Timepiece

by Heather Albano

  “You shouldn’t be,” a voice said from just outside the courtyard. It belonged to the taller of the two women possessed of mop and pail, who had apparently not gone on her way after pushing past Katarina. Her emphasis said plainly both that Katarina was often out after curfew and that everyone knew it. “There was a pack of Wellingtons out last night,” the tall woman added with relish. “Who knows what devilry they were about before the coppers brought them down. They’ll eat you sure, if you don’t take more care.” With these words she took her departure, and no one appeared to care enough for her company to call her back.

  “How would you know what happened last night unless you broke curfew yourself?” Katarina asked the air, and there were some appreciative chuckles from her audience. Quite a crowd had gathered, Elizabeth noticed: most of the laborers, both of the painted girls, and the remaining woman carrying a mop.

  “Just come to say hello on your way home, then?” Thompson asked.

  “Just so.”

  “Have a gasper?” He offered her one of the tiny cigars, and Katarina took it. Thompson’s eyes slid to Elizabeth. “And one for your friend?”

  “I think she’d choke on it,” Katarina said, amused. “She’s only just up from Kent, hasn’t had time to learn city ways. Give her a day or so.” She slipped the cigar between her lips and leaned forward, and one of the other men produced a tiny box. He fumbled with it, and with a snap flame appeared between his fingers. Elizabeth stared as he touched the little wooden stick to Katarina’s cigar. A matchstick, was it? She had heard of the things, invented by a Frenchman and considered to be quite clever, but too dangerous and too expensive to be widely popular. They appeared to be less expensive now, to judge by the surroundings in which this one was being used. She hoped they were similarly less inclined to explode.

  “Is it true what those wicked paper-boys were saying last night?” the woman with the mop demanded. “About Lord Seward being taken by the coppers?”

  “Quite true, I’m afraid.”

  “Wicked,” the woman proclaimed, and the men nodded, looking grimly at each other. “I was hoping it wasn’t true, so I was, but if you say so—”

  “I heard the papers said he was doing terrible things.” The man with the matchsticks looked at Katarina. “They said he had a pack of Wellingtons under his control, and—”

  “Wicked lies, those papers print,” the woman said. “Why, he’s given away more to charity than—well, than I’ll ever see in a lifetime! Saved us from being thrown into the street, he did, when Thompson lost his work in the Ingleham fire. You didn’t see Mr. Ingleham putting himself out, did you? The idea of Lord Seward doing anything he oughtn’t. Wicked lies.”

  “His honor’ll be all right, a rich man like him,” a third man said, words catching around a soft Irish brogue. “Even if someone’s printed lies about him. Won’t he?”

  “Oh, no doubt of it,” Katarina said. “I’m sure it’s all a mistake. Tempers run high when the heat is so horrid, after all.”

  “No doubt it’s that,” Thompson said, watching her as narrowly as Johnson had back at the docks.

  “And I can’t think but that it’ll break soon,” Katarina went on. “There’s a storm coming tonight, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Tonight?” the Irishman said.

  “Oh, I think so.” Katarina waved a hand. “Can’t you feel it?”

  “I can, and a blessing it’ll be if it brings a breath of clean air with it,” the Irishman said. “What—”

  Somewhere nearby, a church bell tolled out the three-quarter chime.

  “A’right, lads.” Thompson tugged his cap more firmly over his ears. “Shift-change whistle’s about to blow, better be stepping. Hope you’re right about the weather, Madam Katherine.”

  “Tell the others,” Katarina said. “See what they think.”

  “We’ll be doing that,” the Irishman promised. He touched his cap to her and joined the men already filing out of the courtyard. Mrs. Thompson and her mop brought up the rear. Within minutes, the courtyard was filled only with half-grown children, dark sack-like shapes huddled against the walls, and an old woman Elizabeth had not previously noticed, slumped on a step in a drunken stupor.

  “We can’t do better than follow them,” Katarina said. “We’ll be at the factory gates when the whistle blows, catch those going home. Just on the off-chance.”

  “On the off-chance of—?” Elizabeth hastened to follow her, but received no answer.

  Katarina led her at a brisk walk in the direction where fog had already swallowed Thompson and his companions. Along the way, they passed small groups of similarly dressed men. Many of these nodded to Katarina in a friendly manner. Some asked after Lord Seward. To them all, Katarina mentioned a coming storm.

  The drone in the air grew more insistent, and then loud enough to be called a clatter. It clanked rhythmically, like Trevelyan’s loom. Da-da-da-DUM, it said, over and over, increasing in volume with every step they took closer to it.

  Behind them, a church bell began to faintly toll six o’clock—and over it, through it, screeched a sound that made Elizabeth duck her head and clap her hands to her ears. When she looked up, the fog ahead cleared enough for her to see where the sound had originated, and she stood still to stare at it.

