by Peter Bunzl
Caddy curled up against her like a kitten, and Robert tried to do the same. It felt strange to be held so close by his ma at first, but something about it was also achingly familiar. Smoke scented her hair, her breath was warm on his face, and as she spoke he could almost feel every word.
“In the old days,” Selena was saying, “the Door family were part of a troupe that toured theatres. Jack was a famous escapologist and magician, like his father before him, and my ma, Artemisia, was a psychic. My brother Finlo and I helped with their acts.
“Jack’s show was always first, and involved a startling bit of escapology or magic. Then, after the interval, it was Ma’s turn. That’s what the audience came for. They would bring the valuable jewellery of lost loved ones to help them commune with that loved one’s spirit.
“What they didn’t know was Ma and Jack were using this part of the performance as a means to gather treasures. During the show, Artemisia would find out as much as she could about the jewels and their worth, then later, as the audience left the theatre, Jack would pick their pockets.
“Over the years his own show faded from the limelight somewhat, and Ma’s grew more succesful, so he began using his escapology skills to break into the houses of the rich and famous.
“Things really came to a head fifteen years ago, when Artemisia and Jack were both to take part in a royal command performance for Queen Victoria, onstage at the Egyptian Theatre. Also appearing in the show was the mechanical Elephanta.
“Ma knew from her knowledge of precious things that the forehead of the Elephanta contained the most valuable jewel ever mined: the Blood Moon Diamond – given to the Queen by her husband Prince Albert. So Ma and Jack set about making a plan to steal it.
“Jack told everyone that for his part of the show he would be chained in the path of the Elephanta and he would escape and ride the beast before she trampled him to death.
“During the performance, with everyone watching, Ma shackled Jack to a frame at the centre of the stage. The Elephanta was wound up and she set off walking towards him. Jack seemed to struggle in his chains – for the very first time it seemed as if he might not escape. As the Elephanta was about to crush him beneath her feet, the lights in the theatre flashed off, and when they came on again, Jack had vanished. The Elephanta was stilled, frozen in the centre of the stage, and the Queen’s Blood Moon Diamond, which had sat in the Elephanta’s forehead since the day it was made, was gone. Disappeared.
“An Inspector Fisk from Scotland Yard visited Queen’s Crescent and questioned us, but Finlo and Ma told him nothing. As for me, when I heard what Jack had done, I wanted no part of it, but I kept my own counsel.
“Then the police began watching the house. We sat there for weeks, brewing and stewing, being followed wherever we went, Ma issuing veiled threats. Eventually, I’d had enough. I couldn’t take any more. I contacted the inspector and revealed where Jack was hiding.”
“Where was he hiding?” Robert asked.
Selena bit her lip. “By the docks, at The Magnificent Theatre of Curiosities. The plan was, as soon as the brouhaha blew over, he and Ma would take a boat out to sea with the diamond and leave Britain for ever. But that never happened, of course. As soon as the police knew where he was, they went to arrest him. And they did a better job of it, that time.
“At the trial, Jack took the blame for the whole plot, claimed my mother knew nothing of his plans. The judge sent him down for life, but the Blood Moon Diamond was never found. The police couldn’t work out where it was, though they’d eyes on us constantly while he was in court.” She shook her head. “Obviously they never thought to look under the house.”
“Fleet is the river,” Robert repeated. “It runs beneath Queen’s Crescent, like Jack said.”
“It does.” Selena smiled. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”
“I never heard any of this!” Caddy’s mouth was an O of amazement.
Selena brushed a hand through her daughter’s hair. “Ma planned to wait for Jack to escape jail, so they could collect the diamond together, then they would sell it and escape Britain on the proceeds.”
“But how did she manage to keep it a secret?” Caddy asked.
“By trusting no one,” Selena said. “Not even Finlo knew where the diamond was hidden.
