Of Steel and Steam: A Limited Edition Anthology

by Pauline Creeden

  Nothing. The sound hadn’t come back either, and I figured it must’ve been the wind echoing through the empty halls, nothing more.

  Pulling the blanket closer around myself, I returned back to bed, where Mac was snoring loud enough to wake up half a town.

  Perhaps Mac was right, I considered as I crawled into bed next to the sleeping cat. I was no proper lady on the look for a respectable gentleman to marry her, but I could use some company, at least. I had never even fallen in love, or gotten close to it. The life I was living…

  It wasn’t what Father would’ve wanted for me.

  Then again, the dead didn’t have many desires or wants left, and I had done what I had to do to survive. When the debt collectors appeared on our doorstep asking for money I didn’t have, and sold my ancestral home without giving me as much as a penny for it, I had to make ends meet somehow. Living a respectable life was no longer in the cards for me. I had always been the daughter of a somewhat eccentric scientist, a man whose genius earned him a job as a professor at a prestigious university, so although he was eccentric, people seemed to take that in stride—it was suiting of his persona. Father was a man of science, not of connections, and I had been left on my own after he passed away, the handful of friends he had offering support at first but quickly turning away from a girl who was as peculiar as her father. Yet, while Father’s quirks had been charming, mine were off-putting, no way for a proper young lady to behave.

  Maybe I didn’t need companionship after all. I hugged Mac close, and he willingly let me snuggle into his fur. I doubted there was anyone on this whole wide world who could fall for a girl like me without wanting to change her completely. I dreamt of a man to share my clock tower with, who would be intrigued by my inventions and possibly offer some suggestions of his own, who didn’t mind joining me during my midnightly adventures in underground crypts covered in cobwebs. That man was a dream image, though, a fata morgana. If I did find a suitor in London’s society, it would be the kind of man who would whisk me away from here, who would say that a crumbling-down monastery was no place for a proper young lady, and who would lock me away in a fancy townhouse with nothing to busy my mind but reading the same books all over again, or taking up a hobby such as crocheting.

  No, if the choice came down to that, I rather become an old spinster, tucked away here in my own slice of heaven, growing old with my cat as my sole companion.

  I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep again. Right before sleep claimed me, I heard a faint noise in the distance—like wheels shuffling over cobblestones.

  Chapter 4

  Sunlight streamed in through the windows of my clock tower, and I pulled the covers over my head, trying to doze off some more.

  Mac kneaded my back, purring in my ear. “Breakfast.”

  Breakfast was the cat’s favorite meal of the day, and whenever I tried to sleep longer, he turned into a nagging, old bat. Kneading my back was quite pleasant, but next he would start meowing complaints that were impossible to ignore, even with the covers pulled up to my ears, and then he would start tugging the covers off the bed. The little bugger was quite persistent when he wanted food.

  “Sleep,” I countered. “Tired.”

  A loud complaint escaped from the back of Mac’s throat.

  I resisted the urge to throw a pillow at the feline. “Aren’t you supposed to be a dangerous rodent hunter? Why don’t you go fetch yourself some rat stew or something?”

  Mac scrunched up his nose, as if I had just insulted him and his entire lineage. “I wouldn’t stoop so low as to eat common rat.” He paused, licking his lips. “I want tuna.”

  Rolling my eyes, I finally gave in and stumbled out of bed. The clock tower was still chilly, but nowhere near as cold as it had been during the night. The copious amounts of sunlight always provided sufficient heat during the day.

  Bare-footed, I made my way to the kitchen and gave Mac his much desired tuna. The cat instantly attacked the bowl, and if I didn’t know any better, I would think he was on the verge of starvation.

  My gaze was pulled to the backpack with the archbishops’ treasures in it. I ought to send word to Dr. Moore about my discovery, pique his interest a little. The good old doctor lived in a secluded estate on the outskirts of the city, guarded almost as well as the residence of the prime minister, and although I knew a few street urchins who worked as errand boys, I didn’t trust them enough not to open the message unnoticed. Last thing I wanted was to get robbed by one of London’s criminal gangs.

