The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter (11 page)

The evening air smelled of damp earth and decaying leaves. A factory steam whistle sounded in the distance. Some poor workers’ shift had ended. To start one’s labours before dawn and return home after the sun had set was not a life I wished to contemplate. My frugal existence amid the peace of the cut would seem as luxury to the uncounted masses who laboured in the mills of North and South Leicester.

Loose chippings of gravel crackled under my boots as I stepped to the door which, on my knocking, was opened by Mrs Simmonds. She beamed, taking my gloved hand and attempting to pull me into the brightly lit hallway.

“Such a pleasure,” she said. “So unexpected.”

“I should not,” I said, letting the words resonate in my chest, keeping the pitch low. “I have a cold. You wouldn’t want to catch it.”

“Nonsense.” She pulled again, but I slipped her grasp and dipped into my pocket for the coins.

Her husband stepped into the hallway behind her, receipt book and pencil in hand. Where his wife’s sharp movements suggested a heron on the hunt for small animals, he put me in mind of a sleepy toad, an impression heightened by the magnifying lenses of his spectacles. I passed him the money, which he accepted with a slow nod.

“My dear,” he said to his wife, “I believe we should respect Mr Barnabus’s wish.”

“But I want him to meet our guest.”

“Nevertheless–”

“He would be enchanted to meet her. And her him.”

Mr Simmonds slipped a sheet of carbon paper between the pages and wrote out a receipt in blocky, deliberate letters. “Thanking you kindly,” he said.

His wife muttered something under her breath, then stepped back into the house. A moment later she had returned, leading her guest by the hand.

“Mr Barnabus, I have the honour of introducing you to Miss Julia Swain. Miss Swain, may I introduce Mr Edwin Barnabus.”

Julia curtsied, her eyes averted from mine. In the light of the hall, I could see she was blushing. “I was just leaving,” she said.

Mrs Simmonds smiled with the satisfaction of one whose plan has just come to fruition. “Then you must walk her home, Mr Barnabus. It isn’t safe for a young lady to be out at this time of night.”

“It wouldn’t be proper,” I said.

“Then I shall accompany you as chaperone.”

Shoulder to shoulder, I would have stood two inches taller than Julia Swain, but the boots I wore had been made to include lifts. Thus I found myself looking down on her from an unaccustomed angle as we walked the road up the hill towards her house. Mrs Simmonds insisted we go ahead, though she kept close enough to be able to listen in on our conversation.

“It’s a beautiful night,” Julia said.

“Yes,” I replied.

“And November on us already. Ned Ludd Day will be here before you know it. Do you prepare through the winter or leave it to the last moment?”

“I don’t really... that is, I was brought up in the Kingdom.”

“Then you give gifts at Christmas? To your sister perhaps?”

“Indeed.”

“Surely you must have built models of the Infernal Machines or seen them smashed.”

“Never.”

“It’s hard to imagine not doing. It’s such a part of our winter. Evenings by the fire. Gluing and painting. Together as a family.” She paused for a moment as if gathering her courage, then said in an artificially casual tone: “Perhaps you could come to our house on Ned Ludd Day. With your sister of course. We would eat the feast and sing the hymns together. Then you could see Father smashing the Infernal Machines for another year.”

We walked on in silence for a while. Though I kept my gaze forward, I was able to see her on the periphery of my vision stealing coy glances in my direction. This was a meeting that should never have happened.

“How are you acquainted with Mr and Mrs Simmonds,” I asked, reasoning it would be easier to pose my own questions than to evade hers.

“My father is a registered inventor,” she said. “He has seven patents to his name. Two of them concern the steam propulsion of boats. Mr Simmonds visits on occasion to consult.”

Hearing Mrs Simmonds’s footsteps closer behind us, I turned and asked, “Is your husband a frequent visitor to the Swain household?”

She flustered and tutted as she fell back to a distance of some fifteen paces.

“This was my first visit,” Julia whispered. “Though I’ve long been intrigued to meet you, I wouldn’t have had it happen in this way. Your sister is my teacher. And yet more than a teacher.”

“She enjoys your classes,” I said.

