Amongst Our Weapons

19 Hearts and Minds

I arrived back at the Folly at dawn the next morning, to the sound of trumpets.

The sky was lightening above the dome of the atrium as my father stood at its centre, playing ‘The Night We Called It a Day’ while Nightingale sat in one of the overstuffed leather armchairs reading the Telegraph, legs folded, the toe of his shoe gently bobbing in time to the music, and Toby did a very good ‘his master’s voice’ impression – no doubt in the hope of sausages.

I caught a glimpse of Molly drifting along the first floor balcony and, behind her, Foxglove, pirouetting.

I wondered if my dad had played the night before in the faint light of a crescent moon while the sisters danced around him. He wouldn’t have noticed them, though. When my dad plays he goes somewhere else. You could set fire to the stage and he wouldn’t notice.

Nightingale folded his paper, set it aside and rose to greet me.

‘Are we ready?’ I asked.

‘Preparations are well under way,’ he said. ‘Although I do not care for our chances of success. I’m very much afraid that we may have to take the direct approach – given the alternatives.’

‘Or I could be completely wrong,’ I said. ‘And then you’re going to have to come up with another plan without me.’

‘I could order you not to do this,’ he said.

‘Are you going to?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps we should swap roles.’

We’d gone over this earlier over the phone.

‘I’m not skilled or fast enough to play your role,’ I said. ‘So that’s a non-starter. Does Foxglove know what we need?’

‘The explanation proved quite difficult, but in the end I drew her a picture,’ he said. ‘A comic strip, if you like.’

‘This I have to see,’ I said.

‘I’m afraid Molly confiscated it,’ he said.

‘Pity.’

Guleed came in first, carrying with her her MetVest and officer safety gear in a sausage bag and my demagicked staff over her shoulder.

‘I don’t see how this is going to work,’ she said.

‘You do your bit,’ I said, ‘and everything will be much easier.’

‘I don’t mean that,’ said Guleed. ‘I mean their bit – what makes you think they’ll be so helpful as to follow your plan?’

‘The lure is irresistible,’ I said. ‘They’ll be here.’

Molly arrived with coffee and tea but before we could settle down, the team from SCO19 arrived. Guleed took charge and led them upstairs, but not before scooping up a cup and the coffee jug.

A sudden worry caught me off guard.

‘Where’s Toby got to?’ I asked.

‘In the kitchen,’ said Nightingale.

I realised that I was breathing fast and shallow – almost hyperventilating. The atrium went in and out of focus. I realised that I was terrified. Which seemed so absurd, given that I was having tea in the middle of the Folly, that I had to stop myself breaking into giggles.

‘Deep breaths, Peter,’ said Nightingale. ‘In, hold, out.’

I followed his advice, taking long slow breaths as if I was preparing for a particularly tricky spell. My heart slowed, the panic subsided – although the fear remained.

‘What the fuck was that?’ I said.

‘The responsibility of command,’ said Nightingale. ‘You’re personally brave to the point of recklessness, Peter. But now you are waiting for the battle and you know, because you’re not stupid, that you might have overlooked something or the enemy might have a capability you haven’t considered. But you know it’s too late. It’s going to happen now, and if it goes wrong and people die, you will be responsible.’

‘Cheers, boss,’ I said. ‘That was a morale-booster.’

‘This is a workable plan,’ said Nightingale. ‘I wouldn’t have approved it if I didn’t think it had a chance.’ He looked at his watch. ‘We might want to take our start positions now, however.’

I watched him trot up the side stairs and went to find myself somewhere to hide.

Back in the Regency, when the Folly was built, the gentry were very clear about the role of servants in society. They were to be helpful, subservient and, above all, as invisible as possible. To this end, the Folly was built with a number of corridors and stairs to allow the maids and stewards to circulate unseen. They also had semi-secret doors into public areas, and these doors had spyholes to allow loyal servants to check the coast was clear before entering. That this allowed the lower classes to spy on their betters never seemed to occur to the latter.

