Sparrow Falling

by Gaie Sebold

  “Tea,” Beth declared, as the safest thing she could think of, and scurried for the kettle. As it boiled, she chewed her lip. Evvie would be furious if she told, but if she didn’t... and Evvie was up to something dangerous.

  “Thank you, dear.” Madeleine stirred her tea, though there was no sugar in it, she never took any. “You’ve met Octavius, Beth.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he seem... I mean, do you think Eveline took a dislike to him?”

  “I don’t think so, Mrs Sparrow. She hasn’t spoken of him to me, not really.”

  Madeleine put the spoon in the saucer with a decisive clink. “No, she’d have no reason to. But... do you know of our situation? Before?”

  “Some. Evvie told me about Uncle James, and how he stole your work...” Beth swallowed. “I think he was lucky he died of the gout,” she declared. “I think he should have been hanged.”

  “My dear child, how fierce you are!” Madeleine smiled. “I admit, there were times I would have happily slaughtered the wretched man myself, brother or no. But I think... well, I know Eveline went through some... some dreadful things, when she was alone, and I am grateful to that Pether woman because without her taking Evvie in – I’m sorry, child, I know I’m making little sense. But I thought Eveline excessively suspicious towards Octavius, and I realize that even if she was wrong perhaps she had reason, and now she thinks she can’t trust me either, and if you know where she’s gone, please tell me.”

  “It’s not that,” Beth said. “I mean, yes, probably, she’s cautious, but I don’t think he’s that sort, although...”

  “Although?”

  “Well, Ma Pether... Ma Pether thought he was a little too well-dressed, for an inventor, because she didn’t know any rich ones. But then Ma Pether mostly knows criminals, really.”

  “Yes. And so does Eveline, doesn’t she? Beth, what is she up to?”

  Beth chewed her lip again, looking down at her cooling tea. “I promised,” she said. “It’s not because she doesn’t trust you, only she’s scared. She wanted to be sure that whatever she did, the rest of us were safe. The school – the girls – you. Liu can probably take care of himself.”

  “Oh, that boy! He’s a nice enough young man but... oh, what is that to the point? Beth, tell me, please. I can’t... I can’t bear the thought that she’s in trouble and couldn’t come to me.”

  “She’s gone to the Russian embassy, I think. I don’t know why. And she says it will all be all right but she wouldn’t let me go and now I don’t know...”

  “Wait, Beth, please, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s all I know, that’s all she would tell me.”

  “Right.” Madeleine leapt to her feet, slapping her mug of untouched tea down on the bench so hard it sloshed over the side. “Is that machine working?”

  “What machine? Sacagawea?” Beth put her back protectively against the vehicle. “Well...”

  “Is it or isn’t it?”

  “It will, once I’ve reconfigured the flow and reattached...”

  “How long will that take?”

  “About a week.”

  “That’s no good then.” Beth slumped with relief, which was short-lived.

  “We need something else,” Madeleine said.

  “For what?”

  “To go get my daughter out of whatever unholy mess she’s got herself into, that’s what.”

  “But how...”

  “Do you know where that woman went?”

  “Who?”

  “Ma Pether. Do you know where she went?”

  Beth frowned. “Wait. I might... she said something... about a place she kept in... Bermondsey? By the river.”

  “I think we need her. Can you find her?”

  “Maybe. I have... other things. I’ll go. I’ll find her. But I’ll need a compass.”

  “A compass? To get to Bermondsey?”

  “No. To find Ma Pether.”

  IN BETH’S TOOLKIT there was a secret compartment that no-one else knew about. It held a small phial of grey shimmering dust that moved like oil, a pale green stone, worn smooth, a feather so white it seemed to glow, and a few small silver charms.

  She bit her lip, took out the phial, and scattered a few grains of the dust into a piece of paper, took them to the workbench and working with neat, concentrated speed, began taking the back off the compass Madeleine had found for her.

  Ao Guang’s Palace

  LIU AND THE Harp were kept waiting, of course. Punctuality might well be the courtesy of kings, but such as Ao Guang – and the Queen – did not think it a necessary part of their dealings.

