The Fugitive and the Vanishing Man

by Rod Duncan

  In the hour before dusk, Edwin had all the candle lanterns emptied from the storerooms and loaded onto a wagon. He gave instructions that one be placed by the roadside every fifty paces, starting at the castle gates. If the embassy got within a mile or so, the lights might encourage them to keep riding. Then they could feast through the night. It would make for a sweeter beginning.

  But when it had grown full-dark and cold food was being carried back to the kitchens, Janus met his eye and smiled.

  “Better luck tomorrow, magician.”

  Instead of answering, Edwin wheeled and set off after the line of kitchen boys. He caught up with them in the main passage.

  “Wait!”

  They didn’t want to, of course. They must have been dreaming of a feast of their own. So he ordered them again.

  “Follow me.”

  Having led them to the gates, he had them load the feast onto the cart, which had not long returned from placing the lanterns. Then he ordered the carter to turn around and head off back into the night.

  If there’d been a moon, the candles would have been too dim to be seen. But clouds had blotted out most of the sky and so the curve of the road was marked out in dots of light.

  “Can’t see nothing,” the carter grumbled, though Edwin never heard him miss a step.

  It was slow going. He’d counted off only twelve lanterns when heavy footsteps sounded behind, catching up. Too heavy for Janus, Edwin thought, though his fingers sought out the hilt of his knife, just in case.

  “Who goes there?” he called.

  “I’m brother to the king, damn you!”

  Edwin relaxed. “Lord Timon. What can we do for you?”

  “You’re off to find them, then? The embassy?”

  “If we can.”

  “Why?”

  “So they won’t go hungry tonight.”

  “You’ll be feeding bandits, more like! Pray you’re carrying enough venison, or they’ll make you the second course.”

  “Bandits wouldn’t dare. Not so close to the castle.”

  Timon grunted rather than answer. The cart had begun to roll forwards again. Edwin set off after it and Timon followed, stumbling.

  “How do you see, blast it all!”

  “Put your hand on the side of the cart,” Edwin said. “It makes for an easier walk.”

  Edwin felt Timon’s hand linger on his shoulder. Then he had passed and taken up a position just in front. By the light of the next lantern, Edwin saw that the king’s brother had followed his advice.

  “Better,” Timon said. “And I’d thought you were seeing with magic.”

  “Not tonight.”

  Edwin had lost count of the lanterns. He glanced back but the road had dipped down, putting the castle out of view. At the next light, he caught an impression of low trees on either side. As they picked their way forwards, their shadows leapt ahead of them.

  “How far does it go?” Timon asked, his voice quieter now.

  “Perhaps a mile. We only had so many candles.”

  “And at the end?”

  “We turn back.”

  “Damn but we’re going slow.”

  Ahead, the dots of light marked a low climb. But there was something else. At the top of the rise, the trees were visible from time to time, as if one of the lamps was brightening and fading. Halfway up, he caught the scent of wood smoke. Timon must have smelled it too. Metal whispered as the king’s brother unsheathed his sword. If it were the embassy, drawn steel would make for a bad start. If it were a bandit camp, it might get them killed. One sword could be worse than none, but there was no point telling that to Timon.

  The carter had slowed as they approached the top.

  “Wait here,” Edwin whispered, then set off. The trees and undergrowth at the brow of the ridge were picked out by the wavering light of a campfire behind it. A small one: newly lit to judge by its inconstancy. He could hear men’s voices, but not clearly enough to pick out an accent. Instinct told him to draw his knife and crawl over the last few yards. Logic told him not to. He stood tall, walked forwards, giving a twist to each footfall making the grit of the road scrunch under his boots. The bright light of the fire below exposed him, though he’d be a shadow to those sitting around it. They had to hear his approach, to have warning.

  A twig cracked behind him and a blade pricked him in the back. He raised his hands, but slowly.

  “State your business.” The voice was a man’s, sounding part-Irish, part-American: the accent of Newfoundland.