  Great black wrought-iron gates, larger than any she had ever seen surrounding a country estate, rose up before her. Behind them was a building of tired-looking brick that might well compare with a country house in size—not so wide, perhaps, but taller, and with space cleared respectfully all around it. At its very top were the largest chimneystacks Elizabeth had ever seen, belching great clouds of black smoke into the thick gray air. On either side, dwarfing the crowd, heads nearly level with the chimney stacks, stood two of the copper giants she had run from the night before.

  She tensed, but glanced at Katarina and inferred there was no reason to run now. Katarina did not return her look, but the older woman’s fingertips brushed her wrist—unobtrusive, comforting. Elizabeth tried to breathe.

  The giants did not look as though they were planning to stomp forward and offer harm to her or anyone else. They stood quiescent, heads unmoving—though their eyes, Elizabeth noticed suddenly, swiveled in their sockets, rolling first one way and then another. She watched the eyes of the one nearest to her as it sought restlessly in all directions. No blue-white light shone from them now; perhaps there was no need of it in daylight. Those eyes could see, she thought. But the head had no other features, neither mouth nor nose nor ears.

  She couldn’t keep looking at the wrongness of that blank, staring face. She looked elsewhere instead. Seen with time to consider, the giant’s red-gold body reminded her even more strongly of a teakettle—or perhaps a coffee urn—a long cylinder, dully gleaming. The legs were slimmer cylinders, with knee joints like a man’s and feet that looked as though they could crush anything in their path. The arms—

  Elizabeth found herself shivering at the wrongness again. The arms looked like arms up until the elbow joint. But then the left one ended in a gaping cannon-mouth, and the right one in a collection of smaller rifle-mouths gathered in a circle. Between the enormous arms, four evenly spaced bolts the size of Elizabeth’s hand held a square plate to the creature’s chest.

  Below the giants’ watchful gazes, close enough that they could have struck the metallic legs as they passed, a line of men stumped through one side of the iron gates toward the building. From the other side stumped a second, identical line, headed from the building. Some exchanged greetings, brief enough not to mar the rhythm of marching feet.

  Katarina positioned herself where she could speak with a few of the exiting men—casually, and once they were sufficiently far outside the gates that they might pause without causing others to pile into them from behind. Elizabeth did not try to overhear. She was too busy staring at the building and the copper creatures.

  “Never seen the like, have you, love?”

  The voice spoke at her elbow
, and Elizabeth jerked around. The boy standing there was nice-looking enough, though terribly dirty. He grinned at her. “New to London, are you?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth managed. “I’ve—I’ve just come up from Kent. What is this place?”

  “This here,” the boy said with pride, “is the factory what makes coppers for the Empire. The constructs,” he clarified in response to her confusion, and pointed at the giants. “Them great big stompy things keeping the monsters away.”

  “You—” Elizabeth cleared her throat. “You make them, do you?”

  “I do,” the boy said. “I screw in parts now, but someday I’ll be a supervisor or something grander.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s not so bad,” he said, with affected carelessness. “Better than drudging on a farm, at least. What’s your line of work, love?” His eyes ran down her trouser-clad legs. “Music hall?”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “I’ve, ah, I’ve just been engaged.”

  “Have you? Lovely bit of costume they’ve given you.” He reached out to finger Elizabeth’s sleeve. Smudges appeared at once on the shabby linen. Elizabeth glanced at her own fingers and saw a sift of black dust clinging to them as well. She hadn’t even touched anything, not that she could remember; this was only from walking about outdoors. “Whereabouts do you sing?” the boy asked, leaning closer.

  “The Shoreditch Empire,” Katarina’s voice said crisply behind them. “There’s shows every night, young sir, we’d be delighted to see you. Now, now—” She plucked his hand off Elizabeth’s arm. “When you can pay us a penny, you can have a proper look, but until then, we’ve other business to be about. Come along, then,” she added, and Elizabeth was only too glad of the excuse to follow. The boy, though he protested, abandoned pursuit soon enough; but the staring blank eyes of the constructs seemed to bore into her back for a long time.

  Machinery clattered and groaned in deafening orchestrations as Trevelyan stared at William. “How did you—?” he started. Then his eye fell on the scrapbook. “Oh.”

  He put his hand out for it, and William gave it to him. Trevelyan turned without a change in expression and walked to the back of the room. He dropped the book into the forge, and it went up in a whoosh of flames. “Seems Max was right,” he commented, returning to where William stood. “Too great a risk to leave that lying about. I didn’t think anyone but him could figure it out from those clues, and he already knew.”

  “Anyone but he and you, you mean,” William said.

  “Anyone but him and me,” Trevelyan agreed, mouth twitching slightly at the corner.

  William folded his arms across his chest, using the fingers of the left to coax the right into position. “So I’m cleverer than you thought? I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “As it happens, you’re wrong, but you got closer than I would have liked from that information. Not that it matters any longer, but we’ve been burning anything we don’t absolutely need, in case they burst in here.”

  There were a number of interesting tidbits in that statement. William bypassed the implication that the snowstorm of papers still in the laboratory were all absolutely necessary, and decided against asking outright how close he had in fact gotten. Instead he repeated, “‘Not that it matters any longer’?”

