Voices in the Dark

by Catherine Banner

  ‘And the time when we came looking for ghouls.’

  ‘My God, I’ve never been so scared in my life.’ He shook his head. ‘Except maybe now.’

  I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. ‘What are you scared of?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He rested his cheek against the window and sighed. ‘Anselm, everything is wrong with the world. Our shop is finished. My family has been here for generations. What do we have now? My father says when the Alcyrians arrive, it will go hard for us, because he was in the resistance. He says it’s better to leave now with our dignity. But dignity doesn’t keep you safe. I wish I had something to believe in. And I keep thinking …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Anselm, what if the Imperial Order does win? I don’t want to be fighting against the world all my life. But I don’t want to keep my head down.’

  ‘They can’t win,’ I said. ‘The king won’t let them. And Titanica is the strongest country on the continent, and they’ve already sent troops in.’

  ‘But it’s not just a country, the Imperial Order. It’s everywhere.’

  As if in answer, there was a burst of gunfire. It had been too much to hope that the rioting was over for good. ‘We

  should get back,’ I said. But neither of us moved.

  ‘Anselm, look at this,’ said Michael.

  He took a crumpled sheet of newspaper out of his pocket and put it into my hand. It was too dark to see it properly. ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘People are disappearing,’ he said. ‘Not just in Alcyria, but also here. A man who was with the resistance under Lucien’s government. A woman teacher who spoke out about the Imperial Order in her town. They can get you for anything. If you go to Mass when they have called a curfew, or come from the wrong country, or have powers, or if you fall in love with the wrong person. That’s two years in jail.’

  The candle spluttered with a strange human sound and went out. I struck a match. Michael was sitting far away from me, his coat pulled up to his face, and shadows moved in his eyes. ‘Anselm, sooner or later, people who don’t agree with them will have to fight,’ he said. ‘And I’m scared to think of where it’s going to end.’

  ‘It might not come to that,’ I said. ‘In between his pessimistic moods, Mr Pascal is saying it might all blow over.’

  ‘But how can it? They have everything. They are building all kinds of new roads, and railroads too, with carriages powered by steam, and they have the best navy, the strongest army, all the money. Anselm, I swear I have to do something. I swear.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  His voice was shaking with anger or fear; which it was, I could not tell. ‘Michael, listen,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘I know we will.’

  ‘Are you just saying that?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He laughed without mirth. I knew his face so well that looking at it was some reassurance, even in the dim light of the carriage, where I could hardly make it out. ‘I’ll miss you,’ I said, ‘when you go off south and leave this godforsaken city.’

  A breeze troubled the match, and he raised his hand to shield it, but it fell from my fingers and our hands came together instead. His was cold. We sat there palm to palm as though we were divided by glass. The match on the floor was still burning, but the light barely reached our faces. ‘Anselm, this is why I’m angry,’ he said. ‘Because the whole world is against people like me.’

  ‘Then it’s against me too,’ I said. The wind howled around the abandoned carriage, but as he leaned forward, it seemed to falter.

  ‘Write to me,’ he said. ‘If you find out anything about Harold North or your real father. Write to me anyway. It won’t be the same, when I don’t see you all the time.’

  ‘I don’t have your address,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll send it to you,’ he said.

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘If I can.’

  ‘How will we ever see each other again, unless you do?’

  ‘We will,’ he said. ‘People find each other. And whatever happens, don’t forget me.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  I could not help thinking of two years in jail for falling in love with the wrong person. ‘It’s not justice,’ I said, and he nodded, still shaking with anger, and kissed me.

  * * *

  I don’t know how long it took me to realize how I felt about Michael. It was not gradual; it was more like the twist of a knife. I woke one day and saw him differently, and after that my life grew harder, not easier. Real love is a fierce thing. It never lets you go, no matter how miserable it makes you, no matter how unforgivingly it sets you against the world. Two years in jail. You might as well imprison people for the turn of their accent or the colour of their eyes. That was what I thought. Because as surely as I knew, I was in love with the wrong person, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  The next morning, the Barones closed up their shop, put the grilles on the windows, and left. And when we woke, the Imperial Order had declared war on us all. Posters had appeared on every wall of the city, with an eagle and a scythe and the Imperial Order’s crest. ‘We declare war,’ they proclaimed, ‘against the king and his government, the followers of religion, the resistance traitors, the Unacceptables, the homosexuals, the practitioners of magic arts.’

  The day Michael left, Jasmine and I went together to meet my mother after work. A grey wind ran through the city, sending the Imperial Order’s posters spiraling along every street. No one seemed to want to remove them. Even the shopkeepers left them stuck to their front windows. Towards evening, the police came out and began to take them down.

  We walked fast, towards the east of the city. Jasmine jogged beside me, in her last year’s winter boots; they were stretched out of shape with wearing them too long. ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked me.

  ‘Nothing, really.’

  ‘Are you missing Michael?’

  ‘He has been gone only a few hours.’

  I had not answered her question, and she knew it. There is no deceiving a magic child. ‘I miss him,’ she said. ‘Will he come back?’

