Maddie Hatter and the Gilded Guage

by Jayne Barnard

  A blond lad touched the brim of his large cap. Maddie peered at him. “Weren’t you the one who brought my first message from Emmy?”

  “Nope. Me brudder, Hare.” Beyond him another boy, almost identical but darker-haired, tugged his own drooping cap.

  “Rabbit and Hare?” Maddie looked at Cat.

  “The March twins,” said Emmy. “On account of when they joined up. Where’s Dormie?”

  “Tucked up,” said Cat. “Coughin’ something awful.”

  “Found ’im in a crate of tea on the pier,” Rabbit volunteered. “Didn’t know his own name but kep’ on singin’ ‘Dormie Voo, Dormie Voo.’ Hadda pinch ’im to make ’im stop.”

  “Good a name as any,” Hare added.

  “Dormie sleeps all the time,” said little Muffet mournfully. “Can’t sing nor nothin’ now.”

  Emmy’s mouth twisted beneath the mask. “Chest gone on him again? I heard the orphanage is getting a box from the druggist round about four today. Hare can hop on over and nick a bottle o’ cough stuff. Nothing else, mind. Them kids needs that medicine as much as Dormie does.”

  “If there’s pie,” Muffet squeaked, “can he take a pie, Emmy? Just one? To have with our tea?”

  “If he sees one, he can.” A laugh lurked in Emmy’s voice for the pie that would be waiting on the windowsill. “Just the one. Them orphanage kids . . .”

  Muffet sighed. “Needs it as much as we do.”

  Cat squeezed Muffet’s shoulder. “You want to go live in the big house? Sleep warm an’ have pie every week?” Muffet shook her head, clasping Cat’s hand tightly. The keg fell on its side and a small boy rolled out, ending up at their feet. “Stand up before ladies, Drink-me.” The lad got to his feet, his grin revealing one lost milk-tooth right in front.

  “Makes himself small enough to get in anywhere,” said Hare—or Rabbit?—proudly. “Cat telled us the story and we gived him the name.”

  “I’m off,” Emmy announced suddenly. “You lot watch out for Mad Hatter, right? She’ll have business down here by times. Might need a lookout.” As Cat led Emmy and Maddie out, the smaller children reached out grubby hands and stroked Maddie’s serviceable blue skirt, as if marking her one of them. Cat paused in the alley, scanning both ways, and Emmy slipped a slim packet into her hand. “Share of me takings. Get them kids warm togs. Nights is colder now.” Cat nodded, sliding the packet into a pocket, and slipped once more into the shadowy stable.

  Back in the orphanage yard, Emmy put a hand on Maddie’s arm. “Go see if the coast is clear to the office. Wave when it’s safe.”

  Maddie went. The voices murmured in the kitchen. She leaned out the door and waved, then hurried with Emmy down the shabby hallway. As Emmy swapped her identity once more, Maddie stowed the disguise back in the brown case. At last she spoke.

  “They live in that draughty stable not ten paces from a warm orphanage? Why?”

  “They won’t come in. Mrs. Mayfair used to try, but they ran. Beaten at their last place, maybe.” Emmeline fished a fold of money from her jacket pocket and placed it on the desk.

  Mrs. Mayfair returned. “How are they?”

  “Dormie’s chest’s bad again. Can you order up his cough medicine?”

  The older woman nodded. “I’d like to see Dormie and Muffet indoors before winter.”

  “Cat’s working on that,” said Emmeline, and took her leave.

  When they reached Madame Lavinia’s Parasol Dueling Academy, both girls checked out through all the portholes before exiting the rocket car. There was no sign of the abductors, and Emmeline walked up the stone steps to the lobby undisturbed. Nobody seemed to notice Maddie either, coming a few paces behind. And yet, what matter if she were identified, really? This wasn’t London, where she was forbidden to be recognized on pain of losing her father’s quarterly allowance. Surely, sooner or later, her parents would have to admit she was alive and had left home voluntarily?

  It wasn’t just her leaving, but her choosing to work for her living, that hurt her parents. Her Old Nobility mother would die of embarrassment if her friends knew her only daughter had chosen a barely middle-class job over an advantageous marriage, while her father believed a child who went out to work was casting a cloud on his ability to support the family. It was better all round to simply not be recognized as the missing daughter of the Third British Steamlord.

