“No. Actually, I was born on a STEAMer. Quite literally.” Magnus’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“I know,” she smiled, “Very odd indeed. My father was an engineer who worked with Issy Rhealm on the prototype for this model. They were taking it for a test run, and brought my mother along for an outing. She went into labour early, and here I am,” she lifted her hands as evidence.
“I don’t remember it being in the news at the time.”
“And why should you? We’re not that far apart in age, Magnus. And besides, my mother was a bit of a snob herself and she thought that it was vulgar for her daughter to have been brought into the world on an experiment.” Though her voice reflected mock horror, her eyes twinkled with humour.
“Did your mother think that the experiment made you go to university and want to become a barrister?”
“Actually, my parents died in a carriage accident when I was eight. The only other family I had was my great-aunt, and she sent me away to an unexpectedly progressive boarding school, which is where I became interested in the law.”
“I’m sorry,” Magnus said. “And this is the great-aunt who just disowned you?”
She nodded. Minerva divested herself of her cloak and hung it on the back of her chair.
They settled into their plush seats just as the train slowly levitated and pushed out of the station. It gathered speed so quickly and silently that soon the city was a distant vision and they were surrounded by farmland.
“Isn’t it remarkable?” Minerva mused. When Magnus tilted his head, she elaborated, “I mean, the technology that has allowed us in so little time to travel so far, so far. Who knows where it might take us next. And,” she pulled her eyes from the vista, “Your father has played such a crucial part in it!”
When he didn’t reply, she pressed,
“Aren’t you proud of him?” He nodded, grudgingly.
“I am. I’m proud of my entire family, but they’re just so, so…odd. They don’t fit in well with the life I’m trying to lead.”
Minerva tried to submerse her disappointment in the fact that at least he was being honest.
Chapter 23:
Quintus warily climbed the staircase to the top floor, and knocked on the steel plated door. Without waiting for an answer, knowing one wouldn’t be forthcoming, he entered.
Cornelius’s laboratory took up the entire top floor of the house. Dim, red tinted light streamed in from a dozen windows, augmented with dozens of luminescence tubes hanging from the ceiling at different heights. There were steel-topped wooden tables everywhere, covered with glasses housing bubbling brews, burners alight with blue flames, and hundreds of odd-shaped bottles. The few spaces not being actively used for an ongoing experiment were piled high with loose papers covered in Cornelius’s messy scrawl, some with notes in Edwina’s careful hand.
Looking about, Quintus finally saw his father ducking below a table near the back windows. Approaching him warily, ready to duck, he saw that Cornelius was poking some kind of red gooey substance.
“Damn thing won’t react!” Cornelius said. “Would you take a look at my numbers?” He thrust a bundle of papers into Quintus’s hand, and kept poking the goo.
Though Quintus had the delicate features of his mother, he was in temperament most like his father, even if he did affect a half-false frivolity. But instead of having a talent for chemistry, he was a wizard with numbers. Looking through his father’s notes, he quickly skimmed the complicated calculations. After a few minutes, he handed them back.
“Take a look at the reduction numbers on the spesium-sublimation. I think you missed a decimal point.”
“Thank you, son. Now, what can I do for you?”
“What makes you think I need anything?” Quintus idly tapped a beaker. Cornelius pulled off his goggles and ruffled his blond hair.
“The last time you came up here with that look on your face, you had written your math homework on the dining room table. In acid.”
“Only because Erasmus dared me.” They both smiled, and Cornelius led the way over to a workbench set in the bay window. They both sat down, and Quintus sighed, letting the familiar, astringent scents settle his thoughts. Of the whole house, he felt the most comfortable among the chaos of the lab.
“Father, I’d like to tell you that I’ve left Oxford, but that wouldn’t be entirely true.” Cornelius began to frown, but listened quietly.
“I was working on a calculation, my final project, and my tutor came across my results. He published them as his own work, and when I came across the article in a journal I went to the head of the maths school and told him.”
