The Custodian of Marvels (4 page)

I could handle the boat without him, but it made for even slower progress since it was impossible at one time to both stoke and steer. Whenever the boiler pressure faded, I was obliged to disengage the gears, leaving the paddle wheels to drag in the water, slowing us towards a stop. Then, having steered her to the bank and made fast, I would shovel coal, while boats properly crewed steamed past, rocking the
Harry
in their wake.

In this fashion, I limped east along the Grantham Canal to the wharf at Casthorpe Bridge, a sleepy mooring place inhabited by more ducks than people. At first no one would admit knowledge of my delivery. Eventually, on my request, the wharf keeper sent a boy to ask in the village. And at length, a cart arrived, driven by a man in a dented hat.

“I’m to take the cargo,” he said.

“Have you brought payment?”

“That’s for the master. I’m to load and carry.”

“And when the master comes with money, I shall help you load.”

He took off his hat and scratched at the back of his head, as if trying to dislodge a flea. I folded my arms and gave him what I hoped was an uncompromising stare. Presently he replaced his hat and climbed back on the cart, mumbling something about women and boat people and a deal more besides.

After an hour or so the wharf keeper approached and told me I would have to pay a mooring fee if I wanted to stay any longer. I told him to charge it to the master, whoever that was. He went away grumbling as well.

It was noon by the time a man in a high hat and tails rode up. I stood on the steering platform and he remained seated on his fine horse. Looking down at me he said, “You’re late. The contract said Tuesday.”

“There were delays,” I said.

“Where’s your husband? I need to talk business.”

“He’s been called away,” I said.

“Well, it won’t do! I’m told you refused to release my goods. When your husband hears, you’ll surely get the belt.”

“It was he who gave my instruction,” I said. “I’m to take payment before letting the cargo off the boat.”

“Well, you’re a day late.”

“Half a day. I was here at dawn. You’ve kept me waiting.”

“Nevertheless – lateness must be paid for. I’ll retain twenty percent of the fee.”

“Very well,” I said. “Then I’ll retain twenty percent of the cargo. There are some chairs and a table that’ll burn well enough in place of coal.”

His neck and cheeks purpled. I turned and stepped back down into the cabin. Sitting on the cot, I inhaled deeply then held my breath and counted, doing the exercise my father had taught me to calm my heart before stepping onto the stage.

It was mid-afternoon before the cart returned. This time the man in the dented hat passed me an envelope containing banknotes to the correct sum. I undid the lacing and hauled back the tarpaulin to reveal the hold. There was little enough cargo. It took barely half an hour for me to pass each item up and watch it stowed on the cart.

When we had done, I offered my hand by way of reconciliation. He stared at it then swept his eye over the rest of me. “Goodbye, missus,” he said. There was something reptilian about his smile.

When he had gone, I tried to put him and his master out of my mind. I had papers in hand for the collection of six crates of pottery. That might seem a petty cargo, but it would pay for the coal I’d burn getting back to the Trent.

“Will you help me load?” I asked the wharf keeper.

“Your cargo’s not here,” he said.

I could see it behind him, the crates stacked next to the wall of his cottage. I told him so.

“I’m sorry, missus.” He removed his hat and hung his head. “That’s what I’m to tell you. I’m sorry, but there’ll be no loading today.”

“And if I wait till tomorrow?”

“That’s what the master said you’re to do. Tie up on the quayside. It’s sure to be here in the morning.”

As he spoke the words, he shook his head. There was pleading in his eyes.

Only then, I understood that I’d pushed too far. I had overreached my station. Republican civility would not protect me if I stayed the night. Losing no time, I turned the
Harry
in the basin next to the bridge and steamed off west. Seven miles out, I found a mooring place between two bends. The boat nestled snug on the bank opposite the towpath, under the boughs of a row of willow trees. The branches dangled like a curtain, leafy tips trailing in the water. If I made sure the stove and lamps were out before nightfall, there would be no way for them to find me in the darkness.