  She left TD on her hat in the Robing Room, there being no unobtrusive way to hide him in her blue cotton exercise dress. In the Flexing Chamber, the usual assortment of gymnasts and foot-boxing partners were immersed in their usual pursuits. Up where morning sunlight streamed through the high windows, the doll-like woman spun like gossamer on her silken ropes. Nobody here could be a threat to Emmeline, surely. Maddie settled into her stretching routine, watching carefully all the same.

  When they reached the dueling auditorium, a faint prickling on her skin told her she was under close observation. She scanned the galleries, but the mysterious lady in the blood-red gown was not up there. Or, if she was, she was wearing a different costume. Maddie was demonstrating for Emmeline the Prussian figure named Ehre Nehmer, the Honour-Stealer—a Reverse Snub which simultaneously admitted defeat while denying the opponent their victory blow—when someone coughed behind her. She whirled into a full-frontal Snub.

  Behind her stood a slim woman perhaps twice her age. Fine white-blond hair, with symmetrical scarlet streaks at the sides, was tightly braided and coiled. This was the lady who had watched Maddie two mornings ago from the gallery. Up close she looked tantalizingly familiar, and yet Maddie was certain she would have remembered hereditary scarlet-streaked hair. All the Steamlord families knew such pedigrees; it was how they identified their peers in a crowd of Old Nobility or business associates.

  Unlike everyone else in the gymnasium, the lady was clad in proper Austrian dueling leathers, skin-tight and creaking slightly as she bowed. These matched her hair and would, Maddie realized, readily disguise fresh blood. Perhaps they already had.

  “Please forgive the intrusion,” said the woman in faintly accented English. “I see you are familiar with the Prussian dueling code. It is not practiced here. Surely you have come from across the ocean?”

  Was this the answer to the watching eyes: a European recognizing a dueling style? Warily, Maddie answered, “I am a visitor to this Academy. Do you instruct here? I have only seen Brandenburg Variations taught thus far.”

  “A visitor, like yourself.” The woman bowed again. “Countess Olga Romanova. Would you do me the honour to spar with me? I have been too long away.”

  “Oh, do,” said Emmeline. “Seeing a proper demonstration will help my studies no end.”

  Maddie bowed to the countess, hoping she would not insist on Russian dueling, by far the least graceful of the forms. “I am Miss Hatter. At your convenience.”

  The countess smiled. “I am conversant with the Prussian code that you were demonstrating, but for a better workout I prefer Hungarian-Imperial. Sheathed tips, naturally.” She raised her long, tightly-strapped parasol to show a blunt cap covering the sharpened point. It would be an insult to insist on adding a hedgehog, and Maddie, confident of her ability to spar without hurting or being hurt, didn’t suggest it. She showed her own parasol’s tip, its steel point safely cased in its moulded silver housing.

  “Hungarian-Imperial it will be.”

  They took their places in the nearest dueling ring. Automatically Maddie checked the angle of the light. Large overhead lamps compensated for sunlight blocked by the gallery above. Satisfied, she raised her parasol to the salute.

  The duel began slowly, with much sidestepping and feinting, feeling delicately for each other’s weaknesses. Maddie pulled back her arm as the countess jabbed at her wrist. She swiped at one leather-sheathed ankle. The room’s noise and movement fell away. Every shift of the opponent’s weight was noted. Her own looser clothing did not give as much away. In a serious combat, the difference in garb would not be acceptable but here it
merely levelled the field between Maddie’s youth and the countess’s undoubted years of experience. Or she hoped it did, because it was soon apparent that the countess’ skill easily matched hers. The woman hadn’t really tried to land a blow . . . yet.

  The countess lunged, stabbing downward. Maddie yanked her foot away and the descending tip thumped harmlessly on the padded canvas floor. A sideways slide took her past the countess’s guard far enough to rap an exposed wrist with her blunted silver tip.

  “First hit to you, Miss Hatter.” The countess drew back, smiling.

  When she came on again, it was twice as fast. Maddie flashed out a frontal Twirl to deflect the point aiming for her midsection, and followed up by a surge that forced the countess back to her own ropes. She countered with an ankle swing that Maddie had to leap over, and followed up immediately with a sharp rap on Maddie’s forward thigh. One hit each.

