Ghosts of Engines Past (7 page)

“Got any more crumbs for the birds?”

They had been my last words to her before we saw the guns come out.

“Run! I'll cover!”

They had been her last words to me. I ran, crouching low. Nine shots barked out behind me, and by the time I looked back there were three bodies on the ground and a lot of onlookers screaming and fleeing.

Now it was I who was doing the defending. I had fired my shots, I had not run, but I still had to stand my ground. Mister Brandel was a killer.
A killer from any other age still kills as dead.
The thought almost made me laugh, but I could not afford to laugh. At some time in the distant past, and with a trail of dozens of corpses behind him, Mister Brandel would finally court and win an Elizabeth Crossen who was perhaps four decades old. She would be bitter from the twenty years of pain and loss caused by his murders. He would be disappointed with what she had become after so much waiting and effort. He would be a disappointed killer.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mister Brandel stand, straighten his coat, then walk from the reading table.

“Oh Mister Goldsmith, you forgot your folder!” I called as loudly as is proper in a library.

He stopped and turned. His eyes wandered here and there, as if he were confused about who might have spoken to him.

“I am just to the privy, watch over my effects if you will,” he said to me at last, then continued on his way.

Glancing to the reading table, I saw that all five books I had give him now lay open. There was a muffled thump from somewhere, like the sound of a motor accident in the distance. I returned to my work on some inane reference question from the local historical society. A smoke detector called its shrill warning from nearby. I looked up.

“Someone smoking in the men's toilets,” said one of the shelvers.

“Again,” I replied.

I got to my feet with the usual reluctance. Ejecting smokers from the toilets always involved a confrontation. Ejecting Mister Brandel for smoking was bound to be even more of a challenge. Still, I was not surprised that he needed a smoke to steady his nerves after what I had done to him. I expected him to have one of those long-stemmed clay pipes, the sort that you can still find fragments of beside the Thames. As I approached the outer door I realised that something was wrong, however. There was the smell of sulphur on the air.

I had never dreamed how much smoke could be produced by a single gunshot. Mister Brandel was lying on the floor, on his back. His wig had landed in a urinal, and I now saw that his head was shaved. There was a neat hole, blackened at the edges, in his right temple. The exit wound took up most of the left side of his skull. In his right hand was a flintlock pistol, its barrel still smoking, and in his left was his beaver hat. The ball had continued on to shatter a mirror.

I was the first aid officer for the evening shift, but this was well beyond my training or experience. Workplace First Aid 2.1 does not prepare students for someone blowing his brains out with a half inch lead ball. I forced myself to go down on one knee and put my fingers to the body's neck. The skin was warm, but there was no pulse. I stood, touching nothing, then recorded the scene with my phone camera.

The library was closed as a crime scene while the police and coroner did their investigations. Mister Brandel immediately became a source of considerable mystery to them. He had no identity whatsoever, aside from what was in the folder. In the weeks that followed the police found no match with his DNA, and no match on his key facial elements. The Costume Suicide Man, as he came to be known, was featured on the television news and even spawned a few websites.

When the police first arrived I was quizzed about what books he wanted. Because he had borrowed nothing, he had needed no library card—and thus had not needed to show any ID. Only my memory contained a record of his requests.

“Why would history drive him to suicide?” asked the detective as I showed him the books that the dead man had been reading.

“I can't say. He seemed as if he wanted to live in the past, like with all his period clothing.”

“Oh yeah, it's amazing how he got the costume, the weapon, everything, so accurate. Like I study this sort of thing for a hobby, you know, I'm into historical re-enactment. That body in the gents is authentic, right down to the tooth decay. Even his costume has the sort of wear that only comes with years of use. My redcoat uniform is just like that, proper wear from years of use.”

“He had a particular interest in the poet Elizabeth Crossen,” I said, pointing out the five books that lay open alongside his leather folder.

“And apart from reading the books he never used any library facilities?”

