Sparrow Falling

by Gaie Sebold

  She thrust the other letters into her pocket, and went to look for Mama.

  MADELEINE WAS IN her workshop. Eveline paused for a moment in the doorway to watch, and to listen.

  Mama looked better these days. When she was first rescued from her unjust imprisonment in Bedlam at her brother’s hands, she had been pallid, distracted, and slow in her movements, flinching at unexpected sounds and struggling to return to the world from which she had been so long barred. Then she had been seized by Eveline’s former nemesis, the government agent Thaddeus Holmforth, and dragged half around the world, witnessing murder and various other unpleasant and disturbing things – though she had proved herself both tougher and a deal more adaptable than might have been expected.

  Now, notebook in hand, she hummed along with her instruments, the gleaming, spinning, singing mechanisms of Etheric Science, that subtle and artistic discipline of sound and mood (which had, like the Folk, its lethal aspects).

  Madeleine made an adjustment to one of the machines, a small, rosewood box with three dials set in its side and a small brass trumpet protruding from its top. It started to vibrate, and gave out a slow, rising tone, which at first made Eveline smile, and gradually rose to a penetrating whine which made her wince and clap her hands over her ears.

  “Oh, dear,” Madeleine said. “That’s not right.” She leaned close to peer at the dials, made a note, snapped off the machine with a flick of her wrist, and turned around. “Oh, hello, my love. Did you want me?”

  “There’s a letter for you, Mama.”

  “A letter? How delightful!” Mama’s face lit as though the sun had shone through the window on her. Mama could be pleased by such small things now. Eveline handed over the envelope, hoping desperately that it was something nice.

  Madeleine opened it neatly with the edge of one of her dozens of screwdrivers, and drew out the single sheet within. “Oh, dear, I really do need spectacles, how thoroughly lowering.”

  “Don’t worry, Mama, we’ll get you some nice ones.” Even if I do have to steal them, Eveline thought. “Do you want me to read it for you?”

  “No, no, I think I can manage.” Madeleine walked over to the window and held the letter close to her face. “Dear Madame, etc. etc... oh!”

  “What is it? Mama?”

  “Octavius Thring! He saw my work at the scientific exhibition in Bristol, and wants to meet me, and look at the rest of the mechanisms! And talk about Etherics!” Mama’s face positively glowed.

  “Octavius Thring? Who’s he when he’s at home?”

  “He says he’s an enthusiastic amateur – a ‘dabbler in the sciences’ – and thinks my work is fascinating!”

  “What’s he want?”

  “Why, to talk. I could perform a demonstration – though a subject would be useful – several subjects – would you object if I asked some of the girls? Oh, I must finish the Halciphon...”

  “Mama!”

  “Yes, my dear?”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “Why would it not be? Just to have someone to discuss... your friend Beth is a dear girl, and an excellent engineer, but she really isn’t at home with Etherics. From his letter it’s plain Mr Thring has more than an amateur’s understanding. It would be so good to talk to someone, to clarify some thoughts. I don’t see the harm in that.”

  “It’s just... Mama, I don’t wish to upset you, but I was thinking of Uncle James. What if this Thring person should be the same? What if he tries to steal your ideas?”

  “Oh, well, I have applied for patents, you know. It does take forever, of course, but one or two have come through already.”

  “And what if he finds out about... everything?” Even here, Eveline was reluctant to mention Holmforth, or Shanghai, out loud.

  Madeleine frowned, sat on the bench, and held out her hands to her daughter. “Eveline. Come sit with me.”

  Eveline went.

  “My love,” Madeleine said, “I know you mean to look after me. But it is not a daughter’s place to have to look after her mother, you know; not unless I should become helpless, and I’m not quite there yet.”

  “I didn’t mean...”

  “I know you didn’t. But you must allow me to make my own decision in this. It was hard enough to send the instruments off to the exhibition without attending myself; there were a number of people there I should very much like to have spoken to. Besides, they are mine, and I am proud of them. And yes, I know it would have been a risk, but now I consider it, the likelihood of one of the staff from the asylum attending such a thing and recognising me is very small.”

