Doctors Wear Scarlet

by Raven, Simon

  “Then all the other men come and join in, and they still talk very low, but they seem to be angry over something; until after a time the woman makes a wave of her hand and then seems to be giving them money, and whatever it is it shuts them up for sure. Last of all, two of the men get back into the boat, while the other two pick up the stretcher and start away from the harbour towards the track that leads up into the hills. The woman follows them, with a good strong step and her cloak swinging as she goes, and the whole party vanishes round the shoulder of a hill. Meantime, the two men in the sailing boat untie her and take off out of the harbour, turning back up North when they get to the harbour mouth. As for the boys, they’re only a couple of kids, and they just go back to their hut, take a big swig of wine each, and pull their blankets up over their heads. And that’s it, gentlemen. That’s the story that Michaeli and Nico had to tell when they got back from their all night picnic the next morning.”

  “They never thought of following…the stretcher?” I asked.

  “They thought of it all right. But neither of them would have done it for ten thousand drachmas. They didn’t like the woman, see, and they didn’t like what they saw on the stretcher.”

  “But presumably,” Roddy said, “the police were told about all this?”

  “Sure they were told. And they sent men out and made enquiries. But whatever they found out, not a thing did they ever let on. But that’s the Greek Police all over. They probably didn’t find much, and they couldn’t cope with what they did, and in that case they’d just shut up and pretend that nothing had happened. Any case, people here got to reckoning the boys had been drinking too much, or invented the whole thing for laughs, and the police didn’t contradict them any. Though that’s not to say they don’t know more than it suits them to tell…”

  “But where in God’s name could they have been taking the stretcher from the harbour?”

  Milton shrugged.

  “There’s some monasteries in the hills,” he said. “There’s a few huts for fishermen round the coast. But nowhere for that little party to find much joy… Anyway, who’s to think it was your friend? Only a face above some blankets.”

  “The face fits,” said Piers, speaking for the first time since Milton had started his story; “and so do several other things.”

  Roddy and I looked at him, startled by the fierce assurance with which he had spoken. He returned our look very gravely, and said with rather more diffidence – “This is all what I was beginning to think… I hoped… But now…”

  He turned away from us and spoke coaxingly to Milton.

  “Can you remember the names of any of the monasteries?” he said.

  Milton swigged at his wine and pulled a drunken parody of a thoughtful face.

  “There’s the Monastery of the Prophet Elias,” he said, “which is high up above the town here. Away to the South West is the Monastery of Hagiou Pneumatos – of the Holy Spirit. And up North you have the Monastery of Haematos Christou, the Monastery of the Blood of Christ–”

  “–The Blood of Christ,” shouted Piers, banging the table so that the cans rattled. He rose from his seat. “We must go now,” he said. “There isn’t a minute – now. Richard – OH MY GOD.”

  White in the face with terror and love, he swept through the prancing sailors.

  “Now. NOW,” he screamed back at us.

  The sailors dropped back and the music died. Roddy and I rose to follow Piers. Milton, himself looking scared but understanding no more than the rest of us what Piers meant, simply had recourse to the one action, almost a matter of reflex, by means of which he had for so long sought comfort in the face of difficulty. He rapped his wine can on the table and flung it over his shoulder. But he had forgotten that there was still wine in it; and the pretty pot-boy was too fascinated with the furious face of Piers to answer on his cue. The can hurtled through the air spilling wine like summer rain, till it fell with a clatter at the feet of the pot-boy and rolled aimlessly and with a hideous noise of grinding on the dirty floor of stone.

  Fifteen minutes later, Milton having found a guide for us but having prudently elected to remain behind himself, we were walking along a coastal track, which would take us the three miles to the old shipyard whence we must turn up towards the Northern hills of Hydra. The guide, with a powerful flashlamp, walked ahead; just behind him was Piers; while Roddy and I, side by side, brought up the rear. The path was easily wide enough for two but very rough; rocky slopes rose above it and descended from it, almost sheer, into the quiet but expectant sea. There were many loose rocks scattered along the way and a little carelessness could have led to a nasty fall – could have rolled one down over the rock, gasping and clutching with torn arms, into the pitch-black waters below. So Roddy and I walked with care; but Piers, who seemed to have mastered by instinct the technique of this cruel passage, talked on and on into the darkness, often turning his head and walking entirely blind to make sure the two of us could hear.

  “We’ve been misled by what Tyrrel told us,” Piers was saying. “Not his fault – for no doubt he was equally misled by what the Greeks told him. Anyway, what they said and what he told us was probably more or less true – once. Once there probably was a time when Richard himself was the danger. You remember what I told you in Cambridge, Anthony? About Richard looking for release, and how this search could quite as easily be for something to hate as for something to love? Well, I stick by that even now. But at some stage the situation has been twisted round. It’s Richard that’s being hunted now, Richard who’s in danger…

  “Richard being hunted. Not only by the police, but by the very powers he went out to discover. He thought that Greece would give him freedom and manhood – release from Walter and all the things that had been stifling him for so long. All this might have been achieved through love or through hate, but the important thing is he expected to find certain…certain forces…which would propel him onward to release. I don’t suppose he knew whether these would operate through love or through hate. Perhaps he didn’t care. Perhaps he assumed that they must be benevolent – or deceived himself into assuming that. In any case he came here and he found the power he was looking for, and in some way it was working through this woman. He thought he could harness it – harness it to draw his chariot to freedom. But he’d forgotten something very important about himself.”