  The Harp did not speak, or show any interest in the splendid carvings that surrounded them. Liu bit at his nails. He had involved himself in a hundred schemes, in a lively and interesting life, but never one that relied so much on the cooperation of others. If the Harp confessed his banishment from the Queen, if he refused to play for Ao Guang... everything could go wrong, and Liu had nothing to offer him.

  He looked at the gilded creature beside him, so weary and so desperately alone.

  Perhaps one thing.

  “Listen,” he said. “If you will let Ao Guang think that the Queen most treasured you, and will be furious that you are gone, if you will play for him, even once, if he asks it... I will do my best to get you what you want.”

  “There is only one thing I can still desire.”

  “I know,” Liu said. “And I will try. Please?”

  “You have not the power to do it yourself.”

  “No. But... I know Ao Guang. And the Queen.”

  The Harp sighed, and even in sorrow and without a word, his voice was beautiful; it shivered in his strings. “I am weary of promises.”

  “I know.”

  “I am weary of... everything.”

  “I know.”

  “Will you help me? Truly?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well.”

  Liu, listening to the sounds of Ao Guang’s musicians, wondered how hard it would be.

  Bermondsey

  BERMONDSEY WAS HORRIBLE. Beth had come as far as she could on the steam-bus, but once she got off she was almost entirely reliant on the compass, desperately hoping that she’d got it right and that it wasn’t playing tricks on her as it led her into increasingly darker, smellier, louder, poorer bits of London.

  And this bit of it was the worst yet. Beth huddled in her cloak and clutched the tool kit tightly, praying that no-one would notice her, as she scurried through the crowds. A man fell out of a pub doorway and almost knocked her over, landed on his hands and knees and started to puke loudly into the gutter. Beth held her breath and hurried on. Two women were shrieking at each other in an alleyway, a small child stood naked and howling in the middle of the street, a man with wild hair and wilder eyes stood on a crate and ranted “Judgement” and “End Times” at the mostly-indifferent passers-by.

  She could still hear him when the compass needle stopped, quivering, pointing at what was probably a doorway. The house around it was so grimy and slumped it looked like a half-empty sack of coal.

  Beth swallowed hard, and knocked.

  She heard footsteps, but the door remained shut. She sniffed... pipe smoke.

  “Ma? Ma Pether? It’s Beth.”

  The door creaked open. “How the ’ell did you find me?” Ma Pether said.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Bloody right it matters. You could be the law. Or various people of unhealthy intentions who might happen to be wanting to find out where I’m hanging my hat. So you tell me how you tracked me.”

  Beth slid the compass into her pocket. “Something you said, about Bermondsey. In the corridor that time. Then I... asked.”

  Ma looked at her with narrowed eyes. “Good thing you en’t a peeler, is all I can say. So what’re you doing here in such a kerfluffle?”

  “Evvie’s in trouble. And her Ma thinks you can help. Well, so do I, only I don�
�t know if you will.”

  “Hah!” Satisfaction exploded out of Ma Pether in a cloud of pipesmoke. “I knew it! I knew she’d overreach herself. Come on then.” Ma went inside. Beth hung on the threshold. She spent her days surrounded by oily rags, but the filthy bits of cloth that sagged across the doorway made those rags look like freshly laundered handkerchiefs.

  “Come on, what you waiting for?” Ma’s voice boomed.

  Scrunching up her face and protecting it with her forearms, Beth pushed through, convinced the cloth was leaving stripes of some unspeakable vileness on her clothes and hair.

  The floor scrunched and stuck to her boots. The corridor was so dim she could not, thankfully, see what she was walking in. She heard a click and a creak, and the soft glow of a lantern outlined a doorway. She scuttled towards it. “Wipe yer bloody feet, was you born in a barn?” Ma said, pointing down to something on the floor that might have been a square of hessian.

  Beth wondered what earthly point there could be to wiping her feet in such a disgusting place, but obediently did so. Ma stepped back, and Beth stepped into a room that was so colourful and crowded that at first all she could do was blink, trying to define what she was looking at.

