Shadow of a Hero Read online

  ‘What is it you do?’ he said.

  ‘That is my business,’ said Restaur Vax.

  ‘Well, I will help you,’ said the man, and with his bare hands he lifted the stone aside as if it had been thin timber. Below it in a pit lay a clay pot.

  ‘So you dug for treasure,’ said the stranger. ‘Well, since we have found it together, we will now share it.’

  ‘It is my inheritance,’ said Restaur Vax.

  ‘What need has a priest of an inheritance?’ said the stranger.

  ‘Great need,’ said Restaur Vax, ‘if I am to fight the Turks.’

  ‘First you will have to fight me for my share of the treasure,’ said the stranger.

  ‘Not so,’ said Restaur Vax. ‘For you are going to come with me and fight the Turks. What use is it to me to break your bones?’

  The stranger laughed and said, ‘You are a better priest than most I have met. Very well, we will not fight each other, but we will have a contest. If I am to trust you as a comrade against the Turks, then you must show me you can use a gun. We will shoot in turn, once with each of my pistols and once with my musket. If I win, I shall take my half of the treasure and go, and if you win I shall come with you to fight the Turks.’

  Restaur Vax saw the man’s thought. How should a priest shoot better than a bandit? But his father had kept a gun in among his rafters, and had taught him its use, so he agreed to the contest.

  The first target was two peaches set upon a rock. With his shot the stranger knocked the peach off the rock, but with his, Restaur Vax shot the stone out of the peach, leaving the fruit where it was.

  ‘That was a lucky shot,’ said the stranger.

  They reloaded and exchanged pistols.

  The second target was two pigeons that chanced to fly past. With his shot the stranger knocked three tail-feathers away, but the bird flew on. With his, Restaur Vax shot the bird through the head, and it dropped like a stone.

  ‘That was a lucky shot,’ said the stranger.

  Now, as they were choosing a target for the musket, the son of the Pasha of Potok came along the road with some of his household on the way to their hunting-ground. Hearing shots where by their law none should carry weapons, they turned aside and saw two Varinians, one of them loading a musket. The Pasha’s son sent five bazouks to arrest them, but the stranger raised his musket and shot the leading bazouk in the shoulder and he fell down, and the others took cover and fired back, and Restaur Vax and the stranger sheltered behind a broken wall while the stranger reloaded.

  Now the Pasha of Potok’s son rode up to find the cause of the delay, and Restaur Vax saw him and knew him. He took the musket from the stranger, saying, ‘Now it is my turn.’

  When he stood up the Turks all fired at him but he did not flinch. He took steady aim and shot the Pasha of Potok’s son through the heart, so that he dropped from his horse, dead. And all the Turks ran away, rather than face such shooting.

  ‘That was more than a lucky shot,’ said the stranger. ‘You have won our contest, and I will fight the Turks at your side. There is no help for it, since we have killed the Pasha of Potok’s son, and now there will be a price of many gold pieces on our heads. My name is Lash.3 Some call me the Golden, for I am of the old blood.’

  Now he was a famous bandit, who had killed many men.

  ‘My name is Restaur Vax,’ said Restaur Vax.

  ‘You may keep my musket,’ said Lash the Golden, ‘for you have won it fairly, and you cannot fight the Turks without a gun.’

  ‘A gift for a gift,’ said Restaur Vax, and gave him the two rings which the Bishop had given for the purchase of a gun. One was of silver, set with a ruby, and one was of pure gold.

  So they vowed everlasting brotherhood, and gathered up Restaur Vax’s inheritance, and left.

  1 This incident is described by Vax himself in Homecoming (Collected Works of Restaur Vax, Rome 1868).

  2 It is popularly believed that Varina derives its name from the Varingian Guard, the famous regiment of Norsemen who served the Emperors in Byzantium. The occasional appearance of blond hair among the normally dark Varinians is regarded as evidence of this. A colony of veterans is supposed to have been established on the Danube some time around the ninth century AD, though there is no documentary or archaeological evidence of this being so.

  3 Alexo Lash (1785?–1826), Chief Lieutenant to Restaur Vax in the struggle for independence. A flamboyant figure, to whom legends concerning earlier folk-heroes naturally attached themselves. Throughout the whole period of Turkish domination there were always both groups and individuals who refused to accept it, and fought and raided from inaccessible refuges among the mountains.

