Tessa caught her breath. There were beautiful tiny rooms perfectly decorated with miniature furniture, everything built to scale, from the little wooden chairs with needlepoint cushions to the cast-iron stove in the kitchen. There were small dolls, too, with china heads, and real little oil paintings on the walls.
“This was my house.” Jessamine knelt down, bringing herself to eye level with the dollhouse rooms, and gestured for Tessa to do the same.
Awkwardly, Tessa did, trying not to kneel on Jessamine’s skirts. “You mean this was the dollhouse you had when you were a little girl?”
“No.” Jessamine sounded irritated. “This was my house. My father had this made for me when I was six. It’s modeled exactly on the house we lived in, on Curzon Street. This was the wallpaper we had in the dining room”—she pointed—“and those are exactly the chairs in my father’s study. You see?”
She looked at Tessa intently, so intently that Tessa felt sure she was supposed to be seeing something here, something beyond an extremely expensive toy that Jessamine should have long ago grown out of. She simply didn’t know what that could be. “It’s very pretty,” she said finally.
“See, here in the parlor is Mama,” said Jessamine, touching one of the tiny dolls with her finger. The doll wobbled in its plush armchair. “And here in the study, reading a book, is Papa.” Her hand glided over the little porcelain figure. “And upstairs in the nursery is Baby Jessie.” Inside the little crib there was indeed another doll, only its head visible above tiny coverlets. “Later they’ll have dinner here, in the dining room. And then Mama and Papa will sit in the drawing room by the fire. Some nights they go to the theater, or to a ball or a dinner.” Her voice had grown hushed, as if she were reciting a well-remembered litany. “And then Mama will kiss Papa good night, and they will go to their rooms, and they will sleep all night long. There will be no calls from the Clave that drive them out in the middle of the night to fight demons in the dark. There will be no one tracking blood into the house. No one will lose an arm or an eye to a werewolf, or have to choke down holy water because a vampire attacked them.”
Dear God, Tessa thought.
As if Jessamine could read Tessa’s mind, her face twisted. “When our house burned, I had nowhere else to go. It wasn’t as if there were relations that could take me in; all of Mama and Papa’s relations were Shadowhunters and hadn’t spoken to them since they’d broken with the Clave. Henry is the one who made me that parasol. Did you know that? I thought it was quite pretty until he told me that the fabric is edged with electrum, as sharp as a razor. It was always meant to be a weapon.”
“You saved us,” Tessa said. “In the park today. I can’t fight at all. If you hadn’t done what you did—”
“I shouldn’t have done it.” Jessamine stared into the doll-house with empty eyes. “I will not have this life, Tessa. I will not have it. I don’t care what I have to do. I won’t live like this. I’d rather die.”
Alarmed, Tessa was about to tell her not to talk like that, when the door opened behind them. It was Sophie, in her white cap and neat dark dress. Her eyes, when they rested on Jessamine, were wary. She said, “Miss Tessa, Mr. Branwell very much wants to see you in his study. He says it’s important.”
Tessa turned to Jessamine to ask her if she would be all right, but Jessamine’s face had closed like a door. The vulnerability and anger were gone; the cold mask was back. “Go along, then, if Henry wants you,” she said. “I’m quite tired of you already, and I think I’m getting a headache. Sophie, when you return, I’ll need you to massage my temples with eau de cologne.”
Sophie’s eyes met Tessa’s across the room with something like amusement. “As you like, Miss Jessamine.”
7
THE CLOCKWORK GIRL
But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this chequer-board of Nights and Days
Hither and thither moves, and checks and slays.
—“The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,”
translated by Edward FitzGerald, 1859
It had grown dark outside the Institute, and Sophie’s lantern cast strange dancing shadows on the walls as she led Tessa down one flight of stone stairs after another. The steps were old, concave in the centers, where generations of feet had worn them down. The walls were roughly textured stone, the tiny windows set into them at intervals giving way eventually to blankness that seemed to indicate that they had passed belowground.
“Sophie,” Tessa said finally, her nerves rubbed raw by the darkness and silence, “are we going down into the church crypt, by any chance?”
