The Oversight Page 26

  Lucy left them to argue about Charlie’s washing habits and walked through the small fair which had sprung up as she slept. She wondered if she might find a stall selling gloves as she had indeed split Sara Falk’s when she had hit Georgiana, and though she had stitched them up they were old and already beginning to fall apart again. She did not want to find herself glinting by mistake and revealing herself to her new companions.

  It was not only the sights and the colours and the variety of the attractions on offer that pleased the senses as she threaded her way through the temporary lanes bordered by wagons and tents, it was the smells: after three days on the road Lucy felt as if all the open air had washed through her and left her empty and ready to be filled with this new rich assault on her nose: underlying the clean smell of wood-smoke which always attended the camp there was the smell of new ale and cakes and boiling sugar and pies and cinnamon and roasting meat and spices whose names she did not know. It was a heady, holiday smell, and as with all holiday things it made her feel a little bit happy, which was not a normal state for her. A harassed latecomer was edging a wagon through the fair looking for a pitch and she stepped out of the thoroughfare into the gap between two tent sides to let him pass.

  Alone and unseen among the guy-ropes, she allowed herself to pause in the middle of everything and stop, just closing her eyes so she could concentrate on drinking in the smells and the rising noise all round her as the first fair-goers were spotted by the barkers and patterers who began pitching and counter-pitching the attractions of their rival shows.

  It was an unguarded moment, and one she regretted the moment she opened her eyes.

  Georgiana Eagle stood right in front of her, her eye still blackened from Lucy’s punch. Her face was unreadable. For a moment Lucy thought she was going to slap her again, and bunched her fist to retaliate.

  Then Georgiana’s face changed in an instant, like a lamp igniting.

  “I’m sorry I slapped you,” she said with a bright smile. “I find it so very hard when people laugh at Father, and you laughed first. I have a terrible temper.”

  She held out her hand.

  “If you can forgive me, let us be friends.”

  She was, despite the black eye, which was now fading to mauve, perilously beautiful when she grinned. Her smile and her eyes seemed to dazzle Lucy and fill her head with such delight that there was almost no room for any other thought than just wanting to reach out and shake her hand and start a friendship.

  Something stopped her and kept her hands at her sides.

  It was her sense of self-preservation, and it was telling her to cancel the unbidden smile, which was even now trying to twitch up the edges of her mouth, and think.

  “Why?” she said.

  “Why?” echoed Georgiana. “Does there have to be a why? Is not friendship a good thing all by itself?”

  “No,” said Lucy. “It is dangerous. It is not something to be given unthinkingly.”

  Georgiana’s brow crinkled, and she looked so suddenly hurt and betrayed that Lucy’s fist twitched open and almost reached out of its own volition. She took a breath.

  “But I am sorry for the shiner.”

  “Shiner?”

  “It’s Charlie’s word for it. For the black eye.”

  Again Georgiana looked hurt and unsure of herself. Her hand fluttered up and smoothed the hair around her bruised cheek.

  “You and Charlie have been talking about me?”

  “No,” said Lucy. “Yes. Just about me hitting you.”

  “Did you laugh about it?”

  “No,” said Lucy.

  “You laugh at my father,” said Georgiana, her face curdling back towards something cold and proud.

  “No,” said Lucy. “Why would we?”

  “Because people do. You all do. But he is a genius and a good man,” she said. “He is a kind man. He told me to seek you out and apologise for striking you. He said it was no way to treat a newcomer and a stranger.”

  Lucy didn’t know what to say.

  “Well,” said Georgiana. “I have apologised. And Father says you are welcome to visit. Rabbits or no rabbits.”

  And with that, she turned an elegant heel and stepped quickly and daintily away down the canvas passage between the two tents, never looking down but still managing not to trip on any of the criss-crossed guy-ropes. Lucy watched her go, and when Georgiana turned the corner she felt as if something good had been taken out of the day.

