The Oversight Read online

  Anderson turned away, his back to the audience so as not to be able to see the card and the carter raised his knife, leaving behind the unpierced slab of cards and showing the face of the last one he had stabbed to the crowd.

  “Make sure I do not see the card, but ensure everyone else sees it.”

  The carter waved the impaled cards from left to right, slowly, so that all could see the seven of diamonds.

  “Now, sir, behind you on the table are the three cups. In one is a pencil. In the other a pair of sugar tongs. Please write your name on the card and show it to the crowd. If you do not wish to write your name, make a mark.”

  It being the way of crowds to enjoy a joke at someone else’s expense, there was certain amount of coarse suggestions as to whether the carter knew how to write, but write he did, and showed the card to the audience with the word “JOAD” scratched boldly across it.

  “Thank you,” continued Anderson. “Now please fold the card in two, then grip it with the sugar tongs and hold it in the candle flame until it is entirely alight. Let it burn to nothing and then drop the ashes to the floor and stamp them into dust.”

  The carter did as he was asked, burning the card and scrubbing the black residue across the floor with his boots.

  At this point Anderson whirled on the crowd, shook the carter by the hand and helped him return to the crowded murk beyond the footlight.

  “Now you all saw that the cards were not gimmicked. That they were shuffled, not by me, but by you. And then you saw I had no control over how deeply the knife penetrated the deck, and that there was no way that I could know which card Mr Joad there would show you.”

  There was a rumble in the crowd.

  “Oh yes!” he continued. “I know the name that he wrote on the card, though I have never met him before in my life. I know it just as sure as I know the card itself was the seven!”

  The rumble from the crowd became appreciative.

  “Not just the seven but the red seven, and not the heart, for anyone’s knife may pierce a heart, but the seven of diamonds, yes, diamonds, I say, for the knife is not made that could cut through a diamond! The card was the seven of diamonds!”

  The crowd cheered happily, impressed. Some were astonished, others began telling each other that they knew the trick–Lucy heard the man beside her admit that it was well enough done, but of course Anderson had rigged a mirror and seen the front of the card without having to look backwards.

  Anderson smiled and waved the crowd to silence.

  “Impressive, I hear you say. But not, perhaps… magic? Well, you are a hard crowd to please, wise and suspicious, just as you should be. So far, so difficult, but not, I fear, enough to convince you?”

  “Show us more!” shouted a woman at the back.

  “Show you I shall!” he shouted. “But real magic must be unconstrained, so if you all follow me outside into the night air, and keep absolutely silent, I swear to you on my life that you will see the impossible, for the deed is but half done! I swear that you will see no sleight of hand, no conjurer’s legerdemain; I swear you will see real magic! But only if you keep absolutely silent and do as I say. Will you trust me?”

  The crowd roared an agreement, and then remembered he’d asked them to be silent, which reduced the noise to an apologetic mumble, which in turn dwindled to silence as he stood in front of them with his fingers to his lips.

  Once he was satisfied, he took a torch and lit it from the flame of one of the footlights, then made a gesture like Moses dividing the Red Sea and jumped into the crowd which obediently parted, leaving a corridor through which he led the onlookers to the front of the tent and out into the night.

  Lucy was swept out in his wake by the press of eager watchers. It was a very eerie thing to be part of, as the silent mass of people formed a column snaking through the bright lights and flares rigging the rest of the fair. The fair-goers who had not come to see the show saw this silent crocodile of earnest faces and became so intrigued by such an odd spectacle that by the time Anderson came to a halt the crowd was about six hundred people.

  He stopped at the apple tree guarded by the two brindled mastiffs, who broke the quiet by beginning to bay and snarl at him as he used his torch to light five flares stuck in the paling erected around the tree, and then climbed over the fence.

  “Mind the dogs! They’re vicious—” shouted someone, who was then silenced by the hisses of the crowd.

  The dogs barked furiously at Anderson, flinging themselves towards him, their chains snapping tight.

