Текст книги "Summon the Bright Water "

Автор книги: Geoffrey Household

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‘But light?’

‘Piers, darling, I am grown up! I brought a torch and then chucked it away as soon as I could see down into the cavern. I thought it would spoil my entry if I didn’t use both hands to carry the bowl. Scene Three. Priestess rescues lover. Tripey plot by Verdi and music by Stravinsky.’

She began to sob with relief and I held her close.

‘What do we do now?’ she cried. ‘I can’t go back to Broom Lodge, and you’re icy and shivering.’

‘Stick your robe on him!’ the major ordered. ‘And you can have my anorak.’

The dark green anorak and her brown tights suited her very well. She reminded me of the principal boy in a pantomime. I did not say so. I was so glad that she belonged again to our sanctuary of the trees, and not to the altar of black waters. As for me, I tied my wet clothes up in a bundle and put on that fragrant robe. The warmth of her body and her laughter when the shoulder seams split restored me.

‘Where are we to go?’ she asked. ‘No hotel would take us.’

I said that I could offer some Robin-Hood hospitality for the night and that next day we would go to London. Meanwhile she should return to Broom Lodge, pack a case of necessaries and her smartest summer frock and slip out again on foot without being noticed.

She had boldly parked her car – snatched from the communal garage – on the track used by the ‘geologists’, and she drove us to the village of Wigpool where I picked up mine. We then made for Broom Lodge, she to the garage and her room, and I to the quiet forest road where I waited for her return.

‘Going to the British Museum, Piers?’ the major asked.

‘Yes, just as we intended before the burglary.’

‘May I come with you?’

‘Of course. Whatever Elsa’s bowl is, you are its guardian for the present.’

He did not object to my calling it Elsa’s bowl. Since, strictly speaking, it belonged to the commune, I thought he might object and so added the bit about the guardian.

‘I have not been found worthy,’ he said. ‘She has.’

I wasn’t going to tell him how the Grail had come into her possession and I doubt if he wanted any prosaic explanation of the mystery. For him it may have been the eternal destiny, or a reward for her selfless gallantry.

Elsa returned out of the night, transformed from priestess via principal boy to neatly dressed tourist, hair now primly plaited and coiled. I drove to the glade beneath my gloomy hill where sometimes I left my car and led them up to the den.

‘So this is the hotel where you lived!’ she exclaimed.

‘It is as it should be,’ the major said, reverently laying down the cauldron on the stump which I used as a table. ‘The vision of the angels and the forest hut.’

He must have been referring to one of the Grail legends in which the seeker was led to a humble hut full of light and music. Presumably it was also full of heavenly warmth, which my den was not. As the smoke could not be seen by night I lit a fire in the ruined hearth, and when I had changed to the gent’s suiting of Personality No. 1 we sat round the blaze till the sky behind the line of the Cots-wolds, far away across the Severn and its meadows, showed the grey of dawn. My own forest angel slept with her head on my lap.

I put out the fire and rolled the major’s blessed car rug round the cauldron, tying it up safely. Dawn and the presence of Elsa and Denzil, one representing the joyous spirit of earth and the other the mysteries of the wandering soul, brought on a moment of adoration. Suppose, I said to myself, I really have got, here rolled up in a rug, the Grail itself or that paragon of beauty which created the myth.

We drove into Gloucester and took the first train up to town. I expected the major to stay at my flat. I had only two bedrooms, but there was no need for embarrassment – by this time he knew very well what were the relations between Elsa and myself. He surprised me by saying that he would go to his club; a clothes brush was all he needed, and the valet would supply everything else. Clubs and valets seemed utterly out of character. But why should they? No doubt he wasn’t the only eccentric retired officer who turned up fresh from a religious meeting in some obscure and holy Himalayan village, or from a study of voodoo in the groves of Haiti, with nothing but an expensive suit of indestructible tweed.

‘No connections half as good as yours, old boy,’ he said, ‘but if Tony is there for lunch I could mention the Museum to him.’

I asked who Tony was.

‘Sir Anthony Aslington. On some board or other which runs the place.’

Aslington was only a name of power to me. There was hardly a national museum of art or antiquities in which he was not chairman of some committee. The best authority I could reach myself was the curator of the Middle Eastern Department.

