‘Wearing a precious jewel in his head!’ she remarked.
‘Exactly. I wonder if Shakespeare had learned from some admiring Robin that there was a reality behind the myth.’
That was my prelude to the use of Leyalá and I went on to tell Rita of the experiences of Gargary and Midwinter which seemed to prove my theory.
‘And the creature which is the medium is itself unaffected?’ she asked.
‘Yes. Think of that network of brain cells as a computer programmed by the shaman. And you don’t expect a computer to get up and run.’
‘Well, if it’s a computer you have only to pull out the plug. Kill the macaw!’
‘Not now that I have won.’
‘If you have won.’
I said, perhaps too boldly, that I would cross that bridge when I came to it and that now she must tell me what Izar—if it was Izar—had against me.
‘You know the anthropologists’ theory of the king who must die for the people?’ she asked.
‘Yes. And I’ve spotted remnants of the belief here and there in India.’
‘And did you know that was why William Rufus was killed?’
I did not, having only learned the school book verdict that he was a ‘bad’ king. She explained to me how historians had been puzzled by all the abuse poured on him by monastic chroniclers, when the rest of the evidence showed that he was brave, just, chivalrous and accepted with love by the English, who hated his father, the Conqueror. Why did the common people follow his bier from the New Forest to Winchester? Why was it said that all the way his blood dripped to the earth? And why when Walter Tyrell hesitated to shoot, did he cry: ‘Draw, draw your bow for the Devil’s sake and let fly your arrow, or you will be sorry for it!’ And why was his death expected and foretold all over Europe?
‘He was the King and Grand Master, the grandson of Robert the Devil. That’s the explanation. Churchmen knew him for what he was and were appalled by his contempt for them; but the mass of the Saxons, who were as much pagan as Christian, adored him for living for them and dying for their land. This isn’t a lecture, Alfgif, so I’ll just give you Rufus. There’s a good case too for Henry II as Grand Master and a better one for Gilles de Rais who was Joan of Arc’s commander in the field.’
I presumed that she knew her stuff and I saw the implications, but I said I could not for a moment believe that the gentle Paddy was the secret shaman of Western Europe.
‘Ah, but the Grand Master did not have to die. If he could find a willing victim to die in his place he had another seven years.’
‘You’re suggesting that the rite still exists in the Europe of today?’
‘There must be more people than you, Alfgif, who share the vision that all living creatures are one within what you call the Purpose. Their myths and forms of worship may be as odd as tiger brother’s. And that’s no odder than some of those American sects. I told you I couldn’t really believe it but the evidence keeps piling up. And you must admit that your Paddy was a Man in Black.’
‘He had no coven.’
‘Of course he hadn’t. A village coven would be an absurdity in these days when one can fly to Paris in the time that it took to ride from Penminster to Wincanton. So couldn’t a coven now be international? Remember all the strangers and foreigners who came to his funeral!’
That I had explained by his reputation among horsemen, but it had always puzzled me. So did the fact that a saddler in a little country town had executors of international standing. And if Rita was right, where did I come in? That I did come in somewhere was certain.
‘Why do you think he gave me Meg?’
‘Because he saw you were a kindred spirit, just as your tiger brother did. And perhaps because it was a mark of honour and good for Meg and perhaps because you are loved. Will you start a coven, my Robin, and dance with me on our downs in moonlight?’
I replied that I was no good at dancing—my coldness breaking my heart—and pretended to be impatient to hear why according to her I was considered an enemy.
She said that Paddy’s plan had gone wrong. He reckoned that the car which was to kill him could never be identified. But it was identified, and what should have been just another hit-and-run accident threatened to end up in Penminster magistrates’ court, where I, to protect myself from the allegation of having lent my car, might have talked.
