by Andy Conway
They kicked their horses and thundered on, southwards, towards Moseley, down the long, gaslit street.
As they rode through Balsall Heath and up the small hill over which she knew was the village, Katherine wondered if she was good now; if the evil spirits had left her.
Peter’s words — you are the evil spirit — still haunted her. Could it be that an evil spirit could turn good after all?
She sought her mind for examples. Many times she’d heard the likes of Red Shirt persuade the Lakota that a peace was possible with the white man. Many times she’d wanted to believe that their treaties and their promises would be kept. But every time, she’d seen the betrayal. The white man was always evil and would never turn to good.
And yet she’d seen white men and women with good in their hearts. There was Annie and Frank, and Bronco Bill. Even Buffalo Bill, who was a colossal braggart and a lover of that most evil of white men, Custer, but who’d railed at white men against the broken treaties and defended the Indian cause. Even he was a good man.
And perhaps she was good too. For she was white. And she had been evil. Perhaps she could now be good.
They crested the rise, and rode down into Moseley village, where she’d walked before. People outside the pubs and on the village green stared and pointed, but no one moved to stop them, and there seemed to be no policemen around.
She led them on through the village and up the hill to where she could see the dovecote on the right — a short, redbrick tower, sat in a garden behind a wooden fence. There were no buildings around. It was as if the village of Moseley had given way to countryside again.
They dismounted and threw their horses’ reins over the fence, and she gazed at it, hearing its song, feeling a flood of half-thought memories.
Whatever power had been inside her, whatever magic she possessed — and she knew it was in her, had always been in her — she knew it came from this place. Or if it didn’t belong to this place, it was here that she had most often practised her magic.
A phrase came to her, unbidden, and she heard it as clearly as if one of the others had said it.
“This is the touchstone.”
And almost as soon as she heard it, another phrase came to her.
“There is no touchstone. You are the touchstone.”
And she knew that this magic she possessed was her own, it came from her, not this place. But she needed this place, if only to remind her of the power she possessed.
She climbed the fence and the others followed, and they stood in a semi-circle gazing upon it.
A redbrick tower of three storeys that stood only just higher than a tipi, with a window on one if its octagonal sides, and arches above and below that suggested windows, or even a fire place, but were nothing but brick. A wooden staircase led up to a door on the first floor.
There was a distinct smell of ordure, either from cows or pigs, and a rustling and grunting from inside confirmed that it was now used as a pigsty. At least the lower floor.
The crump of distant explosions wafted through on the frigid breeze. Stars exploded across the black sky. Fireworks. She walked across the grass and a memory flashed before her eyes.
The dovecote under moonlight. A girl lying on this same grass, looking up to her, begging for mercy. The girl in her dreams. Rachel. This was the moment Katherine would kill her. And then Rachel’s eyes turned to stars. And Katherine fell out of the sky onto the Plains.
She had been banished, and now she had returned, through eleven years and four thousand miles, and so much pain, and cold, and hunger.
She lurched forward and touched the cool stone with her palm.
Nothing happened.
The bitter taste of defeat curdled in her throat. She had failed. A home for pigs was not the place from which she might fly home. And she knew that it was fear. Better to turn away and flee than to face what she might find inside there, where she had to confront the past that was lost and that might reveal her evil heart.
She had not fought to retrieve her past. For all these years she had pushed back the memories, even when they had surrounded her. Like a frightened white settler surrounded by Indian braves, she had circled the wagons and shot them down. She had always been afraid of what those memories might reveal to her: a girl begging for mercy on this grass, and the evil in Katherine’s heart that wanted to destroy her.
“So what now?” said Annie.
Katherine turned to them, her friends, shuffling and looking to each other awkwardly. She had brought them to this place and now she was afraid to take the last step for fear she would only walk into that wall and bang her head and fall to the floor with shame.
Red Shirt stepped forward, the soft tread of his moccasins on the grass, and took her hands, gazing into her eyes, seeing her soul laid bare, and he opened his mouth to sing.
“Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds,
And whose breath gives life to all the world,
Hear our sister, Bright Star Falling!
She is small and weak,
She needs your strength and wisdom.”
Rocky Bear came to her side and took one of her hands, holding the other out to Annie. She joined the circle, and Frank and Bronco Bill too, as Red Shirt chanted on.
“Let her walk in beauty,
And make her eyes ever behold
The red and purple sunset.
Make her hands respect the things you have made,
And her ears sharp to hear your voice.
Make her wise so that she may understand
The things you have taught our people.
Let her learn the lessons you have hidden
In every leaf and rock.”
Rocky Bear chanted a mumbling percussive beat, stamping his feet on the grass. “He-ay-hee-ee, He-ay-hee-ee, He-ay-hee-ee...’
Bronco Bill joined in, calling on the Everywhere Spirit, and Annie and Frank too, though they didn’t know what they were singing.
“She seeks strength,
Not to be greater than her brothers and sisters,
But to fight her greatest enemy... Herself.”
And she tasted the salt of her own tears running across her lips.
“Make her always ready to come to you
With clean hands and straight eyes.
