by Robin Jarvis
A frantic scuffle broke out as, within the sty, Adam changed tack and tried to catch one of the piglets instead. Their high, piping squeaks lasted several minutes until finally one of them was seized.
“Stop that wriggling!” the apprentice said sharply, tucking the piglet under his arm and crawling from the low entrance. Jiggling and squirming, Suet squealed again but Adam gripped it firmly and hurried back to the piggery fence.
Clambering over, he paused to look up at the darkening sky. At the highest point of the leaded firmament the panes had become completely clear and the first gleaming stars were pricking through.
Adam o’the Cogs spared a moment to consider them. He was a slight youth and the untidy crop of hair that sprouted from his head was almost the same colour as the pieces of straw that now clung to it.
“All them little lights,” he declared. “One day I’m going to learn what each is called, even name a few maybe.”
A jab in the ribs from one of Suet’s trotters returned his thoughts to more immediate matters and he went running on his scrawny legs, over the yard and into the stables.
When she was certain the boy had gone, the ample bulk of Old Temperance came trundling from the pigsty, followed closely by her remaining piglet. Out into the gathering dusk they shuffled. The great sow pushed her snout between the fence’s wooden bars to grunt her objections.
Yet the eyes which peered across the yard were lenses of polished glass, set into a roughly carved wooden head, for Old Temperance was not a living creature. In these uplifted lands there were no beasts of flesh and blood except for man himself; every other animal was mechanical. The horses of which Wutton Old Place had once been so renowned were finely tuned automata. Even the ducks which swam in the village pond were engineered with springs and gears that flapped rusting tin feathers.
Old Temperance’s concertina-like snout moved rapidly in and out as the set of bellows fixed inside her large, barrelled frame squeezed together, and she gave a long, protracted and miserable snort.
The stables which had once housed the finest mechanical horses of the realm were now reduced to common workshops. Shelves and benches crowded the once grand stalls and from every beam there dripped a hundred gleaming tools.
To bolster his floundering fortunes, Lord Richard Wutton had been compelled to take in the broken and defective animals of neighbouring estates. Here, under the guidance of Master Edwin Dritchly, a man most learned in the study of motive science, Adam and two other apprentices executed repairs. Many of the county’s best animals had at some point been inside the stable workshops and even in the great isle of London there were mechanicals which bore the discreetly pasted label ‘A Wutton Restoration’.
An endless ark of faulty creatures passed through those stable doors so there was always enough to keep Master Edwin and his lads busy, but today had been the most frantic and trying that he had known in a long while.
Edwin Dritchly had been with Lord Richard for many years and had adapted to this new, uplifted world with greater ease than most. He was a short, round man with a chubby pink, clean-shaven face which broke out in red blotches whenever he became flustered or agitated. Since that morning, when his Lord had sprung the surprise announcement that they were to expect an illustrious visitor from the court, Master Edwin had resembled a very large and overripe raspberry.
Huffing and sweating, he foraged through boxes of odds and ends, muttering to himself.
“Fourteen year it’s been,” he grumbled under his breath. “Fourteen year without so much as a hafternoon revel on the green, and now all of the sudden I’m hexpected to put those old gleemen back together and make them fit to be heard. Well, I haren’t no conjuror and what I doesn’t have can’t be grabbed out of the hempty hair.”
Thrusting the box to one side, he pushed past the other two apprentices and began searching beneath one of the benches.
The last of Lord Richard Wutton’s finest mechanicals, the only ones which had never been sold for revenue, were two life-size mannequins: a lutanist and a recorder player. These musicians had not been used for many years, and when Master Edwin was commanded to fetch them out and prepare them for a performance that evening, his plump face had fallen and immediately blotched up.
From their dusty corner in the stable loft the mannequins were brought down and Master Edwin groaned loudly. For too long these marvellous mechanicals had been used as the repositories of excellent spares and so when they were laid upon the workbenches he saw that they were in a truly dreadful, ransacked condition. Most of the internal works were either corroded or missing, pipes had perished and brass joints had been stripped away.
