The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter

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by Rod Duncan


  “It was glass,” I said. “Broken glass. I must have...”

  “But we heard shots.”

  “That was...” I stopped myself before the truth came out. “That was my brother.”

  “Is he safe?”

  “He gave chase,” I said.

  A murmur of approval went around the small crowd who had gathered on the towpath.

  “Good for him,” said the coal boat man. “And good for you also, Elizabeth.”

  “Don’t you Elizabeth her!” scolded his wife. “Get the bandages!”

  At which he hurried off.

  “How do you feel?” she asked

  “I don’t know.” I thought about the broken glass and the smoke and the water damage to my few possessions. More than likely there would be holes in the galley wall from the lead shot. “Angry,” I said at last. “Angry and resolved.”

  Chapter 30

  A good trick may make you rich. But a risky trick will make you famous. If it goes wrong.

  – The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

  When I fled at the age of fourteen, the Duke of Northampton’s men-at-arms in hot pursuit, I thought I was running towards freedom. Wading the river, hungry and half frozen to death, I crossed into the Republic and out of his reach.

  But an exile is never free.

  Always the Kingdom was in my mind – its vivid colours and spontaneity, its people driven more by emotion than logic. Forsaking such things may seem of no significance compared to the life of degradation I had escaped. But I could never escape my yearning for the gaudy exuberance of the place I had left behind.

  It is ironic then, that on the very day I most clearly felt my love for my new home in the Republic, when its careful seemliness had reached out and gathered me in, I should also understand that the Kingdom was about to claim me once more.

  The community of the cut felt more like a family that night than it ever had. They enfolded me in their care and protection. I assured them that my attackers would not return so soon, but they set up a rota all the same, taking turns to watch until the sky paled.

  The coal boatman’s wife washed and bandaged my feet. Then I was put to bed alongside two of her daughters, squeezed in top to toe, our bedroll laid out next to a pot-bellied stove. With my mind full of new understandings, I thought I would stay awake until dawn. But once the candle was snuffed, I quickly fell into a dreamless sleep. When I woke in the morning, the coal boatman’s daughters pressed up for warmth on either side, it was with a calmness and clarity of thought I had not felt since I first met the Duchess of Bletchley.

  The Sleepless Man did not try to hide. Rather, he sat in plain sight some fifty yards distant, a fishing rod resting over his knee, a red and yellow float bobbing on the rippled surface of the canal. He did not turn his head to look, but I knew he watched me. I knew he would not try to take a knife to me in unforgiving daylight. He was gaoler rather than executioner, for the time being. He was a sentry left to police my house arrest. But the moment he saw me try to run, I had no doubt his role would change.

  Therefore, I went about my business unhurried. When the dairyman’s boy rang his bell on the lane, I climbed the path from the cut, swinging a tin jug in my hand, returning with it full a few minutes later. The morning being free of rain, I draped the soaked linen and blankets over Bessie’s roof to dry. One does not lay out washing when preparing an escape.

  Then I was up the path again, observed in everything I did.

  “I shall be going away,” I told Mr Simmonds in a lowered voice.

  “So soon?” said his wife, who stood next to him in the hallway. “You need to recuperate, Elizabeth. Your poor feet must have time to mend. And what of your brother?”

  “He’s out chasing the villains still.”

  She wrung her hands in front of her chest. “So brave. So brave.”

  Such was the transformation in her attitude towards me, I began to think I had missed an opportunity and should have hired actors to stage an assault on Bessie years before.

  “And what of your boat?” Mr Simmonds asked. “She’s not weatherproof. The portholes want for glazing.”

  “Your boathouse is empty,” I said.

  He scratched his head. “Ordinarily I charge...”

  “But you shall not this time, Mr Simmonds,” cut in his wife.

  “You would have my gratitude,” I said.

  “The poor girl has had such a turn of misfortune.”

  “It’s more for Bessie’s safety than for the rain,” I said. “I fear the men who did this might return.”

  This last point seemed to convince Mr Simmonds. “Very well,” he said.

  In the second after they had turned to lead me from the house, I snatched a china dog of which I knew Mrs Simmonds to be particularly fond, and, feeling a twinge of guilt, slipped it into the folds of my coat.

  I watched Mr Simmonds and his man leaning back as they hauled the ropes, guiding my beloved Bessie into the narrow safety of the boathouse. My sodden bedding still lay on the roof. From his place on the canal bank, the Sleepless Man watched also, a slight tension in his posture as the oak doors swung closed.

  “One foot longer and she wouldn’t have fit,” said Mr Simmonds, slotting the lock in place. “She’s a fine boat, though. I saw her that time she ran London to Nottingham. Her paddles churned the water white. Broke the record by almost an hour. Never dreamed she’d be moored in my boathouse! Have you thought to get the engine working? She’d be a sight.”

  “It may be that someone will come looking while I’m gone,” I said. “A man with a credit notice trying to seize her. I’d be glad if you could keep the boathouse locked.”

  It was noon when I finally walked the path to where the Sleepless Man sat fishing. He did not look up until I stopped next to him.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Are you here as warning to drive me away or as a watchman to make sure I stay put?”

