Airman

by Eoin Colfer

  It is the Airman, he thought. Come to kill the queen.

  The situation with Bonvilain must be set aside until this common enemy was dealt with. He grabbed a hank of tablecloth, bent low and used his weight and strength to spin the warring pair from the table. They rolled across the floor, still battling, though Bonvilain’s blows were growing weak and ineffective. The Airman drove his fist repeatedly into his enemy’s face, until Bonvilain’s eyes lost their focus.

  Declan reached for the collar of the intruder’s jacket but was too slow. The Airman spun around, speaking urgently.

  ‘Did you drink? Have you raised the toast?’

  A strange question for an assassin to pose, thought Declan. But no time for distractions; put him down then ponder his questions.

  He swung his sword, intending to render the Airman unconscious with the flat of his blade, only to find it almost causally batted aside by his enemy’s forearm.

  ‘The toast. Did you drink?’

  Something in the man’s attitude unsettled Declan, as though he were about to make a terrible mistake. The face or perhaps the voice. Something. He held back from striking, uncertain now of his strength of purpose.

  Catherine had no such doubts. She saw nothing of the Airman’s face. From her angle there was only her husband and the man attacking him. She hitched up her skirt and planted a solid kick square in the Airman’s side, following it with a dashing blow from a handy flower vase.

  Conor staggered sideways, dripping water and wearing daffodils.

  ‘Wait,’ he gasped, shrugging off his harness and wings. ‘Don’t…’

  But he was given no respite. Isabella pulled a samurai sword from its presentation case, and adopted a fencing stance before him.

  ‘En garde, monsieur,’ she said, then launched a blistering attack. Conor’s sabre barely cleared its scabbard in time to parry the first thrust.

  ‘Isabella,’ he gasped, completely disorientated. ‘You must stop.’

  The queen was in no mood to stop anything.

  ‘I will stop when you are dead, assassin.’

  Conor managed a lucky counter riposte, which bought him the second he needed to find his balance.

  Isabella had improved as a fencer since their lessons with Victor, but Conor could still see the bones of his teachings.

  ‘You have studied Marozzo well,’ he gasped. ‘Victor would be proud.’

  Isabella’s blade quivered, then froze.

  What did this mean? Who was this man to invoke Victor’s name?

  Declan gathered his wife and the queen behind him, sword raised for battle.

  ‘You will show your face, sir?’ he demanded. ‘I grant you five seconds before we duel to the death. And that death will be yours.’

  Conor slowly reversed his grip, then buried the tip of his sword in the floorboards.

  ‘Very well. But, before I do, tell me if you drank a toast.’

  ‘There was no toast,’ snapped Declan. ‘Now, off with those goggles, sir.’

  Conor’s shoulders slumped and he seemed on the verge of collapse, but he drew himself erect and pulled the collar down from his chin, then pushed the goggles up to his forehead. His face was blasted black from soot and oil, but his eyes were clear, and a lock of blond hair had come loose from his leather cap.

  The watchers were confused. What they were seeing was not possible.

  ‘Father, I know you vowed to kill me should we meet again,’ said Conor slowly. ‘But there are things you do not know. Victor did not kill the king, nor was I involved. It was Bonvilain.’

  ‘Conor,’ breathed his mother. ‘You live?’

  Declan sank to his knees as though gut punched. His breath was laboured and tears streamed down his face.

  ‘My son lives. How is it possible?’

  And suddenly Conor understood the scale of Bonvilain’s deception.

  My parents genuinely believed me dead. Bonvilain spun a different lie for each party.

  Isabella was the first to reach him, hugging him tightly, kissing his cheek. Her tears mingling with his.

  ‘Oh, Conor. Conor, where have you been?’

  Conor held her tightly, reeling from the strength of emotions aimed at him. He had been expecting mistrust and anger. Not love.

  ‘That was you in the cell,’ moaned Declan. ‘I said I would kill you. I sent you to hell.’

  Catherine rubbed her husband’s back, but then couldn’t keep herself away from her son. She rushed to him, taking his face in her hands.

  ‘Oh, Conor. You are a man now,’ she said. ‘Grown as tall as your father at seventeen.’

