Steadfast (3 page)

Jack sat down on the stool propping the door open for a bit of air, and rubbed the
stump. It always hurt. He wasn’t like some fellows, he never got the feeling he still
had a leg and a foot there. He didn’t know if that was bad or good. He did dream about
having two legs again, sometimes . . . but except for the ache, and the difficulty
in doing some things, he reckoned he wasn’t that badly off. There were others that
had lost two limbs or more. Or worse, come back half paralyzed. Or blind. At least
he could hold down a job—a job he liked, moreover. Alderscroft in London had arranged
it when he’d come back an invalid, through the secret network of Masters and magicians.
It had taken time to arrange, virtually all of the time he was in the hospital recovering
and learning to walk again, but hunting for a job on his own would have taken a lot
longer.

The only other magician here was Lionel, so Jack wasn’t entirely sure
how
the job had come about, only that the offer had turned up in the mail, inside an
envelope with the address of Alderscroft’s club on it. That had been about two months
after the hospital had given him the boot and he was pensioned out. At that point,
he’d jumped on it; he’d been staying with his sister, but they’d never been all that
close as kids, and her husband had been giving him looks that suggested he was overstaying
his welcome.

He’d expected that, of course. In a way, he’d been surprised it hadn’t happened sooner.
He was a lot older than this, his youngest sister, and he reckoned she had mostly
offered to let him stay out of a feeling of obligation. He couldn’t move in with his
older sister, the one he was actually close to—she was living with their parents,
in
their
tiny pensioners’ cottage, and there wasn’t room for a kitten in there, much less
him. They weren’t the only children, but all his other siblings were in service. He’d
have been in service himself—he’d been a footman—if he hadn’t joined the Army.

And of course, no one had any use for a one-legged footman.

Behind him, he could hear the orchestra in the pits, and the reaction of the audience.
Out there past the door, if he strained his ears, he could hear the sounds of motorcars
chugging past on the road beyond the alley and the vague hum of the city. The heat
was keeping people out later than usual. Probably, between the excitement of being
on holiday and the heat, they weren’t able to sleep. Well, it was intolerable heat
to them; having been in Africa, where you slept even if it felt like you were sleeping
in an oven, it wasn’t so bad to him. He knew all the tricks of getting yourself cool.
Not a cold bath, but a hot one, so when you got out you were cooler than the air.
Cold, wet cloths on your wrists and around your neck. Tricks like that.

But if it got hotter, and all his instincts as a Fire magician told him it was going
to, people would certainly die. They didn’t know the tricks. They’d work in the midday
heat, instead of changing their hours to wake before dawn, take midday naps, and then
work as the air cooled in late afternoon. It was going to be bad, this summer. He’d
have to see if he could do anything with his magic to mitigate things in the theater.
At least, he and Lionel could get together and see what the two of them could do.

He’d have to be on high alert for fires in the theater too. In fact, when he’d been
hired on, that seemed to have been the chief reason he’d been taken.

“Says here you have a sense for fire,”
the theater manager, old Barnaby Shen, had said, peering at the paper in his hand.

“Aye, sir. Maybe just a keen nose for a bit of smoke, but I’m never wrong, and I never
miss one.”
All true of course, though it was the little salamander that told him, and not his
nose. That had saved his life, his and his mates, more times than he cared to count
in Africa. Knowing when a brush fire had been set against them, knowing where someone
was camped because of their fire . . . even once, knowing when lightning had started
a wildfire and the direction it was going in time to escape it.

He hadn’t really even been a combatant, just a member of one of the details set to
guarding the rail lines. The Boers rightly saw a way to be effective with relatively
few men by sabotaging the rail system, hampering the British ability to move troops
and resupply, and at the same time tying up a substantial number of Tommies by forcing
the commanders to guard those lines.

It was a weary, thankless task, that. Kipling had got it right.
Few, forgotten and lonely where the empty metals shine. No, not combatants—only details
guarding the line.
A handful of men to patrol miles of rail, never seeing anything but natives, and
those but few and far between.

He’d cursed his luck, the luck that kept him out of real combat . . . until new orders
had come down that made him grateful to be where he was.

