You may devise a switch, a gimmick tamping rod, a cunning barrel breach or any other plan. But also devise the means to double check before the gun is pointed at your head.
The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
John Farthing opened his mouth and then closed it again. He glanced over his shoulder to where the other agent was instructing the men, sending them off to search the wagons.
“You boy,” he said, pointing at Tinker with his pencil. “Name?”
“Sam,” said Tinker.
“Family name?”
“Smith.”
“Sam Smith,” said Farthing, adding the name to the paper in his hand. “What’s your job?”
“Boy,” said Tinker.
Farthing echoed the word as he wrote it.
I braced myself. Silvan would shortly have all the excuses he needed to come at me, knife drawn, something he had clearly wanted to do since I arrived. My best hope was that Farthing would arrest me and that I would be bundled away in his carriage. As for those members of the troupe whose trust I had gradually won, I could not bear the thought of the betrayal they would feel on learning that I was a spy, or at least the sister to one.
“And finally...” said Farthing, turning to me. “Name?”
“Elizabeth.”
“Family name?”
“Barnabus.” Anger sounded in the pitch of my voice. That he should toy with me in this way.
Braced for his sarcastic response, I watched as he wrote on the sheet of paper. Yet when he had finished and straightened himself once more, he held the sheet turned in my direction and I saw that where my name should have been, at the bottom of the list, he had written instead “Elizabeth Brown”. Having held it still for just long enough for me to take in the words, he stepped back to his colleague.
Tinker snuffled as he wiped his nose on the sleeve of his coat. Sal turned and placed his huge hand on my shoulder. The gesture was at once protective and accepting. It seemed the shared ordeal had ushered me across an invisible barrier. I stood now on his side, part of the troupe. Part of a family set square against any prejudice or injustice the world might throw against us.
“We’ve had this before,” he whispered. “We get through.”
At last they permitted Tania to go and forage for herbs with which to dress Fabulo’s wound. The Patent Office men were still searching the wagons, hauling out boxes of belongings, emptying bags of clothes onto the wet grass, treading clean linen underfoot.
The dwarf’s wound proved long but not deep. Tania pressed sphagnum moss onto his skin, together with a twist of some pale leaves I did not recognise. Having bound it in place with a strip of cloth around the barrel of Fabulo’s chest, she pronounced herself satisfied.
“A clean cut,” she said. “It won’t fester.”
Of all the blades Sal must have thrown at the dwarf during their act, the first scar would come from the sword of a Patent Office agent. Lara and Ellie fussed over him, bringing a flagon of red wine to ease the discomfort. He grumbled and frowned, but I suspected he might not be so unpleased with the way his part in the affair had resolved.
The Patent Office man went into Tania’s wagon and began throwing my belongings out onto the mud along with everyone else’s. I watched as he stood on the steps delving into the pockets of my coat. But he did not probe the lining with his fingers, so its secrets remained undiscovered and I began to breathe again.
The final wagon to be searched was Timpson’s, wherein I assumed the old impresario to be waiting. John Farthing led the men inside, closing the door behind them. The wagon shifted on its springs as they moved within. No clothes or equipment were ejected. And when they emerged some thirty minutes later, I saw them shake their heads in disappointment.
“We’ll start at the bottom of the list and work our way back up,” said Farthing, pointing in my direction. “Bring the woman and the boy.”
So it was that I found myself sitting in the gloom of the large carriage, its blinds closed. Tinker clung to my arm, more frightened than I had seen him before.
“Don’t be scared,” I said, though that was exactly the emotion pumping through my veins. “They won’t hurt you.”
“They’ll take me back,” he sobbed.
“They’re after bigger fish than you, Tinker.”
“But...”
“Hush now.”
I had no timepiece, so could not say how long they had already kept us stewing there. With each minute that passed my confusion changed more into anxiety. Sure enough, Farthing had recorded my name as Brown, not Barnabus. He had held the paper so that I could see it, though whether that had been deliberate or merely chance, I could not say.
Explanations tumbled in my mind, each more extravagant than the last. He wished to hide my identity from the other agent. He wished to accuse me of giving a false name and on that pretext arrest me. He wished to dispose of me and leave no paper record. I would be murdered without witness, my body disposed of in an unmarked grave.
Tinker’s presence in the carriage was another question. Whereas I had given my true name and a false one had been written, the boy seemed to have given a false name which had been recorded faithfully. Perhaps they expected us to give each other away.
“Tinker,” I whispered. “I may need to tell these men some... things. To get us out of here.”
“What things?”
“That doesn’t matter. But Silvan mustn’t know what I say. Nor Fabulo. Not even Mr Timpson himself.”
“Don’t understand.”
“I will say anything to keep us safe.”
“They’ll take me.” He blurted the words.
“No.”
“They’ll take me back!”
“Back where, Tinker?”
“Bletchley.”
The boy’s words hit me like a slap across the face. In that moment, all the elements of my confusion seemed to crystallize. I gripped Tinker’s shoulders and knelt in front of him so our faces were only inches apart. “You know the Duke and Duchess of Bletchley? Is this what you couldn’t tell me the other night?”
He squirmed, trying to look anywhere but into my eyes. “Mustn’t say!”
“Who are you trying to protect?”
He started shaking his head from side to side.
“If you’re trying to help the Duchess’s brother, then tell me now.”
“Can’t.”
“I want to help him. That’s my purpose. My one mission. But I can’t help unless you first tell me what you know.”
When the glass marble is pushed down into a bottle of soda water, the liquid within will sometimes erupt with great force. So it was with this taciturn boy. It seemed that all the words he had held back from saying in the week I had known him were ready to gush out.
“Timpson tried to take the machine,” he said. “They fought terrible. So he ran. Took the machine with him. Made me promise not to tell.”
“A machine? Does it belong to the Duchess’s brother? Is it a gun? A weapon of some kind? Speak quickly.”
“It’s a box like this...” He gestured, holding his hands apart in front of him to the width of perhaps a foot and a half.
“But what does it do?”
“It draws light in the air. Easy as drawing a line in the dust with a stick.”
There were voices outside the carriage now, Farthing and the other agent, growing louder as they approached. So intent was Tinker on telling the story that I doubt he heard.
“It drew a great line in the sky. That’s when they saw it and came for him and we ran to Timpson for help and to hide. But when Timpson and him have their fight, he offs without me.”
The carriage lurched on its springs. I leapt back into my place. The door swung open, revealing the two agents who stood silhouetted against the low winter sunlight. Tinker shrank back into his oversized coat and his mouth shut tighter than an oyster.