Johnny O'Brien - Day of Deliverance

“Which way?”

“No idea.”

“That way then…” Angus chose one of the pathways.

Occasionally they could hear shouts or orders in the distance as the guards kept up a desperate search in the fading light. Jack and Angus pressed on, taking random choices at a further two junctions. Five minutes later and they were utterly lost.

“Stop for a minute,” Jack said. “Shall we try and go back?”

“Could do. It’s creepy in here.”

Suddenly, they heard a loud scream. It was close.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know, but I’m not hanging around to find out.”

Jack felt himself starting to panic. They ran on, weaving their way through the trees, and then suddenly they found themselves in an oval-shaped clearing, surrounded by thickets and high hedges.

Jack stopped dead in his tracks. The queen and Lady Sarah stood directly ahead of them with their backs pressed up against a huge oak tree on the far side of the clearing. A man stood in front of them, his pistol levelled at the two women. There was sufficient light from the torches for Jack to recognise Pendelshape instantly. He was pointing the gun at the queen and then moved it slowly towards Lady Sarah. He seemed to be hesitating, confused by the likeness of the two women.

The arrival of Jack and Angus took him by surprise. He swivelled around and, in panic, fired. He missed. Lady Sarah screamed. Jack and Angus dived for cover behind a thicket on the edge of the clearing.

Pendelshape shouted out at them, “You have interfered for the last time.”

He fired again but Jack and Angus were well hidden in the thick foliage. Beside himself with frustration, Pendelshape let loose a further two shots, but again they went wide. Swinging the gun back towards Lady Sarah and the queen, he fired again. This time he could not miss. As Jack peered out from the foliage, he saw Lady Sarah’s legs give way and she collapsed in a heap. Something inside Jack snapped. He felt a visceral anger well up inside him. He pounced forward, but as he did so, Pendelshape pressed his gun to Elizabeth’s head. She stared back, head high, jaw clenched, eyes defiant. Pendelshape pulled the trigger. Nothing. The magazine was empty. Pendelshape screamed in frustration and fumbled for a fresh magazine, but he was too slow. Jack, enraged by the brutal murder of Lady Sarah, leapt up and crashed into Pendelshape’s ribcage at full tilt, lifting him clear from the ground and propelling them both forward a full two metres before crunching back to earth. Pendelshape’s gun flew free.

Angus, now also up on his feet, looked on with a mixture of dumbfounded astonishment and admiration. Jack was really no match for the stocky and powerful Pendelshape. The teacher had been caught by surprise but he was quick to recover. Enraged, he lashed out with a clenched fist, which caught Jack square on the side of the head. Jack spun sideways, and the world went dark.

“Time you learned… meddling idiot!” Pendelshape growled. He started to crawl around on the ground, cursing angrily and desperately searching for his weapon.

Suddenly, there were voices. Angus shouted, “Help! Over here, we’re in the clearing.”

A second later, Tony, Gordon and several other royal guardsmen tumbled into sight.

“Over there!” Angus pointed at Pendelshape who was still scrambling around desperately trying to find his gun.

Tony called out to him, “It’s over Pendelshape.”

Pendelshape screamed back, “That’s what you think… VIGIL is about to be crushed.”

“Stand still — or we’ll shoot,” Gordon shouted.

But Pendelshape was having none of it. He stood up, put his head down, dropped his shoulder and charged directly into the perimeter hedge. Instantly, Tony and Gordon let loose a volley of shots. For a second all was quiet. Suddenly, there was a flash of incandescent white light and for a moment the sky above them was as bright as day. Tony and Gordon rushed over to the hedge through which Pendelshape had escaped.

Tony cursed under his breath. “He’s gone. Time signal… this means trouble… we need to get to the safehouse.” He turned back to the guards. “You men — take the queen and Lady Sarah back to the palace immediately. We will go ahead and track down the intruder. When you get back to the palace, get Walsingham to send help and search the surrounding area. Now go!”

Tony peered down at Jack. “Are you okay?”

Jack was starting to come round. His head was spinning; he felt like he’d been hit by a bus.

“Hurts like hell… what happened?”

“You just saved the queen’s life.”

Jack just about had the wherewithal to reply, “But not Lady Sarah’s?”

Tony grimaced. “Don’t know — she’s in a bad way…”

“We’ve got to go…” Gordon said urgently. “We don’t know what Pendelshape is going to do. We need to act while this time signal lasts. We’ve got a couple of hours at most… come on!”

The guardsmen were already escorting the queen away from the clearing. But as they prepared to leave, she walked over to where they stood. Her voice trembled with emotion.

“Sir, you have saved my life. I must now return to the palace for protection until the area is secured. Report to us tomorrow and you shall be rewarded.”

“Your Majesty — we must give chase… the intruder,” Tony pressed.

“Yes — you must go.” Then, quite spontaneously, she slipped a ring from her finger and pressed it firmly into Jack’s hand. “Take this as a token of our thanks. Now Godspeed…” She paused before adding grimly, “And when you find the assassin — kill him — and bring me his head.”

It took them fifteen minutes to reach what Tony called the ‘safehouse’ — a hunting lodge that they had already commandeered in the middle of the deer park about a couple of kilometres from the palace. Jack’s head was still throbbing from Pendelshape’s punch — and in the dark he had to be supported by Angus and Gordon as Tony led the way through the woodland at a lung-bursting pace. When they entered the lodge, Jack and Angus were surprised to find a third member of VIGIL waiting for them — Theo Joplin.

“We’ve got a problem,” Tony said.

“I noticed: the time signal,” Joplin replied.

“Yes, it all went according to plan, except for one thing — Pendelshape has escaped. He could be anywhere.”

Angus was not listening. Instead, he was looking at an array of bags and equipment that were stacked up against one wall of the room. “What is all that stuff?”

“Weaponry of various sorts. Provisions. When Joplin came back to reinforce us, VIGIL supplied what we needed to defeat Pendelshape. Don’t worry about it just now,” Tony said.

Jack’s head was spinning. “I need to sit down.”

“Sorry, Jack — sit there.” Tony pulled out a chair. “Gordon — get the lad an ice pack and break out some of the emergency provisions. We’ll all need our blood sugar up. We haven’t got much time but let’s get ourselves properly organised. What we do next… well, it’s life or death now.”

Soon they were all sitting round the table inside the main room of the lodge. Joplin had warmed up some tomato soup and they were working their way through bread, cheese and chocolate bars. Jack held the ice pack to his head. Despite the throbbing he was listening intently as the VIGIL team quickly pieced together the events of the last few days to work out their next move.

“So the Taurus transfer went wrong?” Angus said.

“It dumped us in some godforsaken bog north of London. At that point we had no idea where you two were — you could have been dead for all we knew,” Tony replied. “We had to lie low and wait for the next signal. To begin with, we froze our butts off in some shack, but then we reckoned we should head to London, because if you or the Revisionists were going to be anywhere it had to be there.”