Wall of Days

149

‘Tora?’

‘My lover, before I left.’

‘You think I should know you?’

‘If you don’t, you are a simpleton.’

His expression changes. ‘You are a guest in this town. Do not forget.’

‘A guest you don’t know what to do with. You have choices: give him the best room, or, try to ignore him in the hope that he will go away, or, take him outside into the orange groves, set on him, slit his throat, bury him so no one can see.’

‘We will not kill you. We are a good people, a forward-looking people.’ With that the Marshal leans back in his chair, folds his arms behind his head and looks up at the ceiling. He speaks again. ‘You were here last night.’

This throws me slightly. ‘How did you know it was me?’

‘Your footprints were all over the place.’

‘How did you know they were mine?’

The Marshal shrugs. ‘Who else?’

‘The door was open.’

He says nothing.

‘I walked into the hall. I have seen what you’ve done.’

‘What have I done?’

‘You have erased my name from the wall of names.’

‘Erased, you say?’

‘Erased. Perhaps a joke. Perhaps some ill-advised conception of public good.’

‘Explain?’

‘Someone, you, the real Marshal, someone, not liking what we did, 150

chose to eliminate traces of the person most closely associated with the error. Error, as they saw it.’

‘What error is that?’

I hesitate, wondering if he is being deliberately obtuse, or is admitting that he too sees the merits of what we did. ‘The error, as some like to call it, of eliminating the weak, of following the policy that killed some yet saved so many. The policy designed to fix our world, broken in an original sin. The policy that some called a cull.’

The Marshal stares at me for a few moments. ‘Why were you here?’

‘Why was I here? I was passing. The door was open. I was curious.

I wanted to see my old rooms again. I wanted to see my name on the list.’

‘And you were disappointed when you did not see your name?’

‘Of course. You do not erase history simply because you do not ap prove, simply because you wish you had another and this is clearly what has happened here.’

‘By removing names from a wall?’

‘It’s emblematic. The removal of the names stands in the stead of something greater, something darker.’

‘You think we should keep telling ourselves the stories that frighten us?’

I think I might be on the verge of extracting a confession from the Marshal.

‘Why should you be afraid of it? The past has as much power over you as you allow it. Punish if you like. Crucify if you must. Burn the guilty and throw their ashes to the wind, blacken their names and cast out their families. Do not sweep under the carpet. Avenge guilt and 151

move on. Even the guilty deserve to be remembered, deserve the status of being guilty.’ Too much, I tell myself.

The Marshal betrays no emotion. After a while he looks down at the table and says, ‘Let’s go down to the hall then. Let’s see if what you’re saying has merit.’ I want to remark that what I say has merit regardless of what is on the wall but I hold my tongue.

We do not talk again until we are in the Great Hall. I am about to point out the error when the Marshal says, ‘Madara, Abel. Not a long line yet, though an auspicious one.’

I am surprised to say the least. ‘The first is not the right name. You must know that. And you have an Abel there but no end date to his rule. Tell me, where is he, what has become of him? And why is your name not there? Are you not proud to be Marshal?

He snaps at me. ‘I have more important things to do than write my name on a wall. It will get done soon enough.’

‘Regardless, Madara is still wrong.’

‘What should be written on the wall?’

‘I think you know the answer to that but I will indulge you,’ I say. ‘The first Marshal of Bran was Bran. Me, the man named for the settlement. The second Marshal was Abel, my second-in-command.

He became Marshal when I was banished. You may very well be the third Marshal but I cannot say for sure.’

‘You cannot say.’

‘Cannot say whether you’re the third, the fourth, the fifth. You know very well what I mean. The names on that list, if there are three, should be Bran, Abel, Jura. That is the error. The wrong names, the wrong number.’

The Marshal walks up to the wall, stands with his nose almost 152

touching it, looking at the names. He puts his hand to them and rubs his fingertips over the gold lettering. ‘You asked if I was proud. I am very proud to be Marshal of Bran and to follow such men. Madara then Abel, a man even greater than the first.’ He pauses. ‘On wood such as this you would have to be extremely careful sanding it if your alterations were not to stand out. Extremely careful. It has such a soft texture, is so finely grained that only an expert craftsman would be able to remove paint and then repaint without leaving any traces of his work. Come and have a look.’

I step closer.

‘Do you see any marks?’ He points to the name Madara. ‘Do you see any difference in the wood?’

