Neither did I.
Ightham Mote was a solid wood and stone 14^th century manor house that sat in the middle of a deep wide moat. This house was specifically designed to withstand siege and attack. The main entrance was a stone bridge that led underneath a tower flanked by stone buildings. The other three sides of the house comprised a half- timbered upper storey sitting on a solid stone lower level. There was another, smaller stone bridge at the rear. There were sandbagged gun emplacements on both bridges. There used to be a wooden bridge on one side, but that had obviously been pulled down by the building's new occupants; the National Trust would have had a fit.
One of the teachers used to take junior boys on trips to Ightham and had produced photocopied floor plans for the lessons he gave before the trip. Earlier we had turned Castle upside down and found a pile of these sheets in a store cupboard. The building was a maze, not somewhere you wanted to get involved in close quarters combat.
'This is suicide,' I said. 'There is no way we are getting in and out of there without getting shot to pieces.'
'What this? Nine Lives Keegan walking away from a fight?'
That was his new nickname for me, Nine Lives. Funny guy.
'Yes,' I replied. 'Always. Whenever humanly possible I walk away from a fight. I don't like fights. They hurt.'
'Petts is in there. He's one of our boys. We never leave one of our boys behind.'
Grief, he was starting to speak 'Tabloid'.
'Mac, mate, we're schoolboys not Royal Marines. He's probably already dead. And I know it's callous, but chances are some, if not all of us, will die getting him out. Surely one dead, however regrettable, is better than twenty?'
Mac favoured me with a look of total disgust.
'You'd really leave him in there?'
'Considering the odds, yes.'
'Then you're not the man I thought you were.'
Hang on, I wanted to say, since when did the murdering rapist have any claim to the moral high ground?
'Look,' I said. 'I agree with you in principle, of course I do. But for fuck's sake, look at that place. What good does it do anyone getting ourselves slaughtered?'
He just ignored me and crawled away. Clearly I was beneath his contempt.
The more I thought about attacking that place the less I liked it. I could see Mac's point about rescuing Petts, it was the only honourable sentiment I'd ever heard him utter, but it was going to get us killed. The power base that Norton was trying to build for a coup was just not strong enough yet, so there was no way of seizing power before the attack. And Mac was riding a wave of post-victory loyalty, so even our progress so far was looking wobbly. The boys had seen Mac's strategy win them a battle, and he'd been in the thick of the fighting, leading from the front. He'd proved himself both clever and brave. Which is, let's face it, what you want in a leader.
Not for the first time I wondered if maybe Mac was the best choice to lead us after all. And not for the first time I recalled Matron's face and Bates' screams, and felt my resolve harden.
Time was of the essence. We needed to devise a plan of attack quickly and efficiently and for that we needed more intelligence. We were clear on the approaches to the house and its internal layout, but we needed to know more about the routines and behaviour of the people who lived there. After all, attacking in force during their daily weapons training drill, the only time of the day when every single person inside is armed to the teeth, would not be a good thing. We needed to know stuff, and the simplest way to find stuff out is to ask. Rather than knock politely on the door and ask the insane cannibals to fill in a survey we decided to wait until someone left and then capture them. We didn't have to wait long.
A group of three young men left the house around midday, armed with machetes and guns, and headed off in the direction of a nearby village. Speight led an ambush in which two of the men were killed, and then rode back to school with the survivor strapped across the back of his horse.
'You'll bleed for this, cattle fucker!'
The man was in his early twenties. His blonde hair was slicked back with dried blood and his face, torso and arms were similarly daubed. He stank like a butcher's shop and his breath reeked. Mac had tied him to a chair in an old classroom and was sitting facing him, turning his hunting knife over and over in his hands, saying nothing.
'David will come for me and when he does you'll pay. You'll all pay.' This last directed at me and Speight.
'Let me guess,' said Mac, impersonating The Count from Sesame Street. 'We'll pay… in blood! Mwahahaha!'
Speight chuckled. I rolled my eyes.
'You'll help make us safe. We're chosen. You're nothing.'
'This whole 'safe' thing, let me see if I've got this straight,' said Mac. 'You smear yourself in human blood to protect you against what exactly… the plague?'
'The chosen shall bathe in the blood of the cattle, and they shall eat of their flesh, and they shall be spared the pestilence.'
'But you've already survived the pestilence, yeah? I mean, you're O-neg, right? David's O-neg, your blood brothers are all O-neg, your victims are O-neg. You're all immune anyway otherwise you'd be dead, wouldn't you? So what's the fucking point?'
'The pestilence was sent by God to cleanse the Earth. It was The Rapture, don't you see? The worthy were taken up to The Lord and we have been left behind. We are the cursed ones and we must prove ourselves worthy in his sight before the Second Coming. We are living through the seven years of The Tribulation. We must not fail the trials before us or we shall burn in hell forever. David is the prophet of the Second Coming and he shall lead the chosen into Heaven. He anoints us with the blood of the unworthy so that when the pestilence returns to carry off those who have failed in the sight of The Lord we shall be protected from the mutation. We shall live forever, don't you see? When David takes the blood of the cattle and blesses it then it becomes the blood of The Christ and we are cleansed. Hallelujah!'
We just stared. None of us really had an answer for that.
'Um, right,' said Mac, for once rendered almost speechless. 'Okay. Look, mate, I don't want to get into a philosophical discussion with you and stuff. I just want to know the routine in your little manor house, yeah? What times you eat, what time you put the lights out, guard changes, that sort of stuff. Oh yeah, and where you keep the cattle from Hildenborough locked up. You know, just the basics. Think you can help me out?'
The prisoner appeared to think about this for a moment and then replied: 'Piss off.'
Mac turned to me and Speight, and beamed. 'Finally, fucking finally, I get to torture somebody!'
He turned back and brandished the knife. 'Right, you smelly little toerag, I am going to cut you into tiny chunks and feed you to the pigs!'
'Mac, a word,' I said. I was still in Mac's bad books but he hadn't demoted me or anything, so I figured I was still persona grata.
'What is it Nine Lives? I'm busy.' He advanced towards the captive.
'Mac, a moment please,' I insisted. 'Outside.'
He turned to look at me. He did not look happy. 'This had better be good.'
In the corridor I explained my idea to Mac, who thought about it for a moment and then nodded. Speight scurried off to get the necessary torture implements.
'Does this mean I don't get to cut him?' said Mac, disappointed.
'You can, yeah, but not now, eh? Just let me do this, we'll get the info we need, then you can do what you want with him. Fair?'
'All right. This better work though.'
'Trust me.'
Speight returned and handed the tools over to me. I re-entered the room, with Mac and Speight behind me, and I advanced on the bound prisoner. I placed the torture devices on the bedside cabinet, pulled up a chair, and leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially in the captive's ear.
I told him what I was going to do.
He begged for mercy, but I refused to relent.
