Voices in the Dark (42 page)

‘Are you armed?’ I said.

He opened his jacket wearily, as though submitting to a search. He had two pistols and a rusty knife that looked like it could kill. I think it was then that I realized properly I had made a mistake. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Maybe this was all a bad idea.’

‘What was?’ said Jared. ‘Our bargain? But I’m afraid it’s made now, and sealed.’ He let his jacket fall again and put the paper with Aldebaran’s writing into the safe. ‘It’s getting late. Just go on home, and we can talk about it another day.’

‘What are you going to do with it?’ I said. ‘I just want to know.’

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You can trust me. All right?’

I put the gun into my pocket. There was nothing else to do. ‘Good lad,’ he said, as though I was six years old. Then he raised his hand in dismissal, and I was in the road and running, the pistol thumping against my ribs and five thousand crowns in my pocket. I had known that Jared Wright was dishonest from the start. But I had not thought him dangerous. And now I was not sure. Anyone is dangerous who has no restraint, Leo told me once, when I was a little boy and too small to think him wise. Standing there with those guns in his pockets, Jared had looked like
a man who was capable of anything. He had been in Lucien’s government, after all. And Aldebaran’s words were lying there on the table waiting for him to do whatever he chose with them.

I could not hold out beyond the end of Trader’s Row. I turned and ran back to Jared’s shop. The light was still burning. I hammered on the door. But Jared did not answer, and I could not see him through the glass. I only succeeded in waking half the street. The snow was falling harder now. I had no choice but to give up and go home.

I dreamed about Leo that night. He was sleeping on a bunk somewhere in a dark building, among strangers. I could see every detail of his face, the lines that had crossed his skin too early and the grey strands in his hair. I could even make out the letters on the ring on his finger:
M
.
V
.
A
., my mother’s initials. He was turning the ring around as he slept, and I was willing him to wake up. I was willing him, in spite of everything, to come home. I was calling his name when I woke. ‘Leo,’ I was crying. ‘Papa, come back.’ It was like when I lay awake as a small boy and wished and wished he would sense it somehow and wake and come to my side. I knew what I suspected him of, but my heart could not shake him off so cheaply.

I got up and dressed and walked back to Trader’s Row, though it was barely six o’clock and still night over the city. Jared’s shop was in darkness. I sat on the step, wrapped in my overcoat, and watched the birds cling to the skeletons of the trees, waking out of a cold sleep with their feathers ruffled. I was determined to get those papers back. But though I hammered on the door at intervals, and though I sat there over an hour, Jared did not come to the door. I got
up and went round the side of the shop and looked in at the window. The shop was in darkness, and the back room stood deserted. Eventually I turned round and went home.

The money weighed heavily on my chest all through that day and the next. On the third, my grandmother said, ‘We really must pay this midwife’s bill.’

I held out for a long time without speaking. We were sitting round the table – Jasmine and my grandmother and me – while she sewed and we pretended to do our homework. ‘How much is it?’ I said eventually.

‘Two hundred crowns.’

I took a few notes out of my jacket pocket, as though that was all I had. ‘Here,’ I said.

My grandmother held the money away from her suspiciously. ‘Where did you get this?’ she demanded.

I had this plan worked out. It had to be something dishonest, because no one ever earned five thousand crowns entirely honestly – and they would know before long that five thousand crowns was what I had, even if I handed it over by degrees. ‘I won this money,’ I said. ‘Playing cards with some of the old traders.’

‘You did what?’ said my grandmother.

‘Won it playing cards.’

‘Gambling, Anselm!’

‘Who has been gambling?’ said my mother from the next room.

‘Your son has, Maria. Honestly!’ My grandmother stormed into my mother’s bedroom. ‘He gave me this money and told me quite boldly that he had won it playing cards.’

‘How much is it?’

‘Two hundred crowns,’ I said. ‘It’s for the midwife’s bill.’

My mother took the notes and studied them. ‘Oh, Anselm,’ she said, and looked at me so tenderly that I had to turn away. My grandmother tutted and marched back into the living room. ‘I suppose I should be scolding you,’ my mother said. ‘But I can’t. I really can’t.’ And she agreed to take the money.

