The Clockwork Three

by Matthew J. Kirby

  Hannah put her hand inside the chest and pulled out a lump of something. She held it out in her open palm, and Frederick saw that it was a chunk of dried clay, inscribed with letters he did not recognize.

  “What is —?” he began, but a noise from the clockwork man stopped him.

  The Magnus head shuddered, and the mouth opened wide. “Why?” it said, and the jaw closed. The spinning eye slowed, slowed, stopped. The clockwork fell silent.

  “For its heart.” Hannah began to cry. “I’m sorry.”

  Frederick touched the Magnus head, the bronze completely still beneath his fingertips. Dead. “What is that in your hand?” he asked, his voice so quiet he was not sure he had spoken aloud.

  “It’s a piece of a golem,” Hannah said.

  “A what?” Frederick asked.

  “A golem is an artificial man,” Master Branch said. “A protector made of clay.”

  Hannah still would not meet his eyes. “I took it from the museum. I didn’t mean to. And then I put it in your clockwork man.”

  Frederick said nothing.

  “The two were built with different purposes,” Master Branch said. “The Magnus head to think and the golem to act. I would not have thought that a golem fragment could animate a clockwork.”

  “But it did,” Frederick said.

  “I’m sorry,” Hannah said again.

  Frederick studied her. Then he put his fingers under her chin and lifted her head so he could look into her green eyes. “Don’t be. I think you made him something more than I ever could have.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Mister Twine

  HANNAH DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO SAY AS FREDERICK SLOWLY and methodically removed the Magnus head. Master Branch tried to assist him, but Frederick held an arm out, barring anyone else from approaching. He sniffed and worked with his tools, and Hannah wanted nothing more than to hug him. He had been so brave, and had sacrificed everything to save Giuseppe.

  The two Italian boys waited at the edge of the room, as if they did not feel they were a part of what was happening in the cellar. But they were. They all were, and they had all witnessed the death of a noble machine. It was hard for Hannah not to blame herself for the death, as in some ways she was responsible for giving it life. Somehow, the fragment of golem had animated the body, but was never really part of it.

  “There,” Frederick said. He stepped away from the worktable. The Magnus head sat upright, as it had when Hannah had first seen it, looking just as lifeless. “I suppose I’ll take it back to the museum now.”

  Giuseppe stepped forward. “Are you crazy?”

  “You can’t go back there,” Hannah said, thinking of Mister Clod and Mister Slag.

  “I have to,” Frederick said.

  “Your friends are right,” Master Branch said. “I do not trust Reginald Diamond, and would not send you to his museum. I will return the bronze head.”

  Frederick shook his head. “But, sir —”

  “I know you would do it if I let you, and that is enough. I will attempt to persuade Mister Diamond to accept the head and let the matter drop.”

  “Do you think he will?” Frederick asked.

  Master Branch gave them all a sly smile. “I think so.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Master Branch picked up the Magnus head. “My guild would have a legitimate claim to a clockwork of such historic significance, and we have power and influence enough to cause Mister Diamond quite a bit of grief when we decide we want something. If he accepts my offer of the Magnus head, and agrees to forget about this whole incident, I will guarantee him that the guild will leave the head where it is, in the Archer Museum.”

  Hannah felt such relief she almost laughed.

  “Thank you, sir,” Frederick said.

  Master Branch held the Magnus head to his chest. “It’s quite heavy, isn’t it?” The four youths moved aside to let the old man pass as he crossed to the cellar stairs. “I shall dress and go now,” he said. “Sooner rather than later. Will you be all right?” He was looking at Frederick.

  “We will,” Frederick said. “Although I probably won’t open the shop today.”

  Master Branch nodded. “I shall see you later.”

  The old man started up the stairs. Hannah and the two boys watched Frederick, who never took his eyes off the bronze head in his master’s arms. Once Master Branch had left, he dropped his gaze to the floor. Several moments passed in silence. Then Frederick shook his head and turned to Hannah. “Well. Shall we go?”

  “Where?”

  “Up to the Heights. To Mister Twine’s mansion.”

