The Clockwork Three

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “The brothers fought continuously when they were together, so it was fortunate that Archer was seldom at home. But one day he returned and learned that the legacy McCauley had left behind to maintain the park was about to run out, and that Anton planned to strip the park bare and build over it to expand his vision for the city.

  “Now, when Archer heard about this, he became outraged. You see, in all his travels through the crumbling ruins of fallen civilizations, he had picked up this notion that mankind is insignificant. That nothing we create will last. That we will all turn to dust. And it is only in nature that we find constancy and immortality. As I said, he was insane. But he had money. Archer spat in his brother’s face, turned all of his wealth over to the legacy of McCauley Park, and wandered off into the woods to live the life of a hermit.”

  McCauley and Archer Gilbert. The land had enchanted them both. Well, Hannah had been inside the park, and she knew of its allure.

  “And now,” Mister Twine said. “We come to someone whose name you already know.”

  “Mister Stroop,” Frederick said.

  “Precisely. I remember the day he checked in to the hotel. If I had known then the trouble that man would cause for me, I would have turned him away. But I didn’t and he stayed until the day he died. Hours he spent up there in that suite with his telescope, going slowly mad. I knew that Archer’s legacy was running out, and I had my own plans for the park. But then Stroop called me to witness his new will. I had to stand there and watch as he signed away my ambitions, turning all his wealth over to McCauley’s folly. Stroop entrusted me, as his executor, to see his wishes done.”

  “But you didn’t,” Frederick said. “Pullman said the legacy is running out.”

  Hannah narrowed her eyes at Mister Twine. “You stole his money?”

  “Stole?” The old man’s eyes flared, and his cheeks puffed up ruddy as a rooster’s cowl. “Stole you say? How dare you! I am no thief! I have not touched a single cent of that money for my own use and I never planned to.”

  “But you kept it from going to the park,” Hannah said.

  “I prevented a terrible mistake,” Mister Twine said. “When that legacy runs out I will be able to see Anton Gilbert’s dreams fulfilled. My dreams. If the city does not grow, it will die, don’t you see?” Then he turned to Hannah. “Unless …”

  “Unless what?” Hannah asked.

  “I am now going to ask you a question. If you want it, I will give you the money, all of Mister Stroop’s treasure. In return, you will be required to keep silent and let the park pass into my hands.”

  “Or?” Frederick asked.

  “Or, you leave the money with me, and I will honor Mister Stroop’s will.”

  Frederick snorted.

  “Why would you do that?” Hannah asked.

  Mister Twine sighed. “Because it is the right thing, after all. I had planned on giving the treasure to a charity. But I would not object to your taking possession of it, which would relieve me of the need to exercise my own conscience, something I’ve successfully avoided for some time now. Do you understand the choice before you?”

  Hannah nodded. But she did not want to make it. If she took the money, her family would be saved. They would have a home, a real home, and a doctor for her father all the time. They would have food, and clothes, and her mother would be able to laugh again. Hannah would be able to go back to school. Mister Stroop’s treasure could be hers, for her family, but at what cost?

  The park would be destroyed. No more trees, no more Mirabel, no more cabin by the pond for Alice. No more flowers, no more herbs for Alice to study to make her medicine, the medicine Hannah had given her father. Without the park, the doctor would have taken her father’s leg. And without McCauley, there would have been no park. Without Archer Gilbert, there would have been no park. Without the legacy of either man, her father might have died.

  The park was dark and dangerous, but also beautiful and life-giving. What would the city be without it, its green shadow, its other side? Both were necessary. Mister Stroop had seen that through his telescope. The park was his treasure. The park was a treasure that belonged to the whole city, a treasure of life. And Hannah had already found it.

  “I want you to follow Mister Stroop’s wishes,” she said. “For the legacy of McCauley Park.”

  Mister Twine fixed her with a stare that she could only meet for a moment before looking away. He lowered his voice to a drone. “Very well.”

  “Hannah,” Frederick said. “Are you sure about this?”

  Hannah nodded once.

  “What about your family?”

  “I don’t know,” Hannah whispered. She had no plan, no idea what she would do. But perhaps if she pleaded, Mister Twine would give her old job back. “Sir?” she said. “Can I ask you something now?”

  Mister Twine held up a finger, pointed at the ceiling. “There is something else you should know. Yesterday, I told Miss Wool the selfsame story that I have just told you, and presented her with the same choice.” He brought his finger down. “I did not like her answer. So, I fired her.”

  Had Hannah heard that correctly? “You fired Miss Wool?”

  “Yes. Miss Wool no longer works for the Gilbert Hotel.”

  It was as though someone had suddenly taken away a pain that Hannah had grimly accepted and grown used to. She shook her head, feeling lighter.

  “I have a final question for you,” Mister Twine said.

  Hannah blinked and waited.

  “Would you accept Miss Wool’s position at the hotel?”

  Again, she wondered if she had heard him correctly. “What?”

  “It is true that you are quite young for the position, but also quite capable. And I see that you have integrity, a quality I prize in others.”

  Hannah stammered, searching for something gracious or thankful to say, but ended up breathing out a simple yes.

