Chapter Twenty-Nine Kilkenny Aflame
Twenty-Nine
Kilkenny Aflame
Alice Lonsdale slept in one of the staff bedrooms at the Savoy.
She shared it with two other women, who were congenial enough, and they all worked different shifts, so they didn’t see much of one another anyway.
None of her old friends knew where she was, but she’d managed to let Malcolm’s parents have her address, and the name she was passing under: Cathy Hood.
And on the morning when Lyra woke up among the gryphons, after the death of the sorcerer Sorush, Alice found a postcard in her staff locker. It showed a picture of Port Meadow, and before she turned it over she knew it was from Brenda Polstead.
It said:
Dear Cathy, I hope you’re well. Our old friend Dr. Ralph is going to be in London on Wednesday and would love to see you and say hello. The Egyptian kiosk at one if poss. Love from me and Reg—Brenda.
Wednesday was that very day. Brenda knew how to spell Dr. Relf’s name as well as Alice did, and the Egyptian kiosk was a coffee stall on the Embankment not far from Cleopatra’s Needle; they called it that because Reg had told them about the old man who ran it, saying he was so ancient and wrinkled he might be a mummy himself.
So Alice found her supervisor and made a change to her lunch hour, and at five to one she was sitting on a bench under one of the trees in the Embankment Gardens, from where she could see the river and the obelisk, and a little way along, the coffee stall.
The day was gray and damp, and threatening rain.
Hannah Relf arrived only a minute or so after Alice.
She was wearing a heavy coat and a dark blue beret, and carrying a Harrods shopping bag.
Alice jumped up as soon as she saw her, but then remembered what she was doing, and looked around carefully to see if anyone was watching; she knew she was an amateur at this game, and made herself move slowly and casually.
They exchanged a kiss. Alice was moved by Hannah’s warm embrace.
“Let’s find somewhere indoors,” said Hannah. “It’s going to rain soon.”
“There’s a little café just up that way,” said Alice. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you.”
“I want to know everything that’s happened. But I’ve got a task for you, and I need to explain…”
Alice noticed how Hannah unobtrusively scanned everyone in the street, and how as they approached the café she put her hand in Alice’s arm and steered them firmly past it before suddenly turning back and into the entrance.
As she turned, her eyes flicked across the sidewalk and the roadway, taking everything in.
Once they were sitting at a corner table with bowls of soup in front of them, Alice quietly told Hannah about her arrest, and the prison camp, and her escape.
“Brenda told me you’d been to see them,” Hannah said. “She knew she’d be safe telling me, but she swore she wouldn’t tell anyone else.”
“Oh, I trust them. But it’s been like living in a, I don’t know, a different country now. Suspecting everyone.”
“We have to.”
“You said you had a task,” Alice said.
Hannah put the Harrods bag on her lap. “I want you to take this and give it to someone personally. Don’t put it through a letter box or give it to a secretary.”
She handed Alice a package the size of a small book, wrapped in brown paper and securely taped. It bore the name David Ferguson, and an address in Battersea.
“Here’s the point,” said Hannah. “The package is a sort of decoy. If by chance anyone does see you, they’ll think that’s the important thing.
The real message you need to take to David Ferguson is in four sentences I want you to memorize.
Say them as you hand the package to him, and make sure you get the wording absolutely right. ”
“What are they?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Now, tell me about the Savoy.”
Alice told her what she was doing, and how she’d found the job, and all she could about the way she was living now. Hannah was curious about everything, and particularly interested in the internment camp Alice had escaped from. She listened avidly.
“ORD, and Brytsec,” she said. “There’s a power struggle between those two. The officer who interrogated you was ORD, you say?”
“Very proud of it too. Flaunting his what’s-names—things on his shoulders.”
“Epaulettes.”
“That’s it. He was more proud of being ORD than Brytsec, I could see that.”
“Interesting.”
Hannah was concentrating hard on everything Alice was saying, as if she was making mental notes. Then she said, “How long have you got? When do they expect you back at work?”
Alice looked at the little clock over the counter and said, “I’ll have to go in about ten minutes. What was it I had to remember?”
“Ready? Don’t write it down. Just keep it in your head.”
“I will.”
“Here goes: Kilkenny aflame is a nine-days’-wonder. Beyond the marshes all the cats are redeemed in flags and banners. Total harvest lies laid out and stripped of circumlocution. Enter the ice-bound belvedere.”
