by Rod Duncan
All happened to plan.
After it was done, when they were back in the castle, the king had thanked him in private. Such a display of hunting prowess would bring fame, he said. It was a marvellous trick.
It had always been the same with the king and conjuring. He’d been happy to play along with routines of coloured flames and vague prophecies. But after all that, it seemed that he too believed. At least in the magic of auguries. How was it possible for one man to hold two such opposites as true? The thought unsettled Edwin.
The killing of the deer had been witnessed only by those in the van of the hunting party. The second sacrifice would gather an audience of hundreds.
The ox, whose only sin was to have a magnificent set of horns, had been washed and brushed until its coat shone in the thin sunlight. It seemed brighter than anything else in the castle courtyard, brighter than the purple silk that Edwin wore, which had been the ceremonial robe of his mother and the magicians who’d come before her. The ox’s horns were of the wide, sweeping kind. Someone had decorated them with jagged lines of black and ochre. Red tassels dangled from the tips, dancing as the beast turned its head to take in its unfamiliar surroundings. The decorations were an inherited tradition, like the robe.
It would be no different from the killing of the deer, he thought. Yet there was something melancholy in the passivity of this great tethered beast. As magician to the king, he advised on the planning of raids. Afterwards he would read lists of the names of the dead, or just the number if things had gone badly. Such actions were needed. Lives to save lives. There was a mathematical logic to it. The death of the ox served no such purpose.
He’d been in the courtyard for over an hour, supervising the building of the pyre, timber stacked layer on layer. The beast had been tethered between it and the platform where the dignitaries would sit. It watched the work as if curious, occasionally dipping its great head to take another mouthful of hay, or looking back at the trickle of arriving spectators, not realising that it was the subject of their attention.
A rope marked out a wide circle on the stones, taking in the pyre, the ox and Edwin himself. Anyone could have stepped across it. But no one did. Even with the pressure of new arrivals pushing in from behind: soldiers, peasants, courtiers, coopers, cooks, children. Some he recognised, but many must have come from beyond the castle.
Animal sacrifice hadn’t been part of his mother’s world before coming to Oregon. But the previous magician to the king had done it, and the magicians who’d served the Lords of Crown Point before him. The theatre of blood never failed to draw a crowd. His mother had found it useful in the end, and never seemed disquieted. She hid her feelings, he supposed.
The audience was standing five-deep by the time Timon and others in the succession took their places on the platform. The king was the last to arrive, helping his consort to climb the steps. Silence had fallen and all the others stood in respect, until the king was seated.
“Begin!” he said.
Edwin advanced towards the box of ceremonial knives. But before he could select one, Janus stepped into the circle of rope and bowed to his master. He had a confidence about him that made it seem as if his actions were part of the show, agreed and rehearsed beforehand.
“The Magician of Crown Point has been directed to perform this ceremony so the auguries may be read, and the future known.”
Janus turned as he spoke, taking in the full circle of the audience, but ignoring Edwin as if he were merely a functionary. He clapped then, as if showing approval for the king’s decision. All within the courtyard followed his lead. Even the king himself. The servant who controls the master, Edwin thought. And the ox had been dressed like a king. But then, weren’t they all? It was a day for finery.
He selected the largest blade and lifted it above his head. It was long as a machete and gently curved, but not so wide. Somehow he needed to exert his authority over the performance. But before he could speak, Janus began again.
“We all rejoiced at the good tidings. Our king has planted his seed. The royal consort is with child.” Again he clapped. The applause from the audience was louder this time, and more immediate. They were learning to follow. The king dipped his head in acknowledgement.
“Are you ready to perform your task, magician?”
Edwin wanted to swear. He would have turned and walked away, but that would have insulted the king. He was taking all the risk, but Janus had found a way to command the glory. If glory there was. And belittling him in the same process.
“I am ready!” he said, acting a confidence he didn’t feel, stepping towards the ox, knowing that he was obeying his rival. If he’d been wearing an apron instead of robes, he would have seemed like a butcher, a servant.
