Band of Gypsys (34 page)

Fiorinda was chalk pale, her eyes huge. ‘I’ve seen that happen before. I didn’t do it Ax. The internal world and the external world change places. They did it to themselves. They had laid hands on the king.’ She stared at them. ‘The ghost was Wallingham… We’re all playing with fire.’

They listened to the sounds of battle, and grew calm.

In his blind negotiations, Ax had tried to insist on non-lethals as weapons of first resort, zero casualties as the objective: starting the bidding low to keep the final price down. Who knows if the Scots had understood, or complied? Battle plans always break down at some point. No regrets, but the size of what they had done came home to them.

‘We better get this under control,’ said Ax. ‘You up for that, big cat?’

‘Oh yeah. Lead on. Jus’ make sure I don’t fall over anything.’

‘Go ahead, I’ll take care of the old lady,’ said Fiorinda.

Running through stately corridors in the dark, it was like high-class hide and seek: except for the smell of cordite, the glue-sniffer sting of non-lethals. Hoping not to hit any tear gas. Yells and flashes below as she crossed a gulf of stairwell. She found an English body, and shame gripped her. We did this. Oh, fuck. More English bodies. At least these ones weren’t dead, just moaning and wriggling in the grip of sticky webbing—

Lady Anne had been sleeping when the attack came. Like Margaret Thatcher, she needed very little sleep: but she treasured the hours from midnight to three am, when she relinquished command to Tom Lacey, Wallingham’s peerless steward; her ally in many skirmishes with the conniving National Trust, years ago. Usually she slept unaided, but she had taken a pill, tailored to give her a measured dose of oblivion, as she was exhausted by the stress of the Mr Pender situation. She had a guilty fondness for prescription drugs.

She had known nothing of Tom Lacey’s last stand, or the decision to move the prisoners. Her household officers had been unable to page her rooms, her women had been silenced. Roused out of bed, she was brought to her study in her nightgown: in lamplight, meaning the generator had failed. The drug clouded her mind, usually so sharp and decisive. She thought they were Wallingham men, holding her up by her arms because she did indeed feel on the point of falling.

‘Where are they kept, ye auld witch—’

‘Let me find my glasses.’ The plan of Wallingham flung down on her desk, the confused sounds she could hear, had flooded her with the greatest of terrors. Fire. But the hands were extremely rough, and the faces unknown to her. Instead of taking out her glasses she pressed the panic button, then opened a small drawer in which she kept a powerful talisman, a gold locket holding a nub of shrivelled flesh. She thrust it into the ringleader’s face.

‘Begone from here!’

She was struggling, a tinder-limbed, pitiful grotesque, in the arms of her captors, when the study doors were flung open and the young queen marched in. Fiorinda knew these raiders at once. They tended to naked ropey limbs and heads scoured of hair, instead of dreads and ragged layers: plus skin more luminously white than you often see in England. But they were obviously just barmy army squaddies, the Scottish version of Ax’s hippy guerrillas. The lunatic dregs of radical society, getting shot and not even asking for sixpence, and well over the top as usual.

Her heart went out to them.

‘Hey! What the fuck do you think you’re doing!’

Altercation followed. The Scots were not willing to relinquish their prey, neither Lady Anne nor her elderly lady’s maid—who was being roughly held still in a corner. They were righteous, stubborn, and unfavourably impressed by her ladyship’s weapon of first resort, an object which Fiorinda suspected was the preserved and sanctified heart of a newborn.

Abomination. Shall not suffer a witch to live, etc.

So, not Celtics then. Must be the other team.

She had to yell at them for about five minutes, handicapped by the fact that she could hardly understand a word they said, before she brought them to admit that raping politically sensitive VIP old ladies wasn’t in the deal. All right, didn’t mean to insult anyone, not raping,
beating up
the old ladies—

Different, but enough like barmies for me to hold them.

‘Lady Anne, you’ll be able to contact Lord Mursal, or whoever you wish, in a few hours. Meanwhile you’ll stay in your bedroom, under guard, and you won’t be harmed. You’re in the hands of a civilised nation now,’ (pause to glare at the trainspotters) ‘and you’ll be given
civilised
treatment.’

