Wall of Days

by Alastair Bruce

  I have been scanning the horizon for people all the time. My eyesight is still keen and I have not seen anyone. I wonder though. I wonder if we have been seen already and the watchers take care to remain out of sight. Last night I pictured them just beyond the circle of light made by the campfire. They watched expressionless as we ate and slept.

  We walk through the day watching the mountains grow ever larger.

  We make camp at the base of the pass. We eat well again that night and lie down under the stars. The country we are in has changed so much in ten years. What else will have changed? I think of my reception.

  Will I get a chance to say what I want, to tell them why I’m here, why I’m back, before a knife in my back stops my tongue, before an arrow pierces my throat?

  I take a branch from the fire and walk around our camp. I hold the branch above my head. It illuminates bushes, sand, trees, but no people.

  I extinguish it and stand for a while in the cool air. I am in complete darkness watching Andalus through the fire. Just his head appears through the flames and the smoke. Slowly my eyes grow accustomed to the dark. The night opens before me.

  It is further to the summit than it seems. At mid-morning we leave the trees behind and walk, following the natural contours of the slope, criss-crossing the side of it. The way up is defined by a sheer drop to our left and by scree to our right. The sight of the peak brings energy surging to my legs. Within minutes though, my lungs are bursting and I can think of nothing but where to place my feet and how to slow my breathing. I stop, realising Andalus has disappeared. I shiver as a breeze comes over the peak. I stare down the path, close my eyes, open them. I see him again. He is struggling. I wait.

  I should not push him too hard. If he were to die, to disappear, I would have no excuse. I wait till his breathing has slowed then offer him some water. He drinks the whole thing in one go. I do not stop him. I say gently, ‘We will go more slowly. You are not made for this. I would not want you to die before we reach the settlement.’ He looks at me when I say that. He appears to have half a smile, as if he suspects the double meaning of my words. It is an expression I remember from earlier days.

  It is afternoon by the time we reach the summit. We round an outcrop and there it is. A vast plain stretches away beneath us. It is coloured variously, yellow, pink, blue, white, as far as I can see. Wildflowers softening the landscape, giving the air, it seems, a delicate perfume.

  I am amazed. I have never seen flowers like this. But the flowers are not all I can see. There in the distance, so far away you cannot focus directly on it is a plume of smoke and a smudge on the horizon. This is it. This is the settlement I left all those years ago. I stare at it for ages. Andalus comes up and I can sense him watching me. I turn to him briefly and point to the smudge. He looks blankly at it and goes to sit on a rock.

  I am surprised we have not come across any people. Though we are still probably two days’ march away, I would expect there to be scouts, patrols. I would expect farmers and foragers. I would expect to see signs of nomads, the people who choose not to live within the security of the settlement, though these could have been eliminated in the intervening years. Even in my day there were not many left. Yet we have seen nothing. Nothing and no one. I wonder again if they have seen us. Perhaps they have been camping at the top of this mountain, waiting, looking out at the two figures approaching slowly across the plain. Perhaps now they are hiding behind the next rock, waiting to fall on us.

  We descend to the valley floor where we make camp. I sleep little in the warm night. I fancy I can smell the people. Wood smoke, charred meat, sewers, the smell of water seeping through sunbaked earth in sluices that I helped dig. I fancy too I can hear them: voices, breathing, laughter even. It is like I’m back on the island.

  The next day we walk towards the point on the horizon where I saw the settlement. We walk through fields of flowers.

  But this is not paradise. This is what we fought over, lands like this. We fought and buried our dead under the ground of fields like these. Face upward, naked and open to the earth. Perhaps we thought this was a way of bringing the earth back. There are rumours we were worshippers of nature once. Perhaps the earth is in our blood after all, our veins running with soil like an hourglass.

  Towards dusk a solitary tree appears on the horizon. We have left the flowers behind now and this part of the plain is white. Little grows in the rocky soil. The tree is a stark blot on the landscape. When we get closer I can see that it is dead. It is large and still sturdy but dead.

