For distraction’s sake, Conor decided to investigate. It took no more than a moment for him to find that a narrow fissure along the seam between two blocks of the alcove extended to the outside world and was allowing weakened light to filter through. Conor tapped the left block with a fingernail and was surprised to find that it budged, scraping against its neighbours. He prodded more forcefully and the block wobbled on its base, dislodging caked muck. The block itself cracked, for it was not a true block, merely a husk of dried mud. Conor wiggled one finger along the side of the false block and popped it from its hole. A wedge of sunlight blasted him in the eyes, blinding him for several seconds. Not that it was light of any great brightness, but it was the first direct light Conor had seen in many hours.
Conor closed his eyes, but did not turn away. The heat on his face was wonderful, like a gift straight from the hand of God. He thumped at adjoining blocks, checking for more counterfeits. But there were none. The rest of the wall was solid as a mountain. One hole only, the size of his two fists.
He squatted there for a while feeling the light warm his skin, watching it trace the veins in his eyelids, until at last he felt prepared enough to open his eyes. He was not disappointed with what he saw, because he had not allowed himself to feel any hope. This hole was a devilish small one, and deep too, encased by four feet of solid rock, with barely a napkin’s worth of sky at its end. Only a rat could escape through this tunnel, perhaps a largish one would struggle. And even if by some miracle he managed to mimic Doctor Redmond, the famous escape artist, and wiggle through this narrow pipe, where would he go? The ocean would swallow him up quicker than a whale swallowing a minnow. If he managed to steal a boat, the sharpshooters on the walls would pick him off for sport. No one had ever escaped from Little Saltee. Not one single person in hundreds of years.
So, accept this light as a small secret gift, and nothing more, Conor told himself. Allow it to heat your face and wipe your mind clean of pain, if even for a moment.
Conor sagged back against the compartment wall, relishing the meagre warmth. Who had made this fake block? he wondered. And what had caused the hole? There were any number of answers to both questions, and no way of confirming one of them.
The prison walls possibly sagged an inch, concentrating vectors of force at this point, pulverizing the block. Or perhaps successive generations of inmates scraped away with primitive tools. Saltwater erosion, or rainwater. Though that was unlikely in less than a millennium. A combination of all these factors, most likely, and a dozen more besides.
Conor studied the clay block, which had hidden this treasure of light. It was chipped, but intact. It would certainly serve to hide the hole for his tenancy. But he would not hide the opening just yet; Billtoe would not arrive for a short time. Until then he would enjoy the dawn like scores of convicts before him. The devil take his troubles.
Water. A mug of water would be nice.
Conor closed his eyes again, but images of his parents tormented him so he opened them again, and for a long moment thought he was dreaming or insane. What was happening, should not, could not be happening. The wall of this hidden alcove was aglow, and not just with sunlight, with a strange ghostly green glow. Not the entire wall, just lines and dots. Familiar characters. Conor realized that he was staring at music. The walls and roof of this tiny alcove were covered in music.
Mister Wynter had said: ‘I keep an opera on the broiler inside my head and in other places.’
The other place was back here in a secret alcove. He would have shared that fact, had they not killed him.
Conor ran his fingers along a series of notes, up and down they went like a mountain range.
What was this glow? How was it possible?
Victor’s ghost tormented him.
Come on, dimwit. We studied this. Basic geology. And you call yourself a man for the new century.
Of course. It was luminous coral. It only grew in certain specific conditions, which must have been freakishly mimicked by this damp, close environment.
Conor scraped away a thin layer of mud to reveal the rough plates of luminous coral below. This part of the cell was living coral, fed by the constant drip of salt water. It must have grown up through the rock over the centuries and was activated by the sunlight. What a marvel. He had not expected to find marvels here.
There were other marks too, fainter than the musical notes. In older hands and quainter language. Conor found the diary of Zachary Cord, a confessed poisoner. And also a rambling curse scratched by one Tom Burly, damning the seventeenth-century warden for a hater of justice. Conor had no trouble accepting that as truth.
So this was how Linus had kept himself sane during his hours of solitude. He had recorded his music on the only surface available to him – a mud-covered crypt – without ever knowing his parchment was luminous. It brought tears to Conor’s eyes when he reached the final notes and the word Fin, engraved with considerable flourish. Linus Wynter had managed to finish his life’s work before being ‘released’.
It was a noble tradition, this recording, and one that Conor suddenly knew he intended to continue. He would commit his own ideas to the walls of this tiny alcove. In fact, the mere notion set his heart beating faster. To have a canvas on which to diagram his designs was more than he had hoped for.
He scrabbled around Linus Wynter’s bunk until he found what he had known must be there. His most recent stylus. It was hidden under a leg of his cot. The chicken bone Billtoe had tossed earlier, one end ground to a point. Perfect.
Conor scrambled into the alcove, lying flat on his back. He would begin on the ceiling, and he would sketch only until the cannon fired.
With confident strokes, Conor Finn etched his first model into the damp mud, allowing the luminous green coral to shine through a moment later. It was something he had been working on with Victor. A glider with a rudder and adjustable wings for lateral balance.
On the wall the diagram was static, but it Conor’s mind it soared like a bird. A free bird.
CHAPTER 10: UNLUCKY FOURTEENTH
1894. Two Years Later
Arthur Billtoe took one last chew on a wad of tobacco, then spat a mouthful of juice towards the hole in the floor. The stringy wad missed its target, landing square on the toe of his own boot.
‘Sorry,’ said the guard, then realizing he apologized only to himself, cast an eye around in the hope that no one had overheard, or they might think him simple and lock him away with the scatterfools.
No one had overheard except Pike, and that hardly mattered as Pike was only half a step removed from idiocy himself. In any case, Billtoe decided to cover up his blurted apology.
‘Sorry,’ he repeated, but louder this time. ‘It’s sorry I am for the poor lunatic Salts inside Flora this night.’
The prison guards stood in the subterranean pantry overlooking the dive hole. Below them, Flora was submerged ten fathoms in dark Saltee waters. The seas outside were rough and the tunnel to open water had become something of a blow-hole, rattling the diving bell with each bellow of bubbles from its spout. With every impact a flurry of peals rose through the chamber.
‘Sorry indeed,’ continued Billtoe. ‘They’d best move sharpish or Flora will remove a limb or two.’
Pike did not believe for a second that Billtoe was actually concerned for a prisoner, any more than he would be concerned for a blade of grass. But it didn’t do to contradict Arthur Billtoe if you were further down the prison ladder than he was, or he would set you working Christmas Eve on the mad wing.