  Luckily, I had a far more effective system than using London’s most finest: messenger pigeons. In my case, the pigeon in question was a mechanical one endorsed with a compass, but it worked just as well. And like real pigeons, the automaton could always detect North, and could always locate its position.

  Shoving back the seat from behind my desk, I sat down with a cup of coffee I had prepared in the kitchen while offering Mac his tuna. The coffee was hot enough to burn my throat, but it had the caffeine I desperately craved, so I gulped it down.

  Ripping a piece of paper from my notebook and grabbing my pen, I began to write down:

  Dear Dr. Moore,

  I have come in the possession of several golden miters, necklaces and rings belonging to long-deceased archbishops, hidden in a secret tomb for well over two centuries.

  Given your interest in curious objects, I believe these might be of interest to you. Next to being made of pure gold, these items are an invaluable archeological find, and would be a proper asset for a museum as intriguing as yours.

  If you’re interested in these items, please provide word by nightfall. I have another customer who is intrigued by this items, but given our standing business relationship, I felt it was only fair to give you the first option to purchase these items.

  Yours,

  Arabella Blake.

  The note was riddled with lies, of course. I didn’t have a second buyer on stand-by; Dr. Moore was my first and only option. However, the doctor remained blissfully unaware of that fact, and always paid me generously.

  I folded the note, put it in an envelope addressed to Dr. Moore and licked the envelope close.

  Meanwhile, Mac purred and rubbed against my legs.

  “Finished?” I asked him.

  “It was delicious. You should get some food too,” the feline commented.

  “Not hungry.” Usually I could eat like a pig, but the nightmare from last night, or whatever it was that had disturbed my slumber, had also ripped away my appetite, it seemed. Even the coffee made my stomach twist.

  I tabbed twice on the pigeon’s head. Its eyes glowed while the machine woke up. The pigeon opened its beak, and I put the envelope inside. The beak slammed shut, as tight as a vice; the only way to break it open until it had reached its destination was by using brute force. Given how high the pigeon flew, it was near impossible.

  I turned the pigeon around, and lifted up its metallic feathers from its back, revealing the mechanism beneath. I put in the coordinates using the keyboard, then closed the metallic feathers again. The pigeon opened up its wings and flapped them twice, slowly. Then, it flew higher and higher, circling to the top of the tower where small pigeon holes had once allowed the nuns to deliver messages to other monasteries across the country.

  “So, what do you want to do?” Mac asked, licking his paw and then scratching behind his ear. “You know it’ll be at least late afternoon before Moore gets back to us. Sometimes I worry the guy is a vampire who only wakes up past noon and spends the night haunting that creepy mansion of his.”

  Grinning, I shook my head at Mac; cats were often the subject of superstition, but Mac himself was more superstitious than half a dozen old, gossiping ladies put together.

  “Moore’s mansion isn’t creepy. It’s eccentric.”

  “The man keeps skulls as decoration.” Mac looked at me as if I had grown three heads and was wearing a golden archbishop’s miter on each. The feline wasn’t particularly fond of Moo
re’s hunting gallery, where skulls of a variety of beasts shot down by the doctor himself were put on display, including the heads of tigers, jaguars and other catlike creatures. During our previous visit to Dr. Moore, when he had proudly showed us his gallery, Mac’s face had morphed into a horrific expression, the fur on his back standing on end.

  “Unfortunately, a lot of people do,” I told Mac. “Especially the rich ones that have money to pay us for our little endeavors.”

  The cat meowed and turned toward the clock. “You still haven’t said what you plan to do today.”

  “I thought about heading to Maximillian’s.” I scanned the room, trying to locate my boots and the clothes I had haphazardly kicked off yesterday when going to bed. “To thank him for the manuscript he recommended to us.”

  “And to warn him that if he conveniently forgets to mention an archbishop-automaton-shaped trap again, we’ll kick his butt?” Mac offered.

