Voices in the Dark (48 page)

Nearly all communications are severed. But in the old newspapers that reach this place, the king’s disappearance is reported again and again.
KING CASSIUS FEARED DEAD
, say some, or
KING CASSIUS IN HIDING
, or
NO NEWS OF THE KING
. I study all those newspapers without hope of finding out the truth. Sometimes I dream that I am my father. It probably sounds strange to you, but it is true. I can feel the scar across the right-hand side of my face and the emptiness
of the socket where my eye once was. My skin feels older, as if it has been eighteen years longer in the world. And the strangest thing about this is that my soul is different. A different man, older and tougher and less sure of the rights and wrongs of life. I cannot explain it. But when I wake, just for a moment, I cannot separate myself from him. My father’s letter was lost in the fire, but I know it anyway. Sentences repeat themselves in my mind. ‘My Son. I see such visions. I want to die condemned, and stand condemned for ever.’ In spite of the absence of any gravestone, I have found his spirit here.

Just after I arrived, I went to the graveyard and laid down a sprig of holly, the closest thing to flowers I could find. I laid it on the corner of the wall, where no graves were. Then I stood there a long time thinking of him, when he was a boy like me in this town, before he ever knew Malonia City. I disobeyed his last wish and forgave him. Because I can’t live here in this grey abandoned town for ever. I can’t live without all that my life used to be. Love never lets you go, my brother. It never lets you lie down and rest. But someday I will come back and find you all. Just not yet.

Parts of the story come back to me, and they are a kind of consolation. ‘He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.’ I suppose too many of us would stand condemned for ever.

At the inn in the town, the Prince and Beggar, people talk about the gangs of revolutionaries who are hiding in the hills. They are forming a resistance movement already. They come down to the farms and demand food, and people give it to them. I asked if anyone had seen a boy with untidy black hair and grey eyes and a hat with a
feather. Someone said, ‘Maybe,’ someone else shook their head. I can send word with one of them when they next come down into the village. It is a faint hope. They all know of each other, and I believe Michael is with them somewhere. He never wanted to keep his head down. If I can’t find him, I don’t know what I will do next.

Sometimes I think about everyone back in the city, Father Dunstan and Sister Theresa and Mr Pascal. I wonder where they are and whether our paths will cross again. I understand that it will be a difficult task, and exhausting, to rebuild what we have lost. But what else can we do? I am too young to lie down and give up the fight.

I was trying to explain this story to you, my brother. I have written the rest of it now. Between telling it to Mr Hardy and travelling north on my own, the pages are completed. But in truth, I don’t think it is right. In telling it to Mr Hardy, I have lost it. I will never write it as truthfully again. Maybe it is better not to give this to you, my brother. Your life will be hard enough already without other people’s guilt to bear.

Just after I arrived, Harold North sent me a letter. It reached me yesterday. ‘All is well,’ it said. ‘Baby is well. He is christened Harlan.’