by Andy Conway
“You will.”
“If they’re the ones keeping me here, then what good are you?”
He stroked her cheek, thumbing away her tears. “They’ll decide about you soon.”
“So I’m to be put on trial, and I don’t get to see the faces of my jury?”
“You did this to yourself, Katherine. There’s a man who lives not far from here. He’s just like you. He’s lost too, he doesn’t remember who he was or the evil he did.”
She remembered the feeling she’d had, up on the tower, looking out to the south-east. Another feeling of Tiyata, not as strong as the dovecote or the church. She had known it then. It had called to her with the voice of a man.
“Who is he?”
“You know his name.”
“I don’t.” And as she said it, the name came up to the surface of her mind, like a fish popping up for air.
Danny.
“Oh,” she said with sudden surprise. She saw him. Remembered reaching out to him. It came in a rush: the full realisation and memory of her evil.
“Oh God,” she said. “I became obsessed with him, and I did bad things, and I was punished. I tried to kill that girl. The girl I see in my dreams.”
“Rachel,” he said.
“She’s the one who sent me here. She’s the one who banished me.”
“She was stronger than you. She’s stronger than us all.”
“I tried to kill a couple sitting in a graveyard.”
“Her parents.”
“She stopped me.”
It had hit her like an arrow. She was shot from the sky before she could kill them. Rachel had stopped her.
“Oh, and I really did kill two men. They were attacking me on the church tower.”
“How did it feel? Did you enjoy it?”
She nodded, sadly. “But I’m good now.”
“I hope so,” he said.
He glanced up the corridor. Footsteps approaching.
“I really hope so, Katherine,” he said. “But we’ll see.” He stepped back.
She reached out for him in panic, knowing he was leaving her.
There was a burst of blue light like the magnesium flash of a photographer, with a smell of singed hair, and the sound of an implosion, as if all the air that had been around Peter Wethers had rushed to fill his absence.
41
LILLIAN SMITH DUCKED out of her own modest tent, looking up and down along the rows.
The camp was settling down for the evening, following the second of the day’s performances and the meal that had followed. The camp followed a predictable rhythm. Now was the hour of pleasant exhaustion. There would be some drinking, even a little music and singing around some of the camp fires — most notably in front of the band’s tents — sometimes chanting drifting from further down, from the Indians, with their goddamn wailing sounds that didn’t sound like any kind of tune known to humans.
She paused and did not move, like an owl watching for prey, making sure no one saw her at all.
Further up the row, to her right, the carriage that she had heard rolling into camp, was unloading Baynard Calder, the Pinkerton agent. He seemed to be in the custody of a policeman, and he looked all shook up and sorry for himself, like he’d been given a whupping, or drank himself senseless, or maybe even both at the same time.
He shuffled into Buffalo Bill’s tent with his head down and the policeman walked in behind him.
As quick as a flash, Lillian scooted around the side of her tent, skipping over guy ropes, till she was at the rear of the long line of tents, all lit up like lanterns.
Bent over and waddling like a duck, she skirted along the row until she came to the big one. Buffalo Bill’s. His voice came from inside. His voice always came from inside. He never stopped talking, whoever happened to be in his company. And it was always the same: some story about Colonel Buffalo Bill Cody and his array of achievements.
Looking both ways to check no one was observing her, she crouched down and gently teased open the slit in the canvas she had created some months ago. She placed her eye to the hole she held apart with her fingers and focussed on the dim figures seated at the far end of the marquee.
Bill’s bed was at the rear of the tent and she was looking along its length to the lamp lit gathering beyond. It was where the men met every night, smoking their cigars and drinking Buffalo Bill’s bourbon. No woman ever got invited to these events. At least Annie Oakley had never been invited to one. That was something. If Annie Oakley had walked in there with the men, Lillian might just have shot her right through the slit in the canvas. Right there and then.
Calder was slumping into a canvas chair next to Nate Salsbury, who was pouring a glass of bourbon. The policeman had just left and she could hear the carriage wheeling off into the night. Frank Butler and Bronco Bill Irving were there, and Gabriel Dumont, who appeared to be asleep.
Buffalo Bill was pacing, throwing his arms up in the air, in a rage. Bright Star Falling hadn’t been kidnapped at all. She’d run away!
Nate didn’t seem to be bothered. He just handed Calder the glass of bourbon and patted him on the knee.
“What in tarnation is this damned woman trying to do to my reputation?” Bill yelled.
No one offered him an answer so he continued.
“I declare to the sweet Lord himself, she is hell bent on sabotaging my whole operation. Even now! Even with the blessing of the Queen of England herself. The mighty Victoria waves me on to greatness across all of Europe, and Bright Star Falling trips me right up so I fall on my face!”
Calder snatched his bourbon back in one gulp, and it looked like it gave him some strength, because he looked up with clear eyes and stared at the pacing showman.
“But Bill,” said Nate. “What were you thinking to do: tie her up and steal her out of the camp when we move to Manchester? It’s a month away.”
“I can’t very well let her go gallivanting across the country now, can I?”
Nate shrugged. “She will wander where she will, I guess.”
