Airman

by Eoin Colfer

  ‘Hell’s bells, boy. What do you need engines for at this time of night?’

  And so Conor told him, and the musician almost fainted.

  ‘You are going to hurl yourself into a windstorm, so you can fly into a prison? Why don’t you write that sentence down and read it? Then perhaps you would realize how insane you are.’

  Conor settled his goggles. ‘I have to do this, Linus. That island owes me. Five more bags and I leave – we leave – for America.’

  ‘You have to hurl yourself into space for greed? For science I can understand, barely – that’s what Nick and Victor dedicated their lives to.’

  ‘It’s more than greed. It’s right.’

  Linus barked a bitter laugh. ‘Right? It would be right for you to rescue your parents and your queen from the madman who has deceived them.’

  This gave Conor pause. Linus was speaking the truth. His loved ones were in danger and he had no idea how to save them without dooming them all. And, if he were honest with himself, he dreaded seeing that look of pure hatred in his father’s eyes.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ he said finally. ‘Nothing except take my diamonds.’

  Linus raised his arms like a preacher. ‘All of this. All of it for diamonds. It’s beneath you.’

  Conor ratcheted up his wings, ducking into the wind stream.

  ‘Everything is beneath me,’ he said, but his words were snatched away, as he was, into the night sky.

  Great Saltee

  Billtoe and Pike were in the Fulmar Bay Tavern, spending their evening off over a bucket of half-price slops as was their custom.

  Pike followed a long swallow with a belch that shook his stool.

  ‘Them’s good slops,’ he commented, smacking is lips. ‘I’m getting wine, beer, brandy and a hint of carbolic soap, if I’m not mistaken.’ Pike was rarely mistaken when it came to slops, for it was all he ever drank, even though with Battering Ram money in his pocket he could afford actual beer, rather than whatever ran off the bar into the slops’ tray.

  ‘What do you say, Mister Billtoe? You tasting soap? Goes down easy, but doesn’t stay in long, eh?’

  Billtoe was not in the mood for tavern chatter. He wanted nothing more than to drink himself into oblivion, but he was mightily afraid that when he reached oblivion, the French devil would be waiting there for him. Since that night on Little Saltee one week ago, Arthur Billtoe had not been his usual cruel and cheerful self. He felt the presence of the flying demon looming over him, waiting to bring down his blade. Then there was the small matter of Marshall Bonvilain’s dead prisoner. Billtoe lived each waking moment struggling with his panic. The effort was such that he had developed a shiver.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Mister Billtoe,’ said Pike, ‘if there’s something wrong with you. You ain’t been taking the usual care with your ruffled shirts, and they’re your pride and joy. You been shaking a lot and mumbling too. And that’s plague right there, or maybe Yellow Jack, though I never heard of that this far north.’

  Billtoe’s mood was darkened by the realization that Pike, the hairless simpleton, was his only friend. He never had much use for friends before now. When you had as many dark secrets as Arthur Billtoe, the last thing you needed was friends to wheedle them out of you. But tonight he was on the brink of utter despair and he needed words of comfort that came out of an actual mouth, and not just the imaginary voice of his favourite slipper to which he talked occasionally.

  ‘Pikey, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Of course you can, Mister Billtoe. I would appreciate nothing with numbers or directions though, cos they give me blinders.’

  Billtoe took a deep, shaky breath. ‘Do you believe in the devil?’

  ‘Warden’s the devil, if you ask me. I mean, why can’t the convicts eat each other? Two birds with one stone right there. Convicts get fed, and we don’t have to bury the dead ones.’

  ‘No!’ snapped Billtoe. ‘Not the warden, the man himself. Old horned head.’ He turned on his barstool to face Pike. His face was gaunt and his eyes were wide and red-rimmed, and the ruffles of his pirate shirt did seem wilted. ‘I’ve seen him, Pikey. I’ve seen him. With his wings and flaming eyes. He landed on the island last week, coming for me he was. Called me mon-sewer. The devil called my name, Pikey. He called my name.’

  Billtoe buried his face in his forearms, and soon his back shook with sobbing.