My problem was coal. The trip along the Grantham Canal would have paid for itself. But a return journey with an empty hold would wipe out any profit. I’d first taken possession of the
Harry
in its present form early in the year. It had been six weeks before I’d developed the contacts to begin earning money carrying freight. Depending on the weather, I might get half a season of work before ice gave me no choice but to lay-to for the winter. The major routes would be kept open by icebreakers. But that business was dominated by fleets of large boats run by ruthless men. I wouldn’t be able to compete – even had it been safe for me to try. My work would always be running errands on those little spurs and dead ends of the canal system that the large boats could not negotiate and the large fleets would not bother to travel.

There was a ballad popular among the canal folk, which told of a boat iced in on the Leicester Summit. The family who lived on her ran out of food. Then, worse, they ran out of coal. They foraged for wood. And when all that was used up, they burnt what furniture they had. And then they froze to death. None of the country people who lived thereabouts would help them.

Through my years of being a fugitive, I’d felt as if I was also moving towards something – a place of security, perhaps around the very next bend. The hope of it had kept me going. But one by one, options were being stripped away. Perhaps I’d finally escape from the Duke of Northampton by freezing to death on some unseen spur of the canal. What would that feel like, I wondered – to fall asleep, knowing I’d never wake? The thought of it held me. It was an effort to break free.

Taking the shovel, I began to shift the coal from one side of the bunker to the back. On reaching the metal of the floor plate, I delved in with my hands, feeling blindly underneath nuggets of anthracite until my fingers found the tin box in which I kept my few valuables.

Having wiped it down and washed the black dust from my hands, I returned to the small cabin and laid it on the cot. There was no lock.

I laid out the contents: first my father’s pistol with the turquoise emblem of a leaping hare inlaid into the hardwood stock, then a cloth purse, mostly empty, and finally an ancient copy of
The Bullet-Catcher’s Handbook
, its leather cover gnarled and partly burned.

The woman who had given me the book was no longer alive. But her parting message had claimed it to have some hidden value. At first I’d set out to destroy it, to rid myself of the memory of its previous owner’s death. But somehow the gift seemed sacred. At the last moment I changed my mind and snatched it back out of the fire.

Turning the pages of the book brought me pain. I might have left it hidden deep in the coal bunker, but for some reason I couldn’t understand, the Patent Office had sent John Farthing to search for it. The insistence of his questioning made me believe that it did have a value, though I couldn’t understand what. For that reason, it remained in my mind and from time to time I took it out to puzzle over.

Under the dappled light beneath the willow trees, I examined it once more, tracing the folded leather of each cover with my fingers. I had long assumed that the hidden value must lie in the information it contained. I had read it many times over, but found only obscure aphorisms and advice on the nature of illusion and conjuring. Useful, perhaps, to a stage magician. But nothing that I could convert into money.

Conjurors have a peculiar way of looking at the world. My father taught it to me from infancy. He encouraged me to turn things around so that I could look at them from a side that no one else would see. Wherever there was a statement, he would cast it as a question. There was nothing settled for him that could not become a puzzle if rearranged. Reading the book was like hearing his voice.

A flash of blue and orange beyond the willow curtain jolted me from my thoughts. A kingfisher had dropped into the water with a splash. Then it was up again, a speck of thrashing silver in its beak. It flitted away to land on the opposite bank. I watched as it beat the tiny fish against a stone. When the fish was still, the bird upended it and swallowed it whole.

The distraction had broken my chain of thought. When I looked down to the book once more, it came to me that I had been blinded, such was the emotional intensity I felt when holding it. I had accepted it as a book when I should have been asking if it was one. I had opened it and read the words when I should have been turning it around and finding an angle to see it from that no one else would consider. I had avoided doing precisely what it and my father had urged.

The covers were thick and heavy. Thick enough, perhaps, for something to be concealed between the leather and the board. In a daze, I carried it below. Thoughts tumbled as I waited for the kettle to boil. There was room for a sheet of gold or platinum to be hidden. Yet it didn’t feel heavy enough. Perhaps some forbidden technology could be slim enough to fit in such a space. If so, I could understand the Patent Office being bent on its recovery.

