The English Assassin (9 page)

“And the pins, love,” she reproved, donning the hat as if it were the Crown of England.

He took the three long pins with their blue, red and gold enamelled butterfly wings and presented them in the flat of his unhealthy hand, his expression cool, like a nurse proffering a surgeon his instruments. One by one she picked them from his palm and slid them like a conjuror expertly into her hat, her hair and, apparently, her head.

“Cream!” She was satisfied. She tilted the brim just a fraction to the right. She flicked at a pheasant feather.

“Shall I be in this evening?” asked the boy. His accent while by no means educated was indefinably in contrast to the woman’s. “Or not?”

“Better stay at Sammy’s, love. I think I’ll be entertaining tonight.” She smiled comfortably at herself and admired her large, well-corseted figure for a while, hands on hips. “You’re looking prime, girlie.” She gathered her pale green satin skirts and pirouetted on her matching patent leather boots. “You’ll do, you will.”

The boy put his hands in his pockets and swaggered about the untidy, over-furnished bedroom whistling, without irony, ‘I’m Gilbert, the Filbert, the Colonel of the Knuts’. He marched through the open door into the gaslit parlour. The parlour was a dark jungle of aspidistra and mahogany. Opening the front door of the flat he spread his arms, running and leaping down the lodging house’s uncarpeted stairs and making a high-pitched whining sound as he pretended he was a fighting aeroplane making a death dive on its enemies. He rushed panting into Blenheim Crescent and was almost knocked over by the baker’s motor van which hooted at him as it puffed past in the twilight. On the corner of the dowdy street, where it met Ladbroke Grove, under the unlit lamp and by the wall of the Convent of the Poor Clares, stood a group of younger urchins. They spotted him at once. They yelled at him, jeering insults which were more than familiar to him. He veered and began to walk in the opposite direction, pretending not to have noticed them, and went up towards Kensington Park Road and Sammy’s pie shop on the corner. Some people thought Sammy might be the boy’s dad, the way he favoured him. The boy always got first chance at shooting the rats in the cellar. Sammy kept a .22 pistol for the purpose. But, when pressed, the boy’s mother usually claimed the Prince of Wales for the honour. There was, however, a rumour concerning a Russian.

A thick, tasty smell of grease billowed from the warm shop and steam boiled in the yellow light from the street door and from the grating in the pavement under the window where, on gas burners, sat enamel trays of pies, sausages, bacon, faggots, saveloys and baked potatoes, heavy with shining, dancing fat. At his stoves behind the wooden counter stood warm, greasy Sammy. With his thin assistant beside him he gave his attention to a score of a long-handled frying pans, each of which contained a different kind of food. The shop having just opened for the evening, the only customer was little frightened Mrs Fitzgerald, from round the corner in Portobello Road, getting her husband’s dinner. Her shawl was drawn close to her face, but Sammy had noticed what she was hoping to hide. “That’s a lovely shiner!” He grinned sympathetically as he wrapped the pies but Mrs Fitzgerald looked as if he had caught her in the act of some mortal sin. Her right eye was swollen green, blue and purple. She gave a barely audible but evidently embarrassed cough. The boy stared neutrally at her bruise. Sammy saw the boy. “Hello, there, nipper!” The colour of his own sausages, his fat, Jewish face ran with sweat. His striped shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows and he wore a big white grease-spotted apron. “You come to give me a hand, have you?” The boy nodded, stepping aside from Mrs Fitzgerald who seized her pies, left the correct number of pennies on the counter, and, like a mouse making for its hole, scuttled from the shop. “Mum says can I stay the night?”

Sammy’s expression became serious and he said in a different tone, attending suddenly to his frying pans, “Yes, that’s all right. But you gotta work for your keep. Get yourself an apron off the hook, son. We’ll be busy in a minute.”

The boy removed his threadbare Norfolk and hung it on the hook at the back of the shop. Taking down a sacking apron he pulled it over his head and tied the strings round his waist. He began to roll up his sleeves. Sammy’s assistant was a young man of eighteen or so, his face gleaming with large, scarlet pimples. He said, “Go on up the other end. I’ll do this end.” The boy squeezed past Sammy’s great bottom and went to stand near the window where the sizzling trays filled his nostrils full of the stink of frying onions. His eyes wandered past the trays and through the misted glass where they fixed on the street.

