The Fugitive and the Vanishing Man

by Rod Duncan

  She didn’t understand the taboo against refusing a wager. At Crown Point, such an act would be understood as an insult, cowardice or both. There was so much she didn’t know. He would never have thought to tell her such a thing. It seemed common knowledge. Had there been witnesses, the damage would have been more severe. Janus might still whisper it around. But that would be dangerous for him.

  Edwin stopped at the top of the gulley and looked down the scree slope. “Take the rope,” he said, showing her how to hold it. “Always keep one hand gripping. I’ll go first. It starts steep but don’t worry. It’ll get shallower as we go.”

  Hand over hand, tree by tree, they began the descent, following the main rope at first. Then branching towards the gulley wall along the frayed line. It seemed to have deteriorated in the short time since his last visit. He could feel the stretch of it. Loose strands twisted, trying to unravel under their combined weight.

  Resting against the final tree, he glanced back. She was keeping up, a grim expression on her face. Had it been another person, he would have thought them scared. But not his sister. It was another emotion, he thought, the looming encounter with the place their mother died.

  Digging in his heels, he scrambled to the base of the cliff. She followed, matching his steps. Then they were picking their way around under that wall of basalt, hidden from view by the trees. At the stone, he looked back. The last of the colour had drained from her face. It seemed as if she might be sick.

  He had to be honest with her. “I told you our mother went over the edge. And I did see someone go over. But I didn’t have her in my sight all the time. Not for every second. So… what I mean to say is, if she’d been in on it, they could have made a switch.”

  “They didn’t,” Elizabeth said, with certainty heavy as the stone itself. “She is dead.”

  “Shall I let you… pay your respects?”

  “No,” she said. “Our mother isn’t here.”

  How many times had he lain on that slab and wept? But Elizabeth didn’t even bend to touch it. He realised then, and it took him aback, how much of their mother he could see in her eyes.

  When Edwin had told her that they would need to leave the castle to practise the flash bomb, her thoughts had jumped to this spot. If they were going to risk it anyway, why not come to the place her mother died? Her mother’s memorial was shielded from view, he’d said. From one side by the trees and from the other side by the cliff itself. They would think the bang a rifle shot. There were enough of those. It would be perfect.

  She’d thought that being there would allow her to touch her sadness, perhaps to wallow in grief. But Janus had cheated her of that. Descending the slope, she had felt only anger. And here, at the memorial Edwin had so carefully arranged, she felt anger still.

  Edwin put the flash bomb in her hand. It looked like a ball of putty with a metal ring attached. She closed her fingers around it to test the size, found it firmer than it looked.

  “The thing is not to panic,” he said. “Pull the ring clean out, drop it straight down, take a half-step back with your eyes closed. It won’t bounce. It won’t roll.”

  He made her mime the actions just as their father would have done. Or their mother. Again and again. By repetition do the hands of the clock move slow. And then, when she could do it flawlessly and without thought, he stood back. To give her room.

  “Do it,” he said.

  So she did.

  Pull.

  Drop.

  Half-step back.

  Even through closed eyes, she saw the world turn white with the brightness of the flash.

  CHAPTER 36

  For the benefit of the embassy, Edwin was once again clothed in the fashion of the men of Crown Point. But he no longer needed to hide his nature from Elizabeth. The barriers were falling away between them. He felt empowered.

  In the morning room, he greeted the king and the consort, then took his place at table and began to load his plate with slices of apple and venison.

  “You’ve got your appetite back,” said the consort.

  “He’s a magician,” said the king. “Some days he fasts.”

  Edwin nodded, though she’d been right. He’d hardly noticed it himself, but the stress had been stopping him from eating. Now, his hunger made every morsel delicious.

  Janus entered, bowed to the king, to Timon, to the consort, then sat. That bland smile gave nothing away. It seemed impossible that only a few hours before he’d been threatening torture.

  “I hear you have your agreement written,” Janus said.

  “It will be the king’s agreement,” Edwin said. “Should he wish it.”

  All were staring at him.

  “And if I don’t wish it?” asked the king.

  “Then I will throw it in the fire.”

  “Then I shall read it. But why the long face, Mr Janus?”

  Janus’s brow was indeed folded into a frown. “It is not agreed yet, sire, by either side.”

  The king’s face darkened. It seemed he would respond, but the Master at Arms stepped into the room, face grave. “A body’s been found,” he said. “A mile from here.”

  Edwin was suddenly alert.

  “Who?” asked the king.

  “A working man, to judge by the clothes.”

  It would be bandits, Edwin thought. Yet so close to Crown Point.

  The king clearly had the same idea. He scowled. “How dare they!”

  “The body was left in the track. No sign they tried to hide it.”

  “Which track?” the king asked.

  “Just off the east road. Halfway to the Cairn.”

  Edwin’s mouth had turned dry. “How’s the man not known?”

  “Oh, he may yet be,” said the Master at Arms. “But not by his face. He’s been lying there through one day and one night at least. The crows have been at him. And there was… damage.”

  Edwin had seen the Master at Arms describe battles where scores of men had died. His unease in making this report seemed wrong. Edwin’s stomach tightened. “Was anything found with the body?”