  By this time their agility had attracted attention. Others crowded the ropes, murmuring, until an instructor ordered everyone to step back. As soon as they were out of range the countess picked up the pace again, slashing and jabbing in a manic rhythm that Maddie was barely able to counter. It was the best workout she’d had since Madame Saffron deemed her fit to take off the training guards.

  At last, after defending herself halfway around the ring with the ropes at her back, she saw an opening. She lunged, her blunted point taking the countess in the pad of her offside shoulder. The woman reeled back, shaking out her arm. Something flickered through the air. Then she lunged. The overhead light snaked along a naked steel spike that should have been safely locked under its cap.

  Maddie jumped backward, the ropes catching her across the spine. “Countess, your tip is exposed.”

  If the woman heard, she did not pause. Her sharpened point drove forward. Maddie beat it down and yelled again. The countess’s parasol slid under hers on a perfect line for her leg. Trapped against the ropes, Maddie had nowhere to go. The spike was about to pierce her knee.

  One response might save her from injury: the Empress’s Kiss. She dropped her booted foot hard onto the Countess’s parasol, driving the sharp tip into the mat. It plunged deep and stuck. With all her weight anchored there, she lunged upward. Her second foot landed high up the countess’s shaft, pinning hand to parasol handle. She simultaneously thrust her silver–capped weapon in a straight line from her shoulder. The cap nudged the countess’s smooth, white cheek.

  She froze, barely drawing breath. Given Maddie’s precarious balance—only one heel touching the mat and her weight focused on that tip against the countess’s face—any sudden move might shatter teeth. Until Maddie withdrew that tip the duel was at a standstill.

  In a true duel, an unsheathed tip would have penetrated the flesh and pierced the tongue. It was a move the Empress Elizabeth herself had perfected as a punishment for duelists who broke her rules. The puckered scar was a permanent reminder to all other duelists that this person had behaved dishonourably. Had the countess been dishonourable in continuing this bout after her tip was exposed? Or had she not understood Maddie’s warning?

  Maddie leaned in, keeping her body aligned above the countess’s parasol and its straining arm. Her lips a hand-span from the woman’s shocked face, she said clearly and firmly, “Countess, your safety sheath has fallen off. Do you yield?”

  “Yes. I yield.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “I AM SORRY I can’t practice more today,” Maddie told Emmeline as they withdrew from the gymnasium. “Dueling against a naked point is a nerve-wracking business.”

  “I didn’t notice when the sheath came off,” Emmeline confessed. “At least, I saw something but didn’t realize what it was, or what it implied until I saw her point pierce the mat. She was trying to stab you in the knee?”

  “Yes. The move is, in English, called the Cavalry Hobble. If you cripple a warhorse in such a manner, it’s useless and has to be killed. A steel point driving into my knee would have seriously injured me.”

  “She can’t have realized.” Emmeline held the door and followed Maddie inside. “Why would she want to injure you?”

  “An accident, surely,” said Maddie, keeping her misgivings to herself. “Perhaps her English was not good enough to have understood my warning.”

  “Her English seemed fine before the duel.” Emmeline opened her locker door. “It was only afterward, when she was apologizing to you and assuring the staff that she would pay for the mat repair, that her words acquired the heavy accent.”

  So Emmeline had noticed that? Pondering the implications, Maddie stripped off the loose blue gym dress and, after a fresh dusting of powder, stepped into her walking suit. Taking the matching hat to the mirror, she pinned it into position. As Emmeline’s head bowed over tiny boot buttons, she stroked TD’s beak and whispered, “If I say the word ‘Countess,’ take images of any woman or object you can see without turning your head.”

  TD settled into alignment with the crown of her hat, so that anywhere she looked, he looked. His vigilance was soon rewarded. The countess, still wearing her leathers, though with a loose silk wrapper thrown over for propriety, came forward the moment the girls reached the lobby.

  “My very dear Miss Hatter!” she cried, extending both arms. “I am desolated to have caused you a moment’s concern. I pray you will forgive me.” Her English, Maddie noted, had improved again.

  “There is nothing to forgive, Countess.” Above Maddie’s right ear a tiny click sounded as TD followed his instruction.

  “Oh, but I must make an amend.” The countess drew an embossed white card from her pocket. “You and your charming friend will be my guests at a benefit entertainment for Hungarian children.”