  WINTER 1989

  ‘HI, AUNTIE,’ SAID Nigel.

  ‘Good morning, Nephew,’ said Letta. ‘I trust you are behaving yourself and getting good marks for your schoolwork.’

  It was their standard greeting. A car had come for Grandad and she’d driven up with him, but she’d got the driver to stop at the top of the road and walked down by herself, so as not to be seen arriving with the great man. It was a bright November morning. The road was a wide avenue of plane trees, with a big park and some sort of palace on the left and huge solemn houses on the right. Most of the houses seemed to be embassies or something now, with flags and coats of arms over the porches. Some of them had a policeman on guard. She found the Romanian Embassy half-way down the hill with about thirty people standing around while Grandad shook hands with them. There were barriers on the pavement to keep the small crowd in order. Nigel had seen her coming and had walked a little way up to meet her.

  ‘What’s up?’ she said.

  ‘Mum’s taken over, of course.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘She called the man you said, and the man knew our name and asked if she’d got anything to do with Grandad and she said yes. And she told him she knew about protests and he was keen to have her along. Dad says it’s because she isn’t bothered by policemen, and anyone who’s had to live in Varina can’t help being.’

  ‘At least the cocoa will be hot. Where is she?’

  ‘Over there, by the gate.’

  Letta turned and saw her sister-in-law, with Mr Jaunis and another man, arguing about something with the policeman who guarded the Embassy. Mollie was a bit older than Steff. She was a square, cheerful woman who loved taking on problems, stray dogs, charity appeals, protests about pedestrian crossings, Nigel’s school friends when they had troubles they didn’t want to talk to their parents about. She was easy to like, but your first thought about having her to help you was, ‘Um?’ because she gave an impression of having just too much energy, like an Old English sheep-dog pup which is full of goodwill but liable to knock tables over and trample the flower beds. In fact she was terrifically organized, and she always took trouble to know her stuff. She’d once done an interview on local radio with some kind of junior government minister about a school closure, and he’d tried to get away with waffling at her, and she’d wiped the floor with him and left him without a waffle to his name. Nigel had sent Letta a tape with a note saying, ‘Boadicea rides again.’

  Letta had been pretty certain Mollie wouldn’t mind coming to the vigil for a bit, though she was English, and the family talked English at home. (Nigel could only just about get along in Field.) Steff wasn’t like Momma. He thought and talked about Varina, though he’d left there before he was six. Anyway, Mollie, being Mollie, would have known all about Ceauşescu anyway and how disgusting he was and what he was up to. Still, Letta hadn’t expected her to be quite so in the thick of things yet.

  It was interesting to watch her in action. Letta had mainly heard about her through Nigel, who of course regarded her as rather a joke, which is one of the important things good parents are for, Letta thought. (The chief problem with Poppa was that he wasn’t there enough for jokes about him to build up properly.) Mollie, she saw, wasn’t all Boadicea. She couldn’t actually hear what the people at the gate were saying
– the policeman, Mollie, Mr Jaunis and a slightly creepy-looking skinny bald man in a fur hat – but she could see from their attitude that all three men were a bit unsure of themselves and Mollie wasn’t, and they found that soothing. She was using a portable telephone which the skinny man had handed her. She finished the call and came over just as Grandad reached the end of the line where Letta and Nigel had joined on.

  ‘We’re waiting for the bloody press, as usual,’ she said. ‘Sorry about this, Grandad. You’re early and they’re late. Are you warm enough? I’ve got some cocoa in a flask. I suppose they wouldn’t let the car wait.’

  ‘My Marks and Spencer thermal underwear I am wearing,’ said Grandad, in English. Mollie could hardly speak Field at all.

  ‘Good for you,’ she said. ‘Don’t you think we look a miserable bunch? Isn’t there something we can sing? A national anthem or something?’

  ‘The words nobody will know. Funereal also the tune.’

  ‘Well then, a folk-song. Steff’s always whistling bits of folk-song. I bet you know some folk-songs.’

