The Robber Girl

by Franny Billingsley

  The Judge laughed and said he wished he could have been a fly on the wall.

  He always said such strange things.

  “I have to talk to Gentleman Jack,” I told Mrs. del Salto. “I want to tell him I can read.” Maybe then he wouldn’t say I was dull.

  “When you’re better,” she said.

  “I have to talk to Gentleman Jack,” I told the Judge. “I want to tell him I can read.”

  “When you’re better,” he said.

  “But Gentleman Jack will be mad if I wait too long.” And once I’d said that, a thought floated from my undermind to my over-and-above mind. That was really the reason I wanted to see him: I didn’t want him to get mad.

  “He already knows you’ve been ill,” said the Judge. “He already knows you can’t visit him.”

  That was just like the Judge. To tell Gentleman Jack I’d been ill before I’d even thought of it myself.

  I believed the Judge more than I believed Mrs. del Salto. He’d kept his promise to Magda to build her a dollhouse, even though she was dead. That was the kind of person he was. He’d keep his promise.

  Every evening the Judge asked me about what I’d read. I told him about bears that turned into men and huts that ran around on chicken legs. I told him I’d found the number three in almost every story—three tasks, three sisters, three talismans—which made me wonder if the dolls were right about three being the proper number of tasks. Not that I said this to the Judge, of course.

  “No!” said the dagger. “Two is the right number. Grandmother’s number of tasks is the right number.”

  “Three is an exceptional number,” said the Judge. “A triangle, with its three sides, is the strongest shape there is.”

  The Judge was very smart. He knew all about numbers. He knew about the number zero. He knew about the number three.

  We were silent a moment while I thought about this, then the Judge said, “It’s a wonderful thing, reading. Just think of our brains. They weigh only a few pounds, but when you read, they’re as big as the whole universe.”

  There was the Judge, at it again, making small objects like your brain look big, so you could understand them. And making big objects like the universe look small, so you could understand them.

  “I’m better now,” I said. “I need to see Gentleman Jack.”

  “Not until the trial,” said the Judge. “We’re transferring him to Buffalo Bend.”

  Now that I had been to school, I knew more about Buffalo Bend. I’d known it was the capital city of the Territories. I’d known it was where they took the gold. Now I knew it was where they sent people to be hanged.

  “But you said I could see him when I was better.” The Judge and Mrs. del Salto exchanged glances. They had forgotten. It was not like the Judge to forget.

  The Judge said he was sorry but it was quite impossible to see Gentleman Jack. “He won’t get angry,” he said. “He knows you’ve been ill.”

  The dinner table turned slightly unreal. The lamps sucked in their breath. The steam rising from the stew stood still. The Judge’s lips opened and shut, opened and shut. Funny how naked they looked inside his black whiskers.

  The Federal Marshals were coming to get Gentleman Jack. They were going to put him on a stagecoach on April twenty-sixth and drive him away to stand trial in Buffalo Bend.

  April twenty-sixth was four days away. It was also to be my first day back at school.

  “But you promised,” I said.

  May sixth was the new Day Zero. The last Day Zero.

  “I’m so sorry,” said the Judge. How funny mouths were, two pink worms, squiggling and talking and eating, opening and closing and eating and squiggling.

  “You kept your promise to make a dollhouse for Magda,” I said. “Even though she died.”

  The flames held their breath. When you don’t breathe, you grow pale. The flames grew pale.

  Mrs. del Salto laid her fork on her plate. “You’re picking at your thumb,” she said. “You haven’t done that for a long time.”

  I glanced at my thumb, which had sealed itself up without letting me know. It was such a strange stump of a thing, all whorls on one side and ridges and folds on the other. Maybe I’d never looked at it before.

  But I picked at it; I was good at picking my thumb. I found a loose end of skin. Now I could make it bleed.

  The Judge said that Gentleman Jack had to stand trial outside the Indigo Heart. It was the law, said the Judge, because of where Gentleman Jack was supposed to have killed Marshal Starling.

  Gentleman Jack, leaving the Indigo Heart? I could not seem to understand this. The steam hung motionless. The flames were pale.

