Voices in the Dark

by Catherine Banner

  She went to the stove and took the kettle off it and put it back on again. Still it would not boil.

  In a box on the table was all that Aldebaran had bequeathed to us. I took out the things carefully and replaced them again; it was something to do. He had not left much. The chief advisers took a vow of poverty when they were sworn into office, and after they died, all their papers were burned. There was a wooden box for Jasmine, his christening medallion for me, and a ring for my mother. For Leo there was a book in a paper wrapping that still lay unopened. There was also a parcel with To the baby written across it in red ink. My mother’s baby was not due for several months, but it seemed Aldebaran had thought of everything.

  Jasmine lay down under the table and began to cry in earnest. Aldebaran had been her teacher, and his death left her the last in the family with powers. Although they had argued bitterly in all their lessons, she had really been the one he loved the most.

  ‘Hush,’ said my mother. She knelt down beside the table and stroked Jasmine’s hair. ‘Come on, Jas. He wouldn’t want you to make yourself so unhappy. And it is not for ever. You know that.’

  ‘Dead is for ever,’ said Jasmine. ‘Dead means dead, and you can never be not dead again.’

  ‘He will still watch over you.’

  ‘He won’t.’

  Someone tapped at the door. The neighbours were out in the street waiting to pay their respects. ‘Anselm, go and let them in,’ said my mother.

  The neighbours’ chatter drowned out the silence of our house, and by the time they began to leave, darkness was falling. The Barones stayed a while longer than the rest. My grandmother was still here, and Mr Pascal, who could never be made to leave any funeral. We stood around the table in the back room and listened to the guns fire yet another salute from the Royal Gardens. Leo and Mr Pascal lit cigarettes, and the smoke rose and made strange patterns under the ceiling.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Mr Pascal when the silence had drawn out for several minutes, ‘who succeeds Aldebaran as chief adviser?’

  ‘I believe it is Joseph Marcus Sawyer,’ said my grandmother.

  ‘Sawyer?’ said Mr Pascal.

  Mr Barone shook his head and ran his hands over his thinning hair as though he wanted to fix it in place. ‘I don’t know why the king has chosen a man like that,’ he said.

  ‘He is not so bad,’ said Mr Pascal. ‘He may be the best we can hope for, under the circumstances. At least they say he has powers, and it has to be someone with powers. In these days, it is a miracle they found anyone at all.’

  ‘As far as I heard, those powers left him when he was a child,’ said Mr Barone. ‘And all the world knows he was a collaborator.’

  ‘There are worse things.’

  ‘Are there?’ said Mr Barone with a sharpness I had never heard in his voice before. ‘Are there really worse things?’

  Mr Pascal breathed out and held his cheeks there. He was a large man, and it made his face look round and shapeless like a baby’s.

  ‘What’s a collaborator?’ said Jasmine.

  ‘Come on, Jas,’ said Michael, ruffling her hair. ‘I’ll teach you a card game.’

  I caught his glance and followed him out of the room, and Jasmine came after us. We sat on the floorboards of the shop, between the counter and a rack of old clothes, and Michael dealt out his stained playing cards and occupied Jasmine with a list of rules. She was still close to tears, but the distraction worked. In the back room, some argument was rising between Mr Pascal and Mr Barone. I tried to listen, but the rain obscured their voices. It was coming down hard again. Trader’s Row was deserted, except for the old newspapers that circled in the rising gale.

  ‘Your turn, Anselm,’ Michael said, making me start. I had been thinking of other things. He handed me two crumpled cards, and I played my turn without knowing what numbers I put down. The storm rattled the windows and howled in the chimney. It made the side gate crash and shudder against the wall.

  ‘I should go out and lock that,’ I said.

  I got up and went out. In the yard, the wind was ferocious. I wrestled the gate back into place. Then, as I turned to close it, there was a quick movement in the shadows on the other side of the street. Someone was standing there, in the dead space between the two gas lamps, watching me.