  I remember this tree. It was not dead then. On one of the very few occasions that we saw each other outside of our normal hours Tora and I came here. We sat in the shade. We didn’t talk much. She lay with her head in my lap. I stroked her hair. I reach out and touch the bark. It is smooth, like paper. I remember the touch of her hair.

  We spend the night camped beneath the tree. It is four hours from here to the town walls.

  We start early in the morning and soon crops begin to appear: fields of barley, wheat and finally corn that is taller than I am. We have no choice but to walk through it.

  It is quieter and darker in the field of corn. We walk for several minutes before I see it. Or think I see it. Between the leaves, hidden by shadows, a face. A momentary glimpse of a face and a swish of the corn leaves. I stop, chilled. I hold out my hand to Andalus but he has stopped already. I wait. There is only stillness. I walk forward a metre.

  Stop. Listen. Again nothing. There is nothing I can do about it anyway.

  If I am to be discovered now then so be it. I walk on.

  A while later without warning, we burst through the last of the maize. In front of us is a white road curving around the field and on the other side is an orchard of orange trees. Under the trees is long grass. It looks soft and is such a luminescent green I imagine the water here must be abundant. I think back to Tora’s mother dozing in the speckled shade beneath her orange tree, protecting what little fruit it managed to bear. These trees bear no relation to their parents. They are laden with green leaves and ripening fruit.

  But beyond the orchard is what we have come for. The timber walls of the town rise above the trees. The walls, baked grey by the sun, are tall enough to prevent us seeing any buildings or roofs. Except one, and this one I know. This one is so familiar as to have been anchored in my mind. My offices – the offices of the Marshal of Bran. I feel my heart beating. I pull Andalus across the road and into the shade of the trees.

  The walls disappear again.

  I sit for a few moments thinking but there is no planning to be done now, no calculations. All that remains is to walk around the walls to the gate, straight down the main thoroughfare and up to the office. There I will find an official, whether that be Marshal Abel or someone else, and say what I plan to, say something: ‘Here I am. Kill your Marshal if you must,’ and that will be that. That is the extent of it. What happens after that needs no planning. It needs adaptation to circumstance.

  I rise, helping Andalus to his feet and begin the walk. We are on the side of the town exactly opposite the gates. I walk anti-clockwise, making sure Andalus does not stray. I walk within sight of the road, though far enough into the trees to make sure we can hide quickly.

  When we have done half the circuit of the walls, I see the road branch to the left, leading to the gates. I follow it, still in the orchard, until I judge we are about thirty metres from the walls, take a deep breath, and head out into the sunlight. I am holding Andalus by the hand.

  From here we need to walk quickly but not too quickly, and confidently but without arrogance.

  We emerge onto the road and I notice the gates are shut. I don’t stop however as they are often shut. I scan the turrets above the gate for sentries but there is no one there, no one that I can see. This is different. I walk up to the gates. I am unsure what to do. Hesitating at first, I knock. There is no reply. I knock again, louder this time. I wait. I put my ear to the door but cannot hear a t
hing. I open my hand and bang on the door three times. I look round at Andalus. He has his back to me. He is rocking on his heels, facing the plains, facing the mountains. He begins to walk away. I grab him by the arm, tell him to stop.

  I turn back to the gates. There is no handle on the outside. Instead I push. I put my shoulder to the gate and shove but nothing gives. I call out, ‘Bran.’ I call again, ‘Bran.’ I think I can hear an echo. I put my ear to the gate but I can hear no footsteps. It is mid-afternoon.

  I take a step back, grab Andalus’s arm again and walk away. I walk all around the town looking for someone to let us in, someone who can tell me where everyone is.

  But I see no one. Sometimes Andalus walks ahead of me. I watch him. He appears to melt into the earth. There is a heat mirage. His feet disappear. He floats, circling the town.

