The Fugitive and the Vanishing Man

by Rod Duncan

  None came.

  The illusion of context had saved them: the one illusion that should never work, but always did. He had been expecting to see her. Fearing it. So that is what he saw. The king, Janus and the guards were seeking someone else. It blinded their eyes. He had seen her made up to look like him. They had tried to match their voices and failed. But they had taken to wearing identical clothes and it was the king’s first viewing.

  The noise of the search party was suddenly muffled. With the corner in shadow, he risked a look, saw the empty passageway and the open door of Janus’s room. His sister had somehow changed a disaster into a victory. The search of the Room of Cabinets had become a probing of Janus’s own property.

  She would want to be away from them. And he needed to move. Every moment that they were both abroad would add to the risk.

  As he crept back up the stairs, he wondered what they might have achieved if they were fully on the same side. For these few days, circumstance was allowing them to fight together. It was easier to think on that and forget the bigger truth. They’d nailed their colours to the masts of different ships. At the end, one of them would lose. For all her quietness, his sister’s brilliance would make her a formidable enemy. The thought of it was too disquieting to hold.

  When they first gave chase, Edwin had pulled closed the door of the Room of Cabinets behind him. But now standing in front of it again, he could not remember scrambling the tumblers. He put his ear to it and listened. Nothing. He gripped the handle. It turned. He must have left the room unlocked. The door opened, silent and smooth. He stood under the lintel, taking in the stillness. The scents of other people still hung in the air. One of his mother’s cabinets had been pulled away from the wall.

  The stress and surprise had made him forget to lock up. Mistakes always cost in the end: his mother’s words. He stooped, pulled the knife from his boot and advanced into the room. There was no one behind the door. Nor inside the ottoman. He tipped each of the cabinets an inch, feeling their lack of body weight. Treading lightly, he looked under the workbench, around the back of each item of furniture.

  A scratching sound made him spin around, knife blade extended, pointing towards the door, which was swinging inwards. Elizabeth slipped through the gap. His sister. The relief hit him unprepared and his eyes prickled with the threat of tears.

  “That was… extraordinary,” he said.

  She closed her eyes and teardrops ran. “I almost didn’t make it.”

  “But you did. And now… they won’t need to search this room again. Leading them to Janus – that was inspired.”

  “It was an accident,” she said. “I was looking for a room to hide. They’d never check in there. That’s what I thought. But that door… there’s no way I was getting through it.”

  He listened as she told him about the cloak, smiling as the story developed.

  “The king was angry,” she said.

  “But that helps us! Janus won’t be able to use this same attack again.”

  “I think he was angry with both of you,” Elizabeth said. “As if he could feel something had happened, but didn’t know what.”

  CHAPTER 31

  On the dawn of the third day following the arrival of the embassy, which was the first day after the search of the Room of Cabinets, a hunting party assembled in the castle courtyard.

  The king had been unwilling at first. Petulant. “I’ll not go with them!” he’d said.

  It was the arrogance of the embassy that had cut him, an injury he’d since rubbed raw. Helped by Janus, no doubt.

  “We’ll be a small party,” Edwin said.

  He didn’t need to spell out the implication, that if the Newfies played the same insulting game, there’d be few to see it, and none that would talk about it afterwards. The king’s emotions might be childish, but he understood the way things worked.

  The horses stamped. Their breath made fog in the cold air. Edwin looked up to the towers, already touched by the morning sun. Good weather for a ride. The gates opened and the king led the way with Brandt just behind: the correct order for anyone who happened to be watching. Then came Red and Tomo, followed by two of the king’s guards. Trusted men, who would keep their mouths closed. Edwin set off next to Gilad, bringing up the rear. There was no Timon to get in the way. And no Janus. Whatever mischief the Second Counsellor might get up to would have to wait till their return. For now, Edwin had gathered all the people he needed.

  A small party. That was how the king liked to hunt: moving fast, no train of mules clanking and clopping behind. No ceremony. And no need of trickery to provide a kill. Some of the stiffness and irritation he’d been carrying seemed to drop away from him as they put the castle behind. Once over the first rise with even the towers out of view, they could have been anywhere. Brandt too seemed more at ease. How strange that the prospect of shooting a defenceless animal could bring such men together.

  Red and Tomo were more pensive. But with Elizabeth’s revelation, this made perfect sense. She had unlocked the puzzle of the embassy. Each of the men had been sent with a different purpose. Brandt was the figurehead, a kind of diplomatic misdirection, drawing attention away from where the real decisions would be made. Red, fiercely independent and a natural sceptic, was there to argue the treaty out of existence. Doubtless he represented a faction in Newfoundland’s turbulent politics. Tomo would speak for the other side. He was outward-looking, facing the future, hopeful of the opportunities that change might bring. He would argue for an agreement to be forged. If Red and Tomo could be made to agree, so would their people back home. But it was Gilad who held the real authority. Edwin saw that now. It would have been on his word that the embassy delayed its arrival. Grandson to the king of Newfoundland, he was the ringmaster. It was he who’d sabotaged the first meeting. How strange it had seemed when he’d spoken to Edwin afterwards and offered helpful advice. Only now did that make sense. He had created the argument to watch its ebb and flow. One side or other would win. And he would be the judge of it. On his word, an agreement would be signed. Or not. The more Edwin thought of it, the deeper his admiration for the king of Newfoundland. And for Gilad.

