Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (20 page)

So began Mistress Angharad Cwmlech's ghostly siege upon the door-less tower of Sir Arthur's indifference.

There is not much a ghost can do to affect the waking world, but what she could, she did. She blew in his ear, ruffled his hair, pinched his arm, spilled his coffee, knocked his food from his plate. The result of her hauntings was no more than a wry remark about drafts or fleas or clumsiness, at which she'd howl and rail and curse like a mad thing. Sometimes it was all I could do not to laugh.

This had been going on for perhaps a month when Sir Arthur told me, after I'd brought up his coffee one chilly evening in July, with the rain coming down outside in knives and forks, that three gentlemen were coming to dine with him on Saturday.

These gentlemen, sir," I said, mild as milk. "Will they be staying the night?"

Yes. Is there a problem?

Mistress Angharad, hovering by the hearth, giggled.

I put my lips together and sighed. "Perhaps you did not know, sir, there's no mattress in any bedchamber save your own, nor a whole sheet to make it up with. And while you may be happy to take mutton pie in the morning room, there's shame to serve no better to your guests, and they come all the way from London."

"Oh!" he said. "I hadn't thought. Can't have Mr. Gotobed sleeping on straw, either—he'd take offense, and that would never do. These guests are important, Tacy. What are we to do?"

I was tempted to take a page from Mistress Angharad's book just then and tell him what I thought of inviting guests without notice. But, as Mam was always telling me, he was the tenth Baronet Cwmlech and I was Tacy Gof, the smith's daughter. Friendly we might be, but it was not a friendship to survive plain speaking, however justified. "We must do what we can, Sir Arthur," I said, dry as sand. "Buy mattresses, for one thing, and cloth for curtains. Bed linen, of course, and wool coverlets that can double as blankets, and —"

"Oh, damn," Sir Arthur said with feeling. "I hadn't thought — oh,
damn.
You must buy what you see fit, of course, but please remember that I am ruined."

"Ruined?" I echoed blankly. "But the carriages and the mechanicals . . ."

"Are all my fortune, Tacy. With work and luck all will be restored, and you may bring Cwmlech Manor back to its full glory. But first I must secure a patent on the new pipe and find someone to manufacture it for general use."

He might have been speaking of flying to the moon, so hopeless did he sound.

"Come, now," I said. "That should be easy enough for a man clever enough to invent it in the first place. Da will help you, I'm sure. As for your guests, you may leave their entertainment in my hands."

His smile was clouded with worry, but it warmed me nonetheless. "Thank you, Tacy. I have every confidence in
you,
at least."

Which is a heady thing for a girl just past her seventeenth birthday to hear. As I cleaned the kitchen, I chattered of lists and plans to Mistress Angharad until she lost her temper.

"It is dull you are, bleating about roasts and beds like an old ewe. Have you not asked yourself who these gentlemen are and what they're after, out in the damp wilds of the Borders when the London Season is at its height? Lombard Street to a China orange, they're up to nothing good."

"All the more reason to be thinking of roasts and beds," I said shortly.

Mistress Angharad wailed to curl my toes and disappeared.

After that, I had far more important things to think about than a sulky spirit. Hercules himself could not have made Cwmlech Manor fit for company in three days' time, so I went down to Mam's and begged her help.

If Da's genius was to beat dead iron into usefulness, Mam's was to settle a house into order and beauty. She began at Cwmlech by going to Mr. Thomas at the wool mill and Mrs. Wynn the shop and charming goods from them in exchange for a letter of patronage to hang on the wall, saying that Sir Arthur of Cwmlech Manor did business here and no other place. Then she summoned all the good women of Cwmlech village, who tucked up their sleeves and descended on the Manor with mops and brooms and buckets. They worked like bees in a meadow, until the windows were all draped in good Welsh wool, and the bed linen white and fragrant with lavender, and flowers on the chests, and the wood in the dining room all rubbed soft and glowing.

On the Saturday morning, Mam came with me to the Manor to help cook and wait upon the guests.

