What does it profit a copper, I thought, if he should gaineth one hostage but loseth another?
I put a werelight into the air above our heads, the biggest I’d ever attempted. The staff hummed like a beehive and the light came out the size of a weather balloon and bright enough to get three paragraphs in UKUFOindex.com and a special feature in the
Fortean Times
.
I’d been going for sunlight, and it rolled over us like a sudden summer, painting the unicorns in pinks and whites, rippling like an oil slick across the scales of the Queen’s armour and flashing off the sapphire at her brow.
‘This is the police,’ I said. ‘Everybody needs to keep calm and stay where they are.’
‘You moron,’ shouted Victoria.
The Queen turned her eyes on me and I felt the power of her regard push and pull and shove at me as if it were a festival crowd.
‘You wouldn’t believe the number of people who’ve tried that on me,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid you’re just going to have to talk instead.’
The pale flawless skin of her brow ruffled, and fuck me if I didn’t recognise that expression – every single time I failed to finish what was put in front of me for supper at the Folly. So far the Queen had kept her gob shut, but I was willing to bet she had a mouth full of sharp teeth and, behind them, a long and prehensile tongue.
I laughed for sheer delight at having
that
question answered.
Now I knew what to look for, the similarities to Molly were obvious. Not so much the physical, but the way they held themselves, the way they moved as if they were standing still and the world was obligingly rearranging itself around them.
So Molly was fae or, even better, this particular kind of fae – whatever this kind of fae was. And so we progress in our knowledge of the universe step by step, pebble by pebble.
‘Give me my child,’ shouted Victoria. The Queen glanced at her, and Victoria fell suddenly silent and slumped to her knees.
‘Stop that,’ I said.
The Queen looked back at me and inclined her head.
‘I can’t let you have either of the children,’ I said. And, because I was raised to be polite, ‘Sorry.’
The Queen’s expression went from annoyance to contempt, and on either side her beasts stirred, stamped their hooves and lowered their heads.
I fixed my eyes on my unicorn, the one with the bleeding wound on its shoulder, and feinted with my staff. It flinched and then backed away a couple of steps before rearing up on its hind legs with a frightened whinny.
The Queen shot it a poisonous look and I thought, Just wait till she gets you alone. You’re in so much trouble. The unicorn came down at her unvoiced command, but it stayed noticeably nervous.
Then the Queen turned back to me and smiled – this time showing her teeth.
And suddenly there were at least a dozen more armoured fae standing amongst the foxgloves and between the trees that grew down by the riverbank. They wore the same armour of blue-grey slate and in their hands they held half-drawn metre-long bows.
I took a deep breath.
‘Peter,’ said Dominic. ‘Can you even spell de-escalate?’
And I exhaled slowly.
‘Let’s not do anything hasty,’ I said, and lowered my staff.
I heard Dominic mutter something weird about a throne of blood. I looked at the girl half-wrapped in the Queen’s cloak, at her half-sister bound and fuming, and her mother on her knees and weeping silently. My mind was suddenly clear and free of doubt and, given what I was about to do, possibly devoid of thought.
‘My name is Peter Grant, I am a sworn constable of the crown and an heir to the forms and wisdoms of Sir Isaac Newton,’ I said. ‘I offer myself in exchange for the children, the mother and my friend. Take me – let everyone else go.’
She made me wait, didn’t she? Of course she did.
Then her smile grew wider and she inclined her head in gracious acceptance.
‘Dominic,’ I said.
‘You idiot,’ said Dominic.
‘Take the girls and Mrs Lacey and get out of here as fast as you can and go to the nearest place indoors where there’s lots of people – a pub will do,’ I said.
The Queen banged the butt of her spear against the ground.
‘I’ll be right with you,’ I said, and then to Dominic, ‘You’ve got to get a message to my governor, DCI Nightingale. Tell him that wherever they’re taking me it will be via Pyon Wood Camp, okay? The castle must be somewhere beyond that, in Wales I think.’
Two sharp raps with the haft of the spear – no more time.
‘They don’t like the Roman road,’ I said quickly, and handed Dominic my staff. ‘That would be a good place to intercept.’