They’d almost left him, the salamanders, when he’d first turned up in Africa, and
the orders came to burn the Boer homes and take the women and children left behind
to the camps. They hadn’t left only because he’d escaped that duty right up until
the moment he’d gotten injured, by getting assigned to patrol. But he’d heard about
the camps from other men in the hospital. Camps where half the children starved to
death, or died of dysentery, and the women didn’t do much better. Fortunately—he supposed,
if you could call losing a leg “fortunate”—he’d never had to either burn a home out,
or drive the helpless into captivity. He hadn’t even lost the leg to a man. It had
been a stupid accident that got him, a fall and a broken ankle that went septic, far
from medical help. When you were on the rail detail you were pretty far from help,
and his commander reckoned it could wait until the weekly train came in. So he’d waited,
in the poisonous African heat. By the time he had got that help, all that could be
done was to cut the leg off just below the knee, but by that time he’d been so fevered
he hadn’t known or cared.

He was well out of it all at that point. He hadn’t realized just what a horror this
so-called “war” was when he’d joined the Army. Hadn’t realized he’d be told to make
war on women and children. Hadn’t known he was going to war for the sake of a few
greedy men, and diamonds, and gold.

Hadn’t realized just how vile those men could be.

Hadn’t realized that the leaders back home hadn’t given a pin about the lives of the
common soldiers they squandered. That he and his fellows were no more to them than
single digits within a larger number on a marker they shoved about on a map.

He knew by the time he mustered out, though.

He was bitter about it, but he tried not to let the bitterness eat him up. There were
plenty of things to be thankful for. That he’d never been forced to make war on the
innocent. That he’d escaped the sickening horror of guarding the camps where his own
country was murdering children by inches. He told himself that he had no blood directly
on his hands, and no deaths on his conscience.

And he was grateful for this job that he had held since. The people here at the Palace
were kind in their own ways. He had a
decent
job, one he liked, with people he liked. He had money for books, and the leisure to
read them. If his magic wasn’t strong, it was at least useful.

In the end, he had it better, so much better, than some of the other shattered shells
of men that had come out of that war. Yes, he had a lot to be thankful for.

And when bitterness rose in him, when his stump ached too much, that was how he burned
the bitterness out. The flame was not high, but it was clean and pure. And in the
end, what more could a man ask for?

2

K
ATIE had been with the Smalls for a month now. The Travelers had supplied Katie with
clothing. Walnut had stained her skin darker, and some concoction of Mary Small’s
had made her dark hair closer to black. She knew all the names of everyone in the
clan at this point. Only Mary and her sons and one of the brides were pure Gitano,
rather than mixed-blood—which probably accounted for the reason why Katie, with her
mixed blood, was welcome among them.

Katie had settled into an emotional state she could only think of as exhausted wariness.
Not wariness of the Smalls—the only time she felt safe was when they were all hidden
away in some patch of forest and tending to their camp—but somewhere, deep inside,
she was still certain that Dick was not only still looking for her, he was getting
angrier the longer she was gone.

But from the Small wives—though they didn’t talk much, Katie had been given a certain
silent reassurance. Good men did not beat their wives. All of the Small wives were
proud of their husbands, proud of the spotless condition of their
vardas,
proud of their swarms of children, but they were not in the least afraid of their
husbands. There were things that a wife should not do—look at other men, nag, be dirty—but
within days they seemed convinced, without Katie saying a word in her own defense,
that Katie had never been guilty of these things. Therefore they accepted her, and
their ranks parted to include her.

The four wives of the Small clan were Beth, Sally, Bessie, and Celia. All four were
married to Mary’s descendants. Celia was the lone Gitano among the girls, and the
dancer. Her husband didn’t much care for her dancing for the
gadjo,
although he understood it was needful, and was just as happy for Katie to take over
that particular job for a little.

Celia was married to Joe, one of the two musicians. He played the guitar. The other
musician, a fiddler, was Bert, married to Sally. Beth’s husband was Robert, the father
of Joe, and Bessie’s was David, the father of Bert. That was the four married couples.
There were six more unmarried men: two of them, Harry and Paul, were two more of Mary
Small’s sons, and the remaining four, Charlie, Fred, George, and Jack, were her eldest
grandsons. And there was a swarm of children, great-grandchildren, that Katie still
didn’t know the names of.