  “Rabbits or no rabbits, indeed!” snorted Rose later as she was filling Lucy’s basket with rock for the third time since the pleasure-seekers had begun to pour into the fairground in serious numbers. Rose had made the rock the previous two evenings, boiling up damp sugar and peppermint oil over the camp-fire. Lucy had a lump of it in her mouth and didn’t want to risk her teeth by trying to crunch it, so she just nodded. She hadn’t found any new gloves but had decided to pocket the ones she did have and not wear them out whilst in the country so as to keep them as much as possible for villages and towns. There were certainly advantages to this new world of canvas and wood that she had fallen into, one being that the past didn’t seem to lurk in wood or canvas the way it did in stone walls, and so she felt freer and more relaxed.

  “That Barney Eagle don’t miss a trick, for all that he’s trying to drown himself in a sea of gin and tinctures,” said Rose. “You get nothing from an Eagle that doesn’t come at a price.”

  Lucy sucked on the rock and raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh, I’m not saying Georgiana doesn’t want to be your friend–I’ve never seen a girl who likes to be liked so much as she does–but the bit about the rabbits is the tell,” said Rose.

  “What’s a tell?” said Lucy, transferring the minty lump to her cheek.

  “It’s a clue. Watch people close and they all got a tell, something they do when they’re lying, or when they’re uncomfortable, or when they’re trying not to show they’ve been sneaking peppermint rock instead of selling it,” grinned Rose, sticking her tongue inside her cheek and bulging it out in mimicry of Lucy. “Now get along and sell another basket. Barney Eagle’s too lazy to trap his own rabbits and too keen to spend his money on drink to buy enough food for the pair of them. He was hinting that you should bring them some supper one of these nights. He’s always used that poor girl like a bright little lure to draw people in. Same as he did with her mother, may she rest in peace. She had the dazzle and something of the glamour too, did Sally Eagle… and it’s her passing that turned Na-Barno to the drink.”

  Her eyes had gone away into the past for a moment, and when they came back they saw Lucy looking at her.

  “The glamour?” said Lucy.

  Rose rubbed her hand over her face as if to clear her head. Lucy wondered if that was a tell, and if so what it meant. Rose shrugged as if it was nothing.

  “Oh, glamour… glamour’s just another word for beauty. Beautiful people catch the eye, and it’s easy to lead others once you’ve caught them by the eyes,” she said. “The rest of us have to work for a living. Go sell some more lovely peppermints!”

  As she walked back into the open, which was now teeming with people, Lucy thought about what Rose had said. She was sure of two things: firstly, Rose had just lied about something to her, and though she wasn’t sure what it was, it was important. And then she thought about Mr Sharp’s eyes and the way the brown flecks in them seemed to tumble like autumn leaves—

  —and then a drunken ploughboy caught at her arm and asked to buy some rock for his girl, and she put both thoughts away in the back of her head and took his money with a smile.

  CHAPTER 47

  THE HUNTER HUNTED

  There is a phenomenon that all hunters of dangerous prey who stay long in the field become aware of eventually: a vague unease creeps in and–prompted perhaps by some horripilant tingling in the triangle between the shoulder-blades and the back of the neck–the hunter wonders if at some stage the roles have been reversed, and the prey he seeks ha
s doubled back and is perhaps even now stalking him.

  Hodge got this feeling as he walked carefully along the ridge of a roof above one of the nastier rookeries on the westernmost limits of the City. Even at this height, the smell was so bad that he wondered how Jed could possibly distinguish anything useful from the rich and varied stink, a noisome concoction of damp coal fires, rotting vegetables and raw sewage bound together by the underlying accreted funk of the hundreds of unwashed occupants of the ramshackle mess of dwellings below.

  This jerry-built hotchpotch of buildings was crowded so close around the maze of alleys that at certain points they seemed to lean over them and drunkenly support one another. This kept light and fresh air out, and ensured that life at ground level took place in a permanently crepuscular miasm of shadows and stench which made it dangerous and unhealthy in equal degree, though the sullen and usually gin-soaked knots of corner-men lurking in the gloom contributed an extra level of threat to the unwary.

