The Kidnap Plot (The Extraordinary Journeys of Clockwork Charlie)

by Dave Butler

  Charlie got his first glimpse of the Thames. It was huge, a flood, a plain, a great silvery-pink sheet in the morning sun. A paved footpath wound along the edge of the river, crowded with little food stands and Egyptian monuments: obelisks and stone sphinxes and statues of Egyptian gods Charlie knew from his bap’s library: Anubis and Osiris and Wepwawet, Opener of the Ways.

  Ahead, Charlie saw the enormous face of Whitehall’s famous clock tower. He had read about it. Everyone called the clock tower itself Big Ben, he knew, though technically that was just the name of the big bell inside the tower. Beyond it was a jagged, pointy-topped palace that Charlie thought must be the Houses of Parliament.

  Then the Sky Trestle turned to cross the river. The tracks soared on high, delicate arches of iron and wood. Below, bridges carried other kinds of traffic over the river.

  “Waterloo Station,” Gnat said, pointing ahead of them.

  “About time,” Grim muttered.

  “ ’Ome,” said Heaven-Bound Bob.

  The sky above them cracked open, and rain poured down.

  Only then did Charlie realize he’d left his father’s hat behind in the dairy.

  Waterloo Station was one part anthill and one part wheel hub. It gleamed with a dull brass-and-iron glow even in the rain, towering majestically over the Thames on the river’s south bank and launching arms of the Sky Trestle in all directions. Below the Sky Trestle a stream of wagons, hansoms, steam-carriages, velocipedes, riders, and pedestrians rushed in and out of the near side of the station; out the far side raced iron rails that carried trains away into the green hills of England. Upon the flat roof grazed swollen zeppelins, tethered and drifting just above the broad surface. Mooring towers shot up at forty-five-degree angles all around the station like the spikes of a crown, to which gliders, montgolfiers, and flyers of other sorts were anchored.

  Waterloo Station was busy.

  The train decelerated and had begun to angle down into the station when something else caught Charlie’s attention.

  “The London Eye!” he gasped.

  The Eye was a gigantic leisure wheel sitting in a plaza off to the side of Waterloo, slowing turning. It stood vertical, resembling the wheel of a hansom. Long spokes radiated out from its central hub, ending in a ring of brass-and-glass boxes, like metal rooms. The boxes hung on axles and rocked back and forth slightly in place as the Eye slowly rotated, bringing each box in its turn from the ground to the top, hundreds of feet above the river below, and then back down again. Charlie was surprised not to see steam puffing from the machinery, and he wondered how it worked. Maybe Bob knew.

  His bap certainly would. Charlie plunged a hand into his pocket and wrapped his fingers around his bap’s pipe.

  Charlie had read that the Eye never stopped. If you took a ride—once rides had actually started, on the Jubilee morning—a conductor would help you board one of its boxy brass-and-glass carriages as it slowly passed at ground level. You would go once around, which might take half an hour or more, and when your carriage reached the ground again, you would get out. It did look magnificent, and great fun.

  But it also looked like a giant cog, and at the sight of it Charlie fell silent.

  The stampede of rain on the rooftop ceased, and the carriage went dark as it plunged into the station. Light returned when the train rolled to a stop at a long concrete platform, illuminated by gaslights on tall poles. Charlie and his friends piled out and stopped beside a rickety wooden newsstand to stretch and shake the kinks out of their backs and necks.

  “We smell like pigs,” Ollie commented.

  “We rescue Mr. Pondicherry, I’ll stand you a bath,” Grim rumbled.

  “ ’Ey, look ’ere.” Bob pointed at the headlines of the morning’s newspapers, painted with black ink onto large sheets of paper and tacked to the sides of the newsstand. HEAVY SHOWERS DAY BEFORE JUBILEE, they announced, and ROYAL MAGICAL SOCIETY WARNS OF CLOUD SQUEEZING. “ ’Eavy showers, getting all the rain out an’ making it nice for the queen tomorrow.”

  “Could have warned us yesterday,” Ollie complained.

  “Who d’you think you’re fooling, lad?” Gnat shook her head. “This is England. When was the last day you had without a risk of heavy showers? Why do you think my folk live underground?”