  “Good. Be at my hotel office tomorrow morning at eight o’clock and we shall discuss your new responsibilities. As well as your raise.”

  “My raise?”

  “Of course.”

  She felt Frederick take her hand and squeeze it. Tears clouded her eyes, but she welcomed them. “Thank you, Mister Twine.”

  He grinned. “I think I understand the desperate circumstances that led you to steal Madame Pomeroy’s necklace. While it was certainly wrong of you, I have seen for myself the material your character is made of. We shall let the matter lie, and I shall see to the police.”

  “Thank you,” Hannah said again. She rose to her feet.

  “I don’t mean to offend you,” Mister Twine said. “But as the new chief of maids you will need to work on your appearance.” He gestured toward her as though flicking dirt from something in front of him.

  Hannah looked down at her shabby dress.

  “Here.” Mister Twine reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small leather folio. “Buy yourself some new dresses before tomorrow.” He handed her a small wad of money. “You have earned this.”

  Hannah clutched the money to her breast. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “In that case, you may go.”

  Hannah nodded and turned to leave, but remembered herself and dropped into the worst curtsy she had ever performed. Then she stumbled toward the door, and would have fallen had Frederick not been there to catch her. As she reached the far side of the room, she had a thought and turned back to Mister Twine.

  “Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “What about Mister Grumholdt?”

  Mister Twine chuckled, a high huffing sound like a small bellows. “Every man needs a blunt instrument for the rough work, my dear. Something reliable in its own way. Don’t worry about Hans. I only ask that the passageways remain a secret between us and your father. Agreed?”

  “Of course, Mister Twine,” Hannah said. “Have a good day, sir.”

  “You do the same. And give your family my regards.”

  “I will,” Hann
ah said.

  She and Frederick left the drawing room, then the dusty entryway, and descended the brick path outside. Hannah took one last look at the city from this height, the view of it that Mister Twine saw every day, before heading back down into the streets.

  “I think I’d like to go see Madame Pomeroy,” she said. “But before I do, I think it’s your turn.”

  They waited in the lobby of the Orchard Street Hospital. The tang of antiseptic alcohol sharpened the air in Hannah’s nose. But another odor brooded beneath it like a layer of dark silt along a river bottom. The iron smell of blood.

  Frederick stared at his knees, which were bouncing like steam-driven pistons. Twice Hannah had tried to settle him with a gentle touch, but that had only calmed his agitation for a moment and she had given up.

  “Where is this nurse?” he asked. “We’ve been waiting for —”

  “It hasn’t even been ten minutes,” Hannah said. “She’ll come.”

  But it felt like it had been longer to her as well. For a hospital, the lobby seemed quite lifeless. The only decoration was a rough-hewn cross, hanging on the wall opposite their chairs like a crack in the sterile whitewash.

  Frederick’s legs stopped. He leaned toward her. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”

  “Me too,” Hannah said. “I’m glad you came with me to Mister Twine’s.”

  “Me too.”

  Hannah smoothed her hand over the wooden arm of the chair. “What’s going to happen with your apprenticeship?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you still going to try and build your own clockwork head?”

  Frederick laughed. “No. Not even if I thought I could.”

  “I think you could.”

  Frederick gave a modest nod, acknowledging without agreeing. “Whatever I do, Master Branch will be there to help me.”

  “You’re lucky to have him.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

  At that moment a woman entered the lobby wearing a nurse’s bonnet, and a bleached white apron over a sky blue dress. She was short, and walked with the waddle and bobbing head of a duck. She smiled and approached them. Frederick stood up to greet her, and she stopped.

  “Why, you look just like her,” she said, staring at him. “They told me Maggie’s boy was here asking after her, and sure enough. Here you are.”

  “Are you the nurse that took care of my mother?” Frederick asked.

  She nodded, and came the rest of the way till she stood in front of him with her hands folded in front of her apron. “For most of her time here. We became friends.”

  “She died here,” Frederick said bluntly, but with a fragile certainty, as if he hoped to be told differently and knew he would not.

  The nurse nodded. “Not long after she came. She was a wonderful woman, your mother. She used to go from bed to bed, comforting the other patients when she had the strength. She’d sit with them for hours and sing to them till there wasn’t a dry eye on the ward. People used to stop in the street outside the window.”

  “I remember her voice,” Frederick said.

  “Lovely, wasn’t it? Like the most beautiful songbird in McCauley Park.”

  Hannah felt like an intruder. She tried to ease herself away a bit and drew Frederick’s eye.

  “This is my friend Hannah,” he said. “She’s the one that got me thinking about my mother, and made me want to find out what happened to her.”

  Hannah curtsied. “Hello.”

  “Hello, dear.”

  “Do you know where she is buried?” Frederick asked. Tiny tears had lodged in the corners of his eyes, as if unwilling to fall.

  “I think they laid her in the Old Rock Churchyard.”

  Hannah had been there. She might have seen her tombstone.

  “Thank you very much for your time,” Frederick said, and his voice caught. “I just had to know. For certain.”

  “Of course,” the nurse said. “If I may add, she spoke of you often.”

