By the second arrow, and the third, and the fourth, I felt dizzy myself, because I was turning on my heel as well, keeping pace with Natty. But not so dizzy that I stopped looking. Not too dizzy to forget the crowd, with their gasps and squeals and squeaks and sighs and laughs and open mouths and closed mouths and hands pressed over their mouths. Not too dizzy to forget Mr. Vale and check he was keeping his word, being our eyes and ears.
I had just whizzed over his face and seen his blink and twist and blink, then passed to his neighbor, a quiet face and a soft cap, when suddenly I was back with Mr. Vale again. His voice drew me, and his jumping up, and his pointing: “Ah!”
I looked—and saw a ripple like the rings in water where a fish rises. And in the heart of the rings I saw a face.
A smear of skin.
Then nothing again.
But a shadow.
I kept on staring. At the gap between faces where this face had been. At the cheerful smiles and wide eyes. I swept on, then back, then on again to the next small gap, then on again to the next…And there he was. Black Cloud and no doubt; Black Cloud and the Painted Man. His mouth like a pike. His shoulders gold in the lamplight. The rise and fall of his chest, as though he was panting.
Natty had not seen him. “Keep turning,” she hissed, because I must keep pace with the Rider, who flashed through my sight and away. I ignored her. I folded my arms over my chest to conceal the satchel hanging there, as though I expected Black Cloud to snake out an arm twenty feet long and snatch it from me.
But he was not looking at me. I was not important to him any more, because I was already as good as dead. He was concentrating entirely on Natty. He had seen a way to destroy her first and he would take it.
I understood this when I saw him making a space for himself, rolling his broad shoulders and sticking out his elbows. Lifting his bow with an arrow already set to the string. Levelling his eye along the flight. Aiming at Natty. This was the plan, perhaps made here and now, perhaps earlier when he had crept up to watch the rehearsal. The plan to make it seem as though the Rider had misfired and killed Natty. And it was a good plan, because the crowd would think there had been a mistake, an accident not a murder, and this would allow Black Cloud to melt away, but only when he had fired a second time, and struck me down in the panic. When no one would notice him ripping the satchel away from me.
A good plan, but the Rider saw it.
Without seeming to take his eyes off Natty, and with his pony still galloping, and his stern face creased with the effort, and the lights still dazzling, and the crowd still booming, he swept closest to Black Cloud when the danger was greatest. When the arrow that would have killed Natty was about to fly. At exactly the same moment, he swivelled round on his pony and let loose his own arrow, which hummed toward Black Cloud and struck him in the shoulder, or seemed to strike him, or at any rate shocked him so much that he jerked backward, and released his arrow quite uselessly, high above the heads of the crowd, where I saw it dwindling into the star-flow and, if everyone had been quiet, would have heard it clatter down useless onto the stones of the wilderness.
Was this a part of the Entertainment? The crowd thought so, and began shouting even more loudly, and clapping, and encouraging the Rider—while others knew better what they had seen, and screamed just as loudly “No!” or even “Murder!” although it was not clear who or where the victim might be, because nothing was clear now, nothing at all, not even to those who had seen most, not even to me, who watched Black Cloud drown in the crowd and drag the Painted Man after him, sinking away and leaving the ripples to cover the place he had been.
No, not even clear to me, who in the second that Black Cloud vanished was suddenly spun round and lifted up from the ground, because the Rider had finished his business with the bow and arrows, finished with the Entertainment entirely, and hauled me onto his pony so I was seated behind him, gripping him around the waist, pressing forward with everyone screaming and shrieking and flapping their hands until we reached Natty and dragged her up as well, and sat her in front of the Rider and then, squeezed together as we were, and with the pony grunting beneath our combined weight, we drove forward again and broke through the crowd, out into the wide open air and the hush, not knowing whether we were still in danger or not.
I looked behind me, still holding tight to the Rider and feeling his skin damp with sweat. Everything in Cat’s Field was chaos. The clear O of the ring had disappeared, with the crowd barging and weaving because they knew what had happened, or had no idea, and in either case thought that an arrow was about to strike them, any one of them, any moment. Bonnets and hats, bare heads and whiskers, fists and faces all jumbled together. Most in the torchlight, some in shadows, some in darkness. And at the center, with his arms high above his head, Boss in his bright red topcoat, bellowing fit to burst and ordering everyone to keep calm, to return to their places, to wait for the show to continue, to please make their donation before leaving, if leave they must.
Bellowing and then beseeching, with a note I had never heard in him before, a note of panic, because in the midst of everything the Spectacle had stayed at the top of her platform, catching the juddering lights, thinking perhaps this stampede had come to admire her, to be close to her, to love her, and so must be greeted with another wave of her hand, another smile, another caress of her moon-scalp.
“My love! My love!” Boss shouted, as another shuddering wave ran through the crowd.
“Dear heart!” he bellowed again, as the platform supporting the Spectacle began to tremble. “Have a care! Have a care!” But it made no difference. The platform began to sway. It began to tilt. It began to fall—and the Spectacle his beloved, still splashed by the glow of the lamps, slithered and shuffled and scrabbled and finally tumbled from sight, with her white dress and its many spangles and stars striking the darker faces and shoulders and arms and legs and feet of the crowd beneath her like an explosion of sea-spray.
