by Rod Duncan
So began the draining away of my few coins. In the round that followed, my cards held no promise and I folded directly, losing only one penny. Once again, Silvan bid heavily but this time no one would face up to him and he scooped the coins without ever showing what he held.
Then the pack was placed into my hands.
“Shuffle it,” said the dwarf.
I made to imitate the shuffle I had seen the others perform. But not a second had passed before the entire pack splashed onto my lap and spilled from there to the floor.
The men roared with laughter. Even the dwarf could not help but join in. I pretended to fluster as I re-gathered the pack, letting it slip from my hands a second time, making such comic show of my ineptitude that even Silvan broke the careful gaze he had been keeping on me.
“Satan’s teeth, but you’ll ruin those cards, child,” said the man with the forked beard.
At last I had the pack together again. More or less.
“That’ll do for the shuffle,” said the dwarf, grabbing it. As he dealt for me, I noticed a small hole in his left hand between the thumb and first finger. A sword puncture, I thought.
This time my cards seemed fair, with two tens holding a promise of some reward. Thus tempted I played and lost more heavily than before. At least it was not Silvan who won the round, but the man sitting to his left.
On the sixth round, the deal passed back to Silvan. Having won nothing, the pile of coins in my lap was almost gone. I dropped a penny onto the box and picked up my cards. The dwarf leaned in close again, but this time I held my hand from him.
“I know the rules now, sir. I’ll do it alone.”
“I can give this advice without looking. Fold now. Give up. Go away. You’ve lost nothing but pride and a handful of change.”
“You heard your teacher,” said Silvan.
I peeked at my cards: a two, a seven, a useless eight, a jack and a king. Nothing.
After one round of bets there were only the three of us remaining. The man with the forked beard swapped three cards from the deck. I placed my whole hand down.
“Five cards please,” I said, my voice sounding very small.
“Never do that!” hissed the dwarf in my ear. “Never. Never.”
“I will play as I wish!”
Silvan dealt five from the deck, his eyes fixed on me, his face expressionless as I inched them from my chest and looked down to see what I had been given.
The man with the forked beard threw in a fivep’ny bit. I did the same. Then Silvan picked two silver tens from his pile of winnings and cast them onto the box.
“Too rich for me,” said the man with the forked beard.
“I wish to play,” I said. “Yet I’ve no money left.”
“Bet she’s got something of value,” said one of the men. “What about her pretty clothes?”
“You can’t do that!” said the dwarf. “She can’t do that!”
“She can gamble her clothes if she wishes,” growled Silvan.
Hands trembling, I unbuttoned my long coat. Slipping it from my shoulders, I untied the shawl I wore underneath. This I threw across to him. He caught it. For a moment he rubbed the material between his thumb and fingers. There was no smile now. “You should listen to your teacher,” he said, then added another two silver tens to the pile.
All eyes turned back to me.
“You’d have me undress?”
“I would have you run home,” he said. “But it’s not mine to choose. Make your bet or fold.”
I stood and gathered my coat in arms. “This is worth more than all that money.”
Silvan scooped his winnings into his hands and spilled the whole lot onto the make-do table. “I place this against your coat and everything else you wear down to the innermost layer.”
“It isn’t the fabric that you ask, it’s the sight of my flesh exposed!”
“I ask nothing.”
“All here would see me. And all on my lonely walk back to Sleaford, too.”
“My money is in the pot,” said Silvan. “There’s nothing else.”
“There’s a job and a place to sleep.”
“Don’t do this, lady,” said the dwarf.
“It’s hers to bet if she wants!” Silvan shouted, then glared around the fire at all the other men, who had fallen silent now. None were laughing. They looked at him half in fear.
“Bet your pretty clothes if you have no shame,” he said. “And I’ll bet a job for you. Expect no pity though. It’s your ruin not mine.”
“Will you not back down?” I asked.
“I will not.”
“Then I make the bet of all you ask, but not my camisole, which I’ll keep.”
Silvan dealt his cards onto the box. A two, a three, a five, a six and finally an eight.”
“It’s a straight,” said the dwarf, his voice bleak. “For the eight counts as wild.”
“How do my cards stand against it?” I asked, laying all four aces on the box.
A second of silence passed. Then Silvan was on his feet and had marched away out of the firelight. The man with the forked beard swore and then everyone was talking at once – all but the dwarf who seemed too shocked at first to utter a word. Then he leaned in close and whispered.
“Next time you’re going to cheat, don’t make it aces.”
Chapter 15
The secret of deep deception is to tell the truth.
– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook
The other men had no complaint with me. Indeed, when I stood from the pile of rope on which I had been sitting and straightened my skirts, summoning the courage to follow Silvan, it was they who called me to sit again.
“Leave him be, lass,” said the man with the forked beard. “We’re each as honest as the next, but you’ll be wanting to keep an eye on your winnings.”
Blushing, I scooped the coins from the upturned box onto my shawl, gathering it into a make-shift bag.
“You’d not played Wild Eights, eh?” he said.
Much swearing and guffawing followed. Silvan’s bottle was doing the round again. This time the dwarf got his turn. Of all the men, he was the one who had not smiled since my victory. Nor did he smile as he placed the bottle in my hand.