Animal sacrifice should be played out, to build anticipation. That’s what his mother had told him. This was all going wrong. But by commanding the leading role, Janus might have made himself vulnerable. If Edwin could involve him in the ceremony in some way, the blame of things going wrong might be shared between them. That might protect the consort.
“The question you are called to answer is this,” Janus said. “Is the king’s child to be a boy or a girl? Will it be born healthy? And will the consort be healthy also?”
Three questions, for Edwin to get wrong. For a moment, the consort was looking directly at him. He’d heard her throwing up again that morning. One of her eyes was deep red from a small haemorrhage. It gave her a devilish look. And she was holding her belly as if about to throw up again. If she made it through the ceremony, it would be a miracle in itself. Making her watch was another cruelty.
“It is time,” Janus said.
Not wanting to seem as if he was obeying, Edwin turned away from the ox and began to walk around the circle, just inside the rope, holding the blade in front of him, showing it to all in the audience. The faster the beat of his heart, the more he forced himself to slow. Small steps. Making the time stretch. Separating the act of killing from Janus’s instruction.
Having completed the circuit, he knelt in front of the platform, holding the blade out towards the king on his two hands. He lowered his forehead to the dust. It was an unnatural position and his shoulders ached from it. But he’d practised in the privacy of the Room of Cabinets and knew he could keep it up for a count of fifty.
Somewhere above the castle a raven called. It seemed like an omen in itself. All else was silent. Edwin had counted to forty-five by the time the king spoke.
“Make the sacrifice,” he said.
At least now the order was not from Janus. Hoping the shake in his arms wouldn’t show, Edwin got to his feet. He stepped to the side of the ox, level with its head. Its eye looked back at him as he wiped the length of the blade across his sleeve. Then he placed the edge to its neck and in one smooth movement, drew it across and in. The ox stumbled but remained standing, seeming more surprised than anything. The stream of blood splashing onto the stones was the only sound. Then the animal’s legs gave way and it dropped, first to its knees, then onto its side.
With that first cut, the blood would have stopped flowing to its brain. Edwin knew it. There was no more sight in its eyes. No more feeling in its body. But one of the hind legs kept kicking.
Using the flat of the blade, Edwin anointed his own forehead, then turned to where Janus had been standing, to blood him as well, to implicate him in the magic. But the man had been wise enough to step out of the rope circle. He’d disappeared into the crowd.
Mind whirling, Edwin lay down the blade and took a small knife to the belly of the ox. The tip slipped in easily but cutting towards the tail end was harder work. Sawing through the skin, he extended the cut backwards until the intestines started pushing through under their own pressure. The intake of breath from the crowd sounded like a breeze passing over the land. They would all be leaning forwards, straining to see, but not crossing the rope.
It surprised him how hot the inside of an animal could be. Plunging in his hands fe
lt like immersing them in water heated over a fire. A sharp tug released the organs and viscera, which spilled out onto the dirt, steaming. Though he hated the waste of life, he knew the power of the act. Not to predict the future. But to astound an audience. The spectacle of the familiar being turned inside out. Outside, the beast’s fur carried a pattern of browns and cream. But here revealed was a slick wetness of reds, blues and white. Lifting a loop of the intestines pulled out a film of connecting tissue, patterned with veins, like a page on which the creator had written a message, held secret until that moment.
But it must never be easy to read.
His forehead itched with the drying blood. He delved into the carcass again, scooping out a kidney, deep red and lined with yellow fat. The crowd was so quiet now that he could hear the flag rippling in the wind on the topmost turret. He was about to delve within the ox one more time, going for that pattern of three. But just then, a baby started crying somewhere in the castle. It was one of those fortunate things. Never follow a script, his mother had told him. Always watch and listen for something that your audience will consider to be a sign. So he lifted the kidney, using the knife to cut it free. He held it above his head and turned, as if to give each member of the audience a personal view.
