Three-Cornered Halo

by Christianna Brand

  “Impossible, my dear. Unthinkable. The stage is no life for a girl.”

  “Ah, if you would but have taken her last year, Innocenta!”

  “It would not have done, Pepita, she was too—was too …” Was too knock-kneed, poor child, thought Innocenta, whose kind heart had bled at having to turn her down. But the stage! “Perhaps, after all, when I get rid of Inez …”

  “It is too late now, her heart is set on it; and what’s more, I believe she has infected Manuela. Poor Guido, he is beside himself with anxiety.” Pepita looked over proudly to where the huge heap of the Gerente de Politio snored dreamlessly amongst his vexatious daughters. “But you, Innocenta—you do not look happy either.”

  Innocenta was not only not happy, she was seriously alarmed and she longed for a confidante. “If I tell you, Pepita, you will not repeat it to a soul? But then, you couldn’t—for your Guido also is involved.”

  “My Guido?”

  “Listen, Pepita. Half an hour ago, a messenger came for me: from—guess! But you never could guess. From the Grand Duke himself.”

  “Innocenta!”

  “I went to the pavilion. Imagine how I felt, Pepita! He was there with Tabaqui. He said nothing, just bowed his head.”

  “He never speaks, not to ordinary people like us.”

  “Tabaqui said that the Grand Duke wished me to send a girl to the palace; he would keep her there some time, some weeks perhaps. He asked who I would suggest. Well, you know, Pepita, I’d been thinking of letting Inez go. This seemed the opportunity. I suggested, ‘Inez Canillo.’ The Grand Duke wrote on a piece of paper. Tabaqui read it and said: ‘El Exaltida wants a well-behaved young woman, not such a one as Inez Canillo.’ Imagine, Pepita!—what these people know! They know everything.”

  “No wonder you said just now that you would get rid of Inez.”

  “Yes, and what a reference she will take with her!—dismissed because her deportment has been such as to attract the attention of El Exaltida himself. It’s in church, you know, they’ve seen her ogling the touristi.”

  “Well, so anyway, the Grand Duke would not have Inez?”

  “Exactly. And so … Pepita, what I did was innocent, I thought only of what girl I best could spare …”

  “Lorenna?”

  “Well, of course. It seemed to settle all my problems. And the Grand Duke agreed at once, he bowed his head—really Pepita, near-to he is magnificent!—and snapped his fingers and a guard came and I made my reverence and came away. Tabaqui said that he would arrange terms with me later and tell me when Lorenna would be wanted at palace; and meanwhile to send her back with the messenger.” She looked at her friend, her round face quite haggard with terror. “She has gone—it is too late to draw back; and now, Pepita, I realise what I have done.”

  Pepita looked blank.

  “Tomaso,” prompted Innocenta.

  “Tomaso di Goya? He will not like it, I suppose …”

  “Will not like it: he will be delighted with it. And so,” said Innocenta, heavy with direful significance, “will your Guido.”

  “My Guido? What has he to do with Lorenna?”

  “Say, rather, what has he to do with Tomaso di Goya? Ah, Pepita, you don’t hear Tomaso holding forth, evening after evening, in the salon, up at the Colombaia.…”

  “Certainly not,” said Pepita, primly.

  Not to mention your precious husband, thought Innocenta, nettled; but true to a strict code of etiquette, said nothing aloud. “And you know very well that your Guido and Tomaso di Goya are thick as thieves.”

  “They are together in a business deal.”

  “Business deal—nonsense!” said Innocenta. “That Tomaso is a firebrand of the very worst sort and he has your stupid husband on a piece of string. And Lorenna, too, silly girl, filling up her head with nonsense about taxes and tyranny and the rights of the people. The rights of the people! What rights have people got? To breathe, that’s all.”

  “And to eat and drink, Innocenta, and to be happy, to dance and to sing.…”

  “All this we may do if we work. Does the Grand Duke stop people from working?”

  The Grand Duke not infrequently stopped people from breathing but fortunately for the duration of this high political argument, the fact did not occur to either lady. “In any event, what has this to do with my Guido?”

