A Clockwork Heart (27 page)

“Do not go any closer. He must go to the Shadow before it's too late and this portal closes. Wraiths do not survive for long in the Light,” Jack warned.

“Come with me. We can break this curse. Together we can do this.” Huge tears started running down her cheeks, unbidden.

“Don't be sad.” Marsh's eyes softened. “Better I go … be free and forget me … better that way.”

“He is right. If he is truly a wraith, he will drain your life force away,” Loisa said.

“There will be nothing left of either of you, before long,” Jack said. “Come along then, sir, before it's too late. Wouldn't want to miss the gap.” He motioned toward the glowing rent in the barrier from which he had just stepped. “Tell them old Jack sent you. They will take care of you if you do.”

Marsh looked at Jack and nodded.

“No! Don't leave me, please,” Elle weeping so profusely now that she felt as if her lungs would burst.

Marsh turned to look at her. A strange look of compassion crossed his face. “It calls and I must go.” As he turned, his face filled with color and for a sliver of a second he was human and he smiled at her. Then he turned and slipped through the rent and disappeared.

“No!” Elle fell to her knees and buried her face in her hands. Her tears were mixing with the soot on her skin, spitting large black drops of sorrow onto her clothes.

“The black tears of a grieving widow. You should hang on to those. They are very valuable. Very rare too. Pure sorrow,” Jack mumbled as he picked up his bundle.

Everyone else ignored him. They were all too shocked to say anything.

“Very well, if there is nothing else, I will be on my way then,” he said as he hitched up his bundle. “Three times three, little Oracle. You and me will meet again when the time is right.” And with those words, he slung his bundle over his shoulder and walked off into the night.

CHAPTER 37

The Clockmaker sits up in his bed, grasping his nightshirt. Something is amiss. Even here, in his safe, warm little apartment in Zurich it feels like an invisible hand is pressing into him, constricting his chest.

“What waits in the darkness?” he whispers. He shrugs his head in disbelief at his own fear and makes to slip back under the comforting warmth of soft linens and goose down. The Clockmaker does not believe in ghosts or strange creatures who go bump in the night, for he is an artist and a scientist and so he puts his faith in the things that can be proven. He believes in the power of money. The power of the Consortium he has created. All those financiers and businessmen, who click and tick together to make the world turn. It is his greatest achievement.

He does not see the wraith who waits silently in the dark. He does not even see the fine lasso the wraith holds in his hand. The wraith is ready to perform the unspeakable task he has set without delay.

By then it is too late and the Clockmaker's eyes widen in surprise for only an instant as the filament winds round his neck. The Clockmaker has time to make only half a choking sound before death takes him.

A single drop of ruby-red blood drops to the front of his pristine nightshirt, exactly in the place where his heart no longer beats, before his body falls forward in perfect lifelessness.

The wraith does not flinch at the sight of the blood. Calmly he gathers up the lasso around his left hand. It is pure white and wound from the purest strand of silk, such as can only be woven by a wyrd-weaver. The end is a little frayed, as it is had been ripped apart by some great force, but this does not matter. As he twists the filament, it shortens and slips around the fourth finger of his left hand where a ring once sat. But the wraith does not stop to remember such things, for they are now firmly in the past. All that remains for him is the burning desire for revenge. It burns within him, white and hot, like a forge which sustains the empty husk that once held a beating heart.

And so, with the whisper that reminds of summer meadows and of grass, the wraith slips from the room into the night.

For even in this darkness, there is little time before he must return to the Shadow. And he has much work to do.

CHAPTER 38

The days that followed what the newspapers were calling “The Battle of Battersea Park” would always be shrouded in a haze for Elle.

Gentle hands conveyed her to the car. At some point, she was lifted out of the seat and put to bed. Doctor Miller's face swam in and out of her vision as he administered bandages and sedatives and sleeping potions. But none of these ministrations did anything to ease the shock or numb the pain. Marsh was gone.

She drifted through flurries of days that wisped passed. She watched on with cool detachment as if she were a stranger, observing her one life from a distance.

