Castles Made of Sand

by Gwyneth Jones

  ‘Everything real is good.’

  ‘Will you sing me the Jigglypuff song?’

  ‘Coming up.’

  So he sang a cartoon lullaby, and rocked her, and eventually she slept. Sage stayed awake, watching her sleeping face, not deceived by the ephemeral, adrenalin-fuelled recovery. It’s going to be hard, he thought, it’s going to take a long time. But Ax will be with her, and she’ll know she’s loved. She’ll be okay. The Lorien flew on, cruising at thirty knots under sail, like a knife through butter, what a boat. He watched the silvered alloy wings shifting, he watched the beauty of the ocean, and tried not to think of what he’d like to do to Rufus O’Niall. No anger, no ultra-violence, don’t muddy the waters, just do what has to be done.

  It was late afternoon when the computer woke him.

  ‘What is it?’ There should be at least another hour of the crossing. ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘No,’ said the voice Serendip used when she spoke aloud, welling from the empty air. ‘Everything’s in order. I didn’t want you to miss the dolphins.’

  There was a school of them, a striped kind. They stayed for miles, surfing the bow wave as if the Lorien was a big ship: leaping up, bright-eyed, to beam at their whooping and cheering audience. By the time they left, banking off and vanishing to the south, the yacht had passed between Fastnet Rock and Cape Clear and changed her course. They were heading into Roaring Water Bay, at the southern tip of West Cork, with its skein of islands strung between the sailing ports of Baltimore and Skull. One of which, the hourglass-shaped Inis Oir, Island of Gold, was the private property of Rufus O’Niall.

  Their perfect breeze was breaking up as they left the powerful calm of the open sea; and they were not alone anymore. There were other smart pleasure craft, chugging ferries; fishing boats and little outboard-motored dinghies. They went down to the galley and brought back sandwiches of bread and sliced ham, with some red wine. The wine was extremely superior, wasted on both of them, but they ate, and drank it anyway, passing the bottle between them at the rail, admiring the traffic. It was very strange to see all these people out enjoying the beautiful weather—as if through a clear but impenetrable veil.

  ‘Okay,’ said Sage, ‘given the situation at home, and given that this trip would be breaking quarantine, if there was nothin’ else going on, this is the tricky bit. We can be sure there are suits in the Dail who would be glad to hold our coats while we take out Rufus, but officially the Irish government is neutral and we must not be caught.

  ‘No need to worry about the radar on Mount Gabriel—that’s Mount Gabriel, the hill above Skull—it won’t spot the Lorien. But there’s three Irish cruisers standing off Kinsale, which is a little too close, and Serendip’s not sure what they’re doing there. We seem to have sneaked by…just have to hope for the best. It’s the right time to be coming into the bay. This is party central for West Cork sailing folk, it’s hit the pubs hour and we are lost in the crowd: fuck of a sight better than trying it after dark. We have a fake radio identity, and Lorien’s radar profile is non-existent. Once we’re between the Calf Islands and Inishodriscol, that’s the one over there—

  ‘You’re very convincing, motor mouth. Is this all from Serendip?’

  ‘Not all of it. I’m remembering some: I’ve been here before. My dad brought me on a sailing trip, when I was fourteen. Last-ditch bonding attempt.’

  ‘Was that good?’

  ‘Diabolical. I hated him, I couldn’t do fuck around the boat, an’ although I didn’t count myself as addicted it was my first experience of missing the smack, which he knew nothing about, an’ he would have gone beserk—’

  ‘I get the picture. Hey, shouldn’t we be talking about what happens next?’

  ‘Yeah. Let’s get parked first.’

  The Lorien slipped through the islands, the sunset behind her, looking no way out of place; just very classy. On the land side of Inishodriscol they lost the crowd. They passed Rufus’s boat dock in the waist of Inis Oir, with the village climbing above it. About half a mile further, and they entered an inlet under engine power. There were no buildings in sight, only rugged little cliffs, capped with a rising ground of gorse and heather. It was darker suddenly, without the great sky.

  They went back to the wheelhouse.

  ‘So,’ said Fiorinda. ‘What now?’

