Airman

by Eoin Colfer

  Billtoe plucked the page from the table with two grubby fine-boned fingers.

  ‘You know, I’ve been talking to a few mates. Apparently there’s a German makes twelve-shot revolvers.’ He spat a stream of tobacco juice on the flags, to show his displeasure.

  ‘But small calibre,’ argued Conor. ‘To accommodate the bullets. With this design the cylinder is actually a screw, so the bullets can be as big as you wish, and the weight is spread out more efficiently so it will work for rifles too.’

  The design was preposterous and utterly unworkable, but looked pretty on paper.

  ‘I don’t know,’ grumbled Billtoe. ‘A screw, you say?’

  ‘Have one made. Like the balloons. Do a test.’

  Billtoe folded the page roughly, stuffing it into a pocket.

  ‘That I will, Master Finn. And if this turns out to be a scatterfool’s daydream, the next time you see daylight will be on the day I toss you from the south wall.’

  Conor nodded glumly, hoping his excitement did not shine from his forehead like the Hook Head lighthouse.

  Billtoe had made a mistake. In his eagerness to see the revolver plan, he hadn’t noticed Conor’s sleight of hand, plugging the Bell and Bolton handcuffs, diverting the ratchet to one side. His hands were free, but it was not yet time to make use of this.

  ‘This is no daydream, Mister Billtoe. This is our future. You can register the patent, then perhaps pay a few bribes to get me out of here.’

  Billtoe feigned great indignance. ‘Bribes! Bribes, you say. I am deeply offended.’

  Conor swallowed, a man holding his nerve. ‘Let’s speak plain, Mister Billtoe. I am in this hole for life, unless you can pull me out of it. I’m not expecting freedom right away…’

  Billtoe chuckled. ‘I am relieved to hear it. The pressure is on, says I to meself. Immediate freedom or no deal. But you’re not expecting freedom, so there’s a worry lifted.’

  ‘But I would dearly love a cell on the surface. Or near it. Maybe a mate to share with. Malarkey would be suitable, I think.’

  ‘I bet he would. Lovely and cosy, all Rams together. No wheedling now, Finn. First I have the model made, and when it doesn’t explode in my face, then we parley.’

  ‘But, Mister -’

  Billtoe held up a flat hand.

  ‘No. Not a word more, soldier boy. Your balloons have not taken flight yet. I may be coming for you in the morning with a Fenian pike.’

  Conor hung his head in defeat, in reality hoping he had not overplayed his role. The entire revolver notion was merely misdirection, any magician’s meat and potatoes. Fill Billtoe’s mind with notions so that he would be less attuned to what was unfolding in front of his eyes.

  ‘Now, let’s be off to work. Well, work for you. I’m off topside to supervise your… my… coronation balloons.’

  Conor sidled past Billtoe, through the doorway, careful to keep his mud-caked back on the guard’s blind side. His plan was a house of cards, a citadel of cards. One unlucky glance could bring the entire structure down.

  No time for that now. Begin your count.

  His count. Another largely theoretical card in the citadel. Conor had long since discovered that there was a blind spot in the corridor between his cell door and the diving-bell wing. One of the mad wing’s occupants had been in front of him six months previously on the walk to the warden’s weekly speech. The man was tiny with a disproportionately large head, especially the forehead, which sat atop his eyebrows like a porcelain slug. It was the man Billtoe had called Numbers, because inside his strange head, everything was reduced to mathematics, the purest science. He would spout long streams of digits, and then laugh as though he were watching cabaret in Paris.

  On that morning, half a year ago, Conor had watched the man lope down the line before him, muttering his numbers, measuring his steps.

  Fourteen was the last in his list.

  Then Numbers took a sideways hop, and disappeared.

  No. Not disappeared, but certainly not as visible. There, in sudden black shadows, shaking with mirth at his own joke. A joke that could see him hanged.

  Numbers held his position until Pike noticed him missing, then hopped from his hiding place.

  ‘Fourteen,’ he exclaimed in a screeching shriek. ‘Fourteen, eighty-five, one half.’

