The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories (26 page)

"Mind,” he said, “don't believe a word of the feller's tale, but plain that's val'ble; far too val'ble an article to be in
your
hands, boy. Better give it here at once. I'll get Christie's to value it. And of course we must advertise in
The Times
for the wallah who palmed it off on you—highly illegal transaction, I daresay."

Mark felt curiously relived to be rid of the apple, as if a load had been lifted from his mind as well as his pocket.

He ran upstairs, whistling. Harriet, as usual, was in her room mixing things in retorts and crucibles. When Uncle Gavin, as in duty bound, asked each evening what she had been learning that day in her domestic science course, she always replied briefly, “Spelling.” “Spellin', gel? Rum notion of housekeepin’ the johnny seems to have. Still, daresay it keeps you out of mischief.” In fact, as Harriet had confided to Mark, Professor Grimalkin was a retired alchemist who, having failed to find the Philosopher's Stone, was obliged to take in pupils to make ends meet. He was not a very good teacher; his heart wasn't in it. Mark watched Harriet toss a pinch of green powder into a boiling beaker. Half a peach tree shot up, wavered, sagged, and then collapsed. Impatiently Harriet tipped the frothing liquid out of the window and put some more water on to boil.

Then she returned to the window and peered out into the dark.

"Funny,” she said, “there seem to be some people waiting outside the front door. Can't think why they didn't ring the bell. Could you let them in, Mark? My hands are covered in prussic acid. I expect they're friends of Uncle Gavin's."

Mark went down and opened the door. Outside, dimly illuminated by light from the porch, he saw three ladies. They seemed to be dressed in old-fashioned clothes, drainpipe skirts down to their ankles, and cloaks and bonnets rather like those of Salvation Army lasses; the bonnets were perched on thick, lank masses of hair. Mark didn't somehow care for their faces, which resembled those of dogs—but not tame domestic dogs so much as starved, wild, slightly mad dogs; they stared at Mark hungrily.

"Er—I'm so sorry? Did you ring? Have you been waiting long?” he said.

"A long, long time. Since the world-tree was but a seed in darkness. We are the Daughters of the Night,” one of them hollowly replied. She moved forward with a leathery rustle.

"Oh.” Mark noticed that she had bats’ wings. He stepped back a little. “Do you want to see Great-uncle—Sir Gavin Armitage? Won't you come in?"

"Nay. We are the watchers by the threshold. Our place is here."

"Oh, all right. What name shall I say?"

To this question they replied in a sort of gloomy chant, taking turns to speak.

"We are the avengers of blood."

"Sisters of the nymph with the apple-bough, Nemesis."

"We punish the sin of child against parent—"

"Youth against age—"

"Brother against brother—"

"We are the Erinyes, the Kindly Ones—” (But their expressions were far from kindly, Mark thought.)

"Tisiphone—"

"Alecto—"

"And Megaera."

"And what did you wish to see Sir Gavin about?” Mark knew his great-uncle hated to be disturbed once he was settled in the evening with a glass of port and
The Times.

"We attend him who holds the apple."

"There is blood on it—a brother's blood, shed by a brother."

"It cries for vengeance."

"Oh, I
see!"
said Mark, beginning to take in the situation. Now he understood why the little man had been so anxious for a bicycle. “But, look here, dash it all, Uncle Gavin hasn't shed any blood! That was Cain, and it was a long time ago. I don't see why Uncle should be responsible."

"He holds the apple."

"He must bear the guilt."

"The sins of the father are visited on the children."

"Blood calls for blood."

Then the three wolfish ladies disconcertingly burst into a sort of hymn, shaking tambourines and beating on them with brass-studded rods which they pulled out from among their draperies:

"We are the daughters

Of darkness and time

We follow the guilty

We punish the crime

Nothing but bloodshed

Will settle old scores

So blood has to flow and

That blood must be yours!"

When they had finished, they fixed their ravenous eyes on Mark again and the one called Alecto said, “Where is he?"

Mark felt greatly relieved that Uncle Gavin had taken the apple away from him and was, therefore, apparently responsible for its load of guilt, but as this was a mean thought he tried to stifle it. Turning (not that he liked having the ladies behind his back), he went into the sitting room, where Uncle Gavin was snug by the fire, and said,

"There are some callers asking for you, Great-uncle."

