5. The Council of War and Peace
GAVIN
I was never quite sure how I had managed to talk the others into making a detour by Balmoral. At first Mark was the only one on my side, and come to think of it, he positively encouraged me to persuade them. Maybe they had been planning to go there anyway and they had just pretended it was my persuasive powers that had worked on them and made up their minds. Or maybe it was idle curiosity on their part.
There was no doubt, as things turned out, that it was the right thing to do.
We came to the place very early in the morning, arriving over the hills because we were unsure of our welcome. Or at least, Declan and the others were unsure. I was fairly sure we wouldn’t be welcome, except possibly if the authorities were looking for somebody to torture.
There was somebody else up there already, gazing over the lawns towards the house itself. It just wasn’t really a castle, no matter what its name.
By the time we saw him it was too late to hide. I suspect we were all too tired of that kind of thing anyway. We had been walking for two days and the food supplies had more or less run out. If we didn’t get a square meal soon we would all just fall over and never get up again. Even Declan didn’t show any sign of wanting to overpower the man.
In any case he turned to us with a friendly smile and said, ‘I’ve been expecting you.’
I blinked. He must have mistaken us for another little group of people. Or maybe he was some sort of seer. He had that kind of look about him – straggly beard, wide innocent eyes, an expression of trust and wonder. He had predicted our arrival using only the moon and stars, or some rune stones from his pocket, or tea leaves, or the palm of somebody’s hand.
‘That’s odd,’ said Declan cautiously. ‘We weren’t expecting to be here.’
‘Have we met before?’ I asked politely, certain that we hadn’t.
‘No, but I know your wife and daughter,’ he said, with equal politeness. ‘I’ve seen a picture of you. And your son,’ he added, nodding in Dan’s direction.
Dan looked as if he was ready to attack the man, but I was more circumspect.
‘I didn’t realise Emma carried around pictures of the family,’ I said, rather cheered by this revelation.
‘She doesn’t,’ he said. ‘I saw it in her mind.’
‘In her mind?’
‘It’s all right, I only read the good things,’ he assured me. I didn’t find it all that reassuring though. I had always thought of mind-readers either as complete charlatans who found out what they wanted to know by the usual means – which normally involved asking people the right questions – or agents of the government who had somehow planted dangerous electronic devices in people’s heads to read the minds for them. ‘Except occasionally if a signal’s really strong. I picked something up from Jeff – that’s why I’m here.’
‘Jeff?’ said Declan. ‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’
‘A friend of mine.’
He obviously didn’t trust us. I didn’t blame him. Even if he did recognise us from some kind of mind-reading trick, he didn’t really know Dan and me, and he probably didn’t have a clue about Declan and Fiona, except that they were with us.
‘Have you seen Emma and Jen lately?’ I enquired.
He frowned. ‘Not since they went off with Jeff to the next safe house. But things have moved on a bit since then.’
‘This isn’t exactly a safe house,’ said Declan with a hollow laugh, indicating the large building below us. ‘In fact, I would say it’s probably one of the least safe houses in the country right now.’
‘We don’t know that for sure,’ I said for the sake of argument. I tended to agree with him really, but it didn’t do to give way to Declan too easily.
‘Come on, Gav, it’s always been their headquarters. You of all people should know that.’
‘I thought your lot had taken over,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Maybe they’re all in there now, relaxing in front of a roaring log fire while they plot the downfall of anybody who happens to think they’re running the country. And if the last couple of months have shown me anything, it’s that we need somebody to be in charge.’
It was getting a bit heated and I think we might even have started to fight properly if Dan, of all people, hadn’t intervened.
‘So you said you picked up a signal or something from Jeff?’ he asked. ‘Have you found him here, then?’
He had asked the right question, of course. If Jeff had gone off with Emma and Jen, the chances were that he might still be with them or at least, not far away.
‘No,’ said the man with a frown. He glanced round at our faces again and suddenly held out a hand to me. ‘I’m Will, by the way. Jeff brought them to my safe house in the first place – when they got away from the hospital. That’s when I met them. It was only when Emma came round and was fit to move on that they left.’
It wasn’t really the time or the place to go into long explanations, but I insisted Will should tell me more, so we sat in the heather with a few chocolate capsules Dan had found in his pocket, and Will narrated the hospital escape story as he understood it.
‘And then they went off to find the next safe house,’ he concluded. By some miracle nobody had interrupted him, or at least not seriously. There had been a few moans and groans along the way, mostly from me, but no heckling.
‘Cool,’ said Dan. ‘It’s like the underground railroad.’
‘A bit,’ said Will. ‘We’ve been building it for quite a while. During the bad times. You know.’
Yes, we did know only too well. It didn’t seem as if they were going to be over any time soon, either.
‘So can you read their minds now and find out where they are?’ I asked eagerly.
He frowned. ‘It’s all gone a bit fuzzy, I’m afraid. Maybe it’s interference.’
‘Interference in your thought waves?’ said Declan.
‘No – sorry, I must have misled you. This doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s an implant in my brain. I was a volunteer. When they were testing it out a while ago. I think they abandoned the programme but I never went back to have it removed.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘That makes more sense… What about your friend Jeff? Is there any way of tracking him down?’
