Peter Dickinson - Shadow of a Hero

‘You said “partly”,’ she said.

He raised his eyebrows.

‘You were thinking partly about Van.’

‘Yes. My darling, this is something I need to talk to you about. I was also thinking partly about Varina. We have an even more dangerous state of affairs than I had realized, but at the same time there is a glimmer of hope. My policeman is in fact a very good friend, and we agree about most things, but he has had difficulty in persuading his masters to take Varina, and especially Otto Vasa, sufficiently seriously. They have other things on their minds. I think I can tell him exactly enough to give him the evidence he needs, so that his masters will then think it worthwhile to put pressure on the government in Bucharest to counter Vasa’s activities by allowing me back into the country.’

‘No!’

Letta had almost shouted the word. Grandad looked at her in surprise. He smiled, nodded and put his pencil and pad aside.

‘You still forbid me to go?’ he said.

‘No, of course not. I can’t forbid you anything. I just don’t want you to, that’s all.’

‘You don’t remember? Last summer – when was it? Soon after we started reading the Legends, I think – we had almost this conversation, and in the course of it I told you I would not go permanently back to Varina without your permission.’

‘Unless I could come too, I said.’

‘I’m afraid there is no question of that.’

‘I know . . . Anyway, it doesn’t count. We didn’t really mean it, did we? It was a sort of game we were playing.’

‘I meant it.’

‘Oh . . . Still . . . It’s not my . . . But anyway, it isn’t fair, Grandad! On you, I mean. You aren’t well. You’re . . . Do you want to go?’

He put the ghost fingers against the real ones and cocked his head to one side.

‘I have asked myself that often,’ he said. ‘The answer is, I don’t know. I should of course prefer to die in Varina – remember that, my darling, if it should happen. That apart, the question is unimportant, trivial. If I have the opportunity and refuse it, what will have been the point of my life? What will have been the point of my bearing the name I bear? You see?’

‘No. No I don’t. Whatever happens, you’re you. Whatever you’re called. There isn’t anyone else like you and there never will be. Oh, please . . . I’m not allowed to say that, am I? I’m supposed to say “If you must go, then you must go.” But I won’t. I won’t!’

He was looking at her, nodding his head, considering.

‘You do forbid me, then?’ he said.

‘No, it isn’t like that. I’ve told you, I can’t.’

‘You could, and if you did I think . . . I think I would stay. Remember that I am not sure that even if I were allowed to go I could achieve anything. I am old. I am tired. It is very likely too late. I am telling you the truth, my darling. I do not know.’

He started to take his pills, one at a time, with sips of water between. Letta watched him. His hand quivered as he lifted the glass. A moment ago he had been full of energy, but now he looked as frail as a fallen leaf. What could one old man do?

The window was open and the curtains drawn. The town lights glowed below, and glowed again from the cloud-base above. Somebody was having a party a couple of streets down the hill. There were whoops and cheering. The noise reminded Letta of sitting with her back against the sun-warmed wall of ruined St Valia’s, listening to the noise of Potok rejoicing in the festival, and that in turn reminded her of the picture, almost like a vision, she had seen in her mind when she was sitting with Biddie in Richoux, the war-planes screaming between the mountains, the stampeding crowd in the square, Parvla falling under their feet . . . It wasn’t anything to do with what she wanted, she realized, or with what Grandad himself wanted, for himself. Perhaps he could make the difference. And if he couldn’t, then no-one could.

‘I think you’re sort of fixed,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to go if they’ll let you, haven’t you?’

‘I’m afraid so, my darling.’

LEGEND

Restaur Vax and the Bishop: II

THE PRINCES OF the World came to Potok to see Bishop Pango enthroned Prince of Varina, and there was a great feast, and wine flowed from every fountain, and all went late to bed. But Bishop Pango was troubled by a dream and could not sleep, so he rose, and dressed himself as a poor priest and let himself out by a side door, and walked down by the river below St Valia.

At the water’s edge one came walking towards him, leading a great horse, wearing a sword at his belt and bearing a musket on his shoulder.

The Bishop said, ‘Where do you go, my son, carrying these weapons of war, now that Varina is at peace?’

The man answered, ‘These are gifts I had from Bishop Pango to fight the Turk. I would return them to him now that the Turks are gone.’ 1

By that the Bishop knew that he spoke to Restaur Vax, whom he thought to be far off in Rome. And he was troubled, for under the terms of peace agreed among the Princes of the World, Restaur Vax must not set foot in Varina, for the Turk could then also return and take away his Princedom. Nevertheless, knowing what debt Varina owed to the hero, he, Bishop Pango, knelt by the waterside and asked for a blessing.

Restaur Vax said, ‘My blessing is on you and all Varina, until the Turks return. See that my horse is well fed, and lodge my gun and my sword among your rafters. But when you have need of me, let my horse be led forth and saddled, and my sword strapped to the pommel. Then fire my gun three times into the air, and I will return.’ 2

Then he raised Bishop Pango to his feet and kissed him on both cheeks and put the sword and the musket and the reins into his hands, and vanished.

By this Bishop Pango knew that he had seen only the shadow of the hero, and that Restaur Vax himself was dead, far off in Rome, across the sea. And within a week came a messenger with news that it was so. 3

1Under the Treaty of Milan, Varina was given full self-government, but remained technically part of the Turkish Empire until 1868, when the suzerainty was transferred to the Austrian Empire. A Vizier was appointed by Byzantium to ‘advise’ the Prince-Bishop, but his duties were purely ceremonial.

2Edward Lear, who made a sketching trip through Varina in 1873, records seeing four separate skeletons of Restaur Vax’s horse, with the same legend attached to each of them.

3This is perhaps the most popular of all Varinian legends. Nevertheless its chronology is completely mistaken. Pango was enthroned as Prince-Bishop on St Joseph’s Day, 27 August 1828, shortly after the Treaty of Milan. He died in 1850. Restaur Vax lived until 1865. His widow brought his body for burial in the family grave at Talosh when the Austrian Empire assumed hegemony of Varina in 1868.

SEPTEMBER 1991

LETTA WAS STARING out of the window of what used to be Grandad’s room, and was now going to be hers. When he’d left for Varina she had come up here once a week to dust and sweep and air, so that if he came back he could move straight in. She’d known in her heart that he wasn’t coming back, but it had been a sort of magic, a way of looking after him, as if, by pretending that one day he would come back, he had to stay alive for it to be true. Even now, when the magic hadn’t worked, she was glad that she’d done it.

Almost as soon as the news had come she’d asked Momma, not knowing how to put it without hurting, if she could move up here, and Momma had seemed pleased and said, ‘Yes, of course. He’d like that.’

She’d begun by clearing a lot of Grandad’s books into boxes, not anything in Field or Formal, and not the battered old Wordsworths and Walter Scotts he’d used to teach himself English, but the political ones and the ones in languages she couldn’t read. She’d worked steadily until the thought came to her that school was starting tomorrow, and that meant it must be exactly a year since she’d sat here talking about whether he had to go back to Varina. A wave of sadness washed through her at the thought that she would never see him again, so she stopped sorting and stood by the window, not really crying but seeing the roofs and the tree-tops mistily.