The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter (17 page)

Silvan had stopped me riding out with the others to paste daybills. This I could understand. He would fear I might use such a trip to pass secrets to an accomplice. He had put me in the wagon of the fortune-teller. Another well-reasoned choice. But now, to keep me from the show itself, this seemed strange.

Whilst so many of the troop performed within the tent, what mischief might I make outside it? Better, surely, to keep me in the audience, or have me help the performers to costume up backstage. Unless something in the show was being kept from me.

I sat on a box on the other side of the fire from the lad who watched the horses. He stole glances at me from time to time, when he thought I was looking the other way. Shyness seemed to be preventing him from speaking.

“How long have you been with Timpson’s men?” I asked.

“Hmm.” He shook his head and shrugged.

“Your mother and father are showmen also?”

“No.”

“You ran away then, to join the circus.”

Instead of answering, he got up and scuffed away into the shadows, returning a moment later dragging a log behind him. This he placed on the ground, one end on the bed of glowing embers. I saw now from the stubs of other logs around the fire, that each must have started as long as this one and been pushed inwards inch by inch as the flames consumed them. In the Circus of Mysteries we had cut our logs to length. Seeing the simplicity of this arrangement, I wondered why we had made such trouble for ourselves.

“You could go and watch the show,” I suggested.

“Seen it.”

“I’m sorry, but no one has told me your name.”

“I’m Tinker,” he said. For a moment his eyes met mine, then he was looking down again with focussed attention on a small hole in the knee of his canvas trousers.

“Tinker is a good name. How old are you?”

He shrugged.

“Do you know your birthday?”

He shook his head.

“You must have a birthday. Else when would people give you presents?”

A muffled drum started to beat out a slow march in the distance. We both turned to look in the direction of the big top. The clapping of the audience had joined in, keeping time as the drummer increased the pace, building until it formed a continuous wall of noise and the audience began to cheer. Suddenly the drum stopped. A flash of intense light shone momentarily through the canvas followed by the percussive boom of a gunpowder charge. The show had begun.

I let half an hour pass before making my move. The sounds of the show had built and subsided three times. Three different acts, the crescendo of each somewhat louder than the last.

From facing the fire, my cheeks felt hot and my back cold. I stood stiffly, as if unused to such rough living. “I need to freshen myself,” I said.

Tinker squirmed in embarrassment and seemed incapable of objecting when I walked off. The field felt eerily still. The beast wagons lay empty, the cage doors open. Even with the Sleepless Man absent and the troop busy, I chose a cautious detour, picking my way along the hedge that bounded the field, keeping to the deep shadow until I stood not ten paces from Tania’s wagon. Here I waited and watched until I was certain I was alone.

With my things lying before me on the blanket roll, I unsheathed a small knife and cut through a run of tacked stitches in the lining of the coat. Opening a gap just wide enough to slip my slim fingers through, I extracted three flat, wooden pots, two of pigment and one of adhesive.

Working quickly now, trying to ignore the heavy pumping of my heart, I began to transform my face, first giving it a more weather beaten pallor, then darkening my chin and upper lip.

Feeling inside the lining once more, I extracted the hair which, when applied over those darkened areas, so changed the shape and appearance of my face. Releasing two fastenings inside the back of the coat, I pulled out the tucks of cloth that had held it in a tailored, feminine line. Thus altered it hung straight from my shoulders. The false trouser legs had been concealed in the coat sleeves. My black purse, I twisted inside out and then around, releasing the sprung wire that popped it into the shape of a top hat.

The final change, the most profound and vital, was not one of dress or makeup, but of the mind. Thus when I emerged from the wagon, it was to jump two footed from the steps onto the grass, and set off towards the big top in a rolling stride.

Chapter 19

The hand is seldom quicker than the eye. Therefore, strive to make it quicker than the mind.

– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

It was as a young gentleman of Lincolnshire that I stepped through the entrance of the big top and dropped a silver fivep’ny into Lara’s outstretched hand. Such was the flirtatiousness of her smile that I knew my disguise held good. She put a finger to her lips, then flourished an arm, ushering me towards the empty benches at the rear.

