They glared at each other, neither moving for a long moment. Lucy saw Georgiana was quivering like a wild animal, ready to spring, though whether to fight or flee she couldn’t tell. Then Georgiana’s perfect lips curled back into something close to a snarl, revealing similarly perfect teeth clenched in fury.
“You’ll regret that,” she hissed. “Oh my. You’ll regret that a lot.”
She tossed her curls and spun prettily on her heel, striding away towards the slumped figure of her father alone at the side of the fire.
“She does like the last word,” said Charlie. He watched the retreating figure, and then turned to Lucy.
“What?” she said.
“You punch like a boy,” he said. “Where’d you learn that?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “I just do it.”
“Most girls slap,” he said with a grin.
“Do they really?” she said, trying to remember who had taught her to punch and finding another of those vertigo-inducing holes. “Let’s go and have some rabbit stew.”
They walked together towards the Pyefinches’ wagon. Lucy saw him sneak a look back to the Eagles who were huddled together talking. Eagle raised a hand to Georgiana’s face and turned it to the light of the fire so he could see where she’d been hit. He looked back at them, and then quickly away.
“Georgie-girl’ll have a right old shiner in the morning,” said Charlie, sucking his teeth. “I’d say you made yourself an enemy there.”
CHAPTER 43
A CHAIN BROKEN
Amos Templebane, London-born and London-bred, thrived on his new life in the countryside. The open spaces were like his dreams but bigger and wider and–when he lay on his back and looked up at the sky–deeper. In London there was always a wall somewhere close, and beyond the walls, people. And where there were people there was noise–not just the sound of talking or shouting, there was the incessant sound of their thoughts. Most of the time he could fade them into the background of his mind, and though he’d got better and better at it as he got older, the noise from other people’s heads was always there even if it was a very quiet but constant sound, like the hiss of fire in the grate or the wind in the trees. And the noise meant that he was never alone.
In the country there were fields and hills and woods, and Amos felt bathed in greenness and silence. He walked the less travelled ways, the drover’s paths and the sheep tracks, keeping clear of the turnpikes and the high roads. When the food in the tinker’s pack ran out, he found his way to a farm and was given more provisions in exchange for sharpening all the knives and trading a pair of tin canisters.
The only time he walked the high road was on the first day, and he stopped when he came to a crossroads and was faced with the choice of going home to London in the south, or turning east or west. The road west was the least frequented, and he took it. At the time he could not have explained why he did so, but as he walked the countryside and felt himself getting stronger he knew it was because all that waited for him in the south was more of the life he had been trapped in, whereas the other directions offered the hope of freedom. They also contained no Templebanes.
Something had broken inside Amos. At first he thought it was because he had run away, because he had killed the murderous tinker, because he now bore the mark of Cain. He sat for several nights over lonely fires looking at the flames and thinking about this after long footsore days on the road. And then he took the tinker’s sharp knife, his “snickersnee” and threw it into a weedy dewpond and walked away.
He had decided that what had broken was not anything good, not something he should feel guilty about, nothing to be mourned, regretted or lamented: what had broken, as cleanly and suddenly as the strap which had once held the Templebanes’ “Mute but Intelligent” label around his neck, was a chain. He was no longer a prisoner manacled to his past. He did not belong to anyone but himself. He was free and answerable only to the future. And whatever it held, he swore he would never be chained or imprisoned again.
CHAPTER 44
THE LONG HAND
Sara was sitting quietly by the range, contemplating the soup bowl in front of her and even remembering to take a spoonful every now and then. Cook matched her silence, and though the atmosphere remained charged, a companionable quiet enfolded them as she prepared the crust for a large pie.
Sara was eating when it happened.
The spoon was halfway to her mouth when she flinched and cried out in shock. She dropped the spoon and half rose, slamming her hand onto the table to brace herself. The heel of the hand hit the lip of the bowl and it overturned, splashing hot soup into her lap.
She stood up on reflex, gasping again as the liquid burned her leg, the spoon clattering unheeded to the floor at her feet.
“My hand—!” she choked.
Cook had a wet dish-rag in her hand and was at her side in an instant, pulling the dress away from her leg and sponging the soup off it.
“Are you burned?” she said.
“My hand…” Sara repeated queasily, looking as if she might be sick at any moment. “Someone is holding it.”
The shutters to the caravan had been closed for privacy, the coal had been quietly moved, piece by piece, and the trapdoor opened. The box had been removed and opened, and Sara’s hand was indeed being held and examined by the light of a lantern.
“Now,” said the voice. “How do you work?”
Sara’s hand was put back in the box which was plunged back into shadow as the person redirected the bull’s-eye lens of the lantern to help as they rummaged in a drawer for something.
When the lantern was redirected onto the hand, the flash of light steel announced that they had found the sharp bodkin needle they had been looking for. The point of the needle was slowly pushed towards the hand, and then stopped an inch from the flesh as the hand itself moved.
“Hello,” breathed the person. “What’s this?”