Each new day was punctuated by a fresh headline that appeared on the silver tray next to her bed. The same tray that was later removed untouched.

The headlines told their own story:

PLOT TO INVADE BRITAIN FOILED

one read.

MRS. MATHILDA HINGES, NATIONAL HEROINE TO BE HONORED BY THE KING

said another. It had a picture of Mrs. Hinges, finely drawn by the publishers, beside it.

ELECROMANCERS OPEN REHABILITATION HOSPITAL ON BANKS OF THE THAMES

one said later.

And later still:

ASTONISHING ADVANCEMENTS IN HEART SURGERY PIONEERED

Then:

POLICE COMMISSIONER DISMISSED AMIDST ALLEGATIONS OF CORRUPTION

It had been discovered that Commissioner Willoughby had been doing favors for various organizations. The prime minister was said to be outraged and was proposing widespread police reform.

And even later:

STRANGE KILLINGS IN EUROPE. ANOTHER RIPPER ON THE LOOSE.

A funeral was held and she stood silently and alone in a scratchy black dress next to the empty coffin as it was sealed up inside the Greychester mausoleum. She weathered the countless pats and caresses of affection and sympathy in the same way a tree weathers a summer storm. Stoic and unattached, she stared blankly before her, until all conversation ran out and the world retreated to its own business.

Ducky had escaped the crash with nothing more than a few bruises and a broken collarbone. He had hugged Elle at the funeral and promised her that he would look after the charters till she felt better. The pilot of the other ship had not been so lucky. Elle never found out what his name was, but somehow she thought him to be the lucky one. For her life stretched out before her like a vast bone-bleached plane.

Marsh was gone.

Loisa and Jasper remained the best of friends. And after a suitably appropriate amount of time, they departed in her new steam cab, now freshly modified to accommodate two travelling coffins and emblazoned with her red family crest. Jasper had passed Loisa's test and had joined her in the world of the night as a companion while he completed the training and rituals all young Nightwalkers must learn.

Following the great battle, the professor finally professed his feelings and proposed to Mrs. Hinges, or Dame Mathilde Hinges, as she was henceforth known. Eventually they too departed for Oxford to prepare for a small wedding to be held at the local registry office. Elle had held the cream invitation card, for a long time before she fed it into the fire. She watched the copperplate script, which advised rather formally that tea and cakes baked by the bride herself would be served afterward, blister and disintegrate in the flames.

Adele had chosen to stay with Florica. She had made it known that fairies did not fare well in places that were infused with the kind of sorrow that dwelled within the walls of Greychester house. And the travelling folk were always on the move, so it was not long until she disappeared entirely. All that Elle had to remember the fairy by was the small brass button that Florica had given her. It sat by itself in a small ornamental porcelain bowl in the center of Elle's dresser.

Elle took to sleeping in her secret chamber. Curled up in a ball around the red velvet pillow she clung to like it was a life raft. Every night, she prowled the Shadow Realm. Always searching. Her portal to the Shadow Realm became so well used that small shadow creatures now waited for her to emerge in the hope that they could slip through into the Light without anyone noticing. She did not pay them any heed, even when one of the maids shrieked and swatted at a dip-dib who skittered across the marble floors and vanished into the dark night. On and on Elle wandered through the Realm of Shadow. Always searching. Always hoping to find him, but he was never there. She became pale and thin with dark hollows under her eyes, which spoke of her unspoken sorrow. But nothing she did helped. Marsh was gone.

One morning, Elle woke and stumbled out of her lightless chamber to find that bright shafts of sunlight were shining into her room. She walked up to the panes and looked out into the street below. Everything seemed hazy and brown, a bit like the sepia of a badly developed photograph, and it took her a moment to work out that the windowpanes really were very dusty indeed. She walked over to the newspaper which resting on the tray that had been left out for her as it was every morning.

It was the fifteenth of May, 1904. Her twenty-fifth birthday.

Three months had passed without her even noticing. And still, he was gone.