  ‘Maybe when all this trouble is over.’

  ‘Does that mean never?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope not.’

  She tossed her hair impatiently and walked ahead of me, her faded shawl wrapped very tightly around her shoulders. She had to walk along every broken wall we passed; it was a kind of superstition with her. By the time we got to Regent’s Place on the east side of the city, the day had begun to lose its light. This was where all the rich of Malonia City lived. Dr Keller’s house was at the end of the row, and the merchant banker whose children my mother taught owned the tallest house in the middle. The window frames were painted in gaudy red and green, as though the family was too rich to take even their expensive house entirely seriously. There was a small brass sign under the upstairs window: THE LORD RIGEL, REVOLUTIONARY HERO AND FORMER SECRET SERVICE LEADER, LIVED IN THIS PLACE. I wondered if the family had known that when they bought the house, and whether it added to or diminished the value.

  ‘Anselm,’ Jasmine called. ‘Watch.’

  I turned and my heart nearly choked me. She was walking along the top of the city wall, with the street on her right and the drop to the river on her left. I did not know how she had got up there; I had turned away for only a minute. ‘Jasmine, come down from there!’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Jasmine, in the name of—’

  ‘Don’t distract me, Anselm.’

  She walked slowly, putting one foot in front of the other. The wind off the hills was fierce enough to unsettle her balance; every time she took a step, she swayed. I did not dare to move once she had told me not to. She kept walking until she reached the end. Then she launched herself into the air, and I ran forward and caught her.

  ‘Jasmine, what the hell did you think you were
doing?’ I demanded.

  ‘Nothing. Put me down.’

  ‘Do you want to give me grey hairs like Leo’s? Honestly!’

  ‘I wasn’t going to fall.’

  ‘The wind could have knocked you off.’

  ‘It couldn’t. I knew. Put me down.’

  I put her down but kept hold of her wrists. I could not argue; I knew from hard-won experience that it was pointless. But I kept hold of her hands tight enough that she could not break free. I almost hoped it would hurt her. ‘Let me go,’ she was whining, but I wouldn’t. I kept my hands closed around hers until we saw my mother coming down the steps of the house. ‘Mama!’ called Jasmine then, and broke away from me. My mother smiled and knelt down on the steps to put her arms around Jasmine. At the window of the house, I saw the curtain move. Those two rich children were very curious about us but were too shy to ever let us see them looking out.

  Jasmine and my mother began talking at once. I walked behind them. My heart was still beating fast. Every few weeks, Jasmine did something like this, and ever since Aldebaran had died, she had been worse. My mother was walking slower than usual; she kept shifting her handbag from her right hand to her left.

  ‘Let me carry that,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a prince, Anselm,’ she said. It was heavy with all the children’s schoolbooks.

  ‘How are the two little duchesses?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, the same as ever. Juliana wanted to know today if there were really people who had babies without being married, so I told her certainly not.’

  Jasmine choked with laughter and had to be hit on the back several times before she regained her composure. She saw it as a point of principle to look down on those two children, with their white dresses and their high-class manners.

  ‘Tell us about places you’ve been?’ asked Jasmine when she finished coughing.

  ‘Oh, I’m tired tonight,’ my mother said.

  ‘Please!’ said Jasmine. It was a favourite game of hers. As we walked through the city, my mother would point out each house she had danced at when she was a rich girl and every street she had visited with her well-to-do friends.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You see that chapel on the corner? It’s a private chapel that used to belong to the Marlazzis, and Agnes Jean was married there. They had seventeen bridesmaids, so many that the front of the procession finished before the end had even begun. I started laughing when I saw that, and my papa had to take me out. And the confetti was real gold leaf—’

  ‘Real gold leaf?’ said Jasmine, wrinkling her nose.

  ‘Real gold leaf, not one word of a lie. The beggars came out and collected it afterwards. Come on.’

  Jasmine linked her arm in my mother’s. She had to reach a long way up to do it, but it made them very alike. The weak sunlight in their brown hair was a thousand colours. My mother drew strangers’ eyes as the north draws a compass, and Jasmine at almost seven years old was already beautiful. It only made me lonelier today. Nothing was right now that Michael had gone. It seemed like the worst kind of sign.

  As we passed by the Royal Gardens, Jasmine ran to the railings to stare through at the boarded house. The place looked more dismal in the daylight. The dark surrounded it and gave it stature, but now it was just a derelict building, with the light shining through the gaps in the roof and all the windows smashed. It seemed already a hundred years since Michael and I had sat in the abandoned carriage with the wind howling around us.

  ‘Mama, did you ever go to that house in the old days?’ said Jasmine.

  ‘No,’ said my mother.

  ‘Whose house was it?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘It must have been someone’s.’

  ‘Oh, Jas, it was a long time ago. But, yes, it must have been someone’s.’

  We walked the rest of the way in silence. By the time we got back to Trader’s Row, the street was in shadow, and starlings were wheeling in the sky. ‘It will be autumn before long,’ said my mother, glancing up.

