I stopped and looked at him. It was not his political views that startled me, but the casual way in which he had disposed of half a million crowns. ‘Are you such a rich man, sir?’ I said.
He raised one eyebrow. It was a look I was coming to know well. We walked on past an inn that was closing up and through a square where the snow drifted over the ground. ‘How is your mother?’ said Jared.
‘Not well,’ I said. ‘Not at the moment.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ he said. ‘She is not in danger?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I haven’t seen your stepfather about either.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘He must be one of the famous Norths,’ Jared said. ‘I know it, whatever you say. I envy him, you know. People would pay for anything Aldebaran left, and I’ll bet good money there was a last prophecy. I would pay thousands for that, really I would – so would half the political men in this city. Was there one, do you know?’
I shook my head. ‘Ah!’ said Jared, delighted with his cunning. ‘So your stepfather is one of the Norths, then? You admit that much.’
‘His surname is North,’ I said. ‘That’s all. And, sir …’
‘Yes.’
‘Why do you call him my stepfather?’
‘Well, he is, isn’t he? What else do you want me to call him?’
I started to speak, and so did Jared, but neither of us finished. We were on the corner of Trader’s Row. I wanted to ask him how he knew that and what he knew of my real father. But I could not do it. I had promised my mother not to even see him again. I knew it was superstitious, but with her lying so sick inside the house, I could not bring myself to disobey her. ‘I should go inside,’ I said.
‘Anselm?’ he said. ‘Come and see me again.’
There was something significant in the way he said it that made it into more than a careless invitation. ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I don’t think I can.’
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t tell you. I just don’t think I can.’
‘But that is absurd,’ he said.
‘Maybe. I’m sorry, but I can’t.’
I turned and walked away before I could lose my resolution.
As I drew close to our shop, someone shone a lamp into my face. ‘Where are you going?’ he said. There were two police officers in front of me, pistols in their hands. I had not even seen them approach, and for a second I had thought it was the Imperial Order.
‘Home,’ I said, stepping back against the window.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Nowhere. Just walking in the city.’
‘Please raise your hands.’
I did it. My heart thumped sickly in my throat. The officers proceeded to search me, taking everything out of my pockets. Scraps of paper from school; a broken dial from an oil lamp, which they studied for several seconds; two or three coins. ‘Can I go on?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ one of them said as though granting a great favour. ‘Yes, very well.’
I went round checking the bolts several times once I was inside the shop. The city outside seemed against us, and the few locks on the doors were no protection at all. I went up the stairs and closed the living-room door and locked that too. I was still breathing fast from the encounter with the police. I could not help connecting them with Dr Keller or the Imperial Order. After I went to bed, my bones ached with cold. I lay staring up at the ceiling, and dismal thoughts came to me, and I could not stop them. My tooth was still throbbing. It had already become part of my life, as if it had always been broken. I could not stop thinking, so I got up and spread out those papers Leo had left, then lit the lamp. I did not believe they would solve anything, but it was something to draw my mind away from the real world. When I was a young boy and real life was hard to fathom, I always used to turn to England. I surrendered to it now.
Ashley fell asleep on the underground on the way home. He woke as the train shuddered, drawing up at a station, and met the eyes of an old man. He was very thin, with a face like a skull, sitting in the last seat at the end of the carriage. His grey eyes trapped the passing lights. Ashley did not know where he was going, and his head ached. He stood up and made out the name of the station; it was far beyond the one where he had meant to change. He would have to get out at the next stop and walk.
Two women in suits left the carriage, and as the train drew away, they vanished down a lighted tunnel. Ashley sat down and rested his sketchbook against his knees. The carriage was almost empty now.
‘It is quiet this evening,’ remarked the old man.
Ashley nodded. It was the first time anyone had spoken to him on the underground in the nine years of his life here.
‘I am going to the end of the line,’ said the old man. ‘Can you tell me, please, how much longer it will take?’
‘About half an hour.’
