Black Iron

by Franklin Veaux

  “Yes, well, if there is any—”

  “And then hang him!” Eleanor continued. Her eyes blazed with righteous indignation. “And after that, they can put him in a cage and throw him in the fire!”

  “I don’t see how that—”

  “And then break his fingers!” Eleanor said. Her mind, having grabbed hold of the image of proper justice for an Italian spy, was reluctant to let go. “And then they could—”

  “Yes, yes, alright,” Alÿs said. “I think he would be dead by then. If there is a spy.”

  “There must be!” Eleanor insisted. “I bet it was Shoe Man. He was probably working for the Italians. He looked just like one of them! He had that swarthy complexion like they do, didn’t he? I mean, he looked...he looked…” Her brow wrinkled. “He looked like...he had an Italian nose, didn’t he? I think he had an Italian nose. I bet he was plotting against the Queen. That would be just like those Roman bastards. Remember what they did after the Schism? They sent their armies to drive all the peace-loving Frenchmen out of Italy and—”

  Alÿs leaned back and closed her eyes. “Yes, that was a long time ago,” she said wearily. “And I don’t think the man I saw was Italian.”

  “He could be!” Eleanor said darkly. “They’re not like us, you know. They’re all dark and shifty. And they have those beady eyes. Shoe Man had dark eyes. He must be one of them!”

  Alÿs tuned her out. Somewhere in the background, Eleanor went through an extensive catalog of sins, great and small, perpetrated by the Italians since the Schism. It was a list of such length it offered Alÿs plenty of time to think.

  The other members of the nobility seemed skeptical of Alÿs. There was overt disbelief of her story, but there was also an undercurrent of paradoxical suspicion: we don’t really believe this man exists, but we think you’re probably in cahoots with him…

  The more she thought about him, the angrier she got. Where are you, little man? Where did you go? Little man who can’t dance, little man with your hat and your shoes, little man who—

  She sat bolt upright, eyes wide.

  “…eat babies!” Eleanor said. “What is it?”

  Alÿs held up a finger. She chased the thought before it could disappear back down into the recesses of her mind. “Little man with your hat and your shoes,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I have to go.” Alÿs stood, so quickly she nearly upset the chair. With a great rustle of heavy silk skirts, she was gone.

  “Where are you going?” Eleanor called after her. “You’re not chasing the Italian, are you? They do terrible things to women, you know!”

  But the door had already closed, leaving Eleanor alone.

  ✦

  Alÿs hurried up to her room, where she shed her corset and heavy skirt for something simpler and, most importantly, less conspicuous. She threw on a plain-looking cloak and hustled through the network of rooms and hallways that sprawled through the underbelly of the palace, the domain of the bustling servant class that made the machinery of royalty function. Few members of the nobility ventured here, among the kitchens and boiler rooms and servants’ quarters. Alÿs had explored them all, driven by a curiosity usually absent from people of her station. When you are born into wealth and luxury but you are nonetheless still predisposed to kindness toward your fellow human beings, there are certain gift horses you don’t want to inspect too closely if you want to be able to sleep at night—not that any members of the Queen’s Court were ever likely to have trouble in that regard.

  She slipped out a servants’ entrance and hurried across the courtyard to the stables. She searched the stalls until she found who she was looking for. “Psst! Henry!” she said.

  He turned around. He was a lad of thirteen, all gangly physical awkwardness, with tousled hair and an equally tousled smile, dressed in the green-and-yellow livery of the Queen’s stable boys. “Alÿs!” he said. His face broke into a wider-than-normal-grin, revealing teeth like icebergs colliding with one another in a narrow strait.

  “Is your brother Rory about?”

  “You’re not going on one of your adventures, are you?” Henry said. He looked her up and down. “You’re on another one of your adventures. The Cardinal said he would box my ears, he did. He said your father wanted him to look after you.”

  “Well, if he asks, you can tell him I ordered you,” she said. “You don’t want to disobey a direct order from a lady, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “The Cardinal is a mean old man. I don’t want him to box my ears.”

