Shadow of a Hero Read online

‘That’s silly.’

  ‘Silly but normal. It is nothing exclusive to Varina. It happens wherever there isn’t enough of something important to go round – money, justice, power. There will always be some who will settle for nothing less than what they believe to be rightfully theirs. They are the Vaxites. The Pangoists are the ones who calculate the most they are likely to get, and settle for that.’

  ‘But Restaur Vax had done all the work. He’d made it happen. Then they booted him out.’

  ‘It was what they could get. There is never enough justice to go round. Besides, there are times for heroes, and times when it is better for heroes to do the decent thing and recede into legend.’

  Letta looked at him, puzzled. He’d changed. Only slightly – perhaps she wouldn’t have noticed if she’d been seeing him every day. He was still brown from the Varinian sun, and sat as straight as ever in his stiff chair, but he seemed somehow smaller. His hands looked older than she’d remembered, with hummocked veins under the loose, blotched skin. And his voice sounded sad – nothing a stranger would have heard, but Letta’s ears caught the note.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said.

  ‘The doctors say I am doing very well for my age. Why?’

  ‘You sound unhappy. Underneath, I mean. Or angry.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve missed you. And now, instead of having worthwhile conversations with my granddaughter I shall have to spend my days doing what I can to prevent our modern Vaxites and Pangoists from ruining everything with their stupid quarrels.’

  ‘Which are you?’

  He smiled and put his hands together in the old way, with the ghosts of his left-hand fingers resting against the living ones of his right hand.

  ‘You will tell no-one?’ he asked. ‘Very well. Between us two only, I am an onion. At the outside you have my name, like the brown onion skin you throw away. Next there is a Pangoist layer, not thick, because I want those I talk to to believe I am someone they can do business with. But inside that I am a Vaxite. I demand everything we are entitled to. No, wait, this is still not the centre, but it is a good thick layer, and it means that those who wish to do business with me must realize that I, too, mean business. If I demand less than everything, they will fob me off with less than they might have yielded, and I shall find that I have betrayed both myself and my country. Then, inside that I am a Pangoist. In the end I will take what I can get.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, my darling. But suppose there had been no Bishop Pango, no Treaty of Milan. Suppose my namesake had insisted on fighting on, demanding complete independence, what would have happened? The great powers who imposed the treaty would have lost patience, sympathy with little Varina would have ebbed away, we would have become no more than the naughty child in the European nursery, and the Turks would have been left to crush us out of existence. There might well have been no Varina at all today.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘The same is even truer now. We would not be fighting against muskets and scimitars and clumsy cannon. The Serbs and Bulgarians and Romanians all have modern armies, with modern weapons. How many rocket attacks, how long an artillery bombardment, do you think it would take to reduce the buildings around St Joseph’s Square – our lovely cathedral, our ridiculous palace – to heaps of golden rubble?’

  ‘Don’t! It won’t happen, will it? Not nowadays?’

  ‘Nowadays is a very frail notion. It certainly could happen, though I believe the odds are still on the side of reason. But if Otto Vasa is given his head, I will no longer think so. He already has a considerable following.’

  ‘Parvla went to a huge rally of his.’

  ‘Parvla?’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? The friend I met at the festival. I got a letter from her this morning. Van made a speech at the rally. She says every girl in her valley is in love with him.’

  ‘She doesn’t live in Potok?’

  ‘No. I write to a place called Kalavani, but that’s only where she goes to collect the letters. She lives in a farm up a side-valley – it’s an hour’s walk, she says. It must be perfectly lovely. She says you look right out down the valley, and there’s a waterfall that comes over the cliff beside it so it’s cool in the summer . . .’

  ‘Saludors.’

  ‘That’s right! Parvla Saludors. You’ve been there! She never said!’

  ‘No, I’ve not been there, but my friend Miklo Saludors used to talk about that waterfall on hot days in the mountains.’

  ‘Parvla’s father? No, her grandfather?’

  ‘Her great-uncle, I should think. He was some years younger than me. He had no children. He was engaged to be married, but he was one of my companions on the peace mission, whom the Russians shot and buried in the clay-pit.’

