A Spark Unseen

by Cameron, Sharon

  “He said to ‘beware of strong-blooded women.’ And good advice that was, too. Don’t you think that was good advice, Miss Tulman?” I smelled the outdoors and molten metal. I’d never been aware of scents in a dream. “Come with me now. Work’s done for the day.”

  I was pulled from my chair in mock protest, and I saw that it was not annoyance but mischief glinting in his eyes, like sun on a choppy gray sea, and with the current running high. I allowed myself to be led out the morning-room door, not quite successful in hiding my smile, past the stone stairs, through a gaslit corridor, around the corner, and all the way to one end of the dim and silent drawing room. Lane dropped my hand and left me at the bottom of the wide, curving staircase, his long legs taking the steps two at a time. He stood for a moment at the top, grinning down at me, straddled the banister, and then he slid, very fast and quite gracefully — though I would not tell him so — back around the curve and to the bottom, where he leapt off, dark hair now wild from the brief burst of wind. I crossed my arms.

  “You are not going to get me to do that.” But we both knew he was going to get me to do that. “I’ll get my dress dirty.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “I’ll fall off and break my neck.”

  “My, my. Just make sure you fall off on the side with the stairs. Are you going up or not?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  His smile was wicked. “Not really.”

  And inevitably I was sliding, the wind of my speed rushing past for a few precious seconds before I hopped off lightly at the bottom. He laughed when I ran up to do it again, and the next time I slid down he caught me, still laughing, and put his mouth on the bare place just beneath my ear.

  When my eyes opened, it was to the dark of a bedchamber in Paris, my neck still warm and tingling.

  I was ready to go early, too early, as the sun was not quite high enough to allow me to pin up my hair without a gaslight, though far enough along to let me ascertain that no one waited outside beside the lampposts. Mr. Babcock had reassured me again, advising me to be cautious, but not fearful, that this was most likely a quest for information, not my person, and that he would take care of the situation in due course. I wondered what that could mean. What could he do if the slouching man was from the French government, or if he was from the British, for that matter? I shoved in the last pin. Whatever it was, I was certain it was for the best. I’d never known Mr. Babcock to do otherwise.

  I stood up from the dressing table and examined the mirror. The bruise on my cheek had lightened, the cut on my neck hardly showed, and I had a bag with me that matched my dress, a dusky slate blue, holding my passport and all the French documents Mr. Babcock had given me. Proper or no, I did not plan on finding Lane in a mourning dress. The silver swan glistened dully in the gaslight, and my grandmother looked down on me from her portrait, now hanging on the wall beside the bed. Eighteen months of being powerless to affect my situation, and today I was stepping forward to change that. My feet fairly flew up the stairs to the next landing.

  But Mr. Babcock’s bedchamber door was still shut, and there was no sound when I pressed my ear to the door. So I went downstairs alone, ignoring the temptation of the banister, set my bonnet ready on the table in the foyer, and went through toward the dining room, where I stopped, openmouthed, in the doorway. The crystal and gilt chandelier was sparkling, reflecting brilliantly on the carved surface of the sideboard, where a feast had been set: scones, croissants, marmalade, tea and chocolate, bacon, sausage, boiled eggs, kidney, and I knew not what else under the silver dish covers.

  I sighed. Mr. Babcock had had some sort of talk with Mrs. DuPont, to “make matters clear,” as he put it, the result of which had been to pat me on the arm, say that all was “understood,” and that he had given Mrs. DuPont seven days to find other accommodations with the strict stipulation of remaining downstairs. I suspected that a substantial chunk of money might have gone with this. Mr. Babcock was the shrewdest man I knew, but his heart did have its soft places; I trusted him to deal with governmental spies more than I did the wily Mrs. DuPont, who was nobody’s fool. Dinner last night had been exotic, delicious, and overabundant and, like this morning’s breakfast, told me without question that she planned to play every card in her hand, to make herself indispensable and intimidating all at once. I would have to put a stop to it; the waste was a crime. But I decided to do so after I’d eaten.

  Thankful there had not been a single soul to see how I stuffed myself, I stole quietly back upstairs, four scones wrapped in a napkin.