“Instead she drew a map of its hiding place and commissioned someone to engrave it on the back of a locket she had. A Moonlocket – of two halves. The first half was a crescent moon, which my father had given her when I was born – to celebrate, see, because I was named Selena. He gave her the second half – the gibbous moon – when my brother Finlo was born, and the two fitted together, as one, to create a whole moon. She couldn’t have got the map engraved on only one half because it didn’t fit, so she had the map engraved across both parts, and added a clue in code. I suppose it was an extra precaution, a final trick to obscure the diamond’s secret location.
“On the day she had to collect the locket from the engravers, she couldn’t go for some reason, so she gave me the jeweller’s ticket and sent me to collect it instead. The apprentice boy behind the counter at the clockmaker’s, he was so handsome. He told me his name was Thaddeus and asked what I was called. When I told him my name was Selena, he asked if the locket was mine – because, he added, I was named for the moon and it was as beautiful as I was. I think that was the moment I fell in love with him. After that we started courting in secret.
“I took both halves of the Moonlocket back to Ma, and everything was fine for a time. But Finlo was so angry. He’d started digging around, asking questions, wanting to find out who’d betrayed our father to the police.
“One day he came home and told Ma it was me, that I was the one who’d given Jack up. She threatened to kick me out of the house. I’d nowhere to go. I went to Thaddeus, and he couldn’t take me in where he was working, but he said he’d a family who kept a shop in a little village called Brackenbridge. It was a proper clock shop that served the whole county, repairing people’s clockwork and mechanicals. We could escape together and work for his da, who was getting on and would soon retire.”
Robert remembered Townsend’s as it had once been – a gleaming family shop. It was true what his ma said, it had belonged to generations of his family, but today his da was gone, and it was an empty, burned-out shell of its former self.
Selena seemed to sense his melancholy. She touched the ring on her left hand. “So I ran away with your father, Thaddeus, to Brackenbridge. We were married in the village church and began a life there. None of the Doors knew where I was, and in that way I hoped to keep safe from my family. To forget their bullying and my unhappy youth.
“In the back of my mind, I thought that when things had quietened down we’d return to London. But then we had you, Robert. You were such a bonny baby, and we all loved you, and your grandparents – Thaddeus’s parents, I mean – loved you the most. They were very old, and died within a year of each other, leaving Thaddeus and I in charge of the shop, and I realized that this was to be my life. There’d be no going back.”
She paused and took a deep breath.
“I loved you both dearly, of course, but in those few years at Brackenbridge I never truly felt comfortable. It was always at the back of my mind that none of us were safe because of Jack and what I’d done.” She wiped a tear from her eye, studiously avoiding Robert’s gaze as she continued.
“Then I saw in the paper that my brother had returned to England, after five years away – travelling in a circus round America. At the bottom of the article was one extra line about why he’d come back: his mother was very ill – dying – and he needed to see her one last time.
“When I read that, I knew I had to do the same. I’d seen Thaddeus lose his parents and I knew I couldn’t let my mother go without saying goodbye, even though she’d said she never wanted to see me again.
“I set off post-haste to our old house on Queen’s Crescent, where she’d rented rooms for years. Wh
en I arrived, the landlady mistook me for a boy, for I was dressed in travelling clothes, with my hair pinned back, wearing an old jacket and a bowler hat like Fin’s – a disguise so I wouldn’t be harassed on the road. I told her who I was and she showed me up to my ma’s room, though she warned me that the old lady cursed my name daily for putting Da in jail.
“I knocked and went in. A single bed filled the tiny, squalid room. Above it was a sash window with thick gauzy curtains part drawn to keep out the light. On a narrow chest beside the bed were various framed lobby cards from the Door Family Show – advertising our act together. Except, when I looked closer, I could see I’d been ripped from each one, my name scratched out of the line-up. I’d been erased from the family history. A no-name girl, who’d disappeared.”
“That’s horrible.” Caddy’s voice was choked with tears.
Robert felt a pang as he remembered the cards in the room they’d visited. Caddy knew nothing of this, he realized. “Go on,” he whispered to his ma.
