Working Wonders (38 page)

Marcus, all seven stone of him, had been thrown onto the ground by the force of the close-range shot.

‘Are you all right?’ Arthur knelt beside him, aiming to pull him to safety under the opening of the gate.

‘I’m fine,’ said Marcus, breathless and winded. ‘You’ll have to go on without me.’

‘We can’t leave you here!’

‘After all you’ve done.’ Gwyneth knelt down beside him. Sven was making Rambo-style terror noises out in front, shooting repeatedly.

‘GO I tell you! If you fail now I’ll never forgive myself. Go, and leave me here.
DO IT
.’

Arthur looked at him with more respect. ‘You’ve …’

‘It’s all right,’ said Marcus, settling back and beginning to close his eyes. ‘You don’t need to tell me. I know.’

Arthur clapped him on the shoulder and Marcus grabbed his arm and clasped it one last time.

‘Thank you,’ said Arthur softly. ‘Sven! Sven! Come ON! We’ve got to get inside and close this bloody gate.’

Sven was dancing between splashing yellow bullets. ‘Come on, you
WANKERS
.’

Gwyneth jumped up and dragged the back of his collar. ‘
QUICK! IN!
’

On the other side, underneath the dark arch, thankfully, there was only one lever to pull. Arthur did so immediately, and the portcullis began to come down quickly. For some reason, he got a lump in his throat watching Marcus there on the other side of it, patient where he had fallen.

‘
SANDWICHES!
’ screamed Sven suddenly. ‘He’s not going to make it!’

The game little dog had been hurtling himself about and nipping and yapping at the enemy’s ankles as they had emerged from their tree hideout and even now were running towards the gate.

‘I have to go …’

‘You CAN’T,’ said Arthur, pulling him further into the safe recesses of the wall.

‘You’ll get shot immediately. I can’t do without you.’

‘So you’ll leave him like you left Marcus? Sandwiches!’

And Sven leaped out again, putting himself into the range of fire.

‘I’m
NOT
stopping it,’ said Arthur. Ross’s mob were thirty feet away … fifteen … ten … and the portcullis was five foot … four foot … three …

‘
SANDWICHES
!’

Now there was less than a foot to go, and the other side were nearly on it. Realizing he wasn’t going to fit his fat bottom underneath the gate, Ross had reloaded his gun and was standing full square in front of the entrance.

For the second time, Gwyneth grabbed the full weight of Sven and pulled him, and they both went flying backwards into a small alcove, just as a tiny flash of white, brown and black squeezed itself under the tiniest gap between the closing gate and the ground, and catapulted itself into Sven’s arms.

The three of them landed in a heap, watched by an incredulous Arthur, shaking his head.

‘Unbelievable,’ he said. And, ‘Great!’ when he saw that what he’d taken for an alcove in fact led to a dark passageway.

Arthur unpacked the torch Rafe had passed onto them and gingerly pointed it upwards. The staircase curled round the inner wall of the castle. Other walls were long gone, and tangled weeds and wild undergrowth furled up between the rocks across the floor. Holes in the roof let through light from the sky, but mostly it had held, and as they moved further away from the portcullis and the central courtyard, it became more and more difficult to see where they were going.

‘Who do you think used to live here?’ said Gwyneth in wonderment. ‘It’s a proper castle. I feel like I should be wearing a wimple.’

Or a chastity belt, Arthur found himself thinking sadly.

They clung to the wall and wound up and around the inside stairs. Water dripped down the sides of it, and moss grew. It didn’t feel like anyone had been there for hundreds of years.

‘I wonder what the last person to leave thought?’ said Gwyneth dreamily, envisaging a world full of princesses and marriages and – oh, things that could never happen now. She swallowed hard.

‘Probably, “Oh no, I’ve just been horribly killed by marauding hordes,”’ said Sven.

Ahead, in the torchlight, at the top of the stairs, Arthur suddenly caught sight of a door. His heart jumped.

‘Ssh!’ he said, and pointed ahead. The door was made of an ancient heavy wood, studded with massive iron bolts, with a large black knocker in the middle. ‘That’s got to be it,’ he whispered.

All of them stood stock-still in trepidation.