"There is funny gentlemen they are," she said when she came from showing them to their chambers. "Rat's eyes and bull's necks, no servants, and next to no luggage. No manners, neither — not so much as a smile or thanks, only a sharp warning not to meddle with their things. Were they not Sir Arthur's guests, I would not willingly give them to eat."

Which was strong speaking for Mam. It made me think of Mistress Angharad and how I'd missed seeing her these past days, sharp tongue and all, and how I wished to hear her opinion of the men who would sleep at Cwmlech Manor this night.

So you may judge my joy when I carried Mam's leek soup in to dinner that evening, to see Mistress Angharad hovering at the sideboard, bloody and disheveled as ever.

I smiled at her; she frowned back. "Eyes open and mouth shut, girl," she ordered. "Here's mischief abroad."

Which I might have guessed for myself, so smug were the guests, like cats at a mouse hole, and so fidgety was Sir Arthur, like the mouse they watched. Two of them were large and broad, very thick in their beards and necks and narrow in their eyes; the third was thinner and clean shaven, but no more handsome for that, with his mouth as tight as a letter box and his eyes hard as ball bearings.

"A fine, large workshop, Sir Arthur," Clean-Cheeks said, picking up his spoon. "A pity nothing useful has come out of it."

One of the roughs said, "Don't forget the pipe, Mr. Gotobed."

Mr. Gotobed smiled thinly. "I do not forget the pipe, Mr. Brown."

Sir Arthur nudged his cutlery straight. "It's very nearly ready, Mr. Gotobed. Just a few details about the interface——"

"Interface?" The second rough found this funny. "Them things got no face at all, if you ask me."

And then the tureen was empty, and I must run downstairs again to fetch the fish course. When I returned with the baked grayling, Mr. Gotobed and his friends had scraped their plates clean, Sir Arthur's soup was untouched, and Mistress Angharad was scowling blackly.

"I know Cwmlech Manor is haunted," Mr. Gotobed was saying. "There is a whole chapter on the subject in
The Haunted Houses of Great Britain.
Your resident ghost is precisely why Mr. Whitney wants to buy it. He has a great affinity for the supernatural, does Mr. Whitney of Pittsburgh, America. By his own account, some of his best friends are ghosts."

"Then I'm afraid he must be disappointed," Sir Arthur said. "You will be paid in full."

Mr. Gotobed smiled. "Yes," he said. "I will. One way or another. Mr. Whitney is very excited. I believe he intends to install a swimming bath in the Great Hall."

Mistress Angharad reached for a candlestick. Another time, her look of fury when her hand passed through it might have made me laugh, but I was too furious myself for mirth. Sir Arthur's hands clenched against the table. "A year's grace is all I ask, Mr. Gotobed."

"A year! It will take that long for the patent office to read your application, and another for them to decide upon it. I'm sorry, Sir Arthur. A manor in the hand is worth any number of inventions in, er, the bush. Pay me in full on the first of September or Cwmlech Manor is mine, as per our contract. Excellent fish, by the way. Did you catch it yourself?"

How I got through the rest of the meal without cracking a plate over Mr. Gotobed's head, I do not know. Lucky that Mam was busy with her cooking. My face was a children's ABC to her, and I did not want her knowing that Sir Arthur had pledged Cwmlech Manor. She'd small patience with debtors, and she'd think him no better than his father, when the poor boy was only a lamb adrift in a world of wolves like Mr. Gotobed.

The uncomfortable dinner wore on, with only Mr. Gotobed and his roughs eating Mam's good food, and Mistress Angharad cursing impotently, and Sir Arthur growing more and more white and pinched about the nose. When I took up the cloth at last and put the decanters on the table, he stood up. "I have some rather pressing business to attend to," he said. "Enjoy your port, gentlemen."

And then he went into his bedroom across the landing and shut the door.

I wanted to knock and give him a few words of comfort. But Mam was waiting downstairs with all the cleaning up, and I could think of no comfortable words to say.

Mam and I were to sleep at Cwmlech Manor to be handy to cook the guests' breakfast in the morning. When the kitchen was tidy, we settled by the fire to drink a cup of tea, too weary to speak. So low was I, I hardly started when Mistress Angharad said, "Tacy! I have news!" right in my ear.

