The Custodian of Marvels Read Online Free PDF

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,