Airman

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.
My hidey-hole is like a sweat lodge. Now my spirit guide has appeared, and it’s a swearing bird-man.
The bird-man contraption came down fast, wings cracking as the air filled their sails. It seemed as though the creature would break itself against the rocks, like a sparrow against the window – which Billtoe always found amusing – when at the last possible second the angel creature pulled up his nose, gliding in for a smooth landing.
His speed took him running for a dozen steps until he managed to halt himself.
Billtoe gazed up, terrified at this otherworldly creature who loomed above him, the moon haloing his head. It was close enough to stab. But what would be the point? There was no killing a creature like this.
The creature was dressed in black from the top of his leather cap to the tip of his knee-length riding boots. His face was concealed by a pair of glassed goggles and a scarf pulled tightly across the mouth. His breath was ragged though the scarf, and his chest heaved.
Something twinkled on the angel’s chest. An insignia of some kind. Two golden wings, springing from a letter ‘A’. Could it stand for Angel?
Arthur Billtoe wished with all his heart to remain still and silent. He felt once more like the seven-year-old boy he had been in a Dublin alley, hiding in a water barrel, being hunted by a drunken crone for the sixpence in his pocket. His life was worth no more now than it had been then. This creature would kill him with a glance. He longed to draw the grass and weeds around him like a blanket and sleep until this fearsome flying creature had departed.
Do not whimper, he told himself. Whimpering at times of danger had always been a failing of his, and had earned him bruises more than once in the past.
Hold it in, Arthur me boy. Suck it down to yer boots.
He might have managed it, had the creature not pulled a sabre from its scabbard at his belt and began plunging it into the ground, as though seeking to wound mother earth. Each thrust brought him closer to where Billtoe lay shuddering.
Finally he could absorb the fright no more.
I will die if I don’t speak. My poor ticker will burst her spring.
‘What are you?’ he hissed, the power of his emotions lifting him to his feet. ‘What do you want with Arthur Billtoe?’
The creature reared back, then steadied himself. Its glass eyes flashed orange in the lamp glow, then blackened as they landed on the prison guard.
‘Billtoe,’ it growled. ‘Arthur Billtoe!’
If Billtoe could have, he would have changed his name on the spot, such was the hatred in the creature’s voice. These winged types must be hateful by nature.
While Billtoe was contemplating this, the airman darted forward, his curved wings rearing upwards from the sudden movement, lifting the black-clad stranger into the air. He dropped to earth like a giant snarling gargoyle within arm’s length of Billtoe, a fact he put to good use by clasping the guard’s windpipe in steel fingers.
‘Billtoe,’ he said again, laying his sabre blade flat along Billtoe’s pale throat.
‘A-are you angel or devil, sir?’ stammered the guard. ‘I needs to know. Are you taking me up the ways, or down?’
The glass circles studied him for a long second. Billtoe felt the blade slide along his Adam’s apple, he felt the keen cut sing. Then the blade stopped its deadly arc and the creature spoke.
‘I can be angel or devil, monsieur,’ it said. ‘But in your case, I will always be a devil.’
‘Will you kill me now?’ asked Billtoe, his voice almost a shriek.
‘No, monsieur, not now. But you are making a lot of noise so…’
The devil lifted his sabre high, and brought the pommel down on Billtoe’s brow. The guard collapsed like a dropped puppet.
He was not quite unconscious, but Billtoe thought it would be better to seek out the darkness, rather than open his eyes and incur the wrath of the airman. He kept his eyes closed and soon drifted away.
When Arthur Billtoe awoke, it was daybreak. His head felt like one giant wound, and the warden’s dog walker, Poole, was standing over him, encouraging the little terrier to use Billtoe’s boot as a piddling spot.
‘Geddoff!’ snarled Billtoe, kicking at the dog, then remembered the French devil, who could still be in the area.
He rolled himself from the marshy puddle in which he had lain, and scrambled to all fours, unable to go any higher because of the pain hammering his skull.
‘Devil,’ he panted. ‘French. Big ruddy wings. Flying about like a nighthawk. Did you see it?’
Poole’s response to this lunacy was to pretend he didn’t hear. He coughed furiously to cover Billtoe’s chatter, then chastised the terrier.