‘Well,’ said Gwyneth. ‘I guess that’s where we’re headed.’ Still none of them moved.

‘What do you think’s behind the door?’ said Sven, voicing their fears.

‘Oh, come on, what can it be?’ said Gwyneth stoutly. ‘You’d never get a … ehem … twenty-foot python up these stairs. Or a shark, say.’

‘Yeah,’ said Sven. ‘Right. They still haven’t cloned Hitler, have they?’

‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said Arthur. ‘It’ll probably just be another problem solving thing.’

‘Well, that’s handy now Marcus is dead,’ said Sven.

‘Marcus is not
dead
,’ said Arthur. ‘Come on. It’s the last hurdle now. We’ve done brilliantly. Just a few more steps. Let’s keep moving.’

He took one more step, and the castle exploded.

Gwyneth screamed as what felt like black shrapnel came towards her. A flurry and a dreadful roaring, flapping sound filled her entire field of sensation.

‘
ARTHUR!
’ she screamed.

But Arthur too was engulfed. He pushed out his arm in front of his eyes, and forced his back against the wall. Sandwiches, however, was leaping and throwing his body in the air, desperately trying to push himself upwards.

‘
Flagermus
!’ shouted Sven. ‘Bugger it!’

‘
What
?’ yelled Arthur, trying to fight off the whirring torment.

‘Bats!’ said Sven. ‘Bloody bats!’

‘They’re in my hair,’ yelped Gwyneth. ‘Urgh! Get off!’

Arthur tentatively opened his eyes and saw that Sven was right – but it wasn’t just a few bats. There were literally hundreds of them, maybe thousands, streaming through the passage like an oil spill.

‘They’re biting me!’ said Gwyneth.

‘They won’t bite you,’ said Sven.

‘No?’ She flailed desperately at her head. ‘Why do they call them
vampire
bats, then? Why not the friendly bats?
VEGETARIAN
bats?’

‘Keep quiet,’ said Arthur. ‘They get about by radar, don’t they? We must have been making too much noise.’

‘Yes, that’s because
BATS ARE FLYING IN MY EYES
,’ said Gwyneth, as the cloud circled and squawked.

Arthur pulled out his gun. ‘Oh God,’ he said, and put his finger on the trigger.

‘You can’t shoot the bats!’ said Sven. ‘They’re a protected species!’

‘Yes, and I
AM NOT
!’ shouted Gwyneth. ‘Shoot the fucking bastards!’

‘I’m not going to shoot them, only splat them.’

‘They’re only small. You’ll kill them.’

Arthur heaved a sigh. ‘Okay.’

He held the butt of the gun and started flailing it about in front of him.

‘What’s he doing?’ said Gwyneth, who now had her jacket covering her entire head.

‘Flailing around,’ said Sven.

‘I’m using my gun as a sword to cut a way through here,
actually
,’ said Arthur.

‘Okay. Let me know when they’ve all got tired and gone home,’ said Gwyneth, slumping with her back against the wall. ‘Eurgh. There’s bat crap everywhere.’

Sandwiches came and put his head in her lap.

‘Sandwiches and I don’t like it up here. It’s yucky and frightening.’

Arthur was antagonizing the bats, which were swirling in rapid concentric circles. ‘Ha!’ he shouted, cutting a rather elegant swathe through with the heel of his gun.

Amazingly, the strategy began to work; the more Arthur lunged at them, the further away the strange creatures were moving. Finally, they started to swoop out and under the eaves, across the dark spaces and into the further reaches of the castle, as if they had checked the visitors over thoroughly and found them wanting.

‘Phew,’ said Arthur, brushing the last few away. Then, with some reverence, he cleaned his sword – gun, and thrust it back into the scabbard – holster, round his waist. ‘Thank God we’re through that.’

‘Yeah,’ Sven agreed, brushing himself down. ‘How the hell do you think the outward bound team got them all up here? That’s amazing.’

Once they’d checked everyone was all right, and made absolutely sure there weren’t any bats accidentally still tangled up in Gwyneth’s hair, Arthur tentatively set forward once again. No one had come out from the room ahead of them at the commotion, and he couldn’t imagine what lay beyond. He put his hand on the heavy bolted door.

