Airman

by Eoin Colfer

  ‘You’re right, Arthur,’ he said brightly. ‘It is time to seal that wound.’

  Bonvilain boarded the ferry with Captain Sultan Arif, his most trusted officer. Billtoe cowered in the stern, every now and then poking at the scar of fused flesh on his thigh, seeming surprised each time the contact caused him pain. He passed out during the short trip and each time woke up blubbering like a babe and blurting the word barrel.

  Bonvilain found that he was not in the least anxious now that he had considered the night’s developments. In fact, he felt invigorated by the challenge of maintaining his position, or even improving it. After all, Conor Broekhart was a youth with a kite. Hugo Bonvilain was a military strategist with an army behind him. Apparently young Conor was reluctant to commit murder, whereas Bonvilain regarded murder as a time-honoured and valid political tool.

  The marshall leaned close to Sultan Arif’s ear.

  ‘There may be some poisoning later. Ready your potions.’

  Sultan nodded casually, toying with his splendid moustache. ‘Yes, Marshall. May I ask who we may be poisoning?’

  ‘Myself, I regret to say,’ replied Sir Hugo.

  Sultan seemed unsurprised. ‘There will be others, I take it?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Bonvilain confirmed, his gaze distant. ‘There will be others.’

  Little Saltee

  There was a prisoner in Conor Finn’s cell, but it was not Conor Finn.

  ‘And who, pray tell, is this?’ asked Bonvilain, pointing to the terrified wretch huddled in the corner away from the lamplight.

  Billtoe knew he was rumbled. ‘Don’t kill me, Your Worship,’ he begged, dropping to his knees, and grabbing the hem of Bonvilain’s Templar stole.

  ‘Please spare me. I don’t know how the blighter escaped. One minute he was there, the next gone. Some form of magic. Perhaps he ’ypnotized me.’

  Bonvilain did not kick him off immediately, enjoying the grovelling.

  ‘What I don’t know yet, Arthur, is if you were actually Finn’s accomplice. You helped him escape, and you were his smuggling contact.’

  ‘Oh no sir, Marshall,’ gibbered Billtoe. ‘I never done no colluding. I don’t have the depth of thought for that.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. This substitute scheme of yours might have worked with any other prisoner. You were unfortunate to lose this particular one.’

  ‘That’s all it was, sir. Bad blasted luck, not an ounce of co-operation with the prisoner in it.’

  Bonvilain decided a display of anger was called for, after all Sultan was watching.

  ‘You lied to me, Billtoe,’ he shouted, his voice echoing in the tiny cell. ‘You stole my diamonds!’

  The marshall whipped his stole from Billtoe’s fingers then delivered a mighty kick, which sent the guard tumbling over the bed and into the wall behind. A muck plate cracked and fell. Billtoe lay in a heap like a spilled sack of laundry.

  ‘Well struck, Marshall,’ said Sultan. ‘On the point of the chin. He rolled like a cartwheel. Should I finish him off?’

  ‘No,’ replied Bonvilain. ‘Something more poetic, I think. Perhaps our friend Arthur needs some time to reflect on his shortcomings.’

  He was distracted by a strange glow from the rear of the cell. Billtoe’s forehead had knocked some mud from the wall, and strange ghostly scribblings shone behind.

  Curious, Bonvilain stepped closer, bending to examine the markings.

  ‘Coral, I imagine,’ he mused. ‘Old Wandering Heck would have loved this.’

  But the markings were man-made. Diagrams and equations. Someone had tried to cover up these markings with mud, but the mud had not bonded completely with the damp surface below. A glider was plainly visible on the wall. Bonvilain tapped it with a gloved finger.

  ‘Hello, Airman,’ he whispered. ‘It seems I provided you with your laboratory.’

  He drew a pistol from his belt, rapping the wall with its grip. Another plate of mud cracked and fell, revealing that the glider had been launched from the roof of a tower.

  ‘And you have left me your location. And more valuable secrets, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  On the floor, Billtoe moaned.

  ‘Am I to be executed now, sir. Is that my fate?’

  ‘Not at the present time,’ said Bonvilain, stretching. ‘I have use for you, Arthur Billtoe. Your immediate fate is to clean the dirt from these walls, then transcribe every mark you find underneath.’

