by Sam Christer
She keeps hold of Jade’s hand. Presses it to her face. Rests her head on the bed. Keeps her skin and her daughter’s bound together. The last time it was like this was fourteen years ago in a maternity ward.
Mitzi closes her eyes and sees light pushing the curtains. Tiredness crashes in. The pains, stresses and strains all become too much for her. She dozes. The black tide that swims over her is healing and soothing, like a hot, dark bath.
Mitzi wakes with a jolt. Her face hurts. It feels like it’s been pricked or scratched. Almost as though Jade has clawed her cheek. She looks down. There’s blood on her daughter’s nails.
Mitzi sits up. She puts her hands to her face. There’s fresh blood on her fingertips. She tells herself she’s imagining it. It can’t have happened. She brushes hair from Jade’s face. ‘Baby, can you hear me?’
There’s no response. But there is something different about her.
‘Jade, it’s Mom. Can you hear me?’
There is something different about her. Mitzi just knows there is. She looks again at the blood on her own hand and on Jade’s fingers.
Her frown is back. Jade is frowning. Mitzi’s seen it a million times. There’s no mistaking that furrowed, sulky brow.
‘Nurse! Nurse!’ She almost screams the building down as she runs to the door. ‘Hel-fucking-lo! Are there no freaking nurses anywhere in this goddamned place?’
One appears at the far end of the corridor.
Mitzi rushes back inside.
Jade’s eyes are open. The tone on the monitor has changed. Her mouth moves.
Mitzi can’t hear anything. She rushes to her daughter’s bedside. ‘Sweetheart —’ She stops just inches away, scared that touching her might ruin the fragile recovery.
Jade speaks in a hoarse, slow voice. ‘Mom – please shut the fuck up – you’re embarrassing me.’
187
NORTHERN MEXICO
Chris Wilkins showers, then does a final check around the house before hitting the sack.
He sets the burglar alarm. Tests the locks on all the windows. Slips a Glock into a cabinet in the bathroom and another under his pillow. Precautions he and Tess always made whenever they settled somewhere new.
He thinks of her as he turns the lights off and slips into the cool sheets. If she was here, they’d curl up together and not part until they were breathless, their energies spent.
Deep inside, he knows she’s dead.
If she was alive and free, she’d have sent an email to one of their secret accounts. He’s checked and she hasn’t. If she’d been arrested, she’d have called their lawyer. She hasn’t. Even though there’s nothing on the news, every atom of his body is telling him she’s gone. At some point, when his anxiety about being caught has gone, then he’s going to fall apart. And afterward, when he’s pulled himself together again, he will wreak a most bloody vengeance on those responsible for her death.
But for now, comfort comes in the form of rest. After being cramped in cars, buses and trains, it’s a relief to stretch out on a soft bed. The air-con has a hypnotic whirr that helps him drift into the first stage of sleep. He tosses and turns. Kicks off the sheet. Sinks deeper into slumber.
It’s been so long since Wilkins has done anything more than nap, that he doesn’t stir at first. Not when the smoke alarm goes off. Nor when fumes creep up the stairs.
He wakes with a jolt.
Some sense has been triggered. He sits upright. His head aches from sleep but he knows what’s happening. The house is on fire. He grabs the gun from beneath his pillow. Rushes to the bedroom door. The blaze is in the hallway. It’s thick with smoke and orange flame. Too dense for him to run through it.
Wilkins shuts himself in and goes to the double windows in the bedroom. He untwists the locks and pushes them open. There’s a drainpipe to his right. If he grabs that, at most he has a drop of twelve feet. A twisted ankle is better than risking a rush through fire.
He stuffs the Glock in the back of his briefs and gets up on the window frame. He turns and dangles his legs outside. Shuffles so he can reach the drainpipe. It’s a bit of a stretch but he makes it and swings himself out.
Bare feet find the brickwork and he eases himself into the dark night.
Then he feels a sharp pain in his spine. His grip goes and he falls like a sack of sand. Before he even hits the front yard, he knows he’s been shot. The impact knocks the wind out of him but he ignores the pain and reaches for the Glock.
A second shot opens up his stomach. A third cracks a rib under his heart. A fourth pops the middle of the throat.
Off in the distance there’s the siren of a fire truck. Neighbours are running from their homes.
Ross Green is already breaking down his sniper rifle. He’ll be gone before the fire-fighters arrive.
He just wishes Sir Owain were alive so he could tell him the news.
188
CAERGWYN CASTLE, WALES
The private chapel in the castle grounds is deserted, except for Myrddin.
He hasn’t left the cold, vaulted place of worship since Owain’s body was brought in. Nor will he. Not until the ceremony that will carry him to Avalon.
Wrapped in a timeworn funereal cloak, he stands like a round-backed sentry at the feet of the man he considered a son.
As Myrddin commanded, there has been no attempt to sanitize the effects of the blast. Owain’s body lies before him, battle-raw. He sees the eviscerated skin, the shredded clothing and clumps of dried blood. To him, they are the ultimate medals of honour, pinned on a brave mortal frame that contained an even braver spirit.
‘You live on, my child. You are immortal.’ He touches the knight’s feet. ‘You are born again in your unborn son, just as you lived in the spirit of your father, your father’s father and the generations that shaped our great land.’
There are no tears in the old man’s eyes. They have been wrung dry by too many years of sorrow, too many sons to stand over and mourn.
He puts both hands together, as if in prayer and clears his mind of everything except the oath he is about to make. ‘These promises I solemnly give unto you. I will watch over your wife as though she were my own blood.’ He places his praying hands on the great man’s chest. ‘I will be the strictest guardian of the mind and soul of the man to whom you entrusted her welfare. I will ensure beyond earthly doubt that he keeps your lady’s love alive so she may raise your child in the enrichment of its light and warmth.’ His white fingers stretch over the heart that loved so much and now no longer beats. ‘I will watch over your son, Arthur, as he grows in your features, speaks in your voice and acts in your spirit. And when he faces the challenges that await him, I will be there to protect and guide him, as I did you.’
Myrddin crosses Sir Owain’s hands, so they lie in the position that befits a fallen knight. With a sigh, he bends to the cold stone floor of the chapel and raises from it the sacred object that will complete his oath.
Into the great man’s hands Myrddin fixes, not a burial cross but a mighty broadsword. One that symbolizes everything his family and the Order stand for.
The tired, old augur steps back and kneels.
He gazes into the future and visualises the day he will guide another young man, one yet to be born, to the body of his brave father. It will be the moment he tells him the time has come to take up the Arthurian broadsword and all the power and the responsibility that goes with it. It will be the start of the new Cycle.
Acknowledgements
Little, Brown/Sphere – Jade Chandler for her great ideas and sensitive persuasion (especially about endings!). Iain Hunt for all the hard labor/labour in editing. Andy Hine, Kate Hibbert and Helena Doree for their mastery of foreign rights. Jo Wickham – publicity. Hollie Smyth – marketing. Nick Castle – cover design and direction.
LBA – Luigi Bonomi for his constant belief, expert advice and resilient good humour, Alison Bonomi for her eagle eyes and kind assistance.
Professor Guy Rutty MBE, Chief F
orensic Pathologist, East Midlands Forensic Pathology Unit, University of Leicester, for his unique guidance and amazing thoroughness – any deviations from fact are down to me not him.
Everett Baldwin Barclay – Jack Barclay and team for the best company advice in the business.
Peter Robson – better known as Lundy Pete for all his help and patience with the scenes set on Lundy and its wonderful legends and history.
Last but not least, Donna, Billy, Elliott and Damian for being everything that matters in fact not fiction.