So when life fades, as the fading sunset,
Her spirit may come to you without shame.”
Her heart cracked open and she wailed to the moon and felt the night mother take her pain.
“I’m sorry!” she cried in Lakotan to the sky. “Forgive me! I’m sorry! Tell me how to get home! Tell me how to get back!”
Red Shirt put his hands to her shoulders again and kissed her forehead.
“It is this place,” he said. “But not this time. Have you not always known that, my sister?”
She nodded through tears and felt the sweet breath of joy that followed the breaking of a heart.
“Go,” said Red Shirt. “Fly with the dove spirits. Fly away home.”
She kissed Annie and embraced Frank and Bronco Bill and Rocky Bear and Red Shirt, and turned from them to climb the wooden steps that took her to the entrance door halfway up the tower.
With a last smile to them, she opened the door and paused, seeing nothing but a black cave.
With a deep breath, she stepped into the darkness.
49
BAYNARD CALDER SAW Katherine Bright Star Falling silhouetted in the doorway, framed against the moonlit sky. The outline of a woman who’d haunted him. The shape of a white woman, but nothing but blackness inside her.
He dug inside his jacket, pulling his pistol from its holster in one neat, fluid movement, the scrape of metal on leather just a whisper that she couldn’t have heard above her own breathing.
He could shoot her dead right now. She was the perfect target. But he paused, wanting her to come inside, to close the door behind her. He wanted to see her face. He wanted to see her face the moment she saw him: to see the full re
alisation that he’d won and this was her last moment.
She closed the door and there was nothing but darkness for a couple of seconds, but his own eyes were used to it now, with the pale light from the window, and he saw her standing there, her hand still on the door knob, blinking.
Then she stiffened and gasped and he knew she’d detected them. She’d smelt the whiskey on him or the perfume on Lillian.
There was the sound of a match scraping and the flare of sulphurous light as Lillian lit the oil lantern they’d found hanging in there. She had done just as he’d instructed, but it still annoyed him for some reason and he felt as if his perfect plan was already unravelling.
The oil lamp glow lit the great round barrel of a room in which the three of them stood, and he saw her face. It disturbed him that she didn’t seem at all surprised to see him there, nor at all afeared of the Smith and Wesson Model 3 Schofield pointed at her heart.
In fact, she sort of smiled.
“It’s over,” said Lillian. “We’re taking you back.”
Katherine didn’t look at her, keeping her gaze on him. “I don’t think he wants to take me back, Lil,” she said.
“Of course he does. That’s what we planned. We’re taking you back to Buffalo Bill.”
“I think he misled you, Lil.”
Lillian looked from her to him. “Calder?” she said. “Tell her.”
Calder cocked the hammer and it reverberated in the room like a church bell tolling.
“It ends here,” he said.
“No, Calder,” said Lillian. “You can’t just shoot her like some dumb animal.”
“She’s an Indian. What else is that but a dumb animal?”
Lillian stepped in his line of fire, holding the lamp aloft, throwing shadows.
“We’re here to capture her. Not kill her. That’s something different. I won’t allow it.”
“Then I guess I’ll have to shoot you first. Then you won’t be around to protest about it.”
He watched Lillian’s eyes and knew she was working out how to get rid of the lantern and reach for the rifle she’d left leaning against the wall. She’d made the mistake of stepping into his line of fire without it by her side and now she was done for.
“Unless you want to step aside and let me finish what I came here to do.”
Lillian shook her head. “I can’t do that, Calder.”
Katherine did nothing but stand behind Lillian, clutching the amulet that hung at her breast, her eyes closed, as if she were listening to some music they couldn’t hear. And then came the sound from outside of horses approaching. Was that what she’d heard? Someone outside shouted.
“That’s either the police or it’s Buffalo Bill,” said Lillian. “You have to hand her over now.”
She reached out with her free hand to take his gun.
Bile flooded his soul. These damned women had given him the runaround enough. He could end it all with a couple of bullets.
“I’m not gonna let that showman fool take this away from me,” he said.
“Listen to yourself, Calder. He’s your boss. He hired you to bring her back.”
“I don’t give a damn.”
Katherine was still behind Lillian with her eyes shut tight, mumbling to herself or was she humming a tune? She was crazy, or she was praying for deliverance. But not this time. He would send her to the devil that had spawned her.
“Get out of the way, Lillian. Last chance.”
Steps outside. Boots tramping up the wooden stairs.
“I’m not moving, Calder.”
Katherine opened her eyes and pushed Lillian aside.
He squeezed the trigger.
The hammer fell.
He saw the flash of fire as the bullet leapt for her heart.
Time slowed. And a figure came between Katherine and the bullet. It could have been no more than half a second of time, but he saw it like a play unfolding on the stage.
A Red Indian man dressed up like a squaw, his painted face laughing like a devil, appeared behind Katherine and wrapped his arms around her. The bullet went right through them both and hit the red brick wall of the dovecote, pinging up a cloud of dust.
The deafening boom left only a ringing in his ears.
