The Fugitive and the Vanishing Man

by Rod Duncan

  “Why not?”

  “There are enemies. If they knew I had family…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. The enormity of that one word had taken his breath: family. “You’re going to have to stay here in this room. For now. I’ll bring food as often as I can. And water. And blankets. There’s a few bottles of good red wine in that chest.” He pointed.

  “I’ll need a chamber pot,” she said. “Or a bucket. Or something.”

  He felt himself blushing. “I didn’t think of that. Trouble is, there are so many spies around the castle and half of them are watching me. If I leave this room with… well, a bucket and go to empty it… They’re going to know I’m hiding someone here.”

  “Where would you empty it?” she asked.

  “There’s a latrine two floors down.”

  “The people watching… will they follow you when you leave here?”

  “Most certainly.”

  “Then I could empty it myself. Once you’re gone. If you tell me where.”

  “What if someone sees you?”

  She smiled then, for the first time, and he found himself smiling back at her, though he didn’t know why.

  “Bring me a set of clothes,” she said. “Something that people will recognise as yours. I can make it so they’ll think that I am you. At least from a distance.”

  “What if they come closer?”

  “We’re the children of bullet catchers. Mother and Father. If we can’t find a way to make this illusion work, then we don’t deserve our heritage.”

  From the place the Arthurs had hidden their boat to the castle must have been twenty miles: rough ground and most of it a climb. They’d trekked all through the night with no rest. Now Elizabeth felt the tiredness of that journey, all the way through to her bones. But still she could not sleep.

  Edwin had left her alone, locking the door behind him. She doubled over a rug and laid down. But towering over her on either side were her mother’s cabinets. She got up and opened one. The smell of mothballs brought back a memory from the Circus of Mysteries: playing games with her brother in the baggage wagon, opening chests and dressing in over-sized costumes, pulling faces, laughing at each other as if they were laughing at themselves in a mirror, pretending to be the strong man, the fortune teller, the ringmaster, pretending to be the people their mother and father pretended to be. In the glow of the Drummond Lights no one was who they really were.

  The camphor had clung to them after those dressing up games. Not that they could smell it by then. But their mother could. She’d gathered them in, one in each arm and pressed her face to their hair, then held them at arm’s length.

  “Have you been rummaging?” she asked.

  They shook their heads. It wasn’t allowed.

  “The truth!” she said. “We never lie to each other.”

  So they’d owned up and she’d kissed them. Him first, it seemed, and longest.

  Elizabeth would have trusted the memory, but this strange reunion with her lost brother had thrown everything into doubt.

  She couldn’t remember her father building large props for the show. That would make sense if her mother had been the engineer.

  Elizabeth moved on to another piece of stage furniture – a lacquered box on trestles, little bigger than a coffin. Walking around it, she found herself touching the hand and foot holes. On stage, her father had placed a woman in just such a box and sawn her in half, only to put her back together again. Curious that her mother had reconstructed it, down to the precise arrangement of markings. Elizabeth didn’t believe those symbols held magic power. And yet here they were, reproduced in fastidious detail, as if their mother had been recreating her lost life out of timber and paint.

  Sitting on an old ottoman of woven willow, Elizabeth surveyed the room, trying to clear her mind, trying to see it as if it were all completely new to her, to see what was really there instead of seeing what the conjuror intended her to see. A wooden floor and ceiling. Stone walls. One window set deep with a seat before it. An abundance of functional lamps hanging from beams, all unlit. A work bench with saws, drills, planes, chisels, a spirit level, protractors, parallel rulers.

  Fresh sawdust lay around it. Yet he’d said their mother had died five years before. And there were other signs of recent work. A quantity of timber stacked nearby, planks, posts and boards, all of different sizes. Two bundles of fine willow.

  Standing, she turned to look at the ottoman. She’d thought it old, but age was easy to fake. She opened it. Instead of camphor, she smelled dank air. But the wooden frame inside had been dovetailed together in just the manner of the vanishing cabinet. The saw marks on the wood were crisp and sharp. She closed the lid, felt along the edge and found a hidden catch. This time when she opened it, she felt the change in weight as panels shifted inside. But when it was opened, the cavity was still empty. If something secret had once been stored there, it had gone.

  She began to examine other furniture of no consequence. Some items proved just as they seemed, or at least she was unable to find any deeper secret. But one chest had a false side panel, concealing a ring of iron keys. This she replaced, taking care to leave it as it had been, shy to have her activities discovered. Even by him.

  Then she sat at his writing desk. Some drawers wouldn’t open. She could have tried the bunch of keys, but locked was somehow different from hidden. It would have seemed more a breach of trust. Three drawers opened, containing paper, pens, candles, sealing wax, a set of fine pencils, paint brushes, a jar of varnish and fine glass tubes of the kind used for sending messages by avian post. Pulling the drawers out, she felt inside each cavity. In one she found a line of three buttons. Pressing them made a faint click but did nothing else. She tried again, pressing in a different order, and then again whereon a small panel sprang out from the side of the desk.

  A book toppled out. She opened the cover and found vellum pages within, dirty with age, the text written in a looping hand.

