The Liberators (10 page)

Ivo nodded. ‘Well – yes, I suppose so.' He gulped at his wine glass, allowing the warm, fruity liquid to roll down his throat. His hand was shaking slightly. Come on, he said to himself, stop being ridiculous.

‘You're a bright boy,' said Julius. ‘Strawbones here has told me a lot about you.'

Ivo turned to Strawbones, who, flopping back into his chair, blew hair out of his eyes and said, ‘Yes, I have.' Ivo took another gulp; without asking, Julius reached over and poured him a little more. Ivo's mind was beginning to feel sharper and focused, and yet at the same time, whilst he felt he could do anything in the world, his grasp of physical reality seemed to be slipping. When he moved in his chair, he found that he almost knocked his glass over; he looked up shyly at Julius, who smiled. Ivo glanced round the room again, and his eyes alighted on another painting: a man in a wig, wearing a tricorn hat and a long, brocaded blue coat, slumping in a chair, his hands in his pockets.

It had stopped raining, and now the sharp winter sun was beaming in through the tall windows, striping light across the floor. Both Julius's and Strawbones's faces were half in and half out of shadow.

‘We think you have a very great future ahead of you,' said Julius. Ivo considered this.

‘How do you mean?' he asked.

Strawbones lifted his glass quickly and drained it, his long, white neck flashing in the light, his blond hair streaming back. ‘We mean,' said Strawbones, ‘that we think that you're going to go far. Do you remember what I said, about the two great forces in this world?'

Ivo was looking at another portrait, a man in a red soldier's uniform, his hair tied back, standing in front of a pile of classical ruins.

Julius had, almost without Ivo noticing, refilled Ivo's glass again. Ivo picked up the crystal goblet, and held it in his hands, then took a large sip. The red wine was like velvet on his lips. ‘Tastes like strawberries,' he said. Ivo's mind was pleasantly fuzzy now. It seemed to him that Julius and Strawbones were both the friendliest people in the world. The room around him was taking on colours of extraordinary vitality, shimmering and rippling as he looked. He wanted, all of a sudden, to get up and dance. Though there was no music he felt an internal rhythm that wanted to burst out of him; he wanted to embrace Julius and Strawbones.

He noticed that Strawbones was looking at him and smiling, his long canines bared, and said, mistily, ‘Oh – yeah, I do remember. You said there were two . . . things in the world. Remember that. Whawassit?' He laughed gently and slumped back in his chair. ‘Nice pictures,' he said. As he looked at one of two men dressed like dandies from the 1920s, he said, ‘They look like you guys. Cool!'

Julius and Strawbones glanced at each other. Julius spoke, his soft, powerful voice creeping into Ivo's cranium. ‘One force: the force of reasoning, of man's intellect. The shadow in the picture in your aunt's room.'

‘The other force,' said Strawbones, ‘the force of will, of ecstasy.' Ivo, as he looked at him, saw his eyes glisten. His limbs were limp and langorous, eyes green and wide.

‘We've seen your instincts, Ivo,' said Julius quietly. Ivo laughed. ‘You respond to things in an interesting way. You have emotion, power, imagination.' The Persian carpets on the floor started to shiver, their bright hues undulating, and the objects in the room took on some inner, demonic vitality. Now all the room became animated; the statue of a woman in flowing robes seemed to be opening and shutting its mouth in silent screams, and then it seemed to be saying, ‘It's OK, you don't need to be yourself, you don't need to carry around all that bundle of worries and anxieties and hang-ups that make you into the weak person you are. You can transcend that, you can join us.'

Ivo sensed that Julius and Strawbones were reaching out to him: their arms were extended, and they were clasping hands. Mentally, too, he felt that some great, intent force was focused upon him. It was an enormous opening up of his will; he felt the beginnings of ecstasy. Was it his imagination, or were vines and grapes springing from the ground around their feet? The two brothers got up, and walked towards a cupboard, opened it, and when they turned round, they were clutching a staff, which was glowing brightly. How can this be happening? thought Ivo. He felt inert, like a rag doll.

‘Come here,
Ivo
,' said Julius, and held out the staff, which was radiating some strange light. It had all the warmth of the sun on a summer afternoon. It expanded, coming towards him, and Ivo knew that to be immersed in that light would be the greatest, most joyful moment of his life. He felt as if he had grown wings and could fly. Heat was concentrating itself in his stomach, seeping up into his heart, spreading out through his veins and arteries, sliding into his brain. He was alive to everything: to the shimmer of Julius's wristwatch, to the glow of his polished shoes, to the deep blue of Strawbones's shirt, the many colours of his plaited belt.

