Shadow Conspiracy

by Phyllis Irene

  “Do you think he’s still alive?” Ada forced herself to ask the question calmly.

  “I do. The question is, what do his abductors want of him?” Mr. Worth met her gaze. His eyes were a bright pale blue, like glass. “If it is him they wanted.”

  Ada’s throat seized tight. She had not stopped to consider she might have been the actual target of this bizarre kidnapping.

  No, I did not permit myself to consider it.

  “Was it the Luddites?”

  “We don’t think so. The Luddites would have been more likely to destroy the New Britannia or murder Mr. Babbage outright. And they do not have the funding to build a mechanism like the one employed in this case.” He laid the paper down. Her father’s memoirs. He was reading her father’s memoirs and discussing so calmly the abduction of Mr. Babbage.

  “Do you know who might have been able to build a mechanism like the one we saw, Lady Lovelace?”

  Be calm, be calm and answer. “I can only guess, as I saw only part of it.” Black, dripping wet, sweeping him off the deck, into the air, down, calling my name... “However, we may venture to say it needed to go under the water, control the...tentacles...and be able to see or otherwise identify the...individual required. Taken with the automatic tug that crossed the path, I would estimate there are only half a dozen individuals who could create such devices.”

  “One of whom would be Mr. Babbage?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you would be another?”

  Ada hesitated for a single heartbeat. “Yes.”

  “You also shouted something at the end, as Mr. Babbage disappeared. What was that?”

  Ada felt immensely weary, as if she’d been standing for hours on a high mountaintop, exposed to the elements.

  He knows everything else, he may as well know this.

  “Canto Thirteen.”

  He cocked his head. “Why would you shout such a thing?”

  Ada felt her knees begin to tremble. She wanted to sit. She wanted to call the servants for food and drink.

  She wanted to order Bastion to throw this man with his glass-blue eyes out the window, gather up the memoir pages and hide them away again.

  “What do you know of automata codices?” she asked.

  Mr. Worth shrugged minutely. “They carry the encoded language that determines how an automaton will behave, which commands it will follow and so forth.”

  “And on the cards that I have designed personally...there is an extra set of codes. Those codes identify a command that will stop the mechanism if spoken.”

  “I see.” But he didn’t. Neither did he believe her.

  His open doubt bit hard. “No machine is infallible, Mr. Worth, and a number of the automata in this house are highly dangerous. It is necessary that there be a safe word of some sort.”

  “A very sensible precaution,” he agreed smoothly. “But I ask again, why would you call out your private safe word to a machine you did not build?”

  “I thought perhaps someone had counterfeited some of the codex cards I created. It has happened before. If so, they might have unknowingly copied the safe word codes.” More thoughts clicked into place. “Perhaps they had access to the Dover Patrol, or the Panzance Guard.”

  “Perhaps.” He ran his fingers over the scarred table edge. “The only remaining question to ask is what can you tell me about the charred body we found in the alley behind your Camden factory?”

  Ada briefly considered lying. A day ago, she would have.

  “His name was Gordon Beale. He was a private agent and I was employing him to discover who was sending me these papers.” She gestured toward the pages on the table without looking at them. “His flier crashed, but he made his way back to me. I did not wish his body found in the house, so I had it removed.”

  Mr. Worth blinked once. “Very cold of you, if I may say so, my lady.”

  “Yes.”

  “And quite illegal.”

  “Yes.”

  They stood, gazes locked, neither giving ground before the other.

  “And did he tell you anything before he died?” Mr. Worth asked at last.

  “I asked who had...harmed him. And he said...” She swallowed. “He said, ‘Your father.’”

  Mr. Worth rubbed the side of his jaw but to her surprise did not continue the questions. “Thank you, Lady Lovelace.” He bowed to her. “I have left my card with your butler. You will be so good as to contact me if you think of anything new, or if you decide to leave London for any reason. Now, with your permission, I will show myself out.”

  He bowed and left, closing the door behind himself.