Mam shivered. "There's a wicked old draft in by here."

"Worse when you're tired," I said. "Go in to bed, Mam. I'll see to locking up."

She gaped fit to split her cheeks and went off without argument for once, which was a blessing, since Mistress Angharad was already talking.

"Listening I was, as they drank Sir Arthur's port. It's all a trick, look you. The Manor is sold already, to the rich American who likes ghosts and swimming baths. And Tacy, that blackguard will wreck Sir Arthur's workshop tonight, in case he might sell his machines and pay his debt!"

I clutched my cooling tea, half sick with rage and entirely awake. "Will we tell Sir Arthur?"

"Sir Arthur!" she said with scorn. "Meek as a maiden aunt all through dinner, and off to cower in his bed as soon as the cloth was lifted. No. If anyone is to save Cwmlech Manor, it must be the two of us."

"Right." I put down my tea. "To the stable, us. And pray we're not too late."

Pausing only to light the lantern, we crept out of the kitchen and across the yard to the stable, the moon sailing high and pale in a wrack of cloud above us. Within, all was black, save for the sullen glow of the forge fire. The flickering lantern drew little sparks of light from the dials and gears and polished metal of Sir Arthur's machines and tools. The air smelled like pitch and coal and machine oil.

"The dragon's lair," Mistress Angharad said, full of bravado. "Is that the virgin sacrifice?"

I followed the faint glow of her pointing finger to a table set like a bier under a bank of lights, and the figure upon it draped with an old linen sheet.

"That," I said, "is Sir Arthur's expensive French automaton. Will you look?" I picked my way carefully through the chaos of strange machines and gear-strewn tables and reached for the sheet. "Only an old mechanical it is, see?"

In truth, it looked eerie enough, bald and still and deathly pale. Mistress Angharad stroked its cheek with a misty finger. "There's beautiful it is," she said, with wonder.

I touched the key in its neck. "Still, only a mechanical doll, simpler than the simplest automaton." Without thought, almost without my will, my fingers turned the key, feeling the spring coil tight as I wound.

Mistress Angharad turned her head. "Douse the lantern," she hissed.

Heart beating like one of Da's hammers, I blew out the candle and ducked down behind the table. The door flew open with a crack of splintering wood, and Mr. Gotobed and his two thugs rushed in, waving crowbars.

I cursed my tired brain, drew my pipe from my apron pocket, and played the first tune that came to mind, which was "Rali Twm Sion" — a good rousing tune to instruct the mechanicals to break down walls.

Someone shouted — I think it was Mr. Brown. Then the air was filled with whirring gears and thumping treads and grunts and bad language and the clang and screech of metal against metal.

"Sons of pigs!" Mistress Anghard screeched. "Break their bones like matchsticks I would, could I only touch them!"

From the corner of my eye, I saw her hovering, cloudlike, over the automaton. Then she said, "I am going to break a great rule. If it means the end of me, then I will at least have tried. Good-bye, Tacy. You have been a good friend to Cwmlech and a friend to me as well." And then she disappeared.

Though tears pricked my eyes, I went on playing
"Rati Twn Sion"
as though my life depended on it—until the French automaton twitched and thrashed and sat up on the table, when the pipe dropped from my hands, grown suddenly nerveless.

The mechanicals froze, of course. The French automaton, however, swung off the table and staggered toward the noise of iron crunching against polished metal. Not to be outdone by a toy, I snatched up the first heavy tool I laid my hand on and ran, yelling to tear my throat, toward a shadowy figure whose shaven cheeks showed ghostly in the gloom.

Swinging my makeshift weapon high, I hit him on the arm — as much by luck as design. He swore and dropped the bar. I was about to hit him again when Sir Arthur's lights flared into blinding life overhead, and Sir Arthur's pipe brought the mechanicals to purposeful life.

Quick as thinking, they seized Mr. Gotobed and Mr. Brown and held them while the automaton who was Mistress Angharad picked up the third thug and slammed him bodily against the wall.