  Maddie looked down at the card. She blinked. Looking up at her, half-hidden under the countess’s flowing silk sleeve, was a miniature, golden dragon. Its gleaming tail coiled around the lady’s forearm and its forelegs gripped the leather at her supple wrist. Golden scales, tiny wings of gossamer-silk woven with golden threads, and emerald eyes completed the delicate creation. Maddie was almost sure its shining head had just moved. Was it a clockwork, like TD?

  “Countess,” she said, still gazing down, and heard TD click. “We would be delighted to accept your kind invitation, but we must seek permission from Miss Gauge’s mother.”

  “Oh, but you will bring her also.” The countess spread her arms once more. “Any pupil of my old sparring partner, Madame Taxus-Hemlock, can have only the most enchanting of associates.” She looked keenly at Maddie. “For it was she who taught you the Csók a Császárné, was it not?”

  “The Empress’s Kiss is taught at many European academies,” Maddie replied. She had long ago learned not to speak of Madame Taxus-Hemlock’s affairs, either business or political.

  “But you know her?” The countess’s eyes, icy blue-grey, peered intently into Maddie’s. “Or of her?”

  “Who could be familiar with parasol dueling and not know of the last living Black Sash?” Maddie smiled politely, taking the embossed card in one hand while her other gripped Emmeline’s wrist. “We must go now, with thanks for your kind invitation. We are expected for luncheon.” She fairly dragged her friend out of Madame Lavinia’s Academy and down the steep stone steps to the street, quite forgetting to look around for abductors.

  When they were inside the rocket-car with the hatch firmly closed, Emmeline rubbed her wrist. “What was that all about?”

  “The countess was trying to pump me for information about a former employer. When I performed the Empress’s Kiss, she guessed who had taught it to me. There aren’t many who still trap the opponent’s hand on the shaft.” Maddie’s shoulders eased. She had not slipped up. Whatever the Russian noblewoman might suspect, she could not be sure. “I hope her hand pains her, for she quite seriously tried to hobble me.”

  “Should we stay away from her benefit entertainment, then? You did say Mother should try to attend such functions.”

  “Let me check into the counte
ss’s social connections. If it is likely your mother would make suitable acquaintances there, you and she might go without me.” Hardly heeding Emmeline’s protests, Maddie scoured her memory for any previous encounters with the countess. She must send a message to Madame Taxus-Hemlock as speedily as possible. Madame would know if there was anything to worry about.

  This plan was thwarted, for Mrs. G-G had left her chamber and was once more fretting herself to flinders in the impersonally ornate parlour. The girls danced attendance on her all through the main rooms, the guests’ bedchambers, and the menus sent up by the chef for every meal and snack in the next three days. The only benefit of all this hovering was that they heard, when Mr. Gibbs stopped in to inform Mrs. G-G, that they’d be entertaining a British Steamlord, an American gentleman, and a German who was not, he thought, named Ritter, or knight. He wouldn’t give their names even to Mrs. G-G, murmuring instead about ears being everywhere.

  When he left, Maddie told Mrs. G-G, “You’ll be perfectly safe if you just say ‘my lord’ when addressing the British one, and ‘sir’ for the others.”

  She did not have a moment to herself until after tea. Fleeing to her bluebell chamber, she immediately composed a message that was part warning and part query.

  “TD. Listen: To Madame Saffron Taxus-Hemlock, via Birdie. Dearest Madame, do you know a woman calling herself Countess Olga Romanova? I’m almost certain I’ve seen her somewhere before, but I can’t recall. TD will append an image. She forced a duel on me this morning in a parasol academy, and attempted a Cavalry Hobble with her point bared. I had to subdue her with the Empress’s Kiss, which prompted her to ask if I knew you. Of course I dissembled.

  “Also, I’m attaching images of two men who attempted to abduct my current charge, Miss Emmeline Gatsby-Gauge, in that street fracas two days ago. They are probably hired thugs, but maybe your sources can find out something. And is the Gatsby Gauge as unique as the company claims? Worth kidnapping her to get hold of? Until I have seen Emmeline’s father’s investors for myself, I haven’t an inkling where else to look for danger. I’ll send on the investors’ names when possible, in hopes you can tell me which one is most likely to kidnap a child as a negotiating tactic.”