At the platform, he prostrated himself again. It might be a lump of meat, but it was also a gift to a king. Cloth brushed against cloth as the crowd shifted, turning their heads or cupping their ears so not to miss anything of what he was about to say.
Clambering back to his feet, he took a breath to speak, but was cut short by the voice of Janus, who had stepped back into the circle behind him.
“What is your pronouncement, magician?”
Oh, but the man was clever. He’d dodged Edwin’s one chance to hurt him. And now he had returned to finish the job.
“Good news,” Edwin said, hating that he had no other option, that he was playing a part that Janus had written for him. “The king will have an heir. Healthy and strong.”
“Will it be a boy or a girl?” Janus asked, closing the second trap.
“It will be a boy, fit to rule.”
“And will the mother be healthy?”
Even though he’d known that a third set of jaws would close, Edwin was surprised by their sharpness. The consort looked down at him from her seat on the platform, fear on her face, mixed with nausea.
“She will be healthy,” he said.
A weak smile spread over her face and she relaxed back into her chair.
Edwin placed the kidney on top of the pyre. Then servants carried the other organs to lay alongside it. The wood had been soaked in oil and quickly took the flame. White steam and black smoke rose in a column, swirling near the battlements. The king helped his consort to stand and everyone cheered. Those wearing hats threw them in the air. Edwin had been forgotten. Nor would he be welcome in the celebrations. But Janus had stepped up onto the platform and was congratulating the happy couple.
Edwin watched him. And then, just for a moment, Janus seemed to become aware that he was being observed. Their eyes met. Edwin saw a flicker of a smile, a nod of acknowledgement. There could be no more doubt. It had all happened according to his enemy’s plan. Janus would poison the consort. He had six or seven months to arrange it. Unless Edwin could stop him.
CHAPTER 15
“Get in,” Conway said from the foxhole.
Elizabeth did, squatting next to him and the bags. Mrs Arthur followed, stepping down with the pigeon basket. They slid the cover over the top – a sheet of corrugated iron covered with sacking and soil. For a moment all was dark and then daylight streamed in through the mirror of a periscope. Mrs Arthur, who had uncovered the viewer, was first to look.
Two days had passed since Elizabeth’s unmasking as the sister of Edwin, Magician of Crown Point. Her heart had thrilled with the news that he was alive. And more, he was in some position of significance.
Mrs Arthur hadn’t explained beyond that. Nor had her husbands, of which Elizabeth now knew there were at least three, Conway being the eldest. Each new husband was about fifteen years younger than the last. All jumped to her command.
They’d treated Elizabeth well enough, for a prisoner. The food had been simple but filling: corn, or bread, beans and bacon, or sometimes dried fish cooked with wild herbs. The coffee had been too strong to drink, but there’d been a hand pump outside and no shortage of water. Always one or other of the men had stayed close with a gun.
Her turn came and she looked into the periscope mirror. The hillside sloped away from the foxhole towards the border fences. Turning the angle of view, she saw a patrol of three border guardsmen on horses, picking their way along the road. They seemed in no hurry. It took minutes for them to pass out of view. The pigeon fluttered and cooed in its carrying basket.
“Settle in,” Conway said. “We’re here till nightfall.”
“Is this the way you smuggle?” she asked.
“We don’t.”
“The newspaper said you were carrying gold back across the border.”
He chuckled. “The self-same gold we’d carried on the way out.”
“Hush now!” Mrs Arthur warned.
In the darkness, Elizabeth found herself smiling. It was a good trick. Better to be a suspected smuggler than a spy. That was surely what they were – agents of a foreign power, with which her brother had become enmeshed. When Conway spoke of Edwin, it was with a hushed voice. She hoped that was a good sign. Certainly her brother’s name seemed to be protecting her.
“Where do you find the gold?”
“Here and there,” said Conway. “It’s only metal.”
“Then what matters to you?”
