by Rod Duncan
“We’re both acting parts,” she said.
He turned. “It’s hard not to.” And then, “I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry.”
She’d shared things with this stranger, her brother. Things she’d told no one before. Not Julia or Tinker. Nor even Farthing. Some of it she’d hardly been aware of herself, as if her feelings had needed forming into words before she could fully see them. But through all those confidences, a barrier had remained.
“The sun will be up soon,” he said, then set off towards the door. “I’ve something to do.”
“What about me?”
“Please wait.”
From frustration, she hissed towards his back, “Do I have a choice?”
Then she was alone. Again.
In truth she did have choices. None of them she liked. She knew enough now to be able to escape from the castle: a treacherous climb down that thin rope with Mary Brackenstow. The rivers would guide them. Food would be the problem. She could fashion a barbed hook, find something to bait it with, trail it in the water. But lighting a fire would be too great a risk. They would need to eat the fish raw, drink river water, stay alive. She could get them back to the border, to Lewiston.
But what then? She would be returning as she left, accompanied by a mad woman and rumours of a treaty. Even if she risked waiting to see the thing signed, she’d be offering the Patent Office little more than her beliefs and asking for her life in exchange. A bargain written in smoke. They would surely refuse, just as they had at the start.
She thought again of Julia and Tinker. Being away from them had been a kind of bereavement. And her dear John Farthing. The idea that she might never see them again was more than she could bear to hold. Through her hours alone, she had tried to keep it from her mind. But it took such strength to hold the thought at bay, and she did not think she could sustain the discipline for much longer.
Grey light showed in the window. She got up, began to pace. In the prison that was the Room of Cabinets, she’d walked the path from wall to wall so many times, it seemed a wonder the floorboards hadn’t been worn away.
What if she were to stay and her brother’s plans came to grief? If the embassy were to return to Newfoundland leaving the document unsigned, Edwin’s life would be in danger. He’d told her that his fate and the negotiations were tangled. Having overheard Janus’s threats, she knew it for herself.
She imagined her brother abandoning Crown Point, returning with her to the Gas-Lit Empire. She could take him to the agents of the Patent Office. Edwin knew the full inventory of the forces of Oregon: troop numbers and divisions, their bases and supply dumps, the capacity and weaknesses of their new weapons, the place and method of manufacture of each item. Such a hoard of knowledge would surely be enough for the Patent Office to spare her life.
Kneeling in the window seat, she looked out over the valley, which was still in shadow, though sunlight had reached the high peaks. In all her travels she had never seen a place more beautiful than Oregon. It was hard to imagine Edwin abandoning it and returning to the gentle hills of England, but harder still to think that he could betray all his ideals. To bargain for her life, he would be handing over the means of destruction of everything he’d worked for. And everything their mother had worked for. If he did it, he might never forgive himself.
Sunlight crept its way down the slopes of the hills. The sky brightened from grey to blue. When the tumblers clicked in the door lock, she realised she’d been drifting in her thoughts. Weaving back between the cabinets, she set to greet him, but stopped dead.
Edwin’s hair was still tied back in a queue, but the eyes had been adorned like a woman’s, dark lines of kohl making them seem larger. Trousers had changed to khaki riding skirt but the shirt and jacket were of the male fashion. Edwin seemed uncertain standing in front of her. Shy, almost.
“Well?”
At first, she could think of nothing to say. “I’m… sorry.”
“For what?”
“Staring. It’s just… I don’t know. This… half and half…”
“I often go about like this.”
“They see you then?” she asked. “In between?”
“Yes. I wanted you to know. I’m sorry, but I don’t know why I kept it from you before.”
She felt a sense of recognition. “It’s almost like I knew.”
“What about you?” Edwin asked. “When we were children, we sometimes dressed as boys. Sometimes as girls. And now, here you are dressed as a man. But you also go as a woman. How do you choose which way to dress?”
“There are places where I need to appear like a man,” she said. “And places where I need to be a woman. It’s not me who chooses. It’s rules that other people set – who can do what and where, man or woman. It’s a disguise, I suppose. Both ways perhaps.”
Edwin nodded. “I’m happy for you,” they said. But a shadow of disappointment had crossed their face. “If it was left to you… might you choose to be like this? Like me?”
It was a question she’d been asked before in a different form. One of the Sargasso pirates had wanted to know if she would choose masculine or feminine clothes. At the time she’d said she’d wear a dress, though she hadn’t been certain. But here there was a third option. An ambiguity.
“Do others at Crown Point dress this way?”
“No.”
“But they don’t mind you doing it?”
“Some do. Some don’t. Prejudice takes time to wash away. What would they say in London?”
She didn’t want to tell him that it would be impossible in England to appear that way, ambiguously poised between genders. She imagined the laughter and shouts of outrage they’d face. A crowd of jeering men and women. A mob, shouting all the louder to drown out their own uncertainties. But to admit it would feel like a betrayal of her father’s choice. And her own. Somehow she’d become a bad apologist for the Gas-Lit Empire, the grudging defender of a lesser evil.