“He never so much as reserved a book.”

There had been chaos following the alarm being raised over Mister Brandel's suicide. Very conscientiously I had removed the tapes for the monitor cameras that covered the information desk and front door, then locked them away for the police to examine. The new tapes did not go in until after I had substituted our library's biographies of Elizabeth Crossen for those that Mister Brandel had just read. These found their way into my backback behind the information desk. Naturally the staff were badly shaken by what had happened, and it was two hours before the police allowed us to leave. As I walked for the Underground station I thought of Harriet, and of how much I owed her.

The very first thing I did when I got home was to light a fire. Next I got out the scotch and poured myself a generous measure. By the end of my second glass the fire was burning hot enough for my needs. Into the flames went a stolen accessions stamp from the Nunhead library, and as this burned I began ripping up the biographies of Elizabeth Crossen and feeding the pages into the flames. I was working on the last book when Harriet phoned me. She had heard about the suicide on the news.

“Whoever he was, he imagined that he really was a time traveller,” I told her.

“But why did he do it?” she asked. “Nothing seems to make any sense.”

“Obsession with the past,” I replied. “Some people really let it get to them, you see that sort of thing if you work in a library for long enough. I think he fell in love with Elizabeth Crossen. In a way it was a clever fantasy.”

“You mean he was pretending to be a time-refugee, and pining for his sweetheart in the past?”

“Yes.”

“That
is just
magical!”

How could I tell her the truth? Brandel had been killing Elizabeth’s suitors one by one, then travelling forward in time to read about how history had changed. It had never changed to his satisfaction, so he had gone on killing. Surely this said something about his chances with her, but love was apparently blind in this case. How many lives had I saved by driving him to suicide? Quite a few, I hoped, because I was feeling decidedly guilty. Could I be prosecuted for murder? Probably not. Accessory to suicide? Possibly. I could possibly plead self-defence on behalf of potential victims who had died back in the Nineteenth Century, and point out that I did it because there were no time-police... my head started to spin, and I decided to stay with the pretend-time-refugee story.

“Brandel was reading of how Elizabeth married Robert Bell at the library tonight,” I said aloud, as much to solidify this version of events for myself, as to tell Harriet. “I watched him, wallowing in grief as he read of how his girl met, then married, another man. He was unable to stand it any more, so he killed himself.”

“But he's not a real time traveller, is he?”

“No, he's just done a good job of looking like being one. So far the police can't trace him as someone modern. As far as they are concerned, he might as well have been a time refugee.”

“Hey, intense. Like, in a sense he had got what he wanted. He escaped these times, and died as a man from, er, when did you say?”

“1810.”

“Wow. As plots go, it's got a lot going for it.”

“Yes, although it's sort of real,” I agreed.

“Er, look I don't want to sound, like, crass or anything, but I don't suppose I could come over now, could I?” asked Harriet in her rarely used tentative voice. “I mean, to get a few impressions while they're fresh in your mind? This could make a fabulous book, in fact I think I could sell over a thousand copies if I get it out really fast.”

I had seen this coming, and I did not mind at all. First I had lost Emily, and then I had developed something of a crush for Elizabeth before saving her for a life with Robert Bell. I was lonely, and Harriet was the sort of company that I really needed.

“Better be quick or you won't get much sense out of me,” I warned. “I'm about to pour my third scotch, and I'm stretched out in front of a roaring fire.”

“Give me just twenty, I'm on a scooter, remember?”

The biographies of Elizabeth Crossen that I had hurriedly scanned and re-written from the originals, then self-published in runs of one copy each, had been quite slim. This was because in my version of history she had died in 1812. I read my tragic tale as I fed the last pages of the fifth book into the fire. I had Robert Bell taking the king's shilling and going to fight in the Peninsular Campaign against Napoleon in 1809. This he had done to prove himself brave to Elizabeth, yet in doing it he had lost his life. When news of his death had reached her, she had gone into deep mourning. It had only been after a courtship of three years that she had finally agreed to marry Edwin Charles Brandel, formerly of the East India Company. The marriage had been a brief but turbulent one, and had ended one night when he had beaten her to death, then shot himself out of remorse. Some of her last words, taken from a letter written only days before her death, were quoted on my final page.

