The Raconteur's Commonplace Book

by Kate Milford

  Many decades later, just before he died, he told his granddaughter the story of the half-built device, and he asked her to take it from the cabinet and destroy it—a thing that he had never managed to convince himself to do in all the long years of his life. His granddaughter listened with the same fascination with which Ustion himself had listened to the specifications of the customer all those years ago, and she promised to do as he’d asked.

  She put it off until after he was in the ground, telling herself there was plenty of time and that she couldn’t bear to destroy anything of her grandfather’s while he was still alive. Then she put it off again, telling herself now that he was gone, she couldn’t bear to destroy anything he’d left behind.

  At long last, after she’d had a good long think and a few glasses of courage, she went to the workshop and opened the cabinet.

  There was nothing there—not the mechanism, and not the list.

  She told herself her grandfather must’ve destroyed it himself. Perhaps he’d seen the ambivalence on her own face when he’d asked her to do it, and decided to spare her the temptation. Perhaps he’d done it years ago, but in the twilight of his life, he’d forgotten that fact, along with birthdays and the color blue and the songs he’d sung to her when she was a baby.

  Either way, it was probably for the best.

  INTERLUDE

  “Things left behind are fascinating, aren’t they?” Petra asked. “I mean, as an idea.”

  What on earth is she up to? Amalgam wondered. Amused and curious, he said, “Certainly. They can take on rather a life of their own.”

  From the chair by the sideboard, Masseter, too, watched her with interest, but his curiosity was beginning to solidify into an actual theory. It was for the sake of testing his theory that he said quietly, “The magic of that-which-remains.”

  Petra smiled at him, but the expression told him nothing. “You’re very poetic, Mr. Masseter.”

  “Do you mean something like relics?” Negret Colophon asked.

  “I don’t really know what I mean,” she said in a musing tone.

  Yes, I believe you do, Masseter thought. I think you mean something very specific. But he couldn’t quite be sure.

  “Relics . . .” Petra said dreamily. “The power of things left behind in memory . . .”

  “And left behind in reality,” Negret put in. “Mr. and Mrs. Haypotten, you must be experts in things that are left behind. Surely guests are always forgetting things. I would imagine you have quite a collection.”

  Reever shot him an exasperated look, but his brother ignored it.

  Mr. Haypotten nodded, looking studiously down into the teapot on the cart as if something very interesting had been left behind inside it. “Inevitably.” His face was a little bit redder than it had been.

  “Though we do try to return things,” his wife added. “And a good many of our guests come back, so we manage it more often than not.”

  “There have been some notable exceptions, though.” The innkeeper replaced the top on the teapot. “But you have me thinking about relics now. I believe I have a tale I could share.”

  FOURTEEN

  The Particular

  The Innkeeper’s Tale

  It was Madame Grisaille’s story last night that put this tale into my mind—the bones of the hero, you know, and the mysterious box—and also my dear wife’s, with the bottle of fog. Well, this is a tale my papa told me, which he had from his father. And Grandpapa always said he had this story from a fellow who knew the boy in it personally, so of course it must be true.

  Much like my grandpapa himself, the boy in the yarn had emigrated from London during the years of the worst of the fogs, when he was about fifteen. His name was Hugo Bankcliff, and back home, he and his brothers had been link­lighters, making their livings by lighting the way for people needing to pass through the fogs, which regularly came on so thick and dark that they could turn even the brightest noon to midnight. After he arrived in Nagspeake, where there was no need for linklighters, Hugo cobbled together a living doing odd jobs. He collected sea coal on the beaches where the Magothy Bay met the Atlantic; he patched sails in the Quayside Harbors; he collected orpiment and realgar and mispickel for the denizens of Ferrous Sanctus Monastery high up on Whilforber Hill. But piecing together all this work carried him all over the city, and at the end of the week, he was so tired, he would sleep away the Saturdays that were his chosen days of rest.

