Mainspring

by Jay Lake

  “There’s an order to the world,” muttered Hethor darkly, his face and groin hot all over again. She was making him sweat now. That made him angry.

  “Yes, and that order is that I’m driving this hearse and you’re not, which means you can get out and walk if I tell you to.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “Mum and Da’ build the hearses, along with three hired men. They can’t take the time to make a delivery, and they don’t have to pay me to do it because I’m family.”

  Somehow Hethor doubted it was that simple, but he tried to let loose of his objections. “World’s a strange place,” he managed, “and rarely fair.”

  “All the more so if you’re a woman, which is why I’m just as happy to pass as a boy. I’ll thank you not to say more.”

  As the afternoon wound on, their chatter continued, while avoiding the girl question. Hethor noticed Darby took corners a little faster, bumped into him a little more. That night she invited him into the hearse with her, to spoon a bit.

  “You’re a nice enough boy.” Her smile glinted in the moonlight, lips parting wide in a way that made his breath catch. “Come on, we can keep warm.”

  “I …” This woman kept driving him to silence. Hethor’s penis felt huge, distorted, like it would drag him to the ground. He was sure she could see it straining at his pants. Why wasn’t she laughing at him? “I, no!” he said, sweat pouring down his face. “I’m already too warm!” His voice was loud and clumsy.

  Then Darby did laugh, but softly. It seemed she meant to be kind. “Suit yourself.” She crawled inside the hearse and tugged the door shut behind her.

  Hethor sank down under a willow tree nearby, loosening the buttons on his fly, though he was careful not to touch himself. That way lay sin and madness, everyone knew.

  So why was he so desperate to get closer to her?

  When sleep came, it was hot and troubled. When Hethor woke later, he had to find a stream bank far from the hearse to wash his shame out of his linens. They talked very little the next morning.

  TWO MORE days of travel, including another hand-off in Foxboro to a taciturn Italian man bringing early greens into Boston, got Hethor to the Boston Common. There were no more mentions of albino toucans, but Hethor still saw the influence of the white bird. “Court Street,” was the only thing the last drover said to him, waving generally to the east.

  He was amazed to have arrived in good order.

  On the Common, Hethor found himself surrounded by horse chestnuts and elms and half a dozen more sorts of trees he didn’t recognize. Men and women wandered together. Families were out taking the air with hampers of food, children screeching by the ponds. He’d never been away from the Connecticut coast before, and the journey here hadn’t felt quite real. Standing on the grass of the Common, staring at the brick walkways and the spring-green trees, made him terribly homesick.

  “Viceroy,” said Hethor to himself and the chattering squirrels. “I must find the viceroy.” He walked to the east end of the Common, then followed Tremont Street until it met Court Street. Boston was not so different from New Haven. Bigger perhaps, but with the same gas lamps and electrick cabriolets and shouting teamsters forcing their wagons through traffic. There would be more airships looming over the nearby harbor than those that called at New Haven, of that he had no doubt. Government was here, which meant the Royal Navy.

  Court Street ran east from the Common, so he followed that until he came to a brick building that had to be what he was seeking. The building’s center was three stories tall, topped with a clock set within a cupola, and a lion and a unicorn rampant on brick insets to each side of the clock. Two-story brick and marbled wings extended to each side away from what was clearly, even to Hethor’s untrained eye, the original facade. Little round windows below the animal figures were set about an ordinary double-hung window, and below that a balcony that had the look of something used to read proclamations, or perhaps to declare public punishments. A Union Jack flew over the clock, while the blue-on-white stars of Her Imperial Majesty’s New England colonies flew to one side, and an unfamiliar yellow-and-red banner flew to the other. The sigil of the viceroy, Hethor supposed. He hoped it meant that the man was in residence now.

  Doubt gnawed at his heart in the face of his goal. Should he go to Anthony’s tap room on Pier Four and seek out this Malgus first? Hethor had no assurance that the viceroy would not simply laugh him away, or even worse, make an example of an upstart Colonial countryman.

