The Fugitive and the Vanishing Man

by Rod Duncan

  “I do.”

  “And you say the world is one country because you do believe in that.”

  “Yes.”

  “There are more people who believe in borders.”

  “But my belief is stronger. Once you’ve understood it, you can’t un-know it. That’s why it can only grow and spread. This way sees all people as equal. Wherever they were born. Men and women. All races.”

  “Pleasant words,” said Elizabeth. “But without swords and guns, none of that would happen.”

  “I have none,” said Mary. “I never will. Yet your king is afraid. Not of weapons, I think. Words are more powerful in the end. I thought you were an intelligent man, Edwin, with your conjuring and your fortune telling. But if you can’t see that the dreams of a poor woman, who owns nothing but the clothes she wears, can be more powerful than the army of a king – then you’re less than I thought.”

  “I don’t want you to die,” Elizabeth said.

  “The king won’t be moved,” said Mary. “And he will have his way. This winter will kill me, sure enough. You need not blame yourself. Your part in it is vanishing small.”

  Elizabeth had thought it through a dozen times or more and come to no conclusion. She still didn’t understand why Mary’s words had pushed her. But they had. The decision was made.

  “I have something for you.”

  “Another chicken leg?”

  “Something else. For you to keep. But not to use till I say.”

  “Now you have me curious.”

  “Can you agree to keep it secret?”

  “Without knowing what it is?”

  “Please.”

  The wooden shingles shifted below, as Mary opened a hole in the roof of her cell. “I can’t lie for you,” she said. “But neither would I tell.”

  In the dark Elizabeth felt for the rope, which she’d brought hidden under her cloak. Coiled, it would be too fat for the hole in the cell roof. Unwrapping the end, she began to thread it through between the planks of the walkway. She felt the moment when Mary grasped the end, the sudden tautness where it had been slack before. And she heard a breath of surprise. Then it began to slip over Elizabeth’s hands, as Mary pulled it through.

  “Why are you giving this to me?”

  “Can you hide it?”

  “There’s no need. They lower down the food and water. No one ever sees this place. They never see me.”

  “If you use it to escape, they’ll know I was the one who gave it to you. Hold it there, for now. I’ll tell you when it’s time.”

  “Why are you putting your life in my hands?”

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t know. It’s just something I feel.”

  “Bless you,” said Mary Brackenstow.

  When the real Edwin stepped into the Room of Cabinets, he expected to find Elizabeth sitting up amid her blankets. That would be the usual way. She was a light sleeper. Only once had he found his sister curled up, eyes closed. But the room was silent. The absence of her breathing registered on some unconscious level. He shivered, lifted his lamp, stepped further, found her nest of blankets empty and cold.

  Finding her gone made a panicky feeling in the base of his stomach. Uneasy possibilities flashed through his mind. He might meet her on his way back down. Someone else might see them together. She might have run away, just like his mother had done all those years before.

  He was being irrational. The chances of such an event were small, manageable, no different from the other dangers he faced. And, in some ways, this was better. She didn’t need to see what he was about to do.

  In the corner of the room furthest from the door, he knelt and set to work on one of the screws that held down a floorboard. Then, with the tip of the screwdriver, he levered the end of the board until there was enough of it exposed to get a grip with his fingers. With that laid to one side, he could reach into the narrow darkness of the hole and extract a small ledger and a crock of coins.

  The first quarter of the book was filled with his mother’s handwriting. Columns for dates, names of people, incremental amounts of money, and a running total for each person. The names were not their actual names, rather a code. The maid to the consort was recorded as Stella, though her real name was Clara. But it was the pigeon master’s assistant that Edwin needed to check. He was recorded as Lion, though his real name was Pentecost.

  In the time when Edwin’s mother was magician to the king, Pentecost had emerged as a useful source of information. But in her last two years, his help had become invaluable. Edwin flicked through the ledger to the place where his own handwriting took over. Then on, through the years of his own tenure. The last pages, he leafed through one by one. The total was an eye-watering sum. Yet it had been earned. Two hundred and sixty-eight times, Pentacost had come with information or done some other service.

  Edwin began counting the coins into piles of twenty. The man was illiterate. It seemed unlikely that he would himself have kept such careful tally. And yet, he was charged with scoring off each hour. Five vertical scratches of the pen, then a diagonal scratch through the group, making a bunch of six hours. Four of those bunches would make a day. Though there were clocks in the castle, events in the pigeon loft had ever been gauged by the falling of sand.

  From the crock Edwin counted thirteen piles of twenty silver coins. Then eight more. The whole treasure he dropped into a cloth bag, which he then tied closed.

  He’d chosen simple weapons: a knife that fitted into a hidden sheath within his boot and his mother’s flintlock pistol, which rested in a deep outer pocket of his coat. The touch of it gave comfort. The purse of coins, he tied to his belt. It would stop him running, but it seemed the best way to hide it.

  For all his fears, he met no one on the way down to the small gate. One of the guards was sleeping. The other watched his approach with hooded eyes. Edwin put a finger to his lips and the man nodded.

  “Has anyone else passed this way?” Edwin whispered.