“Now you’re one of us, it seems,” he said.
I was being tested again. Though whether I was expected to drink or pass the bottle on, I could not tell. I sniffed. It seemed to be some sort of rough spirit. I put it to my lips and tilted it back. Though I’d only taken a few drops, a burning sensation filled my mouth. Taking a sharp breath, I began to cough.
“What are you doing to the poor girl?” came a breathy voice from close behind me.
I turned and saw the familiar face of the gypsy fortune-teller from Sleaford. Today she wore a loose skirt of striped cotton. Three lengths of green cord hung from her wide belt, each weighted at the end with a glass bead. A tightly tied headscarf held her hair in place.
Travel west, she had said. And here she was.
“What’s your name, pet?”
“Elizabeth,” I said.
“And they’ll not have fed you neither. Come. I’ll see you’re settled.”
Tania was the fortune-teller’s name, or so she said. The strands of hair that spilled from her headscarf at the back were jet black. But the dry crack of her voice had some years behind it. At first I had guessed forty-five, but the wrinkled skin of her neck and the deep crow’s feet that spread from the corners of her eyes suggested I might be a decade out or more.
I was to sleep in her caravan along with two other unmarried women, both performers of some kind. This arrangement should not have been a surprise to me. It is what I would have done in Silvan’s shoes, forced to accept a stranger into the community of the travelling show. To find someone’s secrets, there could be no place better than in the wagon of the fortune-teller, exposed to all her reading arts.
“Silvan ought to’ve brought you here straight-ways,” she said.
Under her instruction, I had hefted a pile of blankets from the belly box under the wagon. These we were rolling out on the floor next to the stove. “We’d have put you up without fuss.”
“I don’t want to be trouble,” I said.
“Always room for one more. I’m on the bottom bunk of the cot. The girls sleep top to toe above.”
“Silvan didn’t want me,” I said.
“Don’t you listen to him.”
Using a fold of her skirt as if it were an oven glove she opened the black, iron stove and fed in sticks until the fire crackled and flame began to lick out of the opening. The door closed with a snug clunk.
“They get work enough out of us,” Tania said. “No harm in comfort, eh? All of them was new once. Even the boss.”
As the stove heated, so the kettle began to rumble. The lamplight caught the steam as she poured boiling water into a blue china pot. Tania busied herself, taking down linen that had been left airing on a line strung across the width of the wagon, feeling each item with her fingers before folding it away into a drawer under the bed.
Next she poured and passed me a glass of black tea. Holding it made the skin of my cold hands prickle. I sipped and felt my heartbeat speed with its syrupy sweetness.
“That’ll warm you through,” she said. “Those men! Only think of number one. They’ll sit cosy in a greatcoat an’ let you freeze in summer muslin. Then tell how pretty and pale your skin is.”
So saying, she slipped off her own coat and I saw that panels of paisley-patterned cloth had been sewn to her blouse, making it seem more like a waistcoat.
A metal bowl rested on the bench next to the stove. Out of this she tore a handful of sourdough, which she began to pat from one hand to the other. A gust of wind shifted the wagon gently on its springs.
Five years it had been since I left my home in the Circus of Mysteries, and though I had fashioned my home in the Republic to match the life I had lost, yet it was an imitation only. But here, watching Tania work the dough, smelling the yeast and the wood smoke, hearing the stamp and snort of a horse outside, here I found myself thrown back to the world of my childhood.
Back and forth the dough patted, thinning into a disk as she shifted it from one hand to the other. She hummed quietly to herself as she worked. There didn’t seem to be a tune to it but I found the rhythm filling my attention.
Then she threw the dough into a hot pan. Grains of loose flour spilled onto the stove top sending up threads of smoke, blackening then glowing for a moment before disappearing altogether.
“You’ve seen this life before,” Tania said, without turning.
Lies take effort to sustain so I made no response.
“Silvan said you’ve no father and no husband,” she said.
“That’s what I told him.”
She dipped a hand into the pan and flipped the bread, revealing the honey brown of the side that had already cooked. “It is true?”
“Must I talk of it now?”
“No child. Eat first.”
In truth, my plans had not gone beyond finding work in the Laboratory of Arcane Wonders. That had seemed challenge enough in prospect – and had proved even more risky in execution. Having won my place, I could get to know the people and the ways of the show. If the Duchess’s brother was still here, he would not be able to hide himself. In speech and action he would be revealed as an aristocrat.
The fortune-teller dipped into the pan once more and lifted the flat bread, which had now filled the wagon with the acrid smell of cooking yeast. Thinking back, I realised I had not eaten since breakfast. The day had been so full of preparations that I had not noticed my hunger until now.
“It’s hot,” Tania said tossing the loaf to me.
The action came back to me un-thought, the shifting of the loaf from hand to hand, changing the fingers in contact with the surface each time so that no heat built up. Deftly, I ripped a piece from the edge, releasing a curl of steam. The bread was flecked with green inside and I could smell sweet marjoram. Coarse flour, rough salt and a few hedgerow herbs. Poor man’s food some would say. Oh, but it tasted fine to me. Salty and yielding inside, yet crisp and brittle on the crust. I ripped another piece while Tania rummaged in a tightly packed cupboard, producing an almost empty wine bottle.
