The Hatmakers

by Tamzin Merchant

  “I searched all over Wapping for him,” he said. “High and low, asked everyone I saw. Couldn’t find him anywhere.”

  “Did you go to the sickbay?” Cordelia frowned.

  Jones nodded. “Yes. There was an old drunk sailor asleep and a broken medicine bottle on the floor, like you described.”

  “But Jack wasn’t there?”

  “Nowhere to be seen. And all the ships have now been impounded, on account of the assassination attempt. The last one out was just setting sail for Jamaica when I arrived at the docks,” Jones told them.

  Cordelia shook her head.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” she whispered. “He was all muzzy and confused—he couldn’t have gone anywhere.”

  She felt her aunt’s comforting hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off. Jones looked from Cordelia to her aunt.

  “On my way back, as I passed the Glovemakers, they were calling for the Thieftaker. They were robbed too, this afternoon. And the Cloakmakers this morning, I heard.”

  Cook gasped and Uncle Tiberius snorted.

  “The Cloakmakers, the Glovemakers, and us,” Aunt Ariadne said grimly.

  “All Makers are in danger,” Great-aunt Petronella croaked.

  “It’s got to be those Bootmakers—” Uncle Tiberius began.

  “But Jack!” Cordelia interrupted. “He knows something about my father. I need—I need—” She felt the chance of finding her father slipping like water through her fists. “We need to find Jack!”

  “Sometimes when something terrible and frightening has happened to someone, they aren’t themselves,” Uncle Tiberius said softly. “And the easiest thing is to run away.”

  “But he couldn’t have! He wasn’t even strong enough to sit up!” Cordelia protested.

  Uncle Tiberius pulled her to him and crushed her into a bear hug, murmuring words of comfort, but all she could hear was the sound of waves on rocks. Or it might have been blood pounding in her ears.

  She unscrunched from her uncle’s arms.

  “But … there’s still hope?” she whispered.

  “My dearest,” Aunt Ariadne began, her voice full of unbearable sympathy.

  Cordelia did not want to hear it.

  “No!” she wailed, whirling around and running from the room. “There is hope! There’s …”

  Agatha!

  Agatha would be back by now.

  Cordelia’s feet pounded up the stairs. Her heart tore in her chest. In the Library, she threw open the window and leaned out into the night, listening for the hush of wings bringing Agatha back with a message from her father.

  Nothing. Nothing but a terrible emptiness in the sky.

  “What can I do now?” Cordelia sobbed.

  There was a soft footstep in the doorway and Aunt Ariadne was there.

  “Cordelia? Can you help me set the Starbowl on the roof?” she asked gently. “And then I think we should all have an early night. We need to be at our very best to work on the hat. The day after tomorrow it must be finished and delivered to the palace. We must not forget our duties even in this difficulty.” She took Cordelia by the hand.

  Uncle Tiberius carefully tied a Boltfast rope in complicated knots around the doors of the Hatmaking Workshop as Cordelia helped her aunt carry the Starbowl out onto the roof.

  It was a deep silver bowl with a domed glass lid. They set it carefully on the brick ledge by the chimney. Mars winked red in the western sky, so Aunt Ariadne tilted the bowl eastward.

  “By morning, it will be full of fresh starlight,” she whispered.

  Its glass dome was speckled with reflected stars.

  “They help us find our way, littlest one,” Prospero had once said to her, sitting on the very same chimney. “The stars guide us through this world. They’re always above us, but we can only see them when it’s dark. So, if you’re ever lost, you have to wait for it to be dark—so dark that you can’t even see your nose in front of your face. Then you can look up at the stars and begin to find yourself.”

  Cordelia had snuggled in her father’s arms, wondering at his heaven-deep wisdom.

  Tonight she looked up, but her eyes prickled and a hot tear slipped down her cheek. She was grateful that the dark was hiding her face from her aunt.

  When she climbed into bed, she did not shut her eyes. She held her father’s telescope tightly to her chest and lay hoping—hoping—for a miracle, like the moon shining in the dark of the night.

  “They help us find our way, littlest one,” Prospero had once said to her, sitting on the very same chimney.