  Conor was vaguely surprised to remember that he was only seventeen. Conor Finn had been more than twenty.

  Declan Broekhart’s face was suddenly terrible with rage.

  ‘Bonvilain did this. All of it and by God I will make him pay.’

  Bonvilain!

  In the swirl of emotions, Conor had forgotten about Hugo Bonvilain. He turned clumsily in the embrace of his mother and queen, to find only a puddle of blood where Bonvilain had fallen. He plucked his sabre from the floorboards and scanned the chamber to find his old enemy sliding along the wall, quietly making for the door.

  ‘Father,’ called Conor, pointing with his sword. ‘We must secure Bonvilain.’

  Finding that his escape was thwarted, Bonvilain reached behind a tapestry and pulled his hidden lever. The fireplace slid aside on a pulley mechanism, revealing a tightly packed group of Holy Cross guards.

  Bonvilain smiled, his mouth a bloody mess, more than one gap in his teeth.

  ‘My last line of defence,’ he said, spitting crimson. And to the soldiers. ‘Kill the women. They are impostors.’

  It was a cunning order, diverting Conor and Declan from their path in order to defend Isabella and Catherine. The soldiers tumbled from their confined space, drawing daggers and swords. No guns – guns would bring the Wall watch running.

  Luckily the secret space was cramped, and so the men were stiff and light dazzled, which gave the Broekharts a second’s advantage.

  They used it well, bundling the half-dozen Holy Cross guardsmen back towards their hiding place.

  ‘Watch the marshall,’ Conor called to Isabella.

  ‘He is no longer the marshall,’ said the queen, raising the samurai sword.

  ‘I have been taught how to slice a man into three pieces,’ she said to Bonvilain. ‘Take one step towards us and I will demonstrate those strokes for you.’

  Bonvilain pinched the bridge of his nose. Ordinarily he would rush this silly girl and crush the hands that held the sword, but the poison in his wine was beginning to affect him. Already his fingers were tingling and a volcano bubbled in his innards. He needed to be away from here before the more extreme symptoms.

  The path to the door was blocked by the Broekharts. His secret passage was a melee of flailing limbs and blades and the only other exit was the balcony.

  Bonvilain tripped over Conor’s discarded wings and on to the balcony, searching furiously below for something to rescue him.

  Imagine. Hugo Bonvilain needs rescuing. How embarrassing.

  Below, the Wall watch stripped down the Gatling guns, apparently oblivious to the commotion sixty feet above their heads. They had obviously not noticed the giant bird-like creature crashing into their marshall’s apartments.

  Bonvilain felt his stomach lurch as the poison twisted his guts.

  I must escape. I need a way down.

  There! Crossing the courtyard below was Sultan Arif, a duffle bag in his hand and another slung across his back.

  Where the devil is that fool going?

  ‘Sultan!’ he shouted. ‘Captain Arif. I need you, now!’

  Sultan missed a step, but he did not stop.

  ‘I am going home, Hugo,’ he called, without turning. ‘I have many sins to atone for.’

  For the first time in many a year, Bonvilain experienced real rage. ‘Get back here!’ he demanded, pounding the railing. ‘I d
on’t have time for your sulking. Send me a rope on a crossbow bolt.’

  Arif disobeyed yet again. ‘If you have drunk the toast then I would advise you stay calm, Marshall,’ he advised, quickening his pace towards the gate. ‘A speeding heart moves the poison more quickly through your veins.’

  ‘Traitorous wretch,’ roared Bonvilain. ‘Do not doubt that we shall meet again!’

  ‘And I know where we shall meet,’ whispered Sultan, his back turned on Bonvilain once and for all.

  A speeding heart moves the poison more quickly.

  Bonvilain realized the truth of those words as a spasm hit him and he vomited bile over the balcony.

  Calm yourself, Hugo. There is still time.

  With one last shake of his fist in Sultan Arif’s direction, Bonvilain went back into his own apartment…

  … Where Declan and Conor Broekhart were battling furiously with three of the Holy Cross guard. Three were already down, unconscious or clutching their wounds. At that moment, Declan Broekhart took a blade in the shoulder, leaving his son to fight alone.

  Catherine dragged her husband clear, and Queen Isabella kept her sword levelled at Bonvilain.