She pulled on her dressing robe over the pink scars that now marked her forearms. The scars were a painful reminder of the fateful night when her life had ended.

On a whim, she decided to see who else was about. She pulled on a pair of satin slippers and padded down the hallway.

The house around her felt empty and hollow. Sheets covered all the mirrors and all the curtains were drawn. For this was indeed a house of mourning.

In the drawing room, no fire had been lit and she shivered at the sight of the abandoned bath chair which still stood beside the fire. Empty.

She turned and walked through to the breakfast room. It was chilly in here, despite the brightness outside. She noticed that the plants in the conservatory had wilted and turned brown. Only a few brave ferns still clung to life in their dried out ports.

Edie came by, carrying a bucket and stopped in her tracks. “My lady!” she blurted and immediately averted her eyes.

“Edie, is that you?” Elle croaked. Her voice still felt rough and husky after all this time.

“My lady,” Edie said again.

“Where is everybody?”

“Well, ma'am, Neville has moved on. The professor did his best to give him a good reference, so he's decided to join the army. The last we heard they were sending him to the Balkans to see if the trouble brewing there could be sorted. And for the rest, well, it's just me and Mr. Caruthers left now. We do the best we can, but this is a big house to care for.” She looked away, slightly embarrassed at the admission.

Elle sat down on one of the chairs and rubbed her face. Her skin felt greasy and her eyes scratchy. She realized to her dismay that she could not remember the last time she had brushed her teeth properly.

“Would you like me to fetch you something, my lady?” Edie said shifting from one foot to the other, clearly becoming more and more distressed at the sight of Elle, half-dressed and wild-haired, wandering though the house like a lost soul.

These thoughts somehow jolted Elle out of her reverie. She focused on Edie who was still holding the bucket.

“You know what, I think you can,” Elle said. “Bring me some fresh towels. I think I would like to take a nice hot bath. And afterward, I think I shall have some breakfast. Perhaps a cup of tea and some fried egg.”

She had eaten fried egg on that first breakfast she shared with Marsh on the day after their escape from Paris. She had such a fight with Mrs. Hinges about setting the table with the best linen. Somehow the memory of it gave her comfort.

“Yes, my lady,” Edie said. She picked up her bucket and rushed off to tend to the task at hand.

Elle walked up to the windows of the breakfast room and dragged the floral print curtains open. A puff of dust rose up off them and sifted down onto her shoulders, but she hardly noticed, for the sun shone through the windows in and onto the carpet in glorious bright shafts.

Elle stared up at the sky. It was the perfect blue of late spring, with only a little headwind, judging by the speed of the giant white clouds that crept across it.

Then she took a deep, cleansing breath.

Today was a new day. Her life was beginning again. And the weather looked like it might be perfect for flying.

HISTORICAL NOTE

TK

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In many ways, a second novel is almost harder to write than a first. The playing field changes, the demands of the author are different and with this new world comes a whole new set of challenges.

I can say without hesitation that
A
Clockwork
Heart
would never have reached fruition in time if it had not been for the magnificent team of people assembled behind me. Writing might be the most solitary of occupations, but bringing novels into the world is very much a team effort.

So to Michael and Tricia, thank you again for everything and for dealing with my emails sent while hiding in ficus plants in the ladies' with such grace.

To the lovely Emily Yau. Thank you so much for your patience and your dedication. Your eye for detail is amazing. To Hannah Robinson who looks after all the millions of tiny dots that make up the rather frantic pointillist world of a writer. I don't know how I ever managed without you.

To Joe Scalora and Sarah Peed who look after me in America, and who stay with me in spirit on that side of the world.

Also, a very special word of thanks to Justine Taylor for the copy edits. Without her, the whole world would know that I mostly never know what day of the week it is.

And last but not least, a special mention Oliver Munson and Melis Dagoglu. Thank you for the support and feedback and for knowing just what to say when the clouds roll in.

I have asked Mrs Hinges to bake strawberry tarts for all of you, but even such sublime confections don't adequately express my gratitude.