Novel - Airman (24 page)

He stepped inside the Wooden House, found himself a corner table, and called for a bowl of stew. Life was being lived in front of his eyes. He could see it and hear it and smell it. The scratch of elbows on tables, the knocking of wonky chairs. Sunlight through the pipe smoke. Yet there was a distance between him and the world. All he could feel was an intense irritation toward people in general. Everything upset him, the sound of chewing, the slurp of porter, the nasal whine of a drunkard’s breathing. He could make allowances for nothing.
I have forgotten how to be human. I am a beast.

Then Conor’s mood was lightened by music drifting in the tavern window, a gentle violin that rolled itself out like a fine carpet, playing overhead, riding the stale air and pipe smoke. It seemed to cut through the fog surrounding Conor’s heart, warming it with its melody. I know that music, thought Conor. I have heard it before somewhere. But where?

The landlord arrived with his stew, a rich soup of beef and pork with vegetable chunks floating on the surface. “Generally I move the beggars on, young man,” he remarked. “But this blind fella, the way he plays, reminds me of my childhood in the stables. Wonderful years.” He wiped a tear away with a tattooed knuckle. “Onions in the stew,” he blubbered, then moved on.

Conor worked on the stew, savoring its flavors and textures, enjoying the strangely familiar music. I will throw a shilling to the musician as I leave, he decided. What is that tune?

The more Conor listened, the more the puzzle vexed him, and then suddenly everything became clear.
I have heard this music and I have read it. “This blind fella,” the landlord had said.

Conor dropped a brimming spoon halfway to his open mouth, rose from his chair as though in a daze, and barged his way through the fair-day crowd. Outside, the sudden sunlight blinded him after the tavern’s smoky gloom.

Follow the music.
He ran on like a rat in thrall to the piper of Hamelin. To the side of the Wooden House a small throng had gathered, swaying as one to a gentle adagio. A tall black-garbed figure at the crowd’s center led the sway with the tip of his violin bow, lulling the listeners.

Conor stopped in his tracks, completely flabbergasted. He could not decide whether to laugh aloud or weep, eventually settling on a hybrid of the two.

The musician was, of course, Linus Wynter.

“So, Billtoe did not lie. You actually were released?”

They sat at Conor’s table in the tavern, enjoying a glass of porter after their stew. Linus Wynter’s gangly limbs were too long for the furniture, and he was forced to straighten his legs to fit them under the table. His crossed feet poked out the other end. “Released I was,” he said, fiddling with pipe and tobacco pouch. “Though I fully expected to be
released
, if you see what I mean. Nicholas had signed the order before he died, and it took a few days to reach the island. And as Marshall Bonvilain had not expressly forbidden it, out I slipped. Free as a bird.” He rasped a match along the tabletop and played the flame over the pipe. “I doubt you slipped out so easily.”

“Not quite,” confirmed Conor.

Wynter smiled, smoke leaking from between his teeth. “I was playing in Dublin in a nice alehouse. Then I began to hear rumors of a baker flying up to the moon in a balloon.”

“It was a butcher, and he never got anywhere near the moon, believe me.”

“So I thought to myself, all Victor ever talked about was balloons, and young Conor was his student. Coincidence? I think not. So I began taking the train from Westland Row to Wexford once a week or so, and hoping you would show yourself. I was beginning to think you hadn’t survived.”

“I almost did not. It is a miracle that I sit here today.”

Linus patted his violin. “You remembered
The Soldier’s Return
.”

“How could I forget? I committed large sections to memory.”

“Ah, you found my notes.”

“I used the space for my own diagrams. Did you realize that the coral was luminous?”

Linus tapped his temple. “No. Blind, don’t you know. Dashed inconvenient in the area of luminous coral and such. It gave me comfort to trace the notes with my fingers, helped me to remember. There was also the danger that I would die in that place and my music would be lost forever.”

“Well, Linus, your notes shone. It was something to see.”

