Heriot Read online

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  In a room of Guard-on-the-Rock Betony sat leaning forward, elbows on his knees, smiling a little, and talking intently with his doll-like bride. In the Tower of the Hero, Carlyon looked across the room, looked past a cluster of wildly gossiping friends and lifted his glass ironically to Luce, seeing in Luce’s simple gaze something he had learned, over many years, to recognise in his own. Behind him, Izachel sat listlessly, looking like the shell of a man, his centre burned away.

  And out in the night, not particularly comfortable on his straw bed, though he was used to straw, Heriot listened to Cayley breathing loudly beside him, worked on by such exhaustion he suddenly felt guilty, feeling he had used the child’s offered energy and time unfairly. Then he felt a movement outside, heard the gate scrape and clink. Quickly he tossed more hay across sleeping Cayley, turning as light swung around his darkened room and fell on his mattress. He flung his arm over his eyes for it seemed unreasonably bright.

  ‘You are distinctly favoured, Magician,’ sighed a voice behind the light. ‘It is the man visiting you, not the King. He seldom appears, this man, but he has come out at midnight to speak to you.’

  ‘Lord King!’ Heriot said, and was silent.

  ‘I have Cloud with me,’ the King said. ‘But only by way of simple company. Magician, as I understand it from Lord Glass, who has sought to be your advocate, you have chained yourself up because you feel you have transformed yourself into a monster and you wish to exemplify this state in the most ironical fashion.’

  ‘Since I was relieving you of one prodigy, Lord King, I thought I might as well offer you another in his place,’ Heriot replied.

  ‘What makes you prodigious?’ asked the King and Heriot was silent for a while.

  Then he said in the slow voice of someone unravelling a mystery, ‘After that first vision, back when I was a boy, no one behaved the same to me, and since then, I suppose, I’ve been trying to get back to what I used to be … contented with my true place in the world, contented and complete …’

  ‘You’re asking for paradise,’ the King replied. ‘Take it from me, life thrusts us on, and there is no true going back.’

  ‘But I had it once,’ Heriot cried. ‘I was there. Everything around me was my meaning.’

  ‘If you hadn’t changed, something else would have,’ Hoad replied. The candlelight shone up into his eyes. ‘I’m sure you know that, in the beginning I didn’t want to be King, nor did I expect to be. But the moment came, and immediately I began imagining myself as a man who might do good. I was tempted by power – the power of remaking the kingdom by the conceit of kingship – and so I embraced the possibility. And now I cannot imagine myself as anything but King, struggling to achieve peace. A lot of people support me, though there’s still a number that don’t.’ He sighed and looked into the shadowed air over Heriot’s head. ‘You could support my ambitions. You could help me, even though such dreams have their dangers.’ He sighed again. ‘Those of us who think, either grow discontented with our setting in the world or make the world so uneasy around us so that it strives to work us out of its flesh, as if we were festering thorns. And then we must live ever after like parasites trying to eat our way back in.’

  ‘I’m nothing true here,’ Heriot said. ‘Just a magical function living in the city’s gut.’

  ‘What would you rather be?’ asked the King. He was dressed in grey, the colour of his sighs. All his colour lay in the glance he now turned on Heriot. And, in considering this question, Heriot was brought to admit to himself again that, by now, he didn’t want to surrender his magical nature, and return to what he once had been. He groaned at the contradiction and shook his head helplessly.

  ‘You are not singular in any tendency you might have to be monstrous,’ said the King. ‘We can all be monstrous, and balancing a complicated nature is the most wearing of all responsibilities. Think of that.’ Heriot was silent. ‘For the rest, as King, I am interested in you only as a Magician and in the function a Magician might have in Hoad.’

  A moment later he was gone into the night. Heriot stared after him, their conversation turning over in his head. After a while he put that seething head down on his arms, which were folded across his knees. He fell into a tense cramped sleep, only to wake in the first dark grey light of dawn, with Cayley leaning heavily against him, then waking, too, as if he sensed that Heriot was awake, blinking and swearing with astonishment.

  ‘So, are you going to stay here then?’ he said in a resigned voice.

