Arms and the Women (38 page)

Unable to speak, the Prince dismissed his men with an imperious gesture. Achates paused in the entrance and looked back as though he had something to say. Then he shook his head and let the curtain fall behind him.

Aeneas refilled the goblets with red wine and the two men drank deep.

'If that was a fair example of their singing, it sounds more like an invitation to Hades than to Heaven,' said Aeneas.

'Hades? Aye, been there, done that,' said Odysseus with a shudder. 'And I'm not inclined to make any jokes about it either.'

The Prince leaned forward and looked deep into the other man's eyes.

'You are serious? You have made that journey and returned? I thought none had done that save Orpheus who braved the blackness for love.'

'Oh him,' said Odysseus dismissively. 'I got the low-down on him. Load of crap, that all-for-love business. Seems that wife of his was the jealous type and when she caught on he were using his musical charms to get his end away elsewhere, she hid his best lyre. Then she got bit by a snake afore he could find out where she'd put it, and that was why he went down below after her. But when he met Pluto and his missus, he thought he'd best go for the sympathy vote so he span that yarn about not being able to live without her. All he wanted was a quick chat - Where's me lyre? Thanks, luv, see you around - and off, but his story worked so well they said he could have her back, only he hadn't got to look back at her as he led her out of Hades. Well, there he was walking along playing his second-best lyre and all the time a few steps behind came Eurydice, and she never stopped wittering. On and on she went about his bits on the side and he needn't think this made any difference, and just wait till they got home, she was really going to give him what for. And in the end, with the daylight in sight, he thought, sod this for a lark. And he said, "Sorry, luv, didn't quite catch that," and he turned around. Bye-bye, Eurydice. It's true. Honest. On my mother's life.'

Aeneas said dryly, 'Truly I see that you are the man that all your legends claim you to be. So, what did you do in Hades? Who did you meet? What did you learn?'

'Well, funny enough, I met my old mam for a start. That were a shock. Didn't even know she were dead. Mebbe I swore on her life once too often. And I saw a lot of other women, all wives of noble husbands

'You didn't.. .'said Aeneas hesitantly. 'Did you perhaps see.. . would you know.. . Creusa, my wife, my son's dear mother, who strayed from my side as we fled burning Troy and was taken and slain by . . . say, did you see her?'

Odysseus shook his great head and said, 'Nay, Prince, I'll not lie. I didn't notice her, but there were so many, and time were short. Tell you who I did see, but. Great Achilles! Aye, he were down there, prancing round the Elysian Fields, large as life. I said to him that I were sure a great hero like him got real special treatment even down here, and you know what he said?'

'No. What did he say?' said the Prince dully, his mind still on his dead wife.

'He said he'd rather be a serf working for a landless nobody than be king of all these dead warriors. Makes you think, doesn't it? Great Achilles. Makes you think, eh?'

'Yes, I suppose it does,' said Aeneas, taking another long drink of wine. 'But you'll forgive me if I don't feel too much sympathy. If he'd never come to Troy, you'd never have beaten us. Didn't the gods proclaim it so?'

'Aye, they did.'

'And isn't it true that his mother sent him away to hide on Skyros disguised as a girl because she knew that he would die if he came to Troy? And was it not the subtle and cunning Odysseus who followed him there and found him out and made him join the Greek force? Oh, you have much to answer for, my friend, both at the start and at the end of this tragic business.'

He stared gloomily at the fat Greek, and suddenly the old soldiers' bond which had grown between them felt very weak.

'Hang about,' said Odysseus. 'You can't argue with the gods. You don't imagine any of us would have given up ten years of our lives to fight over a daft tart if we'd had any say in it? I certainly wanted no part of it, even though I'd taken an oath with a lot of other daft buggers who were wooing her to defend the rights of whichever of us got her in the end. When I heard that she'd been snatched and Menelaus was calling in our markers and going after her, I let on I was doolally and went around clucking like a chicken and pecking corn. Well, that didn't work, for all my famous smartness. So I thought, right, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, and let's see if we can't get this mad business over and done with and all be home for the winter panegyris.'

'You were still responsible for discovering Achilles, without whom none of this could have happened,' accused Aeneas.

'Come on!' protested the Greek. 'You make it sound like summat special. Well, it weren't. Any idiot could have found him out. I mean, think about it. There he was, disguised as a lass among all these other lasses. Good thinking, eh? Except that he's seven foot tall and he's got a dong like Big Ajax's spear! You know what the lasses on Skyros used to call him when he hid among them?
Stiffy!
And it weren't for the way he danced.'

Ellie laughed out loud at her own joke and sat back and sipped at her lemonade.

Why did she want to be a writer? friends had asked her, though rarely staying for an answer. Which was just as well as there were so many answers, mostly disingenuous, none complete.

Favourite at the 'serious' end of the market was that you were trying to make sense of, impose a pattern on, apparently senseless and disorderly human experience.

But fiction writing, as she'd indicated to Daphne in the garden at Rosemont yesterday, was also an extension of experience, indeed at times a substitute for it, as well of course as an escape from it. Sitting here in the sunshine, laughing at her own invention, she felt she could offer one answer to the question without any prevarication.

She wanted to be a writer because a writer could do anything, go anywhere, answer any question. Here was a world of profit and delight to equal that which tempted Faustus. Here was dominion which stretched as far as doth the mind of man. Maybe as with Faustus the price to be paid was your soul, or at least that part of you which fitted you to live in the real world. For she had tasted the sweet poison and knew that more than pipes of opium or lines of coke, when you drank the waters of Hippocrene, all that was actual, people and problems, time and troubles, trees and green grass, presently departed from you and left you falling down through the clouds to land lightly on the world of your own creation. Here she was God moving through Her Garden, and if from time to time her creatures exercised their free will, why, that was part of the deal too.