  “Check your weapons, gentlemen,” Grim suggested. He then loaded his pistol; Bob drew her sword and swiped it through the air as she struck various martial poses; Ollie snapped his umbrella open twice and playfully stabbed at Mr. Clockswain. Charlie opened and closed his clasp knife.

  “I’ve lost my spear,” Gnat said sadly.

  “I remember.” Grim smiled. “But you’ve still got your teeth.”

  The pixie laughed, but it sounded forced.

  The newsstand had a basket of apples for sale. Grim bought them all and passed them out. After two minutes’ munching, the cores were tossed into a rubbish bin, and Charlie and his friends were moving again.

  The Sky Trestle platform was part of a maze. With Gnat flitting ahead to scout for trouble, Charlie and his friends limped through it. Charlie stopped counting how many platforms he’d seen at an even dozen, all tangled together with yellow-lit halls and concrete stairwells.

  The walls were decorated with scenes in mosaic tile. The scenes celebrated the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte—the station was named after that famous battle, of course—and the greatness of Britain generally. British dwarfs and kobolds worked with Isambard Kingdom Brunel on his bridges and trains; Jamaican ships heavy with sugar sailed up the Thames; alfar planted and defended England’s great reborn forests; Indian elephants carried huge baskets of gems to lay at the feet of the young empress Victoria; hulders farmed England’s rolling green hills.

  “Not all folk are equally represented in these pictures we’re seeing,” Gnat complained, returning from her exploration.

  “That’s right.” Ollie snickered. “If I was a ghoul or a shaitan, I’d be right irritated that my contribution was not being taken seriously.”

  “When you’ve slain your three mighty beasts,” Grim told the pixie, “I promise you I’ll commission a monument.”

  “Hmm,” Gnat snorted, and flew on ahead again. Almost immediately she zipped back into view. “Welcome to Waterloo Station proper!”

  Charlie emerged from the tunnels onto a broad balcony and immediately had to step aside. Four moving staircases, shoulder to shoulder, lifted and deposited passengers on the balcony right in front of Charlie. They were tall ramps with dark wooden walls to waist height, broad bronze steps, and a long hand railing of leather. Charlie jumped out of the way to avoid getting trampled by the herd of frock coats.

  “How do we get down?” he asked. “All the staircases go up.”

  The balcony ran all around an enormous waiting room. Below, people swarmed out of gates opening onto train platforms and into the city. Some of them rode the moving staircases up and toward the Sky Trestle. Others flooded out wide doors to waiting hansoms and rickshaws.

  “Over there,” Ollie pointed. “With the flyer passengers.”

  Across the big room Charlie saw another set of moving stairs. There were two of them, and they were spiral staircases, bronze and polished to a high shine. One carried people up into the ceiling, toward the mooring towers (it was mostly empty), and the other brought them down again (it was packed).

  Charlie and his friends skirted the balcony and forced themselves onto the downward staircase. It didn’t look like there would be enough room for them until Grim growled. The sight of the huge hulder, bloodied and disheveled, made two men in dark wool suits jump back and bury their faces in newspapers. Charlie and the chimney sweeps popped into the newly opened space.

  As they rode the moving stairs down through the floor, Bob nodded at a hallway that opened from the balcony. Before it was out of sight, Charlie saw walls of tall, narrow metal doors. “The lockers,” Bob whispered, and she winked.

  Charlie looked around to make sure no one was listening to them. “W
ere you just planning on…on launching, tomorrow?” Ollie huddled close. “I mean, how would you do that, without getting stopped? This place is so busy.”

  “Right out the window,” Bob nodded. “There’ll be coppers all over the towers, of course, but my flyer’s so small I can launch it without a tower. It don’t need a runway, only the gyroscopes. Just need a small drop, really.”

  “What is your flyer, a pair of wings?” Charlie asked. “For just one person?”

  “Two. Ollie’s my copilot.”

  “Copilot, my eye.” Ollie chortled. “I’m the pretty lady on the front of the ship. Can’t have a ship without a pretty lady.”

  “Finger bread.” Bob chuckled, and elbowed Charlie in the ribs.

  “Figurehead, you mean,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah,” Bob agreed. “That’s what I thought I said.”

