Voices in the Dark

by Catherine Banner

  I got up and walked once to the door, then back to the stairs again. It was better to walk than to stand still, and I went on. As I walked, I counted. When I had paced fifty-seven times to the door and back again, there was a cry inside the room. We all froze. Then someone opened the door. I caught sight of my mother, her face pale and covered in sweat, behind some kind of curtain.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ said the nurse, closing the door behind her.

  ‘This is the family of Maria Andros,’ said Father Dunstan. ‘They want to wait outside the room for any news.’ He said it so firmly that the nurse could not argue.

  ‘Mrs Andros is holding out well,’ she told us, and turned and marched away down the corridor.

  ‘What does that mean?’ said Jasmine.

  ‘It’s good news,’ said my grandmother, but it wasn’t. Father Dunstan forgot his prayers and sat there staring at the low barred window at the end of the corridor. ‘You are going to have a little brother or sister,’ said my grandmother. ‘You should be excited about it, not scared, Jasmine.’ Jasmine started to cry.

  ‘Shh,’ I said. ‘It’s all right.’ But Leo was the one who knew how to calm her down. She was wailing loudly, her face pale and trembling.

  ‘Shh,’ said my grandmother. ‘They will send us away if you don’t stop crying.’

  But fear and exhaustion had got the better of Jasmine. She lay on the floor and wailed. My grandmother glanced at me, and I picked Jasmine up and carried her back along the corridor to the entrance hall. She was struggling so hard that I had to set her down there. ‘Stop it, Jasmine,’ I said. ‘Stop crying.’ But she would not stop. So I let her lie there and cry. There was no one about anyway. I sat down on the nearest bench and rested my arms on my knees. I could hear all the church bells chiming. I wondered if they were ringing for Christmas Mass or if it was the invasion warning. I wondered how long we would be shut away here, cut to pieces in this uncertain world between hope and despair. Two nurses with a stretcher ran past us, throwing disapproving frowns at Jasmine as they vanished down another corridor.

  ‘Come on, Jas,’ I said, trying to pull her to her feet. ‘They will throw us out if you don’t stop that crying.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Stop it. Come on. Mama is being brave – why can’t you?’

  Jasmine turned over and murmured something into her hair.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘Mama is going to die, isn’t she?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It is probably going well. It was just like this when you were born.’

  But it hadn’t been like this. My mother and Leo had been together. I had waited out on the apartment steps, and every few minutes, Leo had come out and told me that things were going well, with a strange glitter in his eyes. Everyone had known then that it would be all right; no one had doubted it. I wondered if the best times lay behind us already. That thought made me feel old and tired, and I didn’t want to consider it any longer. ‘Hush,’ I said. ‘Stop crying now. Come on, Jas. You’re making my head hurt.’

  ‘I’m not just crying because of Mama,’ she said.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Anselm, all our things have burned up, haven’t they?’

  I did not know what to say. I hardly believed that we had seen what we had seen. I began to doubt that we had really witnessed it. ‘It might still be all right,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Jasmine. ‘No, Anselm. I was the one who did it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I made the house burn down.’

  I knelt down and looked into her face. It was streaked with tears and red blotches, and her hair lay plastered over it. I pushed it away. ‘Listen to me, Jasmine,’ I said. ‘It was not you.’

  There were footsteps behind us, and we both looked up. Father Dunstan was hurrying down the corridor towards us.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘The midwife came out and told us things are going better.’

  ‘Is she out of danger? And what about the baby?’

  ‘I don’t know. But that’s what the midwife said.’

  Jasmine tried to brush the tears off her face with the ends of her shawl.

  ‘How much longer?’ I asked.

  ‘A while,’ said Father Dunstan. ‘A good while.’

  I did not know what time it was. The night seemed to have stopped altogether.