  The floor outside made no sound.

  Ada realised she was shaking. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared out the window. Down in the street, carts and horses jostled with the steam wagons. A tinker family carried clockwork birds in cages and cried out their wares, but made room for the pair of whistling automatic horses that pulled a carriage the size of a rolling house.

  The gossips and the tittle-tattles liked to speculate that she was hopelessly in love with Charles Babbage. How could a woman and man create so much together without love between them? But Charles loved the work, the machines, the acclaim. Oh, he cared for her, more than her husband, certainly more than her children. But love? That raw storm of endless, unstoppable emotion her father had written of? No. No one felt such a thing for her.

  But she liked Mr. Babbage. She respected him, and he had seen at once what she meant when she showed him the notebooks filled with switching diagrams that could be used to directly command automata and engines. No one else had ever believed her when she spoke of her mechanical dreams.

  Ada looked at the secret papers laid out so neatly on her desk. It was impossible to leave them there, naked to the world. She gathered them gently up to return them to their safe hiding place.

  It was only then she realised one was missing. Gone. Into the hands of Mr. Worth of the glass-blue eyes, who did not believe her explanation as to why she had called out the safe word command.

  Slowly, awkwardly, Ada Byron, Ada King, Countess Lovelace began to cry.

  VI

  “You have been keeping silent about a great deal, Lady Lovelace,” Mr. Worth said.

  It had been fully four days since Mr. Worth had interviewed her and removed the page from her father’s memoirs. Since then, Ada had felt herself caught up in some strange country dance in which she was required to move through an infinite formal succession of figures without being able to control them. If she was not talking with the head of police or the Home Secretary, she was at the Camden factory. If not there, she was in the salon with Mother and the Furies, receiving visitors and saying again what a shock, what a dreadful shock it was.

  It was a strange relief to have Mr. Worth stride into her workroom again, barely waiting for the footman to step aside. She had always felt a kinship with his kind of man, to her mother’s dismay. Mr. Worth was, in his own way, a creator. He dealt in the real and was not too proud to use his hands. That he did not trust her was almost beside the point.

  But not entirely. “You stole my property, Mr. Worth,” said Ada, even as she gestured him toward a chair in the library alcove.

  Mr. Worth ignored her words, and her invitation to sit. “You have been receiving mysterious packages, my lady. Your investigative consultant died recently in a highly preventable accident.”

  Ada drew herself up straight. She’d had her reply prepared from the first. “My inquiries had nothing to do with my work or with Mr. Babbage, Mr. Worth. It was a purely personal matter.”

  Mr. Worth sighed. “Lady Lovelace, before last Tuesday, Mr. Babbage’s life was proceeding normally. But you...your father’s memoirs are resurrected, your man died, and your partner was kidnapped. Whether you wish it or not, your personal affairs must be at the centre of my inquiries.” He drew out the ragged, water-stained page he had taken from her and unfolded it carefully. “Now, I was under the impression your fathe
r’s memoirs had been destroyed?”

  “By his publisher, John Murray.” Ada drew in a deep breath and forced her thoughts to hold their places. Mr. Worth had the paper in his hand. She could not prevaricate. Neither could she—no matter how much she wanted to—snatch it from his fingers. “Mr. Murray said they were...unsuitable for a general readership.”

  “Mmm.” Damon Worth pursed his lips. “But this page at least does not include the usual unsuitable reasons. For example, ‘Why do I find myself thinking of baby Ada now? What place will that child—or any child—ever again hold in my thoughts after the morrow? Perhaps that is what disturbs Mother Mary...?’” Mr. Worth raised an eyebrow at her. Ada opened her mouth, but no words emerged. “I will have to have a word with Mr. Murray.”

  He sat regarding her for a long moment. He was waiting for her to grow uncomfortable and fill the silence, he hoped, with revealing or poorly considered words. But Ada had suffer this tactic from her mother and had years of practise keeping silent.

