He tied the two lengths of rope together with a double fisherman’s knot, then fastened one end to the broadest section of the trunk he could reach. Dragging Alison down through a hell of needles made her wail and sob but he had no choice. “All right, darling, this is it. It’s all downhill from here.”
He sidestepped out onto a stout limb, braced himself on a spot he felt would support their combined weight. It would also give her a less obstructed descent. He took several massive breaths. Please work. He fed the rope over his shoulder until it was taut between the two of them. “Alison, I need you to push yourself off. You’ll swing toward me, then I can lower you away.”
God bless her, she didn’t hesitate a beat. The rope chafed his neck and his shoulder as he caught her full weight—Jesus—but at least she had one good arm to hold the rope with. Her other, though damaged, had enough life to push against the foliage, to guide her through the obstacles below. He gritted his teeth and fed the rope quicker than he’d like, until it suddenly went limp.
“Red, I’m stuck!”
Bloody hell fire. “All right, I’m coming.” He didn’t know how many times he could keep rescuing her, but he’d die before giving in. Of a sudden, with the snowflakes flittering about his face and the sheer razor of impossibility lining their descent, it felt epic, like some dark Russian fairytale, as though he was in the midst of his swansong. A lifetime spent trying to achieve the unachievable, dreaming big and falling short, now gaped before him, daring him to fail again.
But he had not failed. On the contrary, he’d achieved everything he’d set out to do in London. He had momentum.
He bent to unlock his knee joint but found himself flat on the branch. The entire tree shook under a heavy blow. He watched in horror as a small cannonball smashed its way through the foliage, thumping from branch to branch, a few feet away.
Time’s up. We go together. He grabbed the rope and lowered himself, hand under hand, down to Alison.
“We can’t make it, can we?” Her resignation confirmed what he’d already decided he had to do. He couldn’t let Alison be taken—not like this, not with the names in her possession. That left only one option.
“Not the way I thought, no.” He untied her harness and tossed the rope aside.
“What...what are you doing?”
“The only thing I can. You know too much, and we can’t risk you being caught.”
She stared, frozen and glistening. “Will it be quick?”
“Yes.”
“Will it hurt?”
“Only a little.”
“I—I didn’t even make it to Christmas, did I?”
Another cannonball rocked the tree. Red kissed her forehead, tried not to let her sobs get to him. There’s no other way. But when he dipped a hand into his belt pouch and found it empty, her despair flooded into him too. Christ. It’s fallen out.
But where on earth had it landed? Could his friends find it in time? And if so, how could they possibly get it up to him?
Chapter Eight
“Joe! You there?” Mr. Mulqueen bellowed down.
Thank God he’s still alive. Edmond spun so fast in his eagerness to fetch Joe from the candy apple stall, the dynamo lamp spilled out of his coat, clattered somewhere on the cobbles. He didn’t care. “Joe, come on. It’s Mr. Mulqueen. He needs your help.” Tugging the black fusilier’s shirt tail didn’t prompt the rush he’d expected. Angharad was still treating his wounds.
“Give us one minute, Edmond. I’m almost done.” She affixed two thick pieces of gauze, one for each bullet wound, and wrapped a bandage three times around his waist, then once more for good luck.
“What does he want us to do, lad?” Joe squinted up at the riot of red and green glints.
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s stuck and wants to jump.”
“Christ, no. He’s far too high.” Joe gave Angharad a peck on the lips when she finished tying the bandage. “You’d best hold fast to those nursing skills,” he told her. “Red’s angel’s in a bad way from the sounds of it.”
They all hurried to about thirty feet from the tree, a reasonably safe distance, where Joe shouted up, “Ahoy! How goes it, Red?”
“Joe, quick as you can—I need you to find something I dropped. It’s copper and round, about the size of a large marble. It’s urgent. Can you see it?”
“I’ll...have a look.” Joe pulled a face and nursed his side, muttering, “What the devil he wants with a marble at a time like this...”