  ‘I don’t understand how people can do things like that.’

  ‘May you not. May you simply be aware that such things happen, and that ordinary-seeming people are capable of doing them. What else does Parvla tell you?’

  ‘Oh, everything is wonderful and they’re going to try and have a referendum on independence – that was what the rally was about – but bread is getting terribly expensive because the Romanians are making things difficult and her geese have just hatched and her sister is pregnant again. I’m afraid she thinks Otto Vasa’s wonderful. I don’t know what to say to her about that.’

  ‘Tell her it’s hard for you to judge, as you’re not there.’

  ‘Could you tell me a bit more about your friend Miklo? She’d be thrilled to know you knew him.’

  ‘I imagine she is already aware of that.’

  ‘She’d have told me.’

  ‘Not necessarily. For all our excitability, we are a reticent people.’

  ‘You mean she might have thought it was pushy to tell me?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘But is it OK if I . . .’ Letta began, and stopped when Grandad held up a finger. He thought for a few moments.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘This is perhaps a little unwise, but I will write a note on Miklo for you to send to your friend.’

  ‘That would be terrific! She’d be thrilled! Why is it unwise?’

  ‘Because if she were to show it to the wrong people, it could be taken by them to make it seem as if I were approving the use of Miklo’s name as that of a martyr for the cause of freedom. This is exactly the sort of thing that Otto Vasa is doing when he speaks at these rallies.’

  ‘Oh, in that case . . . couldn’t you just tell her things that don’t matter, you know, the sort of jokes you tell about friends?’

  ‘Perhaps I could, but then, well . . . I owe it to Miklo not to deny what he meant to me. That is more important than being wise. But if I do this, then perhaps – who am I to complain about the use of Miklo’s name for political ends? – if I do this then perhaps it would not be out of place for you to suggest in your letter that you are not absolutely sure how far Otto Vasa is to be trusted.’

  ‘Not absolutely sure, hell! I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw an elephant. He’s the most absolutely world-beating utter downright untrustworthy jerk anyone could hope to meet!’

  ‘I respect your judgement, my darling, but if you put it in those terms your friend will close her mind. For the time being all we can do is work by hints and suggestions. We must sow the seeds of doubt and hope they grow. Vasa at some point is going to reveal his true nature. We cannot make it happen, but we can help our countrymen to be ready, when it does, to see him for what he is.’

  ‘What is he, anyway? I mean, a Vaxite or a Pangoist?’

  ‘Neither. Both Vax and Pango were patriots. They loved their country, in their different ways, worked for it, fought for it, and if need be would have died for it. Vasa is also a patriot, but of a different kind. His country is simply an extension of himself. Varina must will what Vasa wills. There is no other source of right or wrong. He is a Vasaist.’

  LEGEND

  Restaur’s Bride
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  NOW FOR SEVENTEEN years1 the Pashas left the mountains in peace. Nowhere did any Turk dare to come, no roof-tree was burnt, no children taken for slaves, no flocks seized without payment. So the chieftains dispersed, each to his own valley, and the men put their guns above the rafters, and all was well.

  At the beginning of this time Lash the Golden came to Restaur Vax holding in his hand a lamb-fleece which had been dipped in blood and said, ‘This I found at my door in the morning dew. It is from the Kas Kalaz. The last Turk has been driven from the mountains and his oath is fulfilled. He seeks my death.’

  Restaur Vax said, ‘Let me go to the Kas Kalaz and ask him, for all that we have done and suffered together, you and he and I, to forgo his oath and let the feud sleep.’

  But Lash said, ‘Am I to see you kneel at my enemy’s feet? Never while my honour lives shall I endure that. Besides, I am no merchant or farmer. I am a bandit till I die, and now there are no Turks to rob, nor will I any longer rob my countrymen. I will go elsewhere.’

  So Restaur Vax took a silver coin and laid it on a log and smote it in two with his sword, cleaving the log also. One half he kept, and one half he gave to Lash the Golden. So they wept and parted.