Two days before Christmas Eve, something happened to drive the prophecy and Jared Wright out of my mind. The Alcyrians gave up Ositha and retreated two miles.

The atmosphere in school that day was like a national holiday. Sister Theresa let us leave early, and nearly all the class joined in the national anthem. A weak sun was shining over the city, making the snow glitter in crystals of lilac and blue. I could not remember when we had last seen the sun. ‘Two days until my school play,’ said Jasmine as we crossed the new square. ‘Is Mama coming?’

‘She is still very sick. But she will if she can.’

‘Do you think Papa will come back for it?’

I hesitated. I was uncertain how to answer that.

‘It might happen,’ said Jasmine. ‘Mightn’t it?’

And then my heart stopped. I was certain that I had seen Leo. People were crowding around us on every side, and I caught his cigarette smoke on the air and saw a gold-haired man turn for a second, then vanish among the stalls. I began struggling through the people towards him, dragging Jasmine by the hand. ‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Anselm, I’m getting squashed! Don’t run so fast.’

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Stay with me. Jasmine, come on!’

The man was walking faster now, towards the edge of the market. We followed him. Jasmine ran beside me, her shawl trailing and her thumb in her mouth. He was
several yards ahead, and carts were surging between us.

‘Leo?’ I said. He did not turn. I broke into a jog, trying to keep pace with him. He was almost running now, taking a watch out of his pocket every few steps to check the time. I did not recognize that watch. ‘Leo?’ I said, louder.

The man turned, and his face was wrong. ‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Are you two following me?’

He had an accent like my mother’s employer, a high-class accent. ‘No,’ I said. I could hardly speak for disappointment.

‘You were. I saw you. What are you playing at?’

‘We aren’t playing at anything.’ I took Jasmine’s hand. ‘I thought you were someone else.’

‘Anselm?’ said Jasmine timidly as I turned and pulled her back towards the square. ‘Why did you think he was Papa?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘He didn’t even look the same.’

‘I don’t know what I was thinking,’ I said.

The sun vanished behind a new bank of snow clouds. People hurried towards their houses, and the city grew empty and bitterly cold. The gunfire was clear again, if you stood still and listened. I wondered how long we would keep that meagre two miles of land. When we got home, the answer was in the newspapers. It was already lost.

Jasmine could not sleep that night. I heard her turning over and sighing, a quick impatient sigh like Leo’s. ‘Anselm?’ she said eventually.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Will you light the candle?’

I did it. ‘Can’t you sleep?’ I asked her. The clock in the square was chiming twelve.

She shook her head. ‘I’ve done a bad thing, Anselm.’

‘What have
you
done, Jasmine?’ I said, startled.

She looked at the ground, opening her mouth and closing it again. I could tell she was working up to tell me. Eventually she said, ‘I’ve lost the prophecy Aldebaran gave me.’

My heart turned over. I had been waiting for her to realize that someone had stolen it, but I had never thought she would blame herself.

‘I’ve lost it,’ she said in desperation. ‘I can’t find it anywhere.’

‘How?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. I thought it was in the box, but it isn’t. I must have forgotten to put it back in.’

‘You can’t have forgotten,’ I said.

‘But it’s not there.’

‘Maybe someone took it.’

‘Mama wouldn’t. You wouldn’t.’ She paused, then said, ‘Grandmama?’ I did not answer. ‘But Grandmama wouldn’t know about secret compartments,’ said Jasmine. ‘Unless …’ She frowned. ‘Those Imperial men might have done it. They’re always standing around here, aren’t they?’

‘Are they?’

‘Yes. At night when everyone else is asleep, I get up and sometimes I see them.’

My heart gave a strange jump. ‘When, Jasmine?’

‘Just sometimes.’

‘Yesterday? Or the day before?’

‘Maybe.’ She sighed. ‘Anselm, I shouldn’t have lost that prophecy. I think it was important.’

‘Can you still remember it?’ I said.

‘Yes, of course, but—’

‘That is what matters,’ I said. ‘Uncle wouldn’t have cared
about you losing a scrap of paper. The words are what count with prophecies.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. We studied it at school, when I was at Sacred Heart.’ Before magic grew unpopular and all the great ones vanished. That was when we studied it.