  Some stars showed through a gap in the cloud that was drifting across the sky, but the road seemed darker than ever. There was a wind rising and the sea stirred uneasily in its wary rest.

  “He’d forgotten something that was embedded in his nature. It is Richard’s nature to command but it is also Richard’s nature to obey. For years he’s been obeying – obeying the school rules, obeying Roddy, obeying Walter. He has commanded, yes – but always under higher authority. Sometimes he has seemed temporarily independent of that authority; sometimes he has rebelled against it – snubbed Walter, insulted Penelope: but he’s always come back before long. Always knuckled under. So that in the end, when he found the power that was to release him from obedience, he also found that he must still have something to obey. Walter was too far away – the book of rules was back in England, back in the housemaster’s study, and there was no help from any of these. Deprived of the familiar, he turned for help wherever he might find it; and so, instead of controlling the power that was going to release him, he has begged for it to control him, he has chosen, not to use it, but to grovel under it. And since this power has come in the form of a woman…

  “What form did he think it would come in? Did he think strength would flow up through his feet out of the soil of Greece? Or that the old gods, the gods of warriors and lovers, of drinkers and travellers, would come down from Olympus to his aid? Or perhaps he longed for even older gods, the gods of Crete, or those that were here before Olympus ever rose from Earth the Mother – herself the most ancient of them all, except the Void. But wherever he thought this power would come from, from Aphrodite or the Earth
or the Sky, from the holy soil of Hellas or from the winds of freedom which fly singing off its mountains, he thought it would come in a known guise – known, at any rate, to him, because he knew about the gods, and about Greece which is the giver of life.

  “So when he found this woman, he must have thought that here, in human form, was Aphrodite or Demeter, or some power of which he knew and which would bring him where he wished to be – forever out of Walter’s clutches. God knows what happened for a time. Those hints of Tyrrel’s… But then he started wanting to obey once more, and here was the twist, because having no Walter to obey he now obeyed the woman. Tired of revolt, he turned in obedience to the power through which he had revolted – but thinking all the time that it was a power benevolent towards him, or at least one which he knew of or had read of, a goddess or a guardian or a nymph.

  “But it wasn’t any of these. This woman was quite different. She wasn’t a goddess or a nymph. She wasn’t love and she wasn’t hate. She was from the ancient world all right, but she was from a part of it he didn’t know about. Something he had overlooked in his investigations. Something which has persisted through the ages, firstly in Greece, where it had its birth and where it is still strongest, but later in all of Europe. She was the votary of a cult very different from those, whether good or evil, with which Richard Fountain had concerned himself. She was… She was…”

  “Are you trying to say,” said Roddy gently, “that she is in some way supernatural?”

  “No,” said Piers, and now his tone lost its slightly unreal quality and became crisp and sharp again. “No,” he said; “she’s a woman all right, and she’s a mortal woman. But she is the inheritress, if I am not mistaken, of an old and particularly obscene tradition. I’ve spoken of this before. Do you still not know what I mean?”

  “No,” said Roddy firmly.

  “Well, she…she… It’s no good,” Piers said. “I can’t tell you. Not yet anyway. God send that I am wrong and that you will never need to understand.”

  We rounded a bend in the track and then started to descend. There were now crude steps at about every tenth pace. When, after a little while longer, we passed to the right of a ramshackle stone hut, I saw we were nearly level with the sea. Although the wind was getting stronger, the sea was calm; because we had come to the old harbour, and there, just discernible in front of us, was a stone quay with a beach beneath it, and on the beach the shapes of forlorn and skeletal caiques lying keeled on their sides. But the guide did not take us on to the quay. He led us past a small white chapel, above the entrance to which the bell seemed to be swinging slightly in the wind; and then on to a far cruder path, along which we had to stumble in single file, and which began to climb in a series of steep twists up towards the mountains and away from the rising sea.

  Four hours later, after what seemed a century of torment and curses, a white dawn rose from the East. The wind on the mountains was bitter, the sea far below us huge and angry in its movement. We were walking to the North along a narrow ridge; but after a time the guide led us down a ravine to our right, and then up again on to a parallel but still higher ridge. We continued North, and the ridge started to steepen against us as though we were proceeding to a summit. We passed through a grove of stunted pine trees, then over a minute and incongruous patch of cultivation. Hence up a crude formation of rock, from the top of which we could see the sea to both sides of us, and hence again down into a hollow in the mountain’s back. At the far side of the hollow was a wooden palisade, beyond which was a chapel with a small but impressive bell-tower surrounded by several simple and seemly white buildings. As we approached across the hollow, the bell began to ring in the tower; a gate opened in the palisade; and a monk in black stepped slowly forward, then halted to bow in welcome.

