The Fugitive and the Vanishing Man

by Rod Duncan

  So strange how the minds of audiences work. They believe they are being convinced by one thing, when in reality their minds have been swayed by another. To pass a signed card in secret so that it came to be in the other cabinet: this was trivial. Yet, when the child emerged, impossibly in the wrong place, it was that card that proved the laws of nature had been warped.

  Connecting the dream world of half-memory with the life he knew was something hard to think about. A dark space lay between. A void from which no memories would come.

  There had been that before-time of wagons and the warmth of a sister. Then there was the after-time, the real world, riding on horses next to his mother. Travelling always west. There had been an ocean crossing. Seasickness. Throwing up over the side of the steamer. Then the sights and smells of New York. A new life and a new continent. Performing tricks. Telling stories. Selling medicine.

  For a time their mother had been an eye doctor, though the miracle cure had been mostly a tincture made from tea leaves. They had crossed the Free States, crossed the First Nations then ventured out into the wilds of the Oregon Territory.

  In the Gas-Lit Empire, conjuring had given them the means of earning money. Audiences had believed and yet at the same time known the magic for trickery. They had willingly given up their critical faculty in exchange for entertainment. But in the wilds it was different. Outside the Gas-Lit Empire their audiences not only believed them capable of the supernatural. They also approached in secret after the shows to ask for special blessings to be made. Or as often, curses. They wanted amulets to protect them from grizzly bears or bullets or whatever it was that most frightened them.

  And they most particularly wanted to know the future. It was that which won them their place of influence in the castle at Crown Point. Two right predictions proved the difference between starvation and the ear of the king. First, a trapper asked when the salmon would run, for they were late that year. Edwin’s mother had said “next week” and taken his money. It was no risk. They would be long gone by the time the trapper found the prediction false. But a month later they came upon that same trapper in a bar in one of the small settlements by the coast. They’d been ready to slip away, but the man was all smiles. He told everyone in the room of the marvel she’d performed. “This woman made the salmon come,” he said.

  How slippery that distinction, between making a prediction and them thinking the thing had been made to happen. All the patrons of that bar had been pleased to buy them drinks and food. All had some question of the future to be answered. Edwin’s mother had been cautious. She’d known not to trust her luck again, for every promise is a seed thrown to the wind, which might come up as vine or briar. Only one prediction did she risk, and that because of the weight of the purse laid on the table in front of her.

  “My son is sick,” the man said.

  She turned his hands to read the lines on his palms, then stared into his eyes so closely that it seemed she was reading the strands of colour in his irises. Long after he had blushed and looked away, she carried on examining him. Then she nodded.

  “Your boy will live,” she said.

  They stole away in the night.

  “What if he dies?” Edwin had asked.

  “We’ll be long gone.”

  But that man, too, found them again. It was the following spring when they came upon him on the road, travelling with a dozen guards. They could not have escaped. She whispered in Edwin’s ear, “When they take me, you must run. It’s me they’ll want.”

  The man dismounted, his face full of emotion. Edwin thought he might rip her from the saddle. Instead he knelt and kissed her foot in the stirrup. The boy, his son, had seemed to be on the road to death until she had ordered his recovery. Then all had changed.

  “My name is Timon,” he’d said. “You must come with me. My brother is the king. He will want to meet with you.”

  Elizabeth and the Arthurs had been paddling down the river since dawn, that same hypnotic rhythm, Conway in the front. Neither of them spoke to her, contented it seemed with the sound of ripples and wind.

  But with the sun reaching its highest point, something changed. There had been a growing alertness in her travelling companions – or captors. She still wasn’t sure how to think of them. Then, a whispered conversation in a language she didn’t understand. Through the morning she’d seen signs of people in that vast wilderness: cabins on the valley sides, smoke rising, small boats on the river, fish drying on racks.

  Conway had paddled them close in under the left bank, though the waters moved more slowly there. Quite suddenly, he gave two deep pulls, and they were heading in towards a sandy beach.

  “What do we do now?” Elizabeth asked, when the canoe had been pulled up into the bushes and covered with brushwood.

  No answer came, so she said, “Tell me about the King of Crown Point.”

  “He’s brought peace to these lands,” Conway said. Mrs Arthur gave him a warning look, but he carried on. “When I was a boy, I lived out here. There was always killing. Warlords. Reivers. Every man with a sword might call himself king. I lost two brothers to men who were kings, in their own minds. And my parents, I guess. Though I never saw that. I came back from a hunting trip and they were gone.”

  He squatted by the water to wash his hands and face. Mrs Arthur had stalked away and was standing with her back to them some distance off. The smoke from her tobacco pipe drifted in the breeze.

  There were so many questions that Elizabeth wanted to ask. How did one woman have three husbands? Why did Conway put up with her displeasure? If they did not smuggle gold, what paid for their spying? They seemed poor. So why did they risk so much for the King of Crown Point? Yet sometimes more can be learned by staying quiet.

