Novel - Airman

by Eoin Colfer

  The guards reached Conor’s cell and simply raised one end of the plank, sliding him through the doorway. He tumbled to the wall and lay there, limbs splayed, moaning. The moans were real.

  Pike and Billtoe stood framed by the doorway. “You know something, Pikey?” said Billtoe, scratching an itch on his collarbone. “Maybe I’m getting old and soft, but I’ve taken a liking to young Conor Finn.”

  Pike was more than surprised. Liking prisoners was not Billtoe’s form. “Really?”

  “No,” said Billtoe, shutting the cell door. “Not really.”

  Conor lay still until the guards’ footsteps faded, first to echoes, then silence. Another minute for safety, then he crawled upon his bunk, hiding his face with a forearm, though he was alone in the cell. The shaking began suddenly, racking his entire body from toe to crown, as though he had grasped a wire of the electric, like a laborer he had seen working in Coronation Square, all those years ago. On another island, in another life.

  There was simply too much to think about. Father, Mother, King Nicholas, Isabella. His own plight in this prison. Bonvilain, the Battering Rams, Billtoe and Pike. Images of these friends and foes passed through his mind, branding him with more pain than a Little Saltee kiss.

  Mother and Father taking him to Hook Head to fly his paper kite. King Nicholas’s stories of the American Civil War and why he fought in it. Bonvilain’s face, features set in a permanent sneer. Otto Malarkey, fear of death in his dark eyes.

  Too much. Too much.

  Conor gritted his teeth and imagined himself flying until the shaking stopped.

  Pike booted Linus Wynter back into the cell some hours later, just as Conor was finishing his first meal of the day. “I put yours on the flat stone by the window,” he said to the gangly American. “It’s the warmest spot in here. You sit, I’ll get it.”

  Wynter tutted, heading straight for the flat stone. “No need. I know where the griddle is. I have been here almost a year, young Conor.” He bent down and tickled the air with two fingers until he found the bowl. “But thank you, that was very thoughtful.”

  Wynter perched on his bed and selected a lump of gristle dripping with grease. “Oh lord, it’s hardly the Savoy, is it? I spent a night there in ’eighty-nine. Fabulous. Full electric lighting, a bath in every suite. And the water closets, I dream of the water closets.”

  “We’ve had electric lighting since ’eighty-seven on Great Saltee,” said Conor. “King Nicholas says that we have to embrace change.” Conor’s face fell. “King Nicholas said that.”

  Wynter did not comment, chewing the fatty lump in his mouth thoroughly lest it choke him on the way down. “So, young Finn, are we going to swap water closet stories all evening, or are you going to tell me of your adventures in the bell?”

  “I let Malarkey live,” said Conor. “But I thrashed him soundly, and he knows I can do it again. Next time I won’t keep quiet about it, and we’ll see how long he survives as head ram after that.”

  Wynter froze, a dripping gobbet of meat halfway to his mouth. “Hell’s bells, boy. If I could look at you admiringly, I would. Nick was right about you.”

  “Nick? King Nicholas? You knew the king?”

  “We met in Missouri. He was in the balloon corps. Actually, he was the balloon corps. He towed two raggedy hot-air rigs around to various battle sites. Our paths crossed at Petersburg in ’sixty-five. I wasn’t much use to anyone back then, having had my eyes poked out by the teenage Jesse James. And Nick was just about tolerated by the generals; so we struck up a friendship. He taught me how to tie knots and fill ballast bags. Even took me up a few times. I had no idea that he was royalty—of course, neither did he.”

  Conor had always been a fast thinker. “It can’t be coincidence that you’re here.”

  Wynter cocked his head to one side, listening carefully. “No, Conor, it’s no coincidence. Nick sent me here to spy for him.”

  “You’re a spy? You shouldn’t tell me this. I could be anyone. Another spy sent in to find you out.”

  “You could be, but you’re not. I have heard of you before from Victor Vigny. He visited me here days ago and took my news to the king. The pretext was that I had stolen from him. Such cloak-and-dagger.” Wynter reached out long fingers until he found Conor’s shoulder. “King Nicholas thought of you as a son. Victor said you were his greatest hope for the future. You’re no spy.”

