Maybe the road coexisted in both the mundane and the faerie worlds. Perhaps a bright young man who was quick on his feet might have it away down that road to safety. The Queen must think so, otherwise why bind my wrists? She took the other end of the rope in her own hand – I took that as a mark of respect.
Roman engineers like a nice wide bed, and a cross-country road was often eight metres across with the undergrowth cleared back for another five or six metres either side. I saw it first as a lightening in the wooded gloom and then as a long straight clearing. The Wyldewood had done its best – saplings and undergrowth had claimed the road almost to the middle. But none of the mature trees intruded further than a metre.
The band paused in the shadows at the edge. The Queen cocked her head as if listening to something far away. Beside her the unicorns stamped uneasily. Then she whipped around to face me – a question in her eyes.
‘I can’t hear anything,’ I said.
But then I did.
A buzzing sound that dopplered past my ear. A bee and not a fat bumblebee, I saw, but a slender working girl from a hive. She swerved past one of the unicorns which flicked its mane angrily at her, then back to me where she circled once around my head and then buzzed off back down the line of the Roman road.
I thought I heard the sound of tiny trumpets.
I glanced at the Queen who waited, still as a statue, for at least a minute before raising her hand to gesture us forward. But before we could move there was a crashing in the undergrowth and a huge white deer as tall as me at the shoulder thundered past the spot where we waited. And, as if he had been a pathfinder, a wave of animals followed. I spotted wild pig, more deer, rabbits, red coats and white, brown fur and russet red. Birds whirred overhead, screaming and crying.
By the pricking of my thumbs, I thought, something wicked this way comes.
The Queen let out a low snarl. And then I heard it.
It sounded like a train, like a steam train – huffing and blowing. The flood of animals reduced down to a trickle. I watched a cat the size of a Labrador zigzagging in panic before scuttling around us and vanishing into the undergrowth. I looked down the clear path towards where the noise came from, and saw the forest changing. Trees were falling backwards away from the road, their trunks splintering and fragmenting as they crashed down, so that by the time they hit the ground they had gone to dust. Grey stones the size of my fist were pushing themselves up through the forest floor like stop-motion mushrooms.
The Queen screamed in anguish as her unicorns jittered and skipped back.
I heard marching feet and smelt wet iron and rotting fish as the old Roman road ripped through the forest like a new wound.
The Queen pulled me closer and then, with a savage yank on the rope, drove me to my knees. She shoved her face in mine, lips bared over sharp teeth and her restless tongue snapping like a whip around her lips.
‘Make her stop,’ she hissed.
‘Make who stop?’ I asked.
‘Make
her
stop,’ she hissed and grabbed my head and jerked it round until I could see the engine bearing down on us. I recognised then the black iron painted with crimson and forest green livery and saw the name written on the canopy –
Faerie Queen.
The driver was still hidden behind the pistons, spinning bits and pipes and struts. But I knew, suddenly, who had come to rescue me.
‘Oh boy,’ I said. ‘You’s in trouble now!’
I’ll say this for the Queen. She was brave – or possibly stupid. It’s easy to mistake the two. She stood her ground while all her retainers fled alongside the other animals of the forest. She kept me on my knees by her side as the huge iron machine huffed and hissed and clanked and lurched to an uncertain stop beside us.
We waited for what seemed like a long time as the engine ticked and whirred and let off occasional mysterious bursts of steam. There was a clang from inside the driver’s compartment and a familiar voice said, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.’
Then silence.
Then Beverley Brook stepped onto the footplate and pointed a shotgun straight at the Queen’s head – I recognised the Purdey from my trunk. It was nice to see it getting an airing.
Beverley herself was wearing an oversized leather jerkin and jeans. Her dreads had been tied into a plait down her back and a pair of antique leather and brass goggles were pushed up onto her brow.
‘Put your hands on your head,’ she said, ‘and step away from the boyfriend.’
The Queen hissed and gripped the rope harder.
‘I don’t care,’ said Beverley slowly. ‘He is not free to make such a bargain.’
‘Nonetheless,’ hissed the Queen, ‘he made a bargain and he must keep it.’
‘Ladies,’ I said.
‘Peter,’ said Beverley, ‘you stay the fuck out of this.’
She reshouldered the shotgun.
‘I’ve loaded this particular gun with scrap iron,’ she said. ‘Now, I don’t know if a shot to the head will kill you or not. But just consider how much fun we can have finding out.’
While they were chatting, I created a little shield and, very carefully, sliced off the ropes around my wrist. The Queen felt when they went slack and turned to grab me but Beverley shouted, ‘No!’ And she thought better of it. She watched sullenly as I picked my way to the traction engine and climbed aboard – managing to burn myself just the once on hot metal.
‘The railings,’ said Beverley. ‘Keep your hands on the railings.’
When I was onboard Beverley ducked back into the cab, pulled what she called the reversing lever, checked the single brassbound gauge and pulled a second lever. The
Faerie Queen
lurched into reverse.
