Dolly And The Cookie Bird - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 03 (19 page)

She had a good look, too, at the escort of soldiers who came next, with gold-banded hats off, but then we were back to the hoods and gowns: all white with pale blue masks; all white with blue hoods; all white with black hoods and buttons, like a gingerbread man, all down the front. A stout man in uniform and gloves came stepping down, like a
haute école
act without the horse, and then a ringing noise broke the silence and, turning a corner, rattled backward and forward among the high houses as the municipal band appeared on the slope and descended, blowing and beating. They had their music stuck out in front, and the flute had a little torch pinned to its chest. There was a clarinet, as well, and drums. The racket squeezed through the arch and ricocheted back and forth under the gallery before being swallowed, abruptly, by the jaws of the Portal. A body of upright men with long coats and epaulettes breasted the lane: they all caught Mr. Lloyd’s eye and smiled. “Hullo?” said Janey.

“Public relations,” said Mr. Lloyd. “Pay no attention.”

They wheeled round before us. The room between the two archways was filled with bobbing caps and a few retarded white peaks. Things were still pouring down the slope. Church dignitaries in velvet and thick gold embroidery, edging downward with care. Two wooden crosses borne at intervals by robed figures, their black-soled bare feet padding securely down over the stones. The figure we had seen in the Cathedral of the sorrowing Virgin, in a halo of silver, with her lace hankie still in her hand. Some women, veiled in black lace, carrying fancy black missals. A large block of civilians, in their good suits, medals catching the light. A Cavalry with the figure in a purple velvet sort of apron, a thick silver belt round the waist.

The silver flashed under each lamp as it came down the hill, and I stopped watching Gil and started to nibble my nails. Any minute now. More robed figures. A regimental band of cornets and drums, deafeningly letting off down the slope, the brass dressed in scarlet with fringes. The echo of the drums, banging backward and forward inside the arch, was like a heavy cavalry charge. Janey put her hands over her ears, but I was enjoying the mixture. You could hear, far off in the low town, the bugles and drums and flutes which had already passed us, playing something different. It was a bit like the
1812
being played by Boy Scouts in two different drill halls. Then the band got through and down to the ramp, and I had time to look up the slope and see the Saint Hubert.

Hubert is not one of my very favorite names, and what the fishwife had told me hadn’t changed my mind much either. After beating it up as a courtier, he was startled into repentance when hunting on Good Friday, say the books, by the sudden appearance of a stag bearing between his horns a radiant crucifix. He renounced all worldly pleasures and ended up as a bishop, in afterlife giving much help to those bitten by mad dogs and taken over by devils.

Anyway, there, obviously, seesawing at the top of the slope, was the form of Saint Hubert, in a bishop’s mitre, robed and bearded, with one hand uplifted, as in his photograph, and the other resting on the head of a stag. The heads in front of it moved, marching downward, and you could see that instead of a canopy, the float had a tree fixed at each corner, with flowers and leaves realistically made out of wax. Round the trees, lay the carved statues of various hunting dogs, one with a hare in its mouth, and the rest of the space was filled in with flowers and half a million candles with their flames all bending one way, like a happy crowd at a tennis match. Then it got a little nearer, and you could see something else: the candlelight flashing crimson on a sort of necklace slung round his shoulders. The Saint Hubert rubies. He still had them, then. So somewhere near, Johnson must still be lurking, but I couldn’t see him. Nor could I see Derek.

I looked round. A contingent of soldiers was goose-stepping past us: little, sallow men with mustaches, with rifles reversed held by white gloves, the ranked helmets shining like fishing floats. Both Mr. Lloyd and Gilmore were staring at them, their eyes slightly glazed. Janey wasn’t looking at all. I followed her gaze with my eyes and found a wrought-iron balcony with a carpet flung over it and a family party sitting behind on tall, straight-backed chairs. At the end of the balcony, a perfectly super type with one of those long, brown Spanish faces and sideburns was carefully picking geraniums out of one of the window boxes and throwing them to selected females in the crowd, most of whom were Janey.

