by Peter Bunzl
She pulled her straps away, the rough edges of the leather burning her skin as she struggled free. Then she slid off the table onto a flat piece of wall, stood, and pitched herself across the sloping floor.
Slowly and painfully, she reached up to loosen the bonds roped round Papa’s ankles. Everything felt hazy. Was she still woozy from the gunshot, or the professor’s anaesthetic? She coughed and spluttered from the smoke. Then realized: The room was on fire!
Suddenly something hit her in the back, throwing her off balance. It was Professor Silverfish, barrelling into her. He seized her by the waist, and pulled her towards a broken glass porthole. She barely had time to struggle before he shoved her through – and they landed with a thump on the sloping roof of Big Ben.
With an ear-splitting pop the spear-sharp steeple of Big Ben punctured the front of the balloon and air rushed in with a whoosh. In the pause that followed, it seemed to Robert that the zeppelin was taking a breath.
Then the point pushed further through the bent metal spider’s web of girders and pierced the first gas envelope.
KABOOOOOM! An almighty explosion battered down the length of the gangway, throwing up burning oil and fuel from the tanks as the ship tipped onto its side.
Robert hung on to his shaking strap, and tucked his head and body round Malkin, pulling his sopping wet jacket round them both to shield them from the fire.
Mould was already alight, his eyes melting in their sockets like mercury tears. He threw his arm out and grabbed Roach’s coat-tails. Roach fumbled, trying to push him away, and his thin fingers lost their grip on the handle of the embedded sword. The half-burned creatures toppled backwards, tumbling down the gangway and skidding towards the gash in the smouldering silk of the upturned airship.
“Grab something, Roach,” Mould pleaded, hugging his companion.
“Let go, you fool!” Roach screamed. “You’re too heavy, you’ll drag us both down.”
He thrashed his arms about, grasping blindly for a safety rail or a steel rib. But the metal was too hot, he couldn’t hold on, and the flaming pair tumbled through the opening and were sucked away in a rain of glass and dust. Their screams echoed through the smoke from the abyss beyond.
Robert clung tight to Malkin and his strap. Pain crackled in his chest and fear poured off him in sweaty globules. His wet clothes were already almost dry from the intense heat. Fragments of burning metal toppled past. He shielded his eyes and looked around.
The blackened ribs of the airship were folding in on themselves, collapsing. Oven-hot air radiated off them, licking at his bare face with flaming tongues.
This wasn’t the end, it wasn’t over. He wouldn’t let them finish him this way, like they did his da.
Something dripped onto his nose. He looked up. Above him hung the big bag of ballast water. Of course. He reached out with his knife and slit its side, and the water poured down over him and Malkin, soaking them once more, and tumbling along the gangway, quenching the flames in their path.
Grasping the fox against his chest, Robert swung back and forth transferring his grip to a slippery new length of pipe. Following the path of dowsed flames they were able to reach the spiral staircase. It was tipped at an angle, but Robert managed to climb down the steps. At the bottom, he threw open the hatch and tumbled into the gondola.
Together they slid down the sloped floor of the corridor, skating past burning hatches and windows, and bumped to a stop at the entrance to a central atrium.
A pair of feet were kicking to and fro above them. “Robert, Malkin!” a voice cried. And when Robert looked up, there was John Hartman, dangling from his wrists on a rope, tied to the ceiling.
Robert dropped Malkin, who darted over to John and nipped playfully at his heels. There was a metal gurney bolted to the floor, and Robert climbed onto it. Standing on tiptoes, he reached up with his knife and cut John free.
John slid down the wall towards a broken porthole. “Quick!” he bellowed at them both. “Professor Silverfish has taken Lily into the tower – we must follow!”
Robert, Malkin and John dropped through the broken porthole and crawled out from under the airship’s belly onto the roof of Big Ben, which was sleeked with rain.
The hulking frame of the zeppelin burned above them. It was fast collapsing into a smoking inferno. Gigantic Os of fire burst across its surface, and flames licked up the last flecks of silk and canvas, pulling them free to drift off across the night sky.