I have to admit I do not.

‘Then,’ he says, barely bothering to conceal his triumph, ‘You have to concede that you are wrong.’

‘You said yourself an expert craftsman could have done it.’

‘You misunderstand. But, never mind.’ He turns away from me, his back to the wall. ‘You say you know a great deal about history but I am not sure you have learnt from it. Nevertheless it has been a pleasure talking with you. I enjoy the exchange of ideas. You must come again and we can continue our discussion. Of course you should announce yourself when you do and not walk around like a thief.’ I cannot tell if he is serious or not. ‘But for now you must go.’ He walks off.

At the entrance to the hall he turns around, looks me in the eyes and says, ‘Madara was our first ruler. In some ways a truly great man.

He wrote our constitution. He saved us all from starvation. But he was brutal, too brutal. Perhaps a man of his time. Then that time ended and he could no longer be a man of his time. He had to go. He had to 153

end. That is his story. Abel took over. His was the true vision, a vision that healed us and gave us stability and a sense of purpose, an identity we have come to cherish.’

I am too stunned to reply. I can only watch the Marshal leave. But then I shout, ‘You cannot deny me forever, Jura. You will have to reckon with me in the end.’

I turn back to the wall, run my palm over the wood again. I walk out of the room, out of the building, out of the courtyard. As I go I look up at the window. Perhaps a shadow, a hand, a pale face. Perhaps nothing.

I have left without answers but I will be back. If I can’t get answers from the Marshal, I will find them myself. I will find proof of what is being done here. I will find Abel and Tora.

I walk quickly to Abel’s house again. I knock hard at the door, place my ear to the wood and listen intently. There is nothing. Once more I knock and listen.

After a few moments I tiptoe away from the door to the window. I cannot see through it. The sun shines brightly on the pane and blinds me. I place my face against the glass. At first I can see nothing. One by one objects become visible: the stone floor, a chair, a table, a chest against a wall. On the chest a jug and basin. At the far end of the room a passageway deeper into the house. The chair has been knocked over.

Peering to my left I can make out where the door should be but cannot see it as it is just behind a wall that juts out, blocking my vision. I imagine someone standing there, waiting for me to leave. I press further into the glass, using my hands placed around my face to block out the glare of the sun. The floor is covered in a grey film of dust. It is thin, just a few days old.

It is obvious to me by now that I will get no easy answers. Few 154

people look at me in the streets. One, the judge, has run away from me.

The two, three hundred people whose names I knew have vanished. A Marshal who is plainly not a leader of men. A woman who pretends not to know me or her predecessor, pretends reluctantly perhaps, out of duty, obligation. That I do not know.

They seem to be trying to forget. That would be a tragedy. It is only the weak who forget their past. If you kill a man who has no memory of his place in the world, none of the ties that bind him to his community, can you say you have really killed a man at all? What is a man but his past and his companions? There would be no loss felt. With peoples too. Only a weak people forgets its past, a nation that can be wiped out and restarted without anyone noticing. In place of a history, only a silence with no one to hear it. A pathetic people and if that is what they choose then they deserve what comes to them.

My people have been given a history by war. They were trimmed down the better to face an inhospitable world. That is the history of these people. The man running away, the one who knocked me over, the people sitting in the kitchens ignoring me, the Marshal, Elba, they should not forget where they came from. Born of hunger and necessity they are the survivors, they are the ones that had to bear the burden of the future, a future that the weak impinged upon. Do they feel guilt?

That is not their burden. There is no question of guilt anywhere in this land, there has been no guilt since we first started fighting, since we first started slitting each other’s throats in a frantic bid to survive.

These people do not have the imagination to feel guilt. They do not have the right to feel it.

Is it simply a case of forcing them into remembrance, forced memory?

Is it simply a case of gathering enough proof so they cannot deny me, 155

until they take a breath and pluck up the courage to stare the past – and me – in the face?

Duty is what they should feel. Not guilt but duty. They have a duty as the last representatives of a once-dominant species to remember that which came before. For we have nothing else.

It is disappointing to me what they seem to have become. Shadows.

Ghosts. Have I created them like this? Have I scared them into hiding in the corners like children? No. I too am the product of a shattered world. But I showed how it can be mended, how it can be pulled together piece by bloody piece.