  “Your Guido is plotting and scheming with Tomaso, day and night. The Joyeria is left to a boy to look after, El Gerente’s ships he idle at the quay, his men have nothing to occupy them but their police duties. And what,” said Innocenta darkly, “is the object of their plotting?” Her sweet round face screwed itself into an expression of angry foreboding, her bright eyes stared accusingly into the eyes of her friend. “It is my belief, Pepita, that Tomaso di Goya and your Guido are doing nothing less than plot the assassination of the Grand Duke.”

  Every vestige of colour drained from Pepita’s face. “The assassination …? Of the Grand …?” She looked round her in terror as though the very olives might suddenly sprout green ears and tongues and scuttle off piping out the news. “Per Dios, Innocenta, don’t speak such words out loud!”

  “I tell you, Pepita, it is true: a revolution.”

  “Innocenta, my Guido is Chief of the Police!”

  “Who more able to promote a revolution? He commands the only trained men in the island. Not,” said Innocenta, loftily, “that your Guido will promote the revolution or anything else, either. He will be permitted to assist; it is Tomaso di Goya who will lead, my dear, and place himself, when your Guido has done the work and taken the risks, in the Grand Duke’s place: and a fine ruler we shall have then, thanks to your Guido—Tomaso di Goya, a no-good malcontent whose mother was an unmarried gipsy from the mainland; descendant of a tuppeny painter on the run from Spain. But this Tomaso has a tongue, Pepita, they say even the Arcivescovo listens to him, with his talk of the good of the people and equal wealth.… And your Guido is under his thumb. And so, also,” said Innocenta, ready to faint at the recollection of it, “so, also, is Lorenna.”

  “Lorenna! At the palace …!”

  “Tomaso di Goya is plotting to assassinate the Grand Duke,” said Innocenta. “And Lorenna will do whatever Tomaso tells her. And I have recommended Lorenna to the Grand Duke.”

  Lorenna approached them, walking down softly through the twisted olive trees, under the misty veil of their silver leaves. She was very lovely, slender as a reed, her mouth like geranium petals, her eyes bright and dark as the eyes of all Juanese girls: her hair was pulled sleekly against her head and caught into a great knot at the nape of her neck, ringed with tiny red flowers. Innocenta started up and caught at her wrist. “It is arranged?”

  “Si, Senora.”

  No respite then. “You saw the Grand Duke himself?”

  “Yes. And Tabaqui. Tabaqui spoke. He said I should be some weeks at the palace. He said he would arrange things with you; but I also should be well paid. He said I should speak to no one of where I was going.” A great tear gathered, teetered, spilled over and rolled down a cheek of ivory. “Oh, Senora Innocenta—what will my Tomaso say?”

  Evidently no thought of playing Charlotte Corday had as yet, at any rate, penetrated Lorenna’s charming head; which also was of ivory, reputed solid right through. “If the Grand Duke has told you to tell no one …”

  “Of course I must tell Tomaso.”

  “But El Exaltida, himself …”

  “It was not El Exaltida himself, only Tabaqui. The Grand Duke said nothing. Or only at the end. It was very odd. He looked me up and down when I came in, he listened for a moment while I replied to Tabaqui; but after that he seemed not interested, he had a cat there and he was playing with it. The cat had a collar of pearls, Senora Innocenta, better than anything Tomaso has at the Joyeria … And then … Tabaqui called to the guard, the guard came back, Tabaqui stood up and said good-bye to me, and I made my reverence to the Grand Duke. And then the Grand Duke spoke at last, he said, ‘Your duties
will be light. You will be in attendance …’ I cannot have caught it aright, Senor Innocenta, it sounded as though he said, ‘on the Grand Duchess.’”

  “You certainly cannot have heard aright,” said Innocenta.

  “And then he said, ‘Arrivaderci,’ and a name. Not my name; not even a Juanese name. I’m not even sure it was a name, except for the way he said it. It sounded,” said Lorenna, as though he said, ‘Arrivaderci, Jane Seymour.’”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BY five o’clock the island was all alert again, the picnic sites reoccupied, bottles of limonado had been brought from the cool shade, there were baskets of sweetmeats, sugared chestnuts, almonds in honey, little cream cheeses set out on green fig leaves, to eat with little ginger cakes … The sun shone merrily overhead no longer oppressively hot, the rim of the arena was banked with oleander, silver and pink and green. El Exaltida came out from his pavilion with La Bellissima at his side, both in their gay fiesta dress, two magical figures removed from the cares of everyday man: the people waved and cheered and they bowed unsmilingly back. There was a faint, faraway hooting, a drift of music across the dancing waters of the Mediterranean; and, black as a threat, a blot of doom between blue sea and blue sky, the Vaporetto de Muerte hove into sight. The fun had begun.

