A brief shower comes upon us, the falling drops catching in one last slant of sunlight levered underneath the rain clouds billowing down from the north. I look at my home, as a golden shroud of wind and rain wraps round it, trying to see it as another might; a modest castellation, not large; age smoothed, sitting prettily in a ring of water and surrounded by lawns, hedges, gravel paths and outbuildings. The ancient walls once pierced only by arrow slots, long since remodelled to allow more generous windows are the colour of honey, in that rose red light. It looks peaceful; but still, for all that architectural delicacy, somehow too strong for these brutal, disrespecting times.
Steeped in all this indiscriminate barbarity, anything standing proud invites a razing, like some defiant shout which only draws the hands’ attention still faster to the throat, to grasp that moving strand of air by which we hang from and on to life. The only persistence in these unleashed days is achieved through low denominations and banality; in uniformity if not in uniforms, like that shoal of the displaced we tried to become part of. Sometimes the lowest how is the highest guard to offer.
For now, all is still about the castle; no smoke rises, no figures stalk its square of battlements; no flag flies above, no light shines and nothing moves. There are still a few tents on the front lawns; people from the village who’d suffered the attentions of armed bands before and had thought the proximity of the castle might guarantee a degree of safety. Some smoke rises slowly there.
I think the castle never looked so good to me as now, for all that one lot of pirates are in charge of it and I am being forced to help another band even more determined to have it for their own.
The grounds around it are another matter; even before the despoilings inflicted by our mongrel dispossessed cutting wood for fires, digging latrines in our lawns the fields, woods and policies were running down, going to seed, becoming neglected. We lost our estate manager two years ago, and I only ever distantly interested in the running of the estate could not find it in me to take his place. Thereafter, gradually, all the other estate workers were taken by the war, one way or the other, and nature, unrestrained, began to renew its old authority over the burden of our lands.
‘There, at the stables,’ the lieutenant whispers, over the noise of raindrops pattering through the foliage around us. ‘Those two four wheel drives.’
‘Ours,’ I tell her. We left them there, and the stable doors unlocked, knowing that to attempt to secure anything would only invite more damage. ‘Although we didn’t leave the doors open like that.’
‘That building with the slatted sides at the back of the garages,’ the lieutenant says. ‘Is that a generator house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any fuel for it?’ She looks at me hopefully.
Only under our carriage. ‘The tank ran dry last month,’ I tell her, truthfully enough. Saving our last few drums of diesel, we have mostly used candles for light and open fires for heating since then; the kitchen stoves burn wood too. There were fires and lamps that ran off propane, but we used up the final cylinder last night, before we left.
‘Hmm,’ our lieutenant says, as the soldier to her other side nudges her and points. We watch as a man another irregular, as far as I can see appears from the stable block, puts a drum in the back of one of the four wheel drives and then starts it, bringing it round to the front of the castle, out of sight from us.
‘Much fuel in those cars?’ the lieutenant asks quietly.
‘Only what we couldn’t siphon,’ I reply.
‘Can you take a vehicle into the castle itself?’
‘Not one of those,’ I tell her. ‘Too tall. There’s a small courtyard, with enough room to rum something the size of a jeep around.’
‘No drawbridge?’ she says, looking at me. I shake my head. She smiles thinly. ‘I think you mentioned a gate, though, didn’t you, Abel?’
‘A thin one, and a portcullis of wrought iron. I doubt either would stop ‘
The lieutenant’s radio chirps. She holds up one hand to me, and answers the radio, listening then making a snuffing noise. ‘Yes, if you can do it cleanly. We’re on the ridge just behind the castle.’
She puts the instrument away. ‘Amateurs,’ she says, sneering, and shakes her head. ‘They’ve nobody in the gatehouse.’ She looks at the man to her other side. ‘Psycho’s in the trees by the drive, over there,’ she tells him. ‘Says there’s only two loading the car. Nothing heavy in sight. He’s about to start shooting, then one of the trucks and the other jeep are going to make a dash for the front. Give them cover.’ She turns to me. ‘These aren’t soldiers,’ she says with seeming disgust, ‘they’re just looters.’ She shakes her head, then puts the binoculars away and readies her long gun, steadying it and sighting. ‘Deathwish,’ she says to the soldier with the rocket launcher. ‘Save it. Not unless I tell you, okay?’
The fellow looks disappointed.
Gunfire comes from beyond the castle, near where the driveway leaves the trees and climbs up the shallow slope to the main lawn. There is nothing to see for a moment, then the four wheel drive reappears racing round the gravel track from the front of the castle, back towards the stable block. The car drifts across the gravel, rear door swinging wildly, still open. Its windscreen is starred white and somebody is trying to punch through it from behind. The lieutenant’s gun barks suddenly, making me start; the heavy machine gun they brought from the jeep opens up and I put my hands to my ears. The four wheel drive shakes, pieces fly off it and it turns sharply, front wheel seeming to buckle, almost tipping it into the moat (the machine gun’s rounds kick tall thin splashes in the water for a moment); the car swerves the other way, losing speed; it straightens out briefly and crashes into the corner of the stable block.
‘Stop!’ shouts our lieutenant, and the firing ceases.
Steam curls upwards from the car’s crushed bonnet. The driver’s door opens and somebody falls out, crawling on all fours on the ground, then collapsing.
Another motor sounds, there is more firing from the front of the castle, and then one of the lieutenant’s trucks appears, roaring up the drive, straight for the castle. The gunfire stops; the truck disappears from view, obscured by the castle. We hear its engine rev, then stop altogether.
The rain has ceased. For a few moments there is silence and the only movement comes from the wisps of steam escaping the fourwheel drive’s engine. Then we hear a few shouts, and some shots. The lieutenant takes out her radio. ‘Mr C?’ she says. I hear a crackle in reply.
‘Ah, Dopple; what’s happening?’
She listens. ‘Okay. We got the four wheel drive; it’s out of action. We’re coming in now, from the ridge behind. Three minutes..’ She puts the radio away. ‘Psycho got one at the bridge,’ she tells us. ‘There’s another two or three inside the castle, but the truck got to the gate in time; we’re in.’ She shoulders her gun. ‘Tootight,’ she says to the fat soldier I shared the rear of the jeep with. ‘You stay here; pop anybody running away who’s not one of us.’ The fat soldier nods slowly.
Crouched, we move at a half run between the bushes and trees down to the rear gardens. Isolated shots sound from inside the castle. We go first to the man fallen by the side of the steaming, hissing four wheel drive. A man lies dead in the passenger seat, his uniform weltered in blood, his jaw half torn off. The driver lying on the ground is still moaning; blood seeps on to the gravel beneath him. He is a tall, gawky young man with the spotted complexion of adolescence. Our lieutenant squats to slap his face, trying to get some sense from him but extracting only whimpers. Finally she rises, shakes her head, exasperated.
She looks from the wounded man to the soldier with the machinegun, the one called Karma. He has taken off his steel helmet to wipe his brow; he is red haired. ‘Your turn,’ she mutters. ‘Come on,’ she says to me, as Karma puts his helmet back on, clicks something on the machine gun and points the weapon at the head of the man lying on the ground. The lieutenant strides off, her boots crunching over the gravel.
I turn quickly and follow her and the soldier with the rocket launcher, a strange tenseness between my shoulder blades, as
though vicariously preparing for the coup de grace. The single, loud bang still makes me jump.