Touchstone Season Two Box Set

by Andy Conway

  Boots echoing down the alley again, coming back for me.

  The man looked at me and I could see he was scared.

  I put my finger to my lips.

  He nodded. Then gestured me inside.

  Voices clustering in the alley.

  “He come in this way.”

  “He dain’t come out ahead.”

  “He must be in one of these yards.”

  I walked to the man and rushed into the dark house. He followed and shut the door behind him.

  Scared to breathe, I stood in the damp scullery. The man peeked through the dirty windowpane and I peered over his shoulder.

  The yard gate creaked open. A child with a peaked cap peered in, looking the place up and down, then stared right at us.

  But did not see.

  He turned and closed the gate.

  The man took my arm and ushered me through a grim kitchen to the next room. A young woman sitting before a meagre fire with a baby on her lap. She looked up with surprise.

  Her husband reached for a shirt and pulled it on, strapping the braces over his shoulders.

  “This gentleman was being chased,” he said. “You’re safe now.”

  I breathed again.

  “Who was chasing him?” the woman said.

  “Never you mind, Lizzie.”

  “I said who, Edward?” Then she looked up to me, as if in apology. “We don’t want no trouble, sir.”

  “I didn’t mean to bring you any, madam,” I said, and swiped the boater off my head.

  She laughed a little and I wondered if calling her madam was the wrong thing to say, but I could see Edward smiling too.

  “You’re not quite dressed for the weather, sir,” he said. “No wonder the Peakies picked you out.”

  Lizzie clutched her throat and held the baby closer to her breast. “The Peakies?” she whispered. “We don’t need Wellie Davies coming here killing us!”

  Tears had sprung to her face and Edward rushed over to stroke her arm.

  “It’s all right. Don’t you fret, sweetness. Wellie Davis ain’t coming here.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  I moved to walk back out to the yard. It didn’t matter how many kids with razors were waiting for me out there, I couldn’t bear the thought of making this woman cry.

  Edward pulled me back. “You go out there, you’re a dead man. You just sit over here for a bit.”

  He pushed me onto a rickety wooden chair next to the table.

  “Lizzie. Some tea for our guest.”

  She nodded, wiped her face and humped the baby into his arms. “I do apologize, sir.”

  I sat with my straw boater on my lap, took a white handkerchief from my summer suit jacket pocket and mopped the sweat from my face.

  Lizzie was bustling in the cramped kitchen, lighting a fire under a kettle, and I watched Edward bouncing the baby on his knee, grinning contentedly to himself. For a while he said nothing to me, and I let my gaze roam over the room, taking stock of how poor this young couple were, and yet how happy. Destitution had not yet worn them down, as it surely would, sometime soon. No matter how much they loved each other and their child, poverty would break in and kill their dreams.

  The baby coughed as if to confirm my dark thoughts. Would it even survive another year in this slum? I’d seen the startling figures for this kind of place at this time in history: fifty-five percent of children died before they reached the age of five years. This baby had less than half a chance of making it. Death would run amok through this row of shabby dwellings and take every other child. Would it be this one?

  Edward rocked it on his chest and whispered to it, soothing, gentle. “There now, sweet Emily,” he said.

  A girl. Just like mine.

  I thought of the poverty Sandra and I had suffered when we’d tried to set up our own home. It was nothing compared to this, but that grubby bedsit in Erdington, and the baby on the way, and no money, and the nights I lay awake in bed wondering how I was going to look after a wife and a child when I was just a boy who could barely look after himself. The terror of it. And some nights the blind fear that made me want to run away. And then it had all been resolved, with Mrs Hudson. You can live in the flat above my shop, rent free. It’s two floors, two up, two down, almost the size of a house. The relief. Like being dug out of a collapsed building and feeling daylight on your face. Sun and air rushing into you. Hope.

  I watched Edward hold his coughing baby girl as if his arms could protect her from the poverty that was already inside her. A kind man. As if I didn’t already know it.

  When he looked up at me and smiled nervously, I found myself saying, “Do you still have your wedding suit?”

  THE TEA WAS WEAK AND insipid, but it cheered me up.

  “This is for your suit,” I said, taking half of the notes from the roll and laying them on the table.

  Lizzie clutched her throat again, wide-eyed, her cheeks flushing scarlet. Edward almost dropped the baby.

  “It’s too much,” he said.

  “We don’t accept charity, sir,” said Lizzie.

  “Then please accept my gratitude. You saved my life. And my life is worth a lot more than this.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment, then nodded.

  I went to the front room where their bed and the child’s cot were crammed side by side, realising they only had the ground floor rooms and there was probably another family or two upstairs. I’d imagined Death coming and calling at every second house for a child, but the grim fact was that he would call at every single damp hovel and take one or two of them.

  But not this one. Not this child.

  I’d seen the hope on their faces. That pile of notes meant medicine they couldn’t otherwise afford, food, nutrition, even a way out of this slum.

  Edward’s suit was a tight fit, but it looked decent. I pushed my remaining banknotes, photographs, calling cards, notebook and such into the pockets.