Only the ship’s metal hull, and its forest of spikes, protected them from the falling debris. That and the fact that the wind was blowing the fire and flames away from the tower. Yet still the heat was intense; it pulsed in waves through Robert’s body until he could barely think straight.
Then, through the haze, he made out Professor Silverfish and Lily halfway up the steep sloping roof. Lily screamed and kicked at the professor, but he dragged her over the balustrade of a balcony. Robert, John and Malkin clambered towards them as they disappeared through a tall gold-leafed arch into the interior of Big Ben’s spire.
As they skirted a line of guttering, another roar of gas exploded from the zeppelin’s envelope; a whoosh of escaping fire scalded Robert’s cheeks. Rivets popped from Behemoth’s heated metal plates and pinged past them.
They hunkered against the tiles and Robert glanced down. On the ground beneath the tower, firemen and police rushed across Parliament Square towards the blaze.
The drop made Robert’s head spin and he almost tripped over the edge of the roof, but John gripped his arm and pulled him onward.
They battled through the steaming rain, and reached the balustrade where they’d seen Lily and Silverfish disappear. Climbing over it, they ran towards the gold-leafed arches.
The inside of the roof was furnace-hot; sweat ran down Robert’s back as he, John and Malkin hobbled down the spiral steps towards the belfry of the tower, following the sound of the professor’s echoing footsteps. With each spiral they descended, the sloped ceiling opened out and the noise of the huge clock’s mechanisms grew louder.
They passed the tip of the great tin and copper bell of Big Ben, hung in the vaulted roof alongside its four smaller brothers, and arrived on a gantry at the base of the belfry, where echoing ticks were joined by the deafening grind of cogs that floated up from somewhere beneath them.
Robert’s pulse beat time with the myriad of clockwork. The noises reminded him of his da’s workshop, before the fire, before everything stopped – but this was a thousand times stronger. He looked about for the professor and Lily.
Behind the skirts of the bells, four identical clock dials filled the walls, and far below the metal gantry on which they stood, four sets of mechanisms radiated out from the central timekeeper, their gargantuan cogs and springs clicking and rotating in unison.
A bullet zinged past Robert’s ear. He bobbed under the rim of the great bell, dragging John and Malkin along behind him. Four more bullets exploded off the outside of the immense dome. Then the gun was silent.
“It’s empty,” John said.
They scrambled out from their hiding place and a flash of red caught Robert’s eye in the darkness – Lily’s hair.
A few feet away, she and the professor were silhouetted against the nearest clock face, like slides in a magic lantern show. As they passed in front of its vast patterned panes, Professor Silverfish fidgeted with the empty pistol. His other hand muffled Lily’s mouth. She kicked at his shins, fighting back.
Robert ran at the professor and knocked the gun from his hand. He grasped at the machine on the man’s chest, pulling at the tubes, trying to loosen them, but the professor fought back. Robert stumbled; his elbow cracked against the rail of the gantry, making his teeth jitter.
John was right behind – he balled a fist and jabbed at the professor. The professor shoved Lily aside to swing at him. John stepped back and tried to weave away, but Silverfish caught him with a right hook, smacking his head against the bell with a clang. John fell, clutching
at his temple, blood dripping through his fingers.
Lily swayed unsteadily, clasping a hand to her chest. As Robert reached out to her, the professor turned quickly and grabbed her again. Malkin darted forward, snapping at his heels, sinking his teeth into the man’s leg.
“Get away from me, you confounded mechanimal!” Silverfish kicked Malkin aside and grappled Lily back into his grip.
Robert dived at the professor again, clinging to the lumpy device on his chest, and throwing punches around it, while Lily yanked at the pipes in an attempt to loosen them. The professor cursed and swung his arms wildly, but they clung on. He stepped back, clasping at a broken length of rail, but it gave way, and all three of them toppled off the open end of the gantry.
