She sighed, releasing him a little. ‘How can we possibly leave?’
‘I’ll find a way. I want to take you and Lee, David and Holly and whoever else will come away from Haver. We either have to escape or overthrow Jasper and his brothers. Whatever Bridget says, this is no life — not for you, not for me, not for our children, not for anyone.’
‘But how?’ Penny asked again, her voice full of despair.
‘I don’t know, but by the sound of things I’ve got more than a year to find the answer.’ There was a hint of bitterness in his voice, something Penny had never heard before.
She snuggled closer. ‘Maybe things will get better.’ He didn’t reply. ‘Are you really happy about the baby?’ she whispered after a while.
Still he didn’t reply. Exhausted, he had fallen asleep.
33
The months dragged by. All that changed for Steven and the boys were the hours of daylight. Apart from the few yards they travelled between the Punishment Room, the Great Hall and their quarters, ninety percent of the time they were awake was spent in the Punishment Room.
Only the minds of the Four Musketeers were free, though maintaining the charade was a struggle at times. During the summer and autumn they cycled across Russia, through China and down the Indian subcontinent.
In mid-December Penny gave birth to a son. They called him Christopher after his great uncle who now lay buried on Marina Hill in Gulf Harbour. Initially the baby brought Penny and Steven great joy, but early in the New Year Steven felt Penny drawing away from him. He was sure something was wrong, but try as he might he could not find out what troubled her. He guessed Paul and Bridget knew what the problem was, but despite his probing he could get no answers from them either.
Many nights Penny did not sleep with him. She slept instead with the baby in an adjacent bedroom, claiming that Christopher would disturb him. Now even the warmth of her body was being removed from his existence. It all added to his despair.
As winter gave way to spring, the Four Musketeers cycled across Australia. Steven was relieved when they arrived at Brisbane and Lee hogged the story. It gave him more time to think about the problem forever on his mind. How to escape?
When not thinking about escape he worried about Penny’s withdrawal. Confined to the Punishment Room he could not find answers to either question. He was torn between trying to get himself relieved of his responsibility for electricity generation and looking after the boys’ welfare.
When the cycling party began their journey around New Zealand, Steven taught the boys a few words of Maori. He, like Jane, Nicole and Zach, had learned Maori in school, and was surprised how much he’d remembered. He also taught them the Maori war chant — the haka. At the end of a particularly good session on the cycles they would perform it as a celebration of their achievement.
While Lee entertained his cousins with exaggerated stories about his former life at Gulf Harbour, Steven finally decided he would have to overthrow the Chatfield brothers rather than attempt an escape. His Uncle Paul was right. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself knowing, or suspecting, the retribution that would be wreaked on his relatives by Jasper and his brothers if he and his family escaped.
But how could he seize control? Not only the Chatfield brothers, but Virginia and her daughters had to be overpowered simultaneously. The brothers were armed, and for all he knew Virginia and her daughters might be carrying weapons concealed in their dresses. At mealtimes one brother — usually Greg — was on watch, manning the machine gun on the top of the West Tower. The exception was Sunday breakfast, when Jasper addressed his subjects and issued his instructions for the coming week. At that time Greg manned a machine gun in the Minstrel Gallery in case any of Jasper’s edicts triggered dissent. The staterooms were alarmed at night, and Paul was convinced Damian had rewired and relocated the sensors since Paul had installed them.
Despite the difficulties, Steven commenced formulating a plan. It was not one he could execute alone — he would need help. How could he persuade other members of the community to conspire with him? How could he even risk talking to them, knowing a traitor lived in their midst?
The one person he trusted, apart from Penny, was Luke, but it was difficult to talk to the young man. Luke served at the top table at mealtimes and slept in the Dalton quarters. Steven dared not risk being caught outside his own quarters during the dusk-to-dawn curfew.
A successful takeover appeared impossible. To make matters worse his relationship with Penny was crumbling rapidly as she became ever more withdrawn.
In the second week of April, the Four Musketeers were completing the final leg of their tour of New Zealand’s North Island and were about to catch the ferry across Cook Strait.