  ‘It’s hard to explain …’ Heriot said, sliding his fingers down between the iron fetter around his ankle and the protesting skin beneath.

  ‘It doesn’t make sense to make things rougher than they need to be,’ Cayley said simply. ‘But it’s a fairy tale, isn’t it? You think you’ve grown too strange to be born. Maybe, says the rest of the world, but we’re all strange, this way and that. But me – I’m a bit stranger than most, you mutter on, mutter on. That’s why, ’n’t it?’

  Heriot grinned unwillingly. ‘That’s more or less why,’ he agreed. ‘But already the idea of it is something different from what it was when it came to me last night.’

  ‘I used to hear fairy tales and that,’ Cayley said. ‘My mother told them, over and over. And if you tell them over and over like that, they get to be true, don’t they?’

  Heriot looked straight ahead, smoothing his tangled hair.

  ‘See, another man wouldn’t do what you’re doing,’ said Cayley. ‘Another man would lie low and get what he could get. But you leap around, thumping your chest and saying Look at me! I’m a monster! and that’s a fairytale thing to do.’

  ‘I’ve used that word too much. It’s suddenly gone all cosy on me,’ mumbled Heriot. ‘If I’m a monster I’m a cosy monster.’

  The morning light grew, not lighter but bluer. Cayley put his mouth against Heriot’s ear. ‘You’re not a monster but I am,’ he said in a very quiet voice. ‘I’m not as old as you, but I’m a long way ahead of you in being one.’

  Heriot felt the hair prickle on his neck at the dark, breathy tone. He tried to smile, but his smile refused to be completed.

  ‘You stay in here, you let me go loose,’ Cayley went on. ‘You might save the city from yourself, but you leave it open to me. It’s had its turn with me, that city. Soon I’m going to have my turn with the city, unless you come out to watch over me. Listen!’

  Heriot listened. He could tell that, in the following moments of silence Cayley was struggling to break down something of that terrible, guarded blankness he carried within him.

  ‘Once my mother tried to cut my throat. I’ve told you that. She did it out of a sort of mad sadness about things. Not that it worked, but I still carry the mark of her sadness And then there was the man I call my stepdadda. He lay there drunk, and his boy, my little half-brother, was coughing and dying under a blanket. I come out from under the bed. Twice …’ he held up two fingers. ‘Twice I put the point of the knife I had back then against my stepdadda’s eye – wrinkled his eyelid up with it. See, the rest of him, it was full of bones … I couldn’t be sure I would get past them back then. No point in just hurting him for nothing, was there? An eye – that’s a sure way in, ’n’t it?’

  Heriot shrugged. ‘We often think terrible things and don’t do them.’

  ‘What do you think I am?’ Cayley said derisively. ‘I’d have done it. Sometimes now, well, I could cry at having let the chance go by. But I couldn’t be sure I’d get away with it. That stopped me. They’d have stretched me, and I wouldn’t stretch for him. See, I got to thinking I might be allowed just one –’ he bent one of his fingers down ‘… and my stepdadda wasn’t the right one. Not the one I wanted. Not the one I’ve been practising to have!’

  Heriot turned his head very slowly. Cayley wasn’t looking at him, but out into the growing light, a dreamy expression on his patched face as if he were remembering some wonderful honeyed flavour, still tasting its ghost on his lips.


  ‘Things was looking up for me out there,’ he said regretfully, turning to Heriot. ‘Eating and sleeping and that, working out with Voicey Landis. But now? Shall I live in the straw with you? Steal a chain to match? I can be all sorts of company. You say it and I’ll be it.’

  There was a silence

  ‘You’re a clever little bastard, aren’t you!’ Heriot murmured at last. ‘You’ve been brought up so badly I can’t resist looking after you. So undo the lock on this chain and we’ll go home.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Cayley said, busily drawing a long pin from the thick hem of his shirt. There was a blob of sealing wax on its end.

  ‘Don’t you know it!’ Heriot exclaimed derisively, as his companion began to work on the lock, which Heriot himself had closed on his own ankle the night before.