It was now dark and populated. Men, women and children came from all sides, bearing down on the pie shop, because it was Friday. They all had the glazed look of the really poor—the poverty trance had overtaken them, robbed them of their wills and their intelligence, enabling them to continue life only in terms of a few simple rituals. There was little animation on even the faces of the children and their tired, heavy movements, their set expressions, their dull eyes made it seem that they all belonged to the same family, so strongly did they resemble one another. The boy felt a shudder of fear and for no reason that he could tell he suddenly thought, with some tenderness, of his mother. He turned to look at the pub on the opposite corner to Sammy’s, the Blenheim Arms. The gas was being lit. The large crowd of out-of-work Irishmen and local loafers which had gathered outside its doors gave a ragged cheer. It was opening time.

Again the boy shivered.

“What’s the matter, son?” said Sammy noticing. “You catching something?”

Captain Nye received an order to report to his barracks, the Royal Alberts in Southwark, where his CO, Colonel Collier, informed him that the Black Flag had been raised in Argyll and that an anarchist army of some 8,000 men was camped in Glen Coe where it would shortly be joined by a force of French Zouaves (about a thousand) which had landed at Oban a week earlier, claiming to be independent volunteers. It was no secret that the French had territorial ambitions in Scotland, but this was the most blatant act of support to the rebel clans they had yet given. It was putting a distinct strain on the fiction of the Entente Cordiale.

“We do not want a direct confrontation with France for all sorts of reasons at the moment.” Colonel Collier fingered his buttons and the cuffs of his tunic. “So this must be handled damned delicately, Nye. Neither, it seems, does the present government want any military action against the hill tribes if we can help it. You’ve had dealings with these people before, I gather?”

“I’ve some experience of the Highland clans, sir.”

“I want you to go and talk to Gareth-mac Mahon, their chief. He’s a sly old devil, by all accounts. Used to serve with one of our native regiments. Learned all our tricks, needless to say, and took ’em back to the hills with him. I’m sure he knows he can’t beat us. Probably be satisfied with a few concessions. So find out what he wants and let us know as soon as possible. This is more in the nature of a diplomatic mission than a military one.”

“I understand, sir.”

“They’re plucky blighters, but it looks as if their virtues have turned into vices.” Collier stood up behind his desk. “It’s the same with their pride. They’re prepared to sacrifice all that they’ve gained under British rule in order to chase this chimera of ‘independence’. Even if they should have some success, the French would move in at once. Mahon must realise this. They call him the Red Fox, I gather. Because of his cunning. Well, he’s certainly no fool. Try to talk him round.”

Captain Nye refused the offer of a squadron of motor-escorted cavalry and instead asked for a single small dirigible flying machine which might be loaned by the Royal Airship Corps. “Let us impress them,” he said, “with our science rather than our sabres.”

* * *

Glen Coe was glorious in her autumn colours. Her bronze hills shivered with white streams which fell from scores of sources high up near the crest of the range. The dirigible hovered over the valley and Captain Nye peered through the observation ports in the large aluminium gondola and noticed, with some satisfaction, the consternation of the Zouaves in their blue tarbooshes, blue tunics and baggy red trousers as they became aware of the green-and-khaki camouflaged monster over their heads. The shadow of the ship moved implacably across the camp, its steam turbines purring as a hungry leopard might purr while stalking a herd of unsuspecting and succulent antelope. Down the glen sailed the aerial frigate, just a few feet above the tops of the tallest hills, following the boisterous river upstream to the falls at the far end of the valley. The bravest of the French mercenaries (if mercenaries they were) took a few potshots at the airship, but either they missed, fell short, or their bullets failed to penetrate the tough boron-fibre shell of the vessel.

