Airman

by Eoin Colfer

The night was overcast, with barely a star winking through the clouds. The Wall crenellations had an orange haze drawn above their blocks by the electric lighting. Billtoe used the orange line as a marker, easy to navigate by. He nipped across the springy rock grass under cover of darkness, a little sharpish as it turned out, because his boot heel slipped on a pat of moss and he went down on his back. The wind went out of him like dust from a beaten rug.

  Billtoe lay there on his back, wheezing and gasping, when suddenly the clouds parted, letting a silver guinea moon shine through. When Billtoe recovered his wind, his lips spread in a plug-stained smile, because finally, after so many years, he could make out the man in the moon that everyone prattled on about. Must be the angle, because before this moment he had never seen anything but smudges.

  I can see the face now for the first time. And I get to cut out a prisoner’s tongue. Happy day.

  Then, through the gap in the clouds came some kind of figure. A man with wings. Flying.

  This kind of event was so strange, so impossible, that Billtoe was not even surprised initially.

  A man with the wings of a bird. An angel in black.

  The angel banked sharp starboard so as not to overshoot the island, then descended in a tight curl, spiralling down until Billtoe could hear the craft as well as see it. It creaked, flapped and fluttered and the human-looking creature fought it as though he were being borne away by a great eagle.

  I know what is happening here, Billtoe realized.

  Arthur Billtoe had in his life read two books. London’s Most Gruesome Murders by Sy Cocillée, which he found most educational, and The Noble Indian by Captain George Toolee, which he had hoped would concern itself with settler massacres and scalping, but which actually turned out to be an in-depth study of the Indians’ culture. Billtoe had almost tossed the book into the fire, but it had cost him a few shillings so he persevered. One chapter described a tent known as the sweat lodge, where the Indians got themselves good and smoked up until their spirit guide appeared.

  My hidey-hole is like a sweat lodge. Now my spirit guide has appeared, and it’s a swearing bird-man.

  The bird-man contraption came down fast, wings cracking as the air filled their sails. It seemed as though the creature would break itself against the rocks, like a sparrow against the window – which Billtoe always found amusing – when at the last possible second the angel creature pulled up his nose, gliding in for a smooth landing.

  His speed took him running for a dozen steps until he managed to halt himself.

  Billtoe gazed up, terrified at this otherworldly creature who loomed above him, the moon haloing his head. It was close enough to stab. But what would be the point? There was no killing a creature like this.

  The creature was dressed in black from the top of his leather cap to the tip of his knee-length riding boots. His face was concealed by a pair of glassed goggles and a scarf pulled tightly across the mouth. His breath was ragged though the scarf, and his chest heaved.

  Something twinkled on the angel’s chest. An insignia of some kind. Two golden wings, springing from a letter ‘A’. Could it stand for Angel?

  Arthur Billtoe wished with all his heart to remain still and silent. He felt once more like the seven-year-old boy he had been in a Dublin alley, hiding in a water barrel, being hunted by a drunken crone for the sixpence in his pocket. His life was worth no more now than it had been then. This creature would kill him with a glance. He longed to draw the grass and weeds around him like a blanket and sleep until this fearsome flying creature had departed.

  Do not whimper, he told himself. Whimpering at times of danger had always been a failing of his, and had earned him bruises more than once in the past.

  Hold it in, Arthur me boy. Suck it down to yer boots.

  He might have managed it, had the creature not pulled a sabre from its scabbard at his belt and began plunging it into the ground, as though seeking to wound mother earth. Each thrust brought him closer to where Billtoe lay shuddering.

  Finally he could absorb the fright no more.

  I will die if I don’t speak. My poor ticker will burst her spring.

  ‘What are you?’ he hissed, the power of his emotions lifting him to his feet. ‘What do you want with Arthur Billtoe?’

  The creature reared back, then steadied himself. Its glass eyes flashed orange in the lamp glow, then blackened as they landed on the prison guard.

  ‘Billtoe,’ it growled. ‘Arthur Billtoe!’

  If Billtoe could have, he would have changed his name on the spot, such was the hatred in the creature’s voice. These winged types must be hateful by nature.