  Dresses, cogs, segments of brass housing, hats, bags (beaded) and bags (Gladstone). Copper wire twining amongst perfume bottles and photographs. Shoes, boots, tankards, flasks, and waistcoats both fancy and plan. The brass head of a mannequin apparently in conversation with a bronze bust of a distinctly disgruntled-looking gentleman Beth thought might be Socrates.

  It was like finding a dragon’s hoard around the back of a junk shop.

  In amongst the shimmering piles were two chairs; one large, squashy version speckled with the small burns of spilled pipe-tobacco, in which Ma settled herself, and one fragile looking item with a blue-velvet seat that Beth lowered herself onto with great caution. It creaked and puffed dust, but held.

  Ma repacked her pipe with callused, brown-stained fingers and stared at a point somewhere above Beth’s head. “What...” Beth said, but Ma raised a hushing hand, and Beth subsided. Ma’s eyes narrowed, widened, narrowed; her thick greying brows shifting up and down, the smoke of her pipe rising to the ceiling where it gathered like a storm. Beth stayed silent and tried not to cough.

  “So. What’s she gone and got herself into?”

  Beth took a deep breath and went through it again.

  Ma listened, and nodded, and puffed smoke, and asked a couple of brisk questions.

  “Hmm,” she said, when Beth came to a halt, and took her pipe out of her mouth and contemplated the chewed end. “Never had a stab at that end of the market, bit too rich for my blood. Nice takings, but risky. Peelers all over it like a case of the itch, and I heard nasty things about them Cossack guards, too. So. Evvie’s gone to snatch this bantling, then. That don’t sound like Evvie, that don’t.”

  “She said it would be all right but she wouldn’t say why.”

  Ma nodded. “Smart. Don’t spill every bean to every bleeder and there won’t be beans all over the floor to slip on.”

  Beth considered this phrase for a moment in silence, then said, “So will you help?”

  “What d’you want me to do?”

  “Help us get Evvie out.”

  “Hmm. And what makes you and her Ma so convinced she’s in need of getting out?”

  “I don’t know,” Beth said. “It doesn’t make sense, I mean, she’s clever, isn’t she, Evvie, she’s always got out of everything before, but this time...”

  “You got a tickle?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “A tickle, an itch, a tightness in your belly, a feeling you missed something what’s important. That.”

  “Yes... Both of us, I think. I mean Mrs Sparrow had more reasons, but...”

  Ma made another satisfied puff of smoke. “Hah. Reasons, words, them comes later. You seen or heard or felt something, and didn’t know what it was at the time, that’s what. Something she or someone else done, or said, or had about ’em. If you ignore that tickle it’ll snap a chain around your ankles, sure as eggs.”

  “It’s not my ankles I’m worried about,” Beth said.

  “Well,” Ma said. “We need some o’ the girls, and we need a vehicle. Because yours is out, en’t it?”

  “The Sacagawea? Yes. I was trying to improve it, but I took it apart and added bits and I’d never get it back together in time, not safely.”

  “And we need a driver. That’ll be you.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Don’t go ma’am-ing me, I ain’t the Queen. I can get a vehicle but... ah, you’ll do, ’cording to Evvie there ain’t a machine made you can’t get to walk and talk.” Ma gave her a sharp look, catching the smile on Beth’s face. “Yes, it’s nice to know she thinks well of you, but is she right? Don’t you say you can do it if you can’t.”

  “I don’t know until I see the vehicle,” Beth said. “But... yes.”

  “Honest, at least. Well, we’ll see. If we can get it off the old fool.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to round up the best of the girls, and get them to meet us. We’re going to get us a vehicle. And then, we’re going to drag that silly chit out of the mire.”

  The Russian Embassy

  BARTHOLOMEW SIMMS SAW the girl silhouetted in the window, with a bundle in her arms. He’d been right.

