Shadow of a Hero Read online

  The hermit answered, ‘I am the Hermit of Lapiri and I do not lie. All that is rightly yours will be returned. Do as I tell you, or I will go back this night to Lapiri.’

  Seeing no help, the aldermen then took up their treasure from under their stairs, and the gold pins from the shawls of their wives, and sent them to Restaur Vax in the wood above St Valia’s.

  On the morning of St Axun’s the aldermen came to the Pashas and said, ‘There is no treasure below our stairs to pay the blood-price. But look, this old man who is now blind was once sub-Prior of St Valia’s, and he will show you a place where is hidden a treasure of seventeen thousand kronin, and that will be your blood-price.’

  Then the Pashas questioned the hermit, and he told them that it was as the aldermen said, so they carried him to St Valia’s and there, feeling the ground with his staff, he led them to a place in the vineyard and said, ‘Dig here. At a shin-bone’s depth is a great stone in which is an iron ring. Lift it up and you will see a stair. Let torches be brought and lit, for it is very dark below.’

  So it was done, and they found the stone and heaved it aside and saw the stair leading down into the dark. Then they sent down a bazouk carrying a torch, and called to him, ‘What do you see?’ And he cried out, ‘I see boxes of gold, and many gold pins, spread about the floor.’

  Hearing that, the Pashas rushed down the stair, each fearing that the others might cheat him of his share. As they knelt to gather up the gold, Restaur Vax and Lash the Golden fell upon them from behind and slew them. For the hermit had told them of a secret passage which led from St Valia’s Chapel in the wood into that place, and there they had lain hidden in the shadows until the Pashas came. And the Kas Kalaz and the rest came out of the wood and slew those who were above ground, all but three bazouks who escaped back into the town.

  When these three told their fellows what had happened at St Valia, and that all four Pashas were slain, the bazouks were afraid, and fled from Potok, and from all Varina north of the Danube.

  Then Restaur Vax told the aldermen to come to St Valia’s, and gather up the treasure, which was the same treasure as that which had lain below their stairs. And they counted it and said, ‘One tenth is not here.’

  Then Restaur Vax said to them, ‘All that is rightly yours is here, as the hermit promised. But I have taken a tenth by way of taxes, for I am now master of Potok and Varina. Moreover, think in your hearts. The Turks will know that it was you who told the Pashas to come to St Valia where I slew them. That blood is on you, as on me. Therefore you have need that I should be strong, with cannon, and food to feed my army, so that I may defend you when the Turk comes to take vengeance. We are now bound each to the other with ties of blood and of gold.’

  The aldermen wept and said, ‘The tax upon Potok is seven hundred kronin only, and you have taken seventeen hundred.’

  Restaur Vax laughed and said, ‘If I had not come to your help you would have paid the Pashas seventeen thousand, and still you would not have been ruined.’

  1 Potok has always held a number of non-Varinian citizens, many of whom were successful merchants. There have been frequent episodes of friction and some bloodshed as a result.

  2 The trickster who has to deceive without actually telling a lie is a popular motif in Varinian folklore.

  AUGUST 1990

  THE FOLK CONCERT took place in the ruined cloisters of St Valia, a large square open space, its rough grass hummocky with buried masonry and its yellow walls patterned with the remains of archways and illegible tablets. The English contingent had not yet adjusted to Varinian notions about time. They arrived about half an hour before the concert was supposed to start and found almost no-one else there, and the sound system still being set up.

  ‘I’m dead beat,’ said Mollie. ‘I’ll have a nap. And let’s find somewhere near an entrance, so that we can slip away.’

  ‘Not in front of that speaker, Nidge,’ said Steff. ‘I value my ear-drums.’

  ‘I’ve got some ear-plugs,’ said Mollie.

  ‘It’s meant to be loud, Mum,’ said Nigel.

  They found a bank of turf against the outer wall. Donna slept, sprawling and inert, and Mollie did her trick of having a nap sitting bolt upright, with her head balancing on her neck. She said anyone could learn to do it and it was just as refreshing as sleeping lying down.

