by Rod Duncan
Chapter 26
As a bullet can be removed through a barrel breach, so can one be added. Therefore, never trust anything or anyone, or even your own self when a gun is pointing at your head.
– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook
In the sudden dark and enclosure of my hiding place, three discomforts crowded in on me – the dizzying smell of camphor, the steadily increasing pain in my palm where the window glass had cut and the fact that every lurch of the wagon now sent the angles of my tightly folded body into hard contact with the walls of the crate.
I had embarked on my course of action without any clear view of an ending. Like a hunted animal, I had bolted into the nearest hiding place. Fear had driven me, not reason. But in the stillness after the chase, my mind continued to run.
The broken window. My bloody handprints. The locked door. The bars. The chain lying on the track behind us, waiting to be discovered should Silvan turn the wagon around and head back towards the pitch.
We lurched into another left turn. The back of my neck pressed hard on the wood panel behind. Three deep ruts bounced me against the floor. Then the wagon rolled to a stop. For a moment, the silence was abrupt and intense. Then the wagon swayed again as the driver jumped down, his boot falls just audible from where I lay.
A second silence followed, lengthening, becoming unbearable. I was acutely aware of the rapid and heavy beating of my heart. I tried to breathe deeply to calm myself, but with my knees pressed up to my chest it was impossible.
The lock clicked. The door opened. I felt the movement of the wagon as he climbed up. I could feel his footsteps through the wooden floor. A drop of sweat ran across my forehead. Silence again. My heart was beating with such frantic energy it seemed the crate must be vibrating in response.
Boxes were being shifted. He was searching. Slowly at first, but with increasing violence. The lid of the crate pulled away and light flooded in, filtering between the mass of ropes above me. A shadow passed over the box. Then with a crash that left my ears ringing, the lid slammed back down. His footsteps moved away. The wagon lurched as he jumped from it.
All this time I had believed the man to be Silvan. But now I knew it for sure. He cried out in anger and frustration, using such curses as I cannot repeat.
The swearing stopped as abruptly as it had started.
“Boy!” he shouted.
There was an answer, too distant to make out.
“Has she been found?”
This time the answer was closer. “Don’t know, sir.” Tinker’s voice.
“Why did you follow me?”
“Wanted to see.”
“Hell and damnation! Unhitch the horse. Quick now! She broke the window back on the lane. Can’t have got far.”
“No, sir,” said Tinker.
“Stay here!”
I was out of the crate before the hoof falls had faded, jumping from the wagon in time to see Silvan spurring the horse away down the track. On seeing me, Tinker opened and closed his mouth like a beached fish. In half a minute Silvan would find the chain. It would take him perhaps fifteen seconds to understand its meaning. Then he’d be back up the lane at a gallop. I might have one minute before he came within sight of the place I was standing.
Why was there never time?
I grabbed Tinker’s shoulders and looked straight into his eyes. “Tell him I jumped you from behind.”
“But...”
“Tell him I ran into the woods. That way.” I pointed to the right of the track.
“Yes, miss.”
I pushed the boy back, lowering him to the ground. At first he struggled, then submitted as I rolled him in the mud. “I’m sorry,” I said, pressing his head, so his cheek scraped across the stones. “First he won’t believe you. But keep saying it.”
“He’ll catch you,” said Tinker.
“Maybe so,” I said, dropping to the ground next to the rear wheel.
From the holes in the floor, I’d known a belly box must have hung between the axles. Now, looking from the outside, I saw that the place it would have been was hidden from view by planks running the length of each side of the wagon. I rolled underneath and looked up. Sure enough, the six anchor points above me were arranged symmetrically within a discoloured rectangle – the missing box’s shadow.
I could hear the returning hoofbeats. Damn but Silvan was quick. I wedged my fingers in a crack in one of the side planks. Placing first one foot and then the other against the opposite plank, I lifted myself into position, tightly braced, muscles trembling from the strain.
Silvan’s horse thundered to a stop. I felt the thud of his feet landing. He stood not a pace from my head.
“She’s gone that way,” called Tinker
“What happened?”
“She hit me,” said the boy.
“Cretin child!”
There was a smack of flesh on flesh and Tinker stumbled back, landing heavily next to the wheel.
“Run – back to the gaff. The track through the woods. Tell the boys to ride out. Cut her off.” As he spoke, Silvan was harnessing the horse to the wagon once more.
My muscles screamed at me, telling me to drop, sending lances of pain through my arms and legs. Then the wagon was moving, making a turn in the track. Tinker scrambled to get out of the way.
“Run, boy!” Silvan shouted.
My arms gave way and I dropped, but the noise of my fall was covered by the rumble of the iron wheel rims which were picking up speed. As the wagon lurched away along the track, I caught a glimpse of Silvan standing, reins in one hand, whip in the other.
Tinker scrambled to his feet.
“Go,” I hissed. “And don’t look back at me.”