“Is this what he means?” Angharad slipped on a bed of splinters and pine needles as she dashed out from under a low branch. Edmond and Joe helped her up.
“That’s it!” Edmond wanted to snatch it from her hand, but pointed at it instead. “It’s from his pouch. He told me it was dangerous—he wanted to keep it secret.”
Another cannonball, followed by a barrage of rifle shots, pushed them back to their original safe distance. “Red, we’ve found it,” Joe yelled up. “What is it? What can we do with it?”
“Nothing. Good God man, you mustn’t do anything with it. I need you to throw it to me somehow. If I’m going to save Alison’s life, I must have it right now. We have no time.”
Edmond gasped, gazed up, then looked at the dull copper marble in Angharad’s hand. This is something I can do...I have to do. His quick solution felt right—it just fit, as though he was still resting on his father’s shoulder, using his own intuition as he studied the Leviacrum roof through the telescope. He knew the old man would approve of this answer.
While Joe and Angharad shrugged at one another, Edmond snatched the marble from her hand and sprinted away to the scaffold ladder. He ignored their calls and even the din of snapping wood. Another cannonball had hit the tree. His mind outpaced his feet. He missed his footing several times on the various ladders until he stood, panting, on the third highest platform.
A carpet of green baize and numerous imitation frosted mountains separated him from the steam train climbing on its track against the hangar wall behind. Its rhythmic clunk-clack, clunk-clack as it passed between sections of track gave him a strange, steely poise, as though he knew deep down he was supposed to do this.
He picked his catapult up from where he’d left it earlier, and held the copper marble against the leather pocket.
“Edmond! How good are you with that thing?” Wherever he was, Mr. Mulqueen sounded surprised and anxious.
“I’m a crack shot, sir. But I can’t see you.”
“What about now?”
No, not—
“Look up, lad. Thirty, thirty-five degrees. The red tunic hanging over the rustling leaves.”
There! Got you.
“Yes, sir. Tell me exactly where to aim.” Edmond’s hands began to shake, so he wiped them both on his trousers.
“I’ll hold your target out. Aim for the centre of the tunic, and I’ll catch it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can hit it from there? We might only have one shot at this.”
“Ready.” Edmond licked his lips, then clamped his bottom lip between his teeth.
“Go, lad.”
As he breathed out, he pulled the rubber strips back almost to arm’s length, imagined he was aiming at a single letter on a label on the smallest tin can perched on his garden wall, and let go. He leaned after it, as if that would somehow help with the flight—an insanely long, rising flight he lost amid the darkness and the coloured glintings.
No reply.
The red tunic fell from the tree. It opened and twirled and closed and plummeted.
Hell. I missed.
He stepped back on eggshells, once again wanting to slip unseen through the hole at his feet. He scrambled for excuses, for reasons why he’d let everyone down. Then it occurred to him...what could the old soldier have done with a copper marble anyway? How could it have—
“Well done, lad. Tell Joe that letter inside the tunic must reach Viscount Faversham. Did you hear that?”
“Yes, sir. Of c
ourse.”
“Good lad. And Edmond?”
“Sir?”
“Don’t forget me.”
What?
Mr. Mulqueen dropped from the tree with his angel tightly in his arms. She didn’t even scream. But— Edmond shut his eyes and turned away...
In the corner of his vision, even through the skin of his eyelid, a searing blue flash. He ran to the edge and peered down, not comprehending, just...watching.
A spherical web of St. Elmo’s Fire spread in mid-air. It enveloped Mr. Mulqueen and his lady in a falling blaze. A memory of observing the sparks atop the Leviacrum tower shot into his mind.
The web imploded and vanished in an instant, leaving behind a hundred crackling, lilac streamers that spun to ground like molten spinning jennies scarring the night air. Edmond staggered back, dropped the catapult at his feet. He gazed up to the empty spot in the tree where Mr. Mulqueen had jumped from.
What—what just happened?
He listened to the claps of rifle shots and the ripping thunder caused by falling cannonballs, the distant, jaunty music from the pipe organ, steam hisses whispering around the emporium. But it was all background noise, for the same four words echoed in his brain like pick-axes striking precious metal in a deep subterranean cave: Edmond, don’t forget me.
