The Milord agreed and they rolled the dice on the floor of the barn, and once again Lash lost.
But as he stood up and prepared to go the Milord said, ‘Wait. I do not love the Turks, and you have played honourably with me, neither cursing your luck nor accusing me of cheating, as most men would have done after such a run on the dice. Moreover you need at least one horse to carry your companion. I will stake either one against a single hair of your beard.’
So the stakes were agreed and they rolled the dice for the last time, and now Lash won.
‘Now choose,’ said the Milord. ‘The black is the better bred and the better looking, but he was bred in the plains. The bay was bred among mountains, and has the heart of a lion.’
‘Then I will take the bay,’ said Lash.
He fetched Restaur Vax down from the loft and wrapped him well against the storm and put him on the bay horse and took him by goat-paths and the paths of the hunter to a cave that he knew of on Mount Athur. But first he bound the Milord and the farmer and his wife with cords, so that they could tell the Turks that they had been forced into all they did.
When Restaur Vax woke in the cave on Mount Athur the fever was gone and he knew himself.
‘What horse is that?’ he said.
‘He is yours,’ said Lash the Golden. ‘I paid a Milord for him, with the four rings which the Bishop gave you for that purpose. He was bred among mountains and has the heart of a lion.’
1 In one version of this legend the Milord is identified as Milord Byron. Byron, though sympathetic to the Varinian cause (cf letter to Hobhouse 19 Feb 1822), did not in fact at any time visit Varina.
2 St Joseph is the patron saint of Varina. His bones and a chisel said to be his are kept as sacred relics in the cathedral at Potok. The story is that Our Lord was in the workshop one day when Joseph swore at a knot in the timber on which he was working. At that, his chisel leaped in his hand and cut him to the bone. Then Our Lord, having rebuked his father for his intemperance, touched the wound and healed it, and then touched the timber and made the grain straight. Hence the Varinian belief that to swear by St Joseph is not accounted blasphemous.
WINTER 1989
GRANDAD STAYED IN bed for two days. Momma tried to unplug his telephone, but he wouldn’t let her.
‘I must speak my own words,’ he said, ‘or people will put words that were never mine into my mouth.’
There were photographs of the vigil in some of the papers, two of Grandad almost falling down the steps and one of him being helped away by Nigel and Letta, and two of the singing. The Independent had a six-inch news report as well, and next day the Guardian actually mentioned Varina in a leader about the Balkans, saying it was one of the problems to which there weren’t any right answers, but that didn’t excuse the filthy way the Romanians were behaving. Some of the kids at school brought copies of the photographs along, which meant that people who didn’t have any special reason to be interested in Varina must have noticed.
On Thursday when Letta took the tea up she heard voices before she reached the top of the stairs, so she knocked and waited till Grandad called to her to come in. It wasn’t Mr Jaunis’s day, but he was there and so was Mr Orestes. Without his fur hat you could see that his head really was absolutely shiny bald, which made him look creepier than ever.
‘I’ll just get another cup, so there’s three,’ said Letta, assuming that Grandad wouldn’t want her to stay. The visitors obviously thought the same, but Grandad said, ‘We will need two more cups. I cannot expect either Mr Jaunis or Mr Orestes to toast my crumpet to your standards. Did you meet Mr Orestes on Tuesday? No? Hector, this is my granddaughter, Letta.’
Mr Orestes rose and waited while she put the tray down so that he could shake hands with her formally, bowing his head as he did so.
‘Orestes like in the goat-boy book?’ she said. ‘Anya Orestes?’
‘My grandmother,’ he said, in a slightly whining voice.
‘Like us, Hector suffers from the burden of a literary ancestor,’ said Grandad. ‘Now, my darling, if you would be kind enough to bring two more cups and then toast my crumpet, we will continue to settle the future condition of Europe.’
She went and returned, bringing extra hot water as well. She poured the tea, refilled the pot and settled by the fire. Mr Orestes accepted a crumpet which he ate with lashings of butter on it. Letta listened to the discussion and did her best to understand. They were talking about how to follow up on the vigil. In spite of what had happened to Grandad – or rather, because of it – the vigil had made much more of a splash than anyone could have hoped, and people who’d never heard of Varina now knew it was there, and real.
They were talking about some kind of delegation to a minister at the Foreign Office, and who should be on it. The problem for Letta was that she didn’t know any of the names, which made it all a bit meaningless, but after a bit she noticed that as soon as either Mr Jaunis or Mr Orestes suggested somebody, the other one would come up with a reason against them. Mr Jaunis was jolly and giggly about this, and Mr Orestes was sour and cold, so it was odd that it was something Mr Jaunis said – the way he said it, more – that suddenly made Letta understand that neither of them was very interested in the delegation for itself but they both were trying to use it to do the other one down. They needed a British MP to lead the delegation and there were two possible choices. Mr Jaunis wanted one, so naturally Mr Orestes wanted the other. Grandad suggested a joint leadership.
Mr Jaunis giggled and said, ‘The difficulty about that, I’m afraid, is that the two gentlemen happen to detest each other.’
With a slight shudder of shock, Letta saw that the two who truly detested each other were Mr Jaunis and Mr Orestes. She didn’t much like either of them herself, but this was different. It was different even from the sort of feud you get between a couple of kids at school, not speaking to each other, letting everyone know how much they despise each other, being generally mean, but all still as a kind of trying-it-out-to-see-if-it-fits exercise, a nasty little game. The way Mr Jaunis and Mr Orestes hated each other was real. It filled the room like a horrible smell. Surely Grandad could smell it too.
Grandad never drank more than one cup of tea, but she took the teapot over to his bed and pretended to offer him a refill. He hadn’t finished his first, and he’d only eaten half his crumpet and let the rest go cold. He was sitting up in bed and leaning back against the piled pillows with his head held straight, glancing at each of the visitors in turn as they spoke, making notes on his clipboard. He looked alert enough to anyone who didn’t know him well, pretty spry for eighty-one, in fact, but Letta could see he was forcing himself to stay like that, and really he was feeling almost as bad as when she and Nigel had got him into the taxi.
She turned and waited for a pause in the argument, feeling herself going red.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, too loudly. ‘Grandad’s not feeling well.’
Mr Orestes had just been going to say something. He half turned his head and looked at her like an angry snake. Mr Jaunis gave a surprised giggle.
‘The doctor said we mustn’t let him get tired,’ she stammered. ‘Momma – my mother – she’ll be very upset, if . . . I mean . . . and you want him well too, don’t you?’