  Steff read. Letta and Nigel chatted and watched the crowd beginning to stream in. The sun went down and the ruined bell-tower glowed with floodlighting against the darkening sky. By the time the stars were fully out the cloisters seemed crammed, but more and more people kept pushing their way in, squeezing the mass tighter and tighter, or scrambling up the crumbling walls and perching along them.

  Mollie woke and muttered to Steff, who glanced around and then said, ‘OK, listen. This might get out of hand. If it does, don’t try and get to the door. We’ll go over the wall here. I’ll lift Nidge up and then pass Donna to him. Then Letta, then Millie. Somebody will give me a leg-up. Shouldn’t happen, but just in case. Got it?’

  They nodded. It was another of those differences. In England there’d have been crush barriers and marshals, and ambulances ready, because they’d been doing this sort of thing for years and knew what might happen. In Varina everything was new. This was the beginning of a new world, before rules, before problems, before disasters. It was alarming but exciting too, and somehow, Letta felt, pure.

  ‘Hey! There’s Uncle Van!’ said Nigel.

  ‘Where? I want to talk to him,’ said Mollie.

  She cupped her hands round her mouth and called. It was another of her tricks. Nigel said he’d seen her hail a taxi across Piccadilly Circus in the rush hour. She did it without yelling. She just flung her call and it carried. Like now. Van looked round, wildly at first, then spotted Mollie and came struggling over, causing a commotion in the crush, as half a dozen other people tried to follow him. He arrived panting and tousled, but obviously on a terrific high.

  ‘How’s everyone?’ he shouted. ‘Isn’t this great! Got some friends here want to meet you.’

  He introduced them as they arrived. They were native Varinians, all at the same fever-pitch of excitement as Van. Everybody had to shake hands with everyone. A pretty young woman gave Steff a smacking kiss and cried out, ‘Now I have kissed both grandsons of Restaur Vax!’

  Her friends all cheered.

  ‘And where is Letta?’ she asked, and flung her arms round her and kissed her and then stood back, holding her by the shoulders.

  ‘And you, you live with him in the same house!’ she said. ‘Van says you have tea with him every day! And is he well? Is he still . . . ?’

  She couldn’t bring herself to say the words, but instead held her hands cupped but rigid, a few inches apart in front of her, and made them quiver, as if there was some precious object between them which she was testing to see if it was still sound.

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Letta. ‘Bright as a bird. Of course he gets tired sometimes. But mostly you wouldn’t guess he was anything like eighty. I’m very fond of him.’

  ‘Fond?’ said the woman with a startled laugh.

  (You aren’t supposed to be fond of a hero. That’s quite wrong. What you do with a hero is worship him.)

  ‘Oh, look,’ said Mollie. ‘Something’s going to happen at last. Listen, Van. Message from Poppa. Grandad will be at the Palace Hotel at twelve tomorrow, opposite the cathedral. He’d like to say hello, and he’s not going to have much time for us after that.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Allow a bit extra. The Square’s going to be packed solid.’

  (One of Steff’s family’s complaints about Van was that he was hopeless about keeping appointments.)

  ‘Don’t worry, Mollie. Historic moment. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. OK, Steff, Nigel, Sis. Be seeing you.’

  ‘Typical Uncle Van,’ said Nigel automatically as the group plunged back to join their other friends, but it wasn’t typical at all, Letta thought. She’d
never seen her brother in that kind of state before.

  Now the spotlights came on and a band appeared, a standard group with guitars, bass, drums, and a primitive synthesizer. The singer was a pale, hungry-looking blonde woman in jeans and crazy high heels. They waved to the crowd, fiddled with their mikes, and were just set when one of the spotlights popped. Everyone laughed. Then they were off. Letta reached across to Mollie for ear-plugs. The speakers were large, but they’d been turned up well beyond the point where they could take the bass, so every chord was threaded with an appalling, tooth-rattling metallic buzz – just like a Western concert, only far, far worse. All round her the Varinians were bellowing their national anthem, rejoicing.

  The songs from then on were rock versions of old Varinian folk-songs, most of which Letta had heard, but not, of course, like this, with electronics and a band which kept trying to liven things up with a heavy rock beat. But she thought the singer was pretty good, with throaty bubbling low notes and soft trailing-away high ones which made her spine tingle. The lead guitarist, on the other hand, was doubly dire, a pretty awful musician and an older version of God’s-gift, but ten times worse.

