I Am Margaret (16 page)

“You don’t actually sound very surprised,” smiled Jonathan. “Or indignant.”

I had to laugh.

“I s’pose I know him too well to be surprised. Hearing he’s still doing it himself makes me more worried than anything. He doesn’t seem to have any fear for himself at all. I sometimes wonder if he got killed, if he’d even care.”

“Or just be angry about it,” said Jonathan softly, not contradicting me. “Yeah.” He was silent for a moment, then asked, very quietly, “Anyway, is there anyone nearby?”

“Uh, no. But you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes. But I wanted to be certain. Can anyone see this hand of mine?” He wriggled the fingers of the hand that lay in his lap.

“Hmm. No.”

“Absolutely certain?”

“Yes.”

“No mirrors?”

I checked again.

“No. Between your body and the table it’s completely hidden.”

“
Good.” He dropped his voice even lower and his finger and thumb curved into the Fish. “
Salve, soror
.”

Hello, sister.

***+***

10

THE FIRST LETTER

I grabbed his hand, automatically replying in Latin.

“Careful!”

“You said no one can see.”

“
I didn’t know you were going to do
that!”
Caution belatedly reasserted itself and I switched back to English. “Why are you showing me that, anyway?”

“
Margo
.” He rolled his eyes slightly. “
Bane
...”

“
Seems I need to have a little chat with my fiancé about
discretion
.”

“Bane trusts me, he hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Huh.” He’d gone straight back into Latin and I replied in the same. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“
I wanted to form my own opinion of you. I’d trust Bane’s judgment with
my
life, yes. But other people’s lives?”

I shrugged.

“Fair enough. Why didn’t you go underground, though? Why show up for Sorting?”

“Why’d you?” he said, smiling.

“My parents run a Mass center,” I said, very softly indeed, Latin or not, “but I imagine you know that already.”

“Yes. Well, mine run a safe house. So I was in the same position as you.”

“Ah… a hotel. Perfect cover!”

“Absolutely. It’s an all-stream safe house. Quite important. Not worth closing down for the sake of one blind boy.”

“I bet your parents didn’t think that.”

“No, but I did. How would the Underground keep me hidden, anyway? I’m a little noticeable. They’ve enough to do protecting the priests and rabbis and everyone like that.”

Priests.
Uncle Peter.
I looked at Jonathan’s cheerful face. He didn’t know what’d happened. I could scarcely get it out of my mind. I had to tell him… Some other girls had just sat at a table nearby, so I went back to English. “Jon… I had an uncle called Peter; did you ever meet him?”

He turned his head a little more squarely towards me with sudden attention.

“
Peter?
An… uncle?”

“That’s what I always called him.”

“
I think I may have done; why do you ask?” His face clouded. “What do you mean,
had
an uncle?”

“I think you know what I mean,” I said softly, then pretended to change the subject although no one appeared to be listening. “Oh, did you hear what the Menace made us watch the other day?”

He sat there, very very still.

“What did the Menace make you watch?” he whispered.

“A… full conscious dismantlement. It was… horrible.” My voice shook—I could hardly get the words out.

He didn’t say anything. He just sat there, his face frozen and his nostrils flaring now in hurt rather than sensitivity.

“
Damn,” he said at last, with unusual feeling. And after another long, long silence, “
Bitch!”

“Yeah,” I whispered, hardly trusting myself to speak. “Bitch.”

“
Bane!”

Bane stumbled on, staggering into one bush after another. I sprang out and he started violently, fists rising, then dropping as he recognized me. I realized the soft noise he was making was laughter.

“
Did you see that?” he gasped. Far too loudly. He was almost shouting as he caught my arms. “Did you
see
that?”

He broke out laughing in earnest. Among the very genuine mirth there was a ragged edge of pain.

“
Be quiet!”

I clapped my hands over his mouth and his laughter trailed off abruptly. Deafened and stunned. And... my hands came away from his face covered in soot. Bother.

“
Come on!”

I pulled his arm over my shoulders, the better to aim him in a straight line. He stayed silent, so perhaps the shock was wearing off. I stopped near the hut where we’d talked earlier, beside a boot washing station, yanked off my wellie and used a sock to give his face a speed wash, ignoring his flinches.

We looked and listened carefully for guards before heading over to the fence, but his first attempt to scale it brought him to his knees, clutching his chest and gasping. No, he wasn’t just stunned...

But we had to get over
now
, before the guards got themselves organized. I dropped to my hands and knees, patted my back and pointed most emphatically up over the fence. Reluctantly, Bane stepped up onto me and
Deus omnipotens
he was heavy, but a few moments later he was on the other side of the fence, albeit hunched over and gasping again.

Frightened and bewildered, everyone was pouring out of the sports ground, and at the moment the guards on the gates were letting them, rather than have a panic break out if they tried to keep everyone there.

Bane’s pinkened skin and blackened eyebrows were rather obvious in the lights. I pulled his hood forward, gave him a meaningful look and shoved his face into my hair before slipping an arm around his waist.

