by Phil Parker
Those blue eyes didn’t waver.
‘Time to leave Glastonbury, Mister Goodfellow.’
This was not the sentiment from a miserable old bastard, he didn’t have the authority. This sentiment was getting handed down the chain of command. How could things change so radically in six months?
‘Where should I go, Colonel Crabbe? I’m exiled from Tir na nÓg because I killed a member of their royal family. It was something I did to protect the human race.’
The old man snorted, fluttering the hairy caterpillar beneath his nose. He clicked dismissive fingers at one of the soldiers, when he spoke it was with same disparaging tone.
‘Lieutenant Weir, debrief this person and assist him in whatever way will ensure his removal from my town in the shortest possible time.’
The young man, sporting a uniform with sharp creases and such highly polished boots you could see your face in them, glanced at me then turned to his commanding officer with a resigned frown and saluted.
‘Yes sir, as you command.’
The old man turned smartly, his unit did the same, casting gloating glances at the young man who remained behind.
‘You haven’t answered my question Colonel Crabbe. So where should I go?’
The upright figure paused, turned ice-cold eyes on me. ‘I don’t know Mister Goodfellow. Frankly, I don’t fucking care either. Perhaps during the next attack, you will reconsider your situation and allow your assailant to complete their mission successfully. I’m sure that would please everyone on both sides of these fucking portals.’
He turned smartly and marched with stiff-necked precision out of sight. No one else was going to protect me apparently, I wasn’t wanted. I might have brought about the end of the war but now I was an embarrassment, a dubious ally. If I was going to survive I’d need to keep my wits about me. Everything I’d fought for, risked my life to achieve, meant nothing.
This was why it paid never to get involved.
I marched into my kitchen to make myself another cup of tea.
Chapter 2
‘What would you like me to do?’ the young soldier asked, then flushed bright pink. ‘So long as it doesn’t cause me any pain, sir.’
I smiled, despite myself. He stood in the new doorway to my cottage, the epitome of masculinity, with his impressive height, lean physique, handsome face and dark brown eyes.
‘I’m making a cup of tea. Want one?’
I got a nod and a nervous smile. I felt a little shaky as I slapped the kettle on the kitchen range, every part of my body hurt. I found it difficult to breathe because of the congealed muck in my aching nose so I dunked a piece of cloth into cold water to remove the clots of dried blood and made a half-hearted attempt to straighten it.
My guest, who filled the doorway, sniggered.
‘I can sort that out if you want? You get enough practice in the army.’
My tormentor tolerated my screams of pain, the curses and threats of violence with good humour. When you get soldiers together, it doesn’t take long before they start sharing stories of their fights and mishaps. I liked the young man that sat across the table, drinking his tea and laughing at my story of how a fight in a brothel ended up with us wearing wigs and dresses. Mending a broken nose is one way of breaking down barriers, it’s not one I’d recommend.
‘The Colonel’s not so bad when you get to know him.’
I rolled my eyes and told him to change the subject, he gave me an easy grin.
What hurt most was knowing the old goat was right. I was an outcast in both societies; humans didn’t trust me, the Dark Court considered me a traitor and the Light Court a murderer. Nimue, the Lady of the Lake, might have commissioned me to remain watchful on this side of the portal, but it didn’t stop everyone else believing me to be a villain.
‘Do you know who’s sending these assassins?’
The young man’s question jolted me out of my self-pity. He’d been ordered to debrief me, his question was doing just that. There was no reason to be uncooperative.
I explained that my popularity meant anyone in Tir na nÓg could have commissioned the attacks. The first two had used explosive devices, anonymous methods that offered no answers. The choice of the Fir Darrig sent a different message. Whoever wanted rid of me hailed from the Dark Court, their Light Cousins refused any contact with denizens of the Fae underworld, like the Fir Darigs. Whoever it was wanted revenge and they were ready to pay for it.
‘The Colonel’s right, undiscovered portals represent a continuing threat to our safety.’
The guy said it while looking directly into my face. He wasn’t going to be intimidated. I gave him a sigh as a way of admitting he was right. It looked like Nimue had been too, the Dark Court did remain a threat and likely saw me as an impediment to their ambitions. The thought process led me to the same destination as it did whenever the Lady of the Lake and Tir na nÓg sprang to mind.
Oisin.
I wondered if he was alive. If he had recovered. If he believed the stories they’d be telling about me over there.
If he missed me.
‘Are you all right Mister Goodfellow?’ A hesitation. ‘You look…’
My stern expression froze any attempt to define how I might look to the young man sat across the table, watching me with a puzzled frown on those handsome features. He swallowed hard, as though he was about to say something dangerous. I maintained the stern look, just in case.
‘I grew up in Bridgwater, Mister Goodfellow, I had good friends in Glastonbury, most of them dead now.’
I gave a quick snort. ‘And you blame me.’
The young man shook his head emphatically.
‘No!’
He took a deep breath and kept blinking, as though it helped him reach a decision. When he did speak it was slowly, carefully choosing the right words.