  ‘I know this,’ Cayley said indistinctly. ‘You like playing just as if you were a little one. All this – it’s nothing but a game, and I can’t be bothered with the rules.’

  ‘It’s not simple,’ Heriot said. ‘Once I watched children playing a game in the Third Ring – they were practising for love. They tied it down with names and running and kissing, chasing, and catching and screaming …’

  ‘There’s a lot of screaming to it sometimes,’ Cayley agreed, working at the lock.

  ‘Listen. A child from one line would try to fetch away another from the other line back on to his own side. “The boy – no – the burning boy shall fetch – or was it catch – the girl and he shall be her lover.” Do you know that game?’

  ‘I’ve already said I don’t play,’ Cayley pointed out.

  ‘I play,’ Heriot said. ‘I’m playing all the time – acting Magician, acting monster, acting man to see which feels right. It’s what you call a metaphorical life …’

  ‘I wouldn’t call it that, just playing, playing, playing,’ Cayley put in.

  ‘Perhaps I’m a bit like those children,’ Heriot said, ‘acting out future choices so I’ll get a bit of practice before they come upon me. I thought it might be right to live in this cage, but maybe everyone else is right and I’m wrong. One thing’s certain, you need looking after, you threat to the world.’

  ‘So do you,’ Cayley said. ‘Need looking after, I mean.’

  ‘But it hurt my feelings that Dysart couldn’t look at me directly,’ Heriot complained. ‘I mean he grabbed me, but he was careful to look past me.’

  ‘He was scared.’ Cayley twisted his face, still concentrating on feeling his way into the lock with the pin. ‘But I always look direct, you’ll never scare me.’ The lock clicked, and the anklet fell open with a ringing sound. ‘See, I’m ruined for beauty and all that, but suppose you was to drop down right this moment into a pool of blood or turn into a devil with looking-glass eyes I’d still look straight at you. “That’s him, that’s my man. Hey you! Stop fooling around!” I’d say.’

  ‘A devil with looking-glass eyes.’ Heriot was momentarily diverted. He laughed with sudden ease. ‘Now there’s a thought.’

  ‘I made it up,’ cried Cayley with a shout of triumphant laughter. ‘All the time I’m learning your words, catching your ideas, stealing thoughts. Pity to lose a skill.’

  ‘Watch out – words can be an illness,’ Heriot said, but without bitterness. He stood up, then cautiously moved his ankle from side to side.

  ‘They won’t sicken me,’ boasted Cayley. ‘I’ve nearly died of thoughts already – always other people’s, not my own. You don’t sicken twice.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Heriot asked with weary amusement as they came out of the cage together, leaving its door swinging open behind them.

  ‘Your sickness,’ said Cayley, dancing a little, like a dog pleased at the prospect of a walk. ‘It’s got a name ’n’t it? Im-ag-in-ation!’ He pronounced the one word as if it was four.

  The morning was already laced with the voices of birds. The two-faced woman, the dwarfs, all slept. The lions paced backwards and forwards.

  ‘It’s so beautiful,’ said Heriot, looking around him with astonishment. ‘Cayley, it’s so beautiful. All over again!’

  The garden was filling with a mysterious and tender light, each tree, each leaf, each blade of grass displaying itself against a colour between grey and silver. Ill at ease with the rest of humanity Heriot found there was a space in the morning into which he fitted exactly. ‘Supposing the simple act of asking “Am I human?” makes you human?’ he said, coming to a stop.

  ‘Supposing,’ said Cayley from his side.

  ‘And who hasn’t got a beast in them anyway?’ Heriot asked again.

  ‘Supposing … just supposing,’ Cayley agreed, nodding.

  ‘I’ve tried being good,’ Heriot said, ‘being clever too … but there isn’t a final answer. I’m wonderful compared to Carlyon for instance, better off too. His cage might be a whole island wide, but there’s no one to unlock his collar. He’s the great freak of Hoad, displayed.’

  ‘Maybe he sits and asks, “What am I?”,’ Cayley suggested. ‘It’s easy to ask.’

  ‘I think he did ask once, and didn’t like the answer,’ Heriot replied. ‘I don’t think he’s asked properly since.’ The gate to the zoo was a little ajar.