  “My name is Edwin. I’m counsellor to the King of Crown Point. And I bring food to our good friends.”

  The sword point withdrew. Only then did Edwin’s heart begin to slow.

  There were twelve of them around the fire. Thirteen counting the watchman who’d poked Edwin in the back. The mood became less prickly once the cart had rolled into the light, revealing the feast.

  “Your names?” the eldest among them demanded, a stout man with a grey beard.

  Edwin got in first: “May I present Timon, brother to our king.”

  “Where are your guards?”

  “We need none. The king’s law is unchallenged.” The lie came unplanned. But Edwin felt pleased with it. They’d not seen Timon’s sword. He’d had the sense to slip it back into its scabbard before stepping into the light.

  “I’m Brandt of the Shanks clan,” the bearded one said. Then he bowed towards Timon. Edwin began to breathe more easily.

  The mood brightened as the men took their places around the fire. Timon and Brandt sat shoulder to shoulder as the others unloaded the food and laid it out on the ground. The Newfoundlanders received the meat as a polite gift, but their eyes widened when they saw the fruit: baskets of fresh apples and pears, jars of apricots and bitter cherries.

  Edwin tried to take the place on Brandt’s left side, but one of the Newfoundland warriors sat there first. And then another of them was sitting on Timon’s right. By the time Edwin squeezed himself in, he was a quarter of the circle around from the men of power and finding it hard to hear their conversation. Half of it was impossible to lipread, since the king’s brother kept a leg of turkey hovering in front of his mouth.

  But for all Timon’s lack of subtlety, the feast seemed to be doing its work. The apples were half gone already and the men were passing round a jar of apricots. Sugar syrup dripped as they fished out slices with the tips of their knives.

  The jar went left around the circle from Brandt to a man with a ginger beard, to a laughing youth with a clean-shaven face. Then it skipped one place and carried on around, each man taking a portion of the sweet fruit, until it reached Edwin, who passed it on without eating, being too busy trying to hear the conversation between Brandt and Timon.

  When the feast was done, the men rolled out blankets on the ground and set themselves down to sleep. Places had also been set for Timon, Edwin and the carter.

  “Why didn’t you follow the lantern trail?” Edwin asked of the man with the ginger beard, whose name was, unimaginatively, Red.

  Red glanced in the direction of his leader before answering. “Thought we’d best not sneak up on a castle last thing at night.”

  Edwin nodded and said goodnight. But as he lay down and pulled the blanket over his shoulder, it came to him that Red’s reasoning made no sense. Lights had been laid. They must have known a welcome was waiting. They could have arrived to a feast. Instead they were choosing their own time. They would march into the castle with the dawn, mud-stained from the road. Brusque and to-the-point: that is how they intended to begin the negotiations. Not with food and wine.

  He had been trying too hard. He saw that now. Janus’s hostility to any deal had been pushing him in the other direction. He needed the deal to succeed at any cost. But Brandt of the Shanks Clan had clearer thoughts in his head. Better to be the party who seemed ambivalent to the deal on the table.

  The sounds of wine-heavy sleep soon surrounded him. Slack breath and snores. Two guards had been s
et to watch. But cloud had made the night sky dark. After the fire had died down, Edwin could barely make out the shape of his own hand before his face.

  The men of power were sleeping next to the embers. His place had been at the edge of the camp. When he pulled back the blanket and began to crawl away, feeling the ground rather than seeing it, there was no one lying between him and the road. The trick was all in the first fifty paces. Beyond that, he’d be able to stand. The sound of unsteady feet scuffing the ground would not carry back to the guards. When the embassy woke in the morning, he would simply have disappeared. A touch of rudeness there. And of mystery. If Brandt had decided to play it cool he need must follow.

  At the top of the ridge, he saw the line of lamps. Guessing one of the guards would be near, he crawled on down the other side, the gravel and dirt digging into his knees and palms. He had no way of gauging the time, but guessed an hour must have passed since leaving, before he dared stand. And then to walk half-blind the mile back to the castle. He tapped on the small postern gate. The spy hole cover slid across and a light shone out.