  Trevelyan sighed. “Yes,” he said, “Seward is Locksley. The world knows this now; Seward was arrested for treason the night before last. The constructs do not belong to Seward, however. They belong to a man named Gladstone, whom Seward opposes. Seward is Locksley, Mr. Carrington, the clue is in the name.”

  “Then the monsters—the Wellingtons? Those belong to Seward?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a third faction?” William guessed.

  “Not exactly.”

  The temptation to shout was growing overwhelming, but William didn’t think shouting would succeed in impressing or intimidating the man in front of him. “If you wish me to be any help at all,” he said calmly, “perhaps you could spend five minutes laying out what the devil is going on?”

  Trevelyan reached for a rag to wipe his hands. “I suppose I have five minutes. And it’s probably better you know the truth than act from supposition. You will likely find it entertaining, Mr. Carrington,” he went on, mockery creeping into his voice. “It’s quite a Celtic ballad, really. The tale of two students. ’Twas the best of times and the worst of times—”

  He glanced at William, so obviously expecting an impatient reaction that William resolved to give him nothing of the kind. Trevelyan smiled a little and dropped the theatrical tone into something closer to normalcy. “It was, though, truly. It was the best of times, and a rich young student who had everything he could desire strove for one thing more. He wished to make life from death, and he did; he set a torch to the world he knew by creating a monster from dead flesh, for no better reason than to amuse himself. And then—later, in the worst of times—when the children of that monster ran free and destroyed everything in their path, a poor young student who had nothing but the love of one lass lost her. He built a new monster, this one out of metal and gearshifts and clockwork, and turned Britain into a funeral pyre for a woman he loved.”

  William digested this. “And Locksley?”

  “Seward is trying to dismantle the funeral pyre, but can’t while the constructs guard it. He needs a weapon that can bring them down.” Trevelyan indicated the workroom. “You might consider him my patron.”

  “I...see,” William said, and he did, at least in part.

  He heard a slam from the far end of the corridor, and recognized it as the front door opening with some violence. “Elizabeth!” he said, drenched in relief, and turned to welcome the two women back.

  It was not, however, Elizabeth and Katarina returned. It was instead Maxwell, whose fingers had frozen on the locks at William’s exclamation. “No,” he said, turning, his tone flat and dangerous. “Not Elizabeth, just me. Is she not here?”

  “Er,” William said, wondering how he could possibly defend the moment of pique that had allowed this circumstance to occur, “no. She went out with Madam Katherine to—”

  “She what?” Maxwell’s face went the color of chalk. “Elizabeth Barton is wandering about out there? Trevelyan, have you lost your mind?” He looked ill—physically nauseated—and more afraid than angry. William felt his stomach settle somewhere in the vicinity of his boots.

  Chapter 8

  London, August 27, 1885

  “Who is this Lord Seward?” Elizabeth asked, and got at least part of her answer from the flash of pain that crossed Katarina’s face. “A friend?”

  “It would be presumptuous of me to call him so,” Katarina said after a pause. “He is a philanthropist. He does great good throughout the city using his personal fortune, and aims to do more good still with his Parliament seat. Aimed to do more, at least.”

  “Before he was arrested,” Elizabeth said.

  “Yes.”

  “What crime did he commit?”

  Katarina did not answer.

  The fog had grown lighter but hotter, a searing humid miasma. It had also grown considerably more crowded. Drab shapes appeared out of it without warning, shouldered past Elizabeth, disappeared again. Voices rose and fell, murmuring and calling and weirdly echoing, and over them the clanking pounded out a monotonous rhythm. That sound came from too many directions to originate just from the one factory they had visited, Elizabeth thought; might there be many factories, on all sides? Katarina stopped at a bakery, a fishmonger’s, and a tobacconist’s shop, where she purchased nothing and spoke to the proprietors about the weather.

  They emerged from the tobacconist’s and Katarina stood for a moment on the street, glancing up and down it before choosing a direction and setting off. “I need you to keep quiet for a bit,” she said, though Elizabeth had been listening far more than talking all along. Before Elizabeth could agree or argue or defend herself, Katarina turned sharply to the left, leading the way into a
n alleyway so narrow Elizabeth thought she might suffocate from the closeness of the buildings.

  The path wended and twisted like a knotted rope, and Elizabeth followed Katarina down numerous left- and right-hand branchings for what felt like a long time. The clank of the factories faded back into a drone that was almost possible to ignore. The fog seemed to be really thinning as well, for a particularly sharp turn brought Elizabeth suddenly within sight of the alleyway’s exit, and she could actually see a little bit of the street upon which it opened. Katarina led her to within a few feet of the exit, then stopped. Elizabeth drew breath for a question, forgetting that she wasn’t supposed to talk—and the breath caught in her chest as heavy footsteps shook the street.

  She looked up, and could see the red-gold head of the construct over the high brick buildings on either side. In a moment, she could see the thick legs and feet as the metallic man stomped down the cross-street a few feet away. Katarina waited until the head was out of sight—waited longer until the ground ceased shaking—and then took Elizabeth’s hand and drew her out of the alleyway.