  Hannah felt a flutter in her stomach. “Yes.” She turned to Giuseppe. “But you are staying right here.”

  Giuseppe held up both hands. “No argument from me. Stephano’s still out there.”

  At the mention of that name, Giuseppe’s little friend flinched.

  Hannah went to him and smoothed his hair. “It was nice to meet you, Pietro.”

  “Yes,” he said. “You very nice to me.”

  Frederick waited at the foot of the staircase, and let Hannah go first. She heard Master Branch upstairs as they left the shop and went out into the street. She looked to the north, where gentle foothills rose up to a level bench of earth just above the city skyline. Just high enough for the mansions situated there to look down on the buildings below. Those great homes reminded Hannah of the castles in her fairy stories, with turrets and towers, high windows and lavish gardens, guarded by wrought iron gates and hedgerows. Frederick started up the street in their direction but Hannah hesitated.

  This was it for her. Her last hope and only chance to save her family. Even if she got another job, she would never find one that would pay her as generously as Mister Twine had for her meager skills. Her family had far too little as it was. She returned again to the image she could not ignore, the image that had exhausted and occupied her for so long. Her family on the street, huddled in some building stoop, begging for food. Her father …

  “What is it?” Frederick asked.

  “What if he won’t help me?”

  “Then we’ll figure something else out.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Something. It’s fine.”

  Hannah felt a jolt, like an explosion of swirling sparks from the collapse of burning logs. “But it’s not fine.”

  Frederick acted as though he had not heard, just impatient and anxious to get moving. “Things will work out, Hannah.”

  That red-hot stove in her chest erupted. “I’m not fine!”

  Her shout echoed through the street. A bonneted woman with a small child paused a moment and looked at Hannah out of the corner of her eyes before moving along. Frederick blinked at her.

  “I am not fine,” she said, a heat burning up her cheeks.

  Frederick nodded. “All right. You’re not fine.” He led her off to the side of the street. “But who would be, Hannah? Why do you pretend you are?”

  Something had given way inside her, the stove a flow of molten iron. Her blood had turned to hot ash and ember, her chest ablaze with pain, regret, and rage. Why did she pretend? Why did she lie to herself? She had given up so much, her school, her life. She had taken on such a heavy burden. So heavy she could not bear it any longer, could not stay upright. In that moment she hated her family. She hated her mother, so frail and helpless, always sad and overwhelmed. She hated her sisters for all their childish demands and their whining, their crying and fighting. And most of all, she hated her father. She hated him for simply lying there, for doing nothing, for letting her give up her schooling and slave away in the hotel he helped to build.

  Hannah sobbed. She covered her face and fell into Frederick’s arms. He stood rigid as a tree. She pounded his chest with her fist, and he hugged her for a long time. Her whole body heaved, her face wet and hot with tears.

  “I hate them!” she cried. “It’s not fair!”

  “No, it isn’t,” Frederick said gent
ly.

  “I can’t do it all!”

  “No. You can’t.” After a long moment he said, “But you do what you can.”

  “And what if that isn’t enough?”

  Frederick held her shoulders and took a step back. He looked in her eyes. “Enough for what?”

  “For my family.”

  “What more could they ask for than what you’ve given?”

  She bit her lip. She sniffed. “I don’t really hate them,” she said.

  Hannah loved her sisters, their laughter, and that no matter how hungry they were or how late it was when she came home, they always wanted Hannah to play with them. She loved her mother, her calm demeanor, her intelligence and compassion. And she loved her father. She loved him so much it hurt, like a knife made of sunlight in her chest.

  Frederick was right. What more could anyone ask of her? Her tears subsided, and she found that they had extinguished the worst of the blaze inside, a charred and smoldering landscape left behind. She felt lifeless, burnt up. All she had been was gone. She had given everything.

  “Are you ready now?” Frederick asked.

  It took a moment for the question to reach her. “Ready for what?”

  “To go see Mister Twine.”