‘Thank you,’ said the old man, and gave a gruff nod.
Ashley lowered his eyes and studied the man’s face, pretending all the time to read the cover of his sketchbook. The old man reminded him of the Rolls-Royce Anna had sold, and their old life in the country, and an age that was already gone. The silence drew out. A cold voice announced another station. ‘Are you an artist?’ said the old man, nodding towards the sketchbook.
‘Not really.’
‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘may I possibly see that book?’
Ashley grinned suddenly; he could not help it. It was the way the man had asked. ‘Here,’ he said, and handed the book to him. The man turned over the pages carefully.
‘This one is very good,’ he said, pausing on a portrait of Anna.
‘I got the light wrong,’ said Ashley. ‘It looks like she’s in the dark, and you can’t see her face.’
‘It’s a problem of tone,’ said the old man. ‘Not enough contrast in the work.’
Ashley did not know what to say. A wild thought drifted through his head that perhaps this man was a great artist and would take him away from everything and teach him to draw like a master. It was a childhood wish that he had tried to forget. But the old man only closed the book. ‘I know nothing about these things,’ he said. ‘But I have a good friend who draws. Tell me, do you ever sell your work?’
‘I draw portraits for tourists sometimes, in Covent Garden.’ The man’s accent made him add, ‘If you know it?’
‘Oh yes,’ said the old man. ‘Yes, I know Covent Garden. Such strange names your places have.’
‘I think so too,’ said Ashley. ‘I mean, I’ve always thought so.’
But there had been nothing significant about the remark. The old man was already thinking of something else. He laid the sketchbook down on the seat beside Ashley. ‘Do you make much money from it?’ he said. ‘Drawing tourists’ portraits?’
‘I make some.’
‘And what do you do with it?’
‘I’m saving it.’
‘For what?’
Ashley hesitated, then gave him the truthful answer. ‘To go to Australia. To see my father.’
‘Your father is Australian?’ said the old man. ‘You must miss him, if he is so far away.’
‘No, he’s a bastard. I’m going to Australia to tell him so.’
The train gained speed with a low metallic whine. And Ashley, for no reason he could explain, began to feel frightened. The old man was watching him as if he was reading his soul. Ashley hoped he would say something else, but he didn’t. He held out for two stations, then got up and stepped down onto the platform.
‘Wait,’ said the old man. But the doors were already closing. Through the glass, the old man was mouthing something, like a fish in a jar, but the train was moving now. Then, when Ashley looked back, the man was no longer there.
He was at a different station to the one he expected, and the clock stood at a different time. Ashley did not know what had happened. Fear gripped him, and he turned and walked faster and faster, along the lighted tunnels, up through the hot draughts of
the escalator, and out into the night. The train was far gone now, and Ashley listened for the next one to tremble under the paving stones. But no more came. It was late, and that had probably been the last.
Ashley ran his hands over his face and tried to come back to the real world. A light rain had fallen, and the pavement glistened blackly. He was stranded in some high-class area he did not recognize. The white houses stood in a stupor around fenced gardens. He climbed over one of the fences and crossed the immaculate grass, for no reason at all, then swung around a lamppost and decided he was going in the wrong direction. That strange dream had set his heart out of joint, and he wished he was back home. He thought that he would ask someone where he was at the next shop he came to. But there were no shops here.
For a while, he pretended to navigate by the stars. It was a kind of game he played. He stopped on each street corner and looked upwards for a moment, then turned left or right. Eventually he decided he was lost. He sat down on the steps of a white house and considered the situation.
A silvery clock somewhere chimed eleven. Ashley stared around at the unfamiliar square. It was while he was looking round that he remembered the old maps he used to draw. Somewhere in his memory, this square must exist. He frowned and tried to fix his mind on it, and after a while, the lines of the streets became clear. He knew the accuracy of his memory was not natural, and sometimes it still startled him. He could recall anything, once he remembered that he knew it. The plan of the streets came into his mind now. Right, and then left. He got up and went on.