  She had turned as she spoke and said this to a couple of what looked like students next along the line. They’d been holding hands and staring with adoring expressions at Grandad. The young man began to stammer.

  ‘What about “The Two Shepherds”?’ said the girl. ‘Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Except me,’ said Mollie. ‘What about it, Grandad?’

  ‘Good. But Mr Jaunis and Mr Orestes you will consult first?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  She darted across. Letta watched the by-play. Mr Jaunis pursed his lips, but the skinny man, Mr Orestes presumably, creased his face into a surprisingly gleeful smile and did a couple of small jig-steps. Everybody cheered up. They divided without being organized into two groups on either side of the gateway. Mr Orestes stood in the middle to conduct.

  ‘The Two Shepherds’ was a sort of nursery rhyme with silly words, two young men calling to each other across a valley, boasting about how they’ve got the best sheep, the best dog, the best crook, the prettiest girl, and so on. It had a cheerful tune, but the main point was the chorus, which was pure nonsense, the Varinian version of ‘With a folderolderolio’ and you sort-of-yodelled it. Everyone enjoyed themselves. Their voices echoed off the stuccoed walls of the Embassy and up through the branches of the planes into the bright winter sky. The yodelling sounded particularly good. To Letta’s surprise they came to a verse she didn’t know. Then another. Listening carefully, she realized why.

  ‘What was that about?’ said Nigel, as the other group took up the tune.

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing an aunt should go telling her innocent little nephew.’

  ‘Oh, come off it!’

  ‘Well, he was saying . . . Hold it, I’ll tell you next time.’

  It was their turn again, and yet another verse she didn’t know. These words were even more surprising – though there were some she’d never heard before. The woman behind her shoulder had a penetrating clear soprano and sang with great gusto, but when Letta glanced up and caught her eye she stopped short.

  ‘You understand?’ she whispered in English.

  ‘Most of it,’ said Letta cheerfully. ‘I can guess the rest. It makes much more sense like this, doesn’t it?’

  The woman was not amused, and kept her mouth firmly shut during the next verse, so Letta missed most of it, and then, while they were doing the yodel, which seemed to get longer and twiddlier with each verse, two photographers showed up. The singing stopped, but the photographers wanted them to start again because a singing protest was a bit of a change. Letta heard Mr Orestes telling them that ‘The Two Shepherds’ was a patriotic anthem. A few of the women were wearing national costume – rather bogus-looking, Letta thought, with a big bead shawl and a wide-brimmed hat down on one side – so the photographers made them stand in front and sing, or pretend to in the case of the one nearest Letta. Like Mollie, she was English and didn’t know the words.

  Next, Grandad was due to deliver his protest. The photographers wanted him to take the Englishwoman in national dress up the steps with him, because she was prettier than the real Varinians, but he put his foot down. He refused to have any of them.

  ‘Not a charade, this is,’ he said loudly. ‘A protest we deliver about those serious and tragic events that in our country are taking place. A deliberate effort by the Romanian regime is being made to destroy our country, our culture, our language, our sense who we are. Those who resist they torture and kill. Let this be truly understood.’

  He had been waiting in the cold and looked frail but his voice came out strongly. Though he was a small man and his English was peculiar, the moment he spoke you forgot about that and he became the one who mattered, the centre of things. Mr Jaunis handed him an envelope and he turned and walked up the drive, with Mr Jaunis a pace or two behind his shoulder.

  ‘Who is this guy, then?’ said a man who’d come with the photographers. There was a woman with them too. They both had notepads and pencils.

  ‘He is our last democratic Prime Minister, Restaur Vax,’ said the woman who’d worried about Letta understanding the words of the song.

  ‘Spelling?’ said the reporter, and wrote it down. ‘How old, anyone know?’

  ‘Over eighty, I believe,’ said the woman.

  ‘Eighty-one,’ said Letta.

  ‘Sure, love?’ said the reporter patronizingly.

  ‘She’s his granddaughter,’ said Nigel. ‘And I’m his great-grandson.’

  Letta could have kicked him. It wasn’t his fault not knowing about her pact with Grandad, but even so . . . Luckily, no-one took him up on it.

