The Silver Bough (19 page)

The Colonel leaned back. “Your points are interesting, decidedly interesting—but your final assumption!” He shook his head. “But you would first have to do some jugglery between burial in a chambered cairn and burial in a short cist.”

“Well of course,” agreed Grant. “That's where the drama comes in. We take it as established that the individual cist burial was a method of burial introduced by a round-headed people invading us from the Continent and landing on the east coast——” He paused.

“Well?” The Colonel waited.

Grant smiled also. “I agree it's difficult. But let us assume for a moment that this woman's man was the headman of this settlement. For gold to have been about at all, raiding must have been going on, either raiding or trading. Let us assume he was away on a raiding—or trading—expedition.”

“What would he trade with—from a place like this?” asked Blair.

Grant nodded. “You may be right.”

“And if it was a case of a sudden invasion of a peaceful people—how had they managed to get the gold?” asked the Colonel. “You'll have to assume, I'm afraid, that they were a fighting raiding lot, not unlike the clansmen of a later date.” The Colonel was enjoying himself.

“Very well. Let us say the headman was away fighting, and while he was doing this Clachar was invaded by round-heads from the east coast. The local home guard would do their best, rallying round the woman and child, but in the end they are overcome and the woman, to avoid capture, decides to pass out, taking the child with her—poison or drowning, something like that, for I can find no evidence at all of violence to a bone.”

“And the roundheads buried her cist-fashion in the cairn out of respect for so noble an enemy?” suggested Blair.

“They might,” said Grant. “It's the kind of thing they did in those days.”

Blair laughed in enjoyment of his scepticism.

“And in the hurry and alarm, the aged medicine man would block up the urn in the corbelled cell?” suggested the Colonel.

“He might,” said Grant. “It would certainly be the best place to hide it.”

“Why?”

“Because if the old boy was then done in and the headman came back and drove out the invaders, the first thing he would notice when he had opened up the passage and entered the tomb of his forefathers was that the corbelled cell had been built up. Investigation would reveal the urn, and the headman would bless the memory of the aged priest.”

Colonel Mackintosh laughed. “You seem to have thought it all out!”

“I admit I thought of that bit only this minute. Actually I am not at all sure that it happened like that.”

“No?” The Colonel eyed him.

“No. You see, a rather extraordinary thing is taking place in my lodging just now. I have the two skeletons in a box in a small room—a cell—just off my bedroom. The first night they were there they came out while I was asleep and were . . . very much alive . . . on the rug in front of the fireplace. They appeared a second night. The third occasion was last night, but last night, for the first time, they saw me.”

All eyes were on him and in the silence the summer night came into the room, for the curtains had not been drawn.

“Did they get a shock?” asked Blair, but no one laughed.

“Well?” asked the Colonel.

“That's all,” said Grant.

“You mean you woke up?”

Grant hesitated. “I terminated the interview by coming to my ordinary senses.”

“You think the woman might have spoken?” probed the Colonel.

“She might.”

“In English?” asked Blair.

“I don't think it would have mattered whether she spoke in words or not. An experience is an experience—not speech.”

“But you can't communicate it without speech.”

Grant looked at Blair. “Can't you?” Then he got up, apologised for stopping so late, and in a few minutes was on his way home, wondering in the light-hearted aftermath of parting whether he understood the silent look Mrs Sidbury had given him.

F
or two days Colonel Mackintosh took control and things got going. To his solid body was added his solid reputation and all irrelevances and foolish speech bounced off him. He joked with the policeman, and if anything further was needed to draw the law to his heels, he unconsciously achieved it by mentioning the Home Office as if it were his private club. The passage in the cairn was reopened, and as the Colonel's extensive hindquarters slowly disappeared the policeman started an eagle-eyed patrol, which had small consideration for human curiosity even in its more cunning guises.

For naturally the public, not to mention the press, were in a state of suspense about what might be happening inside a cairn peopled at the moment by three archaeologists and the village idiot. But Colonel Mackintosh was quite simply in his element. He snuffed the air, he handled the bones, he lifted a skull as it were an apple. His manner was off-hand while he spoke to no one in particular. He ruminated, squatting like a Buddha. The outside world of time was no more as he dredged the dust of millennia and ordered Blair to hold the light to it. When Blair spoke out of his knowledge, the Colonel said “Hm” or “Hmf” through nostrils fashioned to blow such knowledge away. He poked here and scraped there. His finger of electric light travelled so deliberately from doorjamb to lintel that it wrote the architectural story as it advanced. When Blair felt called upon to indicate the more fascinating aspects of that story in plain and even excited English, the Colonel still contented himself with sounds that may have been Neolithic. At last he entered the eastern chamber, and before the raped cell his features gathered, lifting the moustache bushily and closing the eyes to slits. Grant had laid his hand-lamp on a stone on the floor. Blair withdrew his torch from the cell and straightened himself. The Colonel turned to Foolish Andie, who was by his right shoulder, and stared at him.

