Shadow of a Hero (14 page)

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 Artillery. ‘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 hangings
¹
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.

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.’