“Don’t think too badly of Mrs Simmonds. She means well enough. She has two sons, grown and fled to Carlisle where I hear they have good jobs and families of their own. Arranging the lives of others is her small consolation.”

Light shone from the front windows of Julia’s house, revealing strands of thin mist which hovered over the road in front of us.

“I knew it should be in the night that I saw you if ever, Mr Barnabus.”

“How so?”

“Your sister doesn’t speak of you beyond saying that you sleep during the day, and I don’t press her. Please don’t take this badly, but there’s nothing of the ordinary about you. I’d half imagined you as Mr Stoker’s vampire, though a gatherer of private intelligence is almost as exotic.”

We had reached the front door and I found myself facing her. “I’ll not ask you in,” she said. “I don’t think you’d accept. But please believe me when I say this brief meeting has been more than pleasant. For me at least.”

“I’m no more than a shadow,” I said, “and can have only such friendships and feelings as a shadow might. A vampire would be more substantial.”

She made to take my hand, but I was already turning away.

Chapter 12

Illusion is story. Weave it with characters and feelings and love and loss and the audience will follow you as surely as the children of Hamlyn followed the Pied Piper.

– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

At the end of the British Revolutionary War, the generals took a ruler and drew a line across the map. The border ran from the Wash in the East to Wales in the West and was so placed as to cut no city or town. But when news spread that the birthplace of Ned Ludd, father figure of the revolution, lay inside the Kingdom, Republicans took to the streets in protest. It seemed war might break out again. The generals hastily rectified their mistake by signing the Anstey Amendment, redrawing the line to include a small southward loop. But in doing so they split Leicester in two.

The impossibility of securing a border across The Backs made Leicester unique. Only in the divided city could people cross with such ease and the differentiated cultures of Kingdom and Republic bleed through into each other. Perhaps that is what had drawn me to live there.

Notwithstanding this mixing, the clothes I could see on the far side of the border post were noticeably brighter. Skirts in the Kingdom were worn shorter also. Here and there I could glimpse ankles and flashes of colourful stockings. But fashion was merely the outer symbol of something more profound, something elusive as a half-remembered scent. It was a way of thinking, a love of mystery, a pleasure in rudeness, a preference for Anglo Saxon words over Latin, a mixing of races. It was the sum total of a thousand small differences, each of which might be irritating or pleasing to a degree but when put together formed a quality that I yearned for and knew I could never again possess.

Two guards in blue Republic uniforms sat in the glass-fronted booth a few paces away from me, their muskets leaning next to them. Two Kingdom guards in red sat in an identical booth on the other side. The protocol of the border demanded that guard numbers always matched. Today this symmetry extended to the way their guns had been balanced in the corner of the booths and to their indifferent sleepiness.

There being so many cheaper and easier ways to pass between the Kingdom and the Republic, this crossing was left as a place of parades and symbolic exchanges of prisoners. I doubt a more porous border had existed in the history of the Second Enlightenment.

I pictured myself stepping forwards, ducking under the barrier and disappearing into the crowds on the other side before either set of guards had stirred. It would be easy. And yet others would see.

Just as the border had made Leicester boom as a city of smugglers, so too had it boomed as a place of spies. Some worked for the government of the Kingdom, some for the Republic. A few perhaps for the Patent Office, though that could only be a guess. By far the most numerous of the intelligence gatherers of the border were private traders in information. People like myself.

As I stood, gazing into the Kingdom, I became aware of a portly man in a blue coat and top hat who stood just to the other side of the barrier adjusting his fob watch to the clock tower standard. He took a casual glance in my direction.

The hour was indeed growing late.

Humberstone Gate, being the last respectable thoroughfare in North Leicester before The Backs, was home to a vibrant mix of businesses. Many were tailors and outlets for factory-produced woven goods. There also were delicatessens, retailers of fine porcelain, estate agencies, banks, and one steamcar showroom.

Having stopped to ask directions from a newspaper boy, I stepped down a side street and immediately found the shop I was looking for. A wooden sign cut into the shape of a Gladstone hung over the door and bags of every description crowded the small window display.