  Pike licked his palm, then smoothed back his one strand of hair. He had seen the devil too, except it wasn’t your actual devil, it was a man with wings strapped to his back. Pike saw them taken off and folded up. It was a shame to see Arthur all broke up with his devil talk, but information like this was worth money, which Pike himself could collect as soon as the Rams sent their man for a parley.

  Then again, if anyone knows how to make real money out of a situation, it’s Arthur Billtoe. And won’t he just love me when I take away his devil.

  Pike wrestled his sketchpad from the pocket it was bent into, opened it to the sketches he had scratched at Sebber Bridge and slid the book across the bar.

  ‘I seen him too, Mister Billtoe, your devil.’

  Billtoe’s bleary eyes peeked out from over his sleeves. For a moment he didn’t understand what he was seeing, then he recognized the figure that Pike had drawn. And if Pike had seen the devil too, then Arthur Billtoe was not losing his mind. His eyes assumed their usual piggy cunning and one hand scuttled out crablike to grab the notepad.

  ‘That’s him, ain’t it, Mister Billtoe?’ said Pike. ‘Only he ain’t no devil – he’s a man like you and me, except taller and better made than us. You being stumpy and me being, well, me. But that’s him I’ll bet, ain’t it, Mister Billtoe?’

  Billtoe straightened shrugging off his mood like a dog shaking water from its coat.

  ‘Call me Arthur, Pikey my friend,’ he said.

  Pike smiled a gap-toothed smile. He was familiar with that look in Billtoe’s beadies. It was the same look he got just before he searched a prisoner. Billtoe could smell guineas.

  An offshore breeze blew constant and the moon was a silver shilling behind a veil of clouds. The perfect evening for clandestine flying. Conor Finn felt almost contented as he dipped the glider’s nose, swooping in to land on Sebber Bridge. His control of the craft was much improved and there was no greater impact on his heels than if he had jumped from a low wall. The propeller bands were still fully wound as fortune had steered him clear of stalls. There was also the heartening fact that he had recovered three bags of Battering Ram diamonds from the salsa beds on Little Saltee without a sniff of a prison guard. He had worried that Billtoe might have swallowed a bottle or two of courage and come looking for his devil with a few cronies, but there had been neither sight nor smell of Arthur Billtoe.

  I scared that rat for now. But he won’t stay scared long.

  One more trip. And I shall have all seven pouches.

  Why do you need all seven? was a question that Linus might have asked, and now Conor asked himself.

  I need seven as compensation for my imprisonment. It is a matter of honour.

  This was the argument that had sustained him in prison. He would do what Billtoe could not: take his diamonds off the island. But now, this plan seemed flawed. Why expose himself to danger time and time again, when he should already be on the steamer to New York? It was true that Otto had been promised half of the diamonds, but even if he paid off the Malarkeys in full, he would still have more than enough diamonds to buy him a passage to America and a new life when he got there.

  I do not wish to leave, he realized. But I must.

  Staying was of no benefit to him or his family.

  Seven pouches. Then America.

  The skiff was beached high on the shale, with a single set of tracks heading back towards Fulmar Bay. Zeb Malarkey was keeping his end of the deal, and why wouldn’t he, with half the diamonds in his coffers and more to come.

  Conor sat on the boat’s gunwale, unfast
ening the glider’s harness. Not much flight damage tonight, but he would check every rib and panel tomorrow to make sure. Even the tiniest tear in the wing fabric could unravel an entire panel and drop him from the sky like a plugged pigeon.

  One of the diamond pouches slipped from inside the harness, clinking on the shale. To Conor, the sound seemed louder than a gunshot. He squatted low in the skiff’s shadow, then gathered the bag to his chest like a babe, scanning the Wall for movement. There was none, but the liquid shimmer of lamplight.

  Take care, airman. One mistake could see you on the ferry back to Little Saltee.

  He stowed the pouches under the aft bench and laid his collapsed glider gently on the deck. Then something happened that made him smile.

  Conor stood straight, raising his palm to feel the breeze.

  The wind has changed. I can sail directly to Kilmore.

  He slid the skiff along the shale to the lapping waterline.

  Still waters and a fair wind. Good omens.

