by Andy Conway
Bowey shook his head, grinning like a man who knew more than you. “No. She’s gone.”
“Gone? Where?”
“She escaped. The Pinkerton chased her. Across the roofs. Shot his gun at her and everything.”
“A gun?”
“He shot a man. A man who was helping her. Shot him clean off the roof.”
“Shot him dead?”
“Dunno. Hit him, for sure. Didn’t see him fall. Might still be up there.”
This was a whole different game of marbles. Davies was used to sloggers with knives, knuckle dusters, coshes, nuts and bolts wrapped up in rags — those were the everyday currency of the street fight, the means by which he’d kept control over half the men of Cheapside, and a good deal of women too — but a gun was different. A gun was serious business. Still, it was just one man with a gun, and Llewelyn Davies was one man with a small army that knew every alley and ginnel of the city.
“Tell me where the girl is.”
“Little Herbert Powell’s on her tail now,” Bowey stammered, not so cocky now. “She got on a train at New Street. Camp Hill Line.”
“She’s heading south?” Davies contemplated this. After the first couple of stops on that line you left Birmingham behind and you were in the genteel borough of Kings Norton.
“What’s more,” said Bowey, “she slipped that yank detective.”
Davies felt his fingers twitching. Bowey needed a slap.
“Alf and Herbert slipped the station guard and jumped on the train with her. Followed her, like.”
“And?”
“She got off at Camp Hill. That’s when Alf came back and told me everything. Herbert’s still with her. And we’re the only people who know what she looks like. Redhead in a purple dress. They don’t say that in the paper.”
Camp Hill was good. Still his territory. He had a couple of brothels over Calthorpe Park way. She wouldn’t get far.
Bowey gulped on his porter. That smug grin.
Davies dragged him out of the snug and slapped him hard across the face. He’d tried to save it for later, but the anger in him was too strong.
Bowey yelped in pain, face going red, looking around for his piece of skirt, but she wasn’t there.
“What was that for?”
“You should have told me this last night!”
He dragged him out by the collar, out onto the street corner, where Agnes was waiting.
The smell of rotting vegetables and fish from the Bull Ring.
“I’m heading over there. You go and call on the boys. I want everyone on this.”
“Everyone?” said Bowey, incredulous, rubbing his face.
“You tell them Welly Davies said everyone. I want that redhead girl! And when you’ve done that, you come back here.”
“Why?”
Keep him out of it. Show him who’s boss.
“I need someone to keep an eye on things here. And don’t ever ask me “why” again.”
He strode off, back across the street to the cabstand.
Agnes shouted after him. “You don’t hit my man! He’s better than you!”
He’d have to kill her sooner than he thought. Her and Bowey. As soon as all this was over, he’d settle them both.
As he crossed the street, he whistled. The cabman cursed under his breath, but climbed into his jarvey. Even his horse shied away a little, which made Llewellyn Davies grin.
If even the horses were scared of you, it meant you were still king of the hill.
26
AT THE FOOT OF THE slope, she turned and ran up the street, dashing into the first left turn, then jinking again down a back street, and again, a few more times, each time cutting into a smaller street, each time making sure that no one could follow.
And in no time at all, she found herself running through gates marked Calthorpe Park, rushing in and surprised to find wide open fields and giant trees. Elegant, respectable couples promenaded, some of the men in top hats, but there were also rougher sorts. It was open to all classes.
She checked to make sure the boy wasn’t following her and advanced at a steadier pace, trying to affect the graceful style she saw in other white women. They all had a parasol or umbrella to twirl. She only had her tiny purse to occupy her hands, but she breathed in, straightened her back, pushed her nose in the air, and walked on, checking the sun in the sky to ensure she was heading south.
The land rose in that direction, a plain of hovels, church spires sticking up here and there, like tipis on the bluffs.
Moseley had been the third name on the list of stations, so calculating how quickly they had reached the first station, it surely couldn’t be far off. She might be able to walk it in a half hour.
It was what lay between here and there that bothered her. That half hour might present a great many obstacles. She had seen the warren of grimy streets that seemed to make up the town, and the sullen gangs of men that hung about on every street corner. This park was an oasis of calm, but there were more streets beyond it and she would have to face them.
Some way off, in the middle of a vast acre of green lawn, sat a tipi. She stared startled for a moment. It wasn’t a tipi at all, it was a pile of wood. A great bonfire stacked high and ready for the celebrations. What had they said? It was Guy Fawkes Night. A rhyme came to her.
Remember, remember,
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot.
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
It came to her, loaded with the scent of ash and acrid mist, and memories out of focus, fleeting as smoke.
She passed a refreshment room and felt a pang of thirst. Should she use her Running Away Money to buy tea or coffee? She pushed the thought back.
She passed a little girl in rags. “Matches, miss?”
Katherine shook her head, not stopping, but fascinated by the state of the girl. She was almost barefoot, her boots in pieces, her legs blue with cold, a silver strand of snot running into her mouth.
Across the way, men were playing football.
Then she halted at the sight of a ghost.