  When the door opened, Edwin put a finger to his lips. “There could be silver for you,” he whispered. “Unless people hear that I came in this way.”

  The guard licked his lips. “Don’t reckon no one’ll find out.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Though isolated in the Room of Cabinets, Elizabeth had been able to sense the expectation gripping the castle. The passageway outside would normally have been quiet. But three times during the afternoon, she’d heard footsteps hurrying past. And there were other noises, a distant banging as if some carpentry project were underway, and on the edge of audibility, a low hum of activity and voices. Then, as the evening drew on, all became unnaturally still. Unable to bear the suspense, she took the risk of venturing from her hiding place in the Room of Cabinets. Through a corridor window she looked down on the castle courtyard. Torches burned, even though it was not full dark, and soldiers of the castle garrison waited.

  Edwin did not return all that day. This she had expected. He had said as much. And he had left her food and water enough to last two full days. It was to be the time of his triumph. The coming together of the strands of a plot long planned. But now it seemed the embassy must have been slow on the road. Her brother’s triumph would have to wait.

  Night fell. She slept fitfully. When she woke again, the silence was complete. She rose, wrapped a binding cloth to flatten her breasts and fill out her waist. Then she pinned up her hair and darkened her chin, to give the suggestion of stubble.

  Among the clothes that he’d left for her, were two sets almost identical: navy blue canvas trousers and jackets of lighter blue. One of these she’d adjusted for better fit, taking in the trouser legs and cuffs. None of the white shirts were entirely a match, but she’d unpicked the ruff front from one and added the French cuffs from another to make a pair that could not be easily told apart. Both wearing the same outfit lowered the risk.

  Usually she would have been confident about her voice. But it had been more than twenty-four hours since she had spoken: that to her brother. First she hummed to make warmth and resonant depth. Then she spoke, deepening the pitch until she could feel the top of her chest vibrating.

  It was perhaps three in the morning when she felt ready to step out of the Room of Cabinets once more.

  She had seen jails in England: brick buildings with high, windowless walls, inmates crowded together in exercise yards. To visit a cell required an escort along dark corridors. The wardens carried great rings of keys at their belts. Above ground or below, they had always felt subterranean, the air dank and stale.

  The kings of Crown Point had followed a different track. Instead of trying to hack an underground chamber from the basalt on which the castle stood, they had strapped their cells to the outside wall, above the cliffs. No dank air for these prisoners, though pity the one who suffered from vertigo.

  Edwin had sketched her a map of the castle, which she’d spent hours committing to memory. But he hadn’t marked the entrance to the jail. Looking down on them from above, she’d counted the windows in the North Wall and worked out that it had to be two floors below. It was some distance to the right of the Room of Cabinets. Sixty yards, perhaps.

  The passageways of the castle were empty and silent. Approaching the place where the doorway should be, she began to plant her heels, allowing the footsteps to echo. But still the guard’s eyes were closed.

  No chair had been left for him. He had propped himself in the alcove of the doorway, feet wedged against one side, back resting against the other, head lolling towards a shoulder. Asleep but standing.

  “Well?” she demanded, pleased by the menacing reverberation of her voice in the stone passageway.

  He woke with a start, seeing the king’s magician, or thinking he did, and panicked to attention. Not waiting for him to offer an excuse she barked: “Open the door! I need to speak to Mary Brackenstow.”

  Relief showed on his face as he reached for the keys at his belt.

  The wind hit her as he opened the door. She stepped through a short passage, the thickness of the North Wall, and out onto a small wooden platform, which creaked under her feet. The stairs that took her down were little more than staves embedded in the stonework. There was no rail to stop her toppling over the edge, but a chain had been strung over the rock surface. With one hand on that she stepped precariously down towards the cells. They had been spaced far enough apart to make conversation between them difficult. Elizabeth’s path took her over the top of each.

