Shadow of a Hero Read online

  When it was seen the man fired his musket as a signal, and then the Kas Kalaz and the others rose up from their places of hiding and fired on the walls, as if they would attack the town. At that the bazouks who guarded the quay ran to the walls to defend the place. Then Restaur Vax and his men took their weapons from among the hangings and seized the quay, and on the barge the Captain of Artillery held a pistol to the steersman’s head and told him what he must do, while Lash the Golden carried up from the hold two guns, the barrels being of such weight that two ordinary men could not have lifted them. These he assembled and loaded, as the Captain of Artillery had shown him.

  Then the barge came to the quayside and the guns were carried ashore and made ready, the Captain of Artillery standing by one and Lash by the other, while the rest of the guns were brought up from under the bales and set upon the mules. And now the Turks, seeing what was afoot, returned to the quayside, many hundred bazouks, but the way was narrow and the Captain of Artillery fired with his cannon into the mass of them, as did Lash in his turn (this having been shown him too by the Captain of Artillery as they came down the river), and there was great slaughter and the Turks fled.

  So the guns were brought out through the town, but the bazouks upon the walls fired hotly at them as they passed under the gate, and the Captain of Artillery was struck in the side and fell down with a great cry. Thus his hat fell from his head and the long hair which had been hidden beneath the hat streamed down, and all saw that it was not a man, but a woman of great beauty, like the mother of St Valia, but that her hair was as red as a cloud at sunset.2

  They set her on a mule and fled and took her to a farm above Drogo where lived a woman skilled in herbs, who washed and bandaged the wound and declared that she would yet live.

  But the chieftains came to Restaur Vax and said, ‘When she is recovered she must be sent away. We cannot fight with a woman among us.’

  Restaur Vax said, ‘She is our Captain of Artillery, and where shall we find us another before the Turk is on us?’

  Then Lash the Golden said, ‘To fight beside a woman is not honourable. Our courage will be less.’

  But Restaur Vax said, ‘I did not see that your courage or your honour were less when you fought beside her on the quay at Slot. And who taught you the management of cannon?’

  1 Weaving hangings in elaborate geometrical patterns is a traditional winter occupation among Varinian peasants. They are then sold at riverside markets in the spring, when the Danube melts.

  2 Marie McMahon (1779?–1841) is a historical figure. Half-French and half-Irish, she disguised herself as a man and followed her lover into the French army. After he was killed at Jena she continued to serve, though not apparently quite undetected as she seems to have borne at least three children on various campaigns. Her highly unreliable memoirs (Paris 1835) represent her as having been a great beauty in her youth. By the time of her exploits in Varina she must have been around forty-five. Several observers remark on the striking colour of her hair.

  AUGUST 1990

  ST JOSEPH’S SQUARE was the heart of Potok. On one side stood the cathedral, not very grand, crumbly and homely, built of grey-gold stone with three red-tiled domes. Opposite it stood the Palace Hotel, which at first glance looked far more imposing, but at second glance had something fake about it. Steff had insisted on a quick tour of Potok their first evening, before the concert, so that they could find their way round without getting lost, and being Steff he’d already looked everything up in an ancient guidebook. The Palace Hotel, he said, looked like a fake because it was one.

  When the War of Independence was over and the Turks agreed to let Varina become semi-independent, provided Restaur Vax went into exile, Bishop Pango had become the first Prince-Bishop. The old Bishop’s Palace had been part of St Valia, which the Turks had destroyed, and there wasn’t enough money to build a new one, so he’d taken over five of the merchants’ houses opposite the cathedral and got an architect to design a grand façade, with a great porch and curling double stairways. The façade was symmetrical, but the houses behind weren’t, so some of the windows were blank, and several of them were half-blank, with bits of the old windows showing behind the new ones. Letta didn’t like anything to do with Bishop Pango, so she thought his palace was just right for the old fraud.