‘There was bunch of people who’d survived that fucking dragon. They watched what happened in the Abbey grounds that day. One of them was a good friend of mine. He saw you fight the skeleton thing as well as dozens of their soldiers before you killed their king. He thought you died.’
I wished I had.
‘My friend told me if you hadn’t acted like you did, the fairies would have won.’
Now it was my turn to blink but he hadn’t finished.
‘The top brass, the politicians, they don’t know what war’s like. I fought at Swindon, Mister Goodfellow. Not in a big way, but I saw what the fucking fairies could do. Sorry. I didn’t mean…’
I waved away his concern.
‘The Colonel thinks he knows, but he doesn’t. They dragged him out of retirement five months ago when the manpower shortage became obvious. But we don’t all think that way, Mister Goodfellow.’
‘Call me Robin.’
He gave a tight nod.
‘Thank you, Lieutenant Weir.’
‘Luke.’
I let the stern expression fade and smiled, until the guy’s name made me frown and it prompted a shy grin from him.
‘I know. It didn’t occur to my mother until I got to school that when you run the names together it sounds like ‘look queer’. You can imagine how the bullies reacted.’
I smiled. ‘Didn’t your father…?’
A shake of the head. ‘Never knew him, left before I was born. I was brought up by women.’
This man intrigued me. ‘Is that why you joined the army?’
That grin again. ‘Probably. Mind you, the Colonel thinks it made me too sensitive.’
‘Is that why the old goat chose you to do this job?’
Another nod. ‘I’m dispensable, sensitivity isn’t a quality he needs. Or respects.’
‘I can imagine.’
We returned to our mugs of tea though I was aware of the other man’s eyes on me. I wondered if this was how spies worked, they gained your trust so you’d open up and share all your secrets. If this guy was into pillow talk I’d happily cooperate but I stopped that thought process before blood started f
lowing to places where it didn’t belong.
The brown eyes seemed to reach a decision. ‘Can I ask what happened to your friend? The guy who was badly injured?’
It sounded innocent enough but I wondered if there really was a friend who’d witnessed everything or if he was just being a clever spy.
‘I don’t know.’
I got a compassionate shake of the head. ‘You must worry.’
‘Yeah.’
The young man sipped his tea but his question caused a dark cloud to hover over me, it was never far away.
‘And now you can’t return to find out how he is. That must really eat away at you.’
I looked into the man’s face, found concern that appeared genuine enough but it could have been a performance, including the whole thing about being bullied and Colonel Crabbe’s reasons for choosing him.
‘Unless you found this other portal. Would you go back then?’
‘Careful. Direct questions like that will definitely convince me you’re a spy.’
The perplexed look turned into a frown as my meaning became obvious.
‘You think I’m here to spy on you?’
‘Aren’t you?’
Lieutenant Weir shrugged powerful shoulders. ‘There’s no point denying your question, you won’t believe me. But, for the record, the Colonel ordered me to help you leave, finding this portal would be doing just that. Besides, it could be significant for all of us. But you decide what you want to believe about me.’
Silence, like an unwelcome guest, hovered in the kitchen until the young man finished his tea and stood up to wash his mug. I couldn’t decide if he was carrying out an elaborate bluff or if he was telling the truth. With his mug washed, he turned to face me, without any obvious resentment about what I’d said.
‘I suppose I should get your report of your latest attack. You said a Fir Darrig attacked you. What is such a thing, precisely?’
I explained while he took careful notes, asked occasional questions and showed intelligent insight into the implications of the attack. It led us to discuss the kind of creatures who might attack next and what might be done to prepare for it.
‘I think I’ve got five or six days before the next attack, going by experience. Might be enough time to find a secret portal, and destroy it.’
‘I’d like to help, if you’d allow me?’
I shrugged. There was only one way to find out what this man’s role really was.
‘You can join me tomorrow, I’m going to see an old friend to find out what she knows. She has spies too.’
We said our goodbyes but I didn’t expect he’d return. I couldn’t imagine his commanding officer permitting him to cooperate with me. If he was with me I wouldn’t be committing acts of treason so it would be a waste of manpower.
The following morning proved I’d underestimated Lieutenant Luke Weir.
He arrived outside my cottage at precisely the time we’d agreed. The day before I’d got the impression, from his uniform, his behaviour, that precision and control meant everything to him. He was my opposite, he respected authority even when it was in the wrong, he believed the chain of command had to be maintained otherwise it led to chaos. I wondered how he would have coped in situations where military command didn’t work, in situations where staying alive superseded military goals. I had probably been like him when I’d joined up, I couldn’t remember. What did stay with me was the knowledge that in war you often need to react without the orders of a superior, where precision and control are the first things to be sacrificed.
I stepped out of my cottage and decided I might have been too hard on him. He chuckled when I looked at him. I think it might have been because I said something like, ‘Wow!’
He’d abandoned his uniform, for one thing. He stood on the pavement with piercing brown eyes, full pink lips, a splash of freckles, shaved head and bulges in his plaid shirt and jeans that prompted my groin into feelings it had probably thought lost forever.
‘I decided to take a day’s leave,’ he said.