I see them approach from afar, one much taller than the other. Elba and Amhara. They have already seen me. I stop and wait for them to come closer. Amhara wears a red coat. Again I am reminded of when I first saw her. I have the same feeling now I had then.

‘Morning,’ Elba says.

‘Hello Elba. Hello Amhara.’ The girl looks at the ground.

Elba continues, ‘I am sorry if I was abrupt last night.’

I shake my head.

‘Would you like to try again?’ she asks.

‘Try calling again?’

‘No. Well, yes. I am trying to invite you to dinner again,’ she says.

‘Tonight?’

‘I would like that,’ I reply.

‘Good.’ She does not say goodbye but turns and is off. I watch them make their way down the street. At the corner, Amhara turns to look at me. I wave at her. She does not wave back.

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There is a limit to what I can do during daylight but there are at least two things. I can start knocking on doors, trying to find someone who I recognise or someone who will talk to me. I can also head back into the orange groves and to the clearing in the middle of it, the place where we hanged the weak.

Of course there is the risk that they will shut the gates when I am out and not allow me back in but I will have to take that risk. I want to find evidence of my work. Some documents were stored in a hut on the site and if they are still there might help my case.

On my way to the gates I see Andalus in the distance. I am annoyed at his wanderings but I cannot keep him close, in my vision, all the time and still pursue the truth.

I am not used to limitations. On the island the limits were only of my choosing.

I call to him but he is too far off. He is a grey shape in the distance, a shape broken up by the heat mirage. I am reminded of the first morning at the town gates. I run to catch up with him. He turns a corner and is gone. I beat the wall of a house with my fist. The door to the house opens. It opens towards me. I can see a man’ s shadow between gap and frame. I wait for him to show his face. He does not come out. The door begins to close. I shout and run towards it but I am too late.

I walk through the trees, through the dappled, green light, dragging my hands through the grass and along the bark of the trees.

I walk through the light, the sun cooled by the shade of the citrus leaves. I lift my hands to my face. I smell the acids, the oils. I realise, in some ways I am entranced by my old town, by what it has become. Entranced and frustrated. Can one give oneself over 157

to love completely that which is not perfect, that which is wrong?

I want to say yes. Part of me wants to yield to the town. I know I could slip back into its embrace, yield myself to the caresses of Elba, forget about Abel, about Tora, about my part in all this. I could raise the girl, perhaps start a family of my own. Begin over.

Though that may not be possible. Elba has reached the age where it would be dangerous for her to give birth. A surrogate family then. Something not perfect, something incomplete, impure. Too far on in history for purity.

And too many questions. Too many things left unfinished for there to be satisfaction in a quiet life.

Some of the fruit is so low I have to duck as I walk under the branches. In places the thick foliage makes it dark. I walk deep into the orchard seeing no one. There is no sound other than my footsteps. I am amazed at the abundance of fruit. Some of it is overripe, as if they have more than enough and could not be bothered to pick it. In my day we harvested what we could and kept watch over it to prevent theft. But there is no one here.

I break through the trees suddenly and find myself in a sun-filled clearing. Trees give way to long green grass, and in the centre, quite incongruous for our settlement, a stone hut, about four by four metres.

Though the surrounds have changed much, somehow I have found my way here easily. All those years ago there were just a few trees. Trees that were sturdier than orange trees. A few of these are still standing, I notice, still standing in a circle around the hut.

I kept this place fenced off. It was a mile from the settlement gates, not quite out of sight. I have been walking over the graves for the last hundred metres. We used to bury them here, here where they died. We 158

started at the hut and buried them in circles, spiralling away from the centre as we had to bury more and more.

We buried them in shallow graves with their faces pointing skywards. That way, some believed, they could rise again to join a better world, a world made possible by their passing. Often several bodies to a grave. We buried them but our burial was not a forgetting, was not meant to be a forgetting. I am angry that the markers seem to have been removed. We were careful to mark the graves with a small pile of stones. But they have not been moved. I scuff the grass with my foot and disturb a pile. Not moved, just buried and forgotten. At least they are still here but they should not be overgrown like this. If there was so much fuss about what we did to these people, why then have they not been remembered? This is not remembrance, leaving the graves to be overgrown by grass and fruit trees. I have a vision of a corpse in the earth. The roots of an orange tree pierce the earth, pierce the bag, pierce the flesh of man. The fruit of the trees that feed the town nourished by the death of our ancestors.