“There are laws in this country!” Bill screamed. “Laws of immigration, and decency, and propriety. She is here under my protection. She is my responsibility! If I let her go wander the streets of England and she does someone some harm, what consequence will it have for me? For this?”
He waved his arm around to indicate the giant sweep of his camp, his show, and perhaps his ego.
“However,” said Nate, “is she not actually a citizen of this country?”
“No one knows that! She doesn’t even know herself! She may talk like them, but she’s been on the Plains for over ten years and has no memory of any life before that. So as far as any law is concerned she’s a Hunkpapa Sioux and subject to the laws of the United States government!”
Lillian shifted her weight onto her other leg, her knee beginning to stiffen.
“She’s from Moseley.”
They all turned to Baynard Calder, who was peering into his empty glass, hoping it might produce some more bourbon.
“From where?” said Bill.
“It’s a village south of Birmingham,” said Calder.
“This is so,” said Nate, filling his glass again. “Calder discovered this earlier. The police superintendant of Birmingham went there personally to retrieve her, once he was informed of the arrest of both Calder here and Katherine.”
“And a fat lot of good he did!”
“She’s from there,” said Calder. “It’s in her notebook. I’m guessing everything she’s done in the last ten years has been leading her to that place.”
“Perhaps she wants to stay there?” said Frank Butler, with obvious sympathy.
Wasn’t that just like him. His bitch of a wife was all friendly with the squaw and all, and he was probably the one who’d filled up Buffalo Bill’s ears with so much honey for the smelly Indian.
“I had a boy follow her,” said Calder. “There’s something there. A dovecote.”
“A what?”
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“It’s a home for doves,” said Nate.
“Just off the centre of the village,” said Calder, staring into his empty glass, like he could see her in there. “I was going to wait for her inside the dovecote and capture her, but I was passing through the village square when I saw her arrive, keeping to the shadows of the old estate boundary, which fronts the village along one side. The dovecote is part of it.”
Buffalo Bill stopped pacing and stood arms folded, listening — actually listening — to another man tell a story.
“She headed for the church. I assumed she wanted to take a vantage point. The same vantage point that I myself had used earlier to espy the layout of the land. So I circled round to the other entrance of the church and waited inside for her to arrive. She took some time, even though she had taken the shorter route, and I was thinking she had entered before me and was already up on the tower. But then she entered and I waited for her to ascend to the tower, where I knew I could trap her. Where I knew there was no way out for her.”
“And why then, did you fail to capture her?”
“The police arrived too soon. Before I could take her into custody and return her to you, they arrested us both.”
“And they keep her still!” Bill threw up an arm, as if swatting away a hornet.
“Once I had given my account,” said Calder, “supplied my credentials, mentioning your good name and the influence of certain personages of the city, the police inspector there saw fit to release me. However, he held onto her. What’s more, he forced me across town under guard. He is, I fear, not so cooperative as we might have hoped.”
“So he won’t release her?”
“Only to you.”
“Confound it!” Bill cried, adding, as if it were his own idea: “I shall have to go and fetch her myself!”
Bill hooked his suspenders back over his shoulders and reached for his buckskin jacket, while Calder knocked back his empty glass once more, desperate for one more drop, as if it were the last on earth.
“I should have listened to Sitting Bull. Oh yes, he warned me about her. Sitting Bull himself looked me in the eye and said there was bad magic around her and if I took her to Britain she would unleash a great tragedy upon me.”
Nate laughed and slapped his own thigh. “Come now, Bill, we surely can’t stoop to believing their childish Indian superstitions?”
Buffalo Bill turned to him, knotting a red kerchief around his neck. He was no longer shouting, no longer pacing. There was a gravity to his voice that Lillian had never heard before. It was the gravity of truth.
“Well, my friend, you may say that, and we’ve done a mighty fine job of trampling their superstition into the ground, and we all laugh at their curses and their magic, just like we whistle past the graveyard of a night time. I’m one of those men who can laugh it off as loud as anyone, but I have to say I’ve seen their magic at close quarters, and she scares the hell out of me.”
He took the armrests of the canvas chair in which Calder was slumped. Calder looked up and their eyes met.
“And I see by your eyes, my good detective, you know what I’m talking about. I’ll take it from here.”
Buffalo Bill reached for his buckskin gloves and his guests rose to their feet. All but Calder.
“Prepare my coach,” said Buffalo Bill. “I’m off to Moseley village to take charge of her personally.”
They shuffled out after Buffalo Bill, leaving Calder alone.
He sat slumped in his canvas chair and she wondered if the sad, dejected drunk had fallen asleep.
He jerked his head up, grunted, swiped the whisky bottle from the table and emptied the last few drops down his throat. He wiped his mouth, whimpered and punched his thigh with sudden venom.
And then he looked up and stared right at the slit at the far end of the tent. Right at Lillian
She pulled away and ran back along the row of tents, heading for the stables where all the horses were kept. If there was some action going down, she wasn’t going to sit at camp and get edged out of it. Oh no, not again. No sir.
