by Eoin Colfer
I want to fly away from this place, thought Conor. I need to fly away.
The pain arrived, and Conor Broekhart flew away, but only in his tired mind.
CHAPTER 6: IN THE MIDDLE OF WYNTER
Morning arrived early on Little Saltee, heralded by a single cannon shot aimed towards the mainland. The shot was a Saltee tradition that had been missed only twice in the six hundred years since King Raymond II had inaugurated the custom. Once in AD 1348 when an outbreak of plague wiped out half the population in less than a month, and then again in the Middle Ages when Eusebius Crow’s pirate fleet had all but overrun Great Saltee. The single cannon shot served both to awaken the prisoners and to remind Irish smugglers, brigands or even government forces that the Saltee forces were vigilant and ready to repel all attackers.
Conor Broekhart awoke on a wooden pallet to the sound of cannon echo. He had slept deeply in spite of all that had happened. His body needed time without interruption to repair itself and so had granted him a night of dreamless sleep. Numerous pains assaulted his senses, but the most urgent sang from his left hand.
A Little Saltee kiss.
So it was all real, then. The king’s assassination. The orphaning of dear Isabella, and his own father’s threats of murder.
All real.
Wincing, Conor raised his hand to inspect the wound, and was surprised to find it covered with a neat bandage. Green fluid oozed through the material’s border.
‘Do you like that dressing, boy?’ said a voice. ‘The green muck is Plantago lanceolata. I put some on your face too. Cost me my last plug of tobacco from one of the guards.’
Conor squinted across the cell’s gloom. A pair of long, thin legs poked from the shadows. A skinny wrist was draped over one knee, long fingers tapping imaginary piano keys.
‘You did this?’ asked Conor. ‘The dressing? I have… I had a friend who was good with medicines.’
‘As a young man, I rode with the Missouri Ruffians for a year during the Civil War,’ continued the man, his accent American. ‘I learned a little about medicine. Of course, when they learned that I was a Yankee spy, Jesse James himself took a poker to my skull. I suppose he thought I’d seen enough.’
‘Thank you, sir. I was not expecting kindness in this place.’
‘And you won’t see much,’ granted the Yankee. ‘But what you do see shines like a diamond in a bucket of coal. Naturally, we lunatics are the kindest of the bunch.’
Conor was momentarily puzzled. We lunatics?
Then he remembered that Bonvilain had declared him insane. A turf head, scatterfool.
The American was still talking. ‘Of course, technically, I am an invalid, not a lunatic, but we are all lumped together here on Little Saltee. Lunatics, invalids, violent cases.’ He stood slowly, extending a hand. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Linus Wynter. With a Y. In the middle of Wynter, you understand. You will be seeing a lot of me, but I won’t be seeing much of you, I’m afraid.’
Wynter emerged from the shadows like a stack of brooms falling from a closet. A tall gangle of a man, over fifty, clothed in the ragged remnants of a once-fine evening suit. Like Conor, he wore a bandage. But his was tied across the sockets where his eyes had been. Jesse James had done a thorough job with his poker, the scars of which ran in purple welts across Wynter’s high brow.
Wynter tugged on the bandage. ‘I used to wear an opera mask when I played. Very melodramatic. Very Dickens.’
Conor shook Linus Wynter’s hand as firmly as he could manage.
‘Conor… Finn. That is my name now.’
Wynter nodded, his prominent nose and Adam’s apple sending angular shadows dancing across his face and neck. ‘Good. A new name. In Little Saltee it is better to become a different person. The old Conor is dead and gone. A man needs a new sensibility to survive here. Even a very young man.’
Conor flexed his fingers. Pain scraped his tendons, but everything functioned as it should. He examined his prison cell without enthusiasm. It was as rough and ready as his previous cell with one small barred and glassed window and a couple of wooden pallets.
Something Wynter had said struck him belatedly.
Even a very young man?
Conor waved his hand before Wynter’s eyes. ‘How can you tell my age? Have your other senses compensated?’
‘Yes, they have, so if you could lower your hand. But I know all about you, young Conor Broekhart or Conor Finn, because you were fevered in the night and kept me awake with your babblings. The king? He is truly dead, then?’
