‘He must have been a very astute man,’ said Mrs Bradley cordially. ‘I shouldn’t think there are many people who could possibly manage to do that.’
‘You are right,’ said Alexander, mollified. She nodded, her gaze now bright and bird-like. ‘So now that we know you are prejudiced against poor Ian’s name and not against himself, I think I had better call the young people here and you can give them a father’s blessing. … Now don’t be silly, child,’ she added, as he began to fidget and mutter. ‘What’s done cannot be undone. They are married, and that’s an end of it. You don’t need to give your consent. It’s been taken for granted. And,’ she went on in gentler tones, with her skinny but compelling hand on his sleeve, ‘I think poor Cathleen could bear to have you a little kind to her. You know, she’s been living under very severe nervous strain for the past few months – clandestine meetings and scowled-upon correspondence with Ian MacNeill, a secret marriage – the sort of thing which you must know she would dislike – a breaking off of all true companionship with you. It has been the worst thing possible for her. Why, even I, with all that I know about such things’ – she grinned disarmingly at him, as a cobra might possibly grin before it struck – ‘disliked the poor child intensely when we met. Now, is that fair? Is it nice? Is it kind or fatherly? Do you want the poor girl to be haggard and old before her time? Do you want to wreck her beauty?’
‘Oh, Lord!’ said Alexander, now utterly reduced in spirit. ‘Very well. Bring them along. I suppose I shall have to put up with it.’
‘And mind you wish them happiness. You ought to be glad that you have such a sensible son-in-law,’ said Mrs Bradley severely. Alexander looked at her, decided that she meant it, grinned, and wagged his bald head.
2
Gelert and Dick returned in the late afternoon without any cattle. Dmitri, they said, was in Corinth, doing what he could. Sir Rudri replied that in that case he would offer human sacrifice, and looked keenly at the three little boys. Kenneth and Stewart laughed, and, calling out, ‘Here, I’ll be it,’ Kenneth advanced towards him. Sir Rudri waved him away.
‘Not yet. Not yet,’ he said. He had produced from his miscellaneous collection a broad-bladed, gleaming knife. The sun’s rays falling on it turned it to a blinding sheet of flame. Ivor held his hand to his eyes, and, walking backwards and sideways, got close to Mrs Bradley and pulled her by the arm. She went away from the circle of listeners, and said:
‘What is it, child?’
‘Father,’ said Ivor. ‘I don’t believe he’s – I think he’s – I mean, he isn’t well.’
‘I know. I expect it’s the sun, child.’
‘He means it about the human sacrifice, you know.’
‘Yes, yes. But I think that Dmitri will come very soon with the oxen. Don’t worry.’
But Dmitri did not turn up, and by sunset all was ready for the sacrifice. Dick and Gelert separately sought Mrs Bradley, and commented on Sir Rudri’s extraordinary manner, but nobody else seemed to notice that anything was amiss, and when all were assembled at the Lion Gate for the ceremony, and all the men had washed their hands in some of the precious bottled drinking water and had taken up handfuls of barley meal, Sir Rudri, putting out his hands, palms upwards, prayed to Apollo.
‘One moment,’ said Mrs Bradley, when he had finished praying. ‘What about the billets of olive wood, child? We’re not ready for the sacrifice yet.’
Sir Rudri opened his eyes and then blinked, like someone awakened from sleep.
‘What did you say?’ he asked.
‘Billets of wood,’ said Mrs Bradley, clearly, in a practical, pleasant voice. ‘You’ve forgotten the olive wood, child. Don’t you remember how, in the first book of the Iliad, when Odysseus takes back Chryseis to her father, the meat of the sacrifice was burnt on wood and over it the priest poured wine, whilst the young men beside him held their five-pronged forks? Where,’ she continued, fixing him with bright black eyes, and speaking with greater sternness, ‘are your billets of wood for the altar, your wine, and your five-pronged forks? Is this the manner in which you make sacrifice to the Far-Darter Apollo, you wretched, ignorant man?’
Sir Rudri, the Viking moustache having wilted with the heat of the day, looked perplexed, uncertain, and sad.
‘It’s true,’ he said at last. ‘Yet why do I think of the sacrifice of children? We don’t need the pronged forks for children.’