  We are back at the gates. I try again – knocking, calling – but there is no answer. I sit down, my back against one of the gates, my head resting against the wood. I pull Andalus down beside me. I close my eyes and wait.

  I listen. I find myself listening for waves, for wind, for gulls. There are none of these. Thoughts float to the surface. I try to listen for other things to quieten them.

  Eventually I fall asleep.

  6

  I wake with a start. It is an hour after sunrise. I look around. Andalus is slumped against the wall a little way off. To my left I notice that now one of the gates is ajar. Only fractionally but open nonetheless. I did not hear this during the night, did not feel anyone creep past. I am surprised. I am usually a light sleeper.

  I push it further open. The street opens before me. Shadows of the rooftops stretch across the dust in the street. I look down. There are footprints in the dust. The houses on one side in the shade are dark, the others bright, lit by the sun. All are grey. Old wood, weathered by years of sun, rain, wind and the occasional snowstorm. There is no one in the street.

  I push the gate open and turn to call Andalus but he is right behind me, also looking into the town. I take him by the arm and we walk through the gates into the settlement of Bran.

  I look to the right and left of me. The houses stand silent. My people have turned into late risers. The windows that have curtains have them drawn. Those that don’t are black. I see no one in the houses.

  But I sense people. As I got used to speaking, perhaps so I have to get used to seeing people again. I sense them around me in their multitudes. If I reach out an arm suddenly I could touch one. They shift as I move down the street to avoid knocking me, a parting ocean.

  They surround me, staring. I feel their breath on my neck. I cannot see them. When I pass they stare at my back.

  And then I do see someone. She stands at the end of the street. A girl. She has her hands at her sides and is looking at the ground. She wears a red coat. Something about her startles me. I call out to her,

  ‘Hello.’ When she doesn’t answer I call again. She does not look up.

  The second time she turns around and runs off, disappearing round a corner. I let her go. Again the streets are deserted.

  I walk in the same direction. As I turn the corner I see it straight ahead, the complex housing the settlement’s administrative buildings.

  The buildings grow taller as we approach. Two and three-storey wooden structures, which, though they look fragile, have withstood many a year. I can see that the gate to the complex is open.

  My pace is quicker now. I have once more taken hold of Andalus and we march straight up to the gate and through it. We are in the courtyard. Around it are doors leading to various chambers, various places of appeal, boards, licensing departments. The doors have the same white plaques I remember but the yard is empty. Usually there are scores of people here on some or other business but nothing now. It is empty and every door is closed. I look around, letting go of Andalus’s arm.

  It is not what I was expecting. It is early in the morning but the settlement wakes early and the hub of Bran can never afford to close down. I go up to the first door. The sign says Ministry of Agriculture.

  I smile. It was me who insisted we give these departments grand names. They conveyed a sense of purpose. The only truly important office in this building was my own. That was where all the major decisions were made. Though it was called the Ministry of Agriculture, all that happened there was the counting of the crops we managed to grow and the monitoring of our small livestock herds. Next door the Farming Licensing Agency did not license farms or regulate the bigger providers. Instead it handed out licences to individual citizens to grow certain crops for public consumption on small areas of land.

  Though this was all it did, it was important, for a licence was, for many, the difference between an a or b citizen’s grade and a c. There were often queues of supplicants outside its doors, mostly old women, a few old men. I remember standing in my offices, leaning out the window, looking down on these people. I saw Tora’s mother in the crowd. I sent down word that she was to be licensed. It was a reprieve, though inevitably not one that lasted forever. Like the Ministry of Agriculture the Farming Licensing Agency is closed.

  The death of Tora’s mother was not a simple affair, not as simple as I may have intimated. She was well liked in our town. There was a silence, a darkening, when it became known what had happened to her. I had to walk to her home. I went unaccompanied and let myself in. I did this because I had taken on the task of deciding who would be classified c. I did this to spare others the task. It was not a pleasant thing and I do not lack compassion. I let myself in and went to her in her bed. Her eyes were closed. I brushed my fingers over her cheek.