  I myself heard Grandpapa say more than once that, as miserable as a proper London particular can be, especially to one who lives with pea-soupers day in and day out, he found himself missing the fog now and then. That was Hugo, too, at the end of his first year in Nagspeake. Despite all the coal fires the city burned, it didn’t have the right geography for pea-soupers. Nagspeake’s fogs were all of the ordinary kind, and they never made you have to light candles before noon. They didn’t kill off the camellias or stain the brickwork, and they didn’t require travelers to hire linklighters to find their ways through the murk, for it was barely murk at all. Nagspeake fogs were—and are still, for the most part—veils of gauze that lie gracefully between your eyes and the city; the true London fog is an oily velvet wrap thrown over your face, and just as hard to see or breathe through.

  Even so, Hugo began to wish for a proper pea-souper, both because he was homesick and because, even with all the assorted jobs he was working, he was barely living any better than when he’d been carrying pitch-topped torches through the streets of London. He’d look fondly at the fog glasses he’d worn practically every day in his former life but that had no use here, and he’d wish to wake up just once to a thick yellow pall over the whole watershed.

  One morning he left his house in the Quayside Harbors with his shovel and rake as he did every Wednesday and went along the pier to wait for the boat that carried the sea-coalers down the Skidwrack to the Magothy and, beyond that, the Atlantic. When he got to the slip where the boat came, he found the other two sea-coalers bent over a mail-order catalog that the wind had blown onto the wharf.

  “Hugo,” called his best mate, another former Londoner, as he approached, “come help me try to stump the catalog here. If I think of something that isn’t in it, Pete buys lunch.”

  “Can’t be done,” said the other boy, Nagspeake-born and feeling superior. “Deacon and Morvengarde have everything. That’s the whole point of them.”

  “Fog,” said Hugo instantly.

  “Fog!” his Londoner friend crowed with delight as he flipped through the catalog’s index. “I believe you’ve done it, Hugo. Well played.”

  “Be reasonable,” the Nagspeaker boy protested. “It has to be something that can be bought and sold, obviously!”

  “You said they have everything,” the Londoner argued, turning pages. “You laid the conditions for this wager, not . . .” His words died away, and he lowered the book, and the other two boys peered down at the entry he’d found. Under the Fs was the heading FOG (see WEATHER, page 316.)

  Hugo’s friend looked up at him. Then they both looked at the third boy, who was trying very hard to appear as though he’d already known that Deacon and Morvengarde were in the weather-delivery business. Then the boat arrived, and that was the end of it. The three of them gathered their tools and went off to break their backs for ten hours raking up coal. Surreptitiously, Hugo folded the catalog and stuck it in his bag. The Nagspeaker boy did not buy lunch.

  Hugo didn’t open the catalog at all until he’d gotten home, sweaty, aching, and tired from a day scraping black coal from the sands. On sea-coal days he usually paid extra at his rooming house for a bath; today, already thinking about other things he could do with that money, he scrubbed himself clean over the water basin in his room instead. Then, reverently, he took the catalog from his bag and opened it on his bed.

  It had absorbed the salt air of the Atlantic, as did every bit of paper or porous stuff that made the journey to that stretch of sand. Turning to the index, Hugo could smell his esp
ecial beach, with its swirls of black coal and green sea lettuce and the snaking pale lines that were the record of the always-vanishing spume of the wave edges; the masses of gravelly piecemeal shells that broke up the sands here and there and the occasional flat, clear jellies without tentacles or stings that Hugo often failed to see until he was already stepping on them. But—was he imagining it?—there was another whiff of scent there, too, something that changed the combination and made it not exactly the same blend of odors that his clothes always carried home mingled with the sweat of a hard day’s work.

  At first he thought it was just the aromas of the catalog’s specific paper and ink, but somehow he couldn’t let the question go. Finally, Hugo picked up the catalog and riffled the pages before his nose, inhaling deeply. His heart leaped even as his chest constricted instinctively and prepared to cough to defend itself against the familiar viscous thickness, the chewy, oily yet abrasive air his body associated with that smell.

