Sex reasons. Why else would a man like that take a child?
Pervert.
Murderer.
To each flank he thought he saw familiar faces. Was that Beth, skulking behind an apple-cart? Why did she hate him so? Had she known all along what he’d intended? Was that Cedrick loudly calling for his head, somewhere towards the rear, his voice shrill with condemnation? And where was McConnell? What was his hand in all this?
He was led, snaking through the town until he passed through the great wall that encapsulated the old quarter. The passageway passed through shadow and beneath the mighty (yet disfigured) clock-tower. It was there that Harris had been waiting since news arrived.
Mavis’ captain, once plucked from the ocean, had changed somewhat in the passing weeks. Without the Kraken, there had been a fidgety quality to the man, an unease in his standing and place. That didn’t seem to be the case now; he stood proudly, dressed in finery, a score of armed soldiers behind at his command. He greeted the Mariner with a mix of relief and regret, anger and astonishment.
He beckoned to the Mariner’s captors to lead him inside a nearby doorway, taking him up inside the clock-tower. There, in a stone-walled room, the only window a tiny slit in the bricks, he was dumped, arms still bound.
“Leave us,” Harris commanded, and it was done.
The silence after so much shouting and yelling felt like concussion, and for a moment the Mariner actually suspected he’d gone deaf. Harris’ grim voice broke the illusion.
“Where’s Barnett, Arthur? I sent loyal soldiers with you. Where are they?”
“Dead,” he managed to rasp. “Where is McConnell? I need to speak with him.”
“How did they die? Did you kill them?”
The Mariner shook his head and tried to explain the events, though Harris was less than convinced.
“You say the Pope had them killed for being spies?” he sneered. “But if that’s true, why weren’t you? What information did you offer to save your skin?”
“Nothing. He told me what’s happening, what’s gone wrong with our world.”
“Nonsense. You sold us out, didn’t you? You’ve allied yourself with the Anomenemies. Hell, perhaps you are one? Perhaps you were working for the Pope this whole time?”
“Listen to me! I know the truth, don’t you understand? I know the truth! You’ve got to release me so I can find the Wasp!”
“And you know where this insect is?”
“It doesn’t have a place, I just need to help it see me. I think, if I return to the Waterfall, the first tear in the cocoon, I will be close enough.”
“Bullshit!”
“Let me speak with Mavis.”
“Mavis is retired. Decisions run through me now. And McConnell does the steering.”
“What?” he exclaimed, astonished arrangements could change so quickly. But hadn’t he suspected such a coup d’état possible? “You killed her?”
Disgust crossed his captor’s face. “We’re not like you! We’re not killers or perverts, thieves or Anomenemies! She retired out of choice, through debate! Rational discourse! The Beagle’s got a new purpose now, a proper course at last, and the last thing we need is a child-killer spreading ridiculous stories about wasps, cocoons and popes, just to save his own filthy hide. You’re going to be hanged, Arthur.”
The words, coming from someone he’d sailed with, someone he’d saved from the sea, hammered the point home with brutal force. He was going to hang. The concept hadn’t seemed real before, but now, locked in a cell on Sighisoara, it did.
The Mariner rose to his knees, holding out his bound hands. “I know I deserve to die,” he pleaded. “But not yet. Please not yet.” I’m afraid, he wanted to scream, but knew those words would find little sympathy. “Whatever you’re trying here, it won’t work. Please, it can still turn out right. But only I know how to save us!”
A familiar voice, one that used to contain warmth but now only offered the firm chill of morning stone, penetrated the cell.
“You ‘know’? You ‘know’?” McConnell’s cold voice bounded about the room as he entered. “I thought I knew based on silly superstitions I half remembered. Diana thought she knew by some nonsense she made up to control the desperate. Mavis thought she knew by assumptions made about the old world. Lots of people think they know.”
“What’s going on, McConnell?” the Mariner asked. “Why are these people answering to you?”
“What’s the problem with our world?” McConnell spoke rhetorically, squatting next to the Mariner, whilst Harris stood guard. “No-one is thinking. No-one is remembering. It’s as if the thoughts are just flying out of our heads like butterflies, delicate and erratic. What we’re doing here is protecting those thoughts, nurturing them, making them strong.”
“McConnell, our thoughts are leaving because of the Wasp. I know now, I remember.”
“I don’t want to hear about this fucking Wasp!” McConnell screamed, rising to his feet. The Mariner was taken aback at the sudden display of rage, and fell away, afraid the reverend might strike out. “All we ever got from you was bullshit! Manipulations just so you could get near that poor girl. Well I’ve had enough. You’re going to die for what you’ve done!”
“Please,” he whispered, trying to calm his old friend. “Please Christopher, don’t kill me. I’m scared. I’m sorry. Don’t do this. I’ll help you in whatever it is you’re doing here, just don’t kill me.”
A strange smile of amusement struck McConnell’s lips. “What we’re doing is building a library, the last library in existence. It will act as a school for mankind, and in a way, a hospital too. A hospital for thought. If we can restore the knowledge, we can restore the world. That’s what my father did with Sighisoara. That’s what Grace did with her zoo.”
“No,” the Mariner argued. “That’s not quite it. I brought back the zoo. I’m not sure how, I need time to work it all out, but I did.”
The reverend’s fist struck the Mariner sending him to the floor, cold stone against his cheek. “Don’t you take that away from her! You took everything else, don’t you take that!”
The Mariner decided not to argue; instead he stayed prone on the ground.
“This is the end of us, Arthur Philip,” McConnell spat. “I shall look on you no more. And from tomorrow morning, after the rope has choked existence from your cursed body, no-one will ever again.”
44. TRIED AND SENTENCED
HE SLEPT ON THE FLOOR of his cell, and against all expectations, remained dream-free the whole night. Perhaps this was one last dig at him by his twisted psyche? That the one night he hoped to last forever passed in mere moments, greeting him with brilliant sunlight seemingly as soon as he closed his lids.
The slit in the stonework betrayed the bright sky beyond, and the Mariner watched it intently, waiting for the inevitable bird to land on the ledge, mocking him with its freedom. The bird never arrived, but he resented it nonetheless, imagined or not.
He knew he should hang. There was no doubt about that. Even if the Pope had been lying about the cause of the Shattering, what he’d done since was beyond recompense. Terms such as ‘sorry’ were meaningless in the scale of such pain. What use was sorry to Grace? To Isabel? And how many countless others beyond the reach of his memory? Apologies are impotent if the past cannot be changed.
Everything had been a lie. Since the day he’d awoken on the Neptune, he’d been following a degraded ideology, idea’s picked together from fragments. What had been inside his head was a rotten philosophy, putrid in its decay.