The door swung open at the lightest touch. It wasn’t locked after all.

Daylight streamed in. The room was octagonal, like the castle itself, and had windows – well, not glass windows of course, holes cut into the walls – on all sides. The room was cold, but bright; with heavy stone walls and great, crumbling flagstones on the floor.

There was only one object in the room, and all of them crept in and stared at it.

‘But that’s …’

Arthur nodded slowly, grimly. ‘This is … this is absolutely impossible.’

Sven leaned forward. ‘Why is she …’

‘I don’t know.’

Arthur’s face had gone white, staring straight ahead, as cold as ice. ‘What the hell are they doing to me?’ he said, almost to himself.

Fay didn’t stir. It really was impossible to tell, as she lay on the surface of the stone table, whether she was asleep or even alive, although when you looked closely you could see her chest lightly rise and fall.

She was dressed in a simple long grey shift, belted loosely around her hips. Her hair, normally pulled back with cheap scrunchies in untidy ponytails, had been brushed around her shoulders, and her cheeks were pink in the cold.

None of the three could approach her. It was as if they were rooted to the spot by some deep sense of uneasiness, of an enchantment sensed in her peaceful face.

‘I’ve seen this before,’ said Gwyneth, nodding. ‘It’s very clever. You take someone out of one of the teams to be what you have to find. Woman in jeopardy and all that. This is a good company.’

Arthur looked at her. ‘You have … you have
no
idea.’

Gwyneth looked at his stricken face.

He took a step backwards, and looked from one to the other, his head spinning. This must have been what – no, it couldn’t. Could this have been what Lynne had been talking about? Nothing made any sense.

‘Do you think she’s wired to a bomb?’ said Sven.

Arthur staggered back. ‘You’re right. It’s just a trick. It’s just something they’re doing as part of the game. That’s all it is.’

‘Has he gone bonkers?’ said Sven to Gwyneth. But she didn’t answer. She had some idea of what he was thinking. She swallowed hard, and looked at him.

Arthur was looking at Fay, then turned to look straight at Gwyneth.

Gwyneth looked at Fay, then back at Arthur, and for a very long moment, neither of them could speak.

‘You were …’

He couldn’t finish the sentence. ‘You would have been my queen.’ He smiled ruefully.

Gwyneth stepped towards him. He automatically stepped one pace backwards. ‘I – can’t I?’ said Gwyneth. Her eyes, suddenly, were filling with tears.

Arthur couldn’t speak, just stared back at her.

‘What are we doing?’ said Sven, suddenly. ‘I mean, call me crazy, but don’t we have a plan to carry out? It’s almost like there’s some kind of atmosphere between you two.’

Gwyneth and Arthur couldn’t tear their eyes away from each other.

‘Don’t,’ said Arthur to Sven. ‘It might be dangerous.’

‘Everything’s dangerous,’ said Gwyneth.

‘No, playing with fire is dangerous,’ he shot back.

‘La la la la,’ said Sven. ‘Come
on
. Let’s move!’

‘Don’t,’ said Arthur again. ‘You could get hurt. We’ll have to figure this out together. I don’t trust the people running this for a second, and neither should you.’

There was silence in the room.

‘I …’ she started, stuttering. ‘Well, I mean,
she
’s here. It’s almost like a sign.’

‘She was true,’ said Arthur.

‘Yes, apart from when she slept with Ross and fucked you out of our info!’ said Gwyneth, outraged.

‘But you were …’ Arthur shook his head.

‘Whatever you thought,’ she said, ‘maybe I just wasn’t. Maybe I was just what you wanted me to be.’

‘No,’ said Arthur. ‘You were.’

‘Well, then,’ said Gwyneth, suddenly furious. If men wanted her and couldn’t talk to her, was it her fault? Her problem? ‘You couldn’t talk to her – you couldn’t talk to me. Choose.’

‘Oh God,’ said Sven suddenly. ‘Well, seeing as I’m the virgin round here, I think I’m going to have to kiss the princess. Or get the grail. Or whatever the consolation prize is in amongst everyone else’s sexual tension, because I am Very Brave.’