  “You’ll go, too, of course,” said the Judge. “So you can testify at his trial.”

  “In the carriage, with Gentleman Jack?”

  But the Judge said that he and I would go in the del Saltos’ carriage. He said the stagecoach would be too full of Federal Marshals, plus the Sheriff, so Gentleman Jack couldn’t escape.

  Gentleman Jack—escape? There, that was something to think about. That was real. Escape. The word made the world real again. The flames started breathing. The candlesticks reflected them with their round brass cheeks. The steam went back to rising.

  “Escape!” said the dagger.

  “Escape!” I said.

  I walked about the cottage. Walking helped me think. I passed through the library. The Judge was sitting in his armchair, as he often did after dinner. I didn’t look at the desk, just the way I always didn’t look at the desk, in case it made me steal the inkwell and the coins. But Paloma was supposed to keep people from stealing things. Would she protect me from my own self?

  Escape! It was funny to think the word Escape so loudly and clearly with the Judge sitting right there. But he couldn’t read my thoughts, not like the dagger. He couldn’t know I was making a plan. He couldn’t know I realized Rough Ricky could help Gentleman Jack escape. That Rough Ricky could hold up the stagecoach, and this time he wouldn’t be stealing gold. He’d be stealing Gentleman Jack.

  “Gentleman Jack is more valuable than gold,” said the dagger.

  It was a little like deciding whether to hurt someone or to kill someone. Hurting gets you into less trouble, but killing is more sure. Helping Gentleman Jack escape would get me into more trouble than lying at his trial, but helping him escape was more sure.

  With Gentleman Jack I had to be more sure. I remembered thinking that when I helped Gentleman Jack escape, I’d be giving him back to himself. It would be my gift to him. A wonderful gift he’d get on April twenty-second.

  I could forget about the dolls and the last task and the trial. What a relief to know what to do. What a relief the Judge had forgotten his promise. He’d betrayed me; I’d betray him.

  My thumb was bleeding again. I licked it clean. I licked up the iron in the blood. Now I could be strong and cold.

  The moon was still almost full. It shone off the star steps and the roof of the Shrine. The moonlight was kind to shadows, stretching them on the ground, crisp and clear. But there’d only be a half moon on April twenty-sixth, which was good. That meant it would be a lot darker on the night Gentleman Jack was to escape. It’s harder to find someone in the dark.

  I took the street parallel to Main Street, so I wouldn’t risk running into anyone who knew the Judge or Mrs. del Salto. I neared the garden in which the two blue roses had been blooming when I’d last run down this street. In the garden was a swing, and in the swing was a woman with a baby in the crook of each arm. There! I saw the letter W in action. The letter W was in the word Swing, and the letter W was the swingiest of all the letters. I couldn’t think of anything swingier than swinging babies to sleep.

  I was glad when the woman wished me good evening; I could ask her about the babies and the roses.

  Had she wished for the babies?

  She had, although she hadn’t specified two.

  “I saw the blue roses in your garden,” I said, “on .
. .” I thought about the date. “On March seventh.”

  “My stars!” said the woman. “That was just when they were born.”

  “Did you thank the Blue Rose?”

  The woman said you bet she did, on the Feast of the Blue Rose. And that also, every time the bells rang, she sang the song of praise extra loudly. “I know it’s not like having a Songbird,” she said, “but I hope my words of praise reach the Blue Rose.”

  I said I was sure she would—because, suddenly, I was sure. I had a good feeling about the Blue Rose. And then I was off to meet Rough Ricky.

  I wished I felt wild. But I hadn’t been outdoors since I’d fallen ill. I wished I felt the iron course through my blood, cold and strong. But I was stumbling. I had to stop to catch my breath and organize my feet.

  Here, on Main Street, the roofs covered the sidewalks, and the pillars held up the roofs, and the metal basins fixed to the pillars leapt with fire. There the shadows lost their edges. The firelight caught at the shadows of passing people, smudging them like charcoal.