  Because the smell of the fog was there. Right there, nestled in the pages. Hugo felt the pull of it like a yearning for food or sleep when he hadn’t had any in a day or two. And just then, as the craving ache crested over him, the catalog fell open on his quilt, not to the index he’d been looking for, but to the weather section—as if the book itself had said, I know what you need better than you know it yourself, so let’s not waste time in searching. There, on the center of the page and nestled in an ornate frame, was the entry:

  FOG

  Obscurities and effluvia of all varieties and opacity, including MISTS, MIASMAS, MURKS, GLOOMS, BRUMES, HAZES, SMOGS, SMOKES, SMAZES, GROUND CLOUDS, VAPORS, FUGS, SEA-FOGS and SEA-SMOKES and STEAM.

  Please specify any particulates to be included (viz. water, carbonized matter, aromatics, chemicals—for available chemical options, see CHEMICALS, page 200), optimal visibility and/or density (Ringelmann scale or pencil smudge acceptable), and preferred levels of humidity, corrosiveness, conductivity, temperature, and tenacity.

  If uncertain about how best to compound your preferred fog, we will be happy to advise you; you may also order by location and allow us either to recommend the perfect fog for your current circumstances or to replicate the fog you remember.

  A wide variety of soots may also be purchased separately (see COMBUSTION, page 132).

  For medicinal smoke, please see supplemental informational form at back of catalog (APPENDIX C: FORMS). May be purchased concurrently with a DIAGNOSIS (see MEDICAL, page 37); however, Deacon and Morvengarde assumes no liability regarding potential side effects. All panaceas are dispensed at the patient’s own risk and responsibility.

  As Hugo read the description, the scent of his fog curled deeper into his lungs, and by the time he had gotten to the pricing below, it wouldn’t have mattered what a true London particular would cost. Hugo couldn’t live without it, not now that he knew it could be had to order.

  The price was high, but not impossibly so. It took him three weeks to save enough; then, on a Friday, he took his hard-earned money to the local offices of Deacon and Morvengarde and, with the help of the D&M representative, placed an order for his fog. He handed over his money and in exchange received a square blue receipt with gilded edges. Hugo carried the receipt in his wallet, afraid to let it leave his person. It had been a lot of money, after all; and the receipt itself was an attractive bit of paper, like one of the beautifully lettered prayers the church down the street handed out to parishioners each Sunday.

  Hugo’s attractive bit of paper said his fog would be delivered in a week, which meant the following Friday, which was a sail-patching day. Hugo spent all morning, then all afternoon, then all evening on the docks as he worked, watching and waiting for the distinctive oily yellow of the pea-souper to come rolling down the Skidwrack, his nose lifted in case it caught the first hint of the London fog before his eyes did.

  But the fog didn’t come.

  At last, with his fingers bruised and his workday done, Hugo set off for home, torn between indignation that the famed Deacon and Morvengarde hadn’t delivered on the day they’d promised and humiliation at having believed even for a moment that any sort of weather could be dispensed this way. He slunk into his lodging house and climbed the stairs glumly, cursing himself for wasting money on something so foolish.

  There was a parcel waiting before his door.

  It bore a blue-and-gilt label that exactly matched the receipt in Hugo’s wallet. He picked it up gingerly. Something inside shifted, and there again was the smell: the exact, the precise, the very odor he remembered.

  Inside his room, Hugo undid the parcel and found, nestled in straw and wrapped in tissue, a round box about the size of his palm, made of smoked glass. Except no—the glass wasn’t smoked. That swirl was the fog itself, roiling against the lid in yellow and brown and gray and all the shades the London particular could take, its colors shifting and swirling like the blues and oranges of an opal. Except no opal could’ve been as pretty; not to Hugo, not just then.

  He stared at the fog in its glass container for a few minutes, marveling at what he held. Then he glanced back into the package and found a small piece of folded paper that had been tucked inside the tissue. Unfolding it, he read:

  Enclosed please find your purchase of one (1) genuine London Fog. Please take care when handling and do not attempt to contain fog in any vessel other than the one in which it was shipped. To release fog, turn lid widdershins; to recall fog, turn lid sunwise. Please note that the box lid should never be fully removed. We hope you enjoy your purchase and will not hesitate to contact us if we may be of further assistance.