I opened what looked like a normal stretch of oak panelling and slipped into the access corridor that led to the back stairs. I turned off the single 40-watt light that illuminated it and opened the spyhole.

And then, feeling sick, I waited to see how workable the plan really was.

As we reconstructed it later, Lesley had scouted the Folly in advance and picked out one of our analysts as a suitable mark. Whether she did this on the fly the evening before, which would have been fast work, or had done the recce and selected her target earlier in the week, we were never able to establish. Either way, she’d done it early on enough to have time to acquire a professional-quality Afro wig – not something they sell at TK Maxx.

In any case, that morning she turned up at Nathan Fairbright’s front door in Norwood, talked her way in, put the glamour on him and then fed him some sleeping pills. Danni found him later, fast asleep on his My Hero Academia bedspread. Nathan was a clever choice because, despite being male, he was short and had a slight build. Better still, he walked around in baggy sweatshirts, cargo trousers and an enormous parka with a fur-lined hood.

The timing was clever, too – Lesley coming in with the tail end of the rest of the police staff, minimising the risk of an acquaintance talking to her while still using them as cover as she walked in the front door, bold as brass.

She probably thought her main risks were Molly and Toby – who both knew her by smell. But they were safely downstairs in the kitchen with Foxglove, with instructions to stay low until told otherwise. Once she was in the atrium, she could head for either of the two main staircases, or even the side stairs, and it would have been interesting to know where she would have searched first.

But when she was halfway across, I stepped out of the servants’ corridor and called her name.

It was clever, coming as a man, because we were expecting a woman. I would love to say that it was something subtle, like the fact that Nathan always takes his parka off the moment he steps inside and never walks with his hands in his pockets. But really it was because she hadn’t quite got his face right. Lips too thick and nose too wide – he looked like he’d stepped out of an early Asterix comic.

Subconscious racism, I thought – it will fuck you up every time.

She flinched and even from behind I could see that she was swearing. Then she turned to face me. I walked over and stopped a nice safe three metres away. She gave me a rueful grin – it was Lesley’s smile on a cartoon character’s lips.

‘I see your security is still as shit as it ever was,’ she said, and her face changed.

It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it happen, but it wasn’t getting any less weird to watch. The skin on her face rippling like some undersea creature settling into the seabed. The brown colour not so much fading as being squeezed out, as each fold rolled and merged, rolled and merged. It looked painful.

‘We seem to have caught you,’ I said.

‘Only after I was all the way inside,’ she said.

Then she paused, clocking the now-closed doors front and back, the absence of any civilian collateral and, more importantly, the fact that Molly had removed all the breakable objets d’art. Including our first edition copy of the second Principia.

‘No …’ She sounded almost impressed. ‘You didn’t?’

‘Didn’t what?’ I asked.

‘You sly fucker,’ she said. ‘You laid a trap. You knew I’d want the rings back and you knew that I still have access to the police network. I’m so stupid. Nice touch having Danni make the breach of security – new girl and all that? I was in two minds this morning until I read that text.’

Danni had put the location of the rings on CRIMINT that morning, in the hope that Lesley’s contact in the Met would pass it on. Obviously they had, and equally obviously the Department of Professional Standards would try and trace who the leak was.

I really should have said three birds with one stone.

‘How’s she working out, by the way?’ asked Lesley.

‘Not bad,’ I said. ‘She’s good with dogs and canal boats.’

Lesley was looking around the atrium, not bothering to hide that she was checking the angles and looking for an escape route.

‘Where’s Thomas the tank eater?’ she asked.

‘That would be telling.’

‘And Frank Caffrey and his merry bunch of part-time murderers?’ She craned her head, checking the balconies for snipers.

‘He’s got the day off,’ I said – lying.

‘So, what next?’ she said.

