The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter (24 page)

“The one you seek, he’s died?”

“He’s crossed through a different veil. He took the road south to London.”

“Then surely you must follow.”

“I’ve told you before that I’m wanted in the Kingdom.”

“No one would know you’d crossed.”

I examined the pupil who had become my friend. I would have thought she spoke from naivety, but there was something in her eyes that suggested the danger had of itself excited her. I did not wish to dampen her innocent enthusiasm, yet some words of reality needed to be spoken.

“I was a child when I ran from the Kingdom, chased by men-at-arms.”

“I know,” she said. “Five years ago.”

“Had they caught me, I would’ve been bound and delivered like a parcel to the man who owns the contract of my service.”

“But if you crossed south today, he couldn’t know it. Oh, Elizabeth, don’t you see? My father must travel to London himself to plead a case before the Patent Court. I’d thought to travel with him. We could go together, you and I. No one would notice one more in the party. Not in those teeming streets.”

She still did not understand. “What motivation could a man have, do you suppose, to bribe an agent of the Patent Office, causing my family to be fined? Also, he bought up our small debts and called them in. Thus we were bankrupt. All this he did to force my indentured servitude. Me, a fourteen year-old girl. They said I was pretty, in a puckish sort of way. What service do you think he had in mind for me?”

Understanding broke in her expression. “It was a silly fancy. I’m sorry. I was thinking selfishly.”

“Yet here I am. Safe and whole,” I said. “You must go with your father to London. It’s a great opportunity. You’ll see the International Patent Court. You can listen to the lawyers arguing the case.”

The reaction of Julia’s parents on seeing me safe was more muted but I could detect relief in their faces, particularly Mr Swain.

The story I related to them was less complete in detail. The Sleepless Man had an interest in a case my brother was pursuing in Lincolnshire. The investigation had not been imperilled and neither had we. I avoided all mention of my work in the Laboratory of Arcane Wonders.

When I pushed the conversation towards Mr Swain’s forthcoming southward journey, everyone seemed to relax. Julia announced that she had decided to accompany him after all. There were smiles all around the drawing room.

“It will be an education,” said Mr Swain.

“You will meet many people,” said Mrs Swain.

“You’ll bring me a present,” said I.

“I’d hoped you might travel with us,” said Mr Swain. “Your local knowledge would be invaluable.”

“And your charming company,” added his wife.

“She’d love to have come,” said Julia, quickly. “But it’s proved impossible.”

“Wear something...” I struggled to find a word that would not seem critical of their Republican fashion sense. “Wear something brighter in colour. You’ll seem less foreign that way.”

Mrs Swain frowned. “We’re moderate folk, Elizabeth. Modest. Bright colours don’t sit comfortably with us. But perhaps if you come tomorrow, you could help my daughter choose from among her wardrobe?”

The discussion of clothes had clearly made Mr Swain uneasy. He got to his feet. “My workshop calls. Would you excuse me please?”

“Before you go, could I ask a favour,” I said.

“Anything.”

“Do you have some buckets I could borrow?”

His eyebrows arched in surprise. “How many do you need?”

“How many do you have?”

Chapter 29

That which you perform on the stage is merely illusion. That which occurs in the mind of your audience is pure magic. It is the magic they will remember.

– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

In the two years I had been tutoring Julia, I’d never been invited to her bedroom. Nor, for that matter, had I shown her
Bessie
’s small sleeping cabins. Yet here we were, climbing the neatly carpeted stairs of her house, the black iron stair rods shining as if freshly polished. Mrs Swain seemed to have had the maid work double time in preparation for my visit. I could smell beeswax polish from the banister rail.

“It hasn’t been decorated since... well, since I was a girl,” said Julia, as she stepped through the door into her room. I looked around and found myself giggling.”

“Elizabeth?”

“I’m sorry. Really. It’s lovely.”

“Is it the dolls?” she asked.

“They’re a delight. It was their... their number that surprised me.”

China faces looked in on us from every side. Three on the bed. Five on the dressing table, sitting with their backs to the mirror. Six occupied the highest shelf of a dark bookcase and two rested on each side of the hearth, as if they did not wish to be far from the cheery coal fire.

