Castles Made of Sand (41 page)

It was because you knew, she thought. You tried to keep me out of it, but you knew what he was, and that one day he would come back for me, and there’d be nothing you could do. No wonder you were the way you were.

‘Mum?’ She touched the glass.

I never had a mother before.

Once upon a time there were two sisters. Suzy the journalist had an affair with a big rockstar and got pregnant by him. Little sister, whose career consisted of wanting to be around celebrities, was incredibly jealous. Their mum claimed she was a witch. Suzy didn’t believe in that stuff, but Carly did. She moved in those circles, she made herself useful and attractive to Rufus O’Niall. So then maybe Rufus started fucking them both, enjoying this piquant situation, until he tired of the rows and left for fresh pastures. But he didn’t forget he had a daughter. In due course he sent Carly, still his creature, to the cold house of Fiorinda’s childhood. It was the year when Fiorinda’s mum was ill in hospital. And Carly took the girl to be seduced by her father

A child, three years old, peeping in through a bedroom door, sees something that she doesn’t understand, only that Mummy’s crying. They’re hurting Mummy and Mummy can’t stop them. MUMMY’S NO USE. You hate Mummy because how else could you bear it, seeing her so helpless, so beaten? You grow up from being three to being eleven, and you’re a little monster: hard, gullible, selfish, greedy. You’re easy meat when Carly arrives, looking so glamorous. You don’t have the slightest idea, and when Mum finds out what’s going on, she says nothing because she dares not. She’s afraid, so afraid.

Then there’s the terrible year, and then the little girl escapes. But the happy ending didn’t last, too good to last. All she’d achieved was to bring ruin on the people she loved. He destroyed Ax and Sage and Fiorinda, now he’s going to destroy England, all because of me, and I don’t know how to stop him.

There’d been a leap in the traffic on the Internet Commissioners’ satellite link. The media folk were onto it, and they’d become less docile without Ax around. Somehow, suddenly, there was a buzz of damaging rumour. Allie and Fiorinda and David had to go public: Yes, Ax was invited to the USA, for talks to bust the data quarantine deadlock. Yes, it’s true that the US authorities believe he may have been kidnapped. But there’s every reason to hope he’s alive and well.

As soon as we have further information we’ll let you know.

On a warm June evening, when this news was spreading through the country to shock and disbelief, Fergal Kearney came to Rivermead. Fergal had taken to going about with an entourage. Three big barmy army squaddies (unfamiliar faces, but who knows all the London barmies?) were always with him. Nobody liked this. It was a point of honour, with the Few, that except on public occasions they walked unprotected in the crowd. But no one said anything, because Ferg was a well-loved figure who had a lot of credit. He’d come to see Fiorinda, nothing odd about that. He went to her rooms, with his friends.

She was alone. She had too much on her mind for casual company.

Dusk filled the wide windows of the solar. The sky was overcast; elven glimmers marked the tented town. She opened the door for her visitors, walked away from them and stood looking out: Fiorinda with her hair brushed and burnished, wearing an antique violet satin sheath dress that left her arms bare, and narrow dark blue trousers. There was a fire in the grate, despite of the warmth of the night, and the air was scented by big planters of living flowers. Fergal’s men took the rock and roll princess and set her in one of the cross-framed Roman chairs. They set another chair opposite. Fergal went to stand beside this throne, his eyes dull, his gap-toothed mouth hanging open.

The timbers of Fiorinda’s chair sprang back into life, just as they had left it. Branches clothed in cold, sodden grey bark swept up and engulfed the girl’s body, bearing down thickly on her arms and across her breast. Grey twigs tangled into her hair and tugged backwards, holding her head like a bridle so her face was lifted, chin up.

Something like smoke came out of Fergal’s mouth, trailed to the floor and grew. Then a big man with chestnut skin and the curling, shining black hair of a Restoration monarch sat in the opposite chair. He wore an ample purple mantle, with golden gleams in it and fringes of gold, over fashionable evening casuals, Italian sandals on his silk-clad feet.

He was not young, but still flamboyantly goodlooking.

‘I knew,’ said Fiorinda, her stretched throat moving, her eyes forced to gaze at him, ‘that if I stuck around here long enough, eventually you would turn up.’

‘Did you want me to turn up?’

‘Oh yes… Rufus, I have an offer for you.’