  ‘Ah… Well. We’re somewhat exposed. There’s not much chance he doesn’t know we’re coming. But we have things in our favour. Rufus is a fearsomely powerful magician, but he’s also been a superstar for forty years. He hasn’t the sense he was born with. He can’t tie his own shoelaces.’ Sage grinned. ‘As I would know. Also, if he’s like any other senior rock musician I ever met, he’s more than a little deaf.’

  Fiorinda crossed her eyes. ‘Eh?’

  They laughed. But there was something wrong. Sage had been acting shifty since they left the ocean and turned towards the land. Oh, here it comes. He took her hand and led her to one of the cockpit chairs. A solemn look. She realised they’d never had that discussion he’d promised.

  ‘Sweetheart. I’m going on alone.’

  ‘Don’t do this to me.’

  Never trust Sage when he gives in easily, over anything. ‘Fiorinda please. Please, my baby, have mercy on me. How could I ever face Ax if I let you come along? You can’t be involved. No one must know that you or Ax were in on this. I brought you with me because I realised you were as safe on board the Lorien as you could be anywhere, and I have been so happy with you today. But you’re going to wait here. The Lorien won’t be seen, even if someone comes looking. I have a mirror-routine running, sampling the light on the rocks and the water. Serendip won’t let you leave the boat; she’ll stop you by knocking you out if she has to, but she’ll stay here as long as it’s safe. If I’m not back when the next tide turns, or if for any reason it’s time to go, she’ll take you home.’

  ‘You bastard,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I should have known.’

  What could she do? Make things harder? No.

  She looked out at the inlet, thinking, this is Ireland, where I have never set foot, while he went below. When he came back, he’d changed into his sand-coloured suit. He looked amazing. She kissed him goodbye and watched him row to the cusp of beach. He must have been rowing for the fun of it: as soon as he got out and shipped the oars the dinghy came gliding back to the Lorien’s side all by itself. He waved, blew her a kiss, and set off into the gold and indigo twilight.

  She sat for a while, chin on her hands.

  ‘Serendip. I’m very sorry I said that about you being only a computer. You wouldn’t hold me here against my will, would you?’

  ‘Of course not, Fiorinda,’ said the empty air. ‘And apology accepted.’

  ‘Thank you. Tell me when I should go after him.’

  He looked back, from the ridge. The Lorien was invisible. There was nothing to be seen except the water and the rocks; and a couple of odd shadows. That’s good, he thought, that’s very good. He climbed down into the next bay, and here there was a real beach, a great wide sweep of golden sand, with romantic little cliffs and picturesque boulders; and the castle on the opposite headland, facing the west.

  Nice pad, Rufus. Location, location, location.

  He walked by the ebb tide, where the minor colours of twilight lay caught in the wet sand, thinking of the miserable fuck-up he’d made of his life, and how he’d failed his darling, again and again. But Ax trusted me. When Ax left, he trusted me to look after Fiorinda. He was wrong, but Ax trusted me, I remember that and it all falls away, the chances missed, the hope refused, all that sorry record. I’m all right now. I’m sorted.

  The cliff was a piece of piss, likewise the curtain wall of the bawn, the outer defence of Rufus’s castle. The stonework was new but it wasn’t sheer; the infra-red traps and the photo-opportunities easy to miss. Once within the bawn he forced an ordinary Yale lock on someone’s back door in the domestic staff’s quarters. Everyone was out, according to Serendip; for the mo
ment, anyway. He sat gathering himself, looking around: at kiddie art magneted to the door of the fridge, the ancient oilcloth on the table, the brand-new webtv beside the cereal packets; a photo of a football team. A dog-eyed, sepia Jesus gazed from the wall, pointing to his Sacred Bleeding Heart… This palimpsest of histories that we live in. These human things, that look so precious, so vulnerable and fragile: but it’s not true. A tiger is vulnerable. Trees, rivers, mountains, they are fragile. He wondered about the woman who ruled here. Did she have opinions? Or did she just live from day to day, not knowing anything except that she loved a few people? He thought he ought to have a clear head. Why am I doing this? To avenge my darling? To protect England? To save the billions? Are my motives pure?

  I don’t know.

  I’ll just have to wing it.

  Serendip told him it was time to move on, warm bodies approaching. He went through the house, out the front door, and he was in the inner courtyard of Drumbeg, an open space surrounded by handsome stone buildings, either new or much restored; and the tower.

