The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter

by Rod Duncan

“To increase the range of the beam, we tried setting the concentration of reagents higher. But when we did this, we discovered that the duration of the beam decreased. All the energy contained in the chemicals was thus concentrated into shorter and shorter times. At last we turned the dial full up and tried sending the beam clear across the estate, a distance of some three miles, to paint a spot of light on the gate at the head of the main drive.

  “The duration of the beam was so brief, it deceived the eye into believing that nothing had happened. And its power... Until then I’d not believed that light could change the nature of metal. But in the place where the beam had touched the iron gatepost, we found a hole; pencil thin and perfectly smooth.”

  “Then it had melted the iron?” I asked.

  “If it had melted, there would be traces – droplets congealed on the gatepost like wax on a candlestick. The iron had gone. Completely. And in an instant. Iron had changed into air.”

  The light from the machine had faded now. I could no longer see the beam and as I watched, the spot on the roof dimmed to nothing. I thought of all that light being concentrated into a second. A fraction of a second. The power of it would surely be intense. But to make iron disappear?

  Orville opened a valve in the machine and I saw the spent liquid emptying from the reaction tube. I could hear it trickling but could not see where in the machine it went. Then he closed the lid and snapped the brass fasteners in place.

  Wiping condensation from the window glass, I looked out to the courtyard and the stables beyond. We had been stationary ten minutes at least and I was nursing a growing impatience. The Sleepless Man must have reported back by now. Silvan would be setting off towards Bletchley at the greatest possible speed, or worse, he might try to intercept us on the way.

  “A watched pot never boils,” said Orville.

  I sat back and pulled my coat closer around me. “The man who helped you, was he called Zoran?” I asked.

  “How did you know?”

  “Putting small clues together for the most part,” I said. “I had some of it from Tinker also. Don’t be angry with him. He loves you like a father.”

  “I didn’t want to leave him behind,” Orville said. “But this isn’t the journey for a boy. Is he safe?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Last time I saw. He told me of an aged conjuror...” I held up my right hand with the two middle fingers down, as the boy had done. “My father used to tell me of the exploits of the Great Zoran. I knew about the accident. How does he make his living now? Surely no longer as a bullet catcher?”

  Orville’s face lengthened. “He and his daughter have rooms at the post house next to the Hall. He helps to maintain the steamcars. She cleans and carries.”

  “This saddens you?”

  “I didn’t plan to abandon them. They deserved better.”

  “I’m sure you were a good employer.”

  He turned his face away, but not quickly enough to hide his pain. When he spoke again, his voice dripped with self-loathing. “Everything that happened was my fault,” he said. “Zoran had failed to make gold so I asked if there were others who might help. He knew how to contact Harry Timpson but wisely refused to do it. I pressed him, saying he should act – if not for his own sake then for his daughter’s. At last he relented. The letter went but we received no reply.

  “I had no patience for waiting. I tried new experiments with the machine. By angling the mirror upwards, I sent the beam into the night sky. It seemed to disappear at a great height above the Hall. That was not enough for me. I tried again and again, consuming the reagents in an attempt to touch the heavens. Do you see the tragedy of Icarus in me?”

  “Your strange light brought the Patent Office?” I asked, fitting his story into the jigsaw puzzle I had already assembled.

  “Three days later. Yes. But Harry Timpson reached me first. We showed him what the machine could do. He was greatly excited. He couldn’t keep still, but walked up and down, moving freely despite his age. Ideas poured from him.

  “He saw that our first goal must be to identify and replicate the reagents. Unless we could make fresh supplies, the machine would soon be useless. Then he said we could combine the light beam with various substances mentioned in the notes of past alchemists – of which he’d assembled a great collection. He kept reaching into the air as he spoke, grasping it and pulling it back to him, as if he were trying to catch the essence of life. Together we would defeat poverty, he said. Such was the force of his personality, I couldn’t help but believe him. He shared my goals, I thought. We would do all this together.”