‘Bad, Sir Percival, bad, making to piddle on Mister Billtoe like that, and he coming out of a dream, the details of which I have no desire to hear. I would kick you, Percy, if you weren’t such a lovely lad.’
He picked up the dog and delivered the message he had been sent with.
‘Warden is looking for you,’ he said, unable to meet Billtoe’s eyes. ‘He says he’s full fed up of you and your hidey-holes. And you can either fill ’em in yourself, or he’ll fill ’em in with you inside. And that’s what he said to me, word for word. I been repeating it to myself over and over.’
Billtoe was still wide-eyed, his gaze darting around the rocky area, a thin string of drool hanging from his lips.
‘He found me. He found me. I was in the barrel with sixpence, and he found me.’
Poole decided to misunderstand. It was easier. ‘Yes, sir. The warden finds everyone. He must have eyes in his backside.’
Poole chanced a flash of wit as he trotted after Sir Percival back to the guards’ billet.
‘Or maybe he has a set of wings and he flies over the island at night looking down on us.’
Billtoe sat himself down on a rock, prodded the goose-egg bump on his forehead and began to cry.
The sky

Conor Finn was flying, but it was not the gentle experience he had hoped for. The glider was a beast, and to conquer it meant constantly wrestling with the contraption as they soared through the air. Truth be told, it did not feel like soaring, rather a buffeting battle with the elements. The wings banged, cracked and jerked, threatening to snap their ribs with every gust of wind. The harness bit into his chest, restricting his breathing and even a collision with a sea bird would send him spiralling to the earth. Nevertheless, Conor would not have missed the experience.
I am the moon, he thought. I am the stars.
And then.
Look out. A seagull.
The glider was holding together as well as he could have hoped, though he would swear that the third rib to starboard was splintering. He would slip it from its sleeve later, and replace it with a new rod. The steering bar, one of his own innovations, was working perfectly, allowing him to shift his weight and exert a certain control over his trajectory. But it was a tenuous control, and one that could be contemptuously overruled by the smallest updraught or current.
The night sky was heavy with clouds, reflecting the lights of nearby Wexford and Kilmore on their underbellies. Every now and then, Conor passed below a hole in the clouds and the full moon would spotlight him with her silver rays. Conor hoped that from below his silhouette would be that of a large bird, but nevertheless he was glad of his decision to use black fabric for the wings. Dyed black not painted. Paint would be too weighty.
Up close and in broad daylight, it would be obvious that the glider was little more than a cleverly designed kite. Two elongated eight-foot curved ovals for wings, linked by a central circular space where the pilot hung suspended in his leather harness. A short-stemmed tail rudder with leg braces and a nudge pole that could be tipped by the feet, and a trapezoidal steering bar which was attached directly to the main wing strut. In theory, if one could successfully locate rising thermals, it was possible to fly forever, suspended below a glider like this. Of course, this was a very optimistic theory, which did not allow for wear and tear, bad science and the simple fact that thermals were only slightly less difficult to locate than unicorns.
Conor himself was outfitted in the sturdiest ballooning gear, leather chin-strapped cap, goggles and tight boots. His uniform was a convincing copy of that worn by the French Army’s aeronauts, but all in black down to the trouser piping, and no insignia’s apart from a mysterious winged ‘A’, which could possibly stand for Aeronautique.
If I do happen to crash on the Saltees, thought Conor, I will look for all the world like a French airman, who does not want to be identified as such. In other words, a flying spy. That should stoke Bonvilain’s mistrust of the French Army.
It was a small comfort, but twisting a thorn of disquiet into Bonvilain’s heart was better than dying and leaving nothing but a corpse.
His luck had held tonight. A good launch from the tunnel, with everything performing as it should. The steam fan had popped a few of the tunnel planks out of their grooves, but that was easily repaired, and there hadn’t been any great loss of wind power. His mounting mechanism had worked a thousand times in suspension from a tower beam, but tonight it had worked in the open air and he had managed to lean forward in the body harness and ratchet his legs back into the stirrups. This was one of his major innovations, though there were a thousand small ones, from the steam shaping of the ribs, to the tail rudder.
The coastline approached, and the black sea – with the Saltee Islands glowing upon it like two nests of fireflies. The moment he cleared Saint Patrick’s Bridge, the long bar of shingle that curved from the mainland to point like an arthritic finger towards Little Saltee, the thermal he had been riding disappeared and his gilder stalled, tilting forward at the nose.