"God bless my soul, at this time of the evenin'? Who the deuce—"

Great-uncle Gavin crossly stumped out to the porch, saying over his shoulder, “Why didn't you ask ‘em in, boy? Not very polite to leave ‘em standing—"

Then he saw the ladies, and his attitude changed. He said sharply,

"Didn't you see the notice on the gate, my good women? It says ‘No Hawkers or Circulars.’ I give handsome checks to charity each year at Christmas and make it a rule never to contribute to door-to-door collections. So be off, if you please!"

"We do not seek money,” Tisiphone hungrily replied.

"Milk-bottle tops, jumble, old gold, it's all the same. Pack of meddlesome old maids—I've no time for you!” snapped Sir Gavin. “Good night!” And he shut the door smartly in their faces.

"Have to be firm with that sort of customer,” he told Mark. “Become a thorough nuisance otherwise—tiresome old harpies. Got wind of that golden apple, I daresay—shows what happens when you mix with such people. Shockin’ mistake. Take the apple to Christie's tomorrow. Now, please see I'm not disturbed again.” And he returned to the sitting room.

Mark looked uneasily at the front door, but it remained shut; evidently the three Kindly Ones were content to wait outside. But there they stayed; when Mark returned to Harriet's room he looked out of the windows and saw them, somber and immovable, in the shadows outside the porch, evidently prepared to sit out the night.

"Not very nice if they're going to picket our front door from now on,” he remarked gloomily to Harriet. “Goodness knows what the postman will think. And
I
don't fancy ‘em above half. Wonder how we can get rid of them."

"I've an idea,” Harriet said. “Professor Grimalkin was talking about them the other day. They are the Furies. But it's awfully hard to shake them off once they're after you. Maybe the postman won't see them. They aren't after
him
."

"There must be
some
way of getting rid of them,” Mark said glumly.

"There are various things you can do, biting off your finger—"

"Some hope of Uncle Gavin doing that!"

"Or shaving your head."

"Wouldn't be much use since he's bald as a bean already."

"You can bathe seven times in running water or take the blood of pigs—"

"He already
does
take a lot of cold baths and we had pork for supper, so plainly that's no go."

"Well, you can go into exile for a year,” Harriet said.

"I only wish he would."

"Or build them a grotto, nice and dark, preferably under an ilex tree, and make suitable offerings."

"Such as what?"

"Anything black, or they rather go for iris flowers. Milk and honey, too. And they can be shot with a bow of horn, but that doesn't seem to be very successful as a rule."

"Oh, well, let's try the milk-and-honey and something black for now,” Mark said. “And I'll make a bow of horn tomorrow—I've got Candleberry's last year's horn in my room somewhere.” Candleberry was the unicorn.

Harriet, therefore, collected a black velvet pincushion and a bowl of milk and honey. These she put on the front step, politely wishing the Daughters of Night good evening, to which their only response was a baleful silence.

Next morning the milk and honey were still there. So were the Furies. Evidently they did not intend to be placated so easily. By daylight they were even less attractive, having black claws, bloodshot eyes, and snakes for hair. However, slipping down early to remove the saucer in case the postman tripped over it, Harriet did notice that all the pins had been removed from the pincushion. And eaten? This was encouraging. So was the fact that when the postman arrived with a card from their parents in Madeira—
Having wonderful time, hope you are behaving yourselves
—he walked clean through the Furies without noticing them at all.

"Perhaps they're only visible to relatives of their victims,” Harriet suggested to Mark, who was working on the unicorn horn with emery paper.

"I hope they've taken the pins to stick in Uncle Gavin,” he growled. In default of bicycle exercise Uncle Gavin had made Mark do five hundred push-ups before breakfast and had personally supervised the operation. Mark felt it would be far, far better to shoot Uncle Gavin than the Furies, who, after all, were only doing their duty.

The most annoying thing of all was that, after his initial interview with them, Uncle Gavin seemed not to notice the avenging spirits at all ("He only sees what he chooses to,” Harriet guessed) and walked past them quite as unconcernedly as the postman had. He packed up the golden apple in a cigar box, rang for a taxi, and departed for London. The Furies followed him in a black, muttering group, and were seen no more for several hours; Mark and Harriet heaved sighs of relief. Prematurely, though; at teatime the Furies reappeared, even blacker, muttering still more, and took up their post once more by the front door.