‘Thank you, Anselm,’ she said, as though a burden had suddenly been lifted from her. ‘I’m glad about that.’

I felt like the worst brother in the world. Jasmine got out of bed and went to our box of books in the corner, throwing aside the old shawl my grandmother had laid fastidiously over it. ‘Will you read to me?’ she said.

‘What shall I read?’

‘A story out of the Bible. It’s nearly Christmas, and I want to hear one.’

‘The story of Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem?’ I said.

She shook her head. She returned with my mother’s old Sunday school Bible, but she did not open it. ‘Anselm, I’m sick and tired,’ she said.

‘What of?’

‘Everything. Everything is going wrong.’

‘Everyone has to go through troubles,’ I said, though I felt the same. ‘And it doesn’t look like it now, but when they are finished again, we will forget about them. When the baby is three or four years old, we will tell him about how he was born in a country at war, and we’ll make it into a story.’

‘Anselm,’ she said. ‘Why hasn’t Papa sent us a letter?’

‘He will.’

‘Mama said yesterday that once the baby is born, we are going to Holy Island. Is that true?’

I did not know. Since that night Jared Wright had taken me to Devil’s Cross, I had hardly spoken to my mother. Jasmine got back into bed, drew the blanket up to her chin, and watched me. With only her grey eyes showing, she looked very like Leo. ‘I keep dreaming that we go to find him but we can’t,’ she said,‘so we just keep walking until we come to the sea. A horrible black sea, with ice all over it, and we can’t find Papa. Then Mama says,“Quick, the baby is going to be born. Where shall we go?” But men with guns come, and they start pushing us into the sea, and—’

I handed her the Bible. ‘Read us both a story, Jas. Choose one. Like when you were little.’

‘That was when I couldn’t even read properly,’ said Jasmine, wrinkling her nose. My mother had taught her to read on three pages of the Bible every night.

‘Still, you read better than me. You have more expression.’

‘What’s expression?’

‘Acting. Here, I’ll find you something to read.’

I turned over the pages, searching for a chapter. December was Isaiah, I remembered. I found the passage from Mass the week before. ‘There,’ I said.

Jasmine pulled the blanket up over her face so that I could not even see her eyes, and she read to me like that, but at least the dream was temporarily forgotten. ‘“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God,”’ she read. She went on reading, in the same voice Father Dunstan had used, a ringing voice like a real prophet. I knew where the chapter finished when Jasmine came to it; this part was why I had chosen it. ‘“Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like
eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.”’ Jasmine looked up then. ‘But what about the people who don’t hope in the Lord? What about them?’

‘Everyone hopes,’ I said. ‘I mean, everyone has faith in something. Everyone has something that makes them want to go on. I think that’s all it means.’

‘You sound like Michael. He always made the Bible into something else.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose he always did.’

‘Was it because he didn’t believe in it?’

‘I don’t know, Jas. I think everyone makes the Bible into something else. If that’s the only way it can help you, is there any harm?’

‘Do you miss him?’ she said. ‘Do you miss Michael?’

‘Well …’ I said. ‘It’s not so bad. I might see him again.’

I didn’t know how we had got onto this so abruptly. I took the Bible from her and made as if to study it. ‘I wonder who Isaiah was,’ I said. ‘He was a very great poet. When I was a little boy, I always imagined him like Aldebaran.’

She watched me. ‘Anselm,’ she said. ‘If you miss Michael, just say yes.’

I didn’t know what to answer to that. Jasmine lay down and pulled the blanket up to her chin. We watched the last coals dying on the fire. My grandmother never built it up in the evenings; by the first light, the windows were always frosted. I turned it over to make it burn hotter.

Jasmine reached out and shielded the candle with her hand. She looked very solemn in that light, with her hair falling loose across the pillow and her face still young, like hardly more than a baby.

‘Jasmine,’ I said. ‘I am a very bad person. If you knew, I don’t know what you would say.’

‘Is it because you gambled?’ she said, gazing up at me. ‘And because you fought with John Keller and smashed the windows of our old shop?’

I could not tell her the truth. I hesitated, then nodded.

‘I’m glad you did all those things,’ she said fiercely. ‘Stupid Doctor Keller. If it wasn’t for him, we would still be in our shop.’