  At last, Mr. Worth inclined his head as if to acknowledge her victory, and changed the subject. “What’s behind that curtain there?” He asked, turning toward the green baize draperies that hung between two of the bookcases, where a fireplace might be in a more usual sort of sitting room.

  I would not be at all surprised if you already knew. “A portrait of my father. My mother presented it to me on my wedding night.” A test, you see, to determine that I was beyond being affected by the sight of him.

  “May I see it?”

  “If you wish.” She stood up and pulled the cord.

  The curtains opened to reveal a space of blank wall with a faint square of dust marking the place where the portrait had been.

  Ada stared. She saw the empty spot, but it made no sense whatsoever. The portrait had to be there—a young man in Albanian dress with dark hair and narrow moustache and a strong smooth profile. He looked confidently into the distance. It was a handsome face, a face that had once driven young women to swoon and much more.

  The wall was blank.

  Ada rounded on Mr. Worth.

  “Where is it?” she cried.

  He neither moved nor flinched. “I don’t know. When was the last time you looked behind that curtain?”

  “I...I cannot remember.” Ada pressed the heel of her palm to her forehead. A tremor shook her. What is happening?

  “A month? A year?”

  “I...I don’t know.” She’d hidden it because it was hidden while she was growing up. But she’d known it was there, an embodiment of her father’s ghost in oil and canvas.

  Do not let him distract you. Do not let him command this. “Did you know about this?” she demanded.

  “I did,” said Mr. Worth, quite unperturbed. “But I needed to find out if you did. Do you need to sit down, my lady?”

  She did, but she did so quickly, so that he would not have time to step forward to help her. Now he could look down on her from his great height.

  “Your mother, Lady Lovelace. Her feelings toward your father seem to have been...somewhat complex.”

  Ada’s hands twisted together. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  The corner of Mr. Worth’s mouth curled up. Again, he did not believe her. “She was instrumental in spreading the rumours of an affair with his half-sister that caused him to enter his self-imposed exile,” he said. “She accused him of sodomy. And yet she keeps his name, his ring, his portrait and his child.”

  He waited. He would wait for an hour, or longer. She could tell. He was that sort. Not too proud to use his hands, or anything that came into them.

  “My mother, Mr. Worth, is acutely aware of the realities of power.” She had never spoken aloud of these things. Not even to Mr. Babbage. “If she is Lady Byron, she has power. If she is the keeper of Lord Byron’s daughter, she has a kind of legitimacy that just being...another castoff woman cannot confer.” Her thoughts flashed to Lady Melbourne in her unsuitable dress, smiling beside her husband on the quay.

  “Could Lady Byron have removed his portrait?”

  “She would have no reason to do so.”

  “I did not ask if she would,” said Mr. Worth patiently. “I asked if she could.”

  Ada swallowed and shuffled through her thoughts. “If she acquired the key to the lock, it is physically possible. She knew where it was, and it was not secured to the wall.” She paused. “You are aware that Lady Melbourne was on the quay as well, that day?”

  Mr. Worth nodded. “And I am of course aware of her...connection with Lord Byron. It is a difficult matter to discover information about the wife of the Prime Minister, but inquiries are being made.” His eyes went distant. She could practically hear the turning of the gears in his mind as he totted up a list of all that needed to be done. “Now, Lady Lovelace, I must ask you for the remainder of your father’s memoirs.”

  Ada lifted her eyes and frowned deeply. “You have no right.”

  “My lady,” he sighed, and Ada saw the dark rings under his eyes. She also noted for the first time that his collar was dirty, and crooked. “You know that is not a true statement. Do you want me to get them or will you?”

  Ada rose and walked to her desk. She worked the marquetry switch she had thought so clever. She glanced at her keyman, Bastion. Mr. Worth had no idea what commands Bastion answered to. With a word to her automatic servant, Mr. Worth could find himself restrained, or worse. With a word, he could be made to regret he had come to turn her world over.