I did not hear Boss after this because the noise smothered him. But I saw him crumple, then also vanish as he plunged down to make his rescue.
Then I saw nothing more, because the Rider had torn off his headdress and Natty’s as well, and dug his heels into his pony, who carried us as quickly as he could through the wilderness. In a dim landscape of rocks and bony trees, with the stars our only light.
“Do you think he’s still here?” I asked, speaking over the Rider’s shoulder so Natty could hear me.
The Rider himself answered. “He is here.” His voice seemed slow even when he spoke fast. “He has come a long way.”
“But you wounded him,” I said. “Or you killed him.”
We were trotting now, heading round in a wide arc toward the town, and our poor suffering pony bounced the words out of us.
“Not killed,” the Rider replied. “He is not dead.”
“You’re sure?”
“Besides, there is the other man.”
“Will they follow us?”
“They will—for the necklace.”
I hesitated for a moment. How did the Rider know about the necklace? I had not shown it to him. Natty could not have shown him. But she had told him, she must have. And perhaps other secrets as well, about our life together.
“And for other reasons,” the Rider went on.
“What other reasons?”
“Don’t ask him that,” Natty said; she was leaning forward and clinging to the pony’s neck. “Ask him where we are going.”
The Rider did not mind her interrupting. “To fetch the other ponies,” he said. “We cannot stay here.”
“Suppose they’re waiting for us?” I asked. “At Mr. Vale’s?”
“They will not be there,” said the Rider; it was as though he had seen everything that lay ahead of us and it was all preordained. “They will ride off, then come back when they are ready. You have robbed them, remember.”
“Can we give it back?” Natty asked, the same question as always.
“The insul
t remains,” said the Rider. “You cannot change that.”
“I know.” I felt full of apology and the Rider heard it, but it did not lessen the sting of his words.
“You know?” said the Rider. “I do not think so. You say you are sorry but you do not regret.”
“I am sorry, I am,” I pleaded, like a child.
The Rider did not rebuke me again. “I understand,” he said. “You want the necklace. You like it. You think it is yours now—it is always the same with treasure, it is…” But he had said enough, because there was nothing more to be gained, and for the next several minutes we continued in silence over the dark ground, coming at length to a point where we could enter the town at a good distance from Cat’s Field, and reach our stableyard along empty streets.
We rode very cautiously all the same, creeping from shadow to shadow and still not speaking. But thinking. In my case thinking: the Rider has left the Entertainment and joined us now. But is it just his way of staying with Natty? No, he is our friend equally; we have him to ourselves now.
When we reached the stableyard and dismounted, and went to untie our own ponies from their stalls, Mr. Vale lurched out from the back door of his hotel.
“You startled us,” said Natty. “That’s not kind.”
Mr. Vale ignored this. “I ran back,” he wheezed, raising his eye-shade and wiping his forehead. “I could not let you go without another word.”
“You mean you want us to pay you?” said Natty.
“No, nothing like that!” exclaimed Mr. Vale. “I’m not concerned about that—your Boss-man will pay, tonight or another night. There will be other Entertainments. Not with you, but other Entertainments.”
He made the prospect seem dismal and hung his head; although I was desperate for us to be on our way, I took pity on him.
“You want to see, don’t you,” I said. “You want to know the reason for all our trouble.”
Mr. Vale looked up and gave me a weak little smile. “A glimpse,” he said. “That is all I want.”
“Here, then.” It sounded impatient but Mr. Vale did not mind. And when he saw me hand the reins of my pony to Natty, walk straight up to him, and open my satchel and hold it toward him, his smile turned into astonishment. I did not take out the necklace. I only offered for him to look inside the satchel, and when he bent forward I teased it away, so he would know not to touch. Although the stableyard was lit by nothing more than lamps burning inside the hotel, the silver caught their glimmer and flashed into his eyes.
“Aaaah!” Mr. Vale gave a long sigh. “Thank you, Mister Jim. Thank you.”
“Well, you have seen it now,” I told him.
“I have seen it.”
He shied away and before I had closed the satchel I looked at the Rider.
He held up his hand. “I do not need to see it.”
He was so definite I did not ask again, only nodded and tucked the satchel inside my tunic. Besides, Mr. Vale was all busy-ness now, scurrying around the yard, handing Natty our two blanket-rolls, and a flask, and a parcel of food, all the while muttering under his breath. “Such brightness,” I heard. “Such brightness, such brightness.” And then, “Not for that butcher. Never for him. I looked for him, though. I waited. I looked for him. And you two only children still. No blame, I am sure, no blame, no blame. But you must be on your way, no matter what. On your way now!”
It was an extraordinary performance, as though seeing the silver had driven him out of his wits. At another time I might have thought I should stay and comfort him, to bring him back to himself. In the event I did not even thank him for what he had given us.
“Are you ready?” I called softly to Natty.