He might have been standing there for hours by the time Angharad took him by the hand. “We need to get you home, right now,” she said. “This might buy us some time.” She let go and drew a pistol from her skirt pocket, fired four times up through the open window. “There. Let ’em stick that in their Christmas pudding.” Then she ushered him down never-ending ladders until they reached Joe, who gripped Edmond’s shoulder with a firm hand, rocking him a little.
It broke his morbid spell.
The sealed envelope Reggie plucked from the red tunic jogged Edmond’s memory. “Hey, Mr. Mulqueen said—”
“Yes?” When Edmond didn’t answer her, Angharad turned to Joe. “I might have hit something up there. Can’t be sure. We need to skedaddle, sharpish.”
“Agreed. Right, fellas,” Joe said, “I don’t know what the hell just happened to Red, but it’s our cue to leave. You know where to meet?”
“At the Roundhouse cloisters.” Reggie tossed the red tunic to Angharad. She draped it over Edmond’s shoulders to keep him warm.
“Aye and don’t dither. They’ll be watching us like hawks. Least we can lose ’em in the streets if we’re quick.”
Edmond’s urge to speak out almost made his head burst. Reggie’s leaving with the sealed envelope? “But Mr. Mulqueen said—” he shouted.
Angharad crouched in front of him, stroked his cheek with her cold hand that smelled of cordite. “What did he say, love?”
“He said, Joe needs to make sure the letter gets to Viscount Faversham. Then he jumped.”
“You hear that, Joe?” she asked.
“Aye, and I’ll see that it does. Whatever exploded up there, Red gave his life for this letter. You have my word on it, lad. Now, let’s go.”
Edmond glanced back once more before they left the emporium. The giant Christmas tree still stood, its reds and greens still sparkled, the steam exhibits worked tirelessly, but all hint of magic was gone from the place. Mr. Mulqueen had killed himself and his angel from atop the tree in an explosion from his unfathomable grenade. Leviacrum technology—something Father was working on? If weapons like that were headed for Britain, maybe the old soldier was right to want the Leviacrum destroyed. Maybe Father was one of the villains without even knowing it.
Reggie and Bertie ran southward onto Liverpool Street, while Joe and Angharad led him northward, homeward. The airship, with its twin bullet-shaped balloons—a Gannet ship—had already crossed the Thames and was veering eastward at an extreme lopsided angle. So Angharad had hit it after all, perhaps burst a ballonet or two.
“You said Ransdell Avenue?” Joe asked him.
“I know it,” Angharad replied. “A few streets past Spiffy Row, sorry, Challenger Row,” she imitated a posh voice, trying to cheer Edmond up, “near Vincey Park.”
“Would you like me to explain to your parents.” The pain in Joe’s side made him groan.
“I’ll take care of it from here,” Angharad said. “You get yourself over to the Roundhouse, see if there’s anyone can dress that wound proper.”
He flicked her a salute. “Yes, ma’am. Edmond, the best of luck to you. You’ve been through hell tonight, and I’m sorry. But that was a brave show you put on at the end. A very brave show indeed. Your parents would be proud. If you ever need us for anything, try the Roundhouse Circus first.”
“I-I will. Goodbye, Joe.”
“Fare thee well, lad. Via con dios.”
And just like that, Edmond was on his own with the skinny, one-armed woman who smelled of cod liver oil and cordite and had a deep, beautiful shade of red hair that shone intermittently in the light from street lamps as she hunched over his shoulder, protecting him from prying eyes.
The red tunic weighed heavily on him all the way home.
Chapter Nine
Was it possible to just walk away from something like that? Something that would be splashed all over the newspapers in the coming week? Something inexplicable?
Secrets. He was getting good at them.