‘Children?’ said Mrs Bradley. In the sunset light of the wild glen of the Atrides she stood before him like some ancient prophetess and waved her skinny arms and menaced him with her hideous, leering lips. Her black eyes, reddened, it seemed, by the last rays of the sun, the declining Apollo, held his, and he felt he could not take his gaze from hers. ‘Children?’ The word went echoing over the hill and against the thick walls, and shouted itself to silence over the plain. ‘What of the young sons of Thyestes, who seduced the wife of Atreus? What of their spilt blood crying aloud for vengeance? What of the curse which descended to Agamemnon and to Orestes? Listen! Do you not hear?’
She pointed to the sculptured Lion Gate. Even the young men half-fearfully followed her thin yellow forefinger, as though they expected to see some manifestation of the ancient hatred there. But only a great bird, black against the light, perched there for half a moment before it gave a hoarse-throated, mournful cry, and flew off towards the other side of the road.
‘It’s gone to the tombs! It’s gone to the tombs!’ said Cathleen. Sir Rudri stood staring after it. Then he rubbed his arm across his eyes, turned with an apologetic smile, and said in his normal tones:
‘My dear Beatrice, my dear Alexander, I beg your pardon. I’ve been losing my sense of proportion.’
‘We mustn’t, any of us, do that,’ said Alexander Currie. ‘Cathleen, my lass, go and bring me that scallywag husband of yours. Rudri, these two have got married without my leave or consent!’
After the diversion thus created, Mrs Bradley took Gelert aside.
‘I should like to have your father under observation, dear child, but at present that is impossible in the sense I mean. He needs a rest.’
‘He needs to get his own back on old Currie,’ said Gelert. ‘That would get rid of his troubles quicker than anything. Pity those serpents were a flop. The Eleusis do was good, and almost took us all in.’
‘The second Iacchus, you mean?’
‘Yes. Armstrong, of course. It’s a nuisance about that blighter, but he had to be in on the ground-floor because of his looks, you know. I believe he’s managed to get on father’s nerves. The old boy was on the point of confiding in me this morning, and then Armstrong came up with some yap about the photographs. We’d just got as far as mentioning his name and that was all. I expect he heard us, and that’s why he came and butted in.’
Mrs Bradley nodded.
‘Perhaps Ephesus will solve all our difficulties,’ she said.
‘You won’t let father go to Ephesus?’
‘I don’t see how I am to stand in his way, dear child.’
‘But he’s perfectly bats, you know. I mean, if you hadn’t stepped in and fobbed him off just now, he’d have clawed one of those kids for a sacrifice. I was rolling up my sleeves to dot him one when you stepped in and declaimed your little piece. Congratulations, by the way. You ought to have been the original Pythoness of Delphi.’
‘Perhaps I was,’ said Mrs Bradley modestly. ‘What do you think about Cathleen and Ian?’
‘Same as I did before, worse luck. I say, can you think of anything I could do instead of going back to Athens just now? Megan subbed up the money, but I don’t feel like meeting the people I know until the thing has blown over.’
‘I think you had better go back. You have nothing to fear. Is there a baby, by the way?’
‘Good Lord, no!’ said Gelert aghast. ‘It’s only a species of breach of promise, or something. I wouldn’t care, only that rotter Armstrong knows all about it. It happens to be his half-sister, do you see, and that’s torn it, of course, complete
ly. He’s got me where he wants me, damn his eyes! He hasn’t put the screw on yet, but he will. And then it won’t be twenty or thirty quid!’
‘I see,’ said Mrs Bradley. She went back to the little boys and watched them wriggle into their sleeping-sacks. She placed her own sack near at hand, and sat on it. The party were spending the night in the entrance between the great walls which bordered the path that led to the Lion Gate. Night darkened the path over which, after Troy, Agamemnon’s chariot had passed. The gateway, topped by its vast and weathered lintel, stood open now, bereft of its great wooden door, and with nothing to show that the great door had ever existed except for the pivot holes left in the stone to hang it by. Night hid the little iron gate which the keeper had had instructions to leave open, but, ghostly, and guarding still their tapering pillar, the stone lions, lighter in colour than the vast, surrounding walls, gazed outwards over the heads of the trysting pilgrims. Suddenly, on the walls that looked over the Argive plain, there appeared the tall figure of a woman. A garment like a great cloak was gathered about her, and she looked statuesque and brooding, more than life-size, silhouetted against the sky.