Alice blinked.
“Don’t worry,” said Hannah. “I’ll go through them again till you remember. Kilkenny aflame…”
They were speaking quietly, under the noise of the coffee machine and the clatter of plates and cutlery and the usual chatter of a busy café.
Hannah spoke each phrase separately. Alice’s hearing was good; she heard every word clearly, and repeated them several times until she had them accurately.
Then she went through them as a whole for Hannah to check.
“…Total harvest is laid out—”
“Lies.”
“Sorry. Total harvest lies laid out…”
She got to the end with no more mistakes.
Hannah nodded sternly. “Say it to yourself over and over till you’re simply unable to make a mistake.”
“Can I write it down to help?”
“No. Not at all.”
“No point in asking what it means?”
“None whatsoever, my dear. Find David Ferguson, hand him the package, speak those words, and then go back to the Savoy and forget all about it.”
Alice looked for her purse, but Hannah shook her head.
“Well, it’ll make me feel a bit useful, anyway,” Alice said. “Give my love to Reg and Brenda. You haven’t heard anything from Malcolm, I suppose? Or Lyra?”
“I wish I had. I’m anxious about everything, Alice. All we can do is carry on.”
“Anything else I can do, you know where I am.”
Hannah paid the bill, they left the café, embraced on the pavement, and Alice hurried back to work.
—
She came out of the hotel at half past five, caught a bus along the Embankment as far as Albert Bridge, and crossed over into Battersea.
The tide was in and the river was high, and busy with traffic: cargo barges, a couple of river buses, a police launch cruising slowly up towards Westminster.
Alice had only been to London once in her life before she was a prisoner on the run, but she was beginning to know her way around now and enjoy the vastness, the anonymity, the busy-ness.
And she loved the river, the same one that flowed through Oxford, though much bigger here, whose waters had carried her and Malcolm and the baby Lyra so many years before.
It had been wild then, but it was gentle now, the same river, mild and decorous.
The first thing she’d bought when she got there as an adult was a detailed map, and she consulted it now as she stood at the Battersea end of the bridge.
Aland Street was tucked away in a maze of small roads south of the park, and it took her the best part of half an hour to find it, a small house in a shabby terrace with nothing to distinguish it from the neighbors except the number in tarnished brass numerals on the door.
She knocked and waited. She waited long enough to knock again. This time she heard a door closing somewhere inside, and then footsteps came to the front door. It was opened by a thin man in shirtsleeves looking as if he’d been busy at something and wanted to get back to it.
“David Ferguson?” said Alice.
“Yes. That’s me.”
“I need to know for certain.”
He looked at her coldly, and his eyes flicked to left and right along the street. “You’d better come in,” he said, and stepped aside.
She followed him in. He shut the door and took a wallet out of his back pocket, opening it to show her a card bearing his picture. It called him Captain Ferguson and said he worked for the Ministry of Agriculture.
“Agriculture?” she said, but then went on, “Sorry. None of my business. I got this for you.”
She took the package out of her bag and held it out, but didn’t let go. He looked expectant.
“Kilkenny aflame is a nine-days’-wonder…” she began, concentrating hard. She stumbled over is and lies, but got it right, and he nodded; and then she released the package. His lips had been moving as she said the words, memorizing it too.
“Thank you,” he said. “You can go now.”
He smiled with unexpected friendliness, and opened the door for her.
“Cheerio, then,” she said, and left to make her way back to the river and the bridge, where she caught a bus back to the hotel.
—
Pan was aching all over, but it was going to be the final part of their journey, Tilda told him.
“Do you get tired too?” he said. “Does flying use your muscles? All I can see is that you keep hold of the branch.”
“Yes, that’s what we do. I don’t know how the flying happens.”
“But…Do you really not know?”
“I just feel it happening.”
“You really don’t make any effort with your muscles, or anything?”
She shrugged. “Never thought about it,” she said. “Now you made me think about it, maybe it won’t happen. Suddenly I can’t fly. What will you do then?”
“Apologize.”
“You better. Come on. Last day now.”
“And no birds yet,” he said, finding the least uncomfortable place on the pine branch.
“You trying to look for bad luck?” she said without expecting an answer, and sprang upwards.