“This.If the damn birds are gone—really gone...”
“They’re gone.”
“Then I want to do what every decent person I’ve met latelyseems to have had the balls and the sense to do.Gibson, Charlie,John Kucharski, Foster...”
Sashabroke into soft laughter.He took both Laurie’s hands in his own,mindful of the drip feed, otherwise tight enough to squeeze bone.“Are you proposing to me, my one and only beautifulLoz?”
“Yes.God, Sasha—will you?”
“Yes.Yes.”
***
The darkwas almost down.The window was open to the sweet late-summer dusk,and Sasha leaned with his elbows on the sill, looking out over thecity that had become his home.Behind him in the room, the doctorswere settling Laurie down for the night.
Sashahad a glass bird of his own, he supposed, though its edges weren’tsharp, and its colours were warm desert russet and gold.He hadheard from Mateo.The email said that he’d been accepted for theDACA programme—that his paperwork was being processed, all hisprospects good.It had also contained an invitation.
Sashareached into the pocket of his jeans.Mrs Gibson had brought himseveral changes of clothes, but in his distraction that morninghe’d pulled on the same pair he’d worn on the day he’d left thestates.Gently he pulled out a dry, still-fragrant jacarandablossom.Sasha smiled.He raised the flower to his lips and kissedit.Then he held it out of the window, where it lingered for asecond on the palm of his hand before the breeze caught it, bearingit off into the night.
Chapter Thirty
TheLife of Saint Ke,a rare medieval Cornish-language play, had manylost sections in its sixteenth-century manuscript.High on aclifftop outside the little fishing village of Porth Bay, thePlain-an-Gwarry Players were filling these gaps with verve and wildimagination.
The tinyoutdoor theatre space was packed.The crowd had overflowed from thecar-tyre seats in the amphitheatre into the meadows around – PorthBay villagers, parents and kids, surfers catching the very end ofthe season.The local vicar, whose translation of the play theactors were using, was looking nervously on, and even the villagedoctor and the local air-sea rescue chief had turned out for theentertainment, both of them ridiculously handsome in the eveninglight.From time to time Sasha thought the two were holding hands,but that seemed an embarrassment of riches.
Hereturned his attention to the stage.This was a ten-foot-squareplatform enclosed by the keel of a boat.Beneath the arch formed bythe prow leaned wicked King Teudar, a piratical-looking fellow witha scar beneath one cheekbone and an air of infinite villainy storedup in the cant of one dark brow.Not only had holy Saint Ke givenshelter to a stag he had been hunting, but when Teudar had sortedout a punishment to fit the crime by impounding Ke’s oxen, the staghad called up its friends from the forest to plough Ke’s fields forhim.
The saint was a strapping dreadlocked surfer, the stags abunch of kids from the local primary school, ash-twig antlers thatwere proving just as dangerous as the real thing strapped to theirover-excited heads.The Plain-an-Gwarry Players were popular inWest Cornwall and probably would have called up a good crowdanyway, on a bright September evening with a soft breeze off theCeltic Sea.Once news had gone out that Laurie Fitzroy, Londontheatrical prodigy and Devlin Steele from the greatestBlood Moonfilm nevermade, would be there for a one-night performance, the numbers haddoubled then tripled.The various charities the Players supportedwere sorted out for this season.
Despite all this, or possibly because of it, King Teudar wasvery cross indeed.He leaned more eloquently on his boat-keel arch.He lowered the canted eyebrow, paused for a second then tilted theother, somehow with that gesture sending a wave of hilarity throughthe crowd.He was very handsome despite the scar.His blue eyesshone with sea-lights as he sought out Sasha in the crowd.Still,he was wicked, and the little children squealed obligingly when hestepped down off the platform, arms folded, an ominous cloud on hisbrow.“I now have no stag to hunt, it seems,” he rumbled – cue forthe smallest of the antlered children to rush out and begin amocking dance behind his back.“Bad enough, but now this wretchedhermit sneers at my justice!”He paused.This was one of the gapsin theBewnans Kemanuscript, and he was way off-piste anyway.His audience wascracking up.He spread his hands in broad appeal.“What’s a wickedking to do?”
ThePlayers were well used to extempore.After the tide of reactivelaughter had died down, one of Teudar’s courtiers suggested, as ifit were the most reasonable step in the world, “You could slaughtera virgin, Your Highness.”
“A splendid idea, minion.”Teudar scanned the crowd.“But wheream I to find one in a village such as this?”It was a dreadfulpanto line, but one that never failed.The adults creased up, thekids joining in after a second, laughing – Teudar hoped – justbecause everyone else was.He looked off stage to the left.There’dbeen some sounds of frantic struggle from behind the makeshiftwings.“A virgin!”Teudar repeated loudly.“Where am I to find one,after closing hours in this benighted spot?”