  I shook my head, smiling when I located my boots and clothes. “I don’t think we can exactly blame him for that,” I said while I jumped into my pants. “He still thinks I’m a scholar interested in archeology. If he knew I was a tomb raider, his honor would forbid him from selling me anymore volumes, for sure.”

  I struggled to put my boots on, while Mac sneaked up on me.

  “Can we stop by the fish market after our trip to the bookseller’s?” He practically purred at the thought of more food in his belly. “We’re almost out of tuna.”

  Feeling the pouch locked around my waist, I hesitated. The pouch was nearly empty, the coins I had earned from a sale two weeks ago nearly spent. I should ration the food, at least until I received payment from Dr. Moore, but on the other hand, denying Mac a treat was like denying a puppy a bone.

  “Sure,” I relented, “but our first stop is the bookshop, and don’t try to persuade me to head to the market first for ‘second breakfast.’ It’s not happening.” I finished putting on my second boot, and scrambled to get up.

  “Hey Mac,” I said suddenly, recalling the eerie noise that had woken me up in the middle of the night. “Did you hear anything out of the ordinary last night?”

  “Out of the ordinary? No, why?” Mac flexed his ears. “You don’t think we have rats, do you? I hate rats.”

  “If we do, then you’re supposed to hunt them, not chicken away from them,” I reminded the feline. “And no, it was probably nothing. A bad dream, is all.”

  Still, my mind filled with dread at the memory. I shrugged my coat on to defeat the shivers running up my spine.

  Mac and I arrived at Maximillian’s bookshop roughly an hour later, having walked from the monastery through a myriad of claustrophobic alleys into the buzzing, lively heart of the city. Townhouses were lined up next to each other in a kaleidoscope of colors, some of them with windows bricked close. It was a strange sight but one that made perfect sense since people had to pay taxes based on the number of windows in their façade. A walled-up window no longer counted, and some folks went through great lengths to be forced to pay less taxes. I would probably do the same, if I had to pay any taxes to begin with—since Her Majesty’s tax office was still blissfully unaware of my occupying of the monastery’s clock tower, I didn’t exist in the eyes of the Crown.

  The bookshop was tucked between two oversized buildings on the corner of a street, bulging out from between them, as if it was about to erupt like a squeezed balloon. The shop window was cluttered with books and antiquities—sometimes I tended to forget that Maximillian didn’t just sell ancient manuscripts, but all kinds of curiosities. Although, I doubted any of them were looted by gravediggers.

  The door bell sang when we walked in. Inside, the shop was divided in two halves; the left side, dark and gloomy, was overtaken by ancient tomes, and the right side, slightly less dark and gloomy, displayed other antiquities. The reason behind the it was that some of the older books in the shop shouldn’t be exposed to sunlight.

  Square in the middle sat the oak counter, and behind it was the patron, Maximillian himself.

  Maximillian wasn’t that much older than me. He had short black hair with a grey patch in it—by his own accounts, he had been turning grey from the moment he turned sixteen. He wore a high top hat, which looked remarkably good on him, and a suede jacket with a chess pattern. He was leaning on the counter, browsing through a manuscript, and looked up when the bell announced our arrival.

  The corners of his mouth tugged into a smile that instantly made a blush creep up my cheeks.

  Maximillian was handsome, but in a bookish kind of way. Clean-shaven, straight nose, glasses, his whole appearance suited well for his profession. If you’d stumble upon him while crossing the road, you’d guess he was either a bookseller or a librarian. Intelligence was attractive, though, at least to me.

  Mac went ahead and jumped on top of the counter. He purred while Maximillian scratched his neck.

  “Good morning,” the bookseller and I said at the same time.

  I chuckled nervously. “Heh. Uhm, hello.”

  “Hello to you as well.” Maximillian looked flustered too, or perhaps that was wishful thinking on my part.

  “I…” I hesitated, struggling to remember the reason why I came here other than to ogle him. “Uhm… Well, the manuscript I bought the other day…”

  “What is it?” Worry flashed across Maximillian’s features. “No pages missing, were there? I mean, I thought I checked pretty thoroughly, and even if there’s anything missing, it’s one of the few copies in existence, so—”

  “No, no,” I cut him off. “Everything was fine. In fact, better than fine. I found it really useful for my… research.”