  There was no way for Hethor to know. Master Bodean had not been a political creature, preferring to stick to his clocks and pay his assessments and let the Crown get on with the business of ruling. As a result, Hethor had inherited no politics from his master, other than the politics of business—charge cash up front, pay slow against your own credit, never sell for less than you bought plus a solid margin.

  He advanced slowly up the marble steps that led to a surprisingly low door beneath the balcony. A small brass plate read MASSACHUSETTS HOUSE. Inside was cool and dark, almost damp. Two soldiers stood there in the gray wool uniforms of the New England colonial militia, each with a carbine over his shoulder. They looked bored. A circular marble desk was ensconced before a double flight of stairs, with galleries leading left and right to the wings.

  Hethor stood in front of the desk. An enormous register, even larger than Librarian Childress’ books of artistic engravings, lay open on the counter. Sharp copperplate script displayed the comings and goings of men of power. A thin man, face pinched tight above a dark suit and an almost clerical stiff collar, gave Hethor a fishy-eyed stare from behind the armor of his book.

  “Servant’s entrance is on Chatham Street.” The thin man’s voice was as reedy as his looks. “I’ll thank you not to muddy His Lordship’s front hall.”

  “I’m here to see His Lordship,” said Hethor slowly. He was trusting inspiration to come, but his trust appeared to have been misplaced.

  “One of the Specials, hmm?”

  “Special. Well, er … yes.”

  “Password?”

  Password? “Uh … albino toucan.”

  “Hmm …” The thin man pulled a small notebook from his coat pocket and flipped through it. “I see.” He looked up, past Hethor. “Sar’n’t Ellis. Please be so kind as to detain this … individual … for questioning. He claims to be a Special. I expect Mister Phelps will wish to see him whether or not that is true.”

  “Alrightie.” The burly Sergeant Ellis grabbed Hethor’s arm none too gently. “Come on, then.”

  “I suggest the Blue Room,” said the thin man helpfully.

  “I knows me business,” Ellis grumbled before leading Hethor around the desk to a stairway heading down beneath the marble risers.

  “But I need to see the viceroy,” Hethor protested as Ellis tugged him through the door.

  “Oh, and you will.” Ellis chuckled.

  Belowstairs, the hallway was vaulted brick, as if it had been tunneled rather than built. Rooms opened on each side, much like Hethor imagined a dungeon to be, but when Ellis gently pushed Hethor into one, the room proved to contain only two settees and a desk, and a small, dirty window up near the ceiling that admitted a minor ration of the morning’s light.

  “I’d stay out of the desk,” Ellis growled. “Mister Phelps don’t like people in his drawers. Bar’s on your right.”

  Then the door was shut, and with a clear, clanking thud, locked.

  Not knowing what else to do, Hethor looked around the room. This place was vaulted, too, he realized with a glance at the ceiling. It stank of salt and mold—the sweat of both men and bricks. The bar was a small cabinet pushed against the wall; it proved to contain three cut-crystal tumblers in need of a cleaning, half a bottle of lemon squash, and a tin of biscuits. He wiped one of the tumblers on the tail of his shirt, poured out a glass of squash, and opened the tin.

  If this was a prison, it was a strange prison. Yet the door was locked.

  Ign
oring the desk, Hethor sat on one of the settees.

  The window was too high and too small for him to fit through. Besides which, it had the ironwork on the outside. The door’s hinges were out in the hallway. He could starve in this room if no one came.

  Hethor closed his eyes and listened to the world.

  First and always there was his own breathing, and the snick-snick of his pulse in his ears audible as his head leaned against the couch cushion. Hethor listened past that, to the rattle of cart wheels in the street outside the dingy window and the faint murmur of voices from elsewhere in the bricked basement. Perhaps someone in the hall. He listened past that, to the very faint groan of the foundation’s stones bearing up under the heavy building above, and the even fainter rattle of the world’s turning.

  Only this time the rattling of the world—always the least of sounds, like a mouse in the forest—seemed louder, easier to find. Almost like it was coming toward him. Eyes still closed, Hethor listened to it click and whir, like the greatest of clocks, the sound filling him up until he realized that what he heard was the key in the lock of the little brick room.