‘And meanwhile you’d better take care of the bowl. Can’t allow it to be unpacked by anyone. Can’t leave it with the porter.’

It was curious how the Guardian could become outwardly the ex-officer of the Horse Guards. With no apparent stress he left behind the lanced and unstirruped cavalry of Arthur and returned to a world in which the plumes and armour of everyday were real.

‘You do the talking when we get to the Museum,’ he added. ‘Never was any good at lies!’

Once at home, I managed to make an appointment with my friend, the curator, for next day. Later he telephoned me to change the time as Sir Anthony wanted to be present. What the hell had I got hold of, he asked, that could interest that old sinner? I replied that I didn’t know what I’d got but hoped that one of them could tell me, and left it at that.

Elsa refused to accompany us. To be in my flat opened up for her a present and future for which as abbess she must have longed, and she was bubbling with mischief and gaiety.

‘I’d be a distraction,’ she insisted. ‘You know what they’d be curious about instead of attending to the bowl. What a pretty piece! You should ask her out to lunch, Tony. Who does she belong to, Colet or Matravers-Drummond? And what would they think of you if it came out that you’d raped me?’

There was, of course, only one answer to that piece of impertinence.

I set out next morning with the cauldron in a case used for packing top hats and a feeling that I might be walking into trouble. The police had been informed that among objects stolen from Broom Lodge was a gold bowl. The description of it had been very imprecise, but jewellers and bullion brokers might have been advised to look out for something of the sort. It seemed possible, though very unlikely, that the British Museum had also been warned. I was happier when I called for the major at his club. He had bought a new shirt and tie and looked a personage above suspicion who might easily be lord-lieutenant of his county but could never have been a burglar, even amateur.

We took a taxi to the Musum and were ushered in to the curator’s office. I was impressed by Sir Anthony, who struck me as an authority on art rather than archaeology, which may have been due to his neat, pointed, seventeenth-century beard and the jeweller’s loup slung from a broad black ribbon round his neck. So much the better. The bowl had authorities of two different disciplines to pronounce on it.

Up to a point I came clean. I said that Major Matravers-Drummond in the course of his investigations into esoteric religions had become involved with a strange character who claimed to have rediscovered the secrets of alchemy and had shown him the golden bowl as proof. The major pretended to believe that he had made it and managed to obtain the loan of it for a day. He had appealed to me for an opinion as I was the only expert at hand, not realising that I was a historian of ancient economies and certainly no archaeologist.

Polite chorus of: ‘No, no. You are well known, Colet. Admirable work in your own field.’

Well, I had ruled out transmutation of metals, I said, and when I had seen the bowl or cauldron I thought it more likely that the self-styled alchemist was trying to fake an antiquity. I had also wondered whether it might not be a genuine treasure from some undeclared discovery of a chieftain’s hoard or tomb.

I then took the lid off the hat box and placed my beauty upon the table. They were both fascinated by it, but the curator ruled out my buried hoard immediately.

‘The gold is thin and unless very solidly protected from falling material it would have been squashed flat or at least dented by earth or pebbles. But there is only one small dent below the rim which looks recent. My dear Piers, it resembles nothing I have ever seen – Scythian, Scandinavian, Persian, Egyptian. I don’t care for the handles, and my personal opinion is that two years old is more likely than two thousand.’

Sir Anthony praised to the skies the craftsman who had made it, but added that as an antiquity it would not take in a … he was about to say ‘child’ but substituted ‘competent archaeologist’.

‘We must ask ourselves first what it was for. A cooking pot? Well, you wouldn’t dare put it on a hot fire. A mixing vessel? But that would be a bowl without neck or rim. A burial urn? Wrong shape. The vessel depends for its astonishing beauty on its form. No decoration at all, which is exceptional. A bed-ridden emperor’s urinal. That’s the best I can suggest. And what’s your opinion, Denzil? You sit there saying nothing and looking guilty. How about that second sight of yours?’

‘I can only tell you that in some way it is not of our world at all,’ the major said.

‘Made at the full moon by a cabalist, eh? But there is something odd about the glorious colour…’ he fixed the loup in his eye and carried the cauldron to the window. ‘I have my suspicions. May I send it down to the lab, Denzil? You can trust them, they won’t need filings. And meanwhile shall we have a small decanter of the Museum manzanilla?’

