by Andy Conway
He was itching to rush back out and pursue Bright Star Falling, but Colonel Cody had insisted he stay and listen.
“The trail is cold now but it will be just as hot in the morning. In my days of tracking on the Plains, why, I always camped at sunset and picked up again at sunrise like a bloodhound, all the better for a night’s rest.”
“Hear, hear,” said Nate Salsbury, clapping his hands.
“With all due respect, Colonel Cody,” said Calder. “This isn’t the Plains. This is a city. There are no broken twigs and dust trails to follow. It’s a trail of information.”
“Exactly!” cried Buffalo Bill. “And information does not get washed away by a night’s rainfall!”
As Buffalo Bill waffled on, Calder sighed and accepted he would have to take it up again in the morning. He had at least had the good sense to engage the boy, Herbie Powell. Perhaps he had already cornered her.
He took a seat, and a cigar and a shot of whisky, and listened along with the others to the true tales of how Buffalo Bill practically tamed the Wild West all by himself. Only with the aid of General George Armstrong Custer, who, every time his name was mentioned, became a bigger star in God’s firmament, till by midnight he was sitting at God’s right hand, having turfed Saint Peter out of his seat.
There came a point when even Buffalo Bill’s sense of himself waned and his guests took their leave. Calder made sure he was the last.
“Colonel Cody, might I have a peek at that map of the city you have?”
“Capital idea!”
Buffalo Bill unrolled the map over a camp table, and Calder could sense he felt like Custer plotting an attack on an Indian camp. For Colonel Buffalo Bill Cody, if there was a more perfect way than to end an evening talking about himself, it was to end it pretending to be Colonel George Armstrong Custer.
With the aid of a magnifying glass, they found Aston Lower Grounds and plotted a trail to the city centre, where he could clearly see City Council Square. Calder noted the number of hotels marked in the vicinity.
“A hotel,” Buffalo Bill said. “Might that be her first port of call?”
“If she has money,” said Calder.
“All of my Indians are paid well for their participation in the show. Many of them send it home to their families on the reservations, but Bright Star Falling has no dependents back home.”
“What about the inns?” Calder said. “They have rooms above their pubs, they call them inns. They aren’t marked on the map. There are hundreds of them. If she’s clever, she’d try one of those, not a hotel.”
“Oh, she’s clever, all right.”
“Then that makes it an arduous task. If you want this done discreetly.”
“What about the newspaperman?” said Bill.
“The newspaperman?”
“Why, yes! Perhaps she’s with him!”
“Who’s the newspaperman?” asked Calder.
“He’s a reporter from one of the local newspapers. I assigned him to her, as she’s the interpreter. I told them to stick together like glue.”
Calder rubbed the knot between his eyes and tried to swallow the intense desire to scream. “You didn’t think to mention this to me, Colonel Cody?”
Buffalo Bill took to pacing to and fro, his hands on his hips. “I did not assume, Mr Calder, that we were dealing with a couple of eloping lovebirds. But the reporter. Why, yes! She must have asked his help. He would be with her. That’s the only way she would be able to stay hidden.”
“This reporter,” said Calder, suddenly longing for his bed. “What’s his name?”
“Wethers. Mr Peter Wethers. I have his card.”
Buffalo Bill rummaged through a leather wallet that contained a collection of calling cards and Calder noted that he was building up a contact base of influential people in Europe. He was a wily operator, all right.
He handed it over and Calder read it.
Mr. Peter Wethers. Reporter. The Birmingham Daily Post.
“I say we take a trip to this place first thing in the morning and talk to the editor himself!” said Buffalo Bill.
Calder smiled. Of course, it would have to be the most important and influential person at the newspaper. Buffalo Bill did not talk to people who had no influence or power.
“And I’ll wager that if this reporter is not on the run with Bright Star Falling, she will at least have furnished him with a clue as to her intentions.”
Calder pocketed the business card and tucked the map under his arm. “I shall return both cards once the investigation is complete, sir. Goodnight.”
As he walked across the sleeping camp, he felt better. The delay in pursuing her might not be such a bad thing now. In the morning they would sniff out this reporter, and if that produced nothing, he would head straight to Council House Square and find little Herbie Powell. He fancied, anyway, that she would be hiding in the first hotel he came across.
There were two hotels right there in Council House Square: the Colonnade and Corbett’s Temperance Hotel. Those would be a start.
19
KATHERINE DREAMED OF an old white lady with a kind face that had turned sour. This old white lady was like a mother who had turned against her child. Katherine was the child, even though she wasn’t her child. She only felt like her child when this old lady was angry with her. She wanted to know how to make her mother love her again, but every time she clung to her, the mother turned away.
She woke to the strange room and the feeling of falling and the certainty that the old lady in her dream was here in this city. But not here now. Maybe the old lady had passed on to the spirit world. She knew she wouldn’t find her, not now, but something about this woman’s rejection had made Katherine fall from the sky and land on the Plains.
She sat up in the bed.