  “Not even for a shilling?”

  Greed lit a fire in the boy’s eyes. “Really?”

  “I need to go out, and I don’t want anyone to know. Is your brother around? There’s an extra shilling in it for him, too, if he can drive me.”

  “I’ll go fetch him!” The boy tore out of the stables at breakneck speed.

  Fifteen minutes went by. The seeds of doubt in her head began to germinate. Did she really want to pursue a criminal by herself? That seemed rash, even for her. The Queen’s Royal Guard was on the case, even if the Cardinal was disinclined to take her seriously. And it was such a tenuous thread…

  Henry ran back into the stable, panting. “I found him!” he gasped. “He’s not busy anymore. I told him there was half a shilling in it for him…”

  “A whole shilling,” Alÿs said. “Don’t try to cheat your own brother. Family is important.” She pressed a coin into his dirty hand. “And don’t tell anyone I’ve gone out.”

  The hansom cab was waiting in the side yard. Rory stood beside it, tipping his hat as Alÿs approached. He was like a slightly taller version of his brother, the same eyes set above the same warm and easy smile. “My lady,” he said.

  “I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you.” She squinted up at the late afternoon sun.

  “No more than usual,” he said. “Where are we going?”

  Alÿs climbed into the hansom. “Do you remember what to do?”

  “Aye!” Rory said. “Out the gate, down the street, across the bridge, double back, turn around in front of the fountain, make sure nobody’s following. Where to after that?”

  “Just like that,” Alÿs said. “Then head to Pemmerton Street. Don’t tell anyone at the gate I’m here.” She crouched on the floor and drew the blanket over herself.

  “Pemmerton Street?”

  “Yes. I’m going shopping for shoes.”

  Brundel and Sons occupied a new, stylish storefront at the corner of Pemmerton Street and Lower Cross Way, in the center of one of New Old London’s more exclusive neighborhoods. The place was artfully made to look old and shabby, by people gifted in the art of mimicking poverty without approaching it too closely. Fine lumber had been exquisitely crafted to look old and weather-beaten, and new gas lamps were fitted with carefully cracked glass that had been cunningly stained with the finest faux dirt.

  Mister Brundel the elder was similarly crafted. His suit looked shabby and old, though Alÿs couldn’t help noticing it had the most fashionable of contemporary cuts. The store was designed to look crowded and just a little bit fusty, but if a single speck of dust were somehow to make its way in, it would die of loneliness.

  On most days, he worked the shop alone. He had three sons, not one of whom properly appreciated the vast amount of work he had put into building a future for them. On any given day, the three of them could usually be found at one of Mister Spear’s establishments, gambling or drinking their future away. There were people, some of them employees of Mister Spear, who made book on how long the sons would be able to evade the workhouse once Mister Brundel shuffled off to the hereafter.

  Not that Mister Brundel minded, oh no. He was playing the long game. When, after he passed, they pissed away their inheritance and ended up in the workhouse, then, in the fullness of time, in Purgatory, he planned t
o smile down on them beatifically from his well-deserved rest in a better place and say, “I told you so!” Timing was everything to Mister Brundel. He was prepared to wait.

  When Alÿs came in, he peered at her through eyes almost entirely concealed by the most astonishingly bushy white eyebrows she had ever seen. His face was similarly obscured by a heavy, bushy beard so white it was nearly blinding.

  “Welcome to Brundel and Sons!” he said. “My sons are all preoccupied at the moment, but I would be happy to assist you.” He gave her the calculating look of proprietors of expensive goods the world over, the one that appraised both her net worth and her knowledge of commerce and arrived through an intuitive mental calculus at the margin of profit she might represent. “Do you have anything special in mind?”

  “Not for me,” Alÿs said. “I was hoping you might have something for a gentleman friend of mine. I’m afraid he’s terribly uninformed about fashion. Something modern, I think. Stylish.”