Before Dominic could say anything I stepped forward until I was between Victoria and not-Nicole and the Queen. The unicorn I’d injured snorted and pawed the ground – I gave it the eye.
‘Now the girl,’ I said.
The Queen nodded cheerfully and set Nicole in motion towards her mother. She passed me, a small figure dressed in what looked like a woollen shift. I heard her mum sob with relief.
‘Dom?’ I called without looking round. ‘Have they cleared out of your way?’
‘Yes, they have,’ said Dominic.
‘Then off you go,’ I said and stepped forward.
You swear an oath when you become a police officer – you promise to serve the Queen in the office of constable with fairness, integrity and impartiality, and that you will cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people and property. The very next day you start making the first of the many minor and messy compromises required to get the Job done. But sooner or later the Job walks up to you, pins you against the wall, looks you in the eye and asks you how far you’re willing to go to prevent all offences. Asks just what did your oath, your attestation, really mean to you?
I could have bottled it and not offered the swap. No disciplinary inquiry would have found me lacking in my duty had I merely sought to contain the situation and wait for back-up – in fact that would have been proper procedure.
And it’s not like my colleagues wouldn’t have understood. We’re not soldiers or fanatics, although I think I would have heard the whispering behind my back in the canteen whether it was really there or not.
But sometimes the right thing to do is the right thing to do, especially when a child is involved. And I reckon there wasn’t a copper I’ve worked with who wouldn’t have made the choice I did. I’m not saying they would have been pushing their way to the front of the queue, and they certainly wouldn’t have done it with a glad song on their lips, but when push comes to shove . . .?
So I did it. Because I’m a sworn constable and it was the right thing to do.
Plus I fully expected Nightingale to come rescue me.
Eventually.
I hoped.
They followed the Queen as she turned and walked up the logging track. The unicorns wheeled and cantered ahead. Her heralds, I decided, and the manifestation of her desires. Around me the rest of the party moved in a loose formation, some on the track, some drifting silently amongst the saplings. It was hard to pin down how many there were.
I heard the Nissan start up and, after what sounded like a slightly desperate three-point turn, roar away. The engine sounded weirdly muffled, but at the time I just put that down to distance and the intervening trees.
Either we turned off the logging track or it petered out, because soon we were walking a narrow trail that threaded between mature trees. There was some moonlight to see by, but I found it hard to keep up and the Queen had to stop a number of times to wait for me. Whenever she did, I heard a familiar rhythmic hissing sound from her retainers – I recognised it from Molly. Laughter.
After a long time we emerged onto the bare crown of a hill. One of the unicorns crowded me then, pushing its shoulder against me and guiding me roughly into a hollow between two grassy banks. There the Queen and her retainers made camp, sitting down and wrapping their grey cloaks around themselves. There was a chill in the air, so when one of the retainers offered me a cloak I took it gratefully, although it did smell suspiciously of horse.
The unicorns took station at either end of the hollow and, under their watchful eyes, I slept.
I dreamt that I’d pulled over a flying saucer and was trying to determine whether to charge the occupant with driving while unfit under section 4 of the Road Traffic Act (1988). Which was stupid really because it was a flying saucer and they’d have to be charged as being unfit for duty under part 5 of the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003. Not to mention breaches of various CAA regulations, and of course Illegal Entry into the UK under the 1971 Act.
I woke to grey skies and damp grass.
Croft Ambrey, that’s where I reckoned I was, in one of the ditches that put the ‘multi’ into multivallate Iron Age hill fort. I smelt wood smoke and, looking over, saw a group of grey-cloaked figures crouched around a campfire.
Never mind Nightingale, I thought, the National Trust are going to have conniptions about that. Quietly, I got up. And angling away from the campfire, I made my way up the side of the lower of the banks. If I was at Croft Ambrey it might be possible to make a dash down the slope towards Yatton. Despite the low cloud it was humid and I was sweating by the time I reached the top.
Stretching away below me was an unbroken sea of trees. Not the ordered ranks of pine and western hemlock, but the spreading multi-coloured tops of oak and ash and elder and all the traditional species of the ancient woodland. I recognised the outline of the hills and valleys from Google Maps and from when I’d stood at the Whiteway Head further up the ridge.