A blanket strewn across the sofa.
He was gone.
Listening to the sounds of the city below, she wondered at these things she thought of as the white way of doing things: how to sleep on a bed, wear a dress, be married to only one man. They seemed foreign. But she knew now they must have been the way she’d lived her whole life before she’d fallen from the sky and landed on the Plains. She only had to remember. As soon as she remembered it all, it would be her Indian life that would feel strange to her.
She rose and put on her dress and splashed water in her face from the basin by the window. There was a bar of soap that smelled of sage, but she didn’t use it, only put it to her nose and remembered the night after the Battle of the Greasy Grass: pungent sagebrush smudge sticks healing the wounds of the warriors.
It was not good to be remembering the Plains so much. It was this city she needed to remember. It was her old life, before she fell from the sky. The more she remembered Bright Star Falling, the further away she would be from discovering Katherine Bright.
Peter was bad for her. So many questions he asked about her Indian life, when what she needed to know was this world, this life: this old self of hers that was buried in time.
She should run from him, she thought. Run from him now.
But he’d agreed to help her. He had said he would take her to this tower she had seen in her vision. The tower that might give her all the years she’d had before she fell. But the price was to tell him every moment of the last eleven years.
Footsteps on the wooden stairs, coming to the door. They paused and there was a knock. She held her breath.
“Katherine? It’s me.”
“Come in,” she said.
He pushed the door open and came in, creeping slowly, wary of surprising her and finding her naked.
He was holding a tray, on which sat a tin jug, some cups, a plate of pastries. He had gone for breakfast. She felt a sudden pang of hunger and wondered if she really was hungry or whether it was the smell of coffee and bread that made you feel that ravenousness, like a soul crying out in recognition. Like her own soul had cried out in recognition as she’d ridden through the square below. Tiyata! Tiyata! My h
ome! My home!
“Good morning,” he said. “The man downstairs made us breakfast. The bread is fresh and so is the coffee.”
He placed the tray on the small table and invited her to take a chair. She sat and began to tear at the bread, shoving it in her mouth, salivating, swooning with desire. He watched her keenly, and she wondered if he thought she was nothing more than an animal, a savage, but she felt no shame. No person who had experienced the keen pain of starvation could ever again fail to feel exquisite euphoria when placing food in their mouth.
Once she had eaten one of the bread rolls and felt it fat in her throat, she drank the hot coffee and sighed with satisfaction. Black medicine.
He sipped at his and smiled.
There was another reason she would stay with him — even though he forced her to remember her Indian life instead of her white life — and it was that she liked him. She felt a sudden devilish thrill as she wondered what he would do if she kissed him and pushed him onto that bed. It rose in her like a flame of mischief. Like an evil spirit stoking up a bad fire in her.
She doused it with coffee, averted her eyes and picked at more bread. He had brought little pots of jam and butter and she watched him spread first the butter and then the jam on the bread and take a bite of it. It seemed such a normal ritual, one that she knew, and yet she had never seen it before.
She copied him and took a bite and felt the sweetness sting her teeth.
“You like it?” he asked. “It’s strawberry jam.”
“It tastes like honey.”
“Yes. Sweet.”
She ate it slowly, washing it down with hot coffee. He looked at his pocket watch.
“The library will be open now. We can go and enquire about your tower.”
She nodded, her mouth fat with squished bread and jam, wiping a splodge of butter from her lips. He frowned and took a linen napkin and wiped her chin and she wondered what his lips would taste like if she kissed him.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Let’s go now.”
He nodded, surprised at her haste, and stood, placing his napkin over the tray of food, the wreckage of crumbs and spilt jam and butter.
“We can leave it here. They said they’d take it away.”
He reached for his derby hat that was hanging on the hat stand. She put on her bonnet, tucked her purse under her arm and followed him out.
As they stepped out into the cold November light, she paused, startled by the crowd. People flashing this way and that on the pavement, horses and carts and carriages rattling by through the square under the shadows of the grand Town Hall, the stately Council House and the white church.
Peter felt her grip on his hand and turned surprised, his keen eyes seeking hers.
She expected ambush. This was how it was. You stepped into the open and at any moment the white men could attack. She knew they were coming for her. Buffalo Bill would send them. They would pounce on her at any moment.
“Are you all right?”
She nodded and hurried forward, stepping into the street, veering between carriages and carts, letting him guide her, her eyes on her feet.
They crossed to the safety of the Town Hall with its great Greek pillars — like the Parthenon, she thought. Something she knew from her past: the Parthenon in Greece — and they skirted along its side and walked into the open square where the fountain sat, its stone tower as tall as a tipi, its cool water bubbling like a mountain stream. Chamberlain Square, he’d called it, up there on that balcony, the other night.
She raised her head and looked up at the surrounding buildings and gasped, feeling that song of home again.
The Liberal Club and Mason College. A flash of a corridor in her mind’s eye. A room up there. She had walked in one of those buildings.
