Part 14 (2/2)

”It's what we need at Branxholm,” said Sir Wat gloomily. ”Janet broke another vase last week..

For some reason this tickled both Sybilla and Christian. The Dowager was the first to recover.

”Just you wait,” she said. ”I have it all from Bulb, and it all sounds remarkably well authenticated, considering. Anyway, he's coming again to Midculter to explain it to me..

”Good G.o.d!” said Buccleuch, to whom the Dowager was the source and fount of all astonishments. ”You don't mean you believe all that rubbis.h.!.+ I've enough of it at home with Janet; and the Lee penny never out the house..

”All what rubbish?” said Sybilla. ”You see, you don't know yourself what you're talking about, and neither shall 1,” she added as an afterthought, ”until Master Bulb has been and explained it again..

”Well, I don't know what you want the Philosopher's Stone for,” said Christian. ”It seems to me that as a family you're quite indecently rich already..

”Oh, you never know,” said the Dowager mysteriously. ”Healing charms-elixirs of life-love potions-.

”What I came to ask,” said Christian, her face rather red, ”was whether we might all go to the Fair-Agnes, Mariotta and myself, I mean. The trouble is-.

”The trouble is, Master Bulb won't read our fortunes here: he hasn't got his crystal, he says, and he won't go and bring it back.” Agnes, squeezing through the door, provided the explanations, fortissimo. ”But he says we can call at his tent, and Tom'll go with us-.

The Dowager spoke quietly. ”What about Richard?.

”It's all right.” Christian was quick in defence of the absent Mariotta. ”As a matter of fact, he's asleep, and . . .” And it won't do him any harm to be spared a performance of wifely reproach, her hesitation added.

The Dowager made no objection. So the gypsies left, and a little later, wrapped in heavy cloaks and hoods, the three girls walked out with Tom Erskine, and an un.o.btrusive following of Erskine's men. Sir Andrew and Buccleuch left. In the snug parlour the big fire hissed and murmured in the silence, glimmering on mother and son. Sitting beside Richard's quiet couch, Sybilla put on her spectacles and threaded a needle. Then she put it down and sat quite still for a long tune, staring owlishly into s.p.a.ce.

And it was into s.p.a.ce that at last she spoke. ”Oh, my darling!” said Sybilla. ”I do hope I've done the best thing..

* * *”Are you all right?” asked Tom Erskine. And again, later on, ”What's wrong? Are you feeling all right?.

”Of course. It's the cold,” said Christian rather snappishly, andrelaxing her grip on his arm, tried furiously to still the uncalled-for and humiliating frisson set up by her nerves.

It was not cold, as she well knew. It was the crowded strain of the day; the blaring darkness; the devils' orchestra of uncouth music; the coa.r.s.e chatter, the catcalls and the mindless, ganting laughter. The Fair had become by night a bloated Saturnalia, sodden, sottish and leering of voice. She was buffeted by blundering bodies and twitched by grasping hands. Smells a.s.sailed her: beer smells, food smells and leather smells; the stink of human bodies and once, as two struggling shapes crashed into her, the reek of blood, forcing on the mind the warm fire and the reeking arrows of an hour before-Culter's voice:”If that's what a life of depravity does for your archery”; Mariotta's:”He seems able to do almost anything he wants”; the Dowager, bandaging with cool hands, refusing to panic.

”Buy a rare pippin!” said a voice in her ear. ”A fine rosy pippin for a fine rosy la.s.s-.

”A chain of gold for that bonny dress, now! Five crowns and a kiss for yourself, my bonny may!.

”Hatpins, sweeting: a thousand and a half for sixteen pence-.

”A puppet for your sister!.

”Mackerel!.

”Hot pies!”-And grease brus.h.i.+ng her cheek as the pastry was thrust upward. The shaking became uncontrollable.

”Tell your fortune, la.s.sies!” in the sly, garlic-laden voice.

It was some kind of a booth. First Agnes went in; then Mariotta; and they were both quite remarkably reticent when they came out. Tom, waiting with Christian, was bored. ”It sounds poor stuff to me. Let's go home..

Agnes objected. ”Christian hasn't been yet..

”Fortune, lady?” said Bulb's voice again, at Christian's elbow. ”One other lady?.

”I'll come with you-.

”Oh, no you won't.” Christian eluded Tom deftly. ”If I'm going to have the secrets of my boudoir revealed, you're staying outside. Master Bulb will take me..