“Finish it,” she said.
The loaf had cooled enough to hold in one hand now. I put the bottle to my lips and filled my mouth with the dark flavours of last summer’s fruit.
Tania sat back, silent. From somewhere she had found a needle and length of saffron thread, and seemed to be fully focussed on the act of sewing a length of emerald green cord onto a plain cloth belt. But every now and then she raised her eyes and smiled at me.
The wine and food and the warmth of the caravan had loosened the tight knot I had worked myself into during the card game. Too much perhaps. For now I began to perceive what my actions must have already revealed to the perceptive fortune-teller. Even the manner in which I sat, legs crossed comfortably under the full skirts would be information to her. My ease in holding the hot pan bread, my comfort at drinking from the bottle, the whole meal relished as a delicacy long missed.
My eating slowed as I approached the end. What story might this woman desire to be true? Certainly nothing bland would serve. A juicy bone of scandal would be the ticket. Something to throw to Silvan that would prove her worth. But what lie might I sustain?
Stopping sewing, she watched me drain the last of the bottle. “Better my dear?”
“Much.”
“Travellers’ food.”
“It’s been five years since I’ve eaten in a wagon like this.”
“It burns your heart to miss it so.”
“Yes,” I said, knowing there was no point in denying what the woman had already perceived. Yet knowing also that she performed the same magic she had woven for me in my male guise in the back alley in Sleaford – thrumming my emotions rather than my thoughts, making them resonate. Had she already divined that I might twist the facts but had no power to deny my feelings? Might she work a different trick on a different person?
“To be forced from that life. To be exiled from the road. Ah, we are never whole again.”
I tried to cover the sudden rush of emotion by standing and smoothing down my skirt.
“Tell me of it dear,” she said, as I knelt again.
“It hurts too much,” I said.
“Were the lanes of the North or of the Kingdom your home?” She reached out and rested her hand on mine. “You’re a child of the Kingdom.”
“Yes.”
“So far from home.”
“Yes.”
“And cast out against your will.”
I placed my face in my hands. A melodramatic affectation perhaps, though it served to delay the inquisition for a minute more. Tania was but a few shrewd guesses away from divining my identity, or close to it. She would tell Silvan, who would whisper it around that he had money in exchange for information about me. It would not be long before news came back that I was sister to a private intelligence man. And from then, how long would it be before I woke in the night to find his hand pressed down on my mouth and my throat opened with a razor?
A laugh outside the wagon broke into my thoughts. Footsteps approached and voices. I dropped my hands into my lap. Tania’s eyes were on me still, though I could see she listened as I did.
“Just one kiss,” a man cajoled.
“What must you take me for?” This was a woman. A young voice coloured with a smile.
“I take you for a lady,” a second man said. Local by his accent. “A fine lady. And beautiful.”
“Would a real lady put her soft lips to yours?” teased the woman.
“A gentleman would pay a king’s ransom for such a gift.”
“You are that gentleman?”
“I am! I am!”
The wagon shifted on its springs with the weight of someone climbing onto the step outside.
“And th
e king’s ransom?”
“It shall be yours! In the morning, fair maid.”
“You want your kiss on account then?”
The fortune-teller stepped past me and opened the door.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “So gallant to escort Lara to her berth.”
Tania’s frame blocked any view of the pantomime outside, but the cold night air stole past her. I took a deep breath, feeling my senses sharpen. The cloying emotion was suddenly gone and I knew what I must do.
Moving quickly and silently, I took off my bonnet, lay down and wrapped myself in the blankets. No time to undress properly. Beneath the covers my fingers worked undoing the buttons of my coat.
“We are gallant,” one of the men outside was saying.
“We are gentlemen,” said the other, the slur of his words telling the story of his evening.
“Thank you Mr Jim,” said Lara. “Thank you Lord Billy.”
“Goodnight gentlemen,” said the fortune-teller.
The wagon shifted as the two women moved inside and the door closed once more. But I was already curled up in an imitation of sleep, safe from further questioning. Until the morning.
Chapter 16
For the sickness of exile the only cure is return. But the sickness of the travelling showman, which is in reality the sickness of the wanderer, will admit no cure.
– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook
Lara slept on the upper bunk. In the morning when I woke, I found a second woman, Ellie, feeding split logs into the stove. The two were so alike that I guessed them to be sisters. The fortune-teller was nowhere to be seen. I had little doubt she had stolen out early to whisper her findings in Silvan’s ear.
Happily, Lara and Ellie asked no questions. Rather they bathed me in smiles and seemed to have made the decision that I needed looking after. Lara shaved slices of smoked pork into a pan and soon the wagon was filled with the smell of it. I watched as she added barley and water, cooking up a savoury porridge. While she did this, Ellie was busy clearing out half a shelf of the wagon’s one cupboard for me to store my bag and clothes. “It’s all safe here,” she said. “The jossers won’t come in.”