  He merely raised a hand. They stopped. He turned his hand. They dropped to the ground. He waved. They rolled on their backs. The crowd sighed approvingly.

  He climbed on an apple box and looked round at them.

  “You saw the card picked at random? You saw the name written on it? And then you saw it consumed by fire? Yes?”

  The crowd nodded.

  “You may shout the answer to my next question: is it truly IMPOSSIBLE that the card you chose still exists?”

  “YES!” bellowed the crowd, the pent-up noise breaking like a thunderous wave.

  “NO!” roared Anderson right back at them. “NOT IF MAGIC IS REAL! If magic is real ANYTHING is possible!”

  And suddenly he was all action. He shot a pointing finger to the heart of the crowd.

  “Miss Georgiana Eagle! Would you be so kind, so very kind as to come and take this long walking stick I have here, and pull any one of these apples off the tree? The choice as to which is entirely yours!”

  Georgiana was pushed and jostled to the paling, looking decidedly unhappy about being chosen, but when she was helped over the fence she settled herself in her ribboned dress and turned a professional smile back to the crowd.

  “I do not need your stick,” she said. “I choose this apple.”

  And she plucked one from a low branch and held it out to him. Lucy could see she had afforded herself some small satisfaction by not following his instructions quite as indicated. Anderson was not perturbed, nor did he take the apple. Instead he put his hands in his pocket again.

  “Mr Joad!” he shouted. “Come forward!”

  Joad the carter came to the front again.

  “Both of you look and tell us what you see,” said Anderson.

  “An apple,” said Georgiana.

  “ ’S’right,” admitted Joad.

  “Any distinguishing marks?”

  “No.”

  “Any nicks or cuts or signs it has been tampered with?”

  “No,” said Joad, squinting at it. “It’s perfect.”

  “Show the ladies and gentlemen,” ordered Anderson, and Lucy saw Georgiana bridle again at the way he had suborned her, his rival, into acting as his assistant. Georgiana won another small victory by handing the apple to Joad who showed it to the nearby crowd.

  “One apple, ladies and gentlemen, nature’s everyday miracle!” he said with a final flourish. “Real magic, I think you’ll agree!”

  The crowd didn’t agree. It was confused. Then nonplussed. Then certainly and increasingly noisily very disappointed indeed.

  “Oh,” cried Anderson. “Oh. You were expecting something more?”

  The crowd growled in agreement.

  “THEN BE SILENT AND YOU SHALL SEE SOMETHING YOUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL TELL THEIR GRANDCHILDREN THAT YOU SAW!” he roared, and so loud was his voice that the crowd followed his instructions and quietened down into one giant held breath.

  “Mr Joad,” he said. “Be so kind as to cut the apple in half with your fine knife, but gently does it and do it in plain sight so there is no hint of trickery.”

  Joad unclasped his knife, the torchlight flashing off the steel as he locked the blade in place. Then he made a shallow circumference of the apple and then looked puzzled.

  “Split it, Mr Joad,” said Anderson, hands still in his pockets. “Split it so that all can see.”

  Joad gingerly prised the apple apart. There was an intake of breath, for in doing s
o he revealed a folded rectangle of red in the very centre.

  “Take it out gently,” encouraged Anderson.

  Georgiana’s face was tight as she watched Joad do so.

  “Unfold it,” said Anderson.

  Joad did so. His face went white.

  “But…” he said in shock. “But…”

  “Exactly,” smiled Anderson. “It is inconceivable, unbelievable, beating the very bounds of possibility! But not if you believe in REAL MAGIC! Show them, man!” Joad held the card up to the crowd as Anderson continued. “Ladies and gentlemen–for your delectation and amazement–I give you… THE IMPOSSIBLE!”

  Lucy knew what it was before she could see it clearly from the rapturous response of the crowd.

  It was the seven of diamonds–pierced by a knife, with Joad’s name in his writing scrawled across it in thick pencil. There was no doubt. It was the destroyed card, hidden in a perfect apple.