I waited until the sound of the boy crashing away through the undergrowth had faded to nothing, then emptied the contents of my bag onto the track and began to change my appearance. On a good day, I could have completed the transformation within a minute. This was not a good day. The lining of my jacket would not open cleanly and I found myself ripping the cloth rather than the stitches. I dropped the small pot of glue, contaminating it with grit and mud.
At last I held my hands out in front of me and saw that they shook. The harder I tried to steady them the stronger the tremor became. And worse, when I came to apply pigment to darken my complexion where hair would be applied, I found my cheeks wet with tears.
I began to gasp with sobs, my shoulders heaving. Yet I could feel no sadness. It was as if I was looking in on the grief of another person. Someone standing a great distance away.
“Hysteria.” I spoke the word aloud, as if the naming it might help me to gain power over my condition. “Ignore it for now.”
And somehow, that is what I did.
Thus, ten minutes later, the tears on my face having dried, but my eyes still feeling puffy and sore, I set off with the gait and guise of a young man. Knowing I would meet my pursuers anyhow, I chose to head back towards the Laboratory of Arcane Wonders. When our paths crossed, I hoped they would be in such hot pursuit as to speed past without a word.
As if from a distance, I observed myself striding along the centre of the track, swinging my arms, my chin raised a fraction of a degree, imitating that careless attitude which comes so easily to men. Yet I knew the disguise would not work. Not today. The sunlight shone too brightly on my face for it to withstand close inspection. Clothes which would have blended in during a nocturnal excursion in the city felt conspicuously out of place in the countryside. And my eyes, fresh from weeping, were sure to be red.
Silvan had left the chain where it lay. I walked next to it, surprised by its length, passing the end just before the track emptied onto a wider lane. I turned right, recognising a familiar copse of trees in the sculpture of the landscape ahead, knowing the field that had been my home for the last week must be close.
It was on hearing the approaching gallop of hoof falls that my strange disassociated state collapsed like a telescope. In one breath I had crashed bac
k into myself. No longer did the dangers seem distant. The overwhelming urge to run washed through me. I must flee into the woods or back along the track the way I had come.
But it would not do. Straightening myself, I stepped to the side of the lane, making space for the approaching rider to pass. It was the Dutchman, his forked beard pressed back by the wind as he spurred his horse towards me. I forced my head up and looked him square in the face. On seeing me he slowed. The horse had not yet worked up a sweat. I raised a hand to my hat brim. He mirrored the gesture then kicked in his heels and the beast leapt forward once more, passing me in a heartbeat.
I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. The horse may not have been sweating, but I was. A drop ran from my forehead into the corner of my eye, the salt of it stinging.
Another sound was approaching – running footsteps. Lighter than a man’s. I had already guessed it to be Tinker before he came into view. On seeing me, his run became a walk, his expression cautious. He began to frown as the distance between us closed. I did not slow as we passed, but he stopped, turned and fell into step beside me.
“Good day,” I said, in my deepest, most masculine voice.
“Miss Elizabeth,” he said, “I know it’s you.”
Chapter 27
To separate the trick from the illusion is the very centre of the bullet catcher’s art.
– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook
Within the span of a month, two people had discovered the secret of my double identity. First it was the Duchess of Bletchley and now this boy – a horse minder in a travelling show. But whereas the Duchess had caught sight of me changing, Tinker had seen through the disguise.
He walked with me. And when we came upon other members of the troop out searching, he told them he had been paid a penny to guide this young gentleman to the Lincoln Road. They swallowed the story and hurried on past without a second look. It happened twice. Each time, I felt a pang. In the few days I had lived among them, I’d come to feel as if I belonged. Now none of them would own me as a friend.
When at last we reached the junction where Joe had dropped me off, I began to breathe more easily. Tinker watched as I reversed the transformation, shaking out my dark hair, turning the long coat inside out, removing whiskers from my face and wiping away the makeup. The top hat, he found especially fascinating, making me change it into a bag and then letting it spring back several times. Had his hands been cleaner, I would have allowed him to try it for himself.
“I won’t tell,” he said, unasked.
“Thank you.”
“Can keep a secret.”
“I know. You’re a good boy, Tinker.”
He squirmed in his shoes for a moment, then asked, “Why d’you want to find Mr Orville?”
“I’m searching on behalf of one who loves him. She’s afraid for his life.”
“Does Mr Orville love her back?”
“I...” The question had not occurred to me before. “I imagine he does.”
“Then why don’t he find her?”
“He’s running with the machine. Running from the Patent Office.”
Tinker scratched a line in the mud with the toe of his shoe, a deep frown on his young forehead. “He didn’t know ‘bout you, when he told me not to tell.”
“No,” I said.
“I suppose...”
He wavered, on the brink it seemed, ready to fall one way or the other.
“If you don’t tell me where Mr Orville has gone, I’ll have failed. There’re no more clues to be had. I can’t ever go back to Harry Timpson. He wouldn’t let me escape a second time. But if you do tell me – and if I manage to find him – it’ll be him that chooses the path. If he wants to run once more, I won’t stop him.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Tinker nodded solemnly. “Mr Orville crossed south,” he said.
I stood frozen. “South...”
“Yes miss. London town.”