It was ten-fifty; only another ten minutes and the clock on the West Tower would chime eleven. Lee had taken over Steven’s cycle and was hogging the narrative. The boys were doing well. The dials’ needles were high, as they always were when the story was interesting.
Steven stretched his limbs. ‘Right lads, just ten more minutes. Let’s give it a final whirl.’ Ruben groaned. ‘The more you get in tonight, the less you’ll have to get in before breakfast tomorrow.’
He yawned; it was time to top up the batteries. Taking a bottle of distilled water, he turned on the dim light in the equipment area of the Punishment Room and made his way into the maze of racks, wires and battery cases.
Seconds later, the boys on the treadmills heard him give a strangled gasp.
‘You all right, Uncle Steven?’ called Ruben.
There was a pause, then Steven replied calmly, ‘Yes, I’m all right.’ He paused again. ‘I thought I’d seen a ghost.’
PART 3
34
Mark, gasping for breath, rested beside the stone pillar of the gate set in the wall surrounding Haver House. A badger wandered down the centre of the lawn, grunting as it sniffed out slugs and worms. He peered round the pillar to see if he could spot Fergus, but the young man was well hidden in the bracken. The night was still and he could hear Duncan, on lookout on the tower, periodically stamp his feet in an effort to keep warm.
Mark made his way cautiously between the trees bordering the lawn, looking nervously up at the window to the King’s Room on the second floor of the south wing. Relieved to find a door on the ground floor unlocked, he entered and made his way quickly through a maze of corridors to reach the Great Hall. Moonlight filtered through the high windows. He wondered why there was only one refectory table in the centre of the hall, why there was a small tablecloth set on the end of it. Surely two tables would be required to seat the number of people living at Haver?
He walked under the Minstrel Gallery and peered out into Flag Court. Once satisfied there was no sentry above Cromwell’s Tower, he made his way in the shadows to the dimly lit Punishment Room on the opposite side of the courtyard.
Crouched below the barred window, he could hear no sound, not even the grinding of the huge wooden treadmill. Slowly he stood and peered through the window. He was astounded: in the dim light he saw no treadmill, nor the bucket and belt system that had lifted water from the reservoirs to the header tanks. In the treadmill’s place were three cycles attached by belts and gears to dynamos. No one was in the room.
Entering the unlocked room he inspected the cycles and the dials on the wall before examining the racks of batteries and the crowded equipment. As he squeezed through the narrow passageway between the racks he heard the sound of shoes on flagstones. He picked up a length of piping and waited, expecting the door to burst open. The footsteps grew louder, then fainter.
Duncan’s voice called out. ‘Halt, who goes there?’
There was sneering laughter. ‘I was hoping to catch you asleep.’ There was disappointment in the voice.
‘I never sleep when I’m on sentry duty Sir Damian, you know that.’
The response was threatening. ‘I’ll catch you asleep one day. And that’ll be it.’
Mark listened t
o the footsteps as Damian made his way back past the Punishment Room and continued across Flag Court towards the Great Hall. Realising he would have to wait till Damian stopped prowling around before investigating further, Mark lay down on the flagstone floor between the racking to rest. His thoughts turned to Anne and Allison and how he was going to resolve the situation.
He awoke with a start to the sound of boys’ voices. He was stiff and cold. For a moment he wondered where he was. He held his watch close to his eyes. It was six o’clock in the morning.
‘I wish we could tell Uncle Steven,’ one of the boys was saying. Mark recognised the voice, but couldn’t place it.
‘You know what Mum says,’ replied another boy. ‘Penny’s business is Penny’s business. We daren’t tell Uncle Steven. If we do he’ll lose his rag. Our first duty is to keep things sweet with the Chatfields.’
‘Shush,’ whispered the first voice. ‘They’re coming.’
Mark had placed the voices. They belonged to his young nephews Harry and Ruben. He had to suppress the inclination to call out to them.
He was filled with a mixture of relief and concern. The boys had confirmed Steven was at Haver, but what was the secret they were withholding from him? Could he trust boys who considered their first duty lay in keeping things sweet with the Chatfields?