  The man’s silhouette was strange; there was something unearthly about it. I looked at him, and he stared back at me. Then he turned and walked away. The breeze made the lamps gutter, and in that jumping light, I could not make out his face. But as he vanished, I saw what it was that made his outline strange. Across his back was a rifle. It gleamed as the darkness overtook him. The rain was driving down hard now out of a dull grey sky. I shivered and bolted the gate and went in.

  At first I thought I would mention it to the others. But the Barones and Mr Pascal and my grandmother were all getting up to leave. After they had gone, a cold silence fell on the house, and I did not dare to raise the subject. Leo sat down at the table and rested his head against his arms.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said my mother.

  ‘I will be all right tomorrow.’ She put her hand on his shoulder. ‘At least he is buried now,’ said Leo. ‘That’s the worst thing, not knowing. All that ceremony makes things better. I don’t know why, but it does.’

  None of us answered. He was speaking from experience. His parents, the famous Harold and Amelie North, had been missing for more than two decades. I knew that he still lay awake at night because he did not know where they were. It seemed Leo’s family was condemned to suffer every time our country rose and fell.

  ‘Come on,’ said my mother, picking up the box of Aldebaran’s things. ‘Let’s go to bed. Nothing is right this evening.’

  We followed her upstairs to the living room and watched while she lit the lamps and Leo turned over the fire.

  ‘Here,’ she said, setting the box down on the mantelpiece. She put on the ring. I took the medallion and Jasmine the box. ‘Are you not even going to open this book, Leo?’ my mother asked.

  Leo shook his head. ‘What’s the use?’

  ‘What’s the use? Uncle must have meant something by it. Don’t you want to know what it is?’ He shook his head again and closed the bedroom door behind him. My mother left the book lying on the mantelpiece. It was still there when we put out the lamps.

  It was half past eleven, but from the square of light falling below the window next to mine, I could tell Michael was still awake next door. On nights when neither of us could sleep, we opened the windows and leaned out and spoke to each other. We had done that since I was a little boy and our family first came to the shop on Trader’s Row. ‘Michael?’ I said, and pushed the window up. After a few seconds, I heard him raise the window on his side.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘It must have been a long day.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Here. Take this.’

  His skinny arm appeared with a bottle of spirits. I took it and drank some, out of politeness more than anything. A gale blew through my room, troubling the pages of the books on the table and making the faded picture on the wall swing wildly. ‘What was the service like?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Grand. Like you would expect. But it was just us, those foreign heads of state, and a few famous people. He should have had more family there. I could tell it troubled Leo.’

  ‘And I’ll tell you someone who wasn’t there,’ said Michael. ‘The Alcyrian president.’

  ‘Wasn’t he?’

  Michael leaned precariously out of the window and handed me a newspaper. It was tomorrow’s edition; Michael’s father always walked to the end of the street to get it from the printers’ at ten o’clock. The first seven pages were taken up with Aldebaran’s funeral. Michael had underlined a single paragraph: ‘The new president of Alcyria, the self-styled Commander General Marlan of the New Imperial Order, was conspicuous by his absence. Many saw this as a sign of the new Alcyrian government’s growing hostility towards its neighbours.’
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br />   ‘General Marlan?’ I said. ‘Aldebaran hated him; he wouldn’t have wanted him there.’

  ‘But he should have been there. Everyone else was. Even a few of the presidents from the west and the Crown Prince of Marcovy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And now that Aldebaran is gone, what’s to stop Marlan from invading every other country on the continent?’ said Michael. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘It won’t happen,’ I said, because Aldebaran had always said it. But the newspaper thought otherwise. Several pages were taken up with a discussion of the chances of war with Alcyria and the chances of civil unrest from the New Imperial Order here. They had groups in every nation on the continent. They marched about in mock uniforms, and held rallies, and stood for government at every election under the banner ‘Liberty and Justice’.

  ‘I think it was them,’ I said. ‘I think the Order were the ones who did it.’