But there was no farmland in sight, no white gouge of quarry works at Leinthall Earls, no village of Yatton – so no Stan sniffing her chemicals and listening to death metal. This was the Wyldewood, spelt with a Y, that once covered the Island of Britain and would again, once the pesky tool-using primates had done the decent thing and exterminated themselves.
I didn’t think it was time travel because faintly, like an old scar, I could see the line of the Roman road running north up the valley from Aymestrey towards Wigmore. And, beyond the road, the solitary mound where Pyon Wood Camp had stood – only here was Hannah’s castle, blue and orange and, well, I personally would have said salmon rather than pink. A grouping of slender bulbous-topped turrets with rounded roof caps. It looked like a cross between something on the album cover of a progressive rock band and a termite tower.
I realised then that the fae didn’t coexist with us within the material world. This was a parallel dimension of some kind. The sort that mathematicians and cosmologists get all excited about and smugly inform you that your tiny maths-deficient brain couldn’t get a grip on. But I had a grip on it all right. A terrifying, sick-making grasp of my predicament. Because I didn’t think Nightingale was going to be able to get me out of this.
‘Fuck me,’ I said out loud, ‘I’m in fairyland.’
I heard a hissing sound behind me and turned to find the Queen having a good laugh.
They were realer in their own world, particularly the retainers, whose faces showed acne scars and blemishes. Their fingernails were dirty and their armour sported the occasional cracked scale or sign of obvious field maintenance. The unicorns were still beasts the size of carthorses, with the temperament of a Doberman Pinscher and a great big offensive weapon in the middle of their foreheads.
The Queen scared me most of all now that her cloak smelt of damp wool and had a splatter of mud along its hem. As she turned to organise her retainers breaking camp she seemed far too solid for comfort.
It’s amazing what irrelevancies you find yourself thinking when it’s too late. Because as I looked over the Wyldewood at the disturbingly organic towers of the castle on Pyon Mount, I realised what gift it was that I could give to Hugh Oswald in exchange for his staffs.
We should open up the school, I thought, if only for a day. Bring down Hugh and all his mates and show them the names that Nightingale carved onto the walls. Let them know that they are remembered, now, while some of them are still alive, before it’s too late.
And bring their children and their grandchildren – even if, like Mellissa, some of them were definitely a bit odd. In fact, especially the ones that were odd. That way they would know that they were not alone and me, Dr Walid and Nightingale could get a good look at them and take notes for future reference.
And why stop there – let’s bring the lot of them. Beverley, the rivers, Zach the goblin, the Quiet People, all the strange and illusive members of the demi-monde and show them the wall and have an alfresco buffet.
Get all of us in the same place so we could all get a good look at each other and come to some kind of proper arrangement. One that we could all live with.
The day was warming up by the time we headed downslope and into the valley where Yatton definitely no longer existed. Being really real hadn’t put a crimp in the way the fae moved, though, gliding amongst the trees even as I stumbled down the path and used both hands to steady myself. It got easier once the slope levelled, but the trail stayed narrow and twisty and the canopy of the trees blocked out the sky.
After fifteen minutes of crossing the valley floor, the Queen held up her hand and the band stopped. She made a quick gesture at two of her retainers, one of whom pulled a rope from his pack while the other mimed holding his hands out in front of him, wrists pressed together. I glanced at the Queen who gave me a weary
Just don’t get any ideas
look and so I held out my hands as directed. The other retainer wrapped the rope around my wrists, tied it with some care to keep the circulation going but without giving me any leeway, and looped the other end around his own wrist.
I felt a moment of excitement. They hadn’t been concerned to restrict my movements before, but the fact that they felt they had to now indicated that they feared I might to try to escape. Which implied that there might be a way to escape nearby.
It was the road. The Roman road. Those imperial fuckers had put their mark on the landscape, all right. Even to the point where it impinged onto fairyland. Had that been their intention, to break up the native fae and ease their conquest of the material world? Or had they just liked straight lines and not cared about the effect?