An old man in cavalry blue, a leather peak on his round cap, like the one who had held the standard that day by the Greasy Grass.
He stared at her, accusing. A ghost. Come for vengeance.
She quailed and turned back, glancing over her shoulder to make sure he wasn’t following.
The match girl was bending over a stone fountain, drinking a thread of cold water.
Katherine rushed to the girl’s side and watched her drinking, glancing back again at the ghost of the cavalryman.
“Don’t mind him, miss,” said the girl. “He’s the park keeper. He won’t do nothing, if you keep yer nose clean.”
She saw it now. He wasn’t a cavalryman at all. The blue tunic was similar, with its two rows of brass buttons, but he was an old man, with a bushy grey moustache. Ghosts did not age. Angry spirits always returned with the same face with which they had died, and there had been no old men like that at the Little Bighorn.
She drank the cool water, the shock of it hitting her temples, but a gorgeous slaking of her desert throat.
A policemen passed, touching his forehead, but giving them a hard stare.
“Are you all right, Miss?” said the match girl. “You look lost.”
“Moseley,” she said, and again the thrill of that word in her mouth. It sang of home. Tiyata!
“Ooh, very posh. You really are lost, ain’tcha?”
“It’s south of here.”
The girl pointed. “It’s a bit of a trek, is that, Miss. But I can show you the way.”
Katherine followed the direction the girl had pointed, a few degrees west of where she suspected it lay. “Surely, it’s that way.”
“Yeah, but that’s like as the crow flies. The quickest way is out that way.” She pointed west. “And that’s where I know a nice lady who can put you straight.”
“Put me straight?”
The girl tugged at her arm now, trying to lead her away. “You’re lost and you’re hungry and thirsty, Miss. Now I know a nice old lady, Mrs Burney, she’ll help you out, put some food in your belly, maybe even give you a few pennies to set you straight.”
There was something about the girl’s desperate insistence that signalled red. Katherine shook her off and pushed her back, marching away.
“Stuck up bitch!”
The girl had hissed it, afraid to shout, aware of the proximity of the park keeper and the policeman. Katherine strode along the gravel path. There was a turning just ahead. She glanced back to see the girl by the fountain.
Talking to the boy with the peaked cap.
She marched on through a gentle, winding path screened on both sides by bushes and came out to where a group of men in flat caps were digging a garden bed. They each wore shirts with rolled up sleeves and one or two of them had clay pipes in their mouths, puffing sweet smelling smoke.
They turned to look her up and down as they dug at the earth. There were planks of wood strewn all about, and a small cart full of tools.
And a horse.
The half-starved chestnut brown nag looked up from its weary stoop, its nose almost touching the ground. He was tired and old and ached all over, but Katherine felt his pang of curiosity. The horse sensed her magic and snorted, stamping a foot.
She walked to him and stroked a hand along his flank, the horse whinnying in recognition. The gang of working men laughed and returned to their work.
“You are old and a beast of burden,” she said to him. “But you long to run just one more time, to feel the wind in your mane, to gallop into battle and swallow sunbeams in heady flight.”
The horse nudged her, its nostrils flaring, and she ran her hand along its nose, whispering.
Onsila. Poor thing.
Miyela ka cola. I am your friend.
Kiksuyapi, le mita cola. Remember, my friend.
Tashunke ohitika. Brave horse.
Nimitawa ktelo. You will be mine.
She ran her fingers through the horse’s mane, gripped it tight and jumped.
She straddled its back, her purple dress ballooning up around her, stocking legs tied at the knee kicking the horse’s flank.
With a yelp she shouted, “Hoppo!”
The workmen only had time to gasp at the sight of her bare thighs before crying out, too late, as the horse cantered away.
They gave chase forlornly, the youngest of them throwing a shovel after her, but the horse was faster, neighing its joy as they thundered across acres of sweet grass.
27
AGENT CALDER DUG OUT the notebook and flicked through its pages as Nate Salsbury sat with his top hat on his lap, listening to the police chief’s tirade.
They had called him something else, a Chief Superintendent or some such, and Calder had chuckled silently at the thought of this white man in a suit with his giant whiskers and his puffy face being a chief.
There, on his desk: a brass nameplate.
Chief Superintendent Xavier Varley.
Calder stifled a giggle. He was a little bit tight, if the truth be known. After losing the girl at New Street Station, he’d walked into the first pub he’d seen and sunk half a bottle of whisky.
The man had fallen.
The man had fallen and not hit the ground.
Because the man had fallen and vanished in mid-air.
Whisky made everything seem right again.
Nate was doing his best to soft soap the old buffer — he had even apologized that Colonel ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody was not there himself due to performing for the people of this great city this very minute — but it had to be said that they were in trouble. Pretty big trouble. And all those stuck up leaders of the council were up in arms over what had happened.
At times like this, Calder thought, it was best to let someone like Nate do the talking. He had the gift of making people think what he wanted them to think and thinking it was all their own thinking at the same time.
“You are damned lucky that the mayor wants this whole thing covered up!” raged the police chief, pacing the range of his spacious office. “First a mob throwing stones at Chief Red Shirt, the King of the Sioux, and now this!”