  ‘It’s why my father got so angry,’ said Michael. ‘At least, that’s part of it. Joseph Marcus Sawyer has been linked with General Marlan. Everyone knows Sawyer was part of Lucien’s government. He’s no choice for chief adviser. What was the king thinking?’

  ‘I have never seen your father angry like that,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Michael. ‘He was talking tonight about getting out of the country.’

  ‘Does he really mean that?’

  ‘I don’t know. He doesn’t want to see another war.’

  ‘But what about you? What do you think?’

  ‘Maybe it isn’t so crazy to think of going, now that Aldebaran is gone. My father was in the resistance, and everyone knows it. And people are leaving Alcyria.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. We had seen them arrive in the city with their belongings piled up in carts and a dazed look in their eyes, as though they hoped they were about to wake up from something. ‘I know,’ I said again. ‘But where would you go if you left? Michael, you are not really serious?’

  He did not answer, just sighed and changed the subject. The wind was growling so fiercely now that I could hardly hear my own voice, and we were both shivering. ‘We should go inside,’ he said. ‘My father is in no mood to catch me leaning out of the window.’

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I have to know – you are not really serious about leaving?’

  He sighed and I saw his shadow on the pavement shrug its shoulders.

  ‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Goodnight, Anselm.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  I heard him push the window down. The rain began to fall again, but I remained where I was. As I stood there, the lamp came on in the shop below. Leo must be down there. I had known he would not sleep tonight. The light threw the letters from the front window backwards onto the pavement: L. NORTH & SON, DEALERS IN SECONDHAND GOODS. I stared at those words for a while, and thought of Aldebaran in the graveyard in the dark and of his assassin, alive somewhere, awake or sleeping or drinking at some inn. Then I tried not to think about it any more. The rain was falling hard again. I ducked to go inside.

  As I pushed the window down, I started. Just for a second, I thought I saw that man in the alley opposite again. But the street was deserted. I must have imagined it. A newspaper was spiralling under the streetlight; that was all. I pulled the curtains closed and turned up the lamp. The bedroom grew close and safe in the yellow glow. The narrow bed, the rickety desk piled with books, the rug worn through in the middle, and the saint’s picture that hung on the wall – all of them were so familiar that they drove out the darkness of the city. I kept my eyes on that picture as I undressed. The saint stood at the prow of a ship in the darkness, holding forth a crucifix. We had never been able to work out who he was; even Father Dunstan, when we asked him, could not be sure. But when I was a little boy, I called the figure St Anselm and asked him to protect me from danger. Until I was ten or eleven years old, I had a hopeless fear of the dark. Perhaps it was childish, but when I whispered, ‘Defend us from all perils and dangers of this night,’ on the evening of Aldebaran’s funeral, it was still the saint I was praying to.

  The clocks were sounding twelve. The largest bell, in the new cathedral, went on chiming with a steady note. The guns fired a final salute, and the city echoed. Then there was no sound at all, except the wind growling in the alleys and driving the rain hard against the windowpane. After a while, it died away too, and left the city in silence.

  I suppose I should go back to the start and tell you the history of our family. I told myself the story that night as I lay in bed listening to the wind fighting in the streets and sleep seemed a thousand miles away.

  It started with two families. The Andros family were the richest bankers in Malonia. The North family was famous because the Norths were Aldebaran’s descendants. After the revolution, when half the royalists in the country were exiled or missing, the last remaining members of these two families were left stranded in the city. My mother and my grandmother moved from place to place before I was born. From my earliest years, I knew the names of the streets where they had lived: Slaughterhouse Lane, Greyfriars Square, Paradise Way. And the last – the place they finally settled – Citadel Street. That was where my mother and Leo met.