  “A worker’s knife. A key. Tinder box, steel, a length of twine, a handful of grain…”

  “What kind of grain?” Edwin asked.

  The Master at Arms shrugged. “Didn’t see it myself.”

  “How was the grain carried?”

  “A pocket. Sewn into the poor man’s coat.”

  “Where’s the body now?”

  “I sent men with a handcart. Give it an hour and they’ll be back. Then you can see for yourself.”

  The king was peering at Edwin. “You have a thought on who it might be?”

  Edwin answered with a shake of the head, not trusting himself to lie in a level voice. “If you’ll give me leave, sire. I’d like to see the body where it lies.”

  The king gestured his assent, suspicious it seemed.

  Edwin marched from the room, breaking into a run only once he was clear of the royal apartments. The guards at the gate stood back to let him pass.

  He had argued with Janus over the lives of millions. No doubt the man might order an army to attack. But somehow, it was hard to imagine that pasty-faced counsellor getting his own hands wet. Please don’t let it be Pentecost, he thought. Please don’t let it be him. But in another part of his mind, he already knew and was ashamed that his care was more for what the death might mean than for the snuffing out of the life of a man who had helped him so much over the years. And his mother before him.

  He caught up with the soldiers and the handcart, walked behind them until his breath was less ragged, and then took over the lead. Two more of the castle’s garrison had been left to guard the corpse. The feet were the only part of it visible.

  “Show me,” Edwin told them.

  One stooped and half pulled back the cloak that had been covering it, revealing the back of the body, but keeping the front covered.

  It was Pentecost, though Edwin wouldn’t have known without the context of place
and time. A lumpen man with steely grey hair, whose fat hands had been so gentle in gathering pigeons from their cages. How often had he dipped inside his coat and flourished a few grains of wheat or corn to scatter as treats.

  “Show me the rest,” he said.

  The guard didn’t like it, but didn’t complain. He stood back and dropped the cloak away from the body.

  A trickle of blood had seeped from a coin-sized wound in the steel grey hair. An entry wound, Edwin thought, and then remembered Janus’s threat: a bullet in the head. Taking a breath to steady himself, he stepped to the other side of the body, looked then retched. The bullet must have fragmented on its way through. Little wonder no one had been able to recognise the pigeon master’s assistant. Everyone thought he was visiting his sick mother, in any case. Who would think that such a mass of flesh and shattered bone had once been the face of gentle Pentecost?

  But his identity would soon be revealed. Then the king would send out trackers. The pigeon loft was a place of politics, after all. The secrets of the kingdom passed through it. With the ground dry and dusty, there wasn’t much that Edwin could see, beyond a chaos of prints from garrison boots. But not so long before, he had walked on beyond that point to their night time meeting.

  “Has anyone gone further up the track?” he asked.

  The guards said no.

  “Then take the body back to the castle. I’m going to scout around the cairn.”

  As he walked away, he wished that he had the skill to read the ground like the king’s hunting master. But with every pace, he allowed his feet to scuff away any evidence that he, or the killer, might have left behind.

  A wintery breeze rattled the branches of scrub trees on either side of the path. He shivered, trying not to think of that ruined face. At the cairn, he knelt, getting his head low. It seemed the wind had done his work for him, scouring the dust of traces.

  “Looking for something?”

  The voice made Edwin scramble back to his feet. Janus had crept close without him hearing. The man wore an easy smile. They were quite alone.

  Edwin tried not to let his panic show. “What are you doing here?”

  “Watching you. Were you checking for footprints?”

  “I… I was.”

  “And do you think this might be something to do with it?”

  Janus held out a bag, which Edwin found himself accepting. It was his own, once filled with silver. Now empty.

  “Do you know it?” Janus asked, the soft clay of his face impossible to read. “I found it caught in the scrub.” He gestured back along the path.

  Edwin had passed that way and not seen it.

  They were standing close enough that either could have reached out with a knife and stabbed the other. Edwin tried not to blink, though his eyes were stinging.

  “Why do you hate me?” he asked.

  “How little you understand,” Janus said. “You and your mother. She was the same – always missing the subtext. You want to know where the hate came from? It was bequeathed to me. There! I’ve given you something for free. I wouldn’t want you to die without knowing.”

  Edwin could think of only one person who might be able and willing to tell him the answer. His feet took him to her door, and into that room of pastel silks. The consort must have sensed the turmoil in his thoughts, because she dismissed her ladies-in-waiting and stepped with him to the window furthest from any ears that might hear.

  “Who was Janus’s mother?” he whispered.

  “The blacksmith’s wife. Why is it you ask?”

  “I thought… I don’t know. It’s something he said to me.”

  She sighed, as if disappointed with a child who won’t learn their lesson. “You didn’t ask about his father.”

  “The blacksmith.”

  She put a hand on her belly. “All can see when a woman carries a child. But a man can sow his seed in any bed and be gone by morning.”

  “Not the blacksmith?”

  She nodded as if encouraging him to take the final step. Only then did he understand.

  “The old magician…”

  “Yes,” she said. “The father of your enemy is the man your mother had killed.”