And if there was any kind of action that involved sticking it to that white squaw bitch, Bright Star Falling, then Lil was going to make sure she was right there to see it.
42
FRANK BUTLER ENTERED the tent he shared with Annie Oakley, stumbling only slightly, knowing his face was flush with Buffalo Bill’s bourbon, sweeping his hat off with a smile.
Annie looked up to him ruefully from her desk where she was writing a letter under the glow of a lantern. It was no doubt some piece of business that would involve Frank Butler running all around the houses.
Feeling not a little guilty that his young wife was here in the tent while he got to drink and smoke with Buffalo Bill, his mouth began blurting out the news before he’d even slumped into his canvas chair and pulled off his boots.
The expression on her face was not the one he expected. He’d thought she would nod understandingly and congratulate him on taking part in the important business of recovering Bright Star Falling. But Annie seemed in no mood to congratulate him for his good work.
“We must go and get her!” she cried.
“What? Why the blazes? Bill’s after fetching her.”
“Did it occur to you, Frank Butler, that she doesn’t want to be fetched by Bill, or anyone else?”
He struggled for words and felt his face flushing again. It had all seemed so straightforward when he’d walked in and told her what had happened, and now it was all so confused and dramatic. He wondered why every situation that was sorting itself out without needing help from himself, when he told it to Annie, would suddenly involve a great deal of interference and no rest at all for Frank Butler.
“We can’t be going getting her when Bill’s going getting her. It don’t make no sense, woman.”
He bit his lip. An argument never went well after he addressed her as ‘woman’. In fact, it routinely, almost always, went the way of victory for Annie Oakley.
“Don’t you dare take your boots off, Frank Butler! We’re going to help our good friend, Bright Star Falling. The girl’s in trouble, damn it!”
Frank sighed and mumbled, “Bill knows what’s best, I’m sure.”
Annie laughed the laugh that made him feel like a boy, not a man thirteen years her senior. “Aw, shoot! That man wouldn’t know what time of day it was if General George Armstrong Custer rose up out of his grave and slapped him across the face with his pocket watch.”
“But they’re bringing her back here, Annie.”
She was pulling on her buckskin jacket and dressing herself for a ride now.
“Did it occur to a single one of you men deciding her fate in that bourbon washed, cigar-smoke-stinking tent of yours that she might not wanna be back here?”
“How do you know?”
“Because she ran the hell away, Frank! For the love of St. Lucifer, why is it men have such a problem seeing what a woman wants in this world? We make it so obvious for you. Even then you can’t get it into your thick skulls!”
Frank wasn’t sure this was necessarily true. From his experience of the fairer sex, he’d gleaned that when a woman thought she was being obvious, she was actually doing the complete opposite of what she wanted. This happened every single day with Annie and he’d become used to dismissing it in his mind and simply trying to guess what it was she wanted, because it seemed no woman in the world could just come plain out and say it to a man. It therefore stood to reason that Katherine’s running away quite probably meant that she wanted to come back. In the contrariwise world of the female mind.
He did not say this, though, because he had learned many years ago that whenever he pointed this out to a woman, it created a drama of Old Testament proportions; a drama that resulted in making his life a profoundly miserable experience for days, if not weeks.
“I see what you mean,” he said.
“Hallelujah!” Annie shrieked. “Now let’s go get to her before Bill does.”
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“I don’t see how we’re going to do that,” said Frank. “He’s already set off in his carriage.”
Annie marched outside the tent and Frank followed, bumping into her because she had stopped and was peering across to the camp exit.
“As I thought,” she said. “He’s not got more than ten yards before he’s stopped to make a speech.”
Frank peered through the night gloom to where she pointed. Her eyesight was sharper, much sharper than his own, but even he could make out the crowd that thronged in the street at the edge of Aston Lower Grounds. They had been there since the camp had arrived, always a group of people desperate to catch sight of their strange world.
And there was Buffalo Bill’s carriage, with the Colonel himself standing, throwing out his arms, obviously narrating some great story.
“How in Hell did that man ever tame a solitary inch of the Wild West without stopping to tell a tall story about it? I swear,” said Annie. “You go get our horses. I’ll tell the others.”
Frank did not dare ask who ‘the others’ might be. He rushed over to the stable — the giant marquee where all the show’s horses were kept, and told little Archie Rose, the stable hand, that he was out for a ride with Annie.
Archie called, “Where’s everyone going tonight? Is there an impromptu show or something?”
“I don’t know,” said Frank, puzzled. He took a firm hold of the reins of Annie’s mare, and whipped his own horse away and cantered across camp.
As he came to Annie, he saw a crowd gathered around her tent, all on horseback, and feared their plan was scotched before it was begun.
But once closer up, he saw Bronco Bill, Gabriel Dumont, and a couple of Indians. It wasn’t until he was right there that he knew it was Red Shirt, sitting imperiously atop his mount, and Rocky Bear alongside him.
He wondered why until he spotted the woman with Bronco Bill. His beautiful Indian wife, Ella. Bronco Bill had gone to his tent, just like he had himself, and told her everything. She had rushed to the Indians to tell them the news, and Red Shirt had come.