  “What will they kill, do you suppose?” Gilad asked.

  “Hopefully not each other,” Edwin said. And then, “What is your wish for the future?”

  “Why should my wishes matter?”

  “Wishes are all we have. They matter more than anything. But if you won’t speak of that, tell me of your family.”

  Gilad glanced at him, suspicious. “I have a mother, a father, two sisters. Much like any family. What of you? They say your mother was killed.”

  Edwin didn’t let the sting of that remark show in his face or voice. “We were from England,” he said. “Poor folk. We moved from place to place.”

  “Yet here you are. Magician to a king. Whatever that means.”

  “Like all titles, it means nothing. And everything. But you and I – there’s something the same about us. We both stay at the back of the hunting party.”

  “Why is that?” Gilad asked.

  “So we can keep watch on the others who ride ahead.”

  The King and Brandt had spurred their horses into a gallop, much to the alarm of the two guards who were struggling to catch up. The dust began to settle. Edwin watched the rest of the party riding away.

  “Will we find them again?” Gilad asked.

  “It’ll be easy enough. There is a wooded ravine a couple of miles from here. It’s kept stocked with game. That’s where the king will lead them.”

  “Not a real hunt then? Not wild animals?”

  “Almost real. Let them enjoy themselves. Think of it as a performance. Like diplomacy.”

  Edwin glanced over to see if Gilad would react. But the man’s expression gave little away. They rode on in silence after that. It was a kind of agreement, Edwin thought.

  Coming to a stand of trees and a fork in the path, they headed left, down into a ravine, then followed
the flow of a laughing brook. He could see the footprints of birds in the mud, but no horse tracks. He hadn’t expected any. The guards would have warned the king from this particular shortcut. Such ravines offered hiding places to robbers. Not that anyone would have dared waylay the king so close to Crown Point.

  A flock of small birds flitted through the tree branches above them, chirping as they went.

  “Beautiful country,” Gilad said.

  “It is.”

  “You have more trees than Newfoundland. More plants. More of everything. Except for fish and seaweed.”

  “Seaweed?”

  “You can eat it. It’ll keep you healthy when you can’t get greens and fruit. That’s what you’ve got to understand about the Rock. The hard life makes for hard people. In a fight, we’re the ones you want with you.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  They had slowed to a stop in the shade, with the smell and sound of water.

  “There’s something about you I can’t figure,” Gilad said.

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know what it is. You just seem different – the way you look at people, your seat in the saddle, the way you picked those apples from the barrel, everything. It’s all so precise. Like you’ve learned it or something.”

  Gilad’s clarity of vision was astounding. Edwin knew it now more surely than ever. A formidable opponent. The temptation to tell him the truth felt overwhelming. You’re right. I’m not this person that I’m pretending to be. I’m not those movements. I’m not these clothes. He looked away, trying to control himself. His hand had clenched to a fist around the reins.

  “Don’t take offence,” Gilad said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Still not trusting himself to meet the man’s gaze, Edwin nodded. “None taken,” he said.

  Three shots rang out as they were climbing the other side of the ravine. Not close. It was another mile before they found the king and the rest of the party, dismounted next to the body of a deer. There was no strange patterning on the deer this time. Nothing remarkable about it, except that when viewed close, all such animals are remarkable.

  The king and Brandt were exchanging hip flasks, congratulating each other. Even Red and Tomo seemed more relaxed.

  “We thought we’d lost you,” the king said. “You missed the fun.”

  “They both shot at once,” Tomo explained. “And look…” He pointed to the animal’s neck, to the two entry wounds, only a few inches apart.

  Edwin kept back and watched as Gilad crouched down and laid his hand on the animal. It hadn’t been a trick this time. Mere chance that they’d both hit in the same moment, and so close. But Brandt and the king had been bound together by the shared experience, the extreme unlikeliness of the twin shot. Even Gilad seemed to be moved: a man who had dismissed magic and fortune telling as trickery.

  While Brandt and the king strode off to drink and talk, the guards gutted the deer and skinned it. One set to work butchering out the backstraps while the other built a fire and soon the smell of roasting venison and the smoke of burning fat was drifting in the breeze. Tomo and Red had been quiet. Edwin went to sit with them.

  “Enjoying your day?” he asked.

  “The meat smells good,” Tomo said.

  Even Red managed to smile.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Edwin said. “You may not want to be part of our war with the Gas-Lit Empire. But we can still have an agreement signed. Something about peace between our kingdoms.”

  Red nodded, enthusiastic. “We can do that.”

  “There’s no harm in writing it,” Edwin said. “And we can write more. Something about trade.”

  “And the military alliance?” Tomo asked.

  “We can write that too. Just the words. So we know exactly what we’d be talking about.”

  Red frowned. “I don’t see why that’s needed.”

