The Road to Bedlam

by Mike Shevdon

"I don't. I've gone as far as I can."

  "I could make you."

  "You could try, but I have nothing else for you." He stood up. "Don't call me again. I don't want to hear from you."

  "I saved you, Sam. I could have left you there."

  "If anyone else finds out we've had this conversation, what you'll do to me is pigeon shit compared to what they'll do to me."

  He walked towards the arch leading to the exit, then paused and looked back. "And they'll leave me there."

  When he'd gone, I went back to the paintings. Strange angular faces looked out at me through knowing eyes. The more I looked at The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, the more faces I saw. Tiny figures peered through the long strands and around stones, but like the Feyre they were only there if you looked for them. It was a perspective on a world I knew, but I could see why they questioned his sanity.

  Sometimes I wondered about my own.

  NINETEEN

  The afternoon sunlight was bright after the muted light of the gallery, but the day's sunny disposition did not match my mood. Sam was right, he had given me something, but not enough. I knew that there were government files on my daughter and on me. I knew that files like that had existed since the thirteenth century. It tied into what I already knew about the Feyre.

  When I was first presented to the High Court, Kimlesh had told me that the Feyre had taken a risk and mixed their bloodlines with those of humanity. She hadn't said when that happened, but I knew that the Quit Rents Ceremony, which was part of the barrier that kept the Seventh Court from visiting our world whenever they wanted, was almost eight hundred years old. That meant the barrier against Raffmir and his kindred dated from the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, shortly before the Stone House, which Sam had mentioned, was moved to Bishopsgate and renamed Bethlem.

  That humanity would treat its mad and vulnerable as freaks was not news to me. I had lived and worked in London for years and the sight of homeless, helpless individuals living in cardboard boxes and begging was so much part of the wallpaper that most of the time I just didn't see it. When occasionally something or someone got past the social blindness, the best I could offer was the price of a meal or a hot drink. Even then, I was never quite sure whether I was actually supporting a drug habit or an alcoholic binge. Some people were hard to help, but that had always been the case.

  Blackbird had once told me that the genes of the Feyre were mixed with humanity and could manifest unpredictably in the population. She'd told me that some of those people were like her and became part of fey society, and some managed the way they were, rationalising their abilities as an uncanny talent or a psychic ability. I was reminded of Greg, who lived and worked in the community, using his fey sense to follow his vocation, knowing he was different but not knowing why. If he chose to regard that as a gift from God, who was I to argue with him?

  Others, though, did not cope with the discovery of their fey nature. Fey gifts could be very strange, and if you woke one day to find your reflection was no longer a face you recognised, or that items in your possession took on odd and perverse properties, then I could see how that might tip the balance of your mind. It was hard enough to accept it for yourself, but then to try and tell friends and loved ones that weird things were happening to you, that your perception of the world had shifted radically, that inanimate objects held strange messages or that you could see the fragmented futures of other people? It was no surprise that people like that ended up in institutions for the delusional.

  What happened, though, when it turned out that you could see the future? What happened when the mad people turned out to be right? There had been witch-trials in the seventeenth century. Were those women simply people who had inherited an ability they could neither understand nor control? Wasn't it better to treat those people as mad rather than hang them or burn them at the stake? Or was the treatment worse than the cure?

  Mankind knew about the Feyre. The helicopter over our burning cottage, the strange markings on the truck outside the hospital where Alex was being treated, the men waiting outside my ex-wife's house – all these pointed to an organised response. Somewhere, someone knew what was going on and had for a long while. As Garvin said, they were prepared and every time they encountered the Feyre they learned a little more. Now they had my daughter and they were looking for me.

  As I walked slowly back up through Whitehall it occurred to me that somewhere behind the blank exterior were civil servants making decisions about people's lives. Somewhere buried in a department – Health, maybe, or perhaps Defence – was a small office that dealt with the incarceration and treatment of people for whom there was no place in society: not criminals, not enemies, just people that didn't fit.

  In a democratic country it should be impossible for people simply to disappear. That method of dealing with dissent ought to be confined to banana republics and despots, but I knew it happened, either through choice or through intervention, as in my daughter's case. They had tried to do it to me. A passing thought occurred to me that I could give myself up and thereby discover what happened to people like me, but I did not think I would enjoy their concept of care.

  They must know that she had not intended to harm anyone. They must know that she was innocent, mustn't they? How could they blame a fifteen year-old girl who had been bullied – tortured even? The girls that had persecuted her had used methods that would be illegal in most decent countries – water-boarding, they called it, didn't they? A form of torture banned under international law. How could they blame someone for retaliating, if they had the opportunity?

  Yet three girls had died. It might not be murder, but they were still dead. The state would treat her as a murderer. It brought home to me that even if I managed to find her, Alex would not be able to go back to her life. It made me regret telling Kayleigh, since they would never be able to resume their friendship. Their lives would diverge rapidly. Alex couldn't go back to school. She would not be able to live a normal life. The moment she appeared in normal society, she would be arrested, the same as me. More final than that, Kayleigh would grow up and get older. Alex would grow up, but once she reached her adult size, she was going to age far more slowly. Kayleigh would be dead before Alex looked middle-aged.