  It was, it must, it could surely be–she and the entire crowd agreed–Real Magic.

  She glimpsed Georgiana, her face yellow as the ribbons on her dress, searching for her father’s eyes in the crowd. She looked like she was drowning.

  “Now, my friends, an intermission!” shouted Anderson who was being hoisted on the shoulders of the crowd. “And back to the tent in a quarter of an hour for my friends the Eagles! But first, I think, a drink!”

  Lucy watched the crowd, uproariously noisy and happy now, carrying him off to the beer tents. She saw Georgiana dart forward and grab her father’s arm, leading him into an alley between two tents, whispering furiously into his ear. He walked like a broken man. Lucy followed at a distance, keeping herself in the deep shadows cast by the full moon in the clear sky above them, her fascination with Georgiana leading her onwards.

  She had seen how little the girl liked being used by Anderson as his assistant, and could understand it. Anderson had undoubtedly poured salt in the wound he had inflicted on his rival by using his daughter as an unwitting collaborator. Lucy stayed in the shadows as they re-entered Huffam’s marquee, which was now empty while the audience was making use of the intermission to enjoy the beer and cider being sold in the adjoining refreshment tents. Because of this she was able to hear what was going on backstage, even if she couldn’t see it.

  Na-Barno sounded hoarse and bewildered.

  “He’s done our act and then shown them how we do it. He exposed the secret of my automaton. And then, to top it and bury us five fathoms deep, he performed a truly impossible trick. I do not know what to do.”

  “Father, it is simple: if you know how he did the trick, we are rich. If not, we must change our plan. And do it fast!”

  Georgiana’s voice was tense and emphatic, as if trying to wake her father out of a stupor.

  “I can’t believe how he knew how exactly to mimic our act…”

  “That I do know,” sighed Na-Barno. “Because I stole it from him, child, or your mother did.”

  There was a cold moment of silence. Georgiana’s voice frosted over, and became icily deliberate.

  “And you did not tell me this?”

  “I saw no need.”

  “No need? If you had told me we could have foreseen his stratagem! We could have planned to counter it. Now you have no choice left to you except to—”

  “I know, child: to leave quickly while it is still dark and there is a crowd to confuse.”

  Lucy heard the slap as it landed, and the shocked silence that followed it was like punctuation.

  “I am not fuddled, child,” Na-Barno’s voice quavered, close to tears.

  “I was not slapping the fuddle, Father. I was striking you!” hissed Georgiana.

  “But—” choked Na-Barno, the tears coming now.

  Georgiana’s interruption was brutal as another slap.

  “Fetch the hand.”

  “But… but I have not mastered it,” blubbered Na-Barno. “We have not built an act round it.”

  His voice choked off as if he was being gripped round the neck, but it was clearly Georgiana’s intensity of purpose that was acting on him as she carried on, her voice unstoppable as the logic she proceeded to steamroller him with.

  “Can you not see what has happened? Anderson has changed the rules. It’s not about an act, Father. It’s now down to two things: our survival and the impossible. And that hand is the most impossible thing I have ever seen.”

  “But his card trick was impossible—”

  “But it was a card trick. Even if it was impossible, even if that itself is true, even if, God and all the little devils help us, it was real magic, it was still a card trick. And that is the only chink in his armour. If we are to gut him back, the way he has filleted us, then that is the only place we can stick the knife. Because people will always suspect a card trick as working by a sleight of hand or a misdirection of some sort, even if they are too slow to see it happening, because they know that is how card tricks work. A card trick itself is stale. The hand is something truly out of the ordinary.”

  “But, child, I do not know—”

  “I do, and one of us must make the decision or we shall both surely starve and end in the poorhouse. Get the hand. Ask it questions. It won’t matter if the presentation is a little unpractised; what will matter is that you are not only topping Anderson’s impossible thing, you are showing them something truly novel. Do it! They will be back and stomping on the floor in five minutes if we are not ready, and they will all have drunk two more pints apiece as well.”