Edwin nodded, as if her silence had proved him right.
“I’m glad you can do this,” she said. And then, perhaps to change the subject because of her own uncertainty: “What will happen if your meetings fail, if the Newfoundlanders won’t sign your agreement?”
“I’ll show them some marvel. I’ll make them believe. They’ll agree in the end. They must.”
“But if they don’t… might you come away with me?”
She knew by his face that he’d thought of it already: the impossibility of his helping the Gas-Lit empire, juxtaposed against the impossibility of life continuing if his agreement was not signed.
“You’ve asked me to think things I don’t want to think,” she said. “I’ve done it. And I’m helping you. Please now do the same for me. If your plans fall to ruin, will you come with me? Back east. We can escape together. If you agree to that, I will help you do all you wish. We will devise a conjuring trick, an illusion grand enough to persuade them of your power. I’ll give it all my ability.”
“You’d gamble with the fate of the world?” Edwin asked.
“We’ve been doing that from the start. This is about us. It’s about finding a way to live.”
“Then I agree,” he said.
The trick had to be a demonstration of magic, with no possible explanation based on chance. It would be witnessed by all the members of the delegation in the same moment. And then, in the stunned aftermath, with their understanding of the immutable laws of nature in flux, a prophecy would be presented: a prediction of inevitable victory should the alliance be formed.
“It could be the bullet catch,” Edwin said.
They had placed the two pistols side by side on the workbench. The inlaid turquoise seemed identical. Not just the outline of the leaping hare: the marvel of it was revealed in Edwin’s magnifying lens, the pattern of filaments and mottled imperfections in the precious stone. One could not be told from the other. Two thin slices must have been cut from the same lump, a fraction of an inch separating them in the
rock. And though the two pistols had been taken to opposite ends of the Earth, now here they were united again, lying together, the miracle of their similarity revealed.
“Don’t worry about how the trick might be performed,” Elizabeth said. “Think of what effect you would like to show.”
“Fire coming out of my hands…”
“We could do that.”
“…and consuming Janus!”
“I’m trying to be serious!” she said, but Edwin was smiling at her and she could not remain severe.
“I’m sorry. But this is a grim business. If we can’t laugh, then what are we even trying to save?”
“Perhaps we could vanish him,” she said, now smiling herself.
“To make him vanish would amaze them. But they would applaud when we made him reappear. Which I would rather not happen!”
“Then let us change Janus into you. Or have you transport yourself from one place to another.”
Elizabeth laid her hand on one of their mother’s cabinets. Somehow their conversation had strayed to the grand illusion of that shared past. On the stage, a child would be seen entering one of the cabinets. A moment and a flash of gunpowder later, they would emerge from the cabinet on the opposite side of the stage, carrying some unique token: a playing card, a watch, a pistol, to prove it was the same child.
Sometimes it was Edwin who disappeared and Elizabeth who appeared. Sometimes the other way around. Either of them could play boy or girl. Each knew both parts.
“Where do we perform the trick?” she asked.
“There is to be a grand feast before the embassy departs. That is the place. All must see it. A shared experience, so that none of them can afterwards doubt their memory.”
“It will seem odd, don’t you think – to have cabinets there?”
Edwin stared at the bare wall, as if looking through it. “Our cabinets must seem to be something else,” they said. “The more they belong in that setting, the more impossible the illusion will seem.”
“Then shall one of us burst from a giant pie?” she asked, meaning it as a joke.
“Not a pie. The kitchens would need to help. And no one else can know. But it could be a container of food. The Newfies love to eat fresh fruit. We could have a chest of apples and pears set before them.”
Elizabeth pictured it in her mind. It would seem the most natural thing in the world. A generous gift for the embassy. It could sit before them through the meal. Then the king’s magician would announce a demonstration of his power. In some way he would disappear. A fraction of a second later – just enough for their minds to be able to understand the vanishing – the fruit would begin to shift and spill. The same magician would eme Drge before their eyes.
“I must be the one to appear,” Edwin said.
She understood the reason. After the miracle would come the prophecy and the treaty document. Even if she could be schooled in the politics and know everything to say, it would be hard to argue for a treaty that she wanted to fail.
“You can leave the feast to fetch a gift for them,” she said. “Then I return in your guise, with servants carrying a cask of fruit, which is laid before them. You’re going to be cramped in a small space. How long can you last? We’re not as small as we used to be.”
“I’ll manage as long as it takes.”
“But how shall I disappear?” she asked.
“In fire and thunder,” Edwin said, smiling. “You will vanish in fire and thunder. I will show you how.”
CHAPTER 35
When Elizabeth had applied the makeup to darken her chin, giving the suggestion of stubble to match her brother, she stood at arm’s length from him and took her turn with the hand glass. They were not so similar, she thought. His nose was bigger, and his chin. He was taller by a couple of inches and broader in the shoulder. It seemed impossible that anyone had mistaken her for him. Yet they had. As with so many illusions, it worked through confidence and context.