On the other hand, better a fruit orchard and undisturbed peace than dry ground, a baking sun and a few small stones as a monument in a bleak landscape.

I have brought the island stone with me. I remove it from my bag and look around the clearing for somewhere to put it. There is no obvious place. It seems a hollow gesture but I place the stone on the ground before me. It is darker than the others I have disturbed. I straighten up and take a deep breath. I am left feeling flat.

I walk up to the hut. The one window is boarded up though not entirely. Two planks form an x. The door has been nailed shut. I peer in. It takes a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. There is 159

not much to see. At first glance it seems everything has been removed.

But not everything. A white shape lies sprawled across the table inside.

I jerk back. The shape of a head, two lumps at the end for feet, an arm hanging down at one side. It does not move. I know of course it is not a body. But the sight of it brought it back. Real enough. An imagined body standing in place of hundreds before it. It fills the space of the dead.

I kick the door in. I approach the shape slowly, walking through dust. There are dust motes in the air like flies. They shimmer in the shaft of light coming through the doorway. I walk up to it, reach out my hand, touch it. It gives in easily when I touch it. It is one of the bags we stored people in before burial. For a moment I think I will see Tora’s mother when I tear it open, as if she had died yesterday, but all I see inside are more of the bags. They seem to have been arranged to look like a corpse. Why I don’t know. I pull them out one by one. More dust.

There is a scuttling from behind me. I wheel around sharply but see nothing. At the door I squint against the light. I can see no one. ‘Who’s there?’ I shout. No answer. I walk around the hut to the other side but there is nothing and I hear no more sounds. A rabbit, I assume. I re-enter the hut and dismantle the pretend corpse. I find myself sneezing from the dust. The noise startles me again.

I look around the room. Everything has been removed, except for the table and the bags. There was never much call for equipment. A chair, a table, a small platform, a cabinet, some rope, a stove for heating food for the guards, knives, twine, bags. That was it.

The cabinet, which used to contain records, is gone.

I walk to the far wall. I raise my hand to it. I run my fingers over the marks. We made a small mark with a stone on the wall of the hut.

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The seventh line we drew crossed the previous six. At the end of fifty-two of these we started a new row. Why we measured the dead in this way, the way we measured time, I cannot recall. Did each death mean another day’s life granted to the settlement? Perhaps. But it is a sign of respect too. A mark, inscribed in stone, will never die.

I step back. The marks reach across the wall and from floor to ceiling. I am surrounded by them. Suffocated.

I know how many of them there are. I do not have to count. There are nine hundred and seventeen scratches on the wall.

I can remember the name behind the first mark, the name behind the last, some in between. I tried on the island to remember more. I lay on my bed each night and went over the names, glancing over at the cave wall. I willed myself to remember more. After a while I’d force myself to stop by listening only to the wind, the waves. I did not think about Bran, about Tora, Abel, about my banishment. Just the names.

Only the names. The faces, mostly blank, nameless, pushed against the rock of my cave, against the wall of days, straining to get through. I shut my eyes to keep them out.

When Tora came to me after I hanged her mother I held her close.

I hugged her and felt my heart leap. But then I looked at my hands on her back. I remembered the blood, the blood of her mother on my hands, hands separated from Tora’s skin by just a thin dress. I let go of her with that hand, held on tighter with the other. I think though, it seemed as if I wanted to let her go. I did not. I wanted to carry on holding her. On and on. She looked hurt. I could not explain. She broke my grip, brushed past me and went to pour herself a glass of water.

For each one of the nine hundred and seventeen I gave to myself the task of pronouncing the c-grade. I took this on myself. For each 161

I pronounced death. Some cried. Some tried to attack me. Most were too feeble. I have been cursed a thousand times.

I close the door and go outside and again walk round the back of the hut. It is overgrown, the trees unpruned. My feet bury themselves in rotting fruit, weeds, dead branches. Like mud. I kick at it. My boots dislodge something hard. I bend down to pick it up. It is a few centimetres long and caked in brown earth. It is not wood, it is much too hard for that. I wipe off some of the earth. I can see the pores now. It is bone, of that I’m sure. From what I do not know. It could be anything: dog, human. I kick away more of the earth and get down to my hands and knees and dig a little deeper. The digging is tough and I can only go a short way down, barely scratching the surface. With better implements I could, I know, uncover whole skeletons. But what would that prove? Without names it proves nothing. But I do find another. I pull it out. It is from the leg of a human. I wrench it out of the earth, stones and leaves scattering as I do. I stand there with it. I stand there with the bone of a man’s leg in my hand and I tilt my head back and my eyes shut against the light.