“Good for you! I should hope that the Head took your side?”
“Oh, he did! But he also said that because of the hullabaloo and all, I would have to submit an alternate paper for my project. Apparently they don’t appreciate having to grade a paper that has already been published under someone else’s name.”
“More like they don’t like to have to grade anything tinged with scandal,” his father grumbled, scratching his short beard.
“Exactly! I worked so hard on the paper; it was going to be the basis for my dissertation next year. But…well,” he took a deep breath and plunged in, “I got into a bit of a row over that, and since the paper is contested, Oxford is just going to bury it, as if the whole thing never happened!”
Cornelius picked up on the important part of that last bit.
“A row with whom?” Quintus swallowed.
“With the Head of the School. And the Disciplinary Committee. And the Vice-Chancellor.” He hung his head.
“Have you been sacked?” Cornelius asked gently.
“I’ve been asked to reconsider if Oxford is the place for me. And to consider that while I’m packing my bags.” Cornelius was very quiet. Finally, he brought out his small glass pipe, filled it with some mint leaves and water, and began to puff it.
“Well, son, I suppose you’re just continuing the great Cogspeare tradition.” Quintus looked up, surprised.
“You’re not furious?”
“Of course I am! Those bastards should be drawn and quartered for not hanging that tutor!” Intellectual property was sacrosanct to Cornelius, and that was why, almost thirty years ago, he had made the process to make coal-syrup publically, and freely available.
“But what should I do now, Father? It’s as though, suddenly, I’m unfit for anything. And despite my cultivated air of sang fois and flippancy, I do want to do something!” Cornelius puffed and nodded in understanding.
“Well, I’m sure something will come along for you. Though London is the largest city in the world, it’s really a small village too, and someone will hear about the importance of your paper soon, published or not. What was it on, by the by?”
“I called it an Input-Output Matrix.” Cornelius blinked, and then grinned blankly.
“As for what you can do right now, I would suggest that you hound your brother to the best of your ability.” They both knew that they were talking about Magnus. Quintus couldn’t contain himself, and laughed until his eyes watered. “It’s time that boy grew up and took responsibility for his work and its repercussions. Support him, but don’t let him get away with anything.”
“As much as I’d like to help with that, Father, I think Miss McFlynt is doing a better job of that than any of us could.”
Chapter 24:
Magnus was terribly nervous about the rest of the train trip. He didn’t know what to say or do around a young woman. Of course, he had been invited over to Grimsby’s house for dinner, but every time had been disastrous; while Grimsby’s wife had drunk herself into a near-stupor, his daughter had done everything short of throwing him onto the settee to seduce him, and all the while Grimsby had been rattling on about his triumphs in the courtroom. Other than that, Magnus had had little interaction with the fairer sex.
Minerva, being a woman of remarkable perspicacity, vim and vigour, had seen him sweat and realized that he
was really just a young man with far too much intelligence and a dearth of common sense and stunted social ability. So she decided to go easy on him.
“Tell me about your first case, Magnus. What was it? Were you nervous in the courtroom?”
“My first case…” he thought for a moment, but didn’t have to think too hard. He could almost hear the creaking of the fleshy judge’s chair who had presided over the case.
“What made you smile just then?”
“Nothing really. Just that the judge had been so fat, and his chair so old, that the opposing council and I agreed that we would have to duck if the chair broke; we knew the splinters would have been deadly!”
They grinned at each other, and through her coaxing, he began to speak about working in at Grimsby and Associates, the difficulty of being the youngest and yet the most advanced barrister there, the parties he had to go to and hated.
“And you?” he finally got up the nerve to say, “when you aren’t chaining yourself to the Prime Minister’s house or badgering young barristers or fighting to become a lawyer, what do you do?” Minerva shrugged.
