gaze forward, I was able to see her on the periphery of my vision stealing coy glances in my direction. This was a meeting that should never have happened.
“How are you acquainted with Mr and Mrs Simmonds,” I asked, reasoning it would be easier to pose my own questions than to evade hers.
“My father is a registered inventor,” she said. “He has seven patents to his name. Two of them concern the steam propulsion of boats. Mr Simmonds visits on occasion to consult.”
Hearing Mrs Simmonds’s footsteps closer behind us, I turned and asked, “Is your husband a frequent visitor to the Swain household?”
She flustered and tutted as she fell back to a distance of some fifteen paces.
“This was my first visit,” Julia whispered. “Though I’ve long been intrigued to meet you, I wouldn’t have had it happen in this way. Your sister is my teacher. And yet more than a teacher.”
“She enjoys your classes,” I said.
“Don’t think too badly of Mrs Simmonds. She means well enough. She has two sons, grown and fled to Carlisle where I hear they have good jobs and families of their own. Arranging the lives of others is her small consolation.”
Light shone from the front windows of Julia’s house, revealing strands of thin mist which hovered over the road in front of us.
“I knew it should be in the night that I saw you if ever, Mr Barnabus.”
“How so?”
“Your sister doesn’t speak of you beyond saying that you sleep during the day, and I don’t press her. Please don’t take this badly, but there’s nothing of the ordinary about you. I’d half imagined you as Mr Stoker’s vampire, though a gatherer of private intelligence is almost as exotic.”
We had reached the front door and I found myself facing her. “I’ll not ask you in,” she said. “I don’t think you’d accept. But please believe me when I say this brief meeting has been more than pleasant. For me at least.”
“I’m no more than a shadow,” I said, “and can have only such friendships and feelings as a shadow might. A vampire would be more substantial.”
She made to take my hand, but I was already turning away.
Chapter 12
Illusion is story. Weave it with characters and feelings and love and loss and the audience will follow you as surely as the children of Hamlyn followed the Pied Piper.
– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook
At the end of the British Revolutionary War, the generals took a ruler and drew a line across the map. The border ran from the Wash in the East to Wales in the West and was so placed as to cut no city or town. But when news spread that the birthplace of Ned Ludd, father figure of the revolution, lay inside the Kingdom, Republicans took to the streets in protest. It seemed war might break out again. The generals hastily rectified their mistake by signing the Anstey Amendment, redrawing the line to include a small southward loop. But in doing so they split Leicester in two.
The impossibility of securing a border across The Backs made Leicester unique. Only in the divided city could people cross with such ease and the differentiated cultures of Kingdom and Republic bleed through into each other. Perhaps that is what had drawn me to live there.
Notwithstanding this mixing, the clothes I could see on the far side of the border post were noticeably brighter. Skirts in the Kingdom were worn shorter also. Here and there I could glimpse ankles and flashes of colourful stockings. But fashion was merely the outer symbol of something more profound, something elusive as a half-remembered scent. It was a way of thinking, a love of mystery, a pleasure in rudeness, a preference for Anglo Saxon words over Latin, a mixing of races. It was the sum total of a thousand small differences, each of which might be irritating or pleasing to a degree but when put together formed a quality that I yearned for and knew I could never again possess.
Two guards in blue Republic uniforms sat in the glass-fronted booth a few paces
“How are you acquainted with Mr and Mrs Simmonds,” I asked, reasoning it would be easier to pose my own questions than to evade hers.
“My father is a registered inventor,” she said. “He has seven patents to his name. Two of them concern the steam propulsion of boats. Mr Simmonds visits on occasion to consult.”
Hearing Mrs Simmonds’s footsteps closer behind us, I turned and asked, “Is your husband a frequent visitor to the Swain household?”
She flustered and tutted as she fell back to a distance of some fifteen paces.
“This was my first visit,” Julia whispered. “Though I’ve long been intrigued to meet you, I wouldn’t have had it happen in this way. Your sister is my teacher. And yet more than a teacher.”
“She enjoys your classes,” I said.
“Don’t think too badly of Mrs Simmonds. She means well enough. She has two sons, grown and fled to Carlisle where I hear they have good jobs and families of their own. Arranging the lives of others is her small consolation.”
Light shone from the front windows of Julia’s house, revealing strands of thin mist which hovered over the road in front of us.
“I knew it should be in the night that I saw you if ever, Mr Barnabus.”
“How so?”
“Your sister doesn’t speak of you beyond saying that you sleep during the day, and I don’t press her. Please don’t take this badly, but there’s nothing of the ordinary about you. I’d half imagined you as Mr Stoker’s vampire, though a gatherer of private intelligence is almost as exotic.”
We had reached the front door and I found myself facing her. “I’ll not ask you in,” she said. “I don’t think you’d accept. But please believe me when I say this brief meeting has been more than pleasant. For me at least.”
“I’m no more than a shadow,” I said, “and can have only such friendships and feelings as a shadow might. A vampire would be more substantial.”
She made to take my hand, but I was already turning away.
Chapter 12
Illusion is story. Weave it with characters and feelings and love and loss and the audience will follow you as surely as the children of Hamlyn followed the Pied Piper.
– The Bullet Catcher’s Handbook
At the end of the British Revolutionary War, the generals took a ruler and drew a line across the map. The border ran from the Wash in the East to Wales in the West and was so placed as to cut no city or town. But when news spread that the birthplace of Ned Ludd, father figure of the revolution, lay inside the Kingdom, Republicans took to the streets in protest. It seemed war might break out again. The generals hastily rectified their mistake by signing the Anstey Amendment, redrawing the line to include a small southward loop. But in doing so they split Leicester in two.
The impossibility of securing a border across The Backs made Leicester unique. Only in the divided city could people cross with such ease and the differentiated cultures of Kingdom and Republic bleed through into each other. Perhaps that is what had drawn me to live there.
Notwithstanding this mixing, the clothes I could see on the far side of the border post were noticeably brighter. Skirts in the Kingdom were worn shorter also. Here and there I could glimpse ankles and flashes of colourful stockings. But fashion was merely the outer symbol of something more profound, something elusive as a half-remembered scent. It was a way of thinking, a love of mystery, a pleasure in rudeness, a preference for Anglo Saxon words over Latin, a mixing of races. It was the sum total of a thousand small differences, each of which might be irritating or pleasing to a degree but when put together formed a quality that I yearned for and knew I could never again possess.
Two guards in blue Republic uniforms sat in the glass-fronted booth a few paces
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