“They should patent this.” Will sat on the velvet bench, looking at bit like a pauper sitting on the throne of a king. “People would pay good money not to swim through horse—”
“Will,” I warned. “There are ladies present.”
Lucinda laughed. “Would you like to drive?”
Will didn’t even nod. He simply swooped onto the stool the moment Lucinda rose. He took the controls as if he’d invented them. I found myself compelled by the look of utter concentration on his face.
For the first time since falling into the ditch, I felt warmth radiating through me from deep within. I was very glad Will was with us.
“Meg?”
I shook my head, startled, then looked at Lucinda.
“Perhaps you should sit down,” she suggested as she reached into the satchel and produced a loaf of bread and a lump of cheese. “You seem out of sorts.”
I joined her on the bench then tried to pull my ripped skirt over my knees, but it wouldn’t cover the bottom frill of my drawers. At least my stockings had dried some, making them less transparent, but I still felt exposed.
Will glanced over his shoulder then quickly turned his eyes back to the road. Was he looking at me? Why?
I crossed my ankles, but couldn’t stop the flush of heat that burned in my cheeks. I was hardly one to command the attention of a man, especially sitting next to the gilded beauty Lucinda possessed. Will couldn’t possibly fancy me, so why did he watch me so intently?
I’ll admit, I had noticed he was handsome when I first met him. At the time, it might have only been my shock at seeing someone my own age. Even Lucinda had said he was handsome, and she was only a few years his senior. Whatever it was that plagued me, it was more than his looks. It didn’t come from his dark eyes or reluctant smile. It came from someplace deeper than that.
Did I fancy him?
No, it was only a passing interest.
I looked out the window, afraid my thoughts would somehow show on my face and betray this feeling to him. No matter how much I felt a longing to remain near him, something about Will and this sudden adventure left me ill at ease, but no matter how deeply I pondered the matter, I couldn’t put my finger on what had me out of sorts.
We rolled along the quiet country roads north of London. The silver horses never once veered from the center of the road in spite of several turns along the narrow lanes. Patches of light shone through the clouds, creating a quilt of bright and deep greens accented by clusters of budding woods.
At one point we passed a farmer carting milk, and he nearly drove his poor mule off the road in his amazement. I wondered what he’d say to his friends at the tavern that night, and how fiercely they’d laugh at his story.
After several hours, the coach finally rolled to a stop at the bottom of a small hill in the middle of a large open field.
At first I wondered if the horses had wound down, but we’d reached the end of the tumbler, and the mechanical horses still tossed their heads.
“Do you know where we are?” I asked Lucinda as we stepped out onto the grass. Daisy had already dropped her head and grazed contentedly by the side of the coach.
“I haven’t the faintest,” Lucinda admitted.
I trudged up the hill, hoping for a better view of the countryside. Perhaps there was something we had to see. Will came after me, marching up the hill with long strides.
Lucinda followed, losing the battle between her long skirts and the nearly knee-high grasses.
“Meg, look at this,” Will shouted from the crest of the hill.
A block of gray stone like a pagan altar lay before us. In the center, someone had embedded the flower medallion.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE LARGE RECTANGULAR ROCK REMINDED ME OF Pricket’s gravestone. There had to be another clue hidden inside.
“Wait,” Will said as he watched Lucinda still struggling up the hill. He headed back toward her, and I found myself annoyed by it. I didn’t know what had possessed me to believe for a moment that Will might be attracted to me.
Lucinda would have reached us in her own time without his wrapping his arm around her waist and steadying her hand. Besides, if I could gather the next clue, or perhaps another tumbler hidden in the rock, I could save her the effort of stumbling the rest of the way, and requiring Will’s assistance to walk. Honestly, did she have to lean on him so?
Perhaps it would be better if I could just finish this. I took the key and fitted it, then lowered my ear to it so I could hear the tune. The delicate notes got lost on the breeze and I had to struggle to hear the portion of the song. I finally recognized it, and listened for the final phrase.
Spurred on by impatience, I twisted the key slightly in an effort to make the song go faster. If I could open the stone quickly, Will would arrive to see me triumphant. The key was all I had. It was the only thing that made me special.
The song finished, and I thought through the next phrase of the music, preparing myself to play it on the keys that were sure to reveal themselves.
But no, instead of keys, a tiny dial rose out of the ring surrounding the medallion.
Panic set in. I didn’t know what to do with the dial and I had to get the stone open. Surely Lucinda would arrive and know exactly how it functioned, and I didn’t want to hear the derision in Will’s voice as he argued that I should have waited. I couldn’t stand the humiliation.
As I inspected the dial, my mind worked furiously on how it might function. Along the outside, there were twelve pegs, long and short. They had to represent the octave. Assuming the one at the twelve o’clock position represented middle C, I tried to piece out mathematically the notes floating through my head.
It took me far too long, but to my great relief, as I turned the dial to align my chosen pegs with the mark on the outer ring, the rest of the song began to play. My heart raced. It was tricky and unnatural turning the dial, and I didn’t want to make a mistake.
Finally, I turned the dial to the last note.
