The Transference Engine

by Julia Verne St. John

  I dropped the key into a basket—once a week a foundry worker collected the used ones and recast them for new cuttings—and I swept up the broad staircase to my private parlor.

  The first page was a redrawing of a map of London from Roman times. My eyes nearly crossed trying to read the antique script. While not part of my linguistic repertoire, Latin bore enough resemblance to French and Italian to be discernible. I found seven landmarks where I knew more modern buildings now rested upon original foundations. I marked them on a separate sheet of paper and moved on.

  The next five maps showed other parts of Britain during the same period. The sixth brought me back to London at the time of the Normans. Three of the buildings I’d marked remained unchanged on this chart, but I noted several newer ones built at that time, beyond the ancient city walls, that held possibilities.

  At each successive stage, my list of buildings both expanded and shrank until the most modern, charted ten years before. One of the original seven, a church dedicated to an obscure saint of Turkish descent was now a warehouse near the Strand, its sidewall might have been part of the city defenses at the time of the Magna Carta. It had gone through many changes of purpose and ownerships, but it looked to have original cellars with possible access to the Thames through a water gate similar to the one at the Tower.

  Time for an investigative journey. What disguise was best for this expedition? Did the owner operate the warehouse for a legitimate business, or did he lease the place? Much property in London belonged to landlords who kept to their fine houses outside the city and never set foot on their other properties. A woman alone, no matter how fashionable, could not approach the place.

  I needed help. Or a better disguise than the old beggar woman.

  To Ada, Lady Lovelace,

  Please accept my regrets that I cannot attend your most excellent dinner party this evening at eight of the clock. Other business requires my urgent attention. If you would be so kind as to lend me the services of a stout footman of the utmost discretion, loyalty, and bravery, I would be most grateful.

  Your most obedient servant,

  Madame Magdala.

  Eight of the clock that evening and the sun dropped beneath the smoky cloud cover long enough to send long, distorting shadows and bright streaks of gold, orange, and crimson light along the Thames. A stout country lad, broad of shoulder and long of leg, from Lord William of Lovelace’s stable steadily rowed a small, hired boat downstream beyond the Tower. He and I wore similar garb of black knee breeches, tall boots, and dark jerseys beneath our short coats. His two-day stubble darkened his face naturally. I’d resorted to soot from my coal fire to keep any light from reflecting off my fair skin.

  We skimmed along close to the embankment. I hoped that the side light from the westering sun would reveal any imperfections in the seawall. We passed several rusty iron gates with solid barriers of bricks behind them. The mortar looked reasonably old with brighter patches in odd places. Clearly, new work shoring up the old.

  “There! Angle in close,” I instructed my coconspirator.

  He obeyed wordlessly, expertly handling the oars. When the hull brushed against the stonework, I grabbed the iron bars. Thankfully, I wore sturdy leather work gloves, for the rust broke off in large flakes. New iron, smooth and recently from the foundry, showed beneath the cloak of false rust, more like ruddy paint sloppily applied. Behind the bars, my fingers brushed against a wooden panel, cunningly painted to look like old brick, match to so many of the previous outlets. A wonderful triumph of trompe l’oeil. I wanted to salute the artist for his mastery. At the same time, I cursed the evil it might hide.

  “Can you see what building sits above us?” I whispered to the nameless lad.

  He shook his head.

  Frustrated, I pushed hard against the barrier. It gave a bit, but remained firmly latched from the other side. Forcing it would alert any watchmen here or in adjacent facilities to our illicit entry. The gate held firm on well-oiled hinges and a stout padlock, also inside. I hadn’t enough light or leverage to pick the lock.

  “Can you move toward the center of the river without drifting too far downstream?”

  The lad nodded and did so. In the last of the glaring red light from the sun, I marked the location of the Tower to our left and the squat shape of the warehouse above.

  Good enough. Time to return the boat upstream. From there, I must venture on my own. Something about the rounded shape of the gate I sought reminded me of the Romany Bardo, their homes on four wheels pulled by sturdy ponies.

  It also appeared larger than normal, of a size to ease a body through and into an awaiting boat—or to be washed out to sea with an outgoing tide.

  Jimmy Porto and his family made locks and knew how to work around any one of them in absolute silence while leaving no trace of their manipulations.

  I wondered if I had time enough on this night to find my friends, return to the warehouse, and scout the interior before dawn in the scant hours of darkness this close to the solstice.

  Chapter Fourteen

  AS I MADE MY WAY back to my home, I stopped at a tavern and left a whispered word in the ear of the barmaid. At an inn on the edges of the old city, I suggested to the stableboy that a traveling person might earn a bright coin for some assistance. Three of my guttersnipes took the same message farther afield.

  The oldest of my army of street urchins, Kit Doyle, a boy of fourteen who was nearly ready to settle down to real work and respectability, took a note to Inspector Witherspoon. I said only that I’d found something old he might find interesting.

  Then I retired to my bed, too fatigued to stand upright any longer and too heartsick to sleep.