“May the celestial orbs fall upon me!” he warbled. “I fear Lord Richard will look like an impoverished fool this night.”
The apprentices, however, were not so easily dismayed and were certain they could manage to lash something together. They were rarely allowed to work on any automata as intricate as the musicians and were eager to show off their skills. For the whole of the afternoon they toiled unceasingly to replace plundered cogs and levers. Gears were removed from several sheep, and the legs of chickens and geese were robbed of their springs. Master Dritchly’s wife took time away from the kitchen, where a feast was being prepared, to whisk the faded velvet costumes from the mannequins. She then set to work beating the dust out of them and sewing up the holes.
Eventually, as the day wore on, their confidence that the task would be completed on time increased.
Inspecting the labour, Master Edwin had congratulated his apprentices. But when he opened the head of the recorder player to check that the breath pipe was still in place, he made an awful discovery and buried his face in his hands. “The cordials are gone!” he had wailed.
Inside every mechanical, from the most crudely fashioned tin fighting cockerel, to the Queen’s own Ladies of the Privy Chamber, were glass phials containing a fluid named ichor. The sophisticated models possessed four vessels of these different coloured ‘humours’, each one governing separate aspects of function.
The basic fluid was the green which maintained balance and motion. Vulgarly called ‘phlegm’, it was present in even the most rudimentary creature. Amber ichor, also known as ‘yellow bile’, controlled intent and obedience; a skilled master of motive science would ensure that this was in harmony with ‘temper’, the red fluid which instilled character. Last and most precious of all was ‘black bile’, a rare elixir to be found in large quantities only within the servitors of the richest households. This costly liquid imparted elementary thought to a mechanical and was valued many times higher than gold.
At some point during the years of repairing the ‘livestock’ of other estates, the ichors of the musicians had been removed and never replaced. Without them, they could neither move nor play a single note.
In the little time that remained before the important guest’s arrival, Master Edwin and the apprentices tried to refill the empty phials. Every cow had been rounded up and their dismantled pieces lay in corners alongside overturned or half-open sheep. Heads of all sizes stared up from the floor, the glass lenses of their eyes gazing sightlessly at the three boys feverishly topping up the musician’s vessels with scavenged cordials. But there was still not quite enough of the amber for the recorder player.
Only a few drops more were needed and so Adam o’the Cogs had been sent out to the piggery to fetch in Old Temperance. The great sow had yellow bile in abundance.
“Where is that clotpole of a boy?” Master Edwin called again. “Hum hum, how long does it take to haul the old pig in here?” Even as he spoke Adam came running in with the piglet under his arm.
“I couldn’t get Old Temperance out of the sty,” he explained hurriedly. “So I brought Suet instead; there ought to be just enough in him.”
Master Edwin waved a podgy hand at the main workbench. “Set it down and hopen it up,” he instructed. “Hardly any time left – we won’t have a chance to rehearse these gleemen.”
/> Taking the piglet from under his arm, Adam placed it upon the wide workbench. The wooden creature gave a shrill squeal and went scooting from the boy’s grasp. Through a heap of small brass wheels and miniature pulleys it bolted, sending them rolling to the floor. Over a sheep’s hind leg the piglet leaped, darting this way and that as it hunted for an escape.
“Catch it!” Master Edwin roared.
Henry Wattle, a curly-haired apprentice who was the same age as Adam, could not help laughing as the small creature scudded across the bench. Suet looked so comical, dodging and swerving on its small trotters, that Henry was of no assistance at all. Still squealing, the piglet darted to the end of the workbench where the recorder player sat awaiting the remaining drops of amber ichor.
Master Edwin’s stout arms came reaching across to grab it but Suet was too nimble. Nipping aside, it ran straight into the musician’s velvet-covered back.
A high squawk sounded as the piglet’s nose squashed flat. To everyone’s dismay, the figure was knocked from the bench and went lurching to the ground.
“Save it!” Master Edwin cried.
