Rupert Thomson - Divided Kingdom

She smiled. ‘Are you ready?’

Aware that the house might be under observation, she took me along a series of overgrown paths that would see me safely off the property. As we came through a wooded hollow, I heard the stuttering of rotor blades.

‘That’s probably them now,’ she said.

She held quite still and listened, then she moved on up the slope. I followed her. The chatter of the helicopter faded.

We scaled a fence, then struck out along one edge of a field. When we arrived at the stile in the corner, the land unfolded in front of me, sleepy and unspoiled. This was as far as she could go, Rhiannon said. In the knapsack I would find a detailed map of the area. For the first few miles, I should keep to footpaths and bridleways. She doubted the Customs and Excise people would be looking for me there.

I thanked her again. We embraced quickly. Stepping back, I saw that her face had altered, as if the bones had shifted a fraction.

‘Think of us sometimes,’ she said.

With those words, I felt she had given something away — something she’d wanted me to see all along, perhaps, but hadn’t wanted to spell out. I had thought of the Church of Heaven on Earth as a kind of cult, though it was actually more like a charity. Owen had created a place in which he could try and redress the damage wreaked by the division of the kingdom. Losses could be overcome there. Injuries could heal. Maybe that was what Rhiannon had meant when she said I would fit in. Maybe that explained the unfathomable smile. She had identified me as a casualty, not of the shipwreck, but of an earlier catastrophe — the Rearrangement — and if times had been different, who knows, I might even have stayed on. How had she been wounded, though? What was the origin of the pain I thought I’d seen in her? I turned to speak to her, but it was too late. She was already halfway across the field.

Though it was almost December, the air had a sweet burnt smell, and the sky was tall and blue and empty. The recent storm had blown the clouds into a different part of the world altogether; all that bad weather had piled up somewhere else. I had the feeling that my life, too, had been swept clean, put in order. I walked northwards through open, undulating country. To the east I had a view of a ruined castle. Beyond it, a finger of water pointed inland. An estuary, I thought, or possibly the sea.

After a couple of hours I paused for a rest. In the knapsack Rhiannon had given me, I found some mineral water. I drank half of it, then consulted the map. Now that I had money, of course, I could afford a train. I decided to make for a town to the north-west, whose station was on the main line to the capital. Even if I kept to the footpaths and bridleways, as Rhiannon had advised, I should be able to get there in two days. I would be thirty miles from the coast by then, and breaking cover ought not to be a problem. Pleased with my strategy, I tucked the map and water-bottle back into the knapsack and hurried on.

Once, as I climbed down into a gully, I heard the helicopter again, though it was only a subdued grinding in the distance, little more than a vibration. I saw it too, above the treetops, heading busily in the wrong direction.

By the time I stopped for lunch I must have walked ten miles. A kind of heath spread out all round me, pine trees relishing the sandy soil. Gorse clung to the ground in strands like natural barbed wire, and every now and then my trouser-legs would snag on its sharp spines. Unpacking the knapsack, I discovered hard-boiled eggs, crusty rolls filled with slabs of cheese, several apples, a bar of chocolate, and a second bottle of water. As I ate and drank, I checked my position on the map. I was in a white space, between two rivers. Ahead of me lay an area of downland, the hills topped with ancient forts and barrows, the valleys housing villages with quaint, humorous-sounding names. The going would be more arduous, but at least I ought to be able to find a place to stay. I finished the bread and cheese, then ate an apple. I kept the rest of the food and water for later on. My energy renewed, I set off again, determined to make full use of the daylight.

That afternoon I passed through several farms, every one of them abandoned. The houses had been boarded up, and the cattle sheds were empty, ghostly places, doors hanging off their hinges, hay strewn haphazardly about. Not long before the Rearrangement, disease had swept the countryside, and huge numbers of livestock had been slaughtered and then burned. The farmers had never recovered. A substantial percentage of the Blue Quarter’s population had been vegetarian for years.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I saw a large flock of sheep about a mile to the west. As I watched them move across the wide green flank of a hillside, though, I realised they weren’t sheep at all but people — White People. It was astute of them to favour the Blue Quarter. They would be treated kindly here; in some areas, in fact, they would be revered, or even worshipped. I had always felt a good deal of sympathy for them, a feeling that had only been enhanced by my encounter on the front steps of the Sheraton, but I had never really believed in their so-called powers, preferring to find rational explanations for their sometimes mystifying, almost supernatural behaviour, and I remembered a story Marie had told me, one from which we had drawn quite different conclusions.

The incident occurred during Victor and Marie’s walking tour of the Red Quarter. They had been in the far north at the time. Instead of slavishly following the border, they decided to scale a ridge that ran parallel to it. The ground had been marshy at first. After a while, though, it turned into high pasture, punctuated by pale-grey boulders. The ridge was further away than it had looked, but they had started now, and both father and daughter agreed that nothing tried the patience more than the process of having to retrace your steps. They would reach the ridge, they said, even if it killed them. And it almost had.

They toiled onwards, upwards. The grass became a steeply sloping field of stones. No sooner had they arrived at what they had imagined to be the summit than another summit would appear, one which, until that point, had been concealed by the angle of their ascent. To make matters worse, a mist had drifted in behind them, obscuring the route they had taken. They peered at the ridge. It had transformed itself into a crest of ominous black rock. They glanced at each other. On they went.

In another hour they had reached the top. They couldn’t see for more than a few feet in any direction, and their clothes were soaking wet. Still, they celebrated by sharing a cup of coffee from their flask.

What happened next was something Marie hadn’t been able to explain. The mist seemed to give in front of her, and in this opening she saw a footpath curve off through a kind of meadow. She took a few steps towards the opening, so as to have a clearer view of the path, some clue as to where it went. When she glanced over her shoulder, Victor had disappeared. She couldn’t believe it. Assuming he must be behind her, she whirled one way, then the other. There was no one there. The mist closed in around her. She called his name softly, almost experimentally, but there was no reply. She shouted as loud as she could. Her voice refused to carry. Her sense of isolation was so acute that, paradoxically, she felt haunted.

She returned to the patch of ground where she’d been standing when she last saw him. The rocks looked different. She thought about crying, but managed to resist it. She had no idea what to do. The mist thinned. A bronze light fell. Looking up, she saw a group of figures dressed in white. One of them detached himself from the others and approached. His face was blurred with a growth of beard, and his black hair hung down to his shoulders, its knotted strands festooned with burrs and leaves and bits of bark. He stood sideways on to her and gestured with one hand. He wanted her to follow him. She realised she wasn’t frightened, and this surprised her.