‘I thought we might try a bit of de-escalation,’ I said, thinking that one day it was going to work. ‘We have tea and biscuits.’

Lesley laughed then – not a cynical laugh, but a genuine burst of good humour as if I’d done something that delighted her.

‘I’m not redeemable, Peter,’ she said. ‘I know that, you know that, the Crown Prosecution Service knows it, too.’

‘So do you have any weapons on you that I should know about?’

‘Why don’t you search me?’ she said. ‘That’s what comes next, isn’t it? Off to Belgravia and into the hands of the custody sergeant. If I’m not going to get a Molly breakfast, I might as well have something …’ She stopped suddenly and made a half-amused, half-exasperated huffing sound. ‘Wait, you’re not actually—’

And suddenly the atrium was full of vengeful angel.

‘You total cunt!’ shouted Lesley, but she was proud of me – I could tell.

Francisca had arrived in full Samuel L. Jackson furious vengeance mode, wings of fire extended, a crown of light blazing behind her head and, of course, a burning spear tipped with lightning glass.

You can generally tell when and by whom a spell was perfected by the name it’s given. Old Newton himself was crap at names, or more precisely didn’t really give a shit. Thus we get telescopium for the telescope spell and kisef for a spell that is supposed to determine the purity of gold but really doesn’t. In the period between Newton’s publication of the second Principia and the founding of the Society of the Wise, the diverse bunch of quacks, ambitious apothecaries and dangerously independently minded women who were his immediate heirs named their spells however they liked. Dancing Dog does what it says on the tin, although you can use it on most mammals, not just dogs. Not that I’ve seen it in action, on account of ethical considerations, and Toby would probably bite me if I tried. I think the posh women that went on to become the Society of the Rose used ancient Greek for some reason, and then there are spells named things like Shazorami!, with an exclamation mark, which comes straight from the music hall.

The pedantically precise Latin of such spells as clausurafrange come from that era when the newly formed Society of the Wise was clawing for respectability and royal patronage. By the first half of the twentieth century, the language opened up again but there is a marked difference between serious spells such as aqua ex vestibus exi and the Treacle Foot spell I threw at Lesley as she legged it across the atrium.

According to Nightingale, this was a spell that was passed around and down by the boys at Casterbrook School for gentlemen wizards. It was considered a frivolous spell because it basically caused someone’s shoes to stick to whatever they were standing on. Nightingale said it was used during rugby matches.

‘Magic while playing was encouraged,’ said Nightingale, when I asked whether this was cheating. ‘But strictly forbidden to spectators and, of course, equally forbidden when playing against teams from mundane schools.’

So while the serra obscura and the narrow-gauge fireball officially called lux bodkin were perfectly adequate for chopping up your enemies and brewing up their tanks, for a peacetime copper Treacle Foot was as nice a non-lethal way to neutralise a suspect, and was just what the Officer Safety Policy Unit asked for.

Lesley, who’d sensibly been legging it for the side door, suddenly found the soles of her shoes sticking to the floor tiles. Her best bet would be to yank her feet out of her trainers, but I didn’t have time to watch because Francisca was trying to kill me.

I ran to my pre-planned position at the north end of the atrium – my back to the entrance – and put up the best shield I could. This was the first test.

I saw the movement in her shoulder that telegraphed her strike. Even as the spear darted forwards, I was jumping back. Whatever else she might be – former housemaid, devout believer, angel of death – nobody had bothered to train her to use a spear. She overextended, so that when the tip hit my shield she was at full stretch and off balance.

‘Now!’ I shouted, but Guleed was already airborne.

She parkoured off the balcony onto one of the green overstuffed leather sofas and bounced in a way that Michelle Yeoh would have been proud of. In her hand was Hugh Oswald’s battle staff, serving its country for the last time. It might have been drained of magic, but it was still a metre of solid oak around an iron core.

She struck, not at Francisca but at the spear – where the glass met the haft.