  ‘I’ve got a pain in my stomach,’ said Jasmine, sniffing. No one answered her. We went back to the door and waited. From behind it came urgent voices, and my mother’s cries pierced the silence. I fixed my eyes on the cracked tiles on the wall in front of us. The cracks made a chart like roads or a branching river. I tried to follow the lines from the top of the wall to the ground, rather than have to think. Jasmine was turning her christening bracelet around in her hand, whispering, ‘Please come back, Papa. Please come back, Papa.’ I remembered dimly, from somewhere beyond my fear, where she had got that from. It was what Leo used to do after his own parents went away.

  Time passed, and nothing changed. And eventually the night drew out so long that I slept, with my head against the hard tiles and Leo’s old jacket pulled up over me, because there was nothing else to do.

  When I woke, Father Dunstan was standing at the window. My grandmother was sitting with her shawl in her lap, twisting it fiercely, first one way and then the other.

  ‘What was that sound?’ Jasmine was asking, shaking me by the shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  A burst of gunfire came from somewhere nearby. I got to my feet without knowing what I was doing. Then my mother screamed in the room across the corridor, and I came back to the real world. I sat down again and glanced about the corridor, trying to stop my heart from beating so fast.

  ‘I wish Papa was here,’ said Jasmine.

  ‘Listen to the city,’ said my grandmother. ‘It sounds like a real war.’

  People were shouting out there, the way they might shout in a play, and I could hear gunshots and footsteps running up and down in the alleys. I did not go to the window. I did not want to see. None of that seemed real; our world was these two chairs and the cracked tiles and the door behind which my mother screamed again. We stared at each other, and the horror held us and would not let us go. And then there was a weak and strange cry, very feeble, and we all started to our feet.

  The nurse pushed open the door and said, ‘The priest? She wants the priest.’

  Father Dunstan was there in a moment. My mother was lying very still in the bed; the doctor was holding something bloodstained that moved feebly.

  ‘Is that the baby?’ said Jasmine, crying. ‘And what’s wrong with Mama?’

  ‘Does anyone have a cup?’ said Father Dunstan quietly. ‘Does anyone have something—’

  ‘Here,’ said Jasmine, and held out the alms cup from her costume.

  Father Dunstan took it, and filled it with water from the metal sink in the corner. ‘What name?’ he said.

  ‘Is it a boy?’ said my grandmother.

  The doctor nodded.

  ‘Leo,’ said my grandmother. ‘Name him for Leo.’

  ‘Leo,’ said Father Dunstan. ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’

  As soon as that sentence was over, the doctor carried the baby behind a curtain. The nurse pushed us back towards the door and closed it firmly. We stood there and listened to the silence. My grandmother was grey-faced and shaking, her perfect make-up smudged and her hair dishevelled and tears tracking courses down her face. ‘I was always too hard on Maria,’ she said suddenly. ‘I was always too strict with her. I wish … Anselm, I only wish …’ She trailed off.

  People were shouting in the hospital, I realized suddenly, and running to and fro below us. With a strange kind of calm, I went at last to the window. There were soldiers in blue in the streets, marching and shouting. At the door of the hospital, a line of stretchers was moving slowly in. Some of the people on them twisted
and cried out; others lay there in silence. Some of the casualties walked in of their own accord, clutching a bleeding arm or a bandaged head.

  A nurse came past briskly and glanced at us. ‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘There’s a war on out there – we need the space. Give me those chairs. And you.’ She was looking at me. ‘Shouldn’t you be fighting?’

  My grandmother and Father Dunstan stood up, and she whisked the chairs away along the corridor and vanished. Dimly, I realized I should be. Weeks ago, I had registered my willingness. But what did that signify now?

  We waited through what felt like a year more of silence and darkness. I did not know how we stood it from one minute to the next. Then, after the dawn had risen, a nurse opened the door. ‘You can come in now,’ she said.

