Liberation (I Am Margaret Book 3) (11 page)

Daring words. The EGD would be furious at being mocked on TV. Let’s hope Eduardo was able to get hold of some newspapers – if the presenter was anything to go by, the headlines might be entertainingly bold.

Now they were showing footage from the previous day, of another presenter going to the house of the parents of two of the escapees – sisters – to break the news. The mother gasped and put her hands over her face, her eyes peeping out, round and agonised with hope. The father asked over and over if it was true. He was shown a newspaper, then another, tears began to stream down his face, the mother gave little shrieks of joy and he spun her around, both their faces radiant with happiness.

Then the man remembered the camera. He stopped twirling with the mother, muttered something in her ear – they turned back to the news team, joy poorly hidden.

“So how does this make you feel?” asked the presenter idiotically – as though any words could express what’d just been displayed for all to see.

The woman said nothing, clearly afraid to speak truth and reluctant to lie.

“Obviously it is natural for any parent who has just discovered their children are to live,” said the father carefully, “to feel the greatest happiness imaginable. Uh…” He became a little less collected. “Is it known… where they are? Our Chloe and Justine?”

“The Underground have claimed responsibility for the so-called ‘Liberations’, so it is assumed the escaped reAssignees are probably somewhere in the African Free States with Margaret Verrall and her companions.”

“Africa!” hissed the mother, her face shining. “There’s no Extradition treaty with…” Her husband – sorry, registered partner – stepped on her foot and she shut up.

“Indeed,” said the presenter, straight-faced, “the EGD have already admitted there is no realistic possibility of recovering any of the lost reAssignees.”

“Oh, how terrible for them,” said the mother, equally straight-faced – and promptly dissolved into hysterical laughter. The father hustled her back into the house.

“They said ‘Liberations’,” said Bane smugly, as it went on to other news. “On TV. That’s good.”

“
So-called Liberations
,” said Jon precisely. “But yeah, they didn’t say raids. That is good.”

“However reluctant some people might be for the whole system to be brought to an end,” I said, “even the most selfish organ-grabbing bastard can’t help feeling some sympathy on an individual scale.”

“If you call seven hundred reAssignees
individual
,” said Bane dryly.

“Admittedly the numbers are large enough to cause the more selfish members of society some concern, but general public sympathy is still with us – just listen to those presenters!” I glanced at the clock. “Oh no, the sentencing’s back on in five minutes…”

“Thought you didn’t want to watch it.”

I glared at him.

“S’like a train crash. Can’t help looking now I’ve seen it start.”

“Speaking from personal experience, train crashes are over before you know what’s happening.”

“Metaphor, Bane.”

He laughed.

“Come on, if we’re quick we can make sandwiches in the kitchenette before they start again.”

We both dived into the little room, pulling out bread and marg and cheese. Jon hovered helpfully in the doorway until we sent him to sit down again, and we joined him just as the jury began to file back in.

“Here you go, my invalid friend.” Bane deposited a plate in Jon’s lap.

“Ah, thank you, my culinarily challenged mate. Margo, do you think this is safe to eat?”

“He only buttered the bread,” I assured him gravely.

They put the Major – sorry, Mr Everington – back in his seat – he hunched pathetically, arms wrapped around himself, trembling like a leaf. What sort of ‘break’ had he had? He hadn’t even done anything to embarrass the bastards today!

But after the speedy conclusion of the summary, the judge asked the convicted if there was anything he wanted to say.

“My God, he’s a slow learner!” said Bane.

I cuffed him absent-mindedly for taking the Lord’s name in vain, watching as Everington slowly raised his head and stumbled to his feet. He looked dazed, like a man rallying himself for one last effort. Yeah, the judge really was a slow learner. ‘Cause whatever they’d done during the break wasn’t going to be enough, was it?

“It doesn’t make
sense
,” Everington whispered, staring at the gallery. “Can’t you see it doesn’t make sense? If I was helping her escape, why would I mark her like that? So
obviously
…”

His finger traced a cross on his own forehead.

“Must have been such a nuisance for her…”

Bane had gone rigid beside me.

Oh, why did you have to say that?

***+***

9

BLACK FUCHSIAS

Bane took my head in his hands and stared at the scar.

“
He
did that to you?”

“Margo…” Jon exclaimed at almost the same moment. “I’m so sorry, I thought it was the EuroGov…”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said quickly.

“Matter?” Bane’s tone was ferocious. “He cut you up! He tortured you!”

“Why?” Jon sounded puzzled. “I thought you said the EuroGov tried to break you?”

“They wanted me to make the Divine denial, yes,” I whispered, starting to feel shaky inside. “Major Everington wanted something else. Look, let’s not talk about this now, we’re missing it…”

“I hope they skin him and blind him and gut him,” said Bane.

“They will.”

“Well, I hope he’s conscious!”

I shoved my way out of his encircling arms and off the sofa, went around and sat beside Jon, knees up to my face. Fixed my eyes on the screen.

“Margo?”