The verdict did not take long to come back – the time for two leisurely glasses of sherry and some learned conversation on the techniques of Cretan and Mycenaean goldsmiths to which I contributed little and the major nothing – beyond saying that his alchemist friend was a recluse, worked to his own taste and didn’t know whom he was imitating if he was.

The bowl was brought back and a note handed to Sir Anthony.

‘As I suspected might be the case,’ he pronounced, ‘your cauldron or amphora is of pure gold. 24 carats. Pure. No ancient craftsman would ever have worked in pure gold without any alloy. It’s too malleable for any practical purpose. With strong arms you could squash this vessel fairly flat between your palms. Off-hand I can think of only one explanation. Your alchemist was hoarding gold as a speculation. He possibly got hold of it illegally. So, being as we all agree a fine goldsmith, he decided to keep it in the form of this vessel rather than ingots of which the origin could be traced.’

That was running close to my early conjecture before I decided on the burial hoard. I said that it seemed an expensive hobby.

The curator, who was probably worried by the rising cost of insuring and guarding his own collection of near-eastern gold, and kept a close eye on the value of priceless objects if stolen and melted down, at once replied to that.

‘It only cost him his time. Weight of your bowl is about 180 ounces. At the beginning of the year the gold price was £600 an ounce. So we can say its value was £108,000.1 don’t know whether the rarity of pure gold would make it more or less. Gold price now is £670 an ounce. Value of bowl something over £120,000. Profit just by sitting still for six months £12,000.’

Then Marrin’s profit on gold, so long as the price continued to rise, would alone account for the prosperity of his commune without any need for the pretence of alchemy. But what started him off when Broom Lodge was bust and he rescued it? He had not the capital to speculate in gold; and even if he could somehow raise enough to buy, perhaps on margin, what would have happened to his precious commune if the price fell?

No, somewhere there was still a mystery. Marrin had suddenly changed from futile and contemplative salmon fishing to working in gold. That, as Elsa had said, brought prosperity. What then was the object in impressing his public by a skeleton glyptodont and a vessel reputed by the inner circle to be sacred? Answer, as Sir Anthony had acutely observed: to hide the source of the gold. Was it fraud in South Africa or a dig in the Severn meadows or dredging the Wigpool lake or some method of transmutation more scientific than alchemy? We were free to choose which impossibility was the least impossible.

At the Museum there was nothing more to be said beyond our expressions of respect and gratitude. The cauldron was restored to its hat box – with even more care than before – and we went back to the major’s club for lunch. In the taxi we laid off the whole subject except once when I exploded:

‘So bang goes your Grail and my Nodens’ treasure! You do agree, Denzil?’

‘With reservations, yes.’

‘You said once that the Grail could be remade.’

‘I said the druidicals thought so.’

‘But you accepted it.’

‘Pure gold. Inspiration. Wasn’t wrong in a way. Give it a rest till after lunch, old boy!’

He was right. The club dining-room was no place for discussion of subtleties apart from those of the wine list. And we needed to be fortified against so much disappointment. Afterwards, in a quiet, cool corner with brandy in front of us, he said:

‘Going on with the search, Piers?’

‘Is it worth it?’

‘Very strong position you’re in. You’re just a friend of Simeon who stayed at the commune and came to the funeral. They don’t know the wolfs den, don’t know he has been watching, don’t know who did the damage at Wigpool.’

‘So what?’

‘Got to let ’em loose, haven’t we? Badly want the bowl, and can be sure that Elsa has it.’

‘She’s safe with me, and they don’t know about us. You didn’t.’

‘Maybe. But wiser to give it up. Police and lawyers likely to be a nuisance too. I’d find another dowry for that splendid girl if I were you. Where did Simeon get his gold?’

‘But I haven’t a clue.’

‘Severn, old boy. Bright water and the shadow.’

Chapter Three

Again I must write an exact account of my operations while memory is fresh, in case I am ever compelled to justify them. I feel that I am guilty of a betrayal, yet must admit that the offence lies on me as lightly as do the deaths of Marrin and Evans. I intended neither, but perhaps did not care as much as I should have if my actions were to bring about a highly probable result. A sentence of one year for Marrin would, I think, be ample. My intervention was only culpable negligence. In the case of Evans I could plead self-defence unless witnesses agreed with each other in some outrageous lie, which, thanks to Denzil’s mission to the heathen, is now most unlikely.