“My notes always shine, boy. A pity the rest of the world doesn’t realize it.” Wynter took a deep drag on his pipe. “Now to business; do you have a plan? Or would you like to hear mine?”

“A plan to do what?”

Wynter’s puzzlement showed in the lines between his ruined eyes. “Why, to ruin Bonvilain, naturally. He has robbed us of everything, and continues to destroy lives. We have a responsibility.”

“I have a responsibility to myself,” said Conor harshly. “My plan is to collect all the diamonds buried on Little Saltee, then begin a new life in America.”

Wynter straightened his back. “Hell’s bells, boy. Bonvilain killed your king. He killed our friend, the incomparable Victor Vigny. He has torn your family apart, taken your sweetheart from you. And your answer to this is to run away?”

Conor’s face was stony. “I know what has happened, Mister Wynter. I know something of the real world now, too. All I can hope for is to leave this continent alive, and even that is unlikely; but to attack a kingdom alone would be lunacy.”

“But you are not alone.”

“Of course the boy and the blind man will attack Bonvilain together. This is not an operetta, Linus. Good people get shot and die. I have seen it happen.” Conor’s voice was loud and attracting attention. Bonvilain was not a name to be bandied about even on the mainland. It was said that informers took the marshall’s coin in every country from Ireland to China.

“I have seen it happen too,” said Wynter in hushed tones. “But lately I have not seen it and have had to imagine it instead, which is far worse.”

Conor had imagined death many times in prison, and not just his own. He had imagined what Bonvilain would do to his family if they ever found out the truth of Nicholas’s murder. “If I fight, he will kill my parents. He will do it in the blink of an eye, and it will cost him not a moment’s sleep.”

“Do you believe that your father would thank you for making him the marshall’s puppet?”

“My father thinks that I had a hand in the king’s murder. He denounced me for it.”

“All the more reason to tell him the truth.”

“No. I am done. I love my father and hate him, too. All I can do is leave.”

“And your mother,” persisted Linus Wynter. “And the queen?”

Conor felt his melancholia return. “Linus, please. Let us enjoy our reunion. I know that we were only cellmates for a few days, but I see you as my only friend in the world. It is nice to have a friend, so let us avoid this topic for the moment.”

“Don’t you want to clear your name, Conor?” persisted Linus. “How can you let your father live with the idea that you have murdered his king?”

The idea would eat Declan Broekhart from the inside, Conor knew, but he couldn’t see a solution. “Of course I want to prove myself innocent. Of course I want to expose Bonvilain, but how can I do these things without endangering my family?”

“We can find a way. Two brains together.”

“I will think about it,” said Conor. “That will have to be good enough for now.”

Linus raised his palms in surrender. “Good enough.”

Wynter turned his face toward the window, feeling the sun on his face. “Can you spy a clock, Conor? I can’t read the sun from in here. I need to return to Wexford for the train.”

“Forget the train, Linus Wynter—you are coming home with me.”

Wynter stood, his hat brushing the ceiling beam. “I was so hoping you would say that. I do hope the beds are comfortable. I stayed in the Savoy once, you know—did I ever tell you?”

Conor took his elbow, leading him toward the door. “Yes, you told me. Do you still dream of the water closets?”

“I do,” sighed Linus. “Will we have privacy in this house? We must have privacy if I am to hatch my schemes.”

“All the privacy in the world. Just you and I, and a small company of soldiers.”

“Soldiers?”

“Well, their ghosts.”

Linus plucked his violin strings in imitation of a music hall suspense theme. “Ghosts, indeed,” he drawled. “It seems, Mister Finn, that once again we are destined to share interesting accommodation.”

CHAPTER 14: HEADS TOGETHER

Linus quickly settled into his new digs, and Conor was happy to have him. Usually his thoughts stayed inside his head, so it was a relief to let them out. They sat on the roof together, and while Conor tinkered with the skeleton of his latest flying machine, Linus worked on his compositions.