  It was half dark. There were armed guards, but they were avoidable. The dogs were more alert. Two Dobermans came trotting up, through the pools of shadow between the security lights: heads low, silent, trained to give no warning before they attacked. He put on the mask. ‘I don’t like dogs,’ he said softly, in the back of his throat. They took the advice, and returned to their routine patrol. Sage had noticed, years ago, that animals seemed to understand the mask. The results could be unpredictable, it wasn’t something he’d try again in a hurry on a nervy fucking big police horse; but dogs aren’t dangerous.

  Now he met a real obstacle, but it was the last. The door at the base of the tower was double-timbered, thickly covered with fanged studs of polished iron, and the lock was a massive, ancient thing, not amenable to high-tech persuasion. But he still didn’t need magic, which was good. He wasn’t sure of the limits of his new-found superpowers, but it seemed to make sense to conserve them. He took out a ring of heavy-duty skeleton keys and Serendip told him what to do.

  And here we are, in at the front end.

  The ground floor of the tower was surprisingly small. He had seen plans, and a video (an interview that the lord of Drumbeg had done in here, carelessly, years ago), but imagination is stronger. He’d still been expecting an English, baronial-style hall. The room had no furniture except for a mass of ancient weapons, lovingly displayed on the white walls. Fine, silky rugs on the stone-flagged floor; a stone spiral staircase in one corner. Across from the entrance another, modern door, promised different territory beyond. That was the way to the guardrooms; but Rufus’s private army wouldn’t come running unless someone raised the alarm. A brass pitcher full of leaves and hothouse flowers stood in the cold hearth: the glossy magazine touch. On the wall above there was a picture in an Art Deco frame, a soft-porn portrait of a very young girl, displayed on a woodland bank, her little breasts uplifted, her knees open, lips parted and gossamer wings spread wide.

  The girl was Fiorinda, of course.

  Someone came down the stairs, treading softly. It didn’t sound like Rufus. Who could this be? When, apparently astonished beyond caution, this person had crept out into the middle of the floor, he turned around. A woman of a certain age stood there, dressed in a long green open robe over a slinky catsuit type thing: slim as fashion, long legs, a superb pair of tits, glossy, aubergine-coloured hair. She stared at him, wide-eyed. Ah, I know.

  ‘Carly Slater,’ he said brightly, bowing a little from his height. ‘I think we met, once. You won’t remember. Some fucking VIP lounge somewhere.’

  She bolted for the stairs.

  Sage followed, leisurely. He could hear music.

  The source of the music was in the room at the top which, Irish-style, was the great hall, and here was the traditional rockstar castle stuff that he’d expected below: a minstrels’ gallery, massive black oak antiques, a grand piano, costly knicknacks, fabulous paintings; and a fabulous view, lost in the evening, through broad windows all around. No sign of Carly. He didn’t see Rufus either, at first. A wallscreen, maybe three metres across, hung opposite the stair. It was showing the Inauguration Concert at Reading, of all things. Aoxomoxoa, skull-masked, in his sweeping black and white kimono, towers predatory over Fiorinda. Give me your hand, he croons, meaning, I’m going to have you, and she answers, pure as crystal, raising her starry eyes.

  Vorrei e non vorrei—

  Intimidated? Not she. She’ll take the Don apart, this one.

  ‘Can you remember the future, Steve?’ enquired a man’s deep voice, rich and musical, received rockstar with just the trace of an Irish accent.

  ‘Me?’ said Sage, grinning, strolling forward, hands in his pockets. ‘I can’t remember anything. Too many drugs.’

  An armchair under the screen turned (it didn’t scrape on the floor). A big man was sitting there, relaxed and magnificent, shining black curls on his shoulders, a much photographed face, not so young as it once was. ‘Aoxomoxoa,’ said Rufus. ‘How times change. Last time we met you were the fart-sucking faceless king of the lads. Now you’re the sex god that every man, woman and child in Ax Preston’s little manor wants to fuck. Or be fucked by. But Aoxomoxoa, they say, loves only that grey-eyed slip of a girl who is the queen of England… I’ve been expecting you. Take a seat, make yourself at home.’

  The screen had switched to ‘Atlantic Highway’. Four skull-headed idiots bounced over the potholes in a terrible old wreck of a car, convertible as in someone sawed the roof off, chief idiot sporting pink sunglasses and a Goonhilly Earth Station baseball cap. On backwards, of course. In a moment the masks will disappear. They’ll cruise along Newquay seafront, all the tat edited out, and step out into a suave Cornish Riviera.