As Andie held the stare, his mouth opened a little more; as his head moved his eyes glistened. “Gu—gu——”

“Gu gad!” said the Colonel sternly.

Andie's shoulders began to move. His eyes swept to Grant, who was by the Colonel's left side.

“Gu—gar——”

“By gad you did! And this is what you did!” roared the Colonel. Whereupon he swung round and embraced Mr Grant with such unexpected violence that that slim figure lost its balance and grabbed at the Colonel.

“Look out!” yelled Blair.

The Colonel felt his shoulder wrenched by a paw, but Grant tore in, and forced Andie back with imperious shouts.

Andie stood flapping his arms like great wings, gabbling in tremendous excitement, but dominated by his employer, who continued to address him sharply until the eye-glistening rage subsided.

“That was a near thing!” said Blair and blew a chestful of air.

But the Colonel, though breathing heavily, did not seem put out. “He did it all right,” he muttered, watching Andie. “Point is: does it convey anything to him, does he remember?”

Through the flying dust of the centuries, Grant said, “I'll give him something to do.” He turned to Andie. “Come on; we have got to shift these stones—from here—to there.”

The Colonel watched Grant shifting the first stones himself, then turned away, and did a minute examination of the cell.

“Odd that this should have been the only place,” said Blair, still shaken with amazement, “where this overlapping—this corbelling—should have been done.”

The Colonel straightened up. “I don't know,” he muttered. “I once had a dog that buried bones in the garden. I came to the conclusion that he had forgotten where he had buried some of them, if not all.”

Blair looked at him. “You're thinking of the crock of gold?”

“God knows what happens inside that mind,” muttered Colonel Mackintosh as he watched Andie stack the last of the loose stones against the off wall; then he proceeded to examine the row of skulls.

It was after lunch when the Colonel was tackled by Arthur. Blair and himself had gone back to Clachar House to eat, for it was no great distance and Mrs Sidbury had alleged that it was easier to spread something on a table than wrap it in paper.

“And you are Arthur——?”

“Arthur Black, sir,” replied Arthur with a smile.

“Hm,” said the Colonel with a glance at his black head. “What do you want?”

“I was wondering what you thought of the cairn?”

“Why, is there something you think you could learn about it?”

“From you, sir, everyone could learn.”

“So you brought everyone to the spot? You think that's helpful to us?”

“I can't help that.”

“Can't you? If you brought them here, you can drive them away? Surely you don't suggest that the press is not omnipotent as well as omniscient?”

“Do you imply, sir, that it's omnipotent enough to get an exclusive interview from you?”

“I might imply even that.”

“I am prepared to obey all instructions and, where necessary, submit copy for your approval.”

“You looked an intelligent fellow.” The Colonel turned to Blair. “Tell Grant I've been waylaid by a man who wants to grind his own stone axe.”

Then Colonel Mackintosh seated himself and prepared to speak to the young man.

Before returning to Clachar House for supper the Colonel thought he would like to have a few words with Mrs Mackenzie. “She seems a nice simple stupid woman,” he said.

It was his use of a word like “stupid” at such a moment that made Blair smile appreciatively and got Grant a little on the raw, though he smiled also, for he knew it was an indirect way of baiting him.

“We don't want to crowd the poor woman out,” the Colonel continued, “so perhaps you'll tell Mrs Sidbury I'll be along presently.”

“Very good.” Blair saluted.

As the two men approached the cottage, the Colonel asked, “I suppose she's quite
compos mentis
?”

“Quite,” replied Grant.

“You say she resents all this intrusion?”

“I suspect she thinks it's bad manners, but that's merely because she doesn't know any better.”

“Not a radical defect in intelligence, you suggest?”

“Possibly not.”

As Mrs Mackenzie appeared in answer to his knock, Simon Grant, at once smiling and friendly, said, “Here we are troubling you again, Mrs Mackenzie, but Colonel Mackintosh was saying he did not have a chance of speaking to you properly today with all the people about. I hope we're not intruding?”

“Would you please come in?” Her grave face hardly smiled and her voice had a smothered note of distress. They followed her into the kitchen, where she hospitably saw them seated.

“Is all this getting a bit too much for you?” asked the Colonel.

“It is,” she admitted. “Too much.”

They thought she was going to break down, but she swallowed and pressed her lips and then was calm again. She obviously had been having a struggle with herself before they appeared.

“I asked you and Andie along today, because I did want you to meet my friends and we needed some help for opening the cairn,” Grant explained, “and your son is a capital worker.”

“Excellent,” said the Colonel, watching her.

She made a neat fold of her apron on her knee and then looked up at Grant. “If you don't mind, sir, I would like that we stopped now working at the cairn.”

“Why, what's gone wrong?” asked the Colonel before Grant could speak.

“Everything,” she said.

“Nothing's happened to Andie?” asked Grant quickly.

“No,” she answered.

It was the reticence of one who did not wish to trouble them with personal explanation, who was tired and wanted to be left alone, who knew that she may have let them down but could in herself and in her son do no more.

“Surely you are not bothering your head about all these silly gaping people?” asked Colonel Mackintosh.