  She lifted her father’s papers from the drawer, placed them in a portfolio and handed them across.

  Mr. Worth received them with a bow. “Thank you for your time, Lady Lovelace.”‘

  “Mr. Worth,” she said as he turned away. “If I might ask you a question.”

  “Of course, my lady.” He faced her fully, patiently.

  “On the quay, you asked me several questions about souls and machines. Why?”

  His smile was small, almost bashful. “Because I very rarely have the chance to indulge my personal curiosity.”

  “But why that particular subject?”

  “Because, Lady Lovelace, the person from whom that automatic valet fled in Scotland was my brother.”

  He bowed once more, his glass-blue eyes shimmering bright. She closed the door behind him and listened while his feet passed over her nightingale floor without triggering one of the loose boards.

  VII

  Three more days passed before Ada could contrive sufficient excuse to allow her to visit Lady Melbourne. Three days of signing papers, writing letters, and issuing orders. Three days of listening to her men of business explain that they did not wish to be indelicate, but this was a marvellous opportunity. The abduction of Mr. Babbage had shown that the government and the police needed to increase the investment in the automatic sciences, and the firm of Babbage & Lovelace was uniquely qualified to answer the national need, provided she would appoint a temporary director, in Mr. Babbage’s...absence.

  Ada knew what she was supposed to do. Mother and the Furies, with William’s support, had made it all plain. She was to keep on. The proper men would find Mr. Babbage, if he was to be found at all. If not, another partner would be taken on, or the business would be sold. That would be even better. That would leave a fortune for William to be in charge of, and she could retire to her parlour and do charitable works, possibly even found a school. Activities proper to a titled lady.

  Ada demurred and delayed and finally locked herself in the workroom, where she did nothing but look up at the green curtain covering the wall where her father’s portrait had been. It was too much. She needed to act, and to understand. She needed to know why her father was being resurrected at the same time Mr. Babbage had been taken.

  As Ada expected, she was admitted to the Prime Minister’s private residence as soon as she presented her card. Lady Melbourne sat alone in a well-appointed blue and green parlour. When Ada entered the room, that lady stretched out both hands.

  “Ada,
my dear! This is most unexpected! How are you, poor, dear child?” She gripped Ada’s hands as if her strength could convey sincerity.

  “I am perfectly well, thank you, Lady Melbourne.”

  “Of course, of course.” She laid one dry hand on Ada’s cheek. Ada had to work not to shake her off. “Anyone can tell by looking at you how well you will bear up under your trials. Such strength. So very like your father.”

  Which was not an assessment of Lord Byron that Ada had ever heard before.

  “I have often longed to be able to speak with you about your dear father, you know,” Lady Melbourne went on as she settled back in her plush chair and motioned Ada to the green sofa. “I even wrote you once or twice. I do not expect you ever received my letters?”

  “I did not.”

  “As I thought. She sought to separate you from all knowledge, all memory...” Lady Melbourne’s face spasmed in anger.

  “It is about my father I’ve come, Lady Melbourne,” said Ada quickly.

  Lady Melbourne’s smile was all sunshine, but the gleam in her eye was cold triumph. “I knew it! Oh, Ada!” Again Lady Melbourne seized her hand. “You want to bring him back, don’t you?”

  “I am not precisely sure what you mean,” said Ada, extricating herself gently but firmly.

  “You want to fully acknowledge that you are his heir, his living legacy.” The triumph was gone from Lady Melbourne, replaced by something almost ethereal. “You wish to be reunited with him, as a portion of his greatness.”

  Lord help us, she’s been listening to the ghost-gossipers. Not a week went by without someone attempting to proclaim that her father’s shade still lingered on Earth, and that he had a message for Ada. “I wish to know, Lady Melbourne, if you are the one who has been sending me pages from my father’s memoirs.” Ada found no polite way to introduce the subject gradually, and so determined to be direct.

  Lady Melbourne blanched. “You’ve been receiving...?”