  That girl is really becoming quite irksome. Why did I let her live this long?

  Bonvilain realized that he had allowed his schemes to become too elaborate.

  I need these people dead, but, more than that, I need to be in a safe place where I can regain my strength. I have funds and supporters on the mainland.

  Conor drove the three Holy Cross guards back with a wide swing, then drew a pistol from his belt, firing off two low rounds. A couple of soldiers collapsed with shattered shins.

  Gunfire! thought Bonvilain. That and the word ‘poison’ from the courtyard will have the Wall watch running. I must away.

  The poison was in his legs now, sticking needles in his toes, cramping his muscles.

  Across the room, Conor Broekhart struggled with the final guard, a huge Scotsman wielding a shortened broadsword. This was one of Bonvilain’s mercenaries and a veteran killer. For a moment Bonvilain nurtured a glimmer of hope, then Conor stepped under the big Scotsman’s swing and knocked him flat with the sabre’s finger guard.

  The Airman tumbled the final guard back inside the cavity then reached behind the tapestry and sealed them inside. Their moaning could be heard through the grate.

  ‘Behind you, son,’ said Declan, through gritted teeth. ‘The marshall.’

  Conor rounded on Bonvilain with three years of hatred glowing in his eyes. He was a figure from children’s nightmares. A man in black, wielding a bloody weapon, lips pulled back in a snarl.

  ‘Bonvilain,’ he said, with a strange calmness.

  Generally Bonvilain would have relished the opportunity for some choice remarks, followed by swift mortal combat with this whelp, but now his system was afire with wolfsbane. His tongue felt strange and swollen in his mouth and his legs bent under the weight of his torso.

  Soon my judgement will be gone. I must escape now.

  Isabella stepped forward. ‘You will answer for your crimes, Hugo Bonvilain. Your reign is over. There is no escape.’

  Bonvilain bent low, grunting like a wild boar. He grasped Conor’s harness, dragging the glider on to the balcony.

  ‘Escape,’ he muttered, drool dripping from his slack lip. ‘Fly away, Airman.’

  Conor followed him, cocking his pistol. ‘I’m warning you, Bonvilain.’

  Bonvilain managed a dry laugh. ‘Conor Broekhart. Always in my way. In Paris when I ordered your father’s balloon shot down. When I set the king’s tower alight. Even now. Perhaps you are magical, as people believe.’

  It was difficult to understand what Hugo Bonvilain said, his loose lips bubbled with spittle and blood. The marshall rolled his body up on to the balcony’s parapet.

  ‘Keep away, or you will never know my secrets.’

  Conor ached to finish Bonvilain, but Isabella’s light touch prevented it.

  ‘Don’t, Conor. I need to know everything he has done. There is so much to be set right.’ Isabella turned to the marshall. ‘Come down from there,’ ordered Isabella. ‘Your queen commands it.’

  Bonvilain struggled to his feet, clumsily pulling the harness round his shoulders.

  ‘I have no queen, no god, no country,’ he mumbled, cinching the chest belt with rubbery fingers. That would have to do, he did not have the dexterity for the remaining buckles. ‘All I have is cunning.’

  And with a focus born of hatred, Bonvilain reached inside his dragon robe to a dagger at his belt, with the intention of flicking it from the waist. Conor saw the gleam of the blade as it cleared the silk.

  Isabella! Even now he tries to kill Isabella.

  Conor swung his pistol, but Declan Broekhart was quicker, even though his shoulder was wounded. He hurled his sword, spear-like, with such force that it pierced Bonvilain’s vest of chain mail and lodged in his heart.

  Bonvilain sighed, as though disappointed with the book he was reading, then stepped backwards off the parapet, into the night. An updraught filled the glider’s wings, floating Bonvilain over the courtyard past the disbelieving eyes of the Wall watch and hundreds of Saltee islanders raised from their beds by the Gatling guns.

  Bonvilain hung there for several moments, his dripping blood painting swirls on the flagstones, before a crosswind flipped the glider about, urging it out to sea.

  Conor watched him go, dropping closer and closer to the cold ocean, the silhouetted sword protruding from his lifeless heart, and with him went the nightmare that his life had become.