Watching the rock, I waited for it to unfold the way the gravestone had. A boom shook the ground.
What was that?
The shaking grew in intensity until I could no longer stand. I tumbled backward onto the grass. The stone slowly sank into the earth, and my heart sank with it. I leapt forward to retrieve the key just in time before it disappeared into a gaping hole.
“Meg, what happened?” Will shouted.
“I don’t know!” I called, turning back to the dark hole where the stone had been. Black and endless, the deep maw of the hole opened wider. I only had the courage to peek in the deep cavity before fear forced me to scramble along the ground in retreat.
The ground rumbled and shook so violently, it pitched me toward the hole. With my chin nearly on the edge of the chasm, I clenched the grass, pushing myself back. A pained cry rang over the hill. Lucinda.
Turning away from the hole, I tried to stand and run to find the others, but I only managed three steps before the quake threw me to the ground once more.
Great mounds of earth rose around me then slid to the side as enormous pillars of what seemed to be rusted iron sprouted from the dirt like massive oak trunks.
I covered my ears. The terrible din of rattling metal and grinding gears deafened me. I rolled away from the great towers as they rose higher, driven by huge gears turning slowly along their sides.
Surrounded by the pillars of iron, I hunched down and tried to protect my head from the bits of dirt and rock raining down from the iron. I had no place to run. I couldn’t see Will or Lucinda. At any moment I feared the pillars would tumble and crush me.
The ground stopped shaking as the pillars reached their full height. They must have been more than twenty feet tall. I struggled to my feet and ran toward the largest gap between them. Just as I neared it, the top half of the pillar tipped.
I screamed. The top of the pillar crashed down onto the one next to it, creating a cascade of falling iron in a wave around me. Boom
, boom, boom, the pillars slammed onto the posts, until finally the last one dropped. The force of the sound pushed the breath from my body.
I fought to regain my breath as my ears rang with the noise. To my amazement, I found myself within an iron ring of monoliths, a metal re-creation of a pagan altar from long ago. Stonehenge.
Slots opened in the bottom of each horizontal beam of iron. Slowly, like spiders descending on delicate webs, large crystal lenses dropped between the pillars, suspended from copper wires.
I tried to swallow the dry lump in my throat as a whirring began behind me. I turned to see an enormous crystal emerge from the ground where the stone altar had been. Set like a jewel in a lofty crown, it rose on brass legs driven by steadily turning gears that looked as if they crawled up the brass spindles of their own accord.
When the crystal had reached its peak, stillness returned to the countryside.
I took three long, slow breaths, waiting for something else to come crashing down. Nothing.
“Will!” I screeched.
“Over here,” he called.
I grabbed my skirts and ran as fast as I could down the hill. Will had Lucinda in his arms. He glared at me as I skidded and slid down the slope to him. Why was he holding her?
“You couldn’t wait,” he snapped. He turned from me, Lucinda gripping his neck as he carried her down the hill. She was biting her lip in pain.
“What happened?” I stumbled trying to keep up with him.
“You nearly killed us.” Will reached the coach. He managed to open the door on his own and place Lucinda inside.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know that would happen.”
Will turned on the footboard and the heat of his anger could have burned me. I felt shamed, and a strange desperation to restore whatever had just broken.
“Blast it, Meg,” he growled. “You don’t think things through. That’s your problem.”
“Will,” Lucinda interjected with a tone that reminded me of a governess one would not wish to cross. “I only twisted an ankle.” Lucinda fought with her crinoline to reach her injured foot, then gave up and propped it up on the bench.
“You could have broken your neck,” Will insisted, then he turned his ire back on me. “And you could have been crushed.” His voice changed as he said it, sharpening with a hard edge.
“Enough,” Lucinda said. The reprimand snapped through the coach. “We have to put it aside for now. I will be fine, and Meg is unharmed. We don’t have much time before we lose the light and those pillars sink.”
I peeked around Will’s crossed arms to see Lucinda on the bench. She looked exasperated as she lifted the satchel onto her lap.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t expect there to be danger.”
Lucinda pulled the book out from the leather sack. “Then you have just learned the first rule of Amusements. Expect the unexpected, especially danger.” She flipped through the pages of the book, until she found what she was looking for. She turned the book so we could see it.
I slid into the door, and Will reluctantly let me past.
“Here.” Lucinda pointed to a diagram. “It seems we’ve unearthed Gearhenge. According to Simon’s notes, there’s a trigger that reacts to light just below the crystal lens in the center of the structure. If you align the outer lenses, you can focus enough light to open a stairwell into the chamber below.”
“What are we after?” It seemed unlikely I’d know it if I saw it.
“I haven’t the faintest, but you’re clever,” she said. I could see the determination in her face, and I didn’t want to let her down. I felt awful about her foot. I truly did. “I trust you’ll find what we need.”
I nodded.
As I jumped down from the coach and climbed back up the hill, it seemed Will intended to make me feel even worse. He wouldn’t even look at me.
It wasn’t my fault. It’s not as if I could have suspected giant iron pillars would rise out of the ground. I’d apologized. Yet his shoulders remained stiff as he trudged back up the hill.