The men—in fact, all of them—treated her with a little of the same deference and respect
that they gave the matriarch; they seemed to accept that this “magic” that Mary Small
claimed Katie had was as real as the sun on their faces, and at the moment, since
they didn’t ask anything of her except to dance and tend to Mary Small’s needs, she
wasn’t inclined to argue with them. If that made her more welcome, all the better.

She learned the swaying, sinuous dances of her mother’s folk from Celia, combined
the movements with what she already knew, and performed in the firelit circle for
the
gadjo
who came to gawk at the encampment, get their fortunes told by the other women, and
buy old Mary’s potions. As ever, learning dance and movement came as easily to her
as breathing. She was already better at the Gitano dances than Celia was.

She never left the camps. Even if the men had not warned her that she would be harassed
at best and molested at worst by the village men, she would not have left the camps.
First of all, circus folks were just as likely to be harassed and molested if caught
alone as Travelers, so she knew better than to go strolling about through a village,
and secondly, the last thing she wanted was to somehow be spotted by someone who knew
her. Her disguise wouldn’t fool one of her fellow performers in the least. People
who knew how to spot familiar features through greasepaint were not going to be fooled
by a little stain.

For the first time since her parents died, she felt relatively safe. But only relatively.
She couldn’t continue with Mary Small’s clan, and they all knew it. Winter would come
eventually, and with her taking up the bunk, they were three places short of the number
needed to sleep all of the unmarried men—for obviously they could not sleep in the
same space as a strange, unmarried woman to whom they were not related. It was always
possible that they would inadvertently cross paths with the circus, and the little
troupe of Travelers could not possibly defend themselves against the mob of circus
roustabouts Andy Ball would unleash on them. Worse, Dick would probably kill one or
more of them, and the law would do nothing about it. She knew this. They knew this.
This was only a respite until they got far enough away that it would be safe for Katie
to buy a train ticket to somewhere further yet.

But where?

She decided to consult with old Mary one night before the matriarch went to sleep.

For the first time, she was invited into the cupboard built at the back of the wagon
that held the big bed that had once slept Mary and her husband and whatever baby she
was nursing. It had a curtain across the end to close it off from the rest of the
wagon, like the curtain across her shelf-bed. Right now the curtain was open, and
Mary was tucked, cross-legged, with her back to the wall. Katie sat on the edge of
Mary’s bed, on the faded quilt patiently patched out of the last bits and pieces of
worn-out clothing, and waited as the Traveler pondered the question.

“You must make your own way,” Mary said at last. Her old eyes were very bright as
she regarded Katie shrewdly. “Yet your gifts are . . . not common. You could not work
in a shop, or serve in a pub. While this could be a problem, it can also be of benefit.
Uncommon gifts are sometimes in demand. But at the same time, you are no great dancer.
You are very good, but I have seen great.” She nodded wisely, and Katie had to nod
in return, if she were to examine herself honestly. Her heart sank. What was she to
do? Where was she to go? Not another circus, certainly! Andy Ball would find out immediately
if she joined another circus.

But Mary was continuing. “You need a place where the circus will not go, because there
is so much else there to entertain crowds that they will make a poor showing. Yet
you need a place where there are
small
entertainments, where you might find a place.” She pondered again. “Brighton,” she
said at last, with an air of finality.

“Why Brighton?” Katie asked, quizzically. It was true that the circus had never gone
there.
“Too much bloody competition,”
Andy had grumbled.

“It is a seaside resort. Many small theaters. Many places like sideshow booths. Many
opportunities for you. Surely one of them will take you. It is a place where you can
even perform in the street, as we do, sometimes. For that you would need only yourself
and a cloth for people to throw money.” Mary made the pronouncement as if it was already
an accomplished fact, and really, Katie wasn’t inclined to argue with her. Her logic
was sound.

The walnut stain had already faded from her hands and face; the next day, under Mary’s
instruction, Katie turned and mended her clothing until it not only looked respectable,
but she probably could not be told apart (on the train at least) from a little country
housemaid going on a well-earned trip to her family.

The next town held a train station, with the line going straight to Brighton. To the
Travelers, the signs could not have been clearer. Katie was meant to go to Brighton.
And then they left her at dawn on the platform of the station with only the briefest
of farewells.