Conor was prepared for this, but not ready. If the stall lasted more than a few moments, he would plummet to earth to a certain death.
In the event of a stall, hold the nose down and set loose the bands.
There were three ropes tied off to the steering bar and all three were linked to Conor’s wrist. He released the bar, tugging sharply downwards, untying the hitches on all three ropes.
The central rope was connected to a hinged forward panel – the beak — which pulled the nose down. The other two slipped from the blades of two wooden propellers, which were immediately set whirring by the released energy of two stout rubber cords.
The rubber-band propellers would only work once per flight, and the amount of thrust they provided was minimal, but it might be enough to pull him out of a stall.
It was. The glider jumped forward barely a yard, but it righted itself and caught the sea breeze. Conor felt it running along the length of his body, smelled the salt in each gust.
Before him, the Wall lights of Little Saltee marked his target in the blackness.
Heart-shaped, he thought. From up here, the island looks like a heart.
And then. I am returning to Little Saltee. God help me, I am going back.
And he could not suppress a shudder that was more dread than cold.
On the night of his daring escape, Conor had spiralled flaming from the sky like Icarus of legend, crashing into a lifeboat on Victoria’s royal yacht, which was a-bustle with preparations for departure.
Conor Finn lay undiscovered below a scattered dozen of cork life preservers for the duration of the overnight voyage, unable to move even if the rough hand of discovery landed on his shoulder. The hand never came, and Conor was able to sleep until the yacht blew its horn to alert a skiff in its path.
Fortune had smiled on him once more in London, where he had been able to slip overboard a couple of leagues out of harbour and swim to a slipway on the Thames.
Conor stole a jacket, which fortunately had some bread and cheese in the pocket, then spent the remainder of the day walking the docks, listening for an Irish accent. By dusk he had spotted a group of London Irish who had too few teeth and too many tattoos to be Customs spies.
If you ever do make it out of this hellhole, Malarkey had often said, find my brother Zeb on the London docks. Show him the ink and he will look after you.
Conor rolled up his sleeve for the dockworkers, revealing his Battering Ram tattoo, and spoke the magic word. Malarkey. Inside the hour, he was up to his neck in soapy water with a mug of coffee in one hand and a fine cigar in the other. Zeb Malarkey was a man of means, most of these means being fruits of his own personal import tax.
Zeb himself had arrived at the inn a couple of hours later, and without a word of greeting examined both Conor’s tattoo and the Little Saltee brand.
How’s Otto? he wanted to know. How’s his hair?
Conor supplied the crime boss with as much information as he could. Hair silky, health fine. Nice little line in rackets going.
Zeb had already heard of Conor through a prison guard on Little Saltee who took bribes to pass on information.
Conor Finn? The soldier boy. Otto speaks highly of you. Says you put order on the Rams what is locked up. Fancy doing the same here?
It was tempting, simply to shed his old life completely, like a reptile shrugging off a brittle skin. But Conor knew enough of his own heart to recognize that being a waterfront enforcer was not for him. He may not be Conor Broekhart any more, but he was not entirely divorced from his mother’s morals. He could hurt another person to survive, but not for payment.
He was an airman. That was his destiny. He needed to stick to the plan. Go to Ireland, build the means to reclaim his diamonds and then sail for America with the funds to equip his own laboratory.
So he told Zeb Malarkey thank you, but no. He had business on Little Saltee. Business that could make the Rams a lot of money. Perhaps Zeb had a few men in Ireland or perhaps on the Saltees who could help?
The Rams have men everywhere. What kind of business? Revenge?
Not exactly. There are items on the prison grounds that belong to me and your brother. I gave Otto my word that I would see him free. My thanks for his friendship these past years.
Zeb Malarkey tossed him a purse of guineas.
Go then, islander. Go and spread chaos.
Which was exactly what happened.
Little Saltee was suddenly below him. In less than three minutes he had crossed the two-and-a-half-mile wide band of ocean between the prison island and the mainland. If he had been one of an army, the island would have been overrun before they could sound the warning cannon.