Then the Zouaves were left behind and Captain Nye signalled to the captain to cut his engines to half-speed, for they were almost at their destination. The main camp lay ahead, a collection of semi-ruined crofts, hide tents, and peat or bracken shelters. They were clustered on the tawny hillside which shone like beaten gold as the sunlight struck it. Horses, tracked vehicles, Bofors guns and Banning cannon, as well as cooking and medical equipment, had been scattered apparently at random amongst the other paraphernalia of the camp. Broadswords, dirks and lances glittered beside pyramids of stacked rifles with fixed bayonets. Kilted clansmen sat talking in groups, passing bottles and cigarettes, or else wandered drunkenly about with no apparent purpose. Over this savage encampment fluttered the sinister black banner of Anarchy—Mahon’s adopted standard. Gareth-mac Mahon’s own tent was easily spotted. It was a huge expanse of intricately woven blue, yellow, green and scarlet plaid. The scarlet was predominant. The folds of this great pavilion undulated slightly in a wind which blew through the hills from the west.

“Break out the flag now, sir?” The smart young second officer saluted Nye and the airship’s captain, a man named Bastable. Bastable looked enquiringly at Nye. Nye nodded. They watched as the white parley flag billowed over the side, suspended from a line attached to the stern of the control gondola.

“Take her down a couple of degrees, height coxswain,” said Captain Bastable.

“Two degrees down, sir.”

The ship dropped lower. Its engines reversed to keep it steady against the wind. As it fell, a number of the savages dived for cover while their braver (or drunker) comrades ran forward waving their broadswords and howling like devils. They calmed down when they recognised the white flag, but they did not sheathe their swords. They watched with glowering suspicion as the ship steadied less than fifteen feet over the Mahon’s own tent. Captain Nye brushed his fine brown moustache with the back of his hand, waited a few moments and then stepped onto the outer gallery and stood with one hand on the rail, the other in a dignified salute of peace, speaking clearly in their own language. “I come to offer peace to the Mahon. To you all.” There was a pause while the savages continued to glower and then the flap of the pavilion was pushed back and a heavy Scotlander emerged. For all his barbaric finery, the Mahon was an impressive man. He was clad in the traditional costume of the hill chieftain: the filibeg kilt, the huge, hairy sporran; the elaborately worked (if rather grubby) lace shirt, the plentitude of little leather straps and buttons and buckles and pins of bronze and silver, the big woollen bonnet secured by a hawk-feather badge; the green coatee with silver epaulettes; the black, buckled shoes; the clan plaid flung over his shoulder—the regalia befitting a great clan leader. All the cloth he wore, save for the coat and shirt, including the decorative tops of his green cross-gartered stockings, was of the same tartan as the tent. Nye recognised it as the red Mahon Fighting sett. The Mahon himself was short and broad-shouldered, with a red, belligerent face. He had a hooked nose, pale, piercing blue eyes and a monstrous grey-streaked red beard. With one hand on the hilt of his heavy, basket-hilted broadsword and the other on his hip he raised his head slowly, calling out in a proud growl.

“The Mahon acknowledges your truce flag. Do you come to parley?”

Although the Red Fox revealed nothing, by his expression, Captain Nye was sure he was properly impressed by the aerial frigate. “My government wants to preserve peace, O Mahon,” he said in English. “May I descend to the ground?”

“If ye wish.” Gareth-mac Mahon replied in the same language.

At Captain Nye’s request, the rail was broken and a rope ladder rolled through the gap. Nye went down the ladder with as much dignity as was possible until he stood confronting the wily old hill fox. This was a man who had discovered the creed of anarchism while serving as a soldier in the capitals of the civilised world. He had brought the creed back to his native land, adapted it and turned it into a philosophy capable of bringing together all the previously disunited tribes. Nye was by no means deceived by the Mahon’s appearance. He was well aware that he was not addressing a simple savage. If he had known nothing at all about the Mahon, he would still have recognised the look of profound cunning which glinted even now in those pale eyes.

“O Chieftain,” began the captain in Scottish as soon as he had recovered his breath, “you have made the great Chief-of-us-All sad. I come to tell you this. He wonders why his children gather all these weapons to themselves.” He spread his arms to indicate the camp. “And give hospitality to soldiers from other shores.”

In the distance the autumn river roared down the narrow gorge, its flow altering constantly as it was fed by a thousand tiny streams which streaked the hills; white veins in yellow marble. Throughout the half-mile radius of the camp the savage warriors stood and looked as their leader talked with the soldier who had come from the sky. Each of the men had a naked sword in his hand and Nye knew that if he made one mistake he would never be able to reach the airship before he was slaughtered beneath those shining blades.