  Conor felt a twinge of sadness. He had thought of the king almost as a second father.

  An awful truth struck him. “But now, Mister Wynter, you are truly imprisoned here with the rest of us.”

  Wynter sighed. “It would seem so. I can hardly tell Mr. Billtoe that I am actually a professional spy posing as a vagrant musician.”

  “I suppose not,” Conor agreed. “Who were you spying on?”

  Again, Linus Wynter listened before replying. “Marshall Bonvilain. Nicholas had come to suspect Bonvilain of treason in many areas, but especially on Little Saltee. Bonvilain was running it like his own personal slave camp. Prison reforms were implemented only when Nicholas or his envoys came to visit. The king needed a man on the inside, and who better to spy on a music-loving warden than a blind musician? Nobody would suspect a man who cannot spy anything of being a spy.”

  “I see,” said Conor.

  Wynter grinned. “Do you really? What’s it like?”

  Conor smiled, his first in days. The smile was a twinkle in the gloom and did not last long. “I don’t think I can make it through this, Mister Wynter. I am not strong enough.”

  “Nonsense,” snapped Wynter. “You showed courage today, and ingenuity. Anyone who can thrash that brute Malarkey can certainly find the strength to survive Little Saltee.”

  Conor nodded. There were people in worse straits than he. At least he had youth and strength on his side. “Tell me, Mister Wynter, how do you go about your business?”

  “What business is that?” said Wynter innocently.

  “The business of being a spy, of course.”

  Wynter pulled a convincing horrified face. “Spying? Me? But, you foolish boy, I am blind, which is the same as brainless and only slightly better than dead. Why, you could plant me at the piano in the warden’s office, and he would go about his business exactly as though I weren’t even there.”

  “But now there is no one to report to?”

  “Precisely. A while back, Nicholas requested my temporary release to play in his orchestra. I gave him my first report then. There was another due tomorrow. I would surmise that I shan’t be delivering that report, or any more.”

  Conor felt a sudden kinship for this tall American. “We are together, then.”

  “Until one of us is released. And when I say released, I mean it in the Little Saltee sense. Occasionally an inmate disappears and the guards tell us he has been released.”

  “Dead, then.”

  “I would guess. Murder is the most expeditious way to prevent overcrowding. I pray that we fortunate two are never released.”

  Conor was surprised. “Fortunate? A curious choice of words.”

  Wynter wagged a reedlike, knuckle-knobbed finger. “Not at all. We are two like-minded, civilized men. Just think who we might have drawn as cellmates.”

  Conor’s memory flashed on Malarkey’s features, shaped by the violence of his life. “You are right, Mister Wynter. We are indeed fortunate.”

  Wynter raised an imaginary glass of Champagne. “Your health,” he said.

  “Your health,” rejoined Conor, and then: “Clink.”

  The cell itself was a study in the Spartan, not much more than a hole in the island. There was one window high in the wall, of letterbox size. The light admitted by this portal was weak and watery, without the strength to cut through more than a few feet of shadow.

  The walls themselves were expertly hewn with barely a need for mortar, which was just as well, as the surface mortar had long since crumbled, allowing various fungi to spread themselves across the joins. Conor estim
ated the dimensions to be twelve feet by fourteen. Hardly enough for two tall men to spend their confinement in comfort. Then again, comfort was hardly the issue.

  As he lay on his hard cot that evening, Conor dreamed of his family. Eventually his thoughts grew so painful that a small, pathetic cry crept through his lips.

  Linus Wynter did not comment; he merely shifted in his bed to show that he had heard and was awake for conversation if needed.

  “You said that you would instruct me,” whispered Conor. “Tell me how to survive in this place.”

  Wynter turned on his back, clasped his hands on his chest, and sighed.

  “What you must do, what we both must do now, is so terribly difficult that it is close to impossible. Only the most determined can achieve it.”

  Conor felt that he could indeed do the close to impossible, if it meant that he would survive Little Saltee. “What, Mister Wynter? Tell me. I need some relief.”