The smell hit me first – body odour and horses and the sweet-sulphurous mix of tobacco and gunpowder smoke, a cloud of which hung under the green and white stripes of the canvas top. Many of the jossers in the middle row were on their feet. With flat shoes, the only way for me to get a clear view was to stand on the rear-most bench.

There, at the very centre, the very focus of every eye, stood Silvan, feet planted like a gladiator, arms spread, whip in one hand, a sword in the other. The extraordinary height of his top hat might have seemed ridiculous. But in this setting it suited him as a crown suits a king. He turned as he spoke, his gaze shining out like a lighthouse. For a moment, I felt him look directly at me and had to resist the impulse to step down out of view.

“...nor from the dark artisans of the great Congo forest. Ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests, the conspicuous, the miraculous wonder you are about to witness, was smuggled by the great Harry Timpson from the ice-capped roof of the world itself, from the arcane workshops of the great monastery of Lassa in the far extremities of the orient.

“Pursued by warrior priests, he scaled a mountainous glacier to carry the secrets of this machine to you. Such was the cold of that place that frostbite took three of his toes. He endured this danger; he endured this pain and loss of limb, to reveal to the world that a mechanism of brass and iron can be possessed of intellect. I present, the incredible Thinking Loom of Lassa.”

The drum rolled and from behind the partition emerged Sal, carrying a carved box, perhaps two foot along each side. The wood had been inlaid with an intricate latticework of polished metal that reflected the torchlight. As he placed it in the centre of the ring, every member of the audience seemed to be leaning forward. Sal lifted the top of the box, which swung open on a hinge, revealing a mass of cogs and springs so fine and dense that it was impossible to see into its depths.

Fully open, the lid lay horizontal, revealing a chessboard on what had been the underside. Onto this, Sal placed counters, arranged as for a game of drafts.

I will confess that I can pierce the secrets of a magic show nine times out of ten. If not the trick itself, then the general manner in which it has been performed – whether by sleight of hand or card force or illusion or simple logic. But as I watched Sal wind up the machine and volunteers come forward to challenge it to the game, I could see no trickery.

Wagers were placed. Several in the audience put money on the volunteers to win. Some backed the machine. Small bets of a few coins only. But enough to have the crowd whipped up into a fury of excitement as the game commenced.

The volunteers debated their moves, sliding the white counters with their own hands. Sal never touched the machine. Its choices were signalled by ivory buttons that rose from squares on the board, showing which of the black pieces were to be moved and to where. These instructions were also executed by the volunteers.

The machine won. The crowd erupted into cheers and boos, depending on which way they had placed their bets. As the wagers were being settled, Sal picked up the box from the floor. Had he lifted it at another time, I would not have watched his movement so carefully. But the outburst of sound and noise and emotion was too perfect a misdirection. So it was that I saw the strain in Sal’s arms, the tremor of his muscles as he pretended to lift the Thinking Loom with ease. And I saw also that the box was larger than I had at first assumed, carried by one who was almost a giant.

There would not have been space inside the Thinking Loom for a full grown adult to hide. Space enough for a child though. Or a dwarf.

Next came the Dutchman with the lions, a display that led directly into the acrobatics, the climax of which involved Sal lying on his back and juggling three knives and a cleaver in the air above his body. Through this cascade of sharp metal the acrobats dived in continuous stream, until Fabulo ran on from backstage and tried to join them, falling over in the attempt, prompting hilarity and whoops of derision from the audience.

At last the dwarf had his way, tripping the next acrobat in line to jump and taking his place. He launched into a cartwheel and vaulted the prone giant, at which moment the audience were plunged into a silence of dread, for the cleaver spun down in its glittering arc and thudded directly into Fabulo’s chest, where it stuck.

