Mechanized Masterpieces: A Steampunk Anthology (27 page)

There was a pause, a sickening, wet sound—one redolent to Meg of stage battles, heroic deaths by daggers through the heart—as the smaller, thinner of the two dark silhouettes fell, and then . . . silence punctuated by the sound of quiet sobbing.

Meg ran past the myriad of concerned and startled salutations from the cast and crew of the Palais Garnier. She’d emerged from the hidden mirror passageway in Christine’s former dressing room moments ago and discovered the company to be in frenzied preparation for the evening’s début of the phantom’s new work.

“Meg! Oh, Meg. You missed him, you silly goose!” Brigitte caught her up as she hurried down the hall. “The Opera Ghost was here. Someone said they saw him with your mother—”

Spurred on by a new fear, Meg hastened through the backstage area, ignoring all attempts by passersby to ascertain where she’d run off to today, of all days. Brigitte, kind in spite of her flightiness, stayed at her side, guiding Meg to where her mother was resting, thoughtfully staying outside and keeping shut the door as the prima ballerina tentatively entered the sickroom.

“Mother?” Her eyes were met with an unexpected sight.

Madame Giry sat calmly in the little room, arguing with the company’s doctor. Thumping her cane demonstratively on the floor, she was in the middle of insisting that she resume her duties when her daughter entered. Knowing himself to be dismissed, and relieved to be rid of his troublesome patient, the doctor removed himself from the room with alacrity.

“Erik—”

“Was here, yes, child,” Meg’s mother completed the sentence and opened her hand to reveal a tiny glass bottle, a twin to the one Meg had lost in the dark below the opera. “We had a good little chat, he and I.” Her eyes twinkled and she patted the couch beside her. Meg sat. “We've long had an arrangement, the details of which you’re not needing to know. Suffice it to say, I am happy to report that he is keeping his end of the bargain,” the old woman sniffed, clearly pleased with herself.

“But his father, he—”

“His father is a bastard,” Madame Giry’s eyes grew hard. “If it weren’t for him and his infernal experiments, none of this ever would have happened.” She paused, grew thoughtful, “Though, without it, Erik might never have become the remarkable genius he is today. And when you think on what some of his creations could be capable of in the wrong hands—the government, the military . . .You might say he’s done society a great favour, resigning his clockwork marvels, his smoke and mirror illusions, to the humble theatre, where no real harm may be done.”

“But he’s a murderer!” Meg blurted out, unable to help herself from assigning blame, in spite of all she’d seen.

“Accidents, my dear. For which poor Erik is quite sorry, I assure you,” Madame Giry shook her head sadly. “It’s taken a long time for our opera ghost to find his way in our dark little world. He has had little of the comforts that you or I take for granted. A mother’s love, a father’s approval . . . He has loved and lost and been left with nothing but this opera house and its colourful asylum of inmates. Even developing out of such circumstances, you’ll find he’s infinitely more honest and trustworthy a man than our own Mm. Richard and Monchamin are. But they, too, are products of their world . . . ” She patted Meg’s hand. “I trust that the wonders you saw in his world below will serve as a reminder someday when you, too, leave all this behind and are tempted to forget your humble origins, prima ballerina Meg.” She smiled sadly.

“Oh, but I don’t see that—” Meg shrugged off this last insinuation.

“Shh . . . ” Madame Giry turned, fished a small letter out of her pocket, “He asked that I give you this.”

Dearest Meg,

I confess that your trueness took me quite by surprise. I am not often faced with such honesty in another—in fact, I can count the occurrences on one hand. But I am not without conscience, and, after our discussion a bit ago, I have found myself unable to go through with the plans I had been forced to consider in my long exile beneath the opera house. You and your mother deserve that much from me, and so I beg your forgiveness and hope that we might be friends henceforth. With such a hope, I do believe that I might find contentment with my place in this world. For you’ve managed to show me that, in the words of a very wise butterfly, “It does not matter what we used to be: the important thing is what we are now!” I am, as ever, your humble servant—

Erik

“Put on your gayest smile, my dear. I hear that M. Baron de Castelot-Barbezac is to be in attendance tonight.” With a sly smile, Madame Giry kissed her daughter lightly on the cheek and disappeared into the growing throng to deal with the arriving audience.

Styled after after The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Ebenezer stood, head bowed, a single tear chilling on his cheek as the bearers lowered Rose’s wrapped body into the waiting earthen womb. He stood as the prayers were said, wincing at the first handful of dirt scattered across the shroud over Rose’s face. He stood, cold and rigid, until they’d all gone. Until the gravedigger had left the last shovelful of earth, as Ebenezer had requested. The gravedigger nodded respectfully and reached a shaking hand to collect the sovereign Ebenezer held out to him.

Ebenezer watched the man disappear into the gloaming. And then he began to dig.

With each gentle push of the spade into the earth, he felt his memories peel back to reveal the long march he’d taken to that dismal hour. If only he and Rose could have afforded cleaner lodgings. If only he hadn’t been so quick to disobey his father. If only his father had been less fierce, more prone to forgiving than forbidding.