  While Billtoe was contemplating this, the airman darted forward, his curved wings rearing upwards from the sudden movement, lifting the black-clad stranger into the air. He dropped to earth like a giant snarling gargoyle within arm’s length of Billtoe, a fact he put to good use by clasping the guard’s windpipe in steel fingers.

  ‘Billtoe,’ he said again, laying his sabre blade flat along Billtoe’s pale throat.

  ‘A-are you angel or devil, sir?’ stammered the guard. ‘I needs to know. Are you taking me up the ways, or down?’

  The glass circles studied him for a long second. Billtoe felt the blade slide along his Adam’s apple, he felt the keen cut sing. Then the blade stopped its deadly arc and the creature spoke.

  ‘I can be angel or devil, monsieur,’ it said. ‘But in your case, I will always be a devil.’

  ‘Will you kill me now?’ asked Billtoe, his voice almost a shriek.

  ‘No, monsieur, not now. But you are making a lot of noise so…’

  The devil lifted his sabre high, and brought the pommel down on Billtoe’s brow. The guard collapsed like a dropped puppet.

  He was not quite unconscious, but Billtoe thought it would be better to seek out the darkness, rather than open his eyes and incur the wrath of the airman. He kept his eyes closed and soon drifted away.

  When Arthur Billtoe awoke, it was daybreak. His head felt like one giant wound, and the warden’s dog walker, Poole, was standing over him, encouraging the little terrier to use Billtoe’s boot as a piddling spot.

  ‘Geddoff!’ snarled Billtoe, kicking at the dog, then remembered the French devil, who could still be in the area.

  He rolled himself from the marshy puddle in which he had lain, and scrambled to all fours, unable to go any higher because of the pain hammering his skull.

  ‘Devil,’ he panted. ‘French. Big ruddy wings. Flying about like a nighthawk. Did you see it?’

  Poole’s response to this lunacy was to pretend he didn’t hear. He coughed furiously to cover Billtoe’s chatter, then chastised the terrier.

  ‘Bad, Sir Percival, bad, making to piddle on Mister Billtoe like that, and he coming out of a dream, the details of which I have no desire to hear. I would kick you, Percy, if you weren’t such a lovely lad.’

  He picked up the dog and delivered the message he had been sent with.

  ‘Warden is looking for you,’ he said, unable to meet Billtoe’s eyes. ‘He says he’s full fed up of you and your hidey-holes. And you can either fill ’em in yourself, or he’ll fill ’em in with you inside. And that’s what he said to me, word for word. I been repeating it to myself over and over.’

  Billtoe was still wide-eyed, his gaze darting around the rocky area, a thin string of drool hanging from his lips.

  ‘He found me. He found me. I was in the barrel with sixpence, and he found me.’

  Poole decided to misunderstand. It was easier. ‘Yes, sir. The warden finds everyone. He must have eyes in his backside.’

  Poole chanced a flash of wit as he trotted after Sir Percival back to the guards’ billet.

  ‘Or maybe he has a set of wings and he flies over the island at night looking down on us.’

  Billtoe sat himself down on a rock, prodded the goose-egg bump on his forehead and began to cry.

  The sky

  Conor Finn was flying, but it was not the gentle ex
perience he had hoped for. The glider was a beast, and to conquer it meant constantly wrestling with the contraption as they soared through the air. Truth be told, it did not feel like soaring, rather a buffeting battle with the elements. The wings banged, cracked and jerked, threatening to snap their ribs with every gust of wind. The harness bit into his chest, restricting his breathing and even a collision with a sea bird would send him spiralling to the earth. Nevertheless, Conor would not have missed the experience.

  I am the moon, he thought. I am the stars.

  And then.

  Look out. A seagull.

  The glider was holding together as well as he could have hoped, though he would swear that the third rib to starboard was splintering. He would slip it from its sleeve later, and replace it with a new rod. The steering bar, one of his own innovations, was working perfectly, allowing him to shift his weight and exert a certain control over his trajectory. But it was a tenuous control, and one that could be contemptuously overruled by the smallest updraught or current.