‘We can show you,' whispered Strawbones, ‘what it would be like. To be totally free.'

Ivo was flushed; he was breathing heavily. He managed to pull himself up from the chair. ‘I . . . I . . .' he slurred. Some part of him that was still conscious was flashing warning signals at him. The portraits: the man in the ruff, the man in the red soldier's uniform, the tricorn hat, the dandies: they were all the same people. They were all either Julius or Strawbones. He turned his attention to the door, and saw that on the hatstand was hanging the multicoloured jacket of the man on the tube. That's funny, he thought. That red embroidered jacket. The man on the tube, walking away from the death of Blackwood. A sudden burst of awareness came upon him; it was Strawbones.

He put his hands in his pockets, and felt the smooth bulk of the Koptor. His mind cleared, as if a veil had been taken away. He breathed deeply. The room stopped flashing and swimming around him. He saw the two brothers holding the staff, and his impulse was not to join them, but to run. They were facing him; the door was behind him. He made a sudden and desperate dash towards the entrance; he scrabbled for the handle, flung it open and leaped down the stairs and out on to the street and whizzed around the corner. Ivo wasn't sure if he was being pursued, but he sprinted all the way up South Audley Street, and across Oxford Street, nearly being crushed between two huge red buses, and it wasn't until he got to Charmsford Square that he stopped, panting and hot, feeling the sweat prickle down his neck. A kind of disbelief had shrouded his mind. He refused to accept that Strawbones was the man on the tube train, that Strawbones was at the centre of this insanity, that it all emanated from him. It was Julius, Julius who was the one, not Strawbones. It had to be. Ivo was devastated.

In the flat, Julius turned to Strawbones. Strawbones had flung himself into an armchair, mimicking the pose of his eighteenth-century counterpart. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and blew his nose loudly.

‘You were right,' Julius said to his brother. ‘There is power there.'

Strawbones shrugged. ‘Aren't I always right?'

The sun went back behind a cloud; the room was still; the staff they had been holding had been returned to its secret place; Julius sat down.

‘Don't worry,' said Strawbones to his brother. ‘He'll come round.'

‘Even so.' Julius stretched and yawned languidly, his teeth showing white. He gripped the arms of his chair. ‘There will always be someone watching.'

.

Chapter Nine

Ivo called Felix immediately: he answered, after a few agonisingly long rings. ‘What's up?' he said lazily.

‘Now. We have to go to see Hunter now. Are you working?'

‘No, we're off till five. Perky's away. Mate, are you OK?'

‘Weirdness. Meet me outside your house, now!' He hung up, hoping that the urgency in his voice was obvious. He paced up and down in front of the Rocksavages' house, and eventually the door swung open. Felix slouched out, zipping up his jacket, and Miranda followed. They pulled the door shut and stood at the top of the stairs. Ivo started walking. Miranda turned to her brother, shrugged, and chased after Ivo; Felix came a little more slowly at first, and then ran to catch them up.

Ivo told Felix and Miranda what had happened, stumbling slightly as he tried to find words for what he had experienced when he'd been in Julius's flat. A negation of the self, a feeling of total and extreme power, that one could do anything, in a frightening, brutal sense. It was, he imagined, like the feelings of those first tribes who reared their low forheads out of the stinking swamps and the fly-filled jungles.

Not, he said, that he had seen God, or even a god, but he had felt a powerful attraction which was not natural. He described the staff which Julius had brandished. He didn't mention Strawbones. He still couldn't believe it.

Felix chimed in: ‘The Thyrsos! That must be what Blackwood was talking about! The staff of the maenads.'

‘I saw it! I saw it in Julius's flat.' Ivo was suddenly sure that this was what the Koptor had been entrusted to him for. Its purpose was destructive. The breaker, the cutter.

They took the Bakerloo line to Kensal Green. It was dirty, grey and empty; they hardly saw anyone as they trudged along the dull streets, full of rows and rows of dingy Victorian houses. They eventually found Hunter's street. A dog snuffled past them, ownerless. They stood on the doorstep, banging the fish-shaped doorknocker as hard as they could, and after what seemed like the longest time imaginable, it opened to reveal a short, frumpy middle-aged woman wearing a brown cardigan and a flowery dress, her dark eyes, as black as shoe polish, peering at them from under a careless fringe of hair, coarse and black, as black as the sky at night.

‘Alice Hunter?' said Ivo.

‘Yes?' she said.

‘FIN?' said Ivo expectantly.

She shut the door in their faces.

The three looked at each other. ‘I think I know what to do,' said Miranda. She took the doorknocker confidently and rapped three times. It opened a crack and they saw Alice Hunter's eyes peering at them suspiciously.