A bell tinkled as I stepped inside.

The girl behind the counter flashed a smile of welcome. “May I help you?”

“Are you the bag-maker’s assistant?” I asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“I was told to meet the bag-maker’s assistant. This afternoon.”

“What name should I give?”

“Barnabus,” I said, surprised to be asked.

The girl beckoned and I found myself following past racks of bags spaced so closely that I had to sidestep to avoid knocking them from their hangers. The smell of leather and new wool prickled my nostrils. A narrow doorway at the very back of the room brought us to a short flight of stone stairs leading up towards a windowless storeroom. From there, a wooden ladder granted access through a trapdoor to the upper storey.

Lifting her head, the girl called out, “It’s Barnabus.”

With a clunk the trapdoor above our heads opened. The girl curtsied and scurried back to the front of the shop.

The wooden joints of the ladder creaked at my weight. Gripping tightly, I climbed, rung by protesting rung until my head emerged through the opening and I found myself peering into a bare room of floorboards and uneven plaster. Thin daylight streamed in through a large window of frosted glass. And there, looking down at me, stood the Duchess of Bletchley herself, wearing a coarsely woven travelling cloak and an expression that might have been cold determination, though I fancied it was anger.

“I brought your gold.” It was all I could think to say.

She waited until I had climbed into the room before making her reply. “Most kind. Minus your expenses?”

“I’ve located Harry Timpson.”

“You’ve succeeded in narrowing the search to Lincolnshire. One of the largest counties south of Carlisle. Would you call that a triumph of detection?”

I held out the bag of coins for her to take, but she made no move beyond a momentary flick of the eyes. “Living easy on my money for two weeks then announcing that you have grown tired of the assignment – this sounds like sharp practice. Not only have I entrusted you with payment in advance, I’ve exposed myself to danger in crossing the border. Twice! I will not accept your resignation.”

“You
will
not?”

“I will not, indeed!”

I stepped away from the open trap door and began circling. The Duchess turned, keeping her stern face towards me. Her rebuke had thrown me off balance. But the authority of the aristocrats did not extend to this place. And the further she pushed, the thinner her pretence of righteousness seemed to me.

“When the thugs chased us,” I said, “when they ended our first meeting, I had thought they came for my brother. But it wasn’t so. They came for yours! You knew this but didn’t warn me.”

“We each escaped,” she said.

“You brought me into their gaze. Even before our meeting, you knew this would happen. Your letters, so secretive. Your payment – the bag carrying a hidden label. You prepared all this but didn’t warn me of the danger. You’re not the injured party! I’ve been followed. My home searched. I was imprisoned by agents of the Patent Office. Kept for days in a room without windows or light!”

The Duchess of Bletchley raised a hand to her chest and held it there. At last she took the small woollen bag from me, opened it and ran a slender finger over the coins inside.

“I could have run with your gold,” I said.

When the Duchess looked up to me again, her sham anger had disappeared. I felt her eyes evaluating me. “We had no time on our first meeting to haggle over a price,” she said. “Is there too much danger for you, or insufficient money?

“Life is more precious than gold.”

“Life and gold are synonyms,” she said. “You of all people should know that. Had your father the money to repay his debts, you wouldn’t have become the property of the Duke of Northampton.”

“We never borrowed from that man!”

“And yet you owed.”

“The Duke of Northampton...” I spat onto the wooden floorboards between us, trying to rid myself of the taste of his name. “...that man... through bribes and forgeries he ruined us.”

“I’ve read your history,” she said. “Your family’s wagons, tents and effects seized by the court. I know of your flight from the Kingdom. Yet, had you the money, this ruin wouldn’t have come.”

My eyes were stinging. I screwed my face into a snarl, trying to stop the first tears from spilling, then turned away from her and leaned my hands against the cold plaster. “You’ve got your gold,” I said, my voice sounding shrill. “Now go.”

But instead of leaving, she stepped closer, dropping her voice to a whisper. “How much would it cost to pay the debt owed the Duke of Northampton? How much to pay the expenses of the court and win back the effects of the Circus of Mysteries?”