Conor’s body ached from the constant stress on his joints and he was relieved to pull back on the bar and swing his glider into a descending curve. In test flights, he had succeeded in landing the glider inside the fences of a field far smaller than this island. But that field had hedges instead of guards. And the hedges were populated by badgers and squirrels, none of whom were likely to aim a rifle at flying creatures.
Even at night, a bird’s-eye view was very revealing. There were three guards on the wall, all at the northern end in the shelter of a tower. Conor could see the glowing bowls of their pipes bobbing close together. They should be evenly spaced and on the move, but centuries of quiet had bred complacency in them.
There were actually two walls on Little Saltee. The main outer ring, and an inner wall that circled the prison building. In between the two was the work area where inmates took exercise and toiled over their salsa gardens. This was where Conor wished to land. Where the diamonds were buried.
A thermal suddenly took his craft, causing him to overshoot his preferred landing spot by a hundred yards. Conor kicked the nudge bar to extreme port, and pointed the nose down. This put him into a tail-spinning descent, but his alternative was to land in the ocean. It would be a pity to drown tonight, having flown further in a glider than any man before him.
Victor would be proud.
The thought unsettled him. In prison he had tried not to think of the family and friends from his old life, but since his escape he could think of little else.
I could simply go back. Explain. Father could challenge Bonvilain.
Yes. And be murdered for his pains. Mother too. Best to simply nail the door shut on the past and begin his new life.
Conor dropped quickly. Rocks and hillocks grew from what had been syrupy black space. The glider fought him all the way down, and he fought back, cursing at his infernal craft, refusing to allow it its head.
Once inside the wall’s shelter, the turbulence disappeared and the glider grew docile and sweet, lifting her neck graceful as a swan. Conor’s boot heels dug into soft earth, and he ploughed twin furrows for ten feet before he cranked the wings up behind him with a winch on his belt, and came to a halt.
There was no time to rejoice in his landing, or congratulate himself on the effectiveness of his collapsible wings, though at the moment they were technically only hoisted. To be fully collapsed, two struts had to be removed.
To work, to work.
The diamonds were buried one foot beyond the northernmost corner of each salsa patch. Seven patches, seven bags of diamonds. The nearest prison garden was virtually at his feet. If he worked quickly and was not discovered, he could possibly retrieve three bags tonight.
Conor drew a sabre from his belt, using it to dig into the sod, searching for diamonds, but was distracted from his labour by the sight of a dark and distraught figure rising from the earth.
A trap. I am trapped.
But that was not the truth of it. The shivering figure spoke. ‘What are you? What do you want with Arthur Billtoe?’
Conor felt an anger so intense that it was physical. His brow burned and the sabre’s leather-bound pommel creaked in his fist.
‘Billtoe,’ he growled, springing forward. ‘Arthur Billtoe!’
The speed of his motion caught the air, and the wings jerked skywards. Conor was elevated briefly, but if Billtoe thought he could escape, he was wrong. Conor landed not two feet from the terrified guard, wrapping steel fingers round the man’s gullet.
How the tables have turned. Who is the master now? Not twenty yards from where you bullied and humiliated me.
‘Billtoe,’ he said again, laying his sabre blade flat along Billtoe’s pale throat.
‘A-are you angel or devil, sir?’ stammered the guard. ‘I needs to know. Are you taking me up the ways, or down?’
Conor considered killing him. The urge was strong. In all likelihood, this wretch had murdered Linus Wynter. He indulged this desire to the tune of a small cut on the guard’s neck. But he could not complete the motion.
Still not a killer, Linus might have said.
Stick to the plan. You are a French spy.
‘I can be angel or devil, monsieur,’ said Conor. ‘But in your case, I will always be a devil.’
‘Will you kill me now?’ cried Billtoe.
‘No, monsieur, not now,’ said Conor with more than a touch of regret. ‘But you are making a lot of noise so…’
He struck Billtoe sharply on the temple with the sabre’s hilt, relishing the thump of contact. Funny, the guard did not seem so threatening now, stretched in the grass. A coward without his gun or the weight of authority behind him.
Get the diamonds. One bag at least.
Conor’s plan to unearth three bags was shot. Billtoe could wake at any moment, and, tempting as the notion might be, he could not keep bashing the Billtoe’s skull all night. Neither could he bind and gag the man, as he did not have a rope or cloth. Something to remember for his next visit, should he survive this outing.