I suppose, up to then, the retreating noise of the bands had drowned the sound of the barking. At any rate, it was only then that I noticed, and everyone else beside me, that the float of Saint Hubert was behaving in a peculiar manner. For instance, it was traveling sideways. It then moved backward, and sideways again, and then with sudden and extreme rapidity, disappeared up a side lane. There was a heightening of noise, and the procession halted behind it, while the crowds all inclined upward, pushing. It was the nearest one could get, in performance, to actually rushing to see what had happened.

For a moment, everyone shouted and shoved and asked questions, while nothing else happened. Outside the walls, there must have been a block on the ramp, for the band and the float and the penitents between the two arches had stopped, too, and those who could were craning round to watch the happening behind, while the lot stuck through the arch in the guardroom kept calling up questions. The soldiers stood at ease and swayed without moving their boots, their eyes wandering vaguely. Then, as suddenly as it had gone, the Saint Hubert float shot like a roller skate out of its side street, turned round twice in mid road, and began to charge down the slope. At the same moment, creaking, the procession before us got moving again, and draining out through both arches, disgorged itself into the town, leaving the cobbles in front of us perfectly clear.

Alone and jolting, its velvet skirts flouncing, its candles vibrating, and Saint Hubert posting above, the paso of the poor hunting bishop came rollicking past, accompanied by every dog in Ibiza.

They were happy dogs. High and low, white, black, brindle and tan, with or without ears and tails, covered with dust, scabs, and layers of incense, leaping and driving and fighting and snapping and barking—about two dozen dogs ran round and after that float, under it, and scrabbling half up its sides. And every time a boot lashed out from under the valance and caught a dog in the ribs with a squeal, another three dogs ran in, teeth bared, and another voice joined the shouting and swearing which we could now hear, emerging with passion from under the litter. It joggled, dancing. Impelled by a series of snaps, it took a short run to the left, and another back to the right, stopped, and then suddenly set off, like a clockwork mouse, dead downhill. It passed us, going like steam, with everyone within reach on the cobbles giving gratuitous help to kick the peripheral dogs out of the way: the rest were quite beyond stopping. For a moment, it looked as if it were going to crash into the crowd. Then, lurching, Saint Hubert swerved, instead, sharp right and shot through the arch into the galleried guardroom.

The roofless space between the two arches was now quite clear of people. There was, in fact, nothing in it but wind. As the float slowed and turned, snarling, to move with its dogs out through the Portal de las Tablas, the flames of the candles suddenly bent flaring over, and the bishop’s robes burst into fire.

I think Mr. Lloyd was there first. I never saw anyone move so fast, although Gil was not far behind, and Janey and I flailed our way through the arch after, the lines of penitents pounding beside us, their torches streaming, their hood points fighting like pelicans. I saw Mr. Lloyd force his way through the dogs and jump onto the float, at the same moment as I saw Derek scramble up on the far side, with a bunch of Penitent Brothers ahead of him. You could see the palinquin tremble as the extra weight piled on top. It tilted; the dogs squealed, the men underneath shouted, and just as one of the hooded figures flung a cloth over the blazing Saint Hubert, hugging and smothering him, the litter came cracking down on its legs, throwing everyone on it off balance.

For a moment, there was a smoking heap of limbs, flowers, candles, shattered china, and dogs. Fighting my way through, with the crowd pushing me forward, I saw no faces I knew. Then beside the statue, a hooded figure stood upright, still clutching the end of the cloth which had put the fire out. It let go the cloth and turned, clearly about to get down, when from the end of the float rose another figure, also hooded, purple robed and gloved. It advanced on the first, picking its way over the struggling bodies and ignoring the guttering candles, and drawing back its gloved fist, socked the first man clean on the jaw.

Whoever he was, the assaulted Brother must have had a neck like a bullock. He shook his head once, staggered, tore himself free, and turning, jumped. Not for the ground, where rows of upturned faces, aghast as I was, waited for him. But upward, to the rusty rails of the small balcony which hung over the galleried wall. For a moment he hung there, in a swirl of stained robes. Then, swinging himself up and over, he disappeared through the green, double-leaved, broken door and reappeared two seconds later, on the shattered tile roof. I think he glanced down at us, once. Then turning, he began, hand over hand, to climb up the creepered wall to the bulwarks.

