by Rod Duncan
The coachman reined in his horses and we slowed to a stop under a signboard hanging from a gallows-style beam across the road. The Green Man and Black’s Head Hotel. The porter carried my case inside. I resented his assumption but still had to pass over a coin for his trouble. Ashbourne was going to be expensive.
At the desk I found myself yet again navigating my own web of deception. I was still presenting the appearance of a young man. This being a very different kind of establishment to the guest house in Derby, I couldn’t ask to see the un-chaperoned Julia Swain. Nor had I been given so much money as to be able to make free with it by booking rooms of my own. Instead, I wrote a message on the hotel’s notepaper and folded it.
“Miss Julia Swain asked for the address of my children’s nanny,” I said. “It’s for her sister. Could this be given to her?”
The desk clerk pocketed the coin I had passed with the note and said that he would see that it was delivered. I watched as he slipped the paper into one of the rack of pigeon holes behind the counter. Under it was the number 203 and a hook from which no key dangled.
“Thank you,” I said. “And may I trouble you to direct me to the rest room?”
He hesitated until I had passed yet more money, then pointed out to the back. It did not matter whether or not he believed the charade. Unseemly conduct was like sewage – everyone knew it existed, but no one wanted to be reminded of the fact. So long as virtue remained plausible, Republican morality would be satisfied.
I picked my way through the bar, empty at that time in the morning, and out to a coach yard. Crates of empty brown bottles were stacked around the outside. A tradesman’s entrance took me back into the building. Unseen, I made my way up to the second floor.
Julia opened the door to my knock. On seeing me she seemed temporarily incapable of speech. Her appearance suggested a beached carp rather than a than lady detective.
“Let’s protect your reputation,” I whispered, not waiting for her to unfreeze, but slipping into her room before anyone could happen upon us in the corridor.
“I... I thought... that is...”
I cut her mumbling short by wrapping her in a sisterly embrace, as I’d done a thousand times before. But after a moment she was struggling away from me. “Please change first,” she said, blushing. “I’m too taken aback by surprise to greet you properly.”
She watched intently as I peeled the false hair from my chin and changed into female attire. She didn’t smile until I had wiped away the last of the makeup and was brushing out my hair.
“Better?” I asked.
“I don’t think I’ll ever grow accustomed to seeing you like that.”
“I’m sorry if it offends.”
“It’s just that when you’re dressed as a man the world seems upside down. And you being here – it was a shock. I only received a letter from you this morning – and that postmarked North Leicester.”
“Events,” I said, “have overtaken me.”
She sat and listened as I related the trials that had beset me since we parted. The colour drained from her usually rosy cheeks as I described my internment and escape. I chose not to dwell on the brutal details.
“Will they come looking for you?” she asked, alarmed.
“They don’t know to look for me this far north.”
“They shall not have you!”
“If by force of indignation they could be stopped, you’d have saved me already.”
She smiled at that. “And what of Mrs Raike?”
“What of her?”
“She told you where to find me.”
“Yes.”
“And anything else?”
I didn’t fancy my chances of keeping Mrs Raike’s secret without Julia realising I was holding something back. So I said: “There’s something I can’t tell you.”
Her expression clouded. “Explain.”
“What did Mrs Raike say when she sent you here?”
“That I should talk to the ice farmers. But not to use her name. Discretion is the watchword, she said. But you’re avoiding the point!”
“I once promised you openness,” I said. “But now another promise holds me back.”
“What can’t you tell me?” she asked, before seeing the illogicality of her words. “I mean what manner of thing?”
“It regards Mrs Raike...”
“But now you’ve met her, surely your misgivings are gone.”
“I’m more convinced of her sincerity,” I admitted. “But she told me something in strict confidence. Would you have me betray her trust?”
Julia got up and started pacing in the way she did after an argument with her mother. I braced myself for some expression of anger or frustration. But after two times back and forth across the room, the frown left her face and her shoulders relaxed.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“Oh.”
“There’s a tea shop across the road. They do scones with cream and jam.”
“That sounds lovely.”
Nothing more was said on the matter of Mrs Raike. Not that day.
The thing that infuriated me about Julia was the absence of nuance in her thinking. A statement could be true or false. A person good or bad. Though I’d taught her for two years, she still had trouble comprehending that the world of the intelligence gatherer is coloured in indistinguishable shades of grey. The morals and motives of crime and deception can’t be resolved through arithmetic.
But certainty cultivates contentment. Though she often missed the subtlety of things, her attitude gifted her with a marvellous ability to divide wakefulness from sleep. Seconds after I had turned off the gas and plunged the room into darkness, her breathing became deep and regular.
“Julia?” I whispered.
But she was gone.