  Then Restaur Vax mounted his horse and rode west, but he had gone only a small way when he saw a woman coming towards him, wearing the veil of mourning.2 He took a coin from his purse and cast it in the road before her, at which she blessed him. Then by her voice he knew her for his mother, but he saw that she did not know him.

  He leaped from his horse, but fearing to slay her with sudden joy, he asked first who she was and why she wore the veil of mourning. She answered, ‘I do not know who I am, nor why I must wear this veil, nor why my feet are on this road. All memory has been taken from me.’

  He said, ‘Your name is Parvla Vax.’

  She said, ‘It is as good a name as any.’

  He said, ‘You travel this road to find your son.’

  She said, ‘It is as good a reason as any.’

  He said, ‘I am your son, Restaur.’

  She said, ‘No doubt you will be as good a son as any.’3

  Then he took the veil from her face and kissed her and put her on his horse and led her west until they came to the bridge over the Avar. There he saw that the house that had stood beside the bridge was empty, and its roof-tree burnt and its walls black with flame, so he asked other travellers where was the woman who had kept the house, and one said, ‘She fled from the Turks and now lives in a cave in the mountains.’

  So Restaur Vax turned aside and went by goat-paths and the paths of the hunter until he came in sight of the cave. The woman sat on a rock with her two daughters in her lap, and a book before her, from which she was teaching them their letters. Restaur Vax said to his mother, ‘Now it is your business to find me a wife. Go to that woman and ask if she is spoken for, for she is a widow. If she asks you what she must bring as a dowry, say to her three good fields and twenty-seven sheep.’

  His mother said, ‘One woman is as good as another, and that is a fair price.’

  She went to the woman and spoke as she had been told and the woman looked up and saw Restaur Vax standing in the pathway beside his horse, with his musket on his back and his sword and pistols in his belt.

  ‘Am I to marry a bandit?’ she said.

  Then she looked again and said, ‘There was a certain priest who came by the bridge and brought my troubles upon me, though he paid a fair price.’

  She looked a third time and said, ‘I have need of a husband and my daughters have need of a father.’

  ‘But where are your sons?’ asked Restaur’s mother, in the voice of one speaking in a dream.

  ‘I have no sons,’ said the woman.

  Then Restaur’s mother looked at the children and said, ‘I had two sons,’ and as she spoke the bolts of her memory were drawn and she knew all that had been done to her and fell to the ground and mourned. The woman raised her up and Restaur ran to her side and now she knew him and wept again. Then the woman went into the cave and brought out wine and bread and olives, and they sat and ate.

  The woman said, ‘So you would be a farmer? Can you shear a ewe? Can you prune a vine?’

  Restaur said, ‘I was a priest who learned to be a warrior. Now I am a warrior who will learn to be a farmer. And your daughters will be my daughters and my mother will be your mother, and I will build your house by the bridge over the Avar, and all will be well with us, as it is with all our people.’

  So the woman lit a fire at the cave mouth and baked the betrothal cake, and they ate from the same dish and drank from the same cup and kissed each other and were agreed.4

  1 The full independence of Varina lasted from the battle of Tresti (1 March 1826) until Bishop Pango’s acceptance of Turkish hegemony with himself as Prince-Bishop at the Milan Conference in October 1828.

  2 Traditional face-covering of widows without immediate family to support them, enabling them to beg without loss of honour to their clan.

  3 This encounter and its sequel are probably entirely fictional, reworking a traditional tale, now lost. Restaur Vax’s own poem ‘Meeting’ (op. cit.) uses the tale up to this point, but treats both son and mother as nameless figures of mythic stature.

  4 Restaur Vax married Mariu Kori (1799–1893) in 1824. She had been betrothed to Vax’s elder brother until his disappearance at the start of the War of Independence (see Legend: Lash the Golden). By custom Restaur took the family obligation on himself as soon as he was free to do so. It is to Mariu that we are indebted for the preservation and publication of almost all of the poems.