  After the band there were bagpipes. Varinian bagpipes are the sort you work with a little pair of bellows under your elbow, instead of blowing into the bag like Scottish pipes. This is just as well, as half the point is the dancing. Varinians would regard standing-still pipers, or even marching-around ones, as shirkers. The pipers were all men, but they wore short frilly skirts so that everyone could see the steps, a sort of twiddling jig, starting pretty fast and getting faster and faster until the fingers on the pipe were a blur and the legs were almost a blur too. And all the time the top half of the body, which was dressed in a stiff jacket with buttons all up the front and complicated patterns of gold thread, had to stay as still as a statue, with a calm statue-face above it, and only the tassel on the little round hat flopping wildly to and fro. Several pipers started together, playing the same tune, and the crowd picked up the beat by clapping, and then gradually clapping faster until one of the dancers missed a step and dropped out, and so on until just one dancer was left, piping and twirling, and he was the winner.

  ‘Is Mr Orestes this good?’ whispered Letta.

  ‘Nothing like,’ said Nigel. ‘It’s amazing. It ought to be in the Olympics. Then we’d be sure of getting at least one gold.’

  After the pipers came a real folk band with weird but beautiful instruments. The male singer had a strange, bleating tenor, but apparently that was how the songs were supposed to be sung. Letta enjoyed them but she sensed that the crowd wasn’t so keen. To them this was pretty ordinary, something they could do for themselves at home.

  Then there was another round of piping, and then an old woman was helped onto the stage. She looked pretty frail and needed a stick to walk, but she held herself straight and wore a wonderful long black dress, covered with sequins, which looked at least as old as she was, and a feather boa. Her hair was shining white, her face thin and beaky, with heavy eye-shadow and thick pale make-up. Everyone had started cheering the moment she appeared, and she stood there, looking surprised but gracious, while the Master of Ceremonies, a fat, anxious, smiling man, tried to introduce her through the clamour.

  ‘Who is this?’ Letta asked Steff.

  ‘Minna Alaya,’ he said. ‘She was a film star in Germany. Silent films, you know, so the accent didn’t matter. Grandad told me she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever met.’

  The woman held up her hands and the cloisters fell silent for her, while the MC adjusted the microphone.

  ‘They asked me to do something,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what. These are such happy times at last, aren’t they? All I could think of was to read a poem they taught me at school. So long ago. Some of you older ones will know it too, I think. But then the Communists took these poems away from us. Why? They are not about politics. No, but they took them away because they wanted to stop us being the people we are, and these poems are one of the many things that make us the people we are. Us Varinians. Don’t be afraid because it’s in Formal. It isn’t difficult.’

  With quivering hands she took out a pair of spectacles and put them on her nose and then unfolded a piece of paper and held it so that she could read it by spotlights.

  ‘“The Stream at Urya”.’

  A slow, long sigh breathed from the crowd, followed by utter silence. Letta had felt her own lungs join the sigh, because this was so right. Grandad had chosen ‘The Stream at Urya’ to read with her because he said it was the easiest of all Restaur Vax’s poems, his last, written as he was dying in Rome, remembering the stream below his father’s farm. There seemed to be nothing to it, only short simple sentences about the hot sky and the hard bare hills, and the naked rocks, and the thin stream tumbling through. Because it was easy, Grandad said, it was the first piece of proper Formal, not counting silly little stories like the goat-boy book, which children used to be taught in school.

  The woman read the first two lines in a clear voice, but half-way through the third she faltered, and went on, but choked again, and stopped. Her glasses seemed to be misting up, and she was finding it difficult to see the words. She stumbled through a half-line from memory, and this time when she stopped again, somebody in the crowd prompted her. With a gesture of thanks she went on, and next time she faltered it was as if the whole audience picked her up and murmured the words with her. Letta saw Steff’s lips moving, and beyond him the reflected spotlight lit a row of faces, and almost every one of them was saying the lines too.