She didn’t know if it was gratitude, or undying hatred that she saw rise in the mad old eyes, as the PM’s ritual consort was led away with her servant. Nor did she care. A baby’s heart, how cute. Just don’t get killed on my watch.

Someone had turned the power back on. As Fiorinda and her new friends headed north from Lady Anne’s suite, the great public rooms were suddenly ablaze with light. The reivers started muttering.

‘What is it now?’

The leader of the detachment said something incomprehensible.

‘I’m sorry, I really don’t understand. I may be a musician but I’m hopeless at languages. Is there a MacLean in the party?’

This put them on their dignity. An older man with a grizzled bullet head spoke up, in the same precise, nit-picking English as Sovra Campbell.

‘The men are just saying, they accept the ruling on summary justice against persons, but what would the
cailin rua’s
opineenion be on the removal of property?’

The
cailin rua
(it means red girl) barely hesitated. ‘Make it small stuff,’ said Fiorinda, feeling like Lady Macbeth, and
good
about it. ‘Don’t waste time.’

The illusion that they’d taken control was shortlived. They left Wallingham in the bare, windowless back of a van, which they shared with a dozen or so reivers. The Triumvirate sat close together: not touching, because they didn’t want to show weakness. They were no longer themselves. An hour ago they had been Ax and Sage and Fiorinda, in prison. Now their charmed lives were over. What they had been, what they had done, their whole extraordinary career was
over.
Scenes rose up, all played to music. The reckless energy of Dissolution summer. The young Fiorinda screaming her desperate pain from Reading Main Stage: firelight and night. A huge crowd under a pure blue sky, held silent and entranced, passionately exalted by Ax Preston’s guitar. The fabulous weirdness of Aoxomoxoa’s immersions, turning the world inside out in the Insanitude ballroom… It was bad to know they’d sold England, but they could tell themselves the country was surely better off this way. There was nothing to soften their own shame, their loss of status. It was devastating.

The wheels were leaping over very poorly surfaced road. Now to make this work, thought Ax, stubbornly positive. He wished they’d been able to manage their own escape, but if it had been possible, where does that get you? Ax and Fiorinda and Sage, either running for their lives or fomenting a horrible civil war… No, this was the right choice, statesman’s choice. And now to make this work. Say it often enough, it’ll come true. For England. For the people he had served, all of them, all ages, all dresscodes, through the years of disaster. He could feel Sage’s exhaustion beside him, and the big cat’s fear of what this jolting journey was doing to his eyes…

It was a foretaste. There would be months of this. They would be paraded in public. They would be interrogated, hopefully without torture, they would be taken from place to place, moved from one captivity to another. A figure like Ax Preston is either
dux bellorum
or a greasy banknote: currency, passed from hand to hand. They saw it all, and closed their eyes. We will never escape. Mouths stitched shut. Occasionally one of the Scots asked Ax a question, and he answered calmly and confidently.

After some time, maybe a couple of hours, the van drew up. They were handed out, into cool air and a feeling of landscape emptiness: almost like the desert. They saw misty stars, a shadowy mass of trees, and a square-angled blot rising in the foreground. Was that a house…? It was a house of sorts that was revealed, when the Scots brought up the big lights. Two gable ends and a chimney, no roof, not much of the walls left. A stone-floored lean-to kitchen silted with rubble. Ax asked were they stopping for the night.

That got a laugh, because it was nearly dawn. ‘Business,’ said one of the men (if there were women, they were hard to spot).

They’d parted from the small army that had taken Wallingham, there was only this one van. They moved into the ruined house, the three closely surrounded. Fiorinda noticed that she could understand what was being said to her, which meant this must be a MacLean party, Highlanders. Gaelic speakers, pure English as a second language. She saw that Ax and Sage had realised the same thing, and they were uneasy too. In the hands of the Celtics, for some private business. Fuck, that doesn’t sound good…

Everyone sat in a circle, there was an atmosphere of expectancy. The high-powered lamps were hooded, to mimimise the escape of light into the sky. Reivers took out their Wallingham souvenirs, and showed them to each other. Gold boxes, trinkets; little rolled-up razored canvases; antique
objets
. The three larger items of loot felt self-conscious. One of the two commanders of the raid came and sat opposite them, in the open centre of the circle. He greeted Ax and Sage with the respect due for what they’d done back in the house, and introduced himself to Fiorinda, with dignity. His name was Neil.

