She waited for him to repeat glow but he never did, just stared her down for several long painful seconds before sighing. Heavily. That special, Father’s-disappointed sigh she remembered so well from her youth. Sigh. Father was disappointed that she’d eaten all the tea cakes, leaving none for the other children and giving herself a bellyache. Sigh. Father was disconsolate regarding Miss Finnegan’s report on Freddie’s shameful conduct during lessons. Sigh. Father simply didn’t know what to do with a girl who wouldn’t stop opening up his steam car bonnet and removing vital bits to examine them without telling anyone.
The sigh was uncalled for here. She was telling the truth about the squid or cuttlefish, and about the fact that she didn’t know where the Gilded Lily could be found. It was somewhere between Tilbury and the channel, she hoped, with Phineas at the helm doing something to keep the smugglers from accomplishing wholesale cephalopod destruction. But that was as far as her knowledge extended.
“It’s all true. Eventually you’ll see.”
He stood up, straightening his coat. “Knock on the door and inform Maurice when you’re ready to tell me what I need to know. The longer you take to capitulate, the worse it will go for you in the long run. Oh, and you might want to start packing your trunks, if you’re looking for something to do. I’ve purchased a small home in the countryside just a stone’s throw from Windermere. You’ll be moving there shortly.”
“You’re banishing me?”
“To the Lake District,” he pointed out. “It’s beautiful.”
“I won’t go.”
“What sort of life can you afford on your tinker’s wages? And what if the makesmith guild decides on a crackdown against the unlicensed tinker-makesmiths sometime next year, next month, tomorrow? How will you support yourself then?”
“I’ll hire myself out as a French tutor.” She could do it too. Her French was as good as any native’s. Although she was iffy on the specifics of grammar in her almost-native tongue, which might prove a deficiency. “Or I’ll think of something else.”
“Freddie. Darling, I love you and I’m sorry you feel your life is so circumscribed. I’m sorry too that your ideals have to be shattered so harshly. I’d like to use the Glass Octopus as the basis for a public warning system, of course I would. But it isn’t up to me, and politics is a complicated business. A truly intractable Gordian knot. The sooner you learn that . . . well, I won’t say you’ll be happier, but you’ll waste less time worrying about it, once you accept that it can’t be changed.”
“It can. People change things all the time. Systems, ways of thinking, whole governments.”
“Freddie.”
She returned his gaze, feeling so miserable she didn’t even protest when he embraced her awkwardly for a moment, giving her back a pat for good measure before releasing her.
“There, there.”
“Thank you.”
“By the way, don’t suppose you can co-opt any more of my servants, or try to play on old sympathies. Mr. Pinkerton served me well enough, but he let you lead him astray for a good long time before coming back to his senses. I’m grateful he did come back, as I wouldn’t have had you risking your life and poking in affairs that are none of your concern, but of course I had to terminate him. A man who deceives you once will always do it again given the chance. You don’t keep a dog who bites his keeper’s hand.”
Terminate . . .
“But—you can’t have. You killed him? You monster!”
Murcheson looked at her, questioning, then shook his head. “Oh, Freddie, don’t be so melodramatic. I terminated his employment. And told the staff to stop sending our mending to his mother for piecework. He’s a strapping young ox with a pleasant face and a good leg; he’ll quickly find another position. I’ll even provide him a character. As long as the household is far away from here, and nowhere close to the Lake District. You know I’m surprised to hear you defending him, after he tattled on you. Very magnanimous of you.”
“Magnanimous how?” But her words trailed off, and her father didn’t appear to have heard.
It was Dan.
Murcheson was already at the door, knocking for Maurice. “Go to Windermere. Oh, and I’ll be sure to let you know how Lord Smith-Grenville’s ankle is faring, as I’m so sure you’ll be concerned. I’ll be sending someone to arrest him for treason this evening, once I’ve made sure he isn’t going to lead me to anything useful if left to his own devices. Though useful and Smith-Grenville don’t seem to go hand in hand. Heh. Staying at Lady Sophie’s for the doctor to visit, and refusing the five-minute carriage ride from there to here on the grounds of a twisted ankle, I’d be inclined to call him a delicate violet of a fellow. But those flowers have a graceful appearance, don’t they, for all they’re so short? So let’s call him Clumsy Violet when we look back later and have a good laugh about all this. Well, Smith-Grenville probably won’t be laughing, of course.”
Because she had no idea what he was talking about, other than that Barnabas was apparently still at liberty, Freddie said nothing and tried to think what it could all mean. Her father seemed to take her silence for further sullenness, and it didn’t seem to faze him. When the door opened he slipped out quickly, and Freddie caught a glimpse of Maurice’s bulk before she was once more shut in with her thoughts.
Barnabas hadn’t been injured when she left Sophie’s. Had he remained there all night, instead of returning to his room here as they’d discussed? What possible reason could he have?
It didn’t matter. She could find all that out in good time. Because it hadn’t been Barnabas who betrayed her after all. It had been Dan. And while Dan might have wanted to protect Freddie, that couldn’t have been his only motivation.
She smacked herself on the forehead. “I’ve been an idiot!”
