by Eoin Colfer
And he had become the Pig Boy.
One night he had done the butchering, just to demonstrate how handy he was with the knife, and the next thing you know, King Otto had dubbed him official butcher. This was not Pig Boy’s dream.
Your name be James or Jimmy or even Jem, he reminded himself. Not blooming Pig Boy.
And now. Now. Even that tiny measure of favor he had earned as butcher was up in smoke as by all accounts King Otto was feeding the worms, and James Jimmy Jem happened to know that Farley weren’t a pig man.
As he ladled grease on the swine, Pig Boy wondered how he could get in with the new chap and secure a promotion from the butchering budge.
Information is currency, he thought to himself. So, does I be knowing something worth selling?
He did not. Here was Farley offering sovs to every Ram in the building, and Pig Boy knew with a gloomy certainty that he would be excluded from the feast, as what could a pig boy bring to the table except pork?
I is in a sort of half-Ram limbo, he thought. Stuck at the pig job, never getting no respect.
Everyone else would pocket the gold, he was certain. Even that little Irish cove hiding over there behind the blades, who were not even a Ram.
Pig Boy chewed on this gristle for a while, and then inspiration struck.
This be a Ram meeting. All civilians were shown the door, ’cept for the dancing girls and lady friends, and yet wee Paddy sits yonder, picking his teeth.
Now would this information be worth a pat on the back? Pig Boy wondered.
Nothing to lose by volunteering it, he decided, and he raised his arm, waving the knife so it glinted in the eyes of old Farley.
“Over here, m’lord,” he called. “I gots something to say.”
Farley had always despised the monarchy and everything they stood for, so referring to him as m’lord was certainly not the way to earn his favor. He squinted across the hall.
Who was it? Who called him lord?
The Pig Boy.
“Yes, boy,” he said, irritated. “What do you need to say?”
This had better be good, he thought. Or I may make another example.
The Pig Boy lowered his knife. “Pardons, yer washup. But this ’strordinary meeting be for brethren, right?”
“That is right, boy,” said Farley, his strands of patience already fraying.
“Well,” said the boy, pointing his knife into a corner, “he ain’t no Ram.”
Farley shuffled to the edge of the dais to give himself a better view of the little man hunching down behind the pile of blades. There was something about his silhouette. Something familiar.
“You there,” he called. “Step out into the light.”
Figary was regretting not slipping away when he had the opportunity. After all, slipping away was a skill in which he had years of experience. Top-drawer dippers knew that the getaway was just as important as the dip itself. There wasn’t much point in lifting a fat wallet only to stand around waiting for the manacles afterward. This was especially true in Dublin’s Monto, where the locals tended to enforce their own street justice and a chap could find himself nursing a stump where his hand used to be, just for the lifting of a few pennies from the wrong pocket.
And now Michael Figary was wishing he had slipped away when the crowds were being ushered from the Hidey-Hole, as this assignment had taken a decidedly dark turn, and the butler had grown quite fond of both being alive and not seeing other people murdered before his eyes.
Michael’s dear old mammy had been blessed with a touch of the sight and could see danger coming from two counties away, and for the first time Figary knew how that sense of impending danger felt as his stomach churned with a premonition of doom.
This doom turned out to be considerably closer than two counties as Farley shifted to the side of his stage and called directly to the butler.
“You there,” he said. “Step out into the light. Double quick now, before I shoot first and ask questions later.”
Figary had no choice but to obey and found himself the focus of every Ram and dancing girl in the Hidey-Hole and, as a lifelong pickpocket, being the center of so much hostile attention made him decidedly nauseated.
“Who are you?” asked Farley. “Why did you not leave with the others?”
“I am quite drunk, so I am,” replied Figary truthfully. “I was having a little snooze for myself when the gunfire woke me. Though I did not see who did the shooting. Was there someone injured?”
Figary’s accent stirred a memory in Farley. “I know you, don’t I?”
Michael Figary’s sense of doom intensified and he felt light-headed.
Or perhaps I am sobering up. A horrifying thought.
“You do not know me as such, though I have dropped quite the sheaf of bank notes at your tables over the years. I tend to make wild bets after a snifter or two.”
Farley was not swallowing this story. He remembered following Malarkey back to Grosvenor Square one night, with a view to possibly murdering him in his bed. And who had answered the door on that night and spoken in precisely that accent, which had carried clear across the street?
“No. No. I know you.” He snapped his fingers. “I have you. The commodore’s man. Malarkey’s manservant.”
The moment he let the words out, Farley knew he should have kept them in, for if this imp was here, then Malarkey must have sent him, which meant that King Otto yet lived and was sending out his tendrils to feel out the lie of the land. If the Rams were allowed to question this man, they might glean information that Farley did not wish to be gleaned, for had he not just now sworn that the king was dead? And if he was lying about that important fact, by extension he was probably lying about the gold.
They will tear me apart, Farley realized and he suddenly wished he had brought a team into the building with him.
