As the people’s wrath fomented all around me, I decided I’d better make myself scarce. With this in mind, I sauntered casually away from the milling throng.
‘Just a minute,’ said a voice behind me. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
I looked over my shoulder and saw a man approaching. He was wearing an iron helmet. I proceeded slowly for a few more paces, then stopped and allowed him to catch up.
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘My tent’s over in the north-west,’ I replied. ‘I’m just heading back to see if it’s alright.’
‘But there’s work to do here,’ he said. ‘Everybody’s supposed to help clear up the mess.’
He was a large man, with an outwardly menacing appearance, but he wasn’t being particularly unfriendly. Actually, his manner was reassuringly earnest.
‘I’d like to lend a hand,’ I said, ‘but it’s pandemonium at present.’
The man peered at the enraged mob which was seething and swirling barely a stone’s throw away.
‘Yes, they’re all rather upset,’ he remarked. ‘Still, they’ll soon settle down now they’ve found someone to blame.’
‘You mean for building the turf wall?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘It was Yadegarian, wasn’t it?’
Even as we watched, a cry went up and the crowd started surging away towards the south-west. The man in the iron helmet looked at me enquiringly, and all at once I realized I hadn’t answered his question.
‘Well, yes,’ I said. ‘That’s more or less the truth.’
A Note on the Author
Magnus Mills is the author of A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In and six other novels, including The Restraint of Beasts, which won the McKitterick Prize and was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread (now the Costa) First Novel Award in 1999. His books have been translated into twenty languages. He lives in London.