by Rod Duncan
Someone was always watching. On the morning of the third day it was Elizabeth. Julia would turn her back on his nakedness but Elizabeth never flinched. She’d positioned her chair to the side of the bath.
“How long do I have?” he asked.
“Eighty years or so.” Her smile was tight.
He sighed. “At least tell me what’s going on out there,” he gestured towards the front door.
“The town’s in uproar,” she said, brightening.
“More than usual?”
“They say there’s been a battle.”
“They?”
“Well, yes. That’s the thing. No one knows for sure. But if it’s true, your clan met what’s left of Jago’s men. On the North Road somewhere.”
“I have no clan,” he said.
“I’m sorry. How’s the water?”
“Cooling.”
“Ready to get out?”
He shook his head. He felt better in the water than ever he did dry. “Can you pour in another kettle?”
She held it over the foot of the bath, letting the water trickle in slowly. He pulled back his legs so not to be scalded. The routine had grown familiar. The heat seeped into him and he felt his heart relaxing.
“When you were delirious, you said some things. About my gun. And the Yukon. And a man. I don’t know what you meant by it.”
He’d been expecting the question. It had hung between them, unspoken through the long journey back to New Whitby. He’d been unwilling to raise it for fear of the trouble it might make.
“I wasn’t delirious when I said it.”
“Then tell me what you meant.”
“It was just that. A man with your gun. He’d travelled up from Oregon. The overseer did everything he asked. So he must have been important.”
“What was his name?”
“They never told me. I’m sorry.”
“And the gun was like my father’s?”
“More than like. I would have sworn it to be the same one. He wore it in a holster strapped across his chest, so you didn’t see it except when he took off his jacket. But you’ve had yours a long time. So it can’t be the same. Its twin, perhaps?”
Elizabeth was leaning forwards, her eyes open wide enough for the whites to show all the way around.
“Am I going to die?” he asked again.
“Yes. Wrinkled and grey in old age. Like any other man.”
“You won’t let me see the glycer-fortis. You’ve upped my dose, I know. Is it so you can ask me this before I die? I wouldn’t mind.”
Elizabeth seemed taken aback by his question. “You’re carrying two sicknesses, Elias. Only one’s the poison in your blood. The other’s up here.” She tapped the side of her head. “You still believe you’ll die without that green jar. I’ve seen the way you panic when it’s out of reach. That’s why you can’t have it any more. That’s why we’re not showing you.”
“So you haven’t increased my dose?”
“You’ve got to stop thinking on it! Please. Just tell me what that man looked like.”
He shook his head. “If I’m going to die, I want to spend my last days with Charity. She saved me. She brought me back from hell. I need to know!”
“You’re getting better,” Elizabeth said. “I promise.”
“But my dose?”
“We’ve given you nothing but a sniff of that poison in two days. Your body’s strong, Elias. It’s over the worst. It can live to be a hundred. But you’ve got to let it go from your mind.”
He’d been sitting forwards, matching Elizabeth’s tension. But now he leaned back against the sloping rest. His heart slowed. The beat felt regular for once.
Elizabeth got up and poured cold water from the pail into the kettle. He watched her set it on the stove.
“Your man with the pistol,” he said.
“He’s not my man.”
“Well, that’s the thing. I’ve been trying to picture his face all this time. And I can’t. At least, I thought I couldn’t. I just kept seeing your face and it seemed like I was getting confused. But that’s not the way of it. You asked me what he looked like. The only thing I can say is that he looked just like you. He could have been your brother.”
Elizabeth turned away.
On the fourth day he found himself asking for more food. On the fifth he got dressed and walked around the cottage. He wanted to find where they’d hidden his medicine, just to see how much there was left. But he quickly tired and gave up, reminding himself that he didn’t need it any more.
The news of battles and politics came quickly after that. He doubted that half of it was true. But the tide seemed to be flowing for Patron Calvary. Scattered clans and leaderless fighters were offering their oaths to him.
“There’ll be a king,” he said to Charity.
“Your great uncle,” she said.
“He cut me off.”
“If he’s king, he can take you back again.” A shadow seemed to have fallen over her.
“It would be difficult,” he said. “There’s politics, even for a king.”
“Oh,” she said, still sad.
He touched his fingers to her lips. “I wouldn’t want it anyway.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I want to stay with you. If I live. And if you’ll have me.”
All the beautiful women and all the feasts and all the treasures of his old life were cast into shadow by that smile. It lit her face. And the room. And his heart.
“You’ll live,” she said.
And for the first time, he believed it.
Chapter 41
Any king would have been an upstart. But they still came out to see him, the people of New Whitby. He’d approached the unaligned lands at the head of an army greater than any before seen on Newfoundland. Jago would have marched the whole lot of them right in. But Calvary left his host camped beyond the North Road turning. He brought with him only enough warriors to act as guards and five old councillors, who’d once served contending clans.