  ‘That royal old fox,’ Cayley said half admiringly. ‘It’s like a little message, saying, “I know you’ll go”, isn’t it?’

  They crossed into the First Ring, watched by the guards at the gate. High above them, over in the Tower of the Lion, a window shone palely, picked out by the light in the east. They moved on further, the light deepened and suddenly became miraculous. Heriot found himself weeping, for he thought the morning was extending an irrevocable welcome back into the world of natural men, even though he was bringing his occupant with him, unruly but not outlawed.

  ‘I’m a true man after all,’ he said to the air and to Cayley.

  ‘You can do better than just being a true man,’ said Cayley, dancing around him.

  ‘I value it,’ Heriot exclaimed. ‘You will too, one day.’

  Cayley’s dancing stopped. ‘I won’t ever live to be one,’ he said seriously. ‘I’m more opposite to all that than you guess.’

  ‘We might both live for ever,’ Heriot suggested. ‘I’m becoming immortal, walking in this light. I’ve got a lot of questions unanswered, but I’ll stay still for a little, not fretting and not asking them.’

  He looked up into the sky, which was beginning to colour, its blush deepening from moment to moment, as if his stare had set love and blood free to contend across the clear skin of the air. Heriot couldn’t think of a more adequate response than falling on his knees and staring ahead of him, his face rapt and still.

  ‘It’s so beautiful,’ he repeated. ‘If only I could just dissolve into it.’ The morning grew if anything more intense. But then he shook himself. ‘Here!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m getting lost. Hug me back. I want someone to touch me.’

  ‘I’m not good at it,’ Cayley said, but obediently knelt and, putting his thin arms around Heriot, hugged him energetically.

  ‘Good enough!’ Heriot told him. ‘Rough but real.’ He looked up at the trees, their top twigs burning furiously with the approach of day, quite unable to see Cayley’s face, which was taking on an indescribable expression, tender, triumphant yet menacing, the expression of a demon, not of the night, but of the bright morning.

  26

  Linnet Meant It

  ‘You’re all I ever really wanted. You’re my true kingdom,’ Dysart said to Linnet. ‘The city was only a sign of you.’ At the moment it seemed completely true. ‘Back there in the dream I just cut the world out. I didn’t want to know anything, because there was nothing worth knowing any more. I wasn’t even curious. I didn’t want to know what was going to happen next. I didn’t understand.’

  ‘Understand what?’ Linnet asked.

  ‘You’re my true kingdom,’ Dysart told her.

  ‘It was always meant to be,’ Linnet said. Her happy voice came to Dysart from his own sh
adow, which lay across her. ‘But we had to be tested.’ He couldn’t tell that, as Linnet spoke, she was testing every part of her memory and awareness, fearful of detecting some secret contamination of her own will by the will of the Magician of Hoad. She couldn’t bear the thought that she and Dysart had only achieved each other because Heriot had somehow slipped desire under their skins.

  But there was nothing there that was not her own. Heriot might have hovered around her as she risked her life and climbed the wall by its disintegrating steps, but her declaration of love was hers alone.

  Outside she could detect the first alteration of light. It was still dark, but it was a transparent darkness. Morning was on the way. ‘My father will be looking for me,’ she said with a sigh. ‘There are terrible fights ahead of us. He wants to be the one who chooses my husband.’

  ‘Let’s stroll out of here. Let’s walk like civilised sentries around the rim of the castle,’ Dysart suggested. ‘Just once round the walls. Then you can go back and fight with your father, and I’ll go and argue with mine. Don’t straighten the bed! Don’t touch a thing. I’ll come back, see the mark of your head on my pillow, and I’ll know it was all true.’

  Linnet stood up, feeling so light and free without her clothes, she was reluctant to dress again. But the night had become part of a time that was only attainable through memory. Day was bearing down on her. She slipped a linen chemise over a silk one. Dysart buttoned a crumpled shirt, and they dressed, putting on the world along with yesterday’s grubby clothes. ‘Your father …’ began Dysart. ‘Linnet, you must think hard about what it really means … being in love with me.’