'He keeps railing against me for being bitter and disillusioned, and not being the girl he loved, yet how can this be? He only met me when fate had already squeezed the joy from my heart and rendered me desolate with loss. Edwin is just one of many who courted me, but fortune willed it that we should marry. Robert was my only true love.'

When I had written the words I had hardly dared to hope that they really would drive Mister Brandel to despair. Like a shot taken at a dangerous gunman at extreme range, my words had struck home through sheer luck. As the last page burned I sipped at my scotch and opened my own copy of Abercrombie's definitive biography of Elizabeth Crossen. Mister Brandel was absent from the index, and both Elizabeth and Robert were recorded as living happily together into the 1860s. The lovers were safe, forever, in a fixed and constant past.

The doorbell chimed, then Harriet rapped at the door and called my name. I let her in, and she managed to ask half a dozen questions about Mister Brandel and his suicide before she remembered to ask me if I was feeling okay and give me a hug. By then I did not feel like anything other than immediate bed and sleep without company, but I was very much in her debt. Harriet had taught me about vanity presses, print-on-demand publishing, who to contact, and what they could do in what sort of timeframes. Without her I would not be the anonymous publisher and pseudonymous author of five biographies of Elizabeth Crossen, each with a print run of one copy. Looked at from that perspective, the two of us were indeed a slightly peculiar version of Elizabeth Crossen and Robert Bell, and I even found the idea strangely alluring.

It is 1449, and although they had the skills and materials to build the steam engine in this story, they lacked the idea.

The first operational steam device was invented in the Middle Ages. It was only a steam bellows, but it showed what could be done. While I was writing this story I decided to experiment with some ultra-simple designs for steam propulsion, and I came up with this design. I checked with a marine engineer, and he said it might work. I built a model, and it did indeed work. The story that requires a medieval steamship is one of elf versus engineer, spell against steam and magic against physics. This is steampunk, however, so naturally the elf is an absolute cad and we are all cheering for the engineer.

It was Anno Domine 1449, and the world was about to change. An idea was approaching the market town of Keswick, just north of Derwent Water. The name of that idea was La Hachette, and she already had a following.

1
It is 2010. Some people just don't appreciate art, but a two mile long metal dragon with a serious attitude problem can do more than just sneer.

Many people were a bit distressed by this story because they really like art. The problem is that a lot of nice things are bad for you, like sugar, tobacco, and easy credit. Can art be bad for you? Well, yes, if you aspire to be finger painting champion of the world. At some stage one has to grow up, and art may not be for grownups.

Sir Gerald always rose from his bed a half hour before first light and walked from Keswick to the Derwent River. Every day, for seven years, the hour before dawn and the hour following sunset would find the knight sitting on a rock that had become known as Gerald's Watch. The rock was near a footbridge of planks and poles that spanned the river. His squire sat quietly some distance away.

In Keswick it was well known that Gerald did not tolerate company while he waited and watched, so he was both surprised and angered when a figure came into view in the half-light before morning. At distance it looked like a man carrying an infant, then Gerald noticed that the bundle was glowing. The intruder stopped a little upstream. The knight was able to make out the shape of a helmet and the gleam of chainmail in the weak light.

Gerald strung his bow before striding down to the water's edge. The intruder had arrived at the very worst time possible, and Gerald had opened his mouth to say as much when he saw a little boat on the water. Curiosity smothered the knight's anger.

The boat was half a yard long, and six short, thick candles were burning along its keel. Astride them was the metal rendering of a long, thin dog, its head facing backwards and its tail raised to display its bottom to wherever the boat might go.