"Lost the old boy somewhere in London,” Mark diagnosed. “Or perhaps they were chucked out of Christie's."

The unwanted guests were certainly in a bad mood. This time they were accompanied by a smallish thickset winged serpent or dragon who seemed to be called Ladon. Harriet heard them saying, “Down, Ladon! Behave yourself, and soon you shall sup on blood.” Ladon, too, seemed to have a snappish disposition, and nearly took off Harriet's hand when she stooped to pat him on returning home from her Domestic Science lesson.

"What a beautiful green his wings are. Is he yours?” she said to the Furies politely.

"He is the guardian of the apple; he but waits for his own,” Tisiphone replied dourly.

Ladon did not share the Furies’ scruples about coming indoors; evidently he was used to a warmer climate and found the doorstep too draughty. He followed Harriet into the kitchen and flopped his bulky length in front of the stove, hissing cantankerously at anyone who came near, and greatly discomposing Walrus the cat.

Walrus was not the only one.

"Miss Harriet! Get that nasty beast out of here at once!” exclaimed Mrs. Epis, the cook, when she came back from shopping. “And what those black ladies are doing out on the front doorstep I'm sure
I
don't know; I've two or three times give ‘em a hint to be off, but they won't take it."

Evidently Mrs. Epis counted as one of the family or else she had a guilty conscience. Mark and Harriet soon found that visitors to the house who had episodes in their past of which they had cause to be ashamed were apt to notice the Erinyes in a patchy, nervous way and hurry away with uneasy glances behind them, or else break into sudden and embarrassing confessions.

And Ladon was a thorough nuisance. As long as Harriet kept on the fan heater in her room, he would lie in front of it rolling luxuriously on his back and only snapping at anyone who approached him. But at bedtime, when she turned the fan off—for she hated a warm room at night—he became fretful and roamed snarling and clanking about the house. Even Uncle Gavin tripped over him then and blamed the children furiously for leaving what he thought was a rolled-up tent lying in the passage.

"Things can't go on like this,” Mark said despondently.

"We've certainly got to get rid of them all somehow before Mother and Father come home next week,” Harriet agreed. “And Uncle Gavin's plainly going to be no help at all."

Uncle Gavin was even more tetchy than usual. Christie's had sent him a letter saying that, in view of the apple's unique historical interest, it was virtually impossible to put a price on it, but in their opinion it was certainly worth well over a million pounds. They would return the apple by the next registered post pending further instructions. And the advertisement which appeared in
The Times
every day, “Will person who persuaded young boy to exchange valuable new bicycle for metal apple on August 20 please contact Box XXX,” was producing no replies.

"Nor likely to,” said Mark. “That chap knows when he's well out of trouble."

When Mark had finished his horn bow, he tried shooting at the Furies with it. The operation was a total failure. The arrows, which he had decided to make out of slivers from a fallow-deer's antler, were curved and flew on a bias, missing the visitors nine times out of ten. If they did hit, they merely passed clean through, and, as Mark told Harriet later, he felt a fool having to pick them up under the malign, snakey-and-bonneted gaze of Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone.

Harriet, however, came home in good spirits. She pulled out and showed Mark a paper covered with Professor Grimalkin's atrocious handwriting.

"What is it?” he asked.

"Recipe for a friendship philter. You've heard of a love philter? This is like that, only milder. I'm going to try it in their milk. Now don't interrupt, while I make it up."

She put her crucible on to bubble. Mark curled up at the end of her bed and read his bird book, coming out only when Harriet tripped over Ladon and dratted him, or asked Mark's opinion about the professor's handwriting.

"Is this ‘verdigris’ or ‘verjuice,’ do you think? And is that ‘Add sugar’ or ‘Allow to simmer?’”

"It'll be a miracle if the stuff turns out all right,” Mark said pessimistically. “Anyway, do we
want
the Furies friendly?"

"Of course we do, it'll be a tremendous help. Where was I now? Add bad egg, and brown under grill."