  “Timpson can be persuasive,” I said. “And when the Patent Officers came, you hid with the Laboratory of Arcane Wonders?”

  He covered his face with his hands. “Yes. I abandoned those I loved.”

  “This machine is a terrible thing. It’s consumed you and Harry Timpson both.”

  “It’s the only thing I’ve not destroyed. You’ve helped me regain it. I’ll honour our agreement and face my sister once more.”

  “I do believe she loves you,” I said.

  “Then you’re cruelly deceived. Once I’ve seen her I’ll be gone. I won’t return.”

  Orville brooded over the box that had destroyed his life. I brooded over the delay, seeing in my mind’s eye Silvan riding northwards as we sat waiting in the stable yard. At last my frustration pricked me into action and I stepped out in search of our driver.

  I found him sitting in front of a fire in the snug of the inn. He jumped up on seeing me and flustered an excuse that made no sense.

  “Is this also a post house?” I asked.

  “Yes miss.”

  “They have a pigeon master then, and a loft?”

  When he flushed red, I knew the truth of it. Silvan had sent word of a reward should our journey be delayed.

  “What would happen if the coach company learned of a bribe paid to a driver such as yourself?” I asked.

  “I... that is... we are ready to be off. If you–”

  “There will be no more delays.”

  “No, miss.”

  “You’ll drive the horses hard.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  I thought of all the pain that Orville’s machine had caused. It seemed certain that it would destroy him utterly. I thought also of Silvan and his men, armed and willing to do murder. I held all this in my mind, whilst the coach driver stood in front of me, clutching his hat in his hands, trembling with tension and the prospect of the workhouse. It had never been my desire to choose the fate of others. Yet here I stood, weighing each person and each possibility.

  “Very well,” I said. “But I’ll need to see the pigeon master before we go. I have two messages to send.”

  Chapter 38

  All bullet catchers are alike. Therefore take yourself to be your yardstick and never trust another with the secret of your illusion.

  – The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook

  We rode through the night. The driver, more afraid of me than I had realised, missed three of the scheduled stops. We changed horses once and kept up a good speed, our path more or less direct.

  “What did you do out there?” Orville asked me when he saw the driver’s haste.

  “A little threat,” I said. “And I sent a message ahead to the Duchess, your sister. I hope she’ll be waiting for us when we arrive.”

  But when the coach put us out on the roadside, we found ourselves alone. The sound of wheels and hooves receded into nothing in the pre-dawn. Before us rose a magnificent iron gate, emblazoned with the Bletchley arms. High stone walls stretched away into the distance on either side. I shivered.

  The dark cloud of self-loathing that had hung so heavily over Orville during the journey seemed to have lifted. With the box under his arm, he pointed to one of the iron gateposts.

  “This is what I spoke of.”

  I lowered my head to look through the hole that his machine had cut. Everything was as he had described.

  “Co
uldn’t your machine be used as a weapon?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “We know this because of an accident.”

  The image of a hand flashed into my mind – a small hole punched through between the thumb and first finger. A sword wound, I had thought. “Fabulo?”

  “The same. He had his hand in the way when a powerful beam fired. There was no blood. The wound was perfectly cauterised. And no pain, he said, though it itched afterwards. Any musket ball would do fifty times the damage.”

  I stroked a finger over the ironwork. Despite Orville’s assurance, I felt certain of the machine’s capacity to destroy.

  The gate swung open smooth and silent. The dark forms of three great monkey-puzzle trees stood to one side of the long drive. Lying directly ahead, the Hall seemed to be more a castle than a stately home. The self-confident affluence of the aristocrats still shocked me. I wondered again at Orville’s dream. If gold were suddenly worth no more than lead, would the meek at last inherit? In my meetings with the Duchess, I had felt a surprising kinship. Did I want to see her brought low?

  “They must have woken your sister when my message came.”