  ‘Oh thank you, sir,’ said Billtoe, tears of relief dripping from his nose. ‘I shall have one of the inmates get to it immediately. Top of my list.’

  ‘You misunderstand, Arthur,’ said Bonvilain, catching the guard’s lapels in his fist, wrenching the very coat from his back, tumbling Billtoe further to the back of the cell.

  ‘You will not be supervising this task as prison guard, you will be performing it as inmate.’

  Bonvilain turned to the young man who had occupied the cell for almost a year.

  ‘What is your name, boy?’

  ‘Claude deVille Montgomery, Yer Majesty,’ answered the youth promptly. ‘Though me nears ’n’ dears call me Spog.’

  Bonvilain blinked. Life never failed to surprise.

  ‘Old Billtoe there said to answer Conor Finn if anyone, ’specially yerself, ever got around to asking, but that was only if he didn’t get around to pulling me tongue out, and as you can see…’ Spog opened his mouth wide to reveal two teeth and a grey tongue.

  ‘Thank you, eh, Spog. Tell me, has Mister Billtoe been unkind to you?’

  Spog’s whole face frowned. ‘Blinkin’ nasty, the evil scut. With the hitting and spitting. Pulling hair too, which is hardly gentlemanly, is it now?’

  ‘Well then, now is your chance for revenge,’ said Bonvilain tossing him the guard’s jacket. ‘You are now the prison guard, and he is the prisoner. Do unto him and so forth. His life is yours, and yours his.’

  Spog greeted this announcement with complete calm, as though his fortunes were reversed every day.

  ‘I’m yer man, Yer Highness,’ he said, approximating a salute. ‘What’re yer views on torturin’ them what used to be guards?’

  ‘I am all for it,’ said Bonvilain. ‘It builds character.’

  Spog smiled, his teeth like gateposts in his mouth. ‘I’ll make you proud, Yer Worship.’

  The marshall winced. ‘Let’s stick with Marshall, shall we?’

  ‘Yessir, Yer Worship.’

  Billtoe’s senses were swirling around in his head like spirits in a witch’s cauldron, but still he managed to get the gist of what had transpired.

  ‘I’m… I’m an inmate now?’ he gasped, hauling himself on to the bed.

  Bonvilain patted Spog’s shoulder. ‘Handle your prisoner, Mister Montgomery,’ he said. ‘I don’t deal directly with criminals.’

  Spog’s eyes glowed with vengeful malice. ‘Yessir… Yer Worship. My pleasure – you might want to avert yer eyes.’

  Bonvilain folded his arms. ‘Perhaps. But not right away.’

  Billtoe backed away from his new gaoler, deeper and deeper into the cell till his elbows knocked mud from the walls, revealing blocks of diagrams and calculations.

  The coral’s green glow traced the dawning horror on Arthur Billtoe’s face. The misery he had visited on so many others was now to be his.

  Bonvilain winked at Sultan. ‘As I said. Poetic.’

  Forlorn Point

  Due to the night’s activity, not one fight but two, Conor got no more than an hour’s sleep. And that sleep was filled with dreams of prison guards with blades for hands and diamonds for eyes. There was something else, though, leaping up and down in the background, seeking attention. A small memory of Conor and his father rowing across Fulmar Bay when he was nine.

  Watch the oar’s blade, Declan Broekhart had said. See how it cuts the water. You want to scoop the water, not slide through it.

  Then in the dream Declan said something that he had never said in real life.

  The same th
eory applies to the blades of a propeller. That might get your aeroplane off the ground.

  Conor sat up in bed, instantly awake. What was it? What had he been thinking? Already the dream was fragmenting. The oar. Something about the oars. How could an oar help to fly an aeroplane?

  It was obvious really. The oar had a blade, just like the propeller.

  See how it cuts the water…

  Of course! The oar was not bashed flat into the water, it was presented at an angle to reduce drag and maximize thrust. The same ancient principle must be applied to the propeller. After all, the propeller was really a rotating wing. When the aeroplane eventually flew, the propeller would have to absorb the engine’s power and overcome the flying machine’s drag. It must be treated like a wing, and shaped accordingly.

  Flat propellers are of no use, thought Conor, hurriedly pulling on his clothes. They must be angled and the blades shaped to provide lift.