I lay, looking at the line of moonlight on the wall. Julia was happy. So should I have been. For once, I was well fed and warm. She had presented me as her cousin, unexpectedly arrived, and the hotel had provided a cot bed for me to sleep on. Though lumpy where wooden slats pressed through the thin mattress, it was luxury by the standards of my recent experience.
Circumstances had taken a turn for the better. I had escaped and was safe for the time being. They would never think to look for me in Ashbourne. Julia was content to not know a secret and Mrs Raike would lobby for my cause.
The mystery of the figure that had been following me was resolved – insofar as I had discovered his identity. It seemed that Tinker was still focussed on me after our adventures a few months before. In his chaotic world, he had mistaken me for a substitute parent. His was an unhappy knack of betting on the wrong horse. The question of why he’d not revealed himself had been tumbling in my mind. Possibly he feared that I would send him away. Yet whilst he hid close, he could believe there was hope of me taking him in.
And then I had made a mistake. Without thinking, I had let him know that I was travelling to Ashbourne. He would surely try to follow. But with my life lurching from one disaster to the next, he was a responsibility I could not accept.
Slipping out of the bed, I padded to the window. Under moonlight, the rear courtyard appeared like a woodcut illustration. I vainly tried to pierce the shadows, searching for a boy in a ragged coat, hoping he would not be there.
When I awoke it was already daylight outside. Julia was gone and her bed made. I found a tray with half a rack of cold toast, butter, chunky marmalade and a cup of tea, also cold. A considerable number of crumbs and a used butter knife told a story.
Not having felt properly clean since leaving the wharf, I filled the basin, stripped and washed vigorously with flannel and soap. By the time Julia returned, I had dressed and breakfasted and was sitting in the sunshine by the window.
I could tell from the fast beat of her approaching footsteps that something had alarmed or excited her. Once inside, she stood with her back pressed against the closed door.
“We must leave,” she said.
“What’s happ
ened?”
“Pack now. I’ll pay the bill.”
“What has happened?”
“I... I went to send a report to Mrs Raike. In the post office there’s a wall pinned with official notices. And... a picture of you. I nearly fainted.”
“Someone who looked like me, perhaps?”
“Your name was on it. Printed. I didn’t want to stare, but I did. I couldn’t help myself. I really couldn’t. And now I think maybe I was seen staring. And if I was seen–...”
“Julia, for heaven’s sake, slow down.”
“We must go. We must leave as quickly as–...”
“What – did – the –notice - say?” I spoke slowly and firmly.
“Elizabeth Barnabus. Wanted fugitive. One hundred guineas reward for information leading to her apprehension.”
“One hundred!”
“And four hundred guineas for her capture and extradition to the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales. Claimants will be required to provide proof of their contribution, witnessed by public notary. The sum to be paid by his grace the Duke of Northampton.”
I felt my heart constrict. I watched Julia rush to her travelling case and then away to the dressing table and then back to the case without having picked up any of her things.
For one hundred guineas, I understood why the transport constable in Derby was so focussed in his search. But four hundred would transform the life of a working man. Everyone seeing the notice would dream it might be them to claim the prize.
“Was it a good likeness?”
Julia stopped, mid-stride, her hands full of brushes and tooth whitening powder. “Not a photograph. Yet not unlike.”
“Was it the image itself or my name that made you stare?”
“I... can’t say. But once I looked closer, I saw clearly it was you. There was a description also. Your height. Your eyes.”
“What about my hair?”
“I can’t recall. Black, it must have said.”
“Long or short?”
“The picture showed it long but I can’t remember the words.”
“Then put down those things and help me plait it. We’ll pin it up. And while we do that, think of the clothes in the picture, and the hat. All the details we can change. And then I will go.”
“We,” said Julia. “You’ll not be going alone.”
“There are penalties for harbouring a fugitive.”
But her face was set and I knew her mind would be also.
Chapter 18
Wink to one who has come to see a trick. But never let the wink be seen by those who have come to see magic.
The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook
The Circus of Wonders was a paradise for a child who liked to play dress up. There were wagons full of clothes, hats and shoes – anything and everything that would show brightly in the limelight. There were belly-dancer’s veils and paste jewellery and skirts with little mirrors sewn in and wigs of natural colours as well as colours that nature did not intend. Under the tabernacle of the big top, all excess was benediction.
But when Julia returned to the hotel room and unwrapped the package she had brought, I discovered that the wig maker’s art in the Republic was somewhat different.
She said: “I told them you tried to cut your own hair and had an accident.”
“You did tell them my hair was red?”
That had been the idea – to change my colour to something conspicuously different from the description on the wanted notice.
“They don’t do red.”
“Are there no red headed people in Ashbourne?”
“He said they’re not ‘that kind’ of wig maker. And there was something about ‘proud colours’ and modesty. It seemed he was insulted that I’d asked. This one was the lightest tone they had.”
I took it out of the box and stepped to the window the better to see. The hair was a light mousy brown and would hang to the shoulder.