There are patterns on my eyelids made by the light. I open and close them, again and again, hoping the shapes will go away. They return brighter and brighter. I begin to see their faces. Their faces start to come back. I am surrounded by trees. From each branch hangs a corpse. Ants crawl over their skin. The corpses stretch back into the grove, back far into the dark of the orchard. The black bodies sway gently in the breeze. I can hear the ropes creak.

It is late afternoon when I get back to the town. I make my way to the shelter. Andalus has re-appeared. He is dozing in the late sun, leaning 162

against a wall. I sit next to him, our shoulders touching. He wakes but does not move. I tilt my head towards him. In a way his bulk is comforting. Real. I pat him on the hand. ‘Andalus,’ I say. ‘Andalus. I am getting nowhere. I came here to save us but I am getting nowhere.’

He does not answer. He has his arms resting on his legs. An image crosses my mind. I saw this picture as a child. I found it in a ruin my group came across as we moved south. In the picture were creatures shaped like men but with bigger jaws and heavier foreheads. They were covered in black hair and standing in a forest of the lushest green. To my child’s mind they were both frightening and alluring. If I think back, perhaps that is what helped make me more curious about the past than others: a picture of strange beasts in a strange land. I showed it to no one. My parents had been dead a long time – I only ever had a vague idea of what they looked like – and I had few friends. But it was something I would not have shared even if things had been different.

I kept it for years. One of the animals was sitting in exactly the same position as Andalus is now. How has he come to this? I am beginning to believe he is not simply traumatised by whatever happened to him in Axum but has lost his reason as well. The possibility has to exist that nothing happened to him. No big trauma, no big event, no mutiny, uprising or trial. Perhaps he lost his reason and simply wandered off one day never to return. Kept alive by the colony as an indication of humanity to a once-great ruler, one day he simply slipped his velvet shackles and sloped off. A not entirely unreasonable explanation.

I think again of another possibility. He is cleverer than I am. He spies me on an island, begins an act, an elaborate ruse. I bring him back, he worms his way into favour here and leads an army back across the seas and the plains to re-conquer Axum, take it back from the mutineers, 163

from the third force, and impose law and order. He is biding his time, waiting for the right moment to speak. In the end his play will out.

I wonder how it would be if the situation was reversed. If I had been exiled, sailed unknowing into Axum territory, encountered Andalus alone on an island, what would I have done?

I continue: ‘They are hiding from us, Andalus. Of that I am becoming convinced. What other explanation could there be? It has only been ten years. They have locked away Abel and Tora. Either that or Abel is directing it. His name is still on the wall. Anyone who knows me well remains out of sight while I wander the streets. While I am here their lives are in hiatus. The only people allowed on the street are children and the ones they know I won ’t know.’

I lean my head against the wall.

‘Of course, I have no proof of this. It is merely a theory. And I don’t understand why. Why not put an arrow through me and be done with it? Why not face me and say, “No, you are not allowed. Be gone.” It seems weak. A mark of weakness.’

I look over to him. ‘I need your help, Andalus. I will get to the truth.

I will force it out of these people one way or the other. I will force them to acknowledge me, like I, like we in fact, forced them to face the truth of our situation all those years ago. But it will be quicker if you help.’

I turn to him. ‘Don’t you want to fix things? Don’t you want an end to all this? To all the thoughts, all the ghosts, the hundreds of ghosts?’

And then he shakes his head. It is so slight I might have imagined it. I wait but there is no further movement.

‘Is that your answer, Andalus? Is that your answer? No? Don’t you feel anything?’

His head is pointed away from me now. It is still. Perhaps he was 164

just moving to get away. Not answering. His eyes are closed. I pull his face towards me and they open. ‘Did you give me an answer?’

His eyes have a vacant look. They remind me of the ocean we sailed across. Blue-grey. Lifeless. But somewhere in there, drowned perhaps, a sapphire city, a memorial to a great man, a memory, a history.

When I arrive at Elba’s later, Amhara opens the door. Before I can say anything she has run off leaving me to enter the flat on my own.

‘Hello?’

‘In here. In the kitchen.’

Elba is bent over a small stove.