  “I’ll kill you if you try to run.”

  “And if I stay?”

  He turned back to stare at his float. The silence grew in the space between us.

  “The fishing is clever,” I said, at last. “Working men respect it. And I can’t prove that you were one of my attackers. Not without telling them things I don’t care to admit.” I crouched down and opened his catch bag to look inside. “Nothing biting?”

  “Where’s your brother hiding?” he asked.

  I closed the bag and stood. “He watches over me.”

  “Keep your nose out of men’s business, little girl,” he said.

  “You’d be surprised what I consider my business!”

  “The kitchen and the bedroom,” he said. “That’s where you belong.”

  I turned and stalked back along the path, past the boathouse and up to the coal barge where I had slept the night before.

  The Sleepless Man did not know he was their target. The coal boatman and his sons approached along the towpath. Five more young men of the cut converged from the other side, each carrying some weapon – staves and axe handles for the most part. Mr Simmonds appeared at the top of the embankment, the musket clutched to his chest. Then the Sleepless Man understood. But too late. He scrambled to his feet but they were on him.

  I hauled my travelling case out of the boathouse and started to make my way up the path away from the cut.

  “You! Stand where you are!” ordered the coal boatman.

  “What’s this about?” came the Sleepless Man’s reply.

  “You sir, are a thief!”

  “You accuse me?”

  The voices grew fainter as I clipped briskly across the courtyard towards the road.

  “Search him boys.”

  “No– I’ve not–. I’ve never seen them before!”

  “Strange fish you’ve been catching!”

  I was too far by then to hear whether the Sleepless Man started to offer an explanation for the presence in his catch bag of the china dog from the Simmonds’ house and a small paint
ed milk jug that had until recently adorned the top of the coal boat. Either way, he was not allowed to finish. He cried out in pain as the beating began.

  A rattling omnibus carried me down Melton Road through the sprawling suburbs of North Leicester. Though a shroud of mist hung low, turning the houses grey, yet I seemed to see every brick in vivid colour. A reluctant Republican I may have been, yet now as I headed towards the border, perhaps never to return, the details were suddenly precious to me.

  My fate, together with that of Mr Orville and Harry Timpson had become inextricably tangled with a mysterious machine. I had seen through too many illusions to give credence to the claims made for it. Yet it had persuaded the great impresario.

  I pondered the question of how a box could draw with light. In my mind I pictured a moth-hole in a curtain, through which the bright sunlight streamed into a smoke filled room. Such an arrangement could make a line to appear suspended in the air. Perhaps Mr Orville’s machine simply captured and reflected the sun. But if so, why did they believe it could unlock the secrets of alchemy? Could light burn into the essence of one element and transmute it into another? Or was this simply part of some greater illusion that Harry Timpson had designed? One final mystery. A grand display to puzzle great minds of the future and give immortality to his name and legend.

  The only things I knew for certain were that Timpson was willing to sacrifice everything on this quest and that he now perceived me as an obstacle. The Sleepless Man had been left to keep me out of mischief’s way until Timpson had the box in his possession. But once he had disposed of Orville and secured his heart’s desire, I would simply be a person who knew too much. To stay on the North Leicester Wharf would be to wait for the spectres of death and financial ruin to battle it out for control of my fate.

  I had never much liked waiting.

  Crossing the border is easy but to do so unseen is impossible, as both sides teem with private intelligence gatherers. The trick is to cross anonymously.

  At the official border post one must present identification and possibly a permit of residence. Lists of comings and goings are drawn up by the border guards on both sides then handed over to the constabulary and the secret services of the two countries, who file them away in warehouses of similar paperwork. Ask to see the lists and you will be told that the information is confidential. Unless you have perfected the art of passing money in a handshake.

  Crossing at Gallowtree Gate would be like sending a pigeon to the Duke of Northampton informing him that I was on my way back to a place within his reach. Therefore I headed for the Leicester Backs, with its warren of illegal crossing points.

  Showing a callous disregard for my reputation, the taxi driver dropped me short of my destination, saying he would not risk his steamcar in that den of iniquity. Thus I was forced to haul my case the last two hundred yards on foot, enduring glances that were by turns accusatory and licentious from the rowdy girls and respectable gentlemen.

  Not all crossing points are equal. Some emerge in alleyways so dark and overhung by roofs on either side, that robbery or worse is likely. Some are controlled by fierce gangs. Others are too safe in that they pass behind police houses. Whichever route you choose, payment is required – though different amounts.

  I had selected the Odeon Passageway for my crossing. Not the cheapest route, but one of superior quality according to those who knew. It exited the Republic via the back of a tattoo artist’s parlour on Cank Street. Not the sort of shop a lady should frequent according to Republican morals. But I was walking though The Backs anyway and thought I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

  I pushed the door, setting a bell jingling and stepped into the small shop, a corner of which had been cordoned off with a carved screen. Framed designs lined the walls – predatory animals, palm trees, crosses, stars and national flags. The pungent, sweet smell in the air I recognised as opium smoke.