The impact knocked the wind from Robert’s body. He lay teetering on a ledge. He gasped, clawed himself upright, and found himself standing on a narrow metal beam, barely wider than his feet, that ran from the gigantic machinery of the tower into the big centre of the clock face.
In front of him the professor rose slowly and behind him, Lily clambered up from where she’d landed. Robert was the only thing that stood between the two of them.
The professor edged towards him. “You can’t win, you know. You haven’t the wits.”
Robert’s old fears bubbled up. Perhaps the man was right. He glanced over the edge of the metal beam into the abyss below. Lily coughed, trying to catch her breath.
Robert took her hand. Far beneath them, the sharp gears of the timekeeper shifted with a click.
After all he’d been through, he didn’t know if he could do this. It felt as if he still had so far to fall, but then he remembered Da’s words: No one conquers fear easily, Robert. It takes a brave heart to win great battles.
“I’ve heart enough,” he murmured.
“What?” the professor asked.
He spoke the words louder. “I said: I’ve heart enough. To win this battle.”
He squared off against the professor, driving his shoulder into him, but the professor seemed to have gathered extra strength. He danced nimbly on his feet, forcing Robert and Lily down the length of the beam, until they were pressed up against the glass clock face.
“Careful,” Lily said, and Robert felt her arm around his waist. Grasped against her, he could sense her heart drumming wildly through the back of his chest. The shadows of Big Ben’s two gigantic hands hung above them on the exterior glass, which crackled and warped from the outside heat.
Professor Silverfish lunged, shoving Robert’s head against a triangular pane; trying to force him from the beam. But Lily clung on tight, she wouldn’t let go, wouldn’t let him fall.
KeRrAcK! Splinters of glass sliced into Robert’s ears, as his head smashed into the pane. Blood trickled down his face and dripped onto his shoes. There was no escape. He glanced down once more and felt sick.
The drop was at least twenty feet to the VI of the clock face and another thirty to the sharp-looking mechanisms and cogs that turned below, at the heart of the tower.
Then he noticed something: the beam they stood on went out through a hole at the centre of the clock dial. An image of the inside of his da’s timepieces came to him:
The movement mechanisms…the centre wheel…the rod which runs from there to move the hands on the face. Of course – they were standing on that rod, that beam! Any second now, it would turn the minute hand of the clock…
Gritting his teeth, he reached up and gripped the corner of the broken pane of glass with his fingers. “Hold on to me tight, Lily,” he whispered. “Any second now…”
“Out of my way, boy.” Professor Silverfish threw his full weight onto Robert. He was so close Robert could smell the stench of his breath behind his big yellow teeth. But he wasn’t holding on to anything…
The minute must nearly be up. Robert grasped the broken corner of glass tighter. Pain coursed through him until he could barely stand it.
CLICK!
The beam shifted the hands of the clock; twisting under them.
Professor Silverfish staggered back, his feet slipping, his arms waving, thrashing the air. He’d lost his balance, and the weight of his heart-machine pulled him over the edge. His eyes wide with horror, his fingertips brushed the end of Robert’s arm—
And he fell.
Robert heard his echoing scream.
Then a sickening crunch; and the grinding of gears.
The tick of the clock and the clatter of movement juddered to a stop.
He and Lily stared down into the darkness beneath them, where the professor’s body and his machine were mangled in the gigantic stilled cogs of the clock.
“I think he’s dead.” Lily shuddered, letting out a sigh of relief. She loosened her grip on his waist; and Robert found he could breathe once more. He gasped a great lungful of air and let go of the broken pane he’d been clasping.
The clock had stopped. Without the noise of its cogs turning, the room felt eerily silent. Robert took Lily’s hand in his, and they stumbled along the stilled beam and up onto the safety of the gantry.
“Where’s Malkin and Papa?” Lily asked as Robert helped her up beside him.
As if in answer, John scrambled to his feet behind the rim of the bell, rubbing his head. Malkin yapped, and lolloped beside him, butting him gently to his feet.