Tears welled on Conor’s eyelids. Hearing a stranger say the words aloud had the effect of planting Bonvilain’s deed in the real world.
‘Yes. I saw him dead.’
Wynter sighed long and mournfully, running his fingers through fine greying hair. ‘That is indeed grave news. More than you know. Bonvilain will drag these islands back to the dark ages.’
‘You know Bonvilain?’
‘I know a lot about the affairs of the Saltees.’ Wynter seemed about to elaborate, his mouth open for the next word, when he paused, cocking his head to one side in the manner of a deer that senses nearby hunters. ‘Time for histories this evening. Over dinner perhaps.’ He leaned forward, fingers scrabbling through the air like spiders until they settled on Conor’s shoulders.
‘Now listen to me, Conor Finn,’ he said with some urgency. ‘The guard approaches. They will try to break you today. Watch carefully for trouble. A sly blade. A plank across the shins. Come through this day intact, and tonight I shall teach you how to survive this hell. There is an end to it, and we shall see it, believe me.’
‘Break me?’ said Conor. ‘Why?’
‘It is the way here. A broken man, or even boy, is not likely to upset production. And on Little Saltee production is the real king, not Arthur Billtoe.’
Conor pictured the monkey pirate who had ferried him to the prison. It was unlikely that Billtoe would lift a bejewelled finger to protect Conor.
‘What can I do?’
‘Work hard,’ replied Wynter. ‘And trust neither man nor beast. Especially a sheep.’
Before Linus Wynter could explain this unexpected remark, the door’s heavy bolt scraped through its rings with an almost musical sound.
‘Top C,’ said Wynter dreamily. ‘Every morning. Wonderful.’
This was a noise that Conor would yearn for over the months to come, a noise he heard in his dreams. The latch’s release signified liberation from his dank cell, but also served as a reminder that the liberation was temporary. Social diarists record that survivors of Little Saltee often suffered from insomnia unless their bedchamber doors were fitted with rusted bolts.
Arthur Billtoe peeped round the door, wearing the cheery expression of a kindly uncle waking his nephew for a plunge in the swimming hole. His hair was slicked back with a smear of grease and thick stubble poked through his skin like nails driven from the inside.
‘Ready for the pipe are you, Conor Finn?’ he said, jingling a set of handcuffs.
Wynter’s fingers gripped tight, like coal tongs. ‘Mouth shut. Work hard. Mind the sheep. And don’t cross Mister Billtoe.’
Billtoe entered the cell, clapping the cuffs round Conor’s wrists. ‘Oh yes, never cross me, little soldier. You lay one finger on me and you will be strapped to a low ring at high tide. And as for the sheep. Wise words from the blind man. Sheep are not for stewing here on Little Saltee.’
All this talk of sheep was strange and ominous. Conor guessed that he had a surprise coming, and not the jolly kind.
Traditionally in hostelries and even in prisons around the globe, breakfast is served before a shovel is lifted. Not so on Little Saltee. Here the morning meal was used as an incentive to work harder. No diamonds, no bread. It was a straightforward equation that had proved effective for centuries. Conor had expected a detour to a mess hall, but instead was led directly to the diamond mine, or the pipe, as the prison’s occupants called it.
Bil
ltoe explained Little Saltee’s routine on the way.
‘Salts with a tum full of grub are inclined to be satisfied and dopey,’ he said, chewing on a hank of bread, which he stored in his pocket between bites.
To Conor, who hadn’t tasted a morsel in twenty-four hours, this was yet another form of torture. His hunger pangs were soon subdued by Billtoe’s revolting habit of half swallowing each mouthful, then regurgitating it to relish the taste once more. Each regurgitation was accompanied by a convulsion that ran along Billtoe’s spine like a flicked rope.
Though Conor was repulsed, he knew his hunger would soon return, gnawing on the lining of his stomach, as if his body had turned on itself in desperation. He was distracted from his hunger by the peal of a church bell in the distance. This was something of a mystery in such a godforsaken place.
Billtoe seemed cheered by the sound.
‘Say your prayers, boy,’ he cackled.
