Day of Deliverance jc-2

by Johnny O'Brien

  Day of Deliverance

  ( Jack Christie - 2 )

  Johnny O'brien

  Nick Hardcastle

  Johnny O'Brien, Nick Hardcastle

  Day of Deliverance

  A poisoned sword

  Jack thrust the rapier forward. Angus jumped back, but this time he was not quick enough. The blade pierced his flesh and an ominous red patch appeared on his white shirt. Angus glanced down at the wound and looked back at his opponent with an expression of rage on his face. A frisson of excitement rippled through the crowd. The contest was proving far better than they had imagined. Jack was exhilarated — one final blow and it would all be over.

  His confidence was short-lived. The strike had found its mark but he’d also momentarily lost his balance and Angus came back with a violent counter-thrust. His blade flashed through the air and caught Jack in the ribs. There was a gasp from the crowd. The foil was so sharp that Jack scarcely felt it. But in only a few seconds his own blade grew heavy in his hand and his breathing quickened. Sensing his chance, Angus darted forward once more, his sword aimed at Jack’s chest again. This time Jack spotted the move and swayed to one side. Angus’s forward momentum presented Jack with an opportunity. He grabbed his opponent by the arm and heaved him onwards, while simultaneously thrusting out his leg. Angus tripped and spun through the air landing with a crunching thud, his sword spinning from his hand. Jack pounced onto him and they became locked in a deadly struggle. But he should have known better than to take on Angus in a wrestling match. Angus was much too strong and soon he had Jack pinned on his back beneath him. He grasped Jack’s sword hand and banged it hard on the ground until Jack relinquished his grip. Angus lowered his face towards Jack’s and sneered.

  “You will die.”

  Jack was nailed to the ground. He was wounded and he had no weapon. Angus’s massive bulk was pressing down on him. But it wasn’t over yet. He gritted his teeth, and with a super-human effort jerked his knee upwards into Angus’s crotch. Angus wailed in pain and Jack seized the moment to wriggle free. Snatching up a sword, he wheeled round. The sword felt different — heavier and unbalanced — but it didn’t matter now. Angus jumped back to his feet and grabbed the other sword and the two of them circled round and round, panting at each other like wounded animals. The crowd jeered. Jack’s remaining energy was melting away — he knew he only had seconds left. There was blood all over the floor and Angus slipped. He was only distracted for a split second but it was enough. Jack leaped forward to land a second, fatal blow. Angus screamed as blood from a second wound spurted from his chest. He dropped to one knee, and looked up at Jack. It was an unexpected expression — almost apologetic,

  “The poison… I am killed with my own treachery…” He stammered.

  Jack glanced down at the sword that dangled loosely from his hand — and suddenly he understood. He had snatched up his opponent’s sword, which Angus must have dipped in poison before the contest. Jack had already been injured with the same sword, which meant that, in less than a minute, both of them would be dead.

  But there was still time to see to unfinished business. Jack knew what he had to do.

  Clutching his chest to stem the bleeding, he staggered across to where his uncle sat cowering behind the long banqueting table. The food and drink was laid out — still untouched. Jack mounted the table and fixed his eyes menacingly on his uncle who sank back into his chair, shaking. There was to be no mercy and Jack did not hesitate. He thrust the sword into his uncle’s heart.

  Words,words,words

  Miss Beattie scurried onto the stage, “Well done, everyone! Lights!”

  There was a spontaneous round of applause from the cast and crew. Nothing was being left to chance. The week before, Miss Beattie had even arranged for a special fight choreographer to come in and help them with the sword fight between Hamlet and Laertes in the last scene. It was all perfectly safe, of course, and the flashing swords reassuringly blunt, but there was always tension in the air during the famous scene and everyone stopped what they were doing to watch. And today, with Angus a reluctant and unrehearsed stand-in for the real Laertes who was off sick, anything might have happened.