  Yours,

  Deacon and Morvengarde, Incorporated.

  Purveyors of Goods, Services, and Expressage.

  Trusted since time immemorial.

  Hugo carried the box carefully to his window, which looked out over the river. His fingers tingled as he pushed up the sash. He made himself count to ten, then, leaning out into the night, turned the lid one rotation counterclockwise.

  Instantly, a thick, smoky fug sifted out from under the glass, spilling free on all sides, so that the runnels of fog combined with the round dome of the box put Hugo immediately in mind of a strange, smoke-tentacled jellyfish. The sensation of the fog was heartbreakingly familiar as it poured over the sides of his hand: it really did have a feel to it, an actual thickness, almost a weight. It rolled down the side of the house to pool on the thin stretch of cobbled walkway, then overran that and flowed over the nearest bulkhead that separated the land from the water and onto the surface of the Skidwrack, where it settled in and began to spread.

  Hugo watched this in wonder, looking from the river to the box in his palm and wondering how much fog the little glass container actually held. But it continued to pour out, and little by little, the mist on the river thickened, and the smell of the London particular began to overwrite the usual scents of the Quayside Harbors. As the level of it rose, the lights of the buildings out on the piers and the ships on the river began to dim until they were mere pinpricks. Then, one by one, they vanished altogether in the clotting dark of the fog.

  Hugo leaned down close to the box and breathed deep, feeling actual pain as his lungs protested and a simultaneous but different kind of ache as his heart and memory absorbed the thing they had been craving. Then he put the box carefully inside his vest, pulled on his coat, stuffed one of its pockets with matches and an old shirt that could be torn into rags, and went out into the particular, the fog eddying around him as it continued spilling out of the vessel in his vest.

  Hugo hunted in the alley behind his house for a bit of dry driftwood, nearly falling off the bulkhead twice before he found a suitable stick. He wrapped the top of it in his old shirt, clamped it between his knees as he lit a match from his pocket, and set the makeshift torch ablaze. I’ll need pitch for next time, he thought. This will burn too fast without it.

  The fog drowned the Quayside Harbors and its stretch of the Skidwrack in less than ten minutes, turnin
g it into an entirely new and alien landscape. Though Hugo had lived there only a year, he had come to know the district well. But the fog made the familiar unknowable—so much so that twice he found people wandering lost in the miasma who probably knew the Harbors far better than Hugo did. And it could be more frightening than the darkest hours of the darkest night. Hugo helped the lost souls find their ways home until his torch had burned down to cinders, and although he tried to refuse the coins they offered in thanks, by the time he got home, he had enough to buy pitch to make a proper linklighter’s torch.

  He tossed the remnants of his driftwood stick into the river and went upstairs to his room. He shed his coat, took the glass box from his vest pocket, and, leaning out the window again, slowly turned the lid clockwise. As he tightened it, the fog flowed in just as it had flowed out, and by the time the lid was shut snugly, every shred of the particular had gone back into its container, leaving nothing behind but a vaguely sooty film on the window. No more opening the box inside, he decided as he put it on the crate that made a table beside his bed and shucked out of his now-filthy clothes.

  The next day was Saturday. Instead of sleeping late, he woke early, his nose seeking and finding the scent of the fog instantly and rousing him out of dreams of London and home. Even though the murk had been in his room only once, its scent had permeated the threadbare curtains and sheets and lingered even in the clear bright light of morning. There on the bedside crate was the glass box. Hugo sat and stared at it for long minutes before he finally got up and dressed to start his day.

  He found another shirt that could be sacrificed for rags and packed it in his bag, along with his matches and his fog glasses. Then he tucked the box carefully in his pocket and went straight to the Tar and Pitch Works, where he convinced the merchant to sell him a crock of leavings scraped from a broken barrel, enough to soak the rags and make a proper torch when he was ready. From there he headed for the water, pausing along the way to peer into each alley he passed until he found the perfect length of wood to make the handle.