“Lily!” John exclaimed. “You’re all right.” And he ran over and hugged her, enveloping her in his arms. Malkin’s ears pricked up and he jumped crazily in circles around them, wagging his bushy tail and aiming licks at their hands, barking happily, until Lily picked him up and hugged him too.
“Oh, my dear-heart,” John said. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
Lily smiled in relief, then noticed the tears as they rolled down Robert’s cheek.
John and Lily pulled him into their embrace too. And Malkin, who was squashed somewhere between them, gave Robert the most enormous sandpapery lick on the end of his nose that made them all laugh.
“Thank you for everything, Robert,” Lily said. “You saved us. How did you know the bar would move?”
Robert shrugged. “I remembered,” he said. “Remembered everything Da taught me before he died… Not just how clocks fit together – but how people work too. How it takes quick thinking and a brave heart to win great battles.”
Tears glistened in Lily’s eyes. “Well, you have those in spades,” she said.
“And so did your father,” John told him. “I didn’t realize he was gone. He was a good man.” He hugged them all once more, a proper bear hug this time, and kissed the top of Robert’s head. And underneath his sobs, Robert felt a warm and tender feeling: a flickering flame of hope.
Malkin gave a loud yip. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, “before more trouble arrives.”
“Agreed. Come, lead on, Macduff.” John took their arms and they ducked under the bell and limped across the iron gantry and out of the belfry, with Malkin trotting at their feet.
Slowly, haltingly, the four of them descended the steps towards the base of the tower and the noisy chaos of New Palace Yard, and the fire crews, ambulances and steam-wagons that filled Parliament Square beyond.
A few days later, Robert and Malkin jumped down from the number thirty-eight omnibus and made their way along the busy bustling streets of Westminster. Robert’s hand was bandaged; the wound was healing well but still felt a little itchy.
Today was market day and bright shop awnings stretched across wintery blue skies, shading the pavements from the November sun. Along the centre of the cobbled street, stalls and trestle tables nestled in crooked rows, each piled high with incongruous merchandise: gas lamps next to airship anchors next to wreaths of holly and ivy; bouquets of walking sticks beside rows of watch chains hung with pocket watches ticking in unison. Down side alleys, gangs of cog-and-bone men dealt broken mechanical parts from the back of steam-wagons.
His tail down, Malkin wove along under the carts, dodging the feet of the various stallholders, looking for
rotten apples and root vegetables to sniff at and prod with his nose.
At the end of the row Robert saw a fruit stall and stopped to buy a present for Lily and her papa. He had some coins Anna had given him, for he’d been staying with her, along with Mrs Rust and the rest of their mechanical friends, while they waited for John and Lily to be discharged from the hospital.
Robert selected a few apples from the stacks of fruit, crisp and red and just about perfectly ripe. The mechanical stallholder put them in a brown paper bag for him, twirling the top shut with his big clamp-shaped fingers.
As he waited for his change, Robert heard the newspaper boy on the other side of the road shout out the headlines: “Repairs continue on Big Ben! Mystery body found mangled in the mechanism!”
Robert felt a little ill. It was a good thing they’d got out of the tower when they did, before the police and firemen had made it up there. On the ground after the crash, New Palace Yard had been in chaos and, before anything could be asked of the four of them, they’d been ushered into an ambulance and taken to St Thomas’s across the river. On their journey to the hospital, Robert, John and Lily had agreed not to mention their role in the airship crash, especially not to anyone official. It would cause too much trouble and there would be too many questions to answer about Lily, Professor Silverfish and the Cogheart.
After all, no one on the ground had been hurt. Even Big Ben wasn’t seriously damaged – if you didn’t count the hole in the roof, or the repairs that would be needed to fix the mechanisms, and Robert tried not to count these things. It was as his da used to say: Broken clocks can always be fixed, but broken hearts are a harder thing to save.
Malkin’s yapping brought him out of his reverie. “Come on,” the fox barked, “or we’ll be late to meet them.”