Wynter sighed. ‘It would seem so. I can hardly tell Mister Billtoe that I am actually a professional spy posing as a vagrant musician.’
‘I suppose not,’ Conor agreed. ‘Who were you spying on?’
Again, Linus Wynter listened before replying. ‘Marshall Bonvilain. Nicholas had come to suspect Bonvilain of treason in many areas, but especially on Little Saltee. Bonvilain was running it like his own personal slave camp. Prison reforms were implemented only when Nicholas or his envoys came to visit. The king needed a man on the inside, and who better to spy on a music-loving warden than a blind musician. Nobody would suspect a man who cannot spy anything of being a spy.’
‘I see,’ said Conor.
Wynter grinned. ‘Do you really? What’s it like.’
Conor smiled, his first in days. The smile was a twinkle in the gloom and did not last long.
‘I don’t think I can make it through this, Mister Wynter. I am not strong enough.’
‘Nonsense,’ snapped Wynter. ‘You showed courage today, and ingenuity. Anyone who can thrash that brute Malarkey can certainly find the strength to survive Little Saltee.’
Conor nodded. There were people in worse straits than him. At least he had youth and strength on his side.
‘Tell me, Mister Wynter, how do you go about your business?’
‘What business is that?’ said Wynter innocently.
‘The business of being a spy, of course.’
Wynter pulled a convincing horrified face. ‘Spying? Me? But, you foolish boy, I am blind, which is the same as brainless and only slightly better than dead. Why, you could plant me at the piano in the warden’s office, and he would go about his business exactly as though I wasn’t even there.’
‘But now there is no one to report to?’
‘Precisely. A while back, Nicholas requested my temporary release to play in his orchestra. I gave him my first report then. There was another due tomorrow. I would surmise that I shan’t be delivering that report, or any more.’
Conor felt a sudden kinship for this tall American.
‘We are together, then.’
‘Until one of us is released. And when I say released, I mean it in the Little Saltee sense. Occasionally an inmate disappears and the guards tell us he has been released.’
‘Dead then.’
‘I would guess. Murder is the most expeditious way to prevent overcrowding. I pray that we fortunate two are never released.’
Conor was surprised. ‘Fortunate? A curious choice of words.’
Wynter wagged a reed-like, knuckle-knobbed finger. ‘Not at all. We are two like-minded, civilized men. Just think who we might have drawn as cellmates.’
Conor’s memory flashed on Malarkey’s features, shaped by the violence of his life.
‘You are right, Mister Wynter. We are indeed fortunate.’
Wynter raised an imaginary glass of champagne.
‘Your health,’ he said.
‘Your health,’ rejoined Conor, and then, ‘Clink.’
The cell itself was a study in the Spartan, not much more than a hole in the island. There was one window high in the wall, of letterbox size. The light admitted by this portal was weak and watery, without the strength to cut through more than a few feet of shadow.
The walls themselves were expertly hewn with barely a need for mortar, which was just as well as the surface mortar had long since crumbled, allowing various fungi to spread themselves across the joins. Conor estimated the dimensions to be twelve feet by fourteen. Hardly enough for two tall men to spend their confinement in comfort. Then again, comfort was hardly the issue.
As he lay on his hard cot that evening, Conor dreamed of his family. Eventually his thoughts grew so painful that a small pathetic cry crept through his lips.
Linus Wynter did not comment, he merely shifted in his bed to show that he had heard and was awake for conversation if needed.
‘You said that you would instruct me,’ whispered Conor. ‘Tell me how to survive in this place.’
Wynter turned on his back, clasped his hands on his chest and sighed.
‘What you must do, what we both must do now, is so terribly difficult that it is close to impossible. Only the most determined can achieve it.’
Conor felt that he could indeed do the close to impossible if it meant that he would survive Little Saltee. ‘What, Mister Wynter? Tell me. I need some relief.’
‘Very well, Conor. There are two parts to this scheme. The first has the sound of an easy task, but, believe me, it is not. You must forget your old life. It is dead and gone. Dreaming of family and friends will plunge you into a dark hell of despair. So build a wall round your memories and become a new person.’
‘I don’t know if I can…’ began Conor.
‘You are Conor Finn now!’ hissed Wynter. ‘You must believe it. You are Conor Finn, seventeen-year-old army corporal, smuggler and swordsman. Conor Finn will survive Little Saltee. Conor Broekhart’s body may survive, but his spirit will be crushed as surely as though Bonvilain clamped it in a vice.’
‘Conor Finn,’ said Conor haltingly. ‘I am Conor Finn.’
‘You are a killer. You are young and slim, true, but ruthless with your blade – arm as strong as a steel band. You prefer your own company, and will brook no insult. Not so much as a dirty look. You have killed before. Your first when you were fifteen, a grog head who dipped your pocket. This is all the truth.’
‘It’s true,’ murmured Conor. ‘All true.’
‘You have no family,’ continued Wynter. ‘No one to love, or to love you.’
‘No one…’ said Conor, but the words were hard to utter. ‘No one loves me.’
Wynter paused, tilting his head, hearing Conor’s distress. ‘This is the way it must be. In here, love will rot your brain. I know this to be true. I had a wife once, lovely Aishwarya. Dreams of her fuelled my days during my five years in a Bengal prison. This was enough to sustain me for a while, but then my love turned to suspicion. And finally to hate. When I heard that she had died of typhoid, the guilt nearly killed me. I would have died if they hadn’t kicked me out.’ Wynter was quiet for as long as it took him to relive those horrible times.
‘Love must die in here, Conor; it is the only way. Once you open your heart…’
‘Love must die,’ said Conor, storing images of his parents in a padlocked chest at the back of his mind.
‘But something must take its place,’ said Wynter in a stronger voice. ‘An obsession to fire your enthusiasm. A reason to live, if you like. I myself have music. I keep an opera on the broiler inside my head and in other places. Amadeus himself would weep. My music is never far from my thoughts. It is my fondest wish to have it performed in Salzburg. One day, young Conor. One day. My opera keeps me alive, you see.’ Wynter slipped two fingers under his eye bandage, massaging his ruined sockets. ‘I see music like you see colours. Each instrument is a stroke of the brush. The gold of the strings. The deep blue of the bassoon. Even as I trot out pompous marches for the warden on his rickety piano – that sound board is not even spruce – I am dreaming of my opera.’
Wynter’s lips murmured across the phrases of his beloved music.
‘And what about you, Conor?’ he asked after several bars. ‘Do you have a dream? Something that fills your mind with hope but never pain?’
The answer came quickly to Conor.
I want to fly.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have a dream.’
The night arrived though it made little difference to the light in Conor’s cell. There was a slight thickening of the dirty darkness but that was all. They were trapped in a limbo of gloom, with only food and work to instruct them as to the time of day. Conor lay on his cot wrestling with thoughts of his family, which he was not supposed to be thinking. Shrugging off one’s old self was not as simple as discarding a dirty shirt. Memories popped up unbidden, clamouring to be examined. Mister Wynter was right: this was the most difficult thing he had ever had to do. Conor could feel the sweat coating his face like a wet flannel and the voice of his mother seemed as real to him as the cell walls.