  When I came back to the parlour Lizzie nodded her approval, and Edward handed me his best derby hat.

  “Much better,” he said. “If I say so myself.”

  “I’ll look like every other man now,” I said. “You can keep my suit and boater.”

  “Don’t think I’ll find much use to wear that kind of–”

  Lizzie shushed him. “You’re very kind. He’ll look grand in it next summer.”

  I guessed she would sell it, and I didn’t mind. I thought of the relief when Mrs Hudson had offered me the flat above the shop. If you could bottle that feeling it would be sweeter than champagne.

  “I can’t thank you enough,” I said.

  “You’ve thanked us more than enough,” said Edward.

  “You’ve changed our lives,” said Lizzie, and she rushed forward and kissed my cheek, then retreated and stared at the threadbare rug, blushing.

  Edward only smiled and patted me on the arm. “Come. Let’s go.”

  He put on his coat and a derby that had seen much better days and led me through to the front door. We stepped into a courtyard that seemed to be a workshop premises. Phoenix Works, Harness Furniture, a painted sign said, the place thick with smoke from a fire somewhere. The stench of the street caught in my throat again.

  “This way,” he murmured.

  We walked through the courtyard and along an arched alleyway, out onto the street. Park Road. Edward turned right and we walked swiftly, just two men off to the pub or the evening shift, heads down.

  On the other side of the road, a building I recognized. The familiar gloomy frontage of the place they called the Mucker. The sign above the door said The London Museum Concert Hall. In my time, a nightclub and karate centre.

  Boys in peaked caps skulked around one of the entrances. Were they the same boys who’d chased me? They noticed us. Looked a little too closely.

  “Keep walking,” Edward hissed. ‘That place is a Peaky hangout.’

  We walked on up to St. Martin’s.


  A shout behind.

  ‘Let’s run,’ I said.

  Edward gripped my hand. ‘Easy.’

  A cabstand opposite, under the shadow of the church. Could we hop on and speed off in time?

  We turned the corner, not looking back, and there was the hill I’d run down earlier. Spiceal Street. The shopkeepers pushing the blinds back, market traders packing up in the failing light. We marched up the hill past Nelson and The Lion & Lamb till we turned into New Street.

  Edward stopped at a line of cabs.

  “You’ll get a man to take you to Aston here.”

  I thanked him, feeling guilty that I had no intention of going to Aston to see Buffalo Bill. Once Edward was gone, I would think myself back home to my baby girl. They could go and whistle for their mission. There was nothing more important than family.

  But Edward wouldn’t hear of leaving me there. He waited until I was sitting up in a jarvey and he’d instructed the cabman to take me to Aston Lower Grounds.

  “Buffalo Bill. I’d love to go and see that,” he said. Then he laughed, as if at a happy memory. “You know. We will go and see it. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

  I smiled and waved as the cab pulled off.

  Of course. He could afford to go and see it now. He could afford more things than he’d ever dreamed he could. A stranger had walked into his back yard and opened up a world of possibility to him. Life.

  The cab thundered up New Street where cowboys and Indians had ridden only hours ago and I patted my pockets. The roll of money, my notebook, calling cards, a letter of introduction to Colonel W.F. Cody, otherwise known as Buffalo Bill, informing him I was a reporter from The Birmingham Daily Post assigned to write a story about his famous show. It would get me inside the camp and afford me an introduction to his Native American translator, a certain Katherine Bright.

  Pity swelled in me again. That poor woman. What had she been through? Pity and something else. A warmth in my chest that made me smile stupidly.

  An old man was lighting the lamps up New Street and one of them caught the outline of a walking figure, hunched over, a peaked cap.

  The cab swerved away and thundered up Corporation Street and I thought of my baby girl, sleeping safe at home, some night one hundred and twenty years from now.

  She was safe.

  I would go ahead with my mission and get back to her and she would never know I’d been gone.

  I shivered, but not with the cold. It was excitement. The thought of possibility. Life. Adventure.

  BRIGHT STAR RISING

  Dedication

  To David

  the most diligent desk sergeant

  Introductory note

  AS WITH PREVIOUS BOOKS in the Touchstone series, this is a work of fiction that contains several real people and historical events. I have tried to be as true to that history as possible, while letting my fantasy take me where the story wants to go.

  For a full discussion of the facts, see the Historical Notes at the rear of the book.

  Buffalo Bill did come to Birmingham on the 3rd November, 1887. This is what might have happened.

  1

  IT WAS MIDDAY ON THURSDAY, November the third, 1887, when Chief Red Shirt — of the Wagluhe band of the Oglala tribe of the Lakota nation — rode his grey Nokota horse into New Street, in the city of Birmingham, England.

  A flock of doves exploded and echoed off the canyon walls of the tall buildings either side, over the heads of the white men and women that thronged the sidewalks.

  He had tried to stare ahead and present a noble bearing, but the sight of the whites fascinated him. Here, as in America, the inhabitants of the white man’s cities looked so poor, their pale faces almost blue, their clothes such that no human would wear with pride. This was the richest land in all the world, the land of the great Grandmother England, Victoria. But still, its people wore rags and broken shoes.