‘They didn’t know how much you could guess or what Paddy might have told you. What they did know was that you were half pagan, half Christian—a freelance witch, as you once called it. Now suppose an outwardly sane, responsible citizen like you got some outstanding authority—anthropologist or historian—to give evidence of the former rites of the witch religion, then the police would gasp but investigate the movements of anyone staying with the Pirrones on the night of the party. And worst of all, the popular papers would have witchcraft right across the front page. Half a joke, of course, but secrecy would be compromised. And there might be an arrest.
‘So anything you say must be discredited. That’s where Leyalá comes in. You take your unbelievable nonsense to solid Somerset police. Gargary says with regret that you are mentally unbalanced. All your friends agree that you have been avoiding them and behaving oddly. George Midwinter, Ginny and even I would admit, putting it politely, that you needed a holiday,’—her tone sounded irritable but I deserved it—‘so Mr Hollaston would be encouraged to spend a short period with the headshrinkers at a funny farm to cure his imagination, and when he came out he would find an unsquashable rumour that he killed Paddy himself while of unsound mind. And how’s that?’
Chapter Six
July 25
IT’S ALL NOW QUITE clear. At the weekend I called up Lady Pirrone and asked if I might come over and renew my acquaintance with Leyalá. They were both most cordial. Sir Victor opened a bottle of some dark Sicilian wine, still glowing with the past warmth of lava, and asked for my opinion. My opinion is worthless—for who am I to pick and choose among nectars?—but my enthusiasm most Latinly delighted him. I am certain that both of them are entirely innocent. Concha Pirrone is a very pious Catholic, and while she knows that her godfather is a man of mysterious insight and reliable hunches she would never dream that he, as she would put it, had sold his soul to the devil.
The bird recognised me without a doubt, his chuckling in no way inspired by the trouble he had involuntarily caused me but rather by the moment of communion which we had shared. When confidence all round had been established, I asked Sir Victor why he had chosen to live at Penminster.
‘Oh, my wife saw a photograph of it in Country Life and fell in love,’ he said. ‘And it suits me as well as another. The house not too big; the garden beautiful, though I miss my cypresses. And it’s ideal for weekend visitors if they come from the Mediterranean and want to understand what it is that the English so love about their land. I would have liked to be nearer London, but we use the port less and less and here I am handy to Bristol and Southampton.’
‘Izar promised to send you some cypresses from Granada,’ Lady Pirrone interrupted.
‘That’s your godfather who gave you Leyalá?’ I asked. ‘I think he may be the oldish man, remarkably tough, who was talking to me at your house-warming party.’
‘That sounds like him: But then it was so sad. He was taken ill and had to go to bed.’
I had no idea whether I had seen Uncle Izar or not. But the shot in the dark had produced a marvellous and unexpected lead.
Next day, feeling like a private eye and faintly ashamed of it, I decided to call on Bastard, Broome and Bastard, our local estate agents who handled the sale of the manor. I enjoy old Bastard. He is immensely proud of his surname, which was invented by Charles II and the Earl of Rochester in the course of one of their drunken evenings, when they called for Rochester’s baby son, who till then had been hidden under the voluminous skirts of the Duchess of Cleveland’s favo
urite waiting woman, presented him with his surname and, to make up for the insult, the Coat of Arms which faces the visitor behind Bastard’s desk.
He never seems busy outside his auctions and got in first with his questions. How was Miss Vernon getting on down the valley? He supposed I saw something of her. He was very well aware that, if I did, nobody would be any the wiser, so his pleasantly dirty mind sensed the opportunities. I headed him off by saying that I believed the Water Board was insisting on charging her a water rate, though she drew it from her own well. That got him fulminating about local government in general, and I was able to mention that Pirrone had told me his rates were outrageous.
‘It takes a wealthy man to be really angry over a few quid,’ he said, ‘so I hope he gives them hell.’
‘I’m always surprised that he bought the place.’
‘It was ready to walk into, you see. All redecorated a couple of years ago, and just the job to appeal to a foreigner who doesn’t want trouble with builders, surveyors and planning permission.’