  After the First World War, when Varina had been split in three, it had become the Governor’s Palace for the Romanian Province of Cerna-Potok, and when the Germans invaded they’d taken it over as their headquarters, and then the Communist Party had moved in, and now they’d gone and nobody knew what to do with it so some enterprising person had borrowed enough money to buy a job lot of beds and furniture and turned it into the Palace Hotel.

  Mollie and Steff had one of the rooms in the University, partly because of Donna and partly so that Mollie could be at the centre of things.

  ‘Come and pick us up by half-past ten, latest,’ she’d told everyone last night. ‘Grandad’s due to arrive at eleven, and he’s making the opening speech at twelve.’

  They set off in good time, with Steff carrying Donna in a backpack, but for once Mollie had got it wrong. Normally it was only ten minutes’ walk to the Square, but not when every single person in Varina seemed to be heading that way. It was difficult to get into the centre of Potok at all, and the nearer they struggled the tighter the crowds were jammed and the slower they all shuffled along.

  ‘This is no good,’ said Steff, and struck off down a side-alley which led to another street just as solid with people as the first, and so on, with increasing difficulty, until they were right round at the back of the hotel. The policemen who were posted to stop unauthorized people trying to sneak in that way were quite unimpressed by Steff’s pass and told him to go round and try at the front. But when Steff explained he was Restaur Vax’s grandson they became smiling and jolly and insisted on everybody shaking hands with everybody.

  One of the policemen led them through the kitchens where a banquet was being prepared, and then through a warren of corridors formed by the five houses needing to be joined up. It didn’t feel much like a hotel, more like depressing old offices or a really dingy school. And then their guide opened a small door and stood aside, and they were in a grand entrance hall with red carpets and gilt mirrors and potted palms and a sweep of stairs with gleaming brass banisters. Fifty or sixty people in their best clothes were standing around. Letta spotted Mr Orestes talking to a large, blond, red-faced man in a bright blue suit. The main doors were open and the midmorning sunlight dazzled in. From where she stood Letta could see one of the domes of the cathedral, but not the Square itself. Despite that, she was at once aware of the immense crowd standing shoulder to shoulder, waiting there. They made a steady murmur, quiet but huge, so that the entrance hall was like the chamber of some giant sea-shell, filled with the shushing mutter of the ocean.

  Steff led them to a side-alcove.

  ‘Hang on here a moment,’ he said. ‘I’ll check where we’re supposed to be.’

  Nigel nudged Letta and gestured slightly with his head. She glanced round and saw that they weren’t alone in the alcove. Sitting in a corner on a stiff chair, half-hidden by one of the palms, was Minna Alaya, who had read ‘The Stream at Urya’ the night before. Letta hesitated and went over. Miss Alaya turned her head without moving her body and nodded, like royalty.

  ‘I just wanted to say how lovely that was last night,’ said Letta. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘Oh, I felt such a fool,’ said Miss Alaya. ‘Imagine! Crying like a baby in front of all those people!’

  ‘We were all crying too. It didn’t matter.’

  ‘For you it is permitted, but I am a professional. I cry only to order. You are one of our exiles?’

  ‘Yes. We live in England.’

  ‘And you, too, know “The Stream at Urya”? That is good.’

  ‘I don’t know it by heart. I read it with my grandfather. He’s teaching me Formal.’

  ‘Good, too.
These things must not be lost. And why are you here in the Palace on this grand occasion? Do you perhaps, in England, know my friend Restaur Vax?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact – I mean, we’re trying not to make a fuss about it so we can just be ordinary visitors – but he’s my grandfather. He lives with us in our house.’

  Miss Alaya smiled and nodded, royal as ever, but obviously pleased. She glanced towards Nigel, who was rather pointedly looking the other way. Perhaps his English half couldn’t cope with going straight up to famous strangers and starting to chat.

  ‘And that is another grandson?’ she said.

  ‘A great-grandson, actually. He’s older than me, but he’s my nephew.’

  ‘I would like to talk to him, please.’

  ‘You’ll have to speak slowly. He’s half-English, and his Field isn’t very good.’