“And we are most grateful to the mayor and to yourself, Chief Superintendent Varley, in assisting us in resolving this unfortunate matter,” said Nate. “I can speak for Colonel Cody himself on this matter.”
Calder tried to focus his eyes as he flicked through the pages of scrawled notes and sketches that Bright Star Falling had written.
Falling.
The man had fallen and had disappeared in mid-air.
He pushed it to the back of his mind. There was nothing to be done about that now, only be grateful that the reporter hadn’t hit the ground. It was the kind of mess that would have made this meeting infinitely more painful.
“Shots fired on the streets of Birmingham!”
“Technically, the shots were above the streets of Birmingham,” said Nate. “On the rooftops. No one was really aware of them, I’m sure.”
“I have told the editor of the Birmingham Daily Post to quash the numerous reports of gunfire, heard by dozens of witnesses,” said the police chief, shooting Nate his coldest glare. “The rumours will eventually die out and be dismissed as nonsense.”
“Then it’s all settled,” said Nate, cheerfully.
“If you get her back.”
There were pages of patterns and Indian designs that seemed to suck him in, lost in their dizzying whirl, but there were words here and there that jolted him back to his senses. Sometimes one word, with meaningless swirls around it, sometimes a whole page of words all jumbled up.
There was no meaning to them. They were random collections of words, names, objects. Names like Danny, Rachel, Hudson, Mitch (was there a place called Hudson in Michigan?). The word touchstone was repeated again and again. In one place it said There is no touchstone. And later, many times, You are the touchstone.
But there was only one word from her scribbled notes that he recognized from the station time table.
“Moseley,” said Calder.
“What?” The police chief tramped across to him and slapped the book out of his hand. It skittered across the floor and hit Nate’s ankle. The impresario stooped to pick it up, scowling.
“She’s heading for Moseley,” said Calder. “It’s written there in her notebook and it’s the third station on the Camp Hill line she took.”
“Moseley,” said the police chief, stroking his moustache. “That’s not good.”
“But surely, if we know where she is, we can go there now and find her,” said Nate. “Is it a large place?”
“It’s a small village.”
“Excellent!”
“But it’s outside our municipality.”
“I don’t understand,” said Nate. “You can’t go there? It’s like crossing a state line?”
“It’s the borough of Kings Norton. Different police force.”
“But there’s nothing to stop my man here from going there?”
“Him? You think I want him walking into Moseley and shooting the damned place up?”
“I thought I had assured you there would be no more shooting,” said Nate.
“You’re bloody right there won’t!”
The police chief coughed and looked like he was about to keel over and die from heart failure. He reached for a handkerchief and mopped his brow, wheezing, slumping into the chair behind his desk.
And then, in the flash of a rattlesnake’s pounce, he was fine again. He smiled.
“There’s a police inspector there I can call,” he said. “He can put his men onto it and take her into custody. She’ll stick out like a sore thumb in Moseley, so it won’t take long.”
“And once she is apprehended?” asked Nate.
“I’m sure he can be persuaded to hand her back to your good selves.”
&n
bsp; “Excellent,” said Nate, rising swiftly. “Of course, if Buffalo Bill’s reward money is not claimed by a member of the public, then I am sure it might find a use elsewhere.”
The police chief twitched, as if a mosquito had bitten his neck. “Yes, quite,” he mumbled.
Calder stood and took the notebook Nate slapped at him.
“Once again, sir,” said Nate, bowing and tipping his top hat, “my deepest apologies.”
“We have an understanding,” said Chief Superintendent Varley, smiling his rattlesnake’s smile.
The police chief waved them away and they tramped out of the building to the busy street.
“Where are you going?” said Nate.
“Moseley. I’m going to bring her back.”
Nate grabbed his arm. “Did you not hear a single word in there? You’re to come back to the camp immediately and stop embarrassing Colonel Cody.”
Calder grinned and shook Nate’s hand off, a surge of whiskey bravado coursing through him. “You go back and run your circus, Mr Salsbury. I’ll go find the runaway Indian. I hear there’s a reward.”
He stalked off through the sidewalk bustle, shoving the notebook into his jacket pocket and, by habit, patting the gun that hung at his side.
28
ONCE SHE HAD LEFT THE park and was certain she wasn’t being chased, Katherine rode the horse along the first street heading southwards using the sun in the grey sky to guide her. It was not as busy here as in the town centre but she caught sight of a boulevard to her left, thick with traffic, and realized she was galloping down mean little back streets.
Gangs of children stopped to stare. Even on these quiet streets she was getting too much attention. Every street she rode, people noticed, pointed, called their friends to look.
Of course they did. She was a woman, riding bareback, showing her legs.
The horse, after its initial enthusiasm, was tiring, slowing, wheezing. She patted his neck and called words of encouragement but it was no good. He was too old for this.
Reluctantly, she reined him in and jumped off, kissing his nose and tying him to the rail outside a beer house. He drank from the water trough and she whispered Thechihila, I love you, looking up and down the street, checking the sun in the sky, deciding which direction to head next.