by A. M. Morgen
“Thank you,” George breathed.
Vice-Chancellor Shadwell directed the police officers to unlock George’s handcuffs. “Lord Devonshire, I apologize for the way you’ve been treated. It’s a good thing I got here when I did to remind these officers that suspects are innocent until proven guilty. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Vice-Chancellor Lancelot Shadwell.”
Although they clearly already knew each other’s names, gentlemanly custom required that George introduce himself with a polite bow. “George, 3rd Lord of Devonshire.” George rubbed his sore wrists where they’d been chafed by the handcuffs. He felt his whole body relax now that he knew Ada had sent someone to rescue him. “There’s been some terrible misunderstanding. Perhaps you can help me clear it up.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself. You’ve been accused of some serious crimes. I won’t rest until we get to the bottom of this.” Vice-Chancellor Shadwell brushed the dust and dirt off George’s shoulders and sleeves in a fatherly way, then led George into a small side room. The walls were painted the color of a muddy puddle on a cloudy day. The vice-chancellor shut the door behind them. “Please, have a seat.”
George sat down on one side of a worn wooden table, and the vice-chancellor sat on the other. A small cup of cool water was brought in. The vice-chancellor smiled while George gulped the water down gratefully. He wasn’t a large man, but he was solidly built, with broad shoulders, like a rock in the middle of a turbulent ocean. For a fleeting moment, George wondered what it would be like to be Vice-Chancellor Shadwell’s son. He probably didn’t keep secrets from his children or leave confusing letters hidden in old books.
Vice-Chancellor Shadwell rested his hands on the table. His eyes were intense beneath bushy brows. “I know you didn’t mean to poison the King,” he said. “I don’t know much about the truffle business, but I imagine that it must be difficult for even a well-established mushroom seller to ensure the safety of his products. So many mushrooms look alike. Instead of a nice Portobello mushroom, you pick a deadly Destroying Angel. An innocent mistake, I’m sure.”
George shook his head. “Impossible, sir. The truffles I sell are grown in very safe conditions. I can assure you that no poisonous mushrooms were grown under my roof—er, in my gardens.”
“And yet the fact remains,” said the vice-chancellor, “that the King became seriously ill immediately after eating a truffled duck egg for breakfast. Can you explain that?”
“It must have been the egg. Ducks are very grubby birds,” George said. He took another sip of water.
The vice-chancellor leaned back in his chair and folded his broad arms. “We examined the duck after we killed it. Its corpse showed no signs of illness or disease.”
George nearly choked. “Oh dear. Give the duck’s family my condolences.”
Vice-Chancellor Shadwell’s eyebrows rose in shock. “Interesting. You have more remorse for a duck than for the sovereign ruler of your country?”
George tugged on his collar. The air around him seemed to have grown warmer. He was beginning to doubt that this man had been sent by Ada. “No, no. Of course I’m sorry for what happened to the King. It’s a terrible tragedy that he was poisoned.”
“So you admit that he was poisoned!” Vice-Chancellor Shadwell declared.
A bead of sweat trickled down George’s neck. “Well, I don’t know. I guess he must have been.”
The vice-chancellor’s face grew dark. The features that had seemed kind moments ago were now hard and unforgiving. He leaned over the table. “Don’t you want to know if he’s going to recover? Or are you so uncaring that you can’t even inquire after the King’s health?”
“Is he going to be all right?” George asked, but his own voice sounded far away. He was beginning to feel somewhat ill himself.
“It’s too soon to tell. If his doctors knew what he’d been poisoned with, it would greatly improve his chances of surviving. What did you poison him with, Lord Devonshire?”
A flare of resentment surged within George. This man was trying to trick him into confessing to a crime he hadn’t committed. “Nothing! I’ve never hurt anyone in my life. I’m innocent.”
“Tell me, Lord Devonshire. Does an innocent man flee when guards knock on his door? Does he destroy one of London’s most cherished floral competitions? Does he refuse to cooperate with authorities when they try to help him?”