The hand was moving. Not trying to escape this time, but doing something else entirely. Instead of crabbing blindly about the tight confines of the box and finding nothing but insurmountable sides, it was moving with a different but very obvious purpose.
Three fingers curled under the palm, leaving the index finger sticking straight forward like a pointer. The thumb stuck straight out at right angles to it like an outrigger, providing balance and a kind of lever to raise the hand enough for the index finger to have room to manoeuvre, which it began to do. It flexed and bent and the tip of the finger began to trace a repeating pattern on the floor of the box.
“What are you up to?” said the person, holding the light closer and bending low to examine the pattern. “What are you a-drawing?”
The finger repeated the pattern, slower and slower, as if trying to help the viewer.
“Letters,” said the viewer. “You can do letters, by God.”
The moving finger wrote and moved on.
“P… H… C… L… another P… H… C again… V or is that another L?… P… doesn’t make sense, no sense at all… that’s definitely H again… C, no it’s not a C!” the viewer gasped. “It’s an E!… L… P… H… E… L P… Help! By heavens you are spelling, aren’t you, my beauty?”
And they leant forward and patted the hand as if it were a dog or other small animal that had just successfully completed a trick.
“Well,” said the voice. “If we can’t make a bucket of money from you, we can’t make money from anything. You shall be The One and Only Hand of Glory, my friend, shan’t you just?”
Sara sat at the table, braced against it with her one hand as if the stump on the end of her other arm, which was stretched out in front of her, might at any moment try and hurl her to the floor. Her face was beyond pale, distinctly green around the edges, and sweat was dropping from her forehead onto the scrubbed white floor below.
Cook sat opposite her, crouched low and peering into her face with great concern.
“Sara, whatever you are doing…”
“I
am writing,” said Sara from between clenched teeth.
“You are harming yourself.”
“I am doing what I can,” she panted. And then her face twitched and she gasped again in surprise, but this time the expression which flooded her eyes was one of relief. She breathed in and allowed half a smile to twitch the side of her mouth.
“What?” said Cook. “What happened?”
“Water,” said Sara, her mouth dry.
Cook spun to the sink, filled a glass and put it in front of her. Sara chugged it down in one draught and then looked up at her. Something like her old self kindled in her face.
“They patted my hand,” she said. “Someone patted my hand.”
“They patted your hand,” said Cook. “What does that mean?”
“It means they read my message. It means we can communicate!”
Before Cook could ask another question she took a deep breath and concentrated on her stump again. This time Cook could see it twitch and move in tiny increments as if Sara was sending nerve pulses out into the air.
“What are you writing?” she said.
“Don’t talk,” said Sara sharply. Then she smiled an apology. “This is hard. It feels like my hand is made of lead.”
She concentrated for a minute and then exhaled. “I’m asking who they are.”
“Who… are… you…?” whispered the voice. “Who am I indeed? And who are you?”
The index finger on the hand stopped writing and tapped on the bottom of the box, as if demanding attention. After a pause it did it again, more insistently.
“Ah,” breathed the voice. “Ah, no. I don’t think we can have that. I don’t think we can have that at all…”
With one hand they gently grasped the wrist of Sara’s hand, stilling it, and with the other they reached for the bodkin.
Sara inhaled sharply and bit off a yelp of pain.
“What?” cried Cook. “What, girl? What happened?”
“Hurt,” said Sara. Staring at her stump as if it had betrayed her. “Hurt.”
“Come to bed, child,” said Cook, reaching for her.
“I am not a child,” snapped Sara. “And you are not my bloody nurse-maid!”
Cook looked as if she’d been slapped. Indeed Sara had never in her life spoken to her in this sharp and unfeeling manner. She had certainly never heard her utter even the mildest swear-word, swear-words being as much Cook’s particular and distinctively delimited preserve as her kitchen was.
“Well,” she said. “Well. You are out of sorts. Sail your own course then.”
Sara would not meet her eyes, perhaps because she knew there would be something close to tears in them, perhaps because she was still angry.
After a long silence, Cook sniffed and Sara spoke down into the table, very quietly.
“They are writing on my hand. I must concentrate.”
Cook stared at the top of her head and saw Sara was quivering with the tension involved in focusing on what was happening to the absent hand.
Being a sensible if piratical Cook, she reached for the teapot and slid two cups on to the table between them. She poured them each a measure of tea and lightened it with some milk. Then she reached behind a crock of wooden spoons and spirtles and retrieved a black bottle out of which she glugged a large measure of whisky into each cup.
“Don’t tell Mr Sharp,” she grunted, and put the bottle back. When she turned and reached for her cup she was surprised to find Sara’s hand waiting to take her own.
Sara’s eyes were wide and apologetic, and in them Cook could see the heartbreaking shadow of the younger Sara, terrified by the Green Man she had found in her room almost a lifetime before.
“They wrote on my hand,” she said. “I wrote ‘who are you?’ and then they pricked me badly and then wrote ‘your master’.”