Conor returned to his digging, levering clods from the earth with the sabre. It occurred to him then that Malarkey could have lied, and secreted their booty in another spot, but Conor thought it was unlikely. In spite of inauspicious beginnings, Otto Malarkey had become his friend, and the Battering Rams had a strong sense of loyalty. They would mount the gallows’ steps before betraying another man who bore the mark.
Conor’s trust was warranted. His blade soon clinked against a clutch of diamonds. He put away the sabre and scrabbled in the dirt with his gloved fingers, pulling the pouch of diamonds from the earth.
One found. Six more to go.
He was tempted to try for another. With a second bag on his belt, his future would be secure and he could leave for America tomorrow.
Go now. Be prudent. Billtoe could wake at any second.
One more. Just one.
Conor ran to the second salsa bed, all the time imagining that Billtoe regained his senses.
Should I have killed him?
No. A dead guard would raise suspicions. There would be an investigation. Billtoe having conversations with a flying Frenchman on the other hand would be viewed as the ramblings of a drunkard, unless Bonvilain got wind of them.
Too late now. Fetch the second bag.
The salsa bed was further north along the wall’s curve. Conor ran close to the plinth, avoiding the swirling currents that flowed over the island’s hillocks, and also the salty mist that would weigh down his wings.
The glider needs to collapse further, he told himself. The wings catch every breath of air.
The second pouch was as easy to find as the first had been. Otto Malarkey had followed his instructions well. The bag slid from the earth, trailing clods and pebbles. It was the size and weight of a small rabbit.
Heavy enough. Two found.
Now it was most certainly time to fly. To attempt one more search was to invite disaster. Conor had a sudden image of passing the remainder of the night back in his old cell and a shudder rippled along his spine. He must be away.
The guards were doubtless huddled in the northern tower, filling their pipe bowls, so he would make his escape from the south. Conor returned to the base of the wall, and followed his nose until he found the garderobe, a privy hollowed into the base of the wall with a drain running through into the ocean. Garderobes were normally near the stairwell, so the guard would need as little time away from his post as possible.
And, just as he had hoped, the stairwell was a mere three paces past the garderobe, built as a stepped bulwark to the main wall. Conor crab-walked up, keeping his wings behind him, safe from damage, but open to gusts of wind. More than once he was forced to brace his legs against the efforts of his hoisted wings to drag him from the steps.
Not yet. Higher still.
There was neither sight nor sound of a sentry on the wall walk, though he himself would be visible plain enough as soon as he emerged from the stairwell. It was all exactly as planned, but for Billtoe. What in heaven’s name had the man been doing? Sleeping in the outdoors?
Conor lay his body flat along the top steps, peering along the wall’s curve at each side. The cobbles, worn smooth by centuries of patrol, shone orange in the electric light. The crenellated parapet was head high with rows of horizontal gun ports. The wind whistled through each one, sending up an eerie banshee howling.
An offshore wind. Still strong.
It would have been most fortuitous had the wind changed to a sea breeze, blowing back towards the mainland. But these were the kinds of odds that could not be relied upon. Take advantage when lady luck smiles, but do not plan for it. And so Conor’s immediate destination was not Kilmore, but Great Saltee, for that was where the wind was going.
Conor gathered his feet under him, pushing his harness lower. He gripped the wing-hoist lever in one hand and the rudder bar in the other.
Once more into the air.
He stood and ran across the wall walk. His footsteps seemed absurdly loud as his boots clacked on the stone. Surely the sounds would march along the wall to the guards’ tower.
Concentrate on your actions. The slightest slip could be the death of you.
It was curious, but sometimes the voice in Conor’s mind sounded like Victor Vigny.
I have a guardian angel, and he is French.
This made him grin, and so in spite of the life-or-death situation, it was a smiling Conor Finn who hoisted himself on to the Little Saltee parapet, and launched himself into the night sky.
I am flying home.
Sebber Bridge, Great Saltee

Pike generally worked the early shift on Little Saltee, then spent sunlight hours and leisure days on the big island, nursing his one-legged mother and fixing the cottage wall, which he had been working on now for fifteen years. When he wasn’t mixing mortar for the wall, Pike was making himself money hand over fist selling information to the Battering Rams.