  My grandmother was the bravest of us. She stepped over the threshold. Then she was running across the room to my mother’s bed, and we ran after her. My mother was very pale, her beautiful hair clinging to her face in wet strands. The baby lay in the nurse’s arms, clenching its fists feebly. Jasmine stopped in front of the bed and would not go any closer.

  ‘I’m all right,’ said my mother weakly. ‘Why are you crying? We are both all right.’ But she was crying too. Then the doctor was telling us that they were out of danger, and my grandmother and Jasmine made such a clamour that the baby woke and raised his thin voice and cried as well. Anyone watching that scene from outside would have thought it a sad occasion. And if tears signified anything, my brother was baptized a thousand times.

  When my brother was five days old, the Imperial Order put up posters calling for the arrest of Aldebaran’s last descendant. When he was eight days old, we decided to set out west. We would cross the city under cover of darkness, with the baby wrapped in all our extra clothes. We had a few belongings now, purchased hastily from the one shop in the district that had stayed open. It flew an Imperial Order flag over its door, but we were past caring about that.

  Father Dunstan brought us a box with food, soap, matches, a coat for Jasmine, and other things the remaining members of the congregation had collected between them. He was leaving the city too, but not yet, he said. Not until his work here was done. ‘Go to Holy Island,’ he told us. ‘Ask at the munitions factory for Leo. It is on Harbour Street, in Valacia. They will be able to tell you where he is living, if he is there.’

  He wrote all this down, and the name of the priest, on a scrap of paper for my mother. He had sent word to people he knew there to get the information for us. Holy Island was across the border, unoccupied territory. If Leo was not there, at least we could find out where he was.

  ‘Will you be all right, Father?’ my mother asked as the priest left.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘God go with you on the journey. And for ever, Maria, I hope.’

  * * *

  After he had gone, when we had all lain down to sleep for a few hours, Jasmine asked, ‘Will we see Father Dunstan again?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said my mother. ‘I hope so.’

  The baby let out a faint murmur. ‘Shh, baby,’ said Jasmine, and got up and went to the side of the cot. Under his hospital blanket, his face was pink and untroubled, as though he had been born in the greatest palace.

  ‘Will he have another name?’ said Jasmine.

  ‘Yes,’ said my mother. ‘When we get to Holy Island, we’ll christen him again, and he’ll have another name.’

  I got up and went to the window. We were all living in my mother’s small hospital room; we had been ever since the night the baby was born. They had found out about the house, in the end, my mother and my grandmother. Jasmine had told them in a fit of crying. We could not go back. Every last thing we owned had gone up in smoke. My grandmother was bearing it as well as she could, but every few hours, she would fall silent and a tear would slide down her cheek, for the lost furniture from Cliff House that she would never see again. But the hospital was full of people like us, sleeping on the floors of their relatives’ wards or in the corridors, because there was nowhere else to go.

  ‘Anselm,’ said my mother. ‘Do you want to hold the baby?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Later on.’

  ‘You have hardly looked at him yet,’ she said.

  ‘I have,’ I said. ‘He’s almost asleep. I don’t want to disturb him.’

  But the truth was, I could not look at him. I had sold that prophecy to Jared Wright, and he had sold it to the newspapers. The last descendant of Aldebaran on the wanted posters – that was the baby. And the Imperial Order was the government now. Their posters were the law. If the king was still in the country at all, he had gone into hiding so effectively that no one could tell us whether he was alive or dead.

  The air bit sharply as we reached the coachyard. We had to go west by coach; the river had frozen solid, and no ships passed in or out of the harbour any more. There were already people waiting, but they let my mother go first because of the baby, with tired smiles that forbade our thanks. The coachman was impatient to leave. The people already inside shuffled up reluctantly on the seats.

  ‘All right,’ said the coachman. ‘All right, two more. Come along now. Women and children first. You two ladies – you with the baby and the woman with the scarf.’ He meant my mother and my grandmother. The other people waiting were all young men and did not protest.

  ‘We can’t go without my children,’ my mother said.