  Conor felt the water raise the skiff, and hopped on board, the deck shuddering under his weight. With one hand he untied the sail, shaking it loose of the mast, with the other he grasped the extended tiller, setting a course wide around the west coast of Little Saltee.

  Home in an hour, he thought. Perhaps Linus would play something. Music is a tonic for the soul.

  Conor’s sail caught the breeze, pulling the small skiff across the waves.

  A good boat. She skips along.

  He sailed for his new home, forcing himself not to look back. Nothing behind but heartache.

  From high in the rocks, Arthur Billtoe watched the strange airman depart. And though a sharp rock pressed into the guard’s stomach, he would not so much as twitch until the man he had believed to be a demon had disappeared completely round the bend of Little Saltee’s coastline.

  Pike did not have the necessary concentration span for such caution; he had relieved himself and was skipping stones into the surf before Billtoe joined him at the groove sliced by the skiff’s keel in the shale.

  ‘Dunno why they call it Sebber Bridge,’ muttered Pike. ‘It’s not a bridge is it? Just a spit of stones going out into the current.’

  ‘It used to be a bridge, thousands of years ago,’ said Billtoe, the words rattling nervously out of him. ‘Before the sea washed it away. Went from here to Little Saltee, then from there on to Saint Patrick’s Bridge on the mainland.’

  ‘That airman really turns your backbone soft, don’t he, Arthur?’ said Pike, changing the subject.

  ‘He had a sword at my neck. A ruddy big sword, none of your fencing namby-pamby pinprickers. This thing could take the top off an oak tree.’

  ‘He’s a man, though, Arthur. You seen it yourself. Those wings of his are some sort of kite. That’s all.’

  ‘That’s all!’ said Billtoe incredulously. ‘You idiot! Don’t you realize what we have just witnessed?’

  ‘Idiot? Arthur, idiot?’ said Pike, injured. ‘I took away your devil, didn’t I? You can sleep again because of my gift. Idiot seems a bit harsh.’

  ‘Not harsh enough,’ snapped Billtoe, who was fast forgetting his fear. ‘That man has a flying device. Have you any idea how much the Battering Rams would pay for that? They could just drop into whatever port they pleased, and hang Customs. A device like that would change smuggling forever.’

  Pike cleared his throat. ‘As it happens, I knows a few gents who might have ties to the Rams. Possibly.’

  Billtoe clamped a hand over Pike’s mouth, as though the gents in question could somehow hear. ‘No. No. We don’t involve the Rams until we have those wings locked up safe somewhere. Otherwise those treacherous coves would nab the wings themselves and feed us to the sharks. What we want is to get ourselves into a strong bargaining position.’

  Pike shrugged off Billtoe’s hand, which stank of sweat and worse. It was clear to him that they were friends no more. It was business as usual for Arthur Billtoe, which meant that Pike was back to being a lackey to be abused.

  ‘Whatever you say, Arthur.’

  ‘That’s-’

  ‘I know, that’s Mister Billtoe to me.’

  He turned to the sea, skipping one of the stones in his hand across the surface.

  Typical Arthur Billtoe. I took away his devil, and he forgets it with the first sniff of a payoff. I thought it was Pikey and Billtoe to the end. How wrong I was.

  Throwing the stones calmed him, each successful skip reminding him of his childhood. He was reaching back for a big throw when Billtoe grabbed his arm, then wrestled the stone from his fingers.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he demanded, excitement reddening his cheeks.

  Pike wondered was this one of those questions that weren’t really questions, and if he answered it, would he look stupid?

  ‘It’s a stone, Arthur… Mister Billtoe. I just picked it up.’

  Billtoe dropped to his knees, scrabbling in the shale until he found half a dozen more stones that pleased him. He held them in his cupped palms, like a tramp guarding his egg breakfast.

  ‘Arthur. Are you feeling ill? Would you like me to collect a few more stones for you? I saw a nice piece of wood further along.’

  Billtoe was too happy to be annoyed. ‘These are not just stones, Pikey. These are rough diamonds. That’s why our airman was stopping off on Little Saltee. He’s a diamond smuggler.’

  He rubbed his hands together, clinking the diamonds like voodoo bones.