  The Vaporetto de Muerte plies, in the ordinary way, between Puerto de Barrequitas and the mainland of Italy where the Juanese burying grounds are. In the long ago days, when a couple of B-class galleons could starve out the island in as many weeks, every inch of the land on San Juan el Pirata was of value, and land which could be dug to the depth of a grave, of incalculable worth. Lacking space for a burial site, therefore, San Juan had applied to Italy for rental in perpetuity of a suitable patch, northof Piombino; and this being refused, resorted with immediate success to a delicate piece of blackmail: having happily discovered a current which could be relied upon to deposit a corpse, in not less than five days from its launching, at the very spot selected for the cemetery. The necessity of transporting the dead by sea has resulted in the Vaporetto de Muerte, the Ship of Death; which, splendid with black plumes and bunting and hung all about with elaborately beaded wreaths, toots its way back and forth from the mainland upon this errand alone. On the Hangman’s Sabbath, however, it is pressed into service, its resident band lugubriously playing, as conveyance for the ‘condemned.’

  If El Gerente de Politio was indeed anxious for the assassination of the Grand Duke, he was at least assiduous to prevent its marring the pleasures of that day. His men, resplendent in blue cloaks and flat, black, circular hats, sped hither and thither in their dirty sand-shoes, administering the law with the butts of their silver-chased rifles, which could slap or jab according to how they were presented. By this means, a broad lane was formed from the landing-stage to the gallows and along this, dreadfully dancing, the nine hooded men and their gaolers, masked, made their way. They were covered, as the Major had promised, from head to foot in black, with cone-shaped hoods dropped over their heads, their hands manacled with chains so heavy that they could barely lift them in the dance. The dances themselves were impromptu, the dancers choosing steps and movements indicative of reluctance to approach the gibbets, and terror at approaching dissolution, but otherwise improvising. The little band ground out a funeral dirge of desolate tunelessness that mingled with the moans and groans of the victims, the laughter of the spectators. The crowd was delighted, shouting and clapping, helping on the blinded and stumbling felons with thumps on the back or ticklings of their chained, bare feet with pieces of stick or ferrules of parasols. In the body of the arena, the ‘relatives’ of the condemned, danced in sympathy at the approach of their loved ones, feigning acute distress. From the gallows, nine nooses spelled out a welcome, dangling from their scarred old posts in the gentle breeze.

  Clustered about the Major, the touristi looked on, half-appalled, half-entertained. Not so long ago, these men would have been real people, real felons, really convicted, on their way to abominable death; one could not help wondering if the fun then had been any less whole-hearted; and doubting that it had. The Major, urged on by Miss Cockrill, barked out a running commentary on events. “Climbing up to the rock now. Group of ‘relatives’ trying to drag one feller back. ‘Nother old chap—can’t make it—guards prodding him on. Wonder what he’s supposed to have done?” ruminated Major Bull: the crimes for which death was—indeed, still is—the penalty on the island of San Juan, are many and various and are listed, as the Major had discovered to his great delight, in a large book in the museum which makes delicious, though gruesome, reading. “‘Shuffling dance’ now. Choosing which to hang first. Just listen to the next of kin!”

  From the marble terrace of their pavilion, the Grand Duke and Duchess looked down, indifferently. On the top of the gallows rock, the guards chased their half-blinded victims in a sort of a grand chain of ordered pursuit; at the foot of the rock, little bands of people danced their despair, alternately howling with pretended grief or uncontrollable laughter, as each outdid the other in extremes of sensibility. A victim was chosen, capered his last regrets beneath the dangling noose, was suddenly hauled up high and there danced the air to the delighted screams of the audience till at last, exhausted, he subsided with a few dying jerks and hung, turning gently in the breeze, his head lolling sideways in a parody of death. A second victim was selected and a third and a fourth. Any tedium of repetition was relieved by the variety and vigour of the rope-end dances, the actors being accorded prizes dependent on the public acclamation their efforts received. Had Major Bull been consulted, all would have been equally rewarded: his applause was deafening. “Really, Dick!” said Miss Cockrill, divided between disgust and laughter. Winsome Foley turned away her head and thought upon the life to come.