The guard on the turnstile was too busy talking on his walkie-talkie and looking around wildly at the surrounding area to pay us any attention. The reader peeped happily at us both and we hurried on with everyone else.

Did half the guards even realize the explosion had been caused by the fireworks and not by the Resistance? Bane and I had certainly expected nothing more than a lot of fireworks going off in rather rapid succession.

My house was only about four kilometers away, so we headed that way at the best speed we could manage, Bane’s arm still around my shoulders, his face still hidden against my hair. This was going to start some rumors of gun-jumping, if any of our year saw us. But he was walking almost straight and even turned his head slightly at the sirens of four police cars that went tearing past.

We didn’t stop, or speak, until we’d shut my front door behind us.

“
You’re not bleeding, are you, Bane?” I only had to speak a bit louder than normal, now.

“
Not bleeding. Think my flaming ribs are broken,” he gasped.

“
Let me see...” I slipped a hand under his coat and sort of patted him over, checking for blood... no, that wasn’t going to be enough. “Let’s get you upstairs.”

I tried to take his arm again—he flinched, swore, apologized, and walked up under his own steam, shoulders hunched. I sat him on my bed and began the painful business of peeling off his layers of clothing. He flinched and swore some more, and bit his lip rather too hard.

Oh, it was his
back
that was becoming one enormous purple black bruise!

“
What happened, Bane?”

“
There was a knot in the wood of the door,” he wheezed. “Saw it at the weekend. So I took my waterpistol with me, filled with petrol,” he nodded to the rucksack now lying on the floor and I realized what the smell was that I’d been dimly aware of.

“
I squirted it all through the hole, shoved it back in my rucksack, then lit a scrap of paper and dropped it in. I heard the petrol catch and legged it. The fireworks seemed to be going off just the way I hoped, so when I got inside the bushes I stopped to watch. And then BANG. I went flying—literally—flung my arms up behind my head, good job, ‘cause I hit the boundary wall,
whack
. Lay there in a heap until everything stopped flying around. Then got up and started running. Trying to run. I just couldn’t go straight. Good thing I found you, ‘cause I reckon I was making a hell of a lot more noise than I realized.”

“
Too right! I thought a rabid bear was on the rampage!”

“
Well. Thank you for coming to help me.”

“
Help you! I thought you were dead, you stupid fool!” I hugged his head and even that made him wince.

“
Sorry. Didn’t realize that was going to happen. Or I’d have used a fuse cord or something. They won’t play that down, though!” He started to laugh again, then winced and went motionless. “You know, I think I just want to lie down on your bed and stay very still. For several days.”

“
Well, let me put some cream on your face first...”

“
Hang my face!” His hands gripped my duvet, white-knuckled. “Er. My head’s going all funny, y’see...”

“
Whoa, let’s get you horizontal!” I sprang up and pulled back the covers, ‘cause he was literally about to keel over in a dead faint, if he was admitting to it.

“
Where,” he demanded through gritted teeth, once he was lying on his stomach, “is adrenaline when you need it?”

“
I’d say it was right when you needed it!”

His eyes slid closed and I sat looking down at him anxiously. What if something was actually broken? Did he really need the hospital? But his injuries were too suspicious; hospital would get him executed.

I settled the duvet gently over him against the chill—even that made him twitch.

The sound of the front door...

Oh no! I’d left my parents at the sports ground, in the middle of what appeared to be a terrorist attack, with no idea where I was.

My turn to wince.

I stood by the little window the following evening, looking out at the shadowy forest and breathing in the fresh night air—and trying to ignore all the strategy discussions going on behind me. The Prize was still playing hard to get.

“
My mum told me guys want a
nice
girl,” Annie was telling Harriet, very seriously.

“
More than nice
legs?”
asked Harriet in disbelief.

“
Which do you think is more important, Jon?” asked Jane smoothly. “Legs or
nice?”

“Just be careful,” put in Rebecca, “if you say legs, Jane will claim you by virtue of the fact that she has the longest legs in the dorm.”

I couldn’t help glancing around at that. Jonathan stirred from his own—bleak?—thoughts and smiled slightly.

“I think I’ve already made it clear legs aren’t my highest priority.”

“So you want the nicest?” said Harriet excitedly. “That’s settled, then! But…” she deflated slightly. “Who is the nicest?”

“
Looks like
you’re
out of the running,” said Rebecca, smiling sweetly at Jane.

Jane scowled. “Looks like Jon and Sarah are going to be an item, then.”

“
I
didn’t say I wanted the nicest,” said Jonathan dryly. “
I
want the one I
like
the best.”

“You’re still out the running, then,” murmured Rebecca to Jane.

“Oh, shut up. At this rate no one’s going to have him. He seems to have the sex drive of a castrated snail.”

“
Snails are hermaphrodites,” said Jonathan, very blandly. I stared at him, sitting there surrounded by girls. Which one
did
he like best?