And at the far end of the chamber, there was the god in a grotto, being born out of a stony matrix: a sturdy person with a Phrygian cap on his long curls and a plumpish body: neither child nor man.
Alleyn said: “They made sacrifices, didn’t they? In here.”
“Of course, on the altar,” Grant said quickly. “Can you imagine! A torch-lit scene, it would be, and the light would flicker across those stone benches and across the faces of initiates, attenuated and wan from their ordeal. The altar fire raises a quivering column of heat, the sacrificial bull is lugged in: perhaps they hear it bellowing in the passages. There is a passage, you know, running right round the chamber. Probably the bull appears from a doorway behind Mithras. Perhaps it’s garlanded. The acolytes drag it in and the priest receives it. Its head is pulled back, the neck exposed and the knife plunged in. The reek of fresh blood and the stench of the burnt offering fills the Mithraeum. I suppose there are chanted hymns.”
Sophy said drily: “You gave us to understand that the Mithraic cult was a thoroughly nice and, did you say, gentle religion.”
“It was highly moral and comparatively gentle. Loyalty and fidelity were the ultimate virtues. Sacrifice was a necessary ingredient.”
“Same idea,” Major Sweet predictably announced, “behind the whole boiling. Sacrifice. Blood. Flesh. Cannibalism. More refinement in one lot, more brutality in another. Essentially the same.”
“You don’t think,” Alleyn mildly suggested, “that this might indicate pot-shots at some fundamental truth?”
“Only fundamental truth it indicates — humans are carnivores,” shouted the Major in triumph. “Yak-yak-yak,” he added and was understood to be laughing.
“It is so unfortunate,” said Baron Van der Veghel, “that Lady Braceley and Mr. Dorne are missing all this. And where is Mr. Mailer?”
“Did you see them?” Alleyn asked Major Sweet.
“I did not. I put her in the — what d’you call it? Garden? Courtyard?”
“Atrium?”
“Whatever it is. On a bench. She didn’t much like it, but still. Silly woman.”
“What about young Dorne?” Alleyn said.
“Didn’t see ’im. Frightful specimen.”
“And Mailer?”
“No. Damn casual treatment, I call it. What do we do now?”
Grant said with that air of disengagement that clung about him so persistently: “I understand it was thought that you might like to look round here under your own steam for a few minutes. We can meet here, or if you prefer it, up above in the atrium. I’ll stay here for ten minutes in case there’s anything you want to ask and then I’ll go up and wait in the atrium. We’ll probably meet on the way and in any case you can’t get lost. There are “out” notices everywhere. I’m sure Mailer—”
He broke off. Somebody was approaching down the iron stairway.
“Here he is,” Grant said.
But it was only Kenneth Dorne.
He had sounded as if he were in a hurry and made a precipitate entry, but when he came out of the shadows and saw the others he halted and slouched towards them. His camera dangled from his hand. It struck Sophy that he was in some unsatisfactory way assuaged and comforted.
“Hullo,” he said. “Where’s my aunt?”
Grant informed him. He said: “Oh dear!” and giggled.
“Hadn’t you better take a look at her?” Major Sweet asked.
“What?”
“Your aunt. She’s up top. In the garden.”
“May she flourish,” Kenneth said, “like the Green Bay Tree. Dear Major.”
Major Sweet contemplated him for one or two seconds. “Words,” he said, “fail me.”
“Well,” Kenneth rejoined. “Thank God for that.”
This produced a kind of verbal stalemate.
It was broken by the Van der Veghels. They had, they excitedly explained, hoped so much (ah, so much, interpolated the Baroness) that Mr. Grant would be persuaded to read aloud the Mithraic passage from Simon in its inspirational environment. As everybody saw, they had brought their copy — was it too much, even, to ask for a signature? — to that end. They understood, none better, the celebrated Anglo-Saxon reticence. But after all, the terms of the brochure, not of course to be insisted upon au pied de la lettre, had encouraged them to believe…
They went on along these lines with a sort of antiphonal reproachfulness and Grant’s face, even in that dim light, could be seen to grow redder and redder. At last he turned helplessly to Sophy, who muttered: “Hadn’t you better?” and was strangely gratified when he said at once and at large: “If you really want it, of course. I didn’t mean to be disobliging. It’s only that I’ll feel such an ass.”
The Van der Veghels broke into delighted laughter and the Baron developed a more extravagant flight of fancy. They would take a photograph: a group at the centre of which would be Grant, reading aloud. In the background, the god Mithras himself would preside over the work he had inspired. This extraordinary variant on Victorian group photography was put into operation after a playful argument between the Van der Veghels about their active and passive roles. Finally they agreed that the Baroness would take the first picture and she went excitedly into action. The wretched Grant, with open book, was placed upon an obscure stone protrusion to the left of Mithras, Alleyn on his one hand and Sophy, who was beginning to get the giggles, on the other. Behind Sophy posed Major Sweet and behind Alleyn, Kenneth Dorne.
“And you, Gerrit, my darlink,” the Baroness instructed her husband—“because you are so big, yes? — at the rear.”
“Afterwards we exchange,” he urged.
“So.”
“And all to concentrate upon the open page.”
“Ach. So.”
Major Sweet, always unpredictable, took a serious view of this business. “How,” he objected, “are we to concentrate on something we can scarcely see?”
And indeed, it was well urged. The head of the little god, like the altar and all the other effigies in these regions, was cleverly lit from a concealed niche, but his surroundings were deep in shadow, none more so than the area in which the group was deployed. The Van der Veghels explained that all would be revealed by the flashlamp. Their great desire was that the god should be incorporated in the group and to this end a little make-believe was to be excused. Grant’s discomfort had become so evident that Alleyn and Sophy Jason, simultaneously but without consultation, decided upon a note of high comedy.
“Ah yes,” Alleyn suddenly offered. “Even if we can’t see it, we’re all to gaze upon the book? Fair enough. And I expect Mr. Grant knows the passage by heart. Perhaps he could recite it for us in the dark.”
“I can do nothing of the sort, damn you,” Grant said warmly. The Baroness explained. Afterwards they would move into a more luminous spot and Grant would then, without subterfuge, read the appropriate passage.
In the meantime, the Baroness reiterated, would they all concentrate upon the almost imperceptible page.
After a good deal of falling about in the dark the group assembled. “Would it be pretty,” Alleyn suggested, “if Miss Jason were to point out a passage in the book and I were to place my arm about the author’s shoulders, eagerly seeking to read it?”
“What a good suggestion,” Sophy cried. “And Major Sweet could perhaps bend over on the other side.”
“Delighted, I’m sure,” said the Major with alacrity and did bend very closely over Sophy. “Damn’ good idea, what,” he whistled into her ear.