The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter

by Rod Duncan

  I reached out and took the purse. “We’re just leaving,” I said.

  Chapter 13

  Never repeat a trick, for the same eyes may not be misdirected twice. And never return to the same pitch. Even should they think they want more.

  – The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

  Three weeks had passed since Harry Timpson set out from Sleaford continuing the endless pilgrimage that is the inheritance of all travelling peoples. Enough time for his scouts to have found a pitch in a fresh town, to have wrung the population dry and then to have moved on again. If fortune smiled on me, I would find him soon enough. If not I might be wandering the lanes of Lincolnshire until snows made travelling impossible and Leon had seized my precious boat.

  The gypsy I’d met in Sleaford had indicated that I should travel west. There being no better choice, I set out in that direction, hoping to hear word of Timpson’s passing in the villages around. Spending the Duchess’s gold with what felt like reckless abandon, I hired Alf’s cousin Joe and his steamcar taxi to transport me. He expressed his pleasure at the commission. Doubly so when I added extra coins to his fee, explaining that he would be bodyguard as well as driver.

  Ten miles west of Sleaford we pulled over at a rest stop to let the engine cool. I sat in the passenger seat and watched Joe work the arm of a roadside pump. Having filled a tin bucket, he poured water into the car’s capacious tank, then went back and repeated the process. As he was thus engaged, a pony and trap clopped to a halt immediately in front of us. Joe and the trap’s driver stood for a moment in conversation, Joe mopping his brow with a green handkerchief whilst the other man jumped and jogged on the spot, as if wishing to loosen stiff joints after miles of travel.

  Sliding out of the seat, I straightened my skirts and was about to approach the newcomer to ask if he had heard news of the Travelling Laboratory, when I noticed the gatepost nearest the pump. On its flat surface, positioned so that it would not be easily seen from the road, were three chalk lines, one horizontal, the other two crossing it vertically, the line on the right side having a small kink near its base.

  I had not seen such a mark since my childhood. Yet there was no mistaking the sign of the broken-legged man – a symbol that used to be drawn by outriders of the Circus of Mysteries indicating that a good pitch lay close ahead.

  From somewhere distant I seemed to hear a voice shouting my name. My father’s voice. It sounded so real that for a moment I wanted to call back to him.

  I had thought the broken-legged man was part of a secret language known only in the Circus of Mysteries. Yet here it was on a gatepost in the Republic, the chalk still fresh. Such marks could last three weeks in dry weather. But at this time of year, with the dew heavy each morning, they would be unreadable in half that time.

  Pulling the glove from my hand, I rubbed a thumb over the rough wood of the gatepost. Chalk dust crumbled away under my touch. An absurd idea began to take shape in my mind. Perhaps the Circus of Mysteries had somehow survived and my father with it.

  “Miss Barnabus?”

  Joe’s call pulled me back from my thoughts. Concern was written on his face. The emotions washing through me must have shown.

  “Miss Barnabus?” he said again.

  Making myself smile, I said: “Did the great Harry Timpson pitch his tent in Sleaford last month?”

  The trap driver stepped towards me, touching a hand to the brim of his bowler hat. “So I hear,” he said.”

  “It’s a shame I missed the chance. His show is famous. But he’ll be long gone by now.”

  “Why miss, no. That is, I don’t mean to contradict. But you’ve most excellent luck. He came back.”

  “He never does that.”

  The man laughed and scratched the back of his head. “You’ll trust your own eyes I hope. Climb this rise and you’ll see his tents pitched in a field to the right of the lane.”

  The car remaining too hot to drive, I walked the low hill. Joe, striding beside me, brought his hefty stick down on the road with a dull thud every other pace.

  “Expect you’ll be wanting your money back,” he said, when we saw a flash of green and white striped canvas through the trees. “There’ll be expenses to take out first.”

  “Harry Timpson never returns so soon,” I said, more to myself than to my driver.

  “But that’s him sure enough.”