‘Freedom is nothing,' said Miranda quietly.

Felix took the cue, and repeated the phrase; Ivo followed him.

Alice Hunter looked intently behind them, opened the door wider and they crushed in, Alice banging it shut behind them. Still reeling from the alcohol and his encounter with the Luther-Rosses, suddenly Ivo was confused, cornered in the passageway, by this pudding-shaped lady who pressed down upon him, sparks in her eyes.

‘What do you know about FIN?' she demanded, eyes narrowing, hands fluttering plumply as she waved the three of them into a tiny sitting room. It was the opposite of Blackwood's flat: scrupulously neat, with everything looking as if it knew its place and would never dare to leave it. But, despite the neatness, everything else was a riot of colour. The four walls of her sitting room were each painted a slightly different colour, as if she had tried each one out and then never got round to choosing one. A wooden table, painted dark green, sat in the middle, and the armchairs and sofas were covered in multicoloured cloths. The walls were crowded with photographs of Hunter and several other people, as well as a print of a dog poking its paw into a bath.

‘Sit, sit, all of you, so many of you, go on, sit. Did anyone follow you?'

‘No – well, I don't think so,' said Ivo, for in truth he hadn't expected anyone to do so.

‘What do you mean, you don't think so? That's not good enough, is it? They could be swarming all over the place. Here, wait.
Acolytes
,' she hissed behind her.

She popped into the corridor like a champagne cork, Ivo heard the door being opened, and after a few moments shut again, and the sound of chains being drawn across the door.

She appeared again, looking rather martial.

‘Well then. Can't be too careful. What's your story then, eh? Who's the leader? This one?' She pointed at Miranda, who shook her head dumbly. ‘This one?' pointing at Felix, who also shook his head, and indicated Ivo with his index finger.

‘You . . . what's your name?'

‘Ivo Moncrieff, ma'am,' said Ivo, and he felt as if ‘ma'am' was the right thing to say, although she laughed at that, showing her teeth, which were mottled and pied.

‘So, Ivo Moncrieff, what brings you here?'

‘Blackwood – he gave me this before he was killed – he told us to find you.' Ivo showed her the Koptor.

‘He gave you this?' she snatched it from him and held it up to what little light came from a lamp in the ceiling.

‘But this is the Koptor!' She looked at them suspiciously. ‘When did Blackwood give you this?'

Ivo explained what had happened to him on the tube platform; suddenly he was overwhelmed by the memory, its sharp, bright, fierceness, and he felt dizzy, limp and exhausted.

‘Here, you look like you're about to keel over! Restoratives, that's what you need,' said Hunter, and all but pushed him back into a big, squashy sofa that smelled of dog and biscuits. She went briefly out of the room and came back with a glass of water. ‘Drink this,' she said briskly, ‘and I'll make you some tea.'

Without thinking, Ivo gulped down the water; he suddenly realised that, even though she looked completely innocuous, they had no idea whether they could trust this Hunter woman, and decided to be on his guard.

Five minutes later Alice Hunter had brought in a delicate teapot and four china cups with blue figures on them, and some biscuits arranged in a pattern on a plate. Ivo, Felix and Miranda were sitting crushed together on the sofa whilst Hunter occupied the only armchair.

Ivo had to admit to himself, he hadn't thought that Alice Hunter would look like this. He'd imagined a dashing young lady, athletic, brave and beautiful, not somebody who spoke with their mouth full of crumbs and wore clothes that came from charity shops. Maybe she is an impostor, he thought, but that seemed preposterous. He resolved not to drink the tea, but it was too late to communicate this to Miranda and Felix, who were gulping it down and already stuffing themselves with biscuits.

‘And what are your names?'

‘Felix.' He looked up, blinking, running his hand through his dark hair.

‘It means lucky. Are you?'

‘Well . . . yes, I suppose . . . I mean, I don't always get caught, if that's what you mean –' Miranda elbowed him and he stopped.

‘Good,' said Hunter, ignoring him. ‘And you?'

‘Miranda.' She put on her best grown-up grin.

‘A girl to be marvelled at . . . Well, I won't ask you if you think you are.'

Miranda widened her eyes at Ivo behind her hand.

‘And Blackwood gave the Koptor to Ivo . . .' she said, glaring at Ivo intensely. She was appraising his qualities, assessing him like a horse before a race. ‘Bright eyes, springy step, good muscles,' he imagined her saying to herself.

‘Thank the lord
they
didn't get hold of it,' she said. ‘Though from what you say, they were close enough. Blackwood, Blackwood dead . . . I am the only one left. And you witnessed it. My poor dear,' she said, her voice changing suddenly.

‘Who are the Liberators?' asked Ivo.