  Miss Alaya nodded her understanding. Letta turned to beckon to Nigel but he was watching something on the other side of the room, so she went over. He looked round as she came and pointed.

  ‘See that big guy over there?’ he said. ‘Talking to Hector Orestes? Any idea who he is?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Hector’s fawning like a puppy, far as I can see. Some of the others too. And the big guy’s lapping it up. He doesn’t even look Varinian.’

  ‘I don’t know. I see Lash the Golden a bit like that.’

  ‘Another blond thug.’

  Nigel knew the Legends only from what Steff had told him. Being dark and slight and cautious, Steff had never had much time for Lash. Letta grinned, and gestured with her head.

  ‘Minna Alaya would like to say hello,’ she said.

  His eyes widened, but he came obediently over and waited while Miss Alaya gravely inspected him.

  ‘Very like my friend Restaur at that age,’ she said. ‘A distinct family likeness, despite the English blood.’

  Nigel hadn’t quite followed, so Letta translated.

  ‘Tell her she should see Uncle Van,’ he said. ‘He’s supposed to be the spit image.’

  Letta did so, and Miss Alaya nodded, still amused.

  ‘Do you know who that is over on the far side?’ said Letta. ‘The big blond man in the blue suit? I think he looks a bit like Lash the Golden.’

  Miss Alaya didn’t bother to turn her head. Her face became severe and her tone chilly.

  ‘So he would have us believe,’ she said. ‘His name is Otto Vasa. He has made a great deal of money since the war, in Austria, where he lives. It is he who is paying for this festival, out of his own pocket. Tell your grandfather when you see him that he is a dangerous man. He would like to be President when your grandfather is dead. He is not . . .’

  She broke off because Steff had arrived to collect Letta and Nigel. Recognizing who they were talking to he gave a foreign-looking little bow and held out his hand, which she touched graciously with the tips of her fingers.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘We were much moved and honoured by your reading last night.’

  ‘It is nothing,’ she said. ‘Please convey my respects to your grandfather.’

  ‘I’m sure he will wish to see you,’ said Steff.

  ‘He says you’re the most beautiful woman he ever met,’ said Letta.

  ‘It is true,’ she said. ‘They all said so. Now you must go and prepare to welcome our hero, and I must wait here. This is what it means to be in one’s second childhood – one must learn again to do what one is told. Goodbye.’

  ‘How did she know Grandad?’ asked Letta as they climbed the stairs. ‘I thought he was just a schoolmaster then, and she must have been famous.’

  ‘It’s a small country,’ said Steff. ‘Everybody knew everybody, among the intellectuals, at least. And then in the war – she’d been a German film star, remember, so a lot of the German officers had had a crush on her, and she played along and let them think they could trust her, but all the while she was sending information out to the Resistance. The trouble was, when it was over some of the Varinians wanted to shoot her as a collaborator, but Grandad got her out of that . . . all highly romantic and probably untrue, but that’s what Poppa told me.’

  ‘Of course it’s true,’ said Letta. ‘It’s got to be. It fits.’

  ‘Only in stories, Sis. In here, apparently.’

  They had come to a wide landing with a new red carpet running a few paces to left and right. Beyond that stretched a tattered old brown one. Opposite the top of the stairs were some big double doors, through which came an odour of fresh paint. Letta followed Steff through and found Mollie and Donna in a grand, uncomfortable great room with more of the little gilt chairs, and some shiny tables, and huge gilt-framed mirrors with black blotches on them, and enough flowers for a funeral. Three tall windows looked out onto the Square, with a balcony outside. In front of the middle one was a podium with microphones. The man who’d led them up, some kind of hotel manager, started fussing around opening doors and showing them the rest of the suite. There was a bedroom with a vast pink bed and a lacy pink canopy covered with artificial roses; a little den with a desk and two easy chairs, where a workman was installing a telephone; a terrific bathroom with a bath about eight feet long and four feet deep and several vast brass taps controlling a shower-device which looked like something from a Jules Verne film; some immense cupboards; and yet another bedroom, this time with twin beds but also frothing with lace and roses, pale violet.