  The skin of old people can feel lifeless, like dry sand. Hers was cold too. An eye fluttered open. She looked at me with the one eye. It was open wide. She did not blink at all. I looked into it and waved my hand in front of her. She reached up to me with one arm. She seemed to be trying to move her mouth. Sound came out but it was nothing.

  Not a word. A gurgle. It was fear. Fear of me, the bringer of death.

  I knew she was paralysed on one side of her body. The rules were clear. She would have to hang.

  I sent a cart for her. Or rather I went with it. Just me and the hangman. There was no need for a soldier this time as there was no chance she ’d be able to escape. I went with all of them. I wanted them all to see compassion before they died, to see that their hanging would not be in vain. It was my responsibility.

  I lifted her from the bed. She was remarkably heavy. The tongue moving, gurgling again. The one eye open, her good arm and leg thrashing. I placed her in the cart and led her out through the town gates. It was after sunset but there was a full moon. The hangman drew the cart after him. There was a loud crack and the cart began to tip over.

  An axle had snapped. I ran to it but was too late. It landed on its side and she slid out. The blanket fell off her and her legs were uncovered.

  I saw the veins and the bruises in the moonlight. The body of an old woman. I lifted her to a sitting position. Her head lolled to one side and I took it in my hands. She was breathing quickly now. I felt a warm liquid on my hand. Her face was cut from the fall and bleeding heavily.

  So much blood from someone half dead. I wiped my hand in the dirt.

  I lifted her up, placed her over my shoulder. Through my clothes I felt her, I felt her heart beat. A broken woman but a heartbeat so powerful I could feel it through my coat.

  On the way she vomited. I was covered in it. I felt myself gag. But I did not allow myself to let go. I carried her to the trees and set her down. ‘Do it,’ I said to the hangman. He did not move. I went up to him and slapped him across the face with the back of my hand. ‘This is your duty,’ I said to him. ‘This is what you contribute.’

  From behind me I heard a whimpering. I knelt in front of her. I wiped the sick from her mouth, the blood from her face. I wanted to say something to her. I wanted to whisper something to her so that the hangman wouldn’t hear. I wanted to whisper something that would make
her unafraid, that would make her understand, that would make her not see me there in front of her preparing her for death. I had something ready to say but I couldn’t say it. I cannot remember what it was. I couldn’t say it. I had to hold her up. Her legs wouldn’t support her. I held her up from behind while the noose was tightened around her neck. It was like she was already dead but I could feel her shaking. I held her tight, smelling her warm, old woman smell, then I let her go.

  I can remember feeling grateful that Tora was not there, that she would never have to witness something like this.

  When the act was done we released the body from the noose. We placed her in a sack. There were two bodies already in bags from the day before. They were to be buried the next morning. I did not see where she was buried.

  Back in my office I stood at the window in the moonlight. I was naked. I had a damp cloth and wiped myself. I slowly wiped away the blood and the vomit. I stood there for an hour, cleaning myself.

  I step back and look up at the windows for the first time since entering the courtyard. There, though I cannot be certain, I see a shadow, a figure slipping quickly back into the dark and out of sight. I stare up for a minute but I can see nothing more. It was no more than a flash.

  I look round at Andalus. He stands in the middle of the courtyard. His pose mirrors that of the girl, hands at his side, head down, red coat.

  I continue round the circle of doors. Each is looking older. If the paint is not peeling then the plaque is obscured, but the complex still appears to be in use as the settlement’s administrative offices. Why leave the names in place if not?

  Two-thirds of the way round I come to my door, the entrance to my offices. I think I deliberately started on the far end, deliberately did not come to this door first. I wonder who will answer the door and who is Marshal. Will it still be Abel or would he have been replaced?

  It has been only a decade though and he was a young man with ascetic habits. Unless he has died it will probably still be him. I wonder what his reaction will be.