House of Ashes by Monique Roffey Read Free Book Online Page A

could see shops and banks and buildings and that everything had been smashed up; he could see towers of smoke down by
the docks hanging over the city, still visible in the street lamps. But now these looters had all gone to sleep. There was no one picking about. A curfew had been imposed. A State of Emergency had
been declared. Now the city was very still. Usually at night, downtown was lively, especially at the Square of Independence where the vendors sold swamp oysters and barbeque ribs. Now all was quiet
and the city smelled of sea breeze and petroleum and burning buildings.
    Ashes knew the city well. He was born here, up in the hills to the east. Born and bred son of the City of Silk. He liked it here and had never left the island, no need to. He could see the big
wide world on television and he saw nowhere else too different and certainly not any better than Sans Amen. Sans Amen was one of the northern islands of the archipelago; the other islands which ran
in an arc southwards were similar, in a way, but also each one was particular. Some were more mountainous; one was entirely flat – that one was overrun by tourists. Different languages were
spoken on the islands, Spanish, French and Dutch; each had its own creole language too. Trinidad, in the very south, had oil and carnival, it was the only island he was tempted to visit. Trinidad
had also started the tradition of calypso, and those singers had always been – and some still were – revolutionaries too. They were the great bards of the Caribbean and they sang things
like they were. They sang about life in the street and about corruption in their own House of Power. Generally politicians were afraid of them and what kind of songs they brought out around
carnival time. Yes, he would like to go to Trinidad, if anywhere at all, and visit a calypso tent and listen to a great old calypsonian like Lord Wellington.
    Otherwise, everything Ashes desired was right here. He hadn’t even seen much of the rest of Sans Amen itself. There were remote parts of central and southern Sans Amen he would never know
or see, quiet sleepy villages in the old sugar cane belt; places where men still gathered in gayelles on basketball courts to stick fight and bet on who was the best warrior amongst them. There
were masjids and churches all over the island, temples to every version of God. There were mountains in the centre, full of deer and ocelots, and there were swamplands full of howler monkeys and
anacondas to the southeast, and plains which still raged with fire every dry season, generations after the cane fields had disappeared. There were small fishing villages on the southern and eastern
coast he would never know. Leatherback turtles came to nest on the beaches on the north coast, though he’d never seen one. He was a humble town man; so was his family. His wife’s family
came from nearby. It was like that – they were a clan, all neighbours. Everyone knew each other.
    Then he saw the holy man. Father Jeremiah Sapno was walking towards the House of Power from the north side of town. The streetlights lit him up and it seemed like he was walking out from an
orange haze. He had his hands in the air and he had a cross around his neck. He was walking down the street away from the soldiers.
    A shot rang out.
    Father Sapno ducked.
    One of the young brothers had taken a shot at him.
    ‘Hold your fire!’ Hal shouted. ‘Jesus
Christ
. Don’t any of you know what is going on? There’s a frikkin ceasefire. Don’t shoot the man.’
    Father Sapno had stopped walking.
    ‘Come,’ shouted Hal. He was up on the balcony above the wrought-iron gates which barricaded the main foyer on the ground level of the House, the side which looked down to the big
square in the centre of town where old men gathered to play chess. But Father Sapno looked uncertain.
    ‘Come, come,’ gestured Hal upwards. Hal quickly moved back inside, out of sight of the army snipers.
    When Father Sapno