The dwarf dropped heavily on his back and lay spread-eagled. The other three knives thudded into the earth around Sal’s head. A woman on the front row of benches screamed. But Sal, already getting to his feet, raised his hands to silence the audience. With great solemnity, he picked Fabulo from the ground and stood him on his feet. Somehow the tiny, rigid body balanced as Sal stepped back. The audience held its collective breath. Then, with no warning, Fabulo’s eyes snapped open and he set off, making a line of cartwheels around the edge of the ring, the cleaver still projecting from his chest.

The applause was explosive. When Sal and Fabulo took their bow, the dwarf unbuttoned his shirt and removed the thing that had protected him. Until then, I had felt confident in my understanding of the trick. But when he held it up I saw that his armour consisted of a piece of wood cut to the shape of a heart, in total no bigger than a clenched fist. The remainder of his chest appeared unprotected.

With the show an hour old already there had been no sight of the man whose name it bore. I had resigned myself to disappointment, believing that Timpson’s performing days must have passed. But then the drum roll began again, the audience clapped in time and Silvan planted his feet in the centre of the ring.

“Ladies and gentlemen. For your education and entertainment we have presented some trifling amusements and lesser wonders. But now is the moment you have longed for. It is my honour and pride to introduce the man who you have come to see, whose fame now spans the world, who has seen with his own eyes the wonders of both poles and of the far orient. The man who has dedicated his life to gathering the mystic secrets of arcane sciences. Honoured with a doctorate from the great Peking University of China and a second from the University of Tromso in the icy northlands. And now come to you on his very final tour of the Anglo-Scottish Republic to reveal and demonstrate the ultimate and most hidden science of alchemy. I ask you not to applaud, but to pay your respect through silence in welcome to the great Harry Timpson.”

There is no silence so intense as that generated by a crowd in which each member is holding his breath, and is tensed into stillness for fear of the whisper of the fabric of his clothes. Just such a silence pressed in on my ears as I strained to see over the heads of those in front of me. All were on their feet.

Harry Timpson shuffled slowly from the wings supporting himself with the aid of two walking sticks, each step seeming an effort and made with pain. He wore a dark jacket and trousers and a top hat of modest height. When I had seen him in the wagon I had marvelled at the strange opalescence of his eyes. But now in the clear light of the circus ring, his eyes were concealed beneath a set of brass goggles, the glass of which reflected the torches like two black mirrors, each perfectly round.

Standing in the centre of the ring, he turned slowly, as if searching the audience for a certain face. Only when he had made the full circle, and it seemed the audience might burst for waiting, he began to speak. The resonant quality of his voice that I had first heard in the wagon now filled the expanse of the Big Top.

“The earth and the heavens and everything that resides between are animated by two contending qualities – that of inertia and that of change. Left to itself a pendulum will continue to swing, a fire will continue to burn and every elemental substance will retain its unique essence.”

As Timpson spoke, Sal stepped up to him and set a lit torch to the impresario’s jacket, which instantly sprung into generous flame. The great showman held his arms out to each side so that he resembled a fiery cross. A gasp breathed around the audience, above which Timpson’s voice rang out more powerfully than before.

“It is the destiny of man to intervene, to bend nature to our will, to conquer and change. Thus, a pendulum may be stopped and a fire may be extinguished.” So saying, he ran his hands over the material and where they went, the flames died instantly so that between two heartbeats he stood unharmed and, it seemed safe, though a thick smoke rose from his clothing to join the cloud that hung in the roof of the tent.

“Thus also,” he said, “may base metal may be transformed into gold. But alchemy is not like these other changes. For in this we mutate the essence of things, which is in truth to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, for which crime Adam was expelled from Paradise.

“The achievement and perfection of the alchemic process has been the goal and motivation of my life and work. It was for this that I have travelled the world, accumulating such trifling wonders and arcane knowledge as you have seen tonight, and more beyond that it is not seemly to display.”

Timpson raised one of his sticks and from behind the canvas partition, Sal and the Dutchman emerged, carrying a brazier of glowing coals, their hands protected by leather gloves. Having placed it on the ground next to Timpson, they started working the bellows that I now saw to be attached to each side.