  I turned off Main Street and went down 3 Street, down the skitter of stairs that led to the river. I passed the tar-and-spit houses, the oil-paper windows. Everything was paper down here, oil paper, tar paper. The moon glistened off the moisture on the stairs.

  Down and down. I heard the rush of the river; I heard the rustling of the willows and their papery sighs; I heard a faint whistling that fit into the spaces in my brain that I’d kept empty, on purpose. It was the cattle boy’s song, and here was the cattle boy, although he wasn’t herding cattle because it was night. He was whistling the same song as before.

  There was enough moonlight for us to see each other. We stopped, the cattle boy touched the brim of his cap. “Evening,” he said.

  I said Evening back, and then, “Can you tell me the words of that song?”

  Not only could he tell me, he could sing them. He sang the notes clearly; he said the words clearly.

  “My mother dear will unto me

  Fetch milk and honeycomb.

  My father dear will for us three

  Build our enduring home.”

  I’d been right. The words Mother and Father fit into the sad spaces of the song. And so did the words Milk and Honey, except that the word that fit the rhyme was Honeycomb. But you could slurp honey off honeycomb. They were kind of the same thing. This was the song I’d recognized when I’d first met Rough Ricky by the river. This was the song I’d recognized, I’d recognized it in the way crocuses recognize the sun.

  The cattle boy went on his way, and at the very next turn of the river, there was Rough Ricky, waiting.

  He spoke to me so I could speak to him. I sat beside the fire and told him about the stagecoach. Rough Ricky was quiet for a while. Then he said that the Federal Marshals were going to construct the stagecoach very carefully so Gentleman Jack couldn’t escape.

  Rough Ricky told me about another man who’d been transferred to the jail in Buffalo Bend. This other man was like Gentleman Jack, quick and tricky, with a history of escaping, so the Federal Marshals took great care in the construction of his coach. They’d do the same with Gentleman Jack’s coach.

  “Here’s what they’ll do,” said Rough Ricky. “The blacksmith will bolt a sheet of metal to the floor of the stagecoach. He’ll rivet leg irons and a chain to the metal plate. The chain will run from Gentleman Jack’s handcuffs, through the leg irons, to the metal plate.”

  The Judge hadn’t told me about any of that.

  “He doesn’t trust you,” said the dagger.

  I didn’t trust him, either. He had broken his promise, and now I saw that maybe he had lied, just a little, about the reason I couldn’t go on the stagecoach. It wasn’t only that the stage was too full. It was also because he didn’t want me to know about the sheet of metal and the leg irons and the handcuffs and the chain.

  “You can’t lie just a little,” said the dagger.

  It was hard to imagine Gentleman Jack with irons on his wrists and ankles. Not Gentleman Jack, with his frills and ruby earring and primrose gloves.

  Rough Ricky said I did just right to tell him. He said they’d rescue Gentleman Jack from the stagecoach. “We’ll bring crowbars and metal saws and chisels,” he said. Those were all tools to break metal.

  I wanted to carry a crowbar. I wanted to break metal. But Rough Ricky said I couldn’t ride with him and the others. “If you disappear on the very day Gentleman Jack is due to be transferred, that Judge of yours might suspect something.”

  But the Judge wasn’t my judge.

  Rough Ricky said that if I went missing, the Judge would sound an alarm, and they’d change their plans about how and when to transport Gentleman Jack, and this time the Judge wouldn’t tell me about the new plans.

  “First,” said Rough Ricky, “leave your coat here, by this willow. It’s warm in Blue Roses but it will be cold in Netherby Scar. You won’t have so much to carry. You can get it when we meet on Friday.” Friday was April twenty-sixth. “Right here, no later than five o’clock.”

  “Don’t you need gold to help you stop the stagecoach?” But Rough Ricky said that stopping a stagecoach wasn’t a tricky thing, not like getting Gentleman Jack out of jail with no one catching them and no one dead. He said that he and the few other Gentlemen who remained could rescue Gentleman Jack.

  In four days, I’d creep down the indigo tree and meet Rough Ricky by the Jordan. Finally I had something to do.

  “Finally!” said the dagger.