  Perhaps, said a small voice inside her head, perhaps it was the last thing he did before he went under the waves. Perhaps he threw it to Jack, like my mother threw me in the hatbox, right before she died. Just so I could have something special of his—

  “No,” Cordelia said sternly. “There’s got to be another reason.”

  She slipped out of bed and went to the window with the telescope. She extended it as far as it would go. It was almost too long for her to hold, and very heavy. When she put it to her eye, it brought the chimneys across the street close enough to touch.

  She swung the telescope up toward the star-speckled sky.

  It looked as though someone with starlight on their fingers had smudged the glass. The stars were daubed and splotched across a black canvas. Cordelia twisted the telescope, as her father had taught her to do, and the blurry stars snapped into sparkling focus.

  With a soft whisper, a piece of paper unfurled from a thin slit in the brass casing and drifted to the floor, landing at Cordelia’s feet. She snatched up the paper and bounded across the room to the fireplace, where the embers still gave enough light to read by.

  She stared at it, turned it over, then turned it over again. It was blank.

  “It can’t be!”

  She stirred the embers and held the paper closer. Nothing but a smooth, empty page.

  “Father!” Cordelia cried.

  Heart sinking like a stone in the ocean, she remembered: the leather telescope case had been damp from the seawater. Jack had tucked it inside his shirt as he swam to safety, so surely anything written on the paper would have been washed away by the remorseless waves.

  Cordelia knelt on the hearth in front of the dying fire, clutching the blank paper in her hand. She wondered, with a great aching heart, what words her father had written for her that had been lost to the sea.

  She did not know how long she sat there. Eventually the soft murmur of the wind swirling around Hatmaker House and the ever-so-faint tinkle of starlight falling into the bowl on the roof made Cordelia’s head feel heavy. She laid her cheek on the warm tiles of the fireplace.

  “There’s still hope,” she muttered, already half dreaming that she would find those lost words from her father drifting in the ocean of sleep.

  The embers burned low and slowly faded to ash.

  In a mansion not far away, a shadow was scrambling through a schoolroom window. A shadow that left a print of itself behind on the windowsill.

  CHAPTER 18

  CORDELIA WOKE ON HER BEDROOM FLOOR, her cheek cold on the fireplace tiles. Musical chimes tinkled through Hatmaker House. It sounded as though Great-aunt Petronella had spilled a jar of moonbeams down the stairs.

  Cordelia followed the sound all the way to the front hall, but there were no spilled moonbeams anywhere.

  Aunt Ariadne appeared from the workshop, clutching an armful of Pax Palm leaves.

  Uncle Tiberius leaned over the staircase and called down, “By Methuselah’s bicorn! It can’t be the Summoning Clock?”

  “I haven’t heard that sound in thirty years,” Aunt Ariadne whispered.

  Cordelia was about to ask what on earth a Summoning Clock was, when her mouth fell open in surprise.

  The ancient clock in the corner of the hall was moving. Never, in all of Cordelia’s life, had the clock moved. It had stood there, upright and inscrutable, like a sentry guard with a secret, since before she was born. It was
built into the very walls of Hatmaker House and Cordelia was sure she had seen Uncle Tiberius glance darkly at it from time to time. But if she tried to touch it or turn the key to wind it up, her aunt or uncle, or Cook, and even once her father, would say, “Leave it be, Cordelia.”

  Now the hands on its face were moving smoothly around, and melodic chimes were sounding a tune from somewhere inside its ancient body, and—

  “Oh!” Cordelia cried.

  A tiny wooden door opened and a little carved figure glided out. It was exquisitely dressed, with miniature polished boots, a flowing cloak, a pair of gloves, a fob watch the size of an apple seed, and an old-fashioned black hat, trimmed with a tiny feather. The figure carried an elegant walking stick in one hand, as thin as a twig, with a fine silver handle.

  Aunt Ariadne and Uncle Tiberius joined Cordelia in the hall. They all watched as the clock’s secret resident raised his hat in salute, turned on the spot and disappeared back inside.

  The tiny door snapped shut and the hands on the clock face froze. The chimes fell silent.