It broke, the lightning glass shattering, splinters spraying across the atrium to bounce off my shield. I heard Guleed shouting. Her vest and reinforced trousers took most of it, but a couple of shards struck her hand – even as she was vaulting for cover on the other side of the sofa. Lesley, I learnt later, had abandoned her trainers and ducked behind a pillar.

The wings of fire flared and Francisca reared back, blood from multiple cuts on her forehead and cheeks running down her face. She screamed in pain and something – we never did work out what – struck my shield with such force that I was driven backwards.

Then Nightingale stepped out of the eastern stairwell and bound her.

The same spell as last time, only the bonds were thick enough to show blue refracted light. They looped around Francisca, wings and all, and tightened.

I stepped forward to cast the sīphōnem spell. As I did, I noticed that Lesley was hiding behind that nearby pillar. She saw me moving and shook her head in exaggerated disbelief.

‘Not again,’ she said as I cast at Francisca.

Yes again – the same spray of colour behind Francisca like a stained glass window, again the drag as if I could lean forwards and fall into the boundary between our world and the allokosmos.

And again the sheer power overwhelming Nightingale’s binding spell. I felt it slipping, the bounds loosening.

‘Lesley!’ I shouted. ‘Help!’

And this was the second test.

I was having to constantly reinforce the triggering formae and didn’t dare look over but I felt, rather than heard, her long sigh of frustration. Then she swore and then I felt the tick-tock razor strop of her signare as she cast her own spell. I couldn’t see what it did, but suddenly Francisca’s struggles stopped. Nightingale’s binding tightened.

And my spell caught.

I felt the gap opening in front of me and I let myself pitch forwards.

The third and final test.

I fell into somewhere else.

I’ve been to the stone memory of London, the singing crystal ghost palace of Chesham and the unicorn-infested wild lands of Faerie. I have looked into portals from strange allokosmoi and felt things staring back – so what happened next was terrifyingly familiar.

I found myself standing in a courtyard full of fruit trees. There was the scent of orange blossom and the gritty taste of dust. Above me the sky was cloudless and an impossible dark blue – the colour a sky goes at dusk when a storm is rising on the horizon. The flagstones beneath my feet were warm from the sun.

I looked down at myself – I was stark bollock naked.

The orange trees were arranged in ordered ranks, and the pattern of the flagstones drew me towards a fountain and beyond that a shadowy gothic arch rose two storeys high. The great wall it was set in was blurred and indistinct, like the surroundings of a dream. I could practically feel my mind trying to impose shapes and order on what I was looking at.

I felt the archway was the obvious way to go. I’ve done this kind of thing before, and sometimes your real, actual flesh-and-blood body is asphyxiating in slow motion. When I took a deep breath, the whole pulmonary gas exchange seemed to be working fine, but I thought it better not to take the chance.

The fountain was dry – the beautifully blue and white abstract tiles of the basin and rim dusty and bleached. Still, as I passed by I felt the caress of water on my face, my arms, my head and my feet. It was refreshing but I could have done with a drink as well.

As I approached the archway it stayed in darkness, while around it the angles and shadows shifted and changed. From abstractions to statues, to carvings of animals and mythical beasts. I saw a sad woman, eyes downcast; a young man holding aloft the head of Medusa; some were what I thought might be Roman gods, others saints or kings. My feet slapped on the steps leading up and I stepped into the shadows.

It was a cathedral nave, with stone pillars stretching upwards to an impossibly high vaulted roof lit by golden sunlight. The walls were shaded and elaborately carved with animals and gargoyles, saints and sinners. I thought some may have moved as I walked past.

I was drawn forwards towards an arch that was too squat and plain to be part of a cathedral. As I stepped through, I smelt burning and could hear men shouting in fear and frustration.

If before had been the cathedral in Seville, then this must be the Castle of San Jorge that sat across the River Guadalquivir from the city. Judging by the scorch marks, the smoke and the shouting – some point after Enrique had busted himself and his family out.