He shook his head. ‘Fuzzy as well. Sometimes that means they’re wearing electronic blocking devices, and sometimes, I’m afraid, it means bad news.’
‘What sort of bad news?’ I rushed to ask, immediately wishing I hadn’t.
‘Well, it could be that they’re all asleep. But it could mean unconsciousness, a coma or even…’
‘Death?’ said Declan.
‘Thanks for spelling it out, Declan,’ I said. ‘We really needed to hear that.’
‘Saying it doesn’t make it any more or any less likely,’ he said.
‘Sometimes it’s better to face up to the worst,’ said Mark, who had been very quiet up to now. ‘Then it’s a huge relief when something less than that happens.’
‘Fine if it isn’t your family involved!’ I snapped.
‘Chill out, Dad,’ said Dan. ‘What are we going to do next? That’s the real question.’
‘I was just pondering on that,’ said Will. ‘There aren’t enough of us yet to storm the place and mount a rescue mission. On the other hand again, maybe there are.’
‘Does this electronic implant of yours let you conjure up extra people from your imagination too?’ I said. ‘And are they guaranteed to be on our side?’
Declan elbowed me aside so that he was face to face with Will.
‘Don’t mind Gav, he’d be prostrate with grief and panic if the heather wasn’t so damp. Let’s work out a strategy.’
Will stared at me doubtfully. Then he, Declan and Fiona went into a huddle a few metres away, talking in low voices so that I could only make out about one word in ten. After a while Mark wandered over to speak to them too, and they didn’t immediately shove him away, which was good. Dan didn’t se
em at all put out at being excluded from the planning stage. I would have to make sure he didn’t try and join in when it came to the action either.
It got dark while they were talking, and a few lights came on in the Castle. Unless most of the occupants were unconscious, there couldn’t be very many people in there to judge by the number of lights. Only about five rooms were lit, and that was a generous estimate. I knew that many of the rooms were big enough to have several windows.
Maybe they were round at the other side, though.
Dan lay back in the heather, eyes half closed, apparently doing nothing, while I fretted and fussed and tried to think of anything I could possibly do to help. My mind was fairly blank on the subject.
DAN
If I had been Dad I would have been angry about the others talking amongst themselves, but he didn’t seem at all agitated. Maybe he was so used to being left out that he had started to take it for granted. Or maybe he thought this new friend Mark would say anything that mattered. Dad was probably too old to change his ways now, though. He must be at least forty-five. When was his last birthday? Had I missed it while I was locked up at the Castle?
I didn’t want to seem as if I was trying to lip-read or anything, so I wandered over to look down to the little loch beyond the hill we were standing on.
When something moved, I rubbed my eyes. I must have been staring at the same spot for too long. But when I looked back that way, there was quite a bit of movement going on. Just darker shapes in the darkness. The only reason I could see anything at all was that the moon was coming up, looking enormous as it dragged itself away from the horizon, and its light reflected off the water in the loch. There was a kind of rippling effect with the light that confused me for a bit, but there were definitely things down there.
‘What’s going on?’ said Dad’s voice just behind me. He was peering over my shoulder. ‘Are those people moving about?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s a herd of deer. Going for a drink at the loch or something.’
We both kept our voices low, I noticed. It was almost as if we didn’t want the others to hear us. Not that they’d have noticed.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘They’re heading the wrong way. And they don’t have antlers.’
I glanced back at him uncertainly. ‘Do you think they’re friendly, or what?’
‘With my luck,’ he said, ‘it’s definitely going to be what.’
‘Do you think we should get down – hide behind a rock?’
‘Hmm. I don’t suppose they’ll have seen us.’
There was a buzzing sound and something flew past my head.
I ducked instinctively and lowered myself to the ground. Dad joined me there, head resting on a clump of heather.
‘I think somebody has,’ I said. It was redundant, but I felt as if I had to say it anyway.
‘I suppose we’d better tell them,’ he said, gesturing towards Declan, Fiona, Mark and Will. I considered that for a minute. The three of them were shielded by the higher part of the hill, and it wasn’t impossible that whatever trigger-happy idiot was roaming about in the darkness wouldn’t see them, but on the other hand, it didn’t seem all that fair not to warn them.
I was just about to start wriggling over in that direction when they turned and moved towards us. I saw Fiona’s expression change from extremely worried to panicky when she caught sight of our positions. She broke into a run.
‘No!’ said Dad in an urgent half-whisper. ‘Keep down!’
She ducked, and then fell to her hands and knees and crawled. Declan and Will stood back a bit. It seemed wrong for them to let her crawl into danger, but of course women were more than equal these days and Fiona was definitely more equal than others. Declan looked over-excited and Will slightly anxious, which seemed to be his default position. Mark’s expression was neutral, as far as I could see. Maybe he didn’t want to reveal too much of his thinking in this company.
‘What’s going on?’ said Fiona as she got close enough to speak in a low voice.
‘Somebody just fired at us,’ said Dad. ‘From over there. It looks like there’s an army massing for attack down by the loch.’