  “First we go to the workshop,” he said. “There’s something there I need.”

  Cutting across the wet grass, he began to lead the way towards a cluster of low buildings at the rear of the hall.

  “Our agreement–”

  “I’ll honour it. But once my sister’s seen me, she’ll likely have us thrown off the grounds. This’ll take only a few moments.”

  “This obsession has warped your judgement,” I said.

  “She won’t hide her true colours when I’m in front of her. You’ll see.”

  We were both whispering now, for the buildings loomed close.

  The workshop towards which we were picking our way must originally have been built as a set of stables. I could see where doors had been bricked. Chimneys had been added also, lending it the appearance of a small factory.

  “I hid two large bottles in the fireplace,” Orville explained as we approached the door. “That’s all that’s left of the reagents. The Patent Office won’t have found them. They had no reason to search.”

  We slowed as we approached, stopping a couple of paces short. A large padlock hung from a hasp on the door. A bill had been pasted at face height.

  THIS BUILDING IS SEALED

  BY ORDER OF THE INTERNATIONAL PATENT OFFICE

  “I’ll break it,” said Orville.

  “Too noisy. You’ll bring the men-at-arms. Why not use that?” I pointed to the box he carried. “Your machine can turn the metal of the lock into air.”

  A smile broke out on his face. “You should have been an inventor.”

  I watched as he opened the box on the doorstep and began turning the handle. When the light appeared he angled the mirror so that the beam touched the lock. “This is to get our aim,” he whispered. “Then we turn the dial up full and set it off again.”

  But when he reached out to shift the lock a fraction to one side, the hasp from which it hung fell free of the door.

  “It’s been forced,” I said.

  He pushed and the door shifted.

  I hissed a warning but he was already moving. “It’ll take only seconds.”

  As the door opened, I darted my hand to the mirror, shifting it so the beam of light did not enter the darkened room. Then I ducked to the side.

  Though I was braced for action and fully expected it, the sound and flash of the gunshot made me flinch. A woman screamed within. Then someone must have lit a gas lamp for a steady yellowish light spilled out of the door, casting a rectangle on the uneven grass next to me.

  “Let her go!” That was Orville’s voice, fearful, outraged.

  “Where’s the machine?” Timpson this time.

  “First release her!”

  “We don’t have the luxury of time, Orville. The gunshot will have woken the household. I’ll kill you both if need be. The box can’t be far. You have five seconds. Save her if you will, or the machine. One... two...”

  I picked up the box with both hands. The mirror now directed the beam of light directly out in front of me, as if it were a line emerging from my chest.

  “...three... four...”

  I stepped around the door and into the workshop. Orville stood in front of me, frozen. To the left, backs against a workbench stacked high with machinery, stood Silvan, Fabulo and Harry Timpson. On a stool between them sat the Duchess of Bletchley, dressed in the clothes of a working woman. Her eyes flashed from Orville to me.

  Silvan gripped a cocked pistol, the muzzle pointing at the Duchess’s chest.

  “Stop!” My voice cried out into the silence.

  In a blink, everyone was staring at me and at the box I carried. Timpson stepped forwards.

  “I’ll drop it!”

  He stopped dead.

  The line of light vibrated in the air in front of me, betraying my heartbeat.

  Timpson looked from me to Orville and then back, nodding slowly, his opalescent irises seeming almost to glow in the dim workshop. “Drop it then. I’ll mend it. Your time is up anyway.”

  I knew Silvan was going to shoot the Duchess. I could sense the tightening of his grip on the pistol. Orville must have seen it too, for he leapt across the room, clearing the space in two great strides. I saw the knife flash in his hand. Then it was thrust into Silvan’s chest. The pistol clattered to the floor as Silvan fell.

  A gunshot flashed, half deafening me. Orville looked down to his own chest, blinking rapidly. Then he dropped to his knees. From somewhere Timpson had pulled a second pistol.