  The guard shook his head then unlocked the door and opened it. Edwin doused his lamp and left it hanging on a hook on the wall.

  East Cairn had once marked the limit of Crown Point. Or, rather, the limit of the order it could impose. It lay a mere two miles from the castle. Beyond that, bandits had once been able to operate. The piling of those rocks into a heap had been an act of conquest, a statement that all the lands within would be defended. At the time, no one could have guessed how far this new ambition might spread. All the land north up to the Yukon River was now under their control. And all the land south as far as the great Redwood forests. There were still bandits. But they knew they lived on borrowed time.

  Edwin picked his way along the track more from memory than from sight. From time to time he stumbled, and felt the heavy weight of the purse swing back against his leg. Then, over the last half-mile, the clouds cleared and a sliver of moon lit the way, so that he could see the East Cairn ahead of him. And, as he drew closer, the figure of a man standing next to it. Even in the dark, Edwin knew that it was Pentecost. And knew that the man was anxious.

  They acknowledged each other with a nod, then as if it had been prearranged, stepped away together into a thicket and crouched low.

  “Did you bring it?” Pentecost whispered.

  Edwin tapped the purse through his coat, making the coins clink against each other. “When did you leave the castle and by which route?”

  “Yesterday. The main gate. They think I’m visiting my mother. I told them she’s sick.”

  Edwin began to relax. He unbuttoned his coat, produced the purse, which Pentecost took. The man seemed surprised by the weight of it, as if it was more than he’d expected.

  “Don’t bring it back to the castle,” Edwin said. “If they found you with it…”

  “I got a secret place,” said Pentecost.

  “Will there be bribes from other men to add to that?”

  In the dark it was impossible to see the man’s reaction. “There may
be,” he said.

  “I won’t be asking who. Don’t worry.”

  Pentecost’s shoulders eased down. “You’ve always been the best of them,” he said.

  “You’re collecting all your earnings now?”

  A nod.

  “Be careful. It might be that some of them thought you’d never collect. They might not have put the money aside. You asking for it… It might cause trouble.”

  “Thank you, Mr Edwin. But they’ve all of them agreed.”

  As Edwin picked his way back along the path, climbing by stages towards the castle, he wondered who those people might be: the other clients of Pentecost.

  CHAPTER 33

  The placing of words on paper had never felt so much like a dance. The circling began with the opening line. The scribe dipped his pen and Edwin spoke.

  “We the kings and representatives of the peoples of Oregon and Newfoundland…”

  Red slapped his hand down on the table making the lid of the ink pot rattle. “It should be the other way. Newfoundland and Oregon.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Alphabetical,” Tomo said, reasonably.

  Edwin imagined the king’s reaction to that wording and knew it wouldn’t work. Newfoundland was the smaller. It had less people, less wealth and more primitive armaments. It would be the junior partner in the alliance, except in its position: holding the eastern seaboard, while Oregon held the west. In that one way, they would be equal.

  “How about this,” he said: “We the kings and representatives of these two peoples…”

  The Newfoundlanders glanced to each other before nodding. Edwin hoped they couldn’t see his tension. They’d still have to figure whose signature went top at the end of the document. But that would be a fight for another day.

  “…affirm our present and future peace…”

  “That should be brotherhood,” said Red.

  That implication of equality again. But Edwin could at least tell the king that Newfoundland was the younger sibling. “…affirm our present and future brotherhood and commit ourselves to lasting peace…”

  By the end of the opening paragraph, the scribe had filled two sheets of notepaper, mostly with lines that had been struck through and re-written. How much worse it could have been with Janus present. But on the ride back from the hunt, Edwin had begged the king’s indulgence.

  “Order Janus away,” he’d said.

  The king’s curt nod had given him hope. But he couldn’t expect more than a day’s grace.

  The council room was airless and overwarm. The skin of Edwin’s forehead felt sticky with sweat. He was aware of a disagreeable smell of body odour. Not only from himself.

  From every page, they were salvaging a few lines at most. The hours were creeping, yet passing too fast for Edwin. The light in the window faded. He called for a second scribe and a second table. They split into two working parties. Red and Gilad began drafting the trade agreement, which they would surely write as a wish-list of Oregon produce. Meanwhile Edwin and Tomo worked on the war alliance, which would be a wish-list of Oregon’s military ambitions.

  Red and Gilad finished their work first and came to look over Edwin and Tomo’s shoulders. Red set about arguing against every line they’d already drafted. All progress stopped.

  “We should eat,” Edwin said.

  At least they could agree on that.

  It was a meal of bread and cold meats. Edwin had whispered to the steward to keep refilling their glasses with the best wine that Oregon’s vineyards could offer. Red and Tomo made the most of it. Gilad wetted his mouth, but little more. Edwin had the impression of a man keeping count, as he was. Both of them would stay sober. And both would be able to judge the drunkenness of the others. It seemed odd that Gilad did nothing to stop his comrades.

  “It doesn’t matter what we write,” Edwin said. “Nothing’s agreed unless it’s signed.”

  “I’m too tired to carry on,” Red complained. Tomo nodded.