He laughed. ‘Really? Make me your offer.’

‘I will be your consort. I will be everything you want me to be.’

‘Everything I want?’ he murmured. ‘What a promise.’

‘Only you have to leave Ax and Sage, and all of Ax’s friends, alone.’

‘Hm.’

‘Forever.’

‘Now, Fiorinda. I don’t sign contracts that say
forever
.’

‘I think you do. I think you’ve signed one already, why not another? Come on, don’t balderdash me. Say yes, why piss around? You know you’re going to.’

He laughed again, soft thunder. ‘My bossy little girl. You haven’t changed!’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘think about it.’

Rufus raised an eyebrow, incredulous. ‘I should
think
about it?’

‘Listen. You don’t just want me, you want the Rock and Roll Reich. I know you do. You want it partly to get back at Ax, but you really
want
it too. Ireland’s still living in the modern world, and you don’t like that. Ax’s England as your private fief would suit you down to the ground. You took your time putting this together. You were the one who set David up, with the human sacrifice ring, and then brought us the evidence so we’d have to do something about it; and Ax would be forced to take power in a way he never wanted. You sent me those bad dreams. You knew I wouldn’t tell them what was happening, and it would make big trouble between me and my boyfriends. You’ve been very patient. Why rush it now? Sage is gone. Ax isn’t coming back. They’re finished. You know that, and I know that. The people need time to get used to the idea. What you should do is you should
court
me. You court me, you win me over. Gradual change, we both have our credibility intact. Do we have a deal?’

The three barnies were looking nowhere, doing nothing. Fergal Kearney, the dead man, stood unoccupied, like a strange, awkward polychrome sculpture. Rufus sat and smiled, not at all displeased at having his own plans explained to him by his little girl.

‘Let me see.’ He rose, a haze like smoke around him, crossed the floor and leaned over her, appreciation gleaming in his eyes, the thick shining curls of his hair seeming to touch her shoulders. He stroked his lower lip, weighing it up. His hands were manicured; the oval nails stained, not varnished, deep blood-red.

‘If you run away I won’t come after you. I’ll stay here like a fox in a chicken-run. You don’t want that. If you tell anyone what I am, I’ll know it and I’ll worse than kill them
instantly
, man woman or child. They will be where Fergal is. Do you know where he is? He is in Hell. A real, physical scientific Hell, Fiorinda. It doesn’t matter that his body will die eventually, for him it will never end. Do you understand? I can make eternal torment a reality.’

She nodded, as far as the bridle would let her. ‘Okay, got that.’

‘If you leave your body, at any time: the same. I will put your friends in Hell.’

‘Leave my—?’ said Fiorinda, and then, ‘Oh.’

Rufus chuckled. ‘Yes. You understand. But you know so little.
You have no idea
, my child, my only true child. Don’t you want me to teach you? Aren’t you even curious?’

She stared back at him, unafraid. ‘About what? There isn’t anything special about what you can do. Magic is just power. You have the power. I know that. The rest is verbiage.’

‘Ah! You still have your thorns. My briar rose.’

He stooped, as if he would kiss her.

‘You’ll take me when we seal our bargain,’ she said. ‘Not before.’

Rufus laughed, stepped back and bowed. ‘So be it. I consent. I can wait.’

He returned to his place and sat for a while watching her. The living ghost vanished. Fergal came back to life; the squaddies returned from their blank patch, the men left. When they were gone, the Roman chair reverted to its normal state. Fiorinda dropped to the floor, arms round her knees.

Well, that didn’t go too badly.

When she could walk without her legs giving way she went for a prowl around the building. She thought what had happened must have had an effect: she’d find people crying, hiding under their beds. No one had noticed anything untoward. Everything okay? Yeah. G’night, Fiorinda.

They liked seeing her around at night.

Back in her rooms, she crouched by the dying fire. My father has sold his soul to the devil (I don’t believe in the devil, but it describes the situation). I don’t know the extent of his weaponry, I don’t know how I can stop him in the end. But one step at a time.
One step at a time
, that’s the way. He likes to listen to me talking bullshit. I have real power over him, power he chooses to give me, but it’s real. Have to see how long I can spin that out. He’s old, there might be something there. And I’ll think of something, it will come to me. Oh,
fucking hell
. I can’t protect forty million people!

But I can try.