“A lute here, I think,” Linus would say. “Do you think a lute too pastoral. Too vulgar?”

And Conor would reply, “I have two main problems. Engine weight and propeller efficiency. Everything else works, I have proven that. I think, I really think, that this new gasoline engine I have built will do the trick.”

So Linus would nod and say, “Yes, you are right. Too vulgar. A piccolo I think, boy.”

And Conor would continue, “My engine needs to supply me with ten horsepower at least, without shaking the aeroplane to pieces. I need to build a housing that will absorb the vibration. Perhaps a willow basket.”

“So, you’re saying a lute? You’re right, the piccolo simply does not command the same respect.”

“You see,” Conor would say, chiseling his latest propeller, “there is no problem we cannot solve if we put our heads together. We need to bump skulls, as Victor used to say.”

These were reasonably happy days. The specter of Marshall Bonvilain watched over them from the islands, but both man and youth felt a sense of camaraderie that they had not known in years. Of course they argued, most notably when Conor set the steam fans whirling in preparation for his second flight. Linus Wynter climbed the ladder from his bedchamber, shouting over the steam engine’s noise.

“Hell’s bells, boy. What do you need engines for at this time of night?”

And so Conor told him, and the musician almost fainted.

“You are going to hurl yourself into a windstorm so you can fly
into
a prison? Why don’t you write that sentence down and read it? Then perhaps you would realize how insane you are.”

Conor settled his goggles. “I have to do this, Linus. That island owes me. Five more bags and I leave,
we
leave, for America.”

“You
have
to hurl yourself into space for greed? For science, I can understand, barely; that’s what Nick and Victor dedicated their lives to.”

“It’s more than greed. It’s right.”

Linus barked a bitter laugh. “Right? It would be right for you to rescue your parents and your queen from the madman who has deceived them.”

This gave Conor pause. Linus was speaking the truth, of course. His loved ones were in danger and he had no idea how to save them without dooming them all. And if he was honest with himself, he dreaded seeing that look of pure hatred in his father’s eyes.

“There’s nothing I can do,” he said finally. “Nothing except take my diamonds.”

Linus raised his arms like a preacher. “All of this. All of it for diamonds. It’s beneath you.”

Conor ratcheted up his wings and ducked into the wind stream. “Everything is beneath me,” he said, but his words were snatched away, as he was, into the night sky.

Billtoe and Pike were in the Fulmar Bay Tavern, spending their evening off over a bucket of half-price slops, as was their custom. Pike followed a long swallow with a belch that shook the stool he was sitting on.

“Them’s good slops,” he commented, smacking his lips. “I’m getting wine, beer, brandy, and a hint of carbolic soap if I’m not mistaken.” Pike was rarely mistaken when it came to slops, for it was all he ever drank, even though with Battering Ram money in his pocket, he could afford actual beer, rather than whatever ran off the bar into the slops tray. “What do you say, Mister Billtoe? You tasting soap? Goes down easy, but doesn’t stay in long, eh?”

Billtoe was not in the mood for tavern chatter. He wanted nothing more than to drink himself into oblivion, but he was mightily afraid that when he reached oblivion, the French devil would be waiting there for him. Since that night on Little Saltee one week ago, Arthur Billtoe had not been his usual cruel and cheerful self. He felt the presence of the flying demon looming over him, waiting to bring down his blade. Then there was the small matter of Marshall Bonvilain’s dead prisoner. Billtoe lived each waking moment struggling with his panic. The effort was such that he had developed a shiver.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Mister Billtoe,” said Pike, “if there’s something wrong with you. You ain’t been taking the usual care with your ruffled shirts, and they’re your pride and joy. You been shaking a lot and mumbling too. And that’s plague, right there, or maybe Yellow Jack, though I never heard of that this far north.”

