The Oversight (Oversight Trilogy) by Charlie Fletcher

Author:Charlie Fletcher [Fletcher, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Fantasy / Historical, Fiction / Fantasy / Paranormal, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Occult & Supernatural
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2014-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 42

THE SHOWMEN’S DRUMHEAD

The long line of carts and wagons crawled across the landscape for two days in a snake which stretched as it went, those who travelled lighter moving to the head as they inexorably outstripped the lumbering wagons grinding heavily along in the dust-cloud at the tail.

“Them poor flats choking at the back will be wishing it would rain,” said Charlie, looking up at the sky. “Then when it does they’ll be axle-deep in mud and hoping the jolly old sun will pop along and dry it all out again.”

He smiled with the assurance of one who knew everything and was lucky enough to travel at the front of the line.

Lucy didn’t meet his father until they stopped to water the horses in the early afternoon of the first day. Then Charlie and she hopped down and helped him.

Mr Pyefinch was an energetic man of medium height who limped as he walked, but did so with such vigour and so nimbly that he seemed twice as able as most undamaged men. The damage had been acquired, Charlie confided to Lucy with some pride, fighting the French at the Battle of Waterloo, more than thirty years in the past.

“But don’t worry,” he said. “He don’t bear a grudge. He won’t mind that you might be a Frog.”

“Don’t mind at all, girl,” said Mr Pyefinch. “It was a long time ago, and I was no more than an eleven-year-old drummer boy minding my own business in the middle of a crowd of Guardsmen as Boney’s cavalry rode round us trying to break our square. Fellow who shot me was as English as me, a big fumble-fingered Kentishman he was, dropped his musket as he was reloading and it landed just clever enough to put a ball through my shin, it did!”

He held out a hand and shook hers with a nod.

“Frenchies never touched me, though one of them Imperial Guard put a bayonet through the Kentishman later in the day–nasty-looking bloke he was with a big bushy moustache. Thank you for the rabbits.”

“Thank you for looking after me when I passed out,” said Lucy.

“Wasn’t me,” he said. “Thank Rose for that.”

Rose, it transpired, was his wife. They returned to the road, and this time Lucy was invited to sit at the front. It was a situation she would normally have avoided if she could because she was sure that she was going to be plied with questions about how she’d appeared in the big tent last night, and where she came from. Strangely they didn’t ask her any of those sort of questions at all, not even why she wore gloves at all times, something people usually remarked on, and as the afternoon progressed and the warmth of the sun worked with the rhythmic sway of the cart, she relaxed and listened to them talk instead. The particular “show” that they travelled the country exhibiting was a series of “Historical and Infamous Tableaux” which, she gathered, were glass-fronted cases behind

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