An idiot with a practical set of skills. Freddie swiftly dug in her wardrobe, pulling out the sack in which she hid her usual work clothes. In minutes, she’d changed her simple muslin day dress for a pair of trousers and shirt, sturdy brogues and the new cap she’d found to shove her shortened curls into. It fit tighter than the uniform cap had and held all the stray locks in quite nicely.
She didn’t have the padding and bandages, and she considered making do with some sort of substitute, but in the end she decided against it. The trousers were loose, but her braces still held them up, and time was wasting.
Even sans padding, however, she could instantly see that her first hope of escape was no hope at all. She’d had no fire since that morning, owing to the warmth of the day, so the hearth was cool enough to stand in. But when she really got her first good look up the chimney, she could see that she would never make it all the way to the roof that way. The house was old enough that the flues had hosted their share of chimney sweeps’ apprentices, in the days before mechanical sweepers and clockwork flue-scouring devices became the norm. But even on her slimmest day, Freddie had never been built like a sweep’s boy, and the already narrow flue took at least one jog and very likely decreased in size before it reached the open air.
That left only one option, the one she hadn’t wanted to take. Crossing to the closest window, she studied the hasp and padlock that had been installed while she slept, a later discovery that had fueled a good half hour of enraged weeping. But she’d railed more at the symbolism than anything else. If her father had thought to place the lock outside the window, that might have been more difficult, but he’d been foolish enough to put it on the inside. The lock itself was simple enough, thirty seconds’ work to pick.
It was the part once she got outside the window that might be tricky. Aside from the decorative sills and lintels at the windows, the white exterior walls of the house were smooth, offering little purchase for questing feet. There was a drainpipe at the corner of the house, and in theory she might shimmy down that, but the pipe was at least three feet from the window with nothing to grab in between. Then t
hree stories down, clinging to the side of the building directly over the garden fence with its wickedly pointy spikes at the top.
She knew the climb would be a challenge, because she had tried it once before and failed, as her father well knew. It was before the household had moved to France. She had been eight years old then, bent on running away from home over some imagined injustice. Her downfall had come at the end, when she tried to spring clear of the fence and drop the last half story or so. Falling clumsily, she’d caught her skirt on one of the spikes, then swung face-first into the fence and concussed herself against the wrought iron, or perhaps against the flagstones when her skirt gave way and she dropped the last few hand spans to her final landing place. She’d also dislodged two teeth in the process. A gardener had spotted her, wandering bleeding, gap-toothed and dazed, and she supposed they must have patched her up and summoned a doctor but she couldn’t recall much of that part. Only the long interlude afterward during which Mrs. Pinkerton was her constant companion, and both Mother and Father had perfected what was evidently to be a lifetime of sighing in disappointment.
Father must have known she could easily manage the small padlocks he’d put at the windows. He’d taught her how locks worked in the first place, after all. But he hadn’t expected her to try escaping that way, anyway, so he hadn’t invested time or money in a more secure solution. If he’d gone for bars, she would have been well and truly stuck. As it was, she had but to fiddle with the lock, slide up the sash, and wait until the coast was clear.
The irony, she reflected afterward, was that they had both been thinking the same way, judging by the capabilities she’d demonstrated as an eight-year-old girl. A woman of twenty-one has a substantially longer reach, stronger legs and enough common sense to spot where the pipe brackets were before she started her descent, so she would know what her toes were reaching for and the approximate distance until the next one. And this particular woman was also wearing trousers, no layers of fluffy skirts to get in her way or snag on the fence.
She had just dropped to the pavement side of the fence and straightened up when a bobby strolled around the corner, whistling and twirling his billy club. Constable Tucker, a friendly sort who had been a familiar sight around the park for as long as Freddie could remember. She bent on one knee and started retying her shoe, heart racing as she tried to figure out what to say if he spoke to her or, worse, recognized her.
But other than a laconic “Evenin’” as he passed, Constable Tucker paid her no mind at all.
“Evenin’,” she squeaked back, and took off in the opposite direction at a brisk walk, forcing herself not to look back.
She wasn’t sure about her second stop, but she knew where she was headed first. Sophie lived less than two miles away, and it was possible Barnabas was still at her house, nursing an injured ankle. And Freddie knew exactly what to do with a Gordian knot.
TWENTY-TWO
“YOU’RE GOING TO kill us both, Phineas.”
“Not if you keep your elbow out of my blasted ear.”
“I can’t help it. Your head is in the way. This thing wasn’t designed for two pilots, especially not in the dark.”
“If we turn the lights up any further it might attract the cuttlefish. I’m uneasy about the lighted dials being too bright as it is. And you’re not a pilot. At the moment you’re not even being a very good hydrophonics man.”
Barnabas was attempting to operate the Gilded Lily’s hydrophone controls from a kneeling position, bracing his side against the back of the pilot’s chair so he didn’t fall over whenever the submersible changed speed or direction. He was not happy about doing this, but had little choice as he had no idea how to pilot the vessel. He’d at least used the hydrophonic array once before, though only to spot a very large submersible. He had no idea whether he’d be able to decipher the subtler indications of anything smaller, such as a rampaging cuttlefish. And he was trying to do it all through the impediment of a massive hangover, the direct result of his attempt last night to block out every memory of Freddie Murcheson. It hadn’t worked.