  “You’re right, child. It’s a long shot, but by God we’ll take it.”

  She heard Na-Barno run off the stage, and then heard a rustling noise as Georgiana did something to her costume.

  Lucy, overhearing all this, realised she had witnessed a second secret performance, for Georgiana had not only picked her father up and revived him, but set him to do her will quite as if he were an automaton himself, she manipulating him as easily as a child jerking a marionette around by its strings. The other thing that impressed Lucy was Georgiana’s sharp intelligence. While her father was still reeling from the effects of Anderson’s clinical double blow, she had already both analysed exactly how he had done so and come up with a counter-move. Though what this “hand” was she had no idea. All she knew was that it was going to be worth seeing, even if it did not out-impossible Anderson.

  CHAPTER 61

  DEAD AWAY

  Sara moaned in her sleep and tried to get up. She managed to raise herself onto her elbows, but then hung there, exhausted, staring at the guttering fire at the end of her bed. Then she dropped back into the pillows and stared at the shapes and shadows the flames were casting across the ceiling, exhausted by the effort.

  “Thought I heard music,” she muttered.

  A hand reached out from the chair and patted her hand reassuringly.

  “Mr Sharp?” she said, tilting her head towards the figure sitting patiently in the dark.

  It was Emmet.

  She stared at him, her face slack against the pillow. And then a growing horror began to widen her eyes.

  “What has he done?”

  Emmet pointed at her dressing table.

  “What?” she said, voice catching. “Emmet! What has he done?”

  Emmet got to his feet and crossed to the table. He tapped the mirror.

  Cook heard the frenzied jangling and looked up to the bell-board on reflex although she was already on her feet, knowing it was the bell from Sara’s room that had roused her from her doze.

  She burst out of the door and took the stairs three at a time, like a girl half her age and size. She opened the door to see Sara sitting bolt upright in her bed, staring at Emmet in horror.

  “What—?” began Cook.

  “What is Emmet trying to say?” said Sara.

  Emmet tapped the mirror helpfully.

  “What has happened to Mr Sharp?”

  Cook scowled at Emmet.

  “You talk too much,” she said.

  “WHAT?�
�� said Sara.

  Cook came and sat on the bed. She took Sara’s hand.

  “He’s gone to look for your hand.”

  Sara shook her head, first slower, then faster,

  “No,” she said. “No no no no no NO!”

  Cook tried to stop her but she shrugged out of her grip and threw herself on her side, nose to the wall.

  “Not into the mirrors,” she said in a voice that was so small that Cook could have been sitting beside a ten-year-old Sara.

  “Was no stopping him,” she said.

  Sara began to bang her head slowly on the wall.

  “No, Sara,” said Cook, holding her back. “That won’t help. That won’t—”

  Sara pushed her violently away and carried on banging.

  “No,” she said as she carried on banging her head. “No. No. No.”

  Emmet stepped over Cook’s shoulder and gently but firmly held her head still. Then he reached a hand back to help Cook to her feet.

  Cook pulled herself upright with difficulty and looked at him.

  “Sometimes I think Mr Sharp might have been right about you,” she puffed. “Keep her still if you can. I shall go and get something to help her sleep.”

  Emmet might have nodded. The movement, if movement there was, was so slight as to be almost unnoticeable. His attention was focused on Sara, who lay there, eyes screwed shut, tears leaking from them, face twisted in mute despair.

  Cook looked back from the door. Sara’s back curved away towards the wall, face hidden, Emmet hanging over her like a flying buttress, a single candle barely piercing the darkness sending his shadow ominously arching across the ceiling.

  This is it, she thought. This is what the end looks like.

  CHAPTER 62

  THE EAGLES FIGHT BACK

  The audience filtered back in from the beer tents and cider stalls. Lucy saw that there were now fewer people sporting yellow ribbons than before. It felt both more crowded and more boisterous as the spectators began to stomp and clap and call for Na-Barno.