“He had longer ones, but it would have been too expensive.”
For a moment I wondered where blonde and auburn women in the Republic went if they wanted to raise money by selling their hair. There would always be willing buyers in the Kingdom. The more striking the colour, the more they would pay. I had never considered it before, but there must be people who earned a living trading ‘modest’ hair north and ‘immodest’ hair south.
“Will it do?” Julia asked.
I placed it on my head, deliberately askew and pulled a face. “Do you recognise me?”
She giggled, but it seemed more from nerves than happiness.
The staff of the Green Man and Black’s Head had already seen the natural colour of my hair. If I were to venture out with my new wig, it would surely raise their suspicions. Thus, I had to hope they wouldn’t go to the postal office and see the wanted poster.
I was obliged to remain closeted in the room all through the day whilst Julia went to buy food and make arrangements. Guides would be needed for our journey up into the world of the ice farmers in the Peak District. Julia had been waiting for them when I arrived in Ashbourne. Each day she had been told they would come the next. But now she dispatched a more strongly worded message, telling them she could delay no longer.
One more loose end remained to be tied. That was Tinker. I had said goodbye to him the previous year, assuming he would go back and resume his place among the wagons of the travelling show, which was still touring despite the disruption it had suffered. He had not been my responsibility. But Tinker was far beyond the conventions of society. That made his actions unpredictable. Unwontedly, he had attached himself to me.
The coal boatman’s wife had told me of food being stolen from the wharf. It had been going on for months, she said. It was now clear to me that Tinker had been the thief – stealing to eat. He had feared discovery by me, so had avoided taking from my boat. But his actions had pointed the suspicions of the community in my direction. When I left, he must have left also. The thefts would have stopped, confirming suspicions that I was a Royalist ne’er-do-well and better gone than living among them.
I wondered where the boy had slept during his vigil. There were places enough to bed down unseen along the far bank of the canal. But he couldn’t have survived January without warmth. It had been bitter. Mr Simmonds kept a stove burning to stop the water in the boathouse from freezing. Tinker could easily have found his way in there.
Things would be different for him now. He knew I had seen him in the Derby Coach Station. I had spoken his name. Having followed me so far, he would surely have travelled on to Ashbourne. But secrecy is a hard habit to break. Even if he had found his way to the Green Man and Black’s Head, I didn’t think he would try to make contact. I imagined him hiding somewhere outside, keeping watch.
The fugitive poster meant that I was going to have to disappear again. Tinker had once seen through my full disguise and not even broken step. That a woman should dress as a man and do a man’s work seemed no more stranger to him than any other part of his chaotic life. A simple wig was never going to fool him. If I didn’t do something, he would continue to trail behind me. And that would leave us both vulnerable.
The sun had set and the small town grown quiet. After a day indoors, I was itching to walk under the stars. I pulled the curtain aside and peered out at the rear courtyard of the hotel two floors below. There was no prospect of seeing Tinker. But if he was keeping watch, he would certainly see me.
Turning down the lights, I headed out.
Night hides a multitude of indiscretions. But any watcher would have had no doubt that I was leaving. The most revealing detail would have been my travel-battered case – proof of identification, had they known me.
Across the yard, past a stack of barrels, then out towards the road at the front. There would be no looking back – such a gesture might scare away one following. Then a brisk march away into the night.
Three seconds passed. Then Tinker emerged from his hiding place. Not stealing from behind the crate
s as I had anticipated, but dropping down from the slant roof of the privy. More like an animal than a boy.
That is when I stepped out of my own hiding place – the shadowed doorway of the tradesman’s entrance. He froze, confused. I didn’t wait for him to think it through – to understand that the woman he had seen dressed in my clothes carrying my case was in fact Julia, that he had been tricked into revealing himself. His head flicked from one side to the other. I launched myself across the space between us. I saw his shoulder drop and knew he was about to spin and run.
“Tinker! Stop!”
He hesitated. It was enough. I had his arm. He stepped back, taking me with him. He wriggled and squirmed trying to get free. I tightened my grip. He twisted and threw all his weight to the left almost pulling me off my feet.
“It’s me,” I hissed.
Another slight hesitation betrayed his uncertainty.
“I’ve got something for you.”
He tugged once more at my grip. Then the tension went out of his muscles and he flopped to the floor. I laid his arm down on his lap then slowly let go. The black of his eyes reflected the light from the hotel windows. I brought my other hand forwards so that he could see what I held – an apple. It was hard to buy an apple in spring. I’d tried three shops with no success. Having almost given up, I asked at the front desk of the hotel. The clerk said that his brother had a few left, packed in a barrel of straw. I paid three times what the price should have been. The skin was wrinkly and slick with wax. But the apple was still good.
I held it close to Tinker’s nose. I saw him inhale.
“It’s for you,” I said.