  Dawn found me kneading bread dough and roasting in the special oven enough raw coffee beans from Africa to serve the café for a full week. By the time Emily and Lucy stumbled down the stairs from the attic, sleepy-eyed and grumbling, I was able to hand them freshly brewed drinks and the first scones out of the oven.

  “That’s our work, Missus,” Emily protested when half a cup of coffee had roused her sensibilities.

  I shrugged and returned to shaping the bread dough into loaves of several sizes, from tiny single-person servings to long rolls that would fill the tummies of a family at their dinner.

  “What troubles you, Missus?” Lucy asked.

  “I fear that Toby, Violet, and Jane are lost to us. They’ve been gone too long.”

  “Don’t fret for Jane just yet,” Emily said around a mouthful of pastry.

  I frowned at her to remember her manners and not speak with her mouth full. She gulped down the last swallow and repeated her statement more clearly.

  “Why should I hope that our Jane thrives when so many others have also gone missing?”

  “Because her young man is also missing,” Emily said softly.

  I raised my eyebrows in question, prodding her to fill the silence with more information.

  “His da, the barrister, came round yesterday to ask if we’d seen him. He’s livid that his son has not been home studying to finish his exams. Wants the boy to join him in his law offices.”

  “Did you tell him that we have not seen Jane?”

  “Yes, Missus. He did not like that at all.”

  “But he understood,” Lucy chimed in. “He’s not so old as he’s forgotten what it is like to be young and in love. He wanted them to wait until after finishing exams and working, earning some money.”

  “Then he admitted that Jane is right pretty with decent manners and might become an asset to the boy. The barrister’s missus likes Jane and says she has polite conversation,” Lucy added.

  “That’s all thanks to you, Missus,” Emily reminded me.

  I preened a bit under the praise. If indeed Jane had eloped with her love and made a decent marriage above her station in life, then I could claim a bit of her success. Witho
ut me, she’d still likely be walking the streets and selling herself for barely enough coin to eat.

  “We’ll see about this. I’ll not hope that she lives until she returns and apologizes for leaving without a word.” But I did hope. Perhaps one of the missing might not be a victim.

  Moments after I unlocked the front door for customers, a tall grim-faced Runner appeared in my café with a note from Inspector Witherspoon. In response, I merely wrote down an address in the old city and sent the uniformed man on his way before he frightened my customers with his frowns and keen gaze.

  We settled into a normal day of serving coffee and pastry, searching for books, and perusing the newspapers, domestic and foreign. Eavesdropping on political conversations suggested no new patterns of unrest or amassing of resources that could fuel a new military campaign, or trigger a major industrial advancement. But I did hear a wild-eyed young man read a few lines of poetry, strongly imitative of Lord Byron’s style.

  I’d read everything Lady Ada’s father had written in his official life and knew most of it by heart. He was a genius. This poetry was more than derivative and lacked the horrific undertones, if you knew what to listen for. I could almost hear the lord’s affected drawl reciting this poetry with drama and flourish to a fascinated audience.

  The fine hairs on my spine stood on end in atavistic dread that Byron really did live in a different body from the one that “drowned” fourteen years ago.

  I knew he continued to write esoteric books, not all poetry, that glorified death. The arousal of intense pain, flashes of light, drifting between this world and the next . . . I thought that only one who had experienced death and come back could have written those words.

  The noon lull came and I took a few moments to survey the café. A few spills needed scrubbing, newspapers folded neatly and replaced on their rack. Books needed to be coded and returned to the engine that near miraculously “knew” where it should be stored with similar volumes. After the debacle with Jeremy’s bad translation book, I feared that I relied too much on the machine. I did not personally know every one of the twenty thousand volumes I stored. But the machine did. Was my trust well-founded as Lady Ada and her partner Charles Babbage said? Or was that trust dulling my own senses and intelligence by doing so much work for me?

  A hesitant knock on the kitchen door interrupted my survey of the café and the new wave of customers. I nodded to regulars and introduced myself to newcomers, always checking their fashion choices and how closely they followed mine as I wended my way toward the stairs.

  Mickey had assumed the job of transporting plates filled with pastry from kitchen to the shelf beside the coffee bar. He bit his lip in concentration and walked slowly with careful steps. I mentally applauded his new determination to better himself. I just hoped he kept his ears open among the customers as he did on the streets.

  “Ya’know, Missus, if we left the plates beneath the coffee bar and carried trays of pastry up from the kitchen, t’would be faster for t’ customers,” he whispered as we passed.

  “Figure it all out and talk to me tonight,” I told him and moved on.

  With my mind half on the organized but frantic pace of my business, I opened the kitchen door and had to look down to find a blob of wriggling damp rags and a mop of unrestrained black curls that fell below shoulders hunched against a chill wind that preceded a brief shower. Female, I decided.

  “Yes?” I asked, wondering if I should kneel to look the creature in the eye.

  She bit her lip and looked up at me with dark brown eyes wide with wonder. I expected a request for food, or money, or even work to earn said food or money. She lisped out some words I could barely understand.

  So I did kneel and asked her again what she needed. I think she said in Romany “Me da says to come.” Her accent was strange and thick, not one of the local tribes.

  “And who be your da?” I asked in Romany, hoping she’d understand my accent with an over-layer of gorgí intonation.

