by Andy Conway
“Over supper you can tell me more of your story. If you like?”
“Yes. I’d like that.” She felt warm inside when she told him her story, as if there was a magic created in the telling of it, a bond between them. Even the parts of the story that were dark and violent and full of horror. Even with those, it felt good to unburden herself.
The old man knocked the door and entered with a maid, a pale-faced girl struggling with a giant tray over which sat a silver bowl. She put it on the table, leaving it covered, digging out knives and forks and spoons from her apron pockets and placing them on the table.
“There’s not much left by the way of food in the kitchen, madam,” said the old man. “But we have some lamb stew left and it’s my pleasure to give it to you.”
She felt a strange thrill at being called madam. He saw her as a white woman. It really was as simple as putting on a new dress.
Peter gave the girl a coin and she smiled, curtseyed and blushed a little, scurrying out. It appeared he wanted to pay for everything. She would have to give him some of her Running Away Money when no one was around, so that he could pretend it was his own. Or should she just keep it in case she needed to run away from him?
The old man left them, smiling benignly.
Katherine sat at the table and lifted the silver dome from the dish, revealing a steaming tureen of sweet stew, with two smaller bowls and a ladle. There were hunks of bread too, which she ripped apart and began to chew, hunger gnawing at her.
The stew was hot and salty and she did not speak as she ate. Peter stood at the window and seemed in no rush to come and eat with her. It was only as she cleaned her bowl with bread that she noticed him staring at her and wondered if she ate like an animal.
The wasicu had so many rules in the way they behaved that it was difficult to be among them without offending some secret code of behaviour. She had held her spoon in the proper manner, but perhaps she had eaten too loudly, or too much, or filled her mouth more than three times in any one minute.
She didn’t ask him what it was and he didn’t offer anything, only smiled that secret smile of his, and returned to gazing out at the city.
“It really is quite a sight, isn’t it?” he said.
He was looking up, at the grand buildings, not the squalor of the street below.
“You don’t live here?” she said.
“Oh yes,” he said. “I do. It’s just, sometimes, you don’t always see it. Do you know what I mean?”
She nodded, so that he would know she understood entirely, but she folded it away and hid it in a secret place, ready to take out later and compare it to the other things he’d said.
He talked like a man who had known this place only a day or two longer than she had.
16
AGENT CALDER’S KNEES creaked as he walked along the Lichfield Road. He wasn’t used to so much walking. But this wasn’t a place where a man could ride up the street on horseback, like home. There were men that did it, but they were peculiar sorts who stood out from the crowd. An agent didn’t need to look peculiar. He needed to go unnoticed.
Since landing in England, he had taken great care to notice what the vast middle range of men looked like, the common herd, the unnoticed ones. So, gone were his Cuban heeled riding boots and his favourite Stetson, and the hip holster that carried his gun. Now he wore leather shoes in the full English shape, with stout soles and low broad heels, and a derby hat. His Smith and Wesson Model 3 Schofield hung at his side in a shoulder holster, hidden under his jacket.
He had picked up the look in London, and it didn’t seem that it was any different here in Birmingham, so he took it for a typical middle-class English man’s look.
Lichfield Road was not that wide, but it was certainly long. It appeared to travel for about two and a half miles, connecting Aston to the city of Birmingham and it was dotted with saloons that seemed to be every twenty paces or so.
Pubs, the English called them, which was short for public house. And they weren’t saloons. They were a totally different animal. They were built like theatres, with ornate stonework, stained glass windows, filigree, gold lanterns, marble bar tops, oak panelling. You would walk into any pub in England and think you had entered the home of a lord and lady.
The English took their drinking seriously.
Outside the Reservoir Tavern stood a gang of young boys wearing shabby suits and peaked cloth caps. Peakies, they called them, and it seemed the locals held them in some fear. It was his job to scout ahead of the show to find out the lay of the land. He’d received a report outlining the criminal underclass of the city in great detail and the Peakies had stood out as a gang of particular ferocity. Looking at them now it seemed hard to credit. They looked so small and undernourished. But they had the rat-faced look of real poverty and he’d seen enough starving rodents to know how sharply they bit.
“Good evening, sirs,” he said, touching the brim of his derby. Too much? Too oily? “Might I ask your assistance in finding a friend of mine?”
“Yer can ask all yer like, mate, but yer might not get an answer,” said the tallest, puffing out his chest and tucking his thumbs into his waistcoat pockets.
The others giggled, but their eyes burned with menace.
“I would make it worth your while, of course,” he said, taking out a coin and holding it up.
The tallest snatched it from him and examined it under the gas light from the lantern that hung above them.
“You’re one of them yanks from that Buffalo Bill show, ain’t ya,” said one of them.
“Are you Buffalo Bill, mister?”
“Where’s your gun?”
Calder patted his jacket, smiled and saw them shrink back an inch.
“Well, I’m not Buffalo Bill Cody, but I’ve just been talking to the man himself.”