“The prisoner is clearly growing confused with the stress of his situation,” the judge was saying, jaw rigid underneath a look of forced concern – been practising his acting skills? “He may have thirty minutes to rest. Take him away.”

Apparently too exhausted to fight or even scream, the prisoner sagged in utter – and silent – despair. The guards dragged him out like a sack of washing.

“Margo?” Bane said again, peering unhappily past Jon.

I turned my head away, cheek still on my knees, and stared at the wall instead. I didn’t want him to give me puppy eyes – just wanted him not to have said what he’d said.

“
Margo
.” Now he sounded aggrieved, and that made me mad.

“You’re an effing barbarian, Bane! Either that or an effing idiot who doesn’t have any idea what he’s saying.”

“Oh, come off it, Margo! I think you’re overreacting…”

“Really? My fiancé just wished one of the worst most horrible fates ever invented on another human being and you say I’m overreacting? Makes you either an evil bastard or a blithering idiot and I’m supposed to be
happy
?”

I sprang off the sofa and stormed out. Almost ran into Father Mark, who stood outside as though something had made him pause in passing.

“That didn’t sound very good,” he remarked.

I bolted straight on into the stairwell, because I could hear Bane coming after me. Didn’t stop until I reached the highest bastion, where I draped myself around a nice, round, sun-warmed, huggable cannon and sobbed my eyes out. Until footsteps made me start upright, ready to run again.

Father Mark.

“Is Bane right behind you?”

“No. I, ah, managed to persuade him someone who takes off as fast as you really doesn’t want to be caught.”

“Why’d you follow me, then?”

“You’re not mad at
me
. As far as I’m aware.”

I released my grip on the ancient cannon – it was starting to burn me! – and went to sit on the wall instead. He came and sat beside me.

“No, I’m not mad at you.” I stared at my hands in my lap. Red, scorched and shaking. I didn’t want to talk about what Bane had said. “Does it frighten you, Father Mark?”

“What?”

“Going into EuroGov territory, knowing if they catch you… Does
IT
frighten you?”

“Ah.” He stared out at the island for a moment, then looked back at my tear-streaked face. “Spitless.”

I blinked.

“Oh. You don’t show it.” I mopped my eyes with my sleeve. “How do you… do it, then?”

He smiled slightly.

“How do you?”

“I… um… I suppose I just have to…
make
myself go. It’s so, so hard.”

“Then you know how I do it. Being in Salperton was actually easier than these raids. You can only maintain a certain pitch of fear for so long, then you just get used to it. To some extent.”

“Oh yeah. I know that.”

“I bet you do.”

“Do you miss your parish?”

He shrugged.

“Yes. I would’ve stayed, but the escape was more important. I don’t think I’d have lasted much longer, though. The place was red hot. But by the time my replacement arrived everything would have quietened down, and the Lord gets a bit more use out of me here. Win-win situation.”

He was still eyeing me rather gently – considering some comment on what’d brought me fleeing up here?

“How did you become a priest, Father Mark?”

“You don’t want Father Mark’s life story, surely?”

“Yes, I do. I’ve wanted to hear it for ages.”

“It might severely dent your rosy image of me, you know.”

“Were you an assassin with the Resistance and killed a lot of people?”

“Well, the dent may not be that severe, then. All right, um… let’s see… my parents were Believers, so I was brought up in a household with continuous, but light, involvement with the Underground. I rejected it all pretty much as soon as I became a teenager. Thought I didn’t believe any of it, dismissed it as silliness. I can see
now
I was more worried about the demands it would make on my life. Often the person who’s best at lying to us is our own self, I think.

“Anyway, I took early Sorting at sixteen, passed, and went to the Dismantlers’ Training College. It looked like an excellent career path to my determinedly Godless mind. A career doing good and helping people, with good pay, what more could anyone want? Well, that lasted as long as it took them to train us up far enough to take part in a real Dismantlement, then I was out of there. Totally disillusioned. Joined the Resistance.

“
They
thought I had heaps of promise too – they trained me up
very
thoroughly. And for several years it paid off – I did everything they told me to do, and I did it very well. I tried so hard to believe in them. But all I ever really believed in was
not the EuroGov
. When I wasn’t on a mission – rare, admittedly – I tried to drown my misery with all the usual things people try to drown misery with. None of them work.

“My parents didn’t really want to see me much after I joined the Resistance. Wasn’t long before I was living in a safe house anyway – so compromised that as far as a normal life was concerned my boats were thoroughly burnt. Then one day my parents were captured in a raid on a Mass centre.”

My breath caught.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry…”

“Hmm, well. I was a damn good jackal by then, if I say it myself, so I headed off to the Facility to rescue them.”

“Oh. And you did?”

“No. Doubt I could’ve done. But I arrived in time to see them walking out the gates. They’d made the Divine denial.”

“Oh no.” No wonder he’d a funny look on his face.