  Conway scooped water into his mouth and spat it out. He stood and stretched. When he turned to face her again he was smiling. “It always feels like coming home. I don’t miss it when I’m away. But when I get back here… I don’t know. I just feel more alive.”

  “Why don’t you stay here then?”

  “I will. One day. But there’s work to be done before that.”

  He seemed to be examining her with renewed intensity. She wanted to look away, but there was a clue in this, as well. Somehow, she was important to him.

  “When will you make your home here?”

  “When the King of Crown Point has no more need of us in Lewiston.”

  “Will that ever happen?”

  “It will,” he said, nodding with the kind of certainty she had seen only in religious converts.

  “You’ll see soon enough,” he said. “Now don’t get me in more trouble than I’m in already.” He flicked his eyes in the direction of Mrs Arthur, who was glowering at them, puffing fiercely on her pipe.

  They wouldn’t light a fire. That was another clue. Elizabeth chewed on a strip of salted fish which left her mouth so dried out that she had to swallow two full cups of water to get it down. When she tried to wander off along the riverbank, they called her back. They no longer threatened her. But in that unknown land she would have been helpless as a baby.

  Towards dusk, Conway began to gather up their things. He dropped her bag in front of her. “You’ll need your coat and a change of clothes. But everything else – you must leave it in the canoe. We’ve a long walk tonight.”

  When her bag had been mostly emptied, he showed her how to tie ropes as straps so that it could be carried on her back. Then he took her pistol from his deep coat pocket and offered it.

  “Thank you,” she said, as she took it back.

  By the time she had it stowed and was ready to walk, Mrs Arthur had brushed the beach sand clear of their footprints. They set off along a barely discernible path between the scrubby bushes. It might have been an animal track. At first the sky was brighter than the ground in front of her and she found herself stumbling. Then stars began to show and the moon rose from behind the mountains. She took to listening for the rhythm of Conway’s footfalls up ahe
ad. Whenever he broke step, she knew some small obstacle would be in the path. Mrs Arthur walked so quietly that from time to time Elizabeth found herself looking back to check that the woman hadn’t been left behind.

  Sometimes they followed dry river gullies, crowded with small trees. At other times the way took them over hillsides of scrub. But always they climbed. Then – they must have been walking for several hours because the moon had started to sink – they reached a cairn of rocks, which had been built around a wooden flag post.

  The air was dry, the only sound the rippling of cloth in the wind. Conway and Mrs Arthur put down their bags. Elizabeth did the same. Her feet were sore from walking and the ropes had rubbed her shoulders raw.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “The East Cairn,” Mrs Arthur said. “It’s where we’ll meet him.”

  “Who?”

  But the woman had turned and was peering into the darkness. Then Elizabeth heard it also, the scrunch of loose stones under a boot. A figure stood there under the moonlight. He must have been hiding behind the bushes to watch their approach. He stepped forwards, took off his wide-brimmed hat, uncovering his face from shadow.

  Conway and Mrs Arthur bowed. Elizabeth stared, not understanding what she was seeing, though it was clear enough as he approached. She reached her hand to touch his face, and he did the same to her. It was like her own face, yet not quite. The chin more sturdy, the nose a fraction more prominent.

  “Edwin,” she said, not as a question, but simply to voice his name.

  “Elizabeth?”

  She had known it was true already. But when they held each other and she found herself inhaling the scent of him, she knew all over again that she was no longer alone in the world.

  “Where is our father?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s gone. Dead. But where is our mother?”

  At which, he wept.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 18

  A generous road approached the castle, curving gently across the plateau. It had been built wide enough for two men to ride abreast in comfort, or four men to march in close formation. The outer wall had no moat or ditch – nothing to slow the charge of an attacking army. If the forces of the Gas-Lit Empire did ever cross the border into the Oregon Territory, they could march right up to the stones, but few would survive the last hundred yards. Loopholes to either side of the main gate looked out on that spread of exposed land. The automatic guns of Crown Point would cut through the ranks of its enemies like scythes through long grass.

  The second way into the castle was via a narrow sally port on the east wall, a few yards from the cliffs. It had been built small and deep, so that a broad-shouldered man would need to sidestep in order to pass and a lone defender might hold it against a horde.

  But walls work in other ways. A castle may hold its residents inside just as surely as it keeps attackers out. And whoever controls the gates may keep a record of all those who pass.

  Getting Elizabeth into the castle proved easier than Edwin had feared. One of the guards who should have been at the sally port was away at the latrine. The other one was uncertain. He seemed relieved, himself, when Edwin ordered him to turn around and face the wall. The fact that someone had arrived in the night would be reported, since the guard was on Janus’s payroll. But Edwin made sure that the Arthurs were spotted by another informant before they left on their long journey back to Lewiston: a passing glimpse near the front gate. Their arrival would be the story in the end. It would unsettle Janus.

  Elizabeth: he still couldn’t get used to the idea of having a sister. She stepped across the room touching the lacquered cabinets, tracing designs and edges with her fingers, just as he would have done, eyes wide. She seemed unable to speak.

  “My mother’s things,” he said. Then, adjusting: “Our mother’s things.”