“Family.”
“Honour,” said Mrs Arthur. “And land.”
“What land?”
“This land. Now, will you hush your questions!”
Conway sat back against the rear wall of the dugout. Mrs Arthur remained kneeling, her back upright. Elizabeth stared out of the periscope. For a time two hawks wheeled in the air over the hills on the other side of the border. Then stillness, the light beginning to fade. The brown earth tinged red as the sun dipped lower.
She’d been thinking about Conway and his travels across the continent, which might be frequent, spying in different cities, gathering information. He would surely be familiar with the wonders of New York. That’s where Elizabeth’s mind kept drifting: to Julia and Tinker. The Patent Office agents would have had no reason to tell her friends about the deal she’d broken. Julia would think she’d simply abandoned them. But it would be harder still on the boy. He’d have no way to understand such betrayal.
A movement on the hillside below drew her mind back to the present. At first she thought it might be a person emerging from another dugout. But it was an animal. Like a dog. Then the light was too low for her to see.
There had been more patrols through the afternoon. But nothing regular enough to trust. When it was quite dark, Mrs Arthur said, “Off with the roof.” She spoke quietly, but it wasn’t a whisper.
The cold air outside felt beautifully fresh. Elizabeth hobbled a few steps, stretching out her limbs after the hours of cramped confinement. Cloud covered half the sky, but stars shone from a broad strip overhead. The light seemed enough for Mrs Arthur, who took Elizabeth by the wrist and led her down the slope and along the line of the fence. Conway’s footsteps crunched the ground just behind.
“It’s here,” Mrs Arthur said, tapping one of the posts.
Conway got down on his knees. There was a slack twang of wire on wire and he crawled through. More metallic sounds followed as he parted the scrawl of barbs in the middle.
“Follow him,” Mrs Arthur said.
Elizabeth felt the stony ground under her hands as she crawled through.
“How do you hide the break?” she asked, when they and the bags were all together again on the other side.
“There are ways,” Mrs Arthur said.
“Tarred paper and g
um,” said Conway.
“Hush now!”
“She’s the magician’s sister.”
“So she’ll understand – some secrets got to be kept!”
“How did they catch you last time?” Elizabeth asked.
“Footprints,” said Conway. “But that was meant to be. They were onto us anyway. After we’d dug the new foxhole, we let them find the old one. We’ve done it before.”
“The judge called you recidivists.”
Mrs Arthur laughed, the sound crackly from the bottom of her lungs. “We are that,” she said. “It’s the one thing they got right.”
It was slow walking, the ground strewn with small stones. They wouldn’t use a light, even after the brow of the last hill had hidden the fence entirely. Once, Elizabeth’s foot dropped into a hole and she almost fell, but Mrs Arthur still had her wrist and heaved her back to standing.
She smelled the Snake River before she heard it. They’d been going downhill for some time when the scent of water and damp earth came to her, so different from the arid air of the dusty hills. Then she heard the lapping of ripples. Only when her feet met beach sand did she catch the reflection of starlight from its surface. At last Mrs Arthur let go of her.
“Sit,” she said.
Conway rummaged in his pack and put a hunk of bread in her hand. “Eat,” he said. “Then sleep if you can. There’s a long boat ride ahead.”
“What’s the Magician of Crown Point to you?” Elizabeth asked.
She heard the stillness as they both stopped what they were doing.
“He’s First Counsellor to the king,” Conway said.
“He’s got the power,” said Mrs Arthur. “Did you not know?”
The king’s consort lived in an apartment of satin and pastel shades. Edwin would have liked to dress to match. But in that world of handmaids, friends, cooks and dressers there was not a sinew of masculinity. However fully the feminine persona was felt, however perfect the dress and movement, Edwin would always be seen as an outsider.
Instead he went the other way, donning a pair of heavy boots to emphasise the difference. Having knocked briskly, he stood to attention and waited. Presently the door opened and a doe-eyed maid peered out.