  “A gentleman’s shoes?” Mister Brundel changed gears. The abacus of his soul shifted the number it had previously calculated one place to the left. “Ah, I know just the thing. High heels are the rage in France right now. Everyone loves a tall gentleman, hm? Hm?” He stood on his tiptoes, peering down at Alÿs.

  “I was thinking of something more specific,” Alÿs said. “Something flat, with metal points that turn up at the ends. Made of many different kinds of leather. Kind of a patchwork, you know?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Such a pair of shoes would be very, hm, expensive,” he said. “They are, hm, not just for anyone.”

  “I was at a ball,” Alÿs said. “I saw them there.”

  “Did you just, then? Indeed, indeed. Likely you saw many, many shoes, hm?” Mister Brundel nodded. “The history of shoes is the history of civilization, my dear. You can tell a great deal about a man by the shoes he wears. And about the city by the shoes it wears, oh yes. Such a pair of shoes, well, such a pair would be made for a very special kind of gentleman, wouldn’t it? A very discerning gentleman. A gentleman of considerable wealth and power, hm? A regal man. A man most powerful. A lord. Not an ordinary man at all. Only a very poor businessman would risk the displeasure of such an esteemed and, ah, profitable gentleman, hm? But I wonder, would they necessarily be worn by such a man?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping to find out,” Alÿs said.

  “Yes you are, hm? I think you are not here to buy shoes.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Look around you.” The man flung his arms wide, indicating the many shoes on the shelves lining the room. “Here you are, in a store that sells shoes, yet you haven’t glanced at even a single pair. This is most unusual for one looking for shoes, wouldn’t you say, hm?”

  “Do you know the shoes I’m talking about?” Alÿs asked.

  “Oh, I do, I do. Intimately.”

  “Do you know why I’m asking about them?”

  The man waggled his surrealistically bushy eyebrows. “I cannot read minds, young miss. Only shoes.”

  “Can you tell me who bought those shoes?”

  He frowned theatrically. “I am a maker and a purveyor of shoes. Not of gossip, young lady.”

  Alÿs stamped her foot in frustration. Mister Brundel shrugged. “Will that be all, hm?”

  “Wait!” Alÿs said. “You must know other craftsmen, right?”

  “Oh, I know some people, here and about,” Mister Brundel said.

  “Suppose I were looking for a craftsman to make me a kite,” Alÿs said. “A very large kite, made of silk and bamboo, intricately designed to fold up into a very small space. A kite of great beauty, but large and strong enough to carry a man. Whom would I be looking for?”

  “Oh, now that is a very interesting question,” Mister Brundel said. “Most interesting. There is no man in London who can make such a thing as that.”

  Alÿs’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “Oh,” she said. “Thanks anyway.” She turned to go.

  “You do not want a man,” Mister Brundel said. “You want a woman. Mistress Chiyo Kanda. Highpole Street, across the Centenium Bridge, in Old New London. You will know her shop when you see it. Look for her kites, hm?”

  His eyebrows waggled after her as she left the shop.

  9

  Her Most Excellent Majesty Queen Margaret the Merciful was seated in a white chair of white wood whose white cushions were covered with white silk of the highest quality, adorned on their edges with small blue flowers whose stitching was so exquisite they appeared painted on. The room around her was so opulent it could bring a blush to the cheeks of the conquering chieftain of one of those nomadic tribes accustomed to raiding cities and carting off anything of value or that looked like it might be of value or was once sitting next to something that might be of value. The moldings along the ceiling were gilt. The paintings on the walls, mostly of somber-faced men standing beside horses while wearing military regalia festooned with an exuberant array of medals or relaxing in pastoral settings while hunting dogs cavorted about in the grass, were mounted in wide, heavy frames, also gilt. The Queen’s personal effects, of which there were many, tended toward a gilt motif, with the addition of rubies and other gemstones wherever they could be worked in or, failing that, glued on.