Water rumbled in the kettle. I held the front cover above the spout. At first the steam was only a wisp, but as the water began to boil, droplets condensed on the ancient leather and the glue that had held it in place began to soften. I grabbed a knife and started working it under the edge. The leather made a cracking sound as I peeled it back. More than once, I scalded my hand in the steam, but carried on through the pain, turning the book to unpeel the second side. I had got the knack of it now, and was quickly on to the final edge. Then the entire covering folded back, revealing a blackened board below. My pulse thudded in my ears as I held it up to the lamp, searching for a mechanism or hidden words or anything else that might carry the book’s secret value. Seeing nothing, I turned it over, knocked my fingers against it, took it in both hands and flexed it. My fingers slid on the hot glue.

There was nothing. It remained as it had first seemed – a thin board, blackened with age.

I don’t know how long I was standing there, but the trance was broken by the tilting of the boat and the padding of feet on the aft deck. The hatch opened and Tinker jumped down into the cabin, where he crouched, staring at me.

“Everything’s well,” I said, suddenly aware of how unwell it must look. Strands of my hair had worked free and now hung limp from the steam. My hands and one sleeve were smeared with black. And the book’s cover dangled from my hand like a dead thing.

He wrinkled his nose. “It stinks.”

“That’s just the glue,” I said.

“What is it?”

“A book. An old book.”

This put the matter beyond his interest.

“Pour water for me,” I said, holding out my blackened hands for him to see. He whistled tunelessly about the task, half filling the washing bowl from the jug then topping it up from the kettle. He was not usually so biddable.

The water clouded and my hands began to show pink once more. The dark mood that had gripped me was also beginning to recede. I took a brush to my fingernails but found my eyes returning to the boy, as if they had detected something out of place, though I had no idea what it might be.

“How has your day been?” I asked.

“Not bad.”

“Did you follow the canal path?”

“Maybe.”

“See any rabbits?”

“No.”

“Did you talk to anyone? Any news of river thieves?

“No.”

“Did you find anything to eat?”

He turned his head, as if hearing some sound beyond the boat, though it seemed to me that he was looking for a way out of my questioning. Those occasions when Tinker preferred silence were invariably the ones in which he wanted to hold some fact unsaid.

“Did you see anything I should know about?” I asked, drying my hands on a cloth.

“No!”

“Then did you find anything I should know about?”

He picked dirt from one of his fingernails in an unsuccessful attempt to appear casual. I held out my hand. He huffed and creased his brow into a frown that was clearly supposed to indicate displeasure but actually made him look rather sweet.

“Show me!”

Pouting now, he burrowed deep into his trouser pocket and withdrew something sparkling. A silver chain dropped onto my palm followed at last by a silver watch. I took it and pressed the button. It chimed one clear note for each hour, then twice more in a higher pitch for the quarters. Half past eight. It was clear from the widening of his eyes that Tinker was hearing its voice for the first time. His love for the object had turned to adoration.

“Did you steal it?”

“No!”

“You found it then?”

A nod.

“Where?”

“In the path.”

I turned it over. A dark line of mud marked out the edge of the rear panel. The chain too had dirt caught in between the links. I now insisted that Tinker let me wash his clothes every two weeks, so it seemed unlikely the watch could have been so soiled from merely spending time in his pocket.

He held out his hand to take it back. It seemed the wrong moment to tell him that we might be forced to sell it.

“If you got caught with it, they’d not believe it was found.”

“It’s mine!”

“Then for keeping’s sake, put it somewhere it won’t get seen.”

I dropped it back into his hand and was rewarded with a grin. Then he was on his knees, lifting a loose floor plank near the stove and secreting his treasure underneath. It would not stay hidden through a determined search. Least of all from me.

Not that I would steal from the boy. But I needed to assess its likely worth. Therefore, when he was next roaming, I returned to the stove and lifted the loose plank.