  His head jerked up with a start.

  A small man with a huge head, his body so diminutive as to be almost a grotesque, stood in front of Hethor. This man wore tradesman’s garb not much better than Hethor’s, though cleaner and more free of wrinkles. His eyes were clear blue, almost the color of ice, and his hair a crinkling red-brown.

  “I am Mister Phelps,” the newcomer announced, “and Lord William suggested I come see you this evening.”

  Hethor looked down to notice the crystal tumbler shattered on the floor. The lemon squash was no more than a sticky spot around it. How long had he been sitting here, listening to the world? Hours. A trance, perhaps. “William,” he said, feeling as stupid as if he had been roused from sleep. “Of Ghent. The so-called sorcerer?”

  “Or perhaps William the tile setter’s boy,” said Phelps softly. “I see I have caught you unawares.”

  “No, no, I … my apologies.” Hethor made as if to stand, then realized that would set him quite a bit taller than Phelps. He wound up sitting again with his hand half stuck out in abortive greeting. “I’m here to see the viceroy.” What had happened to him? Caught up in listening to the world and forgot where he was and what he was about.

  Phelps ignored the hand. “So I understand.” The small man hitched himself up onto the desk, sitting so that his swinging heels banged against the pediment. “Mister Cannon at the entry hall says you claimed to be a Special upon your arrival, mentioning a certain white bird. Sadly, Sergeant Ellis thought you were an imposter when I sought him out in a tavern for a second opinion.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Hethor. Albino toucan. “I don’t know what a Special is.”

  “Heh.” Phelps looked thoughtful. “I thought you might not. Let’s just say that Specials are men, and very occasionally women, who aid me in my discreet services to the viceroy. Some matters of governance are best not put in the hands of younger sons of powerful lords sent over here from Mother England to wait out their various disgraces.” Phelps’ eyes positively glinted. “Have you spoken in confidence to any women recently, young Master Hethor?”

  “I … how did you know my name?”

  “My Specials,” said Phelps. “At least one of whom took you very seriously indeed. The message came to me, along with you, though your story as it was passed to my ears would bring laughter to the lips of any Rational Humanist who heard it. And I might add Rational Humanism is quite the fashion this season in the viceroy’s court. They talk far more of the Clockmakers than they do of God.”

  “I am a clockmaker’s apprentice,” Hethor said. “And I have something to tell the viceroy.” He picked his next words carefully. There would be no more chances after Phelps, Hethor knew that with a certainty. “It is a critical matter.”

  “Tell me,” said Phelps, his voice soft but urgent. “I am the viceroy’s ears in many things. Sometimes his hands. Even more rarely, his voice.”

  He had no other choices. Not in a locked room in the basement of Massachusetts House. And this was, after all, the path upon which Librarian Childress had set him.

  So Hethor recounted his tale of the visitation from the archangel Gabriel. Under further questioning, he told of the steps he took, from Pryce Bodean to the library and being turned out, on to the journey to Boston.

  “A DIFFERENT man might have begged forgiveness,” Phelps said, pouring the last of the lemon squash into another tumbler.

  “I did no wrong,” Hethor insisted. Telling his tale had raised his anger all over again. The tiny room, dark now except for a candle Phelps had taken from the desk, seemed hot and close as it had not earlier in the day.

  “Wrong is most often in the mouth of the accuser.” Phelps sipped the squash, made a face. “Were you to call His Lordship a liar, you would be lucky only to be whipped out of hand. Were His Lordship to call you a liar, you would be lucky only to be whipped out of hand. The material facts are not at issue.”

  “As I have learned,” Hethor muttered darkly, wishing a terrible fate on Pryce Bodean. “I had a duty.”

  “And so your falling out set you on the road here.” Phelps waved his arm, taking in the little room. “Closer to the viceroy in miles, perhaps, but for the moment bereft of your freedom. I must put a question to you, Master Hethor.”

  “Just Hethor. I am master to no man. What do you wish to know?”