“The room smelled of camphor and candle wax,” Selena continued. “Your grandma was lying in bed with the covers pulled up to her chin. Her head nestled on an old grimy pillow, her arms resting by her sides. The skin on her hands was so thin, you could see the delicate veins and bones beneath. I’d been scared of her for ever, almost as frightened as I was of Jack, but here she was, on the way out. And she looked like if you stood her up she’d blow away with the wind.
“Consumption, it was. She was so weak she couldn’t even sit to receive me. I perched on the end of her bed, for there were no chairs.
“The room was filled with a lampless evening gloom, so that I could hardly see, and her eyes were barely open, but she smiled at me.
“‘Hello, Finlo,’ she croaked, mistaking me for my brother.
“Her voice sounded rough as a coal shovel scraped across macadam. I was about to open my mouth and correct her when I remembered the pictures on the chest. So I played along. I knew if she realized it was me she would refuse to speak, tell me to leave, and I wanted a few moments with her to call my own. I still loved her, you see.
“I tried to make my voice deeper, more manly.
“‘Hello, Ma,’ I said, taking off my bowler hat and placing it on the end of the bed.
“‘I’m glad you came.’ The words dropped slowly from her mouth onto the bedspread. ‘There’s something I want you to do for me.’ She reached round her neck and her hand shook as she took off a necklace – the Moonlocket – and handed it to me. I thought somehow she knew who I was, and this was an act of forgiveness.
“She took a jagged breath. ‘I want you to have this, Fin,’ she said. ‘One last thing… Live the life you choose. Good or bad. No regrets. Like your father…like Jack.’ She peered closer at me. ‘You’re his spit, you know? His double. Just like him.’
“She closed my hand around the locket. ‘When Jack’s finally out of solitary and they’re no longer keeping an eye on him, go visit him in jail, help him break free, and give this to him with my love. Tell him he’ll need games and tricks to solve its code.’ She laughed wheezily.”
“She meant the book!” Robert said.
Selena nodded. “Precisely. But I didn’t know that. Not until you mentioned it just now to Jack. I thought she was talking gibberish, or in some garbled riddle.
“I clasped her hand and asked no questions. And soon she closed her eyes and was gone. I sat for a long time then, stroking her hair in silence, and when I finally let go of her hand, I sobbed so hard I thought I might choke.
“I put the locket round my neck, tucking it into my shirt. Then I kissed Ma on the forehead, and left.
“It was five flights down from her rooms to the ground floor, and as I walked those stairs a figure brushed past me in the gloom. I knew from the set of his shoulders and hat that matched mine that it was Finlo. He’d a key in his hand and must be going to let himself in.
“I realized, soon as he saw Ma, and spoke with the landlady, he’d clock what’d happened. I needed to leave right away. I turned my face to the wall and continued on downstairs, kept walking – through the hallway and out the door. And I never looked back.”
Selena took a deep breath.
“That afternoon I caught the first zep back to Brackenbridge. Soon as I arrived, your father saw from my face that I’d had a terrible shock. I filled him in as much as I could on what had happened and gave him half of the Moonlocket. It was a gift for you – it was mine, after all, to do with as I pleased. Artemisia had told me to live my own life. I didn’t know what the locket was then – or, at least, didn’t suspect. If I had, I might’ve thrown it in the river. I just wanted you to have a legacy, a connection to me and the past you’d never know.”
“I told Thaddeus I had to go, and to keep the locket safe somewhere. To hide it where no one would find it. Then, when you were fully grown, he was to give it to you and tell you the whole story. And if you decided you wanted to see me again, given all the risks, you would be able to come and find me.”
“He must’ve been the one who hid my half of the locket in the fireplace,” Robert said. “He always kept his promises.”
Selena nodded. “That night, he comforted me, tried to change my mind about going, but it was no use, the next morning I knew I had to leave. Brackenbridge wasn’t safe. Finlo could easily find out where I was. And one day Jack would escape from jail and come looking for me. After all, no lock had ever held him…
“Thaddeus was still sleeping when I made my final decision, and so were you. I packed my things and visited the church to say a prayer for you both and, before I left, I ripped our marriage certificate from their book of records. So that Jack could never ever discover we were connected.”