  Sage folded himself into a black-oak baronial chair, facing the lord of Drumbeg, his hands still in his pockets, legs stretched out. ‘Is this what you do with yourself these days, Rufus? Slob around in yer carpet slippers, watching my old videos?’

  Rufus took a couple of draws on the cigar he was smoking. Then he decided to offer the box, pushing it across the massive, mediaevaloid coffee table that stood between them. No doubt these were very fine cigars. ‘Please, help yourself.’

  ‘Wasted on me, thanks. They make me throw up.’

  ‘Really? But you’re smoking a cigar in this video, a little further on.’

  ‘It was a prop. I don’t recall if anyone actually smoked it; I cert’nly didn’t. Have you been studying my fucking videos as a hobby? Now that is sad.’

  Rufus pulled the table closer to him, leaned down and spooned a quantity of white powder from a silver bowl, cut it deftly and offered a silver straw.

  ‘What about a little blow? It’s Bolivian, certified organic.’

  Sage shook his head. ‘Not my drug.’ He noted that he was being offered, in some sense, fire and salt, and wondered if there was a ritual significance. Fucked if he cared. No, in these circumstances, has to be the right answer.

  Rufus leaned back. ‘How old are you, Steve? Thirty-one, thirty-two? The perfect age for a rockstar. You’ve made the shitloads of money. You don’t yet realise that no matter what the fuck you do now, you’re on the downward slope. But all those people looking at you, they know. They’ve seen you take the step beyond the top, they’ve seen you topple. You can write your rock symphonies, fill the Superbowl, but you’re over. Oh, you don’t mind if I call you Steve?’

  This earned a big sunny smile. I mind, if my opponent tells me he’s rattled?

  ‘Not at all. My grandad still calls me Stephen.’

  ‘Maybe you’d like to see some pictures I took of her when she was twelve years old. The ones I took for the artist… She was very compliant, a real little professional.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  Rufus looked irritated. He crushed out the cigar in a chunky bronze sheelanagig ashtray. ‘Then what do you want, Steve? If you’re not prepared to accept my hospitality?’

  ‘I’m here to kil
l you,’ explained Sage, placidly. He took his hands out of his pockets and laid them on the arms of the chair, in full view. The jewel on his right hand caught shards of light from the fake-flambeaux around the walls. ‘I’m gonna break your legs and peg you out and leave you for the tide. Anythen’ else you need to know?’

  The big man, in his dark, gold-fringed mantle, majestically filling that chair, drew a long, measured breath.

  ‘Partly because of what you did to my babe,’ Sage went on, ‘I have to admit that, though I’m fighting the idea: because that would be revenge, an’ I know it would be wrong, an’ only store up trouble. Partly because you won’t stop, Rufus. Everybody knows you won’t. You’re beat, you’re not king of the hill anymore, but there’s no way anyone can say to you, be a good lad and retire quietly, and you’ll do it. You’ll keep coming back, fucking everything up. And partly—’

  Rufus laughed heartily. ‘What, more? How many excuses do you need?’

  Sage was reminded of something he’d had to face. The person he’d liked, in Fergal Kearney’s body, though with a different voice, and eyes, and physical presence: the misfit, loser, but also a really clever and knowing guy, had been in some way Rufus O’Niall. God help me, of course I liked him. He is her father.

  ‘And partly for your sake, Rufus. Because I’ve some faint idea what it might feel like, being where you are. Think of me as the doctor. I’ve come to get you out of the shit you are in. You don’t have to die if you don’t want. We could talk about other ideas.’

  The two men looked into each other’s eyes.

  There was a silence.

  Suddenly the magician surged to his feet, sweeping up the mediaeval coffee table like a mad, huge shield. ‘Damn you to hell!’ he shouted. He flung his shield and charged forward, unstoppable, stormed past Sage and rushed out the room.

  Rufus ran down the stairs to the bedchamber on the floor below, leaped inside and barred the door. He was very stirred-up, not at all concerned. He called the guardroom and spoke to O’Donoghue, his security chief. In rapid fire he ordered everybody out: men, domestic staff, the lot. They could sleep in the village, or wherever the fuck they liked. He didn’t want them around. For what was going to happen, he wanted a free hand.