“Will?” I implored.
We reached the gap that served as an entrance into the circle. “Don’t.” He inspected the tear-shaped crystal at the center. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“Why are you here?” I asked. I crossed my arms as I studied him. “At every turn you complain about how you don’t really want to do this, so why do you bother?”
He turned to look at me, really look at me. He stalked forward with his mouth pinched in a hard line until he crowded into my space. I tilted my chin in defiance, unwilling to take a step back. While my heart seemed ready to fly into my throat, I held steady.
“I am here to watch out for you.” He inched closer, until his head was too close to mine. I couldn’t bear it, so I took a step back.
“You could have fooled me,” I mumbled, looking down to my exposed boots.
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. I didn’t need to look at his face to feel the anger there. He snapped his cap off his head and put it in his coat pocket.
“The problem, Meg, is that you only ever think of yourself.” His words were low, earnest in a way that made me feel a deep shame for every failing I had ever had.
My heart went from my throat straight to my shoes. Will turned away from me, tramping over to the first iron archway. His words played over and over in my mind.
Reaching above his head, he was just able to tip the bottom edge of the glass lens until a flare of light hit the crystal in the center.
“You find me selfish?” I followed after him as he walked casually to the next arch and tipped the second lens until the crystal glowed brighter.
He let his arms drop to his sides. “Aye, I do.”
I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? Never in my life had I been accused of such a thing. I wanted to retort, but something stopped me. I had a feeling nothing I could ever say would change his opinion, and by arguing, I’d only dig my grave deeper.
Will made quick work of the lenses, and I had to leave him to it, as I couldn’t reach them on my own. I needed him. Over and over, he could do the things I couldn’t. I hated it.
If he didn’t wish to be here, then he was a fool for staying. And if I was selfish, it was only due to the fact that I felt so much of this mystery rested on my shoulders.
As he tipped the final lens, the crystal in the center glowed like a captive star.
The whirring started again and the earth around the center crystal began sinking. The hole opened wider as chunks of grass segmented into neat squares and dropped down. It looked as if the hole was slowly eating the earth, creating an entrance for the top of a stair while the crystal seemed to float above it, suspended by iron. I backed up, afraid that the opening would take the ground beneath my feet as well. Finally the whirring stopped, and I cautiously stepped to the edge of the hole.
Metal plates hung from a framework of vertical bars creating a floating spiral stair. I cautiously tested them out as I descended only a few steps into a great vacuous room. It seemed the whole of the hill was hollow, and the area beneath it a remarkable dome, like the top of some great cathedral sunken beneath the ground.
Losing my courage, I came back up and found Will. “Are you coming?”
He shook his head even as he closed the gap between us and joined me on the stair. We climbed down in silence, partly because of my nerves, as the steps swayed and the cables holding them trembled. I also didn’t know what else to say. As we turned through the circles of steps and bars, drawing closer and closer to the deep center of the dome, one question was in the forefront of my mind. “What do you want of me?” I whispered.
Will sighed as we reached the floor of the cavernous room. “Think,” he said. “Stop and think.”
I hung my head as I hopped off the final step and looked around. Instead of dirt, the interior of the dome shone with polished black stone that glittered with tiny crystals embedded in the rock. It took me a moment to r
ealize the crystals were a map of the stars. I could trace the constellations.
“What is this place?” I whispered as I gazed around. The cascade of light from the crystal lens above spilled down, showering a mirrored globe in the center of the structure. It reflected a blanket of glittering light throughout the room. The speckled light seemed to dance, bouncing off mirrors that ringed the outer edge of the dome.
The light played everywhere yet nowhere at once, creating a million pinpoints of light and making the crystals shine more brilliantly than their nightly counterparts. Standing at the center of it made me feel as if I’d been set adrift in a sea of enchanted starlight.
“We haven’t long before we lose the sun,” Will stated. Did he even see where we were? It was amazing. The coach seemed a toy wagon compared to this.
Reluctantly, I dragged my gaze from the crystal stars. I turned around, then started, jumping backward in shock. A man was slumped against the wall, his head hanging. I couldn’t see his face, only a dapper hat and dusty coat.
“Is he dead?” I gasped, as Will stepped in front of me. He crept closer to the man.
“No, it’s not a man at all. It’s a machine.” He took my hand and led me forward, but my fright had hardly abated. “Look.”
I peeked around him. The man’s skin was indeed brass, jointed so he looked a bit like a golden suit of armor in a hat and well-cut coat. He held a ten-inch square plate in each hand, their faces covered with interlocking gears.
“Those must be parts of the lock from Pricket’s letter,” I whispered. “He said they had broken it apart and hid it within the Amusements.”
Will reached out to take one, but he couldn’t pull it from the automaton’s hands. “He won’t let go.”
I eased forward. Along the lapel of his coat, just above his heart, I spotted the flower medallion.
I fitted the key into the automaton with a growing sense of trepidation. Never again would I take an Amusement for granted. As I pressed the button, I took a step back. The man trembled, lifted his head, then blinked open dark eyes and looked at me.
Legacy of the Clockwork Key Page 11