  Pike did not get the joke, proceeding to cuff Numbers round the ear hole several times.

  There were no more demonstrations from Numbers, but Conor learned quickly. He had seen the trick once and set about dissecting it.

  How do you unravel a magician’s secret?

  Start at the reveal and work backwards.

  There was a natural blind spot in the corridor, something magicians and escapologists created artificially on stage with lights, drapes or mirrors. A tiny spot of isolated darkness, surrounded by stimuli that drew the eye. A patch of near invisibility. It would not stand up to any scrutiny, but for a second in frenzied circumstances it would do.

  For the next few weeks, Conor watched the space and analysed the numbers.

  Fourteen, eighty-five, one half.

  It was no deep code. Numbers had taken fourteen steps from his cell door along the path, then hopped half a step, eighty-five degrees to the right. Into the belly of the blind spot. Conor simply added the five steps necessary to find the spot for himself.

  Once there, he was amazed by how obvious it was. Overlapping layers of shadow, untouched by torchlight, further shaded by a slipped cornice stone, with a spume of spilled crimson paint on the flagstones a foot to the left. A cylinder of blackness that would take no more than a heartbeat to pass through. But, once inside, it formed a cloak of near invisibility that could be enhanced by further misdirection.

  Billtoe walked beside him, muttering about his lack of respect for his superiors.

  Twelve.

  ‘And the warden? Don’t talk to me about the warden. That man makes decisions that boggle the mind. Too much time in the Indian sun if you ask me. Blooming Calcutta fried his mind.’

  Fifteen.

  ‘The money the man wastes. The cash money. It makes my heart sick. I fair feel ill just talking about it, even to a Salt.’

  Nineteen.

  Billtoe clicked his fingers at Conor, meaning stop where you are.

  Now comes the vital moment. All strands converge. Live or die on this instant.

  Billtoe stepped to the wing door, tinging the bell with his fingernail. No response for a long moment, then a familiar mocking voice from the spy hole above.

  ‘Ah, Billtoe. Is it out, you want? From the mad wing? Are you certain sure that’s the right direction?’

  Billtoe’s posture stiffened. A dozen times a day he had to endure this ribbing.

  ‘Can you not simply open a bolt, Murphy? Turn the wheel and lift the bolt, that is all I require from you.’

  ‘Sure I know it’s all you require, Arthur. The rest is free, a little daily gift. I am the funny fairy, dropping little lumps of humour on your head.’

  Six feet up, the wheel was turned and bolt lifted. The door to the mad wing swung open.

  ‘If I could put in words how much I hate that man,’ muttered Billtoe, turning. ‘Then Shakespeare himself could kiss my…’

  The final word of Billtoe’s sentence turned to dust in his dry throat because his prisoner had disappeared. Vanished into the air.

  Not my prisoner, thought Arthur Billtoe. Marshall Bonvilain’s. I am a dead man.

  ***

  While Billtoe stood glaring skywards into the spy hole, Conor found himself rooted to the spot. He had imagined this moment so often that it seemed unreal to him now, as though it could never really materialize. In his mind’s eye he saw himself confidently putting his plan into action, but the flesh-and-bone Conor Finn stayed where he was. One and a half steps to the left of the corridor’s blind spot.

  Then Billtoe began his turn, and Conor’s life to come flashed before him. Five more decades under night and water until his skin was leec
hed of all colour and his eyes were those of a tunnel rat.

  Act! he told himself. It is a good plan.

  And so he acted in an exhaustively practised series of movements. Conor took a pace and a half to his right, spun round so his muddied back faced Billtoe and tossed his open handcuffs into the grate of the nearest sealed chimney. The rattle drew Billtoe’s eyes away from the blind spot.

  ‘Stupid boy,’ he groaned. ‘He’s gone up the spouts.’

  The guard hurried past Conor, who huddled camouflaged in his hiding place, his brown jacket blending effectively with the corridor walls. Billtoe kicked the grate angrily, then bent low to holler up the chimney.

  ‘Come down from there, halfwit. They are sealed, all of ’em. The only thing you’ll find up the spouts are the mouldering remains of other scatterfools.’