  “You know what this means, Ariadne,” Uncle Tiberius muttered.

  “Indeed I do,” Aunt Ariadne replied grimly.

  “What—” Cordelia began.

  “Cordelia, go and put on your finest clothes,” her aunt ordered.

  She had such a stern look on her face that Cordelia ran straight up the stairs without asking any of the questions running through her head.

  Twenty minutes later, the Hatmakers marched along Bond Street, all dressed in their smartest clothes, with their most spectacular hats jammed on their heads.

  “Where are we going?” Cordelia asked, half jogging to keep up with her aunt.

  “The Guildhall,” Aunt Ariadne answered, cutting along the pavement with the surging purpose of a battleship in full sail.

  “What’s the Guildhall?” Cordelia panted, feeling like a row boat struggling along in her wake.

  “You’ll see when we get there,” Uncle Tiberius puffed, coming up behind them. He was pushing Great-aunt Petronella in a wheeled chair. Great-aunt Petronella squawked with glee as the wind flapped her black shawls around her face.

  “But why did the clock chime?” Cordelia demanded. “Did you wind it, Uncle?”

  Her uncle kept ploughing down the pavement, using Great-aunt Petronella and her chair to make headway through the crowds. “No, I did not wind that clock,” he huffed. “That clock is Made from a Kingsland Oak, which was struck by lightning in the great storm of 1492. Six identical clocks were carved from it, so when one clock is wound up, all six clocks chime at the same time. That is why you were instructed never to touch it. You’d have set off chimes throughout the city.”

  Cordelia stopped in the street, in wonder.

  “But where are the other five clocks?” she called, bounding after her uncle.

  He appeared not to hear her.

  Across the gully of the muddy road, through a shuffle of carts and carriages, Cordelia spotted the Cloakmakers on the opposite pavement. They were a large family, eight of them in total, walking together in an elegant procession. They were heading in the same direction as the Hatmakers, wearing what looked like their finest clothes and their stoniest expressions.

  Strange.

  “Uncle—look—” Cordelia pointed at them.

  He grunted and narrowed his eyes, but he did not seem surprised.

  “This way!” Aunt Ariadne called, taking a corner at speed. Cordelia scampered after her.

  They were striding down an alley now, the backs of buildings rising on either side of them like the cliffs of a canyon. Around one corner, then another, the alley zig-zagged, getting darker and narrower.

  After a hairpin bend Aunt Ariadne stopped suddenly. Cordelia collided with her. The wheels on Great-aunt Petronella’s chair squealed as Uncle Tiberius pulled her to a halt.

  The Hatmakers were standing in a shabby square, staring up at a very old building. It was vast and grand, with ruby-red brick walls, wide diamond-paned windows and twisting chimneys.

  On a plinth above the studded oak door was a statue of a man. It was identical to the little carved figure that had appeared out of the clock in the Hatmakers’ hall, except this one was life-size. He wore a triumphant smile on his stone face and did not seem to mind that his hat had crumbled a little, or that his elegant cane had been broken off.

  In spite of its grandeur, the building had a sad, abandoned air, as if its walls and empty windows were wishing for something.

  “Aunt Ariadne, what is this place?” Cordelia asked, rather breathless.

  Her aunt looked down at her with a curious mixture of sadness and pride.

  “Only Makers and Monarchs can open these doors,” she answered, reaching out and taking hold of the brass handle. She twisted it.

  The door groaned open, revealing a dark hallway.

  Cordelia stepped inside.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE AIR WAS THICK WITH DUST AND MAGIC.

  Before her eyes adjusted to the gloom, Cordelia could smell the history in the building around her: there was the chalky scent of marble floors and the resin sweetness of wood-paneled walls. She felt her way forward and brushed through velvet curtains, prickly with age.

  She was in a colossal circular chamber. Jewel-colored light spilled through a vast stained-glass window, scattering a dazzling pattern on the wide wooden floor. Soaring pillars circled the room and a domed ceiling rose high above her, garlanded with plaster flowers. Tapestries and paintings adorned the walls, carved wooden crests hung above the doors, and a sweeping mahogany staircase curled in an elegant arc to a gallery above.