  “Where did you bury her?” she asked. “What I mean is, I’d like to visit her grave. To leave flowers. Or say something. I don’t know what. All these years, I put her out of my mind. I never prayed for her.”

  “Do you believe in that? In praying?”

  “No. Or, I don’t know. It just feels as if I should do something. To say goodbye.”

  “There isn’t a grave,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Then tell me how she died.”

  “We can talk about it tomorrow,” he said. “You should rest.”

  “Tell me now.”

  He felt her eyes on him. There was something of his mother in the intensity of that gaze.

  “They threw her from the battlements,” he said.

  Elizabeth’s hand went to cover her mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling as if he’d slapped her.

  “Why did they do it?”

  “She’d made a prophecy. It didn’t come true. And then… grudges build up when you’re First Counsellor. Someone found an old law that said a failed magician had to die.” It was hard enough to think these words, let alone speak them. “Afterwards… I would have made a grave. I would have…” His eyes stung as the tears began to roll. “The king gave the order. To kill her. And for me not to go to her. It was a test.

  “I would have gone anyway. I could have chanced my luck – out there. But she… Mother… she’d made me promise that if it ever happened, I’d take over from where she’d left off. That I’d finish her work. So when the king asked me to be his new magician, I had to do it. I knelt – in front of the man who killed her. I felt his hand on top of my head. And heard him telling everyone I was the new magician, even though I was just a boy.”

  “What happened to the body?” Elizabeth asked, a look of horror on her face, as if she’d guessed already.

  “I couldn’t leave the castle without being seen. If I’d have done it, they’d have known I’d disobeyed the king. You don’t understand what it’s like in a place like this. They were jealous of my position. If they found an excuse, it would have been me dead as well. I begged to go. For six months the king wouldn’t let me.”

  A tear dripped from his chin. Elizabeth looked away. His sister.

  “Do you blame me?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer. Her mouth hung slack.

  “Maybe I could have gone out before. I don’t know. But she’d made me promise to not do anything to risk my position. When the king said I could go out – it was spring by then – the first thing I did was climb down under the cliffs. But when I got there, all I could find were a few shreds of cloth. From the coat she’d been wearing. There are animals out there. Even the birds will strip a body down to its bones.”

  “Then, where are the bones?”

  He shook his head. “They must have been carried off. I searched. You’ve got to believe I searched.”

  “Then, can you be certain?” Elizabeth asked. “Did you see her going over the edge?”

  “Yes.” He said it quickly, to get the word out of his mouth. Without thinking whether it was true.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I had to ask. How old were we, when you left?”

  “Seven,” he said. And then, though he felt stupid for asking, “Are we twins?”

  “I think so.” She opened the cabinet in front of her, “I remember this.”

  “You can’t,” he said.

  Elizabeth reached inside and pressed the catch, releasing the false panel. It had been quite hidden. She ducked her head and stepped into the compartment. He watched as she squeezed herself into the secret space.

  “We must have been so small,” she said.

  “How did you know where to find the catch?”

  “I told you,” she said. “This is from the Circus of Mysteries. When we were children. Don’t you remember? The show was our life.”

  “But we left with nothing – Mother and me. She only built this after we got to the castle.”

  He saw his sister’s eyes flick around the room and alight on the second cabinet, the twin of the first. “There.” She po
inted. “One for each side of the stage. One for each of us.”

  He shook his head, trying to clear the confusion. “Perhaps it’s easier for you to remember. You stayed on with the circus. We were thrown out.”

  “Thrown?”

  “Yes.”

  “You left!” Elizabeth’s voice sounded brittle. “She left! She abandoned me. You were the one she wanted.”

  “Is that what he told you – Father?”

  “I remember him weeping,” she said.

  Feeling his legs weaken, Edwin dropped himself into the window seat. Elizabeth had turned very pale, as if she’d felt it in the same moment: the story of who they were becoming insubstantial. A sudden vertigo, as if the stones under their feet were heaving, cracking to reveal a yawning void. He’d hoped she might complete his story. Instead she was tearing it up.

  “Our mother never wept,” he said.

  “Then it’s like I told you. She was the one to leave.”

  “No. She never showed her sadness. Crying just wasn’t her way. Not for anything. But I could see the hurt in her. She used to stare away into the distance, out of this window, as if she was longing for someone. You, I think. I watched her when she didn’t know I was there. You were the daughter he stole from her. You were the child she really wanted.”

  “You were the one she chose to take!”

  Elizabeth closed the door of the lacquered cabinet and turned her back on it, as if she couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. “How many years have you been here?” she asked.

  “Thirteen.”

  “And when… How long ago did she die?” There was a break in her voice, as if she was battling to hide her emotions.

  “Five years ago. I’ve been the magician since.”

  “Then she lived two years longer than our father. He died in a debtor’s prison.”

  She stepped towards him and seemed about to sit beside him in the window. He held out his hand to warn her back.

  “Someone might be looking up from the valley. I’m sorry. It’s unlikely, I know. But you can’t be seen.”