  We were given bread, wine, water and olives. Then we were taken to the Superior. The conversation which followed was conducted largely through Piers, who put all our questions to the Superior and translated what the grave old man said for the benefit of Roddy and myself; though I suspected him of concealing a good deal from us, in the same wary or fearful spirit as he had refused to reveal, on the night road by the sea, the final answer which he had wrought from his speculations.

  The Superior was seated on a stone bench in a large cell, which was lit by high, narrow and unglazed windows, and was decorated by one rather garish depiction of Christ bleeding on the cross. Chairs were brought in for the three of us; and after we had bowed formally to the old man he signed to us to be seated and then made further gestures which might have indicated either welcome or blessing. After which Piers, leaning forward and fixing his eyes full on the Superior’s face, started to explain our mission.

  After about five minutes the Superior nodded and spoke in reply.

  “He says that a woman came here with a sick man,” Piers told us. “After a time the police came too, but by then the pair of them had left. He told the police what had happened – but only in the terms they would understand, of physical appearance and symptoms, of arrival and departure. There was another reality, he says, but that would not have concerned the police.”

  “Does it concern us?” said Roddy.

  “Yes,” said Piers. “We must be prepared for…what we may find.”

  He turned and spoke to the Superior.

  “‘Your friend,’” translated Piers, who had evidently established Richard’s identity beyond doubt, “‘your friend was suffering from…’” – here Piers paused and glanced almost furtively at us – “‘…from an ancient sickness. The woman brought him to be cured. Not because she loves us, but because she knew that we could cure him better and more swiftly than anyone else. Nor does she desire that he should be…properly …finally cured’ – cured in the spirit, he seems to mean – ‘but she wishes, because after her own way she loves him, that for the time being he should remain alive. When he came here he was sick nearly to death; and we cured him, because we, in the Monastery of the Blood of Christ, have this secret, and because it was our duty, in all charity, to do so. But the cure will not be for long: with the woman he will become sick once more, and sooner or later her love will tire, and when that happens she will not bring him back to us for healing, but will cast him off and let him die. The woman is accursed…’”

  The Superior talked gravely on, but Piers, whose expression had slowly become more drawn and despairing, ceased to translate. For two or three minutes we listened to the meaningless voice, then Roddy spoke up sharply – “What does he say, boy? For God’s sake tell us.”

  Piers looked at us, again rather furtively.

  “It’s all much the same,” he said. “The woman is evil, she brought Richard here to be cured, but as long as he is with her he cannot really be well. She only wished him cured so that she might begin to make him sick again. The only real cure is to take him from this woman, and even then…”

  The Superior touched Piers’ arm and pointed at Roddy and myself with a look of interrogation. Piers seemed to brush off the old man’s questions, but he persisted, until Piers shrugged and spoke a few rather halting words.

  “What does he want to know?” asked Roddy.

  “Whether you have understood what has been said.”

  “Well I don’t,” said Roddy flatly. “There are a lot of things I don’t understand, and among them what this ‘ancient’ disease is, which the monks in this monastery can cure but which will apparently recur. I should be obliged, for a start, if you would enlighten me as to that.”

  “I tried to tell you. The other day and on the road,” said Piers, almost in tears. “I tried very hard. Do you remember what I said? That Richard’s…trouble…might be connected with the practices of the ancient city of Hydra. That King Heracles destroyed the city, but meanwhile the practices might have come over with colonists to this island.”

  “Very well. But Richard’s trouble must have started in Crete or before. Not here. And what have the monks to do with it all?”

  “When th
ey came to the island, centuries after the Hydriots had first brought the curse here with them, the monks tried to fight it. They also found a cure for the…disease which the practices caused.”

  Roddy considered this.

  “The fact remains,” he said, “that whatever it was attacked Richard did so somewhere other than on this island. You yourself said last night that this woman represented something which had spread over all Europe. So why this particular knowledge among the monks of this monastery?”

  “Because…it…was concentrated here. Here more than anywhere else. The island having a direct connection with the mainland city where it all started. The…thing…only dribbled …into the rest of Europe. But these monks have had it at full flood from the time they first came.”

  “All right then,” said Roddy. “And exactly what form does this disease take?”

  “It is…to do with the blood. Hence the name of this place – the Monastery of the Blood of Christ. In gratitude for the discovery of a cure, they renamed their house after the undefiled and undefilable blood of the Redeemer.”

  “So what is it they are curing? Some form of syphilis?”

  Piers burst into hysterical laughter. He slapped his thighs again and again, while the scarcely withheld tears now came streaming down his cheeks.

  “If only it was,” he screamed, “if only it was.”

  Roddy leant across and smacked him hard across the face. At once Piers became still. He took out a handkerchief and started quietly to wipe his cheeks and eyes. All this time the Superior stared at the three of us, gravely and with no attempt to intervene.

  “If you won’t tell us, you won’t,” said Roddy. “It doesn’t matter – until we catch up with him. Does the old gentleman know where they’ve gone?”

  Piers, entirely recovered it seemed, began quietly to address the Superior.