The Petitioners

by Perry, Sheila

  I had just quickened my pace a little so that I could catch up with Jeff and see if I could persuade him to stop again, when I noticed he was carrying something in one hand and staring down at it as he walked. When I spoke, he hastily concealed it, curling his fingers round it.

  ‘Can we have a rest now? Sorry, but Mum will get along better if she sits down for ten minutes… What was that in your hand?’

  He ignored the last part and focused on my request for a stop. ‘We could eat now. It must be about lunchtime.’

  ‘I didn’t think fugitives could afford to have lunch,’ I teased him, still wondering about the device in his hand. But by the time he took off his backpack and got out our lunch capsules, cheese sandwich substitute again – thank goodness they hadn’t found a way to incorporate mayonnaise in them – he must have put it away somewhere.

  ‘How much further do you think?’ said Mum, sitting on a fallen tree trunk and closing her eyes.

  ‘Where to? Balmoral? Or to our bed for the night?’ he asked.

  ‘Either – both – neither,’ she said, stretching her arms.

  ‘Two more days to Balmoral at this speed,’ he said. ‘An hour or so to the next safe house. If we don’t come to any rivers, that is. They’re all in spate – I don’t know how many bridges will have been swept away.’

  Half an hour later we stood on the banks of what had probably once been a rather picturesque mountain stream bubbling over the pebbles and rocks, stained brown with peat, on its way to join one of the main rivers of the area, maybe the Tummel. Now it was a full scale river, still frothy and brown with peat but now about ten feet wide and probably as much as that in depth.

  There was no sign of a bridge. Nobody would have needed one before.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Jeff. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘If we had a boat…’ My voice trailed away as I realised we wouldn’t last long in a boat in these conditions. For one thing, we could hear the sound of a waterfall not far off, which probably meant the river was about to cascade over a precipice. I had seen movies where people survived that kind of boat ride, but we weren’t in a movie now, as I was only too well aware.

  GAVIN

  I hadn’t realised before that it was possible to feel frightened out of your wits while travelling in a narrow-boat.

  I suppose it wasn’t usual to feel like this if you were navigating a shallow inland waterway that wasn’t all that deep, with locks to break the monotony and pretty little canal-side inns where you could spend a pleasant evening before going back and sleeping in your cosy bunk bed, rocked to sleep by the gentle movements of your boat.

  On the other hand, shooting the rapids on a mighty torrent like the Almond wasn’t something a narrow-boat had originally been built for, and finding your way out on to the now much wider and more frightening River Forth while hoping not to collide with any concealed underwater artefacts, was quite a different matter too.

  All that was before we found ourselves being pursued by people in official uniforms in a much faster, better equipped vessel than ours.

  All in all I was relieved to be hauled off our own little boat somewhere just about where the Third Forth Bridge used to be before it crumbled into oblivion, and on to theirs before we got into much deeper waters. Metaphorically and physically.

  At least I was relieved until the interrogation began.

  They had a special room for that. Or maybe it was the captain’s cabin. I didn’t take in much information about my surroundings. I was too busy trying to keep my story straight in the face of a good deal of aggressive scepticism on the part of my interrogator, a man with an annoyingly smug face who wore his uniform in an unbending kind of way that suggested what kind of a person he might be.

  ‘So, you’ve set out to sail in restricted waters without a permit, in a vessel that in no way is suitable for the purpose, in contravention of so many laws that I can’t even begin to enumerate them,’ he said. For some reason the officials had identified me, and not Mark, as the leader of our tiny group, so they had brought me in here for questioning before the others.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘Was that a question?’

  ‘Not really,’ he sighed. ‘When I start asking questions, you’ll know… I’m summing up the situation for both our benefits and for the recording device I am obliged to inform you is in operation.’

  I glanced around to see if I could spot the device, but of course it might have been smaller than the smallest microdot, for all I knew.

  He put his hands on the table between us and leaned towards me. ‘Where did your journey originate?’