He turned left and headed for the great round building ahead, and as they came closer to it she saw that it was not round: its two ends were rounded off, but it was a long building that ran along the whole rear of the Town Hall, jutting out further to close off the square.
They doubled back around the other side of the Town Hall and crossed the street again, heading for the stone portico that was the entrance.
As they skipped up the steps and entered the great hall, she gasped at the vast, open expanse of space, like the cathedral she had seen in London, with a complex network of arches and glass ceilings, the light streaming in. It was beautiful.
There were rows and rows of desks all around, and thousands of books lined the walls. They were canyon walls made entirely of books.
Her head swam as she took it in, that musical chord of Tiyata resonating through her body.
“Do you recognize this place?” he asked.
“I don’t recognize this place. But I know this place.”
“How do you mean?”
“There’s something about it that I know,” she said, her eyes darting to the desks manned by the staff. It hit her suddenly, like an arrow in her chest. “I think I was a librarian.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I feel it. I know it.”
“You think you were a librarian here?”
She looked all around. Although there was a sense of the place that called out to her, she knew it was not this place itself.
“No. Not this one. But here, in Birmingham. It must be. How long has this library been here?”
“We can ask,” he said, heading for one of the enquiry desks.
The librarian was an old man with pince-nez and a starched collar.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said. “We’re new in town and we’d like to know how long this library has been here.”
“Oh, we’re new, sir. We’ve been here only five years, since the old library burned down.”
“So there was a library here before this one?” Katherine asked.
“Oh yes. A beautiful place. Not quite as beautiful as this one, but sadly it caught fire in 1879. Fifty thousand books lost. Up in smoke. Such a terrible tragedy.”
Katherine’s head swam. She thought of all those books burning, and how curious it was that their words had gone up in smoke, the way the Cheyenne would send smoke signals, which were also words in smoke.
But there had been a library here before this one. It must have been where she worked. She could almost picture it in her mind. It was a grand space made of hard stone and looked like a cliff face from the outside. It was not pretty, like this one.
“We’d like some help locating a tower here in Birmingham,” said Peter, pushing Katherine’s drawing across the leather inlay of the table.
The librarian peered at the sketch through his pince-nez and tutted. “Do you have a name?”
“We’re looking for a name,” said Katherine.
The librarian squinted up at her and appeared surprised she would address him.
“Well, we do have a catalogue of monuments, but that doesn’t look like a monument to me. If anything, it looks like a dovecote.”
“What’s a dovecote?” Katherine asked.
The librarian sighed and looked at Peter. “It’s a home for doves and pigeons and the like. I’d have thought that was obvious.”
“Can you tell us where the dovecotes are in Birmingham?” Katherine asked.
The librarian clucked and tutted again and addressed Peter when he spoke. “Those documents are restricted. I can’t just take them out for any old body.”
“Aren’t they supposed to be available for all to see?” asked Katherine. “Isn’t it a Free Library? That’s what it says above the entrance.”
“Madam, it is a free library, but not every book we have is available. Now, if you don’t mind, I have other customers to see to.”
Katherine snatched up the sketch and stared down the librarian, her eyes blazing with fire, anger burning in her breast. It formed an arrowhead that she aimed between his eyes. Just like she’d done with Lil Two Face. She felt it shoot from her and fly through the air between them.
Wakan, buzzing in the air betw
een them, familiar and exciting.
She let it go, scared. It felt like an evil spirit trying to force its way inside her.
The librarian’s hand went to his nose and she expected to see the blood run over his mouth, as it had with Lil Two Face, but he merely stuttered and said, “What’s that smell?”
Suddenly afraid and ashamed, she took Peter’s hand and pulled him away, sweeping along the rows of desks, heading for the exit.
But she caught sight of something along one of the walls and changed course. A map. A giant map with the word BIRMINGHAM across its heart.
She stopped before it, gazing over its pattern, reading the tiny names of neighbourhoods. There was Aston and Aston Lower Grounds, up in the north of the city, where the Wild West Show was and where her abandoned tipi sat. And there was the city centre, Council House Square and the Town Hall and the Central Free Library, where she stood now.
She looked through the map, her eyes misting over, letting it become a brown fog, and waited for a place to swim to the surface, like waiting silently for a fish to swim into view.
And it emerged. A single word, floating up out of the blur and forming before her eyes. A word that had come to her long ago. A word she had scribbled into her notebook with many others, not knowing its meaning — only knowing it meant something.
She focussed and found the place down there to the south of the city centre.
“There,” she said, pointing to the map.
Moseley.
“That’s the place. I know it.”
“But Katherine. How do you know?”
She walked out, desperate to breath air again, to be away from that place. She stumbled out to the busy street and ran across it, dodging horses and carriages streaming by, Peter’s voice calling her.
She circled the Town Hall, through the human traffic which was numerous and bewildering. A thousand or more people she’d seen in the last hour. The city was teeming with life. And you might see a thousand people in an hour and never seen them again. Surely it was a place where one could disappear and never be found?