“Those duties are very time consuming, you know. And I am a lawyer, just not legally. Do you think that if you were disbarred you would cease to be a lawyer?” He thought about that, and Minerva loved that he always thought about each question.
“I suppose not. I’ve never thought what I would do if I couldn’t work in a firm. And being a solicitor has no appeal, working on wills and marriage contracts all day might as well be done by clerk! But though I don’t know what I would do, I would still be a barrister at heart,” he said with a kind of wonder.
“Then you don’t only do it for the money and the power.”
“I do it because of the order, and because I’m good at it, too.”
“And the people?” He paused, feeling his answer would be very important. But just as he was trying to formulate it, the conductor came into the carriage and announced,
“Port Chastity, Port Charity and Port Prudence, next stop!”
As they gathered up their things and donned their outerwear, Magnus managed to say,
“Whoever went around establishing these villages was too bloody virtuous!”
Though they had been distantly aware of the city giving way quickly to the countryside, it had been a slightly blurred scene as the STEAMer had sped westwards at over 100 miles per hour. Slightly less than two hours after they had left Paddington Station, they disembarked in the heart of Cornwall. The sky was clear and blue and filled with corpulent white clouds, completely unlike the bloody sky of the city. All around them, spring was just getting ready to blossom, and the air was filled with the saltiness of the sea.
The station they got off at was little more than well-maintained shack, and there were no carriages in sight. They were the only ones to get off and they looked around, completely out of place.
“Well, I suppose there’s only one way to go,” Minerva said, pointing to the one gravel street that sloped downwards and around a large grassy hillock.
“But-” even as he protested she carried on, beginning to walk down the hill, leaving him to trail after her with his briefcase and hamper in tow. He caught up to her just as they rounded the hillock.
As they saw on the other side, though, it wasn’t a hill.
It was the detritus of the mine, dirt and sewage and packing, all built up and overgrown after over a decade of plundering the soil for a small, red mineral. They continued to walk, but in silent dismay as they saw the earth cut open and the mine, all too silent.
“Where is everyone?”
Magnus shrugged and kept walking. Finally, he said, “they might know here,” he nodded to the first building on the main, and only paved street of the town; it was the pub.
It was a neat, low building that spoke of a regular stream of patrons, and the little wear and tear showed that those patrons were, by and large, respectable. Beneath the front windows, brimming over with petunias from well-tended flower boxes, were two benches carved from driftwood.
“Here we go,” said Magnus, stopping at one of the benches and setting down the hamper. “Now, just wait here for a moment, and I’ll try to find out where the foreman, or whoever is in charge of the mine, is.”
“But-” Minerva began to object, but he was already gone, pushing inside past the heavy doors and into the dark, gloomy interior.
However, while it was dark and gloomy, it was also the best-kept bar that Magnus had ever seen. The floor was devoid of unknown stickiness, and the brass fixtures on the bar and lanterns gleamed. The gloom just seemed to be an affectation to make the drinkers feel sure that this was, indeed, a pub, and not a parlour.
As one, those drinkers looked up at the newcomer, and the low rumble of conversation stopped. The thirty or so patrons were all miners, all encrusted with dirt, hands and faces dyed an angry, spesium scarlet that would forever be the patina of their hands. They glared at the well-kempt Magnus and held their pints of ale protectively.
Magnus gulped, but strode forward anyway.
A large, burly man tended the bar, methodically wiping its immaculate surface down with a clean cloth. He was obviously the proprietor.
“Can I get you somethin’, sir?” he asked with a thick Cornish accent. Magnus tried not to stare at his brushy eyebrows that seemed to have minds of their own, creeping towards each other with nefarious intentions.
“Um, no, thank you. I was just hoping to find the foreman of the spesium mine.” The room temperature dropped a few degrees.
“And why would you want to find him, now? Do you owe him money?”
“No, it’s just that-”
“Just that nothing, sir. As I’m sure you can see, this town’s in mourning. Mourning for those lost in the mine explosion, and for all their lost livelihoods.”