Henry Wattle, who had not stopped laughing, slithered across just in time to break the mechanical’s fall.
Pushing its nose out again, Suet hopped a brief victory jig. Then it jumped from the bench, landed upon the musician’s back, sprang on to Henry’s astonished head and leaped the remaining distance to the floor.
With a triumphant shake of its stiff, leathery ears, the piglet rocketed for the stable door. Haring under Adam’s legs it set off, pelting between the disassembled sheep and cattle which lay between it and freedom. But, even as the yard came into view, a pair of strong hands seized its stumpy body and Suet was plucked from the ground.
Jack Flye lifted the small creature high into the air until it was level with his own lean face and stared into the tiny eyeholes cut into the animal’s carved head.
“Now then,” he said firmly, “we’ll have no more of that. You can go back to Old Temperance tomorrow.”
Before Suet could begin to squeak a protest, it was whirled around and the oldest of the apprentices pressed the Wutton crest which was chiselled upon its back. In that instant the piglet’s struggles ceased, the small trotters juddered to a stop and dangled limply from their axles as the concertina snout extended to its full length with a sad whine of escaping air.
“Thank you, Jack,” Master Edwin sighed, mopping his forehead with his cuff. “Hum hum, take hout the cordial and we can lug the gleemen across to the manor house.”
Suspending the inert piglet from a wire by the hook of its tail, Jack unfastened the clip that held the creature together and the wooden keg of its body swung in half. Deftly, the apprentice reached inside and removed a small glass phial which he carried to where Adam was helping Henry lift the fallen musician back on to the bench. Master Edwin fanned his glowing face with his hat while overseeing this final adjustment.
At seventeen years of age, Jack Flye was the most experienced of his apprentices. He was a serious young man, determined in his ambition to possess his own workshop one day. Adam and Henry both looked up to him; they watched in respectful silence as the youth brushed the dark hair from his eyes and measured several drops of Suet’s ichor into a larger glass vessel already swilling with yellow bile.
“There,” he breathed, placing the second phial into the mannequin’s polished brass head. “The level is amended, the amber cordial is in perfect accord with the red. This fellow is ready to toot until his bellows bust.”
Nodding in satisfaction, Master Dritchly closed the musician’s face and fastened it shut.
“Well done, lads,” he said, a great grin splitting his own features. “I never thought has how we’d do it – I never did, most honest I never. Hum hum.”
Jack sucked his teeth thoughtfully as he gazed at the renovated mechanicals. Arrayed in their repaired finery, the figures looked quite presentable. The recorder player was dressed in a peascod paunch doublet of popinjay green, embellished with gold brocade with matching slops. Not an inch of the internal frame could be seen, and that was just as well for one of the arms was undoubtedly a modified cow’s leg with chicken-claw fingers. Hidden from view by sleeve and glove, nobody would be able to guess – especially at a distance and in candlelight, which was the plan.
The lutanist was dressed in much the same manner, except that the velvet was Coventry blue, pinked with silver tinsel. Yet the colours had faded from both costumes, the trimmings were tarnished and, despite Mistress Dritchly’s best efforts, she had been unable to eradicate the worst patches of mildew.
“Let’s just hope they’ll play in tune after all these years,” Jack murmured.
“Hum hum, may God and the heavenly spheres permit it,” Master Edwin said, “for there’s no time to test them.”
Bidding Henry and Adam to follow them with the actual instruments, Master Edwin and Jack hoisted the musicians over their shoulders and marched from the workshop.
Cog Adam glanced around at the wreckage of animals and birds that littered the stables. “Look at the state of this mess. It’ll take three days at least to put everything back the way it was,” he muttered. “We won’t be able to find half of what’s needed, there’ll be bits missing and most of the sheep will end up limping.”
Henry Wattle picked up the detached head of a tin goose and blew through its neck as though it were a trumpet. The head wagged and a loud “HONK” blasted throughout the workshop. “Duck!” he shouted, throwing it at Adam and cackling at the bad joke.