“Ready,” she said, handing me back the reins of my pony, and with that we rode out into the street, where I turned to look at Mr. Vale for the last time. He had retreated to the threshold of his hotel, and for once in his life was standing straight, with his long arms hanging down loose. I was glad to leave him, but thought he was brave to make this place his home, when he knew that one day he would die here, and be buried in ground that was not his own.
CHAPTER 23
Nowhere Else
As we left Santa Caterina the Rider found us a trail winding toward the east. A very faint mark, which starlight made nothing at all, yet it came alive when the breeze blew the dust from footprints and wheel-marks, and for the next hour or two we made good progress. I thought once the town had vanished he might explain why he had thrown in his lot with us, but he said nothing and I let him be. It was enough to know that he wanted to find a way back to his own people, and enough to have his kindness as well. Whatever his feelings for Natty, or hers for him, when we made our camp later that night he was equally attentive to us both, and built our fire and cooked as though he had never forgotten his old customs.
When the sun rose next morning he continued in the same quiet way. Handing out food from the parcel given to us by Mr. Vale, then leading us forward along a track that now only he could see clearly. As far as Natty and I were concerned, everywhere was the same wilderness. Red rocks, and dusty grass, and cacti holding out their waxy arms, and little stunted trees. The same landscape as ever, in fact, but more blistered and shriveled than before, with the tracks of our fellow creatures very faint in the earth beside us.
In such a desert I needed all my curiosity to care for anything, and might not have done so without a good deal of help. But the Rider did more than encourage me. Under his instruction I found that a speck at the highest point of heaven turned out to be an eagle—a flake of gold that only revealed its valuable colors when the sunlight flashed along its wings. When he uprooted a dreary shrub and shook it so all the dirt blew away, I discovered a miniature universe of green shoots and insects, most of which were tasty to eat. When he pointed to a scribble on our track, that looked like a sand-ridge blown together by the wind, it suddenly curled into a snake and hissed at me and squirmed away to hide under a stone.
I suppose my childhood had given me an appetite for all this staring and studying; although our marshes were much more fertile and watery than the wilderness that now enclosed me, they were also a place where enormous skies made the ground seem dull, until the eye narrowed and sharpened and moved carefully to see what there was to see.
For this reason, I sometimes still imagine I am living alone and unremembered in America, with only the Indians for my company. But when I look around at my present life I check myself, because now I understand we cannot easily deny our origins. And although it has taken me a lifetime to accept this, some part of me knew it even when we made our second camp on this part of our journey, with the Rider once again building our fire and choosing where we should sleep. A crumbling boulder protected us from the breeze and its shadow was all the blanket I needed for warmth.
Then a part of this shadow moved, and I saw the Rider pull the knife from his belt, his black hair hanging around his face and the firelight rolling over his bare arms; a moment later he slackened again, when the shadow stepped forward and turned into a man.
Into three men in fact, Indians whose faces were smeared with ash, and whose bare arms and legs were thin as sticks. This alone made me think they were no threat to us, but as they shuffled closer and came into the light of our fire, I could see they were too weak even to look at us for more than a moment.
When we had given them something to eat from our pot, the Rider spoke to them in his own language and they rallied a little, answering questions that he then translated for us. Very soon he told us we had been invited to their camp.
“How’s that?” I wondered.
“They are lonely,” the Rider said, which I thought was a strange notion.
“But surely they’re not alone out here?” I said. “Surely they have the rest of their tribe?”
Natty interrupted. “They don’t belong here, that’s what he’s saying; they’ve traveled from somewhere else.”
The Rider nodded, then picked up a stick and laid it
s tip in the flames until it began to blaze. He seemed fascinated by this, and kept his eyes fixed on it.
“They have traveled,” he said at length. “That is all I know.” Then he looked up. “They have come here to be safe.”
“They don’t seem very safe to me,” I said.
This sounded facetious and the Rider frowned at me; I rebuked myself, and began to understand what he meant. These people were not as I had imagined we might become ourselves in this new phase of our existence, content to wander from place to place and accept the world as we found it. They had left their home against their wishes; they had been evicted. This was why their bodies were smeared with cinders. They were grieving.
Despite this, they were determined we should follow them to their camp. To make us welcome, the Rider said, but also because they thought we should not stay in the open.
“Because he’s here?” I said at once, meaning Black Cloud.
The Rider shook his head. “Not now. He has been here, though. He came this way, perhaps on his way to Santa Caterina. But his ghost is here.”
“Is this what you think? That his ghost is real?”
“I think we must do what they say.” The Rider’s face was a mask, and I could not decide whether he believed the danger was genuine, or merely wanted to show courtesy. I decided the latter, and did not persevere with my questions. When we had finished our meal, I therefore helped him put out our fire and gather up our things, and all six of us set off together.
We left the path our Rider had found through the scrub, heading across stony ground toward the north, and because the moon was now high and cloudless we saw the landscape quite clearly. It was a wretched country, with a stiff breeze blowing grit against my bare legs, prickling my arms and face.
“Why here?” Natty asked the Rider in a hollow voice, which was also my question.
“They have nowhere else,” he said.
“But they’ve chosen the worst of all places,” she went on. “The very worst.”
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