  Jed worked the alleys, keeping his nose down and his head low to the ground. Hodge took the high ground, walking the roof ridges and gable ends with the ease of a practised urban mountaineer. He carried a small grappling hook which swung easily from his hand and as he moved, and which was attached to a strong length of manila rope. On the steeper pitches, he would lob the hook ahead, secure it and then pull himself onwards and upwards. He was sure-footed but he was not reckless, rather relying on the methodical and practical side of his nature, the one that balanced the berserker streak that also ran through him.

  It was his methodical approach that kept him so relentlessly on the trail of the breath-stealer even though the scent was still lost to him and Jed. He had begun by circling the building the Alp had been in at a ten yard radius, hoping to cross the trail. When that failed, he had painstakingly widened the circle and tried again and again. Failure had not dented his determination; rather it had bedded it in and strengthened his resolve.

  Now he was patrolling a circle whose radius was almost a full mile and a half from the room in which he had discovered the dead baby, a wide sweep that brought him to both the roof ridge upon which he now stood, and the moment when he became aware that something or someone might be watching and following him.

  He squatted in the lee of a crumbling chimneystack and made himself as still and as calm as he could. He wished the Raven was with him, but it had been decided to leave it watching the house on Chandos Place. If he had been able to use the Raven’s eyes as it circled above, it would have been easier to spot if there was another person moving in tandem with him, keeping pace or perhaps closing in.

  He slowed his breathing and let his eyes meander across the surrounding roofscape. He knew the easiest way to catch sight of something was not to look for it with the eye direct, but to allow attention to drift across a scene and catch any anomaly with the tail of the eye as it passed.

  The irregularity of his current perch and the nearby slates and gables spread away on all sides before flattening out into more recognisable and uniform formations hinting at the wider streets and orderly squares beyond. Here and there, church spires jabbed through and pointed hopefully at the louring sky above, and far in the distance he saw the comforting swell of St Paul’s dome. He did not see anyone following him or watching him.

  “You’re there though,” he growled. “I can feel your damn eyes on me.”

  CHAPTER 48

  THE MECHANICAL MOOR AND THE READER OF MINDS

  When she had emptied her basket of peppermint rock, Lucy stuck her head into the tent where Mr Pyefinch was leading an enthralled crowd of rustic ladies and gentlemen through the heroic intricacies of the Battle of Waterloo while Charlie used a pointing stick and a cunningly rigged lantern to highlight the important points on the battlefield as he spoke.

  It was Lucy’s way not to look at what people wanted her to see, so she watched the audience instead, noting how Mr Pyefinch’s words held their attention and how they all moved their heads in time with the insistent pointing of Charlie’s stick, as if they were all on a string. They were deeply enthralled by the spectacle, and she decided to leave them to it and see what else the fair held by way of attractions. She’d kept a piece of pepper-mint rock in her pocket, and slipped it inside her cheek as she ducked out of the tent into what was now twilight.

  She wandered between the attractions and the tents as if she didn’t know where she was going, but her feet took themselves to Na-Barno’s pitch as surely as if Georgiana Eagle had given her an invitation and then dragged her there. She saw a bright naphtha lamp throwing stark shadows across the façade, a cleverly painted canvas screen that was part pyramid, part Grecian temple and had a big eye in the centre from which radiated beams of light picked out in silver paint which sparkled in the lamplight. “THE TEMPLE OF MAGIC” was written across the foot of the pyramid, cleverly painted to look like it was incised in stone. At the doorway, which was closed by a crimson curtain, stood Na-Barno. He was wearing his suit of black velvet and a cape lined in scarlet satin which he twitched and swirled as he encouraged the fair-goers into his entrance.

  “Roll up, roll up, ladies and gentlemen! Do not tarry at the door, for while you make up your minds, others may step ahead of you and gain your valuable place in the Temple of Magic! Come and see the wondrous feats of your most humble servant and present interlocutor, Na-Barno Eagle, the Great Wizard of the South! Not to be confused with my pale imitator, the imposter Anderson, who calls himself the Great Wizard of the North, wretched fellow…”

  The idea of his rival seemed to drain Na-Barno of some energy, but Lucy saw someone poke him in the back through the canvas walls of the tent, and he shook himself and rekindled the fire in his voice, launching into a practised avalanche of words as he addressed the passing crowd in a deep ringing baritone.

