The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter (5 page)

We had both raised our voices to be heard above the machine, which pounded, as rhythmic as a military band. Binding its strange music and paying out time second by second was the bass boom and exhalation of a giant piston, which powered a vertical flywheel. Other sounds filled in an intricate percussion between the main beats; clinking, rattling, humming and ringing. Regulators spun. Escape valves hissed, while here and there a dribble of steaming water escaped into small drain channels in the floor.

I felt the superintendent’s hand on my back as he guided me down a flight of steps to the machine floor itself.

“If any letter has been sent from the Kingdom or the southern border area to the... ah... to your father’s place of work, it will have passed through this hall and been sorted by this machine.”

“But how can one ask a machine if it’s seen an address?”

“Indeed child, no device can read. But here we employ a marvellous symbiosis of the human eye and the power and speed of steam.”

His fingers began to stroke the small of my back. Finding him looking down at me from an uncomfortable proximity, I turned away to examine a small doorway in the side of the machine.

“What is this?” I asked.

Consulting his fob watch he said. “That, you will presently observe.”

Something was changing in the room. Not the reverberating rhythm, but the pattern of movement of the workers. Each, I noticed, wore blue overalls and a cloth cap. None wore facial hair, which seemed curious. On our arrival there had been as many men feeding the monster with sacks of letters as there had been carrying away the neat packages. Now the feeding had stopped and all hands were busy on the other end of the production line.

“Cover your ears, child.”

No sooner had I followed his instruction than a factory whistle blew close above us. The flywheel continued to spin, but the rhythmic boom and rush of steam abated. The workers dropped packages and trooped from the hall.

It seemed there would be no one remaining to question, but then the door in the side of the machine clanked open. I watched, amazed, as men began to emerge. They wore the same blue overalls as the other workers, but the tops of their faces were covered with goggled leather masks of unusual design.

On exiting, each used one hand to shield his eyes from the light of the room, and the other to steady himself on a brass hand rail. The fifth man out closed the door behind.

“These are the sorters,” said the superintendent. “It will take a moment for them to orientate themselves.”

I could not imagine how these men might exist within the belly of the leviathan, let alone operate it.

Perhaps sensing my question, the superintendent leaned in close and said, “They spend each shift suspended over conveyor belts, along which the letters travel at great speed. Each of their fingers rests on a different button, much like the keys of a stenograph. They press the buttons in varied combinations to send the letters on their way to different stacks.”

“But how can five men read so much in so short a span?”

“It’s a prized ability among the sorters,” he said. “And they imbibe certain tonics to maintain their concentration.”

The first man was by this time removing his goggles. The pupils of his eyes seemed extended beyond the natural limit, taking up almost the entire iris. It was only now that he looked around and seemed to notice us.

“Stand straight, citizen,” said the superintendent.

The man did indeed straighten somewhat, though it seemed his work had left its mark on his posture.

“We need to know if you have seen, in the last weeks, any messages addressed to Harry Timpson’s Laboratory of Arcane Wonders.”

The man blinked his eyes, in an owl-like fashion. He frowned for a moment then shook his head. The others had started to remove their goggles now. They stood squinting, pupils dilated like the first man, peering around themselves as if seeing the sorting room for the first time. My guide repeated his question. Three reacted as the first had done. But the fourth sucked his teeth in thought. “Timpson... Harry Timpson...”

Moving his hands in front of himself, he momentarily closed his eyes while his fingers twitched and danced, as though he were playing an invisible instrument.

“A week gone, or two maybe. I sent it on the belt to the Sleaford office.”

“Good man!” exclaimed the superintendent. “Good man indeed.”

I felt his palm come to rest on my back once more, so stepped away, making to take the hand of the sorter, who grinned at me myopically. His fingers seemed unnaturally smooth, as though the lines and whorls had been worn away.

