by Rod Duncan
Edwin recognised the trap being set for him. With one more push, he shouldered his way between the courtiers and stood before the king.
“Well, magician?” Janus asked.
“I’ve seen nothing to say otherwise.”
All around were listening now.
“Does the consort need doctors?” Janus asked.
“As any woman with child.” Damn but Edwin knew he was sounding evasive.
“No special care?”
“For the heir of Crown Point – only the best.”
Janus turned back to the king. “The magician should slaughter an ox. Read the entrails. The people need to be reassured.”
The king would usually have come to Edwin’s aid. After all, it was in both their interests that belief in magic prevailed. But perhaps distracted by the quantity of vomit on the flagstones, he waved a hand as if to say his advisors could decide between themselves.
Janus bowed low. “I’ll arrange for the auguries to be read.”
People nearby murmured their approval. The king nodded. Triumph flickered in Janus’s eye. Few would have caught it, but Edwin felt the jaws of the trap closing.
Woe betide a fortune teller who offers a king any future other than his heart’s desire. But the consort might die, even with the best of care. The baby might present side-on. The child could be sickly. Worse still, it could be a girl. That thought brought another bitterness.
“The reading shall be tomorrow,” Janus announced. “I’ll have an ox sent up from the valley. Bring your knives to the courtyard at noon.”
“Not tomorrow,” Edwin said, caught off his stride. “It must be a full moon.” For a moment he couldn’t even think how many days that might buy him.
“The full moon then,” said Janus. “You’ll do it in a week.”
There was a safe way from Crown Point down to the floodplain of the Colombia River. The road cut a straight line for a mile or so across the high plateau before starting its gentle descent. In seven days, the ill-fated ox would follow that path in reverse as it climbed on its last journey. At least it would get a spectacular view.
The quick route was more risky. Just beyond the castle walls the cliff softened into a treacherous gulley, which widened out below. Small trees had somehow managed to root in the scree, holding it together. Between those slender trunks, ropes had been strung, allowing the brave or foolhardy a direct route down. Or those with some particular motive. Still in leaf, the trees allowed for no view, though it would in any case have been a brave traveller who lifted their gaze from the next footstep.
Halfway down the steepest section, Edwin stopped to rest, leaning against a branch which bent under his weight, but not too much. Wind whispered through the leaves. Beyond that, he could hear no sound. No audience.
Solitude brought relief, allowing him to touch that deep loneliness he was obliged to forget while walking the corridors of the castle. Being First Counsellor to the king meant trusting none but close family.
He had chosen trousers and boots for the excursion. Rugged clothes and practical. Though the choice had been more an instinctive thing, a response to how he felt. The clamber down would loosen his muscles. The slog back up would soak him in sweat. Anything to drive the uncertainty from his thoughts.
A magician may perform a hundred miracles. But if ever one is seen to be mere trickery, all that went before will be set to nothing. His mother had quoted that line to him, over and over again. An inheritance from the life of the travelling show. He could only just remember the rolling roads of England, being lolled to sleep by the movement of the wagon.
Never let them choose the time or place of your trick. Nor what the trick should be.
Well, he’d be breaking all of those rules in one go. He would live or die by the consequences. In seven days, the population of the castle, and many who farmed or fished beyond, would arrive in the courtyard for a theatre of blood over which Edwin must preside. He would consult the entrails and pronounce on the future of Crown Point.
A voice drifted up from the valley, thinned by wind and distance. The cry of one boatman to another, Edwin thought. He took hold of the rope and ducked under the tree branch that had taken his weight. Small stones rolled under his heels. A few tumbled away below. He let himself down hand over hand, following the line that branched right towards the edge of the widening gulley. It was the worst route. Most people veered left. This rope hadn’t been replaced for many years. Broken strands sprouted like hair from the loosening weave.
It had been spring when he last took that path. Half a year had gone. But there had been so little time.