“I didn’t mean to wreck the flower show,” George said desperately. “It was an accident. Everything happened so fast. If I could go back and do it again, I would never have run. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was scared.”
The vice-chancellor’s eyes softened again beneath his angry brows. “You were scared of going to prison?”
“Yes,” George said.
“For poisoning the King?”
“Yes.”
No sooner had the word slipped from George’s tongue than the vice-chancellor stood and banged on the door. “Guards, bring back the shackles.”
“Wait! What’s happening? No! I didn’t poison the King.”
Panic raced up and down George’s spine. His chair toppled backward as he shot up and ran to the vice-chancellor’s side, grasping the man’s sleeve in desperation. “It’s Nobody’s fault. He’s framing me.”
The vice-chancellor paused for a moment. His face wrinkled with confusion. “Nobody’s fault?”
“Please, you misunderstood me. I meant it’s somebody’s fault, but not mine. His name is—”
But the words dried up in his mouth, scorched away by the memory of the tall man’s threat against Frobisher and Ada’s mother if George attempted to stop him. Though Frobisher was suffering from the loss of his sea legs, he was far from helpless. There was a chance he could defend himself against an attack. Lady Byron, on the other hand…
“I’m innocent,” George repeated feebly. “I swear.”
The vice-chancellor brushed George’s hand off his sleeve as if it were a speck of dirt. He lowered his face to George’s own and, in barely more than a whisper, said, “You’ve already confessed. I shouldn’t be surprised. Crime does run in your family, Lord Devonshire.”
George’s stomach turned into a rock. Vice-Chancellor Shadwell was talking about the 2nd Lord of Devonshire, George’s father, a notorious gambler. George had spent two years trying to ward off the debt collectors his father had brought upon them by squandering their family fortune. Clearing his throat, George summoned his grandfather’s words. “My father… he didn’t act like a Devonshire, sir. I’m not like him.”
“I’m not talking about your father.”
Before George could voice his confusion, the vice-chancellor produced three pamphlets, placing them on the table for George to read. Each pamphlet was a decades-old, faded edition of the popular Proceedings of the Old Bailey, a public summary of court cases decided by the judges at the central London court. George had never cared for the Proceedings and their gory tales of real-life crime and punishment, but they were sold on every street corner alongside newspapers, and for over a hundred years, Londoners had devoured the latest murders and robberies published within those cheap pages. A corner inside each pamphlet was turned down so George could quickly find the entries Vice-Chancellor Shadwell wanted him to see. Someone had underlined his grandfather’s name in each of them:
17 September 1781 Yesterday Robert Freeman, alias Frisky Bob, and George Devonshire were committed to the Gatehouse, Westminster, by Justice Cotton, for picking a gentleman’s pocket of 15 guineas, a silver snuff box, and two gold rings of considerable value.
22 March 1782 Yesterday George Devonshire, the son of the respected shipbuilder Thomas Devonshire, was accused of being one of the persons who robb’d and gagg’d Captain Romaine on his ship, La Isla, bound for the port of Guayaquil, causing a wreck of devastating proportions, for which he now hangs in chains at the Gatehouse, being concerned with a large gang of thieves in several felonies, burglaries, and acts of piracy.
2 May 1782 Saturday las
t George Devonshire, one of the robbers under condemnation in Newgate, made such a disturbance in the Chapel during the divine service by quarreling with the prisoners, that the Keeper was oblig’d to take him out of the Chapel and put him into the hole call’d Little Ease.
George went utterly cold. The name George Devonshire was pulsing over and over in his brain. “But… this isn’t right. This can’t be right. The 1st Lord of Devonshire was a hero.”
Vice-Chancellor Shadwell tutted, then turned and called, “Guards!”
The red-coated guards screwed the heavy iron handcuffs onto George’s wrists once again.
Shaking his head in disdain, the vice-chancellor escorted George out of the room. “This boy has confessed to the attempted murder of the King of England. As vice-chancellor of England, I deny his right to a trial and declare him guilty. By special order of Princess Victoria, heir to the throne, he is condemned to a fate worse than death: He will be taken to Newgate Prison and kept shackled in the dungeon with only the rats to keep him company. He shall have no visitors, no freedom, and no chance for appeal.”
