PART 3: AIRMAN
CHAPTER 12: ANGEL OR DEVIL
Little Saltee, 1894
On the night Arthur Billtoe met the devil, he was indulging himself in one of his favourite pastimes. The prison guard was on the skive in a comfy spot near the cliffs on the island’s seaward side. Billtoe had half a dozen such spots all over the island, places he could set down his head when prison life did for his nerves.
Dossing off was not a simple thing on a walled island with a fort perched on the south-eastern wedge and a dozen lookout towers along the wall itself.
Stupid electric lighting, Billtoe often thought. How’s a man supposed to grab a kip?
This particular comfy spot was Billtoe’s favourite, a shallow little dugout near the salsa garden, fifteen paces from the base of the wall. The floor was an ancient tarp the ferry boys were flinging, and the roof was one of the old doors from Wandering Heck’s days, frame and all, still on the hinges. The entire thing was near invisible from the outside, covered as it was with mud, grass and scrub that had crept down over the door.
Billtoe felt a swell of pride every time he sneaked himself into its pungent, welcoming darkness. Of all his doss spots, this was his favourite. Dry as a bone come hell or high water, and he could uncork the spy-hole and use it as a chimney, which saved him revealing his embers to the watch.
One more smoke, thought Billtoe. One more and then back on the job.
Arthur Billtoe had been spending more and more time in his hidey-holes in the six months since Conor Finn had disappeared. He wasn’t nursing a tender spot for the soldier boy, but he was fearful that Marshall Bonvilain had a plan for that young man, and him being dead was not part of that plan.
On the night of Finn’s disappearance, Billtoe had stood in the chimney stack roaring for hours. When that had proved fruitless, he had fetched a twelve-year-old Cockney boy who was doing a dozen or so years for robbing toffs, and sent him up the stacks with a promise of a few years off his sentence. The boy came down empty-handed after half a day, and Billtoe sent him right back up again at gunpoint. Forty-eight more hours in the labyrinth and the boy came back down with bloody knees and no news. It was no use. Conor Finn was not up there. Somehow, Arthur Billtoe had been duped.
Then he began to wonder about the butcher who had become entangled in one of the coronation balloons.
Could that have been Finn? Could soldier boy have got above ground somehow?
Billtoe could never know for certain and this itched him like a beetle crawling under his skin. Maybe Finn was desiccated in the chimneys, or perhaps he had a lungful of brine in Saint George’s Channel. Dead was dead and bones was bones. But that wouldn’t be the end of it. Sooner or later Bonvilain would come looking for his special prisoner and then all hell would be brought down on Arthur Billtoe’s head.
Unless. Unless…
Unless the marshall would be fooled by his deception. Billtoe had considered upping sticks and hopping a steamer to New York when Finn disappeared; one of his possible fathers was in New York, if he were still alive. Even if he weren’t, then there could be some form of estate. But that was all eating rat and calling it turkey. He hadn’t the money for the Atlantic, nor would he have with a year of saving. It was frustrating to have a fortune in stolen diamonds that he could not convert into hard cash.
Anyway, things were rosy on the island at the present moment. He was Bonvilain’s boy, what with his coronation balloons being such a success. Pretty soon, he might find himself at one end of a promotion’s handshake. Maybe then Arthur Billtoe might be in a position to smuggle some of his diamonds off the island, and then maybe he could travel first class on that steamer to New York.
Until then, he would have to pray to whatever god would have him that Marshall Bonvilain did not look too closely at the bearded youth he had slung into Conor Finn’s cell. The boy was roughly the same age, build and colouring. After a few beatings he had the same haunted eyes and lopsided looks. It could be the same young man, if you didn’t look too hard. Billtoe hoped that Conor Finn was a simple hostage job and not someone with facts in his skull, because if it was information that the marshall was after, then he’d best be looking up high and down low, because he wouldn’t be finding it in Conor Finn’s cell.
Billtoe had a sudden idea.
I should cut out the ringer’s tongue. Say it happened in a fight with Malarkey. The marshall couldn’t hold me responsible for that, as it was he who ordered me to set Malarkey on the boy.
That, as far as Billtoe was concerned, was a capital idea, far better than salsa gardens or coronation balloons. Or twelve-shot revolvers for that matter, which had turned out to be a pile of fool’s gold. A Kilmore gunsmith friend of Billtoe’s had nearly lost a finger trying to build that particular weapon.
I will slice that boy’s tongue out as soon as I get back, thought Billtoe, tapping his boot to make sure his good knife was nestled there against his shin.
Mightily pleased with this notion, Billtoe blew a final flute of smoke through the peephole, then stubbed out his cigarette on a clamshell he kept in the hidey-hole for that purpose. He toed the door open a crack to release any lingering smoke or smells, then clambered up into the darkness like a corpse rising from its grave.
Not only will cutting that ringer’s tongue out serve a purpose, vis-à-vis my plan, but it will also improve my mood.
Billtoe’s general routine was to hug the wall until he reached a stairwell, then trot up as if he were simply taking the air. No one would challenge him, especially since the coronation. He was a big shot now, was Arthur Billtoe.
That’s Mister Billtoe, to you, Pike.
As he had become fond of saying lately.
The night was overcast, with barely a star winking through the clouds. The Wall crenellations had an orange haze drawn above their blocks by the electric lighting. Billtoe used the orange line as a marker, easy to navigate by. He nipped across the springy rock grass under cover of darkness, a little sharpish as it turned out, because his boot heel slipped on a pat of moss and he went down on his back. The wind went out of him like dust from a beaten rug.
Billtoe lay there on his back, wheezing and gasping, when suddenly the clouds parted, letting a silver guinea moon shine through. When Billtoe recovered his wind, his lips spread in a plug-stained smile, because finally, after so many years, he could make out the man in the moon that everyone prattled on about. Must be the angle, because before this moment he had never seen anything but smudges.
I can see the face now for the first time. And I get to cut out a prisoner’s tongue. Happy day.
Then, through the gap in the clouds came some kind of figure. A man with wings. Flying.
This kind of event was so strange, so impossible, that Billtoe was not even surprised initially.
A man with the wings of a bird. An angel in black.
The angel banked sharp starboard so as not to overshoot the island, then descended in a tight curl, spiralling down until Billtoe could hear the craft as well as see it. It creaked, flapped and fluttered and the human-looking creature fought it as though he were being borne away by a great eagle.
I know what is happening here, Billtoe realized.
Arthur Billtoe had in his life read two books. London’s Most Gruesome Murders by Sy Cocillée, which he found most educational, and The Noble Indian by Captain George Toolee, which he had hoped would concern itself with settler massacres and scalping, but which actually turned out to be an in-depth study of the Indians’ culture. Billtoe had almost tossed the book into the fire, but it had cost him a few shillings so he persevered. One chapter described a tent known as the sweat lodge, where the Indians got themselves good and smoked up until their spirit guide appeared.