Adam scowled at him, then clambered up to the hay loft where the instruments had been stored. He reappeared a moment later carrying a large recorder and a very dusty lute.
“One of the strings is broken,” he said, passing the unusual, bowl-shaped object to Henry. “Do you think it matters? Will anyone notice?”
The boy shook his curly head and snorted rather like Old Temperance. “Listen, Coggy,” he laughed, “the less strings there are the better. Less racket, see? Do you really think them mechanicals are going to be able to play? I’ll be amazed if they can hold the instruments, never mind a tune.”
“Master Edwin knows what he’s doing,” Adam insisted. “There’s no one better at motive science than him. If he thinks they’ll work that’s good enough for me!”
Henry wiped a hand across his already dirty face and succeeded in making it worse. “Hog’s breath!” he said scornfully. “If Hummy Hum, Dull as Ditch Water Dritchly was really any good he wouldn’t be stuck in this dung pile. He’d be out there on some rich estate making heaps of money. That’s what I’m going to do, soon as I’m able. Sir Henry Wattle, that’s who I’ll be one day. Work for the Queen Herself, maybe, and have pots and pots of gold coin.”
“Well, you’ll just have to make do with that lute for now,” Adam told him as he went into the yard. “Bring it to the house.”
Alone in the workshops, Henry Wattle spat on the floor, then kicked an upended, headless sheep, forcing air through its internal pipes. A hoarse “Baaaaaaa” echoed from the circular neck hole.
“I will be rich,” he said defiantly, “I will live in a great house of my own – I know it.”
Leaving the stables, Henry was surprised to see Adam still in the yard. It was quite dark now and the fair-haired boy was staring out along the dusty road that led to the village.
“What you doing?” Henry asked.
Adam pointed with the recorder. “They’re here,” he murmured. “Lord Richard’s guests.”
Then Henry heard the faint sound of cantering hooves and saw indistinct shapes riding through the shadows.
“Five of them,” Adam counted. “No, there are five horses but only four riders. I wonder who they are.”
The message that Lord Richard Wutton received that morning had not divulged the identity of the important guest who would be visiting his estate. The desire to know the answer to that mystery burned in the hearts of both apprentices. Their errand momentarily fo
rgotten, they stood rooted to the spot as the riders drew closer.
“What if it’s the Queen Herself?” Adam whispered.
“You loony,” Henry scoffed. “Why would Her Majesty come to this muddy backwater? Nowt in this muck hole to interest the likes of Her.”
“She came here once,” Adam answered. “Supposed to have been good friends with Lord Richard in the old days, when he were rich and important.”
Henry clicked his tongue. “Well he ain’t neither no more,” he said flatly. “I’ll wager this’ll be a big wash out. Won’t be no one worth mentioning at all and our hard slog today will have been wasted. Prob’ly one of the court cooks come to maunder the secret of Mistress Dritchly’s pear tart.”
“Cooks don’t get to ride on steeds like that,” Adam murmured.
The riders were very near now and even in the gloom the boys could see that their horses were infinitely superior to anything they had ever seen.
Then into the yard they came, reining their mounts to a stamping halt.
The horses were magnificent. Fashioned from black steel, they were elegant and powerful and the boys gawped at them. Never had they imagined that any mechanical could be so beautiful as these incredible creatures. Every sinew of the original beast was hammered into the flowing panels and their proud heads tossed and strained at the reins in a most natural and convincing manner.
Yet among those horses there was one even greater than the rest. It was a whole hand taller, the mane and tail were of the finest silken fibres and it was shod with bronze. In the obsidian globes of its eyes there gleamed a fierce intelligence, and both Henry and Adam guessed that somewhere within that fabulous steed there was undoubtedly a quantity of black ichor.
“You, boy!” a clipped, commanding voice called down from its rider whose face was concealed in shadow. “Where is Richard Wutton? Why is he not here to greet us?”
Not certain which of them the stranger was addressing, both apprentices bowed and began gabbling at once in apology.
“I’m sure he don’t know of your arrival yet, sir,” Adam said.