It was so unexpected that we all stood and gaped, while the dogs pushed and swarmed and barked and the heap of men on the float scrambled upright again, groggily, in the mess of bent trees, chipped dogs, and real dogs hysterically barking. Alone in their midst, the painted hand of Saint Hubert stretched out scatheless in the benign gesture of blessing. The lower half of his robe was a peeling mess of layered and blackened embroidery, but the mitered head was untouched. Round his neck, knocked awry and evidently not quite refastened, was the ruby collar, with Mr. Lloyd peering at it. Gilmore knelt at his side.

Pressing with Janey at the side of the float, we could hear her father speaking quite clearly. He said, “That’s not the true collar! Follow that man in the robes!”

He was pointing up to the room with the balcony, with the wall rising behind it. The man who had received the crunch on the jaw, his agility unimpaired, had just disappeared over the top; but now a second figure came into view through the roof. The hooded man who had hit him was hard behind his victim and climbing like crazy. Our mouths open, Janey and I watched her father and brother likewise make a leap for the rails and, with a good deal of grunting, begin to swing up them. “Are you game?” I said to Janey.

“There’s Derek,” she said suddenly. “Look. Right at the top. Come
on
, She-she!” and we both jumped for the wall.

One or two of the more agile penitents were intrigued enough to come with us, but not enough understood English or were near enough to hear what Mr. Lloyd had said. The rubies were still hanging there, most publicly present, and you would have to know a good bit about rubies and have your face practically in them to tell they weren’t quite real. In any case, other things were rather rapidly happening.

The bearers, having let the float down with a crash when half the populace of Ibiza appeared to have jumped on their backs, had finished rubbing their bites and their sores and were crawling out, bellowing from under the valance to lodge appropriate complaints.

No one knew, afterward, who had had all the legs of the float fitted out with new Shepherds’ castors. All we saw at the time was that as soon as the bearers had left it, the litter stood trembling slightly, a mess of reeking wax, smashed flowers, and dogs scrapping, biting, barking, and making the most of the trees. Then, very slowly, as a Cunard liner moves down the slipway, it began to move inch by inch down the steep slope of the guardroom, steel rumbling, ruination rising in clouds like the rust from its chains. Then, traveling like a torpedo, it shot through the Portal de las Tablas and veering right, dogs going crazy, went sheer through the window of the marketplace butcher’s shop.

Saint Hubert, patron of hunting, rested, they said, outside the door, one hand rocking benignly, as every hound in Ibiza tumbled smack into paradise.

Janey and I both missed that bit. We’d got to the top of the wall, through a door and down a slope to the Avenida General Franco, and were thrusting uphill against the rush of people, penitents, priests, and drummers pouring down to get an eye view of the disaster. Here and there, in the patchy dark, you could see the dark spire of a hood far ahead, forcing uphill the wrong way as we were. Occasionally, still ahead, I could catch the gleam of Mr. Lloyd’s gray head and Gil’s sandy one following.

We climbed another wall, and as the noise from the crowd thinned and the tail of the procession dropped down below us, we continued running— threading through the dark, uneven lanes, going up steps, stumbling into half-made trenches and through builders’ rubble—our footfalls strangely flat and distinct against the faint rumble of crowds and music and drums far below.

We were easily the last in the race. Sometimes, turning a corner, we would glimpse a dark figure skidding fast round the next: once I distinctly saw Derek, face uncovered, running at the end of a lane. We followed, pelting along until we came to one street where we saw and heard no one, where the road end was empty and there were no side paths up which anyone could have possibly gone.

“We’ve missed them,” I said.

“No, we haven’t. Not all those people. They’ve stopped running,” said Janey, and raised her voice. “Gilmore! Daddy!”

No one answered. I kept turning round, like the float. I didn’t want to be coshed on the back of my neck and find myself in the Lebanon market:
for sale, white slave with pills who can cook
. “Where
are
we?” I said. And almost immediately answered myself. “Wait. I know where this is.”

Janey got it in the same instant. “So do I. I know where the rest are, as well. I’ve never been here before in the dark.”

“I have,” I said. “But that time we got in through the back.”