  Letta had an urge to pretend she was six again and rush round trying out all the beds and turning on the tape and gadgets, but at that point Van came in, tousled and panting, and said, ‘I think he’s almost here. I heard them cheering.’

  Nigel began to open one of the windows but Steff said, ‘Hold it, Nidge. That comes later. We don’t want to spoil the great moment.’

  Letta craned, but the balcony was in the way so she took off her shoes and pulled one of the idiotic chairs over and climbed onto it so that she could see over the rail. The whole Square was crammed with people. Despite the closed windows she could hear that the cheers were louder and more intense, and over in the far right-hand corner the crowd was churning around. She could see the helmets of outriders trying to force a path through the mass. After them came the roof of a black official car. It stuck still, then moved on, and behind it appeared the cab of a truck, painted black and purple and white, with flags flopping listlessly on either side. Slowly it edged forward. It carried what seemed to be a festival float, swathed in the Varinian colours. The cheering crashed out like falling waters and the crowd became a forest of waving flags. On the float was a platform with a rail round it, and standing there, holding the rail with one hand and waving cheerfully with the other, stood Grandad.

  He had to be dead tired, tired with the journey, tired with the sheer emotion of homecoming, but he held himself straight and turned to left and right and waved, and whenever the truck was forced to a halt he bent down to shake a few of the thousands of hands that reached up to greet him. He was wearing a black beret over his bald head, an open-necked shirt and grey slacks. The extraordinary thing, Letta thought, was that he looked exactly like himself, no different from the Grandad who had crumpets with her at tea-time, as if this, too, was something he did every day of his life.

  At last the truck moved out of her line of vision. As it did so, she noticed that the colour of the crowd had changed from darker to paler beneath the layer of flags, as all those heads turned to watch it and she was now seeing faces, not hair. The cheering never stopped, but after several minutes its level dipped for a while and rose again. In the quiet spot she could just hear a band playing. That must be the national anthem, as Grandad climbed down from the float and up the steps and turned beneath the porch and stood there waving, while the cheers rose even louder than before, and at last died away as he turned and disappeared into the hotel.

  There was a bustle below, but while it was still going on the door opened and Momma rushed in, laughing and crying at the same time, not acting like hers
elf at all, but throwing her arms round everyone and hugging them with easy joy.

  ‘Isn’t this wonderful!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Letta, darling, how are you? I’m so happy you’re here! We’ve all come home, and you’ve never even seen it!’

  ‘Is Grandad all right? He’s not too tired?’

  ‘He’s fine, fine!’

  And she rushed away to hug Van and Nigel and the others. After a bit they fell silent and just stood there, too keyed-up for chat or laughter, but listening to the murmurs below and the unending ocean-mutter of the crowd outside.

  Time passed. Without warning the doors opened again and Grandad came through, with Poppa behind him.

  ‘Well, here I am at last,’ he said, smiling and erect. But when the doors closed they all saw his shoulders droop as he let the wave of exhaustion wash through him. Steff had a chair ready and helped him into it. Letta knelt and unlaced his shoes. He leaned back with closed eyes.

  ‘I would give all Varina for a cup of tea,’ he murmured.

  ‘Bet you Mollie’s got a Thermos,’ said Poppa.

  She had, too. The tension broke and they laughed and talked about their journeys while Grandad sipped at his cup and nodded and smiled, though he still looked almost as old as he really was. But then he began to peer round the room and a curious amusement came into his face.

  ‘You know,’ he said to no-one in particular, ‘I have spent sleepless nights trying to devise some method of getting a bomb under this floor. This was the German Commandant’s office.’

  He handed his cup to Letta, sat up and looked at his wrist-watch.

  ‘I have a few minutes still,’ he said. ‘Time for a wash, at least. Letta, my darling, in my bag there are clean socks.’