Ashley had been walking for several minutes when a car parked ahead made him slow his pace. It was a Rolls-Royce, gleaming with polish, an old model that looked out of date in this high-class street. The same model that Anna used to drive. Ashley stepped down into the road and walked around the car, then reached out and touched the passenger door. His fingers remembered opening it a thousand times, when they were still too small to grip the handle. It was the same car. He was certain of it. The number-plate was different, but the car was the same. He ran his fingers over the roof and found the trace of the dent that had once been there.
Ashley glanced up at the house, but the building was in darkness. No lights showed around the curtains, and though a burglar alarm flashed on the front wall, it was clear there was no one inside. He turned back to the car again and looked in through the windows. He had never known who Anna sold the Rolls-Royce to; he had been too young. But he was certain this was the same car. It was like a miracle – that strange dream, and then getting off at the wrong stop, and now here was the old car in front of him.
‘Excuse me,’ said someone quietly from the shadows. ‘Is that your car?’
Ashley looked up, but it was too dark to make out the figure. A man dressed in black. ‘I’m just looking at it,’ said Ashley, and made to go on.
‘Stay where you are,’ said the man, and came out of the shadows.
Richard woke suddenly to find Aldebaran sitting in the corner of the room. He was not a ghost; there was nothing ghostlike about him. He was sitting on the chair with the worn-through foam seat, watching a train go past. ‘Teacher!’ said Richard, fear and sleep constricting his voice.
‘Rigel,’ said Aldebaran. ‘I have been waiting for you.’
‘I thought …’ said Richard. ‘I thought …’
Aldebaran came forward and extended his hand. Richard took it. It was as solid as his own. ‘Aldebaran,’ he said.
‘We had an agreement once,’ said Aldebaran. ‘You were going to come here and find the people with powers. You were going to send me word.’
‘I know,’ said Richard. ‘I know.’
‘Don’t look so sad,’ said Aldebaran. ‘I thought I would never hear from you again when I watched you go away from me that night. I think I always knew.’
‘It was for Juliette,’ said Richard. ‘I thought I would die if anything happened to her. Teacher, maybe I’ve been stupid, but it was always for her.’
‘Your daughter is a remarkable girl,’ said Aldebaran.
‘Yes,’ said Richard.
He let Aldebaran’s hand go. His old teacher had aged in the ten years that had passed. The moonlight rested in every line in his face. ‘Teacher,’ said Richard. ‘Are you—’
‘I am not going back home,’ said Aldebaran. ‘No.’
Richard had been going to ask something else. ‘Why are you here?’ he said instead.
‘I need your help,’ said Aldebaran. ‘You won’t refuse it.’
Richard hesitated, then shook his head.
‘Magic is dying,’ said Aldebaran. ‘But there are still those with powers. Still a few of them. You are the first, Rigel. The second is Anna Devere. The third is your daughter, and the fourth is the king’s son.’
‘The king’s son?’ said Richard. ‘What king’s son?’
‘No one knows about him,’ said Aldebaran. ‘Only R yan and I know.’
‘So why are you telling me?’
‘The fact is, R yan may not have long either, because there are people who dislike him. Someone else has to know.
His name is Ashley Devere, and he is here in England.’
‘The king’s son?’ said Richard again.
‘Yes. And there is one more person with powers left – at least, the only one who will ever be a true great one.’
‘Who is that?’ said Richard, still half certain he was dreaming.
‘The only one still in the old country. My successor.’
Richard reached out towards Aldebaran, because he seemed to be growing fainter. ‘Help him,’ said Aldebaran. ‘Help my successor. That’s what I want you to do now.’
Richard woke up, and the window was open, blowing a gale into the room. People were arguing in the room next door, and a train was rattling past. And Aldebaran was nowhere. ‘Juliette?’ he said, a strange kind of fear gripping his heart. ‘Juliette.’