And shadows, she thought. Under the full sun, a sceptical eye might see the truth.
“You’ll only be talking with guards,” he said. “And that’ll be in a dark passageway. When the door opens, try to be turned away from them. That’s when you’ll have full daylight on you. And don’t look back.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, silently telling herself that it was excitement stirring her heart, not fear. She’d be outside the castle for the first time since she arrived. If they let her through.
“Half an hour,” he said. “Then I follow. But through the front gate.”
Day transformed the castle. Small windows let in light, painting the stones with a warmer tint. The light faded around the turn of the spiral, greying until the next window came into view. So much detail she had missed on her night walks.
The corridors were no longer dank with the cold night air, but carrying the hints of smells: food and perfume and body odour and woodsmoke and more things she couldn’t quite name but which left a feeling in her nonetheless.
Then there were people: three young men decked out in kitchen aprons. Make them get out of your way, her brother had said. So she did, opening her stride.
“G’morning magician,” they chorused.
She pushed through, brushing a shoulder against one. Striding away, she caught their hushed laughter.
Edwin had told her the route, made her repeat the list of turns and stairs, directing her through those passageways used by servants.
And spies.
“What brings you here?”
Janus’s voice, close and quiet, made her wheel. He emerged from something that might have been a storeroom. She couldn’t read the soft features of his face. The man she least wanted to meet. She took half a step to the side, putting the light of the window behind her, hoping the shadow on her face would be deep enough.
“Did I startle you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
The curve of his mouth suggested a smile. “What brings you to the west range?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Concern?” He spoke the word as if it was unfamiliar.
“I’m going somewhere,” she said.
“Indeed. Well, the First Counsellor has his work, I suppose. But what of the negotiations? You and your new friends, huddled in that room for hours. The way the scribes tell it, you’re giving away all our gold and goods.”
“It’s only writing. We’ve given nothing.”
“And nor have they.”
“But they will.”
“We should make a wager of it,” Janus said. “You say the agreement will be signed. I say not. Will you take my bet?”
“No,” she said, just wanting to get away.
But Janus flinched. Anger showed on his face, real and unhidden. “You go too far! I will see you die, magician,” he hissed. “And then I will piss on your corpse. Just like I pissed on your mother’s.”
Elizabeth walked on in a daze of shock, unable to understand the feelings that were surging, not understanding the full meaning of what she’d heard, glad of the darkness, for there were no windows on that stretch of passage. She wasn’t in full control. She did know that.
Then the sally port was ahead. One of the guards raised a lamp. She put up a hand to shield her eyes.
“I’m going for a walk,” she said, as she’d been trained, but sounding too shrill.
“Why?” asked the guard with the lantern.
“That’s my business!”
He didn’t like it. But he nodded to the other one, who stepped into the narrow way, which was the thickness of the wall, and drew back the bolts to open the door. Daylight streamed in. As he sidestepped back, he was looking directly at her.
“Out of my way!” Turmoil gave her words force.
“I’m sorry,” he said, averting his gaze. “No offence.”
She was through. The daylight and cold air sharpened her. She had to get away, had to trust her brother’s instructions.
One path turned to run under the ca
stle wall, heading for the front. The other, easy to miss, cut off at an angle, over the lip of the plateau. She set off along it, counted her paces, reached one hundred and twenty before finding the thicket of black hawthorn. She sidestepped as he’d instructed, ducked down and crawled under the branches into a little hollow. The hiding place had been invisible from outside.
She had no means for measuring time, and no will to bring it into focus. It passed nonetheless. Clouds moved over then cleared again. The leaves of the hawthorn shivered in the wind. A flock of small birds flitted through the branches where there had been none before. Then just as quickly they were gone.
Footsteps approached. She knew them for her brother’s. A moment later he was crawling through into the hollow, a small leather bag in his hand, his eyes wide with excitement. But seeing her, he frowned.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Janus was there.”
She told him what had happened: the fencing with words, the abrupt switch to hatred. As she spoke, his expression changed from concern to fear. She’d been going to tell him everything, but when she came to those hateful parting words, she stopped.
“What then?” Edwin asked.
“He said he wants us dead.”
“He wants me dead, you mean.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
He had found the secret hollow whilst still a child. The gate guards hadn’t minded the child of the magician scampering out to play. So long as it was in sight of the castle. There were other hiding places out there, but none so perfect. For a time it became a den, garrisoned by toy soldiers. One day, he would tell his sister about those happy times.
From the leather bag he pulled a thin coat, which fitted over her clothes as a kind of disguise. A skullcap completed the transformation. He watched as she tucked her hair out of sight. Anyone who happened to be looking up from the valley would see two individuals picking their way under the cliffs. Not one man magically duplicated.
Leaving the bag, he crawled out from underneath the hawthorn. Elizabeth followed on behind, along the track to the top of the gulley.