West Cornwall had another legend, connected to Teudar but notrecounted in theLife of Saint Ke.This was the story of Saint Ia, an Irish lady ofgreat virtue who had missed the boat supposed to bring her on hermission to Cornish shores.Nothing daunted, she had stepped ontothe nearest floating leaf, which had grown into a boat around herand borne her off safely to the harbour that would one day be namedafter her, St Ives.The details of her life were patchy after thatuntil her martyrdom by wicked Teudar, making her a good candidateto fill in a gap in Ke’s story.The Plain-an-Gwarry players alwaystried to combine modern cultural symbols with their historicaltales, and in this case had decided that the saint should travel ona delicate arrangement of three surfboards, draped in leaf-greenfabric and carried aloft by a retinue of half a dozen fine youngChristian men.
The ideahad just barely worked in rehearsal.Teudar watched apprehensivelyas Saint Ia emerged from the wings.Cries of delight rose from thecrowd.The boys were magnificent, poising the three draped boardsupon their naked shoulders with careless ease.As for the saintherself, she had come rather young to her task but lookedthoroughly ready for it, sitting serenely upon her miraculous boat.She raised one hand to shower blessings on the noble hermit Ke, whorushed to adore her.Then she poked a minatory finger in Teudar’sdirection.“Wicked Pagan infidel!”
Teudarrather thought that if anyone deserved to be called Pagan, it wasthe saint who could call the creatures of the forest to do hisbidding and the one who had floated in a leaf across the CelticSea, but that was the beauty of the old Cornish faith.Themissionaries blended in legend with the sea gods and the wind gods,the goddesses of earth and sky.To stand in an ancient West Countrychurch was to feel the electrifying sanctity of five thousand yearsin wind-song vortex all around.
Saint Iathrew a handful of holy water.Teudar cringed as expected, whilesomeone behind the scenes made convincing popping and sizzlingnoises.Ia was a good shot.She was taking delight in her target,too, a large unsaintly grin spreading from ear to ear.Her thirdattempt to soak the wicked king was so enthusiastic that she madeher central surfboard lurch.Its fins locked with those of theboard next to it and the whole construction tilted sideways.SaintIa gave a shriek and one of the good Christian lads stumbled overthe edge of the drapery.“Shit!”he bellowed, as his holy burdencatapulted off the boards.
Shelanded on the turf at the feet of the crowd.Sasha, who’d made sureof a front-row seat for this unique performance, was in the rightplace at just the right time.He held out a hand to her.Shegrabbed it like a tow cable, sprang upright, let him go with agrateful flash of a smile.The boys were in a heap behind her.After a glance to make sure that nobody was hurt, Saint Ia facedthe crowd.Her tinsel-and-wire halo was dented beyond repair andtilting off one side of her head.She leapt up onto pointe: made aperfect five-turn pirouette, then sank to the ground in adying-swan curtsey Pavlova might have envied.
Theaudience roared.Teudar leaned against the boat keel in relief—itwas a lot easier for him to martyr his virgins if they hadn’talready broken their necks.A grand Cornish riptide of laughter andapplause was filling the auditorium.Unable to help himself, Teudarjoined in.Even the strait-laced vicar, who’d asked the Players totreat the story with respect, was doubled up, his handkerchiefpressed to his eyes.
Afterthat, the performance proceeded more smoothly.Teudar appeared tomellow out in his old age and granted Saint Ke all the land hecould walk around while Teudar was having his bath.Saint Ke andSaint Ia put their heads together to come up with a potion thatmade the old monster stick to the sides of his tub, and set off ona wild, hooting run around the amphitheatre to claim their newterritory.Teudar was wheeled off in his bathtub, ranting andraving.That signalled a break in the performance, and Sasha madehis way through the crowd to the tiny curtained-off backstage area.He leaned cautiously on a cardboard wall and smiled at King Teudar.“All right, Your Majesty?”
Laurie had retained his underwear to please the vicar andstripped off the rest to please everyone else.He stared up atSasha, wide-eyed.He had been out of hospital for a week.His hairwas tousled, his collarbones and ribs standing newly stark beneathhis skin.“I’m fine,” he said.“It’s just that I reallycan’tget out of thissodding bath.”
“Potion must have been good.”Sasha reached into the old enameltub.One of Teudar’s soldierly retinue appeared at the other side,frowning in concern.Between them they reached in and hoistedLaurie out.Sasha met the boy’s eyes and nodded gratefully.“Ithink your leading man might have overdone his first day back onthe job.”
“Is he okay?”
“I think so.Can somebody cover for him for the next act,though?”
“Sure.We swap parts around all the time.And it’s just abacklit sequence where he murders Clara – we do it in silhouette soas not to scare the kiddies.”