The guard jabbed his rifle butt into Conor’s spine, pushing him along a cobbled passageway lit by torches and dawn glow from roof portholes. The surf crashed against the granite wall on their left, which was half-natural half-hewn as though the island was growing through the structure. Each wave crash shook the entire corridor and set a hundred rivulets pulsing through mortar as crumbly as cheese.
‘Below sea level, we are,’ explained Billtoe, as though Conor needed telling. ‘A while back the prison and the mine were two separate things. But the Trudeaus’ greed and the inmates’ labour drew them together. The prison basement was heading that way and eventually the two met up. Just a matter of bashing through a wall. It was fortunate for us guards in the mad wing. Now there’s no need for us to venture out in the elements – we let the lunatics work the pipe. Half the time they don’t even know it’s dangerous and most of them will work until their hands bleed if you tell ’em that’s what Mummy would want.’
This exposition was delivered in a cheery tone that belied Billtoe’s cruel nature. If it had not been for the gun butt in his back and the burning Saltee kiss on his hand, Conor might have believed the guard a decent man.
They passed along a maze of corridors, dotted with strong doors and collapsing arches. The entire prison basement seemed in danger of imminent cave-in.
‘Looks like the whole place is coming down, don’t it?’ said Billtoe, reading Conor’s expression. ‘It’s been looking like that since I got here. Doubtless this pit will outlive you. Though you being a Salt, that’s not much of a boast.’
Salt. Conor had heard the term before. This was what Little Saltee inmates were called. Forever branded as such by the S on their hands. He was a Salt now.
They emerged from the corridor into an open area, which may have been a pantry in previous centuries. The walls were smeared with faded spice marks and flour swabs. The central flags had been excavated and ladders thrown down to the area below. Roughly a score more guards stood around, tooled with standard rifles but also more personal weapons. Conor spotted Indian blades, whips, dirks, cutlasses, American six-shooters, blackjacks and even one samurai sword. The Saltee tradition of hiring mercenaries had left its mark on local weaponry. The guards lounged about, smoking, chewing and spitting. They feigned easiness, but Conor noted that every last man of them had a fist on some weapon or other. This was a dangerous place to be, and it didn’t do to forget it.
The ladders dropped down to open water. Deep, black and ridged with whatever light could find it. More guards were ranged about the cave walls below, keeping their boots above the water line. Several convicts wrestled with a scaffolding rig, taking the weight of a huge brass bell which swung pendulously in the confined space, knocking stone splinters from the cave wall where it struck and sending huge cathedral bongs booming through the upper level.
‘Welcome to the pipe,’ said Billtoe, spitting breadcrumbs.
Conor knew something of the island’s geology from Victor’s teachings and quickly realized what was happening here. The Saltee diamond pipe was brewed in the gullet of a volcano on the other side of the world, sliced off by a glacier and deposited off the Irish coast. This meant that someday the diamond supply would run out, especially considering the constant and eager mining by the Trudeau family. This was not the first time underwater mining had been used to bolster diamond supplies, but King Nicholas had banned the practice within six months of his coronation. This brass bell was a diving bell, from the belly of which prisoners could chip rough diamonds from the underwater section of the pipe. King Nicholas’s decrees were being overturned before his body was cold. Bonvilain had clearly been plotting for long bitter years.
‘That bell is ancient,’ Conor said, almost to himself. ‘It must be a hundred years old.’
Billtoe shrugged theatrically, then unlocked Conor’s handcuffs. ‘That fact doesn’t bother me, being that I’m not the one going down in it, thank God. A man could get hurt and worse, as you will find out this fine morning. Down you go.’
Another shove from Billtoe’s rifle butt sent Conor stumbling towards a broad ladder poking from the cave’s shadows. The ladder beams jabbed him in the chest, preventing a tumble into the hole, and the end of a very short mining career.
‘One coming down,’ Billtoe shouted.
The senior guard scowled up through the gloom. Conor recognized him as Billtoe’s partner of the previous evening. His main distinguishing features were a seeming lack of any hair and a pinched stance, which made him seem almost hunchbacked.
‘We don’t need another, Arthur,’ he cried. ‘Full complement, we have. Even if a few croak it in the bell.’
