Bonvilain turned slowly, already pulling a sad face.
‘Ah, young Broekhart,’ he said, as though Conor was expected. ‘A terrible tragedy.’
Conor aimed the Colt at Bonvilain’s chest, a large enough target. ‘I heard everything, Marshall. I saw you shoot Victor.’
Bonvilain dropped the act. His face was once again its sharp self. Angles and shadows.
‘No one will believe you.’
‘Some will,’ said Conor. ‘My father will.’
The marshall considered this. ‘You know, I think you might be right. I suppose that means I must kill you too, unless you kill me.’
‘I could do it. And that oaf too,’ said Conor, cocking the Colt.
‘I am sure you could, theoretically, but the time for theory is over. This is not the practice field, Conor; we are at war now.’
‘Stand where you are, Marshall. Someone heard the shots. They will be coming.’
‘Not through these walls. No one is coming.’
It was true and Conor knew it. Victor had told him that one night he and Nicholas were testing fireworks in the grate and not a soul in the palace had heard.
‘You, soldier. Put down your rifle and sit on the chair.’
The sentry did not appreciate being ordered about by a fourteen-year-old boy, but then again the boy seemed very familiar with the weapon in his fist.
‘This chair? There’s blood on it.’
‘No, idiot. That chair. By the wall.’
The sentry laid his weapon on the stone floor, shuffling across to a stool by the wall.
‘This is a stool,’ he mumbled. ‘You said chair.’
Bonvilain took a sneaky step forward, hoping that Conor was distracted by the sentry’s inanities. Not so.
‘Don’t move, traitor. Murderer.’
Bonvilain smiled. His teeth were glossy, like yellow pearls.
‘Now, Conor, I will explain to you what I am about to do. I intend, and this is a promise, to take a leisurely walk across the space between us and then choke the life from your body. The only way you can stop this coming to pass is to shoot me. Remember, this is war – no school today.’
‘Stay where you are!’ shouted Conor, but the marshall was already on his way. Five steps divided them. Four now.
‘Take your shot, boy. Soon I will be too close and it will be difficult to get a bullet past my hands.’
I chose badly, Conor realized. I should have fled down the passage and fetched my father.
He had never shot a person. Never wanted to.
I want to build a flying machine. With Victor.
But Victor was dead. Murdered by Bonvilain.
‘I am upon you,’ said the marshall.
Conor shot him twice, under his outstretched arms in the upper chest.
I had to do it. He gave me no choice.
Bonvilain’s steps faltered slightly, but he kept coming. He was purple in the forehead, but the light in his eyes never wavered.
‘And now,’ he said batting the gun from Conor’s fingers, ‘to choke the life from your body. As promised.’
Conor was lifted from the floor, his arms and legs flapping, battering ineffectively against the marshall’s flanks, which seemed to jingle when struck.
‘I am a Templar, boy,’ said Bonvilain. ‘Have you never heard of us? We like to wear chain mail going into war. Chain mail. I have a vest on at the moment just in case things did not play out as I planned. Prudence is never wasted, as we see here today.’
This revelation did not matter much to Conor now. All he knew was that Bonvilain still lived. He had been shot, but lived.
‘You hold him, Marshall!’ said the sentry, reclaiming his rifle. ‘Hold him still and I will shoot him.’
‘No!’ shouted the marshall, imagining the indignity of an epitaph that included the phrase accidentally shot while strangling a youth.
‘You prefer to do it yourself,’ said the sentry, sulking slightly.
Bonvilain thought as he strangled. He held in his hands, literally, the solution to his Captain Broekhart difficulty. Victor Vigny had been right: Declan Broekhart was his only real opposition in the Saltee Army. Surely there was a way to win the captain’s loyalty from this situation. And if it required a little manipulation, was that not his speciality?
An idea poked from the depths of Bonvilain’s brain, like the head of a sly serpent from a swamp. What if the rebel Victor Vigny had not acted alone. What if he had an accomplice, the sentry for example. The sentry was certainly expendable.
Bonvilain felt a shiver run up his spine. He was on the verge of brilliance, he could feel it. For Bonvilain, it was moments like these that made life tolerable. Moments that presented him with a challenge worthy of his specific talents.
‘You there, idiot,’ he said to the sentry. ‘Open the window.’
‘That one?’ said the sentry, though there was but one window in the apartment.
‘Yes,’ said Bonvilain innocently. ‘The one overlooking the cliffs.’
Conor awoke from near strangulation in a damp windowless cell, where he languished for hours. His solitude was interrupted periodically by a brace of guards who stomped with considerable gusto on his slim frame. On their final visit, the pair stripped him of his clothing and bundled him into a Saltee Army uniform.
As yer own clothes stink of blood and fear.
Conor wondered about this briefly through his pain. Why a soldier’s uniform? Before his addled brain could reach any conclusion, the beatings recommenced, backhanded blows across the face. One eye closed and he felt the blood flow down his nose. The guards propped something soft on his head. A towel perhaps? To staunch the flow of blood maybe? It seemed unusually compassionate.
There were more confusing meddlings with his person. One swabbed his cheeks with what smelled like gunpowder. The other scratched on his arm with an ink pen. It went on for what seemed like hours.
When the guards were satisfied with their arrangements, the fatter of the pair clamped a set of manacles on Conor’s wrists and a lunatic box over his head, pulling the head cage’s leather mouth strap tight until it forced Conor’s teeth apart, ratcheting back between his jaws. The only noises he could make now were groans and grunts.
The cell itself was a ten-foot block of hell, and Conor could not credit that such a place existed on Great Saltee.
The walls and floor were granite. Hewn from the island itself. No bricks or mortar, just solid rock. There was no escape from here. Water trickled through grooves worn by centuries of erosion. Conor did not waste a second thirsting for it. The combination of lunatic box and manacles meant that he could not pass anything through the metal grille to his mouth. In any case, the grooves themselves were flaked by salt. Sea water.
They left him for an age, wallowing in his misery. The king was dead. Isabella’s father murdered by Bonvilain. Victor was gone too. In the blink of an eye, his mentor and friend cruelly killed. And what was to become of Conor himself? Surely Bonvilain would not leave breath in the body of a witness. Conor felt the weight of the cage upon his head, the gall of manacles chafing his wrists and the threat of his impending murder heavy on his heart.
The metal slab of door swung, dragging on the hinges. A tallow yellow light filled the room with a sickly glow, and in that glow stood the unmistakable silhouette of Sir Hugo Bonvilain. The king’s marshall and murderer. Because of this man, Isabella was an orphan.
Rage took hold of Conor’s body, filling his limbs with strength. He lurched to his feet, arms outstretched towards Bonvilain.
The sight cheered Bonvilain tremendously. The man actually whistled as he grasped the lunatic box’s grille, stuffing his thick fingers between the bars. He stepped to the side and casually swung Conor into the wall, wincing at the clang and clatter.
‘I used your own momentum against you,’ he said, as though school were in session. ‘Basic training. Basic. If one of my men made that mistake I’d have him flogged. Didn’t that French dandy teach you anything?’