Castles Made of Sand (45 page)

So I will be okay. Somehow, I will be all right.

The arena was thronged as she wandered through it. Why don’t they stay away? Because they’ve forgotten everything Ax tried to tell them, thought Fiorinda. They can’t see any difference between us and the fucking Celtics. It’s all the Counterculture, isn’t it? It’s all green-is-good, wild-and-free, rock-and-roll. Ah well, it just goes to show. People
actively prefer
the crappy junk food.

Bless. Little thirteen-year-old boy, bug-eyed, mud to the armpits, must have slept in a binbag out in the rain last night. Bless. Evil-tempered woman that sells tofu salad wraps that taste of ammonia. Bless, naked woman with stupid expression… She reached Rupert the White Van Man’s van,
Anansi’s Jamaica Kitchen
, and bought a cup of dandelion and chicory ‘coffee’ with a hefty slug of cognac. Rupert didn’t want her to pay, but she pleaded with him and he took her money, for old time’s sake. Rastaman, there’s more grey in your dreads than the first day I met you. But your smile is still wonderful. Bless you, Rupert.

She had no idea what this ‘bless’ business meant. She couldn’t remember how long she’d been doing it. Most likely it was just a nervous tick. But if he can curse, maybe I can bless. It’s worth a try. If there is justice in heaven…

Unfortunately, all the evidence we have says no.

She saw DARK coming towards her. They’d come down from Teesside a week ago: she’d been rehearsing with them. She was hoping she would not fuck up too badly on stage this afternoon. But hey, what if I do? It surely won’t be the first time. Though it might be the last.

Not everybody at Reading hated the takeover, but enough did to make the atmosphere backstage of Main Stage poisonous. The Second Chamber Group had decided to turn Mayday into a political rally, with public speakers dominating the bands. Green lords and ladies were swanning around, very pleased with themselves: infuriatingly delighted to be
hanging out with the Few
. Benny Preminder looked particularly happy. Here he was in the inner sanctum, and not a thing the rockstars could do.

The old guard, the rockstars themselves, were keeping themselves to themselves, as far as they dared. Fiorinda sat with DARK—Cafren Free, Fil Slattery, Gauri Mostel, Charm Dudley and Harry Child. Rob Nelson and Dilip Krishnachandran were with Anne-Marie’s helpmate, Smelly Hugh: who was recounting a puzzling cartoon he’d seen in
Weal
.

‘Fucked if I know what it meant. You know those tigers Fergal shot? Male and female. Big cat and a littler cat, right? Well, in this cartoon, it’s like, the tigers are Sage and Fiorinda, and Fergal is protecting Ax, so he kills them.’

‘Well bizarre—’ muttered Rob vaguely. Smelly was a slow thinker. Explaining
anything
to him would drive you up the wall.

‘Yeah, but it’s not really Ax. It’s meant to be
England
, so that makes… Er. Either of you two know what leg-iti-mate succession means?’

‘It means
bollocks
,’ Dilip yelled at him, beyond endurance. ‘It’s
bollocks
—’

‘Oh,’ said Hugh, meekly. ‘Right… I was only asking.’

‘
Hey
,’ Rob gripped the mixmaster’s arm, ‘calm down, DK.’

Chip and Verlaine came into the area. They saw Fergal and went right up, pleased to note that he had several fully tooled-up media persons in close attendance. They’d thought hard about what they had to do. They knew it was on the cards that they’d end up getting shot. Or macheted to pieces: some of the weapons around the Irishman were not very civilised. But they had to confront him in public, in a way that didn’t involve the others; and where they had a chance of being heard before the minders intervened. Backstage at Mayday was their choice. They were sure this was what Ax would have done: take the direct action, sort the details later.

‘Uh, Fergal,’ said Chip. ‘We want to show you something.’

Verlaine laid a pair of gleaming cells on the plastic tabletop in front of Fergal, and held up a third so the sunlight brought the colourful image to life.

‘These are scans of your brain, Ferg. Taken in that hospital in Sweden, where you got your natural, organic memory machinery burned out.’