His first act was a proclamation of peace. There would be no killing or looting, he said. The people of the unaligned lands would be protected. They could go about their trades as before.
It would never be that simple, Elizabeth thought. There would be taxes in exchange for protection and for the mending of roads. Then there would be the other things that governments find the need to spend on. The tyranny of lawlessness would be replaced. It remained to be seen whether the people would warm to their new situation. But Calvary had made a good start.
She’d been thinking about the smugglers in their submarine boat, bringing weapons from the mainland, and before that from the factory in the far Yukon. Beyond that it was hard to see. But Elias had told her the factory was controlled from a kingdom in the Oregon Territory. He didn’t know the name of the king.
Whoever it was had wished to establish Newfoundland as a puppet kingdom, a power to trade with, a means of controlling both oceans. He’d backed the wrong man: Jago instead of Calvary. That would sour the diplomacy. But where there was trade and guns, a way would be found, she thought.
Then there was the thing she’d tried not to think about: the man Elias had described with the pistol that looked like hers. The man so like her that he could have been her brother.
There’d been a time when her father pretended she had a brother. It had been part of a trick of stage magic. Sometimes she’d dressed as a boy and played the part. But it was more than pretending. The brother and the sister had each been facets of who she was.
Then there was a time further back. She found it difficult to think about. But on the very edge of her memory there was the warmth and scent of a woman, her mother. She didn’t know what her mother’s name had been. But there had been another child on the knee. A boy.
Guards came to the cottage to search for dangers. Once they were satisfied, they stepped outside and the King of Newfoundland entered, ducking under the lintel of the door. Elizabe
th attempted a curtsy, though it didn’t feel right. Charity followed her lead. Then they left Elias and the king together.
“I’m to be a merchant,” Elias told her afterwards. “The king approved it. I’ll be learning the wine trade.”
“You’ll be living here then?”
“I will,” he said. “I’m to be a lodger with Charity and her family.”
“I’m happy for you,” Elizabeth said. “Happy for you all.”
He blushed, then, that highborn warrior brought low, as if embarrassed to have such blessings heaped upon him.
“The king didn’t want you back then?”
“He wanted me. His advisors told him no. It would be an insult to the old clans if I were to be taken so easily into his court. So here I stay. Pretending to be sad about it.” Elias stared at his feet, sheepish as a schoolboy, his smile growing slowly until it lit the room.
Charity’s husband loaded their things between a cargo of empty barrels. Maria Rosa wept as she said goodbye to Elizabeth. She ruffled Tinker’s hair, then hurried back to the inn, not waiting to see the boat go.
With Tinker and Julia boarded, Elizabeth turned to him. “You’re sure this is safe?” she asked.
“You’re under the king’s warrant,” Elias said.
“Do all accept it?”
“Those that don’t are hiding in the hills.”
They’d neither thanked the other. But words would have been trite after what they’d gone through. It was enough that they both knew it.
“It’s time,” Charity’s husband called, from the launch.
“I had a brother,” Elizabeth whispered, getting the words out in a rush. “I think that’s who you saw in the Yukon. I only half-remember him. I was very small. And my pistol – it was kept in a wooden box. But there were places for two of them. I thought the other one was lost.”
“Go back to your people,” said Elias. “Back to the Gas-Lit Empire. I shouldn’t have told you. No good comes from hunting ghosts. Especially not out there.”
She stepped down into the boat. And then they were moving. She looked back only once, and saw Charity leading him away.
A Glossary of the Oath-Law and its Origins
Affinity
A clan allegiance as defined by oaths and/or blood.
The Blood
To be of the Blood was to be a direct patrilineal descendent of the original Patron Protectors, present at the first Reckoning in 1842.
Custom and Practice
The system of oaths was established to hold the tyranny of law and government within the narrowest possible limits. Anything that might have appeared to be a rule lying beyond those limits was said to be the custom and practice of Newfoundland. Death might result from contravening such custom and practice, but it was not a law.
The Island of the Reckoning
Situated off the northern coast, the Island was not in truth an island, but a peninsular connected by a narrow rock ridge. It was chosen as the venue for the annual Reckoning due to its shape (being a rough approximation of the shape of Newfoundland itself), and due to the ease with which entry and exit could be controlled.
The Migration
The rapid influx of settlers arriving in the first half of the nineteenth century. Mostly from America and Europe, they travelled in search of lands where they could be free from the strict law of the rapidly expanding Gas-Lit Empire.
Oath-bound
One whose skin had been tattooed with an oath of obedience to another.
Oath-breaking
Any attempt to fraudulently evade oaths. An oath-breaker was by definition an outlaw.