  “No later than five o’clock,” said Rough Ricky.

  IT WAS MY FIRST DAY BACK AT SCHOOL. It was April twenty-sixth. It was my last day back at school. It was April twenty-sixth. It was a day of knowing things the other children didn’t know. I knew that today Rough Ricky and the remaining Gentlemen would ride out with saws and chisels and crowbars. I knew that today they’d free Gentleman Jack. I knew that today I’d meet Rough Ricky at five o’clock sharp.

  I had everything I needed. I couldn’t put anything in a suitcase. All I had were my pockets. Gentleman Jack’s face was already packed. It was folded into quarters. My coat was waiting for me on the banks of the Jordan.

  And I knew one more thing. I knew that today I’d read aloud and that I would discomfit Mrs. Elton.

  The dolls were seated in the parlor. Their china heads jerked up. Their lips couldn’t smile, but their voices were filled with smiles.

  “Starling!” said the mother doll.

  “Starling!” said the father doll. “We long for our baby.”

  “We long to see him learn to walk,” said the mother doll.

  “Holding on to Oakheart’s collar,” said the father doll.

  Would their hearts break if I didn’t bring the baby? I’d told them I’d bring the baby, but I hadn’t meant it. It had been a piecrust promise, just to keep them quiet.

  “I have to leave tonight,” I said. “I can’t get the baby.”

  “You can’t leave!” said the mother doll.

  “You can’t leave without bringing us our baby,” said the father doll.

  “I can leave,” I said. The dolls didn’t care about me. They only cared about the baby. “I will leave.” All the magnets in the world couldn’t stop me.

  “But you promised,” said the mother doll.

  I’d promised, but that was just to make them happy.

  “You can’t break a promise,” said the father doll.

  Yes, I could. People broke promises all the time. But I tried to explain. I explained about Gentleman Jack and how the Gentlemen would stop the stagecoach, and how stopping the stagecoach was more sure than going to trial.

  “The Indigo Heart will bring you back,” said the mother doll.

  She was wrong. I was no starling to swoop and twist in their dance. I only swooped in Gentleman Jack’s dance.

  The dolls clicked their eyes shut. It shouldn’t work that way. Their eyes should only click shut when they lay down.

  “I only care about
Gentleman Jack,” I said.

  The dolls said nothing. Their eyes were closed. I laid the back of my forefinger against the mother doll’s cheek. It was cold, but she was always cold. She was made of china.

  Your heart can break when you’re made of china. Were they dead? Did you die when your heart was broken?

  I laid them down. Their eyes stayed closed.

  I pushed their eyelids open. But their eyes weren’t alive. They had dead glass eyes. There would be no opals that could match their eyes.

  “Talk to me!” I said. “I brought you a dog and a collar.”

  The dolls said nothing.

  “And a clock and a mirror and a tablecloth and a key,” I said. “You didn’t even ask for them.”

  The dolls said nothing. The dolls were dead. Maybe it was the Judge who’d made them come alive by keeping his promise to build the dollhouse, even though Magda had died. Maybe the dolls were dead because I’d made them a piecrust promise.

  The Judge was going to walk me to school, just as he’d done on the first day. How long ago that had been! It was even longer ago that I’d first seen him open the drawer in the little table in the foyer and lay his key on the green felt. And now I had a key. It was shinier than his, but the important bits were the same—the sticking-out bits that jaggled down the side, those were the ones that opened the lock.

  We stepped out the cottage door. I now knew the sunflower carpet wasn’t really a carpet; it was a doormat. I knew that the letters on it spelled WELCOME. And for the first time, I thought maybe it was facing the wrong way. The word WELCOME was right side up when you were leaving the cottage, but upside down when you approached. You didn’t need a WELCOME sign when you were leaving. That would be ironic.

  It was funny how everything was the same. Only I was different. The star steps still rose up to the Shrine; the Shrine still rose into the clouds. The banister down to Blue Roses was the same unsteady character. The bridge was familiar, as was Main Street, as was the black skeleton of the house, as were the grave markers, three of stone, one of wood.