  Edwin pictured Janus, pacing like a caged animal, waiting for his chance to get into the council room. “Let’s at least finish a draft,” he said. “Then we’ll deserve our sleep. Tomorrow we can edit.”

  It was Gilad who swung it. He stood, clapped his friends on the back. “It won’t take more than half an hour. If we dig in our spurs.”

  The writing went faster after that. In the warmth of the council room, with a fire crackling in the hearth, Red’s eyes drooped. Tomo was little better by the end, head tipping forwards then jerking awake, while Edwin and Gilad transcribed the whole thing into a final neat copy.

  The two kingdoms would be like brothers. Newfoundland would receive all it wanted in trade and the new weapons. Oregon would have its eastern ally and a war that they could win together. So said the agreement.

  It meant nothing, of course. With signatures and seals attached, it would mean fractionally more. Even then it could hold no more weight than a child’s promise, which might be discarded on a whim. No sanction had been stated. Only honour, that most slippery of laws. Like all such insubstantial things, it would become real only after time and tests had proved it.

  Red snored. Tomo slept silently. When Edwin had finished writing, he showed the copy to Gilad, who read through it line by line.

  “Congratulations,” he said, handing it back.

  “Will you advise it’s signed?” Edwin asked.

  “Only if they can agree.”

  Edwin followed his gaze to where the others were slumped. Tomo had wedged a cushion in between his head and the wing back of the chair. Red’s chin rested on his chest. He would wake with a sore neck.

  “If they do agree?”

  “They would bring their factions with them. All would be possible.”

  “I’d like to know what you want to happen.”

  “What would it matter? I can only do what is possible.”

  “Then why have you helped me?”

  Gilad frowned. “They say that fools befriend each other because no one else will. It’s the same with kingdoms. Why would my king shake hands with yours if Oregon was ruled by idiots? I don’t know what you are, Edwin. But a fool you’re not. You’ve earned your chance.”

  Edwin folded the paper down and slipped it into an inside pocket. “Thank you.”

  As he was turning to go, Gilad said, “Red and his faction won’t agree straight off, just so you know. Next year, perhaps. Or the year after. It’ll take time for them to change their minds. Or a miracle.”

  The chill air outside the council room sharpened Edwin’s mind. He wondered what Gilad had meant by that last remark. It almost seemed as if the man had been asking for a demonstration of magical power. More likely, he was angling to see the Mark Three in action.

  The lamps had been hung too far apart. Pools of shadow dotted the passageway. Catching a movement in one of them, away to the right, Edwin turned left and hurried to the nearest doorway. Then he cut back and climbed a spiral stairway, up two flights. Along the corridor and around the corner. Another short flight of steps. But with only a few paces to go, Janus stepped out to block his way, dressed for the cold.

  “You can’t keep me out forever,” he said.

  “How long have you been waiting?” Edwin asked, meaning in the corridor.

  “A lifetime,” said Janus. He was holding one hand within the folds of his coat.

  Edwin tensed, shifting his weight, ready to jump back. “It doesn’t need to be like this – fighting at every turn.”

  “That’s easy for you to think, from the king’s right hand.”

  “What if we were equal? We could help each other. Take the best from each of our plans.”

  “Equals?”

  “I’d yield my place.”

  “Nature allows for no equality.”

  “We could try.”

  A slow smile grew on Janus’s soft face. “You know you’re going to fail, Edwin. Else you’d never have made such an offer. When the embassy rides home with no agreem
ent – and they will – I’ll take your place by the king’s side.”

  Edwin flinched as Janus’s hand withdrew from his coat. But it was empty.

  “Did you think I was going to shoot you?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You have me wrong. I have others do that kind of work.” Janus leaned closer, dropped his voice to a whisper. “I heard the other magician in that room of yours, pacing, pacing. Should have been quieter when you were away.”

  Edwin felt the fear curdling his stomach. “Think of my offer,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “For the good of the kingdom.”

  Janus laughed, a soft, wet sound. “Don’t insult me with the greater good. This was never that.” And then, as he turned to go, “What would you say to a bullet in the head?”

  At the door, Edwin listened to silence and pictured his sister lying on the floor in a spreading pool of blood. His hands were trembling so badly that he could hardly turn the tumblers of the lock.

  The door swung open. And there she stood, ten feet back, face grim, pistol levelled. Seeing him, she lowered her arm.

  “I was listening,” she said. “I heard it all.”

  Elizabeth could not bear to be alone. She begged him to stay, even though there wasn’t enough bedding for them both.

  “We can share,” she said, spreading out a blanket on the floorboards.

  He lay himself down on the edge of it, facing the stove. And she lay with her back towards his. The other blankets covered them, keeping in their warmth. They had each travelled far, in many ways. But somehow they always seemed to be reaching back towards that lost childhood, nestled together in the back of a wagon in the Circus of Mysteries.

  CHAPTER 34

  Elizabeth woke in the dark to the squeak of the stove door opening. Her brother had squatted to feed twigs into the remains of last night’s fire. The embers cast an orange glow over the side of his face. Then yellow flame blossomed and the kindling crackled. She watched as he began arranging larger sticks on top of the pile.

  In sleep, it had seemed they were close again, but glimpsed in the flame light, his face had become a mask once more.