  “I for one find you sincere. You clearly believe your story as you tell it. That being said, I am not prepared at this moment to judge the objective truth of your tale on its own merits, but I will offer you a choice. Would you prefer to take the story to the viceroy as you are, roughshod and uncultured? Or would you prefer to recount it again to an amanuensis, take some coaching in deportment and manners, and have one or another pliant gentleman of the court deliver your report in a few weeks’ time, with you decorously under that gentleman’s apparent sponsorship?”

  The very thought of being puffed and powdered and paraded about made Hethor’s skin crawl. Pryce and Faubus had communicated to him a newfound allergy to gentlemen and all their works. Besides, Gabriel’s visit and the archangel’s warning about the Key Perilous were his story to tell.

  “I must do it myself,” Hethor said, “and trust to the viceroy’s wisdom to see through my unsophisticated veneer.”

  “Unsophisticated veneer indeed,” said Phelps with a small smile. “He will see a rustic countryman and not hear any words at all, I am afraid. Nonetheless, it is your story. And I seem to have made it your choice as to how to tell it. His Lordship hears petitions and appeals in morning session several days per week. You shall be presented as soon as practical.”

  “I can see that these small rooms are for the telling of stories,” said Hethor, finding unexpected courage. “Which you or your Specials must routinely relay to the viceroy. Why will you not simply relay my own story in the usual manner?”

  “Because, unlike most stories I hear in these small rooms,” said Phelps, his smile growing sad, “I believe yours. If the story were mine to tell, the angel would have come to me.”

  LATER THAT evening, a man entered the room with a little cart. He was dark-skinned, though by his clothes neither slave nor servant. “Mister Phelps said you was please to stay here until someone came for you,” the newcomer said in a deep, singsongy West Indian accent. His voice put Hethor in mind of how a tree might talk. When the man left, he did not relock the door.

  Hethor examined the cart. On top were a pair of covered dishes, one of which under inspection proved to be cod and pease porridge—dinner, he presumed, though almost cold—while the other was a dish of boiled eggs, onions, and a pale cheese shot through with blue veins. On the lower ledge of the cart was a washbasin and a chamber pot, along with a ewer of fresh water, a clothes brush and a rag.

  Master Bodean, like most of New Haven, had enjoyed running water. Apparently the viceroy’s basement g
uests did not.

  “Thank you,” Hethor told the walls, only half in jest. It would not surprise him in the least if Mister Phelps could hear his every word either directly or through the reports of one of his Specials.

  Taking advantage of the last light of Phelps’ candle before it guttered out, Hethor brushed his coat and trousers as clean as he could. He used the rag and water to take some of the grime off his face and hands. Then, mindful of the old farmer’s comment about judging a man by his boots, he spent the rest of his effort on his footwear. After that he ate sparingly of the cod, never a great favorite. The pease porridge helped to offset the cod’s lip-curling saltiness. Finally he lay down on the settee to rest. Hethor was afraid of sleep tonight, afraid of the clicking trance that had claimed the long hours of his day, but fear or no fear his body surrendered to the soft cushions and the oddly scented darkness of the room.

  He slept, dreaming mostly of cod and candles and a fire that burned high in the sky.

  “OUT, MON!” It was the West Indian, rousing Hethor from his sleep. “His Lordship will see you but very shortly.”

  Only half awake, Hethor stuffed an egg and an onion in his coat pocket, crammed some cheese into his mouth, and pulled on his boots. The cheese was unexpectedly sharp and thick. He had trouble swallowing as he followed the dark-skinned man down the brick corridor, farther from the entranceway, then up a narrow stair.

  Hethor had the cheese more or less jammed down to a hard lump in the bottom of his chest when the West Indian stopped him in a coat closet. The ceiling angled to the floor, bespeaking a rising stair just above them. A dim electrick light flickered orange immediately over the wooden door that led out. The wall behind them snicked shut, the door to the downward stair now become only paneling.

  “You will be silent, mon, until you are spoken to.” The West Indian flicked cheese crumbles from Hethor’s shirt-front and coat. “This is a hearing, not formal court. Do not be amusing, mon. I especially advise you to keep one eye on Mister Phelps and heed his signals. And for the love of God, don’t lie about anything in front of that nasty Lord William.”