  I understood at last that he was a customs official. I recognised him from his turn of phrase.

  ‘We were up in the Pentlands,’ I said. ‘In a group.’

  ‘What were you doing up there? Weren’t you aware that survivors have been told to head for the census at Balmoral?’

  ‘Balmoral?’ I echoed. The word set off an unpleasant resonance in my mind. I shook my head to try and get rid of it. ‘No, we didn’t know that. The census?’

  His face took on that expression of cultivated contempt that was fairly familiar from previous interrogators I had known. ‘Haven’t you been tuning into the regular cloud-casts from the Scottish government?’

  ‘Never heard of them,’ I said truthfully. ‘The cloud-casts, I mean, not the government.’ I was only too familiar with the latter, but I tried not to sound bitter in my reply.

  ‘Oh, come on, I don’t believe that for a moment. An educated guy like you – you’d want to keep up with what was going on.’

  ‘I was busy.’

  ‘Busy with what?’

  ‘Counting the cost,’ I said, once again being completely truthful, although I didn’t think it would get me anywhere. I had met people like him before. I just hoped that if physical violence started up, Mark would rush in and save me. Or possibly Mrs Swan. I was sure she could be vicious if she tried.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  I shrugged. ‘I was documenting the state of things. Drawing maps – recording where everything was.’

  ‘Was this a government-sanctioned activity?’ His eyes narrowed. I watched for his nostrils to twitch as he scented prey.

  ‘I don’t know. They might have sanctioned it if they’d been aware of it. If there was a government. It was just something that needed to be done. I wish I could just have stayed there and carried on with it – I don’t like leaving things incomplete. But maybe I can get back to it soon.’

  I don’t know why I rambled on like that. It might have been better just to answer the questions and leave it at that.

  ‘Know what I think?’ he said. ‘I think you’re going to have some explaining to do when we get there.’

  ‘Where’s there? Balmoral?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a special place for you and your kind.’

  Oh dear, I was destined for the seventh circle of hell or whatever it was called. I wondered if I would find anybody I knew there. Declan – Fiona – not Dan, I hoped. I tried to keep my face straight and told myself sternly not to reply.

  ‘So where’s that – at the bottom of the sea in a concrete overcoat?’ I said, defying my own instructions.

  ‘Concrete overcoats are old news,’ he said ominously. But his round face didn’t lend itself to looking sinister. I couldn’t help smiling at the incongruity of it. Once again I told myself not to say any more.

  ‘Where then?’ I said. ‘The bunker under Corstorphine Hill?’

  ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘Some rather important people have moved in there now. More than our jobs are worth to turf them out.’ He must have realised he had strayed way off topic at that point, for he stopped making these vague threats and turned back to what I had been doing in the Pentlands.

  ‘How about your son, Mr Hepburn?’ he enquired. ‘Our intelligence indicates that he was with you in the hills, but that he led raiding parties into town to loot shops and uninhabited buildings
. Where is he now? And where are the known outlaws you were both associated with?’

  ‘Outlaws? That’s a bit Wild West, isn’t it?’

  I really almost thought he was going to hit me then, but he restrained himself, at the cost of his face going red and his chest swelling until I imagined his uniform shirt bursting its buttons.

  ‘I’m referring to the Irishman and his friend,’ he snapped.

  ‘To be honest, I don’t know where they’ve gone. Declan, Fiona and Dan, I mean. They might as well have been kidnapped by aliens. They just vanished. Maybe you and your colleagues have them locked up in this special place of yours.’

  ‘In my experience,’ he said, glaring, ‘people who use that phrase are about to tell lies. And I don’t like lies, Mr Hepburn.’

  ‘What phrase is that? Kidnapped by aliens? I don’t really believe in that kind of thing, you know. I was just using it as an example of something extremely unlikely, if not impossible.’

  ‘Hmph!’ he paced up and down a bit and then came to a halt in the same position as before. ‘I’m not allowed to use physical violence, Mr Hepburn, I’m sorry to say. For some reason I’m supposed to deliver you without a mark on you.’