Pike was never going to be in the gang’s inner circle, but he was a useful man in any situation because in spite of his apparent lack of grey matter, he had an uncanny knack of accumulating information. The warden, a political man, appreciated this and granted Pike extra leave time to hook him any court gossip he could, while the Battering Rams paid him handsomely for any Customs information he was able to wheedle from his mates on the docks. Two bags of coin per week and neither party any the wiser.
As well as information, Pike ran the odd errand for the Rams. Nothing violent that could see him hanged, and also he was an inveterate coward. His latest job was simplicity itself, if a little puzzling. Until further notice, on any night there was a stiff breeze from the mainland he was to tow a skiff around to Sebber Bridge and leave it there. Simple as that. Beach the boat on the shale outcrop below Promontory Fort, then row back up the coast to the harbour. No lights, no whistling nor singing sea shanties, or the Saltee Sharpshooters would put a bullet in his behind. Simply beach the boat and go. The skiff would make its own way back to Saltee Harbour the next day.
Simple orders, but not to Pike’s taste. Thanks to his double pay packet, he was well aware just how valuable good information was, and he felt certain that there were those who would pay to know what manner of person was picking up a skiff on Sebber Bridge in the wee hours. Not someone on the up and up, that was for certain. Honest citizens came and went through the harbour without the need for skulduggery like this.
The trick was how to sell the information without falling foul of the Battering Rams. But he could chew on that problem when he had some information to sell.
So Pike decided to delay his departure awhile, until the mystery sailor had set sail. Then he would know what kind of a nugget he had, and how much it was worth.
He concealed his own punt under a bank of weed, then crawled high into the rocks and settled in to wait.
After a couple of hours, he was regretting not bringing more tobacco along, and was considering stuffing his pipe with seaweed, when something whooshed overhead, causing him to drop his pipe altogether.
If that was a bat, then it was a big one. Low-flying gull more like, or a kestrel over from the mainland.
Pike had a vague sense of the creature’s bigness.
There would be some eating in a bird like that. A pity I don’t have my slingshot along. Even a gull can taste passable when you cook it right.
He wriggled forward out of his crevasse just in time to see a man with wings swoop in to land on Sebber Bridge, his heels dragging up arcs of shingle.
A flying man, he thought, flabbergasted. A man that can fly.
Pike knew instantly that this was the most valuable thing he would ever see. He pulled a pad from his pocket, licking the stub of a pencil that hung from a string on the binding.
A good tout never knows when a nugget will need recording. Keep your pencil close to your heart, and you’ll never miss a trick.
So, with his heart rattling his ribs and his fingers shaking, Pike sketched the winged airman hanging on to the skiff’s gunwale, lest the breeze carry him off to the moon.
He drew arrows pointing to the wings and above the arrows wrote wings, as if writing the word made what was before his eyes more believable. He noted it down when the airman pulled a lever and his wings were hoisted behind him. He drew a diagram of the harness and how it cradled the sky rider from shoulder to knee. He saw how the man took himself out of the harness like a lady from her bodice, and collapsed the whole contraption down by pulling out a few stays, till the wings folded up neater than a picnic blanket.
Perhaps I should just take those wings, thought Pike. That airman don’t look so big. I could part his ribs with my knife and present those wings to the warden. Perhaps that would be the best course of action.
But then he noticed a sabre on the man’s belt, and a revolver on his other hip. There was also the possibility that these airman types possessed strange mystical powers such as the evil eye, or the deathly hex.
Best leave it at pictures for today, he decided. Next time I will be prepared, and he will be relaxed. A nice short-handled axe should do the trick.
The airman stowed his gear neatly under the aft seat, then dug his toes into the shale, pushing off. The skiff slid sweetly into the dark water with no more of a splash than the waves were making on the north shore.
He’s gone, thought Pike. I am safe.
But perhaps he thought his thoughts too loudly, because the airman froze and turned his glass-goggled eyes towards the rocks. His head was cocked like a puzzled deer, and he scanned the higher levels with twin orange circles.
His eyes are on fire, thought Pike. He can see in the dark.
But then the strange flying man turned, leaping neatly into the skiff, his landing sending her scudding out across the water, prow slapping the waves. In seconds the dark sail unfurled, and she tacked to starboard wide of the island.
Pike sighed in relief.
Perhaps a short-handled axe will not do the job, he decided. Perhaps I need something with a long handle.