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER 37

  On the morning of the final day before the embassy departed, a rainstorm blew in to lash the window glass. So dark was the cloud that an hour after the sun should have risen, lamps were being lit again around the castle. A bad omen, for those who believed in such things. If the squall continued, the farewell feast would be held in the Great Hall instead of the courtyard. That would mean a hundred or so fewer revellers to witness the illusion. But worse, Elizabeth’s vanishing would need to be re-designed.

  In the courtyard, she would be able to back up to one of the doorways and under cover of the flash, slip away into an empty passage. But servants would be using all the passages outside the Great Hall. Unless some task could be devised to send them all back to the kitchens.

  “The rain will stop,” Edwin said, peering out of the window, not believing it himself but wanting to make their task seem less impossible. There was work to be done and the weather they could not control.

  Ever since he’d finalised the words of the agreement, Elizabeth had been transcribing them onto parchment. A painstaking process. One copy for the King of Crown Point. One copy for the King of Newfoundland to sign: this Edwin would keep with him as he lay waiting in the crate. And one copy, the twin of Edwin’s, for Elizabeth to be holding when she vanished. The size of her handwriting had to be constant. The number of lines and the position of the text on the page. Bent over the workbench, she kept her back so still as to seem like a statue. But whenever he looked over her shoulder, he saw the pen moving in her hand.

  His own task was to finish the crate in which he would conceal himself. It had been one of his mother’s unfinished props. She’d prepared the outside surfaces with that distinctive lacquer, and would have added arcane symbols in red had she lived to complete it. But plain black worked far better for this illusion.

  He had taken out the lowest plank on the rear wall and added a hinge, so that it would swing out on the pressing of a secret catch. The hole was just big enough for him to crawl inside. Above that hidden space, a rectangle of cotton formed a thin barrier. Strong enough, he hoped, to carry the weight of apples and pears that would rest on top.

  As he was hammering in the last small nail, she came over to inspect.

  “Are you done?” she asked.

  He stood back and surveyed his work. “I still see a dozen flaws.”

  “Well, it looks perfect to me,” she said. “I was never taught all this – the building of stage props.”

  At the workbench, he examined the twin parchments, which she’d left side by side. She’d chosen sheets with similar patterns of imperfections. And the placing of the text was marvellously similar.

  Standing next to him, she frowned. “They’re quite different.”

  “I couldn’t have done it half so well,” he said. “And they’ll never be seen together. Except by us.”

  Flipping back the lid of the ink pot, she dipped the pen and placed a matching spot on the right-hand margin of each parchment. Then she wiped them away with her thumb, leaving a smudge on each sheet.

  “That’s better,” she said.

  And it was.

  Elizabeth had to hide when the servants came to carry away the crate. He’d covered the whole thing in sacking, to stop them looking inside and seeing its secrets. They bumped it on the inner pillar of the spiral stairs. Following behind, he found himself clenching his teeth. If by accident they pressed in the wrong place, the hidden door would fall free. They knocked it again on the frame of the door leading out into the courtyard. And one more time in the kitchen on the corner of a table on which great piles of vegetables were being diced.

  By the time they reached the small storeroom, he felt sick with tension. Having thanked the men and dismissed them, he leaned his b
ack against the closed door, and steadied his breathing.

  The barrels of fruit were already waiting: pears and two varieties of apple. He locked the door, stripped off the sacking and examined the crate for damage. Two of the knocks had chipped lacquer from the corners. The third, the kitchen table, he thought, had left a small dent in the middle of a surface. But the catch worked and the door still sat flush. He began placing the first layer of fruit inside, resting it on the cotton barrier, alert for any sound of tearing cloth as he filled it almost to the top. When it was done, he stood back. It looked better than he had imagined. The fruit was beautiful: colour and sheer abundance drawing the eye.

  He began to allow himself to think that it might work. They would perform this apparent miracle. Everyone would feel the power of it. Even the most sceptical. After that, he would make his prophecy: power and wealth for Newfoundland if the alliance was made. He would unfold the parchment. Red would at last agree. Gilad would nod. And Brandt would sign.

  The rain had stopped and sunlight slanted down over the courtyard walls. The puddles had already started to dry. He stood, taking in the beauty of it all.

  A dazzling clarity surrounds the conjurer when everything that can be controlled has been controlled. It is the awareness of detail, which is the sum of all the planning and preparation that has gone before. As Edwin walked across the courtyard, he could feel the texture of the flagstones under his every step. The men and women setting out tables seemed to move with unnatural slowness, whilst he could take everything in with a single glance.

  They stood facing each other, he and his sister, dressed in their identical clothes: navy blue canvas trousers, white shirts, jackets of lighter blue. She had trimmed his hair so to more perfectly match the length of her own, then tied it back in the masculine fashion. Each of them wore a brown bowler hat.

  Looking at themselves in the hand glass, she had pointed out a slight difference in complexion. Despite her time on fogbound Newfoundland, Elizabeth’s cheeks showed touches of apple-blush. Powdering both their faces made them more similar. But it was the final detail that completed the illusion.