  “She did?”

  “Nearly every day. I take it you’re not in the orphanage anymore.”

  “I’m an apprentice clockmaker.”

  “And he’s brilliant at it,” Hannah added.

  “I don’t doubt it,” the nurse said. “You look well. Quite handsome. Your mother would be proud, I think it right to say.” She appeared to hesitate. “I don’t mean to add to your grief, but I think leaving you was the great sorrow of her life. Even more so than her husband’s loss at sea.”

  Frederick stood for a moment, working his lips. Then the tears fell, one at a time, without leaving a trail. “Thank you again,” he said.

  “My pleasure. It was very nice to finally meet you, Frederick.”

  Hannah curtsied and Frederick led the way back out into the busy street. He wiped his eyes, and he was smiling. Truly smiling, wider than Hannah had ever seen, as though shutters had opened on the full light of the sun. He was staring at her, pedestrians brushing their elbows, horses and carriages trundling by.

  “What is it?” Hannah asked.

  Then he hugged her. A sudden, warm, gentle hug.

  “Thank you,” he said into her hair.

  She put her hands around him and hugged him back.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Old Rock Church

  GIUSEPPE HAD THE GREEN VIOLIN BACK. IT RESTED IN HIS LAP, smooth and warm. He and Pietro lounged in front of the fireplace on the top floor of the old clockmaker’s shop. They had slept a bit down in the cellar, and upon waking found nothing to do down there and grew bored. The shop had proved more interesting, with things to look at but nothing they felt comfortable touching. Giuseppe viewed clocks with a wary eye now that he had seen Frederick’s creation, as though every wristwatch, mantelpiece, and cuckoo were a secret, living thing, hiding silent thoughts and biding time rather than counting it.

  After exploring the shop the only place left to them was Master Branch’s living quarters, so they had prodded each other up the stairs and now sat with their feet kicked up, enjoying a fire from the comfort of the armchairs. Pietro sat so low in the cushions he bent at the neck. Giuseppe and he now spoke entirely in Italian when no one else was around.

  “Do you think they’ll mind if we’re up here?” the little boy asked.

  “Nah. Besides, they can’t expect us to stay down there in the cellar all day. Like we’re rats or something.”

  Pietro shuddered. “Don’t talk about rats. I hate rats.”

  Giuseppe spit into the fire. “I hate Stephano.”

  They both fell silent.

  “Where did you get the green violin?” Pietro asked.

  “I found it floating in the harbor.”

  “Where do you think it came from?”

  Giuseppe looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. A place where they like to play music and change people’s lives.”

  “I always wanted to hear you play it,” Pietro said. “Ever since I saw you hide it.”

  Giuseppe rubbed his eyes. “Perhaps later.”

  The fire burned itself out and neither of them moved to toss more wood on. They sat there without speaking until the door to the shop opened downstairs.

  “Giuseppe?” they heard Frederick call.

  Giuseppe switched to English. “Up here.” He did not rise from the chair.

  Footsteps on the stairs, and then Frederick entered the room. There was something different about the way he looked. Perhaps it was in the way he moved. He stood taller and straighter, and his eyebrows were up instead of digging down into each other.

  “How did it go?” Giuseppe asked. “Where’s Hannah?”

  “She went to tell her family the good news.”

  “What good news?”

  “Mister Twine hired her back and gave her a promotion. He fired Miss Wool and gave Hannah her position.”

  “That is good news.”

  “Yes.” Frederick sighed, and sat down at the kitchen table.

  Master Branch returned sho
rtly after that with meat pies he had bought on his way home from the museum. The four of them sat down for lunch and the old clockmaker told them that Mister Diamond had accepted his offer. No charges would be brought against Frederick, and the museum would keep the Magnus head. Master Branch spoke in heavy tones, as though mourning the loss of the clockwork head for his guild. Giuseppe expected Frederick to show similar feelings, but instead of grief the apprentice only expressed relief and gratitude to his master.

  The pies were still warm, and the flaky crust crackled as Master Branch cut slices on everyone’s plate. The dark gravy spilled out around chunks of meat, onion, and potato. Giuseppe could not remember eating so well. First the turtle stew and now this. Everyone but Master Branch had two or three pieces before the pies were gone.

  After they had finished, the bell chimed on the door downstairs, and Hannah called up to them. Frederick hopped to his feet with a foolish grin and hustled down the stairs to meet her. Giuseppe smiled and noticed a similar expression cross Master Branch’s face. Pietro licked the leftover gravy from his plate.

  A few moments later, Frederick and Hannah came upstairs. Once they stepped into the room, Hannah walked right over to Giuseppe.

  “I have something for you,” she said.

  Giuseppe sat up. “Oh?”

  “Yes.” She reached into a pocket in her dress. “I owe you something, Giuseppe. Without your music, my father would never have been able to lead me to the treasure. So here.” She held out her hand.

  Giuseppe lifted his, and she placed some money into it.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Mister Twine gave me some money for new clothes. I don’t think he knows how much a new dress costs, because he gave me more than I will need. But he said I earned it. So did you.”