  “Roll up and enter the Temple of Magic! Leave your preconceptions at the door, for once within you will see untold wonders and marvels, things you will be proud to tell your grandchildren about in the years to come: you will see a prodigious panoply of persiflage and prestidigitation! A chimerical conquering cornucopia of conjuration! An immense inchoate itinerary of illusion and impossibility! And you will be made mute, marvelling at the magnificent mind-reading mentalism masterfully manifested by my magically Mechanical Moor who will answer questions about the other world, the realm beyond the veil of life, questions only you and he know the answers to!”

  The tent poked Eagle again, and he coughed and looked a little lost until he remembered something in his pocket which he reached for and then flung into the air.

  There was a bang and a flash and a cloud of blue and red smoke, which jolted the crowd and allowed him to start declaiming again at the top of his voice.

  “No matter how far you have travelled in the realms of gold, my good friends, or how many goodly states and kingdoms have you seen, never will you feel a wonderment so serene as when you see the Great Wizard of the South conjure silver to gold! Then you, pretty madam, And you, tall sir, will feel like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into your ken, or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes…”

  “Who’s stout Cortez?” shouted a man standing by Lucy. “Who’s stout Cortez when he’s at home then?”

  “He’s a fat dago, don’t be ignorant,” said his wife, pulling him away into the entrance. “It’s a poem.”

  Lucy walked beside them, going fast-but-slow as she did so, so that she entered the passage into the tent without really being seen and certainly not noticed enough to have to pay an entrance fee at the small window. She could hear Na-Barno, muffled now as he picked up the thread and carried on outside.

  “Like fat—I mean like stout Cortez,” he roared. “You will be like stout Cortez when he stared at the Pacific with a wild surmise, silent, upon a peak in Darien.”

  “What’s a wild surmise?” mumbled the man beside Lucy as his wife rattled coins onto the narrow wooden ledge of the window.

  “It’s like a tame one, only n
ot house-trained,” said a man in front of him in the queue, and for a moment Na-Barno’s pitch was drowned by the rumble of laughter in the narrow canvas corridor.

  “Can’t we go in?” said a voice. “I feel like a sheep in a fold, just before shearing.”

  “Been shorn already,” said another. “Ha’pence to stand in a dark passage? I can do that at home!”

  “Oooh, fancy!” said another voice. “Hark at her! She’s got a passage. Must live in a palace!”

  More happy rumblings, and as the crowd shifted in the dark, Lucy saw the shutter come down at the payment window. From its position, she realised that whoever had been sitting there taking the money was also the person who had been poking Na-Barno in the back and keeping him going. She assumed it had been Georgiana.

  That assumption was quickly confirmed as she heard the sound of small bells being shaken close by. The crowd quieted itself to listen as the noise passed up and down the passage on the other side of the canvas.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said a deep woman’s voice, somehow Georgiana’s but lower. “Thank you for your patience in waiting here for one more minute. No one may enter the inner room of the Temple of Magic without the Great Wizard being in attendance to control the powerful forces penned within it. This is for your protection.”

  The crowd rumbled agreeably, rather liking the frisson of danger the voice was alluding to.

  “As you wait, anyone wishing to ask a question of the Mechanical Moor should think of who they wish to contact and attempt to get a seat close to the stage. We would not like you to miss your chance of having your question answered, and a good seat will assure you of the Great Wizard’s attention. We will open the doors to the inner sanctum in one minute exactly.”

  The crowd began to whisper to itself: Lucy heard people discussing with their friends or spouses in quiet voices whether they should dare to try and contact someone in the spirit realm. “Ow about Grandmother?… what about our Jessie?… Ask Jethro who he lent the good scythe to?… don’t get Grandpa Watkins; he hated magic shows…” the various voices said, some laughing nervously in the gloom.