  The sun was bright now. I could hear horse hooves and French noise coming from the street, and a peek through the shutters showed me an empty lamppost. When there was still no movement from Mr. Babcock’s room, I set aside my growing impatience, continued up the stairs, unlocked the storeroom, and slipped through the shelf door.

  The workshop was beginning to look like a workshop now, littered with the debris that was the hallmark of my uncle Tully’s presence. He sat cross-legged on his floor pillow, white head hunched over some sort of paper, the epicenter of a metallic explosion that had scattered tools and little bits to every corner of the room. Mary came out of the bedchamber, folding a blanket.

  “Ain’t you gone yet, Miss?”

  “Mr. Babcock is still asleep, I’m afraid. Here, I’ve brought Uncle Tully some scones.”

  “Well, good luck to you getting him to eat them,” Mary commented. “It’s playtime.”

  “I can see that.” Uncle Tully was intent on his paper, a pamphlet called Philosophical Magazine, which he held exactly one inch from his battered face. I had watched him examining this for a good part of the afternoon yesterday, but now he had some sort of wooden box beside him, not clockwork as far as I could tell, but with two small poles sticking up from the top on either end, wires connected to four of the fluid-filled jars I’d seen the day before. I frowned at his wrinkled jacket. “Has he been doing that all night?”

  “Most of it, I’m thinking, Miss. He’s needing rest, but he’s all out of schedule, and you know there’s no talking sense to him when —”

  “Little niece!” Uncle Tully called suddenly. He had looked up, his eyes bright globes of burning blue, shining out over the blackened bruises beneath. “Come here! Quick! It is ready! Come quick!”

  I went to my uncle and crouched down beside him.

  “Look, Simon’s baby. You must watch carefully. It is not out of my head. This is from someone else’s head, but it is splendid, just the same. …”

  He had a clock key connected to a little lever, almost like a telegraph key, with wires running from it to the wooden box. I could not imagine what this key was for, but when he pushed it down, suddenly there was a spark, a strange crackling, and blue flame shot between the two poles on the top of the box. I jumped back, nearly sitting down in my surprise as Mary shrieked. My uncle let go to clap his hands, and the blue flame disappeared.

  “Is it not right?” he cried. “Is it not just so? It is lightning, Simon’s baby! A machine that makes lightning!”

  He pushed the key down again, held it, and an even bigger flame sparked and shot between the poles, the noise like insect wings, or meat sizzling on a hot pan, or maybe the crinkling of dressmaker’s paper. Or perhaps all of them at once. I stared at the sparking blue fire that almost hurt my eyes. It really was lightning, I realized, electricity in a box. Where had Mr. Babcock procured the parts to make such a thing? “Did you build this yourself, Uncle?”

  He shook his head. “The pieces were in the box, and the pictures were in the book. This is from someone else’s head. But I made it different. When you make it different, the lightning is …”

  His words trailed away, and I saw that he was gone from me, lost in the smoothly ticking mechanisms that were inside his head. I stood up slowly, so as not to disturb, and went to set the scones on the table. Mary was still standing where she had pressed herself at the sight of the first spark, flat against the wall.

&n
bsp; “That ain’t natural, Miss,” she said, her eyes on the little wooden box.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Mary. Perhaps it’s as normal as rain, only we’ve just been raised in a desert.”

  Mary peeled herself from the wall cautiously, nose wrinkling. “What can you be talking of, Miss? When have you ever been going to the desert? That’s nonsense, that’s what my mum would say.”

  “Never mind,” I said, before I got an earful of the wisdom of Mrs. Brown. “Run down to the dining room before I have to go, and get yourself some breakfast. There’s a king’s feast set up in there. And if Mrs. DuPont says a word about you eating at the table, tell her she’ll have Mr. Babcock to deal with. I’ll stay with Uncle Tully. He looks like he’ll be busy for a good while.”

  Mary nodded. “That’s the truth and no mistake. You’ll be gone for the day, then?”

  “Yes. As soon as Mr. Babcock wakes up.”