“This is the location. I don’t see any movement. Can you make anything out?”
On the periphery of his screen he saw some of the vague glimmerings that he’d gathered meant something was moving nearby. Nothing substantive, though.
“Not so far.”
“Mord couldn’t spot them either at first. Then the sub stirred them up and they moved. Keep looking. I’m taking us closer.”
“Must you?”
Phineas didn’t answer right away, but Barnabas heard a sharp intake of breath and pulled his face from the equipment to see what his brother had discovered.
He gasped as well. “Are they . . .”
Phineas nodded. “Blinking, yes. And we’re right on top of them.”
“Oh, dear God.”
Through the front and side portholes, Barnabas could make out with his naked eyes what the hydrophone had missed. The creatures were everywhere: curled over the nearby rock formation, spread over the ocean floor, nestled in among the kelp. By their shapes and colors, they would have been invisible to the unsuspecting observer, completely camouflaged. Some dozens of animals, many larger than the vessel that floated among them, and they could have been part of the ocean landscape itself if not for one thing. They were all pulsing, glowing then dimming in a gentle rhythm like a heartbeat. Blink blink pause. Blink blink pause. In perfect unison.
The eeriness made him doubt his little brother’s sanity anew when Phineas said, “I think it will be all right.”
“How can this possibly be all right?” Nothing would ever be all right again, but least of all this.
“Without the light, I don’t think we’re disturbing them. It’s odd they’re not moving at all, though. You’d think the water pressure from the propeller would stir them up. I’m going to try to back out slowly, see if I can get some distance.”
“Yes.” That part, Barnabas could support. “Distance would be a very good idea.”
“Then I want to try something. Get back on the hydrophone array.”
“I don’t want to try anything, other than retreating.”
“No, I think this will work. This is far enough. Now I need a light, but something small. With a switch, preferably. Or something I can cover completely with my hand. Do you still have that stupid crank torch, by any chance?”
“If it’s so stupid, why do you want it?”
“Are you positive you’re the elder brother?”
Barnabas started to hand the torch over, reluctantly curious to see what Phineas had in mind. His brother cupped his hand over the end of it, holding it steady with the other hand and pointed at the front porthole, and told Barnabas to start cranking. He wound the gadget dutifully until a halo of light shone on his brother’s palm.
Meanwhile, Phineas had started counting, watching the cuttlefish and matching their time until he was matched to their tempo. “On, on, off . . . On, on, off.”
“Tell me you’re not going to do what I think you’re—”
“Shh . . . off. On, on, off.” He uncovered the light and let it beam forth, shifting his hand to cover it at just the right moments. “On, on, oh my God it’s working. Where are you going? Don’t stop cranking! Barnabas, come back.”
The creatures had responded, peeling slowly away from their hiding places and approaching the submersible in slow, undulating ripples of light and color. There was no apparent aggression. If anything, they looked curious, but they seemed to be keeping some distance. Phineas kept his frantic chanting up, keeping himself in time, and Barnabas bent over the hydrophonics array to see what they looked like on the screen now that they were in motion.
“The torch will stay lit for several minutes. Keep going. Oh, now I see. You know, I think a few of them may have been moving before, but I thought it was kelp.”
“Barnabas, I just
thought of something . . . on, off . . .”
“What?”
“What happens when I stop?”
“Uh. Well. Don’t stop. Damn.”
He would have thought of something eventually, he was certain of it, but it turned out not to be necessary. When he glanced at the screen again, he saw a set of ovals, crisp and distinct, closing in from the south. And just as he lifted his head to share this news with Phineas, the squid stopped blinking, suddenly and simultaneously.
“Cover it up,” he shouted as the creatures began darting this way and that, becoming easier to spot as they grew more agitated. “Cover the light, Phin!”
“Oh, right!” Phineas stuffed the torch under his shirt and wool jumper, effectively blocking the beam while freeing his hands. “Why did they do that, I wonder?”
“Wonder no more. I think the smugglers have arrived. We didn’t move quickly enough.”
They had, in full force and with lights blazing. The cuttlefish swarmed toward them, a seething mass of tentacular rage, and Phineas gave chase. The nimble little sub outpaced the cephalopods and passed the enemy subs completely, but then Phineas cranked the controls hard and pivoted to observe the battle taking place.
Torpedoes, it seemed, were not the most effective weapons against cephalopods the size of gunboats. These enemies didn’t flee, they charged, and before a single shot had been fired at them they had attached themselves directly to the brightest parts of each of the poppy-bearing submersibles. The portholes, the headlamps, the floodlights that swept the seabed. And they began to rend, and squeeze, and use all their considerable might to extinguish every one of the offending lights.
“Let’s back away again,” Barnabas suggested, when it was clear the animals were in no need of their help.
“Right. Turning tail seems like another good choice.”
But just as he maneuvered the craft around, Barnabas spotted one piece of flotsam that distinguished itself from the others. It was bullet-shaped and had propellers, and it sped past them before they were sure what they’d seen.
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