“Oh yes. I gave them a lift home and that was the end of our estrangement, they felt they had no stones left to throw. We had to be careful about meeting, of course, since I was probably number one wanted person in that part of the department. But they couldn’t look me in the face ever again. Because what they’d done – it really, really bothered me, and they could tell. I was so shocked. Me, the cold-blooded killer.

“I couldn’t get past it, somehow, couldn’t forget it, it went on nagging at me. I couldn’t figure out why it bothered me so much. Until, of course, one day, I did. I’d just…” He broke off abruptly – grimaced. “Well, never mind that bit. Suffice to say I’d just done something particularly despicable even by Resistance standards.” His eyes had gone cold, killer’s eyes, save for the pain lines around the corners.

“And I realised. That it bothered me so much because I still believed it all myself. And deep down, I thought they shouldn’t have done it. And there I was, living a life utterly at odds with pretty much every aspect of the Faith. My hands were drenched with blood and I knew in that moment that there was no one on this earth as damned as I was. I don’t expect you can understand the despair I felt.”

“Maybe.”

“I hope you can’t.” He pulled up his left sleeve to bare the long scar I’d seen before, thought nothing of – some memento of his violent past. Now I realised better.

“You did that.”

“Yes, I did. Now I’ve made a little dent, haven’t I?

“No… No. I just wish I’d been there to give you a big hug.”

He gave a slight laugh.

“Trust me, I wasn’t very huggable back then. Though at that moment, I just might’ve accepted one. But you weren’t there, and nor was anyone else and I lay on that floor fretting and fuming because my blood was taking such a long time to exit my body. Until some words crept into my mind.
Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Though your sins are red like crimson, they shall be whiter than wool.
”

“From the penitential psalms.”

“Yes. I hadn’t been to Mass for most of a decade by then, but the verses came into my head and wouldn’t leave. I lay there thinking about them for so long I almost bled out without realising it. And eventually it occurred to me it might be worth checking out the possibility I was wrong, and that I could be washed white again. So I bound up my wrist and crawled off to Vatican State.

“I won’t bore you with the details – you know how hard it is to get across Europe, especially in poor condition. But I wasn’t hunted – the Lord smiled on me, I don’t know why. When the police found the amount of blood I’d left on that floor, they assumed there’d been a
dispute among thieves
– that I’d been killed and my body disposed of. They changed my status to dead and were satisfied.

“Anyway, I made it to the Vatican. I told them what I was and when they confirmed even I could be forgiven, I told them henceforth I belonged to the Lord and they were to do with me whatever He willed. So they tidied me up and sent me to a confirmation class with all the other adult catechumens.

“When it came to my confession, they gave me the oldest, most experienced priest and assured me he’d heard everything.” Father Mark sighed. “I think I shocked even him.

“When he absolved me, though, it was like the whole world began again. Like being re-baptised. And then I was confirmed, and received Our Lord again, and I was so happy that day, I wished I could die. Not because I couldn’t bear to live another moment, like before, but because I knew if I lived to be a hundred and fifty, I could never be happier than that, so I might as well be with Our Lord at once.

“Of course, the Lord had other plans for me. I joyfully scrubbed floors and did whatever was needed for a while, then someone asked me if I’d considered the Seminary. I told them, I would clean toilets for the rest of my life or I would go to the Seminary, it was the Lord’s call. So they put me in the Seminary. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

I stared at him. No wonder he was such an oasis of calm. If you could survive doing all that – psychologically as well as physically – you had to finish up pretty unflappable. Was Father Mark ever
really
‘scared spitless’? Or just ‘mildly bothered’ – at least by my standards?

I checked my watch. Twenty minutes into the half hour break and I still didn’t want to see Bane.

“You know, Bane actually… looked kind of pissed off himself,” said Father Mark mildly.

“Sod him!” My hand flew to my mouth. “
Sorry!
”

“You really are upset. So what happened?”

“Bane said something terrible.”

“About you?”

“
No
, not about
me
. He said he hoped Major Everington got Conscious Dismantlement – you know he’s being sentenced today?”

“Yes. But he won’t, it’s not a religious crime.”

“I know he
won’t
. That’s not the point!”

“I know.” Father Mark stared out at the barren island again. “But Margo, I honestly don’t think Bane would’ve said that if he really understood.”

“I know that. I think. I hope. But hearing him say that made me go all… s’like a void opened up inside me and it was going to swallow us and I thought I was going to be sick… which sounds really melodramatic but it made me feel
awful
. I mean, they’re going to kill the guy for something he didn’t do, isn’t that enough for him?”

“Why did Bane suddenly go all hard line on this guy?”

“Oh, he…” I sighed and put a hand to my forehead. “He found out about this.”

Father Mark eyed the scar.

“Everington did that?”

I nodded.

“I can see why Bane’s pissed off, then.”

“Yes, but…” the words tumbled out, “he offered me the anaesthetic. If I gave him a certain piece of information. But I don’t think he was that bothered about the information. And he cut me to try and make me understand what I was facing, to try and force me to take his offer. I think… I think in a twisted way he was trying to help me.” There, said it out loud at last.