  She wiped her stinging eyes and lifted them up to the Heights, resting like a crown above the city. A king’s crown, regal, bejeweled, the prize of the treasury. And at the thought of treasure, something quivered inside her. She felt for it, and down among the black cinders she found a patch of green, a tender shoot with pale leaves, somehow spared. Hannah felt the beginnings of renewal.

  “I’m ready to try,” she said.

  Frederick nodded. “All right.”

  She rubbed her cheeks and smoothed her skirts. “Let’s go.”

  Mister Twine’s mansion stood at the top of a series of landscaped terraces. A brick path rose level upon level from the street, bordered by rosebushes, like a long red tongue reaching down from the mansion’s great double doors. Stately oak trees towered over the green lawn. Something about them seemed too perfect and unblemished, having been tamed by gardeners. Not like the trees in McCauley Park, which bore the scars of their long lives proudly.

  Hannah turned around and looked down on the city. It smoked and shone, clamored and sang, looking and sounding familiar from this height, but also different. She usually thought of the city in its parts, its neighborhoods and quarters, but from up here it seemed to be one grand thing. The Quay and the docks were the arms, flexing and laboring along the river and the bay. The factories were the legs, pumping and grinding the city along. Gilbert Square lay at the heart, beating with people, sending them coursing down the streets to the city’s far corners. And McCauley Park was the city’s shadow, its other side, as necessary as the city itself.

  “Shall we just knock on the front door?” Frederick asked.

  Hannah shrugged. “I can’t think of another way.”

  They climbed together, smelled the roses, and passed under the too-perfect shade of the trees. Hannah felt winded by the time they arrived at the doors, and took a moment to catch her breath before she reached for the heavy brass knocker. It hung from the mouth of a snarling lion, big as a giant’s bracelet.

  Hannah slammed it down one, twice, and flinched at the anvil sound that echoed around them. A moment passed with a ringing in her ears, something rattled in the latch, and the doors parted.

  A young man stood before them, wearing a fine suit and a bland smile. If he felt surprise at seeing two children at his door, he did not show it. “Can I help you?”

  Hannah scrambled for her wits and spoke. “We’re here to see Mister Twine. Is he at home?”

  The man nodded. “Mister Twine is in. But it is not his custom to receive visitors.”

  “Please, sir,” Frederick said. “It’s very, very important.”

  The man regarded them with his head tilted.

  “Yes, sir, please,” Hannah said. She heard the desperation in her own voice. “Mister Twine knew my father. He was a stonemason at the hotel.”

  The man sucked on one of his cheeks. “Well. Mister Twine did receive another woman from the hotel yesterday, and she came unannounced. Perhaps he’ll see you.”

  Hannah’s body went numb. “What woman?”

  “The chief of maids, I believe. Miss Wool.”

  Frederick swallowed, and Hannah fell backward a step.

  “Wait here,” the man said, and shut the doors.

  Frederick craned his neck and looked up at the face of the mansion. “What do you want to do?”

  Run. Hannah wanted to turn around and run. But to where? “We try,” she whispered.

  They waited. A long time. Hannah stood frozen while Frederick paced around her, and a few timid birds chirped up in the trees.

  The latch clicked and the doors reopened. “You are fortunate. Mister Twine will see you. Follow me.”

  He waited until they had entered into the mansion before closing the door behind them. They stood in dusty gloom, curtains drawn all around them. Hannah peered into the entryway, and her eyes adjusted, revealing walls paneled with dark wood from floor to ceiling, and a carpeted wooden staircase climbing up to the second floor. Tables flanked the stairway bearing empty vases, and massive portraits of unhappy-looking men and women weighed down one wall. Rafters spanned the vaulted ceiling overhead, fluttering with wisps of cobwebs.

  “This way,” the man said, and ushered them toward a series of doors.

  Hannah and Frederick fell in behind him, their feet whispering over faded rugs. Everything in this mansion seemed so old, as though nothing had been replaced since the house was built. And yet Mister Twine left nothing alone for long in the hotel. Perhaps his home was the one place he demanded permanence.

  The man opened a door and led them into a drawing room only marginally brighter than the entryway. “Mister Twine will be in shortly,” he said, bowed his head, and left them.