“Why did they lose their jobs?”
“Because,” said a gravelly voice beside him, emanating from a man who looked to be about fifty, but was in all probability Magnus’s age. “After the explosion, we protested the working conditions in the mine. Brutal, they ‘twere. But the company, the SWSMC,” he spat, “took it that we were striking and so sacked us all. They’re bringing some other miners out here next week to reopen the mine.” He made to spit on the floor, but a sharp word from the house-proud proprietor checked him.
“So sir, we’d all be happy if you’d just leave.” It wasn’t a request, and Magnus, though tall, was outnumbered, and beat a hasty retreat back out into the fresh air and sunshine…to find that Minerva had disappeared.
He looked around, suddenly slightly panicked, looked up and down the street, and yet didn’t see anyone except for a few children playing in small front gardens. He picked up his briefcase and the abandoned hamper and began to retrace their steps, his mind a frantic blank, when he heard the sound of Minerva’s laughter. He ran after it, following it around the side of the pub to a small side door.
What Magnus didn’t know when he had entered the front door of the pub was that, while the front door was perfectly serviceable, none of the locals ever used it. Instead, they all entered through the back door, going through the basic kitchen, past the stairs to the rooms above the pub, and into the bar for a drink. Decades ago, before Mr. Pips was the proprietor, the publican had a beautiful daughter who was also the cook. And so, as single (and, it must be said, some not so single) men in the village came to flirt and court her, it saved time to just go through the kitchen, woo her and ask for a bacon sandwich, and move through to the drinking and socializing in the front. And though the cook had long since lost her figure after she married Pips, and her father had retired to a table in the pub, she still made quite superior bacon sandwiches.
Had he known all that and gone ‘round the back to the kitchen entrance, his reception might have been warmer. As it was, he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
When Magnus had left Minerva kicking her plainly-shod heels and boiling in frustrated anger, she had wandered
down the back alley and met the good Mrs. Pips. Just now, she was leaning over the split-door, laughing and nibbling on a bacon sandwich.
“And so I says to my ol’man, Mr. Pips, that is, that if that floor don’t stay as clean as seal’s arse, then he’ll be seeing soggy bacon sandwiches for the rest of his life!” As they both giggled, Magnus slowed down from his frantic running to a more dignified trot.
“Magnus, there you are!” his companion said, as though he were the one late for a meeting. “Do let me introduce you to Mrs. Pips, the wife of the publican and wonderful chef of bacon sandwiches- the best in the county!”
“Two counties, Miss,” said Mr. Pip’s better half. Indeed, she could have been his twin, they looked so alike; both red-faced and blustery, though Mrs. Pips had a great deal more hair, everywhere.
“Mrs. Pips was just telling me how she married her husband, though only after a spesium accident blew off the lower part of his leg and he got a mechanical limb imported all the way from Bristol.”
“Indeed, he did. I wouldn’t have married a miner, no indeed- far too dangerous for the family. O’course, after the accident he couldn’t work, and so took over me dad’s place. And it’s a shame, a shame says I, that the mine now had to go and explode. If you ask me, ‘twas planned by those higher up, if you know what I mean,” she tapped her nose, leaving a smear of bacon grease on it. Magnus was about to say something, but Minerva stepped hard on his toe and quickly said,
“Really?” eyes wide, she asked, “but it wouldn’t have anything to do with the foreman here, now would it? Good Mister...”
“Craggs? Of course not, dearie. Why, he was born and bred here, and the poor man just lost his wife. And he opened the newest mine shaft, the one that exploded. Why, the poor man won’t even leave his house now.”
“Oh yes, that one…”
“Yes, just down the way. You can still see he wife’s rose bushes, though they’re overgrown by now. I tried to prune them back for him, but he actually began yelling at me for it the other day, can you imagine?
The Cogspeare Conspiracy (The Cogspeare Chronicles Book 1) Page 9