  It meant she would no longer be able to live with her mother either. It left the issue of whether to tell Katherine that her daughter was alive unresolved. If it was me, I would want to know. I would need to know. If I had found out that she was alive and that someone close to me knew that, I would be incredibly angry. It made withholding the information from Katherine feel like treachery. I would hold back, though, until I had Alex back. I would not tell her now, only to have myself proved wrong later. We weren't out of the woods yet. Instead, I promised myself that as soon as I knew that Alex was safe, I would find a way to tell Katherine. She was her mother. It was not in me to let her continue what was left of her life believing that her daughter was dead, when she was alive.

  I had turned across the lower end of Trafalgar Square down the Strand to the church of St Clement Danes, where I knew I could get access to the Way through the crypt, but then I stopped. I had become used to being fey, following their ways, adopting their methods, but there were other ways to find things.

  I went north towards Drury Lane and the theatre district, looking for something that always popped up in the tourist areas: an Internet café.

  The one I found can't have been there long, but even so it had the odour of stale sweat and the yellow stain of nicotine on the keyboards. A couple of youths were smoking outside as I entered and one of them followed me in to relieve me of the money for an hour's worth of Internet. I sat down and opened the screen on Google, typing in the letters B/BWPD. The full reference came up with nothing, but BWPD apparently stood for a number of things: Barrels of Water Per Day, a Boston PC support company, Black and White Polka Dot – none of it made any sense in the context of mental asylums. I branched out, trawling through the official websites
for South London and Maudsley Health Trust, the sites for Broadmoor and Rampton secure hospitals, the Wikipedia pages for St Mary's Bethlehem and numerous sites on Bedlam at St George's Fields, where the Imperial War Museum was now housed.

  I knew something had changed. When St George's Fields was handed over to the Imperial War Museum, the file references had altered. Sam said it was military and restricted access, but that in itself marked a shift in approach.

  Perhaps originally the mongrel fey were treated as undesirables and misfits, then later as freaks and even as entertainment. Why then a change in 1930? I tried to remember from documentaries and the distant memory of school what had been significant about 1930. Further searching brought up information about the Great Depression, the slide into Fascism and numerous other events, but not about what had happened to trigger a change in policy with regard to the Feyre. The Feyre themselves weren't mentioned at all and I wondered whether that was by design.

  What had prompted someone in authority to say that these files were no longer a civil matter and would thereafter be a military concern?

  The initials, BWPD, appended to the B file reference marked the change, but did not explain it, while the initials themselves were obscure.

  My hour had expired some time ago, but no one seemed to care. I stood, stretching my neck and easing knotted muscles in my shoulders, then made my way out, nodding to the youth, and headed back to the crypt of St Clement Danes.

  Avoiding the door to the main body of the church, I took the spiral stairway to the side and made my way down. The whitewashed walls with the commemorative plaques and the rows of simple seating gave this place a dignity and simplicity that the larger church above didn't have. The traffic rumbled past outside but did not disturb the peace that existed there.

  I stood for a moment, trying to borrow some of that peace, then I stepped forward and whirled away, veering around Way-nodes so that I was thrown far from London. Within moments I was standing on the hill looking down on Ravensby. The graded streets were ranked bands of shadow, but the harbour still looked bright and colourful, at least until you got close enough to see the grime.

  Slipping back into the town, I headed for the guest house. The room was as depressingly bare as I had left it. I stowed my sword and hung my jacket on the back of the door. Sitting on the end of the bed, I tried to clear my head. I felt as if I had the fragments of a picture but no clear idea of what I was looking at.

  Sam had failed to find Alex for me. I could push him harder, but I didn't think that would get me anywhere. Sam had helped me, not because I had threatened him, but because I turned back and saved him when I could have left him in the glade. He had gone as far as he was prepared to go and pushing him further would only result in him digging in his heels. I consoled myself that I knew more than I did before.

  Blackbird was a different problem. I stood and went to the mirror. Laying my hand upon it, I whispered her name into the glass.

  "Blackbird?"

  The mirror clouded, a sickly glow coming from within. There was a growing buzz, then a stuttering clatter erupted from it and I snatched my hand away before the mirror broke. The glow faded slowly. I could not find her that way.

  A different idea occurred to me and I replaced my hand. "Claire?" The mirror glowed with a more hopeful milky white. "Claire Raddison?" I could hear vague snatches of words, cut off and jumbled, like a conversation that had been taped, shredded and reassembled in random order. She also had protection against eavesdropping, though not as aggressive as Blackbird's. Were they together? If they were, wouldn't the same protection apply to both of them?

  Who else could she be with? Would she return to the forest where she grew up? I could see her wanting to have her baby among the trees, to let him be part of the forest from the very beginning, but the tenuous safety there had failed her before. I could not see her relying solely on that.