“They were presents on my birthday.”

“Quite a birthday!”

“Many birthdays. One doll per year.” She seemed affronted.

I counted them. Eighteen. Every face wore an expression individual to itself. The hair on each was different in colour and style. Long and flowing, piled high or turban wrapped. “Do they have names?” I asked.

“They do,” she said, cautiously. “But you’re here to help me choose my wardrobe for the journey.”

“Please tell. I must know!”

“Glenys, Ruth, Valerie, Aimee, Michelle, Sue.” She moved her finger around pointing the dolls out as she spoke their names. “Tony, David, Matthew...”

“Boy dolls?” I asked.

“I went through a phase. Alison, Fleur, Anne, Victoria, Judith, Antonia, Kathryn, Mary and Liz or... Elizabeth.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Please don’t mind. I named her the year before I met you.”

I picked up my namesake, from her place near the fire. The porcelain of her face felt warm.

“Well, they are very sweet. But I don’t think I could sleep with so many eyes watching over me. How will it be when you find yourself a husband? What man would suffer such a parade of lace and crinoline?”

“If he loves me, he’ll not complain.”

“Indeed,” I said. “Three of them are boys. He should not complain.”

“And if I love him, I might be persuaded to put them away.” She took the doll from my hands. “Most of them.”

Though Julia displayed all the modest propriety of a well-brought up Republican girl, yet exploring the deeper recesses of her wardrobe revealed clothes that better reflected the independent streak that made her such refreshing company. Sliding a row of dark dresses to one side, I discovered two skirts I had never seen her wear, one a summery green, the other decorated in hooped stripes of red, yellow and blue. Though I had not been in the Kingdom for five years and could not be sure what was in fashion, surely these would be less conspicuous than the dour charcoal and Prussian blue outfits so common among polite society in the Republic.

But when I laid my selection on the bed, Julia seemed less than pleased.

“Don’t tease me,” she warned.

“They may seem bright here, but...”

“But these are dressing-up clothes from when I was a girl. A lady wouldn’t wear such things. People would stare.”

“They’ll stare sure enough in London if you dress from head to foot in bombazine like some widow in mourning.”

The stripes being a step too far for Julia, we compromised on the summery green skirt. Among her blouses and coats I found a few suitable choices. I laid the most colourful on the bed. These Julia removed. Eventually we negotiated a compromise.

“But I won’t be seen in them whilst still in the Republic,” she said.

“Then people will stare when you arrive in the Kingdom.”

“We’re booked into an inn at Market Harborough. I’ll change there.”

She layered more modest clothes on top of my choices, concealing the brightest colours at the bottom of her case as if they were some kind of contraband she wished to hide from the customs officials.

Most of the life in her wardrobe, I discovered among her underwear. It was clear that she had a taste for highly coloured silk pantaloons and bright wool stockings that I would never have guessed from her outer appearance. But when I started rummaging she pulled me away.

“I have no need of your help on that shelf,” she said. “I trust no Royalist will see what I wear beneath!”

I allowed myself to be shepherded to the bed, where I sat with my back to the headboard like an oversized doll. Julia continued with her packing.

“I’ve never flown before,” she said.

“You’ll sit in a long carriage,” I told her. “Much like an omnibus, but one level only.”

“I’ve seen pictures.”

“In which case, you’ll know most of what there is to tell. When the feeling of strangeness has passed, one journey is much like another.”

“Are you afraid to be in the air?” she asked.

“Everyone’s afraid a little. Flight is unnatural.”

“And what manner of men have you met on your flights?”

“Is it the men or the flying that interests you?”

She blushed. “I was thinking for you.”

“Boring men. Men of business.”

“Is it considered polite to speak with the other passengers?”

“It happens,” I said. “A lady travelling with her maid spoke to me on the journey to Sleaford. And the man sitting across the aisle.”

“How old did you take him to be?”

I called John Farthing to mind as I had seen him that first time, his clothing more relaxed, a homburg instead of a top hat. I remembered our small conspiracy which had deceived the lady but not the maid. I hated myself for having been taken in.