  I coughed politely and the proprietor ducked his head out from behind the screen. His eyes flicked from my bonnet to my travelling case. I held out two silver tenpences. His eyes flicked to a pot on the counter. I nodded and dropped the money into it. When I looked back, he had already disappeared behind the screen once more.

  Though he worked with ink and needle, I had heard it said that this was his highest art-form – looking the other way. For a pound he could be blind to a gang of porters sweating under a weight of cloth or china or any other commodity that he never saw. And so skilled was he in his work that a whole regiment might pass unheard should sufficient funds be found.

  I picked up my case and started making my way towards the rear of the parlour. Glancing behind the screen, I saw a bare-chested man lying on a couch. The proprietor was wiping a patch of blood and ink from above his breast.

  A doorway led through into a small kitchen from which I exited the building into a yard of greasy flagstones. From there I followed a narrow passageway, at the head of which was a door with a hole where the handle should have been. It swung open to reveal a second courtyard, this one stacked with barrels and crates of empty bottles. The smell of stale beer hung in the air.

  With every step I found myself wondering if I had crossed yet. But no line marked the border on the ground as it did on the map.

  Sunlight shone through from a passageway ahead. Hurrying now, I rushed towards it and emerged, blinking onto a bustling South Leicester street.

  Chapter 31

  Though you live and travel all the years of your life in the gap between that which is known and that which is not known, yet you will have explored but a fraction of that vast land.

  – The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

  Returning home should not be bewildering. It should fill you with peace and a sense that everything is in its proper place. It should be the smell of baking bread or the sight of sunlight through lace curtains.

  Carriages and pedestrians in the Kingdom are supposed to keep to the left. In the Republic it is the other way around. Making this small adjustment might seem easy, but there is a deeper difference. Good Republicans follow rules meticulously. But Royalists are meanderers – whether they be walking, driving or paying their taxes. On the roads and pavements they sometimes pass to the left and sometimes to the right. I bumped shoulders with a young woman, elbowed an elderly man and collided full on with a boy. By the time I was making my fifth apology, my initial elation at crossing the border had begun to chill.

  The streets were busier than I remembered them. I wanted to step out of the jostle for a few minutes, to sit quietly and get used to all the newness. I also wanted a chance to watch for anyone who might have been following. There were coffee houses here, any of which would have served my purpose. There were even bars which I could enter without causing a scandal. Here women could drink alongside men in a public house without an eyebrow being raised.

  But before any of that, I needed money.

  Dressed in an ankle-covering skirt of subdued purple and a charcoal grey coat, hauling a case and now asking directions to the money changer, I could not have looked more like a tourist. Though I had seen across the border from behind the customs barrier in Gallowtree Gate, I had never set foot in the other half of the divided city. From the safe side of the border things had not looked so very different. The cultural mixing across this most permeable of national boundaries made sure of that. But now it felt as if I had passed through Alice’s looking glass. All the things I could not see from the other side were altered and strange.

  I progressed up Granby Street wide-eyed, eventually finding the Midland Money Exchange, a grand red-brick building fronted by a set of low steps. Trying my best to move around obstacles rather than cut a straight Republican line, I wove through the crowd that jostled in the entranceway.

  Just inside the door, I paused to rest my travelling case on the floor. It was an act that would have caused confusion and collisions at a busy junction in the Republic. Here, people simply moved around me as river water flows past a rock. />
  Two great sandstone pillars lay ahead, and beyond them, the huge expanse of the trading floor, which seemed more like a hive of bees than a room of people. Light flooded down from windows in the cavernous roof onto knots of men standing in inward-looking groups. Everyone seemed to be talking at once. Those in the centre of each circle wore colourful bowler hats. I saw greens, browns, reds and even a soft pink. These men gesticulated wildly with slips of paper clutched in their hands, calling out numbers. Their shouts mixed, becoming a dizzying cacophony. A few feet back stood men in high top hats, who seemed disinterested by comparison. There were a few women here also, but these stood waiting around the edge of the trading floor.

  Making my way between the columns, I skirted the room and took up position next to one of the women. She wore the same jewel-green colour that the Duchess had been dressed in when we first met. Her red and black striped stockings were visible to the calf.

  “The trade’s full steam today,” she said.

  “What do I do?” I asked.

  She turned to look at me properly. “You’ll be a Republican then?”

  I shook my head. “But I’ve been away. I need to change money.”

  “You surely talk like a Republican. And will you look at that skirt!”

  “I’ll be changing clothes very soon.”

  “Well, the world’s ever yours if you’ve money to spend.”

  She took my arm and waved towards a knot of men on the trading floor. The intimacy of her touch took me aback. It was something that would only have passed between close friends in the Republic. Moments later, a trader wearing a russet bowler hat had spotted us and was hurrying over.

  “She’s from the Republic,” explained my new friend.

  I emptied my purse onto his hand. After picking up one of the coins and examining it in close detail, he did a quick count.

  “I can do you a one to five exchange, Kingdom for Republic on a half hour turn.”

 

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