She glanced over her shoulder at the other three. ‘We’d better get back into the shelter of the rocks, then. Come on.’
‘Did you tell them?’ said Declan, as we all arrived and straightened up.
Fiona laughed, not loudly and not with hilarity. ‘Wait till you hear this,’ she said.
Dad broke the news to them. Declan swore a lot. Will just looked more anxious and sadder than before. Mark remained impassive.
‘I was hoping to just find Jeff and then get out of here again,’ Will whispered. ‘I don’t want to get involved in any violence.’
Hmm. I had learned a few things during the past year or so, and one was that nobody wants to get involved in violence, but it sometimes lands on your doorstep anyway. I didn’t know how Will had reached whatever age he was without knowing that. He must have led a very sheltered life.
‘You stay here then,’ said Declan. ‘We’ll go and check this out.’
Fiona tugged at his arm. ‘Not you. It’s too dangerous – don’t forget you’re an illegal.’
‘An illegal?’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Fiona told me. ‘It’s true. He was meant to have been deported two years ago.’
‘That’s not what he told me,’ observed Dad.
‘It might be our lot anyway,’ said Declan. ‘In which case Gav could get himself into serious trouble. He’d better stay here and we’ll go down the hill.’
‘What about Mark?’ said Fiona. ‘You’re not illegal, are you?’
Mark shrugged. ‘Not as far as I know. Not sure I’m up to speed with what’s going on, though.’
‘You’ve got to be at least as up to speed as Gav,’ said Declan.
‘This isn’t a good time to argue about it,’ I pointed out. ‘I think Dad and I should go.’
I wasn’t sure that my father saw it quite the same way as I did, but he agreed meekly enough.
We worked our way steadily downwards, weaving to and fro in an amateur attempt to confuse everybody. It was quite effective, in the sense that nobody else took a shot at us. But they were probably focussing on their goal, which surely must be Balmoral itself.
‘Get down!’ Dad hissed suddenly, reinforcing his words by pushing me into a prickly bush.
I winced and only just stopped myself giving a yelp as brambles scratched my forehead. I was sure they’d drawn blood.
Not far away, an oddly familiar voice said, ‘I’ll keep my people back here, sir, while you go on.’
‘So you’re letting us walk into the trap on our own, are you, Ms Fairfax?’ said a different voice, one I didn’t recognise. ‘That’s not very sporting.’
She made a faint snorting noise. ‘Sporting or not, I’m not sending them into danger. You don’t pay them enough for that.’
There was a pause. I heard the quiet but unmistakable sound of footsteps walking away on grass, and a sigh, as if the woman had relaxed after facing him down.
‘Tanya Fairfax,’ hissed my father, almost breathing the words into my ear. He seemed a bit cross, which wasn’t like him.
‘I thought she was a friend of yours,’ I whispered back. I couldn’t resist winding him up even in those circumstances.
Just then a hand grasped the back of my jacket roughly and hauled me upright. Another bramble – or maybe it was the same one – scratched my face on the way up.
‘You were right, their spies are everywhere,’ said a man’s voice.
I glanced sideways to find they had also dragged Dad out of the undergrowth. We stood in front of Tanya Fairfax. Her face was in the shadow so I couldn’t tell whether she was angry, amused or what. I half-expected her to come out with a traditional villain’s line like ‘So, Mr Hepburn, we meet again.’ She didn’t.
‘This could work out quite well,’ she said instead.
; ‘In what way would that be?’ growled my father. I looked past Ms Fairfax and saw the massed ranks of what seemed to be a private army, in the semi-darkness towards the loch. Were they about to attack Balmoral? Whose side were they on anyway?
‘Do you just work for whoever pays you the most?’ I said. I had meant to leave all the talking to Dad, but he didn’t seem to want to do very much of it.
Tanya Fairfax gave a low laugh. ‘Isn’t that the only way for an army to survive these days?’
‘Who paid you to help us?’ I asked.
‘Clever boy,’ she replied. It wasn’t an answer, and I didn’t take it as a compliment either.
‘Who’s paying you now?’ said my father.
‘A consortium,’ she said. ‘Now stop distracting me, both of you. I’ve got work to do.’ She spoke over my head to the man who was still holding me by the back of my jacket, although not as roughly as before. ‘Take them back behind the lines. We’ll need to keep them safe.’
‘I doubt if we can afford your prices,’ was Dad’s final comment before we were removed from her presence.
JENNIFER
There weren’t any scars round her hair line. That was the first thing I noticed. Had they done something to her after taking her away that removed the scars but did something to her brain instead? But there was more to it than that. She kept calling me ‘Jennifer’ which she hadn’t done since I was very small or had done something bad, and she didn’t seem to want to talk about anything that had happened recently.
We were taken into a small sitting-room. It had probably looked much the same when this was a royal residence, with tweedy carpets and oatmeal-coloured furnishings. Maybe somebody had imagined this gave it a particularly Scottish ambience. All it needed was a few haggises hanging on the wall as trophies, and the picture would be complete.
I knew I was focussing on the surroundings deliberately, to avoid considering this impossible problem.
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