  Mac curled into a ball, his tail next to his head. We had come here so often that the feline felt right at home in the bookshop.

  “Oh. Phew.” Maximillian let out a relieved sigh. “I thought you were coming to complain. I’ve had a customer come in this morning to complain about the words of Shakespeare. Apparently, he found it totally unbelievable that Hamlet is haunted by a spirit, or that Romeo and Julia would kill themselves although only having known each other for a few days.”

  “Shakespeare is rather dramatic like that,” I said.

  “Romantic in a tragic way,” Maximillian said. “Anyway, I don’t mind if a big buffoon comes in here to complain, but if you had any complaints, it would be terrible. You’re one of my best customers, Miss Blake.”

  I blushed and looked down at the floor. “Thanks, but I already said you can call me Arabella. I come in here practically every week.” Plus, I considered him to be my friend. Or something close to a friend. In any case, the closest thing to a friend I had, besides Mac.

  “I keep on forgetting. Arabella.”

  When Maximillian said my name, my stomach clenched and the coffee I had for breakfast threatened to turn to acid.

  “Anyway,” I said, desperate to cut to the chase and stop blushing like a madman, “I was wondering if you had anything else, similar to the last manuscript I bought? I’m particularly interested in crypts, vaults, burial chambers, cemeteries, tombs, you name it.”

  “Anything related to the dearly departed?” Maximillian furrowed his brow. “One day, you’ll have to show me your research, Miss Bl—Sorry, Arabella.”

  “Oh, you don’t want to read it.” I waved his suggestion away. “It’s quite macabre and ghastly.”

  “Macabre and ghastly sounds like excellent reading material.” Maximillian’s smile brightened. “To be honest, I do have something you might be interested in. It came in today. A genuine Necronomicon, if you believe it.”

  Maximillian glanced around at the shop. Save for a few customer staring at antiquities, it was rather slow, like most days. The shop only had a handful of regulars, but those regulars made purchases often enough to keep business going, as Maximillian had once confided to me.

  The bookseller gestured for me to follow him into the darkest part of the shop, far away from the prying eyes of other customers. Mac didn’
t follow us, but instead kept lying on the counter and soaked in the sun streaming in from the glass entrance doors.

  Maximillian had showcased the Necronomicon on a special stand at the end of the shop, behind glass. As I had suspected, it wasn’t an actual book, but a handful of scrolls depicting ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.

  The Necronomicon, or the Egyptian Book of the Dead, were scrolls included in the burial chambers of pharaohs and other people of prominence who were entombed along with their treasures. The first few pages, like the one shown at the front, typically displayed burial rites. The mummification changed over the course of the centuries, and the different ways to properly embalm a corpse could be studied in great detail when researching these Books of the Dead. But what was a thousand times more important, at least in my humble opinion, was the information contained in the scrolls behind those describing the burial rites: the scrolls that spoke of ways how to get into the tomb of the deceased.

  “Where was this uncovered? Did you have a check done on it, to make sure it’s genuine?” I asked Maximillian while I inspected the manuscript, looking at it from various angles. The papyrus scrolls certainly looked old enough to be the real deal; I feared they would crumble to dust simply by touching them.

  “I bought it from a reliable seller, but I haven’t gotten around to testing it yet. Looks real to me, though, and you know these things are in high demand. I’d have a buyer for this by the end of the day if I wanted to.”

  Some people would say that just to make a quick sell, but with Maximillian, I knew it was the truth.

  “It was found at the entrance of a cave supposedly leading to the resting place of Amenhotep III in the Valley of Kings,” Maximillian said.

  Amenhotep III. I made a mental note to uncover more about this pharaoh, including if his actual sarcophagus was uncovered yet. If it was, then purchasing the Book of the Dead was useless; I didn’t need a map to rob a sarcophagus that was already stripped bare. Be it archeologists or grave robbers, the moment anyone entered a pharaoh’s final resting place, they didn’t leave without taking everything of value.