Fiorinda ran the Few ragged through the dreadful length of that summer. She never stopped. She spoke to the nation officially (such of the nation as could reach a Big Screen or a working tv) only once, making a firm plea for calm. But she spoke to the Counterculture, and the crowds at the Crisis Management gigs, incessantly. Schmoozing every front row, trailing around every campground, as if she’d made up her mind she had to tell the people of England
one by one
: that Sage would achieve the Zen Self, and return in triumph. That Ax would come home with the end of data quarantine in his pocket; and meantime, business as usual. Utopia on a liferaft, stick together against the dark.

We’ll do this for Ax. He trusts us to keep on track.

The bricks-and-mortar media folk had finally started noticing that the Celtic Movement was the majority in the English Counterculture. Fiorinda didn’t let that idea go unchallenged, she insisted that the Celtics were also Ax’s people, but she puzzled her friends by ignoring the resurgence of things like illegal ritual sacrifice. They began to wonder at some of her behaviour.

The anniversary of Ax’s inauguration ended the nonstop Festival Season. Sayyid Mohammad Zayid, Ax’s sponsor in the Faith and the leader of English Islam, came to London on a delicate mission. He and Allie met Fiorinda in the small office she was using at the Insanitude. It was October the fifteenth; there had been no news of Ax since he had disappeared in May. Mohammad and Allie had to tell Fiorinda that her relationship with Fergal was causing scandal. He’d become her most trusted advisor, and people didn’t like it. The Islamics, especially the young men who were Ax’s passionate supporters, felt that Fergal was influencing Fiorinda so that she favoured the Celtics whenever there was trouble…(There’d been several outbreaks of bloody street-fighting between ‘Celtic’ ‘Islamic’ and ‘techno’ gangs over the summer, despite Fiorinda’s efforts).

Their cause was just, but Fiorinda in person, spruce in her dove-grey trouser suit, bearing her terrible grief with grace and pride, defeated them. They tried to talk to her, but she was a stone wall. She would not take their advice.

Mohammad Zayid believed that Aoxomoxoa’s love for his friend’s wife (in his mind he had always called Fiorinda Ax’s wife), should have remained chaste. Sage had been right to repent, and dedicate himself to the great scientific project which was also a spiritual quest. But he attached no blame to Fiorinda, this brave dedicated girl, protector of the poor. The woman is never to blame.

‘Aye, well, we’ve spoken and we’ll leave that. But five months now, lass. The troops need your encouragement. You must speak to the nation.’

‘There’s nothing new to say,’ said Fiorinda. ‘We hang on,
keeping the Celtics on board
, until Ax comes home. End of story. I don’t want to say it too often. I’ll get tired of repeating myself. I’ll sound insincere.’

Mohammad, the badger-bearded Yorkshireman in his good, subdued tailoring, was looking older, and very weary. He had loved Ax like a son.

‘I know it’s hard, Fiorinda. I’m not asking you to give up hope. But—’

‘Did you do anything about getting a new kitten?’ asked Allie, helplessly.

Ax’s cat had disappeared when Fiorinda moved to Rivermead. It’s the way cats behave, but Fiorinda had loved Elsie, and she must be so lonely—

Fiorinda rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Allie, er, sorry, Mohammad—’

They went together to the Office. A much-travelled Jiffy bag had turned up, that the postroom thought the Few should look at. There was still masses of this kind of stuff: the fanmail of Ax’s disappearence. At first they’d opened it all personally. Now they let the postroom and the police filter everything: and the loss of that chore had been another small death. Fiorinda sat by Fergal Kearney, substitute bodyguard. Mohammad, with a curious glance and a reserved nod for the Irishman, took the place on her other side.

The Few were united again, their quarrel over the Zen Self long forgotten. Everyone was here today; except Peter Stannen, who was in North Wales, at Caer Siddi in North Wales. The Heads believed that Sage was still alive. They were taking turns at staking out the Zen Self HQ, obstinately trying to get in contact with him; to tell him what had happened.

‘This could be a live one,’ said Chip, brightly, ‘if you go by the stamps.’

The others set their teeth. But the boy can’t help it.

‘It’s been through quarantine,’ said the techie who’d brought up the packet. ‘It passed through at port of entry and ended up in our normal mailbag. We’ve given it the usual tests, and then some. It’s harmless: I mean, you can open it.’