  The night sky was heavy with clouds, reflecting the lights of nearby Wexford and Kilmore on their underbellies. Every now and then, Conor passed below a hole in the clouds and the full moon would spotlight him with her silver rays. Conor hoped that from below his silhouette would be that of a large bird, but nevertheless he was glad of his decision to use black fabric for the wings. Dyed black not painted. Paint would be too weighty.

  Up close and in broad daylight, it would be obvious that the glider was little more than a cleverly designed kite. Two elongated eight-foot curved ovals for wings, linked by a central circular space where the pilot hung suspended in his leather harness. A short-stemmed tail rudder with leg braces and a nudge pole that could be tipped by the feet, and a trapezoidal steering bar which was attached directly to the main wing strut. In theory, if one could successfully locate rising thermals, it was possible to fly forever, suspended below a glider like this. Of course, this was a very optimistic theory, which did not allow for wear and tear, bad science and the simple fact that thermals were only slightly less difficult to locate than unicorns.

  Conor himself was outfitted in the sturdiest ballooning gear, leather chin-strapped cap, goggles and tight boots. His uniform was a convincing copy of that worn by the French Army’s aeronauts, but all in black down to the trouser piping, and no insignia’s apart from a mysterious winged ‘A’, which could possibly stand for Aeronautique.

  If I do happen to crash on the Saltees, thought Conor, I will look for all the world like a French airman, who does not want to be identified as such. In other words, a flying spy. That should stoke Bonvilain’s mistrust of the French Army.

  It was a small comfort, but twisting a thorn of disquiet into Bonvilain’s heart was better than dying and leaving nothing but a corpse.

  His luck had held tonight. A good launch from the tunnel, with everything performing as it should. The steam fan had popped a few of the tunnel planks out of their grooves, but that was easily repaired, and there hadn’t been any great loss of wind power. His mounting mechanism had worked a thousand times in suspension from a tower beam, but tonight it had worked in the open air and he had managed to lean forward in the body harness and ratchet his legs back into the stirrups. This was one of his major innovations, though there were a thousand small ones, from the steam shaping of the ribs, to the tail rudder.

  The coastline approached, and the black sea – with the Saltee Islands glowing upon it like two nests of fireflies. The moment he cleared Saint Patrick’s Bridge, the long bar of shingle that curved from the mainland to point like an arthritic finger towards Little Saltee, the thermal he had been riding disappeared and his gilder stalled, tilting forward at the nose.

  Conor was prepared for this, but not ready. If the stall lasted more than a few moments, he would plummet to earth to a certain death.

  In the event of a stall, hold the nose down and set loose the bands.

  There were three ropes tied off to the steering bar and all three were linked to Conor’s wrist. He released the bar, tugging sharply downwards, untying the hitches on all three ropes.

  The central rope was connected to a hinged forward panel – the beak – which pulled the nose down. The other two slipped from the blades of two wooden propellers, which were immediately set whirring by the released energy of two stout rubber cords.

  The rubber-band propellers would only work once per flight, and the amount of thrust they provided was minimal, but it might be enough to pull him out of a stall.

  It was. The glider jumped forward barely a yard, but it righted itself and caught the sea breeze. Conor felt it running along the length of his body, smelled the salt in each gust.

  Before him, the Wall lights of Little Saltee marked his target in the blackness.

  Heart-shaped, he thought. From up here, the island looks like a heart.

  And then. I am returning to Little Saltee. God help me, I am going back.

  And he could not suppress a shudder that was more dread than cold.

  On the night of his daring escape, Conor had spiralled flaming from the sky like Icarus of legend, crashing into a lifeboat on Victoria’s royal yacht, which was a-bustle with preparations for departure.

  Conor Finn lay undiscovered below a scattered dozen of cork life preservers for the duration of the overnight voyage, unable to move even if the rough hand of discovery landed on his shoulder. The hand never came, and Conor was able to sleep until the yacht blew its horn to alert a skiff in its path.

  Fortune had smiled on him once more in London, where he had been able to slip overboard a couple of leagues out of harbour and swim to a slipway on the Thames.