Sophie chuckled, and the lights of the lantern flickered on the walls. “It used to be the crypt, before Mr. Branwell had it fixed up into a laboratory for himself. He’s always down there, tinkering with his toys and his experiments. It doesn’t half drive Mrs. Branwell wild.”
“What’s he making?” Tessa nearly tripped over an uneven stair, and had to grab for the wall to right herself. Sophie didn’t appear to notice.
“All sorts of things,” Sophie said, her voice echoing strangely off the walls. “Inventing new weapons, protective gear for the Shadowhunters. He loves clockwork and mechanisms and that sort of thing. Mrs. Branwell sometimes says she thinks he’d love her better if she ticked like a clock.” She laughed.
“It sounds,” Tessa said, “as if you’re fond of them. Mr. and Mrs. Branwell, I mean.”
Sophie said nothing, but the already proud set of her back seemed to harden slightly.
“Fonder of them than you are of Will, anyway,” Tessa said, hoping to soften the other girl’s mood with humor.
“Him.” The disgust was plain in Sophie’s voice. “He’s—Well, he’s a bad sort, isn’t he? Reminds me of the son of my last employer. He was proud just like Mr. Herondale. And whatever he wanted, he got, from the day he was born. And if he didn’t get it, well . . .” She reached up then, almost unconsciously, and touched the side of her face, where the scar ran from mouth to temple.
“Then what?”
But Sophie’s brusque manner was back. “Then he’d be like to pitch a fit, that’s all.” Transferring her glowing lantern from one hand to the other, she peered down into the shadowy darkness. “Be careful here, miss. The stairs can get awfully damp and slippery toward the bottom.”
Tessa moved closer to the wall. The stone was cold against her bare hand. “Do you think it’s simply because Will’s a Shadowhunter?” she inquired. “And they—Well, they rather think they’re superior, don’t they? Jessamine, too—”
“But Mr. Carstairs is not like that. He isn’t at all like the others. And neither are Mr. and Mrs. Branwell.”
Before Tessa could say anything else, they came to an abrupt stop at the foot of the stairs. There was a heavy oak door there with a barred grille set into it; Tessa could see nothing through the grille but shadows. Sophie reached for the wide iron bar across the door and pushed it down, hard.
The door swung open onto an enormous brightly lit space. Tessa moved into the room with wide eyes; this had clearly been the crypt of the church that had originally stood on this spot. Squat pillars held up a roof that disappeared into darkness. The floor was made up of great stone slabs darkened with age; some were carved with words, and Tessa guessed that she stood on the gravestones—and the bones—of those who had been buried in the crypt. There were no windows, but the bright white illumination that Tessa had come to know as witchlight shone down from brass fixtures fastened to the pillars.
In the center of the room were a number of large wooden tables, their surfaces covered with all manner of mechanical objects—gears and cogs made of dully shining brass and iron; long strings of copper wire; glass beakers filled with liquids of different colors, some of them giving off wisps of smoke or bitter odors. The air smelled metallic and sharp, like the air before a storm. One table was entirely covered with a scatter of weapons, the blades shining under the witchlight. There was a half-finished suit of what looked like thinl
y scaled metal armor, hanging on a wire frame by a great stone table whose surface was concealed by a lumpy cluster of thick woolen blankets.
Behind the table stood Henry, and beside him, Charlotte. Henry was showing his wife something he held in his hand—a copper wheel, perhaps a gear—and was speaking to her in a low voice. He wore a loose canvas shirt over his clothes, like a fisherman’s smock, and it was smeared with dirt and dark fluid. Still, what struck Tessa most about him was the assurance with which he spoke to Charlotte. There was none of his usual diffidence. He sounded confident and direct, and his hazel eyes, when he raised them to look at Tessa, were clear and steady.
“Miss Gray! So Sophie showed you the way down here, did she? Very good of her.”
“Why, yes, she—,” Tessa began, glancing behind her, but Sophie was not there. She must have turned at the door and gone soundlessly back up the stairs. Tessa felt foolish for not having noticed. “She did,” she finished. “She said that you wanted to see me?”