Ahead was a plain square doorway from which candlelight spilled like a beacon. I became aware of the bell-like tone that I associated with the violent arrival of Francisca in her guise as an angel of vengeance. It grew louder as I reached the doorway, but softer, too – like a bell humming.

I’d heard those tones before – from the bell Martin Chorley and Lesley May had planned to summon Punch with. Was this the same magic, or was it an innate quality of bells?

I decided that these were questions for another day, and stepped through the doorway.

It was a chamber the size of my parents’ living room, with white plastered walls and carpets laid over a flagstone floor. There was no fireplace, but a couple of dozen candles burned in five-branched candlesticks mounted on stands around the room.

A man sat on a high-backed chair with the window behind him. He was old, white and thin, with grey hair poking out from under a black skullcap. His eyes were dark, deep-set and fixed on mine as I approached. He was dressed in brown robes with a comically large starched white collar, making him look like a wilting flower or a Time Lord.

Kneeling in front of him was a naked white woman with brown curly hair; she had broad shoulders and muscular arms and legs. On her back were pale lines – old scars left by the lash. Her head was bowed but her arms were outstretched, her hands resting in the palms of the seated man.

Behind the man was a workbench with the crucibles, alembics and assorted glassware of the late medieval alchemist. Books and papers were stacked untidily on a wooden writing desk under the window, where they could catch the daylight. The view through the window was of an impossibly blue sky fading into the mist below.

The man said something in Spanish or Portuguese. His voice had a rasping quality – as if he hadn’t spoken for centuries, and his mouth was dry.

‘Salve, loquerisne Latine?’ I said, on the basis that any man of letters would be more familiar with Latin than I am with Spanish.

‘Esne mi salvator?’ he asked – Are you my saviour?

I was tempted to say ‘yes’ and claim the ultimate authority, but I reckoned that would be a bit presumptuous – even by my standards.

‘Non sum, sed nuntius de longe emissus,’ I said – claiming I was a messenger from a far land.

‘Have you come to release me from this burden?’

His Latin was fluent, although he pronounced his c’s soft, which would have annoyed Nightingale and Postmartin, who were adherents of the hard consonant school of classical Latin.

I crouched down beside the woman and checked that it was, as I’d suspected, Francisca. Or her avatar, or spirit, or whatever it was we were doing here. It was definitely her, her face serene, her eyes closed and her lips moving in silent prayer.

I looked back up at the man.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

‘Cristoval Romano,’ he said. ‘Magister. Once called the wise.’

‘Once called?’

‘In an educated man, hubris is the worst sin of all,’ he said, and gave a spluttering cough that I realised was a laugh.

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

‘It seems an eternity,’ he said. ‘At first I steeled myself to patience, then I sought to amuse myself through games and the recitation of poetry. For a while I tried to lose myself in erotic thoughts, then in dreams of vengeance against those that had urged me to this foolish action. Particularly that venal dog de Pruda. More recently, I have found comfort in prayer.’

I had so many questions, but also a real sense that it was better to get the fuck out while I could. How he’d done it, I decided, was less important than why.

‘This is a terrible work,’ I said. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘The usual reasons,’ said the Magister. ‘I told myself it was piety and duty to the Church, but a thousand years of contemplation will batter down the doors of one’s own delusions.’

But not your tendency towards tortured metaphors, I thought.

‘In truth, it was a test of skills,’ he said. ‘We had always been rivals, Enrique and I, and I was eager to prove myself the better philosopher.’

I glanced at the naked avatar of Francisca, kneeling, head bowed, also trapped within this VR recreation of an Inquisition prison. A thousand years of contemplation didn’t seem to have revealed the fucking awfulness of what he had done to her. Perhaps he needed another thousand years for that.

But I didn’t see why Francisca had to do time with him.

‘Perhaps it is time for you to let her go?’ I said.