  “You’re right, Mama, I know. And it’s not as though you ever did anything wrong, after all. You were put away under false pretences.”

  “Well, quite.”

  “But if someone found you, they’d find me. And my case is different. It’s not the asylum authorities who’d be looking for me, it’s the government. Not the proper public government, neither – though they’re bad enough – but a bit of the government that hardly anyone knows about. They don’t have to follow the same rules.” She’d been about to say more – to mention bundlings away in the middle of the night – but Mama had had enough to trouble her, and Eveline had no wish to add to it.

  “But my dear, both those vile men are gone, and there’s been no sign that anyone else knew the slightest thing about it.”

  “One of ’em’s gone,” Eveline said, forgetting in her agitation to keep up the careful language she tried to use with her mother – drawing-room language, as she thought of it. “The other – who knows?” Sometimes she almost felt sorry for Holmforth, the government agent who had recruited her, and who had been turned into a hare when he tried to cross the borders of the Crepuscular, where the Folk lived. For all she knew, he was still running mindlessly about the swamps outside Shanghai. Then she remembered that he had threatened her mother, and any pity died a swift and merciless death. Besides, she didn’t even know if the transformation was permanent. What if Holmforth came back to himself? He’d be naked, alone, and probably confused – but she’d bet pounds to pennies he’d still be vengeful. She’d seen his capacity for that first hand.

  “If we are careful, and remain on the right side of the law,” Madeleine said, “I see no reason why anyone should come looking for you.”

  “I am trying, Mama.”

  “I know you are, my dear.”

  “I still don’t know about this Thring sort, though. I mean, what do you know about him?”

  “I know that he is interested and enthusiastic and wrote me a most courteous letter. In that last particular alone, he is entirely unlike my unlamented brother. Also, he has inventions of his own, ‘mere dabblings,’ he calls them, that he should like me to take a look at. So he is capable of coming up with his own ideas, too. Now, you must have a class, do you not?” Madeleine stood up, still holding Eveline’s hands in hers. She was the taller – in Bedlam at least the food had been adequate. Eveline was still making up her growth after years of deprivation. This slight difference allowed Madeleine to look down at Eveline with fond reproach. “My daughter the schoolteacher,” she said. “This is far better than your... other life, Eveline. When I think of how you lived...”

  “I know, Mama.” She kissed her mother on the cheek and left her to her mechanisms.

  It might be a better life, with less chance of getting transported or chucked in Newgate, but it didn’t pay. Not enough, not when you couldn’t resist bringing home a girl you spotted with a neat line in pickpocketing or patter, who would be an asset if you could only put her to use, but who hadn’t a copper penny to put towards the fees.

  She didn’t dare risk bringing the law down on them, no. But there were reasons the girls learned how to pick a mark, run a con, break a window, and slide out with the swag without raising an eyebrow. There were reasons they learned what she could remember from her brief time at the Britannia School, being taught the elements of espionage.

  S
he had schemes, she had plans, and she had ambitions. And she had an interview tomorrow, which, if she could be bold enough and lucky enough, might be the beginning of better times.

  “EVVIE!” A LARGE, leather-waistcoated figure strode towards her, a pipe clamped in one corner of her mouth, trailing blue smoke down the corridor behind her.

  “Ma, please can you smoke that foul thing outside?” Eveline said,

  “You got proper finical since you set up this place,” Ma Pether grumbled, but she opened a window, knocked out the pipe on the frame, and pointed its chewed mouthpiece at Eveline. “Those girls are doing all right. You’ve got an eye for ’em, just like me.”

  “Told you so.”

  “Ah, you did. But, Evvie my birdlet, what’re you planning to do with ’em? They’ll get restless. They already are. And that can only lead to trouble.”

  “Who’s getting restless? What’ve they done?”