‘Clytemnestra!’ thought Mrs Bradley, holding her breath and not knowing that she did.
The woman stood there, motionless, for four or five minutes. Then she climbed down, and came out through the gate, and Mrs Bradley perceived that it was Megan.
3
A good deal later Mrs Bradley went to sleep. An hour after this, Dmitri returned to Mycenae. He was driving a slat-ribbed cow, and the first indication the camp received of his coming took the form of a bellow of protest from his charge, which then fell over Sir Rudri, who had elected to sleep with his sack across the centre of the path. Sir Rudri’s exclamations of fear and annoyance helped to wake the rest of the pilgrims. Dmitri, without a word, tossed the end of the cord by which he had led the cow over a spike of the modern iron fence in which the little gate which led to the grave-circle was fixed, and lay down, with a low moan, in the fairway. Here he went to sleep. Mrs Bradley switched on her torch, went over to Dmitri and looked at him, and then went over to the cow, which could not lie down, even if it desired to do so, because the rope by which it was tethered was too short. It mooed reproachfully at her as she came up. She unhitched it and, calming it as well as she could with a Homeric quotation referring to ox-eyed Hera, the wife of Zeus, she took off her stockings, tied them together, and fastened the rope thus made to the end of the animal’s tether. Then she hitched it on to the fence again. The cow, without ado, reclined on the stony ground, lifted its head and gazed at the thick, soft blackness of the crumbling, hilly bank on the right of the doorway, wedged itself firmly against the Cyclopean wall, and apparently followed the example of its erstwhile captor and guided. Satisfied that both man and beast were asleep, Mrs Bradley returned to her place, but scarcely had she settled herself when a large, dim shape, voiced like the leader of the party, sidled up and said, in a whisper which startled her:
‘Beatrice, who went into the excavations just now?’
‘Just now, Rudri, dear child?’
‘Yes. Somebody slipped through the gateway just before the wretched animal nearly blew my hair off my head. I watched him go. That’s why I didn’t see the cow.’
‘But you must have heard the cow,’ Mrs. Bradley observed.
‘Yes, yes! But I wasn’t thinking of cows,’ Sir Rudri testily replied. ‘The thing is, what are they up to? What the devil are they up to?’ he amended. ‘It’s very dangerous by night. They might fall into the deepest part of the excavations and kill themselves. Easily they might. I’d better go and see what is happening.’
But before he could do so there was a sudden scream, a torn-throated, masculine scream, of horrid surprise and terror.
‘He’s fallen in,’ said Sir Rudri, not, Mrs Bradley thought, without satisfaction. She was on her feet and had tied up her shoes in a trice, and together they made for the gateway. The cow snorted suddenly as they passed her, but she did not attempt to rise. Mrs Bradley’s torch was powerful. She had brought spare batteries with her, and had fitted one that evening. The bright light showed them the path. They ran, stumbling on the uneven, stony surface, and calling as they ran. No answer came from the shaft graves. Except for a wind which came at them with fury and then died down, there seemed nothing but lifelessness anywhere.
Mrs Bradley and Sir Rudri leaned over the stone-slabbed wall and shone the torch on to the blackness of the depths below them.
‘I see him,’ said Mrs Bradley. She gave the torch to Sir Rudri. ‘Keep the light placed where it is.’ She left him and groped her way down the easiest slope into the treasureless graves. She had a box of matches in her pocket. Sir Rudri, training the torch on to the bundle of grey below, could watch her progress and count the matches she used.
‘Don’t set the vegetation alight, if you come to any,’ he cried.
By this time the cow, the scream, and the activities of Mrs Bradley and their leader had roused the camp. Guided by Gelert, who also had a torch, they came stumbling through the gateway and up the path. Gelert made his way down to Mrs Bradley, and held his torch whilst she knelt by the injured man. It was Ronald Dick.
‘There’s nothing broken. He’s come round,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Bruises and shock, and lucky for him it’s no worse. Up you get, dear child. You must look where you’re going next time.’