  “Very well, Conor. There are two parts to this scheme. The first has the sound of an easy task, but believe me, it is not. You must forget your old life. It is dead and gone. Dreaming of family and friends will plunge you into a dark hell of despair. So build a wall around your memories and become a new person.”

  “I don’t know if I can . . .” began Conor.

  “You are Conor Finn now!” hissed Wynter. “You must believe it. You are Conor Finn, seventeen-year-old army corporal, smuggler, and swordsman. Conor Finn will survive Little Saltee. Conor Broekhart’s body may survive, but his spirit will be crushed as surely as though Bonvilain clamped it in a vise.”

  “Conor Finn,” said Conor haltingly. “I am Conor Finn.”

  “You are a killer. You are young and slim, true, but ruthless with your blade, arm as strong as a steel band. You prefer your own company, and will brook no insult. Not so much as a dirty look. You have killed before. Your first when you were fifteen, a grog head who dipped your pocket. This is all the truth.”

  “It’s true,” murmured Conor. “All true.”

  “You have no family,” continued Wynter. “No one to love, or to love you.”

  “No one . . .” said Conor, but the words were hard to utter. “No one loves me.”

  Wynter paused, tilting his head, hearing Conor’s distress. “This is the way it must be. In here, love will rot your brain. I know this to be true. I had a wife once, lovely Aishwarya. Dreams of her fueled my days during my five years in a Bengal prison. This was enough to sustain me for a while, but then my love turned to suspicion. And finally to hate. When I heard that she had died of typhoid, the guilt nearly killed me. I would have died if they hadn’t kicked me out.” Wynter was quiet for as long as it took him to relive those horrible times. “Love must die in here, Conor, it is the only way. Once you open your heart . . .”

  “Love must die,” said Conor, storing images of his parents in a padlocked chest at the back of his mind.

  “But something must take its place,” said Wynter in a stronger voice. “An obsession to fire your enthusiasm. A reason to live, if you like. I myself have music. I keep an opera on the broiler inside my head and in other places. Amadeus himself would weep. My music is never far from my thoughts. It is my fondest wish to have it performed in Salzburg. One day, young Conor. One day. My opera keeps me alive, you see.” Wynter slipped two fingers under his eye bandage, massaging his ruined sockets. “I see music like you see colors. Each instrument is a stroke of the brush. The gold of the strings. The deep blue of the bassoon. Even as I trot out pompous marches for the warden on his rickety piano, the sound board not even spruce, I am dreaming of my opera.”

  Wynter’s lips murmured phrases of his beloved music. “And what about you, Conor?” he asked after several bars. “Do you have a dream? Something that fills your dreams with hope but never pain?”

  The answer came quickly to Conor. I want to fly. “Yes,” he said. “I have a dream.”

  The night arrived, though it made little difference to the light in Conor’s cell. There was a slight thickening of the dirty darkness, but that was all. They were trapped in a limbo of gloom, with only food and work to instruct them as to the time of day. Conor lay on his cot, wrestling with thoughts of his family, which he was not supposed to be thinking. Shrugging off one’s old self was not as simple as discarding a dirty shirt. Memories popped up unbidden, clamoring to be examined. Mr. Wynter was right, this was the most difficult thing he had ever had to do. Conor could feel the sweat coating his face like a wet flannel, and the voice of his mother seemed as real to him as the cell walls. How could you do it, my son? How could you betray us all?

  Conor bit his knuckle until the voice faded. He needed distraction, and proof that this new life strategy was effective. “Mister Wynter,” he whispered. “Are you asleep?”

  Cloth rustled on the other cot, then Linus answered. “No, Conor Finn, I am awake. Sometimes I think that I never truly sleep. One eye on the real world, so to speak. The legacy of a lifetime’s spying. Are you having trouble burying Conor Broekhart?”

  Conor laughed bitterly. “Trouble? It is impossible, Mister Wynter.”

  “No, not impossible, but devilish hard. It took me months to forget my real self. To become this rakish, devil-may-care playboy. Even talking to you about this is opening a chink in the door to my previous self.”

  “Sorry,” said Conor. “Tell me of your dream, then. The opera.”

  Wynter sat up. “Really? You would like to hear my music?”

  “Yes. Perhaps your music will give me enthusiasm for my own project.”