  For a fraction of a second the Duchess’s scream seemed to come from a long way off. Then all the sound rushed back at me.

  I swung the box around aiming the beam at Fabulo’s eyes. He recoiled and swiped the air, as if batting away invisible hornets. Timpson was coming for me now. His hands went to the smoked glass goggles hanging around his neck. But I shifted the beam before he could put them on. When the light touched his eye he screamed, and fell to the floor clutching his face.

  “Enough!” the shout came from Fabulo, who squinted like a man looking into a stinging gale. “This is enough! Who will have this marvel now? A dead man? Or a prisoner? That will be every one of us if we wait. Miss Barnabus, you must run fastest. The Duke of Northampton knows you’re here. We sent a message.”

  “I cannot see!” cried Timpson. “You’ve blinded me!”

  Fabulo knelt by Silvan’s lifeless body and pressed his stubby fingers to the man’s neck.

  The Duchess was on her knees next to Orville. She ripped open her brother’s coat to reveal a red bloom, like a poppy, spreading out across the white of his shirt. His eyes stared up at the ceiling.

  She collapsed onto his chest, her body heaving with unvoiced sobs of pain.

  Fabulo was trying to help Timpson to his feet, but the old man batted the dwarf away. “Get the machine you idiot,” he hissed.

  The beam of light had faded to nothing. I placed the box on the floor. Men were shouting in the distance, heavy feet closing at a run. “Duchess,” I said. “I’m sorry for your loss. But I did as you asked. Protect me now.”

  Still she could not speak, but clutched the dead body to herself and rocked it in an agony of sorrow.

  Then the door crashed open. The men-at-arms poured in. Fabulo lifted his hands above his head. A gun jabbed me in the back and I did the same.

  “Call them off,” I pleaded.

  The Duchess looked at me through her tears. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  In that moment I understood the riddle that had been in front of my face for so long. The brother who said his sister loved him not, who never wanted to see her again, and yet gave his life to save her from a gunshot. The way she held him, clutching his head now to her blood stained breast. I was not looking at Orville’s sister. I was looking at his lover.

  How simply I had been trapped. Too proud of my own detection, I hadn’
t entertained the thought that the clues I’d followed might have been laid as an illusion. The watermarked notepaper, the aristocratic hand, the place of postage – all would have been simple to arrange.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, as the dreadful realisation took root in my heart.

  “You are Elizabeth Barnabus,” said one of the men behind me. It was not a question. “You are fugitive from a contract of indentured servitude held by my master, the Duke of Northampton.” He gripped my shoulder and turned me to face him. The other men-at-arms bore the badge Bletchley, but he wore the oak tree and stars.

  “That woman will pay the debt,” I said, though I knew already she could not.

  “She?” laughed the others. “She’s a village girl! She mops the floor at the post house or did before she went on the run. You thought her a princess?”

  “She said–”

  “She’s the bitch daughter of an old gypsy called Zoran.”

  “Aye and she’s wanted for thieving here at the Hall.”

  There it was. The whole illusion laid bare. Simple, like every good trick. The theft of a purse of gold – my advance. Theft of notepaper also, no doubt. One foot in the post house to intercept any letter or message I sent, stopping them before they reached the real Duchess.

  Another man entered the workshop, an armful of chain and iron in his hands. “This do you?” he asked. Northampton’s man took it with a nod. He turned me again so that I was facing away from him. I felt the cold weight of iron as he snapped the collar in place. Roughly he grabbed my right hand and manacled it to the collar. Then the left. I did not resist.

  “That should hold her,” he said.

  The laughter of the men mixed with the sound of more footsteps approaching along the path.

  “Make way,” ordered a new voice.

  The chains clanked as I turned to face the door.

  “I am an agent of the Patent Office,” said John Farthing, holding up his warrant paper. “This workshop is under investigation. Who is authorised to be here?”

  No one answered. One of Bletchley’s men took the paper and examined the stamp of office on the bottom before handing it back.