  “You’re looking right nice today, Miss,” she said suddenly. “I hope you … I’m hoping it all goes the way you’d be wanting it to.”

  “Thank you, Mary,” I said, but my smile went away as I watched her inching her way past Uncle Tully’s machine. The words had been kind, but they had also been laced with tiny threads of pity.

  Forty-seven minutes later, Mary returned and Mr. Babcock had still not emerged. So I went downstairs, found Marguerite, gave her some coins, and with my smattering of French and a strange game of charades, succeeded in sending her out to buy me a map of the city. As eager as I was, I hated to wake Mr. Babcock. He was not young, and had been working tirelessly on my uncle’s behalf since this entire business started. I wondered what he had left behind in London, and when he would have to leave me to my own messy affairs and return to his own.

  Marguerite gave me some change and a curtsy. I smiled and put the change back in her hands — she couldn’t help having her mother, after all, any more than I could help having Aunt Alice — and spread out my new map and the official invitations on the tea table, trying to ascertain where I actually was and where I wanted to go. Someone knocked at the front door, and my heart sank. I’d thought to be long gone before Mr. Marchand came, or hoped that he might forget his fancy and never come at all.

  I stood, smoothing two or three errant curls, and went to peer out the window. The red doors were not in sight, the angle was too sharp, but what I did see was the slouching man, hands in pockets, propped against the stones of the house that was directly across the street. I stepped back from the window. No matter how Mr. Babcock tried to soften my fear, the man had my pulse throbbing against the tight material of my dress. And then Mr. Marchand was in the salon.

  “Bonjour,” he said, bowing formally, sleek and preened as always in an immaculate suit. “You see how I am behaving, Miss Tulman. No kisses today, though you are looking so very beautiful.”

  I closed the shutter with an angry snick, hiding away the sight of the slouching man. How Mr. Marchand could manage to find the exact words that would irritate me every time he opened his mouth was a mystery. He must have seen me bristling because he turned to my maps and papers, still spread out on the table.

  “You are planning your day, Miss Tulman? And where is your escort, this Mr. Babcock?”

  “He will be ready shortly, Mr. Marchand. I’m sorry to have caused you an unnecessary trip, but I did say there would be no need. Please stay and have a cup of tea if you like, but I’m afraid I must say good day to you. I have several things to attend to.”

  And before he could respond, I had given him a curtsy, hurried out the door, and away up the stairs. Exhaustion or no, Mr. Babcock needed to wake. The morning was wearing on, and he would want to know that the man was once again outside, watching the house.

  I knocked softly on his door. “Mr. Babcock?” When there was no response, I turned the knob, peeped inside, and then threw the door wide. The room was empty, the bed neatly spread up, Mr. Babcock’s coat, hat, and cane all missing. I had been waiting all this time and Mr. Babcock had been gone, perhaps since before I got up, and without even the courtesy of a note.

  I bit my lip, disappointment flowing bitter and out of all proper proportion. The morning was mostly gone, and perhaps the one institution I would not now get to visit was the one that actually held what I sought. And despite my saucy declarations during yesterday’s miserable tea, how many of these places were actually going to allow a woman inside unescorted? Not many. Perhaps none.

  I marched back downstairs and into the salon, the bonnet I’d left on the foyer table now snatched up and in my hand. Mr. Marchand dropped my map and jumped to his feet.

  “I accept your offer, Mr. Marchand. Would you mind if we left by the courtyard?”

  The next on your list is Charenton, Miss Tulman. Would you prefer a carriage, or …”

  “Walking is fine, Mr. Marchand, as long as we do it quickly.”

  He grinned. “I think that wheels will get you there faster than your feet, Miss Tulman, though you do walk with such a hurry.”

  I relented, ignoring his amusement — everything I did seemed to amuse him — and we boarded an omnibus, climbing up to the open second story. I paid little attention to our direction or Mr. Marchand’s occasional comments as the horses pulled us through the rain-washed maze of the city streets. But I did look at the faces around us, noting each in my memory. So far I had seen nothing that would make me suspicious, no one in the same place twice, no one that seemed particularly interested in my person. I looked carefully all the same.