  They crossed the big room. Above the gate to each land-train platform was a signboard made of clacketing rows of characters that spun around to show departure times and destinations.

  “Alton,” Ollie read the sign over platform thirteen. “Sounds like a real hole.”

  “You think everything outside London is an ’ole,” Bob reproached him.

  “Everything outside London is a hole,” Ollie agreed. “A fellow’s gotta have standards. But you can say this for Alton: at least it’s in England.”

  They passed through the gate and onto the platform. It was narrow, paved with small gray stones and posted with multiple warnings to MIND THE GAP and HAVE YOUR TICKET READY. A white line ran along each edge of the platform, just before a drop into the deep trench where the trains idled. The Alton-line train had not arrived yet.

  The platform ended in a brick wall, featureless except for a metal door, painted red.

  Henry Clockswain tried the handle. “Locked.”

  Grim gripped his Eldjotun by the barrel and raised it like a hammer.

  “ ’Old on!” Bob called. “Let me give it a try.” She whipped a thin wallet from her peacoat pocket and extracted what looked to Charlie like two long steel pins. Bob inserted them into the keyhole and fiddled briefly with them.

  Click.

  Bob pushed the door slightly ajar and stepped aside. Grim shouldered forward to have a look.

  “Goodness gracious,” Henry Clockswain said, eyes blinking furiously. “Almost like a burglar.”

  “Burglar!” Ollie flared. “He’s a top mechanick, you thick-witted midget, and don’t you forget it! He’s an inventor too, not second-fiddle errand boy to the real brains of his shop!”

  Bob grabbed Ollie by the front of his peacoat, trying to clamp a hand over her friend’s mouth.

  “You little weasel!” Mr. Clockswain barked. The kobold’s voice had a fierce edge. “I was cutting my teeth on cogs and springs while your mother was an orphan strumpet picking horse apples off the street with her bare hands and selling them for firewood at ha’penny a bushel!”

  Ollie fought free of Bob’s hands and wound up to shout back at the kobold. “I—”

  Grim clapped a hand over Ollie’s mouth. “Bob’s a top mechanick,” he agreed, “and you’re very loud.”

  “Mmmph, mmmmph.” Ollie thrashed about for a moment and then calmed down. Henry Clockswain rubbed both eyes with his hands and backed away.

  “Right,” Grim agreed. “It’s a staircase going down. I’ll lead the way, and then Bob, Gnat, and the kobold. I need you and Charlie to stay up here and keep an eye out.”

  “For enemies,” Charlie suggested.

  “Yes.” Grim let go of Ollie, and he straightened himself up. “Or train staff, or passengers, or anybody else. Bang hard on the door three times if you need to warn us of anything.”

  Ollie sulked, but he didn’t argue.

  Grim led the way down into the darkness below Waterloo Station. Gnat followed, and then Bob and Henry Clockswain. The kobold shut the door behind them.

  “Horse apples,” Ollie muttered. He kicked a light-pole.

  “Mr. Clockswain’s not so bad,” Charlie said.

  “You wouldn’t say that if it was your dad he called an orphan picking up horse droppings, though, would you?”

  Ollie was right. Before Charlie could think of a good answer, a group of men sprang onto the platform. They came out of the Alton-line trench, dragging themselves up and rolling to their feet. They were big and brutish, and they were waving cutlasses.

  Five men. Six, seven.

  “Ollie!” Charlie shouted.

  Eight, nine!

  Ollie had just enough time to spin around and raise his umbrella to a defensive position, and Charlie was just able to pull his clasp knife from his pocket, before they were both swept away.

  Men threw a sack over Charlie’s head and yanked his knife from his hand. He kicked and squirmed, but the men shoved his hands into shackles and then gagged him with an oily, bitter-tasting cloth.

  “Hands off!” he heard Ollie shout. Through the sack Charlie smelled rotten eggs.

  “In the bag!” someone yelled.

  Charlie heard men shouting, and the scraping of boots. Then quiet.

  He heard the groan of door hinges, and hands pushed at his shoulders. He stumbled down stairs, banging his head against a wall. When he fell, hands caught him. They were rough hands, and being caught felt a lot like being hit.