  She thought for a moment, still biting her lip. It must be important for the Rom to trust a girl child with this errand. They usually kept them close to home and very well protected. The words that tumbled out sounded like chief and da to the one who flies. I couldn’t be certain but the “one who flies” sounded right. Then she put her hands up encircling her head, mimicking a balloon.

  “Ah, your da is also da to Jimmy Porto.”

  She nodded vigorously, beckoning me to follow. A strange response to my messages of the night before. But then I could never be quite certain of tribal politics and concerns. Coming to me might not be safe for Jimmy. So I must go to him.

  An expected routine if not completely within the usual protocol.

  “Go,” Emily said, her arms elbow-deep in dishwater with the china and fine cutlery. “We can manage a while longer on our own now that Mickey is helping and Philippa scrubs the pots and linens. She has a good eye for faint stains that require additional attention.”

  “Show her how to apply lemon juice to the stains,” I said.

  “Lemons be expensive,” Lucy reminded me.

  “Less so than new linen.”

  Mickey looked up with one of his charming grins as he deposited an empty plate on the counter stacked with other used service ware. “If t’ toffs wants a book, they kin wait until you return or I learn how to run the bloody machine,” he said.

  “Don’t curse, Mickey,” I reprimanded him automatically. “Very well, I trust you all to do me proud.” With that, I swept out the kitchen door and followed the urchin through the alleys and backyard paths north toward the open heath.

  My toes cramped in the light indoor shoes—red leather with black painted dots—I’d chosen to wear with my red dress and bonnet with the black ribbon and lace trim. I should have known that any trek with a Romany would involve mud paths as well as cobbled streets. But the nameless child seemed in a desperate hurry. She did not touch me—forbidden among her kind—to tug at my hand. Mostly she dashed ahead a few yards with a peculiar rolling gait and beckoned me forward.

  The moment we cleared the maze of houses and lanes and set foot on the barely discernible trail through the wild grasses and shrubs of the heath, I knew where she headed. I hung back in caution. No ordinary cutthroat or outlaw would know enough of the Romany language to coach a small child to speak the proper words. But her alien accent—closer to the mountains of Transylvania than generations of English born or even Irish tinkers—and her lack of names of the people who had sent for me, made me think twice now that we were away from the protection of an audience within the city. I should have thought of this before.

  If the child’s mission was not honest, then those who sent her knew me very well and had traveled far to understand the mostly secret language.

  “I know you are watching. Come to me or I go no farther.” I spoke Romany as I stopped and crossed my arms at hip level. My Rom would know I reached for weapons secreted among the folds of my skirt. They’d show themselves as harmless before I had a chance to throw sharp metal stars or shoot a gun. They knew my aim to be true and my distance eyesight keen.

  “’Twill do no good to summon them,” the little person said in heavily accented English and straightened up from a stooped posture. While still short—no taller than my breastbone, the aspect of a small child wearing rags too big for it disappeared. With a shake of the head, the tangle of dark curls flew back to reveal a masculine dwarf. The dirt on his face turned out to be two days’ worth of beard stubble. The voice I noted was still high-pitched but no longer childlike.

  “You are not Rom,” I said, fingering my weapons.

  “No. I am not.” The accent lingered. It carried no hints of the languages I spoke. Dark hair and olive-toned skin hinted of the Mediterranean.

  Greek. Greek!

  “Where did you learn the language of the Rom? They do not share it willingly with gorgí
.” I needed time to stall. Time to think.

  “No, they do not share it willingly. But it is ingrained in their blood from birth. Drain the blood, bathe in the blood, and the rudiments become clear. A little observation and the rest becomes understandable.” The creature shrugged and a layer of dust shifted off his rags. “We knew that a child who speaks the Rom was the only way to lure you away from the protection of your friends and of the city.”

  “Why did you bring me here?” Long ago, I’d learned the trick of appearing to maintain eye contact while searching the environs for signs of danger. The wild grasses of the heath shifted slightly in the opposite direction to the constant breeze. To my right and left and two more directly ahead. Behind?

  My summoner did not focus on anything on the path he’d led me along. Unless he’d learned the same trick I used. I’d learned it from the Rom. He may have as well when he indulged in his gory blood sacrifice.

  “We have need of your expertise and that of Lady Lovelace.”

  “Does Lord Byron, Lady Lovelace’s father, still live?”

  “Define living.”

  Trouble. This was the nightmare that had haunted me for over twenty years. I frequently dreamed/remembered the night Mary Godwin, her infant son, and I had fled the villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. Percy Shelley and Lord Byron followed in outraged pursuit. “Your master managed to capture his soul into a vessel, awaiting an appropriate body to house him,” I said on a deep exhale.

  The little man nodded.

  “We have a body. We need a machine.”

  “I cannot help you.”

  “Cannot or will not?”

  I had no true answer for that.

  “We hold you here while my helpers send a ransom note to Lady Lovelace.”

  A chill ran through me and dried my throat. “My lady places no value on me.”

  The dwarf threw back his head and laughed long and hard until he gulped for air. “You underestimate her.”