‘I don’t disagree, Marshall. I just need to think about something else today. My wife, and my queen, they need me. For today at least.’
‘Of course,’ said Bonvilain, his tone gracious, but his eyes were hard and his teeth were gritted behind his lips.
Broekhart recovers, he thought. His scruples are already returning. How long before the dog bites his master?
Hugo Bonvilain waved a gloved hand at the cheering citizens on the roadside.
Better not to take the chance. Perhaps it is time for a little blackmail. Declan Broekhart could not bear to lose his elder son a second time.
Little Saltee
Conor was ready for flight. His sewing was done. A double seam would have been better but there was not a strand of thread left. The device was as sound as it would ever be.
The sounds of revelries drifted across from the Great Saltee Wall. Singing, cheering, stamping of feet. A great coming together. A thousand faces flushed in the glow of the wall lamps. Conor imagined the crowds lined a dozen deep waiting for the great show of fireworks. It seemed as though the very prison walls shook, though a stretch of ocean separated prisoners from the party.
The buzz of coronation excitement had communicated itself through the prison, and many of the prisoners hooted through their windows or dragged tin cups across their barred windows.
Surprisingly perhaps, most of the inmates showed monarchist leanings in spite of their incarceration at Her Majesty’s pleasure. A ragged chorus of ‘Defend the Wall’, the Saltee national anthem, bounced off the walls and under Conor’s cell door.
He found himself humming along. It was strange to hear the words King Nicholas already replaced by Queen Isabella.
How could you believe Bonvilain’s lies? Why did you not send for me, Isabella?
Confusion bred heat in his forehead and Conor felt the strength of it cloud his brain. His senses piled on top of one another. Sight, touch, smell. Grime in the wrinkles of his forehead. The cell door seemed to shake in its housing. Sweat, damp and worse from his cell. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply through his nose. One of Victor’s tricks, brought back from the Orient.
Breathe in cold air, clear the mind.
Conor pushed thoughts of Isabella aside. Time now to concentrate. Billtoe’s steps were on the flagstones outside. One last time through the checklist.
Mud on his back?
Yes. He could feel it crusting inside his collar. At last, a use for the damp wall. There is always a use for everything, Victor had told him. Even pain.
The device secured?
Conor reached round under his loose jacket, tugging at the rectangular pack concealed on his chest. The ropes groaned at his pull, but they were homemade and imperfect. Woven from raggy ends and cut-offs. Spliced together and daubed with candle wax.
The cuff peg?
Concealed in his palm. A jagged ivory cone, measured by pressing the cuffs’ ratchet hard into his palm when Billtoe was removing them. The cuff peg was an old escapologist’s trick, and would only work on a set of single-lock cuffs with some play in the bolts, but Billtoe’s cuffs were old enough to have belonged to Moses, and Conor had been yanking at the bolts for half a year now. There was enough play. When Billtoe slapped the cuffs on, Conor would quickly plug the hole with the ivory peg. The ratchet would be deflected while appearing to close.
Mud, devices, pegs! This plan was lunacy.
And as such could never be anticipated. Conor stepped on his uncertainty with a harsh boot. There was not the time now. His plan would liberate him, or kill him, and both were preferable to more long years in this hell pit.
Billtoe’s key clanked into the ancient lock, turning with some effort. The guard shouldered the door open, complaining as usual, but with one cautious hand on his pistol.
‘An angel is what I am, sticking it out with you clods, when a man like me would be welcomed into any discerning society in the world. I could be a prince, you know, Finn. An emperor, darn it. But here I stays, so that you can tell me my twelve-shot revolver is not ready yet.’
‘It is ready,’ blurted Conor, playing the excited, eager-to-please prisoner. ‘I have the plan here.’
Billtoe was canny enough to be suspicious. Lesser brains would have lost the run of themselves and the price of their distraction would be a stove-in skull, but Arthur Billtoe’s prime instinct was self-preservation.
‘Where, exactly now, would that plan be? I won’t be doing any bending over, or fumbling in shadows.’
‘No. Lying on the table. Shall I hand it to you?’
Billtoe cogitated. Coughing up a lump of recently swallowed rations for a re-chew.
‘No, soldier boy. How’s about I cuff you as per usual, then have a little look-see at the plan myself.’
Conor extended his hands, happy to comply. ‘Do I get my walks, Mister Billtoe? You promised I would.’
Billtoe smiled as he clamped on the cuffs, one eye on the table.
‘It’s your beard that has me grinning. A pathetic shrub. It ain’t ready for growing yet. You ought to trim it back, thicken it up. The Rams ain’t going to be ordered to by some runt with a bare gorse on his chin. And we’ll talk about walks after I have a good study of this drawing.’
Billtoe plucked the page from the table with two grubby fine-boned fingers.
‘You know, I’ve been talking to a few mates. Apparently there’s a German makes twelve-shot revolvers.’ He spat a stream of tobacco juice on the flags, to show his displeasure.
‘But small calibre,’ argued Conor. ‘To accommodate the bullets. With this design the cylinder is actually a screw, so the bullets can be as big as you wish, and the weight is spread out more efficiently so it will work for rifles too.’
The design was preposterous and utterly unworkable, but looked pretty on paper.
‘I don’t know,’ grumbled Billtoe. ‘A screw, you say?’
‘Have one made. Like the balloons. Do a test.’
Billtoe folded the page roughly, stuffing it into a pocket.
‘That I will, Master Finn. And if this turns out to be a scatterfool’s daydream, the next time you see daylight will be on the day I toss you from the south wall.’
Conor nodded glumly, hoping his excitement did not shine from his forehead like the Hook Head lighthouse.
Billtoe had made a mistake. In his eagerness to see the revolver plan, he hadn’t noticed Conor’s sleight of hand, plugging the Bell and Bolton handcuffs, diverting the ratchet to one side. His hands were free, but it was not yet time to make use of this.
‘This is no daydream, Mister Billtoe. This is our future. You can register the patent, then perhaps pay a few bribes to get me out of here.’
Billtoe feigned great indignance. ‘Bribes! Bribes, you say. I am deeply offended.’
Conor swallowed, a man holding his nerve. ‘Let’s speak plain, Mister Billtoe. I am in this hole for life, unless you can pull me out of it. I’m not expecting freedom right away…’
Billtoe chuckled. ‘I am relieved to hear it. The pressure is on, says I to meself. Immediate freedom or no deal. But you’re not expecting freedom, so there’s a worry lifted.’
‘But I would dearly love a cell on the surface. Or near it. Maybe a mate to share with. Malarkey would be suitable, I think.’
‘I bet he would. Lovely and cosy, all Rams together. No wheedling now, Finn. First I have the model made, and when it doesn’t explode in my face, then we parley.’
‘But, Mister -’
Billtoe held up a flat hand.
‘No. Not a word more, soldier boy. Your balloons have not taken flight yet. I may be coming for you in the morning with a Fenian pike.’