Bright Star Falling stayed standing, eyes closed. It was as if, at the very instant that the bullet passed through her, she had shimmered and become water and was unharmed.
Someone was kicking at the door and he wondered how she’d locked it behind her.
He realized she wasn’t his captive.
He was hers.
He cocked the hammer again and squeezed.
The ghostly squawman lunged for his face, laughing like a devil.
Calder fell back, terrified, shooting at the black shadow of the ceiling. He heard his own cry of fear, a child’s scream, as he hit the ground, dust in his mouth, flapping his arms at a ghost bird.
“You saved my life,” cried Lillian, her voice coming from far away. “Why in hell?”
“Because it was the right thing to do.”
Calder stared in horror as Katherine shimmered.
A blue light enveloped her and turned red and gold and then an intense white.
And as she cried out, “Tiyata!” the dovecote was filled with the light of a thousand suns.
He covered his eyes, squealing in pain.
And when the light was gone and when his eyes adjusted to the dark, he saw the others rushing in through the door, and Lillian, one hand to her throat, shaking her head in disbelief.
The police had arrived. But they were too late. It was all over.
Bright Star Falling was gone.
50
INSPECTOR BEADLE KNEW what was coming, even before Chief Superintendent Xavier Varley rolled up in a carriage, emerging with his opposite number from Kings Norton, Chief Superintendent Baskerville Trevis.
He knew there would be no arrests. No one would be charged with firing on a police station, theft of a cabman’s coach, or the disappearance of his prisoner, the so-called Indian woman. There would be no reports, no press, no talk of this, anywhere, ever.
He knew it as he watched Baynard Calder slumped on the bottom step of the dovecote, huddled up, dropping tears onto his boots. One thing was obvious, just looking at him: he wouldn’t do any more work for the Pinkerton Agency. All he’d do for the rest of his short life would be to get himself to a saloon and drink away the ghosts.
Whatever had happened in that dovecote had wiped his mind clean.
The sharpshooter girl too, the small one with the pug nose, was also in a state of shock. Someone had wrapped a blanket around her, but there was no one to give her sweet tea.
The rest of the gang — Annie Oakley, her husband, the Indian chief who’d walked into his station, and the other two who had no doubt kept watch outside — had all pleaded innocence in the matter of the breakout.
Buffalo Bill had arrived in his own carriage and stoutly defended his performers, declaring he felt sure they were beyond reproach and had merely rushed here, as had he, to find their friend.
“And how did they all know she was here, when she was supposed to be locked up in my police station?”
Buffalo Bill had harrumphed, caught out, then smiled and asked, “And is she here, inspector?”
“She is not,” said Beadle.
“Then my performers cannot have come here for her.”
“They came to my station and requested her release.”
“I did send them on ahead of me,” said Buffalo Bill, “Now that I remember.”
“And not five minutes after being refused, they broke her free and attacked the station with guns.”
“Did you see them do this, Inspector?”
Beadle felt his fists tightening, longing to punch the showman. He could threaten them with evidence gathering and witness statements from the cabmen, but he knew it would all be whitewashed.
And, at that thought, the whitewashers arrived.
Chi
ef Superintendents Varley and Trevis looked like they had been to the opera, resplendent in top hats and tails. They were not going to jump over the wooden fence, so he marched over to them.
“Chief Superintendent Trevis, sir, I—”
“Save it, Beadle. Chief Superintendent Varley has apprised me of this shambles. I trust you’ve now taken it in hand at last?”
“Sir, we have all the suspects here, ready to be charged.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“But sir, I think if you saw the damage done to the Balsall Heath station, not to mention the endangering of the life of half its force—”
“The damage can be repaired,” said Trevis.
“And the municipality of Birmingham shall be happy to assist in the cost of repair,” said Varley. “I have the word of the Lord Mayor himself.”
“Then the only thing to do is get these people back to Aston and to make sure Colonel Cody understands the gravity of the situation.”
“I’ve no doubt he does,” said Varley. “He is nothing but overzealous in the matter of reputation.”
“Then get this area cleared, before we have a mob form.”
“Sir, I think a gunfight through half of Balsall Heath and Moseley might be a difficult thing to cover up.”
“Fireworks,” said Trevis.
“A fancy dress parade by locals,” Varley offered. “Inspired by the arrival of the Wild West show. I’ll see to it that the Birmingham Daily Post prints a story about it.”
Beadle felt a bitter taste and longed for his clay pipe, gazing over to where Sergeant Macpherson was interviewing the performers, scribbling in his notebook.
“And tell that stupid ape to stop interrogating and burn those bloody notes.”
“If you say so, sir,” said Beadle.
He turned to go but Trevis gripped his coat sleeve, anger burning in his eyes and frothing at the corner of his mouth.
“I do say so, Beadle. And when I say so, you bloody well jump. If for one moment I think you are daring to question my authority on this, or any other matter, I will have you in a uniform and patrolling the fleshpots of Highgate. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly clear, sir.”
“There will be no talk of this. No reports. No arrests. And I want it understood by every single man in your command that we will all quietly forget any of this ever happened.”