  ‘Mama?’ said Jasmine. ‘Can I please not go to school any more?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ said my mother, looking down at her anxiously.

  ‘I just don’t like it there. I don’t want to go back.’

  ‘You have to go to school, Jas,’ said my mother. ‘You want to learn and get clever, don’t you?’

  Jasmine sighed. ‘When do I have to go?’

  ‘Next week.’

  ‘I want to go and train with a great one, like Uncle did. Can I?’

  ‘Maybe one day.’

  ‘That means no, doesn’t it?’ She tugged my mother’s hand. ‘Doesn’t it?’

  My mother rubbed her forehead. Her face was very serious tonight; the laugh that usually lingered at the corners of her mouth was quite gone.

  ‘Come on, Jas,’ I said. ‘Mama is tired.’ I took Jasmine’s hand, and we followed her inside.

  Leo was writing when we came in, resting on the accounts book. He looked up as the door opened, then closed the book and put it into the drawer under the counter. We sat in the back room and drank tea while the storm rose again in the city. ‘Anselm,’ Leo said when we had finished. ‘Will you help me sand down these old cupboards? I want to start varnishing them before the cold weather sets in.’

  It was something to do, and I set myself to it fiercely. I took the oil lamp out to the yard and worked in its circle of light. I thought Michael must be thirty miles away by now, if they had met no problems on the road. The wind troubled the lamp and made its light stretch and waver. I worked for hours, until it was quite dark. I glanced up only when my mother called me for dinner. And as I looked up, I started. Someone had been standing by the yard gate looking in at me.

  As soon as I met his eyes, he turned and vanished. I could not be sure how long he had been there. Fear caught hold of me suddenly. I picked up the lamp and went inside.

  ‘What is it?’ said my mother as I closed the door behind me.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You look as if you’ve seen a spirit.’

  ‘Not a spirit,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘Dinner is ready.’

  I nodded and set down the lamp. But my heart was still beating fast. I kept glancing at the front window, expecting to see someone looking in at us. And even after everyone else had gone to bed, I could not sleep. I went down to the shop and polished a box of old lamps at the counter instead. The wind growled disconsolately around the house and made me think of the shop next door standing empty and Michael further away now – forty miles or fifty, and getting further with each minute that passed.

  At half past one, I heard people shouting outside. They had been shouting for several minutes, but I had not heard them at first, because the wind and my thoughts had drowned their voices. I glanced up at the front window. The lamplight made reflections against the glass, and beyond it figures were moving with lighted torches. Through the grilles, I could see people dressed in blue, half of them boys my age and others older, running up and down the street. They were shouting, ‘The king is dead!’ and rattling the grilles on the shops.

  ‘Anselm!’ said Leo, making me start. He was standing on the stairs with his clothes pulled on hastily. ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s a group of men in blue clothes.’

  ‘Blue clothes? Put out the lamp.’

  I turned to blow it out. The scene outside the window emerged from the darkness. Eight or ten men were running up and down in the street, proclaiming that the king was dead. ‘Where are the police?’ said Leo. ‘Where the hell are they?’

  Lights were coming on in the shops now. The starlings leaped from the tree opposite the Barones’ shop, rising in a cloud past the castle.

  ‘Join our cause!’ shouted one of the men. ‘Come out of your houses and join our cause!’

  ‘Piss off and let me sleep!’ called someone from the pharmacist’s highest window. The men threw themselves against the grille of her s
hop, their torches leaping wildly. I thought I recognized one of them for a second. He looked like Isaiah, from the class above mine at school. Then the light fell again, and I could not make him out.

  ‘Where are the police?’ Leo kept saying. Someone thumped the grille on our window, and we both started and drew back. My mother was on the stairs then, with her arm around Jasmine’s shoulders.

  ‘Come back upstairs,’ she whispered.

  ‘Maria, listen!’ Leo whispered. ‘Listen to them!’

  ‘Come back to bed. They will not do anything.’

  ‘You three go back,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay here.’

  But none of us moved. It was half an hour before the police came and read the riot notice outside our door. ‘The king is not dead,’ they shouted; then, ‘By order of the government of Malonia and His Majesty King Cassius, disperse and return to your homes. You are charged with disturbing the peace, an offence punishable under Malonian civil law. Disperse and return to your homes. This is your first official warning.’

  The men went on shouting and running. The crowd had multiplied; there must have been twenty or thirty of them now. Then, without warning, there was a volley of gunshots. Jasmine shrieked and clapped her hands to her ears. The police were firing rifles off their shoulders.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said my mother. ‘Shh, it’s all right.’ The gunshots came again, and the crowd broke up.

  ‘None of you are safe!’ shouted the nearest man as the crowd fled down an alley. ‘None of you royalists are safe in this city any more! Remember that!’

  The silence hummed. Somewhere down the street, two traders were calling to each other from their upstairs windows: ‘Bloody nerve’ and ‘Get back to sleep; the police will sort it out.’ A man opened a window and threw out a cigarette, lazily, as if to show he was not afraid.