‘We can only think of one reason you’d do that,’ said Chip. ‘We think you’ve got a big implant. We think you went all the way, ditched your human self, and it’s just a bunch of
evil
,
futuristic
anti-Gaia
microchips that’s talking to us—’

‘Because otherwise you can’t be walking around, with scans like this.’

The Adjuvants had scripted this with care, trying to make the language simple but arresting. They spoke loudly and clearly, but with good-humoured calm. They hoped they sounded like Tarantino gangsters,
interesting
gangsters,
not the kind that instantly needed shooting…
They had calculated rightly. Nobody pulled a gun, Fergal himself seemed fascinated. By the end of their delivery the whole crowd around Fergal, celebs and minders, liggers and media folk, was attentive, silent and mystified. The music and the muffled crowd noise from the arena surged up, suddenly vivid. In the background Fiorinda was on her feet, white as milk, Charm and Gauri holding her back—

‘So we want you to take a new scan, F-fergal,’ said Chip, beginning to quake.

‘Prove it isn’t true,’ explained Ver. ‘But if you’re
not
this person, who are you?’

Fergal stared at them. There was a murmur of astonishment from those onlookers who could see his face. ‘Fock—’ he whispered. ‘Fock—’

A slack-jawed old man with sea-green eyes, his voice as thin as a reed. His head began to jerk and nod—

‘
Fergal!
’ said one of his own men, grabbing his arm. ‘Come on. Get you out—’

But Fergal didn’t get up. He fell down. He fell from the chair like a suit of clothes folding.

‘Heart attack—’ cried someone, urgently.

‘Oh
God
, what’s that smell—?’ cried someone else.

Fergal Kearney lay on the bruised grass, shrinking like a wax model held in the flames, his clothes wetly stained, his face melting from the bones. He lay there, in seconds, dead and putrefied.

Fiorinda had stopped struggling and stood transfixed. No one was looking at her yet. A bunch of the politicos rushed up to the body, Benny Preminder at the fore, brandishing his dogtags—an absurd gesture, but he didn’t look absurd.

‘I’ll take care of this. I’m Ben Preminder, Countercultural Liaison Secretary, this is mine.’ He stooped over Fergal, theatrically grave, and stood up again. ‘Someone call the police. This man may have died by witchcraft!’

A babble of disbelief, a surge of people trying to get a look, or to get away.

‘No one leaves!’ cried Benny. ‘There are suspects who must be questioned!’

‘Come on, princess,’ muttered Charm Dudley, putting a ferocious lock on her singer’s upper arm and hauling. ‘Out of here.’

‘What? Why should I—?’ gasped Fiorinda, shaking, mulish, resistant.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ hissed Gauri. ‘Just don’t argue.’

If they could have got her onstage they might have made it. The enemy wouldn’t have wanted their own goons grabbing the princess in front of that crowd, and it would have been a brave Thames Valley police chief who allowed the arrest of Fiorinda on Red Stage at Reading Festival Site. But they didn’t think fast enough, and Fiorinda was screaming to the Few and friends that they were to LET THIS HAPPEN! SORT IT LATER! So what support they had was scattered and uncertain. It was DARK against the world, and of course they lost. The police turned up and took over. Fiorinda was escorted to Rivermead, where she spent the next days in her rooms under armed guard, while Benny marshalled his evidence. Then she was formally arrested and charged with the murder. This would be the first ever attempt to enforce the witchcraft law. No one knew how the case should be handled, they were looking back hundreds of years for precedent.

But Benny thought he could make it stick.

The Heads tried to race back from Caer Siddi, but they were stopped at the border on the English side, hassled, kept waiting for personal transport permit vouchers; and finally informed there was a curfew due to Fergal Kearney’s death, so they couldn’t travel until the next morning. In the end it took them three days to reach London. They found the Insanitude crawling with strange hippies, who said they were looking for evidence of criminal magic. Allie had called the police, but the Met declined to intervene.

Of course there was stacks of ‘evidence’: as for criminal, it depends where you draw the line. The hippies left eventually, taking random items that had caught their fancy. A set of bongos, several expensive fx generators; scented candles.

