The Golden Sabre. Jon Cleary
him, he says he can arrange it that you four go free.’
‘No!’ said Cabell and the two children echoed him. ‘It’s all a bluff. That guy won’t have us shot.’
But later that night, trying to sleep on one of the hard wooden benches, Cabell felt no optimism at all about their fate. He had heard of the wholesale killing by both sides in this bloody civil war and he knew and understood some of the hatred that fired the revolutionaries. Keria was one of them, recognizable at a glance, a man looking for a way out of a hole in the ground to a place on top of the mountain. Cabell had seen the coal miners on strike in the hills of Pennsylvania, the men who had inherited the fierce passions of the Molly Maguires of the 1870’s. Miners had the seeds of revolution ingrained in them as deeply as the mine dust in their lungs. He could not blame Keria for the way he felt. He just did not want to die as a way of proving Keria’s revolutionary zeal. And there was also the villagers’ hatred of outsiders … Tomorrow there would be no one on his and the others’ side at the trial, no one but a randy old man offering to marry a girl young enough to be his great-granddaughter.
He turned over to go to sleep and saw Eden sitting up on her bench, her head and shoulders outlined against the moonlit window. Quietly he got up and went and sat beside her.
They spoke in whispers, not wanting to wake the children and Nikolai. ‘What am I to do?’ she said. ‘I keep thinking of the children. And you,’ she added. Then added further, lives weighing on her like sacks of potatoes: ‘And Nikolai.’
‘It’s not worth the risk,’ he said. ‘The old man can’t guarantee we’d be let go.’
‘Perhaps I could save my own life. I’m ashamed that I keep thinking of that.’
He felt for her hand, found it. It was the first time he had touched her and both felt the immediate intimacy; but their hands were stiff one within the other, arthritic with caution, wary of the circumstances that had brought them this close. ‘When he dies – it could happen tomorrow, the day after, any time … What happens to you then?’
‘They’d probably kill me then.’ Her fingers were just dead bones in his hand.
‘I’m not going to let that happen. Not to any of us.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Then she started to weep. It was something she hadn’t done in a long time, not since the first lonely weeks when she had first come to Russia and then when they had buried Igor Dulenko. She had never thought of tears as a sign of feminine weakness, but somehow she had survived without them till now. When Cabell put his arms round her she didn’t resist but leant her head against his shoulder and let the tears come. It was so long since he had held a girl like this one in his arms that he felt awkward; there had been girls in his arms but they had been paid for and none of them had asked for gentleness or sympathy. He brushed his lips against her hair, but said nothing.
On a bench opposite them Nikolai watched them and wept, too. For himself alive today as much as for himself dead tomorrow. He longed for love, but there was no man who would comfort him.
[4]
In the morning the villagers came early to the square, like a football crowd eager to get good seats for today’s big match. They brought chairs with them and set them up in a hollow square in front of the railway station. The sun climbed through a brilliant sky and the tree-shrouded mountains flickered with flashes of green as the trees stirred in the slight morning breeze; to the east clouds lay on the horizon like the white negative of another dark range. The breeze suddenly dropped as the sun got higher, the trees in the square drew their shadows into themselves and the heat already began to sear like an invisible flame. Two ravens appeared out of nowhere, materializing like black spirits, and flapped lazily on to the roof of the railway station. They croaked miserably as the prisoners were led out of the waiting room and Cabell, looking up, thought of the line (was it from Hamlet?): The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.
But there was no look of revenge on the faces of the crowd sitting on their chairs, standing in orderly groups. They looked uncertain this morning, as if during the night they had dreamed of the enormity of what they wanted, the death of the outsiders. The old men sat in the front row, some of them with their wives.
Delyanov rose from his chair and came forward. He carried a bunch of red roses and, taking off his hat with a sweeping gesture, he handed the bouquet to Eden. ‘Everyone knows of my proposal. I announced it last night. You will be welcomed by all as my wife.’
‘Silly old bugger,’ said an old woman in the front row and chomped her gums at him.
Delyanov turned to her. ‘You are only jealous, Natasha Mihalovna, that I did not ask you to be my bride.’
‘Who would have you?’ said Natasha Mihalovna. ‘It takes you all your time to pee, let alone use it for anything else.’
‘Do you mind?’ said Eden. ‘There are children present.’
‘Holy Toledo!’ said Cabell, careful for once of the children.
‘What’s the matter, Mr Cabell?’ said Eden.
‘Nothing, nothing.’ He shook his head, wondering if the heat had got to him already. By tonight it wouldn’t matter what was discussed in front of the children, they would only be corrupted by worms. ‘Here comes Judge Keria.’
But Keria was not the only judge. The village soviet had stayed up half the night planning this trial; it would be done in the proper way, even if the verdict was already decided. Keria and two other miners sat down behind the table that had been placed outside the entrance to the railway station. The five prisoners were sat on chairs placed to one side; opposite them sat two more miners, the prosecutor and his assistant; there was no counsel for the defence. The walnut trees threw impartial shadows on all of them; the spectators sat in the open sun but seemed oblivious of it. Keria rapped the table with his gavel, a short pick-handle, and the trial began.
The prosecutor, a burly young man with close-cropped black hair and a look of intelligence that had never been allowed to flower, rose to his feet, conscious of the occasion and his position in it.
‘The charge is that these five strangers are enemies of the State.’
‘You have no evidence,’ said Cabell.
‘I second that,’ said Delyanov.
‘Shut up, you old fool,’ said Natasha Mihalovna and some murmurs in the crowd seconded her advice.
‘You were the same at the priest’s trial,’ said Delyanov. ‘You’re not interested injustice, just in satisfying your spite.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ grumbled the old woman, not sure herself what he was talking about. What was justice? No one in the village had ever known it.
Cabell looked for a priest amongst the crowd, but there was none; then he looked across the square and up past the houses to the white church on the slope above the village. Its doors were closed, planks nailed across them. Had the priest been driven out of the village or had he, too, been executed? He stared at the church, then his eye caught sight of something else on the crest of the slope. A horseman stood there gazing down on the scene in the square. The rider was small (a boy perhaps?) and he sat without moving. Was he waiting, Cabell wondered, to take a message of their execution to another village?
Cabell looked back at Delyanov. ‘What happened to the priest?’
‘They drove him away,’ said Delyanov. ‘Drove him away with stones.’
‘Good riddance!’ cackled Natasha Mihalovna.
Keria banged the pick-handle, called for order. ‘Go on,’ he said to the prosecutor.
But the prosecutor was too slow. Delyanov was back on his feet, speaking directly to the tribunal this time.
‘The young woman, if she has any sense, is to be my bride. So I say you cannot execute her friends, because they will be my friends, too. I move the trial be ended.’