At that moment I knew my quest was over. The one place I could not go was the only place where my freedom could be regained. It was an impossible paradox. For this, I had played dice with the hangmen of the Patent Office. For the dream of returning home, I’d frittered away days which could have been spent earning money for my payment on Bessie.
The only sensation I could feel was a yawning hollow somewhere deep within me.
“Where in London?” I asked, my voice flat.
He shrugged. “Ever been there Miss?”
“When I was a child.”
“Will you take me there?”
“I can’t,” I said. “And even if I could, we’d never find Mr Orville among all those millions.”
“Don’t know where he’s gone,” said Tinker. “But I do know why. Said he needs to make the box work. So he’s getting help from a Jew.”
Tinker’s words were the cruellest twist, for they made perfect sense to me. Orville must have run to Spitalfields, home to a colony of Jewish scientists and doctors. I now had all the information I needed to find him. But it could never be.
Tinker didn’t want to leave me, but I sent him back with a penny clutched in his hand as proof he’d been helping a young man find his way. Then I waited, ready to jump behind the low wall at the edge of the lane should anyone approach. But no one did.
The spot proved so remote that no traffic passed in all the time I waited. It was so quiet that when dusk eventually fell, I could hear the sound of the approaching steamcar long before it came into view. I’d had no fear that Joe would renege on the deal we’d made, to drive past that spot every evening at dusk for ten days, his heavy stick by his side in case of trouble.
I stepped out from the shadow as he drew close and was up into the back with the door closed behind me before the car had properly stopped.
“Glad to see you, miss,” he said.
He spun the wheel, setting the steamcar around in a tight circle and off back the way he had come. I heard a clank and noticed for the first time a large, black blunderbuss propped next to him, which had shifted as we turned, coming to rest against the door.
“Best be prepared,” he said, seeing the direction of my gaze. “Can’t be too careful with circus types about.”
“They’re not all a bad sort,” I said.
“Tell that to the constables! Been more houses burgled and more since that lot turned up than ever was before.”
“Burglary?”
“A plague of it.”
“And did the burglars steal jewellery?”
“With a passion, miss.”
And there it was, like all illusions, trivially simple once I knew where to look. How could Timpson pretend to create gold and then afford to sell it at half its market value? Because he was merely selling back to the local population what his men had recently stolen from them. In spite of the bleak future that lay ahead of me, I found myself laughing.
Chapter 28
Some see only what they hope to see. Others see only what they fear. Few see that which is before their eyes.
– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook
Julia Swain ran the last fifty yards of the towpath and engulfed me in a fierce hug. At first she could not speak. I tried to hold her at arm’s length to read her face, but she pulled me to her again, the hoops of her skirt being pushed out behind.
“Did they find you,” she gasped.
“They? Who?”
“A man came looking. He... he said he was from a solicitor. A will being read... Your uncle’s... And you to gain. Father only wished to help...”
I pulled away again and looked into her eyes. “You must breathe. In slowly. Out slowly. Just so.”
“Father told him too much. Where you were. Your brother’s work. Everything. When I told father that you have no uncle... Oh Elizabeth, is there damage done? I fear we’ve been tricked. My father...”
Tears were brimming in her eyes.
“Your father is trusting. It’s a virtue. And his goodness has com
e down to you. So please don’t fret. The man who came would’ve spoken to many. And had the same story from others before he believed any of it.”
“But what of your dear brother? I’ve not rested since.”
“My brother is safe as I am.”
“I must run to the house with your news.”
“Indeed they can wait a few minutes longer.”
I had cleared the mess already, the shattered pieces of the cabin door lock, the scattered cutlery and books. I had refolded and stored away my clothes. Where the Patent Office agents had replaced everything they moved, the Sleepless Man seemed to have taken pleasure in the chaos he left in his wake as he searched my home. Yet after the ordeals of my previous week, the destruction seemed of little consequence.
I chose not to tell my student the full extent of the damage. She led a sheltered life, with a maid to cook and shop for her. I doubted she knew the cost of the Russian tea we drank together or the difficulty of obtaining it in the Republic. With what painstaking care I’d swept the scattered leaves up from the floor where the Sleepless Man had emptied them, gathering all I could salvage onto a sheet of paper before tipping it back into the caddy. Being squeamish about such things, Julia would not have understood.
The kettle boiled quickly, being already hot. Soon we were seated knee to knee at the small table. Low sunlight shone through the porthole catching the threads of steam that rose as I poured. I breathed in the smoky aroma from the tea.
Julia’s cheeks had been pale and blotchy when I met her on the towpath. Her rosy complexion was returning slowly. I regarded her over the brim of my cup. Her knowledge of crime had shifted unexpectedly from the theoretical to the practical. It was a difficult transition.
“Who was he?” she asked.
“I don’t know his name, but he works for Harry Timpson.”
“The showman?”
“The very same. That’s where I’ve been all these days, working as a hired hand in the Laboratory of Arcane Wonders.”
Julia’s mouth dropped open. I usually took pleasure in shocking her, but this revelation was deadly serious.