George fought back the tears that welled up in his eyes. His arms ached with the weight of the iron cuffs. “Please, don’t do this! It wasn’t my truffles, I swear. Find Ada Byron. She’ll figure out who really did it. She’ll prove I’m innocent. I know she will.”
“Ada Byron?”
George nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes! She lives at No. 5 Dorset Squa—”
“I’m sorry, son.” Shadwell gripped George’s shoulder. “You must not have read the newspaper this morning. Ada Byron is dead.”
Chapter Seven
It was not unusual for George to have terrible days. Before he met Ada, when he’d believed that he was cursed with bad luck, each day of his life felt more terrible than the one before. His tenth birthday, when he’d found his grandfather keeled over next to his father’s grave, was supremely dreadful. But that day paled in comparison to the horrific awfulness of this day.
Ada’s life had ended, and George’s life had ended, too. Though the crime reports that the vice-chancellor had shown him lingered at the back of his mind, Ada’s demise screamed in his ears. The tall man must have taken her—killed her. If only George had stayed awake last night, maybe he could have protected her. This was all his fault.
A sob tore out of his chest.
Police officers tossed him into a prison carriage bound for Newgate Prison. The carriage was already packed with other prisoners, members of a gang of shoplifters and pickpockets. Curiously, most of them were girls not much older than George, though the dim light at the back of the carriage carved deep shadows into their faces. They narrowed their sunken eyes at him, looming above him like an army of ghosts. Vaguely, he registered the taunts and jabs they made at his expense, barely whispered under their breath.
“Now, girls, go easy on the poor lad. He’s having a bad day. Enjoy your stay at Newgate, Lord Devonshire,” Vice-Chancellor Shadwell said as a royal guard shut and bolted the carriage door. All the light disappeared, and the carriage became as dark as a tomb. As dark as Ada’s tomb would be.
A surge of hot rage swept through George. He flung himself to the door. “Let me out! Let me out NOW! I didn’t do it!”
Behind him, the girls jeered.
“Give me another chance, too.”
“I’m innocent. Honest, I am.”
“Ask me mum, she’ll tell you. I’m a good girl!”
A heavy fist thumped on the side of the carriage. It lurched forward, rumbling its way south through London toward Newgate Street.
George collapsed on the hard wooden bench. He’d lost everything to the Society. Don Nadie had won. The last twelve hours of his life felt like battling a strange monster in the dark; every time he fought back, another tentacle would slither out from the shadows to strike. Now, even if he proved his innocence, Ada would still be gone. He imagined Oscar’s and Ruthie’s faces when they learned the news, which sent a fresh wave of misery through him. He buried his face in his hands and began to weep.
“Cheer up, we’re all in the suds now,” the girl seated across from him called out. “No use blubbering.”
“What a sniveler. I’ll give him somefink to cry about,” said another girl.
“Aw, shut yer potato trap, Maggie,” a squeaky high voice said. “You’s the one with the thick fingers that’s got us in this mess.”
“’Twasn’t my fingers what done it. Was the new girl got us nabbed with her gummy mittens.”
George thought of Ada’s slender fingers and how they’d never again make a machine or peel a hard-boiled egg. Fresh tears dripped down the tip of his nose. “I never got the chance to say goodbye,” he exclaimed to no one in particular. “She’s dead. My best friend is dead, and the last time I saw her, we were arguing.”
One of the girls slid next to him on the bench. It was odd that she wasn’t wearing handcuffs. Her knobby elbow poked encouragingly into George’s side. “Your friend must have been a right trusty trout, then.”
“I have no idea what that means,” George replied, his face still buried in his hands. “I’d like to mourn in peace, please.”
“Suit yourself. But you shouldn’t waste no tears on the dead. Ain’t no use thinking nothing about the dear departed.”