  “Writing it isn’t the same as agreeing,” said Tomo.

  “It just means we know what we’d be rejecting or accepting,” said Edwin.

  They were both looking at Red now.

  “I guess it could do no harm,” he said, though he still seemed troubled. “Nothing’s agreed until it’s signed.”

  Edwin stood. The Newfoundlanders did the same. He offered his hand and they shook it. Not a contract exactly. An agreement to not agree. Not yet. The wash of relief was so intense that he felt like crying.

  Then the guards-turned-cooks were calling and handing out skewers of meat, scorched on the outside but still pink in the very middle. He couldn’t remember a more delicious feast.

  CHAPTER 32

  The prison guard stepped from the doorway alcove as she approached, the ring of keys already in his hand. His direct gaze ran from her hat to the bulky cloak, all the way down to her boots. On her first visit, when she found him sleeping, it was he who had been discomforted. The second time, he’d stood taller. Now she caught insolence in his eyes. As if he’d glimpsed the secret of her unseemly fascination for the prisoner, Mary Brackenstow, and was calculating where such currency might be spent.

  With a clanking of the bolt, he opened the door, letting in the north wind. She welcomed its tug at her hair and clothes. The iron chain burned cold under her hand as she stepped out along the platform. The planks felt slippery. It was too dark to see whether they had caught a frost or if it was merely dew.

  The previous afternoon, she’d pushed open the window of the Room of Cabinets, craned her neck out to look down and across the castle wall to the line of small cells suspended below the walkway. Had it been on the level, she could have estimated the distances with ease. But something about the verticality of that stony expanse played tricks on the mind. At first she thought the height of the cliff might be more than four hundred feet, which would have been too much. Then she guessed the length of the castle wall, and in her mind turned that length by ninety degrees until it became a height. This gave her a more possible answer.

  But now, in the dark, the void below her felt limitless. If she slipped, she might fall forever with the wind rushing around her ears. She might freeze to death before ever reaching the end of it. Or if she jumped.

  “I knew you’d come to visit me again.” Mary’s voice sounded warm, as if she was smiling.

  “Then you were right.”

  “That’s the way of it,” Mary said. “Once you’ve seen a spark from the truth, you have to keep coming back.”

  Elizabeth lay down the burden she’d been secretly carrying under her cloak and sat herself next to it, her back resting on the stones. “I haven’t seen anything,” she said. “I just don’t want you to die.”

  “Last time you brought me food. It was a kindness you didn’t need to show.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I only wish I could see you. So I’ve someone to picture in my head when we talk.”

  Elizabeth repeated Mary’s words in her mind. The suggestion that she hadn’t seen Edwin before seemed wrong.

  “I’m only here to ask questions,” she said.

  “That’s precious also. The talk means more to me than the food.”

  “Last time you said you wanted the whole world to be like a single country.”

  “No,” Mary said. “Those are your words. I’m telling you that the world is a single country. Right now.”

  “But there are hundreds of kings. Hundreds of countries. Each with different forms of government.”

  “So you say.”

  “Can you deny it?”

  “Show me a line where one country ends and another begins.”

  “The map has many.”

  “But a map of the earth is just a piece of paper. And every king has his own, with lines in different places. If they were real, you could show me one marked on the ground.”

  “I crossed one of them to get here,” Elizabeth said. “So did you, if you came from the Gas-Lit Empire. Two fences with barbed wire in between. Do you not remember?”

  “
That?” The sound of laughter came up from below, incongruous. “That fence will rot and rust. It is only the border because people believe it’s a border.”

  “You don’t?”

  “The world is one country. That’s the truth. And that’s the real reason the king put me in here. Not because I don’t believe in magic tricks. It’s because I don’t believe your prophecies. He isn’t going to rule the world.”

  Mary’s was a particular kind of madness. For every question an answer had already been prepared. Perfectly rational. Elaborate. Through all those hours of confinement, she must have been planning this conversation. Yet it made no sense in the real world. Elizabeth felt herself half crazy for entertaining the idea.

  “Would there not be chaos if people stopped believing in their kings and their countries?”

  “Maybe so. If it came about like that.”

  “Millions might die.”

  “It could happen.”

  “Then how can you wish so many deaths on the world?”

  “I wish them not,” said Mary. And again, “I wish them not.”

  “The king wants to conquer all the other nations. Fewer men might die that way than with what you’re planning. Doesn’t that make you worse than him?”

  “There have always been wars,” Mary said. “And if you follow his way, there always will be. Say he builds his empire till it goes on forever. What then?”

  “Then the world would have one king. Just like you say you want.”

  “No. I say it is one country. And the people will decide who rules them. But even if your king does manage all the things you say, how long would his empire last? In time, there’d be revolutions and splinters. New kings breaking it up from the inside. In fifty years, a hundred, you’d have maps with borders all over again.”

  “You can’t make anything happen sitting in this cell.”

  “I made you come here,” Mary said.

  “No. I came to save you,” Elizabeth’s voice had dropped to a whisper. If she could only prove the woman wrong, she might put it out of her mind. “You say a border isn’t real because you don’t believe in it.”