Angharad assured him the police would have no cause to seek him out—the only treacherous person who’d seen him was Parnell, and even he could only hope to find Edmond by dint of his association with Mr. Mulqueen, a man who no longer existed. The old soldier had referred to Edmond as his great-nephew. In a way, that’s what he’d felt like tonight. But now Mr. Mulqueen was gone, and that pretend family tie was...lost to St. Elmo’s Fire.
They both agreed it would be best if Edmond made up an excuse for why he was out late rather than own up to any involvement in the deadly emporium affair.
On the corner of Randsdell Avenue, Angharad kissed him goodbye and held him for the longest time. He felt nothing, only a weary indifference. But as he watched her take the darkest, emptiest side streets on her way to a life of homelessness, a twinge of guilt hit him, and he crept home through a strange sensation he could only describe as half floating, half mired in a foggy familiarity.
Inside, he found Father flaked out on the settee in his smoking jacket, so he decided not to wake him and went straight to bed. The lies could wait until tomorrow. He kept to the left side of the stairs to keep them from creaking, and didn’t even put his bedroom light on to get changed into his pyjamas. As he took the red tunic off, went to place it onto the bed, a flash of panic gripped him—the whole nightmarish series of events in the emporium blazed back to life all at once. He tossed the tunic onto the floor.
Something spilled out and whacked the bottom of his tallboy. Shaped like an open clam, it was about the size of his palm. At closer inspection he found it was an old, faded silver pocket watch. He held it up to the moonlight. On the lid was a coat-of-arms inscribed into the metal: crossed axes, a shield, a wreath, and a tiny scroll whose words he would need a magnifying glass to read. He put it in his bedside drawer, hid the tunic behind his armoire, and changed for bed.
For much of the night he lay on his side, staring out at the snow showers and the bright moon between clouds, reliving the tragic events of a Christmas Eve he could never come to terms with. A day as long and exciting as a whole year—but excitement turned inward on itself, eating itself to its bare, sharp bones. He wished none of it had happened. It had started in near-death in broad daylight and ended with real death in the dark, right in front of him. Mr. Mulqueen had shot in and out of his life like a meteorite skipping off the earth’s atmosphere, sparking for a brief moment before disappearing forever. But in that moment, Edmond knew he had gained a new way of seeing the world that he would never forget. Maybe he would understand it better when he was older, as Father was fond of saying.
Don’t forget me, Mr. Mulqueen had said at the end.
No, sir, I shan’t. And don�
�t forget me either, wherever you are.
He fell into a fitful sleep.
Laughter from children playing in the street outside woke him early the next morning. As soon as he’d rubbed his eyes, picked the crusted sleep out of them, he realized what day it was and leapt up, giddy with anticipation.
Presents.
Vague shadows of distant, heavy events blotted in the back of his mind but this was Christmas Day—nothing could breach the magic. Breathless, he roughed into his dressing gown and dug his feet into his slippers. A faint ticking drew him to his bedside drawer, but before he’d half-opened it, the memory of something illicit inside, a pocket watch that kept time for events he daren’t go near today, he slid it shut and bounded downstairs, focused on only one thing:
Presents.
Mother and Father weren’t up yet, so he poured himself a glass of milk, gulped it down, and began separating the gifts into three piles, one for each of them. Of course, his was by far the biggest.
When Mother came down, she kissed him and wished him a happy Christmas. He repeated the words once aloud, then several times under his breath, feeling relieved and grateful and genuinely blessed. That he’d had a family to come home to at the end of a horrible day when the men and women from the emporium had not—he would remember this feeling, and this Christmas morning, for a long time.
“Where were you last night, Edmond?” Father didn’t sound overly concerned as he strolled in, yawned, and kissed Mother for making his morning coffee. But when he repeated the question, he glared at Edmond. “Hmm?”
“At John’s. We played games till late. You were asleep on the settee when I got back, Father.”
“Ah, yes—well—” Father eyed the empty brandy bottle on the sideboard, cleared his throat, “—you’d better ask us next time or there’ll be trouble. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” He rubbed his hands together. “So who wants to go first? Lisa?”
Yuletide Miracle (The Steam Clock Legacy Book 3) Page 8