  “I caught that Doris – she may look like butter wouldn’t melt, but she’s a proper bobbish mort, that one,” Ma Pether’s admiration was unmistakeable. “I caught her trying to get into my room! Mine!”

  Bobbish? Eveline thought. Bloody daft, if she thought she could put one over on Ma P and get away with it. Brave, but daft.

  “What did you do?”

  “Don’t look like that. I didn’t whack her, I know you don’t hold with it – though I was tempted. I told her I’d be peaching on her to you.” Ma gave her a look.

  It was a challenge. Evvie knew it. Ma might have been talking about retiring from playing Fagin to a houseful of girls for as long as Evvie had known her, she might have shown every sign of gratitude for her new role, but she’d ruled her particular roost a long time, and thought she knew how it should be done.

  “I’ll deal with her.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’ve said I will, and I will. And you’re right, it’s time they were put to work. I’m off about something for us tomorrow.”

  “What do you mean you’re off about something?”

  “Like I said. I’m sniffing something out, and that’s all I’m saying. You’re the one told me never spread a secret, Ma.”

  “True enough. But I hope you know what you’re about.”

  “Yes, Ma. Honestly, you and Liu... you’ll drive me distracted between you!”

  “Yes, well, that boy’s another thing. I don’t hold with it.”

  “Don’t hold with what, exactly?”

  “Now don’t you take me up so sharp, Evvie Duch... Evvie Sparrow. You know exactly what I mean. Boys is trouble.”

  “Liu is not trouble. He risked his neck for me, remember?”

  “I got nothing against him personal. He seems a decent enough sort – but when all’s said and done, you keep a fox in a henhouse you’re going to get ruffled feathers.”

  “He hasn’t been ruffling any feathers, if you mean what I think you mean, Ma.”

  “And you’d know that, would you?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Well, you know your own business best, I’m sure,” Ma said, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you. It’s the cart you don’t think’s moving as runs you down.”

  “EVVIE? ARE YOU all right?”

  “Oh, Beth.” The bell rang, signalling the end of the day, and Evvie pulled Beth into an empty room as the corridor filled with chattering girls.

  “Was Ma Pether bullying you again?” Beth said.

  “She’s all right, she’s just got her way.”

  “I don’t know how you stand up to her,” Beth said. “She scares me.”

  “I won’t let her do anything to you.”

  “It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “She won’t do anything to me, neither.” Eveline leant against the wall and rubbed her eyes. “She’s all right, is Ma, but she don’t half go on. And Mama, too. Honest, Beth, I had no mother for the longest time and now it’s like I got two, and it ain’t that I’m not grateful, but sometimes...”

  “You’ve taken on ever so much, Evvie. I wish I could help more.”

  “I couldn’t do it without you, Beth. Who’d teach the girls mechanics and sums? You know how cack-handed I am with all that, and all them little numbers makes my head swim. And you’re helping out with other lessons, too. You’re doing plenty, don’t you worry about that. And if we get this job, there’ll be proper money coming in and we can get some more teachers. We can start up Bartitsu if we can find someone to teach it. I miss Bartitsu,” she said. “I could properly do with hitting something today.”

  “Evvie? Are you going to tell your Mama?”

  “Not yet. Not ’less it works. She’ll only worry.”

  “And what about Ma Pether?”

  “No. She’d interfere.”

  “Are you sure that’s all she’d do?”

  “That’d be enough. Why?”

  “I don’t know.” Beth chewed her lip. “I just... I don’t think she’ll like it, that’s all.”

  “Well of course she won’t like it, it wasn’t her idea. She likes to be the one doing the planning – doesn’t think anyone else is up to snuff.”

  “Mmm. Evvie? What happens if we don’t get this job?”

  “I’ll find another,” Eveline said. “Come on, Miss Anxiety. I don’t know about you, but I want a cuppa tea.”