‘Ah,’ said Romano the no longer wise. ‘I fear you have not properly comprehended my circumstances.’

He glanced down and I followed his gaze to his hands. Francisca’s work-strong fingers had a tight grip on the Magister’s wrists. It was she who was holding him.

‘What will happen to you if she lets go?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps I will be set free,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I will fall into oblivion or Heaven or Purgatory or Hell – I no longer care.’

I thought of the airmen of the moors, and the eager way they had boarded the Glossop’s cargo cult passenger plane. They hadn’t seemed to care where they were going, as long as they went. And I thought of Heather’s narrowboat, its journey down from the North, and its cosy double bunk.

I had to think carefully about the next question – my Latin isn’t that good.

‘Did you make a weapon of this woman?’ I asked.

‘For my sins,’ said the Magister.

‘What did you offer her in return?’

‘Offer?’ The Magister seemed genuinely puzzled by the question. ‘Nothing. She was a servant, a woman – obedience to her master and to God was enough.’

Right, I thought, let’s hope my counter-offer is better.

I shifted so that I could see Francisca’s face and called her name.

At first, nothing, and then the slightest frown appeared upon her forehead.

‘Francisca,’ I said again, and then in English, ‘Your work is done. It’s time to go home.’

She turned her head to look at me.

‘A casa?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Heather is waiting.’

Francisca definitely reacted to Heather’s name, but it seemed disconnected.

‘You haven’t finished unpacking the shopping from Sainsbury’s yet,’ I said.

Her frown deepened and became a real worry attached to a real problem. I put my hands on hers and gave an experimental tug. Her grip stayed firm.

‘Some of that stuff is going to go off if we don’t put it away,’ I said.

Suddenly her hands slipped off the Magister’s. I didn’t hesitate, and used my grip to raise her up and turn her to face me.

‘Heather needs you,’ I said, and we turned and walked away hand in hand.

I heard the Magister’s coughing laugh, and looked back to see him turn into vapour and drift away. Exactly like Beverley’s water balloon or Nightingale’s crimson flower – then the bench and wall behind his chair did the same.

I resolutely faced forwards and tried to pick up the pace.

Back through the corridor of pain and smoke, the cathedral of stone and light.

The courtyard of water and orange blossom.

I opened my eyes to what was left of the atrium. Ahead of me, Francisca was standing and looking around with amazement. When I took a step forwards, something caught my foot and I nearly stumbled. I looked to see what I’d tripped on and saw that the black and white floor tiles had been rucked up in concentric circles centred on the spot where Francisca stood.

‘Stay still,’ said Nightingale.

He was standing to my left with his right hand raised above his head, palm facing upwards, his left across his chest and clenched into a fist. Above us, the air shimmered in a curve over our heads. Raindrops were splattering on the shield and running in rivulets off the sides. I looked up further and saw that the Victorian glass and cast-iron dome that roofed the atrium was mostly gone. As I watched, a final section of iron girder with some attached glass tumbled down to smash on Nightingale’s shield. It slid down to join the ring of debris I saw surrounded us.

Oh God, that’s going to make a dent in the budget, I thought. Maybe we can get a Kickstarter going.

‘I trust that you have resolved the angelic aspect of the case,’ said Nightingale.

‘I think so,’ I said. I glanced at Francisca, who had slumped down to sit on the floor. ‘Was anyone hurt?’ I said.

‘Not that I know of,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I doubt Molly will be pleased.’

‘Lesley?’

‘She bolted when the roof fell down,’ said Guleed, picking her way through the debris towards us. ‘If she’s sensible, she won’t ever come back.’

‘She will,’ I said. ‘She won’t know why, but eventually she’ll come back.’

Francisca looked up at us – the cuts on her face were going to need the paramedic who, according to the plan, should be parked up in the courtyard.

She looked at me, her eyes wide.

‘Am I free?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And no.’