  There was no response, but Billtoe imagined he heard a rustle.

  ‘Aha!’ he shouted. ‘Your clumsiness betrays you. Down now, Finn, or I will discharge my weapon. Do not doubt it.’

  Conor moved like a prowling cat, stealing sideways to the open wing door. He must not reveal himself. This plan would only succeed if nobody worked out that he was gone. To be spotted now would mean a brief chase and a long time recovering from whatever beating the guards decided to dish out. He edged beneath the spy hole, searching for a face. There was none, just the tip of a boot and the lower curve of a cauldron stomach.

  Conor slipped across the door saddle, and the closeness of freedom sent him light-headed. He almost bolted for the outer door. Almost. But one stumble now could kill him. It was so close, tantalizing. Only a dark wedge of stained wood separated him from the outside world.

  The door opened and two guards strolled through, sharing a snide sniggering joke.

  I will have to kill them, decided Conor. It will be easily done. Snag the first’s dagger and gut them both. I can make a run for the balloons.

  He flexed his fingers slowly, getting ready for the lunge, but it wasn’t necessary. The guards simply did not see him; they turned towards the mining wing without once pointing an eyeball his way.

  I could have murdered them, realized Conor. I was ready to strike.

  Even this thought could not delay him for long. Little Saltee guards were not to be seen as normal people. They were cruel gaolers, who would gladly toss him from the highest turret into the maws of the sharks that patrolled the waste pipes.

  Conor moved quickly, feeling that his store of good fortune was depleting rapidly, and slipped through the outer doorway as soon as the guards had rounded the corner. He found himself at the foot of a narrow stairway with a rectangular patch of starred night at its end. Twelve steps from open air.

  This was the blurred section of his plan. From here to the balloons was unknown territory. He had some memory of his admission to the prison, and Malarkey had educated him in the set-up as much as he could, but prisoners did not climb these stairs, neither did they patrol the wall. He must trust to his wits, and whatever luck was left in the bottom of the barrel.

  I will surely fail if I stay here, he thought, mounting the steps two at a time.

  Salty air washed over him as he emerged into the darkness, and its tang almost made him cry. Of course there had been air in his cell, but this was pure and fresh, untainted by the smell of offal and sweat.

  I had forgotten how sweet the sea air is. Bonvilain took this from me.

  He was two steps below ground level now. A low stone wall shielding him from the main courtyard. It seemed smaller than he remembered, barely more than a walled yard. Two aproned butchers worked on a hanging pig carcass on the diagonal corner. They sliced fatty strips of meat from the haunches, rinsing them thoroughly in a water bucket, pushing their thumbs into the folds of flesh, rivulets of blood dripping from their elbows. Conor found himself lost in the image, a sight that he had missed without knowing it. Honest labour. Life and death.

  An explosion boomed overhead and swathes of multicoloured sparks rained from the sky. Conor ducked low, then saw that the explosion was of his own design. They were igniting the coronation balloons.

  Too early. Too early. It is not yet fully dark.

  One of the butchers swore from shock, then caught himself, made a joke of it.

  ‘Good thing that pig is dead. The fright would have done for him.’

  The second, a smaller man, pulled the kerchief from across his nose.

  ‘To hell with this, Tom. I’m going up on the walls. I don’t care what the warden says.’

  The other butcher, Tom, pulled down his own kerchief. ‘You know what? You’re right. The lass is our queen too. Let the warden eat half an hour past due. It’s not as if he hasn’t got enough lard stored away to be getting on with.’

  The butchers shared a laugh and hung their aprons on a fence post.

  A second balloon exploded, releasing a swarm of dancing golden sparks.

  ‘Oh, the Saltee Sharpshooters are earning their pay tonight. Look lively now.’

  The butchers left their work, skipping sharply up steep stone steps to the crenellated battlements above, leaving the courtyard deserted apart from the prisoner concealing himself in the stairwell. A third balloon exploded, casting stark shadows from the wall, lighting night like a photographer’s phosphorous flash.

  Three gone, thought Conor. Three already. Too early.