  “That’s all coming together quite well.” Miss Beattie said, pleased with their progress. “Only two weeks to go now…”

  Jack looked down at Tommy McGough from his position high up on the table. Tommy was playing Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, and he nervously opened one eye.

  “Did I survive?”

  “Looks like it,” Jack said. “Don’t know how you get away with it. Every rehearsal I somehow manage to miss.”

  “Dangerous business this Shakespeare stuff…”

  Angus bounded over from centre stage, flushed with excitement after the sword fight.

  “That was awesome…”

  “Told you…”

  Angus’s shirt was almost completely red as Miss Beattie removed the pouch of stage blood from underneath it.

  “What a mess,” the English teacher fussed.

  Angus grinned, “I thought I would go for Hamlet meets Terminator… Everyone likes a bit of blood, don’t they, Miss?”

  Without looking up, she replied, “Actually, you’re right. When they performed these plays in the old days they wouldn’t have skimped on the blood… they’d have used real goat’s blood probably. The audiences loved gore. There’s even a story of actors using a real musket. In one production it went off and someone in the audience had his head blown off by mistake.”

  Miss Beattie was always coming out with stuff like this. It was one reason why Drama was so popular at school — and successful. The whole town of Soonhope would probably turn up for the end-of-term performance of Hamlet.

  “Is that true, Miss?”

  “Apparently. They just dragged the body out. Next day they were on again. I doubt they used the musket again, though health and safety wasn’t top priority in the sixteenth century…”

  “I could get into that,” Angus said.

  Jack elbowed him. “See — told you it was worth coming.”

  “Well — the fighting was good fun, but I couldn’t stand Shakespeare for too long — you know, all those… words.”

  Miss Beattie looked up at Angus with a steely eye, her good humour evaporating. At nearly six foot, Angus towered over her, but somehow, the expression on her face made him shrink.

  “You’ve done it now…” Jack murmured, casting a sidelong glance at Tommy, who grimaced in return.

  “Words!” Miss Beattie rolled the ‘R’ in her strong East Scots brogue. “WORRRDS!” She repeated it — louder — and it came from her lips like a dart from a blowpipe. “Is that all you have to say on the matter — WORRRDS?”

  Everyone around the stage stopped what they were doing and turned to look at Miss Beattie. For all her boundless enthusiasm, she was also prone to dramatic changes in mood. As a result, Angus was about to receive what was popularly termed by the pupils of Soonhope High School as ‘a Beattie Beating’. It was never pleasant.

  “But, Miss…” Angus bravely tried to stand his ground, but it was too late. It was as if he had inadvertently triggered a small thermo-nuclear device.

  “I’ll tell you this — laddie — not any old words… nearly one million words in forty plays and more than one hundred and fifty four sonnets and poems… and not just any old plays and sonnets, but the most sublime writing the world has ever read — even after four hundred years. Words? Shakespeare invented them. Lots of them… like: critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, zany, leapfrog, vast, hereditary, excellent, eventful, lonely… and phrases… new phrases like: vanish into thin air, brave new world, fool’s paradise, sea change, sorry sigh
t, in a pickle, budge an inch, cold comfort, flesh and blood, foul play, baited breath, cruel to be kind, fair play, green-eyed monster…” She paused only to take a deep breath. Then she was off again. “These are WORDS and phrases that have been used so much they have become cliches… they are words and phrases that I use — God help us — even you use them, my lad — Shakespeare was the world’s greatest writer. He helped define the world’s richest language — the English language — your language. He gave us the very tools to think and feel. He gave us the essence of humanity… do you get it? Do you understand? So please don’t talk to me about WORRRDS!”

  There was stunned silence around the stage as everyone wondered if there might be more — whether this was to be a tactical nuclear strike — or the full-blown strategic version that would take out the whole of Soonhope. Thankfully, the colour in Miss Beattie’s cheeks normalised from a deep purple to its more usual pink. Nevertheless, Angus continued to stare at a spot on the end of one of his shoes for a full ten seconds before finally mumbling, “Yes, Miss. Sorry, Miss.”