  There was once a line marked out by God,

  through which were divided Heaven and Hell.

  And thus was chaos banished from the world.

  The Devil created lawyers to make amends.

  They argued the thickness of the line

  until there was room enough within it for all the sins of men to fit.

  And all the sins of women too.

  It was a verse she’d heard spoken to her father by the ringmaster of another travelling show. Don’t trust governments and laws. That had been his argument. And like so many stage magicians before, he’d turned to a verse from the Bullet Catcher’s Handbook to close the conversation.

  Her father loved other verses more, and had the whole book memorised. Though she’d never seen him with a copy in his hand. Perhaps this had been his book, stolen away by their mother when she left.

  The sound of footsteps in the corridor outside had her fumbling to replace it in the desk and the panel that had hidden it. She stood, feeling guilty, stepped away, then returned to shove the chair back underneath.

  It seemed impossible that the ox sacrifice had been only one day before. Gods! But he’d never known so little time bring so much change. He’d seen no one in the corridor outside the Room of Cabinets. But he’d stopped halfway down the spiral stair and caught the sound of footsteps before whoever was following had frozen.

  He’d gone to his bedroom first, collected clothes for Elizabeth, bundled them to hide what they were, then set off again towards the timber store. He had no need of timber, but it would confuse the story, when reported back. They might think he was gathering construction supplies. Then he was off again. Courtyard. Small red door. Servants’ passageway. Back stairs. Main corridor. Spiral stairs. Stop.

  This time the following footsteps continued, getting closer. Edwin wanted to grab for his knife, but his hands were full. Caught by indecision he lost a second. A figure scrambled around the turn and into view. A woman wearing a patterned cotton dress. He shifted his feet back from the fighting
stance.

  “Clara,” he whispered. “You should be with the consort. Is she still throwing up?”

  A nod. “Twice this morning.”

  “She needs to keep something down.”

  “I’d be with her, sir. But it’s the king. He’s there now. They’re talking about food.”

  “You came to tell me that?”

  Clara nodded. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Yes. You did well.”

  “And there’s a doctor with her too.”

  A doctor. Not the doctor. Edwin had been alert, ready for danger. But that word kicked his heart into double time.

  “Who?”

  “It’s not anyone I’ve seen before,” she said. “Mr Janus brought him.”

  Edwin tried to keep the panic from his voice. “You must go back. Go now. If you love your mistress, stop her taking any medicine. Throw it from the window if you must.”

  “But the king–”

  “Do it. Do it now.”

  Her eyes widened. She turned and ran off back down the stairs. She did love her mistress. Of that he felt sure. They’d been girls together. The consort was the pretty one. The king had plucked her early and would have moved on to others, but she’d wits as well as looks. She’d insinuated her way from a place in his bed to a seat by the throne. In doing so, she’d rescued her childhood friend from the kitchens. Clara was now her maid. Clara would protect the consort from this new doctor’s potions. For now. But Edwin needed to be there himself. And in short order.

  He ran, up the stairs, back to the Room of Cabinets. Gods, but the world was turning too fast.

  Elizabeth was standing next to his mother’s writing desk.

  He threw down the bundle and undid the ties to reveal the things he’d selected for her. He’d chosen all masculine clothes. Dressed in that way people were less likely to challenge her. Only as she lifted a dark blue shirt to her chest did it occur to him that he might have been unconsciously trying to make her different from their mother.

  “They’ll fit,” she said. “But you’re taller by a couple of inches.”

  “It’s not going to matter.”

  “We could work on my boots. A few layers added to the soles. We have your workshop. If you could get me some leather of the right grade–”

  “No one’s going to see!” He knew he was being unreasonable. “Look. I’m sorry. But everything’s turning too quickly. I can’t stay.”

  She frowned, stepped towards the window seat.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  But she seated herself in it anyway. “It doesn’t matter. From down there, they’re going to think that I’m you. So long as we’re not seen together.”

  There was a defiant look in her eye, which even more reminded him of the mother he had lost. “We need to talk,” she said.

  “It can’t be now. There are things happening. Big things. And dangerous. But I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Do those big things involve the Gas-Lit Empire?”

  He’d been about to walk away, but that stopped him. “Was that a guess?”

  “Partly.”

  “Look, Elizabeth, there’s no time to explain. But you chose the wrong day to come. Everything is in the balance. My life. And yours now. Though it’s not your battle, you’ll be caught up in it.”

  He began to turn again, to leave.

  “Does your battle involve Newfoundland?” she asked.

  He froze. “Who told you that? Only the king’s advisors should know!”

  “The king of Newfoundland knows. And I was there. I was with him. That’s where I learned that you might still be alive. It’s no coincidence I came looking for you right now. And if you think the future of the Gas-Lit Empire isn’t my battle, then you’re wrong.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Mind reeling, Edwin dashed away along the corridor. He would need to get his own people in place around the consort. And quickly. There was no telling how soon Janus might make his move.

  He took the first flight of stairs down to ground level, then set off the wrong way. Deliberately. His pattern of movements would be watched and analysed by Janus and others. Returning continually to the Room of Cabinets might already have aroused their suspicions. Thus, he would confuse them. It meant a detour, counter-clockwise around the castle, through the storerooms, the kitchens.