  Wynter was suddenly stuttering. “V-very well, Conor. But you are the first person ever . . . That is, we are hardly in the correct environment. The acoustics in here are of the worst kind—even the human voice will be mangled by these close quarters.”

  Conor smiled in the dark. “I am a kind audience, Mister Wynter. My only request is that your music be to a higher standard than your spying.”

  “Ahh,” said Wynter, beating his breast with a fist. “A critic. Of all the cellmates I could have chosen . . .” But the joke had calmed him, and he began his performance in confident tones.

  “Our story is entitled The Soldier’s Return. Imagine, if you will, the great state of New York. The war has ended, and the men of the 137th Infantry have returned to their homes in Binghamton. It is a time of mixed emotions, great joy, and deep sorrow. For these men and their families, nothing can ever be the same again. . . .”

  And following this sparsest of introductions, Linus Wynter launched into his overture. It was a grand number, but not pretentious, switching between moods, from delirious joy and relief to unfathomable sorrow. It could have been comical. A blind man playing all the parts of an orchestra for a frightened boy. But somehow it was not. Conor felt himself lost in the music, and the story sprang up around him as he listened.

  It was a sad yet triumphant story, with fine arias and soaring marches, and Conor clung to it for a while; but by and by, the story faded, leaving the music alone. But music must have pictures to go with it, and in Conor’s mind the pictures were of a flying machine. Heavier than air, yet soaring among the clouds, with Conor himself guiding the rudder. It could be done, and he would be the one to do it.

  I will do it, he thought. I will fly, and Conor Finn will survive Little Saltee.

  The third day. Billtoe arrived after the cannon, looking as though he had been dragged to work through the sewers. This, Conor was beginning to realize, was his standard appearance.

  Wynter sniffed the air on hearing the hinges. “Ah, Guard Billtoe. Right on time.”

  Billtoe flicked a chicken bone he had been sucking at the blind prisoner. “Here, Wynter, boil yourself some soup. And you, Conor Finn, look lively. The Pipe waits. Maybe today we’ll get some work out of you, if you’re not too occupied with the unconscious floating.”

  Conor sat in his bed, feeling the itch of salt and dirt on his back. “On my way, Mister Billtoe.” He trudged to the door, searching his heart for a s
park of enthusiasm for anything. Linus Wynter provided it with a farewell and a tilt of the head that served as a wink.

  “Until this evening then, Conor Finn.”

  Conor could not help but smile. Being part of a secret is a great source of strength. “Until this evening, when the soldier returns.”

  Wynter’s face broke into a broad smile, wrinkles stretching the scars that ringed each eye like rays from the sun. “I await The Soldier’s Return then.”

  Billtoe scowled, uncomfortable with anything more than abject depression from the convicts. “Quit with the conversation and out the door with you, Finn.”

  Conor Finn left the dank cell, leaving Conor Broekhart farther behind with every step.

  Malarkey was already in the bell when Conor swam under. The huge convict was squeezing water from his long hair like a washerwoman wringing towels. “Salt makes the hair brittle,” he explained, glancing at Conor from under the crook of a raised elbow. “If a man favors the long styles, he has to get as much out as he can. Sometimes I think it’s wasted work, as no one on this blinking rock gives my hair a second glance.”

  Conor was not sure how to react to this genial gent who had replaced yesterday’s hired brute. “Ah . . . my mother recommends oil for brittle hair.”

  Malarkey sighed. “Yes, oil. Where to get it, though; there’s the puzzle I have wrestled with for a decade.”

  The man was serious, Conor realized. This was important to him. “Billtoe seems to have a ready supply. The man’s head is as greased as a wrestling pole.”

  “Billtoe!” spat Malarkey. “That snake. I wouldn’t please him with a plea.”

  Conor had a thought. “Well then, I have noticed that our daily stew is loaded with some form of cooking oil. A small pool collects in the bowl. I daresay it would do you more good on your head than in your stomach.”

  Malarkey was thunderstruck. “God almighty, you are correct, soldier boy. There it was every day, three times a day, staring me in the mush, and me looking for oil. That’s good advice.”

  “And free,” Conor added. “Though you may smell like stew.”