‘I thought all those had long since been confiscated,’ I say, nodding in the direction of the stove.

She laughs. ‘No. We are allowed now.’

‘So you do acknowledge things have changed,’ I say.

She looks around, a puzzled expression on her face. ‘Of course.

Things change all the time.’ It is as if she is challenging me.

There is a smell in the kitchen that makes my stomach rumble.

I have not eaten all day. Amhara rushes in and goes straight to her mother, whispering in her ear.

Elba turns around. ‘My daughter would like you to tell her a story.’

She smiles apologetically. Amhara turns sharply and looks angrily at her mother. It is only momentarily though and I might be mistaken. I decide to ignore it.

‘A story? Let me think. Would you like to hear more about the island?’

She nods her head but does not look at me.

‘Well then,’ I sit down at the table. ‘I lived in a cave on the island. It 165

rained all the time. Not like here. I had not seen the sun for ten years, other than as a white disc through clouds. It was a dull world: grey, brown, pale green. These are not the colours of life. I might have given you the impression last time that the island was paradise. It was not.

It was a hard life. Not unbearable certainly. But not to feel the sun on your skin for ten years, only the rain, is not a good way to live. And the silence. I would see things.’ I stop abruptly. I had not meant to say that.

‘Who else was there?’ asks the child.

‘Who else? No one. No one else was there. It was just me. Me, the birds, the fish, the worms.’

‘What did you see?’

I look hard at her, then at Elba. ‘I saw people. I mean, I know they weren’t actually there but if you’re alone for a long time you start to imagine things. And part of me wanted them to be there, wanted them to come back.’

‘Did you miss your friends?’

I am glad she has slightly misunderstood. ‘There was a woman,’ I glance over at Elba. ‘There was a woman I missed. I hope she missed me a little. There was another man. He was once a friend of mine. I did not miss him much.’

‘Why not?’

‘He was the one who sent me away, who conspired with the townspeople to have me removed from power and banished to the edges of Bran.’

‘Why did he do that?’

I pause. ‘People felt a change was needed. I was no longer needed.’

Amhara thinks for a while. ‘So you were alone.’

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‘Yes. But then one day I found someone. I was walking along the coast and I spied him from some distance off lying on the sand. He had been washed up. I nursed him back to health gave him food and shelter.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘I brought him back to Bran. He is a very important man. I knew I had to bring him back. Our future might depend on it. I left him where I am staying. He is not very talkative.’ I say this with a smile.

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose he had some kind of shock and is unable to speak for now. It happens sometimes. In war people see things they don’t like. It shocks them. Sometimes they become silent. I have seen it many times.’

‘Has it happened to you?’

‘No. I have been lucky.’

Her face down, she seems to be pondering what I have said.

‘How is he your friend if he doesn’t speak? He must speak for you to know him.’

‘That is a good question. I knew him years ago, years before he arrived on the island. His name is Andalus, General of Axum, a very powerful man. Years ago I was very powerful here too. You would have been born soon after I left and stopped being Marshal of this settlement. Between us we brought peace. We had known long years of war. But we ended it because we could see that it was of no use. We ended the senseless deaths of thousands of young people.’

I look at Elba to see if I am going too far but she has her back to me and does not turn around.

‘This was more than twenty years ago, twenty-two years in fact 167

since I last saw him. Our two groups were at peace. We had promised to take care of our own and never to go to the other’s territory. Never.

So I thought I would not see him again. And then he turns up on the island. It got me thinking.’

The girl asks, ‘What did you think?’

‘I began to wonder if we were about to go to war again. Don’t you think it’s strange that my friend should turn up in Bran territory after promising that neither he nor his kind would ever come near us again?’

At this point Elba turns around and says, ‘That’s enough stories.’

Amhara says, ‘I would like to hear more.’ She looks at Elba, who gives in easily.

‘Alright. A bit longer,’ she says.

I continue, ‘There was another reason I came back.’

‘What was that?’

‘He and I were powerful men, with ideas that suited the time. Some didn’t like them, said the ideas were barbaric. They tried to stop us.’

‘Were they right?’

I don’t answer. Instead I say, ‘I’ve come back to try and fix things.’ I look at her mother when I say this.

Elba puts down the plate she was holding. ‘She’s too young, Bran.

Amhara, no more questions.’

The child stares at me from across the table, ignoring her mother.

After a few moments she says, ‘I would like to see your friend.’