  ‘Are you trying to tell the future with those things?’ joked Pike, the naked greed in Billtoe’s eyes making him nervous.

  ‘I know the future,’ said Billtoe. ‘We round up a few of the boys, we ambush this airman, sell his wings and steal his diamonds.’

  ‘What about the airman? We let him go free I suppose.’

  Billtoe elbowed him good-naturedly. ‘Nice one, Pikey. Let him go free. No, we kill him, cut him into little pieces and then burn the pieces. As far as the world is concerned, this airman never existed.’

  Pike swallowed. All this talk of blood made him nervous. He resolved there and then never to invent anything useful, or Billtoe might orchestrate a gruesome end for him too.

  CHAPTER 15: HOME

  There was almost perfect peace as Conor sailed the skiff north-north-east between the Jackeen and Murrock Rocks in the Saltee Straits. These rocks spent most of their lives submerged, but sometimes a trough dipped low, exposing their flattened peaks. When the five-year-old Conor had first seen these gnarled oblong shapes one evening on the patrol boat with his father, he was convinced they were crocodiles and would not be calm until Declan agreed to fire a warning shot. Sure enough, the crack of gunfire did the trick and the two crocodiles sank below the waters.

  This little story had become one for the fireside, and it was dusted off whenever a friend visited for brandy or lemonade. It had always made Conor scowl, but now it near drove him to tears.

  I cannot endure this. They are too close.

  His mother’s face seemed to hover before him, calling him home, and he could ignore her no longer. No doubt she suffered as much as he did, perhaps more. He needed to know.

  If I could just see them. Look on their faces once more before I leave, to make sure they endure.

  Conor nudged the tiller with his knee, and tightened the sail for a south-west tack. He was going home.

  ***

  From a distance, Saltee Harbour seemed much as Conor remembered it. A grand tiara, points shining silver and orange. Inside the pincers of the sea walls, it was clear that some of the tiara’s lustre had faded over the past few years. Sea slime crawled along the granite and the dock was clogged with haphazardly berthed boats, trussed together like tangled tops. The new outer-wall project had been abandoned, and the half-built structure trailed off into the sea like an eroded sand fort. The planned beacon tower was only half built and stood askew, a crumbling reminder of a past era, rather than the proud symbol of a new one. King Nicholas’s loss was being keenly felt,
even here on the waterfront.

  Conor knotted the skiff’s stern line to a mussel boat, and tossed the anchor into the half tide. It fizzed, bubbled, then sank quickly, bearing with it three securely fastened satchels of diamonds. Conor skipped across the prows of half a dozen bobbing fishing boats, before hauling himself to the quayside flagstones with the aid of a brass hitching ring.

  He strolled nonchalantly along the quay, flicking his eyes upwards to the Wall guards. Whatever else grew slack and haphazard, Declan Broekhart would not allow his sharpshooters to lower their standards. Four guards stood atop the Wall, their wind capes fluttering around them. Conor saw the glint of a barrel and he knew that at the first sign of belligerence a warning shot would kick up sparks and slivers at his feet, at the second sign he would be dead before his body hit the water. He moved slow and easy with both hands in plain sight.

  The quayside walkway curled the length of the outer wall to a cobbled market area, which would be bustling with stalls during the day. Merchants, innkeepers and housewives converged on the market each morning to fill their baskets with mackerel, cod, pollock, mussels, lobster, crab, crayfish and salmon. Boats arrived empty from Kilmore and left full or vice versa, depending on which crew had the run of the waters that day.

  By evening, the air was tangy with smells of turning fish and salt. Scrubbers pumped water from the harbour, hosing the blood and guts into the sea. Most young lads on the Saltees had done their time as scrubbers, armed with stout bristled brushes and the energy of youth, they scrubbed the grime from the flagstones, only for them to be splattered crimson once more the following day.

  Conor walked beneath the Wall arch, past a Customs booth.

  ‘Anything?’ asked the guard.

  Conor raised his empty palms. ‘Just a raging thirst, sir, and a rendezvous with my sweetheart.’

  The guard smiled. ‘Ah, the beer and Bessies. Two good reasons to visit the Saltees. It’s not your first time inside the Wall, then?’