The White Horse Trick (2 page)

But although the men mumbled and grumbled
to each other, none of them bothered to answer him.

The front door and the bedroom door were both broken, and the best Billy’s mother could do in the darkness was to prop furniture against them to keep them closed. It wasn’t enough to stop the wind from blowing in, though, and for most of the night the storm tore through the house, drenching everything it touched, and rattling and rocking and shaking and breaking anything that moved. There was no more sleep to be had for mother or daughter that night. They huddled together beneath a couple of damp blankets, reassuring each other as well as they could. Finally, in the early hours of the morning, the wind dropped quite suddenly, and left them feeling frightened and alone, listening to the silence.

Sometimes Billy’s ribs hurt from lying over a brawny shoulder, and sometimes his back hurt because he was under someone’s arm and his legs were dangling at the wrong angle, but none of the men ever carried him for very long, and every few minutes he was passed from one to another, so he could exchange one kind of cramp or pain for a different one. It felt to him as if his fear and discomfort would never end, but eventually he sensed that they had begun to go downhill, and a short time after that the storm gave one last violent heave, which almost knocked them all off their feet, and then decided to call it a day. The rain came at them from above instead of from
the sides. Then it, too, stopped, and the darkness all around them was suddenly silent and, just as suddenly, warm.

The man who was carrying Billy gave a great sigh and slapped him on the back in a way that was almost friendly.

‘Nearly there now,’ he said.

‘Where?’ said Billy. ‘Nearly where now?’

But he got no answer, and no one spoke to him again. Their pace slowed as the terrain underfoot became more difficult, with bigger rocks and loose stones, and then the torch went on again, blinding Billy with its sudden brilliance. There was a lot of scuffling and grunting among the men, as though they were trying to manoeuvre something heavy, but he couldn’t see what it was. He was pushed quickly through a narrow gap and on to some kind of floor; then he heard a door closing and more grunting, and then the sound of the men’s footsteps departing.

‘Hey!’ he called out after them. ‘What about me?’

There was no answer. Billy listened. He could hear the irregular dripping of rainwater from the roof, and something else as well. Someone breathing. His blood ran cold.

‘Hello?’ His voice was tight with fear.

‘Hello,’ said a voice. Another child, like him. It didn’t sound nervous, or threatening either.

Billy let out his breath. ‘What’s happening?’ he said. ‘Where is this place?’

‘We don’t know,’ said the child. ‘All we know is that we’re locked in here and we can’t get out.’

At first light, the woman and her daughter set out for the castle to find out what had become of Billy. Their journey was a slow and cautious one. The storm might have ended but its aftermath still affected their progress. During the woman’s lifetime the rainfall had increased so much that new lakes had developed. Some of them were temporary, and came and went depending on the rainfall, but others were more permanent and only dried up when, once every three or four years, there was a prolonged drought. These new lakes had changed the landscape, filling up every hollow and flooding the low points in the valleys. It meant that a lot of the old roads and paths had become blocked and new ways had to be found. So mother and daughter made for the high ground and followed the ridges of the hills wherever they could, staying just beneath the horizon so as not to be seen, because it was dangerous to be out and about in the wild places, by day as well as by night.

There were no trees or bushes to give cover, but the Burren was full of boulders and crevices, and as they
approached castle territory they slowed down and stayed low, and managed to creep from one hiding place to the next without being seen. When the notorious terraces came into view, they concealed themselves behind an outcrop of limestone and settled in to observe the scene. The mother knew what went on here and she wished she could prevent her daughter from seeing it, but it was too dangerous now for them to be separated and they had to find out whether Billy was there or not.

The castle stood on a broad shoulder of Sliabh Carran. To its west was a series of shallow cliffs known as the stony steps. To the north, the windowless face of the castle looked out over the sea, and on its opposite side, facing south, the hillside sloped gently down towards a shallow lake which had once been the meadows and woods at the foot of the great cliff called Eagle’s Rock. It was on this slope that the terraces were being built.

