by Mike Shevdon
“I don’t need another set of negotiations,” said Blackbird, “and they will want something in return.”
“It’s in their own interest. Otherwise they have to clean up the mess, and prevention is better than cure, surely?” I saw a shadow pass across Angela’s eyes at the mention of a cure. She’d been at Porton Down and knew first hand the sort of cures they’d been developing there. “Sorry,” I said to her, “bad turn of phrase”.
“If we meet the Secretariat,” said Blackbird, “then Garvin will know about it.”
“Not necessarily,” I said.
“I want him kept out of it, Niall.”
“I won’t tell him. I promise.”
“You won’t need to. If the Secretariat is involved then it will get back to him and then he’ll have reason to start sticking his nose where it’s not wanted. They won’t help us anyway. You’ve said yourself that they’re only interested in covering their backs.”
“Then we need a better idea,” I told her, “and fast.”
“Are you all right, Sweetheart? Can I get you something?” It was the tenth time she’d asked that question; well maybe not the tenth, but it was getting on Alex’s nerves.
“No, Mum, I don’t want anything.”
That at least was true. There was nothing Alex wanted and nothing she could do. She couldn’t go out, or see her friends, or mooch around the shops, or invite Kayleigh round, or any of the things she might have done. She’d thought twice about inviting Kayleigh, but how did you even begin to explain, and anyway, what would they talk about? She’d stood outside Kayleigh’s house one night and watched her. It’d been like time-travel, watching someone from the past. For Kayleigh, nothing had changed. For Alex, everything had changed.
“Are you all right?” asked her Mum.
The question again. “I’m fine.”
“It’s just… do you mind not doing that with the cushions?”
Alex looked down in her lap at the cushion she had twisted until it was wound tight. She let go and it sprang back into plumpness, though the cover retained the stress lines across it. She smoothed them with her hand.
Katherine sat opposite, waiting for Alex to say something.
“What?” said Alex.
“If there’s something on your mind, you can always talk to me about it,” said Katherine.
No, she really couldn’t. She shook her head. “I’m OK. What’s for supper?”
Katherine wasn’t put off so easily. “Alex, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
“What about? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
“You’ve said some things — I understand. Teenagers make things up all the time. It’s part of their narrative — coming to terms with the world. I know you need… attention. But you’re home now. You can let all that go.”
“All what?” asked Alex, genuinely puzzled.
“All that stuff about killing people, and being on the run. You forget, I was a teenager once.” She smiled. “It’s all about the drama.”
“Drama?”
“You’re very creative. You always had an active imagination. It’s only natural that you should make up stories.”
“I killed three girls,” said Alex, coldly, staring at her mother. “I went to school with them, and now they’re dead.”
“That was an accident,” said Katherine. “It was the sewer — there was an explosion. It was a tragedy, of course.”
“I drowned them,” said Alex, “in sewage.”
Katherine laughed nervously. “There you go. Stories. You see?”
“You think this is made up?” said Alex. “You think I’m imagining this shit?”
“There’s no need for that language, young lady!”
Alex shook her head. “You have no idea, do you? I’ve fought for my life, made friends, and enemies, stolen things, taken stuff. I’ve bargained with ravens, walked unseen through the Houses of Parliament. I’ve seen the cosmos split apart above me… the universe, opened up — made to take notice.”
“You say things I don’t think you even understand,” said Katherine. “What does that even mean?”
“I’ve seen Dad, shining in the dark like a…”
“Like a what?” asked Katherine.
“Nothing,” said Alex.
“If your father is encouraging this…”
“You still don’t get it,” said Alex. “This is not about him. It’s about me.”
Katherine reached forward and grasped Alex’s wrist. “What’s this?” She pushed Alex’s sleeve up her arm revealing the winding pattern of dark vines. “You got a tattoo. It’s not even a nice one. What’s it supposed to be?” She took hold of her other wrist and looked at that as well. “They don’t even match.”
“It’s not a tattoo,” said Alex.
“Is that why you’ve been sitting in your cardie sweltering while I’ve got the central heating on? Because you were ashamed to show me? When did you get that done? Did your father let you do that to yourself?”
“I told you it’s not a tattoo. It just does that.”
“I’ll have to talk to him,” said Katherine. “This can’t go on.”
“No!” said Alex. “Don’t talk to him about me. Talk to me about me. I’m right here!”
“This is silly,” said Katherine, making to stand up.
“Don’t walk away,” said Alex. “That’s what you always do to Dad. You say something and then you make out that it’s nothing, but you’ve already said it by then.”
“Leave my relationship with your father out of this.”
“Then talk to me,” said Alex. “Dad treats me like a grown-up.”
“I’ll treat you like one, when you act like one.”
Alex’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe me,” she said. “You think I’m making it all up.” She looked around the room. “Central heating pipes, all round the house. How about we make it go backwards?”
“Backwards? What do you mean, backwards?”