  “You saw him before?”

  “Aye. And worth the shilling it cost. Changed lead into gold, he did. That I’ll never forget.”

  More of the canvas emerged as we started down the other side of the hill and the trees thinned. The big top itself had been pitched off-centre in the field. I counted fourteen wagons clustered near the rear hedge. Smaller tents and wagons stood near the gateway – the usual assortment of fortune telling booths, freak-show tents and animal exhibits. Three campfires burned in different parts of the field and I could smell the wood smoke on the air. Taken together I judged it to be twice the size of the Circus of Mysteries.

  Skewbald and piebald horses had been tethered to the right side of the field and were grazing circles in the long grass. It was a sight familiar yet foreign. I felt my heart constrict in my chest such was the pang of longing that washed through me at that moment.

  “This is what you came for?” Joe asked.

  “You must keep the payment in full,” I said.

  “I won’t argue with that.”

  “But I’ll need one extra service.”

  The darkness had closed in around us by the time we again approached the Laboratory of Arcane Wonders and a gibbous moon shone between broken clouds. Joe put me down from the steamcar half a mile short of my destination. Then, with a look that could have been disapproval or an expression of concern, he made a turn in the roadway and chugged off back towards the town. I listened to the departing beat of the pistons until they were quieter than the wind in the trees that crowded the road. Then I waited another minute more.

  It was on foot and unencumbered by my travelling cases that I arrived at Timpson’s pitch. Stepping from the lane, I carried only a canvas bag slung over my shoulder and the few small but incriminating items that I had concealed in the lining of my long coat.

  It seemed that a show was in progress. Two lines of lit torches made a path from the gateway, down across the grass to the big top. A dull light shone through the canvas from within. At the very entrance to the tent a young woman stood. Even at such a distance I could see that the skirt she wore had been cut shorter at the front than the back, so as to reveal her thighs. A red top hat rested on her head and her sequined jacket glinted and sparkled in the torchlight. Other than this woman I could see but one soul – a slight figure crouched near a fire on the right-hand side of the field next to a line of tethered horses.

  Within the tent a crowd cheered. It was the sound of home, yet I had not heard it in five years. I felt the skin on the backs of my arms tighten into gooseflesh.

  Keeping to the shadows, I turned left and picked my way around the outside of the field, using the boundary hedge as my guide, one hand brushing its branches and the few papery leaves that still held on.

  The crowd had fallen silent in the tent and a man’s voice now rose and fell, the words muffled by distance. I could not tell exactly what he was saying, yet his polysyllabic exuberance was unmistakable. A ringmaster was at work, whipping up the audience into ever greater levels of expectation. Could it be Harry Timpson himself? The voice sounded too youthful and vigorous. Yet a man such as Timpson would find it hard to turn his back on the performing life. He would surely travel until infirmity stopped him. When that happened, would the show that bore his name continue or would it be broken up? The trick gimmicks and scientific devices would be one-off artefacts crafted in secret. None of them would bear a patent mark and thus none could be legally sold. For all his fame, the estate of the great showman would be nothing more than canvas, rope, horses and a handful of wagons.

  The sale of the Circus of Mysterie
s had raised a mere eighty-three guineas once the vultures of the court had pulled out its heart. A show that had given work and home to so many, that had entertained and amazed crowds in the towns and hamlets around the Kingdom – reduced to its component parts it had proved insufficient to pay the fees of the lawyers who had destroyed it.

  My path was bringing me ever closer to Harry Timpson’s big top, which had been pitched towards the left side of the field. Its silhouette loomed above me. I could smell dew-dampened canvas and the acrid smoke of burning tar from the torches. The long side-ropes angled down to wooden stakes embedded in the grass near my feet.

  I was starting to be able to make out individual voices in the crowd – a woman who laughed like a braying donkey, a man who called out, “More! More! We must have more!” In the background a creature roared. A lion, I thought.