“Somehow he found that out anyway,” Robert said.
Selena wiped at her puffy eyes. “He always does… After that, I returned to my old world of the stage. Not in this country – I didn’t want to be found so easily… Instead, I crossed the channel. Not as Finlo once had to America, but to Europe. And I joined the travelling shows there.
“It was only when I got to France I discovered I was pregnant again. I named her Cadence – it means the rhythm of things.” She smiled at her daughter.
“I kept Caddy with me, while I tried to make a new life. And I knew you’d be all right. Safe with your da.”
“Da’s dead,” Robert said. “This six months gone.”
“I thought as much,” Selena said sadly. “I felt it somehow – deep inside. But I wasn’t sure. And I couldn’t risk returning the way things were. I’m sorry.”
Beside her, Caddy was in tears, crying softly to herself.
Selena was silent, waiting for him to say more. But Robert found he had no words with which to ease her pain.
The trouble with hairpins was sometimes they took an awfully long time to pick a lock. Lily had been at it a good hour when she finally heard the mechanism click. She tried the handle and the door swung open.
She and Malkin peered around its edge, before slinking out into the guild’s corridor.
“Claptraptions!” cried a voice behind them. “Where do you think you’re going?” It was Captain Springer.
“Nowhere,” Lily tried.
“I should think not.” The captain folded his arms in front of his chest. “London’s a very dangerous place, tiddler! Your papa told me to stand on guard outside your room all night if I have to, while he joins the search for Robert and the rest of them.”
“But don’t you see?” Lily said. “That’s exactly why you must let Malkin and me go. We’ve worked out where Jack’s going, and we can get Robert back.”
“I don’t know.” Captain Springer tutted and clucked like a cooling engine. “Better to leave things to the police.”
“They don’t have a clue, Captain. And neither does Papa. He wouldn’t listen!”
“Sometimes adults don’t.”
Lily wrung her hands together. “What can we do? We need to save Robert. It’s dow
n to us. We’re the only ones who can do it – you have to let us go!”
“Sprocket-springs!” Captain Springer said. “What a decision…” He thought about it for a long time. “I’m afraid I can’t disobey specific instructions,” he said finally. “It goes against all my clockwork. But, perhaps, if I wasn’t paying attention… I’m only a clueless mechanical. If you ran away, I probably wouldn’t be able to find you. You and Malkin could probably sneak down the stairs, while I was looking the other way, and I wouldn’t even notice. Or perhaps I ran down during the night and you got past me that way.” He turned and stared hard the other way, as if he hadn’t even been looking for them.
“Thank you, Captain.” Lily patted his hand, then nodded to Malkin. “Come on, Malkin, we need to go to The Daily Cog to get Anna – we have to save Robert.”
They ran down the corridor, past the retired mechanicals in their cases, and down the stairs of the guild. As they sneaked past the large workroom, Lily saw that the door was ajar. She peered in, but there was only the elephant in the room. Lily was glad Papa wasn’t around – if he’d caught her loitering in the corridor, he would’ve sent her back to bed at once, and this time he would’ve made sure to double-lock the door.
Quickly, she signalled to Malkin and they sneaked onwards into the lobby of the guild…where Mr Porter – the mechanical porter – was wide awake and guarding the entrance to the building.
They hid behind an archway and peered out. To get to the main door, they would have to get past Mr Porter’s desk.
“Malkin,” Lily whispered. “You’re going to have to create a distraction.”
“What sort of distraction?” Malkin mumbled.
“I don’t know, do I?” Lily said. “A distracting one.”
“You want me to create a distracting distraction?”
“Yes!” she hissed.
“Fine. Then that is what I’ll do.”
Malkin raced out from their hiding place, barking as he did so. And when he reached Mr Porter, he pulled the paperwork off the mechanical’s desk and ran off with it down the corridor in the other direction.