  Maybe I was looking at this from the wrong angle. I was searching for Blackbird, or a place she would go, or a friend she would turn to. Maybe I needed to come at this from an entirely different direction.

  I placed my hand back on the mirror.

  "Deefnir?"

  I had only seen him once, hanging back as Raffmir came forward to greet me, but I remembered the sardonic curve of that lip, the foppish mop of black hair that fell over his eyes, the way his smile never reached his eyes.

  "Deefnir, where are you?"

  The mirror clouded then cleared. Into the room came a subtle shuffle and soft hush, the sound of outdoors. I was getting somewhere. I focused on the mirror, slowly increasing the connection, not wanting him to realise that I was listening in or trigger his defences, keeping it low profile.

  Wherever he was, it sounded remote. There was no buzz of cars or rumble of diesel engines, so if it was London then it was a park or a common. No, even then there would be the bark of distant motorbikes, the distant cry of sirens or the rumble of the jets turning for Heathrow. No, this was somewhere altogether more remote.

  If Deefnir wasn't in London then Blackbird wasn't either. Should I break off to pass this information to Garvin? The first question he would ask would be: "Where is he?"

  I concentrated, trying to decipher the layers of sound coming through the mirror. A breeze gusted, the grass rustling in response. Where there other rustlings behind that? The distant caw of crows echoed for a moment, but not nearby. A forest, maybe, but where was the sibilant hush of the breeze in the trees? No, this was in the open.

  There was a droning, a distant airplane maybe, except it didn't pass. Was it an air-conditioner? It didn't sound right for that. Maybe a car, but then why didn't it drive away? Wherever Deefnir was, he wasn't moving. Then a shout, tantalisingly short. Not near enough to recognise a voice or a word, but a sign that people were close by. He was watching someone, or something, but what?

  Now came the sound of movement, a sliding shuffle. Was he moving closer? What was he trying to do? Wherever he was, he was being cautious. What would make Deefnir cautious? What was there that he would be afraid of? He was wraithkin and pure-bred at that. There was little that would stand against him. What was causing him to hang back?

  The rumbling sound in the background rose in volume, a diesel rumble, but constant, not like a bus or a taxi. Was it a generator, or maybe a stationary vehicle? Then it came. The memory snapped into place. It was a tractor. Then came a sound I recognised, and I knew straightaway where he was. I could see it in my head. A baying bark, deep and full, followed by another. Two dogs, heckles up, legs braced: I could see them in my imagination, coats the colour of burnt honey bristling down their backs as they picked up the scent of the intruder. He was in Shropshire, at the farm owned by the Highsmith family, where Blackbird and I had gone last year to get the Quick Knife reforged for the Ceremony of the Quit Rents.

  I heard Deefnir turn and retreat, moving cautiously away from the unwanted attention, then accelerating as the sound of the barking increased. His pace increased until there was a steady padding and the sounds of the farm diminished, but I dropped my hand from the mirror. Now I knew where he was.

  The farm should have given it away, and with my rural upbringing I should have recognised the sound of a tractor, but what sealed it was the sound of the dogs, the two mastiffs that Jeff and Meg Highsmith kept on their farm in Shropshire. Their distinctive baying brought the memory back immediately, and if Deefnir was there, then so was Blackbird. It made sense. The place was steeped in iron. The Highsmiths knew about the Feyre and had their own ways of protecting themselves. I was surprised, though, that Meg Highsmith would take Blackbird in. As far as Meg was concerned, Blackbird was trouble that Meg didn't need. She was there, though. Why else would Deefnir be there?

  I needed to let Garvin know. I replaced my hand on the mirror.

  "Garvin? It's Niall."

  The sound from the mirror was of traffic, somewhere busy, maybe London or somewhere equally urban. "Garvin, can you hear me? It's Niall. I've found Deefnir." Th
ere was no response.

  I removed my hand, then placed it again. "Tate?"

  The sound of traffic re-emerged. Where you found one you found the other. What were they doing? I took my hand away again, letting the milky light fade from the mirror. Who to try next?

  "Fionh?" This time the mirror filled with milky light, but then quickly cleared leaving no sound at all. The mirror was completely silent. I wondered whether she was with the High Court, in which case it was no surprise to learn that it was not possible to eavesdrop on that conversation.

  I was running out of options. "Fellstamp?" This time a sound emerged immediately, the harsh drone of someone snoring. "Fellstamp? Wake up, it's Niall. I need to speak with you."

  The snoring continued its rasping rhythm. "Fellstamp! Wake up! I need your help!"

  There was no change. He seemed to be making more noise than I was.

  "Amber?" This time the mirror filled with a sour sickly green, the light pulsing in strange ways as it made strange clicks and ticks. Where on earth was she? The connection faltered and I let it drop.

  That left one more to try. "Slimgrin?" The mirror filled with light once more.