Read Online The Poison Oracle by Peter Dickinson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Peter Dickinson
Tags: Mystery
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Anne too had chosen her role as a rejection of the non-culture she was supposed to belong to. Her roles, rather, because that was the alternative course. You could choose, like Morris, to be a quietist and wash about where the tides drifted you; or you could actively seek roles, the more extreme and violent the better, switching them as the mood took you, wearing mask after mask to hide the lack of features behind. Perhaps even the vet-despising, dog-owning Mummy was an invention, a beauty spot on such a mask—there had been something a little off key about her very first line in the role—absolutely giddy bonkers. Hmph.
He wondered what she would make of the flood-going feast, if she bothered to go and watch it from the women’s gallery.
2
Quite unreasonably Morris had expected the boys to be the same three that had sung the Testament last year. They wore the same white clay masks whose lips were set into a permanent pout to allow room for the funnels that made the young voices resonate, but they were three different boys. The main singer’s voice was less limpid than last year’s but he sang with greater drive and drama, even with a slight harshness that contrasted well with the softer voices of the younger pair. Their naked black bodies were striped with ochre designs. They sat cross-legged, motionless on a patterned reed mat in front of the throne, while to either side of them the little orchestra of their fathers and elder brothers thumped and clinked and gurgled at their tuneless instruments.
The wonderfully ornate passage about the preparations for Nillum’s boar-hunt came to an end in an onomatopoeic flourish of hoofbeats and horns. A vast series of dishes piled with spiced rice and mutton was carried in to the hail. The audience—petty sheikhs and their cousins, random brigands, senior palace courtiers, a party of town Yemenis on some unexplained mission, several groups of litigants who had arranged their cases to coincide with a famous free meal but whose real interest was in camel-theft and water-rights and blood-money—maintained for the most part the extraordinarily dignified silence with which they had listened to the singers, not one word of whose song any of them could have understood.
The Sultan spoke affably to a small fat sheikh. The leader of the Yemenis listened, nodding. Akuli bin Zair scratched his ribs, pulled his beard and turned to Morris, who was evidently still Foreign Minister, to be sitting so near the throne.
“Your excellency is entertained by the squealings of the savages?” he asked in his high, tinny voice.
“I like the songs,” said Morris.
“I have made a film of the performance of one of our dancing boys, one of the Hadahm. He is very beautiful and can do strange things. Your excellency must come to my quarters to see it.”
“The pleasure would be as great as the honour,” said Morris, who had in fact often been forced to watch the smutty contortions of young male prostitutes which seemed for some reason to delight and amuse quite respectable old Arabs. He himself detested them, so switched the subject back to the marshmen.
“I saw yesterday, from my windows, the ceremony at which the tribute was brought,” he said, gesturing at the odd little pile of offerings in front of the singers. “What do you do with them when the feast is over?”
“The spear is burnt, always. It is a sign that the killing of each other is finished. The boar-tusks we put in a chest, as we did even when the Sultan’s father lived under tents. That is how it has always been done.”
“You mean that if you were to count the pairs of tusks in the chest, you would know how many years ago the ceremony first started?”
“No doubt,” said bin Zair. “However, some may have been lost or stolen.”
“Even so, I expect you could have the oldest ones carbon-dated.”
“You think the matter important?”
“It is not for me to say. I am always interested in such matters. But if, for
He wondered what she would make of the flood-going feast, if she bothered to go and watch it from the women’s gallery.
2
Quite unreasonably Morris had expected the boys to be the same three that had sung the Testament last year. They wore the same white clay masks whose lips were set into a permanent pout to allow room for the funnels that made the young voices resonate, but they were three different boys. The main singer’s voice was less limpid than last year’s but he sang with greater drive and drama, even with a slight harshness that contrasted well with the softer voices of the younger pair. Their naked black bodies were striped with ochre designs. They sat cross-legged, motionless on a patterned reed mat in front of the throne, while to either side of them the little orchestra of their fathers and elder brothers thumped and clinked and gurgled at their tuneless instruments.
The wonderfully ornate passage about the preparations for Nillum’s boar-hunt came to an end in an onomatopoeic flourish of hoofbeats and horns. A vast series of dishes piled with spiced rice and mutton was carried in to the hail. The audience—petty sheikhs and their cousins, random brigands, senior palace courtiers, a party of town Yemenis on some unexplained mission, several groups of litigants who had arranged their cases to coincide with a famous free meal but whose real interest was in camel-theft and water-rights and blood-money—maintained for the most part the extraordinarily dignified silence with which they had listened to the singers, not one word of whose song any of them could have understood.
The Sultan spoke affably to a small fat sheikh. The leader of the Yemenis listened, nodding. Akuli bin Zair scratched his ribs, pulled his beard and turned to Morris, who was evidently still Foreign Minister, to be sitting so near the throne.
“Your excellency is entertained by the squealings of the savages?” he asked in his high, tinny voice.
“I like the songs,” said Morris.
“I have made a film of the performance of one of our dancing boys, one of the Hadahm. He is very beautiful and can do strange things. Your excellency must come to my quarters to see it.”
“The pleasure would be as great as the honour,” said Morris, who had in fact often been forced to watch the smutty contortions of young male prostitutes which seemed for some reason to delight and amuse quite respectable old Arabs. He himself detested them, so switched the subject back to the marshmen.
“I saw yesterday, from my windows, the ceremony at which the tribute was brought,” he said, gesturing at the odd little pile of offerings in front of the singers. “What do you do with them when the feast is over?”
“The spear is burnt, always. It is a sign that the killing of each other is finished. The boar-tusks we put in a chest, as we did even when the Sultan’s father lived under tents. That is how it has always been done.”
“You mean that if you were to count the pairs of tusks in the chest, you would know how many years ago the ceremony first started?”
“No doubt,” said bin Zair. “However, some may have been lost or stolen.”
“Even so, I expect you could have the oldest ones carbon-dated.”
“You think the matter important?”
“It is not for me to say. I am always interested in such matters. But if, for
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