“We are not used to it.”

“You're lucky,” he said heartily. “Mr Grant and myself have got used to it long ago.”

She did not answer, sitting quite still, her face to the fire. The slight movement in her hands, pressing against her knees, drew Grant's attention, and he saw them intimately and isolated, and read their lines and colour as he might some ancient script. He glanced at her face. The skin had the texture of the skin on a plate of cold porridge; a heavy face, with graven lines which he had not noticed before; her eyes had a strange glisten in them as though a weight pressed on her forehead.

“Have you been keeping your son from going out at night?” asked Colonel Mackintosh.

“Yes.”

“You're quite right. We'll have to see that you're not troubled any further.”

Grant heard the remarks, but vaguely, so lost was he in apperception of her being. His eyes had withdrawn to the fire.

“You have no idea at all, from your son's behaviour, where he may have hidden the urn?” continued the Colonel.

“None,” she answered.

“If Mrs Mackenzie had any idea she would have told me,” said Grant suddenly, as though the words had been surprised out of him in anger, but when the Colonel glanced at him he was smiling.

“Once we have got all these people cleared away, you'll find everything will come all right,” the Colonel assured her.

But Grant got to his feet with the unbearable feeling that she was going to break down in a way no stranger should witness. “I must get along,” he said briskly, afraid now to address even one word of sympathy to her.

“You're in a hurry.” Colonel Mackintosh looked up at him. To end the interview was surely his prerogative.

“I think we should get along,” said Grant smiling.

“People round here are very restless,” said the Colonel to Mrs Mackenzie, but he got up. With a cheerful good-bye, Grant turned for the door.

Behind him he heard Mrs Mackenzie say, “No, thank you. We need nothing.” He felt pierced between the shoulder blades.

There was a slight confusion on the Colonel's features as they walked away. “An independent sort of woman, too.”

“But stupid,” said Grant, relieved now, drawing in the outside air, prepared once more to give as much as he got.

The culminating episode of the Colonel's short visit occurred the following afternoon. The girl in the shorts appeared before the cairn and said to the policeman that she must see Colonel Mackintosh at once. But the policeman, who had already had cause to measure his resources against those of the press, was not impressed, and even less impressed when she said that she was prepared to crawl up the passage in order to deliver her urgent message in person.

“I have heard that one before,” he suggested, stretching his six feet in sarcastic ease.

“You go in yourself then and tell him,” she said.

He perceived now that she had been running, that she was breathless, and that her eyes were very bright.

“What's your message?” he asked.

She looked at him with such earnestness that she was plainly tempted to tell him. “I can't tell you,” she said. “It's for Colonel Mackintosh.”

“He is not to be disturbed by the public.”

“I am not the public.” She spoke with such penetrating force that one or two hovering members of that great body drew a little nearer. In the desperate moment she took a step nearer him herself. Involuntarily he lowered his head. “We have found it,” she whispered.

As his head went up again his lips parted in astonishment.

“You mean the crock——”

She stopped him with a swift nod. “Hsh!”

His expression slowly narrowed as his eyes searched her face. Still far from being completely reassured, he got into the opening himself, stuck his head up the tunnel and roared, “Ahoy, there!” Grant's figure wavered distantly against swinging lights. “That newspaper woman,” bellowed the policeman, “says she wants to see Colonel Mackintosh.”

The Colonel rose out of the passage and as the girl was imparting her intelligence in a low swift voice his legs were butted by Blair who was followed by Grant.

“Just see that no one goes in there, constable, till we come back,” said the Colonel, and the three scientists, with the girl in their midst, walked away. They passed the tall monolith in the south-west of the circle, dipped with the ground, went up between two shoulders of land, rounded the inland one and came into a tiny valley whose watercourse was dried up. From a swath of tall bracken Arthur Black's head reared up. He waved to them.

The Colonel's brows gathered, his moustache lifted, as he gazed not only at a short cist but at a baked-clay cinerary urn.

Arthur's eyes were brighter even than the girl's. “It's quite genuine,” he said and smiled at the Colonel's puzzlement.

“You mean it's—genuine?”

Arthur's smile deepened. “Quite genuine.” He snatched a coloured silk neckerchief from the top of the urn. “Have a look.”

Colonel Mackintosh got down on his knees, looked inside the urn, withdrew a burnt bone, examined it, withdrew another, looked inside again and put the bones back. Then he examined the exterior of the urn. It was an excellent specimen of the Overhanging Rim type, with decoration not only on the collar and the inside bevel of the lip, but also right round the shoulder below the collar; a particularly tall specimen, too, not much under two feet if his eye could measure anything.

“You found this—here?”

“Yes,” answered Arthur. “We saw him coming out of this valley fairly early this morning.”

“Who?”

“The idiot. We have been prospecting ever since.”

“How early?” asked Grant.

“Before eight o'clock.”

The Colonel stepped to the edge of the cist, which was the usual affair of fair slabs on end, from which the covering lid, some four feet by two, had been heaved over.