'Mrs Pascoe . . .
Ellie!
Are you OK?'

Suddenly she was back in the garden of Nosebleed Cottage, summoned there by a flushed and anxious-looking Shirley Novello.

'Yes, of course I'm OK. Have you been running? You really should be careful in this heat.'

'You said you'd stay inside and lock all the doors,' said Novello accusingly.

'You
instructed me to lock the doors, which in fact I have done,' said Ellie. 'As for staying inside, on a day like this? You must be joking!'

'Yeah, I'm full of jokes. Where's Rosie?'

'She's . . .'

Nowhere.

The birdsong persisted, but the chatter of the child's voice as she played in her own parallel universe was no longer its descant.

And now the trees and green grass did swim away from Ellie Pascoe and leave her falling down through the clouds.

'Rosie! Rosie!' called Novello. 'Where are you?
Rosie!’

Silence. The desperate cry had silenced even the birds.

Then there came a barking, followed a moment later by Tig. And blessedly, somewhere beyond the high garden wall, they heard the girl's voice calling, 'Goodbye, goodbye,' and a moment later she came running through the garden door, in her hand a posy of small white flowers.

For a second Ellie felt a huge gratitude to Novello, as if it was the power of her summons alone which had brought Rosie back to her. But almost instantaneously this turned into an equal and opposite resentment at the unnecessary shock to her system administered by the stupid woman's sudden arrival and disruptive urgency.

Rosie was the beneficiary of this reversal. Instead of reproving her for straying, Ellie said, 'Hello, darling. You mustn't get too hot. Come and have a glass of lemonade. Are those for me?'

'Yes, the lady picked them for me and Nina.'

Novello, who had gone to the doorway and looked out, turned round and said, 'Nina? Who's Nina?'

Ellie, who was studying the wild flowers, looked up and said, slightly mocking, 'Rosie's friend that no one else can see.'

Novello frowned at her. She had the kind of strong face which a frown made even more striking, thought Ellie grudgingly.

'And the lady who picked the flowers? Does she have a name too?' demanded the DC.

Rosie considered this then said, 'Well, she had a moustache so I think she might be the lady you told me about. Cucumber.'

'Cucumber?' said Ellie, puzzled.

'Think she might mean Uncumber,' said Novello reluctantly. 'She's a saint. . .'

'Yes, I know,' said Ellie suspiciously. 'Wilgefortis. I'm just wondering why on earth you were telling Rosie about her. Not missionary work, I hope.'' It just came up,' said Novello. 'And I'm just wondering how on earth you know about her?'

Cheeky, thought Ellie.

'As a well-known atheist, you mean?' she said. 'Well, you see, my dear, just because I don't subscribe to any of the primitive superstitions doesn't mean I can't be entertained by their more risible legends.'

Novello's face flushed with an angry offence which it would have done Father Kerrigan's heart good to see, but which made Ellie feel guilty.

Time maybe for an olive twig.

She said, 'Rosie, dear, this lady you mentioned with the moustache, is she like Nina? Or could Shirley here see her too?'

There. She'd used her first name!

The girl examined Novello assessingly over the rim of her lemonade glass, then gave her a complicitous smile as if to remind her they were in the same gang.

'Maybe she could,' she said. 'And maybe Nina too.'

Baffled, the policewoman looked to Ellie for assistance.

'Probably Mrs Stonelady,' she mouthed, then returned to her examination of the posy, the greater part of which consisted of plants with white-leaved yellow-centred florets blooming in profusion on single stalks.

'How lovely,' she exclaimed. 'And how fitting. Yarrow. I think these are yarrow.'

'Yarrow? What's that?' said Novello.

Ellie smiled into the posy, not her daughter's smile, which had been conspiratorial and inclusive, but an inward-looking and secretive smile.

'I will pick the smooth yarrow that my figure may be more elegant, that my lips may be warmer, that my voice may be more cheerful,' she murmured. 'May my voice be like a sunbeam, may my lips be like the juice of the strawberries. May I be an island in the sea, may I be a hill on the land, may I be a star when the moon wanes, may I be a staff to the weak one.'

She paused and now her gaze lifted to look straight at Novello.

'I shall wound every man,' she declared in a strong clear voice. 'No man shall wound me.'

The dog, which had been sniffing at Novello's trainers with a foot-fetishist's enthusiasm, now cocked his leg and began to pee.

Oh God, thought Novello. Trapped in a cottage called Nosebleed with a gang of skinny-dipping, poetry-reciting nutters, not to mention a weird kid and an incontinent dog.

This could be a long, long day.

viii

we galloped all three

Peter Pascoe opened the door of his house, picked up the mail from the mat and went through into the living room.

The answerphone display was on, indicating one message. He pressed the
Play
button and sorted his mail from Ellie's as he waited for the machine to start.

'Hi, it's me. Just to say we've arrived safely, quite a miracle when you consider the way Daphne drives. The bothy is lovely, makes our place look a slum, couldn't you take up growing roses? Rosie thinks it's heaven, and she's taken a shine to
your
infant prodigy, which isn't surprising I suppose when you consider what they've got in common, like grating voices and no social graces. Only joking, only
just
joking anyway, still can't see why we couldn't have had Dennis Seymour or that nice boy, Hat, no problem with sleeping arrangements, even Rosie has got her own room. So, everything's fine. You can enjoy your bachelor delights with a clear conscience. By the way, if there's anything for me from you-know-who, if it's a package, stick it on top of the wardrobe and say nothing till I get home. But if it's a letter, open it at once! Love you. 'Bye.'