He branched right again, coming up hard under the sheer rock face where the rope ended, knotted around an exposed root. From there it became a scramble, tree to tree, holding on to the trunks as best he could. He was out of the gulley now, following the line where steep scree met the bottom of the cliff. The trees would still hide him from below, though they had thinned, allowing silver glimpses of river.
He could only see a few paces ahead around the curving slope, so when the rock table came into view, it was a sudden thing, like the flourished reveal of a trick. The slab lay at the base of the cliff, long and narrow as a bed. A pile of smaller stones formed a miniature cairn at one end. He stepped onto it with reverence. A bunch of withered flowers had been tied in place with twine. The petals fell to dust as he pulled them free. He cast the dead stalks to the wind.
He would slaughter the ox. The entrails would tell their story. The king would present him with a token of thanks. It was always something of more show than substance. Edwin had a chest of such useless gifts. Blunt swords and golden cloaks.
He lay down, curled on his side, his head next to the cairn.
“What should I do, Mother?” he asked, feeling the loneliness bite, immersing himself in the feeling. Voicing the question unblocked his tears. They dripped from his face onto the stone, a validation of loss and suffering. He felt his mind clearing.
He had asked the wrong question. What would Janus do? That was the crux. The king’s counsellor was clever and ambitious. When the ox lay dead, what might Janus be willing to sacrifice? It was not uncommon for a woman to die in pregnancy or childbirth. Some miscarried. No one would think it unusual.
There could only be one fortune cast for a king, all others being sedition. Edwin would announce the good news to a great assembly of high and low. He’d tell them that the consort would remain healthy, that the royal heir would be born whole and hearty. There was no other choice. Then Janus would act to make the prediction untrue. How had it come to this, that the fate of a kingdom, the fate of the world, might come to be measured against a scattered pinch of poison?
CHAPTER 9
Elizabeth would have sidestepped into the shadows and made her escape via a drift of bushes that stretched all the way to the road. But the grounds of the Grand Niagara would surely be patrolled by night watchmen. Taking a deep breath, she set out along the path, directly away from the main entrance, in full view, as if choosing to depart before dawn was the most natural thing in the world. Every step of the way, her skin prickled. But she could hear no sound of pursuing footsteps.
At the main gate, she paused to don the agent’s coat, which was too long for her, and to button it up. With her hair tucked underneath his hat, she seemed less like a woman. The illusion deepened as she opened her stride into a masculine gait and allowed her shoulders to roll. She didn’t know whether the clothes and body language were creating a disguise, or if they had revealed a facet of who she was, or if she was somehow conjuring a memory of her lost brother. Either way, she felt different.
From a distance, she was a man, a tourist, on her way into the small town. Unusual at that time of night. But not vulnerable. Close up it would be another story. Distance was the trick. Not just keeping away from people on the street, but putting miles between herself and the hotel. It was perhaps three in the morning. The agents would wake at six-thirty. She’d timed their r
outine over the previous days. Julia might wake an hour later. Tinker could get up at any time. She hoped this would be one of those days when he slept in. She’d left cushions underneath the blankets on her bed to make it seem as if she was still asleep. If no one had noticed by eight o’clock, it would be good fortune. Five hours, then, was all she could hope for before they set out to search.
By the time she reached the town of Niagara, dawn had not yet begun to show in the sky. She passed the hotels and guesthouses, the shops and restaurants, always choosing the downward slope until she reached the river itself, the wharfs, jetties and chandlers. It might not have been safe. But Elizabeth had lived among the boat people of England’s canals and it felt more like home than anything she had seen in months.
Large boats were moored along the quayside. But she wanted to find something smaller. At last she came to a cluster of single-funnelled steamers with side paddles: little more than engine and cargo hold, no space spared for comfort. Walking closer to the edge, she shifted back to the female gait and allowed her heels to clack more heavily on the stones, loud in the quiet of the night.