‘They are not human like us – I'm human, don't you worry about that,' she said as the three of them started, Felix letting out a ‘No way!' and Miranda squawking in disbelief.

‘What do they want?' Ivo asked. ‘The Liberators, I mean.'

‘Freedom,' said Alice, brushing crumbs from her flowery skirt, her voice deep and full. ‘Unconditional freedom. They believe in a world without rules, without boundaries. They call themselves the Liberators, believing that our poor, human, mortal world is bound in chains, that our so-called “free will” is a lie. You can't call them insane, because they're not human, but they are definitely dangerously psychopathic. They believe that what they want to do is, how can I put this,
good
.'

‘
Good
?' Ivo said.

Alice Hunter sat up in her chair, and folded her arms across her chest. Her feet tapped out a rhythm on the bare floorboards. She thought for a while before responding. ‘They think that our consciences are prisons. They believe that we are prevented from becoming the people that we should be. They wish to liberate us from our consciences.'

‘So you mean – when I see something I want, and it's in a shop, and there's a little voice in my head saying “Take it, take it”, and there's another voice saying “No, don't”, they want to get rid of the voice telling me not to?' asked Miranda.

‘Yes. That's it exactly.' Hunter stood up and went to rummage in a cupboard; she pulled out a plain blue file, and brought it over, yanking out a picture. It was an engraving of two men with long black hair. Their faces were fairly indistinguishable; the most remarkable feature was that they wore tiny bones and skulls tied ornamentally into their hair. ‘This is the oldest picture we have of them. They can assume other guises, of course. Now they are walking around as –'

Ivo interrupted, knowledge burning in him painfully. ‘As Julius and Strawbones Luther-Ross?'

Hunter took the picture back from him and said quizzically, ‘You've met them?'

‘Yes,' said Ivo. ‘A few times . . .'

‘Oh lord,' said Hunter. She patted her knees.

To break the silence, Miranda asked: ‘So what does FIN do?'

Hunter turned to gaze at her, her brow creased. She got up to replace the file, continuing to talk as she did so. ‘FIN was set up to stop the Liberators, after the Second World War. Through our research we followed their movements across the centuries. Whenever the world threatened to descend into anarchy, you could bet that they were behind it. We noticed a pattern: at times of great change, the Liberators would re-emerge. Communism, the Napoleonic Wars – we could trace their influence there. But until now they have never been able to put their full plan – Liberation – now the time is right. The global situation suits them. Communication is so much easier, their message can be spread across the world in an instant; and so they have come back.' She stopped.

‘Why are you looking at me like that, young man?' she asked Ivo.

Ivo realised he had been staring at her open-mouthed. ‘I . . . I don't know.'

‘You're thinking, who is this silly old woman and how on earth did she become a member of FIN? Don't deny it, I know you are. Well,' she said, looking at Miranda, ‘many of us were recruited from the secret services. And yes, we are very highly trained.' As she said this she leaped across the room and had a knife at Ivo's throat; panicked, he sat absolutely still, and she brought it down and slopped back over to her armchair, sitting down and refilling her cup.

‘There we are,' she said, ignoring the astonishment of the three. Miranda and Felix became very tense. Ivo touched his hand to his throat.

‘Right, where was I? Oh yes. Some of us thought they were behind the Second World War; unfortunately that was just human nature. But they've been around now for a year or so, gathering Acolytes. As soon as we knew they were back, ten of us set out to stop them. But they've got rid of nearly all of us now. Their Acolytes are bound to them by their lives, and they will do anything to achieve total Liberation. What they offer is very appealing to many people.' Ivo saw that she was controlling herself with difficulty. ‘There must be rules. Not petty rules – there can be too much of that. But there has to be order, there have to be limits, otherwise there is nothing. There cannot be just chaos. There is a pattern to everything, from the smallest flower to the largest star. You are up against something evil – something that kills and maims at the whim of a moment. And we must stop it.'

Ivo held out the Koptor. ‘And this is the key?' he said.

Hunter looked at him appraisingly. ‘You're right,' she said. ‘The Koptor is the only thing in the world that can destroy the Thyrsos which gives the Liberators their power. Break the Thyrsos, break their power.'

Ivo gulped, feeling very insignificant. ‘But it's so small,' he said.

‘And yet,' Hunter continued, ‘it contains within it the opposing power of Apollo. The Thyrsos belongs to Dionysus, the Koptor to Apollo: with order you can negate chaos. Chaos doesn't have to win.'

‘I want to help,' said Ivo.

‘And so you will. You have to keep the Koptor. It's safer with you. They'll get it off me if they can and kill me. They don't know you have it – yet.'