  Some hissed and jeered but most applauded, grinning with broken teeth, and called out words he did not understand.

  His eyes fell on a particular white man, a shabby pencil hawker who glared, eyes reflecting a flash of light like a knife blade in the sun, keen with death.

  Bad heart.

  Red Shirt shivered, and at that moment became aware of a commotion in the parade behind him.

  Over the squirming din of the Cowboy Band far down New Street at the head of the procession, he heard Bright Star Falling, her voice like those doves, careening and swooning through the air, and he knew that she had seen the ghosts of her past.

  Twisting in his saddle, he looked back along the procession, and for a moment felt the faint echo of a thrill that had moved him many moons past — the sight of warriors dressed for battle, riding out to meet their enemies. Beyond the flurry of his braves bright with eagle feathers, Bright Star Falling’s horse reared up and whinnied to the sky as if it too had seen those same ghosts. The winyanpi on horseback eddied around her, one of them catching her reins to steady the horse. Bright Star Falling rode on, her head to the sky, jabbering a song of mourning, speaking in tongues that sent a wave of disquiet through the procession.

  Chief Red Shirt noted the concern on their faces; fear at her vision. She sobbed, hunched over, as they rode down New Street, the sun falling on her red hair. He stared back at his men and women, long enough for them to see his repose, and only then did he turn and face forward.

  As their horses walked on down New Street he knew that whatever evil spirit held her — a spirit he had sometimes seen, like a snake coiled around her — it might destroy her in this place, and others of his tribe.

  He held his head a little higher and rode on, trying to ignore the dark shadow that had fallen over his soul.

  2

  WAS I ENGLISH? Bright Star Falling thought. Was I from this place?

  The procession filed past the grand Council House where applauding dignitaries stood on the stone steps. She glanced at the square to her right, half hidden by the Council House and Town Hall, as if they were closing together to hide it from her.

  A fountain and two great buildings called out to her.

  “Tiyata! Tiyata!” she cried. Home! Home!

  The spirit cry tumbled from her mouth as the procession circled round the great, white church that squatted on the Council House steps. As they rode into the long street at the centre of the city, the church disappeared and she saw a giant man made of iron. And in the place where the church stood was a pool and a waterfall, and in the pool was a giant goddess, and at the foot of the waterfall were two creatures the size of buffalo, with wings made of stone.

  They cried out to her as old friends.

  “Tiyata! Tiyata!”

  And then, she was not riding down New Street.

  Day turned to night and she was standing on a hill out on the Plains under a shower of stars.

  Sitting Bull stood alone, singing to the spirits.

  It was the night before the battle. She was back in the place they now called Last Stand Hill. She remembered climbing the bluffs that night, following the great medicine man, listening to him pray. She looked around, expecting to see herself on the ridge behind.

  Sitting Bull ceased singing and turned to face her. “You are down below in the shadows, and you are here too,” he said. “In two places and two times at once.”

  “How is this?”

  “Everything has already happened,” he said, as if she ought to know this, as if everyone knew this. “There is no time.”

  Tomorrow would be the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Sitting Bull’s greatest victory. Was she here to tell him his future?

  “I know we will win tomorrow,” he said, smiling. “I know we will lose also.”

  Had he known it all that night? That they would destroy Custer and his regiment, but that it would be the end of the old way; that they would be hunted down, driven to Canada, and eventually made to surrender?

  Had Sitting Bull known all of this before it had happened?

&nbs
p; “Why am I here?” she asked.

  “You are not here,” said Sitting Bull. “You are dressed for war, wearing feathers and paint, riding through a city full of strange beasts: a giant man made of iron; a stone goddess in a pool; great beasts with wings of stone. This place is your home. It calls you.”

  Tiyata! Tiyata!

  Its song was deafening.

  She was home, and she was here at Little Bighorn, a decade ago, at the same time.

  “So why have I come back here to see you?” she asked.

  “The past pulls you back. You refuse to let it go.” He pointed to the medicine bundle at her neck. “You even wear it on your heart.”

  She clutched it, afraid he might snatch it from her.

  “You wear his ghost by your heart. You must burn it so your friend can live in the spirit world.”

  “Little Star,” she said.

  “He will die tomorrow. When Long Hair comes.”

  She glanced down the hill to the camp below. Little Star slept in one of those tipis and did not know that he would be killed in the morning. “I could go down there now and warn him. That’s why I’m here!”

  “It has already happened. It was a great death.”

  “What’s the point of this magic I have inside me, if it can’t change anything?”

  “Burn the white ghost,” he said. “Let Little Star live in the spirit world.”

  “I can’t,” she said. “I need him.”

  “He does not belong there, in that place that sings home to you. It is where you belong. Not here on the Plains with the Lakota.”

  He turned from her and looked up to the stars, holding his arms out, to continue his prayers.

  “Tell me how to find myself!” she cried.

  “You must take out your bad heart,” he said. “Only then.”

  He sang a familiar tune. She found herself singing along with him, but the words were not a prayer she knew.

  “You are not Bright Star Falling,” he sang. “You are Katherine Bright.”