The door opened again.
‘Right Lee, you take the first stint.’ It was Steven’s voice. Again Mark suppressed the urge to call out. He couldn’t talk to Steven without alerting Ruben and Harry. He pulled himself up and peered between the battery cases. The three boys were pedalling. Steven locked the door from the inside and stood gripping the bars of the window, peering out into Flag Court.
Mark suddenly had more questions. Why had Steven locked them in? Who was he trying to keep out?
‘OK, where did we get to yesterday?’ Steven asked.
‘Wainuiomata,’ Lee replied. ‘We’re just leaving Uncle Christopher’s house to set off for the ferry.’
Mark listened in astonishment as Steven and the boys talked about an imaginary cycle trip through the Wainuiomata Valley. Every fifteen minutes one of them took a rest while the other three pedalled.
‘Right boys,’ Steven announced an hour later, ‘we need to put a sprint in to get the levels up before breakfast. So what we’re going to do is pedal up Wainuiomata Hill.’ Ruben and Harry groaned. ‘Zero the counters, Lee.’
Through the gap between the batteries Mark watched Lee flick a switch. ‘Come on,’ Steven yelled, ‘four kilometres to the summit!’
‘Bet I beat you,’ Harry bragged.
The three cyclists were off. Sounds of puffing and panting filled the room. Lee provided a running commentary; the whirring of the bikes reached a crescendo. Mark smiled: the boy sounded like a New Zealand race commentator.
‘And it’s Sleepy Steven with his head just in front, hard on his tail and gaining is Hopeless Harry, followed closely by Rotten Ruben …’
Mark took the opportunity afforded by the din to stand and find a gap through which he could see the window. His relations were filing across Flag Court on their way to breakfast in the Great Hall. He searched anxiously for Allison and Luke, but saw neither. Penny walked past and Steven called to her above the commentary, but she appeared to ignore him. Mark wondered what was going on between them.
Lee continued ‘… and they’re into the final stretch, and Sleepy Steven is putting in a final burst, but it’s too late, yes it’s too late, Rotten Ruben has it by fifty yards.’
The whirring noise died down and stopped. The three cyclists slumped over their handlebars, fighting to get their breath back.
‘Look at the dial,’ Lee said triumphantly when they had recovered. ‘Ninety-seven percent. We can take the full breakfast break today.’
‘Let’s get going,’ Harry urged as he climbed off the cycle, ‘before those gannets eat all the food.’
Mark watched as Steven unlocked the door. He hoped the boys would leave first, enabling him to attract his son’s attention, but Steven was first out of the room and raced the boys across Flag Court towards the Great Hall. Greg walked out of the entranceway and all four stopped, stepped aside and bowed to him before hurrying on.
Greg ambled across the courtyard. He had a rifle slung across his shoulder and a pistol on his belt. He passed the Punishment Room and continued under the archway before disappearing out of sight. Five minutes later Duncan hurried in the opposite direction and Mark guessed Greg had relieved his cousin on sentry duty.
Mark slipped out from between the racks and drank weak beer from the bucket standing beside the door before returning to his hiding place. He found an empty box and sat down, his back resting against the stone wall. If he had to wait, he might as well wait in comfort.
Steven was the last to return to the Punishment Room. Mark saw him lock the door behind him, and again wondered why. Then he listened as the cycling party made its imaginary journey down Wainuiomata Hill and turned towards Wellington’s seaside settlements of Days Bay and Eastbourne.
His son told the boys how he had found Christopher with his children and grandchildren barely clinging to life at Eastbourne a year after the super-SARS pandemic had broken out. Mark felt a lump in his throat as Steven described the happy times he’d had with his sister Jane on the beach they were cycling past.
Ruben stood peering through the window into Flag Court. ‘Poor Aunt Jane, dying in the tsunami,’ he said.
‘I wish we hadn’t left New Zealand,’ Lee said sadly. ‘I hate this place.’
‘It’ll get better one day,’ Steven promised.