  ‘Good,’ I remarked. It seemed to be the only thing to say in the circumstances.

  The door opened and a guard ushered in Mark Sutherland and Mrs Swan. Neither of them looked any the worse for wear. I was glad of that in Mrs Swan’s case, but I wouldn’t have minded seeing a bruise or two starting to form on Mark’s face. But it was Mrs Swan who took me by surprise.

  ‘Now, then, Simpson,’ she said in a commanding tone to the man who had been questioning me. ‘We haven’t got all day, you know. Anything new?’

  ‘Not a scrap, Irene,’ he told her.

  Irene? Simpson? I only just prevented myself from blurting out something silly, such as ‘Do you two know each other?’

  Mark didn’t have himself quite as well under control as I did, evidently.

  ‘Do you two know each other?’ he said suspiciously.

  The next minute all eyes in the room were on me as I fell about laughing. No, I couldn’t believe how easily amused I was, either.

  DAN

  We were about to be intercepted by a dull grey ship that Declan thought was a customs reconnaissance vessel, when our humble fishing-boat put on an amazing amount of speed and we shot forward like a rocket. It was just as well we were clear of the Port of Leith, what was left of it, by then and out in the Forth.

  ‘Just a wee gadget I picked up somewhere,’ Fiona explained modestly as she came out of the engine compartment.

  ‘You’re a serious danger to shipping,’ Declan told her.

  I turned away in case things started to get emotional and messy.

  ‘I hope the driver’s watching out for the Isle of May,’ she said unromantically.

  ‘Skipper,’ said Declan. ‘I’d have thought you’d know that, with your history. And the Isle of May’s a long way under water right now. Probably several fathoms below us.’

  ‘I wonder what happened to the seabird colonies,’ Fiona mused.

  ‘They’ll have flown off somewhere else before it all kicked off,’ said Declan. ‘They’re not stupid, you know.’

  ‘There’ll be pressure on their nesting sites,’ she said, wearing a worried frown.

  ‘They’ll just have to find new ones,’ said Declan unsympathetically. ‘Just like we have.’

  ‘Nesting sites?’ she said, amused.

  ‘Whatever,’ said Declan.

  I had decided to leave them to it and turned to go on deck again when Declan said,

  ‘Have you heard the cloud-cast, Dan?’

  ‘No – is there a way of tuning into it?’

  ‘Ship’s computer. You can go and have a listen if you like. It’s along in the cabin. The Scottish government seem to be putting out the same message over and over again.’

  ‘What else is new?’ said Fiona, laughing.

  ‘It’s not that funny, actually,’ said Declan. ‘They’re saying anybody who doesn’t reach Balmoral for the census in the next couple of days will be declared an outlaw.’

  ‘Wow,’ I breathed. ‘The Massacre of Glencoe all over again.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Declan. ‘Is this one of those things every Scottish schoolboy has heard of but nobody else in the world has?’

  ‘More or less,’ said Fiona. ‘Tell him about it, Dan.’

  I explained the lead-up to the Massacre of Glencoe as I understood it: the deadline for swearing allegiance to William of Orange, the chief of the clan’s trek through the snow to try and get to the place in time, his failure through no fault of his own, so on, so forth through to the actual massacre. Mum would have been impressed that I had remembered something from school. Not that I’d been there all that often, what with being arrested and everything.

  ‘It’s not quite the same,’ I concluded doubtfully. ‘Nobody’s said anything about a massacre, have they?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Fiona.

  ‘We’ve already been there and done that,’ said Declan.

  Fiona frowned. ‘I wouldn’t describe it as a massacre, exactly.’

  ‘Might as well have been,’ said Declan.

  ‘Do you think Tanya Fairfax was spying on us for the government?’ I asked.

  ‘Quite probably,’ said Declan. ‘That was one reason for getting out of there.’