  The Times was lying on the table in the kitchen, not yet having been used for the fire, and Beth disappeared behind it. Eveline made tea and dug some more bills out of her pockets. She’d taken to carrying a few about with her, hoping that somehow it would inspire her to find a way to pay them – but also because it made the pile of them on her desk slightly less intimidating.

  “This is scary,” Beth said.

  “You’re right there,” Eveline said, glowering at a bill. “They start charging any more for coal I’m going off to dig me own.”

  “I mean Panjdeh. Have you heard about it?”

  “The what? No, what is it?”

  “Panjdeh. It’s a place in Turkmenistan.”

  “Sounds a long way away.”

  “It is. Eveline. Don’t you remember any of our geography lessons?”

  “Not a one. And I don’t see a need to. I got no plans for any more travelling, thank you very much.”

  “I’d love to go to Russia,” Beth said. “Such a huge country. So mysterious. But they don’t like us – they want a lot of the same bits of country we want. There was almost a war over the Panjdeh Incident, you know – there still might be.”

  “What do they want some bit of land in the middle of nowhere for, anyway? Why do we? S’a lot of nonsense if you ask me.”

  “It might be nonsense, but if it comes to war people will still be killed,” Beth said.

  “Well they ain’t going to be coming here recruiting us, are they?” Eveline said.

  “I suppose not.” But Beth still looked worried. Eveline couldn’t help feeling a little irritated with her friend. It wasn’t as though they didn’t have problems of their own, without bothering about something that was happening on the other side of the world.

  Eagle Estates

  IT TOOK EVELINE longer than she had intended to find the offices of Eagle Estates. They did not declare themselves loudly. A small brass plate screwed to the yellowish bricks, almost hidden in the shadow of the portico, was the only clue for the curious. She checked it twice, to be sure, and in the slight but unacknowledged hope that this might not be her destination.

  It was a smart enough building and fairly new, but the squat pillars of the portico had a dropsical look, and together with the sulphurous bricks, black-leaded windows and spear-headed black iron railings they gave the place a sullen, hostile feel that sent unease capering up and down her spine.

  You’re just letting yourself get all unnecessary, she told herself sternly. You’re Eveline Duchen, the Shanghai Sparrow, and you’ve got through plenty worse than this. The Britannia School had looked pretty forbidding, when she’d first arrived – and that door had had the headm
istress, Miss Cairngrim, waiting on the other side of it. There couldn’t be anything much scarier behind this one.

  Eveline took a deep breath, and gave herself a last mental check. Smart, business-like skirt and jacket, in grey, trimmed with dark blue ribbon. Hat, straw, with a stiff, dark blue gauze bow adorning its crown. A bag that was something like a baby Gladstone, also in dark blue.

  She was still getting used to these narrower skirts. For convenience they were definitely to be preferred to crinolines, but she did miss the sheer capacity of a crinoline. It was amazing what you could stash under there if you had to.

  Not that she was planning on stashing anything today. Today she was respectable. And she was as sure as she could be that she looked respectable. Whether she looked like somebody a person might hire for a job, that was another matter.

  “Well, if they don’t, the more fool them,” she said to herself, raised her chin and rang the bell.

  JOSH STUG LOOKED out of the window of his office at the hat below. A woman? What could she want? It wasn’t his wife, she never came to the offices and he would certainly have discouraged it had she shown any such inclination.

  Not... not one of them, surely? He jolted back from the window, his hand unconsciously rising to his mouth. If anyone should see, should guess... But surely there was no reason? He was due, yes, with another payment – but not overdue.

  But why would they wait in the street? They had no need... the figure moved under the portico, and the next moment the bell sent its juddering clatter up the stairs.

  That settled it. They would certainly never ring the bell. Unsettled, none the less, he snapped at Jacobs, “Well, answer it, man,” even as his secretary was lifting the speaking tube to his lips.

  “A representative from Sparrow’s Nest Security, Mr Stug,” Jacobs said, putting his hand over the mouthpiece. “I have the appointment in the book.”

  “From... Really?”

  “It’s written here, sir.”