  AUGUST 1990

  ONE GOOD THING, nothing to do with Varina, happened. The recession, which had taken Angel away, brought Biddie back. Her parents were feeling the pinch, and decided that in order to pay for their own holiday in Greece, they would have to let their Devon cottage for the priciest part of the season and spend the rest of the summer holidays in Winchester.

  Biddie rang at breakfast.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘How was Romania? Don’t tell me now. We got back last night. What are you doing this afternoon?’

  ‘Nothing special.’

  ‘Shall we choose presents? In time, for once?’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Pick you up at two?’

  ‘Make it one-thirty. I want to get back and have tea with Grandad. He’s been at a health farm. He’s only just back.’

  ‘What about Richoux?’

  ‘Do that first?’

  ‘Fine.’

  They rang off. That was a fairly typical Biddie call. Her parents were extremely tough with her – mediaeval, Angel used to say. They were tough about homework, tough about being out after dark, tough about clothes, tough about dragging her off to Devon all the holidays and most weekends, and fiendishly tough about the telephone. At one point there was trouble with Angel, who didn’t think that anything less than an hour-and-a-half counted as a serious telephone call, but then Biddie’s dad, who was a thoroughgoing gadget-nerd, fixed a timer to the telephone which cut it off after three minutes whether you called her or she called you, unless she used a special key which she had to ask for. What’s more it kept it cut off for another five minutes, so you couldn’t just make a series of three-minute calls. This meant that Letta’s friendship with Biddie had been mostly a school thing, so it was especially pleasing and comforting that Biddie had called pretty well the moment she got back.

  Choosing birthday presents was a ritual, much more important than the Christmas present ritual. Because of the way their holiday comings and goings had worked out, they’d usually had to wait for the start of the winter term, and then they’d cruise the gift-shops in the High Street looking for things under five pounds and awarding them points out of ten for idiocy. If they couldn’t find two objects scoring at least eight, they bought each other cards instead. Then they’d finish up having hot chocolate at Richoux.

  Letta loved Richoux, even crammed with tourists, a
s it was in August. It was a bit posh and a bit ye-olde, but nothing like as fake as it might have been. They were lucky and got a table in a niche, where they settled down and looked at each other. Biddie had hardly changed at all, Letta decided. She had a very square face with coarse black hair, black eyebrows, dark brown eyes, whitish freckled skin and a wide mouth. Letta guessed that if she never saw her again till she was sixty, she’d still recognize her at once. In their old school, everyone had known that Biddie was about the cleverest pupil they’d had there, ever, and she was going to get all sorts of scholarships, and finish up famous. It was lovely now to be with her. Theirs wasn’t the sort of friendship you had to work to keep going, like the one with Angel. It was simply there, a fact.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ said Biddie.

  ‘I was just thinking you hadn’t.’

  ‘I have, too. At least I’ve struck. I’ve told Mum and Dad that now we’re going to different schools they’ve got to let me have other ways of getting to hang out with you. We get home for weekends from this school, so I’ve said I won’t always be coming down to Devon with them. I’m going to be staying with you instead, if it’s OK with your mum.’

  ‘That’s great! I’m sure Momma won’t mind. What did your parents say?’

  ‘They’re thinking about it. They’ll say OK in the end. They know what matters and what doesn’t. Tell me about Romania. I found your card when I got home.’

  ‘Not Romania, Varina.’

  ‘It had a Romanian stamp.’

  ‘It won’t next year. Don’t you remember, I spent most of last hols helping my sister-in-law in St Albans fix coaches and hotels and things to get to our culture festival?’

  ‘Oh, yes. How did it go?’

  ‘The first half was brilliant. Best thing that’s ever happened in my life. I can’t imagine anything as exciting, ever again. I felt as if I’d come home, as if a huge piece of me had always been missing and now I was all joined up again. And Grandad was there – he was our last proper prime minister – and everyone cheered him everywhere he went. He was a total hero. And then, out of the blue, the Romanians arrested him in his pyjamas and took him away. They let Mum and me come along after, to see he was all right, but they practically kept their guns pointing at us all the time until we were on the plane and out of the country.’