I said that Sir Victor was a valuable import and wouldn’t like to be called a foreigner.
‘Well, he is, ain’t he? But I was thinking of others who showed interest. One old boy got on to it before we had even advertised the place for sale.’
‘The usual Arab?’
‘Not down here in Somerset! No, some kind of Spaniard. I wouldn’t be surprised if he recommended it to the Pirrones.’
‘I think he was at the Pirrone party. I wish I could remember his name.’
‘We must have got it somewhere. He told me that he was interested in Dorset Horns and wanted to hear of any prize rams to be sold privately.’
A clerk in the downstairs office easily found the name for him. The enquirer was a Mr Izar Odolaga with the address of a London bank. His visit had been in the last week of January. That left plenty of time for the sale to go through and for the Pirrones to move in before that fatal May 12.
When I escaped from the geniality of old Bastard—he would have been distressed to know in what a mood—I did not go home immediately. I walked away from Penminster through the wearisome sanity of council houses and market gardens and the sewage farm where my stream had entered the culture zone and been put to work, at last taking refuge in the woodland at the foot of the downs after wandering up the valley and passing above Rita’s cottage. I did not want to see her. Mourning for my dear, incomprehensible Paddy, I did not want to see anyone. Everything had fallen into place, confirming the slaughter of Paddy by this Izar Odolaga. One had only to start with the reasonable assumption that the Pirrones really did want a country house.
I saw the sequence of events as something like this: Odolaga, visiting Paddy, learns that the manor is for sale. Paddy himself may have suggested the set-up if he had already agreed to the sacrifice—a cold thought which made me shiver. Odolaga then steers his goddaughter towards the house, drawing her attention to a photograph of the place. She inspects it and he assures her that it is ideal and will bring the Pirrones luck. Sir Victor shrugs his shoulders; if she wants the house, it will do.
Once the manor is bought and the house-warming party arranged, Paddy directs the plot: the Pidge, my car, the absolute certainty that I will not be using it and will have an unbreakable alibi if anything goes wrong. Odolaga handles the Pirrone end. Obviously he must be a houseguest at the time of the party and must be able to be absent for a few hours without anyone knowing. How he managed it was unimportant. I could never know on what excuse he locked his bedroom door or was able to choose a room with access to the garden.
Below me, not far away, was my vixen’s earth, and I looked to her for comfort—not that I expected to see her at midday, but the scent and signs of her would tell me that she at least was fulfilling herself within our common world. I padded as gently as she over last year’s leaves and looked down on the chalk-flecked terrace at the mouth of the earth. The cubs had left, though they should still have been learning to hunt with mother; neither had she herself been home for some time. All this I knew partly by faintness of scent, partly by dust in the tracks, partly by a silence beyond the silence to be detected by the ears. As I went down towards the stream, my eye was caught by the remains of a recent kill among tufts of trampled grass. I thought at first it was a lamb and then saw that the skull was hers. The smallest bones had been scattered and cracked; the larger, which she would have broken, only showed the gnawings of ineffectual teeth. She had died in the open and her hungry cubs had eaten her, a victim serving her purpose to the last. My mind finds some indefinable parallel with Paddy. Him I cannot revenge because I do not understand the meaning or the worth of his sacrifice. But I now know who is responsible for the end of my vixen, dying of the madness which was intended for me.
August 1
The black night of the soul. That is what the Christian mystics called it. Tiger brother would have spoken of the capture of the soul. As so often, saint and shaman both mean the same. It has nothing to do with the Fear. I could bear that. At least I was vividly alive like any terrified creature. Now for over a week I have been dead and empty. I cannot even paint. What I believed to be power turns out to be only obscurity. There is no doubt that what I used to call my picture postcards are of more value.