  Charlie stumbled at the bottom of the stairs, banged into a wall, and was pushed around a turn. The air was clammy and cold. He couldn’t smell anything over the stinking rag in his mouth. He heard clicks, whirs, grinding noises, and faraway booms.

  Up more stairs, but a short flight. The groan of another door.

  He was shoved onto a stool.

  “Now we are all here.” It was a voice Charlie recognized and hated, with an accent he had been told was French.

  “I won’t do this thing.” Charlie felt joy and fear mixed together. The second voice was his bap’s. Charlie tried to call out, but choked on his gag.

  “Not if I threaten to kill you?”

  “Kill me, I don’t care. I am done with the Cog. I only want to be left alone.”

  “But, Dr. Singh,” the Sinister Man said, “don’t you see that you are fighting against us? The Cog invested so much in your research, and then you and the other turncoat stole our technology. Now I am giving you one last opportunity to make things right. You will finish our queen, or you will regret it.”

  “You can make no threat that will persuade me.”

  “No? Let us see if that is true.”

  Charlie was pushed off the stool and forced to stumble across an uneven floor. He barely managed to keep his footing. The sack was whipped off his head, and he heard his bap gasp. One of the men behind Charlie ripped the gag from his mouth.

  “Bap!” Charlie shouted.

  He lurched forward, but strong arms grabbed him from behind.

  Charlie was in a large chamber with walls and floors of rough red brick. Like the workroom at Pondicherry’s Clockwork Invention & Repair, this room was full of tools and parts, stacked on shelves and piled on tables.

  Charlie’s friends—Bob, Grim, Gnat, and Mr. Clockswain—sat on a row of stools against one wall. They all had shackles on their wrists, like Charlie. Their weapons were gone, and they had sacks over their heads. On the floor in front of them rested a bulging, writhing sack; Charlie guessed that Ollie must be trapped inside, in the shape of a snake. Behind them stood men with cutlasses.

  Charlie’s bap and the Sinister Man stood next to the biggest table in the center of the room. Mr. Pondicherry was dirty and rumpled, and his ankles were shackled together with a short chain. The Sinister Man held a long-barreled pistol.

  Beside them, her back perfectly straight, stood Queen Victoria. Her presence made Charlie feel like his entire family was here, and he tried to bow. He couldn’t quite do it, because of the arms holding him, but he managed at least to bob his head. He thought Her Majesty would understand.

  The Sinister Man laughed. “Oh, Doctor, how your toy del
ights me!”

  “He is not a toy,” Mr. Pondicherry said. “He is my son.”

  “Even better,” the Sinister Man said. He raised his pistol and pointed it at Charlie’s forehead. “Can I make a threat that persuades you now, Dr. Singh?”

  Charlie’s bap slumped on his stool.

  “That isn’t the queen,” Charlie realized. She didn’t move at all. He had heard of Madame Tussaud’s wax figures, but he had also heard that they didn’t look very lifelike. They looked like wax. This Victoria looked like flesh and blood.

  “No, it isn’t. That’s Dr. Singh’s daughter!” The Frenchman laughed uproariously.

  The Sinister Man cocked the hammer of his big pistol. The gun looked especially huge so close to Charlie’s face.

  “I’ll do it,” Mr. Pondicherry said, and he looked down at the shackles on his feet.

  “Bap!”

  “Take them all away!” The Sinister Man uncocked his pistol and shoved it into his belt. “Give the good doctor a few minutes with his son.”

  Charlie’s bap reached out to grab Charlie, but Charlie was whisked out of his reach by two sword-slinging men. Both the Pondicherrys and all of Charlie’s hooded friends were hauled off through a door, down a dark brick passage, and down more stairs, and then tossed through an open doorway. Charlie landed hard, and his bap and all his companions hit the ground around him.

  The door slammed shut behind them and total darkness fell.

  The smell of rotten eggs, and the sound of tearing cloth.

  “That ain’t my dad,” Ollie said.

  “Course it ain’t,” Bob agreed.

  “Just because he’s French don’t mean he’s my dad.”

  “Course not. You’re a good English lad, same as me. Now get this bag off my ’ead. I can’t see a thing.”

  “It’s completely dark,” Charlie told Bob. “You wouldn’t see a thing anyway.”

  “Aye, but I would. Get this mess off my face and I’ll have a look around.”