Fiorinda had been taken from Rivermead to a grisly Victorian remand centre on the outskirts of Reading. She had been allowed no visitors, and she hadn’t been allowed to speak to a lawyer—on the grounds that there was as yet no procedure for dealing with someone who could kill by magic. The Heads got in because the assistant governor was a fan. She was very confused about Fiorinda, but she couldn’t resist George, Bill and Peter; fresh from Caer Siddi, where her hero Aoxomoxoa was pursuing his thrilling quest.

They met the heartbreaking sight of the rock and roll brat literally behind bars. At least the screws left the room, so they had some illusion of privacy. ‘It’s to protect you,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Iron’s supposed to be proof against witchcraft.’

‘Does it work?’ asked Peter.

‘Well, I’m still here. I haven’t turned into a bat and flown away.’

‘Don’t talk like that,’ said George. ‘We’ll get you out, my love. This is ludicrous.’

‘Fiorinda,’ said Bill, urgently, ‘
don’t
talk like that. Don’t be a fucking idiot. Nobody has a sense of humour when you’re on the wrong side of the law.’

She smiled. ‘
Py kefer Myghter Arthur? Ny wor den-vyth an le
—’

It was the first half of the Cornish couplet that served as password and countersign for the secret resistance. George felt as if someone was squeezing his heart in a vice, ‘
Whath nyns yw marow; efa vew, hag arta efa dhe
.’

Where is Arthur? No one knows, but he lives and he’s coming back
.

‘I’ve been working on my Brythonic intonation. How am I doing?’

‘Not bad,’ he croaked.

Unfortunately they were no longer in touch with ‘Lurch’, the American girl who was convinced that Ax Preston was alive. The Insanitude direct link with the US had been spotted and closed down. There was no more solid
evidence
that Ax was alive than there’d ever been—but they knew how Fiorinda had been clinging to that lifeline.

They would not tell her it was gone, it would have been needless cruelty.

The situation looked ominous. Fiorinda’s personal popularity was immense, but Fergal had died and rotted in minutes, in seconds; before upwards of a hundred witnesses.
Millions
had seen his death now, televised. As for Chip and Verlaine’s bizarre story, forget it. The autopsy had beeen scrupulously correct. The inside of Fergal’s skull had been soup, nothing could be said about strange brain surgery, but there’d certainly been no microchips. Meanwhile Benny was amassing witnesses who would recount ‘strange rumours’ about Fiorinda going back to when she was fourteen; denouncing the Few as traitors who had been getting rich off the Reich (helped by Fiorinda’s evil magic); setting himself up as the defender of Ax’s honour.

A few brave media folk were holding out, but this rewriting of history was published and broadcast widely. Worst of all, no one had talked about it, for obvious reasons, but most of her closest friends had suspected for a while that Fiorinda was ‘a witch’. She must go on denying it, they must all deny it, there was no question of coming clean now: but it wasn’t a good start. Some of the Few would be in real problems if they were questioned under oath.

They tried to give her a hopeful spin. You’re the nation’s sweetheart, he’s just pissing around, he won’t dare to hurt you. Fuck, there’s an
army
of staybehinds and drop-outs who’d
die
before they’d let anything happen—

Fiorinda paced her share of the room, arms folded over her breast, head bent. She came up to the bars, and her eyes flashed in that strange Fiorinda way, pupils flared wide and then down to pinpoints.

‘George. Did Sage trust Alain?’

‘He’s not
dead
, Fiorinda,’ said George. ‘You got no reason to say he’s
dead
—’

‘Did Sage, who is dead or he would be here, trust Alain de Corlay? I think Alain’s okay, but I know I’m losing track, so help me with this.’

He gave up. ‘The boss trusts Alain. They got their differences, but it’s surface, playfighting, er, more or less. Alain’s solid.’

‘Good. I want you three to take Marlon and Mary to Brittany.’

‘Fio, I think we should stay in England,’ protested Bill.

‘
You think wrong
. Think mediaeval,
idiots
. I have no child. Ax has no child. One of the three has a son. Listen to what you’ve been telling me. Suddenly Benny is Ax’s champion. Legitimate succession. Get it? Now convince Mary however you like, but get Marlon out of the
fucking
way, before he’s a
dead
legitimate heir.’