‘Now we seal the contract.’

‘I’m not going to sign anything here,’ said Ax firmly. ‘Not until we get to Edinburgh, to the Assembly. I intend to do this by the book, no side deals.’

He was clutching at straws.

‘It’s no’ about signing things, and it won’t wait.’

Beside Neil sat a small man with a bowed back and a neck like a turkey, dressed in a white singlet and black cotton trousers, seriously tattooed around his bald, wrinkled head; sleeved down his arms. Where had he come from? He didn’t look like a reiver.

‘It’s me you’ve got to see,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m an expert.’

It seemed Ax had to be tattooed. Neil agreed that this stipulation had never been on the table before: but it had always been in mind. If Ax refused, the Celtic Party, largest political voice in Scotland, would simply withdraw support from the Edinburgh deal, and it would collapse.

‘The Celtics of Scotland don’t entirely trust the Assembly,’ explained Neil, in a soft-spoken, reasonable tone. ‘They don’t entirely trust Ax Preston either, and you’ll understand that. They’re with you all the way in rooting out the lunatics, Ax. But they remember the Velvet Invasion, and they have a lingering feeling in their minds that Mr Preston kills Celtics, or at least tars them all with the same brush. A little knotwork will make a big difference.’

‘I’ll have to think it over,’ said Ax, realising he’d been doublecrossed.

‘That’s the first count,’ said Neil. ‘The second count is that you are known to be a wily fucker, but once you have our badge on you, you’ll have a hard time wriggling out of the bargain. We’ll be recording the operation, for legal reasons, hope that’s okay.’

They laid Ax on his back on a reed mat. The tattooist took out his inks and needles from a briefcase. ‘My name’s Billy,’ he said to Ax, in a piping little old voice. ‘I’m not a Scot, I’m not Celtic. I’m a wanderer, maybe older than Celtic, maybe nothing. I chose this spot: I’ve been around here before. It’s called the Wood Court, and it’s holy. No shrine nor stone nor sacrifice, none of that, it’s just a right place.’

Two massive reiver hands settled on Ax’s skull, with a vice-like grip, and the lamps moved closer, so he felt their heat.

‘Keep yer head still,’ advised Billy, ‘and it won’t take half an hour. If you can’t, it’s going to be longer.’

Ax kept his head still.

When the job was done, everyone got back in the van and they drove on. Another jolting drive, then the van seemed to leave the road. It stopped again. The men got out. The Triumvirate glimpsed the trunks of trees, early morning in a wood: then the doors were shut. After a while Neil put his head in, and reported that everything had gone according to plan. The police had been avoided. The rest of the war party was well on its way to the border. No trouble, except one of the injured men had died. Fatalities on the Scots’ side now stood at three, the bodies being taken home, of course. It had been a smooth dismount. What about us, asked Ax. What’s the delay?

We’ve been told to wait for dark, said Neil.

They stayed in the back of the van all day, too burned out to sleep or to talk much; or to feel much anxiety. The Scots came and went, grumbling out of boredom, and once producing sandwiches. Ax spoke when he was spoken too, expressing hopes for peaceful change, the swift collapse of the Second Chamber. He was sickeningly aware that events had passed out of his control. He kept thinking, it’s going to be tough being Ax Preston, in public, with this thing on my face. He’d expected his eye would close up but it didn’t, the needlework was just tender… Later they heard urgent conversations in Gaelic; perhaps triggered by radio messages. No one told them what was going on, and for the moment they were beyond caring.

All they really noticed was the quiet that interrupted the sound of the reivers’ voices. It was very quiet that September day, in the unknown countryside a few hours’ minor-road driving from Wallingham. The stillness, and the dying fall of summer’s end.

The van set off in the rain, as soon as it was fully dark. By this stage the three were completely indifferent, just longing for the journey to be over. To be alone together, to speak freely to each other, for the first time since June. They weren’t thinking any further. The van bounced along, neither faster nor slower than the night before, keeping to neglected roads and presumably heading north: though it seemed to make some strange turns.

It pulled up again. The back doors opened, Neil hopped in and spoke to the men in an undertone. Then he said, ‘Take your gear, English, and get down. This is free, gratis, you are free.’