When the ticket-booth opened, she bought her one-way ticket to Brighton. The stationmaster
in his official blue uniform seemed incurious, even though she wasn’t a native of
this village and he certainly must have wondered where she had sprung from. But she
sat quietly on the platform, holding the bundle that contained all her worldly possessions
and the provisions the Travelers had wrapped up in carefully saved butcher-paper for
her, and that seemed to be enough for him to leave her to her own devices.

In all her life, she had never been on a train. All the traveling that the circus
had done had been under its own power; the horses that pulled the circus wagons and
the living-wagons did double duty, helping to erect and take down the circus and performing
in the acts. She was a little nervous, and kept one eye on the station clock. Three
trains arrived and departed before hers pulled into the station, and at least the
stationmaster took the time to leave his post and gesture at her to let her know for
certain it was hers. She went all the way to the rear, scuttling along as fast as
she could, until she came to the third-class carriages. They were very old, and the
windows had been put all the way down, but as warm as it had been, that was not exactly
looming large as a defect in Katie’s mind.

She took the first open door and the first empty seat, squeezing herself into the
corner next to the window so as to make the most room for anyone else who might come
along at the next station. There were only a few other people in the carriage, and
all of them seemed to be dozing. None were in her compartment. At the very back she
could just see what appeared to be an entire family arranged along the back bench.
She was barely in place when the conductor came along, closing all the doors with
a
bang,
and the train started again.

She quickly came to the conclusion that, on the whole, she preferred riding in or
on the front bench of a wagon.

Although the countryside sped by at a rate that was alarming to someone who was used
to plodding horses that could not be urged to a speed faster than an amble, the entire
carriage shook, rattled, and swayed on the rails. The hard wooden bench on which she
sat was no worse than the driving bench on a wagon, but it vibrated under her, and
every shock to the carriage was transmitted in a most unforgiving way to the bench.

This was not an express. That fact had been made very clear to her when she purchased
her ticket. Expresses were more expensive. So they had not been underway for very
long—not nearly long enough for Katie to get used to the speed—before they began to
slow again and pulled into another station.

More people got in this time. Katie was alarmed when some stocky young men looked
into her compartment, but two older women who might have been their mothers took one
look at her and hustled them along to another. To Katie’s relief, it was a trio of
old women and a younger one with a baby that got in, ranging themselves along the
bench. They proceeded to talk among themselves, a conversation that sounded as if
it had been resumed from one begun as they had waited, all about pregnancies and births
and weddings. With them sitting bulwark between her and any strange men, Katie allowed
herself to relax.

Stop after stop punctuated the morning. Katie discovered by dint of listening and
careful observation that the door in the middle of the blank wall led to a lavatory,
and she was glad to make use of it, finding it a far cry from the primitive privies
set up at the circus. It seemed the height of luxury to her; she recognized how to
use it from reading magazine advertisements for such things. She wondered what it
would be like to have such a little room right in your own home, with, perhaps, a
bathtub that wasn’t made of canvas and didn’t have to be set up outdoors! She was
tempted to linger, running her hand along the cool, clean, white porcelain of the
wash basin, admiring how water came from the tap . . . but there might be someone
out there waiting, and she didn’t want to draw attention to herself.

She did thrill in washing her hands and face not just once, but twice, before she
left.

As the hour neared noon, each time the train stopped, she began to notice people hawking
food and drink at the windows of each car. She gazed wistfully at the bottles of lemonade
and burdock, but contented herself with a paper cup of water to drink with her bread
and cheese. She kept her eyes on her own food as the party around her bought ham sandwiches
and lemonades and chattered on, oblivious to her presence. Or, perhaps, politely ignoring
her, so she wouldn’t feel her poverty too much.

If the latter, well . . . that was kind of them.

It was early evening before the train pulled into Brighton at last. She had gathered
up her bundle and was about to leave the compartment, when one of the old women that
had shared it with her turned back.

“Go here, ducky,” she said, with a kindly smile, pressing a little rectangle of cardboard
into Katie’s hands. “Not to worry, it’s safe as houses.” Then she rejoined her party,
as Katie paused to look at the little printed card.

Mrs. Brown’s Boarding House for Working Girls,
it said, and listed the rates. Katie stepped down out of the carriage and onto the
platform with a sinking heart. If this was how much it would cost to live here . . .
her scant supply of money would not last three days.

•   •   •