  By the time Linus negotiated the stairs with bacon, soda bread and hot coffee, Conor was chiselling the second blade on his new propeller.

  ‘Ah,’ said Linus. ‘A new propeller.’

  This pronouncement stopped Conor in mid-motion. ‘You are blind, are you not? How can you possibly know what I’m doing.’

  Linus laid the breakfast tray on a bench. ‘I have mystical powers, boy. And also you’ve been talking to yourself this past hour. Lift, drag, propulsion, all that interesting stuff. We blind folk ain’t necessarily deaf you know.’

  The scientist in Conor wished to continue to work, but the ravenous young man dragged him away from his precious propeller to the delicious breakfast.

  Linus listened to him tuck in with a cook’s satisfaction.

  ‘I picked up the bread fresh in the village. The folk down there are all a-frenzy over stories about this Airman creature. Apparently he slew twenty men on the island last night.’

  ‘I hear he’s ten feet tall,’ said Conor, around a mouthful of bread.

  Linus sat beside him at the bench.

  ‘This is no joke, Conor. You are in danger now.’

  ‘No need to fret, Linus. The Airman’s short career is over. No more night flying for me. From this day on, scientific flights only.’

  Linus stole a strip of bacon. ‘Perhaps you might think of finding yourself a girl. You are of an age, you know.’

  Conor could not help but think of Isabella. ‘Once, there was a girl, or could have been. I will think of females again when we reach America.’

  ‘When you reach America. I plan to stay here and conspire against Bonvilain. There are others who think like I do.’

  ‘You mean it,’ realized Conor sadly. ‘I had hoped you would change your mind.’

  ‘No. I lost friends. We both did.’

  Conor had no desire to rake over the coals of this familiar argument.

  ‘Very well,’ he said, pushing away his plate. ‘The tower is yours, and there will be abundant funds too. But I am going. In America there are airmen like me, eager for the sky.’

  ‘I see. And when will you go?’

  ‘I had planned to leave today, but now I am impatient to test this new propeller. She is a thing of beauty, don’t you think?’

  Linus Wynter tapped the velvet sleep mask that he now wore over his ruined eyes.

  ‘I’ll take your word for it. I had this mask sent from the Savoy. Did I ever tell you that I once stayed there?’

  ‘Let us make a bargain,’ said Conor. ‘Today I transport my aeroplane to Curracloe beach. It will take two days to assemble and another to test. When I return we will ship my equipment to New York and go by ferry and train to London. We will live like kings for one week in the Savoy, with no talk of revolution or science, then review our situation.’

  ‘That is a tempting offer,’ admitted Linus. ‘Some of the suites have pianos. My fingers twitch at the thought.’

  ‘Let us agree then. One week for ourselves, then back into the world. Separately perhaps, but I pray that we will be together.’

  ‘I pray for that too.’

  ‘Then we are agreed. The Savoy.’

  Linus extended a hand. ‘The Savoy.’

  They shook on it.

  Bonvilain and Sultan came ashore incognito, faces shadowed by broad-rimmed toquilla hats. Their Saltee uniforms lent them no authority on the mainland and they were unlikely to attract attention dressed in civilian clothes. Local rowdies are far less likely to trouble dangerous-looking strangers than they are soldiers off their patch. In fact, some of the Kilmore lads knocked huge sport from taunting Saltee Army boys who were under strict orders not to retaliate. Bonvilain and Sultan were restrained by no such orders. They made no overtly hostile gestures and were the very definition of gentility, but still the local harbour boys got the impression that to trifle with this odd pair would lead to immediate and lasting discomfort.

  They strolled down the quayside and into the smoky depths of the Wooden House.

  ‘I have visited taverns all over the world,’ confided Hugo Bonvilain, ducking under the lintel. ‘And they all have one thing in common.’

  ‘Drunks?’ said Sultan Arif, toppling a sleeping sailor from his path.

  ‘That too. Information for sale is the common factor I had in mind. That wretch for example…’

  The marshall pointed to a solitary man, elbows on the bar, staring at an empty glass.

  ‘A prime candidate. He would sell his soul for another drink.’

  He sidled up beside the man, and called to the innkeeper for a bottle of whiskey.

  ‘Do I know you?’ asked the innkeeper.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ replied Bonvilain cheerfully. ‘And I recommend you keep it that way. Now leave the bottle and make yourself busy elsewhere.’