On the whole I see the betrayal of my professional standards as worse than dubious manslaughter. On the other hand I am convinced that it is pointless to publish a discovery which in the absence of date and identity adds nothing material to history.

I return to my confession. The fact that I have just written ‘confession’ shows that my conscience is still uneasy, but to hell with it! If I published I should undoubtedly lose my reputation rather than advance it, and at the same time be forced to throw more light than is convenient on matters which could still, I fear, be of interest to the police.

After the indisputable verdict of Authority on the golden cauldron, I repacked it and consigned it to the safe deposit at my bank. The next urgent duties were to recover the major’s car before it was found and reported, and to release the prisoners at Wigpool. Meanwhile I left Elsa at my flat, where it was best she should remain until we had dealt with the parishioners of Gwyn ap Nudd and concocted some story to account for her sudden disappearance from Broom Lodge.

In the evening the major and I drove down to the Forest. After dark we found his old Humber undisturbed and extracted it from the thicket where it had been hidden. I was growing weary of darkness and straining eyes along the beam of a torch, and wished I had been gifted with night sight: a werecat rather than a werewolf. When we were out in the open we mended the wire, leaving the fence in better condition than before. As soon as wheel tracks had become barely distinguishable under growing grass the farmer to whom the derelict copse belonged would never notice that the wire had been cut and repaired.

No lodging was more discreet than the den, so there we remained till morning. I noticed that the major slept where he dropped as easily as any old soldier. That accounted for his patience underground as champion of the imagined Grail. He was divisible by three: one part the wandering friar, one part clubman, one part veteran of the Queen’s – or Arthur’s – bodyguard.

We were in no hurry to release the druidicals. They had now been buried for three nights and two days, and they could well endure another without food. Excellent fresh water they had in plenty. Before we unearthed them we had to know what their saner companions were doing or had done at Broom Lodge, so in the morning the major, as friend of Simeon Marrin and always welcome visitor, drove over to the commune for a casual call.

He came back with rations and the news. Evans and six others were missing. Elsa was missing too. The colonists assumed she was with the others but were puzzled since they knew that she had mild contempt for the inner circle. Had the police been informed? Well no, they hadn’t. General opinion was that the disappearance must be connected with some ritualistic observance. Three days of fasting under the oaks, perhaps. Broom Lodge was of course aware that the adepts did have their places of worship but out of reverence for the mysteries of others – inspired by Marrin himself rather than the characters of his disciples – refrained from tasteless curiosity. Another good reason for not reporting the missing persons was that the commune disliked police on principle. Working for the future and happy in the present, they felt no need for the protection of law.

All the commune knew of Wigpool was that Marrin had done some casual search for ores which he needed in the laboratory. Another tour of nearby pubs confirmed that Broom Lodge need never come into the picture at all. Marrin, with his genius for staging a convincing scenario, had set a story going that assays of minerals were occasionally carried out for the training of students in geology. That accounted for the tracks of vehicles and signs of excavation.

In the last of the twilight and an empty countryside we came upon the Broom Lodge van still standing at the end of the rough lane. It was safe enough there and the odd villagers who might have passed it would naturally assume that the ‘geologists’ were at work nearby or perhaps camping for a night or two. We approached the low heap of pit props silently, and listened. Nothing to be heard. Then we tried the blocked gate to the old workings. There they had been at desperate work, for a hole had been scraped out of the timbers which ended at the iron bars above and below the slit. It appeared to have been done laboriously with a knife, and all the chap had gained by a blistered palm was the certain knowledge that the bars were too close together for a body to pass. There, too, we could not hear a sound, but that meant little. The loudest speech could not carry round two corners of the gallery.

We started very cautiously to remove the pit props until only four were left, quite easy to push aside. Obviously the condemned were so demoralised in the darkness that they had given up hope and possibly were huddled together in the changing room which might retain some warmth from my bonfire. We wanted them out and away, so I went down as far as the cross gallery thudding on the floor with a pit prop and hammering against the rock wall. At last I heard somebody feeling his way up, falling and, instead of cursing, sobbing at his helplessness. I came up, cleared the hole completely and we settled down in a dry ditch close to the van to await their arrival.