He looked up at my partly derelict cottage. It looked worse from the front, where Llyr’s spriggans had focused most of their attack six months before.
‘I know, it’s a tumbledown ruin.’
I closed the door behind me with some force, its frame was slightly out of alignment now. Glass tumbled from an upstairs window, making us dodge out of the way. He gave a bewildered shake of the head, I felt a need to defend my eccentricities.
‘I’ve rebuilt some of it but ransacking other derelict buildings is a risky business.’
He looked at the crumbling houses and shops as we marched along the street, at the craters and burned out vehicles brown with rust; Glastonbury used to be pretty, a popular place with tourists. War and rampant poverty weren’t conducive to urban development. Two urchins, filthy, emaciated and dressed in rags, hovered at the corner of a street watching us with hollow eyes. It brought back memories of a group of boys Oisin and I had met on a similar journey, boys who Llyr had tortured. I noticed my companion reach a hand to the gun at his hip, I placed a hand over his arm and shook my head. He gave me disapproving look.
‘The crime those little bastards cause keeps our unit busy every bloody day.
‘Inconsiderate of them to want to stay alive, isn’t it?’
I ignored his frown and we walked on in silence.
I tried hard to suppress the memories of Oisin doing the same journey but so many locations reminded me of things he’d said or done, his bewildered questions and his silences when I’d offended him. We arrived at the Old Beckery Road, now a line of rotting tarmac beneath the waters of the Bristol Channel. Society might be trying to mend but the topography remained the same; Glastonbury was still the narrow peninsula it had been two thousand years ago, when Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea were supposed to have landed in the town to trade their wares. I’d remembered explaining the legend to Oisin who, despite my efforts, was now trespassing on my thoughts during the day as well as trampling through my dreams at night.
‘Robin?’
It jolted me out of my torment.
‘Just remembering when all this was fields.’
We slogged over muddy ground and then along an overgrown cart track to where a thin column of smoke rose into a cobalt blue sky. We arrived at the cottage where dozens of pairs of eyes watched us unblinkingly and things scuttled in nearby bushes. The young man at my side glanced around nervously, unconvinced by my reassurances.
‘Why have you brought me here?’
‘For answers.’
I lifted the drunken garden gate out of our way and walked along a path overrun by weeds. Cats of all colours, sizes and breeds watched with imperious disdain but would be relaying our progress to their owner.
‘I’ve brought you a sexy young man to ogle Amelie!’
She’d aged over the last six months, her bony frame was almost skeletal, her rosy cheeks had turned pale and those eyes, like flint, now looked a little bewildered. She’d lost many of her animal friends, thanks to Llyr; and with the twins gone, she only had loneliness as a companion. I worried her deterioration had other causes but she’d told me to mind my own business, repeatedly.
She opened the door and grinned, looked beyond me to the apprehensive young man behind me.
‘Don’t let him fuck you!’
Luke’s eyes widened and his mouth gaped open.
‘Oh no. He already has, has he?’
‘Madam, he has not… I don’t even… I am on a military assignment and our relationship…’
I barged past her into the kitchen, chuckling. Amelie followed, grinning at the consternation she’d caused. Luke brought up the rear, even more apprehensive now. I sat down at the old oak table in the middle of the kitchen, it had become my regular spot of late, I visited every couple of weeks, it was the least I could do for her.
‘I need your help Amelia. It looks like my problems aren’t over after all.’
She sighed and pour
ed the contents from the steaming kettle into a battered teapot. She’d known we were on our way, reports would have reached her from any one of the birds that had wheeled over us in the last quarter of an hour. I told her what had happened while Luke looked around timidly at the assorted menagerie of animals that filled the shelves and rafters. I remembered Oisin reacting the same way.
Amelie inhaled the steam from the infusion of ginseng she’d already made, its earthy aroma quickly saturated the air around the table. More evidence that she had something wrong with her.
‘Solomon thought there was something happening.’
I caught the other man’s attention and nodded at the barn owl perched in the open window, it caused his frown to deepen. Amelie stayed firmly focused on her mug of tea as she spoke.
‘They haven’t finished with you yet, have they, my boy?’
I shook my head. Without a reply, she looked at me.
‘The Dark Court think you’ve got away with murdering their High Lord, don’t they?’
It had been a concern I’d tried to communicate to Nimue but I’d been too close to death to make much of an argument. Luke looked even more bewildered, he deserved some explanation.
‘After I killed their leader I had to return to Tir na nÓg to face a trial. Mab represented the Dark Court, Nimue their Light cousins. Between them they had things so tightly controlled I was tried, sentenced and punished in less than a day.’
The young man’s face furrowed deeper. ‘Your crime?’
‘Manslaughter. But with extenuating circumstances that Mab argued were caused by Llyr’s rapidly increasing insanity. She painted an exaggerated picture illustrating how Oberon’s condition had been passed on to his son. As there was no other witness, they had to accept what she said.’
‘Apart from the young lad, Keir,’ Amelie added.
I shrugged. ‘His involvement was under scrutiny when I left, Mab kept him out of it.’
‘And someone doesn’t like that verdict. They want an execution,’ said Amelie.