  Stug had been planning to do him over, replace him with this chit. What use did he think she’d be? Sharp enough, yes, but who was going to be afraid of a little thing like her? The man was a fool. Not the first Simms had dealt with and wouldn’t be the last – and like the others, he’d have to pay for his folly. Not right away, no. This time, Simms would do what should have been his job in the first place: get Stug what he wanted – payment would come later. Once you turned your back on Bartholomew Simms you’d better grow eyes in your spine – and you still wouldn’t see him coming.

  If you didn’t know better, Duchen looked just like any respectable maid; in a place like this, you could pass as a lower servant easily enough. The building was crawling with them. The ones in livery were hard to mimic, but at the lower end – skivvies, boot-boys, nursemaids – easy. The gentry didn’t look at such lowly faces much, or if they did assumed someone new had been taken on. That was how he’d got his information from Stug’s offices – no-one noticed chimney-boys, and the starveling scraps were always eager to earn a few extra pence.

  Getting in was shamefully easy; he shook his head at it. And this the ambassador’s residence! But with everyone arriving for the ball, all this coming and going, sliding in was simple enough. Dress like a respectable servant, hold your head up, look confident, and find the right person...

  The maid was harried, skinny, and young, her arms full of towels. She was also Russian, and looked at him blankly when he said, “Where’s the nursery?”

  “Ya ne ponimaju.”

  “Nursery!” Dammit, the chit would be out of here with the baby before he could stop her. Simms crushed down the impulse to put his hand around the stupid girl’s skinny white throat, but something must have shown in his eyes. She backed away, shaking her head, and casting frightened glances about her – looking for some help. She’d yelp out if he didn’t calm her. He took a breath, and smiled. “Don’t take on, love. I just need to find where the baby is. Baby, baba.” He made a rocking motion with his arms. “I have medicine, for the baba.” He took a bottle from his pocket, made coughing sounds. “Medicine. Doctor. Baba.”

  “Rebjonok bolen?”

  “Baba.” Rocking motions, hand to brow, checking for a fever, serious look, shaking head. Giving medicine. Smiling. All better. What a raree-show, he felt a proper fool, grinning and capering like some penny gaff mummer. Maybe he’d come back for this girl, pay her out for forcing him to make such a show of himself.

  “Oh!” Finally, she seemed to get it. Pointing up a set of servant’s stairs, gesturing, turn left.
>
  “Thank you.” He gave her a grin which made her glance nervously behind her again, and headed up the stairs.

  He’d have to be quick. The maid might be foreign and beef-witted, but he’d pushed a trifle too hard and maybe she’d have second thoughts about the stranger she’d let upstairs, tip the office to whichever footman she was mooning over.

  Ao Guang’s Palace

  EVENTUALLY, THEY WERE summoned. Unlike the Queen’s court, it was below the dignity of most of Ao Guang’s followers to show too much interest in such a lowly visitor as Liu; the formal dance of the Court, the movement of each to and from their appointed place continued much as it always had, with only a sidelong glance here and there, from behind a sleeve, or a fan.

  Liu looked about for his father. There he was, looking entirely comfortable and playing at Go. Liu felt a surge of resentment. Everything he had gone through, everything he had risked – and his father was not even in prison.

  Not that he wished for that, he told himself fiercely. Not at all, not for one moment.

  Ao Guang sat upon his throne, dressed in scarlet and gold. His form was human; usually a sign that he was in a good mood, and did not feel the need to impress his followers with terror. He was manifesting as an elderly man with a long white beard. Dignity and wisdom, then.

  Liu prostrated himself.

  One of the dozens of little lion dogs that infested the place scuttled up as the Harp was set down, to sniff at it. Liu showed his teeth at it, and the dog, its dignity affronted, growled, before being swept up by a dignitary and carried, yipping, away.

  “So, it seems you have succeeded,” Ao Guang said. “Rise.”

  “Thank you, Great Lord.” Liu got to his feet.

  Ao Guang rose from his throne. His manifestation did not extend to tottering like an ancient; the cane he carried was purely ornamental, his walk as sleek and powerful as that of a warrior at the height of his strength.