  Never trust coincidences, his mother had said. And yet hadn’t he done just that? He should have asked why his long-lost sister had chosen this very moment to seek him out, crossing the border from the Gas-Lit Empire just as the army of the king was preparing to cross it in the other direction.

  He skirted the servants’ quarters, which had been built up against the south wall, then the guardhouse. Turning back towards the keep, he entered the Great Hall and finally the royal apartments. The guards at the doorway parted for him.

  The king stood at the window, his back to the room, fists on hips. The consort was reclining on the divan, a woman of the court sitting to each side. Clara waited by the wall, ready for any errand her mistress might order. And Janus stood in the very centre of the woven carpet. But it was the stranger standing with him that took Edwin’s eye: a hunched figure wearing a black skull cap.

  Edwin coughed and all but Clara turned to look at him. Only the consort seemed pleased by his arrival. Her right eye was still deep red, but it looked less devilish when she smiled.

  “I wondered how long it would take you to get here,” the king said.

  Edwin bowed. “I happened to be passing.”

  Janus’s eyes flicked around the room as if searching for the informant. “Our audience is finished,” he said, too quickly. He surely hadn’t wanted Edwin to find out about the meeting.

  Edwin bowed again, this time towards Janus, underlining the man’s presumption of authority. The king’s frown deepened. He strode across the room, then back, gesturing for one of the ladies-in-waiting to get up.

  He took her place on the divan. “You prophesied health,” he said. “Only yesterday you said it. But this morning she’s… she’s bled.” He gestured to the consort’s lap, but angled himself away from her, as if wanting her to leave.

  Panic knotted in Edwin’s stomach. It was happening too soon. He’d had no time to put precautions in place. If Janus had poisoned her already, all hope was gone.

  “I’m… That is… was there much blood?”

  The consort’s chest and neck flushed red with embarrassment but her face remained waxy and pale. She shook her head, eyes cast down.

  “What’s to become of my child?” the king demanded.

  “Only a few spots,” said the consort. “It’s normal enough.”

  “All will be well,” Edwin said: the only possible answer. He glanced at Janus. But if the man had already done this terrible thing, there was no sign to be read from his face.

  “We shouldn’t worry,” said Janus. “The magician has prophesied health.”

  “Will the change of diet help?” asked the king.

  “Yes, sire,” said the man in the skull cap, his voice crackling with age.

  Edwin looked from face to face, searching for explanation.

  “Doctor Winnowbrooke, this is my First Counsellor,” said the king. “Edwin, this is Dr Winnowbrooke. He’s prescribed meats and fruit for the consort.”

  “Venison and goat,” the doctor explained. “With berries, fresh and dried. It is the natural diet, which we stray from at peril to our health.”

  “Who will prepare it?”

  “Doctor Winnowbrooke has cured many this way,” Janus said.

  “He is a cook also?”

  The doctor nodded. “Food and medicine are one and the same.”

  Edwin’s mind was churning. When food becomes medicine, the patient cannot refuse to eat. And with Janus’s man in charge, they would have complete control. The poisoning could happen at any time, or be spread over many weeks. They could choose their moment to manipulate the politics of the castle. But at lea
st it meant that the poisoning hadn’t happened already.

  “Good,” said the king. “That’s agreed, then. Now, I only need you to agree on…” He glanced at Doctor Winnowbrooke and seemed to change his mind about what he’d been about to say. That was a good sign. He didn’t completely trust the man to hear of war plans. “…to agree on our matter of state. I put up with the both of you because you’re good at what you do. But now you’re like two stags, with your antlers locked. We can’t go forward and we can’t go back. It won’t do. Do you hear me?”

  Edwin saw Janus bowing, so did the same. Then he stepped into the middle of the carpet, shoulder to shoulder with his rival. They were like schoolboys lined up in front of the master.

  “You are right, my lord,” Janus said. “We are locked. And no progress for months now, as we wait for your magician’s plan to mature. So may I suggest a time limit. Give him some more days to work it out, and if he has still failed by then–”

  “We have not failed,” Edwin said. “Diplomacy takes time.”

  The king grunted. “He’s right. You may not have failed but we’re no closer to success. But then, don’t think I can’t see what you’re trying to do, Mr Janus. A few days is too little. We must give him more than that.”

  “You are wise and kind,” Janus said. “But once the snows have come, there’ll be no way for a delegation to travel. Not until spring.”

  “Till the snow, then,” the king said. “When Mount Hood is covered white, and no word from…” He gestured towards the east, towards Newfoundland. “Then we’ll follow Mr Janus’s plan. Am I fair?”

  “You are, sire,” Janus said, quickly.

  Edwin nodded.

  The king beamed. “Good. You are brothers again. Tomorrow I’ll go hunting.”

  Janus and the doctor started backing away towards the door. That was when the idea came to Edwin: simple yet elegant.

  “Sire?”

  “What now?”

  “I’m grateful to Mr Janus for bringing this doctor.”

  “Good. Good.” A touch of impatience.