  But they were young! They couldn’t possibly have learnt ‘The Stream at Urya’ in school before the Communists came. And yet they knew the words. Almost everyone in the audience, though many of them must have been born in a time when it was dangerous to have the book in your house, knew the whole poem by heart. In carefully faint murmurs, so as not to drown the thin old voice, they carried the woman through to the end.

  Then they cheered her for about ten minutes. Slowly the cheers changed to cries for an encore, until she held up her hands for silence. Her make-up was streaked with tears. The MC produced an enormous yellow handkerchief and she wiped the tears away and held herself erect.

  ‘No,’ she said in a clear voice. ‘Please don’t ask me to read it again. I think my heart would burst.’

  So they cheered and cheered while she limped to the edge of the stage, where hundreds of arms reached out to help her down.

  Letta was wiping her own face with a Kleenex when Nigel said, ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘You’ll have to learn Formal,’ said Letta smugly.

  LEGEND

  The Captain of Artillery

  RESTAUR VAX SENT letters to Bishop Pango, saying, ‘Now I hold Potok, and all Varina north of the Danube. Soon the Turk will come against me with armies, and to fight them I must have cannon, and also a Captain of Artillery to teach us the use of them. I have money from the merchants of Potok, and can pay well.’

  Winter fell, with great snows, and there came in secret to Restaur Vax one who said he had fought in the French Wars as a Captain of Artillery. He was small of stature, and slim, like a boy before manhood. He studied the land and said, ‘For mountains such as these you must have mule-guns, which may be carried by goat-paths and the paths of the hunter, and with those you will fall on the Turk unawares. Such guns I can supply, and then teach your people the use of them. Now let us make terms.’

  Restaur Vax said, ‘It must be done quickly, for when the snows melt the Turk will come, and our need will be great.’

  The Captain of Artillery said, ‘Then I will bring your guns under wool-packs on a barge, down the Danube. Tell me of a place where there is a quay with good landing.’

  Restaur Vax said, ‘We hold Slot, which has a deep-water quay where many barges load and unload, for there are merchants there to whom our people sell stuff that they have made in the winter.’

  ‘So be it,’ said the Captain of Artiller
y. ‘My price is seven hundred kronin, half now that I may buy the guns, with shot and powder, and half when I bring them.’

  Then the Kas Kalaz, who was there, said, ‘These terms are too hard. How shall we trust this little foreigner? He will take the money and we shall not see him again.’

  And so said others. But Restaur Vax said, ‘Trust him we must, for we have no other help. What else will you do with the money? Will you melt it into gold bullets and fire them at the Turk? Moreover, small though he is, he has the look of honour.’

  The Captain of Artillery departed. Winter gripped the land, so that the Danube froze and no traffic could pass. While the ice was yet solid the Turk crossed the river with armies and cannon, and captured Slot. At that Restaur Vax sent letters to the Captain of Artillery in Vienna appointing another place, but the messenger was eaten by wolves, so that the Captain of Artillery did not learn of the need to change plan.

  Then a message came from the Captain of Artillery to Restaur Vax saying, ‘The river melts, and the river-traffic is moving. Your guns are laden and ready. We wait only for the powder. Be at Slot on the day appointed. You will know my barge by a yellow standard.’

  Then some said, ‘He does not know that the Turk has taken Slot. We must look for fresh cannon elsewhere.’

  But Restaur Vax said, ‘There is no time. Take my horse, Lash, and ride by the river till you see a barge with a yellow standard and hail it, and tell the Captain of Artillery what has befallen.’

  This Lash did, and found the barge, but it could not come near the shore because there were shoals, so he set the horse into the water and though he did not himself know how to swim, he held to the harness and so came to the barge, and bade the horse swim back to the shore and return to Restaur Vax. By this Restaur Vax knew that the barge was found.

  Meanwhile Restaur Vax had sent through the hills and gathered from many houses the hangings1 that the people had made in the winter. On the day appointed he came with eighty men, all weaponless and in the likeness of farmers, to Slot. By twos and threes they came, driving mules laden with hangings, and gathered at the quay where the merchants bought. And at the same time the Kas Kalaz and all the others lay in hiding round Slot, having set a man to watch for the barge with the yellow standard.