‘Your mother has seen him,’ I say.

‘Have I?’ She seems to forget her instructions to Amhara.

‘Yes. At the kitchens. I came in with him.’

Elba furrows her brow. ‘I don’t remember him, sorry.’

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‘He was sitting opposite me. You have also seen me with him in the town.’

She shakes her head. ‘I am sorry.’

I am surprised. He is not a forgettable sight.

Elba turns to Amhara and says, ‘Now it is bedtime. Say goodnight.’

The girl ignores her. She looks at me and says, ‘She’s not my mother, you know.’

Elba drops a pan and rounds on her. ‘You are not to say that.’ Her voice is a breathless whisper. ‘What did we say?’

Amhara looks at the table. She has a scowl on her face. ‘Well, you’re not. You just pretend to be.’

‘Off you go! Goodnight.’

Amhara walks away without a word.

I smile apologetically at Elba. For a moment I do not know what to say. I want to ask about what Amhara said, but Elba speaks first. ‘The child is overly imaginative. I wish you wouldn’t go putting ideas into her head. The story of Andalus and you is a good one, very creative, but should not be told to a little girl.’

‘It is not a story, Elba. It needs to be told. And people need to listen.

And I don’t believe someone can be overly imaginative. Without ideas, visions, we may as well be dogs.’ I surprise myself with this outburst.

Elba says nothing.

I cede, ‘But yes, perhaps a story of impending war is not one to be told to a child before bed.’

She nods her head. ‘I am going to dish up. I have some wine,’ inclining her head in the direction of a cupboard. ‘Would you pour some?’

We do not talk much after that and the silences are slightly un-comfortable. I want to talk about Amhara’s comments, about Elba 169

not remembering Andalus, but I take care to avoid making her angry.

Towards the end of the evening though, I tell her about my earlier talk with the Marshal. I notice she does not look at me or pass comment throughout. ‘What do you think?’ I ask eventually.

She looks straight at me. ‘I think the Marshal is right. And I don’t think you should concern yourself with these stories anymore.’

This takes me aback. ‘Right? Right about what?’

‘Just right. Right about everything. Our first Marshal was Madara.

A great man, albeit a violent one. He was a saviour to some, a beast to others. But whatever he was, he is dead to us. We have moved on. You should not concern yourself with altering names.’

I do not know what she means. ‘No. You are incorrect. We have to acknowledge these alterations. We have to find the persons responsible.

I can see that the torpor of life here means that people seem to accept whatever stories they are told because not to would be too much trouble.’ I have been banging my fork on the table. She covers my hand with hers and holds a finger to her lips.

‘You’ll wake the child.’

I nod. ‘I apologise. But Madara is a fiction, a made-up person, a character in a play.’

Elba gets up, just as she did last night and goes to stand by the window. ‘Have you heard of the legend of Bran? You must have since your name is Bran. We tend to know things that are close to us.’

‘I have.’

‘Then you will know Bran too was once a great king. He ruled in a time when no one can remember, when no one can remember having been told of. He ruled a kingdom located somewhere in the east. Somewhere. Head east and as soon as you see the flowing rivers, 170

soaring mountains and fruit falling off trees, you will know you are there. They say strange creatures live there.’

She pauses. ‘He came to power at a dangerous time for his people.

They were weak. But he defeated all who came before him. He went looking for neighbours to destroy. He protected his people, made them strong, made them rulers of all others. Then one day he died. He was shot in the back by one of his own marksmen. An accident. They pulled the arrow out but that was what killed him. He bled to death and his blood soaked into the ground of his beloved land.’

She talks as if reciting something memorised.

‘The people were frightened. Their saviour was gone. They took a knife and cut off his head. They took it to the edge of the kingdom, the shoreline. They placed it on a stake facing out to sea. The glare was so terrible, so frightening, it warned off all invaders. His country was never conquered and it became a peaceful place without him, with just the memory of him.’

‘Are you saying that is what has happened to me?’

Elba scoffs. ‘No. It is just a story. Something that happened. That might have happened.’

I go over to join her at the window. I hesitate, then put my hand on her shoulder. To my surprise she tilts her head, so her cheek is resting on my fingers.

‘What did she mean?’

‘Who?’

‘Amhara. What did she mean when she said you weren’t her mother?’

She stiffens beneath my touch.

‘She is approaching a difficult age.’