The weather patterns had changed. Ireland had always had a wet and windy climate, but over the past few decades the storms had increased in frequency and severity, and now, throughout the whole region, the soil was being washed away; swept into streams and rivers and carried out to sea. The woman and her family were, in that respect, among the luckier ones. Their garden lay on a gentle slope, which was sheltered on two sides by high crags, and the lie of the land meant that most of the rainfall was channelled down one side of it. Even so, the rain washed the nutrients out of the soil faster than they could be replaced, and every
year the vegetables were smaller and harder to grow.

But at least they still had something. They were looking down now on the ones who had nothing; the poor souls whose farms and gardens had failed completely and who had been rounded up by the commander’s army and brought here to work. The ‘Social Welfare Project’ is what the soldiers called it, but everyone knew that it was a labour camp, pure and simple, and that there was no prospect of any kind of life beyond it. People worked on it until they died. They were out there now, the old and the young, lugging rocks or baskets of soil, building walls, grinding stones for mortar. Almost everyone these days was thin, but these people were more than thin. They were just skin and bone; so emaciated that it was amazing they could still stand, let alone labour all day in the sun and the storms.

Indeed, it soon became clear that not all of them could. An old man staggered and sat down, resting the rock he was carrying in his lap as though it were too precious to drop. One of the soldiers on guard watched him, but he said and did nothing. The woman tore her eyes away from the scene and examined the children instead. They were working among the adults, doing the same jobs and wearing the same hopeless expressions. Their bodies were thin and stiff, with none of the grace and energy that children ought to have.

‘Do you see him?’ she whispered to her daughter.

‘No. He’s not there.’

‘Right. I want you to wait here and stay out of sight. I won’t be long.’

‘Why? Where are you going?’

‘To the barracks. I’m going to try and find out what’s going on.’

But she paused a moment longer. The old man lay down on his back, the rock on his belly. He struggled to get up, but failed. The soldier prodded him with his boot, then bent down and pushed the rock off him. Still he didn’t get up.

The worst of it was that all these suffering people were fighting a losing battle. What they were attempting to do was build a series of walls across the hill to hold in the soil and stop it from being washed away, but it was clear that they were failing. The storm of the previous night had left its mark on the works. There was a clear trail made by one of the raging streams that appeared all across the land whenever that kind of torrential rain fell. It had broken through walls and washed stones, even quite big ones, down the hillside. It had poured across the vegetable plots, uprooted plants and gouged out precious topsoil in long gaping gashes. There were still some crops remaining, mostly beans and beetroot and cabbage, but the plants were small and weedy and their leaves were yellow from the lack of goodness in the ground.

Billy slept, and when he woke up it was broad daylight. There were two other children in there – a girl of about his age and a boy who was a bit younger. Both of them were still asleep, so Billy set about examining the surroundings.

They were in a funny little house which seemed to be made out of plastic and tin. It had two rooms, one with beds in and another with sofas and a table, and a little old cooker and a sink, neither of which worked. Beside the bedroom was a tiny bathroom with a smelly toilet bucket and a basin of water. There were windows everywhere, but they were made of plastic and they were all scratched and cloudy. In any case, it seemed to Billy that they all looked out on to high stone walls, so there was nothing to be seen outside them anyway.

‘What are we doing here?’ he asked the others when they woke up. Neither of them knew. They just shrugged and yawned and scratched themselves.

‘Well, I’m getting out,’ Billy said.

The door was narrow and had more of that plastic
glass in the top half. Billy put his face up against it, but it was scratched like the others and he could see nothing outside except for vague grey shapes in a misty white gloom. The handle moved when Billy turned it, but there must have been some kind of lock on the outside, because the door wouldn’t open. He pushed it with his shoulder and thumped on it with all his strength, but it wouldn’t budge. He tried the windows next, tugging and hammering on the old fastenings, but they were rock-solid as well, as if they had rusted into place.

‘It’s no good,’ said the girl. ‘We’ve tried all that already. There’s no way to get out.’