She’d passed three boats before someone appeared, the silhouette of a hatless boy sitting up from among a pile of blankets on the deck of a thirty-footer.
“Where’s your master?” she whispered.
He made no reply, but scrambled on hands and knees to a cargo hatch, which he lifted. She couldn’t hear the words he spoke down into the belly of the boat, but after no more than a few seconds a man hauled himself out. He seemed fat at first, but spidery legs and arms gave him away. Layer on layer of clothing made most of the girth around his stomach. He clambered up to the quayside and stood blinking at her.
“I need help,” she whispered, gripping her pistol hidden within the pocket of Winslow’s coat. It wasn’t loaded. But if it came to trouble, they wouldn’t know. “I need to get away from here. I’ve got money.”
“You’re in trouble?”
“They’re forcing me to marry,” she said, hoping it sounded plausible. Niagara was a place for weddings, after all.
“Who’s forcing you?”
“My uncle and aunt.”
“You don’t love him, then?”
She shook her head. He scratched his.
“I’m an orphan,” she said, not knowing if it was true.
He looked her over, as if seeing her for the first time. The man’s hat, the oversized coat. He ran his tongue over his lips. He was calculating, sure enough, as was she. What kind of man wraps himself warm in the cargo hold and leaves a boy under a blanket on the deck? Her palm felt sweaty against the pistol stock.
The boat lay low in the water. The cargo hold must be full already. “Where are you bound?” she asked.
“Cleveland.”
“Where’s that?” She was giving away her ignorance, but needed to know if it was east or west.
His eyes narrowed. “You talk funny. Like a queen or something. Where’s home to you?”
“London. But I’m no queen. My people are shopkeepers.”
“Well, Cleveland’s two days west of here. But we don’t take passengers.”
From the boy’s glance at his master, she could tell it was a lie.
“I can pay. But you’d have to leave early.”
He stroked his chin. “Leaving early would be extra.”
“Twenty dollars is all I have.”
“That’s the very price.”
He held out his hand, palm upwards.
She didn’t move. “How quick can you get the boiler up to pressure?”
He scratched at his chin, as if beginning to suspect she was more than she seemed. “Three hours.”
“Do it in two and I’ll pay double.”
“You said twenty was all you had.”
“And you said you don’t take passengers.”
A steam engine must be coaxed into life. That’s what the boatmen had told her on the North Leicester wharf, where she used to live. Build a roaring blaze right from the start and the joints in the metal will take the strain badly. The trick is to start the fire small. If the water rumbles, slow down.
But forty dollars is forty dollars. Elizabeth didn’t know how much boiler repair that might pay for on the waterways of North America. Enough, it seemed. The boat master may have been frowning as he threw coals into the firebox one by one, but he didn’t complain.
Elizabeth found a place on the deck, behind the wheelhouse, out of view from the quayside. The sky began to pale. Her friends would not raise the alarm when they found her gone. They wouldn’t need to. As soon as Winslow looked for his coat, he would know.
The boy brought her a tin mug of coffee. It was too bitter to drink, but it warmed her hands. Other crews along the quayside were waking. The sounds of activity echoed from the walls of warehouses.
“What’s your boat called?” she asked.
“She’s the Rosy Dawn,” said the boy.
The last bit of firing up the boiler was the quickest. The scrape and crunch of shovelling reverberated through the boat. She could smell the sulphurous tang of coal smoke. Steam began to hiss. The master clambered up from below, his face sheened with sweat and black dust. She put one of the Patent Office’s bank-fresh twenty-dollar bills in his hand. He examined it before holding out his hand again.
“You can have the other twenty when we get there,” she said.
He nodded his agreement. Too easily, she thought.
The boy threw off the lines from the mooring cleats, hopped aboard and used a boathook to push the prow out towards the river. There was a clank of gears and the paddlewheels began to turn, the noise of the engine building until everything on the boat was rattling. Elizabeth crouched down behind the wheelhouse. A line of buoys marked out the channel. Other boats had been getting up steam, but the Rosy Dawn was the first to leave Niagara.