It took the best part of an hour. Perhaps some of them had to be fetched up from the great cavern – a difficult journey through black nothing, even though the way could not be missed. Torches would have burned out long since and the batteries of flashlights would be flat. They must have had some in order to get from the entrance to the changing room, and now that I think of my fast and spontaneous activities, I believe there was a pocket flashlight in each of the coats I threw on the flames.

They whimpered with relief when they found their truck still in its place and collapsed against it, their dim figures looking like life-size rubber dolls simultaneously deflating. There were only six of them, and they were in no state to go hunting in the dark for the persons who had set them free.

Somebody said:

‘Could you finish the windlass?’

‘Not the lot. Couldn’t in the dark. Most of it has gone.’

A voice I recognised as Ballard’s whined:

‘The wind! Oh, the wind!’

There was not much of it. A damp, cool breeze. But when, as I myself had found, one has been wet, hungry and cold for so long fresh air is altogether too fresh.

‘Who let us loose?’

‘Same man who shut us in.’

‘I’ve told you. It was Elsa.’

They could have no doubt that Elsa had acquired the bowl exactly as and when she did, but I gathered there had been a disagreement on whether she had made her dramatic appearance in order to save the major and/or the unknown, or whether she had boldly attempted to take over her uncle’s high priesthood to which Evans had succeeded.

Apparently that was not unthinkable. As opposed to some of their eastern doctrines they allowed women to have souls. I should bloody well hope so! I know men who are so single-minded that the chance of eternal life for them will be a case of win or lose. But women have as many aspects as a diamond and at least one facet must be immortal if anything is.

They must have debated the question of Elsa over and over again, as well as the mystery of the major’s companion. That they touched on, just enough to confirm my opinion that I had not been identified, and slopped themselves into the van. To judge by the driver’s course down the track I could only hope that the hour was too late for much traffic on the forest roads and that nothing of what there was would have the bad luck to meet him.

‘Poor sods! Only misguided!’ the major exclaimed with a pity I had not expected. ‘They are not likely to return. But we will now go down and deliver them from any further temptation.’

I said that we should need explosives to close the place for good.

‘Didn’t mean the way of the body, Piers. Way of the soul what matters.’

I was in no mood for any of his theological hairsplittings but there was another good reason to go back: to see that Evans’s body had not been left about. Abruptly and as never before I was shocked to realise how the innocent and happy colonists were involved in criminality without being aware of it. Inner circle was a misnomer. A better picture of Broom Lodge was a figure of 8 with a small loop at the top and a larger one at the bottom and the fraudulent but impressive magus at the junction.

When we reached the great cavern it was plain that the work of dismantling the windlass and removing all traces of occupation had been interrupted by lack of light. The main wheel, weighed down by axle and fittings, had been sunk in the lake. Most of the superstructure remained, but bolts and lashings had been partly loosened so that it was easy to demolish the lot and to steer the floating timbers and ropes to the other side of the cavern where the current of the stream slowly carried them away to oblivion under the low roof.

There was no sign of the exact fate of Evans. The swimmers must have been able to disentangle him from the dredge, but when they found that he had been under too long to be revived I suppose they pushed the body out as far as they could and weighted it. Their anxiety to leave no trace of recent occupation seemed to me exaggerated. The cavern and its lake might, however, be rediscovered at any time – since rumour proved that it had been visited in the past – and they wanted no awkward questions. Nor, for that matter, did I.

The major now turned to delivering them from temptation. With the energy of a Round Table champion he attacked the altar of the pagans with a heavy baulk of timber. I helped him with some regret. The altar, and especially the pedestal for the cauldron, had its own beauty like everything Marrin touched. Fortunately he thought more of proportions than good mortar, or else it had not set properly in the prevailing damp. Splash after splash, his cut ashlars were drowned in the lake.

Returning to the surface, we bedded down the pit props and scattered loose ones above them, recreating the illusion of a derelict pile which had been there for years. While we were driving home to the den I asked the major what story he thought the six would tell when they arrived at Broom Lodge. He was far more conversant with the social diversities of the commune than I was.