Silently, the gypsy caught her sleeve, and they moved forward. Something brushed her hood, and from the deadening of noise, she guessed the tent flap had closed behind her. Underfoot, the street cobbles were spread with fabric; the darkness was stuffy and cold, smelling vaguely of cheap incense. She walked a few paces, and thenwas aware of a new aperture. The grip on her elbow disappeared; Bulb's soft steps could be heard receding; then these in turn were cut off. This time, there was absolute silence.

Her face forced into lines of composure, her betraying hands tight-held behind her back, Christian stood quite still and waited in the cold and the dark.

Mothlike in its lightness and rapid insistency, the so-familiar voice spoke. ”This, of course, is the chamber of devils, who sit in hexagon babbling like herring gulls about the ruin of charity and the disorderly rupture of souls. . . . The aforesaid malignants have provided a chair, a little to your left: that's it. Before you lie four feet of carpet; then a box upon which I am rudely-but I hope rea.s.suringly-seated. Nothing else is worth noting except a bundle of effects belonging to Johnnie Bulb-you'll have discovered his name. He was, of course, my friend of the cave. A long time ago. Is that better?” he asked. ”I wonder what frightened you?.

Astonis.h.i.+ng that a voice should carry such power to soothe and disarm. She said, seated, clasping her hands, ”It's been a bad sort of day-I'm sorry-and the Fair on top was a little too much..

”A day remarkable, certainly, for a wholesale slaughter of the innocents,” he said. ”I wonder how the parrot enjoyed its brief second of freedom. And the victim of the less schismatic shaft, how's he?.

She told him, and he received it with a hint of mockery, adding:”Don't, for your own sake, begin weaving fantasies of evil around me as well. I haven't tried to kill anybody today, I give you my word..

”Well, if you had, I think you probably would have succeeded,” said Christian. ”Do you shoot?.

”Yes. Very well, as it happens: one of my vanities, you see. It's handsome to watch, and satisfying to perform; it's convivial and compet.i.tive and artistic and absorbing. Poets love it: they rush home to unpick all their quills and write odes with them..

”Others don't,” she said quickly. ”Others kill..

There was a little silence. Then he said, ”And that's what you're afraid of, isn't it? Violence?.

It was true, and she acknowledged it. ”Except that it isn't trained and purposeful violence that terrifies me: it's the negligent, casual kind. All these people today . . . They were taking wagers, you know, on Culter's chances of life. And violence of a nasty, inconsequent kind, tonight at the Fair. Or the kind that amuses itself bystuffing women and children into a cave and smoking them to death. In slaughtering livestock and burning a harvest for fun. Or after Pinkie, when the army broke; and the Durham and York and Newcastle boys, and the landknechts and Italians and Spaniards sat on their beautiful horses and flew along the Leith sands, and the Holy-rood road, and the Dalkeith road, hawking men with their swords like b.u.t.terflies”Violence in nature is one thing,” said Christian, ”but among civilized mankind, what excuse is there?.

His voice was cheerful. ”Nothing more civilizing than a good crack of thunder. One hot unsettled summer and whole countrysides end up like St. James with their knees hard as camels. . . No. I take your point. But what in G.o.d's name had that poor, enthusiastic, politically imbecile troop of Englishmen last month got to do with civilization? And what's going to stop them? Religion? With their music, their churches, their prayers, in a rag bag at home; His Most Christian Majesty of France egging on the Turks to scimitar the head off His Most Imperial Majesty King Charles; the Bishop of Rome seducing the Lutherans in Germany to secure his posterity . .

Christian said, ”What kind of excuse would you make then for a private a.s.sa.s.sin?.

He was silent for a moment, then said, ”Let's get one thing clear. I'm not excusing anything. I'm no theologian, only a pedagogue in rhetoric, with whatever shreds of humanity the universities have left me with..

”Well, as an apologist for human nature, then. What of private murder?.

”What of it? This afternoon's, if you mean to particularize, was neither very private nor very successful, by all accounts. It shouldn't be difficult to cla.s.sify. Not high-spirited; not casual; an act of instructed force, like Somerset's: a matter of policy, in fact.

”And brilliantly carried off-by the Old Man of the Mountains himsell, obviously, the Sheikh-al-jebal, tw.a.n.ging his hemp instead of eating it. Motives: greed, hate, envy-I don't know. Excuses: there don't seem to be many. He might, of course, be a saintly old sheikh, whose doctrines Culter was denying; or a lascivious old sheikh, whose mistress Cuiter had alienated . . . except that Culter, Jerome bless his childlike head, is such a remarkably dull and blameless creature himself..

”For a humanist,” she said, ”you~re very scathing on the subjectof virtue. For one thing, you shouldn't confuse stolidity and self-control..

”You admire self-control?” he asked, and she took her chance.

”I admire candour..

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