“Indeed,” Henry said. “We could use your help with something. Could you come over here for a moment?”
He gestured for her to join him and Charlotte by the table. As Tessa approached, she saw that Charlotte’s face was white and pinched, her brown eyes shadowed. She looked at Tessa, bit her lip, and glanced down toward the table, where the heaped fabric—moved.
Tessa blinked. Had she imagined it? But no, there had been a flicker of movement—and now that she was closer, she saw that what was on the table was not so much a pile of fabric as fabric covering something—something approximately the size and shape of a human body. She stopped in her tracks, as Henry reached out, took hold of a corner of the fabric, and drew it away, revealing what lay beneath.
Tessa, feeling suddenly dizzy, reached to grasp the edge of the table. “Miranda.”
The dead girl lay on her back on the table, her arms flung out to either side, her dull brown hair straggling down around her shoulders. The eyes that had so unnerved Tessa were gone. Now there were hollow black sockets in her white face. Her cheap dress had been cut open down the front, baring her chest. Tessa winced, looked away—and then looked back quickly, in disbelief. For there was no naked flesh, and no blood, despite the fact that Miranda’s chest had been sliced open down the front, her skin peeled back on either side like the skin of an orange. Beneath the grotesque mutilation gleamed the brightness of—metal?
Tessa moved forward until she was standing across from Henry at the table where Miranda lay. Where there should have been blood, torn flesh, and mutilation, there were only the two sheets of white skin folded back, and beneath them a carapace of metal. Sheets of copper, intricately fitted together, made up her chest, flowing smoothly down into a jointed cage of copper and flexible brass that was Miranda’s waist. A square of copper, about the size of Tessa’s palm, was missing from the center of the dead girl’s chest, revealing a hollow space.
“Tessa.” Charlotte’s voice was soft but insistent. “Will and Jem found this—this body in the house where you were kept. The house was completely empty except for her; she’d been left in a room, alone.”
Tessa, still staring in fascination, nodded. “Miranda. The Sisters’ maidservant.”
“Do you know anything about her? Who she might be? Her history?”
“No. No. I thought . . . I mean, she hardly ever spoke, and then she only repeated things the Sisters had said.”
Henry hooked a finger into Miranda’s lower lip and pulled her mouth open. “She has a rudimentary metal tongue, but her mouth was never really constructed for speech, or for consuming food. She has no gullet, and I would guess no stomach. Her mouth ends in a sheet of metal behind her teeth.” He turned her head from side to side, his eyes narrowing.
“But what is she?” Tessa asked. “A sort of Downworlder, or demon?”
“No.” Henry let go of Miranda’s jaw. “She is not precisely a living creature at all. She is an automaton. A mechanical creature, made to move and appear as a human being moves and appears. Leonardo da Vinci designed one. You can find it in his drawings—a mechanical creature that could sit up, walk, and turn its head. He was the first to suggest that human beings are only complex machines, that our insides are like cogs and pistons and cams made of muscle and flesh. So why could they not be replaced with copper and iron? Why couldn’t you build a person? But this. Jaquet Droz and Maillardet could never have dreamed of this. A true biomechanical automaton, self-moving, self-directing, wrapped in human flesh.” His eyes shone. “It’s beautiful.”
“Henry.” Charlotte’s voice was tight. “That flesh you’re admiring. It came from somewhere.”
Henry passed the back of his hand across his forehead, the light dying out of his eyes. “Yes—those bodies in the cellar.”
“The Silent Brothers have examined them. Most are missing organs—hearts, livers. Some are missing bones and cartilage, even hair. We cannot but assume the Dark Sisters were harvesting these bodies for parts to create their mechanical creatures. Creatures like Miranda.”
“And the coachman,” Tessa said. “I think he was one as well. But why would anyone do such a thing?”
“There is more,” Charlotte said. “The mechanical tools in the Dark Sisters’ cellar were manufactured by Mortmain and Company. The company your brother worked for.”
“Mortmain!” Tessa tore her gaze from the girl on the table. “You went to see him, didn’t you? What did he say about Nate?”