“Sara,” said Cook gruffly, squeezing the hand in hers.
Sara squeezed back and then let go in order to sit back and breathe deeply. She wiped something out of her eye and found a smile that was, in Cook’s heart, even more heartbreaking than the ghost of the young girl she’d just glimpsed again. Sara took the teacup and took a good swig.
“I had hoped to tell them my name and ask them to come. I had hoped to offer a reward,” she said. “But I do not think my hand is safe. I think it has fallen among evil people.”
CHAPTER 45
THE ALP LOOKS AT THE MOON
The naked Alp looked up at the night sky, or what it could see of it through the dirty window. The pale wash of moonlight falling across its face flattened its habitually blank expression and made it seem even more than normally like a harmless and forgettable mask, a face devoid of everything except symmetry, lifeless and joyless–and guiltless. It was a face which few registered, and one that had the strange quality of erasing itself from the memories of those acute enough to notice it almost as immediately as it passed beyond their immediate vision.
It was naked because it drew calm from bathing in the moon’s rays. The woman upon whose breastbone it was kneeling was not naked since the Alp’s needs were not sexual. Her eyes were cloudy with gin and the influence the Alp had worked upon her, and her breathing was stertorous. The Alp noted with satisfaction that the waxing moon was a fraction off full. It had a rendezvous contracted for the night of the full moon, a contract that had brought it to this teeming city from the mountainous heart of Europe across the grey and contrary sea, and it did not intend to break that appointment since the consequences of so doing would be disastrous for the family it sprang from.
Satisfied that it had kept a good track of passing time, it looked down at the woman upon whom it knelt and concentrated. Pound by pound it made itself heavier by will alone so that it pressed more and more strongly on the thin ribs below its bony knees, licking its lips and preparing to lock its mouth over the woman’s. It was no longer a hungry gesture since the Alp was no longer stealing breath for itself. Rather it was a business-like matter since the vigour it was storing up was for another.
It would have been less content had it known that half a mile away Hodge and Jed were patiently casting round in ever expanding circles as the terrier tried to recapture the distinctive scent of the Alp that it had memorised amongst the pigeon coops. They had been doing it almost without pause for more than three days, moving from rooftops to sewers in their methodical quartering of the city, Hodge’s jaw set in a murderous clench of determination, while Jed and the Raven worked above and below him with no sign of tiring.
CHAPTER 46
ON WITH THE SHOW
The rhythm of life on the road suited Lucy well. The wagons and carts travelled from town to town and fair to fair, sometimes en masse, sometimes splitting off from one another as they diverted to smaller villages and hamlets along the road. From listening to the Pyefinches she learned that this progress around the country was an annual routine, and was in its own way as inflexible and predictable as the seasons themselves: just as spring led to summer and then winter, so the circuit that began the touring season at Reading led eventually to Lansdowne Fair at Bath, which in turn led to Bristol and Devizes and so on. They talked of this as a “circuit” because most of the showpeople overwintered in London and attempted to head back there before the bad weather and the snows made the journey treacherous.
She learned from Charlie that in the winter months the Pyefinches put up in a big yard attached to the “King Harry” public house in the Mile End Road and turned traders and costermongers until spring, repairing and improving their “show” in the long evenings, repainting their wagon and hoardings and planning new draws to attract the next year’s customers. In the touring season, the big fairs were the main events where every showman would attempt to attend and pitch his tent, but between the hiring fairs at the start of the farming year and the harvest fairs at the end, there was plenty of time and space for individual showmen to branch off to try their luck at smaller opportunities like market days and local galas.
It was at
one of these lesser festivals where Lucy got her first taste of the Pyefinches’ show. After three nights on the road they arrived at a cheery little town tucked in a fold in the heathland at a point where the river they’d been following acquired a tributary. They arrived late, having spent all of a long and tiresome day on the road. They found a spot on the centre of a wedge of empty common bounded by river on two sides and the town on the third, and barely had time to water the horses before everyone was asleep.
When she woke in the morning, Lucy found that the field had sprouted tents and wagons while she slept, so that what had been a patch of bare land was now a canvas village all a-flutter with bright flags and pennants and gaudily painted frontages promising all the unimagined wonders of the world for a ha’penny.
It was a sight to make anyone smile, and Charlie told her to have a walk round “before the flats get here”. Charlie divided the world into “flats” who were unwary simpletons or sheep to be shorn, and the enterprising “sharps” (in whose number he counted himself as one of the very keenest) who did the shearing. Lucy looked at Pyefinch and Rose, conscious that although she had provided rabbits on her first night, they had been feeding her ever since.
“Let me help you set up,” she said.
“We can set up in a jiffy,” said Pyefinch. “You can help later.”
“You can help Charlie sell the rock,” said Rose. “People’d rather buy from a pretty young lady than a half-washed ragamuffin.”
“I have washed!” protested Charlie.
“Maybe,” said his mother, pointing at his neck, “but you didn’t stand very close to the soap.”
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