  Miss Beattie gave a final sigh of indignation and said, “That’s all right, Mr Jud.” She looked around and clapped her hands.

  “Now everyone — let’s get this lot cleared up. It’s nearly four o’clock.”

  But something that Miss Beattie had said stuck in Jack’s mind and as he and Tommy put away the props, his curiosity overcame his fear of re-lighting the blue touch paper.

  “Sorry, Miss — did you say a million words? I mean written by one man — Shakespeare?”

  “Yes, Jack, I think that’s about right.”

  “But that sounds like an awful lot for one man to write…”

  “It is. There are lots of theories — most of them rubbish — that he did not actually write his material, but that others did. Shakespeare lived during the ‘English Renaissance’ — it was a boom time for plays and playwrights and art and artists generally. More than fifty candidates have been suggested as the ‘real’ Shakespeare — people like Christopher Marlowe.”

  “Who?”

  Miss Beattie was overseeing the flow of props back into the store cupboard, giving orders as she worked. “No, Tommy, put the swords into the sword trolley properly, or they’ll get damaged.” She looked back at Jack. “Sorry, Jack — what was that?”

  “Marlowe — was he like Shakespeare, then?”

  “He influenced Shakespeare, but he died in 1593 before Shakespeare’s career had really got going. He was only twenty-nine… it was murder. He was a spy.”

  “A writer and a spy?”

  “Yes, maybe even a double agent. I know it sounds odd, but there were quite a few writers who were at the time — not Shakespeare, though. They often studied at Oxford or Cambridge; the universities were hotbeds of radicalism.”

  “What do you mean by radicalism?”

  She sighed. “You’re insatiable, Jack.” She turned to lock the store cupboard and then looked at him sympathetically. “Look — we don’t really have time to go into the whole of sixteenth-century politics right now… but next lesson maybe we’ll do it in more detail.” She thought to herself for a minute. “Tell you what, come over here…” She scurried over to a pile of bags at the side of the stage and pulled out a large book.

  “There you go, that should get you started.” She handed the tome over to Jack. It was entitled, simply, Elizabeth I. On the front cover was the famous Armada Portrait of the auburn-headed queen in an elaborately decorated dress covered in jewels with one hand draped over a globe and pointing to Virginia in the Americas, England’s first colony in the New World. Behind the queen, the Spanish Armada could be seen, sailing to its doom.

  “Knowing you, Jack, you should be able to finish that off in a couple of hours. It’s all there. And it’s not just about Shakespeare and Marlowe you know. This was a period of deep religious conflict — between Catholics and Protestants — a struggle for the very soul of man. And this religious conflict was intertwined with the political struggles between states. Spain was the global superpower and England was a backwater by comparison. But when England defeated the Spanish Armada, that all started to change. Otherwise, we might be living in a Catholic country today and speaking Spanish — and so might most of the world. We would probably be having tapas for school dinners.” Miss Beattie stopped. “There I go again… prattling away…” She tapped the book. “Anyway, I’ll leave it with you.”

  Jack leafed through the first few pages.

  “Who’s that?” He pointed to a picture of a confident young man in what he took to be flashy Elizabethan clothes.

  “That’s him — Marlowe,” said Miss Beattie, “Only portrait ever made of him — he was just twenty-one and dressed up to the nines.”

  “What does that mean?” Jack pointed to some Latin words beneath the picture.

  Miss Beattie laughed. “‘What feeds me destroys me.’ Just about sums Marlowe up. How shall I put it — he liked to live life on the edge.”

