Off With His Head. Ngaio Marsh

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СКАЧАТЬ stuck out at one end. Ernie crouched beside it, squatting on his heels with his great hands dangling, splay-fingered, between his knees. His face was beslobbered and blotched with tears. When he saw Camilla he cried, like a small boy, all the louder.

      ‘Why, Ernie!’ Camilla said, ‘you poor old thing.’

      He broke into an angry torrent of speech, but so confusedly and in such a thickened dialect that she had much ado to understand him. He was raging against his father. His father, it seemed, had been saying all the week that the dog was unhealthy and ought to be put down. Ernie had savagely defied him and had kept clear of the forge, taking the dog with him up and down the frozen lanes. This morning, however, the dog had slipped away and gone back to the forge. The Guiser, finding it lying behind the smithy, had shot it there and then. Ernie had heard the shot. Camilla pictured him, blundering through the trees, whimpering with anxiety. His father met him with his gun in his hand and told him to take the carcass away and bury it. At this point, Ernie’s narrative became unintelligible. Camilla could only guess at the scene that followed. Evidently, Chris had supported his father, pointing out that the dog was indeed in a wretched condition and that it had been from motives of kindness that the Guiser had put it out of its misery. She supposed that Ernie, beside himself with rage and grief, had thereupon carried the body to the wood.

      ‘It’s God’s truth,’ Ernie was saying, as he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and became more coherent. ‘I tell ’ee, it’s God’s truth I’ll be quits with ’im for this job. Bad ’e is: rotten bad and so grasping and cruel’s a blasted li’l old snake. Done me down at every turn: a murdering thief if ever I see one. Cut down in all the deathly pride of his sins, ’e’ll be, if doctor knows what he’m talking about.’

      ‘What on earth do you mean?’ cried Camilla.

      ‘I be a better guiser nor him. I do it betterer nor him: neat as pin on my feet and every step a masterpiece. Doctor reckons he’ll kill hisself. By God, I hope ’e does.’

      ‘Ernie! Be quiet. You don’t know what you’re saying. Why do you want to do the Fool’s act? It’s an Old Man’s act. You’re a Son.’

      Ernie reached out his hand. With a finicky gesture of his flat red thumb and forefinger, he lifted the tip of his dead dog’s tail. ‘I got the fancy,’ he said, looking at Camilla out of the corners of his eyes, ‘to die and be rose up agin. That’s why.’

      Camilla thought: ‘No, honestly, this is too mummerset.’ She said: ‘But that’s just an act. It’s just an old dance-play. It’s like having mistletoe and plum pudding. Nothing else happens, Ernie. Nobody dies.’

      Ernie twitched the sacking off the body of his dog. Camilla gave a protesting cry and shrank away.

      ‘What’s thik, then?’ Ernie demanded. ‘Be thik a real dead corpse or bean’t it?’

      ‘Bury it!’ Camilla cried out. ‘Cover it up, Ernie, and forget it. It’s horrible.’

      She felt she could stand no more of Ernie and his dog. She said: ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help you,’ and walked on past him and along the path to the smithy. With great difficulty she restrained herself from breaking into a run. She felt sick.

      The path came out at a clearing near the lane and a little above the smithy.

      A man was waiting there. She saw him at first through the trees and then, as she drew nearer, more clearly.

      He came to meet her. His face was white and he looked, she couldn’t help feeling, wonderfully determined and romantic.

      ‘Ralph!’ she said, ‘you mustn’t! You promised. Go away, quickly.’

      ‘I won’t. I can’t, Camilla. I saw you go into the copse, so I hurried up and came round the other way to meet you. I’m sorry, Camilla. I just couldn’t help myself, and, anyway, I’ve decided it’s too damn silly not to. What’s more, there’s something I’ve got to say.’

      His expression changed. ‘Hi!’ he said, ‘Darling, what’s up? I haven’t frightened you, have I? You look frightened.’

      Camilla said with a little wavering laugh: ‘I know it sounds the purest corn but I’ve just seen something beastly in the copse and it’s made me feel sick.’

      He took her hands in his. She would have dearly liked to put her head on his chest. ‘What did you see, my poorest?’ asked Ralph.

      ‘Ernie,’ she said, ‘with a dead dog and talking about death.’

      She looked up at him and helplessly began to cry. He gave an inarticulate cry and gathered her into his arms.

      A figure clad in decent blacks came out of the smithy and stood transfixed with astonishment and rage. It was the Guiser.

      III

      On the day before Sword Wednesday, Dame Alice ordered her septuagenarian gardener to take his slasher and cut down a forest of dead thistles and briar that poked up through the snow where the Dance of the Five Sons was to be performed. The gardener, a fearless Scot with a will of iron and a sour disposition, at once informed her that the slasher had been ruined by unorthodox usage.

      ‘Dame,’ he said, for this was the way he chose to address his mistress, ‘It canna be. I’ll no’ soil ma hands nor scald ma temper nor lay waste ma bodily health wi’ any such matter.’

      ‘You can sharpen your slasher, man.’

      ‘It should fetch the blush of shame to your countenance to ask it.’

      ‘Send it down to William Andersen.’

      ‘And get insultit for ma pains? Yon godless old devil’s altogether sunkit in heathen clamjamphries.’

      ‘If you’re talkin’ about Sword Wednesday, McGlashan, you’re talkin’ bosh. Send down your slasher to the forge. If William’s too busy one of the sons will do it.’

      ‘I’ll hae nane but the smith lay hands on ma slasher. They’d ruin it. Moreover, they are as deep sunk in depravity as their auld mon.’

      ‘Don’t you have sword dances in North Britain?’

      ‘I didna come oot here in the cauld at the risk o’ ma ain demise to be insultit.’

      ‘Send the slasher to the forge and get the courtyard cleared. That will do, McGlashan.’

      In the end, the slasher was taken down by Dulcie Mardian, who came back with the news that the Guiser was away for the day. She had given the slasher to Ernie with strict instructions that his father, and nobody else, was to sharpen it.

      ‘Fancy, Aunt Akky, it’s the first time for twenty years that William has been to Biddlefast. He got Dan Andersen to drive him to the bus. Everyone in the village is talking about it and wondering if he’s gone to see Stayne and Stayne about his will. I suppose Ralph would know.’

      ‘He’s lucky to have somethin’ to leave. I haven’t and you might as well know it, Dulcie.’

      ‘Of course, Aunt Akky. But everybody says old William is really as rich as possible. СКАЧАТЬ