Oath-holder
One who held the oaths of another. Note: a person could be both oath-bound and an oath-holder.
Oath-wright
To be an oath-wright was to be a guardian of the law. It was to make power, inking it under the skin of Patron and slave. But they were not to touch it for themselves. Each bore the oaths of office across his chest:
I hold no oaths but these:
to ink with no mercy or favour,
for no payment or honour,
to hold the oath of no other
to mark my work with no seal,
but the one placed in clear seeing,
on my brow for all to witness.
To separate them from political machinations, the oath-wrights were sworn to poverty and celibacy. Thus they performed roles akin to lawyers but with the ethic and social standing of priests. The extent to which they fulfilled these vows was a matter of controversy.
The number of oath-wrights remained mostly constant. A nephew would normally be apprenticed to learn the craft and the wisdom. On the uncle’s death, he would be presented to the conclave of oath-wrights, who would confirm him as successor.
Only a majority vote of all the oath-wrights at the Reckoning could make a new one. Once he had served his apprenticeship, the words of the law would be written across his chest and his seal on his forehead. The fact that new, non-hereditary oath-wrights were occasionally made is an indication that politics was at work even among those sanctified ranks.
Off-Lander
One born beyond Newfoundland. Typically these were shipwrecked sailors come unwontedly to those shores. Any Patron could place slave marks around the neck of an off-lander and take them to his service.
When discovered, off-landers usually claimed to be the unaligned descendants of Newfoundland’s early settlers. But an investigation of their family trees would easily prove otherwise.
Outlawing
To be outlawed meant being put beyond the custom and practice which protected Newfoundlanders from arbitrary killing. Whilst not strictly a code of law, it was understood that to slay an outlaw would result in no direct retribution, and one who harboured an outlaw would have all the clans set against them.
By tradition, the outlawed were permitted a warrant of as many hours as there would be months in the period of outlawing. The optimum time for fatality was held to be eighteen. Too few hours of warrant to get away. Too many months beyond protection or assistance to survive.
Patron Protector
Traditionally, a Patron had to be a man of the Blood, beholden of no oaths.
The Reckoning
First held in 1842 to decide whether Newfoundland should agree to join the Gas-Lit Empire, the Reckoning became an annual festival. It was at the fifth Reckoning in 1846 that the system of oaths and oath-wrights was first instituted.
Severance
The ending of an oath through the removal of the limb or extremity onto which it had been inked and an amendment to the relevant truth mark.
Slave
Strictly speaking there could be no slaves on Newfoundland, since any oath could be severed. But when the oath-marks were written around the neck, there could be no severance without death. However, it was said that a real slave could not with honour kill themselves without their owner’s permission. Whereas those oath-bound in this way would still have that one freedom remaining. Thus the two states were different.
Truth Marks
Whenever an oath was tattooed, an additional “truth mark” was made on the part of the body considered its opposite. (These “opposites”, some of which might have appeared arbitrary, were part of the tradition of the oath-wrights.) Thus it was impossible for the oath-bound to simply cut off the skin where their allegiance had been marked and claim it as a battle wound. An oath-wright seeing such a scar could check for a corresponding truth mark. A precise pairing of opposite scars was held as irrefutable evidence of oath-breaking.
Unaligned
The unaligned were those people of no clan affinity. They were typically descended from the inhabitants of Newfoundland present before the Migration. Most lived in and around New Whitby.
Acknowledgments
I’m struck by the sheer number of people who’ve helped me to write this novel. My special thanks go to the team of midwives who brought it into the world, including Marc, Phil, Pen
ny, Nick, Lottie and Ed. I’m indebted to all the members of Leicester Writers Club for their suggestions, guidance and time, particularly Terri, Siobhan, Dave and Jacob who, at various stages, gave formative input. And I’d like to acknowledge the parts played by Stephanie, Joseph and Anya, whose understanding and support made the whole process possible.
Thanks also to readers of the previous books who took time to send supportive messages through the year or wrote reviews or clicked to ‘like’ or to ‘follow’. Those things always give me a lift. They kept me going on days when the story wouldn’t cooperate. Finally, books only become complete when they’ve been read. So if you’ve just shared the road with Elizabeth and Elias, thank you. We created their world together.
About the Author
Rod Duncan writes alternate history, fantasy and contemporary crime. His novels have been shortlisted for the Philip K Dick Award, the East Midlands Book Award and the John Creasey Dagger of the Crime Writers’ Association. A dyslexic with a background in scientific research, he now lectures in creative writing at DeMontfort University. Some might say that he is obsessed with boundary markers, naive 18th Century gravestones and forming friendships with crows. But he says he is interested in the way things change.
rodduncan.co.uk • twitter.com/rodduncan
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