  Most good innkeepers develop an instinct about their customers and their capabilities. The proprietor was no exception. He would ask no more questions, but he would check the load in his shotgun just in case the oddly familiar broad-beamed customer and his grinning companion unleashed the trouble that they were surely capable of.

  Bonvilain opened the bottle, turning to the solitary, glass-gazing man.

  ‘Now, good sir, you look like a gent that could use a drink. I certainly hope so, because I have no intention of imbibing one drop of this ripe spirit, which by the smell of it has already been passed through the stomachs of several cats.’

  The man pushed his glass along the bar with one finger. ‘I’ll do you a favour and take it off your hands.’

  ‘Very noble of you, friend,’ said Bonvilain, filling the glass to the rim.

  ‘We ain’t friends,’ said the man, grumpy in spite of his sudden good fortune. ‘Not yet.’

  Half a bottle later they were friends and Bonvilain steered the conversation as though the man had a rudder fixed to the back of his head.

  ‘Stupid gas lamps,’ said the man. ‘What’s wrong with candles? A candle never ruptured and exploded. I hear a gas explosion destroyed an entire city in China, ’cept for the cats what are immune to gas.’

  Bonvilain nodded sympathetically. ‘Gas. Dreadful stuff. And as for foreigners buying our buildings…’

  ‘Stupid foreigners,’ blurted the man vehemently. ‘Buying our buildings. With the big smug heads on them. Do you know the English own one hundred per cent of the big houses around here? If not more.’

  ‘And don’t they just love living in towers, lording it over the rest of us.’

  ‘That they do,’ agreed the now-sozzled man. ‘We got us a right scatterfool at Forlorn Point. Takes on a blind musician to cook and clean for him.’

  Bonvilain was extremely interested in this scatterfool. ‘A boy like that shouldn’t even own a tower,’ he prompted.

  More whiskey was slopped into the glass. ‘No! Blast it. No, he shouldn’t. Boy like that. Should be out cutting hay like the rest of us at that age. But what does he do? Buys reams of material. Sends off for all sorts of mechanical parts. What’s he building up there? Who knows. Like Doctor Frankenstein he is.
Whatever he’s doing, the noise coming out of that tower at night is enough to waken a dead pig.’

  The man downed his drink in one, its harshness shocking his system from stomach to eyeballs.

  ‘And don’t tell me lobsters aren’t getting smarter. I caught a lobster last month and I swear he was trying to communicate. With the clicking claws and the pointy head yokes.’

  The landlord rapped the bar with a knuckle. ‘You can shut up now, Ern. They’ve gone.’

  ‘Don’t matter,’ said Ern, clutching the bottle protectively to his chest. ‘I don’t like fellows with hats anyways. Never trust a hatter.’

  The landlord was tactful enough not to point out that Ern himself sported a jaunty cap.

  It took mere minutes for Bonvilain and Sultan Arif to find Forlorn Point. The old British Army marker stone by the roadside helped quite a bit.

  ‘The place is well named,’ noted Arif, placing his shoulder satchel on a tree stump. From inside he selected twin revolvers and a selection of knives, which he arranged on his belt.

  ‘I presume we are not sending for help.’

  ‘As is occasionally the case, Sultan, you are correct,’ said Bonvilain. ‘This is a Martello tower; we could have a battleship off the coast and still not gain entry. We proceed cautiously. Diplomacy first, then guile, and finally violence should it become necessary.’

  They stepped over the ruined remains of the wall and across the yard, careful not to snag their boots on treacherous creepers that snaked from the rocky soil.

  ‘It doesn’t look much,’ said Sultan, picking moss from the tower wall.

  Bonvilain nodded. ‘I know. Clever, isn’t it?’

  A quick circuit of the tower confirmed that there was indeed only one doorway, above head height and plugged with a wooden door.

  ‘I’ll wager that door is not as flimsy as it looks,’ muttered Bonvilain.

  Sultan placed his cheek against the wall. ‘The stones vibrate from a generator, Marshall,’ he noted. ‘I can hear classical music. It sounds as though there is an entire orchestra in there.’

  ‘A phonograph,’ said Bonvilain sourly. ‘How very modern. Conor Broekhart always liked his toys.’

  ‘So, how do we get in? Throw stones at the doorway?’