They cooed and gasped, and there was a volley of questions he couldn’t make out because they came all at once in their thick as gumbo accent. It was different to the London accent, less screechy and caustic, more musical. He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a photograph of Buffalo Bill and handed it to the tallest one, the leader. They crowded in on him to peer at it.
“Is it him you’re looking for? I ain’t seen him riding this way, mister.”
They laughed and Calder allowed himself a smile. When they’re laughing at you it’s often the prelude to an onslaught of fists, so laughing along with them bought you some time. He knew, though, that should this at any point turn nasty, he could simply flap back his jacket and touch his Smith & Wesson, without even taking it out.
“That’s funny, although he did ride right past here yesterday afternoon, on the way to camp, but it’s not Colonel Cody I’m looking for. It’s a... lady.”
It stuck in his craw to call her such, her being a squaw and all, but there was no point calling her an Indian, if she looked and dressed like a real woman.
“A yank lady?” said the tallest, with an air that said he was a particular expert in every sort of person that passed this way and he might well have seen one walking by.
“Well, yes. Although she might sound English to you.”
He took out the folded up piece of newsprint and showed it to them, tapping her face with a finger. The Peakies peered close, frowning.
“That’s an Indian woman.”
“A squaw.”
“Ain’t seen no squaws walking in here.”
“She’d take your scalp if she came here.”
“Cut your hair right off.”
“I seen her.”
They looked at the smallest one. He might have been no older than ten years. The runt of this particular litter, though he had the same mean, hungry look about him that testified to his street smarts.
“You dain’t see no one. He’s a liar, mister.”
“I seen her. She was getting on a carriage after the show this afternoon. I was helping people up. She smelled funny.”
“Smelled funny, you say? What like?”
“Like a farm. Like a farm that was burnt down.”
“Getting in a carriage?”
“Yeah. They was going to Birmingham.”
Calder took the fold of newsprint from his hands and tucked it away. “And can you recall which particular place they were headed?”
The boy shrugged and looked him in the eye. “Depends,” he said.
Calder dug out another coin and held it up. The boy snatched it and put it in his pocket without looking at it, swift as a rattlesnake.
“I might have heard him say Council House Square, mister.”
“That’s the town centre, that is,” said the tallest, stepping forward and puffing out his bony chest, as if he were the only person in this part of the city with the authority to tell him where Council House Square was.
“Thank you, very much,” said Calder, touching the brim of his derby once more and turning.
“Hey, mister. If it’s Indians you’re looking for, there’s one in there.”
“He’s in the saloon bar.”
“Totally tight.”
“And he stinks and all.”
Calder cursed silently. This would end his search for Bright Star Falling tonight. He flicked another coin in the air. The Peakies scrambled for it and he noted the young boy simply watch them. Shrewd eyes. He grabbed hold of his jacket and pulled him through the door.
“Here, mister, what do you want? I told you everything!”
They were in the quiet hall of the pub, off which there were three doors to different bars.
He leaned down to the boy’s frightened face. “I know. And I can see you have a talent. Not like those idiots out there. So I’m going to engage you to my service.”
“Service, mister?”
He pulled out another coin. “This is for you. And there’s more where it came from.”
The boy took the coin and made it disappear in a second. “What do you want?”
“You go on and find that girl. You watch her. First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll come to this Council House Square and you’re to tell me where she is. You understand?”
The boy nodded.
“What’s your name?”
“Herbie. Herbert Powell.”
“Well, Herbie Powell, you work for the Pinkerton Agency now, boy. And you’ll be paid handsomely. Now git.”
The boy rushed out and Calder walked into the bar marked Saloon.
The place was as thick with smoke as a tipi and there was a delighted chatter of cheers and laughter. A mob of local men, and a few women, crowded round an Indian wearing a war bonnet. It was the damnedest sight you ever saw.
The Indian knocked back another whisky and did a yodelling war cry and everyone cheered and laughed once more. They were plying him with drink just to hear him scream.
Calder squinted through the smoke. Black Bird was his name. Or was he Little Chief? Wasn’t he one of the chiefs? They had so many. Red Shirt was the big chief, but there were about five or six others chiefs too, each one a chief of whatever damn tribe they belonged to, all with their funny names you couldn’t say. If it were up to the white man, there would only be one chief. That was what the damn word meant after all. But he knew, from experience with Indians, that what they called a chief wasn’t quite what the white man thought of as their chief. It wasn’t a rank that anyone could give or take away. And there wasn’t only one of them for any group of Indians. And this particular Indian, whether he was a chief or not, was absolutely pickled.
He walked back out and asked one of the Peakies to go get him a cab, throwing another penny, noticing that Herbert Powell was no longer with them. Good. He was on the trail already.
This whole thing was a shambles. It was like herding racoons. The damned Indians just wouldn’t stay still and behave like they were supposed to. No wonder it needed the Seventh Cavalry to force them onto reservations.
He pushed through the crowd and dragged Black Bird up from his seat, to a disappointed jeer from the locals, and slung the dead weight of the Indian over his shoulder.