He got up and went to the next room and tapped on the door. There was no answer, but the door was open when he tried it. Juliette was not there.
Juliette knew nothing of Aldebaran or her father’s dream. She was sick of the hotel with its grey walls and of her father’s silences, and she was sick of being followed everywhere she went by James Salmon. So she opened the window of her room and climbed out.
It was three floors to the ground, and Juliette climbed down by willpower alone. Every time she felt herself slipping, she fixed her eyes on the stars above and refused to fall. She reached the ground without injury, pulled her coat tighter around her, and started walking back to the old house. She had no fixed plan in her mind, only to get away.
It was a longer walk than she had thought, and by the time she reached the square, the clocks were chiming eleven. She stopped on the corner and leaned against the railings of a house to catch her breath. While she was doing that, she heard voices. A man in black clothes was talking to a boy beside her father’s Rolls-Royce. Juliette edged closer and listened.
‘I’m just looking at it,’ the boy was saying.
‘Tell me who this car belongs to.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Tell me–’
‘Honestly, I don’t know!’
The boy’s voice had risen. The stranger had pulled out a gun. ‘Where have you been tonight?’ he demanded.
‘In Covent Garden.’
‘Why?’
‘Drawing portraits for money. It’s where I always go. Put that gun down, please. I don’t see what I’ve done wrong.’
Juliette hesitated, then stepped forward. Both of them turned to her. The man regarded her for several seconds, then turned and marched away. The boy was standing with his hands raised and a mutinous expression on his face. He had black hair cut short, a jewel in his left ear, and very black eyes. ‘Are you all right?’ said Juliette, breathing fast because of the long walk and the gun.
The boy made no answer. He just turned and walked away along a side street. Once he was halfway down the street, he broke int
o a run and did not stop when she called after him. As he turned the corner, something fell from under his arm. It was some kind of book. Juliette started after him, but already he was gone, leaving the book behind him.
Juliette went to the corner and picked it up. The pages fell open. Sketches came to life in front of her eyes: perfect portraits and detailed buildings and rain-blackened London parks with the lights of cars passing. But there was more than that within these pages, Juliette thought. She studied the portrait of a restless man in a shiny black suit and knew about him suddenly. She knew that he had a wife and a small child and lived in a tower somewhere and that he wanted more than anything to be a musician and leave the city.
On the book’s cover was a name and address. ‘Ashley Devere, 12C Forest Park Mansions’. Juliette hesitated, then put the book inside her jacket to keep it out of the rain. It had come down suddenly while she was studying those pictures. Now she came back to the real world, and fear of the night gripped her. She turned and ran.
Anna was mopping the floor of the hotel entrance hall when a man brushed lightly past her. She turned and looked. He was thin, with a face like a skull, and it made the blood stand still in her veins. She was sure she knew him. ‘Arthur?’ she said. ‘Arthur Field, is it you?’
The man did not hear. He went on past her, out into the rain. And when she went after him, he was just a stranger, an old man who must have come to enquire about a room. He was not Arthur Field at all.
‘Excuse me?’ someone was calling urgently when she returned to the hotel. ‘Excuse me.’
It was the man staying on the third floor. He was standing at the reception desk, looking about anxiously.
‘Yes, can I help you?’ she said.
‘Have you seen my daughter? The blonde girl, about so tall. She’s gone out without telling me.’
‘She didn’t pass this way,’ said Anna. ‘I’ve been here more than an hour.’
He was a tall man, with a scar across his cheek and an expensive suit. He marched about the entrance hall, then picked up the pen from the reception desk and set it down again with an exasperated sigh. Anna went on mopping the floor. The man’s daughter returned not long after, wet through and out of breath from running, and an argument broke out between them. When Anna thought of Arthur Field again, after the man and his daughter had gone back upstairs and left the entrance hall in silence, she thought she had been stupid to mistake that man for him. Her great-uncle could not be still living, in that country he came from. He must be long gone by now. And yet things changed for her after that night. Things changed for all of them.
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