‘I should think he walked in his sleep,’ said Stewart to Ivor. ‘He’s been poking about in the grave-circle all day long.’
The little boys were preparing to descend into the pit when they were collared by Sir Rudri and by Megan, and were instructed to remain where they were. Armstrong improved the occasion by cuffing Stewart, who retaliated by swinging round and butting him in the belly. Ian, who had joined the party, took the clout that was meant for Stewart on a large forearm, and returned it with such interest that Armstrong, with a noise between a gasp and a gurgle, was jolted against the stone slab which bordered the path on which he stood. Collecting himself, he withdrew from the dangerous vicinity of Ian and the boys.
Between them, Gelert and Mrs Bradley got Ronald Dick to his feet and persuaded him that he was well enough to scramble out of the tomb. Sir Rudri, who was thoroughly exasperated by the whole occurrence, said shortly that he should be glad of an explanation in the morning. He then warned the party not to tread on the cow, and fell over her himself, she having elected to transfer herself to the blackness of the archway and lie down in the very centre of the path. The cow, with an inquisitional bellow, scrambled to her feet. Sir Rudri scrambled to his. It was Dish who came forward and moved the animal out of the narrow gateway.
The rest of the night was peaceful. Mrs Bradley woke, as she had intended to do, at dawn, and, treading carefully, passed the sleepers and the cow, went through the iron gateway under the arch, and explored the grave-circle, its surroundings, and the acropolis above. She looked abroad, over the misty and indeterminate landscape which soon the sun would reveal as the Argive plain. She looked to the shadowy mountains, dark purple, and massed like cloud, and, nearer, to the citadel of Larissa, and thought of the burning beacons, heralds of the fall of Troy. By night the place had seemed no wilder than and not as lonely as many English country districts she had stayed in. The great walls had been companionable; the cow a pantomime animal; the little adventure of Dick’s tumbling into the pit an incident far removed from the terrors which lived in the plays of Aeschylus. But at dawn, and, even more, she knew, beneath the hot noonday sun, Mycenae came into her own. Her tragedy and her greatness loomed like battle on the landscape. The walls enclosed the dead, and the great excavations, where Schliemann had kissed the gold death-mask of Agamemnon, yawned like the graves that they were.
She stood there a long time, watching the day grow brighter. There was a slight sound near her, and Dick came limping to join her. They stood, without speaking, ten minutes or so, and then at last he said:
‘I’ve got the key of the t
reasury. Come with me to unlock it.’
‘I should like to do that, child,’ Mrs Bradley replied. Soberly, not speaking to one another, they walked to the iron gateway, passed underneath the lions’ arch, followed the path to the road, and walked down it towards the tomb.
‘Thank you for coming to my rescue last night,’ said Dick.
‘Who pushed you?’ Mrs Bradley inquired in an artless, careless tone. She had seen the marks on the stony ground. He flushed.
‘It was Armstrong, I think. I don’t know where he could have come from. I am sure that nobody followed me through the gate.’
‘What were you doing there, child, in the dead of the night?’
‘I think I might be psychic. I wanted to see what would happen.’
‘Did anything happen?’
‘No. I was afraid.’
‘To go up on to the acropolis?’
‘Yes. So I stood there hesitating, just where the wall is broken away, and somebody came behind and shoved me. I cried out because I was startled.’
‘Yes, I see. What makes you think it was Armstrong.’
‘He’s the only one who’d do a thing like that.’
‘We don’t know that, child, do we?’
‘No. Will you unlock the entrance gate?’ They had crossed the ditch and ascended the rough, steep bank. Soon they came upon the entrance to the beehive tomb. Mrs Bradley waved the key away, so he kept it, and unlocked the gate, and they walked towards the gaping mouth of the treasury.
‘Do you mind waiting just a second until I whistle?’ was the young man’s strange request. He disappeared into the darkness of the massive conical structure, a shaft sunk into the hill and vaulted over by means of courses laid flat and their inner surface cut to the shape of the dome; and Mrs Bradley turned her back on the Treasury of Atreus and waited for him to emerge. He was less than a moment gone. It seemed to her that he reappeared directly with something cupped in his hands.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I want to show it to somebody. That’s what I found.’
Come Away, Death Page 13