Do not panic, Major, he ordered himself. You have been in tighter spots, and the team waits outside. All it takes is a single burst of squawk on the radio, and you will be surrounded by special forces in seconds.
But seconds could be too long if this butler person blurted out that Malarkey was alive.
I need to close his mouth immediately and permanently, Farley realized.
“You are a spy!” he said, raising his pistol.
“A spy, is it?” said Figary, highly offended, even though it was true. “A spy on whose behalf?”
Rather than wait for an answer, Figary ducked behind the heap of blades, and this was a wise move to make, as Farley emptied the rest of his clip into the shining steel, setting bayonets and cutlasses a-ringing like church bells and demolishing the casual structure. By the clip’s end, Figary crouched shivering and exposed but miraculously unhurt, which was more than could be said for Pig Boy who, in a flash of poetic justice, had suffered a ricochet to the gluteus maximus that would make it difficult for him to sit down for several weeks.
While Farley delved into his belt for a second clip, Figary ripped aside the makeshift canvas curtain, only to find the window boarded up, something he could possibly have taken care of, given half an hour and a hammer. But he had neither tools nor time, and before he could so much as duck down behind the pew, Figary heard an ominous click that he somehow knew was the precursor to another spluttering string of bang-bangs.
This is it, so it is, he thought. My dear mam always told me bacon was bad for the health.
But salvation—or at least temporary reprieve—was at hand, in the shape of one of the dancing girls.
“Hey there. Major Farley. Mr. Hangman. Is there something you’re not telling these fine upstanding gentlemen?”
The accent was American, and the tone was brim-full of impudence, which made it impossible not to search for the speaker.
It was one of the dancing girls. Dark-skinned and pretty and destined to be a true beauty if London
did not grind her down. Her eyes were wide and brown, and her bare arms were tanned and muscled. One crooked elbow rested on the militia cannon in a manner that was wild and somehow threatening.
Farley was confused. Did he know this girl? She called him Hangman, just as Vallicose had.
He stamped his foot, shutting away these questions and confusions until later in the day, when everyone who should be dead was dead and he could afford such luxuries as ponderings and searching his memories for half-forgotten faces.
“Silence, girl. You have no right to speak in this house.”
“That isn’t very modern of you,” said the girl, and she scraped a long, thin stick along the length of the cannon, which Farley now noticed was pointed directly at the ceiling over his head. The thin stick was a match.
“Ha!” said Farley. “That cannon has lain there for the best part of a year. You don’t think it’s loaded, do you, wench?”
Wench was not really a twentieth-century word. It wasn’t a nineteenth-century word, for that matter, but Farley liked it.
A blue-yellow flame sputtered into life at the matchstick’s tip, and suddenly the entire room was interested in how this thing would work out. It really was like the stuff of storybooks: the mean old crook facing off against a bonny lass would be sport enough, but throw a multishot pistol and a cannon into the mix, and you had yourself a potboiler, no mistake.
“I don’t know if it’s loaded or not,” said the girl, tipping the matchstick for a larger flame. “Outside the palace, I would say no. But here, in the company of these dogs, I would guess they keep it loaded for devilment. And I would also guess it’s been fired before, and that’s why the axle broke.”
Farley blinked. This was indeed true. The cannon had been fired three times since Christmas. The last ball went through the roof and killed a horse clear across the river.
Figary was forgotten now.
Forgotten.
He could have stripped down to his long johns and danced a jig and no one would have bothered him with their attention. What was he compared to a little minx and a cannon?
“I fink Bessie might be loaded,” said a Ram with the pelt of a fox tied around his waist.
“Nah,” said another. “Bessie ain’t been loaded for weeks. And anyway, the powder would be soppier than a Valentine’s verse.”
“I applaud your metaphor, Mr. Oxendale,” said Fox Pelt.
“And I applaud your knowledge of literary devices,” said Oxendale, bowing.
Farley lost his cool. He had been holding his temper for years, but now that it was out of the bag, he had trouble stuffing it back in.
“Shut your mouths, fools! I am dealing with a situation here.”
“Put down the gun, Major,” said the girl. “I have plenty of matchsticks.” And to prove her point, she lit a second from the first.
Farley raised his gun, and the girl quickly ducked behind the cannon’s broad barrel.
“Step away from the cannon,” he ordered.
“And then what?” said the girl mockingly. “You won’t shoot me?”
When the girl ducked under the cannon, her hair shifted slightly as it knocked the barrel.
A wig! thought Farley. Of course.
“Savano,” he said. “I know you.”
In response, Chevron Savano lit a third match, holding it dangerously close to the touch hole.
“Kill her!” shouted Farley. “One hundred sovereigns for the man who brings me her head.”
The Rams considered this. The Battering Ram oath did preclude certain female-related activities, specifically the insulting of a member’s mother and the murdering, without severe provocation, of a female, but gold was gold and this dancing girl was fiddling around with a cannon, which could certainly be considered provocation.