  Hannah turned to Frederick. “It’s not too late. We could run.”

  Frederick smiled. “But we won’t.”

  The room they stood in held several chairs in clustered gatherings, as though engaged in whispered conversations about one another. None of them looked comfortable for sitting. They were the kinds of chairs one stood next to with a hand on the back. The cold hearth hoarded what might have been last year’s ashes for all the life that room held. A solitary clock ticked away on the mantel, and more portraits hung on the walls, their subjects’ faces pinched in obvious and constant disapproval. Of everything.

  A door on the far side opened, and Mister Twine stepped through. He looked as Hannah remembered him. Short, thin, bent, with white hair that retained just enough rust to suggest its former fiery red. Mister Twine moved toward them with a steady and purposeful gait, as though he practiced in a mirror to maximize efficiency.

  “Hannah. I thought it might be you,” he said. He did not extend a hand to shake, but motioned for them to sit in one of the uninviting chairs. “How is your father?”

  Hannah sat, her back straight, her rump almost immediately uncomfortable. Frederick took a seat near her, and adjusted the legs of his trousers several times.

  “He is doing quite we —” Hannah stopped herself. She heard Madame Pomeroy’s voice in her head: No more lies, Hannah. She drew herself up. “Actually, sir, he is doing poorly. The doctor nearly had to amputate his leg.”

  Mister Twine stood across from them, his hand on the back of a nearby chair. “I am so sorry to hear that. But you say ‘nearly’ … I take it something or someone intervened?”

  “Yes,” Hannah said. “With medicine, and the help of friends.”

  “Friends are a precious commodity. At times I think perhaps I should acquire some.” He stared off into a corner of the room.

  Hannah cleared her throat. “Sir, if you will permit me, I must tell you about my situation.”

  Mister Twine’s eyes glittered beneath his eyebrows. They were the eyes of a much younger ma
n. “Before you go on, you should know that Miss Wool was here yesterday.”

  “I know,” Hannah said.

  “And yet you came,” Mister Twine said.

  Hannah stood up straighter. “I had to try.”

  “So you did. I take it the medicine was expensive?”

  “It would have been.”

  “The diamond necklace was supposed to cover the cost, isn’t that right?”

  Hannah refused to look away. “That’s right.”

  “A noble purpose by ignoble means.” Mister Twine nodded his head. “I do understand something about that. You know why Miss Wool was here? You read the will as well?”

  “I did.”

  “And in the process discovered secrets I’d managed to keep hidden for a very long time. But you are your father’s daughter. I knew the risks when I took you on.”

  “And I appreciate the work you have given me, sir. You kept my family off the street.”

  “Perhaps I should have done more.” Mister Twine gripped the chair. “But I refuse to give what has not been earned.”

  Hannah leaned forward. “Sir, since you know why I’m here, you probably know what I came to ask you.”

  “Yes. But you will do so on my terms. First, I am going to tell you a story, and then I will ask you some questions. After that, you may ask of me what you will.”

  Hannah felt impatient, but did not want to anger him. “I will listen.”

  Mister Twine nodded. “The history I am about to relate goes back a long way into the past. You know about our city’s founders. Gilbert and McCauley were two sides of the same company, and they split the land in half, a seam right down the middle marking the boundary between civilization and the wild. Both the park and the city were born out of fear. Fear of what would happen if we conquered the land, and fear of what it would mean if we didn’t.

  “With the passing generations, McCauley’s line ended while the Gilberts thrived. Their ambition and bravery dripped down through the years, from father to son, until collected and concentrated in two brothers. Anton and Archer Gilbert, as different as the wind and the mountain.

  “Anton was a man after my own heart. He wanted to build. To shape. To enact. He created the Opera House and the hotel. He carved roads and brought industry into our city. His brother was of a different mind completely, and I daresay he was insane. Archer traveled the world, adventuring and plundering. He discovered new lands, new peoples, and explored lost cities, sending the fruits of his exploits back to his brother’s city. The Archer Museum was built to house his massive collection of artifacts.