Billtoe’s mood was darkened by the realization that Pike, the hairless simpleton, was his only friend. He had never had much use for friends before now. When you had as many dark secrets as Arthur Billtoe, the last thing you needed was friends to wheedle them out of you. But tonight he was on the brink of utter despair, and he needed words of comfort that came out of an actual mouth, and not just the imaginary voice of his favorite slipper, to which he talked occasionally.

“Pikey, can I ask you something?”

“Of course you can, Mister Billtoe. I would appreciate nothing with numbers or directions, though, ’cause they give me blinders.”

Billtoe took a deep, shaky breath. “Do you believe in the devil?”

“Warden’s the devil, if you ask me. I mean, why can’t the convicts eat each other? Two birds with one stone, right there. Convicts get fed, and we don’t have to bury the dead ones.”

“No!” snapped Billtoe. “Not the warden, the man himself. Old horned-head.” He turned on his barstool to face Pike. His face was gaunt, his eyes were wide and red rimmed, and the ruffles of his pirate shirt did seem wilted. “I’ve seen him, Pikey. I’ve seen him. With his wings and flaming eyes. He landed on the island last week, coming for me he was. Called me ‘mon-sewer.’ The devil called my name, Pikey. He called my name.” Billtoe buried his face in his forearms, and soon his back shook with sobbing.

Pike licked his palm, then smoothed back his one strand of hair. He had seen the devil too, except it wasn’t your actual devil, it was a man with wings strapped to his back. Pike saw them taken off and folded up. It was a shame to see Arthur all broke up with his devil talk, but information like this was worth money, which Pike himself could collect as soon as the Rams sent their man for a parley.
Then again, if any
one knows how to make real money out of a situation, it’s Arthur Billtoe. And won’t he just love me when I take away his devil.

Pike wrestled his sketch pad from the pocket it was bent into, opened it to the sketches he had scratched at Sebber Bridge, and slid the book across the bar. “I seen him too, Mister Billtoe, your devil.”

Billtoe’s bleary eyes peeked out from over his sleeves. For a moment he didn’t understand what he was seeing, then he recognized the figure that Pike had drawn. And if Pike had seen the devil too, then Arthur Billtoe was not losing his mind. His eyes assumed their usual piggy cunning, and one hand scuttled out crablike to grab the notepad.

“That’s him, ain’t it, Mister Billtoe,” said Pike. “Only he ain’t no devil, he’s a man like you and me, except taller and better made than us. You being stumpy and me being, well, me. But that’s him I’ll bet, ain’t it, Mister Billtoe?”

Billtoe straightened, shrugging off his mood like a dog shaking water from its coat. “Call me Arthur, Pikey, my friend,” he said.

Pike smiled a gap-toothed smile. He was familiar with that look in Billtoe’s beadies. It was the same look he got just before he searched a prisoner. Billtoe could smell guineas.

An offshore breeze blew constant, and the moon was a silver shilling behind a veil of clouds. The perfect evening for clandestine flying. Conor Finn felt almost contented as he dipped the glider’s nose, swooping in to land on Sebber Bridge. His control of the craft was much improved, and there was no greater impact on his heels than if he had jumped from a low wall. The propeller bands were still fully wound, as fortune had steered him clear of stalls. There was also the heartening fact that he had recovered three bags of Battering Ram diamonds from the salsa beds on Little Saltee without a sniff of a prison guard. He had worried that Billtoe might have swallowed a bottle or two of courage and come looking for his devil with a few cronies, but there had been neither sight nor smell of Arthur Billtoe.

I scared that rat for now. But he won’t stay scared long. One more trip and I shall have all seven pouches.

Why do you need all seven?
was a question that Linus might have asked, and now Conor asked himself.
I need seven as compensation for my imprisonment. It is a matter of honor.

This was the argument that had sustained him in prison. He would do what Billtoe could not, take his diamonds off the island. But now this plan seemed flawed. Why expose himself to danger time and time again when he should already be on the steamer to New York? It was true that Otto had been promised half of the diamonds, but even if he paid off the Malarkeys in full, he would still have more than enough diamonds to buy him a passage to America and a new life when he got there.

