by one o’clock the party had taken possession; the grouppa (with Miss Cockrill, Winsome and Mr Cecil associate members) keeping themselves to themselves, the rest of the hotel guests as rigorously excluding them. At two o’clock, El Exaltida arrived.

  The grand ducal barge drew up at the landing stage, resplendent in white and gold, with a gay, striped awning, and at once, as though a great flock of coloured birds arose from the ground, everybody stood up. After the sermon that morning, there was a great craning of necks to see if La Bellissima had come: and she was there, walking remote and cool, a little behind her husband with a grave face and downcast eyes. The Grand Duke was in fiesta dress: black knee-breeches, tremendously embroidered down the outside of the thigh, silk stockings, buckled shoes, and the great black cloak, the right corner taken up and thrown across the chest and over the left shoulder. La Bellissima too wore the national dress, adapted like Mr Cecil’s in sophisticate circles: narrow, pale green satin embroidered all over with little white flowers, a veil of embroidered net hanging over her head and falling in two straight panels in front, to the hem of her dress. Behind them crept El Exaltida’s secretary, a little grey jackal of a man, nicknamed by the Grand Duke ‘Tabaqui’ and so called throughout the island, though nobody else there had ever read any Kipling. The little French friends wriggled and giggled their way behind them, in anything but Juanese garb. In the rear of the procession came the court dignitaries, and El Patriarca in his white serge soutane, blessing everyone, right, left and centre with a fine nonchalance as he passed; and El Obispo (but more moderately), doing the same. Of El Arcivescovo, there was no sign.

  El Gerente was in splendid form that afternoon, dashing hither and thither in the official gym. shoes, cloak flying, sabre rattling, barking out orders to the confusion of all. Tomaso di Goya had come ashore with him but made no attempt to follow in his erratic wake, strolling about instead, looking Byronic, surrounded by a group of anarchistic young men, all talking eagerly but with a determined air of secrecy. He wore fiesta dress, brightly embroidered, but his pale face with the long nose and sharp black eyes was sombre and intent. When he saw Miss Cockrill and Winsome, however, he allowed it to brighten and, dismissing his followers, came towards them, bowing and hand-kissing with a wealth of graceful flourishes. Miss Cockrill asked after the snuffboxes.

  Winsome had not kept a tentative appointment she had made with Tomaso di Goya on the previous evening. Awaking ill at ease in body and mind, she had in the cold light of morning viewed with something approaching horror the gay extravagances of the night before; and an all too rewarding search through Vol. I., for an undertaking, in Juanita’s authentic, thin, sloping, purple hand, to send up a cloud of rosy incense on the forthcoming Fiesta di San Juan—which is also the national Day of Roses—did absolutely nothing to allay her anxiety. She sent round to the Joyeria a casual note: she had greatly enjoyed all their fun and nonsense (tremendously underlined), but perhaps a joke could go too far, and now they really mustn’t be naughty any more! Meanwhile, her cousin insisted (most tiresomely!) upon some expedition, so she wouldn’t be free, after all, to see the Cathedral treasures he had kindly offered to show her.… In pursuance of this resolution she had forced Cousin Hat to a day of mortification in the San Juan Museum, poring with passionate intensity over a vast number of objects of no virtue whatsoever except that they occupied her time; and on the evening ramble through the town, kept to Major Bull’s side with so firm a resolution as to make that great lover for the first time wonde
r whether, by any chance … But no, no. One or two of the older young things at the Heronsford tennis club made sheeps’ eyes at him still, it was true; and several of the unattached ladies in his party had been flatteringly kind. But … An old buffer like him, grown white (not to mention red) in the service of his country, overseas.… It was impossible. And besides there was Hat.

  Miss Cockrill, unaware of the inner uncertainties of her companions, meanwhile pursued idly the matter of the snuff-boxes. “Alas, Senora—who shall buy!” Unloaded now, and unpacked, they were stacked away, thousands of tiny crystal boxes crowding out all the storage place in his little shop; and no interest had been shown in the one in the window, none at all, though it had been priced at a figure hardly covering its cost, let alone the cost of the thousands that must remain unsold: no interest even from the touristi, even though for once they would really have been getting a bargain, even though the legend SMUGLED had been doubled in size, even though the inscription ‘Mad in San Juan’ had been copied out in five different languages on pieces of cardboard, and dotted all about. The end of the season and his profits all gone in this one undertaking.… “Alas, Senora—no buone, my poor snuff-boxes.” He produced one, however, from his pocket, done up in a twist of tissue paper. “But I have brought one—for the Senorita.” He handed it to Winsome looking into her face with limpid eyes.