‘You’re right, Arthur,’ he said brightly. ‘It is time to seal that wound.’
Bonvilain boarded the ferry with Captain Sultan Arif, his most trusted officer. Billtoe cowered in the stern, every now and then poking at the scar of fused flesh on his thigh, seeming surprised each time the contact caused him pain. He passed out during the short trip and each time woke up blubbering like a babe and blurting the word barrel.
Bonvilain found that he was not in the least anxious now that he had considered the night’s developments. In fact, he felt invigorated by the challenge of maintaining his position, or even improving it. After all, Conor Broekhart was a youth with a kite. Hugo Bonvilain was a military strategist with an army behind him. Apparently young Conor was reluctant to commit murder, whereas Bonvilain regarded murder as a time-honoured and valid political tool.
The marshall leaned close to Sultan Arif’s ear.
‘There may be some poisoning later. Ready your potions.’
Sultan nodded casually, toying with his splendid moustache. ‘Yes, Marshall. May I ask who we may be poisoning?’
‘Myself, I regret to say,’ replied Sir Hugo.
Sultan seemed unsurprised. ‘There will be others, I take it?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Bonvilain confirmed, his gaze distant. ‘There will be others.’
Little Saltee
There was a prisoner in Conor Finn’s cell, but it was not Conor Finn.
‘And who, pray tell, is this?’ asked Bonvilain, pointing to the terrified wretch huddled in the corner away from the lamplight.
Billtoe knew he was rumbled. ‘Don’t kill me, Your Worship,’ he begged, dropping to his knees, and grabbing the hem of Bonvilain’s Templar stole.
‘Please spare me. I don’t know how the blighter escaped. One minute he was there, the next gone. Some form of magic. Perhaps he ’ypnotized me.’
Bonvilain did not kick him off immediately, enjoying the grovelling.
‘What I don’t know yet, Arthur, is if you were actually Finn’s accomplice. You helped him escape, and you were his smuggling contact.’
‘Oh no sir, Marshall,’ gibbered Billtoe. ‘I never done no colluding. I don’t have the depth of thought for that.’
‘I’m not so sure. This substitute scheme of yours might have worked with any other prisoner. You were unfortunate to lose this particular one.’
‘That’s all it was, sir. Bad blasted luck, not an ounce of co-operation with the prisoner in it.’
Bonvilain decided a display of anger was called for, after all Sultan was watching.
‘You lied to me, Billtoe,’ he shouted, his voice echoing in the tiny cell. ‘You stole my diamonds!’
The marshall whipped his stole from Billtoe’s fingers then delivered a mighty kick, which sent the guard tumbling over the bed and into the wall behind. A muck plate cracked and fell. Billtoe lay in a heap like a spilled sack of laundry.
‘Well struck, Marshall,’ said Sultan. ‘On the point of the chin. He rolled like a cartwheel. Should I finish him off?’
‘No,’ replied Bonvilain. ‘Something more poetic, I think. Perhaps our friend Arthur needs some time to reflect on his shortcomings.’
He was distracted by a strange glow from the rear of the cell. Billtoe’s forehead had knocked some mud from the wall, and strange ghostly scribblings shone behind.
Curious, Bonvilain stepped closer, bending to examine the markings.
‘Coral, I imagine,’ he mused. ‘Old Wandering Heck would have loved this.’
But the markings were man-made. Diagrams and equations. Someone had tried to cover up these markings with mud, but the mud had not bonded completely with the damp surface below. A glider was plainly visible on the wall. Bonvilain tapped it with a gloved finger.
‘Hello, Airman,’ he whispered. ‘It seems I provided you with your laboratory.’
He drew a pistol from his belt, rapping the wall with its grip. Another plate of mud cracked and fell, revealing that the glider had been launched from the roof of a tower.
‘And you have left me your location. And more valuable secrets, I shouldn’t wonder.’
On the floor, Billtoe moaned.
‘Am I to be executed now, sir. Is that my fate?’
‘Not at the present time,’ said Bonvilain, stretching. ‘I have use for you, Arthur Billtoe. Your immediate fate is to clean the dirt from these walls, then transcribe every mark you find underneath.’
‘Oh thank you, sir,’ said Billtoe, tears of relief dripping from his nose. ‘I shall have one of the inmates get to it immediately. Top of my list.’
‘You misunderstand, Arthur,’ said Bonvilain, catching the guard’s lapels in his fist, wrenching the very coat from his back, tumbling Billtoe further to the back of the cell.
‘You will not be supervising this task as prison guard, you will be performing it as inmate.’
Bonvilain turned to the young man who had occupied the cell for almost a year.
‘What is your name, boy?’
‘Claude deVille Montgomery, Yer Majesty,’ answered the youth promptly. ‘Though me nears ’n’ dears call me Spog.’
Bonvilain blinked. Life never failed to surprise.
‘Old Billtoe there said to answer Conor Finn if anyone, ’specially yerself, ever got around to asking, but that was only if he didn’t get around to pulling me tongue out, and as you can see…’ Spog opened his mouth wide to reveal two teeth and a grey tongue.
‘Thank you, eh, Spog. Tell me, has Mister Billtoe been unkind to you?’
Spog’s whole face frowned. ‘Blinkin’ nasty, the evil scut. With the hitting and spitting. Pulling hair too, which is hardly gentlemanly, is it now?’
‘Well then, now is your chance for revenge,’ said Bonvilain tossing him the guard’s jacket. ‘You are now the prison guard, and he is the prisoner. Do unto him and so forth. His life is yours, and yours his.’
Spog greeted this announcement with complete calm, as though his fortunes were reversed every day.
‘I’m yer man, Yer Highness,’ he said, approximating a salute. ‘What’re yer views on torturin’ them what used to be guards?’
‘I am all for it,’ said Bonvilain. ‘It builds character.’
Spog smiled, his teeth like gateposts in his mouth. ‘I’ll make you proud, Yer Worship.’
The marshall winced. ‘Let’s stick with Marshall, shall we?’
‘Yessir, Yer Worship.’
Billtoe’s senses were swirling around in his head like spirits in a witch’s cauldron, but still he managed to get the gist of what had transpired.
‘I’m… I’m an inmate now?’ he gasped, hauling himself on to the bed.
Bonvilain patted Spog’s shoulder. ‘Handle your prisoner, Mister Montgomery,’ he said. ‘I don’t deal directly with criminals.’
Spog’s eyes glowed with vengeful malice. ‘Yessir… Yer Worship. My pleasure – you might want to avert yer eyes.’
Bonvilain folded his arms. ‘Perhaps. But not right away.’
Billtoe backed away from his new gaoler, deeper and deeper into the cell till his elbows knocked mud from the walls, revealing blocks of diagrams and calculations.
The coral’s green glow traced the dawning horror on Arthur Billtoe’s face. The misery he had visited on so many others was now to be his.
Bonvilain winked at Sultan. ‘As I said. Poetic.’
Forlorn Point
Due to the night’s activity, not one fight but two, Conor got no more than an hour’s sleep. And that sleep was filled with dreams of prison guards with blades for hands and diamonds for eyes. There was something else, though, leaping up and down in the background, seeking attention. A small memory of Conor and his father rowing across Fulmar Bay when he was nine.
Watch the oar’s blade, Declan Broekhart had said. See how it cuts the water. You want to scoop the water, not slide through it.