  Conor stole a jacket, which fortunately had some bread and cheese in the pocket, then spent the remainder of the day walking the docks, listening for an Irish accent. By dusk he had spotted a group of London Irish who had too few teeth and too many tattoos to be Customs spies.

  If you ever do make it out of this hellhole, Malarkey had often said, find my brother Zeb on the London docks. Show him the ink and he will look after you.

  Conor rolled up his sleeve for the dockworkers, revealing his Battering Ram tattoo, and spoke the magic word. Malarkey. Inside the hour, he was up to his neck in soapy water with a mug of coffee in one hand and a fine cigar in the other. Zeb Malarkey was a man of means, most of these means being fruits of his own personal import tax.

  Zeb himself had arrived at the inn a couple of hours later, and without a word of greeting examined both Conor’s tattoo and the Little Saltee brand.

  How’s Otto? he wanted to know. How’s his hair?

  Conor supplied the crime boss with as much information as he could. Hair silky, health fine. Nice little line in rackets going.

  Zeb had already heard of Conor through a prison guard on Little Saltee who took bribes to pass on information.

  Conor Finn? The soldier boy. Otto speaks highly of you. Says you put order on the Rams what is locked up. Fancy doing the same here?

  It was tempting, simply to shed his old life completely, like a reptile shrugging off a brittle skin. But Conor knew enough of his own heart to recognize that being a waterfront enforcer was not for him. He may not be Conor Broekhart any more, but he was not entirely divorced from his mother’s morals. He could hurt another person to survive, but not for payment.

  He was an airman. That was his destiny. He needed to stick to the plan. Go to Ireland, build the means to reclaim his diamonds and then sail for America with the funds to equip his own laboratory.

  So he told Zeb Malarkey thank you, but no. He had business on Little Saltee. Business that could make the Rams a lot of money. Perhaps Zeb had a few men in Ireland or perhaps on the Saltees who could help?

  The Rams have men everywhere. What kind of business? Revenge?

  Not exactly. There are items on the prison grounds that belong to me and your brother. I gave Otto my word that I would see him free. My thanks for his friendship these past years.

 
Zeb Malarkey tossed him a purse of guineas.

  Go then, islander. Go and spread chaos.

  Which was exactly what happened.

  Little Saltee was suddenly below him. In less than three minutes he had crossed the two-and-a-half-mile wide band of ocean between the prison island and the mainland. If he had been one of an army, the island would have been overrun before they could sound the warning cannon.

  Conor’s body ached from the constant stress on his joints and he was relieved to pull back on the bar and swing his glider into a descending curve. In test flights, he had succeeded in landing the glider inside the fences of a field far smaller than this island. But that field had hedges instead of guards. And the hedges were populated by badgers and squirrels, none of whom were likely to aim a rifle at flying creatures.

  Even at night, a bird’s-eye view was very revealing. There were three guards on the wall, all at the northern end in the shelter of a tower. Conor could see the glowing bowls of their pipes bobbing close together. They should be evenly spaced and on the move, but centuries of quiet had bred complacency in them.

  There were actually two walls on Little Saltee. The main outer ring, and an inner wall that circled the prison building. In between the two was the work area where inmates took exercise and toiled over their salsa gardens. This was where Conor wished to land. Where the diamonds were buried.

  A thermal suddenly took his craft, causing him to overshoot his preferred landing spot by a hundred yards. Conor kicked the nudge bar to extreme port, and pointed the nose down. This put him into a tail-spinning descent, but his alternative was to land in the ocean. It would be a pity to drown tonight, having flown further in a glider than any man before him.

  Victor would be proud.

  The thought unsettled him. In prison he had tried not to think of the family and friends from his old life, but since his escape he could think of little else.

  I could simply go back. Explain. Father could challenge Bonvilain.

  Yes. And be murdered for his pains. Mother too. Best to simply nail the door shut on the past and begin his new life.

  Conor dropped quickly. Rocks and hillocks grew from what had been syrupy black space. The glider fought him all the way down, and he fought back, cursing at his infernal craft, refusing to allow it its head.