‘Not if they have anything to do with it,’ Ruben said, nodding at what he saw through the window.
Mark levered himself to his feet so he could see what Ruben saw — Damian and Jasper walking across Flag Court.
‘Take over please,’ Steven said to Ruben. Ruben mounted the cycle and Steven took up position at the window.
‘Excuse me, Your Lordship,’ he said as the two brothers approached.
‘What do you want?’ Jasper snapped.
‘I wondered if you could arrange some new batteries. We’re having trouble keeping the levels up.’
‘So pedal faster, you lazy bastards,’ Damian sneered.
‘The problem is the plates,’ Steven explained. ‘The acid eats them away. It doesn’t matter how fast we pedal, there’s not enough plate left to hold the charge.’
‘You’ll have to talk to Lady Virginia,’ Jasper grunted.
‘I don’t know why you let him have those three boys in there with him all day,’ Damian complained as the brothers disappeared from view. ‘We used to operate those treadmills twenty-four hours a day, just the three of us. You’re too soft on them.’
To Mark’s dismay, at both lunch and dinnertime Steven and the boys left and returned to the room together.
‘Right lads,’ Steven said after the evening meal. ‘We need to put in a good session, its laundry day tomorrow so we need to get the levels as high as we can.’ The three boys groaned. ‘I’ve got a very special hill climb for you tonight, up to the top of Mount Victoria.’ The boys groaned again. ‘Then we’ll have a nice easy ride down to the ferry.’
‘How easy?’ Harry demanded. There was a hint of rebellion in his voice.
‘Are you having trouble keeping up with me?’
‘That’ll be the day,’ Harry said, rising to the bait.
‘Right,’ Steven said. ‘Let’s get the hill climb over now — just in case you youngsters conk out on me.’
Ruben motioned to Lee to let him on the cycle. ‘Never.’
‘Well, we’ll have a bit of a warm-up along the waterfront, and then if you’re up to it, we’ll do Mount Victoria,’ Steven said as he picked up the revs.
‘We’ll be up to it,’ Harry boasted.
Lee called the race up Mount Victoria, declaring a dead heat between Hopeless Harry and Sleepy Steven. It had been a hard climb.
As the imaginary journey t
o the ferry progressed, Mark became increasingly worried. He knew he had to rendezvous with Fergus by dawn — if he didn’t, Rick might attempt to lead an assault on Haver. The brothers were well armed and he suspected there would still be a machine gun mounted on the West Tower. The only arms possessed by AWOL’s crew were two rifles with three rounds of ammunition and Rick’s impressive-looking but empty squad assault rifle. Should he just come out of hiding and risk exposing his presence to Ruben and Harry?
‘Right lads, just ten more minutes. Give it a final whirl,’ Steven announced. Seconds later he stepped into the passageway between the racks, saw his father and gasped.
‘You all right, Uncle Steven?’ called Ruben.
Mark held his finger up to his lips.
‘Yes, I’m all right,’ Steven replied. ‘I thought I’d seen a ghost.’
The boys laughed. ‘Hope it’s not the ghost of Lord Nigel,’ Harry said.
‘Don’t be daft,’ Ruben scorned. ‘His Lordship was too fat to get in that little space.’
Steven made his way to his father and hugged him.
‘I need to talk to you alone,’ Mark whispered in his ear.
‘I’ll be back later, once the shift is over,’ Steven said softly.
‘Who you talking to?’ Harry called.
‘I’m talking to myself.’
‘Talking to yourself’s the first sign of madness.’
‘Yeah, and listening to someone talking to themselves is the second,’ Ruben pointed out.
Steven squeezed his father’s arm and was gone.
35
‘Halt, who goes there?’
From his hiding place between the racks, Mark heard Duncan’s voice ring out from the top of the West Tower.
‘It’s only me,’ Steven’s voice responded.
‘What are you doing out of your quarters? You know there’s a curfew.’
‘The power levels are down. I’m doing an extra stint.’
Blood Roots: Are the roots strong enough to save the pandemic survivors? Page 22