Alex opened her hands, took a breath and released it slowly. A draft from the kitchen had a sudden chill to it. The pendant lamp in the centre of the ceiling swung gently.
Katherine narrowed her eyes, but for a moment, nothing happened. “You see?” she said.
The radiator under the window made a ticking noise. The pipes along the wall started to vibrate with a low hum. All around the house, the pipes began to groan and creak. A clanking noise was coming from the boiler in the kitchen. The whole system started banging and clanking as the pressure built.
Katherine stared about her wildly. “Alex! Stop this at once.”
“What Mum? I thought I was imagining it? I thought I was making it all up?”
The radiator was making creaking noises. It started rattling against the brackets holding it to the wall. The pressure was building. Any moment and the pressure would blow and then…
Bing bong.
The noise of the doorbell was a signal. Everything stopped. The vibrations ceased, the clanking fell into silence. The whole system eased as the water started to flow again in its usual direction.
“Who’s that?” said Alex.
Katherine looked crossly at Alex. “I don’t know,” she said. “It might be the postman, he sometimes rings if there’s a letter too big for the letterbox.”
They waited in silence.
Bing bong.
“I’d better go see,” said Katherine.
“No!” said Alex. “Leave it. Let it go.” They waited.
Bing bong. Bing bong. It was followed by sharp tapping.
“I’ll go and see,” said Katherine. “Don’t worry,” she said to Alex. “I’ll get rid of them.” She went to answer the door.
Alex stepped up to the window, trying to see who was at the door without moving the net curtains. She hung back behind the drapes, peeking around to view the doorstep. She could hear her mother.
“Yes,” said Katherine. “Can I help you?’
The guy on the doorstep
was middle-aged with sandy hair and greying temples. He wore a long loose coat.
“Is Niall in?” he said.
Katherine looked taken aback. “Niall doesn’t live here any more,” she said.
“Only, I have something for him,” said the man. Alex didn’t recognise him as anyone her Dad had ever mentioned.
“I’m afraid you’re out of luck,” said her Mum.
“Will he be back later?” asked the man.
“I told you. He doesn’t live here. We’re divorced, I’ve recently re-married. Who are you?”
“Just a friend,” he said, looking up and down the street. Alex could tell, whoever the man was, he was no friend. “Did you have a caller recently, a lady? About five-six, brown hair, goes by the name of Claire?”
“I’m sure I don’t know who you mean,” said Katherine.
“She’s been missing for a while. I thought she might come here,” he said.
“Why would she come here? I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Fair enough,” said the man. “Well, look, if you see Niall…”
“I won’t,” said Katherine.
“If… you see him. Would you give him a message for me? Tell him I have something he needs.”
“I told you, he doesn’t live here,” she said.
“Thanks very much,” said the man. He walked away down the drive and across the road. Alex watched him as far as she could. He didn’t turn, and he didn’t look back. Katherine closed the front door and returned to where Alex was watching through the window.
“What a strange man,” said Katherine, from the doorway of the sitting room.
“He was lying,” said Alex.
“I didn’t recognise him,” said Katherine, “but I’m not sure that’s any reason to assume that…”
“He’s lying. I can hear it. We all can.”
“We?” asked Katherine. Alex shouldered her bag and went into the kitchen. Katherine followed her. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to tell Dad,” she said.
“Well I expect he’ll pop in when he’s ready,” said Katherine. “We can tell him then.”
“He needs to know,” she said. “There’s stuff going down,”
“But what about… you were staying for supper,” Katherine said as Alex went to the back door.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get something later. I can always raid the pantry. The cooks don’t mind.” Alex opened the door and scanned the garden.
“Alex?” Katherine was stood in the door between the kitchen and the hall watching her daughter as she stood outlined in the doorway. “Be careful.”
Alex stepped quickly back inside and kissed her mother’s cheek. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve dealt with worse than his sort.” She slipped back through the door. Katherine didn’t hear the back gate, but she stood with the back door open for a long while.
“That,” she said, “is what worries me.”
SEVEN
The room was at the top of the house. It probably used to be servants’ quarters when the house had been in its heyday, only now the stewards lived in the main house and the attic rooms were empty, except for this one.
The bed had been moved to the centre where it dominated the room; the curtains were swept back so that the low late afternoon sun striped the floor. Beside the bed, a stand held a drip that fed transparent solution slowly into Fellstamp’s arm. He lay on the bed, eyes closed, looking for all the world like he was taking an afternoon nap — except for the saline drip that had been set up, and for the way his skin sagged from his frame like an oversized suit.
“You don’t come up here much, do you?”
Fionh’s voice startled me. She was sat back in the shadows in the corner and I wondered if she had deliberately cloaked herself from being noticed.
“How’s he doing?” I asked her.
She folded closed the book that was open on her lap and clasped her hands together over it. “How do you think?” she said.
“Has he shown any signs?”
She shook her head slowly.