There was a ragged roar as several Rams decided to hell with the oath and rushed the cannon, leaving Chevie no choice but to light the cannon’s fuse. Those who were rushing reared back, and those who had not rushed hunkered down; and it was just as well, for, without so much as a heartbeat’s delay, the cannon proved itself to be indeed loaded by firing its fifty-pound missile at a steep angle into the Hidey-Hole’s ceiling, which decided that this was the final straw of abuse and collapsed concentrically, from the breach outward.
The noise sequence, though expected, was still astounding. It began with a metallic vuuuumppp as the ball traveled the length of the barrel. That was followed by a concussive roar, like the crash of a thousand waves on a shoreline of tin and glass, as the cannon hawked its ball into the air. Much of the ceiling was turned to dust by the impact on the way up, and the last remaining wooden beam was blown to splinters as the ball, having completed its arc, whistled to earth once more, bringing a rain of slate, timber, steel, and stone in its wake.
For those inside the Hidey-Hole, the experience was akin to being in an erupting volcano. Devastation rained down from above as they stumbled in circles, clutching their bleeding ears.
Chevie thought, I never really respected cannonballs till now.
And:
I really hope Farley is dead, so he will never hang a single soul.
And:
I think this wig looked pretty good until it got blown off.
She had no such luck re her second thought of Farley being dead. She picked through the wreckage and found him merely unconscious with a gash on the forehead from some shrapnel or other and thought, Well, at least he is having a bad day.
It did occur to Chevie that were she to finish Farley off now, then she could possibly avert all the public hangings he would get up to; but she was herself, after all, and no cold-blooded murderer, so she contented herself with stealing his weapons bag and radio.
“You are losing a lot of gear today, Major,” she said, patting his cheek. “If you keep going like this, you’ll end up fighting your great revolution with stern words and tattoo needles.”
Though the jeers flowed easily from her mouth, a part of Chevie was appalled that she could speak in this fashion to Major Anton Farley, the Blessed Hangman.
Don’t think that way, she told herself. The queen will not hang, my dad will not be executed, and neither will DeeDee.
After all, there were four of them now, and they had two satchels of weapons.
What could go wrong?
On the other side of the room, Figary had sunk to his hunkers and was thinking,
Forgive me, Mammy. But you can’t leave toffee apples in a jug and expect a child not to eat them.
Which was something that had been weighing on his mind since childhood.
Someone grabbed his lapels and yanked him to his feet. He looked, and it was Miss Savano.
“Otto sent me as backup, in case you needed it.”
Figary’s heart swelled with sudden affection for his employer, quite forgetting that it was Malarkey who had sent him on this insane errand in the first instance.
“The commodore. He is a saint, so he is.”
Chevie noticed several black-clad men entering quietly through the front doors.
Special forces, she thought. Missus Figary’s son is not the only one with backup, so he isn’t.
“I think we should leave,” she said.
Figary nodded. “Agreed. I could do with a drink, so I could.”
Chevie handed the stolen bag to Figary. “Hold this. I need both hands free in case someone gets in our way.”
Figary hung the bag on his shoulder. “I will guard it, if not with my life, then at least until someone threatens my life.”
Luckily, as the section of wall beside them had disappeared, there was nothing to impede their hurried exit. They climbed through the rubble and found plenty to impede them on the other side of the wall.
Inspecting the hole were two soldiers dressed in black capes that covered all but the stubby barre
ls of their automatic weapons.
“Hands up,” said the first soldier, and Chevie got the impression that the man was hoping they would not comply.
“You need to make it back to Grosvenor Square,” she whispered to Figary from the side of her mouth. “Otto needs to know the plan.”
Figary understood that Miss Chevie was about to have a go at these big burly soldiers, and he whispered to her that this was a very bad idea and they should bide their time, but he was whispering to the air, as Chevie had already made her move.
The soldiers had been caught by surprise, with their weapons still hidden beneath their short capes. There was an actual drill that Colonel Box had devised whereby soldiers could practice getting the flaps of their capes out of the way with maximum efficiency. It was a simple duo of movements. First both hands were thrust down and out, shooting the cuffs, as it was known; then the elbows were lifted sharply, as if to break the noses of tall attackers, thus flipping back the cape’s wings and leaving the hands perfectly positioned to grasp the heretofore concealed weapon. This maneuver took one-point-five seconds, but Chevie covered the ground between her and the soldiers in one-point-three seconds—and she would have done it faster had her voluminous skirt not caused a bit of drag.
“Run!” she shouted at Figary, who stood frozen in surprise. “Go.”
“How dare you?” shouted Figary, breaking his freeze. “Missus Figary did not raise her boy to leave girleens in danger.”
Then two more soldiers came through the hole and joined the scuffle and Chevie disappeared under the pile of men so quickly that her wig stayed in the air for a moment after her. At this point Figary remembered a Shakespeare quote his mother had often trotted out: Discretion is the better part of valor.
And what is a good quality for a butler, Michael Figary, he asked himself, if not discretion?
And he clutched Farley’s bag tight to his chest and vamoosed down the avenue toward a line of cabs on the Haymarket.