  None could tear their eyes from Bonvilain’s corpse, arresting even in death. Further from land he drifted, and lower too until his toes skimmed the ocean. Conor wished to see him go down, to be certain that it was over, but he did not. Bonvilain was lost to sight before the ocean claimed him.

  Below was consternation. The watch were hammering on the Wall access door, and the people surged against the foot of the tower.

  Declan Broekhart took Isabella by the hand, leading her to the parapet.

  ‘The queen is safe,’ he called, raising her hand. ‘Long live the queen.’

  The cry that came back was relieved and heartfelt.

  ‘Long live the queen.’

  CHAPTER 19: TIME APART

  Great Saltee. One month later

  Queen Isabella had taken to walking the Wall every morning at sunrise. She believed that it gave her subjects heart to see her there. Before too many sunrises, she could call to everyone she saw by name.

  Conor often joined his queen on her morning strolls, and on the morning before his planned departure to study for a science degree at Glasgow University, they met below what had been Bonvilain’s tower.

  Isabella stood with her elbows on the parapet, watching a cluster of fishing boats half a mile offshore, the small crafts bobbing in the choppy channel currents.

  ‘They will never find him, you know,’ said Conor. ‘Bonvilain’s mail vest has taken him straight to the bottom. He is food for the crabs now.’

  Isabella nodded. ‘Without a body, he becomes the bogeyman. They say he has been seen in Paris, and Dublin. I read in the London Times that Bonvilain survives as a killer for hire in Whitechapel.’

  They were both silent for a minute, convincing themselves that they had actually seen Hugo Bonvilain die.

  ‘What will you do with this place?’ Conor asked finally, slapping the tower wall.

  ‘A diamond market, I think,’ replied Isabella. ‘It seems ludicrous that the diamonds are here, and yet we trade in London.’

  ‘You’re making big changes.’

  ‘There are many things to be changed. Little Saltee, for one. Did you know that only fourteen of the prisoners are from the Saltee Islands? The majority of the other poor souls are from Ireland or Great Britain. Well, no more. I will shut the prison down and contract the mining to a professional firm.’

  Conor glanced at the S branded into his hand.

&nb
sp; Little Saltee will always be with me. It has marked my body and mind.

  ‘What will happen to the prisoners?’ he asked.

  ‘Every case will be reviewed by a judge. I suspect most have served their sentences and more besides. Reparations will have to be made.’

  ‘I would be grateful if you could look kindly on a certain Otto Malarkey. He is not as fearsome as he seems.’

  ‘Of course, Sir Conor.’

  ‘You will make a fine queen.’

  ‘My father was the scientist; I am a businesswoman. You can be my royal scientist… on your return.’

  ‘Mother told you?’

  Isabella took his arm, and they promenaded along the Wall. ‘Catherine told me about Glasgow. I am supposed to talk you out of it.’

  ‘And how would you do that?’

  ‘I could always have you hanged.’

  Conor smiled. ‘Like the old days. Sometimes I wish the old days were here still.’

  Isabella stopped at one of her favourite spots on the Wall. A dip facing the mainland where centuries ago masons had built a lovers’ seat. From this vantage point, at various times during the morning, it was possible to view morning sun illuminating the church tower’s stained-glass window. As the sun moved, it seemed as though the Saint Christopher figure in the window moved a little too.

  Isabella sat on the stone seat, pulling Conor down beside her.

  ‘I miss the old days too. But it’s not too late for us is it, Conor?’

  ‘I hope that it is not,’ replied Conor.

  ‘Then I shall wait,’ said Isabella. And her playful side surfaced. ‘Shall you fly home to see me, Sir Airman?’

  ‘I am merely a sir. Is that not too common for a queen?’

  ‘That is easily fixed. With one prick of my hat pin, you can become a prince.’

  ‘Hat pin? Is that legal?’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be a hat pin, so long as there is blood and you are in great pain.’

  Conor took her hand in his. ‘I think now that I shall be in great pain until I return.’

  ‘Then study hard, earn your paper, and come home quickly. Your queen needs you. I need you.’

  And they kissed for the first time, with the stained-glass sun painting rainbows on their faces and the hubbub of morning trade rising from the square below.