“You are to be wed to Miss Catherine Howlett and I will hear no more trifling over this Rose Bennet. My son, to wed a dollymop . . . a woman of
that
standing!”

“Father, a fine woman Miss Howlett may be, but she would have me as half a man and all the price. She knows me only as heir to the family fortune, which you have worked so hard to build. And she would have no more knowledge of me than that! I love Rose and she loves me, inheritance or no. And she—”

“Ebenezer, I have seen that Bennet woman enter a public house, and unaccompanied at that! She is but a lowly strumpet! I won’t have you throw your life and my fortune away by marrying her. If you marry her, your services will no longer be required at the firm.”

“No, please. You misunderstand the situation, Father—” but his words rebounded from his father’s disappearing back.

Rose had loved Ebenezer from the first time he walked into her uncle’s public house. He treated her like a lady, not a barmaid. Whatever pains his father might have taken to instill in him a disbelief in her virtue, they had not worked. She assured him of her purity, despite her standing.

As he spent time at the pub and grew to know her, he knew he had been right to believe in her. Her rosy cheeks and sparkling gray eyes reflected her sunny, sweet disposition. She cast dispelling sunlight on the fog that had surrounded Ebenezer for most of his life. As the only son to a fierce-tempered patriarch, Ebenezer had had his share of gloomy days, but with Rose by his side, he’d seen a more cheerful future stretching out before him, like the open sea.

His father, alas, held fast to his convictions, and he dismissed Ebenezer from the family business on the day of the wedding. When Rose began coughing blood mere months after they spoke their vows, Ebenezer’s future once again hung over him like the bleak, soot-black, smoky skies of London.

Rose’s death came one year to the day after the wedding. Ebenezer shrank inward. No wintry weather could chill him; no summer day would warm him. He wrote to his sister, Fanny, with the news of his wife’s death. Burial was not a pittance at six-pound-and-ten, and he would be damned if he’d let them throw Rose atop the pile in a pauper’s grave. He hoped that Fanny might have more luck than he in warming the old man’s heart enough to loosen his purse. But the elder Scrooge kept to his convictions, as only a Scrooge can do. Ebenezer’s name had been stricken from the family.

All hope seemed truly lost until Neville Jameson, his mother’s favorite brother, came to his aid with a gift meant to satisfy both the burial costs and a second chance at Ebenezer making something of himself. He would do both, he assured his Uncle Neville. He would leave the dirty streets of south London where he and Rose had lived and loved for that one painful year. But he would see her properly buried first, even if only in the farthest corner of the churchyard.

Rose’s family accepted his gift with grace and understood his circumstances. Half of his uncle’s money was spoken for. Jameson had made it patently clear that Ebenezer should invest the maximum possible. He felt half would be enough to establish himself. The remainder would go for better lodgings. And Hargreaves’s invention.

Ebenezer first came across Hargreaves in the public house owned by Rose’s uncle. He and Rose were ensconced in a cozy booth, daydreaming aloud about their future, when a ragged gypsy approached.

“Ah, ’tis a fine couple I see. Would you be wanting to know how many strapping boys you’ll be having? Cross my palm with silver and I’ll tell all.” Rose giggled and held out her hand. The gypsy’s face darkened and she muttered something.

“What? What is it?” asked Rose, her voice too high and tight.

“Ah, poor girl, poor, poor girl. You’ve found great love and he will give up everything for you, but death will claim you early.” She walked away, head bowed, without her silver coins. Rose burst into tears.

“It’s just humbug. Pay no attention, my dear,” soothed Ebenezer. He watched as the gypsy approached a well-dressed man sitting with a small, dirty boy in scruffy, stained clothing. The gypsy raised her voice.

“You play with forces you can’t hope to understand! Your machine shall be your undoing! And,” the gypsy continued, turning to look with horror at the boy while still addressing Hargreaves. “You will kill this boy while you play about with the Lord’s work.” She turned and scuttled out of the pub.

Rose excused herself to attend to some duties for a moment, and as she did so, the fellow with the street urchin approached Ebenezer, asking if he might explain the gypsy's meaning.

“I do hope the fortuneteller's ravings have not put you of a suspicious mind, sir."

"Not entirely, though I would speak false if I said I had no questions for you. What explanation do you propose to offer? Perhaps we should begin with introductions, though. I am Ebenezer Scrooge."

"Roland Hargreaves. A pleasure, Scrooge. A pleasure." Hargreaves took a seat while the boy stood alongside the booth, eyes downcast.

"Scrooge, I am an inventor and my device is nearly complete. When ready, this machine, as the vulgar gypsy called it, shall be death’s undoing. Think of it, Scrooge, to live forever. To no longer fear the grave’s grasping hand at life’s end.”

Ebenezer had asked for details, fascinated by the inventor’s talk, and, he admitted to himself, not a little entranced by Hargreaves’s passion. The old scholar conveyed a sense of wonder and awe with his words. And also power—the power to defeat even the greatest challenge man could expect to meet in life.