17
WHEN THE SUPPER WAS finished, she sat on the bed, cross-legged, her long dress ballooning about her, and knew it perhaps offended some code of behaviour, but didn’t care. He sat in the wicker chair and reached for his jacket, pulling out his notebook and pencil and told her to continue with her story.
She talked long into the night as the sounds from the square thinned and a peace fell even there.
He pencilled her words as she told him more of her story, barely raising his eyes to look at her, only listening and writing it down, interrupting with occasional questions to be certain about some point of fact which seemed to always pertain to her emotions. How did you feel about that? What did that feel like? Did you feel bad about that? Did you enjoy feeling bad about that?
She told him of that morning when the blueshirts attacked on the banks of the Greasy Grass, which the whites called the Little Bighorn. How Little Star walked out to meet them even as they shot their bullets into the camp. The winkte man who was her sister, who wanted to be a warrior, calling out, unafraid. His face blown away, wearing a red headdress crown for just a moment before he fell.
She told him how she carried Little Star’s body back into the camp and borrowed his clothes to go and fight.
She told him of the men she killed on the bluffs, in the smoke and noise and blood, and of the retreat, burying Little Star, her brother sister husband friend, and taking a lock of his hair to wear around her neck in a medicine bundle.
She touched it as she spoke.
“I still wear it, even though one is supposed to wear it only for a year and then bury it, or burn it.”
“You’re supposed to burn it? Does that mean it’s sacrilege?”
She nodded and looked at her lap. “I can’t let him go. I need him with me, still.”
“How does that make you feel?”
“Safe,” she said. “He protects me.”
She told him of the cold and hunger on the flight to Canada, how Little Star’s voice had warned her when the women had come to kill her that dark night, and how she’d flown through ten years of time to fall at Red Shirt’s feet, which had led her to New York, and Buffalo Bill, and finally to England.
When she had told it all, she became aware of the candle flickering low, and yawned.
They looked into each other’s eyes for a long time across the room and she thought about the possibility of inviting him into her bed, to be married in the way Lakota women would take a husband as and when they felt like it. They could marry a man for a single night if they wanted, or for a week, or for a lifetime. Before the whites made them wear crosses and live in huts.
Instead, she wrapped the blanket around herself on the bed and turned away from him.
“Good night,” she said.
He blew out the candle and she listened to him fumbling in the dark, preparing a bed for himself on the sofa.
Much later, when she heard his snores, she took off her dress and stood naked in the night.
The mirror on the wall called to her and she examined the stranger standing before her, the scar across her cheek, her red hair tumbling about her shoulders.
Who was this woman?
A face in the shadows behind her. She thought Peter had risen from his bed, to come and hold her, take her, but he was still snoring.
She turned in panic. Standing at the window, looking out at the city, a native man in a winyan’s dress.
“Is this your home, my sister?”
“Little Star,” she answered, wanting to run to him.
“It’s so ugly,” he said. “Look at how the white men make their horses wear iron shoes. And how their cities are so alive even at night. And the people dress in rags.”
“What’s it like in the spirit world?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “You won’t let me go.”
She rushed to him but he was gone before she crossed the room.
“I’m s
orry,” she said, clutching the leather pouch at her breast.
A thin crescent moon sat in the sky. She caught flashes of people under the gas lamps. Men talked in groups and smoked. Carriages rode through the square every few minutes. Women walked here and there. One was selling flowers. Some of them talked with men, cackling and joking, and went off with them to darker streets. There was drinking, shouting, and laughter. Sometimes a policeman would walk through and voices would quieten, only to flare up again once he had passed. There were even children down there, ragged street children flitting by, gangs of boys hanging around, skulking in shadows, shouting at adults, hiding each time a policeman walked through.
A boy stood in the shadows of the great church for an hour or more, huddled against the cold, with nothing but a threadbare jacket and a peaked cap for warmth.
She checked her heart for signs of any feeling for children and found none. But still, what kind of world was this that let its children sleep on the streets in the cold?
She wrapped a blanket tight around her and gazed on Peter Wethers, wondering if she might crawl under his blanket. But she left him sleeping and stumbled to her bed, falling into dreams.
18
AFTER TAKING BLACK Bird, or Little Chief, or whatever his name was, back to the camp, Agent Calder was summoned to Buffalo Bill’s tent to once more hear the old man orate.
It seemed he had gathered a council of men to hear him speak. Nate Salsbury sat smoking a fat cigar. Bronco Bill Irving and Frank Butler were there. Even Gabriel Dumont, like a bear drinking whisky, and only half listening.
Buffalo Bill was giving it out like a politician, talking of the noble Sioux braves and how his own Wild West show was going to be the key event that would bury the hatchet between white man and red man for all eternity.
Calder smirked and noted the distinct lack of red men invited to hear this tale.
When he’d reported the events regarding Black Bird’s drunken episode at the Reservoir Tavern, Buffalo Bill shook his head sadly and wittered on about the poor Indian’s inexpressible sorrow at the loss of his baby boy, as if he were talking about the tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, not some savage from the Plains.