“Perhaps he was twenty-eight,” I said.

“A good age,” said Julia.

“A good age for what?”

“Don’t tease, Elizabeth. He sounds handsome, would you say?”

“How do you come by that conclusion?”

“By the look on your face as you remembered him.”

“You’re mistaken!” I said, my words sounding harsher than Julia’s question had deserved.

Being perhaps the most honest people in England, Julia and Mr Swain hired a carriage to the border post on Gallowtree Gate, where they disembarked and carried their cases across into the Kingdom, paying a fee for emigration on one side and another for immigration on the other. They then hired a second coach and headed south towards the inn at Market Harborough. Bedford Air Terminus would be their destination the following day, acknowledged as the cheapest place from which to fly to the capital.

They had refused my offer to see them to the border, for which I was secretly glad. Difficult though it was for me to think of the journey I was not taking, it would have been infinitely worse had I said goodbye at the gate itself, looking across into a promised land that I would never reach.

Had the wind been strong and the boat tugging at its mooring ropes I might have remained asleep. But the night was dead calm. I woke in the darkness to find myself sitting up in my bunk, clutching my nightgown to my chest. Slowly the porthole resolved itself as a grey circle against the black of the cabin wall. I listened, hearing no sound but knowing from the slight tilt of the boat that I was not alone.

I groped for the pistol on the floor next to the bunk, then stepped lightly out into the gangway, placing my bare feet one after the other, mindful to avoid Mr Swain’s buckets, which I had laid strategically the day before.

A shadow passed over the galley’s starboard porthole. With a gentle creak the glass began to swing inwards. An arm reached through. Using both my hands, so the click would be muffled, I pulled back the hammer, cocking my pistol.

The intruder’s head was inside now and he was squirming his shoulders through after it. The boat tilted further. Others must be out there on the deck. When I loaded the gun the night before, it had been with as much black powder as I dared use, followed by a handful of pellets and plenty of wadding. The flash would blind them in this dark. The shot would spray a wide scatter of pain and confusion, but not death.

Spare powder lay where I had left it on the table. But to reload would take twenty seconds in full daylight. In the dark, one fumble and I might spill the bullets.

Suddenly the intruder dropped through. He did not seem as strongly built as I had feared. The gun could wait. I snatched a galley knife and was on him in one long stride, grabbing his coat and bringing the blade around to his chest. He did not cry out. Nor did he try to leap away. I’d expected to feel his muscles tensing. Instead they went limp.

“Miss,” he hissed.

It was Tinker.

His words spilled out in a whispered rush. “They’ve found where Mr Orville’s gone. Don’t know how. I’m to open the boat so they can kill you. Then they go for him.”

I pressed my mouth close to his ear. “Open the door and run.”

“But...”

I pushed him towards the hatch. He looked back at me, though he could have seen little in the dark. The boat shifted again – men readying themselves to slip inside. They would have knives for this job. Silent and nimble.

“Go,” I hissed. “And get clear of the hatch.”

Tinker fumbled for the door bolt. I heard it slide back. Then a rectangle of grey opened. I saw Tinker’s silhouette pass up onto the deck and away, then a man’s body blotted out the hatchway. I raised my gun, closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.

The noise was indescribable. It felt more like pain than sound. The flash was searing, even through my eyelids. The purple after-image faded and I started to make out a dark shape flailing in the open hatchway. The sound of the man’s screaming was distant and unreal. Other shapes were out there. Hands reached down and started to haul him back. In two strides I was at the hatch. I slammed it after his departing feet, slotting the bolt back in place.

Then I was at the table, feeling for the powder.

My hearing was coming back. There were voices outside. The boat shifted, tilting towards the horizontal once more. They wouldn’t try the hatch again. I tapped another generous measure of black powder down the barrel, groped for wadding and shot – a single bullet this time – all tamped in place with the rod.

Suddenly I could see my hands. A flickering light had fallen on them, shining through the porthole from a fire out on the towpath. It was this that I had feared. I jumped back into the shadow. Torches were being lit. I counted three of them.