  Ducking under a rope, I reached out and touched the canvas wall with my fingers. Somewhere here would be a vertical line of metal eyelets where two sections of the tent would be laced together. Easy enough to untie at the bottom and slip inside. Had the night been windy I might have tried. But in such dead calm, the movement of the material would easily be seen. Putting my face close, I closed my eyes and inhaled.

  Having picked my way around the back of the field past the sleeping wagons, I found myself climbing a gentle incline, heading for the lane once more. I could smell the tethered horses before I saw them. They sensed my presence too, though the member of the troop who had been left to watch over them did not. He was hunkered down, warming his hands by a small log fire, blind to anything beyond the flickering circle of light. When I’d seen him from a distance, I’d thought him to be a man. But I now realised this impression came from his greatcoat, an oversized castoff gathered in at the waist by a length of string.

  The mare nearest me stamped and snorted, setting up a movement along the line of animals. The lad extended his scrawny neck and peered out tortoise-like from the coat, but on seeing nothing in the darkness he returned his attention to the fire.

  Inside the big top the heavy beat of a drum had started up, followed by a gypsy clarinet, mournful yet sensuous. The audience quickly joined in, stamping and clapping, urging the musicians into an ever faster tempo.

  The horses were still once more. Among them were animals I had not seen on my first visit earlier in the day. I judged these beasts to belong to members of the audience, who would have paid to have them watched. The show would be approaching its climax soon. When it ended, the field would be flooded with people. There would be no hiding after that.

  I readied myself, rehearsing some phrase in my mind with which to assuage the suspicions of the lad by his fire. But then, as I prepared to step out of the shadows, a broad hand clamped down on my shoulder.

  “Now then, miss,” came a breathy voice from just behind. “Don’t be making a bolt for it. Turn slow and we’ll see what we’ve got.”

  Chapter 14

  The man who desires not certainty will have no interest in illusion.

  – The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

  A scar on the left cheek made Silvan’s face asymmetric. A burn, perhaps. It stood out starkly pale, even in the firelight. More of it I guessed lay concealed under his thick sideburns. Yet he was not unhandsome.

  That is how I first saw Harry Timpson’s lieutenant, smiling directly at me from where he sat on the step of a bow-topped wagon, one of five men playing cards on an upturned box. The smile contained no warmth.

  “Where did you say you found her?” Silvan asked of the man who gripped my shoulder.

  “Sneaking round the horses.”

  “I would have seen her,” said the lad who’d been keeping watch.

  “Would have. Could have. Didn’t,” said Silvan.

  The lad stood biting his lip, as if awaiting judgement. Silvan gestured with a jerk of the head and the boy scampered away into the dark. All the men were looking at me. Silvan drew in a breath as if about to make his pronouncement.

  “I want a job, sir,” I blurted, before he could begin.

  Whatever the man had been about to say dissipated into a stream of air blown from between his pursed lips.

  “I can clean and cook and paste up bills and feed the animals. I can–”

  “Whoa there. We’ve no work.”

  “But please.”

  “And no bed for a well brought up girl.”

  “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  “She can sleep in my wagon,” said a man with a forked beard sitting on Silvan’s right.

  “Choose your man and you’ll have a place to sleep,” said Silvan.

  All the others grinned and chuckled at my discomfort, though keeping an eye on their boss. Such talk would have been unthinkable for most Republicans. Yet the world of the travelling show has always stood apart, with its own codes, dress and language. The smile dropped from Silvan’s face and the others fell silent.

  “The animals have their carriages,” I said.

  “You’d sleep in the beast wagon? The lions would like that well enough.”

  “In the wagon but outside the cage.”

  “Every town has a girl like you,” Silvan said. “She sees the show and conjures a fancy for escape. She begs and weeps. But we don’t take her. Else there’d be a train of angry fathers and husbands following behind us.”

  “I’ve no father and no husband. I can sew canvas and mend tents.”