Billtoe took Conor by the scruff, urging him on to the ladder. ‘That’s enough out of you, Pike. This is Marshall Bonvilain’s special boy, remember? He needs to be looked after.’
Pike’s expression changed from wheedling to leering. ‘Ah, the special boy. The little prince. Send him down. I have a few rams waiting to bump horns with him.’
Sheep again. What could it mean?
Billtoe stepped on Conor’s fingers, forcing him down a rung. ‘Down you go, Conor Finn. Don’t make me break your fingers. These are good boots and Salt blood would ruin ’em on me.’
There was a curious, expectant silence as Conor climbed down into the pit. He could feel the temperature drop with every rung, until the cold of the water crept from its surface like an invisible cowl draping itself heavily on Conor’s shoulders. He was really scared during those moments. Almost too petrified to move, but gravity tugged at his bones, helping him on his way.
The mad-wing convicts were a motley lot, favouring the stony-stare, slack-jawed demeanour. They glared at Conor with loathing and fear and the threat of harm hung heavy in the salty air. For long moments, the only sounds were the creaking ladder and the gentle slap of water on rock.
Finally Conor arrived on the surface, feeling like an enemy flag under the hammering gaze of so many hostiles. Billtoe stepped down behind him and pointed at the diving bell.
‘That there is Flora. You know what she is, Salt?’
Conor mumbled his reply. ‘She’s a diving bell.’
‘No, turf head. She’s a…’ Billtoe was frustrated to have his information stolen. He poked Conor in the chest with a rigid finger. ‘Yes, she is a diving bell. And because you know all about it you can be first into her. Flora has been out of service for several years, but I’m sure all is well with her fittings.’
Conor forced himself to study the bell, though all he wanted to do was clasp his knees in a quiet corner and cry for the bad luck that had cursed him. The bell seemed sound enough, though deeply gouged by stone in several places. She was suspended by a network of chains that hitched to an iron hoop dangling over its prow. The hoop in turn fed half a dozen more chains to the scaffolding above. The chains seemed as ancient as the bell, with several rust-dappled links shedding flakes as they swung. A cracked rubber hose poked from the top of the bell, snaking upwards to a hand-cranked bellows affair, which Conor presumed to be an ancient air pump. The pump was
being cranked by two inmates. One was racked with consumptive coughing fits and the other paused regularly to spit tobacco phlegm on to the rocks. Not the ideal pair for the job. Conor would not rely on either to supply enough oxygen to fuel the lungs of a small dog.
Billtoe stepped well back and called out his command to a guard above.
‘Lower her down. Do not break the hose or the warden will tan all our hides.’
The diving bell descended in fits, according to the strength of the inmates bearing the strain and the clumsy coiling of chains on the previous use. Some of the links had fused in tangled knots and now popped free sending the diving bell lurching and swinging. The cavern walls resounded with irregular clangs and bongs, causing anyone with free hands to cover their ears.
‘Hell’s bells, man!’ Billtoe called up to his comrade. ‘It sounds like drunk day in Saint Christopher’s in here.’
Saint Christopher had been adopted by the Trudeaus as the Saltees’ patron saint. The church on Great Saltee bore his name.
‘It ain’t my fault, Billtoe,’ retorted the guard. ‘She’s coming, ain’t she. Mind I don’t land her on your head.’
It was said only in jest, but Billtoe stepped aside smartish just the same. Flora swung lower, like a skittish baby monkey on a rope, until eventually she splashed into the black water, sending wave rings rushing to the rocks.
‘Every day,’ sighed Billtoe, mopping his brow with a kerchief. ‘We have to go through this blasted rigmarole every day from this out.’ He turned his attention and annoyance to the prisoners at the pumps.
‘Crank! You apron-tugging, turnip-brained scatterfools.’
‘Yes, boss,’ they mumbled, and set to pumping the bellows, sending air through the rubber hose and into the bell itself. The hose wriggled and flipped as the air inflated it slightly.
The bell sank slowly into the sea, emitting a curious shivering hum as the water caressed its surface.
Billtoe elbowed Conor. ‘You hear that, soldier boy? We call that the siren’s song. Because it’s the last sound many of you Salts hear. Lord, I had forgotten how soothing it was.’