I do not wish to leave, he realized. But I must. Staying was of no benefit to him or his family.
Seven pouches. Then America.

The skiff was beached high on the shale, with a single set of tracks heading back toward Fulmar Bay. Zeb Malarkey was keeping his end of the deal—and why wouldn’t he, with half the diamonds in his coffers and more to come.

Conor sat on the boat’s gunwale, unfastening the glider’s harness. Not much flight damage tonight, but he would check every rib and panel tomorrow to make sure. Even the tiniest tear in the wing fabric could unravel an entire panel and drop him from the sky like a plugged pigeon.

One of the diamond pouches slipped from inside the harness, clinking on the shale. To Conor, the sound seemed louder than a gunshot; he squatted low in the skiff ’s shadow, then gathered the bag to his chest like a babe, scanning the Wall for movement. There was none but the liquid shimmer of lamplight.

Take care, Airman. One mistake could see you on the ferry back to Little Saltee.
He stowed the pouches under the aft bench and laid his collapsed glider gently on the deck. Then something happened that made him smile. Conor stood straight, raising his palm to feel the breeze.
The wind has changed. I can sail directly to Kilmore.

He slid the skiff along the shale to the lapping waterline.

Still waters and a fair wind. Good omens.

Conor felt the water raise the skiff and hopped on board, the deck shuddering under his weight. With one hand he untied the sail, shaking it loose of the mast; with the other, he grasped the extended tiller, setting a course wide around the west coast of Little Saltee.

Home in an hour, he thought. Perhaps Linus would play something. Music is a tonic for the soul.

Conor’s sail caught the breeze, pulling the small skiff across the waves.

A good boat. She skips along.
He sailed for his new home, forcing himself not to look back. Nothing behind but heartache.

From high in the rocks, Arthur Billtoe watched the strange airman depart. And though a sharp rock pressed into the guard’s stomach, he would not so much as twitch until the man he had believed to be a demon had disappeared completely around the bend of Little Saltee’s coastline.

Pike did not have the necessary concentration span for such caution, and had relieved himself and was skipping stones into the surf before Billtoe joined him at the groove sliced by the skiff ’s keel in the shale. “Dunno why they call it Sebber
Bridge
,” muttered Pike. “It’s not a bridge, is it? Just a spit of stones going out into the current.”

“It used to be a bridge, thousands of years ago,” said Billtoe, the words rattling nervously out of him. “Before the sea washed it away. Went from here to Little Saltee, then from there on to Patrick’s Bridge, on the mainland.”

“That airman really turns your backbone soft, don’t he, Arthur?” said Pike, changing the subject.

“He had a sword at my neck. A ruddy big sword, none of your fencing namby-pamby pin prickers. This thing could take the top off an oak tree.”

“He’s a
man
, though, Arthur. You seen it yourself. Those wings of his are some sort of kite. That’s all.”

“That’s all!” said Billtoe incredulously. “You idiot! Don’t you realize what we have just witnessed?”

“Idiot? Arthur, idiot?” said Pike, injured. “I took away your devil, didn’t I? You can sleep again because of my gift. Idiot seems a bit harsh.”

“Not harsh enough,” snapped Billtoe, who was fast forgetting his fear. “That man has a flying device. Have you any idea how much the Battering Rams would pay for that? They could just drop into whatever port they pleased, and hang Customs. A device like that would change smuggling forever.”

Pike cleared his throat. “As it happens, I knows a few gents who might have ties to the Rams. Possibly.”

Billtoe clamped a hand over Pike’s mouth, as though the gents in question could somehow hear. “No. No. We don’t involve the Rams until we have those wings locked up safe somewhere. Otherwise those treacherous coves would nab the wings themselves and feed us to the sharks. What we want is to get ourselves into a strong bargaining position.”