As we backed away, I heard the Queen, the real Queen, shriek with frustration. But even as she did so, the sound began to grow fainter. As it faded, the sun came out and the trees that had crowded the road melted away like dew until we were reversing up the good old A4410 and overlooking the hedgerows to the calm and civilised fields beyond.
The clouds had gone and so had the termite castle.
I sighed with relief.
Beverley stopped the traction engine and spent what seemed to me a very complicated ten minutes, getting it turned round to face in the other direction. Beverley shushed me when I tried to talk.
‘This is not easy,’ she said. ‘In fact, if I wasn’t cheating I’m not even sure I could do it.’
I wanted to know how she was cheating, but she glared at me until I shut up.
Once we were safely lurching in the right direction I got her to explain how she came to be the one who rescued me. She’d returned to Rushpool about the same time as Dominic. Beverley had insinuated herself into the conversation – ‘I felt it was my duty to offer my expertise,’ she said – and, having assessed the situation, made her own plans.
‘Your boss approved of it, of course,’ she said. ‘He’s waiting for us at Aymestrey.’
I doubted that Nightingale had been quite that relaxed about Beverley’s role and boy was he going to freak when I tried to explain the whole parallel universe thing to him. Not to mention the all-too-human loose ends which were flapping around this case.
I asked whether Nightingale had any idea what to do with not-Nicole.
‘Are you saying that you did that whole stupid hostage swap when you didn’t even know what you were going to do with the evil little strop afterwards?’
‘It was a high-pressure situation,’ I said. ‘Do you think Molly would like a friend?’
‘Not that kind of friend,’ said Beverley. ‘Besides, Molly has her own friends.’
‘Like who?’ I asked and thought – like how?
Beverley hesitated. ‘That’s not for me to say, is it? You’ll have to ask her yourself.’
‘The girl has to go to social services,’ I said.
‘Like that won’t be a total disaster,’ said Beverley.
‘I’m open to suggestions.’
‘Give her to Fleet,’ said Beverley. ‘She’s already got like a gazillion foster kids, and she’s married to a fae. So little Miss Psycho’s not going to worry her.’
‘Married to a fae?’
‘Yeah,’ said Beverley. ‘Scandalous, isn’t it?’
Ahead I could see the bridge across the River Lugg next to which I’d allowed myself to be taken into the water. There were stands of alder on the river’s banks and dogwood, hazel and hawthorn in the hedgerows. Robins and thrushes sounded across the fields and a couple of wood pigeon still refused to bloody shut up.
I put my arms around Beverley’s waist and buried my face in her hair. Beneath the oil and metal she smelt of peppermint and shea butter.
I was ready to go home to London.
Deep breath – the usual suspects: Andrew Cartmel, James Swallow, Mandy Mills, the Evil Monster Boy. Sabrina and Andreas for rural transportation. John and John at Da Management, Inspector Bob Hunter MPS and Inspector Martin Taylor WMP for everything police. Sonya Taaffe for Latin, Neil Patterson CoE and Clare Greener NFU for country matters. Ben Ando BBC for insight into the media. As always the litany of errors in the book are entirely mine and nobody else’s. Finally, I’d like to thank Jon, Simon, Marcus, Gillian, Sophie, Jen and Pandora at Orion, Betsy and Sheila at DAW, Joshua at JABberwocky, Thibaud, Tina and everybody else who have put up with my slow ways – I promise to do better next time.
Architectural and Historical Notes
Readers with an eye for the esoteric and unusual in architecture will recognise Hugh Oswald’s home as
The Folly in Herefordshire
which was built in 1961 by Raymond Erith, whose response to modernism was to pretend it never happened. It sits just as I describe it up on the Wylde and is a sight to see – although please remember that it is a private house and act accordingly.
Hugh Oswald demonstrates the benefit of a classical education by quoting from Book 17 of the
Iliad
:
Pokehouse Wood is a real place, but I’ve changed the dates on which it was replanted to suit the necessity of my story. I’m almost totally certain that it doesn’t form a gateway to the land of faerie, since if it did I’m sure its owners, the National Trust, would have, at the very least, put up a useful informative sign, if not a visitors’ centre with an attached café and small play area for potential changelings.
Since the events of this book, West Mercia Police have entered into a close alliance with several neighbouring police services. As a result Leominster nick is now fully staffed while Ludlow has become as lawless a town as Deadwood ever was – although presumably with better cuisine. This is assuming, of course, that they haven’t reorganised again while my back was turned.
Also by Ben Aaronovitch from Gollancz:
Rivers of London
Moon Over Soho
Whispers Under Ground
Broken Homes
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Ben Aaronovitch 2014
Cover illustration copyright © Stephen Walter
Cover image Courtesy of the Artist/TAG Fine Arts
Cover image taken from The Island ¬London Series, published by TAG Fine Arts
Design by Patrick Knowles
All rights reserved.
The right of Ben Aaronovitch to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2014 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 13253 5
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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Table of Contents
Due Diligence
Mutual Aid
Operational Flexibility
The Falcon Assessment
Customer Facing
Stakeholder Engagement
Enhanced Interrogation
Proactive Measures
Post Incident Management