  Silvan picked a long-necked bottle from the grass beside where he sat, put it to his lips and upended it, his eyes not leaving mine as he swallowed.

  “Let her gamble for it, Silvan,” said the man with the forked beard. The words sent a thrill of fear and excitement through me.

  “Not the cards!” called the one who sat nearest me, who I now saw to be a dwarf, a fact his seated position and the uneven firelight had conspired to conceal.

  “Please let me play,” I said.

  “Why would I?” asked Silvan. “And why would you?”

  “To win a place in your travelling show.”

  “You have money?”

  “I have a little, sir. Teach me your game and I’ll do my best.”

  Silvan aimed a kick at the dwarf, sending him scrambling to his feet, vacating the pile of rope on which he had been sitting.

  “Take a place at the high table.” He flourished his arm, to gesture with mock courtesy. “We’ll teach you.”

  “The game is called Wild Eights,” said the dwarf who, having sacrificed his seat for me, had been assigned the role of tutor and was making no secret of his annoyance at both misfortunes.

  “I haven’t heard of it,” I said, which was a lie.

  “Don’t suppose you’ve heard of poker, neither,” said the dwarf.

  “Indeed I have.”

  “The rules?”

  “No, sir. But I know it’s played in the bars of the American Republics.”

  “The two games are much alike,” he said, spitting towards the fire but not reaching it. “You look for patterns in your cards. Two the same, three the same. But just the number, not the suit. And eight doesn’t count for a pair, though it can be anything in a straight.”

  While pretending to give full attention to my teacher, I watched Silvan pass the bottle round the circle. Each man took a swallow except the dwarf who, being busy with his lecture on the ranking of cards, missed his turn. If he had spoken to me with better grace, I might have felt sorry for his night’s growing total of indignities. Doubly so, for I knew the rules well enough already.

  “Got it?” he said at last, tapping a stumpy finger on his forehead. “Has it all sunk in?”

  “The game costs a penny to join,” said Silvan. “He didn’t tell you that.”

  Following Silvan’s lead, I dropped a coin on the upturned box, then watched as he dealt a pile of five dog-eared cards to each player.

  “Look at ‘em but don’t show,” the dwarf hissed in my ear.

  “Not even to you?”

  “You want my
help or not?”

  I spread the cards clumsily in my hands and turned them for him to see: a three, a seven, a ten and two queens. He nodded his approval.

  Silvan tossed a couple more pennies onto the box. The man with the forked beard did the same.

  “You must match them to stay in the game,” said the dwarf.

  Everyone waited as I selected two pennies from the small collection of copper and silver resting on my skirts. Their eyes glinted in the firelight.

  Next came an exchange of cards, each player choosing some number from his hand to throw face down, to be replaced from the body of the deck. When my turn came the dwarf pulled all but the pair of queens. The cards I was dealt by way of return added nothing.

  Silvan threw down another two pennies. The man with the forked beard shook his head and sat back.

  “Put in your money if you think your hand better than his,” said the dwarf.

  “By what should I know?”

  “By his bid. By the number of cards he swapped. By his face, which must tell you most of any clue.”

  I threw my coins down then watched as each of the following players folded and dropped their cards.

  “You see,” said Silvan, “it comes to a simple question. Do you think your cards better than mine or worse?” So saying he flicked a silver fivep’ny onto the pile.

  “You must match his bet,” said the dwarf. “Or more than match it if you wish to see his cards.”

  “But I don’t wish to spend more.”

  “Then you must fold your hand and say goodbye to the money on the table.”

  “I don’t wish that either!”

  At this all the men laughed except the dwarf, who seemed to bristle at the slowness of his pupil. Another indignity. “Choose,” he said.

  So I threw in a fivep’ny and another penny besides and watched as Silvan laid down three twos on the box. The dwarf blew air through his lips, disappointed. “He beats you.”

  “But queens must be worth more than twos,” I said.

  “Did you not listen? Three of a kind beats a pair. No matter the number or the face.”