  ‘There’s no space,’ said the coachman. ‘The little girl can sit on the floor, but there’s no space for the lad.’

  ‘When is the next coach?’ I said.

  ‘First thing tomorrow.’

  My mother glanced from me to the coachman. The baby started to wail; he had been out in the cold too long. ‘You go without me,’ I said. ‘I’ll catch you up.’

  ‘Anselm, no!’

  ‘Just do it. I will be all right. I’ll get that coach first thing tomorrow and meet you at Holy Island.’

  ‘No. Absolutely not.’

  ‘Mother, we can’t wait another night. The hospital won’t let us stay again – there will be no space.’

  ‘But where will you go tonight?’

  ‘Here.’ I took a hundred crowns out of my pocket, then gave her the envelope with the rest of the money folded in it. ‘I’ll take this and go to an inn,’ I said. ‘Have the rest.’

  ‘Anselm, I really don’t like this.’

  ‘Come on, let’s go now,’ said the coachman. He was preparing to leave, strapping someone’s case to the rack and checking the harnesses.

  ‘Go,’ I said. ‘I will be all right. The baby can’t come with us if we have to wander about in the cold here looking for an inn, but I’ll be fine. Just go.’

  They agreed at last, though none of them wanted to, and got up into the coach. My mother reached out and gripped my hand. Jasmine called, ‘Anselm, promise you’ll come straight away!’ Then the coachman swung up onto the driver’s seat and shook the whip. The coach moved off, sliding on the icy road. They were all crying as they rode away, even my grandmother.

  After they left me, I wandered about the city for a while. Most of the houses were locked and barred. Once or twice I passed soldiers in blue uniforms, but they did not trouble me. No one seemed to know what was going on. There were no flags flying on the castle, and the printers and the newspaper offices stood darkened. I went back to my grandmother’s old building, a skeleton now, but there was nothing there, so I went to the old shop instead. The windows were smashed again. I climbed in and slept on our old sofa, wrapped in Leo’s leather jacket. My only belongings were what I had with me – the clothes I stood up in, Aldebaran’s medallion, the papers Leo wrote, and a hundred crowns. Sometime in the night, heavy snow fell and covered everything. When I woke, a strange hush lay over the city.

  I got up long before dawn and went out into the street. Mr Pascal’s shop was locked up, and so was the pharmacist’s. Jared Wright’s was abandoned too. People had smashed the unbarred windows and looted all its conte
nts. I climbed through the window and pushed aside a gold table with a missing leg. Glass and crystal were lying smashed all over the floor. I thought that the castle Ahira had once owned must be somewhere among the dust. I found a stub of candle and lit it and began searching for the prophecy. I knew it was a small hope that Jared had left the original copy here, but if he had, I wanted to find it. Jasmine had lost her letter from Aldebaran – it had gone up in flames with the wooden box – and I had sold the only other thing she had.

  It was light outside by the time I found it. It was neatly folded, in the back of the broken safe on the wall, with a seal that must have come from one of Jared’s rings. At first I thought it must be something else, just a useless list or a page of calculations, but like a miracle it was still there – Aldebaran’s words, finger-marked at the edges but undamaged. I put it into my pocket with Leo’s papers. I took a few things from Jared’s shop. I knew he was gone now and would not need them, and they were worthless things anyway – a pencil, a stack of paper burned at the edges, a box of matches, and a candle. I think I did it more to pretend that I had a few belongings than anything else. When I closed his safe, I remembered our own. It was still there on the wall, and in our hurry to leave, we had never emptied it.

  I went back into our shop for the last time and unlocked the safe. The things inside were just as we had left them weeks ago. But I could not take them with me. Only the parcel from Aldebaran, marked To the baby. I put that carefully into my jacket pocket. The sun was coming up, and I glanced back as I left our old shop. If you looked closely at the window, you could still see L. NORTH & SON faintly in the glass.