  Jack didn’t really understand what she meant but he was already leafing through the rest of the book. There were pictures of ships: great Spanish galleons stuffed with treasure from the New World; terrifying fire ships let loose by the English on the anchored Spanish fleet off Calais; The Revenge demasted in the Azores, where, in a fit of macho bravado, Sir Richard Grenville took on twelve great Spanish galleons single-handed, only to die. There were extraordinarily beautiful new buildings, soaring edifices of glass and stone — a far cry from the brutal castles of the Middle Ages. Then there were the people: kings and queens, princes, players and poets… One chapter was called ‘The English Renaissance’ — and it seemed to live up to its billing. As Jack leafed through the volume, he noticed a small frame at the bottom of one of the pages. The caption read, ‘Elizabethan Troupe’. It was a colour plate of a group of actors in various costumes. There was one dressed as a court jester and next to him, in stark contrast, another dressed as a priest or, more likely, a monk. There was a third who looked slightly more important — a country gentleman with a fine cloak and a neat, pointed beard.

  “Head in a book again?” Angus leaned over Jack’s shoulder.

  It looked like nearly everyone else had gone. “Do you want to get something at Gino’s?”

  Jack snapped the book shut.

  “Why not?” He stuffed it in his bag.

  “Well, stop reading that rubbish and let’s go.”

  Gino's

  Jack sat pillion on Angus’s motorbike. He was nervous. Usually trips on the back of Angus’s bike did not go well. Angus was seventeen now and had passed his bike test. His old 125cc Husqvarna two-stroke had been left in one of the sheep sheds at his place up at Rachan and he had taken to riding one of the farm’s more powerful four-stroke Yamaha 250Fs. When he could afford the petrol, he took the bike to school — avoiding the one-hour journey on the bus that picked its way painfully round the hamlets of the upper Soonhope valley.

  Angus turned back the throttle and the engine wailed; he dropped the clutch and they set off. Thankfully, Angus omitted the wheelie he usually performed just to frighten Jack. Soon they reached the bridge over the river, which was quite low from a dry spring. The big Presbyterian church at the head of the High Street loomed ahead of them and Jack remembered what Miss Beattie had been saying about the ‘struggle for the soul of man’. Even in Soonhope, with fewer than two thousand inhabitants, he knew of at least five churches, all of different denominations. It occurred to Jack that he hadn’t actually been inside any of them, and he wasn’t sure how many of the local population had either.

  The High Street was busy but Angus managed to squeeze the bike right in front of Gino’s and, as they went in, the welcoming smell of warm coffee and ice cream wafted over them. Gino was manning the espresso machine while Francesca, his daughter, polished glasses grumpily. Gino was as jolly as ever.

  “What can I get you, lads?”

  “Hi, Gino.” Angus looked up at the endless menu of drinks and snacks pinned
to a board above the counter. But he already knew what he wanted. “I’ll have the double Gino-chino, extra shot, full fat, with caramel and extra cream… and don’t forget the cherry.” He looked over at Francesca and winked provocatively, adding in a deep voice, “Shaken, not stirred.”

  Francesca rolled her eyes and tutted loudly. Gino glanced up. “You have no chance there, the Turinelli family’s outta your league.”

  Angus shrugged. “Oh well — I’ll have four chip butties as well, please, Gino.”

  “Cutting back?” Jack asked.

  “Not exactly. We’re playing Melrose the day after tomorrow — last game of the season. If we win, we’re champions. Need to bulk up.”

  “And Jack, my friend, what are you having?”

  “Thanks, Gino. I’ll go for a Gino-chino as well — but without the bells and whistles and make it just one chip butty.”

  “Coming right up. Take a seat, boys.”

  Gino had recently tried to convert his popular Italian bistro into an American diner — he had even got himself a juke box (which didn’t work). It had been a brave attempt, but somehow it all looked a bit out of place in the traditional High Street of Soonhope. Jack and Angus settled into one of the booths and soon, in hushed tones, they were discussing their favourite subject.

  “Do you think we did the right thing?”

  It was Angus’s first question. Jack thought for a moment and came up with his usual answer.

  “Yes — we did the right thing. I’m sure of it. Dad and Pendelshape created brilliant computer simulations to test out the changes they wanted to make in history, but you could never be certain that by going back in time you might not do something that would have unforeseen consequences for the future. That’s the risk. That’s the whole reason VIGIL was set up. And that’s why we had to side with them.”