  ‘What about Dad? Do you think he knows about this outlaw thing?’

  There was a pause. I didn’t think Declan even cared what happened to Dad, but at last he replied,

  ‘Maybe not. He never did show much interest in the cloud-casts. I don’t even know if he knew they were going on.’

  ‘But you passed on the news to him. There was no mention of this then.’ Fiona sighed. ‘We can’t really go back for him.’

  ‘Not now,’ Declan agreed. ‘Once we re-group…’

  ‘Do you seriously think any of our people are going to be up there waiting for us?’ she demanded suddenly, wrenching herself free of his grasp. ‘Get real, Declan! This is just one big nostalgia trip for you, isn’t it? You want to see our old camp again and relive past glories.’

  ‘Glories? Ha! That’s one way of putting it,’ Declan interrupted.

  ‘I thought that was how you saw it!’ She flounced out of the cabin and slammed the door behind her.

  ‘Women!’ said Declan. ‘It’s just one emotional scene after another.’

  I thought he was being a bit unfair on Fiona. She had gone along with what he wanted all this time, even leaving what had seemed like a fairly secure camp to run off, worrying Dad by pretending we’d been abducted, boarding the fishing-boat when she seemed sceptical about its safety certificate. I thought he was lucky she had stuck by him this long. But then, I suppose I wasn’t old enough to claim any understanding of women.

  Even my mother and sister were almost strangers to me now. That was a scary thought. But I knew Mum would be all right, whatever happened. She was probably even now either on her way to Balmoral or already there, ready to kick them all into shape. Jen might tag along behind her. I didn’t think my sister was interested enough in politics and so on to take any independent action. But it might be useful to have some family members who weren’t outlaws.

  I was smiling at this stray thought when Declan said, ‘There isn’t very much to smile about. I’m sorry, Dan. I thought this was the best thing to do. I don’t want you getting into more trouble with the authorities. Even if they only have a tenuous claim to be called that. I don’t even know if they can hang on for all that long as a so-called government.’

  I shrugged. ‘My choice to come with you. It’s better to do something than nothing.’

  ‘I’m not sure your Dad would agree with that. In fact, I know he wouldn’t. He seemed to be all set to stay up there indefinitely, writing his notes and drawing his plans.’

  ‘It was something he thought needed doing,’ I said in Dad’
s defence. ‘It wasn’t that he was hiding there or anything.’

  ‘Hmm, maybe not.’

  The next minute there was a sort of bump and we were both flung about the cabin like toys scattered by a two-year-old having a tantrum. While the world tried to turn upside-down, I stayed where I was. Once it re-stabilised, I sat up. The light had gone out, and it was dark outside the porthole, but we seemed to be the right way up.

  Then I saw Declan still sprawled on the floor, a scary-looking pool of dark liquid forming by his head.

  JENNIFER

  In the end we had to go the long way round to get across the river. There was a sort of improvised bridge further upstream. It was really just a fallen tree, around which the water swirled dangerously, but somebody had been there before us and nailed a couple of planks across the other part of the river. It didn’t exactly look safe, but we had to cross somehow, so we gritted our teeth and went for it. At least, that’s what I did. Jeff managed to cross it without losing his cool, and Mum was a bit out of things by then and I think if we’d asked her to swim across she wouldn’t have turned a hair.

  She was noticeably worn out when we finally reached the next safe house, which was a bit of an improvement on the previous one, having a resident housekeeper who prepared a very welcome meal for us without even being asked to. It was larger too, and the housekeeper had made up a separate bed for each of us in separate rooms. I wasn’t sure about leaving Mum in the room on her own, but Jeff very firmly told me to get a good night’s sleep while I had the chance.

  That wasn’t all. The following morning when I went downstairs I found Jeff had been out foraging before my mother and I woke up, and had come back with a horse and cart.

  ‘Your Mum can’t walk much further,’ he said. ‘This way we might even make Balmoral by nightfall, if everything goes as it should. That would simplify things a bit.’