  The woman started trying to tell the reporters about Grandad being named after the national hero, but they weren’t very interested, and at that point things started to happen at the Embassy door. There was a flight of steps up to the pillared porch, and Grandad had been standing patiently on the doormat while Mr Jaunis rang the bell. He’d tried short rings and nothing had happened, and he now had his finger steadily pressed on the bell-push. The door opened a crack. Grandad had the envelope held out and a hand came through the crack and snatched it from him. Whoever it was just tore the envelope in half, stuffed the pieces back through the crack and tried to close the door, not realizing that Mr Jaunis had turned his umbrella upside-down and hooked the handle round the bottom, so that it wouldn’t quite shut.

  This was obviously against the rules, because the policeman made a disapproving face, said, ‘You just wait here, all of you,’ and started up the drive.

  Whoever it was behind the door made several attempts to heave it shut before they realized what had happened. Then they flung it open and rushed out, two stocky, thuggish-looking men in grey suits. They simply barged Grandad and Mr Jaunis out of the way, rushed back in and slammed the door.

  Mr Jaunis was knocked clean off his feet and sprawled across the doormat, and Grandad, staggering back, tripped over him, teetered for a moment, and was actually falling down the steps when the policeman caught him. At the same moment the whole group of Varinians went rushing up the drive and gathered, clamouring furiously, on the Embassy steps.

  Letta was swept up in the rush but managed to push her way out and found Grandad sitting on the bottom step with Mollie and Nigel kneeling beside him and the policeman standing over them.

  ‘All right now, then?’ said the policeman.

  ‘I don’t think he’s hurt, just shaken,’ said Mollie. ‘Thank you very much, officer. If you hadn’t caught him . . . These bloody people! God!’

  ‘Better get him to hospital,’ said the policeman. ‘Now I’ve got to sort this little lot out.’

  He turned and started trying to persuade the infuriated Varinians back into the road. Letta sat beside Grandad and put her arm round him. She was weeping. She couldn’t help it. If the policeman hadn’t caught him he’d have been badly hurt, with his thin old bones crashing down the stone steps.

  ‘You two
keep an eye on him for the moment,’ said Mollie. ‘I’ll send for a taxi.’

  She strode away. Two more policemen appeared from somewhere, but they didn’t know what had happened and seemed to think the Varinians were trying to storm the Embassy, out of bloody-mindedness.

  ‘Back in the road now,’ snapped one of them.

  ‘He’s hurt,’ said Letta. ‘They pushed him down the steps.’

  ‘Back in the road, will you?’ said the policeman, like a robot.

  Letta was going to protest again when Grandad said, ‘We go now, officer. Help me up, darlings. Good. That’s it. I’m a little dizzy, I think. Now.’

  Together, with their arms round his waist and his round their shoulders, Nigel and Letta steadied him across the gravel. In the gateway the photographers crouched and tensed, cameras busy. Mollie was beyond them, talking into the mobile telephone which she’d commandeered again. The woman reporter was waiting in front of her, notepad poised. Mollie switched the phone off and waved them over.

  ‘Taxi’s coming,’ she said. ‘How are you, Grandad?’

  ‘I’ll do, I’ll do. Thank you, my dear.’

  ‘Do you feel up to answering a few questions?’ said the reporter.

  ‘She’s from the Independent,’ Mollie explained. ‘Mr Vax was delivering a peaceful protest at the Romanian Embassy when a couple of thugs charged out and threw him down the steps. He might easily . . .’

  It looked as if she was going to take the interview over, but Grandad held up a hand and stopped her. Letta thought she actually felt a surge of strength coming from somewhere inside the trembling body.

  ‘I am Restaur Vax,’ he said. ‘I am last democratically elected leader of the Varinian nation.’

  ‘He led the Resistance against the Germans,’ said Nigel, getting his oar in as usual. ‘Then the Communists put him in prison for thirty years.’

  ‘Details you will find in our press leaflet,’ said Grandad. ‘Important now is that my people who live in Romania are by the Ceauşescu regime being savagely oppressed, turned from ancestral land and homes, massacred, when they protest. This they do here this morning is in small way typical of how they have contempt for civilized modes. On the British government and the British people we are calling to use all means in their power that they dissuade the dictator Ceauşescu from continuing his aggression.’