It is Paddy’s sacrifice which depresses me. One can only take it as a lunatic rite of a lunatic cult. My saintly Paddy, keeping his religion to himself yet spreading far and wide his own goodness, can be compared with the pastor of some primitive Christian sect, who also radiates love and righteousness but imagines his God as human and angry: a half-god disapproving the marvellous mechanism of life—the flesh, as the pastor would call it—which may on no account be worshipped through senses made for worship.
All my reverence is challenged. Meg represents joy in the Purpose rather better than any bishop. On the other hand the bishop represents the suffering of man rather better than Meg.
And whose life could Paddy have considered so valuable to Megs and bishops that it ought to be extended? It could not be Izar Odolaga’s life. That’s certain. Paddy would have recognised evil in him, the abuse of power. Then who? Anyone from a village priest to a microbiologist, each performing miracles in his own way. Of the two the priest seems more likely; his miracles would so easily restore faith and awe. And yet suppose the man behind the electron microscope were on the verge of manipulating the nervous system of the brain to prove and analyse the action of mind at a distance?
What nonsense! Who the hell is worth the sacrifice?
Black night of the soul, yes! I am like Meg when she felt some effect of Leyalá’s transmission and could no longer play. All passion spent. Why do I bother with Rita? Love is an inconvenience like any other, almost a curse in itself.
I might as well be a gentle, unworried animal like Concha Pirrone, satisfied within her own fat. Not fair! At least she can pray. I cannot. There have been times when I could repeat the Lord’s Prayer, concentrating almost with tears upon the full meaning of the words or such meaning as I chose to put upon them.
There is no unity for me with the Purpose and it is not within the Purpose that there should be. I shall paint my picture postcards and be the jolly artist in the company of genial fools like Bastard and the rest. Such an easy fellow, they’ll say, after his little illness. Must have done him good.
Bastard. A reminder. In Penminster last Wednesday I saw his red waistcoat bearing down on me like the unavoidable clown in a circus.
‘I had that sturdy old Spanish fellow in my office the day before yesterday,’ he said. ‘I put him on to a ram down Blandford way if he likes to pay the price.’
I had no need to ask where he was staying. That is his second visit to the Pirrones. The first was to murder Paddy. I wonder what this second was for.
‘He asked after you,’ Bastard added. ‘I told him that we had not seen so much of you as we liked. Always shut away painting hard,
ha, ha! But that now you were back in good form.’
Odolaga would have known that already. He might have suffered some kind of rebound from his devilry with the macaw. Tiger brother used to hint that there were dangers for a shaman if his magic were absorbed by more powerful magic. But there is no necessity for any such mystification. If he exchanges correspondence with his goddaughter and encourages her to amuse him with local gossip he’d have a dozen pages of waffle in her spidery, nunnery writing complete with exclamation marks.
It is tempting to imagine that he could be responsible for my depression, but I do not believe it. I am suffering from disgust and reaction after discovering the cruelty and worthlessness of all this misuse of spiritual energy by Paddy, by Odolaga and by me. I need tiger brother to dance himself unconscious and bring back my soul from its underworld.
How many other religious follies, I wonder, have been resurrected to drift like lost spirits through our western society? I have come upon a whole school of unsuspected practitioners: that quiet saddler in a country town; a Basque farmer; a likely nest of Sicilians more secret than the Mafia; von Pluwig and his superstitious circle who believe without knowing what they believe; the strangers at Paddy’s funeral. And on the edge of them there must be others like myself, able to heal and transmit thought with or without the aid of a familiar, who respect the holiness of a gift which needs no barbaric ritual.
August 7
Gargary has been here to ask me if I would care to lend Ginny to Rita for a day or two. Meg and I could send to the zoo for some monkeys, he said, and roast them on a stick. Yes, he could get in a daily woman from Penminster but the presence of a stranger might only get on Rita’s nerves and add to her exasperation. She was not bothering to cook for herself, and the cottage seemed to him just a scrapyard of dirty glasses, of books lying wherever she had read them and paper littering the floor around the wastepaper basket.
The Sending Page 10