She didn’t seem to be very upset about it, and nor did the young boy. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to work in the garden like we did at home.’

‘And no housework or cooking,’ said the girl. ‘We get more food here, too.’ She pointed to a large pot beside the sink. Billy opened it. It was full of stew – barley and beans from the look of it. ‘They bring it every night.’

‘I don’t care,’ said Billy. ‘I hate them. I’m not going to eat their food.’

‘That’s what I said to begin with,’ said the boy, ‘but you’ll eat it when you get hungry enough. There’s nothing else to do.’

He took a worn and bent spoon out of his pocket and began to tuck in.

The commander-in-chief had his feet up and was watching a DVD and having a cup of tea. A knock came at the door. One of his private guards put his head round it.

‘Message from the general, sir,’ he said.

‘At this time of night?’ The commander hit the pause button on the remote. ‘It better be important.’

The guard stood aside and a soldier came into the room. He was very small. His camouflage fatigues and his boots were several sizes too big for him. He didn’t look much more than ten or eleven years old, but his eyes were hard and clear, and there was nothing youthful or innocent about them.

‘Out with it,’ said the commander. ‘What’s the message?’

‘Where’s my brother?’ said the boy.

‘You what?’ said the commander, so astonished by the child’s effrontery that he couldn’t come up with a more forceful way to respond.

‘My brother,’ said the soldier. ‘Your men kidnapped him last night. What have you done with him?’

The guard, realizing that he had been tricked, stepped forward to get hold of the boy and throw him out, but he was too slow. The little soldier was already halfway across the room and was launching himself at the commander-in-chief. As he hit him, hot sugary tea erupted from the commander’s mug and sloshed all over both of them.

The guard grabbed the boy by the collar and hauled him off the commander, but he could do nothing to stop his wildly kicking feet landing several bruising blows. ‘Where is he?’ the boy was yelling. ‘What have you done with him, you fat, evil toad? It was your people who took him! Your goons in their waterproofs. I know it was them. What do you want with him? Where is he?’

The boy continued to struggle and swear, but the guard had a better grip on him now and his flailing feet couldn’t connect with their target. Slowly, menacingly, the commander stood up. His face was broad and fleshy, and it was flushed with rage. With the edge of a feather duvet he wiped at the sticky tea.

‘You’ll pay for that, you little worm,’ he said.

More guards appeared in the room, alerted by the noise. The commander stopped the first of them in his tracks.

‘Fetch the general,’ he said. ‘Right now!’

The guard didn’t even pause to turn up his collar, but plunged straight out into the rain. While he waited for him to return, the commander paced up and down the room, struggling to control his temper, casting the occasional
vicious glance at the boy soldier. Then running footsteps crossed the inner courtyard and the guard returned, breathless. Behind him, more measured footsteps could be heard approaching, and the general calmly opened the door and came in. His eye fell on the soldier and he shook his head disapprovingly.

‘What’s been happening here?’ he said.

‘I’ll tell you what’s been happening,’ said the commander. ‘This young gutter rat has lied his way in and accused me of kidnapping his brother.’

‘He did kidnap him,’ said Pup, still struggling to get free from the guard. ‘His men took him away last night.’

‘I want him punished,’ said the commander. ‘I can’t have this kind of thing going on in my armed forces.’

‘Quite right,’ said the general. ‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t do it again.’

‘Oh, he won’t do it again,’ said the commander. ‘There will be no fear of that. I want to see him court-martialled at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, and then I want the entire army gathered outside the castle at nine. There’s only one way to stop this kind of mutinous behaviour. I want him shot by firing squad in front of all your men.’

The general paled, and for a moment he seemed at a loss for words. Then he regained his composure and turned to the guard, who was still holding on to the squirming boy.

‘Put him in the lock-up,’ he said. ‘The rest of you leave
us alone for a few minutes. I want to talk to the commander-in-chief in private.’

The guards glanced at their boss. He thought long and hard, and finally nodded. Reluctantly, taking the boy soldier with them, the guards left.