Julia Swain now had eighteen years to my twenty, an age gap that seemed far smaller than at the beginning of our association. At first I had been her teacher only. But increasingly she took pleasure in sharing the small confidences of her sheltered life. Chief among these were her opinions of the young men her mother introduced, none of whom met with her approval. Her husband would be kind, sensitive and intelligent, she said. But also masculine in the way of an athlete or a soldier.

“No such man exists,” I said. “Or ever has.”

“Then I will remain single and read law at a university of the Kingdom.”

In return for this growing openness, I began to relate stories of my peculiar life on the cut. I even admitted to some of my exploits as an intelligence gatherer, though these I presented as if I were merely acting as an assistant to my brother. In truth I felt torn. The fiction gave me the opportunity to tell her more than I could otherwise have done. But I did not enjoy deceiving her. And her interest in my brother had a focussed intensity that made me uncomfortable.

“Offering a bribe is breaking the law,” she said after I had told her of the various methods by which I gained entry to the sorting room.

“Only if a jury says so. And no jury will be asked.”

“And in using a forged receipt...”

“I never told him it wasn’t forged.”

“A technicality.”

“The law can’t see the difference between technicality and substance. You know that.”

Julia’s frown deepened. “But is it... moral?”

“You expect it to be?”

“Our law was made through moral striving,” she said. “Republicans, Abolitionists, Luddites. High-minded men and women. They were driven by an ethical code.”

“They were each driven by a different code.” I said. “And there are so many to choose from – vegetarianism, eugenics, anarchy, communism, naturism, family planning...”

“Elizabeth!” Julia was blushing. “Mother would have a fit if she heard you speak of such things.”

“There are reading rooms all across the Republic where men talk of such things. Why shouldn’t we?”

“You can’t possibly know what they talk of.”

“My brother has told me. But perhaps I’d better continue the story?”

Julia nodded, so I narrated the end of the adventure, my escape from the Superintendent of Postal Services. Her eyes opened wide and round as I stood in the middle of
Bessie
’s galley, acting out the scene, fluttering an imaginary fan, as if overcome by the steamy atmosphere.

“He thought perhaps that a loosening of stays or laces might revive me,” I told her. “But the sorters, gallant to a man, said fresh air would be the ticket. And he, though so senior in rank to them, couldn’t disagree without seeming... how should we say? Ashamed?”

“Oh, but you shouldn’t act so!” she exclaimed, holding a hand in front of her face, in an unsuccessful attempt to hide an expression that was half shock and half grin. “To make him believe...”

“If he took the belief that my virtue could be loosened and unlaced, then the shame should rest on him.”

“But if you flaunted, isn’t it natural for a man to assume?”

“It wasn’t the cut of my blouse or the angle from which he looked down that made him think that way. It was the suggestion of gypsy blood.”

“How could he think that of you?”

“You believe I’m not a gypsy?”

Suddenly she seemed to notice the cabin in which we sat. That a narrow boat served as my home had been the given fact of our first meeting. We sometimes discussed its practicalities but never its reason. It seemed only now that she saw in my home the signs of a restless spirit. To slip three mooring ropes would be the work of seconds.

“Are you a gypsy?” she asked. But before I could speak, she had changed her mind and blurted, “Please don’t answer.”

“Don’t you want to know?”

“At least don’t tell my parents. They’d no more tolerate our visits if you were of... of gypsy blood.”

“I don’t know the Romany language, if that is what you mean. Yet neither could I be happy anchored to the foundations of a house. Does that make me a gypsy in your eyes?”

“I’ll never ask of it again,” she said. “Nor would I respect you less if you were. You’re more than a teacher to me.”

I took her hands and squeezed them, feeling a sudden urge to confide the secret of my double life but fearing also that the revelation would be too great. Somehow, I had come to depend on Julia Swain as she had on me.

So I brewed a fresh pot of tea and I told her of the family of ducks that came to the boat to be fed on crumbs and of the coal boat moored next to me and the kisses the old boatman blew when he thought neither I nor his wife were watching. And I told her not one more thing of consequence.

Chapter 7

The great illusion is the one the audience does not see, though it may have rested before their very faces for the duration of the show. But greater than that is the illusion invisible to another illusionist.

– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

The slavery of indentured servitude so commonly seen in the Kingdom of England and Southern Wales has no place in the law of the Anglo-Scottish Republic. Yet the women of the Kingdom have more freedoms. They are permitted to own property and manage businesses whereas their sisters in the Republic cannot be seen to manage more than the affairs of a household.
Equal but different
was the slogan of the Republic’s guardians on the matter.

So it was that my brother worked for my protection and I for his.

During the hours of darkness my brother, or rather I dressed as him, laboured as a gatherer of intelligence. By day he slept, or so the world believed, whilst I managed the smooth and proper functioning of the home. And though the home we had chosen was a narrow boat and his profession one that most decent people might frown on, yet as siblings together we seemed somehow more respectable.

The journey I was about to undertake, however, could not be conducted in the shadows and I would not risk the great secret of my double life in unforgiving daylight. Thus I announced to Mrs Simmonds that I would be travelling to Sleaford to seek out the graves of my grandparents.

“Un-chaperoned?” she inquired, her tone suggesting I was about to travel to Lincolnshire dressed only in Turkish bloomers.

“No indeed, Mrs Simmonds,” I said. “My brother has travelled ahead to secure lodgings.”

Thus, the day after the Duchess’s messenger delivered a cloth purse of 70 gold sovereigns into my hand, I set out on the short trip to Anstey to begin my journey. It would have been cheaper for me to travel to Sleaford by coach but time was my enemy. Strangely, I would need to unlearn the habits of thrift for a chance to save myself from poverty.

There being no ship tethered to the mooring pylons, it was the two huge hangars of Ned Ludd Air Terminus that I saw first. Each hangar is shaped like a vast cylinder, sliced in half along its length so it can lie flat on the ground. Doors to front and rear may be rolled open, allowing the entire body of a ship to float inside. And there, illuminated by great lamps, passengers come and go via a staircase and elevated platform. Airships are indeed marvels, even in an age of marvels. Travelling swiftly from city to city, they have shrunk the globe.

I climbed to the alighting platform wearing my long cloak over a burgundy jacket and skirt. Not knowing if the carriage windows would be open or closed, I had pinned my hair up under a small hat. My belongings were already in the careful hands of the air terminus’s porters, men known to be trustworthy in the handling of even the most delicate package.

The route not being of great popularity, my journey into Lincolnshire was to be below the belly of a small airship. Having shown my ticket and had it punched, I hitched up my skirts and climbed the final steps.

Though the carriage could have seated thirty in comfort, there were only eleven other passengers. Eight looked to be businessmen. A young couple sitting on their own, I judged to be newlyweds, patrons of one of Anstey’s many wedding chapels.

I chose a seat opposite the final two passengers, an elderly lady and her maid. Then I gazed out of the window to watch the ground crew hauling away a gas hose. Porters hurried to the safe end of the alighting platform while the bosun shouted instructions to men standing around the tethering points.

A uniformed terminus guard marched the length of the ship, whistle ready in his mouth. Having satisfied himself that all were in their allotted places, he raised his flag and seemed about to give the signal when a young man hove into view, running for the carriage door. One of his hands gripped a Gladstone bag; the other held a tan-coloured hat in place on his head. A Homburg, I thought.

The guard nodded him on board then blew a shrill note. The carriage doors clattered shut. Mooring ropes swung free and the airship lifted, leaving a feeling in my stomach as if we were riding a fast carriage over a humpback bridge.

The young man slotted his Gladstone into the overhead rack, then sank into a seat across the aisle from me and fanned himself with his hat.

The rotors were turning now, the lopsided beat of the engine becoming more regular as its revolutions increased and we began to move forward. Through the window, I watched ground-crewmen hauling back the great hangar doors.

The noise changed as we emerged into the thin winter sunshine. Exhaust gases no longer puffed from either side of the engine. But turning in my seat, I could see a trail of smoke billowing from a vent at the rear of the great canopy below which the carriage was held secure.