  Cordelia walked into the middle of the enormous room, leaving a track of footprints in the dust. Around her, the air hummed with unspoken magic. She felt like she was standing inside a secret.

  “I am sorry we’ve never told you about the Guildhall, Cordelia,” Aunt Ariadne murmured, “but we did not really know how to begin. … Besides, a meeting of Makers has not been called for thirty years.”

  “It was built more than two hundred and fifty years ago, by King Henry VIII.” Uncle Tiberius beckoned her over to look at a large oil painting on the wall. “There he is. Notoriously vain, was King Henry. He appointed families to be Makers of the Royal Garb and every few weeks he’d come riding up and want to try on new outfits. This is where our ancestors worked, Making hats for the king.”

  Cordelia peered up at the painting. It depicted the familiar broad-faced king surrounded by industrious Makers, all busily decorating him with magnificent accessories.

  “Oh, King Henry was rather naughty.” Great-aunt Petronella sighed, gazing up at the painting. “I remember, after he beheaded his second wife, my mother made me hide in the garderobe when he came for his fittings. She was worried he’d take a shine to me.”

  Cordelia turned to her great-aunt. “But—that was over two hundred years ago!”

  “Yes.” Great-aunt Petronella nodded. “I was a pretty young thing, wasn’t I?”

  Cordelia walked into the middle of the enormous room, leaving a track of footprints in the dust.

  Cordelia stared at the graceful young lady in the painting who was placing an ornately embroidered cap on the king’s head. She turned to study her great-aunt’s parchment-pale face, her wrinkles so deep they could have been carved from marble.

  “Great-aunt, exactly how old are you, if I might be permitted to ask?” Cordelia said, careful to sound as polite as she possibly could.

  Her great-aunt turned twinkling eyes to Cordelia. “Oh, once I got to a hundred I stopped counting.”

  “But when was that?” Cordelia asked.

  “Ah, dearest, time is relative, you know!”

  Cordelia could not tell whether or not her great-aunt was joking. She turned back to the painting, still puzzling. Then she noticed something else strange about it.

  “But—there are six Makers in this picture!” she exclaimed. “Hat—Cloak—Glove—Watch—Boot—and … is tha
t a walking stick?”

  “Cane,” her uncle said through a tight jaw. “The Canemakers.”

  “Who are the Canemakers? Why are they in this picture? I thought there were only five Maker families!”

  “There were six,” Aunt Ariadne admitted, her footsteps echoing as she marched across the great empty chamber. “King Henry appointed six Maker families in total. As well as being vain, he was also paranoid—he constantly worried about his enemies trying to overthrow him and take his throne—so he gave the six greatest Maker families a royal charter and banned all other makers from working.”

  “There were other makers?”

  “Oh, yes,” Great-aunt Petronella said. “There was once a time when everyone in England was free to make whatever they chose, and not just clothes. Then the king decided he wanted to keep that power all for himself and anyone caught Making anything without a royal charter was thrown in prison.”

  “Why?” Cordelia cried.

  “The king was afraid that somebody else might invent a hat that would give them great cleverness, or make gloves to gain the upper hand, or a cloak of compelling elegance, and then they would be able to throw him off the throne. He made the six chosen families sign a pledge to do no harm. That’s where the Maker motto comes from: Noli nocere, do no harm.”

  “I thought that was the Hatmaker family motto?” Cordelia asked.

  Her aunt shook her head. “It belongs to all the Maker families,” she said, ignoring Uncle Tiberius grinding his teeth behind her.

  Cordelia frowned. “And … the Canemakers—what happened to them?”

  “After King Henry died, we kept on Making,” Great-aunt Petronella said. “All six royal-appointed Maker families would come every day to the Guildhall to Make things for the king or queen. In 1632, King Charles I gave permission for us to Make things for members of the aristocracy. We Made things for the lords and ladies, but always had to keep the most magnificent things for the king himself. That way, he made sure he was always the grandest and most powerful person. Each family of Makers had an individual workshop leading off this grand chamber. That’s the Hatmaking Workshop there—”