Nicholas Royle - Regicide

‘If money meant anything here, there’d be a bounty on his head,’ she said. ‘As it is, there’s an enthusiastic vigilante movement. Everyone’s eager to prove they’re not guilty. That’s why you have to do something about your appearance. You won’t last long looking like that.’

I took a long drag on my cigarette and thought about how long I’d been growing my hair, how much I loved my white leather jacket and my butterfly boots.

‘I know someone,’ she said.

Ten minutes later we were peeling away the corrugated iron sheeting that blocked the inside of the door to discourage intruders. Stella had smeared dust and grime on my jacket to make us less conspicuous. It would take about half an hour to go across town to Eyshall, the district where Stella’s friend Maxi lived. Maxi was an actress and she kept a well-stocked wardrobe. In the meantime Stella had given me a black woollen beanie like Giff’s and I tucked the rest of my hair down the back of my jacket, but there was nothing we could do about my boots. Stella’s feet were several sizes smaller than mine.

It was dark outside. I had no idea of the time. My watch had stopped when I’d entered the City. I asked Stella but she just shrugged and said, ‘Keep close to me.’ We walked in the shadow of buildings, turning our heads away whenever we passed anyone. At first the streets were fairly quiet but it clearly wasn’t curfew hour yet and the nearer we came to the city centre the more people we saw. At one intersection we passed right beneath a judge’s nose, Stella claiming that was less obvious than crossing the road to avoid him.

‘Turn down here,’ Stella said, taking us into a quieter district of bigger, grander-looking terraced houses with imposing gateposts and steps up to the front doors. The windows were all black as night and there was no noise coming from within. A few of the windows on the top floors betrayed shadows flitting across pulled blinds but Stella hurried on and I didn’t have time to linger. I heard a ringing telephone but again Stella led me on deeper into the City. We turned back towards the light and the noise after two more blocks and soon found ourselves in a crowd of murmuring bystanders lining the sides of a main road. Stella motioned to me to keep my head down. I tried to listen to the voices around me but there was only an indistinguishable mutter, like extras mumbling lines of nonsense in a film.

‘What’s going on?’ I whispered to Stella.

She shook her head. ‘They’re obviously waiting for something,’ she said. ‘I think we ought to wait quietly or we’ll draw attention to ourselves.’

I nodded and reached into my boot for my squashed pack of Camels. Stella saw me and pushed my hand back down. From the breast pocket of her jacket she produced a drab soft pack which she passed to me. I examined the pack. There was no brand name, just the word CIGARETTES and a logo that was a rough spiral design. I shrugged and tipped one out of the packet. Stella struck a match for me and I took a drag of what tasted like the paper straws we used to light on the Bunsen burners in school physics lessons. I scowled and Stella smiled grimly.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Tastes like shit but there’s not a lot of choice here.’ Then she looked up because there was movement in the crowd. Heads were turning towards the road and necks craning. I heard an engine approaching; it sounded like a big truck. It rumbled closer and I could see from the cab that it was a very old worn-out haulage vehicle. Proceeding at walking pace it was escorted by paramilitaries wearing black drill and brandishing wooden clubs. They wore black woollen hats similar to the one Stella had given me to wear. She noticed me fingering it and I left it alone. The paramilitaries looked into the crowd with eyes that were chips of black ice. Occasionally one of them would heft his club.

The vehicle was pulling a trailer like an open cattle truck in which were packed at least thirty prisoners, staring wide-eyed and sallow-faced at the crowds as they were drawn past. Their heads had been shaved roughly, nicking the scalp here and there and leaving short trails of dried blood. A few tufts of hair remained behind the ears or at the temple. I thought of the Passage.

The reaction of the crowd was curious. They watched the approach of the trailer, then bowed their heads as the prisoners passed right by them as if to avoid the vacant stares, and once it had moved on they looked up again, catching the steady but blank gazes of the few creatures standing at the back of the trailer. Then one or two hollow cries went up — ‘Traitors’, ‘Murderers’, ‘King killers’ — and the crowd started to disperse.

‘Where are they being taken?’ I asked Stella after we’d crossed the road and plunged down another side street.

‘To die,’ she said. ‘But first they get driven all around the City to set an example.’

‘ Set an example ?’ I said sharply.

‘Yes, why?’ she said.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘A line in a song.’ The lyrics to ‘Shave Your Head’ hovered just out of reach. Something about setting an example, starting a trend.

For some reason I thought of Annie Risk and I felt a little kick in my stomach. I didn’t know how long I’d been in the City but it must have been at least a couple of days and she was bound to have tried to call me. Unable to get me at home she would have tried the shop and there would have been no answer there either. She would be worried and there was nothing I could do. For the time being I had to go along with Stella’s advice in order to give myself a chance merely of surviving in the City. Stella had said there was no way out but given that I’d found the place — I’d begun to suspect partly because I’d been so convinced it did actually exist — I had to believe there was a route out of it. My belief would help me find one. Perhaps the day I gave up believing it was possible would be the day I became a true citizen of the benighted place.

‘What?’ said Stella, looking at me.

‘Nothing.’

We entered a large square. A cluster of taxi cabs dozed by a small section of railing, their engines switched off and lumpy figures slumped over in the driving seats. An articulated bus bent almost double waited for daylight to come. A few bits of newsprint, damp old cigarette packets bearing the same spiral design as Stella’s and plastic drinks bottles whispered under our feet as we crossed the wide road and headed for a narrow bridge.

‘It must be near curfew,’ I said.

‘We’ll just make it,’ Stella answered without looking back. ‘We’re in Eyshall now.’

I didn’t know how she was able to be so accurate without a watch but I didn’t question her. As we walked across the little bridge I looked over the parapet and at first it was too dark to see anything. I heard Stella’s shoes on the road and knew I should catch up with her but I wanted to know all there was to know about my surroundings. As I concentrated and shielded my eyes from the bleak street lighting either side of the bridge I could make out the black, treacly canal beneath. It moved slowly, bearing a patina of litter and patches of scum. The banks were reinforced with stone slabs. It was narrow and there was very little room beneath the bridge, yet despite its unwelcoming aspect I felt reassured by the mere presence of another element in this restrictive landscape.

I heard Stella’s voice hissing in the distance. Looking up the road I saw her a good fifty yards away beckoning me from beneath a broken street lamp.

Maxi’s place was an old dentist’s surgery. She had the reclining chair, the pull-down light, wall-mounted cabinets with mirrored fronts, little instrument trolleys from which she served drinks. She even still had the drill, one of the old, slow motor-driven kind with long extendible arms and strings. I shuddered in recollection.