  We had visited two hospitals that morning, one for those who could not pay, little better than a street gutter, and one for those who could, a fine building with swept floors and nurses that wore white aprons and served red wine. Though when it came to the end of a life, I was no longer convinced that the misery for those in clean beds was very less than for those in the filthy. It was all death, disease, and pain, and it had sickened me. But there had been no sign of Lane. The idea of finding him immediately, on my first day of searching, was ridiculous, of course. The practical side of me knew this. But the illogical half, growing larger by the minute, could not help but be disappointed.

  “Come, Miss Tulman,” said Mr. Marchand. I saw that the omnibus had stopped. He steered me out of my seat, down the narrow set of stairs, and onto the sidewalk. I looked behind as we walked, but if we were being followed, I could not see it.

  Mr. Marchand led us up a narrow road that climbed a small cliff, dropping off to a creek and then a river below, stone buildings rising up on our other side. We reached a wrought-iron gate, and Mr. Marchand rang the bell. A burly man unlocked the gate, large and oxlike with his white sleeves rolled up — he gave me a twinge of homesickness for my gentle Matthew — and I silently handed him one of Mr. Babcock’s papers. A quick glance and he ushered us through a pleasant courtyard of orderly trees and summer flowers at the end of their season, then into a grim building of stone.

  I was struck by the smell as soon as we stepped inside, much as I had been in the other two hospitals, the overpowering stench of human bodies and waste, here overlaid with a perfumed soap that was nothing more than a translucent veil. We were in a long corridor of closed doors, iron bars across their tiny windows. And then I became aware of noise, a constant jabbering like a pack of worried dogs, punctuated by the occasional yell or scream. I kept my eyes in front of me, feeling the knotted place inside me twist. This was not a hospital. It was an asylum.

  The burly man was replaced by a tiny nun, head and body swathed in white and black, a crucifix swinging gently from her belt as we followed her down the hall. Mr. Marchand translated as we went, something about the numbers of rooms and classes of patients and bowls of soup, but I hardly heard. Through the bars of the fifth door, I saw a man in a bare room with grotesquely twisting limbs; behind the seventh, another systematically pulling out chunks of matted hair; and in the twelfth cell, a man tied to a chair obviously made for the purpose, his shrieks a large part of the disturbance in the hall.

/>   My feet moved on down the hallway, my breath coming in shallow gasps. I thought I had belonged in an asylum once, for a time had thought I was going to one. And I had never even known how much I should fear it.

  After twenty-four doors, we left the hall and stood in a garden. People were about in the morning sunshine, all women this time, either busy or indolent, several Matthew-sized attendants stationed around and about, still, but watching. It was more peaceful here, without the noise or smell, these cases obviously not requiring the prison-like conditions I had just seen. A little boy, perhaps four or five, sat in the dirt along the path we were walking, hunched over two piles of small stones. His hair was uncut, a scratch on his arm scabbed and a bit swollen. He did not look up as we passed.

  The child’s silent play put me in mind of Davy, and the sight of him, alone, and in this place, set my teeth on edge. I tapped Mr. Marchand’s arm. “Ask the sister why there is a child here,” I whispered.

  He spoke, listened to the little nun’s response, and said, “The child is débile, not normal, he does not speak or let the others speak to him, though she says he is well-behaved when left alone. He was found at the door …” He listened again to the nun. “… eight days ago, tied in a basket. He will be taken to the Hospice des Orphelins, the place for the orphans, unless the doctors decide it is better to keep him here.”

  I watched the little boy with his stones, picking them up, putting them down, arranging and rearranging the piles while Mr. Marchand and the sister walked on down the path. I wondered if this was how Davy had been in that London workhouse, before Mr. Babcock brought him to Stranwyne, playing inside a shell of his own making to escape the horror of what lay just outside. I very much wanted to hit something. Or cry. And then I felt a touch on my hand.

  A woman who had been sitting on a bench near the path now stood right beside me. She was small and bent, hair that might have once been blonde now graying, and she was lovingly stroking my hand. I suppressed the impulse to step away and instead stayed very still, afraid to upset her. Mr. Marchand and the nun were far down the path, deep in conversation.