Once the agents figured out that she’d escaped, they’d be sending men to search. Someone would surely ask questions along the quay. The Patent Office was held in low regard by most from the labouring classes, but someone would talk. By ten in the morning they’d have discovered the name of the first boat out and that it had been bound for Cleveland.
When the quay was far enough behind that she wouldn’t be seen, she got back to her feet, steadying herself against the wheelhouse. The boat didn’t look like much, but it moved at a fair lick.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Daytime,” the master said.
And that was that.
Peering into the hold she could see little, but caught the whiff of food. Her mouth watered. She let herself down into a space stacked with barrels to either side. The boy was crouched in front of the firebox frying eggs on the flat of a shovel. A plate of cooked bacon and a loaf of bread lay to the side. There seemed plenty enough for three so she tore a hunk from the loaf and picked up a strip of hot bacon with her fingers. It was delicious. He watched her eat as if observing some strange creature. There was bacon fat on her chin. She wiped it off with the back of her hand. At that, he smiled. If only the master proved so easy to win over.
Winslow and McLeod would send a message by pigeon to Cleveland. It would arrive long before the Rosy Dawn could steam there. That meant agents would be waiting with a description of her, and the warning that she could pass herself as a man.
Little was said as they steamed upriver, but by mid-morning the wide waterway opened out to become what seemed to be an ocean, though they had been travelling upstream. Now there was no current to fight against, but waves pitched the Rosy Dawn one way and then the other, growing as the land sank below the horizon. Elizabeth held on for fear of being tipped over the side.
“What is this place?” she asked, shouting against the engine noise.
“Lake Erie,” the master said.
She could see no compass in the wheelhouse. He stared resolutely at the horizon ahead. Navigating by the sun, she thought. And presently land came into view once more. As they came clos
er in, the waves began to subside.
Through the day, she had seen other cargo vessels steaming in each direction. Some great ships raised bow waves big enough to splash over onto the deck of the Rosy Dawn.
With the coast close enough to make out individual trees, the master went below, leaving the wheel to the boy. It had been sunny through the morning but Elizabeth’s clothes were wet from the spray and the cold was working into her. She stood beside the boy in the small wheelhouse.
“Is he your father?” she asked.
“No.”
“How long have you been working for him?”
“Since I turned nine.”
“And what is it you usually carry?”
“Stuff,” he said.
There was something in the way he said it that marked the evasion as important. Contraband, then. Untaxed spirits perhaps. That would fit with the Rosy Dawn. From the outside the boat seemed rusty enough to be leaking from a dozen holes. But they were making seven or eight knots. And though the rattling of fixtures was almost deafening, behind that she could hear an engine running sweetly.
“Where do you put in when it gets dark?”
He glanced back at her but didn’t answer.
The sun crawled across the sky. Since meeting the southern coast of Lake Erie they had been steering due west. The master climbed back up to the deck with an apple in his hand. He offered none to her or the boy, but devoured the whole thing, core and pips and all, flicking the stalk over the side. Then he took the wheel.
There was no word of lunch. The boy made more bitter coffee. This time she was thirsty enough to drink. It set her heart racing. Only then did she think of asking for water. Two cups took away the taste of the coffee. At least it had jolted her back to alertness. She didn’t trust the master enough to risk sleep.
They knew she’d been carrying forty dollars and was ready to spend it. The master would rightly think she was carrying more. There’s no easier place to get rid of a body than in a wide expanse of water.
The master seemed to be looking for some landmark on the coast as the sun dipped below the horizon. The light faded fast. They couldn’t continue for long. On some signal that she could not understand, he steered the boat in towards a thicket of trees. It seemed certain that they would run aground, but just in time he pulled the lever to disengage the engine. The paddlewheels began to drag in the water and they suddenly slowed.