  Moonlight fell on the opposite side of the valley, but the cliff and castle walls cast a great shadow, so that Elizabeth had to feel her way and only knew at the last moment that she had reached the end of the walkway. Looking down between the slats, she could just make out the cell.

  “Mary? Mary Brackenstow?”

  For a moment there was silence then she heard a creaking sound, as if someone was moving around below her.

  “Who is it?”

  The accent was European. French, perhaps.

  “Edwin Barnabus. I’m here to question you.” She felt foolish in the silence that followed. “How long have you been here?”

  “Questions, I’ll answer,” said Mary. “But not taunts. You know how long you’ve kept me.”

  It was a stupid mistake. Elizabeth bit her lip, then said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Even enemies should respect each other.”

  “Yes. I agree. So, please help me to respect you.”

  “How?”

  “You could be released tomorrow. You only need to recant what you said before. It’s only words.”

  “Does your conscience bother you, Edwin?”

  “Always.”

  “Well,” she said, “at least that’s some kind of respect. I do thank you for not sleeping so well while you keep me here.”

  Elizabeth sat herself down on the wooden slats of the walkway, her back to the stones, one hand still above her, holding the safety chain. “Why won’t you say the words?” she asked. “Tell the king that you believe in magic and he would let you go. You could leave this awful place.”

  There was a long silence after that. A swirl of wind rose up next to the rock face, tugging at Elizabeth’s clothes.

  Then Mary said, “You’ve kept me here for six months because of my words. You must think they’re important. I have nothing else. How could I give them away?”

  “It’s not your words that matter,” Elizabeth said. “It’s the meaning behind them. Words are just sounds. You can make those sounds without ever changing what you believe.”

  “It almost seems as if you’re begging me.”

  “Would that help?”

  “How could it? If words are only sounds, your begging would mean no more than the howl of the wind. But if you really want to understand, answer me this: do you believe in peace?”

  “I do.”

  “Then tell me how it may come about.”
/>   The woman was mad, according to Edwin. But that didn’t square with the way she was speaking.

  “In the Gas-Lit Empire they’ve had centuries of peace,” Elizabeth said.

  “But peace is more than the absence of war. Do you think that a deeper peace might come to be? Something more than the Long Quiet?”

  Elizabeth thought on this. In some part of her mind it felt as if she did believe it. But perhaps that was only because she found the alternative too desperate to be entertained. “I would like it to be so,” she said.

  “And in this time of peace that is to come, who would make the rules?”

  “Kings, I suppose.” Elizabeth knew that the tone of her voice would give her away. The uncertainty. The rising inflection.

  “Kings like the one who cast your mother from the battlements?”

  A drop of rain landed on the exposed skin of Elizabeth’s hand. Just the one, but there would be more. She could smell it in the air. The stars overhead were being blotted out by cloud.

  “Tell me your answer,” Mary said.

  “I cannot.”

  “Whisper it, if you will. Confess the truth.”

  “I cannot.”

  “And yet you want me to speak an outright lie in front of that same king – in front of his courtiers. Perhaps words are important to you after all.”

  “Now it’s you teasing me,” Elizabeth said.

  “Do you want my respect?”

  “I should like it.”

  “Is that why you come to see me at the dead of night? So none of the king’s men will know of your visit?”

  “It is.”

  “Then if you won’t do anything else, take my hand.”

  There was a clattering sound of wooden slats moving against each other, the shingles of the roof of Mary’s cell, Elizabeth supposed, though she could see nothing. She got onto her knees, put her face to a gap between the planks on which she’d been sitting. In the dark she saw a shifting of pale skin, a hand reaching up towards her.

  “Take it,” Mary said.

  But to give her hand would have been to give the secret of her identity. Her fingers and wrists were too slender to belong to a man. With senses heightened by darkness, Mary Brackenstow would know the wrongness of the grip.