  The last but one of the malefactors danced himself to death and hung with his fellows, his head lolling on his shoulder, softly turning from side to side in unison with them. The band ceased abruptly to play; a hush fell on the multitude standing staring up at the rock where, in the sudden silence, the masked guard closed in upon the one remaining figure, standing solitary, waiting. Blinded, half-deafened by the enveloping hood, he was thrust into a wooden coffin and the lid closed. In an absolute soundlessness, the coffin was lifted to the shoulders of the guards; beneath the swinging figures of the dead, the living dead was paraded at funeral pace. A violin played a single note, piercing and terrible, wailing forth into the sunlit air, and the note was taken up by a thousand voices in a keening hum of lamentation. In the midst of life, we are in death: in the midst of jubilation, a host of people in a mounting of mass hysteria no less acute for its annual repetition, were suddenly made aware that what they knew quite well to be untrue, was true; that what they knew to be a farce, was terrible reality; that what they knew to be a live man playing a game of cat and mouse with life, was a dead man whose only hope lay in resurrection, … In one great, forward, downward surge of movement, with a left-to-right, up-and-down fluttering of hands, they crossed themselves and fell upon their knees.

  The guards placed the coffin. Tipped up on end, it stood in the centre of the gallows beneath the one empty noose: to each side of it, hung four dead or dying men. The crowd held its breath. In one moment, El Gerente de Politio, cloaked, sabred and masked, would step forward, throw upon the coffin and tear the hood aside, so that all might see who it was that had escaped from the very embraces of death.

  El Gerente stepped forward. The coffin lid was flung open, the robed and hooded figure was visible, propped up, leaning back against the floor of the coffin. El Gerente put out his hand to strip away the hood: and into the absolute silence, a voice said, almost in a whisper and yet carrying to the furthermost corner of the arena: “Wait!”

  The secretary, Tabaqui, moved quietly forward; with soft, unhurried gestures of his grey hands, he pushed aside the startled guards and made a lane for his master. El Exaltida strode up to the coffin, his head brushing the feet of the hanging men. With one great
hand, he caught the robed figure by the front of its gown, half lifted it out of the coffin and dropped it to its knees at his feet. The secretary intoned in his soft, carrying voice: “The message of El Exaltida, Juan Lorenzo, Hereditary Grand Duke of San Juan el Pirata to the people of this island—’Next time there will be no resurrection!’ ” The Grand Duke, as though at a given signal, tore aside the hood: and, grey-white, half fainting, hideously scarred, the piteous, ruined old face of El Arcivescovo stared out across the heads of the people. The Grand Duke jerked him to his feet again and said in a voice of thunder and lightning, “Very well. Dance!”

  Down in the heart of the arena, surrounded by all the gay holiday-makers in their bright clothes, stricken silent, staring up with horrified eyes—Mr Cecil stood appalled. A drop scene! A Cecil B. de Mille epic in Glorious Tech., the ring of oleander under the blue sky, broken only by the marble minarets of the little pavilion; the barren bowl of the arena packed full with supers at so many dollars a day, all ready to raise stained brown arms and cry, Rhubarb! Rhubarb! at a sign from the cheer-leader outside camera-range. And, centre stage, the built-up platform of cardboard rock with its formal pattern of swinging dummies on opposed octagonals of post and cross-beams, black against blue, blue sky: the dark hump of the coffin centring an arrangement in black and grey, the black of the Grand Duke’s costume, brightly embroidered, the grey of the grey secretary, the black-and-grey of the tottering old man, black robed and ashen faced. But—it was not a drop-scene. It was real. A real sun smiled down upon real flowers, ringing in real people with real hearts, real tears of pity: and on the rock, a real man, old and dying, tottered and trembled and a real man stood and cried, ‘Dance!’ with uplifted hand. “Goodness,” said Mr Cecil’s high voice, piping across the heads of the people, standing all white-faced, silently looking on. “Not quite Winchester, would one say?”

  The Grand Duke paused, for a long, long moment his hand still held in the air. Nor did he lower it. He clicked his fingers as though he had raised his hand for no other reason, and, without change of expression, said to El Gerente: “Take him aside,” and to the secretary, “Read.” He folded his arms beneath the black cloak and stood looking out over the people’s heads, as Tabaqui read.