The Toymaster's Castle

Chapter Forty-Eight - The First Funeral

The next morning, we all made our way down to the cathedral for Alan's funeral.

Somebody had managed to make a simple coffin for him and five of our boys - plus Daniel - carried him down the hill on their shoulders. Again, the people of the town came out to show their respects... I guess word had got around about the horrors of 'The Court of King Angus' and they really did appreciate what we were trying to do for them. There was also a steady string of volunteers looking to join the Lighthouse Militia.

The funeral service was desperately sad, of course, even though Alan didn't have any family about... in 'The Before' he'd been a bit of a drifter who'd been living in a van with a surfboard, down by the beach. Daniel said a few nice words at the end but it still left me with a hollow, helpless feeling. It just didn't feel right - didn't feel fair - that such a young man should have to die. He'd only just turned twenty.

And, afterwards, we buried the coffin in a hand dug grave at the back of the cathedral grounds. There were already quite a few graves back there but the chaplain had set aside a special area for our 'War Dead'.

It was frighteningly large... sort of telling us that this might be the first funeral but it certainly wasn't going to be the last.

Then we went back up to the 'Traveller's Rest' for lunch. Life went on. It had to. We didn't have any choice!

Sarge was planning the expedition to retrieve our new recruits' families for that very night. It seemed wrong and insensitive until he pointed out that it was not going to take long for 'King Angus' to work out that his boys had defected and, at that point, we might as well not bother trying to extract their families. They would be beyond any sort of earthly help.

Possibly even more shocking was that he was planning on taking a couple of our new recruits with him, particularly their officer guy. Again, it sort of made sense if you thought about it - nobody would be able to move around in the town like them - but it just felt like they were taking a stupid risk.

They set off soon after lunch. The border between what we were jokingly calling the two kingdoms was about a dozen miles east of here and they wanted to get there well before dark.

Then all we could do was wait...

And wait...

And wait...

It was completely unbearable.

Again, neither Daniel nor I could sleep properly and at first light, the next morning, we looked at each other and silently agreed on what we had to do. We put on our coats - there was a horrible drizzly rain thing going on - and set off to wait for them at the edge of town.

It was madness - standing there in the rain when we could be eating breakfast... or still be tucked up in bed... but we didn't have any choice. We just had to know what was going on as soon as possible. We found a bit of shelter in a bus stop and I snuggled up on Daniel's lap - trying to stop myself from freezing to death!

A lady appeared from one of the nearby houses with a couple of mugs. "I'm afraid it's just mint tea," she apologised as she handed one to me. "We've run out of the real stuff."

"It's wonderfully warm!" I responded with a smile as I wrapped my hands around it. "And more than welcome!" I took a sip and it was surprisingly tasty.

"Can I ask you what you're doing out here?" she asked.

"A couple of our boys went out last night on a risky expedition," I explained. "And, all being well, they'll be coming back this way any time now."

She was slightly taken aback by that answer. "You really do care about your boys, don't you..." she hesitated then added, "Your Majesty."