“You didn’t know her. She wouldn’t mind if I think about her,” George said roughly. He turned away to look through the bars at the streets flashing by. Ada wouldn’t have wanted him to sit here blubbering, that much was true. She would have wanted him to do something. To make her life mean something. George clenched his fists. She would have wanted him to make the Society pay for what they’d done to her.
The girl’s soft, warm hands covered his wrists where the handcuffs shackled him. She leaned closer, whispering in his ear in a very different voice. “If your friend were here right now, do you know what she’d say to you?”
George froze. He knew that voice, but it was impossible that he was hearing it. He looked up into the fierce, dark eyes of a ghost. “It’s you! You’ve come back for revenge!”
Ada’s ghost sighed. “No, that’s not what she would say. She would say, ‘Hold on to something, Lord Devonshire. This might get a little bumpy.’”
George patted the ghost’s knees, then her hands, then her shoulder, then her face. She wasn’t a ghost at all. She was solid and real and… alive.
“Miss Byron!” George exclaimed, embracing her fiercely before pulling away again. “I don’t understand. What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you, obviously,” Ada replied. She turned to the girls at the back of the carriage. “Now, Maggie!”
The girl called Maggie grabbed an iron crowbar that had been hidden under her seat. With a practiced jab, she inserted it into a small slot in the floor of the carriage opposite the doors, then thrust it down with all her weight. There was a loud pop as the carriage broke free of its hitch.
The rest of the girls rushed at the carriage doors, which flew open as the iron hinges disintegrated into clouds of rust-colored dust. At the same time, George’s wrists started to feel uncomfortably hot. He looked down to see that his handcuffs had begun to dissolve in the same way as the door’s hinges. His skin itched terribly, and red blisters formed where it touched the smoking metal.
Ada grabbed his aching hands and pulled him to his feet, then slammed his ironclad wrists against the side of the carriage. In a gust of red powder, his handcuffs crumbled into pieces.
“Acid,” Ada explained cheerfully.
“Acid,” George repeated, ready to weep again with gratitude and also from the tenderness of his raw, itchy skin.
“Yes. Time to go, everyone!” she shouted.
But Ada needn’t have said anything. The other girls were already launching themselves out of the busted-open doors with cries of glee as the unhitched carriage careened wildly through the streets. They dispersed, torn and raggedy skirts fluttering behind them, weaving through a gathering crowd of onlookers like strands
of multicolored thread.
“But—” George began to protest. His teeth chattered and his vision blurred with the fierce rattling of the carriage over cobblestones below.
“Don’t think. Just jump,” Ada said.
So George jumped. His feet hit the hard cobblestones with a jolt of pain that raced through his ankles and into his shins. Ada pulled him up, and a second later they were running, escaping into the twisted alleys that wound through the heart of London.
Chapter Eight
After they had run all the way to the Thames River, Ada finally slowed down and led George behind a row of scraggly bushes. Panting, George slung his arm around Ada to assure himself once again that she was alive. Huddled together, they listened to the river splash against the stony shore and waited as a pack of police officers ran past, then disappeared down another street.
“What happened, Ada?” George whispered. “I thought you were dead. The vice-chancellor of England told me he read your obituary in the paper.”
Ada smiled. “I am dead—legally, anyway. Not physically dead, as you can see.”
George laughed in delight, but the laugh turned into a groan. “I might as well be dead, too. Do you know what they said I’ve done? Everyone thinks I tried to murder the King with my truffles. But I didn’t—I swear on Frobisher’s life I didn’t. I’m innocent. You believe me, don’t you, Ada?”
The occasional police officer strode past their hiding place as George told Ada what had happened the previous night after he’d gone back to No. 10 Dorset Square. He shared every detail with her: his trip to No. 10, the portrait over the fireplace that contained the Star of Victory, the tall man revealing that he knew George’s grandfather and that he had organized C.R.U.M.P.E.T.S. and confessing that he was the one who had sent the Society of Nobodies after George and Ada, and now, Il Naso in Spain. Sheepishly, George finished by explaining what had happened to the mechanical frog after the royal guards showed up to arrest him.
Grimacing, Ada said, “I’ll build another.”