For a moment Charlotte hesitated, glancing at Henry. Tessa knew that glance. It was the sort of glance people gave each other when they were preparing to engage in a joint falsehood. The sort of look she and Nathaniel had given each other, once, when they’d been concealing something from Aunt Harriet.
“You’re hiding something from me,” she said. “Where’s my brother? What does Mortmain know?”
Charlotte sighed. “Mortmain is deeply involved in the occult underworld. He’s a member of the Pandemonium Club, which seems to be run by Downworlders.”
“But what has that to do with my brother?”
“Your brother found out about the club and was fascinated by it. He went to work for a vampire named de Quincey. A very influential Downworlder. De Quincey is in fact the head of the Pandemonium Club.” Charlotte sounded bitterly disgusted. “There is a title to go with the job, it seems.”
Feeling suddenly dizzy, Tessa braced her hand against the edge of the table. “The Magister?”
Charlotte looked at Henry, who had his hand inside the creature’s chest panel. He reached in and drew something out—a human heart, red and fleshy, but hard and shiny-looking as if it had been lacquered. It had been bound around with copper and silver wires. Every few moments it would give a listless thump. Somehow it was still beating. “Would you like to hold it?” he asked Tessa. “You’d have to be careful. These copper tubes wind throughout the creature’s body, carrying oil and other flammable liquids. I have yet to identify them all.”
Tessa shook her head.
“Very well.” Henry looked disappointed. “There was something I wished you to see. If you’ll simply look here—” He turned the heart carefully in his long fingers, revealing a flat metal panel on the opposite side of it. The panel had been etched with a seal—a large Q, a small D inside it.
“De Quincey’s mark,” said Charlotte. She looked bleak. “I’ve seen it before, on correspondence from him. He’s always been an ally of the Clave, or so I thought. He was there at the Accords when they were signed. He’s a powerful man. He controls all the Night Children in the western part of the city. Mortmain says that de Quincey bought mechanical parts from him, and this would seem to bear that out. It looks as if you weren’t the only thing in the Dark Sisters’ house that was being prepared for the Magister’s use. These clockwork creatures were as well.”
“If this vampire is the Magister,” Tessa said slowly, “then he is the one who had the Dark Sisters capture me, and he is the one who forced Nate to write me that letter. He must
know where my brother is.”
Charlotte almost smiled. “You are single-minded, aren’t you.”
Tessa’s voice was hard. “Don’t imagine that I don’t want to know what the Magister wants with me. Why he had me captured and trained. How on earth he knew I had my—my ability. And don’t think I wouldn’t want revenge if I could have it.” She took a shuddering breath. “But my brother is all I have. I must find him.”
“We will find him, Tessa,” Charlotte said. “Somehow all of this—the Dark Sisters, your brother, your own ability, and de Quincey’s involvement—fits together like a puzzle. We simply haven’t found all the missing bits of it yet.”
“I must say, I hope we find them soon,” Henry said, casting a sad glance at the body on the table. “What could a vampire want with a lot of half-mechanical people? None of this makes any sense.”
“Not yet,” said Charlotte, and she set her small chin. “But it will.”
Henry remained in his laboratory even after Charlotte had announced that it was past time for them to return upstairs for supper. Insisting that he would be along in five minutes, he waved them off absently as Charlotte shook her head.
“Henry’s laboratory—I’ve never seen anything like it,” Tessa said to Charlotte when they were halfway up the stairs. She was already out of breath, though Charlotte was moving with a steady, purposeful gait and looked as if she would never tire.
“Yes,” Charlotte replied a little sadly. “Henry would spend all day and all night there if I allowed it.”
If I allowed it. The words surprised Tessa. It was the husband, wasn’t it, who decided what was and was not allowed, and how his home should be run? The wife’s duty was simply to carry out his wishes, and to provide him with a calm and stable refuge from the chaos of the world. A place he might retreat. But the Institute was hardly that. It was part home, part boarding school, and part battle station. And whoever might be in charge of it, it clearly wasn’t Henry.
The Infernal Devices Series Page 14