‘Anything. Any mystery,’ he replied. ‘The rest of the colony won’t care where they have been.’

‘But what about Evans?’

‘After long prayer and meditation he left them to seek further enlightenment.’

‘The commune will let them get away with that?’

‘No reason to disbelieve. And thankful to be rid of him.’

‘Who will take over?’

‘Democracy, old boy.’

‘But democracy needs a chairman.’

‘He’ll appear. Pity to see the place all sixes and sevens. I used to enjoy it. Simeon and all. Guest room always ready. So I think I’ll go back for a bit.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘Boring from within, Piers. Boring from within.’

I insisted that it was dangerous and that he shouldn’t take the risk.

‘No risk. If I’m dead, I can’t let on where Elsa and the bowl are. They know I know. But if I say nothing about Wigpool, all they can say is: “Good morning, major. Nice day!” Easy to keep ’em in order while they’re off balance.’

‘And Elsa? What will you tell the commune about her?’

‘That she couldn’t stick working with Evans and cleared out in a temper. Might come back when she hears that Evans has gone.’

‘How could you know?’

‘Ran into her in Gloucester, Piers. She was seeing Simeon’s lawyer to sign some papers.’

I remarked too lightly that for someone who disapproved of lying, that was a beauty. He took it almost as an insult, informing me as if I were a junior fellow officer that to preserve the honour and safety of a woman a lie was not only permissible but a duty. He was still in a mood for military snorts until we were back in the den and had opened a bottle.

We could not sleep. The little pool of lamplight in the clearing, surrounded by the wall of larches which seemed as black and solid as the impenetrable rock, was a continuance of our ordeal.

‘I think you want to give back the cauldron,’ I said at last.

‘Yes – on conditions. Summon the bright water for your girl’s dowry!’

‘It’s never bright. A dirty blue under the sun. Milk chocolate under cloud.’

‘Let’s walk to the top of your hill, Piers.’

We pushed our way up to the peak, where through the slender trunks we could watch the great expanse of the Severn Sea silently sliding down to ocean at half tide and under a half moon.

‘Gold under the silver, Piers. You’ve forgotten it in all this sordid excitement.’

In the morning I again tried to stop him setting out upon his new illusion of himself as missionary to the pagans or whatever he meant by ‘boring from within’. It was no use. The only indication he gave of any lack of confidence was to tell me – should I not be far away and not wish to appear in person – to look for any message at our old ash stump and leave a reply.

When he had gone I cleared up the den since it was unlikely that the wolf would need it any more. Meanwhile my thoughts played for the hundredth time over the dreams and contradictions in the major’s character. The Gloucester solicitor, who had caused the temporary coldness between us, kept recurring to mind. He really existed and was Marrin’s unfortunate executor. I had his name and address from Elsa who was about the only person able to answer questions on the assets of the commune, though she couldn’t make much sense of them. I decided on the spur of the moment to call on this Mr Dunwiddy as a friend and guest of Broom Lodge. He might refuse to talk to me as having no standing in Marrin’s affairs but, if he did talk, some clue to the source of Marrin’s capital might come out of it.

Dunwiddy’s office was in the cathedral close. I think I would rather live in such a place than anywhere else in England. All the benediction of the land is there, from the devotion of the Norman architects struggling with traditions of Byzantium to the ecstasies in stone of the fifteenth century and, around the lawns, shapely Georgian houses of the servants of the great church. I am overcome by the sanity of it all rather than by any religion, mindful that before this Christian civilisation there were few peaceful havens for the soul. It was no place for an executor of Simeon Marrin, who served past and future gods by blood on a torch-lit altar or slower death in the quicksand of Box Hole.

Dunwiddy was a round ball of a man with a fitting rotundity of wit and wisdom. He made me wait some time, but, as soon as he had opened his office door and set eyes on me, received me with a cordiality for which I could not account.

He led me to talk of my interest in ancient economies and thus, via agriculture in the Forest of Dean, eased the way to my impressions of Broom Lodge.

‘I trust, Mr Colet, that the commune will now farm the hereditament with enterprise and without enthusiasm.’

Catching his obscure meaning, I replied that I did not think belief in reincarnation ever had much effect on their efforts to make the place pay.