  Of course, I had a father. I asked about him sometimes, when I was still very young, but I had my mother and Leo, and my grandparents, and Leo’s grandmother Margaret for the first six years of my life, and to wish for anyone else seemed heartless somehow. Even Aldebaran treated me as a relative from the start. After Sunday dinner, he would stand in the light of the fire and show me magic tricks, and I wished I had powers so earnestly that I used to cry sometimes over it. Can you become part of a family by wanting to be? I don’t know. You can get so far with lying that you convince yourself that it’s true and genuinely feel a kind of outrage when anyone questions it. That is the closest thing that I can think of. And if you could measure, Leo was the one who loved me best from the start.

  There is one night I remember more than anything. It was the winter when I was six years old, and all through the dark months, I had been troubled by nightmares. On this night, something woke me suddenly and drove out all hopes of sleep. It was past three o’clock and the building was silent. The last embers of the fire threw strange shadows over the walls. I lay shivering, tracing pictures in the uneven plaster of the ceiling. I imagined the largest mass was the land of England, and the smaller ones were ships sailing round its coast. Sleep seemed as far off as another world. And while I lay there, I began to be afraid that there were spirits in the room around me. I was sure that if I moved or made a sound, they would awaken and get my soul.

  I stopped breathing. I thought that if I breathed too loudly, they would find me. I was scaring myself, and I knew it, but I could not help it. I counted as long as I could without taking a breath, and then breathed out carefully so as not to make a sound, and went on like that, minute by minute. I began to pray for Leo to wake up.

  The minutes passed, and the clock chimed the hour, and then the quarter. I waited and heard it chime again. ‘Leo?’ I whispered.

  Then, at last, an oil lamp brightened in the next room, and I heard his footsteps. He appeared out of the dark and stood beside me. ‘Are you all right, Anselm?’ he said.

  ‘I can’t sleep.’

  He sat down on the edge of my bed and leaned over to build up the fire. The coal caught and started to drive the chill from the room. In the sudden light of the lamp, I could make out every grey strand in his hair. Leo was twenty-two, and his hair was already greying, but at the time I did not think much about it. ‘Was it a nightmare?’ said Leo. ‘I thought I heard you call out.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Papa, don’t go away.’

  He brushed the tears from my face with his jacket sleeve. ‘No. I’ll sit with you for a while until you fall back to sleep.’

  Leo could always sense my thoughts without asking, and I could usually tell his. He had not spoken for the first few
years of my life, and I had learned to tell what he was thinking from the very air that surrounded him.

  ‘Will you read to me?’ I said.

  He went to the mantelpiece and took down Harold North’s second-to-last book, The Sins of Judas. He had read it to me twice already. But tonight he did not open it. He just sat there frowning. ‘When I was a boy, I used to dream too,’ he said after a while had passed.

  ‘You still do,’ I said, thinking of the way he cried out sometimes in the dark and startled us all awake.

  ‘Not nightmares,’ he said. ‘I used to go away from here. Far away. They were like visions, these dreams. I used to dream about England.’

  ‘England?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. All the time.’ He said it with an air of surprise, as though he was talking of someone else.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right, I could tell you what I remember.’

  He began softly. His outline was very black against the fire. He told me stories of another place, where there lived a girl who wanted more than anything to dance and a boy who would become King Cassius. And Aldebaran was there, just a wanderer on a journey, a man who disguised himself as a servant to hide from the law.

  ‘And then what happened?’ I asked when Leo paused.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Sleep was dragging me down now like the waves of the ocean. The story had settled my heart. ‘Was it all true?’ I whispered.

  ‘There is no way of telling.’

  ‘But couldn’t you ask Aldebaran about it himself?’

  ‘He doesn’t speak about England. Not any more. Sometimes I think he doesn’t remember it. Or doesn’t even believe it exists.’

  ‘Then how do you know that story?’

  Leo answered so calmly that I thought I had heard him wrong: ‘Because I used to have powers.’

  I sat up. He turned and gave me a quick, sad smile. ‘You had powers?’ I said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Real powers like Aldebaran? You could make things move and tell the future?’

  ‘Yes. A bit, anyway. I never bothered much with them.’