  He scrambled up into the courtyard, improvising a plan as he went. All the months of plotting fell apart in front of his eyes. Timing was everything, and it was all wrong. He skirted the walls, casting furtive glances to the battlements. There were a few soldiers, but most would be on the far side, enjoying the spectacle. And the lee of the wall was made all the darker by the shocks of light from the fireworks. Anyone who had looked directly at them would be without night vision for several moments.

  This is all wrong, thought Conor, snatching a butcher’s apron from the fence post. I am supposed to have at least an hour to figure out how the balloons are tied. Billtoe thinks I have bolted up the chimney, so no one will be searching for me out of doors. I should not be harried in this way.

  But harried he was, and there was little point wasting seconds rebelling against it. Every second wasted could see another nitroglycerine bullet on the way to its target.

  Conor found a bloody kerchief in the apron’s pocket and tied it across his nose, then took another second to thrust his hands and forearms into the pig’s belly, greasing them with blood and gore. A butcher now, to his fingertips.

  The nearest stairwell was the one recently mounted by the butchers, so Conor ignored it, boldly crossing to the western wall. He ambled slowly, imitating butcher Tom’s bow-legged gait.

  He was not challenged. Nobody saw, or nobody knew. There was a wooden gate at the foot of the stairway, but it was fastened with a simple latch, more to stop it flapping than with a mind for security. Conor pushed through, and up the stairs with him, boots crunching on sand and salt.

  A guard stood above, his heels half moons on the top step, rocking gently with the brass music drifting across from Great Saltee. Conor had no choice but to disturb him, edging past with muttered apologies.

  ‘God, you’re dripping blood, Tom,’ said the guard. ‘This is a coronation not a battlefield. Don’t let the warden smell you on the upper level stinking like that. He has a delicate stomach, though you wouldn’t know it from the size of him.’

  Conor faked a convincing enough chuckle, then threaded his way through the throng of guards and staff piled on to the battlements. There were women here too, dressed in coronation finery. All the fashions of the day, Conor supposed, outrageous bodices and leg-of-mutton sleeves.

  There are too many people. The warden was throwing a party. Best seats in the islands. This was not a part of my calculations. The wall should be clear for safety reasons. I told Billtoe. I told him.

  The Little Saltee parapet walkway was ten feet wide, with a chest-high open gorge wall on the ocean side, and a sheer drop to the main bailey on the oth
er. A rope had been strung along between posts to stop the drunken gentry from stumbling to their deaths. Conor recognized several guards serving drinks, dressed as prisoners in immaculate blue serge overalls. Obviously the warden was hoping to discredit the rumours of unChristian treatment of the inmates. These prisoners were so well treated that they could be trusted to pass out champagne and plates of hors d’oeuvres. There was not a nook or gap without a clay brazier stuck in it, baking skewers of shrimp and lobster for the guests to pluck at. Nowhere for an escaping prisoner to crouch and catch his breath.

  Conor wiped the fine mist of salt spray from his face. The mist. He had forgotten that too. How could an islander forget the mist? One more thing on Bonvilain’s account. Worth a few diamonds surely, if Conor had the luck of the devil and managed to cast himself off from this cursed island.

  Another balloon exploded, followed a second later by a dozen interlaced swirls of crimson and gold sparks. The Saltee colours. Very amusing for the watching crowd. The sparks flitted to earth in showers casting their light on the waters below, some held their energy until a wave folded over them, like a child catching a star.

  A few sparks had the audacity to land on the wall, singeing expensive silk dresses. A great tragedy indeed.

  I told him, thought Conor, not unhappy with this development. It is not safe here.

  A genteel panic spread through the audience. Champagne glasses were tossed into the sea along with seafood platters, as moneyed folk hurried to the various stairways, preferring not to be set afire by low-flying fireworks.

  Pandemonium. Good.

  Conor moved against the tide towards the next balloon, reaching for the stout rope fastening it to a brass ring on the battlements. Across the sound Great Saltee was a riot of lights and music. Brass-band tunes thumped across the water, echoing on itself, arriving in waves. There were so many torches and lanterns that the entire island seemed to be ablaze.