I walked around the bed slowly, noting how the sheet had been carefully folded back just below his shoulders, how his curly hair fell on the spotless white linen pillow and how thin his frame looked under the sheet.
“Garvin said he’s still losing weight.”
“He hasn’t eaten in months,” she said. “It’s hardly surprising.”
When you looked at his face, he looked older, though the Feyre don’t age outwardly, once they reach adulthood. I wondered if that was what happened when you starved to death. You suddenly looked older.
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked her, aware that they had tried everything to wake him.
“You could talk to him?” she said.
“What about?”
“I don’t think it matters,” she said. “He’s not listening anyway.”
Fionh stood up and put the book quietly on the side table, as if she didn’t want to disturb the sleeper on the bed. “You can say whatever you want,” she said, moving to the doorway. “You might start by explaining why the mongrel that did that to him is still alive.”
I heard her footsteps as she walked away down the corridor. She was angry, and no wonder. She’d been with Fellstamp when they went in against Eve, Sparky, Chipper and Alex, when they’d been spotted in an abandoned office building in London.
“You know?” I said to Fellstamp, “You misjudged them. You went in hard with the expectation that they would be disorganised and weak.” I began to walk around the bed slowly, talking more to myself that to the recumbent figure on the bed. “So you held a blade to Sparky’s throat. You made an assumption, that more than anything else he wanted to live, and that the desire to live would give you control. You took him hostage.”
As I walked between the bed and the windows, my shadow crossed the bed with me, like a ghostly companion. “You were only half-right. They were disorganised. They weren’t trained to act as a team and they hadn’t prepared their defence. They winged it.
“Where you misjudged them, though, was in the assumption that more than anything else they wanted to survive, and that they would grasp at any sliver of hope that meant they might live to fight another day. You forgot what had been done to them.”
I stopped at the head of the bed. I watched the slow rise and fall of the sheet as he breathed. I almost felt that I could hear his heart’s slow beat.
“I think we found out later that, for at least some of them, survival wasn’t the objective.” I began a slow circuit once again. “I’m not saying they’re not to blame — they carry the responsibility for what they did — but you made a mistake. After what had been done to them, there was something worse than death. Whatever happened, they weren’t going to be captured again.”
My shadow drifted across the bed, following me.
“I’ve had to learn that. Alex is the same. She can’t be contained, not any more. She sleeps with the door open, did you know that? She can handle it by day — but at night, I think there’s the thought that if the door once closes, she won’t be able to open it again.”
I looked down into Fellstamp’s face, wondering whether he dreamed, whether he knew anything at all.
“I’m not asking you to forgive them,” I told him. “I’m not sure it’s your forgiveness they want. The experiments they endured were designed to push them beyond their limits, with no thought for subtlety or finesse. The scientists set out to discover how much they could do. In that, they succeeded. None of them have any real control. It’s all, or nothing. Sparky gave you everything he had.”
I walked round again, finding that I had said most of what I wanted to say. “Think about it,” I told him.
I left him there. I think Fionh was lurking close by somewhere. I got a sense of her presence, almost like a perfume as I left. I suspect she returned to her reading.
Downstairs, Alex and Angela were talking. “Did Alex find you?” said Blackbird
. “She was looking for you.”
“I haven’t seen her,” I said.
“Never mind, come and see this.” She indicated one of the journals, which was open on the desk. The journal was open at a series of entries, but there was a loose leaf of paper between the pages.
“Where did this come from?” I asked. Unlike the heavy parchment of the journal, it was written on paper that was so thin it was translucent. The hand was scratchy and the ink was faded in places.
For the manor and the land appertaining to Grey’s Court, a red rose, presented in full splendour on midsummer’s eve by Robert and Lettice Knollys or their successors in title in full escort and regalia at the foot of the altar of All Hallows of the Keep, unless there be a white rose at midday on the eve of the winter solstice, at the same place, whereupon the manor shall pass to the key-holder in perpetuity.
“It was tucked between the pages of this journal,” said Blackbird. “We found it when we were going through them.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure,” said Blackbird. “It’s not a contract, or a deed of any kind. We’re not even sure what it relates to.”
“They’re not serious, are they? A manor house in exchange for a rose?”
“It’s not beyond precedent,” said Blackbird. “In law, a contract must have a consideration, something given and received in order for it to be valid. If you wanted to give something away then you could make the consideration something trivial, like a rose,”
“So it’s a gift?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“If this is just a copy of another document,” said Angela, “then this may all have been resolved years ago. It’s just a piece of paper with mild historical value.”
“But if this is the only reference to it,” said Blackbird, “then it’s possible that somewhere there is the contract that this relates to, and by invoking the conditions of that contract we could benefit from it.”
“Surely someone must have tried this before?” I said.
“Except for one thing,” said Blackbird. “Where would you get a white rose in the middle of winter? This was found in pages dating back five hundred years,” said Blackbird, “and at that time there would be no way of producing a pure white rose on the eve of the winter solstice unless you had an awful lot of money.”