  It wasn’t that Margaret particularly liked gold, though a casual observer could be forgiven the assumption. It was just that the royal treasury was blessed with an embarrassment of the stuff. It had been arriving night and day from the colonies across the ocean for a very long time, and there was no sign that the flow would be letting up soon.

  The Spanish had been the first to reach the New World, and so had been the first to confront the problem of an embarrassment of wealth. The Spanish government, flush with gold, had thought, perhaps reasonably, that the best thing to do with a sudden influx of cash was to spend it, and so had proceeded with great enthusiasm to spend their economy straight into oblivion. The other nations had watched the ruin and, on the idea that it is far less expensive to learn from other people’s mistakes than from their own, had taken a more moderate approach to dealing with the gold they brought home from their own colonies.

  The British treasury soon established a cartel, carefully limiting the amount of gold released on the market to keep its value up, which left the enviable but nevertheless still knotty problem of what to do with all the stuff piling up in the vaults. Decorating the royal chambers with it was one obvious solution to the problem, and so the Queen’s personal effects tended toward a monochromatic yellow theme.

  Margaret held a china cup in her hand, its rim edged with gold. Her hand trembled slightly.

  “Thank you so much for taking the time from your schedule to meet with us, Your Eminence,” she said. “We appreciate the blessing of your presence.”

  The Cardinal was seated in a chair identical to Margaret’s. On the small gold-edged table between them, his own gold-rimmed china cup sat untouched. The Cardinal didn’t trust tea. It was a foreign drink, difficult to get and extremely expensive. He had little use for expensive foreign curiosities. When people made a fuss over expensive foreign curiosities, expensive foreign wars often followed.

  His face became even more sour. “Sarcasm does not befit one so young,” he said.

  “You’re right, of course. Forgive us. It’s much more suited to those with a more ecclesiastical nature.”

  “Your Grace,” the Cardinal sighed, “I am not your enemy.”

  “Had the Realm more friends like you, we should never want for enemies,” Margaret said. “Already the ambassador from the Caliphate is expressing concerns about our nation’s stability. Your little show certainly did not fail to make an impression.”

  “The timing was poor, I agree. Such is the way of crisis.” He folded his hands in front of him. “We cannot always schedule them when we would like.”

  “And yet, fro
m the perspective of the Church, this timing must appear divinely inspired. Anything that pushes us further from the Ottomans must bring us closer to the embrace of France, hmm? You must be pleased. And then there is the matter of the Council of Lords. It meets tomorrow, and here we are, confined to this...” she waved her hand “…gilded cage.”

  “Alas, the law, as our friend Julianus would say, is very clear. Any person suspected of association with the heretics of Rome, regardless of station, must be placed under arrest until an ecclesiastical tribunal can determine the truth, if there is any, of the matter.”

  “Yes. Julianus,” Margaret said. “We will deal with him in due course. As for the truth of the matter, only a madman, a fool, or a schemer would suggest that the Crown is conspiring with Rome. You are no fool, Your Eminence. We wonder, are you a madman?”

  “A question I have asked myself more than once.” The Cardinal picked up his cup and glowered at it.

  “The Council has reached an impasse. And when the Council is at an impasse—”

  “—yours is the deciding voice,” the Cardinal said. He cleared his throat delicately. “I am aware. Nevertheless, I am certain we both agree that in a just society, the rule of law is paramount. I have already begun the process of convening the tribunal.”

  “Your promptness would be notable even for a man half your age. You certainly seem prepared for action.”

  The Cardinal shook his head. “Allow me to be frank, Your Grace.”

  “We wouldn’t have you any other way.”

  “We have known one another for a long time, Your Grace. I do not believe even for a moment that you are an Italian sympathizer. It is my desire that the matter of this tribunal be concluded as expeditiously as possible, and I am confident they will see things as I do.”

  Margaret smiled grimly. “Never let it be said that the ambassadors of the Most Holy Church are anything less than agreeable in their words. Yet here we sit, with guards posted outside my door. We can’t help but notice that some of them are yours.”