Off With His Head. Ngaio Marsh
up into a bonfire outside the old battlemented wall. Here it would be partially seen through a broken-down archway and would provide an extra attraction for the village when the Dance of the Sons was over.
Torches, made at the forge from some ancient recipe involving pitch, resin and tow, were set up round the actual dancing area. Later in the morning the Andersens and Simon Begg were entertained in the servants’ hall with a generous foretaste of the celebrated Sword Wednesday Punch, served out by Dame Alice herself, assisted by Dulcie and the elderly maids.
In that company there was nobody of pronounced sensibility. Such an observer might have found something distressing in Simon Begg’s attempts to detach himself from his companions, to show an ease of manner that would compel an answering signal from their hostesses. It was such a hopeless business. To Dame Alice (who if she could be assigned to any genre derived from that of Surtees) class was unremarkable and existed in the way that continents and races exist. Its distinctions were not a matter of preference but of fact. To play at being of one class when you were actually of another was as pointless as it would be for a Chinese to try and pass himself off as a Zulu. Dame Alice possessed a certain animal shrewdness but she was fantastically insensitive and not given to thinking of abstract matters. She was ninety-four and thought as little as possible. She remembered that Simon Begg’s grandfather and father had supplied her with groceries for some fifty years and that he therefore was a local boy who went away to serve in the war and had, presumably, returned to do so in his father’s shop. So she said something vaguely seigniorial and unconsciously cruel to him and paid no attention to his answer except to notice that he called her Dame Alice instead of Madam.
To Dulcie, who was aware that he kept a garage and had held a commission in the Air Force, he spoke a language that was incomprehensible. She supposed vaguely that he preferred petrol to dry goods and knew she ought to feel grateful to him because of the Battle of Britain. She tried to think of remarks to make to him but was embarrassed by Ernie, who stood at his elbow and laughed very loudly at everything he said.
Simon gave Dulcie a meaning smile and patted Ernie’s arm. ‘We’re a bit above ourselves, Miss Mardian,’ he said. ‘We take ourselves very seriously over this little show tonight.’
Ernie laughed and Dulcie said: ‘Do you?’ not understanding Simon’s playful use of the first person plural. He lowered his voice and said: ‘Poor old Ernie! Ernie was my batman in the old days, Miss Mardian. Weren’t you, Corp? How about seeing if you can help these girls, Ernie.’
Ernie, proud of being the subject of his hero’s attention, threw one of his crashing salutes and backed away. ‘It’s pathetic really,’ Simon said. ‘He follows me round like a dog. God knows why. I do what I can for him.’
Dulcie repeated, ‘Do you?’ even more vaguely and drifted away. Dan called his brothers together, thanked Dame Alice and began to shepherd them out.
‘Here!’ Dame Alice shouted. ‘Wait a bit. I thought you were goin’ to clear away those brambles out there.’
‘So we are, ma’am,’ Dan said. ‘Ernie do be comin’ up along after dinner with your slasher.’
‘Mind he does. How’s your father?’
‘Not feeling too clever today, ma’am, but he reckons he’ll be right again for tonight.’
‘What’ll you do if he can’t dance?’
Ernie said instantly, ‘I can do Fool. I can do Fool’s act better nor him. If he’m not able, I am. Able and willing.’
His brothers broke into their habitual conciliatory chorus. They eased Ernie out of the room and into the courtyard. Simon made rather a thing of his goodbye to Dame Alice and thanked her elaborately. She distressed him by replying: ‘Not’t all, Begg. Shop doin’ well, I hope? Compliments to your father.’
He recovered sufficiently to look with tact at Dulcie, who said: ‘Old Mr Begg’s dead, Aunt Akky. Somebody else has got the shop.’
Dame Alice said: ‘Ah? I’d forgotten,’ nodded to Simon and toddled rapidly away.
She and Dulcie went to their luncheon. They saw Simon’s van surrounded by infuriated geese go past the window with all the Andersens on board.
The courtyard was now laid bare of snow. At its centre the Mardian Dolmen awaited the coming of the Five Sons. Many brambles and thistles were still uncut. By three o’clock Ernie had not returned with the slasher and the afternoon had begun to darken. It was half past four that Dulcie, fatigued by preparation and staring out of the drawing-room window, suddenly ejaculated: ‘Aunt Akky! Aunt Akky, they’ve left something on the stone.’
But Dame Alice had fallen into a doze and only muttered indistinguishably.
Dulcie peered and speculated and at last went into the hall and flung an old coat over her shoulders. She let herself out and ran across the courtyard to the stone. On its slightly tilted surface which, in the times before recorded history, may have been used for sacrifice, there was a dead goose, decapitated.
II
By eight o’clock almost all the village was assembled in the courtyard. On Sword Wednesday, Dame Alice always invited some of her neighbours in the county to Mardian, but this year, with the lanes deep in snow, they had all preferred to stay at home. They were unable to ring her up and apologize as there had been a major breakdown in the telephone lines. They told each other, rather nervously, that Dame Alice would ‘understand’. She not only understood but rejoiced.
So it was entirely a village affair attended by not more than fifty onlookers. Following an established custom, Dr Otterly had dined at the castle and so had Ralph and his father. The Honourable and Reverend Samuel Stayne was Dame Alice’s great-nephew-in-law. Twenty-eight years ago he had had the temerity to fall in love with Dulcie Mardian’s elder sister, then staying at the castle, and, subsequently, to marry her. He was a gentle, unworldy man who attempted to follow the teaching of the gospels literally and was despised by Dame Alice not because he couldn’t afford, but because he didn’t care, to ride to hounds.
After dinner, which was remarkable for its lamentable food and excellent wine, Ralph excused himself. He had to get ready for the Dance. The others sipped coffee essence and superb brandy in the drawing-room. The old parlourmaid came in at a quarter to nine to say that the dancers were almost ready.
‘I really think you’d better watch from the windows, you know,’ Dr Otterly said to his hostess. ‘It’s a devil of a cold night. Look, you’ll see to perfection. May I?’
He pulled back the curtains.
It was as if they were those of a theatre and had opened on the first act of some flamboyant play. Eight standing torches in the courtyard and the bonfire beyond the battlements, flared into the night. Flames danced on the snow and sparks exploded in the frosty air. The onlookers stood left and right of the cleared area and their shadows leapt and pranced confusedly up the walls beyond them. In the middle of this picture stood the Mardian dolmen, unencumbered now, glinting with frost as if, incongruously, it had been tinselled for the occasion.
‘That youth,’ said Dame Alice, ‘has not cleared away the thistles.’
‘And I fancy,’ Dr Otterly said, ‘that I know why. Now, how about it? You get a wonderful view from here. Why not stay indoors?’
‘No, thankee. Prefer out.’
‘It’s not wise, you know.’
‘Fiddle.’
‘All right! That’s the worst of you young things: you’re so damned headstrong.’
She chuckled. Dulcie had begun to carry in a quantity of coats and shawls.
‘Old William,’ Dr Otterly went on, ‘is just as bad. He oughtn’t to be out tonight with his heart what it is and he certainly oughtn’t to be playing the Fool – by the way, Rector, has it ever occurred